Hello, all. Short write-up today, as I have to leave early this morning (i.e. in a couple hours) (it's 4:28am right now!) for a day trip down to New Jersey. My wife has something she has to do there, and I'm coming along for the ride. Get to see my good friend Lee and [drum roll] my daughter, who's gonna pop over from the City and have lunch with us. Anyway, let's get to it. This looks like a debut from Mansi Kothari. Erik Agard's name, on the other hand, you will recognize if you've been doing puzzles for any length of time. Longtime constructor, American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (and Jeopardy!) champion, former editor of the USA Today crossword, he's one of the most prominent names in contemporary crosswords, and this puzzle has many elements of what I consider a typical Agard puzzle. First, and most important, I really enjoyed it. His grids are always so carefully, and thoughtfully, constructed, wide-ranging, and with a good sense of humor. I think of Erik as a kind of Reverse Maleska. Maleska was the editor that preceded Shortz, and he was (in)famous for putting things in the grid that he thought you *should* know. This included what struck many solvers as rank obscurity. Lots of three-letter rivers and animal genuses and what not. His was a very teacherly approach. Erik also has a teacherly approach, in that his grids include names he thinks you should know, or that he thinks are worth knowing, names that might strike some (traditional, longtime) solvers as obscure, but there are several big differences (imho) between these approaches, the most important of which is that Erik is trying to broaden our sense of what the crossword can be and (particularly) who it's for. He's taking U.S. puzzles beyond their historically Anglo-American frame of reference. His puzzles are Blacker and more international, more inclusive of women and younger people. But (and here's another difference from Maleska), the grids are crafted in such a way that people can *get* the names even if they don't *know* them (i.e. the crosses are fair), and they really do range widely, so it would be hard for any solver, from any solving demographic, to say "I'm not represented here at all." Lastly, there's a playfulness and sense of humor that makes it seem like the puzzle is supposed to delight instead of punish (I frequently felt like Maleska was punishing me—it's possible I kinda liked it, at times, but ... I wouldn't say that attitude was healthy). Anyway, this is a co-construction, and I don't want to diminish Mansi Kothari's contributions, but this had a definite Agard vibe, and I'm definitely here for it (even when I'm stumbling over my ignorance).
Wow, that paragraph was longer than I expected. Down to business. Mötley Crüe's METAL UMLAUTs and EXTRA CHEESE pizza gave me big late-80s Pomona dorm room flashbacks, so I was pretty much sold on this one from the jump, but the moment where the puzzle seemed to go from "Good For Me" to "Good For Everyone" was right ... here:
Great answer, great wordplay in the clue (31D: Intricately plotted fiction). Zoom zoom, whoosh whoosh, Happy Friday to me. There were two other stellar clues on stellar answers. 11D: Inapt response when somebody says "Happy birthday!," presumably ("SAME TO YOU!") made me laugh out loud, and 55A: Petty person? for ANIMAL LOVER was adorable. I was really thinking of Tom Petty there, but HEARTBREAKER didn't fit. There were the usual assortment of proper names I didn't know. Tommy IVAN seems like a very, very deep cut, as far as ice hockey lore is concerned. He coached the Red Wings to several Stanley Cups ... in the '50s. Looks like he went on to coach the Chicago Blackhawks for over two decades and won a Stanley Cup there as well. Admittedly, I know hockey the least well of the Big Four U.S. sports. But he was new to me. I'm happy to learn him. I'm never that happy being asked to know a beauty pageant winner, of any kind, from any year, EVER, so as for LARA, good for her, but shrug (48A: ___ Dutta, winner of the Miss Universe 2000 pageant) (she's a very successful Hindi-language film actress—that seems a more worthy accomplishment to highlight—not that I would've known her, but that cluing would've made her seem more worth knowing. Pageant shmageant). As for NADU (also new to me), it's a geographical name part, and it's the part that bugs me a little (39A: Tamil ___, India). Tamil NADU is an Indian state (worth knowing), but NADU on its own is like AVIV on its own. Not good fill. Just because something's never been in the NYTXW before (and it hasn't) doesn't make it good. NADU means "land" in Tamil ... and now you know! Please don't turn NADU into neo-crosswordese, thank you. (Although, in its defense, it is a very common place name part in South Asia, primarily India)
I solved this puzzle fairly easily, despite a ton of missteps. GETS before GEMS (1D: Keepers), OCHO (my bad) before OTTO (3D: Quattro + quattro), SITE *and* SLOT before SPOT (29A: Place). Wasn't sure if it was VALE or DALE (43A: Low-lying area). I know about CAD from my daughter ... but only remembered this after I got it from crosses (54A: Modeling software, familiarly). Before that, no idea. Lots of schools have online offerings, I didn't know ASU was particularly "known" for that (8D: Southwest sch. known for its numerous online offerings). Seems slightly brutal to have only a vague geographical indicator in that clue, but luckily I knew RETTA (9D: One-named actress on "Parks and Recreation") which helped me get CHAR, which then seemed like the only reasonable answer for 6A: Toast, say (that gave me the "A" in ASU). Most solvers (I'd wager) are never going to have heard of Sylvan ESSO, so that made me laugh (61A: Indie pop duo Sylvan ___). I like them a lot! I mean, ESSO is still crosswordese, but why not give it a new spin (again, assuming the crosses are fair).
That's it. Once again, this write-up has not been as short as I promised. My apologies. Good day.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. I'll be reminding you all week that These Puzzles Fund Abortion 4 is now available. Here is my description of the details (from this past Sunday's write-up):
These Puzzles Fund Abortion 4 (four!) just dropped this past week—over 20 original puzzles from top constructors and editors—and you can get the collection now (right now) for a minimum donation of $20 (donations split evenly among five different abortion funds—details here). You can check out a detailed description of the collection and a list of all the talent involved here. I not only guest-edited a puzzle, I also test-solved puzzles. I have now seen the finished collection, and it's really lovely, across the board. General editors Rachel Fabi and Brooke Husic and C.L. Rimkus put in a tremendous amount of work ensuring that it would be. The attention to detail—test-solving, fact-checking, etc.—was really impressive. Anyway, donate generously (assuming you are able) and enjoy the puzzle bounty!
Learned some new things today and got through it, but not sure I can support NADU crossing SANAA, two relatively obscure place names that invoke another one: Natick. I only got there by trial and error which would have been a fail with my first choice of bADU/SAbAA.
Not easy for me. More of a medium. Certainly solvable, but the names, oh all the names. Looking at completed grid, I’d GUESSTIMATE that, ultimately, their crosses were fair, but man did they slow me down. I finished with an average Friday time, but I feel considerably slower than my current/recent Avg Friday (thx early yrs). The names did just enough were I couldn’t commit to anything, and slowed me down more than they should have.
Oh well, I too really liked this puzzle. All the long answers are good to great. Cluing voice struck a good balance of clever/fun with a little deviousness. Definitely an Agard vibe and props to Mansi on the debut.
Very challenging for me. Not a lot of overwrites (@Rex covered most of mine), but a lot of WOEs and even a WTF or two. Sergey, Larry and I solved as a team.
Hopefully there is more to that METAL UMLAUT clue than meets the eye. I disagree with Rex on the “good arcana” vs. “bad arcana” dichotomy. I wondered on Monday why they don’t avoid the trivia tests and just stick with crossword puzzles with more difficult clues - today is a great example of why I WISH THAT WERE THE CASE.
Rex enjoyed it, so there is obviously a constituency for this kind of combination word puzzle/trivia test/brain teaser - so kudos to all who enjoy this approach to CroosWorld.
SANAA has been in there before. Puzzle was OK, Had to Google 2 or 3 times. Had alot of the same over writes.. fEb for LEO, ridS for NETS, gEne before CELL etc. I liked seeing SOBER in there, I am a few days away from being 2 years sober. I quit just to take a "break"... but now it's been so much time I don't think I will ever go back. Dont miss it. I thought 46D was battery-related at first, was hard to get that out of my mind
Maybe it's just me when I see this sort of questioning, that my mother raised me to be less collaborative than I ought be. A character flaw I should perhaps work on. But whenever I would ask her, "Hey, Ma? What does such-and-such mean?" I'd brace myself for what I knew was coming: "Look it up." Admittedly, on the rare occasions that she simply told me what such-and-such meant it was satisfying. (If only to my youthful preferred state--laziness: "Oh good. Now I don't have to go do something.") OTOH, what I thought of as a kind of meanness in her was actually instilling in me a resourcefulness that would prove invaluable every day of my life. And so, my friend, I pass on the wise advice of my mother: Look it up. It's pretty damn interesting! Here ya go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_umlaut#%3A%7E%3Atext%3DAmong_English_speakers%2C_the_use%2Ca_%22gothic_horror%22_feel.?wprov=sfla1
Because it's styled "Mötley Crüe," containing METALUMLAUTs (see also Motörhead and Queensrÿche, not to mention Spinal Tap, for which I can't even generate its N-umlaut).
Loved this puzzle. The very last clue I filled in was "metal umlaut" -- I had the umlaut part, couldn't figure out the beginning -- and then I looked it up and learned this is a term specifically for gratuitous use of umlauts by metal bands. Great finish.
Finished it without cheating, which makes one Friday in a row for me. Needed trial-and-error for the CHAR/RETTA cross (I don't think the clue for CHAR is quite right..."toast for a long while, e.g." would be better). I also had "Feb" before finding LEO.
I had a NARU/NADU dnf. I was convinced that 10 D was TRANSPIRE. My "thinking " was it was a portmanteau of TRANS and ASPIRE. Apparently my reading can be just as dyslexic as my spelling. The small scale of my phone screen and the difficulty of reading vertically played a part too. I put in the U of NUS to finish and no congrats. It took me over 20 minutes to spot my mistake. You'd think having TRANSPRIRE would be a dead give away but that extra R hid in plain site.
As debilitating as this dyslexia can be for reading and spelling it seems to help me with the SB.
Far from easy with all of the obscure proper names RETTA NADU LARA ESSO etal. But the quality of the puzzle demanded that I keep hammering away, so I finished in a medium challenging amount of time. Disappointing to see Rex call it easy, even with the caveat.
Some good stuff here and there but definitely not EA at his finest. The petty clue is clearly trying far too hard to be cute. VISUAL AIDS, EXTRA CHEESE and especially FIRST GENERATION take up a lot of real estate but lack fire.
Liked MORAL CODES and TALK TO ME. HEADLINER x METAL UMLAUT is pretty cute. Love me some Chennai food - NADU dropped right in. Not sure a group established and funded by the auto workers union can be considered a peace org. - keep the rewrites out.
Pleasant enough Friday morning solve - but a slight letdown given the constructor.
My favorite part of today’s puzzle was the abundance of wicked clever cluing. Erik is in my top echelon of clue makers, and seeing the clues that Mansi made (mentioned in her notes), she may climb up there in relatively short order.
Man was I delightfully misdirected today! I get misdirected often because part of who I am is naïve. This, to me, is a gift when I solve crosswords, because it brings an extra powerful “Aha!” when the right answer finally hits me.
And marvelous ahas came when I finally uncovered [Moved cross-country?] for RAN, [Primary directive?] for VOTE, [It’s in the neighborhood] for GUESSTIMATE, [Intricately plotted fiction] for WEB OF LIES, and not only a big aha but also a guffaw when [Petty person?] for ANIMAL LOVER emerged.
Clever, clever cluing. Oh, I also loved how wide-ranging the set of answers were, and the resistance my work-loving brain encountered. And I smiled when I realized that [Go clubbing?] is a clue that works both for GOLF and GOLF backward (okay, that’s a little dark).
But the wicked clever cluing – ahh, that is one of crossword’s prime gifts, IMO, and today I felt showered by it, bathed by it, and it gave me supreme pleasure. Thank you, Mansi and Erik!
Just stopped by to say it is so good to see ERIK! He is one of my favs (along with Robyn W) so I'm going to savor this Friday moment (I hope!). Be back later :)
Technical DNF today as the NADU SANAA cross is what I really call a Natick. Also lots of names that were WTF's-VIV, LARA, ESSO, RETTA. Hello to you all. You made things tough.
In a hurry this AM as we're trying to get lots of things from one place to another before a spring storm brings us all the snow we didn't get all winter. Closing next week and moving to a new condo close by, but still have to move everything, which a lot of you know is not fun.
Nice challenge, MK and EA. Mighty Knotty and Exceptionally Arcane but some fun was had, for which thanks.
How odd. I can spend two hours completing a puzzle that many of you folks knock off in 10 or 20 minutes; yet to me, this felt like a themeless Wednesday. There are a number of entries that "got filled in by themselves" by crosses without my even seeing the clues. That's not something that typically happens on a Friday. Like I always say, it's all about the wheelhouse. (Actually that's the first time I've ever said that.)
At least the bottom half. Top felt fun and fresh, with fair crosses. A Miss Universe winner from 2000 is too obscure, and the 55A clue is just plain lousy. And please, ditch the “playground retort” clues.
The short fill was transcendentally horrible: LARA NADU VIV RETTA HMOS (annual plan, WTF?) LEO (shortest of 12? Who knows this crap about astrology?) cluing of ESSO.
too many names and crappy trivia. A Miss Universe from a quarter-century ago? Pretty stale.
I had two friends, one from Alabama and one from Georgia. They each claimed to have the perfect drawl. So I agreed to judge a contest to determine who was right. At the end of regular time, it was a TIE. The Alabamian thought they should have overtime drawl periods, while the Georgian thought I should pick the winner in some random manner. In the end we went with the suggestion to DRAWLOTS, and everyone was happy.
If you don't want your lowercase version of the 13th letter of the Greek alphabet to look like a "v", you better start spreading the NUS.
I like my BRAS to be like my batteries - - AA! Which reminds me, I'm late for my AA meeting.
I, for one, would like to know what transpired at the TRANSPRIDE Anagram Contest.
Such wonderful cluing today. It's to be expected of Erik Agard, and is enthusiastically welcomed from debutante Mansi Katharine.
So interesting to see the breadth of reaction - I found this hard, annoying, and obscure, and agree with everyone else who found SANAA and NADU a tough cross. I found SAME TO YOU pretty sketchy, though in hindsight I guess I do appreciate all the other clever long clues I struggled with. But there were lots of short words to wade through and it took me much longer than usual.
Hey All ! Toughie! Finished, got the Almost There! message, said, "Dang it!", and set about trying to find my error. Thought it was the R of CHAR/RETTA, as never hearing of RETTA, but after an alphabet run, figured it had to be an R. Hmm. Eventually found I had MORALmODEl crossing FAmEOFF. In my defense, a FAmEOFf sounds perfectly fine. Two celebrities duking it out. But, was able to see it was FACEOFF, which got me to change MORALmODEl to MORALCODES, and Happy Music! Preserved my Streak at 7 in a row! (Non-asterisked, as I haven't cheated , yet!)
Loved the F fest in SE area.
Good FriPuz, enough crunch to get the ole brain grinding. Even if I don't think METAL UMLAUT is a thing. 😁
I had METED instead of DEALT (which still crossed fine with BEAK, which was easy.) That lead to MOOR instead of DALE, which tripped me up for a few minutes until the adjacent clues made it abundant clear that something was wrong. But all in all, a fine Friday outing!
This was not "easy", although I had the satisfaction of gradually realizing the voice of the constructor and things would be fair and fun if not obvious. Welcome back @Lewis, and thanks for listing the great clues - good luck paring down your list to only 5 this week.
I was very proud of my Petty person being a NASCARRACER. ANIMALLOVER even better!
UMLAUT didn't fit, so was looking for some variant of "diacritical mark". Happy to know that METALUMLAUT is a thing in all its ridiculousness. OchO>OTTO kept me from seeing that and finished the NW last. Also spent way too long trying to think of a kind of cheese before EXTRA emerged. Lots of cobWEBs in the noodle today.
I get to say MALAPOP today with LEO wrong at 37A for July celebrant, then correct for 41D.
@ncmathsadist - all you need to know is that LEO only has 3 letters, and is thus the shortest:) Also, HMO is a Health Maintenance Organization, in which you enroll annually.
Interesting to see Christopher Nolan explode this year with Oppenheimer. TENET, his previous movie didn't get a lot of love. Most "Intricately plotted fiction" ever could have been the clue for TENET - how he got that story to piece together is mind-boggling.
Rex, I cut my teeth on Maleska's puzzles and I enjoyed them very much. What you say about Asgard, who's puzzles I do not like, is esssentially the same. Do you see that? There is so much random trivia in this puzzle and I mean random. Why should I know MIss Universe from 2000? Sylvan Esso? Retta? In my view, these are a lot of things I do not need to know, nor are any of them likely to stand the test of time. Some of the cluing here just makes me groan. Who willl know aunt Viv in 50 years? Maleska asked about things that were not, in my view, trivial in the same frivolous way. That is a crucial difference. It would be nice if you stopped beating this very dead horse.
"same to you" is an apt response for twins, triplets, etc...and for folks like me who share a birthday with a family member. my older (by 3 years) brother and i share the same birthday.
Confidently dropped "whodunnit" for 31D (WEBOFLIES) and spent a good amount of time paying for that mistake. Congrats to Mansi Kothari, and thanks to Eric Agard (one of my favorite constructors) for another enjoyable puzzle!
On another note, thanks to Rex Parker for recommending "Riddles of the Sphinx". I bought two copies for my wife and I to start our own private book club, and I had no idea the read would hit so close to home, as our own daughter suffered through a serious case of anorexia nervosa. The book has given me new perspective and insight about this often misunderstood condition and by proxy what my daughter went through, as well as being a very good read about the history of women in crosswords. Thanks again!
Tough for me, as Fridays almost always are. That Natick-y cross of Asian geographic entities added however much time it took to run the alphabet from A to N. (I was vaguely aware we have seen SANAA before--maybe even recently--but that doesn't mean it stuck with me!) :-)
So, I heard the Happy Music, but not in a thoroughly satisfying way.
Did enjoy all the great clues and answers that others have highlighted.
I do not love thee, IVAN, ESSO, LARA, RETTA, VIV. I think your names are just a heap of unknown, pointless triv.
And this puzzle could have been SO good without them! Fabulous clues for ANIMAL LOVER (bet Lewis will include it this week); WEB OF LIES; GUESSTIMATE and TENSE. Lots of traps to fall into and I fell into all of them. LEO before USA for the July birthday celebrant. DOLED before DEALT for "handed out". ECRU led to RIDS instead of TINT leading to NETS at the "Light shade"/"Clears" cross.
Why do constructors insist on spoiling otherwise excellent puzzles with arcane names that absolutely no one knows? Why, why, WHY????? I will never understand it.
Talk about ruining a great puzzle with proper nouns. This is a master class in what not to do. Holy mackerel the gems inside of a sea of soot. Cross NADU with SANAA like a boss, yeah?
METAL UMLAUT is new to me and hilarious. [Petty person.] is wonderful and I will use it forever. EXTRA CHEESE, WEB OF LIES, and GUESSTIMATE are fun.
But then at least 14 propers and way too many abbreviations and initialisms for a themeless just wreck the experience. We've talked about this before. You get nine (9) propers to make your weekend puzzles harder (dumb, but whatevs) and if you can't do it, try submitting to Connections and give up crossword constructioneering in disgrace. Thankfully the software and the bloated word lists only set you back a few hundred bucks.
Tee-Hee: So how does this non-starter ever get published? Sit at the feet of our slush pile editor and learn from the master: BRAS = [AA or A]! Am I rite? My kingdom for a D.
Uniclues:
1 Why there's smoke rolling out of the oven. 2 Being a petty person. 3 Bird battle. 4 "We're here to help you," among others. 5 What pop starlets inevitably brandish in an ill-fated attempt to remain pop starlets.
1 EXTRA CHEESE RAN 2 LEADS TO LABS (~) 3 BEAK FACE OFF 4 HMO'S WEB OF LIES 5 HEAD LINER BRAS
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Arson plan nixed. KEROSENE? WE CAN'T.
Is it MOBY...or is it DICK? What slot does LEO go in....Aunt PIV...who might you be? Oh, wait, it's VIV. My windmill has VANES not PANES. Have we met, RETTA? No. I've also not met Tommy IVAN nor that ESSO dude and I don't know what SDR stands for or why there's a movie called TENET. I would GUESSTIMATE it took me well over an hour to fix my mistakes and finish.
Did I like the puzzle? You bet your sweet bippy I did. The longies were whee inducing. FIRST GENERATION...you were my first. I crawled back up to EXTRA CHEESE... I had the agita fits with METAL UMLAUT... the angst with GUESSTIMATE and the dyspepsia with TRANS PRIDE. I swallowed my pill and penned you in inch by little inch. SAME TO YOU as a birthday wish? Wow, you took for ever to uncover. That whole eastern section was the hardest. I cheated on RAN and AME and NADU....I had to. The nasty threes got me good.
Favorite: ANIMAL LOVER. I thought maybe a Petty person could be a Navy Officer. So many wrong thoughts that eventually became right.
It took a lot of time but I enjoyed huffing and panting all the way to the finish....
I understand the respect for Erik Agard, but his puzzles are always really hard for me. The cluing is vague and just not in my wheelhouse. This one was so packed with obscure proper names or names that I simply didn’t know and had no hope of getting, that I gave up eventually. I did like the long answers, and could mostly suss them out - but the bottom half of the puzzle, no way for me.
Dread of the “Agard Vibe” kept me OFF being in any big hurry to start this ONE. When I finally did, it was not as painful as I anticipated but the proper names made it impossible for me without googling help. Arcane even for a Friday. Aside from that, a good solid themeless with some very nice long answers.
Never thought of myself as a petty person, but I guess that’s what YOU could call ME. I’ve often joked that I have a neon sign on my roof saying “all strays welcome here.” There have even been occasions when people out looking for lost pets have been sent to my house by neighbors who assume they will automatically gravitate to the biggest ANIMAL LOVER around.
A lovely Friday puzzle. I thought the long entries were stellar, especially WEB OF LIES along with FUN FACTS and MORAL CODES. I found it fairly easy up top but very hard to get into the SE corner, where "Doled" and "ecru" blocked my view...until I erased them. Pattern recognition got me ANIMAL LOVER and the way to the finish.
Do-overs: "leo" before USA; Doled before DEALT, ecru before TINT. No idea: RETTA, the METAL before UMLAUT, ViV, CAD, LARA, IVAN.
I had to look up ESSO and LARA; the latter unlocked the seemingly impossible puzzle for me, as that made it DEALT rather than Doled. After that it just filled right in.
I did know Tamil NADU and SANA'A, though. Our government is currently bombing Yemen, so I think we ought to at least know what its capital is.
As an old SDSer, I would agree that it was not a peace organization -- it had many goals along the lines of economic reform and, in particular, participatory democracy. And in Vietnam the primary focus was victory by the National Liberation Front, not "peace" per so. As for UAW funding, though, that was SDS's predecessor, the League for Industrial Democracy. The UAW broke ties when SDS repealed the rule that members could not be communists.
Yes, the EXTRA CHEESE is for a pizza pie; but the state where I grew up, Wisconsin (aka "America's Dairyland") it was a legal requirement that restaurants serve a slice of cheese with every piece of apple pie. "Apple pie without cheese is like a kiss without a squeeze,' it was said.
Yep, all the good stuff @Lewis said and all the shortcomings that Rex cited were observed today. Add in a strange glitch with iPad/software/server connection/??? and it wasn’t as much fun as one expects on a Friday.
OTOH, it had lotsa stuff I liked, like: * TENET. Great time-twerkin schlock flick. * GOLF clue. * Learnin about funfact-ual METALUMLAUTs, which was deduce-able, even tho OTTO, SAL, ASU, and RETTA definitely added precious nanoseconds to the deducin. * EXTRACHEESE. ANIMALLOVER. GUESSTIMATE. FUNFACTS. * SAMETOYOU clue. * Jaws of Themelessness. * Decent U-count.
Gotta admit it … sometimes M&A just looks up a few obscure names, like IVAN and RETTA. Hey -- lotsa times the constructioneers hafta look em up, before they can clue em up or even know about em in the first place. Fair's fair.
staff weeject pick: AME. Dang, I almost remembered this abbrever this time. It popped into my head as MEA, tho. Primo weeject stacks, in the the NE & SW, btw. Gonna try real hard to cement AME into the old M&A brainpan … arrgh … got it. Oops … now BTS just popped plumb out of memory, to make room. day-um.
Collabs kinda present a neat puzmakin advantage. U can have twice as many puzsubmissions in the NYTPuz pipeline at once, since any one person's collab only counts as half a submit for him/her. But, but -- I'm sure that's not necessarily why most collabs happen.
Thanx for gangin up on us, Mr. Agard dude & Ms. Kothari darlin. And congratz to Ms. Mansi on her half-debut.
Love the dialogue on Maleska vs Agard trivia. Not sure which will better stand the test of time. My Dad (whose challenge was to do the NYT Sunday puzzle from acrosses only) left me an unfinished Maleska puzzle and the key missing answer was the name of a root from an obscure tree found only in the Philippines. I found it only by some very intricate Googling, something not available in my Dad’s time. But it was quite scientifically accurate and led me a merry chase….I think the big difference between the two is Agard’s sense of humor—that will last as long as the idiomatic phrases he wields so well…in the meantime, I can only wish I had inherited my Dad’s facility in doing crosswords…
My initial delight at seeing Erik ... took me longer to solve than usual. This was a typical Erik puzzle with RETTA, NADU, VIV, ESSO, LARA (none of which I knew). Had LEO for JULY BIRTHDAY CELEBRANT so that threw when LEO showed up again for 41D. All in all, a typical Erik puzzle (I enjoyed it) & congratulations on your debut, Mansi and impressive collaboration with Erik :)
It has been awhile since I have read so many laudatory comments from you, Rex, about a puzzle. I found the puzzle tough to soive and am happy I can check it out by turning to your solutions
Had the same issue. Didn’t think that was a fair cross, given the obscurity of the name. TENT is definitely a plausible answer to “light shade,” thinking of those canopy-type tents you’d see at festivals, farmers markets and such.
In the puzzle’s defense, Mötley Crüe is a very, very well known band. It’d IMO be a reasonable name drop on a Tuesday or Wednesday, maybe even a Monday with good crosses… on a Friday? Sorry, not much to complain about.
Did anyone else consider that a TeNT can be a “light shade” just as well as a TINT can, and a hockey player could be Tommy eVAN? Oof - good thing I was stuck on -ADU/SA_AA and went to the website to run the alphabet. (That little cheat is the only advantage over solving on paper.) I had looked up SANA’A for a previous puzzle so was leaning towards the N, but I didn’t want to put it in and then come here and find out it was wrong after successfully navigating the rest of the PPP.
Agree with OFL there was a lot to like and I’m going to start referring to myself as a “Petty person” and calling my TREEs “Ring bearers.” Liked the WANES/vanes cross.
Plus, TWO entries, NUS and LOS, reverse to reveal another bright SPOT: SUN and SOL.
Hand up for the LEO malapop (that’s what someone dubbed it, right?) and the hesitation over DALE/vALE. I took @Nancy’s advice and wrote in -ALE until I was DEALT the answer.
Bet our friend @Roo had fun in the SW today!
FUN FACT - Two bassoonists in our orchestra share a birthday, though ONE of them came OF AGE about TEN years earlier than the other. They can FACE OFF over the delicious cakes they both make and aptly respond “SAME TO YOU!”
@Shaw, I did the same thing with tent/Evan. So I beat my brains out triple checking the whole damn puzzle. Third time through I finally questioned Evan (not a great hockey name) and finally saw Ivan/tint. Yeah, a tent does provide shade from light after all.
There were some things I loved here, like METAL UMLAUT, ANIMAL LOVER (tricky clue included), and GUESSTIMATE, but the puzzle was ruined by the cross at SANAA/NADU. Had to run out the alphabet, and that’s just not a fun way to end a puzzle. Yes, I know, with late week puzzles sometimes you just have to know obscure trivia, but this is double obscure trivia crossing an a non-inferable consonant. Ugly stuff. At least I learned what those two places are.
Love how you described Erik Agard's puzzles – there were a ton of clues I was pleasantly surprised to see! Love that LEO was clued as "Shortest in a group of 12" right near "July birthday celebrant", which I actually put LEO for my first time around (Thought they were trying to be clever, since Leo season is mostly August but starts the last week of July).
Also got ESSO in my first go-through! Turns out I only know one Sylvan Esso song though ('Frequency' on their 2020 album Free Love), so clearly I need to listen more.
I had to look up "metal umlaut". I'm very familiar with the IDEA that metal bands are known for adding gratuitous umlauts to their names, but I didn't realize that that concept had been given a name. But yes, apparently a "metal umlaut" is a term that specifically refers to umlauts added to a heavy metal band's name for no particularly good reason.
It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. Those great long answers, and fun tricky clues! Those awful obscure names! I knew SANAA and NADU, but not SAL, ASU, RETTA, VIV, LARA, or IVAN. That clue for IVAN is just bizarre! I'm a hockey fan, and I'm fairly old, but that name rings absolutely no bells. I was thinking: Wayne, Bobby (Orr or Hull), but no one named Tommy.
It actually went fairly quick (14 min) and I finished with no errors. But it would have been so much better without all those names.
Anyone who expects me to know (or waste my time learning) who won Miss Universe 24 years ago loses all credibility for me. Some obscure clues are worth looking up and learning about; others just tick me off.
I never comment, but laughed today. This puzzle was for hard me because I don’t know names — BUT I knew both Nadu and Sanaa. Still need a lot of help. Winnie
Clearly a matter of opinion but Sanaa has been in the Times puzzle quite often though, usually with a reference to Yemen. There has been a civil war going on for over a decade in Yemen one side has been attacking international shipping near Sanaa. Recently very much in the news. I thought it was fair for Friday
For those praising or criticizing "Eric's puzzle" or "Eric's clueing", how do you know for sure who is responsible for the fill and clues, Mansi Kothari, Eric Agard, Joel Fagliano or editorial staff? My guess is that it's a mixture of all those rather than one person but without direct knowledge, it's unsure who did what for any specific entry or clue.
I always think puzzles edited by Eugene Maleska should be compared and contrasted with other puzzles of his era, 1977-1993. I doubt he even had access to crossword puzzle construction software, like Crossword Compiler, and certainly not to the internet resources available to today's constructors and editors.
I thought this puzzle had some nice stuff but with 36 black squares, there were too many 3s and 4s for my taste. Does that make me a CAD?
I don't mind SOME popular culture names, but would like to see more time for capital c culture where possible. Both LARA and IVAN could have been clued with reference to Russan lit, so why not? Neither Dr. Zhivago nor The Brothers Karamazov is obscure, unlike the clues given. I'm also a bit dismayed that no one seems to know that "malaprop(ism)" comes from the character Mrs. Malaprop (a pun on French "mal a propos") in Sheridan's 18th C play "The Rivals". And it doesn't mean a merely incorrect answer but a mixed-up version of a word or expression - my dictionary cites "polo bear" for "polar bear". Now I suppose someone will say they never heard of Sheridan...Their loss if they enjoy a good (and timeless) laugh!
As a younger solver, this was one of the easier Fridays I’ve ever done - finally, pop culture I know! I find it funny how older solvers are fine with pop culture from decades ago vs how much kvetching there is about, say, a world capital, or a well known actress on an incredibly famous contemporary tv show. Erik Agard is KNOWN for trying to make puzzles more accessible to younger solvers and expanding the realm of what counts as viable material, as Rex explained, and I am loving it.
A mixed bag for me. I love EXTRACHEESE and WEBOFLIES, but all the proper nouns (Miss Universe? Indian state? Capital below Mecca?) in the SW region were just guesses for me.
VIV, LARA, RETTA, ESSO, IVAN…I had no hope of getting any of these without crosses. (In a couple cases, not without every single cross.) At least three of them were serious mis-steps in cluing. (Or, in the case of VIV and RETTA, use as answers at all?)
But I heartily agree with those who defend SANAA as not only an ancient city of some note, but a current world capital very much relevant and in the news. I’d in fact argue that the only thing that makes that one even close to Friday-challenging is that there’s more than one way to transliterate it.
And of course it also had the advantage of being crossed by the wildly easy NADU…wait, what? Some folks found that made it harder? Guess you never can tell. For me personally—not a particularly strong knower of things Indian, but I do catch the odd Kabaddi match now and then on ESPN+—that one was precisely as easy as if it had read “Rhode ______, USA”.
I too tried SITE and SLOT before realizing it was SPOT. And I'm glad I wasn't the only one thinking HEARTBREAKER for the Petty clue! I originally was thinking EXTRA CRISPY before realizing it was EXTRA CHEESE. I guess I had KFC on the brain!
The comments herenalmost always leave me exasperated but I always take solace that I am more aware of our contemporary world than Nancy. Every day she shares with us how little she knows, it's a delight.
The Nadu/Sanaa cross got me started down there in the SE. Feeling slightly smug after reading all the comments (which makes a nice change, usually I come here to read the explanations!)
Almost impossible Friday. Played like an early Agard, which a bunch of PPP that needs every cross and is completely uninferrable (ESSO, IVAN, LARA, RETTA, VIV). No pleasure at all from this one. Give me a Maleska any day.
Now just you, I was surprised I made it almost all the way through the comments before seeing another person who had ‘fresh off the boat’ before ‘first generation.’ Fun facts and draw lots seemed to confirm it, but then nothing else fit for the downs, so I got it figured out.
@anon 6:31: No, you are NOT the only one. FRESHOFFTHEBOAT was my FIRST thought as well. Luckily I didn't write it in.
Initial hangup: OchO, confusing my romance languages. Made those long acrosses inscrutable for a while. After OXEN/EXTRACHEESE, I was forced to abandon the Spanish. Then, METALUMLAUT was forced in. Really? I had no idea that metal bands overused the mark, but there it was. Who knew? (Apparently, lots of folks.)
On a toughness scale of ONETOTEN, this puppy was a twelve. I bet a dollar tomorrow's will be easier. So it GOES in the corners. Birdie.
Another hand up for OchO. OFL was too busy gushing over Mr. Agard to notice LEADSTO SAMETOYOU and ONETOTEN all crossing on the TOs in the same SPOT, with TALKTOME not far away; that's four TOs. Then WEBOFLIES OFAGE. Wordle birdie.
I found this puzzle to be covered with extra hard cheese. I got her done, though, and without any outside help. Chicanery galore with the cluing , and almost all the names were unknowns. I finally remembered Sal which helped with the metal part of umlaut. Sylvan Esso I recently saw in another xword puzzle. Thankfully, I'm fairly good with world capitals so Sanaa wasn't too difficult to dredge up. Post-puzzling I had to go see who is this Retta person? As soon as I saw her face , I shouted inside my head: I know her!!! She hosts Ugliest House in America! She's a hoot and a half, and boy are there some butt-ugly houses in this country.
A long time ago, I was solving this puzzle and got stuck at an unguessable (to me) crossing: N. C. WYETH crossing NATICK at the "N"—I knew WYETH but forgot his initials, and NATICK ... is a suburb of Boston that I had no hope of knowing. It was clued as someplace the Boston Marathon runs through (???). Anyway, NATICK— the more obscure name in that crossing—became shorthand for an unguessable cross, esp. where the cross involves two proper nouns, neither of which is exceedingly well known. NATICK took hold as crossword slang, and the term can now be both noun ("I had a NATICK in the SW corner...") or verb ("I got NATICKED by 50A / 34D!")
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121 comments:
Great puzzle but it took work for me. I usually rely on the downs to get the PPP I don't know, but I had a difficult time with the short crosses.
FEB instead of LEO
LEO instead of USA
RIDS instead of NETS
I don't understand the metal of umlaut (yeah, I know Motley Crue is metal, but is that it?)
Way over my normal Friday time for this one.
Ha! Show us a review you said would be short that actually was short!😆😝👻
Learned some new things today and got through it, but not sure I can support NADU crossing SANAA, two relatively obscure place names that invoke another one: Natick. I only got there by trial and error which would have been a fail with my first choice of bADU/SAbAA.
Not easy for me. More of a medium. Certainly solvable, but the names, oh all the names. Looking at completed grid, I’d GUESSTIMATE that, ultimately, their crosses were fair, but man did they slow me down. I finished with an average Friday time, but I feel considerably slower than my current/recent Avg Friday (thx early yrs). The names did just enough were I couldn’t commit to anything, and slowed me down more than they should have.
Oh well, I too really liked this puzzle. All the long answers are good to great. Cluing voice struck a good balance of clever/fun with a little deviousness. Definitely an Agard vibe and props to Mansi on the debut.
Very challenging for me. Not a lot of overwrites (@Rex covered most of mine), but a lot of WOEs and even a WTF or two. Sergey, Larry and I solved as a team.
Oof, I thought this puzzle was atrocious. To each his own, I suppose.
Granted SANA’A is a world capital and fair game, but crossing that and NADU seems pretty Naticky to me.
Hopefully there is more to that METAL UMLAUT clue than meets the eye. I disagree with Rex on the “good arcana” vs. “bad arcana” dichotomy. I wondered on Monday why they don’t avoid the trivia tests and just stick with crossword puzzles with more difficult clues - today is a great example of why I WISH THAT WERE THE CASE.
Rex enjoyed it, so there is obviously a constituency for this kind of combination word puzzle/trivia test/brain teaser - so kudos to all who enjoy this approach to CroosWorld.
SANAA has been in there before. Puzzle was OK, Had to Google 2 or 3 times. Had alot of the same over writes.. fEb for LEO, ridS for NETS, gEne before CELL etc. I liked seeing SOBER in there, I am a few days away from being 2 years sober. I quit just to take a "break"... but now it's been so much time I don't think I will ever go back. Dont miss it. I thought 46D was battery-related at first, was hard to get that out of my mind
ONE TO TEN really got me.
What's a "Onetoten?" Are there twototens? Fourtotens?
Otherwise not too tough, once a few clues started falling into place.
Couldn’t agree more!
Maybe it's just me when I see this sort of questioning, that my mother raised me to be less collaborative than I ought be. A character flaw I should perhaps work on. But whenever I would ask her, "Hey, Ma? What does such-and-such mean?" I'd brace myself for what I knew was coming: "Look it up." Admittedly, on the rare occasions that she simply told me what such-and-such meant it was satisfying. (If only to my youthful preferred state--laziness: "Oh good. Now I don't have to go do something.") OTOH, what I thought of as a kind of meanness in her was actually instilling in me a resourcefulness that would prove invaluable every day of my life. And so, my friend, I pass on the wise advice of my mother: Look it up. It's pretty damn interesting! Here ya go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_umlaut#%3A%7E%3Atext%3DAmong_English_speakers%2C_the_use%2Ca_%22gothic_horror%22_feel.?wprov=sfla1
Struggled for an hour and gave up on the NW.
Because it's styled "Mötley Crüe," containing METALUMLAUTs (see also Motörhead and Queensrÿche, not to mention Spinal Tap, for which I can't even generate its N-umlaut).
Loved this puzzle. The very last clue I filled in was "metal umlaut" -- I had the umlaut part, couldn't figure out the beginning -- and then I looked it up and learned this is a term specifically for gratuitous use of umlauts by metal bands. Great finish.
Great (1-paragraph) write-up of Agard :)
Congrats to Mansi Kothari on her NYT debut. The inclusion of NADU and LARA Dutta (Indian actress) makes sense now, so no problems there.
Tough puz (esp. the south for me), but enjoyable and satisfying to complete. Thanks Erik & Mansi!
Finished it without cheating, which makes one Friday in a row for me. Needed trial-and-error for the CHAR/RETTA cross (I don't think the clue for CHAR is quite right..."toast for a long while, e.g." would be better). I also had "Feb" before finding LEO.
Can someone explain the clue for NUS?
Nu, the Greek letter
I wonder if I’m the only one who officially DNF, because I didn’t know IVAN and TENT also qualifies as a “light shade”?
I had a NARU/NADU dnf. I was convinced that 10 D was TRANSPIRE. My "thinking " was it was a portmanteau of TRANS and ASPIRE. Apparently my reading can be just as dyslexic as my spelling. The small scale of my phone screen and the difficulty of reading vertically played a part too. I put in the U of NUS to finish and no congrats. It took me over 20 minutes to spot my mistake. You'd think having TRANSPRIRE would be a dead give away but that extra R hid in plain site.
As debilitating as this dyslexia can be for reading and spelling it seems to help me with the SB.
yd -0. QB13
Far from easy with all of the obscure proper names RETTA NADU LARA ESSO etal. But the quality of the puzzle demanded that I keep hammering away, so I finished in a medium challenging amount of time. Disappointing to see Rex call it easy, even with the caveat.
Some good stuff here and there but definitely not EA at his finest. The petty clue is clearly trying far too hard to be cute. VISUAL AIDS, EXTRA CHEESE and especially FIRST GENERATION take up a lot of real estate but lack fire.
MOBY
Liked MORAL CODES and TALK TO ME. HEADLINER x METAL UMLAUT is pretty cute. Love me some Chennai food - NADU dropped right in. Not sure a group established and funded by the auto workers union can be considered a peace org. - keep the rewrites out.
Pleasant enough Friday morning solve - but a slight letdown given the constructor.
Southside Johnny
My favorite part of today’s puzzle was the abundance of wicked clever cluing. Erik is in my top echelon of clue makers, and seeing the clues that Mansi made (mentioned in her notes), she may climb up there in relatively short order.
Man was I delightfully misdirected today! I get misdirected often because part of who I am is naïve. This, to me, is a gift when I solve crosswords, because it brings an extra powerful “Aha!” when the right answer finally hits me.
And marvelous ahas came when I finally uncovered [Moved cross-country?] for RAN, [Primary directive?] for VOTE, [It’s in the neighborhood] for GUESSTIMATE, [Intricately plotted fiction] for WEB OF LIES, and not only a big aha but also a guffaw when [Petty person?] for ANIMAL LOVER emerged.
Clever, clever cluing. Oh, I also loved how wide-ranging the set of answers were, and the resistance my work-loving brain encountered. And I smiled when I realized that [Go clubbing?] is a clue that works both for GOLF and GOLF backward (okay, that’s a little dark).
But the wicked clever cluing – ahh, that is one of crossword’s prime gifts, IMO, and today I felt showered by it, bathed by it, and it gave me supreme pleasure. Thank you, Mansi and Erik!
Just stopped by to say it is so good to see ERIK! He is one of my favs (along with Robyn W) so I'm going to savor this Friday moment (I hope!). Be back later :)
The Greek letter Nu - its lowercase looks like an “n”. Lehigh University’s strong Greek life continues to help me in the strangest ways 🤩
Technical DNF today as the NADU SANAA cross is what I really call a Natick. Also lots of names that were WTF's-VIV, LARA, ESSO, RETTA. Hello to you all. You made things tough.
In a hurry this AM as we're trying to get lots of things from one place to another before a spring storm brings us all the snow we didn't get all winter. Closing next week and moving to a new condo close by, but still have to move everything, which a lot of you know is not fun.
Nice challenge, MK and EA. Mighty Knotty and Exceptionally Arcane but some fun was had, for which thanks.
It's my birthday and this puzzle felt like a special treat! Clever clues, satisfying finish.
How odd. I can spend two hours completing a puzzle that many of you folks knock off in 10 or 20 minutes; yet to me, this felt like a themeless Wednesday. There are a number of entries that "got filled in by themselves" by crosses without my even seeing the clues. That's not something that typically happens on a Friday. Like I always say, it's all about the wheelhouse. (Actually that's the first time I've ever said that.)
The FEB/LEO, LEO/USA thing for me too. Great misdirection!
At least the bottom half. Top felt fun and fresh, with fair crosses. A Miss Universe winner from 2000 is too obscure, and the 55A clue is just plain lousy. And please, ditch the “playground retort” clues.
Anonymous T 6:41. That’s no Natick. That’s beyond a Natick. I call “foul.”
The short fill was transcendentally horrible:
LARA
NADU
VIV
RETTA
HMOS (annual plan, WTF?)
LEO (shortest of 12? Who knows this crap about astrology?)
cluing of ESSO.
too many names and crappy trivia. A Miss Universe from a quarter-century ago? Pretty stale.
Just plain dreadful.
Objectively medium.
I had two friends, one from Alabama and one from Georgia. They each claimed to have the perfect drawl. So I agreed to judge a contest to determine who was right. At the end of regular time, it was a TIE. The Alabamian thought they should have overtime drawl periods, while the Georgian thought I should pick the winner in some random manner. In the end we went with the suggestion to DRAWLOTS, and everyone was happy.
If you don't want your lowercase version of the 13th letter of the Greek alphabet to look like a "v", you better start spreading the NUS.
I like my BRAS to be like my batteries - - AA! Which reminds me, I'm late for my AA meeting.
I, for one, would like to know what transpired at the TRANSPRIDE Anagram Contest.
Such wonderful cluing today. It's to be expected of Erik Agard, and is enthusiastically welcomed from debutante Mansi Katharine.
So interesting to see the breadth of reaction - I found this hard, annoying, and obscure, and agree with everyone else who found SANAA and NADU a tough cross. I found SAME TO YOU pretty sketchy, though in hindsight I guess I do appreciate all the other clever long clues I struggled with. But there were lots of short words to wade through and it took me much longer than usual.
I think it’s referring to the specific phrase “on a scale of 1-10…”
Hey All !
Toughie! Finished, got the Almost There! message, said, "Dang it!", and set about trying to find my error. Thought it was the R of CHAR/RETTA, as never hearing of RETTA, but after an alphabet run, figured it had to be an R. Hmm. Eventually found I had MORALmODEl crossing FAmEOFF. In my defense, a FAmEOFf sounds perfectly fine. Two celebrities duking it out. But, was able to see it was FACEOFF, which got me to change MORALmODEl to MORALCODES, and Happy Music! Preserved my Streak at 7 in a row! (Non-asterisked, as I haven't cheated , yet!)
Loved the F fest in SE area.
Good FriPuz, enough crunch to get the ole brain grinding. Even if I don't think METAL UMLAUT is a thing. 😁
Friday!
Five F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
BRAS also may be B, C D and double D.
Hated this puzzle
I had METED instead of DEALT (which still crossed fine with BEAK, which was easy.) That lead to MOOR instead of DALE, which tripped me up for a few minutes until the adjacent clues made it abundant clear that something was wrong. But all in all, a fine Friday outing!
Exactly — I’m here for the wordplay, for the cleverness. Not to learn bands I’ve never heard of.
I'm horrified to learn that not only cheese on pie is a thing, but that anyone would want extra.
"Pie preference" definitely had me stumped when it didn't involve ice cream or whipped cream.
Turns out cheddar cheese on apple pie is a whole thing -- for those who were as unaware as I:
https://thetakeout.com/does-apple-pie-with-cheddar-cheese-topping-taste-good-1849524512
Sorry, Mansi Kothari. I didn't catch the earlier autocorrect to Katharine. Again, great debut.
This was not "easy", although I had the satisfaction of gradually realizing the voice of the constructor and things would be fair and fun if not obvious. Welcome back @Lewis, and thanks for listing the great clues - good luck paring down your list to only 5 this week.
I was very proud of my Petty person being a NASCARRACER. ANIMALLOVER even better!
UMLAUT didn't fit, so was looking for some variant of "diacritical mark". Happy to know that METALUMLAUT is a thing in all its ridiculousness. OchO>OTTO kept me from seeing that and finished the NW last. Also spent way too long trying to think of a kind of cheese before EXTRA emerged. Lots of cobWEBs in the noodle today.
I get to say MALAPOP today with LEO wrong at 37A for July celebrant, then correct for 41D.
@ncmathsadist - all you need to know is that LEO only has 3 letters, and is thus the shortest:) Also, HMO is a Health Maintenance Organization, in which you enroll annually.
Interesting to see Christopher Nolan explode this year with Oppenheimer. TENET, his previous movie didn't get a lot of love. Most "Intricately plotted fiction" ever could have been the clue for TENET - how he got that story to piece together is mind-boggling.
2 extra palindromes in VIV and SDS
Rex, I cut my teeth on Maleska's puzzles and I enjoyed them very much. What you say about Asgard, who's puzzles I do not like, is esssentially the same. Do you see that? There is so much random trivia in this puzzle and I mean random. Why should I know MIss Universe from 2000? Sylvan Esso? Retta? In my view, these are a lot of things I do not need to know, nor are any of them likely to stand the test of time. Some of the cluing here just makes me groan. Who willl know aunt Viv in 50 years? Maleska asked about things that were not, in my view, trivial in the same frivolous way. That is a crucial difference. It would be nice if you stopped beating this very dead horse.
@Teleiotes - think pizza pie
"same to you" is an apt response for twins, triplets, etc...and for folks like me who share a birthday with a family member. my older (by 3 years) brother and i share the same birthday.
Much discussion here at Kaffeeklatsch regarding the clueing of 33A "Cereal ___" with answer "RYE". Rye the blank?
CAD=Computer Aided Design. Pretty tough for me today, but I agree that it was a well-designed puzzle.
Confidently dropped "whodunnit" for 31D (WEBOFLIES) and spent a good amount of time paying for that mistake. Congrats to Mansi Kothari, and thanks to Eric Agard (one of my favorite constructors) for another enjoyable puzzle!
On another note, thanks to Rex Parker for recommending "Riddles of the Sphinx". I bought two copies for my wife and I to start our own private book club, and I had no idea the read would hit so close to home, as our own daughter suffered through a serious case of anorexia nervosa. The book has given me new perspective and insight about this often misunderstood condition and by proxy what my daughter went through, as well as being a very good read about the history of women in crosswords. Thanks again!
Tough for me, as Fridays almost always are. That Natick-y cross of Asian geographic entities added however much time it took to run the alphabet from A to N. (I was vaguely aware we have seen SANAA before--maybe even recently--but that doesn't mean it stuck with me!) :-)
So, I heard the Happy Music, but not in a thoroughly satisfying way.
Did enjoy all the great clues and answers that others have highlighted.
I do not love thee, IVAN, ESSO, LARA, RETTA, VIV.
I think your names are just a heap of unknown, pointless triv.
And this puzzle could have been SO good without them! Fabulous clues for ANIMAL LOVER (bet Lewis will include it this week); WEB OF LIES; GUESSTIMATE and TENSE. Lots of traps to fall into and I fell into all of them. LEO before USA for the July birthday celebrant. DOLED before DEALT for "handed out". ECRU led to RIDS instead of TINT leading to NETS at the "Light shade"/"Clears" cross.
Why do constructors insist on spoiling otherwise excellent puzzles with arcane names that absolutely no one knows? Why, why, WHY????? I will never understand it.
Talk about ruining a great puzzle with proper nouns. This is a master class in what not to do. Holy mackerel the gems inside of a sea of soot. Cross NADU with SANAA like a boss, yeah?
METAL UMLAUT is new to me and hilarious. [Petty person.] is wonderful and I will use it forever. EXTRA CHEESE, WEB OF LIES, and GUESSTIMATE are fun.
But then at least 14 propers and way too many abbreviations and initialisms for a themeless just wreck the experience. We've talked about this before. You get nine (9) propers to make your weekend puzzles harder (dumb, but whatevs) and if you can't do it, try submitting to Connections and give up crossword constructioneering in disgrace. Thankfully the software and the bloated word lists only set you back a few hundred bucks.
Tee-Hee: So how does this non-starter ever get published? Sit at the feet of our slush pile editor and learn from the master: BRAS = [AA or A]! Am I rite? My kingdom for a D.
Uniclues:
1 Why there's smoke rolling out of the oven.
2 Being a petty person.
3 Bird battle.
4 "We're here to help you," among others.
5 What pop starlets inevitably brandish in an ill-fated attempt to remain pop starlets.
1 EXTRA CHEESE RAN
2 LEADS TO LABS (~)
3 BEAK FACE OFF
4 HMO'S WEB OF LIES
5 HEAD LINER BRAS
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Arson plan nixed. KEROSENE? WE CAN'T.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Sure, cross a place in India with a place in Yemen, I don't mind. Pfui.
Is it MOBY...or is it DICK? What slot does LEO go in....Aunt PIV...who might you be? Oh, wait, it's VIV. My windmill has VANES not PANES. Have we met, RETTA? No. I've also not met Tommy IVAN nor that ESSO dude and I don't know what SDR stands for or why there's a movie called TENET. I would GUESSTIMATE it took me well over an hour to fix my mistakes and finish.
Did I like the puzzle? You bet your sweet bippy I did. The longies were whee inducing. FIRST GENERATION...you were my first. I crawled back up to EXTRA CHEESE... I had the agita fits with METAL UMLAUT... the angst with GUESSTIMATE and the dyspepsia with TRANS PRIDE. I swallowed my pill and penned you in inch by little inch. SAME TO YOU as a birthday wish? Wow, you took for ever to uncover. That whole eastern section was the hardest. I cheated on RAN and AME and NADU....I had to. The nasty threes got me good.
Favorite: ANIMAL LOVER. I thought maybe a Petty person could be a Navy Officer. So many wrong thoughts that eventually became right.
It took a lot of time but I enjoyed huffing and panting all the way to the finish....
Mostly easy except for the SE which took a lot longer than the rest of the puzzle.
Why?
ecru before TINT
Doled before DEALT
rAbAt briefly before SANAA
ridS before NETS
…and I did not know LARA, ESSO, NADU and IVAN…tough corner!
Mostly liked it because sparkle, but the above mentioned corner was kinda irritating.
Just brutal. Painful and joyless imo.
Yes!!! That's it!!! A malapop!!! I had the same LEO malapop that you did, @burtonkd. And was quite aware of it while solving.
Not only that, but I actually remembered the puzzleword for this very odd puzzle occurrence! Does anyone know who coined it?
I understand the respect for Erik Agard, but his puzzles are always really hard for me. The cluing is vague and just not in my wheelhouse. This one was so packed with obscure proper names or names that I simply didn’t know and had no hope of getting, that I gave up eventually. I did like the long answers, and could mostly suss them out - but the bottom half of the puzzle, no way for me.
Thirteenth Greek letter NU. Uppercase looks like N, lowercase looks like v. Plural is NUS.
A number of “unfair” proper name crosses I thought.
I did have the Leo ‘malaprop’! (Never heard it called that before though the experience certainly occurs more than one might expect.
Dread of the “Agard Vibe” kept me OFF being in any big hurry to start this ONE. When I finally did, it was not as painful as I anticipated but the proper names made it impossible for me without googling help. Arcane even for a Friday. Aside from that, a good solid themeless with some very nice long answers.
Never thought of myself as a petty person, but I guess that’s what YOU could call ME. I’ve often joked that I have a neon sign on my roof saying “all strays welcome here.” There have even been occasions when people out looking for lost pets have been sent to my house by neighbors who assume they will automatically gravitate to the biggest ANIMAL LOVER around.
A lovely Friday puzzle. I thought the long entries were stellar, especially WEB OF LIES along with FUN FACTS and MORAL CODES. I found it fairly easy up top but very hard to get into the SE corner, where "Doled" and "ecru" blocked my view...until I erased them. Pattern recognition got me ANIMAL LOVER and the way to the finish.
Do-overs: "leo" before USA; Doled before DEALT, ecru before TINT. No idea: RETTA, the METAL before UMLAUT, ViV, CAD, LARA, IVAN.
100! He was decrying Maleska while extolling Agard for exactly the same traits.
Somebody please explain CEREAL RYE
I had to look up ESSO and LARA; the latter unlocked the seemingly impossible puzzle for me, as that made it DEALT rather than Doled. After that it just filled right in.
I did know Tamil NADU and SANA'A, though. Our government is currently bombing Yemen, so I think we ought to at least know what its capital is.
As an old SDSer, I would agree that it was not a peace organization -- it had many goals along the lines of economic reform and, in particular, participatory democracy. And in Vietnam the primary focus was victory by the National Liberation Front, not "peace" per so. As for UAW funding, though, that was SDS's predecessor, the League for Industrial Democracy. The UAW broke ties when SDS repealed the rule that members could not be communists.
Yes, the EXTRA CHEESE is for a pizza pie; but the state where I grew up, Wisconsin (aka "America's Dairyland") it was a legal requirement that restaurants serve a slice of cheese with every piece of apple pie. "Apple pie without cheese is like a kiss without a squeeze,' it was said.
@Nancy, it was Andrea Carla Michaels, aka @ACME.
@jae (10:56)-- Other than RABAT, our initial mistakes were completely identical. See my comment -- a bit earlier than yours.
Yep, all the good stuff @Lewis said and all the shortcomings that Rex cited were observed today. Add in a strange glitch with iPad/software/server connection/??? and it wasn’t as much fun as one expects on a Friday.
Tough stuff. Lotsa no-knows, at our house: METALUMLAUT. VIV. NADU. LARA. SAL. CAD. RETTA. IVAN. ESSO.
OTOH, it had lotsa stuff I liked, like:
* TENET. Great time-twerkin schlock flick.
* GOLF clue.
* Learnin about funfact-ual METALUMLAUTs, which was deduce-able, even tho OTTO, SAL, ASU, and RETTA definitely added precious nanoseconds to the deducin.
* EXTRACHEESE. ANIMALLOVER. GUESSTIMATE. FUNFACTS.
* SAMETOYOU clue.
* Jaws of Themelessness.
* Decent U-count.
Gotta admit it … sometimes M&A just looks up a few obscure names, like IVAN and RETTA. Hey -- lotsa times the constructioneers hafta look em up, before they can clue em up or even know about em in the first place. Fair's fair.
staff weeject pick: AME. Dang, I almost remembered this abbrever this time. It popped into my head as MEA, tho. Primo weeject stacks, in the the NE & SW, btw. Gonna try real hard to cement AME into the old M&A brainpan … arrgh … got it. Oops … now BTS just popped plumb out of memory, to make room. day-um.
Collabs kinda present a neat puzmakin advantage. U can have twice as many puzsubmissions in the NYTPuz pipeline at once, since any one person's collab only counts as half a submit for him/her. But, but -- I'm sure that's not necessarily why most collabs happen.
Thanx for gangin up on us, Mr. Agard dude & Ms. Kothari darlin. And congratz to Ms. Mansi on her half-debut.
Masked & Anonymo6Us
**gruntz**
Another short, temporary mix-up: CGI for CAD.
Add me to the chorus of those stumped by the SANAA/NADU crossing. Had to brute force it after a fairly fun and breezy solve.
Love the dialogue on Maleska vs Agard trivia. Not sure which will better stand the test of time. My Dad (whose challenge was to do the NYT Sunday puzzle from acrosses only) left me an unfinished Maleska puzzle and the key missing answer was the name of a root from an obscure tree found only in the Philippines. I found it only by some very intricate Googling, something not available in my Dad’s time. But it was quite scientifically accurate and led me a merry chase….I think the big difference between the two is Agard’s sense of humor—that will last as long as the idiomatic phrases he wields so well…in the meantime, I can only wish I had inherited my Dad’s facility in doing crosswords…
pizza ! pEEtzuh pie !
p.s.
Almost forgot … really wanted to sign off today with:
NADU NADU!
M&Also
oh for love of trivia, nancy ! who cares who coined it ? am i right.
This took my best solving chops and delivered. Yay! I'm with Lewis on this puzzle - misleading clues and rewarding answers.
I had no idea on the 5 names Nancy listed, plus SAL, but NADU was a gimme. And SANAA is often in the puzzle, though I tried SANNA first..
EXTRACHEESE was my last answer - thanks to ocho and SAL. But it earned a smile, as did the longs in the SW. This was a very enjoyable puzzle for me.
My initial delight at seeing Erik ... took me longer to solve than usual. This was a typical Erik puzzle with RETTA, NADU, VIV, ESSO, LARA (none of which I knew). Had LEO for JULY BIRTHDAY CELEBRANT so that threw when LEO showed up again for 41D.
All in all, a typical Erik puzzle (I enjoyed it) & congratulations on your debut, Mansi and impressive collaboration with Erik :)
Oh & yes, great write-up on Maleska/Agard, Rex.
So a “petty person” is someone who pets…animals?
It has been awhile since I have read so many laudatory comments from you, Rex, about a puzzle. I found the puzzle tough to soive and am happy I can check it out by turning to your solutions
Had the same issue. Didn’t think that was a fair cross, given the obscurity of the name. TENT is definitely a plausible answer to “light shade,” thinking of those canopy-type tents you’d see at festivals, farmers markets and such.
Whether Maleska or Agard I find both to be a trivia slog from time to time - this being one of those times.
In the puzzle’s defense, Mötley Crüe is a very, very well known band. It’d IMO be a reasonable name drop on a Tuesday or Wednesday, maybe even a Monday with good crosses… on a Friday? Sorry, not much to complain about.
Did anyone else consider that a TeNT can be a “light shade” just as well as a TINT can, and a hockey player could be Tommy eVAN? Oof - good thing I was stuck on -ADU/SA_AA and went to the website to run the alphabet. (That little cheat is the only advantage over solving on paper.) I had looked up SANA’A for a previous puzzle so was leaning towards the N, but I didn’t want to put it in and then come here and find out it was wrong after successfully navigating the rest of the PPP.
Agree with OFL there was a lot to like and I’m going to start referring to myself as a “Petty person” and calling my TREEs “Ring bearers.” Liked the WANES/vanes cross.
Plus, TWO entries, NUS and LOS, reverse to reveal another bright SPOT: SUN and SOL.
Hand up for the LEO malapop (that’s what someone dubbed it, right?) and the hesitation over DALE/vALE. I took @Nancy’s advice and wrote in -ALE until I was DEALT the answer.
Bet our friend @Roo had fun in the SW today!
FUN FACT - Two bassoonists in our orchestra share a birthday, though ONE of them came OF AGE about TEN years earlier than the other. They can FACE OFF over the delicious cakes they both make and aptly respond “SAME TO YOU!”
Enjoyable Friday.
@Shaw, I did the same thing with tent/Evan. So I beat my brains out triple checking the whole damn puzzle. Third time through I finally questioned Evan (not a great hockey name) and finally saw Ivan/tint. Yeah, a tent does provide shade from light after all.
I believe the pie in the clue is referencing pizza. As in pizza pie😀
There were some things I loved here, like METAL UMLAUT, ANIMAL LOVER (tricky clue included), and GUESSTIMATE, but the puzzle was ruined by the cross at SANAA/NADU. Had to run out the alphabet, and that’s just not a fun way to end a puzzle. Yes, I know, with late week puzzles sometimes you just have to know obscure trivia, but this is double obscure trivia crossing an a non-inferable consonant. Ugly stuff. At least I learned what those two places are.
Love how you described Erik Agard's puzzles – there were a ton of clues I was pleasantly surprised to see! Love that LEO was clued as "Shortest in a group of 12" right near "July birthday celebrant", which I actually put LEO for my first time around (Thought they were trying to be clever, since Leo season is mostly August but starts the last week of July).
Also got ESSO in my first go-through! Turns out I only know one Sylvan Esso song though ('Frequency' on their 2020 album Free Love), so clearly I need to listen more.
I had to look up "metal umlaut". I'm very familiar with the IDEA that metal bands are known for adding gratuitous umlauts to their names, but I didn't realize that that concept had been given a name. But yes, apparently a "metal umlaut" is a term that specifically refers to umlauts added to a heavy metal band's name for no particularly good reason.
It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. Those great long answers, and fun tricky clues! Those awful obscure names! I knew SANAA and NADU, but not SAL, ASU, RETTA, VIV, LARA, or IVAN. That clue for IVAN is just bizarre! I'm a hockey fan, and I'm fairly old, but that name rings absolutely no bells. I was thinking: Wayne, Bobby (Orr or Hull), but no one named Tommy.
It actually went fairly quick (14 min) and I finished with no errors. But it would have been so much better without all those names.
[Spelling Bee: Thu 0; QB streak 7.]
Haven’t seen tenet yet. Love Nolan. Just waiting to stream it somewhere that I’m subscribed. “Bankruptcy be subscription” at this point.
I DNF because Quattro + Quattro is Ocho…
AMON DÜÜL is my favorite and the most crossword-y.
Easy until that brutal southeast. Obscure pop duo, obscure place, and a Miss Universe winner from decades ago? Ugh.
Anyone who expects me to know (or waste my time learning) who won Miss Universe 24 years ago loses all credibility for me. Some obscure clues are worth looking up and learning about; others just tick me off.
I never comment, but laughed today. This puzzle was for hard me because I don’t know names — BUT I knew both Nadu and Sanaa. Still need a lot of help.
Winnie
@Nancy (11:00 am) Pretty sure it was Andrea Carla Michaels who coined "malapop."
Enjoyed this one… Got a kick out of the Leo USA Feb tangle.
RJ 6:04 AM
You are not alone in the malapop (sic) Leo for USA then Feb for Leo. Made this puzzle harder than average for me.
Liked it though
Clearly a matter of opinion but Sanaa has been in the Times puzzle quite often though, usually with a reference to Yemen. There has been a civil war going on for over a decade in Yemen one side has been attacking international shipping near Sanaa. Recently very much in the news. I thought it was fair for Friday
For those praising or criticizing "Eric's puzzle" or "Eric's clueing", how do you know for sure who is responsible for the fill and clues, Mansi Kothari, Eric Agard, Joel Fagliano or editorial staff? My guess is that it's a mixture of all those rather than one person but without direct knowledge, it's unsure who did what for any specific entry or clue.
I always think puzzles edited by Eugene Maleska should be compared and contrasted with other puzzles of his era, 1977-1993. I doubt he even had access to crossword puzzle construction software, like Crossword Compiler, and certainly not to the internet resources available to today's constructors and editors.
I thought this puzzle had some nice stuff but with 36 black squares, there were too many 3s and 4s for my taste. Does that make me a CAD?
Am I the only one who put FreshOffTheBoat instead of first generation? Does that make me evil?
Very much a no thank you slog. Let’s meet in a decade and see if the proper names plummet even further into obscurity.
I don't mind SOME popular culture names, but would like to see more time for capital c culture where possible. Both LARA and IVAN could have been clued with reference to Russan lit, so why not? Neither Dr. Zhivago nor The Brothers Karamazov is obscure, unlike the clues given. I'm also a bit dismayed that no one seems to know that "malaprop(ism)" comes from the character Mrs. Malaprop (a pun on French "mal a propos") in Sheridan's 18th C play "The Rivals". And it doesn't mean a merely incorrect answer but a mixed-up version of a word or expression - my dictionary cites "polo bear" for "polar bear". Now I suppose someone will say they never heard of Sheridan...Their loss if they enjoy a good (and timeless) laugh!
As a younger solver, this was one of the easier Fridays I’ve ever done - finally, pop culture I know! I find it funny how older solvers are fine with pop culture from decades ago vs how much kvetching there is about, say, a world capital, or a well known actress on an incredibly famous contemporary tv show. Erik Agard is KNOWN for trying to make puzzles more accessible to younger solvers and expanding the realm of what counts as viable material, as Rex explained, and I am loving it.
Got just shy of 1/2 of the puzzle last night, and had to step away. Picked it up for a few minutes at work, and notched a few more answers.
Just sailed through the rest now. Ended up really liking some of the clues. Even though I got the EXTRACHEESE, finally realized it was pizza-pie.
Also “loved” petty person ( when I finally got it)
Definitely a case where coming at it with a fresh look helped.
A mixed bag for me. I love EXTRACHEESE and WEBOFLIES, but all the proper nouns (Miss Universe? Indian state? Capital below Mecca?) in the SW region were just guesses for me.
Not sure how today qualified as "easy"?
VIV, LARA, RETTA, ESSO, IVAN…I had no hope of getting any of these without crosses. (In a couple cases, not without every single cross.) At least three of them were serious mis-steps in cluing. (Or, in the case of VIV and RETTA, use as answers at all?)
But I heartily agree with those who defend SANAA as not only an ancient city of some note, but a current world capital very much relevant and in the news. I’d in fact argue that the only thing that makes that one even close to Friday-challenging is that there’s more than one way to transliterate it.
And of course it also had the advantage of being crossed by the wildly easy NADU…wait, what? Some folks found that made it harder? Guess you never can tell. For me personally—not a particularly strong knower of things Indian, but I do catch the odd Kabaddi match now and then on ESPN+—that one was precisely as easy as if it had read “Rhode ______, USA”.
I too tried SITE and SLOT before realizing it was SPOT. And I'm glad I wasn't the only one thinking HEARTBREAKER for the Petty clue! I originally was thinking EXTRA CRISPY before realizing it was EXTRA CHEESE. I guess I had KFC on the brain!
Petty person = animal lover? I got it but I don’t understand the connection.
@Anonymous 8:28 AM
That makes two of who benefited from Lehigh's penchant for Greek life!
The comments herenalmost always leave me exasperated but I always take solace that I am more aware of our contemporary world than Nancy. Every day she shares with us how little she knows, it's a delight.
The Nadu/Sanaa cross got me started down there in the SE. Feeling slightly smug after reading all the comments (which makes a nice change, usually I come here to read the explanations!)
Almost impossible Friday. Played like an early Agard, which a bunch of PPP that needs every cross and is completely uninferrable (ESSO, IVAN, LARA, RETTA, VIV). No pleasure at all from this one. Give me a Maleska any day.
I doubt very much Will Shortz would have given the green light to the SANAA-NADU crossing. Also, NUS was news to me.
Too much PPP and non-words like SDS, AME and ASU
@anon 6:31 pm
Now just you, I was surprised I made it almost all the way through the comments before seeing another person who had ‘fresh off the boat’ before ‘first generation.’ Fun facts and draw lots seemed to confirm it, but then nothing else fit for the downs, so I got it figured out.
NUS EXTRA
LARA could DRAWLOTS OF LOVERs,
which LEADSTO PRIDE, SO YOU see,
SO if ABET'S EVER covered,
TEN TO ONE she'll TALKTOME.
--- ÖTTÖ ÜMLÄÜT
EZ?
EZ?
Hah! But with a touch of help (oh that PPP) I finished it. And the triumph points rained down on me.
Diana, LIW
@anon 6:31: No, you are NOT the only one. FRESHOFFTHEBOAT was my FIRST thought as well. Luckily I didn't write it in.
Initial hangup: OchO, confusing my romance languages. Made those long acrosses inscrutable for a while. After OXEN/EXTRACHEESE, I was forced to abandon the Spanish. Then, METALUMLAUT was forced in. Really? I had no idea that metal bands overused the mark, but there it was. Who knew? (Apparently, lots of folks.)
On a toughness scale of ONETOTEN, this puppy was a twelve. I bet a dollar tomorrow's will be easier. So it GOES in the corners. Birdie.
Wordle par.
Worthy of another pie to the face.
Another hand up for OchO.
OFL was too busy gushing over Mr. Agard to notice LEADSTO SAMETOYOU and ONETOTEN all crossing on the TOs in the same SPOT, with TALKTOME not far away; that's four TOs. Then WEBOFLIES OFAGE.
Wordle birdie.
I found this puzzle to be covered with extra hard cheese. I got her done, though, and without any outside help. Chicanery galore with the cluing , and almost all the names were unknowns. I finally remembered Sal which helped with the metal part of umlaut. Sylvan Esso I recently saw in another xword puzzle. Thankfully, I'm fairly good with world capitals so Sanaa wasn't too difficult to dredge up. Post-puzzling I had to go see who is this Retta person? As soon as I saw her face , I shouted inside my head: I know her!!! She hosts Ugliest House in America! She's a hoot and a half, and boy are there some butt-ugly houses in this country.
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