Sunday, March 31, 2024

Sound unit found in many Asian languages / SUN 3-31-24 / Final phase of a video game, perhaps / Toy brand for a budding engineer, maybe / With "the," a sudden flip from attraction to disgust, in modern parlance / Its water is nearly 10 times saltier than ocean water / Police captain in "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" / Sibilant summons

Constructor: Spencer Leach

Relative difficulty: Medium


THEME: "Turns of Phrase" — familiar phrases (following a "___ THE ___" pattern) have their first and last parts switched *and* (most of the time?) changed to homophones, creating ... yes, wackiness:

Theme answers:
  • ALARM THE RAYS (22A: Spook some creatures in an aquarium's tank?)
  • DAZE THE COUNT (33A: Deliver a blow to Dracula?)
  • CITES THE SEE (47A: References a Vatican Library source?)
  • SCREWS THE TITANS (60A: Referees a Tennessee football game poorly?)
  • HONOR THE DEW (79A: Write an ode to a caffeinated soda?)
  • HEAT THE BEETS (90A: Start preparing borscht?)
  • PRESS THE MEAT (104A: Make smash burgers?)
Word of the Day: TONEME (84A: Sound unit found in many Asian languages) —
phoneme in a language that uses different tones for different meanings. (wiktionary) //  [PHONEME: "any of the perceptually distinct units of sound in a specified language that distinguish one word from another, for example p, b, d, and t in the English words pad, pat, bad, and bat." (google / Oxford languages)]

• • •

For a puzzle that seems to want desperately for you to see it as youthful (the Taylor Swift lyrics and the YEETing and whatever that clue on ICK is, etc.), the theme is remarkably basic and corny and last-century. The puns are sometimes funny, sometimes not, mostly ho-hum, definitely old-fashioned. It's not showing anything terribly inventive or interesting, and if you look too hard at the theme, it starts to unravel a bit. I mean, you have to understand the parameters very loosely. It's really just a sound change thing. Sometimes the spellings of words change, sometimes they don't, sometimes the meanings change drastically, sometimes you just change a noun into its related verb (i.e HEAT into HEAT). You always change the spelling of the last word (except with SEE ... and COUNT ... where just the meanings are changed), but you never change the spelling of the first word (except with DAZE ... and CITES ...). It all works best if you don't really look at the grid, but just *say* the new ("turned") phrase: "raise the alarm" => "ALARM THE RAYS." Perfect. Textbook wackiness of the aural kind. Taken at that level, the themers all work ... except HONOR THE DEW—the phrase is not "do the honor," but "do the honors," plural. You might "do someone the honor of" something, but as a standalone phrase (which is what we're doing here), it's "do the honors." HONORS THE DEW would've worked perfectly ... but it's HONOR THE DEW because that's what fit in the allotted grid space. Symmetry is a harsh mistress, it's true, but if the *correct* version of your themer doesn't fit, it doesn't fit, and you should find something else. Of course the grid could've been built with CITES THE SEES (plural) and HONORS THE DEW as a symmetrical pair. But it wasn't. If this puzzle were full of wonder and delight and genuine humor, I wouldn't be noticing this relatively trivial defect. But the theme is just OK, so I notice. Greatness excuses unevenness. Without greatness, though ... leeway retracted.


"THE ARCHER" peaked at #38, but I guess charts don't matter anymore, we're all just supposed to know the whole Swift catalogue by heart (6D: Taylor Swift song that begins "Combat. I'm ready for combat"). God bless her and her fans, but come on. I mean, she's a Sagittarius, awesome, me too, but ... at least give me a clue that has *something* to do with bows and arrows. "Combat. I'm ready for combat" only suggests bows and arrows if you're living in medieval times. I wanted "THE something something WAR" or "THE ARMOUR" (British sp.??). Had to get through CLOROX, with its awful pandemic profiteering clue, to finally figure out "THE ARCHER." Other things about which I had no or little clue: BETTA (I had TETRA) (LOL if BETTA is "common" why is it debuting in the NYTXW only *today*?); and TONEME, yeeeeeesh, that one, crossing KNEX (not LEGO) (74D: Toy brand for a budding engineer, maybe), was rufffff. The very last letter I put in the grid was that "E." TONEME, also a debut. I'm not sure "congratulations" are really in order for either of these debuts. THNEEDVILLE (also a debut) at least has the virtue of being huge and bold. I never read "The Lorax" as a child (I learned to read from the Dr. Seuss dictionary, but my Dr. Seuss story education didn't go any farther than "One Fish, Two Fish" and "Green Eggs and Ham" (absolute staples)). Still, I must've picked up enough "Lorax" lore over the years that eventually THNEEDVILLE came to me. A big goofy answer that has broad demographic appeal—that's something I can get behind. 


Hard stuff (for me) included ARSE ([Git] really reads like a countrified "Get out of here, animal or child or other nuisance!"—as opposed to what it is here: British for "foolish or worthless person") and AULI'I Cravalho (commit that name to memory because she is young and full of vowels and she is working, most recently in the 2024 remake of Mean Girls). Weak stuff included HBO SHOW (just... "show?") and "IT'S A ZOO" (really wants an "in there" or "out there" to be fully viable) (10D: Comment from someone exiting the mall on Black Friday). Clue on TOOK was tortured (113A: Jumped over, as a checkers piece)—"as a ___" implies that it's just one example, but "Jumped over" is *the only* example for this meaning of TOOK, so the clue is kind of lying to you. The long Downs in the NE and SW are quite good, and "HELL YEAH!" is welcome whenever wherever. Great energy. "HANG IN THERE" and "NO ME GUSTA," also praiseworthy. And I enjoy both PISSARRO and HOT DATES, so the grid is not without its pleasures, for sure. Most of these pleasures were non-thematic, though, which is kind of an issue on a Sunday, when there's just So Much Theme.


Speaking of pleasures, here are my Puzzles of the Month for March 2024 (two themed, one themeless):

March 2024 Puzzles of the Month:

Themed
Themeless
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

90 comments:

  1. Breed a BETTA Fish and the world will beat a path to your aquarium.

    At Marjorie Taylor GREENSPACE, I give Mike Johnson about two more weeks as Speaker of the House. And BTW, is it coincidence that he and Chris Hayes are never seen in the same room?

    Let's see now. Who was that cross figure who said (and I paraphrase) EATTHERICH? Oh CHRIST, I can never remember. And speaking of EATTHERICH, is it ok to have a three word answer with "the" as the second word when the theme is built on such a structure?

    I was on a quiz show and they asked what was Red Adair's occupation before firefighter. I thought I remembered that he was a thespian, so my incorrect answer was REDACTED.

    If you like to SEESIN, watch an ORAL history, particularly that one where guys HITON HOTDATES.

    The theme here was obvious almost immediately, but it still took me a long time to get them all. Really a wonderful puzzle. Thanks, Spencer Leach.

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  2. This was an odd mix of very easy and very tough sections. For me, the tough sections won out and this was on the tough side for me.

    No idea on The Lorax clue and the answer just look wrong.

    Kept trying to fit pfizer where CLOROX was supposed to go.

    TONEME was a WOE and lego (Hi @Rex) before KNEX didn’t help.

    I’m kind of a Swiftee but I haven’t heard THE ARCHER yet (@Rex - Thanks for explaining why). I currently have “she wears short skirts, I wear tee shirts” running through my head.

    I had no idea why git means ARSE until I read @Red

    AULII ????

    The rest went pretty quickly.

    Cute/amusing theme with some fun long downs, liked it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I believe in Britspeak ARSE and GIT are synonyms. As in you are a git or you are an arse.

      Delete
  3. HMTR, but not because I didn't completely solve this puzzle, which I miraculously did, but because it was chock full of PPP and required way too much educated guesswork. So, in other words, luck. I had vaguely heard of "phoneme," so went woth TONEME, even though I had to sacrifice the more satisfying-KNoX for KNEX,something totally unknown to me. CLOROX eas easily recognizable, but ARSE for "git" made no kind of sense (except, perhaps, "git your ARSE outa' here"), but I finally just let it go. Then this gawd-awful troika of YEET, YALIE and AULII. Really, someone has that name, for real? Were they parented by a crossword puzzle constructor, if I may ask? Geesh.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous10:31 AM

      Her name is Hawaiian and and a diacritical is missing between the first and second i, though progeny of Moana addiction age were more helpful than Hawaiian language familiarity.

      Delete
    2. Anonymous12:14 PM

      Git, bellend, twit, twat, knob, the Brits are a font of insults.

      Delete
  4. Anonymous12:39 AM

    Look, I don’t disagree with anything Rex said. But we have EAT THE RICH in the puzzle. I’ll remember that and the rest of the fill will fade quickly. It’s worth it just for that answer.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Seems like we've had this sort of theme a lot lately. SCREWS THE TITANS is the only one that really impresses.

    I finished with an error with KNOX crossing TONOME. Okay TONOME sounds hinky, but so do both TONEME and KNEX.

    At 1 across, for "Let me repeat", I had AGAIN for ages before some of the crosses forced me to change it to I SAID. And unfortunately for "Stealthy criminal", SNEAK THIEF is the same length as CAT BURGLAR.

    Seemed like a lot of names, and several Names I've Never Heard Of: AULII HOLT BETTA eg. Thank God for BJORK, who with Sigur Ros are the only Icelandic music stars I know.

    [Spelling Bee: Sat 0; QB streak 6.]

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    Replies
    1. Anonymous1:24 PM

      Same error at the end. I was sure it was Thneeville or Aulii, but Knox surprised me. Aren’t “Knox Blox” a thing? I just looked it up, and what I thought was a Lego rip-off was instead a Knox gelatin ad campaign from my youth. (Jell-O shots without the shots.)

      Delete
    2. Anonymous7:14 PM

      Okanaganer
      About knox. Didn’t think of Knox fortunately.
      Knex is a branding way of spelling the word connects. FWIW. I

      Delete
  6. This was as hard as yesterday's solve. The fill was tortured in places, sometimes around the themes. I kept expecting there to be some kind of directional change to account for the blanks I was coming up with around CITESTHESEE and the TITAN thing. Nope it was just crosses like THNEED, YEET and AULII.

    The Y and the L of YALIE were my last letters. I half expected to get the "Almost there" because of AULII and especially because of YEET. There was quite a mixture today of unknown things both old and new but all was fairly crossed.

    TONEME is not a debut. I'm completely unfamiliar with it so it was one of the words I looked up on the clue list at xwordinfo after solving. This is its 5th appearance (2 under Maleska.) With letters like it has I'd expect it to get far more use.

    DAMASCUS: last Saturday we had the eponymous cloth.

    BOSSLEVEL: I started putting in BONUS then saw it wouldn't work. Remembered the BOSS thing from a previous puzzle.

    BETTA: I had the "___TA" and actually put in TETTA thinking it was TETRA. Saved by the crosses again.

    yd -0. QB22

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  7. Anonymous3:42 AM

    A hi-hat is not an instrument, it’s a component of an instrument. A very bad clue, indeed. Had to come here to see what it was because I just could not, for the life of me, get it.

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  8. SharonAK5:01 AM

    I liked the theme. Enjoyed mentally saying the theme answers and then saying them backwards hearing familiar phrases. Didn't matter what we were or were not changing in the spelling, etc. They sounded just right. Except, definitely honor should have been honors.

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  9. Easy-ish, except for trouble in the South, all my own doing.

    I thought the 91D singer was BJORn (he's a tennis player). I don't know why TOOn (113A) didn't bother me. Maybe I thought it was some term used by professional checker players?

    And then there's my very imperfect Spanish to blame for NO ME GUSTo at 75D, which made the very obvious PIETA (114A) hard to see.

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  10. Anonymous7:30 AM

    TONEME crossing a Spanish phrase and KNEX (not Lego) … NO ME GUSTO. Add to that my misspelling the toy as cNEX and I couldn’t see KNEE. Enjoyed the theme, but did notice the inconsistencies mentioned by Rex.

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  11. Anonymous7:34 AM

    Really surprised at so many not knowing what a Betta fish is. Walk into any pet store and you’ll see a million of em in their little individual containers (fun fact: you can’t place them in a tank with another Betta or they’ll fight each other to death). We had one in our college dorm room named Johnny Cash. He lived in a (cleaned out and well maintained) converted Jack Daniel’s bottle.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous11:52 PM

      Betta = Siamese Fighting Fish

      Delete
  12. This was pretty much just a terrible solving experience. One small section is residence to KNEX, HOLT, NO ME GUSTA and TONE ME. Yea, give me a break. Seriously, are you guys over at the Gray Lady actually trying to make your crossword puzzles suck ?

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  13. Charming theme, with its wordplay. I, who love wordplay, adored this. I found it fun to try to guess the theme answers with as few crosses as possible.

    I also liked how the answer set didn’t have a same-old, same-old feeling. There were 14 answers never before used in the 80 years of NYT puzzles, including the theme answers, yes, but also lovely answers such as GREEN SPACE, NO ME GUSTA, and THNEEDVILLE. There were also five answers used only once before, including THE DEAD SEA, IT’S A ZOO, and PISSARRO. Lots of pop here.

    Freshness and wordplay – for me, pings of pleasure throughout. Thank you so much for this, Spencer!

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  14. Anonymous7:51 AM

    Didn’t understand the theme at all until I came here. My brain just doesn’t ever get these multi-tiered wordplay gimmicks. I was like “alarm the rays? Who says that?” This one fell totally flat for me.

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  15. [Electronically send a head shot?]








    FAX THE FACE

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  16. Anonymous #2: A HI-HAT is very much an instrument as an optional part of a drum kit (N.B.: not a drum instrument). It not like a capo for a guitar or that thing than makes a trumpet sound silly as neither does much by itself (though I suppose one could argue that any sufficiently stiff object could serve as percussion).

    In fact, if you want, you could make the toms and bass and snare and cymbals optional to the HI-HAT and just tika-tika-tika all night long. Very popular with ska bands.

    In fact (part 2), NOFX, a DIY hardcore punk band with SKA tendencies, ska'd out pretty hard on 1997's So Long and Thanks for All the Shoes which includes a lot of sweet HI-HAT action. Songs like "All Out of Angst" and "180 Degrees" are prime examples. But no track pops on the HI-HAT like the opening of "Flossing a Dead Horse". Then there's "EAT THE Meek"...

    Why must we stay
    ...tika-tika-tika-tika...
    Where we don't belong?
    ...tika-tika-tika-tika...

    Because there's never gonnna be enough space
    ...tika-tika...
    So EAT THE meek
    ...tika-tika...
    Savor the taste
    ...tika-tika-tika-tika...

    In fact (part 3), I'm just being a little defensive because PISSARRO and RAO were a natick for me and caused me to lose patience and cheat, effectively DNF'ing. As the track following "EAT THE Meek" goes:

    The desperation's gone
    (The song's the same!)

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  17. [Covering a bruise with a Band-Aid?]








    SEALING THE HIT

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  18. Anonymous8:32 AM

    "I curse Sir Walter Raleigh, he was such a stupid git!" - J. Lennon (with possible help from P. McCartney).

    ReplyDelete
  19. For a while I had ITSALOT rather than ZOO - thought that was a pretty clever double meaning

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    Replies
    1. MCortland2:48 PM

      Me too, me too!

      Delete
  20. Liked the theme; hated much of the fill.

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  21. Andy Freude9:18 AM

    Note to constructors: please avoid names of characters in TV shows, Swiftian deep cuts, and the like. Yeet the PPP.

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    Replies
    1. *YEET the PPP" gets my vote for slogan of the year... I'm happy to contribute to a GoFundMe campaign to order a plaque with that directive for Will Shortz's desk!

      Delete
  22. Odd to criticize the obscure Taylor Swift reference. The whole idea, I think, of making a challenging puzzle is obscure references. Also, Daze The Count made me chuckle.

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  23. Anonymous9:21 AM

    “I guess charts don't matter anymore, we're all just supposed to know the whole Swift catalogue by heart.”
    Correct.

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  24. Not one, but two duplicate answers in today’s NYT and LAT/WaPo offerings. I’ve noticed at least a half dozen single dupes so far this year, but this is the first time I can recall seeing two in one day (one is pretty standard crosswordese, the other makes appearances from time to time, so not a surprise that they would be good dupe candidates).

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  25. That pesky pedal instrument ... for the longest time I wanted to go with ORGAN, having the A from the cross, but eventually that crucial piece of '70s action movie soundtracks came to me... and not knowing much Spanish (hey, I'm Canadian, I can do French clues like FESTIVAL D'ETE all day long), had NO DE GUSTA crossing TONEDE. Took me forever to get that right and hear the music.

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  26. Diane Joan9:30 AM

    “Git” got me good! I needed a lifeline to complete this puzzle. But it’s a beautiful sunny day here in the NYC metropolitan area so that makes up for any puzzle mishaps! Have a great Sunday, Rex and all other bloggers!

    ReplyDelete
  27. Bob Mills9:32 AM

    I do the Sunday in pen in the magazine section, so I rarely comment here afterward.. But this was a very clever effort which for me was ruined by the KNEX/TONEME cross and the adjoining NOMEGUSTA. How would anyone know KNEX/TONEME without cheating?

    Even Rex Parker referred to "phoneme" in his commentary. Bad stuff.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous7:30 PM

      Bob Mills
      You have a point about Knex/toneme. That cross does approach natick territory though according to Tex natick applies only when 2 names cross.
      I noticed many had trouble there. Fortunately, I happen to know the word phoneme so when I got me I knew it had to end in -neme. Then Knex made sense and I think I remember seeing it in a puzzle before. I was lucky.
      Maybe someone here will say Knex isn’t obscure. But I only know it from crosswords.

      Delete
  28. Hey All !
    Streak* broken today. Thought it'd be at one of the two unknowns for me, THNEEDVILLE (but what else could the crosses be?), or PISSARRO/RAO (PISSARRO is bizzare-o). Got the Almost There, figured I had more than one mistake, so decided to end my Streak*, and hit Check Puzzle. Turns out all that was correct. It crossed out one letter (why is it always one??). Had an O instead of an A at NOMEGUSTo/PIETo. Argh!

    Should have gotten PIETA. Have seen/know that is an O. Dang. Ah me. I'll try to get another Streak going, this time without the asterisk. (Not likely.)

    Liked the reparsing theme thingies.Fun to grok them, helped with the solve. Got a chuckle out of SCREWS THE TITANS. I can imagine all the TITANS fans yelling, "That's right! All the time! Stupid refs!"

    My Nit-for-the-Day is the extraneous THEs running about. THE ARCHER, EAT THE RICH, THE DEAD SEA. I know SunPuzs are bears to fill, but it'd be more elegant to not have non-theme THEs.

    Fill overall good. NEATO theme. Light ICK.

    Happy Easter! (No, not using the old trope Hoppy.) 😁

    No F's (In a Sunday sized grid!)(There's the ICK!)(Change BETTA/BRIE/ITE/RCA to FETTS/FREE/ETE/RCS. At least get me one!)
    RooMonster
    DarrinV

    ReplyDelete
  29. Rex's review was spot on, but I am slightly disappointed that this wasn't one of the videos for today:
    Krokus- "Eat The Rich":

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fcrj4szgTjc

    ReplyDelete
  30. Niallhost10:13 AM

    Chalk up another TONoME/KNoX DNF. Had never heard of either word and guessed the "O" over the "E." Lots of other uncertainty with me. AULII didn't look right. Guessed on RAO, even though PISSARRO kind of rung a bell. Had never heard of BETTA even though the crosses seemed pretty secure. I was sure 1 across was agAIn, as in "come again?" so took a while to untangle that. Thought for a second that tulips were named after "two lips" because I could see that being true. Have no idea what an ASTER looks like. Didn't think THNEEDVILLE was possible even though I couldn't come up with alternate guesses to the crosses. Had never heard of git being an ARSE. YEET? BOSSLEVEL? Not my day.

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  31. Also, haven't y'all never heard the Aerosmith song "EAT THE RICH"?

    RooMonster Hungry Guy

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  32. Anonymous10:25 AM

    I just accidentally deleted a comment from “Alice Munro” so if you are in fact the legendary author Alice Munro, please repost 😘 ~RP

    ReplyDelete
  33. Anonymous10:26 AM

    YEET THE RICH!

    ReplyDelete
  34. Well, first I had to get over the shock of seeing a NYT Sunday puzzle with the exact same title as another NYT Sunday puzzle with the exact same title -- a puzzle that is especially HART TO MY DEER.

    For those of you who don't remember it, here's the link: https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=1/23/2022

    But while this one is very similar in concept, there's no overlap in the answers -- so I guess no harm, no foul.

    Did I like this one? As far as the theme answers went, yes. They were clever and well chosen -- my favorite being CITES THE SEE.

    The less said about some of the fill, though, the better. The worst area -- the area I couldn't finish -- was the Asian sound unit crossed with the Brooklyn Nine Nine police captain crossed with the toy game for budding engineers crossed with the Spanish phrase. I might have "finished" the puzzle if I'd cheated, but why bother?

    The pet fish bothered me too, but at least that was in a section where I could get everything else. Bottom line? The editing really shoulda been BETTA.



    ReplyDelete
  35. Anonymous10:40 AM

    I am now officially as tired of OLE as I am of OREOs

    ReplyDelete
  36. The Taylor Swift song title ruined this for me. I’m supposed to know the titles and lyrics of Taylor Swift’s (relatively) deep cuts? Yuck.

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  37. If YEET has made it to the NYT Xword puzzle *more than once* then it’s probably “out” as far as slang is concerned! Not easy but at least it’s nice to have a challenge! I liked it but still don’t get Cites the See. What is that?

    ReplyDelete
  38. No idea about THNEEDVILLE (or THEARCHER) but it had to go in. Failed at KNEX/TONEME and at ARSE/THATSO.

    Took me forever to see ITSAZOO partly because I also thought ITSAlot worked.

    I liked CATBURGLAR, ALARMTHERAYS, HANGINTHERE hanging. Surprised by EATTHERICH - in the NYT!
    Got the ICK from PRESSTHEMEET, SCREWSTHETITANS, and meh for HEATTHEBEETS.

    Lots of work, which I usually enjoy. Usually.

    ReplyDelete
  39. Anonymous10:58 AM

    CITES THE SEE as in "makes a citation referring to the Holy See."


    Villager

    ReplyDelete
  40. Even though i figured out the themers, except for HONOR THE DEW, (where i had variations of “cola” and “pop” until I gave up and read Wordplay for hints) I was stuck in so many places.
    Also had LEGO. Even though I had YALIE i had so much trouble there I took it out.
    Thought Barry and Ballers must be sports shows of some kind?
    I even struggled with THE DEAD SEA, because I was certain it was ETA at the cross. Because who ever notices ETD??

    Although there was some definite fun here, but overall it seems like the BRO-FICATION of the puzzle continues unabated. Clues about game cubes, levels in games - great fun to oearn about these niche interests. Makes me think of those memorable NOSERAGS and CRAPPER answers from yesterday. Woo-hoo.

    Note to self: try to think like a 20 year old male.

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  41. Medium for me...until I DNF. Yesterday I lucked out on the proper names; today it was the opposite, and KNEX sank me (I guessed that the language unit was a TONal E). Enjoyable solve, though - I thought the theme was amusing and had fun trying to get the phrases without crosses, with CITES THE SEE my one winner. I also liked DAZE THE COUNT and SCREWS THE TITANS. Other pleasures: CAT BURGLAR, the varied geography (DAMASCUS, THNEEDVILLE, THE DEAD SEA), the parallel rhyming REDACTED and SUBTRACTED.

    Help from previous puzzles: YEET, NES. No idea: THE ARCHER, BETTA, TONEME, HOLT, AULII.

    ReplyDelete
  42. Anonymous11:49 AM

    Average theme, average solve time, average everything. I remembered THNEEDVILLE, got it from just -NE- in place. Rough spots (still not too rough):
    - the area around the Z where ITSAZOO only went in on my second pass in the north. I thought "git" could be a ruSE.
    - SKIED x STAY before LUGED x LAST. YEET, YALIE and SEESIN fixed that.
    - BOSSfight before BOSSstage before BOSSLEVEL.

    As for TONEME, I know that Chinese is TONAL, so I wanted something tone-related. The M helped me see the -EME ending that "grapheme" and "phoneme" have. HOLT and KNEX were unknown. I completely understand getting Naticked at 84A/74D.

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  43. @gregmark Great post, thanks for the NOFX nostalgia. (The Decline has a great hi-hat intro, but my favorite part is from 0:01-18:20)

    Fav themer was the marquee SCREWSTHETITANS (righty-tighty!). "Make smash burgers" was the perfect clue for PRESSTHEMEAT. Pizzarrao: pizza made with RAO's tomato sauce. Simple theme, some awkward clues/crossings in some spots, but overall enjoyable with a pleasant aftertaste. Well constructioneered! *chef's kiss*

    ReplyDelete
  44. Anonymous12:26 PM

    My biggest gripe, as a music fan, was ALT for “Umbrella term for eboys and goth girls.” ALT is so much broader (ALT-country, anyone?) and EMO would have been much more accurate.

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  45. EasyEd12:40 PM

    Ah me, four years in London and never heard Git…must have played basketball with the wrong crowd…thought this was a fun puzzle and learned some things after starting with skiED and lego and organ…appreciated @Nancy generously reacting to shared theme. A good idea should be able to support more than one attempt.

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  46. SCREWSTHETITANS got a literal lol from me.

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  47. I've never heard of the Holy SEE, BETTA, TONEME, THNEEDVILLE, AULII, YEET, OR KNEX,and it was hard to believe some of those were right. They seem a little too obscure for a Sunday puzzle. I like Sundays to be fun and clever but not full of little-known terms.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous7:58 PM

      JT
      Just because I haven’t heard of something, doesn’t mean it is obscure. I never heard, not on a menu or spoken, of sha cha beef and needed all 3 crosses to get it yet not one other person complained about it. Clearly not obscure.
      The Holy See is both a very old and very contemporary expression for the Vatican and/ or the Pope Perhaps you screen out any reference to the Pope, the Vatican etc, but virtually every news article anywhere about the Pope or the Vatican uses the term Holy See.
      Having just a simple clue/answer Vatican/Holy See would be appropriate for a Monday.

      Delete
  48. I liked this theme, although I figured OFL would take less kindly to it...
    Agree, some of the fill was rough.

    April starting tomorrow... Boy, this year is flying by fast! Happy April Fools Day!

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  49. Cute, but still a slog. I now recall why I’ve skipped Sundays for many moons. Happy egg hunting and all that to lucky lads & lasses…..see ya next Wednesday perhaps.

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  50. Re: PISSARO - Alice Hoffman’s novel “The Mariage of Opposites” is good read.

    Re: KNEX - I knew it from at least one previous puzzle although it may not have been a NYT.

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  51. As many others have said, too many WTFs. But I did finally complete it. I easily got what some others had trouble with, like TONEME, PISSARRO, NO ME GUSTA and RAO. But I had ORGAN before HI-HAT, TETRA before BETTA, ARAL before DEAD, and more.
    Great way to spoil part of a holiday.

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  52. Anonymous1:12 PM

    Cute theme but overall lacking zest. Why are Sundays always a letdown lately.

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  53. Thanks for the link to your previous puzzle, @Nancy!
    You're being very gracious, but one has GOT to cry FOUL on this one! - Exactly the same idea and puzzle title!! Are the NYT editors so desperate for ideas?? (OK, that question does not require an answer.)

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  54. To follow up on @Anon 1:27 Beatles line "I curse Sir Walter Raleigh, he was such a silly git", here's a YouTube of its source, the song "I'm So Tired" from their 1968 double album The Beatles, also known as The White Album. After Lennon's "I'll have another cigarette", he curses Sir Walter for introducing tobacco into England.

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  55. SharonAK1:48 PM

    @JT I WISH I'd never heard of "yeet". It was in a puzzle recently. I can't imagine where such a bad sounding meaningless word came from.
    Colin?! Are you trying to out quibble Rex?
    I totally agree with Nancy. If all the themes were different, which they were, why should the scheme not be done again.? They weren't even the same phrase pattern - using of or for ( or some other preposition, I forget) instead of the.

    Thanks Egs for starting us off with a good chuckle

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  56. Trina2:22 PM

    DO THE HONOR - singular - is just fine, as in “Will you do me the honor of [this dance][becoming my wife] …”.

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    Replies
    1. Anonymous2:31 PM

      Nope. And Rex explained why. You have to add words (as you have) to make it work.

      Delete
  57. BlueStater3:18 PM

    Can someone puh-leeze explain EAT THE RICH to me? The others all (sorta) work if you reverse them, but RICH THE EAT? Huh? TIA for all aid.

    This one, for me, continued the long, not-so-slow slide of the Sunday puzzles.

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  58. @BlueStater

    EAT THE RICH isn't a themer (which are all Acrosses).

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  59. Arg. I am not a great puzzle solver, but this one HURT.

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    Replies
    1. Anonymous6:18 PM

      Same. All I can say for myself is that I did know K’nex and Betta - thought they were household words - but whew I was on the struggle bus today. So much I didn’t know.

      Delete
  60. yep. No doubts, here. That there RE:THEHANGIN' themer was definitely M&A's fave.

    staff weeject picks: the RHO & RAO pairin, crossed (partially) by HAR.

    Re: SEESIN & CITESTHESEE. See? This is why M&A don't try to do SunPuz-sized puzs much … I keep forgettin that I already used a word. Happened to m&e just recently, in a smaller puz-constructioneerin project. Really suffered, to undo it, after I thought I had finished buildin the whole puzgrid. And the word accidentally repeated? … SEE.

    Thanx for the fun, Mr. Leach dude.
    And happy Easter, all U blog bunnies.

    Masked & Anonymo6Us


    real extra hard one:
    **gruntz**

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  61. I hated this puzzle. It broke my streak of 48 straight NYT puzzles.

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  62. Bianca6:11 PM

    Liked it. Spoonerisms with a twist. RP needs to learn the difference between profiting and profiteering. I happily bought Clorox wipes during the pandemic and no one raised the price.

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  63. BlueStater7:03 PM

    Thanks, JC66. Sort of a double-curve ball, I guess. Grrrr.

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  64. Anonymous9:29 PM

    Nobody has mentioned the rather impressive collection of Easter-related answers in this puzzle, including CHRIST, INRE, DAMASCUS, THE DEAD SEA, the reference to the Holy SEE, and PIETA. Maybe also HANG IN THERE?

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  65. Anonymous11:13 AM

    Liked seeing that all of your puzzles of the month were by women. I have noticed that being a woman, I tend to do better on these puzzles as great minds think alike! Keep 'em coming ladies!

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  66. Anonymous10:02 PM

    I thought git could either be countrified get or version control a la github. Yeah ok I've heard it used like ARSE but not in my working vocab.

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  67. Victory Garden5:34 PM

    I wonder if Rex realized that Spencer is nonbinary. In the print version bio it says "they are..." etc. I think if Rex had realized this, he'd have been more lenient.

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  68. DNF. Impasse at 43d. OBVIOUSLY, there's NO WAY that can begin with THN. Whoever heard of such a combination. Now I come to find out there is one. Go figure, is all I can say.

    Wordle par.

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  69. Burma Shave1:32 PM

    SCREW THAT!

    JAN SAID TO BRIE ON THE street,
    "HELLYEAH, I'M IN A HOT HEAT,
    SO I COUNT THE DAZE
    TO give OTTO A RAYS,
    IT'S an HONOR; can't BEET OTTO's MEAT."

    --- STAN ASTER

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  70. Anonymous1:50 PM

    Puzzle was both hard and easy, not atypical of a Sunday puzzle. There seemed to be a lot of names, but loved the play on backward phrases. Loved construction toys when I was a boy, so Knex was easy for me, even though they came out well past when I was a kid. I remember Tinker Toys and Lincoln Logs, and others. But the best one was the Erector Set, that my mom said had belonged to my great uncle. It came in a metal toolbox and weighed a ton. We bought an electric motor that you could purchase and build working toys. We built a working Ferris wheel.
    AWESOME!!!

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  71. Anonymous1:53 PM

    As a side note, Harry once yelled at Ron: "You're a right foul git!"

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  72. Anonymous2:21 PM

    Someone said they didn't understand why the 40A answer was asters. Aster comes from the Greek word for star. The flowers are star shaped.

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  73. rondo2:57 PM

    My slowdown was at the TONEME -KNEX-NOMEGUSTA area. Noticed: CITESTHESEE, SEESIN crossing HANGINTHERE, GOALLIN.
    Wordle birdie.

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  74. Way, way too many "the"s in this puzzle! Having two answers with "the" side by side--EATTHERICH and THEDEADSEA--right next to each other is pretty much a dealbreaker for me right there. Having THEARCHER elsewhere in the puzzle makes it worse. But when that's on top of a theme built around "the" phrases. Nope. Can't allow that. Needed to be fixed.

    ReplyDelete