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Widespread rumors, in a portmanteau / SAT 3-9-24 / MacGyvering / "Thanks a lot!," in intentionally butchered French / Remington of 1980s TV / Ananda Mahidol became its king at the age of 9, while living in Switzerland / Branch of causality that comes from the Greek for "study of the end" / Gem used in intaglio / They are felt every April
Saturday, March 9, 2024
Constructor: John Guzzetta
Relative difficulty: Medium (potentially skewing harder)
Word of the Day: intaglio (64A: Gem used in intaglio = ONYX) —
1a: an engraving or incised figure in stone or other hard material depressed below the surface so that an impression from the design yields an image in reliefb: the art or process of executing intagliosc: printing (as in die stamping and gravure) done from a plate in which the image is sunk below the surface2: something (such as a gem) carved in intaglio (merriam-webster.com)
• • •
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| [NILES Fitch] |
But back to the puzzle's weird high energy. Really felt like the puzzle was out here just shouting random made-up terms, or slang terms, or whatever popped into its head. "INFODEMIC!" (13A: Widespread rumors, in a portmanteau) Uh, that's ... not a thing. "NEW NORMAL!" (16A: Post-crisis baseline) Ooh, yeah, I like that, but maybe go back to normal words now? "STRIPY!" What!? I said "normal." Do you even spell STRIPY like th-? "MERCY BUCKETS!" (6D: "Thanks a lot!," in intentionally butchered French) OMG slow down ... Not sure how I feel about dopey fake Fr- "LIGHTEN UP!" You lighten up. "DIGITAL DETOX!" Yeah OK, good, now you're back on the right tr- "TAX BITES!" Huh. So not SEX BITES, then? Good to know, I thought April Fools' was getting a little kinky there. Don't love this in the plural, but- "TELEOLOGY!" (33D: Branch of causality that comes from the Greek for "study of the end") Alright, now you're speaking my language, but I don't know if it's gonna be everyone's lang- "AUGIE!" Well, yes, see my TELEOLOGY comment, above. {End scene}.
I think [MacGyvering] was my favorite part of the puzzle. I use that term all the time. Sometimes when I'm teaching. Then I have to explain the '80s to kids who have no memories of anything before the Obama Era. It's awkward. But actually "MacGyvering" seems to be a concept that has transcended its TV origins. And since I already had the "JU-" in place when I looked at the clue, whoooosh, JURY-RIGGING! The puzzle had its other colorful, whooshy moments. "MERCY BUCKETS" is godawful as a phrase, please don't say it, ever ... but as a crossword answer, I have to give it points for originality. And DIGITAL DETOX is very good, very current, even if I could not for the life of me remember the word that was supposed to follow DIGITAL ("Diet? ... Fasting? ... Time out? ...") I kinda sorta knew it alliterated, and that still didn't help. But when I got DETOX, I recognized its validity right away. Speaking of validity—you may be wondering how FIT is a valid answer for 33A: Meet. Yeah, I thought they were verbs too. But they're not.* They're adjectives, and both mean (roughly) "proper" or "appropriate." Merriam-webster.com defines "meet" (in this sense) as "precisely adapted to a particular situation, need, or circumstance : very proper." So the answer is FIT as in "fitting." That meaning of "Meet" is borderline archaic. In fact, Merriam-Webster has it as "archaic & dialectical British," so if you didn't know it, don't feel too bad.
Really hate the pithy-saying-type clue, since they never compute for me until I've got nearly every cross, and today... we get two! Descartes on DOUBT (50D: "The origin of wisdom," per René Descartes) and Denis Leary on COMEDY (19A: "The ultimate form of free speech," to Denis Leary). I don't know why it's "per" René Descartes but "to" Denis Leary. Is Leary not fancy enough for a "per?" Also, why are we being told it's René Descartes, specifically? Is there some other Descartes? Jimmy Descartes? Typically, Descartes is a one-name dude. If you don't know him as Descartes, then "René" is not gonna help you.
Bullet points:
- 52D: Asparagus, essentially (STEMS) — went with SPEAR here at first, which I'm just gonna assume was a common error
- 27D: Concupiscent one (EROS) — I didn't know EROS himself was "concupiscent" (he's often depicted as a mischievous child or adolescent boy). I thought he just made ... you ... that way (i.e. horny) ("concupiscence" is strong desire, esp. sexual desire)
- 2D: Reluctant to join? (INERT) — ah, chemistry jokes, who doesn't love those!? (besides me). Per wikipedia: "The noble gases (helium, neon, argon, krypton, xenon and radon) were previously known as 'inert gases' because of their perceived lack of participation in any chemical reactions. "
- 10D: Pay for a crime, say (SERVE TIME) — an ordinary phrase, but for some reason I could not come up with the first word. Had TIME and after "DO TIME" I was out of ideas. SERVE TIME is rather formal. But it's not wrong.
OK, I GOTTA RUN. Coffee and cats are calling. This one was more good than bad. Irksome in parts, but enjoyable overall. See you next time.
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126 comments:
for fit i thought of it like meets the criteria and fits the criteria as being the same sort of thing
Another day gone by without MEATBALL RON as an answer
do thE TIME before SERVE TIME, but L_hG_ quickly became LARGO and SERVE fell in. I found this one much easier than @Rex, for a Saturday. COMEDY fell right in, as did MERCY BUCKETS and NEW NORMAL. Oh, and Remington STEELE. :) I enjoyed the long answers, even TAX BITES--I had TAX, thought it might be BITES, but didn't put it in until I checked it with crosses. Agree about the proper names, but most of the crosses were fair. Fun.
At first I had sit for meet. Verbs.
Rex and I are total opposites this Friday-Saturday. Yesterday was Easy Medium for him and Really Hard for me; today was Medium potentially skewing harder for him and Easy for me. But I had an error with sIT and sANS. I thought “meet” could be sit, as in a committee meets or sits, and sans seemed at least plausible as a slang word for “strikes out.” But when I didn’t get happy music, I found the mistake quickly.
Rex, INFODEMIC is definitely a thing. (Love it when you declare something “not a thing” because you haven’t heard of it,) It came from the widespread disINFOrmation about Covid during the panDEMIC.
I had laos before SIAM. My cunning canine was a SLY fox before turning into a SLY DOG. And my asparagus at first was not STEMS, not spear, but stalk.
I liked the fresh answers in this one but I didn’t see much clever cluing.
FIT (as clued) crossing FANS (as clued) and TELEOLOGY (at all) sent me to Google. I also struggled in the southeast and had aLEs instead of CLEF, and lAGS instead of GAGS.
Can someone please explain the TAX BITES clue and answer to me? Thanks
Same! Yesterday I couldn't finish, but today was my fastest Saturday yet.
Philosophy major here (yep, great money in that field) so this one spoke to me - not sure how others will handle some of those obstacles. Learned some new terms like INFODEMIC but crosses were fair. Fun puz.
Aw, come on…. “Mercy buckets” took me back to my youth. Which was, admittedly, many years ago. The phrase was, in fact, a thing. My friends and I used it all the time. Maybe in the days of “see ya later, alligator”? Nostalgic. I can picture my then-bestie saying it to me. Hate theme-less puzzles, though. Seem sort of pointless.
Intelligent references, clever clueing, and appropriately challenging for a Saturday. The names I didn’t know were solvable from crosses.
It’s easy to get distraught over the current state of the NYT Crossword sometimes but Friday’s and today’s puzzles have restored my faith, at least temporarily.
When my first thought for “They often come in shoes boxes” was FOOT FETISHISTS, I of course knew that wouldn’t be the answer even if it had fit.
But I so want to live in the world where it might be.
Taxes take a "bite" out of your income. April 15 is filing due date. (The one day of the year you want to be poor.)
When people say the NYT is out of touch with middle America, I used to assume they meant politically. Now I know it’s the crossword’s obsession with eels, Lil Nas X, and Yoko Ono.
Loved MERCY BUCKETS. Liked NEW NORMAL and DIGITAL DETOX. DIGITAL DETOX is a new thing that happens often enough it needs a word. Widespread rumors are as old as civilization itself, and do not need a word for it. INFODEMIC is not a word I've heard and not a word that needs to exist, other than some crappy media person wanting to coin a phrase to seem relevant. It's clunky and ugly and no one should ever say it, ever.
Raced through much of the grid but the southeast killed me. Even though remington STEELE was my first drop-in that I started building off of. Never heard of AUGIE Match or TELEOLOGY or an escalator CLAUSE. Never heard Berkeley called CAL and took forever to get NO LUCK SO FAR. So that entire corner was a horrible slog for me, and I ended the puzzle with a DNF on FIT of all things. Had the I but was sure the first letter couldn't be F because I've never heard of striking out being called FANNING. Had zero idea what the last letter could be.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/tax-bite
In fact there is a reason it is "per" for René Descartes and 'to" for Dennis Leary...
"Per" is about following a method or instruction. Descartes was not simply expressing an opinion; he was giving a method or instruction for doing philosophy, with step #1 being doubt. This process has become commonly known as the "Cartesian Method," around which an entire tradition and school of philosophy was built, and one that dominated European philosophical thought until the modernists came along to challenge it. The use of "per" here is most appropriate and accurate, then.
Denis Leary, however, is not giving an instruction or proposing a method about comedy. He is instead state a conclusion from his experience as a comedian and as a fan of comedy - a phenomenology that expresses his existential reality. The use of "is" here is most appropriate and accurate, then.
And finally, per the unknown ancient Roman philosopher, whose works have largely been lost: "Semper ubi sub ubi."
Medium/fast Saturday here. I learned INFODEMIC and DIGITALDETOX. made the acquaintance of RONNIE, LOLA, and NILES, and finally ran into TELEOLOGY again after 50+ years since my last philosophy class. Of course, I'm still looking for two things that have been missing since yesterday.
Lots of talk around here about the NEWNORMAL, mostly as it relates to winter. Many ski areas are reporting their worst seasons in forever and it hasn't even been cold enough to make snow. Off come our snow tires next week, and we really didn't need them all year. And people have been making maple syrup already, starting in February. What next?
Had a nice time with this one, JG. Jolly Good job, and thanks for all the fun.
Man, this puzzle was perked up and toughened by fresh answers. Perked up because these answers are not same-old same-old. Toughened, because they don’t have clues I've seen before and perhaps remembered.
When fresh answers gang up in a puzzle, I feel the newness I felt when I started solving puzzles all those many years ago. That is a gift.
So, look at John’s answer set today, with eight NYT debut answers – all of them long (8 letters or more). And look at how vibrant they are: DIGITAL DETOX, I GOTTA RUN, INFODEMIC, JURY RIGGING, MERCY BUCKETS, NEW NORMAL, NO LUCK SO FAR, and SOLO ALBUM. Wow!
That NW stack includes two of these, and the SE stack has one plus two answers that have only appeared but once in the 80 years of the Times puzzle. Two grace the middle area. So they’re nicely spread out.
This made for a fill-in marked by spark and luscious labor. There was glee and satisfaction, bolstered by humor (as in “Sign in front of some bars” for CLEF).
Thus, this was not simply a go-through, it was an experience, and a mighty fine one at that. Thank you so much for creating this gem, John!
I’m with Rex on the kind of a weird vibe from this one - the clues seemed pretty fair, maybe a touch on the easy side for a Saturday, but the answers just seemed like a stream-of-consciousness hodgepodge, almost like the puzzle was constructed by someone who was having a vivid dream - ok we’ve got TELEOLOGY, people won’t like it but it’s real, and INFODEMIC, also real, but who cares. And how many people can also say that they actually got MERCY BUCKETS to appear in an NYT grid. Toss in your DIGITAL DETOX and your TAX BITES, and off we go.
I thought COSET was a touch too obscure, even for a Saturday. Fortunately it sounds like a math term so one can rely on the crosses. I also think it’s kind of cool that DYSON is an “appliance giant” and I’ve never, ever heard of them - hopefully they make really good refrigerators and stuff so maybe I’ll remember the next time when AMANA won’t work with the crosses. I just absolutely love trivia.
Ugh, I had SITS and SANS for "Meet" and "Strikes out, informally", and changed the first S to an F, but still no happy music. Turns out I had COL crossing I GOT TO RUN instead of CAL and I GOTTA RUN. Took ages to figure that out. I've never heard anyone refer to Berkeley as anything but Berkeley, so...
Haha just won this tshirt in a silent auction that says Cats and Coffee make me less Murdery- makes me think of someone but I can't quite put my finger on it...
One of the hardest puzzles I've finished without cheating. Never heard of COSET, TELEOLOGY, DIGITALDETOX or DYSON. Based on French classes I took almost 70 years ago, I imagined "Thanks a lot" began with "Merci" and went from there. I agree with Rex Parker that STRIPY isn't a word.
One minor complaint...TAXBITES don't happen every April. First of all, many people get refunds. Many others pay their taxes quarterly, so April doesn't matter.
TAXBITES killed my streak. Never heard that phrase. Missing only the B, I threw in TAXRATES, which seemed a stretch, but whatever...maybe it's the SOMAL*a* Peninsula, and CAr send equally as fitting as CAB (which didn't occur to me, as I didn't question CAr).
Ran through the alphabet for FIT and knew I was screwed.
Oh well. It was a good run.
Ugly. Just a bunch of made-up junk.
Had a lot of fun with this - tough enough for late week but forgiving and smooth. Toughest part for me was the NW quadrant - as the big guy highlighted the STRIPY x MERCY BUCKETS cross was funky.
AGES of You
Liked SLY DOG, LIGHTEN UP and NO LUCK SO FAR. Some obscure trivia - TELEOLOGY was new to me and the actors had to be backed into. There’s not a lot in this grid to argue about.
The combination of this one and Matt Sewell’s Stumper has made for an enjoyable Saturday morning.
RONNIE Drew
We always said "murky bucket". Never heard MERCY BUCKETS.
SOLO deBUt shares a lot of letters with SOLO ALBUM.
Thanks to 63A, I went down a little bit of a Beyonce rabbit hole, which eventually led me to discover that Yoko Ono had thirteen songs hit number 1 on the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart. (Beyonce had 22; Madonna, 50.) The chart has been discontinued, a victim of the COVID-19 epidemic, so Yoko will never catch up.
I usually take a deep breath before reading RP (along the lines of “Okay, gird your loins, whinging and moaning and complaints ahead”) but I found today’s write up hilarious. Jimmy Descartes. I laughed out loud and am still smiling!
The IT folks at the college I recently retired from periodically encourage faculty members to sign up for a DIGITAL DETOX, which, as far as I can tell, consists of a series of webinars and a flood of email, guaranteed to keep you chained to your computer screen. In other words, exactly the opposite of what I understand that term to mean. Anyway, my familiarity with the phrase was useful today.
John Guzzetta: As they say in Doyouwanna, GRASSY ASS!
Medium-Challenging for me. Liked it a lot less than @Rex did.
iNO before ITO at 9D made me take out STEIN before putting it back in
moab before noah before ENOS at 12D
red before VHS for the tape at 21A
Resisted STRIPY for Streaked at 22A because I always spell it "Stripey"
see before FIT at 31A
Didn't know the actor at 45A; wavered between NIgEl and NILES
Opal before ONYX for the gem at 64A
TELEOLOGY (33D) was a WOE, as was Every. Single. Effing. Proper noun
DIGITALDEath before DETOX. Had dothETIME next to LIGHTENUP - the side by side HH didn’t look like it would work so I removed LIGHTEN because I was convinced dothE was right. Oops.
Berkeley the school not Berkeley the city.
Hey All !
Well, sugar. Reverted back to Check Puzzle and Good Ole Google on this one. Couldn't get anything after initial run-through, so hit the Check Puzzle, and it literally crossed out half my answers! Holy Asparagus!
After that, though, it was slightly better. Still had to Goog for three names to be able to finish.
STRIPY? Dang. So if something is Streaked, it's STRIPY? Like Aquafresh Toothpaste? Or NYY uniforms?
TAX BITES? Now you're just being silly. Wanted TAXBIllS. Originally wanted something with ANTLERS, because isn't that what covers young bucks' antlers is called?
So NO LUCK with today's puz. Ah, well, can't FIT well all the time.
Happy Saturday, I GOTTA RUN.
Four F's (I'm a FANS)
RooMonster
DarrinV
I’m with Rorinsky. We said MERCY BUCKETS all the time back in the dark ages.
As for MEET, I remember the semiarchaic meaning Rex mentions from the communion liturgy in church: "it is MEET and right so to do." Haven't heard that in ages. Don’t know if it would still be worded that wat in the newer English versions. But the older King James lingo was pounded into our heads in a lasting way back then!. INTAGLIO?!
Spun my wheels on STRIPY in the beginning. Thought maybe it was going to be some sort of rebus. But once I committed to the made up word STRIPY i was able to streak thru the rest of it.
I gave up! Too many names and quotes and I didn’t know them. Did love Mercy Buckets. but is JURY RIGGING what MacGyvering actually means? I have not really heard it in that way, more like doing something in a way that is really cool. Like solving a problem in a quick and surprising way. but maybe it has multiple meanings. Anyhoo, Meet and FIT was a real problem point and I coul not get the down either FANS. Didn’t know that meant Striking out. I was just doomed today!
Here's the first sentence of Bellow's AUGIE March:
“I am an American, Chicago born, and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted.”
It's considered one of the great opening sentences in American lit by many.
My favorite sentence of his is from Herzog: "Stuff your face with herring, [name I forgot], and mind your own f*cking business." (Something like that.)
Did someone mention snow tires (Hi pabloinnh)? My son had a bad experience with snow tires he bought when he moved to Michigan: they melted.
Ba da boom.
My mechanic said I needed to have my tires rotated. I said, "Don't they rotate by themselves when I drive?"
I'm worried about him -- he's addicted to brake fluid. I said, Marvin, that's dangerous. He said, Don't worry, I can stop whenever I want to.
Oy. Enough.
The complete phrase, in my misspent youth, was “mercy buckets, main sewer”
If you were raised in the Episcopal Church, you know the word “meet”. It is in one of the responses in the Rite of the Holy Eucharist: “It is meet and right so to do.” That phrase popped into my head as soon as I filled in that word. Funny how indoctrination sticks around…
This was a frustrating exercise in obscure proper noun trivia. I don't think I've ever seen so much obscurity packed into one puzzle. I've never heard of any of these people or TV shows. And I've certainly never heard anybody say "MERCY BUCKETS". Are you kidding me with this nonsense? What on earth made the unskilled constructor use MEET as a clue for FIT? You've got a novel from 1953, a TV series from 1982, a symphony from 1893, and a bunch of nonsense long answers. TELEOLOGY?? What do constructors get out of making the most obscure answers they can possibly find?
I understand Saturday is supposed to be more challenging, but this felt impossible unless you're just a huge trivia buff. Hated every minute of it, and I want my Saturday morning back.
I've heard MERCY Buttercups. Never BUCKETS.
On the first pass I dropped in ADO and LARGO, and considered quitting. But there were enough things sort of tickling the back of my brain that I figured I'd probably make it, eventually.
Rex says this puzzle had lots of energy. If that means very hard and full of things I’ve never heard before, he’s absolutely right. Didn’t take me too long to know I was in trouble and stop to Google a few names in the hope of getting a running start. But even then, it was slow going and an uphill struggle to complete a pretty long list of things I learned . . .
TELEOLOGY, DIORAMA, INFODEMIC, MERCY BUCKETS (Love it though!), Macgyvering is JURY RIGGING and that besides oil, applesauce can substitute for EGGS. Not complaining, just saying.
I’ve become very aware of the need for a regular DIGITAL DETOX following my last eye exam. One of the questions on the patient info sheet was how many hours a day spent looking at screens, including TV. I was a bit horrified by my answer, which seemed like way too many. Apparently there is some growing concern about devices and macular degeneration, which is a condition nobody wants. Anyway I don’t intend to push my LUCK with it.
Don't forget to spring forward tonight before bed if you are an analog-ist.
My post never showed up yesterday (you're welcome) so:
If I am me: {Weeping} "My delicate prose!"
If I am @andrew: I've been censored {wah}.
If I am 🦖: Who are you?
If I am God: People needed a break from you.
If I am Google: Your Tee-Hee went too far for the bot.
If I am Blogger: Yes, I am still broken.
If I am society: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I'm still trying to wrap my head around why people like themeless. Today we have a Wednesday puzzle with some unfamous people and book titles to make it less doable and no theme to fiddle. It's fine, but meh.
Tee-Hee: CONCUPISCENT: When a PBS watcher feels the feels.
Uniclues:
1 Lord of the Flies locale for those who do their class assignments.
2 Activity for jailbird headed to the chair or parole.
3 He shaved.
4 Activity for roadside denizen when chewing gum, duct tape and a rubberband failed to fix the VW bug.
5 Book title for one who loves electronics concupiscently.
6 Not buying polyester.
7 Reaction to congress ending democracy on November 6, 2024, and dropping the ampersand from a beloved sandwich.
1 DIORAMAS ISLE
2 STRIPY FIDGET
3 GOATEE EBBED (~)
4 JURY RIGGING FIT (~)
5 TO DATE DIODES
6 IRONS ROOT CAUSE
7 PBJ CLAUSE ADO (~)
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Bad place for a dance. HOT HEAD'S LAP.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
As I'm a retired mathematician, I get irritated every time I see "coset" misdefined. A coset is NOT a sub-group, it's obtained by multiplying a sub-group by a group element. Editors: NOTE THIS AND GET IT RIGHT NEXT TIME!
Saturday going along as a Saturday does. Hard but doable until the SE corner. TAXBITES did me in. The closest I could come was TAXBluES, and that felt stupid, but not as stupid as TAXBITES. Ruined that corner for me and DNF. Got lucky with FIT/TELEOGOLOGY/FANS section because did not know the last two, and FIT didn't feel solid. I loathe the musical clues because they all seem like variations on the same word to me with interchangeable vowels. I should have been able to figure out that LARGO was more likely than LoRGO but I had lost the will to live by that point. Not my day.
Quite the conceptual melange today, spanning gods OF WAR to DIGITAL DETOX. No singular age bias today, tho MERCY BUCKETS was probably more familiar to some of us than others. I died in the northwest, unable to get the simple DINGS to get started. Started elsewhere and picked my way through, but dang, never got the DING…
Bugs Bunny and Pepe LePew came to mind when I saw the clue for “Mercy Buckets”. I guess my misspent youth watching cartoons finally came in handy! I didn’t know that exact phrase but I remember those characters coming up with strange French sayings, sometimes not G-rated either.
Brilliant!
Well COMEDY should be the ultimate of free speech but that’s not always the case. In the sixties Lenny Bruce had shows cancelled and he was sent to jail on obscenity charges. These days the pro-censorship crowd are trying, mostly unsuccessfully, to silence Dave Chapelle for speech they don’t like. He did have to cancel at least one show but they were unable to get him cancelled from Netflix.
This was on the challenging side for me. Most of it played out at the same level as yesterday's solve. What put today's offering into OT was the 9 space block to the west of CAB. I'm not familiar with DIGITALDETOX. All I could think of was DELAY . Even worse I forgot all about ROOT because I was thinking of REAL to support DELAY or vice-versa. This also had me trying BELT and BEAM for 55D. The 56D name was of no use. I finally got my break when TAX popped up but a good third of my time went into that little section.
I had a STALK/STEMS write over. Yesterday it was watches today it's asparagus.
DIORAMA was in a recent SB speaking of which....
yd -1, another streak done in by
an Italian food
I’m a retired engineer. LED == light emitting DIODE. DIODES is a puzzle foul.
Nice Saturday puz with enough bite. Had to guess at FIT/FANS to finish, unfortunately. Can anyone explain either or both to me? Do they mean FIT = meet as in “FIT a description/meet a description,” for example? Or is there some better parallel between the two?
As an altar boy, I remember that the Suscipiat was followed by the part of the Mass called the Preface, which in the English translation began with "It is meet and just to give Him thanks and praise". The only context in which I remember "meet" meaning appropriate or "fit".
“It is MEET and right so to do.”
Should have read the write-up before commenting 😬 Also, seems like a bunch of folks struggled in the same area. Still, anyone have any explanation for FANS?
Back in my very distant past, I remember someone -- in real life? on TV? -- using the term MERCY BUCKETS in place of "Merci Beaucoup". I found him crashingly unfunny and boorish at the time. But he did me a huge favor today. He gifted me a long, well-situated answer in a puzzle where I was struggling everywhere.
I don't know what DIORAMAS are or why they come in shoeboxes.
I've never heard of DIGITAL DETOX -- but what a colorful phrase. INFODEMIC is even better; I love many of these new portmanteaus and the fun for me here was having to guess it. I'd already guessed DEMIC based on the crosses, but the first four letters were up for grabs.
I don't understand the clue for INERT (2D). But that's the only clue in this puzzle I don't like; mostly I thought the clues were inspired. I love curiosity-provoking clues like the one for COMEDY (19A), the one for DOUBT (50D) and the one for SIAM (8D). Also misleading clues like the ones for CLEF (14D) and STEIN (15A)
I thought I'd have to cheat on what turned out to be RONNIE and LOLA -- but I didn't. I solved this fair and square, if rather slowly. Crunchy, colorful and engrossing Saturday.
"Rationale" before "root cause", "apt" before "fit", and still I loved this puzzle! OFL is correct about the energy level, it helped to keep me going in spite of my errors.
@Sam -- When a batter in baseball strikes out, he FANS.
I love that you used "Fit But You Know It"! That's a great track from a great album.
After enjoying 39 grids by John G, I am willing to give him a pass for today’s INFODEMIC (even my iPad wants to fight over it). Any puzzle that balances RONNIE & STEELE with AUGIE & DESCARTES can’t be all bad! When a puzzle is able to FIT TELEOLOGY alongside MERCY BUCKETS, there’s something for everyone to bitch and moan about so fairs fair and that’s what makes it fun.
A first pass through the acrosses gave me nothing solid except STEELE and AUGIE. (I really should have thought of LARGO, but...) But then AUGIE suggested NIX which gave me ONYX, and I was able to complete that corner. From there it was pretty steady solving, if appropriately challenging at times. As usual with me, the NW was the last area to go in. I liked it.
RONNIE DYSON, who sang "Aquarius" in the original cast of "Hair", had this Top 10 hit in the summer of 1970, from an off-Broadway musical called "Salvation". (It's great for playing air tambourine.)
“Fan” is baseball slang for striking out a batter. See, for example: https://www.baseball-almanac.com/dictionary-term.php?term=fan
Medium. Solid grid with not much dreck (except maybe STRIPY), liked it.
Did not know RONNIE, INFODEMIC, and NILES.
Erasures - INFODEMIa before INFODEMIC, STalk before STEMS, and ousT before BOOT
“Mozart in the Jungle” is worth watching.
Hey GaryJugert -
Thanks for the shout-out. And keep going with your daily TEE-HEEs. Don’t worry, someday, one might cause a mild chuckle…
Great cut @Joe D - I still have my brother’s 45 of his cover of When You Get Right Down to It. Always wonder why guys like that never made it big.
I'd swear I've seen the butchered French as BUCcups. As you might imagine, that caused a hold up south of COSET. Perhaps I've heard someone say MERCY BUCKETS and misheard?
I interpreted Meet as the Shakespeareanesque usage so FIT went in with no trouble.
I had the first S of 52D and knew it couldn’t be Spear. Unfortunately, it also wasn’t STalk.
My husband is an expert at Macgyvering. I often tell people that if you have to find yourself in a dire situation, he's the one you want to have around. It's very comforting.
Thanks, John Guzzetta!
For politeness sake, when someone says MERCYBUCKETS, one should reply Dairy Ann.
If I had to guess, I'd guess that a former President will be involved in some attempted MacGyvering (JURYRIGGING) in the coming months.
I first thought that the Horn of Africa might be in the country whose capitol is Bamako, but the crosses weren't working, SOMALI wasn't right. I was further confused by NILES flowing into SOMALI.
Lots of whooshing to enjoy today. Thanks, John Guzzetta.
@andrew ditto for the Jugert joke applause and kudos to @liveprof for adding to the giggle factory output. After all as we learned today, COMEDY is the ultimate free speech.
The perfect Saturday. Battled with the puzzle for a half hour, got all but the NW corner. Went to the library to return some books, picked up the Lou Reed CD, came back home and said, I'll take another look. Quickly figured out OFWAR and then *BAM* - - - - everything fell into place.
I had never heard of INFODEMIC, but notwithstanding rex, it actually is a thing, and seems to have gained prominence during the Covid pandemic as the flood of false information that just made us suffer more than we had to.
When I saw that "meet" had to be FIT, I also saw them as adjectives.
Had "do the time" (If you can't do the time, don't do the crime") which I was so sure of, it held up the NE for a long sentence!
Like @Adam above, LARGO dislodged "do the time". And btw, the second movement (Largo) of Dvorak's 9th symphony ("Going Home") is perhaps the most beautiful movement of any symphony.
I know that trousers FIT is the two ends of the waistband MEET when I try them on.
I opened my puzzle in the NYT app and the answers were already filled in. I wondered who hacked my account, then it hit my that I did it in bed last night.
Loved the writeup, RP! Jimmy Descartes will make another appearance in my life.
@Nancy from yesterday inre baller:
You know what you know, but in defense of my hint theory:)
Tennis court - you would have heard of it
Badminton court - uses a shuttlecock, not a ball
Pickleball court - uses a wiffle ball, not cool enough for urban slang (yet)
Racquetball court - all being pulled out to become squash courts or yoga studios
Squash court - too elite for urban slang, backdoor to ivy league scholarships
Handball court - perhaps, but would that really be likely to be a NYT clue?
Tell me why I immediately thought that HAMSTERS come in shoeboxes
It took me forever, but it was a good forever. I didn't get MERCY BUCKETS, MEET=FIT, I didn't know AUGIE, never heard of Macgyvering since I never watched the show, but it was a good workout.
Liked SOLO ALBUM.
Nice going (for you!), John :)
Had TAXB___S and somewhat guessingly wrote in TAX BLUES? “Is that a thing? Could be” I supposed. Never heard of TAX BITES before today, but here we are. LUE there really screwed up my SE, but eventually sorted it out. Fun Saturday barring that hiccup
Maybe I’m an outlier, but I always said: mercy bocups… of course that didn’t work, but I wanted cups at the end… tough puz for me today needed uncle google
This went super fast for me. Almost 3 times faster than yesterday. Some great long answers.
After graduating architecture school in 1987, I got a job right in downtown Vancouver and moved into a nearby apartment. In the first week, we had:
a) my neighborhood evacuated due to a bomb threat
b) an episode of MacGyver filmed right in front of our office! They closed the street and filmed this one scene about 20 times, where a shotgun goes off (BLAM!) then Dana Elcar shouts "Where's the bomb squad?" It was the best day ever.
[Spelling Bee: yd currently -2. Condolences, puzzlehoarder.]
I always thought the term was JERRYRIGGING, not JURYRIGGING. To my mind, JURYRIGGING is when lawyers use underhanded methods to ensure that the jury is stacked with people on their side, or particular demographic groups are excluded. Merriam-Webster tells me I'm wrong -- but still, does anybody else have that sense?
@Gary J -- Thanks so much for the clock change heads-up! I would have completely forgotten. 1) DST seems early-ish this year and 2) nothing in NYC's current wet and dreary weather reminds me in the least of Spring. Or even "daylight", for that matter.
Had a waterfall of errors that made the north go sideways ... ales for 14D, which made the unknown infomedia 23A look just right ... then sidles 24A which sorta fit and lags 25D kinda work ... but when I got lighsenup for 11D, I knew something was wrong ... fixing all that took up over half my time this a.m. clef, fidget, gags, lighten up - got it!
BTW, I spent time on my usual Saturday morning routine of cleaning my house and I had just put away my Dyson vacuum, so 28D was a gimme.
Wow, the FIT/FANS cross is the worst I've seen in a long time. Only one of those two clues should be that far into the realm of obscurity.
Never associated Mercy Buckets with French, but I do know it as the name of a great song by the band Drive By Truckers. We’ll worth checking out.
Seemed kinda hard, but I guess just regular SatPuz hard.
Had some no-know names, plus INFODEMIC, DIGITALDETOX, TELEOLOGY, and MERCYBUCKETS.
That'll sufficiently do it, toughy-wise.
staff weeject pick: REI. This semi-obscure name musta got used often enough now, that it recently got cleared for ?-marker clues.
Had DOTHETIME before SERVETIME.
Enjoyed the math term COSET. Reminds m&e...
PuzEatinSpouse's cousins visited us last week, and one of em was a math major. I gave him runtpuzs to solve. After a suitable amount of sufferin, he returned fire, by presentin m&e with an illustrated math problem. It showed parallel lines, with two half circles inside. Each half circle had its center point on a separate parallel line. The two circles were touchin each other one time at their rims, at a point inside the parallel lines. Sorta like this:
a
|D|
|C|
…b
…. where D and C are the two half-circles. M&A's assignment: If each half-circle has a diameter of 2, how long is the diagonal line from a to b? [a and b are outer points on the two half-circles, where they touch the lines.]
It was a tricky problem. Took M&A many nanoseconds to solve. And my first take, square root of 17, was too easy and in no way correct.
But, I digress …
Thanx for your brand of SatPuz buckets of mercy, Mr. Guzzetta dude. Tough but fair.
Masked & Anonym007Us
**gruntz**
I bought a tee shirt for my son that said, “I’m a philosophy major; why do you want fries with that?” Fortunately, for his financial prospects, he got another degree in computer science.
I'm a retired engineer with degrees in English degree and mathematics. I have a couple of LEDs here. Each of them incorporates a diode. I have DIODES.
Loved this one.
(Anon @ 7:18 Lol)
@jb12912:38 PM - Haha! I also never watched MacGyver, but I had no problem with 34A thanks to the hysterical ongoing SNL spoof in which Will Forte played a character named MacGruber who got blown up at the end of every sketch; although I might never have known MacGruber was a sendup of MacGyver if my hubby had not explained it to me.
@M. Rosenthal (1:19). I thought that too, but jury here comes from the root for aid and it's maritime for a temporary fix on a ship. So a jury mast is a replacement mast. No connection to courtroom juries. Jerry-rigged is more broadly "shabbily built" (not maritime) and comes from jerry, a pejorative term.
BTW, my HS French teacher was Oscar Rosenthal in Brooklyn (HS class of '67). Probably no relation, but worth a shot. He was wonderful and very funny. I still tell stories about him.
Hard, but I finished (with 1 error, as I just discovered after coming here), despite assuming I would DNF, and despite the STRIPY INFO DAMNic bad COMEDY fill.
My error was due to the clueless 13A wording. "rumors" is a noun. INFODEMIC, were it actually a word, would be an adjective. INFODEMIA, were it actually a word, would be a noun, so that's what I entered. But I failed to notice that ALEF is not a sign in front of any bar I've ever seen.
I've never bitten a tax, BTW.
As an avid bodybuilder, RONNIE Coleman was a gimmie. :)
IMPROVISING fits in the MacGyver slot, which slowed me for some time. There was a remake of MacGyver not so long ago that apparently escaped most people's notice. This one featured a cast of problem solvers and was pretty good.
Today's puzzle is a fine example of what this old word-nerd likes most about crosswords---everywhere I look in the grid I see lots of interesting words crossing one another.
I'm a little surprised at the lack of commenters' love for TELEOLOGY. We get the very common suffix -OLOGY meaning "study of" and the even more common combining form TELE- meaning "distant. The clue "Branch of causality that comes from the Greek for 'study of the end'" segues to 60A ROOT CAUSE "Underlying reason". This is bowling in the lanes of philosophers like the French existentialist Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973). (Oh look, he came back for a brief visit @7:40.)
And the philosophical pièce de résistance shows up at 50D DOUBT. Descartes found he could DOUBT the truth of everything except the fact that he was DOUBTing. Since we often have dreams that are so real that we only realize they were dreams after we wake up, he asks how can we know for sure that what we think is our waking experiences will ultimately be revealed as dreams. How's that for some badass TELEOLOGY? His famous quote really should read "I DOUBT, therefore I am."
I GOTA RUN. Chow.
I had asparagus as essentially a STALK till crosses helped.
@M&A - really hard to picture based on the description, but if I understand it correctly, it would be 2 * √2
As a mathematician I'm appalled by 38 across. COSET is not a synonym for mathematical subgroup. Shame on you!
Telos (Gr.) = end, goal, purpose
I loved this Saturday puzzle. Hard hard hard until suddenly an answer appears—a gateway to other clues. Thanks, MERCYBUCKETS— got it immediately and it started me off.
@kitshef: Yer answer is a bit too small. I blame my lousy description of the problem.
Here's a picture of what I was presented. It was in pencil, but hopefully U can read it.
Original problem pic:
http://puzzlecrowd.com/kf/ABLinePuz.jpeg
M&A Help Desk
Quick hits:
As mentioned above by a couple of commenters - don't forget to set the ole clocks ahead one hour tonight. 2AM becomes 3AM.
I'm surprised that a bunch of y'all never heard FANS described as the Baseball Whiff. I don't watch baseball, and I knew it. (Well, good for you, Roo) 😁
And I got QB in the SB today! Yay Me! One day streak @puzzlehoarder! Har. (My QB streaks are always one day!)
RooMonster Can We Stick To One Damn Time? Guy
Perfect Saturday! Messed up MacGuyvering with Improvising before I realized nothing fit. Mercy Buckets:fun!
Bob Mills
Many people don’t pay additional taxes in April.
But many people do. So the answer is fine. BTW anyone who does any work self employed and they are legion these days pays estimated taxes in April.
Nothing wrong with the clue.
@Mand A. Now that I see the picture, the answer is the square root of 17. Around 4.123.
Anonymous 9:33
I wouldn’t comment except you criticized the constructor as unskilled.
As Rex and others explained, meet has more than one meaning that makes it a perfectly legitimate Saturday clue.
Don’t criticize until you check first.
No one can know everything.
Symphony from 1893. Odd criticism since most popular symphonies are even older. BTW that is a very popular symphony especially among American orchestras because of its American music theme.
Saturday very often has at least one difficult Greek based word. Nothing unusual about that.
I didn’t like mercy buckets at all but if you read the comments many people knew it and in fact used the term. So just because we don’t hear something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist!
Niallhost
Maybe it is a bit of old newspaperese but I am old and I recognized the expression tax bite immediately, although I did try file originally. But you are not alone in not knowing it so it must be a generational thing
Johnk
I think you forgot about panDEMIC which of course is a noun. The portmanteau is info plus demic not fo put into indemic
@M&A - yes, that diagram helped. I was picturing the semicircles touching at their midpoints. My new guess is √13
@M&A - eep! belay that last answer. Made a silly mistake.
Hand WAAAAY up for your (and @ Offenbach’s reply) @Wanderlust! I had no “ticket” to the Jackson Matz Friday Train of Thought, but appreciated the effort at crazy-odd clues. At least to me. Today though, I was half my usual Saturday time (even that’s nothing to write home about except to me), and except for a couple of the names, I just flowed.
Hahaha! @Anonymous 9:21 AM! I am also in the nostalgia brigade when it comes to MERCY BUCKETS (with the “main sewer,” by the way). And I have been solving regularly for over 60 years so yep, I’m old.
@M&A - OK, final answer is 2*√(2+√3). Not sure how clear that is as posted, so in words:
Take the square root of 3. Add two. Take the square root of the resulting sum. Then multiply that by 2.
So pleased to see so many who liked yesterday and today. Both were fresher, fairly crossed with some humor, something to learn and just more of what I look for in this puzzle.
I’m finally completely without any full moving boxes, but am having to thoroughly wash everything! Wherever they stored my boxes and furniture (for almost 6 weeks!) was a sty full of silty red dirt that seeped into everything. So I am headed back to cleaning after a puzzle break.
I’ve said it before, but it’s still true. Y’all are such a daily highlight. Thanks!
@kitshef: Your answer seems to be around 3.86, which is correct. Well done.
If it's any consolation, it took M&A 3 tries, to come up with the correct solution.
I'll try to post my proof, tomorrow.
M&A
in the USA, federal and state income taxes are due on April 15th.
I took “meet” to mean fitting as in the liturgical sense of “right & meet so to do”.
As a lifter I thoroughly enjoyed seeing Ronnie Coleman in the puzzle. “Light weight!”
What does that mean?
Challenging. Cluing was borderline unfair in spots with too much PPP.
I'm with Mr. Grunpypants - this one was a pisser infestation.
I wasn't absolutely sure, but thought the phrase MERCY BUCKETS came from U. S. soldiers being in France during world war II. So I looked it up, and it does. So us older solvers had an advantage on that one. Although, I also heard it from friends that served I grew up with.
If the ends meet, they fit.
I don't think I've seen the term teleology in fifty years.
GO CAL!!!
Hard one. Some very inventive phrases. Several times I said NOLUCKSOFAR, but went back after a break and saw something. Tons of triumph points. Birdie.
Wirdle birdie.
I found this quite hard . Lotsa contemplating. Everything here from INFODEMIC to TELEOLOGY. Oof.
Wordle birdie.
NO NORMAL TIME
LOLA had NOLUCKSOFAR -
NO DOUBT OF the ROOTCAUSE:
Want TODATE a COMEDY star?
NIX the INFODEMIC CLAUSE.
--- RONNIE STEIN
Well, I had tons of almost points. But no cigar in the end.
Diana, LIW
Always thought it was JERRYRIGGING…who knew? 🤷
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