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Relative difficulty: Easy (very)
Theme answers:
It's a weirdly gendered insult that I don't generally hear and certainly wouldn't use, but I guess it has enough currency to be a crossword theme, why not? It's the gender part that ends up being the one weak link in the theme, since all the animals are identified by specifically male terms ... except "fish." Fish is just "fish." No gendered term for baby fish, which makes this answer stick out more than it already did—FRY being a word I almost never hear except metaphorically, with the word "small" in front of it. If you'd asked me the word for a young [any of the non-fish animals in this grid], I would've known immediately, but FRY, uh, yes, that is a stage in fish development (between larva and fingerling, i.e. once the fish becomes capable of feeding itself, but before it's developed scales and working fins, per wikipedia) ... but, perhaps because they aren't generally visible unless you have a fish tank, and aren't particularly adorable, I would not have put them in the "baby" category. But fish are animals and FRY are young ones and STEPHEN FRY gets you an answer symmetrical to SAMUEL COLT, so there you go. Still, nothing "male" about it, so the MAN BABY theme you've taken pains to establish in all the other theme clues kind of falls apart there.
- STEPHEN FRY (16A: *Actor who played Oscar Wilde in "Wilde" [fish])
- RYAN GOSLING (10D: *Mouseketeer peer of Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake [gander])
- SAMUEL COLT (62A: *Inventor who patented the first revolver [stallion])
- CHARLES LAMB (24D: *English essayist who wrote "Lawyers, I suppose, were children once" [ram])
Barbacoa (Spanish: [baɾβaˈkoa] [...] is a form of cooking meat that originated in the Caribbean with the Taíno people, who called it by the Arawak word barbaca, from which the term "barbacoa" derives, and ultimately, the word 'barbecue". In contemporary Mexico, it generally refers to meats or whole sheep or whole goats slow-cooked over an open fire or, more traditionally, in a hole dug in the ground covered with agave (maguey) leaves, although the interpretation is loose, and in the present day (and in some cases) may refer to meat steamed until tender. This meat is known for its high fat content and strong flavor, often accompanied with onions and cilantro(coriander leaf). (wikipedia)
• • •
STEPHEN FRY made me laugh because I have no idea what "Wilde" is so, this being crosswords, I wrote in STEPHEN REA. This made me remember that Stephen REA appeared in a grid recently and a bunch of solvers got So Mad because the answer wasn't FRY. Let's see if I can find the puzzle where this happened ... here we go, April 4, 2024—the MARTINI puzzle. The clue was [Stephen of "V for Vendetta"], which both three-letter Stephens were in! So you can see why a solver might be mad. Me, I've been solving crosswords for over three decades (since the early '90s, when Stephen REA gained some fame because of his role in The Crying Game), so REA is just a reflex at this point. Unless you are *certain* about Stephen Fry, the three-letter acting Stephen is *always* REA—the name with the more crossword-friendly letters wins, that's the rule, thanks for playing! It's been that way since 1993—though you might occasionally see the term [Mens REA] (legal Latin for "intention of wrongdoing”) and if you're lucky, you might get a musical appearance from Chris REA. But today, OOXTEPLERNON, the God of Short Bad Fill (I mean, Crosswordese), betrayed me and failed to give me the REA I instinctively expected. He is a capricious god. A MAN BABY, some might say (some, but not me—I really don't want to make him angry) (solvers should make a point to honor him every October 30, for that was the one and only day upon which he showed his fearsome aspect to solverkind, way back in 2009) (the traditional offering is OREOs; you could try NILLA Wafers, but ... I wouldn't risk it).
I had BIG BABY before MANBABY, and thought that the BIGBABY / BIGBIRD crossing was some kind of ... thematic thing. But then BIG didn't work for the BABY answer so I changed it to MAN. I don't know if GOO over BABY is intentional (mens REA?), but it's a nice touch (GOO being half a baby sound). The only tough parts of this puzzle were the first names of COLT and, to a lesser extent, LAMB (having a Ph.D. in English means the 18th-century essay guy is a lot more familiar to me than the gun guy). Oh, and I had no idea about the N.F.L. coach, but crosses just blew right through him, no (real) problem.
[When you "finish" the puzzle but don't get the "Congratulations" message...]
Bullets:
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
- 10A: ___ czar, N.Y.C. government position whose job listing called for "a virulent vehemence for vermin" (RAT) — tl;dr for sure. Scanned the clue, saw "vermin," wrote in RAT, the end.
- 65D: Deserving of a fire emoji, as a party (LIT) — I had HOT
- 64D: Essie competitor (OPI) — nail polish
- 25A: Starting point for a record-setting swim in 2023's "Nyad" (CUBA) — so presumably ... the starting point for a record-setting swim ... in real life? The movie was non-fiction, right? Weird clue.
- 56A: Pepper and O'Leary of classic rock: Abbr. (SGTS.) — [literal record scratch sound in my brain] Wait, hold up. I nearly blew right past this because SGT. Pepper is a gimme but ... O'Leary!? Did you ... did you really just gratuitously throw a Billy Joel reference in there!? SGT. O'Leary? The one who's walking the beat? At night he becomes a bartender? Trading in his Chevy for a Cadillac (-ac -ac -ac -ac -ac)? Wow. He's in one verse of the song, not even the title or anything. That is some deep Billy Joel commitment. Not sure who to blame for this one but I'm gonna guess ... Joel.
- 53D: Word in the title of Broadway's longest-running show (OPERA) — ladies and gentlemen, my sincere reaction to this answer was "Wow, Three-Penny OPERA ran that long? Longer than Cats or Les Miz or Phant- ... oh."
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
ReplyDeleteI've heard the term "MANBABY" applied to a certain former President and current defendant. Seems appropriate.
BARBACOA was a WOE, and I thought that the 25A movie might have opened in CaBo.
Easy except for the NE. I couldn't get TYRE because "tire" seemed obvious, and I had no idea that RAT was a New York czar of something. But RYAN seemed the only alternative, and it worked.
ReplyDeleteI appreciated the relative lack of popular culture names in the puzzle.
In England, the trunk of a car is called the “boot” and over there it’s spelled “tyre.” You’ll see this come up again.
DeleteI agree that the “Fry” entry is a bit of a
ReplyDeleteclunker parallelism-wise, but have enough personal fondness for Stephen Fry as a cultural entity that that answer was a bet plus for me.
Beautifully timed for the trial of the man babies' man baby.
ReplyDeleteI speak Spanish so BARBACOA was easy. But, that and FRY, induced me to think that the theme was somehow culinary.
ReplyDeleteSAM(UEL) COOK fit perfectly, too!
Never heard of a TAPIR before, and of course no clue about nail polish or emoji’s, so I pretty much just stared at that mini section in the SE - tough way to end a Tuesday for me. Even KISS CAM was a stretch.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what percentage of us, on average, just wait and come here to have Rex explain to us what the theme is every day. Seems like editors, constructors, Rex and a dedicated group of solvers put a high value on the theme content, and probably about a third of us just ignore it. Wonder if there has ever been a formal or informal survey on that.
SE was the only resistance, as I've never heard of Essie, I don't know Roman numbers, and I had initially filled in SAMUEL CALF because I had never heard of SAMUEL COLT.
ReplyDeleteRevolver/colt
DeleteFound this overall very easy for a Tuesday. Not sure I understand Cuba for the clue “ starting point for a record setting swim in 2023’s “Nyad”. She swam from Florida to Cuba.
ReplyDeleteNo, she swam from Havana to Key West, so the clue is correct.
DeleteIt was Cuba to Florida.
DeleteOCHre before OCHER, which I do ever time. Not really a kealoa is it's the same word, but there ought to be a name for that. Grey/gray, theater/theatre, etc.
ReplyDeleteMisread Rex's SGTS take as "The one who's walking the bear", which made me very curious. The actual lyric is not as exciting.
My favorite clue by far was wild couple's cruise (Noah's ark). Wilde, of course is Oscar Wilde and the biographical movie. Thoroughly enjoyed the theme and the creative cluing. Fun way to start my day.
ReplyDeleteI won’t admit to the thoughts I had on that clue!
DeleteJeff Chen used to talk about Cruciverba, the crossword goddess, who, when things fell into place when constructing a puzzle, was smiling down at you, and who, when they didn’t, was bringing her wrath upon you.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading your notes in WordPlay, Adam, it sounds like she was smiling at you big time, providing a theme answer set that worked beautifully (when so often this is the point where a theme idea dies), and I saw more as well. This is a grid filled with clean answers, and some lovely ones, including RELIC, TAPIR, SMITE, and TIPTOES.
She also popped a couple of sweet question-mark clues into your brain – [Wild couple’s cruise?] for NOAH’S ARK, and [What might catch X’s at an O’s game?] for KISSCAM.
I’m grateful for learning a new meaning for FRY, for learning a culinary term in BARBACOA (a style of cooking meat), and for the scintillating PuzzPair© of BIG BIRD and EAGLE.
Thank you for a breezy, balmy solve, to accompany a short-sleeve day here in the Carolina mountains. And may the fickle Cruciverba continue to hold you in her favor!
I’ve only been working the crossword for about six months, though I do some archives when bored. I feel like I’ve seen OPI about a dozen times but just cannot commit it to memory.
ReplyDeleteI’ve heard of TAPIR, but not enough to have it down pat.
So ya. That one square was my only resistance. Tried TAmIR and TAbIR before getting the P correct.
Steven Fry portrayed Oscar Wilde in the 1997 film “Wilde”. He was nominated for a Golden Globe for his portrayal of the Irish poet, playwright and aesthete.
ReplyDeleteI think the intent of the theme was a MAN and a BABY together. Stephen, Ryan, Samuel, and Charles are all men. Then there's a baby term after the male first name.
ReplyDeleteThat's it.
I mean... even "baby" isn't gendered, in the revealer. The fact that several of the terms for young animals are indeed gendered is, I think, not the point.
This theory doesn’t hold water. You’d use sheep / horse / goose if gender really didn’t matter.
DeleteThose aren’t babies.
DeleteI didn’t know the word Barbacoa so i kept trying t figure out what was wrong there until I finished and it was Not wrong. Hey enough people love Billy Joel that he’s sold out over 150 shows at MSG since he started his residency there. Not an issue for me, I grew up in the town next to the one he grew up in. We went to neighboring high schools!
ReplyDeleteI typically like Adam’s work - but the theme here is an inane reach. Overall fill was odd enough to keep the solve interesting I guess but there is something fundamentally flawed in this puzzle.
ReplyDeleteLast Lonely EAGLE
Nice to see STEPHENFRY in a crossword. Couldn't find the exact quote, but I once saw him on a panel show talking about coleoptera, lepidoptera (insect orders), and someone asked him how the hell he knew these things. He responded, "Why does me knowing something seem like such a strange phenomenon to you?" Love that line. Also, baby fry are indeed adorable. I had several tanks decades ago to breed fish. Lot of fun to watch the fry grow. But, to steal a line from "Adaptation.", one day I just said f*** fish.
ReplyDeleteSolid Tuesday puzzle. Well done, Adam.
Hey All !
ReplyDeleteNice Across and Down Themers, pinwheeling around the grid. Agree about the oddity of FRY. I guess that's the source of the "small fry" saying.
In the RYAN GOSLING clue, I read it as "pair" instead of "peer", causing quite the head scratch.
Decent puz for a Tuesday. Good fill.
Have a great Tuesday.
One F
RooMonster
DarrinV
Constructor is Adam Vincent, not Adam Wagner.
ReplyDeleteEdit: maybe the STEPHENFRY quote was, "Why does *someone* knowing something seem like such a strange phenomenon to you?" I'm sure he put it more elegantly than I did.
ReplyDeleteHappens to me a half dozen times per Jeopardy episode
DeleteAdam took the time and trouble to find some really playful and colorful ways to clue certain answers. The RAT czar. The sardonic CHARLES LAMB quote. The BIKINI clue. The KISSCAM clue. The KISSCAM answer, for that matter. It makes me think he'd be fun to have lunch with.
ReplyDeleteBut if we have lunch, Adam, I won't order a BARBACOA. I never order "mystery meat" and BARBACOA is certainly a mystery to me. I wanted BARBeCue there and it just didn't work.
An odd but amusing theme. The MAN is a man, or at least a man's first name. But the BABY is a critter. Talk about mixing your metaphors. But who cares? This was the kind of breezy, good-natured puzzle that I really like to see.
Only goofs here were OWNSIT before OWNSUP and ENAMORS before ENDEARS, otherwise no problems. I knew the fish-related meaning of FRY but am unfamiliar with the actor. So it goes.
ReplyDeleteThe POR vs. PARA conundrum is famous as both are usually "for" in English. You can make up entire quizzes giving students the choice of one or the other. a 50-50 chance, and still have students get more than half of the answers wrong. Don't ask me how I know. Certainly wasn't the result of poor teaching.
OK Tuesdecito, AV. Agreeable Variety of younger animals, and thanks for all the fun.
Thanks for the explanation of O’Leary - that part of the clue led me to believe SGTS was wrong, until it had to be.
ReplyDeleteOCHER is one I always have to remind myself that Crossworld spells wrong 😉
Any fun puzzle with charmers like RYAN GOSLING, PICCOLO, BIKINI and SKIS that got me past annoyances like NONET (appreciated the cluing there).
Also appreciated the job description for the RAT Czar.
Have to say the short fill was pretty strong today, IMO. No idea about the POR/TOPPS intersection, but whatever.
Also had a chuckle about OOXTEPLERNON! (Doubt if I would have stuck with being a solver through puzzles of that type!)
So smiles all around. 😎🔆
Have a great day everyone!
Man-baby has been in vogue since… hmmm… exactly 2016
ReplyDeleteI nominate the TwiXter to the club
DeleteAgreed, Monday-easy
ReplyDeleteI say "manchild," not "manbaby," but I got it eventually.
ReplyDeleteI've never heard of "barbacoa," what on earth is that?
And spelling "tire" with a "y" was awful.
Rachel
DeletePuzzled by the complaint about tyre
Common Times crossword trick signaling the British spelling by using a British usage in the clue, boot instead of trunk.
I think it’s a fair clue.
A large % of the world’s English speakers spell it that way!
Whelp, Mrs. Egs and I have a few kids that we fawn over. But we got into a spat about having any more. "Listen, chick," I clucked "I don't think we can pullet off with your strained calf. But MANBABY, the thought brings me joey."
ReplyDeleteHaving no Chipotle experience, I had to wait for the last cross to see whether they served BARBACOA or BAR BACOn. I'd gladly eat a combo of the two in a TACO de CUBA.
I'm all for ending war, hunger, poverty and disease, but who the heck wants to ENDEARS? I've never heard of such a thing!
Nice touch to have GOO all over BABY at the center of today's grid. But doesn't BIGBIRD come a bit to close to being a MANBABY to be in the puzzle?
Pretty fun Tuesday with some great clues. Thanks, Adam Vincent.
There's a fair amount of questioning about whether Nyad actually completed a lot of her swims, either in general or unassisted. So the movie is possibly a lot more fictional than people were led to believe.
ReplyDeleteI suppose it's a bit worse when you know all the proper nouns and the puzzle is a complete snoozer than the more typical NYT puzzle with 17 starlettes from shows you've never heard of on streaming services you don't buy. Maybe it's all miraculous and I am grumpy. Just fill in the letters Gary until you finally accept MAN BABY (?!) as true.
ReplyDeleteTee-Hee: I suppose BIKINIS and KISS CAMS sorta save this. There's even a guitar in here.
NOAH'S ARK isn't a cruise! It's a cruising vessel. It's the thing holding you inside with a clowder of critters (you'll eventually start eating them after the rain lightens up) while the cruise happens in the fourth dimension. The ARK floats and the cruise happens amidst flooding. The cruise is the floating part, not the contraption filled with deliberately bi-gendered beasts part. You don't say, "We're Princess of the Seas-ing." You actually say, "We're going to float around in a glorified toilet stuffing our faces until we arrive at some poverty stricken place where we'll buy trinkets and then get dysentery on the way home with 4000 of our favorite conga dancers." That's cruising. NOAH'S ARK is a boat. Shall we ING-ize a dinghy? What are you planning to do during the rainy season this year? Oh, we're going NOAH'S ARKING.
Uniclues:
1 Homing "pigeon" used as food delivery drone in Matanzas.
2 Two piece featuring two fish.
3 Beguiles golddigger.
4 Ballet school.
5 Making out with a pillow before heading to the ballpark with your new squeeze.
1 CUBA TACO EAGLE (~)
2 SOLE-KOI BIKINI
3 ENDEARS NINER
4 TIPTOES ENTITY
5 KISS CAM TRIALS (~)
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Barbs crooned by smart alec insect. SINGER ANT'S GIBES.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I had MAYBABY which jibed well with YOLOARK, sadly it was not YOLOARK :.(.
ReplyDelete@Rachel -- Yanks keep their spare TIREs in a trunk. Brits keep their spare TYREs in a boot. The clue was fair.
ReplyDeleteOf course it's helpful if you've read a lot of Agatha Christie.
Whether Nyad made a record swim in "real life" is a subject of much dispute in the community of open water swimmers. For various technical reasons, the swim is not officially recognized, and so no record is recorded. And some are convinced that she cheated and didn't actually complete the entire swim without help - pointing to anomalies in the real-time record of the swim, and what some assert is a long history of serial lying and fabrication. Given this, the clue is on solid ground in referring only to the movie and not to "real life."
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, she went in the water in Cuba and came out of the water in Florida.
I agree that the clue for TYRE was fair. But a better clue, which wouldn't involve Brtish/Americn differences, would be "Hall-of-Fame golfer Roberr _____ Jones." (Bobby Jones)
ReplyDeleteWhen I was introduced as a teacher of mathematics, the person would often brag about hating mathematics. Meaning that they couldn't learn it. That reminds me of people here who brag about not knowing a word in the grid.
ReplyDeleteOh look...A BARBACOA FRY TACO in CUBA. Que fun. The BARBACOA (I think) is only used in Mexico. It was there that I first heard the word. I'd love to see a *Churrasco* from Argentina and a *Lechon Asado* from CUBA......I would dine in style.
ReplyDeleteAs a Tuesday might go, this one was sweet. A few names I wasn't sure of - I'm looking at you TOPPS and I'm staring at MAN BABY and that STEPHEN FRY dude. All getable. At least I learned that COLT had a first name and it was SAMUEL. My crossword SAMUEL is Adams.
@kitshef. Grey/Gray. The way I remember it is: (E)is for England and (A) is for America. I can't help you with the others....
@egs. You're on fire today...My emoji is that one where your head is tilted and there are tears of laughter coming out something resembling eyes. I can't send it on my MacBook but it's the thought that counts....
@GILL I. 10:51 AM
Delete🤣
And word of warning, encouraging @egs is likely to lead to a pandemic of profuse punsterism.
Kinda neat & timely theme, especially with the commencement of the historic criminal trial of that there certain immature adult.
ReplyDeleteWoulda been a pretty easy TuesPuz, except for the STEPHENFRY/BARBACOA crossin. Lost precious nanoseconds. But learned about new stuff -- right, @mathgent dude?
staff smallfry weeject picks: LET, LIT, LOT. Letin lives today.
fave stuffins: BIGBIRD [semi-near-themer?]. KISSCAM. PICCOLO. BIKINI.
Thanx, Mr. Vincent dude.
Masked & Anonymo2Us
The Mini-Crossword [yo, @The New Yorker!]:
**gruntz**
This was a read the clue, fill in the blank kind of puzzle. I did not know about the fry stage of a fish's life, but I thought of a fish fry - and that with Barbacoa (I worked in restaurants so that is not an unfamiliar word to me), taco, sole, and ribs made for a very filling meal!!! But, alas, it was a manbaby puzzle, not a dining puzzle so I was confused by the fry reference. I figured correctly that I would find the answer here!
ReplyDeleteMy dumb problem with REA is RAE
ReplyDeleteExtremely easy, and so nice to have a puzzle with no shaded squares, little circles, or other "modern" crossword "games".
ReplyDeleteI'm aware of many a woman baby, but that term hasn't caught on. I couldn't think offhand of any famous or infamous women with surnames like Chick, Kitten, Kit, Piglet, Cub, Puppy, Joey, or Filly. But some quick research found Mandy Fawn, Fanny Calf and Anna Larva. Using those would create a rather difficult solve!
Er, @Rex, I'm pretty sure that LAMB is gender-neutral as well as FRY. Female ones are sometimes called "ewe LAMB," but not always.
ReplyDeleteMy rule for restaurant selection is simple: unless it's breakfast, they have to serve wine. Hence I've never been in a Chipotle, and have no idea about their menu. Hence I went with BARBeCue, and then (hi @egs) BAR BACOn (what a nice idea!) So I learned something today, along with learning that all those people had been Mouseketeers. (I didn't know that there were any Mouseketeers after Annette Funicello.)
Charles LAMB does get into quite a few puzzles, but usually as a clue for "Elia." Nice to see him make the grid in his own right.
Why is it that male mammals all have gender specific names like stallion and ram, but male fish just get fish?
ReplyDeleteSee a need or a protest movement here.
Rex "fry" was easy/obvious to me Bu I've never heard it in reference to fish in a fishbowl.
Easy and easier than yesterday’s for me. As usual, I ignored the theme until after I finished. Pretty clever, liked it. Unlike yesterday I knew the theme answers.
ReplyDeleteNo erasures and BARBACOA??? was it for WOEs.
@Lewis
ReplyDeleteAGre the clues for Noahs Arkand Kisscam were clever and fun
@egs.
LOL especially like the end ears riff
The gloomy, rainy day here made the clue for 14A hard to read. I kept going back to it, wondering what more one could say for "Watery, as [the] sea". And when WEAK finally filled in, I said, "Huh?" but finally saw the tea in clue. SMH.
ReplyDeleteThis was a twist on a common theme and I really liked it. Thanks, Adam Vincent!
A fun puzzle which I solved as a themeless until I looked around. Thank you, Adam :)
ReplyDeleteAll the consternation about BARBACOA compels me to point out that it is Spanish and the source of "barbecue", which I knew, and I intend to feel smug for the rest of today.
ReplyDelete@m&a (11:19). Happy to be one of yr dudes. I read you every day.
ReplyDeletePretty much any eatery you go into hereabouts in Tex-Mex Land has BARBACOA so that was a gimme. COBB salad? Not so much.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it's MAN CHILD but that's one letter too many for the middle slot. Just saw recently where a former aide to a former president referred to his former boss as a "Petulant MAN CHILD".
Never having heard the expression MAN BABY meant the puzzle didn't exactly ELATE me. I think a BABY is too innocent and has not yet developed enough personality traits to act like an "immature adult", as clued. And other than having animal related last names and being males, the themers don't seem to have anything else in common. Kind of WEAK if you ask me.
And with ORB, TIP TOE, OWN UP, BYLINE, TRIAL, PHASE, SSN, STIR, ENDEAR, STRUM, SGT, SPLINT, RIB, TSP, BLT and SKI all needing some letter count boosting grid fill help from a heavy RAIN of Ss, the POC (plural of convenience) Committee gave this grid a POC Marked rating.
The theme was a major fail. Colt is the only gender specific term in the puzzle. In fact equines (colt and filly) and chickens (pullet and cockerel) are about the only species that have gender specific words for their young. A lamb can grow up to be either a ram or a ewe. A gosling to either a goose or a gander. And in this increasingly gender neutral world of our why would you even construct this theme?
ReplyDeleteI started just like Rex, filling in REA once I realized that the first name was STEPHEN. Then I got REF, FRY, and *also* thought of the comments on that one Thursday puzzle.
ReplyDeleteI had BARBeCue before BARBACOA, until COBB got me MAN BABY. I'm more familiar with "manchild" but BABY definitely works better with this theme.
The BIGBIRD is just there to carry the MANBABY, that would be too much for any regular stork. OK, I'll see myself out.
Haven’t read comments yet except Rex. Fry didn’t bother me at all. But I did like Rex initially want Rea. But that April 4 puzzle helped because I was surprised some were very annoyed by Rea. I on the other hand had no clue who Fry was.
ReplyDeleteThought this puzzle was easy. Liked it.
Will look for complaints about the Spanish, Italian and Japanese answers, which I like.
I'm with Southside Johnny. Don't alway pay attention to the theme. Also found TAPIR crossing OPI to be a NATICK. For us occasional solvers, this was not a 'very easy' Tuesday, usually my favorite puzzle day.
ReplyDeleteEnjoyed the clue for TYRE. Glad to know STEPHENFRY's name. Have seen him and heard him, but didn't know the name even after inferring the answer.
NYAD appeared in a recent crossword and, having never heard of it but being intrigued by "true story" type shows/movies, i googled it (so CUBA was a rare geographical gimme today). and i ended up reading several wiki and other articles about the movie and its real life counterparts. @johnny w. (10:30am) covered all the points nicely. it was an interesting read and left me not really wanting to see the film but wishing (like some critics) that the makers had chosen to tell the actual true story, whatever that may be. kind of seems like a lame inspirational poster in movie form as it is, even though i'm sure annette bening and jodie foster were excellent.
ReplyDeletecute theme today, although i've never heard "MAN BABY" - only "man child."
-stephanie.
Did anyone have crybaby? Messed me up for a (short) while.
ReplyDeleteTOPPS was a blast from the past.Had to work out BARBACOA/FRY and RYANGOSLING from the crosses. So a lot of jumping back and forth as I adapted. Fun stuff and did not fret over gender inconsistencies.
ReplyDeleteThe one day being English probably helped - that Stephen Fry played Oscar Wilde is about as obvious to me Lee Majors playing The Fall Guy (ahem)
ReplyDeleteAnd Samuel Colt was a bit of a gimme too.
No idea about Barbacoa (I’m only vaguely aware of what chipotle is) or Skyy vodka, but easily filled in with crosses
JeffB@4:08
ReplyDeleteTry "A bit of Fry and Laurie" or "Jeeves and Wooster" to really appreciate Stephen Fry.
I was not familiar with the term 'barbacoa', especially since I've only been to Chipolte once.
ReplyDeleteLooking up the term to verify whether I had it right brought up an interesting description.
In some parts of Mexico and even Texas, 'barbacoa' means a kind of barbecue but also means cooking with 'meat from the animal's head' . That could be a real turn off!!
Since the theme answer says it refers to "both halves" of the starred clues, I think MAN is referring to the clues' first names (i.e., Stephen, Ryan, Charles, Samuel), not the gender of the young animal (which is the second half). So Fry works.
ReplyDeleteExtremely easy for a Tuesday, but enough proper nouns that spelling mistakes cost me some time. Not a very elegant theme, but I parse it as MAN/BABY in two halves rather than chromosomally male animal babies, so I don’t feel offended by it.
ReplyDeleteSome fun clues for sure, didn’t place the Joel reference til I read it here!
Glad you called out 56A, as a Billy Joel diehard Sargent O'Leary leapt from music-neurons BEFORE it connected to Pepper. And I own and listen to both albums as a Verified Gen Xer like yourself. So, kudos to NYT / Adam Vincent on that one, I loved it.
ReplyDeleteI have personal experience with the risks of wearing a BIKINI on a surfboard, so that was my favourite moment in this crossword.
ReplyDeleteNot "very" easy here. No-knows include BARBACOA (never even been to Chipotle's), STEPHEN FRYnotREA, "noodle" as clued, or even the theme revealer: MANBABY. So that's a thing? Awkward. Why not just "BABY?" *sigh* The older I get, the less I understand. I suppose on the day I die I will be totally ignorant.
ReplyDeleteTheme seems reasonably consistent, and I knew the other guys. Fish is a minor outlier. Tell gender confusion to the sea horse.
A few clues try to move it along past Monday. Job done. Par.
Wordle [BIG] birdie.
Theme is half-baked and not worth the effort.
ReplyDeleteSOLE PHASES
ReplyDeleteTENSE and WEAK, oh POR BABY,
ENDEARS to KISS a LOT, maybe,
but ARIEL OWNSUP to mom,
she wore BIKINI TOPPS to PROM.
--- SGT. DAN COBB
My only downfall, at the very end, is lack of knowledge of "essie" and OPI. I must hand out in the beauty aisles more often.
ReplyDeleteThe rest pretty much fell into place.
Lady Di
Very easy Tuesday; easier than yesterday's puzzle. Mostly read/write. Men whose last names are baby animals. I found it fun. What I find intriguing is that things that I think are common knowledge, perhaps aren't as common as I think they are. Fry for a young fish, and what a tapir is are two things I've known since I was a kid. Barbacoa, I know from Mexican restaurants and Chipotle commercials.
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