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Lizards with sticky toe pads / MON 4-29-24 / Unorthodox spot from which to take a meeting while working from home / Point at an off-target spot / Ring surrounding a nipple
Monday, April 29, 2024
Constructor: Tom Locke
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (solved Downs-only)
Theme answers:
Hey, this works! I don't know if I loved this theme, but I loved that it made sense and was consistent and did not seem forced or awkward at all. All the theme answers are real, ordinary terms and fulfill the requirements of the theme perfectly. A clean, light theme, a little wordplay, no burps or cracks or smudges. Monday! This is it. Fillwise, things are a bit creakier—no good longer answers to spice things up, and a decent amount of somewhat crummy short fill (ABRA is the worst, as always, but ITSY's not much better—the rest of it's mostly just ordinary and tiresome). MISAIM, really? If you are pointing at an off-target spot ... yeah, I guess you are misaiming, OK. I never saw this clue, so parsing MISAIM was a bit of a ??? Also, reading that clue now, "pointing" is kind of ambiguous. I imagined someone literally pointing, with their finger. "Why would you point at an off-target spot?" was my main question. But I see it now. "Pointing" implies being deliberate—you point at something to indicate or identify it. But here, the pointing is simply the orientation, not the orientation you intended. The clue decouples aiming and pointing. This is my mental hurdle. But I'm over it. Now.
- BLUE WHALE ("wail") (17A: Marine creature that can weigh over 400,000 pounds)
- BLACKBALL ("bawl") (28A: Bar from joining a private club, e.g.)
- WHITE WINE ("whine") (48A: Chardonnay or pinot grigio, e.g.)
Procedure words (abbreviated to prowords) are words or phrases limited to radio telephone procedure used to facilitate communication by conveying information in a condensed standard verbal format. Prowords are voice versions of the much older procedural signs for Morse code which were first developed in the 1860s for Morse telegraphy, and their meaning is identical. [...] [definition of WILCO]: "I understand and will comply." It is used on receipt of an order. "Roger" and "Wilco" used together (e.g. "Roger, Wilco") are redundant, since "Wilco" includes the acknowledgement element of "Roger". (wikipedia) (my emph.)
• • •
Hey, this works! I don't know if I loved this theme, but I loved that it made sense and was consistent and did not seem forced or awkward at all. All the theme answers are real, ordinary terms and fulfill the requirements of the theme perfectly. A clean, light theme, a little wordplay, no burps or cracks or smudges. Monday! This is it. Fillwise, things are a bit creakier—no good longer answers to spice things up, and a decent amount of somewhat crummy short fill (ABRA is the worst, as always, but ITSY's not much better—the rest of it's mostly just ordinary and tiresome). MISAIM, really? If you are pointing at an off-target spot ... yeah, I guess you are misaiming, OK. I never saw this clue, so parsing MISAIM was a bit of a ??? Also, reading that clue now, "pointing" is kind of ambiguous. I imagined someone literally pointing, with their finger. "Why would you point at an off-target spot?" was my main question. But I see it now. "Pointing" implies being deliberate—you point at something to indicate or identify it. But here, the pointing is simply the orientation, not the orientation you intended. The clue decouples aiming and pointing. This is my mental hurdle. But I'm over it. Now.
There wasn't much real difficulty here, but there were plenty of minor stumbling blocks for me on my Downs-only voyage. The first and worst was my god I could not figure out the Halloween decorations. We have both a spider-web welcome mat and a spider-web shower curtain that we Never Take Down ... but still my only thought for 1D: Some Halloween decorations (WEBS) was BATS... then CATS ... then nothing, even after I got the "B" ("ORBS?," I half-seriously wondered). No chance at EYEFUL at first pass (4D: Quite a sight to behold)—needed to infer several Acrosses before I could parse that one. Had BARE before BALD (7D: Hairless). Got GECKOS easily and needed it because I could Not parse DOG TREAT even when I had it down to DO-TREAT ("DO A TREAT?," I half-seriously wondered). Thought the [Unorthodox spot from which to take a meeting while working from home] (BED) might be LOO (LAV? CAN?). Guessed right on the LUTE v. LYRE challenge (33D: Bard's instrument). Took me a bit to get "YOU IN?" because I was imagining a professional dealer, who would not (I don't think?) say this (46D: Dealer's "Wanna play?"). Had a real dilemma on my hands with 66D: Long stretch of time, which I wanted to be EON (correct!) but which seemed like it could maybe possibly also be ERA. That would've given me ERRS and SOAS in the crosses, and the improbability of the latter is what made me choose EON, though ... I can imagine the puzzle trying to perpetrate SOAS on me. It hasn't been seen in fourteen years, but it has been seen (usually clued [In order (to)]). Also, the "Long" part of [Long stretch of time] just goes better with EON than ERA. Still, that was a definite Downs-only danger zone.
The only other issue I had was FACE before ABUT (55D: Be up against). An understandable and highly fixable mistake. Overall, a textbook Monday: simple but clever. Light theme, smooth (if somewhat tired) fill. I'll take it. See you next time.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
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64 comments:
Easy…a text book Monday. A very smooth grid with a delightful wordplay theme. Liked it a bunch! A fine debut!
No WOEs and no erasures.
Croce Solvers - Croce’s Freestyle #906 was a medium Croce for me with the east side slightly tougher than the west. Good luck!
"WARE are my WISDOM TEETH?" WILCO would BALL..."That TALC makes them WHITE and EYE can't stand any other HUE!" "That's a MYTH!" IRIS, his wife, would WHALE..."You can DYE them TEETH of yours BLACK and an EYEFUL of my WINE BREW will LET IN the ABRA RATIO; your TEETH will be WHITE again...No need for TALC!"
WILCO no longer felt BLUE. He'd play BALL with his BALD DOG, BOA, while IRIS went to BED. He was KEENLY aware that IRIS always wanted an ITSY AUDIENCE to hear her OUTAKE on the BREW she GREW ON her LOT. Once she got her REAR out of BED, her TREETH ITCHED to AMASS her AUDIENCE.
IRIS was SELFIE taught and she knew the WIHITE WINE RATIO to use in her BLUE, BLACK and WHITE DYE in order to make WISDOM TEETH last an EON. You could BET there'd always be A MASS of DONS at the DOOR with some ASHEN BLACK TEETH that would CRY for her help. Even that SELFIE, EROS, ITCHED to be part of her AUDIENCE! She was of USAGE.
WILCO, however, was the BUT of TALES told by a WEB of BALD lies. BUT, he didn't CRY in his TAPA. He was KEENLY aware that the REAR LOT was for IRIS and her WHITE WINE ABRA RATIO DYE. No TALC GREW ON her LOT...its USAGE wasn't needed! However, when IRIS DELETES a LOT of the BLUE, BLACK and WHITE DYE, it becomes a WHALE of a success....!
"SO...ARE you IN or are you OUT?" IRIS would cry...The whole BOAT load was IN...No one was OUT. IRIS OWED her AUDIENCE a TREAT. The WHITE WINE ABRA RATIO DYE did SOAR on ETRADE . Everyone had a BALL. No need to rock the U BOAT. They OWED a LOT to both WILCO and IRIS for their WHITE WISDOM TEETH. Their TALES of WISDOM will always be the TALC of the town.
And that's the truth!
Hmmm. This played like a grocery store puzzle clear up until the double clank of MISAIM and HUE AND CRY. Rough way to wrap up an already lackluster Monday.
I did enjoy going to Wikipedia afterward and reading up on the 13th century law. These days the cops don't want you to help apprehend criminals because they figure you'll be more trouble than help. Unfortunately my experience here in Denver is the cops aren't much help either.
Propers: 6
Places: 2
Products: 5
Partials: 0
Foreignisms: 2
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 15 (19%)
Tee-Hee: AREOLA is a [Ring surrounding a nipple.]
Uniclues:
1 Gives bellbottoms to Goodwill.
2 My feelings about @egs.
3 Open your home to a chrome dome from Rome.
4 Start a lizard army.
5 What a cat does.
6 Why the ladies seek me out.
1 OUSTS ABBAWARE (~)
2 WHITE WINE OWED
3 LET IN BALD EURO (~)
4 AMASS GECKOS (~)
5 TAKE YOU IN/OUT (~)
6 UBER BED WISDOM
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Grizzly with the sizzly. WOWIE-ZOWIE BEAR.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
One of the easier down-clues-only solves. Got the color part, but when I hit the revealer the CRY part wasn't obvious. Cry WHALE! BALL! WINE!?... I thought they were all plausible "cries": "WHALE ahoy!", "BALL!" in several sports, "Gimme WINE!". Didn't get the homophone part until I read Rex.
Few typeovers; like Rex for "Be up against" had FACE, then MEET.
[Spelling Bee: Sun 0, streak 21 days New Record!! Yay.]
Yikes! I did a double take when I got to the reveal "Public uproar...or a phonetic hint to the two words in 17-, 28- and 48-Across" [my emphasis]. For the second word in those themers, yes; WHALE for wail, BALL for bawl and WINE for whine but I'm not seeing a similar phonetic hint for the first words, just a straight up definition of HUE in BLUE, BLACK and WHITE. Was this a MISAIM or am I missing something?
Uboot was misspelled as Uboat. That cost me 30 seconds, but was otherwise a nice puzzle
The revealer was a clunky letdown for me as I’ve never in my life come across the phrase HUE AND CRY. Feels verrrrry old and outdated. I googled it after finishing and see it is indeed a phrase, but I can’t imagine too many people know it. Am I alone in this? Is it a generational thing?
I think I remember Mr. Carson using the highly obscure term once. Maybe fine as a long in a Stumper but it’s a huge MISAIM as a Monday revealer.
Looking forward to seeing you
What @jae said: Fun, easy Monday.
So can we all agree , that unless I am missing something , the last few puzzles suggest that our editor is moving in the right direction? Unrelated , I was a radio operator in the USMC in the early to late 70s and I can tell you we never used the word Wilco. The word “over” meant you were done speaking and ready for a reply and “out” meant that you were terminating the conversation. Likewise , I do not recall ever hearing “over and out”. Apropos of nothing, we also never used the word “repeat” since it sounded too much like retreat and/or because it could be confused when humping with an artillery unit as meaning fire again. So, if you hear someone say, “say again” instead of repeat , odds are he or she or they or them served in the Corp.
It’s a completely ordinary expression.
Super easy, super clean. Nice debut from Tom Locke.
HUE AND CRY etymology from Google: "late Middle English: from the Anglo-Norman French legal phrase hu e cri, literally ‘outcry and cry’, from Old French hu ‘outcry’ (from huer ‘to shout’)."
DO-OR above DYE, ehe.
Easy-peasy Monday. I noticed the theme after finishing, even though there was never a revealer. Maybe the constructor was embarrassed about misspelling "whine" and "bawl." It didn't matter, because the fill was routine.
Cruised through this one as it was all pretty much tried and true crosswordese. I thought DOG TREAT was one of the theme entries, which really messed with my karma until I reread the revealer and had a brief DOH moment. Enjoyable, easy breezy Monday.
Who wants to debate whether “whale” and “wail” / “wine” and “whine” rhyme?
I love the etymological history of the W-following H. It used to come before the W to denote a different sound!
Speaking of the devil, check out 32A if you do today’s WaPo/LAT puzzle. Weird duplicate coincidence today. A lot of duplicates in general this year (or maybe I just notice them more, but they sure do seem to occur more frequently lately).
Now this is a Monday that knows how to Monday. A fine theme and nice that all the terms for CRY used alternate spellings. Double take on MISAIM, BUT otherwise all good.
And any crossword that includes both STET and ANODE is fine by me. Nothing makes me feel more crosswordy than running into old friends like this.
A fine debut indeed, TL. I wish it Took Longer, because I was having a good time. Thanks for all the fun.
Lol
Wow on this theme! To me, getting from HUE AND CRY to “finding two-word phrases where the first word is a hue and the second is a homonym for a type of cry” is a huge leap in creativity. My first thought upon uncovering the revealer was, “How did he think of this?” It’s masterful, IMO. Bravo, sir!
The theme got me thinking homonyms, and then they started popping out at me in the grid: WARE, SOAR, LEA, DYE, OWED, TALES, SONS, LYRE, SOME, and Paris's EYEFUL.
Also popping out were lovely four-letter semordnilaps: OGRE, EROS, IRIS, DUAL, ABLE, and ABUT.
And the pièce de résistance was the magnificent PuzzPair© of the REAR/TEETH cross and WISDOM.
A bright and brilliant theme with a scintillating supporting cast – a Monday rife with treasure. Talk about potential – I’m itching to see what you come up with next, Tom. Congratulations on your NYT debut and thank you for a dazzling outing today!
My five favorite original clues from last week
(in order of appearance):
1. Where peas are queued? (3)
2. Bare-bones outfit (8)(7)
3. Small-town issue (5)(5)
4. Bumpy ride? (5)
5. Whose performances were as astonishing as all get-out? (7)
POD
SKELETON COSTUME
LOCAL PAPER
CAMEL
HOUDINI
The theme was really cute
The theme was really cute
My first downs only, almost! I did the first row of acrosses and thought “too easy, let me try it” and one of them was wrong! But I did it all from there, so fun.
I'm a well-read 47 year old who has never heard the phrase "hue and cry." Came here just to see if that's a common sentiment.
A fun and smooth Monday! Feels like a positive trend.
Is it a coincidence that today's NYT spelling bee letters are HUANCRY?
Hey All !
Well, shoot. Haven't heard the idiom HUE AND CRY before. Still solved the puz, but got down to _UEANDCRY, and just couldn't figure it out. Was trying to parse _UEAND as one word. Finally got ITCHES, and was able to infer HUE AND CRY, mostly because tying it into the Themers.
Dang, all the HUE AND CRY going on nowadays twixt both political parties thinking the other is full of $#!* would have me thinking i'd've heard of that
Light on dreck, well constructed MonPuz. It's not that easy to make a clean fill puz like this one. It seems like it'd be easy after you solve it, but through experience, I know things can get dicey.
Anyway, good one Tom.
Monday REARs its ugly head again...
One F
RooMonster
DarrinV
@GILL I. 12:48 AM
How did BOA go BALD? This will plague me today.
Thank you for the lesson in military terminology, but…have you ever heard the term HUE AND CRY? That’s what I was asking.
Couldn’t get WILCO without the crosses
It’s a reasonably common phrase. I found several recent uses in mainstream media articles. Idiomatic expression for “uproar” that I’ve known forever. No idea if it’s “generational”
Great Monday puzzle with an intelligent, engaging theme. Bravo TL for a smooth, smiley fill. I too believe that the editing has eased up and the gotcha clues are no longer coming at you constantly from all angles. Hope to see what else TL has in store.
My apologies to Mr. Locke for writing that his theme had no revealer. I obtained HUEANDCRY from the crosses, thus I didn't read the clue. Unlike some commenters here, I was very familiar with the phrase (maybe because I'm an octogenarian).
Imaginative and easy, you can’t get much more Monday than this puzzle. Interesting about the HUE AND CRY over HUEANDCRY. Must be something either regional or generational about it. Filled it in without a second thought. Blog today also very much a learning experience.
@Rebecca, same (except I'm a mere 46 years and 8 months old).
I had the smoothest downs-only solve until the SW, at which point I had to give up.
It may be a MYTH -- but for this puzzle I really didn't need more than 10% of my brain to solve it. A really, really easy Monday as far as the clues were concerned.
OTOH, the cute theme was unguessable. I saw the colors, but didn't see any connection between WHALE, BALL and WINE.
Homonyms!! Very, very nice. Never thought of that. HUE AND CRY is a terrific revealer!
Not sure why @GaryJ is calling me a white wino, but I won't protest. At most I'll raise a HUE but certainly no CRY.
I once had a painful case of BLACKBALL. Thank god it didn't progress to the other one. I'm not one to really notice an EYEFUL of AREOLA as I AMASS-oriented.
Mrs. Egs and I love to bring restaurant food home and watch scenes that didn't make it into movies. We call it OUTTAKEs with Takeout.
Really nice theme. Congrats, Tom Locke.
definition via Google AI:
The hue and cry was a medieval English policing system where citizens would call out for help to pursue a suspected criminal. Anyone who heard the call was required to join in the chase, and failure to do so could result in a fine. The practice involved raising an alarm with cries and sounds, such as yelling out "thief" or "wolf" to help the police identify and catch the criminal.
A nice Monday, Tom, thank you.
I read in your constructor comments on Wordplay that you are retired from a fire service career. All the more impressive that something you did to "destress" in your spare time was published.
Congrats on your debut & thanks for joining us :)
Primo, almost-complete themer set. Lacked only the PINKBLUBBER. [Assumin YELLOW S.O.B. would be too much of a stretch, of course.]
KEENLY kinda wanted some DYE, to help it limp onto the themer list.
staff weeject pick: BED. Great clue of: {Unorthodox spot from which to take a meeting while working from home}. M&A immediately arrived at many possible outcomes …
* LAV, LOO, or POT. Definitely tops the list.
* ODA. Assumin yer home is the Taj Mahal or somesuch.
* BAR, GYM, SPA, or CAR. If U just *claimed* to be "workin at home".
* PIT. Applies only to Edgar Allan Poe dude.
fave moo-cow eazy-E MonPuz clue. Woulda been the one above, if the answer had been LAV. sooo … gotta then go with: {Ready, willing and ___ } = ABLE. Definitely a familiar phrase to m&e, just like that there HUEANDCRY revealer one.
Thanx, Mr. Locke dude. Colorful, with just a touch of lamentation. Nice debut.
p.s. - MISAIM? har
Masked & Anonymo9Us
**gruntz**
Good puzzle with minimal grunge, many answers that are familiar but that we don't see often. The revealer took a few seconds but liked it a lot!! MISAIM is a meta-answer IMHO. Only stumbles there and, of all places, BRUNT/ABUT
In all of my 77 years, and with degrees in English and other languages, I had never heard the phrase “hue and cry.”
I don't pronounce the HW sound of WHINE the same as the W sound of WINE; nor, for that matter, is the vowel sound in BAWL the same as that in BALL. But close enough for puns, and for this theme. As for HUE AND CRY, I still hear it frequently -- not of course with its original legal meaning, but just to mean a lot of ADO (to go crosswordese here).
The puzzle would have been a tad more fun with a RATsO/sTEM crossing, though.
I did like the UBER/UBOAT crossing--and it should no more have been U-BOoT unless there was some clue that it was a German word, not just a German sub.
William INGE wrote Bus Stop, Come Back Little Sheba, and The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, as well as the screenplay Splendor in the Grass, among many others; it would be nice to see him clued by something other than "Picnic" once in awhile.
Sorry if I sound grumpy; I was put off by how ridiculously easy this was. "Computer suffix with soft or hard?" C'mon!
Nice to see William INGE again. He always seems to be clued re "Picnic". "Bus Stop" is a better work, and it contains one of my favorite quotes, as uttered by the Marilyn Monroe character:
"Well, it ain't exactly a diamond, but it ain't exactly not a diamond either."
Surprised none of the youngsters here have complained about such "dated" fill.
@anoabob’s comment is spot on. The first part of the revealer (hue) is a literal description of the first word in each pair, not a phonetic hint.
@Danny, I won't debate you, but I'll admit that the whale/wail and wine/whine pairs do NOT sound like homophones to me. It took me a minute to grok the theme because of that.
But upon further research, it seems that I am in a distinct minority in that regard.
"The process by which the historical /hw/ has become /w/ in most modern varieties of English is called the wine–whine merger. It is also referred to as glide cluster reduction." [Wikipedia.]
In the US, retention of this older pronunciation is only common in the southeast. I'm not from that region, but I apparently inherited this pronunciation of the WH digraph as /hw/ from my Scots forbears (Scotland being one of the few world regions where this pronunciation remains prevalent).
@Anon 3:43am i also got to the revealer and said "huh? ok..." never heard of it. for the data collection, i'm 40 and grew up in RI and have been living in the boston area for the past 20+ years.
Agree with Rex regarding the crosswordese. I enjoyed the double theme. However I did not refer to it during the solve.
What is the magic in "downs" only? Why not do "acrosses" only?
A successful downs only Monday, except for the fact that I typo-ed WILCO (somehow it came out WILlO) and having that C as an L made the crossing word TALl (instead of TALC). So when I didn't get the happy music, it took we a while to check the across clues and find my typo mistake.
@Linda... for me, downs only is usually more interesting because the theme answers are usually (but not always) acrosses. Themers are longer, and easier to guess without the clue because they have something in common, and getting them helps a lot with the downs that I'm missing or have incorrect.
*was. No it’s antediluvian
Interesting response to Anonymous 3:43 AM
I am over 70 & have lived in RI my whole life.
It was a gimme for me Just remember, those who think the phrase is obscure, you might have come across it but it didn’t stick.
It is definitely an old expression but it is still used. As Anonymous 9:29 AM said it is fairly common as a set 3 word expression. It comes from an old legal term.
It is simply used metaphorically now
Agree with Anonymous 6:13 AM
Hue and cry not obscure
Bob Mills
There is a revealer, hue and cry- and the “misspelling ” were part of the gimmick. Ball instead of bawl etc.
There are several complaints about the revealer and the theme answers. The answers do have the first word the correct color spelling but the second word a homophone of the crying word.
That does seem off. But the revealer does work for the expression itself, hue and cry because their meanings have nothing ( in the case of hue) or little ( in the case of cry) to do with color or crying in the sad sense. So they are phonet hints. Close enough for crosswords?
Rex, and other downs-only solvers, didn’t risk getting caught by the misdirection at 42A, *It might be open and shut”, where I had CASE before DOOR.
Otherwise, smooth sailing and enjoyable.
Bob, there was a revealer. But this 64 year old NYCer Never heard the expression HUEANDCRY
Hue and Cry (brothers Patrick and Gregory Kane) are still at it...more than ever this year, in fact, as they celebrate their 40th anniversary with a series of EPs, a documentary series (on YouTube and elsewhere), and a tour with a full band.
Here's a song written by Michael Marra, "Mother Glasgow", that they popularized; it's one of my favorites.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBrvVdr6PsU
Terrific puzzle, terrific theme, easy overall.
Croce Freestyle 906 was medium. That's it, just medium.
MISAIM? Seriously? How did that get past the editor? When is Will Shortz coming back?
Responding to all the HUEANDCRY about MISAIM, I have a true story.
In 1960 I joined the Air Force to avoid the draft. Never a gun fan, I hoped to be able to skip using one. Alas, we were all required to "qualify" with an M-1 at 1,000 inches (27.777...yards). A whole squad took the test at side-by-side targets at the same time. I managed to misalign my body when dropping to prone--and fired my first three shots into my neighbor's target!
The DI* came by and corrected me, and I proceeded to score 5 out of 5 for my remaining 57 shots, for a 285 score (300 was perfect). Good enough for an "expert" rating.
Very nice beginner puzzle today, with a two-part theme excellently revealed. There are a few uh-ohs in the fill, but overall a good job. One thing: if we must have a bleedover, does it have to be ETRADE? Anyway, birdie.
Wordle birdie.
*Drill instructor
Monday Monday - I love that day.
Lady Di
@Lady Di: Sometimes it just works out that way.
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