Spilling the tea, so to speak / MON 4-22-24 / Make out, in Britspeak / Slowpoke in a shell / British princess who was an Olympic equestrian / Two-legged stands / Mosaic decoration
Constructor: David J. Kahn
Relative difficulty: Very easy (Downs-only)
THEME: From COAL to WIND — for Earth Day ... a word ladder, with a few extra climate change-related theme answers
The ladder:
COAL (1A: *Nonrenewable energy source ... and the start of an eight-step word ladder)
COOL
WOOL
WOOD (35A: *Energy source whose production contributes to 36-Across)
FOOD (39A: *Energy source whose production contributes to 36-Across)
FOND
FIND
WIND (64A: *Renewable energy source ... and the end of the word ladder)
Theme answers:
GREEN POWER (18A: Sustainably produced electricity)
GLOBAL WARMING (36A: One symptom of climate change)
The city of Abu Dhabi is located on an island in the Persian Gulf, off the Central West Coast. Most of the city and the Emirate reside on the mainland connected to the rest of the country. As of 2021, Abu Dhabi's urban area had an estimated population of 1.5 million, out of 2.9 million in the emirate of Abu Dhabi, as of 2016. The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority is headquartered in the city, and was the world's 3rd largest sovereign wealth fund in 2022. Abu Dhabi itself has over a trillionUS dollars worth of assets under management in a combination of various sovereign wealth funds headquartered there.
Abu Dhabi houses local and federal government offices and is the home of the United Arab Emirates Government and the Supreme Council for Financial and Economic Affairs. The city is home to the UAE's President, a member of the Al Nahyan family. Abu Dhabi's rapid development and urbanisation, coupled with the massive oil and gas reserves and production and relatively high average income, have transformed it into a large, developed metropolis. It is the country's centre of politics and industry, and a major culture and commerce center. Abu Dhabi accounts for about two-thirds of the roughly $503 billion UAE economy. (wikipedia)
• • •
Wow, a word ladder. Haven't seen one of those in ages, perhaps because they are in no way interesting. Buncha four letter words, the end. Yes, there's a quasi-environmental theme here, with the puzzle "going green" as it shifts from COAL to WIND, but the puzzle kind of undoes that word ladder with the longer them answers, which go from GREEN POWER up top to FOSSIL FUEL down below, with some species extinction (DIES OFF) along the way. This puzzle is meant to commemorate Earth Day, which is today, I just learned. I suppose it's vaguely Earth-y, but only vaguely. This puzzle doesn't have a climate change theme so much as it has a collection of words one might hear in a conversation about climate change. Maybe it's supposed to be dramatizing (encouraging?) a shift from nonrenewable to renewable energy? Some of the word-ladder words get climate-related clues, but the cluing there feels pretty forced, especially with so many of the ... rungs? ... having zero to do with climate. One of them (COOL) is even clued via air-conditioning (21A: *Air-conditioned, say), which seems bizarrely wrong-headed in a puzzle that's supposedly touting GREEN POWER and the fight against GLOBAL WARMING. The whole thing doesn't quite come together for me. It's like it knew the word ladder wasn't really theme-y enough, so it threw in a few buzz words and, Ta da: Theme! Ah well, it's Monday, and I've done worse puzzles.
The Downs-only experience was remarkably easy, with only the SW corner giving me even the slightest bit of trouble. Took me a lot of Downs before I could reason out PERSONA, though RAN ON was the only Down there that gave me any real pause (I wanted something one-word, like RAVED) (33D: Talked incessantly). Lots of answers ending (or beginning) in prepositions today, which should've / could've made parsing those answers a bit of a problem, but I got most of those at first pass. Three ONs today is a bit much (ON A RUN, RAN ON, DAWNED ON), and then there's AT HAND and LOUSES UP and CUED IN, the last of which was the only Down that I abandoned and came back to. Oh, I think I abandoned AT HAND at first too. I actually wanted CUED IN, but something about it felt wrong—I wasn't sure it was a real phrase, musically speaking (45D: Signaled to begin, as a conductor might). But it all worked out rather easily in the end. I was lucky enough to know all the crossword people, from Sheryl LEE Ralph to LEN Cariou to Leslie NIELSEN (who wasn't clued as Leslie NIELSEN, but that's the great thing about solving Downs-only—those Across clues can be Anything you want them to be). Just watched Leslie NIELSEN on a Season 1 episode of The Love Boat, where he played an old friend of Captain Stubing's who is worried that his impending marriage won't work out because his fiancée is just too young for him (she's late 20s, he's pushing 50). This was his second Season 1 episode—in the earlier episode, he was married to Eva Gabor! Like all Season 1 stories, the Leslie Nielsen age gap one was incredibly stupid. Am I going to stop watching? I am not. Rick Nelson was on the one I watched today! And Jamie Farr! And an uncredited pre-famous Shelley Long! And you never know when Charo is going to show up! Stop watching? Unlikely.
I don't see anything else here that particularly needs explaining or commentating, so I'm gonna go read now. Enjoy Earth Day, whatever that means to you. I'm gonna spend it ... calling my insurance company to inquire as to why I got a massive bill for what I assumed was routine blood work. I can't remember ever paying a dime for blood tests, but wow do they want me to pay dimes this time. So many dimes. I really really hope there's been a mistake. Anyway, some fun phone calls await me this morning. And then a run to burn off the inevitable post-phone call anger. I will likely be running on the earth, so in my own (very) little way, I guess I will be celebrating Earth Day. See you next time.
After three super unpleasant puzzles in a row, they offer this lovely grid proving they have the ability to offer a fun one. The obsession with proper nouns continues. I'm assuming they've given up looking for good clue writers and simply stuff grids full of names to create the challenge. At least these were crossed fairly.
The NYTXW either runs hot or cold and when it's cold, it's fuh-ree-zing.
I like the look of the word ladder. The fossil fuel theme is a nice secondary addition. The polished grid is well edited and the cluing voice is as if an adult helped.
Ug: A TALL TRI TEST.
Uniclues:
1 Time period before you get engaged. 2 Most hackneyed hats. 3 Puppetmaster's onus. 4 Stinks the place up. 5 Noble gas powered pup. 6 Pups can't get over the twist. 7 When my friends and I get out of the gutter. 8 What poverty, civil wars, unstable government, and piracy did.
1 COOL HON ERA (~) 2 TRITEST TURBANS (~) 3 WOOD PERSONA (~) 4 RIPS BOSSY WIND 5 LAB RAN ON ARGON (~) 6 AXEL WOWED FURS 7 WINOS NOW AFOOT (~) 8 DAWNED ON SOMALIA
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: When a penguin moves into the neighborhood. SQUID CITY JINX.
Medium-tough. I know this had to run on Earth Day but there was quite a bit of trivia…TOSCA, ROXIE, OLIN, CALEB, LEN, ANNE, FAVA… that Gen Z solvers would be unlikely to be familiar with. I know this for a fact because my 21 year old grandson, who has been doing the NYT puzzles for around a year now and usually has no trouble with Mondays, got stuck on this one. I just called him and he confirmed that he didn’t know any of the above. Plus, he’d never heard of a word ladder.
I too am not that fond of word ladders but this was fine for Earth Day, liked it.
Croce Solvers - Croce’s Freestyle #904 was on the easy side for a Croce except for my multi-square DNF in the SW. It was a combination of couple of WOEs, a couple of plausible wrong answers, and a couple of “I should have known better but went with them in anyway” answers. May your luck be better than mine!
Thanks for saying this. I’m 40 had had similar issues. That lower corner had me messed up and I normally crush Mondays. Never heard of TOSCA or OLIN before
@Anon 3:51 i'm also 40 and i know TOSCA and OLIN...but only from doing crosswords. it was the center top section that did me in. double the time of my usual monday because i didn't know ROXIE or LEN and for some reason i parsed "skater" as "skateboarder" so i couldn't figure out AXEL as clued, oops.
Rex... good luck with your medical insurance. Being Canadian, I've never had to deal with that. I pay cash for dental and eyeglasses, but paying for bloodwork?... barbaric.
Yes easy solve with down clues only. Theme could have been better, 3 theme answers not counting the intermittent word ladder stuff, is a bit thin. But it's only Monday.
[Spelling Bee: Sun 0; and Sat 0 in overtime finally getting the 11 letter pangram Sunday afternoon, and it felt good. 14 day streak intact.]
I had BIPED from BIP- even though it didn't quite work with "stand", so from G-E I started typing in GREENHOUSE and then GAS fit, but that got me R- at 33D so I immediately saw it was wrong. Virtually the only slowdown I had today.
I'm not a movie buff and especially not a horror guy, so can anyone explain why FAVA beans are relevant in The Silence of the Lambs? I had LIMA and corrected it with AVE. Bean-based kealoa.
There’s a very famous line where Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) says “I ate his liver with some FAVA beans and a nice Chianti.” The most famous moment in the movie.
I liked the theme, but because there was too much trivia, I think this would have been a better Tuesday than Monday puzzle. But today is Earth Day, obviously and I enjoyed having that as the theme.
I agree that CUEDIN is awkward and it’s generally not what would be said in that context - the conductor CUEs the player or section that needs to join at a certain point in the piece. The IN is superfluous.
I have never watched The Silence of the Lambs, nor do I ever plan to do so, way too creepy for me. So I had no idea what bean is mentioned there. Very obscure if you ask me.
The line from Silence of the Lambs about the FAVA beans is a pretty ubiquitous pop culture moment. Spoofed on SNL at the time, mentioned in the Oscars…not obscure at all.
Its as famous a movie line as ‘Im Walkin’ here!’ Or ‘You can’t handle the truth!’. It doesnt seem unfair. (Hannibal Lechter, the cannibalistic villain likes his humans served with ‘Fava beans and a nice Chianti’) Trivia doesn’t always mesh with your personal field of reference, but this isn’t obscure.
I found this one challenging, for a Monday. At least, my time was much higher than average.
For all the complaining @Rex does about tribute puzzles running on the wrong day, I'd have thought he'd have given this one more credit for running on actual Earth Day. I agree, though, that the word ladder progression from COAL to WIND is bizarrely countered by going from GREEN POWER to FOSSIL FUEL. All the long answers were climate-related, and the word ladder did its job. I enjoyed it far less than any Monday I can think of in recent memory, but I appreciate the Earth Day sentiment.
Good luck with the insurance company.
@Anonymous, Hannibal Lecter, talking about having a friend for dinner, describes the meal by saying that he ate his liver "with fava beans and a nice Chianti". Great movie--highly recommended.
It seemed like they leaned into the PPP (and foreign stuff) a little more heavily than usual, which caused it to be a little more challenging than a usual Monday. It will be interesting to see what the rest of the week has to offer.
Some fava bean trivia: Legend has it that Pythagoras refused to eat fava beans because he believed that they held reincarnated souls. So Hannibal Lecter’s choice of side dish adds an extra bit of cannibalism.
Following yesterday’s highly novel (though unpleasant) theme, today we get the old-as-the-hills (and much hated by some) word ladder.
I am not a word ladder hater, and Monday is the ideal day from them as they lower the difficulty a bit. I wonder if Rex even knew it was a word ladder while solving; I doubt that would be evident solving downs only.
Croce Freestyle 904 was easy peasy (for a Croce). Incredibly, I only had four overwrites at 4D, the last letter of 34D, the last letter of 36D, and 56A.
I see a little theme echo in RAN ON, as in “This electric product ran on COAL, while that one ran on WIND.”
I love OBI under GOBI. Say that five times fast!
A lovely puzzle. Our first word ladder in what feels like a long time, and I’m not ready for this genre to die yet. I think there are more clever angles that can come to it that have not been outed yet. Also, this is a brilliant piece of construction – smooth and Monday perfect, despite its very-high 65 theme squares, more than a third of the white space!
David J. has been making NYT puzzles for more than 30 years, and, to me, behind his puzzles there’s a boyish enthusiasm, an unflagged joy of wordplay.
Thank you, David, for brightening crosswords for so long, and for a meaningful-yet-fun time in the box today!
Tough Monday, lot of names, but easy to get from the crosses. Surprisingly, GLOBALWARMING is an NYT debut. Nice Earth Day puzzle. Professional and polished, as expected from David J. "Khaaaaan!"
Well I read "word ladder" and for some reason thought "step quote" and trying to make the first few themers say something was interesting, but I eventually came to my senses and changed course. Come on, man.
Easy enough but I felt like I was not on a first-name basis with all the first names. Hello LEN, CALEB, and ADAM. Hi ROXIE, at least I remembered you.
I was in my first year of teaching when the first Earth Day occurred. Nice to see it's still around and a puzzle that reminds us of it. Seems like too many of us have forgotten all about this (looking at you, OFL).
Nice timely Mondecito, DJK. Decent, Job, Kudos for your theme. Thanks for all the fun.
Downs only, the top third was pretty smooth. Then a brick wall, just some downs here and there but couldn’t infer most of the crosses. So I looked at some across clues. I’m always a little leery of theme puzzles keyed to some special day or commemoration, but I liked this more than Rex and it was a nice word ladder — for a word ladder.
And here’s a PPP (post-puzzle puzzler), inspired by the theme and two answers from today’s puzzle:
Can you make a word ladder from FAVA to NADA? And who can do it in the fewest steps?
How about posting how many steps it took you rather than writing the ladder words, so as to let others who wish to, come up with solutions on their own. (Took me five.) Let’s say that at 6:00 people can post solutions.
@ JKK I'm not a real fan of movie references, or cultural trivia as a whole, but I think FAVA beans is a pretty well known reference to what was a very popular movie.
I'm old enough to remember the very first Earth Day, so any puzzle that celebrates this day is a winner in my book. Considering we spend the other 364 days exploiting the earth.
Hey All ! Good fill, considering all the Theme all over the place. Three Longs, plus Eight four-letter Word Ladder entries. With the Center Themer surrounded by two word ladder answers. Tough to get clean fill Nice job David! Any hair left?
Nice puz for Earth Day. The FOOD one was a head scratcher. Energy source = FOOD? OK, energy for you, I suppose. But we need FOOD to survive, so are we just supposed to stop producing it? Or, live off the Earth, ala fruits and veggies that we all must have in our gardens? Odd clue, that one, is what I'm getting at
"This puzzle doesn't have a climate change theme so much as it has a collection of words one might hear in a conversation about climate change." That seems a tad unfair, Rex - it's a word ladder progressing from non-renewable COAL to renewable WIND with reminders about GLOBAL WARMING and consumption of FOSSILFUELS, and criticizing a crossword puzzle for being "a collection of words" is a strange barb. Plus it's published on the day it commemorates.
I think it’s nice when a theme that is appropriate for Earth Day actually publishes on that day AND is “day of the week” appropriate in its difficulty. The subject was in my wheelhouse and it was a pleasant Monday solve.
One of the things I often think of on the last several Earth Days is whether the people (or at least SOME of the people) who made Al Gore out to be an “alarmist kook” have second thoughts about that. We wasted a ton of time arguing whether the activities of humans on the planet could affect our climate, even going so far as to say it was oddly “presumptious” to even think that we could. Seems like even climate change deniers are starting to open up their minds that it MIGHT be a good idea to reduce greenhouse gases.
I'm sort of betting that, Rex notwithstanding, no one is going to diss this puzzle. Not even the people who normally hate word ladder puzzles, of which I am one. But not today.
It's a word ladder with a message, richly enhanced by the density of the other theme-related answers. And while I don't think for a moment that a mere crossword puzzle can do anything practical to end our reliance on FOSSIL FUEL, enhance GREEN POWER or solve the existential crisis of GLOBAL WARMING, it's still a worthwhile subject to build a puzzle around and this is an impressive piece of work. Usually a word ladder is just a word ladder and doesn't need to include any other theme elements. This does so much more. So let's give this elegant grid the kudos it deserves.
That's not a thing in the context of conducting ("Signaled to begin, as a conductor might".)
A conductor CUES the violins, or CUES the French horn, or CUES the altos. A conductor cues the violins *to* come in.
But a conductor doesn't "cue in anyone", or "cue anyone in".
Where the phrase can be used is in the context of *editing*, like music/soundtrack editing ("why don't you CUE the crash sound IN right there, on frame 12").
In my mind, you "cue" something that is already written/scripted (like a music score) when you're simply reminding the performer of something they should already know. E.g. classical music performers don't *need* to be cued, but if they haven't been playing for the past 48 bars, it's a courtesy by the conductor in case anybody lost count if it's not an obvious place to enter.
Whereas you "cue in" something when you're making an editorial choice in the moment, whether to bring something in at all, or where to bring it in. Which makes sense in film or music editing. But not in music conducting, where the score is already written, and the conductor is merely adjusting the tempo during the performance.
I'd have liked this better if the clue for 1-A didn't tell me that I was dealing with a word ladder; I enjoy said ladders more when they take me by surprise. As it was, as soon as I got the first answer I tried to fill in the whole ladder, but I didn't succeed because I skipped over one of the rungs without noticing it. That lead me to think how neat it would be if there were no non-ladder four-letter words in the puzzle; that might be tough, though.
I always forget who was who in Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross, which I naturally assumed was what the clue for 10-A was referring to, but it made me want Anne instead of Dave. Who is this ADAM guy?
@Lewis, I thought I had it in two, but it turns out FADA isn't a word. I was thinking of, but misspelling, Portugues FADo music.
@Roo, it's not the food, it's how it's produced on modern factory farms--burning lots of fossil fuels, releasing carbon dioxide from the soil by frequent plowing, massive feed lots, etc.
And AC can be green if you get the electricity from a renewable source.
Although I have been completely committed to -- and completely successful at -- avoiding "The Silence of the Lambs" in its full incarnation, TV programs have been peppering the TV screen with that godawful scene for years and so I've seen that hideous face and heard that creepy voice -- if only for a few seconds. PLEASE DON'T DO THAT TO ME, TV ADVERTISERS, AWARD SHOWS AND ALL OTHER GUILTY PARTIES. PLEASE!!!!
To those who didn't know the FAVA reference, I consider you very, very, very lucky. I strongly suggest that you try to make sure that you never get to know the FAVA reference. Why people want subject themselves to these creep-out films intended to haunt your nightmares is a complete mystery to me.
Escalator, agree on LMS. I did a bunch of archived puzzles yesterday and it reminded me how much I missed her.
I also am old enough to remember the first Earth day. I rode my horse to school. I have no recollection of what the horse did all day long or how he or I got home.
Today's the day I learn that ^ has never been called a carrot despite sorta looking like one but is instead a...caret? Shocked and appalled, to say the least. Every day I learn another cold truth about the world.
@jb129 11:41 AM @🦖 We probably all have medical bill horror stories thanks to insurance companies being the real people running America. (Nobody tells you that when you watch the political shows.)
I once fought a $5000 bill for four months and in the end they found a typo in the doctor's billing code, and voilà, I owed $0. Both of those numbers feel like pure madness.
@Lewis I thought I had it in 4, but NADE (short for grenade) isn't a valid Scrabble word, but it's listed in the OED as a variant of "have". *shrug* Looks like ceptimus.co.uk (word ladder solver with a Scrabble dictionary) has multiple 4-step solutions, but nothing less than that. With obscure words, of course.
The "fava beans with a nice Chianti" line is literally the 21st greatest movie quote of all time, from the AFI: https://www.afi.com/afis-100-years-100-movie-quotes/.
It's about as obscure as "There's no crying in baseball."
@Sailor and @anon 11:21….while burning wood contributes to global warming…I believe the clue can be read to refer to the deforestation that occurs in order to PRODUCE wood products….fewer trees to capture the CO2.
@Lewis: I get from FAVA to NADA in four, but the two added terms are both names of animals, one real and one fictional, so it’s a little too PPP for actual use.
And as for your putting OBI GOBI in my head, thanks a lot. Or as Roy Orbison would say, Ooby Dooby.
Somehow I got from the comments here to Mairzy Doats, which was a delightful clip. And I was delighted to see an old fashioned word ladder. Positively Maleskan!
@jberg, thanks for the link. In the comments someone says that Joni Mitchell said they were her Beatles growing up. Nice laid back jazz singing, sounds like early-ish Miles Davis cool jazz.
@Beezer... I'll grant that deforestation may have been what the constructor/editor had in mind. But I would still call it a bad clue, since deforestation is mainly a result of clearing land for livestock grazing or food crops. The wood products industry is quite different, in that it needs to keep re-growing forests in order to produce successive crops of trees.
Well, since everyone seems to know the FAVA bean line, I guess it’s just me languishing in ignorance of it. @Nancy, I’m with you about horrible creepy movies and I think I’ve just always blocked out anything having to do with that one.
@Anonymous 3:48pm WOE = What on Earth? = something that appears in the crossword with which you are unfamiliar.
@Lewis - Is LANA a word, or only a name? If names are permitted, you could go FAVA - LAVA - LADA - NADA, or even FAVA - FADA (a city in Chad) - NADA.
The best I've been able to do with common non-proper words (at least a common as FAVA) is: FAVA - FAVE - FATE - DATE - DATA - DADA - NADA. I have to believe that can be improved on, though.
I didn't set out any rules; perhaps I should have. And if I did, I would have said that any word is in play if it has appeared a good number of times in the NYT puzzle, and I would have set that number at ten.
Looking at all the replies, Gary, Okanaganer, and Kitchef all had valid four-word ladders, and thus a three-way tie as co-champions!
I remember COAL heat. (I was born & raised in PA, where there's huge bituminous deposits.) Every cellar had a coal bin, right next to the furnace, with a window to the outside facing front. The coal truck would come, they'd lay down the chute, and the coal made a sound like hard rain as it slid in. Then Daddy would shovel some into the furnace, and soon it would be warm in the house again. FOND memories.
We didn't know any better then. This puzzle traces our progress in the awareness of GLOBALWARMING, but the FOSSILFUEL companies are loath to give up their stranglehold on them. It'll take time, I hope time we still have. WIND is the future. Don Quixote would have a field day.
Kudos for getting this published on Earth Day. Thumbs up for the NYT, Joel and David. Even a great DOD in Lena OLIN. Eagle.
Hey @Spacey - my grandfather built a house in the 1920s with a coal furnace. My mom and I lived there for a few years, and I remember the chute and shovel.
My grandfather also built a farmhouse in the 1920s complete with COAL furnace and bin. The farm also had a WINDmill. I lived there for 20 years. Mostly we burned WOOD. I still own a COAL shovel. And have a WINDmill in my front yard. And burn WOOD, at times. In general, word ladders, ugh. Earth Day extras give it credence. Wordle birdie.
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The city of Abu Dhabi is located on an island in the Persian Gulf, off the Central West Coast. Most of the city and the Emirate reside on the mainland connected to the rest of the country. As of 2021, Abu Dhabi's urban area had an estimated population of 1.5 million, out of 2.9 million in the emirate of Abu Dhabi, as of 2016. The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority is headquartered in the city, and was the world's 3rd largest sovereign wealth fund in 2022. Abu Dhabi itself has over a trillion US dollars worth of assets under management in a combination of various sovereign wealth funds headquartered there.
After three super unpleasant puzzles in a row, they offer this lovely grid proving they have the ability to offer a fun one. The obsession with proper nouns continues. I'm assuming they've given up looking for good clue writers and simply stuff grids full of names to create the challenge. At least these were crossed fairly.
ReplyDeleteThe NYTXW either runs hot or cold and when it's cold, it's fuh-ree-zing.
Propers: 11
Places: 4
Products: 0
Foreignisms: 5
Initialisms: 1
---
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 20
I like the look of the word ladder. The fossil fuel theme is a nice secondary addition. The polished grid is well edited and the cluing voice is as if an adult helped.
Ug: A TALL TRI TEST.
Uniclues:
1 Time period before you get engaged.
2 Most hackneyed hats.
3 Puppetmaster's onus.
4 Stinks the place up.
5 Noble gas powered pup.
6 Pups can't get over the twist.
7 When my friends and I get out of the gutter.
8 What poverty, civil wars, unstable government, and piracy did.
1 COOL HON ERA (~)
2 TRITEST TURBANS (~)
3 WOOD PERSONA (~)
4 RIPS BOSSY WIND
5 LAB RAN ON ARGON (~)
6 AXEL WOWED FURS
7 WINOS NOW AFOOT (~)
8 DAWNED ON SOMALIA
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: When a penguin moves into the neighborhood. SQUID CITY JINX.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Medium-tough. I know this had to run on Earth Day but there was quite a bit of trivia…TOSCA, ROXIE, OLIN, CALEB, LEN, ANNE, FAVA… that Gen Z solvers would be unlikely to be familiar with. I know this for a fact because my 21 year old grandson, who has been doing the NYT puzzles for around a year now and usually has no trouble with Mondays, got stuck on this one. I just called him and he confirmed that he didn’t know any of the above. Plus, he’d never heard of a word ladder.
ReplyDeleteI too am not that fond of word ladders but this was fine for Earth Day, liked it.
Croce Solvers - Croce’s Freestyle #904 was on the easy side for a Croce except for my multi-square DNF in the SW. It was a combination of couple of WOEs, a couple of plausible wrong answers, and a couple of “I should have known better but went with them in anyway” answers. May your luck be better than mine!
Can some tell me what WOE means? Not new to crosswords but I’ve missed this somehow and it’s bothering me.
DeleteThanks for saying this. I’m 40 had had similar issues. That lower corner had me messed up and I normally crush Mondays. Never heard of TOSCA or OLIN before
Delete@Anon 3:48 WOE = "what on earth"
Delete@Anon 3:51 i'm also 40 and i know TOSCA and OLIN...but only from doing crosswords. it was the center top section that did me in. double the time of my usual monday because i didn't know ROXIE or LEN and for some reason i parsed "skater" as "skateboarder" so i couldn't figure out AXEL as clued, oops.
-stephanie.
No idea what WOE means either. I never see it anywhere except the comments section of this blog
DeleteWOE = what on earth. Was driving me nuts too until I saw someone else here spell it out. Couldn’t find it anywhere when I searched.
DeleteHow to get rid of small southwestern bids of prey? AXEL FOWLS.
ReplyDeleteHeadline after a riot precipitated by a so-so sewing job: MEH Hem Causes Mayhem
"SNL" V.I.P.s are HOSTS, but if you put Artificial Intelligence in the middle of the show you get a SNAIL.
I'm not one of those Ladder Day Saints. Give me a fish ladder any day.
Rex... good luck with your medical insurance. Being Canadian, I've never had to deal with that. I pay cash for dental and eyeglasses, but paying for bloodwork?... barbaric.
ReplyDeleteYes easy solve with down clues only. Theme could have been better, 3 theme answers not counting the intermittent word ladder stuff, is a bit thin. But it's only Monday.
[Spelling Bee: Sun 0; and Sat 0 in overtime finally getting the 11 letter pangram Sunday afternoon, and it felt good. 14 day streak intact.]
I had BIPED from BIP- even though it didn't quite work with "stand", so from G-E I started typing in GREENHOUSE and then GAS fit, but that got me R- at 33D so I immediately saw it was wrong. Virtually the only slowdown I had today.
ReplyDeleteI'm not a movie buff and especially not a horror guy, so can anyone explain why FAVA beans are relevant in The Silence of the Lambs? I had LIMA and corrected it with AVE. Bean-based kealoa.
Easier to just Google search the movie title + Fava beans and watch the YouTube clip. It's a piece of pop culture you'll see referenced fairly often.
DeleteThere’s a very famous line where Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) says “I ate his liver with some FAVA beans and a nice Chianti.” The most famous moment in the movie.
DeleteI liked the theme, but because there was too much trivia, I think this would have been a better Tuesday than Monday puzzle. But today is Earth Day, obviously and I enjoyed having that as the theme.
ReplyDeleteI agree that CUEDIN is awkward and it’s generally not what would be said in that context - the conductor CUEs the player or section that needs to join at a certain point in the piece. The IN is superfluous.
I have never watched The Silence of the Lambs, nor do I ever plan to do so, way too creepy for me. So I had no idea what bean is mentioned there. Very obscure if you ask me.
The line from Silence of the Lambs about the FAVA beans is a pretty ubiquitous pop culture moment. Spoofed on SNL at the time, mentioned in the Oscars…not obscure at all.
DeleteIts as famous a movie line as ‘Im Walkin’ here!’ Or ‘You can’t handle the truth!’. It doesnt seem unfair. (Hannibal Lechter, the cannibalistic villain likes his humans served with ‘Fava beans and a nice Chianti’) Trivia doesn’t always mesh with your personal field of reference, but this isn’t obscure.
DeleteI found this one challenging, for a Monday. At least, my time was much higher than average.
ReplyDeleteFor all the complaining @Rex does about tribute puzzles running on the wrong day, I'd have thought he'd have given this one more credit for running on actual Earth Day. I agree, though, that the word ladder progression from COAL to WIND is bizarrely countered by going from GREEN POWER to FOSSIL FUEL. All the long answers were climate-related, and the word ladder did its job. I enjoyed it far less than any Monday I can think of in recent memory, but I appreciate the Earth Day sentiment.
Good luck with the insurance company.
@Anonymous, Hannibal Lecter, talking about having a friend for dinner, describes the meal by saying that he ate his liver "with fava beans and a nice Chianti". Great movie--highly recommended.
It seemed like they leaned into the PPP (and foreign stuff) a little more heavily than usual, which caused it to be a little more challenging than a usual Monday. It will be interesting to see what the rest of the week has to offer.
ReplyDeleteHah. Hannibal eats someone’s liver with fava beans and a nice Chianti- https://youtu.be/bIahXVJrvT0?si=bUl6VJmYHk0zgGv1
ReplyDeleteSome fava bean trivia: Legend has it that Pythagoras refused to eat fava beans because he believed that they held reincarnated souls. So Hannibal Lecter’s choice of side dish adds an extra bit of cannibalism.
ReplyDeleteFollowing yesterday’s highly novel (though unpleasant) theme, today we get the old-as-the-hills (and much hated by some) word ladder.
ReplyDeleteI am not a word ladder hater, and Monday is the ideal day from them as they lower the difficulty a bit. I wonder if Rex even knew it was a word ladder while solving; I doubt that would be evident solving downs only.
Croce Freestyle 904 was easy peasy (for a Croce). Incredibly, I only had four overwrites at 4D, the last letter of 34D, the last letter of 36D, and 56A.
Just too easy
ReplyDeleteI see a little theme echo in RAN ON, as in “This electric product ran on COAL, while that one ran on WIND.”
ReplyDeleteI love OBI under GOBI. Say that five times fast!
A lovely puzzle. Our first word ladder in what feels like a long time, and I’m not ready for this genre to die yet. I think there are more clever angles that can come to it that have not been outed yet. Also, this is a brilliant piece of construction – smooth and Monday perfect, despite its very-high 65 theme squares, more than a third of the white space!
David J. has been making NYT puzzles for more than 30 years, and, to me, behind his puzzles there’s a boyish enthusiasm, an unflagged joy of wordplay.
Thank you, David, for brightening crosswords for so long, and for a meaningful-yet-fun time in the box today!
My five favorite original clues from last week
ReplyDelete(in order of appearance):
1. Cross fit? (4)
2. Bloomers worn around one's head? (3)
3. Bound for the big stage? (4)
4. Course addendum (4)
5. Partner ship? (3)
SNIT
LEI
JETÉ
SIDE
ARK
Tough Monday, lot of names, but easy to get from the crosses. Surprisingly, GLOBALWARMING is an NYT debut. Nice Earth Day puzzle. Professional and polished, as expected from David J. "Khaaaaan!"
ReplyDeleteTime to go touch grass.
For me, this crossed inched over the line from 11:59 pm Monday to 12:01 am Tuesday.
ReplyDeleteWell I read "word ladder" and for some reason thought "step quote" and trying to make the first few themers say something was interesting, but I eventually came to my senses and changed course. Come on, man.
ReplyDeleteEasy enough but I felt like I was not on a first-name basis with all the first names. Hello LEN, CALEB, and ADAM. Hi ROXIE, at least I remembered you.
I was in my first year of teaching when the first Earth Day occurred. Nice to see it's still around and a puzzle that reminds us of it. Seems like too many of us have forgotten all about this (looking at you, OFL).
Nice timely Mondecito, DJK. Decent, Job, Kudos for your theme. Thanks for all the fun.
Downs only, the top third was pretty smooth. Then a brick wall, just some downs here and there but couldn’t infer most of the crosses. So I looked at some across clues. I’m always a little leery of theme puzzles keyed to some special day or commemoration, but I liked this more than Rex and it was a nice word ladder — for a word ladder.
ReplyDeleteYoung Gen-Xer here, and this one wasn't easy for me — 2 mins above my average time. As Jae noted, much trivia today. Of those, I knew only ANNE.
ReplyDeleteNot Monday easy.......
ReplyDeleteAnd here’s a PPP (post-puzzle puzzler), inspired by the theme and two answers from today’s puzzle:
ReplyDeleteCan you make a word ladder from FAVA to NADA? And who can do it in the fewest steps?
How about posting how many steps it took you rather than writing the ladder words, so as to let others who wish to, come up with solutions on their own. (Took me five.) Let’s say that at 6:00 people can post solutions.
@ JKK
ReplyDeleteI'm not a real fan of movie references, or cultural trivia as a whole, but I think FAVA beans is a pretty well known reference to what was a very popular movie.
I'm old enough to remember the very first Earth Day, so any puzzle that celebrates this day is a winner in my book. Considering we spend the other 364 days exploiting the earth.
Hey All !
ReplyDeleteGood fill, considering all the Theme all over the place. Three Longs, plus Eight four-letter Word Ladder entries. With the Center Themer surrounded by two word ladder answers. Tough to get clean fill Nice job David! Any hair left?
Nice puz for Earth Day. The FOOD one was a head scratcher. Energy source = FOOD? OK, energy for you, I suppose. But we need FOOD to survive, so are we just supposed to stop producing it? Or, live off the Earth, ala fruits and veggies that we all must have in our gardens? Odd clue, that one, is what I'm getting at
Anyway, good puz, bad that it's Monday. 😁
Six F's (FOND of that)
RooMonster
DarrinV
I interpreted NIELSEN as the media rating company, including TV.
ReplyDelete"This puzzle doesn't have a climate change theme so much as it has a collection of words one might hear in a conversation about climate change." That seems a tad unfair, Rex - it's a word ladder progressing from non-renewable COAL to renewable WIND with reminders about GLOBAL WARMING and consumption of FOSSILFUELS, and criticizing a crossword puzzle for being "a collection of words" is a strange barb. Plus it's published on the day it commemorates.
ReplyDeleteGood luck with the insurance.
I think it’s nice when a theme that is appropriate for Earth Day actually publishes on that day AND is “day of the week” appropriate in its difficulty. The subject was in my wheelhouse and it was a pleasant Monday solve.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things I often think of on the last several Earth Days is whether the people (or at least SOME of the people) who made Al Gore out to be an “alarmist kook” have second thoughts about that. We wasted a ton of time arguing whether the activities of humans on the planet could affect our climate, even going so far as to say it was oddly “presumptious” to even think that we could. Seems like even climate change deniers are starting to open up their minds that it MIGHT be a good idea to reduce greenhouse gases.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteanother terrible one. please stop with the dumb themes
ReplyDeleteUnable to solve this one downs-only
ReplyDeleteI'm sort of betting that, Rex notwithstanding, no one is going to diss this puzzle. Not even the people who normally hate word ladder puzzles, of which I am one. But not today.
ReplyDeleteIt's a word ladder with a message, richly enhanced by the density of the other theme-related answers. And while I don't think for a moment that a mere crossword puzzle can do anything practical to end our reliance on FOSSIL FUEL, enhance GREEN POWER or solve the existential crisis of GLOBAL WARMING, it's still a worthwhile subject to build a puzzle around and this is an impressive piece of work. Usually a word ladder is just a word ladder and doesn't need to include any other theme elements. This does so much more. So let's give this elegant grid the kudos it deserves.
I FIND that I'm not too FOND of this word ladder. It's so weak that I fear I'll break a rung.
ReplyDeleteAn easy puzzle, except for CUED IN.
ReplyDeleteThat's not a thing in the context of conducting ("Signaled to begin, as a conductor might".)
A conductor CUES the violins, or CUES the French horn, or CUES the altos. A conductor cues the violins *to* come in.
But a conductor doesn't "cue in anyone", or "cue anyone in".
Where the phrase can be used is in the context of *editing*, like music/soundtrack editing ("why don't you CUE the crash sound IN right there, on frame 12").
In my mind, you "cue" something that is already written/scripted (like a music score) when you're simply reminding the performer of something they should already know. E.g. classical music performers don't *need* to be cued, but if they haven't been playing for the past 48 bars, it's a courtesy by the conductor in case anybody lost count if it's not an obvious place to enter.
Whereas you "cue in" something when you're making an editorial choice in the moment, whether to bring something in at all, or where to bring it in. Which makes sense in film or music editing. But not in music conducting, where the score is already written, and the conductor is merely adjusting the tempo during the performance.
Still missing Loren Muse Smith witticism……sigh….
ReplyDeleteI'd have liked this better if the clue for 1-A didn't tell me that I was dealing with a word ladder; I enjoy said ladders more when they take me by surprise. As it was, as soon as I got the first answer I tried to fill in the whole ladder, but I didn't succeed because I skipped over one of the rungs without noticing it. That lead me to think how neat it would be if there were no non-ladder four-letter words in the puzzle; that might be tough, though.
ReplyDeleteI always forget who was who in Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross, which I naturally assumed was what the clue for 10-A was referring to, but it made me want Anne instead of Dave. Who is this ADAM guy?
@Lewis, I thought I had it in two, but it turns out FADA isn't a word. I was thinking of, but misspelling, Portugues FADo music.
Anyway, here's a clip of the aforementioned trio.
@Roo, it's not the food, it's how it's produced on modern factory farms--burning lots of fossil fuels, releasing carbon dioxide from the soil by frequent plowing, massive feed lots, etc.
And AC can be green if you get the electricity from a renewable source.
Now I have to watch The Love Boat 😂
ReplyDeleteAlthough I have been completely committed to -- and completely successful at -- avoiding "The Silence of the Lambs" in its full incarnation, TV programs have been peppering the TV screen with that godawful scene for years and so I've seen that hideous face and heard that creepy voice -- if only for a few seconds. PLEASE DON'T DO THAT TO ME, TV ADVERTISERS, AWARD SHOWS AND ALL OTHER GUILTY PARTIES. PLEASE!!!!
ReplyDeleteTo those who didn't know the FAVA reference, I consider you very, very, very lucky. I strongly suggest that you try to make sure that you never get to know the FAVA reference. Why people want subject themselves to these creep-out films intended to haunt your nightmares is a complete mystery to me.
35A is a very bad clue. Wood production does not lead to global warming. It reduces it through photosynthesis. Burning wood is what contributes to it.
ReplyDeleteEscalator, agree on LMS. I did a bunch of archived puzzles yesterday and it reminded me how much I missed her.
ReplyDeleteI also am old enough to remember the first Earth day. I rode my horse to school. I have no recollection of what the horse did all day long or how he or I got home.
Come on Rex… it is a Monday. And fulfilled its earth day mission well (and cutely) enough.
ReplyDeleteToday's the day I learn that ^ has never been called a carrot despite sorta looking like one but is instead a...caret? Shocked and appalled, to say the least. Every day I learn another cold truth about the world.
ReplyDeleteThis was easy & fun. It gave my brain a break & no doubting my xword-solving abilities for a change. Now I can go on & enjoy yoga :)
ReplyDeleteI hope you got your medical insurance billing resolved. I know, speaking for myself, I wouldn't have slept all night ...
@jb129 11:41 AM @🦖
DeleteWe probably all have medical bill horror stories thanks to insurance companies being the real people running America. (Nobody tells you that when you watch the political shows.)
I once fought a $5000 bill for four months and in the end they found a typo in the doctor's billing code, and voilà, I owed $0. Both of those numbers feel like pure madness.
Happy Earth Day, y'all.
ReplyDeleteGood to see Mr. Kahn back in the saddle, for rodeo #189.
staff weeject pick: OBI. An old reliable constructioneerin staple puz tie-piece.
fave moo-cow eazy-E MonPuz clue: {___ non grata} = PERSONA. Nice 7-letter gimme, thanx U. Honrable mention to that ARGON anagram clue, btw.
Can see that @Nancy darlin was definitely not in fava of that there 16-Across clue & answer.
Thanx for the COAL conversion ladder, Mr. Kahn dude. Unusual (but fun) to see U, on a Monday, burnin coal.
Masked & Anonymo5Us
p.s. Good luck with them bill-duels, @RP dude.
**gruntz**
@Lewis
ReplyDeleteFAVA
****
****
NADA
That's the number of steps it took me.
@Lewis I thought I had it in 4, but NADE (short for grenade) isn't a valid Scrabble word, but it's listed in the OED as a variant of "have". *shrug* Looks like ceptimus.co.uk (word ladder solver with a Scrabble dictionary) has multiple 4-step solutions, but nothing less than that. With obscure words, of course.
ReplyDeleteAnon @ 11:21 AM: Good point. Growing trees capture carbon.
ReplyDeleteThe "fava beans with a nice Chianti" line is literally the 21st greatest movie quote of all time, from the AFI: https://www.afi.com/afis-100-years-100-movie-quotes/.
ReplyDeleteIt's about as obscure as "There's no crying in baseball."
@Sailor and @anon 11:21….while burning wood contributes to global warming…I believe the clue can be read to refer to the deforestation that occurs in order to PRODUCE wood products….fewer trees to capture the CO2.
ReplyDelete@Lewis: I get from FAVA to NADA in four, but the two added terms are both names of animals, one real and one fictional, so it’s a little too PPP for actual use.
ReplyDeleteAnd as for your putting OBI GOBI in my head, thanks a lot. Or as Roy Orbison would say, Ooby Dooby.
Somehow I got from the comments here to Mairzy Doats, which was a delightful clip. And I was delighted to see an old fashioned word ladder. Positively Maleskan!
ReplyDelete@jberg, thanks for the link. In the comments someone says that Joni Mitchell said they were her Beatles growing up. Nice laid back jazz singing, sounds like early-ish Miles Davis cool jazz.
ReplyDelete@Lewis, FAVA to NADA in 3 steps, but only if an old car name is okay.
ReplyDelete@Beezer... I'll grant that deforestation may have been what the constructor/editor had in mind. But I would still call it a bad clue, since deforestation is mainly a result of clearing land for livestock grazing or food crops. The wood products industry is quite different, in that it needs to keep re-growing forests in order to produce successive crops of trees.
ReplyDeleteWell, since everyone seems to know the FAVA bean line, I guess it’s just me languishing in ignorance of it. @Nancy, I’m with you about horrible creepy movies and I think I’ve just always blocked out anything having to do with that one.
ReplyDeleteFor those who took a stab at the PPP (Post puzzle puzzler), this is what I had (and all have shown up plenty in crosswords):
ReplyDeleteFAVA
LAVA
LANA
NANA
NADA
I'd love to hear what others have come up with!
FAVA
DeleteFALA
NALA
NADA
@Anon 3:48 WOE is What On Earth. It is a kinder gentler version of WTF.
ReplyDelete@Anonymous 3:48pm WOE = What on Earth? = something that appears in the crossword with which you are unfamiliar.
ReplyDelete@Lewis - Is LANA a word, or only a name? If names are permitted, you could go FAVA - LAVA - LADA - NADA, or even FAVA - FADA (a city in Chad) - NADA.
The best I've been able to do with common non-proper words (at least a common as FAVA) is: FAVA - FAVE - FATE - DATE - DATA - DADA - NADA. I have to believe that can be improved on, though.
FAVA
ReplyDeleteLAVA
LADA
NADA
Well, that was fun!
ReplyDeleteI didn't set out any rules; perhaps I should have. And if I did, I would have said that any word is in play if it has appeared a good number of times in the NYT puzzle, and I would have set that number at ten.
Looking at all the replies, Gary, Okanaganer, and Kitchef all had valid four-word ladders, and thus a three-way tie as co-champions!
Way to go!
FAVA JAVA JADA NADA
DeleteFave dave dade dada nada
ReplyDeleteGood theme. More of a challenge than your usual Monday - at least for me. Liked it very much. GLOBALWARMING and/or climate change are real.
ReplyDeleteI remember COAL heat. (I was born & raised in PA, where there's huge bituminous deposits.) Every cellar had a coal bin, right next to the furnace, with a window to the outside facing front. The coal truck would come, they'd lay down the chute, and the coal made a sound like hard rain as it slid in. Then Daddy would shovel some into the furnace, and soon it would be warm in the house again. FOND memories.
ReplyDeleteWe didn't know any better then. This puzzle traces our progress in the awareness of GLOBALWARMING, but the FOSSILFUEL companies are loath to give up their stranglehold on them. It'll take time, I hope time we still have. WIND is the future. Don Quixote would have a field day.
Kudos for getting this published on Earth Day. Thumbs up for the NYT, Joel and David. Even a great DOD in Lena OLIN. Eagle.
Wordle bogey.
Hey @Spacey - my grandfather built a house in the 1920s with a coal furnace. My mom and I lived there for a few years, and I remember the chute and shovel.
ReplyDeleteGood puz (for me) after yesterday's "Huh? Fest."
Happy Memorial Day and Earth Day to all.,
Diana, LIW
My grandfather also built a farmhouse in the 1920s complete with COAL furnace and bin. The farm also had a WINDmill. I lived there for 20 years. Mostly we burned WOOD. I still own a COAL shovel. And have a WINDmill in my front yard. And burn WOOD, at times.
ReplyDeleteIn general, word ladders, ugh. Earth Day extras give it credence.
Wordle birdie.
Noticed: DAWNEDON RANON ONARUN.
ReplyDeleteWARMING UP
ReplyDeleteA SNOG is AFOOT,
such POWER had ANNE,
so FOND of PHIL’s WOOD
to WIND UP IN her HAND.
--- ROXIE LEE NIELSEN