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Suspicious, informally / SUN 4-28-24 / Rapper who shares part of his name with the world's tallest building / Trees that can grow multiple acres wide / Footwear retailer founded in Montreal / Gazing angrily / Some Olds of old / Percussive shaker / Slopes attire resembling overalls / Marsalis family patriarch
Sunday, April 28, 2024
Constructor: Mike Ellison
Relative difficulty: Easy
The "scale" / "tone" answers:
- TUXEDO (19A: What a conductor might wear to a concert)
- PAVAROTTI (24A: One of a trio of famous tenors)
- CINDERELLA (28A: Rodgers and Hammerstein's only musical written for TV)
- "I TOLD YOU SO" (57A: 1988 #1 country hit for Randy Travis)
- WIZ KHALIFA (82A: Rapper who shares part of his name with the world's tallest building)
- "WHO AM I?" (107A: Question asked in a "Les Misérables" song)
- "THAT'S AMORE" (111A: Classic tune inspiring a joke about eels)
- GLISSANDO (123A: Musical slide)
Cameron Jibril Thomaz (born September 8, 1987), better known by his stage name Wiz Khalifa, is an American rapper, singer and actor from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. [...] A tribute to his hometown of Pittsburgh, the song peaked atop the Billboard Hot 100 and received two Grammy Award nominations. "Black and Yellow," along with the top 40-charting singles "Roll Up" and "No Sleep" preceded the release of his third album and major label debut, Rolling Papers(2011). It was met with commercial success and peaked at number two on the Billboard 200, although critical response was mixed. [...] His fifth album, Blacc Hollywood (2014) became his first to debut atop the Billboard 200, and was supported by the lead single "We Dem Boyz." His 2015 single, "See You Again" (featuring Charlie Puth) was released for the soundtrack to the film Furious 7, in tribute to late actor Paul Walker. The song peaked the Billboard Hot 100 for 12 non-consecutive weeks, received diamond (14× platinum)certification by the Recording Industry Association of America(RIAA), earned three Grammy Award nominations, and remains Thomaz's most commercially successful release. His sixth album, Rolling Papers 2 (2018) matched its titular predecessor in chart position, and was supported by the sleeper hit single "Something New" (featuring Ty Dolla Sign). (wikipedia)
• • •
Also, it's SOL. Decades of crossword-solving have taught me that the note is SOL, not SO. DO RE ME FA SOL LA TI DO. Here, look:
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| xwordinfo.com |
OK, some of those clues have nothing to do with music, but look at all the ones that do: [G, in C]; [Fifth note in an octave scale]; [Fa-la connector]. I know that "SO" is an acceptable variant, but I would've been a hair's breadth more impressed with this theme if it had pulled off a SOL instead of a mere SO. I guess there are no musical terms ending in SOL. Not a lot of songs about PARASOLs or LYSOL, I suppose. Ah well.
I just went over to the puzzle website to make sure there was not some music or puzzle animation that I was missing. Apparently not, which seems slightly startling. They went to such great lengths to make those wheels spin last week that I thought for sure they'd do some big musical number, some song, dancing notes, god knows what. But nope, just gray squares and an out-of-order scale, just like my downloaded puzzle. Hmm, now that I look at the clues and grid a little more, it looks like the puzzle is so desperate to convince you there's really a theme here that it's trying to make As Many Clues as Possible into music clues. DOMO? MOPS? ANT? All of them (and more) getting musical treatment. I didn't notice. If the theme is weak, it's weak, and no amount of "bonus" stuff is gonna rescue it.
The fill is fine, OK, pretty average. CIERAS is less than lovely (bygone and plural?) (98D: Some Olds of old), but not much else made me wince. Well, HINKY, a little, especially crossing CIO (Chief Information Officer). And I had to say the ENACTED clue to myself over and over again before I could begin to understand it (7D: Written in code?). If you enact a law then it becomes part of the legal or penal or criminal code ... I think that's what the clue is going for. Also, HOUDINI was an escape artist so he ... got out ... of various forms of bondage (47D: Whose performances were as astonishing as all get-out?). I know Wynton and Branford Marsalis, but I did not know ELLIS (he's one of many accomplished musicians who died early in the COVID epidemic (see also John Prine and Adam Schlesinger, among others)). I was proud of myself for getting BANYANS off just the "B"—pretty sure I learned about the existence of those trees from crosswords, and that knowledge really paid off today (94D: Trees that can grow multiple acres wide). Speaking of knowledge I possess solely from solving crosswords—ALDO shoes! (115D: Footwear retailer founded in Montreal). And the word AGLARE, LOL, what? (22A: Gazing angrily). I mean, I know what, but still, what? Such a dumb word. Only mistake I made today was thinking that [What guacamole often costs] was EUROS. You cannot dispute that guacamole is sold in the E.U. and therefore often costs EUROS, so please respect my perfectly good if technically wrong answer, thank you, good day.
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145 comments:
Usually takes me a while to catch on to a theme, but this one jumped out at me as soon as it came up on the screen, even before I printed it out; musical title, 8 shaded pairs, just had to be do, re, mi…. One exception: I think that “so” is usually written as “sol.”
A pretty easy one for me. Natick at the cross between 69D and 82A
When it comes to trivia in an xword, it should either (a) make you feel good because you knew it, or (b) be interesting enough that you're glad you learned it. Does anyone know, or care, who Alice Cooper's drummer is? Am I missing something?
Also, natiked on BUd/dORGE. No way anyone non Danish could know that one.
"Tan Ciera! Tan Ciera!"
Oh, Rex! There is an order to the scale. It's going "down". Which goes along with the 2 revealers. Do, ti, la, so, fa, mi, re, do. So give Mike credit for that.
Didn’t love this one but must point out that notes are not “random”, they are in reverse order.
The scale IS in order… going down! High to low. Makes it a bit more interesting of a construction
Yes this was on the easy side but what slowed it down(SCALEd it DOWN?) was that I found myself solving from east to west and kept starting sections with only tail end letters
Starting from scratch over and over I kept thinking I was going to run into a dnf. SHERA crossing HUNAN was about as close as it got.
My final letter for the congrats was the G of PEG and GUM. That song title meant nothing to me. Shades of yesterday's ALONE? I look it up and first glance at the lyrics I recognize it. Of course I know the song I just never could quite understand that first word or, obviously, heard the title.
yd(it is after midnight) -0. QB14
As suggested by "scale down", the notes *are* in order: a descending octave.
Easy for me too. A breezy fun solve. I got the theme about a third of the way through which helped. My last entry was WIZ KHALIFA which I was really hoping would be right.
Much better than last Sunday, liked it.
I, too, was disappointed that the notes weren't in order. I recently redid an old NYT puzzle (1994 or thereabouts) that DID have them in order.
Wanted PESOS for the cost of guacamole. Much better than EUROS. :-)
The scale is not in random order. It's the scale DOWN (backwards).
Fine. Not my favorite Sunday, but not close to my least favorite. I spent a while searching for a pattern in the notes, bummed to confirm it was random. It would be another layer on the theme to have the notes in order going down, but oh well.
OFL: all due respect, but I believe you totally missed the main conceit of this grid… The “falling tones” are in fact placed not randomly at all, but in fact, quite purposefully. Starting at the top of the grid with the high “Do”; and then every note in the scale placed progressively lower. DO, TI, LA, SO (agreed that SOL is more commonly used, but SO is also accepted), FA, MI, RE, ending with low DO at the bottom.
It's Sunday and I was not impressed... TI LA SI FA MI RE DO, top to bottom order? I didn't get it, but the comments point out that is the normal order in reverse! SCALE DOWN! Okay, better. But if every theme answer had been the name of a song, or something like that, it would have been more better.
On top of that I finished with errors at ZIPS crossing two total unknowns. WIZ (dunno those rap dudes) at the Z (so many consonants were possible there), and PINOLE (never heard of it) at the I (so could be A E I or O!). And for the life of me I've never actually owned a suitcase so could only imagine it closing with some sort of latch. So cue percussive sounds: NIPS? POPS? CAPS? DAPS? Horrors. Suitcases have zippers?... why did no one tell me. If the clue had been "Closes, as a winter coat or sleeping bag", well...
But for some good news:
[Spelling Bee: Sat 0, streak 20 tying my record!]
Maybe someone has already said this but the scale is in order - backward. TKkus the scale down revealer.
I found it rather difficult because of all the song titles and rapper names, etc that I've never heard of.
Got a bog smile from47D. Whose performances were as astonishing as all get out?
I love all the extras. I always think it enhances a puzzle to have theme related eras (except when they are rock stars o names) But Classical singers/ sirens - how is that not making the puzzle richer and more fun?
ANd I like the sound of maracas and the sound of the word so it was nice to see that.
Good puzzle
Another lame theme with PPP-laden fill. Phooey!
As a singer, I was really bothered by “so” rather than “sol”. I get the fact that it would be near impossible to get a “-sol” word that fits the theme, and that a lot of people may not notice the difference, but it certainly nags at me.
@astrotrav: I am not Danish but I am of a certain age of people who watched (& loved) comedian/pianist Victor Borge many times on the Ed Sullivan Show.
Once again just to easy
Record time again
Why is bro jockish?
Victor Borge is pretty well known to older Americans
Guido of Arezzo is thought likely to have originated the modern Western system of solmization by introducing the ut–re–mi–fa–so–la syllables, which derived from the initial syllables of each of the first six half-lines of the first stanza of the hymn Ut queant laxis.
From Wikipedia on solmization.
Rex, I'm so confused: how could you miss that the scale IS in order?? It's just high to low, which is not how we normally see/hear it. But indeed, if you go to the movie that the title alludes to, "The Sound of Music", Maria actually sings the scale IN THIS ORDER at one point! And considering that the two revealers have "fall" and "down" in them (one of which is *literally* SCALE DOWN!), that seems like two large, flashing arrows that say, Hey, maybe this is the scale, but with the notes going DOWN (or FALLing) instead of going UP. That said, I do agree that SOL would have been more satisfying than SO, and that nobody talks about autumn colors as "FALL TONES".
Easy-Medium. Easy except for a clusterWTF in the center. Didn't know HINKY (33D), I TOLD YOU SO (57A) as a Randy Travis song, HALO (63A) as a Beyonce song, the WIZ part of 82A or PINOLE (89A). Those, plus wanting SpieS for the special ops folks (70D) and Star(something) for the featured performances at 77D made it hard to see the rest of the section.
@puzzlehoarder: Me too for my last entry being the G at PEG/GUM.
Is a BRO necessarily, or even usually, a jockish sort? Or is a jockish sort necessarily, or even usually a BRO? I may not be a PRO on this, but this is such a bummer, I don't even say BOO. I say POO!
Marshal Biggs : This is hinky, this guy's a college graduate, he went to medical school, he's not gonna come through all the security, go to the county lockup, to find someone his own people say does not exist. Hinky.
Deputy Marshal Samuel Gerard : Well, what does that mean Biggs, 'hinky'?
Marshal Biggs : I don't know. Strange.
Marshal Henry : Weird.
Deputy Marshal Samuel Gerard : Well, why don't you say strange or weird? I mean hinky, that has no meaning.
Marshal Biggs : Well, we say hinky.
Deputy Marshal Samuel Gerard : I don't want you guys using words around me that have no meaning. I'm taking the stairs and walking.
Marshal Biggs : [sotto voice] How about 'bullsh*t?' How about 'bullsh*t', Sam?
Hi Astrotrav! It's BUb/bORGE. You don't have to be Danish to know Victor Borge, but it helps to be old as dirt. He was funny. He must be on YouTube.
Loved this one. First off, as many have pointed out here, the order isn’t random, it’s in reverse order. So the notes all SCALE DOWN throughout the puzzle. Surprised Rex missed that!
Had 2 major trouble spots: BICORNES never popped out at me (I was looking for some French word, like my incorrect BItOnNES?) and since I’ve never heard of a SCOW or that Catherine lady, I was stuck - ultimately had to just run through the alphabet and check puzzle to get it.
The other one was - I admit with blushed cheeks - I confidently wrote in MIA instead of WIZ KHALIFA, never realizing until much later that that name that came so easily into my head…is a porn star. Hey maybe she’ll be in next weeks! 🤣
The scale isn’t random — it goes down instead of up. Instead of Do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do, it’s Do-ti-la-so-fa-mi-re-do — literally a scale going down an octave instead of up. That’s why scale down is an alternative title…
I found this Medium due to several unpleasant Naticks: THEPIPS/WIZKHALIFA, LEMANS/SIP (I had LEMANN/NIP for a long time) and I too fell in the trap of BUD/DORGE, not really knowing who Victor BORGE was (this has been filed in the increasingly large portion of my brain dedicated to crossword trivia).
Not sure I understand CIERAS- is it the latin CI=101 and then...?
The grid definitely presents the correct order for SCALE DOWN - but it is exceedingly easy and becomes a chore to maintain interest. Lots of 3s and 4s forced from those center black squares. FALL TONES is a little bit of a mashup.
A wonderful Elliot Smith GLISSANDO
No pushback in the entire oversized layout. There was some nice stuff - BAD DREAM x BOB CUT, SHINGLED, BOTTOM HEAVY etc. but also a lot of dreck. WINKLE was amusing - BORGE reminded me of my parents.
MILES bring in the cool
Pleasant enough in the realm of recent Sunday’s - but it would have benefited from a little more bite.
It's your Irish heart I’m after
Too much PPP for my taste, but all gettable from crosses so okay. I’m in the old as dirt group who knew BORGE without blinking. He was wonderful! I actually thought the puzzle was pretty cleverly constructed and this actually helped the solve, which doesn’t always happen.
These super-thematic puzzles are misery for some and a joy for others, depending on your particular wheelhouse. I think I can speak for a lot of fellow musicians in saying this one was a delight. The only nit to pick is SO instead of SOL, but think about how hard it is to come up with a music-related answer that needs in -sol. I’d love to hear what anyone else can come up with. The best I can do is [A possible alternative title for Rihanna’s “Umbrella”].
And the last themer! GLISSANDO! Perfect! Cue Jerry Lee Lewis.
I liked the theme echoes in the non-theme answers that ended in scale notes: AGLARE, ACTI, ESSO, BLARE, OGRE, CRESCENDO.
And, as if to emphasize that SO is acceptable as the fifth scale name, it’s even spelled out in 127-across (ESSO).
Very impressive to debut on a Sunday, and the constructor’s passion for music shines through, IMO, giving the puzzle an aura of delight that added to the solving experience. That he only started solving crosswords five years ago makes this puzzle even more impressive.
Because there was an effort to clue as many answers musically as possible, may I suggest that 112-down (SLIP) could have been clued [1977 hit “___ Sliding Away”]. And maybe others can find more.
Congratulations, Mike, on your first NYT puzzle. I’m intrigued to see what you’ll follow it up with, because I enjoyed this one so much. Thank you!
Solving tip: When you see that the theme elements (in this puzzle, the gray squares) are mainly occurring in the eastern half of the grid, there’s a good chance that they have something to do with answer endings. There’s also a decent chance that there will be a revealer in the western area, as swaths of non-theme white are discouraged in themed puzzles.
Solid theme well executed. Would have been doubly impressive had all the down themers been musically related as well, but only MILES Davis and, sorta, ADORING FANS were. Also nice that there were not one but two revealers that were both apt.
As a child, I was able to see Victor BORGE live. One of the most memorable performances I have seen. As kids we often grumbled and complained about all of the shows our parents dragged us to, but I’m so grateful now for the gift of live entertainment they shared with us, from local community theatre to names like Borge and Cab Calloway.
I guess I’m old as dirt as you say but Victor Borge’s act was hilarious. I’m gonna Google him now to have a laugh— hopefully his act has been immortalized there.
Sorry to have missed last week... Away to celebrate my dad's 90th birthday!
I too did not see the order of the notes - it looked random, even though I solved this fairly quickly, looked at the revealers, etc. (It didn't help that DO is at the top.) I appreciated all the music in the grid, but it did make for a lot of PPP. Still, I found this a pleasant solve, after the difficulty I had with last week's Sunday.
Congrats on your debut, Mike!
Enjoyed the crossword part, as the theme jumped out early and a lot of the cluing was on the easy side. As usual, despised the PPP everywhere - the middle section was particularly brutal with HINKY (do people actually say that?), the Randy Travis song, the Beyonce song, the weird looking rapper’s name and whatever PINOLE is/means.
At least they toned down the theme gimmickry for a nice change of pace - if only they could dial back on the trivia for once, they could really come up with a winner. This at least is an improvement.
I think we have only seen Robyn’s byline once so far this year - maybe this Friday we’ll get lucky.
Nice debut! Enjoyable music theme. DOMO arigato, Mr. Mike Ellison.
3 Tenors: Carreras, Domingo, PAVAROTTI
3 Musketeers: ATHOS, Porthos, Aramis (+ D'Artagnan)
3 responses to an accusation: SLAP, "SEE YA", "WHOA, MI?"
I loved this puzzle! Music, music everywhere!!! I got to use all my knowledge of playing and listening to music for years. Jazz, rap, broadway, pop, rock, so many musicians!!! Staccato, gilssando, music hints abounding. My favorite puzzle ever.
I remember Victor Borge from the Ed Sullivan show. I’ll be 70 next month, I guess that makes me old as dirt. 😩
I was hoping that the order of the notes was a tune we could play or sing together. Has that ever been attempted as a theme?
The Pontiac "Fiero" is more fun as a car to recall than the forgettable Olds Ciera.
"Is [somebody somebody] still living?"
"No, he's still dead."
I heard Victor BORGE deliver that line back in 1986. Sadly, Borge himself has since passed.
His appearance in the puzzle today is appropriate because he was a classical pianist as well as brilliantly funny. His humor (much of it at the piano) ranged from high-brow to low-brow. It was not beneath him to fall off the piano bench for a laugh. You would leave his performances in pain from laughing and totally in love with him.
Two of his better known routines were inflationary language and phonetic punctuation. He reasoned that language should keep up with inflation. So any word that contained a number within it would be adjusted. "Tennis Anyone?" became "Eleveniss Anytwo?" He'd read a passage teeming with inflated words to hysterical effect. And phonetic punctuation gave sound effects to punctuation marks. Hard to convey this in writing, but, again, he'd read a passage with every comma, period, colon, etc., sounded out.
You can find videos of him on YouTube. I looked for one in particular in which he plays all the instruments in the orchestra, as different characters, with an hysterical final moment, but I couldn't find it. D'oh!
Guacamole was easy--costs extra. Clever yet easy theme. The only word that caught me is HINKY (33D). Never heard that
Super easy for me - pretty much everything in my wheelhouse, and the theme appeared pretty much instantly (including the fact that it was going UP).
@astrotrav, Victor Borge will be known to MANY people who grew up in the 70s. I got it off just the "E". Not only was he pretty popular overall, but he also did some bits on Sesame Street (I believe), because he would read books and pronounce the punctuation marks. Hilariously funny guy. In fact, I may go find some of his bits now.
Had a woeful time with the whole BUB, BORGE, GLISSANDO, CIERAS, BANYANS area. Still can't really understand how a guitar STRAP is a cord? But otherwise quite enjoyable.
I think we have discovered the Natickaloa today: BU_ could be B or D, and it crosses a proper noun.
As has been mentioned, Victor Borge was a regular on late night TV and the concert circuit. Here is the classic Borge routine on punctuation. As with all comedy, it may or may not transcend time and place:
https://youtu.be/TIf3IfHCoiE?si=zhAjUAr1DGeDREp_
Many other routines that skewered classical music were very familiar: upside down music comes to mind.
SOL is preferred, but SO is perfectly fine. “A needle pulling thread…” after all. Should we rehash fixed vs moveable DO today?
After studying some foreign languages, I am no longer sure of myself on doubled letter locations (sorry, Lewis). It took a few nanoseconds longer to figure out Pavarotti and Cinderella (which in retrospect seem pretty obvious…).
Informercials for Victor Borge’s comedy used to be on tv ask the time when I was a kid, so I’ve known about him since I was 8 or so. And I know my parents went to see him once in the ‘90s. So as usual, plenty of people have heard of this thing that “only certain people” could have possibly known.
Scow refers the to garbage barge, or scow.
I mean, it’s sol not so, right?
Anybody notice that it's a descending scale? How about JAM OR DAM? Anybody have trouble with that?
Among the other things I didn't know in this puzzle (song titles, obscure names) was the fact that there could actually be someone named WIZKHALIFA. Talk about needing every cross.
I've done a fair amount of music in the course of my (longish) life, but I guess there's a lot I've missed lately, which made this one pretty thorny. Thought I was going to be in trouble when 1A turned out to be SHERA. The first of quite a few "oh oh's".
Nice enough Sunday, ME. Mostly Enjoyed it, and thanks for a fair amount of fun.
njoyed it
Hey All !
Apparently the TONES rise in volume (or whatever word equates with musical notes) as you sing them, ergo, they start low (bottom of puz) and end high (top of puz)? Is that another theme layer? With CRESCENDO there to pull it all together? I'll let myself believe that. 😁
Interesting puz. I do like all the "turn down" answers are music related, not just random words. And two Revealers!
Wanted the CRESCENDO where GLISSANDO was at first. Malaprop, that one when I found it later. Not being musical knowing, GLISSANDO was a new one on me. I know someone who was in bands (played trombone a good chunk of his life), maybe I should've phoned a friend. Har.
Did manage to get puz 100% correct, though. Yay me! Couple of iffy spots I filled in, fingers crossed they were correct. PEG and BUB was one.
SKiBIB? What, are you drooling while skiing?
Anyway, Happy Sunday.
Four F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
I liked the fact that CRESCENDO was correctly clued (“gradually increase in volume”). Almost every time I see this word in print, it is incorrectly used to mean “climax,” which is completely wrong. When I see it, suddenly I’m AGLARE. I try not to nitpick but as a musician this drives me crazy.
Like Rex, I initially filled in the notes as do-re-mi etc but the crosses (not to mention the revealers) soon made it clear that the scale was going down. For once I figured out something in a puzzle before Rex did! It was a fun one for musical types.
Random: Catherine Parr was the last wife of Henry VIII. Can anyone explain how ROW at 69 D relates to the clue, which was “Part of a battleship guess”?
I broke an honest (no google, hints, checks) 245-day streak on this one and wanted to cry. Many puzzles (245 days’ worth, at least!) have enough info in the crosses that I can get things I don’t know. This one broke me, though. I had no idea about ?INOLE and thought THE PIPS rang a bell, but wasn’t certain. (Figured it wasn’t THE PITS, THE PISS, or THE PIGS, anyway.) Had something like G at the start of ?LISSANDO deep, deep in my brain … but no idea about BORGE, so I couldn’t check it. Add this to the fact that I had BUm instead of BUB and hadn’t even thought to try other letters. In the end, I had PINOLE and GLISSANDO correctly, but thanks to mORGE there was no happy music. I checked and rechecked clues and finally used the “check puzzle” option, hanging my head.
Sigh. RIP streak. May the next be even longer.
mEG and SLAm seemed plausible. I of course now remember that the song is called PEG, but for those who know nothing of Steely Dan, that will be a doozy. I knew it and still didn't get it right.
Just yesterday the song popped into my head and as is my wont every time that happens I thought "man if I never see another scale puzzle it'll still be too soon". So when I opened this one up I was not very pleased. Always great to see a theme that has been done approximately infinity times before. And no, going backwards doesn't make it clever.
There must be original, good, Sunday themes out there. Maybe some day we'll see one.
Ugh, had PRO instead of BRO up top, took ages to suss out, since POO worked for the down clue almost as well as BOO.
I'm 56, and I saw Victor Borge in concert when I was a kid! Is 56 old as dirt? Probably, these days...
That is what I had too! Seems like a more female response.
On the easy side, yes, but with enough challenge to keep me hooked.
If I start a Sunday puzzle late Saturday night -- especially on a night when I'm really tired as I was last night -- and I continue on even when I really want to go to bed, I know it's addictive. So many Sunday puzzles I can put down anywhere, even in the morning when I'm not tired. "Time to stop, Nancy!" I told myself last night, but I kept wanting to do "just one more clue. Just one more." I ended up going to bed with only the tip of the SE corner unfilled.
(I slept 9 hours. I needed it.)
Why was this puzzle addictive? Darned if I know. It can be very hard to pinpoint why some puzzles are so much more enjoyable than others. The right combo of struggle and whoosh, maybe?
One question (which has probably been answered, but I haven't read the comments yet.) Why is ENACTED the answer to "written in code"? I circled the clue last night so I'd remember to ask the question.
I went right to that “The Fugitive” movie scene as well. Only place I’ve ever heard the word, but it stuck with me all these years.
Annoying DNF for me. I had SLAm for SLAP and mEG for PEG. Both of which seemed reasonable and still do although slap is slightly more common.
It's SOL not SO. some music major.
That’s my only context for HINKY as well :)
Victor Borge, a TUXEDOed classical pianist, was also a brilliant comedian.
Apropos to this group is one of his best offerings about punctuation marks, but please YouTube some others - he was the one guest on a ‘60s variety shows that brought our family together to watch.
Phonetic Punctuation
The new remake of Les Miserables will feature the song WOAHMI.
If one wants to leave one's current situation, one might fly ONESCOOP.
My father served as the Chief Information Officer for the old American Football League. Yes, he was the AFLCIO.
I came home the other day and saw that all of the homes on my block had been reroofed with metal, except mine, which was done with split cedar rectangles. "Hey," I cried in astonishment, "Why was my roof SHINGLED out?"
I think that rapper Robert Matthew Van WINKLE should have named himself Rap Van WINKLE instead of Vanilla Ice.
Pretty nice for a Sunday and a debut. Thanks and congrats, Mike Ellison.
Medium for me, with quite a few names or titles I didn't know. Thanks to commenters to pointed. out that the SCALE is indeed going DOWN! I missed that entirely.
Until I started reading @Rex, I wasn't familiar with the term "theme density," but that certainly struck me today, with the wealth of theme-adjacent entries: adoring fans, (Beatles') mops, The Pips, bottom heavy, chant, I Tina, Borge, oldie, Miles, Pavarotti, Cinderella, Tenth, maraca, I Told You So, dot, Halo, sirens, emo pop, Winkle, Neal, Wiz Khalifa, Sean, Peg, That's Amore, Ellis, Adele, (guitar) straps, and I'll even throw in (Janacek's The Cunning Little) Vixen.
All those taking umbrage with "sol." Let's let the Sound of Music have the last word on this one.
It's "So, a needle pulling thread."
Not, "Sol, the Spanish sun overhead."
I think the L could possibly come from slurring it together with the following "la."
Anyway, googling gives 119k for "sol" and 393k for "so" so I guess both camps are SOL.
I enjoyed the puzzle even though my stupid DNF concerned ROW and SIP (I had raw and sir…I know…ridiculous). I was greatly helped by the fact that I knew the tallest building was [something] KHALIFA, and yes, I’d heard of WIZKHALIFA, yay me. I did NOT know ELLIS is who Branford and Wynton got their talent, but now I do.
I personally never got why “sol” was used in the crossword or anyone’s version of the scale. Makes me wonder if it is due to its next door neighbor LA. Hey…in the Sound of Music the lyric says “So, a needle pulling thread.” Well, harumpf…THAT is good enough for me! :D
A law is enacted to become part of a legal code.
ENACTED as in written into a code of law
I genuinely enjoyed solving this despite SO many things I didn't know, SO SO SO many people, and SO many songs. Thoughtful crosses helped throughout. I think a bit of music school helped too. Wheelhouse, as they say. And, um, SO is perfectly acceptable for SOL -- it's 2024 and you can write in English on scores instead of in Italian too (gasp).
Alas, a one letter fail like many of y'all -- a BeeDee little sucker. BUD/BUB DORGE/BORGE.
Propers: 21
Places: 3
Products: 13
Partials: 4
Foreignisms: 4
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 45 (32%)
Tee-Hee: Fiddle harlot = GLISSANDO VIXEN. Your BOTTOM HEAVY may be audiophilic, but mine is Kardashianesque.
Uniclues:
1 When noted tenor punches a member of the paparazzi all the while saying he hates pepperonchini.
2 The one you don't see during her subsequent pregnancy when her ankles have swollen up like balloons and moccasins are her only option.
3 Why a computer jockey for shoe jockeys is searching for an epipen.
4 哈利·波特 哈利·波特
5 When idolizers turn to excoriators.
6 Lists of times when sportscasters misused a word assuming it means apex.
7 Put fat Shrek for sale.
1 PAVAROTTI IN TWO DRAMAS (~)
2 RARER CINDERELLA SCENE (~)
3 NIKE'S CIO BEE
4 HUNAN HOME MOVIE CHANT
5 ADORING FANS SLAP SLIP
6 CRESCENDO SHOWCASES
7 EBAY BOTTOM HEAVY OGRE (~)
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: The opposite of how stadium naming rights committees think. ROAR NOT FOR SALE.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@okanaganer 2:37 AM
WAIT. You've never actually owned a suitcase?! WHAT?
I'm also old enough to have seen Victor BORGE on TV often back in the day and like just about everyone else here, I found him side-splittingly funny. Always.
Note to the younger generations: Do yourselves a favor and go find him on YouTube. His humor will transcend the decades; I'm absolutely sure of it. You're in for a real treat. And he was one of a kind -- there's absolutely no comic, past or present, who was anything like him.
Ditto!
Not a "fail" at all in my book, @Gary J. But a funny guy like you simply CANNOT go to your grave without ever having seen Victor BORGE even once. Go look him up right now!
Okay I guess. I just found there were too many 4-letter and 3-letter answers. Little bits and pieces that made it a choppy solve. Also, the answers with the note extension are only loosely related to music so while GLISSANDO is a really good theme answer ITOLDYOUSO isn’t.
LOL, you're right on all accounts!
Yes, it's "sol," and "ti" is pronounced "see" which makes one of the worst songs in one of Rogers and Hammerstein's least good musicals (better than Flower Drum Song for sure, but nowhere near Oklahoma or South Pacific; their publisher and estate owe a huge debt of gratitude to Julie Andrews for making it a hit) even more grating. By the way, be thankful few in the US use German solfege or even chromatic variants of French.
Simple for me, having made my life in music and learning fixed do. There is no do but do, to borrow an idea. My funniest error, because of this, was confidently setting down EADGBE for 125 across, with my brain translating "cords" as "strings." I was wrong, but it's a more elegant answer.
By the way, a Gregorian Chant is a chant, not a song. That's why it's called that. Although, I guess, thanks to Apple everything from a 10 second ditty to a 45 minute long symphony is now classified as a "song," isn't it?
Other than the guitar string things, I was really stuck around the center, with Tills, Loan, and Hinky. Otherwise very fast and breezy for me. And fun too.
Love your apy titled "gunk gauge" head count.... Keep up the good work, and maybe cc Shortz while you're t it, lol.
The solfège I learned in music school was DO RE MI FA SOl LA sI DO. However, as some have pointed out, SO is used in The Sound of Music. The title of the puzzle is The Sounds of Music, so SO belongs in the puzzle. However, TI is also from The Sound of Music, as opposed to si. So with the scale DO RE MI FA SO LA TI DO (in reverse) the puzzle is being true to its name.
LOL, @Beezer, you think that's bad - my DNF was stupider! Not only did I share your Sir, I also had raP for POP and Ram/mIZKHALIFA.
I also had cOiN as the shared finance/linguistics term for quite a while but couldn't make heads nor tails of cIN-TO. Changed HiLO to HALO and secured a LOAN for a HINKY.
Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera was a car manufactured by GM back in the day
Another nit is that SO is its own word, not part of another word.
The “iron” in a hotel room is not a “freebie” any more than a telephone or a TV set is. It’s an amenity but, if you take it with you, as freebie implies, I'm pretty sure you’ll hear from management. And “acres wide” is wrong. An acre is a unit of area while “wide” denotes linear distance.
My hubs and I went to see Victor Borge….back when you could just walk up to the ticket window. Someone stopped us to ask if we wanted to buy his as he couldn’t attend. He seemed like a nice person so we took them……and they were FRONT ROW SEATS!!! We had a fabulous time!
I’m sure glad I didn’t cough!😮💨😂😂
@Lewis 7:29 AM
23A: [March time.] IN TWO
Well, hey -- the constructioneer majored in "Music Education", ergo: SO is an ok SOL alternative. The Official M&A Help Desk Dictionary confirms this, btw.
fave thing: CRESCENDO … which ends in DO. Scaley.
staff weeject pick: SOB … a notable weeject. Alternative to SOLB, btw.
I thought the fillins were really neat & smoooth. Limited SunPuz theme humor here, but FALLTONES was kinda hinky-winkley-cool, at least.
Thanx for the Sunday serenade, Mr. Ellison dude. And congratz on buildin a SunPuz-sized xword, in yer debut effort. Surely musta suffered somewhat.
Masked & Anonymo5Us
**gruntz**
Pls explain Nikes = kicks
Took me 17 minutes (!) of searching to realize BUD/DORGE was my problem
Strong disapproval of HINKY.
I can recite that entire scene from The Fugitive that Anonymous posted above, but--never having heard anyone use HINKY--for 30 years, I've always assumed Biggs was saying "hanky". Admittedly, "hanky" doesn't make any more sense, but neither does HINKY.
No one says that. To paraphrase another movie quote, "Stop trying to make HINKY happen."
@astrotav: Victor BORGE was a huge musical star internationally, and definitely in the US, in the 1950s-70s.
This is the first Sunday puzzle in a long time that I've enjoyed. Clever, but not overly so, and felt like a puzzle designed for the solver's pleasure, not so that the designer could strut around, bragging about how difficult the puzzle was to make and how tough it would be to solve.
@Mr. Cheese: "Kicks" is slang for sneakers.
@Nancy 11:53 AM
As instructed, veni vidi and I am slayed (occidi?). So funny. How have I completely missed him? Love love love.
@Rex
I'll see your SOL rant and raise you "The Sound of Music" ""So, a needle pulling thread..." Obviously there was never an l on the end of so.
Euro could have been technically right, but EXTRA had a bit of an "aha" which EURO does not.
@ Mr. CCheese. Kicks is sometimes slang for shoes. And Nikes famous brand of...
@Mr. Cheese 12:46pm: I wondered about that, too. Kicks is evidently a slang alternative word for sneakers.
M&A Help Desk
@whoever asked: Battleship is an 8x8 grid on which you place your battleships of varying length. Opponents guess the ships’ locations by naming row/column coordinates, i.e. C6
Kicks = slang for shoes
@JonnyZ - CRESCENDO = climax is my main language pet peeve. Was just watching something on TV with closed captions that read: dramatic music builds to a crescendo. FAIL!!
Got everything except the WIZKHALIFA crosses and NIKES for "kicks." Good theme idea, and overall a good Sunday with less than the usual trashy fill.
This was a fun Sunday (for a change). Thank you, Mike.
I loved HOUDINI, didn't know BICORNES & never listened to Randy Travis. Good to see Gladys Knight & the Pips. I started out late today so I didn't have the patience to look for my error, so lost my streak. No biggie - it wasn't much of one anyway.
Thanks, again, Mike :)
Knew something was up - or down - when PAVAROTTI didn't fit in the horizontal squares. Still took a while to figure that out. After that, mostly smooth sailing. Had trouble remembering how to spell WIZ KHALIFA. Tried Tricornes. Nope.
Double dose of Steely Dan's "Aja" - "Peg," of course, plus BANYANS - Chinese music under banyan trees, from the title song.
64 year old NYer here - Victor BORGE was a gimme, did not hesitate on that one. HINKY, however..?
Fun puzzle. I like it when Sundays are not a slog. But... SKIBIB is not a thing. They are "bibs." A "bib" is what you wear when eating lobster. BOO to that answer.
"Kicks" = slang for new shoes, the kind made by Nike. Foster the People had a big hit "Pumped Up Kicks" a few years ago. Actually, a disturbing song with a great beat.
@Gary Jugert... I have only ever owned soft athletic type bags and backpacks. I remember my parents having rigid suitcases that latched, not zipped.
@Gary Jugert -- Good catch on IN TWO!
Easy but natick’ed at PIPS/PINOLE. Guessed P and got it right.
Actually it’s going up, just like it would if you sang the syllables or played them on an instrument.
Why would you go ahead with your hyper/critical blog post when you find out your biggest criticism of the puzzle is based on your misunderstanding of the conceit?
Jocks are male athletes. So, they’re each others bros.
Ugh, I just popped on here to see if it was really SO instead of SOl. And so it is. I've been a musician for 60 years or so, I have never seen SO. I don't know any of the songs, I don't care about the cartoon princesses. I am not going to finish.
Guess I was the only one for whom NEAL Smith was a gimme! Had a successful career in real estate after Alice fired the band.
Here’s a music-related clue that contains -SOL - “what Paul and Art did after Simon and Garfunkel” - answer: “WENTSOLO”
I think you will find that in the movie SOM the children sing the notes backwards and forwards.
Yes! from another singer.
Are you saying “Say, it’s not SO?”
Very late to the table today but want to add my commendation to the respect others have shown to. Victor Borge. You don’t have to be Danish to love him. On the other hand, you may have to be old to remember him. My reaction to the puzzle was a lot like @Nancy. Frustration with the PPP and some clues so ragged progress but the quality of the overall puzzle kept me interested and pushing to finish.
Am I crazy, or do the black squares going down to the right of 27 across and 67 across form a visual representation of a major scale descending, with the halftone where the squares drop straight down>
I totally agree this one deserves many kudos. About half the clues were musical… very clever from the band director/music major. I imagined he had sol much fun creating it!!
Benbini
As has been explained above, BORGE was a gimme for most people ove 50. Ditto the Pips Way too well known to be naticks. The point is we can’t know everything so some things are obscure to us but not to many others. Getting LEMAN- a majority of solvers would immediately remember the (I thought it was famous, but maybe just well known) race. So you were unlucky. But they aren’t naticks per Rex’s definition.
My take on SO/SOL: The DO-RE-MI song stretches the notion of a homophone twice. The first is with FA, which is "a long, long way to run" only in Boston and certain other -r dropping linguistic regions. Nobody thinks the musical note is FAR. The second is is with SOL, pronounced "sew" to make the lyric work. Nobody thinks the musical note is SO, even if it is an "acceptable variant."
Also, I seem to recall that the original lyric "Soul, it leaves you when you're dead" didn't go over well in test screenings...
Niallhost
I had no clue about the Steely Dan hit , but SLAP with a fine is a set expression, much more common than slam, which didn’t even occur to me. Because of that I thought the cross was fair.
Anonymous 10:31 AM
As many explained , so is acceptable. That is also how the note is pronounced in the famous song in the Sound of Music, which is of course the title of the puzzle
Sounds like a fine music major to me.
Anonymous 12:18
We are talking about a puzzle not a dissertation
Puzzles represent popular, not technical speech, unless specifically indicated Anyway we are talking about clues or hints to answers not dictionary definitions
Acres wide is a perfectly fine clue, or hint to the answer
Ditto “freebie” for amenity. Close enough for crosswords
I knew there would be an argument about SO and some outrage.
Many here that know better than me said it IS acceptable
And of course the Sound(s) of Music reference.
In my opinion, close enough for crosswords!
Liked the puzzle. Thought the theme was easy but many parts of the puzzle were hard for me. Did get it all though.
Did anyone else have cOiN for 54D and cINKTO for 54A? I figured to coin a phrase was linguistic term as well being financial. LINKTO was pretty crap fill in my opiniion. I thought cINKTO was an app or some webpage…
PS - HINKY is junk fill.
As a lifelong piano player, SO is totally acceptable!! This one was right up my alley, even if I didn't know many popular music PPP...
fwiw, i've never owned a suitcase either. i don't travel...except to my parents' and i have i guess what you would call an overnight bag instead. [and 1-2 big ikea bags full of laundry. i'm 40, but free laundry is free laundry! beats the laundromat.] but i did borrow a suitcase once, and i have seen a suitcase before, so.
was flying through this one in record time until some sticky spots in the bottom portion. BORGE crossing GLISSANDO was a total guess on the G, never heard of either, sorry everybody. then i had to run the alphabet on PARR crossing BICORNES - sorry, never heard of either of those...well, either. so that was a bit of a cheat i guess.
it was okay. certainly wooshier than most sundays lately. appreciate everyone who explained why the notes are in reverse order!
-stephanie.
Row and column for a battleship guess
HINKY is gold
DO TI LA SO(L) FA MI RE DO.
Make a note of that for next time.
Most of this was relatively easy but holy smokes, It is white boy April confirmed. We've got references to: golf, vanilla ice, Opera, Latin, French, skiing, Les Mis and Beyonce. I mean what else is on the bingo card?
Same here - took 15 mins to find this stupid crossing. True arcana
I am hereby adding a big heart or up-pointing thumb to this!
agree with Hinky being junk fill- nobody says that. i missed the BUB/BORGE cross. i had BUD/DORGE. had no idea who BORGE was but accept that it's a common enough reference for folks of a certain age...
White boy April? Certainly few things are whiter than the sound of Steely Dan, or so-called "Yacht Rock" in general.
Also, thanks for that Brandi Carlile performance of Hello In There, which I missed the first time around. One of the greatest songs written by anyone anywhere, even Dylan acknowledged that, and John Prine was a friend of a friend (Canadian folk legend John Allan Cameron, who included 3(!) Prine songs on one of his LPs), so those songs always had an extra bit of resonance for me, beyond their inherent perfection.
I love it when a puzzle shakes loose something I had long forgotten. Yesterday I listened to the Styx song Mr Roboto which I hadn’t heard in decades.
We say HINKY all the time. It’s about time it appeared in a crossword puzzle.
When you live in the Okanagan there is truly no reason to own a suitcase!
yes! i can’t believe a constructor with a music background did that, and that it wasn’t caught/fixed before publication.
Also a singer here, and I’ve only ever used so! The syllables aren’t globally standardised - I learnt ‘so’ in Australia through the Kodály system, which is a Hungarian music education philosophy. However, other Europeans, such as the French and Italians, use ‘si’ instead of ‘ti’
Coin flip between BUb/bORGE and BUD/DORGE (I got it wrong). NEAL Smith and this BORGE person seem afwully niche. ELLIS also unknown to me but probably more well known overall.
As a former music teacher, I loved this puzzle!! So much fun
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