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Unfair, to Brits / SAT 4-27-24 / Pistol used by James Bond / NASA rocket name since 1957 / Hybrid shape with straight edges and rounded corners / Modern driving aid / Company logo derived from a state symbol
Saturday, April 27, 2024
Constructor: Rich Norris
Relative difficulty: Medium
Word of the Day: Thomas NAST (11A: "Father of the American Cartoon") —
Thomas Nast (/næst/; German: [nast]; September 26, 1840 – December 7, 1902) was a German-born American caricaturist and editorial cartoonist often considered to be the "Father of the American Cartoon".He was a sharp critic of "Boss" Tweed and the Tammany Hall Democratic party political machine. He created a modern version of Santa Claus (based on the traditional German figures of Saint Nicholas and Weihnachtsmann) and the political symbol of the elephant for the Republican Party (GOP). Contrary to popular belief, Nast did not create Uncle Sam (the male personification of the United States Federal Government), Columbia (the female personification of American values), or the Democratic donkey, although he did popularize those symbols through his artwork. Nast was associated with the magazine Harper's Weekly from 1859 to 1860 and from 1862 until 1886. Nast's influence was so widespread that Theodore Roosevelt once said, "Thomas Nast was our best teacher." (wikipedia)
• • •
Did you know that DUMBWAITER and DOORKEEPER have the same number of letters and both start with "D"? Well, presumably you knew the "D" part, but I was surprised when I tested DUMBWAITER and it fit and it was "confirmed" by PERK and (I thought) STES (52A: Penthouses, e.g.: Abbr. => APTS). But AKA really wanted to be AKA (39A: Blotter letters), which messed up DUMBWAITER, and finally REEBOK confirmed that no, it wasn't DUMBWAITER. Do upscale buildings even have DUMBWAITERs? Well, yes, if the buildings are older mansion-type things, then they do. I'm semi-satisfied by the aptness of my wrong answer. I don't think I fell into any other holes besides the DUMBWAITER hole. I did try to spell WAZE "WAYZ" (28D: Modern driving aid). I also typo'd Mad LIBS as "Mad LIPS," which had me wondering (for a minute or so!?) what the number PI could have to do with "some coins" (17A: Like some coins => BIMETALLIC). You ever have your own typo hold you up? Maddening.
Other stuff:
- 30A: Regatta leaders (COXES) — made two bad assumptions here—one, that the regatta had to do with sailboats (like most regattas I've ever heard of), and two, that "leaders" meant "the ones who are ahead of everyone else in the race" (as opposed to the person sitting in the boat "leading" the rowers).
- 33A: Things drawn in a group (LOTS) — wanted OXEN, but I think that's just because OXEN might "draw" a plow.
- 7D: NASA rocket name since 1957 (ATLAS) — this is probably a gimme if you grew up during the Space Race. I don't know how I got this. It's vaguely familiar. Once I got the "T" and "S" it went in. I thought it was going to be something much more esoteric, somehow.
- 38D: Kind of snapper, for short? (SLR) — the snappers are back. Yesterday, they were long-haired (actually, long-tailed) turtles, today, cameras (single-lens reflex).
- 57A: B.C. and others (ERAS) — LOL what? The entire history of time before the putative birth of Christ is just one "era" now? That's like when Phoebe asks Rachel what period the (Pottery Barn) apothecary table is from and Rachel says "uh, it's from Yore ... like, the days of Yore, you know?"
See you Sunday, I hope.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
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119 comments:
Clunky is the word I use to describe.
I agree with Medium for a Saturday. In my vast (NOT!) experience with horse racing, I've heard the terms DOPE SHEETs and @Rex tip sheets, but I've always called them tout SHEETs.
Overwrites:
mAke SENSE before TALK SENSE at 14D
SQUIggle before SQUIRCLE (huh?) at 35D
Briefly considered Apb before AKA at 39A
adidas before REEBOK at 42A
No clue on 20A WALTHER PPK or the 40A Gulf of Guinea capital
34A really wanted to be BOOK(something) - and was - but I couldn't imagine the clue fitting anything but audiobook
I just couldn’t get my arms around DOORKEEPER - it doesn’t sound like a real thing, person or job, but lo and behold - a search of the web and apparently the term has been around since biblical times. So now I’m wondering why I haven’t seen it in an Xword before (or maybe I have but those brain cells have atrophied?). At the very least, an indication that it’s time for more caffeine.
I love SQUIRCLE - good to see that the NYT still has a fetish for the quasi “made-up” words even in Will’s recuperative period. They used to drive me nuts, now I think it’s just hysterical for some reason.
I thought Rex might call for stricter gun reference control legislation instead of embracing the firearm/handgun reference - but apparently he’s cool with it. Seems like a slippery slope though - the next thing you know we will have NRA references showing up in grids from time to time.
Can anyone enlighten me as to the “mecca” that SOHO can acronymic itself to? That clue has me stumped.
I have my hundreds of hours playing Goldeneye on the N64 to thank for me knowing WALTHER PPK cold and putting it in confidently as my first answer on this grid. Struggled my way down the eastern edge and then DOPE SHEET, NOT CRICKET, and TTOP basically ended the solve for me. In a billion years I never would have guessed the DOPE part - I wanted timE SHEET or something. Before I googled what it was I thought “is this a heroin thing? Like track as in tracks in your arm?” Nope, it’s horse racing. What a weird niche word. Add to that TTOP feeling like an ancient term no one has used in decades and then NOT CRICKET making absolutely no sense…bad road block there I wasn’t able to overcome.
I don’t think SOHO is “acronymic.”
I suppose this rates "medium" if you are familiar with WALTHERPPK and NOTCRICKET -- which I wasn't, so "challenging" for me.
And Bob's your uncle
I actually went “oh come the F on!” When I solved CLEARTAPE. I really wanted something with STAMPS there, and WALTHERPPK was just bonkers. That was my last solve (had haveSENSE instead of TALKSENSE) and when it finally landed I was shocked at the solve music. “How are PPK any combo of letters ever?!” And since the whole answer was foreign to me, WALT(h)ER with an H really threw me for a loop. Bleh.
“SOuth of HOuston” is a posh neighborhood in NYC with upscale shopping.
Very well-done, professional puzzle, that would have benefited from some more trickery in the cluing. Also, easier than yesterday's.
SW was the toughest section, thanks to steS before APTS, and wanting 'DOORman' but needing every cross to get DOORKEEPER.
And part of brain said 'WebstERPPK', while another part of brain said "that's close, but not quite'. Eventually changed it wo WeLTHERPPK, where thing stayed until almost the bitter end, when I finally twigged on ATLAS and I was done.
Solid, solid puzzle. Classic feel. And by classic, I don’t mean old-fashioned; I mean high quality.
Clues that make you think for a good number of beats, but when their answers suddenly hit you, you realize that they’re eminently fair.
A panoply of answers from many areas: Sports, geography, the arts, marketing, food, science.
A lovely flowing grid with a soaring 18 longs (answers of eight letters or more), including 12 ten-letter answers! This allows for many of those precious solving moments where the addition of one more cross rings the bell and brings the “Aha!”.
Freshness, where a quarter of the answers have appeared four times or less in the 80-year-old Times puzzle, including eight first-timers, my favorites being SQUEE, SQUIRCLE, and LOCAL PAPER.
So much skill built in, skill that comes through talent and experience (30 years of making puzzles).
And sweet serendipities, such as EMIT crossing a backward “emit”, and the terrific PuzzPair© cross of PERK and EXTRA EXTRA.
High quality all around. Just a lovely Saturday puzzle. Thank you, Rich, for bringing class to Crosslandia for so long, and for a most splendid outing!
I think technically it is.
Given BCE and CE (Before the Common Era and Common Era) are alternatives to BC and AD, I thought clueing BC as a ERA was fair.
The constructor is a blast from the past. Nice puzzle - WALTHER, SACRED HEART and a couple of other gimmes helped. Liked BIMETTALIC and NOT CRICKET but IN OVERTIME, CLEAR TAPE were a little pedestrian.
Smiled at your funny little ways
SoHo is acronymic and god knows there are plenty of small shops and galleries that no one ever seems to be in - but a mecca? SIRI and WAZE are slightly dated but still widely used.
Enjoyable Saturday morning solve. Stella has her groove on again today in the Stumper.
We don’t take our trips on LSD
surprised no one has mentioned the aberration that is NEGRO as a way someone would order café. as a Spanish person I can confirm we do not order black coffee like that, a black coffee is called "café solo" in Spanish. absolutely cringed at this. how did it make it past the editor?
I agree with Rex on everything he wrote except the word “medium.” Very hard for me. I resorted to the lowest form of cheating - the “check word” function in the app, just to confirm I wasn’t wasting time trying to build off wrong answers - I had so little filled in after the first pass. The only wrong answer I found was adidas instead of REEBOK.
Some of the answers were definitely NOT CRICKET to me. I did not let out a SQUEE on learning that St. ANNS is a school in Brooklyn. (Is that famous?) Speaking of the days of yore, BOOKS ON CD needed something to indicate old-timeyness. I did finish without any additional cheats, so some sense of accomplishment, but I didn’t have a lot of pleasurable moments in the process - maybe a smile at “small town issue” for LOCAL PAPER.
Speaking of which, as a journalist, I lament the rapid die-off of the small-town paper. So much of the US is becoming a news desert, and corrupt pols are rubbing their hands in glee that no one is watching over them at town hall - or even, increasingly, the state house. Some commenters complain about the NYT’s greed when it comes to puzzles. Not me. It’s one of the few papers that has found a way to pay for good journalism, through puzzles, cooking, etc. - things people will pay for that finance investigative reporting or overseas bureaus. Wish LOCAL PAPERS had something like that.
I initially had BREAK for “Word with wind or water”, an answer I much prefer, although admittedly I thought it was a little off-brand for the NYT.
South of Houston
I know “not cricket” from the Squeeze song. https://youtu.be/A4rVWTpoZdI?si=43rMard-aeuta1m9
This was a properly challenging Saturday. The NW was the easy part but after that was when I struggled. Part of why I had a hard time remembering PPK or particularly the K part of that gun, is that damn "ppp" term people use here. Only when the K came back to me did the NE fall.
DEGAS was a gimme but COXES stopped me cold. DUMBWAITER was my best guess down there and at least it got me ERAS. BASKS gave me PERK and APTS and I backfilled the SW.
I was able to get the SE from both directions and finished the center last. WAZE and ROKU are things I never really learned. Even though I don't use SIRI it's much more familiar to me
BOOKONCD was the only wooden sounding entry. I briefly considered LOOKBOOK as I do the SB regularly. Speaking of which....
yd -0 QB13
Just a medium difficulty for me, but some of the dullest long answers I've seen in a long time. These are prime real estate--why waste them on clunky phrases like CLEAR TAPE, DOORKEEPER, and BIMETALLIC?
So many awful answers. WALTHERPPK - real inferable! (And a gun, Rex - a GUN! Where’s your consistency?)
SQUIRCLE and SQUEE? Just make up words now? What’s the Times slogan - All The Qs That Fit (ISH)?
DOORKEEPER and DOPESHEET - as Rex points out - are not the terms. Should be BOOKsONCD (or Tape or Gramophone) - plural!
SIRI and ROKU and WAZE - oh my. (Hey, Oz DID have a DOORKEEPER - but as a bouncer to keep the odd foursome a WAYS from the WIZ).
Isn’t NEGRO a SLR these days?
Sorry, on this Saturday, the bunion wasn’t worth the stiletto SQUEEze!
I thought I had made it clear that ADORBS was never again to be used in a crossword puzzle, or, preferably, in conversation.
I also thought “Heroine? Really?”
Oops HEROIN
Surprised Rex didn't list "Book on CD" with the old tech...It came to mind but I kept trying to think of something better because it seemed so antiquated.
BOOKONCD is among the most gruesome answers I can recall. First of all, IF it’s even a thing, the clue really needs to indicate its bygone-ness. But far more importantly, IS it even a thing? To my ear, Book on Tape was the term used even in the CD era. Could just be me, though, admittedly.
Not all Spanish speakers are from Spain. Cafe NEGRO is common in Puerto Rico and I've certainly heard it in Mexico.
MAD LIBS? Gah! Do we take this for confirmation of a rightward shift in the NYT editorial world? It’s already right wing enough thank you!
Am I the only ADORBS hater here? It makes me cringe. SQUEE and SQUIRCLE were just annoying. Amongst Canadian criminal law practitioners, a DOPE SHEET is a prosecutor’s summary of the case against an accused person.
Looks like this puzzle made me crabby.
This started badly, had some nice chooses in the middle, and ended in the NW. I actually knew that the SP ended in OT, but could not make it fit, and assumed it was arcane sports lingo. We're it not for SIRI and WALTHERPPK I would never have got a foothold. (putting Manx in, instead of GAEL gave me a lot of grief.)
When my ADORBS gives me a special TEXACOSTAR, he expects SQUEaling, not SQUEEing, and I really question the status of this word.
Liked NOTCRICKET, and SQUIRCKLE, never heard of DOPESHEETS, and cluing for CLEARTAPE seemed a bit if a stretch.
SE corner was death. No chance on NOTCRICKET or DOPESHEETS. BOOKONCD is so bogus, as is CLEARTAPE (as clued) and DOORKEEPER. Luckily I know my firearms, so WALTHERPPK was no problem. I imagined that being a stumbling block for many.
In sum, too many groaners in this one, which is particularly crappy when they are what's standing in your way for a fast solve. Boo.
Lots of challenge today. Started by guessing 21D's clue was describing ice cream and confirming with the cross of ADORBS, but had to leave the area for the SE when nothing more came to me.
My last entry was the D of DOPE SHEETS. I had the ridiculous hOPE SHEETS and was looking forward to finding out what 34D would end up, ending in “KONCh”. DOPE is appropriately describing that.
Heart had a #1 hit in 1987? I had no idea.
NOT CRICKET, got it off the TC of TTOP and SACRE. I read so many of my Mom's romantic novels (always set in England) in my youth, that must be where I got that phrase.
Rich Norris, thanks for the workout!
The number of things that are to me not things is entirely too high. Never heard anyone say "doorkeeper". "Book on CD" hasn't been a thing in over a decade. "Clear tape"???? It's "packaging tape" to anyone who actually speaks English, and does the post office even sell it? Who goes into the post office any more?
That plus being completely unfamiliar with the British-ism made the Southwest basically impossible for me.
I had a wipeout in the SE -- having no idea what 4-letter word beginning with an "O" Elizabeth Warren calls herself (OLDS, maybe???); having written in suPErfEcTa instead of DOPESHEETS for the "trackgoer" clue; not knowing the ice crystals...or the unfair Britspeak...or the Big 12 team.
All this, btw, after suffering greatly to fill in all the rest of the puzzle correctly and without cheating. And all for naught, as it turned out.
But I had one real coup -- very exciting to me, if perhaps not to any of you. I've quite often had to come up with my very own neologisms and portmanteaus because I'm not familiar with any of the current ones.
"Hmmm," I said to myself. "A hybrid shape of straight edges and rounded corners. If I were making up an 8-letter word for that, what would it be?" I had the first "S", the "I", and maybe an "R" from ROKU? (I wasn't sure of ROKU.)
SPHIRCLE, I wondered? No! Spheres and circles are both round. Aha!!! I've got it! SQUIRCLE!!! That's what I'd call it!! Definitely SQUIRCLE!
And SQUIRCLE it was. Of course, don't ask me to explain SQUEE for the "excited outburst" because I can't possibly. I've heard of a squeal, but never of a squee. (Google is letting me know with a squiggly red line under squee that it doesn't like it any more than I do.)
So a DNF on an impossibly hard Saturday puzzle. But much personal excitement over my "invention" of the portmanteau SQUIRCLE.
SQUEE is a word?!
Doesnt that make it an abbreviation not an acronym?
Pleased to finish this but had help from my husband right out of the box with my question, “what was odd about the end of Super Bowl LVIII”? INOVERTIME very helpful! I somehow remembered WALTHER but, like @Rex had to wait for crosses to get PPK. SQUIRCLE was inferable through crosses and I must admit, I don’t think I’ve EVER heard (or read) the word SQUEE in my life…how does that happen?
@wanderlust…PREACH! (In newspeak). My LOCALPAPER is NOT “small-town” (unless a metro area of 2 million is small-town) and EVERY day I consider cancelling. My husband and I are constantly pointing out local articles that leave out important info (not secret info), plus we now routinely get the SAME story, often by a local reporter on a national news item PLUS the “McPaper” version on the next page!
As for DOORman v. DOORKEEPER…um, okay. I guess THAT is gender neutral AND they DID say “upscale.” I wonder how many highrise residential buildings (even what MOST would consider upscale) have people who actually OPEN the door for you (except at hotels)? Seems like this is being replaced by people stationed by the front door at a desk inside. But then again, I only VISIT NYC so I’m just blathering.
Second day in a row of persisting through a long tough solve without any form of cheating and getting the Happy Music when I entered my final letter--the Q in SQUEE/SQUIRCLE (never heard of either of those).
Not sure if SOHO is intended as a reference to NYC (where I associate it more with residential area than shopping) or to London (where I associate it with trendy shopping area). Both my associations are admittedly based on my perceptions 40 or 50 years ago!
WALTHERPPK was a mighty WOE.
Hey All !
Reached my angstiness level of 45 minutes, and started to cheat unabashedly! First had to Goog for LOME. Funny, BENIN lies on the Gulf of Guinea. Next, SACRE. Sacre Bleu! LOME got me that middle section, but further cheating occurred in the south. Having never heard of DOPE SHEETS, I wanted that to start rOPE, but my BOOKONCr had me scratching my head. Hit Reveal Square to get the D, and finally the ole brain let me see ON CD. Silly brain. SQIRCLE new here, too.
Had NASh for NAST in the NE forever. Wanted either HAveSENSE or make sense for TALKSENSE. A WALTHERPPe is just as reasonable as a PPK.
So a little toughie of a puz here.
adidas for a while for REEBOK, wanted spicy for a bit before BOOZE. Oh, and had TEXAnsSTAR before TEXACO STAR. I said, "Isn't it the Cowboys that have the star?" Thinking somehow the Texans adopted some sort of star-related logo. Har, good stuff.
Happy Saturday!
One F
RooMonster
DarrinV
i think Doorkeeper is fine. Doorman should stay in the past with fireman, policeman etc.
I liked the puzzle
Well, this was a mish-mash of the old and new, foreign and domestic, literal and figurative. I got WALTHERP and drew a blank on the rest—appreciated @puzzlehoarders linkage of PPK to PPP. Was totally surprised to get happy music when I added “D” to DOPESHEETS because I had been completely unable to finish BOOKONC….needed more coffee methinks…for me a challenging quirky puzzle that fits my view of crossword clues and answers having to be “close enough” as in “handgrenades and horseshoes.”
Tex Ritter was doing fine as a movie star, but his career really took off when they got TEXACOSTAR. At that point he really put his foot on DEGAS.
If you don't want to get fat from eating your own words, write them on LOCALPAPER.
I do a party trick where I assert definitively how old people are. This garners me quite a few party invitations. Currently I AVERAGES twice a month.
I guess a sexually adventurous robot might be BIMETALLIC.
Nice puzzle. One of those chip away and chip away types until you look up and it's done. Thanks, Rich Norris.
does anyone call it 'clear tape'? As in, 'I'm heading to the post office to pick up some clear tape'? I'd think of that stuff as packing or strapping tape, or simply tape.
Certainly no walk in the park for me. Things like NOT CRICKET and WALTHER PPK really did me in. And now I suppose we have to say DOORKEEPER, but what if it’s Carlton Your Doorman from the old Rhoda TV show? That would not do. SQUIRCLE was also a new discovery but closely related to squoval which is how I like my nails shaped.
RP suggests that anyone who was around during the space race would automatically know ATLAS but not in my case. I can remember standing outside watching the night sky for the mysterious Russian Sputnik to appear, but I’m much more inclined to associate that ERA with the Mercury astronauts. The Right Stuff is a great book and film about John Glenn and that group of brave men. And if you want an entertaining tale set during the dawn of space exploration, read Rocket Boys or the movie of the anagram name, October Sky. Both the true life account of Homer Hickam, who started out a dirt poor kid in West Virginia, building rockets in his mother‘s basement and went on to become NASA engineer.
Really challenging for me. About 3/4 of the puzzle fell pretty quickly but then it took me a very, very long time to fill out the middle and especially the SE. Didn’t help that I misread the clue for ROKU and had HULU in there for a bit, but even once I corrected that error, SQUIRCLE, NOT CRICKET, DOPE SHEETS, and OKIE were killers for me. Was worried I wouldn’t finish but just barely eked it out.
I believe they do say this in Latin America
@Anon 10:13 AM - I thought the same (re: SOHO not being an acronym), but apparently the definition is broader than I’d assumed. According to Wikipedia, at least: “Acronyms commonly are formed from initials alone, such as NATO, FBI, YMCA, GIF, EMT, and PIN, but sometimes use syllables instead, as in Benelux (short for Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg), NAPOCOR (National Power Corporation), and TRANSCO (National Transmission Corporation). They can also be a mixture, as in radar (Radio Detection And Ranging) and MIDAS (Missile Defense Alarm System).”
I understand the expectation that the doorkeeper be tipped during the Christmas holiday and at other times when the service may call for it, but, when dining out, is one really expected to tip a dumb waiter?
Just asking for a friend.
Well, I might ask @Rex to scoot over and let me sit with him on the puzzle bench. "Slightly off my wavelength." Yes, that's a good way to describe me.
BIMETALLIC (check)...SQUEE (check)...SQUIRCLE (check...Should I continue? Nah.
I happily started off on the right track with LOCAL PAPER... SQUEE # 1. Followed by IN OVER TIME...SQUEE # 2. Then the SQUEE's began to falter. They more or less became NOT CRICKET.
PILL. Are you really a PILL and not a PEST. Yes you are because I remembered WALTHER. I forgot your PPK, though. The TALK SENSE down gave me the K and I let out another SQUEE. Move on.
COXES? Really? That one sounds like something a Brit might call a tallywacker. What I was most surprised at, was how many answers I finally did get. My stare fest helped me but it also made me dizzy.
Can someone please explain why one would go all the way to the post office, stand in line for ages, only to buy CLEAR TAPE?
SO...In conclusion...I finished the puzzle with a cheat on COXES and REEBOK. (A good sounding name for a pub). I did look up to see if SQUIRCLE and SQUEE were correct. SOHO didn't seem right for a shopping Mecca but it fit and I finished up with DOPE SHEET. My favorite answer? BOOZE.
Found this one very easy for a Saturday - House. Wheelhouse. LOCAL PAPER seemed so on the nose I resisted entering it, but IN OVERTIME and downs confirmed. Knew WALTHER PPK.
You can trust your car to the man who wears the star....one of those jingles that stuck in my head.
Wanderlust and Beezer - I've been involved in newspapers one way or another since a paper route in the early 1970s. Dispiriting what's happened to many of them. I subscribe to the local metro paper - but it's printed (not owned) by Gannett (shudder) and mailed.
Seems lately that Fridays and Saturdays veer between easy and challenging, at least to me. With few in the middle.
I agree with Rex and Lewis today, somehow:
Many clues were just off enough to keep me from seeing the answer, but then seeming entirely defensible upon completion. NW and center were my biggest problems. Sure things are BORNE on wind and water, but airborne seems way more common usage. AWRY wants askew or errant; “wrong”as a clue leads so many other places first. A CHORUSLINE is traditionally a group of dancers (think Rockettes) not a “musical group”, unless you mean the cast of the famous musical. Again, defensible, but weirdly a bit off.
SOHO = South Of HOuston in my book, or South of HOrton in London - either works.
For an upscale building in NYC, I’ve only ever heard “I live in a DOORman building”.
RP, Maybe dumbwaiters exist in some residential buildings that had to be called hotels for zoning purposes like the Apthorp?
At Saratoga Springs track, the paper with the race info is called a PINKSHEET, so the PINK was very hard to let go of.
Coxswains and COXES are pronounced only one letter apart. Caught on right away, but I’d never seen the shortened version before.
Takeanap>RECHARGE
Monet>DEGAS
Not sure how and when I saw SQUEE. it has a Rick & Morty energy to it - Love it, but doubted it would make in into a NYT puzzle.
Beretta has the same number of letters as WALTHER - PPK just a letter jumble extension to me. I thought the gun would be more familiar, as most things Bond. Please no more martini discussions….
Post office most definitely sells CLEARTAPE, used for packing in a way that doesn’t obscure any addresses or scanner codes.
Who goes to a post office to buy clear tape
Had many of the same challenges as those above. Some of the answers made me SQUEE but it wasn’t necessarily good excitement more agitation. Overall about right for a Saturday. It’s name sake area of the puzzle pretty much had me running around in SQUIRCLEs, Cure the groans.
A good old-fashioned Saturday puzzle, really tough because of entries that are either obscure or so vaguely clued that thy could be anything. I enjoyed it a lot, although it took me forever. I had a couple of writeovers -- marS before EDYS, steS before APTS SpUrt before SQUEE (it's in the dictionary, though I've never heard it IRL).
Working the acrosses, my first entry was NAST, which gave me NEGRO, ETTA, GAEL, & TALK SENSE. Then nothing, (I figured Bond might tote a glocK, but it didn't fit NEGRO) until DEGAS. That got me to DEGAS (I think there was just a big DEGAS/Manet exhibition somewhere, maybe the Met, or I wouldn't have known it), which gave me PRAWNS (which I eyed with suspicion) and nothing else. Well I eventually inferred ANNS (maybe not a famous school, but a very famous saint, so I took the plunge). Finally I saw LOME, which was more productive, filling in the center (except for the aforementioned error at EDYS, which blocked AWRY) and gradually working my way out from there.
I didn't like DOORKEEPER either, but thought maybe the female members of the profession had instigated a change. I also thought an acronym was limited to one letter per word, but that's not what the dictionary says (I checked after solving), and it had to be SOHO.
I liked CHORUS LINE once I got it. I had the CHO, so naturally thought CHORUS or CHORale, but both were too short. I was afraid it would turn out to be CHORISTERS, which would have been horrible. Then finally it dawned: not a group that is musical, but a group in a musical! English is such a beautifully ambiguous language.
The top third of this was early week easy. The SW was a tough Saturday tough. I wanted some sort of stamp where CLEAR TAPE was supposed to go, DOOR KEEPER was a WOE (DOOR man???), EXTRA EXTRA did not leap to mind given the clue, B.C. is an ERA???, TEXACO STAR took a lot of crosses….thank goodness for AKA, ERR, and REEBOK or I’d still be working on it.
drAGS before FADES ate up nanoseconds in the middle.
In the SE SQUIRCLE (Hi @Rex) and SACRE were WOEs, tipSHEETS (Hi again @Rex) wouldn’t fit, Ucla before UTES…so problems there too.
Liked it except for the evil clueing in the SE.
Medium by time, but still challenging like a proper Saturday. Yay for LOME, Togo. (LO MEin, to go.)
Glad to see a GoldenEye reference from Anonymous, but the gun in the game was the PP7, based on the Walther PPK. Probably changed the name for legal reasons. If anyone cares: PPK stands for Polizeipistole Kriminal (police pistol criminal).
I thought the rocket was good-old-crosswordese AGENA, but luckily it didn't fit with INOVERTIME. Yay sportsball. @Whatsername mentioned October Sky. Wholesome and "prodigious" movie, I enjoyed it.
Are you the Keymaster? I'm looking for the DOORKEEPER.
Edit: Are you the Keymaster? I am the DOORKEEPER. (Ghostbusters reference fail.)
Meh SQUIRCLIZED. Is this the best of 350 submitted this week? We apparently needed somebody to write one more. Pretty challenging, but no real payoff for the struggle except for SQUIRCLE. I like TEXACO STAR for some reason.
😫: BIMETALLIC, WALTHERPPK, SQUEE, DOOR KEEPER, NEGRO, CLEAR TAPE. No.
Propers: 4
Places: 5
Products: 8
Partials: 6
Foreignisms: 1
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Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 24 (34%)
Tee-Hee: DOPE, [Show up].
Uniclues:
1 Why the ballerinas are blurry.
2 What God does before your basement floods.
3 Classy call girl in Custer City.
1 DEGAS' AWRY EYE
2 RECHARGE CIRRUS
3 OKIE AT A PREMIUM (~)
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Her off-topic comment seemed healthy. ASIDE WAS LO-FAT.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Not 'Medium' for me. But made me want to work through it as most Saturdays lately don't. For some reason I had Dumbwaiters (??? that has to be a first for wrong answers) for DOORKEEPERS, didn't know BIMETALLIC, SQUEE which would have led me to SQUIRCLE. I did like EXTRA EXTRA. In spite of a few cheats, I liked it.
In a rush this morning, so will just say I found the puzzle just as tough as I hope for on a Saturday and fun to solve.
And...a famous literary DOORKEEPER appears a short tale related within Franz Kafka's novel The Trial. If you're not familiar with "Before the Law", I recommend it!
Hate to admit it, but after ONIT, the second "word" I splatzed into this puz was STER. Thought both of my answers were desperate stabs, at the time. So, thanx, xword gods.
This rodeo played out pretty easy [for a SatPuz], until I reached the SQUEE-SQUIRCLE region. Lost cherished nanoseconds, down thereabouts. Soooo … yeah, about an average SatPuz solvequest challenge, overall.
staff weeject pick: MSN. Abbreve meat and mighty mysterious clue, at our house. honrable mention to the "snappy" SLR clue. Only 8 of these lil rascals to choose from today, btw.
For these themeless puzgrids, M&A always wonders what the seed entries were. Is Rich Norris a big 007 fan? WALTHERPPK kinda stands out. I remembered the WALTHER part with no sweat, but has been a few too many years since my last Bond-book read, to recall that there PPK part.
Nuthin in the upper or lower 10-stacks stands out as a really must-have seed entry.
Hey, maybe Norris dude just started out ALONE with BOOZE, and spread out from there?
Thanx for squallenge, Mr. Norris dude. Smacked of one of yer old-style Stumpers, in the SE.
Masked & Anonymo4Us
**gruntz**
manx, not GAEL, was a given, or so I thought.
As someone who grew up in London, I thought this puzzle was definitely "not cricket". I go along with those who had issues with "doorkeeper", "squee", "squircle" , "book on CD", etc. I also think Super Bowl LVIII ended AFTER overtime, not "in overtime", amirite? But I have one big ask of my fellow-bloggers: can someone help me with "Okine" and Elizabeth Warren? I have no clue! (see what I did there?)
@Jonny Z (9:20) No, you are not alone in hating ADORBS. It makes me crabby too. In fact, I think we should join with @Eater of Sole (8:41) in demanding a total banishment. We’ve got our rights.
@egs (10:30) Sexually adventurous robot - LOL. My aunt used to say, “If you want to go to bed with nothing on your mind, read the LOCAL PAPER.”
@PH (11:43) Wholesome yes, so few of those to choose from. And I had forgotten about prodigious. 😄
Whew, finally done with no cheats - SQUEE! But I did so want the Briticism to be hOT CRICKET. HOT CRICKET just sounds like something’s wrong, like a hot mess or in hot water. But somehow, somewhere I had seen DOPE SHEETS so it had to be BOOK ON CD and NOT CRICKET. Disappointing. I also strongly disagree that listening to a BOOK ON CD is “Reading.” (Wondered briefly about BOOKmark, as in you’d “rather not read” more, but not all bookmarks have words on them.)
Glad I didn’t think of dumbwaiter. I love the idea of them, though, and I wanted to install a large dumbwaiter not just for dishes, but for us and the pets, like a manually operated elevator. Probably just a pipe dream.
Made a toughISH puzzle tougher by first guessing Goat for the Isle of Man resident, trying NASh before NAST, and worst of all, BrOs before BLOC. I had plunked down an S at the end of the “Unified group” slot, which resulted in TEXAs..STAR for a while.
As a teen I read all of the Bond books so the WALTHER PPK was locked away in the same brain nook with SQUEE and DOPE SHEETS. Maybe that last one was from “The Black Stallion” or another of the many horse books I devoured in the “days of Yore” ERA.
@Wanderlust, @Beezer and @Ride the Reading - Yes, in the days of Yore our LOCAL PAPER may not have been high quality journalism (some referred to it as “The Glaring Error”) but it’s now a shadow of its former self. Down to two small sections (one of which is sports, so basically useless). Concert reviews were dropped decades ago. Still subscribe because it seems like an obligation - “support your LOCAL PAPER” - and because Mr. A likes the games, but now that it’s delivered by mail we may go digital.
Thanks, Mr. Norris, nice workout - appropriate for a Saturday and taking full advantage of the ambiguity of the English language, as @jberg pointed out while enlightening me, at least, on the CHORUS LINE clue. (Thanks, @jberg, my brain was too tired to chase down that last aha moment!)
Drummer Connie Kay was born April 27, 1927. He played with Lester Young, Stan Getz, Coleman Hawkins, Charlie Parker, Paul Desmond, Miles Davis and more. Here he is with the Modern Jazz Quartet in Don’t Stop This Train, from Blues on Bach.
This was awful. Sacre-NotCricket-Dopesheets-TexacoStar-BookonCD-Squircle-Cirrus all in the southeast was a complete joke. No fun at all anywhere in this puzzle. BTW, don't ALL people assemble IKEA furniture step-by-step?
Couldn't finish it even after three cheats. Never heard of SQUEE or SQUIRCLE, or ROKU, or WALTHERPPK, which might be the most far-fetched item in any puzzle. Someone could watch all the Bond films more than once without knowing the brand of his gun.
BORNE is very poorly clued. And considering the many ways ALONE could be clued, leave it to the editor to allow the most remote clue possible.
Not a pleasant Saturday morning for me.
@Upstate
An OKIE is someone from Oklahoma...I think originally coined in the novel "The Grapes of Wrath."
As much as I admire ETTA James, I'm never entirely comfortable with these clues that classify her as "jazz." R&B, definitely; soul or blues, probably. But the true jazz ETTA is ETTA Jones.
Some complaints re bookend left me confused. If both books on tape and books on cd are animated, what has replaced them>
Not excited about SQUEE. ADORBS sounds like a poorly-named diaper brand.
Overall, a decent Saturday challenge that belongs on Friday.
If you’re Spanish then you know that you can’t count on how to say MANY things, from country to country. My understanding is that Argentina is as much of a culture shock as Spain is for those accustomed to SW-American/Mexican Spanish. I can’t imagine how this would be cringe unless your concern is PC in nature, which… well. Coffee time.
Challenging for me, but not in a way I enjoy. A few long answers that were not gettable at all - Walther PPK, Not Cricket, Dope Sheets - unless you were familiar with the trivia (I’d add Texaco Star but I had at least heard of Texaco but not in years) and some that didn’t quite land - Book On CD (Book on Tape or Audiobooks are more in the language), Clear Tape (have literally never bought this at a post office - you can buy clear tape any number of places), Doorkeeper (I feel like this might be a word, but not one I would associate with an upscale building - Doorman, Security, etc. having lived and worked in many an “upscale building” without ever hearing this).
Add some short answers that were just trivia (not familiar with Brooklyn schools, and too many Saints have four letter names (Luke, John, Mark, Ines), knew Manx but not Gael, have heard of Lome, but not in my capital knowledge (I’m reasonably good at geography, and knew the rough location, but don’t have the capital of Togo memorized), wouldn’t think of Soho as particularly a shopping Mecca or an acronym, never heard of a Squircle, don’t know how AKA and blotters are related.
I get that there are going to be crosswords with trivia I know and those I don’t know, but this was just so far out of my wavelength that it wasn’t fun.
What the hell's an SLR (and how/why is it a "snapper")?
I've had objections to quite a few puzzles lately, but at least the Saturdays have been consistently just hard enough. 27 minutes but it seemed longer, though I didn't get to that point of frustration that's usually around 30 minutes. Enjoyed the toughness, and didn't really mind the longer answers at all.
Many typeovers: hands up for MANX before GAEL, DUMBWAITER before DOORKEEPER, and BOUND before BORNE. Never heard of SQUIRCLE so when the RCLE part became obvious, I actually discarded SIRI so I could have SQUARCLE! And the exact opposite of Rex in knowing the PPK part but forgetting there is an H in WALTHER.
[Spelling Bee: Fri 0, streak 19.]
Had doperhoses for a weird sec thinking trackgoers aids had something to do with drugs. Glad I was wrong about that!
Black coffee in Spanish is tinto, no negro.
@MetroGnome: Single Lens Reflex camera. Some people use them to take snapshots.
There's a reason that this puzzle had a good old fashion, classic feel to it. This was the NYTXW puzzle number 188 for constructor Rich Norris. His first was in 1994. He was the Los Angeles Times crossword puzzle editor from 1999 to 2022. My first encounter with him was when I submitted a puzzle to the LAT in 2009 (it got accepted!).
Rich was recently given the 2023 MEmoRiaL Award at the 2023 American Crosword Puzzle Tournament. The award is named in memory of---note the upper case letters in MEmoRiaL---Merl Reagle. Here's the NYT article about Rich and the award. Must read for crossword puzzle fans.
SQUEE? Never heard of. Squeal? I guess I can't complain when I am learning a new word.
SQUIRCLE? Never heard of. So I guess this is the second new word for the day.
But the puzzle was marred by some pretty esoteric trivia:
Heart's "hit" ALONE? Listen, I love the music of Heart; it was the theme music of my high school years, and yet I never heard of this song. I even asked Alexa to play it, and did not recognize it.
And while I somehow knew James Bond carried a WALTHER, the PPK had me guessing.
And then the capital of Togo - LOME - - - which is conveniently not that far from Porto-Novo, for those of you paying attention!! (And also within crossword puzzle distance of ACCRA for the NYTXW trifecta!)
Never heard of WAZE, either. Still waiting (dreading?) to hear an actual real-life human being say the word ADORBS.
You could read the blog?
Finally have a break from moving chores.
Tough one, but got 'er done, except SQUEE + SQUIGGLE = ???,for me.
Our LOCALPAPER just ran a column by a local columnist lamenting the demise of LOCALPAPERs. Serendipity.
Back to work.
@MetroGnome 2:14
WAZE is a very common phone app to alert you to upcoming traffic patterns and slowdowns.
My neice has used the word ADORBS (although in another context).
@sharonak…I upload audiobooks onto my phone through the library and Audible. I listen to them via Bluetooth from phone to car speaker and sometime through earbuds when walking by myself.
Was waiting for a bunch of people to complain about never having heard of “squee,” and I was not disappointed. Wish I could bet on such things.
@Bob Mills…it occurred to me that I knew about Bond’s WALTHER because I read a few of the books (maybe in high school). What I found notable about the books is that they seem “puritanical” compared to any of the movies. Yeah…pretty sure watching the movies is NOT where I picked that up.
Thank you for the link to Change Your Ways or Die, my favorite Cactus Blossoms song.
I think the lowest form of cheating is coming here and peeking at the completed grid. I say that as someone who also resorted to the Check Word function. The unknown pistol doomed me.
That's interesting and surely true but I'm dying on the hill that SOHO is absolutely not an acronym.
The clue for SQUIRCLE is incorrect. A rounded square has "straight edges and rounded corners." Squircle is a nickname for a superellipse, which is a continuous cure, considered more pleasing to the eye since there is no transition between straight line and curve. I learned this in 2 minutes by googling. Picky, I know, but the clue is NOTCRICKET.
From the Great Minds Think Alike Dept:
@GILL writes: Can someone please explain why one would go all the way to the post office, stand in line for ages, only to buy CLEAR TAPE?
Hand w-a-ay up!!! I wouldn't either! I had the exact same reaction that you did, @Gill. To wit:
So the constructor never heard of a stationery store? Or even a CVS or Rexall? I go to the post office only when I absolutely have to. And I almost never absolutely have to.
While Rich is standing (and standing and standing) in line at the post office to buy CLEAR TAPE, @GILL and I are outdoors having a lovely late lunch with the breeze in our face and sipping on a nice Pinot Noir.
I've been reading this blog for years and I have a comment for you, Rex. At 77 I've seen a lot of things, and when I see a puzzle like this, the first word that comes to mind is contrived. So when I see you characterize a puzzle like this as medium, that's what comes to mind, not the crosswordese description, two letter equivalent of baloney.
I was wrong about The Grapes of Wrath (my first mistake this year 😂).
I knew NOT CRICKET from the Squeeze song, “It’s Not Cricket” (on the “Cool for Cats” album).
This is an unnecessary and unkind comment. Lots of people found this Medium, even a tad on the easy side. Why would you be so personally insulting about something as trivial as the difficulty level? You’ve been reading Rex for years. Years! And this is what you have to say. You people astonish me sometimes.
@ great minds department: Not all post offices are the same as the ones in Manhattan. They can be clean, efficient, uncrowded and pleasant. See also upstate DMV offices where you can get in and out of a driver’s license renewal in 10 minutes or less. (My neighborhood post office is regularly one of the worst in the country - I would rather declare a package lost than take that dreaded orange card down there).
You wouldn’t likely go JUST to buy clear tape, but while you’re there and need some because you find you haven’t packed and affixed labels properly, lo and behold you can buy some on the spot rather than run off to a separate stationery store and return. Hell, if you smile nicely, they may even just loan you some…
Agree completely. I was told I was visibly angry when I got that answer.
First of all, has anyone else suddenly discovered that they are unable to stay signed in to this site? For years, I have come here almost daily and lately when I click to “add a comment,” I get the “ghostly” blue guest, not my librarian cat avatar. I must then go to Blogger and sign in there to come back here, and then I’m “back.” Annoying.
So, the puzzle. Tough, but I persevered and succeeded. Today, I say thank you to my favorite uncle for the “SQUEE-dunk!” It was his “thing” that he did when I was little and we lived near his family and we all used to hang at his house because they had an in-ground pool! And that, in the late ‘50s was very unusual (in my limited experience as the child of teachers). I would sit on the side pretending I didn’t want to go in. “Unk” would come over, ask for a hug from his favorite niece and then would flip me over, grab my ankles and yell SQUEE-dunk! And drop me in the pool. Lest anyone worry, I was one of those kids for whom swimming came naturally, there were always adults watching all the kids, and apparently the “SQUEE-dunk” had been a “thing” when Unk and all the sibs (my mother and two more uncles) had been kids and illegally swam in the very deep and dangerous limestone quarry in Columbus OH. And other than Unk and the dunk, I have never again heard the word SQUEE.
Seeing the prolific Mr. Norris’s byline this morning meant trouble for me. I have probably been stumped more times by his clues than any other NYT “regular” constructor. After over 60 years at this puzzle almost every day, I keep thinking that maybe I have earned the secret code to his wavelength. Nope. But at least he didn’t DNF me today. Nearly though.
The start was painfully slow. I had to crawl here and there and had no momentum but I did know 15A IN OVERTIME, which confirmed RECHARGE. WALTHER PPK was a gimme, Bond fan (all the books and films) that I am. I stayed over in the NE and got stuck because of my manx/celt issue. In that regard, once again, my error was failure to read the clue carefully, and I believed the clue asked for first inhabitants which would have been either manx or celt. So I tried celt so that gave me NecRO as my coffee since I was certain of NAST and the iconic (a d regularly appearing in crosswords) ETTA James. Wrong again! So I gave in and used GAEL (still thinking by the way that it was wrong, darn it) and NEcRO became NEGRO, and I actually got some momentum.
I’m tired of the truncated slang such as ADORBS, but its of the language right now and until the heads come off the screens and we converse again, I suppose ‘twill just be us oldSTERs who speak in complete sentences using whole words.
While on a mini-rant, let me mention that portmanteaus give me heartburn, agita, a burr under my saddle or any other idiomatic phrase to mean I am tired of the proliferation of cutesy wordplay that has found its way, seemingly incessantly into daily language. Today the SQUIRCLE. Really? Never heard or read it, and am trying to imagine drawing something that might encourage one to think “I can’t tell if that’s a square or a circle. Must be a SQUIRCLE? No.
Then there’s the CLEAR TAPE. I suppose since the USPS sells it, the importance lies in the fact that the tape is not opaque (like the miles of opaque brown tape my packers used on the moving boxes), and accordingly will not obscure part of an address and thus impede delivery of mail.
All that said, I really enjoyed the solve. This opus seemed better balanced than some of Mr. Norris’s (yeah, the ones I couldn’t finish, ok?). Plenty of resistance, clever clues, nice longer answers and enough real crunch to make me work for the happy music. Keep on constructing, Rich. I’ll keep solving. And taking my lumps when I can’t because I always learn something new from your puzzles.
@Whatshername and Johnny Z. Add me to the “Banishment of ADORBS” list, please!
@ Lewis, thanks for this: “Clues that make you think for a good number of beats, but when their answers suddenly hit you, you realize that they’re eminently fair.” Sums this one up so very nicely.
I often wish that constructors would eschew much of the current and in my opinion meaningless or lazy slang such as ADORBS. Each time such an answer appears, I hear my grandfather scolding me to “Be precise. Say what you mean, and say it correctly,” and then performing the graveyard rollover.
@A had the exact same BrOs error which was my DNF point. glad i wasn't alone. TEXAs_STAR looked so good on its own i wondered if there would be some single weird rebus or something. with rOME as the capital and BOOK ON CD finally in [kept wanting the last four letters to be one word not two so that took ages] i thought...texas O star might be...something? i don't know what texans call their star!
so, rough day but no hard feelings - proud of myself for how far i made it though, but at two hours that was enough punishment for today. came here to see BLOC. considered nOME early on but never heard of LOME. oh well!
-stephanie.
@Nancy...You got it!. How about I treat you to a Lodi Zin, though...? You get a good one, and you'll be sipping all day long!
Pretty sure this is referring to Soho in London, not NYC.
All I have to say is...BOOK ON CD!?!?
Book on tape is at least a saying independent of the medium, but I don't even think you can get books on cd anymore.
Especially crossed with that famous company texacostar... otherwise enjoyable enough. Big fan of the top-left.
Was so proud I remembered MANX as the adjective for people (or cats, really) from the Isle of Man… only for it to be GAEL, who were from all over, not just Man. That one (among others) made me feel like this puzzle was gaslighting me.
Hand up for please please PUHLEEEEZE do not force me to go to a post office! And the whole CLEAR TAPE answer trouble me. Mentioned it i. My too long post that I had to edit down.
This puzzle was a web of nonsense for me. Either things that just aren't quite the real thing (like DOORKEEPER) or clues that really needed a temporal note (like BOOKONCD).
I hate puzzles that are hard because there are so few answers you can get on their own terms. It isn't impressive or fun, it's just annoying.
I had so much trouble with this one. I filled in "SAID" for "Quip ending?"—as in "That's what SHE said!"—before belatedly, and very reluctantly, changing it to "QuipSTER," which I think is much less clever (though much more of a crosswordy word no one ever actually says) than mine. Ah, well.
Also had the nonsensical "RECIRCLE" instead of "SQUIRCLE," which calls to mind a very chubby squirrel.
Oh, that's a very good point. My mind just went "silly English speaking person did a direct translation", when in reality it was "silly Spanish person momentarily forgets about the whole continent her ancestors brutally colonised". I suppose that's a big slice of humble pie to go with my black coffee today, indeed.
I enjoyed remembering unitards and Jazzercize in my hi top REEBOKs!
Heard “snapper” (SLR) for the first time just last night watching Australian Rules Football. This sport is insanely entertaining, in a large part for the Strine commentary.
RIP
Good one! And break also works after wind, so it doesn’t even have to be uncouth (not that there’s anything wrong with uncouth)
I'm catching up on puzzles that I DNF in the late 90s and 00s and they keep coming up Rich Norris. Guess what. Another Rich Norris Saturday puzzle that was just a bit off.
I kinda liked it. Not cricket and extra extra landed with a satisfying thud.
Was it just me that had Elizabeth Warren self-identifying as an Otoe at first, based on the O?
I think everyone can agree that "doorkeeper" is a pile of ----.
Seems more like a portmanteau than an acronym.
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