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Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
Word of the Day: WABI-SABI (35D: Japanese aesthetic that embraces imperfection) —
In traditional Japanese aesthetics, wabi-sabi (侘び寂び) is a world view centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of appreciating beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete" in nature. It is prevalent in many forms of Japanese art.
Wabi-sabi is a composite of two interrelated aesthetic concepts, wabi(侘) and sabi (寂). According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, wabi may be translated as "subdued, austere beauty," while sabi means "rustic patina." Wabi-sabi is derived from the Buddhist teaching of the three marks of existence (三法印, sanbōin), specifically impermanence(無常, mujō), suffering (苦, ku) and emptiness or absence of self-nature(空, kū).
Characteristics of wabi-sabi aesthetics and principles include asymmetry, roughness, simplicity, economy, austerity, modesty, intimacy, and the appreciation of both natural objects and the forces of nature. (wikipedia)
• • •
But where was I? Right, Japanese aesthetic concepts and Vice Presidential family names (!?). This latter one ... wow, I did not understand the clue at all (40D: Vice President Harris's family nickname). I was looking for a family name (I missed the "nick-" part), and so figured it was her family name—the last name she had before she got married. Anyway, how am I supposed to know that MOMALA is what the Vice President's stepchildren call her (!?!?) (it's a portmanteau of "mom" and "Kamala")!? Also, why would I want to know that? When I google this term, I get a lot of hits involving a recent episode of the Drew Barrymore Show (that's a thing?) where she apparently asked the VP to be "MOMALA" for the country (!!?!?), and people are mad at how embarrassing or problematic this is, or something like that. There are stories about this at seemingly every major media outlet (!?!?). The "think pieces" this has inspired in the last (squints at screen ... checks watch) three days ... including in the NYT (!?!?!) ... so many lecturey think pieces. All because of something that Drew (aside: "... really? ..." (checks notes)) ... yep, Drew Barrymore said. Wow. I do not ... understand ... what interests people. (One of the worst aspects of this job is looking things up. "You'll learn things!" Will I, though?)
Probably shouldn't have "family" in your MOMALA clue when you've got FAMILY in your grid (5D: Where roots are branches => FAMILY TREE). But I only just noticed this. As I was solving, there was very little that made me cringe or groan. As for errors, I had just three, and they didn't last long. The one that threatened to do the most damage was APTER for ABLER (1D: Better fit). But when I ended up with an iconic 1950s TV line that started "TUCY!" I knew something was wrong. I spelled FEY with an "E" because ... well, I thought that was how you spelled it, frankly (4D: Elfin folk => FAY). From merriam-webster.com:
Fey is a word that defies its own (original) meaning, since it has yet to even come close to the brink of death after being in our language for well over 800 years. In Old and Middle English it meant "feeble" or "sickly." Those meanings turned out to be fey themselves, but the word lived on in senses related to death, and because a wild or elated state of mind was once believed to portend death, other senses arose from these. The word fay, meaning "fairy" or "elf," may also have had an influence on some senses of fey. Not until the 20th century did the word's most recent meanings, "precious" and "campy," find their way into the dictionary.
Speaking of Merriam-Webster (well, WEBSTER, anyway), that's the other answer I screwed up. I had -STER at 37A: Man of many words? and wrote in TOASTER (as in ... the man ... who gives a toast ... thus saying many words, perhaps).
Notes:
- 5A: Stays hungry (FASTS) — the FASTS / SHOTS / LOS patch was dicey for a bit. You're assuming someone who is fasting is hungry. And started hungry and then stayed that way. I get that you're doing a misdirection bit here, but it feels mildly off. SHOTS (i.e. small glasses of liquor) got clued as if it were a verb (7D: What some do during a night out), so that was tough. Then LOS got clued as if it had something to do with music (24A: Altos might follow this). Just a wicked little patch of black ice. But still, ultimately navigable.
- 9D: Dimension, e.g. (SPEC) — again, I see that you are doing a bit here with the doubling of the "dimension" clues at 8- and 9-Down, but in the singular, in this context, this is weird. I would count "dimensions" (plural) as one SPEC.
- 60A: Singles material, say (CLAY) — really really trying on these misdirection clues. One dollar bills? Unmarried people? No. Tennis, with the "material" being tennis playing surfaces.
- 2D: More than tipsy (SAUCED) — SAUCED/SOUSED is an entirely unexpected kealoa*! Luckily I had the "C" from ECO firmly ensconced, so no problem here.
- 3D: Figure that's not usually discussed (INCOME) — unless you are a professional baseball player, in which case it's all anyone discusses.
*kealoa = a pair of words (normally short, common answers) that can be clued identically and that share at least one letter in common (in the same position). These are answers you can't just fill in quickly because two or more answers are viable, Even With One or More Letters In Place. From the classic [Mauna ___] KEA/LOA conundrum. See also, e.g. [Heaps] ATON/ALOT, ["Git!"] "SHOO"/"SCAT," etc.
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ReplyDeleteEasy for a Saturday. Only one overwrite, EnoTE before EVITE at 41A, and only three WOEs: ARI Lennox (22A), WABI-SABI (35D) and Rainer Maria RILKE (43D).
4D FAY and TARA REID (11D) weren't really WOEs but I needed most of the crosses.
While you might find a PAIL (49D) in a barn, its iconic barn-ness is questionable compared to, say, bAle or foaL. I needed all the crosses for that one.
What does WOE stand for?
DeleteWhat On Earth
DeleteConrad 6am EST, any barn worth its weight in WABISABI will have a least one PAIL (perhaps with a hole in it, Dear Liza) in easy reach to assist in a variety of tasks such as milking a cow, which likely is what the constructor had in mind.
DeleteI had BALE for a while as well. My trip-up
attended the awkward TAPINS, a likely reference to a “tip in”, i.e. a nudge to compel an indecisive basketball in the direction of two points. Are these ever called TAPINS? Probably; I bet Raptors fans say all sorts of nonsense. But gauche verbiage of this sort can’t be typical among players and reasonably fluent fans… unlike the presence of a PAIL in a barn.
But it’s almost always foolish and petulant to whine about a lack of verisimilitude or precision in a Friday or Saturday puzzle, though it didn’t stop Conrad with bale/PAIL.
Neither did it stop me from kvetching about tipins/TAPINS. It is during moments like this that I shake my fist at earlier generations of solvers who happily considered hundreds of thousands of puzzles “done” without fear of being called out by judgemental, perfectionist technology for one or two errant squares. My mother, for example…
whom my nephew calls NANA
not… alternatively… Grammy…
ooooooHHHHHH….
It is almost always foolish to whine about such a lack of verisimilitude or precision on a Friday or Saturday puzzle… or about any myopically-considered or egocentric injustice, be it traffic on the other Key Bridge, settler colonialism or a death row pardon two mintiest too late.
I believe TAP INS is a golf reference here; an easy final putt is known as a tap in.
DeleteGolf TAPIN! Thank you, Anon8:40aEST.
DeleteShots isn’t a verb. Sometimes you go to a bar just to “do some shots.”
ReplyDeleteYes that’s why he wrote “*as if* it were a verb”
DeleteCouple of oddball things here and there as the big guy highlights - WABI SABI is new for me and MOMALA is whatever - both needed crosses to get. The center tri-stack was neat - most of the longs hit.
ReplyDeleteWe Don’t Need This Fascist Groove Thang
RAN LIKE MAD or “run like hell”? Liked TAP INS and FAMILY TREE. MR T crossing Rainer RILKE is gold.
Enjoyable Saturday morning solve. Stan gives us one of his own today - choppy Stumper grids give me problems.
The ANIMAL Speaks
Medium for me. Somehow I found MOMALA oddly inferable.
ReplyDeleteMomala was easy for me. It's a play on the Yiddish mamaleh, for mother, which was used to describe where the stresses in Kamala properly fell. Most recently I think someone mentioned it in an interview and some commentator found it cringeworthy and tried to build it out into a controversy.
ReplyDeleteYou “think?” There’s an entire paragraph about this in the write-up.
DeleteI was really scratching my head when I dropped in CLAY for the singles reference (I didn’t think they would go for that much of a “stretch” - that was a Hail Mary that fell incomplete in my book). There has definitely got to be a better way to clue CLAY that would still be Saturday-level difficult.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that they had to resort to that awful clue is proof positive that ASS has overstayed its welcome. Really guys, talk about trying too had.
I was mildly concerned at one point as I got through about 75% of the grid and didn’t encounter any made up words - fortunately, MOMALA came to the rescue and Will can rest easy that the troops are in fact maintaining his legacy.
My favorite answer is WABI-SABI, which was new to me (Hi, @Rex!). Went down a lovely rabbit hole reading about it. It’s also fun to say, each half rhyming with “bobby”. Makes me want to throw wabi-sabi willy-nilly into conversation today.
ReplyDeleteAnd then I started substituting song title words with it: “I Can’t Get No Wabi-Sabi”, “Bridge Over Troubled Wabi-Sabi”, “Papa’s Got A Brand New Wabi-Sabi” – and now I can’t stop.
My second favorite answer is MOMALA, because it reminds me of the elder members of my clan when I was little, who all called me “Bubbala”. I filled in MOMALA and sweet memories of them and then flooded in, warming my heart.
Plus:
• My eyes grew happily wide at the rare-in-crossword six-letter semorrdnilap ANIMAL, and then they grew even wider at the so-much-rarer seven-letter semordnilap – REVILED.
• A lovely pair of PuzzPairs©, the neighbors TIME / SLOT, and the imperfection-embracing WABI SABI with its neighbor REPAIRS.
• The north, south, and center stacks are filled with serious pop – six of those seven answer have appeared in the 80-year-old Times puzzle one time or less, and the seventh has appeared just twice.
So, very much to love here, a gratifying portal to the weekend, a splendid outing. Thank you so much for making this, Jacob!
I read 60A as sHingles material. CLAY sorta fit with the letters in place and I never looked at it again until seeing above that the clue was Singles!
ReplyDeleteFellow Anonymous, WOE stands for What On Earth?
ReplyDeleteHaven't seen a comment so far on the NE corner, but NANA for a Grammy alternative was totally unfamiliar to me, and DROP in this sense is not in my vocabulary. I couldn't see TAPINS, although I guess that's supposed to be tap-ins, as in very short golf putts.
You’ve never heard of a grandma called nana?
DeleteSolid puzzle, last letter was the C in CLAY and I agree that the stretch is too outlandish to work well (or feel fair). As for two answers that raise a puzzle up to 'medium', isn't that the basic definition of what medium or easy medium is? I struggled with both as well, and this puzzle was um 'medium'.
ReplyDelete4 down. I’ve seen it spelled as “fae” and “fey”, never “fay”
ReplyDeleteWABISABI was in the brain somewhere, so needed only two letters to go in. But it caused me to wonder why it is in there. It must have been used in some movie or TV show from my youth. My first thought was the movie Gung Ho, but I don't think it was in that. This is really bothering me now.
ReplyDeleteMedium for me overall, with MOMALA a complete WoE, and like Rex I had trouble even knowing what the clue was asking for. RILKE was also a WoE; not sure I like that cross with MRT as clued.
But overall, a pleasing Saturday. Looking back, I've enjoyed Mr. McDermott's work in general and he seems to be a weekend specialist, with just one Tuesday nosing its way in.
Just want to add, as somebody who looks at blueprints all day, one dimension is one spec and multiple dimensions are specs.
ReplyDeleteLost it on MAMALA instead of MOMALA. Ouch!
ReplyDeleteEasy!
ReplyDeleteGrammy as in grandmother.
ReplyDeleteMOMALA?? News to me and it didn't help that ASSAM as a kind of tea was news to me too. Oh well.
ReplyDeleteLearned WABISABI and agree with others that it's a fun word. Also met TARAREID, how do you do? TIPINS or TAPINS? Called my own grandmother NANA so went with that.
One of those Saturdays that I thought was going nowhere until it did, and then it got to medium-whooshy with a decent fun factor.
Nice one, JMD. Thorny but Just Made Doable by fair crosses, and thanks for all the fun.
In SB news, yesterday was the rare QB. Picked at it all day long, got to -1, and was saved by the Beatles "Back in the USSR" for the last word, and I went to bed happy.
Almost too easy
DeleteWabi Sabi was for many years one of my favorite sushi restaurants in Los Angeles - so that was an instant "gimme" - it's also a term that these days is used all the time in interior design among other usages. And I think I've seen it or at least one of it's parts - in NYT puzzles before.
ReplyDeleteAs someone has noted - Momala derives from very common Yiddush - VP Harris has a Jewish husband after all, and her kids live in an multicultural and religious household. The name was often mentioned when she first ran for VEEP - I wasn't aware of any controversy, but then again I don't follow Ms. Barrymore.
Really nice -and easy - puzzle, though I too had forgotten about Tar Reid.
Found this much easier than the Friday
ReplyDeleteThank you for the CLAY explanation, which had me quite flummoxed after solving.
ReplyDeleteSurprised that WABISABI is a new word for many — great word, great concept.
Happy Saturday Crossworld!
Was I the only one brutally misdirected on 35D, "Japanese aesthetic that embraces imperfection"? KINTSUGI would have fit fine!
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kintsugi
For the commenter who complained "SHOTS isn't a verb..." no, it's not a verb, but the clue doesn't require it to be. "What some do during a night out" has a verb: "do." You do shots.
I was thinking the same thing but I couldn’t come up with the word, only the K at the beginning. Fortunately, as it turned out.
DeleteHey All !
ReplyDeleteGot everything in, got stuck in SE. Didn't know RILKE, and the ole brain just flat out could not get anything else. Brain said, "Nope, no more help until you Goog Poet Rainer Maria."
Silly brain.
Once I got the K in her?/his? name, it let me see RAN LIKE MAD (I had MOMeLA in, that E messing me up) and was able to finish to the Happy Music.
Good not-too-difficult SatPuz. Tolerable resistance, made you think without making you mad.
Funny misread on the ASS clue. I thought it said "Something to lick", and having _S_ in, chuckled to myself, saying, "Gee, ASS fits, but would the NYT use that as a clue??" Reread, realizing it was "kick", and still chuckled as I indeed wrote in ASS.
Plus a bonus ASS AM. NYT crossword, the puz that has a lot of ASS! And are not afraid to show it. Har. Some say SPARE US, others say GOTTA LOVE IT.
PODIATRIST clue is out in left field. Holy moly, far way for a misdirect. Great clue for FAMILY TRRE, though.
Happy Saturday
Three F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Finished a Saturday without cheating! Hurray for me! I needed trial-and-error to get the ASSAM/MOMALA cross.
ReplyDeleteThe clue for REPAIRS was off-target, I thought, because it excluded a newly built home...in fact, suggested a home in bad shape.
Not so confidently wrote in WHYIOUGHTA for the famous 50s line. Not sure if that is even a thing, but it feels like the Honeymooners? Wanted dEAR something for the "My Word!" clue for way too long. grindER before ROASTER. Never heard of WABISABI but figured it out easily enough. Knew MOMALA from the campaign but took a minute to remember. Always think that a MANSE is where Karen Walker lives (Google the three words if you don't know what I mean), so wasn't sure on that one. Got lucky with the PAIL guess. All in all easier than normal Saturday. 23:47
ReplyDeleteA leap of faith puzzle where I had to leave the north with a gap of BIO__E__ and LO_ and assume that when 21D filled in, those gaps would make sense, and it worked. HEAVENS did the trick though I needed Rex’s explanation of LOS as I never got away from a musical interpretation of the clue.
ReplyDeleteMy other faith leap was 13D. I needed that last S of SPARE US to get the golf reference of TAP INS as finishing touches. (It is golf, isn’t it?)
No problem with MOMALA (except I wanted MaMALA first) or WABI SABI (once the SABI was in).
A PAIL clued as a barn item, well we have pails all over our house and garden so that seemed a tad green-painty, but I suppose if all your barns contain milking stalls, a pail would likely be at hand. I mostly associate barns with hay but couldn’t make “bale” turn into bAIL in my head. (Or into tAIL when I thought 47A might be dEtAIlS.)
Jacob McDermott, thanks for a Saturday puzzle with just enough crunch.
Hm, didn’t read this as a themeless. Thought theme was something like “time-worn sayings” or the like. Anyway, after getting totally lost starting with AptER and similar mistakes, leaning on this theme gave me a way to recovery. My best SHOT in the dark was entering CLAY on my first pass.
ReplyDelete@Ted I also put in Kintsugi first.
ReplyDeletePossibly my favorite Saturday, mostly due to WABISABI. Happy to see it debut in the NYT! I love the concept, and I like how it sounds like wasabi, which I also love. Also, Cindy Crawford's mole.
ReplyDeleteMOMALA was a slight letdown, but that's WABISABI, the beauty of imperfection. Yeah? Well, you know that's just like, uh, [my] opinion, man.
This one was enjoyable and super-wooshy. I don't know if my coffee this morning sparked my brain the right way or what, but I sat down with this puzzle and then, pow, it was over.
ReplyDeleteWABISABI??? How many languages do I have to learn to solve the NYTXW?
ReplyDeleteI think that APTER is a much better fit for "better fit" than ABLER -- which I don't think is even a good fit for the clue. But because it's Saturday, I didn't write it in -- saving myself the hot mess I had at 28D where I wrote in ABLIST instead of AGEIST for the "discriminatory policies." I won't bore you with all the answers I tried in that spot, but the upshot is that my grid at 28D is illegible and that no tournament director would accept it.
This is the 2nd day in a row that the NE corner chock-full of crisscrossing pop culture answers. Today it's TARA REID, EFRON and ARI. I don't like to RAISE A STINK, Joel, but when those of us who refuse to plunk ourselves headlong into pop culture confront such a proper name-riddled corner, WE ARE SO DEAD. Believe that WE CARE deeply about such things. Can you please SPARE US in the future? Please?
Some of this was whooshy for me -- I saw AS IF immediately and loved the clue, for example. But some of it was very hard. The clue for 2D reminded me of just how many synonyms for "drunk" there are in the English language. But at least the answer wasn't in Japanese.
I struggled in several places, but was able to finish without cheating.
Loved the puzzle today, including the unknown, but inferable MOMALA.
ReplyDeleteROASTER could have been a man of many words crossing the coffee ROASTER. Hands up for grindER.
I also read the CLAY clue as shingles. Isn’t terra cotta a kind of clay? Finally saw “singles” - bravo to the mis-direct.
Rex also on fire the last couple of days, Sharknado always welcome. I had to chuckle that he spent 2 paragraphs on WABI-SABI and MOMOLA (+controversy), then declared that he didn’t really learn anything new from the puzzle:)
Funny about wheelhouses. I don’t know a lot about poetry, but RILKE seems about as famous as a poet can get.
Famous quote: Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always. The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens.
I am with RP on being befuddled by what interests people. The number of times I’ve googled an actor, athlete or other famous person and the autofill suggests INCOME as what I’m after is astounding. How about being interested in what that person has accomplished or what makes them great?
I can imagine @Lewis stuck on the proverbial desert island surviving on coconuts and happily amusing himself for years turning words backwards and singing the entire musical catalog inserting WABI-SABI into the lyrics. (Southside would complain about the typical same old coconuts every morning)
ReplyDeleteMomala came weirdly easily to mind. Clay was a huge misdirect…got it through crosses and still took me a while to comprehend. Also had apter instead of abler. Otherwise enjoyed it a lot. Wabisabi new to me but charming.
ReplyDeleteJust read War and Peace, so slapped down TOLSTOY for man of many words.
ReplyDeleteEasy-medium here, from the initial ASIF x AptER (hi, @Nancy and @Easy Ed) to the final ETC x CLAY, with pauses for WABi SABI, TARA REiD, and WEBSTER. The long Acrosses really eased the way. I enjoyed the clueing that made me stop and think, especially for LOS, TAP-INS and CLAY, and the corporate WE CARE along with the sarcastic commentary AS IF! and GOTTA LOVE IT!
ReplyDeleteDo-over: AptER before ABLER. Help from previous puzzles: EFRON. Help from Biden's inauguration: MOMALA. No idea: TARA REID, WABi SABi.
There's something malodorous going on when an ASS is sticking straight up out of RAISEASTINK! I mean sure, I can be distracted by ATIT now and then, but what sort of ASSAM I if I don't notice that one? So SPAREUS the "themeless" b.s. claim and admit that this puzzle wasn't vile enough as submitted and had to be sent back to be REVILED. Of course my inferred theme would have been clearer if "What some do on a night out" would have been "crack".
ReplyDeleteWEARESODEAD sounds like a Zombie movie title.
WEBSTER sounds like someone who runs a word-oriented internet-based blog. Can anyone think of someone who fits the bill?
I liked this a lot. A lot of clever clues for a lot of good answers. Thanks, Jacob McDermott.
@pabloinnh nailed our response: “One of those Saturdays that I thought was going nowhere until it did, and then it got to medium-whooshy with a decent fun factor.” Amen to that assessment.
ReplyDeleteGODLY in the southeast had me thinking Genesis for a logical origin of CLAY being molded into Adam, the ultimate singles player? Ah, ALAS another mental leap of Olympic proportions that fell short. Thanks for sharing Jacob—especially nice range among your clueing 🙏🏾
54A answer was “RAN LIKE MAD”.
ReplyDelete33D clue was “MAD RUSH”.
Isn’t using the same word from a clue in the grid a NTY Crossword no-no? I found an article from 2018 that said as much but maybe the rules are looser now?
ASS is dead center and it segues into STINK. Seed entries?
ReplyDeleteOverall medium but the NW was early week easy.
I misread the MOMALA clue as Harrison. The VP should have tipped me off. Came from the crosses and made much more sense when I read the comments.
Now when I get that gray looking wasabi I'll know it's WABISABI.
It's a banner day when I can get RILKE off the RI.
yd -0. QB20
Kinda feisty but doable, at our house. Seemed like every other clue was a ?-marker-level dosage. Actually, I only count up 5 ?-marked clues. But the again, they had stuff like: {Singles material, say} = CLAY, with no ?-mark. Also, 8 or 9 names, but only a few no-knows: ARI. RILKE. TARAREID. WABISABI.
ReplyDeletestaff weeject pick: LOS. The winner, for its satanically sadistic clue, also with no ?-mark warnin. sheesh. honrable mention to FAY … which sounds singular, even tho its {Elfin folk} clue seemed to lean plural.
Liked learnin about the WABISABI dealie. But it seems to have more to do with celebratin impermanence, rather than imperfection, as suggested by its clue. I reckon not bein permanent could sometimes be considered an imperfection, tho. Except for Trump, and such.
fave stuff: The Jaws of Themelessness with wisdom teeth. GOTTALOVEIT. RAISEASTINK. FAMILYTREE. MOMALA.
Thanx, Mr. McDermott dude.
Masked & Anonymo2Us
**gruntz**
An enjoyable Saturday, but it is so often the NW corner that hangs me up. Like Rex, I really wanted "apter"; I think it fits the clue--"Better fit"--so much better than "abler." (In face, can someone explain how "abler" relates?) Once I got "Lucy come home" I knew it had to be right, though.
ReplyDeleteEasy. I kept waiting for the tough part but the NE was the only section that was somewhat tough. I didn’t remember TARA REID from Lebowski (despite having seen it more than once) but Julianne Moore wouldn’t fit so I needed some crosses. Unfortunately NANA and DROP were deceptively clued.
ReplyDeleteTwo delightful puzzles in a row. I also liked this one a bunch!
Easy for me. About a minute over my best Saturday time, and well under my average. But I knew both Momala and Wabi Sabi. I knew nothing about the Barrymore kerfluffle and don’t consider myself someone who is super up on current events, but I’ve heard the Momala bit several times, and think it’s eminently fair trivia.
ReplyDeleteEasier than the usual Saturday - so I liked it a lot. I knew MOMALA from all the news that Drew Barrymore has been getting. Not much here that stumped me - oh, wait, yes - WABI SABI which I'm gonna have to remember since it's bound to turn up again. And I didn't know TARA REID. But a nice puzzle, Jacob & I thank you a very pleasant Saturday solve :)
ReplyDeleteWell I can certainly see that we are on a WABI SABI and MO MALA kick today. Frankly, they are dance moves for me. I would dance, dance away. LOVE IT, DEAD and STINK...the DJ's of the day. Care to join me?
ReplyDeleteI had some doovers. The NW. I had TONY instead of NANA and I had IPOS instead of DROP... Try and make sense of the 11D name of Bunny Lebowski.....If you have a MOMALA nickname, why not have your first name be LOPRA? Move on.
The longies today were fun. I got most of them without so much as a "get up and move around" moment .LUCY I'M HOME set the OOOH on fire. Like @Rex, I wanted a TOASTER instead of WEBSTER. Toaster would've gone along with ROASTER. All fuzzy and warm. I do have a question, though. Why do you clue the lonely PAIL as something that is a barn item. Why didn't you clue it as something Jack and Jill carried while trudging up the hill? GODLY and REVILED...that's why.
Two cheats today...ARI and MOMALA. They are now best friends.
This was sweet.
Came here to find out about CLAY. I'm a tennis fan. I've been watching the Madrid Open this week. But "singles" suggested dollar bills or baseball or unmarried folk, not tennis. Ugh. Not that it was a problem -- the crosses gave it to me.
ReplyDeleteThe comments today (including this one) haven't had much zip. Maybe Gill will come to the rescue.
Happy to be reminded of Ricky coming home and calling out "Lucy, I'm hoooome!"
Good Saturday for me. Unlike some recent Saturdays, solvable. And it had lsome sparkle.
How often did Ricky actually say, “Lucy, I’m home”? Would not call that iconic. “You’ve got some ‘splainin’ to do.” is iconic.
DeleteI've seen FEY written many times in fantasy literature, describing fairies and such. I've not seen FAY until today. Never heard the term WABISABI either of the stints I lived in Tokyo but maybe it's new (or retro). Has Tara Reid acted in anything else? I only know her from The Big Lebowski ("blow on them; I can't blow that far."), which I've seen at least a dozen times.
ReplyDeleteRex is cranky about what's not in his wheelhouse. Wabi sabi, Momala, and fey were gimmes for me. Some pop culture clues and answers were mysteries to me. I don't even recognize the name Zac Efron, although I do know that "Baywatch" is the name of a tv show. I listened to a lot of R & B 60 years ago. Don't know who Ari Lennox is. Must be a contemporary singer now. We all have our gimmes, and we all have our "never heard of it" responses. Sometimes crosses get us through what isn't in our wheelhouse. That's la vie du solveur de mots croisé.
ReplyDeleteI don't know how to respond directly to someone who has posted. I do want to answer the person who didn't understand the 16A "Grammy alternative" clue. In this case, Grammy doesn't mean a music award. It is a name for Grandmother, Grammy. And Nana is another name for Grandmother. Just as Granny is.
ReplyDeleteI rarely comment but wanted to acknowledge Rex’s hilarious diatribe on the “newsworthy” relevance of MOMALA. Also hate the clue on ANIMAL. The only fiendish animals are human.
ReplyDeleteI am only old enough to have seen reruns of I Love Lucy, but I only remember "Honey, I'm home!" instead of "Lucy, I'm home!" And after a bit of Googling, it appears he only said "Lucy, I'm home!" once in the entire series: https://youtu.be/48LCegAE8WQ?si=-8p_dPVmn4ioioKu&t=206
ReplyDeleteThis one went fast in 11 minutes, unlike recent Saturdays. Many nice long answers, and a lotta drama in the middle: GOTTA LOVE IT, WE ARE SO DEAD, RAISE A STINK, RAN LIKE MAD, RISKS IT ALL.
ReplyDeleteHands up for APTER before ABLER, and TOASTER before WEBSTER. TARAREID crossing ARI and EFRON was ugly, but was the only real name pit.
[Spelling Bee: Fri 0; "streak" at 2, count 'em 2.]
I had the W for “man of many words” and confidently wrote in Windbag. What a woe.
ReplyDeleteDidn't think I'd finish this one. But after staring at the NE and SE for a few minutes after taking a necessary break, it all came clear.
ReplyDeleteI agree that this is another week with Friday and Saturday switched.
Nice to have an ASS right in the center where it belongs.
I don't know when I last saw a milking pail in a barn. Even my long-gone grandfather (the last in a long line of farmers in my family, God rest his soul) used a portable vacuum milker. More sanitary, and easier on both the milker and milkee.
ReplyDeleteThere are even small manual vacuum milkers for the folks with just one cow or a couple of goats. $37 on Amazon.
I originally had "snore" for what some do on a night out, which is the kind of misdirection-y answer one might expect in a puzzle, but then "los" wouldn't fit. Perhaps it will turn up in a future puzzle.
ReplyDeleteDamn triple-name Natick -- TARAREID/ARI/EFRON.
ReplyDelete(On the other hand, though, I first heard Harris mention "Momala" either shortly before or shortly after the 2020 election, so that name has been in circulation for a while.)
@Blackbird (1:16) -- You write: "I don't know how to respond directly to someone who has posted."
ReplyDeleteDo it exactly the way I'm answering you right now. Put the person's nom de blog and the time of their post in your response.
If it's an Anonymous, just put @Anonymous (time of post.) For example, @Anon (2:48).
Or just click the reply button..
DeleteMomala was mentioned lots during the 2020 campaign and early, heady, happy months of the new term.
ReplyDeleteWow. So many wrong turns made this puzzle a downward spiral for me. Not the puzzle's fault, but it sure owned me. Had AptER instead of ABLER at 1D, and as a result I was sure we had pANiNiCHIPS and some form of tUCHus, I don't know, maybe some quaint 1950s version of Beavis and Tuchus head? I can hear it alongside "wise guy" and "knucklehead". The other path to disaster was 10A "Going full tilt" ==> Asap instead of ATIT, which beget sARAndon instead of TARAREID. I finally caved, and checked the puzzle with *many* wrong answers, virtually all of which stemmed from the mistakes above. Correcting ABLER and ATIT made the rest of it an easier than usual Saturday solve. Amazing how punishing those two mistakes were.
ReplyDeleteHowever, there was one other set of crosses that felt hugely Naticky: MRT MANSE and RILKE. I know Mr T, but no clue on the other two, ended up trying random letters. Seems like a weak point in the puzzle.
I don't think I ever saw Baywatch, but if it's Zac then it's EFRON, not related to Nora and Delia, who spell themselves differently (I thought once that he must be, which stuck him in my memory).
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, as a teenager I couldn't tell Rainer Maria RILKE from Erich Maria Remarque, so now they are both fixed in my mind, though I've never read either one.
As for MOMALA, I wanted MoMALA, but couldn't see myself curling up by the fire with a nice cup of NaG. As for NANA, my wife's grandchildren call her Nonna, so I hesitated.
Anyway, I loved the puzzle for all the tricky clues. I agree that you're not going to find a milking PAIL anymore, but there's probably a pail in the barn anyway, in case you need to wash anything up.
All for now--back to watching the Derby preliminary races.
What a delightful puzzle. Never felt like I was on the same wavelength as the constructor, but when the last E of DEARY dropped, I decided we were friends. The long answers are all quite fun.
ReplyDeleteAnd holy cow, it's the cleanest grid since I've started counting junk fill.
Propers: 8
Places: 0
Products: 0
Partials: 4
Foreignisms: 0
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 12 (18%)
Tee-Hee: ASS front and center. You know, we've had a noticeable diminution of fanny-forward juvenalia in the puzzles under our current editor. I am not of the belief he's editing it out, but rather I suspect he WAS the slush pile editor prior to now. And that means our current slushy might be a grown-up (and totes lame-o.) We should take'em out for SHOTS.
Uniclues:
1 What the elderly say as soon as I open my mouth.
2 How I pass my days.
3 Riches from errors.
4 Mean old elf, prone to making millennial jokes, sent home.
5 What DNA testing fixes, sometimes without welcome.
6 Pretty mountains and lakes.
7 People who love conjunctions and their accoutrements.
8 Pious puny putts.
1 DEARY, SPARE US.
2 SAUCED. REVILED.
3 WABI-SABI INCOME (~)
4 AGEIST FAY SAT (~)
5 FAMILY TREE ERRS
6 SKI HEAVENS (~)
7 AND FREAKS, ETC.
8 GODLY TAP INS (~)
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Flimflammer flophouses. CON MAN PARISHES.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I considered Tara Reid but thought there was no way bc of how old the movie is. So I had Lara Reid for too long. ALIT made sense to me
ReplyDeleteI just know everyone has been waiting desperately for me to figure out where I've heard WABISABI. I remembered! It was an episode of King of the Hill. I suspect @PH 9:57 remembers this also, as the scene specifically references Cindy Crawford's mole.
ReplyDeleteFun fact: "kintsugi" fits as well as "wabi sabi"
ReplyDeleteI really enjoy reading this blog, but when I see comments like “why would I want to know that?” as criticism, I wonder if the CROSS part of crosswords is elusive to some. I know very few rappers, but am usually able to infer them from crosses, which seems to be the whole point.
ReplyDeleteThis was probably my easiest Saturday ever. I picked up numerous crosses on my first pass through including (amazingly) PODIATRIST. I had the southeast and the northwest and center north done in no time and everything else fell in short order. I even guessed MOMALA with just the two m’s.
ReplyDeleteI’m sure I’ll be back to doing terribly next Saturday, though.
@kitshef Ah, that's an awesome clip. I like Mike Judge and the show, but I haven't watched as many episodes as perhaps I should have. I knew someone who talked just like Boomhauer and actually understood everything Boomhauer said, haha.
ReplyDeleteI think I learned wabi-sabi from NPR a decade ago. Today I Learned: wabi = less is more, sabi = attentive melancholy. It's also a nice cop-out for messing something up. Burnt steak? WABI-SABI!
Having no recollection of hearing MOMALA before, I found that to be a cute surprise when I pieced it together. Loved WABISABI, which somehow revealed itself from the depths of my brain when I needed it.
ReplyDeleteIf possible, I'd like to revise a comment previously sent, adding the phrase in brackets at the end (and of course removing the brackets):
ReplyDeleteThere are two points to make about this puzzle. (1) Rex missed a nuance of the family nickname “Momala” for Kamala Harris. It’s well known that Harris’s husband is Jewish, and thus the name is a play on the Yiddish word “Mamale” or “Mamaleh” (pronounced to rhyme with Kamala). “Mamaleh” is typically an affectionate diminutive for a mom who’s very close and very cherished.
(2) This puzzle has the rare weekend feature of being themed (albeit never clued as such): AT IT for “Going full tilt”; RAN LIKE MAD for “Hotfooted it”; RISKS IT ALL for “Puts everything on the table”;
And TEAR for “Mad rush.” All excessive actions in hot pursuit of a goal or reward. I’m tempted to include “WE ARE SO DEAD” for “Our parents will kill us!”—an utterance by youngsters who have pursued some compulsion fast and recklessly, and know they will face extreme consequences from their parents; perhaps being grounded for a month; [or paying the deductible for a smashed up car (or two).]
A good Saturday-level challenge. Some groan-worthy cluing but overall very good. Not much junk. I rate it a solid B.
ReplyDeleteSO WECARE
ReplyDeleteGOTTALOVEIT, AND I think,
ALL the TIME ARI does SHOTS,
WE don’t wanna RAISEASTINK,
but HEAVENS, MR. REID is SAUCED!
--- LUCY WEBSTER
From yesterday:
NITE LIES
ESTELLA? Well, NOWLET’SSEE,
AN ELITIST despite our PLEAS,
OK, IT’s ANOUTRAGE,
AND those ACTS at her AGE,
she COSLEPT for BIG COST, OHGEE!
--- MADAM ELENA BARRETT
Not easy, but doable. Had trouble with the simple [LOS] Altos. Couldn't figure what alto singers/players would follow.
ReplyDeleteNice, tough Saturday with three popping central phrases. Good job, and a DOD bonus in TARA REID. Birdie.
Wordle par.
Got it deliberately. Write-over with Demo before DROP. No other REPAIRS. Reviving a yeah baby for a complete TARAREID.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunate wordle bogey.