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La-di-da / WED 5-01-24 / Soprano ___ Te Kanawa / Covers with a glossy black varnish
Wednesday, May 1, 2024
Constructor: Juliana Tringali Golden
Relative difficulty: Easy (6:16, while, um, inebriated)
THEME: WALLFLOWERS — Shy sorts, with a hint to the answers on this puzzle's perimeter
Theme answers: (all are against the "edge" of the puzzle)
Word of the Day: KIRI (Soprano ___ Te Kanawa) —
Good evening, friends! It's Malaika, subbing for our fearless leader! Despite everything, I loved this puzzle, which is one of my favorite types to critique! When I love (or even just like) a puzzle that I think is without major flaws, it's tough to write anything at all. And when I hated a puzzle, I feel mean criticizing the author, who is surely a lovely person who is very proud of what they created. But puzzles like today are fun in that I get to unpack the "bad" things about them as well as why I didn't care. (Unrelated: I wrote this while listening to the bonus tracks on "GUTS (spilled)" if you'd like to join in.)
- [Disney princess who sings "A Whole New World"] for JASMINE
- [Basic yoga position] for LOTUS
- ["The Black ___" (1987 crime fiction best seller)] for DAHLIA
- [East Egg resident in "The Great Gatsby"] for DAISY
- [Scented ingredient in some hand creams and shampoos] for FREESIA
- [One of Indiana's state symbols] for PEONY
- [Rainbow's end] for VIOLET
- [Subject of an annual festival in the Netherlands] for TULIP
Word of the Day: KIRI (Soprano ___ Te Kanawa) —
Dame Kiri Jeanette Claire Te Kanawa, born Claire Mary Teresa Rawstron, is a New Zealand opera singer. She had a full lyric soprano voice, which has been described as "mellow yet vibrant, warm, ample and unforced." On 1 December 1971 she was recognised internationally when she appeared as the Countess in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro at the Royal Opera House in London.
• • •
For the most part, I breezed through this puzzle which can mean a variety of things. For instance, it could mean that I am a Puzzle Solving Genius. (I am not.) In this case, I just vibed with a lot of the trivia / phrasing that our constructor and editors were using. It feels good to drop in 1-Across without even thinking about it, and it feels even better when 1-Across is a substantial length. Many entries in this grid were complete no-brainers to me, and it's only upon going back through that I wonder how others fared. If you can't easily input SERENA as [Wimbledon-winning Williams] I feel you are living under a rock... But was TAMORA (fantasy author Pierce) hard for others? To me she is incredibly famous. HEIDI (classic children's novel set in the Swiss Alps) and DAISY (theme answer) were other literary gimmes that I genuinely don't know how will fare with others.
Then (welcome to the Critique Part of this review) there were a series of Crossword Words that, personally, I could enter without thinking but New Wednesday Solvers may have found incredibly unforgiving. (Looking at them now... "series" perhaps does not do justice to the amount... I'm seeing a lot: ARTY, NIH, ELS, SOL, PSST, SRA, ATT, ANA, LTS, ILK, ESTA, ITE.) I think this didn't bother me that much because I knew them (well... I knew the ones that I listed... I didn't know INT or KIRI or MIR) and, as a constructor, I understand that placing your theme answers along the edges of the puzzle (plus an 11-letter central entry!!) is very tough! But I'm wondering if any of you commenters felt alienated by the quantity of what some (but not I!!!) might call "crosswordese."
Something else that didn't bother me (Critique Part 2) is the "double meanings" of the theme answers. I think the "correct" thing to do for themes like this is to use words that are the names of flowers, and then write a clue that has nothing to do with flowers in order to mask the theme. (JASMINE, DAISY, and VIOLET do this the best, in my opinion. DAHLIA and LOTUS are solid efforts. PEONY and TULIP fail at this but at least are specific, and FREESIA is the worst offender since the answer could be basically anything.) I understand that concept, I understand its elegance, I understand why people care about it and yet... I just really didn't care! The entries were all cute! The flowers all made me think of spring and golden sunlight pouring across NYC and illuminating the botanical gardens and my budding tomato plants! The first two entries that I encountered were masked well enough, and (very important!) when I reached the revealer at 36-Across, it did not highlight (and thus immediately give away) all of the other entries. So.... what about it???
Bullets:
- DAISY — "The Great Gatsby" is an incredibly polarizing book, and Broadway shows are an incredibly polarizing genre, and adaptations are an incredibly polarizing category and yet-- I will say that I saw Broadway's adaption and adored it. It is trite and frivolous and obvious and sparkling and luscious and the tech is gorgeous and Eva Noblezada is perfect.
- JASMINE — Oh, did you think we were done with musicals? Ha! Sorry, pals. I've been to Mexico City many times on vacation, and many of my friends (going on vacation there for the first time) ask me what my favorite thing I've done there is. The answer is quite unhelpful, which is that I saw a now-closed production of Aladdin (in Spanish) that was hysterical, affordable, and dazzling. Cannot recommend enough... I literally wept at during the magic carpet scene and feel zero shame because honestly if you don't weep, that's on you.
- [Rule of ___ (comedic principle)] for THREE — What's your favorite examplee of this? I always think of Pulp Fiction, where he grabs the hammer, then baseball bat, then chainsaw.... and then wrecks the rule and grabs a fourth, even better object (katana)... But this is also hard to beat.
- This is the part of the review (hidden at the very, very end, like where you'd put the poison in an ingredients list if you were someone selling a snack that had poison in it) where I reveal that I couldn't finish this puzzle-- the crossing of JAPANS / INT plus KARMA / KIRI led me to guess on (what was ultimately) the N and the K. And yet! I still had fun :)
P.S. The second word of the day today, is Mimouna-- a Jewish festival that is held at the end of Passover, when (at sundown), Jewish people can return to eating leavened breads. I know that many of my friends were gorging on mofletta and dates tonight-- maybe some of you commenters were as well! Happy Mimouna to all of you <3
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81 comments:
I guess this is a cute theme; a wall of flowers. I can't say I used the flowers to help my solve at all. But then there they are! At least I didn't try down clues only; that might have been a mess. By the way, I hope bocamp is getting better; miss you man.
WALLFLOWERS mainly makes me think of this band.
Malaika, I agree about your "bad" things. And quite a contrived clue for the silly plural JAPANS? I had a typeover where the volunteer's words were I WILL before ILL GO.
[Spelling Bee: Tue 0, some challenging words and that last one was a lucky guess because I have never seen it before. Streak 23 days.]
Malaika,
It wasn't until reading your write up that I realized who tamara pierce s. I had to get the name primarily from crosses. She's a wonderful, wonderful writer. I just don't think of her books as fantasy. They are, but when I see a clue saying fantasy writer I think of total sci fi or more extreme other fantasy than the magic in her books. Most of them I've reread many times.
I blanked on Jasmine - cold not think what Disney film th song was in event I could har the tune in my mind.
But Kiri went in without my reading the whole clue. Don't think I ever saw Kiri Te Kanawa perform but she was a favorite of some music loving friends of ours who talked about her a lot. Many years ago, trying to come up with a name for our new Siberian husky puppy, I had Kiri on a list. It was derived from something else, but my husband saw it as Kiri the famous soprano and said, Yes, we'll name her Kiri
because we hope she grows up to be a great singer (We both loved listening to huskies howl -if you've never been new a dog lot after feeding you've missed a musical treat) Ironically, of our three huskies, she is the only one we never heard howl a note.
Anyway back to the puzzle. I liked it and the revealer did speed up a couple of he theme entries.
State flowers are the kind of trivia that exist to be trivia: they are a) fairly random human decisions and b) nobody cares. The only way to learn them is to seek them out (or encounter them in trivia games) and the only reason to learn them is for more trivia games.
Nothing contrived or silly about JAPANS; it's a perfectly good word. Few countries are verbs that you can conjugate. Actually I can't think of any others atm...
Hi Malaika, thanks for a terrific writeup! I also found it an Easy breezy Wednesday.
Overwrites:
21A: cdc before NIH
41A: GLint before GLEAM
49A: nuT before OAT
KIRI Te Kanawa (32A) and TAMORA Pierce (64A) were WOEs. Rule of THREE (52D) wasn't exactly a WOE, but it was buried deep in the synapses.
My greatest disappointment was that I really really really wanted the Norwegian festival to be about Trolls! But alas, the theme ripped it from my hands. Otherwise a fun challenging puzzle - had trouble at the crossing of FREESIA (never heard of this flower) and INDIRA, but somehow with only the A missing, INDIRA sounded the most correct. Also never heard of JAPANS and had to run the alphabet before getting the happy music.
Great points. Sometimes I feel that a puzzle is amazingly easy, and then I realize that the trivia and wordplay just happen to be on my wavelength. Heidi? Easy-peasy. (Yup, Tamora Pierce also is pretty famous in my world, although I haven't read her books.) Questions about movies and TV shows? Mostly not. (I didn't actually know JASMINE -- we didn't lean into Disney princesses -- but I remembered her once I got a few letters.) Contemporary slang? Spotty. Sometimes I'm left sputtering alongside Rex, 'Does anybody actually say that?' only to confirm that yes, yes, some people do. Every puzzle doubles as a bit of cultural anthropology, or I suppose it should be IOTA.
I also mused about theme masking: somewhat uneven, yes, but like you, I thought it was fine and fun. None of those clues really yells "Flower!" (My first thought for the scented ingredient was TEATREE.) As for the 3s and crosswordese, I'm pretty new to daily solving, and I experienced this fill as not always easy or delightful -- is it even possible to make a puzzle where all the fill is delightful? -- but fairly constructed and clued. Really solid design, free of "gah, that's brutally lame" moments, which I by no means take for granted. So, seconding your Not Bothered. I come to praise this puzzle, not to bury it.
Basically just a list puzzle. Was fun to solve but not very exciting theme for a Wednesday.
Confused how you got stuck on _ARMA... what else can that entry be but Karma
TAMORA Pierce was a WOE for me--the closest I came was Piers Anthony. But her name was inferable from the crosses, so it was fair. I enjoyed the theme although it didn't help me at all with the solve. Lots of crosswordese but overall an okay puzzle.
I don’t know much about Disney other than ELSA, so JASMINE wasn’t a great way to start out , and the fact that I had not heard of JAPANS as clued kind of took away any chance of momentum at the outset. From there I basically stumbled around the grid and mercifully parsed together FREESIA to finish it off. Kind of a neat theme if you’re into that sort of thing.
JASMINE went in instantly as a granddaughter is totally into the Disney princess thing and since we raised two boys tthat's totally new to me, but apparently can be useful.
Today's self-congratulations come from remembering JAPANS (eventually). See also KIRI and MIR and spelling FREESIA correctly, which I have heard but never seen in writing.
My "yoga position" was of course ASANA because it's always ASANA. I suspect an ASANA is not a flower so that's why it didn't work, but there are some crossword conventions that ought to be respected.
Didn't see the WALLFLOWERS going all around the grid until I went back and checked, which was a very nice little aha!.
I liked your clever Wednesday construction very much, JTG. Just The Good start to my morning that I like, and thanks for all the fun.
As I think Rex said once before...LOTUS is definitely not a basic yoga position.
This is one of my favorite theme types – when the themers appear in unexpected places.
Bonus flower, of a sort, at FROGS. The buttercup genus Ranunculus translates to ‘little frog’.
Yep, TAMORA, KIRI, rule of THREE were all WoEs.
In case anyone is interested, today’s Universal Crossword is one of mine.
Sol! I feel completely vindicated.
I love the rhythm of spring, where each flower waits until its time, and over days, weeks, and months, the blooms arrive in a glorious parade, one after another, each stopping before the grandstand in its moment of perfection – a procession of magnificent colors and shapes.
Our peonies are about to pop; they explode like fireworks into huge bundles of beauty. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, look them up, then multiply that beauty by ten for the effect of seeing them in real life.
Our lilacs were just at their peak, and when that happens we always see walkers-by stop and stand mesmerized by the aroma.
I am grateful to this puzzle for bringing flowers to the fore, so grateful for what the puzzle evokes that little nitpicky puzzle elements fly out the window, lost in the euphoria. Who cares about them? Who even notices them amidst this spectacle of beauty -- is how I'm feeling.
Adding to the joy, for me, is the collection of lovely first names spread throughout the grid: JASMINE, DAHLIA, SERENA, KIRI, HEIDI, TAMORA, VIOLET, OLGA, INDIRA.
Heading out to walk our dog Teddy, and to witness today’s version of the parade of blooms. Thank you, Juliana, for creating a flower box today, which has deeply pushed my happy button!
I haven’t seen anyone mention the fact that the puzzle is also in the shape of a flower, which definitely makes some of the dodgy bits a bit more excusable in my book!
I still don’t really get the JAPANS answer….
I didn't use the gentle theme, albeit I do know that TULIPs and DAHLIAs are flowers. The puzzle seemed easy, because of a relative lack of contemporary language. EMIRATIS didn't seem right, but the crosses made it necessary.
The only clue that I struggled with was "End of the rainbow," because I was looking for a scientific term or something out of Wizard of Oz. When VIOLET appeared from the crosses I recognized the clever misdirection.
Very cute theme, too much crossword-ese. I did NOT know Tamora and had Tamara first, but now I know! Thanks Malaika.
Fitting flowers crossword for the start of May. Excited to see one of my tomato plants is starting to flower (yay!) I also like dandelions -- too bad the HOA doesn't. As someone who identifies as a wallflower, I thought the puzzle was lovely. Well done, Juliana!
Hawaii's state bird: nene
Utah's state flower: sego
South Carolina's handcraft: sweetgrass basket weaving
Anyone else think that Ariel sang "A Whole New World"?
Hey All !
Fill came out well, ya gotta factor in how much space is locked in with Theme. It's A Lot, in case you haven't figured that one out. 😁 Always willing to let some dreck slide for Themers/Revealers. Remember, every puz has dreck. This one necessarily so. Just sayin.
tREESap first for FREESIA. Who knows what they put in hand creams, Amirite? Never heard JAPANS as a glossy black varnish cover. Interesting. Apparently I'm not a varnisher.
Thanks for the May Day Floral arrangement, Juliana. It was Golden. Har.
Happy Wednesday!
Three F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Note from a long-time yoga teacher:
The clue says LOTUS is a [Basic yoga position], but please don’t take “basic” to mean beginning level. It’s a difficult pose, often taking years to learn, if ever. My youngest son naturally brought his legs into Lotus up to maybe year six, and had he continued to do it once a day, he’d easily go into it today, but he didn’t and now it is very far from his reach.
You can learn it with practice and patience, first learning to do one leg. It actually feels wonderful, to sit in Lotus. But learn it from an experienced teacher, or at least through detailed step-by-step written instruction, because a wrong move or leg positioning while learning it can hurt your knee, sometimes badly. FWIW.
@JKing - Ariel sang "Part of Your World", how on earth could you possibly confuse that? ;)
Personally, I remembered Aladdin and Iago the parrot (thank you Andy Samberg), but Jasmine came quickly with crosses).
There has to be some kind of theme in EMIRATES EMERITUS, I suppose an OAT ORT could be worked into that.
Surprised nobody has mentioned SOL being restored to its preferred spelling today after Sunday's puzzle was SO controversial (ha!).
Love the theme and all those flowers. Really nice puzzle.
Propers: 11
Places: 1
Products: 3
Partials: 5
Foreignisms: 2
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 22 (29%)
Uniclues:
1 Newt ate lunch.
2 Williams wanting to wow at Wimbledon.
3 Spicy sprinkle of words explaining the downfall of civilization led by the damn Democrats (Republicans) in grampa's electronic communication.
4 Straws, little paper umbrellas, and your grubby paws.
1 TADPOLES ABATED
2 UPMARKET SERENA
3 EMAIL SALSA
4 MAITAI UTENSILES (~)
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Country cutie curated carpet cutting. GIRL YAHOO DJ-ED.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Enjoyed this alot! Laughed at myself having trouble with VIOLET because I paint almost every day and know a lot about colours!
Put in Orchid instead of DAHLIA, which gave me grief until SERENA set me straight.
No idea what OAT (Bit in a bar) refers to - some reference to beer??
Happy to see the parade of apri g flowers here and IRL. Happy Wednesday!
So what was the Disney movie? Also I had the opposite experience from above. It was not on my wavelength at all. For example, I still have no idea who Tamora Pierce is. But the theme was nice and used interesting flower names too.
Please keep religious references out of puzzles and commentary.
Religion is arguably the biggest problem on earth (except for the idiot on trial in NY who is the worst thing that ever happened to the USA).
A moment where I actually had to ponder a bit:
Attorney is usually abbreviated ATT, but occasionally in crosswords is abbreviated ATY (which I hate, btw.) It wasn't ATY here, I'm happy to say, but if it had been, then a "Y" would have been the first letter of the answer to the "Rule of" comedic principle.
I remembered my Nichols and May. To keep an improv skit going, you're supposed to always say YES, AND...?
But, wait. YES, AND is one letter too long. Darn! I put the "T" in ATT.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I remembered something said by one comic or other that THREEs are funny in a series, twos and fours aren't. (And there was HEIDI to help out too.)
Does anyone remember who said that? Maybe someone here has already discussed it? If not, I'll go Google it.
This was my main source of excitement from what I found a professionally executed but not exactly thrilling puzzle.
We haven't been seeing much of the one-named singer with noted bangs lately. If she's being held in captivity, I say FREESIA!
Certain truths about purplish colors must remain inVIOLET.
I grew up a SF Giants fan, but living now in Mariners territory I'm struggling with whether I'll be an NL ORAL fan.
54A was a gimme as I knew that Falcon and Stone in the G.I. Joe franchise were both Left Tackles.
For 27A (Fa follower) I got the SO part, but thought that we learned the other day that that was the end of it. I guess I was SOL on that score.
Fun Wednesday. Nice puzzle, Juliana Tringali Golden. Nice write up, Malaika.
didn't even notice the theme until coming here.
The abbreviated attorney with a Y is ATTY. I just learned ATY in texting is "according to you."
For the oat in a bar, think of a granola bar.
A priest, a rabbi, and a minister walk into a bar.
Bartender says, "is this a joke?"
Relatively easy one for me tho nothing like 6 minutes! Helped a lot by the revealer. Enjoyed the bubbly review. Am a big flower and sci-fi fan but must be too old to know TAMORA Pierce. My first thought when I read Pierce was to think phonetically of Piers Anthony, another fantasy writer of renown.
Not into the fantasy genre at all, so I had never heard of TAMORA Pierce, but the crosses were extremely fair, so can't complain. All the other proper names were familiar.
If you've never seen it, I can recommend the documentary "The Making of West Side Story," about the recording of the 1984 studio cast album. In it, we see Leonard Bernstein conducting WSS for the first time across several recording sessions. Kiri Te Kanawa sang Maria, and Jose Carreras sang the role of Tony. You'd think it might be dry as dust, but just as the earlier cast recording documentary of "Company" has some late night drama (poor Elaine Stritch), here we see Bernstein get frustrated with the rhythmically-challenged Carreras, and some performance notes that never got delivered.
I haven't seen it since it aired on PBS 40 nearly 40 years ago, but I can still recall those scenes vividly.
she sang “part of your world,” which i mix up with “a whole new world” all the time. my instant thought was ariel when reading the clue, but the answer length meant it had to be the other one, jasmine
i got naticked by EMIRATIS crossing INDIRA, i had EMIRATeS and INDeRA. i maybe eventually could have gotten INDIRA since it follows more conventions for indian names, but his is a name that i don’t know off the top of my head.
Thanks for the nice pinch at bat Malaika. The crosswordese was as obvious as JAPANS was WTF, but neither were stumbling blocks—more like toe-stobbers. Fun concept with limitations imposed by the bouquet edges so easily forgiven in our house as one would expect from a retired florist and an English teacher now23 years beyond admiring that light across the lake in a classroom setting.
Back up top to see what you all thought.
Easy, and I enjoyed the parade of blooms. As I was solving in the upper tier, I kept my eye out for possible theme answers, but there weren't any long Acrosses or Downs as potential candidates. Hmmm. I decided to go half-way and then reassess (expecting that the reveal would be at the bottom). So, the puzzle fooled me twice over, with the reveal at the center and the theme answers on the perimeter. In a way, I was sorry that I'd been handed the key, but it turned out I needed it to unlock the "rainbow" clue - I was firmly in the pot-of-gold mindset and only the theme got me to the color spectrum.
I'm lucky enough to have heard KIRI Te Kanewa - it was in 1997 in an indelible performance. @SharonAk, I enjoyed your KIRI story.
My one unknown was TAMORA Pierce - I need to check her out.
Fun 'spring-y' solve. I didn't know Japans but it worked itself out. I enjoyed it. Made me wonder, are we finally turning the corner on puzzles?
Easy-medium. I struggled a bit in the SW because I didn’t completely read the reveal, otherwise VIOLET would have been obvious.
No erasures but did not know TAMORA and OLGA.
Reasonably smooth grid, clever theme, great reveal, liked it,
The only reason I can think of for SOL being the preferred spelling is it has three letters so can be used in a crossword.
Has anybody ever pronounced the L? I was taught do re mi fa so la ti do. I always raise an eyebrow at SOL
@kitshef (or should I say, "Constructor who did not originate in South Yorkshire, surprisingly), thanks for the fun crossword. https://syndication.andrewsmcmeel.com/puzzles/crosswords
Except for the California Poppy. All Californians care. :)
Funny that we get SOL today (the only proper spelling of the musical term, imho, after SO on Sunday. Nice consistency NYT.
Todays comments had me rereading the puzzle, so many errors Tamara Tamora etc
@kitshef 7:19. Nice puzzle! Thanks for the link.
Another SOL/SO thought. The confusion is entirely on the plate of Rodgers and Hammerstein, assisted by Mary Martin and Julie Andrews. I'm soliciting for assistance in a lyrics rewrite. Give me the missing line from this new version of a classic Broadway song:
Mi, a name I call myself
Fa, a long long way to run,
SOL, the bottom of your shoe,
La, a note to follow SOL,
Ti ----------------
That will bring us back to do! (or should it be doh?)
[I'm going with, "Ti, a drink for me and you." (Which I think is superior to, "Ti, that thing that golfers do,")
I think clue 49A should've read " Bit in a barn", rather than "in a bar". Once the beer is in the bar there's no oats to be found
It's referring to a granola bar
I know culture is a tricky topic, but KIRI was a gimme for me; my first recording of Strauss's Four Last Songs was by her, and that was from the late 70's.
@kitshef Yes, very nice puz. Well done!
Nice flower power theme. Well-placed black squares in the puzgrid corners gave the flowers a much better chance to co-habit at the edges. Also, nice revealer.
Cool MORSE clue.
staff weeject pick: ITE. Them prefixi often get a psst-sneakerly clue, like this one's {Meteor tail?}.
some other favor-tails: TADPOLES & FROGS mini-theme. WANTSOME. UTENSILS. Learnin about "taqueria" [correctly splatzed SALSA on it, as my toppin, btw].
Thanx for yer flowery prose, Ms. Golden darlin. Nice job.
Masked & Anonymo2Us
p.s. Congratz on yer "surprisinly" neat Universal puz, @kitshef!
**gruntz**
@Tom T 11:53
How about:
SOL, a fish that they filet
La, a note to follow SOL
TI, a drink to start your day
Another one SOLved as a themeless. I smelled the theme only when I finished. I sped through it with my petal to the medal.
Omg omg Tamora Pierce is in the puzzle! I was OBSESSED with her books when I was a child. I've read the Alanna books (the Song of the Lioness quartet) I don't even know how many times. Those books shaped my childhood.
I have to say I simply marvel at those of you that can achieve a solve time like Malaika's 6:16 today. I consider myself a very smart person that is knowledgeable about the world and very good and experienced at solving crosswords -- I mean, I essentially always complete a puzzle, even Saturdays -- and I felt like I was racing around this grid filling in answers, almost never really getting truly hung up ... and ended up at 11:55, almost literally double Malaika's time.
Fast solvers, you are freaks of nature!
Oh, nice puzzle too.
If I ever knew Disney princesses, I've now lost track, so 1A did not splatz in automatically as it did for Malaika. Crosses were needed.
A few missteps meant this took a bit longer than usual for a Wednesday. Dr. Fauci was in the CDC before the NIH and my 36D was "wanna try?" And as Rex complained recently, self-inflicted typo errors can be the worst and so my VIOtET had me staring at TTS, 54A, because I knew VIOLET was correct. Gah, I guess I see what I expect to see. But I did correct it in time.
Sci-fi/fantasy is "my" genre but TAMORA was a WOE. Wikipedia describes her work as for teenagers so that probably explains why her books haven't hit my radar.
@Lewis, it's interesting to hear about the blooms you have already seen. My lilac bush hasn't even fully leafed out and the peonies are just stalks. My grandmother in southern Minnesota would annually hope the peonies would be blooming by Memorial Day so she could put them on Grandpa's grave - it was a rare spring when they were ready. But my daffodils finally opened, yay!
Thanks, Juliana Tringali Golden, for the spring-y puzzle!
I don't think of The Great Gatsby as "incredibly polarizing." It's widely regarded as a fine book that is certainly open to different interpretations but is it divisive?
I think @Nancy said it well with “…a professionally executed but not exactly thrilling puzzle”.
I appreciated more post solve, and think the theme-construction variant is perfect for a Wednesday.
Finished about a min slower than inebriated Malaika. Cant complain.
SOLfege is the practice of learning to sing by using the syllables that tell you where you are in the scale.
I would have thought the Sound of Music line would be Sew, a needle pulling thread, if you want to be picky about it. Do - doe, re - ray, mi - me, fa - far. Sol - sew.
Too easy for a Wednesday but an absolute delight in every other way. Like others adored the Tamora Pierce (great to see that she's finally getting the place she deserves in children's lit canon), the flowers were lovely (though I agree that the cluing on FREESIA was a bit weak), and the frogs/tadpoles rounded out the garden theme gorgeously.
Best Rule of Three example ever. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh4f9AYRCZY
Nice puzzle!
When I finally filled in 1A JASMINE I did a frowny face and wondered why on earth would you take a lovely flower like that and give it a Disney princess clue. I mean, how many Disney princesses are there? Then I saw the reveal. Oh, okay, never mind.
Not all JASMINE are flowering plants. Asian JASMINE, for example, is a low growing vine ground cover that doesn't produce flowers. The climbing vine Confederate JASMINE is the one with the beautiful bee and butterfly attracting flowers. The flowers even smell like JASMINE. These days the alternate name Star Jasmine is probably preferred.
Landscapers sometimes also employ the "rule of THREE" (52D) for plant groupings.
KIRI was my TAMORA, and vice versa--I even wondered if it should be Whoop-de DaO at 60-D, but decided they'd have clued that as a Portuguese wine. I did wonder about the double-meanings rule, but decided it would have been too hard to come up with another definition of FREESIA.
The hardest part, for me, was reading the clue for 13-A, "Baby 43-across," as singular. Too much space for TADPOLE, so I put in polliwog. It didn't last long, but it made the NW corner look messy when I wrote over it. As for 51-A, I outsmarted myself, figuring that someone who is legally your representative is you AgT.
A lovely puzzle, which reminds me that it is time I cleaned up the leaf litter around my PEONY plants.
@kitshef, just printed out you puzzle, I'll give it a go later today.
Hi Malaika! Every time you sub in, your post makes me smile. I feel I actually know you. In fact, and especially now that I am far, far removed from my home and dear friends of the last 50 years, and don’t yet have a “coffee group,” I think of this gaggle of folks as friends and my daily visits here as “having coffee with friends.”
Here’s what I most dislike about my new abode here in NorCal (as it is called) - the time zone!! I keep forgetting that I am 2-4 hours and I keep picking up my phone to call a friend only to see that it will be dreadfully inconvenient for them, or they are likely having dinner or they’re asleep. And also, by the time I post here, it’s really kind of after the fact. Oh well. Since I’m in the “old” category anyway, and have lately been guilty of telling the same story my listener has heard before, I guess it’s all right to go ahead and post even if I have little or nothing original to say.
Today, I am 100% in the “this was fun and I enjoyed the solve,” group. Since I panned my new abode for the time zone, I’ll now reveal a favorite part - the flowers here! I realize that the Atmospheric River phenomenon brought more rain to California than in any other spring in recorded history, and that, at least in large part contributed to the burgeoning display of spring blooms, but here in the North Bay, Nature dressed the area in the brightest finery I’ve ever seen in the US. So brilliant in fact as to give the color and variety I’ve seen in the Mediterranean a run for its money. I’m already learning local blooms in order to start giving the terraces in my daughter’s teensy back garden some brilliance.
Anyway, the flower theme and its clever WALLFLOWERS reveal made me smile several times. My only oops was (isn’t it always with me) grabbing onto the song title at 1A rather than reading the entire clue and plopping in the movie title, Aladdin - definitely not the “Disney princess” as requested. Quickly corrected, but really!
Super happy to see TAMORA Pierce recognized today. I just got my 11 year old granddaughter interested. My daughter wasn’t a huge fan, but I think our Grace has been looking for “a big story with lots of books like Harry Potter,” and Ms. Pierce came to mind a few weeks ago. I learned of her work on grad school while working on my MLIS and took “Children’s Lit” to give me some relief from all the “computers are here and you must learn all this” overload of the late ‘’70s-early ‘80s.” We had to catch up so quickly.
Excellent puzzle even if it should have been a Monday. Nice job as ways, Malaika. I wish I could have actual coffee with everyone here!!
Peace, love and cooperation is all we need.
I learned about Japaning from Martha Stewart. She knew everything. It’s the art of thick black lacquer on a cabinet or other such furniture.
Frenches? 👄👅
Photographers use the rule of thirds to place the focal point of an image in an interesting location.
Classic music phrasing is to have 2 short phrases, frequently 2 bars each, "answered" by a longer phrase of 4 bars that resolves ideas from the shorter phrases.
Same -- I struggled with the TAMORA, OAT, VIOLET, LTS, PEONY section. I thought they were all clever, bar TAMORA and LTS (bad trivia to me) but to bunch them all together was unpleasant for a Wednesday.
And the bluebonnets of Texas! There's still an urban myth that it's illegal to pick them. I'm not sure of the legality of it, but I leave them there for the next person to appreciate
"The Japanned Box" is a short story by Arthur Conan Doyle.
Too much junk fill. Again. Other than that, it was a cute theme.
Are you serious? Man think what you just said.
I thought JASMINE was right, but had a hard time accepting JAPANS. But, I did, and it all worked out.
You ever try to put an across answer in a down spot, or vice versa? Yeah, me too.
Diana, LIW
Little WALLFLOWER on the shelf, standing by herself
Now she's got the nerve to take a chance, so let the little girl dance!*
As one of the SENIORS, I've got a bone to pick. Why do WE get blamed for pulling pranks? It wasn't me, officer. I didn't do it!
Having worked for a flower wholesaler for 19 years, I welcomed today's theme. FREESIA may not be familiar to some, but we handled a lot of it. They come in all colors and make a marvelous filler in arrangements.
POLLIWOG also fits in 13-across, but then FROGS was plural...
What almost did me in was CDC, with which Dr. Fauci was closely associated throughout his career. When it turned out to be the National Institute of Health, I went "Oops!" Also correct. But definitely a fooler.
Curious that the forward volunteer ILLGO crosses the WALLFLOWER. UPMARKET, really? Does anyone actually talk like that?
Never-heard-ofs: japans as a verb, Tamora, Emiratis (do they drive Maseratis?).
Here comes a dissertation on TAR (yo, @rondo). Birdie.
Wordle par.
Oops, my age is showing! When I was a kid some of the books that were on the shelves in my house, and they were hand-me-downs even then, were The Hardy Boys and The Bobsey Twins.
Japan black triggered several things in my memory. First, I've seen it on shows, where they take you into the shops and show how things are done. Second, when I saw the cabinets that were done in Japan black online, I said, I've seen those on TV shows, in antique shops, and at estate sales. Finally, a bell went off in my head, and I remembered that I own a bowl that has been Japaned. I was at a high end craft show and there was a family there that had decorative pieces that had been Japaned, then the matriarch of the family intricately decorates them with gold paint with a very very fine brush. I stood there and watched her doing it, and was amazed. I couldn't draw a straight line to save my life! As I said, I bought a bowl with cover. Quite beautiful.
Forgot: *"Let the Little Girl Dance," Billy Bland
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