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Relative difficulty: Medium
Word of the Day: CAP (56D: Lie, in slang) —
Cap has functioned as a verb in English since the 15th century: mountains can be capped in snow, teeth can be capped with crowns, and pens and heads can be capped with, well, caps. In each of these cases cap has to do with a cover or top. But the verb cap can also be used to mean something else entirely: to lie, to boast, or to front. // Though often mistaken for new internet slang, capping (or cappin’) has been used in African American English for decades, and possibly much longer. In a Genius video featuring interviews with multiple rappers as well as a linguist, journalist Jacques Morel details the history of the term in rap music and dates the first mentions of capping in hip-hop to the mid-1980s and the phrase “high capping” to the end of that decade. The phrase no cap appears to be a newer development, becoming popularized in the 2000s and the 2010s with songs like “No Cap” by Atlanta rappers Future and Young Thug, and “Deadz” by Migos and 2 Chainz. In “Deadz,” Migos can be heard rapping the lyrics “no for real, no cap.” In Morel’s video, Migos rapper Offset defines cap as “bullshit” and “lies,” and no cap as “I’m dead serious.” (No cap is today sometimes rendered in emojis as 🚫🧢 or 🙅🏽🧢.) Willie D of Geto Boys glosses capping with multiple meanings ranging from the act of insulting someone to bragging or fronting. (merriam-webster.com)
• • •
My only other significant gripe with this puzzle is the clue on AHAB (8D: Who soliloquizes "The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run"), specifically the use of the term "soliloquizes." I know you want to misdirect people, it's fun, etc., but that is a term for drama. "Hey, remember that famous AHAB soliloquy?" No, you absolutely do not, because there's no such thing. Hamlet has soliloquies, Macbeth has soliloquies, and almost certainly IAGO has soliloquies, which is what I (and, please tell me, many of you?) put in there at first. That quotation sounds very poetic, Shakespearean, even, and if you'd told me IAGO's soul was grooved to run on iron rails, I'd've said "yes" (and also "why are you talking like that?"). I love good misdirects, but that was a cheap one. On the plus side, the puzzle really nailed a couple "?" clues today, particularly the clue on WEREWOLF (7D: One who can't handle their moonshine well?). That got a definite mid-solve nod of respect from me. Same thing with the clue on NAVEL (34A: Evidence of a past personal connection?). Yes, the umbilical cord is a "past personal connection," that is undeniable. Hat tip, slight bow, kudos.
Trouble spots mostly came early, with DEL v DES (22A: "Of the," abroad), EASES v CALMS (3D: Placates), ELLA v ETTA (4D: Name that's also a suffix in Italian), and PHD v NTH (5D: High degree) confusion. Also, CHLOE was right in the middle of all that, and I have no idea who she is (2D: Actress ___ Grace Moretz) (b. 1997) (she's been in so many things and I've seen almost none of them). Oh, and as for AWARD, yikes (1D: Speech prompter, perhaps). I built it from the bottom so had an answer that looked increasingly like some kind of CARD. Sincerely thought there might be some kind of rebus going on for a second. [CUE] CARD?? The ambiguity of "prompter" made that one tough. Once I got out of that corner, far less trouble. Weirdly, the most trouble came from a name I knew (or "knew," I guess)—I watched all of Veep a few years back, and loved it, but couldn't remember (today, just now) if Julia Louis-Dreyfuss's character was a SERENA or a SELENA ... but, surprise! Turns out the answer is "neither." She's a SELINA (43D: ___ Meyer, the V.P. on "Veep"). That SE corner got harder in other ways too. While ROMA was easy to come up with, TRIESTE was less so (41D: Italian seaport that's home to Miramare Castle), in part because 45A: Some hired professionals, for short was so vague that almost any letter of the alphabet seemed plausible in the P-S slot. I exaggerate. Some. I wanted PAS (short of "personal assistants"). But no: PIS ("private investigators"). I've seen several PTS in the past couple weeks for my stupid-but-improving wrist (multiple PTS working at the same clinic, that is). Are PMs "hired professionals"? Kinda? Are POs "parole officers?" Anyway, P-S slowed me, especially insofar as it crossed that Italian (but looks French) city I never think about.
I am quite certain that CAP will have put nails in more than a few solvers' tires today. Hard, hard generational divide there. I forget where I (recently) learned that meaning of "(No) CAP," but I know that after I learned it, I marched into class and asked my students if they knew the term, and yeah, they all knew it (and laughed at me, I presume affectionately). Meanwhile, I heard an older man (i.e. roughly my age, lol) working behind the coffee counter at school try to make a "cap" pun/joke to one of his coworkers, and then ask semi-earnestly, "isn't that what the kids say? 'No CAP!'" I told him yes, that is what they say, his pun was good and he should be proud of it. Not every "old guy looking out for old guy" situation is bad.
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ReplyDeletetl;dr
DeleteRead it, but won't be wasting my time on any more of these posts.
DeleteREBA was the first answer in the puzzle, so I put in AHAB pretty confidently after that. In general I agree with @Rex, although I didn't notice CAP as I got it from the crosses. Definitely medium to hard for me. I think WHAT THE HEY was my least favorite answer (tied with SMELLERS)--I confidently tried WHAT THE HEck, which obviously didn't fit, and ripped the whole thing out until I had more of the boxes filled in. Not bad.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteOverall, Medium. Hand up for iago before AHAB at 8D and DEl before DES at 22A. My own original overwrites included ROMe before ROMA at 19A and the concurrent ETTe before ETTA at 4D, cReE before ERIE at 28D plus wOW before HOW at 55D.
Like OFL, I watched Veep and got 43D mostly right, with SELeNA before SELINA. That CHLOE woman at 2D and CAP at 56D were new ones on me.
Was really proud that ACCENT WALL went right in with no crosses, so I was off to a good start right away. Had wOW before HOW, and kept resisting TRIESTE because I was confusing it with Triere which is in Austria.
ReplyDeleteAlso thought of Iago for that quote initially, but that quote isn’t in iambic pentameter (it’s close, but not quite there and too clunky as an exception than Shakespeare would have used - plus it’s not quoted in lines as one would quote Shakespeare, PLUS Iago doesn’t speak in prose), so ruled that out. Had to get it from crosses. Agree that soliloquizes is the wrong term there.
I knew the soliloquizer was unlikely to be Shakespearean because of the apparent train metaphor.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the constructor's poor use of 'soliloquizes' ...but in their defense, Moby Dick came out in the 1850s...railroads/trains have been around since late 1700s....and Shakespeare wrote in late 1500s to the early 1600s. Constructor doing their best to lead you AWAY from Shakespeare, IMHO. Thoughts?
ReplyDeleteIn my part of the country "what the hey?" is a common expression. I live in the sticks.
ReplyDeleteI’m a Long Islander and we used it sometimes too. I don’t even know why because we are among the least averse to impolite language.
DeleteThe Ahab quote (which was NOT from a soliloquy) does sound very Shakesepearian, and Iago came to mind, but there were no iron rails in Elizabethan England. The combination of that style and the railroad metaphor meant the quote had to be from the 19th century.
ReplyDeletePuzzle was fine, workmanlike, with a few duds (INTERNET and not FREE WIFI? SMELLERS? Come on, man) but a few fun cuties (NAVEL, WEREWOLF, SUP).
ReplyDeleteROMA tripped me up (I wanted it to be ROME because the Italian in the clue didn't, uh, clue me in).
Not too bad, not spectacular. Took me 13:30. All in all a perfectly okay, fairly easy Friday.
Same. couldn’t figure out my mistake. Looked it up. I had Rome. Sigh.
DeleteAlso had SEreNA before SELINA.
ReplyDeleteThe WEREWOLF clue was great. I figured out at some point it probably meant literal moon shine, I had WO and kept trying to figure out what WORM couldn’t survive in moonlight. 😆
ReplyDeleteCHLOE Grace Moretz had a recurring role on 30 ROCK as the teenage granddaughter of Jacks boss in later seasons. She was really funny. She was also in the movie KICK ASS.
Vaguely wondered what sense of 'lie' is equivalent to 'cap', and hoped Rex would explain it. Check.
ReplyDeletePretty tough by Will Shortz standards; maybe average under Joel Fagliano standards.
Only two WoEs: a big fat ugly one at 1A with ACCENT WALL, and last thing to go in SELINA. OPAH and USE ME I’ve never encountered outside of crosswords.
That BART Simpson quote is actually from the 20th century – so the same century as Dennis the Menace.
Almost as if The Simpsons were a comedy show
DeleteMaybe not the most egregious dupe, but WHATTHEHEY over ALLTHERAGE, with the “the’s” so close together, also gave me pause.
ReplyDeleteI didn’t notice the triplicate “high’s”, but that seems like a day-one constructing/editing rule.
Max W and Rex
DeleteMy comment about the dupes is that The Times doesn’t seem to care about them. They have no “rule “ against them so no
Editor fail, in their view.
I also had Iago first (a stab in the dark) but then once I got ACCENTWALL, changed to AHAB (another stab in the dark).
ReplyDeleteAgree with others that SMELLERS is bad - I tried SCHNOZES first but never know quite how to spell that one and of course it was wrong anyway.
I’m a Simpsons ignoramus and also never really watched Veep, so BART’s aunt and Julia-Louise Dreyfus’s character’s name were unknowns to me. But I eventually worked them out from crosses. I liked NAVELS, very cute, and STREETSMARTS.
Never heard of CAP meaning lie, so now I know!
It’s early, but it’s interesting how many of his are focusing on similar areas of the grid as either troublesome or amusing - I found SMELLERS amusing, but had trouble with the A vs. E option on ROMe/ROMA v.v ETTe/ETTA cross.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, “iron” in the quote gave away the misdirection for me and AHAB dropped right in. And of course I could be President of the “no idea who SELINA is” contingent.
I shall also tip my hat to the clever clue for WEREWOLF - I got a nice chuckle on that one.
Spark in answer, spark in clue.
ReplyDeleteWith 18 longs, I look for glue
Yet hardly a whiff of junk in sight
But rather pings of sheer delight
Highlights:
• The NYT debut answers today: ACCENT WALL, EARLY SIGN, I’M SO CONFUSED, POWER USERS, and even that goofy SMELLERS, which made me smile.
• The grid design, which made space for that unusually high number of long answers (eight letters or more).
• The skill of quilting this many long answers together without creating an overflow of detritus.
• Sweet cluing, highlighted by those never-used-before clues for NAVEL and WEREWOLF.
• Enough bite to satisfy my brain’s work ethic; enough give to enable the thrill of several answer splashes.
And all this, Jesse, on your NYT debut, which felt more like it came from the hand of a seasoned constructor than from one who’s been at it for a bit more than two years. What you showed was that you’ve got that secret sauce in you, the ability to craft top-notch puzzles. Please, Jesse, keep at it, and thank you for a sublime outing today!
A four-letter soliliquizer? Gotta be iago. Dropped that in without reading the quote, so I never even noticed the anachronistic train reference. And that was the second time in this puzzle (but not the NTH)that my PhD was no help.
ReplyDeleteRaising my hand for Iago, but only briefly considered. Cuz yeah, "rails" not a thing. "Soliloquizes" deliberately puts you on the Shakespeare track, so to speak but I wouldn't consider it a usage violation. Pretty sure Shakespearean oratory was very much an influence on Melville--or any other writer of the period--when in High Tragick mode. Don't think Melville would have objected to calling it that.
ReplyDeleteCHLOE was a gimme here, only because we just finished watching The Peripheral and I developed something of an age-inappropriate crush on her.
ReplyDeleteMoby-Dick Chapter 37: "Sunset"
ReplyDeleteNote that this chapter has stage directions at the beginning and in the middle. From now through Chapter 40, the novel will take on the style of a play.
For this chapter only, the novel shifts into first-person narration from Captain Ahab himself. Since the novel is temporarily turning into a play anyway, you can think of it as a soliloquy, a dramatic monologue laying out the internal reflections of a character.
-- from SparkNotes
••••••••••
In these chapters [37-40], Melville continues to present dramatic scenes, using brief stage directions, soliloquy, and dialogue.
-- from CliffsNotes
Easy-Medium! Hell of a debut from Jesse Cohn. Glad to see @Lewis back to give it proper praise.
ReplyDeleteSlow start made me think IMSOCONFUSED. Then came some short fill, then the woosh. Rinse, repeat. Knew OPAH and TRIESTE from previous puzzles. WHATTHEHEY was only used once before, in 2011. I'm guessing "Heyo!" was to hint at WHATTHEHEY, which might be foreign to some people. SUP, Maleska-era classicists?
Really liked this one -- no CAP! Thanks for a fun solve, Jesse (and Joel)!
Had fun with this. “Lear” before AHAB but REBA set me straight. Need more than STREET SMARTS to survive in the City right now. Agree that POWER USERS doesn’t imply savviness.
ReplyDeleteUncle Tupelo
Love that GP cut. NW and SE were solid. SMELLERS stunk. Backed into SELINA and SNAPCHAT.
Enjoyable Friday morning solve.
Draw blood
Smellers? I had scenters first, perhaps recalling an old riddle: "Why is your nose in the middle of your face? Because it's the scenter!"
ReplyDeleteFinished a difficult puzzle by cheating in the NE. Didn't know POWERUSERS, one of the frequent uses of 21st century language in the grid.
ReplyDeleteNot fun at all for me. I did love the clue for NAVEL. That was the highlight.
I loved this puzzle. Tricky enough for a Friday without being mean. Funny that there's a hard generational divide with regards to Cap in the same blog where he opens with a quote about how the phrase has been around for decades. Not sure it's so much generational as it is cultural.
ReplyDeleteThis one played easy in terms of time for a Friday. But my solve started very quickly in the NW, where ACCENTWALL was the first that thing that popped in my head, and took a flyer. Quickly confirmed with CHLOE, CALMS, NTH and LYE. I’ll bet I had the whole NW done in under 2 min. I did have to correct ROMe/HaY. But overall, very unusual to completely knockout a Friday starting corner lickety-split.
ReplyDeleteOn puzzle overall, the long answers were largely very plain, to the point - simple if you will. So much so, 2nd guessed some of my entries. But nope, I was right and by the middle of puzzle had the voice of this puzzle down.
So, yeah, I had a fair amount of whooshing today, but outside of the NW, the whooshing just wasn’t particularly satisfying.
Yuk, on SMELLERS.
And the dupes, quasi-dupes mentioned by Rex are not good.
Off to my son’s college graduation this weekend.
On March 5, 1946, Sir Winston Churchill delivered "Sinews of Peace," a message heard round the world that went down in history as the "Iron Curtain Speech." "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an "iron curtain" has descended across the continent.
ReplyDeleteHey All !
ReplyDeleteTough, but ultimately doable. Natick potential at the A of ROMA/ETTA, which could easily have been ROME/ETTE, even as clued. Figured ROMA because the clue was spelled Italian.
EARLY SIGN is a head scratcher as clued. How do snowdrops in Spring equate to an EARLY SIGN? Unless you mean drops (piles) of snow left after some warmer weather?
Was stuck in a few places, contemplated cheating, but kept at it, and eventually everything fell, and got the Happy Music!
I guess that's it. 😁
Happy Friday!
Two F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Huh, looks like I’m the only one who thought possibly Lear rather than AHAB. I guess Iago appears in Xwords a lot because of the letters.
ReplyDeleteGlad to have CAP explained.
Loved the clues for NAVEL and WEREWOLF.
Overall enjoyed, even though I found it quite challenging due to many unknown propers.
Rex....on AHAB, the iron rails are the give away that its not Shakespeare. Iron rails for transport (which is what Ahab is alluding to) were not invented until the 1820s....
ReplyDeletePretty smooth for me until I died in the southeast. Not just CAPS but HOW, SELINA, and TRIESTE.
ReplyDeleteI got a Saturday's worth of puzzling out of this. HIGHSCORES was where I finished. I had been expecting HOW to be WOW and SELINA to be SELENA. CAP could have been anything so I was pleasantly surprised to get the congrats.
ReplyDeleteEven better was after solving I went back to the SB and got the final word.....
yd -0. QB26
Easy, once I got my toehold in the NW with LEGATO and LYE, the -GE suggesting ALL THE RAGE, whose crossing WEREWOLF (such a good clue!) led me into the rest of the grid. Smooth sailing though all of the colloquial phrases until the SE, where my "easy" became a looming DNF at 55 Across: I didn't trust HOW, and I didn't know SELINA or CAP; nor did I understand how the clue fit the answer - more than once I looked back at I'M SO CONFUSED and thought, "Tell me about it!" But pattern recognition seemed only to allow for HIGH SCORES, and I was happy to see it was right. ABOVE ALL, I thought this was a bouncy, fun Friday.
ReplyDeleteDo-overs: lark before WREN, safe BuyS, SELeNA, Aeon before AGES. No idea: SELMA, CAP, SELINA.
My brilliant comments hit the "Oops that's an error" roadblock. Hate when that happens.
ReplyDeleteShort version: Started with old friend OPAH (where have you been?) and made steady progress, meeting CHLOE and SELINA along the way, who were total strangers. REBA was very helpful in identifying AHAB.
SMELLERS recalled the old grade school tongue twister which starts "One smart feller felt smart". Spoonerisms lead to hilarity, or used to.
Very much enjoyed your Friday offering, JC. Just Crunchy enough. Congrats on the debut, looking for many more, and thanks for all the fun.
I thought the possibility of SELMA/AHEM and PATTY/PSST was brutal in the NE. It was the only thing that slowed me down for a bit.
ReplyDelete@RooMonster: snowdrops, in many places, are the first flowers to emerge in Spring.
ReplyDelete@Dash Riprock, I assume you’ve been in retirement in the 60 years since your fling with Ellie Mae. For an octogenarian, your writing is so lively and fun. You should have your own blog.
ReplyDelete@lodsf (from Weds)
ReplyDeleteAlasdair Fraser (with cellist Natalie Hass) was terrific last night in PA -- they were at the top of their game. He did at the end wistfully suggest we all march out of the theater together, stop traffic, and continue playing/dancing in the streets into the night. Then he said, No, let's just lock the doors down and play in here all night. (Alas, it wasn't to be. The audience averaged about 85 years old, it seemed, so I don't think we would've been able to go much longer anyway.)
I read in Wikipedia that a few years ago his fiddle, bows, a cello, and other items were stolen from a rental car in Portland OR, but were since recovered. It was the fiddle he had been playing for 40 years. It's the reverse of the viola joke in which a violist leaves his viola in his car overnight and the next day discovers to his horror that someone broke in and left him another viola.
My favorite viola joke: How can you tell the stage the orchestra is playing on is not slanted? The violist is drooling out of both sides of his mouth.
One more: What is the typical range of a viola? About 50 feet if you really heave it.
According to WikiPedia, “The viola jokes are thought to have originated from the 18th century when the part of the viola was very uncomplicated and often just a filler part, thus attracting musicians who were not very talented musically or intellectually.”
(Sorry if this all seems unrelated to the puzzles - it stems from Wednesday's fiddleheads.)
Without a thought to tech chronology, went from Iago to Lear to AHAB. Thank you REBA. Too much PPP for me to finish without help, but found the longer answers entertaining. CAP was a major problem, but should have parsed HIGHSCORES—did my level best but came up CONFUSED because HOW was a shocking answer. Nevertheless enjoyed the effort.
ReplyDeleteWHAT THE HEY? The chattiness, informality, and general entertainment value of this puzzle won me over despite some really odd clues and answers. WHAT THE HEY is one of them. When it isn't the far more ubiquitous HECK, then it's the other "H" word -- the one that the Wordplay algorithm won't let me type in. But HEY???
ReplyDeleteThere are other odd choices and I'M SO CONFUSED. As an EARLY SIGN of spring I want to see robins. Or crocuses. Or cherry blossoms. I do NOT want to see snowdrops. Snowdrops are the last things I want to see.
HOW is an expression of shock? How so? I wanted wOW, but couldn't make weGH at 55A work. (I also had SELeNA).
Personally, I thought the clue for CAP was ridiculous. But great clues for NAVEL, STRIP, WEREWOLF and STREETSMARTS.
Hard in spots, easy in others, but entertaining -- even when the clues are completely off the (ACCENT) WALL.
Snow drops are flowers…one of the first bulbs to bloom.
DeleteGrowing up in the forties and fifties, we used CAP differently. Capping on someone meant making fun of him, playfully insulting him.
ReplyDeleteMy grandson took the year off after graduating high school. He worked on the North Shore at Turtle Bay. He's related to the famous surfing family, the McNamara's. He sold shrimp off one of their food trucks and learned how to surf.
Not a lot of fun and some clunky clues, for HOW and HIGHSCORES.
I liked this one a lot. A bit challenging, but doable. Some proper names, but not too many. Some very nice what I suspect to be debut answers. And speaking of debuts - this was a very impressive ONE, Jesse. I sure don’t feel like I had a WASTE of my PAPER today. Well worth the TIME.
ReplyDeleteMy most beloved ABOVE ALL “singer in the dawn chorus” is the precious tiny house WREN who arrives here as an EARLY SIGN of spring coming into full bloom. No other bird sings quite such a cheerful serenade SO enthusiastically.
I can’t let this puzzle go without sharing a favorite saying of my BAE: “It’s always better to be a SMART feller than a fart SMELLER.” And that’s the truth.
“Power user” is a very common expression for someone who is an advanced, well, user of tech. So much so it has its own Wikipedia page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_user
ReplyDelete“A power user is a user of computers, software and other electronic devices, who uses advanced features of computer hardware, operating systems, programs, or websites which are not used by the average user.”
If it’s been a while since Moby Dick, Ahab’s ‘soliloquy’ is worth revisiting! It’s a short chapter that is simply a first-person ‘monologue,’ Ahab to himself. No narrator, no quotation marks, just distinctly Shakespearean soliloquizing — perfect would for it, I’d say.
ReplyDeleteI liked this puzzle a lot. “What the hey?” is used quite a bit in Michigan, especially in the context of “Why not? Let’s do it!”
ReplyDeleteA SNOWDROP is a white flower that blossoms early==a sign of spring's arrival.
ReplyDeleteMedium tough puzzle, but ultimately a 48-plus minute successful solve.
Easy, but the snowdrops clue makes no sense. like it was written by someone who lives where there are so seasons.
ReplyDeleteThis was tough for me, because of all the relatively obscure proper names--cities clued as the location of particular castles, for example. At least ROMA had the castle name in Italian, while TRIESTE had it in English. I had no idea where either one was, but that's just me.
ReplyDeleteOTOH, I had A_AB by the time I read the clue, so then I knew it wasn't an ArAB. Speaking of which, both OPAH and REBA are crossword staples, but I don't know country music enough to put her in whenever I see 4 letters.
@Nancy, I know you live in a NYC apartment, where you probably don't see a lot of snowdrops, aka galanthus nivalis. They're even earlier than crocus.
POWER USERS is not a 21st Century term, it dates from the early days when PCs had 64K of RAM but you could load programs that made them act like they had more. Pre-Windows, when everything was more transparent.
I finished grading my one course yesterday. Now I have to go study. I could probably rest on my laurels with a PhD, but now that I know there's a higher degree I want to get an NTH.
There's a street through our town that used to be charming but is now full of K-Marts, Walmarts, BiMarts, etc. I hate that STREETSMARTS.
ReplyDeleteI've spent some happy hours walking around the ACCENTWALLs of ROMA. Oh, I guess those were "ancient walls". Never mind.
That lady who SEWed our first flag could always be counted on to keep a secret. Washington himself used to call her SAFEBETS.
Snowdrops might be an EARLYSIGN of Spring, but where I live, Spring means OVERTRAIN. I don't think anyone has pointed out yet that Snowdrops are flowers from bulbs. They come up in early spring.
Liked this puzzle. Congrats and thanks, Jesse Cohn.
Another set of duplications: ALL THE RAGE, ABOVE ALL, and ACCENT W “ALL”. And they’re ALL located in the NW corner.
ReplyDeleteI took POWERUSER to be savvy in the particular tech that they are a power user of, not “tech” in general. If you’re an expert at MS Powershell, you’re a Powershell POWERUSER… but you might not know enough about any other tech to raise above a generic “user”.
ReplyDeleteEasy week ends. The NE and SW were easy-medium. The NW was tougher partly because I wanted some sort of pillow for 1a. Once I got ACCENT WALL the NW was finished except for the D in AWARD which took some staring. The SE was very tough for me because (a) wOW before HOW, (b) spellling SELINA with two Es, and (c) taking way too long to remember that CAP is slang for Lie.
ReplyDeleteA bit bit of sparkle but more than a smidgen of clunkiness….two ALLs, SMELLERS, plus what @Rex said. Liked it
Me too for Lear before AHAB and phd before NTH.
I enjoyed this. A bit easier than my Friday average. On AHAB, I saw the train metaphor and immediately threw out Shakespeare. Awkward plurals in the fill annoy me, so FAS is a red flag, but most of this works pretty well.
ReplyDeleteSo snowdrops are a type of flower! Who knew? Thanks to @Tom T and especially to @Jberg who gifted me with some lovely examples.
ReplyDeleteAnd, @Jberg, since Central Park contains almost every variety of flora, I was sure I'd probably seen them in the wild. So I Googled it...and sure enough, here are a showy collection of snowdrops in Central Park.
I'm sure I've seen them there on some occasion or other. But I don't venture all that often to the Conservatory Gardens. It's a beautiful, but very planned and manicured area of the park -- very much like an English garden -- and I tend to prefer the areas of the park that seem a little more "natural". Of course the entire park was meticulously planned and NONE of it is entirely natural, but many areas give off a convincing impression of naturalness, nonetheless.
Anyway, a big OOPS on my part for saying that snowdrops are the last things I want to see in the EARLY SPRING.
I'm surprised at all the people here who had to put aside thoughts of Shakespeare to come up with AHAB. AHAB was no problem for me. And that's because...
ReplyDeleteI had the "R" of REBA from THERESA. I knew REBA, not because I'm such an expert on country music but because she starred in a recent revival of "Annie Get Your Gun." So now I have a 4-letter character ending in a "B", and there aren't any in Shakespeare. Never read "Moby Dick," but I did know that AHAB had an obsession that can be easily translated to "fixed purpose". And so AHAB went right in.
Other than three letter strung together in the same order, I do not see how any lawyer would argue that the repeated "HEY" is a dupe. In "WHAT THE HEY", hey is a stand in for heck. In HEYO, we have a shortened version of "hey you!".
ReplyDeleteChapters 37-40 of Moby Dick are presented as a drama nested in the prose narrative. Short passage, well-known quote, definitely a soliloquy. Worth a read.
ReplyDeleteHad great luck with the ? clues today. AHEM, DENT, STRIP went right in. HIGHSCORES needed a couple crosses but BARNS stumped me. Was thinking about soup stock — and so pots, urns, etc — rather than livestock.
POWERUSER is exactly right, hard to believe a complaint about that. I'll concede the minor dupes issues, but the long answers seems so good that IMSOCONFUSED about Rex's negatives about this puzzle.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed this puzzle, with its fun long answers and clever cluing. The solve was mostly Whoosh City for me, although I was slowed down an IOTA at the bottom due to misspelling SELINA, despite loving Veep.
ReplyDeleteBased on the comments, not everyone anticipates the snowdrops in Spring but they are one of the first flowers that I see—a welcome sign that it's nearly time to start poking around in the garden.
The good news is that I learned a new slang word (I don't care about which "gen" it is) - CAP. Now, will I remember it?
ReplyDeleteI liked 34A NAVEL. SMELLERS was foul. Having never in my life cared to watch "The Simpsons" I'm happy I didn't know SELMA. I will always think of Barbra Streisand in "Funny Girl" when she was VERKLEMPT but I always thought it was about Nicky Arnstein (Omar Sharif) - but then again, I guess it could be TEARY.
That's just my take. Congrats on your debut, Jesse :)
(ROBYN W. - WHERE ARE YOU?)
Good puzzle but why do only westerners refer to the east as asia(57A)? What do people in Asia call it?
ReplyDeleteSnowdrops are the best! If you're lucky to have them in your yard and can pick them to make a small bouquet, put them in a small bottle, preferably cobalt blue, on top of a flat mirror. The interior of each blossom has delicate green lines that will hide from you unless you display them this way. A trick I learned when I moved to Oregon!
ReplyDelete@Conrad 6:34AM EST -- But ROMA wasn't clued in Italian, at least not entirely:
ReplyDeleteHome of the Teatro di Marcello
That's what screwed me up. I explicitly said to myself that for a French locale the clue would have been worded entirely in French, e.g. "Maison de l'Arc de Triomphe". It wasn't, so I reasoned that it hade to be ROMe -- oh look, ETTe make sense too.
BUT it still should have registered as a tricky spot because I considered ETTA at one point. Furthermore, it is not a Natick. This would only be the case if ETTA was clued as a specific name which it is not:
Name that's also a suffix in Italian
All the person must do to get going is to cycle through all the proper nouns and fancy pasta dishes they know. This is what I did, but I didn't mark it as a trouble spot for immediate post-success-music-denial consideration.
Played pretty easy for me relative to other very thorny recent Fridays.
ReplyDeleteGreat puzfillins! (I ain't quite sold on that there can't ever re-use a word edict). FriPuz thUmbsUp!
ReplyDeletefave thing of all: WEREWOLF & its clue. gr-r-r-reat!
biggest laugher: SMELLERS.
staff weeject pick: CAP. Learned somethin, there. Origins? [M&A fearless word theory: shortenin of "buncha CrAP!"]
Thanx for the neat themeless fun, Mr. Cohn dude.
Lookin forward to yer testimony, on Monday… oh … no… heyo! -- wait. U are a Jesse, not a Mike. nevermind.
And primo debut, btw.
Masked & Anonymo3Us
**gruntz**
Tchaikovsky wrote a set of 12 piano pieces, one for each month of the year. The April pieces is called “Snowdrop” — and EARLY SIGN of spring.
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/07KXmaHpzXo?si=3RYbcdRyoV2VUWPK
i think soliloquy was fine. so does merriam webster
ReplyDeletehttps://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/soliloquy
1 the act of talking to oneself
2 a poem, discourse, or utterance of a character in a drama that has the form of a monologue or gives the illusion of being a series of unspoken reflections
I could barely get a toehold on my first pass, and what toehold I did have I was not confident of, but once answers started popping in it had that whoosh whoosh that Rex is so fond of, with some real smile-inducing answers/clues, and I ended up less than half of my average Friday time. Very enjoyable puzzle.
ReplyDeleteI had no idea about CAP meaning "lie", so I learned something. Hands up for SCHNOZES with one Z before SMELLERS. (Firefox is telling me smellers is not a word; it suggests SELLERS, SMELTERS, or SPELLERS.)
ReplyDeleteLotsa short names: OAHU REBA AHAB BART ERIE CHLOE SELMA
[Spelling Bee: yd currently -1. After a recent streak of 23, my slump continues. BTW, knew OPAH from SB.]
Had two great but wrong answers early on. For me snowdrops are HARBINGERS of spring (12D), and if I'm in a city a good thing to have is RAPID TRANSIT..
ReplyDeleteROMA. What’s the rule on clueing foreign language answers? I debated between ROME and ROMA and chose ROME because, despite using the Italian name for the landmark, the clue was IN English (“Home of the Teatro di Marcello”). I was wrong, though. Is it the case that any use of foreign words in the clue is sufficient to indicate a foreign-language answer?
ReplyDeleteLate to the party as I needed to put my wife on another plane. Word of advice to Gen X: When your aging parents say they don't need help, don't believe them. They do, and it's only going to get worse. How the Boomers in my family have handled their last years: "I am the center of the universe, I will live forever, I need no plan B." My wife has turned out to be their plan B. She's got STREET SMARTS.
ReplyDeleteThis puzzle was a hoot. Didn't know Chloë or Selina or Trieste and those three things slowed things dramatically, but still ended up with a fun solve with the usual Friday hunt and peck. Most of the long answers were cool to grok and went in sort of whooshy.
Propers: 9
Places: 3
Products: 2
Partials: 4
Foreignisms: 1
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 19 (27%)
Tee-Hee: STRIP. I make pretty good money doing reverse strips. Me being draped in textiles is a valuable commodity.
Uniclues:
1 Wunderkind aviational vocalist.
2 How capitalism works.
3 Confirmation fish are fantastic at Final Fantasy 4.
4 Ones who enjoy the odoriferousness of the indefinite ends.
5 The tinfoil kind.
1 ALL THE RAGE WREN
2 ABOVE ALL ... DESIRE
3 OPAH HIGH SCORES
4 NTH SMELLERS
5 SAFE BETS CAP
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Mayonnaisipodes. SLAW ELIXIRS.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
46D was a brilliant double-entendre.
ReplyDeleteYes! Works both ways - losing clothes, messing up a screw. Amazed Rex didn’t mention it.
Delete@Joe Dipinto - I’ve missed you on here, and your whereabouts have been inquiredabout! Good catch today inre soliloquy.
ReplyDeleteI have paid particular attention to SNOWDROPS this year for some reason; a name that I’d heard got connected with a flower I’d seen - love it when that happens.
I found today’s puzzle pretty fresh and snappy, and went by in a flash, significantly below my average.
Thank you RP for your service in recognizing another oldsters cleverness. Now if you could come visit my HS class when they stare at me blankly at comedy gold - I know this bc there is one kid who gets it in the back with a wry smile.
Here’s my lawyerly take: HEYO = slangy hello, HEY in WHATTHEHEY is just a meaningless euphemism for HELL. 3 of the same letters, but different meaning. Would we complain about PAT and PATH being in the same puzzle? (Probably:)
23 Down did have the saving grace of reminding me of the opening line of a talk given to a group of clergymen by Reverend William Archibald Spooner (1844-1930): "I want to thank all you fart SMELLERS for being here today...." I think "fart SMELLERS" also was used by SELMA's nephew BART on one of "The Simpsons" episodes.
ReplyDeleteNot sure if we're talking lunar illumination or illicit hillbilly whiskey at 7 Down so I'm off to brush up on my knowledge of the WEREWOLF to find out why it's "One who can't handle their moonshine well".
My kind of puzzle. Ssmooth, full of real phrases, long fill, very little junk. Extremely enjoyable if slightly easy Friday. Keep ‘em coming!
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete@Burtonkd Re the blank stare at comedy gold--boy, do I know that one. But there always was (at least) one kid in the class that caught on, and that made me look forward to teaching every day. Still miss that part.
ReplyDeleteHaven’t read the comments yet
ReplyDeleteRead Rex. Liked it better than Rex as usual. I did think there was a pile up of names so I thought it was on the hard side.
Looking at an accent wall right now. Didn’t know what it was called. (Not at home Btw)
I agree that the clue for AHAB was very sneaky. I tried Lear, “confirmed” by the A. Didn’t even think of Iago fortunately Just realized Shakespeare has 2 important characters, at least, with A as the 3rd of 4 letters.
Another trick of this puzzle,
Implying an S ending and not having it, waste paper, and no s at the end of the clue, yet a plural word at the end of the answer street smarts. Ouch. At least I avoided a dnf.
This was ridiculously easy, not like a Friday. Maybe a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, but I never bother with those, and don't they often have themes? Surprised to see it marked "Medium." That's "Medium" for a Friday, supposedly?!
ReplyDeleteLate to the game like my hero @Gary from another airport run though the transportee was a favorite sister-in-law. No boomers involved, but I understand his position. Being married to a good woman is a reward in itself…..like finishing a grid like today’s. Not real tough since obscure people not from my universe were fairly crossed, but a neatly clued workout nonetheless as many noted above.
ReplyDelete@Newboy 6:36 PM
ReplyDelete... "hero" ... LOL. Time to raise the bar dude.
And yes, marriage to a great person is the only thing I've done right in life. Highly recommended.
Began this after an all-day drive. Could only fill about half, figuring I would DNF. Then came back to it a few hours later and bingoed it. But I guess I'm too tired to find anything to strongly dislike, even to share Rex's objections to the aesthetic dents.
ReplyDeleteI once said “That’s a cap!” to a student, and he didn’t deny it. But he did correct my grammar: “Mister, it’s not ‘that’s a cap’, it’s just ‘that’s cap’.”
ReplyDeletePOWER SCORES
ReplyDeleteHOW I want THERESA to USEME,
ABOVEALL with DESIRE sublime,
she’s SMART enough to CONFUSE ME,
SO I take IT ONEATATIME.
--- BART BARNS
From yesterday:
TIMID NESS
DON’(TWO)RRYABOUTIT, There’s AMORE. NO TEARs!
Not FINE to GO without IT, though I’m ONINYEARS.
--- MISS KATY KITT
From Wednesday:
SUE’S INON IT
NO LYES LATER WHEN we linger,
ORE IT’S TSK,TSK, TSK ON me,
ISEE BUTTER ON YOUr FINGERS,
IT IS TO EASY . . . TEHEE.
--- EDGAR EMIL MASON
Yet another decent Friday puzzle. Nice and crunchy. Just the way I like it.
ReplyDeleteSurprised nobody mentioned it but how did PIS pass the breakfast test?
ReplyDeletePuzzle was fairly hard for me today, but that's because I will read a clue, and say to myself "I know the answer", but alas it takes longer and longer for me to remember it. My synaptic spark plugs are becoming more Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and much less the Bugatti that I think they once were. At least I got er done all by my little ol self.
ReplyDeleteYay me.
Thought the same as some others above: OFL, an English prof, didn't recognize that there were no steel rails back in Shakespeare's time? Plus the gimme B at the end? Speed solvers miss the logic and the fun.
ReplyDeleteUnexpected wordle eagle!!!