Offer kudos, in modern lingo / MON 5-27-24 / Rare tennis feat in which one player wins 24 straight points / Programming language since 1995 / Soft leather variety / Ref. that added "turnt" and "deepfake" in 2023

Monday, May 27, 2024

Constructor: Christopher Youngs

Relative difficulty: Easy (if only I knew how to spell NOVOCAINE...) (solved Downs-only)


THEME: PUT ON A SHOW (62A: Keep up appearances, say ... or what to do with the ends of 17-, 24-, 39- and 50-Across) — ends of the theme answers are things related associated with a theatrical or movie production:

Theme answers:
  • JAVASCRIPT (17A: Programming language since 1995)
  • GOLDEN SET (24A: Rare tennis feat in which one player wins 24 straight points)
  • PODCAST (39A: Audio download)
  • GIVE PROPS (50A: Offer kudos, in modern lingo)
Word of the Day: GOLDEN SET (24A) —

In tennis, a golden set is a set which is won without losing a single point. This means scoring the 24 minimum points required to win the set 6–0, without conceding any points.

In professional tennis, this has occurred twice in the main draw of top-level events. It has also happened a number of times in the pre-tournament qualifier of the lowest-level events. Bill Scanlon had a golden second set in his win over Marcos Hocevar at the 1983 Delray Beach WCT event. Yaroslava Shvedova had a golden first set in her win over Sara Errani at the 2012 Wimbledon ChampionshipsSteffi Graf came close to achieving the feat in the finals of the 1989 Virginia Slims of Washington tournament, winning the first five games to love against Zina Garrison, before winning the match 6–1, 7–5. At the 2023 Western & Southern OpenTaylor Fritz won the first five games to love in his round of sixteen match before his opponent, Dusan Lajovic, retired. 

golden match is when a player does not lose a single point in the entire match. There are five documented cases of this at low-level events. Hazel Hotchkiss Wightman did so in a 1910 amateur match in the state of Washington. Then it happened twice in France in the qualifiers of lowest-level professional events, two of them in the span of two months, both against the same 55-year-old man, Tomas Fabian. A more recent televised Golden Match involved Krittin Koaykul beating Artem Bahmet during a qualifying match at ITF World Tennis Tour event in Doha, and scoring the minimum 48 points to win. (wikipedia)

• • •

This theme seems fine. A basic "last/first-words-associated-with"-type theme. Pains have been taken to make sure that all of the relevant words appear in decidedly non-theatrical contexts in their respective answers, which is nice. Fill's a little flaccid (esp. down below, in the OVULE PETE'S ELENA RESEW area), but I've seen worse. I don't think PUT ON A SHOW is exactly equivalent to [Keep up appearances], but I guess it's close enough. It was a fairly forgettable solving experience but for two moments. First, I technically failed my Downs-only solve because I finished with a misspelled NOVOCAINE. I had it as NOVACAINE (crossing SNARES) as opposed to NOVOCAINE (crossing SNORES). It's a word I've struggled with before, which is why I convinced myself NOVACAINE was right. See, I wanted NOVOCAINE, but because I had misspelled it in the past, or else had seen it written out at some point and thought "that spelling is weird," I assumed that the spelling I wanted was the wrong spelling, so I went with the weirder-looking spelling, NOVACAINE, which honestly still looks pretty good. Maybe it's because it shares its first six letters with the familiar "NO VACANCY." Anyway, wanted the right thing, second-guessed myself and went with the wrong thing, end of story. 


The other thing about this puzzle that is semi-memorable is GOLDEN SET, which made me groan when I got it. Well, no, not groan. It made me make a horrible, dubious face. I got every letter of GOLDEN SET from crosses, checked all those crosses a second time, and then had to concede that yes, the answer was probably GOLDEN SET, but what the hell is that? I figured it was a mathematical term (like the "golden ratio"). After I finished, I looked at the clue and saw that it was a tennis term, which, as someone who played tennis a lot as a kid, and followed professional tennis reasonably closely for a time, was news to me. Never heard of it. When they say "rare," they aren't kidding. See the "Word of the Day" entry for details, but tl;dr it's only ever happened twice at the top level of professional play for men or women. I can't even believe there's a name for it, that's how rare it is. EGOTs are common compared to GOLDEN SETs. So I'm not in love with GOLDEN SET as the chosen (Monday) SET. Must've been pretty hard to find a six-letter set, I guess. I like HORSEY SET, myself. STEREO SET would've worked just fine. But I guess if everything else is Monday easy (and then some—seriously, zero resistance today outside this answer), then you can introduce your weirdo GOLDEN SET. But I will say that looking up GOLDEN SET did lead me to one of my favorite sports stories, out of France—it involves Tomas Fabian, the Czech player who was on the losing end of not one but two (!) golden matches (!!!) inside of two months (!!!!). Wikipedia actually contradicts itself here—the body of their GOLDEN SET write-up says both losses were golden matches, but the match details below say he actually managed to score one point in one of those matches. No matter, still a colossal (under-) achievement. Check out this French write-up of one of those matches. It's amazing:
Le Blockbuster Tomas Fabian a encore frappé ! Ce Tchèque Non Classé de 55 ans s'amuse à écumer les tournois ITF, offrant un étrange spectacle aux yeux ébahis des spectateurs puisqu'il ne sait pas du tout jouer au tennis. Le suspens est toujours à son comble quand il a la raquette à la main : va-t-il, ou non, remporter un point ou offrir un golden score à ses adversaires ? Joffrey De Schepper, tête de série n°3 (25 ans, 1035 ATP) des qualifications du tournoi de Rodez a manqué de peu le score parfait. 48 points à 1 et 21 minutes de jeu plus tard, il a pu poursuivre son chemin et retrouvera au prochain tour Pierre-Olivier Lassalle. (Tennis ACTU)

Blockbuster Tomas Fabian strikes again! This 55-year-old Unranked Czech has fun roaming the ITF tournaments, offering a strange spectacle to the amazed eyes of the spectators since he doesn't know how to play tennis at all. The suspense is always at its height when he has the racket in his hand: will he, or not, win a point or offer a golden score to his opponents? Joffrey De Schepper, seeded n°3 (25 years old, 1035 ATP) in qualifying for the Rodez tournament, narrowly missed the perfect score. 48 points [to] 1 and 21 minutes of play later, he was able to continue his path and will meet Pierre-Olivier Lassalle in the next round. (Google Translate) (emph. mine)
As a 54-year-old unranked American, I adore this "55-year-old unranked Czech" who apparently has no idea what to do with his tennis racket. Tomas Fabian! Where is his Wheaties box!!? Thank you, Monday puzzle, for giving me a new sports idol.


I've heard of "kid gloves" but not DOESKIN gloves (43D: Soft leather variety). Still, I was able to infer it from just the "D" (which I had because what else is gonna go in the "SWE-E" spot?). I forgot for a second that Adobe made PHOTOSHOP, but again, crosses came to the rescue and I got a good "D'oh" out of it once I finally saw it. I would've gone to DOTED U. but got rejected and had to go to a small liberal arts college instead, boo hoo (9D: End of an academic URL). I hear they treat you pretty good at DOTED U. — MAID service, PICASSOs in every room, the works. Must be nice. 

[45D: Painter with a noted "blue period"]

See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

59 comments:

Anonymous 12:21 AM  

Same same. Solving downs only. NOVaCAINE looked good to me.
And SNaRES

jae 12:34 AM  

Easy even though I did not know BEARD, GOLDEN SET, and BROS…nor how to spell NOVOCAINE (hi @Rex).

Smooth grid but a trifle meh, liked it.



Croce Solvers - Croce’s Freestyle #914 was mostly easy for a Croce. The NE was the toughest part for me. If you are looking for something quite a bit tougher than this weekend’s NYT offerings give #914 a try. Good luck!

https://club72.wordpress.com/2024/05/

okanaganer 12:50 AM  

Also solving down clues only, I too finished with errors. Faced with D-ESKIN crossing -ED I put in an R, figuring DRESKIN must be a variant spelling of DEERSKIN or something crazy like that. I know: what was I thinking?, but I've never heard of DOESKIN. Now Kreskin, I've heard of.

But wait, there's more: "For PITY'S sake!" (ELYNA and AVI looked like two more plausibly stupid unknown names, whose clues of course I hadn't read. Dunno why PETE'S sake never once popped into my head!... not my day.) But still more interesting than solving the regular way, honest.

Also, agree with Rex that GOLDEN SET is crazy non-Monday obscure. Never heard of it either.

On that note, [Spelling Bee: Sun currently -2; non QB slump drags on.]

egsforbreakfast 1:18 AM  

DOESKIN = family? It's an OPEN question.

I saw a pig flying!
I'll believe that when PHOTOSHOP.

@Lewis will likely point out the palindromic PEEP, but it just makes me want to PUTONASHOW with PORN. Once he SEES that he'll probably notice another palindrome. Speaking of which, you could probably use a mirror to REPEL a leper.

Attention Five-O. There's an AMIGO doing a CAMEO in this puzzle.

Thanks for the fun, Christopher Youngs.

GILL I. 1:45 AM  

VERA, the little ISIS from VIETNAM, was a MAID. She loved to EAT and PUT ON a plate of some GOLDEN ANGUS for her AMIGO, EGOT. She would SEEP it in JAVA CAINE hoping it would LURE EGOT to EAT on CUE. "Well, GEE!" EGOT would IMPLY...."My YENS, AS A RULE, are for TUNA SET in a POD of UMA, and you, VERA, need to GRASP the LURE of my YENS!"....

EGOT was about to CAST his little GOLD SWAN (as he called her) into ONE ERIE mind SET.....

"I RAN to a PORN PEEP SHOW" she would CROW....."And it was ERIE and gave me VIRGO and I took PHOTOS of SKIN!" she yelled....EGOT, on CUE, would REPEL this RE MARK of hers. His BEARD, from EAR to EAR, made his SCALPER OPEN. "GEE" he thought, " I need to OPEN my little SWAN up with some MAGI...I'll give her an ISIS in a VASE and hope she'll GIMME ONE more INVITES to EAT AT her INCA!"....

The LURE of EGOT and his TUNA YENS drove VERA to feel an ERIE GNAW. As soon as the TUNA SHOP would OPEN, VERA would EMIT a loud GEE!....Her SCRIPT in hand, and on CUE, she GRASPS for the TUNA. DAVIS, the SCALPER, INVITES her to EAT a little SCONE before she leaves, but VERA has her mind SET on a marinade of TUNA in a POD of GOLD UMA for her AMIGO (lover), EGOT....

VERA and EGOT eventually settled down in their PBJS and watched a PEEP SHOW. It didn't REPEL them....they could POSE for a PICASSO and show how OPEN they were. In the end, either could EAT TUNA or ANGUS and feel DOTED upon! It was truly a MAGI moment they would CROW, and SO SAtisfying....and even though EGOT SNORES!.......

And that's the truth!

Anonymous 4:08 AM  

Doeskin? ...and scalper in the same puzzle. Not a fan.

Carola 6:00 AM  

I had the same DNF as @Rex, with NOVaCAINE crossing SNaRES, but I don''t have the excuse of solving Downs only; I just didn't check the cross, since SNaRES looked fine to me. Nicely done theme, for which I absolutely needed the reveal. I liked the addition of the SCALPER selling tickets to the SHOW; I'm not sure if there's ever a DRAPER backstage - perhaps to adjust the togas for productions of Julius Caesar.

Dale Gribble 6:23 AM  

Not a fan of "scalper" in any context, thanks

Son Volt 6:46 AM  

Cute - early week idea. Went by pretty quickly - had the same initial hiccup with NOVOCAINE as the big guy. Didn’t know GOLDEN SET or DOESKIN - didn’t like DOT EDU.

ANGUS

Liked the PORN x PICASSO cross. So many GIMMEs - no pushback. Revealer is close - but doesn’t tell quite cover the entire story. Considering rewatching Mad Men from the beginning.

Pleasant enough Monday morning solve. Thank you to all those who didn’t come home.

Old CROW

Bob Mills 7:05 AM  

Never heard of GOLDENSET or GIVEPROPS, but the crosses made it easy. Nice comfortable start for the week (I also got to QUEENBEE in the Spelling Bee...brag, brag.

Lewis 7:19 AM  

Classic Monday theme, well executed, and elegant, given that the show words in the theme answers carry a different meaning than what they mean in the theater.

Biggest takeaway for me was learning super-shutout GOLDEN SET.

I let my eyes gaze for a few moments on the completed grid, and they kept seeing connections:
• Lovely word ladder in the West, with SEES / SEEP / PEEP.
• A given-name fest: UMA, MARK, ELENA, ANGUS, VERA, ISAAC, PETE(s), and wannabe HUE.
• A string of schwa-tails: PINA, INCA, TUNA, UMA, ELENA, VERA.
• Two answers that make proper names when “line” is appended: AVE and VASE.
• Long-O enders: CAMEO, ECO, PICASSO, AMIGO, EMO, VIRGO and wannabes PUTONASHOW and RESEW.

Best moment for me was when, after seeing all these theater words, suddenly, in a reprise from “Gypsy”, whose LP my mom played often in my youth, the epic tune “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” started playing in my head, sung brassily by Ethel Merman. I couldn’t get rid of it, and I don’t want to!

So, thank you, Christopher, for a big boxful this morning – this was grand!

Wanderlust 7:24 AM  

I guessed right on NOVOCAINE in my downs-only solve, but the next column in the puzzle forced me to cheat twice. AS A RULE, DOESKIN should not appear in a Monday puzzle. I looked at the across clues for CUE and OED to get those two.

Otherwise, I agree it was an easy downs-only, although I also had OVULa originally but realized RaSEW couldn’t be right.

I doubt we’ll see a GOLDEN SET at the French Open, but I would love it if Rafa scores one on his way to one more trophy before he retires. I can’t believe they didn’t give the guy with his statue outside the stadium protection from facing a top seed in round one. I would root for Rafa against anyone but especially against the evil Zverev, who is currently on trial in Germany in his second credible accusation of abusing a girlfriend.

Liveprof 7:45 AM  

Whenever I set up a dental appointment for my wife, I tell them to skip the novocaine if it will save a few bucks.

Gary Jugert 7:45 AM  

Mostly harmless little grid. I suppose if you're a female deer with a future in the glove industry it's a little dark, not unlike the show Silence of the Lambs with its pro-ALOE VERA-ism, this puzzle advertises the benefits of soft skin for use by DOESKIN enthusiasts.

Propers: 7
Places: 2
Products: 4
Partials: 9
Foreignisms: 0
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 22 (28%)

Tee-Hee: You know, when you're like me, a hunk o' burnin' love, you spend alotta time declining PORN INVITES, and it's nice to finally be recognized by the NYTXW staff.

Uniclues:

1 Black and white film genre of very cold naked people in vans.
2 When words come for tea.
3 Zuckerberg went to Capitol Hill.
4 Plumbers job description.
5 Why cows on the internet look so delicious.
6 How that girl at the bakery gets me to buy a dry piece of cake.

1 SWEDE SUVS PORN
2 OED INVITES
3 MARK PUT ON A SHOW
4 SEEP PEEP
5 ANGUS PHOTOSHOP
6 SCONE LURE POSE

My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Groan. DAD JOKES EARN IT.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

pabloinnh 7:50 AM  

Saw there was some theater/movie connection after getting all the themers but the revealer was a nice surprise, so an A for execution on that.

I knew how to spell NOVOCAINE. I GIVEPROPS to myself. I knew about DOESKIN too, since I grew up in an area where leather was important. The nearest "city" to my little town was GLOVERSVILLE, for PETES sake.


Knew how to spell GIMME too, which is fitting, because I had to look it up once to say on this blog that an answer was a GIMME.

Hand up for being today years old (as we say around here) when I first heard GOLDENSET. Reminded me of a nine-pitch all-strikeout feat in baseball, the "immaculate inning".

And never thought I'd see PORN in a NYT Xword, but there it is.

Very nice Mondecito indeed, CY. Could You make some more like this please? Thanks for all the fun.




mmorgan 8:05 AM  

No trouble with NOVOCAINE doing Downs Only but but I got stuck at DOESKIN (43D) and had to look at some Across clues in that corner.

Mike Herlihy 8:20 AM  

@pabloinnh - we saw PORN just last March 19th! Before that, Mr. Shortz allowed it 17 times over the years, though not since July 27, 2020, according to xwordinfo.

RooMonster 8:39 AM  

Hey All !
Nice MonPuz. Nothing too tough. GOLDEN SET new here. About the only hold-up in the grid. A good amount of Blockers floating around, but puz doesn't seem segmented. It still has a nice flow to it. The open corners help that feeling.

Tight set of Themers for the SHOW. Good one, Christopher.

Got a chuckle out of Rex's DOTED U. Good stuff. I heard you get served grapes by people in togas there.

Another Monday, albeit a Holiday. Not for me, I still get to go to work. Fun!

Happy Memorial Day! Remember why we celebrate today. In Remembrance of our Uniformed heros.

No F's (C'mon AMIGO...)
RooMonster
DarrinV


Anonymous 8:40 AM  

Maybe you were thinking of Frank Ocean‘s Novacane?

Danny 8:55 AM  

Ü

(There’s your dotted U.)

Sam 9:04 AM  

Also solved downs only, couldn’t find my error, and found I had misspelled NOVOCAINE with an A in place of the second O.

pabloinnh 9:21 AM  

@Mike Herlihy-Well, yeah, the WORD "porn".

I guess I'm still waiting for some actual porn.

Interesting facts on appearances, for which thanks.

Nancy 9:27 AM  

Well, I knew we were either making a movie or producing a piece of theater, but I never thought the revealer would be something as mundane as PUT ON A SHOW. I was contemplating something more like THEATER BOXES or HOLLYWOOD SQUARES.

OTOH, it's Monday. And Monday is allowed to be mundane and chock-full of GIMMEs.

This is a smooth, well-made grid that's almost completely completely free of proper names -- and for this I must GIVE PROPS. But it's impossible for me to get excited by a puzzle that's so lacking in challenge. I did learn that a BEARD is a symbol of marriage for Amish men. I thought they all wore them. So there's that. Anyway, I'm hoping for more challenge tomorrow.

burtonkd 9:35 AM  

This is why I donated to the blog this year: 888 words on GOLDENSET. My blog would have had "Hmm, not sure I've heard of that", weighing in at a terse 7, or 13 if I added "despite watching a lot of tennis" It was inferable, or at least filled in from every single down being easy.

I saw NSFW and waited for the PORNSMUTaloa, but it filled itself in without my noticing from the crosses. Wondering what else I missed in this wooshy blur...

I had never heard of EGOT before Tracy Morgan's character was going for one on 30 Rock. Seems like it's been everywhere ever since. Good to know it's not an Eco-friendly Game Of Thrones.

Lewis 9:45 AM  

My five favorite original clues from last week
(in order of appearance):

1. What a king might sit on? (5)
2. It's kept in the loop (4)
3. Bargain hunters, of a sort (6)
4. Get off to a flying start? (4)
5. Nonmetric unit ... or a metric unit (4)


SLATS
BELT
UNIONS
TAXI
FOOT

burtonkd 9:54 AM  

@Nancy, nothing from you on GOLDENSET?

Anyone know what happened to the puzzle at the NYer? Thursday and Friday are now miniatures, and only Monday is very challenging, but not as challenging as it was previously.

Judge Morgan 10:00 AM  

High Point University is literally DOTED U.

andrew 10:17 AM  

Welp, I had BEARs for Amish symbol of marriage. Strong with claws out. And I wasn’t doing the downs only self-handicap unidirectional version of solving. That was my considered first guess.

sOT EDU made sense too - heavy imbibers at keggers on fraternity rows and all. Even at Amish universities during the salad days of Rumspringa.

jberg 10:32 AM  

I can't get interested in down-clues-only, so I started with PINA. Otherwise 3-D would have been lidOCAINE, which my dentist and (I think) most dentists actually use. Fortunately, I've always pronounced that second O as long, so the spelling didn't faze me.

High point of the experience, for me, was misteading 32-D as "Post-E.E. era," and wondering if there was a 3-letter version of CR (for Carolus Rex). ICU came entirely from crosses.

As for GOLDEN SET, of course I didn't know it, but you could sort of infer it once you had a few crosses. Nice puzzle, neat theme -- and if the revealer didn't sparkle in its own right it was still perfect in its use of the theme elements.

Have a good Memorial Day, everyone, honoring whoever you honor.

Anonymous 10:54 AM  

Novocain (no E) is actually the trade name for procaine. Frequently misspelled but this old medical transcription pro isn't buying it.

Anonymous 11:16 AM  

You totally missed the opportunity to show this video. As an aside, I had no idea that the female voice was Belinda Carlisle. How cool!

johnk 11:34 AM  

Monday SNORES.
AS A RULE, I solve Mondays in my head, but I'm a bit sleepy after a great party. So I printed it out and solved acrosses-only. That is, except for most of the theme answers, which just didn't jump out at me but for JAVASCRIPT.
After filling in the themers, I looked for things to nitpick. Can't find any that REPEL me.

Gene 11:34 AM  

Exactly the same, completed Downs only, misspelled NOVOCAINE. 😑

Nancy from Chicago 12:10 PM  

@burtonkd, I am upset about the New Yorker puzzle too. They acted like they were introducing a great new feature in the mini crossword, when in actuality they were just replacing the regular Thurs/Fri puzzles with minis. Since they still have a beginner-friendly puzzle every week, that leaves only two enjoyable puzzles for more experienced solvers. :(

Nancy 12:37 PM  

@burtonkd (9:54) -- Of course I knew GOLDEN SET immediately -- and would have been well able to fill it in without crosses, except that I already had crosses.

What were my thoughts on first seeing the colorful and intriguingly clued GOLDEN SET? These were my thoughts:

Has anyone ever taken a GOLDEN SET from me? No, no one has ever taken a GOLDEN SET from me!!!! None of the players "whose rackets I couldn't carry" and who I probably had no business being on the court with in the first place ever took a GOLDEN SET from me. Not Quince, a 4.5 woman player who was once ranked #2 in the Juniors in West Virginia. Not Patricia, a 4.5 woman player who trained from a very young age at the knee of her uncle, Bob Lutz*. (*Doubles partner of Stan Smith.) And none of the 4.0 men* I occasionally played singles against -- all of whom hit harder and ran faster than I did -- ever took a GOLDEN SET from me. Even though I was only a [high] 3.5 - 4.0, and a 3.5 woman playing a 4.0 man can scarcely be classified as a "match" at all.

But I'm quite sure that no one ever took a GOLDEN SET from me!

Gary Jugert 12:44 PM  

@GILL I. 1:45 AM
"TUNA SET in a POD of UMA." Wowee would I like that recipe. Sounds like something you'd eat with a spoon, rather than knife and fork.

Les S. More 12:54 PM  

Pretty smooth and easy for a downs-only. Had a good idea of the theme (theatre?) by JAVASCRIPT and GOLD_NSET which I first thought might need an I to complete it (some jewellery term, maybe). Only *real problem* was D_ESKIN. I tried filling that blank space with a variety of letters. From bED to zED, nothing worked so I reran the alphabet and found the O.

Couldn't figure out why there weren't a lot of comments when I arrived but, of course, it's Memorial Day. Hope you're all enjoying the extra day off.

Les S. More 1:05 PM  

Oh yeah,

@jberg

Good call on the Novocaine/Lidocaine thing.

Masked and Anonymous 1:05 PM  

Good, solid, "ends of themers" puztheme. Complete with PUTONASHOW revealer and a SCALPER.

fave thing: @RP's DOTED U soliloquy. M&A has also doted on U's, academically, on occasion.
another thing: SEEP & PEEP column.

staff weeject pick: ICU. Homophone summary of @RP's soliloquy.
fave moo-cow eazy_E MonPuz clue: {___ colada} = PINA. Right outta the chute, thank U.

just a few no-knows: BEARD as clued. GOLDENSET. BROS as clued.

This was a good MonPuz, but M&A longs for a totally wacko MonPuz theme, sometime soon. Turn the tables on us, Fagliano/Shortzmeister. And while yer at it, splatz in a SatPuz themed puz, the same week. What the heck - tradition, schmadition.

Thanx for puttin on the show today, Mr. Youngs dude. A golden set of themers.

Masked & Anonymo6Us

p.s. No Jaws of Themelessness at all, today. The streak ends at three.

p.p.s.s. Everyone have a real nice Memorial Day day.

**gruntz**

Burtonkd 1:32 PM  

Wow, I heard back from UES Nancy and Nancy from Chicago from one post - not sure what this portends, but it’s gotta be good!

I don’t think I could win a GOLDENSET even with no opponent - pretty sure I’d double fault at least once or dump an outright winner attempt into the net.

Anonymous 1:38 PM  

I wrote to beg them to “stop the Shrinkflation!” but they ignored me.

Anonymous 2:42 PM  

I have played amateur tennis for years and watched professional tournaments in person and on tv and never heard of 6-0 referred to as a golden set .

Anonymous 2:46 PM  

Never heard of nsfw

Anonymous 3:36 PM  

Because that’s not what a Golden Set is. 6-0 sets are common.

SharonAK 5:08 PM  

@REX THANK YOU for the French news snippet re the unranked Czech which I managed to read tho- I didn't quite get "encumber" "son comble" and "ebahi".
And for your response to it. By the end I was chuckling aloud with a smile in my heart.

Have definitely heard of doeskin gloves. When I read that you had not I wondered briefly if it were a gardening thin - but no, those are goatskin ( tough enough to resist thorns and briars.)
Pleasant puzzle, but your write up was better.

SharonAK 5:22 PM  

@Rx Also enjoyed your rif on dotedu. Good to have you back in the humorous form I remember from first few years of reading this blog.

Anonymous 5:52 PM  

Dale Gribble
To each his own opinion.
But it is a stretch to imply scalper, in the contemporary usage of the word (context, if you will) is inappropriate for crosswords.

Anoa Bob 7:00 PM  

Got to GIVE PROPS to the puzzle for at least a tangential nod to Memorial Day with VIETNAM at 10 Down. There are over 58,000 names on the VIETNAM Veterans Memorial of U.S. service people who lost their lives there. I have many memories of that war, including three deployments over there while in the Navy in the mid to late 60s.

One that still stands out was from a large format magazine of that era, Look or Life, I believe. They devoted an entire issue to pictures of all the U.S. military personnel who had been killed in the war for, I believe, one month or maybe it was for just one week. They didn't show pictures of them in uniform. They used pictures from those peoples' high school yearbooks. That really drove home how young and innocent these people were who had their lives senselessly taken from them.

I thought the reveal PUT ON A SHOW was wide of the MARK of its clue "Keep up appearances, say..." AS A RULE I've heard PUT ON A GOOD SHOW used to mean manage one's image or "Keep up appearances".

JC66 7:08 PM  

A 6-0 set is called a bagel.

GILL I. 7:12 PM  

@Gary J...HAH! Remember that you want the HUE of an EON PODCAST along with some GOLDEN SOSA. Delish!

Anonymous 9:19 PM  

Yes ~RP

mady113 10:13 PM  

Memorial Day and the Vietnam reference is food?

Anonymous 11:05 PM  

Count me in as another downs-only fail thanks to NOVACAINE.

kitshef 5:08 PM  

An almost resistance-less puzzle. DOESKIN was the only head-scratcher, and I did hesitate on the NOVOCAINE spelling. I got it right for the wrong reason. I figured NOVaCAINE would have the prefix 'nova', and didn't think that would be part of the word. Well, it turns out that 'nova' is part of the etymology.

Croce 914 was easy-peasy, but again a one-square DNF at the 4D/17A cross. I had no reason to doubt either of my answers.

Anonymous 4:21 PM  

Can someone explain what a CVS is for academic record. I know transcript gpa/qpa but never heard of CVS. Thank you.

Brett Alan 6:39 PM  

CVs are a kind of academic résumé. The initials stand for "curriculum vitae", a Latin phrase meaning "course of life".

spacecraft 12:36 PM  

How rude to be greeted by a tech-based themer first thing Monday. Felt like doing a Garfield and returning to bed.

But, it all worked out with fair crosses--and it turns out even I have heard of JAVASCRIPT. No spelling confusion on NOVOCAINE for this ex-medical corpsman.

Fine theme & revealer; reasonably clean fill (well, if we could RESEW that hem...). Birdie.

Wordle birdie.

Condolences to Akshay Bhatia after that awful three-putt to blow a playoff chance in the Rocket.

Diana, LIW 7:22 PM  

Lights, cameras, action. The word-play's the thing in this Monday puzzle.

Lady Di

Anonymous 10:48 AM  

A solid beginner-friendly Monday puzzle with a fun theme.

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