Bowling-pin shaped creature of Al Capp cartoons / THU 6-20-24 / Vape's lack / Sidekick of 1950s TV / Kids' menu go-with / Lead-in to normative / Airport acquisitions / Dancer's haul / Lorelai's place of business on "Gilmore Girls" / U.S. city where the frozen margarita was invented / Monk's style / Kind of electrons on the outermost shell of an atom

Thursday, June 20, 2024

Constructor: Ella Dershowitz

Relative difficulty: Challenging (if you go down and get the "revealer" first, then maybe less challenging)


THEME: TRADE NAMES (55A: Commercial identifiers ... or what four pairs of answers must do in order to match their clues) — on four occasions, Across answers that share a row "trade" three-letter strings, which happen to be people's first "names":

Theme answers:
  • INTIMATION / HALE (i.e. INHALATION / TIME) (17A: Breath / 19A: Marathoner's focus) 
  • CANNON / SPRAYING (i.e. CRAYON / SPANNING) (24A: Kids' menu go-with / 26A: Reaching across)
  • ALIVE / LEAST (i.e. LEAVE / A-LIST) (35A: Get out of Dodge / 36A: Fancy few)
  • PICKED ON / PARTED (i.e. PICKETED / PARDON) (44A: Walked for a cause / 46A: Prisoner's reprieve)
Word of the Day: SHMOO (4D: Bowling-pin shaped creature of Al Capp cartoons) —
The 
shmoo (plural: shmoos, also shmoon) is a fictional cartoon creature created by Al Capp (1909–1979); the character first appeared in the comic strip Li'l Abner on August 31, 1948. It has had a considerable influence on pop culture, language, geopolitics, human history, and science. // A shmoo physically resembles a bowling pin with stubby legs. It has smooth skin, eyebrows, and sparse whiskers—but no arms, nose, or ears. Its feet are short and round, but dexterous, as the shmoo's comic book adventures make clear. It has a rich gamut of facial expressions and often expresses love by exuding hearts over its head. Cartoonist 
Al Capp ascribed to the shmoo the following curious characteristics:
  • They reproduce asexually and are incredibly prolific, multiplying faster than rabbits. They require no sustenance other than air.
  • Shmoos are delicious to eat, and are eager to be eaten. If a human looks at one hungrily, it will happily immolate itself—either by jumping into a frying pan, after which they taste like chicken, or on a grill, after which they taste like steak. When roasted they taste like pork, and when baked they taste like catfish. Raw, they taste like oysters on the half-shell.
  • They also produce eggs (neatly packaged), milk (bottled, grade-A), and butter—no churning required. Their pelts make perfect bootleather or house timbers, depending on how thick one slices them.
  • They have no bones, so there is no waste. Their eyes make the best suspender buttons, and their whiskers make perfect toothpicks. In short, they are simply the perfect ideal of a subsistence agricultural herd animal.
  • Naturally gentle, they require minimal care and are ideal playmates for young children. The frolicking of shmoos is so entertaining (such as their staged "shmoosical comedies") that people no longer feel the need to watch television or go to the movies.
  • Some of the tastier varieties of shmoo are more difficult to catch, however. Usually shmoo hunters, now a sport in some parts of the country, use a paper bag, flashlight, and stick to capture their shmoos. At night the light stuns them, then they may be whacked in the head with the stick and put in the bag for frying up later on.
• • •

I've been fed a steady diet of easy and easier puzzles for so long now that I'd forgotten what a properly Thursday Thursday puzzle felt like. This one absolutely ran me over. The theme made it so eight of the answers didn't ("didn't) make sense, and then the cluing overall felt turned up to 11, difficulty-wise. The NW... I mean, that's always likely to be the toughest part of a puzzle, in that it's where I start, and when you start, you have nothing to go on, but even adjusting for that fact, that NW was brutal. Starting with 1A: evidence collector, for short (CSI). A CSI ... is a CSI a countable thing? Is the "I" for "investigator," or is the "investigation" as a whole the "collector" in question? That clue on RUN was great but hard (14A: Homecoming, of a sort?) (you score a RUN when you come “home” … in baseball). Clue on STENO (20A: Court figure), also really hard (and would've been impossible for me without the "O" from SHMOO, which I somehow knew because I am old and so the world of Al Capp (exceedingly popular at one time, very much not popular now) is vaguely familiar to me). The [Brand for bakers] could've been anything (I started with TEC / TEFLON in the CSI / CRISCO slots). I figured tanning was involved at 2D: Get bronze but since the verb is generally just TAN, I could not see SUNTAN. And how many kinds of INTENT are there? (3D: Mens rea, for example). Mens rea is a kind of INTENT? I thought "mens rea" *was* INTENT, so I was looking for ... I don't know. Something related to "state of mind." Total faceplant. That NW also has *two* themers running through it, so ... yeah, haven't been thrashed like that in a long, long time. 


It was clear pretty early on that if I'd only gone down and looked at the revealer (instead of working my way methodically down the grid, always working off crosses, as per uzh), I could've moved things along quicker. But I'm stubborn. So I just kept fighting my way through, assuming I'd get the trick eventually. And I did. I got the switch thing (*eventually*) but the fact that the switched things were names didn't register. Also, somehow knowing that a switch was involved didn't make everything magically Easy all of a sudden. With HALE, ALIVE, and LEAST, the "name" part is so much of the answer that it's hard to guess the (actual, literal) answer from the remaining letters. I mean, [Marathoner's focus] and all I get is the "E"? I thought ...  maybe PACE? Or an ACHE? Or the RACE itself? Or the TAPE at the end? Also, if you give me [Prisoner's reprieve] and PAR- followed by three letters, well, I'm sure PARDON is the best guess there, but PAROLE fits, *and* OLE is a (Danish/Norwegian) name, so ... oof. 


So it was hard, but was it good? Yes. I didn't like some of the cluing, but the theme itself is really SLICK. A simple concept resulting in a very difficult solve. The revealer is perfect. Almost too perfect. Uncannily perfect. TRADE NAMES is about as exact and concise a description of what happens, thematically, as you're ever gonna see. You get eight "unclued" answers, but they're all technically clued ... once you do the name trade thing. The fact that the pre-trade answers are perfectly legitimate-looking words and phrases is remarkable. Nothing feels forced or awkward in the entire theme set. I resented slightly having to know "Gilmore Girls" lore today, especially for a clue as innocuous and infinitely clueable as INN (Lorelai's place of business on "Gilmore Girls"). The problem wasn't the clue/answer per se, it was the answer's position—probably the most load-bearing Down answer in the whole puzzle, with 2/3 of its letters running through those damned traded names. If that clue weren't in such a high-value position, it would've been just another pop culture thing I don't know, la di dah, who cares? Today, ugh. The only TV INN workers I know are the Newharts. I know that Rory (is it Rory) goes to Yale (?) at some point (?), but otherwise I don't know that show. Speaking of things I resent: yet another Yale clue for you today (56D: Certain Ivy Leaguer (ELI)). Like many Yale grads, the puzzle just can't stop mentioning Yale. It never ends. I wonder where the constructor went to sch- ... oh, hey, whaddyaknow? Shocking. (I'm just teasing) (it's true, though).


PHAT is very much "bygone" and should be marked as such (60A: Dope). To call the SLEIGH Dancer's "haul" is awfully, terribly, painfully forced, especially as you're already desperately trying to misdirect solvers with "Dancer" (on its surface, not obviously a reindeer name). I guess the thing that you are hauling is your HAUL? Sigh. OK. I think of HAUL as your total take: say, of candy at Halloween, or medals at a dancing competition (if you're a dancer, and not a Dancer). They did that hide-a-name-at-the-beginning-of-the-clue thing again with 34D: Monk's style (BEBOP). All clues start with capital letters, so there's no reason you'd read Dancer or Monk as proper nouns in their respective clues. Mask the capital, fool the solver, trick as old as time. Oldie but a goodie. I definitely thought "monks have style now?" Even after I realized Monk could be a name, I somehow ended up thinking of the wrong Monk:


Explainers:
  • 4A: Airport acquisitions (STAMPS) — jeez, this is brutal. STAMPS are "acquired" ... in your passport, if you are flying internationally. Lots of context left out of this clue. Very Saturday-level stuff.
  • 31: Hanger-on (LEECH) — in addition to the fact that I still can't spell LEECH (or, to be more accurate, can't distinguish between LEECH and LEACH), I had trouble here because the clue seems like a stretch. I mean, an actual LEECH does "hang on" you (I got some on me in a river in Oregon once—freaky). But metaphorically, I don't think "hangers-on" are necessarily LEECHes. It's a jump from mere hanger-on to actively soul- / energy- / money- (if not blood-) sucking LEECH.
  • 40A: Staff note (MEMO) — another misdirect. Clue looks musical. Isn't.
  • 50A: Sidekick of 1950s TV (TONTO) — Vino TINTO is red wine in Spanish cuisine. TINTO is a word you see on wine labels a lot. Just ... throwing that out there.
  • 27D: "Wild" ingredient in some beers (YEAST) — had the "Y" and first thought, swear to god, was "... YUCCA?"
  • 22D: U.S. city where the frozen margarita was invented (DALLAS) — again, just brutal Saturday-level cluing. I just made a "U.S. city" out of whatever scraps I could turn up in this word.
  • 47D: He played Mary Richards's boss at WJM-TV (ASNER) — Would've been way harder as [Famed Grant portrayer]. Or [Emmy-winning Grant portrayer]. Something like that. As is, this was one of the gimmes for me today. Did a full "MTM" watch earlier this year. About as good as the live-action network sitcom ever got.
  • 61A: Roger's cousin ("YES, SIR!") — "Roger" as in the affirmative ("received and understood") in radio communication.
  • 39A: Loud kiss (SMACK) — Hey, look, it's SMACK again. Back-to-back SMACK. Return of the SMACK. Mwah. Nice.

Hope you survived (and enjoyed) today's puzzle. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

129 comments:

Oliver 6:06 AM  

The NW corner was brutal for me, too. As a Brit, most American-themed clues (aside from sports) always trip me up.

I worked out the link by getting TRADE from the down clues, then filled in TRADEMARK, deleted it after realising it couldn’t be because of some SE solutions, and realised that the circled letters were being traded with the other one on their line (thanks to PARDON/PICKETED).

It took me far too long to then realise that the circled letters were all first names, despite filling in TRADENAMES earlier.

Anonymous 6:17 AM  

Yes, mens rea is a specific kind of intent in criminal law. Specifically it indicates not just the intent to act as one did but to do so with criminal intent, with a 'guilty mind', as it translates literally.

Bob Mills 6:18 AM  

I'm the guy who always hated Thursday puzzles. Now I'm finishing them without cheating. I caught on to the trick with PARDON and PICKETED, then used the theme to solve the rest. SPANNING and CRAYON were fairly easy to identify, the others not so.

I agree that the cluing was devious. STAMPS didn't look right, and Dancer hauled Santa's SLEIGH, but was it Dancer's haul?

Natasha 6:19 AM  

I figured out the gimmick pretty quickly, but I still appreciated having a proper Thursday trick for what feels like the first time in years. I even thought the circles were warranted this time.

(Side note: I couldn't figure out why ASNER was clued like that until I realized that it was an attempt to make the clue trickier, as "Mary Richards" and "WJM-TV" are not dead giveaways for many people.)

Daniel 6:26 AM  

I don't understand why the NYT software allows entering multiple letters in a square to solve a Rebus, but the only "correct" answer is a single letter. So I spend several minutes post-solve swapping the orders of the Rebus to no avail. I finally revealed one square and saw what was required, then filled in the other 23 for the third time.

floatingboy 6:29 AM  

God, I hate Thursdays.

thfenn 6:34 AM  

Great puzzle. Challenging enough to gratify, and engaging solely on its own merits as a puzzle (meaning that unlike most times I didn't run off googling about something I learned or have any fond associations, memories, and other tangential thoughts sparked by the answers. LOL, other than MTM, PBR, and some still lingering terror over LEECH. Just a great puzzle on my hands.

New something was afoot early because INhalATION and CrayON had to be right but clearly weren't, but didn't know the answer was over there in the other circles, where I let pAcE and then rAtE linger. I wandered down looking for the reveal and that did indeed help, but even then I went with TRADEmArkS so knew I was trading something but only late in life realized it was NAMES.

RUN for homecoming and PROMPT for essay inspiration still puzzle, no AHA moment there yet.

Loved this one. A very thumping Thursday. Maine was hotter than much of the US yesterday, and wait there's more. Stay cool.

Stuart 6:37 AM  

Loved it! 🥰

Neil 6:41 AM  
This comment has been removed by the author.
Neil 6:44 AM  

Loved this puzzle. Only complaint I have is with the clue for MEIOSIS. Cell division is mitosis, *not* meiosis. Meiosis is the process by which a ‘normal’ diploid cell (two copies of each chromosome) turns into a gamete (sex cell..haploid…one copy of each chromosome). Yes, meiosis entails cell division (more than one in fact) but cluding MEIOSIS as cell division is just wrong.

Neil 6:45 AM  

@thfeen, a PROMPT’ is what teachers give students as part of an essay-writing assignment. Can’t help you with RUN for homecoming

SouthsideJohnny 6:49 AM  

Rex summed it up very well - especially the extremely tough SLEIGHing up there in the NW - you start out with all of those brand names and other PPP (CRISCO, Gilmore Girls, Al Capp, the March Hare) and the fact that the theme answers just look like gibberish until you grok the gimmick, and it’s pretty close to time to throw in the towel. The brutal STAMPS clue was kind of a stake through the heart as well.

Things got a little easier south of the equator and obviously the revealer was a big help. Hopefully this was a nice diversion and a bit of a challenge for the many who have been championing more crunch in the puzzles that are published in the current era.

Anonymous 7:05 AM  

@Neil @thfenn. Think baseball.

Joe Welling 7:05 AM  

Other mens rea than intent (that is, intending the result) include knowingly, recklessly, and negligently.

DeeJay 7:07 AM  

Isn't the 'Mary' in 47D superfluous or misleading?

He played Mary Richards's boss at WJM-TV

Anonymous 7:10 AM  

RUN in baseball involves coming back to home plate.

Conrad 7:17 AM  


What @floatingboy 6:29 said.

kitshef 7:18 AM  

Shockingly few erasures for a Thursday. Really just OMyGOSH. And actually I tried to spell SHMOO as 'schmoo' until I realized it wouldn't fit. And I left the last letter of 12D blank at first as I wasn't sure if it would be VALENCE or VALENCy.

Good fun, though.

Andy Freude 7:19 AM  

Doesn’t “Mary Richards” in the clue require ED ASNER as the answer?

@floatingboy: I feel your pain. Least favorite day of the week. Wake me up when Thursday ends.

Taylor 7:20 AM  

Run for homecoming is a baseball reference (coming into home to score a run). Took me some time on that one, too. I had a lot of fun with this one!

Anonymous 7:30 AM  

This would have been great if it was fair. But it didn’t seem fair to me, mostly because of the first set of themers. Unlike Rex, I not only had no idea of the Gilmore Girls workplace, I also had never heard of SHMOO and didn’t know what mens rea is. (I certainly know the phrase - from crosswords, as in “Mens -“ or “- rea” - but not what it means.) Since I couldn’t get a single one of those downs, I had to try to get it the other way, by coming up with a name that could be switched with HAL. Like Rex, I thought of a million four-letter marathoner concerns that end in E, but not TIME. And I didn’t see an alternate word for INHALATION with three letters subbing for HAL. So a DNF. Hated that.

I love wordplay in cluing, and I loved some of these, such as for RUN and SLEIGH and BEBOP, but given how hard the theme was, maybe throw us a softball or two? (As Rex said, the clue for INN was unnecessarily aimed at very few people - maybe if it had been “Holiday —“ or something, I might have finished it.) And then add very technical answers such as MEIOSIS (I did have MitOSIS first), VALENCE and PENTADS. Yuck.

Also, LEA is not a very common name. Lee yes, Leah yes. But not Lea. I got tripped up on that pair (before getting the revealer) because “Get out of Dodge ALIVE” made sense as an expression, so I thought maybe the answers were supposed to follow the clues. But it didn’t work elsewhere.

Anyway, definitely feeling very curmudgeonly and Rexish on this one.

Anonymous 7:33 AM  

I know why I am wrong but it still “feel” like the fill should have be GRANT. I see the played but it somehow still seems wrong.

Ted 7:37 AM  

I may be alone in that SLEIGH was an easy get for me... probably because I'd already decided this puzzle was set to Hard Mode and the cluing was tricky.

CSI doesn't have to be an individual, as clued. 1A: evidence collector, for short; the answer can indicate the department, as a unit. The answer could also have been FBI, and you wouldn't have to think of "a single FBI agent" but the whole bureau.

Other than that, pretty tough and chewy. I needed the revealer to figure it out, although I was PRETTY sure we were swapping 3 letter strings in some way already from up top.

@Daniel complained about the Rebus being tricky, and I think a lot of us agree about Rebus puzzles being annoying to figure out what exactly the software will accept. However: today was not a Rebus. Sorry!

Anonymous 7:48 AM  

I loved this puzzle! Just hard enough for A Thursday, bit not impossible. As an added bonus, our 21 year old has started to do the NYTXW every day and it makes for a great WhatsApp conversation (she's in Italy) every morning. She is stubborn about taking help, but I have recommended this blog as a way for her to continue to improve.

This is weird, but, SLEIGH was the first clue I got (like everyone else, I struggled with the NW to the end) and as a lover of puns and Dad Jokes, it made my day.

What a great puzzle!

Anonymous 7:57 AM  

Nice to see some love and details for the pretty creepy (but fun) and highly outdated Shmoo! Talk about something that would never fly today!

Anonymous 7:58 AM  

Never got the theme and had to hack into trade names. I first had trade marks.

D 8:03 AM  

Happily, there is nary a rebus in this puzzle.

Nancy 8:04 AM  

Not only was it a huge "Aha Moment" for me when I finally saw what was going on -- it was also a huge relief. I had been SO completely in the dark for what seemed like forever. If I had only gone to the revealer immediately, I probably wouldn't have "suffered" so much, but my "mens rea" left a great deal to be desired this morning.

I love you, President MONROE!!! You were my salvation. That "E" in PICKETed absolutely had to be an "O"! PICKETed couldn't be PICKETed.

I got to you, President MONROE, a few nanoseconds before I got to TRADE NAMES. At which point the scales fell from my eyes and all became clear. Aha! DON/TED!!! And then back to ANN/RAY!!! ALI/LEA!!! And finally TIM/HAL!!!

I had the final "E" in what had come in as HALE (19A) and I couldn't come up with the "marathoner's focus." RACE? TAPE? CORE (as in a runner's sixpack abs)? But RAC, TAP and COR are not names.

INTIMATION belatedly gave me TIM. Aha -- TIME!!!

One of the hardest Thursday puzzles I've ever done. Solving it makes me feel very smart. If you solved it, you're very smart too. I didn't find it much fun at all until I cottoned on to the trick -- and then I found it enormous fun!

Danny 8:06 AM  

Very different solving experience from Rex et alia. Got the trick pretty early on, was on the puzzle’s wavelength, and came in well under my average time.

Anonymous 8:10 AM  

They don’t seem to stamp your passport any more.

Karen Kelley 8:12 AM  

They don’t actually stamp passports any more. At least in Europe they don’t.

Anonymous 8:14 AM  

Agreed. Thank you

pabloinnh 8:27 AM  

Same hangups as OFL today, especially in the NW, which is where I finished, except I thought of STAMPS immediately for some reason and it turned out to be right.

This one was impossible without the revealer for me. Cool that the words with the wrong names in them were also words, although they made no sense as clued.

My mom was a fabulous baker and there was always a can of CRISCO around somewhere, but it still took forever to think of it. Come on man.

Now that was a Thursday that knows how to Thursday. Extremely Devious, ED, and thanks for all the fun.

thfenn 8:37 AM  

@Neil 6:45 and Anonymous 7:05 thank you both! Aha moments now in place. Am embarrassed at RUN. Love baseball.

Anthony In TX 8:39 AM  

This was tough (but not silly), which is exactly what a Thursday should be. The last few weeks have driven my average Thursday time down to 15:56, but this one should bump that up a bit.
Good puzzle.

Anonymous 8:45 AM  

Because this wasn’t a rebus puzzle. And the NYT app is more than happy to accept a multi-letter square as correct if it’s correct.

Smith 8:49 AM  

@Neil 6:44 Thanks! Thought I was nuts there for a sec.

Anonymous 8:54 AM  

Totally unenjoyable puzzle. I appreciate crosswords but not mind games. I still don’t understand the “theme” in spite of the explanation.

Alice Pollard 8:56 AM  

Was thinking PARole before PARDON for far too long. that slowed me down. Finally finished, no errors. Way over my average time. It was a tough puzzle. I liked it!

Anonymous 8:58 AM  

Like a marathon, it was brutal while you’re in it, but after it’s over, you look back on it with fondness and think about the next one.

Annonymous Army Wife 9:03 AM  

I am utterly stumped by the dress down clue. Of course the only letter Im.missing has that for one clue and a Proper name as the crossing

Anonymous 9:05 AM  

Appreciate that this was challenging (until I read the revealer, at least) but the fill was pretty gross and the cluing worse. Oh My Gosh, WTF is OMIGOSH?

RooMonster 9:11 AM  

Hey All !
Toughie! Goodness.

Couldn't grok INHALATION. kept reading it as HALINATION. Thinking, "what in tarhooties is HALINATION?" Good stuff.

Figured out the NAME TRADing stuff, but some of the clues, holy moly. Had to cheat three times (!) and still had a FWE. Had VALaNCE/RaI. Ouch. Now I see "chain" as a multiple store thing, I was thinking of an actual chain, like linking hikers together.

So a good trouncing today. I hope you're proud of yourself, Ella. 😁

Happy Thursday.

No F's (OMIGOSH!)
RooMonster
DarrinV

Anonymous 9:18 AM  

Wonderful. Finally a puzzle with some challenge to it. It’s nice to see helper circles that help, rather than just jettison any shred of difficulty.

Judge Morgan 9:20 AM  

An absolute mess.

Kevin Uy 9:26 AM  

A point of contention — the frozen margarita machine was invented in DALLAS. The frozen margarita appears to have debuted in Chicago, per this Smithsonian article: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/uniquely-texas-origins-frozen-margarita-180969339/

Dan A 9:33 AM  

Fun Thursday!!! I got PROMPT from thinking about something you’d give ChatGPT to write an essay. Would be extra fun if TRADEmArkS also worked for TRADENAMES ‘cause Mark is a name, and a name is also a mark.

andrew 9:39 AM  

I Automatically turn on Autocheck from Thur -Sat so I don’t make it an all-day event for a missed letter or concept. Yes, it’s like trainer’s wheels on a kid bike or putting up the gutter bumper when bowling but saves me from being committed to PARdon or not formatting a rebus correctly on other Thursdays. Makes a pastime less of a “piss time” (away) waste or “pissed time” state of frustration.

And I get most of the puzzles done without cheating (outside of the training wheels).

Lengthy Rex-like intro aside, thought this was fun. Got the Dancer’s haul immediately and thought it was cute (don’t understand the pushback on this - Dancer’s the name, SLEIGH what He/She/They pulled.

Liked HETERO because it was a callback to Rex’ high school memories of “Cruddy Heteronormative Homophobic school dances” (can anyone even read my Wheel of Fortune pic?)

Saw Al Capp (and Coretta Scott King and Bob Dylan) get honorary degrees when my brother graduated from Princeton in 1970 (quite the troika!)

When some longhaired, bearded students walked out on him, he growled (when he talked, he really did growl), “That’s right, go walk on water. *chortle* And if you happen to sink, try using some SOAP! *chuckle*”

Good times.


Sam 9:40 AM  

Loved it. Even once I figured out the revealer it took some effort to parse the themers. Fun, challenging, and satisfying.

Anonymous 9:42 AM  

What puzzle were you solving?

Anonymous 9:48 AM  

Best puzzle in a lonnnnnng time

Carola 9:57 AM  

Really challenging for me - and with the same thought as others here: a proper Thursday! I saw that there was some kind of switching going on but couldn't understand the pattern. That was partly because of mistakes - I thought a marathoner's concern was "pacE," a clock was "Analog," and Enhances was "ADorns" - and partly because I was inconsistent in entering the "right" or "wrong" letters in the Acrosses and Downs, if you know what I mean - for example, I had both CrayON and SPRAYING in that row. I tried to hold off the reveal, but I needed it for the crucial information that the circled letters were NAMES...ah, hello TIM and ANN! Very satisfying to finish.

Help from previous puzzles: for me, a very crucial SCHMOO. No idea: what "mens rea" means.

Anonymous 9:57 AM  

To “dress down” someone means to scold them or berate them for something. So you might give your kid a dressing down if they skipped school.

Nancy 10:05 AM  

Since my response to all you Willie Mays fans late yesterday (but did anyone other than @kitshef read it?) I've been gifted by YouTube with an absolutely wonderful Willie Mays interview from 2006, conducted by the ex-ballplayer Tim McCarver. I'm linking to it here for all you Mays fans to enjoy too. And you definitely will.

There are plenty of reasons perhaps to complain about the pervasive use of algorithms in the virtual world, but somehow YouTube makes their use eminently worthwhile. Whatever my field of interest -- or even my field of interest for one particular week only -- YouTube, without any PROMPTing from me, finds me the most perfect clip, interview, performance, master class, panel discussion -- whatever. It's like having my own private curator -- and I love it.

SusanA 10:07 AM  

Brutal, but quite enjoyed it, even though i had to check 5 answers and one letter to get there.

I did get the revealer early, mainly because I had no idea what so many of the answers were. And it helped a lot, except the first pair, which was still challenging.
Grateful that I am old enough to know what a SHMOO is, or I’d still be SPRAYING the alphabet around like a PABST.
Thank you Ms Dershowitz for a fine puzzle.

Whatsername 10:08 AM  

As RP said, a proper Thursday. I did not find it difficult but highly frustrating until I got to the revealer and figured out the trick. I balked stubbornly at STYES with an I and ATTN which is not a subject line abbrev. so much as it is primarily on the address line. Once I dug in my heels there, that center section was a mess and ended UP the last area I filled in because of those two entries.

In her autobiography After All, Mary Tyler Moore tells the story of when Ed ASNER auditioned for his iconic role of Lou Grant. The first run-through did not go well, but they decided to try it again and the mold was cast. Also an interesting point of trivia, the part of TED Baxter was originally intended to become a love interest for Mary. However, after Ted Knight blew them all away with his portrayal of the anchorman as a buffoon with a massive EGO, they quickly decided to change direction and again, a star was born.

Anonymous 10:08 AM  

We don’t say “Yale”, we say “New Haven”.

Jack Stefano 10:26 AM  

To score a run in baseball, you have to cross home (plate).

Anonymous 10:28 AM  

This was awful…not fun just awful !

Anonymous 10:30 AM  

It’s not clued incorrectly. The clue should be interpreted as “[A] Process of cell division”, not “[The] Process of cell division”. Any bio textbook will tell you that eukaryotes have two distinct processes of cell division, meiosis and mitosis.

Masked and Anonymous 10:36 AM  

Solvequest started out tougher than snot, at our house, also. I think the puz thought it was a SatPuz, or somethin. Had the Jaws of Themelessness to announce its feistiness, after all.

Peeked at the revealer clue, and decided we were gonna somehow TRADE MARKS. And, of course, the circled letters were gonna be involved. Finally dawned on m&e at CANNON's CRAYON what was actually happenin.
Great puztheme mcguffin, and revealer. thUmbsUp. Also, cruel and unusual for the precious nanoseconds usage.

staff weeject picks: All the trade names, of course.

fave stuff included: SHMOO. OMIGOSH. MITOSIS [yep, I know … but I've gotta be stubborn about this]. ANACONDA. SLEIGH clue.

Thanx, Ms. Dershowitz darlin. One great challenge of a puz, for any old day of the week.

Masked & Anonymo2Us


**gruntz**

Dora Carrington 10:37 AM  

I agree with the comments re: sloppy cluing for a few of these, but I came to comment (which I believe I've only done twice before) to strongly protest "omigosh" as an answer to "Wowzers!" I do not believe "mi" has entered the lexicon as an accepted alternate spelling of "my" and if we're going to allow random text-isms into an otherwise English crossword, what's the point?

beverly c 10:37 AM  

First I thought the names were in pairs. Then I thought the letters were scrambled. I had to finally get the revealer AND beat my head against the wall a bit longer to see we were trading Different names altogether. But what fun and what a relief to go back and untangle all the trouble spots!

Count me as another who thought it was mitosis up top.

Really struggled not knowing mens rea (would have liked jargon there) or SHMOO. No issues with SLEIGH, but did I see it? I did not.
All in all, an Excellent puzzle for Thursday trickery!

Anonymous 10:45 AM  

yes! this was just trying to be devious and clever but mitosis is actually correct!

Gary Jugert 10:48 AM  

Delightful and challenging puzzle. I worry about @Nancy when there are circles. Couldn't remember any MO- presidents, so I had one research project, but the rest hopped in after I grokked PARDON and the reveal. I wish the wrong answers had been funnier.

I haven't bought a STAMP in probably ten years. Are they expensive now? How is it possible the post office is still around when all they bring me is postcards telling me some candidate for office is horrible. I usually don't even know an election is happening. Oh, they also bring me an AARP magazine I toss in the trash by the mailboxes. The grocery coupons have mercifully been axed so no Wednesday recycle project anymore.

I think BLASÉ is more enduring it than over it. In any event, I'm doing nothing while something is happening. I am glad beer only has four ingredients.

Don't know who SCHMOO is, but I like it schmoozing with the other proper nouns.

Propers: 6
Places: 2
Products: 4
Partials: 7
Foreignisms: 1
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 20 (27%)
Funnyisms: 5 😄

Tee-Hee: Guess my tee-hee from yesterday was too tee-hee-y so I was axed and I've only got some PHAT [Dope] to soothe my pain today. (I still have a PHAT sweatshirt.) I make assumptions when the mods have reached their tolerance limits with me. It could have been my overly aggressive uniclue on SHINY CHOPSTICKS.

Uniclues:

1 Isolate the Normies.
2 Face PHAT [Dope].
3 Outdoorsy corporate roamer taking notes.
4 Why murder is happening or summery ones are soaking.
5 My college apartments.
6 Deadest.
7 Spoke ill of the dead.
8 Told fake Native to lose the attitude.
9 How I got fat.
10 Why you look fierce today and scarred from surgeries 40 years from now.
11 To squeeze lunch in.
12 Result of a speeding bowling pin.
13 Line on elf's job description.

1 RUN HETERO SEAL
2 INHALATION TIME
3 REI NOMAD STENO (~)
4 CANNON SPRAYING
5 BLASÉ STIES (~)
6 LEAST ALIVE (~)
7 PICKED ON PARTED
8 SCOLD TONTO EGO (~)
9 CRISCO SPED UP
10 OMIGOSH SUN TAN (~)
11 ANACONDA INTENT (~)
12 SHMOO TICKET
13 ADDS TO SLEIGH (~)

My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: The old man's {you know} in the gymnasium locker room. NUDIST KIWIS.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

egsforbreakfast 10:54 AM  

Lots of good memories were triggered by this puzzle. Our first child (Anton) was, for no known reason, nicknamed SHMOO. Also, with BEE and BEBOP both appearing today, I was reminded that our SHMOO used to call a flyswatter a beebopper.

I like that DELETE and ADDSTO appear side by side in the SE.

A group of us once got into a mens rea state of mind while camping. It was INTENTs.

DOTTY would be a good name for an eccentric pointillist.

Really great puzzle in both theme and execution. Lots of wonderful cluing too. Thanks, Ella Dershowitz.

Tom T 10:55 AM  

Speaking of names, two of the circled names in the grid are duped as HDW (Hidden Diagonal Words) elsewhere in the grid: TED (see 50A, TONTO, for the start) and TIM (15A, HETERO).

And TIM and TED are joined in the diagonal grid by Hidden Diagonal friends IDA (61A, YESSIR), DAN (58A, TODDLE--2nd D), and my personal favorite HANS (15A, HETERO)

But, after all, what's in a name? a SCHOO by any other name would look as sweet.

Anonymous 11:01 AM  

“Omigosh” as a standalone word apparently dates to the 1960’s. Seems quite legitimate to me.

Anonymous 11:10 AM  

Great tough solve with sticky themers and super revealer!

I had a middle school teacher (in the '70s) who was obsessed with Al Capp. He managed to work all the cartoon characters into our lessons with credible reproductions. He made it seem natural so I guess it worked.

Wanderlust 11:14 AM  

Oops, didn’t mean for that to be anonymous. That was me.

Wanderlust 11:17 AM  

They still do just about everywhere else.

Burtonkd 11:20 AM  

Poor SCHMOO, seems to have it even worse than The Giving Tree. Yikes!!

I love that moment when the trick comes to you in a blaze of AHA. I did acrosses first, and noticed some names in circles and got to the revealer pretty quickly what with all the unknowns. A series of downs showed me that the letters in the circles didn’t work, and that gave it away. It was tough to remember which letters should go where to make the answers work. VERY impressive that the results weren’t gibberish, but solid words - hard to even imagine how someone came up with this.

I wanted PACE, before the slap my head obvious TIME was insisted on by INTIMATION.

@anon 10:08: I noticed that a couple of people have told me they went to school in New Haven who obviously went to Yale. I wonder if this sounds even more pretentious…I respond with “Gateway Community College or Southern Connecticut State University?”. This is why I’m so popular:)

Sometimes it’s best not to think too hard. INRE MTM show clue: using the exact parallel for the last name only of the character “Richard’s boss” would be evil. As it is, they are expecting us to know the show, characters and actors without actually naming the show.


Old Jazz fan 11:21 AM  

OK, I'm still confused with the Monk's style clue. Is it in reference to the notable jazz pianist Thelonious Monk? If not, please help me understand

Newboy 11:33 AM  

@Anon (8:58) said it well. A marathon slog today full of PAR??? quandaries etc. solved almost exclusively with downs which made sense but ignoring the across. Like every marathon past, I enjoyed the finish, but getting to the end was a real challenge.

Anonymous 11:37 AM  

I loved it! Just the right amount of challenge. I now know another meaning for valence, and not spelled valAnce (Liberty) like in a recent puzzle. Great job, Ella!

PH 11:39 AM  

Challenging. Such an inventive theme. Same thoughts as Rex.

FanDuel ODDS: Argentina (-360), Canada (+1100)

I enjoyed reading about the SHMOO. I feel bad for the shmoos/shmoon, but oysters on the half-shell? Jump straight into my mouth, please. (Respect to vegans/vegetarians.)

Thanks for a memorable puzzle, Ella Dershowitz.

jb129 11:42 AM  

Well, I said I'd have to gear up for tomorrow's puzzle (on Wednesday). Turns out, I couldn't 'gear up' enough.
Haven't read the comments yet. I always come here first to see what Rex rates a puzzle before I attempt it.
I couldn't even try to get into the constructor's head on this one. Gave up many times (as in cheated) & it didn't matter because I finally gave up on it. Lost my streak the other day in frustration when I couldn't find my typo, so no matter.
I don't know - we either go from VERY EASY to very challenging, I think. Just my take.

mathgent 11:43 AM  

I solved it clean. That gave me an ego boost. But it wasn't fun -- too much thinking required. The word in the grid isn't clued?

But much admiration here for this intricate construction.

jae 11:44 AM  

Mediumish. I needed the reveal to solve this one and it took a while to get there. In the mean time I put several right answers in the wrong places…so, quite a bit of floundering.



Smooth grid, tricky Thursday theme, but a tad annoying to solve (I am not a fan of floundering)…didn’t hate it, but @Rex is right about the clueing being brutal in places…STAMPS took a bit of staring.

Anonymous 11:48 AM  

@Anon 10:08 - That's the douchiest move ever - it's a humble brag which requires the other person to ask a follow up question. Look at me! I'm too humble to say I went to Yale (Harvard, Brown, Columbia, etc) so I say New Haven (Boston, Providence, etc) but the the person still has to follow up with "New Haven Community College?" just so you can say, no, I went to Yale. You still got to say it, you just make the other person work to drag it out of you. Just say Yale in the first place.

mathgent 11:57 AM  

I think using plusses and minuses in sports betting is relatively new. The odds on a favorite is given with a minus -- -200 means that the bettor needs to risk 200 dollars to win 100. The odds on an underdog is given with a plus -- +150 means that the bettor needs to risk 100 dollars to win 150.

jberg 11:59 AM  

I generally agree with Rex about the excessive prevalence of Yale in the puzzworld. Always reminds me of that alleged sex offender who kept telling us that of course he was qualified for the Supreme Court because he'd gone to Yale. Today, though, ELI was a godsend. Like Rex and many others I blanked in the NW and worked my way down the East Coast, noticing that the circled letters didn't really work in the across answers, but figuring that there was some alternate parsing of the clues--that you might focus on being HALE to run a marathon, for example. then I got down to the revealer, put in brAndNAMES, and still couldn't figure out what was happening. But ELI set me straight, and I worked my way back up pretty easily. The only slight hitch was that I thought a marathoner might focus on the milE marks, and MIL did seem like a name. But INmIlATION didn't work.

I flunked the science test, though, with VALaNCE and MitOSIS.

I know it's not M-W or the OED, but Dictionary.com lists OMIGOd but not OMIGOSH. Probably an oversight.

The SHMOON weew Al Capp's attack on the welfare state. Whenever they escaped from their valley they would make life too soft, destroying everyone's sense of initiative, and would have to be rounded up and sent back to the Valley of the Shmoon, from whence they had come.

@Whatshername--ATTN: goes on the address line if you are sending a physical letter, but in email you can't do that, so you need to put it on the subject line if you want it to be noticed. At least that was my reasoning.

@Nancy, thanks for the YouTube citation, that was great.

Nancy 12:01 PM  

"I noticed that a couple of people have told me they went to school in New Haven who obviously went to Yale. I wonder if this sounds even more pretentious?" asks @burtonkd (11:20).

I'd say yes, @burtonkd. It sounds light-years more pretentious to me. Is it because it's a bit of a humblebrag? Or is it the "my-school-is-so-famous-and-so-famously-located-that-everyone-knows-exactly-where-it-is,-whereas-no-one-has-a-clue-where-YOUR-school-is-located,-you-poor-schmuck" insinuation.

Anonymous 12:06 PM  

Had Mitosis as well, and Exhalation held me back for a bit....until I realized....

Niallhost 12:09 PM  

I 80% got the gimmick but ended up putting hyphened letters in each square so both names were spelled in each section, which I knew was sort of right but I didn't get the happy music. So in that way I didn't quite finish, even though I'm going to say it counts. I didn't actually "trade names" but rather doubled them, so my bad.

This is the type of challenge I want for a Thursday and every day for that matter, so loved it.

Whatsername 12:14 PM  

@Nancy (10:05) I did read your response yesterday afternoon, also watched the YouTube video. Thanks for sharing that. What a genuinely extraordinary athlete and human being.

Anonymous 12:25 PM  

Yeah, nobody is spelling “my” as “mi.” The word “OMIGOSH” is one word. And it’s a cutesy made up slang word, like “Wowzers” so the clue is helpfully hinting at this. Reads just fine to me.

Anonymous 12:28 PM  

Not sure about that. There are different mens rea in law. Recklessly, intentionally, knowingly, etc. I think the clue was “in the ballpark” but not perfect.

Anonymous 12:58 PM  

“Too much thinking required” yeah I can see how that would be a burden

Anonymous 1:08 PM  

Fun fact, Pomona College is Yale for the exterior shots in Gilmore Girls. I was attending when they were filming...

Blue Jay 1:10 PM  

I agree that it must be Thelonious Monk, as otherwise Bepop wouldn't make sense.

Teedmn 1:19 PM  

I spent so much time with IN__MATION, looking at the clue, "Breath" and then looking at my grid again, that when I finally gave up, moved on and got HALE, I knew immediately that HAL belonged over at 17A and then saw TIME for the marathoner's focus.

Getting the theme idea didn't necessarily make the puzzle any easier. I had to ask my co-worker about PROMPT. Not having any kids, I had never come across the reference to a school essay PROMPT. Co-worker agreed that "inspiration" was less accurate than "direction" would have been in the clue. But I wouldn't have gotten PROMPT any sooner with the clue wording changed so...

Analog before ATOMIC caused some havoc in the SE and dirT before PHAT in the SW. But all came clear in the end. I really enjoyed this struggle. Thanks, Ella Dershowitz!

Chris 1:27 PM  

A tough one for sure. I think the ASNER / ELI gimmes were to facilitate getting the revealer - Ella threw us a meatball to make the whole puzzle more accessible. I, for one, was happy to take full advantage to escape the spaghetti.

Michael Page 1:33 PM  

Very sloppy clueing. In addition to all those noted above, an ANACONDA isn’t a boa, it’s an anaconda.
I got a stamp in my passport in Paris last week, btw.

okanaganer 1:44 PM  

Yeesh, folks, this was proper Thursday tricky but not that hard. It was soon obvious that the circled letters fit the down clues but not the across ones. Then: oh, the letters are swapped to the left or right! Then finally the revealer made it all sensible. Well done Ella!

Hands up for being quite smug about getting MITOSIS instantly, and then quite chagrined at MEIOSIS which was a WOE for me.

[Spelling Bee: Wed currently -1 missing a 6er.]

Anonymous 2:01 PM  

Note to self, when you wake up in the morning, you’re still in bed, and you start the puzzle, remember what day of the week it is. Didn’t have my Thursday radar on and so there was much befuddlement until the end.

Chip Hilton 2:33 PM  

Tough. Fun. Solid Thursday.

pabloinnh 2:38 PM  

It occurs to me upon reading various comments that my department chairman for the last six or seven years of my teaching career was a Yale graduate and I never heard him mention that fact, or say that he had gone to school in New Haven. Now that's how you do that.

Anonymous 2:39 PM  

Anacondas are a kind of boa. Meiosis is a kind of cell division.

Anonymous 3:09 PM  

Grant WAS Mary Richards' boss, but the word "played" tells you the correct answer is Asner. Just as Mary Tyler Moore "played" Mary Richards.

Anonymous 3:26 PM  

I take issue with ATV. There are plenty of ATVs that may be licensed for highway use. On the other hand, the term for an actual vehicle which cannot be used on the highway is an OHV . That’s official DOT terminology

Photomatte 3:29 PM  

Wow, this was brutal. Had to come here and see what the deal was. Once the trick is revealed, it's not so hard but I still didn't get it. I liked Rex's Trading Places poster; that movie has been running on Showtime recently and it's always weird to watch it knowing I was in one of the buildings, as filming was going on, that was shown in the movie (my old junior high is across the street from the 'police station' - which is actually a community college - and it's visible in two scenes), watching Jamie Lee Curtis and Dan Akroyd, then watching Eddie Murphy. They were there ALL DAY! Hard to believe that was 41 years ago ...
They still stamp your passports if you ask them to, I had to ask last time I was in Europe. And I counted 38 stamps from Narita (Tokyo) in my passports! Crazy

LewS 3:37 PM  

Great Thursday.

Took me an hour or so. Lots of gimmes like TEARIEST, TICKET.

The NAMES part of the themer came quickly enuf, but only had the R from MONROE to help figure out TRADE. From there, it was sort of a breeze.

Hat MITOSIS — MEIOSIS was a complete unknown, but I knew HETERO had no I in it.

Fun from Arizona.

sharonak 3:46 PM  

Anonymous 9:05
Agree what is ohmigosh.
Was waiting for someone to bring that up.
How can a made up spelling be accepted by the editor?

JNKMD 4:06 PM  

Entered BRANDNAMES as the reveler and died on that beachhead.

Anonymous 5:00 PM  

I really enjoyed this one. It was definitely a Thursday challenge, and fortunately I rose to the occasion. But yeah, it was definitely clever and worked out the gray matter a bit.

Alexandria 5:08 PM  

According to every book, everywhere, it was OHMIGOSH from the start (1920), with OHMYGOSH appearing about a decade later. They two vied for supremacy until 2012 (with OHMIGOSH having the lead at that point), when OHMyGOSH became dominant. I'm guessing that one of the major word processors opted for OHMyGOSH over OHMIGOSH.

Jared 5:08 PM  

Thought the cluing was very dated on this one. In addition to things Rex mentioned, no modern bakers use CRISCO, unless in a decades-old recipe. It has no flavor and everything is better with butter.

Also fun fact—the constructor is Alan Dershowitz's daughter. Surprised Rex didn't mention it, considering his (and my) disdain for anything Trump related.

Ben 5:09 PM  

Loved this puzzle. Thought SLEIGH was fantastic, completely fooled me. Got STAMPS immediately with no crosses, maybe I was just lucky?

Great gimmick, was very fun to figure out what was going on and then go back and use it to sort out the trick answers. Thursdays are my favorite and this was the best Thursday in a long time.

Anonymous 5:28 PM  

Nice to have a Thelonious Monk clue in a NYT crossword. A hero of mine…saw him at the Village in NYC back in the ‘60’s.

burtonkd 5:37 PM  

@sharonak: as another commenter posted, omigosh citations go back to the '60s and it was added to the OED in 2004. They didn't just "make it up". See also anon 12:25.

jazzmanchgo 8:09 PM  

Too late -- no one is going to see this, but:

* Thelonious Monk was, indeed, part of the musical fraternity that created the style we now call BEBOP, and he's usually classified as one of the "beboppers" because he was an integral component of this group, and he and they shared ides and cross-pollinated their styles -- but his music itself is not BEBOP as that genre is commonly defined/understood.

Anonymous 10:55 PM  

While any time is a great time for Waxahatchee (I’ve seen her live thrice down here in DALLAS, home of the first frozen margarita machine at La Hacienda Ranch), I don’t understand her insertion here. Part of the fun of these blogs is seeing some of the connections you make with pop culture and the puzzle (return of the Mack gave me a chuckle). What am I missing, Rex? Am I living “under a rock”?

Jim 11:44 PM  

Wanted MITOSIS for too long. That and INN got me stuck. Otherwise, challenging, fair, and interesting.

John Face 12:32 AM  

It’s weird when the pop culture is just totally in your wheelhouse. I watch the Gilmore Girls in the background, all the time, so that was a gimme. I knew someday that would pay off. I’ve also read a Thelonius biography, so he came to mind. Even with those gimmes, the puzzle was rough. But I felt accomplished after finishing. I was half expecting an easy today from Rex, so was glad to see the shared experience of frustration, but general positive feelings toward the puzzle. Conveniently, my knowledge of Gilmore Girls also helped with the Eli answer, as Rory attended Yale in seasons 4-7.

Anonymous 2:44 AM  

That article says that the Waring Blendor was introduced in Chicago. Not the frozen margarita.

Anonymous 10:16 AM  

I was so so so happy to get "4min slower than your average" puz has gotten so easy I have devolved fully to smooth brain. This one changed that. How refreshing!!

Anonymous 11:19 AM  

Am I the only one who had INTONATION vice INTIMATION?
As a marathoner myself, I can tell you I focus on TONE as well as TIME.

Anonymous 5:36 PM  

Amen

Anonymous 12:34 AM  

omIgosh is the type of word that makes me want to quit doing crosswords.

Anonymous 7:04 PM  

I got the trick right away and solved the puzzle much faster than my average Thursday. I didn’t realize that the three letters being switched were names - that makes it even more impressive

Anonymous 1:56 PM  

They usually do when you enter Europe with a non-European passport. Just got my passport stamped in and out of Iceland this month. Also France last year.

spacecraft 11:09 AM  

I have a STAMP on my passport that I bet nobody else has: DDR. How I am ALIVE to tell it is another story.

When I couldn't make sense of things up top, I thought I'd better look for a revealer. Found it in its usual SE place, and almost wrote in TRADEmarkS. But just a quick check produced ASNER, so it had to be NAMES.

The puzzle was still fairly hard after that; it's confusing to transpose letter groups to get the clues to work. However, well done on theme and execution.

We medics are easy to fool with MEIOSIS vs. MitOSIS; me included. Small inkblot there. Birdie.

Wordle par; yet another either/or that wouldn't drop.

Burma Shave 1:58 PM  

DONE PARTED

A NOMAD’s NAME was ‘DOTTY’,
OMIGOSH, ABIT NAÏVE,
her INENT the LEAST BIT naughty,
INTIMATION made her LEAVE.

--- SIR ELI MONROE

Diana, LIW 6:30 PM  

I feel like a SHMOO.

Just could not make the words/trades fit. Good old Thursday - always ready with a problem for solvers.

Diana, LIW

Anonymous 6:50 PM  

Properly hard Thursday puzzle. With it being Thursday and circles involved, I knew something devious was happening. At first, I said to myself, I'm never going to figure what in tarhooties is going on. Slowly, but surely, things came together, and in the end didn't take as long as I thought it would. My first inclination was that the letters in each tricircle were going to be scrambled. Like others here, I wrote in mitosis, all the while thinking to myself, it might be meiosis.

Anonymous 7:10 PM  

Hard. Not fun hard. Just hard.

rondo 10:33 PM  

Plenty of write-overs due to the gimmick. Gimme a PABST or three.
Wordle birdie.

Anonymous 7:24 AM  

Loved it; haven’t enjoyed a puzzle this much in a long time. Challenging, the cluing was fresh, and the cross-eyed theme made my brain hurt a little. Fun all around. Hope to see more from Ella Dershowitz.

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