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"Lovely" Lady in a Beatles Hit / TUES 6-4-24 / N.B.A. Star Curry / Fuzzy Fruit / Major muddle
Tuesday, June 4, 2024
Hi, everyone! It’s Clare, here for the first Tuesday of June (switching it up because the world conspired against me with two major filings due on the same day last week). It’s been actually quite nice weather here in DC recently (think picnics and eating outside at restaurants), so I’m trying to enjoy the not-extremely humid outdoors while I can. I’ve also been staying busy with watching the French Open (Go, Coco!) and getting more into the WNBA (Go, Mystics? – even though we’re currently eight games into the season and winless). I’m also extremely excited for the Olympic Trials that are coming up soon (mainly for track, but swimming and gymnastics and all the others will be cool, too). And I’m extremely sad I watched my final Liverpool game with Jurgen Klopp as our head coach. As Liverpool fans would say to him: “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”
Anywho, on to the puzzle...
Relative difficulty: Pretty easy
THEME: CAN’T TOUCH THIS (66A:
With 67- and 68-Across, MC Hammer lyric that applies to each of the answers to the starred clues) — Each theme answer is something that one can’t (or at the very least shouldn’t) touch
Theme answers:
- CAMERA LENS (17A: Equipment for zooming)
- WET PAINT (31A: Subject of a "Caution" sign on a park bench)
- ELECTRIC FENCE (38A: Shocking thing found on a farm)
- LIMBO BAR (44A: Challenge for an under-achiever?)
- CRIME SCENE (60A: Where to look for fingerprints)
Ann Lee (29 February 1736 – 8 September 1784), commonly known as Mother Ann Lee, was the founding leader of the Shakers (a millenarian restorationist Christian sect founded c. 1747 in England and then organized in the United States in the 1780s. They were initially known as "Shaking Quakers" because of their ecstatic behavior during worship services), later changed to United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing following her death. She was born during a time of the Evangelical revival in England, and became a figure that greatly influenced religion at this time, especially in the Americas. (Wiki)
• • •
Well that was cute, straightforward, and fun! Maybe I’m just in a good mood tonight, or maybe it’s just because I thought the puzzle was on the easy side, but I quite liked it. The theme was well orchestrated, and the theme answers were all things not commonly seen in a crossword puzzle. I particularly liked CRIME SCENE (60A) as a theme answer and then the clue for LIMBO BAR (44A). I thought CAMERA LENS (17A) worked the least, given that you can touch the CAMERA LENS — just not the glass on the LENS. (The lyric is really “You can’t touch this” in a song called “U Can’t Touch This,” but I won’t notice if you won’t.) The construction of the puzzle worked, with all of the theme answers spread out, ending with the revealer at the very bottom. I liked having ICED on top of LATTES (21A, 24A: Some summer coffee orders), and having 55A: Dressy attire (SUIT) and then 56A: Accessory for dressy attire (TIE) was nice. The one that didn’t work for me was having PUMA (1A: Florida panther, e.g.) and then BIG CAT (45D: 1-Across, for one) connected to one another via clues — when there’s nothing spatially tying these two together. It felt like the constructor just found himself with two cats in the puzzle he needed to make a connection for.
I did have a slight oops with 1A and 45D because as soon as I saw a Florida panther reference (shoutout to the Florida Panthers for making the Stanley Cup finals!), I assumed the answer for 45D was “mascot.” So I put that in and then when I got to that section, I tried to make it fit before realizing I was very wrong.
I loved the clue and answer for PLACE MAT (5D: Something a kids' menu might double as). SNAFU (37A: Major muddle) is an objectively amazing word. We got to learn a bit in the puzzle with TYPE AB (25D: Like about 4% of human blood). [Some more learning: Type AB+ is considered the universal recipient, and O- is the universal donor.] We also got ELSE (22A:
Conditional word in coding) in the puzzle, which is an interesting bit of code knowledge. AMNESIACS (11D: The main characters in "The Bourne Identity" and "Memento," notably) is an impressive word to work into the puzzle. The clue for INSECT (9D:
Cricket, e.g.) got me thinking about the sport at first. And reviewing the puzzle after the solve, I was pleasantly surprised to see FORTIETH in there. I got stuck there at first with 40D: Like zirconium on the periodic table and just worked my way around. The answer is even more clever given that the clue is 40 Down. I also really liked the clue for YAM (30A: Vegetable whose name means "to eat" in some West African languages). And AERIE (33D: Nest for a raptor) was interesting to see in the puzzle, even though I think of it as the clothing brand company, not as a prey’s nest.
There was a lot of the typical crosswordese and the typical, pretty boring clues for each of them — See: SUB, ASP, MAC, EELS, AURA, A TON, YES, ABE, KIN, AXE… But it didn’t bother me too much. I did have a bit of an issue with YES (48A: "Of course!") because that clue seems to indicate more of a “yup” or "yep" to me. I hate 28D: Hungry as UNFED. That just seems weird. I get hungry all the time, but that doesn’t mean I’m somehow neglected and unfed. And this is a nit, but with 49A: Get 21 in blackjack, say, even if you get 21 in Blackjack, you don’t necessarily WIN because if there’s a tie with the dealer, there’s a push and nobody wins. But I digress.
Overall, though, it was a good Tuesday puzzle and makes me want to get up and dance (and also try to bring back Hammer Pants?).
Misc.:
- Speaking of celebrating, I assume you’ll all be celebrating Jin 12th with me. BTS’ oldest member, Jin, returns from his 18-month stint in the South Korean military — just in time for the BTS anniversary celebration on June 13th! One member back from the military, six to go.
- STEPH (51D: N.B.A. star Curry) is in the puzzle! The Warriors may be in struggle city and may not have made the playoffs this year, but my love for STEPH is unwavering.
- I distinctly remember reading “A FLY Went By” (41D: (classic children's book) when I was younger. Probably read this at the same time I was reading all of the other children’s books I could get my hands on so that I could win a gift certificate to Pizza Hut. My kindergarten teacher, the great Mrs. Conn, would give us the certificate at the end of the month if we had read a book a day, so I’d rush home on the first day of each month with the new form and read however many books there were days in that month, get my parents to sign the form and claim my certificate on the second day of the month. Yes, I was that kid. Yes, we never once used one of the certificates.
- Seeing SUIT (55A) in the puzzle made me immediately think of the show “Suits,” a legal drama that first aired on USA network in 2011 and then got a huge resurgence last year when the show was added to Netflix. I thought it would be fun to rewatch, but I barely made it a few episodes in before I decided it was too hard to turn my lawyer brain off. Same thing happened after about a season of trying to rewatch “The Good Wife.”
- Having AKC (58D: Dog show org.), the American Kennel Club in the puzzle made me think of the recent Westminster Kennel Club “Best in Show” winner, Sage, who’s a miniature poodle. Just look at her.
And that’s all from me! See you all later in June.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
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43 comments:
Easy. No erasures and FLY and TUB were it for WOEs.
Smooth grid and a Hammer Time theme, fun Tuesday, liked it.
Nice writeup, @Clare! It was an easy puzzle for me too, with no overwrites or WOEs. Just a breezy Tuesday.
Very easy. My only (temporary) sticking point was 1-DOWN, where I had "tact" as a diplomat's success instead of PACT. A diplomat needs tact to arrive at a pact, presumably, but the end result is the success.
The theme was OK, but I solved it as a themeless.
Same MASCOT/BIGCAT mistake here, but otherwise fairly easy. One of the few times I got the revealer on my first pass. I tried to figure out what that could mean and then at the beginning of my second pass got WET PAINT and knew what I was dealing with. Fun theme!
TYPEAB WRIER PSAKI BETO is what happens when you stuff your grid with theme material. CANTTOUCHTHIS even fits in the middle where ELECTRICFENCE is, so going for one less themer might've helped this grid. The theme works very well though, getting CAN'T TOUCH THIS was the highlight of the solve for me.
I'm definitely in the minority here, but the LIMBOBAR clue did NOT land for me. Just a groaner.
Lovely Rita is a lovely song, and it obviously is/has been popular in absolute terms, as are almost all Beatles songs - but I don’t think it’s a “hit” in any real sense of the term - it’s a non single album cut, and I don’t think was ever even placed on any of their official compilations.
I didn’t really get along with this one - seemed like it was overweighted withPPP (PSAKI, SIMU, and especially FRIAR crossing FLY with both clued as trivia questions were realdowners). No interest in the reveal. One thing I did find interesting was having WET PAINT as an actual answer. Maybe a constructor will try to sneak in a green PAINT as well sometime.
Nit: the puma is the largest of the small cats. Confused me momentarily.
Same thought re: aerie but then I realized how clever that all is considering aerie is the lounge/sleepwear brand name for American Eagle
Seems like I'm an outlier, as I thought it was more of a Wednesday than a Tuesday, so a tough week so far.
I was proud of myself for coming up with PtAKI off the P ... shame it was wrong.
Great theme density with five themers plus a whole row for the revealer.
Many years ago, mrsshef and I were on a cruise in the Aegean, and one night they had a limbo contest. After a few rounds, the only remaining participants were me and a group of 15-year old girls from Colombia. I wound up coming in second, the prize for which was a bottle of ouzo. Yuck.
Pleasant way to start a Tuesday morning. Agree with all of Claire’s nits and also with her assessment of the puzzle as bright and lively. Only thing I would have changed if I could would have been to have “doNT TOUCH” instead of CANT. Maybe I’m in need of some psychoanalysis.
@Clare: Loved your early reading story, how Mrs. Conn conned you...or didn't. Please clarify why your legal brain fires: Are the shows inaccurate/inauthentically dramatized (as my wife says medical shows are); is it that you're at work all over again despite clocking out?
Well, Daniel Bodily is doing something right, with nine NYT puzzles published in a bit over two years. Part of it is his ability to come up with entertaining themes. Jeff Chen, who has collaborated with him on three puzzles, lauds Daniel’s ability to “theme-storm”.
I loved today’s theme because, just like yesterday’s, it provided an extra solving challenge – figuring out the revealer before uncovering it. I’m bad at this, so I work extra hard to get better at it. Yesterday, I didn’t correctly guess the revealer but I did find the BOARD connection between the theme answers. That was a huge woo-hoo for me.
Today, once again, I didn’t guess the reveal verbatim, but I did see the connection in the theme answers, that they were things not to touch. Well, holy moly! My small steps are inching toward medium steps!
Jeff Chen also said that Daniel’s prime aim is to “serve the solver”. That is, he’s looking to entertain, to provide a terrific riddle to crack – not trying to show off.
Well, Daniel, you certainly served me today – I loved this puzzle. Thank you so much for making it!
IMAX was an easy answer but it does bug me that the defining quality is more height than width.
It was fun and relatively easy - but a question: am I the only person here who has never heard an MC Hammer song (and certainly didn't know the lyric)? Nonetheless , easy to back into - and I too liked the Bourne clue. Thanks for your writeup too.
Yikes, what a hideous dog! If that awful furdo is what it takes to win Best in Show, that dog might prefer to lose.
44A was an excellent clue: “Challenge for an under-achiever?”
(limbo bar)
PS: Psolving for Psaki almost psent me to a psychiatrist.
Hey All !
Stop! Hammer time. Whoa-oh-oh-oh
Har.
Nice puz. Things you CANT TOUCH. Elliott Ness would've been cool had he made an appearance.
Not bad in the fill department, if you consider 18 of the Downs go through two Themers, with 4 going through three Themers! And two of the four going through three Themers are Long! So, bravo on keeping fill mostly clean.
The symmetric of CANT TOUCH THIS is PUMA PSAKI BAMA. Need a @Gary Uniclue to tie into the Theme.
Y'all have a Happy Tuesday.
Three F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Fun puzzle, but it relies on names of people and products to toughen it up. Otherwise it's a fill in the blank-er.
Using a partial song title from 34 years ago is a tiny bit lame, and it has fewer views on YouTube than EARL Sweatshirt from a couple days ago, but of course it's probably a handicap if your song came out a decade before YouTube existed. I owned a pair of parachute pants.
AERIE is my 8th favorite word between ENIGMA and INGENUE.
Love the Pizza Hut gift certificate story @Clare.
Propers: 10
Places: 3
Products: 7
Partials: 3
Foreignisms: 2
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 25 (32%)
Uniclues:
1 Woohoo. Turn the news on.
2 Elapidae eases eating.
1 YES! WIN STRESS.
2 MAMBA SLIMS DOWN
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Science fiction author at a rave. VIOLET RAY BRADBURY.
¯\_(ăƒ„)_/¯
Monday easy. Basically solved as a themeless, but the theme - once it appeared - was surprisingly clever. I liked the way the revealer didn’t come until the very last and was subtly laid out there across the bottom of the grid. Very nicely done. Thank you Daniel!
Small nit. A 'crime scene' is not a singular object that can be touched. It is an environment containing multiple things. If you touch an item within that environ sans proper precautions, you have 'contaminated' (not touched) the scene.
Fun theme.
Earl Sweatshirt is such a ridiculous name that I may have to check him out. I can’t imagine despite YouTube viewing stats that he has the kind of cultural penetration that MCHammer did with that song - catchy bass line copped from Rick James’ Super Freak.
I liked that the PPP clue for FRIARS was actually solvable as non PPP with Padre being a synonym.
Every time I get introduced to someone and can’t remember their name 5 seconds later, I think about the movie “Momento”
Barely lifted my pen during the few minutes it took to fill this in, finally noting the bottom-line theme.
AERIE has been a crossword standby for years. I was pleased that this and PUMA weren't clued as shoe brands.
Only a couple of minor quibbles, topped by A TON [why not ATOM crossed with I'M IT or ON IT?]. Otherwise, BIOS and MAC needed "familiarly", or some such qualifier.
@Calf- you may be. The song came out in 1990 and it was everywhere. My local electric company used it in a commercial for "call before you dig"
just recently but I remember it from the 90s.
Easy, despite my having no idea about the MC Hammer lyric (I'm with you, @Calf 8:40): my only hesitation in the puzzle came from considering "doN'T" before "CAN'T." Like @Clare, I thought AMNESIACS was an impressive entry, and I liked SLIMS DOWN x LIMBO BAR.
Solved as a themeless. Pretty easy & fun.
Thank you, Daniel :)
As others point out, these aren't things YOUCANTTOUCH. More like things you shouldn't touch. But this also applies to MAMBA, ASP, PUMA, BIGCAT, SUMAC, RAE and PSAKI. (The latter two are allowable if they agree in advance.). All-in-all this makes for very dense theme coverage.
If you can have a kids' menu on a PLACEMAT, I guess you could have Chat GPT instructions on an AIMAT.
When I got out of biz school I had nothing. It was just me and MAMBA. Of course that's a whole lot better than starting out with just AGED.
Thanks for a fun Tuesday, Daniel Bodily. And thanks for such a nice write up, Clare. I've gotta say that having two fillings isn't that big a deal. I once had four wisdom teeth extracted in one sitting. Oh ....... filings? Never mind.
@calf, you might be the only person who has never heard this song. Even if you never listened to the radio or were born after 1990, "U Can't Touch This" is a multi-Grammy-winning song that had a notable lawsuit (for sampling Rick James' "Superfreak). It's part of the cultural ether.
It's in commercials (as mentioned), TV shows, and this article that proclaims it as overplayed in "more movies than any other song:" https://collider.com/mc-hammer-u-cant-touch-this-movie-song/
Easy and fun. Taken just as an answer, CAMERA LENS is very green paintish, but I guess the theme justifies it. And while I guess you can split rails with an AXE, it will be a lot easier if you use a maul and a wedge.
OTOH, very creative cluing for TUB.
These Unknown Names are really getting me down lately. ANN LEE SIMU PSAKI etc. It's not so much that they shouldn't be allowed, as it is that it's only going to get worse because I have no desire to know them. And why does URBAN need to be clued as part of the name of a store? Stupid.
However, pretty good theme!
[Spelling Bee: Mon 0, streak 9. puzzlehoarder, have you reached 50?]
yep. U CANT TOUCH THIS. Like Clare darlin points out, U gotta have the U.
This puz mighta been slightly easier than yesterday's for m&e -- not as many no-knows. Didn't know SIMU, tho. Also, that there clue for FORTIETH was a bit feisty.
staff weeject pick: YAM. Comes close to the puztheme's philosophy, for M&A. I won't touch them YAMs, at Thanksgivin dinner. Not my thing. Had a educational no-know clue, too boot.
fave thing: PSAKI. We watch her, every once in a while.
Thanx for the untouchables, Mr. Bodily dude.
Masked & Anonym007Us
**gruntz**
PSAKI. I'm pretty sure I've seen that a few times in puzzles but I don't watch MSNBC so it was slow getting to me.
Most of the themers are actually touchable providing you have the appropriate protective gear. Think those gloves the detectives pull from their pockets in TV mysteries. Apparently you can pick up any piece of fresh evidence with them. A camera lens can be touched with the aid of a lens cleaning cloth. And wet paint is an invitation to touch. I'm a painter and well, yeah, that Hooker green is just too soft. Maybe, while it's still wet, I can get in there with some phthalocyanine to punch it up. So no problem with touching wet paint.
As for electric fences, they don't hurt a lot. Just a little zap. But I learned a great trick from a fishing guide in New Zealand: if you approach a fence that looks like it might be electrified, but you're not sure, just yank off a handful of grass and throw it at the thing. If you see sparks, look for a gate. No sparks? Feel free to climb over.
My wife and I celebrated our 49th anniversary a few nights ago at a respected Italian restaurant known for their handmade pasta (one of our sons is the chef) and my wife dressed up vey nicely and I wore a suit (no tie)and we found ourselves seated amongst 30 or so tables of people in sweatsuits and camo. Did I mention it was in a very hipsterish area of town. Food was great.
Thanks for the lovely write up, Clare, and the great MCHammer video.
I believe that Jen Psaki was Biden’s first press secretary, but didn’t know she had a news/opinion gig now.
@Roo, I just LOVE you. Elliot Ness would’ve been a fantastic add in! Let me add…”what in the tarhooties”! Another Roo love.
@calf…I feel quite sure YOU aren’t the only one who didn’t know MC Hammer song. I’m old enough but young enough to have kiddos at the age that Hammer was on our car radio, etc during that time. Seems like he might have started the “parachute pants” fad.
KMcCloskey
Lovely Rita
Your own point
“popular in absolute terms “
“Hit” doesn’t have a strict definition.
Clearly close enough for crosswords.
Nothing wrong with the clue and answer
To me, so much of a puzzle is about the cluing choices.
Today you have a theme based on a song -- CAN'T TOUCH THIS-- that maybe 50% of the solving population has never ever heard of. Maybe 70%. Then you have those proper names you're convinced that you absolutely need to make your grid work: STEPH and ANN LEE and BETO and RITA and RAE and SIMU and PSAKI.
So why would you then decide to clue anything else using proper names and pop culture if you could so easily clue them differently? I'm looking at you FLY (41D); TUB (20A) FRIAR (41A); and EELS (57D). Some wordplay clues right around now would have given this puzzle much more balance -- along with a much broader appeal.
Anonymous 7:14 AM
Don’t know exactly what Clare meant but I as a retired lawyer tend to avoid legal shows because the ACTUAL legal process doesn’t equal good entertainment. They almost have to make the legal stuff silly for the show to work. I understand that but those shows grate on me.
It sounds like Clare has the same reaction.
Nice writeup! N.B.: A raptor (nesting in an AERIE) is a predator, not prey.
Les S. More
story about how people dress in restaurants is so true ( more so about men than women though)
I do wear jeans ( but if I think the air conditioner will be cranked up I wear a sports jacket!) but sometimes I get so bored with dressing down that I wear corduroys ( shocking I know)
Liked the puzzle as usual. Also thought it was easy
BTW PSAKI was previously Biden’s press secretary. Not exactly obscure or long ago. Surprised it wasn’t mentioned.
Also thought limbo bar a good answer.
Electric fence went in immediately from the clue rare for me on a grid spanner theme answer.
Finally I never listened to the song Can’t touch this but its existence ( and MC Hammer ans a rapper ) was inescapable.
@dgd
I actually have a corduroy sports jacket for those occasions (shocking I know).
@Nancy, check the comments to see that everyone except @calf seems to know this song. As for the rest of the clues you listed, they fit with my premise that the PPP was very well clued to make them inferable: FLY (41D) 3 letters and rhymes with “by” in the title; TUB (20A) Degas very famous, and what other 3 letter things could a woman be in? FRIAR (41A) synonym for Padre in the clue; and EELS (57D) slithery and under the sea because mermaids - what slithers? A snake. In the sea - EEL.
What I’m saying is you know more than you think and if you don’t just throw your hands up in frustration, you can get these. I’d rather have a clue that makes me visualize a Degas painting than “vessel for bathing” or some other pedestrian clue. Others were equally colorful.
@Les S. More 4:22 PM
In the mid-70s as an elementary kid I was forced from the city in the summers to spend time on two different cattle ranches in southwest Kansas. I think this was to teach me how to obey authority rather than have my own thoughts. I remember hitting an electrified barbed wire fence one time. It hurt then and it hurts me now. It threw my entire 80-pound body at least three feet. It left a burn mark. I hope they don't allow that kind of zap these days.
@burtonkd -- I had no trouble getting any of those answers and it wasn't a hard puzzle in the slightest. But my rule of thumb is: If you don't absolutely have to clue something using PPP clues, then don't. Especially if you already have a PPP-based theme and a lot of other names in the grid already.
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