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Magnus Carlsen achieved one of 2882 / FRI 6-28-24 / What Anne Brontë and Anaïs Nin have in common / MGM co-founder Marcus / National advocacy grp. for L.G.B.T.Q. issues / "Frankly," in texting shorthand / New York Post gossip section named for its location / Mythical creature likely inspired by Madagascar's elephant bird / Letter derived from Phoenician's "heth"
Friday, June 28, 2024
Constructor: Enrique Henestroza Anguiano
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (on the slow side, for me, for a Friday)
Word of the Day: PFLAG (27D: National advocacy grp. for L.G.B.T.Q. issues) —
PFLAG is the United States' largest organization dedicated to supporting, educating, and advocating for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) people and those who love them. PFLAG National is the national organization, which provides support to the PFLAG network of local chapters. PFLAG has nearly 400 chapters across the United States, with more than 350,000 members and supporters.
PFLAG (pronounced /ˈpiːflæɡ/ PEE-flag) is no longer an acronym, but the actual name of the organization. Prior to 2014, the acronym stood for Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (later broadened to Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays). Until removal of the hyphen in 1993 the name was officially styled as P-FLAG. In 2014 the membership of the organization voted to officially change the name to PFLAG to reflect the decades of fully inclusive work it had been doing in the LGBTQ+ community. (wikipedia)
• • •
The bottom half didn't liven things up much more than the top half did, though there's something intriguing and provocative about the THREESOME / IBUPROFEN juxtaposition, and "WHAT A TREAT!" is, in fact, a bit of a treat. But it's really (really) hard to get excited about DIAERESES (38A: What Anne Brontë and Anaïs Nin have in common). That three-vowel run ("IAE") had me certain something was wrong, though nothing was wrong. I was lucky enough to know PFLAG. If you didn't, I can see that section getting really thorny indeed. I think I've been spelling "diaresis" ("dieresis"?) wrong my whole life. Well, to the extent that I've been spelling it at all, which is ... unlikely. You're not supposed to call that double-dot mark in "Brontë" or "Anaïs" an "umlaut" because on a technical level it is not an umlaut despite looking exactly like an umlaut. It's function is to signal a new, discrete syllable. Basically it tells you "Brontë" has two syllables not one (i.e. "BRON-tay," not "BRONT") and "Anaïs" has three and not two (i.e. "ah-nah-ees" (or "uh-NAY-iss"), not "An ACE"). It's a hard word to love, TBH. Speaking of TBH ("to be honest"), really hope everyone is up on there textspeak, because that "T" cross for TBH seems potentially rough (seems reasonable for people to imagine that there's an "MLB on CBS"). I don't know how you'd rationalize CBH as an answer to that clue (33A: "Frankly," in texting shorthand), but I often have no rationalization of the things I put in the grid. I mean, ELO, for instance. See above. Hey, is CBH the cannabis stuff ... nope, that's CBD (short for "cannabidiol," the active ingredient in cannabis). You can add cannabis to chess, poker, KENKEN, and other things I am clearly no expert on (and not particularly interested in).
Dupes aplenty today, NOT SO NICE and IT'S NOT FAR. NOS and NO-NONSENSE and NONA and NANO (I know those last two aren't proper "nos" but the alliteration is hard to stop once you start). Today I learned a new NONA. I put a NONA Hendryx song on the blog the other day when the puzzle *didn't* use her as a clue (it opted instead for the geometrical prefix NONA-, as in "nonagon"). NONA Gaye's discography seems pretty thin, but she did some pretty high-profile acting there for a while. She was in Ali as well as the Matrix sequels. She also collaborated with (and dated!) Prince. I mistakenly thought that NONA Hendryx was the daughter of Jimi Hendrix (she was born "Hendrix") but they're basically the same age. "Distant cousins," according to her. Anyway, connections to music royalty all around.
Puzzle notes:
- 42A: No small part (SPEAKING ROLE) — hey look, another "No" to add to the list of "NOS" and "NOTs" we've already got going. I wrote in STARRING ROLE here. I don't really understand the clue on this one—many SPEAKING ROLEs are in fact Very small parts.
- 4D: Top choices (T-SHIRTS) — big misdirect in the clue, but even so, I should've known the answer wouldn't start "TOP" (which I literally wrote in the grid for a bit, what the hell?!). I was thinking "hmmm, like TOP PICKS, something like that?" when I should've been thinking "That can't be right! 'Top' is in the clue, you idiot!"
- 7D: MGM co-founder Marcus (LOEW) — wrote this in as LOEB. As in "Leopold and." Or, you know, the LOEB Classical Library (red for Latin, green for Greek):
- 60A: Like the flavor of much mezcal (SMOKY) — mezcal is one of my favorite base spirits for cocktails and I still managed to fumble this one a bit. Had the -MO-Y and like "... EMORY?" Tik TOK to the rescue with the "K" (TOK, among the uglier entries of the day)
- 37D: New York Post gossip section named for its location (PAGE SIX) — the things I don't care about just Keep Coming. I'm aware that the Post exists, but can't imagine reading it. And a "gossip section"? I'd sooner solve a KENKEN (which, believe me, is Saying Something)
- 46D: Greek goddess of peace (IRENE) — so many great IRENEs in the world, why would you go this route? I was like "Is it IRENE? IRENA? IRINA?" Ugh.
- 39D: Mythical creature likely inspired by Madagascar's elephant bird (ROC) — I know this exclusively from some version of "Sinbad the Sailor," I think. Hey, do you remember the sitcom "ROC"? Early '90s? Fox? Starring the great Charles Dutton? Is that streaming? I remember really liking it. Gonna see if I can't track that show down...
See you next time.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
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72 comments:
DIAERESIS sounds like something you get after eating a bad ALASKAROLL.
Not a terrible puzzle - but agree with the big guy that it doesn’t offer that splashy fun of a top Friday. Loaded with gluey 3s and 4s that glommed things up. A pain reliever and TELEPRESENCE as longs? Isn’t it eIRENE? REGIS, BURP, PFLAG, LOEW etc are rough.
Bebel Gilberto
I did like the WHAT A TREAT - NO NONSENSE stack. THREESOME is a little cheeky for the NYTXW.
Pleasant enough Friday morning solve.
She Wore Red Dresses
After a terrific Thursday that really made me grin, this one did nothing for me. Tough as a Friday should be, but not particularly fun.
I did like the misdirect of "building toy brand" (of course it's LEGO! ...but wait, maybe not?) being KNEX.
Anyway. Have a good weekend, y'all.
Rex, I'd wager you remember the Roc from 'Popeye meets Sinbad the Sailor'.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48N6aeI4Suc
I thought the southern section was at least marginally enjoyable. I felt like I was at a class in med school working my way through the North and North-central. You start off with the easy stuff (SACRA and ULNA), then add in the other Latin-sounding stuff like TURIN and DOLOR, and as someone already mentioned, DIAERESIS sounds like a most unpleasant malady of some sort.
C-PLUS sounds about right for this effort. When NOCHE BUENA, DIAERESIS and SENORES are among your marquee answers, it’s going to be tough to do much better than that.
LOL. Good one! And how I’m feeling after today’s slog…
Just give me NOCHEBUENA and DOLOR and SENORES and I've got something to work with. I knew those two little dots were DIAERESES, but like OFL, was confused as to spelling and thought there was something wrong when I wrote it down. Didn't know PFLAG but TELEPRESENCE, which I didn't know either gave me the P, and that was that.
Hello to NONA and REGIS, who is apparently a university as well as a Philbin. BOOSTS before ELECTS slowed down the SE . ELO went in on crosses but I had no idea what it might be until the write up. Maybe I'll remember that. Probably not.
Decent amount of crunch this morning, EHA. Even Had A lot of Spanish. Gracias, and also thanks for all the fun.
As I was solving I was thinking "This is pretty easy for a Friday," but when I reviewed the grid to list my hesitation spots there were a lot of them. So I'll go with the Medium side of Medium-Challenging.
Overwrites:
3D: wanted Stapes instead of SACRA but I couldn't make it fit. Got SACRA entirely from crosses.
6D: The PRU is the only Boston building I can name (unless you count Fenway Park), but I hesitated because of the CP--- at 5A
12D: I was talking through my INTERestS before INTERCOMS
16A: NiNA before NONA
17A: NOCHE BUENo before BUENA (I'm no Spanish scholar)
29D: Briefly thought it might be the Old English letter ETh instead of ETA, but CMA (35A) corrected me
56D: one before ANY
59A: Fell into the lego/KNEX trap but quickly fell out of it
WOEs:
I'd never heard of an ALASKA ROLL (14A) but it was easily inferable
Sad for me to say during Pride Month but PFLAG (27D) was a WOE
I couldn't get 38A to work until I cheated and looked up the spelling of DIAERESES
Didn't know REGIS University but it was fairly crossed
A proper Friday. Should’ve taken Spanish instead of French in high school.
For the first time, I wish this blogging platform had reaction emojis because this deserves a hat tip.
Totally agree. Clunky Friday puzzle. No satisfying aha moment. Lots of meh. ELO of 2882?
Richard Dreyfuss had a speaking role in The Graduate but it was a very small part.
Not the worst ever, but no flow. No good helpers when you got stuck, too much stuff that was either niche or obscure crossing each other.
And I'll say this each and every time I encounter one, but ENOUGH with the clues like 36A ____ Cloth. NO NO NO NO NO. I hate your guessing games of lazy cluing when you constructors do that. If I ran the crossword business I'd banish you to Bouvet Island for a year to mull the smell of seabird droppings if you tried to put one of those in a puzzle. They're infuriatingly lazy. STOP IT, GET HELP.
Richard Dreyfuss had a speaking role in The Graduate but it was a very small part.
Your spelling of diaresis is just fine. Diareses is the plural form. Which makes this clue grammatically incorrect. What the two names have in common is ONE diaresis. I suppose you could stretch it…which is what they did. Not groovy at all.
Yeah very bad puzzle coming one day after a fantastic one. Oh well can't have em all
Perfect!
Hey All !
The NW was a bear. Last section to fall, ended up running to Goog after angstness set in.
Looked up PRU, SACRA and TURIN. Yikes.
A toughie little FriPuz. SW corner had Lego before KNEX as I'm sure 98% had. BURP cloth, holy moly. Is that the towel you put on your shoulder after feeding your baby? Then you BURP them.
Spanish people, is that right for Christmas Eve in Español? That reads to me to be just a general "good night". I was looking for eva de BUENA or somesuch.
Anyway, made it to Friday. Have a great day!
Two F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Learned from old crosswords: PRU, LOEW, Fiat in TURIN, sacrum/SACRA, IRENE = peace, ROC, KNEX.
PFLAG was a nice entry. I learned recently that Will Shortz fell in love with a man and married him: NPR link from Jan 2024. Good for Will!
Sort to be contrarian but I really enjoyed this one. Hard but in the right way. Thought the clue for T-shirts was brilliant. Thank you Enrique Anguiano for a great puzzle.
Kramer’s “These pretzels are making me thirsty” qualifies as no small part?
There are apparently no small SPEAKING ROLES, only small actors…
Would have maybe given this a CPLUS, but TBH, 38A deserves the docking of a full letter grade.
Sticky throughout ( see @Conrad), no whooshes, surprisingly faster than average time despite spending almost a minute on PFL_G/DI_ERESES. Decent puzzle except for the latter word, which I am working on forgetting as quickly as possible
After debate last PM, thinking of starting write in campaign for RP -- who's with me?!
I love it when I groove with Rex’s take. ‘70s expressions never did roll off my tongue even though it was my era. I’m at the top level in a video game but it bores the socks off of me to hear gamers talk about ELO which I think is a way to rank yourself in battle leagues. Never managed to memorize human bones; my favorite never seen until complete was CPLUS. I give this puzzle an overall A minus even though it’s not my bailiwick.
@anon 5:59 thanks for that first thing in the morning.
Thanks REX for clearing up DIAERESES - I just give up and say umlaut. I wanted it to be some kind of DIAcritic.
Add NOCHEBUENA to the list of lovely answers. Inferrable even with rudimentary Spanish give or take a correct vowel.
Nothing against either of these, but using a letter string with a symbol, LGBTQ+ to get another string of letters that was once an acronym with a symbol PFLAG is as bad as the list of short crosswordese fill.
The math for making a .3 into a PLUS seems dubious. Is the number after the decimal on a 4 point scale also?? I would think of a .8 as a plus, but maybe that’s a BMINUS?
LOEW’s movie theater chain made this a gimme.
I wouldn’t advise adding cannabis to poker, chess, or kenken unless a barrel of laughs RIOT is your goal.
For the movie world depicted in shows like the terrific EXTRAS, getting a SPEAKINGROLE is a major goal and achievement that puts an actor in a different pay scale.
I guess this puzzle cements my place as an outlier among solvers. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I found it to be easy but satisfying. I had very few overwrites. At 43A "No small part," I was starting with crosses from 33D (S), 30D (P), and 31D (E), so I ventured SPEcial place. I fixed it as other crosses fell into place: PAGE SIX, KID, DISOWNS, etc. And that helped me fix my only other overwrite, at 24D "Not forget," where I started with REcAll, but ultimately fixed it based on crosses. DIERESES and IRENE were gimmes for me, the fellow with a doctorate in classics. This may actually have been my most whoosh-whoosh solve of all time, and certainly so for a Friday.
Not me ~RP
I liked it and found it breezy for a Friday. Soothing after a rough night.
Almost solved it, but DIAERESES killed me.
Okay puzzle, but mostly sparkle-free.
I guess 21D NOS (Chorus of two-year-olds?) refers to twos being naughty and their parents saying no to them. Don't like the clue.
SENORES could have been HOMBRES.
DIAERESES is not a word I’ve ever seen or heard, so that almost got me. Can someone please tell me on what grading scale a 2.3 is a CPLUS? As far as I know, t’s either a C-minus or a C.
C PLUS.
Whooshy solve for me, some of the clues were right up my alley (ELO, KENKEN though I usually call it a KENDOKU, DIAERESES since UMLAUTS wouldn't fit), though there were also unknowns (PAGE SIX, NOCHE BUENA, ALASKA ROLL, TELEPRESENCE and PFLAG, at least ROLL was inferrable from the "sushi" part of the clue). The toughest section was the middle north with PRU and LOEW next to each other, luckily ULNA was right. As a non-American, the clue at 5A would've mystified me a few years ago when I was still a beginner solver, but somehow GPAs came to mind quite quickly. It's a 68-word grid, so SOME gunky fill is to be expected.
Is PFLAG supposed to be a backronym from "pride flag" or something?
Easy for me. NONA, BURP, and REGIS were it for WOEs (I did know PFLAG, KNEX, and DIAERESES).
Me too for LOEb before LOEW.
Sorta solid with a couple of nice long downs but otherwise a bit meh, didn’t hate it.
A real NO NONSENSE Friday that I did NOT have an easy time of but did manage to get on a good ROLL here and there. Started out wrong with SEEK/SKEW at 1A/1D so the NW stayed blank and was the last to fall. Didn’t know the sudoku game, was not thinking in terms of T-SHIRTS for tops and had no idea on the sushi which I find revolting and try to avoid even SPEAKING of this early in the day. Just HOSE that stuff DOWN the drain, please. My other big hangup was of course, DIAERESES. Don’t recall (my first answer to 24D) ever hearing it before but a good word to know, and I plan to RETAIN it for future reference.
Couldn’t help but notice all the Spanish in the clues today. Where is @GILL when I need her? Probably out dancing the fandango tango in some SMOKY bar since last NOCHE. Just kidding of course. You know I love you. Please don’t sue me for SLANDER. 😄
Hard! What a DOOK-y answer is DIAERESIS. I wanted a "C" in there somewhere; aren't they diacritical marks? Or are those different marks entirely?
I've never heard of BURP cloth and I would never wear a fabric that makes rude sounds. Or any sounds at all, for that matter.
A note to my high school, Dalton. You did me a huge disservice by allowing me to take French and Latin. You should have insisted that I take Spanish. The NYTXW is now all Spanish all the time -- and I am at a huge disadvantage is all I can say. When was the last time the NYTXW showed the slightest interest in French vocabulary?
What does it say about me that I wanted SCAREY instead of SCENIC for the ridgeline hike? The only thing that saved me was that that's not how you spell SCARY.
NONA instead of NOrA was very mean (NOT SO NICE) too. But CAST prevented me from falling into the LIST trap at 1D and I did manage to pull CANT out of my you-know-where. I ended up finishing this puzzle with no cheats. I didn't even pull my sushi restaurant menu out of the drawer -- even though I was sorely tempted.
Oh man, this is so funny I had to take an IBUPROFEN and lay down
Challenging for me at the start, as I guessed NOttE BUENA, which prevented me from seeing SACRA and TSHIRTS (I loved that answer, great clue) and from completing that quadrant, even though I knew TURIN and KENKEN. After spending some time in the WANNA SEE area, I returned to the NW with "Oh, geez, NOCHE!" - I've never studied Spanish, but have heard "Buenos días" and "Buenas noches." Anyway, after that things unrolled nicely all the way to the final SEEP.
I see why the puzzle didn't rise to the WHAT A TREAT! level for @Rex, but I liked it...for the challenge, for the ALAKSKA ROLL and the SPEAKING ROLE, for the laugh I got at BURP cloth, and for the satisfaction of wondering, when I had IAE in place and before looking at the clue, wondered "DIAERISiS"? Just one of those words I happen to like.
I enjoy the snarkiness of this blog even though it sometimes ventures into “Crossword Karen” territory. Like today’s post. I enjoyed this puzzle, and thought it was a challenging follow-up to yesterday’s masterpiece.
NOTSONICE for me. Too much mythology, acronym-ity and Spanish; not enough sizzle.
I couldn't have sussed DIAERESES without every single cross; I know umlauts better by a different term. 😊
A tough Friday for me. The solve came down to the wire on a couple of squares. I had no idea whether it was CBS or TBS. I went with the T because I could make sense of TBH.
The cross of PFLAG and DIAERESES was more problematic. I'm not familiar with the former and the later just has one E too many. However it was a choice of an A or a U and the U just looked wrong.
No comments from me last weekend due to traveling for a big anniversary. I skipped the SB for a couple of days ending my QB streak at 66.
yd -0. QB7
About an average FriPuz, challenge-wise, at our house. Had some no-knows and lotsa neat debut words.
NW seemed especially feisty.
staff weeject pick: ELO. Talk about a no-know. M&A didn't even know what the weirdo clue was talkin about.
honrable mention to NOS, as it had the only ?-marker clue in the whole rodeo, that I can recall. Also kinda neat how the NOS propagated, thru-out the puz, from NONA to NANO.
some fave stuff: KENKEN & KNEX. WANNASEE. TSHIRTS clue. ITSNOTFAIR. NONONSENSE. WHATATREAT.
Thanx, Mr. Anguiano dude. Hey -- Just noticed … U is a man with a NO-name, too boot. [m&e, too]
Masked & aNOnymo5Us
**gruntz**
p.s.
Almost forgot to mention --
Thought it was extra cool, that this puz gave us both ROC and ROLL. Earns it a definite themeless thUmsUp.
(Yer enthusiasm may vary on this, I'd grant.)
M&Also
I guess NONA is the word of the month.
Didn't know DIAERESES, REGIS, should've known PFLAG & I wasn't going to give up ALOUD no matter what (which it was).
A meh Friday - lacked sparkle for me (again, calling out for RW or Agard, both more often at the NYer).
Absolutely dreadful cross of PFLAG with DIARESES. I've always just referred to it as UMLAUT which was too short, but then DIACRITIC fit perfectly and worked with ROC. But the other crosses didn't, so I eventually settled on DICRESES because DIARESES just seems wrong.
The top of the puzzle went very quickly, but the bottom much more slowly.
For "Magnus Carlsen achieved one of 2882", looking at E-- all I could think was: he had an ERA of 2882? That meant for every batter he got out, 100 runs scored!
[Spelling Bee: puzzlehoarder, surely if you miss a couple of days it doesn't end your streak!]
GPAs are expressed as two-point decimals. Each of the grades A, A-, B+, B, B-, C+, C, ..., is based on what interval the two-point decimal is in. Splitting the GPAs from 0 to 4 into same-size intervals, a C+ is in the interval from 2.17 to 2.50. So 2.3 is a C plus. From 1.83 to 2.17 is a straight C. From 2.50 to 2.83 is a B -.
Brutal! The whole upper-left was a nightmare, but TSHIRTS was fun once I finally found it. Loved WHATATREAT, liked CPLUS. Toughest Friday for me in a while.
@Nancy: After feeding a baby, you lay him on your shoulder and pat him on the back to get him to BURP. Sometimes they spit up a little so you put a burp cloth under his head just in case.
Guessed Turin with 3 letters. Not much of a stretch. No Googling needed. wasn't sure about the spelling of a couple of things but got them through the crosses.
I agree!! Plenty backspaces and plenty of resulting "ahas"!
The answer SEÑORES for 41D "Caballeros, by another term" surprised me. I thought "Caballeros" was kicking it up a notch to "Gentlemen" while SEÑORES was more of a generic "Sirs".
I've lived in Tex-Mex Land long enough to know that the "Wrapper for a tamale" is 48D HUSK but for me it will always be a "Shuck". I can still hear my mother telling me "Anoa Bobby, go out in the garden and shuck us a few ears of corn for supper tonight".
Rex has told us a few times that he doesn't care for poker (to put it mildly) and when it comes to cannabis, he is not an INHALER.
I was confused about WHOM (49D "Often-misused pronoun") 23D Magnus Carlsen was. I thought he was one of those burly dudes in the "World's Strongest Man Contest" and maybe the "2882" in the clue was some weight he had lifted. Aha! Oho! That was Magnús Ver Magnússon or Magnus Samuelson.
Do they still use INTERCOMS? Seems like TELEPRESENCE would be more likely these days. (I wanted TELECONFERENCE there at first.)
I'm gonna have to agree with wikipedia that the two dots diacritic in Brontë is not a diaeresis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_dots_(diacritic)
The clue about Anne Brontë and Anais Nin threw me, because I know that Nin wrote famous diaries, and I assumed maybe Brontë did as well.
I got here late today because it took me awhile to recover from the debate. Then it took me a bit more to plough through this puzzle, a challenge. I did know DIAERESES, but would have spelled it without the first e, diareses. Also, I somehow didn't notice the one over Bronte. Fortunately I did know PFLAG, although I hesitated because I couldn't remember what the letters stood for. but I like a challenge, and this was one.
I've burped plenty of babies, but I always thought of it as putting a towel over my shoulder, not a burp cloth. Is that really a thing?
I knew Magnus Carlsen was a former world champion chess player, and I knew the number was his rating, but I didn't know ELO, all the same. BTW, it's ArpAd, not Arped.
My biggest problem today was sloppy handwriting (or rather hand lettering); I wrote the D in SLANDER as a little too round, so I wasted some nanoseconds looking for a word for grief starting with an O.
The Spanish trend continues. Okay by me.
I had REcall in place at 24D which gave me _L_ERE___ at 38A. Oh, I thought, Anaïs Nin must have a pen name, like Anne Brontë (Acton Bell), so I had “alter egos” in my grid for some time. SEÑORES saved me.
Not a puzzle to remember but it did the trick. Thanks, Enrique.
The CPLUS makes sense per your hypothesis. 2.3 (technically 2.333) is c plus, 2.7 (2.667) is b minus, 3.3 is b plus, etc
Nancy
They did have a French word as part of a clue yesterday
The answer was the Spanish equivalent
I will mention the French word
Chateau. To be picky, I would argue the clue was wrong
Chateau in modern French really means a mansion or a palace.
Chateau- fort is the exact equivalent to Castillo.
Found this challenging for a Friday but I was glad to have a challenge! Keep some tough puzzles coming please, NYT!
*Arpad Elo.
But I guess you proved your point.
I agree with Aaron that clues such as 36A are just lazy. Almost any random four-letter word could go there. Ugh.
But, my more basic complaint is that this puzzle is in the New York Times, not Nuevo Madrid. When I want a Spanish puzzle, I'll fly there.
I appreciate the use of real-life Spanish expressions here...usually the NYT relies on foreign-language expressions that no one would actually say (I'm looking at you, "ACH") or inaccurate generalizations - the other day ANDALE was clued as something Goya would say, despite the fact that Goya lived in Spain 200 hundred years ago and ANDALE is a modern phrase used exclusively in Mexico.
In general, knowing more about the subject of a clue shouldn't make it more difficult to realize the answer.
Pretty hard for a Friday. Really not on the constructor's wavelength at all. Tough cluing plus REGIS? ALASKA ROLL? PAGE SIX? PFLAG? NONA?
Thank you for the explanation! I had absolutely no idea what this meant before.
I took it to mean that the stereotypical 2-year-old's favorite word is no!
For 28D (Yelp contributors) I had hATERS, which might actually be more accurate.
Challenging. I too thought something had to be wrong in those central downs. When I couldn't replace ANY of them, I just left it. Big surprise when I came here and saw it was right.
UFOS/IBUPROFEN got me started. But here's another local clue about the NY Post. LOOK, you guys, if you want to do New York, then submit your puzzle to the damn New Yorker! This one is syndicated nationwide, so IXNAY on the EWNAY ORKYAY shit!
Rant over. I knew who Magnus Carlsen is, and that 2882 was his FIDE rating, but never heard of this ELO dude. And BURP cloth, for real? That's a new one. A burp RAG, maybe...
Definitely not my cuppa, but beaucoup points for triumph. Par.
Wordle phew. Makes me have second thoughts about ADIEU to start. Haven't had much luck with that at all.
Tough one. Hardest area for me was the NW corner. NOCHEBUENA was a big unknown.
I didn't write in Lego, because I knew the first letter was K , from the tamale husk that crossed it. Love me some tamales. But I sat there thinking to myself, K-Tel didn't make building toys, what the heck is the answer? Finally got K'Nex, which I have seen in stores, but didn't exist when I was a kid.
Diaereses was hard to come up with because of the extra E, but finally the bell dinged, when I thought of Encyclopaedia Britannica, a set of which was in a bookcase in the living room when I was a kid. The AE of which is usually written as a single letter with the back of the A fused to the front of the E.
Otto Korrupt tried to change it to diabetes. That made me laugh!
Burp cloth??? (It's a real thing!!!)
Personally, I prefer the more accurate term barf bib. 😀
Adios ADIEU?
Full of dreck. Unpleasant as hell solve.
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