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Garment for a vaquero / FRI 7-26-24 / Feat on a beat / Fan associated with a red, white and blue skull logo / Breed once known as the "Tax Collector's Dog" / Radiohead's highest-selling single / Letters of coverage
Friday, July 26, 2024
Constructor: Andy Kravis
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
Word of the Day: ANGIE THOMAS (59A: Best-selling author of 2017's "The Hate U Give") —
Angie Thomas (born September 20, 1988) is an American young adult author, best known for writing The Hate U Give (2017). Her second young adult novel, On the Come Up, was released on February 25, 2019. [...] Thomas' initial intention was to write fantasy and middle grade novels; however, she was worried that her stories would not matter. While querying her first manuscript, she began another that would soon turn out to be her first novel, The Hate U Give. While she was a college student, one of her professors suggested that her experiences were unique and that her writing could give a voice to those who had been silenced and whose stories had not been told. During this time, Thomas also heard about the shooting of Oscar Grant on the news. This story, compounded by the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, and Sandra Bland, was a major influence on the novel. [...] The Hate U Give, originally written as a short story, debuted at number one on the New York Times Best Seller list for young adult hardcover books within the first week of its release in 2017. The Hate U Give was written, as Thomas says, to bring light to the controversial issue of police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement. The book's plot follows a teenage girl, Starr Carter, and how her life is impacted by the death of her friend, Khalil, an unarmed black teen shot by a white police officer. The Hate U Give deals with the effect of police brutality on the communities of those around the victim. (wikipedia)
• • •
The puzzle felt a little tepid to me. Plenty of whoosh, but the answers themselves rarely felt that exciting to me. Solid, but plain. If ANGIE THOMAS had meant more to me, I might have felt differently. I saw The Hate U Give on the new/popular YA shelf at the front of my local bookstore every time I went in there for what felt like years. It may still be there. But who wrote it somehow never registered with me. She's the "Word of the Day" today in part so that I can make her name stick. YA is not my thing, but she is a very big deal. I can see how seeing her name in the grid would excite some solvers. So that answer was original / different / interesting. But not enough of the rest of the grid was. For me. But again, I am willing to chalk my less-than-excited response up to night race-induced sleep deprivation brain fog. It's 4:30am and I haven't eaten more than a handful of nuts/raisins since noon yesterday! Basically if anything f's with my routine, I fall apart and forget how to live. I don't even know how to end this paragraph. It's bad. Let's get me to coffee, quickly, OK? OK.
I had several quibbles today. I am really not a fan of the CITY, COUNTRY answer, so LIMA, PERU felt bad to me (5D: Capital city whose main governmental building is known as the "House of Pizarro"). I get that you built yourself a grid where you require an 8-letter "U"-ending word, but the whole CITY, COUNTRY thing always feels so arbitrary. Of course LIMA, PERU. What other LIMA is it gonna be? Seems unlikely that the "House of Pizarro" would be in LIMA, OHIO. I'd be mad at PARIS, FRANCE too, the way I'm mad at ERIEPA every time I see it. Feels contrived, somehow. Also, I've been in English departments ... forever, basically, and I swear I have never heard the term "LIT CRIT" irl (30D: Rhyming subject for an English major). Every time I see CRIT clued this way, I cringe, and seeing the full LIT CRIT was no better. CRIT is a crossword contrivance. Bah. Plus the whole answer creates a really unpleasant "IT" pile-up in the eastern part of the grid. Call it the LIT CRIT GIT PIT. And hey, are OLIVEs really "divisive" (63A: Divisive pizza topping)? Anchovies, sure, that's canon, but OLIVEs? More than other toppings? Weird. OLIVEs rule, though it's true I rarely have them on pizza. If I found them on my pizza, however, I would not mind. "Divisive"? You folks are weird.
Other things:
- 18A: Departure announcement ("I'M OUTTA HERE") — wrote in "I'M OUT OF HERE" and was mad it wasn't the more properly colloquial "I'M OUTTA HERE" ... but then it was. It was ... that. More evidence of a brain on Power Save mode.
- 55D: Subatomic particle named for a Greek letter (PION) — I went with MUON, which is also a Subatomic particle named for a Greek letter, so I don't feel too bad.
- 33D: Feat on a beat (SCOOP) — another one where my brain just didn't have the processing power. "Beat" made me think "cop" ... or else "music" ... and I had S-OOP before I had any idea what was happening. It's a news beat. You probably knew that by now.
- 10D: "I didn't see you there!" ("OH, HI!") — a fine answer, but it dupes the "OH" in "OH, BEHAVE!" (38D: Catchphrase for Austin Powers). I figure you get one "OH" per puzzle. That seems like plenty.
- 58D: Mother of the Titans (GAEA) — I never know if it's GAEA or GAIA. That's because there's no way to know. Same figure from classical mythology, different spellings ... just 'cause.
- 37D: Fan associated with a red, white and blue skull logo (DEADHEAD) — me: "Wait ... fans of The Punisher have a name!?!?" All I could picture were those awful "Back The Blue"-type stickers that dudes put on their trucks to look tough. I guess they generally lack a red component, but that skull logo is a fav of the flag-wavey types, so ... yeah, this one confused me. The Dead, like YA literature, is really not my thing, though I'm vaguely aware of the skull thing.
 |
| [No] |
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| [Yes] |
- 46A: Breed once known as the "Tax Collector's Dog" (DOBERMAN) — this is a grim, grim way to clue the poor pooch. Economic oppression and violence against the underclass: not the image I'm looking for on a breezy Friday. See also the colonialist clue on LIMA, PERU. Lots of ways to clue LIMA without name-checking the guy most closely associated with the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire.
- 45D: Two-piece? (DUET) — I wanted DYAD. Again, as with MUON, I don't feel too bad about the mistake.
- 49D: "... oops, my mistake" ("... OR NOT") — This clue rings wrong to my ear. There's absolutely nothing about "... OR NOT" that suggests apology or acknowledgment of error. Tonally, the clue and answer here are on completely different planets.
- 1A: Letters of coverage (SPF) — first clue I looked at, and immediately there was sputtering. First, IOU. As in "I will cover this bet ... later." No. Wrong. Ooh, OK, how about cell phone coverage? LTE! ... no. Damn. I was so proud of that one. Then, just before I abandoned the answer all together, sunscreen coverage came to me. SPF! I used a 50 SPF sunscreen before the race yesterday. I'm unsunburned, but, as we've seen today, perhaps not entirely undamaged.
See you tomorrow.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
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130 comments:
How utterly deflating to fully complete a Friday with no help from the hints or Google, only to find that I've got something wrong, figure it must be to do with PION or GAEA somehow, click "check puzzle", and find that there was no mistake there but that I'd overlooked the fact that I'd written OOZED as OOSED because I'd correctly spelled LES MIS instead of inserting LES MIZ. Not having it.
I enjoyed BARTLEBY's appearance, which I got only because it's referenced in Archer. (He's not an easy read.) Though on an adult-oriented cartoon note, I think IKE might annoy a few people given how it's clued. You really have to know South Park to be sure you've got it.
I noticed the OH dupe, but the HATING/"Hate You Give" dupe seems worse to me, especially since the "Hate You Give" clue came *directly* after HATING.
OH HI and OH BEHAVE. But don’t forget Ms. YEOH.
Two creaky alternate spellings really jammed me up. Miz? Gaea?
Not an easy jaunt for me - never warmed up to the cluing voice. Was able to back into the unknowns but it took some time. ANGIE x OH BEHAVE is rough. Had to run thru my dog lost for DOBERMAN totally blanked on ARTEMIS.
Thankfully the center spanner went right in - as did BARTELBY, FRATERNAL and TERM LIMIT so that gave me the foothold all around. Would never think about eating an OLIVE pizza. KATANA’s show up regularly in the new Shogun remake.
Rex - I used to do all my running right out of bed at 5:00a but came to the conclusion that it’s just not the ideal time for my body. Better to have a little food energy and stretching before you go out there.
Enjoyable Friday morning solve.
The skull logo is known as the “stealie” made famous in this song
Miz is culturally correct, but I get your frustration there.
"Lit Crit" was definitely a thing in other humanities departments, usually used dismissively ... "Oh, but that's just lit crit [sometimes with a rhyming unpleasant third word]"
I haven’t watched SouthPark in years, so I’d figured there was a new kid named “Iki”.
Easy-medium??? No. Quite a tough Friday. Felt like a PPP-fest, plus some stuff that has become crossword cliche e.g. OH HI and MAA.
Again we see the deliberate choice to clue a word as proper-noun trivia, with CREEP.
I certainly don’t think of OLIVEs as divisive when it comes to pizza. Is arsenic on pizza divisive? Are metal shavings on pizza divisive? How about ground glass? Any of those would ruin a pizza just as effectively as olives do.
That southwest corner was a mess for me based on (as Rex pointed out) that terrible clue for “OR NOT.” I wanted to throw my phone when the answer revealed itself. It added 20% to the solving time.
I enjoyed the rest of it though.
I’m about as far away from YA as one can be and still be breathing, so ANGIE THOMAS was a total unknown (similarly, I’d wager good money that PIONs were not yet well-understood subatomic particles back when I was in physics/chemistry class).
There were some other tough spots like Radiohead next to the Olympic medalist - and the IKE/GAEA crossing was tough as well.
Question for someone familiar with French - is DERRIÈRE singular, plural, neither or both? It’s clued as plural, which makes me want to add an ESS - but that’s could well be the anglicized version.
I’ll say TSK TSK to the NYT for attempting to stir up a controversy where none exists - OLIVES on a pizza are not divisive (unless you slice them in half, perhaps).
I would say the only truly divisive pizza topping is pineapple. Sure, there are people who love and people who hate anchovies, olives, any other pizza topping you care to name. But I think most people chalk that up to "tastes are different." Pineapple is the only pizza topping where I've heard the take that people who like it are bad people.
Too hard for me on the left side. ORNOT is the answer for "Oops.(bad mistake)"???? Never heard of SPF, or YOLO, or PION. It's frustrating to get the long answers but get a DNF on the short stuff.
I must have the election on my mind. SOCKS reminded me of Clinton’s cat. BARTLEBY made me think of President Josiah Bartlet of “The West Wing”. IKE, well, Ike. And OH BEHAVE, well, never mind.
Today I was charmed by SLAM DUNK CONTEST, which looks so good spanning the center, and by its terrific question mark [Jam session?] clue. Another great question mark clue was [Office max?] for TERM LIMIT – a clue never used before in any of the major crossword venues. There were five question mark clues in the grid, and I liked them all.
Not to mention the non-question-mark [Feat on a beat] and [French buns].
Right at the start of the Olympics, it was lovely to drink in the international feel of rows four and five, with KATANA, DERRIÈRE, SERAPE, and LOS. Other lovelies: EAR over ERA, STAND down, DOBERMAN near DOG(MA), and PuzzPairs© SWEET/TEA and GIT/I’M OUTTA HERE.
Andy, you got my brain whirring in the best way, not only cracking riddles, but visiting places and things familiar and not-thought-of-in-quite-a-while. What a gift! Thank you so much for making this!
Wanted NATALIE for “Wood that sinks in water” but otherwise, pretty easy/breezy!
Confession time-could just not see PROPHECY in the SW as PION never occurred to me and YOLO should have been a gimme, but wasn't. And I'm still at -1 in yesterday's SB and ready to call it quits on that one.
Didn't know the ANGIETHOMAS person or IKE as clued and took forever to understand "office max", which was eventually obvious. Also OUT before GIT slowed things down. Not my best morning ever.
Running in the morning is definitely the way to go. I had a couple of good times in longer races back in the days when I could stay up past 9 PM. A brisk walk is about it these days.
Nice enough Friday, AK. Adequately Knotty to thwart my best intentions, and thanks for some bumpy fun.
Also--PLURAL ROOS??? Really?
You say KATANA, I say KATARA. You say SPINAL column, I say SPIRAL. You're right, I'm wrong. Sigh. That error took four passes to discover.
Mostly I enjoyed this one. I wonder if crossword constructors get a little hot when they use the word metonym.
I loved BARTLEBY the Scrivener. He definitely saw life in the way I've chosen to see it too. Except of course the size of my belly indicates we disagree on our portion control.
Propers: 10 (boo)
Places: 1
Products: 6
Partials: 5
Foreignisms: 1
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 23 (32%)
Recipes: 0 (beta)
Funnyisms: 4 🙂
Tee-Hee: DOBERMAN DERRIERE.
Uniclues:
1 Phase of life when taking a nap is your number one priority.
2 Privileged beach-goer's dilemma.
3 Thou shalt keg, thou shalt wear a backward cap, thou shalt haze, and the like.
4 Scratched the Scorpio.
5 When one finally turns off David Muir's World News Tonight for the remainder of election season.
1 I'M OUTTA HERE ERA
2 PARASAIL OR NOT
3 FRATERNAL DOGMA
4 STAR SIGN ERASED
5 CREEP TERM LIMIT
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Avocado-forward spa treatment after discovering he's (or she's or xi's) just not that into you. FRIEND ZONE BALM.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Very easy for a Friday. Just about everything fell into place without trouble. It was a pretty enjoyable puzzle overall, with a couple annoyances (which is to be expected).
OLIVES are absolutely divisive toppings on pizza. It's one of those ingredients that oblivious people include on everything they order, assuming everyone eats them. Ditto mushrooms and pineapple. I once had a grandparent order about eight pizzas for a family party, all of which had mushrooms. She was confused when none of the children wanted to eat any. They're kids! No kids like mushrooms.
Well, there's DUA Lipa again. Constructors must've wet themselves when she came along, now they had a new throwaway three-letter word to use. Let's put her in all the puzzles! At least Rex didn't bring attention to her... Oh wait, he linked a video. Great. Now that awful song will be in my head the rest of the morning.
That clue for UNO is pretty bad. Nearly every game since the beginning of history has a draw pile.
If you know anything about the Punisher, you'll understand just how funny it is that people use his symbol for those silly "thin blue line" stickers.
Anyway. Not really a fun Friday. I've never seen it spelled GAEA (Gaia? Hello?), would think that a South Park character would be one of the main ones, not a little brother, and don't understand why OLIVE is a divisive pizza topping. Put some extra pineapple on mine, by the way.
LIT CRIT was definitely a thing in my grad school department (German, UW-Madison) and then at the university where I ended up being employed. It was not a term heard daily, but it certainly was used. As I think about it, it came primarily from students' mouths when referring to a course in, well, literary criticism.
The whole southwest makes me irrationally angry. MAA doesn’t work for a child goat or human and the South Park clueing only draws attention to how ugly that corner is.
The worst part is that that corner can be done so many different ways:
Change GAEA to GRAD and you’ve got MAR/IKA/TED, GWEN gets you MAW/IKE/TEN, GORE for MAO/IKR/TEE (Imagine clueing with a timely acronym of the youths instead of a nearly 30 year old cartoon)… GLEN, GRAN, GRIN.
This is one of those cases where just because your software autofilled a corner and that corner looks *fine,* it doesn’t mean you have to accept it. Your grid gave you ugly 3 stacks, but you can still pretend to care.
Alternate spelling for GAiA is IKi if you have no clue on South Park kids. NoTICK for this puzzler.
Another Wednesday-easy Friday. My biggest snag was seeing that there was a wintry weather-related clue (without looking much at the clue itself to keep the whoosh going) and putting in SLEET, crossing TOKEN (“confirmed” by the O and E crosses)
DUET and not DYAD is a [Two-piece?] because it’s a song (piece). Like Rex, both answers came to mind almost simultaneously.
The whole GAIA/GAEA conundrum could’ve been avoided if it was GLEE. MAA isn’t that much better than MAL, after all.
OH HI, OH BEHAVE and YEOH. THAT is why it couldn’t be LIMA OHIO!
Love OLIVEs on pizza. Never thought my preference to be divisive.
Two buns = one derriere
Is it Monday already? The puzzle is just getting super dumbed down. This is terrible.
My sister was an English major and I sorta minored in English. I remember her taking what she called "Crit Brit Lit."
Had MUON before PION since many if not all of that class of elementary particles are named after greek letters, otherwise very straightforward. Definitely get a pass if you were subjected to something as cursed as an evening marathon.
Rex, you speak for all of us with your 3:45 stumbling - except for many of us ,that's at 6:45!
Nice puzzle with fun long answers and some unique fill. Just enough challenges to keep it interesting right through to the end
Had 2 daughters who majored in English and both took LITCRIT - suspect that's an undergrad term
Correct!
Hey All !
The highs and lows of puzzledom... Yesterday, got the QB in SB! Hooray! Today, kept getting the Almost There! message, and went through the grid about three times looking for an error. Couldn't find it, ending my 12 day Streak by hitting Check Puzzle. Boo.
I had KiTANA/PARiSAIL. Dang.
Beside that little oof, puz played quite easy for a Friday. Never felt stuck in any area. Solved in about 13 minutes, which for me and s very fast, on a FriPuz. But send 6 more minutes looking for that error. Egad.
Lost power at work yesterday, got to go home an hour earlier. Wondering if it's back on yet. I guess something in the building next to us blew up.
@pablo ... You saw it! Har.
Happy Friday!
One F
RooMonster
DarrinV
You’ve never heard of SPF? Do you only go outside at night?
Anyone else have first HMO for 1 across ?
PGIF = Pretty Good Interesting Friday. (Sorry) Challenging enough I had to keep working at it yet well thought out enough that I could get there by sticking with it … until … the proper name that I just didn’t know and dad no choice but to look up. A few too many of those for my taste: DUA, MOMOA, ANGIE T, plus KATANA. Didn’t like SPAMS or MAA but loved IM OUTTA HERE and the clue for DERRIÈRE. In fact that whole NE section really shined.
Hand up for liking OLIVEs on my pizza. They’re divisive? I also like pineapple but totally understand if you don’t. However, with the right accompaniments - Canadian bacon and feta cheese - you really oughta try it.
Apologies in advance for this bit of Dead pedantry, but the skull comes from the cover the Steal Your Face album: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steal_Your_Face
Weirdly, the song "He's Gone" isn't on the album, even though it's the source for the "steal your face right off your head" lyric. OK, you can get back to your day now!
None of the classic trick taking games have draw piles: Bridge, Spades, Hearts, Pinochle, Euchre... Neither do casino games, which involve dealers... Poker games either have you playing with what you were dealt (stud varieties) or asking the dealer for one or more cards (sure, called draw varieties, but there is no draw pile). Don'tso, not feeling your nit in this case. With you on the pizza toppings though!
I despise OLIVEs (but not OLIVE oil) and yes they are divisive, in the sense that i want half the pizza without said fruit.
would have liked an abbreviation indicator for YOLO.
Didn’t we have a big debate here re MIS/MIZ not that long ago?
YEOH won for a 2022 film, the Oscar was awarded in 2023, not that that helped me a lot because i completely blanked on her.
Liked PARASAIL DERRIERE and the clue for SOCKS.
The grid looked fairly choppy for a Friday (no long-answer stacks) which had me worried when I started. But the puzzle turned out to be a lot of fun.
Highlights:
-- IMOUTTAHERE is a million years old, but I still love it. It was fresh in my mind, because R.E.M.'s "Electrolite" popped on one of my playlists last night, and that phrase closes the song.
-- Austin Powers also feels a million years old, but OHBEHAVE was a reminder of how fun those films were at the time. Mike Myers really was on top of the world for a spell.
-- Interesting how TIL and GIT have become so "in the language" that they don't require "for short" or "colloquially" qualifiers. I think I'm good with that.
-- I'm with @Lewis on the "?" clues. All of them are good, and the ones for SLAMDUNKCONTEST and TERMLIMIT are truly top-drawer.
@Rex's disdain for city/country answers reminded me that, at just eight letters, LIMAPERU is tied for shortest capital/country combo in the world. It shares that distinction with two other cities, which others can provide if they like.
I had the same GAiA/GAEA issue as others, but just couldn't imagine that "South Park" would have a character named IKi.
@Gary -- IMO, that's the best single-puzzle set of uniclues you've given us so far. The FRATERNAL DOGMA one is hilarious. Well done!
You’ve never heard of YOLO? Do you interact with anyone under 40?
And there are still people in the comments who say they’ve never heard of Dua Lipa, despite being in the puzzle almost every week.
Pineapple is the correct answer on that, no doubt. Took me way too long to get Deadhead as I am a fan. Lots of little corrections to take care of once the fill was done
Oh, behave!
I thought Pineapple was the only divisive pizza topping :>}
I so wanted the French Buns to be "chignons." But derriere is cute.
Rex... LOVED your write-up today. Your self-deprecating humor is endearing. Puzzle was a bit ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ for me. Clueless on ANGIETHOMAS. And for some reason I was convinced it was HAvING instead of HATING. Medium puzzle for me . Cheers all, seems like it's going to be a nice weekend. Enjoy it
Even though I expected that FRATERNAL would be the answer at 3D, I couldn't come up with anything else in the NW corner and was afraid to write it in without confirmation. SLUSH to SPINAL to the deviously clued PINTO got me my toehold a bit farther to the right.
A well-clued (SLAMDUNK CONTEST; ACHOO; DERRIERE; TERM LIMIT) and moderately difficult puzzle that was perhaps a bit unfair in the ANGIE THOMAS/MOMOA spot -- but I rose to the occasion. A good Friday that I enjoyed.
Irrational is the right word! None of this makes any sense. You prefer IKA or IKR to a common name? And Southpark is not a 30-yr old cartoon. It's a *current* show that has been running for nearly 30 years. Big difference. It's NYTXW convention that MAA is for goats and BAA is for sheep. I learned that here.
If you enjoy 34D's "Office max?" for TERM LIMIT, you might enjoy the Pun Amok book series, where that clue originally ran in 2021 along with other recent NYT clever clues like "That makes two of us!" for CLONING, "Level best?" for HIGH SCORE, "Place of warship?" for NAVAL YARD, "Fixer-uppers, of a sort" for MATCHMAKERS, "Washer dryer?" for TOWEL, and hundreds of other original clever clues the NYT later ran.
Each Pun Amok book has 770 clever clues.
https://www.amazon.com/Pun-Amok-Word-Crazy-Clues/dp/1733336206/
The SW corner was tough, as I don't know Angie, don't know Momoa, and COULD NOT BELIEVE "or not" was the answer to "...oops, my mistake." I don't see how those phrases relate at all, so I resisted that solution. Seriously, that's about the worst clue I've ever seen in a NYT puzzle. WHERE WAS THE EDITOR???
Ick
At Columbia University, the course formally known as LITERARY TEXTS & CRIT METHODS is usually called LIT CRIT. Consider this an IYKYK fill.
What I don't know (yet) is what this crowd means by WoE or WOE. Pls help
Re: OLIVE.
I've never fought anyone over OLIVE because no one else I've ever shared a pizza with ever thought to order it.
You say PINEAPPLE is the best answer, but I'm not sure how many pizza joints in NYC even offer it as a topping.
The correct answer is ANCHOVY. I like anchovies, but no one else I know does. Lo, the poor ANCHOVY. You can't even get it in a Caesar Salad anymore. Now they just wave the anchovy bottle over the salad and call it "done!" -- sort of like waving the vermouth bottle over the shaker of gin in an ultra-dry martini.
Only anchovies or pineapple would be appropriate responses for 63 across
Yeoh won in 2023. Online version clue is 2022. Ugh! Got stuck there.
Second puzzle in a row with a crossword worthy 6(!)-letter Hidden Diagonal Word--sweet! I'll offer two clues for that word--one for my generation (older than dirt) and an alternate clue for the youngsters:
Clue A: Cliff Robertson's 1968 Best Actor title role
Clue B: Jordan, social media sensation with over 4 million Instagram followers
Good job, Rex, on running the 5K; 6:00 PM is a weird start time. I ran the North Olympic Discovery 5K last month and dominated the 73 and over category. Officially, I finished 2nd out of 6 males in the 70-79 grouping, but the "kid" who beat me was only 71! lol
I used to love a black OLIVE and onion pizza. Which is ironic, because off the initial O in 63A I entered OnIon (wondering how onions could be divisive--bad breath?). But PIT solved corrected that mistake quickly.
BARTLEBY is a favorite story for me, although I misspelled it for a while today, reversing the E and the L. Weird to have all those three-letter answers in the NW. I got SPF almost immediately, which got things off to a quick start.
Answer to the 6-letter HDW clue(s):
CHARLY (I have no idea if CHARLY Jordan is a cross-worthy "celebrity;" her name just appeared before the movie CHARLY when I did a Google search.)
Ok, time to get my SWEET STUD DERRIERE (not!) OUTTA HERE
Like to watch crazy people flying small, mostly single engine, planes on YouTube. Crazy? Pretty dangerous. We were not meant to fly- we don’t have bodily instruments to tell us which way is down.
Anyway, a typical statement when just lifting off - “I’m outta here”. It’s a way I guess of trying not to think of what we’re actually doing.
@Andrew -- Somehow I missed your "Natalie" comment on my first scroll through. I cannot stop laughing. Does that make me a bad person?
I believe you mean “Deadantry”
Oops, for those who aren't into searching for Hidden Diagonal Words (in other words, everyone but me!), you can find CHARLY (1968 film) beginning with the C in 11A, SOCKS.
That “joke” is ancient. Stale. Cringe.
@ Tom T -- Great find! I'll narrowcast with you. 😊
-- Guilty ____
-- Time for a massage, long walk, yoga class, etc.
Oh relax. “If it’s new to you, it’s new.”
I read BARTLEBY a long time ago, but couldn't remember him until I had the BART. Thus slowed me down a bit, but my real problem was confidently throwing in IM going HomE. By the time I figured out it was IM OUTTA HERE there were so many writeovers I had a hard time seeing what the letters were as I figured out the crosses.
A fine puzzle, though, that I enjoyed solving--though I crossed my fingers and yelled YOLO! as I wrote in IKE/GAEA.
EVERYTHING about pizza is divisive! Thin crust vs thick. NY vs Chicago (I prefer the square Detroit style from my childhood.) Haters gonna hate the frou frou Cali style with artichokes, and asparagus. There's the never pineapple crowd, and those that can't stand mushrooms. Whether you pick it up with your hands or eat with a fork and knife. And the dreaded sardine! I have a friend who makes it with brie, caramelized onions, and orange marmalade. So the clue could have really gone anywhere, but it was pretty clear from just a few crosses.
SPF = Sun Protection Factor. Has nothing to do with coverage. It is how much of the UV ligtht is blocked. That red blotch that your partner missed on your back is coverage.
Well a derriere would be two buns no?
I can perform a wicked imitation of a long time ESPN announcer. My friends are always asking me to DOBERMAN.
@Gary Jugert. Nice to see SLUSH at the top of the pile in today's puzzle.
Is an unpleasant First Nations person a CREE CREEP?
Since 26A PIT is cross referenced to OLIVE, maybe the divisiveness arises from whole olives with pits on pizza. I love sliced olives on pizza, but whole ones would be the pits.
I thought this was a pretty zippy puzzle. Thanks, Andy Kravis.
@Sir Hillary not bad, but base, boorish and juvenile.
Saw the 3-letter stacks in the NW and was tempted to say I’M OUTTA HERE. Turned out there was some sparkle in both the clueing and the entries that made this enjoyable. Maybe not a SLAM DUNK but the only really SAD bit was that SE corner.
My DOG would eat any leftovers we’d put down, BUT - no matter how small it was, if there were bits of olive she’d deftly separate them from everything else and leave them on the plate.
Wouldn’t meat be a more divisive pizza topping even than pineapple or anchovies? The latter are taste preferences, but lots of folks don’t eat meat for health or ethical or religious reasons.
PROPHECY has to be my favorite entry today. What a word. Makes anything sound important: STAR SIGN PROPHECY, ROO’S PINTO PROPHECY, the OLIVE PIT PROPHECY, the DERRIERE PROPHECY. I could go on but my fingers are tired of typing PROPHECY.*
IMDb says Les Misérables is “also known as Les Miz.” Doesn’t mention Les Mis. But don’t despair, MIs fans, at least we got ARTEMIS.
Thanks, Mr. Kravis. Fun puzzle and inspired another great @Rex review.
PS. @Rex, only a handful of nuts and raisins since noon yesterday? Eat something!
*Okay, one more: The ERASED TERM LIMIT PROPHECY. IKi and SAD.
Very easy for a Friday, except the SW, not knowing MOMOA or ANGIE. Then PROPHESY popped into my brain. Inferred YOLO correctly from crosses to complete. Still don't know what it stands for and don't care.
Friday record for me today at sub 8 minutes. Probably helped enormously that I could fill in Angie Thomas without crossings. I thought the puzzle was a perfectly good but not outstanding Friday.
Easy. I put in PARASAIL and FRATERNAL with no crosses and it was pretty whooshy from there.
I’ve seen the movie but did no know ANGIE THOMAS
Reasonably smooth with a bit of sparkle, liked it.
Our weekly pizza dinner is take-home from Round Table. The King Arthur. It's liberally sprinkled with delicious chopped olives.
Like Nancy, we like anchovies. I remember when we would order Caesar Salad at a restaurant. They would roll up a cart and make it at our table, cracking an egg and pulverizing anchovies.
PROPHECY and "prophesy" are both words, with related meanings. Unique.
It needed more sparkle, but we liked it.
I had MAh at 61 across, as in a (u) kid(/u) yelling “MAH, I’M HUNGRY!”
A little north of medium for me. I had trouble spelling DERRIERE because I initially doubled the R at the backend of the word. Maybe that was a Freudian slip. Also I'm unfamiliar with BATLEBY and ANGIETHOMAS. Another brief issue in the SW was my MAMOA/MOMOA write over.
None of these issues were hard to straighten out. I did the puzzle on my phone last night and this morning all I could remember was DERRIERE and BARTLEBY.
yd -0. QB8
Glad to see I wasnt the only one with the spinal/spiral mistake...
I don't eat pizza and I found this crazy hard. 1A: Letters of coverage? Good gravy, here we go trying to blow my mind into ARTEMIS. So it's going to be one of those days.
I'll start by saying that I gobble up any kind of olive. What I find divisive is spelling DERRIERE and YEOH. Back to SPF. I stared at that blank for ages until FRATERNAL jumped in. Oh....THAT SPF!....Finish my Pinot and go to bed. Wake up and run....My mind that is. I used to run a mile every morning until my SOCKS gave up.
Finished the top. So proud to get IMOUTTAHERE. SERAPE LOS PIT....you were next! BARTLEBY? What happened to Ahab? I even flirted with Moby Dick. A yipikayay for me for getting a SLAM DUNK CONTEST. Then [sigh] struggling mightily with ANGIE THOMAS and her "The Hate U Give" book. I remember seeing it but not the name although I finally sussed you out thanks for DEAD HEAD..
Then I get 54A Predictive text. PROPHECY? Good gravy...what a way to clue that answer and not have your mind blow up. Finally got to HATING and I thought this puzzle is sure deathy like. It didn't help that I haven't a dead clue what Austin Powers utters nor have I ever cared. I had his OH BE and so I wanted NICE to follow. BEHAVE came only because of DOBERMAN... something the tax collector might utter.
After I finished I looked at this and thought "WOW...this puzzle kinda OOZED of PERILS!".... DEAD HEAD PROPHECY HATING OLIVE PIT. I shall now get my DERRIERE OUTTAHERE!
In Berkeley there was a store that sold university press books. It had a section called "Lit Crit Brit."
@Anonymous (10:17) WOE = What On Earth?
@Anonymous (10:22) Michelle YEOH won the Best Actress Award for 2022. It was presented in 2023, but for a film which was released in 2022. Those clues always get a little tricky.
The man who would steal your face right off your head was, sadly, Mickey Hart’s father, who managed the band for a while. I think he did some time for the crime as we old timers remember.
I was never a STAN like some DEADHEADs, but I sure loved to see them play. First saw them at the Human Be-In when they mainly featured Pigpen singing blues.
Wasn’t Yeoh 2023?
Perhaps the solving powers that @Rex missed having this morning somehow got teleported to the Upper Midwest, as I found answers dropping right in with a certainty I rarely feel on a Friday. I even made the same mistakes as he did: OUT of, DUal, muON. But I enjoyed the puzzle a lot more - especially the international cluster of KATANA, DERRIERE, SERAPE, LIMA PERU, and ARTEMIS and the clue for TERM LIMIT. Fast and fun.
Still missing LMS wit. LMS…come out, come out wherever you are 😊
Yes!
See Rex's FAQs at the top of the page. #16a should clear things up
I enjoyed this Friday puzzle, Andy, thank you :)
Now if I could only find my typo (REALLY HATE THAT!)
My 12-year-old grandson was impressed I knew Dua Lipa
Your examples aren’t divisive as no one would want them on pizza.
28D So unyoked would be joined apart?
These lazy redundancies continue to show uo in clues on a regular basis? Why?
"Deadheads Unite!"
I was held up in the SW by the smallest of things, a muON. YOLO's clue not indicating the text-ese and what I consider a poor match between 49D's clue and answer kept me at bay as well. P_OmHEC_ was predictably not giving me a "Predictive text". And that nasty "text" in that clue was certainly not helping. I can't even remember now what broke the logjam but I eventually got the PROPHECY and all was saved.
I laugh at my attempt to put an eEl in when it isn't needed - eElSNAKE kept me from sniffing out the DOBERMAN and held up the SE. (Didn't like the "Feat on a beat" clue for SCOOP. I get it, but I don't like it).
Andy Kravis, thanks for toughening up the Friday solve!
Hands up for IKI crossing GAIA temporarily denying me the Happy Pencil.
Rex mentions another "subatomic particle named for a Greek letter" is the MUON; I'll add the BETA particle which is a high velocity electron. There's also ALPHA (a high velocity Helium nucleus; technically an atom which has lost its BETAs) but it's five letters).
OLIVEs are okay in most dishes but great on their own. The best are garlic stuffed Olives.
[Spelling Bee yd: congrats @Roo. It had this delighful trio of words which if you can make the first, you can always make the other two.]
@Anonymous 11:56 am
The Oscar ceremony was in 2023. But awards at the Oscars are given for the previous year. So that while the award was presented in 2023, it was for the year 2022.
Well … after a coupla rounds of new posts, and no sign of my postin, it may be that mine got crowdsourced, or somesuch. Will try again. Apologies, if I end up bein duped…
-----
Ahar! The Kravismeister! Been a couple years, since he last dropped by.
Puz put up a nice, light fight, at our house. ANGIETHOMAS was the longball no-know.
staff weeject picks: ERA & EAR. Right there together in the openin NW weeject-stack. honrable mention to OH, as others have mentioned, regardin its 2.5 appearances.
btw: That ERA clue seemed kinda iffy. ERA = {Phase}? Does our moon now officially go thru ERAs every moonth?
best SUSword: LITCRIT. That was a kinda tough LITCRITGIT, for m&e.
other fave stuff included: KATANA [mainly cuz I remembered it!]. DERRIERE & its clue. PROPHECY. IMOUTTAHERE. SOCKS clue. OLIVEs in pizza: U can put M&A down as a definite no-no-no.
Thanx for the themeless fun, Mr. Kravis dude. And welcome back.
Masked & Anonymo4Us
p.s. @RP … runnin 5K races and gettin up at 3:45am "no matter what"? U B from a different "olives rule" planet than M&A. But, hey -- we can still be friends, dude.
**gruntz**
Pineapple on pizza is pretty divisive. It wouldn’t fit.
Number 16a on Rex's FAQs:
Q: The clue says Marisa Tomei won the 1992 Oscar, when she clearly won it in 1993. I remember because I hosted an Oscar party that year. Why would the NYT make such a stupid error?
A: "... Oscars are handed out for achievements that took place in the preceding year. Thus, 1992 Oscars are handed out in 1993, but they are still 1992 Oscars."
@Gary - I also had SPIRAL/KETARI. Looked correct to me as I’m not familiar with the knife … had to come here to figure where my error was. I call this a “dem-Natick” 😛
@mathgent (11:34)-- I would kill for a restaurant like that near me. A great Caesar Salad, lovingly made in front of your eyes, is one of life's great pleasures, but I bet that no one born after 1980 has ever even tasted one. Even if they think they have.
Had HMO for “coverage”.
Liked it a lot, but it was Wednesday difficulty for me. Clues were fun but I maybe could have used a little more misdirection. LOVED French buns, so funny. Really liked TERMLIMIT and its clue. SPF and DEADHEAD are both great.
I wrote in SLAMDUNKCONTEST pretty quick but I still don't really think it works, even as a ? clue.
Washington Post crossword today fr 26th true gem... ny times is so rarely good anymore when it is its good but its few and far between makes no sense cushiest job on earth plus they rave over EVERY puzzle like its good automatically fake optimism not a fan of that kind of bs
The 95th Academy Awards ceremony took place in March 2023 honoring films released in 2022.
I know it's probably too late to get an answer for this, but what the hell is YOLO aside from being a county in California?
“Lit Crit” was definitely a thing when I was a literature major in the 70s-80s at Yale — Rex’s favorite college — during the halcyon days of Derrida, De Man, and the Deconstructionists.
The Grateful Dead Belt was a geographical anomaly than ran from Santa Cruz up to Seattle, then jumped the continent to NYC and ran north, forking east through New England and west throughout upstate New York, so Rex lives smack dab in the middle of it. I heard my best show out of dozens at the Broome County Arena in Binghamton, with my ONLY “China Cat/Know You Rider” second set opener, in 1979. On “white barrel” LSD that had been cooked up in the chemistry laboratories of Cornell University. Potent, non-speedy good time!
nice puzzle Andy Kravis. Spotted=Pinto gave me some trouble. Agree that olives on pizza are not divisive but pineapple is.
@Metro
You Only Live Once
It might be culturally correct in the US, but not in the rest of the world that knows how to spell… I’ve certainly never seen it spelled like that in the UK, and I’ve seen the show dozens of times as a close friend played Valjeans in the west end (albeit as understudy and in matinees).
Terrible clue. Just wrong 🤷♂️
That's the joke.
Anonymous 5:49 PM
(Reply)
The last time I checked the US is not part of the UK.
In THIS country LES MIZ is perfectly acceptable. Nothing wrong with the answer.
Every country has its idiosyncrasies. By the same logic, the English pronunciation of valet , accent on the first syllable and the second syllable ending with a T sound is also wrong.
That’s the way language is, especially when you borrow a word from another language.
BTW people would scream bloody murder if the answer had an s on it
Can someone explain the joke behind "Jam session?" / SLAM DUNK CONTEST. Is it that athletes are jamming the basketballs through the net when they dunk them? (Is that how dunking works?) A reference to Space Jam? Something more obvious that I'm missing? Thanks!
Grayling
Miz is in no way obscure in the US. I would guess Mis is the alternative spelling.
Gaea again may be the standard spelling. Gaea is Ancient Greek via Latin. And for centuries, the Latinized Greek spelling has been much more commonly used in English for Gaea andinnumerable other words. Lately, the trend is to use the Greek orthography. But but by no means is GAEA obscure.
Anonymous 10:47 AM
About coverage
You are being too literal. We aren’t debating a dictionary but a PUZZLE with clues, not definitions.
Anonymous 8:59 AM
Though of HMO first but didn’t put it in!
Had no idea that olives on pizza are divisive. Live and learn.
Olives are a common topping where I live
Not a big pizza fan but love olives.
Egsforbreakfast made a reference to olive pits on pizza.
Years ago as an attorney I would handle an occasional tort claim. One was for a cousin who broke a tooth on a pit in a pizza with olives.
Still insist to Rex that just because you haven’t heard something like LIT CRIT doesn’t mean it is not a thing There thousands of English Departments in this country after all. Just look at the comments!
I liked the puzzle. Thought it was fairly easy except for the names in the SW.
know katana from crosswords but took a while to get the exact spelling.
Really surprised about how many people didn’t know the GAEA spelling.
@Sir Hillary 9:38 AM
Thank you!
@egsforbreakfast 11:06 AM
Haha! I can't believe I missed SLUSH. I'm losing it.
I get the issue with weird race times. A few weeks ago I did the Midnight Sun 10K in Fairbanks, AK with a 10 PM start time. After the long walk to the car, thirty minute drive to my lodging, shower and a couple of IPAs, found myself going to bed at 2, wide awake. It was 4 back home in CA, about the time I’m usually waking up.
Insofar as IKR would be fresh and current language, IKA is “Japanese menu fair,” and South Park IS a 30 year old cartoon, yes, I do prefer both to IKE.
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Gaia%2Cgaea&year_start=1600&year_end=2000&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3
There are lots of means by which "Gaea" is obscure! According to nGrams it's been less used than "Gaia" since English spelling was invented, and really hardly used at all since 1800. "Gaia" was always far more common, and then really got codified some fifty years ago when James Lovelock started using it for his Gaia hypothesis.
All the same, I probably should have known there was nobody named IKI on South Park.
I've never heard of a class called (or referred to as) LITCRIT either, but crit itself is not necessarily crosswordese. In Art school, crits are highly anticipated (mostly dreaded) evaluations where your work is put on the wall for your classmates to tear apart. There's even a crits week. Art School Confidential & Ghost World both have hilariously spot-on crit scenes.
Principal natick for me was KATA_A/SPI_AL. N or R?? The sword was a WOE, so I had to decide between SPINAL or SPIRAL. I finally stiffened my SPINAL column and went that way: whew.
Secondary: GA[I?E?]A. Well, it was either IKI or IKE (I do NOT watch South Park, I'm extremely proud to say), and IKE seemed more lIKEly.
For a Friday, those diffficulties aside, this played easy-medium for me. End-week cluing contributed the medium part. Par.
Wordle par.
A very enjoyable Friday-level challenge.
I HATE OLIVES!!!
I LOVE OLIVE OIL!!!
Does that mean I have a (s)p(l)it personality?
You Only Live Once
My first encounter with anchovies: A group of friends and I, when we were young, went out to a pizza place for a group member's birthday. We were deciding what toppings we wanted, when one said: let's try anchovies. None of us had had them, so we said, okay. When the pizza arrived, on top of it were WHOLE anchovies. The friend who suggested them said: I can't eat something that's looking at me. If I remember correctly, we all took them off.
The only pizza I eat with pineapple on it, must also have either ham or Canadian bacon (which is my favorite), and the only other topping onion. Love me some grilled pineapple!
If I remember correctly, someone on here told us that Hawaiian pizza was invented in Canada.
Slow slog today…my brain was also on “power save” mode. No clue on ANGIE THOMAS and BARTLEBY (not BARTLETT?) was the last entry in the grid…guess I should read more,
"All I could picture were those awful "Back The Blue"-type stickers that dudes put on their trucks to look tough." You're too polite. Not just "looking tough." I'm sure you realize there's lot of MAGA/reactionary ideas behind those stickers. Liked the TERM LIMIT clue [Office max] ...hint hint Clarence Thomas... I mixed up GAEA with Rhea. What was your time in the 5K?
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