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Greek consonant hidden in the names of two Greek vowels / WED 7-17-2024 / Sandwich whose "California" version contains avocado / Caterpillar roll ingredient
Wednesday, July 17, 2024
Constructor: Alex Eaton-Salners
Relative difficulty: Medium-hard (I printed this off, and my copy didn't include picture clues, so I had to get six answers from the crossings. Honestly didn't realize I was missing clues until a third of the way through it, and then it seemed like every clue I wanted to look at after that had the clue missing, but I was still able to power through this because the missing clues were also thematically tied and not just random words and phrases.)
THEME: AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE — six of the clues are given in ASL, and their answers are all common words and phrases you'd use in conversation.
Word of the Day: OPI (17A: Nail polish brand with colors like "Berry Fairy Fun" and "Aurora Berry-alis") —
OPI, originally named Odontorium Products Inc., was a small dental supply company purchased by George Schaeffer in 1981. Shortly after taking over the company, Schaeffer was joined by Hungarian-born Suzi Weiss-Fischmann, OPI's Executive Vice President and Artistic Director. Schaeffer and Weiss-Fischmann partnered with R. Eric Montgomery, a biochemist, and created an acrylic system that Schaeffer sold door-to-door to local nail salons. They closed the dental sales and focused entirely on nail products changing the name to OPI Products Inc.In 1989, OPI expanded its portfolio to nail lacquers and later other products. In 2003, OPI created a Legally Blonde 2 collection that was also featured in the film. Collaborations that have followed include Ford Mustang, the 2010 film Alice in Wonderland, and Dell (2009). [wikipedia]
• • •
Hey hi hello and howdy, Christopher Adams here filling in for Rex for the first time in (checks watch) twenty-four hours. Liked this puzzle more than yesterday's, despite having no theme content to work with due to printing issues. But it was a fun solve that had more flavor than yesterday's, and I enjoyed the challenge of trying to figure out what clues I was missing before I actually got to the reveal. I didn't guess the theme right before seeing the reveal, but the fact that they're all conversational phrases helped. And it was nice to have that extra layer on top of the theme; it feels more cohesive that way (contrast with, say, this last Sunday's puzzle, which I hated hated hated in part because the theme was so loose).Theme answers:
- YOU'RE WELCOME
- I LOVE YOU
- PLEASE
- THANKS
- HELLO
- SORRY
So yeah, didn't have a theme to work with throughout, but in addition to the (fun) challenge of trying to figure out why clues were missing and what those answers were, also had lots of fun clues (OPI, PYRO, ROUGH UP, COLLEGE, more below in olio) and good fill (EAST BERLIN, HONEY LEMON, GOT CAUGHT), and overall it just had a good vibe and personality and felt like it was actually constructed by a single person, rather than (over)edited down to fit the publication voice.
Also, now that I've had a chance to look at the images post-solve, I think I would've still enjoyed the solve for mostly the same reasons, but also a few new reasons. Like, some of the images are more helpful to me than others; I wouldn't have gotten the same fun from puzzling out those answers without any clues, but I would've gotten a new fun from being able to translate the pictures into answers.
Olio:
- DESK [Work station] — If you know anybody in the Iowa area who is looking to get rid of furniture (especially a desk and/or a couch), put them in touch with me. I'm open to other items of furniture as well, but desks and couches are the only things that are more needs than wants.
- TEN [Largest of the three-letter numbers] — Can you find a way to express the number ten, using each of the other three-letter numbers exactly once?
- STEAK [For which you might tell a chef "Well done!"] — No no no no no no no no. If you want your steak well done, order something else instead.
- SHOELACES [They often take bows] — Great misdirect, especially since it's next to [Allegro or adagio] to put you in a musical mindset. Could've done without the cross-reference at 51-Down, though; never a fan of cross-references that go all the way across the grid.
- ST LUCIA [Caribbean country whose capital is Castries] — This clue brought to you by the letter C; also, side-eye at the abbreviated spelling when "Saint Lucia" is more common in my experience.
- PSI [Greek consonant hidden in the names of two Greek vowels] — Epsilon and upsilon, also this is just a cool find to include in a clue.
- MOOSE [Mammal whose babies can outrun humans at only three days old] — Love me some fun animal facts, cervine megafauna, and fun animal facts about cervine megafauna.
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94 comments:
Join your local Facebook buy nothing group! People are always giving stuff away.
Liked this puzzle a lot, recognized a few of the clues from baby sign language days.
Medium. Nice to learn a little about ASL. Thank goodness @Christopher the crosses for the theme drawings/pictures were fair.
Did not know ATUL, ST LUCIA, or any of the ASL clues except the reveal.
Head slap erasures - PYRe before PYRO and DORa before DORY (misread).
Smooth and a bit different, liked it.
@Nancy - Sorry to hear about Joe D., he will be missed.
(Six - one) x two = ten. Hurray parentheses!
A well done steak is simply not a steak, in that it’s not food due to being inedible.
Liked the little thematic couplings - there were a bunch of side-by-side echoes.
Christopher, I solve using Across Lite so I'm very used to this situation with "enhanced clue content". I went to a lot of trouble to make a screenshot from the NYT web page clues with the pictures. But then it didn't matter too much, because while the drawings suggested sign language, they were no help getting the theme answers, which I already expected would be common phrases. And of course the revealers.
I've always thought it weird that there is "American Sign Language". One might hope for a universal sign language, because: it doesn't have to depend on spoken language, right? I Googled the topic and, short answer: it's complicated. Oh well, in a perfect world signers could be universal translators I guess.
So sad to hear from @Nancy yesterday about Joe Dipinto's passing. Joe was a very distinguished member of this Rex blog commentary and I will miss him.
Don't mean to be a WISEASS but AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE takes up a lot of prime grid real estate when the crossword staple ESL would have sufficed. Putting that in, say, the lower right quadrant would have opened the grid to maybe one more ESL sign and increased the degrees of freedom for choosing better fill. I'm looking at you UNKNOT and UNHOOK. And it's hard to get excited about SHOE LACES and GOT CAUGHT unless they somehow get tied together. Then there's EAST BERLIN clued as "One side of Checkpoint Charlie"? Yikes. I got it but that was like 60 years or more ago.
But it's hard not to like a puzzle with THANKS, YOU'RE WELCOME, I LOVE YOU, etc. We could use more of those sentiments these days, right?
There's some carry over from yesterday's puzzle with 11D "Throat-soothing type of TEA" for HONEY LEMON and 71A "Stinging plant" for today's NETTLE and Monday's SEA ANENOME.
Oops. Crossword staple confusion. ASL not ESL.
Very sad at hearing of Joe DiPinto's passing.
Easy-Medium, mainly because weST BERLIN at 29D before EAST (confirmed by aye before YEA at 32A) made PLEASE (27A), PYRO (27D) and LEON (28D) hard to see.
ATUL (3D) was a WOE, and I had ETCH on before IN at 7D.
Nice change.
Kind of anticlimactic as I knew what the reveal was going to be as soon as I saw the first hieroglyphic clue. Don’t know ASL, so the rest of the theme entries were basically unclued, but I guessed that they would be familiar phrases and just made do.
The far north hemisphere was pretty brutal with the likes of ATUL, NERUDA, APOLO, the HINDU whatever, and even the capital of ST LUCIA. That’s just too much esoteric trivia crowded into such a small area for my taste - so unlike yesterday, this one was definitely just not my cup of tea.
Also sorry to hear about Joe D - he always had interesting and well thought out observations to share. RIP.
Sorry if this question breaks any rules for here, but just wondering if today’s NYT Wordplay column is not showing up for others.
For the first time ever, I filled in OPI from the clue. Yes, it took 28 appearances including five this year, but I got there.
I think most animals can outrun three-day-old humans.
Fun fact: ASL for I LOVE YOU is the sign for "L" combined with the sign for "Y". That was the only sign recognized at all … the rest may as well have been clued without the pictures.
Not very excited by this. So it had pictures that many could not see. Big the clues had all been in French or Spanish, would have had the same effect, I think. Borderline themeless.
TIL that ETA is hidden in BETA and THETA, and also that I need to check all of my crosses. :)
A chance for my mea culpa. A few days ago, I lamented guessing Ono for a 3 letter Olympian named Sebastian, thinking of Sebastian Anton Ohno. Not only did I have the last name wrong in the grid, I messed up his first name - an anonymous commenter pointed out that his name is APOLO, and here he was in the puzzle today. The only excuse I can come up with is that I’m a Pittsburgh Penguins fan - they signed Sebastian Aho in the off season, so perhaps I combined the 2 names to come up with the very wrong (but natural sounding) name for the Olympian?
I’ll miss Joe DiPinto horribly. His comments made me laugh aloud and his musical contributions always made me smile. I questioned my sanity that I had developed a crush on an internet blogger. But I had. Thanks for the melodies, Joe. You are remembered.
Well, yes, this puzzle triggered some delightful responses from my crossnerd side, to wit:
• Three palindromes (HAH, LOL, NON).
• Amazement that this is the first time YOU’RE WELCOME has appeared in the 80-year history of the Times puzzle.
• PuzzPair© of DORY and a backward NEMO.
• With its 16-wide grid, this is a lovely complement to yesterday’s 16-tall grid.
• Skilled construction – clean smooth grid, despite a very high 62 theme squares.
• Some sweet cluing, such as [They often take bows] for SHOELACES, [Major undertaking?] for COLLEGE, and [It might thicken or be full of holes] for PLOT.
But more than any of that, this brought me back to thinking about sign language, which has fascinated and charmed me for many reasons, for as long as I can remember. Learning to sign has been on my bucket list, though I haven’t thought about it in a while.
Well, now you've got me thinking about it again, Alex, and thank you so much for that. Thank you also for all those little things that delighted me about your puzzle today!
I did not enjoy this one. Foreign language clues are always a question of whether the particular word in the particular language is so broadly known as to be fair. That's why we get a lot of Spanish and not much Russian. At this point in time, I think ASL penetration is closer to Russian than Spanish. (By way of example, would anyone be happy with a puzzle that had pozhalusta, lublyu tebya, and spasibo as clues?)
The problem of "clues" that were meaningless to most solvers meant that the crosses had to be extra easy. So, while there was, as noted by earlier posts, some good fill, there was a lot of tediously easy stuff.
And, finally, having ST LUCIA as an answer without a clue signaling the abbreviation was a bit unfair.
So, an overall yuck for me.
Sorry to hear about Joe DiPinto, and thank you @Nancy for the information.
My first off-blog interaction with Joe was about a clue in a cryptic puzzle. In addition to having an encyclopaediac musical knowledge, he had a real brain for twisty cryptic clues.
He had mentioned he had less time for crosswords than he used to, but did not mention illness so it comes as a shock. I'll miss our rare but enjoyable interactions.
The Berlin Wall fell not quite 30 years ago, November 1989.
I'm happy I knew the signs or this might've been a real bugger. They're the basic ones that everyone ought to learn along with the alphabet. My wife taught deaf kids for many years in the public schools, so I picked up quite a few words along the way. My favorite is for cat where you use your index finger and thumb to pull on invisible whiskers with open palms. The little drawings in the app are surprisingly good, but I bet on newsprint they're impossible to see.
Since I was 9, I have been eating toast for about 2600 weeks in a row and never once did anyone ever call it "down." Why has this been kept from me?
I think the clue for PLOT is funny. I'm realizing after reading the Wikipedia page on Ramayana that I know absolutely nothing about Hinduism and I oughta do something about it.
Bon voyage to Joe DiPinto. He straightened me out a few times on this blog. Good guy.
Propers: 10 (boo)
Places: 2
Products: 6
Partials: 5
Foreignisms: 1
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 24 (30%)
Recipes: 1 (beta)
Funnyisms: 4 🙂
Tee-Hee: You felt it too, didn't you? You got the WISE part of [Smart alec] and in your soul a teenie voice dared to whisper, "omigosh is it gonna be WISE {ehem} you know?" And it IS! Our multi-year run of fanny-forwardism came to a crashing halt when Joel brought his tyrannical demagoguery to the leather chair, but here we hear the echoes from a simpler baudier time like a somber song coming into a darkened alley out the back door of a tavern for lost boys. Oh, and He-double toothpick squiggly letter, there's a SLIT in a skirt to wrap up the puzzle.
Uniclues:
1 Kissing booth.
2 Preface to Pablo pan.
3 Never ever fast enough.
4 Nickname for disease-ridden dormitory where far too much ill-advised smooching went on.
1 I LOVE YOU DESK (~)
2 SORRY NERUDA
3 ORATION TEMPO (~)
4 HONEY LEMON HALL
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Besotted sisters. RUM AND COKE NUNS.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Regarding the puzzle, I didn't love it. Regarding the comment about steak: Look, I get it. When I ate steak (I'm mostly vegan now but was a steak lover years ago), I ordered it medium-rare or medium. Pink and juicy and delicious! But my husband likes his steak well done, and topped with steak sauce. He savors every bite. Over the years, I've come to resent servers, chefs and members of the general public who scoff at his steak-related choices. As they say nowadays, don't yuck other people's yum.
@Nancy
Sad to learn of Joe DiPinto's passing. Thank you for letting us know. As others have said, he will be missed.
@ Nancy: Thanks for sharing the news yesterday about Joe D. I actually had noticed his absence but people sometimes take breaks, as I have occasionally done myself this year, so I wasn’t overly concerned. Very saddened to hear of his loss.
I also occasionally think of @Joaquin I know is also having health issues. I saw his name a few months ago on the wordplay blog, but haven’t heard from him otherwise.
@ Nancy: That was me who just posted the anonymous comment. I forget I need to identify myself when I’m using my phone.
Agree with WMartyn 7:37. It’s bad enough having to know Spanish to do one of these anymore, but now ASL? Does this meet the Maleska standard?
Hey All !
Puz is 16 wide, in case y'all didn't see it. Wonder why? There's no central Themer of an even number, the 12 letter Themers could've just had a three block of Blockers. Just sayin'.
I got the pictures, liked them, knew a couple but not all of them. Nice to see the full written out AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE, instead of the usual ASL that pops up a lot.
Neat clue on COLLEGE. Good fill, good cluing, nice puz.
@pablo
You made it! Har.
Happy Wednesday.
No F's (in an oversized grid! HELLS bells...)
RooMonster
DarrinV
Hello Anoa Bob ASL is the correct abbreviation. ESL is English as Second Language
Oh, dear God, squiggles! That's what I thought as I glimpsed the puzzle on the table, a fair distance from my eyes which were not encased in reading glasses yet. And then I thought that I am really not in the mood for squiggles this morning!
When I put on my glasses and brought the paper as close to my face as I could without smothering myself, I thought: they still look like squiggles, but if I focus really, really hard...
Yes!!! I see it now!!! There are faces and hands and arrows doing I'm not exactly sure what, but the squiggles definitely have a story to tell...
I found out what the squiggles were telling me by filling in everything else and coming up with phrases like PLEASE and YOU'RE WELCOME and I LOVE YOU via the crosses. I did guess, btw, that we were dealing with AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE.
Perhaps we should all learn the basic phrases of ASL, but this isn't a good place to do so. 27A looks to me like I HAVE HEARTBURN; 52A looks to me like either I HAVE A SECRET or DON'T TELL ANYONE; and 23D looks to me like AYE AYE SIR.
ESL is English as a Second Language and refers to classes. Very different than ASL which is a language itself.
My dude, you comment every morning. The "HINDU whatever" is intuitive and common enough. Crosswords can exist outside of a solely American context. So many of the complaints in the comments of this blog have to do with "foreign"-isms. W e l i v e i n a g l o b a l s o c i e t y. Enjoy learning something new!
What’s next braille
Way too easy, felt Monday level, zero resistance here.
Ten proper names and all the clues were foreign language.
This was a Wednesday?
If you know a bit of ASL, this was a Monday puzzle. If you don't, and didn't know the proper names, this was a Friday.
OPI crossing APOLO is hideous, ST LUCIA (with no clue as to abbreviation) crossing ATUL and NERUDA is Natick-worthy.
Still finished, but with a lot of head-shaking and WTF moments.
Lest fave puzzle of the year and one of the few in ages that I almost bailed out in the middle because I just didn't care anymore.
In the olden days, GIs ate C-Rations. I guess now we're up to ORATION.
@kitshef 7:19, nice catch on the MOOSE outrunning a 3 day old human.
The mood at the White House has become DAM SOMBER after Biden announced he'd SIGNLAUGUAGE to UNHOOK EASTBERLIN.
Very sad to hear about @Joe DiPinto. One of the truly enjoyable regulars. Thanks for letting us know @Nancy.
This theme is funner in concept than in solving, but still enjoyable, Thanks, Alex Eaton-Salners.
Very low scale on the difficulty level despite the novelty of the theme clues. I did have a small snag in the Midwest with AYE instead of YEA at 32A, which prompted me to enter WEST in place of EAST BERLIN. That, combined with the two proper names NERUDA and LEON crossing the unknown themer, took a while to UNKNOT. An entertaining Wednesday, but I have to agree with @Nancy that I’m not fond of squiggles in my puzzle. On the UP side THOUGH, now I know a few SIGN LANGUAGE expressions in case I ever need them. THANKS AES, for that.
For those of you who do Wordle, you might be interested in the comment I put up on the Wordle Blog just now.
Wordle 1,124 3/6
⬜⬜⬜🟩🟩
⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
And now a word about the Wordle Bot. Devilishly programmed to be imbued with all the worst qualities of the human being: Jealousy. Envy. Lousy Sportsmanship.
As you can see, I beat the Bot today. And when I did, I knew that I would only receive a "score" in the 80s. I have never received a score in the 90s when I beat the Bot -- only when I tie or lose.
The Bot gave me an 86 overall and a 72 for my 2nd guess. My 2nd guess, says the Bot, eliminated all but one word.
DO YOU THINK THAT WAS AN ACCIDENT, YOU STUPID, JEALOUS BOT???? DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH THOUGHT I PUT INTO THAT 2nd ANSWER IN ORDER TO ELIMINATE THE MOST LIKELY LETTERS AT THAT POINT?????
You called it "luck". You always call it luck when I beat you, Bot. You gave yourself a 99 for your own 2nd guess while giving me a 72. BUT YOUR 2ND GUESS DIDN'T ELIMINATE ALL BUT ONE WORD, DID IT BOT???
I think we need a new and better bot, NYT. One that's modest in victory and gracious in loss. One without such an easily bruised ego and without the implacable determination to come out looking like the winner whatever the actual results.
You're a disgrace to botdom, Wordle Bot!
A very nice set of Hidden Diagonal Words (HDW) in the grid today, including a mini-theme that might be called "Europe in days gone by." We get an Italian "duke," a piece of Roman formalwear, a defunct Spanish coin, and a Scottish Highlands honey. That's a DOGE (begins with the D in 57D), a TOGA (T in 52A), a PESO (P in 27D), and a LASS (L in 6D). Alas, that's all once upon a time in Europe HDWs for today.
Speaking of that LASS, her ASS moves across 19D, WISE ASS (I had WISE guy first); and the first S in WISE ASS is the second S in a Hidden Diagonal ASS (begins with the A in 27A,PLEASE)! It's a three-ASS cluster, a gathering designed to delight any seeker of Tee Hees (hello, G. Jugert)!
One more Hidden Diagonal delight today: the R in PYRO begins the HDW REED, and its semordnilap DEER (which begins at 24A).
That 27D almost caused a solving failure for me on an otherwise Easy WEdnesday. I was confident that the answer to 27A, Burning man? had to be neRO, especially since I already had the RO in place! I didn't know the R&B singer Bridges or the ASL for PLEASE, but I had to finally give in to the fact that there is no three letter Representative's affirmative that starts with an E (from neRO). I was about to give up when PYRO snuck into my head. I think neRO is a better answer for the clue.
Rest in peace, Joe DiPinto
And the letter "I"
That’s quite patronizing, anon replier. I got HINDU no problem but I couldn’t finish the puzzle because of the northwest.
Most of the commenters on this blog stopped learning anything new at a certain point and use this section to complain about anything that came around afterwards.
Luckily my app allowed me to see more than squiggles and I kinda knew it was ASL, but needed crosses to figure out most. I think the ILOVEYOU confused me since it appears to be two people expressing it simultaneously. At any rate, since the clue “Unwritten code” was in the middle of the puzzle I plopped in ASL instead of DNA (yes, ASL is a language NOT code), but that was easily corrected when AMERICANSIGNLANGUAGE fit like a glove in the revealer.
Rest in peace Joe Dipinto…we will miss your commentary and I always liked this added on to song lyrics: 🎶🎵
Like many of you, I can think for a while that people are taking a break. This year I had a little more than 4 weeks in the Spring where I was every which way from my own time zone so it took me a while to inquire about Joe to Nancy. (@Nancy, the ONLY reason I could contact you is because YOU first sent me an email a while back…cuz ya know your email isn’t listed…and that’s ok)
I enjoy SO many comments, jokes, word play, etc from people on this blog and always miss people when they are absent. Many folks who have had fabulous and extremely thoughtful comments still work full-time and I was ALWAYS amazed at how they found the time! (Here’s looking at @LMS and @Weezie)
I missed the news about Joe Dipinto yesterday, it's very sad. I hadn't seen his comments lately, but thought it was just that I was coming here earlier. His span of musical knowledge was impressive, and his comments always insightful.
@Nancy has the right word for this puzzle -- "squiggles." It didn't make much difference, since I don't know ASL; but the silly grins on some of the figures were off-putting. Still, they had to be common phrases, and I sort of guessed YOU'RE WELCOME from the YO; when that proved correct, it gave me confidence to make plausible guesses for the rest of them.
I liked the crossing UNKNOT/UNHOOK in its own right, but the SHOELACES cross reference is less than ideal, since if you tie them in a bow you do not need to UNKNOT them.
I'd like to speak up in defense of the Ramayana. First off, it's in the clue, so you don't have to know it--just that it's from India, whereupon the H should be enough to give you HINDU. I'm generally in favor of broadening our horizons, so opinions may vary. We've been seeing HOLI (Hindu festival) more lately, and ASANA, a Sanskrit word, so I'm sure more is coming.
But TIL that there is a sequel to Finding Nemo.
@Nancy, I feel your pain--I actually got it on my second guess today, and the bot gave me a score in the 70s, and told me it was blind luck.
I liked the polite and affectionate tone the theme answers give the puzzle, along with the little fillip of I LOVE YOU x HONEY.
@Nancy, thank you for letting us know about Joe D. It is sad news.
M&A is kinda a fan of havin an occasional illustrated puztheme. I'd grant that this would be a bummer, to folks whose puzapp don't do illustrations, tho.
The ASL themers all made sense, altho I wasn't quite sure what that little curly-Q between the two hands for the ILOVEYOU sign was gettin at. Does one twirl the hands around a little, or somesuch?
staff weeject pick: BRR. Ironic(al) sound effects to go with the ASLers.
some faves: WISEASS. Clues for PYRO, COLLEGE, & SHOELACES.
I'm bettin that the editors got rid of AES's ASL pic for WISEASS. But an obvious omission.
Thanx for signin us up, AES dude. (Imagine an enjoyable solvequest sign, here.)
Masked & Anonymo9Us
p.s. Rest in peace, fellow comment gallery member Joe DiPinto. U will certainly be missed, dude.
p.p.s.s. Continuin thanx to the swat team of vacay blog subs for @RP: Christopher, Eli, Malaika, etc. Good job of fillin his shoelaces on short notice, when his remote internet went south.
**gruntz**
All day long I've been given a message that ..."someone is playing games with us." How did everybody here reach the puzzle?
Very easy, even though I don't speak ASL.
I came here expecting to see complaints from app users that they couldn't see the theme clues. Apparently, some could and some couldn't.
Instead, THOUGH, several complaints about foreign words -- which have been in crosswords for decades. HELLO! ADAPT!
Little pictures!!! Where's @Barbara S? It'd be fun to get her art opinion. OK...so I'll give you mine!
25D: I stared at that one for ages. Was tempted to get out the magnifying glass. No, look closer... THANKS!.
So I played along. We're talking ASL here and the pictures prove it (I think)! I was taught the alphabet when I was about 10 or so because one of my American friends was deaf. She had just come from the States to live with her parents in Havana. Her sister was my classmate at Cathedral and she wanted to bring her in to teach us the ASL alphabet (She went to another school because we didn't have any teachers who knew how to sign). Anyway, she came in one day along with her parents and taught us how to sign I LOVE YOU using the alphabet After her visit all of us practiced non-stop. It was a moment in my chaotic childhood that I shan't forget.
The puzzle was fine. I liked learning new gestures like YOURE WELCOME. The HELLO gesture was new to me and I liked UNKNOT next to UNHOOK.
THANKS.
First of all, to @Beezer (10:44)and anyone else who might ever want to email me, but is frustrated by the fact that I don't have an email address up on my profile:
The reason I don't is that, before the days of comment moderation, trolls were fairly ubiquitous on the Rexblog. Not infrequently, their bile was directed at me. Even though they can't now comment, they might still be lurking-- who knows? I know I'm just safer keeping my personal info away from the riffraff.
But anyone with a recognizable presence on the blog is welcome to email me. Here's a list of some of the people who can provide you with my email and have their own emails up on their profile; @Lewis; @GILL; @Teedmn; @Jberg; @JC66; @kitshef; @whatsername; and, now, @Beezer. I will always give them permission to furnish you with my email address should you request it. I love hearing from fellow Rexites.
Now about Joe DiPinto: A nice tribute would be putting up on the blog -- especially for those who weren't on the blog when this fine, fine piece of writing first came out, the full text of "The Green Paint Mystery". Such as it was. Joe was, if memory serves, not only a wonderfully funny contributor to our group mystery-writing project, but a Founding Member. Someone on the blog, I think, but I can't remember who, whipped the entries into shape -- putting the most recent entries at the end where they belong and getting this memorable tale to read in sequence. And when whoever did this had finished, we actually had a--
Well, you'll see! Can anyone help with this project? As a Luddite who also has a fuzzy memory, I'm pretty sure I can't track it down and reproduce it myself. Thanks in advance.
Also ZETA — but that’s a Greek *vowel* hidden inside Greek *consonants*! Nice misdirect, though, with multiple outs (number, type).
ETA is a Greek vowel though, not a synonym as clued.
My thoughts exactly!!
Comments here have a shelf life of a day (at most).
For those who want to give a more permanent tribute to Joe Dipinto, here once again is the link (something Joe himself emailed me instructing how to do).
I didn’t know him (there is a 94 old Delaware man of the same name whose obit comes up more regularly), but for those who did…
Tribute page for Joe Dipinto
It's amazing that you found that page, @Andrew (12:02). I never saw it yesterday.
It's wonderful that there's a photo of Joe attached, and that it's one with such a happy and infectious smile.
I will certainly write something and I imagine many other people will want to as well. Thanks for finding it and providing the link, Andrew.
@Nancy
Funny how the bot always solves opening with a word like CRANE. I'm starting to think that the bot is secretly 'a female' - as in jealous, but it is, afterall, just a bot. And when it comes to my guesses, which make more sense (to me anyway) the "bot" always comments that there was one guess that 'was more efficient.' Oh yes - & when I solve before the bot does "it's "A LUCKY GUESS." So there I go again - "the bot is an envious female".
I've never gone to comments but I'll go look for yours.
But on to this puzzle.
Congrats to AES - your first construction that I've ever liked. I'm sure you're "gratified" to hear that. Thank you for a fun solve :)
@Nancy and anybody else who might b interested in "The Green Paint" little (and funny) story can see how it got started. A poster named @Vanda asked what "green paint" referred to. Joe responded to her and said a story could come out it (or something similar)....And so, it all began. @Nancy started the fun. For those wanting to read or re-live the experience, it started on Rex's blog, Sunday, May 26, 2017. I hope everyone goes back and reads the mystery. Thank you Joe D for making it fun.....
@ Nancy, you forgot me :(
@WMartyn While ASL is not widely comprehensible to the larger public many of these phrases are very commonly used in baby sign language as well and many parents of young kids know at least a few of those. The ubiquitous "more" and "all done" however are missing. There is also lots of kids song content that includes ASL signing. I remember learning the ASL signs for several songs at my church preschool in the 80's and 90's.
I found this puzzle quite easy (finished in half my average Wednesday time) but otherwise pretty boring.
Am I alone in hating "unknot" as an answer? "Untie," sure. Even "disentangle" works, but "unknot" is not a term that anyone uses.
GILL I: 5/26/2017 was a Friday.
https://rexwordpuzzle.blogspot.com/2017/05/chief-justice-in-dred-scott-verdict-fri.html
@GILL I. (12:43 PM) I had to do some googling, but it was May 26, 2019 (not 2017). Anyhow, bookmarked for later, so thanks for that. Rest in peace, Joe Dipinto.
@GILL I re the Green Paint Mystery... May 26 2017 was a Friday and I don't see the word "green" anywhere. I also can't find it on Sunday May 28. Wrong year maybe?
Many thanks to @GILL and to @PH for tracking down the entire evolution of -- as well as the text of --"The Green Paint Mystery." I'm sure I wouldn't have been able to do so.
And may I borrow your memory from time to time, @GILL, when you're not using it? "@Vanda"???? Who the bleep was Vanda? I don't remember her at all, much less her query about green paint. Nor do I remember a single sentence from "The Green Paint Mystery" -- not even any of the ones I wrote.
And therefore I look forward to going back to re-read and re-live "The Green Paint Mystery" experience. Not knowing how to "bookmark" stuff, I'll write down the date that @PH has provided on an analog piece of paper.
@Andrew -- I wrote something for the obituary memory page you provided. My entry should go up in an hour or so. Thank you.
Geez stop the scorn for people who like their food different from the way you like it. Why does cook time become a moral issue? I like meat well done. (Spicy is also a plus.) Husband likes it red in the middle. We love each other and refrain from mentioning how terrible the other person's taste is. When I cook I make it rare for him and crispy for me. Can't we all just get along?
Nancy - beautiful tribute to Joe on dignitymemorial!
@Andrew…AGREED! Nancy your tribute was marvelous! I added a comment/ tribute to make clear just how widespread the blog is, in case his family is interested…
@PH....Oops. Thanks for correcting my mistake. My sevens sometimes look like nines. Yes, folks...."The Green Paint Mystery" began its journey 5/26/2019......I hope Joe's family and friends take a look. He was quite the talent!
Thank you. The "moral issue".qulbblers do get my goat!!!!
Wow, and you have no interest in learning a few common phrases that would allow you to communicate just a tiny bit with the deaf community? This was a great theme; I knew some of the signs and learned some more. These comments are so disheartening.
My goodness, the ableism in these comments is overwhelming. I know I’m late in the day to be commenting, but if Rex or any of his noble proxies see this, a statement addressing this would be nice to see. This puzzle provided a very accessible way to learn just a few words and phrases that might allow someone to even slightly communicate—let alone care to communicate—with the Deaf community. I loved it, but if many here are advocating against “yucking others’ yum” re: steak, let’s apply a little of the same open mindedness to those with hearing differences. Please.
Fascinating to me all the people bellyaching about ASL being a “foreign language.” Sure you might not be fluent, but you really don’t know the sign for “I love you?” For “Thank you?” Those are common. And, frankly, I appreciate this puzzle for attempting to make them more common. All Americans should know ASL.
American Sign Language is not a foreign language. It is used by half a million Americans. More and more it is being used by non-deaf Americans to precede or augment spoken language. Knowing common signs such as hello, please, sorry, and thank you isn’t just helpful in a NYT crossword, it’s better knowing and understanding your community.
I spaced out and almost forgot to do the puzzle today.
I was at Checkpoint Charlie two weeks ago. Though it was a small piece of the puzzle it filled in easily.
@kitshef: "I think most animals can outrun three-day-old humans." I agree - good reading of the clue!
So very sorry to hear of Joe DePinto's passing. A loss for all of us here (I guess there are many like me who read daily, but comment rarely). @Nancy, thank you. for letting us know.
As for this puzzle - easy. I didn't even look at the theme pictures - the crosses did all the work. I don't mind easy!
Way late today because there was news of a destructive storm a bit north of us last night that was exactly where we have a camp on a lake. Off we went this morning to check it out and got there just as clean up crews were coming out of the dead end road that we use for access. No damage to our camp but our lakeside picnic table had disappeared and there was a clear line heading north and east of us with a lot of trees down or with tops snapped off. The big news was finally confirmed that it was an actual by god tornado, right here in central NH. Even my wife, who is a native and has been around a while, had never seen such a thing. What next? No real property damage or injuries, BTW, and thank goodness for that.
Liked the puzzle but my print version was missing the first column of numbers for across clues, so I did some downs-only solving. Didn't really know the ASL visual clues but they were easily inferred.
@Roo-Yeah, a Pablo. Not sure if being in a clue really counts. Thanks for thinking so.
Nice enough Wednsedecito, AES. American English Signing, I suppose, and thanks for all the fun.
More about Joe D, less about ASL.
Joe D was by far the best commentator on this blog. True New Yorker, RIP
(Possibly) Interesting bit of trivia, in an obscure branch of math an “unknot”, is the least knotted knot, which is how I found today’s crossword.
Not terribly familiar with ASL (or any sign language variant for that matter), but the clues seemed to fall into place quite easily with a bit of guesswork.
The only places I got “knotted up” were the food clues (EEL, ON TOAST). Leave it to the powers that be on whether that’s a reflection of my limited knowledge of American colloquialisms or a lack of adventure on my gastronomic choices.
One last point on “knots”. Seems foreign to use unknot rather than “loosen” or “unfasten” as a pair up to shoelaces- but English is my second language so what do I know.
Rather enjoyable Wednesday puzzle on the whole.
I once made a comment on this blog and Joe D lol’d. Made my day.
Etchin, really clunky....(Retching)
I grew up with two friends who used ASL, and two others who were blind. Each year as school got more demanding, (20 years before PL94-142 that required that all students receive necessary accommodations and adaptations to enable them to learn more easily) I grew more and more astonished at their tenacity and drive and their unique ways of handling their ever-growing frustration with a system that did not seem to want to let them all the way "in." Perhaps living in a large city gave my friends a few more opportunities, but I know from being in and out of their homes throughout my entire public school years that they all had families who supported them and went to the mat with the school system each and every year over one thing or another, or sometimes many things.
My daughter teaches special needs students grades 4-6, and has at her and her students' disposal so much wonderful technology, and yet she till asks for more as research finds out more about the human brain and creates ways to help accommodate challenges. So far from my peers' experiences, and yet the same needs for better types of learning tools exist largely because teachers are able to welcome students with more types of challenges to their classrooms. That's a good thing.
Children are humanity's most valuable natural resource, and I cannot imagine a better way to spend public funds that creating parity in public education so that teachers are fairly compensated and have all of the material things they need and are able to teach in healthy, safe environments in which to teach and students are welcomed into learning environments that "expand students' joy and curiosity for learning." That quote was from an interview on NPR today; sorry I didn't catch who was speaking.
My four dear friends changed the way I thought about my exceptionally fortunate self, and I am still close to the three who are still alive. I learned how to read for the blind, and to help take notes for my two deaf friends when we started to have lecture classes. In college, we used to talk (using our precious long distance "minutes" - remember those anyone?) about our foreign language classes; my genius friend, Rick was (while totally blind, used his incredibly acute hearing an is fluent in at least 7 languages) kept trying to figure out a way to create one universal sign language, (hi @okanaganer) but has given up. Today's puzzle brought back so many memories as well as the feelings I had as a young person of being so incredibly lazy because I didn't have to expend much effort to acquire the knowledge expected of me - especially throughout elementary school and most of junior high.
My ASL memories came in handy today. I am by no means fluent and never was. In fact I probably remember more of the rude and slang signs than anything. I can, however understand some conversation still, and knew all of the signs in the puzzle. Usually, picture clues put me off a puzzle, but since today's were the theme; I liked that.
The fill was lots more fun than yesterday - at lest for me. Learned ATUL Gawande today, and have put "Being Mortal" on my hold list at the library. Liked SHOELACES and the inevitable childhood need to UNKNOT them. All the puzzle needed was to have to RETHREAD the SHOELACES after the ends FRAYED due to the loss of the AGLETS. Maybe my first attempt at constructing will be a she themed puzzle with lots of SOLE. OK, I won't do that.
Peace out, my friends
Each sign language is based on culture. And then there's a ton of different dialects withing each one as well. This is the same as saying that everyone should just speak English. Sign Language is part of deaf culture. You'd be erasing tons of different cultures.
Also, as someone fluent in asl, some of the pictures weren't the most clear.
People have scorn for those who like their meat well done because cooking it that much completely destroys the texture and flavor. I hope you buy only the very cheapest meat you can find because the benefits of anything nicer are wiped out.
Also, have you considered that that’s why you like it spicy? Because without that there’s nothing else worth consuming? (FWIW, I also like spicy food, but because I don’t destroy the meat first it enhances the flavor instead of replacing it).
I would argue that it’s obvious there’d be no such thing as “universal sign language”. ASL is not some arbitrary conlang invented in a lab; it’s a language like any other, so it evolves over time and across regions. To suggest that a “perfect world” is one in which signers are universal translators is also to suggest that ASL is not a “real language” and erases Deaf culture. It’s insulting.
”Borderline themeless” is a strange thing to say about a puzzle with a clear, cohesive theme. Your own ignorance doesn’t render it themeless any more than it would on a day where you just didn’t understand.
Has your husband considered that his love of well done steak and steak sauce together is because the steak is so annihilated during cooking that steak sauce is the only way for it to have any flavor or moisture at all?
So true! I have wondered along the same lines, but not so eloquently.
@Anon 1989 was 35 years ago.
This was a good puzzle overall, just super, super easy.
I don't know ASL, but I had enough crosses early on that YOUREWELCOME became pretty obvious for 18A. Figuring the other ASL clues were of the same ilk, once I had a couple of the crossers in, PLEASE, THANKS, ILOVEYOU, etc. were very easy to complete. And to make things even easier, the 54A/65A combo made filling in 20 grid squares a complete gimme!
No, sorry; rejected. You can't put a bunch of unintelligible scribblings in your clue list--and then cross them with really obscure names. How did this get past the editor's DESK?
Wordle bogey.
Loved this one. THANKS AES!
HELL’S DAM OMEN
When LEON SAYS, “HELLO”,
HONEY, YOU GOTCAUGHT,
he SAYS, “ILOVEYOU”, THOUGH,
YOU’RE IN A SORRY PLOT.
--- LUCIA NERUDA
Those ASL pictograms were of no help to me. That is one LANGUAGE that I know nearly nothing of. It used to count like a foreign LANGUAGE did in COLLEGE, but I took Swedish instead, met a couple of Swedish lady musicians in large part due to that.
Wordle par.
I had a friend who inherited, along with one of his brothers, a gene or chromosome that ran in one side of his family, that would cause him to go deaf at a fairly early age. I met him when he was 21, and he was taking lip reading classes. He was pretty good at it, and could even use it to eavesdrop on a conversation he wasn't privy to. Unfortunately, he also inherited other health issues, and died before he was 30.
Not surprisingly, this one is not on the Seattle Times site and probably elsewhere in syndication, because they can't provide the picture clues. Instead we get a rerun from 2019. Rex' recap of that one is here: https://rexwordpuzzle.blogspot.com/2019/07/traditional-time-to-start-work-wed-7-17.html
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