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Relative difficulty: Medium
THEME: None
Word of the Day: ANI (57D: Glossy black cuckoo) —
The anis are the three species of birds in the genus Crotophaga of the cuckoo family. They are essentially tropical New World birds, although the range of two species just reaches the United States.[1][2]
Unlike some cuckoos, the anis are not brood parasites, but nest communally, the cup nest being built by several pairs from 2–6 m high in a tree. A number of females lay their eggs in the nest and then share incubation and feeding.
• • •
Hi friends! It's Rafa again as promised yesterday. Hope the last 24 hours treated you well. I went up to Marin County today and had a beautiful and peaceful beach day. Gorgeous county, that one. Highly recommend a visit if you've never been.Another fun themeless today. Not quite as easy and whooshy as yesterday, but I enjoyed the balance of vocabulary in this one. ARE WE OKAY is a fun in-the-language expression, DEPRAVITY is a cool word (with a non-cool meaning), WEIMAR ERA brings some history, DON DRAPER brings some pop culture. There's something for everyone!
 |
| Dolly PARTON's Dollywood |
I love how as a society we have decided that we will continue to call it Twitter. I've never seen someone unironically refer to that website as "X" and I love that the clue for RETWEETED doesn't have some weird ", formerly" descriptor. I guess they are technically called "reposts" now but ... we don't care! They will always be retweets in my heart.
Then there's COW TIPPER. Is cow tipping a thing that actually happens. The Google AI overview when searching "cow tipping" says "Some say it could take up to six people to overcome the force of a cow's standing position" ... who is "some"? Why did cow tipping become some sort of urban legend? Did nobody question this? I don't think I could tip over a cow if my life depended on it. They are large and sturdy! It's a fine answer to have in a crossword since it is a real urban legend, but I had never really thought much about it until 5 minutes ago.
 |
| Some tipped (and fake-looking?) cows |
What else? I got semi-Naticked by the FRANZEN / ZETAS crossing. I had a B instead of a Z at first. The down could plausibly be BETAS, and the name was new to me, so I had to come back and try the Z. Generally I'm a fan of the silly "apt name for ..." type clues for names (unpopular opinion, I think!) but this one for ERIN didn't quite land for me. I had no idea ANI was a bird, but ANI DiFranco is probably tired of appearing in crosswords so why not change it up.
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| This is an ANI apparently |
Similar to yesterday, the grid felt a bit more on the closed-off side. It's hard to keep things connected with the five stacked answers in the middle, but I was pretty stuck in the top right for a while until PAYWALL (great answer!) came to me and unlocked the corner.
Bullets:
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Bullets:
- UTAHANS [Pioneer Day celebrants] — Pioneer Day was new to me. Also, apparently Utahn is more common / preferred over UTAHAN, but maybe someone from Utah in the comments can let me know!
- GRANTED ["I will admit ..."] — Fun way to elevate a potentially-boring one-word answer by cluing it as an expression
- RILEY [N.B.A. coach Pat who trademarked the term "three-peat"] — I just watched Inside Out 2 this weekend and it would have been incredible timing if the clue for RILEY referenced the character in that movie
- EASY FIXES [Simple solutions] — I like this entry a lot!
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
On the easy side for me with the NE the toughest section. No WOES and knowing DRAPER and FRANZEN was very helpful in the south.
ReplyDeleteI also knew about Pioneer Day.
rose before GREW which remembering the Marquez title fixed. Also Pulse before PANGS.
Fun and mostly whooshy with quite a bit of sparkle, liked it.
ReplyDeleteI agree with @Rafa: Medium for a Saturday.
Overwrites:
I sort my social media feeds (4D) by age, not NEW (-ness?)
vida before AMOR for the Spanish title at 6D
stud Poker (8D) before DRAW
ANI (57D) is some ye olde croswordese which I misremembered as ApI
My 61A FIXES were FasT before they were EASY
WOEs:
7D RAKE as clued
FRANZEN at 45A
I thought TAKE made a whole lot more sense than RAKE.
DeleteLeaving aside the farmers, engineers and veterinarians who have pointed out the near impossibility of tipping a cow, the strongest evidence that it isn’t really a thing is the absence of videos all over the internet of it happening.
ReplyDelete๐
DeleteYou should tip the cow at least 15%.
DeleteThe activity of "cow tipping" is real - successfully tipping a cow is not ๐๐
DeleteHmm. True
DeleteHmm. True
DeleteUncomfortable - segmented layout for me. Some decent entries - some gimmes and some purely inane fill. Overall didn’t feel like a proper Saturday. The center stack was easy and for the most part interesting. Like the ATE CROW x COW TIPPER cross and how DEEP SIX leads into the SE corner.
ReplyDeleteNew Order
The SW corner should have been REDONE - clearly the weakest part of the grid. Keep the emoticons out please.
I expect a little more challenge and nuance in a Saturday morning solve. Thankfully Stan is still on his game - the crossing spanners in Lester Ruff’s Stumper today are worth the effort.
ELLA singing Porter
Loved listening to Ella! TY for link!!
DeleteEnjoyed it for the most part. I thought the SW was extremely tough - no real entry point and that triple stack with the author FRANZEN, FORA which just didn’t register, and of course I had no idea regarding the hieroglyphic clue for OMG.
ReplyDeleteWell, I guess it’s official - the NYT has fully embraced its text-speak fetish and I personally believe that CrossWorld will be worse off for it.
Greatly agree
DeleteOne of those "four corners and a middle" puzzles that you have to solve in stages. Found some good entries in RILEY, ANGELO, and FLUSEASON, but the NW was going nowhere until I changed LOVE to AMOR. That'll teach me to translate while I'm reading a clue.
ReplyDeleteThe only social media feed I have is email, which sorts itself. No help there. BARRIER as clued needed almost every cross, as the clue was no help at all. And I have read "The Connections" and still had a hard time coming up with Mr. FRANZEN. Come on man.
Today's blast from the past is of course ANI, which I mentioned a couple of days ago. Here it is with its proper clue. Honorable mention to ATTA, MIA for too long. ATTA boy, Evans.
Felt just right for a Saturday to me. Enough work to produce satisfaction, and some fresh answers. (COWTIPPING is definitely talked about around here, but I've never seen any proof.)
A fine Saturday indeed, EC. Sometimes good to need Every Cross to get an answer, and thanks for all the fufn.
Man, this grid has serious pop.
ReplyDeleteTen NYT debut answers. Now, debut answers aren’t automatically good things. They can be boring or arcane. But not these ten. I mean, look at them – ARE WE OKAY, COW TIPPER, DEPRAVITY, DON DRAPER, EASY FIXES, FLU SEASON, FRANZEN, OFFLOAD, PAYWALL, RETWEETED!
Every single one of them, except maybe COW TIPPER, is so in the language, IMO, and all of them, to me, have an interesting ring, verve. All of them make me wonder, “How can this answer not have appeared in a Times puzzle before?”
Freshness abounding, then, in this puzzle, especially in that center stairstep stack, containing four debuts and one answer that has appeared but once before in the Times. Wow!
Freshness like this, to me, is not a constructor showing off. It’s a constructor exhibiting skill, as good debut answers are not easy to come by. It’s a constructor focused on entertaining the solver through answers and clues never seen before in the NYT puzzle.
The solving enjoyment, for me, was padded by sweet wordplay misdirects, such as [Meeting places] for FORA and [Run slowly] for SEEP.
Spark, shine, and play, on top of satisfying my brain’s workout ethic. What a lovely puzzle, Evans. Thank you so much for this, and bravo!
Sweet, creative, appropriately challenging.
ReplyDeleteOne nit: it’s probably bad form to touch down on the TARMAC. Works better on the runway.
Finished it without a cheat...good for me on Saturday. Thought I'd finished it, but I had "Franken" instead of FRANZEN for the author (didn't know the book).
ReplyDeleteGuessed correctly on DONDRAPER. At first I had "yehs" instead of YEPS, so that was an issue. COWTIPPER came from the crosses...is there such a thing in real life?
Impressive puzzle, fun Saturday solve. 11 total 9-letter words across- puzzle even looks snazzy!
ReplyDeleteWanted AREWECOOL, but fortunately I'm a Marquez fan and knew AMOR was solid. Seemed like the puzzle had one "solid" in each area that helped me out
When we moved to the heartland 30 years ago we were introduced to cow tipping and corning (throwing ears of corn instead of snowballs at cars) - both of which were much more popular back then.
Isn’t the answer at 19A incorrect? It’s Turner Classic Movies, TCM, not TMC. Had AMC for American Classic Movies…
ReplyDeleteI think it’s referring to The Movie Channel, which I didn’t even know about until I looked it up right this minute.
DeleteTMC = The Movie Channel
DeleteOutlier here as I really can't see what about this puzzle made it stand out to the NYT editors. None of the long answers are particularly interesting. BETHEL and FRANZEN probably not crossworthy. COW TIPPER is not a thing. It's a perfectly decent puzzle, but that's all.
ReplyDeleteHey All !
ReplyDeleteSE was a Natick downfall. Didn't know either FRANZEN or ANGELO. Also had eighT in for OCTET ("Hey, I'm heading to the store to grab an OCTET of hot dog buns. ARE WE OKAY on everything else?"), plus decided twixt DOltS and DODOS, wow and OMG, and just not being able to suss out any kind of answer. So ran to Goog and looked up FRANZEN. Now, I've said before, I'm not very well read, but is a book from 2001 supposed to be known? Just that book?*
Anyway, puz was on the easy side for a SatPuz. In NW had tAKE for RAKE, and amazingly that wrong T was holding up the works. Changed it to the correct R, which led me see 1A, then that corner fell. Weird how one wrong letter can stop you in your tracks.
WEIMAR ERA is a new one here. I'll Goog it if no one here explains it. (Well, maybe... I'll probably forget it later! Silly brain.)
*Speaking of books, mine is supposed to be arriving to me today! We'll see later on. 10 copies. Soon available in book stores and Amazon. #Humblebrag ๐คฃ
Har.
Have a great Saturday!
Four F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
This was medium for me. Mostly this was due to the NE and SW corners. I had no idea on FRANZEN and I really couldn't tell you what a PAYWALL is so there was something to work around in each of those two corners.
ReplyDeleteThe NW and center were easy
Due to years of solving ANI was familiar to me as a bird. That was a key part in why the SE was almost as easy as the NW.
yd -0. QB78
Is it me or are crosswords getting easier? I used to not be able to fill half a Saturday, and recently I am able to finish them. Like…wtf?
ReplyDeleteThinking the same!
DeleteI actually wrote to the NYT about it. They’ve gotten so much easier. Try a Saturday from 2012. They take forever with a lot of DNF. They’ve made the Games app more accessible I think to get more subscribers. Its dog eat dog out there.
DeleteNice. Kinda like doing five mini puzzles with this grid.
ReplyDeletePropers: 8
Places: 3
Products: 2
Partials: 4
Foreignisms: 3
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 20 (29%)
Recipes: 0 (beta)
Funnyisms: 2 ๐
Tee-Hee: I like having DEPRAVITY right in the dead center.
Uniclues:
1 I know what y'all did last night.
2 Caulk gun Liquid Nails solutions.
3 What my dominatrix is paid to do.
4 Primary function of old people talking.
1 ONTO COWTIPPER (~)
2 DODO'S EASY FIXES
3 OFF LOAD SWATS
4 DWELL ON PANGS
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Teenage brain. ACNE MIND.
¯\_(ใ)_/¯
Jonathan Franzen was a Pulitzer finalist for The Corrections and stayed in the news when he had a big dust-up with Oprah about not wanting the book to be in her book club. It was a gimme to me, and I’ve never read the book. Definitely crossworthy for the NYT puzzle; maybe less so for the USA Today one.
ReplyDeleteFun puzzle except for the SW which was just a hot mess. I had SINGE for burning desire.
ReplyDeleteNot a fan. Using obscure names to increase the difficulty is not my idea of fun.
ReplyDeleteI guess I do NOT like my Saturday puzzles to “whoosh,” that is, I like it to appear impossible for me THEN I find out I can solve it. This was a puzzle that I felt a heartbeat away from a “cheat” to get a toehold but ended up having intermittent eurekas which enabled me to finish without a cheat, so a thumbs up for me!
ReplyDeleteLike @Pabloinnh, I have read The Corrections, and FRANZEN finally popped into my head with the FR from OFFLOAD and MOROCCO. Hmmm. I suspect that FRANZEN might be on @Gary J’s C-list. Also, I’m not sure the majority of people living today would know that ANGELO Dundee was Ali’s trainer. I didn’t know he was Foreman’s, which also makes me wonder why the heck I even knew the name of Ali’s trainer!
Was anyone able to immediately pop in WEIMERERA without crosses? Ok…anyone that doesn’t teach 20th century World History? I thought I was being cute by putting in ERA at the end.
If cow tipping WAS actually real, can you imagine a group large enough comprised of 100% idiots that would try to tip a BULL!?
Good tough fun. I had eight for OCTET and US One for ACELA for a long time. Both seem totally reasonable to me. So that corner was a total mystery until I took those two out. Much to love here, worth the struggle!
ReplyDeleteI haven’t done a crossword puzzle in ages, ever since I killed those two guys in that bar. When you’re in jail they take away your iPad, unless you (or a friend) can smuggle one in up your ass. But I got off with a $400 fine ($200/victim)..Between the killin’, the trial, and my release, it was the longest six hours of my life.
ReplyDeleteOn the chest of a barmaid from Yale
Were tattooed the prices of ale.
And on her behind, for the sake of the blind,
Was the same information in Braille.
This puzzle was pretty easy, is all I’m saying.
@JohnX 10.02
DeleteWelcome back!
Agreed on easy.
Yes, whoever asked, I was able to drop in WEIMAR ERA off the clue, no crosses, actually one of my first totally confident entries. ESL teacher (Ret.), not history.
DON DRAPER another gimme.
tAKE before RAKE made journalistic STANDARDS hard to see.
Not a fan of basically five little puzzles.
But WE ARE OKAY.
Excellent Saturday, properly hard, and any time a puzzle features the dreamy DON DRAPER, all sins are forgiven. Well, except one … I do take issue with TMC. The cable initials for film devotees is TCM, Turner Classic Movies.
ReplyDeletePAYWALL, schmaywall. Throw one of those in my face and you can forget about a new subscription. I escape out of those things faster than I do the TV ads that blast their spiel at sound BARRIER levels.
I got a good laugh at 1A to start. STANDARDS are a concern for modern day journalists? SRSLY? We’re talking about a profession that gets much of its fodder from information which is RETWEETED. I’m currently reading Rulebreaker, the new book about the life of Barbara Walters. YEP, reporters in that day and age operated by some very clear established standards of ethics but I’m not sure there is any journalist today who could hold a candle to the giants of that era.
Beirut before Bethel, geography fail, jammed me up in the NE. Also since I'm a history nerd was fixated on the old Soviet scouting organization called the Pioneers. DNF on betas..... Still a great puzzle.
ReplyDeleteAnon @ 8:28 - The Movie Channel
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Movie_Channel
@JOHN X-
ReplyDelete1)Hilarious limerick.
2)Suggest you become President to achieve total and eternal immunity.
A wonderful themeless -- with most of the difficulty derived from vague or misleading cluing rather than from arcane trivia. And where there were proper names, they were mostly from my era and/or within my sphere of interest and knowledge: ELLA; PARTON; DON DRAPER. (Delightful clue for DON DRAPER! If you never watched "Mad Men", watch it now, for heaven's sake!)
ReplyDeleteBut some of the names from my era had vanished from my brain in a sea of Senioritis. I had the EN, knew he was a Jonathan, and thought his last name was maybe...FReiZEN? And I know you, [blank] Dundee!!! What's your first name again? It didn't help that I'd written in an "S" for the first letter, since I couldn't come up with FORA, but was sure the "meeting places" would end in "S". Until I got FORA, I couldn't come up with ANGELO.
Interesting that the one thing my aging, fuzzy brain didn't forget today was something I only know from a previous crossword puzzle. COW TIPPING. I'm not sure what it is, exactly, but it's such a funny image and such a NOVELTY that my always-forgetful brain refused to forget it.
FLU SEASON was clued in a way that could have been a technology Beta launch. EASY FIXES was clued in a way that it would have been some sort of bASe mIX. The cluing was devious and a lot of thought obviously went into it. Thought this was a terrific Saturday.
Mrs. Gore: OMG! What is that large brown creature, Al?
ReplyDeleteMr. Gore: Next to the REDONE? That's a COWTIPPER.
I'm thrilled that @John X is here after the notorious double killing in a bar. Hope you'll be around a while.
Thanks for a whooshy Saturday, Evans Clinchy.
We have a 5 letter HDW (Hidden Diagonal Word) in the grid today--thanks to a POC (plural of convenience). So I'll lead off today's clues with this:
ReplyDelete1. Judges (5 letters)
2. Org. for oldies? (4 letters)
3. What HDWs do (4 letters)
Answers below.
This puzzle felt easier than yesterday, but took longer--part of that was taking pauses without hitting "Pause." Also, yesterday had a bunch of easy sections tossed in with a really tough NW. The challenges were spread more evenly across the grid today, imho.
Had eighT before OCTET (hello, RooMonster) but somehow remembered ANGELO Dundee, who insisted that I find an alternate hot dog packaging option.
Answers to HDW clues:
1. DEEMS (begins with D in 5D, DREG--DREG, ugh, where's the POC when you need it!)
2. AARP (A in 45A, FRANZEN, moves to NE--not sure if that clue should have the "?")
Side note: FRANZen makes me hungry for a Franzbrรถtchen, the delicious cinnamon buns that are a morning staple in Hamburg, Germany.
3. LEAN (final L in PAYWALL, LEANing to the NW)
Enough for your daily dose of HDW NOVELTY. Time for me to LEAVE.
@Rafa - Yes, cow tipping is a thing, and in principle it only takes one fairly athletic man to achieve it. The ones that say it takes six are the idiots who try to do it front to back, not side to side. Unfortunately, there are many such idiots.
ReplyDeleteOnly had trouble in the NE and SW.
ReplyDeleteI got SYN and really wanted the Y in NOVELTY to cross “anomaly” — such a great word. But PAYWALL x ONETWO were the one-two that brought the NE down.
Even knowing FRANZEN cold I was stuck until I mentally browsed the globe for MOROCCO. Who says OCTET for eighT, OMG!
Yes, EIGHT hung me up in that corner. But when the brain eventually realizes the intended word it's such a great aha!
Delete@Beezer (9:36). I had the same feeling. Very pleased to solve this one.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful construction. Sparkly (COWTIPPER, RETWEETED, DONDRAPER, ERIN), crunchy, totally junk-free, single-digit threes.
Jon Hamm fit the DONDRAPER role perfectly. He hasn't been nearly as good in anything he's done since.
Is the symbol in 36A well known? What does it represent?
The symbol is an emoji - or rather an old text-based form of it that we used to have to use to make little pictures before smartphones. The colon is eyes, the hyphen a nose, and the O an open mouth, all forming a face that appears astonished. So it means OMG in text speak, which stands for Oh My God.
DeleteHaving worked in the world's largest & most prestigious ad agency, of course, I loved the appearance of DON DRAPER (& knew many of them).
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I don't have a clue about COW TIPPER & I had DROP for DREG.
This was an enjoyable, doable Saturday - thank you Evans :)
Wow, (my first thought for 36-A), this was tough for me. The acrosses were all too vague or ambiguous to start with until I got to 20-A which could have been 'rose.' That made me check the downs, and gave me the gimme AMOR (one of the few books I've ever read in Spanish, over the course of several months). The rest of the NW fell into place, but I didn't see COW-TIPPER (seriously considered COOW-sIttER), and WEIMAR years wouldn't fit. I don't know why, but ERA never occurred to me. (@Roo, the first democratic of government of Germany was established in 1918 after the overthrow of the Kaiser, and ended by Hitler in 1933. Its capital was the city of Weimar.)Nothing in tne center, finally got a few entries in the SW and SE, but completion of either section was blocked by bETAS and lope (for run slow, since jog was too short).
ReplyDeleteAli's trainer was well known at the time, and everyone I know has read The Corrections and told me I should, too (I will some day, really!), but I couldn't recall either name. I finally surrendered and looked up ANGELO, whereupon I saw that it could be ZETAS, and FRANZEN suddenly bubbled up into view. Oh yes, I had eighT as well.
No idea about this Riley guy, because sports, but did he really 'trademark' that phrase? Does he get royalties when anyone else uses it? Hard to believe.
OMG! I mean :-O -- he did! You don't have to pay him if you say it, but you need to get a license to print it on a jacket, etc. At least, according to Snopes.
Like Pablo, I was glad to see an ANI flying back in. But where is its friend the ERNE?
What's a "PDA" -- Perfectly Detestable Activity?
ReplyDeletethe myth of cow tipping! and that's what it is - she will get up long before you pick a leg up.
ReplyDelete(otoh, when cast down with a rope on a bedded pack, we DO tip them up on their back for surgery and they are quite cooperative)
(signed, a holstein tipper for LDA surgery)
@Gnome
ReplyDeletePublic Display of Affection
"One interested in bull-dozing?' Answer: Cow tipping
ReplyDeleteA bull is a male, and a cow is a female, so the clue is wrong.
Loved this puzzle!! ARE WE OK, WEIMAR ERA, and OMG were my faves. Great cluing, tough but fair and playful :)
ReplyDeleteMuch easier for me than yesterday's puzzle. In each quadrant I had a lucky first cross that unlocked the rest of the section, andor the center, the W I had from ATE CROW suggested WEIMAR ERA, and the rest filled in quickly. Luck of the draw was on my side with names like FRANZEN and ANGELO, and somehow the right phrases popped into mind when I needed them. Hardest for me to see was what was going to come after COW. A lively and fun outing for me.
ReplyDeleteDo-overs: TCM before TMC, omAHANS before UTAHANS. Stack to muse over: WEIMAR ERA above DEPRAVITY - Not to read too much into a puzzle grid, but this juxtaposition struck my eye - while the Weimar Republic has become associated with the notion of "degeneracy," DEPRAVITY fits the era that followed it.
Re UTAHN vs UTAHAN, Rafa hopes "maybe someone from Utah in the comments can let me know!"
ReplyDeleteNo one has. My guess is that no one in Utah does the NYTXW and/or they don't come here to this blog -- not even on Pioneer Day. Maybe we'll find out on Pioneer Day, in 2-and-a-half weeks.
I’ve lived in Utah for 21 years. I just emailed invitations to my annual July 24 “Pie ‘n’ Beer Day” (Pioneer Day) party yesterday. So, I immediately knew I had an entry point to the NE corner. I saw the 7 spaces and filled in MORMONS. When the crosses didn’t work, I finally realized it had to be the alternative spelling that I’ve only seen in the NY Times Crossword. The Salt Lake Tribune, The Deseret News, and the state government all spell it “Utahns”.
DeleteI'm with Rafa for the BETAS / ZETAS problem, that was pretty annoying. Two unknown names crossing (well, FRANZEN looked familiar as soon as I put in the Z but have never read him).
ReplyDeleteAnd then there was UTAHANS and RILEY crossing BETHEL... yikes yeesh I had a pile of blanks there for ages. I tried OMAHANS and several less likely alternatives. And then TMC over SARA! Never heard of either. Those damned unknown names! Thank god that I have heard of PARTON and DON DRAPER. As it was, it took 30 minutes which seemed longer because of the names.
@Michael Page, re TARMAC... I had the same thought, but then remembered that it is a portmanteau for "tar macadam" which is basically asphalt.
As someone from Utah, UTAHANS is decidedly nonstandard and is actually something I have never seen before. When Utahns didn’t fit I tried mormoNS which blocked me in the NE for a bit. Fun puzzle otherwise though!
ReplyDeleteYup same here. Utah transplant for over 8 years and have only ever seen it as Utahns. Not convinced the creator didn’t make up Utahans to fit the puzzle.
DeleteAs usual for most Fri/SatPuzs, had a hard time figurin out the puztheme.
ReplyDeleteAnd I see the Jaws lurkin on the port and starboard puzsides.
OK, M&A is callin it -- Themeless Puz Alert. And pretty smoooth fillins, btw.
staff weeject pick (of only 8 choices): FEE. Its potentially controversial clue intrigued m&e. Hey -- a FEE usually has the opposite effect, at our house: Time to consider cancellin.
honrable mention to SYN, for its slightly sneaky clue.
fave SUSword: COWTIPPER.
other fave stuff included: AREWEOKAY [with near-gimme clue, thx]. EASYFIXES. DEEPSIX. YEPS. ATECROW. ROUND clue.
Thanx for yer generous tip to the cows, Mr. Clinchy dude. Nice job.
Masked & Anonymo2Us
p..s Primo subbin, @Rafa.
p.p.s.s. M&A ate at an Ethiopian restaurant last nite, for the first time ever. Pretty good and different. Like different. As in: U eat all the chow with yer hands, usin hunks of real thin sponge-bread to grab up stuff ... and they had yummy GUAVA drinks, too boot. Waitress even tried to give m&e $5 extra in change [do no doubt to M&A's extreme good looks har], but M&A wouldn't allow it. And ergo was a generous EthiopianTipper.
Best shlock flick in last nite's fest: "Ghosts of Mars". John Carpenter sci-fi-er.
**gruntz**
So look what happens when I step away from puzzling for a couple of weeks. This god-awful heat has fried my brain. YEPS. At least @JOHN X is back to give me some cool beans.
ReplyDeleteThe puzzle: Where to start....I won't bore anyone with doovers. My favorite mistake was misspelling JERICO for the ancient city near Jerusalem. I have no idea where BETHEL is. I GREW PEEVED with names that just wouldn't come to mind. I don't know ANGELO; FRANZEN was FRANBEN; ERIN was Erma; SWATS was Smash; I forgot about PARTON and I've never counted the legs on a PRAWN. That's just for starters.
Oh...and I've never ever counted how many hot dog buns are in a packet. Does one ask a store clerk for an OCTET of buns? DODOS are nitwits? I had asses because I wanted either @Gary J or @egs to be happy. I was able to get WEIMAR ERA from the downs but I've never heard of it....Hey at least I got DON(YUM)DRAPER....
I felt exhausted after I semi finished. It's the heat. I've endured over 100 degree weather for the last week and a half. My pups don't want to go for their early morning walks...I have 54 potted plants in the back patio and the front walkway. About a third of them have wilted despite getting afternoon shade. We have a million trees surrounding our abode but even the shade didn't offer protection. I'm melting and so is my brain....
@GILL I. 2:12 PM
DeletePhew! Glad yer back. Started suspecting aliens were behind your disappearance. I'd started fueling my spacecraft to come get you.
Big Bang Theory, "The Thanksgiving Decoupling" episode. Sheldon explains to Penny that cow tipping is scientifically impossible.
ReplyDeleteAm I the only one who wrote in "goat roper" for "cow tipper"? Also Beirut before Bethel, is it really a city? More of a town methinks.
ReplyDeleteNot bad otherwise
Maybe the easiest and fastest Saturday I've ever done. Cowtipping is something people claimed to do at night when drunk back when I was in college, but it never happened. I went to college in very rural Virginia (Colbert was a classmate but transferred junior year).
ReplyDeletePretty easy for a Saturday, but I roll my eyes at a puzzle with both singular DREG and plural YEPS. That's taking liberties in constructing a bit too far for my taste. Not thrilled with the notion of cow-tipping either; even if it never happens, the very idea is cruel and despicable.
ReplyDeleteMy puzz got blown up when ORANGEMAN didn't work with any crosses for 34A (Moral bankruptcy)
ReplyDeleteMacavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
ReplyDeleteFor he’s a fiend in feline shape, a monster of depravity.
Fun poem. Link to full text: https://poets.org/poem/macavity-mystery-cat
Villager
@Nancy. Same problem with FORA and ANGLELO. One of those things you *know* but don’t know.
ReplyDelete@Whatsername. There are still journalists with STANDARDS. I know some of them from my 20+ years working in a newsroom, but they’re working in a wilderness. The structure no longer supports them. It’s sad.
Had Algeria before MOROCCO at 37D. Messed me up in the SW, as I think it was supposed to.
Re: PDA 54A. If people are going to do that in public, why should I feel obliged to turn away?
Nice way to spend a Saturday morning. Tough but not crazy tough.
Forgot to mention, for whoever brought it up way back at the beginning of the comments, WEIMARERA dropped right in for me cuz I’m a big fan of Berthold Brecht, Kurt Weil, and the German Dadaists. Some times being an art major has its advantages.
ReplyDelete@Gill I. We’re just enterring a heat wave here. Temperatures of 30+ (that’s 90F for all you Americans and your buddies in Myanmar and Liberia) and there’s no rain forecast for like forever. There will be a lot of hand watering to keep the apples and pears alive. I’ll probably even have to water the damned compost piles. What fun. Tomatoes are on a timed irrigation system, so that’s good. Two hours of water at sunrise and then sunshine for the rest kf the day. Should work.
ReplyDeleteI hope.
@Les S 5:42. 110 yesterday in Sacramento and today it might get even higher. You can hardly breath this awful air. To add more insult to this injury, my car ran out of freon and I HAD to go to the store. 4 windows in the car - all down - blowing hot air in my face!!!! Ay dios mio.
ReplyDeleteI think using the plural of convenience (POC) in a themeless puzzle is more of a demerit than in a themed one; there are fewer constraints on the grid fill. This one starts off with two out of the gate with 1A STANDARDS and 1D SWATS. 12D UTAHANS, 35A YEPS (!) and 51D RUES join in. We also get the rare POC where going to the plural form reduces the letter count with 41A FORA.
ReplyDeleteThe ones that stood out the most to me were the extra helpful two for one POCs where a Down and an Across both get a grid-filling letter count boost by sharing a final S. This happens with 46D ZETA and 60A DODO and with 48D PANG and 61A EASY FIX (which gets a two letter boost).
There were cows all over the place when I was growing up in rural Tennessee. My grandparents still had a working farm with a bunch of milk cows. I SAY that the myth of COW TIPPING is a bunch of bull (heh heh)
@Les, here in the Southern Interior of BC there's a heat warning all next week: high temps between 38 and 42 C (100 to 108 F). Not quite the heat dome from 2001 but almost.
ReplyDeleteI meant "the heat dome from 2021".
ReplyDelete@Okanaganer. 2001? I thought it was just 3 or 4 years ago. But I'm old and time doesn't always work like it should for me.
ReplyDelete@Gill I. Let's see ... 110 minus 30 = 80 divided by 2 ... You and Okanaganer are in the same range. I feel like I'm getting off easy.
ReplyDelete@Okanaganer. I must have been typing while you were correctkng.
To clarify - "cow tipping" is a real activity, akin to "snipe hunting" - meaning no cows are actually tipped. The uninitiated, foolish enough to believe the veteran cow-tippers, are led out into a field, by night, and probably drunk, to perform the impossible task of tipping a cow (and likely messing up their shoes on the way there or back)..... or so ive been told ๐
ReplyDeleteCDilly52 here on this very Saturday Saturday puzzlewise. I am going to have to ask my son-in-law (quite knowledgeable about all things “casino”) because I had real trouble with RAKE being the casino’s “cut” and was certain it should be tAKE. Close but apparently no cigar.
ReplyDeleteMy trust in my answer comes from the RAKE (as I understand it) being the casino’s “tAKE” only from poker games, the RAKE being a set percentage of each pot, the percentage varying from casino to casino and sometimes game to game depending on how high the stakes. What the casino’s other earnings are from its other games I shall dig around and find out.
Nice job these past days, Rafa. I always enjoy your blogs. I agree with both your takes on yesterday’s and today’s puzzles. I enjoyed them both.
Thanks for the "Humble Pie" link, Sun Volt! The late great Steve Marriott! The original "Artful Dodger" in London. "The Small Faces" which counted Robert Plant, David Bowie and Mick Jagger as part of their ardent fans shone brightly in London in the mid-1960s. Steve Marriott founded Humble Pie with Peter Frampton. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqgslos32mk&pp=ygUKaHVtYmxlIHBpZQ%3D%3D
ReplyDeleteMan flew through this in record time for me for a Saturday but alas dnf I had Al FRANKEN which I felt reasonably confident with early on even though it made KETAS which I noted didn’t sound right but also sounded Greek enough and Saturday might go for some obscure sorority, finished a bit later and couldn’t remember that doubt, spent 5 minutes looking for the problem and finally just gave up
ReplyDeleteMedium till I got to the NE. Then almost gave up because I had ROast for the bar/butcher order. Finally decided 14d had to be DWELLON, which knocked out roast. 'Twas then that I found ROUND, and all was well. (Never heard of PAYWALL.)
ReplyDeleteThe SW natick wasn't an EASYFIX. But FRAN_EN, to me, could only take a few letters: C, K, and possibly S or Z. Of those, the only Greek letter I could see was ZETA, so Z it was. (Whew!) Par.
Wordle par.
SYN GREW
ReplyDeleteSARA and ERIN would SAY,
“IN AMOR WE ARE OKAY,
and ONE NEW NOVELTY
or TWO of DEPRAVITY
FORA FEE that’s EASY TO PAY.
--- DON I. RILEY
That SW corner was a bitch...
ReplyDeleteCrunchy. Just right for a Saturday.
ReplyDelete