Wednesday, July 3, 2024

Shady, in modern slang / WED 7-3-24 / Japanese rice cake often filled with ice cream / Totally tubular pasta / Three-player trick-taking game / Feature of high heels popularized in the 1920s /

Constructor: Juliana Tringali Golden

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (Easy, were it not for one answer)


THEME: Prognostication puns — things used to tell the future get wacky pun clues:

Theme answers:
  • TAROT CARDS (17A: Observation deck?)
  • CRYSTAL BALL (33A: Glass eye?)
  • I CHING COINS (41A: Metal detectors?)
  • OUIJA BOARD (61A: Predictive text?)
Word of the Day: I CHING COINS (41A) —

The I Ching or Yijing [...]  usually translated Book of Changes or Classic of Changes, is an ancient Chinese divination text that is among the oldest of the Chinese classics. The I Ching was originally a divination manual in the Western Zhou period (1000–750 BC). Over the course of the Warring States and early imperial periods (500–200 BC), it transformed into a cosmological text with a series of philosophical commentaries known as the Ten Wings. After becoming part of the Chinese Five Classicsin the 2nd century BC, the I Ching was the basis for divination practice for centuries across the Far East and was the subject of scholarly commentary. Between the 18th and 20th centuries, it took on an influential role in Western understanding of East Asian philosophical thought.

As a divination text, the I Ching is used for a Chinese form of cleromancy known as I Ching divination in which bundles of yarrow stalks are manipulated to produce sets of six apparently random numbers ranging from 6 to 9. Each of the 64 possible sets corresponds to a hexagram, which can be looked up in the I Ching. The hexagrams are arranged in an order known as the King Wen sequence. The interpretation of the readings found in the I Ching has been discussed and debated over the centuries. Many commentators have used the book symbolically, often to provide guidance for moral decision-making, as informed by ConfucianismTaoism and Buddhism. The hexagrams themselves have often acquired cosmological significance and been paralleled with many other traditional names for the processes of change such as yin and yang and Wu Xing. [...] 

The most common form of divination with the I Ching in use today is a reconstruction of the method described in these histories, in the 300 BC Great Commentary, and later in the Huainanzi and the Lunheng. From the Great Commentary's description, the Neo-Confucian Zhu Xi reconstructed a method of yarrow stalk divination that is still used throughout the Far East. In the modern period, Gao Heng attempted his own reconstruction, which varies from Zhu Xi in places. Another divination method, employing coins, became widely used in the Tang dynasty and is still used today. In the modern period; alternative methods such as specialized dice and cartomancy have also appeared. (wikipedia)
• • •

This isn't much of a theme. It's just ... four of the same kind of thing. Four things from the same general category. It's like BUS CAR TRUCK VAN. Or four baseball player names. Or author names. Or U.S. states. True, it's drawing from a category with fewer items in it (not sure how many prognostication devices there are in the world). But still, this is just "Here are four items that are used for similar purposes." That doesn't really get us to Theme Territory. There's no hook, no revealer, nothing at all to make it make sense as a theme. The theme clues are just ... regular crossword clues!?!? I mean, yes, they're wacky "?" clues, but we see those Every Day. The first one was actually used by this very outlet back in August of 2017 (TAROT CARDS = [Observation deck of the future?]). The cluing is giving us nothing in terms of making the theme cohere. I'm baffled at how this made the grade. I would also say that I CHING COINS feels like a strong outlier here, familiarity-wise. I had to read way way down the wikipedia "I Ching" page to find anything about "coins," and even then, it was just in passing (turns out "I Ching divination" has its own separate page). I think of the I Ching as a text. I know it's used in various rituals of foretelling, but how those rituals are performed, pfft, no idea. Apparently, there's no one way. There are lots of ways. One of those ways involves coins. It seems. I did not have to wonder about how the other three theme answers worked. At all. But I CHING COINS is not a phrase I've ever heard. As a result, this puzzle was briefly Not Easy, which I should be grateful for, but it's a mild bummer to have the only difficulty in a puzzle concentrated on just one answer. I feel like what we've got here is a first draft of a theme idea, but there's nothing to elevate it to real Theme status. No snap, no pop. Just a list of things. Disappointing.


All difficulty for me came in and around ICHINGCOINS. I briefly forgot MOCHI but then crosses helped me remember (5A: Japanese rice cake often filled with ice cream). Didn't know ALYSSA at all but easy crosses made that irrelevant (23A: ___ Thompson, U.S. soccer star who made her World Cup debut at 18). It wasn't until CRISCO for CANOLA (33D: Kind of cooking oil) that I started to struggle a bit. Didn't take *too* long to see that the I CHING was involved in that third theme answer, but what was supposed to follow I CHING ... I had no idea. And so ... let's see, I had DEAD before DAMN (31D: Word with "straight" or "right") (a bad guess, I admit), ADO before IRK (44D: Bother), didn't have enough info to get CONSUME straight away (42D: Eat), and could think only of the expression I actually use (GO SOUTH), not the one that ended up being in the grid (GO SOUR) (46A: Take a turn for the worse). Concentrated struggle. But brief struggle, as struggles go. After that, back to Monday-easy.


MISC. (28D: This and that: Abbr.):
  • 56A: Pass up, using a less common spelling (FOREGO) — to be quite honest, if you'd left out the "using a less common spelling," I'm not sure I'd've blinked. It's like the clue is calling attention to a weakness I didn't know it had, and making the clue ungainly in the process. Better just to find another word entirely. It wouldn't be hard to do a mild tear-down in this corner and start over.
  • 2D: Three-player trick-taking game (SKAT) — I wrote in SPIT. My family (or some members of it) used to play a card game called "SPIT in the Ocean," which must be why my brain went that way. Don't know SKAT, but it was what I guessed off the SK- so I must've heard of it before. SKAT is the "national game of Germany" (wikipedia); you know, in case anyone ever asks you "hey, what's the national game of Germany?" Now you know.
  • 25D: Shady, in modern slang (SUS) — short for "suspicious." And yes it's common. I'm stunned to find that this is its Modern Era NYTXW debut, as I've seen it a whole lot in other, apparently more contemporary crosswords. The last time SUS appeared in the NYTXW (1986) it was as a [Swine genus], wow, yeesh, and yipes. Twenty-one "swine genus" appearances between 1949 and 1986. 
  • 39D: Totally tubular pasta (RIGATONI) — speaking of 1986, glad to see this clue lean into '80s slang. Made me smile. "Tubular" was slang for "awesome" (like "radical"). I think it's originally surfer slang. I want to say I first heard it from Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, but I can't confirm that. I *can* confirm that the word appears in "Valley Girl" by Moon Unit Zappa. Please enjoy one of the most unlikely and strange Solid Gold performances of all time.
  • 34D: Activities that might require 20-sided dice, for short (RPGS) — role-playing games. I almost wrote in DNDS here (!?). 
See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

87 comments:

  1. Bob Mills6:00 AM

    I agree with Rex Parker's analysis (easy, except for _____). I never heard of ICHINGCOINS, and was almost afraid to use the letters. But the crosses made it necessary.

    Closer to a Monday or Tuesday in difficulty, I thought.

    ReplyDelete
  2. RPGS??????????????????????? Random Possible Guesses

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous8:47 AM

      Role-playing games. Like D&D.

      Delete
  3. A list of divination devices - completely useless. I CHING COINS? Overall fill is awkward and loaded with trivia.

    Morrissey

    I liked ANORAK and TUNDRA.

    Joel should have went with the next one in the queue.

    OSCAR Plays Jerome Kern

    ReplyDelete
  4. Walter7:06 AM

    RPGS a point of real struggle, did not know ARCO had ARCI leftover from Bucatini, realized that was wrong but didn't catch the typo. Familiar enough with the I CHING but not the coins. Didn't mind the "theme" such as it was

    ReplyDelete
  5. Juliana’s last puzzle, two months ago, called WALLFLOWERS, where flowers graced the perimeter of the grid, lifted me into the sublime, reminding me of the marvelous parade of floral colors that pass through the months, beginning in the spring.

    Today, the grid awakened sleeping memories, brought me to places in my life that I haven’t thought about in ages. Decades ago I consulted a world-famous TAROT reader, back in my college days I plunged into the I CHING, and in my high school days, much time was spent with friends on the OUIJA BOARD.

    Ah, one of crosswords’ hidden gifts, triggering long unvisited memories, bringing one back to former states of mind, bringing alive lovely locales and people long unthought about. To me, reliving it in my head is far superior to a photo album.

    Juliana, your theme clues were fun, as was the fill-in, but the joy your puzzle evoked, like the joy from your flower puzzle, was priceless. Thank you so much for making this!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Diane Joan7:32 AM

      Thank you, @Lewis, for your very poetic and sentimental response! The puzzle was witty and kept me a little off balance even as I had the correct solutions. Great way to start the day!

      Delete

  6. Easy.

    One overwrite:
    I was so sure that the 5A Japanese rice cake was MOCHe that I didn't bother to check the cross.

    Misconceptions:
    I (correctly) thought that I Ching divination was done with straws, but I (incorrectly) thought that only straws could be used. COINS (41A) came from crosses.
    And I thought that the Fiddler on the Roof character at 68A was YENTa, but no, Wikipedia says the puzzle is correct.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Should 19A be spelled XeD IN, or is XD IN acceptable? Seems SUS to me.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Had to back and look for RPGS .... got it in crosses without noticing. Lucky.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous10:48 AM

      Ditto! Too many mistakes the editor should have caught.

      Delete
  9. I found this one to be easy, even with I CHING COINS. I am familiar with the I Ching, but had no idea coins were involved, but the combination of crosses and the "metal" part of the clue helped it make sense. NIA would've been a problem if not for crosses, and XDIN slowed me down because, wow. Look at how ridiculous it is.

    Interesting coincidence having both I CHING and KOREA, on account of South Korea's flag.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Max W.7:44 AM

    I don’t buy “XDIN”, as spelled, as a legitimate answer. “XEDIN”, maybe…

    That Moon Unit Zappa video is wild! Did they listen to the lyrics before putting it on TV!? Also, seems like it isn’t live (doesn’t sound it, no visible mic on her, and they don’t show the band at all), so she’s doing a Great lip synch! And then with no band to cut to, we get a whole bunch of amazing moments with the background dancers as characters!

    ReplyDelete
  11. Ernie Bishop7:46 AM

    TAXICAB is a shortened form of taximeter cab from the early 20th century. Similarly, “taxi” and “cab” are shortened forms of TAXICAB. It’s not redundant. .

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous9:34 AM

      Agreed! Bad clue based in mild ignorance of the original term.

      Delete
    2. Ernie Bishop and Anonymous
      Taximeter cab.
      Actually cab itself is
      An abbreviation for cabriolet So cab originally referred to a carriage
      My point is words change
      You are referring to the origin of 2 words. Cab & taxi in American English are now 2 separate words meaning the same thing
      So taxi cab is redundant but an expression that is still used
      Taximeter cab is no longer in use

      Delete
  12. Andy Freude7:53 AM

    Really good puzzle. I liked it a lot.

    ReplyDelete
  13. I didn’t realize FOREGO was an alternate/variant spelling — that’s the only way I ever spell it. But I see online that not only is it an alternative spelling, it a can also have a slightly different meaning. “Forego means to go before and forgo means to go without. As a result, work tends to forego a holiday but nobody wants to forgo a holiday.” Huh, whaddaya know.

    ReplyDelete
  14. XDIN was terrible (make it EXED or EXEDIN - gave me an XCDRIN headache).

    As were SMAUG, RPGS, TSTRAP, and the plural CLAYS.

    Agree with Rex there was no real there there.

    But weird that I thought of OUIJABOARD yesterday (and looked up the term planchette). Then again, I had MAGIC 8 BALL (hey, an emoji just popped up of one!) so maybe I was not all that Clara Clairvoyant (obscure Donovan song reference)…

    ReplyDelete
  15. I enjoyed this puzzle! It was a little hard for me, not sure why. I CHING COINS was definitely a sticking point. Had LEGAL before OF AGE and that was really slowing me down some other mistakes that I had to erase before I could proceed. But fun!

    ReplyDelete
  16. Judge Morgan8:14 AM

    So RPGS is an everyday designation for "Role Playing Games".
    Everyone knows THAT! Oh please. I give up.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous5:08 PM

      RPGs have been around since the 70s

      Delete
  17. Irene8:21 AM

    So what is SMAUG?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous8:51 AM

      The dragon in "The Hobbit". Exactly as the clue says.

      Delete
  18. Thanks for the clarification on RPGs. I got it from the crosses, but was wondering why rocket propelled grenades required 20 sided dice.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I briefly thought of RPMS, dice hanging from the rearview kind of thing

      Delete
  19. Anonymous8:39 AM

    FH
    'FOREGO' is not an alternative spelling for FORGO, it's an error. They are two different words with completely different meanings. Shortz should never have allowed it.

    ReplyDelete
  20. I'm with @Rex and others: easy, except for needing crosses to get COINS and for raising a questioning eyebrow at XDIN. I liked the theme with its four pleasing phrases and didn't think it needed a reveal. And we were also treated to MOCHI, RIGATONI, HYDRANT, TUNDRA, and ISSA by ALYSSA.

    Do-over: a red-faced FORgoe. Help from previous puzzles: RPGS.

    ReplyDelete
  21. I don’t know if this is a good or bad sign, but even after reading the entire Word of the Day definition posted by OFL, I still have no clue WTF ICHING COINS are - and I think that’s hysterical. That is truly outstanding - they’re even coming up with arcana that an encyclopedia doesn’t shed light on. Congratulations, NYT - you are truly the gold standard when it comes to nonsensical crossword clues/answers. Simply stellar.

    The rest of it was typical NYT fare - I’m never going to just drop in stuff like SMAUG or RPGS (as clued), so I needed all of the crosses, and the other three themers were pretty self-evident.

    T-STRAP was particularly tough for me as well, and the fact that it crosses RPGS didn’t help.

    ReplyDelete
  22. I pretty much had the same solving experience as @Rex, except I enjoyed the puzzle more as a whole. I finished the puzzle in fairly short order but the app told me something was wrong so I did “check puzzle” to see where my error was. MOsHI instead of MOCHI was the culprit. That’s what I get for being SO confident in MY spelling that I don’t check my “downs.”

    @Ernie Bishop…I did not realize that taxi is short for taximeter! However, I think that TODAY most people think of taxi and cab as synonymous, so the clue is fine by me.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Another here who had never heard of I CHING COINS. I couldn’t break into the west-center area for love or money, despite sailing through the rest of the grid without resistance. It didn’t help that I’ve never heard of this particular NIA, and especially didn’t help that I confidently had PLEA where OATH should be and couldn’t imagine it being wrong.

    ReplyDelete
  24. Anonymous8:57 AM

    Nice "early week" puzzle that somehow we got on Wednesday. I think everyone would be happy with this puzzle on Monday or Tuesday, but it's weakish for Wednesday. Regardless, I thought theme worked well and decent fill. As a former acupuncturist, no problem with ICHING answer, close to Wednesday PR time

    ReplyDelete
  25. Hey All !
    Is my life incomplete in never hearing of I CHING COINS, or just I CHING in general? And I'm sure I won't remember it.

    That section took forever. OATH as clued was a Huh? The ole brain just got it right now rereading the clue. Dang, silly brain. Didn't know director NIA, ended up Googing that just to see if my suspicion answers could be correct. Put in what I thought had to be correct, and got the Happy Music. But was reading those COINS as one word, ICHING (pronouncing it ish-ing). Ah, me.

    Theme was OK. Yes, this qualifies as a Theme. Four related items. Thus a Theme maketh.

    One thing I'm surprised didn't get a RexRant was XDIN. Really? I submit that to non-word status. I can buy XEDIN, but sans E, it'd be the same as if CXZW was an answer. My two cents, and all that.

    There are GEN Z's (or whatever newest Gen is) who think that TESLA is just a car, they've no idea there was a person named NIKOLA Tesla. It's XDOUT of their minds

    Anyway, Happy Wednesday!

    One F
    RooMonster
    DarrinV

    ReplyDelete
  26. I feel like RPG shows up in crosswords a fairly often, and it's something people have been saying at least since the late 70s in reference to games. You may not know it, but it's certainly not obscure!

    As for Iching Coins, I was positive I had something wrong there. Totally shocked when I entered the last letter and the puzzle completed.

    ReplyDelete
  27. I'm trying to figure out how six random numbers between 6 and 9 can have only 64 possible outcomes.

    I thought the theme idea was quite good. It was the fill I found lacking today. A combination of crossword 'old standbys' like OSHA, ALOE, AMOK, USA, EAVE, OLA, and ANTI with new but unwelcome words like MOHCI, CLAYS, TSTRAP, SKAT, and most of all XDIN.

    RPG or RPGS has appeared 15 times in the past 10 years, clued to mean role-playing game(s) each time. It would serve everyone well to remember it.

    ReplyDelete
  28. I had rolatini in there first- since we just bought it the day before- and it threw my IChing ...Seemed to remember RPG and Hobbit dragon but those feel like outliers too

    ReplyDelete
  29. Anonymous9:22 AM

    Pretty sloppy puzzle editing. "Oui" duped with "Ouijaboard," I Ching Coins inferable but I thought I was wrong. Also inferred "Smaug" and "Yente" but the Janice "Ian" cross was pretty unfair, even if I did remember her name.

    ReplyDelete
  30. Tom T9:33 AM

    Clues for 3 Hidden Diagonal Words (HDW) in today's grid:

    1. Painful situation that rhymes with its location? (4 letters, midweek level of difficulty)

    2. Classical language from Eastern India (4 letters, Saturday level of PPP difficulty)

    3. What defines a HDW (4 letters)

    Answers below

    Agree with Rex that this puzzle could use a revealer. I'm completely unaware of the I CHING text, and when I didn't get the Happy Music, I thought my error must have been either there (but the crosses all looked solid) or at ALYSSA/SUS (could it be ALYShA?). But then I noticed that my RIGATiNI needed to be a TONI (ARCO/ARCi, not a musical term in my wheelhouse).

    Like Rex, wanted GO SOUth, but it would have required a rebus. Had NIcOLA briefly before IRK came to the rescue. That Hobbit dragon SMAUG was a WOE, but crosses were easy.

    HDW Answers:

    1. STYE (begins with the S in 33A, CRYSTALBALL, and moves to the NW--notice that 24D is STY, so the vertical STY is crossed by a diagonal STY)

    2. ODIA (start with the O in 16A, ALOE and move to the SW--I include this one for SouthsideJohnny and GaryJugert--lovers of the arcane)

    3. TILT (the T in 21A, RACIEST, moving to the NW)

    SARI, I gotta SKAT ... SKOAL!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. @Tom T 9:33 AM
      So glad you're back except for you and your oddly odious ODIA.

      Delete
    2. Anonymous10:09 AM

      Drea whose last name I do not recall, she played Adriana on the Sopranos, NW from D in Ovid, 66A

      Delete
  31. Fun easy puzzle. While I didn't know iching coins either, it's fun to learn, and it's obviously a real thing. You can even order a set online if you want.

    Rex, thanks for the Valley Girl vid. Made my morning!

    ReplyDelete
  32. I Ching was big in the 60s/early 70s with at least part of the counter culture, very slightly before my pop culture awareness. I think I first encountered it as part of a story that spanned the pages of The Last Whole Earth Catalog, a real touchstone for some of us (first place I learned about Dune, too, FWIW.)

    ReplyDelete
  33. There Is a card game just called Spit. It’s a speed game, trying to get rid of all of your cards before your opponent by placing them on adjacent numbers on stacks in the middle as fast as you can. It’s a two-player game, though, not three.

    ReplyDelete
  34. Easy, yes but my margins were full of notes with question marks: XD? Is that supposed to mean XED? SUS? MOCHI? I know MEAN girls, but what is “golden mean”? RPGS? That’s a thing? And what, in the name of all that is holy, are ICHING COINS?? The only puzzle that answer belongs in is a Saturday.

    Sorry, I don’t mean to sound SOUR but I found this one a bit ODD. Then again, it can safely be said that if the word “wacky” is an apt descriptor, it’s never gonna go on my list of favorites anyway.

    ReplyDelete
  35. This played well for me (~10% faster than my average Wednesday), with RPGS and SMAUG both in my wheelhouse and my only real hang-up at ICHINGCOINS.

    Props to Rex on the Beths music video. Love that song.

    ReplyDelete
  36. Sheesh, those ICHINGCOINS really got Rex going. I’ve consulted the I Ching for over 50 years using … COINS! My only problem with the answer is that I couldn’t believe the puzzle would actually refer to this. But it did and bravo for that! I thought the theme hung together just fine and it made for a fun solve.

    ReplyDelete
  37. If you want to receive an undeserved award for your Broadway play, you might try to RIGATONI.

    What did the polyglot steward say to the crowd of French, German and English tourists anxiously asking if they could get on the ship? OUIJABOARD.

    I'm with @Rex on this one.

    ReplyDelete
  38. STICK, KEEP, TEND to your knitting. Boy we want them yarn artists to flail their wands, eh? Isn't the purpose of a STY to prevent hogs from going wild?

    Wow, I can't spell OUIJA nor YENTE, but SMAUG I've got nailed down. Then throw in the allegedly misspelled FOREGO and I wept openly at the close.

    Ugly little puzzle. But unlike yesterday's 47% gunked-up puzzle 🦖 and several others called a "clean" grid, this one at least falls into the more typically gunked-up zone having (get this) 12 less initialisms, half words, and acronyms. Then again yesterday we didn't get the beauts XDIN and SUS.

    Let's look at the replay:

    Propers: 11 (grr)
    Places: 1
    Products: 2
    Partials: 5
    Foreignisms: 5
    --
    Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 24 (32%)
    Recipes: 1 (beta)

    Funnyisms: (Half credit for the theme answers ... I think they're meant to be amusing anyway. Thanks for the effort.) 4 🙂

    Tee-Hee: So I have a whole thing about old people in love based on the slush pile editor's rich ore here, but the hook casts its long shadow over me when I state the obvious, so I will just leave the words to the answer in order: DAMN, RACIEST OF AGE LUST.

    Uniclues:

    1 When your Bluetooth connects to the neighbor's TV and he likes watching, uh, NASCAR?
    2 Apt description of me balancing my checkbook.
    3 Go solo.
    4 Those times when your horse says she wants you to take her to a nice dinner.
    5 Pasta at the north pole

    1 RACIEST STEREO
    2 GO SOUR MATH
    3 FOREGO CO-STARS (~)
    4 ANTI-OATS SCAMS (~)
    5 ANORAK RIGATONI

    My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Job opportunities for not-good painters. BAD ART EDITORS.

    ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    ReplyDelete
  39. Anonymous11:10 AM

    Thanks to Rex for sharing the Valley Girl video, which took me back to my high school year, fer shure! Totally awesome.

    Misspelled SMAUG as SMOUG, which was hard to find, mistake-wise, since it created ION. Looked okay on the surface.

    ReplyDelete
  40. Anonymous11:10 AM

    SUS was a debut in the 15x15. But I remember Joel used it in the Mini probably 2 years ago at this point.

    ReplyDelete
  41. Would that I were Lewis. I was mildly pleased to see the four "predictive" instruments. He was "lifted into the sublime."

    ReplyDelete
  42. Predictably easy in parts and hard in parts, like most WedPuzs at our house.
    Yesterday we used the magic 8-ball; today we broke out a whole schmear of fortunetellers.

    ICHINGCOINS = hard. CRYSTALBALL = easy. M&A preferred combo: ITCHINGBALLS.
    btw: M&A looked up ICHINGCOINS on Wikipedia. Their explanation was waaay too hard, for a Wed. solve.
    That explanation did recommend heatin up pieces of a turtle shell and analyzin the resultin cracks, instead, tho.

    staff weeject pick: SUS. This has always been clued up as a "swine genus", pre-Fagliano Era. Progress?

    some faves: TUNDRA. MOSQUE. OATH clue. Almost anything, other than SMAUG.
    XDIN? har

    Thanx for the ITCHING info, Ms. Golden darlin. Learned somethin. The pet turtles are sweatin bullets now, tho...

    Masked & Anonymo6Us


    **gruntz**

    ReplyDelete
  43. I thought I remembered reading somewhere that it should just be I CHING and not "the I CHING" which would be redundant, but some very cursory research assures me that that is nowhere near true. Now I'm wondering where I got that from.

    I had no trouble remembering MOCHI as I've never heard of it. It was nice to see an ALYSSA to go along with the ELISSA we had recently. And someday I will remember NIA as clued. Not today though.

    Not a sparkling Wednesday but good enough for a quick diversion. Not much Junk, That's Good JTG, and thanks for a fair amount of fun.

    ReplyDelete
  44. More familiar with I Ching divination being performed with sticks rather than coins, but that’s my own ignorance, I suppose. I am, however, MUCH more familiar with the phrase “STICK to your knitting” rather than TEND. Try Googling “__ to your knitting” and see what comes up. So that ‘sticks’ in my craw a bit, as does the missing E in XDIN.

    ReplyDelete
  45. Anonymous11:29 AM

    Korea or Korean Peninsula ?

    ReplyDelete
  46. If nothing else, last two days got me thinking of John Lennon’s God. Annotated lyrics below.

    I don't believe in magic (8 Ball)
    I don't believe in I-ching (coins)
    I don't believe in Bible (terrible parables)
    I don't believe in Tarot (cards)…

    ReplyDelete
  47. XED IN???? RPGS? SMAUG?
    I was moving along until I got tripped up on the above.
    Otherwise, a fair Wednesday overall. I wish I could say more.

    ReplyDelete
  48. I woke up late and then had a phone call -- and because I was running very late on the puzzle, I was careless, and when I had the opening C for the oil, I wrote down CRISCO without checking any letters.

    This did not help me with ICHINGCOINS -- about which I know nothing. I was able to change to CANOLA with the help of SKOAL and COSTARS.

    CLAYS has taken over First Place for in my running list of Worst Plural of Convenience I have ever seen.

    A pleasant enough theme -- but once again there are many too many names.

    ReplyDelete
  49. At first I thought that if I knew RPGS, at 80, then everyone should. But I realize now that I was alive at all the right times -- the late hippy years, when the I CHING was big, the 80s when Dungeons and Dragons, with dice shaped like all 5 of the regular polyhedrons, took off, and the next couple of decades when people were reading Tolkien instead of going to Marvel movies. So I knew all that stuff except the easily inferable COINS. Plus I grew up in Wisconsin, where sheepshead, a simplified derivative of SKAT, was the national card game. So this one was in my wheelhouse.

    That said, the theme was still on the light side. A clever revealer would have helped.

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    Replies
    1. jberg - Interesting insights there!
      And, I agree completely, a clever revealer would have been nice!

      Delete
  50. XDIN? Really? NYT editors need to do better.

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  51. Easy. No erasures and I CHING COINS, ALYSSA and SKAT were it for WOEs.

    Reasonably smooth grid (CLAYS and XDIN were winces), cute theme, liked it more than @Rex did.

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  52. Anonymous12:40 PM

    Changing COSTERS to COSTARS was the last thing I had to do to solve the puzzle. Obviously CANOLE was wrong, but given its clue - "Ones splitting the billing" - I think COSTERS works!

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  53. SGT. York12:54 PM

    RPG = rocket propelled grenade

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  54. To elaborate on a couple of earlier comments:

    TAXICAB is a portmanteau of "taximeter" and "cabriolet" which denotes a vehicle with a fare meter installed: a taximeter-equipped cab.

    While common usage has further shortened TAXICAB to either "taxi" or "cab" that does not make the original portmanteau redundant, in my view.

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    Replies
    1. Sailor
      Well cabriolet actually refers to a carriage often put out for hire in the 19th century, the name shortened then eventually applied to a motor vehicle for hire.
      It is true that taximeter cab was shortened to taxi cab but the term was further shortened so that both taxi and cab were and still are used interchangeably for the vehicle in question
      My point is words change in meaning.
      Taxi now most definitely equals cab and so TAXICAB has become redundant. That is why it is rarely used now.
      Crosswords rely on current usage, not the history of its word
      The answer is fine b

      Delete
  55. Tom T1:13 PM

    @Gary Jugert, thanks! I first thought that ODIA might be a word, like the plural of ODIUM, perhaps. But then I discovered that the plural of ODIUM is ODIUMS, but that ODIA did exist. And I knew it was right up your alley!

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  56. @Gary Jugert. You nailed it. If you want to see hogs go wild, open up the sty gate and allow them access to the vegetable garden.

    What can I say about XDIN? Words fail me.

    Clara Clairvoyant
    Consultation 10 to 4
    in the shadows
    Leave skepticism at the door

    Thanks @Andrew 8:04. One of my faves.

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  57. @mathgent -- I was lifted into the sublime by Juliana's last puzzle. Today's brought me to a place of joy.

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  58. I was not familiar at all with "I Ching". In fact, as I worked around that answer I thought maybe a Wednesday rebus might be in play, maybe the puzzle maker 'might' be trying to work in 'itching' somehow or another! :)

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  59. Anonymous2:50 PM

    My cat's name is Mochi. Mochi recently ran away for nearly 3 days. She came home at 4 AM today. So seeing her name in the puzzle felt like fate. Maybe it was in the tarot cards? Or most likely the smell of sardines that lured her in. A runaway cat is no joke and very stressful. We searched for days in blazing heat. If this ever happens to you, stay calm...they most likely will return and probably aren't far away. But they will ignore your calls and will hide. Anyway, glad our fur baby is safe and sound albeit a little lighter.

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  60. sharonak2:58 PM

    Ernie @ 7:46 Since taxi and cab are used by themselves, and have been for decades , to refer to the same thing, taxi cab is now redundant, IMO
    I like the theme a lot better than Rex. Thought the clue for iching coins quite clever - so clever it took me ages to understand it.
    Had to look up ichingcoins to see what they were and still did not get the metal detector part until after I came here. Then it fell into place in my mind: "Oh, metal that detects the future"

    I agree with the raised eyebrows over 19A xdin and want to add one: 24 D. I would think a sty the least likely place for hogs to go wild.

    Also had to look up RPGs to see what that meant.
    Now, for those of you who are into rpgs. Are there actually such things as 20 sided dice?

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  61. Anonymous3:32 PM

    Surprised no one has commented on the alignment of today’s puzzle with yesterday’s prognosticating Magic 8-ball theme, and the bonus reference to “20-sided die”, exactly what propels the Magic 8 from inside. Both are examples of the elegant regular icosahedron, the “Platonic” solid shape that has the most sides among the 5 members of that category.

    webwinger

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  62. Not much fun and I agree with mostly easy, but the section with TSTRAP crossing RPGS crossing ICHINGCOINS and GOSOUR was a train wreck. I’ve never heard of RPGS although it sounds like maybe I should have. I couldn’t come up with TSTRAPS although that should have been pretty easy. I’ve always heard and said GOSOUth, not GOSOUR.

    Me too on XDIN being heinous. My parents and grandparents said TAXICAB all the time. IRK was a problem because I was convinced that NIKOLA’s name would be spelled with a C.

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  63. Les S. More -
    And don’t forget the song’s tribute to Maharishi (on top of Lennon’s snide Sexy Sadie).

    “Psychedelic Yogi
    Is not a very groovy groovy guru.”

    Clara Clairvoyant

    To anon - congrats on Mochi’s safe return!

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  64. Anonymous5:33 PM

    KOREA totally stumped me! Mostly fun, cute theme clues.

    The indignation here over RPG is a little silly. It’s a very common term, and nobody is expected to know every term.

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  65. I always thought that "dice" were small six-sided cubes. A consultation with cousin googs confirms that. It can also mean to cut into small cubes. That leaves me in the dark as to what 34D "20-sided dice" would be. Don't do PRGS so that was no help either.

    The fill seemed a little heavy on names for a grid with just four themers. I knew some of them but ISSA, ALYSSA & SMAUG could just as well have been the name of some law firm.

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  66. Role playing games have dice that are not cut into cubes. Life is interesting when we consider other possibilities to what seems like an obvious conclusion. The opposite of Occam’s Razor.

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  67. Obsessed with Anoa Bob's decision not to consult "cousin googs" to learn what a "20-sided dice" might be. Imagine learning something new from the newspaper!

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  68. Anonymous1:17 PM

    O my god!! Thanks so much, Rex, for posting the brilliant Valley Girl video. Loved seeing it again after all these years. Frank & Moon Zappa were Geniuses of the first order.

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  69. Anonymous7:34 PM

    Really did not like YENTE crossed with IAN. Had no clue who YE_TE was so just had to guess it was IAN!

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  70. DNF--and I never even got to ICHINGCOINS, which also would've done the job. No, I never got out of the north central. An unknown food dish over CLAYS??? Come on, how many CLAYS can there be? Ridiculous forced pluralization. Nor did I know that McQueen character. You have Butterfly, and you have Steve--and out.

    Wordle bogey.

    And while I'm in a sour mood: time ONCE AGAIN to wake up the Syndilink person! We've been stuck now for a whole week, and I'm FED UP with fishing around across months to find my puzzle!

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  71. Anonymous11:04 AM

    Not bad. Needed a revealer though.

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  72. Burma Shave12:10 PM

    RACIEST ODDS GOSOUR

    ALYSSA read her TAROTCARDS,
    “CRYSTALBALLs!?”, the seer SUSsed,
    “I’m BOARD with what NIKOLA guards,
    I MEAN, DAMN, FOREGO the LUST.”

    --- LEAH NIA MCCOY

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  73. Anonymous1:17 PM

    Too much junk fill: OSHA, OLA, ISSA, TEL, XDIN, ALYSSA, MISC, NIA, SUS, RPGS, OUI, IRK, ARCO, SARI, IAN, YENTE, OVID etc…

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  74. Anonymous5:01 PM

    @spacecraft
    to find today's puzzle just google the date on the top of the puzzle and Rex Parker. For instance today I googled Rex Parker July 3 2024 and it took me right to the blog

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  75. Anonymous5:18 PM

    Monday easy WedPuzz!
    Some complaints are silly. If you've been doing puzzles for a while, skat is easy, because it's old crosswordese. RPGs have been around for almost 50 years. I've never played one, but know what they are. The only people who should complain about Issa , are those who don't have TVs. There were approximately one billion commercials for Barbie before it opened. I can walk four blocks to my local Walgreens and find mochi in the freezer section.
    Xdin sucks. There are different types of clay used in pottery, but, yeah, I don't like that plural either, but I don't have a hissy fit.

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