.png)
Brand of orange crackers / TUES 8-6-24 / Hole in one's head / South American corn patties / Micronesian nation composed of 200+ islands
Tuesday, August 6, 2024
Hi, everyone, it’s Clare coming to you a little late, for the first Tuesday of August (while hoping Rex is having a lovely vacation)! I’ve been spending essentially all of my free time (and, yes, maybe a little work time) watching the Olympics. The pommel horse guy, the muffin guy, and the two sharpshooters just may have taken over my entire Twitter feed. And then you’ve got Simone Biles doing Simone Biles things. Noah Lyles winning the 100m by five thousandths of a second. American Kristen Faulkner with a surprise gold in the road cycling after a boss move with two kilometers to go. And on and on and on. Watch out for Fiona O’Keeffe in the marathon and Nikki Hiltz in the 1500m (I raced against them both in high school!). I’m gonna be sad when the Olympics is over soon, so I may just have to actually watch volleyball and rugby and cycling other than every four years now.
Anywho, with that long intro waxing poetic about the Olympics, let’s move on to the puzzle…
Relative difficulty: A little harder than an average Tuesday
THEME: Phrases that begin with “as” followed by a pronoun and a verb
Theme answers:
- AS YOU PLEASE (17A: "Any option is fine by me")
- AS THEY SAY (21A: "Or so the motto goes")
- AS I LIVE AND BREATHE (27A: With 33-Down and 51-Across, "What a surprise!")
- AS WE SPEAK (59A: "Currently ...")
- AS IT HAPPENS (65A: "By a stroke of luck ...")
Nuyorican is a portmanteau word blending "New York" (or "Nueva York" in Spanish) and "Puerto Rican," referring to Puerto Ricans located in or around New York City, their culture, or their descendants (especially those raised or currently living in the New York metropolitan area). This term is sometimes used for Puerto Ricans living in other areas in the Northeastern US mainland outside New York state, as well. The term Nuyorican is also sometimes used to refer to the Spanish spoken by New York Puerto Ricans. An estimated 1,800,000 Nuyoricans are said to live in New York City, the largest Puerto Rican community outside Puerto Rico. The Oxford English Dictionary cites this word as evolving slowly through roughly the last third of the 20th century, with the first cited reference being poet Jaime Carrero using neorriqueño in 1964 as a Spanish-language adjective combining neoyorquino and puertorriqueño. (Wiki)
• • •
That was a pretty fun and harmless puzzle. The theme on its own (which really is just connected because all phrases start with “as”) isn’t anything to write home about. And I would’ve loved an “as you wish” in there (“The Princess Bride” being one of my favorite movies and all). But the construction was impressive, with two sets of phrases directly on top of each other, starting on the far left and finishing on the far right. And I really liked how AS I LIVE AND BREATHE (27A) zigzagged through the puzzle and acted as a connector for the other theme answers. Each of the theme answers was generally nice in and of itself. My favorite was probably AS IT HAPPENS (not solely because it reminds me of the amazing movie “It Happened One Night”)I really liked a lot of the words in the puzzle, which felt fresh. POLYP (13D: Individual coral organism) isn’t a word you see all that often. Nor do you see BOTANIST (53A: Plant biologist, by another name), SENSATE (45D: Opposite of numb), AREPAS (52D: South American corn patties), or NUYORICANS (3D) often. Heck, we even got CHEEZ-IT (10D: Brand of orange crackers)! (I used to love those until my body decided it doesn’t like eating gluten.) BARRE (53D: Ballet rail), RAW TALENT (36D: Innate skill), and TWANG (55D: Southern way of speaking) were nice to see, as well.
There were a surprising number of words ending in two vowels in the puzzle — ALUMNAE (14A), MAO (16A), PALAU (12D), PUPAE (40D), and MEA (47D). And it felt to me like other answers had more back-to-back vowels in them than usual, too, but I don’t have the data to back me up on this one. There were also quite a few people in there, too — OSCAR (54D: Witty Wilde), SELA (7D: Emmy-winning Ward), MARA (58A: Actress Kate or Rooney), SAHL(43A: Wry Mort), ELIA (61A: Kazan who directed "A Streetcar Named Desire"), and ARIANNA (70A: Huffington who founded The Huffington Post).
My biggest hang-up with the puzzle was probably DASH IT (9D: "Drat!"). I’m not sure I’ve actually ever heard someone say DASH IT (not even my father), so I had “dang it” and thought that was certainly right. Lo and behold, that caused me some issues in the north section of the puzzle.
We also had a lot of the typical crosswordese that I’m not a big fan of, such as TAT (57D: Bit of ink) (this is in puzzles way too much). Then there was APP (11A: Instagram, for one) and PIC (31A: Instagram post, for short). Did we really need to double up on Instagram clues? We had RAN (68A: Campaigned) and TAN (69A: Beachgoer's goal, maybe), right next to each other, no less.
Some other words and abbreviations were just meh, like EXEC (29D: Business bigwig), CDC (8A: Org. in "Outbreak" and "Contagion"), PER (49A: According to), PIN (67D: A.T.M. need), and WAS (48A: Is no longer). I also don’t know if 66D: Experiencing little to no amorous attraction, informally for ARO was clued clearly enough. I put “ace” there, which is when people experience little to no sexual attraction toward any gender. But the answer was ARO, which is when people experience little to no romantic attraction toward any gender. I’d say “amorous” in the clue does lead you more toward ARO, but maybe the clue still should’ve been a little more explicit.
Misc.:
- It’s pretty funny to have the SEINE (56D: River through Paris) in the puzzle given all the controversy surrounding it and triathletes being forced to swim in it for their event and possibly getting E. coli. One athlete even said he tried to prepare himself for swimming in the SEINE by microdosing E. coli leading up to the event… which is just… awful. They never should’ve had to swim in the SEINE, and there absolutely should’ve been a backup.
- One of my favorite restaurants in college was a small Colombian place that was known for their AREPAS (52D). And it very quickly became my favorite place to take friends and family when they would visit.
- My coworker the other day had to get a copy of a client’s file ready for them, and it was so big that it needed to go on a CD ROM (46A: Obsolescent PC storage medium). She said that she’d never burned a CD before and was excited, which made me (at 28) feel incredibly old.
- Anyone looking to become a better person might be looking for that GNU EWE (5D and 72A). There’s my attempt at a Dad joke. I’ll see myself out…
- “TEXAS Hold ‘Em” (32A) by Beyoncé is a phenomenal country song and Cowboy Carter a great album. Please, Grammys, finally give her album of the year for this one.
- Sense8 (or SENSATE (45D)) was an amazing show on Netflix that lasted a couple seasons before being unceremoniously canceled. It was a unique concept, with 8 strangers around the world being connected to another’s thoughts and actions, and Netflix shouldn’t have canceled it like they do EVERY GOOD SHOW!! Maybe I’ll go rewatch the show once the Olympics are over, and I don’t know what to do with myself anymore.
And that's all from me, folks! Have a great rest of your August.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Save And Share :
77 comments:
Medium-tough. I spent way too much time trying to make sense of NUYORICAN. RAZE was my last fill. The rest was mostly easy, although DASH IT took a little work (Hi @ Clare).
Pretty smooth grid, interesting theme, liked it.
I started with “Ace” as well… but “Nuyorican”? Is that a thing? As a non-American I’ve never heard that before - only filled it with crossing letters, and genuinely thought it MUST be wrong right to the very end!
I thought 9D "Drat!" should be DASH IT ALL.
Now hear this: To "Drop anchor" (20A) is not the same thing as to MOOR. Let Sail Magazine's "Docking, Anchoring, Mooring: What are the differences?" explain:
"Anchoring refers to when a vessel anchors itself to the seafloor with an anchor attached to the vessel by a rope or chain. Mooring is similar to anchoring in that it provides an attachment point for vessels on the seafloor. However, with mooring, you will find permanent fixtures made from ropes, buoys, chains, and anchors set up in specific locations like harbors or marinas. Instead of dropping an anchor into the seafloor as you do with anchoring, these fixtures have already been set up by professionals and/or local governments making it easier for boaters to secure their vessels without having to worry about their anchors dragging due to shifting winds or currents."
That is all. Continue ship's work.
Thank you, @Anoa Bob! I'm a confirmed landlubber but I had concerns about MOOR for "Drop anchor."
Medium for a Tuesday, but before reading the clue for 9D I had --SHIT and at 65A I had --IT HAPPENS. I was wondering if the NYT puzzle was going down the toilet.
Absolutely terrible! Feeble theme, only one little bit of sparkle, zero wordplay, a disgraceful number of threes. Ugh!
I found the puzzle easy, except for NUYORICAN and the AREPAS/MARA cross, which I got by guessing. DASHIT looked wrong, but was inevitable according to the crosses.
I appreciated the relative absence of popular culture entries.
Thought the NYT hit Rated R for a bit today… Parse DASHIT a little differently (similar to “What the…”), then I was briefly looking at **ITHAPPENS and thought “nah, they couldn’t, could they?”
Stop trying to make dash it happen
Curious to know how many of you knew NUYORICAN. Never heard of it and *knew* that a word starting with "NUY" could not be right. Contributed significantly to a long, long solve time. Is this a common word in NYC? Elseewhere? Anyhoo, pretty blah overall.
A couple of things just rubbed me the wrong way - RAH for “you can do it” seems like a real stretch. Similarly, DASH IT sounds like a fish out of water, although I’m sure it gets some (very) occasional airplay IRL. The worst of the bunch was NUYORICAN - which is typical NYT fare (I.e. crap that you rarely see anywhere else).
It will be interesting to see the Gunk level today - it just seemed to rely on a lot of PPP as well, but that just might be because I wasn’t getting along with this one from the start. It will probably garner a lot of favorable reviews, so I’m guessing it’s just a wheelhouse/wavelength thing.
Excellent clarification. I felt there was something here, but couldn’t have articulated it. Thankyou
NUYORICAN is completely unfamiliar to me.
Thought I must be missing something in the theme, but apparently not.
Help from previous puzzles: KHAN, ARO, AREPAS, SELA.
Only the awful drivers license prevents TEXAS Hold 'Em from being the worst song of the last fifteen years.
I like how the theme pronouns contain representatives from first, second, and third person, both singular and plural (with YOU pulling double duty): I, YOU, IT, WE, YOU, THEY.
I like how the theme features a lovely language quirk. Quirks in English are maddening to some, but I love them – they make our language human, a living breathing entity. Many of Daniel’s 18 Times daily puzzles focus on “Huh!”- and “Wow!”-worthy language quirks, by the way. He’s got that radar, and, IMO, his 18 Times daily puzzles have highly enriched Crosslandia.
Serendipities in the grid are lovely quirks themselves. Today we have two AE-enders, four palindromes (CDC, EWE, MAAM, TAT), plus the neighboring ITs of DASH IT and CHEEZ IT echoed by AS IT HAPPENS.
And I love the clue for RAZE – [Verb that sound like its opposite]. This is an answer that has appeared a couple hundred times in the major crossword outlets, but never clued like this.
So, the box for me today was like a box of chocolates, filled with sweet treats. Thank you, Daniel!
Clare, what a complete and interesting-all-the-way-through write-up today. Great catches, explanations, and side trips, with plusses and minuses nicely balanced. Brava!
I guess I shouldn’t be as surprised as I am that apparently no one knows NUYORICAN. As someone who lived in NYC for a decade and is also a big fan of Lin Manuel Miranda’s In The Heights, I can confirm that NUYORICAN is very much a thing. (In case you didn’t parse it, it’s a portmanteau of New York with Puerto Rican)
Great commentary Clare, just minor correction - the last name of the constructor (old friend of mine) is Raymon not Raymond. :)
I’ve never heard of it, and was annoyed because I thought the constructor made it up!
Today I learned NUYORICAN, which had to be right and makes perfect sense if you're used to Spanish spelling. I agree that the NUY looked peculiar at first.
Slightly harder than most Tuesdays, as others have said. Any clue containing an Instagram reference is an "oh oh" moment for me but today's were OK. I know we've seen ARO before in puzzles but I have yet to encounter it anywhere else, so I needed the crosses. KHAN and MARA complete the list of today's unknowns.
"Stiffens" is an odd clue for SEIZESUP. Had to apply Joaquin's dictum to buy that one.
Kind of a meh Tuesday, DR. Didn't Really tickle my fancy but some good stuff. Thanks for a medium amount of fun.
NUYORICAN was familiar to this non-New Yorker because salsa (the music and dance, not the culinary delight) is largely a creation of such NUYORICAN greats as Tito Puente and Eddie Palmieri. Other famous Nuyoricans include Lin-Manuel Miranda.
Thanks to @Anoa Bob for clearing up anchoring, mooring, and docking. That’s all news to me, and I used to be a proofreader for Sail magazine about a thousand years ago.
Pretty light theme, but there's a lot of it, and the fill won me over. Love RAWTALENT and NUYORICAN. Coupla Zs and an X added some spice, even though CHEEZITs are disgusting. Aside from DASHIT, the puzzle felt pretty fresh.
Lost a good amount of time with drAwl instead of TWANG.
Thought we might have an embedded video of this song, which as of today is the fourth-most streamed song in the history of Spotify (3.458 billion streams) and the only one in the top 50 released in 2022 or later.
Wildebeest on East 110th: GNUYORICAN?
When I read DASHIT, it's missing an ALL. My inside voice hears it in a British accent, and from an old movie, play or TV series.
NUYORICAN held me up for ages, as a Brit never having heard the term I was convinced I was wrong for the longest time - not Tuesday fair?
Also I thought in the US you only got 10 vacation days a year... Rex seems to be off way more than that!
The theme isn't simply phrases that start with "as", but [AS]+[PRONOUN]+[VERB]. You, they, I, we, it. :)
Nothing wrong with NUYORICAN (debut entry), but it did slow my solve time down quite a bit. Lot of letters that fit _AZE. Good puzzle overall from a veteran constructor.
Never heard of NUYORICAN before is that a legit term? Naticked on the MARA/AREPAS cross.
Hey All !
Fill is outstanding, considering the grid is rife with Themers. The top and bottom two are stacked, no less! They cross five letters, which is Really tough to get crossing fill through, plus still having to jive with everything else. Neat idea to split up the Center Themer.
NUYORICAN must just be known in Spanish Harlem, well, at least never been heard by me, and I watch a lot (well, not too many anymore) of movies, never heard that title.
A good TuesPuz with bite. Didn't fly through it as normally. Thought we were headed toward a Pangram, after getting the Z, X, K. But alas, no J,Q, and F. Why no F's? AS I LIVE AND BREATHE... My fight continues. 😁
Happy Tuesday!
No F's (It's AMORAL, I tell ya)
RooMonster
DarrinV
I agree with Anoa Bob today, moor or less.
Yesterday's New Yorker XW was by Natan Last. I met him a while ago. It went like this:
Hi! Who are you?
I'm Natan.
Hi Natan -- what's your last name?
Last.
Yes, what's your last name?
Last.
Right -- that's what I'm asking -- your last name.
Last.
What is it -- your last name?
Last.
I'm asking you for your last name, yes.
Last.
Third base!!
It’s a self-identifying name in New York City.
Okay….didn’t know that POLYP also meant an individual coral organism. I was aware of the term only in the colonoscipal context. If you’re ever in Norwalk, Connecticut, definitely have the AREPAs at Luncheria Valencia on Main Avenue. To die for.
Kind of a lukewarm theme or as Clare said, “harmless,” but a perfectly good Tuesday. I learned a couple things which is unusual this early in the week: NUYORICAN which gave me fits but is pretty darn impressive. Whoever came up with that must’ve had to think about it a while. ALSO, AS I LIVE AND BREATHE in my seventh decade, first time seeing ARO and - thanks again to Clare - learning what it means. Have to ALSO say that part about being in the seventh decade gave me SEIZES UP almost immediately. No stranger to that one.
When Covid first came up on us, I was struck by the frightening similarities between it and then what happened in the movie “Outbreak.“ A mystery virus originating with an animal, followed by scenes of hospitals overwhelmed with patients, medical professionals wearing hazmat suits and none of them knowing what to do next. People hiding in their homes like criminals, fearing for their lives. I remember talking about it with a friend and discussing the fact that even though it was almost a futuristic or science fiction type of fantasy, it was something which could actually happen. That was in 1995. Thankful I had no idea then of the horror we would come to face in the future.
Why would you see it anywhere else but NYC? It means New York Puerto Rican.
Oh, BTW, QB three days ago, missing 35 points for QB two days ago, QB Yesterday. My roller coaster ride continues!
RooMonster Whee! Guy
Holy crud that was super challenging for me. What the heck. It took me Friday minutes. I mean the Olympics are on, but I'm worried I had an aneurysm. It's Tuesday, right?
ALUMNAE is probably how they spell it at schools that cost too much. At the state school we spell it UNDEREMPLOYED.
For me [Unprincipled] doesn't live in the same neighborhood as AMORAL. The fact that I don't do what I say I'm gonna do makes me unprincipled, but the fact that I will never admit what I actually do makes me amoral (or it might make me a saint, but it's a secret either way, and on review, it most assuredly does not make me a saint). 🙄
I'm pretty sure every one of us is required by law to mention NUYORICAN today. I'm a DENVERICAN soon to be a NUMEXICAN. I would say I'm a COLORADOICAN, but honestly I'm doing everything I can to separate myself from fans of one noteworthy member of Congress -- the Boeberticans.
I'm working on a symphonic piece of music based on all the flavors of CHEEZ-IT. Some composers bring the deep, soulful, and joyous experiences of the human condition to art; I bring the joys of processed snack foods and zombies. Some people process pain and sadness with music; I process salt and fat. I was inspired by a uniclue from September 2023. Did you know there's been 56 flavors of CHEEZ-IT? Even Star Wars CHEEZ-IT. I don't know what they tasted like, but apparently if you ate them you suddenly had an urge to film crummy movies with crummy scripts and add crummy CGI. And build a death star.
Propers: 9
Places: 2
Products: 4
Partials: 11 (hiss)
Foreignisms: 1
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 27 of 78 (35%)
Funnyisms: 2 😕
Tee-Hee: One who sleeps around before adulthood. AMORAL PUPAE. (I know, I know, despite what they told me during those fire and brimstone revivals my mom took me to as a kid, sleeping around isn't AMORAL, unless you're a future butterfly and as a caterpillar you have one job after you've destroyed somebody's garden: Go to bed and grow wings.)
Uniclues:
1 Posts virus outbreaks before lunch.
2 Took Huffington for a jog on the beach.
3 How you spell "painful pics."
4 Invite me to join your sittin' around doin' nuthin' club.
1 MANAGES CDC APP
2 RAN TAN ARIANNA
3 T-A-T AND ESS (~)
4 AMASS RAW TALENT
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: "You feeling positive or negative today, buddy? Oh, nothing, again?" NEUTRINO RIDICULE.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
NUYORICAN is completely familiar if you live in or near the city. Overall I thought this skewed easier than usual Tuesday, downs only, *except* for DASH IT which no one says, it would be DASH IT ALL. And def not American. Anyway, the rest of the puzzle took under 4, and then another 4 working out that north central section.
Sheesh.
Had Cheetos in there for a second.
Thank you. I knew where they were going pretty quickly but , it seemed like that clue had been generated by AI and not a person
"Dash It" doesn't sound right by itself, it should be "Dash It All"
Dashit. Is. Not. A. Thing.
Dragged plenty of moorings & seen plenty more that were poorly built & maintained so permanence & peace of mind aren't a defining difference IMO.
I was born and raised in Oregon, but lived three years in Manhattan, where I always enjoyed getting together with my fellow NUYORegonians.
If I hold up a treat in front of my dog, ASITHAPPENS.
As a rule, I prefer a bit more of a tricky theme. But nice puzzle, Daniel Raymond. And nice write up, Clare.
Nice review, @Clare - I was hoping NUYORICAN would be the word of the day, AS I hadn’t heard before. Actually, I still haven’t heard it and can’t figure out how to pronounce it. Do you accent it like Puerto Rican, or more like New Yorker? Either way, I like it and was entertained when it made its way into the grid bit by bit. 1,800,000?!
I ALSO liked your list of fresh words - BARRE seemed the least fresh, POLYP maybe the most. I had no idea that’s what we call an individual coral organism.
AS a lifelong Southerner, I wrote in drAwl, which is definitely the default Southern way of speaking. (Just noticed the SPEAK dupe.) A TWANG is a certain aspect of some Southern ways of SPEAKing, but in my experience most Southerners do not TWANG, they drawl. The clue did its job - I just needed to get that off my chest.
Thanks, @Lewis, for pointing out the pronouns were all different! That had escaped me and it’s definitely a highlight of the theme.
I also liked the clue for RAZE - surprised it hasn’t been used before. RAZE shares its Latin root, radere (to erase or scrape), with tabula rasa.
The clue for CRATE sent me back to college, when all of us music majors used milk CRATEs as record holders.
Fine theme, just too bad so many of the clues were dull. AS THEY SAY, let's kick it up a notch!
Considerably more crunch than usual for a Tuesday -- which made me very happy. My favorite clue was for RAZE and my favorite answer was RAW TALENT.
I spent a certain amount of what I like to call "Lewis-time" trying to come up with the revealer ahead of time -- so imagine my surprise when there wasn't one. All these AS phrases have a certain old-timey feel to them and thus give the puzzle a sort of cozy ambiance.
And now for NUYORICAN. (Google's not underlining in red, so I guess it's a word.) Not only am I a lifelong New Yorker, but I live not all that far from Spanish Harlem. But I've never heard it and I was trying to think of where the country called NUYOR was located on the map? It finally dawned on me -- admittedly a bit slowly -- that NUYORICAN might be Spanglish for New Yorker. If so, that's fun!
A breezy puzzle with some bite. I enjoyed it.
I hadn't heard of NUYORICAN before which held me up a bit in the Northwest; CHEETOS instead of CHEEZIT and not knowing how to spell ARIANNA were also speedbumps. Enjoyed the surprising resistance though: good Tuesday.
@Anoa Bob (03:18) Thanks for that very helpful explanation. The only watercraft I’ve ever navigated was a fishing boat, but I was pretty sure MOOR had nothing to do with dropping anchor.
@Sir Hillary (8:11) I was in that same neighborhood this morning. Southern folks speak with a drawl. A TWANG is more Midwestern.
@Gary (9:17) “Boeberticans.” 😄 Can’t say I blame you.
HDW* Clues:
1. Margaret and Raggedy
2. Margaret and Raggedy, casually perhaps
3. Margaret or Raggedy, in Troon
Impressive Tuesday puzzle, with a great combination of clever clues and interesting answers (NUYORICAN, POLYP, SENSATE, RAWTALENT, etc.).
The ARO/ARIANNA cross a bit Naticky: my correct guess with the R was my last letter entered.
@Gary Jugert: T-A-T AND "ESS," very clever combo.
Answers to HDW* Clues:
1. ANNS (starts with the A in 61A, ELIA)
2. GALS (the G in 5D, GNU)
3. LASS (L in 13D, POLYP, moving to the SW; also contains a 3-letter Jugert tee-hee)
ThaZ IT, AS THEY SAY (w/ a TWANG)
I first blanked at TEXAS Hold Em. I didn't know the Beyonce song. Had it been clued "harder," i.e. just with the blank, I would have gotten it right away (yeah, I play poker).
Today, there were 4 (four) abbreviations lacking the required hint: EXEC, TAT, ASAP and ARO. @Clare mentioned two of them in passing without noting the insufficient clues. Other abbreviations (CDC, PIC, CD ROM, RCA, APTS, EAP, PIN) were appropriately clued. So, did the editor decide that those four are actually words now? AS IT HAPPENS, they are not.
None if that slowed me down, though. DRAWL before TWANG, but otherwise NON-STOP.
Wow! This is the ninth day in a row without little circles, squares or other junk.
Like Anon at 3:17 AM, I thought NUYORICAN *must* be wrong until the very end. Didn’t get the music, so went to check that word and accidentally hit reset on the puzzle. So annoying. DASHIT may have crossed my lips.
MOOR seemed wring, thanks for the definition @anoabob
And oddly I had trouble wth PIC, even though I am constantly posting to INSTA for my art business. I think of a PIC as any digital picture, aka PIX for plural. Oh well.
Glad the wise sages here found it difficult for a Tuesday, as found it Friday hard. Didn’t catch onto the theme until I read the writeup.
OK, I'm trying it -- I haven't read Clare, nor any of your comments, so I'll just post a general reaction, then go back and read anything.
I hope I'm missing something, but it doesn't seem much of a theme: phrases starting with as followed by a pronoun and a verb -- or in the central example, two verbs. It does run the gamut of possible grammatical persons, with YOU, THEY, I, & IT. (No he or she, though). But I can't find any thematic element in the verbs. Again, I hope I'm missing it.
Otherwise, a few nice answers, including the two long downs, and I'm always happy to see Mort SAHL. I follow him on the former Twitter, but he hasn't posted since 2019 -- oh, I see, he died in 2021. His Twitter feed is still there, and has links to many of his live shows.
Some of the cluing seemed a bit off -- to me, AS YOU PLEASE is more like "Well, I guess I can't stop you." But close enough.
Now I'll go read Clare and find out what I missed!
@Tom T 10:53 AM
Them's some raggedy HDWs, eh? Nice clue writing.
I went to Barnard College. Despite objections from Alumnae, now they accept some men.
Hi Clare!
I read your review before commenting so now I know what ARO is. And although I'm a native New Yorker, I could've gone through my puzzle-solving life without ever knowing NUYORICAN. But I guess I'd better remember it as it's sure to turn up again. Otherwise, a pretty fast solve. I guess we'll get hit again the latter part of this week.
Thanks, Daniel :)
Well, it seems I didn't miss a third thematic element, it just wasn't there--or if it was, @Lewis missed it too, which is good enough for me.
As for NUYORICAN, it is apparently much more of a wheelhouse thing than I had thought; I think I've been hearing or seeing the term for 40 years. (I just checked; the NUYORICAN Poets Cafe began in 1973 in someone's apartment, soon moved into a bar, and just announced a $26 million renovation of its building, so I guess the term has staying power.)
@Anoa Bob, glad you corrected MOOR authoritatively. The Times makes that error very consistently, I guess no one there has ever sailed.
Do people still play TEXAS Hold Em? My local paper used to have a daily column about the game, right next to the one about Bridge, but I haven't seen it too much lately. It seems to feature confusing words for cards, like "the turn" and "the river." Never played it myself, though.
Medium difficulty and I liked it a lot. Would have been much harder if I didn’t know NUYORICANS straight away.
Hated DASHIT, loved SENSATE and BOTANIST.
I respect the opinions of you all who liked the puzzle. But, as I explained above, I hated it. I hadn't realized before that my taste was so much out of our mainstream.
I will add my thanks to @Anoa Bob for the excellent tutorial on MOORing vs. anchoring. This is another classic NYT landlubber's error, ranking right up there with the belief that a sheet is a sail, or that "oar" is a verb.
May I pile on about NUYORICAN? Well, I will! I lived on 98th and we called it "El Barrio." I say "We" as in those of us who spoke the language. Here I was, a red headed freckled gringa speaking da language, eating arroz con pollo, shopping at "El Mercado" for plantains and yuca, cussing like the best of them and having very long conversations about Cuba with Joselito, my newspaper man. I'm sure this "Barrio" has been gentrified beyond recognition and perhaps these new tenants are the new NUYORICANs......
So...the puzzle. Like @Gary J, I found this Fridayorican in places. DASH IT? Yikes....And why aren't you CHEEtos. SINUS is a hole in your head? APTS are co-ops and condos? Who is KHAN and his academy? PALAU POLYP and PUPAE? Perhaps a good name for a law firm. And so it went.
Not exactly a thrilling Tuesday. AS I LIVE AND BREATHE, good Lord, Jack Stone.
29D should indicate an abbreviation for business bigwig, such as biz bigwig, as exec is short for executive.
Yeah, it's real. Rosie Perez may have been responsible for popularizing the term.
Had the term been in use in the late 50's, Sondheim would have had fun plugging in into "America."
Tough for a downs only Tuesday solve. NUYORICANs will do that to you. Looked pretty wonky but the crosses seemed to be real words so I went with it, fully expecting it to deal me a DNF. But, no, my downfall came at square 61, where I had ARaPAS crossing aLIA. I mean I had no idea about the corn patties and alia is a common crossword answer.
Oh well. Bring on Wednesday where I can access the across clues.
Despite the DNF, I kind of liked the puzzle. The theme entries had a sort of lyrical quality.
BritSolve - Incorrect . I get 6 weeks vacay. maybe entry is 2 weeks.
The theme is “phrases that begin with ‘as” ?
Unique, I’ll say that, but because it’s awful.
Anonymous 3:17 I'm an American, and I've never heard nor seen it before. Even after reading the "word of the day" explanation/history, I still don't believe in it.
Apart from that, I liked the puzzle. I agree with Les S. More that the themes had a sort of lyrical quality
Re "mooring"
Despite Anna's bobs description from a sailing book and the others who had doubted "Moor" for drop anchor, I think I've read the term "moor" used in situations where there wold not have been such manmade mooring object.
Can anyone out there join me on tis?
Drop anchor has, ahem, a number of definitions.
Nuyorican is a well known term among New Yorkers. There are also the Nuyorican poets.
BritSolvesNYT
About Nuyorican. It is the NEW YORK Times and in NYC it is a well known term. As was noted those that know Salsa music , which is quite popular in the US also know the term. I am neither a New Yorker nor a salsa fan but have read the NYT for 50 years so no problem for me.
I liked the puzzle and the theme better than most apparently.
As Lewis pointed out, the theme covers all present tense conjugations, since we don’t use thou anymore. They all have a quaint and/or formal feel which also ties them together. I think people are being too picky.
But mathgent has other reasons to hate the puzzle. I don’t think he is correct his tastes are so different. The blog as a whole is all over the place on this one. I always like his comments even when I disagree.
About technical or specialized terms in any area, sports, science other areas of learning etc etc , what is “incorrect “ in the field in question does not answer the question whether it is incorrect for crosswords. Crosswords are based on what non- specialists say or write, not on what is in say a manual on boating. My guess is that most people conflate mooring and dropping anchor so the answer is within the Times standards , even if sailors don’t like it. I did like Anoa Bob’s comment because he was funny about it ( I am a retired lawyer and people say second cousin meaning a first cousin’s child or a parent’s first cousin. But that is in legal language “incorrect “ In legal terminology, a second cousin is of the same generation and shares 2 great grandparents with you. But such fine distinctions do not last in popular language. So I accept that.)
I grew up in the suburbs of NYC and Nuyorican was a gimme for me. I had the shit part of the answer first and never hear anyone say dash it. I briefly thought the answer was going to to be oh shit!
@Anonymous 2:10 PM
"The theme is “phrases that begin with ‘as” [sic]?
Unique, I’ll say that, but because it’s awful."
I felt silly reiterating what Clare and @Lewis (and Wordplay + Constructor Notes) already explained: AS + [pronoun] + [verb]. Just wanted to make it clear that the theme is tighter than just phrases that begin with AS. 🌈🌠
(I admit I rushed my comment this morning. I do (normally) actually read the blog and the comments before submitting mine. I'm thankful for the blog and all the commenters!)
Arepas/Mara was a Natick for me.
It's NYC specific but the Nuyorican Poets Cafe is iconic.
Easy for a Saturday but enjoyed the multi-decade clues: from Twister Mat to Tik Tok. Manic Panic to Pickleball.
This one got misfiled. It’s about Thursday-level in difficulty. Not sure the theme was worth the effort. It is lacking a zippy revealer.
Well, again, I'm a victim of NOT being a resident of NYC. For me, 3d became a collection of nonsense letters. And, AS that is the ONLY vertical outlet from NW to SW, it made for a very difficult puzzle to get around. Those SW and NE quads are severely cut off, and if the only entries are questionable you have trouble.
There were other unknowns: AREPAS. KHAN AS clued. But ASITHAPPENS, the crosses were OK. Welcome back, DOD SELA.
The theme took up a lot of space, which accounts for some of the hard fill. DASHIT is positively Elizabethan (I, not II!).
Normally, I'd score this one a bogey, but any grid that contains both SELA and a shout-out to TEXAS hold'em can't do worse than par.
Wordle birdie.
Dash it ALL! Not every crossing square you don't know is a Natick. It has a very specific definition.
As you were.
I love it when a native NYCitizen doesn't know a local term that has been around for over 50 years.
I enjoyed this, managed to do it quickly enough, though I had a hard time getting anything filled in for a while. That's probably why I had DASHIT for 9D "Drat!" filled in with 4 letters from the bottom up and parsed differently. I was a little surprised, and then surprised that I seemed to be the only one seeing it that way.
Post a Comment