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Buccaneer's buddies / SUN 8-25-24 / Videography option on a smartphone / Nine credited roles in "Barbie" / George Lucas's original surname for Luke Skywalker / City with a cowboy hat-wearing replica of the Eiffel Tower / Filming innovation used in "The Shining" / Places to let out anger by smashing objects / Carnival attraction that propels its riders sky-high
Sunday, August 25, 2024
Constructor: John Kugelman
Relative difficulty: Easy
Theme answers:
- DOUBLE-CLICK (21A: "Tsk, tsk"?)
- SECOND MATE (23A: Buddy-buddy?)
- RAP DUO (44A: [Knock, knock]?)
- ONE AFTER ANOTHER (45A: 11?)
- THIS BEARS REPEATING (64A: Pooh-pooh?)
- THE MUMMY RETURNS (88A: Tut-tut?)
- ALLOWS (93A: "Ow! Ow!"?)
- BACK-UP COPY (110A: "OK, OK"?)
- PAIR OF PANTS (114A: "Hubba, hubba!"?)
Paris is a city and county seat of Lamar County, Texas, United States. Located in Northeast Texas at the western edge of the Piney Woods, the population of the city was 24,171 in 2020. [...] Following a tradition of American cities named "Paris" (named after France's capital), the city commissioned a 65-foot-tall (20 m) replica of the Eiffel Tower in 1993 and installed it on site of the Love Civic Center, southeast of the town square. In 1998, presumably as a response to the 1993 construction of a 60-foot-tall (18 m) tower in Paris, Tennessee, the city placed a giant red cowboy hat atop its tower. The current Eiffel Tower replica is at least the second one; an earlier replica constructed of wood was destroyed by a tornado. [...] In the late-19th and early-20th centuries, several lynchings were staged at the Paris Fairgrounds as public spectacles, with crowds of white spectators cheering as the African-American victims were tortured and murdered. A Black teenager named Henry Smith was lynched in 1893. His murder was the first lynching in US history that was captured in photographs sold as postcards and other trinkets commemorating the killing. Journalist Ida B. Wells said of the incident "Never in the history of civilization has any Christian people stooped to such shocking brutality and indescribable barbarism as that which characterized the people of Paris, Texas." (wikipedia)
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The fill was pretty decent overall, but there were more than a few answers that grated. A lot of the longer answers felt overly nichey, or like things that were barely things. RADIOSPEAK seemed off (25A: What "Ten-four" and "Over" are used in). Doesn't seem like a very real word. When I google it, I get "radio lingo" and "radio terminology" sites. E-BILL is up there with the worst E-things I've seen in a grid (38A: Paper-saving invoice). It's just a bill, or an invoice. The norm is electronic now, so to specify E-BILL feels E-BAD. "EGADS! Have you seen this E-BILL! It's E-GREGIOUS!" Boo. The STARKILLER thing is just annoying (102A: George Lucas's original surname for Luke Skywalker). If Lucas didn't use it, then it's not a thing. How in the world should I know that dumb bit of trivia? Completely stupid to think that it's an acceptable answer. My god fandom can addle some people's brains. Or else overstuffed wordlists are doing the addling, I don't know, but STARKILLER—hard boo. I got it easily enough, by inference, but still, it's bad enough to have to remember so much damn "Star Wars" universe trivia from the *actual* movies. Asking me to know things that didn't even make it in = bridge too far. For reference:
Luke's original surname was "Starkiller", and it remained in the script until a few months into filming. It was dropped due to what Lucas called "unpleasant connotations" with Charles Manson, who became a "star killer" in 1969 when he murdered the well-known actress Sharon Tate. Lucas replaced the problematic name "Starkiller" with "Skywalker". (wikipedia)
I don't go to enough carnivals, it seems, because SPACE SHOT was a ???? to me (15D: Carnival attraction that propels its riders sky-high). MOON SHOT is really a much nicer answer, why aren't they called that? Also not familiar to me, as a term: NIGHT BIRD (58A: Owl or whippoorwill). I know that many birds are nocturnal, and I've heard of NIGHT OWL, and NIGHTHAWKS, of course, but just ... NIGHT BIRD? Meh. I'm sure some people say this, but do people who know anything about birds say this? Feels too vague, too general. I guess a BRAIN DUMP is a thing I've heard of, but it's so ugly as a term that I can't pretend I'm happy to see it (117A: Outpouring of ideas). Some "originality" = unwelcome. And RAGE ROOMS, lol, whatever (71A: Places to let out anger by smashing objects). I've seen this before, but *only* in crosswords (once, also in the plural, last year). It's hard to believe these rooms exist. How bad are you at feeling your feelings that you need a room to smash? Bizarre. It's too weird a thing to use in a grid, especially once it's already been used. Ten-year moratorium on RAGE ROOMS starting now, OK? OK. Copy? Copy.
There are also some patches of regular-old short fill that are really, really dire. Well, one in particular. It goes from SRTA in the far east and then sorta trickles down to form a sludge puddle right around the AERO / ARO crossing (crossing two homophones that are only one letter apart—not great). So SRTA OUTTA "UH, NO" "OHH" OTRO ARO AERO EGADS ... that is one unpleasant short-answer slurry. But much of the rest of the grid is solid to strong: PARIS, TEXAS, TIME-LAPSE, FOUL TIP, EYE MASKS ... there's a wide variety of interesting fill, and not too much garbage. I loved STEADICAM, esp. the way it was clued (75D: Filming innovation used in "The Shining"), but I'm a *little* concerned that people will spell it STEADYCAM (as I did at first pass) and leave the "Y" in, believing that that is how ELY Manning spells his name. If you are not into sports, this seems like a very plausible error. But then maybe you've all been doing crosswords for so long that even if you couldn't tell ELI Manning from ELI Wallach, you know for sure that it's ELI with an "I." Let's hope so.
What else?:
- 28A: Honnold who was the first to free-solo climb El Capitan (ALEX) — shrug. The only Honnold I know was the namesake of the college library at my alma mater (Pomona). At least I think that's how it was spelled, Honnold. Hmm, looks like it's the Honnold/Mudd Library but we just called it "Honnold" in the olden days. Speaking of my college, there's an article on their English department that is ... well, it's a ride. It's called "When a Department Self-Destructs," if that gives you any idea. (It's been over 30 years since I was an English major there, so I don't know any of the parties involved.)
- 31A: Sight at Sydney's yearly Festival of the Winds (KITE) — four letters so I *kinda* wanted OBOE. Then I had the "K" and I *kinda* wanted KOALA (sadly, not four letters).
- 79A: Queer identity, for short (ARO) — short for "aromantic." Soon, this answer will have become as common as Brian ENO and I will stop feeling the need to explain it to people.
- 31D: Nine credited roles in "Barbie" (KENS) — normally plural names are suboptimal, as fill goes, but Barbie has made KENS an exception. So many KENS ...
- 56D: State with a five-sided flag (OHIO) — I see "five-sided flag," I think NEPAL, so this is interesting. If I knew this about OHIO's flag, I forgot it, but luckily there are only so many four-letter states.
 |
| [Nepal] |
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| [OHIO] |
- 99D: Haggard fellow? (MERLE) — first thought: "... the Horrible? Mr. The Horrible?" But that's Hägar (the comic strip Viking), not Haggard (the country legend). Happy to see Haggard instead of HUNTER HAYES today (Saturday solvers know what I mean...). Haggard is the best of the "H" country stars. Here's some more "H"s in his honor.
See you next time.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
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113 comments:
DNF: AHH made way more sense than OHH. Most of my Spanish knowledge comes from crosswords so I'm gonna not ever find that error in a million years.
Hubba Hubba is what a cartoonish dirty sleazebag says when seeing an attractive woman. That is not panting in any way shape or form. IMO
Punny overload - too much for me. Some are cute enough but would have been better served limited to 3 in an early week grid. Liked SECOND MATE and PAIR OF PANTS the best - although PANTS is a little squirmy.
SPIRIT
There’s just so much fill here - it’s difficult to UNDRESS it all. We get product placement so we can sooth that itch if we’re constipated.
I’ve always known them as NIGHT BIRDs - love the Barred Owl, the aptly named Chat and of course the Nightingale. HEARTIES, SPACE SHOT and NYU all cleared my knowledge range.
A slog for me on this beautiful Sunday morning. Nice to hear from @Z late yesterday.
Will Oldham
In his cluing and themes, John Kugelman is a word-player, and, IMO, a terrific one, who elicits oohs of delight out of me. I sense the twinkle in John’s eyes in his puzzles, and heck, you can see it in his headshot on XwordInfo.
John sets a high bar, spending 100 hours just coming up with the theme answer set for this puzzle, per his notes. That’s before coming up with a grid design, a decent total answer set, and the cluing. Do you know how long it takes to clue a Sunday puzzle, actually coming up with novel clues rather than just repeating clues from the past? Many, many more hours.
The non-theme cluing, IMO, was one of the best parts of this puzzle – with so much spark, such as in this trio of never-before-used clues: [Shock proof?] for GASP, [Park worker?] for VALET, and [Tiger’s target] for PAR.
The theme answers that took so long for him to come up with – and I believe if you try to come up with some good ones yourself, you’ll see why – were simply lovely overall, including the world-class worth-the-price-of-admission THIS BEAR’S REPEATING for [Pooh-pooh?].
When a puzzle is a mood lifter in addition to being a brain pleaser, it’s a gift. Thank you, John, for the hard work you put into this. It sure paid off for me. I loved this!
To me, a CLONK is sharper and more metallic than a "thud." A sack of flour would land with a thud. A hammer would strike an anvil with a CLONK. So I didn't love that.
Otherwise, a fun easy Sunday.
Someone explain the "All Ows" (allows) to me, am I missing a pun? Is it ok to have the clue word in the answer like that?
I don't know bball so couldn't tell if it was 'foul tip' or 'foul tap', because I could see 'Starkaller' working too. Also didn't know my steadicams from my steadycams.
I thought a fun puzzle with unusual clues and deft puns. I like @Rex’s critique of the logic in some of the puns but think bottom line is that they were still easy to get—similar to STARKILLER being pretty obvious with a few crosses in place. RAGEROOMS had their peak of popularity a while ago in Japan and made international headlines at the time—rooms complete with bats and life-size effigies of managers where employees could take out their frustrations.
“Free Solo” is an Oscar-winning documentary about Alex Honnold climbing El Capitan. I highly recommend watching it on the biggest TV you have.
Enough of it was Wednesday-level easy so I just wandered around the grid trying to deal with the theme entries. I finally TITT in the SW - probably the last thing in the world I care about is parsing together crosses to find out the original surname for Luke Skywalker. I also had theme fatigue by that point and BACKUP COPY was going nowhere (ditto for STEADICAM crossing HEARTIES - never heard of either).
Had I persevered and stuck it out to the gory end, I still would have had a DNF since OOH, AHH, OTRO, ATRO all just look like alphabet salad to me.
I enjoyed this one much more than Rex did; in fact, this was the first time I can truly say I "enjoyed" a Sunday puzzle in maybe a couple of years. I can't explain why, but I found the themers much more clever than the typical Sunday dad-joke fare. And it never occurred that a couple of them were technically somewhat off until I came here; they were close enough for me to enjoy sussing out.
I also found it much more challenging than Rex did and much more challenging than typical Sundays. However, this might've been because I somehow wound up starting in the NE and solving clockwise -- and the grid shape made this even more difficult than usual.
Growing up in South Africa, I ate up the African adventure stories of RIDER HAGGARD (UK/colonial South Africa, 1855-1925), e.g., the wonderful "She" (an African jungle queen) and "King Solomon's Mines" (the search for), and this threw me off for a long time, until I recalled MERLE. Viva Rider Haggard's hero Alan Quartermain (before they Skywalked or Skykilled). Good old days...
We just visited Yosemite, and in the Village saw photos of Honnold's feat. Holy ****!!!
Why on the app do they occasionally tell you the puzzle theme but most of the time they don’t?
Hahaha STARKILLER was the first absolute gimme of the grid. And to learn more about ALEX Honnold I *highly* recommend the documentary Free Solo. It’s about the aforementioned first soloing of El Capitan. Incredible, Oscar-winning film.
Anyone else think of Allison Steele aka “The Nightbird” from the grand old days of late night radio in New York? Just me?
Super easy for me, and I enjoyed the themers (and, as usual, barely noticed the fill that tends to bother Rex). I think even the ones he had problems with, like BACKUP COPY and SECOND MATE were just fine. I just would have preferred a bit more struggle.
Never had time to write yesterday about the grief the HAYES/HEDER Natick cross caused me. Yeah, I guess in retrospect that the most likely connector was H, but after considerable consternation, I went with B, which also seemed plausible at the time. Oh well.
It's always interesting when the things that @Rex complains about due to their obscurity (to him) are the few answers in the grid that I thought were absolute gimmes.
STARKILLER is very well-known trivia and even if you didn't know the word as Luke's original last name, it was also the name of the big weapon in The Force Awakens.
SPACE SHOT was a gimme (I love those), NIGHT BIRD was easy, and RAGE ROOMS are definitely a thing outside of crosswords. I've got cancer and I could actually really enjoy a RAGE ROOM, I'm sure of it.
That said, I did fall into to the STEADYCAM/ELY trap. Le sigh.
No real resistance - esp. playing with Autocheck on, didn’t get bogged down with aHH vs OHH and knocked 6 minutes off my average time - but great appreciation for the difficulty in coming up with all the repeating phrases.
Pooh pooh was the best clue, but the rest were all at least fairly good, no small achievement given the parameters. Well done!
Just too many puns to make a solid puzzle. Got bored and had a mimosa instead.
thanks John for a fun, easy Sunday puzzle. I enjoyed it a lot.
It also reminded me of the 2 years in the mid-1980's that I lived in Paris Tx, the second largest Paris in the whole world!!, as locals are proud to point out. Not being born in Texas, I was more Parasite than Parisian, but I did meet lots of wonderful people. It's also the base for the Tour de Paris, a great bike ride every July that attracts up to 1700 riders. Check it out!
Great pun!
Yeah, I was mad about Eli and Steadicam because I HAD Eli and then I changed it thinking STEADI was not a thing. That really messed me up more than it should have considering I do know how to spell ELI. Agree about Hubba hubba, very bizarro. Also you don’t have to explain ARO anymore. It’s a thing.
E-BILLs are the only e-nouns that I’m willing to accept, since nearly every utility, bank, and service pesters their customers to sign up for “e-billing.”
STARKILLER was a piece of trivia I somehow knew (“It was something like Skywalker, but incongruently violent”) and saved me from the FOULTIP-MERLE mashup of things I couldn’t possibly care less about.
For a Sunday, this puzzle was top-shelf. Mostly loved it, never hated it or felt like it was a slog.
Petty nits:
There’s absolutely nothing remotely surprising about conifer and fir not sharing an etymological root. Isle and Island not sharing a root is surprising, fir and conifer not having a relation is just another bad entry in one of the worst genres of crossword clues.
No clue about HEARTIES, but I assume it’s ****another**** baseball clue.
Hated the cluing for ALEX. It was fairly clued, but cluing a common name with “first person to climb a thing” opens an entire Pandora’s box of interminable trivia.
Disagree with CLONK. ASFARAS you can have standardized onomatopoeia, CLONK ain’t it.
Hey All !
My comments didn't make it Yesterday. Let's see what happens...
Puz is 22 wide, in case ya missed it. If you have an even numbered Themer/Revealer in the center row, you need an even number of spaces for symmetry purposes, ergo either add a column, or take out a column. So constructor can do 22x21, or 20x21.
Impressed at the wide open corners, each with an 11 letter Themer in them. Kudos on getting any sort of clean fill.And the other Longs in all corners are solid and fun things.
On a 30 day streak! Sure, a few Googs we're needed here and there, but I'm taking the Streak as a win/I be smart thing. Har.
Good puz, fun Theme. Nice Sunday start, AS FAR AS I'm concerned. 😁
Five F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Theme is clever, and themers have more hits than misses with the best one saved for the middle. Better than average fill. My thumbs up higher than OFL. Good job!
Why is it the official beer of the red Sox "familiarly"? Isn't it just called SAM ADAMS?? Familiarly had me thinking it was some local nickname for the beer. It didn't help that I had SMUT instead if SCUM. And the fact that I have no idea what lil Abner is or who wrote it. That entire SW corner was garbage imo. Oh and I had CLANK instead of CLONK (not a word) because I have no idea who Brian Enos is. I'm guessing he's a crossword staple though.
Rex,
If you haven’t seen the Oscar-winning movie Free Solo (featuring ALEX Honnold and his astonishing climb of El Capitan), please set aside some time to watch it. One of the most literally jaw-dropping things I’ve ever seen.
I think you’ve got BACKUP COPY backwards. You say OK to BACK someone UP, and the second one is a COPY.
Easy Sunday. I really liked ONE AFTER ANOTHER and a couple of others, but several did not hit it quite so nicely for me. For example, it should be BEARS REPEATING. The 'THIS' at the front spoils it a bit. 'Hubba' is a real stretch for PANTS. Etc.
A pair of y/i dilemmas today: STEADyCAM and BENADRiL both made temporary appearances today. Fortunately, ELI was a gimme and NYU, while definitely not a gimme, is at least something that appears in puzzles a lot.
I would encourage OFL to watch Free Solo. Honnold's ascent of El Capitan has to be the greatest physical accomplishment ever.
I thought this was one of the better Sunday puzzles we have had in some time. Some nice misdirects in the clues and the themers were either excellent or at least good. The usual slow down on a Sunday from trying to read tiny numbers but in this case it was worth it.
Almost had a paper DNF because of EFILE for EBILL, which made BENDADRYL impossible, which was finally revealed by NYU , thank goodness, as Ms. SUI was no help at all.
Hey @Roo-hope you do the SB today, as it will make you happy.
Your Sunday was aces with me, JK. Just keep making more like this and I'll be a happy camper, and thanks for all the fun.
Does anyone seriously believe that Tiger Woods built a career on shooting for par?
Rex- i think Ebill is fine, still a thing. I didn't like ALLOWS as i thought it violated the cardinal rule of not having clu-ing showing up in the answer.
I agree!
I have little time to comment so I’ll just say “what @Andrew said” as general comment. I would also just say that you (@Rex) defended NANCHERLA due to fair crosses, and it appears STARKILLER has fair crosses. I don’t know about the Manson thing as a reason to scuttle the name, but wasn’t Luke partially responsible for destroying the Death Star? Might be a little too much foreshadowing with that name.
Ow, ow. And the answer is Ow? WTF?
I never realized until today that almost every vowel in cl-nk makes a thudding sound of sorts (clink, clank, clonk, clunk, but not clenk, which, of course is not a thing). Not helpful when you don’t really know Brian Eno (I wanted “May” there at first).
Same reaction. “Pin” is a better fill here.
Add me to the Ely group.
Is PDA really exhibitionism?
Very easy. Lotsa whooshing with almost no pausing.
Reasonably smooth grid, fun/amusing theme, liked it but I’d prefer a tad more push back on Sunday.
I had a great time working on this one. The theme answers aren't immediately figure-out-able, so I got a mini-OHO after each one. Every one made me laugh and I am particularly eager to tally the grumbles ALLOWS produces with the answer in the clue. It's comedy folks, there are no rules.
BENADRYL and EXLAX... those are my mirror images.
❤️ THIS BEAR'S REPEATING
Propers: 14
Places: 2
Products: 8
Partials: 17
Foreignisms: 3
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 44 of 145 (30%) {the downs, it's full of stars}
Funnyisms: 12 😅
Tee-Hee: I am going to use this joke in real life at these old-people breakfasts I seem to be attending at an alarming rate: PAIR OF PANTS = [Hubba, hubba].
Also, and more to my HORNY TOAD roots, [Dirty film]! Amirite?
Uniclues:
1 Purpose of a preacher?
2 Hip Hop festival.
3 Put a stop to students in the Big Apple yelling in their dorms.
4 HOHOHO, gawd this sucks, I should've tried harder in 10th grade.
5 GoPro for percussion enthusiast.
1 UNDRESSES MAJOR SIN
2 ONE AFTER ANOTHER RAP DUO (~)
3 END NYU RAGE ROOMS
4 MALL SANTA'S BRAIN DUMP (~)
5 DRUM SPIRIT STEADICAM
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Told God. TATTLED ON ALTAR.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Hidden Diagonal Word (HDW) clues:
1. Vigorous spirit or, in France, a moose
2. Deportment
3. Sharp flavors
4. Buzz killer at the beach?
Tons of 4-letter HDWs today in a puzzle that clocked in on the easy side for me. Had to read Rex to grok HUBBA-HUBBA. When that phrase is used at my local golf course it is in exuberant celebration of a remarkable shot--definitely not a pant!
I'll need Rex to continue to remind me about ARO; when I failed to hear the Happy Music, I identified that ARa/OTRa cross as the villain. I did get the OTRO/OHH cross correctly at the top of the words.
HDW answers:
1. ELAN (from the E in 23D, SPELT, moving down towards the SW--who "gnu" that one meaning of ELAN in French is moose?! Sorry for the missing aigu diacritical marks.)
2. MIEN (another French-y sounding word, begins with the M in 83D, AMID)
3. TANGS
4. GNAT
TANGS is the only 5-letter HDW I see in the grid; if you make it singular, you get the very nice semordnilap of TANG/GNAT! If you look, you'll find them in the extreme SE corner of today's grid.
By and by ... aka BYE-BYE
The bottom line is that I couldn't anticipate ANY of the theme answers without crosses. They ranged for me from the fabulously funny THIS BEARS REPEATING...to the rather tepid THE MUMMY RETURNS...to the what-on-earth PAIR OF PANTS. "Hubba" is many things, but a PANT it isn't. It's usually shouted, in fact.
I had DOUBLE CLuCK for "tsk, tsk" before I had DOUBLE CLICK -- and mine is funnier, even though it's not a phrase.
And the worst themer, I thought, was ALLOWS. A paltry two "ows" does not an "all" make.
Nevertheless, I thought the puzzle met its burden of providing a pleasant Sunday diversion. And it was pretty name-free too -- always a welcome plus.
"Hearties" is what a buccaneer (pirate) might call his crew, e.g. "Ahoy, me hearties!".
STARKILLER also got its due as the name of the planet-destroying weapon in Episode VII. Plus, I think it’s easy enough to suss out even for non-Star Wars nerds.
This was a fun, well-clued, mostly easy Sunday. But you would never know it was easy by seeing my grid. I wasn't on my game, I guess, and things like aHa and "goes broke" for 1A got in my way. My herd of buffalo and a complete goof on spelling BENeDRiL also got in the way. bCe for 82A, anybody?
I'm expecting a pun from @egs with MAJOR SIN.
John Kugelman, thanks for a clever, interesting Sunday puzzle.
"Probably the last thing in the world I care about is parsing together crosses to find out the original surname for Luke Skywalker."
"Hubba, hubba!", @Southside,Johnny. And also "Hear hear" while we're at it.
Somewhat amazed that Rex didn't pick up on the completely non-English word "ohh" used at 63 across. Literally not a thing, ever, and the definition of the closest word to it in English ("ooh") is as an expression of surprise, not understanding. In the words of 57 down: "Uh, no".
Went down the same i/y natick roads as @kitsef - - interesting that one of them was foreseen by Rex. With BENADRiL and no familiarity with fashion designers, that widened the natick ambit to SUI/NYU... No way to find my way to either answer. puzzle editor sleeping at the switch again, I guess, but l did love the theme and tbe witty theme answers.
Fun SunPuz theme with pretty interestin fillins. thUmbsUp.
fave themers: THISBEARSREPEATING. THE MUMMYRETURNS [schlocky].
staff weeject pick, of 36 choices: ARO.
staff 4-ject pick, of 54 choices: AERO.
other fave stuff: PARISTEXAS. BRAINDUMP. EYEMASKS. STEADICAM. ITSABET. GASP clue.
Thanx for the good, good time, Mr. Kugelman dude.
Masked & Anonymo12Us
**gruntz**
I'll second all the recommendations for "Free Solo", but I have to admit I watched a lot of it by peeking out from between my fingers. Just yikes!
“SAM” short for “Samuel”
AS FAR AS I'm concerned, Alison Steele will always be the NIGHTBIRD.
I posted this comment awhile ago, ut it hasn't appeared sorry if this is a dupe!
HEARTIES. At the end of one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies (the third one?), Captain Jack Sparrow is alone in a small boat with the compass (a compass that doesn't point North, but points to what you want the most), and he says/sings "Drink up me HEARTIES, yo-ho."
I've heard the word before, in various other oiratey things, but until today didn't know it meant friends/compadres/compatriots. The things one learns from crosswords (and movies.)
RooMonster Arrr Guy
The above comment is me. Blogger somehow lost of me.
SI, SI......... Look over?
I loved this. Sorry that @Rex didn't know STARKILLER without crosses. How dare they put in an answer that he has to work at! Thanks, John Kugelman.
To John Kugelman:
I went to your Constructor's Note mostly to find out if the hilarious THIS BEARS REPEATING had been the original impulse behind the theme. When I got there, I found out that you had to leave two real beauties on the cutting room floor:
[Meme?] = I AM BESIDE MYSELF
[Wee-wee?] = LITTLE BY LITTLE
I adore them both! Sometimes, alas, the inconveniences posed by grid design and the requirements of theme answer symmetry really get in the way of some really inspired and funny and delightful ideas -- don't they? Big sigh.
Samuel...
I started out thinking this gonna be fun. But then -my bubble bursts - what is NAOH? Had MOPS for MATS, how does PAIR OF PANTS translate to HUBBA? & hope to one day finally remember ARO. Oh, and RAGE ROOMS? Who does the cleaning up after someone who goes into one?
I already had the i and o in place when I read the clue for 62A. My first thought "I do" seemed in line with the humor in the puzzle.
Was disappointed when "aperture" going down proved it had to be IPO.
I'm with Lewis in his delight in the word play and with the next commenter in his objection to "clonk" for "thud".
This was above average for a Sunday, and I just loved THIS BEAR'S REPEATING. And THE MUMMY RETURNS is pretty good. However I finished with BENADRIL crossing NIU because I just hate college abbrev's and just looked at it thinking: Northern Ireland University? And then the double whammy of FSU and FLA... bah.
"The Shining"... that carpet! It's actually the scariest thing in the movie.
@Roo I see your comment and I hope it stays. I dunno why you seemed to be blacklisted yesterday; I don't remember anything in your comments that merited it.
Typeover: RESURRECT before RESURGENT until I remembered that a verb is not an adjective.
CLONK is absolutely Not A Thing. Objects coming together may clank or clunk, but never CLONK.
This was an easy puzzle for me, and I appreciated the clever theme. NYU was a gimme, but ARO was not; we were not sure if it was por OTRO lado or por OTRA lado... but ended up guessing correctly. Thanks for this pleasant diversion, John!
Allison Steele …
I thought that must have been tough to come up with this theme set - thanks Lewis for edifying.
I saw Free Solo, but didn’t remember the name. I understood the movie as being about obsession and its proximity to mental illness as much as it was about achievement. And about the sacrifice and disregard for oneself and others in order to do something truly extraordinary. It was also a tough watch for someone with mild acrophobia.
I think the buddy-buddy clue works parsed as “the buddy of a buddy” is the second mate, so we need both buddies as clued.
I think having “papadum” at an Indian restaurant kept me from seeing SAMADAMS as two words. Not sure what the formal is for this if this is the familiar. Also, Sam Adam’s beer seems a little high brow to be the official beer of a baseball team.
OW! OW! I'm surprised that Rex didn't SCOWL at this clue repetition. I totally agree with him about the bottom themers. Bottom of the puzzle and bottom of the barrel.
UMP is UMPire, for short, and the clue requires that. More NEED for an editor.
A lot of trips to the drug store today, for BENADRIL, SECRET, EYE MASKS and EXLAX. Picked up some ICE there, too.
OW! OW! I'm surprised that Rex didn't SCOWL at this clue repetition. I totally agree with him about the bottom themers. Bottom of the puzzle and bottom of the barrel.
UMP is UMPire, for short, and the clue requires that. More NEED for an editor.
A lot of trips to the drug store today, for BENADRIL, SECRET, EYE MASKS and EXLAX. Picked up some ICE there, too.
Came here to say this.
Samuel Adams is the official name of the beer, so the clue is correct with familiarly.
Often (especially in actual cartoons) said sleazebag is panting those words.
Enough good stuff to make this one acceptable. But with some proper editing it could have been even better.
Officially, it’s Samuel Adams
Northern Illinois University establishing campuses in Shanghai and Abu Dhabi would be pretty cool though!
Samuel Adams is the official name of the beer
And I dare say not approptiate for a NYTXC.
FWIW, the Nepali flag is mathematically derived. Fascinating video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2Gne3UHKHs
Rarely comment here on Sunday, because I do the puzzle in the paper. But I loved the puns; one of the best Sundays in a long time. I guessed at the ARO/OTRO cross, and guessed right for a perfect result.
I thought it was a "cut above" Sunday, with theme answers that were fun to figure out and plenty of not-your-everyday crossword answers: PARIS TEXAS, RADIOSPEAK, HEARTIES, NIGHTBIRD, KODIAKS, APERTURE, FOUL TIP.... I agree with others that the BEAR and MUMMY were the stars of the show and PANTS a rather sorry closer. One do-over: my UPDO started out as AERO, which in former times we'd have called a malapop (wrong at 1D but right somewhere else).
Alison Steele! Yes - a name from the past :)
I also remember Frankie Crocker though I'm sure I'm the only one here who does
MERLE had me wondering, "Why not clue that based on Merle Reagle?". I used to solve his puzzles in GAMES Magazine and the San Francisco newspapers. But when I searched him, I realized that it's MERL Reagle. That search led to a link to his puzzle Gridlock, featuring two triple-21 stacks (as well as two more 21-letter answers).
I second. Blew me away too
In the Jewish version of Free Solo, it's not free, but we can get you a pretty good deal.
If you do it right.
On Free Solo, Steven Wright says he doesn't have a fear of heights, but he has a fear of widths.
The only thing I can figure is it is a VERY old thing said my men “panting” over a woman…
Me too! I was on a college radio station (Syracuse U), and all the young women tried to emulate that low-pitched, breathy, sexy Allison voice.
Enough of the anti semitic tropes, already. Thy are not funny but mean spirited
Agree! I had ENu, thinking his great grandmother was perhaps 1/4 emu, so he took the stage name ENu as a tribute to her. Made as much sense to me as any other guess, and CLuNK seemed the best.
Did anyone else look at Al Capp’s Wikipedia entry?
Anonymous 7:48 AM
Luke destroyed the death STAR near the end of the 1977 Star Wars film. Hence a star killer.
That is what Rex meant by the answer being inferable.
But whether it is a step too far into Star Wats “stanism” is a matter of opinion.
I personally liked it. Thought it was interesting to figure out the answer as I am NOT a stan and have only seen the first three movies - when they came out.
Southside Johnny
The odds are overwhelming that you have heard of “ hearties” sometime in your life.
It is a cliche used for pirates in old movies ( and maybe the new pirate movies? I haven’t seen them). Also probably in some attraction at Disney Wirld etc., based on old movies.
Usually said “me hearties” when the pirate is talking to his shipmates.
Ben H.
Tiger’s target ?
Note the question mark.
Doesn’t say anything about his career
In his long career, especially toward the end, he had trouble on SOMe holes; so on those occasions his target would be par
A crosswords answer does not have to fit all possibilities. Anyway, the question mark makes that clear.
It was a clever clue/answer as Lewis pointed out.
Yep, don't shrug ALEX Honnold, Free Solo was an epic accomplishment and is a spectacular documentary.
Liam
Did yo see the ?
If the answer were pin
No question mark.
Sam about Starkiller. Inferable yes
But the movie will always be simply Star Wars to me!
That’s what I saw on the marquee and the screen when I saw it in 1977.
Anonymous 11:22AM
Ohh….(drawn out) , often with I see tacked on
Is certainly an expression I have heard many times. How to write it is another question.
Why is annoying to many is it just as easily be represented differently.
It isn’t fair to say it doesn’t exist but there is no standard form.
Anonymous 1:17 am
Clonk
Millions of people disagree with you.
Look it up
FWIW
Colin
lado
In Spanish it is usually OTRO before a word that ends in o as does lado.
DNF
Because I didn’t go back to correct oho across. Made no sense down and the wrong answer anyway oh well.
Otherwise easy.
Ow ow to ALLOWS made perfect sense to me. The clue has all ows no other letters.
The appearance of ows in the answer bothers me not at all.
Don’t agree with Rex’s criticism of some of the theme answers. It depends on how you parse them As others have explained.
NYU. The answer came to me fairly quickly because life pattern
of reading the Times every day ( a bit obsessed maybe?) and NYU was criticized by dying an article for having a branch in Shanghai. NYU does appear often in this puzzle FWIW.
Eli v Ely. It is a total guess if you don’t know either the person or the camera!
Same. ATRO looked totally believable.
Got to the last few rows and thought "No cat clues today", and there it was: "Some turkeys and tabbies"
I suspect NIGHTBIRD was originally clued referring to the running joke in Star Trek: The Next Generation that we never get to hear Commander Riker play the song Nightbird; but the editors decided that trivia from a show from the 80s was too obscure, so we got owls. Starkiller good, Nightbird bad.
I like both Star Wars and The Shining, but would not consider myself a film buff by any means, I don’t delve into trivia and behind the scenes, etc. but these movies are both so old that I absolutely knew STARKILLER and STEADICAM. You just can’t help but come across them. I didn’t think the Star Wars one was any more niche than the other.
Yes! I don't get it either. Answer is in the clue!
Oh yes, I have no problem with that clue, just noting it was hard for me. And I know Star Wars well, but had a hard time believing Lucas would have picked such a heavy handed name!
Still annoyed about the ow ow thing though.
Enough of the anti Steven Wright tropes, already. They are not funny but mean spirited.
This one was tough for me. Top of the grid went ok then it steadily declined towards the bottom. Alex Honnold wasn’t too arcane, but I was into climbing for a bit. Also loved Star Wars as a kid but Starkiller?! No joy. Loved Paris Texas, found a lot of the other clues awkward in wording.
Did enjoy seeing Merle Haggard, if only to recall the excellent Onion headline “Merle Haggard Haggard”
Answering "aro" (aromantic) for "queer identity" clue comes across as homophobic to me. As if LGBTQ people can't be romantic!
The use of "ow" in both the clue and the answer is what I came here for. I expected half the write up to be Rex raging against the blatant FOUL
RageRooms are amazing and always worth it. Treat yourself. And good luck.
Random musings:
1. Given how much Rex rants against typical CITYSTATE answers, I was surprised to see he just mentioned liking PARISTEXAS and didn't say 'Finally, a CITYSTATE clue that actually makes sense!' (the usual complaint is that there is no need for disambiguation [e.g., there is no WACO other than WACOTEXAS], so why bother saying more than WACO?).
2. Similar to many other commenters, I was also surprised to see no pushback from Rex at the ALLOWS answer when OW was in the clue (twice!).
3. Even if people don't know Brian Eno from his output (member of Roxy Music, solo rock artist, pioneer of ambient music, producer for bands including U2, Talking Heads, Devo, etc., etc.), he has appeared in the NYT crossword on such a regular basis the last few years, I'm amazed anyone who posts here doesn't automatically think ENO any time they see "ambient" or "Brian" in a clue! Kinda similar to I.M. Pei a few years ago—you don't see him in the crosswords as much these days, but for years, seeing 'architect' in a clue triggered a Pavlovian response of 'PEI' in my head.
Not sure how the bit of movie trivia about steadicam, which Rex loved, is any different than the movie trivia he didn’t, Starkiller, but I liked them both!
Re: STARKILLER: There was, about half a century ago, a prolific sci-fi short-story writer named Somtow Sucharitkul, who was regularly published in Isaac Asimov's monthly magazine. In his universe, one could create a "tachyon bubble," a craft that offered virtually instant travel anywhere in the galaxy--but only by "killing" a star. If you can get hold of any of S.S.' work, do.
That was a pleasant memory for me in today's clever offering. All themers represent duality using a different expression every time. The one big stretch, clue-wise, was hubba-hubba. A tad licentious, to boot. Maybe should've kicked that one out.
Fill is decent, marred by the infamous RMK* GMINOR. Still, birdie.
Wordle birdie as well.
*Random musical key
P.S. Can't let the day go by without a shout-out to my Eagles' opening-week victory over Green Bay. Fly Eagles fly!!
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