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Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (if it felt slow, keep in mind the grid is an oversized 16x15)
Theme answers:
- MINOR THIRD (22A: Musical interval like C to E flat)
- "SO WHERE DO WE STAND?" (5D: Question from an impatient negotiator)
- HOLDS OUT HOPE (53A: Keeps the faith)
- IKEA STORE (42D: Furniture outlet with an average size of 300,000 square feet, or five football fields)
Ariel Zev Emanuel (born 1961) is an American businessman and the CEO of Endeavor, an entertainment and media agency that owns the UFC and WWE. He was a founding partner of the Endeavor Talent Agency and was instrumental in shaping its June 2009 merger with the William Morris Agency. [...] Emanuel is the brother of former mayor of Chicago, Presidential Chief of Staff and U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel, American oncologist and bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel, and sister Shoshana Emanuel. [...]Emanuel's relationships with his clients, coupled with his stature in the industry, has led to various homages and parodies over the years, including Bob Odenkirk's character Stevie Grant on The Larry Sanders Show, and Ari Gold, played by Jeremy Piven on the HBO television show Entourage. In 2011, Emanuel co-founded TheAudience with Sean Parker and Oliver Luckett.
An April 2002 lawsuit by agent Sandra Epstein against Endeavor Agency brought forth accusations by Epstein and other Endeavor employees against Emanuel. In the court filings, Emanuel is alleged to have allowed a friend to operate a pornographic website out of Endeavor's offices. According to Epstein, Emanuel made racist and anti-gay remarks and prevented her from sending a script about Navy SEALs to actor Wesley Snipes, saying: "That is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Everyone knows that blacks don't swim." Emanuel disputed these accusations at the time. Emanuel settled Epstein's claims for $2.25 million. (wikipedia)
• • •
Perhaps because the theme was architecturally demanding, the fill got a little iffy in places. Lots of places. If I could throw one answer into the sea and then retrieve said answer and shoot it into the sun, that answer would be EDUCE (12D: Extract, as from data). I have a grudge against this dumb-ass word (a word I’ve only ever seen in crosswords). It's not that it's not a word, it's that it's so displeasing to the eye and ear. Also, arbitrary Latin plurals bug the hell out of me ("arbitrary" in the sense that yes, that is how you pluralize the word in Latin, but we're not speaking Latin, are we? So stop). I'm looking at you, TOGAE, lol what a dumb-looking word. Really hated "SAY AAH," because the length of "AAH" and the "A"-to-"H" proportions, again, totally arbitrary. I've seen "SAY AH" in puzzles a bunch (24 times!). But now we can also apparently say "AAH" (this is the 3rd time). So far no "SAY AHH," as "AHH" is generally the way you spell the sound of satisfaction or pleasure, not the sound you make at a doctor's exam, although AHH was once clued [Something to say to a doctor], so you never know. What I do know is that "SAY AAH" makes me roll my eyes. Roll out as many "A"s as you want I guess, why stop at two? Other unpleasant moments included OLAFI and CDR and lots of plurals of things that you don't normally think about in the plural. BOS'NS, for instance (34D: Cap'n's subordinates). Have you ever seen more than one at a time? Ever? I think I've only ever seen one ... in The Tempest ... and I'm not even sure I saw him. I just know someone shouts the word early on. And OKRAS? Never a fan of that plural. We're having fried okra, not OKRAS. And we're drinking Stoli, not STOLIS, come on. From awkward plurals we go to the rarely seen awkward singular: E-SPORT. Your forte is E-SPORT? Which sort of sport, Mort? One where you teleport? From court to court? I think you mean E-SPORTS, plural, which is the name of the category in question. That is the thing. E-SPORT is like ... a single ARREAR (which, thankfully, this puzzle brought more than one of) (IN ARREARS (38D: Financially behind)).
I had a couple major vowel hesitations. Was it PRIME or PRIMO!? (36D: A-one). Gotta check the crosses to find out (it's PRIMO). And as for SUGAR MOMMA ... wow, no (61A: Spouse to a trophy husband, perhaps). It's SUGAR MAMA, right? MOMMA looks so weird. The only time I'd ever use that spelling is when referring to the long-running 20th-century comic strip "MOMMA." Looks like "SUGAR MAMA" googles about 3x better than "SUGAR MOMMA," but my problem today wasn't MOMMA v. MAMA but MOMMA v. MAMMA, which also seemed possible. Isn't that how it's spelled in "MAMMA MIA!"? Yes, yes it is. Did you know that the phrase "SUGAR MOMMY" googles best of all the "SUGAR [slang for mother]" options? It's true. It googles slightly better than "SUGAR MAMA," though that may be because it is (apparently!) the title of a song.
Bullets:
- 58D: Had the best time, say (WON) — oof I did not understand this for many seconds after I got it. The clue is not referring to "having the best time" as in "enjoying oneself immensely" but rather "having the best time in the race you are competing in."
- 65D: Very basic cleaner (LYE) — "basic" here refers to pH level. LYE has a pH level around 13 or 14—anything over 7 is "basic"; don't normally love the "successive paired clues" gambit, but I did like how the meaning of "basic" changes from one answer (63D: Basic cleaner: MOP) to the next.
- 37A: Aunt, in Italian (ZIA) — reflexively wrote in TIA. I figured "Italian, Spanish, both romance languages, how different can they be?" Did not see that "Z" coming. Luckily I have some (vague) idea who ZOROASTER is (37D: Founder of a Persian religion)
See you next time.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
One request — can we stop with EELY at long last? No one in the history of the English language has ever picked up something slippery and said “wow, this is really eely.”
ReplyDeleteAgreed. I loathe this word.
DeleteIf you ban one word, where do you stop? It's an eely slope
Delete
ReplyDeleteMedium for a Thursday. My big hiccup occurred before I figured out the theme, when I thought 44A and 48A together might spell out STOLIchNa[ya]
TOGAE. 'Nuff said. Oof. The theme was kinda neat. OK. But nothing can forgive TOGAE. Why?
ReplyDeletePlayed very easy to me, but I didn't like the inconsistency in reading direction with the WEST rebus: none of the other directions require reversing direction once you start (e.g. HOLDS-OUT-HOPE runs left to right cleanly through the turn) but SOWHEREDOWESTAND requires reading down, then left from O through WEST, and then picks up again and reads right from WEST! I wanted the answer to incorporate the letters TSEW in that order to maintain consistency with how the all the other clue answers were parsed.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, SUGAR MOMMA/Y was pretty mean when crossed, at the A/Y junction no less, with ZOE SALDANA. Not knowing the phrase, but being well aware of SUGAR DADDY, it seemed logical that the analogue would be SUGAR MOMMY, and SALDYNA is no less plausible a surname than SALDANA.
Agree completely! Tried to parse SOWHEREDOTSEWAND for about 5 minutes.
DeleteLooking at how the puzzle works more closely, I can see that there isn't actually a reading flow issue, since I didn't pick up on how the reading flow is supposed to change along with the direction - WEST is supposed to be read W-E-S-T in a westerly i.e. rightward direction on the turn - since the grid layout just happens to make the NORTH/SOUTH/EAST fills read normally (without apparently having to reverse reading direction as described initially). The web puzzle accepted filled out rebus ("WEST" instead of just "W") and filling them in normally made it appear that "WEST" is inconsistent when it isn't; I'd therefore expect that the puzzle would accept "TSEW" filled in the W circle, as well.
DeleteBut you had to “follow directions” so you had to read “west” right?
DeleteC’mon - The theme (40A) is that “what one MUST do” is “FOLLOW DIRECTIONS” - So the theme answer with “north” turns NORTH, etc., which means the theme answer pivoting on “west” turns WEST, or left as we understand maps. Far from irksome, this was brilliant!
DeleteTrying way too hard to be clever. Finished, did not enjoy it, at all!
ReplyDeleteHad fun with this - although once the trick fell the other three were gimmes. Agree that IKEA STORE was the weakest.
ReplyDeleteOverall fill varied. Totally down with the big guy on both OKRAS and the unforgivable TOGAE. @Z would get a kick out those longs downs today. Liked CRUSHED ON and the full OSCAR WILDE.
Enjoyable Thursday morning solve.
APB was the jam in the early 80s
I hated this puzzle today. Passionately hated it, worse than a tin of cold mushy peas. It so discombobulated me that I could scarcely eat my breakfast. Even looking at your finished puzzle, I still couldn’t find “out-hope” or “e-stand” or “north” anywhere!! Ugh, ugh, ugh.
ReplyDeleteI hated it too
DeleteMe, too! No fun at all, just confusion!! π€¨
DeleteThis was anything but easy for me. Had almost all the letters but still didn't pick up the theme. Was thinking of "follow directions" in some other sense. Finally googled to get SUI and ZOROASTER (because I was stuck on TIA) and got it. I think what held me back was that IKEASTORE seemed like it could just be IKEA and the rest of the themers were not obvious.
ReplyDeleteI struggled similarly. I had IKEA, MINOR, and HOLDSOUT as my theme answers thinking the theme was just directions that weren’t finished. Which led me to think the last was SOWHEREDOWESIGN or something similar. Seems silly in retrospect but that’s where I was
DeleteOKRAS are the favorite food of deers and mooses.
ReplyDeleteRight! Growing up in the North, okra was never on the menu, and my few experiences of it were only as a slimy boiled mess. But when I moved to Maryland I learned how to fry it, a very different experience and a great treat, but it was fried okra, not fried okras. For those readers who think this vegetable to be disgusting, slice the pods fairly thinly, moisten with a little water to get the sap flowing, then toss in a mixture of equal parts of white flour and fine cornmeal, add some salt and as much cayenne as you can tolerate and fry in hot oil until golden. Eat hot, preferably while downing a cold IPA. This will make a convert out of any okra-hater.
DeleteAm I the first person to post a recipe on this blog? π
The lack of symmetry in the compass points was a minor flaw imo. IKEA STORE was a bigger problem.
ReplyDeleteUgly grid with ZOESALDANA, ZOROASTER, BOSNS, TOGAE and the like. I still don’t get the theme - MINOR looks like it turns south for example, and I lost (actually I never saw) the TH part of THIRD - I just see IRD when I look north of the circled N. Bizarre. Anyway, at least this constructor is doing his best to keep Thursdays deeply entrenched atop of my “least favorite days of the week list”. What an unfortunate slog - still puzzled at the size of the fan base for gimmick puzzles. I just have to accept that I’m an outlier and move on.
ReplyDeleteI’m with you. I like crossword puzzles for WORD play, not gimmicks, trivia, or name-dropping.
DeleteYesterday’s was so much FUNFUNFUN (especially with Sir Hillary’s bonus clues).
ReplyDeleteThis just seemed like a Thursday Thud. Certainly by comparison…
Yesterday was Wednesday Weak. Today was much better.
DeleteI liked the theme idea but agree with Rex that the execution was not well done. I didn’t like that the rebus/direction squares were not symmetrical in the grid - or a little more symmetrical at least. Maybe that’s asking alot of a constructor, but… I loved SOWHEREDOWESTAND as an answer but it was hugely awkward going in the WEST direction.
ReplyDeleteAgree with the TOGAE haters, ugh! I also did not know ARI or SUI, and HEMIS was a WoE.
OSCARWILDE sure did hit the nail on the head!
Was really slowed down on SOWHEREDOWESTAND because I just assumed (and didn’t question for too long) that WEST would be incorporated backwards to maintain the visual flow.
ReplyDeleteThis makes no sense. You do have to read it backward (west). Just as you have to read all the other answers in their respective directions. The west answer couldn’t have worked any other way than it does here.
DeleteI believe Alex means reading the word WEST itself backward.
DeleteI entered it as WEST in the rebus box, which resulted in the ugly DNA[WEST] instead of DNA[TSEW] but the puzzle accepted it.
DeleteI was looking at the DNAWEST and all I could think was what the hell kind of answer would end with TSE WAND?? I very much wanted the letters to flow in that direction like all of the other theme answers did!
DeleteUgh. Ugh. As Rex says: if you want to do NESW those things better line up REAL nice like an actual compass. Having them askew through the grid made it impossible to see, and FOLLOW DIRECTIONS? Sweet baby Cheeses, that didn't help at all, that revealer made me physically angry.
ReplyDeleteI had the puzzle 99% filled and had to come here to find out what the hell it needed for me to finish. Having DRI_ at 8D and DNA_ at 46A didn't exactly scream the answer at me, and SOWHEREDO_... that could be anything! "I sign?" "You work?" I don't know!
It’s a perfect revealer.
DeleteOh and I just lucked out that I'd heard of ZOROASTER somewhat recently, otherwise that's a sure-fire Natick for a lot of solvers on that Z. Hoooooooof.
ReplyDeleteThis was a terrible experience. Just not fun at all.
ReplyDeleteWhat a terrific idea for a theme, to rebusize the four major directions and have them instruct which way to turn. Elegant and never-done-before.
ReplyDeleteNot surprising, given the constructor, whose puzzles shine with devious wit, humor, and skill. I smiled inside and out when I saw his name atop this puzzle. Simeon has a bent for Thursdays; 10 of his 14 NYT puzzles have fallen on that day.
This puzzle kept me guessing until close to the end, and that’s what I want. I don’t want to crack the gimmick early on and suddenly have the rest of the puzzle fill in in a flood.
I love sparks of wit in the cluing, which elevate the solving experience. Today it showed up for me in the clues for BEADS, RED, LYE, ERSE, and the most lovely [Had the best time, say], for WON.
I also love sparks of freshness that come from debut NYT answers, and there were eight today, including the terrific FOLLOW DIRECTIONS and SO WHERE DO WE STAND.
I liked the [Very basic cleaner] double clue for LYE and MOP. Simeon could have done it another way, cluing MOP and MATEY with [Term for a swab]. I also liked ACME sitting right at the tippy top.
Another sweet one from your fertile mind, Simeon, involving and crackling with wit. Thank you so much for making this!
Starting out a solve with ACME EELY NEAP isn’t exactly promising, but the trick was fun to figure out. I didn’t know ARI and had no idea whether we were dealing with a MAJOR or MINOR interval, so I had to leave that part of the grid for later. I also had GORGE for DODGE, thinking of Challenger Deep which isn’t even a GORGE. Once I had FOLL- it was easy to see FOLLOW and then DIRECTIONS and then what the gimmick was.
ReplyDeleteI noticed all the clunky fill… except TOGAE. I filled BEADS first, so when I got to 52D, I typed in T-O-G-A and my brain just asumed that the pre-filled letter I had was an S. I can see people getting Naticked at BOSNS and WTA crossing STOLIS. Maybe the grid could’ve been made easier to fill with an extra pair of black squares breaking the stacks of 9s in the NW and SE. That would result in a 79-word grid which IMO is fine for a 15x16.
ZIA is basically the same as the common crosswordese TIA, but it’s not common crosswordese because of that Z. I liked seeing ZOROASTER but I don’t think that Z was worth it.
Sorry, I’ve never heard of ZOESALDANA. That and the PRIMO/PRIME/PRIMA cross made HOLDSOUTHOPE a near Natick for me.
ReplyDeleteI can forgive a lot for a puzzle that has MINOR THIRD in it. Very nice music reference.
ReplyDeleteAgreed! Actually I had a moment of wanting it to be MEDIANT, Eb being the mediant in the key of C-, but that's more of a scale degree than a "musical interval" and of course wouldn't work in the puzzle's scheme. Maybe another puzzle, someday. A music theory-geek terminology theme! SUBDOMINANT for a marquee answer! Nah. Or is it naah.
DeleteWell I liked this one a lot. Basically had everything filled in but the circles and puzzling over how they functioned but I know what a MINORTHIRD is and some staring at that one led to NORTH, which was a major aha!, and then the rest were obvious. As @Lewis points out, you need to FOLLOWDIRECTIONS to read the themers, NORTH goes up and so on. Elegant.
ReplyDeleteToday's highlights included knowing ZOROASTER and guessing that the quote sounded like OSCARWILDE.
Today's who dat? was ZOESALDANA. Good thing I now what a ZOOT suit is.
Agree that some plurals were painful (OKRAS, BOSN'S) but for me at least the end product was worth it.
Interesting concept and well-executed, SS. Some Say they didn't care for this one, but I say I did. Thanks for all the fun.
First puzzle ever where I completely filled in the themes using crosses and the letters NESW from the revealer—and thus finished the puzzle—without ever understanding the themed answers.
ReplyDeleteThis was just awful. Can somebody puh-leeze just work through ONE entry, from clue, through trickery, to answer? I can't do even one. These are not crossword puzzles. They are word games of an indeterminate genre, and I just *hate* them.
ReplyDeleteDNF here. I also wrote in TIA and, unlike Rex, didn’t know ZOROASTER from tOROASTER.
ReplyDeleteHey All !
ReplyDeleteToughie here. Took forever to see what in tarhooties was supposed to go in the circles. For the Revealer, had FOLLOW_I__C____, and the ole brain was taunting me, like "Haha! I'm not going to let you figure this out!" After finally getting ZOE, was able to trick the brain into seeing DIRECTIONS, and finally the lightbulb. Looked at the NORTH one, saw it would work with a Rebussed NORTH, and promptly filled in the other three.
But man, was flailing pretty good for a bit there.
Did notice the 16 wide grid, so apparently the ole brain sees whatever the hell it wants, but leaves me in the dark on other stuff. Silly brain.
Wasn't sure whether to but in WEST or TSEW in that circle. Stayed with regular WEST, and got the Happy Music.
Nice concept, good puz, stirred up the gray cells nicely. Almost had BEADS of sweat form, but powered through. Har.
Happy Thursday!
One F
RooMonster
DarrinV
Can we please stop adding the word "on" to "crushed" and "hated"?? So inelegant. "I crushed on her" ... "I hated on him"....ridiculous!
ReplyDeleteOK. I saw a really cute girl and i crushed her.
DeleteI agree! You can have a crush on a girl, not “crush on” her. This kind of crush is a noun!! And you hate someone, you don’t “hate on” them.
DeleteOkrae?
ReplyDeleteSolved without ever figuring out the themer, which sucked in both concept and execution.
ReplyDeleteJust need to reference Baby Mama to know what that answer should have been.
ReplyDeleteWEVE might be the ugliest contraction without the apostrophe. Maybe ITD.
Yeah, OKRAS is bad. In usage, most treat okra as uncountable, like broccoli.
Constructor is usually hit or miss for me, this puzzle was the latter.
Got the gimmick pretty early but like Rex it took me a bit of a while to figure out SOWHEREDOWESTAND because the "-" fill has to be read backwards. shouldn't that be DNA[TSEW]? Does it work if you fill it that way? Didn't think of it until I got the completion so I can't try it. Looks like DNA[WEST] in my solve, which is even awkwarder than all those pluralized nouns that you never see in the plural. BOSNS, OKRAS etc.Those and the big proper name blocker at 31D, ZOESALDANA, certainly upped the irritation-to-fun ratio near the tipping point. Lot of *ack* *flinch* fill. Timing wise it came up as easy for me 13:48, so there's that I guess.
ReplyDeleteI just wanted to bring up the mini and how awful a clue and answer "Hybrid fruit similar to an "aprium" : pluot" is.
ReplyDeleteI DID NOT UNDERSTAND A SINGLE THING THAT WAS GOING ON IN THIS PUZZLE!!! "Oh, thanks a lot," I said to 40A when it told me to FOLLOW DIRECTIONS. "What a great big help you are!"
ReplyDeleteIf you're spatial relations-challenged as I am, perhaps this was as impossible for you as it was for me. I filled in everything but the circles and the squares immediately around them and then came here to find out what the bleep was going on.
With the answers right in front of me, I sort of see how it works. It's all very intricately done, isn't it? But it's just like my lifelong interactions with maps. Put the map in front of me and I know where everything is. Take the map away from me and it all immediately vanishes. Poof.
This puzzle was above my pay grade.
Hi, Nancy! Found you :-) but I still haven't figured out how to sign up!
DeleteHi, Nancy. This is sotto voce, still trying to contact you through here, with no luck!
Delete@Sotto Voce -- I think you need a Google email account in order to get your name in blue. I don't really remember how I did it -- it was 10 years ago, but I do have a Google email as well as my (much more used) Yahoo account. I suggest you put up a comment early on tomorrow's blog asking for help and I'm sure some people far more tech-savvy than I am (a very low bar) will offer help.
DeleteAmazing! We have a new (unofficial) record-holder for the longest Hidden Diagonal "Word" (HD"W") in crossword history--a whopping 13 letters!
ReplyDeleteHere's the clue:
Fly from St. Louis to Atlanta
(Answer below)
Yes, this one took longer for me than the usual Thursday, and it somehow didn't speed up much once I understood the gimmick.
As the grid appears at the top of Rex's column today, I see that the four directional answers are indicated by their initials (N, S, E, and W), not spelled out rebus-style. That gives us the very, very odd couple combo of late President Eisenhower and Pooh's sad friend. IKE, meet EORE (sic).
I agree with Rex that a more elegant effort would have placed the four directions in a symmetrical alignment, but at least they are in their proper spatial relationships (N is north of the others, E is East, etc.). And the asymmetry did make possible the longest Hidden Diagonal "Word" in history and the answer to the clue, Fly from St. Louis to Atlanta:
SOAR SOUTH EAST (SOAR begins at 69A and moves to the NE, where it conveniently runs into the SOUTH rebus and continues to EAST.
It may not mean much to you, but I CARE.
I'll FOLLOW DIRECTIONS and see myself out
DNF because I had _IA and thought it had to be TIA. Never heard of ZOROASTER, so TOROASTER seemed odd, but plausible enough. I was more worried about that ending R than the starting T, for sure.
ReplyDeleteAlso had TOGAs and BsADS. Wanted deetS for small things to sweat originally. I think I was combining "don't sweat the details" and "don't sweat the small stuff." Then I thought, ads in general are small details to sweat, I suppose, and BS ads would be even smaller things to sweat. I was kind of imagining watching ad-supported streaming TV and having to put up with the BS ads before the show starts. Didn't feel right, but I was already pretty sure I had a mess-up somewhere else.
Also speculatively put in glean for "extract, from data" with no crosses. That's how much I was struggling for a while!
I had the same experience as Rex's. I was sure "tia" was an Italian aunt, but finally remembered ZOROASTER. Frustrating, because I had figured out the trick fairly quickly. Never heard of HEMIS, so I had "semis" for a long time (because large vehicles are semi(s)).
ReplyDeleteThemes which have to be explained almost always WEAR me OUT and this was no exception. The overall experience was unpleasant and - to borrow a term from @Anon at 6:52 - left me feeling very discombobulated.
ReplyDeleteI got on the right track at 42D but only had the rebus of EA which gave me IKEA and because the 49A clue was a blank, it appeared to be correct. How was I supposed to know I needed to put a (ST)ORE there? So since a two-letter rebus appeared to be the trick, I proceeded to do the same with the other circles and of course, got nowhere. I stumbled around for a while longer, wondered what on earth OKRAS are, and finally decided I’d had enough frustration for one day. At which point I sounded the BUGLE of defeat and said “puzzle, meet @Nancy’s Wall.”
Wow, this puzzle kind of beat my butt. Yes, easy-medium for most of the “regular” clues, but even though I got the whole NSEW thing my brain just would not let me see the real answers. For instance, all I could see in my minds eye was MINORTHRID when I tried to actually make the theme work for me. I blame staying up too late after playing pickleball for this! I think it’s a brilliant concept, and I just don’t get angry while I’m working a crossword. Is there a gene that causes that?
ReplyDeleteI briefly started with Zoey (as in Deschanel) then changed to ZOESALDANA. I know her because I’ve seen Avatar and Guardians of the Galaxy, but found this interesting blurb before I came here: As of 2024, she [ZOE] is the second highest-grossing film actress.
This landed a bit flat with me. Because I had no idea what was going on with the circles or hyphen clues, I just filled in anything I could, and the revealer fell quickly. From there, it was a pretty ho-hum trip. Sure, it would have been prettier with a symmetrical, weather-vane-style layout of the rebus squares, but at least [NORTH] was the northmost, [WEST] the westmost, and so on. But even beautiful symmetry wouldn't have made my solving experience any more enjoyable.
ReplyDeleteNot sure I understand the issue/comments on the WEST and NORTH squares. Because those two require a turn that goes "backward" (leftward or up) the rebus can't agree with both the pre-turn and the post-turn component. DNA[WEST] looks weird, but so would SOWHEREDO[TSEW]. I don't believe one is better than the other. Maybe the software should have accepted both, but that's all that could be asked.
Other stuff:
-- I loved the clues for BUGLE and WON.
-- TOGAE? Really? No more of this, please. What's next: "I don't use Oxford commae?" "I really enjoy Finnish saunae?" "I slugged down too many Zimae last night?"
-- Someday I will remember whether the Norwegian monarchs are OLAF or OLAV, but not today. My suspicion is that they are whatever a crossword constructor needs them to be.
-- Not only is ESPORT not a good singular, it's not even a sport. It's a game, like poker. It drives me nuts that outlets like ESPN can't resist featuring competitive games played by non-athletes and non-competitions featuring real athletes (hello, WWE). True sports have to have both -- genuine athletes and genuine competition. (Cue golf haters...)
As a Briton, my introduction to the concept of a difference between "sport" and "sports" came from a Daily Show segment mocking then-presidential candidate Mitt Romney for saying he likes "sport", because that apparently connotes upper-class things like yachting and polo, whereas "sports" is for your baseball and football and all the regular popular games. In the UK, sport is just sport. Always nice to learn something new!
DeleteESPORTS (or ESPORT) is not itself a game comparable to poker; it refers to a class of competitive videogame activities such as team LoL/fighting games/etc. Many ESPORT (ugh) participants are in fact athletically fit since physical conditioning helps greatly with stamina/performance even in activities (such as team LoL) that are sedentary.
ReplyDeleteEsport is a thing. In fact, it is a recruitable varsity sport at many colleges and universities.
Delete@Rex says "I had a couple major vowel hesitations." I guess eventually he had some major vowel movements.
ReplyDeleteI think SUGARMOMMy is far more apropos (sorry @Southside. It means "appropriate to the situation") since it is derived from sugar daddy.
Sorry if I seem a little grouchy today, but I drank 6 STOLIS last night and got my ASSET by Mrs. Egs when I stumbled in at 2:00 am.
This played super easy for me, but I still thought it was a wonderful revealer for a really cool theme. Thanks, Simeon Seigel.
@egs πππ vowel movement! LOL
DeletePer scientific studies in 2014, it turns out that EMUS are not cousins of Kiwis. Just another editorial error.
ReplyDeleteMedium. Most of this was pretty easy. Figuring out the theme was a tad tougher, especially MINOR THIRD which was a WOE. ZIA was also a WOE and the Z was my last entry.
ReplyDeleteFun and moderately tricky with some fine long downs, liked it although @Rex is right about some of the fill…TOGAE, OKRAS…
Wow, I thought was very clever and, hence, fun!
ReplyDeleteHad the reveal in a heartbeat, but much tougher groking the application to the directions. Fun to see the Thursday rebus in all its glory.
ReplyDeleteThanks to yesterday’s Anonymous and @Beez for technical support π
I just got word that my puzzle (with Will Nediger) will appear in the LAT on September 19. I'll remind you the day before or the same day, Or both.
ReplyDeleteHurrah! Marking my calendar.
DeleteThis one gets a bit of my "Ay Dios Mio" whisper. I might've even said it out loud. At some point I was contemplating joining @Whatsername. I wondered if @Nancy had any wall space left.
ReplyDeleteBUT....I didn't!!!! I didn't get the direction changing trip till I was almost done and when I did, well, I was delighted that I'm exceedingly brilliant and figured out the NORTH WEST SOUTH EAST DIRECTIONS. Of all places to get that AAH was in the IKEA STORE. I've only been in one once and it was bigger than any Costco ever built. But I digress.
SO...I was able to at the surrounding words using my hunt and peck method. I had one major peck. I'm looking at HEMIS and it got me again. I've seen the word in puzzles before but it doesn't lodge into my brain. I think I'll remember it now because HEMIS will make me think of those things you get in your nethers that probably itch and that's why men in ESPORT are always scratching their fondillo and think nobody's looking. TMI, I know, butt, I see it, I call it.
The rest...I thanked myself for remembering ZOROASTERS and a SUGAR MOMMA. I looked up the names of some of the famous ones and I don't even know who they are. Does anybody know Francois Bettencourt Meyers? A quote I found: "The amount of money they have is so huge that it hardly causes them to look after their sugar babies." Well, I'll be. I wonder who the most famous sugar daddy is....
Onward. Favorite words today....MATEY GLOAT and BOSNS FETES. It makes for a good name for any bar you could walk into and listen to BASIL in his ZOOT suit play some tunes on the piano PETAL while EVERY EXURB with HEMIS sings along in MINOR THIRD. Feel free to groan.
I didn't hate this as much as others; I found it amusing. Don't hold your breath.
@Gary...Just think, when you get to Albuquerque and unpack all of your stuff, you will be off to a fresh start. I think we all need that from time to time. I believe you've picked a beautiful State to live in and as I mentioned before, the people are really nice and they like Mexican food and drink a lot of beer.
An ideal Thursday for me: challenging, fun to figure out, satisfying to complete, Only after finishing did I appreciate how we really do need to follow directions, turning N, W, S, or E at the traffic circles, to make sense of the answers. I understand the DIGS AT IKEA STORE, but it gets a thanks from me as easy enough to see - unlike the others that I really had to puzzle over. I enjoyed OSCAR WILDE sharing the grid with ZOE SALDANA, ZOROASTRO, and a SUGAR MOMMA.
ReplyDeleteDo-overs: A-one before ACME, PRIMe. No idea: HEMIS. Works in a puzzle but would it work on a ship?: one MATEY and multiple BOSNS.
PRIMO puztheme.
ReplyDeleteYeah ... I suppose it woulda been epic, if the NEWS letters perfectly emulated a weather vane, with the revealer zippin right thru the center of it all. Still, each circled rebus-direction *is* the furthest in its direction of the four, sooo ... fine, by m&e. Strong winds can be hard on weather vane alignments, etc. etc.
staff weeject picks: ARI and SUI. These short vowel-rich names are sure hard for M&A to remember.
Caught on to the theme mcguffin at SOWHEREDOWESTAND. Did spend many valuable nanoseconds figurin that puppy out, tho.
Thanx for givin us such good directions, Mr. Seigel dude. Nice job.
Masked & Anonymo5Us
**gruntz**
Well I did't get it, so I didn't much like it. I could not figure out how to "follow the directions" so it remained a confused mess. Some of the answers almost worked while some did not at all.
ReplyDeleteI would have liked it a bit more if the north east west and south had ben better placed in the grid.
Now that I look back at it, I feel a bit dumb not to have gotten 5A as I wanted it to finish with stand.
Oh well.
Really hated it :(
ReplyDeleteTruly bad fill and clueing. I refused to put in OKRAS at first and actually mumbled to myself "it better not be freaking 'okras'..." IKEA STORE is horrendous. I still have no idea what "BOSNS" is/are. And ORCs are *not* "born from mud;" Uruk-hai are (at least in the movies).
ReplyDeleteThis was frustrating because I never heard of "Zoe Saldana," and had "Zoe Sandana"--which makes just as much sense. I had it all filled in but I had “SEND[S OUT H]OPE” rather than “HOLD[S OUT H]OPE,” which to me is perfectly acceptable for "keeps the faith." That left my crosses as SEMIS (not HEMIS), which are trucks with strong engines (having never heard of hemi engines certainly semi seemed plausible). PRIME (not PRIMO), which is every bit as A-one as primo. And “ZOE SANDANA” - I didn’t know her name, which was ZOE SALDANA. Kinda annoying.
ReplyDeleteOkay Thursday theme; as Rex said it's a bit sloppy. I was seething at the Unknown Names when fortunately I remembered ZOE SALDANA which saved me from a SUGAR MOMMY error.
ReplyDeleteAnd then there's ZOROASTER. Fun fact: he was a.k.a. Zarathustra... from Nietzshe's book and Strauss's famous tune (the 2001 theme).
As a musician, MINOR THIRD went in immediately and three circles followed. I’m waiting for someone to clue “Backwards music” for RETROGRADE.
ReplyDeleteNot being into non-classical music really hurts me a lot these days. (If it’s a Beatle-related clue, I’LL GET IT.
So Zoe somebody clashing with an alcohol clue (non-drinker here) left me with ZOE CALDANA/STOLIC. Knowing ZOROASTER certainly helped with my lack of the Italian language; vraiment, je m’en foutre …
Loved it. Y'all are a bunch of cranky haters.
ReplyDeleteThis was atrocious on every level. Absolutely hated. Made zero sense even with the revealer. I don't even know why I bother with this puzzle anymore. The theme was bad enough and horribly executed, but then to use TOGAE? And the trivia proper nouns were ungettable for me. Awful.
ReplyDeleteHow did people finish the puzzle on the app? I can’t get it to take. I have “rebussed” the compass directions and entered the first letters.
ReplyDeleteMuch agreement with Rex, here.
ReplyDeleteAnd OKRAS? Like fishes and lettuces, the "s" is appended only to refer to different varieties. Burgundy, Cajun Delight, Clemson Spineless and Louisiana Green are OKRAS. If you're going to deep-fry one of those varieties, you'd be serving fried okra - or fried okry, as we say in the South. BTW, select your okra pods young and tender. Slice them about 1/4" thick and saute them in very hot oil. The high heat will defeat the goo and your okra will be delicious!
I've only tried okra once and it was an unpleasant experience but your spirited defense makes me want to try to cook them myself. I only hesitate because finding "young and tender" specimens might be difficult where I live. Shipping them diagonally across the continent (I live just a few hours north of Seattle) might have a detrimental effect on them. Might have spend some time this afternoon seeing if there any local growers. Thanks for the cooking tips.
DeleteI kinda liked this one. Theme was fun. Who doesn't love CRUSHEDON, MEGAMALLS, AND OSCARWILDE, all of which I got from just one or two crosses. I was on a roll until until I hit that first themer. Everything I know about musical composition could probably fit in that first circled square, so MINORTHIRD was beyond my ken. Finally got an inkling of the theme at IKEASTORE; I dislike going but occasionally need a chair or a bookstand for my studio or office. Got he revealer next and went back up to the top to deal with the NORTH rebus and then cruised through the puzzle at a reasonable pace.
ReplyDeleteLoved SOWHEREDOWESTAND. Hated TOGAE. OKRAS was bit lame. Looked at the puzzle post-solve and realized I hadn't even seen the clue for TRADEUNIONS.
Found weird Wednesday to be tedious. This was kinda fun.
Change of direction puzzles are fairly common but this one adds another layer by actually having the specific directions inside the verbis squares*. The downside---or maybe an upside---is that the spatial arrangement of the directions looks like it was inspired by a Salvador DalΓ weather vane.
ReplyDeleteOne of the signs that a theme structure and reveal have taken a heavy toll on grid fill quality is the presence of lots of POCs (plural of convenience). This one has a bunch---hi OKRAS---including three of the two for one POCs where a Down and an Across get a letter count, grid filling boost by sharing a final S as happens when MEGAMALL/IN, BOSN/FETE and EMU/BEAD need help filling their slots.
*Each of those squares has a complete word in it so if one is to use Latin for that, it would be verbis, "with or by way of words" rather than rebus, "with or by way of things", right? More on this at The Rebus Principle.
Way too in love with itself and trying to be cutesy. “Minorth”? So if we’re just using word fragments to cover up lazy design, why not just just have strings of random letters as answers? Yesterday’s puzzle was bad; today’s worse.
ReplyDeleteI thought I was going to like this puzzle when I saw one of my favorite Oscar Wilde quotes as a clue. But then I got into trying to figure out how the theme worked. As Rex pointed out it was poorly executed. As has been pointed out this would have worked better had the circles been a rebus. Which brings me to “okras”. Are you kidding me?! When I was taught about dictionaries 60 years ago if you came across a word in a dictionary without a designated plural IT DOES NOT HAVE ONE! It’s like sheep! Or rebus! This has been a common occurrence of late. Badly constructed puzzles where the constructor literally makes up words so they fit. They used to be a rarity. Now it seems to be the norm.
ReplyDeleteThere is nothing Persian about Zoroaster’s religion. He was an outsider in Persia who brought a religion based on Scythian beliefs.
ReplyDeleteAbove my pay grade. Needed π¦ to explain the gibberish. The revealer instructions didn't help me at all. And like a few others, PRIME/O was my undetectable error. I ended up researching DROWSE for a whole litany of failures in the area. Still, it kept me busy all day long as I was doing snippets here and there as I wrapped up loose ends for the final drive into the abyss tomorrow.
ReplyDelete❤️ The OSCAR WILDE quote.
π« TOGAE, MOMMA.
Propers: 7
Places: 0
Products: 3
Partials: 13 (sigh)
Foreignisms: 5
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 28 of 77 (36%)
Funnyisms: 4 π
Uniclues:
1 Being fierce and fabulous on the town adorned in brass.
2 Where the true heros can be found.
3 Fell in love with the idea of owning a quarter acre, knowing none of your neighbors, and driving 45 minutes to everywhere.
1 BUGLE WEARING OUT
2 EVERY TRADE UNION (~)
3 CRUSHED ON EXURB
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: What makes Pennsylvania worth visiting. AMISH KNEE TART.
¯\_(γ)_/¯
¯\_(γ)_/¯
Ugh. Sort of an advanced beginner solver here. I found this to be such a joyless slog I sorta gave up. Lots of clues felt like crosswordese.
ReplyDeleteTheme helped with some of the dense clues at least.
I speak 3 languages and can say hi/bye/thanks/where’s the bathroom in 5 others.
Still don’t get crosswordese.
1. Exurb - wanted this to be suburb because that’s something normal people would talk about
2. Educe - what the literal eff. Seriously. In data analytics we infer, we deduce, we analyze. No one EDUCEs.
3. The aforementioned TOGAE didn’t bother me much, probably because by then I had decided this puzzle wasn’t for me. At least it is a correct term, unlike some of the weird shortenings.
4. Why e-anything (ESPORT, ebill, etc) - no one says those things nowadays unless they just stepped out of a wormhole from the last century.
I'm surprised no one else has pointed out a (probably accidental) potential pitfall in this one: if you happen to get 32D's ORC in place before figuring out how the theme works, you might be likely to see it as the proper continuation of 22A, forming a "minor c" going down instead of the proper MINOR THIRD, with a rebus, going up.
ReplyDeleteMy exact thoughts were "nice theme; seems like the execution should have been more elegent". So - what Rex said.
ReplyDeleteI saw the byline and thought "Uh-oh. This guy is a real mind-bender." Didn't know how prophetic that was! I also don't know how anybody could call this easy-medium! For the longest time, I was getting nowhere FAST.
ReplyDeleteAt last, the light turned on at IK[EAST]ORE. After that it was OK. But even with a double-gimme start with ZOOT/(DOD)ZOESALDANA, filling it was not simple. Clues were end-of-week; lie I said, SS likes to tax your brain.
What is OFNP fussing about? The north one is farthest north, etc. Does he also demand they be symmetrical? Don't want much, do ya? Sheesh. Eagle. And yeah, challenging.
Wordle birdie.
I loved this one. It was a real head scratcher until the light bulb clicked on. A delightful Aha! moment.
ReplyDelete