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Marked Twain? / FRI 8-30-24 / Lead-in to stakes / Animal found on either end of a scale / Traditional Scottish New Year's gift, representing warmth for the year to come / Mittens might fiddle with one / Historic figure grouped with Judas in Dante's "Inferno" / Summer snack with a swirl / "I think so" in modern shorthand / Film character with an iconic gold bikini
Friday, August 30, 2024
Constructor: Colin Adams
Relative difficulty: Easy
Word of the Day: DEIRDRE (41D: Tragic heroine of Irish mythology) —
Deirdre (/ˈdɪərdrə, -dri/ DEER-drə, -dree, Irish: [ˈdʲɛɾˠdʲɾʲə]; Old Irish: Derdriu [ˈdʲerʲðrʲĭŭ]) is a tragic heroine in the Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology. She is also known by the epithet "Deirdre of the Sorrows" (Irish: Deirdre an Bhróin).Deirdre is a prominent figure in Irish legend. American scholar James MacKillop assessed in 2004 that she was its best-known figure in modern times. (wikipedia) //
In Irish mythology, a tragic heroine (Deirdre of the Sorrows) of whom it was prophesied that her beauty would bring banishment and death to heroes. King Conchubar of Ulster wanted to marry her, but she fell in love with Naoise, son of Usnach, who with his brothers carried her off to Scotland. They were lured back by Conchubar and treacherously slain, and Deirdre took her own life. (Oxford Reference)
• • •
The lack of grid sparkle was made up for, somewhat, by some occasionally brilliant cluing. [Marked Twain?] really threw me off, which it shouldn't have—that "T" is capitalized, after all, which screams "the author's name!"—but I took "Twain" as "a pair" and went looking for, I don't know, twins who had been famously scarred or branded or something. But no, you're "marking" your place in the cheap paperback copy of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by dog-earing the page (I made it a cheap paperback copy because otherwise why, why would you dog-ear?—grab a bookmark, a receipt, a strand of your hair, anything). If you've DOG-EARED the book, then you've "marked" "Twain." Nice. I also enjoyed the "?" clue on DRYER (51D: Alternative to hanging out?). A laundry clue that looks like a socializing clue (or a wardrobe malfunction clue). I also liked the way VEEP was clued today (46A: Lead-in to stakes)—felt (relatively) timely, given what a VANCE/WALZ month it's been. Better for WALZ than VANCE, I'd say. Pretty sure that's objectively true by every metric. Speaking of WALZ, we should be seeing that name in crosswords in 3, 2, 1 ... well, soon, anyway.
Had a buncha mistakes today, but none of them very devastating. SUN before SKY, GROSS before GRODY, DISC before DISK (honestly not sure what the difference is), and then my two favorites: COAT before COAL (37A: Traditional Scottish New Year's gift, representing warmth for the year to come), and PENSION before PIT STOP (8D: Occasion for retirement?). Only thing I was truly unfamiliar with today (besides traditional Scottish gift-giving practices) was DIERDRE; luckily the name was easy to piece together. Oh, I forgot that LEIA ever wore an "iconic gold bikini" (28D: Film character with an iconic gold bikini). That should've meant something to me as a Star Wars-loving teen (which is what I was when Return of the Jedi came out), but I think I thought it was corny, and it just didn't leave much of an impression. Also, it seemed gross (if not grody), since the only time she wore it (iirc) was when she was Jabba's slave? But the clue didn't say "meaningful to me," just "iconic," which seems true enough. My mind went to Goldfinger (someone wears a bikini in that, surely), and then to this musical bit of cinematic history ...
Notes:
- 24A: Mittens might fiddle with one (CAT TOY) — I guess some people name their cats "Mittens," but honestly this clue looks like you typo'd "Kittens"
 |
| ["We're not interested in your toys, buddy. Keep walkin'..."] |
- 26A: Animal found on either end of a scale (DOE) — as in "a deer, a female deer." I don't love this clue, but I don't hate it either. It's not boring, at least.
- 45A: Psyche's lover, in Greek myth (EROS) — I know the couple as "Cupid & Psyche" but that may be due primarily to the Scritti Politti album (Cupid & Psyche 85). Cupid = Amor (L.) = EROS (Gr.), so the clue is not wrong.
- 1D: Historic figure grouped with Judas in Dante's "Inferno" (BRUTUS) — if I have a "wheelhouse," this is it. The ninth ring of hell is it. Satan chewing eternally on Cassius, BRUTUS, and Judas at the very pit of hell, in the middle of the ice lake Cocytus ... is it. Now *that* is "iconic" (to me)
 |
| [Gustave Doré, ca. 1860s] |
See you next time.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
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94 comments:
Second consecutive week of Friday difficulty on Friday! I liked it!!
Overwrites:
3D: AFROrap before POP
21D: pOPOfF before GO POOF
27A: korea before SEOUL
29A: SwAm before SOAP (thinking of "Dove" as a verb)
34D: Tent before TARP
41D: Once I had enough crosses to make a decent guess, still needed several tries to get the correct spelling of DEIRDRE
53A: @Rex DISc before DISK
To me, a disc is something in the spine, and a disk is something in a computer or sound system. In all other contexts, either spelling is acceptable.
Very easy for a Friday, with one tricky area around COAL (no idea) where I also had POP- at 21D, guessing the P from just -OP, which made GO POOF hard to see. Didn’t like the clue on DOG-EARED - and I was expecting the trick to be “Twain” referring to Shania, not Mark. Not many long answers, as Rex noted, but I SAID NO, DOG-EARED, PLOTHOLE, “DEAR GOD”, GOT LOST as clued, and YOINKED are solid in my opinion.
SI forgot to mention - SKY with a sports clue reawakened a memory of the one time I got Naticked on an entire word. I managed to find the puzzle in question: LAT from September 7th 2022. It had the following four answers, unknown to me:
[Big ___ Conference: NCAA division that includes Montana] - SKY, crossing:
[“Mayans M. C.” star Edward James ____] - OLMO(S)
[Cheap wine, in British slang] - PLON(K)
[Jessica of “Cocoon”] - TAND(Y)
In the end I managed to solve the puzzle with a lucky guess. But I would’ve preferred an easy clue for SKY given all the trivia stuff crossing it.
Got it done with lots of trial-and-error in the SE. Never heard of YOINKED (is that a real word?) or FROYO. I misread "scrammed" as "scammed," so it took forever to see GOTLOST (although the "g-o-t" worked with "scammed" also). Lots of misdirects in the cluing, but I expect nothing less on a Friday.
I’m 50-50 on this one too. Some really fine stuff - but littered with losers here and there. Unlike Rex - I liked the SW more than the starting corner. REFUSENIK and UNREALITY are pretty bad. Should ANIMAS be further conditioned with rational/irrational? AFROPOP was cool.
FROYO
Really neat seeing DEIRDRE. Some gimmes in the grid that helped the flow. Good effort on the misdirects and ? clues. The “Mittens” clue was cute.
Talking Italian
Overall an enjoyable Friday morning solve.
Pretend I’m Samuel Clemens
Sadly it would seem as if the constructors’ only familiarity with the military is what they’ve encountered in crosswords. NCOs in the Marine Corps, ranking as low as corporal, would never be considered “bigwigs.” Save that term for the generals.
I have to agree with most everything you said, Rex.
I, a wordplay stan, loved the cluing, which was rich with it.
I’d like to focus here on my two favorite clues, because they were original – and, trust me, given the long history of crosswords, it’s hard to come up with an outstanding original clue.
Today, I should mention, there were clues based on words – “home”, “handle”, “retirement” – that have been punned on before in puzzles. I, an experienced solver, smiled at these old friends.
But I wowed at two terrific clues that broke new ground:
[Alternative to hanging out?] for DRYER.
[Marked Twain] for DOGEARED.
A moment of appreciation, please. These are crossword gold.
Joy from the cluing was buttressed by lovely answers: REFUSENIK, GARISH, PLOT HOLE, DOGEARED, DEAR GOD, GO POOF, SPLAY, YOINKED, ESTHETE.
Buttressed by resistance that satisfied my brain’s work ethic.
And buttressed by hardly a whiff of junk amid all that white space in the grid. Why all the white space despite the paucity of long answers? Because there are only 29 black squares, even less than in the average Saturday puzzle.
So, wit, beauty, bite, and grid-building chops – a recipe for a stellar outing, which is what you delivered, Colin. Bravo, and thank you!
Getting Naticked is different than simply not knowing the answer.
I had eR NURSE originally and parsed together DeGEARED - I saw that Twain was capitalized and thought it might be a Harley Davidson competitor.
I’m a little confused by NCO as a marine “bigwig” - aren’t corporals and sergeants NCO ranks? I was thinking lieutenant general or something like that. Any former Staff Sergeants out in the crowd - did you consider yourself a bigwig (and thank you for your service to our country).
It occurred to me today that we don’t see many visits from Bob DENIRO in CrossWorld even though he seems to have a very crossword-friendly name (especially given his stature and achievements). Similarly, we don’t see Ms. Streep that frequently, although I believe she may have stopped by not too long ago (we have had her erstwhile co-star Stanley the T make an appearance this summer - twice I believe).
I liked this puzzle but that whole SE corner all the way up to DENIRO really did me in. I did not know the movie Heat or DEIRDRE at all, and why is an NCO a Marine Corps “bigwig”? Seems like a middle to low rank? Anyway, otherwise found it fun and challenging= a decent Friday!
Also very glad I followed the Olympic Women’s USA basketball team, many of whom were from the Chicago SKY team!!!
That really confused me. I have minimal military background but even I know that!
Disc with C refers to the object by its use…a disc in the spinal column or an optical storage device. Disk with K refers to an object by its shape…a compact disc happens to be a disk…a disk shaped disc…a disk-disc…
Watch some old Scooby Doo episodes and you'll hear "yoink" in its proper context.
Enjoyed the puzzle in general. Did not like the clue 58a. The N in the answer implies "no so big a bigwig." Took a while to figure out DeGEARED at 38a. Pretty sure that 28d was not mEIr. Even with Golda on the brain.
I was hoping for a rating a little harder than "easy" for this one, as it took some effort here. Plenty of stop and think moments. Agree that NCO is just wrong, so hesitated to put that in. The ER/OR conundrum. Not remembering YOINKED, probably because nary a FROYO around here. VEEP stakes? Well, yeah. And GRODY, long gone as slang, and the execrable PROBS, which can go hang out with adorbs, hopefully somewhere else. Not to mention the unknown DIERDRE.
In short, I was congratulating myself for finishing this with no cheats but it seems others had no problems. I salute you all and will attribute my difficulties to the after effects of celebrating our 54th wedding anniversary yesterday. (Full disclosure, we didn't do a thing, as my dear wife was not feeling well.)
I found your Friday offering properly thorny, CA. A Challenging Adventure for me at least, and thanks for all the fun.
Hey All !
My post GO POOF YesterComments. We'll see today...
Had eRNURSE holding me up. I was thinking, "How does DEGEARED= Mark Twain?" Har, good stuff. Tore out a good chunk of answers, eventually seeing it could be ORNURSE, finally seeing DOG EARED, and put the rest back in that I previously had in correctly. *This* close to a one- letter DNF.
Can someone explain VEEP as clued? Thought Rex might, but still unsure.
Good FriPuz. Had stuck moments, but was able to "chunk" solve it (as in, getting a chunk of answers in a section before moving to another section), and ended up in the easier side.
Where's Shaggy from Scooby Doo with his YOINKED? (Or was that Yoinks?)
No BLOCKER today, Mods. 😁
Happy Friday!
Three F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
I’m pretty sure Yoinked was coined on the Simpsons, or at the least popularized by Homer.
Interesting to learn about COAL as a positive gift. I always heard that it was the present for naughty boys and girls.
Just woke up from sleeping in my hammock in Upstate NY on our way to Montreal. Very interesting to do the puzzle from a picnic table:)
Thinking of a human Mittens, I had CArTOp before CATTOY... homage to Gail Collins...
Also, GRODY sounds like something kids said in high school in the early 70s, can't speak to the 80s, and reminds me of a local family with that last name, kids made to suffer extensively, sigh.
What held me up *forever* was the eR NURSE crossing DEGEARED. I saw the capital T, but somehow thought it was referring to the action from which Clemens took his pen name, but how did GEARs fit in? The paddle wheel must have gears... maybe if they mark twain it's getting too shallow so they ... DeGEAR? Eventually thought about nurses... click!
So a humorous morning (good grief, AI doesn't like humor, it keeps changing that to numerous, which makes no sense... "How was your morning?" " OK, I had to balance the checkbook and pay some bills and see how many bottles of wine we have on hand, so it was kind of a numerous morning"...).
Happy Labor Day weekend!
The picture of Deirdre Barlow here is a delight for UK readers.
Refusenik is a very specific term referring to Soviet Jews who in the early 1970s were REFUSED permission to leave the Soviet Union to emigrate toIsrael.
BRA STRAPS totally familiar term to any woman. "I have to fix my bra straps."
Anyone else have “dish” and “shorts” instead of “disk” and “skorts”? It took me awhile to get the happy music with that error. Otherwise it was a perfect Friday puzzle in my opinion. Have a wonderful long weekend crossword bloggers!
VEEP stakes was a gimme today. A year from now, I can see solvers scratching their heads.
Naticked with FROYO crossing YOINKED but otherwise my best Friday time yet
Confused me too! Sergeants and corporals are only “bigwigs” to privates, no?
Hi, Roo, "VEEP-stakes" refers to the moment when two or three hopefuls are in the running (think horses and "sweepstakes") to be picked as the vice-presidential candidate. Recently, the betting favorites Shapiro and others were passed at the wire by a dark-horse named WALZ .
Let's put PROBS inside the same (hopefully padlocked) cupboard that holds ADORBS. And while we're at it, let's shove GRODY in there too. GROSS means the exact same thing, takes less long to say, and is even a real word.
I hear it gets really cold in Scotland. May I have a COAT, please, instead of COAL? Thank you.
A word about YOINKED -- which isn't a word either. It could have been BOINKED or ZOINKED of JOINKED for all I knew, but I guessed that the snack with the swirl might be FROYO as in frozen yogurt. It was just a complete guess, but it kept me from having a DNF.
Things I know nothing about: the Tower of Hanoi puzzle; Gold Bond and its ingredients; Wizkid and Burna Boy. Another puzzle that I feel invites certain demographic groups in -- while telling the rest of us to drop dead.
I did love the clue for DOGEARED, so there's that.
Please someone explain the VEEP answer. Even after Rex's comments I still don't understand it.
@Mathgent has let me know off-blog that he's been trying to post a comment for two days -- trying several times each day -- and has not been able to. Does anyone have any idea what he needs to do to satisfy the demands of this new format?
I didn't like the clue for dogeared because I don't think of dogear as a verb, I think of it only as an adjective. I interpreted the clue as calling for a noun.
I had a good time with this puzzle and fell into almost every initial mistake that @Rex mentioned, adding on DeGEARED (that was a d’oh in retrospect) which I did not find until I “checked puzzle” at the end, so a technical DNF for me. I was pleased to actually know FROYO, although I’m not even sure how I knew it. Yeah…NCO is just no, not a bigwig, but hey…no puzzle is perfect. Or is it?
I finally got LEIA from crosses but ALL I could think of was the lady in Goldfinger, who was painted all gold and I’m not even sure she was wearing a bikini, and get this…Racquel Welch in that 1000 BC movie, even though I knew her bikini was animal skins. (Or was it 2000 BC?)
Like @Pablo, I was a little disappointed to see @Rex chart this as “easy” but I’ve already gotten over it.
VEEP-stakes = “VP sweepstakes”
Republican JD Vance and Democrat Tim Walz both recently won their parties’ vice presidential nominations after Donald Trump and Kamala Harris chose them from a field of candidates. In so doing, they won the VEEP-stakes.
I was whooshing like I've never whooshed on a Friday, on a record setting pace, until I landed in the SE, where I probably spent over half of my 36 minutes. Put in FROYO, took it out; put in PROBS, took it out; wanted SKORTS but thought that DISK ended in a C, so out went SKORTS; put in NCO (which I thought, like others, couldn't be right), took it out; thought of TESTdrivES, but it wouldn't fit! But I hung in there and it finally fell in place. (Also wanted "Uncommitted sort, coming off the F in AFT, to be FENCE _ _ _ _, something like fence sitter.)
Couple of Hidden Diagonal notes for this grid:
* One of our FOLLOW DIRECTIONS answers from yesterday (EAST) appears as a HDW in the west today, beginning with the E in 35A, TIES.
* Slightly to the EAST of that, there is the Hidden Diagonal Semordnilap of DEER/REED--DEER begins with the initial D in DEIRDRE, 41D.
* Beginning with the S in SPITE, 10D, and moving to the SE, there is this lovely string of 5 letters--SEASE--which contains the rhyming 4-letter HDWs SEAS and EASE. SEASE is itself both a "premium lifestyle clothing brand" (ugh) and an obsolete verb meaning "to seize." SEASE, a Hidden Diagonal Word enthusiast's delight!
I'll EASE on out now.
(Just noticed PROBS and PROBES separated by a single blocker square--I like that.)
Best of the week!
• Absolutely loved that Twain/DOGEARED clue
• An unintentional (PROBS?) wink at The Simpsons, stemming from the cross between YOINKED (https://www.reddit.com/r/etymology/s/bQYY65mXLe) and FROYO (https://youtu.be/CI1-74VQgUk)
Working Mom's dilemma: Bottle ORNURSE?
In terms of the environment, solar TOPSOIL.
I loved that part of the movie where the two women went to their gynecologist while wearing SKORTS. Oh, you mean the OBSCENE?
Our dog can urinate for about two minutes non-stop. He's a real PEER.
Definitely not an easy one for me, but I enjoyed it a lot. Thanks, Colin Adams.
Is "Veep stakes" a recognizable phrase? It feels as though any other modifying word would make just as much sense before "stakes."
The PITSTOP clue is wonderful, but I can't muster much enthusiasm beyond that. Nothing really pops for me. ESTHETE looks weird without the A. No one uses GOTLOST in the way it's clued (She told me to scram, so I GOT LOST -- nope). I did enjoy TSAR and RULERS in the same grid.
I always thought Shaggy yelped zoinks! but maybe it was yoinks! Either way, YOINKED was completely new to me. Agree with @Rex that GRODY is totally an '80s thing -- made me think of Moon Unit Zappa in her dad's "Valley Girl."
Kudos to @Rex for the XTC video. Very underrated band IMO.
Can you explain why veep stakes makes sense?
And there are no other answers over 7 letters long in the whole dang grid??? What is he talking about? Look again, Big Guy. What about Adblocker, Freeagent, Testrides. Not to mention one of your favorites, Dogeared? And this list is not exhaustive. What do you mean?
I am not going to lose my streak to a damn "TYPO"! Any tips?
Ah, the pitfalls of having worked on a brand and having too close a perspective. I stumbled on SOAP because, technically speaking, Dove is a detergent (or, in their lingo, a "beauty bar"), not a soap because its pH is too low.
Only mistakes with Froyo (what the hell is that?) & probs. Went with Froyo (seemed plausible) & prois ( probably is) so 44d quite blue ended up as piscine not obscene. Hey, it worked for me!
Very easy for a Friday. Easy, that is, except for the SW, with the unforgivable cross of two complete unknowns - to me. FROYO and YOINKED. Well, ok, I have seen the latter in at least one previous puzzle and promptly forgot it, as I will this time, too, because it just begs to be forgotten.
More grumbling: UMP is not a word. It's a "for short"!
And the scale doesn't go DOE RE MI...DOE. It's DO! Am I the only grumbler about this?
And why the question mark following 52D clue, "Babe in the woods"? Completely unnecessary and deceptive. I was trying different woodwinds until the crosses fixed it.
OHLORD someone YOINKED on the FROYO.
yd -0. QB5 missed POINCIANA last Sat
Some twenty years before GRODY, George Harrison coined GROTTY (both seem takeoffs of GROTESQUE). Beatles were first in everything (outside of creating AFROPOP - a form of which they imported in their early days from the US).
Dead GROTTY!
Nice youthful puzzle in a YOINKED way. Have I met you and Mrs. GRODY? PROBS yes because I brought you back from lost memory of words I've seen or heard and then promptly forgot until....you showed up again!
BRA STRAPS to start and TEST RIDES to finish. Cool beans. By the way, if you wear a pretty sports bra, nobody cares if you see the strap...! I really contemplated Tush RIDES for my last entry. Why? you may ask.... because whenever I see a motorcyclist screaming past me, his/her tush is sticking out. Or is it just me?
Speaking of colloquialisms....There are a few doozies in Spanish. My sister and I would sit down and talk Guay. This, of course if you are Piripi after drooling about the Chulo next to you in a GRODY bar. "Es la leche!"
Next!... Ok, now to be serious. I had a couple of cheats today that made me mad because I was truly on a roll until I met FROYO. DEAR GOD, what are you? I had your FRO, what can possibly go next? Cheat. Then my next was DEIRDRE. I kinda knew it but I'm a horrible speller...Just two lookie loos for me on a Friday is pretty good. I loved DOG EARED and CAT TOY....Two animals plus two GOD references. So, I'm happy to say I had fun. Is UNREALITY really a word or did someone make that one up...Hmmm
FOUND IT! (God, I hate when that happens).
Thanks, Colin. This was very doable although it didn't start out that way (solving on very little sleep last night) but I did enjoy it after the typo thing was solved. (Except for FROYO, DEIRDRE & ER for OR NURSES :(
BTW - Ida is a sweetie, Rex. I remember when you got her. She is an example of what love an do :)
@JNKMD
thx for that! I knew something was wrong (thinking, nooo, that's not....) but couldn't put my finger on it
Is an ADBLOCKER really a browser extension? That clue seemed off to me. The rest was filled with either-you-know-it-or-you-don't names and phrases, with no real way to suss them out from their surrounding letters.
A Felicitous Friday for me, as the crosses from BRASTRAPS gave me enough for a counterclockwise sweep around to SPITE. Along the way, I especially liked REFUSENIK, DOGEARED, GO POOF.
Do-over: GROss. Help from previous puzzles: YOINKED. No idea: DEIRDRE.
One thing I’ve found is you cannot (or sometimes) leave the blog (once you have opened it) to let’s say…go to another website, and be able to post when you come back. I other words, toggling between things can mess you up. I’ve had success since I quit doing that. No question this format is a bit persnickety.
A skosh tougher than medium for me. eRNURSE before OR ate some nanoseconds…also korea before SEOUL. Me too for thinking Goldfinger at first on the bikini clue.
Did not know BRUTUS, DEIRDRE, AFROPOP, and PROBS.
Low on junk with a bit of sparkle, liked it.
Big thumbs up for the cluer!!
None of the players on the USA women’s basketball team in Paris play for the Chicago Sky, what are you talking about?
This was properly challenging; took 26 minutes but seemed longer. Lots of typeovers: MONITOR before TOPSOIL for Nursery purchase, ASTHETE before ESTHETE, DISC for DISK, CPO (Chief Petty Officer... that's Navy, right?) for NCO which gave me YOICKED. Satisfying to finish clean though.
@Nancy 10:14 am re Mathgent... I was recently unable to comment as myself until I changed from Firefox to Chrome browser (on Windows 10 desktop). No idea why.
@puzzlehoarder re SB.. I missed that one too (and a few others over the week).
“Only thing I was truly unfamiliar with today…was DIERDRE; luckily the name was easy to piece together. “
It’s Deirdre! My name doesn’t start with the word “die.”
What the H? This is Andrew (went to all the trouble of linking the Grotty quote - and carefully SKORTed all things political - and I show up as Anonymous!)
Think "DOE, a deer, a female deer..."
I figured Mittens was a reference to the feline resident of the White House during the Clinton years.
Am I the only one who finds the puzzles that Rex rates as "Easy" to be medium-hard, and the ones he finds medium-hard to be easy?
That part is clear, my fellow Anonymous. But read the clue: "Animal found at either end of a scale [emphasis added]". Now read my comment again.
The objects in the Tower of Hanoi are more like RINGS than DISCS, and more like DISCS than DISKS, which is typically only used in the context of magnetic storage devices. Also couldn't accept an NCO as a bigwig, although most army Sarges probably think of themselves that way. Not so much Corporals, I'd say. Are marine grades similar?
Mittens was definitely the hi-lite.
NCO bein a USMC bigwig was kinda funny, too. It rates staff weeject pick, today.
PLOTHOLE kinda looks like a themer in an add-a-letter puzzle's mcguffin. YOINKED is always a classic extra.
fave thing other than Mittens: GOPOOF.
Thanx, Mr. Adams dude.
Masked & Anonymo5Us
themed:
**gruntz**
unthemed:
**gruntz**
Another horrible puzzle with impossible answers. RENAMES feels poorly clued. UNREALITY is just so lazy and seems like a fake word. Alan watts and Dante's inferno aren't in my wheelhouse at all. Watts especially feels very obscure. I was born in the 80s so REFUSENIK was just not coming to me. I assumed I had an error with a word ending in USENIK, and it didn't help much that it could also be UZENIK. Hated the whole thing.
Rex just calls everything easy no matter what. If you're going to keep coming here, just get used to being made to feel stupid
"OH LORD, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz?" (Janis Joplin)
Very much enjoyed this one.
Don't get why the babe in the woods clue had a question mark. I don't see the pun. An owlet is a "literal" babe in the woods.
What am I missing?
Ump has become a word.
I think because that is an idiom for a person who is facing a situation that they’ve never encountered…i.e. “I’m a babe in the woods when it comes to assembling IKEA furniture” (who knows why I used that example)
I am with Nancy. "Yoinked" is utterly ridiculous. "Probs" is foolish. This new editor wants the old-timers to ride off into the sunset.
So I still don’t understand how OBSCENE matches “Quite blue”. Got it from the crosses but would love to be educated!
I was just coming on to say that - there is no way the puzzles of today and yesterday were “easy.”
Dr A & Beezer
I put in gen first. It is a bit of a stretch.
JNKMD
True the English word REFUSENIK arose out that specific period when Soviet authorities refused permission for emigration to Soviet Jews. But it is of course not a Russian word. So once it entered the English language , English speakers expanded its meaning.
I looked it up
Second definition. One who refuses to do something.
@Mathgent writes: "Thanks for asking the blog for help. I use Chrome on my iPad. Please try again and mention that I get a "A problem occurred..." response when try."
I'll try to remember to post this again tomorrow.
Rachel
Referring to DOGEARED
Perhaps you would like it if you looked at it another way.
It is used as a verb. leave love to do that. But here it works as a past participle used as an adjective. The Twain is referring to a physical copy of a book written by Twain. Marked Twain =
Dog eared Twain
Works for me
A “blue” movie might be considered obscene.
A blue movie is a smutty movie. I know this from crosswords!
Blue = pornographic.
@Nancy & Mathgent 7:21 pm: "A problem occurred; try again later" was the message I got after clicking "Publish" on Firefox. So I switched to Chrome!?...
I had PeeSTOP before PITSTOP for "Occasion for retirement". I so wish they had put PeeSTOP in the puzzle.
Yes — I had the same error for quite a while!
Ah yes, the most favored demographic group — chafe-suffering lovers of mathematical puzzles and afropop. Such a coddled group, puzzles always seem to be made expressly for them.
I could’ve written your post. Ditto.
that reminds me of the simpsons https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=die+bart+die#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:635c2977,vid:gaXigSu72A4,st:0
Holy smoke, that was like Tuesday-easy. Record time.
Yeah, pleasantly, upleasant. If this isn't fully "challenging," what is?? I hadda start from the Q cross (inauspicious). When you're in your 50's and "YASQUEEN" is your first full fill, except for NIHILO you're in trouble. Lots of traps. I had "economy" in for a long time before I understood that it was clued correctly. But the NE was the killer. I had Tobacco in for AVOCADO as my best guess, and the ENSILE (not ensilO??) crossing ECHODOT killed me; could not have come up with either in a million years.
The competition to become the VP candidate in a presidential election year. A particularly unseemly affair in the GOP this year, with the likes of Tim Scott, Kristi “Dog Killer” Noem, Kari Lake, and eventual “winner” JD Vance (a.k.a., “JP Mandel”) offering epic displays of fawning and servility toward their treasonous Dear Leader.
Before summer officially ends try a White Negroni - -the perfect summer cocktail, with gin (Plymouth), Lillet, and Suze. (could be 3:3:1, for example, or other ratios). Refreshing and an instant winner with many people. And a good cure for this brutal puzzle. Yes, I had "ensilo." Couldn't get "Lac," but shoulda. And just plain missed echo. . ..being in the apple ecosystem. Brutal. Cheers.
Unpleasant, but at least it was fairly easy.
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