Thursday, August 15, 2024

Rod-shaped parasite / THU 8-15-24 / Persian's realm? / Kingpin on "The Wire" / Afro-Caribbean religion / Embarrassment from a self-own, perhaps / Straight, informally / Friends, in slang / 18th-century French novelist whose name means "the wise man" / One half of the merger that formed Paramount Global

Constructor: Damon Gulczynski

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium


THEME: SPEECH-TO-TEXT (39A: Technology used in writing the starred clues?) — clues are written as if SPEECH-TO-TEXT technology misheard the speaker / clue writer (i.e. clues contain errant homophones):

Theme answers:
  • EIFFEL TOWER (18A: *Rod-shaped parasite) ("Rod-shaped Paris site" (or "sight," I suppose))
  • PARTY SUB (27A: *Soup or sandwich) ("Super sandwich")
  • BUTT DIAL (54A: *Embarrassment from a self-own, perhaps) ("Embarrassment from a cell phone, perhaps)
  • CLOUDY SKIES (62A: *Grade-A quality) ("Gray day quality")
Word of the Day: Alain-René LESAGE (19D: 18th-century French novelist whose name means "the wise man") —
Alain-René Lesage
 (French pronunciation: [alɛ̃ ʁəne ləsaʒ]; 6 May 1668 – 17 November 1747; older spelling Le Sage) was a French novelist and playwright. Lesage is best known for his comic novel The Devil upon Two Sticks (1707, Le Diable boiteux), his comedy Turcaret (1709), and his picaresque novel Gil Blas (1715–1735). // Very little is known of Lesage's life and personality. Various anecdotes represent him as a very independent man, declining to accept the literary patronage required to survive. One story tells of the time he had been entreated to read his manuscript (according to the fashion of the day) at the Hôtel de Bouillon by the Duchess. The hour appointed for the reading was noon, but the dramatist was still very interested in legal matters and was detained until 1 o'clock attending the decision of a lawsuit. When he finally appeared at the Hôtel and attempted to apologise, the Duchess of Bouillon was so cold and haughty, observing that he had made her guests lose one hour waiting for his arrival. "It is easy to make up the loss madame", replied Lesage; "I will not read my comedy, and thus you will gain two hours." With that, he left the Hôtel and could never be persuaded to return to the Duchess's house. (wikipedia)
• • •

Is the EIFFEL TOWER "rod-shaped"?? Of all the ways I would've described that structure (which I spent a lot of time looking at the last couple weeks, on account of the Olympics), "rod-shaped" is not among them. I think of a "rod" as perfectly straight. Like the "inanimate carbon rod" that wins "Employee of the Month" in that one "Simpsons" episode. That rod is straight. Rods are straight. The EIFFEL TOWER tapers to a point. Seems more like a narrow pyramid than a rod. So much so that I have been sitting here saying "rod-shaped" over and over, hoping to discover some SPEECH-TO-TEXT possibility that I'm missing. It's not like I struggled to get that first themer—I had EIFF- pretty quickly, so I just wrote in the obvious and then tried to figure out how the clue was supposed to make sense. I got the "Paris site" pun pretty quickly, so felt good about leaving EIFFEL TOWER in place, but not that good. Still feels like there's something I'm missing, so weird is "rod-shaped." The word "rod" appears nowhere on the EIFFEL TOWER's wikipedia page. But OK, fine, it's "rod-shaped," moving on... I thought the theme was fine, though it really felt like something I'd seen before. Not much difficulty, but it is kind of fun figuring out the SPEECH-TO-TEXT errors. The hardest speech command to figure out, for me, was the one that might produce "Grade-A quality". Weird, now, as it seems obvious: "Grade A" sounds exactly like "gray day." But I think my brain was trying to make one word out of "Grade A" and was only getting something like "Grady." Grady is the absent-minded friend of Fred Sanford on "Sanford & Son," but it was hard to see how anything about him evoked CLOUDY SKIES, so I just cocked my head and stared dumbly at the screen for a few seconds, like a dog trying to understand television, until "gray day" finally popped into my thick skull.


I know the "technology" here as "VOICE-TO-TEXT," though "SPEECH-TO-TEXT" is not only valid but actually Googles about twice as well. Is there any difference between the two, or are they just two different names for the same thing? I never (well, rarely) use SPEECH-TO-TEXT technology, as I just end up having to make corrections, which often take at least as long as it would've taken to compose the message in the first place. But I also hate adapting to any new technology, and most of my more normal friends and family have been using SPEECH-TO-TEXT for a while now, especially when they're out and about and need to send a quick text. I wouldn't say the revealer was hard to work out—I could already tell there were "mishearings" afoot—but SPEECH was definitely the (non-Paris) site, or locus, or whatever, of the toughest (for me) part of the puzzle. Not SPEECH itself, but the answers all around and through it, starting with LESAGE, which is LOL obscure at this point. In the olden days, you used to see GIL or BLAS clued as LESAGE’s (once) "famous" French novel GIL BLAS, so I must've seen the guy's name before, but if so, it registered not at all (GIL hasn't been clued that way since '08; for BLAS, it’s been since '10; note: while there are myriad ways to clue GIL, there's only one non-LESAGE way to clue BLAS: [Panama's Gulf of San ___]). I got LESAGE like many of you probably got it—by inferring it from "the wise one." 


Also running through SPEECH was REMEDY, which I very confidently wrote in as REPAIR (off the "RE-") (35D: Fix). This meant that though I immediately thought EVILEST for 47A: Most diabolical, it wouldn't work. It also wouldn't work because for 40D: Plant in the mint family with healthful seeds (CHIA), I somehow wrote in DILL (!?) and off of that wrote in ISO- (again, !?) at 44A: Straight, informally (HET). That is some creative f-ing up right there. And was it "AW HECK!" or "AW HELL!"? I wanted the former, which, to my eye/ear, is more "colorful" than the latter (which is more common, and therefore lacking "color"). So everything in the vicinity of SPEECH ended up being a mess (though SPEECH itself was not to blame). My struggles (though minor) extended west and south from there, as PCB seemed like it could be anything. I considered DDT, then really wanted CFC (chlorofluorocarbons), but eventually got PCB entirely from crosses and still don't know exactly what it is. Looks like it stands for "polychlorinated biphenyl." Huh. Alright then. Looks like letter gibberish. TCB. PCP. PBJ. Blah blah blas. I also struggled with TENTS (55D: Rainflies can cover them). I guess I don't go camping enough (i.e. ever ... well, rarely—I'm not averse, just lazy). In truth, though, the puzzle wasn't that hard. My only mistake outside the whole center-to-SW region was when I wrote BENCH in, first thing (1A: City sitting spot = STOOP).


Bullets:
  • 12D: Small sofa (LOVE SEAT) — for better or worse (mostly worse), LOVE SEAT is going to make me think of JD Vance for the foreseeable future

  • 6D: Persian's realm? (CATDOM) — Speaking of Vance, here's one for all the "childless cat ladies" out there! I love cats. I have two cats. I guess this (gestures to entire surroundings) is CATDOM? All cats are CATDOM? I dunno. This is not a word I can imagine using, except maybe facetiously, the way you might stick the -DOM suffix on anything to refer to the wider world of that thing (thiefdom! breaddom!). And yet it's a word. In the dictionary. And so is DOGDOM. And HORSEDOM (though the second hit I get on that search is the OED, which assumes I meant to search for "whoredom" (!?)). I would keep googling through all of animaldom, but coffee is calling my name, so before I google "giraffedom," I'll just move on.
  • 57D: Identifying words from a familiar voice ("IT'S ME") — I really like this clue. I can't put my finger on why; it's pretty ordinary-looking. But there's something ... perfect about it. Spot on. 
  • 21A: Base figure, for short (NCO) — a military base, not a low or evil creature, or a number, or whatever else "base" or "figure" might've made you think (NCO = non-commissioned officer, one of the first pieces of crosswordese I learned back in the day)
  • 26D: Friends, in slang (PEEPS) — your people are your PEEPS. Because your friends are neon-colored marshmallow birds. 
See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

98 comments:

  1. ‘Scuse me while I kiss this guy - the idea could make for a neat theme. This one’s not bad - but I think a few of them fall flat. I like CLOUDY SKIES - but “cell phone” and “super” are a little weak.

    SANTERIA

    Overall fill was solid although it took me every cross to get the NE corner. Pangolins is Saturday level and OVIDUCT is just odd. Liked I HOPE SO and down with the big guy on the wonderful nuance of IT’S ME.

    Enjoyable Thursday morning solve.

    Fred Eaglesmith

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous6:32 AM

    I’ve been reading this blog for too long, because my first response was indignation over “rod-shaped,” followed immediately by thinking about inanimate carbon rod.

    ReplyDelete
  3. @rex -- A commenter on WordPlay suggested that "rod-shaped" referred to a divining rod. That I can see.

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  4. OlympiasEpiriot6:55 AM

    I got the SPEECH-TO-TEXT backwards. I was trying to make EIFFEL TOWER sound like enterobacter or salmonella so that a voice-to-text app could have mistaken them. I was very confused and gave up and just got everything crossing those until I could make a stab at words that worked.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous8:31 AM

      Me too! I didn't get the theme till after finishing the puzzle and coming here.

      Delete
    2. Add me to the “got it backwards” crowd!

      Delete
    3. Anonymous4:14 PM

      Hated everything about this ... just plain confusing. Misleading in so many ways. SEE YA for PEACE? Gimme a break!

      Delete

  5. Medium-Challenging for me, mostly because I didn't get the theme until I came here. I worked with speech-to-text for several years and it's much more reliable than Damon may think.

    Overwrites:
    1A: bench before STOOP
    6D: CATbed before CATDOM
    13D: eggDUCT before OVIDUCT
    14D: adD before WED
    17A: dOck before COVE
    28D: AGRi before AGRO
    35D: REpair before REMEDY
    40D: CHai before CHIA
    44A: cis before HET
    59D: FeEd before FUEL

    Misread clues:
    39D: Afro-Caribbean religion before region
    42A: Suffix with photo before proto (this really hurt my solve)

    WOES:
    19D: LEASAGE, but easily inferred from the clue
    44A: HET as a short form of Hetero
    70A: MARLO from The Wire

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous7:37 AM

      After REpair I got PLASM so confidently corrected it to REMake. Sigh.

      Delete
  6. Alice Pollard7:06 AM

    Dunno, found this on the harder side. I finished no errors without really understanding it. Didnt even get "Parasite = Paris site". Once I was finished I just gave up trying to figure it out. Didnt really enjoy this one. at all

    ReplyDelete
  7. Not too hard (well, after turning on autocheck, correcting my CADET to PLEBE), but still didn’t get the theme till I came here. Just a minor OHO - after yesterday’s fun square root theme, this didn’t do it for me. Rod-shaped, whether divining or otherwise, was bad - EIFFELt like Rex on that.

    It’s 6 am CDT and Diva is getting restless here in her dogDOM, so rain or not, outside we go. (How can such a little chihuahua so DOMinantly own the place? I’d say she’s a Dog DOMinatrix, but that sounds way worse.)

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  8. I discerned that there was some mischief going on when I sounded out the “Paris site” angle on the first theme entry, so I tried (unsuccessfully) to find the homophones in the other clue/answer combinations. Unfortunately I just couldn’t find the rhythm in the others.

    So similar to yesterday, I had to parse a lot of crosses to attempt to discern what appear to be valid words or phrases. It also didn’t help that a lot of the crosses were way, way out of my league - stuff like LESAGE, OVIDUCT, PLATTE, VIACOM and SANTERIA for example.

    I used to enjoy Thursdays more than I do now - for some reason I just have a tough time with the off-speed stuff (i.e. gimmicky “trick pitches”). I think since I’ve gotten to be a little better at solving overall, I’m starting to enjoy Fridays more - although Fridays bring the heat (and misdirections) , but you definitely see more fastballs there as well.

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  9. Tough Thursday that I had to stop and figure out the theme in order to crack the WSW section.

    Clever theme that probably has enough possibilities to be a Sunday puzzle.

    Like Rex, I puzzled over the rod-shaped part of the first themer for a long time. The thing is, the “rod-shaped” descriptor is completely unnecessary for the clue. “Parasite” on it’s own gets the job done. So why is “rod-shaped” in there?

    Don’t say IT’S ME. If I know your voice, it’s not needed. If not, we then have to have a back-and-forth clarification that could have been avoided. If you say IT’S ME to me, I’m going to assume you have forgotten your name.

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  10. Aside from the lovely wordplay in the theme, I adored how Damon connected it with SPEECH TO TEXT, which I – and I’m guessing many – have found can make very funny mistakes, like the plays in the theme answers. When a theme is relatable like that, it’s a big plus for me.

    My brain adored the hitches caused by tricky cluing, where many answers couldn’t just be slapped down before crosses made them clear. My brain derives great satisfaction in conquering these hitches.

    My sense of wordplay adored “parasite” for “Paris sight”, and “gray day” for “grade-A”, not to mention [Made a bundle] for BALED.

    And there were little pleasures as well. LOVE crossing COVE – two words that look like they should rhyme, but don’t. CATDOM sharing the box with PEEPS, because the former is often obsessed with the latter.

    Lots of play today, and when the play’s the thing in a puzzle, I shimmer with delight. Thank you for a splendid outing, Damon!

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  11. What are all these new terms? So I’m HET now? I thought I was CIS or something like that. AW HELL, as a straight white male just call me SIR.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Het is the older version of cis. I remember it being used in the 90s, maybe even earlier

      Delete
    2. Anonymous9:55 AM

      Het means heterosexual. Cis means cisgender. These are not at all the same.

      Delete
    3. Anonymous10:01 AM

      Anonymous 9:55 is correct.

      Delete
    4. Anonymous10:05 AM

      Het = Heterosexual. As a man, you are attracted to women (and vice-versa). It's who you're interested in.

      Cis = Cisgender. As a biological male, you also identify as a man. It's who you identify as. This is as opposed to transgender, where you do not identify as your biological sex.

      Delete
  12. This puzzle made me feel like a dog trying to understand television.

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    Replies
    1. I LOVE this comment and that is exactly how I felt!

      Delete
    2. What Beezer said.

      Delete
  13. Had every letter filled in and correctly, I thought, and then tried to make sense out of the theme. Two things would have helped immensely--having PCB instead of PCP (trying to figure out what a PUTTDIAL might be), and, more importantly, having some experience with SPEECHTOTEXT. Easy enough to imagine what happens when you're doing that, but that particular happiness has not been mine.

    Don't know "Enlightened", but a four-letter Laura is usually DERN. Didn't know the VIACOM reference or KIM as clued and have not seen "The Wire" but I'm guessing MARLO has some connection to "Heart of Darkness", although probably not. My pangolin was SPINY before it was SCALY, but that resolved itself. Otherwise no real problems.

    I liked the word play in this one a lot, DG. Definitely Gray day stuff, and thanks for all the fun.

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  14. Anonymous8:33 AM

    Not in my wheelhouse, no fun at all!

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  15. All aboard the Thursday Struggle Bus! Even after I filled in the revealer and two bottom themers, I couldn't "get" it. I understood what they wanted me to do, but I could not parse WTF to do about it up top. CATDOM really held me up, I had CAT and wanted... SPA? CATDOM isn't a word that I would ever think to use. Plus I had KUNGFU instead of TAICHI and that was deadly. I kept taking it out since it wouldn't cross up, but I didn't know what else to put there.

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  16. EasyEd8:44 AM

    Wow, thank you @Rex for explaining this. Finished the puzzle but had no idea how to reconcile the revealer with the answers. Stumped by “rod-shaped” in particular. And there are some really tricky clues. However, in hindsight admire the complexity the author brought to this effort. Like @JohnX, started as CIS but morphed into HET…

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  17. Anonymous8:48 AM

    Stupid is as stupid does. Enjoyed this puzzle as much as i enjoy the butchering of the English language that texting has perpetrated. I dislike any puzzle that includes clues or answers that use texting language much less making it the theme.

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  18. In response to the folks conflating "cis" and HET—They do not refer to the same thing. Cis is the opposite of trans, as in cisgender and transgender. I'm gay but I'm cisgender or "cis" because I am a man who was "assigned male at birth" (i.e., I came out of the womb with a penis). Home and hetero are short for homosexual and heterosexual, which have to do with affinity for same-sex partners or opposite-sex partners.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous10:05 AM

      This. Stunned that this crowd doesn’t know the difference between straight/gay and cis/trans yet. One is sexuality. The other is gender. Not. The. Same.

      Delete
  19. EIFFEL TOWER came in and I repeated my mantra [TM] to myself: "When there's a mismatch between the clue and the answer, the trick is in the CLUE."

    But I didn't need my mantra -- and neither do you -- because the revealer clue tells us that.

    What great fun this was! It's always good for a constructor to put his trickiest themer first -- before anyone has figured out the trick. I had a really big "Aha Moment" when I belatedly realized that "parasite" = Paris site. Now that is really inspired! Off I went to figure out all the others on my own. "Grade A" = gray day. Wonderful!! "Self-own" = cell phone. A bit more forced, but still fun to figure out.

    Other than starting to write in BUTT CALL before BUTT DIAL, I had no trouble. I didn't know what the computer program was that produces such gibberish, and what I had was SPEECHsomething-or-other. AGRa instead of AGRO wasn't helping me. But now that I know it's SPEECH TO TEXT, remind me not to ever sign up for it.

    As you know, I have a love of puzzles that put their trickery in the clues. This was a highly entertaining example of it -- and with the perfect revealer to explain the trickery. Another candidate for my running list for Puzzle of the Year.

    What fun this was!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. @Nancy, welcome back!

      Delete
    2. Anonymous3:44 PM

      Yes, glad to hear from you again!

      webwinger

      Delete
  20. Bob Mills9:08 AM

    Typical Thursday...far-fetched theme, strange cluing, no fun at all. Somehow I guessed at BUTTDIAL at the end, without any idea of what it meant, and then heard the music. I also didn't understand BALED for "made a bundle," and I had "agri" instead of AGRO (because of the spelling of "agriculture." I can't wait for Friday.

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  21. Hey All !
    16 wide grid, to get the even-lettered Revealer in the center. Which, BTW, works more as SPEAK TO TEXT to my ears. Or TALK TO TEXT. I had SPEakHTOTEXT in, not noticing the H just hanging out in space. Didn't get the Happy Music, said, Huh, and immediately went to the kHIA I had in. Saw the H waving at me, like "Hey, over here! Check your SPEak." Changed it to SPEECH, and got the win.

    A bit on the tougher side, wasn't a whoosh solve, fill decent.

    Interesting theme idea. Isn't stuff supposed to get easier with more technology? Seems like it isn't...

    Happy Thursday.

    Four F's
    RooMonster
    DarrinV

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  22. I liked the idea but didn't find the implementation very compelling (what speech-to-text app, likely running OFF A CELLPHONE, is *ever* going to misinterpret "cellphone" as the nonsensical "self-own"?). MARLO/ORR was an obnoxious Natick and not sure why "Green" for ECO was in quotes. Not a hard puzzle but just... annoying.

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  23. Well, there went my luck this week. I finished and wondered what I was missing. I applied Nancy‘s theory of going back to the clue to find the trick. It was the right idea but no help whatsoever. (Note to self in the future: Try reading the clues out loud.) I might’ve had a chance had EIFFEL TOWER not had that odd “rod” reference or had the clue for BUTT DIAL been simply “self-own embarrassment.” It would’ve made the themers more consistent anyway. CIS before HET which IMO is atrocious.

    There’s no denying it’s a good puzzle and really sharp theme. But when it has to be explained it’s always disappointing.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. What you said is how I feel and my solve experience.

      Delete
  24. Anonymous9:22 AM

    Rod-shaped: Perhaps a mishearing of odd-shaped? Would be better as statement from a tour guide: "There's your rod-shaped parasite!"

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. @Anon. 9:22 AM Now THAT is the only defensible explanation that I’ve heard of 18A: of course “rod-shaped parasite” = odd shaped Paris site.

      Delete
  25. Goodness sakes this was rough for me. I love everything about it, well except for sooo many horrid clues and one shockingly stupid answer. I figured out at PARTYSUB how the misheard sounds were supposed to work, but I couldn't parse any of the other ones, so everything had to be solved by crosses and essentially unclued theme entries. And, it didn't help I knew none of the proper nouns.

    I wonder why they don't have STOOPS in the country. It takes an academic charcuterie munching NPR listener or a gangster to appreciate a STOOP. StoopDogg. STOOP is like a low budget curtsy where you're likely to hit your head on something sharp. A lot of people call me STOOP on account of the blather that comes out of my mouth. It could also be an anagram for SO POT, you know, the promotional slogan for Colorado. My favorite Catholic is ST. OOP the patron saint of crossword puzzlers and basketball players. You probably thought it was ST. OREO or ST. OBOE, but they're only for country folk. I wonder why "folks" never live in cities. Folks are anti-STOOP.

    I don't know how many words I had on that yellow sign before I finally discovered SLOW, but suffice it to say, traffic was well warned.

    Gondolas in Colorado go on cables, so imagine my surprise to learn we were talking about Venice. Now there's a [Yacht spot].

    So many horrible partials on this planet, but I think we can agree HET is way up in the rankings for worst ever. I can't imagine we would see its counterpart HOMO showing up under [Gay, informally]. Maybe HOM? C'mon editors. Change AW HELL to ACHILL [Coors in a cooler] and two of the worst things in this puzzle get a little less horrible. Not great, but HET and HELL both exeunt.

    [Rook's opposite] is a sad clue too. DQS is Dairy Queens, not whatever nonsense is in this grid.

    I adore that we might rank EVIL into EVILER and EVILEST. Only in crosswording and the Minions movies, but garden variety evil just won't cut it anymore. One meeelion dollars. Extreme close-up.

    Propers: 7
    Places: 1
    Products: 5
    Partials: 10 (c'mon ... ugh)
    Foreignisms: 1
    --
    Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 24 of 79 (30%)

    Funnyisms: 7 😂 (Again, I am assuming the theme answers are meant to be funny.)

    Tee-Hee: They said "HE double toothpicks."

    Uniclues:

    1 Question and answer every (non-HET?) underwater sailor grapples before the grappling begins. (I don't really know what goes on down there, but maybe some grapples?)
    2 Hail Huffington hilariously.
    3 How country folk describe a Grade-A.
    4 Poke someone in the eye with that balsa wood sword.
    5 Grow up and make some money.
    6 Why the ladies like my CATDOM.

    1 PARTY SUB? I HOPE SO.
    2 BUTT DIAL ARIANNA
    3 DERN CLOUDY SKIES
    4 LOUSE UP TAI CHI (~)
    5 PLEBE REMEDY
    6 LOVE SEAT ON SITE

    My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: ... said no one ever. ENOUGH CARAMEL.

    ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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  26. Another candidate for WOAT. Sigh....

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  27. walrus9:46 AM

    as always with sunday–thursday, it’s better to skip the theme clues/answers for as long as possible—made super easy now that the editors highlight them.

    ReplyDelete
  28. Anonymous9:56 AM

    this theme is the worst. doesn't work for me at all

    ReplyDelete
  29. Normally I don't do Thursday puzzles but yesterday's SB didn't satisfy the puzzling urge so l gave this thing a whirl. Had to solve it as a themeless and got a Saturday's worth of puzzling so I guess I can't complain but that theme.....yeesh. After getting the congrats I could see the connection for the bottom two themers but the top two were so poorly executed I had to go to xwordinfo to see what was going on. Even they couldn't see the point of "rod shaped" and what I've read here only makes it worse. However as a themeless solve this was enjoyable.

    One post solve bonus was that the "rod shaped " clue motivated me to look up the origins of BACILLI and COCCI which as a regular SB solver I really ought to know.



    yd -0. QB18

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  30. But what were the real answers to the starred clues supposed to be? I feel like that's unresolved. What's the rod shaped parasite?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous11:10 AM

      I’m with you, Rachel

      Delete
  31. Easy-medium. I too had to go back and sound out the clues post-solve to make. sense of what was going on. Pretty clever theme but no help with the solve. Liked it.

    If you enjoy British mysteries and haven’t seen “Foyles War” you should put it on your list.

    ReplyDelete
  32. Rewrites all over the shop, had to iterate from a starting place of lots of wrong answers. My favorite kind of tough today, really liked it.

    ReplyDelete
  33. Unusually high count of three and four-letter HDWs*; I'll offer these clues:

    1. NY MLB shrine

    2. Little climate rascal, with "El"

    3. Fruity pastry `a Paris

    My hold-up today was the area described by Rex, but with even more confusion: BUTT calL for BUTT DIAL, which made mysteries of REMEDY and VIACOM; SANTaRIA, which made SEEYA un-SEE-YA-ble; CHIA, HET, and TENTS, as clued.
    Finally resolved all issues, but made for a slow solve.

    Answers:
    1. HOF (begins with H in 25A; I can't resist a baseball clue)
    2. NINO (N in 1D, SCENIC)
    3. TARTE (T in PARTYSUB, 27A--couldn't get my keyboard to put the accent mark over the a!)

    AGRO, 28D, is crossed by the "Taj Mahal-ish" Diagonal AGRA.

    Time to QUIT; SEEYA.

    *Hidden Diagonal Word

    ReplyDelete
  34. Lots of head-scratching at first but got the trick at PARTYSUB. (Wanting karate and INacab for 2 and 3 Down kept me from seeing the SCENIC Paris site. Nice theme idea but agree the execution could use work. Lots of sketchy (stretchy?) fill. Looking at you, ROOK - I’ve seen noob, noobie, newbie but never rook.

    I tried like HEck to turn “Grade-A” into Great day, which really had me flummoxed. I mean, I love CLOUDY SKIES but it hardly seems like a universal euphemism for a great day. DA.

    I’m a SCENIC route enthusiast. If I’m not in a hurry I’ll go out of my way to find SCENIC routes. One time coming home from Birmingham I got off the interstate and drove about 50 miles through the backroads. I ended up spending an hour walking around Moundville Archaeological Park. National Geographic called it “The Big Apple of the 14th Century” and it is tres cool.

    Computer shortcut discussion alert:

    @Nancy, you’re halfway there! Now all you have to do is learn the shortcut to jump to the bottom of the page. In case you missed it, @akanager posted a suggestion yesterday: “@Nancy, if you are on a computer browser like Firefox (I can't remember if you are), the "End" key should take you to the very bottom of the current page, including the comment form.”

    That was one of the shortcuts mentioned when I searched the web. And you can use it not just on this site, but other websites too. It isn’t a function of the website but of your computer. Although it looks like from what I saw, the shortcut may vary depending on which browser you use, so if hitting the “End” key doesn’t work, don’t give up. Just Google “how to jump to end of page on [insert your browser name here]” and you should get answers specific to your browser. Fingers crossed!

    Oh, and you can always use your mouse to grab the little bubble in the scrolling side-bar of any window and just pull it all the way down - gets the job done in a hurry.

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    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    2. Sorry! That should be @okanaganer posted.... (I practiced this time)

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  35. Hasbro once made a transformer in which a lovable Star Wars character morphed into a republic attack shuttle, that is, a toy Yoda convertible.

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  36. Anonymous10:56 AM

    A Mondegreen themed puzzle. Hmm…

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  37. After EIFFEL TOWER and PARTY SUB and having no idea what was going on, I decided to skip the reveal and try to get the remaining two theme answers, to see if I could figure out the trick. But BUTT DIAL and CLOUDY SKIES got me nowhere. Time to go look at the clues again. Thank goodness for the awkward "self-own"! And then they all made sense. "Parasite" - so good! I took "Rod-shaped" to mean that the structure was fashioned out of iron rods. Going back to the center, I needed just about every cross for SPEECH TO TEXT, a new phrase for me.

    Channeling @pabloinnh: DogGone it, DG - you got me good with those clues! Thanks for the confusion and the fun.

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  38. I'll let the linguists sort this out, but it seems to me that "plasm" is a root and not a suffix while "proto" is a prefix. Can you have a word that's just a prefix and a suffix? Maybe something like neo-ish?

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  39. Hand up for CIS before HET which I already fessed up to in my earlier post, and I was relieved to see that others admitted to this error as well. But to those who seem to be upset about it, I want to explain that I was fully aware the two words are not synonymous. It’s just that because I never heard of hetero shortened to HET, CIS was the only three-letter entry I thought of that might work. It’s not that I was ignorant; it was just one of those crossword moments when something was better than nothing.

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  40. I don't understand the theme, and after 5 minutes of thought am not going to try anymore. I was expecting homophones, but then I have rarely used SPEECH TO TEXT technology, so I'm not sure what kind of errors it tends to cause.

    A few minor points:
    *At 42-A, PLASM is the root, Proto- is a prefix (see also ectoplasm, cytoplasm, etc.).
    *71-A, as I have always understood, you EMEND a printed text when you suggest that the author had really written a word that was different from what was printed; this is very common in Shakespeare editions, for example. The clue suggest simple editing of writing.
    *I also thought at 5-D that only West Point cadets started out as PLEBEs, but I seem to have been wrong about that.

    Now to go see if Rex has figured out how the revealer works.

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  41. Seems like @Rex and others are making too much of "Rod-shaped". The Eiffel Tower is long and skinny, which is how you know the answer isn't Norte Dame or The Louvre.

    The way this puzzle works is pretty much how mind works, so I'm with @Nancy in considering it a possible Puzzle of the Year (and BTW, it's really nice to have you back @Nancy).

    Thanks for this joy ride, Damon Gulczynski.

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    1. Anonymous12:58 PM

      @egs Feel the same way about the puzzle. It was a challenge, but well worth the effort. Thank you Damon.

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  42. Wasn’t seeing the theme, but was able to solve it fairly smoothly. Looking back the ‘rod’ thing bugs me. As much as I love the Simpsons, I immediately thought of bacteria- which look nothing like the Eiffel Tower and a lot like the Employee of the Month- but more animated. HET has been widely used in LGBTQI culture since at least the 90s. So has PARTYSUB, but that is a whole other thing.

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  43. Only two or three days ago I saw a joke on Etiquette Bites (the substack and podcast of the Emily Post Institute) which I read out loud to my wife: "What do a tick and the Eiffel Tower have in common?" She didn't like it, and I completely failed to remember it when I was looking at the clue for EIFFEL TOWER in today's puzzle. I think the rod-shaped part of the clue threw me off.

    @Bob Mills a BUTT DIAL occurs when you carry a phone in your back pocket and accidentally make a call by sitting down on it.

    Hey, everybody--we all have stuff we don't know, no need to put anyone down for not knowing it.

    @A, @okanager, thanks for the tip about the End key!

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  44. "It takes an academic charcuterie munching NPR listener or a gangster to appreciate a STOOP"?? Not at all. Any city dweller of any cultural or ethnic/class background (!!) will immediately identify the "stoop" for what it is.

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  45. The Eiffel Tower is made of rods.

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  46. Excuse me while I kiss this guy while singing about Gladly, the Cross-Eyed Bear and trying to figure out why the man running away from me had a Fighter Flea instinct.

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  47. BUTTDIAL???
    Not for me. Struggled. I'd almost prefer a rebus Thursday :(

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  48. Old Abe Greenberg opens the door on his 85th birthday and standing there is a sexy young woman. She says, I'm a gift from your old army buddies and I'm here to offer you super sex. He thinks for a minute, sighs, and says "I'll take the soup."

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  49. Semi-hard, clever, and FUN, to boot! Oh did I stare at EIFFEL TOWER. Then a huge smile when I saw what you did with parasite. I couldn't wait to figure out the rest....BUTT DIAL embarrassment. I think you're my favorite....

    So I knew what you were doing here but I didn't know it was called SPEECH TO TEXT. Of course it makes perfect sense. So I now have a name for it and decide to fill in the rest of the non-themers.

    SANTERIA!....Boy do I know you well. A secretly practiced religion in Cuba that some people thought was akin to voodoo. I really isn't although some of the rituals and sacrifices were (to me) scary. The folks I knew and lived with and played with secretly practiced SANTERIA which has Catholic roots. The non-Catholic rituals involved animal sacrifices that I hated. A neighbor's German Sheppard mix puppy was used during one such ritual. Our housekeepers boyfriend did the deed and when I found out, I told him I was going to stick pins in a doll that looked like him and hope he'd burn in hell. He took me seriously and left the killing ritual to chickens only because you could eat them for supper.

    My mistakes were very similar to @Rex's. So yes, I started with Bench mistake at 1A. 1D just had to be SCENIC. STOOP it is then....EXTRA for deleted scene at 38D was perhaps my hardest entry to figure out. How is that possible. Another really silly one was trying to figure out FIAT/FUEL. I don't know who MARLO is and so I played with MARIO and MARCO....Well CLOUDY SKIES had to be a gray day so the letters finally jumped out at me and I was finished. Que fun. Yes, it took me a while but I figured you out and I've learned all about Cis vs.HET and I don't know why there are a gazillion people focusing on that one entry. HET it is.

    Here's my little silly but funny, (to me) SPEECH TO TEXT moment. My BFF's nickname to me is Jilly Poo (long story which I won't bother you with except my nickname to her is Rosita Banana) . In one very long text where she started with my name, it translated as "Jelly Poop." Just what I need!....I now am forever some jelly poop to her and I'm going to see how I can mangle Rosita Banana...

    SEE YA....

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    1. Anonymous3:40 PM

      Actually, Santería is derived from the West African Yoruba religion, as are Haitian Vodou and Brazilian Candomblé. "Voodoo" is a made-up practice with roots among the Louisiana Creoles, but the name is derived from Haitian Vodou.

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  50. I usually enjoy Mr. Gulczynski’s puzzles but this one was a bit disappointing. There was an awkwardness about it, especially the themers. The rod shape attributed to the EIFFELTOWER seems to have baffled a lot of people besides me and, though BUTTDIAL fell into place pretty easily, I don’t really know what a “self-own” is. Is it like an apartment you don't rent? Also awkward to my ear is EVILEST. I would say most evil every time.

    Like Rex, I had AWHEck before AWHELL. And CATDOM… why not?

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  51. If you really are a New Yorker, you owe it to yourself to read up on G.E. and their legacy of PCBs in the Hudson River: https://www.riverkeeper.org/campaigns/stop-polluters/pcbs/

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  52. Anonymous1:02 PM

    I think maybe it should be odd shaped instead of rod-shaped

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  53. Anonymous1:07 PM

    I think it is meant to be odd shaped not rod shaped

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  54. @A, you've almost got it!... "okanaganer". (The Okanagan valley.)

    Rex, if you're reading this, I spent last evening watching the 2014 movie "The Rewrite" which I'm sure you've heard of. It starred Hugh Grant as a Hollywood movie writer who finds himself banished to teaching at an upstate New York university. Yup, Binghamton.

    Theme was uneven, to put it charitably. "Grade-A" = "gray day" was the best. "Rod-shaped" was... baffling.

    I remember watching ORR score his "flying goal" all those years ago. Unforgettable visual.

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    1. My new glasses are due to arrive today. Sorry!

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  55. I applied @Nancy's rule (welcome back, BTW) that if the answers don't make sense with the clue, look again at the clue which I did after finishing and not getting the theme. But I gave it very little time before throwing in the mental towel and coming here to get the lowdown. Now it makes sense. I think you can ignore the part of the clue that doesn't make up part of the homophone because while we don't know what sense the tech would have made of "rod-shaped", we can imagine that parasite would end up as heard as Paris Site, eliciting EIFFEL TOWER in the text.

    Took me a moment to come up with MARLO in the far south center. I had Rex's "dill" first at 40D because I was inferring _PEE_ as sPEEd before AW HELL cured that. And I spent a bit of time trying to make sense of SPEECH Ta TEXT. Obviously, if 28D was meant to be AGRa, it would have had a Taj Mahal clue, yes?

    Thanks, Damon Gulczynski, nice Thursday!

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  56. So easy! Got the theme as soon as I got to the 39A clue, as I already had -PEECHTO-E-T. Loved the theme, a departure from my usual Thursday animus. I don't use voice commands except to my dog, but I am constantly irritated at the way "AI" (i.e., Asinine Interpretation) autoEMENDs every other word I type in.

    I had no real problem with "Rod-shaped". I just googled "rod" and looked at the image display. Most of the pics resemble le tour eiffel not at all. But fishing rods kind of do. And maybe Rod Stewart.

    My only gripe is CELEB, unless "perhaps" also implies "informally" - which it doesn't, IMHO.

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  57. Working this puzzle and then finally seeing its theme, reminded me of a Nat King Cole song:
    ♫ So forgettable that's what you are ♫
    ♫ So forgettable though near or far ♫

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  58. Even though I have a dumb phone with a telephone type key pad where texting often requires that a single key has to be pushed multiple times to get the desired letter, I have an example of a funny SPEECH TO TEXT errant homophone.

    One of our regular poker players is a fishing guide and one night he was working on his boat using some caulk to seal up something or the other. His smart phone has the SPEECH TO TEXT technology so when he texted us that he was going to be a few minutes late for that night's game, the text read "...because I have my hands full of cock (!)". Much hilarity ensued.

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  59. Gotta admire Damon for raising both ire and appreciation with today’s grid. Count me among the many who got the SPEECH TO TEXT at the Paris Sight, but AW HELL, just couldn’t parse the others without hand holding by Re-. Impressed that three of the theme related entries were debut entries according to xwordinfo.

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  60. Steve in PDX4:02 PM

    I think that the Eiffel Tower is shaped (built) using rods - “rod-shaped.”

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  61. Anonymous4:04 PM

    Rod-Shaped, i.e. constructed (shaped) using rods.

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  62. Anonymous6:07 PM

    Anyone else have ITSMA ("It's Ma") for 57D ("Identifying words from a familiar voice") which yields AMEND for 71A ("Correct, as writing")? I like these answers better than those in the puzzle. See comments by @kitshef and @jberg.

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  63. I'm so confused (and probably stupid.) I don't understand this at all. Doesn't speech to text type what you say? If you say "grey day quality" it will type "grey day quality" or, if misheard, "grade A quality." It wouldn't type an interpretation of what you said. I don't get it. Pleases help!

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  64. Anonymous12:02 AM

    Maybe you (krytikal) speak more clearly than most. But for most people, speech to text makes a lot of mistakes. So this puzzle makes sense and is funny
    Gray day could easily lead to grade A and vice versa.

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    1. I’m with krytikal 10:51 PM. For example, as Anon. 12:02 AM points out in response, “grade A” could potentially lead to “gray day” but it would never lead to CLOUDY SKIES. “Self-own” does indeed result in “cell phone” (try it! … probably b/c “self own” is gibberish).
      But I guess it falls under “crossword puzzle license” and the puzzle was pretty good (barring unknown religions and obscure French writers).

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  65. CATDen for me for awhile

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  66. Left out the ‘i’ and ‘o’ expecting unknown parasite. But when I got to the. Revealer clue I decided for once to get the revealer and use that for the themes and it helped. Breezed the last two and completed the EIFFLE TOWER. Nice having the revealer higher up in the grid to actually help the solve

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  67. Anonymous1:14 PM

    We can't have a day go by without a comment from a mathematician...

    Those yellow traffic signs are SQUARE! When you rotate a square, it's still a square.

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  68. My syndicated puzzle called it an Afro-Caribbean *religion*, so that was confusing, and I had "ITS Ma" and "aMEND" down in the SE, and couldn't find the error.

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  69. Not easy-medium here. More like medium-challenging, thanks to Damon's flair for clue misdirection.

    I went from REpair through REMake to get, finally, to REMEDY. Very last word. Didn't know that CHIA had any value beyond growing cute heads.

    CATDOM, really? Also not a fan of ATMFEE and TVTRAY, but what're ya gonna do? Inverted the end of MITRE and tried AWHEck before AWHELL for my only writeovers.

    Suitable Thursday workout. Par.

    Wordle birdie.

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  70. I never heard of self-own before. It’s new to me. There were too many bad clues and junk fill for the effort even though some of the themes were pretty clever.

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  71. Anonymous6:21 PM

    Peace meaning goodbye(see ya) has been around for centuries, as it is a shortening of the phrase "peace be with you". It became extremely popular during the hippie era. In the late 80's the word "out" was tacked on and was a popular way to say goodbye for awhile. I enjoyed the puzzle very much, but a lot of head scratching went on before the three-way bulb got set to bright. I was very thankful that I didn't have to scrunch a bunch of letters into one cell.

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