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Linux software packages, informally / WED 9-18-24 / House of worship at the top of 67-Across / Car with a three-box design / Cutesy term for a swap / Lawless princess / Largest arboreal mammal, informally / Pioneering 1940s computer
Wednesday, September 18, 2024
Constructor: Casey Callaghan and Will Nediger
Relative difficulty: Easy or Challenging (depending on your familiarity with the architecture in question)
THEME: THE SPANISH STEPS (67A: Architectural attraction in Rome depicted by this puzzle's grid?) — a famous Roman staircase leading up to the TRINITÀ DEI MONTI church, and represented here by a staircase-shaped set of circled squares where the "steps" are made out of "Spanish" numbers (UNO DOS TRES CUATRO)
Word of the Day: THE SPANISH STEPS (67A) —
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| [source: The Morgan Library] |
The Spanish Steps (Italian: Scalinata di Trinità dei Monti) in Rome, Italy, climb a steep slope between Piazza di Spagna at the base and Piazza Trinità dei Monti, dominated by the Trinità dei Monti church, at the top.
The monumental stairway of 135 steps is linked with the Trinità dei Monti church, under the patronage of the Bourbon kings of France, at the top of the steps and the Spanish Embassy to the Holy See in the Palazzo Monaldeschi at the bottom of the steps. The stairway was designed by the architects Francesco de Sanctis and Alessandro Specchi. (wikipedia)
• • •
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| [La Ragazza Che Sapeva Troppo (1963), d. Mario Bava] |
... though I watched Roman Holiday this summer, so I must've seen them then, too:
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| [Roman Holiday (1953), d. Wyler] |
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| [The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), d. Minghella] |
So they're iconic, and I've seen them (in movies) a number of times, but still, I couldn't retrieve their name (had STEPS and could think only of THIRTY-NINE STEPS — a perfect fit (15!) ... but a Hitchcock movie (1935), not an actual staircase). And I certainly didn't know the name of the church (needed every cross (!) for that one). So I can't say I enjoyed the puzzle, because I just didn't know the reference (not really), so there was no spark of recognition. That's my problem, admittedly. The staircase is certainly famous enough, and if you're familiar with it by name, then I can see admiring this. The one thing I don't really get is the staircase itself. I get that you have built the "STEPS" out of "SPANISH" numbers, but why numbers? And why four? Obviously there are more than four steps. The "staircase" depicted in the grid has eight steps, but as you can see from the pictures above, the actual SPANISH STEPS far outnumber that (135 steps!). So the visual here feels like something kind of tacked on because the constructor(s) made the serendipitous discovery that both TRINITÀ DEI MONTI and THE SPANISH STEPS were a perfect, grid-spanning 15 letters long ... and then couldn't really think of what to do from there. So we get a "staircase" with an arbitrary number of steps and an arbitrary set of Spanish words. To be fair, it's kind of a cute solution to the problem of depicting "Spanish" "steps" — maybe a simple visual pun is enough — but the connection to the actual steps feels pretty tenuous.
["Uno, dos, tres, cuatro!"]
The fill on this one starts out pretty awful (ÉTÉ ENIAC ORANG, all at once, yeesh), but then you get the lovely LACUNA (just me? I love that word) (22A: Unfilled space) and the handsome IGNOBLE and the PRIMROSE PITMASTER who TRIED HARD, and the short stuff gets less ugly, so overall the grid actually ended up being pretty enjoyable to work through. Winced hard at TRADESIES though (43A: Cutesy term for a swap) ... didn't we just have one of these cutesy -SIES expressions? SAMESIES, maybe? TWINSIES? I forget. Anyway, whatever it was, it was more familiar / in-the-language than TRADESIES (?) feels. Also winced at DISTROS, but that's just because I have no idea what that is (42D: Linux software packages, informally). It may surprise you to find that I've spent very little time thinking about [squints at grid] "Linux software packages," let alone thinking about them "informally," so pfft, shrug, if you insist. But again, otherwise, once you get out of that NW corner, this grid seems just fine.
More points of interest:
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
- 13A: Lawless princess (XENA) — while XENA may have occasionally (frequently?) stepped outside the bounds of the law, the "Lawless" here represents the actress's name—Lucy Lawless
- 24A: Half of a Dashiell Hammett detective couple (NORA) — The other half is Nick. The couple is featured in the novel The Thin Man, which was adapted into the classic 1987 movie, Ernest Goes to Camp. Nick & NORA also lend their names to a style of cocktail glass. We have two chilling in our freezer at all times :)
- 29D: Bright spots? (ATRIA) — had the "A," wrote in AURAS, got briefly (and, it turns out, pointlessly) mad at the whole AURAS v. AURAE problem.
- 64D: Sunrise direction, in San Salvador (ESTE) — hard to get excited about a piece of crosswordese like ESTE, but I did like that the puzzle managed to work both "Salvador" and "Dali" into the clues (9A: Like the watches in Dali's "The Persistence of Memory"). The choice of "San Salvador" felt like a wink at the earlier Dali clue, which probably wasn't intentional, but it's art, man, you see what you see. And Dali was Spanish too! And he painted staircases! Who's seeing things now?!
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| ["Heaven Canto 1 (The Divine Comedy)" (1950s)] |
See you next time.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
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101 comments:
Finished it without cheating, thanks to trial-and-error guesses in the SW. I had "comealone" instead of HOMEALONE until the very end. I didn't know XENA as the lawless princess, so EXTOL took a long time to get. This puzzle was closer to a Friday in terms of difficulty for me, because I had no clue in re the theme entries.
On the Easy side of Easy-Medium for me. Like @Rex, I needed every cross for TRINITÀ DEI MONTI (17A), and even then I had to guess where the word breaks came so I could look it up post-solve. But that was the only WOE.
Overwrites:
1D: EXalt before EXTOL
22A: vACUum before LACUNA
35D: roil before STIR
Odd that the STEPS were chosen as a tribute theme - is there an historical connection this year? I’ve been there - so it was fill in the blanks for me.
ECHO
Overall fill is not up to Will’s normal high standards. I guess LACUNA, PRIMROSE and EROICA were nice.
Not a strong Wednesday showing.
She’s an Angel
Got naticked at the ENIAC/LACUNA cross. Never heard either word before, so had ENIAg/LAgUNA (seemed as plausible as anything) and figured that must be the issue. Ended up running the alphabet. WTH is a LACUNA anyway? And WTH is an ENIAC?? And needed the explanation for what the “steps” were spelling out. Weird puzzle.
Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC)
I had a bad vibe right from the start with ETE crossing TERRA, and it got worse from there as that section filled in with XENA and our old friend ENIAC. I had no clue on the XENA actress as I thought XENA was a cartoon character. Then of course TRINITÀ DEI MONTI sealed the deal and I knew this puzzle wasn’t intended for me.
Stuck with it though - I held my nose at DIANA x ARIEL and then bumped into the even fouler smelling DISTROS crossing EROICA. So, not on my wavelength at all - hopefully others will find it more suitable to their liking today.
PoTMASTER/ADDoN did me in. Yuch, on a Wednesday
2 day since our last rap-themed clue.
1 missed opportunity for fill-in-the rapper/D.J. today:
Kid CAPRI (early D.J.)
Other:
Aminé is a rapper, whose name is not ANIME, like I thought.
Reggie WATTS isn't rapper, but he is a multi-hyphenate and he can beatbox.
Not rappy enough today, nyt. I award you no points and may god have mercy on your soul.
Gonna have to rewatch Ernest Goes to Camp soon, it seems
Been there. (The Spanish Steps, that is.) Iconic is right. And my young sons discovered that there’s a McDonald’s nearby. The burgers were no different, but the soft-serve ice cream was: it was Italian gelato. We went back 2-3 times just for that. 😁
I always though Dali's watches were iconically 'soft', rather than LIMP, so that set me back a bit.
Having the stray bit of Spanish (ESTE) unconnected to the steps felt weird. I was looking for it to connect to the theme in some way.
Hand way up for needing every cross for TRINITADEIMONTI. That was the part that felt tacked-on to me. Like they had the steps and one fifteen, and went looking for another fifteen.
Boo to Rex for illustrating Nick and NORA with glasses, rather than a clip from the Ernest film.
ENIAC was the first computer. At least, the way we conceive of them, as electronic, digital computational machines. It was built at Penn and went live in 1945.
I really liked the puzzle, even though the Northwest wasn’t good. As far as I’m concerned, Wednesdays are for whimsy. That is, I hope to get an unusual theme that has some interest but doesn’t make the puzzle especially difficult. This one fit the bill (although it wasn’t especially easy)
Well, NORA is one half, and Nick is one half, and Asta is the other half.
A reminder that tomorrow, Thursday, I'm going to have two different puzzles appearing in two different places -- one in the WSJ and one in the LAT. Both will be accessible online. I hope you will want to do them both and that you'll enjoy them when you do. I really do recommend them both.
I'll be back in a few hours with my comment on today's NYT puzzle.
I have been a UNIX user since 1987, so DISTROS is very familiar ground to me. During my tenure at NCSSM, your DISTRO was part of your nerd cred if you were a techie sort. Ubuntu and Fedora were my favorites. If you used GENTOO, I would say you "compile your life away."
I also liked LACUNA, a word the pops up in my usage periodically. TRADESIES? That's a WTF.
Here's a tidbit for you non-Christians: it's not an accident that there are 39 steps leading up to the church. Jesus was scourged (whipped) 39 times prior to being crucified, so the number has religious significance.
John Keats lived his last days in a house that bordered the Spanish Steps (right side when viewed from bottom), where he died at age 25. Were this a more elaborate Sunday puzzle, one might expect JOHNKEATS running down the east side border of the grid.
This puzzle is so beautifully put together. To wit:
• That sash of circles plus the two theme spanners greatly restrict the answers that can go into the grid. Yet there are minimal junky answers, and even lovely ones – LACUNA, SWATCH, EXTOL, IGNOBLE, PITMASTER.
• I’m guessing many did not know the name of the church that spans row three, (certainly not me!), yet it was gettable due to artful cluing of its crosses, that is, making them easy enough to get while maintaining Wednesday resistance.
Bravo constructors and editors on that!
LACUNA reminded me of Barbara Kingsolver’s novel “The Lacuna”, which I adore and highly recommend.
Normally, tribute puzzles just give facts/features of what or who is being honored. But today we also have a graphic representation (the steps) that includes wordplay (having Spanish going down the steps).
That’s a sweet spin on tribute puzzles, and this was, for me, a splendid outing. Congratulations on your NYT debut, Casey, and high respect, Will, for your expertise and for your kindness in mentoring a new constructor. Thank you both!
OFL -- NOT "just you!"
Ditto.
You should. It's the type of film that gives you something new with each viewing. After 50-60 viewings, a phenomemon known a getting "Vern pilled" happens and the viewer becones enlightened to the pervasiveness of Ernest, including in old movies with seemingly different plots, characters and themes.
That said, Rex is confused. The Thin Man has been adapted many times, but EGTC is not one of them. I believe Rex is thinking of Robocop 2, which is basically a shot-for-shot remake of TTM, with a few minor tweaks (corporate fascists, cyborgs, criminal child gangs, the usual).
Great puzzle. If you like trivia, PPP, crosswordese and Naticks,
This was so clever!
Hey All !
I'm sure our Spanish speakers here will point out that CUATRO is actually the Italian way of spelling, as the STEPS are in Rome, whereas QUATRO is the Spanish spelling. Thinking now though, aren't the other ones spelled differently, too?
That threw me for a bit, but MISC wasn't MISQ, so was able to suss that. Also had TRIEsHARD, messed up the tense of the clue, and CROCUe (from thinking of CROQUE)( If that is even a thing?), so got the Almost There message. Seeing as how my sIeTROS looked all kinds of wacky, managed to get to DISTROS, as seemed logical as a shortened Distribution.
The literal Stairsteps in the center was a nice step. Too bad they couldn't extend the whole length of the puz. 16 Long grid, I guess because of the evenness of the letters in the Stairsteps.
Nice puz. Decent fill, tough to get stuff to work around all those steps.
Happy Wednesday!
One F
RooMonster
DarrinV
Oh the streets of Rome are filled with rubble
Ancient footprints are everywhere
You could almost think that you're seeing double
On a cold dark night on the Spanish Stairs
Ok, not , THESPANISHSTEPS, but that's what this one made me think of. As for 17 A, totally unfamiliar and I know just enough Italian for it to have made almost sense when I got all the letters in, but yikes.
Working bottom up for some time and had __ISTROS, which of course suggested BISTROS . At least I have heard of BISTROS.
Always forget Ms. Kolb's first name. Always.
Had to look twice to see the numbers in Spanish, even though I have taught them countless (see what I did there?) times.
Impressive construction but I have the feeling that the constructors had more fun with this one than I did. Nice engineering, CC and WN. I Certainly Celebrate your achievement but Want No more of these for a while. Thanks for a medium amount of fun.
I loved that scene in “Ernest Goes to Camp” when Ernest knocks his girlfriend out cold to protect her from the mobster’s gunshot!
I had PoTMASTER crossing ADDoN, also got hung up on tIck instead of MITE, another small arachnid
When I saw the clue said 'ingredient' I immediately considered the answer was probably ADDoN (much more commonly seen in xwords) but the clue was more likely pointing to a recipe, to which ingredients are put into. So when I saw PoTMA (which PoT has nothing to do with bbq) I checked crosses and there was the alternate, and more appropriate, ADDIN waiting to be fixed.
Pretty impressive construction effort with the stair STEPS down the middle of the grid, or up, as one sees fit. However, my success at solving was not so impressive, and I found it a challenge, albeit a very fair one. I TRIED but had to work awfully HARD to count out those four numbers since I did not know the architectural attraction or the house of worship at the top of it.
But thanks to RP, I’m now aware I’ve seen it in at least one movie - not HOME ALONE of course. And thanks to Wikipedia, I know a lot more about it than I did an hour ago. A structure referred to as SPANISH, designed by Italians, and partially financed by a Frenchman. So thanks for the history lesson this morning, Casey and Will, and congratulations on the debut.
That was "Ernest Saves Christmas" and I'm sure she understood that it was for her own good and that she shouldn't have been dressed like that. Besides, Ernest says, "didn't see ya there, Vern, hehe" right after he punches her, which is super thoughtful.
If you’re going to include unos, dos, tres, quatro in the puzzle, you should work Wooly Bully in.
CUATRO is the Spanish spelling. Quattro in Italian.
The only time I ever see ORANG is in crosswords. I've never met anyone that uses it as short hand. I'm just annoyed by it. Rest of the puzzle was pretty ok.
@Roo - not sure where you are getting that, but in Spanish it is CUATRO (with a c), and in Italian it is quattro (a q and two ts).
Are you related to the Dyckmans of Manhattan for whom the street is named
17A was a jumble of DOOK-y letters I didn't know, but THE SPANISH STEPS was easy. I never realized that HOME ALONE was a comedy; I thought it was a scary horror-type movie. I gritted my teeth through the pop culture clues, but solved anyway. And you already know that I didn't worry my pretty little head about what was in the diagonal tiny little circles. They were there; they didn't affect my solve because I didn't have to do anything with them or to them; and therefore I felt free to ignore them...and did.
Both my puzzles tomorrow are with Will Nediger. I can promise that neither of them will feature tiny little circles. Will knows of my total lack of interest in this kind of puzzle -- and he is always kind enough to humor me and present me with the kind of grid that I actually enjoy solving myself.
Yep, CUATRO. No word in Spanish starts with a QUA, another thing that I tried to teach kids. Limited success.
¿La Plaza de España en Italia? ¡Qué vergüenza!
It's uncanny. You would need a scientific instrument to tell the difference between these Spanish Steps and the real ones. That's quite the grid spanning Italian word across the top. Required every single cross of course and I've been inside it once. There's so many churches to see in Rome you stop caring what they're named.
Primrose plants are lovely, but I don't think they're common out here. We're more of a sticker bush kind of culture. It helps with keeping the cat-eating Venezuelan gangs out of your yard.
SOO excited to do both of @Nancy's puzzles tomorrow.
Propers: 6
Places: 5
Products: 6
Partials: 9
Foreignisms: 6
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 32 of 79 (41%) {Um, guys, this theme isn't worth setting a gunkification record.}
Funnyisms: 2 😕
Tee-Hee: LIMP RUMPS and BOSOMS
Uniclues:
1 Monkey makin' murder.
2 Mermaid movin' muscle.
3 Big booby trappers.
4 Debauched dude.
1 ORANG PIT MASTER
2 ARIEL TRIED HARD
3 HOME ALONE ORCAS
4 IGNOBLE CHAP
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Beach vista. A LOT OF DARK MEAT.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@jberg—I wanted to go see the Spanish Steps, but we were deterred by the crowds. But at least I’ve heard of them. The church, not so much—even after I got it from crosses, I wasn’t sure how to parse it. But the fill was pretty nice, and very diverse, so I enjoyed the solving experience.
I didn’t notice the Spanish counting in the steps until after I finished. That must have imposed a lot of constraint.
TRADESIES?? Yeah, makes sense.
Thank you for saying that - I was stuck on the exact same spot. I was sure that I was correct, and also thought that it was a very stupid clue for POTMASTER. Once I realized where my mistake was (by looking at the answer key after going through all of the answers multiple times!) I was annoyed at myself for ignoring what was so obviously wrong.
Excellent puzzle. I haven't been to Rome but I have read about THESPANISHSTEPS many times. Great job by Rex, telling about them and showing them in some of my favorite movies.
Nick and NORA were the couple in The Thin Man, a novel by Dashiell Hammett. They are much better known for the movies featuring those characters. Six movies made in the late thirties and early forties. They starred William Powell and Myrna Loy. I saw one of them not that long ago. It held up quite well.
Me too
Got stuck on the clocks also. They are "melting", not limp. BIG difference. https://thedali.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Dali-Symbols.pdf
Very cute and enjoyable
Well, dang. All this time thinking QUATRO. Is that even a word in any language?
Silly brain. 😁
Thanks everyone, for the correction, and leaving out the "you moron" part. Har.
RooMonster UNO Brain Cell Guy
Bueno mis amigos
For more of a challenge, you will enjoy Stella’s grid that today is indeed Tough as Nails!
[Mexican Independence - September 16, 1810]
Clever puzzle, enjoyed it. Congrats to Casey (3 NYT debuts in a row!) & Will.
TRADESIES was amusing. Reminds me of Dumb and Dumber. (Guy in the middle = the average NYT solver.)
IGNOBLE: 2024 Ig Nobel Prize Winners. (My fave: "several mammals can breathe through their anus.")
Had pretty much the same no-knows list as @RP for this solvequest, includin the openin church name themer.
staff weeject pick: HST. Winter hrs. in Honolulu.
honrable mention to: UN, OD, OS, TR, ES, CU, AT & RO.
TRADESIES? har
15x16 puzgrid. More stepsies for yer moneybucks. But well short of 135, tho -- the editin folks probably had to rein that in, a little bit, to keep the puz fittin on one pagesie.
Thanx, Mr. Nediger dude & Callaghan dude. Primo circle-splatzin.
And congratz to Casey Callaghan on his half-debut.
Masked & Anonymo3Us
**gruntz**
To be totally honest, I did not need EVERY cross for the church -- once I had TRIN I went ahead with the ITA. But I needed the rest of them.
Contra Rex, I enjoyed seeing ENIAC; it was big news in the years of my childhood. As for ESTE, it would have fit better if it was clued as the Italian aristocratic family, or their eponymous villa, which is near Rome.
@Roo yes, quatro is four in Portuguese
Rex....you've never set foot in Italy????? Ay dios mio. I think you'd LOVE it. Skip Rome or at least go on a tour of Vatican City and go inside St. Peter's Cathedral. If you're lucky, you can see Michelangelo's Pieta. They keep moving it around but the Cathedral is incredible. Then take yourself to Florence and Venice and Tuscany and and and....Eat, eat, eat and drink, drink, drink....
Oh, the puzzle! Well I thought this was a little marvel in disguise. I've been to the Spanish Steps but never to the TRINITA. It was noisy; filled with a zillion people and dirty. Everyone sits on the steps and eats their porchetta abruzzese sandwich and leaves the wrappings behind...[sigh].
I didn't understand the UNO, DOS, TRES, CUATRO reference but I suppose you'd start out counting the 135 steps that way. The puzzle has some fun words in it as pointed out by @Lewis; it has some nice character and a bit of flourish....One day I'll retell my story about riding on the back of a vespa driven by a very handsome waiter from Rome because my car rental wouldn't start and I needed to get back to my hotel.....! So, if a puzzle gets me thinking and reminiscing, I will always enjoy it....Can't wait for @Nancy's!
Ciao...Next stop, maybe Kyoto?
ORANG ? Even informally I hate it! Nice puzzle overall!.
For me, the easiest Wednesday NYT puzzle ever. Didn't know the church, never heard of the steps, saw the numbers eventually but just went step by step through the puzzle from NW until I finished in SE. Enough easy clues so never got stuck.
I’ve been to Italy but not Rome, but I’ve heard of the Spanish Steps in, among other places the great Guy Clark song “Dublin Blues”: “I loved you on the Spanish Steps the day you said goodbye.”
I’ve never seen “Ernest Goes to Camp,” but is it really based on “The Thin Man”? I only know the classic movies with William Powell and Myrna Loy.
Note to everyone who thinks Rex is ever confused (especially with movies) - you are wrong. Have a chuckle instead.
Easy to solve, and easy to ignore the silly little circles. Sure, the constructors TRIED HARD to assemble the fill to spell 1 2 3 4 in those bubbles, but *shrug*.
At the foot of the subject STEPS, on the left as you're looking up, is a wonderful English tea room. Definitely worth visiting Rome to sip some English tea.
Medium. TRINI…was a WOE for me too so filling in the crosses took some effort. DISTROS was also a WOE.
Costly erasure: CArgo before CAPRI
As usual for me, I ignored the circles and just crunched through the puzzle.
Pretty clever idea, liked it although @Rex is right about the “STEPS”.
Does anyone want to switch seats?
This played like a fun Tuesday for me partly because I've been to Italy a bunch of times. Been in the TRINITADEIMONTI. Sat on THESPANISHSTEPS a few times but perhaps will forego it in the future because, as @Gill points out, there are mobs of people there and they can't seem to find an appropriate place to dispose of their cigarette butts, soda cans, beer bottles, and yes, sandwich wrappers. Kinda sad. And, though I don't recall Venice and Florence being as bad trash-wise, they are both way over stocked with tourists. Yes, I know, I was a tourist there, too. My best trips to Italy have been centred in smaller towns in Liguria, Sicily, and Lazio. My next trip might find me in rural Umbria.
Anyway, always have liked Will Nediger's puzzles. LACUNA is as Rex and others have pointed out, a fine word. Too bad it had to be sitting right below the very ugly ORANG. Will's collaborations are impressive (nod to @Nancy, here) and this one with Casey Callaghan was a lot of fun.
If it's THE SPANISH STEPS, shouldn't it be LA TRINITÁ DEI MONTI? Or is that a NIT only IGNOBLE SCHOLARS would ask?
I totally agree
Not on my wavelength at all lol
Difficult but doable, although I do think that a woman of Nora Charles' stature should have been clued better. Didn't know DISTROS. Didn't miss the rappers today. And thank you both - now I will be singing "Wooly Bully" in my head all day.
Congrats on your debut, Casey :)
Those long DIAGONAL strings of circles could only offer up one 4-letter Hidden Diagonal Word (HDW): RACE (from the R in EROICA).
Didn't get the Happy Music, had already spent enough time on the solve. Hit Check Puzzle to discover my errors on the I in ENIAC and the I in PIT MASTER. Had I spent another few minutes, I might have figured those out. No regrets, however.
Didn't figure out the SPANISH numbers in the "STEPS." Had to get that info from Rex.
I finished but didn't get the Happy Pencil, then wasted many minutes searching unsuccessfully for my mistake. Turns out, like @Alice Pollard, I had POTMASTER crossing ADDON. I'm pretty sure I've never seen or heard the term "pit master".
It was quite confusing to have the church name in Italian, but the numbers on the "steps" in Spanish. As others have noted, in Italian it would be: UNO DUE TRE QUATTRO.
Also, why just 1 2 3 4? If the circles spelled A HUNDRED AND THIRTY FIVE that would have been great.
[Spelling Bee: yd 0; QB streak 17.]
I was helped immensely by a recent attempt to clear out my attic. I came across a very old scarf I’d purchased years ago in Italy on which was depicted several attractions, one of which was La Trinitá dei Monti. I googled La Trinità and learned it was situated above The Spanish Steps. A very lucky and timely find indeed. 😊
Stent is really not a support. It is a hollow tube inserted to keep the blood flowing
@Rex says, "The staircase is certainly famous enough, and if you're familiar with it by name, then I can see admiring this. The one thing I don't really get is the staircase itself. I get that you have built the "STEPS" out of "SPANISH" numbers, but why numbers? And why four? Obviously there are more than four steps. The "staircase" depicted in the grid has eight steps, but as you can see from the actual Spanis Steps far outnumber that (135 steps!)....
This reminds me of the time that @Rex slammed an extraordinary puzzle that was a super-clever tribute to the game "Clue" due to inadequate character development. At the time, I noted in response that there may not be much appetite in the solving community for a 400+ page crossword. Similarly, I don't think that refining this theme to show ciento trienta y cinco steps is going to go over well.
I loved this puzzle! Thanks, Casey Callaghan and Will Nediger.
I’ve been to the Spanish Steps - my sister and I, both traveling in Europe with our boyfriends in 1980, planned to meet on the Spanish Steps on a certain day at a certain time. Since it was pre-cell phones and we had no way to be in touch, we just had to hope it would work out. It did, we met, it was summer in Rome, and we both eventually married those boyfriends.
I thought the puzzle was kind of hard for a Wednesday, the clues were not speaking to me. I did know EROICA but I had no idea, never heard of, the Linux software thing, which I can’t even remember as I write this.
I’m not a medical professional, so I have to rely on layman’s terms/definitions. I believe a stent is used to keep the blood vessel open wide enough to allow the blood flow. To the extent that it keeps the vessel from basically collapsing in on itself, it seems like it may qualify as a support in that regard. I will note that your comment didn’t contend that the clue is inappropriate, but was seeking more of a clarification. I think the clue / answer combination is a close enough hint for CrossWorld.
Agree that they are melting, so I guess they must be limp as well. But that was all crosses. Is there a proverb about the primrose path? I thought it was a metaphor from Shakespeare.
Never mind all the puzzle stuff, how do you get this far along in life without ever going to Italy?
Just wanted to make the point that without the stent the vessel becomes blocked by thickening of the vessel wall. There is
no “ collapse “.
Distros, crocus, ionia, eroica wouldn't be so bad if they weren't all crossing. Once again, please do not shoehorn in your clever gimmicks on a pre-thursday puzzle if it takes a morass like that to make it fit.
Apparently Rex has never seen (or heard of) the original Thin Man movies made in the 30’s. William Powell and Myrna Loy (and Asta). I agree with the somewhat obscure Spanish Steps reference
Come to this blog for the crossword critique. Stay for all the enlightening facts about the classic 1987 movie Ernest Goes to Camp.
Anonymous 6:17 AM
In terms of crosswords , ENIAC is old standby. Classic crosswordese. For people like me who have been doing them for decades, this was a gimme. As it happens, I have read a little about the history of computers, and learned that many consider the ENIAC the first computer in the modern sense. Lacuna is a formal word of Latin origin meaning gap empty space etc. used in academia, medicine and other formal writing. As a lawyer I saw it used in court decisions.
Read Rex's note. The actress who played Xena is named Lucy Lawless.
About P-TMASTER
I made precisely the same error, on paper so nothing to tell me something was wrong. I knew the o didn’t sound right but I forgot about it so dnf on a Wednesday. My excuse is I hate barbecues and never go to them- and I am sticking to it!
Anonymous 10:43 AM
About melting v limp.
I disagree. We are dealing with a puzzle, which has clues or hints not an art history book with a description of the famous painting It is definitely close enough for crosswords.
Medical professional speaking - there are many kinds and uses for stents. One is a balloon expandable type that is used to treat arterial stenosis (narrowing) due to plaque buildup. Usually a balloon catheter is used to widen that section of the blood vessel, then a compressed rigid stent is inserted. Then another balloon catheter is inflated within that stent. The rigid stent is then expected to keep the vessel open and unblocked. Thus, that type of stent is absolutely a support.
I love this Ernest bit and I hope Rex doesn’t stop any time soon
Two more tidbits: There are 135 steps leading up to the church, and the Bible does not say how many times Jesus was whipped.
HA!
I often forget what a prolific masterpiece Ernest Goes to Camp was
i DNF at the same spot. i remembered the computer was EN-something just from doing crosswords, but it hasn't shown up in a little bit so my brain didn't hang onto it. i was certain it was either ENIAd or ENIAl [that's a lowercase L at the end there] - when eniad didn't work [and la duna didn't look like anything] i was like, okay, it has to be enial then! and LA lUNA means the moon, which is definitely an unfilled space, so i guess this is just some poetic way of describing it i hadn't come across. but no...no. never heard of LACUNA, so, rip.
-stephanie.
https://theromanguy.com/italy-travel-blog/rome/spanish-steps/the-spanish-steps-romes-modern-day-landmark/
I'm a bit of a computer geek so ENIAC and DISTROS were gimmes. On the other hand, like Rex, I've never been to Italy. SPANISHSTEPS fell quickly just because they are so famous but I needed all the crosses for TRINITADEIMONTI. Never heard of it. This felt more like a Friday than a Wednesday.
The DISTROS EROICA cross was deeply satisfying to me - both delightful to see pop up. Unfortunately that top left corner was far less in my wheelhouse and I had to cheat
Just did it and I’ll take it as a good omen. We’re leaving for Rome in the morning and staying at The Inn at The Spanish Steps.
i think Rex is having us on. LOL
Pretty excited to get to do this puzzle while on my way to Rome. (!)
Congrats on getting two puzzles published! I'm curious what "edits" did they make to your puzzles? Reworded some of the clues? Changed some of the words in the grid?
Got the Spanish Steps immediately (no crosses) but had no clue about Trinita dei Monte. Figured it out from crosses, and guessing that a reference to Trinita was a reasonably likely name for a church.
I know I am late on this puzzle - busy week - but wasn’t it “Uh! Oh! Oreo”?
Same Anonymous here! That would be Clue 36 Down, which reads “Oh! Oh! ____” as onetime snack brand slogan. Pretty certain it was “Uh! Oh! Oreo!”
The circled squares should have spelled out 135 in Spanish: “ciento treinta y cinco”
IN CITE
She TRIEDHARD TO go faster –
LEAPs and IGNOBLE jumps –
ISN’T XENA A MASTER
with BOSOMS and RUMPS!?
--- DIANA WATTS
Say "Hola!" to a new kealoa: EX[ALT][TOL]. And, please, say "Adios!" to TRADESIES! Permanently. ISNT POTMASTER missing an S? Or is he the local grass dealer who has nothing to do with barbecues (until the munchies come, anyway?
I found this difficult because I had no idea what they were going for with those circled steps. Turns out, it was just counting in Spanish. THAT was IT??? Reminds me of the Doug balloon that gets punctured and wakes him up on the analyst's couch. Let's say, anticlimactic.
I've been to Rome, seen the steps like uncounted others...but know the name of the church? No way. Clue I had the most trouble with: Kings or queens, for...PAIR. Talk about your DOH!!
Learned: LACUNA, DISTROS. Will forget: LACUNA, DISTROS. Oh well, I TRIEDHARD. Par.
Wordle bogey.
Fairly easy for a Wednesday puzzle. Like almost everyone here, I knew the Spanish Steps, but not the name of the church. It's fascinating that it's Rome, the steps are Spanish, and the church and monastery at the top of the steps are French. And on a side note, there are four other francophone churches in Rome.
Who knew???
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