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Longtime college basketball coach Kruger / THU 9-26-24 / Sudden riser in status / Something found near a trap / Prominent feature of Hello Kitty / "Wake word" for an Apple device
Thursday, September 26, 2024
Constructor: Jesse Guzman
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
Theme answers:
- CRUELLA (i.e. CURE-ALL) (1A: Wonder drug)
- GLOATS (i.e. GO LAST) (8A: Have the final turn)
- SET POINT (i.e. STEP ON IT) (32A: Command to a getaway driver)
- TARNATION (i.e. TARANTINO) (35A: Three-time nominee for Best Director (1994, 2009, 2019)
- LAS VEGAS (i.e. SALVAGES) (39A: Rescues)
Sara Beth Bareilles (/bəˈrɛlɪs/ bə-REL-iss; born December 7, 1979) is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. She has sold over three million albums and over 15 million singles in the United States. Bareilles has earned various accolades, including two Grammy Awards, as well as nominations for three Primetime Emmy Awards and three Tony Awards. In 2012, VH1 named her one of the Top 100 Greatest Women in Music.Bareilles rose to prominence with the release of her second studio album, Little Voice (2007), which was her first recording for a major record label (Epic). The album included the hit single "Love Song", which reached number four on the Billboard Hot 100 and earned her a nomination for the Grammy Award for Song of the Year.
Bareilles made her Broadway debut when she composed music and wrote lyrics for the 2015 musical Waitress, for which she earned nominations for the Tony Award for Best Original Score and the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album. She subsequently received Olivier Award nominations for its 2019 West End transfer production. She released the 2015 studio album What's Inside: Songs from Waitress, in which she performs many of the musical's songs as well as some that didn't make it into the show. She has gone on to be involved with Broadway productions, including the 2016 musical SpongeBob SquarePants and a revival of Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods, both of which earned her Tony nominations. (wikipedia)
• • •
These theme answers involve interesting word and phrase quirks, but I don't know how fun they were to figure out. I guess I had to work a little for SALVAGES (i.e. LAS VEGAS) because [Rescues] feels like it applies to a person, whereas SALVAGES ... doesn't. So I needed some help from crosses there, but the others (after CRUELLA, of course) were obvious. But that didn't make them total duds. I was kinda curious about what the unclued surface answer was going to be each time, so that, at least, was a surprise, and there was still the revealer to look forward to ... but that ended up being kind of a let-down. I mean, that is a football play, and it does literally explain what's going on with the shaded squares, but it's actually a little too literal. To be interesting. There's something anticlimactic about the explanation being so plain. There's no clever wordplay. Yes, there's a reverse ... twice ... a DOUBLE / REVERSE. I guess I wanted something more colorful, a repurposed colloquial phrase or something. DOUBLE / REVERSE felt too straightforward. Kinda dull. Maybe if I liked football more, I dunno...
Pretty easy puzzle overall, especially outside the themers. I might've spelled KIROV wrong at first pass (KIREV?) (24D: Russian ballet company), I don't remember. I couldn't remember the kind of LAP I was dealing with at 58A: Final circuit in a track race (BELL LAP). LAST LAP seemed right, and it fit, but ... no (also, GO LAST (i.e. GLOATS) was already in the grid). But the grid was just too full of gimmes for me ever to get significantly bogged down: ASSANGE ANGELOU OATES ANN KOTB ... the puzzle's just handing out freebies today. The one amusing (and nearly fatal) wrong answer I had today was RAT (25A: Something found near a trap). In retrospect, this clue was obviously written to elicit precisely this wrong answer, so RAT is less an anomalous personal pitfall than a predictable design feature (and therefore less amusing), but still, I did get a half-second or so of "What the hell biblical figure is this!?" before reading the *entire* clue, seeing Faulkner, and realizing my error. Again, they really make it easy on you today with the cluing. Oh, and if LAT doesn't make sense to you yet—it's a muscle (short for latissimus dorsi), as is "trap" (short for trapezius).
Bullets:
- 22A: Civil rights leader ___ B. Wells (IDA) — any opportunity to mention my cat (IDA), I'm gonna take. She was technically named after Lupino, but I call her "IDA B." a lot:
- 43A: What has posts all around a site (FENCE) — man, that clue is tortured. The surface meaning *wants* to sound like its internet-related, but just ends up sounding like some Uncanny Valley / AI-produced gibberish.
- 3D: Sudden riser in status (UPSTART) — again, such an ugly / weird clue. Recognizable words in an order no human would put them. "Riser" here is a ... person who is rising.
- 28D: "Wake word" for an Apple device (SIRI) — I've owned an iPhone since 2012 and have never, not once, used SIRI. Don't trust her. I'm sure she's still listening and telling her overlords everything I say, but I'm not "waking" her voluntarily. Afaic, she can stay dead. I think Apple devices should make you say SIRI three times, like "Beetlejuice." I still wouldn't use it, but that seems like it would at least be fun. Maybe they can rush a "Beetlejuice" setting for Halloween. Surely there's a lucrative movie tie-in here ... somewhere.
- 15A: Prominent feature of Hello Kitty (HAIR BOW) — I like all Hello Kitty answers because they remind me of the fact that Shortz once rejected a puzzle with HELLO KITTY in it (an Andrea Carla Michaels puzzle, I think), because he had never heard of it and didn't think people would know it. And then he read about it in an in-flight magazine immediately thereafter, and now it's everywhere, all over the grid. We even had the company that created Hello Kitty—SANRIO—in the puzzle last week, though that caused a lot of consternation because of its intersection with another not-too-familiar proper noun, LEO Rosten. So it looks like Natick now has a mayor: LEO SANRIO. Long may he reign.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
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92 comments:
Nearly a rec Thurs time. The shaded raised a brow, so Rip first rocked the white, bolted to the SE, filled it, and directly grokked the key via LAS VEGAS <- SALVAGES, which uncorked the remainder.
Li'l musical chairs, no seats removed, voila: reverse each horizontal couplet or triplet to rightly tie the pair and finished rearrangement to the respective clue.
Gridiron fans may be tempted to see line-ups, not so. In each relevant across, the first couplet or triplet is the first reverse. The second, the double.
Non-fans of the world's greatest sport (come now, let's be honest), a well-captured double reverse. Follow the ball, see it reverse directions. Risky maneuver. The consummating pass, not a required component.
I suspect some or many vets will balk at the relative ease of play. Riprock demurs.
What's not to like re this puzzle? Nothing, that's what. Rip loved it. Spot on for a Thurs.
In particular, the particulars locked/unlocked elegantly. No flotsam.
And, TARNATION, heh. That's gotta squeeze a happy from the sourest mug.
I had enough of 1A that CRUELLA was inevitable, but I couldn't reconcile it with the clue. Then I realized CURE-ALL and said, "Oh. It's an anagram puzzle where the anagrams are also viable words." I solved like that until I got to the revealer, realized what the shaded squares were for and thought, "Neat."
Wanted MY FREAKING GOLF BALL for 25A, but it didn't fit. Then I realized the clue was correct: my golf ball is always in the trap.
I couldn't get off panacea for 1A and that corner took me an inordinate amount of time. The rest of the puzzle was easy--I also figured it out with SET POINT/STEP ON IT, but for the life of me couldn't see CRUELLA/CURE ALL for minutes, which killed my time. But I enjoyed the theme and the execution.
Had ABSArAM until the end - rAT worked and it didn’t look any odder to me than ABSALAM does now. Luckily it was relatively easy to try for a fix, but on paper that would have been a DNF.
Another hand up for PANACEA. For me it was GLOATS / GO LAST where things started making sense, but not till I got to the revealer did I get the football connection. Chalk that up to my profound ignorance of all things related to sportball. As I said just the other day to Mrs. Freude, as she was solving Connections, everything I know about sports I’ve learned from crossword puzzles.
Ridiculous. My computer (Apple Mac) shows white squares and black squares. Where are the shaded squares? How can anyone solve a Thursday puzzle using a computer like mine?
I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to sign up for AP ITALIAN but I couldn’t because I’ve never heard of it. Actually it’s a pretty easy language, it’s just English with vowels added. Hey whattsa matta you? Why you acta all a-crazy? It’ pretty straightforward.
Easy to see with 1A and 2a that something was up. I filled a few Downs up top, but basically looked at the bottom half of the puzzle, saw no shaded squares, and skipped on down and effectively solved bottom up. Which obviously included the revealer. Working back up I grokked the theme at TARNATION (I still didn’t see it at LASVEGAS).
Only real sticking point for me was ABSALOM, because when I started, one of the early downs I entered was Abraham after reading “Biblical figure….”, and my thumbs are reflexively going to punch in Abraham or Solomon for any 7 letter biblical figure.
A decent Thursday. No real complaints.
Three questions for Jesse:
First, How did you come up with this theme? Did you look at a term, say, CURE-ALL, and in a flash see that it can become CRUELLA? Did you come across the phrase DOUBLE REVERSE, imagine it as a revealer, then brainstorm how that could translate into a theme?
Second, how did you find these theme answers? They are more complicated than being simply anagrams, as they involve turned-around letters in specific places. Did you write a computer program? Did you search words manually hoping to find candidates?
Third, did you come up with additional theme answers? This seems like a tight theme, and I’m guessing it is, because worthy alternative theme answers aren't showing up in the comments, but my guess could be wrong.
Jesse – can you chime in here? Crossnerd me, and I’m guessing others, would find the answers very interesting.
I love this theme, Jesse. I love word quirk themes, so you pushed my happy button today. Icing is how cool the triple-L of BELLLAP looks in the grid, and the lovely answers REPROOF, IMPASSE, RUNUP, BELL LAP and SYNAPSE.
Thank you for this, and I’m eagerly awaiting the two themeless puzzles you have in the queue!
Natick does not have a mayor. It is government by town meeting (typical for New England town). The closest it has to an executive authority is an elected three person board of selectpersons who execute the will of the town meeting (distinct from a town council because it has no independent authority), a number of elected citizen committees to oversee the functions of town government (schools, parks and recreation, safety, health, etc) and a Town Moderator who presides over the town meeting. Massachusetts towns retain the closest thing you will find to pure citizen democracy in the US.
Incorrect. The mayor is LEO SANRIO and has been since last Thursday. Catch up!
I'm with @ Conrad in thinking anagrams first, so I decided to just keep solving and see what transpired. Turns out it was so easy that I wound up at the revealer before I tried any more deciphering, there was DOUBLE REVERSE, and that was that. Nice trick in that the reversals also led to actual other things, as noted by OFL.
MEGATON before KILOTON, there's that Hoda person again, and HAIRBOW sounds clunky to me, as BOW seems sufficient. I read the clue for APITALIAN and thought 'that's not how you spell "profesora" and it isn't because it wasn't APSPANISH, as it turned out. Problem solved.
Nice comfortable Thursdecito with a good trick and an apt revealer, so aces with me JG. Just Got done too soon. Thanks for all the fun.
Could not agree more and just as curious as @ Lewis.
It is VERY rare to see a DOUBLE REVERSE in football. Most of the time it is a plain reverse that the announcers, fans, everyone in attendance calls and shouts, "DOUBLE REVERSE" which is wrong.
WR goes in motion, say, from the bottom of the screen to the top, the ball is snapped. QB hands it off to him (or her as the ladies do play as well) and the WR continues running to the top. That is an END AROUND. If the WR flips it backwards to someone now running down, that is a REVERSE. If, and this rarely, rarely happens, that ball carrier hands it back to someone now running up -- the same direction as the initial ball carrier -- that is finally your DOUBLE REVERSE. Very, very rarely seen as it requires an amazing amount of precision and has the opportunity to completely go wrong in so, so many ways.
Yes, this is a pet peeve of mine and a hill I will die on. Thank you all.
I was so happy to put a HAIRBOW on the mayor’s avatar without hesitation. (Years ago I went in search of Sanrio stores for Hello Kitty postcards to sent to children)
I enjoyed this puzzle very much. I thought the theme answers were clever and legitimate and unraveling the theme was challenging until it wasn’t (and that didn’t take long because my first toehold was in the south and the revealer was wonderfully on the nose). One of my most enjoyable Thursdays of the year.
It’s ABSALOM and IPODS
Wow, my solving experience was very similar to @Rex, with the exception that I’m so visually spatially challenged (or whatever the term is) that even though I figured out the clever gimmick, I solved like a themeless using crosses to get “real words” in the themer across spots. Even so, I completed the puzzle in short order so I figure the crosses were fair.
@CDilly52…with respect to your post later yesterday. If you look at the “comment as:” line it now probably showing “Anonymous”. If you look to the right side of “Anonymous” there should be a little arrowhead pointing down. Press on that (or click) and there should be a drop-down that shows CDilly. I’ve found that since the change in format the Blogger will sometimes just “default” to the Anonymous option. I hope this helps and I’m so glad you’re feeling better!
Noticed that the theme answers didn’t match the clues, but since they were mostly plausible phrases I just went with them and waited for Rex to enlighten me. Got some momentum going at ASSANGE and solved southward from there with pretty good success.
Then I stepped into the NE and it felt like I landed in a different country. I’m guessing that was a Greek letter, so GAMMA wouldn’t drop. Didn’t go to med school, so no clue what a PHILTRUM is. I’ve heard Rex talk about HELLO KITTY occasionally, but don’t know anything else about her. I don’t understand the clue for LAT and why it is near a trap. I’ve heard of the BOLSHOI, but not the KIROV - and of course I never heard of ABSALOM. Other than that, the NE corner was a resounding success (actually it’s been a long time since I butchered a section that badly - especially midweek). The rest of it was kind of enjoyable, mostly because the theme answers were discernible from the crosses and I didn’t worry about the shaded squares or making sense of the reveal.
And Peter Griffin of Family Guy briefly became mayor of Natick following the nuclear holocaust in Season 2 when, because the only food known to survive a holocaust were Twinkies, the family migrated to Natick to raid the Twinkie factory located there.
But these, sir, are exceptions. Exceptions that prove the rule - a rule defended by the minutemen from Natick who fought with minutemen from other surrounding towns (all governed by town meeting) in the Battle of Concord on April 19, 1775.
I have some of the same questions for the puzzle creator! In his notes about the puzzle in The Times he says the following. And get ready for two more!
I’m excited to make my New York Times debut. I’m a college student currently on exchange in Denmark, but normally, I go to school in Nova Scotia.
I started making crosswords during the pandemic, and this idea came to me a year and a half ago. I don’t know much about football, but 62-/63-Across seemed to describe the concept well.
Usually, I can’t solve past the Wednesdays without cheats. But as it happened, this one became a Thursday. My next two are slated as a Friday and a Saturday.
If you also struggle with the harder puzzles, I hope you’ll give mine a shot. This one requires some lateral thinking, so keep at it and don’t be afraid to backtrack.
I’m rooting for you!
This puzzle is CRUELLA as hell. I am at an IMPASSE. I have no idea what the bleep is going on in the NW corner. I go to the NE corner -- and maybe I pray a bit too.
Over in that corner, there seem to be sugar-coated TWEETS. Really??!! I thought Twitter was a nasty platform that encouraged peopled to say extremely ugly things to each other.
Something is very wrong here. AND THEN I SEE IT!!!!!!!
Thank you, than you ORAL exam where I had L??L. And thank you, thank you three-letter body part beginning with "O" that doesn't exist. I gotta switch those letters, don't I?
Aha!!!! It's a REVERSE play in football. I jump down to the revealer, see the word "football" and know that I've got it. Turns out to be DOUBLE REVERSE.
And suddenly every one of those answers that don't have anything to do with their clues makes sense!!!!!
A really tough and rewarding bear of a puzzle with a huge "Aha Moment".
Loved it -- but only after I figured it out. Before? Not so much.
Cleverly crafted and truly sadistic. CUREALL into CRUELLA is a stroke of genius. Into my running list for Puzzle of the Year it goes in a masochistic sort of way.
Hey All !
Figured out at STEPONIT/SETPOINT as to what in TARNATION was going on. Had to be SIRI and ANN in the Downs, and already having the Revealer in, I Reversed the shaded squares and saw it. Pretty cool that they end up being real things, and not just gobbledygook.
Neat to see my town, LAS VEGAS, as a Themer that could morph into something else.
The Revealer clue should say "tricksy", not "tricky", as tricksy implies it being sneaky, and tricky implies it being difficult. Because it's really not that difficult. My two cents.
Quite ambitious where the Themers are placed. It's tough to fill with Themers in the first/last row. Especially tough to get clean fill in NE/SW corner, as you have three 7's starting and ending at a Themer! Plus, they are big corners. So, congrats on a hair-tearing session or two filling those so cleanly, Jesse. Better you than me. Har.
Happy Thursday!
Two F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Nuestro perro finalmente está mejor después de una enfermedad de dos semanas.
There's a puzzle. Holy mackerel it nearly took me to the woodshed. l had the entire puzzle filled in except for anything touching those gray squares and then... stuck. Even knew the double reverse and still stuck. It's rough a couple are triple reverses, but when the penny dropped, it's as if the clouds parted and angels sang an oratorio.
Once I did the work of fixing those reversals, I laughed at each one. Quite clever.
Typing in PANACEA in 1A like many others with such pride at the outset didn't do me any favors. IDA is civil rights, ADA is computers. The KIROV ballet is new to me.
Propers: 10 (sad face)
Places: 1
Products: 5
Partials: 5
Foreignisms: 3
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 24 of 72 (33%)
Funnyisms: 10 🤣
Uniclues:
1 Dame delights in dalmatians.
2 Julian jam.
3 Pizza before prom.
4 Good name for a roofing company.
5 Mockers.
6 Taco-esque meta-men.
1 CRUELLA GLOATS
2 ASSANGE IMPASSE
3 ZITS SWARM LATE
4 TAR NATION
5 EGOTIST ERASERS
6 TOSTADA AVATARS
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: "I bang you and you bring order to my universe / No, it's not weird, so stop thinking perverse." HIT IT: GAVEL ODE.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I never know who these TV people are, *but* right before I did this puzzle I read an article about someone named KOTB leaving her job, so that was a big help.
@JOHN X 7:41 AM
🤣 You-uh, t'inka you da funny one, eh?
I understand how a tortured clue might sound like AI gibberish, but 'uncanny valley?' How does that work?
I think Baryshnikov danced for the Kirov before he skedaddled…
I love you
Oh, the rest, well, @Andy Freude, 👋👋 "all I know about sports I've learned from crosswords" so the revealer didn't help but it was easy enough because it's just.. two.. words, whatever. And I didn't get CRUELLA / CUREALL TIL near the end because I knew it wasn't panacea somehow and, with ASSANGE in place the sports related person probably a Don or Len or Dan or Ben ack who knows...
LON should be Chaney!
Like @ Rex I saw the trick at STEPONIT / SETPOINT before getting to the revealer anyway and just thought, "oh, some kinda pieces are anagrammed..."
Easy side of easy-medium here, well under average time.
The clue to 24D is inaccurate: Kirov is no longer the name for a Russian ballet company. Its name reverted to the pre-Soviet name Mariinskiy in 1992, just as Leningrad reverted to St Petersburg.
The clue to 24D is inaccurate: Kirov is no longer the name of a Russian ballet company. Its name changed to Mariinsky in 1992, just as its home base Leningrad reverted to St. Petersburg
I never thought it was PANACEA, because I thought it was aspirin, for which Bayer's slogan in the 1980s was "The Wonder Drug That Works Wonders." I too first broke the code at SET POINT, then was able to get CRUELLA as an anagram of cure all.
Fun fact: Hoda Kotb just announced on Today Show she is retiring after seventeen years. No word whether it is voluntary or a Biden like coup.
This was my favorite Thursday of the year so far. Not much else to add. Fun puzzle.
As an Eagles fan I could not help but notice that the tricky football play could have been PHILLY SPECIAL in which the ball was hiked to an RB who reversed it to a TE. The TE then threw a pass to the QB, a reversal of normal procedure, and thus was the Evil Empire defeated by a DOUBLE REVERSE.
Good Thursday puz.
A J short?
I loved this and thoroughly enjoyed the solve, not to mention the REVERSE is one of my favorite football plays. The trick wasn’t too hard to figure out, but still pretty crafty the way each DOUBLE cross turned out to be an actual thing. A relatively low level of proper names as well, always a plus. LLA reasons I wholeheartedly support Nancy’s nomination for Thursday Puzzle Of The Year.
Congratulations on a super nice debut, Jesse. I was happy to read that you have two more puzzles in the pipeline. Looking forward to them.
No need to die here Joe, I agree with you completely. I can’t recall the last time I saw a double reverse wish we saw them more often. I love tricky plays like that.
Whatta ya gonna do? 🤷🏻♀️
I enthusiastically second your nomination for Puzzle Of The Year. Very deserving.
Yes, and it usually takes place far behind the line of scrimmage, so a good defense just watches the shenanigans with amusement and then gang tackles the last man holding the ball for an 8-yard loss.
maybe Siri could answer your exasperated query
Re ABSALOM, ABSALOM, it was Faulkner's birthday yesterday (1897). His name was originally Falkner. The U was added in 2018. I've seen several stories on why/how, so I'm not clear on that. I remember from 100 years ago, the professor in my American Lit class discussing ABSALOM, ABSALOM, and it was so fascinating, I was very upset when the bell rang. That very rarely happened.
My 6 year old granddaughter demonstrated the other day that SIRI will tell an unending string of bad jokes if prompted by "Hey SIRI, tell me a joke." Just in case you're looking for a mindless way to pass some time.
I've been brushing up on the language for my upcoming trip to APITALIA.
I think I'm quite fashionable and up to date, but Mrs. Egs says IMPASSE.
Clever theme, fun puzzle. Thanks and congrats, Jesse Guzman.
True/not true. Wikipedia says this:
Founded in the 18th century and originally known as the Imperial Russian Ballet, the Mariinsky Ballet is one of the world's leading ballet companies. Internationally in some quarters, the Mariinsky Ballet continues to be known by its former Soviet name the Kirov Ballet.
i miss the puzzles that didn’t arrive with—and rely on—shaded squares
I made a sloppy mistake in the ABSALOM/IPODS intersection (11-D, 30-A). I misspelled it as ABSALaM and didn't catch IPaDS when it showed up. I would have caught it with a bit more care. I'm not an Apple person, but I know that IPaDS are still in production, and ironically the only Apple product I've ever owned was an IPOD.
On a tangent, it seems like Apple products show up a lot in the NYTXW. Today we had SIRI and IPODS, for example. If I were suspicious, I'd think it was intentional product placement.+
Perhaps it was just my browser's dark mode, but for me it was just anagrams. No shaded squares :(
I also started with Panacea, thought, “ooh, excellent word! A proper Thursday word”. And then had to spend the remainder of the puzzle let down that that wasn’t the answer. Come on Joel! Give us some vocab beyond a 5th grade level!
The NFL marketing people nixed the double-reverse for a while because they found that viewership dropped off significantly after a double reverse because the remainder of the game seemed far less exciting in comparison. But I understand that they are currently test marketing a variation of the double reverse that offers a few unexpected twists and significant unpredictability that are designed to sustain interest throughout the game. So stay tuned. Depending on the results of the focus-group feedback, it may be coming to a huddle near you.
Also, read Rex’s sidebar on Natick and its meaning in crossworld.
I could see the obvious answers, step on it, tarantino didn't fit the crosses so had to figure out the revealer. Know nothing about American football but had enough letters to see it was either double repeat or double reveal & so the light went on! Very clever and entertaining puz.
Double-cool puztheme! Definitely ThursPuz-worthy.
CRUELLA morphs to a CUREALL. Great stuff.
A mere 72-worder, too boot. CRUEL-ALL-er!
Took M&A a bit of solvequest nanoseconds to grok the theme mcguffin. Confidently wrote in GOLAST at 8-Across, which surprisinly led to several Down-crosser problems. no-know ABSALOM was certainly no help. Desperately consulted the inevitable revealer clue, but no ahar moment occurred there.
Eventually solved all the Downs crossin CRUELLA. Ahar! It's a reverse! The sufferin was worth it!
staff weeject pick, of 10: LAT. Did not understand that there "trap" clue ... soooo ... Big Thanx to @RP, for the explanation.
other faves: UPSTART. REPROOF. IMPASSE. APITALIAN [but clue kinda gave away the "A" start-part]. HEREIGO. TOSTADA. SYNAPSE. TARANTINO spellin challenge. CRAZIES. AVATARS clue.
Thanx elbuod, Mr. Guzman dude. And congratz on yer brilliant wordplayesque debut.
Masked & Anonymo5Us
**gruntz**
The TEXANS pulled a reverse against INDY
All that makes Thursdays the day I look forward to. Once my aspirin kicks the headache it gave us, we’ll surely appreciate it even more 😉
That IDA b one cute kitty. Hope Jesse drops by later to respond to @Lewis whose post raises interesting speculation!
Italian is a stunningly beautiful language and many English words come from Italian. In MN there are virtually no foreign language classes until High School, and in my district, St. Paul, it is optional. I think there are probably no Italian classes in any schools in MN. Buona giornata!
Medium. I tried to ignore the shaded squares but unfortunately I needed them to figure out what was going on and finish the puzzle. Realizing that the downs had to work with the clues and the acrosses not so much took enough nanoseconds to push this to medium territory for me.
Smooth grid, clever idea, liked it, but I agree with @Rex.. “I don’t know how fun they were to figure out”
…Oh and Mods - Could you please delete the post by Yikes under my post yesterday. The last thing this blog needs is some anti-vax moron spreading disinformation.
Same! I decided to skip all the shady stuff and go to the bottom when the "obvious" answer didn't work...
Good Thursday puzzle - plus it allowed me the opportunity to learn that the pesO is only used by 7 or 8 countries. That little bit of currency held things up for a while but but I let it go and ALL was CUREd. Actually got the trick at GLOATS/GO LAST because TOSTADAs are so yummy. (btw @Nancy, did you figure out that your Anon yesterday was @Gill? I was wondering, then she came back and commented again and that confirmed it.)
ABSALOM and ANGELOU were gimmes for this southerner working in the arts.
I did not know of ANGELOU’s career as a singer. Found a video of a young Maya ANGELOU singing in the 1957 film Calypso Heat Wave.
@CDilly, belated well-wishes for a full recovery. Great that you’re back! I tried singing the “tune” yesterday too - RETIRE was particularly unsatisfying.
Thanks Jesse - looking forward to your others.
Gotta agree with Rex on this one… A bit too easy for Thursday once the gimmick was figured out with “step on it” Which happened early on.
"What in TARNATION is going on with the shaded downs?" I asked myself. IDA know, I answered, let's take a PEAK. ANN proves it is doubled letters or still reversed. Not so fast, I thought, I need a REPROOF of that with the next ones. ZITS! Nothing going on in the others. They're just sitting there like a limp TOSTADA.
Loved it! It felt both fun and boggling, with some easier clues to keep momentum going even before figuring out why some of it didn’t work. GOLAST was the first themer I got, which was both wrong and right (and confirmed by crosses), but the corner wouldn’t fully cooperate. I jumped around the board a bit with some similar experiences: STEPONIT also was confirmed by crosses, but also creating problems. Before cleaning those up I ended up going to the end and getting the revealer, so unlike Rex who had already figured it out, I experienced it as a glorious “Aha!” that explained the trouble I was having in a grid that was otherwise smooth. A genuinely fun experience!
Unless she’s not awake…or maybe even fumbling with her ipod…
For me, an enjoyable and on-the-easy-side Thursday, with just enough of a "what the heck?" stretch before the Aha of the reverses became clear. I really liked the transformations, especially cure-all becoming CRUELLA and Tarantino turning into TARNATION. I also got a kick out of the reveal, which brought back my days of growing up in an NFL-saturated household and excited cries during TV games of "It's a REVERSE!"
Do-overs: me, too for "panacea," also "tee" before LAT (my trap was on a golf course) and "sis" before NAN. No idea: LON.
@Rex, it's wonderful to see Ida thriving.
So you take the answer that's clued, reverse the letters in the shaded blocks, and get a different word. Nifty trick, but easy to figure out -- and then what else is there? The theme answers are not symmetrical, but then the shaded squares make it obvious where they are. And the new unclued words have little if anything in common. I thought CRUELLA GLOATS might be the start of a sentence, SET POINT -- TARNATION might be something you might hear in a tennis tournament, but LAS VEGAS is just abandoned. I wanted something more, I'm not sure what.
I did learn what a BELL LAP is, though. I wanted last LAP, and was musing about whether that counted as a duplicate of the disguised LAST in GLOATS, but that didn't work.
No UBER in Iceland, either, but I'm not sure if it's banned or if the regulations are just too stiff for it to be worth it.
Later.
Nah, Vermont town meetings come closer.
2018 can't be right; he had a U when I was in college back in the 1960s. 1918 maybe?
OK, you all have convinced me that I was too negative about the theme. I think my problem, oddly, was that I thought of CURE-ALL right away, which made it easy to see the reversals, and therefore figure out the others with little trouble. But objectively, it is, as I said, nifty.
😂😂😂
Talk about timing. Hoda announced she is leaving Today show today. Nice.
My thought process paralleled Rex's today but I figured out before entering it that panacea wasn't going to work so no let down there. I also looked at white squares and then gray squares to try to make CRUELLA be a wonder drug and then SET POINT gave me the theme.
39A Rescues, I was trying to have it be "Something pets" or "Something dogs" which would give me ____ STEP or ____GODS per the theme. Obviously, that went nowhere and I had to finish the SE in order to get the crosses for LAS VEGAS and "salvage".
Fun puzzle and theme, thanks Jesse Guzman!
I solved as a themeless which I knew it couldn't be since it's Thursday. But a solve is a solve, right? Aside from having Abraham for ABSALOM & not knowing BELL LAP I can't remember a faster Thursday (for me).
Congrats on your debut (if even I did miss the theme) Jesse :)
Hands up for both PANACEA at 1 across and a RAT being found next to a trap. I replaced the former with CURE ALL when the crosses didn't work, which made quite a mess to start the puzzle off until I caught on later. But it is a pretty good Thursday worthy theme!
Also had SIS before NAN for the palindromic family nickname.
Today the names are spread around evenly which reduces their annoyingness. ASSANGE, ABSALOM, ANGELOU, OATES, KIROV.
[Spelling Bee: yd 0; QB streak 7.]
I'm just checking to see if my avatar appears....
Agree. Very nice timing.
Suspected that Anon was GILL I. Nobody else calls me pablito.
Speaking of Will … is there any word on when/if he’s returning to the helm? I think Joel is trying, but his editing is quirky and he lets puzzles in that I don’t think Shortz would. Any idea?
In 1918, Faulkner's surname changed from "Falkner" to "Faulkner". According to one story, a careless typesetter made an error. When the misprint appeared on the title page of his first book, Faulkner was asked whether he wanted the change. He supposedly replied, "Either way suits me."
Thanks, Wikipedia!
Yes it does, and that's exactly what I had for breakfast just before doing today's puzzle. Except that your plate is much prettier than mine.
Yes! And the silly circles and other childish games.
Well this was quite possibly the hardest, mind twisting, convoluted puzzle I have ever not had the pleasure of doing on my busy Thursday. Phew! What a disaster for moi. CRUELLA?????? Why is she a wonder drug???? Move on. Names, damn! Move on over to anything I can figure out that isn't shaded and that I don't have to Google. At least I got IPODS. Head for the bottom of the pit.
Maya ANGELOU. I know ye well. You gave me HAITI because I know my Tortuga. I know my Spanish turtles but I wasn't sure they resided in HAITI. Now I know. Fill in all the white blanks as best I can. Cheat like hell. What the hell is a BELL LAP. How to spell SYNPSE. Go back to the shaded areas. CRUELLA staring at me. Who is LON....CRAZIES? Who dat? Stare. Oh.... Wait.... I have to do this flipping thing. Can I? Not very well. My brain doesn't function that way.
I know what you did and I'm secretly whispering that this is brilliant. Too bad it was wasted on me. TARANTINO changed to TARNATION. I don't even know what TARNATION is. DOUBLE sighs.
The theme answers were fairly clever, but what made me love this puzzle were the HIRED goons...a reference to one of the all-time best Simpsons episodes:
https://youtu.be/FsUuhW7WbIg?si=P1aYFaJ_ahA27dkT
I agree. I miss Will
That Naticked me too
Doesn't AP stand for Advanced Placement? And Advanced is in the clue?
Loved the theme and the execution of this puzzle. My only nitpick is the clue/answer for 20-Down, where the clue has "Advanced" in it and the answer is "AP," which is short for Advanced Placement. Can't do that!
Rex, you say 'it's a gimme' and then 'I'm not sure it's right'. You need to acknowldedge a little more sometimes that you have a real talent for puzzles that others do not have. I did not find the NW easy at all, in part because I did not enjoy this puzzle. Those of us who do not go to tournaments might be slightly more tentative when it comes to the fill. And I hate that feeling of 'it goes', but I don't get why and often don't care by the time the penny drops. As for puzzles like this, spare me the word scrambles. For this NY Times puzzle subscriber, I do not need any more. This is the second one recently, if memory serves.
You might say "get going" to your getaway driver (32A) which shares enough letters with "set point" to be troublesome for a bit. Great puzzle Jesse Guzman.
Right on....except the world's greatest sport is hockey!
Once I caught on loved this puzzle . There were a few too many names with which I wasn’t familiar but overall it was great. I agree that Rex is very talented - I rate this one medium in difficulty- maximum enjoyment . Thank you puzzler!!!
Wonderful puzzle!
I'm back with a couple of things I meant to say but didn't. First, I have spent many an hour in pubs in England, Scotland, and Ireland. There is no such thing as an ALE KEG. The best English beers are drawn from casks, but if KEGs are involved, they are beer KEGs. English and Scottish ALEs are always called beer, though there is no resemblance at all to the American swill called beer. You also of course have KEGs for Guinness, which is on tap almost anywhere you go, these days, unless there is a local Stout to savor.
And I know enough about LSD, having been around during its glory days, to know that reports of the DEATH of EGO are greatly exaggerated. Anyone I've seen or heard of still has an EGO and a sense of self, no matter what strange things they seem to be seeing in their mind's eye.
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