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Major League Soccer team with pink home jerseys / SAT 9-21-24 / Florida city where the "The Greatest Show on Earth" was once headquartered / Inn range?
Saturday, September 21, 2024
Constructor: David Karp
Relative difficulty: Easy
THEME: THEMELESS - It's Saturday!
Word of the Day: POT DE CREME (49A: Custardy French dessert) —
Pot de crème (/ˈpoʊdəˈkrɛm/ POH-də-KREM; French: [po də kʁɛm]),[1] plural pots de crème (pronounced the same), is a loose French dessert custard dating to the 17th century. The name means "pot of custard" or "pot of cream", which also refers to the porcelain cups in which the dessert is served
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Hi everyone, it's Eli filling in at the last minute. Hope your weekend is off to a great start. Today's puzzle is a pretty straightforward themeless offering. I drew a blank starting off in the northwest, got slowed by a few wrong answers in the southeast, and still finished it in under 5 minutes. Obviously your mileage may vary, but that's a pretty easy puzzle in my book. Let's see what we've got.Like I said, I got nothing off-hand from the first few clues, so I jumped to a different section to get started. I confidently dropped NBA instead of NFL and POT AU CREME instead of POT DE CREME into 45A and 49A, but the fact that I couldn't make any sense out of 47D (LEXI: Golfer Thompson who qualified for the U.S. Women's Open at age 12) got me back on track pretty quickly. The fact that NEMO (45D: Spoiler alert: He's found in Sydney Harbour) was a true gimme that fit either answer didn't help. Once I got that sorted, though, I didn't really slow down until I finished. I hesitated for a second spelling AFICIONADOS, but no real worries there.
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| Call Me By Your Name? That is one ridic peach. Don't get me started on 18A. |
Stray thoughts:
- 32A: Business with the stock symbol WOOF (PETCO)— Good reminder to pick up dog food tomorrow. Wouldn't want my sweet Maeve to go hungry.
- 14D: U.S. city with the motto "Where Discoveries are Made" (LOS ALAMOS) — I suppose that's better than "If You Had Become Death, Destroyer of Worlds, You'd Be Home By Now."
- 26D: Major League Soccer team with pink home jerseys (INTER MIAMI) — Easy to remember when you keep seeing Lionel Messi in his jersey, rubbing it in your face that he's not playing for LAFC.
- 36D: Box office? (CUBICLE) — I never thought I'd miss a cubicle, but my current job has open, wall-less desks that you have to book every day rather than having an assigned space, so you can't personalize your desk or store anything overnight. If there's a way to dehumanize a work force, a corporation will find it.
- 35A: A whole bunch of people in a row (MELEE) - "Row" as in "fight." But this word always takes me straight to Monkey Island.
I think that's all I've got for today. Enjoy the rest of your weekend!
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31 comments:
Easy-Medium for me.
Overwrites:
24D: ifso before ERGO
27A: SARAtOgA before SARASOTA
29A: Had T-NS- due to the erroneous "s" from 24D and was thinking TeNse before TANGY but I never typed it in because it didn't fit the clue
50D: hub before RIM
WOEs:
Miles MORALES at 5D
POT DE CREME at 49A
Having "lived" in one for years, I liked "Box office?" as the clue for CUBICLE at 36D
Your comment about “too much the” reminds me of a similar curiosity. “La brea” means “the tar” in Spanish.
Thus, “the La Brea Tar Pits” means “the the tar tar pits”. 😁
If you *were become death 😉
Easy (for a Saturday) for me too, except for the unfair cross of POTDECREME/RIDIC.
Splashy no doubt and fun for the most part. Felt more like a Friday and just one or two away from a pangram. POT DE CRÈME, INTER MIAMI and ARE YOU NUTS are all pretty cool. Some oddball TANGY stuff with TITS, CLIMAX, STDS etc.
Maeve is a beautiful girl Eli - no need to fret over the questionable “the” - it can go either way.
Enjoyable Saturday morning solve. Lester Ruff’s Stumper provides a little more bite today.
I like to spend some time in MOZAMBIQUE
There was enough good stuff like AIR FARES, IS THAT A YES, I CAN RELATE, et c scattered throughout the grid that made most sections accessible and even enjoyable to parse.
Not a surprise that the SW would be an area of potential difficulty for someone of my vintage - RIDIC and PEACH EMOJI are not at all familiar, and unfortunately I whiffed on POT DE CRÈME, which is one I could have / should have gotten.
I thought Rex might devote his rant to it being too easy, and of course our guest host blew through it in single digits, but for me at least it was just right - nice to have some difficulty, but at least I had a fighting chance in every section. In other words, my kind of a Saturday.
Boop!
After rejections on his first 21 Times submissions, David said he almost abandoned hope of getting a yes. I’m so glad he kept on. I relish his puzzles because they contain:
• Beauty in answer. Today, for instance – AFICIONADO, MOZAMBIQE, MELEE, POT DE CRÈME.
• Relatable everyday expressions. Today – IS THAT A YES, ARE YOU NUTS, I CAN RELATE.
• Wit, humor and care in cluing. For instance, in the major crossword venues, ANTICLIMAX has been almost always given dry direct clues, such as [Big letdown]. But today, David gives us [Poor resolution, say] a brilliant misdirect. He did the same thing with his witty clues for CUBICLE and RETRIAL, two answers also given colorless clues in the past.
• Words never having appeared in the Times puzzles before, three today, including PEACH EMOJI and INTERMIAMI. And look at these lovely debut answers (among others) from his previous puzzles: FAT FINGER SYNDROME, MORAL OF THE STORY, SPITTING IMAGE, and SLAM DUNK CONTEST.
Today’s puzzle had all this richness plus enough bite to satisfy my brain’s work ethic, not to mention the sweet PuzzPair© of UTTERANCE and I CAN RELATE.
What a feast! Thank you once again, David, for a splendid time in the box!
As your resident alphadoppeltotter, a role I’ve inexplicably taken in the past seven years, it is my duty to inform you that this puzzle has an unusually low number of double letters, at four, where unusual is any number less than five. This is the fourth time this year that this has happened.
I remain your humble servant, ever on the alert.
A fun puzzle with imaginative clues but it took me five minutes just to get started in the NE. After that it was a slo-mo rotation down and around up to the NW. Got PEACHEMOJI but didn’t understand it until I came to the blog. I guess a generational thing. Thought “it is said” was a particularly tough clue because unlike the other similar clues the answer was a definition and not a paraphrasing.
Is 45A referring to those two teams from New Jersey? You know, the two that both play in New Jersey and are headquartered in New Jersey?
Just asking for a friend from Buffalo, New York
I’m getting to the age where I have to ask myself if it’s cubical or cubicle.
Well good for all of you who found this easy, as I was congratulating myself for being able to finish it at all with no cheats. That'll learn me.
Technical DNF as I had NBA early and never bothered to change it. The musical key had to be a something MIN, because what word has a J as the next to last letter? I think I've had this problem before with EMOJI, all of which are virtually unknown to me.
Then throw in MORALES and RAMI and RIDIC and some tricky misdirects and my nanoseconds pile up in a hurry.
Never thought I'd be happy to see AYN in a puzz, but she opened up the NW for me at least.
My idea of a just-right Saturday, DK. All of the stuff I Didn't Know was eventually gettable, and thanks for all the fun.
lol
“New York” refers to the city, not the state, and it’s quite common for teams to play outside the boundaries of the city for which they are named. There just happens to be a state line involved in this situation.
I like your motto for Los Alamos better.
I also used TeNse, “confirmed” by if so for the second “that being the case” clue. That held me up until I got IF SO in its proper place and knew there couldn’t be a dupe.
Also, already had SAsHA so wrote in AFIsIANADO without a proper check and took me some extra time at the end to find that pesky little mistake.
Interesting fact: Peru also means guava in one of India’s languages (Marathi). I enjoy learning this stuff too as long as the crosses are fair.
Go Bills!
Hey All !
Under 5 minutes while still being stuck? My goodness, you should go to crossword tournaments and compete. I came in at 35 minutes, with two Googs and a Check Puzzle when no Happy Music. And that's fast.
Anyway, nice puz that started impossible, but gradually fell under my expert knowledge. (If you took that sentence seriously, you don't know me!) Did manage to suss everything out, except was stymied in the NW corner, and had NBA in for NFL, wondering who AEXI Thompson was.
My Googs we're in the NW. Not a Spiderman film follower, have seen one or two of them, but have yet to see any of the "Multiverse" movies (including Dr Strange). So, looked up for MORALES, still stuck, looked up BUENOS (which in retrospect should've been obvious), and those two got me the rest.
A funny moment, had AIRFAR_S in, and the silly brain could only think AIRFARTS! Quite RIDIC, no?
Thought it might be a Pangram, but no K or V. When you start with MOZAMBIQUE, you figure Pangram.
Good SatPuz. Got the ole brain cells moving.
Today at work (I work at a Classic Car Place that sells and restores/repairs cars), we have a Car Show happening, and I'll be there doing a book signing! Look at me, all famous and stuff. 😁 If for some unknown reason, you haven't got a copy of my book (😁), go to Amazon or barnesandnoble.com and grab a copy! Changing Times by Darrin Vail (you also now know what the V in my signoff is!) Not trying to HAM IT UP or anything...
Have a great Saturday!
Three F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
SE gave me a couple of problems.
• 36D: Box office? (CUBICLE) -- I SO wanted this to be CUBEFARM that it took me a while to notice CUBFARM is not a thing
• 41A RIBS got me the R for what I was sure had to be RANDO (41D)
All of which prevented me from filling in 43A HAITI, which shoulda been an instant gimme from "kreyòl" but I kept thinking it must be some other former French colony in order to make those other answers work. If I'd just hit that one first this corner would have fallen a lot faster. Funny how the order in which you come to a clue can make such a difference. Finally noticed my CUBFARM was a dud, which gave me permission to finally fill in HAITI, thus CUBICLE, which gave me CREME--which I'd been pretty sure would be the end of a French desert. PEACHEMOJI? Ok, if you say so. Not a huge fan of PAP smear crossing those tasty items, but I can't think of a better clue offhand, so I guess it had to be. A variant of Pop, as in Dad, as in "Hey, Pap!" as in "Hey Pop!"? Not really....
Loved the puzzle, but nearly DNF since my Ukrainian Alexander spells it SAsHA!
Ellas me cortaron ayer.
I looked through my post yesterday to see why I got the hook, and I'm assuming the SPIRAL STAIRCASE under the Milky Way was over the line. Maybe? Or watching films with the captioning turned off? Or possibly the sad reality the folks behind the scenes here may occasionally need a break from my RIDIC UTTERANCES and poking the delete button makes for a more pleasant morning for them.
If those are the eggshells we're dancing around, how will we handle EIGHT Tee-Hees in one puzzle? Well, buckle in and we'll ease up to them like Diddy eased up to the county clink.
I loved doing this puzzle. The longer answers are mostly winners. My work mostly languished over shorter stuff and of course the pesky people I don't know.
I did need to research POT DE CREME, ALAS, even though my wife said we saw it on the British Bake Off. We've seen every episode. Every episode. I mostly remember them making things with gelatin.
I worked for a year and a half at the LOS ALAMOS newspaper out of college. It's a beautiful and bonkers town. The smartest people in the world living in the mountains in the middle of nowhere. What could go wrong? You wanna see county council meetings on steroids? Plan your vacations now.
The little space in [Two o' clock] didn't fool me. I know the importance of a tiny space bar. One hiding in a rebus on the pizza puzzle swiped a 950+ streak from me ... and no I am not bitter. I'm not. {CUE SOB sounds}
Did you know Day-O only has two chords?
If you're playing TELEPHONE at your party, it's not a good party, m'kay?
Propers: 7
Places: 7
Products: 4
Partials: 7
Foreignisms: 0
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Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 25 of 70 (36%) {easy tiger}
Funnyisms: 7 😂
Tee-Hee: You can blame me for pointing this out, but the messenger didn't fail to dress the Emperor. TITS. ANTI-CLIMAX. PEACH EMOJI. STDS. MATE. PAP. FITS IN. WET WIPES.
Uniclues:
1 How your lawyer pays for his Jaguar.
2 Spiders who spend a lotta time worrying about cross dressers and hurricanes.
3 Jokes. Or lunch.
4 Why what happens at Motel 6 stays at Motel 6.
5 Times when killers must follow the "fish are friends, not food" rule.
6 Those giddy years in an office when I thought having a job would work out.
7 Clown connoisseur.
1 SLOW RETRIAL
2 SARASOTA MITES (~)
3 HAM IT UP RIBS
4 MAID HAS A HEART
5 ORCA MARTIAL LAW
6 CUBICLE STAY (~)
7 NEMO AFICIONADO (~)
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Rain shoe for a peg-legged pirate. ONE'S GALOSH.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Can someone explain two o’clock? I was thinking about a clock and hands ona clock but that is too far a stretch. Where is the connection between a time and hands? It would be like my saying 72 inches ? With answer being ruler.
MOZAMBIQUE for 1A, crossed with trivia and stacked on top of English phrases that could have many answers... is not Easy. It's a good Medium Saturday for sure. Tricky cluing all around, I really didn't trust that J in FMAJ because how many words end J_? But perseverance paid off.
i expected a pangram puzzle with mozambique being my first write in..but no. after doing nancy and will's LA Times puzzle, i returned yesterday to do another... Will Pfadenhauer's puzzle was amazing. coolest puz i've seen. coming off of nancy's nice puzzle it was 2 days of good times at the LAtimes.
My dad was on his way to Japan when they dropped the bomb. I am very grateful for what they accomplished at Los Alamos.
Nice write up, Eli! Especially like the los alamos motto
I don’t get that one either. Hope someone answers.
Easy? ARE YOU NUTS? I had to Google a couple of trivia answers just to get rolling.
Two ON the clock.
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