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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
• • •
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.
 |
| 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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91 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
--
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.
A clock has two hands
Similar to how “The Los Angeles Angels” means “The the angels angels.”
No French person will say “pot de crème” for a dessert. It would be “crème renversée” or crème caramel” or “flan”. A “pot de crème” is a cream jar as in milk jar.
I have the same question!
Two ON the clock.
Two hands on the clock
Eli
Thank you for this line in your review:
“ If there's a way to dehumanize a work force, a corporation will find it.”
I also pondered how to make the "of" work...maybe "two [parts] of [a] clock"?
Medium for me, and fun to solve, with the many toothsome entries and the slanted clues. I proceeded IN LOW through the NW, NE, and SE but struggled to get into the SW - impeded by an incorrect Meld (instead of MATE) and oped (instead of ARTS). Erasing the definitely questionable Meld allowed me to see AIRFARES and then the way was open to finishing.
It's said that Beethoven had a hard time deciding whether to key his Sixth in FMAJ or ELITE.
I like the mini counseling session at 15, 16 and 17A. AREYOUNUTS IFSO ICANRELATE.
I guess those snoots who want to bury the Dolphins might chant "INTERMIAMI".
Wasn't Alice B. Toklas the one who put the POT in POTDECREME?
Pretty fun puzzle. Thanks, David Karp.
Wow, totally missed the extra space. Who knew? Kudos to you Gary!
Couple of Hidden Diagonal Word (HDW) clues:
1. Familiar sight on the coast of Maine
2. Opposite of "amateurs" opposite
Speaking of opposites, my solving experiences in the NE and SW were opposites of the NW and SE experiences! Especially the SE, where I a) had the CREME early on, but couldn't remember the start 0f that desert; b) had no idea on the latest example of modern slang (RIDIC); c) had emoji early on and considered PEACH--thanks for the visual, Eli, now I get it; d) without PEACH, kept staring at HIT _ C _ with no idea how that could describe next-gen devices. But I persevered (please hear the delightful British pronunciation of that word) and received my Congratulations in (over)due time.
Answers:
1. CRAG (off the C in 21A)
2. CONS (off the C in 36A)
Medium. Like @ Eli I got off to a very slow start with almost nothing in the NW (I did put in and take out ZEAL but kept AYN). Working my way up from the bottom proved to be a more fruitful approach and I finished in medium time for me.
Did not know MORALES, DAL, and POTDECREME.
UTTERANCE a took a while.
Pretty smooth with a bit more sparkle than yesterday’s. Liked it.
What the hell is a "butt text"?
Yes, like yesterday, if I finished it, it must be easy. Although I had to reveal my one mistake - DIGS (archeological bones) crossing CIDES (often Xwords seem made-up or are beyond my ken)
Love Sydney. What a fun place and culture. Unfortunately, confidently put COOK (as in Captain) instead of NEMO (as in I suffered through Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Lion King and Beauty and the Beast but the kids then grew up). Cost some time. Refuse to watch Frozen, Finding Nemo and Moana just for the NYT and expeditiously.
My initial impression of the puzzle was challenging. After going over all the clues in the NW all I had was INLOW supported by SLOW and a possible ESE with no way to confirm.
However once I moved on to the NE the solve turned into a fun Friday with the puzzle filling in steadily clockwise.
As easy as the solve ultimately felt that slow start kept me to an average Sat time which was 29 minutes. I hunt and peck these things out on my phone. If someone read me the answers I don't think I could fill a grid in 5 minutes. As slow as I fill these puzzles anything that comes in under 20 minutes is boringly easy and that's why I've cut back to just late week puzzles.
The Spelling Bee is much more consistent in difficulty and has become my daily puzzle fix.
yd -0. QB2
Two cheats to finish. (Hey, it's a gorgeous day, I woke up late, and I can't stare at the NW corner forever.) Looked up MORALES and DAL(las).
Saw the ERGO space before the IF SO space, so put IF SO in the wrong place and had to correct.
That blasted "U". I had LUTZ instead of QUAD for the jump and didn't know what on earth to do with that unwanted "Z".
And in dark, dark ink (don't DO that on a Saturday, Nancy!) I wrote in OVERACT where the much better HAM IT UP should have gone. What a mess I had over in an easier section of the puzzle.
Another write-over: I insisted on POT au CREME instead of POT DE CREME. I just feel like I'm write, though I'm probably wrong.
Someone will tell me why "Two o'clock" = HANDS, yes? Please?
And finally, I could have gone to my grave without ever knowing what a PEACH EMOJI is. Which would have been absolutely peachy-keen, don't you think?
Very tough for me, but probably not for everyone.
RIDIC is not new slang. You can hear it in movies from the 1940s. The Lost Weekend comes to mind. The Chicago Tribune called it flapperese, as it dates from at least the 1920s.
Didn't know it was making a comeback - kind of like dig did in the 1960s and 1970s.
Patting myself on the back for knowing 43A "country with "kreyól" as an official language" HAITI, only because I just finished reading the book "Babel" by R.F. Kuang. Fascinating fictional story showing how language is used to facilitate colonialism.
Birder here. Gotta love TITS.
Eli, I forgot to say thanks for sharing a picture of your pooch today. Did you know the origin of the name Maeve means “she who rules?” And judging from her adorable face, I have no doubt it’s true.
SB is consistent in never accepting AROAR as a perfectly legitimate word - very annoying :(
A Saturday that opens with 1A MOZAMBIQUE cannot be easy in my book. I thought people played Charades, not TELEPHONE, not knowing soccer (sorry, guys & soccer moms) I didn't know INTER MIAMI. Cubicles were bad enough but having to book a "wall-less desk space" every day -
OMG Eli! (I always had a an office but that was then). Otherwise a fairly decent Saturday - but as I said, definitely not easy.
Also called butt-dial. You have your phone in your back pocket. You sit down on your phone. And accidentally dial a number
{Texter's butt-dial?} = PEACHEMOJI woulda been slightly neater.
No prob with solvequest, thanx to about half a dozen google research projects.
staff weeject pick, of only 8 choices: DAL. I knew about the Dallas Wings, as we follow all the Caitlin Clark games, at our house.
fave stuff: HANDS clue. MITES clue. AFICIONADO spellin challenge. UTTERANCE clue.
And, in a way, ended up likin ELITE. M&A is gettin to an age where he is easily confused. And I wrote in ELITE early on, but splatzed the lower E-leg in right on that square's border, effectively hidin it.
Made that answer look like FLITE.
Later on, when I had built up an answer of HAS AN H-FART at 28-D, I figured that was one of the classic-est new slang entries I'd ever seen. Its clue didn't make much sense, tho. Nice puztheme potential, paired with that there PEACHEMOJI, tho. Woulda coulda shoulda!
Thanx for the themeless fun, Mr. Karp dude. Nice one. Needed a KV, for yer pangrammer, tho.
Masked & Anonymo5Us
p.s. Saturday is just too predictably a themeless puz. They need to rethink that. M&A would be happy to submit semi-RIDIC-hard themed SatPuzzes. It's a waaaay untapped genre, sadly.
**gruntz**
Thought yesterday's LA Times puzzle was great too. Highly recommended.
Thought yesterday's LA Times puzzle was great too. Highly recommended.
Easier than Friday for a change. I didn't need to cheat, but the SE took a long time because I didn't know PEACHEMOJI and assumed the Beethoven key had to end in "min" for minor. The cluing was devilish but not unfair; the clue for UTTERANCE was the best example.
Dang, I thought you were going with ZZTop and the sheik from Mozambique… anyway I generally love your tune choices - so thnx!
Except that there are plenty of places within the boundaries of the NY State side of the metro area for the Jets and Giants to play but they chose to play in the garbage state. The only true NY team is the Bills. Let’s go Buffalo. Also came to say that Ayn Rand’s books are great. Just because you don’t agree with thr philosophy doesn’t make them “unreadable.” That seems very close minded to me.
I finally gave up and looked up the Pastoral Symphony. That pried enough things loose for me to get through. (I had looked up skating jumps earlier, but all I found at 4-letters were Axel, Lutz, and Loop, which I knew already, so I'll call that a failed cheat.) Also, all the Slavic Alexanders I've known have been SAcHA, or maybe Alyosha, so I didn't want to accept SACHA.
It didn't help that I had laTEst before HITECH, violaS (thinking of violas da gamba) before SITARS, and was looking for another Portuguese explorer for the eponymous strait. Oh, yeah, I had to look up MORALES, too. What happened to Peter Parker?
I almost changed PEA_t EMOJI to 'heart,' but since that didn't make sense I took another look and saw the possibility of HI-TECH.
So it was a good struggle, even if I failed at it--- but it leaves me wondering how Petco got to be WOOF? Do companies just get to choose their ticker symbols?
Later.
MATE clue also works for "score."
This puzzle was super easy, until I hit the upper right which took me much longer than the rest of the puzzle by far. Names names names everywhere; fortunately I knew most of them. Way too many names, Joel!
Some typeovers: A LIST before ELITE, IF SO before ERGO only to show up later in that upper right corner. AXEL then LUTZ before QUAD for the figure skating jump (Scrabble letters galore!).
ATTAGIRL is an accepted "word" in Spelling Bee, while as @jb129 notes, AROAR continues to be neglected.
Good catch re 27A, Eli. BTW, I've never seen THE THE in a crossword. My favorite Brit post-punk band would make great fill.
And thanks for your comment about still another NYTXW reference to that Objectivism founder. Is it possible that Miles MORALES could toss her books into the MOZAMBIQUE Channel?
Many clocks have three hands- the hour, the minute and the second hand. So not a good clue!
The right side of the puzzle was Tuesday the left side Wednesday
Those teams may play in NJ, but they "represent" NYC (per the clue).
I always enjoy your posts. I am with you on the time. Took me 31, but was able to solve with no googles which is a huge win and an outlier on Saturdays! I truly don’t understand the less than 5 thing. I solve on my phone and can do a Monday that falls easy and has zero hesitations just boom/boom/boom as fast as I can put it in….and it’s 9 minutes at best!
Where do they get the sauce we all like on fried fish? The tartar pits.
Wonderful Puzzle, David! Reasonably doable for me, which is always a plus, and the long answers were either very in-the-language or had special interest and sparkle! Especially enjoyed ICANRELATE, the clue on HAITI, and also ANTICLIMAX. 17 minutes for me-- Thank you for a great puzzle! : )
Anonymous 1:19 pm
About AYN Rand.
She certainly had a famous extremely pronounced what is called libertarian outlook. She was anything but open minded about or willing to listen to people she disagreed with. Yet you expect people who strongly dislike the I got mine screw everyone else outlook to treat these books as reasoned argument. She hated communism but she in turn created her own party line.
Anonymous:9:30
Not Ukrainian but know a young man of Ukrainian ancestry named Sasha so that annoyed me a bit. But I knew the French version his spelled with a C so put that in reluctantly.
same! not easy at all. i don’t how i got though it without looking anything up. the entire NW corner took me a while. anode + quad. bc i didn’t know morales. kept wanting to write marshal law. sigh. glad it’s over with now lol
Nancy, I wanted POT au CREME at first also; then I vaguely remembered POT au feu (which is a French beef stew). The HANDS clue is very tricky, especially for eyes as old as mine. There is a space between the apostrophe and the word clock, so the clue must be read "Two o' clock" which means two "of clock," which is HANDS. It's a bad clue--for example, many clocks have a second hand. That was exhausting, simply trying to explain it! lol
Five minutes?! It takes me that long to brush my teeth, never mind completing a Saturday NYTXW puzzle. Geez, Eli, slow down, smell the roses and all that.
I know a lot of the commenters here like to work with ink on paper but I’m sure glad I don’t. I’d just be looking at a big Rorchachy black blob. Huge write-over count (actually type-over today).
I also know that Rex and many others have been lobbying for years for the inclusion of more casual expressions in the grid. I don’t mind them but I think it’s possible to overload your puzzle with them. The three up top were all pretty good (AREYOUNUTS, ICANRELATE, and ISTHATAYES), but trying to reverse into ALAS for “S**t happens” (you know that’s what he wanted to say) is stretching it a bit. Just felt off. Keep it to a few and don’t force them.
Speaking of forcing things, I tried to stuff creme caramel in at 49A. Stopped typing at cremeca when I realized it was too long and put in creme brule instead not knowing that, though I know how to make it, I can’t spell it properly. That held me up for longer than it took for Eli to complete the puzzle.
Looking over my completed grid, I realize it was a pretty good Saturday but, even though I completed it successfully, I feel like it kicked my ass.
Subjunctive “were,” too, not past.
It’s not a gimme to credit the constructor with good cluing. Many many clues are replaced / re-written by editors. Has there been a publish of the constructor’s submitted clue set?
A thing so offensive to one’s sensibilities as to be difficult to get through may be described as “unreadable” in much the same way that food one is sensitive or allergic to may be considered inedible.
Thanks, Tom, for working so hard on my behalf. :)
Grew up in a Slavic, mostly Russian, community — SACHA rubbed me the wrong way. The short form of Alexander or Alexandra is transliterated as Sasha. Sacha would rhyme with the word "dacha," ie with a CH sound. The only SACHA I've ever heard of is Baron Cohen.
Ditto
can someone explain "commercial ending" = ESE/
Are you a fan of the Orchard Park Bills?
Super easy Saturday, with MOZAMBIQUE, INTER MIAMI, and MORALES being convenient gimmes. Only downside was being reminded of the terrible spider-verse movies.
Too many non-words like RAMI, LEXI, FMAJ, ATTA, STDS, NAM, ESE, AYN, DAL STE etc. And how did PAP get around the breakfast test?
An anode collects electrons, a cathode releases them... Electronics 101.
RIDIC YOU LOS
IS ITUP to A guess?
ICANRELATE, but ALAS.
SO, ISTHATAYES,
or AREYOU ANTICLIMAX?
--- SACHA MORALES
The Anode is the negative or reducing electrode that releases electrons to the external circuit and oxidizes during and electrochemical reaction. The Cathode is the positive or oxidizing electrode that acquires electrons from the external circuit and is reduced during the electrochemical reaction.
Source: depts.washington.edu/matseed/batteries/MSE/components.html
Serviceable Saturday, nice open grid providing easy access to all parts. Plenty of real talk (AREYOUNUTS, ISTHATAYES, HASAHEART). I CAN RELATE.
One "huh?": TELEPHONE = classic party game??? That one lost me around the corner. The rest is fine. Birdie.
Wordle bogey.
After a quick scan of the clues I began by filling in the answer to 18 across. Satisfied, I put down my pen, leaving the rest of the grid blank.
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