.png)
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
Word of the Day: BITTORRENTS (31A: Methods for sharing pirated material) —
BitTorrent, also referred to simply as torrent, is a communication protocol for peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P), which enables users to distribute data and electronic files over the Internet in a decentralized manner. The protocol is developed and maintained by Rainberry, Inc., and was first released in 2001.To send or receive files, users use a BitTorrent client on their Internet-connected computer, which are available for a variety of computing platforms and operating systems, including an official client. BitTorrent trackers provide a list of files available for transfer and allow the client to find peer users, known as "seeds", who may transfer the files. BitTorrent downloading is considered to be faster than HTTP ("direct downloading") and FTP due to the lack of a central server that could limit bandwidth.
BitTorrent is one of the most common protocols for transferring large files, such as digital video files containing TV shows and video clips, or digital audio files. BitTorrent accounted for a third of all internet traffic in 2004, according to a study by Cachelogic. As recently as 2019 BitTorrent remained a significant file sharing protocol according to Sandvine, generating a substantial amount of Internet traffic, with 2.46% of downstream, and 27.58% of upstream traffic, although this share has declined significantly since then. (wikipedia)
• • •
When I finished this puzzle, which I liked just fine, I looked at the constructor name and thought, "Wait, is this the guy ...?" And then I went and looked it up, and it is, in fact, the guy. What guy, you ask? This guy:
Besides an "OUT" dupe and a "___ TO" dupe (LOAN TO, SOAR TO) and a probably excessive reliance on foreign words (ORA, PERDU, DENTE, POCO, SEL), I liked this puzzle quite a bit. I wonder how many people fell into the STRIKE trap right away (1A: Labor tactic). That's certainly the first place my brain went, but then I checked the "K" cross and kouldn't do anything with it (5D: Whizzes). Then I just toggled: "Labor ... what's another 'labor'? ... aha." And in went LAMAZE and down went ZIPS, and then ENO, and well I felt very pleased with myself. Mission ... started. And pretty soon, I dropped a line all the way to the bottom, and I was off! Everything was, indeed, coming along great:
Do you ever get mad—actively mid-solve mad—at yourself for not knowing something you feel you should know? A vocabulary word, for instance? For me, today, it was "Apologue," which I thought for sure meant a "defense." I knew that's what "apologia" meant, so ... how different could they be!? Well, plenty, apparently, because FABLE, I did not see coming (20A: Apologue). "A moral fable, especially one with animals as characters." The word appears just once in the "Aesop's Fables" wikipedia page, but it's there. I thought maybe the Fables were actually called "Apologues" in the original Greek, but no, the original title is Aesopica. (Are you having fun? Are these FUN FACTS!?). Also, if you google "Aesop," you get not the famous fabulist, but ... this. We're sorry, Aesop. You deserve better than to come in second place to this:
 |
| [Thanks, google! Your algorithms are enriching all our lives tremendously!:] |
More stuff:
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
- 48A: Fast-food chain with palm trees on its packaging (IN-N-OUT) — great answer, even if it does look pretty stupid in the grid (without its hyphens).
- 49A: First word in the opening crawl for "Star Wars: Episode I" (TURMOIL) — 10 demerits for forcing me to think about this movie for even one second. Also, huge LOL that I care about its completely non-ICONIC "opening crawl." The opening crawl for (so-called) "Episode IV" (i.e. the original Star Wars)—that is ICONIC. Who the hell remembers the "Episode I" crawl? (shut up, nerds!)
- 51A: Where you might say "That's the spirit!" (SEANCE) — wanted "bar" or the equivalent here (TAVERN?), but got to SEANCE quickly. Clever wordplay.
- 35A: Mediocre, in modern slang (MID) — so much Z/Alpha/TikTok slang is goofy and unusable, but this one really works. I like it a lot. Witheringly concise. Good stuff.
- 29A: Deep fears? (SEA SERPENTS) — look, SHARKS, sure, but is anyone out there on the ocean like ".... you guys, you guys ... I'm really afraid?" "Of what?" "Of ... don't laugh, OK? ... of SEA SERPENTS!" [Explosive laughter] "I said don't lau—Aaaaaaah, what's that what's that!?!?" "That's kelp, buddy." "Oh. OK. You guys, you guys ... can we go back on shore now?" Seems like more of a mythical (like, actual Greek and Roman mythical) "fear" than a real fear.
See you next time.
*Apparently he is, indeed, doing a bit. Here’s the notes from the first time he published a grid with this pattern—I’m sorry, “topology”:
ReplyDeleteOFL was on his game today; I was definitely not on mine. Mostly it was Medium for a Saturday but the NW corner pushed the whole thing into Challenging territory. Lots of stuff I didn't know (20A Apologue, that 42D ATUL person) or didn't remember (9D ORA, 27A pain PERDU).
The key to getting the NW was actually 38A, because before I realized the inevitability of it I had ACES for the Whizzes at 5D.
Took some time for the cluing voice to register but smooth sailing after that. Wonderful puzzle - why change the grid layout if he keeps pumping out winners - dance with the date you brought. The center tri-stack is top notch and allows access to each quadrant - at least that’s how attack these grids.
ReplyDeleteAm I a hipster DOOFUS?
The MIKEY x MASSIF cross was totally backed into - I’m assuming they’ll be some groans about that today. SUMO RING was inferable and ultimately cool. Wordplay and misdirects all around made this one fun.
Enjoyable Saturday morning solve. Matt Sewell’s Stumper today provides the alternative grid Rex is looking for - another fantastic puzzle.
You spend your whole damn life trying to climb just one RUNG
I liked the puzzle and finished in medium ish time for me, but I was almost Naticked by the U in Atul, since I’d never heard of him or of In-n-Out. I had to run the vowels on that square until I got the happy sound. One thing unusual for me was somehow I did the middle stacks first. Usually such a stack
ReplyDeleteIs last for me.
You really have never heard of In'n'Out?! Only fast food place I've eaten at in 20 years. They cut the potatoes for fries right in front of you, make the burgers to order (no heat lamps), use real high quality ice cream for shakes, and have always paid workers better than any other similar businesses, plus full health care and vacations. You'll see the same people working at a shop year after year. It's a California company with outlets throughout the west. Family owned, never went public.
DeleteIn-N-Out opened in SoCal in 1948 and had something like 50 locations before they even expanded to NorCal in the 90s (I didn’t grow up with it as a kid, as a NorCal native), and I think they were exclusive to CA until into the 2000s. They prob have a few hundred locations now, but pretty sure all still on the west coast (tho I think they might be expanding east now?), so while it sounds crazy to a Californian for someone to have never heard of it, it’s not unreasonable outside of the west coast.
DeleteRe: the constructor’s notes at the NYT, the repetition of the grid shape is part of a larger multipuzzle meta to a poem (8 more to go?).
ReplyDeleteI solve puzzles early enough in the morning to where, these days, it’s often dark when I begin, and grows lighter as I go along.
ReplyDeleteThat is how today’s puzzle went – darkness at the onset, when the clue vagueness and answers I didn’t know made for few toe-holds. There came much pinballing, zigzagging around the grid, often reaching the low point of stuckness, then flipper-ing up again to search for pings of enlightenment.
Those pings did come, and they felt very well earned; those boxes filled with fanfare. And, like my dog ferreting for a treat I’ve hidden, I persisted with no intent of flagging. Pings begat more pings, less spaced apart.
Much beauty was uncovered: MASSIF, MINION, SO FAR SO GOOD, DALLY, FUN FACTS, ICONIC, ABRUPT, LOGJAM, plus that lovable ragtag pair DOOFUS and DONGLE. Not to mention the sing-song NITTY GRITTY MEATY MINTY PETTY DALLY, with PETCO CONGO POCO tagging along.
Plus, the wow of a meager 66-word grid with hardly a whiff of junk.
When this odyssey was all over, I felt deeply satisfied, like I did something worth doing. And grateful to David, who I believe also did something worth doing in making this. Thank you, sir, for a proper Saturday!
Torrents is a frequently used word. BitTorrent not so much. A torrent is a descriptor file, or more casually, a single download action. So torrents is simply more than one in either of those cases. BitTorrent is a protocol, however. Only one of those.
ReplyDeleteCame here to say this, almost exactly this way.
DeleteSorry, this doesn’t make any sense—torrents and BitTorrents are the same thing. A torrent is a file type (*.torrent) that carries metadata about a file stored elsewhere (like a map to that file using bitstrings), and was created as part of the Python-based BitTorrent protocol, a standardized system or syntax developed for enabling the decentralized sharing of files peer-to-peer (P2P) seamlessly across the web, whereby a file can be located and accessed/downloaded from any stored location using any BitTorrent client (app). The term “torrent” was invented as part of the BitTorrent protocol and doesn’t exist except for that, and the terms are now used interchangeably, i.e. all torrents are BitTorrents. While accessing a torrent does action only a single download, plural usage of multiple “BitTorrents” is correct. (And the fact that the creator simultaneously developed a proprietary app called “BitTorrent” is irrelevant—there are many apps (clients) that can access and download files using the BitTorrent protocol.)
DeleteLuckily, long ago and far away I was a Lamaze student…but still had to cheat to get started on this one. Answers I looked up were MAN, MIKEY, and FABLE. So big DNF to start but was still a challenge to me to get the rest. LAMAZE was key to deciding which one of the Whizzes was ACES. The rest was a matter of slow building cross by cross until patterns appeared. Some like NITTYGRITTY were easy, BLURRING OUT was more difficult. Re the repeating pattern, kudos to @Rex for discovering it. I would interpret it not as a crutch but as a challenge.
ReplyDeleteI suspect that there is going to be a little something to trip up most everyone today - I don’t know what a MASSIF is (I assume it’s one word, will be consulting with Uncle Google shortly). So a word I don’t recognize, crossing a Goonie, a French term (for salt, I believe) and what appears to be a regional burger joint and that section was not a NICE ONE for me.
ReplyDeleteI was (very briefly) upbeat when I saw that computer clue in the SE, as I figured that would be a gimmie - no such luck, it turns out that little thing I had to attach to use a wireless device is called a DONGLE ! Speaking of computer clues, I wonder if there is going to be a bit of a dichotomy among the solvers today regarding BITTORRENTS - either you are familiar with it or no idea? Sort of a binary situation there to continue the computer metaphor.
Hi everyone.
ReplyDeleteIt has been 3 day since our last rap clue.
Today's puzzle had 2 missed opportunities for fill-in-the-blanks rapper names:
ROB
MAN
(Close calls on MIKEY and ACES)
Not ALOT to complain about (although 21 Savage and J Cole might disagree)
Gonna smoke an OUNCE. Till tomorrow.
Challenging here, lots of tough cluing and a number of terms 'bittorrents' 'massif' 'perdu' I was unfamiliar with. 'bleepingout' instead of blurringout' slowed me down as well. To challenge a constructor's 'dignity' for not altering the grid structure is a low blow and a cheap shot... especially for such a brilliant and entertaining puzzle. Was it entertaining and well-executed?, YES!
ReplyDeleteA terrific Saturday. Looking forward to the remaining eight.
ReplyDeleteCheated several times and still couldn't finish it. Never heard of MASSIF, or INNOUT, or BITTORRENTS, or DONGLE, or MIKEY, or PERDU, or LAMAZE. I thought I had a good vocabulary, but maybe not.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to hear comments about BLURRINGOUT; is that a legitimate phrase?
How can you be so flippant about SEA SEPRENTS? Have you forgotten Book 2 of the Aeneid already??
ReplyDeleteA LOAN is a noun. It's an agreement to temporarily transfer use of property to a second party for some kind of consideration. The word LEND is a VERB. You don't LOANTO, you LENDTO. That was just not cricket.
ReplyDeleteMcmath sadist
DeleteLoan is.noun
Loan is a verb
End of story.
According to that obscure publication Oxford English Dictionary the first use of loan as a verb found in writing was a short 824 years ago. Since oral precedes writing, loan as a verb is approaching 9 centuries old and the word is used that way by hundreds of millions of people currently. Good enough for me and certainly for crosswords.
Of course hundreds of millio
More misuse and denigration of the word ICON in popular culture to the point of meaningless.
ReplyDeletePart of why I love/hate this blog is that Rex somehow magically remembers the construction patterns of a specific constructor, but beyond that IT ANNOYS HIM. Who cares?!? I know Rex does, and that’s what makes him so special. I laughed out loud that of all things THAT was the thing he focused on. I’d be terrified to see a movie with him: “This is the same typeface as this obscure 1973 film you’ve never heard of!”
ReplyDeleteNever change Rex. Never change.
Hey All !
ReplyDeleteHaven't been getting my posts on here lately. Doing the same thing I do all the time, but nada.
Good puz, had to Goog to finish. Nice to be able to decide to make the same grid patterns, and actually get your puzzles published. Good on ya.
Happy Saturday.
Four F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Good, tough Saturday.
ReplyDeleteWent with sOuth at first for 39A (South Sudan, South Africa). Which gave me sNOot for a big bill, casually. But my biggest holdup was probably BLeepINGOUT before cLippINGOUT before BLURRING OUT, which fell right in the middle of two of the long across answers and gummed up the works.
Also Rex's strikE before LAMAZE and my own moseY before DALLY. Gave myself lots of false starts to work through today.
I found it hard, did not know a lot of the “trivia”. But thanks to Google, I got it done! I did have STRIKE until KIPS was clearly just wrong. Lol.
ReplyDeleteEasy?? Marone! This one really stuffed my cannoli. (Sorry, been watching a Sopranos marathon this week.) Thought I’d never get a foothold but finally broken in with NITTY-GRITTY and SO FAR SO GOOD. But even then it was slow going and very, very tough. Certainly a worthy Saturday stumper.
ReplyDeleteNothing against PETCO but I can attest that Chewy is an outstanding company. Competitive pricing and good customer service. My only complaint is they pack their boxes too heavy. I started ordering from them early in the pandemic and have been so happy with their service that I continue to do so 4+ years later.
I intuitively knew BITTORRENTS, but also knew it couldn't be right (especially considering my incorrect MOUTH and POSTS write-ins), because it didn't seem possible to pluralize. Also killed my confidence in BIKELANE (which was also exacerbated by GOODONE.)
ReplyDeleteI eventually eked it out 12 minutes slower than my average. But this was a toughy for me.
Yesterday's comment didn't get published -- "An error occurred." If this one does, I'll come back
ReplyDeleteMy starting point was PERDU, and I built steadily from there. I would like to offer today's puzz as evidence that we should all study the Romance languages in school, as illustrated by DENTE, POCO,PERDU, SEL ,and MASSIF. Lots of help there, merci, grazie, and gracias.
ReplyDeleteHello MIKEY. Know you better as the MIKEY in MIKEY likes it!, as I'm unfamiliar with you and the rest of the Goonies. And nice to meet you, ATUL. Surgeon writers are impressive.
It's always humbling when folks start discussing the details of things I've never heard of, in this case BITTORRENTS, which I filled in correctly but still looked like a random string of letters to me. Live and learn.
Had the ___BLE and correctly inferred FABLE, as BIBLE seemed unlikely.
Liked this one a lot, DPW. Delightful, Playful, and Well-constructed. Very satisfying solve, and thanks for all the fun.
And on to the S;tumper.
Really liked this one. Good crunch (I needed a couple of lookups), good pizzazz (15 red plus signs in the margins), learned some FUNFACTS, only eight threes. Smart cluing.
ReplyDeleteI guess I believe that Rex saw the repeated grid layout before reading Wordplay. Really impressive.
Solidly medium Saturday. I was nervous on the way in after last week’s Saturday slog. Here, I found it easiest to get a toehold in the middle and then work outward. SE was the last bit to fall. Had SUMO and just couldn’t get to RING for whatever reason, plus I had MEH in place of MID for a while, then PARMA saved the day (PARMA —> RING —> DONGLE —> MID) and finished up in just about average Saturday time.
ReplyDeleteWow, did I have a different solving experience from Rex — hardest Saturday for me in years (in a good way!). But the real reason I’m writing is to give 5 stars to Rex’s dramatic scene about sea serpents. Truly laughed out loud.
ReplyDeleteGood Saturday challenge. I remember this guy from past puzzles, which were all on the tough side for me.
ReplyDeleteAnyone else have trouble in the SE? I got SUMORING but then blanked for like, 5 minutes. Wanted RUMOR instead of BATON, and ROTE instead of BORE. Finally figured out SEANCE, which led to ICONIC, and eventually finished
Thanks again, Mr Williams. BTW, I don't care what your grids look like
No chance at all
ReplyDeleteFREEZE is also a labor tactic, which gave me ZIPS, which made the NW the last section I completed. Overall this was harder for me than for Rex, but I liked it. Was stuck for a while in the SW when I confidently filled in COREY as one of the Goonies, another partially correct wrong answer. Didn't know MASSIF.
ReplyDeleteBrilliant for remembering the grid pattern and confirming; mild boo to automatically deciding it is a negative thing. An anonymous nerd has confirmed that the complaint about plural BitTorrent is correct, not that I would have ever gone looking for that to nit about. I was happy to have that and DONGLE in my wheelhouse.
ReplyDeleteOne square no happy music mistake. tONGO led to a seemingly plausible tNOTE, which on reflection doesn’t make sense.
The grid format is at least a good one for late week puzzles, leading to crossing 11s along with stacked 6,7,8s in the corners.
Strikes>LAMAZE and a premature ACES whiz made the NW tough. Also, I read E”n”tymologists, which led to a very securely wrong insects>ORIGINS. I went back up at the end to struggle: always interesting to see Rex’s partial grids - today he finished that before moving on.
Same experience with thinking I should probably know Apologue, as well as pain PERDU. It looked like I was going to be really mad at myself for most of the puzzle, but then it gradually filled in.
BITTORRENTS???? Is that right? I've never shared any pirated material, so I don't know these things.
ReplyDeleteI forgot to look at what the answer to the MI?/?ONGLE cross is. I had MEH, of course, for "mediocre in modern slang" as I'm sure all the rest of you did, but I couldn't make it work with ICONIC. Which has to be correct, yes? So I changed to MI-something-or-other.
And then I ran the alphabet 4 or 5 times to try to come up with a "computer accessory" ?ONGLE. I'm pretty sure the crosses are right, though it could be ?ONKLE if it's SUMO RINK rather than SUMO RING. As you know, I have no superfluous gadgets in my house, but you'd think I'd at least have heard of that mysterious computer accessory. I can't even make a guess at that missing crossing letter.
Because of all the very, very, very new slanguage that populates the NYTXW, I thought that sOOFUS might actually be a new epithet for a stupid person. Only belatedly did I think to change sALLY for "move slowly" to DALLY. So only one missing letter now. You might want to count that as a DNF, but I'm pretty sure I won't.
Brutal.
Went with meh, edetic & sumo rite which kinda worked except for the unknown computer thingy!! Only other stumble, confidently wrote in bootleg although I did resolve that in the end.
DeleteToo much techie gibberish today
Genuinely shocked you’ve never heard of a dongle. Or a doofus for that matter. Mid is admittedly very new, but I think inferable given that it’s short for “middling”.
DeleteDongle sounds like another one of those sex toy thingies much like Rubbermaid. Something JDVance maybe familiar with perhaps!!
DeleteThank you for the lovely Chopin video. Can you tell us who the pianist is? I would love to listen to more of his videos. Sorry if it is listed and I just can’t figure it out.
ReplyDeleteVery funny post. Scared my dog laughing at "Dignity. That's why." and "Baby steps."
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/@WillsKeyboardSink
ReplyDeleteThanks!
DeleteShouldn't it be SOFA is SO GOOD or SOFAs R SO GOOD?
ReplyDeleteSomeone might be MADLY in love, but a certain someone is bigLY in love with himself. Perhaps a bit too much amour propre as they say over pain PERDU in the Massif Central. A German, OTOH, might multitask by doing FÜNFACTS at once. Ach!
And while we're visiting foreign lands, let me tell you that a SUMORING is no place for hUMORING dohyo denizens.
I love to go to INNOUT with PARMA.
Lucky for @Rex that David P. Williams didn't decide to base his crossword career on "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover." I liked this puzzle a bunch.
Big step up from yesterday's solve. This was on a par with last Saturday's puzzle. I had to go all the way down to MASSIF to get my real start. Prior to that all I had was SERB for Tesla and SALTY mojitos. SEASERPENTS fixed that.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately I ended with a POCA/POCO dnf in the SE. Maybe a really big DONGLE is a DANGLE. It would complement 7A's "Ding-dong" clue.
yd -0. QB13
Wow. This one kicked my butt. I'll put part of the blame on the Tiafoe-Fritz match, which I had on while struggling with the puzzle.
ReplyDeleteFifteen or 20 minutes in, only the SE was filled - plus a few scattered words - and some of the latter were wrong - ACES in the wrong place, e.g. Typed entries in, erased them. Eventually got the middle stacks after a couple of the crossing downs, and built out from there.
Alternate clue for NITTY GRITTY: ____ ____ Dirt Band.
Thanks for the workout, David P. Williams.
Surprised at the number of people who haven’t heard of In-N-Out. It borders on a cult-like following for visitors to California and surrounding states, and gets namechecked in plenty of media (“The Big Lebowski,” for one). And I say this as someone who’s never lived in the western half of the US.
ReplyDeleteI have definitely heard of IN-N-OUT. But never having been to one, I have no idea what graphics are printed on their packaging.
DeleteHere in Santa Rosa old timers from SoCal like me were just in LUV with the thought In N Out was coming to town.
DeleteOh actually the place didn’t exist on LA’s Westside when I grew up there. But now a week seems incomplete without my Double Double and fries cut before your eyes. Really good!
Miserable failure. In the NW, I had GENE POOL and LOTS, and two wrong answers, "strike" and "insects" (mixing up ety in the clue with "ent." I finally gave up and came here.
ReplyDeleteI did like the long answers crossing in the center of the puzzle -- though I doubt if anyone these days actually "fears" SEA SERPENTS. But am I really expected to know what a "Goonie" is, let alone the name of one of them?
I don't know what either a mojito or a soffrito is (though I've had the former), but I managed to figure them out.
After an hour of agonizing, I gave up and came here.
If you squint, and maybe rotate the grid 1/8 revolution, you can sorta see a blackbird there, or rather an abstract representation of one. That must be the inspiration for the bit.
ReplyDeleteSeveral years ago, I learned that it was possible to "cast" streamed material, like concerts or plays, from my laptop to our TV, with a bigger screen and better sound quality. All I had to do was purchase a DONGLE, which turned out to be a little fob I stuck into the computer somewhere. It sort of works, but tends not to be fast enough for streaming -- although, come to think of it, I haven't tried it since we upgraded to a faster router.
The more I think of it, the more embarrassed I am at not seeing LAMAZE. I think of it as a method rather than a tactic, but still -- I did consider it might be that kind of labor, but just couldn't take the next step. Even so, if I hadn't decided that strike was wrong, I should have got ENO off the O. Music, three letters, that's ol' Brian. What was I thinking?
This puz was pretty much no-know city, for the M&A. The precious nanoseconds got siphoned off into infinity.
ReplyDeleteno-know entries: PERDU. BITTORRENTS. MID. ATUL. DENTE. DONGLE. And note, that MID and DONGLE cross, nat-tickly.
Furthermore, no-know clue stuff: apologue. soffritto. poivre. dohyo. opening crawl word. heckelphone. se non ___ quando-speak. mojitos.
Did really like all them neat Jaws of Themelessness, tho. And hearin about that the constructioneer is dedicated to them. Admirable.
staff weeject pick: MID. It halted M&A's solvequest, mid-dongle.
some neat stuff: SEASERPENTS & its clue. NITTYGRITTY. SOFARSOGOOD. FUNFACTS. LOGJAM.
Thanx, Mr. Williams dude.
Masked & Anonym007Us
p.s. Boeing's spacecraft experience may be expanded: All flights using Boeing vehicles are good to go off without passengers.
**gruntz**
Yes indeedy, I started with a STRIKE but eventually took it OUT....You know what made me change my mind?...MINION. Yes, MINION and it's M gave me a lovely AHA and its LAMAZE.....
ReplyDeleteI knew I was going to love this puzzle, and I DID! It had the Saturday flow hither and yon that I want and it made me think in strange happy ways. Take the SEA SERPENTS. I love mythology and I draw some of the critters. I wanted a Kraken but of course everybody knows a Kraken is some grilled calamari with tartar sauce.
The longies seemed to go in like a well oiled slicker.....Except...BITTORRENTS. Is that really you? I asked... What are you and why are you murking things up! SO FAR SO GOOD and then you appear. I had your letters in place because I was pretty sure the downs were correct. I left you and went looking for greener pastures.
There were head scratchers to be sure; I couldn't remember what an apologue is. It did look a bit like an Aesop mystery and I had the F in place so why not just put FABLE in and cross some fingers. It worked!
DOOFUS, DONGLE and MIKEY, the three miscreants du jour, made me cheat. This was a puzzle I wanted to finish without one looky loo. I'm pretty sure I could've gotten all three if I had more patience but I wanted to check and see if that BITTOR whatever was correct. Well it was and I went on to finish with flair.
A beaut of a puzzle if you ask me. I loved starting with LAMAZE and finishing up with a little SEANCE. Speaking of.....I've done both. They both worked for me. LAMAZE taught me to breath while pushing and the SEANCE made me jump through my skin. I was young when I first attended. The dishes rattling, the curtains parting and someone from the back room making ghost noises, impacts your brain for the rest of you life. Now you know....
Nope, not easy for me. I found the SW to be fiendish. corEY had to be correct for 33A (who's Mikey?) and mis-remembering 42D as AToL, and wanting FEEBLE for 50A but not able to make the F work to end 33D all lent themselves to my LOGJAM. That sector probably accounts for half my solve time. As a pescatarian, I’m not likely to know what fast food chains have on their packaging so IN-N-OUT, woof.
ReplyDeleteLike Rex, unable to make a K work for 5D kept strike out of 1A and made me search for, and find, LAMAZE, yay.
Apologue had to mean an apologetic monologue, right? But FAB__ put that out of my head.
Not Meh, now it's MID? Okay… Good that ICONIC and DONGLE were easy (loved the SEANCE clue).
A true Saturday challenge, thanks David P. Williams.
Medium-tough for me. The NW and the middle were easy and the rest was medium except for the SW which was tough. I did not know ATUL, TURMOIL, FABLE, PERDU, ORA, MIKEY, MID (I too had Meh at first), and MASSIF (sorta). I also had BLeeping before BLURRING…and me too for STRIKE at first.
ReplyDeleteMy main SW problem was not seeing IN N OUT despite having one 4 minutes from where I live if I hit all the lights. It also took me a while to get FEEBLE.
On the plus side I put in SO FAR…with no crosses.
Solid with almost no junk and a bit of sparkle, liked it.
Rex is annoyed that the constructor is reusing a grid? Seriously?
ReplyDeleteI found this quite challenging, especially in the southeast. PARMA never entered my head. SO EPIC before ICONIC, ROTE before BORE. EUREKAS before UPTAKES and weirdly the K was correct! Like @Matk, I finished running the alphabet at ATUL crossing INNOUT but got it right.
I was grateful the French Toast didn't turn out to be Pain MERDE. That would be a real faux pas. Or faut pas.
Mi perro está enfermo. It's 3 am and her stomach is unhappy and we've been out in the back yard twice. I guess I'm happy we're not on the 11th floor in my old condo building.
ReplyDeleteExact same start as 🦖. Felt wonderful to drop in SO FAR SO GOOD and LAMAZE out of the gate. I enjoyed this themeless as the answers kept amusing. A lower-gunk Saturday is such a relief. I misspelled "SERPANTS" and it resulted in "DANTE" for my Italian sausage and I thought I'd learned a new piece of trivia about the circles of Hell dude. Alas, DENTE isn't nearly as funny.
Propers: 3
Places: 2
Products: 3
Partials: 2
Foreignisms: 7
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 17 of 66 (26%)
Funnyisms: 4 🙂
Tee-Hee: There's a mini-short-story here, but I sometimes get axed when I portray a STONED DOOFUS and his DONGLE, especially if there's an AREOLA in the neighborhood, so I won't bring it up.
Uniclues:
1 Daddy.
2 What happens when you don't plan a pregnancy.
3 What happens when you do plan a pregnancy.
4 Makes an Aesop book club for two.
5 What Musk seems to be trying to do.
6 Oh! Those lines around the block.
7 Where you summon your dead goldfish.
8 Complimentary statement to an exposed body part when your album sales skyrocketed after a wardrobe malfunction.
9 Most likely place to find yellow pedallers.
10 Knock over houses on Realtor.com.
11 Raising one's hand before saying, "Well, actually..."
12 Those momentous moments when you, as a blog commenter, discover nobody cares if you found the puzzle was easy, or medium, or challenging.
1 LAMAZE DOOFUS
2 ABRUPT ORIGINS (~)
3 LOAN TO GENE POOL
4 JOINS FABLE FAN
5 MADLY MAKE A LOT (~)
6 IN-N-OUT TURMOIL
7 FEEBLE SEANCE
8 "NICE ONE, AREOLA" (~)
9 MINION BIKE LANE
10 ROB AGENT SITES
11 FUN FACTS MOTION
12 ICONIC UPTAKES
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Project 2025's playbook, “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise” (seriously, go look it up). BIGOTS IDEAL.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
1:45 pm - (I know, I know - SATURDAY - but too hard for me - if I have to cheat so much, it's no fun :(
ReplyDeleteVery easy for a Saturday from my perspective. The NW was the toughest part, but ORIGINS and GENE POOL got me started. I’ve seen LAMAZE in crosswords but I needed crossings to remember it. I didn’t fill in STRIKE, suspecting that kind of “labor” misdirection right away.
ReplyDeleteThen I was able to drop two of the center Downs, SO FAR SO GOOD and LADDER STEPS changed to RUNGS thanks to CONGO. In the SW, my misstep was RID before ROB.
And then, amid all the whooshing, my brain somehow decided that “blogroll” = “that list of future tours that bands publish”. Hence DATES crossing DENSEsomething. After I fixed that and got both stacks, the NE and SE were smooth sailing.
First off, I'm too square. Next, too old. And, maybe, just a bit dim. But I can't understand why nobody has complained about the clue Flunky yields the answer AGENT. No, no, no. My spouse and I have remembered and used and reused the phrase "eine flunky" for probably 50 years, ever since Goldie Hawn or George Segal said it in "The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox" - so funny. A flunky is a very low-down character, way down on the RUNGS; he may do stuff you need done, but he doesn't have your respect at all. An AGENT, on the other hand, is someone who does stuff for you and you respect them.
ReplyDeleteAs for the rest of the puzzle, see above : too square, too old, too dim. Me, not it.
@Eniale 2:50 PM
Delete[Flunky] is the clue for MINION.
Flunky yielded a MINION, while the AGENT was “running the show”
DeleteExcellent puzzle that was so much above my paygrade it isn’t funny. At one point I felt like the constructor was talking to me and saying: “you think you’re fairly up on things for your age, but I’m gonna throw BITTORRENTS at you, and even though you’ve HEARD the term DONGLE, you know you really don’t know what it’s used for….[cue: diabolical laugh]” I shan’t tell you how few things I had filled in on my first go around, but let’s just say that I was very happy I could fill in CONGO (after Guinea didn’t fit), and the fact I know about IN-N-OUT. (Do people on the West coast know about Five Guys?)
ReplyDelete@Gary J I’m sorry to hear about your dog. And thanks for giving me a mini-Spanish lesson every day…I MEAN that! I ALWAYS remember “gato” and forget “perro”…and I figured “enfermo” meant ill or sick. I didn’t even have to use Google translate because I figured you weren’t taking a bird, fish, or ferret out at night!
Okay…Roo and Mathgent. I just TRIED to “publish” my comment above (thank goodness for copy and paste) and I got the “an error occurred” message. EVERY time this has happened to me I have toggled OFF of the blog (from my iPad) to do something like respond to a text message, look BACK at the puzzle on the NYT app, or even go to an alternative browser to look something up. You CAN’T leave this site once you are here. So make sure you copy your work (if you do leave the site) and just “re-enter” it as if for the first time, then paste in what you have and anything you might want to add. And yes. It’s annoying and it didn’t used to happen.
Thanks @Beezer, but all that to me sounded like you diabolical laughing, since I'm not that much up on all things computery. I've always just searched for "Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword", and it comes up as the phone version, not the Yellow Paged web version. Maybe I need to go back to that.
DeleteI can't have my insanity unread! 🤣
RooMonster Browsers Smowsers Guy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBa5VJ43Lqg
ReplyDeleteTough for me, really tough. Of course I started with strikE. And, for a long time time, had cleaRINGOUT instead of BLURRINGOUT. You clear out the bad stuff, right? Wrong. Don't know any Goonies characters. Know of INNOUT but don't recall ever seeing their packaging. Know pain PERDU but for some reason confused it with pain de mort. Just brilliant, Les. Good thing it didn't fit.
ReplyDeleteOn the positive side, I popped ORIGINS right in (and then took it out later when I felt it necessary to rip out that whole corner, and the put it back in when I knew it had to be right). And soffrito is something I start most of my Italian sauces with so DICE was a gimme, as were PARMA, DENTE, and SEL. Nice kitchen representation today.
So I finished bruised but not beaten. Excellent puzzle except for things like MID and MIKEY.
Oh yeah, I was likely the only kid in my high school with an etymological dictionary stashed in his bag. Yes, it's about ORIGINS, but it's also about the weird paths words take as they move from ancient Greek to, say, old French, to modern English.
Based on Wallace Stevens, eh? Pretty fancy, Davey.
ReplyDeleteHere is my petty complaint about this otherwise very nice puzzle. GENE POOL doesn't refer at all to genetic variants that are inherited within a family. It actually means the total sum of genetic diversity in a species. Normally I'd be pretty excited to get a genetics clue, but this was a good phrase wasted by a badly edited clue.
ReplyDeleteAgree. I liked the puzzle, but the clue for gene pool is wrong as you say.
DeleteIn 2004 I worked on a friend's house in LA after her mom passed away. Her mom's cat was there too. Katie was a real LA kitty and could tell when I'd been to In'n"Out. Checking with my friend, I leaned that Katie liked their burgers so I would order a plain patty for her. Once I forgot to, but when I got to the house she sniffed me and knew I'd been there. She let me know she was not happy about that. I made her a burger patty from ground meat and she refused it. Months later an employee at an In'n'Out told me that many customers got patties for their dogs or cats and he wasn't surprised that Katie only ate their burgers.
ReplyDeleteUnihemispheric sleep 😴
ReplyDeleteDolphins sleep with only one half of their brain at a time, while the other half remains active. This is called unihemispheric slow wave sleep (USWS). When the right half of the brain is sleeping, the left eye is closed, and vice versa. This allows dolphins to rest without losing consciousness. The active half of the brain watches for predators and obstacles, and signals when to breathe. Dolphins usually sleep for about two hours on each side of their brain.
Sync a brain with the cloud....or maybe it IS bit torrent. My eyes feel like rocks in them. So tired. I ate today. Some cheese but not much cheese. This is getting me down. Hope i already married, or whatever the five days is for, and I don't marry a bee. Hopefully. I'll get back on fasting track then Cauliflower forever. If don't get denied
@gary jugert and @kdburton, oops, thanks, and what was I sayin' about being dim?
ReplyDeleteCan someone please explain why DENTE is "Sausage grinder in Italy?? ? I'm sure it's obvious but not to me.
ReplyDeleteDENTE is Italian for "tooth" so one grinds sausage with his/her teeth
DeleteAlthough I liked the puzzle, one clue really rubbed me the wrong way: 10D Trivia worth learning (FUN FACTS). Excuse me, do facts have to be FUN to be worth learning?? This clue is prejudiced against non-fun facts! Learn everything.
ReplyDeletemy brain is full https://store.gocomics.com/product/the-far-side-comic-art-print-my-brain-is-full-2/
ReplyDeleteDignity? You want to see dignity, behold the succinct Constructor’s Note: “A fifth way.”
ReplyDeleteSo extremely cool.
Rex, maybe you are a tad too young to remember the best-selling author, James Michener. He wrote a book called, “Centennial” which is one of my favorites.
ReplyDeleteThe first word of the Episode 1 crawl is "Episode."
ReplyDeleteDNF because I did not know what a heckelphone was. Is it what Jeckle uses when he needs to call his crow pal Heckle?
ReplyDeleteOFNP's last diagram, with the NW plus SOFARSOGOOD, is exactly how far I got. That was it. Well...MOTION in the SE, but perhaps a fatal error when MEH got me nowhere. How could 35a not be MEH? With the M, even? That's brutally unfair. DNF.
ReplyDeleteWordle birdie.
I found this puzzle to be hard hard, but I gotterdun!
ReplyDeleteI didn't even know dongles still existed. I remember them from my prehistoric computer days at work.
SERPENT FABLE
ReplyDeleteSOFARSOGOOD on the MAKE
TO come ANDGO IN the CONGO,
IN'N'OUT is his UPTAKE,
SO GOes MIKEY's MASSIF DONGLE
--- ROB PETTY
Hated this. Totally unintuitive to me. Just 100% ugh today.
ReplyDelete