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Relative difficulty: Medium
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| [ignore the little blue eyeballs—I had to "Reveal > Entire Puzzle" because I stupidly cleared my finished grid (so I could print a puzzle for my wife) before taking a screenshot] |
Word of the Day: DIANA (63A: Roman goddess of childbirth) —
Diana is a goddess in Roman and Hellenistic religion, primarily considered a patroness of the countryside and nature, hunters, wildlife, childbirth, crossroads, the night, and the Moon. She is equated with the Greek goddess Artemis, and absorbed much of Artemis' mythology early in Roman history, including a birth on the island of Delos to parents Jupiterand Latona, and a twin brother, Apollo, though she had an independent origin in Italy.Diana is considered a virgin goddess and protector of childbirth. Historically, Diana made up a triad with two other Roman deities: Egeria the water nymph, her servant and assistant midwife; and Virbius, the woodland god.
Diana is revered in modern neopagan religions including Roman neopaganism, Stregheria, and Wicca. In the ancient, medieval, and modern periods, Diana has been considered a triple deity, merged with a goddess of the moon (Luna/Selene) and the underworld (usually Hecate). (wikipedia)
• • •
It's a very first-person grid, with "I" "ME" and "MY" answers all colliding near the center of the grid. I like that "THAT WASN'T MY IDEA, / I PROMISE" feels like one complete statement, though I will say there is something *slightly* off about "THAT WASN'T MY IDEA." I think it's the "THAT." If I just google ["wasn't my idea"], all the hits I get are either "IT WASN'T MY IDEA" or just "WASN'T MY IDEA" (both of which feel more colloquially correct). "THAT WASN'T MY IDEA" feels like someone trying to overstuff a wordlist. It's a perfectly comprehensible phrase, but it just doesn't land as perfectly as it ought, to my ear. Not nearly as perfectly as, say, "IT MEANS A LOT TO ME." The only thing that actively bugged me about the puzzle was BIG PHARMA + CITI, particularly that clue on CITI (31D: "___ Never Sleeps" (banking slogan)). It's not that the clue's inaccurate, it's just that it combines with BIG PHARMA to give the puzzle a creepy Blade Runner-esque corporate dystopia vibe. Maybe CITI should sleep. "CITI Never Sleeps" is a half step from "Big Brother is watching you." Also, about BIG PHARMA—I think "familiarly" is maybe missing the vibe. I'd say "contemptuously" is probably closer to reality. No one is saying "BIG PHARMA" with affection, is what I'm saying. It's either someone (rightly) complaining about profiteering and irresponsible marketing, or someone (wrongly) railing against vaccines. I know the puzzle is never gonna sneer at Big Business the way I think Big Business deserves, but, still, I can't imagine voluntarily putting something like BIG PHARMA in your grid. Is anyone going to be happy to see that?
On the other hand, I was happy to see TEEN VOGUE (59A: Youth-centric magazine spinoff). That publication seems (generally) like a force for good, and it also helped me tremendously in getting through that SW corner, where I had PUCE as PLUM (55D: Shade akin to mauve) and had no idea what kind of RACE or SALE I was dealing with, and where the clue on ONCD was entirely inscrutable (53D: Ready for a drive, perhaps?) (I mean, I get it now, but not then). I also loved seeing "Kia ORA" down here (a phrase you'll hear if you ever fly Air New Zealand, which I have, many times), and, I mean, who doesn't love AREPAs (45D: Relative of a pupusa). I had my first AREPA at Hola AREPA on Nicollet in Minneapolis. I was visiting my best friends, Shaun & Steve, and then my friend Rob Ford, who calls games for the Astros, was also in town (because the Astros were in town), and so we all went to Hola AREPA ... I think it might've even been Rob's birthday (!?). All the stars were weirdly aligned to make the debut of AREPAs in my life a memorable one. And today's constructor lives (or at least went to school) in the Twin Cities, so it's all ... it's all coming together. I really want an AREPA. It's 5:11a.m. ... Patience.
The hardest section of the puzzle for me was the NE, without question. Started with my stupid MEAT PATTY mistake, but switching to BEEF PATTY only helped a little. I had no idea PIN was a chess thing, so I was out there, and of course I couldn't remember the OCH v. ACH distinction (7D: Frankfurter's cry), so I left a square blank there, and I wasn't certain about CATHY v. KATHY, and I got completely fooled by the mashed potato / chicken clue, and wow, yeah, SKA BANDS are not a front-of-the-brain thing for me, so parsing that one = yikes (5A: They often have multiple horns). No idea how to take "horns" in that clue. So that corner verged on Saturday difficulty for me, but everything else was solidly Friday, with the center being more Tuesday or Wednesday.
- 63A: Roman goddess of childbirth (DIANA) — this flummoxed me, as DIANA is so strongly associated with virginity that "childbirth" seemed ... an unlikely bailiwick for her. I mean, she's really into virginity. Demands it of all her followers. She favors and watches over Camilla, the virgin warrior who has a prominent role in the Aeneid. She banished the nymph Callisto from her inner circle when she discovered Callisto was pregnant (by Jupiter, who "seduced" or "raped" her, depending on whom you read). So in my mind, DIANA => virginity, and since virginity does not (except in one famous case) lead to childbirth, I resisted DIANA for as long as I could.
- 32A: Rembrandt and Sargent, notably (PORTRAIT ARTISTS) — wrote in PORTRAIT PAINTER even though the answer is obviously plural. Just a reflex. That's the phrase I want. The opening paragraph of Sargent's wikipedia page features a quotation calling him the "leading portrait painter of his generation." Sargent is the artist who first got me to see portrait painting as something other than static and boring. As I've probably said before, I stood in front of this painting for ... well, it was probably 15 minutes or so, but it felt like hours. I was mesmerized. I kept noticing new details. Everything about it was engrossing. I love you, Lady Agnew of Lochnaw!
- 1D: Hindu gentleman (BABU) — no idea. I had BABA in there at one point.
- 57D: Burrell of the Food Network (ANNE) — less than no idea. Isn't there a Ty Burrell who is ... someone? Oh yeah, look at that, he's the dad on Modern Family. As for ANNE Burrell ... wow, she was born on the same day (not the same date, but the same damn day) as my best friend Shaun, who is now making her second appearance in this write-up. September 21, 1969! It's an auspicious birthday, Sep. 21. It's the Earth, Wind & Fire birthday!
See you next time,
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
I wish to encore Adrian’s heart-warming and wise constructor’s notes from January of last year, which are so worth repeating:
ReplyDelete“The day I received the review proof of this puzzle was also the day my grandfather died.
“Normally I’d have a profound puzzle insight to share, but what’s on my mind today is gratitude — for the time I spent with him, but particularly for the friendship Alvin, a dear family friend, forged with him during his final years.
“Alvin, who began as his landscaper, first came by as a casual friend after grandpa’s hip replacement, continuing to come over regularly during the 11 years that grandpa outlived my grandma. Alvin’s visits often took the shape of coffee and conversation after dropping his kids off at school. They discussed things including family, life, hobbies and current events. Some days grandpa would invite Alvin for steak dinners, but other days they’d barely speak and spend the morning watching the news.
“The important thing was his presence: the conscious, routine decision to be involved and engaged, and to make the mundane life of an old man meaningful. Tonight, this morning, whenever you’re reading this, take a few minutes to say hello and check in with someone older whom you care about. Those hellos can make all the difference.”
Beautiful!!!
DeleteLovely
DeleteJohn Prine 'Hello in There'
DeleteThanks for this
DeleteOnly came here to not that I've gone my entire life not knowing what the colour puce was! Was fairly convinced that it was some shade of bright green... (like Rex, had Plum for that answer for a little bit)
ReplyDeleteSeemed easier than most Fridays, except the NE was tricky. SKABANDS only came to me after I decided the "horns" weren't part of an animal, but musical. "Nasty fall" was also deceptive, and NEONS was questionable (can NEON be pluralized?)
ReplyDeleteThe middle of the grid was wide open, but the long answers were very reasonable.
It must be some type of a wavelength / wheelhouse thing - this was by far the easiest time I’ve ever had with a Friday grid. I expected Rex to pan it for being too easy. Very surprised by his comments today.
ReplyDeleteTrouble spots for me included AREPA, SKA BANDS and of course BABU. We can forgive one or two BABU-like entries on a Friday, but please don’t give us a grid that is laden with that sort of junk. I much prefer the “normal” stuff, especially when it is fairly clued like PEACE DEAL, IN THE ZONE, SPACE RACE and I thought the three grid-spanners anchoring down the equator were outstanding. This one gets my vote for the best Friday of the year so far.
Hmmmm, what do you mean by “normal,” exactly? Can’t put my finger on it.
DeleteI was the same. Was my record time for a Friday at 14 minutes.
DeleteYou mean you can’t qwhite put your finger on it?
DeleteLike Rex, I found the NE and the SW to be the hardest. BEEF or meat, I went back and forth. I figured the horns in 5A were in some kind of BAND but didn’t know what. PEACEDEAL seems a little off, one normally hears PEACEaccord or PEACEtreaty.
ReplyDeleteI think BABU is what you call your grandpa in Hindu culture, so “gentleman” seems like a slightly incorrect word - although I’m sure many of our grandpas are gentlemen. Maybe I’m wrong about how BABU is used.
A little bit of colloquial disconnect today. "It wasn't my idea" sounds better than "that wasn't my idea". Conversely, "that means a lot to me" sounds better than "it means a lot to me". Those two right next to each other gave a double "not quite" feel.
ReplyDeleteAnyone who finished with YaP/a PROMISE should probably get credit for the solve. I PROMISE is clearly better, but 'a PROMISE' is defensible.
Hand up for meat PATTY before BEEF PATTY, for C/KATHY uncertainty.
I've never had an AREPA; sounds like I should.
I had "a promise / yap" looked for my mistake for 10 minutes. Had to look at Rex's solution to find it. AARGH, I think that's spelled correctly.
DeleteThis puzzle was a perfect example of why I've switched to mostly doing the SB. It was so early week easy that I never read the clues for ANNE or LEAN. After reading our host's review I had to look up where ONCD was in the puzzle because I couldn't recall it being in there. That's a third clue I didn't have to read
ReplyDeleteOur neighborhood newspaper has a cartoon feature called HOCUS-POCUS where you have to find the differences between two near identical images. I got more puzzling out of that than today's offering.
Time to start today's "less demanding " SB.
yd -0. QB 12
@puzzlehoarder 7:27 AM & Others
DeleteHere's my bi-monthly reminder to those who repeatedly complain about this puzzle being too easy ... you do have choices out there. You are purposely doing the same thing over and over hoping for a different result.
What's the "SB"
DeleteGary you complain about PPP almost every single day.
DeleteAnon 12:50pm — Spelling Bee
This solve was punctuated by moments – Perception Pings, let’s say – where you are seriously flummoxed by a clue, with your forehead wrinkled, then through crosses the answer comes, and just for a precious tiny moment, you remain baffled, and then, with an inner laugh, comes the explosive ping, when the rightness of the answer hits you.
ReplyDeleteAnd suddenly it feels like you’re at a lit party as you’re thinking “Hah! Cool! Clever!” and such. Just for a moment, though. Then you move on, leave it behind, but your mood has raised a notch.
This happened again and again today, for instance, with [Something made just for show?] for SET, [Competitions with many missions] for SPACE RACE, and [Ready for a drive, perhaps?] for ON CD.
I leave a puzzle like this awed and grateful, surging into the day ahead.
That surge today was buttressed by beauty in the box. That center stack with not only gorgeous answers but ringing with freshness, with the middle answer used only once before in a Times puzzle, sandwiched by two debut answers. Plus, the lovely longs of SODA BREAD, RAW NERVES, UMPTEENTH, and TEEN VOGUE. And the loveliest of all: EPHEMERAL.
All this goodness just from letters in a box – amazing! You hit it just right today Adrian. Thank you so much for this – this was a wow!
I also had meat instead of BEEF for a long time, so the NE really held me up. And did you know that “That isn’t my fault” is exactly the same number of letters as THAT WASNT MY IDEA? Strange but true.
ReplyDeleteElegant and nuanced themeless. Loved the tri-stack spanners and nearly the entire grid. Agree that BIG PHARMA is ugly - but others like RAW NERVE, SPACE RACE , SODA BREAD and I PROMISE more than make up for it.
ReplyDeleteWe get both EMPANADA and AREPA - dinner is served. Next time you’re in Queens Rex try Cachapas y Mas in Ridgewood - my favorite AREPA pabellón in the city.
Highly enjoyable Friday morning solve.
Look at MISS Ohio
I agree with Lewis that the clueing was unusually good and with OP that the long "marquee" answers were deceptively easy: the rest of the puzzle, particularly the SW for me, put up a satisfying fight.
ReplyDeleteEnjoyed this one! 18 minutes for me, solving alone, which is pretty good for a Friday. Enjoyed sussing out SKABANDS which took me forever. The middle section was great, and I rode RAWNERVES right into the southwest. Thank you Adrian for a fun puzzle! : )
ReplyDeleteAnother vote for easy overall, though I did get bogged down in the SW. Didn't know of AREPAs; the already mentioned Plum/PUCE; HEh instead of HEE; had RAW but didn't see NERVES for a bit.
ReplyDeleteLooking at the grid...Yards is a brewery in Philly, and it makes a few ales, so now I'm parsing 64A as YARDS ALE. Oh, had YaP instead of YIP - which meant no happy music. Took a few seconds to find that - a PROMISE was just as plausible, to me..
Had ‘a promise’ before ‘I promise’ and “it meant a lot to me” before “it means a lot to me”. But otherwise straightforward and a rewarding Friday puzzle for me.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteMedium for a Friday. No major hangups, but quite a bit of puzzling over the cluing. In other words, an enjoyable puzzle.
I loved this puzzle, once I got started—which took a long time. My first entry was agreEmEnt, later changed to PEACE pact, and much later to DEAL. My real entry was YALTA. But that stack in the center was beautiful.
ReplyDeleteDoesn’t Kia ORA have a sister, Rita?
Getting STANK required a 5-minute linguistic discussion with my wife; I always think it’s STuNK.
The Battleship clue made me a little sad—in my day we just drew a couple grids on paper, as we were walking a mile to school through the snow.
Ok, I’ll be back in a few hours.
@jberg
From The Grinch song: "the 3 words in the English language that best describe you are stink, stank, stunk".
DeleteOnce upon a time, STANK was the past tense (the garage stank), while STUNK was the past participle (the garage has stunk since we moved in). But over time, STUNK has expanded its role and now is used sometimes used for the past tense. But it still sounds odd to my ears. Now I think I'll go clean out the garage.
DeleteIt didn’t really whoosh for me, but I plodded my way mostly through, finally looking up pupusa and the Kiwi greeting to finish the SW. Even then, I still had a Natick at 27A/28D; no idea who Keir Starmer is and never played Battleship in my life. No hard feelings though and I enjoyed it overall. Thanks Adrian and BTW, your kitty is precious.
ReplyDeleteLoved the llama clue. I imagine a SPIT in the eye would be quite effective in deterring romance for many species. I’ve heard it said that once she has mated, a female dragonfly will fake her own death to avoid any more amorous males. It’s like she has eggs to lay and things to do and needs to get on with her life. Smart girls.
Those SKI bands love their HAMBURGER
ReplyDeleteGreat Friday puzzle! As a lifelong Astros fan, fun to know Rex hangs with the radio voice of the team. Go Astros!
ReplyDeleteI found this pretty easy for a Friday, with the exception of the SW corner where ON CD as the answer to "ready for a drive" really threw me. So misleading -- and not in a good way. Let me ask: the music was on an LP or on an IPod and you transferred it to a CD so that it would now be "ready" to pop into your car's CD player? You get your songs "ready for a drive". do you? I quite disliked this clue.
ReplyDeleteBut the names were minimal, I'm happy to say, and I actually knew KATHY and IRENE. And DIANA, too, but not in that context. I know her as the Goddess of the Hunt but not as the Goddess of Childbirth. How interesting. Take note, JD Vance: We women don't have to abandon our careers to stay home and have babies and cater to our men; we can have it all. Remember -- hunting was a major career at one time in history. So DIANA really did it all!
Nice clues for BUGLE; ALIAS; DANCE and ANT. Remind me never to have a piece of SODA BREAD (36D) as long as I live.
Completely concur with your comments about ON CD. I quite enjoyed the rest of the puzzle though.
DeleteNancy, the “drive” is what you pop the CD into, whether it is on a table in your house or built into your car.
DeleteYou put a CD in your computer’s CD drive.
DeleteI think the CD clue was referring to having to put a CD into a CD drive on a computer
DeleteNice Friday solve 👍
ReplyDeletePut in Burger bun for the slider clue early on and that really held me up. Great grid otherwise!
ReplyDeleteUn vendedor de computadoras me vendió un cacharro roto. Bienvenido a Nuevo México.
ReplyDelete@Gill I. I haven't had a green chile cheeseburger yet, despite "Lucky Boy" (as seen in Breaking Bad) being theee blocks from our rental house. But I might have had a plate of carne adovada with red chile. This is a complicated place for one eschewing dead mammal consumption.
Add this puzzle to the pile of many themeless puzzles I find rather dull. I like UMPTEENTH and SPACE RACE, but otherwise it's just a fill in the blank puzzle. Usual misdirects were clever but transparent. [Peke's squeak] was my favorite.
😫 BIG PHARMA, CITI, and BEEF PATTY are synonyms and shouldn't be in any puzzle.
AERIE is my 8th favorite word.
The three-word German crossword dictionary comes through again. ACH.
Propers: 4
Places: 1
Products: 4
Partials: 6
Foreignisms: 6
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 21 of 70 (30%)
Funnyisms: 3 😐
Tee-Hee: SPIT
Uniclues:
1 Those meeting for mid-morning music time in the children's section of Jamaican libraries.
2 What brings the lady elk to the yard.
3 Home security in New Mexico.
4 The lord.
5 What Adam and Eve held before moving.
6 "Seems like the prices are high."
7 Win a rassling match with the beauty queen representing notable cinema chain.
1 BABY SKA BANDS
2 BUGLE IN THE ZONE
3 UMPTEENTH FENCE
4 EPHEMERAL ARMOR
5 EDEN YARD SALE (~)
6 BIG PHARMA SMEAR
7 PIN MISS REGAL
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Your drunken boyfriend at a football game. AROAR ARM WAD.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
What, the Tee-Hee tally doesn't give even partial credit to HEE?
Delete@Jeremy 1:56 PM
DeleteAck! I can't believe I missed it. YOU get full credit for the HEE Tee-Hee.
Very enjoyable Friday solve and I was in the mood today for a little bit breezier experience. A ton of good fill and some great deceptive clueing (I’m looking at you “nasty fall”)
ReplyDeleteI guess I’m not that offended by BIGPHARMA any more than I’m offended by big insurance, big steel, or big automotive. Rex might be thinking a bit too much about Purdue Pharma and the Sacklers and THAT is a corporation now in bankruptcy that built its entire brand around painkillers AND had evil, greedy majority shareholders (Sacklers) leading them. I would like to think that we can all be happy for many things today that BIGPHARMA has produced which have been life-altering such as Humulog (Lilly), and the CoVid vaccines that medical scientists scrambled like hell to devise for ALL of us. So thank you Pfizer and Moderna…BUT we are watching you anyway just in case…
Well, once again the new platform defaulted me to “Anonymous” and I didn’t notice…
DeleteIf an AIRACE is someone who's really good at aerial combat, what do you call someone who's really good at hitting the spacer bar on a typewriter? ....... SPACERACE.
ReplyDeleteWhat's the difference between someone who profits from hogs and someone who hogs profits? One's a pig farmer, the other is BIGPHARMA.
It almost seems like YALTA could have been cross-referenced to PEACEDEAL.
I agree that it wasn't a whoosh-filled Friday, but there was a lot of good cluing. Thanks, Adrian Johnson.
Living far far away from the Americas l thought PUPUSA and AREPA were some kind of larval insects. Live and learn.
ReplyDeleteMy first AREPA was at the AREPERA restaurant in the Plateau neighborhood of Montreal, and was a revelation! Perhaps not as auspicious as Rex's debut...
ReplyDeleteThis looked like one I really wouldn't finish on first pass, but so many AHAs piled up to get the happy music.
I'm surprised rex found this one hard; I set my Friday record with 6 min 27 sec
ReplyDeleteThis one was on my wavelength the entire time, starting with SKABANDS, which for some reason just appeared to me. The central stack is very solid, albeit not "wow"-inducing. Eight 9's and four 8s -- all excellent.
ReplyDeleteThe SBA-PMS-PAC row isn't pretty, but there's very little junk among the connective tissue. Perhaps too many proper names in the SE, but no big DEAL.
Food, glorious food: EMPANADA, AREPA, BEEFPATTY, SODABREAD. And hey, why not BUGLEs and BABY spinach? None of which is cooked on a SPIT.
Replacing STuNK with STANK had me immediately humming the Grinch song.
I knew BIGPHARMA and CITI would trigger some hilarious reactions from @Rex and others, and I have not been disappointed.
Good stuff all around.
Stuck in the SW for a whilie partly due to plum. Finally Googled puposa (no idea)& once arepa went in saw space race, plum became puce & Bob's your uncle.
ReplyDeleteLoved it otherwise, especially the 3 span stack in the center
Very nice puzzle. I liked it much more than did Rex. I especially liked the food.
ReplyDeleteOnly one overwrite for me. TOE before EAR. But that was fixed after chomping on an EMPANADA.
I held off on filling in MEAT. Then I was IN THE ZONE, and BEEF appeared in my slider.
Well, I did some whooshing hither and yon but along the way I had to stop and gather some wits.....The threes got me to pause for way too long. I'm staring at YIP SET PAC. Then I get to the longest clue in the history of puzzledom for the mere mighty ANT. I guess they deserve to be quoted in Proverbs....Move along.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed the puzzle today. It might've been one of my fastest Friday even though I got up several times to take a breath and sip my Peet's. The three longies in the center were quite gettable. PORTRAIT ARTIST opened up the flood gates for my downs. Nothing really STANK at all. I was on a BEEF PATTY roll.
EMPANADAS....You opened up the other floodgates. I make empanadas all the time. I have some in the fridge right now. I stuff them with carnitas and black beans. THEN you gave me an AREPA! @Kitshef YOU MUST TRY ONE! I also like them stuffed with pork carnitas and black beans and avocado and and and...the list goes on. Both are delicious; the difference is only in the bread.
So I finished and smiled. You start me with a BABY and end me with EDEN, I become happy. And wow, I spelled EPHEMERAL right....That was my sweet BABU.
Easy. Unlike @Rex this was a pretty whooshy solve for me.
ReplyDeleteMe too for meat before BEEF and BABU, SODA BREAD, and ANT were it for WOEs.
Smooth and sparkly, liked it.
Feisty FriPuz rodeo. More bucks, for yer bronc.
ReplyDeletestaff weeject pick: ACH. Actually, it sorta picked m&e, for my very first entry into the puz today. Always thankful, for an openin gimme.
other faves: BEEFPATTY [also a near-gimme]. THATWASNTMYIDEA/IPROMISE. EPHEMERAL. UMPTEENTH. SET clue. PAS [MAS' main squeeze].
Thanx, Mr. Johnson dude.
Masked & Anonymo3Us
**gruntz**
p.s. Comment above is mine, even tho the new system often confuses m&e. IPROMISE.
DeleteM&Also
I love that portrait of Lady Agnew of Lochnaw! She has the expression of someone who knows an embarrassing secret about you but is choosing not to reveal it... for now.
ReplyDeleteThis was a good puzzle, but just enough out of my wheelhouse that it put up some real resistance. As always, the Unknown Names were annoying: KATHY AREPA IRENE ANNE. And even the Known Names had clues that didn't help at all: SAAB and CITI.
ReplyDeleteHands up for PORTRAIT PAINTER with no room for the S. And the final letter I entered quite reluctantly was the A at PAS / AREPA. I thought "Faux finish" just absolutely had to be "SILENT X". Oh!... faux pas (literally "must not").
The clue "Hyperbolic ordinal" had me baffled. I took a lot of math classes, so I read both words literally: a curved index number. What the?...
Each year my sister goes to a lot of trouble to make a custom birthday card for me. Last year the back of it had this witty note: "Thank you for teaching me the meaning of 'plethora'. It means a lot!"
Okanaganer
DeleteDon’t want to be picky but faux pas means false step. (the word false is borrowed from an older French spelling and pas also means step.)
Learn something every day! ("Faut pas" with a "t" means "must not"!)
DeleteWell, Okanaganer, you may have had a tough time in French class but at least you had the good sense to choose a witty sister.
DeleteI just came to say that Hola AREPA is phenomenal and living near Minneapolis that was an easy fill.
ReplyDeleteI was undone by IT MEANt A LOT TO ME, because the clue, "Much appreciated," had a past tense vibe. So I went with hItS instead of MISS, leaving me with PhS instead of PMS.
ReplyDeleteJust stupidly couldn't think of any alternative to MEANt.
Came here to celebrate SKABANDS with other solvers and figured I'd share a video of the Aquabats. I can't promise that it's good but it is definitely silly.
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/-goLUhTBtrw?si=DasKefWnmVCWFYu3
Just back from a couple of nights on the Maine coast which counted as our anniversary celebration. (Pro tip--if you can, wait until after Labor Day for your Maine stay--lodging decreased by about half, traffic is normal, restaurants are busy but not packed. Plus we hit two glorious beach days. Downside-awful wifi connection in our motel and had to wait to get back to do today's xword, so did yesterday's too.) Enough digression. I thought today's was fun, very whooshy here. Slight hesitation at EPHEMERAL --a great word, but I had ___MERAL and wanted CHIMERAL, which didn't fit,
ReplyDeleteAlways like seeing YARDSALE which around here is applied to a skier who wipes out and loses a hat, gloves, poles, and any other loose items. Also the skis come off but with ski brakes these days they don't go anywhere.
As for yesterday, pretty easy, but I failed to grok "Waves" ATTHE CAMERA. Those were waves? OK. Fun puzzle anyway.
Thanks for a neat Friday, AJ. Attained Just enough speed to achieve a max zip-through, and thanks for all the fun.
Good advice about Labor (Labour up here) Day. My late friend Glenn and I would schedule our annual SW Alberta Crowsnest River fishing trip for about three days post Labour Day. All the tourists would be gone. All the kids would have packed up their inappropriate fishing hardware and headed back to school. The fish would be rested, i.e., over their trauma and we could present them with some artfully tied flies. Best of all, we could find a camping spot somewhere near the river.
DeleteAh, Babu. I’m reminded of the classic Seinfeld episode about the new Pakistani restaurant. Babu was the owner, a turbaned fellow who thought Jerry was a “very good man” for giving advice on how to increase business, and then a “very bad man” after the advice led to the restaurant’s failure.
ReplyDeleteWould anyone please explain to me how Faux finish = PAS?
ReplyDeleteA faux pas is a a significant or embarrassing error or mistake (Merriam-Webster)
DeleteMy llamas don’t spit at people. They sometimes spit at each other but never in my admittedly new career as a farmer has any llama targeted any human on this farm. Having said that, my wife once got between Lily and Nutmeg when they were quarrelling and she paid the price. Collateral damage is, I think, the term.
ReplyDeleteJohn Singer Sargent. If there is a Sargent exhibition within a 2 day drive of me, I’m there. The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit may be the best “family portrait” ever. And all those more standard style portraits of society women … geez, look at the way that fabric flows. I’m a painter but not of the portrait kind and I am gobsmacked whenever I find myself in the presence of one his works. Spent 2 whole days in the Seattle Art Museum at least ten years ago (probably more). Went in early, ate lunch in the gallery’s cafe (decent food) and toured the show again in the afternoon. Fortunately, my wife is also a fan but after a day and a half I found her in said cafe reading her book with a glass of chardonnay.
I’ve never been to Boston but if I do happen to find myself there I’ll carve out a little time to visit Fenway and a lot of time for the Museum of Fine Arts’ collection of Sargents.
Oh, the puzzle. Really good. I liked almost everything about it, especially the stack in the middle. And SKABANDS. And UMPTEENTH. More from Adrian Johnson would be welcome.
Still don’t get PAC at 30A. Emily’s List?
A Faux Pas is a social mistake. Literally false step in French.
ReplyDeleteIn French, "PAS" means "NOT" and appears at the end of a phrase.
ReplyDeletePAC means Political Action Committee
ReplyDeleteThanks Bob Mills for responding to my query. I live in Canada where politics are a bit different but I did recognize PAC as some sort of political committee. I guess I should have been more concise with my question: Who the hell is Emily and why does she have a list?
DeleteEMILY = early money is like yeast it makes the dough rise
DeleteEMILY = early money is like yeast it makes the dough rise
DeleteLost to Yap/A promise vs. Yip/I promise. Not killing myself for *that*.
ReplyDeleteGreat puzzle.
ReplyDeleteDidn’t find it that easy. Medium challenging for me.
Can see nothing wrong with the expressions in the middle (or peace deal for that matter)
Funny how people vary.
Slightly annoyed by yip versus yap.
Never had an arepa and have no idea what it is but it’s been in the puzzle a lot lately so no problem.
Diana was an immediate guess. Roman goddess. and it fit. Not knowing the virgin aspect ( knew about the hunt aspect) was a help in this case. Z used to point out that sometimes ignorance is bliss doing crosswords
Big pharma is descriptive They are both destructive and helpful to the US.
The answer didn’t bother me.
"Medium"?!? Huh? One of the hardest puzzles I can remember. A good half-dozen of the clue-answer pairs had absolutely no significance for me.
ReplyDeleteCan someone explain to me "SLEET"? How does "Nasty fall?" indicate sleet as the answer, especially in a pun context?
ReplyDeleteI know sleet *causes* a nasty fall, but sleet *itself* isn't a nasty fall.
Sleet falls and is a nasty weather condition.
DeleteIt’s a nasty thing falling from the sky. The question mark indicates the clue is supposed to be taken literally, even punnily. What is a literal nasty fall? SLEET.
DeleteSleet falls from the sky and it’s nasty/icy
DeleteI guess I'm the only one that confidently wrote in NTHDEGREE for "Hyperbolic ordinal"... until I lost my confidence!
ReplyDeleteI was SURE it was NTHDEGREE. so proud of myself for getting that so quickly with no crosses…then I couldn’t get any crosses…
DeleteNTHDEGREE was my first answer in the puzzle
DeleteSeinfeld fans will recognize Babu, a local restaurant owner whom Jerry convinced to open a Pakistani restaurant which failed. Jerry also inadvertently got Babu deported and Babu said, “You’re a very bad man, a very bad man.”
ReplyDeleteNo, no non! The word “pas” can be a negative (ne…pas) but here it means the word step, especially dance step. Like “Pas de deux”, which is a kind of ballet duet. (And I haven’t learned French for ….45 years🤷🏻♂️ )
ReplyDeleteI whizzed right through this one.
ReplyDeleteStill too much junk: ACH, YIP, SBA, PMS, PAC, PAS, ORA, HEE, BABU, ALUM, TMEN, ONCD etc. etc. Too many non-words clutter the grid.
ReplyDeleteEND ZONE DANCE?
ReplyDeleteIT WASN’TMYIDEA
TO PROMISE A DEAL TO THAT rogue,
but ITMEANSALOTTOME
TO get MY PORTRAIT IN TEEN VOGUE.
--- MISS PATSY ANNE
From Thursday:
ODE TO ENMITY
YOU (CURLED)UPWITHABOOK, ISN’T IT an OLD PLOY?
That ‘WHYAMIHERE’ look, YOUr EYES said, “DOWNBOY.”
--- ROD READE