Freshly pressed grapes before fermentation / SAT 10-26-24 / Vessel that hasn't crossed the Canadian border since 1993 / The so-called "Rocket City" of the South / Oslo Accords signatory, for short / Name on the playbill for the 1936 Salzburg Festival / When doubled, a pop nickname / Fish whose egg casings are called "mermaid's purses" / Medical breakthrough of 1954 that yielded a Nobel Prize

Saturday, October 26, 2024

Constructor: Peter A. Collins

Relative difficulty: Easy


THEME: none 

Word of the Day: MUST (10A: Freshly pressed grapes before fermentation) —
Must
 (from the Latin vinum mustumlit.'young wine') is freshly crushed fruit juice (usually grape juice) that contains the skins, seeds, and stems of the fruit. The solid portion of the must is called pomace and typically makes up 7–23% of the total weight of the must. Making must is the first step in winemaking. Because of its high glucose content, typically between 10 and 15%, must is also used as a sweetener in a variety of cuisines. Unlike commercially sold grape juice, which is filtered and pasteurized, must is thick with particulate matter, opaque, and comes in various shades of brown and purple. (wikipedia)
• • •

[18A: Meaning of a finger wag]
(graphic: PBS News)

The more I look this puzzle over, the easier it looks. All the difficulty for me today came because I got suckered into starting the puzzle from below. Shoulda just stuck to the routine: NW to start (if possible), and then generally top to bottom, L to R. This ensures that the answers that I get tend to make up the *front* ends of other answers, especially longer answers. Much easier, for instance, to get VOCAL CORD from VOC- than to get RAVISHING from -ING. But today, as I say, I got drawn into the SE by my own hubris. First answer into the grid was an out-and-out gimme ... and a cross-reference:

[5D: With 43-Down, fictional coach of AFC Richmond]

Now, there's no reason I should've felt the need to check the crosses on LASSO because LASSO was indisputably correct. But some solver instinct made me check the crosses and then *stay* down in the SW—possibly because there were simply more letters in place down there, and I generally build off of the place where I have the most information to go on. Sigh. Should've stuck to the plan! Should've trusted the process! But no, I start working this thing bassackwards, which accounts for almost all the difficulty that I experienced today. I'm never making the LOUISVILLE-for-HUNTSVILLE error (28D: The so-called "Rocket City" of the South) if I come at this thing from the top. I'm never imagining that the -TY at the end of 22D: Something to wallow in (SELF-PITY) is a "STY." That central triple stack was fairly easy for me, but I bet it would've been even easier if I'd come at those long answers from their first letters instead of their last. When I play Quordle, I have a routine. Same first two guesses every time, and after that, if one of the answers isn't readily apparent, my first burner word is CHIMP (or CHOMP or CHUMP, depending on what vowels I might need to move). But sommmmmetimes I try to get cute and guess a different word based on some hunch I have about what one of the words *might* be, and I cannot tell you how many times that decision has bitten me in the ass. "GAWKY!? What was I thinking!?," I mutter as I enter the final correct answer on my ninth (and final) guess. Anyway, I do things a certain way for a reason—because it's effective. Luckily, today, my getting cute didn't cost me much because the puzzle is so easy overall. Lesson learned (and, undoubtedly, soon forgotten).


The triple stack is mostly solid, but it's also the only thing the puzzle has going for it. There are other longer answers, obviously, but they’re largely ho-hum, and then there's all this short stuff—what seemed like an awful lot of short stuff for a Saturday. Alllll the corners, all the nooks and crannies on the edges of the grid, are choked with 3s 4s and 5s. This is probably what made the puzzle feel so easy (lots of little opportunities for traction), but also what made it feel a little lackluster. As for that stack—my main issue with it is that the phrase is "DON'T WAIT UP!" That's what you'd say. The "FOR US" feels totally tacked on (even if it makes a perfectly reasonable complete phrase). The "FOR US" takes a lot of the pop out of the colloquial energy of the phrase. De-zings the expression. Also, I like ORGAN TRANSPLANT as an answer, but I don't like its clue very much (34A: Medical breakthrough of 1954 that yielded a Nobel Prize), mainly because it's so specific that I couldn't help but wonder "Which organ?" (It’s a kidney). Really wanted an actual organ there, making ORGAN a weird sort of letdown. If I hadn't had the "O" from "DO I!" (29D: Emphatic agreement)—which I'd gotten earlier from IDENTITY THIEVES—I might have guessed HEART, even though I was pretty sure the first HEART TRANSPLANT was many years later (actually, only a little over a decade later: 1967). IDENTITY THIEVES is the real winner of the triple stack today—a nice answer with a clever clue (35A: Masters of bad impersonation?). But (with slight side-eye at FOR US), the stack is totally acceptable, and—more impressively—its crosses are all admirably clean (you tend to get a lot of compromised fill in the answers holding stacks together).


The only time I got stuck, like ... stuck stuck ... was here, trying to get into the SW corner to finish up the puzzle:


I would've called a "spade" a GARDEN TOOL. Something about the phrase LAWN TOOL just wasn't clicking at all. Just getting that answer to LAWNT- took some doing, as "Spade" has so many meanings (a card suit, a famous detective, etc.). LAWNT- looked so weird to me that I genuinely wondered if I had an error. But no. How 'bout the other Down that could've led me into the SW? (27D: Vessel that hasn't crossed the Canadian border since 1993). In a word: NOPE. Couldn't make sense of it. That clue was bonkers for several reasons: first, the ambiguity of the word "vessel"; second, the oddness of the word "crossed" (trophies don't have mobility or agency); and third, the unclear implications of "1993," which had me wondering whether the clue wasn't dealing with some obscure transportation provision in NAFTA (turns out that NAFTA was signed in 1992 and took effect in 1994, so my historical memory there was somehow both perfect and wrong). Now, when I say I was "stuck" here at LAWNT- and STAN-, it's not a real stuck. It's a stubborn stuck. It's an "I should be able to get this without looking at any other clues" stuck. Because eventually I got from --OS to LOOS (36A: Pub fixtures), and there was LAWN TOOL, and there was STANLEY ... and there was STANLEY CUP. D'oh! "Vessel"! I get it now. Also, if I'd just bothered to dip into the SW corner and see what was there, I woulda gotten both MERYL and GRETA instantly, so ... in reality, I was only "stuck" because I chose to be. Because I refused to move on (for a bit). I was never properly stuck.


Puzzle notes:
  • 1A: Hotel room staple (TV SET) — tough one to parse right out of the gate. Its symmetrical counterpart—also hard to parse. Sincerely thought 55A: Quite the party (BIG DO) might be a BASHO. A BASH-O. As in, "That was some swingin' BASHO!," opined the hepcat.
  • 1D: Name on the playbill for the 1936 Salzburg Festival (TRAPP) — I'm guessing this is some Sound of Music s**t but "1936 Salzburg Festival" is utterly meaningless to me (yes, here we go: "In 1936, the festival featured a performance by the Trapp Family Singers, whose story was later depicted in the musical The Sound of Music (featuring a scene of the Trapp Family singing at the Felsenreitschule, but inaccurately set in 1938)" (wikipedia). I saw "1936" and "playbill" and five letters and thought GRETA (as in Garbo), making GRETA one of the unlikeliest malapops of my solving career) (a "malapop" is an answer that turns out to be wrong ... only to appear as a correct answer elsewhere in the grid) (see, today, GRETA Van Susteren of TV news).
  • 30D: When doubled, a pop nickname (TAY) — your favorite ubiquitous pop star, TAY-TAY, aka Taylor Swift. One of the weirdest things about TAY, as a crossword answer, is its mysterious 11-year disappearance. The TAY is a Scottish river, and it appeared in Farrar, Weng, and Maleska puzzles with reasonable regularity, but once Shortz took over, it just ... vanished. Then suddenly, eleven years later, in 2004, it came back online, and has since appeared eighteen (18) times as the Scottish river; the first appearance of this more current pop star clue was just this year (back in June), so the TAY-TAY frame of reference is solely a Fagliano Era phenomenon. 
  • 22A: Fish whose egg casings are called "mermaid's purses" (SKATE) — OK, you got me. I'm curious enough to want to see what these things look like.... whoa. Cool.

In case you didn't know, a SKATE is a kind of ray. Here's a picture of one terrorizing some poor man (from the Macclesfield Psalter (14c. England)):

[LOL the Latin text: propterea non timebimus dum turbabitur terra ("therefore we will not fear, though the earth be troubled")]

Have a monster SKATE-free day. Early voting starts today in NY, so that's what I'll be up to today (in addition to the usual Saturday lazing). See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorldld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

79 comments:

Bob Mills 6:07 AM  

I agree it was easy. Finished it in 39 minutes without cheating. The long answers were reasonably clued, so DONTWITUPFORUS and the others were very doable. The NW was a little tricky, especially the clue for ACNED.

Dave in Ancaster 6:15 AM  
This comment has been removed by the author.
Conrad 6:16 AM  


I had trouble in the NW, but the rest was Easy for a Saturday. A big part of my NW difficulty was that I somehow missed 4D. Meaning, I never read the clue. That would have made it a lot easier.

Overwrites:
bible before TV SET at 1A (another reason why the NW was difficult for me)
brick before ADOBE at 7D
At 20A, I hung out with my gAng before my PALS
TAe before TAY at 30D
43D: rdS before STS
RAja before RANI at 46D

WOEs:
6A: Big MAMA Thornton (I was actually thinking pApA x pOut for 6Ax8D)
52A: Laura INNES

Anonymous 6:21 AM  

Please recognize Joseph E. Murray MD as the lead surgeon on the first Kidney transplant in 1954. He was awarded the Nobel Prize many years later in 1990. Over 1 Million patients have benefited from his work, and he essentially saved their lives. I had the priviledge of studying with him(self brag, sorry), in the 1970's, while he was concentrating on Craniofacial reconstruction...uplifting the lives of so many genetically and traumatically deformed patients. A true medical pioneer and humble man.

Dave in Ancaster 6:35 AM  

The Stanley Cup spends most of its time in Toronto. Wikipedia: The Hockey Hall of Fame (French: Temple de la renommée du hockey) is a museum and hall of fame located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Dedicated to the history of ice hockey, it holds exhibits about players, teams, National Hockey League (NHL) records, memorabilia and NHL trophies, *including the Stanley Cup*.

Anonymous 6:37 AM  

First had bible for the hotel room staple, which made me really really want Brecht for 1D, but that wouldn’t fit. Then I too fell into the Garbo trap(p) for the Salzburg festival thing and was so proud and confident to write in guest for 1A (I mean, you do find guests in pretty much every hotel room ever). The start of this thing was rough! But TED LASSO, ever the optimist, gave me the foothold I needed to set things right. Believe!

Anonymous 6:43 AM  

The MUST-SANTE cross got me. MUTT-TANTE? Nah... :)

Anonymous 6:46 AM  

Had UMISS instead of UMASS. 1Sec made as much sense as ASEC

Adam 6:57 AM  

I also did bible before TV SET and I had ShArk before SKATE, and as the A crossed it took me a while to see the mistake. Overall played easy-medium for me, and I enjoyed it.

dash riprock 6:59 AM  

ELHIed** at the NOSE x AON intersection (54a x 48d).

On encountering, 54a, (to) [Slim winning margin], Rip thought, sly misdirection, but literal and so not meriting the interrogative, (to) lOSE -- you lose, you slim your winning margin. And AOl, 48d, recognizable.

And then after the gong, chewing the cud.. "would AOL still have its name on a building?" and ran the letters in cell 54. Good, 2 min from fail to suss the error.

But then Rip was pizzed.. lOSE, an eminently sound answer, Riprock believes even better, more Saturday-esque than NOSE, so the across, ambiguous at the least. While the down, which seemed to take a widely recognized brand name, was instead a building which no one outside of the ORD area will recognize. (LA apparently has one too, don't know that one either.)

And then Rip ruminated.. PAC, Chicagoan? AON investor? Humbug!

And finally, Rip reads nothing but ultimate perfection from The Rex, Lewis and co. Do these people evah drop in the last letter and get the gong? Nevah seen it. Humbug!

Right, well, I liked this game, a lot. Most all parts resonated. Easier than y'day, fo shizzle.

Longs, elegant. Names (though a couple required most letters), recognizable, drew memories. Dross, none.

Rip rocks the first evah Dash Puzzle Ranking of the Week:

1. Tues (by a phat margin, not even close, routed the others), 2. Thurs, 3. Saturday, 4. Sunday, 5. Mon/Wednes (tied), 6. Friday


** FOOTNOTE: ELHIed, cross-reamed. Sounds like shanghaied..

Rip sees and acknowledges the Mass town-come-synecdoche and its illustrious place in The Crossworld, but after a near 6-hr Wed slog over course of a wk during Rip's initiation, the thing is inseparable from the pit. Never seen Natick, doesn't resonate.

Andy Freude 7:33 AM  

Same ELHI as Dash. Grr.

For a moment had only the -ET of TVSET and wondered, do most hotel rooms have bidETs? I’ve been staying in the wrong hotels.

Anonymous 7:34 AM  

Enjoyable solve, easy medium for me with a little resistance in several areas up north
Got DONTWAITUP quickly, but stumbled over the other longs. RAVISHING led to THIEVES, and worked backwards into TRANSPLANT.

I thought the fill was great in the top and middle, but "went south" at the bottom- slightly disappointed with the ease of the SW/S/SE mini grids

But overall decent Saturday morning with my dark roast. Good weather -- yard work awaits

SouthsideJohnny 7:46 AM  

An A for effort on the clue for STANLEY CUP - it would have been all-star level quality if it weren’t for the fact that it’s just not true (in the literal sense).

I started out at a disadvantage because I misplaced my playbill from the 1936 Salzburg Festival and my memory isn’t what it used to be. On a positive note, I actually got the MERYL and GRETA PPP cross (the same cannot be said for Ms. INNES and Mr. LASSO).

I had fun with the three grid spanners in the center and of course MINI SKIRTS are always a welcome addition to the BIG DO.

It’s been about three years now (I know they haven’t dropped season 3 yet, but I think they skipped a year due to the pandemic) and the lovely and talented Ayo Edebiri has yet to make her NYT debut. That’s a way better choice to sneak in some weird looking stuff than TAY TAY in my opinion.

Anonymous 7:50 AM  

LOOS as pub fixtures is just ridiculous, as if they aren't in every other building in the UK. Terrible clue. And who talks about their SUN LOUNGE? Is that really a thing?

Lewis 7:51 AM  

Peter Collins has an active brain, having published more than 10 puzzles a year, over 19 years, in the major venues, including 120 in the Times. After scanning his Times puzzles on Xword Info, it looks to me like this puzzle contains his first triple grid-spanning stack, so he continues to push his envelope as well.

That triple stack shimmers with freshness, with two answers – DON’T WAIT UP FOR US and IDENTITY THIEVES – that have never appeared in any of the major venues, while ORGAN TRANSPLANT has appeared in them only three times. And, by the way, that triple stack is crossed by twelve – twelve! – long answers (eight letters or more).

Wow!

I was absolutely misdirected by [One of a singing duo], searching for a CAPTAIN or TENNILLE type answer. I love being absolutely misdirected.

I liked seeing TREED and DON’T WAIT UP FOR US among the answers, as it reminded me of a neighbor’s cat who often gets stuck high up in trees, which freaked these neighbors out until they finally learned that it eventually finds its way down.

Peter, you gave me enough pushback to satisfy my brains workout ethic while providing enough yield to temper frustration. A most lovely solving experience, for which I’m most grateful. Thank you!

Lewis 7:53 AM  

My favorite ORGAN TRANSPLANT clue, from a 2003 Los Angeles Times puzzle, by Harvey Estes:

[Change of heart, say?].

kitshef 7:58 AM  

Rex makes a good point that sometimes a puzzles difficulty is affected by how you solve it. My entry was at SKATE, and my meandering through the puzzle meant the NW was the last to fall. And the clues for 4D and 5D, two of the easiest in the puzzle, were the last two clues I read.

Of course, putting in Joan vanArK early on pretty much blocked me from getting into that corner earlier, and that's on me.

Son Volt 8:02 AM  

More Fridayish with the trivia and a slew of gimmes but clean and well clued. The triple stack is pleasant - easy to parse and fun. Really liked RAVISHING and STANLEY CUP.

Pray for me MAMA

UNENTERED looked like UNinterred at first. MINK STOLES is not great and the RANI x RHEA cross is awkward. I’ve never heard the term SUN LOUNGE but I like it especially on a mid 30s cool morning.

Enjoyable Saturday morning solve. Lester Ruff’s Stumper is a little more devious but well worth the effort today.

My first trip to the Phil zone was at Glens Falls Civic Center in ‘78 - RIP to one of the greats

Burghman 8:08 AM  

My one night stay in 1993 in tituSVILLE, adjacent to Kennedy Space Center, comes back to haunt me 31 years later :)

Uncle Verbal 8:20 AM  

Having received the Salk polio vaccine injection in first grade (1955), I tried to make that medical breakthrough a 1954 Nobel winner. Couldn't.

pabloinnh 8:24 AM  

I knew TED LASSO despite never having seen the show. Some PPP is unescapable--see also TAY TAY. The E from ETES and the T from Ted implanted BIDET (hi @Andy Freude), which refused to leave and made the NW impossible until I remembered the PLO which gave me the other P (had been thinking PALS) and there was the TVSET and the VOCALCORDS. Phew.

Today's unknown females are Ms. IVEY, Ms. CUSACK and Ms. INNES, which has me wondering if Ms. has a plural.

My do I need new reading glasses episode of the day was reading "not yet explored, as a tomb" as "not yet exploded, as a bomb". It took filling in all of UNENETERD to make me double check the clue. On the plus side, I did know UMASS and the factoid about the STANLEYCUP instantly, so there's that.

Nice enough Saturdecito, PAC. I Put A Considerable Burden on myself with misreading and stubbornness , but thanks for a nice helping of fun.

Dr.A 8:28 AM  

I like Organ Transplant as the answer because the Prize was given for the first time any organ was transplanted. They don’t give it every time someone works out a new organ to transplant. It’s a groundbreaking discovery and a whole new type of life saving procedure~ anyhoo I thought this was harder than everyone else because I did not know many of the proper nouns. I knew it was NOT hard but I just could not break in too many spots. I also thought GRETA until I found GRETA elsewhere. But TED LASSO was my only sure bet.

Anonymous 8:36 AM  

It's true that the northern and southern borders of the grid are very segmented, but a whopping 12 out of 15 Downs crossing the central stack are 8 letters or longer. That must've been so hard to pull off. Not too much overly ugly glue besides ACNED, AON, and the partial ASEC. AON is only there because AOL would dupe LOSE. Speaking of which, you could argue that VOCAL CORD/VOCATION is kind of a dupe.

We haven't seen INNES since that Rich Norris Friday puzzle. And once again, that I could be replaced with A and still work with the cross. In the other puzzle it was INNES x INDY, and INNES also crossed CANTAB causing trouble for a lot of people, myself included. I knew RANI, but I can see some solvers getting frustrated at INNES x RANI.

Side note: According to https://7x11x13.xyz/crossword/ , that Rich Norris themeless is the second most hated puzzle among the r/crossword community (the data is tracked starting from November 27th 2020). First place goes to that "reimagined" Robert Frost abomination.

Anonymous 8:46 AM  

The Stanley Cup is given to all members of the winning team for a few days each. Many of them bring it to their hometowns (or current places of residence). Given the preponderance of Canadians in the NHL, it most definitely crosses the border into Canada many times each year. (And as one commenter said above, the rest of the time it’s in Toronto.)

Dorkito Supremo 8:49 AM  

The coolest thing about the Stanley Cup is that the players from the winning team take turns with it, taking it home, etc. It's traveled all over the place and crossed the Canadian border many times since 1993. I resisted that answer because the clue was so wrong on a literal level. Eventually it was undeniable, so no biggie.

Sutsy 9:09 AM  

RHEA and RANI a Natick for me.

Nancy 9:17 AM  

Pretty easy -- in fact, much easier than yesterday's -- but with some gorgeous clues. I thought that VOCAL CORD, RAPSHEET, STANLEY CUP and IDENTITY THIEVES were quite wonderful.

The very simple TV SET baffled me for a while, as I saw ???ET and wondered if a bidET was a "hotel staple"? Only in Europe, I told myself. duvET? Such a simple answer hiding in plain sight.

You could have knocked me over with a feather when I learned that the very great "Dr. J" had played for UMASS? Is UMASS a great basketball powerhouse? I guess it MUST have been when Dr. J was there.

You also could have knocked me over with a feather with that completely unknown-to-me MUST/wine clue.

No suffering today, but a lively and interesting solve nonetheless.

Anonymous 9:25 AM  

If you look at the full list of Stanley Cup winners over the years, it appears that no Canadian team has won it since 1993. Unless my check missed one, that’s a clever misdirection on two counts: one using the “cup” as metaphor, the other a literal reference to the championship not traveling back north to Canada in over 30 years. Freakonomics, indeed!

burtonkd 9:34 AM  

I was thinking that was an unnecessary troll clue. Canadians are great at hockey, just not as good as being really big and throwing more money at great players.

burtonkd 9:45 AM  

I got the TR of TRAPP, and was afraid it was some sort of TRump clue - I hate how he infects the brain. The Salzburg Festival is mostly a European Classical Music and Opera event, so Greta Garbo would be unlikely - although I see there is a drama element.

What a great clue for SKATE. I’ve seen those forever and never knew what they were; thanks, RP for putting up the pic.

kitshef 9:45 AM  

Shame it only goes back to 2020 as the worst puzzles ever were in the mid-2010s. That Frost puzzle was terrible, though. The Rich Norris puzzle was hard, but perfectly pleasant, I thought.

Anonymous 9:50 AM  

@jberg here. Gotta run, but ACNED? LAWN TOOL? And SITU doesn’t mean that.

Missed opportunity: wrapping NOPE NONE LOSE NOSE into a word ladder.

I’ll be back midafternoon.

Gary Jugert 9:53 AM  

Slogorama.

MINK STOLES clued as [Delux wraps?] is straight up gross.

The humor here can't overcome the gunk. It's a typical Saturday with obscurities creating the challenge, not the wordplay.

😵‍💫 MUST, SKATE, RHEA, FAIRS.

Propers: 10 (ehem)
Places: 3
Products: 4
Partials: 3
Foreignisms: 3
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 23 of 70 (33%)

Funnyisms: 6 😅

Tee-Hee: MINISKIRTS, hoo-wah.

Uniclues:

1 ProActiv promo.
2 Axel buddy's spin.
3 Phlegm.
4 Long legged trade show.
5 Why I'm sleeping in the alley.
6 "I'm smarter than they are."

1 ACNED? NOPE, NONE.
2 PALS SKATE VIBE (~)
3 VOCAL CORD RESIN
4 MINISKIRTS EXPO
5 ALE RAP SHEET
6 SELF PITY FIB

My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Demonic downsized dozer. HAUNTED TONKA.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Anonymous 10:13 AM  

Just the most old fashioned, dated, blah puzzle I’ve seen in ages. A relic of awful times past.

LenFuego 10:14 AM  

This one did not seem easy on my first pass, or even my second, but by the third it yielded very willingly, so yeah, overall it ended up easy.

A 10:22 AM  

Like OFL, I also abandoned the NW early on. Unlike him, I didn’t know TED. I suspected the French word would be ETES, and maybe the hotel staple was a duvET, but that wasn’t enough to get going. Eventually finished but I guessed wrong on the Joan person and filled in wuSACh before doing the crosses (well I had the -ORD of VOCAL CORD but nothing else so I thought maybe some kind of wORD?). So my skimpy garments were MIdIShIRTS and the singing duo item was a VOCALwORD. I don’t know what those really short shirts that show one’s midriff are called but MIdISHIRTS sounded plausible, and I’m not up on meanings of hand gestures these days so ok dOPE, you’re it. I have no excuse for VOCALwORD. Except maybe that I had just been forced to fill in ACNED so obviously we can make up stuff. Fine, I like my puzzle just the way it is.

I also liked the double letters on the east and west edges (TRAPP, UMASS, TREED, LASSO) and the mood/brood intersection, so no MOPEy VIBE here. Thanks to Mr. Collins for the jaunty start to the day.

EasyEd 10:22 AM  

Fun puzzle with interesting clues and answers. Like Rex I made the mistake of starting in the SW. Unlike Rex, I had difficulty with the PPP, felt this was a trivia test at times. However, enjoyed sussing out the longer answers.

Tina 10:25 AM  

Agreed!

Anonymous 10:32 AM  

Always happy to see Judith IVEY in the crossword. Amazing actress and one of America’s least famous national treasures.

egsforbreakfast 10:51 AM  

Joseph E. Murray was getting cold feet about performing the first ORGANTRANSPLANT, so his colleagues had to URGEON the surgeon.

I always hold my NOSE when I make a BIGDO in one of those British LOOS.

That LASSO guy is always in the middle of things. That's why they call him in media RESTED.

Started with TowEl as the hotel room staple. Worked nicely with TRAPP and ETES. Not so much thereafter. Smooth and pretty easy puzzle. Thanks, Peter A. Collins.

Anonymous 10:53 AM  

Mink stoles described as deluxe is gross?
Huh?
I’ll grant fur isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but mink is almost the epitome of luxury. Even if you don’t like it.

Nancy 11:05 AM  

I also thought of UMiSS/1SEC because MISS is so much more of a sports powerhouse than UMASS. But then I remembered that it's not UMISS -- it's OLE MISS.

M and A 11:07 AM  

How astonishin ... both LAWNTOOL & SUNLOUNGE are debut words. har

staff weeject pick, of only 9 choices: TED (+LASSO), my first two entries splatzed into the puz.

Did the NW corner pretty fast, but wasn't able to get the two longballs that led one out of the corner, so had to start over elsewhere. Overall, I'd rate it an average SatPuz nanosecond-burn, at our house.

Kinda hoped it'd be a real weird themed puz, when I saw the 5-4-4 word lengths, across the top. And Collins dude does weird, a lot. Not to be, tho.

Thanx for the workout, Mr. Collins dude. Have a good TAY.

Masked & Anonym007Us


**gruntz**

mathgent 11:09 AM  

Very pleasant and smooth. And only single-digit threes. Bravo!

Hack mechanic 11:25 AM  

Wanted taps there

Newboy 11:25 AM  

NYT Timer said easy as OFL opined, but today the grid seemed really hard. Thanks @Dr A for diagnosing why I felt that VIBE. Ultimately, a DNF when I couldn’t find ASap even after bringing home the STANLEY CUP though a reveal assured me that ASaP wasn’t another damn internet abbrev that I had missed TIL now!

James K. Lowden 11:29 AM  

I don’t think anyone has called it a "TV set" since Quasar had its works in a drawer. I can hear the Batman narrator saying, "Don’t touch that dial!"

Sam 11:30 AM  

Felt quite challenging for about 20 mins, with lots of jumping around the grid and plenty of white space staring at me, but VOCAL CORDS, LAWN TOOL, VOCATION, and MINISKIRTS came to the rescue, helping me see the central stack, and then I was off to the races. That said, total guess at INNES/RANI.

Niallhost 11:43 AM  

Not easy for me, but I don't like my Saturdays easy. Glad I'm still novice and/or stupid enough that I almost always have to struggle (never cheating) to finish. Started off with wrong guesses all over the place. NOno for NOPE, Nada for NONE, budS for PALS, tude for VIBE, ales for LOOS, SETS at for SETS IN, HUNTington for HUNTSVILLE, yes for DO I, and AOl for AON. Never heard of MAMA Thornton, MUST, SANTE, or RANI. Eye-rolled at ACNED, SUN LOUNGE, and LAWN TOOL. And for some reason, because I had "SETS at" for the "takes root" answer, I was certain that RAVaSHING looked correct and UNEtTERED was some archeological term that I had never heard. Took me a few minutes at the end of the puzzle to fix that one. A grind, but an enjoyable one. Finished in 48:50 - a little longer than average.

Tom T 11:47 AM  

Definitely a "Type 2" Fri/Sat solve for me--almost nothing to begin with and thoughts of throwing in the towel, but tiny toeholds falling here and there and a successful finish without errors in roughly an hour. ("Type 1" is steady progress and successful solve in about half an hour; "Type 3" is brutal dnf.)
In other words, unlike Rex, I was often "properly stuck."

Hidden Diagonal Word clue of the day: What's lost in a standing ovation. Answer: LAPS (off the L in 44A)

jae 11:55 AM  

Yep, easy. I immediately filled in TED LASSO and like @Rex started solving from the bottom up. Fortunately I didn’t have any of his problems, so the whole process was pretty whooshy. Quite a few gimmes and MUST and SKATE as clued were it for WOEs.

Reasonably smooth grid with a sparkly center stack, liked it even more than @Rex did.

jb129 12:14 PM  

This wasn't easy for me. More like "hard but gonna stick with it." And finally I know why.
I feel more comfortable plodding on with constructors I know & respect (yes, you, Peter :)
I didn't know TRAPP, MUST, or that Joan Cusack ever was nominated for an Oscar (for what film?).
But I did really like BIG DO, FIB for Small Invention,
IDENTITY THIEVES.
So now that I know where my comfort zone lies, let's see more of them (no offense to the aspiring newbies, of course, & good luck to all).
Thanks, Peter :)

jb129 12:16 PM  

Oh, & really liked VOCAL CORD!

Anonymous 12:37 PM  

Good luck voting - I went to vote today, to have my vote counted just in case I am mercifully relived of these mortal coils in the next ten days, but the line to vote was about 10000 people long. Where I live, that's 9,475 yahoos and 525 people who believe in science, compassion, facts, those sorts of things. I'm not very hopeful

Flybal 12:56 PM  

Ditto

Ellen 12:58 PM  

I wrote in poliovaccine with confidence ... Oops

Paul 1:16 PM  

Felt like a Friday for me. Loved the STANLEYCUP cluing. However, AON is simply awful — seems entirely random. And it could have been easily avoided. AOL crosses with LOSE — done! Or, if you want to make it tougher, cross AOR (album oriented rock) with ROSE.

jberg 1:37 PM  

It doesn't count as a brag if you post it anonymously!

dash riprock 1:51 PM  

The Rex: Disagree regarding "FOR US" as extraneous appendage. DON'T WAIT UP/DON'T WAIT UP FOR US, 29a, close, but there's a subtle distinction in tone. Imagine you're staying with people you don't know well, distant relatives/friends of friends, you plan to be out late. They give you the keys, and you might say, "DON'T WAIT UP FOR US," in addition to some transition. You would not say, "DON'T WAIT UP," full stop, which sounds nearly an order. Intensity of the expression, implied familiarity with the listener. Slight, but they're not one and the same. And so, I can certainly see expressing, "DON'T WAIT UP FOR US," in full.

Also, as you did, checked stride at LAWN TOOL, 24d, seems forced, but acceptable, as a spade could be used to uproot a dandelion, among other lawn interlopers.

(All of the Cup repartee among you and the Gallery, amusing. Coronation of a mindless activity vs. today's collegiate showcase, the best game ever developed. You know it, I know it, everybody and his grandmother knows it.)

Plus one more also, Thievery Corporation, local, musicians + proprietors, met, seen them live, have your referenced CD. Thumbs up!

Eniale 1:53 PM  

Woohoo, yay me, yes I know it was easy, but when I finish a Saturday puzzle my happiness SETS IN. but I thought ACNED was horrible.

okanaganer 1:55 PM  

The puzzle was enjoyable, however two arrows to my Canadian heart cast a bit of gloom on it. The STANLEY CUP has not been won by a Canadian team since 1993 (Montreal). The clue's "crossed the border" is metaphorical so I don't mind its not being literally true.

But it was the EXPOs leaving Montreal in 2004 which really broke my heart since I have loved them since I was 9 years old. In 1994 they were leading their division and there was the tantalizing possibility that they could even play the Blue Jays in the World Series... an all Canadian Series!! But the player's strike destroyed that, and the Expos never recovered. There are other reasons I would like to go back to the year 1993 but never mind them.

jberg 1:55 PM  

A) Maybe you're wrong about those people -- even if that's the composition of your neighborhood, it may not be the composition of those voting early. B) FWIW, those who track these things say almost all the Republicans voting early are people who voted on election day last time around, while many of the Democrats voting early are Democrats who did not vote in the last election. Either good or bad news, depending on your party preference.

Michelle Turner 2:07 PM  

The point is that pub makes you think British whereas library or restaurant doesn’t.

Nancy 2:07 PM  

I thought immediately of the polio vaccine -- I, too, was a schoolchild when I received it circa 1954-5 -- but since I couldn't come up with an answer that fit the space, there was no danger of writing it in.

jberg 2:18 PM  

I know TED LASSO, but never actually seen him or known what team he coaches, so I started off with TowEl; and also crossing TRumP, (Hi, @birtpnkd) since I thought maybe 'Ol Fred had been there; a weird choice that still gave me three crosses.

My other big problem was heart TRANSPLANT, since I couldn't think of another 5-letter ORGAN. Kinda dumb on my part.

Like Rex, I considered the famous detective and the cards, as well as Kate Spade, who designs something or other -- handbags, maybe?

Quick crossword tip: Rani:(Maha)rajah::Queen:King. You'll see them a lot. Also, while there are other flightless birds, one in a crossword is either an emu or a RHEA.

I really wanted Ashley Madison for RAPSHEEET, but couldn't squeeze her in.

Last night my wife and I were driving home after a concert, and at one point had to wait for a bunch of young women to get out of an Uber and enter a club, not wearing coats (it was 53F) or much of anything else. The memory made me reluctant to enter MINISKIRTS as skimpy garments.

I had a lot of trouble with IDENTITY THIEVES as well, as I couldn't get my mind past a SNL-type skit--i.e., done by a bad imitator.

@Adam, I thought of Bible too; but a couple of years ago I wanted to look something up so I checked the drawers for the Gideon Bible, but there wasn't any. Since then I usually do a quick search, and often find none; sometimes there is a sign saying that you can ask the front desk for religious texts. So I guess it's no longer a staple.

dash riprock 3:06 PM  

okanaganer 1:55 PM: "...and the Expos never recovered."

They sho'nuff did recover! No idea what you're talkin'bout. Bwahaha.

dash riprock 3:31 PM  

Anonymous 8:36 AM: Side note: According to https://7x11x13.xyz/crossword/ , that Rich Norris themeless is the second most hated puzzle among the r/crossword community (the data is tracked starting from November 27th 2020). First place goes to that "reimagined" Robert Frost abomination.

Riprock adds to the list, "The Taj Mahal," Wednes, 2023-08-16. Spawned the epithet ELHI/ELHIed. The pits.

Anonymous 4:11 PM  

Hockey is Canadian. The NHL is American. Talent versus money.

Anonymous 5:38 PM  

Nice and challenging for me, just the way I like a Saturday. Favorite clue by far was "National, formerly" as I grew up going to EXPO's games. Along WITH STANLEYCUP, it did my Canadian heart good. And yes, a noticeably more classic style puzzle, but it's nice to get a variety.

Anonymous 5:46 PM  

Wrestled with this for two hours but it was my first Saturday solve with no cheating - and now I’m proud of myself

RooMonster 7:21 PM  

We'll, shoot, another of my comments lost to the ether. Saves y'all from my drivel, at least.

I found this puz quite tough, having to cheat 5 times to finish. Yowsers.

Glad a bunch of yins found it easy!

RooMonster Commen...*POOF* Guy

ChrisR 8:00 PM  

I don't like to disrupt someone's unlikeliest malaprop, but it's Gretl Von Trapp, not Greta.

Gary Jugert 10:13 PM  

@Anonymous 5:46 PM
Congrats! The time isn't important, but the feeling of victory is.

Gary Jugert 10:17 PM  

@Tom T 11:47 AM
What's lost in a standing ovation. Answer: LAPS
Nice!

Terra Schaller 11:02 PM  

7/11 the coast of California is going down right.

Anonymous 6:34 AM  

The NHL has a salary cap, so what the team will pay a super star doesn’t really change that much. McDavid getting 12.5 mil AAV wouldn’t change too much from team to team. Two of the big influencers are Canadian tax rates being higher and location (would you rather live in Calgary, Alberta or NYC?).

Anonymous 7:37 PM  

NYC might be nice to visit but you can LIVE in Calgary.

Anonymous 6:26 PM  

My only DNF of the year. I wasn't even that close. Not sure what this says about me?? I didn't get a single proper noun outside Ted Lasso. Shrug.

Anonymous 11:30 PM  

Some good ones today but phlegm had me actually loling.

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