Sunday, October 20, 2024

Modern H.R. initiative / SUN 10-20-24 / Futuristic microscopic machine / Hasten, old-style / Marquee at the Tri-Plex mistaken as a promo for ... "Godzilla"? / ___ Sidle, longtime role on "C.S.I." / Italian sauce whose name sounds like a French stew / Bandmate of Keith for 60+ years / Band whose name is sometimes rendered with a backward B

Constructor: Jerry Miccolis

Relative difficulty: Easy


THEME: "Triple Features" — each answer is an imagined "Marquee at the Tri-Plex" featuring three movie titles, which, together, seem to describing a fourth, different movie:

Theme answers:
  • BIG GIANT MONSTER (23A: Marquee at the Tri-Plex mistaken as a promo for ... "Godzilla"?)
  • WITNESS ALIEN ARRIVAL (37A:  ... "E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial"?)
  • HANCOCK SIGNS THE PAPER (54A:  ... "Independence Day"?)
  • TANGLED FROZEN TRAFFIC (75A: ... "Rush Hour"?)
  • WIRED SLEEPERS MISERY (91A: ... "Insomnia"?)
  • MANHATTAN HOOK-UP (110A: ... "Sex and the City"?)
Word of the Day: HANCOCK (see 54A) —

Hancock is a 2008 American superhero comedy film starring Will Smith as an amnesiac, alcoholic, reckless superhero trying to remember his past. The film is directed by Peter Berg based on a screenplay by Vince Gilligan and Vy Vincent Ngo. The film also stars Charlize Theron and Jason Bateman.

The story was originally written by Vy Vincent Ngo in 1996. It languished in development hell for years with various directors attached, including Tony ScottMichael Mann (who would later co-produce the film), Jonathan Mostow and Gabriele Muccino, before being filmed in 2007 in Los Angeles with a production budget of $150 million.

In the United States, the film was rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America after changes were made at their request in order to avoid an R rating, which it had received twice before. Columbia Pictures released the film in theaters in the United States on July 2, 2008. While Hancock received mixed reviews from critics, who found it promising, but let down by the mid movie change in tone, it grossed $629.4 million worldwide, becoming the fourth highest-grossing film of 2008. (wikipedia)

• • •

Still fighting off a head cold, so this write-up might not be as elaborate, or coherent, as you have come to expect (or at least hope for). I really gotta polish this off and get some sleep. So ... movies! I like movies. It took me a bit to figure what was going on here because after I got BIG GIANT MONSTER, I thought all the answers were going to be "three movie titles that are all synonyms of one another." "BIG GIANT" is pretty bad here. Unmotivated redundancy. The other answers work, more or less. It's a cute idea—three movie titles that suggest another movie title. But that's twenty-four (24!) movie titles you're being asked to know, or be at least vaguely aware of: six theme clues with a movie in each clue and then three movies in each answer. 6 times 4 = 24. Were you familiar with all of them? I was ... almost. Couldn't place WIRED. Had to look it up. It's the biopic about Belushi (1989), based on the Bob Woodward book of the same name. It is by far the least successful movie of the twenty-four. According to wikipedia, it made just over $1 million on a $13 million budget. I only kind of remember SLEEPERS ... is that the one from the '90s about a group of criminals, or maybe hackers? [looks it up] Well, it is from the '90s (1996), and it does involve criminals, but the core story involves a group of men who, as boys, served time in a juvenile detention facility and experienced terrible abuse. So the movie is about the aftermath of that. I don't know where I got "hackers" from. I think I was thinking about not SLEEPERS but SNEAKERS (1992), which is about a group of security specialists (though not computer security, I don't think). Annnnyway, WIRED and SLEEPERS seem like outliers, fame-wise. I would've said the same about HANCOCK, but it turns out that movie grossed over $600 million, so ... clearly somebody saw it! Oh, THE PAPER, that wasn't that big of a hit, was it? As I recall, it was about this thing that used to exist called a "newspaper." Ask your parents.


The one other outlier was GIANT, in that it's the only pre-1979 movie in the puzzle. Well, that and GODZILLA, but GODZILLA, as a creature, is iconic, whereas GIANT ... if you didn't know the plot of that movie, you could easily think it was about a giant. It's not. It's a 1956 western/drama, famous in large part for being James Dean's last film. MONSTER is that movie about the female serial killer, right? [looks it up] Yes. I think I've actually seen only about a quarter of these movies, but that didn't matter. Even if the theme answers were the hardest part of the puzzle (hard because wacky and strange), the puzzle overall was still remarkably easy. Maybe the idea was that, with so many movie titles, the crosses needed to be very easy. And they were. I've never heard the term "Tri-Plex" before. Looks like there's one in Great Barrington, MA (wherever that is). But I can infer that it's a place that has three screens, shows three movies—hence today's hypothetical marquees. Oh, last movie observation—I had no idea Sex & The City was a movie. It is, first and foremost and most famously, a TV show. So that was weird. But it looks like, yes, there was a reasonably successful 2008 movie adaptation, so OK, it's a movie. 


The rest of the grid was largely forgettable and occasionally awkward. AZURE BLUE? (76D: Sky shade). Is AZURE BLUE here to keep BIG GIANT company? AZURE BLUE ... what else is AZURE gonna be? Is there an AZURE ORANGE I'm unaware of? Bizarre. That next to MEMOIRE (?!) crossing the awkward EMAILER crossing the ungainly and overly wordy SOLD AS IS ... that was definitely my least favorite part of the grid. I don't like BAES in the plural. I don't like OBE ever, but especially in the plural (29A: Honors for David Beckham and Leona Lewis: Abbr. = OBES). NYETS, truly terrible in the plural (104A: Overseas refusals). I do not like the idea of cluing ORCA as a "menace" (38D: Marine menace). The ORCA's just living its life, man, too bad your yacht got in its way. Or maybe the idea is that ORCAs menace ... seals? Penguins? Apex predators have to eat! "Menace," bah. Just 'cause you can alliterate ([Marine menace]) doesn't mean you should. 


The hardest part of the puzzle today was ... nowhere, really. I had some very minor trouble picking up the SPLIT (in SPLIT VOTE (16D: Cause of a hung jury)). Beyond that, I didn't have any significant hesitation until the very (and I mean very) last square of the puzzle. I sincerely stared at SPA-/ADA- for a while. Well, a few seconds, at any rate. I have never heard of the novelist ADAM Johnson, but ADAM seemed like the only viable answer (he won the Pulitzer in 2013 for his novel The Orphan Master's Son). As for SPAM ... er ... that's not a good clue (107D: Overcommunicate, say). First, I don't think of boner pill ads as a form of "communication." Second, the spammer is "communicating" just the right amount for the spammer, I presume. Yes, spam involves mass mailing / texting / whatever, but the "over" in "Overcommunicate" implies there is some good or right amount of advertising that I want to be subjected to, and I assure you there is not. 


Bullets:
  • 5A: Italian sauce whose name sounds like a French stew (RAGÚ) — the French stew is "ragout"
  • 71A: Suitor of Christine in "The Phantom of the Opera" (RAOUL) — no idea. Just waited for a name to appear. Phantom was a tremendously popular Broadway production and like most tremendously popular Broadway productions not named Hamilton, I never saw it.
  • 85A: Modern H.R. initiative (DEI) — Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. It's a concept that drives racists crazy. They have appropriated it as a racial slur; it's how a certain class of losers insults Black success now. See also their obsession with being "anti-woke." Dear god these people are boring. Bitter and boring. Can't decide which is worse.
  • 38D: Actor-turned-policeman Estrada (ERIK) — wait, he didn't actually become a cop IRL, did he? ... OMG he did! And here I thought he was just a fictional cop on CHiPs
Estrada became a reserve police officer for the Muncie, Indiana Police Department, depicted on Armed & Famous. From there, Estrada moved to Virginia, where he was an I.C.A.C. (Internet Crimes Against Children) investigator for eight years in Bedford County, Virginia. As of July 1, 2016, he was a reserve police officer in St. Anthony, Idaho. In the course of his duties, Estrada has been filmed patrolling on a police motorcycle.
  • 101A: ___ Sidle, longtime role on "C.S.I." (SARA) — no idea. Less than no idea. I couldn't name any "roles" on any of the C.S.I.s or N.C.I.S.s or JAGs or whatever. Network dramas of the 21st century ... nothing. I got nothing.
  • 14A: It can bust one's bracket (UPSET) — "bracket" is part of a multi-round single elimination tournament. If you have filled your "brackets" with predicted winners, as many do for the NCAA basketball tournament, then an UPSET can "bust" your bracket (unless you predicted it, then you're good!)
  • 28A: Something seen framed in a Zoom background, perhaps (AWARD) — ew, who does this? I've got a framed signature of Muhammad Ali here that my dad got when he was an Army doctor in the early '70s. I've got a framed movie poster for a schlocky Mickey Rooney / Mamie Van Doren film. Seems a little self-important to make an AWARD part of your Zoom background. 
  • 31A: Bandmate of Keith for 60+ years (MICK) — Keith Richards, MICK Jagger, The Rolling Stones...
  • 81D: Shooting marble (TAW) — ugh, marble types. This is gonna throw some people, especially considering it abuts TALI (kinda difficult anatomy clue) (75D: Ankle bones) and crosses WIRED, which, as we've established, was not a big hit.
  • 39D: Jazz singer Cleo (LAINE) — I know Cleo LAINE only from crosswords. LAINE crossing RAIMI might prove tricky for some, though RAIMI is a very successful director who has appeared in the NYTXW a lot, so this cross is probably "fair." Not great, though.
  • 63A: Liturgical vestment (STOLE) — lol I had no idea. Sounds pretty fancy. My "liturgical vestment" vocabulary begins and ends with ALB (a common answer in crosswords of yore)
See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

104 comments:

  1. Very easy. No pauses until the ADAM/SPAM cross for the same reasons that @Rex paused.

    Did not know SLEEPERS, WIRED, TANGLED, HANDOCK, and of course ADAM.

    Cute and breezy but a bit too easy,

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous10:24 PM

      If Adam is the answer for 120A, why is no one talking about how the clue asks for the novelist Johnson who won the Pulitzer for fiction in 2012 but, apparently, Adam Johnson won it in 2013 -- and NO ONE won it in 2012?

      Delete
    2. Anonymous6:22 AM

      People are talking about it

      Delete
    3. Anonymous6:19 PM

      Correct! The clue is an error!

      Delete
  2. HMTR. Somehow I macheted my way through this PPP jungle, but it was a relatively joyless trek, leaving many rough edges in its wake.  The theme was quite beyond my grasp...I felt I must be missing something but couldn't figure out what...Movie titles, huh? N o wonder!

    I had no idea what Tenille's first name was, and cannot imagine why anyone would care.  CHARLOTTE RUSSE is a dessert??  Never hoid of it!  Notwithstanding, educated guesses yielded OUT as a plausible answer for "Unsafe?". But there's a big problem here.  OUT does not mean "unsafe" unless you were, say, rating options on the basis of safety, and eliminating the unsafe ones. But in such a case, the clue would be straightforward, and so how much wordplay is there here that the question mark behind the clue entitles us to expect?  0%, that's how much.  (An exclamation mark would actually have been helpful!)
    Then that dreadful natick at RAIMI/LAINE, and a couple of minor ones I won't bother relating.
    All in all, this puzzle was really disappointing after two workable Sundays in a row.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous5:58 AM

      It's OUT in the baseball sense (i.e. the opposite of SAFE or UNSAFE, hence the question mark).

      Delete
    2. Anonymous8:18 AM

      Exactly.

      Delete
    3. Anonymous8:53 AM

      Sam Raimi is a successful film director who has been in the puzzle 21 times. Shouldn’t be a Natick at this point.

      Delete
    4. Anonymous10:28 PM

      You, lots of dreck fill today. Only the movie titles were fun.

      Delete
  3. Omigod the names. RAGU BALI ELLIS MICK INC ABBA POE RAIMI RAOUL KAFKA TAZ CABO SARA AGGIE EDIE LENA ADAM. And that's just the acrosses! ADAM was a total unknown, and since I had MAHATTAN HOOKER that area was a train wreck.

    Speaking of MANHATTAN HOOKER, I also had TIRED SLEEPERS MISERY and they prevented me "getting" the theme. Plus, I just didn't get the "Triple Features" part because it seemed some themers had 4 words, and some had 2. Whaaa? I didn't enjoy it and finished with multiple errors.

    Oh, well, in non crossword news: [Spelling Bee: Sat. 0. I missed 4 days last weekend cuz no internet at the cabin, so this week I have been trying to catch up and have gotten QB on all except Monday so far. If I can get Monday my streak will be 31 ongoing; if not it will end at 25. puzzlehoarder, are you still out there?]

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  4. Anonymous3:22 AM

    Didn’t know Taw, but my dad had different colored stoles for different seasons of the church year.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Never heard of taw, but my mother designed and made the seasonal paraments for the altar and matching stoles for my dad.

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  6. Michael M5:22 AM

    Thought this one was pretty easy even without having heard of several movies, finished in a very good time...except I hadn't, there was an error somewhere.

    I figured it out eventually, I had 'tired' instead of WIRED SLEEPERS MISERY...don't know anything about marbles so 'tat' wasn't any less plausible than TAW. Took longer to find the mistake than to fill in the actual puzzle!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous8:04 AM

      Same error. I don't know TAW or WIRED. I had to reveal puzzle to find the mistake. I don't think I would have found it on my own.

      Delete
    2. Anonymous1:06 PM

      Same. Couldn’t find the error. DNF. Frustrating.

      Delete
    3. Anonymous9:17 PM

      Another one here. TAT seemed totally believable, never figured it out.

      Delete

  7. I'm the opposite of a movie buff. I only knew a small minority of the films. Luckily, the crosses were easy enough that I still found the puzzle Easy.

    ReplyDelete
  8. steve6:29 AM

    The plot of “Independence Day” is not the signing of the Declaration of Independence. All the other wacky clue answers actually describe the plot of the movie in the clue…

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    Replies
    1. Anonymous8:55 AM

      Came here to say this. Ask the others describe the movie in the clue. I saw Independence Day once, when it was in theaters decades ago, but pretty sure there wasn’t anybody named Hancock signing papers while we were fighting aliens.

      Delete
    2. Anonymous9:01 AM

      Yeah, I expected OFL to rail about that one. Quite inconsistent. Cute though…I imagine the constructor couldn’t resist.

      Delete
    3. KennyMitts12:58 PM

      Rush Hour is also not about sitting in traffic. I also found this inconsistency annoying.

      Delete
  9. Pretty slick to find three distinct movie titles to form a fourth. That said - I don’t care for trivia based themes especially in Sunday sized grids - the trivia overwhelms the solve and I just want it to be over.

    American Aquarium

    Overall fill was fine with the exception of UNMANS, TUES and the Rex highlighted entries. Have to expect some duds in the large grid but they do stick out. No real pushback anywhere. SERENA showing up quite often lately.

    I’ll applaud the chops and the effort - just not my idea of a good time.

    TRAFFIC

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous7:46 AM

      Couldn't believe Rex didn't call out UNMANS - has anyone anywhere ever uttered this "word"?

      Delete
    2. Jesper8:16 AM

      I was waiting for someone to mention "unmans"! Truly awful...

      Delete
    3. Sun Volt didn’t like unmans Fine. It does a musty misogynistic feel to it. .
      But the anonymous replies went further as if if the word was last used in the Middle Ages.
      A simple search in Google got a quote from that obscure book series Game of Thrones.
      I would never use the word but I have seen it innumerable times. Just because you don’t know a word doesn’t mean it’s obscure.

      Delete
    4. Anonymous10:30 PM

      Yes, unmans was shit. What's next, unwomans?

      Delete
  10. Anonymous7:18 AM

    A completely joyless easy puzzle. Misery says it all. .

    ReplyDelete
  11. Anonymous7:21 AM

    I think spam is being used in a different sense here, as in - stop sending me so many texts! You’re spamming me! Maybe to a sibling or mother.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes! That's exactly how I took it, and came here to say that!

      Delete
    2. Anonymous2:14 PM

      Agreed, I may say "sorry for all the spam" in a Slack or email thread if I send multiple back to back messages espousing on a topic.

      Delete
    3. Anonymous3:23 PM

      correct. SPAM has a more modern usage than what rex is considering. users typing a lot [or sending just a ton of emotes] in twitch or discord channels for instance can be accused of, timed out/banned for, or apologetic for SPAMming.

      Delete
  12. In sync with OFL at first thinking we were just dealing with synonyms, as I failed to see the movie connection at all. Eventually that sank in, duh. Not too many no-knows today, SARA and RAOUL about it for the names. Nice to see old three-letter friends RIA and HIE. How ya been?

    Got all done and thought this reminded me of nothing so much as a tribute to Gary J.'s uniclues. confirmed by the presence of BOXES as "moving day leftovers". I'm still taking truckloads of them (flattened) to recycling. We finally create space and then get more stuff out of storage. Used to think it was one damn thing after another but it turns out it's the same damn thing over and over.

    Nice breezy Sundecito, JM. The mashups all made a goofy kind of sense which Just Might be said by someone. Thanks for all the fun.

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  13. Quite enjoyed trying to figure out the themers with as few crosses as possible. BIG GIANT MONSTER was the easiers.

    WIRED SLEEPERS MISERY was the hardest. As Rex notes, WIRED is an outlier in terms of fame - even after looking it up, I don't remember it. And while I know SLEEPERS as a movie, I'm much more familiar with SLEEPER as a movie. So then I had WIRED ... SLEEPER ... and something beginning with SMI___.

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  14. This was cute, and I didn't think it was SO easy... but my wife thought I completed this in a very reasonable time. Lots of PPP, agreed. I figured out the theme pretty quickly, but some of the movies were obscure, agreed. I'd vaguely heard of a TAW, but also knew AGGIE was a marble.

    I enjoyed reading JM's bio -- that's the way I'd like to spend my retirement! Juxtaposing the Garden State with the Garden Isle is pretty funny. Hey, my wife grew up near Basking Ridge, NJ, and it ain't nothing like Kauai, HI (where we honeymooned).

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  15. R. Moses7:30 AM

    During Covid, what every political type made sure to display prominently in their bookcases during news interviews - in a spot cure to be noticed - was a copy of Robert Caro's "The Power Broker." It's almost as if they feared they would feel shunned by their peers if it wasn't on the shelf.. Toward the end, it became a clichΓ© - so the really cool ones started replacing it with something trendier.

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  16. @steve, 6:29 AM: Yes! I'm searching around to see if there might be ANY connection of the answer with the themer clue... HANCOCK starred Will Smith, hmm... Did he sign any papers in ID4?

    ReplyDelete
  17. High props to Jerry for coming up with this theme set – Each theme answer with three movie titles that meld into a promo for *another* movie – wow! – plus, it's an answer set broken into three pairs, each with the same number of letters – double wow!

    I did notice two things about the non-theme answer set:
    • It’s a schwa-ender-fest: KAPPA, ABBA, KAFKA, ERA, SARA, RIA, ORCA, TUNA, ALGA, AGENDA, CRAYLOLA, IKEBANA.
    • As a serendipitous theme echo, many answers are movie titles: ORCA (1977), AGENDA (2007), MAZE (2000), BRUTAL (2007, 2012), EPIC (2013), BALI (2007), CLUE (1985), EULOGY (2004), SARA (1997, 2019), SEEDS (2018, 2020). I’m guessing there are more.

    I don’t know why, but I love movie titles with exclamation points, like “Airplane!” and “Mars Attacks!” So, I started looking through the grid for more such titles that will never happen, but, to me at least, would be funny to see: “ALGA!”, “ENIAC!”, “BAES!”, “UKE!”, “PILAF!”.

    Thus, Jerry, your impressively-themed puzzle gave me smiles along with a satisfying fill-in. Thank you so much for making this!

    ReplyDelete
  18. This puzzle has an interesting backstory, as today’s constructor made a NYT puzzle seven years ago with the same theme, except the theme answers had two films instead of three. But controversy erupted. Why? WordPlay commenter John Ezra nicely explains it:

    “The original version of "Double Feature" which appeared in 2017, like this one, had as clues the titles of movies and the answers were titles, too (two films then, three films now). Shortz took out the film clues and replaced them with non-movie-title clues, which reduced by half the original cleverness of the idea. Thus, TITANIC SKYFALL was clued as [baseball-sized hail?] when the original clue was a movie: [ARMAGEDDON]. Jeff Chen was upset about it, too, and his notes took issue with what Shortz had done. Shortz was right to apologize for this, and the constructor was more gracious in accepting the apology than many would have been. The appearance of this puzzle, in all its cleverness, is indeed a righting of a wrong.”

    I should add that @Rex was hyper-furious about it as well. If this is at all interesting to you, the constructor’s notes in WordPlay today are worth a read.

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    Replies
    1. This is VERY interesting to me, Lewis, and I'll go read the Constructor's Notes right now. I also want to say I chuckled mightily over your list of made-up movies with exclamation points -- my absolute favorite being "BAES!"

      Delete
  19. I’m surprised the constructor could even stitch the grid together with such an ambitious theme - but somehow he pulled it off. The stress on the grid shows, and there does seem to be a lot of PPP holding it together.

    I’m another member of the “WoE is a TAW?” club, and for me, IKEBANA crossing OBES looks like some sort of secret communication to an alien life form hiding amongst us. Hopefully it stands for something like “sit tight for a while” instead of “let the zombie apocalypse commence”.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Andy Freude8:13 AM

    THE PAPER—that’s a lot of famous actors in a movie I never heard of. But then look who’s in “The Big Operator”: a star-studded cast, right down to the small type. Mel Torme!

    Agree with the big guy about BIG GIANT, which at least has the theme to support it. But AZURE BLUE? C’mon.

    ReplyDelete
  21. No likey. Bad clueing doesn’t just annoy me. It makes it a slog. When a puzzle starts to muddle with my Sunday activities I just guess and come here for the answers. Thanks Rex.

    ReplyDelete
  22. I know Woody Allen’s SLEEPER and thought the puzzle took the liberty of making it plural. Glad I was wrong. BIG GIANT feels very much in the language to me. Great Barrington is a very nice place, check it out sometime, Rex!

    ReplyDelete
  23. Easy. Except when I finished, no happy music. Scanned the puzzle looking for a possible error. RAYME crossing LAYNE. Ok, I don't know either of them. Chainged Y to I and that was that. I was lucky there was only one place like that. It would be nice if it counted the errors for you.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous4:50 PM

      That was my personal Natick too...

      Delete
  24. Hey All !
    Well, Mon DIEU! Ended up with the infamous Almost There! message, and being uncertain of letters in various areas of the grid, decided to hit Check Puzzle, ruining my paltry six day streak. Expected to see at least three letters crossed out, but ended up only being one! ARGH! A one-letter DNF. The worst type. Had tIRED/TAt for WIRED/TAW. TIRED SLEEPERS MISERY. Sounded logical to me. I TAT I TAW a TAW. But kept it as a TAT. Tut-tut.

    Was looking for a connection with HANCOCK and Independence Day, as they both starred Will Smith. But, it was just happened that way. No extra layer.

    Six Themers, although the argument can be made constructor had to find 18 (or 24) movies, to combine. But, in grid, six Themers. Light for a SunPuz, but still ended up a good puz.

    Waiting to read other Trip Movies all you creative types come up with!

    Happy Sunday!

    Five F's (The only time I'm thankful for FROZEN TRAFFIC)
    RooMonster
    DarrinV

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous3:36 PM

      ugh, had the same tIRED/TAt error. the problem for me was, i'm not a movie person. so i was already at a huge disadvantage. and i thought the same thing rex thought at the start - surely "triple feature" meant three words that were synonyms. BIG GIANT MONSTER. okay, i like it. [and i love godzilla.] off to the races! but wait...HANCOCK and SIGN are...sort of synonyms, but i was mad bc it wasn't quite right and hancock is not a verb. and then it all started to unravel when suddenly it was four words...two words...words that definitely were not synonyms. then i was really mad at this "dumb" puzzle. and then i was like okay i guess it's just...kind of silly basic descriptions of movie titles? honest to glob did not see that they were made up of movie titles. all this to say, tIRED felt perfect, and i can never remember the marble and TAt seemed fine. if i had realized sooner they were movie titles, well...well nothing, i guess, because i've certainly never heard of WIRED.

      rare day where i have to come to the blog and scour rex's finished puzzle for my error. it took ages to find that one little square. i even guessed right at IKEBANA/OBES which is a straight up gnarly cross. [also never heard of FINIS so that added to many minutes spent on just a few squares.]

      anyway, pretty big dud of a puzzle for me. i'll accept the lack of movie knowledge as my own fault, but the rest of the fill wasn't exactly great either.

      -stephanie
      [sorry to leave what should be a standalone comment as a reply, but it seems like my comments appear more reliably if they are replies. i've still not been able to solve the mystery of why i can no longer access my blue name account, and why 90% of the time my comments as anon never post, despite not getting any error or posting anything objectionable. i've mostly given up, but i had to give it a go today since i needed to vent lol.]

      Delete
    2. @stephanie (Anonymous 3:36pm)... not sure if it helps, but a few months ago I was suddenly unable to post under my Google id "okanaganer". I briefly tried posting as anonymous but then had similar problems to you. I finally got it to work by switching from Firefox browser to Chrome (Windows 10 desktop). No idea why.

      Delete
  25. Anonymous9:21 AM

    Almost DNF and had to run the alphabet with the Natick at crossing of IKEBANA and OBES.

    ReplyDelete
  26. Anonymous9:50 AM

    That WIRED/TAW/TALI area was tough. Found the W and I more or less randomly.

    ReplyDelete
  27. Rex, Great Barrington is in the Berkhsires in MA. It is a very popular tourist destination, especially in the fall for leaf peeping. It is also very close to Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Pops.

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    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  28. Andy Lowry10:18 AM

    120 across is just a pure error. Notoriously there was NO fiction winner in 2012. πŸ‘Ώ

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous11:40 AM

      Is it like the Academy Awards, where the Oscar is given the year after the movie came out ? Maybe a similar type of situation here. Not sure we have ever settled on any type of informal convention on that.

      Delete
    2. Anonymous11:42 AM

      @Anonymous FReat catch. You are absolutely right. Johnson was awarded the 2023 prize for the novel The Orpgan MAster's Son which was published the novel in 2012. Most "errors" in the NYT puzzle are subject to some debate as to whether they are actually errors or just stretching things, but this one is not.

      Delete
    3. Anonymous12:20 PM

      I thought the same thing. He got the award in 2013 for the 2012 novel. The clue says "the 2012 Pulitzer".

      Delete
  29. A fun puzzle. It's even fun if you don't know all the movies, which I didn't. The ones I didn't know: ARRIVAL; HANCOCK; SIGNS; TANGLED; WIRED; HOOKUP. But all the surrounding fill was easy enough that I never struggled. Nor was I ever able to guess any of the movies ahead of time, except "Rush hour". I didn't know TANGLED, never thought of the absolutely wonderful FROZEN, and thought it was going to be some sort of TAXI TRAFFIC. Now I'm thinking that the name of that movie is TAXI DRIVER. Is there a just plain TAXI?

    Anyhow, it's a nice Sunday outing when the impulse behind a puzzle is amusing the solvers rather than creating some sort of intricate grid design. Pleasant and diverting -- with just the right amount of silliness.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. HOOK and UP are separate movies

      Delete
    2. Oh. Right! Thanks, Rex.

      Delete
  30. Alice Pollard10:36 AM

    I agree the IKEBANA/OBES cross was Naticky. I ran the alphabet, thank God it landed on B so it did not take long. TAW has been in there before, that's how I know it, from crosswords. I kept on thinking of the Woody Allen movie, SLEEPER, I have never heard of SLEEPERS so I thought that was wonky. All the other movies I have heard of, if not seen. I thought the ICER clue was kinda cool. AZURE BLUE is redundant. AGGIE seems to be in there often of late. FUN puzzle.

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  31. I admire the constructor's coming up with these six triple-title theme answers more than I enjoyed plugging in the needed PPP to solve them. Impressive constructing but, for me, short on snap and wit.

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  33. Tres titulos11:18 AM

    Isn't ''The paper'' an outlier? All other movie titles are single words. Three words--- or titles to an answer. THE paper makes its answer a four word solution.

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  34. Niallhost11:33 AM

    I had tIRED SLEEPER MISERY which seemed like it must be correct. Had no idea on the marble. Couldn't think of a movie called "Tired" but didn't know "Wired" either so ended up Naticked in that spot. Had a hard time parsing most of the movies for some reason. Didn't seem hard, but felt hard somehow. Not my best Sunday. DNF in a time of 31:45

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  35. I liked it a lot - whooshed through it . Fun puzzle & Sunday of the Year for me (I can just hear you all now .... )
    Thanks, Jerry :)

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  36. Anonymous12:48 PM

    Having lived on this planet when her music was omnipresent on radio and television, I can attest that Toni Tennille’s given name was no more arcane a factoid than is BeyoncΓ©’s family name for this era’s trivia heads. I call age-ism on you, “Rex”…respectfully.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous2:58 PM

      Rex didn’t mention TONI Tennille once

      Delete
  37. "The Dark Night."(Answer below)

    In the spirit of modernizing the Church, our priest has taken to wearing a liturgical boa, while delivering a EULOGY.

    Did you hear about the bro who SOLDASIS?

    When a close friendship becomes drudgery, it's an example of PALMOIL.

    Combined with your 2017 puzzle, this means you're in the books with a triple double, Jerry Miccolis. Great fun!

    PARANOIDPSYCHOJOKER

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  38. Anonymous1:08 PM

    Some people do not like sports. I have not generally watched movies since seeing Nemo turned my wife into a vegan. And so the puvvle was a slog for me. Finished the puzzle but solved as a themeless with a lot of guesses. I read a few hundred books a year and the movies do not offer the same fun as the books. Although I must say a gummy for arthritis pain has me binge watching movies from the 40s to the. Feel better Rex and Covid test. We had the same feeling of a cold and showers and then tested positive 2 todays later.

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  40. The fact this is based on a bunch of movies I've never heard of nor seen made it a bit of a slog. Not my cup of tea

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  41. Anonymous2:15 PM

    Taw/Wired screwed me up. Had Tired and just assumed it was a movie I never heard of. Also, they are all one word titles except THE PAPER. That annoyed me as I was solving. As I was solving I couldn’t find a one word title based on the crosses I had. Then once I got it I had a moment of anger. Figured Rex would also have the same problem, but didn’t. Ah well.

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  42. Anonymous2:19 PM

    Correction: “Giant” the novel was published in 1952 not 1962.

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  43. M and A2:47 PM

    Wowzers. Betcha there's a lot more themer possibilities ... there's well over 1,000 of them one-word flick titles.
    Speakin of which, THEPAPER was kinda an outlier, in the otherwise 1-word themer flick titles. SORESPOT. Trip points deduction.

    Still, probably kinda challengin, to come up with a set of good themers that will have the right lengths to all synch up correctly.

    staff weeject pick: KAT. Veterinarian name? Yeah, maybe ... but it'd really be a primo name for J.D. Vance's maiden aunt.

    UNMANS? har

    Fairly easy solvequest, despite a few no-know names, at our house. Pretty decent SunPuz, overall.

    M&A's Triple Feature nominee: {Marquee at the Tri-Plex mistaken as a promo for ... "Sleeping Beauty"?} = ?*

    Thanx for the fun, Mr. Miccolis dude.

    Masked & Anonymo10Us

    p.s.
    * = HER + BEWITCHED + COMA.

    **gruntz**

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  44. Anonymous3:52 PM

    A medium Sunday puzzle, starting in the SE corner and working diagonally to the NW corner (downs only) it took two cups of coffee to complete

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  45. Anonymous4:28 PM

    This was absolutely impossible for me. Very surprised to see virtually everybody else thought it was the world's easiest puzzle. HIE? IKEBANA? OBES? COATI? RAOUL? TONI? RUSSE? TAW? TALI? The first name of the guy who invented the Rubiks cube??!?! How is this possibly "easy"???

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  46. Anonymous4:29 PM

    Dame Cleo Laine, a British jazz singer of biracial background, is still alive at age 96. Her music is well worth investigating. I would post a link, but am not technologically skilled enough.

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  47. Anonymous4:46 PM

    I like movies too. Nice puzzle.
    But...

    Some PCs. IBMS

    Since when? IBM sold off PCs in 2005. Clue implies relevency.
    Not. Preface with old or OG maybe.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous5:40 PM

      Literally the clue, ‘some old pcs’

      Delete
    2. Anonymous7:35 PM

      No "old" in the pdf version. Hence the comment. But thanks anyway.

      Delete
  48. I love those seeds at the bottom of the bagel bag! Now that I no longer live in NY I would love to have some of that detritus. For my tastes, I would have used fragments instead. Overall a fun puzzle.

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  49. I learned what a "taw" was years ago, when I first read "Tom Sawyer." I don't even remember whether it was Tom or Huck who said it, but one of them came up with a marble, and the other one was impressed and said, "It's a bully taw!" I literally remember that from back when I was ten or eleven years old.

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  50. MetroGnome5:09 PM

    Still no idea what the hell OBES are.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous5:39 PM

      OBE= Order of the British Empire

      Delete
    2. Order of the British Empire

      Delete
  51. Great Barrington is a very charming little town in Western Massachusetts near the New York border. Between this “wherever that is” comment and the Natick section on your home page - what have you got against Massachusetts? (ha ha) Signed, A Massachusettsan.

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  52. Anonymous6:06 PM

    Watching WITNESS/ALIEN/ARRIVAL back to back to back would be a good way to spend a rainy weekend afternoon.

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  53. Un monstruo gigante enorme fue testigo de la llegada de un extraterrestre.

    Alien vs. Godzilla. My how we entertain ourselves. What happened to the long suffering damsel trapped in a cottage in the peaty wilderness of the Scottish highlands? Oh, she's trying to get home from work, but is stuck in the TANGLED, FROZEN TRAFFIC.

    Pretty funny puzzle with so much hunt and peck. Had fun.

    @pabloinnh Thanks! It is kinda sorta uniclue-ish.

    German vocab: ACH.
    Russian vocab: NYET.

    EULOGY is on my favorite word list between PAGODA and AVENGE.

    From my vantage point here I can see approximately 50 moving BOXES, some with UKES in 'em.

    ❤️ [Island strings] [Island rings].

    😫 RAIMI crossing LAINE. Charlotte RUSSE.

    Propers: 18
    Places: 3
    Products: 7
    Partials: 5
    Foreignisms: 7
    --
    Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 40 of 140 (29%)

    Funnyisms: 13 πŸ˜‚

    Tee-Hee: TEE-HEE. What I feel at 3 am now that I am old: PEE RAGE.

    Uniclues:

    1 The sad story of a Swedish band saying yes to Mamma Mia was rudely (and wisely) interrupted by German disapproval.
    2 When you're excited to tow a boat to Kansas.

    1 ACHS IRE ABBA EULOGY
    2 ALL IN MANHATTAN HOOKUP

    My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: {NB. The following clue references a rather saucy streak of puzzles published when Joel ran the slush pile, or so it seems.} Editorial meetings at the NYTXW (although it appears the anti-team rarely arrives). SEX DEBATE TEAMS.

    ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. A grievous undercount this time Gary, as each of the themes consisted of three POPs....so this would drastically increase the PPP count...

      Delete
  54. Anonymous9:16 PM

    One of those Sundays when I had two gigs in the afternoon and didn't even open the paper till 6 PM. When I was brain dead. I decided 37d, From wat place, was tHENCE, and stopped to admire that answer. Problem is it led to a movie named tITNESS. I didn't know most of the movies, but that one seemed more than usually unlikely. Had to come here to find out it was WHENCE / WITNESS. I've actually seen WITNESS. Oh well.

    Cleo LAINE is fabulous.

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  55. Sharon AK9:36 PM

    Yes Alice Pollard, Sure blue is redundant. But I'm sure Ive heard it said. Kind of like turquoise blue, navy blue, teal blue etc. Granted none of those is quite as redundant, especially not navy, but if it is said , then it's certainly ok in the puzzle.

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  56. Anonymous10:16 PM

    The TAW / WIRED SLEEPER MISERY cross was awful. I had TIRED SLEEPER MISERY, and a TAT could be a marble type (hell if I know. Marbles were even before my father's time, and I'm in my 60s). I ended up just having auto-checker find my error. What a ho-hum puzzle. ACHS, ABBA, LST, JAI, NYETS, AGER, RIA, TAW, HEE, OBES.

    Blech.

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  57. Anonymous11:36 AM

    Funny, I didn’t focus on Sleepers being plural and I thought of the old. Woody Allen movie Sleeper, which I thought was hilarious when I saw it a long time ago. And I agree about having to know these obscure movie titles. The puzzle turns out to be mostly a test of one’s knowledge of movie trivia. If it hadn’t been for the crosses, I would have been in trouble.

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  58. Medium for a Sunday. Alright theme, though some of the movies were not that familiar - at least to me.

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  59. Anonymous11:04 AM

    Could someone explain what MasAcross is, and why the answer is EGAD?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You mean 1A? When you are shocked by something happening, you say YIKES or EGAD. I think it's a euphemism for OH GOD.

      Delete
    2. Anonymous1:14 AM

      OK, sorry, I feel kind on dense, but what is MasAcross? I’m not understanding this clue.

      Delete
    3. Anonymous2:14 AM

      I just found out it was a misprint. The local paper runs the NYT Crossword a week or two late. The clue for 1A in our paper said
      “1 MasAcross
      1 Yikes!”
      The first line shouldn’t be there.

      Delete
  60. Anonymous9:27 AM

    Ikebana? IKEBANA!! Great clue

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  61. After yesterday's SORESPOT, which I solved NOTONEBIT, IMREADY for this. Soon figured out that the themers were three one-word movie titles; that helped hugely throughout.

    My Scrabble dictionary defines UNMAN as "to deprive one of courage." As if males had the corner on that attribute! So I suppose "emasculate" is as good a clue as any.

    Nice puzzle--and nice extra example, @M&A. Birdie.

    Wordle bogey.

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  62. Anonymous3:08 PM

    What's up with you kids these days? You don't know your taw from your aggie from your steelie? Have you lost your marbles??? And gof forbid if parents saw their kids playing mumbly peg nowadays!

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  63. Anonymous10:25 PM

    Easy overall until the upper right corner.

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  64. Cross@words11:36 PM

    2012 prize is given in 2013, just like the Oscars.

    ReplyDelete