So-called "Las Vegas of the East" / TUE 10-22-24 / Offering in Eilish's clothing brand? / Bottoms decorated with characters from the "Odyssey"? / Close-fitting pajamas? / Cylindrical alternative to a French fry / Flavor enhancer in Doritos, for short
Tuesday, October 22, 2024
Constructor: Barbara Lin
Relative difficulty: Medium (i.e. normal for a Tuesday)
Theme answers:
- LONG STORY SHORTS (17A: Bottoms decorated with characters from the "Odyssey"?)
- SLEEP TIGHTS (27A: Close-fitting pajamas?)
- BILLIE JEANS (48A: Offering in Eilish's clothing brand?)
- CUT ME SOME SLACKS (62A: Request to a custom tailor?)
Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O'Connell (/ˈaɪlɪʃ/ EYE-lish; born December 18, 2001) is an American singer and songwriter. She first gained public attention in 2015 with her debut single "Ocean Eyes", written and produced by her brother Finneas O'Connell, with whom she collaborates on music and live shows. In 2017, she released her debut extended play (EP), Don't Smile at Me. Commercially successful, it reached the top 15 of record charts in numerous countries, including the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. [...] Eilish has received multiple accolades, including nine Grammy Awards, two American Music Awards, twenty Guinness World Records, seven MTV Video Music Awards, three Brit Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and two Academy Awards. She is the second artist in Grammy history to win all four general field categories—Record of the Year, Album of the Year, Song of the Year, as well as Best New Artist—in the same year. Eilish is also the first person born in the 21st century to win an Academy Award and the youngest ever two-time winner. She was featured on Time magazine's inaugural Time 100 Next list in 2019 and the Time 100 in 2021. According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and Billboard, Eilish is the 26th-highest-certified digital singles artist and one of the most successful artists of the 2010s. She was honored as one of the BBC 100 Women in December 2022. (wikipedia)
• • •
When the theme is solid, all the fill has to do is hold up, and the fill today did that just fine. We actually get six (6!) long Downs for our solving pleasure, and though there's lots of 3-4-5s, they never become particularly irksome. They lie low and stay largely inconspicuous. I kinda frowned at "UM, YEAH," because it's yet another one of these recently proliferating colloquialisms ("UH, SURE," "OH, OK," etc.) that are hard to get just right in the cluing. To my ear, the tones of "Well, duh!" and "UM, YEAH" are different, though I guess if I mentally added an "!" to "UM, YEAH!" then I might get closer to the naked contempt of "Well, duh!" I also frowned at OCHRE because I'm not Canadian and the puzzle isn't either so what the hell (52A: Earth tone). What the hell is up with this stupid color that can be spelled either -ER or -RE? Merriam-webster dot com has "-ER" as the main spelling and "-RE" as the variant. Being a good red-blooded American, I went with the "-ER" spelling and was not rewarded. Fixing this "mistake" created the only other slow spot in my solve. Almost all the "difficulty" today came in figuring out the wacky themers.
Bullets:
["Like taking candy from a baby" (it's sung)]
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Bullets:
- 5A: Vegetarian's protein source (TOFU) — it's a "protein source" for whoever eats it. I eat a lot of TOFU. I am not a vegetarian. TOFU is a staple of plenty of non-vegetarian cuisines around the world. Also, there are plenty of vegetarians who don't eat TOFU. This clue would feel better if they just dropped the apostrophe-s.
- 17A: Bottoms decorated with characters from the "Odyssey"? (LONG STORY SHORTS) — gotta admit to a certain amount of disappointment when I discovered this clue was *not* about ass tattoos. Scylla on one cheek, Charybdis on the other. It could work.
- 9A: So-called "Las Vegas of the East" (MACAO) — since "Las Vegas" is American I assumed "East" meant "Eastern America," like Atlantic City or something. Then I got the answer to M-C-- and thought "MECCA? Pretty sure they don't gamble there." Then remembered MACAO, which is a fairly common 5-letter crossword place name.
- 16A: Hard core exercise? (PLANK) — a very good "?" clue, though not as good as 66A: Place for grape nuts? (NAPA), which wins the "?" clue sweepstakes today.
- 47A: "Ability" for Johnny Carson's Carnac the Magnificent (ESP) — congrats to the NYTXW on acknowledging, for once, that ESP is, in fact, a quote-unquote ability and not an ability.
- 26D: Flavor enhancer in Doritos, for short (MSG) — congrats also to the NYTXW for not making the tried and true (and tired) reference to Chinese food here.
- 5D: Cylindrical alternative to a French fry (TATER TOT) — I guess they are cylinders, aren't they? They're so squat, and ... rough-surfaced? ... that I wouldn't usually think of them that way.
- 50D: They can cause sour experiences for car owners (LEMONS) — this got me wondering about the use of "lemon" to describe a defective car. So I looked it up: "Its first attribution to mean a problematic car was in a Volkswagen advertisement created by Julian Koenig and Helmut Krone as part of an advertisement campaign managed by William Bernbach, all advertising executives with the firm Doyle Dane Bernbach in 1960, which was a follow-up to their Think Small advertising campaign for VW."
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
55 comments:
Fantastic puzzle - nearly flawless. The theme is cool and tight and the overall fill elegant and mature. Although it’s a one off as Rex mentions - I really liked the CUT ME SOME SLACKS spanner. Lack of a revealer is slick.
Arthur Alexander
Limited glue - we get really nice long downs - BIG CHEESE, LOSES FACE. Agree with the big guy on the NAPA clue. The 4s and 5s really shine - GROWL, LAIRS, GLEAN, SNOB etc. are all top notch.
Highly enjoyable Tuesday morning solve.
And now I’m EASY
Come to papa, that's what I'm talkin about. Right on the Tuesday money, an easier than yesterday's as a Monday.
SLEEP TIGHTS, BILLIE JEANS, CUT ME SOME SLACKS, bwahaha. Get outta town, what's not to love. Nothing, that's what.
Somethin' pizzed you off.. ? There, there.. come on over here, sit next to Uncle Rip.
Backpedals. After blasting outta the NW, threw down 'BIG kahuna' at 4d, but quick e-brake into a drift.. Rip rocked round the bend. Hesitations. 25a, AX.. AX.. yeah'k. And CRUET, 43a, that spelt rite? Uh huh, good werd. Names. Everyone and his gran's seen at least one brothers Coen interview, yeah? (51d) Nada else.
Two phat thumbs up, way up. (*Ebert voice*)
(PS: Nearly half me Tues avg.. on a laptop. Madness.)
I don’t think I’ve ever seen, in a lifetime of reading about guitar music, “axe man” used without the “e” until today’s crossword - the crosses of “sext” and “msg” kept me from getting hung up on it, but I didn’t like it.
Easy. Liked it as much as OFL did. My only overwrite was MACAu before MACAO, but it appears that
both are correct.
Stellar puzzle today. Just a couple of speed bumps for me - I didn’t recognize MACAO and had the usual hesitation at UM YEAH (those kind of clues just never seem interesting).
One thing that will be interesting will be to see if the clue for CAR ANTENNA throws anyone a curve ball. It seems like it’s been along time (for me at least) since I’ve seen one of those old school antennas, but maybe I just haven’t been paying attention and they are still pretty prevalent.
I caught onto the theme quickly with CUTMESOMESLACKS. That made it an easy solve...except for the UMYEAH/TOFU cross. UMYEAH is a stretch, I think. Overall, a pleasant Tuesday without many challenging entries.
See how nice it is when you don't try to cram in a revealer that we don't need anyway? And take your time on the clues?
Nice enough that it was only post-solve that I noticed, E.S.P. R.N.A. I.M.O. T.B.H. M.S.G. M.P.H. O.K.s.
Love this puzzle. Perfect Tuesday. I suspect Rex’s super secret puzzle rating spreadsheet will receive a very high 9 or 10 entry today. Wait, who knows what scale he uses? Maybe it’d be 95 or maybe he uses stars, who knows. I know if I kept such a list, this would be in running for Tuesday of the year.
Anyway, great puzzle. Constructor had her debut puzzle in 2020, and has since racked up 14 puzzles, has hit for the cycle, and had 3 Chen POWs before he left. Congrats Barbara!
Had a hard time moving smoothly through this one for whatever reason, bouncing around and finally wound up in the SW where the crosses and clues led to CUTMESOMESLACKS and the aha! Extra S! There was the theme and things flew after that.
Had the OFL experience with not thinking of TATERTOTS as "cylinders" and finding UMYEAH less than ideal, but small issues indeed. Thought this was the best Tuesday in memory, tight, well-clued, and ingenious.
Well done you BL. I'm Betting Legions of solvers are happy today, and thanks for all the fun.
Just a package of lovely today.
Clever never-done-before theme that brought me from neutral to that filled-with-smiles feeling. That is a gift.
Great care in cluing.
• Misdirects: [Warning sound] for GROWL, which got me picturing things like alarms and sirens; [Small part] for CAMEO, which got me thinking about physical things; [Love, for Rafael Nadal] because “love” has meanings in both tennis and feelings.
• TILs – that ants communicate with pheromones, and even that Doritos have MSG.
• Wordplay: [Hard core exercise] for PLANK, [Going rate?] for MPH, and the magnificent [Place for grape nuts?] for NAPA.
• Riddles, such as [Body part that may be green] for IRIS, that had me taking a thorough mental body inventory, and still not get it until the crosses came.
Sweet extras: Three palindromes (WOW, OHO, ANNA) and fetching answers ORACLE, GLEAN, CRUET, and CAMEO.
Barbara, you are on a roll. This is your third puzzle in three months, and it’s easy to see why, as you infuse your puzzles with quality. Today’s shimmered with wit, beauty, humor, and skill. Thank you for making it!
Administrative note: I will be away tomorrow and maybe Thursday, due to a very full plate. I look forward to rejoining!
Syllabus and Charybdis may be your best yet. It got noisy around here when I read that one.
Hey All !
Fill for me surprisingly good. TATER TOT going through two Themers at the T's, then having to get the Across to work, while also needing to hook onto other Downs that cross two Themers in the bottom half. If you've never constructed a puz, you might not know what I'm saying, but it's not easy to get clean fill.
Puz in the EASY side, but it is Tuesday after all. Liked the theme. AXMAN neat to see.
UM, YEAH, that's about it. 😁
Happy Tuesday.
Two F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Wow. I didn’t really like this puzzle and am kind of astonished to see all the raves. Are people ignoring the awful fill in the upper center? AHEM, crossing OHO, and UMYEAH. Really?
Im too close to it, but how is an oboe a cousin of a english horn? They're not even in the same family. Woodwinds and Brass...
I was surprised to see Rex flag CUT ME SOME SLACKS as the outlier. To me the clear outlier was BILLIE JEANS in that it's based on a song title, while all the others are just based on common expressions/sayings.
SOYA before TOFU
In the movie Tin Men (1987), Barbara Hershey is doing an XW in one scene. She asks Danny DeVito for help with a clue and he says: "Try MACAO."
I can barely remember my grandchildren's names, but that I remember. Crazy.
I like everything about this puzzle -- from the cute and imaginative theme...to the smooth and junk-free grid...to the lively cluing featuring the occasional offbeat clue like the ones for IRIS and LEMONS. And much better to have four nifty themers than three themers and a tepid revealer. This is the sort of themed puzzle that no AI bot will ever dream up. It's much too quirky and idiosyncratically human. Very nice job, Barbara.
Not brass https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cor_anglais
OK theme, but after getting SHORTS (as clued) and TIGHTS I was hoping for an all-underwear theme. Would have been hard, though, I can't think of any. Well, maybe 'legal briefs' or 'Freudian slips,' so perhaps it's not so hard.
I loved cluing NAPA as a place for grape nuts. And I drove a SAAB for years, so the clue for 1-A made me sad.
Until I read Rex just now, I was so focused on wanting them theme answers to all involved underwear that I didn't really notice that they were all pants. Makes it a lot better for me.
I grew up thinking that the English horn was a kind of horn; I think I was over 40 when I realized that it was an OBOE. I play recorder, which comes in a great variety of sizes. almost all of which are called "recorder" with an adjective -- sopranino, soprano, alto, tenor, bass, great bass, contrabass. The is one called the voice flute, but you could call it a tenor in D; and the tiny garklein can be called sopranissimo recorder. So why do some instruments change their names when they change their size? I think it's just part of the mystery of music.
Córtame unos pantalones.
OHO! An OHO! Take that AHA!
Funny puzzle, but way too many partials for what amounts to four POCs. Thanks @Anoa Bob.
I don't wear shorts often, and the Odyssey never struck me as a long story, yet I'd still like some Odyssey-themed short pants. On the other hand, I now ask how long a movie is before I say yes. You get two hours and after that if the director and editor still haven't gotten them to fall in love then I'm going home with unrequited love. Make short movies.
My SLEEP TIGHTS are T-shirts I still own from the '90s, and drawstring pants meant for someone six sizes larger than me. I don't know why or when I gave up.
❤️ BIG CHEESE. TATER TOT.
We got rid of cable in our new house and we have an ANTENNA that looks like the big block in 2001: A Space Odyssey. We can see the TV towers on the top of the Sandias from my roof and now I can watch Bonanza and Gun Smoke for free. I have the TV guide bookmarked on my phone and right at this moment it looks like I could watch Perry Mason or Little House on the Prairie.
Propers: 5
Places: 3
Products: 2
Partials: 14 (ack)
Foreignisms: 1
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 25 of 76 (33%)
Funnyisms: 6 😅
Tee-Hee: SEXT.
Uniclues:
1 Angel who rawks hard.
2 Lonely fish floating to Fornax.
3 Sight on Green Bay football broadcasts.
4 Bugs got gnarly.
1 HARP AX MAN
2 SOLO SPACE COD
3 BIG CHEESE CAMEO
4 ANTS SAT ON SKIS
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Exclamation from one seeing a nood in the 15th century. DEAR ME! THINE CUCKOOS!
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
From Mental Floss:
According to Green’s Dictionary of Slang, using lemon to denote a fraudulent or worthless purchase dates back to 1909; its use in reference to cars specifically goes back to 1923, when one used car dealer profiled in The Oakland Tribune is said to have “congratulated himself upon having rid himself of a lemon finally.” Lemon as a noun or adjective has often been associated with something unpleasant or unpalatable—as some people find the tartness of the lemon to be—or something that’s turned sour.
The car-lemon connection may have been cemented with an ad Volkswagen ran in the 1960s. Like most of their minimalist advertising from the period, it consisted of a photo of a car and a stark caption: “lemon.” The copy goes on to say that Volkswagen’s quality inspectors had caught several flaws with this particular car, ensuring it didn’t arrive to a dealership with those blemishes intact.
“We pluck the lemons,” the ad concluded. “You get the plums.”
Hidden Diagonal Word (HDW) clues for today:
1. Ms. Blanchett
2. Big name in fillets
3. Common start in the film industry
Fun puzzle--played slightly more difficult than a typical Tuesday for me, although I'm not sure why. Looking back over it, it looks very straightforward. Not necessarily a WOW, but a quality grid for sure, with very little REFUSE.
Bought a car yesterday and got the standard LEMON law brochure; hope the Toyota folks gave it as much attention as the VW gang!
Answers:
1. CATE (off the C in 20A, ORACLE--the old C vs. K answer)
2. SOLE (off the S in 39A, TROTS--a food fish to join COD, 62D)
3. CINE (off the C in 43A, CRUET--CINEma, CINEmatic, CINEmatographer, a "letteral" clue)
If MACAO was tricky for you and it was the last answer you entered, at least it gave you the opportunity to END UP ON TOP. ("O MAN, that's a PANE")
Enjoyable, easy puzzle. I came here expecting gripes from Rex about ancient 20th century references: Beatles, Carnac, Quindlen and Rube. Instead, he seemed to like it as much as I did.
Anyone Google ROD CARANTENNA looking for a car show host they had never heard of? Anyone? Just me? OK then.
I heard that they cut a scene out of "Good Morning, Vietnam" where Robin Williams goes to an Asian casino for some R & R and wakes up the sleepy gamblers by yelling ALOHA, MACAO.
#&$%@# I said as my pants split as I took my seat. I guess you could say I SWEARSAT as I SATON the ottOMAN.
Two threats to the American consumer - - Big Pharma and BIGCHEESE.
I often call my granddaughter my little potato. I guess that makes her a TATERTOT.
Two thumbs up on this one. Thanks, Barbara Lin.
both double reed woodwinds and definitely cousins. English horn is deeper and richer (*See Largo of New World Symphony for instance)
Will try to be briefs: Cool TuesPuz.
staff weeject pick: TBH. Texter meat.
Thanx, Ms. Lin darlin. Really good stuff.
Masked & Anonymo4Us
**gruntz**
Wow - this was like the old days :)
A 'blast from the past" puzzle from a pro.
Thank you, Barbara, for today's gem & for setting the bar for other puzzles to follow 👏
(BTW - not to date myself but who coined that phrase? Was it Murray the K?????
POW?
Rex's suggestion for butt cheek tattoos puts an interesting spin on the phrase "Caught between Scylla and Charybdis".
Spent Christmas 1984 in Hong Kong while it was still a British colony, (That ended in 1997.) We took a hydrofoil ferry over to MACAO---didn't do any gambling---and from there took an all day excursion into the Chinese mainland. What I remember most was the cold weather. When we were going into some government building I thought "At least it will be warm inside". Nope. It was just as cold inside as it was outside. Oh, and I got the impression that they revered dead, plucked chickens.
I join those who thought this was a solid, well-crafted puzzle.
Medium. No WOEs and situp before PLANK and correcting OCHer were it for erasures.
Very little junk, some nice long downs, wacky theme, liked it.
The billie jeans was flat for because the name in the clue meant nothing
"Cut me some slacks " was my favorite. Who cares that it didn't follow the pattern of the others?
The first one took me longest to get because I kept trying to think ofa character from the Odyssey that could fit there.
Once the light dawned it did amuse me. 66A took me a while. Had bowl until that obviously didn't work. When Napa dawned it brought a smile.
I had to laugh when I saw that old ad in Rex's write-up. The most lemon-y car I ever owned was a 1970 VW Beetle, bought brand-new off the dealer's lot. Once every other month or so it would just shut down and refuse to re-start. Walk away, come back an hour later, and it would start up and run fine for another couple of months. The dealer could never find the problem, in spite of keeping it in the shop for a week at a time. Between that experience and the more recent "clean diesel" fraud, you couldn't get me to touch another one of their cars.
I didn’t know CRUET and that kinda left me Naticked at that crossing because I never know text message clues as I’m not 15.
Cut me some slack, 11down rod on the road...
CARANTENNA?
AZURE is having a big week! Two NYT crossword appearances and now a (spoiler alert) Strands appearance today.
I started out doing down clues only but soon abandoned that as just too many blanks, and not the slightest clue what the theme was. In any event the theme clues were no help until after the answers filled themselves in. Fun theme!
Rex, the ---RE ending is indeed used more often here in Canada; thanks for noticing! I have wondered if it's partly because many common words end that way in French (eg "centre"), so you can kill 2 languages with one stone on labels and signs.
Typeovers: hands up for SIREN before GROWL for "Warning sound", and DIALS before KNOBS on my Etch A Sketch.
I too enjoyed this one. I did get a little hung up on Macao, in fact, the north east corner was a little rough for me at first until I got most of the letters in antenna. My brother, being a vintage car and hot rod junkie had my mind going in another direction, then I had an eight down moment and immediately put down car and that opened up that section for me right away.
I always thought a lemon was called a lemon because of the French car Citron which translates to lemon. Those cars were the very definition of a lemon.
Maybe confusing English horn with French horn?
@DrSparks 11:01 AM and Sailor 1:04 PM
I owned a 1971 yellow VW Bug and calling it a lemon would be kind. Every other month it needed another $400 something and I was making $6.00 an hour back then. Replaced every part on that stupid hunk of junk until I finally gave it away. Oh, and 1971 taillights were incredibly rare, so those were stolen on a trip to visit my girlfriend (who's now my wife). Years later we bought a new Beetle and it was also yellow and it was also a lemon. So now I drive Toyota.
I had literally no idea. Spent ages trying to figure out what CARAN TENNA meant!
Anoa Bob 12:16 PM: "...1984 in Hong Kong while it was still a British colony... What I remember most was the cold weather..."
We (then gf an'I) too, 7 yrs later. Warm season--though barrenness you seem to describe echoed some of my impressions. TST and rest of HK, swank. But a ~3 wk tour of interior revealed some backward, bleak country-scape, incl. along Grand Canal. Forbidden City, endless terracotta warrior display, newly opened section of Great Wall, exceptional exceptions. Recall staring across the Huangpu from the The Bund at Pudong, cow pastures. Now all sky scrapers, much has changed. Rich culture, but not a fave trip.
PPS: Blew thru NW so quick, neglected to earlier recall after Names the former Times writer and inspiring woman, Anna Quindlen, and her moving work. And,
The Rex: "17A: Bottoms decorated...*not* about ass tattoos [interrobang]" Haha. Yess. BL, face-palming.. at the oversight. All of us, nodding in agreement.
And thumbs up to ad-provoked flashback. Mom'd a Squareback, HS mate, a beater Bus. Bugs here and there. Distinctive sounds, sends you right back. Nostalgia meter, 10.
Anonymous 12:15 PM
POW = puzzle of the week.
Dan
We can’t know everything.
Don’t have to dump on others just because you didn’t know TBH
(Sounds like you are saying if you knew TBH you are an adult acting like a teenager)
A huge % of adults text and most use some text short hand. I actually don’t like most of them and use only one or two. But I knew the answer from uh doing crosswords. It has come up a lot lately.
Nothing naticky about it
Okanaganer
About
-re vs -er
These words were originally borrowed from French centuries ago, and despite the fact that English speakers changed the pronunciation, in England, -re was retained
However, in the US in the early 19th Century , Noah Webster not only created a dictionary but tried to change American spelling . He partially succeeded and the -re to -er is one place where he succeeded. Canadians didn’t agree about that change. Although they accepted others And maybe because of the French influence. Interesting that another French spelling Webster changing cheque to check didn’t make it into Canada. Never thought about that before.
Ochre and theatre are 2 spellings that often still appear in the US. But that is purely snob appeal. The theatre maybe but always movie theater.
I find them annoying (from Americans that is).
Anonymous 2:08 pm
Citroën is the make (in French 3 syllables unlike citron).
Apparently it is an old American term for something bad, applied to cars a hundred years ago. Just a coincidence.
Rip rock
Loved Anna Quindlen’s column in the Times. Great writer.
@dgd... good point about those words coming from French. It's amazing how entire sections of the English language originated there (eg food, law and government) and have changed very little in 1400 years!
Oops.. my math was off; I should have said 1000 years (Norman conquest). 1400 (or 1500?) years was the Anglo Saxon invasion which created old English from their German.
CDilly52 back again with only a short comment. The delightful puzzle and the smiles and chuckles I enjoyed from the apparel theme was enhanced by @Rex’s “disappointment” that the LONG STORY SHORTS did not describe ass tattoos!
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