Speed reading, for short / FRI 10-4-24 / Liu regarded as China's first supermodel / Indian fried bread / High-end skin-care brand / Frequent Missy Elliott collaborator / Cannes "confirm"? / Acrobat displays / Demo for many parents of Alphas / Onetime home of the world's largest pineapple plantation

Friday, October 4, 2024

Constructor: Zhouqin Burnikel

Relative difficulty: Extremely easy (like a Tuesday or Wednesday)


THEME: none 

Word of the Day: POORI (6D: Indian fried bread) —

Puri, also poori, is a type of deep-fried bread, made from unleavened whole-wheat flour, originated from the Indian subcontinent.

Puris are most commonly served as breakfast or snacks. It is also served at special or ceremonial functions as part of ceremonial rituals along with other vegetarian food offered in Hindu prayer as prasadam. When hosting guests it is common in some households to serve puri in place of roti, as a small gesture of formality. (wikipedia)

• • •

A zippy little puzzle, but maybe too zippy. I blew through it like it wasn't there, like walking through smoke, just ... no resistance, anywhere. Even when I didn't know something, or immediately recall it (as with POORI), I seemed to flow right over and around it via adjacent answers and crosses without any apparent speed-drop or extra effort. I think the first time I actually pulled up, once I got started, was way down in the SE corner, when I couldn't get BUFFET off the "BU" ... and honestly, in retrospect, that should've been obvious. Before that, I'd basically tumbled down the grid, from NW to SE, seemingly by sheer force of gravity as opposed to any real cogitation on my part. First guesses were going right in and proving correct every time. I mean, I even remembered every damn letter in LGBTQIA, in order, on my first try (29A: Initialism that precedes "+"). I guess it's really only those last two that are (somewhat) hard to come up with, since they're latecomers to the letter string, and anyway it seemed unlikely to be "AI" since all that does is evoke our dystopian robot-controlled future (which is to say, present), so "IA" it was! And this happened over and over—I'd throw down the first thing that came to me and damned if it wasn't right. HIDEY HOLE off the "IDE" (16A: Place to conceal oneself), TYPE 'A'S off the "Y" (14D: Go-getters, often), the GIRL part of DREAM GIRL (8D: Certain romantic ideal), the HERO part of ITALIAN HERO (are there other HEROs? and how is this different from an "Italian sub," which definitely sounds more familiar?) (11D: Long lunch?)—even stuff I didn't really know, like AESOP ("is it ... AESOP? it is!? ha ha, look at me, remembering beauty product stuff!") (34D: High-end skin-care brand). It all just went right in. Overall, the puzzle was very smooth and very easy, but it wasn't terribly exciting. The marquee answers are fine, but as with lots of Fridays lately, there wasn't a ton of sparkle. Nothing I was really thrilled or surprised to see. But still, it all holds up. A not unpleasant experience, for sure.


There's one square that seems potentially problematic—one where I can imagine solvers making a bad guess (because most of them will not have heard of one of the answers, for sure). That square is the "E" in the WEN / AU NATUREL crossing. I'm sure Liu WEN is a big deal in her profession (56D: Liu regarded as China's first supermodel), but in this grid, she's the least familiar name (at least to me), and proper nouns are always dangerous, especially at the vowels, so the "E" here is a potential "yikes" moment. Yes, you should probably know that it's AU NATUREL, not AU NATURAL (59A: In the buff) ... but I feel like people (mis)pronounce it "NATURAL" all the time (with the last syllable accented and sounding like a guy named "AL"). And yes, WAN is less probable as a name, especially considering that it's a perfectly ordinary English word and would likely get clued that way. But WAN is a name—a Chinese name at that—so if you don't know the supermodel here (and I know a lot of you, like me, didn't), then WAN wouldn't be a bad guess. I'm just saying that this is the one and only square in the puzzle that made me go "yeesh, I am not 100% here... oh well, fingers crossed." Ideally, there should be zero of those squares in a puzzle.* Then again, I'm on record as not giving a damn about "supermodels" and having no real knowledge of that world, so it's possible Liu WEN is like Cindy Crawford-famous and I'm alone, or nearly alone, in even hesitating at this square.


It's a debut for POORI, which is cool, but it's a little weird that we got POORI before PURI, if only because four-letter answers are generally more plentiful than 5s. Actually, PURI was in a puzzle once ... in 1976, as a [Hindu pilgrimage center]. Maybe it appears more often on Indian menus in America as POORI? Yes, based on this single randomly selected menu from an Indian restaurant in Milwaukee, it looks like POORI is the preferred menu spelling in this country. 

[Antique Indian Restaurant]


Explainers:
  • 1D: Speed reading, for short (MPH) — maybe the hardest part of the puzzle, in that it was the second clue I looked at (after getting MWAH immediately), and ... well, I had no idea what was going on here. I didn't know "speed reading" had an initialism or acronym or whatever. Turns out, the clue isn't about speed reading (as in, reading quickly) at all; it's the "reading" of your "speed" on your speedometer (or the cop's radar gun, or any speed measuring device). And (car) speed is, in fact (in this country, anyway), measured in miles per hour (MPH). 
  • 5A: Tablet that's impossible to swallow? (IPAD) — I like the "?" here. Like ... someone somewhere is definitely thinking "'Impossible,' eh? ... hold my beer..."
  • 44A: Business name abbr. (LLC) — had the "C" and went with INC. This is what passes for "difficulty" today.
  • 23D: What often carries a U.S.D.A. seal (ORGANIC BEEF) — really wish this clue had been more BEEF-specific. I mean, ORGANIC anything might carry this seal, right? Yes, pretty much. The USDA website has a subsection labeled "Honey, mushrooms, pet food," and uses "organic dill" (!) as an example at one point. Did anyone guess ORGANIC DILL here? PORK? FIGS? DUCK? My point is, if you're gonna have a BEEF answer, get a BEEF clue. 
  • 43A: Once, for one (NUMERO) — "Once" is Spanish for the number (NUMERO) "eleven."
  • 15D: So-called "explosion shot" from a sand trap (BLAST) — this one tried to confuse me with golf lingo but joke's on you, clue—I had the "-AST," took one look at "explosion," and had my answer. This clue could've just been [Explosion]. But I guess the golf demographic must be served.
  • 57D: Apt letters missing from __ipper_ (SLY) — first, "Apt letters missing" feels all kinds of grammatically wrong. "Letters aptly missing," maybe? Second, there was at least a couple seconds where I was thinking "What is SLS?" But then I got saved by GEN Y. Speaking of ... 
  • 62A: Demo for many parents of Alphas (GEN Y) — ugh no one calls it that. Only crosswords call Millennials "GEN Y." It goes Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z, and, I guess, Alphas (a default reset so we could start over at the beginning of the (Greek) alphabet??). But GENYGENY
  • 50A: Acrobat displays (PDFS) — Acrobat is software (from Adobe) that allows you to view and manipulate PDF files.
  • 54D: Cannes "confirm"? (OUI) — clue of the day. If you "confirm" something in Cannes, you might simply say OUI. It's a pun on "Can confirm" (a common affirmative reply, esp. online). 
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

*It's at least theoretically possible that solvers might botch the CIARA / SABRA crossing as well (36A: Frequent Missy Elliott collaborator / 20D: Big name in hummus). Two not-universally-famous propers crossing at a vowel—never not dicey.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

82 comments:

Rick Sacra 5:42 AM  

Certainly took me longer than @Rex! 19 minutes for me. Enjoyed every minute. Very smooth puzzle, nothing impossible, just slow progress. Toughest time was with the proper nouns/names in the center of the grid. Favorite images--drinking PINOTNOIR in my HIDEYHOLE, and catching glimpses of the AUNATUREL neighbors breaking NOISELAWS at their raucous party! Great puzzle, ZB! as usual...

Johnny Mic 6:19 AM  

I had a DNF because of the predicted WEN/WAN issue. Which was a weird experience. Very easy with a dash of not possible for me. Hard to get excited about it. But I'm excited for the Midwest Crossword Tournament tomorrow!!

Adam 6:24 AM  

I found this more difficult than OFL. AS usUal instead of AS A RULE, and I did in fact have AU NATURAL and couldn't find that mistake for quite a while. Never heard of her. And frankly haven't seen the last two letters of LGBTQ, which is when I usually see the +. I get the feeling it's more commonly known among academics than in the corporate world. Could figure if it was LLC or LTD, so I had issues all over the grid. I found it Friday difficult.

Anonymous 6:30 AM  

Only the NW felt truly smooth, mostly because my brain played tricks on me with 8D. I had DREAM DATE, then got LGBTQIA and for a second I forgot the “romantic” part and figured that DREAM GOAL (?!) must be a thing, confirmed by HTML. The incorrect GOAL made me doubt GLEAMED because it gave me -EO- at 32A.

And I straight up overthought certain clues. I refused to put in SIGNS for “pluses and minuses” because it seemed too easy. 38A suggested DINE, but “spread”? Is “spread” another term for some kind of BUFFET, or is it the “spread” you put on bread? The clue felt odd. I just wasn’t vibing with the clues today.

I finished at GEN Y, which I wanted earlier because of “Alphas” but I don’t think I’ve ever seen “demo” for “demographic. The standard way to misdirect with “demo” is [Demo stuff, briefly] for TNT, where it means “demolition”.

Anonymous 6:37 AM  

PURI could be clued as “Famed Indian actor Amrish”. He played Mola Ram in Temple of Doom!

Bob Mills 6:46 AM  

Finished it without cheating, thanks to some guesswork. Didn't know CIARA or SABRA, but no other letters fit with the crosses. GENY looked wrong, but SLUG seemed the only possible metaphor for idleness. I had "letter-a" for the initialism before +, because A+ made sense, but LGBTQ(etc.) didn't register because of the last two letters.

It didn't seem quite as easy as Rex suggested.






Anonymous 7:14 AM  

The difficult cross for me was WEN/GEN Y, because I wasn’t reading “demo” as demographic or “Alphas” as a generational term. I was trying to figure out what kind of demonstration would take place on Family Day at the sorority house.

David F 7:15 AM  

AU NATUREL caught me, which is embarrassing as someone who actually SPEAKS French. Other than that, I agree - simple, breezy Tues-Wed level puzzle. Some interesting/fun longs, but nothing truly scintillating. I did kinda like the clue for PDFS, though, even if I'm not fond of fill like that...

NJT 7:18 AM  

Naticked as predicted at the AUNATUREL/WEN cross. Never heard of the supermodel and despite having taken a decade of French, I forgot the spelling, confidently dropped in au natural and then spent forever trying to figure out why I wasn't getting the happy music.

Anonymous 7:19 AM  

All I know about hummus is chickpeas and the Middle East. SABRA is the word for a native-born Israeli, so that seemed to be a reasonable guess.

Anonymous 7:24 AM  

Can someone explain 21 Down answer: "bused"?
Clue was: "cleared up after waiting, perhaps". Thanx!

Rick 7:25 AM  

also found it quite difficult.

Anonymous 7:27 AM  

A quick google search tells me that "noise code" is probably as valid as NOISELAWS, which then lets you turn the SE corner into SCUM/ORE/DEN/ELS in the downs and MENS at 62A. Not sure if that's any better but at least then there's no Natick around WEN/NATUREL and I'd certainly prefer MENS to GENY.

SouthsideJohnny 7:29 AM  

Fell for the WEN/WAN trap as Rex predicted, and of course I’ve never heard of CIARA or SABRA.

Not a fan of the clue for ETAT, but at least the word itself is common usage. Counting to eleven in Spanish is at least is stepping on the line, but probably not over it, especially on a Friday.

The rest of it was good stuff for a Friday - tough, but cluing that you could wrestle with and finally have an “aha” here and there. I suspect that Rex blows through the tough stuff because a lot of what we may have to confirm with crosses, he just drops in - so it feels like a Wednesday to him. There’s no way I’m just going to pop in HIDEY HOLE without at least a few crosses for example, and I suspect that I have a fair amount of company in that regard.

So at the end of the day, this one hit the sweet-spot for me, difficulty-wise.

JJK 7:36 AM  

Very easy for a Friday. There were still a few sticking places for me, mostly in the NE, where I had a hard time with both ITALIANHERO (I think Rex is right, the term is ITALIANsub), and BONUSISSUES. Also, I don’t understand how LANAI, which I thought was a general term for a veranda, comes from the specificity of “the world’s largest pineapple plantation”.

pabloinnh 7:50 AM  

Not Monday or Tuesday here, more like a proper Friday. Good start in the NW but stuck after trying ATYPES, which I corrected much later. Actually got started in the SE with OUI and made slow but steady progress after that.

Sticking points at GENY, POORI, AESPOP, CIARA, and the last two letters of LGBTQ. SCADSOF before LOADSOF didn't help either, and shame on me for reading "Once" as, well, "once". Odd clue for LANAI too.

I liked this one a lot, ZB. Lots of Zigzagging Because of clue misdirects, but that led to a lot of satisfying "well of course" moments. Thanks for all the fun.

Anonymous 8:00 AM  

What about bused? Shouldn't it be bussed?

Anonymous 8:01 AM  

Wait. . .bused should be bussed

Dr.A 8:15 AM  

Meh, I found it much harder than Rex. ORGANIC BEEF is a weird answer because USDA does not indicate organic at all. It has to say Organic but that is a pet peeve of mine because I only eat grass fed organic beef (yes I’m that person, annoying I know). Anyhoo, fun, just not as easy as all that for me.

Anonymous 8:42 AM  

Easy—played like a tough Tuesday. The only issue for me was html. For some reason I simply can not ever remember the right order of the letters. Kind of like I can not spell Atilla.

Whatsername 8:49 AM  

Easy but not that easy, Rex! Always makes me feel smart to finish a Friday without any cheats, but I had to work at it. The best part was starting with MWAH and the hint of a delicious dinner, accompanied by a nice glass of PINOT NOIR. AH BLISS! And if you happened to get lucky, maybe it was even on a date with your DREAM GIRL. Or on dream DATE which was my first guess. Hopefully, she was wearing her AESOP makeup and not AU NATURAL. Anyway, it was nice to have a non-taxing, stress-free Friday to wind down for the weekend.

Diane Joan 8:51 AM  

I had to get a lifeline to solve the last few clues. I misspelled “au naturel” and then thought the demo was some sort of weird test that the Alphas of a sorority made parents sit through. Then I topped it off by filling in “sls” instead of “sly” for the missing letters. I totally bungled that corner! But thanks to this blog I got clarification of my errors! Otherwise a pretty easy Friday.

Whatsername 8:51 AM  

Bused a table (after waiting on it) in a restaurant.

Anonymous 8:56 AM  

Like a busboy at a restaurant cleaning a table that’s been waited on

Ride the Reading 9:00 AM  

At a restaurant - bus the table means to clear and clean it after diner(s) finish/leave. So a server/waiter might bus after waiting

RooMonster 9:02 AM  

Hey All !
I feel into the SW A vs E conundrum today. Not helping I had _ERS in for GENY. I wanted YERS, which is even worse. The resulting SLUY made no sense, so I had to break down and Goog the Chinese supermodel (as Edna Mode from The Incredibles said, "Supermodels! Ha! There's nothing 'super' about them!"). Once I had that, the ole brain decided to work in seeing SLUG/GENY. Way to go, brain!

Nice to see CC again, it's been a minute. I liked the puz overall, and agree it was on the easy side. Not RexEasy, but not hair-tearing either. I was stuck in various areas, but threw in answers i thought would be correct, and went from there.

Couple writeovers I remember, crux-GIST, kane-ASHE (didn't read the parenthasized part! Just saw Citizen-four letters- KANE!), UScg-USNA, reversed the IA-AI ala Rex.

If baseballsr Cobb ate pods, were they TY PEAS?
Strong alien? - BUFF ET

Anyway, Happy Friday!

Three F's
RooMonster
DarrinV

Prof. Buddha 9:22 AM  

As in, “The bus boy bused the table after the diners left.” I think it’s an alternative spelling of “bussed,” which scans more easily. I have nostalgic memories (now, at this long remove) of being a “bus boy” at Bob Evans during my college summer breaks in the 1980s. If you are fortunate to live in a state with a Bob Evans (I am far from one now), go get yourself some of their buttermilk biscuits and chicken ‘n’ noodles. You’ll be glad you did.

Anonymous 9:26 AM  

Busboys bus tables at restaurants.

Prof. Buddha 9:34 AM  

It’s a good question, and as with so many things in English, it’s not consistent. My go-to reference, Fowler’s Modern English Usage, says that with suffixes to monosyllabic and last syllable stresses words ending in S “there is wide variation in practice among printers and publishers,” but Oxford University Press does not double. So its atlases, biases, focuses, focused, etc., and buses, busing, bused. It’s gases *but gassed and gassing. Go figure!

Anonymous 9:35 AM  

It’s an Hawaiian island.

Anonymous 9:35 AM  

Finished quickly but no music. Took me about 10-12 minutes to find the WEN/AUNATUREL error referenced by Rex. A horrendous cross but the rest of the puzzle was Tuesday easy.

Beezer 9:39 AM  

LANAI is also a Hawaiian island.

Anonymous 9:43 AM  

Not a fan of this one. I guess I'm not at all on the creator's wavelength. Half the clues were obscure AF.

Beezer 9:52 AM  

Really enjoyed the puzzle and most areas kind of “whooshed” in EXCEPT the West, due to the fact I had Ltd instead of LLC and stupidly accepted the fact that the 21D “form” might have you do “something” tHERE instead of “something” HERE. Still, managed to sort THAT out only to finish with the “close, but no cigar” message. Since I don’t care about “streaks”, I “checked puzzle” to find…you’ve got it …AUNATURaL.
I don’t care! Fun puzzle.

Anonymous 9:55 AM  

This took me twice as long as my Friday average. Approximately 20 minutes to get the solve (with major problems in the whole west section) and then another 20 minutes trying to find the error. It was the wan/natural of course) but I also was unsure if Lanai or Lanay/Shyer or Shier. Must’ve read through every answer looking for typos 5 times. But eventually got the right combo without Google.

Gary Jugert 9:56 AM  

Advertencia: La pista en español de este crucigrama podría enfurecer a algunas personas.

Top half suspiciously easy, bottom half crazy difficult. Another wonderful expedition.

I picture an R. Crumb drawing of a dude shoving an iPad down a huge maw.

We had a HIDEY HOLE in our cat's tower and he used it maybe five times in fifteen years, but it always got him photographed. That's when I lived in the LANAI Condominiums. The pineapples there came from Kroger.

Here in the Land of Enchantment, they have Navajo Fry Bread, which is sometimes referred to as Indian Fry Bread, so when crosses led me to POORI, I asked my wife (my DREAM GIRL) if she knew it. Nope. Googled. Ohhhh, India, duh. They kinda look like sopapillas.

Boy that NUMERO clue with its deceptive [Once] was full of Spanish, eh? Hope everyone is okay with it.

I bet I stared at the GENY/WEN crossing for five minutes. I ran the alphabet several times.

❤️ MWAH. ENIGMA (7th favorite word).

😫 Cluing AESOP as makeup. We are a literary endeavor people. AESOP is AESOP.

Propers: 3
Places: 1
Products: 4
Partials: 9
Foreignisms: 3
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 20 of 72 (28%)

Funnyisms: 4 🙂

Tee-Hee: LUST [In the buff] => AU NATUREL?

Uniclues:

1 Where you'll find mom hopefully.
2 New and exciting Nintendo game where you close on a house.
3 Make a list of most wanted garden tools. (You weren't thinking scandalously were you?)
4 When fastidious one isn't fastidious.
5 Holding a cat at the vet.
6 Purpose of the club.
7 How Israel is handling diplomacy these days.

1 PINOT NOIR BOOTH
2 WII INITIAL HERE
3 ENTER HOES LUST (~)
4 TYPE A'S BLIPS
5 IN HAND CHAOS
6 DREAM GIRL SPINS
7 BLAST BUFFET

My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Native drag queen. PAWNEE CHER HAM.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Anonymous 9:57 AM  

Lanai is an island in the Hawaiian islands.

Unknown 10:18 AM  

Initially, AS USUAL for AS A RULE, REFS for RBIS, and USCG (Coast Guard) for USNA.

Anonymous 10:20 AM  

Odd Friday puzzle. Played like a Monday/Tuesday and then WEN/WAN thrown in to likely derail most solvers. Blech. Hoping Saturday makes up for this disappointment.

Nancy 10:29 AM  

I felt absolutely no resistance at all as I galloped through the NW wondering if I should check my calendar to see if it was really Friday. I did pause at the prime suspect clue pondering who else, other than the butler would be the culprit and I was pleased when HEIR came in. I paused again at ORGANIC -- would it be EGGS or MEAT? -- but it was BEEF. I gave the side-eye to the clue for DINE (38A) -- which was the only clue that truly baffled me -- but I think it was pretty tortured. Nice clues for NOISE LAWS and NUMERO. But couldn't something cleverer and more entertaining have been done for AU NATUREL?

Never mind. I'm cluing a new puzzle right now, and AU NATURAL just gave me an idea for a very off-beat clue I can try for one of the answers. Too off-beat? We'll see.

Alphas, now? Why are we so bound and determined to name and proclaim new "generations" the nanosecond they emerge from the womb? Don't we have our craws full of identity politics already?

And speaking of that: Re 29A: Will they just keep adding more and more letters until every letter in the alphabet has been used at least once?

Conclusion: This is a constructor who just doesn't do "Hard." Friday is probably not the best day for her, but OTOH, it's a themeless, so what can you do? (Well you could change the arbitrary "rules" for themed vs themeless, but that's a question for another day.) Anyway, it's a junk-free grid and on an earlier day of the week it would have been quite lovely.

egsforbreakfast 10:36 AM  

I've noticed the proliferation of dedicated parking spaces at Home Depot lately. Now, in addition to the traditional "Handicapped ", you've got "Veterans", "Seniors", "Law Enforcement ", "Pro" and "Seahawks Fan." Maybe they should set aside some market "L", "G", "B", "T", "Q", "I", "A" and "+".

If you doubt whether someone could swallow an IPAD, check out this guy:

Yes, it's true. Michel Lotito, known as 'Monsieur Mangetout,' was born on June 15, 1950, in Grenoble, France. He was famous for deliberately eating indigestible objects. It took Michel approximately 2 years, from 1978 to 1980, to completely consume the airplane.

It's traditional in our household to salute our ITALIANHERO with a French Toast.

Not as easy for me as it was for @Rex. Good fun. Thanks, Zhouqin Burnikel.

Anonymous 10:50 AM  

What on the wrong wavelength and got bogged down.

Based on the P I put in STRIP for “prepare to swing” when in tone went well with BUTT NAKED for “in the buff”. And DREAM DATE caused a hangup.

And with -IARA and no on the down yet decided Missy Elliott must wear a tiara and collaborator was being used widely.

Noah W. 10:52 AM  

Either is correct. Bused is preferred (in both British and American English), but not by much - if only not to confuse it with the past tense of buss (to kiss), which is bussed. Not trying to bust your balloon, however.

Whatsername 10:55 AM  

Guess I misspelled NATUREL also, but didn’t even know it until you just told me. And I had the same error with SLS/slippers.

jberg 10:56 AM  

I got excited when I came to HIDEY HOLE! I didn't dare to put it in without a few more crosses, but there it was!

The puzzle has a high number of convoluted puns and answers that are non-obviously in foreign languages. The worst of these is NUMERO. You know what else fits there? advERb, that's what. And since AESOP has a ridiculous clue, the B seemed almost as good as the O in that spot. Pennsylvanie does have that inconspicuous spelling change, but the only indication here is that NUMERO crosses ITALIAN HERO.

Well , it is Friday, so I guess it should be difficult, and I did come to respect the puzzle, even if I didn't love it. And I was prompted to look up what the I stands for. But I still have no idea who Missy Elliott is.

For 42-D, "momentary disruptions," my first thought was BurPS, but I only put in BU_PS, thinking it might be BumPS. That only really screwed things up for me, but it was fun in hindsight.

Oops, I just reread the clue for 62-A, and I realized that we're looking for the parents of Gen Alpha (whatever that is), which I guess must be GEN Y, not the plural SENs, and the missing letters are from slippery, not slippers. I guess. Really, you could have just clued the word SLY, unless I'm wrong about the generation.

OK, I'd better read Rex & al.

Later

jae 10:58 AM  

Yep, easy. My WOEs were POORI, WEN, and AESOP.

Erasures: inC (hi @ Rex) before LLC and food before BEEF.

A typical C.C. grid, very smooth with a bit of sparkle, liked it.

jberg 11:20 AM  

I know French well enough to know it's NATUREL, but that only made me think it might be Liu WEi, since I had no idea what kind of demo we might be looking for: a political act? An exhibition of how a new product works? I did see it at the very last moment -- while walking up the stairs to my computer after I thought I had finished.

In Wisconsin, where I grew up, county highways get letters, as in "County Highway T." When they use up the first 26, they just start again with doubled letters, AA, BB, etc. If any counties have more than 52 county roads, I've never heard of them.

Back in the 1970s here in Boston, when the courts had ordered using buses to achieve desegregation of public schools, we saw many explanations in the press as to why it was busing and not bussing, so that one didn't trouble me.

M and A 11:45 AM  

@RP: Extremely easy? ... well ... maybe semi-easy-ish, at our house, except for:

* no-knows: CIARA/SABRA. POORI.
* That E in AUNATUREL/WEN.
* That NUMERO/Once thing.
* whittled-down BUSSED.
* LGBTQIA spellin challenge.

staff weeject pick: SLY. Loved that {Apt letters missing from _ _ipper_} clue. Could make a great runtpuz theme mcguffin!

fave extra: BONUS ISUES. [See what I did, there, busers?]

Thanx, Ms. Burnikel darlin. Was entertained. Clasy construction.

Masked & Anonymo8Us


**gruntz**

Carola 11:47 AM  

The puzzle won me over early with the delightful HIDEY-HOLE, followed by DREAMboat....which, because I'm so fond of the word, I refused to erase until I absolutely had to. That was one of the two snags that kept the puzzle out of "easy" range for me. The other was the SE, where I clung to SLipperS, didn't know WEN or what Alphas are, and didn't understand "Demo." Brain-racking eventually got me to SLY and GENY and "demographic." That corner was definitely Friday territory for me.

I liked the happy exclamations MWAH and AH BLISS and like @Rich Sacra 5:42 was thinking "party time," with folks having a BLAST and LOADS OF fun, if not breaking noise laws then in solving a crossword.

Anonymous 11:54 AM  

Great to see CC puzzle. Always clean and fun. Agree with all those who thought it breezy until the SE. Cute generational crossing of LGBTQIA with DREAMGIRL.

jb129 12:15 PM  

Not that I'm complaining - but isn't today Friday?
C'mon NYT!
I sped through this & I enjoyed it although I was tripped up on Au Naturel & stared at it for a long time.
Thank you, ZB & nice to see you again :)

jae 12:34 PM  

…I too needed to fix the WaN WEN problem cross.

Fun_CFO 12:43 PM  

Solved this at 4a after awakened by an iPhone Emergency BLUE ALERT (for a suspect involved in a police shooting 6 hours away from me, agh!) and couldn’t go back to sleep. Even though Rex solves at a similar time everyday, let’s just say I’m glad I don’t have to. Not my sharpest.

Even so, I agree on the easy side for a Friday. Having said that, no way is this a Tuesday…maybe a medium/hard Wednesday. There’s just too many obscure answers and enough Friday level cluing trickery to ever run this early-week. And I think this early-week stalwart constructor would agree.

Nice breezy Friday solve.

Anonymous 12:51 PM  

Different regions say sub or hero or hoagie or grinder etc. In an nyc bodega you usually have the option of your sandwich on a roll or a hero.

Anonymous 12:53 PM  

Yes but the USDA Organic seal is the particular USDA seal to which the clue refers.

Anonymous 12:58 PM  

Means you caught the bus, so your schedule cleared up.

Anonymous 12:59 PM  

It’s pronounced “BOO-st.”

Anonymous 1:38 PM  

Same although…. you’d probably never know in the days of pencils and newspapers.

okanaganer 1:39 PM  

Agree with Johnny Mic 6:19 am "very easy with a dash of not possible". Hands up for WAN / AU NATURAL... damned Unknown Names. Further complicated by forgetting there was such a thing as GEN Y right below it.

Correctly guessed the A at CIARA / SABRA, but thank you crosses for the last two letters of LGBTQIA (which is past ridiculous; are we going to add an H for the left handers?)

Anonymous 1:54 PM  

Once, for one mixed the language which is misleading

Raymond 2:10 PM  

To expand on SABRA: a sabra is a prickly pear (grows wild in lsrael; it was historically planted on plot borders to serve as fences to keep animals in and intruders out, and characterizes a native-born Israeli because lsraelis are typically prickly on the outside but tender inside, like the prickly pear.

Anonymous 2:24 PM  

Yes, I agree! Thank you!

Anonymous 2:25 PM  

I went through several times and was like “what is WRONG” and eventually lucked out in trying letters across different problem areas

Unknown 4:12 PM  

For Rex and anyone else that doesn't know in and around NYC a large long sandwich aka sub, grinder, hoagie, is called a hero. Since the NY TImes is published in NYC, that clue seems fair.

Beezer 5:09 PM  

Thanks! I will say, I THINK the term “hero” has become synonymous across the U.S. at this point, BUT I did not know it originated in NYC. (D’oh! Many terms did due to Ellis Island).

kitshef 5:20 PM  

Hard Friday. Don't understand the clue for BUSED at all. vINO Tinto at 13A caused some headaches.

Anonymous 5:21 PM  

In War and Peace Tolstoy’s aristocratic laments that whereas the current generation speaks in French but their grandparents thought in French!

hankster65 5:55 PM  

Just a guess here, but I'm willing to bet money that no one in all of the history of the English language has ever used DEMO to mean demographic. Not happy with this DNF.

GILL I. 5:56 PM  

Well, I want to say that I've been impressed with @Gary J's Spanish. I might've, though, said "Aviso" instead of "Advertencia," and instead of pista (which is used more often as a runway), I would've said "Indicio." BUT....grammatically speaking, you're doing great and please keep it up!

The puzzle today was fun. I didn't exactly whizz by, and I knew @Rex would rate is at easy (though secretly I had hoped he might've said THIS WAS VERY HARD!). A GIRL can DREAM

I had some stops and go's. I had no idea what 28A meant . I did't know that initialism that precedes "+" clue stands for LGBTQ et al. I was able to fill it in thanks to the G from GIRL and the Q for QUALM. The IA is a total mystery. I got it but I didn't get it.

Come to my conclusion and I pause for a long time. WEN GENY got me good. My AH BLISS went up in smoke. [sigh]. But I will say this was one fun puzzle and I felt smart and accomplished because I didn't have to Google on a Friday even though I had a wrong ending. Can't wait to see what disaster I will come up with mañana.

Anonymous 6:16 PM  

Perhaps a little tougher than normal for the non Americans among us ... SABRA was rough, I should have backed my RBIS first instinct, ITALIAN HERO what, like Rocky?!? I still don't really understand ETAT. Fun, chewy puzzle though !

Anonymous 7:46 PM  

I will take your money. It’s a common abbreviation

Anonymous 8:34 PM  

And as often as It appears in this puzzle, BUSED looks to me as if it should be pronounced “byouzd,” but whatcha gonna do? I know that during the first wave

And by the way, @Prof. Buddha, your Bob Evans comment brought back memories of the one in Bloomington-Normal IL. My dad used to meet with his doctoral students there for breakfast.

Anonymous 9:00 PM  

Happy Friday! CDilly 52 happy to see one of my favorite constructors today. Zhouqin Burnikel never fails to bring clever and humorous clues. This one was chick full of them and only one nearly got me. Demo either meant demonstration or demolition, neither of which would have ever given me GEN Y. However, it gets weirder. I slayed the SE as it happens using downs. As I read through the “finished but for a typo somewhere” filled out grid, I thought “what’s a GENY (pronounced by my brain as ‘jenny’)? So as is my wont, I checked my downs and was 100% certain they were correct. In these rare instances, I simply tell myself to go see what @Rex has to say. Cleared it up, but this old gal is so tired at the current practice of shortening words. In my opinion this does not improve communication, but trends are what they are and I do not have to participate. But really, why with “demo” already being used for demonstration and demolition, do we even want to use it for demographic? Oh well.

Ages ago, I got DNF’d by “once” meaning eleven in Spanish and I never forgot it. I felt so good breezing right through that one.

All in all this was vintage CC Burnikel. And I do not care that it likely should have run earlier in the week.

Anonymous 9:15 PM  

I thought AESOP intersecting regular SOP was a little too SOPpy.

Also had ORGANICtEff for an embarrassingly long time. I found the puzzle quite challenging and a typical Friday.

Anonymous 9:42 PM  

Pennsylvanie is French for PA. ETAT is French for state.

Anonymous 11:22 PM  

Me, too!

Anonymous 12:00 AM  

Geny was a bad answer. It’s not the first time I’ve seen sloppy/hard to justify answers in the NYT cxwords this year. And, it coincides with WS being on medical leave and JF in his place. Just calling it the way I see it.

Anonymous 9:36 AM  

Me, too. The clues were too vague.

Anonymous 2:02 PM  

Blown away by how easy people thought this was. This was one of the hardest Friday puzzles for me in recent memory.

Anonymous 7:38 PM  

So that’s what “demo” meant here!

Anonymous 1:16 PM  

LQBTQIABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQ

Anonymous 1:20 PM  

Not snark but not only do I turn my phone off but I keep it in another room (kitchen) on a different floor from my bedroom.

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