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Relative difficulty: Medium? Maybe a little north of Medium... (**for a Tuesday**)
Theme answers:
- TENNESSEE TITANS (17A: A.F.C. South team ("Look in the lake! It's ... ah, never mind") (false NESSIE, i.e. Loch Ness Monster, sighting)
- MUCKRAKING (23A: Investigative journalism ("What was that in the sea?! I must be imagining things") (false KRAKEN sighting)
- CUBIC FOOT (35A: Imperial unit of volume ("There's another one! I swear he just slipped into those trees...") (false BIGFOOT sighting)
- COPY EDITOR (49A: Professional proofreader ("Over there, in the snow! That had to b something, right?!") (false YETI sighting)
Washington University in St. Louis (WashU) is a private research university in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. Founded in 1853, the university is named after George Washington, the first president of the United States.Washington University comprises eight undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools, including Arts and Sciences, George Warren Brown School, Olin Business School, Washington University School of Medicine, McKelvey School of Engineering, Washington University School of Law, School of Continuing & Professional Studies, and Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. Washington University enrolls approximately 16,550 students across its campuses from all 50 states and more than 110 countries.
Washington University has been a member of the Association of American Universities since 1923 and is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity". In 2021, the National Science Foundation ranked Washington University 25th among academic institutions in the United States for research and development expenditures. The university's athletic teams, Washington University Bears, play in NCAA Division III as a founding member of the University Athletic Association. (wikipedia)
• • •
['HATE' is said five times, but (therefore) "repeated" just four, so the clue is correct]
But then ... then the theme kicked in, and I have to say that it's completely original and highly entertaining. Love all the misspellings, especially BICFOOT, which ... how is this not already the mascot for Bic pens? He could leave cryptic messages for the CRYPTOZOOLOGIST with his pen feet! Come on, it's a good idea and you know it. Anyway, building the idea of the false sighting into the cryptozoology-themed puzzle = mwah, perfect. I wasn't cheering right away ("so you're just misspelling NESSIE? OK but ... I don't get it, what's the point"), but as the other creatures rolled in, I warmed to the concept, and then when the revealer dropped, I thought "oh, there it is! A great word *and* a perfect grid-spanner. Nice." CRYPTOZOOLOGIST also landed in the grid really dramatically—I had just the -IST, merely glanced at the clue, and whoooooosh, there it went, soaring across the grid:
Lots of little missteps today, but no real capital-T Trouble. "HOO BOY!" or "HOORAY!" before "HOORAH!" (20A: Triumphant shout), although I guess "HOO BOY!" is more "YIPES!" then "YIPEE!" ... which is what I had instead of YIPES at first (50D: "Yowzers!"). Who the hell says "Yowzers!" Is that different from "Yowza?" Because "Yowza!" seems excited, whereas "YIPES!" seems freaked out. So that's twice I tripped on ambiguously excited exclamations. I also wanted DECOR instead of DRAPE (48A: Window dressing). I think of DRAPES, plural, as the "dressing." I like DRAPE better as a verb is what I'm saying. Or you could talk about the DRAPE of an article of clothing, the way it hangs on the body, that's good too. A single DRAPE in the window strikes my ears as weird. No other problems for me, though. The fill isn't so great today. I actually (briefly) sat here and worked out different ways of eliminating LEASTS from the grid, so much did I hate it (66A: Bare minimums). So far, my favorite alternative changes OWL to OMB, and then the two Acrosses down there change to MOVE IN and BEASTS (or BOASTs), but there's gotta be even better options ... I don't actually like OMB (Office of Management and Budget) at all, let alone on a Tuesday, but I really Really hate LEASTS, so ... yeah, fix that, pls. If LEASTS were good, it would've appeared way more often. All those ultra-common letters and it's only appeared in the NYTXW twice in my lifetime! For a reason! Because it's not good! I did like GAG GIFT, though (43D: Purchase for a white elephant exchange). Easily the best answer in the grid. I just taught Manny Farber's "White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art" in my "Moviegoing" class, so White Elephants are fresh on my mind.
ReplyDeleteEasy for me, solving without reading the theme clues, and ignoring the shaded squares. My only overwrite was HOORAy before HOORAH at 20A and my only WOE was PEDRO at 32A. I didn't like the theme as much as OFL did; misspellings aren't my thing.
I enjoyed that the “false sightings” were represented by typos/mis-spellings, and one of them was embedded in COPYEDITOR!
ReplyDeleteI solved it pretty quickly (compared to my Tuesday average) with only a couple of missteps, but I agree that something felt off. I don’t know what.
ReplyDeleteHas escrito mal los monstruos en el crucigrama.
ReplyDeleteDid anybody else notice the typos in the gray squares? What is going on with the editing? I blame the society and their internet and violent video games for not knowing how to spell.
Seriously though, this is a really dumb theme, right? Cryptozoology is a real thing. They know how to spell these monsters. Why misspell them here? And NESSEE doesn't cross the bridge into the second word. TITANS standing around looking pretty, but nobody wants to dance.
I love Napoleon Dynamite and PEDRO. You have to watch the movie twice to get it, but the second time is life altering in the best way. I like AVARICE, GAG GIFT and OPOSSUM. AVARICE is on my favorite word list way down between CAULDRON and WACKOS.
The wind is blowing here and I've been awake since 2:30 convinced someone is breaking into this house. I picture thieves in the high desert with six-shooters, and belt buckles, and mustaches. It's really a poorly pruned pine tree hitting the window. I'm starting a new school called CRYPTOSCAREDOLOGY where all irrational fears will be assigned a trope Jeff and Kevin can misspell in a future puzzle. A tree hitting the house in the wind will be called "The Caballero."
Propers: 7
Places: 5
Products: 3
Partials: 5
Foreignisms: 2
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 22 of 76 (29%)
Funnyisms: 6 😅
Uniclues:
1 "Yech."
2 One helping to ensure "Frankenstein" refers to the doctor, not the monster.
3 The Rex Parker commentariat.
4 Olden term for the purveyors of "Well, actually..."
5 How the Denver Broncos have treated me for eight years.
6 A plastic statue of Elon Musk.
1 MUCK RAKING TERM
2 COPY EDITOR IGOR
3 GLIB BEINGS
4 "SEE HERE..." PROGRAM
5 YIPES! NO MERCY.
6 AVARICE GAG GIFT
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: One with high herr. MARRIED "UP" FRAU.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Misspellings are intentional. They are intended to be “near” sightings, and elusive… I get it. But doesn’t strike me as super original. Just troubling for those with OCD like you and me. 😆
DeleteFALSE sightings
DeleteWas I supposed to read all this stuff? The puzzle was fun, Debby Downer.
DeleteI saw Jeff Chen was involved and fully anticipated something that would be a little “edgy” for a Tuesday. I didn’t have a lot of hope when I saw 1A (when Jeff and I are not on the same wavelength, it can be a long day).
ReplyDeleteI got the ship righted and picked up on the gimmick and was wondering how they were going to put a bow on it with a reveal - which actually pulled it together pretty nicely.
The theme seemed to put a lot of stress on the grid, so some of the fill was a little bizarre, which Rex alluded to - but net, net it was something interesting and a little different for a Tuesday, so a thumbs up from me.
Dropping in early on a Tuesday to second how gross LEASTS is, and how little I ever want to see that "word" again: greatly diminished an otherwise decent puzzle.
ReplyDeleteBeasts wouldn't fit so _easts was used. I guess for the l of it.
DeleteYup, started out with HurRAy, then morphed to HOORAy, and got stuck there while I went on down the puzzle. Was baffled by NESSEE but got the theme idea with BICFOOT. Gotta make the coffee stronger! The CRYPTO answer was then fun to suss out. Thought this puzzle was on the easy side but in the end did take me more than my average time for a Tuesday…
ReplyDeleteI found the puzzle very easy, like an average Monday. The only hard part was figuring out what the theme was. My system doesn't provide shaded squares, so for me it was a themeless.
ReplyDeleteQuirky little idea favoring the typo - I like it. Overall fill was a little off but not as peeved as the big guy. I liked YEDI and BICFOOT.
ReplyDeleteMake a CIRCUIT with me
AVARICE, GAG GIFT, WE’RE IN are all top notch. A few side eyes that were NOT OK but that’s the cost of doing business. The trivia was fairly easy.
IRON & Wine
Enjoyable Tuesday morning solve. Digging the RR Band clip.
These are the TERMs
I thought this was pretty spot-on for a Tuesday, although I often find Jeff Chen’s clues to be slightly “off”, or too vague or something and felt the same about some of the clues here.
ReplyDeleteThe theme was cute. I myself like and am good at proofreading - maybe I was a COPYEDITOR in another life. I’m sad that they seem to be an endangered species these days.
I love Napolean Dynamite, should watch it again, but didn’t remember PEDRO’s name. I love this Taylor Swift song, the only one I actually know. I’m sure I’ve heard many of her other songs, having been here on the planet, but am generally unaware of them as her songs. The video is great too!
A copyeditor is not a proofreader. A copyeditor suggests style and content changes, but a proofreader only corrects mechanical errors. Usually a proofreader is supervised by a copyeditor.
ReplyDeleteAnd a proofreader does his/her job only after the copy editor performs his/her magic on the text and just before it goes to typesetting. Good catch.
DeleteOh, dear, ya beat me to it. I was absolutely astonished to see a blunder of this magnitude in the NYTXW, published in a *newspaper*, fer Lord's sake. Of course, given the unacceptably large number of errors in the puz these days (which any competent copyeditor would catch), I shouldn't be surprised.
DeleteWhat you both seem to be saying is that a COPYEDITOR is a higher level “proofreader.” As an attorney who has proofread first draft legal briefs, you correct mechanical errors as well as implement (or comment on) style and content changes.
Delete@Beezer. Not really. These are two different functions that focus on two very distinct things. The flow in publishing moves sequentially from writing to copyediting (for style and content) to proofreading (for mechanical errors) to typesetting (nowadays done electronically) to printing/publication. There is clear division and sequencing of labor in this process, and each is performed by different actors.
Delete@BlueStater 9:27 AM
DeleteNot unlike the anonymous mathematician struggling with NINTHS last week, to be "absolutely astonished" seems hyperbolic for anyone doing crosswords on a regular basis. To call it a "blunder of this magnitude" suggests lives and careers were at stake, but Merriam Webster only synonym for copy editor is {drumroll} proofreader and of course the only thing dying is our delicate sensibilities. Your phrase "in a newspaper fer Lord's sake" indicates an unearned esteem for perfection no newspaper ever met and it should go under our reasonable expectation clause when we know the newspaper industry collapsed decades ago and editors have been replaced by squiggly red lines in MS Word. But you do reach the correct conclusion, you "shouldn't be surprised" since 100% of us got the right answer based on the clue -- even though the three copy editors still with jobs are fuming at the downgrade in their job description.
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ReplyDeleteI agree with Gary. It is dumb. The problem is that any "sighting" of big foot is false because it doesn't f-ing exist. Misspelling it isn't what makes it false
ReplyDeleteCopy editor and proofreader are two different jobs, both of which I did in earlier years (but not at the same time!), so that didn’t sit right for me. But I have no one but myself to blame for confidently entering CRYPTObiOLOGIST, seeing plausible downs (bEE, iRA) without reading the clues, and wondering why I didn’t get the happy music at the end. Then I went back and corrected the spellings of Nessie et al. Doh!
ReplyDeleteIf you didn't see this yesterday: Lewis is OK!!!! Here's his email to me that he's asked me to share with you:
ReplyDelete"Hi Nancy,
No damage, but for two days, no power, NO WATER!, no internet, no phone. Saturday night the power came back on, but all the other things are off. (I found a wifi place a good distance from home.) Anyway, I'll let you know when news happens and I'm able to report it. We're basically doing okay. The killer is being without water, and it sounds like we'll be without it for at least two weeks.
Anyway, would you be so kind as to let both blogs know that I am okay and anxious to return, and I will when we get wifi once again; don't know how long that will be; it is rightfully lower on the priority list of needs in the area.
Thinking of you with smiles in my heat and wishing you well --
Lewis
Thanks for sharing. His positive approach to all things crosswords is sorely missed!
DeleteThanks Nancy. And, Lewis, if you ever see this, I'm glad you & your family are ok :)
DeleteThanks, @Nancy, I'd been worried.
DeleteI couldn’t figure out why the themers were all misspelled until I got here. Ha! But somehow I easily knew Pedro (and I’m much, much older than a Millennial!).
ReplyDeleteExcuse me. I'm not the world's biggest Swiftie, But even I know that the word "HATE" is repeated not four, but rather five, times in the chorus of "Shake It Off." I pray for Mr. Fagilano's sake that Taylor's army doesn't get wind of this glaring and inexcusable diss.
ReplyDelete“repeated”—RP explains this
DeleteThey are pignolis, that's what it says on the label and that's what everyone (well, me) calls them, so took a lot of crosses to see PINENUT. Love toasting them in a dry skillet before adding to pesto.
ReplyDeleteThe misspellings were weird so after NESSEE and KRAKIN I ignored them and things went more smoothly.
Medium for Tuesday!
I call them by their Italian name, pinoli, but you are right, it does say pignoli on the bag.
DeleteClue: "Word repeated four times in the chorus of Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off"
ReplyDeleteLyrics: "Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play
And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate"
1, 2, 3, 4 -- uh-oh! Mr. Fagliano, get an intern! And, if the Swifties see this, may God have mercy on your soul.
“repeated”
DeleteBut the first time “HATE” was sung, it wasn’t repeated. It was repeated only four times after that. So the clue is absolutely correct. It didn’t ask how many times the word was sung, but rather how many times it was repeated.
DeleteAre you serious? Word said = 1 time, then repeated 4 times =
Delete5 times. Who needs an intern?
I liked how the misspellings didn’t change the pronunciation of any of the “false sightings”. Adds to the elegance of the theme.
ReplyDeleteHey All !
ReplyDeleteI see what's happening, but the theme strikes me as a tad odd.
The outlier for me was BICFOOT, as the other three still have the same sound/pronunciation, even YEDI/YETI is close enough, but BIG is changed to BIC, two different sounds. I'm not saying I could make an alternate spelling of BIGFOOT sound the same, but I'm just sayin'.
Was an interesting idea. Cryptids are always neat to see. No Jersey Devil? Har.
From Pixar's "Monsters Inc", a line by the Yeti: "They call me abominable. Abominable! Why not the Adorable snowman?"
Even with my nits, liked this puz. Fill decent slithering twixt all the Themer "sightings".
Happy Tuesday!
Two F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Caught on to the misspellings right away and thought the theme would be "misspelled mythical creatures", which it sort of was, and then got to the revealer which sort of revealed what it really was. Didn't delight me quite as much as OFL.
ReplyDeleteSomeday I will see Napoleon Dynamite and someday I will listen to a bunch of Taylor Swift songs but that hasn't happened yet.
Nice to see old pal AREEL again. His friend ATILT has been MIA for a while now too.
Pretty ingenious Tuesday, KC and JC, Kinda Clever and Just Cool enough. Thanks for all the fun.
I’m not a power crossword solver, but I do every day (except Friday. Honestly, those don’t thrill me). Today’s felt off. Some clues were spelled correctly, others not. Some were just off, like a store brand that’s close but missing that, you know, something.
ReplyDeleteI finished easily but it was certainly not fun.
The last time the NYT alleged that PESTO could be made with a (single) PINE NUT - I recall there was a huge brouhaha with some people completely aghast. I think with all of the dupes, etc we see under the current regime, that perhaps people are bying into the “clues are hints, not definitions” philosophy more and more (appropriately so, in my opinion).
ReplyDeleteEasy puzzle and I’m the typo of guy who struggles on a Thursday rebus. I got tripped up thinking Yikes not yipes but that was quickly sorted out. And remember “Vote for Pedro”!!!
ReplyDeleteDidn't care for this one, except as a proud WASHU School of Law alumnus, I enjoyed that clue and especially appreciate the explication in this summary! That said, the misspellings of the cryptids weren't necessary (like another commenter above, I had to come here to figure out why they were misspelled at all, and I'm still not sure I understand), and this was a breeze of a puzzle for whatever reason for me.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, go WASHU Bears!
My daughter just graduated SummaCum Laude from WashU last year. She is going on to Med School. great school
DeleteThank you for reminding me what failures my children are. We'll resume the beatings. (Just kidding. Congrats!)
DeleteIf you were alive in 2004-ish, the "Vote for Pedro" shirt was ubiquitous. It's possibly the one thing most people know about that movie.
ReplyDelete"Shake it Off" is possibly the biggest hit by the most famous* artist on the planet. I couldn't name you three Taylor Swift songs if you paid me, but that one is/was MASSIVE.
*Apologies to Beyonce - perhaps they are tied for co-most famous.
OMG, they're ALL spelled wrong!!!!!
ReplyDeleteWhat a dummy I am! I was so flummoxed by BICFOOT, couldn't replace that C with a G no matter how hard I tried, so I came here to see what Rex had said about it. Was there perhaps an alternate spelling of BIGFOOT?
Yes, I had noticed NESSEE, not NESSIE -- and was going to complain that they'd chosen a "less familiar and less accepted" spelling. It never occurred to me that NESSEE wasn't a spelling at all.
KRAKIN and YEDI sort of sailed right over my head.
Did I pick up on the deliberateness of the misspellings when I saw the word "pseudoscientist" along with "sightings" in quotation marks in the revealer clue? Ah, but that would have taken something resembling actual intelligence and Today I Am An Idiot.
This puzzle has it all: Enormous originality, terrific humor, and for me, a much-too-long-delayed "Aha Moment" that blew me away. An irresistible candidate for Puzzle-of-the-Year.
I had no problem with this puzzle whatsoever, and didn't even look at the theme. I'm not sure why Rex (who is unquestionably a better solver than me) thought it was a medium-hard one. I guess I got lucky in that I didn't even look at the clues for some of the harder answers. :shrug:
ReplyDeleteI believe Pooh’s friend is wol. Is the error intentional?
ReplyDeleteFrantically looks for 'like' button
DeleteSomehow the clue/answer combo at 60D "...boy ORA girl?" seems politically full of dangerous undertones. Start with this and soon enough you'll be talking preferred pronouns, LGBTQ rights, IVF bans and childless cat ladies (which are presumably women who had their kittens spayed).
ReplyDeleteI hear that Congress has reached an awkward compromise on the proposal to ban TikTok. Going forward, you can have Tik, but NOTOK.
On the great possum vs. OPOSSUM question, Mrs. Egs says "no O" but ISAYSO.
I liked the mindset of this theme. "Let's make a puzzle full of typos!" Great job and thanks, Kevin Curry and Jeff Chen.
Hidden Diagonal Word (HDW) clues:
ReplyDelete1. Famous king or, when doubled, a reproof
2. Dashes toward home
So glad to see the report from Lewis! Thanks, Nancy!!
This one went quickly for me for a Tuesday, but seemed harder than it apparently was.
There are a couple of nice Hidden Diagonal Word dupes today. ACT one (1D) is joined by a Hidden Diagonal ACT 2 smack dab in the middle of the grid (off the A in 33D). And those OBOES at 51D are missing one of their members, a Hidden Diagonal OBOE who has wandered away from his section to the NW (off the O in 41A).
Answers to HDW clues:
1. TUT (beginning with either the T in 61D, TRI, or the T in 67A,TMI--a palindromic HDW)
2. DIGS (off the D in 48A, DRAPE--a tip of the cap to the start of the baseball playoffs today--Go, Braves!)
Wait, did I just see a member of the House of Lords hanging out around TENNESSEE?! (see 4D)
Medium. Me too for HOORAy before HOORAH and WASHU was the only WOE.
ReplyDelete@Rex “original and highly entertaining” work for me, liked it.
Very fun and clever puzzle. I will say that I thought as I got to the end of the puzzle that @Rex would excoriate the puzzle in his blog. I was glad to see that he came around in the end. (And I agree that it started with a bit of a fizzle)
ReplyDeleteThe theme made me think of Expedition Bigfoot (the CRYPTOZOOLOGIST (rather version of Josh Gates’ archeology Expedition Unknown. Haha…I quit watching because nothing is ever proven in any episode. There is usually a lot of infrared cameras used, rustling trees, and exclamations like…”Oh man, what IS that awful smell”!
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ReplyDeleteWait, I get that the existence of Nessie, Kraken, Big Foot and Yeti is highly questionable, but to use the opening sentences of this blog to callously and gratuitously dismiss the reality of Santa Claus? Why in God's name would someone do this? What sort of cruel and diabolical mind is behind this blog? Did he even give a moment's thought to all of the child prodigy crossword solvers coming to this blog for validation and community? For shame!
ReplyDeleteIt’s a good feeling when the word cryptozoologist Materializes in your brain and it is correct
ReplyDeleteA character in David Nicholls’s novel, You Are Here, explains the difference between a proofreader and a copy editor something like this (I’m paraphrasing from memory because I have already returned the book to the library): A proofreader says, “You misspelled ‘instantaneously’.” A copy editor says, “Would ‘instantly’ be better here?”
ReplyDeletehar. The puztheme starts right out with a Santa sightin, at 1-Across, but what an outlandish mis-spell of SOOT! Cryptic(al).
ReplyDeletestaff weeject pick: ASH. See above.
Really liked this schlocky puztheme. And the fillins are pretty good, considerin they're dodgin 57 squares worth of theme material. 60, if U count ASH.
Thanx for the fun, Mr. Curry & Mr. Chen dudes. Great stuff.
Masked & Anonymo5Us
**gruntz**
I couldn't figure out Santa's footprints (first thought was "ice," nor exchanged for cash (I was thinking ForEx), so my entry was the gimme NAPA. Working the crosses down on the right side, I soon had entries crossing every theme answer, but couldn't quite figure out what was going on until 49-A, where the confluence of snow and four shaded letters strongly suggested YETI. I went back and filled in BIGFOOT-- but I already had AVARICE, which ruled out KRAKEN. Also, I was thinking that the first part of the clue would be the unshaded squares only, as in EDI-YETI-TOR. Also, born and BRED conflicted. So I worked the bill some more, and SIC + PROGRAM finally helped me see COPYEDITOR-- change one letter in the cryptid! I still needed some crosses to figure out which letter, and I've never heard of the TENNESSEE TITANS, but things came pretty fast from that point on.
ReplyDeleteI love seeing the old a- words, so was happy to get AREEL; and I loved the bare bones clue for ESE, an acknowledgement of the reality that most solvers are not helped by clues like "Amherst to Worcester direction."
However I'm appalled by the idea that anyone would buy something for a white elephant exchange. The whole idea is to get rid of something that you don't want but don't want to throw away. Also, to my ear YIkES is closer than YIPES to "Yowzers!" (Spellcheck disagrees with me, apparently.)
I think LEASTS is my new candidate for worst POC ever.
Now I'll read rex and the rest of you.
Later
You're thinking of a white elephant sale. A white elephant exchange is a party game where people purposely by gag gifts for the exchange. I've never been to such a party, but have heard of them.
DeleteAnother very easy puzzle. Solved, again, as a themeless & came here to see what (if) the theme was. I agree - stuff in Santa's footprints is SOOT. Really pushing it with ASH. Dunno - felt like I just wasted 15 minutes. Thank goodness for Wordle, Connections, SB. Gonna have to check out Sprazzle (?) & Jeff's other game game (forgot the name, sorry Jeff). There was just nothing to this one - no oomph, no surprise except for CRYTOZOOLOGIST on a Tuesday. Kinda disappointing & surprising to see Jeff's name as a constructor/collaborator :(
ReplyDeleteFun. Had Yikes before Yipes but that cleared up quick.
ReplyDeleteI'm probably wrong because Nancy and Beezer liked it, but I thought it wasn't very good. If you have to explain the joke ...
ReplyDeleteJust because Nancy and Beezer liked it does NOT mean that YOU need to like it Mr. Mathgent. (She said with affection)
DeleteI was thinking like Rex about Santa--if he has the power to fly all over the world in a single night, he can certainly walk across a floor without leaving ashy footprints on it. And certainly Clement Moore doesn't mention them.
ReplyDeleteI got PEDRO entirely from crosses. Is Napoleon Dynamite someone in a contemporary movie? I was thinking of the Napoleon in Animal Farm, which didn't help.
Joking aside, my problem with 60-A is that one would say "a boy ORA girl," without the first A it becomes "boy or girl?'
There is a Cryptozoology & Pranormal Museum in Littleton, NC. Wonder if the puzzlemakers know it exists.
ReplyDeleteThere are ashes on Santa's suit as well as soot. ". . . all covered in ashes and soot."
ReplyDeleteExactly! “He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot, And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot.”
DeleteCryptozoologist? Seriously? YIPES!
ReplyDeleteRegarding Santa and his existence…there are 3 stages in a father’s life. 1. As a youngster, he fervently believes in Santa. 2. As a teen, he knows Santa is a myth. 3. As a father, he IS Santa. 🎅🏻
ReplyDeleteJust back last night after a looong weekend at the lake (Truth and Reconciliation Day!) and delighted by the theme. However I was a little deflated when I realized the revealer was not actually TYPOZOOLOGIST as I first thought. That would be pretty cool!
ReplyDeleteIronically, I didn't get the Happy Pencil right away because I had... a typo. (Finger just hit the wrong key).
Yikes, it’s now “yipes.” Language, like gender is fluid…so said someone.
ReplyDeleteAm I on the only one who had "I SAY NO" crossing "ENE" as the answer at the top? I of course thought it sounded off, because the answer should be "I said no" but figured it was just a variation that Rex would then rant about and I would agree. Was a Natick/DNF for me because of that. Surprised it wasn't mentioned by at least one other person.
ReplyDeleteAnother 80’s reference: cartoon character Inspector Gadget’s catchphrase was “Yowzers!”
ReplyDeleteIt was “wowzers.”
DeleteWell I didn't watch the misspellings in nessie and kraken so when I got to Bigfoot and Jedi the whole thing seemed like a mess. Now I see it wa my brain that wa messy not the the theme.
ReplyDeleteI hated washu not because it was, as Rex deemed it, crosswordese, but because I'd never heard of it and it' a stupid name.
Quite 4A 18 D 44D. For some reason they made me smile.
From Lewis' message it seems he lives in one of the Helenated states. Glad to hear he is OK. Would miss his comments
@ Es. Thanks again for the fun. I was smiling from the first paragraph but the "Let's make a puzzle full of typos" line got me chuckling out loud.
ReplyDeleteWell, I know what a CRYPTOZOOLOGIST is but I'm not sure why here it's being labeled "Pseudoscientist". One could be a CRYPTOZOOLOGIST and still meticulously follow the rules and standards of the scientific method.
ReplyDeleteI've also heard of the four mythical creatures but still I'm not getting why the said creatures are misspelled...or why these particular misspellings. The one-letter-wrong in each creature spells EICD. The correct letters in those spots would spell out IEGT. Huh? Even after carefully reading Rex and the commentariat the penny is still not dropping for me on this one.
I know WASH U in St Louis because that's where William Masters and Virginia Johnson were in the late 50s when they began their scientific study of human sexuality. The administrators at WASH U wouldn't approve of their proposed research agenda so they set up their own Reproductive Biology Research Foundation off campus in St Louis in 1964 (thanks wiki). And in 1966 they published their groundbreaking Human Sexual Response.
In other news, the TENNESSEE TITANS won last night beating the Miami Dolphins 31-12.
Puzzles with intentional misspellings just feel so amateurish. They feel like the composer was stuck.
ReplyDeleteNo one here seems to have gotten that these are all references to different cryptocurrencies, which is what I assume to be the real meaning behind CRYPTOZOOLOGIST
ReplyDeleteNo they’re not.
DeleteThey lost me at HOORAH, which absolutely nobody says unless they are in the military. It's hooray. The word is hooray. And LEASTS? This is some of the worst fill I've seen in awhile. AREEL is also terrible. Hated this puzzle.
ReplyDeleteCDilly52 again, still struggling with, well, everything, but I keep fighting. Back to the hospital for a couple days- heart arrhythmia and shortness of breath. Thank you 🦠-no thank you!!
ReplyDeleteMy NYT business/finance section has contained news about various cryptocurrencies and when I saw the KRAKIN, I wondered if we were going to go all the way down the rabbit hole and have a technical theme about crypto. Instead, we got a well crafted amusing theme that I guess (?) is actually about crypto but because it focuses on poking some fun, it didn’t really matter - to me anyway. And, when @Rex didn’t mention crypto exchanges in his analysis, I thought maybe I was wrong. I have very little confidence in my Covid brain these days. So thanks @Not that Guy 4:40 PM, your comment gave me hope that I have some active grey matter left!!
My solve echoes that of OFL. Some of the clues were what I call “mushy.” Not especially clever or deceptive, and not particularly apt, to employ one of my least favorite crosswordese terms. While on crosswordese, just Way. Too. Much!!!
And then the theme settled in. I really enjoyed it. Especially because I was expecting a finance/crypto theme full of things about which I am blissfully ignorant. But some of the clues . . .
Took me longer than necessary to get MUCKRAKING from merely “Investigative journalism,” but publication of scandalous, pejorative and often libelous information. True (and prize-winning, honorable) “investigative journalism” is the work of titans like Woodward and Bernstein, and bears no relationship to MUCKRAKING. There’s my clue rant; OFL picked up on the other meh stuff.
This puzzle delivered a true reveal. CRYPROZOOLOGIST surprised me and made me laugh. Loved it. But then, I’m pretty easily entertained.
Happy Tuesday neighbors❣️
I’d be curious to know what Rex’s reason is for his opposition to Santa having ashes in his footprint. (Why should there need to be “some kind of iconic moment, a locus classicus, a piece of a poem or something, that confers ash upon his soles”.) Especially considering (as anonymous pointed out) that ashes are mentioned in the famous poem (which Moore claimed he wrote). Also the origin story of Santa leaving coal in stockings included both ashes and coal. I assume that Rex’s opposition only applies to crossword puzzles. Also why does the "reality of Santa" weigh in on the banning of ash from his footprints?
ReplyDeleteA copy editor edits manuscripts, whereas a proofreader corrects proofs (copy that has been set in type, used to be called galleys) by reading them against the (copy edited) manuscript. Two different stages of the publishing journey.
ReplyDeleteOne minor point - would a cryptozoologist think that they saw Nessy in the sea? Nessy's supposed to live in a lake (well, loch).
ReplyDeleteA professional proofreader and a copy editor are not the same thing. It's not debatable or open to interpretation. They are not the same thing. And, I'm sorry, I will never accept LEASTS as a valid plural noun. Just no. Very poor editing of this puzzle. I'm liking the NYT puzzles less and less because of the poor editing, and it makes me sad.
ReplyDeleteWASHU is crosswordese? I've never used Xwordinfo before, but as far as I can tell, that site says WASHU has not appeared in the NYT puzzle before. I read that clue aloud to my daughters, who attended that school.
ReplyDeleteMy son is a junior at WashU and reports that the clue today was a big deal on campus, especially given how often WashU is confused with other schools using the Washington name, leading to the T-shirt slogan “it’s in St Louis, dammit”
ReplyDeleteAnd one hopes that you didn't disappoint him by flying into Sea-Tac for his first Parents Weekend.
DeleteNot a fan of this one.
DeleteI appreciated SIC crossing COPYEDITOR.
ReplyDeleteSo, they couldn't get it to work with the actual names, and had to cheat by using misspelled names.
ReplyDeleteI LOVE that Taylor Swift video. A reminder that dance can be beautiful, graceful, inspiring, or just plain goofy fun.
Tricky for a Tuesday. Check out Jeff Chen’s new online word puzzle, Squeezy:
ReplyDeletehttps://imsqueezy.com/
The puzzle would have been more interesting if the incorrect (and switched to correct) letters for the fictitious creatures spelled something out.
ReplyDeleteVery very easy Tuespuz. Easier than yesterpuz. Fun and clever. Leave it to Jeff Chen to purposely misspell the cryptids.
ReplyDeleteWASHU and AREEL are bad enough, but LEASTS? Jeff, say you didn't do this!
ReplyDeleteI gotta say: this puzzle left me...cold. Bogey.
Wordle par.