.png)
Minnesotan trio? / WED 1-29-25 / Goes a-courting? / Gemma's role in "Crazy Rich Asians" / Snack whose name translates as "breaded" / Home of Spaceship Earth / Appropriate for all gamers / Merchandise with logos for "Baienglaca" or "Guddi," e.g. / Characteristic of a fork in the road / One of a wide pair for snow sports / Tegan's pop music bandmate / Kernel locale
Wednesday, January 29, 2025
Constructor: Sophia Maymudes
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (easy for me, but lots of names means "not easy" for some)
 |
| [16 rows! Super-sized, like your mimosa consumption...] |
Theme answers:
- BAD EG ("egg") (53D: *No-goodnik)
- COUGH SYRU ("syrup") (3D: *Remedy for a cold)
- PROPOSE A TOAS ("toast") (25D: *Raise one's glass)
- SAVE ONE'S BACO ("bacon") (9D: *Help avoid disaster)
- RAGAMUFFI ("muffin") (39D: *Little scamp)
- REHAS ("hash") (13D: *Go over again)
Naomi Novik (born 1973) is an American author of speculative fiction. She is known for the Temeraire series (2006–2016), an alternate history of the Napoleonic Wars involving dragons, and her Scholomance fantasy series (2020–2022). Her standalone fantasy novels Uprooted (2015) and Spinning Silver (2018) were inspired by Polish folklore and the Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale respectively. Novik has won many awards for her work, including the Alex, Audie, British Fantasy, Locus, Mythopoeic and Nebula Awards. (wikipedia)
• • •
One thing I like about this puzzle is that none of the "brunch" items are clued as food. The "egg" is metaphorical and the "syrup" is for coughs and the "toast" is something you make with a glass (possibly a mimosa), etc. To find not only plausible brunch items, but also ones that can be clued in non-brunch ways, that's a nice extra level of elegance. I will see that "syrup" is a bit of a stretch (it's more a condiment than a food), but there's no denying that you put syrup on French toast, and French toast is a brunch food, so ... OK. But when you get into condiments, you're kind of stretching the theme limit. If TRAFFIC JA had been a theme answer, I'd be squawking in this same way, possibly louder. On the whole, this is a really original theme concept, and the execution is nicely done. The theme's got a Thursday feel (the missing letter bit feels sufficiently tricky to be a Thursday) but it's all clued back at Wednesday or even Tuesday level. I love a tricky Wednesday. Think of it as Thursday gimmickry at Wednesday prices. Like a bargain Thursday. One everyone can do. Would've been nice if the missing letters in the theme answers spelled something (like BRUNCH! or MIMOSA!) but that would be a Lot to ask.
I wish EMPANADA weren't in the grid (29A: Snack whose name translates as "breaded"). This is the only time I can remember ever wishing that an EMPANADA would go away. I apologize to the EMPANADA and all of turnoverkind. But with a heavily food-based theme, I don't think there should be stray foods in the grid. Don't distract me from the brunch! I will take an EMPANADA over any of these brunch items, any day of the week, any time of day. It would be a more elegant construction if food were confined to the theme alone. I'm having a very hard time staying mad at EMPANADA, though. And now I'm hungry. So let's move along...
There are a lot of names today (eight, by my count), which can often spell trouble, especially if those names aren't universally known, but most of these are pretty straightforward. REY and ELENA are in the puzzle all the time. Diana RIGG is a legend. KAY Thompson might be less well known (I couldn't have named her off the top of my head, but I got her after seeing the 3-letter slot and getting maybe one cross). SOFIA Coppola is prolific and successful. Tegan & SARA have been used in clues for one or the other of their names a bunch (it seems) in the past five years or so. Hmm, actually this is just the fourth time, and TEGAN has actually never appeared in the NYTXW. That will surely change someday. Anyway, SARA was a gimme for me. That leaves NAOMI Novik, whose name I know well because wife and especially daughter are big fans. So.... the one name I didn't know, the one name that feels like it's the most obscure (because it's a recent non-titular character name) is ASTRID (38A: Gemma's role in "Crazy Rich Asians"). Tbh, I don't even know who Gemma is (it's Gemma Chan). But ... ASTRID is a name that I've heard of, and one that I could infer from just a few crosses, so no problem, no complaint.
Bullets:
- 1A: Home of Spaceship Earth (EPCOT) — dropped this answer in immediately. No idea why. I've never been to EPCOT. I really don't know much about it. And yet I seem to know that Spaceship Earth is there. Weird.
- 21A: Appropriate for all gamers (RATED E) — "E" for "Everyone." Def had this as RATED G at first.
- 23A: West Coast team, on scoreboards (LAA) — Los Angeles Angels, best known for once having the two best players in baseball and still sucking.
- 24A: Characteristic of a fork in the road (Y-SHAPE) — this might've been tricky if I hadn't had the "YS-" in place before I ever read the clue. "Nothing starts YS-! ... oh!"
- 27A: Minnesotan trio? (ENS) — a "letteral" clue. "Minnesotan" has three "N"s (ENS) in it.
- 43A: One of a wide pair for snow sports (SKIBOARDS) — the "pair" thing threw me because I think of boards being different from skis in that there are just *one* of them, but I was thinking snowboards. SKIBOARDS are just ... fatter / shorter skis. They come in pairs.
- 51A: Farm share inits. (CSA) — "Community-Sponsored Agriculture"
- 64A: Merchandise with logos for "Baienglaca" or "Guddi," e.g. (KNOCKOFFS) — a very fun clue, and a great debut answer (though KNOCKOFF has appeared one time before, in the singular) (Balenciaga and Gucci are famous fashion brands, in case you didn't know what was going on with those insane "brand" names in the clue)
- 29D: Kernel locale (EAR) — think corn
- 31D: World of Warcraft or Rune, in brief (RPG) — Role-Playing Game
- 50D: Popular logic puzzle (KENKEN) — I believe that these are logic puzzles. I do not believe that they are "popular" in any meaningful sense of that word.
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
Save And Share :
79 comments:
Needed an alphabet run to get the REY/RPG cross. I caught on to the theme fairly early, but had several sticking points outside the theme answers (ARCANA didn't seem to fit the clue, but it worked to complete the "breaded" snack that I had never heard of). Fairly hard Wednesday, so I was glad to finish in reasonable time.
Medium for me. I knew fewer than half the proper names. Didn't know NAOMI (14A), REY (31A), ASTRID (38A), KAY (44D) or SARA (46A), but all were reasonably common female first names so relatively easily inferred. No overwrites other than @Rex RATED g at 21A.
An absolute mess for me today. Double my normal time. I was thrown off by the “bottomless” answers and still not sure that this did not detract from rather than add to the puzzle. The names just made things that much harder for me. Looking at the net result , I spent about the same amount of time on this puzzle as I do on an average Saturday—20 plus minutes.
I found it more medium. The names killed me--but they were all inferable from crosses so ultimately I thought it was fun. NAOMI, REY, ASTRID, KAY, SARA--no clue. And it turns out that while I know who Olivia Rodrigo is I don't. know any of her songs. As yet before SO FAR, RATED g before E, I had EMPANADAS in twice and ripped it out twice until it was clear from crosses that it was, in fact, correct. I enjoyed the theme and the puzzle despite not being the target demographic.
Got caught on SKI BOARD. Initially had SKI BOOTS but that resolved itself with the down. I don’t ski so maybe that’s my fault for not knowing Ski is short for ski board but in my mind they are relatively narrow when compared with snow boards. Rest of the puzzle was easy though and enjoyed the theme!
Loved this puzzle! Thanks Sophia. Always tough for me to see incomplete words... but once I got the revealer, the theme actually helped me figure out "PROPOSE" (had prepare at first) and helped me see BACO--SAVEONESBACOn is not a phrase I really am familiar with. Very doable--I agree that it's fun to have a tricky Wednesday, like getting Thursday on sale. : )
I'd never heard of Spaceship Earth or Scholomance, and haven't watched Game of Thrones, so the northwest started out tricky, but the rest of it was smooth. I got the word "bottomless" pretty early on and enjoyed the theme.
I really enjoyed today even though I had a lot of writeovers - I confidently dropped in "rated G", "coughdrop" and "scream by" before seeing the theme. I've not seen "Crazy, Rich Asians" but got Astrid from the downs. Slow but fun Wednesday.
I got the theme right off the bat, which is rare for me. Got wildly bored with all of the proper names, which unfortunately happens on pretty much a daily basis. Don’t know Star Wars characters or the Little Mermaid, DITTO for Teagan and Eloise. When these things start crossing, it just takes all the wind out of the sails so to speak. So, a pretty typical NYT grid.
Actually, there is one man referred to in the clues—that is, if I’m correct in assuming that Ms. Rodrigo’s “GET Him Back!” is not a song about a cartoon eel.
I finished without any cheats, but found this hard. I got the theme early on, but most of the names were either unknown or unremembered, and all gaming terminology is outside my wheelhouse. I’ve been to EPCOT but didn’t remember Spaceship Earth. I also haven’t heard of BOTTOMLESSBRUNCH, although I like BRUNCHes and my husband tells me that “everyone” knows about BOTTOMLESSBRUNCH.
I'm with you
Really good execution of the theme. Having the idea for this is one thing; putting it together is a whole nother thing, and I am very impressed with how it was done.
Just back from Chile. We ate at a lot of roadside restaurants, and we'd always look for places that had fried EMPANADAS and papas fritas, figuring the deep frying process would kill just about anything that might cause tummy trouble. It worked.
Puzzle would have been better if the dropped letters spelled out "drink your
Ovaltin".
There’s a Crosslandia moment that, even after all my years of solving, still amazes me. I call it the “Oh, hello!” moment.
Maybe you'll relate.
It happens when I'm stumped by a clue. The answer spot might even have some letters from crosses, but I just can’t figure out what that answer is. So, I go elsewhere in the grid, but very soon after, I return to that spot, and I easily see the answer. It doesn’t even come with an aha. It’s as natural as day. "Oh, hello!"
How does that happen? There I am, totally perplexed, and then there I am, not even a minute later, and it’s completely obvious.
That occurred a number of times in my solve today. There wasn’t a whole lot of splat fill; it was more a steady march aided by my brain working behind the scenes. Very, very satisfying fill-in today.
This is a well-crafted grid, with a profusion of theme squares, but hardly a whiff of junk. It felt lively to me, no DEAD AIR. The cluing was so skillfully done, IMO, making me think, but eventually gettable – the perfect recipe for those oh-hellos.
Sophia, you’ve got the knack and the talent, and I ADORE your puzzles. Thank you for a sterling outing today!
I had brunch last Sunday. First time I went to brunch in 20 years. There was a time in post-college years that brunch was a regular occurrence. Had Bananas Foster French Toast. Out of this world. We went o celebrate my son's new job - very happy for him.... doing Finance in NYC for a big firm. Anyhow, loved the puzzle though I cheated on Sara. Probably could have gotten it but I was tired and wanted to move ahead. I was hoping the missing letters would spell out BRUNCH but I guess that was a bridge too far
Wow- nailed the theme, and it was a good one! Medium- hard solve for us mortals , with names and not-so-easy clues on the fills. Loved it !
Hadn't noticed the female monopsony in this puzzle till RP pointed it out.I did have a female Natick on K_Y/S_RA , but only one real possible answer so not a true Natick I guess
SM, take yourself out for BRUNCH this Sunday and have a mimosa on us, your fans!
Cute theme, easy peasy. Didn’t notice the muliebral aspect until I came here. Can’t imagine caring about such things, but whatever floats your boat.
Naomi Novik was my student when she was in high school, and I remember her creative imagination back then. I’ve been following her career with admiration and appreciation.
Disney and Star Wars clues. Just missing Harry Potter for the childish trifecta.
Also, second time in two weeks that basically the same clue/answer from the Sunday puzzle was used two or three days later. Isn’t part of editing knowing people do the crossword everyday and not repeating clues and answers like that?
@Conrad - 5:56 AM - DITTO regarding your list of names, except for KAY, which I would not have known had I not see the new Liza documentary at IFC earlier this week! Kay Thompson was a giant of the entertainment world and Liza Minnelli's godmother. When Liza's mother died, Thompson not only became a sort of big sisterly mother figure, but guided Liza's development as an entertainer.
@Alice Pollard - 7:33 am — DITTO on hoping the missing letters would spell out BRUNCH. Since they did not spell anything, I was quite fearful I had gotten something wrong until I read Rex's 'splanation.
Medium by time. 6 themers and a revealer (16) is quite impressive. Enjoyed the solve, well done Sophia.
"Pfft, I know a genuine Panaphonics when I see it... and look, there's Magnetbox and Sorny!"
Watched Little Mermaid often with my kids, so knew Flotsam and Jetsam (lackies of the evil Ursula) were EELS, which made this my favorite clue ever for that crossword staple.
I was prepared to love this one when old friend OBI showed up right away, and when I finally got the gimmick that was cool, but all the names sucked the joy out of this for me. The only ones I knew were ELENA and RIGG (although not from GOT) the EPCOT clue was lost on me.m as was the tarot clue. Even the revealer was a huh? as I have never attended a BOTTOMLESSBRUNCH, but they sound like fun. Guess I hang with the wrong crowd.
Minor nit-a FOUL in soccer does not necessarily mean a "card", got to be something a little more egregious.
@Roo-Yeah, I saw the ROOS. Take a bow, you showoff.
Certainly well imagined and constructed, SM , but Still Managed to miss my sweet spot. Thanks for a medium amount of fun.
Hey All !
Is Revealer a thing? Heard of BOTTOMLESS Mimosas, but BRUNCH by itself is just a thing. ALL YOU CAN EAT BRUNCH? There's a CHAMPAGNE BRUNCH. Probably serve mimosas there, too. I guess if you're hungry...
Nice getting 7 Theme entries in. Nice that the missing letter words are all foodstuffs one would find at a BRUNCH. And they are vertical in the grid, ala BOTTOMLESS. The Theme would've missed the mark if Themers were horizontal.
Didn't notice the femaleness of the grid, or clues. I'll agree it's probably intentional, if you don't need nen in your grid, why put them in? But, GENTS Oh well.
Usually notice extra wide/long grids, but missed todays. Thanks for pointing that out, Rex.
@pablo, first point of the Year for me! (I think...)
Anyway, Happy Wednesday!
Four F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
The same experience as many – slow time, enjoyable solve. I’d never heard of BOTTOMLESS BRUNCH. Guess I lead a sheltered life – a simple search reveals lots of establishments in my city that offer it. I had little problem leaving off the last letter of the theme answers and, in fact, started to do that before seeing the revealer. I think COUGHSYRU was the first to disclose itself. There’s something about having revealer and theme answers as long downs that I really like. It’s elegant and aesthetically pleasing. When you put your cursor on the revealer and highlight the whole theme, it looks like banners dropping from various heights.
Of the NAOMI-RIGG-REY-ASTRID-SARA-ELENA-SOFIA-KAY group, I knew five, so that helped. But there were lots of places where I couldn’t fill in anything until getting either ideas or confirmation from crosses – that’s what caused my solve time to be so sluggish. A glut of SEERs this week (two days in a row). For some reason, I was really hoping the Stade de France would be shaped like a shoe; OVAL was a letdown (and aren’t many/most stadiums OVALs?). NHS sounds like one of those endless professional sports leagues – National Hurling Society, maybe. Learned about SKIBOARDs, loved KNOCKOFFS and marveled again at the fascinating and varied career of Renaissance woman and author, singer, vocal arranger, vocal coach, composer, musician, dancer, actress, and choreographer KAY Thompson.
SOFIA, one Connections answer block, one Spelling Bee pangram, I felt like the Games team was catching up on the 2024 movie backlog!
Darling you are missing out if your life doesn't include empanadas or RPGs.
Weird to see a fork in the road clue the day after Trump's email to federal workers trying to get them to quit (subject line "Fork in the Road"). Purely coincidental?
I've both read the book Crazy Rich Asians and seen the movie (recently), and I adore Gemma Chan, and even I had to think for a minute about what her character's name was in the movie. Lol. But yes, crosses were fair.
I always like it when there's a trick, so I liked this puzzle, at least themewise, -- even though, once you have the trick you have it, so it ceases to be a challenge. Putting in APP instead of RPG caused hiccups (what's an RPG?) and I had to cheat on NAOMI to finish. So much pop culture and computerese in this puzzle. Ugh.
An interesting note: I tried to cheat first on the Star Wars heroine -- whose name, because of my incorrect APP, I thought began with an A. But I had no idea how impossible it is to cheat on her name or anyone else's. I typed in "Star Wars characters" and out came a list of what seemed like 900 names! I had no idea how many characters were in this stupid movie and its endless offspring. Take a look for yourselves; you won't believe it!
Liked the theme. The rest of the puzzle -- not especially.
You know what they say. If you wanna BEFIT you gotta PERSPIRE. Oh, and you might try feeding your BOTTOMLESSBRUNCH. But don't believe me. What does your ASSAY?
As to the lack of male entries, what about PARIS, a guy who was deemed a real catch but didn't have Romeo's je ne sais quoi as far as Juliet was concerned. And as to the fake brand names, how about Vidal SOSOON?
I feel like my thunder has been stolen a bit here as I've been laboring away on a puzzle with the theme "Topless Dancer." It has "starred" entries for ARTHAGRAHAM, SADORADUNCAN, INGERROGERS and ARGOTFONTEYN.
I very quickly understood the theme and the unfinished brunch items here, but it did leave me hungering for that final reveal .....(wait for it)........PNGHTN! Perhaps a scrambled abbreviation for PiGTHiNNGy, which is what they call sausage where I come from.
Anyway, I very much enjoyed your Brunch, thanks, Sophia Maymudes.
Back in pen and paper days I'd always write in the extra letter - "T" to complete "Toast" directionally if appropriate. Puzzles like today's I use the "..." (is there a name for this? R. E. B. for rebus entry button?) to put in the bottomless letters. About two-thirds of the time when I use the REB, it's not NYT correct and I have to repair or delete those entries to hear the happy music. So it was today.
Back in pen and paper days I'd always write in the extra letter - "T" to complete "Toast" directionally if appropriate. Puzzles like today's I use the "..." (is there a name for this? R. E. B. for rebus entry button?) to put in the bottomless letters. About two-thirds of the time when I use the REB, it's not NYT correct and I have to repair or delete those entries to hear the happy music. So it was today.
Not to be confused with TOPLESS BRUNCH, which would skew decidedly male… 🙂
I blanked on REY for a while after reading the clue and confidently preparing to fill in the answer until I realized that our old friend Leia was too long to fit.
I got BOTTOMLESS BRUNCH from the initial B, and probably would have got it without any crosses, the clue was so obvious. Initially I was looking forward to various starred clues of things you might see if the brunch attendees were, in fact, bottomless--but I guess that would have to be on AVC, not the Times. But shortly after that I did get PROPOSE A TOAS, and the trick was clear. Well, almost clear--since one might actually propose a toast at a bottomless brunch, what will all those mimosas yours for the taking--so I was looking for whole answers to be brunch-associated, at least until I got COUGH SYRU. I rarely have cough syrup with my brunch, so I was puzzled. But BAD EG finally gave the whole game away--this was a last-words theme. OK, fair enough, and fun to figure out, once I understood it.
There did seem to be a lot of obscure-to-me proper names,. Is the "Scholomance Trilogy" well-known? show about Tegan and SARA? or a star of STAR WARS who doesn't appear until one of the later episodes. And ASTRID as a character in "Crazy Rich Asians?" Who would have guessed it?
I guess a SKI BOARD is like a snowboard only you put one on each foot. What won't they think of next?
OK, let's see what Rex had to say.
Propón un brindis por un canalla sin fondo.
I love puzzles with a vertical orientation. It's rare and fun. Caught the joke early and then made quick work of everything else, so a fast solve, but phew, so many names crossing names it seemed inevitable I'd be stuck. And yet the guessing game was on my side today.
I love many bottomless things, well, mostly people, but I've never imagined all of brunch to be bottomless. Really makes you wonder if you want to gobble your waffle. Maybe it's a scenario where loosening your belt becomes a bit more extreme, and like a grown-up pajama party at the local bar, there's an underwear-forward tea and crumpets gala ahead.
You'd think spending 60 years in Colorado I might have seen the phrase SKI BOARD before today, but no.
I worked in an assay office in high school, and there were a mess of chemicals you probably shouldn't allow children to use. It's probably why I don't lose sleep over being dumb and needing to look up actresses to solve Saturday puzzles. What The Fonz says when he sees me: "ASS, AY!"
The news is so disheartening now, thank you all for creating this silly space to escape the world for a few minutes each day.
People: 9
Places: 2
Products: 4
Partials: 14 {boooo}
Foreignisms: 3
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 32 of 79 (41%) {ehem}
Funnyisms: 1 🤨
Tee-Hee: STREAK BY.
Loop-i-clues:
-ADORE TRUE NORTH: Disparage the magnetic one as being for simpletons.
-RAGAMUFFIN ARCANA: Collection of fashion tips for those aspiring to look like they belong in a Charles Dickens novel.
Uniclues:
1 Xeroxes.
2 Les Americans stupide are like slippery fish avec slime.
3 1. Helps with hacking. 2. Gets you high if you drink the whole bottle, allegedly. 3. Tastes like a poisoned iced tea. 4. Who doesn't like a slime? 5. It's neon colored. 6. Whatever the closest store is to your house, they probably carry it. 7. A pimply-faced boy running the self-check-out is required to inspect your identification if you try to buy it. 8. Those caps are not coming off unless there's a kid in your house. 9. Not one person has ever read the booklet of warnings and directions it comes with. 10. And to repeat, it gets you high if you drink the whole bottle, allegedly.
1 DITTO KNOCKOFFS
2 PARIS EEL SIMILE
3 COUGH SYRUP TOP TEN
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Popular name for my dance move. DISMAL TWERK.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@egsforbreakfast 9:37 AM
Dude. Your topless dancer idea is genius.
For Minnesotan trio I tried MMM - You know, 3M? Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing!
Had never heard of BOTTOMLESSBRUNCH as a thing, but was easy to infer from the context. However, the numerous names in this puzzle stumped me and took forever plus a couple of cheats to get this one, even with the theme kinda obvious from mid-solve on. Initially tried to make something like DRINKATOAS(T) work and that took time to unravel. Like the theme and related implications. Made me remember loving Father John’s Cough Medicine as a kid—couldn’t wait to develop a cough that required it.
For Anonymous: When I saw you address me as "Darling," I felt a momentary surge of maleness. Then I reminded myself that I'm 83, and that you were probably being sarcastic. Seriously, I don't apologize for not knowing what empanadas and RPGs are.
Vidal SOSOON. Good one! 😄
Medium-tough for me with the SW being the tough part. I caught the theme fairly early when HASH wouldn’t fit but I still struggled a bit.
Costly SW erasures: REw before REC and wooS before SUES.
I did not know ASTRID (and I’ve read the book and seen the movie), OVAL, NAOMI, and SKI BOARD.
Smooth grid, cute/clever/fun theme, liked it.
I forgot to mention KENKEN. As I have mentioned before, we have the NYT delivered to our front porch every morning. I bring it in, open the Arts section, find the page with the puzzle, and fold the paper into quarters so I can put it into a clipboard to solve the crossword. If I did it differently --- say, sitting at a desk and spreading the paper out in front of me -- I would have seen two KENKEN puzzles (4X4 and 6X6) to the immediate left of the crossword. Fortunately, I was able to resist the temptation to flip over the folded paper, since I wanted it to be KENdo for a few seconds.
@Barbara S., RPG= Role-Playing Game, archetypically Dungeons and Dragons. You take on a role and interact with other players through various adventures. One of my sons was obsessed with it as an early teenager.
Re: “The news is so disheartening now, thank you all for creating this silly space to escape the world for a few minutes each day.” Thank YOU for making it a little bit sillier every day.
Nice puzzle and a fun little theme, but I grew weary of the names and trivia.
Great uniclues as usual, particularly #1!
Here go mine:
1. Bygone Hispano-Armenian bread-coated snack, e.g
2. Lana's Indy500 surname
3.Personal trainer's directive to a Valkyrie.
1. SSR EMPANADA
2. DEL-OVAL-REY
3L3. PERSPIRE, ASTRID!
KENKEN is popular with me anyway. Every day they appear adjacent to (or near, on Sunday) the Xword, and serve as a worthy warm-up.
One of the dumber puzzles. Sheesh.
Two kenkens run next to the Crossword in my NYT print edition six days a week. So twice as popular?
It could have been a great puzzle if there had been fewer names throughout the grid. I liked it though
Good analysis. And I appreciate the explanations bullets today. I couldn't figure out what the Confederate States of America (CSA) had to do with farm sharing.
Medium for me, with BOTTOMLESS being one of the words that eluded me the longest, this sort of event being unknown to me. When I finally got it, I also got the joke: no, we weren't dealing with a rebus theme, but with Downs missing their BRUNCH-related.BOTTOMS. I'm glad I caught on with at least two left to get (EG and HAS). Very cute - I couldn't believe how many the constructor was able to include! I also liked the bunch of girlfriends in attendance, most of whom I'm acquainted with - REY, NAOMI, KAY, ELENA, Ms. RIGG, SOFIA. Is that PARIS Hilton hovering on the periphery?
@Anonymous 8:07 - Lucky you, having NAOMI Novik as your student! I'm a big fan.
@Tom T 9:47 - I also was stuck on "Leia" and tried to make a rebus work. Especially with the hint of OBI-wan up top....
When 3 of the 4 across answers in the upper left are names, it's a bad start for me. Fortunately like most, I knew most of the names, even if I had no idea that Diana RIGG was in G.O.T.! Note that Sophia managed to put Sofia in the grid.
Note a typo in Rex's URL today... he left off the 3rd N in "Minnesotan".
@Gary Jugert... how could you have not jumped all over GLUE-ON SKI BOARD?
M&A once attended a restaurant brunch that let U make yer own mimosas, with lotsa fruit garnishes, as often as U wanted. Don't recall it bein called BOTTOMLESSBRUNCH, tho. But I flat-out luved this puztheme, anyhoo.
Do recall that that place went outta business, tho. Don't believe it was us that drained them too heavily, tho -- only went for two rounds of mimosas, as we wanted to drive everyone home safely.
79 worder ... one over the limit. But dedicated to a noble cause: of generatin 26 weejects. Staff weeject pick: KAY, who contributed to the KAY/SARA fork in the names road.
There were quite a few names, but the solvequest survived, with a little extra precious nanosecond drainage. About half the names were of the no-know persuasion.
Caught onto the puztheme mcguffin fairly early ... at least the "bottomless" part. Took m&e a little longer to establish that they were them bottomless foodstuff thingies.
Thanx for the fun, Ms. Maymudes darlin. Superb puztheme innovation! Congratzes.
Masked & Anonymo6Us
... a few more ?-marker clues, anyone? ...
"Question Everything" - 7x7 15 min. questionable runt puzzle:
**gruntz**
M&A
As far as Wednesday puzzles go, I thought that was extremely challenging.
I'd like to plug a different series by Naomi Novak. The Temeraire series - a fantasy version of the Napoleonic wars - is beautifully written. Anyone who just doesn't like fantasy would not be interested. But, even though it had a lot of battle scene, which usually bore me, I found it a great read about friendship and loyalty and the slightly old-fashioned style of writing made it seem more "in its period".
Had never heard of the "Scholomance Trilogy and when I googled Naomi Novik it did not come up. I had to google "Scholomance", so in response to one query above, it does not seem to be well known.
SKI BOARDS, which I own and trot out every spring on 4/20 day (pot-themed, costumed day on the mountain) are known to me as SKI blades, so I didn't see it. Their characteristic features is being short, not wide. So this clue bothered me.
"Saved one's bacon." Ugh. I have an acquaintance who unironically wears ascots (seriously, one time he wore one to a kids birthday party with a polo shirt tucked into jeans). I could see him saying that. Not a great look for him or the puzzle.
I had no idea what was going on until I came I came here. I got BOTTOMLESS BRUNCH & saw the missing letters - could it be a rebus on Wednesday?? Didn't think so.
Very clever, Sophia. Guess I'm not as quick as I thought I was :(
@jberg: I think your RPG explanation was probably intended to answer @Nancy's comment at 9:17. (I've been known to play the odd RPG in my time.)
What an odd feeling, to like a puzzle *less* than Rex!
Cloudy
The sky is grey and white and cloudy
Sometimes I think it’s hanging down on me
And it’s hitchhike a hundred miles
I’m a RAGAMUFFIN child
Pointed finger-painted smile
I left my shadow waiting down the road for me a while.
Thanks, Paul Simon.
Re: Bottoms. There was a New Yorker cartoon years ago that had a father and son, seen from behind, walking up a road. The dad had his arm around the son, and they both had enormous identical rear ends. And the dad is saying, "Son, it's time we discussed your inheritance."
Ken-Ken is popular by definition simply because Will Shortz likes it…
Your expression "early teenager" is a bit jarring. In the context of promptness, there's really no such thing. I once said of my then-teen daughter: There's Planet Earth, and then there's Caity, ten minutes later.
@Pablo YES! Soccer Football players DO NOT get a warning or sending-off for most Fouls or Misconduct offenses, and they never actually get the card. Only when the Foul or Misconduct is serious or against the spirit of The Game does the Ref warn chummy or send them off, and raise high the card so that everybody on & off the field knows the nature of the offense.
regards, JimG the lawman.
Thursday is trash day here, which appropriately describes the NYTXW for that day of the week. So, if I weren't sure what day it is today, I might drag my bins out to the street after solving this trash.
EPCOT is where typical, unimaginative people go to visit fake places instead of visiting the actual ones. There is a "club" there called New Years Eve. Visitors can go there to drink and revel any day of the year, as they usually do only once a year.
As a middle-class white hetero christian male I couldn't agree more (end sarcasm). I liked the puzzle and I learned a new word, muliebral, reading the comments
What is the reference that Rex and others use when determining how many times, if any, an answer has ever appeared in the NYTXW? Thanks
YES! Although, I admit while working puzzle I didn’t think of that. It’s kinda crazy how 3M eventually became more well known for scotch tape and post-it notes, etc.
Thank you Gary J for spending the time to entertain and enlighten us! Yikes…it’s late so I hope you see this. I just know that your contribution takes some time and brain cells. I am lazy and have “no time”, but if I did…I wouldn’t use the brain cells! Ooh. I HOPE this sounds like the compliment it’s intended to be. Let’s add, even IF I used my brain cells…I couldn’t do what YOU do regularly. Okay. Lol…likely…not at all. Yikes. I THINK I turned this into a real compliment…😬
This was a pain from start to finish. Filled with names and ARCANA and clearly meant to put the constructor and her coterie/clique on some higher plain than the average solver. I hated it all the way through, and the revealer did nothing to lighten my mood. A Saturday-difficult themed puzzle. To put it mildly, not to my taste. My final comment on this was that I internally said "AYFKM" and "Seriously?" through the entire unenjoyable ordeal.
Busy beginning of my week out here. In the middle of getting my new (mini) home construction well under way, there occurred the worst rains in California history. We experienced yet another climate change event called the Atmospheric River! It rained most of the late summer. And I mean poured rain all day every day, but for a couple weeks the daily rains were epic. The three day stretch that literally bowed out a concrete retaining wall included 16, yes, s-i-x-t-e-e-n inches of rain in one day. Said (poorly built in the late 1950s) retaining wall is keeping a hill of what is still very, very soft soil from sliding down into the back wall of what I am calling my Barbie Dream House. Its nearly completed exterior occupies almost all of the back yard at my kids’ home. Real estate on California is hideously expensive and folks on public servant and teacher salaries can’t afford much of a yard if they want enough house in which to live in reasonable comfort.
Anyway, between being the official Owners’ Representative for the construction project and now vetting engineers to find someone to do the retaining wall remediation I have been really busy. Being the conduit between big projects and government entities was one of the most time consuming parts of my work life. Here I am doing it again. Fortunately, my kids are so grateful that I “speak construction and engineering” that so far we have avoided extra angst. But I did miss posting here for a few pretty interesting days. Loved the wide variety of opinions on Monday and Tuesday.
Which brings me to today. While I did pick up on and enjoy the woman-centric vibe, the names nearly killed me. Too many. The good news is that the clever theme kept me pretty happy. I found the theme trick right off the bat in the NW when I tried to rebus the UP of COUGH SYRUP and created GLUPE ON. So, I thought maybe that was part of the theme although if I were to describe an untidy affixation as GLUPE, I would have spelled it GLoop. So, that idea went by the wayside when I PROPOSED A TOAS and could not fit the missing T in and have it make any kind of sense. The non-name clues were very gettable and things were going well overall, so I continued just leaving all the theme answers BOTTOMLESS.
As it happened, my solve kept me breezing through the south half and I had BRUNCH finished with only a couple letters of BOTTOMLESS. I came back to the north in a counterclockwise manner and had the reveal but not its first word. Now, I am a BRUNCH lover and if the meal is heralded as being special by locals, I will gladly stand in line for at least an hour. In all my brunching though, I have never seen the phrase BOTTOMLESS BRUNCH. - mimosas or - Bloody Marys yes, but I have not seen the phrase BOTTOMLESS BRUNCH so it took me a minute to suss it out. When I did, I got a true reveal “aha!” So happy about that. My pleasure at the theme and its cleverness almost erased my agony at all the dang names. Just not quite. Overall though, an enjoyable solve.
@doc: Well, this other uses the xwordinfo.com site.
M&A Help Desk
I finished the puzzle, but found it a slog. Got the theme trick early, but didn't appreciate that the "bottomless" answers were all brunch foods until now!
Can someone explain how the "setting for Cape Cod at Christmas" is EST? Is this referring to the time zone?
Wow. YOU have a lot on your plate now and I am amazed you had such a great comment!
So yesterday's revealer consisted of two short words snuck into the SW and today's is right smack in the middle, front and center spanning the grid North to South! Impressive feat! Though, like many others here, I never heard the term BOTTOMLESSBRUNCH. Bottomless mimosas, maybe, all you can eat brunch, definitely, but not bottomless brunch. Even so, that fell pretty quickly and I enjoyed the puzzle, though maybe not quite as much as @Rex did. Agree that the theme was clever, original and pretty tightly executed, and best of all it was fun.
There were quite a few propers that I didn't know today but that didn't detract from the enjoyment, I've always said that I welcome learning something new and (mostly) cool. Though the REY/RPG crossing was a Natick for me today but that didn't sting too much, just a tad annoying.
Anywhere I was held up was purely due to my brain not firing on all cylinders - for some reason SOFAR took forever to click along with EPCOT. At 17A, I had NORTH, and just couldn't get the TRUE to fall as those downs were slow to come to me as well. For a minute I had ASSET for 1D (Ledger item) and that T resulted in TSHAPE - I figured, "hey, that could make some sense." RIGG finally came to me and all was OK.
SE took some time as well. A little thing like insisting on REW for 55D - Video camera button, caused a bunch of trouble. It had me come up with SNOWKOFFS for 64A (I had no idea what those logos were in the clue and figured Snowkoffs must be a name brand I'm not familiar with). I also figured (at the time) that maybe we have a winter theme on top of a brunch theme as SKIBOARD was just a bit to the North. Finally realized it's KENKEN and and not kenSen and REC and not REW and all that came together.
Sometimes mistakes make my solving adventure a lot of fun - this was one of those times. Nice work Sophia!
Post a Comment