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Pidgeon, Hawke or Crowe / THU 1-30-25 / Fictional prison guarded by Dementors / Supermodel Carangi / In-the-works software versions / First U.S. prez to be born outside the original 13 Colonies / Focus of a product development test / Region bordering India and China in Risk / This is "plagiarism or revolution," per Gauguin
Thursday, January 30, 2025
Constructor: Joe Marquez
Relative difficulty: Easy
Theme answers:
- SOLDIER OF / FORTUNE (18A: Mercenary)
- HEART / TRANSPLANT (23A: Groundbreaking medical procedure first accomplished in 1967)
- USER / RESEARCH (38A: Focus of a product development test)
- CAN'T SE / E STRAIGHT (52A: Has a clouded mind)
Walter Davis Pidgeon (September 23, 1897 – September 25, 1984) was a Canadian-American actor. A major leading man during the Golden Age of Hollywood, known for his "portrayals of men who prove both sturdy and wise,"[2] Pidgeon earned two Academy Award nominations for Best Actor, for his roles in Mrs. Miniver (1942) and Madame Curie (1943).Pidgeon also starred in many other notable films, such as How Green Was My Valley (1941), The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), Forbidden Planet (1956), Executive Suite (1954), Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961), Advise & Consent (1962), Funny Girl (1968), and Harry in Your Pocket (1973).
Aside from his acting career, Pidgeon served as the 10th President of the Screen Actors Guild, between 1952 and 1957. He received the Guild's Life Achievement Award in 1975, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960, for his contributions to the motion picture industry. (wikipedia)
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• • •
[ARETHA! (1D: Singer with the 1972 album "Young, Gifted and Black," informally)]
The fill was on the (very) weak side. But as I said up front, it was mostly just dull. Looking the grid over to try to find a Word of the Day, I was struck by how nothing seemed worthy. Nothing seemed interesting or extraordinary or weird enough to merit such a designation. It's mostly very plain language or very familiar crosswordese. It tries a couple longer proper nouns, but ... honestly, I'd rather it hadn't. Horrible to see HP content (AZKABAN) (26D: Fictional prison guarded by Dementors) centered in the grid the day after Rowling's anti-trans bigotry finally got its political expression in the form of an Executive Order hunting trans kids and the people who support them. Congrats on that, all you "protect women's spaces" / "save women's sports" people. Nice job. Pat selves on back. ("No one comes here for your political opinions" — cool cool please go enjoy one of those highly entertaining apolitical crossword blogs then, no one's stopping you!). The other attempt at adding some proper-noun color to this grid (TED LASSO) ends up creating a less-than-ideal TV character / TV character crossing (TED LASSO / HOLT). No one's likely to get stuck there (all the crosses on HOLT are easy), but ... that is not how I would've clued HOLT in this specific situation. I mean, it's not how I would've clued HOLT ever, but as editor, in this instance, I probably would've nudged that clue toward HOLT's regular meaning (a wood, grove, or copse; or the lair of an otter!) ... non-proper-noun HOLT is not exactly a common word, but hey, it's Thursday, some part of this puzzle should actually be a little challenging.
["Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth / Inspired hath in every HOLT and heeth / The tendre croppes..."]
My errors today were, like much of this grid, super-boring. Wanted SKOSH before SPECK (32A: Tiny bit). Wanted -ANE before -ENE (12D: Suffix with methyl). Oof, suffix confusion ... fun! Were those my only missteps? It looks like it. I had trouble with FARCE, but only because it crossed ENE-not-ANE. HOLT is really the only thing I can see holding people up today, and as I said, there's no reason it should hold anyone up for long.
Notes:
- 1A: First U.S. prez to be born outside the original 13 Colonies (ABE) — I started to actually think about this one, but then some (wise, experienced) part of my brain was like "just write ABE, it's probably ABE." And so it was.
- 51A: Supermodel Carangi (GIA) — I know one other GIA. Actress GIA Scala. There's apparently some social media "influencer" named GIA, but I don't want to give constructors / editors any ideas.
- 31D: Division of the Dept. of Labor (OSHA) — Occupational Health and Safety Administration. Do we still have one of these? I can't keep up with the deregulatory news this week.
- 64A: This is "plagiarism or revolution," per Gauguin (ART) — ideally you would not have a standalone answer that essentially dupes one of your up/down three-letter strings (the "ART" in HEART / TRANSPLANT). See also EST (17A: "Sic vita ___" ("Such is life")) / CAN'T SEE STRAIGHT.
- 49D: Possible answer to "Whose?" (THE I.R.S.) — As in, "Whose (money is this)?" It's a question you ask around April.*
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92 comments:
Easy-Medium Thursday. Caught onto the theme at 18A, SOLDIE[R OF][FOR]TUNE, and from there on it was fairly straightforward.
Overwrites:
8A: spoof before FARCE, corrected by ENE at 12D
13A: eek before RUN
26D: Another Harry Potterism got me: guessed AtKABAr before AZKABAN (both are gibberish to me). Then that coupled with 30A: RAtE before RAZE for "Level" prevented the happy music.
46A: ninO before PASO
47A: PeTS before PATS
WOEs:
Brooklyn Nine Nine character HOLT at 51A
GIA Carangi at 61A
Needed one cheat. I had "rate" instead of RAZE for "level," thinking of interest rates instead of destruction, so I looked up the fictional prison. The theme is clever, but CANTSESTRAIGHT doesn't work like the others (unless i'm missing something).
Yesterday was a task, Saturday time. Today played like a Wednesday. I am on all fours with OFL here. In the midst of all of the chaos caused by our government , it’s so nice to have the stability of those things which are LAU, including this puzzle.
Also had RAtE before RAZE and AZKABAN is just gibberish to me.
I think this was a record Thursday time for me, despite several names I had never heard of!
The “top” letter ( e in this case) is used twice, going up and down.
One of those very rare occasions where I got the theme idea with the TRANSPLANT situation, and had it confirmed by the revealer, which gave me the confidence to tackle the others - so I experienced “theme synergy” for a change. Maybe there is hope for me yet.
Hopefully that MILNE dude penned something more clever than that cheesy quote they chose to clue him with. Thumbs down for the TV characters crossing, and I always just have to trust the crosses for AZKABAN (or whatever the mandatory GoT, HP, Star Wars, etc reference of the day is).
Very clever piece of work. I'd have preferred a fifth themer and no revealer, but that is often the case for me.
Thought SOLDIERFORhire at 18A, so I write in the SOLDIER, then dropped FOR down in the circles, then continued with 'hire' and wondered how that would be explained. But ANTES UP was clearly right so that was fixed easily.
It follows the same path as the others, but it is the only one where the doubled letter (the one at the top of the circles) is within a word (see) rather than between words (heart tra..., of for..., user res...).
Can’t de straight?
I liked the theme, got it with HEARTTRANSPLANT. Since I misspelled VISES as VIcES, it took a little while to see SOLDIEROFFORTUNE.
My problem was the SW, where I first had socialize, then socialism, then finally socialIST. Argh!
You include the ‘e’ twice — once as you go up, the other as you come back down… see (sic)?
The TED LASSO/HOLT cross was the last square filled for me, and because I had ISm rather than IST for “Suffix with social” the down answer was impossible to parse so I ended up guessing HOyT. Quickly figured it out but yeah, two TV characters of relatively recent vintage are not an ideal cross.
Haha The IRS. Good one RP!
looked up HOLT, probably would have gotten it but I am running late. Ar first I had Aims where ALPO went. then I remembered, it's not even Aims, it is IAMS . all I know about pet food I learned in crosswords. Cool puzzle, on the easy side of medium
I was so sure that “Young, Gifted and Black” was Nina Simone that i twisted my brain into thinking maybe NINAAA could be the informal version.
Agreed!
I couldn't agree with you more that the anti-trans executive order is repugnant to its core. But there's the whole question of the art vs the artist and whether you can or should separate the two. Rowling's views on trans people are disdainful, but her books got a generation of kids reading. I won't buy her books at this point, but I don't mind when Harry Potter appears in the puzzle. Having said that, I'm very happy to have politics mixed with my crossword blog ... people need to speak up on whatever platform they have.
Random thoughts:
• Debut answers aren’t automatically good, but two today are gold – SOLDIER OF FORTUNE and CAN’T SEE STRAIGHT.
• Speaking of CAN’T SEE STRAIGHT, that phrase nicely echoes the theme, because the theme answers don’t run straight across.
• Lovely misdirecting original clue for THEFTS: [They might sound the alarm].
• A host of schwa-enders: GIA, ARETHA, UTA, PANDA, OSHA, MESA, STRATA, and wannabes BETA(s) and CODA(s).
• TIL why shaking aspen trees shake, after looking it up. Their leaves, due to their shape, flutter in even the slightest breeze, giving the trees the appearance of shaking. This led to their scientific name “tremuloides”. Cool!
So, Joe, your creation brought lots of smiles to spark my day. Thank you so much for making it!
As with all the other themers, you have to use all 3 letters twice (TSE, EST) so it works perfectly.
Enjoyed it except for this AZKABAN right in the center. What were you thinking, Joe?
Hey, Rex: save yourself a few seconds every morning and dispense with the “Relative Difficulty” format. We get it! Every puzzle for you is EASY. Geez, it gets tiresome.
Cmon, the men in womens sports thing is wrong and you know it. I have no objections what you want to be, male/female/other, what you identify as, but biological males dominating biological female sports is not right or ethical. Ask your daughter is she'd like to compete with a biological male
I wanted Andy Jackson initially in the upper left thinking he was from Tennessee, but nope, NC. The more you know
💯
Hey All !
Pretty neat idea. After the HEART TRANSPLANT one, was thinking Theme might be HEART related, as the UP/DOWN thing looks like a blip on a heart monitor. But, false thought. I guess I didNT SEE STRAIGHT on that one.
Agree easy puz today. Close to record time here. Nice to see real words in the Downs that contain the UPS AND DOWNS. Even though the Across Themers end up as non words without the UP/DOWN.
Only two writeovers I can think I had, spoof-FARCE, Ite-IST.
Got a sneaky ASS in in ASSET. Har.
Enough OUTIE me. Gotta RUN
Happy Thursday!
Two F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
isn’t the answer to whose just ‘theirs’? rather than ‘the i.r.s’
Haha, two shows I actually watch or have watched, Brooklyn nine nine and Ted Lasso, what are the odds? Worked for me. I thought the theme was cute, didn’t come quite as easily for me as for Rex. Which is why I liked it. I need something to keep me busy other than the news. Although a judge reversed his federal funding freeze so at least people are trying to fight back!
By the time I read the clue for 18-A I already had TUNE from crosses, so it just had to be SOLDIER OF FORTUNE, and it didn't take long to figure out how those three circled squares fit in. HEART TRANSPLANT and USER RESEARCH were just as easy, even though I didn't much like the idea that the focus of a test was RESEARCH. I mean, the test IS the research, the focus is on your findings. USER RESPONSE would have been better, but wouldn't fit.
But then I came to CAN'T SEE STRAIGHT and, in fact I couldn't see it for a long time. The difference is that this is the only theme answer where the shift from up to down does not come between words. Somehow, it was hard for me to grasp that the E at the top of the circles had to be doubled. It didn't take THAT long, but the contrast impressed me.
I've never heard or read the expression SIC VITA EST, but OK. And PeTS fits the clue a lot better than PATS, but again, OK.
The revealer is a little off, though, in that it's plural. True, you have 4 UPS AND DOWNS, but only one of each in each theme answer, which is not ideal.
Has anyone been to that cryptology museum? I've driven past a sign for it several times on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, but it appears to be inside the NSA, which is not open to the public. Admittedly, though, I've never tried, as we were always in a hurry to get to our next stop.
“No one comes here for your political opinions - cool cool please go…”
When I saw it would be either socialIST or socialISM, either word (being a dog whistle to the political right) reminds me of the news clip of people protesting perceived liberal government overreach, one holding a sign reading “Big Government, get your hands off my Social Security”.
I'm so incredibly smart, especially at spelling. Why, in school I was a STRATA student.
I put in CODAS a "Cousin of haddock". Bet you did too.
If uncertainties of life were UPSANDDNATESTS, it could have been a themer (albeit a pretty pathetic one). I liked that AROSE was in the puzzle, and wish "fell" had been as well, in order to complement the theme.
When I saw REUNITES I said to myself, "Hey, I've drunk a few bottles of those!" Turns out the wine is RiUNITE Lambrusco. Anyone out there remember the "Riunite on Ice" TV ad campaign from the 60s? I thought not.
Time for us to say we CANTSEESTRAIGHT as being in any way better or worse than LGBT or Q. And I'm most serious about this. Everyone with a brain has been knocked for a loop by the storm trooper tactics going on, but it's time to come out of our stupor and stand up for decency. Rant over.
Thanks for the cute theme that didn't RAZE expectations, Joe Marquez.
HOLT / LASSO was a Natick for me, and yeah I know Ted Lasso is supposed too be the most popular streaming whatever in human history but a lot of that stuff just passes me by because some twenty years back or so sit coms just stopped filling any need my brain seems to have. FASSO? Is that it? Couldn't remember. Which for me is a total pet peeve, not because Natick per se but because I hate hate Hate the experience of breezing through a puzzle this easy and then getting snagged at the end by some vacuous proper-name cross that even if I guessed it right was worth barely a "Meh." Other than *that* I actually enjoyed the puzzle, the "meh" somewhat offset by the "Aha!" when I saw the circled bits had to be read in both directions. It was fun using that to unock the rest of the themers and yeah, some liveliness in the fill.
Not a correction, Rex, just admiration for your reparsing of THEIRS. I guess that's the constructor mind at work.
What is the definition of "supermodel" anyway? There seem to be more of them around all the time, and I've never heard of any of those who appear in the puzzle.
@Southside--you have to take the Milne quotation in context; it's Winnie the Pooh, Milne's famous creation, manifesting yet again his absolute obsession with honey, kind of a running joke through the books.
Hoping you're kidding, but if not, A.A. Milne is the writer behind Winnie the Pooh.
Hesitated just a bit on ARETHA, because I guess she coulda done a version but the song is *much* more strongly associated with Nina Simone (as well as the off-Broadway play of the same name). Aretha is a goddess, but not for this song. To me that's Simone's property. Aretha's got plenty of her own. If you need a deeper cut, how about "Rock Steady" or "Freeway of Love."
I thought of Simone first too
As your mother might unenthusiastically say when brought home your STRATA report card, “That’s nice” (then go back to pounding the Riunite. Though maybe that was just MY mom).
Riunite on ice? Meh - Disney On Ice was MUCH better!
That's a good question, what makes one a supermodel? Claudia Schiffer said "In order to become a supermodel one must be on all the covers all over the world at the same time." That's a high bar. There does not seem to be a specific monetary or other "test." It's some vague combination of earnings and celebrity. I guess it's similar to what Justice Stewart of the Supreme Court said about pornography -- you know it when you see it.
@Rex Hear, hear! Any mention of HP is unwelcome, but to encounter one now is, at best, distasteful.
Caught on at the first themer I got to, HEART TRANSPLANT, and had no trouble thereafter. I also read the revealer clue before I was anywhere near it, and immediately thought UPS AND DOWNS. (I checked the U and the W before writing it in, though.) So an easy solve for me -- but not an unrewarding one. I'm always a bit in awe of constructors who can dream up something like a long palindrome in their heads. As soon as I finish typing this, I'll go read Lewis and see what he says. This reminds me of the great palindrome puzzle he did with Jeff Chen. If Lewis doesn't satisfy my curiosity, I'll go read the Constructors Notes.
What I want to know is: Can you come up with these palindromes the old-fashioned analog way or do you need a computer program to help you?
I know what it's like to toss and turn in bed thinking up rebuses and wordplay ideas and Spoonerisms. It interferes with sleep, but it can be done. But in a million years I would never be able to come up with any palindromes off the top of my head. And since I'm almost completely computer-illiterate, you will never see a palindrome puzzle from me.
I enjoy solving them, though, and feel enormous respect for the ART and WIT required to make them. Very nice work here.
A unusual and too easy Thursday: I never got the theme and filled the grid anyway.
Love Walter Pidgeon and remember him well. Getting the theme itself sent me back to get all the related entries quite easily. It was easy for a Thursday, but I'm not complaining.
If done like the others, the answer becomes
“Cantse Estraight” That’s kinda a bs way to write the puzzle.
I assumed it was THEIRS, not THE IRS, for "Possible answer to "Whose?"" Like, "Whose is it? Theirs."
My usual quick scan of clues led me to start with UTA, and the SW corner was easy enough, so I had the revealer before any of the themers. That didn't really spoil anything as they were fun to figure out and not that easy to see, even if I knew what was going on, which I suppose I did.
Never have seen TEDLASSO except in xwords, but having a name ending in ASSO, he was a pretty safe bet. Had OFL's Canterbury Tales reaction after seeing HOLT. as we had to memorize that part in HS. I had seen the HP title somewhere but this was pretty much an every-cross answer.
My Adventures in Parsing for today was trying to imagine which part of the government had The FTS, or what the letters stood for. Come on man.
Very clever construction indeed, JM. Just My bad judgment to start with the revealer, and thanks for all the fun.
So I went to the Constructor Notes and here's the answer: "A quick Python script gave me a couple dozen phrases..." And what I want to know is: What on earth is a Python script?
Same thought, learned something
I really enjoyed all of the theme answers. Contrary to Rex, I didn't find the fill to be that bad. Actually, I kept finding myself smiling at some of the clever clueing. Like 13A, cry in a horror film (RUN), 19D Work on a sub? (EAT), 35D Rash reaction (ITCH), and 55D Base for a proposal (KNEE). Great puzzle, Joe Marquez!
Had LAME for LACE which screwed me up a lot longer than I care to tell. CANT SEE STRAIGHT didn't follow the rules as the others did, but that was okay with me. I liked AZKABAN
Indeed it is Nina’s property, as she wrote the song that Aretha covered and whence that album title came. The song title, “To Be Young, Gifted, and Black” came from Lorraine Hansberry’s play of the same name.
That seems a little tortured to me. Occam's razor says its the I.R.S.
Yes, déjá vu for me today, as the puzzle Jeff Chen and I made, a Sunday (5/31/20), had basically the same theme. To answer your question -- we came up with the theme idea from brainstorming, but for coming up with theme answers, Jeff wrote a computer program that gave us choices.
Or possibly South Carolina. Exact location of his birth is somewhere near the border and disputed.
You aren’t required to agree with Rex’s opinions, but then the rest of us are also allowed to disagree with you.
There is one *opinionator* who posts long, rambling comments here everyday, sometimes two or more times a day. I don’t read his essays because I find them supercilious and annoying. But RP has provided this site where all can politely express opinions, so I just skip over that person’s comments and read on. You can do the same with any opinions you disagree with.
Easy-medium for me. It took a bit of staring to parse the theme answers, but it didn’t seem that hard.
Most costly erasures: sAnE before RAZE and seTS before PUTS
Answer that was a stretch for the clue: THEFTS.
I did not know HOLT, GIA, and AZKABAN
Clever with a couple of fine long downs, liked it.
Erratum from yesterday: I had SW when I meant SE, although I’m pretty sure no one noticed.
Rex humor
Fairly easy, especially for a Thursday. And I’m sorry, but the Can’t Se(e) Straight answer for the revealer clue not complying with the format of the others is just totally lazy and wrong and should not have been acceptable
CMon why don't you actually research the subject before just throwing your opinion in?
Gia Carangi is often considered the first supermodel. There was a very good movie called Gia with Angelina Jolie. I think it came out in the late 90s.
You could fill a good deal of time reading the beautiful things that A.A. Milne wrote. One of my favorites: “Some people talk to animals. Not many listen though. That's the problem.”
IDK if I'm just off or my brain isn't working but this was so hard for me today. I couldn't hardly get anything. I haven't even finished and I don't want to lol. Hope I'm not losing it. Or maybe by brain is to busy worrying about our democracy with Dictator Don in the Oval office.
That’s what I assumed. Didn’t even think about THE IRS until I came here.
Yes I do remember Riunite but hold the ice if you’re pouring for me. I certainly drank my share of it back in the day but it’s been a while.
@Nancy Python is a programming language, so he presumably ran some code against a large dataset of phrases to find results that are palindromatic in certain letter positions.
I subscribe to the NYT "Replica Edition" -- actually not a Times subscription, but rather PressReader. This, because the NYT will not deliver the print edition to my home. So I print out the puzzle daily on paper and solve it in ink.
Today, after the usual clicks for "Print as Image", the preview came up, which now contains an ugly, round "NOT FOR SALE" watermark about the image not to be used for commercial purposes.
Was this change ordered by the NYT to get solvers like me to buy their apps or other products?
In any case, I'm about to say goodbye to the NYTXW. It gets worse by the day under the current silly editorship anyway.
She merely objected to language being made absurd by those who insisted on saying "menstruating people." Standing up for women these days gets a person cancelled.
Vaivenes.
What a fun puzzle! Pretty much in the weeds the entire solve, but kept faith and focus and TADA I solved it even with those mysterious people wandering around. I had ISM for IST so TED LASSO was the final entry and I thought maybe there was somebody named MEDRASSO. Crossing two TV characters is poor form. Frankly, Ted Lasso was poor form after the first season, but we watched 'em all at our house.
Adored working the UPS AND DOWNS.
Harry Potter is #1! Last time he was in the puzzle, the harumphers went unhinged and called it a niche subject. $2.2 billion from the movies (more than the James Bond franchise), 500 million copies of the books (more than Don Quixote), and an author we're loving to hate, pales in comparison to some of the prize-winning authors we're asked to recall, amirite? Sometimes we're ridiculous. By the way, for those of you taking pride in your refusal to learn anything about the topic, should you encounter a situation where you might be taken to AZKABAN prison, you do not want to go. It's awful there. Like some on this blog, the Dementors have no sense of humor. And, they can suck out your soul. What's left of it anyway. You can thank me for warning you later.
Since the police department here can't seem to control crime and is regularly part of doing the crime, I've proposed a night of handing out awards for the Best Felony Transgressions. We're calling THE-FT-S.
I was happy to see the answer to [Has a clouded mind] wasn't the more obvious answer GARY.
I read GIA Carangi's Wiki. Very sad story.
People: 9
Places: 4
Products: 1
Partials: 4
Foreignisms: 1
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 19 of 76 (25%)
Funnyisms: 5 😄
Tee-Hee: SPIT.
Loop-i-clues:
-ASPENS-IST: Quaker cracker.
-STEER UPS AND DOWNS: The emotional rollercoaster of being a bovine falsetto.
-FAT CAT'S VISES: How wealthy felines squeeze their squeaky toys.
-KNEE ADO: Promposal.
Uniclues:
1 When pin the tail on the donkey goes awry.
2 Lick a licorice statue.
3 Finds another even younger woman.
1 TACK ON STEER
2 TASTE ANISE ART
3 REUNITES AGE GAP
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Two Years ago: What's going on in your freezer, probably. COD LIE IN STATE.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Anon 8:16 Agree, it took decades and lawsuits for women and girls to have equal rights in sports. The insistence on allowing someone who was male through adolescence to compete in women's sports is obviously unfair. The Olympic athlete who was Bruce Jenner and transitioned later has vehemently agreed with us on this point.
Me, too, for finding it an easy Thursday and for finding CAN'T SEE STRAIGHT aptly the hardest to see (I had to keep counting "THREE UP and THREE DOWN" to get it to work for me).
Do-overs: spoof before FARCE, ISm x mr. rogers before IST x TED LASSO. No idea:HOLT, GIA.
It does comply. Think about it.
Definitely easy-ish for a ThursPuz. First thing I did was visit the revealer, and say "Oh ... UPS AND DOWNS, probably".
HE(ARTTRA)NSPLANT bore that out, pretty soon after.
Fun puztheme, but it did seem familiar, from somethin similar in the puzpast.
staff weeject pick: ENE. Kinda does its own internal ups and downs.
Thanx for the fun, Mr. Marquez dude. Nice job.
Masked & Anonymo5Us
27 comments from Anon in blue. Enough already!
Solid, straightforward Thursday. SOLDIER OF FORTUNE was so obvious it gave away the trick right off the bat.
Not an obnoxious amount of Unknown Names today; AZKABAN is pretty much it. Some gratuitous nameification of clues for FARCE, ART, ACTOR, PANDA though.
The clue for SHOOT PAR is fair enough, I guess, but unlikely. The only way a player can avoid any bogeys and only shoot par, is if they par every single hole. Every Single Hole.
Easy Thursday, fun puzzle. Well done, Joe!
Some omitted entries (from the Constructor's Notes):
BIL(LIE EIL)ISH
W(RAP PAR)TY
ATLAN(TIC CIT)Y
TO(NAL LAN)GUAGE
KANG(AROO RA)T
TOO (HOT TO H)ANDLE
And there's the explanation for The FTS. Thank you.
Agree with you Anonymous (whoever you are?) If you don't like the 'opinionators',the 'ramblers' - don't read them & go on to something else - it's really that simple.
@Klazzic - Sometimes the GRIPING gets 'tiresome,' you know? Rex has the right - as does everyone here especially since it's his Blog - to express his opinion(s), his rating of a puzzle, etc. It's his blog & one we choose to add & respond & contribute to whether we agree with him or not. Think of how boring it would be without it.
Kept thinking REBUS? Couldn't be. Finished it but I had to come here to get the gimmick.
I had more fun responding to @Klazzic 8:04 & Anonymous 10:51 anyway.
Can someone explain the 66 across clue "walks for one"? Why is the answer "stat" (which I thought meant quickly, in medical jargon)?
Agreed! Had me going
Today marks the return of the always unwelcome "switch positions" clue (my personal barometer as to the quality of editing), last seen in the NYTXW on Thursday, May 11, 2023. I also have a dread of seeing the answer ONS, although I recognize it is occasionally necessary. But if ONS must be used, at least, for the love of God, find a more creative way to clue it.
It is. Rex was joking, which is why he said no corrections please.
It is. Rex was kidding.
Didn't get the gimmick, so a DNF here. And I was hoping OFL was a Steeleye Span fan, because one of their best songs is THE UPS AND DOWNS. and a link would have been great. Also known as the Aylesbury Girl. (As one commentator said, no maidenhead is safe in a Steeleye song, andthis tale of woe has a first rate tune),
It's a walk in baseball - a statistic (stat).
Starting to cringe when I see a puzzle with circles now.
@doghairstew, "walks" is a stat (statistic) in baseball.
BTW @ Anonymous - are you referring to "RIP" something or other??
Python is a computer language. A Python script is a text file written in the Python language. Maybe he programmed the Python script to search through a list of words or phrases that satisfy certain conditions like the 3-letter palindrome pattern in the middle.
Do you think they plan the crossword the same night they go to press? They had no idea that there would be any trans-related orders from Trump the day the puzzle ran. The puzzle is laid out a week in advance at least and you can't just pull it. There is no conspiracy here.
I am so grateful for this blog. I have been doing the puzzles for a LOOOOONG time, but have trouble seeing the gimmicks.
I also wonder about the tomes posted on the responses. I’m on the west coast so I’m always last-late. But the last post above me was later than my local time.
Why not Rebecca Pidgeon?
A.A. Milne wasn't just a children's writer; he was a humorist for Punch, an editor there too, and wrote plays as well. This from Wikipedia: Milne observed that when he told his agent that he was going to write a detective story, he was told that what the country wanted from a "Punch humorist" was a humorous story; when two years later he said he was writing nursery rhymes, his agent and publisher were convinced he should write another detective story; and after another two years, he was being told that writing a detective story would be in the worst of taste given the demand for children's books. He concluded that "the only excuse which I have yet discovered for writing anything is that I want to write it; and I should be as proud to be delivered of a Telephone Directory con amore as I should be ashamed to create a Blank Verse Tragedy at the bidding of others."
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