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Show where the term "Debbie Downer" originated, in brief / WED 1-14-2025 / Fashion photographer Richard / Popular wine from Bordeaux / Mess kitchen implement
Wednesday, January 15, 2025
Constructor: Parker Higgins
Relative difficulty: Medium
THEME: Common "X for Y" phrases are re-parsed so the verbs become nouns
Theme answers:
Word of the Day: PEORIA (Illinois city whose name serves as shorthand for mainstream taste) —
Good morning everyone! Malaika here, for a slightly delayed Malaika MWednesday. I solved this puzzle while listening to Waxahatchee's new album-- I recommend for fans of Joni Mitchell, the Indigo Girls, etc.
- [Look for trouble] for STINK EYE
- "Look" as in "facial expression"
- [Good for nothing] for FREEBIE
- "Good" as in "item you can buy"
- [Open for business] for DEAR SIR OR MADAM
- "Open" as in "the opening of a letter"
- [Fit for a king] for REGALIA
- "Fit" as in "outfit" (this might be a more modern term, see, e.g. "fit check"
- [Run for the hills] for SKI SLOPE
- "Run" as in "stretch of land"
Word of the Day: PEORIA (Illinois city whose name serves as shorthand for mainstream taste) —
Peoria is a city in and the county seat of Peoria County, Illinois, United States. Located on the Illinois River, the city had a population of 113,150 as of the 2020 census, making it the eighth-most populous city in Illinois.
The city is associated with the phrase "Will it play in Peoria?", which may have originated from the vaudeville era and is often spuriously attributed to Groucho Marx. [wiki]
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What a treat to open the crossword app and see Parker's name! From my experience with his puzzles, he is really excellent at wordplay that is a little more clever than the average puzzle, while still being ultimately fun to solve (as opposed to an opportunity for the constructor to show off). Although, outside of the theme, Parker did show off a little bit here, by including pairs of fun, long down answers that had nothing to do with the theme: PREBOARDED, MINIWHEATS, BREAKS EVEN, and SCAVENGERS. This is tricky to do when the down entries have to cross through two theme answers (FREEBIE and OR MADAM on the right, and DEAR SIR and REGALIA on the left), but he pulled it off very cleanly. It's a nice touch in a puzzle where the theme answers themselves are shorter than the standard.
It's impressive to have a set of five symmetrical theme answers that totally nail the re-parsing, and I wonder if Parker had a list of fifty of these from which he plucked the best ones. I don't find any of these stretchy, although I am very used to using "fit" as a noun. I'm not sure if that is new slang or something that's been around for a while, but I have only heard it starting around 2019, so others who do not have a Gen Z younger sister constantly keeping them up-to-date on what the youths are saying might not be familiar. I do think my favorite here is [Good for nothing], because I think it's funny to imagine someone giving me something for free and me screaming "Good for nothing!!" at them.
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| Shoutout to my Gen Z Sister whose face I will not post without permission |
There were a couple of proper nouns I wasn't familiar with here. PEORIA and AVEDON both required every single crossing for me to get, as I've never heard of either before. If someone didn't know RAMI Malek or the phrase TETE-a-TETE, I could see them getting stuck. PADRE / ARCO also could have been a tough cross, although it wasn't a problem for me.
Outside of the theme, the puzzle is bursting with fun clues. [Got on first?] for PRE-BOARDED is a textbook example of how to elevate a pretty boring entry with an excellent clue. [Gig makeup?] makes you think of a setlist, or even stage makeup, but the answer, MEGS, is referring to megabytes which make up a gigabyte. And [Where you might dress up for a court appearance, informally?] for REN FAIRE is talking about royal court, not a modern-day legal courtroom. I'm sure there were others as well! Let me know your favorites in the comments.
Bullets:
- [Parthenon's place] for ATHENS — I had a history teacher who told us that you can remember Parthenon vs Pantheon by remembering that Italy makes pizzas in pans and thus is home to the Pantheon, and today that helped me with this crossword, so thank you Mr. Bell!
- [One who parties hearty] for RAVER — This struck me as kind of old-fashioned and quaint phrasing when compared with the 22 year olds I know who are going to raves!
- [Triangular pastries] for SAMOSAS — I have seen some publications make an effort to stop indicating the country of origin on many food entries. I think this tends to make the entries a little harder. I've never thought of a samosa as a pastry although I suppose it is! Now I really really want a samosa.
- [Vertex of an infamous triangle] for BERMUDA — I am flying to Bermuda soon and would not like to be reminded of the Bermuda Triangle's existence!!!
- [Parker House products] for ROLLS — If this was on purpose, it is very cute of Parker to sneak his name into the puzzle.
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12 comments:
Hmmm. I thought it was a themeless until reading the write-up. Typical Wednesday difficulty.
Up kind of early doing this one and enjoyed it. Now that I’m soothed heading back to sleep! Had “mega” for “megs” but that made no sense and set it straight.
On the tough side of medium for me. I got nowhere in the NW. I did not know LUTE and WANDS and FAST did not leap to mind, plus I tried sped before FLEW…so I solved mostly from the bottom up.
FULSOME is not an oft encountered word.
HAYS is just annoying and not just because the Y was my last entry.
Cute theme somewhat reminiscent of late week/Croce clueing, mostly liked it.
@Malaika: I don't want to spoil your handy mnemonic but I believe that spanakopita is made in a pan.
Fairly Easy for me. No WOEs (although I did need some crosses for 62A AVEDON) and only two overwrites:
1A: spEd before FLEW
18D: hulL before KEEL
I’m still not quite understanding the theme, could someone explain what “ It's impressive to have a set of five symmetrical theme answers”. How were they symmetrical?
Rex Higgins Rolls.
Happy Parker Day!
Never quite caught onto the theme, but it didn't matter. My only glitch was having "fled" instead of FLEW (I didn't know about suits in the tarot deck). When I fixed that the music sounded.
Felt Monday-easy. Attractive, graceful puzzle.
Never heard of Parker House, so didn’t know they made rolls, couldn’t parse RenFaire, and thought that winter coat was some kind of ice or snow (didn’t think of fur), so getting the last two letters of 54A (F and R) took me as long as doing the entire rest of the puzzle. Thought I was heading for a Wednesday PR until I got there. Oh well.
FULSOME And RENFAIR were unusual to me but recognizable and fun to parse out. REGALIA would have joined the club, except that it was shoehorned into that unfortunate little section with RAMI and AVEDON (which also took some of the luster of off a cute clue for LADLE as well).
Overall, a good puzzle, nice theme and just about the right difficulty for a Wednesday. Unfortunately, having two non absolute A-list proper names crossing is always a DEBBIE DOWNER for me.
FULSOME/MEGS gave me pause. thought it should be MEGa and Fulsome? when was the last time you heard that? 1A I started off with spEd before FLEW so right from the start I was a bit off. Never heard of the fashion photographer AVEDON. Also, a big duh for me, I kept thinking of the Pantheon in Rome... Instead of the Parthenon. So was thinking Italia or something along those lines. I never really bothered with the theme. Solid Medium
Four NYT puzzles now for Parker, and each one has been uber-entertaining. In each, the themes showcase English language quirks teeming with wordplay, puzzles which have simultaneously dropped my jaw and widened my smile.
Parker has a marvelous knack for finding these quirks; I don’t know if they just pop into his head or if he belongs to some quirk-study program. But they’re terrific, IMO.
If you want to experience or be reminded of his previous three, go to the archives and check out 6/16/22, 5/17/23, and 9/12/24.
Today he also widened my smile with some lovely non-theme entries. PREBOARDED, for one, felt fresh to me, and when I looked it up after solving, I saw why – neither it, nor “preboard”, nor “preboards”, nor “preboarding” have ever appeared in any of the major crossword venues. A true debut, plucked out of the ether.
Some lovely single-word answers as well: TENDERS (as clued), REGALIA, and the omg gorgeous FULSOME. I also loved column five – KEEL, SRS, LOOT – a palindrome sandwiched by two semordnilaps.
Just an abundance of lovely in the box today. Thank you, Parker, for a most splendid outing, and more please!
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