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Deep, dark ocean caverns / SUN 2-16-25 / Cry of cringe / Hazard cleanup, in brief / Yo-yo-like toy with devilish-sounding name / Instruments with large bells / Religious gymgoer on leg day? / Meyer who directed 1965's "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" / Boat equipment for removing water on board / Whimsically imaginative, as writing / Michael Jordan's nickname, with "His" / Hindu honorifics / They make sounds when they're tickled
Sunday, February 16, 2025
Constructor: John Kugelman
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
Theme answers:.jpg)
Wish I had better news about these Sunday puzzles, but OOF (7D: Cry of cringe). I do not get it. You change "W" to "SQU" ... why? The "S" in particular, I do not get. It's a whole other sound. What is the point of all this? Especially for a mere six weak puns. Mystifying. Even more mystifying is how the grid is as bad as it is, given that there are only six themers, and thus the pressure on the grid is minimal. But still, we're doing COEDS in the year of our lord 2025? And BLUE HOLES, whatever those are, and UBOLTS, whatever those are, and DECON, and plural ALTS and plural SRIS, and on and on. Further, the grid is built to maximize short stuff (look at all the 4s and 5s through the middle there), and in a Sunday-sized grid, that is a particularly dire choice. How do you get only two (2?!) good long non-theme answers in a Sunday-sized grid with this few themers. DEEP-FRIED OREOS and WALRUS MUSTACHE can stay, but everything else? Tear it down and rebuild. I'm surprised that the editing team seems to care so little about overall craft. Even if you (somehow) loved the theme, that's just six answers. What about the rest of it????! It's all so bland and so dull. And the one bit of original fill in the whole thing (besides BLUE HOLES (!?)) is ... A.I. ART!? Why? No one likes that. No one wants to see that, in real life *or* in the grid. I don't understand the choices people make sometimes. AIART + YECH had me wanting to quit the puzzle before I'd even really begun. What the hell kind of spelling is YECH??? Yuck.
Is that really how you spell "SQUIRRELLED," with two "L"s?? As one-syllable words go, that one is looooooong. Eleven letters!? Wow. Anyway, the double-"L" is an acceptable form, but it really looks British to me. Most spellings I'm seeing are single-"L," which is certainly how I'd spell it if I had to spell it. Also thought it a strange choice to deliberately steer the PACKS clue into cigarettes (14D: Cigarette purchases). So many PACKS in the world, why would you go there? Look, I smoked for several years in my youth and I remember that time semi-fondly and I think certain actors look amazing on screen when they're smoking, and it's true that, despite the frequently disastrous health consequences, people still (somehow) smoke; I'm not suggesting we should ban all mention of cigarettes. But somehow the clue was oddly jarring to me, esp. given how unnecessary it was to take the clue in a carcinogenic direction. Packs of animals, packs of cards, packs of gum, "packs" as a verb. If I had a choice, a lot of choices, I don't think I'd go with a cigarette clue. Not going out of my way to normalize a bad habit (and a worse industry).
Bullets:
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
- SQUEAL OF FORTUNE (23A: "Omigod, omigod, jackpot!"?) (from "Wheel of Fortune")
- GREAT SQUALL OF CHINA (45A: Tempest in a teapot?) (from "Great Wall of China")
- HOLY SQUATTER (58A: Religious gymgoer on leg day?) (from "holy water")
- PLEDGE SQUEAK (70A: Sound from some freshly cleaned floors?) (from "pledge week")
- SQUIRRELLED CAPITAL (83A: Money under the mattress, e.g.?) (from "world capital")
- SQUAWK A FINE LINE (107A: Repeat something clever, as parrots might?) (from "walk a fine line")
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Russell Albion Meyer (March 21, 1922 – September 18, 2004) was an American film director, producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, and editor. He is known primarily for writing and directing a series of successful sexploitation films that featured campy humor, sly satire and large-breasted women, such as Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970), the latter of which he considered his definitive work. (wikipedia)
• • •
The theme was not just rudimentary, it was also very easy to pick up. Got the first themer, took one look at the title of the puzzle, and knew exactly what I was for ... although I repeatedly forgot about the addition of that damn "S"—"W" to "QU" makes sense to me, "W" to "SQU" ... much less so. There's not much difficulty anywhere to be found today. Besides YECH (30A: "Eww!") and BLUE HOLES (!?!?!) (11D: Deep, dark ocean caverns), everything was pretty familiar, and none of it was clued too trickily. I think parsing "ODDS ARE..." was probably the toughest part of the solve for me today. I have never heard of a DIABOLO, or heard anyone even refer to such a thing, except in crosswords, where I have seen it ... I dunno, a few times (77A: Yo-yo-like toy with devilish-sounding name). Maleska seemed to really like it (three appearances in four years), but after he last used it, in 1987, it took a twenty-two year vacation from the grid. Why it reappeared in 2009, I don't know, but it's appeared three times since then, twice now in just the past couple years. If you've never heard of it, you're in good company, for sure. As for BILGE PUMP (76D: Boat equipment for removing water on board), I've definitely heard of that, but again ... why do you put such ugly (sounding) words in your puzzle? I know that this is simply a matter of taste, and nautical types might find BILGE PUMP absolutely poetic, but BILGE already kinda sounds like a synonym for "barf," and then you add PUMP in there and .... I don't know. It's not attractive to my ears. See also SUMP PUMP, STOMACH PUMP ... but not FUEL PUMP, BICYCLE PUMP, FIST PUMP. These are my pump rules. I didn't know I had pump rules, but puzzles sometimes clarify things for you, make you aware of feelings you didn't know you had.
["Deep dark! Deep dark ocean caverns..."]
Bullets:
- 32A: Instruments with large bells (TUBAS) — the "bell" is the fluted part sound comes out of. Just glad they didn't spell this TUBAE.
- 67A:Whimsically imaginative, as writing (SEUSSIAN) — SEUSSIAN seems way more narrow than "whimsically imaginative" to me, so this took a while. I think you gotta get "rhyme" in there somewhere for it to be truly SEUSSIAN. And "for children," too.
- 80A: Michael Jordan's nickname, with "His" (AIRNESS) — I liked this. I'd like the whole thing better (HIS AIRNESS), but as dumb sports names go (AIRNESS doesn't even rhyme with anything), I like this one.
See you next time.
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
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121 comments:
I think BLUE HOLES is good fill. It would be better in the singular, but it’s a relatively interesting (real) thing, that I didn’t know about previously. It was ultimately inferable and the crosses were fair, so thumbs up from me.
I would say that is unfairness to suggest that his AIRNESS does not rhyme with anything.
tc
Easy puzzle.
Overwrites:
tiRED before BORED at 56D
REVERsED before REVERTED at 90A
DEtOx before DECON at 95A.
WOEs:
LORI Singer (9D)
Portia de ROSSI (57D)
@Rex RUSS Meyer (88A)
I didn't really know BLUE HOLES (11D), but it was easily inferred.
22 minutes for this early morning, snowed in trio (Dad and 2 sons). So I had help. Enjoyed this puzzle much more than @Rex this morning.... BLUEHOLES, SQUIRRELLEDCAPITAL, HOLYSQUATTER, MADE BANK are all pretty fun, lively expressions. Using squirrelled as a rhyme for world was totally brilliant! Really enjoyed it, John! Thanks.
Plus SQIRRELLED and SQUATTER (the latter especially) change the pronunciation of the rest of the word, while the other four themers don't. SQUATTER especially changes the vowel sound of the A, which threw me a bit. Agree with @Rex.
Rex may have been referring to the rareness of the Airness rhyme.
I thought the best theme answers were the four where the non-SQU words took on a different meaning than in the original phrase they came from, such as CAPITAL of SQUIRRELLED CAPITAL originally, in “world capital”, being a city, but now meaning money.
The most elegant, IMO, was GREAT SQUALL OF CHINA. That one landed perfectly, I thought, because its clue – [Tempest in a teapot?] – is a lovely phrase in its own right. Mwah!
I enjoyed the fun in the box today. After cracking the gimmick early on, I loved trying to get the remaining themers with as few crosses as possible, which pushed my brain’s happy button. I also liked those long down answers WALRUS MUSTACHE and DEEP-FRIED OREOS. The latter is a TIL, and Wiki tells me that they are dipped in pancake batter before being deep-fried and that they are a “cult favorite” at carnivals.
Props to John for coming up with these theme answers. I think coming up with worthy ones is not easy. Took me quite a while to be hit by [What Superman gets when he crushes a piece of coal into a diamond] ... for SQUISH FULFILLMENT.
John, your childlike joy at creating puzzles, as described in your notes, made me smile all over, and I’m grateful because you SQUoze much entertainment in this puzzle. Thank you!
Dead on with Rex. But thanks to Nancy et als comments about Sunday puzzles last week, I was able to more enjoy the journey. As to cigarette packs , lung cancer CT on Tuesday for me. Smokes as a youth and paid the price. So if you are young and even thinking about smoking, the risks outweigh the “pleasure” by a factor.
I enjoyed this much more than I usually do - I just let the theme come to me as I wandered around the grid (instead of forcing it and getting frustrated). Only a couple of rough patches (DIABOLO and ROSSI, for example). I also put in SQUEAl /KOlo for that cross, so one of my more enjoyable dnf ‘s, lol.
Thanks again to several of you who gave me some good tips and advice regarding approaches to the mid-week themed puzzles - I took your advice to heart and it paid off. I also just realized how often I must sound like Rex - boy, he seemed cranky this morning.
Great post Rex.
it rhymes with overrated.
Very mush SEUSSIAN, not for kids and in prose: The Seven Lady Godivas.
I don’t know if anyone keeps track of such things, but if someone does, I’ll bet that today’s puzzle sets a record for the most words ending in -s: 31, by my count. Most of those are plurals, some of them pretty weak: ETAS, SRIS . . .
Squirrelled (my spell-checker says only one L) is two syllables, not one. I'll die on that hill. :-)
I found this as easy as last week's so I didn't spend enough time to dislike it as much as Rex. Using pen on paper, I start in the southeast and got the mechanism almost immediately. Squatter and water, unless you're from Boston, don't sound the same which was a bit disappointing. Ditto dislike of coeds and cigarettes. Coeds in particular was jarring. On the other hand, , diabolos were...are?... ubiquitous toys when I was a kid and there were pros on Ed Sullivan. Pros still abound. Check out YouTube. Could've been worse...
1. Big star and his entourage?
2. My feeling while wasting money?
3. Negative judgement on changing the oval running track into four straight equal sides?
4. Pig vegetable?
5. Drawing studio?
6. Knight’s attendant putting on airs?
Aww, I’m sorry @Rex didn’t find more enjoyment in this puzzle. I had a several chuckles over the themers and then got inspired myself, as you can see. It’s a theme type we’ve seen many times but I thought the themers landed well today and were fun. I take @Lewis’s point about the cleverness of the themers in which the “non-squ” word changes meaning, but I did have a giggle over SQUEAL OF FORTUNE.
My one bit of difficulty was UBendS to UBeLTS (what?) to UBOLTS – what a prosaic little answer to give me so much trouble. I kept the E for so long because TeSS looked like a reasonable answer in a scan of the grid – it was unmasked as an error only when I reread the clue.
I have an unreasonable love for the word TWEE – always happy to see it. HUMBLE PIE was also nice, and RAUNCH was unusual without its Y. Dr. SEUSS strikes me as such a one-off that I’m surprised there’s a need for SEUSSIAN in the language, but I see it’s a real word in actual dictionaries. (I never would have thought, but I’m glad I have been taught.)
I liked the clue for IVORIES [They make sounds when they’re tickled], but said to myself, “Doesn’t everything?” Even my mother, who always said she wasn’t ticklish and truly didn’t seem to be, but she always made a sound when you tried to tickle her – “Stop! You know this isn’t working.”
Van DYKE beard type: It’s odd that this is accepted spelling, when the artist’s name is (now) spelled van Dyck. I think it’s because during his lifetime and probably beyond, the spelling wasn’t fixed and, in addition to the two spellings mentioned, you saw his name rendered as van Dijk, van Dik and other such variants. Here’s the said beard at the top of this article – moustache and goatee with clean-shaven cheeks.
Happy to learn all about BLUE HOLES, key areas of biodiversity.
And as for DEEP-FRIED OREOS – oh no, say it isn’t so! My arteries are hardening at the very thought.
1. TIGHT SQUAD
2. I WONDER AS I SQUANDER
3. WORSE FOR SQUARE
4. HOG SQUASH
5. SQUIGGLE ROOM
6. HIGH SQUIRE ACT
Where would one go these days to find a crossword that actually challenges the average solver? NYT has turned in everMonday it seems.
Sloggy slog. Just a bunch of “fill”. Agree about the theme, felt it was easy but not clear to me why it would be fun. Anyhoo, the write up is always worth the solve. Pump Rules could be a name for a band. Or your memoir
You disqualify “bilge” because it’s not attractive to your ears? Let’s hope we never see “putrid,” “scabrous,” “bilious” or the like.
I don’t know that I’ve ever said this before…but Rex was too kind. The W===>SQU thing feels utterly pointless. And way easy. UNLIKE Rex, I continue to look forward to the Sunday puzzle every week. But then this thing!
i disagree with Rex and others. I found the puzzle creative and very enjoyable. The theme helped the solve, which isn't always the case on Sunday. SEUSS-IAN is a bit of a stretch, I agree. The only hard part for me was finding HOIPOLLOI, because a 9-letter answer rarely ends in "I." Then it hit me...and I was done (no music, because I solved it in the newspaper).
Squatter and water don’t sound the same to you? That’s a bit of an odd comment.
Squatter/water and squirelled/ world rhyme to this Midwestern ear.
Agree with the overrated comment
Hey All !
I thought the full was fine. A bunch of fill is crammed twixt the middle Themers, and came out good. The two Long Downs pass through two Themers each, and the surrounding fill on those nice answers is perfectly fine, too. Opinions, you know what they say about them ...
PLEDGE SQUEAK seemed the lamest of the set, but it's growing in me, even getting to Chuckle-worthy level.
Got the bottom two Themers first, thinking the rest would begin with SQU, but not to be. Didn't put a wrench in the solve, though. Figured out the others easily enough. Toughest spot was NE corner. AIART? Yowza. PIQUES clued differently (to me.)
Had puz done, except NE, in roughly 21 minutes, fast for a SunPuz. Timer finished at 27 1/2 minutes, the extra time sussing that NE. Had oOfs for POWS until OOF showed up two columns over. I didn't think that would get repeated! Always like seeing HOIPOLLOI for some reason. Sounds funny/neat.
@pablo
Got my point from ROO! I was going to keep track this year, but have gotten lazy (surprise, surprise.) Unsure where we stand. Maybe Three-Two you?
Hope y'all have a Great Sunday!
Five F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
I thought there was an aspect of the theme that was going over my head.
Liked it much more than Rex, who has a lot more rules about themes than I do. If the theme is consistent and provides interesting answers, I’m good. I don’t care if there’s no “why” for changing the initial sound of a word, and I certainly don’t have arbitrary rules for how the sounds are changed W to QU is conceivable but W to SQU is a bridge too far?
It was pretty easy Really only BLUE HOLES was unfamiliar, but it was inferrable from crosses and the kind of thing I love learning from crosswords.
Would a sexy highball be RISQUEANDSODA? Just asking.today's constructor, that's all.
Anon 7:47, you take that back! Can’t be overrated when he’s the best that ever was
Could making the theme “SQUared aWay” make it better?
Spot on Rexy. The descriptor “quaintly” for coeds made it even worse, as if we look back in fond reminiscence on the days where women were permitted on college campuses as almost a novelty.
I liked this... kinda cute. Second Sunday in a row that was a relatively easy solve. The reaction from OFL was predictable.
As for BILGEPUMP and the like: What does it matter if it's an "ugly (sounding)" word? It's a perfectly legit crossword entry, no? BLUEHOLES, also a very acceptable answer. (I s'pose it's all the plurals that's got folks annoyed.) I've seen YECH in other word puzzles. I struggled with DECON for a short while, only because I had DETOX in my head. Had LASER (and considered MASER) before TASER became the obvious correct choice.
I cringe a little (OOF!) when I think of the breakfast cereals our mother fed us while growing up. That said, among our favorites were Count CHOCULA, Frankenberry, and Booberry. My brother and I loved getting the free toys inside every box!
I didn’t have an issue with most things Rex took issue with. I thought the theme was fine and that it had a fair share of longish, interesting non-theme entries. My only issue with the puzzle was that it was way too easy – as have been most Sunday and many late week puzzles lately. Part of what made the NYT crosswords the gold standard was the challenge they presented and the sense of accomplishment that came with successfully solving a late week or Sunday puzzle. Because the puzzles have seemed to have gotten easier over the last couple of years or so, I definitely do not get the same sense of accomplishment with successfully solving most late-week and Sunday puzzles that I used to.
Yes, there are a lot of these kinds of Sunday change-one-sound-and-and-get-a-wacky-phrase type puzzles. So the main question is how well are they done? Are the new phrases amusing -- and even better -- are they surprising? And then how accurately, how fairly, and, again, how surprisingly are they clued. Will they produce any "Aha" moments? A lot of them?
Today's puzzle is a great example of an excellent puzzle of this type. I chuckled over PLEDGE SQUEAK and SQUAWK A FINE LINE. And I absolutely love the way the word "CHINA" morphs from its meaning in the original phrase to its dishware meaning in GREAT SQUALLS OF CHINA. "Tempest in a teapot" indeed -- what an inspired clue!
I must go back and take a look at John Kugelman's other Sunday puzzles. (This is the sort of thing Lewis remembers but I never do). But John would seem to have a real gift for amusing wordplay and deft cluing, not to mention a playfulness that's infectious. I found this much fun to solve.
ROC/TENON feels like an obscure natick
My submission for best sports nickname is Johnkensy Noel, aka Big Christmas. He made a spectacular play last season and the play calling was epic
PACKS of cigarettes annoys me far less than PRO-WAR.
Norm MacDonald fans will also know Michael Jordan's nickname from his time playing baseball.
What is wrong with COEDS? Perfectly fine in 2025 the year of our Lord. Dont get all high and mighty on us Rex. Easy puzzle but fun
Back when I was working on my PhD at Harvard, my dissertation advisor and friend, the great Chaucerian Derek Pearsall (RIP) was teaching a core course on Middle English Lit, for which I was head TF. As it happened, he was friends with Terry Jones (also RIP) of Monty Python, and invited him to do a lecture on The Knight's Tale, which he, Jones, had published a book about. (Jones was a trained medievalist, for anyone who doesn't know.) About a dozen of us got to go to dinner with Jones at the Faculty Club, after which he joined a few of us at one grad student's apartment where we imbibed quite a bit of single malt and watched Faster Pussy Cat Kill Kill on the VCR. Yeah, that long ago. Anyway, I've had a soft spot for that flick and Tura Satana ever since.
Speaking of Tura Satana, several years ago I chipped in on the Kickstarter fundraiser for a biopic about her. Seems to have gotten stalled in production somewhere, but I did get the promised T-shirt premium. Eventually.
Hm, these vowels are the same for me, it depends on your dialect of English! Specifically, those who merge the vowels in cot and caught also merge squatter and water (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cot%E2%80%93caught_merger)
Thought I had the theme early with SQUEALOFFORTUNE but as I cruised B
down the west coast, I ran into HOLY something and was thrown off, as SQUATTER in no way rhymes with "water", as others have pointed out. Had to accepts it finally as the other themers were OK.
Have heard of BLUEHOLES, ditto for the DIABOLO and the only new names were LORI and ROSSI as clued. This must be the last unused iteration of OREO. Maybe someone will come up with an OREO a la king or something.
For many years I had to bail out the twenty-odd toilets every fall in the cabins at our summer resort. I finally thought of using a hand-operated BILGEPUMP
Aww, I’m sorry @Rex didn’t find more enjoyment in this puzzle. I had several chuckles over the themers and then got inspired myself (see comment below). It’s a theme type we’ve seen many times but I thought the themers landed well today and were fun. I take @Lewis’s point about the cleverness of the themers in which the “non-squ” word changes meaning, but I did have a giggle over SQUEAL OF FORTUNE.
My one bit of difficulty was UBendS to UBeLTS (what?) to UBOLTS – what a prosaic little answer to give me so much trouble. I kept the E for so long because TeSS looked like a reasonable answer in a scan of the grid – it was unmasked as an error only when I reread the clue.
I have an unreasonable love for the word TWEE – always happy to see it. HUMBLE PIE was also nice, and RAUNCH was unusual without its Y. Dr. SEUSS strikes me as such a one-off that I’m surprised there’s a need for SEUSSIAN in the language, but I see it’s a real word in actual dictionaries. (I never would have thought, but I’m glad I have been taught.)
I liked the clue for IVORIES [They make sounds when they’re tickled], but said to myself, “Doesn’t everything?” Even my mother, who said she wasn’t ticklish and truly didn’t seem to be, always made a sound when you tried to tickle her – “Stop! You know this isn’t working.”
Van DYKE beard type: It’s odd that this is the accepted spelling, when the artist’s name is (now) spelled van Dyck. I think it’s because during his lifetime and probably beyond, the spelling wasn’t fixed: I think in the seventeenth century spelling was much more flexible than it is now, even with proper names. In addition to the two spellings mentioned, you also see his name rendered as van Dijk, van Dik and other such variants. Anyway, here’s the said beard at the top of this article – moustache and goatee with clean-shaven cheeks.
Happy to learn all about BLUE HOLES, key areas of biodiversity.
And as for DEEP-FRIED OREOS – oh no, say it isn’t so! My arteries are hardening at the very thought.
Once again DNF because of an awful clue combination. AHAS? I had AHAh (I know it's plural, and it looks weird, but I thought the singular worked in this instance) and figured hEUSSIAN was just a word that I had never heard of. There was nothing specific to Dr. SEUSS in the clue, which seems like bad cluing when you have a crappy word like AHAS as the cross. This shiz didn't happen to me much when Will Shortz was gone.
Thought I had the theme with SQUEALOFFORTUNE, but in cruising down the west coast, ran into HOLY something and since SQUATTER in no way rhymes with "water", as others have noted, I was momentarily befuddled. The other themers worked fine so I gave SQUATTER a pass.
No problem with BLUEHOLES or DIABOLO, both familiar, and the only unknown names in this one were LORI and ROSSI. Have we finally exhausted the variations of OREOs? DEEPFRIED has to be the last one.
For many years in the fall at our summer resort, I had to bail out twenty six toilets in our cabins. I finally had the brilliant, if belated, idea of using a hand-operated BILGEPUMP, like folks use to bail out boats. OFL may object to them, but a BILGEPUMP will forever be my friend.
Hello to ROC. Nice to see you. Where ya been"
@Roo-Did I see the ROO? Of course I saw the ROO (again). I think you're still far ahead, as I'm claiming half points for variations on pablo, and the names of grandchildren and constructors. Only thing that keeps me within shouting distance.
I like this kind of puzzle and I liked this one, JK. I Just Knew OFL would be asking the why this? question, but all fine by me. Thanks for all the fun.
So I did go back to look at John Kugelman's earlier Sunday puzzles -- why don't I have a memory like everyone else? -- and I was gobsmacked by his irrepressible humor and inventiveness in both theme answers and the cluing of them. TEACHER'S MARKS (10/6/24) alone is worth the price of admission to his crossword page -- and how could I ever have forgotten that delightfully entertaining puzzle even for a moment? Frankly he's the best (relatively) new crossword talent I've seen in years when it comes to highly original wordplay -- a gift to those of us in the solving community who relish that variety of puzzle.
It wasn't easy coming up with additional themer possibilities (hi, @Lewis,). I quit trying after these two (and most readers will say I should have quit much sooner):
"Hey judges! We don't mind sharing the royal root vegetable coronation at this fair." BEETSQUEENUS.
Craving to be lost? SQUANDERLUST
Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors that are not Selective and are taken by Hindu gentlemen are SRIS SRIS. (This was pretty painful for me to type. I hope you didn't read it).
What do you call a fancy burger LABEL? Patti LaBelle.
Don't get crosswise with your online financial institution or you'll have a MADEBANK.
Turns out that GRA is the airport code for Gamarra, Columbia. It is a notoriously difficult airport for making connections, giving rise to their slogan, "It'll be hard if you go VIAGRA."
Robin: HOLYSQUATTER, Batman. We've got to help these undocumented refugees.
Batman: Robin, I've told you that we need to support Mayor Adams in his quest to keep himself out of jail.
Robin: But why, Batman? We know he will hurt the meek and innocent.
Batman: Because, Robin, millionaire Bruce Wayne wants an invitation to Mar-A-Lago. Now, let's jump into the new Tesla Batmobile and bring those scoundrels at the DOJ to justice.
I agree a bit with @Rex's puzzlement over turning "W" into "SQU". It is, in the end, a puzzle to be solved, so in that light it was really pretty fun. Thanks, John Kugelman.
Adam, I didn’t like this puzzle much but I do pronounce “squatter” with the same A sound as “water.” Do you pronounce it to rhyme with “batter”?
BILGE PUMP was actually my favorite part of the puzzle, though it was an unpleasant duty growing up on boats as a kid. I agree with Rex on the rest.
You might say he lacked Awareness.
Pledge on the floor? You’re in for a fall.
Liked the puzzle fine, but now am fascinated by the number of people vehemently insisting not only that “water” and “squatter” don’t rhyme but that it’s not even close. Grew up in Colorado and the Midwest and I’m struggling to imagine a dialect/accent where they sound at all different.
The theme was fine and I never had any issues with the S in the SQU- letter sequences because of the title (sq." is "square). However, what is the title even supposed to mean? Is there a pun I'm missing?
As a non-American, I had trouble with PLEDGE SQUEAK (base phrase I didn't know, replaced with a pun based on a brand I didn't know).
I enjoyed WALRUS MUSTACHE, HUMBLE PIE, MADE BANK and SEUSSIAN.
Please don't use HOI POLLOI in a Monday "HP"-based theme. HUMBLE PIE is fine.
That's the spirit re: BLUE HOLES! A solver could be familiar with that term by being a diver (hand up), knowledgeable about the Caribbean (where the most famous example sits off the coast of Belize), or from being a Jacques Cousteau fan (he brought much attention to that example off of Belize). If not familiar, it's easily inferrable from the clue, so it's not really something to complain about in the grid. Then a quick search leads to learning about an amazing geologic feature, that
ice ages brought huge sea level changes, etc. So, exactly the kind of thing I want in my grids, and I'm glad you experienced it the way you did.
With a winner like GREAT SQUALL OF CHINA, I'm happy to overlook any number of ALTS and SRIS, especially when there's a WALRUS MUSTACHE to admire and DEEP FRIED OREOS to enjoy and a partnering of HOI POLLOI and HUMBLE PIE.
Apologies for the double post. I was writing the first one when it disappeared, and now I know where it went.
Great puzzle. I know there are complaints that it's too easy - so what? It was the 2nd Sunday in a row that I had a whoosh (except for a typo that I'm off to find :( The only thing I didn't like was BILGE PUMP - ugly sounding word. Thank you, John :)
Oops, sorry for the double dose of me, but can't seem to get rid of my duplicated comment -- the joys of Blogger.
Great comments and additional themers @Barbara S. Always enjoy reading you.
Bigote de morsa.
I thought it was easy and fine and pretty funny. Too much short stuff probably. My favorite themer is GREAT SQUALL OF CHINA.
I presume most of us want to talk about how yummy Count CHOCULA is.
❤️ HOI POLLOI. MADE BANK.
It should be OHOS not AHAS.
People: 8
Places: 4
Products: 13
Partials: 12
Foreignisms: 5
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 42 of 138 (30%)
Funnyisms: 11 😅
Tee-Hee: I'm learning from 🦖 today the word COEDS is frowned upon in 2025. There's a whole industry still doing COEDS in 2025. Perhaps they should be notified to stop? VIAGRA. [Pot growers]. RAUNCH.
Uniclues:
1 Creative robots of the future.
2 Sound heard in the college mail room when an envelope with someone's allowance arrives.
3 Crumbs under a cowboy's nose.
1 AI ART HOI POLLOI AHEAD
2 COED'S SQUEAL OF FORTUNE
3 WALRUS MUSTACHE RAUNCH (~)
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Chase musical out of town in offense over the spanking. RUN OFF SPAMALOT.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Water/squatter and world/squirreled do not rhyme to this east coaster.
I stared at PROW_R / M_O for entirely too long. “Prower” — is that like the guy at the front of a boat who watches like a hawk for enemy ships and icebergs?
Unlike Rex, I thought the switch from W to SQU made sense based on the title of the puzzle. SQUAre to Begin. Sure, it could have been any number of other sounds/letters but why NOT SQU? It makes for interesting theme answers, in my opinion. My least favorite was HOLY SQUATTER. My favorite was SQUEAL OF FORTUNE. (I do not pronounce SQUIRREL as a single syllable).
I smiled at BILGE PUMP. My husband has done a lot of work to get a working BILGE PUMP on his fishing boat and it works great. Otherwise, by the end of the day, his feet would be resting in water because it flows to the back of the boat where the motor (and he) sits. Now he just flicks a switch and the water jets out the back.
I will agree with Rex's rant on the PACKS clue. Having grown up with a parent who smoked, I have a huge dislike of cigarettes. I have friends who still smoke but I wish they didn't.
Thanks, John Kugelman, nice Sunday solve!
I liked this one a lot! Really disagree with Rex here, I thought the puns were fun and the fill was mostly not bad.
The main thing that annoyed me was the clue for EON. As an earth science teacher, I can tell you that an eon is absolutely not equivalent to a billion years, it's a division of time based on important events happening. The Proterozoic Eon (characterized by bacterial life) was 2 billion years long and now we're in the Phanerozoic Eon, starting 500 million years ago. Disappointed that this wasn't caught by editors as it's an objectively incorrect clue.
Otherwise, enjoyed the puzzle a lot!
In Philadelphia, it’s pronounced wooder.
Very easy. “Whooshy” underestimates my progress through this one.
Amusing, liked it quite a bit more than @Rex did.
It's about day-um time, that somebody out there did a W-swapped-for-SQU puztheme. har
Enjoyed the humorous results, tho. The 18 U's were also quite extra nice.
staff weeject picks: FBI & FIB.
fave stuff: HUMBLEPIE. WALRUSMUSTACHE. CHOCULA. SUN clue. Learnin about BLUEHOLES.
Thanx for the fun, Mr. Kugelman dude.
Masked & Anonymo18Us
As someone born and raised in Philly (fly, Eagles, fly!), I’m here to tell you "water" with "order".
I wonder if there is an editing threshold for accepting words that are “supposed to” rhyme. To me, “water” and “squatter” do not rhyme - the first has an “aw” vowel (as in saw) and the second an “ah” vowel (as in spa) - and “squirrelled” has two syllables. How common, in various American dialects, does a purported rhyme need to be in order to be validly used in a puzzle?
Also: merry, marry, and Mary have three different vowel sounds, no matter what my 3rd grade teacher tried to tell us.
I had HOPES that the puzzles would be better with the return of Will Shortz, but no. This one was HUGELY a waste of time.
I would love for someone to explain how water and squatter DON'T rhyme? Both the vowel sounds are "ahh", like when you take a delicious drink of tea, are they not? I know there are different dialects of English, but I'm struggling to see how in any dialect they might not rhyme?
New Yorker Mon/Tues are challenging, though not as much so as when they started.
Just another Rex column plagued by unfairness
Squatter and water sound the same to a huge chunk of America. Not sure why Boston was specifically mentioned.
I was just hoping and hoping for a revealed that would tie the theme together, but alas. I am not fond of substitution themes unless I am given a clever justification for such substitution. I did like MADE BANK though
Speaking of AIART, the FallRiver Facebook page had a picture last night of a polar bear standing in the middle of our Stafford Road. The comments were pretty fun in a low-key way. 'Oh, is he back'? 'You should give him a ride to the pound, you can lure him into your car with a cookie, or a carrot'. Someone posted a picture of an Apatosaurus on Pleasant St. 'He tried selling me fent behind the Dunkin Donuts'. 'Stafford Riad never looked so good'.,
Oh, the puz. I found the clue on DEEPFRIEDOREOS objectionable. Not that I have ever eaten one, but I doubt I'd find them scrumptious.
Squatter=blotter ; water =shorter.. (Liverpool, UK)
AHAS — one of several regrettable plurals in this puzzle. SRIS, anyone?
@8:46 Squatter and Water don’t sound the same to me either. Squatter rhymes with potter and water rhymes with daughter. I suppose in some regions people pronounce them alike. Sadly, IMO, most of these regional differences are fading and in a few generations everyone in the country will sound alike.
I liked the puz well enough, but DECON and TENON was a Natick for me.
agree.... what the heck is the matter with COED? Part of the cancel culture methinks
When Rex called SQUIRRELLED a one syllable word I immediately said No! But thinking about it, maybe it is? Crazy that it totally rhymes with WORLD which is only 5 letters.
It's funny how the editors often make an elaborate clue for a totally forgettable 3 letter answer. Today, 105 across ONE is one.
@DrBB, loved your story about Terry Jones.
I know DIABOLO from Proust. Young Albertine was always playing with one. I don't know if it was called anything different in English translations.
To my Midwestern ears, saw rhymes with spa, and squatter rhymes with water. I guess the vowel subtleties are lost on me.
The Atlantic Daily…
smalltowndoc
Born, raised and living in r dropping Rhode Island , water and order rhyme for me too. The second syllable is a schwa without the r.
Mike Herlihy
About squirrel
We all don’t speak the same. My guess is most people use one syllable, except maybe when the word is emphasized. So it’s perfectly fine pun , if not for you. Also it is a fact that we are not necessarily aware of how we speak. I found it an interesting experience really listening to myself on tape. You might use one syllable on occasion without even realizing it.
Gosh. I don't know Where to Begin.
Matthew & Anonymous 8:46 Am
If you both look at the other comments on water and squatter you can see accents vary. The pun
works for the constructor and many other Americans. But not for many others So the comment was not odd. On the other hand it most definitely works in a large part of the Midwest, not just in Boston
Sam
FWIW ROC is crosswordese and has been in the Times puzzle a lot. It’s a gimme for people who have been doing the puzzle a while. Tenon has also frequently appeared. Tenon comes from woodworking. A tenon fits into a mortise in say wooden furniture, not exactly rare. So by Rex’s definition not a natick.
Josh
To answer your question. Read the comments. Very common in the Midwest ( As a New Englander it doesn’t work for me) Also I ‘d bet most people say squirrel in one syllable most of the time.
LMTR for the third week in a row, and I see I'm far from alone in this. One good Sunday puzzle might be an anomaly, two in a row a possible fluke, but three in a row begins to feel like a trend, and a very welcome one! My sympathy to @Sam ROC/TENON probably does qualify as a natick, but only for newbies....I would know nothing of a ROC were it not for frequently encountering it in Xwd puzzles. DIABOLO might have been DIABOLa, I suppose, But KOKO just has ring to it that KOKa lacks. Gary's Gunk Gauge confirms tge low PPP count on this one...if this trend continues ,I'll be one happy camper!
I live on the west coast where squatter has always rhymed with water. The puzzle was easy peasy and though I’m not usually a time solver, this one was a record time for me. I love puns. The best in this puzzle was the “Great Squall of China” some very nice clueing. Congratulations John .
As I read through the comments I kept looking for someone to explain how water and squatter sound different. When someone did "aw" and "ah" I couldn't make it work. I can hear/say a very slight w sound on "a" for "saw" by itself, but NOT in water where it is followed by the t sound. I grew up in Los Angeles, California, have lived in New Jersey, Utah and Texas as well as Alaska, and I cannot remember regional accents that make those words sound different.
I can imagine two syllables instead of one for squirrel, but not so much for squirreled - seems to me that saying the ed ending forces it into one syllable.
Like a couple of commenters above I love "hoi polloi" Just sounds lovely and fun.
Fried Oreos sound revolting tasting. Even worse than s'mores.
I chuckled at 33D "pot growers/ante" because it took a while to think of the answer so it was an aha when I did.
Squeal of fortune and squawk a fine line were my favorite theme answers.
Hey, @egs. Right back atcha. You think of parsings that I couldn't come up with even on my craziest days!
We should call Michael Jordan "His Highness" instead of "His Airness"
I am. fascinated by the subject of accents and regional variations. It is interesting how many people find it hard accept that many people rhyme squatter and water. While I don’t, it does work for many in the US. I remember when I was about six I heard a neighbor’s visiting relatives talking and thought they sounded weird. I learned much later that my accent was the unusual one and that they had a MUCH more common American accent.
This issue has come up many times on this blog. And always the same reactions.
I liked the puns much more than Rex My guess is he is not big on puns, period.
I liked bilge pump. I see nothing wrong with referencing a word from the past like COED Though dated would be better qualifier. Quaint is a strange choice.
I thought it was very easy. I got the theme quickly and many answers filled themselves in
BTW don’t know if it an error, but RABE is dialect. The full name in standard Italian is broccoli di rape or broccoli rape. (2 syllables). I am of Italian descent and most people I know say simply rabe, I actually never see the dialect spelling with broccoli. So I had some trouble in that area. Knowing too much maybe?
Many have commented about the pronunciation of "water." As pointed out by Anonymous at 10:15 AM, there are well-known regional variations. No mystery to this. See:
https://howtosayguide.com/how-to-say-water-in-american-accent/
"Bilge" is nowhere near as ugly to my ears as "grok," misused frequently on this site. "Suss" or "figure out" is what you mean. Ironic that on a site devoted to words, some people miss the proper connotation. "Grok" was coined by Heinlein in Stranger in a Strange Land, a novel which doesn't hold up very well now, though it was mostly acclaimed in its day.
John McWhorter, in his most recent NYT article on Black English, adresses the pronunciation similarities between "water" and "after," as exemplified (or not!) in the Jack & Jill rhyme.
sailing quallage
Potter and daughter rhyme
You didn't let us know the meaning of grok. Apparently, I've been mislead into thinking it was the same as suss. Pray tell?
RooMonster Saying Water Quickly, Sounds Like Wodder Guy (I Still Think They Rhyme In The Grand Scheme Of Things.)
Dictionaries show two syllables so my guess is that more people say it that way.
I realize people don't speak the same, this my attempted hill humor. Sorry if I was too subtle.
Not great I was kinda hoping for an SNL 50 theme i think that would have been better
In Heinlein's usage, grok means to understand deeply, empathetically and spiritually. I'd suggest you read SIASL, but I wouldn't be doing you any favors, I'm afraid! I've been a Heinlein fan for decades, but his later books make for an embarassing read (I'm talking about you, I Will Fear No Evil!).
Suss, meaning to figure out, apparently is a Britishism, per M-W. Disambiguation - "sus" is Gen Z shorthand for "suspicious."
I honestly don’t get the problem with BLUE HOLE(S). Anyone remotely aware of outdoor recreation must know what these are. They’re famous dive sites, and sometimes infamous (dangerous) free dive sites.
@Barbara S. 8:09 AM
These are good!
Same. I had to look it up when I read Proust. Made it nice to see today.
If you know any circus people or circus adjacent people, then diabolo is well known.
In the Dutch language wich is actually called Nederlands the ij and the y are use interchangeably.in these cases the ij is one letter not 2.
Basically solved as a themeless. I knew something was going on with putting SQ in the theme answers, but could not be bothered to figure it out precisely.
Mike (12:21 pm) beat me to it, but the idea that an eon is the "equivalent of a billion years in geology" is completely false!!!!
As Mike alluded to, all the geologic time scale with all its divisions/subdivisions (eons, eras, periods, and epochs) was developed when all we could do was 'relative dating,' which meant that we could tell one rock was older than another rock, but we weren't able to tell the exact age of either one. Since then, we've developed the ability to do 'absolute dating' that lets us assign actual ages/numbers to the start/end of the time periods.
Because of the way the geologic time scale was developed, NONE of the geologic scale divisions represent a consistent length of time (e.g., the Miocene epoch was about 17.7 million years, but the Pliocence epoch was only about 2.7 million years).
Aside from that factual error, the puzzle was way too easy, and the theme wasn't that great.
Best Sunday puzzle ever! Well, somebody has to counteract the nattering nabobs of negativism on this blog.
My squatter is an otter that has a daughter under water. That's how they sound where I live.
Derek Pearsall taught me Old English at the University of Toronto in the pre- Python mid-1960s, and I still revere him.
Syndiland lateness here (maybe I could be His Lateness:) — TASER is a very loose acronym; Jordan is not the greatest by team success or by records set and held, but, rather by excessively hyped sponsorship; and, to explicitly nail down what others have alluded to, SQUARE TO BEGIN is an example of the themes (WHERE TO BEGIN being the in-the-language root phrase).
Mid-Atlantic take on squatter vs. water:
The a in squatter is like the "ah" you do with the tongue depressor for your doctor (as in "say 'ah'"). Or the vowel in "got".
The a in water has the same sound as in bought, caught, aw, awning, draw, saw, haunt, naughty (but not knotty). I have moved to the west coast of Canada and try to make squatter and water rhyme, but I'm sure I rarely succeed. Still, I recognized that they were supposed to rhyme in the clue and that for many people, they do.
Esoteric, colloquial filled, American/British slang rich, cringe worthy puzzle, but I learned more urbanisms. So not too bad once I figured out the themers.
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