.png)
Distance traversed by an arrow / WED 02-05-2025 / Console device with triggers and thumbsticks / Character set for electronic communication
Wednesday, February 5, 2025
Constructor: Kiran Pandey
Relative difficulty: Easy....? (I thought it was hard while solving, but then I saw my time so I guess not)
THEME: SLUSH PILE / DROPS DOWN — A group of circled letters stacked in the middle are the names of precipitation
Theme answers:
Word of the Day: "bhakti" (HINDU: One who practices bhakti and puja) —
- DROPS DOWN clued as [Opens, as a menu ... or a description of this puzzle's circled letters?]
- LEFT BRAIN clued as [Analytical thinker?]
- CARRIES NO WEIGHT clued as [Doesn't really matter]
- CHAI LATTE clued as [Steamed beverage with spices from the Indian subcontinent]
- SLUSH PILE clued as [Common assignment for editorial assistants ... or a description of this puzzle's circled letters?]
Word of the Day: "bhakti" (HINDU: One who practices bhakti and puja) —
Bhakti (Sanskrit: भक्ति; Pali: bhatti) is a term common in Indian religions which means attachment, fondness for, devotion to, trust, homage, worship, piety, faith, or love. In Indian religions, it may refer to loving devotion for a personal God (like Krishna or Devi), a formless ultimate reality (like Nirguna Brahman or the Sikh God) or for an enlightened being (like a Buddha, a bodhisattva, or a guru).
• • •
This was a cute Wednesday! Since I am a constructor more than a solver, I immediately had to look at the grid specs. This had 72 words, which is in line with a themeless puzzle (themed puzzles most commonly have 78 words), but it had a higher-than-average number of three-letter words (20) and a slightly higher-than-average number of blocks (40; the canonical themed puzzles has 38, and themelesses have fewer). I noticed the word count while solving, but I didn't notice the other two stats. They're just fun for me to file away in my brain.
It's a fun treat when a puzzle has two revealers, sort of a two-for-the-price of one situation. I really struggle coming up with wordplay, so finding a double link is very impressive to me. The last puzzle with two revealers I remember is this one, although I'm sure there have been others more recently. Do any come to mind for you? Here, I like the second revealer more than the first. SLUSH PILE is a much more evocative phrase than DROPS DOWN, and it more accurately describes what we're seeing. Those slushy things are all piled up in the center. I don't know that they're coming "down," it feels more that they're going across... but I'm nitpicking.
 |
| We've had some SNOW in the city recently, here's my beautiful BIKESHARE draped in downy precipitation |
Elsewhere, we got some really nice long answers like BOSS LEVEL, WAFFLE FRY, ROT IN HELL and BIKE SHARE. I got a little slowed down by the perpetual "Is it emend or amend?" question, but the crosses helped me out. And I liked the clue [Hawke or Crowe] for ACTOR.
Bullets:
Bullets:
- [You got me there] for TOUCHE — Ugh, I can't remember this reference, but there was a book or movie where a character pronounced this "tushy" the first time they said it aloud to the amusement of others
- [Appendage for a morning glory] for TENDRIL — The word appendage really threw me off here; I associate those with human body parts
- [Gives the thumbs up] for OKS — In tech jobs, we often shorthand this by saying L/SGTM, which means "looks / sounds good to me." I love this term (to me it totally unambiguously means "Yes, I am saying you can proceed with my permission"), and wish people used it more in our day-to-day.
- [Audience member who might be in on the trick] for PLANT — Nothing to say here except that I loved this clue! Such a vivid picture.
Okay, you've made it to the end. You can optionally stick around for my CHAI rant. "Chai" is the Hindi word for tea, and some pedants get grumpy when you say "chai tea" ("That's like saying "tea tea"!!!" they whine) or when "chai" is used as shorthand for the warm, earthy spices (ginger, cinnamon, cardamom) commonly found in masala chai, as it is here. (A "chai latte" might have coffee alongside tea.)
But I wholeheartedly disagree! American English is filled with loan words from other languages that we've twisted and corrupted and embraced to become our own-- that rocks!! And it rocks especially when we do so with food words, weaving immigrant flavors into our own language. That's why we call one hot toasty sandwich a panini (it should be "panino") and why we call one cornmeal dumpling a tamale (it should be "tamal"). CHAI LATTE is a particularly cute example to me, as it's made up of not one but two loan words. That's the American dream, baby.
Save And Share :
103 comments:
Hi Malaika! I can't help with the NYC cakes because (a) I don't live in NYC, and (b) I don't eat dessert (since teen years weight problem). But as for CHAI you are totally correct; English "borrows" words and then does things to them which might be difficult for those we borrow from.
Fun fact: "tea" is one of the most universal words... in Russian, Hindi, and Persian (!!): "chai", Japanese and Thai: "cha", and French, German, Italian, and Spanish: "tay" or its homophone.
The theme was a little weak except for the way the circled words step... down! The "menu" revealer took a while to grok... okay, a computer menu, not a cafe menu.
In other news, winter has finally arrived in southern British Columbia... -10 C (=14 F) during the day with brisk winds which make it feel like -20, -30, whatever. We almost made it to spring without getting any!... Even a trace of snow on the ground. The golf courses are finally empty.
Medium for me.
Costly erasure. I thought 14d were soPAS instead of TAPAS.
I did not know SHAWN and ARI.
Cute theme, smooth grid, very low on junk, liked it.
@Malaika, your summary, "I thought it was hard while solving, but then I saw my time so I guess not" fit my experience perfectly, except I would substitute Overwrites/WOEs for "time".
Only one Overwrite: 16A: fAkE TAN before BASE (and questioning whether a tanning bed tan is "fAkE")
And two WOEs:
1A BOWSHOT as clued
11A William SHAWN
Anyone who objects to "CHAI tea" must also object to "pizza pie."
I connected RAIN, SNOW, and HAIL to SLUSHPILE, but still needed to use trial-and-error in the SW because I didn't know ASCII and had "bunts" instead of PUTTS (maybe because I was a better baseball player than golfer). Finally I saw CATTAIL and the music sounded. Average difficulty for a Wednesday, I'd say.
And perfect timing; here in the NY Metro area we're expecting an overnight storm of "wintry mix" ...
Pizza pie is sacred. In my old Brooklyn of the 40s and 50s we would often say let’s get a pie for dinner and no one would question it. We knew it was pizza. This is a question and no sarcasm intended : Has chai really become that much a part of our language or is it more likely that most Americans have never heard of it other than those who frequent high end coffee shops—I include Starbucks in this classification. Thanks.
In the same category of duplicative terms using loan words: Sahara means desert, so you are technically saying Desert desert when you say Sahara desert.
RIDESHARE instead of BIKESHARE cost me several minutes at the end...
Today I learned the meaning of BOWSHOT (one word) which was new to me - but the literal definition is pretty much the clue, so can’t complain there.
I’m guessing our guest host is more forgiving of the (perceived) theme shortcomings than OFL would be - I can easily envision a paragraph or two due to the fact that the rain isn’t dropping down but is traversing horizontally (perhaps we needed to work a hurricane into the grid somehow).
Two days in a row that I've struggled mightily on early-in-the-week puzzles. Yesterday I was 4 minutes off my Tuesday average, today nearly 6 off my Wednesday.
Might actually be a good thing that the puzzles are a little tougher.
Glad I stuck around for the chai rant! I teach college writing and I'd say half of my students are from multiple language households. Loan words and linguistic appropriation comes up a lot and I really appreciate the way you framed this! Gonna use "chai latte" as an example next time this comes up, thanks :)
We're just gonna ignore the horrible cluing for SGTPEPPER??
My Italian son-in-law is always amused and slightly dismayed by Americans saying, “I’d like a panini” and pronouncing the word “bruschetta” as “bru-shetta” (it should be “brus-ketta”) But yes, borrowed words! Other languages borrow English words and change them too - thinking about the French who call a parking lot “le parking”, changing a verb into a noun.
As for the puzzle, pretty easy and yes, timely for those of us in the Northeast. Had a brief problem with WAFFLEFRY, don’t know that particular food, BOSSLEVEL (I’m not a gamer) and fAkETAN before BASETAN.
I thought BOW SHOT was probably the weakest thing in the grid today (although perfectly correct), and UNALIKE was a close second. TEED no great shakes either. A weak NW corner sometimes can dim the entire puzzle experience, but today that didn't happen. Lots of interesting downs today.
I'm sure if Rex were here, he would point out that RAIN is not split between two words the way the other themers are and that leaves 'LEFT' hanging out and not doing anything.
1D I had gal at first, thinking swinging your pardner at a square dance and then I had licENSE where DEFENSE should go. so I messed up the NW right off the bat . BOSSLEVEL I know strictly from crosswords. I dont thing I have played a video game since Asteroids in a bar in the 1980s. Timewise I was over my average. But I am glad I finished no errors, no googles.
Chocolate cake? NYC? You have to venture up to Lloyd’s in the Bronx! They’re known for their amazing carrot cake, but they now also make a mean red velvet cake (which is chocolate, tinted red, with cream cheese frosting). My mouth is watering as I type this! Take out only.
As I former So. Cal. resident and frequent visitor to LA, I was always amused by people referring to the La Brea Tar Pits. La Brea means "the tar," so "the La Brea Tar Pits" means "the the tar tar pits." LOL
@Anonymous - 7:03 AM - Uh...I thought it was clued perfectly. In fact, I think that's the best—which isn't saying much—clue/entry combination in the entire puzzle. What's your beef with it?
The stars for me today were freshness and beauty, qualities that heighten the solve, that make a puzzle special, IMO.
Freshness? Not only six debut answers – all worthy – but also four answers than have only appeared once in the Times puzzle, and another four that have shown up but twice. Among these 14 answers: BOSS LEVEL, TALK UP, CARRIES NO WEIGHT, WAFFLE FRY, and LEFT BRAIN.
Beauty? In addition to those 14 answers are lovely one-worders: BRASH, CATTAIL, TENDRIL, SLEEK, HENNA.
Random additional reactions:
• I had P _ _ TS for [Gentle strokes] and it took me forever to figure it out.
• SGT PEPPER’S thrust me back into my much younger head. What a gift that is; it’s like being beamed into another world. That Beatles album, which I listened to hundreds of times, defined a year of my life.
• LUMEN tripped off Lumon Industries from “Severance”, a series I’m hooked on.
• I, a wordplay fan, adored Kiran’s 5/18/23 puzzle theme, and I believe you will too.
• For nonaphiles, know that today’s puzzle has nine nine-letter answers.
Eagerly awaiting your next, Kiran, and thank you for this – the box was loaded with lovely today!
Put me in the “That was tough for a Wednesday” crowd. I couldn’t get on the wavelength of that NE corner.
Just the other day I was perusing the menu in a Mexican restaurant and thought, “Huh, they left the e off ‘tamale.’” Speaking of which, man, I love tamales. Oops, I mean tamale.
@Malaika - Here's what Perplexity AI says:
In the TV show "Drake & Josh," Josh's dad frequently mispronounces "touché". This running gag involves him saying "touch" instead of "touché," much to the amusement of other characters.
The movie "Pretty in Pink" features a scene where the character Ducky, played by Jon Cryer, mispronounces "touché".
Although not a movie or book, the TV series "The Great" on Hulu, starring Nicolas Hoult and Elle Fanning, includes a comedic scene where a character mispronounces "touché" as "toosh" or a similar variation.
Re: Loan Words
I remember my mother getting frustrated when a menu would say "with au jus." I don't speak French, but she did and apparently "au jus" translates to "with juice."
So the menu was essentially saying "with with juice."
Glad I'm not the only one.
More difficult than the average Wednesday here. Slowed by silly errors and plausible (but wrong) guesses. Had ethan instead of ACTOR at 10D. Entered ipS before VHS at 34A. Fake TAN before BASE TAN. As others have mentioned, rIdE SHARE before BIKE SHARE.
Gotta be a good story to go with CARRIE SNOW EIGHT - but I can't come up with one.
The AAA baseball franchise playing out of Buffalo NY are the Buffalo Bisons. Literally, Buffalo Buffalo. Oh, and the plural of "bison" is "bison", not bisons. What a mess!
Don't even get me started with the Buffalo Bills.
Hey All !
SLUSHPILE, har. @Gary J will get a kick out of that.
Different kind of puz. Two Revealers with a concentrated Theme in the Center. To channel Rex a bit, the first one (RAIN) is only in one word, whereas SNOW is in all three and HAIL is in both words of its phrase. Inconsistent? Or One, Two, Three?
Had TIL in for YET slowing me down a bit there. Finally erased TIL to see the Downs, and finding it was YET.
Overall fairly easy WedsPuz. Didn't UNALIKE it. 😁
WAFFLEFRY seems like a debut word, excellent for F counts! Only F's in the puz.
"Who is it?"
"ITS ME, man, let me in!"
"Who?"
"It's Dave, man"
"Dave's not here, man"
Have a great Wednesday!
Three F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
I'm not sure which Borough you live in, but here are some places in Brooklyn and Manhattan for your cake fix:
1. Mia's Bakery, Brooklyn
2. Little Cupcake Bakeshop, Manhattan
3. Ovenly, Brooklyn
4. Magnolia Bakery, Multiple locations
5. Amy's Bread, Manhattan
6. Ladybird Bakery, Brooklyn
7. Buttercup Bake Shop, Manhattan
8. The Chocolate Room, Brooklyn
9. Veniero's Pasticceria & Caffe, Manhattan
10. Silver Moon Bakery, Manhattan
11. Two Little Red Hens, Manhattan
12. Betty Bakery, Brooklyn
13. Martha's Country Bakery, Brooklyn
14. Choc NYC, Manhattan
15. Strip House, Manhattan
16. Maison Pickle, Manhattan
17. Sugar Sweet Sunshine, Manhattan
18. Molly's Cupcakes, Manhattan
19. Baked, Brooklyn
20. Lady M Cake Boutique, Manhattan
I look forward to your review!
That was a real old fashioned crossword (derogatory)
Actually, Andy, tamales is correct.Un tamal. Dos tamales.
The touché/tushy reference is from Brooklyn 99. 🙂
Agree that this one seemed harder than it was, if that makes any sense. Did the FAKE/BASE thing but no other erasures today.
Not a gamer but BOSSLEVEL has appeared before, and the next CHAILATTE I have will be my first. This one was wonderfully short on names, ARI as clued was unfamiliar and I learned something about HINDU practices.
Thanks to GJ and his frequent references to a SLUSHPILE, that one went right in.
And thanks to @Lewis for pointing out the number of debut answers. I thought a lot of these seemed new and it turns out they were.
Nice Wednesday, KP I Knew Practically everything in this one, but only after some cogitation, and that's a good thing. Thanks for all the fun.
This was easily my hardest Wednesday ever. About 6 minutes (!) over average. Just didn’t vibe with the cluing at all. Know nothing about archery, tennis, flowers, and it took me running the alphabet to finally understand that awful AMT/MASC cross (I admit I hate hate hate abbr clues, I just never can parse them). Were I solving on paper I never would have been able to finish this thing. Felt like a Friday or Saturday to me. Rough.
Not NYC specific, but Trader Joe’s sells a mini sheet cake in chocolate (and vanilla and carrot cake seasonally). Not a single serving (well, not for me) but not huge either. I affectionately call it “Car Cake”.
Stop buying cake and make the Ina Garten recipe. So so good! You can cut it into slices and freeze them individually wrapped.
Hi Mal,
This is not responsive, but the best chocolate cake I ever had was in NJ and over $10. South and Pine Eatery in Morristown. Call ahead because they often don't have it.
Decades ago, I was with my friend Nancy F. and we were waiting for a table in a German pastry shop on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. I was on a diet and just getting coffee. She was going to splurge.
I said, "Nance, I've been here before. They are going to seat us at a table and hand us menus that say things like poffenkliegel and Kleigenflieg. You won't know what to order. So go over there to the display cases, decide what you want to get, and ask the guy behind them what it's called. I'll keep our place in line."
I watched Nancy checking out all the items in the cases. Then she got the attention of the guy behind the cases and pointed to an item. "This one?" he asked. "No, that one a few over to the left." "This one?" "No, one more over." Finally, they connected. Then I heard him say: "Yes, we call that chocolate cake."
Malvika, thanks for the fun write up. This is second morning in a row I struggled with what should have been an easy and enjoyable puzzle. Not enough caffeine? For some reason could not get ACTOR (!) or ASCII. Regarding ASCII, some years ago an uber-intellectual friend used it in an arcane joke, so when I saw the double “I” ending I recognized the reference but could not remember the actual word —soooo tantalizing!
Thanks for the great writeup, Malaika. I agree with you on the food "loan words" and the evolution of language in general...
...but our usage of "chocolate croissant" for will always stick in my craw. The fact that we've adopted the word "crescent" for what's basically a cuboid pastry will never sit right with me.
this idea was used in a nyt crossword within the last year or two!
Hey, two revealers for the price of one! I'm not sure I get the first one, exactly. It's supposed to be a description of the circled letters, which would be accurate if the RAIN, SNOW, & HAIL were in down answers, but they are not, you read them across. The letters inside the circles do spell things that drop down, but the letters themselves don't do that. I like the SLUSH PILE, though, you would certainly get such a pile if you combined all those forms of precipitation.
I got nostalgic seeing CATTAIL clued as "furry wetlands growth." Here in the NE, at least, they have nearly vanished, displaced by the invasive phragmites. I know of only one place where you can still find them, presumably due to aggressive weeding out of the invasives by those in charge. Sigh.
ARI Aster? Aster ARI? Or is it Ori instead? I have no idea whether you use a GAME PAD or PoD--guess I'll go check the grid at the top of Rex's post.
Had a much easier time with this than I did yesterday‘s, but I thought it was a perfectly nice Wednesday puzzle and cute theme. The RAIN, SNOW, and HAIL DROP DOWN from the sky and leave us with a big sloppy SLUSH PILE underneath it. I like it and I’ll take the rain any day. In fact, it’s coming down right now at my little house on the plateau but thankfully no plans for freezing. I had my fill of frozen rocks the size of golf balls last year to the tune of thousands paid by my insurance company for a new roof.
Nice to hear from you, Malaika. As an avowed chocoholic, I wholeheartedly support your quest to find the best piece of chocolate cake. While I’m geographically too far away to join you, I’m there in spirit. If you ever want to make your own, I can give you a recipe for the best chocolate sheet cake you ever tasted. And the nicest part is, assuming you already have some of the basic ingredients, the entire cake shouldn’t cost you more than $10. Of course if you have to buy a dozen eggs just to get the two you need, all bets are off.
I see Ian beat me to the punch and took my cake, but I’ll second the recc. For CHOCNyc. On Broadway just past the end of the A train, pretty sure it’s under $10.00. If you feel like going way north, Didier Dumas in downtown Nyack is fantastic!
Well I guessed right on the GAME PAD. What a relief! Now I'm going to go have a biscotti.
I'm still pretty much a NYT noob, so no doubt I'm missing some nuance, but I'm confused with the "Drop Down" complaints. Everyone seems ok with the fact "Slush Pile" describes Rain, Snow, and Hail. Which is exactly what "Drops Down" does? Rain, Snow, and Hail drop down from the sky. I suppose I see the wintry mix words are kind of in a pile, but it still doesn't seem that different to me. Both revealers seem to just describe the words in the circles.
Shrimp scampi.
If it had been a Spanish pastry shop Nancy could have pointed and said "I'll have UNALIKE that."
Try Lassen & Hennigs on Montague St in Brooklyn Heights. Many cakes sold by the slice; slices in the $8 range. They do a chocolate raspberry cake that is quite nice.
One of those rare occasions where one ignorable tiny little circle actually got me out of trouble.
I was stumbling badly in the LEFTBRAIN/CARRIES NO WEIGHT section. I had RIDESHARE instead of BIKESHARE and I had MALE instead of MASC for the French words. So I looked at the tiny little circles instead of ignoring them, saw SNOW, which gave me MASC, which allowed me to get CARRIES NO WEIGHT and things started looking up.
I found this puzzle quite hard for a Wednesday -- but only in certain sections. I was tearing my hair out over "Analytic thinker". I had the L. I wanted a person. Someone who's Logical? Someone who's a Lawyer? Someone who's into Geometry? Leibnitz?
LEFT BRAIN was one of the toughest clues for me this whole year! And sometimes it takes just one.
Easily solved as a themeless. Then I looked at the "theme" in the same way I might look back in the rear view mirror after finally passing a pokey driver. Afterward, I shrug and say, "Doesn't really matter", because it CARRIES NO WEIGHT.
"Pass me the gamepad so I can play the boss level" - said no one ever
"The Los Angeles Angels" means "The The Angels Angels"
I had FAKETAN and SWIPEDOWN so that was a mess!🤣
I don’t hate chocolate cake, but I don’t like it either. Which mostly falls in line with how I feel about chocolate generally. Snickers? Sure. Hershey Bar? Meh. Vanilla Bean? Giddy up! Chocolate Swirl? Pass! Cheesecake? Rejoice! Chocolate cheesecake? My God why have you forsaken me?
People think I’m an alien or a troublemaker. To that I respond as does Paul Benedict’s character in “This Is Spinal Tap”: I’m just as God made me, sir!
Puzzle was hard for me. Didn’t put anything down until RNA. Upper right, AMT/MASC cross killed me.
Tom Smothers used to say, "Tushy, Dickie, Tushy!"
The name of the city apparently comes from the French beau fleuve, which means “beautiful river”, so not literally duplicative for the AAA team. Also Buffalo and Bison are not the same animal.
Let's not forget rice pilaf and shrimp scampi in the redundant food foods.
@Malaika. Do you pronounce L/SGTM as Let's Get 'em? It looks/sounds good to me.
And speaking of foreign foods, roti is both an Indian bread and French for "roast" (poulet roti, e.g.). In the French use, ROTI'NHELL might be classier than ROTINHELL. OTOH, one doesn't necessarily try to sound classy while uttering the phrase.
Capo: Ya' made a mess of that hit the other day.
Fella: C'mon BOSSLEVEL wid me. What'd I do wrong?
Capo: Ya LEFTBRAIN on the SILL.
Fella: I couldn't help it. As soon as I pull out my piece, that DAL DROPSDOWN and SLEEPS.
Capo: Well maybe she shoulda been BOWSHOT. Anyway, next time, don't be such a PUTTS.
I thought it was easy but liked it. The inclusion of SLUSHPILE, with all of the @Gary Jugert implications was delightful. Thanks, Kiran Pandey.
Fun puzzle. I perceived thought nearly as much of a sports theme as weather…4 or more clues: bowshot, defense, putts, ump.
El sargento Pepper no lleva peso a nivel de jefe.
I am 100% on board with @Malaika and chai tea.
Another wonderful puzzle today. It's been a nice streak. I had TAKE UP for TALK UP and phew it made the northwest slow to come around.
I am won over by the reminder there's only one true hero in crosswording and it's the anonymous {pretty sure it's Joel} SLUSH PILE editor at the New York Times crossword. Every morning a couple hundred puzzles are sitting in the inbox. Most of them have no business being there on technical reasons like being asymmetrical, or the wrong size, or written by a woman {joking of course}, or only containing one dupe. But once the roughage is cast aside by the cute intern who twirls her hair and says "y'all," then the SLUSH PILE editor must find one or two gems in the remaining mountain of tortured and abused grids. Is it written by a friend of ours who brought hot chocolates to us at Will's crossword competition? Is it written by a Python script? Is it something that will drive that Rex Parker dude into a dither? But the keen asset of the SLUSH PILE editor is his razor sharp eye honed to locate the 5th-grade humorists among the erudite constructors... a daily search for behind the barracks playground language clued as boring grown up things preferably from Britain or NPR. SLUSH PILE editor, you are the unsung hero of our mornings and I for one salute you. Your willingness to find us teenagerisms, rap songs from the 90s, drug paraphernalia, and body parts best left covered up, all to pair with our morning coffee and the sadness of knowing we squandered our days on this planet in search of more WAFFLE FRIES.
My rambling supercilious and annoying opinionator (RSAO) t-shirt is still in the mail.
PSA from a dude who goes to the dermatologist every 90 days to have more weird things started in the 70s and 80s frozen and chopped off my face: A BASE TAN or any other type of sun exposure can lead you to be on a first name basis with the staff at the skin doctor.
I think if you knock on a noggin again it's a REBOP.
People: 4
Places: 0
Products: 3
Partials: 11 {c'mon}
Foreignisms: 0
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 18 of 72 (25%)
Funnyisms: 2 😕
Tee-Hee: [Cocksure.] NOT IN HELL. [Climax in many a video game]. If you say TOUCHÉ very slowly, it's like you're the Fonz complimenting somebody's posterior.
Uniclues:
1 "I'm so pretty."
2 Anted up again in strip poker.
3 Roseanne show writer's fan club.
4 {See above.}
5 Number of bushes I'm trying to keep alive here in Albuquerque.
6 Two seater with sixteen handlebars for Ganesha and friends.
7 Power behind my surprisingly bright one-watt nightlight.
1 BASE TAN DEFENSE (~)
2 LEFT BRA IN
3 CARRIE SNOW EIGHT
4 SLUSH PILE UMP
5 ONE AREA PLANT
6 HINDU BIKE SHARE
7 BOSS LEVEL LUMEN
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: How Beethoven put soooo many dots on the scores. INK WELLS SNEEZE.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
True, but it is also on La Brea Ave. is it not? Perhaps that’s why People say that all the time
This old timer grew up in LA and went to the tar pits and the fossil museum often as a boy. And I know the La Brea Tar Pits are named after Rancho La Brea. Not a silly name at all.
Though obviously the Rancho was named for its most remarkable feature.
Hardest ever for me as well. 20 minutes over my average!
Botanically speaking, I am not convinced that morning glories have tendrils. Peas and cucumbers have tendrils, they're specialized structures that reach out for things to grab onto and curl around. For morning glories it is the whole growing branch that curls around whatever it finds to curl around. And also speaking botanically, I found the answer CHIA for 'kind of seed' pretty annoying. Grass seed? Tomato seed? Maple seed? Gymnosperm? It's worse than green paint.
THANK you for mentioning the tamal/tamale thing. I have had zero traction in convincing anybody there is such a thing as a tamal--even the Spanish speakers I encounter, and there are a LOT of them in my neck of the woods!
I’m a big fan of chocolate in general, but I agree with you 100% about mixing it in cheesecake, which does nothing except ruin an otherwise perfectly decadent creation on its own.
I don't usually like puzzles with 'circles' but this one was fine. As a kid, I got terribly sick from Indian food. I never ate it again so I didn't know DAL.
And certainly SGT PEPPER deserved better cluing than that - c'mon!
thanks, Kiran :)
I love multiple meaning words. Today I had a stroke of luck. Tuesdays was a lot harder than today even though I didn't know that LIL was a qualifier for a rapper. LIL what? LIL lips? LIL obnoxious? Move on.
BOW SHOP BUD....Bam. I'm off and running. BRASH tushy next. I laughed at the mispronunciation. I'm the queen of them. I killed Yosemite. So many fun words I learned today. BOSS LEVEL and WAFFLE FRY sounds like a wonderful name for a law firm. Where's JD?
I saw the PILE OF SLUSH but I wasn't sure what DROPS DOWN had to do with anything. It's our English language. A teach education class. My only problem was with LIL ASCII but otherwise I had a breezy wet fun.
Speaking of chocolate cake. There is only one king....the Viennese Sachertorte. I am this many days today, so I might celebrate by eating chocolates from Belgium.
Fantastic recipe. And now I’m craving it…
La Brea Tar Pits is today the proper name, but the route by which it arrived at that name makes for an amusing result if you know both languages.
Another one in So Cal is The Los Angeles Angels.
I can kinda see where Malaika darlin is comin from ... the puz did seem a bit on the hard side, but didn't really gobble up too many extra precious nanoseconds, at our house.
I reckon I'll mostly blame stuff like: WAFFLEFRY/BOWSHOT. BOSSLEVEL/BASETAN. BIKESHARE/SLUSHPILE. GAMEPAD. These were all no-knows made up of words I could eventually deduce from a lot of the crossers.
Also, LEFTBRAIN & TEE & MASC clues were a dash tricky. And SHAWN was a total no-know.
staff weeject pick: LIL. Abuttin many additional L's & I's. ALIL cult.
Thanx for the fun, Mr. Pandey dude.
Masked & Anonymo5Us
#6 ROTFLMAO
Here in the Hudson Valley many waterways have the Dutch word "kill" in their name but are then double named, such as the Wallkill River.
I was about 3 minutes overtime because I had “game pod” instead of “pad.” I kept going over the puzzle before I realized my error.
As a longtime resident of MD, I frequent a Mexican restaurant here that offers a tamal as an add-on. If you want more than one as a plate, you get tamales. I’ve always appreciated their accuracy!
Agree. Loved the clue, and anything that takes me back to that magical mystery tour time.
@Liveprof 9:23 AM
"Yes, we call that chocolate cake." Hilarious. Love this story. Reminds me of my Starbucks days when men would hold up their cell phone and say, "She wants this." And I would look at them and ask, "You don't know how to pronounce non-fat mocha?"
Thanks Kiran for a solid Wednesday puzzle..
I started in the SE corner and worked my way up to the NW corner...
For some reason I always write “Norm” Chomsky, and realize the mistake when I get to the crosses.
@Egs
Took me two readings to fully get your little dialog story. Then it was a good chuckle as usual.
I still haven't seen anyone describe a waffle fry which I've never heard of. Guess I'll have to google it. Or ?
Wallace Shawn, the unforgettable actor from "My Dinner with Andre" and "The Princess Bride" is Mr. Shawn's son.
Can HENNA be used to create a perpetual BASE TAN? Any politicians out there who look like they might have tried it?
DROPS DOWN doesn't sound like a phrase one would normally use to describe RAIN, SNOW or HAIL (or sleet). "Comes DOWN" or "falls" is more in the vernacular, no?
Loved seeing SGT PEPPER. Not sure about clue complaints. I got it right away from "Fictional bandleader of the 1960s". It was a seismic event in the evolution of rock music, breaking ground for mystical psychedelic imagery with the likes of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "A Day in the Life".
There are over fifty famous people from all walks of life on the cover including images of the mop-headed Beatles from the Beatlemania era standing beside their symbolic grave with the new era, re-born, so to speak, Beatles standing behind it. The rock and roll music scene was never the same again.
The film with the touché mispronunciation is Anora!
Yes, Chomsky is virtually indistinguishable from Norm from Cheers.
I've been fighting this battle for a long time, as the NYT Xword always wants the singular to be "tamale". Nice to find some support.
Ha! Good memories!
Clue had no indication of an abbreviation ("SGT") in the answer
Happy birthday GILL I!
Anonymous 3:52 pm
But that’s the name of the album which the clue is referring to. No need to indicate abbreviation.
In no way shape or form is horrible clue.
Steve Machen
Andy Freude wrote tamale knowingly He is referring to Malaika’s ( today’s blogger) discussion of language.
Her point is that tamale is perfectly fine in ENGlISH.
I agree with her.
@GFRCfP&J: I agree with your botanical dissent. Morning Glories (aka Bindweeds) are twining vines. They don't have tendrils.
Greg Chavez
I am also not a chocolate lover
Chocolate cake does nothing whatsoever for me.
Was I disappointed to learn that red velvet cake was chocolate!
Ian this is a great list that must be from another NYer with a sweet tooth😋 My fave would be the Brooklyn blackout cake from Ovenly
I finished the puzzle in the app but not in terms of my rules. I used to always do the puzzle on paper. So when I put down PoD crossing oRI in the app it told me I was wrong. On paper I would not have known. (Though Ari is much more likely and should have warned me).
Not a gamer. Didn’t know the person.
DNF. Oh well.
Oddly, I thought it was otherwise a fairly easy puzzle unlike many here.
The Mexicans around here say Tamale, with 3 syllables. I expect they know how to pronounce their own cuisine.
As a college writing teacher, I love l/sgtm. I just googled it, though, and just got a bunch of military abbreviations. So maybe it will be the 2025 word of the year?
@anon 10:31am there aren't many gamers here, and i know that, but i still wanted someone to talk about game pad, and i guess this is as close as i'm getting today, i'll take it! XD
i'm not a gamer myself, but my partner of many many years is, and i also watch a ton of gaming on twitch. and the only "game pads" i have seen are the pads for games like DDR where it is in fact, a pad, that you stand on and use with your feet. it doesn't have triggers or thumbsticks. that would be a controller, that you hold and operate with your hands/fingers. and no one would ever call a controller a "game pad." or so i thought. right? i'm open to being shown i'm wrong on this - i actually would much prefer that to a bad/nonsensical clue/answer in the crossword today but that one flummoxed me.
-stephanie.
Billy’s Bakery is a best bet for a traditional slice of chocolate cake. 2 non-cake suggestions (but the have some great chocolate products- Janie’s Life Changing Baked Goods and Levain Bakery)
Shawn was the longest-serving editor of the magazine. He was not so virtuous or saintly as many believe. His daughter, Mary, (Wallace and his brother Allen's sister; she was also Allen's fraternal twin) was institutionalized for most of her life due to being on the autistic spectrum. Shawn also was known as a womanizer, and IMHO he presided over the magazine's slide into smug self-regard, an atmosphere perpetuated by his brief successor Bob Gottlieb. It was a breath of fresh air when Tina Brown replaced Gottlieb in 1992 and brought some humor and self-deprecation back to the magazine. She didn't last long; she was replaced by David Remnick, who has now held the job for 27 years. The founding editor of course was Harold Ross, from 1925 until Shawn took over in the early 1950s. The magazine will put out its centenary edition next week (the Feb. 17/24 double issue).
Chiming in at the end of the day to say that when I did this puzzle this morning, I could not get food menus off the mind and needed every cross for DROPSDOWN, and even after having that in front of me I could not make it make any sense in a restaurant context. Since no one else mentioned it in the blog (the only discussion was that the drops were not written down), I just assumed it was some common slang that I had somehow never heard and went about my day. Randomly this afternoon on my way to office hours, it suddenly hit me and I felt like quite an idiot indeed for being confused (“Oh, the other kind of menu, obviously!”). Anyway, looking back at it this evening, I like it better now that the clue for the first revealer makes perfect sense. :)
I'm a gamer and gamepad was the original name for the NES controller. But over then digital controls were added 25 or so years ago and gamepad was replaced by the by more generic "controller"
It would be a weird slush pile that includes hail. Hail is associated with thunderstorms, which would not likely produce snow. IMHO, sleet would have been a better choice.
@ChrisS tysm - appreciate your input! glad to know there are some gamers lurking here after all :) i never knew those controllers had a name. TIL. words like thumbsticks/triggers seem to point to a more modern controller and apparently "gamepad" is still a collective name for many kinds of controllers. huh! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamepad
-stephanie.
The beau fleuve explanation is one of several theories, not been definitively proven or even widely accepted.
Buffalo and Bison are indeed the same animal
Absolutely right on the disappearance of cattails. If you want to help locally (NYC) you could contact the NY/NJ Trail Conference.
Post a Comment