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Going backward, in skateboarding slang / FRI 2-21-25 / Frozen, flexible first-aid items / "Fortunate Son" subject, informally / Rarest of all state birds / Utterly defeated, as n00bs / Its name in Botswana is the same as the word for "money" / What pogonophobia is the fear of
Friday, February 21, 2025
Constructor: Colin Adams
Relative difficulty: Easy (except for a single square ...)
Word of the Day: NIKKI Glaser (29A: Comedian Glaser) —
Nikki Glaser (/ˈɡleɪsər/; born June 1, 1984) is an American stand-up comedian, actress, and television host. She hosted the television series Not Safe with Nikki Glaser, which premiered on Comedy Central in 2016. She starred in the 2022 reality show Welcome Home Nikki Glaser? on E! She hosted the reality TV dating shows Blind Date (2019) on Bravo and FBoy Island (2021–2023) on HBO Max and The CW and its spinoff Lovers and Liars on The CW. She also hosted the 2025 Golden Globe Awards, which made her the first solo female host in Golden Globes history.She has acted in the Amy Schumer comedy films Trainwreck (2015) and I Feel Pretty (2018) and has appeared on shows such as Inside Amy Schumer and A.P. Bio. She has competed in competition shows such as Dancing with the Stars (2018) and The Masked Singer (2022). She has also participated in the roasts of Rob Lowe (2016), Bruce Willis (2018), Alec Baldwin (2019), and Tom Brady (2024). She has received nominations at the Critics' Choice Television Awards, Golden Globe Awards, Grammy Awards, and Primetime Emmy Awards. (wikipedia)
• • •
To be clear, I have no problem with either FAKIE or NIKKI being in the grid. The comedian is definitely crossworthy—I knew her! Just not how to spell her first name, apparently—and FAKIE ... is stupid (as is the idea that I'm supposed to know any skateboarding term beyond "OLLIE"—but as long as the crosses are fair, I got no problem with stupid things outside my wheelhouse. Happens every day. It's *specifically* the cross at the "K" that is the problem. For reasons stated. As I said, the rest of the grid was good—at least, that's what I vaguely remember. This is a total self-own (self-pwn?). But hey, if I'm the only one who had an issue there, then ... honestly, I'll be surprised, but strange things happen, who knows? If I'm a total outlier, apologies for not feeling like taking the time to talk about how much I liked the rest of the grid. Naticks are fatal errors. They suck all the joy out of the solve. Hard to write about the joyful parts of a puzzle when the feeling of joy has been completely drained away.
["And every stop is neatly planned / For a poet and a ONE-MAN BAND..."]
But before the last horrible square, I remember enjoying the BARHOPPING—the WET MARTINIs and the PIÑA COLADAs (side by side!), and ... I mean, OREO COOKIEs are an unusual bar snack, but OK, why not? (not in love with the redundancy of OREO COOKIE, but ... the phrase was probably used in advertising at some point, and it was easy to get, so I'm not really mad). Clean fill and strong longer answers everywhere I look, honestly. TIME TO KILL. ONE-MAN BAND. ZERO TO HERO. This would've been a well above-average Friday themeless. But the "K" square is the "K" square, and it's all I'm going to remember (unless I can forget this experience entirely, which I'm hoping tomorrow's puzzle helps me to do).
Assorted observations:
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
Assorted observations:
- 18A: Sue at Chicago's Field Museum, e.g. (T-REX) — I remember seeing this clue for the first time years ago and thinking "how the hell should I know? I've never spent any time in Chicago" (seriously, still true—I should fix that). But now, this clue is a gimme. This either speaks to my ability to learn or the puzzle's inability to be more creative. Either way, gimme.
- 21A: Jewelry designer Picasso (PALOMA) — missed opportunity to make this puzzle even cocktailier than it already is. I had my first PALOMA this past summer—apparently they're very popular, but they're not really for me, as I have become less and less of a fan of juice or soda in my cocktails over the years. Just the hard stuff, please, no fizz or fruit, thanks. Anyway, a PALOMA is tequila, lime juice, and grapefruit soda, although there are all kinds of variations
- 34A: "Fortunate Son" subject, informally ('NAM) — this seems like a term Americans who served there might say, but in everyone else's mouth, this abbrev. has always felt ... off. Inappropriate, somehow. Unless you're referring to the long-running Marvel comic book The 'NAM (1986-93)—if it's in an actual title (or if, say, it were in the actual lyrics of the CCR song in question today), then it's fine.
- 40A: Ancient Greek city known for its ornate columns (CORINTH) — I was looking for something related to DORIC or IONIC, the only two "column" types I know. I know CORINTH mainly for its allegedly rich leather ...
- 7D: Pot grower's activity? (POKER) — two POKER clues (see also ANTE) and I didn't even flinch! This is what happens when you ply me with cocktails... annoyability: diminished.
- 51A: ___ Lewis, first recipient of the James Beard Living Legend Award (EDNA) — probably should've been Word of the Day today. Never heard of her. I took one look at -DN-, and wrote in EDNA w/o even glancing at the clue.
Edna Regina Lewis (April 13, 1916 – February 13, 2006) was a renowned American chef, teacher, and author who helped refine the American view of Southern cooking. She championed the use of fresh, in season ingredients and characterized Southern food as fried chicken (pan-, not deep-fried), pork, and fresh vegetables – most especially greens. She wrote and co-wrote four books which covered Southern cooking and life in a small community of freed slaves and their descendants. (wikipedia)
- 44D: Its name in Botswana is the same as the word for "money" (RAIN) — interesting, I guess, but absolutely no help in getting the answer. Is the idea that RAIN means crops means ... money? (yes, rain is scarce in the Kalahari, so it's a blessing in more ways than one)
- 39D: What pogonophobia is the fear of (BEARDS) — I would've thought fear of pogo sticks ... or the comic strip "Pogo" ("Pogo!? No!!!!").
- 44A: 50 Cent piece? (RAP) — 50 Cent is a rapper (and actor) of some renown. But you probably knew that.
- 36D: Subtly flirts with (WINKS AT) — LOL. I thought you said "subtly." Winking at someone is not "subtle"; it's overt and either corny, creepy, or hilarious, depending on context.
See you next time.
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
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141 comments:
Finished it without cheating, but only because I was willing to try PWNED as an answer to "utterly defeated, as n00bs." Maybe the strangest answer I've ever seen in a NYT crossword. I had "Nicki" at first instead of NIKKI, but otherwise not too many do-overs. Average Friday difficulty, I thought.
Questions...Who could ever be afraid of beards, and who made up the word "pogonophobia" ???
Right on, @Rex! My comments closely echo yours. I also had a problem with FAcIE/NIcKI before FAKIE/NIKKI at 24D/29A, preventing the happy music. That was my only overwrite in an otherwise easy Friday.
WOES:
HOE cake (4D)
Sea of AZOV (11A)
The aforementioned FAKIE (24D)
DENIS Villeneuve (32A)
BEARDS as clued (39D)
RAIN as clued (44D)
@Rex EDNA Lewis (51A)
One might intuit skaterboys would say something like fakie. Facie? Not so much.
Identical experience
Totally lucked out. Automatically spelled Nikki with two k’s and thought why not for fakie as skating backwards having just watched the USA v Canada final last night. Got the happy music. Joy.
Somehow put in the spelling on NIKKI correctly and vaguely knew FAKIE so avoided that pitfall. I had the TO in ZEROTOHERO and was happy with INITTOWINIT until it didn’t fit…
Same for me!
Also finished with the C/K error!
A small nit re 33D:
While explorers any be aided in some sense by primitive, incomplete or hopelessly general or inaccurate MAPS at the outset of their exploration, the purpose of an explorer is to make MAPS - to define what has not yet been defined, to make known what is not yet known - not to follow what has already been defined and known.
So while the answer is not technically incorrect, it shoots wide of the central purpose of exploration.
Same problem with Fakie/Facie. I thought if someone was skating backwards, they would be facing me.
Who's that kid with the "Oreo cookie"?
I came here to see what PWNED was but you’re the only one to even mention it. I wanted OWNED but that had to be a Pina Colada…
Same exact thing. Grr. Skateboard slang should be forever banned in crosswords. I am willing to bet that the number of people who skateboard enough to know the slang and who do crosswords is exactly ZERO.
Just looked at my wife’s puzzle. She made the same C/K error. 😍 ~RP
NIKKI Glaser is common these days, she just hosted the Golden Globes, so that was easy. and FAKIE seemed inferable. PWNED???? Gimme a break. I cheated on BEARD . Anyone with a FACETAT needs their head examined.
I got it all--even guessed correctly on Nikki--but what is PWNED? Please explain.
I thought the southern hemisphere was much more enjoyable, with the three long acrosses in the SE being a solid anchor, with OUTER SPACE being my personal favorite of the three.
I’m not heavyweight enough to get into the NE corner and go toe-to-toe with that quad stack of AZOV, NENE, TREX and PALOMA - of the four, only NENE and TREX would have been discernible for me, but I would need some help from crosses (which are hard to come by with those three long down answers such as VEXATIONS), so I had to bail out of that corner before the ref TKO’d me.
I didn’t even bother wasting time with the FAKIE /NIKKI nonsense and just called in for backup. I will admit that I kind of got a kick from dropping in the full OREO COOKIE for a change.
The wet martini has nothing to do with olives. It is a martini that has a higher vermouth-to-gin ratio
Wow, I was so lucky in Naticksville today. Count me in the multitudes who did not know either NIKKI Glaser or FAKIE, but when I got to that square, I had the rest filled in and I just thought airily, “Oh, I think the modern way of spelling NIKKI is with a double-K.” Splat, done, happy music. And glancing back at FAKIE, I thought it just looked like a skateboarder’s term, very much in the “ollie” mold (are they all five letters and end with IE?). The issue of facing, as in facing backwards, never occurred to me. Sometimes, not giving a clue/answer much thought is way better than overthinking it, but – Hah! – you never know when you’ve hit one of those.
I didn’t “know” NIKKI, but FAcIE never even occurred to me, and I’d like to think that the editors would have avoided the near-dupe with the crossing FACE TATTOO. So there was no joy-sucking dilemma for me and I found the whole thing delightful.
PWNED is decades-old gamer slang and is a corruption of the word owned. As in: You just got pwnd!!1!one!!1eleven!!
Sometimes I get awfully tired of Rex describing puzzles as "easy."
"Pwned" originated as a typo of "owned" but it's become a really common saying in video games,hacking and cyber security - and I believe has been in crosswords before
Put me in the camp that didn't even see a Natick until Rex pointed it out. It's a fair complaint, I suppose - but I guessed right the first time and didn't look back. It was a very wooshy solve, not a record but close at half my average time.
Pwned is a kinda funny video gamer word I learned from my kids. It comes from the idea that people were trying to triumphantly type "I OWNED you!" but frequently hit the "P" by mistake instead of the "O."
Pronounced like {poned}.
pwned????? Really?! If anything ever needed an explanation, it was that utter garbage.
Wet martini? Pwned? Swak?
I had Nero to hero
A toast to the Rescue Answer, that St. Bernard that saves you amidst a sea of white. There you are, lost in a sizeable area of the grid, not certain of any answer so far, with few left to go, and suddenly you hit the R.A. – the answer you know, and the longer the better – which breaks that empty mass open. ZERO TO HERO in a blink. Here’s to you, R.A., for the smiles you bring.
In the box today with its chunks o’ white in the corners and sash, those Rescue Answers made several visitations, resulting in “Whee!”-filled splats, and let me tell you, that charges up the spirit.
Oh, the grid held beauty (TIME TO KILL, I KID, ONE MAN BAND, SCAVENGE), freshness (six answer debuts and seven only-once-befores), and the lovely STEP up from the bottom – and I’m grateful to Colin for a fun and satisfying fill-in. Thank you, sir!
I extend that gratitude to the Rescue Answer, bringer of jubilation. You are my Crosslandia friend for life.
A lot of guessing until I got it correct
My younger daughter was terrified by beards when she was a toddler. I’m wondering if the word comes from the Greek for “beard”.
I think this is only a HALF-NATICK... Nikki is pretty well known, but I can understand thinking it might be Nicki. But FAKIE is very much a thing. I've barely ever touched a skateboard and still vaguely knew that term. As soon as you type it and say it to yourself, it should sound like skateboard lingo... versus Facie? Prima facie? Are we shredding the gnar at the Parthenon?
Yup, total Natick on NI[C]KI. Big fat juicy raspberry on that one.
PWNED is Internet/gamer slang going waaaaaay back, based on the common adjacent-key typo, P for O. Same category as deliberately writing "teh" for "the," as in "teh internets." One of many fun little bits in this puzzle that were absolutely overshadowed by that stupid, needless Natick at its heart. What do puzzle editors get paid for, one wonders.
The Parthenon… is Greek? And Rex explained well why FACIE (“face-y”??) might sound right considering the clue.
Thank you! I came here to find this comment.
Hi. I think some of you are disappointed because you set too high a standard.... I loved this puzzle. Lining up PINACOLADA and WETMARTINI right next to each other in a puzzle with BARHOPPING and DONTDOIT right next door, and ending with a TOMBSTONE. That's a great puzzle. I knew that square was a natick square... I guessed FAcIE first and then went back to it when I didn't get the happy music and tried the K... Tada!!! I'm happy enough with that anytime, especially on a Friday or Saturday! I consider that a WIN!! : ) Now.... when they have a whole section with 3 or 4 squares that could be any of 3 to 6 letters each, that's when I feel cheated.... or prone to cheat... or PWNED. or whatever. But this was just dandy
Also, I think in context "WINKS AT" is meant not as actual humans flirting but in the more metaphorical sense, when something else can be said to gently hint at a concept. I'm thinking of news articles where the author winks at some tangential idea. It's... well this usage would be subtle. :D
I actually KNEW Nikki Glaser was spelled NIKKI and changed it to C because FAKIE sounded so illogical! But then when I had an error I tried it as a K (which definitely was something niggling at me already) and it worked. I did not know some of the other things like Sea of AZOV and that TREX clue, somehow I’ve missed Sue in the past. Even when I filled i it in I was wondering what a TREX was (one word, lol) had to look it up after I was done to see it was a T. REX. So silly of me. I did love ZERO TO HERO. That gave me a chuckle.
I enjoyed this and thought the long answers were uniformly strong. I particularly enjoyed MANSCAPED and, after finding out that pogonophobia is fear of BEARDS, had visions of men sculpting their facial hair into fantastic creations like topiary. I had to look up pogonophobia to find out if it’s a real thing. Wikipedia suggests “[t]he term is generally meant to be taken in a jocular vein,” but elsewhere it’s treated seriously as a real phobia stemming from “negative past experiences with BEARDed individuals, societal stereotypes associating BEARDs with danger or untrustworthiness, cultural perceptions, personal anxieties about masculinity, or even a fear of the unknown as a BEARD might conceal a person's face…” My husband has a BEARD, and always has had one since I’ve known him. He modified it into something resembling a Van DYKE during COVID so he could more easily use a face mask, but, yeah, he just wouldn’t be himself without it.
As for PWNED, I looked upon it as an old friend, having learned it from crosswords (3 uses in the present tense starting in 2020). Merriam-Webster calls it “a respelling of OWN, probably originally from a typing error, P and O being adjacent letters on the QWERTY keyboard.” Apparently it’s pronounced “pone” as in corn pone.
Call me an unsophisticated boor, but if given the choice between a WET MARTINI or a PIÑA COLADA, I’d take the umbrella drink every time.
Right? I think it’s due to the fact that NYT puzzles have gotten much easier over the years. A Friday used to be nearly impossible and now it’s pretty do-able, so to him it’s easy. Compared to a Wednesday, it’s harder of course. It’s all relative. I used to take a Friday and Saturday puzzle with me on a six hour flight and it could take me the whole time.
INITTOWINIT for me too
Millennial here. I learned fakie from playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater and Amped Snowboarding. Can't believe those came out 25 years ago, but they Pro Skater in particular was a phenomenon.
Pwned (mostly) comes from online gaming chat culture. Your intuition is right that initially people would write owned as in you lost. Pwned came about due to a common typo that enough people thought was funny and stuck in popular leetspeak canon.
PWNED is the worst answer ever. But then again, I see from the comments that this word is common among gamer DWEEBS.
Pretty much in my wheelhouse. Was surprised to see PWNED and FAKIE in a NYT, so I can understand the complaints for both. I used to skate in the '90s (Hi @CliFLL 7:06 AM). FAKIE also means switch (stance) in snowboarding. If you've watched any skateboarding or snowboarding events in the Olympics, you will have heard of the term, but I wouldn't blame anyone for not watching either sport (or the Olympics altogether).
8 fencing positions: prime, seconde, tierce, quarte, quinte, sixte, septième, octave. tl;dr Who gives a $#!+?
As a former skate bum, I had no issue with fakie. In fact, I confidently slotted ILANA into the across and it was only coming to the fakie clue that made me realise that it was wrong. Filled in fakie, then nikki came quickly after.
Corinthian, ionic and doric. I know all three, but I don't know which one is which. I got that one pretty easily.
Fun grid. Below average solve time for a Friday for me.
Hey All !
Easy puz until NE corner. Man, unsure why so tough, but just could not get anything there. Rest of puz done in about 11 minutes, final time says 19! And I cheated! Had to Goog for AZOV. Once that went in, saw ZEROTOHERO, and steadily was able to finish. Had to change my BIPeD to BIPOD.
Wanted rACyTAT for FACETAT for a minute. Had TREe for TREX, also. Was thinking, "Huh, must be quite an old tree to get a name!" Har. Irrelevant that it's inside a building...
Isn't TIME TO KILL also a movie? James Bond?
Quick Friday, even with getting stuck in NE.
Happy Friday.
One F
RooMonster
DarrinV
Technically, going backward isn’t exclusively defined as fakie. You could also be riding “switch” depending on where your feet are. So, it’s a poorly worded clue anyway. However, with all of the crazy old names I’m expected to know, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to know how to spell her name, especially as Nikki is the more common spelling in my experience. Also, as a skater, it would sound just plain weird to say “ I’m about to do a facie kickflip to nose grind on that ledge!”
Hey! Look at that! You’re wrong!
My first two entries were AZOV and VEXATIONS, so I had an eye out for a pangram, but it was not to be. A reall slow solve for me, partly because of the segmentation of the grid, partly because I stuck to TaranTulas instead of TOMBSTONES for too long, partly because of questionable cluing -- the usual cocktail for an olive would be a dry MARTINI (what makes it WET is extra vermouth), and OUTER SPACE is just too universal to be an answer. Also, I had no idea what happened at a bachelorette party, as I have never been invited to one. Nor a bachelor party, for that matter, so I couldn't even go by analogy.
I did wonder if women call it MANSCAPING, or if the clue needed some sort of gender indicator; and whether it was really exploring if you already had a MAP.
I did learn about EDNA LEWIS, though.
The first time I ever saw PWNED was right here, used by Rex--the puzzle had had "owned" as a gaming term, and Rex had complained that PWNED would have been more authentic.
Fakie is not a Natick. Boardsports (skateboarding, surfing, snowboarding, etc.) are more popular than golf, and the puzzles are riddled with golf terms. This is the sports equivalent of complaining about hip-hop clues.
Sealed With A Kiss -- the others were explained in earlier comments.
Enjoyed this puzzle. Ran through the north half pretty quickly but ground to a halt on hitting PWNED, FAKIE, and NIKKI across the middle. Had to build up the south without them and work backward—a puzzle FAKIE.
Oh man. I used to be a former skater and do xwords. I also happen to have lived in Natick :)
I skateboarded growing up so I was privileged to not even see this area as a problem today, I also wouldn't have known the NIKKI spelling otherwise
I know what you mean by "half natick," but I'm not sure it's possible for such a thing to exist. Acc to RP's definition of natick, it requires a problem at a "cross" due to two unknowable answers. If you know one of them, it lacks an essential element of natickness, IMO.
Also just for the record "suggest" and MEAN don't MEAN the same thing.
I'd say the subject of Fortunate Son is more upper class hypocrisy and abuse of power & that Nam (America's Vietnam conflict) is more the context.
Disney song in the cartoon Hercules. Zero to hero.
What’s the big deal DNFing a crossword ? Happened to me with a BEQ puzzle the other day. No biggie.
According to Wikipedia, BBC's Jeremy Paxman accused the BBC of pogonophobia after he caught sh*t for presenting some programming while bearded. He (unhappily) became a "poster boy" for the Beard Liberation Front, he claimed. Broadcaster Robin Lustig, previously winner of "Beard of the Year," also described the BBC as pogonophobic.
It's a neat phobia to learn about, as were my two favorites, fear of clowns and fear of bubbles, both of which I forget the terms for.
I forgot to add how much I liked MIENS, as clued.
PWNED?!?!?!?
I also died on that c/k thing!!! And Corinthian columns are the third kind of columns -- the ornate ones with explosions of acanthus leaves at the tops.
Doubly wrong! If I need to know baseball terminology (ATBAT, ERA, RBI, OHFERS, etc.) and the many baseballers (CANO!, ICHIRO, ALOU) then learning a second skateboarding word shouldn’t be too big an ask from y’all!
Why "one-man band?" Because no woman can ever have enough talent to play multiple instruments? Thanks for keeping Will Shortz and his sexist crap. From bands to scaping and bar-hopping, we're focusing on the appearance of one's genitals.
So much to like, from DON"T DO IT crossing TOMBSTONES, to the pair of cocktails to the pairing of ZERO TO HERO and ONE-MAN BAND. I started out with NENE and T-REX (Sue is famous in these Midwestern parts), and the -EX- gave me VEXATIONS, a favorite word, which completely won me over to the puzzle. Little did I suspect that there would be two of them to trip me up - wish I thought of that K! But never mind, this one was so much fun to solve I can't be vexed about it.
Do-over: SCrouNGE before SCAVENGE. Help from previous puzzles: PWNED. Help from coveting Tiffany jewelry: PALOMA. Help from being a Dune fan: DENIS. DNF: yet another FAcIE and NIcKI.
So azov Wikipedia article says scientist are split on if this the result of the flood We just heard about in the old testament story of Noah
Natickity, not natickness.😉
Exactly, that's what I was going to say. I also wondered about VOICE actors.
News flash New York Yankees to allow players to have beards
Like Rex -- and probably a lot of you I haven't read yet -- I had NICKI/FACIE. Nor does it matter in the least to me because I'm awarding myself a "Solved!" Try and stop me.
I've seen PWNED before -- but I never remember it. It looks like a typo to me and maybe that was how it was born. It can't die soon enough for me.
I think WET MARTINI is incorrectly clued. It's not the olive that makes a MARTINI wet. It's too much vermouth. All MARTINIs have olives, except for the ones that have a twist of lemon. Or an onion -- in which case they're a Gibson.
Thought for the day: WINKS are not all that subtle.
Second thought for the day: This is a really boozy puzzle. BAR HOPPING; WET MARTINI; PINA COLADA.
Third thought of the day: Who on earth decorates their lawn with TOMBSTONES?
This was hard in places and easy in others. The stacks were impressive.
And how many of you had ARAL before AZOV?
Necesito una pista.
Wonderful wheelhouse puzzle. The longer answers fought a little before sliding in and making me feel smart. Lake Azov was the biggest mystery, but everything else rolled over fairly easily for me. As usual, I didn't know the people, but the crosses were solid. No problem with NIKKI because nothing in sports should lead you to believe FACIE would be a thing.
❤️ BAR HOPPING. TIME TO KILL. ONE MAN BAND.
🤣 Fear of beards. Who decided that needs its own word?
People: 8
Places: 2
Products: 5
Partials: 3
Foreignisms: 1
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 19 of 70 (27%)
Funnyisms: 4 🙂
Tee-Hee: POOPED. Pot grower.
Uniclues:
1 The day they opened Jurassic Park.
2 Added cheese, broccoli, and chicken and put those tubes to sleep.
3 How you build sandcastles in the sky.
4 Where you get the last words in.
5 Hairless automatons.
6 Song sung by beachophiles.
7 What one grows after being punched in the jaw.
8 Pimples on a polyphonic playa.
9 Why in the heck can't those people keep the treats coming fast enough?
1 T-REX TIME TO KILL (~)
2 PWNED MACARONI
3 OUTER SPACE PAIL (~)
4 TOMBSTONE'S DAIS (~)
5 MANSCAPED BOTS (~)
6 PINA COLADA ARIA (~)
7 GEL PACKS BEARD
8 ONE MAN BAND ACNE
9 PET'S VEXATIONS (~)
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Scottish boys ride invisible dragon. LADS MOUNT NESS.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Easy except for the NIKKI/FAKIE Natick cross (hi @Rex et. al) cross which I too had to go back and fix. @Rex - thanks for the rant!
Costly erasure: BOaS before BOTS
WOEs: NIKKI, FAKIE, EDNA, RAIN, and BEARDS.
Solid with some sparkle, liked it, except for …
Was I the only one who started with gin martini? Ante finally convinced me that was wrong but wet martini has nothing special w an olive. Also toker for pot grower instead of poker. Vaguely knew fakie so no natick for me. Fun.
Yes, I agree with *easy for a Friday* designation and I also had FAcIE/NIcKI at the end and had to hit “check puzzle” to find my mistake. I guess the difference between Rex and me is that THAT didn’t ruin the puzzle for me.
I had learned PWN prior to its use in the crossword by listening to a novel, The Nix by Nathan Hill. Luckily, my daughter was also reading it and I learned that the gamer character whose gaming handle I thought was (because I was listening) Poner, was actually PWNER, and thus a valuable lesson was learned that served me well in Crosslandia!
How is it that only one person here commented on SWAK? Since when is that acronym a thing?
Found this to be a pretty smooth Friday on the easy side, although I did get caught in the same C/K natick that snared Rex. And for me, made even more difficult by the other oddly spelled name, DENIS crossing at 32A. MANSCAPED is an interesting term and one I’d not heard before. I liked SAY/AVER/APED, three forms of expression clustered together. And I love when a puzzle has not only stacks of crosses, but also a few long downs thrown in. Makes it much more interesting.
Lots of eating and drinking going on in this grid. If I went BAR HOPPING, I’d avoid any HINT of a WET MARTINI because I’m such a lightweight that I’d probably wake up the next morning with a FACE TAT. On the other hand, I could never abide a PIÑA COLADA either. Both have ZERO appeal to me. For that matter, same for an OREO COOKIE. A nice plate of MACARONI though, it’s always a good TIME for that.
Speaking of using ‘Nam as a substitute for Vietnam, my mother insisted on saying that for a couple of years after I got back. Made me crazy but I never had the heart to insist she STOP ! She thought she was bonding with my experience and I didn’t want to hurt her.
Yep, hand up for the Natick, but worse yet was filling 17A with soME me tIme and refusing to consider another option. Also safe to say that AZOV PWNED me for way too long today. Still an amusing experience in spite of the VEXATIONS.
Late today as we spent the morning updating our living wills and planning our burials. Yeah, lots of fun. The advantage of arriving late is getting to read all the explanations for PWNED, which a lot of us didn't need because we do crosswords.
Found this one easy for a Friday, NW was a breeze and solved counter-clockwise, finishing with the dreaded FAKIE, which sounded vaguely familiar and I realize from reading other comments that I had heard it applied to snowboarding. Pays to have varied interests.
Couple of unknown names but easy crosses. Most fun was seeing a reference to HOE cake, which reminded me of the Smothers Brothers classic "Boil That Cabbage Down (turn turn that HOE cake round), which of course goes off the rails nicely.
Very much enjoyed your Fridecito, CA. Come Again any time with another one like this, and thanks for all the fun.
As did I. I thought Rex would've said something given his affinity for cocktails (or so I believe). And really, for most people, a "wet" martini is probably just one that has vermouth in it. Yet vermouth is what makes it a martini, and not just gin/vodka chilled and served up.
I do it on paper. PWNED should not be allowed. I got it. AZOV is also garbage. I knew NENE but that corner. Ugh. TREX stacked on top of PALOMA should have never made it out of the editors room.
Happy WHD to me (wheel house day)--one of my fastest Fridays. Proud of myself that at least, having entered NIcKI early in the solve, I removed it and left it blank until it was the last space. I popped in the C, didn't get the Happy Music, switched to the K, and done.
I was whooshing through this - thinking "this is kinda Robynesque" only to get tripped up on FAKIE, TREX, MANSCAPED (for some reason I thought it was might have something to do with Mascara), & PWNED.
Liked MINCE for Chop Chop Chop.
A really enjoyable Friday, Colin & thank you :)
I got FAKIE from crosses. What tripped me up, though, was BARHOPPING, because it's a factual mistake. Hard to get a statistical survey on this, but I'd bet that far more bachelor parties than bachelorette parties involve BARHOPPING.
The c/k square slowed me down, but didn't hurt that bad. The NAM clue really grated. My dad did 2 tours in Vietnam. I was a "lifer brat"not much younger than the draftees he led and the only place I ever heard Nam was in movies.
I hear thar NIKKI FAKIE is the best PWN shop in Natick.
I had devised a fake (!) justification for FACIE, too: “it must come from turning about-FACE!”
When I think of bar-hopping (clued, by the way, as an activity for a bachelorette) or a band with a single person, I am not thinking of genitalia.
I did
Lotsa no-knows, at our house: DENIS. PALOMA.PWNED. AZOV. REMY. NIKKI/FAKIE. EDNA. BEARDS, as pogono-clued.
OTOH, M&A did know all 8 of the weejects. Morale victory.
[staff weeject pick: UNO, which is a "one", off.]
fave stuff: ZEROTOHERO. FACETAT clue.
Thanx for the themelessness, Mr. Adams dude. INEEDAHINT was most apt, for my solvequest. Lost many precious nanoseconds.
Masked & Anonymo1U [s]
... and ...
"Unfinished Sympathy" - 7x7 12 min. themed runt puzzle:
**gruntz**
M&A
My next-door neighbors set up fake tombstones and make their front lawn look like a cemetery every year at Halloween. Some of the “graves” even have a skeletal hand or foot sticking up out of the ground. Then to finish it off, they use a fog machine to continuously blow an eerie mist into the air. It’s really very realistic looking and quite creepy after dark.
Would like to add, as a skater, Fakie was easy for me (especially after switch and nollie didn’t fit.) was nice to see a skateboarding clue that wasn’t Ollie.
NIKKI Glazer is really famous! And FAKIE is a very common term in skateboarding and snowboarding, it felt fair to me.
@doghairstew That solves my longstanding befuddlement (since I don’t have young ones to explain it for me) of the P replacing the O… so thanks for that.
Sometimes you just get lucky, I put in a K because C never occurred to me. If the clue had been "Singer ----- Minaj" I would have put a K. So for me this was a really good puzzle... not too hard but not too easy.
Lots of typeovers: ICE PACKS before GEL PACKS, STANZAS before OCTAVES, DINO before T REX (see below), and my favorite: BOAS before BOTS for "Amazon nuisances".
I remember going through CORINTH on the train to Athens and being totally underwhelmed.
Okay re T REX: I already posted this a couple of days ago, but here is the Okanagan's answer to Sue: a giant metal T-Rex.
Also re TOMBSTONES, further to @Whatshername's comment, here is my neighbor's Halloween display from last fall. We only have 50 foot wide lots, but they crammed a *heck* of a lot into their front yard, plus some inspired stuff going on in the street. I was pretty blown away.
There's so much domain knowledge in crosswords (especially these), and nobody (including myself) should get discouraged seeing how Rex often sails effortlessly through the choppy waters of a late week puzzle. Sometimes a puzzle is just right in your wheelhouse and it's Rex's turn to struggle - admittedly thats probably still 2x my speed, but it happens!
Hand up for the FAcIE DNF and for the same line of reasoning as Rex used. Shrug.
And I had the same reaction to the clue for WINK. Subtle, you say?
I thought this puzzle had a lot of crunch. I had a couple of panic moments where I didn't think I'd be able to finish in one sector or another. On the other hand, I put in PWNED with no crosses. So am I hip to gamer speak now? I don't think so.
I briefly considered, with TO____O_ES in place, that someone might be decorating their lawn in October (Indigenous People's Day?) with TOtem pOlES. Ahem, oops.
Thanks, Colin Adams, for the Friday challenge, not too hard, not too easy. No whooshing, in any case.
Can't believe Rex found NIKKI/FAKIE a problem. Across, maybe think about it, Down, hardly.
FWIW, totally agree with Rex on the FAKIE/NIKKI Natick.
As another skateboarder, I've never even really considered fakie as riding backwards, I've always thought of it riding forward in switch stance with tricks being popped from the nose of the board. For the confused a nollie is a jump from the nose of the board instead of the tail. A fakie is a nollie, but in switch stance so it is easier (hence a fake nollie).
In a time when much comedy leaves me dry, NIKKI had me howling in both her Golden Globe hosting and in the Tom Brady Roast.
The clue never said that an olive is the defining characteristic of a WETMARTINI. I agree with Rex about the PALOMA cocktail. I love all of the ingredients: tequila, anything grapefruit, soda - but together it is very disappointing.
Remembered PWNED from here, reinforced by having seen it in the wild since.
I am glad Rex highlights FAKIE and NIKKI in his opening 2 paragraphs plus a picture so I can scroll past the childish rant about a one letter DNF, no matter how erudite.
Sealed With A Kiss
The TOMBSTONE clue includes October for a reason…
Botswana’s currency is the Pula and in Setswana, the local language, pula means rain.
I made many a PIÑA COLADA during my grad school bartending days but never a MARTINI, WET or otherwise.
I was a distance runner back then, mostly 10 kilometer races. One St. Patrick's Day, a group of us runners decided to combine running and drinking. We planned a route that included stopping regularly to have an adult beverage or two. Yeah, we went BAR HOPPING. We called it our St. Pat's Day 10 Kiloliter Race. I don't remember many details of who "won" the race or even if I finished it.
The MARTINI usually has an olive in it but rarely a DAISy. Here's an example of that variation curtesy of an old Ernie Kovacs skit. As his character Percy Dovetonsils happily sips his MARTINI, he says "I pity the abstainers".
FACE TAT? DON'T DO IT!
In fact, if you order a wet martini you're more likely to get a lemon twist than an olive, since the citrus oil is a better complement to the vermouth than olive brine is.
Easiest Friday for me and my all time record. (First sub 15:00 for me - I average about 25 for a Friday).
Though I put “war” for “nam” initially for the fortunate son clue and that wasted about 3 minutes for me to have to go back and reverse engineer it. One of these days I’ll get it in under 10!
Got Naticked at the exact same place!
@burtonkd -- Halloween, Schmalloween -- I wouldn't turn my lawn into a cemetery at ANY time of year. The world isn't bleak and scary enough? To @whatsername: I do not envy you your next door neighbors. From what I know of you, you definitely deserve much less macabre neighbors.
These three terms occupy very different points on the timeline. SWAK is a WWII-era term that I first learned from my mother. WET MARTINI is a recent "backronym" for what was, once upon a time, a standard martini, before James Bond and Bob Hope started everyone thinking of the dry martini as the standard.
Wow. Just wow… on your neighbor’s Halloween display. I have no words except that it comes close to Clark Griswold’s Christmas display!
I can tell you that I attended (now it was quite a while ago) where the bride (for a second marriage) had a limo that went to many different bars in Atlanta. So, I think it’s “a thing.”
You make a good point. I remember (decades ago) when some of our local ski areas were getting pressure to ban snowboards. Ancient history. So many people were taking up board sports that they quickly realized they'd go out of business if they didn't sell lift tickets to boarders.
As readers of this blog know, @Nancy is a Gothamite to the core. If she has ever set foot outside of Manhattan, it was either a foreign country (and likely future U.S. conquest) or it wasn't in October. So please understand that she will likely go to the grave not having seen yards decorated with tombstones for Halloween.
Great post today! Cracked up on bar hopping ending up with a face tat!
Maybe you are younger? It’s okay.
I'd say that today's comments constitute prima FAKIE evidence that many solvers, including @Rex, got PWNED by Colin Adams. I thought it was one of the funnest non-themed puzzles in recent memory.
Was the cluing ridiculously easy today or am I getting better at crosswords? I filled in the left half at like a Monday speed for me. Right half took a little longer but still, not too much trouble.
I liked this puzzle, especially because my name (or the French version of it at least) was at its center. ;-)
my skateboarding brother suffered a traumatic brain injury while doing a fakie front 180 so the word fakie is now burned into my brain
I don’t even know where to go to consume skateboarding, but watch ten minutes of half pipe snowboarding and you will hear fakie-to-fakie many times.
Any skater or snowboarder knows FAKIE. T’was the PWNED that was a real stumper!
FAKIE is great, snappy fill, and it means the same thing in skateboarding as in snowboarding. And NIKKI Glaser is hardly obscure. Sometimes you just don't know the answers, and you just have to suck it up. Probably most puzzle have a NATICK for someone.
@BlueStater 12:01 PM
How is the prevalence of one over the other a "factual mistake?" It only needs to be true once in history for the clue to be true. Last time I was in Berlin, young women from several Bachelorette parties were promenading from bar to bar on the Ku'Damm. One was dragging a cart full of "prizes" to sell to passers-by to raise money for the next bar. It was cute as all heck. She approached me and began her sales pitch in German and switched seamlessly to perfect English when I said I didn't understand her. I gave her a few Euros and I think she sold me a party hat, or beads, or something. What I remember most is her blonde hair, blue eyes, six feet of height, and high heels, and I thought, "Wow, the Berliners are the most beautiful people in the world."
I grew up with Tony hawk on N64 so no problem with fakie. Also Nikki Glaser crushed the Tom Brady roast and has been everywhere.
Surprised everyone had trouble with that but not AZOV / VEXATIONS
FAKIE super easy for me, a snowboarder. My own square guess was the S in SWAT/STEM. Still can’t figure those out…wanted it to be an I for ITEM or something
It's never entirely clear whether the singer in "Fortunate Son" is a soldier who resents that he's not a privileged rich kid and so he's been sent to 'Nam to be a grunt/cannon fodder, or whether it's someone outside the military who doesn't want to be sent to 'Nam for that same reason. So I was thinking that I was thinking that the "subject" of the song might actually be a "vet."
Greater Fall River Committee for Peace
Voice actor is an actual term used for actors in cartoons and some ads.
FWIW Also I would think an explorer could use it map to get to the unknown territory. For me, close enough for crosswords.
Alice Polled
PWNED has been in this puzzle before. This is where I learned it
It is on the verge of being crosswordese. So it will appear again. Look at the comments which explain it started as a typo for owned.
As Rex pointed out, the problem is not that I never heard of Nikki Glaser but spelling! And for me she is at the edge of my knowledge so it is an easy error to make at a key cross with a word I never heard. Inferable? Between facile and fakiecI don’t think so.
My real point is you knew Nikki but I knew pwned. No reason to get dismissive of what you don’t know
I do agree Rex overrated.
Kent
Actually, Shortz allows dupes all the time
From my perspective, the choice between "facie" and "fakie" wasn't insurmountable; I know very little of skateboard terminology except that if one choice seems kind of sophisticated, and the other seems slangy, go for the slangy one. My challenge was "pwned," but since there is no "oina colada," I reluctantly went with it.
Dr BB
Mean & suggest
Crosswords are puzzles not dictionaries. As a CLUE it is close enough for crosswords especially on a Fri/Sat.
Whatsername FWIW
He is French. Denis is the common French spelling. So it’s a language thing. Eg St. Denis is the patron saint of Paris.
Anonymous 11:39!AM
Azov garbage. ?!?!
Has been in the news on and off since the Ukraine war started especially when the Ukrainians attacked an important bridge in the Kerch strait at the entrance to Azov. There have been very many more obscure geographical names than that on Friday. Nothing garbage about it l
Blue Stater
Dangerous to opine about something you haven’t participated in! Anyway, just suppose men do it more often. As long as women do it too it is a good answer.
Wow, can't believe the number of comments about FAKIE and PWNED. As someone who was a teenager in the '90s those were gimmes. Yes, both terms are at least that old, and I thought were in the common vernacular.
Gene
Ollie is well known to non officianados of those sports among crossword people; fakie Absolutely not. Just because you know it doesn’t mean it’s common knowledge
For me 2 days in a row one letter dnf. Yes at Rex’s spot today.
As I said above, Rex did overreact. The Natick natick was much worse! But I don’t follow Nikki Yes I heard of her but knew not the spelling.And I don’t follow those board sports. (No I don’t watch snowboarding during the Olympics). So dismissive people should understand the problem.
Liked the puzzle anyway
Otherwise easy except for me the NE corner. I really had no idea I had a dnf till I read Rex.
Surprised Rex did not skewer the gun reference.
Haha, @egs. But we do have elaborately decorated townhouses on the side streets in my neighborhood (East 90s, Fifth to Third Aves) with skeletons, pumpkins, witches and lots and lots of cobwebs. Some of them look as though they cost big $$$. It's sort of fun, actually, and not depressing like tombstones. But nothing in my nabe can compete with the video that @okanaganer put up at 1:09 p.m. That display looks like it cost more than Kubrick spent on "A Space Odyssey".
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