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Ka ___ (southernmost point in the U.S.) / WED 2-12-25 / Satirist Michael / Either of two for Mozart's Queen of the Night / Success against all odds / Lizard mascot with a Cockney accent / Where a wedge may be used / Inexpensive beer, informally
Wednesday, February 12, 2025
Constructor: Philip Koski
Relative difficulty: Medium (oversized 15x16)
Theme answers:
- DEFINITE ARTICLE (20A: The) (ARTICLE appears on the other side of WAGE (7D: ___ gap))
- SPEAKS ONE'S PIECE (30A: Talks frankly) (PIECE appears on the other side of SALARY (33D: ___ cap))
- CINDERELLA STORY (44A: Success against all odds) (STORY also appears on the other side of SALARY)
"Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen" ("Hell's vengeance boils in my heart"), commonly abbreviated "Der Hölle Rache", is an aria sung by the Queen of the Night, a coloratura soprano part, in the second act of Mozart's opera The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte). It depicts a fit of vengeful rage in which the Queen of the Night places a knife into the hand of her daughter Pamina and exhorts her to assassinate Sarastro, the Queen's rival, else she will disown and curse Pamina.
Memorable with its upper register staccatos, the fast-paced and menacingly grandiose "Der Hölle Rache" is one of the most famous of all opera arias. This rage aria is often referred to as the Queen of the Night aria, although the Queen sings another distinguished aria earlier in the opera, "O zittre nicht, mein lieber Sohn".
• • •
[2D: "___ to Know" (1999 Marc Anthony hit)]
The one downside of this theme, though, was that it's executed in such a way that a lot (lot lot lot) of pressure is put on the center of the grid, and man can you feel it (in the form of creaky, wince-inducing fill). Literally all of my post-solve "ick" ink is concentrated in the middle of the grid. That is an extremely load-bearing part of the grid, as the theme gets incredibly dense through there—that SALARY "wall" has to hold back not one but two articles (PIECE and STORY). Usually, you spread out your themers so they have some space, some air between them, which allows you to not have to drive so many crosses through more than one themer, which in turn allows for cleaner fill overall. But here, those second and third themers are absolutely hugging each other, or may as well be, as ten (10!) crosses (including the SALARY wall) have to run through *both* of them. No wonder, then, that rows 5 through 11 are just thick with weakish fill, from partial nonsense like TRALA crossing partial nonsense like INA (which gives us a much-unwanted three "IN"s in this grid, all pretty close together (see also DID IN, CONFIDES IN). Then there's RAH next to LLC, then LAE (!?!?!?!?) (!?!?!!?!??!) (46D: Ka ___ (southernmost point in the U.S.)), which crosses the super redundant and awkward OPERA ARIA, and at the bottom of it all (fittingly), SEEPY, oof. [Flowing slowly] should be SEEPING and only SEEPING. My patience for the fill in this puzzle was flowing slowly away at this point, so it's a good thing that the revealer came along at the end and saved the day, turning this puzzle from something of a slog into something of a delight.
Other things:
- 35D: Wee (EENY) — I hate when the puzzle pretends that people use "EENY" as a standalone word. They use TINY. They do not use EENY except maybe as the first word in a choosing rhyme (EENY-meeny-miney-moe, if I'm spelling that correctly, which I'm probably not), or as the first part of the sing-songy childish phrase "EENY-weenie," which is probably actually gonna be "teeny-weeny" or "eensy-weensy." It's a cloying awful mess, this array of wordlike entities related to smallness.
- 11D: Lizard mascot with a Cockney accent (GEICO GECKO) — I guess this is supposed to be marquee fill, but I'm not a fan. Reads like product placement. Also, I'm just ****ing tired of that damn gecko. Why isn't he bygone yet? Speaking of ads, I did not watch the Super Bowl, because I don't care, but I did watch the Super Bowl Halftime show (several times now), which was amazing, and featured, among other people, crossword stalwart SZA! (you can watch it here—YouTube won't let me embed it in my blog)
- 3D: Tells private things (CONFIDES IN) — I think this alongside "ANY IDEAS?" (4D: "How will we ever get out of this mess?") was the non-thematic highlight of the day, but it also made getting started slightly difficult, in that I had a hard time parsing both answers, and thus a harder-than-usual time (for a Wednesday) whooshing out of that NW corner into the heart of the grid.
- 65A: Exhaustion from work (BURNOUT) / 66A: Without much hope (BLEAKLY) — good answers, but together on one line, they're a lot to take. BURNOUT BLEAKLY is a little too "capitalist dystopia" for me, pre-coffee. "Exhaustion from work!? Without much hope!?" Shut up, puzzle. You're supposed to be *not* bumming me out.
- 49A: "Take THAT" ("BOOM!") — had the "M" and wrote in "WHAM!" Then changed the "W" to "B" and wrote in "BLAM!" Sigh.
- 22D: Where a wedge may be used (TRAP) — had no idea what was going on here, even after I got the whole answer. Could not imagine what the TRAP was. Mouse TRAP? The TRAP in the plumbing below your sink? Was the "wedge" a shoe heel? Some kind of shim? This is what happens when you don't play golf. The TRAP is a sand trap (a golf course hazard), and the "wedge" is a type of club. Other sports stuff it's possible you didn't understand includes BELL LAP (the final lap of a race) (28D: When to wave the white flag) and screen PASS (a short forward pass to a receiver protected by a screen of blockers) (36A: Screen play?)
- 63D: Inexpensive beer, informally (PBR) — Pabst! Blue! Ribbon!
- 47D: Sign of a hound's happiness (TAILWAG) — this was another non-thematic part of the grid that I really liked. Nice to be welcomed (at the end of the solve) with a tail-wagging pupper. Who's a good boy!? This answer is. Yes he is. Yyyyes he is.
See you next time.
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
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100 comments:
Top half Medium-Challenging, bottom half Easy-Medium. Overall Medium.
Overwrites:
1A: talc before MICA
1D: nhsa (National Highway Safety Administration) before MADD
6D: seek before ABET
15A: teASE before ABASE
23A: DID IT before DID IN
26A: bIo (thinking a book cover) before FIB
41A: Ltd before LLC
WOE:
Satirist Michael PALIN at 5D
2D: I NEED to know
Ka LAE at 46D
I had a minor problem with 10D because we learned in high school that INSIGNIA is plural and the clue is singular ("insigne" would be singular)
Finished it without cheating, but I have no idea how. Never understood the theme, and BEHINDAPAYWALL means nothing to me. My system doesn't provide shaded squares, so I finished up in the South with guesswork. Hearing the music was a pleasant shock.
I also had "Ltd." before LLC.
Ugh. The middle of this grid is by far the worst section of a puzzle I have ever seen. Rex explained why, and I understand, but as far as I'm concerned there is no theme or revealer, no matter how clever, that can make up for the miserable experience I had because of that section.
BLEAKLY indeed. Soulless - underdeveloped theme with matching fill. GEICO GECKO, OPERA ARIA, TRA LA?? On the list for WOTY.
The Jam
Still don’t quite understand how “A BET” is a “drive for.” Can anyone explain that to me?
I thought that was a long and torturous way to go to get to BEHIND A PAYWALL. And Rex is correct, that whole middle section is a disaster, with LAE being the flag-bearer today. Not a lot there to hold your interest today if you are not into trying to discern the theme and maybe guess the revealer.
This one seems like a better fit for experienced solvers. I know I would have hated it back when I was struggling to cobble together mid-week grids. Fortunately, now I just find it boring (and perhaps somewhat annoying due to the significant effort involved for what to me is very little payoff).
Insignia in Latin is the plural form of insigne, but it has long been used in English as both a singular and a plural form: “The insignia was visible on the wingtip.” Or: “There are five insignia on various parts of the plane.” From the singular use of insignia comes the plural insignias, which is also acceptable. The Latin singular insigne is largely restricted to military contexts; in other contexts, it may strike some as pedantic.
I think I'm being quite slow... but how is 36A: Screen play? = PASS? Is this an American football term?
Always happy to listen to the Queen of the Night Aria. Though I think I read once that Mozart wrote it to bully the lady that he knew would sing it. But now... iconic!
Plodded through that mid-grid slog, only to meet wayyy too much capitalist dystopia at the bottom. Even the TAILWAG was not quite enough to redeem this unpleasant puzzle. Oh well, there’s always tomorrow. . .
"Abet" as in "aid and abet". Meaning to illegally help.
ABET - one word. Think of a getaway driver.
I saw it as ABET; as in driving a getaway car
Abet like to drive the getaway car in a crime I guess
Abet as in aid and abet, the clue is getting at a getaway driver
ABET as in "aiding and abetting" -- so you might drive a getaway car as an accessory to a crime.
Yes, a screen PASS is a thing: “ A screen pass is a play in gridiron football consisting of a short pass to a receiver who is protected by a screen of blockers.” (Wikipedia)
Didn’t enjoy this one at all, for the reasons Rex goes into. The middle section was awful, with SEEPY and BELLLAP (what is that?) and LAE.
However I did love “How will we ever get out of this mess?”, something I ask myself every morning when reading the news. ANYIDEAS?
A most marvelous moment for me came with [One leg curl, e.g.], for REP, where I was imagining forever a person on a leg curl machine working on a single leg at a time, and I kept thinking, “There must be a name for that exercise and what do you call that type of exercise?” I kept coming back to it, thinking, “It’s going to come to me! It’s going to come to me!”
When the correct interpretation finally hit me it brought one of Crosslandia’s best moments: The HahaAha!
Let’s say someone says there is an interesting article in the Washington Post they send you a link. If you don’t subscribe to Post, you can maybe read the first few sentences but the Post’s PAYWALL prevents you from reading the rest unless you subscribe.
Great puzzle, thanks, Philip! 13 minutes for me which is just a tad north of average for me--so medium to medium-challenging. Definitely enjoyed sussing out the theme, and paywalls are pretty current, so that was nice and contemporary. I agree that there's some icky fill, but it didn't kill it for me, and I loved seeing BURNOUT and PESTOS and LEGIT (had LicIT first). IGOR
You should mention that the soprano here is Diana Damrau.
IGOR seems to be defeating NERO in the wrestling match in SIAM.... We can be healthy eating BIBB lettuce but then finish up with a PBR... lots of variety. : ) Thanks!
Philip’s last puzzle (6/8/23) wowed me with its wit and intelligence, and I couldn’t wait to dive into this one. It didn’t disappoint:
• A wide range of knowledge – History, geography, sports, arts, grammar, work, food, pets, and of course, journalism.
• Loveliness in answer: CINDERELLA STORY, ANY IDEAS, INSIGNIA, TAIL WAG, and the swelll (BELLLAP).
• Areas of fight leading to gratifying flashes of insight, followed by glorious splat fills.
• Gorgeous layered theme graphically illustrating the relatable BEHIND A PAYWALL.
• Unintended graphic art – that mid-grid tree or lollipop, either of which push my happy-button.
• Clues that misdirected, to my brain’s delight, such as those for OCHRE, TRAP, and REP.
Once again, the stamp of quality, and I’m a fan, Philip. Thank you for a splendid solve!
Liked much less than Rex. As he notes, there is a lot of stress on the grid from the theme, and that leads to a lot of iffy fill. But I didn't like the theme, either, so that iffy fill was not worth it.
And the cluing is just a little off. Why "some looks into space" instead of just "looks into space"? The clue for CONFIDES IN doesn't even work. It should be 'Tells private things to'.
Am I in the a small demo of people for whom that halftime show was not meant? I didn’t watch the superb owl. Folks at work were discussing the brave and brilliant halftime show so I flipped it on. Looked well-choreographed, but this art form is not meant for me. If there was a message, it was completely lost in the medium.
Wow, I enjoyed the puzzle and think it’s a clever theme, so I’m kind of surprised at the negativity in some of the comments, but to each his own. I did an eyeroll at myself when at first I didn’t think of Hawaii for KA LAE. Also, I thought the grid spanners were just fine, with CINDERELLASTORY as the standout.
I was amused at Rex’s “Pabst! Blue! Ribbon!” because back in the day of my first underage alcohol consumption, this was one of the usual offerings at unchaperoned parties (cheap!) and it is solely responsible for me thinking (for years) that all beer smelled and tasted like vomit. So maybe I should thank PBR for this great service of low to no alcohol consumption during my teen years.
A little too much capitalist dystopia? Sorry comrade.
LAE looks like the bastard child of KEA/LOA. It is the southernmost point of Big Island, Hawaii and has a platform you can jump off to land in the water several meters down, then climb a rickety ladder back up. A guide warned us that if you get caught in a strong southerly current, the nearest body of land to the south is Antarctica.
On the same page as Rex, except.. watched the Super Bowl, didn’t watch the halftime show. Philly boy, born and raised. Fly, Eagles, Fly!
This mf’er did NOT just say SEEPY
BELL LAP, LAE, SEEPY - yuck yuck yuck
I'm with Rex. ugh!
I’m a (former) golfer and I still gronked it as a cheese wedge in a mouse trap
What does the grid size have to do with the relative difficulty ? Are we supposed to infer that larger grid sizes are implicitly more difficult?
Hey All !
Kind of strange puz here. I see now what in tarhooties is going on, thanks Rex for the explanation. Saw WAGE and SALARY, but the ole brain couldn't figure out why they were where they were. I did see the related enders, ARTICLE, PIECE, STORY, relating them to a newspaper or something. But the BEHIND left me, well, behind. Silly brain.
Fill surprisingly OK, considering that Center section has run amok with Themers crammed in there. That's not a FIB. BIBB a neat word, too.
Seeing "The" as a clue got a chuckle. I was like "Wha?" at first. Didn't notice the 16 long grid. Again, brain needs to help me out occasionally.
Finally some F's!
Well, hump day today. Have a great Wednesday!
Three F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Echo OFL, but enjoyed it more than he did. Didn't find the center disgusting or unworthy, more of a head-scratching emoji-- "now why did he..."
Pleased to learn of Ka Lae, sounds like a great place to visit in Hawaii to gaze out southward--toward Guam.
For any southerners or Hawaiians on this blog:It's that point in winter:went out this AM, no wind , sunny, felt pretty good at 27 degrees!
Rex, PBR six pack of pints were $1.79 at the Vestal Plaza in 1977.
Knew Michael Palin more from Monty Python than as a satirist.
Is the clue for BELL LAP appropriate? I think the white flag signifies the final lap of an Indy car race. The BELL LAP is the final lap of a track and field (e.g., 5,000 meters) race, and is signified not with a white flag but by a, um, bell.
Nice whooshy start with DEFINITEARTICLE going in with no crosses. Got held up with a LEGAL vs. LICIT thing, thought it might be some kind of rebus, and then LEGIT showed up. Duh.
The revealer, which was great, took a while. I needed PAYWALL to suggest BEHIND , which I had trouble seeing, mostly because of OCHRE. TRALA doesn't bother me as it's an old crossword friend. I'm with OFL on SEEPY though. Ugh.
Highlight for me was CINDERELLASTORY. I can't hear that without thinking of Bill Murray as Carl in "Caddy Shack", winning his imaginary golf tournament. And any reference to Big PAPI and the upcoming baseball season is a big smile.
Nice feat of construction and worth the grid strain for me, PK. Please Keep making more of these, and thanks for all the fun.
Bell lap is the last lap in a race. Bell is rung to signify that lap. White flag is waved for the winner.
Wednesday puzzles are usually well within my grasp, but this puzzles just seemed to be from an alternate universe for me. Needed lots of help. And when I did see the correct fill, I just had to groan. All the fill made sense, but just not in sync with my brain. Oh well, I did learn about Ka Lae.
Detrás de un muro de pago.
Hm. Always thought it was "speak one's peace," but apparently not.
Flimsy weird theme, gunkfestapalooza, and another fast puzzle. Is this the new normal? We need someone in the NYTXW office in a landspeeder, "This is not the puzzle you are looking for."
It's TRA LA LA. Gimme back my LA.
❤️ BOOM.
People: 9
Places: 5
Products: 6
Partials: 9
Foreignisms: 1
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 30 of 77 (39%)
Funnyisms: 3 😐
Tee-Hee: EENY [Wee].
Uniclues:
1 One who tells jokes in Quechuan and dances in sandals.
2 How capitalism helps you welcome your grave.
3 One delicious bit of cereal in a box of Insurance Bit-o-Charms coming to a breakfast table near you.
1 INCA'S ELLEN
2 BURN OUT BLEAKLY
3 GEICO GECKO FLAKE
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: The 5th grade boy inside me every time I see a hint of a woman's undergarment. LACE! {COUGH COUGH}.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Can someone explain a bell lap? Isn’t a checkered flag waived for the last lap?
I had to look up BELL LAP and learned it is a term used in track and field competition. “It's the final lap of a distance race when by tradition a bell is rung to alert runners and inform spectators.” Agree re the mess. I’ve always been a news junkie, but find myself avoiding it altogether these days.
I had the same thought about BELL LAP. The clue implies auto racing. Didn’t really translate in my opinion.
My first entry was our old pal IGOR, who I was glad to see had been promoted from lab assistant to composer. Good for him! Then I worked my way down to the bold clue for 20-A, "The". I set it aside for a moment, then it dawned on me that DEFINITE ARTICLE fit, giving me a nice bit of swoosh. I continued to work my way down, and was probably more than half-way to the bottom before I noticed that we had a last-words theme going, that was something about writing. But then I got the awful OPERA ARIA (has anyone ever said that? I guess my next PIECE is going to be an OPERA ARIA? I don't think so,) followed by the almost-as-awful SEEPY, and -- I was stuck! DOMAIN did not occur to me, so I was left with only one way into the bottom section, TAILWAG--and that was only one side of the seemingly unconnected two parts.
OK, so I did think of DOMAIN eventually, and got to the revealer--but failed to notice the "With 63-Across" part, so I put in the only journalistic thing that seemed to fit, BylInes. That worked with BIBB and DOMAINS, but nothing else. Only then did I notice that it was a 2-part revealer, and I finished at last.
It still took me awhile to figure out the shaded squares. I had to stare at them, and finally noticed that they were PAY and formed a WALL, together with some black squares, that ran from the bottom of the grid to the top. Then I stared a few more minutes and finally saw that the WALL separated the journalistic products from the rest of the theme answers, so they were literally BEHIND A PAYWALL. Hard to figure out, but brilliant in retrospect.
The clue for ANON is weird. Most graffiti consist of nothing but the writer's tag, i.e. stylized signature, so it it the opposite of anonymous. True, the tags can be hard to read, and are usually a nom de plume, but that's far from ANON.
And I'll never accept the idea that MADD is a "road safety org." They are an anti-drinking org; their biggest legislative victory was to get the drinking age raised from 18-21, penalizing millions of people for the sins of a handful. Puritanism, plain and simple.
Only if you measure difficulty by the time it takes you to solve; with a larger grid, there are more letters to fill in.
You would need to gaze westward.
BOOM! Finished this in well under my average time and still had no idea what I was doing. Got through that crazy center on crosses that fit and lucky guesses.Afterward had to look up BELLLAP to see what it meant. Thank goodness for DEFINITEARTICLEs, CINDERELLASTORY and talking GECKOS and for Rex explaining what it all meant. BIBB lettuce is an old crossword friend, but haven’t seen it in real life for a long time.
(If this comment doesn't appear, please let me know)
I know a guy who insulated the walls in IM Pei's Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. He can legitimately claim to have worked BEHIND A Pei WALL.
I sit in a little black booth and CONFIDESIN to a Priest. Given my lifestyle, you could say that that confession is a Hail Mary, but the priest usually wants at least 10.
In Madrid, 1A (MICA) might be clued _______SAESSUCASA. If any of you denizens of NY (or denizens DENY as they say in Madrid) can't parse this, ask @Pablo.
Bad run here for LAY/LAE. I assume that tomorrow there'll be an appearance by "LEI" that will also get commenters bitchin'.
@Gary Jugert. Re: Your missing "LA". The clue has certain implied notions that you apparently didn't notice. "Singsong refrain" is meant to be mentally processed as "This is a dumb singsong answer. Refrain from criticizing it."
A good and different theme always wins me over, regardless of the quality of the fill. Loved this, Philip Koski.
When I saw “southernmost point in the US” I immediately plunked down KEY, thinking Florida. But it’s LAE you say? Very interesting, as Artie Johnson used to ponder, and another little tidbit to tuck in my crucible reference book … along with BELL LAP which I found a little perplexing. The white flag is an official indicator for the last lap in an auto race but it isn’t referred to that way. I guess we were supposed to consider it synonymous, but I thought that clue was a stretch - pun intended.
The puzzle however, was pleasing and I liked it a lot, even though the sight of a PAY WALL is always annoying. I know, I know, they have to generate revenue. But do I really need to pay for an entire subscription just to read one ARTICLE?
On a literary note, I’m currently reading Let’s Call Her Barbie, a fact-based STORY about the creation of the famous doll and her steady beau KEN. I had no idea how much work and detail went into the creation of their wardrobes, which was as much a part of the packaging as the dolls themselves. They knew at the conception that clothing and accessories would be where the real money was generated. It became an industry in and of itself. The book by Renée Rosen is an absorbing read if you’re in the mood for some entertaining historical fiction.
Totally agree with Son Volt's assessment. Nuf Said.
I enjoyed learning Ka LAE (it will come in handy for trivia some day, I'm sure). The clues for BELL LAP and WEDGE were great. (BELL LAP means final lap regardless of whether a bell is rung, and in many auto races a bell is indeed rung. Auto races are loud, so officials communicate with drivers via a variety of flags: The white flag signifies the last lap;; the checkered flag signifies the race is over; yellow means caution, slow down and no passsing; red means stop; in the organization I drove with, black meant pull off the track at the exit and get yelled at for breaking a rule, such as ignoring a yellow flag; and there are others). Overall I enjoyed it a lot. The gimmick and revealer made up for the stuff that really was bad in the middle.
41a: ltd before inc before LLC
Yes! I came here to write the same thing. Wonderful German soprano, and she owns this role!
Medium. LAE was it for WOEs and tiNY (hi @Rex) before EENY and ilE before LAE were my ONLY erasures.
Fun/modern theme, cute/clever reveal, liked it.
Too much garbage!
What's PAWAT?
Has anybody ever said SEEPY except at age one to complain about mommy's bedtime rule?
BLEAKLY? (Nobody ever adverbed the adjective.)
KaLae should be exiled forever, along with Kea/Loa. (It IS interesting that the farthest-North, -South, -East, and -West U.S. states aren't immediately obvious, but that makes for crappy crossword fill.)
"Cover story" evokes fig leaves, not a fib.
Milled edges on coins don't counter counterfeits; They prevent use of blank slugs. I despise puzzle composers (AND their editors) who don't know or use technical terms, because they dumb down our language.
I don't give a xxxx who composes these puzzles, and if I did, I'd be inclined to recycle the page before solving (or trying) some of them. Seems to me that having the author's name adds leverage for solvers, reducing the cerebral challenge to solve the puzzles.
JimG
This old timer sez, best post of the year so far!
@Whatsername 10:21a - my initial reaction also but remembered the monument or whatever it is in KW says “Continental US”.
The otherwise invisible PAY WALL, made concrete here by two forms of earnings walling off three words for what you were hoping to read - I thought it was great, a clever pun and impressive construction, with the double duty SALARY has to perform. I really didn't notice the grid stressors @Rex mentions, as I was too busy trying to imagine what WAGES and SALARY had to do with words for news items. Happy solver here.
I had to work for this one not like the last 2 days which were easy/breezy/fun. LAE? BELLLAP (3 L's in a row? - yikes!) & was really thrown by ABET (great :) Thank you, Philip for a rewarding puzzle & for the mention of John Lennon "Above us ONLY sky" (RIP) And gotta mention - your 'mate' Paul is appearing in NYC for 500+ fans - forgot where - wish I could see it). Last time I saw you guys was at Forest Hills which my mother had to take us to (not a teen yet but screaming all the same.)
Very late getting here, so I may not be read. But I liked this a lot. Admittedly, the theme had nothing whatsoever to do with my solve -- and usually that's a big minus for me. But when the theme is so sardonically amusing as today's, discovering the conceit after the fact is good enough.
The puzzle did produce one mid-solve "Aha Moment". I had BEHIND A and had no idea "where some journalism is located." When PAYWALL came in, I chuckled. Then I went back and looked at the themers and saw what was going on. I thought it was quite a funny and very original idea.
Any puzzle that zings the PAYWALL practice is a friend of mine. I hate the whole idea. I hate most of all WaPo -- always at the top of the Google list for just about any news item you might possibly want to see -- but then WaPo blocks you out when you go there. "Democracy dies in darkness," it proclaims -- and then it supplies the darkness. An amusing puzzle with some real bite.
My least favorite part of this puzzle was in the TRALA BELLLAP LLC LAE CINDERELLASTORY OPERAARIA area. There is a contiguous block of 10 (!) squares that are filled only with the letters L and A.
In a car race, the white flag is waived to indicate the drivers are heading into the final lap. The iconic checkered flag is waived for the winner.
he Queen of the Night has four OPERAARIAs, then Pride and Prejudice has 61 “book chapters” and Beethoven’s Eroica has four “symphony movements”.
Kinda cool idea for perkin up an otherwise too-widely-used last-words-connections puztheme. Too bad the revealer blows it a bit, by blabbin out "the ends of ..." as part of its clue.
I had a little trouble figurin out the PAYWALL part of the festivities, as that term was pretty fuzzy to m&e. Maybe cuz I pretty much just use free websites [other than the nytpuz and xwordinfo].
SEEPY...? har
No prob with BELLLAP [track & field term], except for that there white flag [NASCAR] clue part.
some fave stuff: E/W puzgrid symmetry [done to a big "T"]. ANYIDEAS. FORHERE. INSIGNIA. BURNOUT.
staff weeject pick: (Ka) LAE. Cool to learn about one of them there extreme points in the country.
Might be part of an interestin new four-extreme-USpoints puztheme [dibs!], with KALAE as the southernmost entry. Would be a mighty feisty theme, I'd grant. Plus, the Intl. Date Line makes things kinda hazy, what with the US easternmost point bein in Maine or Alaska, dependin on definition. Hey-- maybe could throw in an INTLDATELINE "wall" as a Down answer, to help clarify? har.
Further potential complication for the M&A puz idea ... Trump slurpin up Greenland, Panama Canal, Canada, and Gaza.
Thanx for the fun, Mr. Koski dude. Clever theme stuff.
Masked & Anonymo2Us
Thought wedge of cheese in a mouse TRAP, but the golf meaning makes a lot more sense. Don't like it, but can accept that's just me.
Frustrated by putting White flag and bell lap together. Seen lots of races and only see white flags where you can't hear a bell. Sorry. How about "where one takes their final turns".
This seemed like a strange puzzle. I didn't jump to see what the revealer was, so the theme wasn't obvious until near the end. There seemed to be some weird stuff going on with GEICO GECKO and OPERA ARIA and the 3 L's in BELL LAP. Also, some clues and answers were just weird sounding: "Not to go" (???) = umm... TO STAY? No, it's FOR HERE (?) Oh, as in "not takeout".
PAY WALL itself is a big negative. I remember the early days of the internet, when I foolishly thought it was A Good Thing. No paywalls! Now it's ruined everything, and you have to pay to see the good stuff.
I misread the clue for NERO and wondered: why was he named after an enemy of the state?
Add me to your small group.
I’m sorry, but for a bell lap a bell is rung, dah! No where have I ever heard or saw of a white flag being waved for a bell lap.
The main thing that made me smile today was Rex's discussion about 47D TAILWAG: "Who's a good boy!? This answer is. Yes he is. Yyyyes he is." Thx OFL!!!
ha—i always thought it was “speak one’s peace”…
I always thought MADD was Mother Against Drunk Driving, not against drinking per se. A quick look shows that it was formed by Candy Lightner after her 13-year-old daughter, Cari, was killed by a hit-and-run drunk driver in 1980.
And the drinking age was already 21 in many states long before MADD. There may have been others but the only state that I know of where the drinking age was 18 back then (1960s) was Louisiana. I know it was 21 in California when I had my first legal drink.
And my understanding is that Puritans weren't against drinking, just drunkenness.
Don’t think most graffiti is anonymous. Tags are basically signatures of specific individuals and more elaborate wall art invariably signed by the crew Or street artist. The whole point of graffiti is that it is basically a reputational thing
"I hate most of all WaPo.."
The Post took a dive after Ben Bradlee's departure years ago. And the descent continues.
Repeatedly resolved to let go the lifelong subscription but can't bring myself to swing the axe.
(Separately, urged Missus Rip over dinner last night again to dump the Tesla stock, and that was the end of dinnertime conversation. FFff.)
The saying and the doing, so far apart.
@Lewis, I am with you all the way today! Well, almost... the exception being the grid art, which rarely does much for me, and even less so when it's unintended. But thumbs waaay up on each of your other points! An outstanding Wednesday puzzle in my book.
I watched the game and used halftime to make something to eat, do the dishes and feed the cat. IMO the halftime shows should stay on a stage in Las Vegas. They are empty extravaganzas and frankly boring.
Congratulations, I am a Niners fan and loved every minute of that game.
What are they now, $1.89?
Two words, a cat may PAW AT her toy mouse.
BELL LAP is the final lap of a distance runners’ race when by tradition a bell is rung. A white flag is displayed for the final lap of an auto race. I completely agree, the two terms are not interchangeable.
In 1978 in Michigan I turned 18 and was legal to drink, 1/1/79 the legal drinking age was increased to 21 (and of course I stopped drinking).
Kitshef
I can see you didn’t like the puzzle but the clue some looks into space is fine. Stares into space is of course an idiom which is a subset of looking into space. Other example. Using a telescope. Some people who want dictionary definitions would have complained about the lack of “some”. I thought this was the best clue answer combo today.
As to confides in. Since the clue is by definition a hint to the answer, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. Close enough for crosswords.
sf27shirley and Anonymous
Agree from past experience about the half time show. (As it happens This year I did not look at one second of the Super Bowl.)
But there was a lot written about the halftime show before and after the game, in the Times so I couldn’t avoid the subject . This year it was very controversial
Kendrick Lamar who just won 4 Grammys was the most popular rap star of the past year
He was involved in a “rap battle “
( exchange of insult rap pieces) with Drake another rap star. Lamar is considered to have won hands down. But Drake did sue the record company for libel!
I think part of the popularity of Lamar’s rap was akin to kids gathering around a fight in a school yard. I bet it was calculated on his part. Anyway, the NFL’s goal was to draw more eyes to the halftime and they probably succeeded.
BTW the Times music reviewers were impressed. But the very idea of an exchange of insults turns me cold. And as Anonymous 8:03 said about his experience I couldn’t understand it anyway!
Sam
Bell lap?!
Longstanding term well known Don’t understand the hate for it. from you & others. Maybe it’s generational. As a Boomer it was a gimme for me.
Anoa Bob A decade made a big difference
By the mid seventies almost all if not all states had lowered the age to 18 on the theory that if you can fight in a war at 18 you also can drink
Dreadful. Simply dreadful.
@Anonymous 9:29 AM
The checkered flag is waived at the end of the race. The bell lap is the last lap before the checkered flag. Sometimes they wave a white flag in addition to or as an alternative to ringing a bell.
@CDilly52 here. My avatar continues to refuse to show up here unless I post through the Blogger but often when I post there my comments don’t show ip here. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Anyone with suggestions to fix this (neither my very savvy granddaughter nor her equally tech-savvy parents have solved the problem) is welcome to send thoughts: cdlingham52@gmail.com.
Anyway, I agree wholeheartedly with OFL today. The theme itself was fresh and clever but the appearance in the grid was a little wonky. But a Wednesday reveal that actually revealed was fabulous.
While the middle section was full of easy and pure crosswordese answers, I welcomed all of it because I had no real toehold in the north or south. Nada.
When I hit 25A I poured myself a hefty tot of DEC egg nog and whizzed all the way down through the Queen of the Night OPERA ARIA without stopping. Well, I briefly thought “tell it like it is” was good instead of SPEAKS ONE’S PIECE, but SPEC and Big PAPI set me straight. That center section answers gave me plenty of fill to go back and suss out the remainder which was doable but not nearly as easy as the middle.
When done, I really enjoyed the visual of the PAY WALL. Thumbs up!
I guess I misunderstood that one. People do bet on drives in golf a lot. But the other explanation is probably correct.
I had the same reaction. Certainly "tags" have been far and away the main form of graffiti seen in NYC.
Thanks. I had never heard that term before, but it makes sense.
I, too, found SEEPY offensive. It actually cost me some time, because I thought the shaded squares might have led me to the "ing" somehow, and that there was some Thursday trickery afoot. When I realized that was not the case, which happened as I finished the puzzle, I immediately came here to make sure I was not crazy. Also, opera aria sounds like a tongue twister and not something anyone would ever say in real life.
Eeny meeny mini moe is a modernized version of an olde English counting scheme. Like hickory dickory dock is a bastardized form of the old Cumbrian words for 8,9,10 hegera, degera, dick. I heard the Columbia University linguist, John McWhorter give the explanation on his linguistics podcast, Lexicon Valley. However, eeny meeny... has more to do with the "N Word", than it does with the old counting system in his exceptional essay in the Times.
No one uses it for tiny, however. That's just wrong.
Now that's funny! I don't care who you are!
Roo
@Rex I think it means a cheese wedge in a mouse trap.
It absolutely doesn’t
I get rid of the flea right?
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