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In-tents dining experience? / SAT 3-1-25 / ___ Aran, protagonist in Nintendo's Metroid / Lenny & ___ (California-based cookie brand) / Supernatural descendant of Cain, in "Beowulf" / Familiar injury in football and soccer / "Parasite" co-star ___ Woo-shik / Word often found near Roman numerals / Variable representing an angle in math
Saturday, March 1, 2025
Constructor: Ryan Judge
Relative difficulty: Medium
Word of the Day: IRWIN Shaw (32A: Author Shaw) —
Irwin Shaw (February 27, 1913 – May 16, 1984) was an American playwright, screenwriter, novelist, and short-story author whose written works have sold more than 14 million copies. He is best known for two of his novels: The Young Lions (1948), about the fate of three soldiers during World War II, which was made into a film of the same name starring Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift, and Rich Man, Poor Man (1970), about the fate of two brothers and a sister in the post-World War II decades, which in 1976 was made into a popular miniseries starring Peter Strauss, Nick Nolte, and Susan Blakely. (wikipedia)
• • •
Yet another puzzle drowning in names. Crossing names, abutting names, names galore. FARRAH BANA! (fun to say). OHTANI IRWIN (unlikely team-up). ATAHUALPA LARRY'S ("come on down to ATAHUALPA LARRY'S for a great deal on wall-to-wall carpeting!"). Except for Saw Moose, the names were mostly gimmes for me today. Even IRWIN, who is very bygone and only wrote a couple things of note, was familiar to me as someone who collects old paperbacks and also grew up in the '70s, when the Rich Man, Poor Man miniseries was massssssive (only the second miniseries ... ever? Wow). Rich Man, Poor Man was 1976, Roots was 1977. Miniseries used to be Events. Anyway, knew that author guy, and FARRAH and the rest of the actors (BANA, ANYA), also straight-up gimmes, as was OHTANI, the greatest player in the entire history of baseball. The one active baseball player you absolutely should be required to know. LARRY'S, though, that's just bad fill. Any name you've tacked an "S" to, for any reason, is bad. And "California-based cookie brand"? Yeah, I don't know what that is. I grew up in California, but we didn't have these when I was a kid, and I haven't lived in California since 1991, so ... shrug. They're probably good. But LARRY'S, as fill, not good.
 |
| [Oh. These. I've seen these at gas station mini-marts, I guess.] |
Lots of mistakes today. Like, lots. Wrong answers that I actually wrote in:
- SAXON for SAMUS (30A: ___ Aran, protagonist in Nintendo's Metroid)
- TORN ACL for TURF TOE (26D: Familiar injury in football and soccer)
- EN PLEIN AIR (!!?!?!?!) for STREET FAIR (16A: In-tents dining experience?) (this is the fanciest mistake I've ever made in my entire crossword-solving life)
- END for AIM (14D: Objective)
- FEED for FUEL (5D: Provide power to)
- EXTEND for EMBOSS (25D: Make stick out, in a way)
- ELY for EEL (44A: Northern California's ___ River)
- PURRED, and then PASSED, for PARRED (49A: Performed exactly as expected, in a way)
- CHOO for CHOI (51A: "Parasite" co-star ___ Woo-shik) (I think I was thinking of Shin-Soo CHOO, who held the MLB record for most career home runs hit by an Asian-born player (218), until he was surpassed by ... Shohei OHTANI!)
More bullet points:
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
- 1A: Like some healthful spice blends (SALT-FREE) — could not fathom how you could make "spice" more "healthful." Did not occur to me that you would've had SALT in there as a default ingredient that would need removing.
- 7D and 43D: Supernatural descendant of Cain, in "Beowulf" (ELF / ORC) — I have read Beowulf. A bunch. Taught it a few times, even. And yet this factoid, I didn't really remember. I assume it comes during the discussion of "where the hell did Grendel come from?" (besides the obvious answer: his mom, who, like Grendel, and unlike ORCs and ELFs, is a major character in Beowulf)
- 4D: Variable representing an angle, in math (THETA) — me: "I dunno, some Greek letter, sigh, guess I'll just wait for crosses"
- 30D: One putting on a show (SOLO ACT) — this clue is cleverer than it seems, I think, since the "One" here has an intensified meaning: not just "a person" but "a single person." I had SOLOIST here at first, so I should probably add this answer to the "Mistakes" list, above.
- 40D: Feature of Mike Wazowski from "Monsters, Inc." (ONE EYE) — I'd've gone with [Polyphemus feature], but the infantilization of crosswords feels unstoppable, oh well.
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| [Odilon Redon, The Cyclops, ca. 1900] |
- 50D: Word often found near Roman numerals (ANNO) — as in "ANNO domini," "the year of our lord" (what "A.D." stands for). Years are often expressed in Roman numerals. So that's what that clue's all about. Not sure about "often" here, as ANNO is usu. abbreviated. But since there's no standard for what counts as "often" ... I guess I can't really prosecute here.
Happy March! See you next time.
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
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107 comments:
It's well known that the painter Francis Bacon did his finest work while high. BACONSTRIPS were often the result of POTBROWNIES.
You know you've had a few too many at the bar when you look someone over and think, "ONEYE, BADASS.....RATESATEN!"
What exact shade of brown is that?
OHTANI think.
This one was fun but super fast, maybe should have run on Friday. But who am I to Judge, Ryan? Thanks for a great time.
Challenging. Not many overwrites but a lot of unkowns that required Sergey & Larry. @Rex says, "the names were mostly gimmes for me today." For me, the names were almost entirely WOEs.
Overwrites:
ElBOwS before EMBOSS at 25D
NSa before NSC at 46A
estd before ANNO at 50D
(something) SHoe at 59A
WOEs:
Lenny & LARRY'S at 3D
ELF (7D) and ORCC (43D) as clued
ATAHUALPA at 13A
SAMUS Aran at 30A
IRWIN Shaw at 32A
The EEL river at 44A
Eric BANA at 45A
CHOI Woo-shik at 51A
I’m with the big guy today - some sporadic decent fill - the center long stack is the highlight - but just too much trivial garbage strewn about. Rex identifies most of the ugly stuff - I’ll add the ARMANIS plural and the FOB - BANA pair.
He’s singing on the OPRY
Not sure where in the week this belongs but this a less than ideal Saturday morning solve. Rex pal Doug Peterson offers a nice crunchy Stumper this morning.
Frowning Atahuallpa (My Inca Love)
My two meta moments – Entering TYPE IN, and silently laughing out loud at [Text that’s usually not literally true].
As a big fan of the Metroid series I won't stand for this anti-SAMUS vituperation, though I will concede that the puzzles of late have been a bit heavy on the gaming lore. Found the puzzle overall easy for a Saturday.
Easier than yesterday's, although not by much. Felt like whenever I would get some momentum going, I'd run into another unknown name (SAMUS, IRWIN, CHOI, LARRYS).
A bacon strip is 43 calories - is that 'high'? The bun is typically three times that.
Hand up for ToRn acl before TURF TOE. Also pSAT before LSAT, caReer before HURTLE, UNicef before UNESCO, and uSo (???!) before NSC.
In my household Samus Aran is a much bigger deal than Ohtani.
If you don't know how ANYA's name is spelled, and you put in HUSTLE before HURLTE (a mistake I admit) you end up with kind of a double natick on the dumb cookie name. Just kept staring at LARSNS....
I'm going to politely disagree with you on SAMUS. She is absolutely crossworthy, as she was one of the first big female protagonists in video games. It was a huge moment when you saw it was a woman inside her helmet, because almost all major protagonists before her had been men.
Oh, please give me things in the grid I don’t know, because I hunger for obstacles to overcome. If crossed fairly – and in the Times puzzle, they usually are – these obstacles become riddles to figure out, manna for my brain.
Thus, I loved this puzzle with its passel of no-knows for me, bringing those “didn’t-know-it-yet-somehow-I-got-it” moments that even after all my years of crosswording, still amaze me.
The outing was enhanced by words I adore: HURTLE, RULE OF THUMB, FOB, GALOSHES, SASHAY, PUNCHY, BANSHEE, and SO TRUE.
The latter is exactly what I thought about the clue for LOL: [Text that’s usually not literally true]. I not only thought SO TRUE, but I not-literally punched the air with my fist to emphasize it!
And a shout-out bow-down to [Circles on the ice] for PUCKS, a clue that misdirected me seemingly forever, as I rooted my brain for figure skating terms.
Thus, a STREET FAIR for my brain, a delectable tour de box. Thank you so much for coming up with this, Ryan!
I was able to have some success around the equator where the grid spanners were enjoyable and the crosses were at least things I have heard of before (save SAMUS). Rex pointed out the copious amount of warts strewn around the rest of the grid awaiting the unwary solver. I don’t have much interest in that sort of thing so I mostly took a pass on stuff like the Inca Emperor and the cookie guy, etc.
I don’t understand why people believe salt is unhealthy. In my opinion, the number one mistake that most home cooks make is under seasoning their food. I understand that some people have to restrict their dietary salt intake for health reasons, but people have nut allergies which are an absolute game-changer as well. When used properly, salt is your friend. There is some truth to the assertion that SALT FREE spice blends are more convenient, as they allow the cook to more accurately control the level of salt in the dish, but that is a matter of technique and not due to health concerns.
Agree. I very often agree with OFL but I think his take on SAMUS is dead wrong. Character has been around since 1986, appeared in a litany of games and comics, and as you mention, was one of the first-ever female protagonists in a video game. Video games clearly aren’t OFLs cup of tea and that’s fine, but SAMUS is crossworthy and to say otherwise is just silly.
Ugh with the obscurity. I am never going to know the names of the actors in Parasite or any characters from any video game. This does not make me culturally illiterate. And while I’m ranting I also dislike clues for product names or taglines from their ads. Do we have to celebrate things that exploit us or make us dumb?
Knew Samus from Super Smash Bros.
I had a similar take/experience as Rex, with some of the same mistakes (torn ACL, ouch, I know!). Some nice stuff but way too much unknown pop culture stuff.
Finished it only after multiple cheats in the NW and SW. I was surprised that Rex didn't criticize the clue for PUCKS. Circles on ice? Hockey pucks are circular in shape, but they definitely are not circles (because they have thickness, and circles do not). That's one of the worst clues I've seen in a long while.
The fusillade of names made this puzzle an ordeal. And Nintendo as a sign of cultural literacy? Gag.
I hate to admit it but I made a RIA / AHTANI dnf on this one. I don't follow any sport but the car.... I think my brain just played SWITCHAVOWEL on me. Here I had just remembered that ATTUNE has two Ts and changed HUSTLE to HURTLE to get LARRYS and ANYA only to get the "so close" notice. I went over the grid for 20 minutes and finally went to xwordinfo to find the mistake. That's how blind I was to it.
Gosh that NW corner was just impassable for me. I had to look up a lot of the names. I have actually recently listened to a podcast on Emperor ATAHUALAPA and had no clue how to spell it! But yeah the rest was doable for me. And Baseball names are generally not my forte either did not know OHTANI. Def not my best work! Lol.
As a huge sports and Metroid fan, A+ puzzle
Turned out to be quite a whooshy Saturday here. Lots of names, but today there were pluses and minuses. Plus side-ATAHUALPA and ANYA, which opened up the NW and the Y from ANYA led to guessing LARRYS correctly. FARRAH and BANA made the SE pretty easy. OHTANI and IRWIN gave away the NE. Minus side- I'll never remember CHOI and apologies to all the fervent gamers here, but SAMUS is a complete WTF here. To each his (their?) own.
Had a regrettable experience at a hockey tournament once, (as a spectator) when our POTBROWNIES turned out to be way stronger than expected. Try watching a hockey game sometime by moving only your eyeballs. Not recommended.
I have a friend who says that GALOSH.GALOSHES is a fine example of onomatopoeia, as that's the sound they make when you're walking.
I liked your Saturday very much, RJ. Really Just the right amount of crunchiness to make me feel smart, and thanks for all the fun.
Hey All !
Had to say Gesundheit to the Incan dude in the NW. Har.
Amazingly finished puz with no cheats, no look-ups, no errors. *Pats myself on the back* Was stuck all over the grid, with unknown things, but persevered and finished. Last letter in was the R of HURTLE/LARRYS. Wanted an S to get HUSTLE, but saw LARSYS wasn't anything. (Language And Reading System?)
Had CHIN UPS and TRIMS in and out several times. Had ERNIE in at one point for IRWIN. Rex's Tornacl for TURFTOE. ANnA-ANYA, I'm sure others I've forgotten.
A finely balanced SatPuz with enough resistance, but not impossible. Good one, Ryan.
Have a great weekend! If you got my book, you'd have something to read today! 😁
Four F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
I thought @Rex was needlessly hard on this puzzle, which I quite enjoyed. Like yesterday, it was tough to get a toehold, which I didn’t start to do until 22A’s NAE [Not from Scotland?], 23A’s ANYA [Taylor-Joy …] and 29A’s YES [“By all means!”]. In fact, I had to concentrate on the little outcroppings of 3- and 4-letter words until I finally got somewhere. Like @Rex, I found the NW the most difficult, although I knew ATAHUALPA right off – but do you think I could spell it? I tried and discarded at least 4 incorrect versions till I got it right. I continued to fill in answers here and there, mostly down south and in the NE corner, until I got two adjacent downs that finally opened up the center and gave me the stagger stack. Those answers were WHIRLPOOL and CHINUPS.
I give you Christopher Plummer as ATAHUALPA in The Royal Hunt of the Sun (1969), surely one of the strangest and most mannered performances in the history of film (but – man, Chris – you’re lookin’ good!).
SALT FREE: I was just reading an article about the dangers of over-consumption of SALT, which said the biggest problem was not the use of salt at table or in home cooking (hi @Southside Johnny), but the massive amounts in processed foods, and called for strict regulation within the commercial food industry.
ARACHNE: More visual aids – here’s The Spinners by Velazquez, thought to be a depiction of the weaving contest between Arachne (facing away from the viewer on the right) and the goddess Athena (disguised as an old woman at left). (Yes, this looks like spinning rather than weaving, but I guess the one is preparatory to the other.) Arachne was apparently a little too big for her britches and announced she was the greatest weaver in the world without giving Athena, the inventor of weaving, her due. So, there was a contest between the two, which Arachne won, producing a tapestry masterpiece that you can see in the scene in the background. Arachne’s work is actually a copy of another painting Velazquez would have known, Titian’s Rape of Europa. (Hmm, is this another contest? Velazquez pitting himself against Titian?) Athena was so enraged at Arachne’s pride and the excellence of her work that she ripped it to shreds, causing Arachne to hang herself in despair. Athena then turned her into a spider so she and her descendants could spin and weave for all eternity.
Rex's take on SAMUS is so wrong that it's worth a mea culpa
Loved this puzzle! 22 minutes for me, so that's medium. Definitely the SE and especially the NW corner were the toughest for me. Considered Tornacl too--but the F in RULEOFTHUMB just had to be right. Also @REX SOLOisT before SOLOACT but the K next door gave me PARKA so that had to change. Getting back up into the NW at the end, I was just lost.... of course I had no idea who the Emperor was. Or who LARRY was. I don't think of eating at a STREETFAIR being "In tents"--I was thinking about camping food. Finally just took a wild stab at SASHAY and YES and hacked away at the rest bit by bit. HUsTLE before HURTLE, but LARRY took care of that. Thanks, Ryan!!!
Very Californian to package a chocolate chip cookie as “plant-based baked nutrition” with 8 grams of protein. I’ll take a dozen, please.
Samus would definitely be frustrating if not in your wheelhouse, but she is an incredibly popular video game character. Crosses seemed fair. But I get the annoyance when something seems obscure to you.
@REX, I just think you had a bad morning. C'mon, we're splashing around the WHIRLPOOL in our GALOSHES with FARRAH (wearing a one-eye patch to show she's BADASS)!
I found this harder than medium. While I knew ANYA and FARRAH and BANA, I had no clue on OHTANI, SAMUS or CHOI. I kept sneaking looks at the crosses of 13A, checking to see if it might turn out to be Montezuma, someone I've heard of, but no, he was Aztec, not Incan.
I got a non-literal LOL from the clue for HEIR, with its tacked-on “if you will”.
This was a decent Saturday challenge, thanks, Ryan Judge.
I confidently dropped in gOlfpro for 30d, One putting on a show, with no crosses. It being Saturday, wrong answers often help -- but not this one.
I never heard of 'familiar injury' TURFTOE. But I was at the Boston MFA yesterday with a friend and a 12-year-od, and we dutifully did the Egyptian collection because of the common belief that if you drag kids to museums you have to show them the mummies. And I noticed that all the statues had feet with beautiful, parallel, unblemished toes. Those toes they were things of beauty. I was once in a train station in Central Europe and saw a family of Roma where the kids had clearly never worn shoes, and their toes were also jaw-droppingly lithe and expressive. Just sayin'.
Easy/medium. Only the NW gave me trouble. SPIN A WEB and RATES A TEN both feel like fair standalone phrases to me.
I should know that RuPaul's catchphrase was SASHAY away? I should care?
I should know the California-based cookie brand when I live in NY? I should care?
I watched "The Queen's Gambit" and enjoyed it. Did I remember the actress's name? No.
Another name-riddled NW corner to torment me. I thought if I cheated on the Incan emperor -- who I'm pretty sure I once did know -- I thought I could probably finish the puzzle. I did cheat and I did finish. His name rang a bell, no question and he fit right in to the letters I had.
The well-clued RULE OF THUMB got me out of my TORN-something-or-other for the sports injury and led me right to TURF TOE. Fun clue for HEIR (56A) and a nice, accurate clue for PUNCHY.
I wasn't wild about the clue for STREET FAIR (16A). Heck, at our many STREET FAIRS in NYC, you won't even find a chair, much less a tent. You eat standing up in the middle of the street or you don't eat at all. Let's hear it from the New Yorkers on this blog.
Mostly an enjoyable puzzle. All you would have had to have done to make it more palatable to me would have been to clue the lovely word SASHAY in a RuPaul-less manner. That would have made the whole NW corner much less pop-culture-y.
Northwest took as long as the remainder of the puzzle. Did anyone else have county fair instead of street fair? I was so sure of it that I almost patted myself on back and would have had arthritis not sapped my range of motion. Too many names.
“Fusillade of names”; exquisite phrase and on point for this puzzle.
Born in California in the early 90s and literally never heard of Lenny and Larrys. And have actually played video games with Samus and still had no clue
There’s always a lot of video game hate here, and it’s never made sense to me. Video games can be just as much a medium for storytelling as books, tv, or movies, and their characters can be just as deep and developed. If we’re comfortable having characters from books, TV, and movies in the grid, we should have space for characters from video games too.
Sorry, Babe Ruth remains the greatest baseball of all time.
As a non-Metroid fan, I still recognized Samus from the many hours of Smash Bros I played with my kids over the years. I like seeing her debut in the crossword!
Challenging for me, and after encountering one more name I didn't know and then getting to the "Embitters" clue, I thought, "Tell me about it!" But I eventually got the four corner chunks filled in and managed to chip away at the center section until all became clear. It even got to be fun - seeing POT BROWNIES, RULE OF THUMB, and BACON STRIPS come into view, and enjoying the clues for SOLO ACT and HEIR.. Happy (in two ways) to finish this one.
Can’t speak to the Nintendo-ification of puzzles overall but i like seeing Samus in the puzzle. I think NES and SNES is lazy but even among gamers I don’t think a lot of people could know Samus’ last name (I certainly didn’t and Zero Suit Samus is my go to in super smash brothers). I always like when I learn something from a puzzle and this is a good bit of trivia a well rounded non-gamer could be expected to know!
Spot-on.
OMG, Barbara S -- if you're not working as a museum docent, you most certainly should be! After reading your exceptionally compelling explanation of Valazquez's "The Spinners" -- replete with enough colorful details and characters to fill a fairly long novel -- I went to look at the painting you were kind enough to link to. As is usual with me, someone neither schooled in art history nor possessing much of an inherent interest in it to begin with, I would have glanced at that painting in the most cursory manner and walked right on by it in a museum without a second thought. You brought it to life.
As I told you once off-blog, I had a friend -- also a Barbara S -- who, before she moved away, used to take me to museums in NYC. I also had the opportunity to travel with her to various cities in Europe including Florence, Venice and Rome. Like you, she -brought to life every painting we encountered and made museum-going a joy rather than a chore. It's a real gift to love art that much, to know art that well, and to be able to impart your enthusiasm to others.
Thanks for the laughs as I too grumbled over Samus and spent time saying its possible pronunciations aloud to myself.
Headed to bed last night after approximately an hour, a good portion of it staring at an almost entirely blank NW corner. All I had for 1A was 6 blanks an EE. Just as I was drifting off, I thought, "I wonder if it's SALT FREE." And so, this morning, SALT FREE turned out to be the TOE hold I needed to crack the corner and get the Congratulations with no mistakes. But it still took some time--like going from caReen to HUsTLE to HURdLE to HURTLE. ______ A TEN could have been givES or RAnkS or RATES. I actually wildly guessed LARRYS along the way, but took it out because I couldn't get the crosses to work. Wanted county FAIR or school FAIR or ...?
An epic, grinding hour and 19 minute solve.
What is the book called?
As a gamer, it's so insane to me to think somebody wouldn't know Samus! It's up there with Mario and Kirby in names I assume everybody knows
I hate it when there are so many proper names. This one has 10.
If montezumA and ATAHUALPA were not the same number of letters……sigh. That A lead so easily into AIR, FAIR, MIC & OHTANI that I took the bait: hook, line and sinker as the anglers say. With that confession made I can return up top to see if others were so badly suckered. Liked RYAN’S grid better than Rex, but not by a lot.
Medium-tough. The NW was very tough (given yesterday’s puzzle I’m sensing a pattern). ATAHUALPA, LARRYS, and SASHAY were WOEs plus I had three extremely costly erasures: delTA before THETA, Feed before FUEL (hi @ Rex), and pgA before EPA. The rest of the puzzle was easy-medium, but definitely not whooshy.
I’ve lived in CA since the 70s and have never run across Lenny and LARRYS cookies. That said I did know OHTANI.
I thought this had quite a bit of sparkle, liked it quite a bit more than @Rex did.
Pretty tough for me. I don't know why I know Montezuma but not ATAHUALPA, but there it is. The former was in my grade school history books, but I don't think the Inca was--they were there as a group, but not by name. And STREET FAIRs around here are not generally in-tents; so that section was tough, despite my getting SALT-FREE as my first entry. (But aren't most spice blends salt-free? One generally adds the salt separately.)
What kind of coin does one not see very often? Why a RARE COIN, of course! That was the second problem, overly generic answers. I was looking for something like "piece of eight," which wouldn't fit, or "shilling," which would but I had PARKA already. COMMON AREA was a little more acceptable, but only a little.
I balked at both UNESCO and NSC, since neither fits my conception of a "group." Also, even if it were a group, UNESCO is not a "peace group," but an educational, scientific, and cultural one.
I also questioned BACON STRIPS, but apparently I was wrong, they're all over the Internet. They used to be rashers, then slices, but now, ok, they're STRIPS.
I once read Beowulf (in translation), and there was neither an ELF nor an ORC in it. Nor, since it was pre-Christian, was there any mention of Cain. But apparently Marvel Comics has appropriated the name, as they have everything else (unless some other part of Disney beat them to it).
I did like seeing HURTLES and GALOSHES in the grid. And only the other day my wife and I were trying to remember the difference between SIMON SAYS and Captain, May I? So I liked that, too.
I forgot to complain about SOURS, as clued. Back in junior high we learned that there were four basic tastes: salty, sweet, bitter, and sour. (They've since added umami.) I guess maybe when you use them metaphorically they come closer to synonymity, but it grated.
Who in the world builds a latissimus dorsi? And then.....ANYA OHTANI LARRY IRWIN SAMUS sitting in an area making me wonder what exam I needed that is spoken with a two-syllable acronym. Ay dios mio. The only name I could remember was how FARRAH spells her name......
I'm glad that I figured out an ELF and an ORC and that they were supernatural descendants of Cain. I never read "Beowulf" nor have I any idea about anything Nintendo or why THETA is a variable or why there is only ONE EYE on Mike Wazowski or why you clue SALT FREE as some healthful spice blend or what muscle words sound encouraging...Who called this puzzle easy?
I cheated on just about all the names. Then I walked away. Other than trying to spell ATAHUALPA and FARRAH, I had nothing for ages. After putting the puzzle down several times, and staring at the names I cheated on, I was able to get some entries hither and yon... I cured my TURF TOE injury and did a little BANSHEE dance. I was getting somewhere. Ah, yes....POT BROWNIES and BACON STRIPS was my RULE OF THUMB. That at least felt good.
I get to the bottom area. Stare again. Leave the puzzle. Come back with my Peet's. Had YENS for LARRYS cookies, some BROWNIES and a side of BACON. Has anyone explained what combat sport is MMA? No entiendo. PUNCHY is a lively language? SIMON SAYS YES! Finished with GALOSHES . Stared at the puzzle. Saturday HARD.
Did I enjoy or like this beast? Yes and no. Yes when I get some of the longies without too much difficulty and no to what I felt was a tedious Sisyphean task.
Just like Rex, here, except fewer overwrites and a DNF NW.
FIRE before FUEL, NET before SET. PURRED before PARRED.
Maybe Ryan and Will know where to buy GALOSHES these days. We called them rubbers when I was a kid. Can't find them anywhere.
I really have to argue against your bizarre rant on SAMUS. The Metroid series is a well-beloved, iconic series dating back to the late 80s. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of video games knows who Samus is. It's ok if you're not a gamer, but it's honestly kind of offensive that you complain about any video game representation that you don't know when it's totally fine to have obscure actors, playwrights, athletes, fashion designers, etc. Video games are part of pop culture as much as anything else, and if I have to put up with gibberish like OHTANI that means literally nothing to me, then you can handle an area of pop culture that you're not an expert in. SAMUS was the biggest gimmie on the grid for me and made me smile, so it's really frustrating to see you get so pissed off about it, please consider that other people do love video games and they're hardly a niche interest nowadays.
I've never even played a Metroid game, but SAMUS was an insta-get. She's an iconic character for anybody even passingly familiar with video games.
Was proud of myself for zipping through the NE and filling in RULEOFTHUMB from the UMB ending. Then everything bogged down with proper names elsewhere. Learned SAMUS is famous, evidently everywhere but not in my experience. Had to look up ATAHUALPA and LARRYS to conquer the NE, so chalk up one bite of classical learning, one bite of a cookie. Overall a mixed experience.
I'm with you re: street fair, the vendors are in tents but not the diners in my experience - good call out!
I knew OHTANI right away but had no clue about SAMUS. In the end, though, I think both are legit crossword names.
He did specify “active” players.
Confidently had Net at 24A which really kept the NW from falling. If I had been right about that answer as well as my correct guess for Brother Samus (like an Irish Monk?) then we would have had RATEN A TEN. For some reason I could imagine the NYT editors allowing that abomination, but since I didn't hear Rex screaming from 10 states away, I knew that I must be incorrect.
Same - this strikes me as classic “I don’t know this so I’m going to be angry at it and pretend no one knows it”. The series is almost 40 years old, there have been at least 15 games with this character … it’s fair game.
Yes agree about the names, but even worse for me because so many were Unknowns. ATAHUALPA LARRYS ANYA SAMUS CHOI. And then the unnecessarily nameified clues for EEL, SASHAY, ELF, ORC, SPIN A WEB, ONE EYE. The only names that were gimmes for me were Eric BANA and FARRAH Fawcett.
Which is too bad, because other than that it was a good challenging Saturday at 27 minutes for me (would have been a lot less without all those names). A few bonus gimmes, eg THETA from my math days (45 years ago, though).
Never heard of TURF TOE but it's a fun term to learn (like TUSH PUSH from a couple of months ago).
Yes thanks @Barbara S for these enjoyable links!
100% agree. I’m 52, so no youngster, and I’m so over the hate for videogames both here and elsewhere.
Regla de pulgar.
Gad. Nothing is saving this marathon of obsessively loaded obscuriphernalia.
People: 14 {holy criminey sakes}
Places: 1
Products: 6
Partials: 8
Foreignisms: 4
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 33 of 68 (49%) {Ladies and gentlemen, if you think this puzzle shouldn't have seen the light of day, here is a convenient piece of data to bolster your belief. This puzzle sets a new bar and world record for gunkiest of all time -- at least since I've been counting.}
Funnyisms: 2 😕
Tee-Hee: LIMP BAD ASS on POT BROWNIES. Does this make the puzzle better?
Uniclues:
1 Incan twangin' on geetar.
2 Desire for rubbers.
3 Struttin' squared.
4 Put gas in the van on the way to the gig.
5 Ipanema dishwasher.
6 Action necessary to finish a crummy puzzle.
1 ATAHUALPA OPRY
2 GALOSHES YEN (~)
3 PUNCHY SASHAY (~)
4 FUEL SOLO ACT
5 RIO WHIRLPOOL
6 TYPE IN BADASS
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: What my glittering personality and shimmering writing does. TESTS OTHERS.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Changing Times, by Darrin Vail.
I got it not long after he first mentioned it. It's an intriguing little mystery story involving time travel - only 125 or so pages so it's easy to finish in one sitting.
+1.
Pretty much the same experience as Rex for me today, the biggest difference being that THETA was the first entry I was 100% sure of. Finished faster than my Thursday average, but did not enjoy it much, since it felt more like a trivia test than the kind of wordplay-rich crossword that I love.
Aside from a few WOES - ATAHUALPA, BANA, CHOI, SAMUS, OTANI this was a nice Saturday.
I really liked POT BROWNIES. Thank you, Ryan :)
Nice theme-free 68-worder. Had a few no-knows, but also many faves. And 4 Jaws of Themelessnessers, too boot. @RP may have been caught in a bad mood ... current political situation can kinda do that to folks, at times.
staff weeject picks: ELF & ORC. Had the same Beo-wulfy clues.
honrable mention to: LOL, on account of its neat ironic(al) clue.
Semi-solid mini-puztheme lurkin in this here rodeo ride:
Proposed themers*:
1. {Actor Kevin bares all?}.
2. {Screenwriter Neil goes oral?}.
3. {Actress Gadot starts to kosh, b'gosh?}.
Thanx for the feisty workout, Mr. Judge dude. Made any Musk-rat court rulins, lately? There's certainly enough of em to go 'round.
Masked & Anonym007Us
* p.s.
1. BACON STRIPS.
2. SIMON SAYS.
3. GAL OSHES.
... fear not, runtpuz [with a theme] is here ...
"We Were Afraid of That" - 7x7 12 min. themed runt puzzle:
**gruntz**
M&A
I thought "Next in line, if you will" was hands down the best clue in the puzzle. Very sly.
Happy National Women's History Month! (International Women's Day on the 8th)
Medium by time, challenging NW. Forgot ATAHUALPA, filled it in slowly with the crosses. Also forgot SAMUS was female, so that was nice to relearn. (Nowhere near as obscure as 1983 Indy 500 winner Tom Sneva.) ANYA is pretty much crosswordese by now (loved The Queen's Gambit.) Guessed at CHOI, a common Korean surname. I recently rewatched Parasite, after watching it in the theater, and enjoyed it as much as the 1st time.
I'm not a film buff, but I've been catching up on movies I've never seen (as another distraction.) I don't care at all for the Oscars, but I might watch tomorrow solely for Conan, while solving crosswords from the archive. Also curious to see who will win Best Picture.
Thanks for a Saturday workout, Ryan!
@Barbara S. 8:50 AM
You're the best.
Names, names, names, names. Give me a break. No naticks, but barely; I got a lot from crosses. I had heard of Atahualpa but not recently. Samus, who gives a frick???
You're right, the crosses were fair so I was never really in danger of a DNF there. I'm old but I can still recall fondly the winter afternoons getting trashed (pwned, anyone?) by my kids playing Zelda, Donkey Kong, and the various iterations of the Mario Bros. franchise. Don't recall playing Metroid but SAMUS was OK because the crosses were practically gimmes.
My name is Lenny, I have lived in California the past 27 years (and 38 years overall), and I absolutely love chocolate chip cookies ... and I have never heard of Lenny and Larry's or Larry and Lenny's or whatever the heck it is. The obscurities in this puzzle make regular obscurities seem common.
I'm as sick of "obscure actors, playwrights, athletes, fashion designers, etc. " as I am of video game PPP. When did the terms "Crossword Puzzle" and "Trivia Contest" become synonymous?
I have lived in California for my entire childhood and twenty years of my adult life and I have never heard of Lenny and Larry’s. I live with a 12 year old boy who would only ever play video games if given the opportunity and I have never heard of Metroid. I have, however, despite my general indifference to sports, heard of Shohei Ohtani.
Huge huge fan of Samus Aran - I have such a connection to her. Amazing video game protagonist and one of the only female leads that looks like a robot. I liked this one a lot more than Rex.
@Southside - I love your use of “warts” that were indeed “strewn around” because that’s exactly my take too!
This one put me through a Saturday experience and also had me whooshing. I felt like I was roller skating when I was young and we only had steel wheeled skates that clamped onto “school shoes” meaning shoes with sewn on soles line saddle shoes or brogans. I adored skating and would go as fast as possible over the sidewalks in my ancient neighborhood. We had all kinds of of swerves and jumps to avoid the cracks and tree roots, but if you took your eyes off the sidewalk for a second and hit even a small obstacle the skinned knees, elbows and palms of the hands were painful badges of the daredevil. Knee and elbow pads came later with the early commercially available (and quite primitive by today’s comparison) skateboards of the ‘60s.
I felt like I was on my skates sometimes racing down Tulane Road after the city replaced 6 blocks of sidewalk on both sides of the street suddenly to be interrupted by a pebble in my path - in the form of a couple no-knows (borrowing from @Lewis, thank you very much) and coming to an unceremonious screeching halt in my solve.
Saturday solves should be tough. I adore learning and cleverness but today lacked enough surprise and cleverness to go along with the difficulty for me. However, I was able to finish, so the crosses were fair enough and after almost an entire lifetime of solving, I have become a good guesser. And thus, my streak continues.
Hard fail by OFL on SAMUS. She’s a legend many decades old and doesn’t fall into the same category of pseudo-hip tech shilling that many other NYTxw answers have these past few years. The particular vitriol of Rex’s response was jarring actually.
Might be fair game, but still obscure and not a name that can inferred… I’m thinking ones who know it are definitely minority
I also confidently entered MONTEZUMA at 13A until crosses and remembering that he was Aztec, not Inca, ruled that out and ATAHUALPA came to mind. Pizarro promised him that he could continue as emperor if he brought him all his gold. ATAHUALPA did that and then Pizarro had him executed. Thus began a long history of treachery and deceit by the Conquistadors.
I was going to suggest a poker option for clueing 40D ONE EYE as a feature of the King of hearts or the Jack of diamonds but a check at xwordinfo.com shows they have been used before, the former in 2006 and the latter in 1999. No wonder I didn't remember their already being used.
While over at xwordinfo.com I checked and 44A EEL has appeared 896 (!) times in the NYTXW, 462 of them during what is now being called the Modern Era. Agree with those who think that, rather than adding yet another name, here of a river, in a grid already laden with names, maybe just clue it straight up as "Slippery swimmer", "Electric ___", or some such.
Video games aren't exactly fringe culture anymore. They make more money annually than Hollywood and people who have been playing them their whole lives are well into their 40s now. If we have to know rappers and foreign film directors, it doesn't seem unreasonable to have to know the first notable female protagonist in gaming.
I think today is the day I give up your blog. Raging against the machine because you didn’t know Samus. It’s not stupid or lazy because it’s a video game reference. Get over yourself.
Amen, amen, @MetroGnome!
Yeah, Samus is every bit as relevant as Anya Taylor Joy or Irwin Shaw or Shohei Ohtani. I don't understand the hate from rex (except that it's his default mode). I even agree with him about the puzzle in general (felt very choppy) but video games are definitely relevant culture and no more infantilizing than baseball
I've been around for a while, and remember when Pong was the only video game option. I didn't know SAMUS and I don't think it's an unfair answer, but if I'm not into video games at all, where else would I have heard of her?
Thanks, @Nancy, @okanaganer and @Gary J. My days of being a docent and of teaching art history are behind me now, but from time to time I enjoy spreading the art historical word to this conveniently captive audience.
Had a similar experience with brownies at an Eagles game about 50 years ago. I remember having to climb steep stairs on the way to the bathroom and saying to my friend: this is a lot harder than sitting.
The biggest thing about Samus is that she’s generally regarded as the first female video game protagonist. Which is relevant here at the start of (what used to be..?) Women’s History Month. Agree that I felt anyone with passing knowledge of video games would know, but it is unsurprising that she is not actually on the same awareness tier as Mario, Sonic, and PacMan. And also an impossible name to infer if you have no idea
See ya tomorrow.
Thanks A! I never get back to these comments til much later in the day. Thanks for covering, and the review! Feel free to let me know if it's terrible!
RooMonster Late Posting Guy
Samus
Is famus
Thank you! She's been in videogames since 1986 and last appeared in 2023. So there's no "generational" issue for Rex to complain about, especially while insisting that we all know the names of baseball players like Ohtani who are younger than Samus.
This xword was terribly difficult and not at all enjoyable. I knew few names and was stuck endlessly. Hated it!
Thank you for the metrics. They don’t lie. Now I don’t feel so bad for cheating on this Proper Name arcana quiz.
I was so sure that word often found near roman numerals was bowl as in Super Bowl LXVII. I still prefer my answer
I had POTATO CHIPS instead of BACON STRIPS. Sigh.
Noel
Now that we have “Sashay away”, can “Shantay you stay” be far behind?
Anyone else think that "set" is an entirely inferior "court division" to "net"? To me, a "set" is a division in a game that takes place *on* a court, not "to" a court. Very dissatisfying, and cost me the NW corner -- I was literally stuck there, thinking about "set," and saying to myself, "if 'net' is wrong then I don't want to be right" so I lost.
NW was impossible to parse. All trivia and proper names. Rest of the puzzle was fair for a Saturday.
Entering the page late, but surprised nobody has called out EPA being clued as "green." "LOL!" Actively dismantling decades of efforts to stop our planet from increasingly imminent destruction. C'mon Will!
I'm fascinated by the video game discussion. I specifically came to the comments today to see how people felt about orc/elf. My default is usually that I must be ignorant of something, not that something is stupid or wrong but nope; this is stupid and wrong.
I'm almost 50. I've been doing crosswords consistently for over 35 years and the main consistency is people complaining about it being dumbed down with new pop culture. That's been true from its inception. The original rule of "if the New York Times might print a story about it, or use the term, it's fair game, is my measuring stick.
That's why, as lifelong player, I don't complain about the inanity of including sports references that I will never know. Insisting everyone should know a Japanese name because they hit a ball with a stick real good, and complaining about one of the most famous Disney characters being included, is offensive Rex. It does deserve a meal culpa. And I say that as a very long time reader and profoundly appreciate your service to the community
It might be worth considering that while video games might not be for you, they exist and are extremely culturally significant. Also maybe that fans of playing games, like, idk, crosswords, might be fans of playing games.
As a life long video game player I didn't know Seamus either. But it is absolutely fair game.
Who orders “bacon strips” on a burger? Wouldn’t it just be “bacon”?
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