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Male influencer archetype / SAT 5-31-25 / Toy doll brand since 2001 / Rod's employer in "Get Out," in brief / Chip maker in a 1961 merger / Participant in a hybrid sport that requires both brains and brawn / Symbol of rebirth in ancient Egypt / Wry response to a this-or-that question / Eponym of Pittsburgh's tallest building / Ride-or-die sort, in brief / Likely spot for a pipe jam
Saturday, May 31, 2025
Constructor: Adam Aaronson and Ricky Cruz
Relative difficulty: Medium (Easy-Medium with a very hard (for me) SW corner)
Word of the Day: E-BOY (54A: Male influencer archetype) —
E-kids, as e-girls and e-boys, are a youth subculture of Gen Z that emerged in the late 2010s, notably popularized by the video-sharing application TikTok.[3] It is an evolution of emo, scene and mall goth fashion combined with Japanese and Korean street fashion.Videos by e-girls and e-boys tend to be flirtatious and, many times, overtly sexual. Eye-rolling and protruding tongues (a facial expression known as ahegao, imitating climaxing) are common.
According to Business Insider, the terms are not gender-specific, instead referring to two separate styles of fashion, stating that "While the e-boy is a vulnerable 'softboi' and embraces skate culture, the e-girl is cute and seemingly innocent". [...]
By the late-2010s, e-boys had split from this original all female culture, embracing elements of emo, mallgoth, and scene culture. The popularity and eventual death of emo rapper Lil Peep also influenced the beginnings of the subculture, with the New York Post describing him as "the patron musical saint of e-land". E-boys also make use of "soft-boy aesthetics" through presenting themselves as sensitive and vulnerable. According to the Brown Daily Herald this is due to a transformation of ideal male attractiveness from being traditionally masculine to embracing introvertedness, shyness, emotional vulnerability and androgyny.
• • •
You can add ALT-METAL to the CHESS BOXER / E-BOY mix. Yet another coinage that made me go "?" (14D: Genre for Soundgarden and Linkin Park). I always though of Soundgarden as part of the greater Grunge universe (because it is). I had the METAL part, but was left guessing at what surprise prefix the puzzle would have in store for me today. Not NU-, that wouldn't fit. "NEO?" "NEW?" "EMO?" No, it's ALT, which is weirdly the answer I put in first for 11D: Fake account (LIE), though I guess an ALT is really just an alternate (social media) account not necessarily a "fake" one. Happily (for me), everything else in the puzzle was familiar to me, if still frequently (and appropriately) hard to turn up. Some major gimmes helped me along the way today, the most important of which was right up front at 1A: Where one might have a mic and a Michelob (KARAOKE BAR). I put the answer in tentatively and then was semi-surprised when the crosses immediately started checking out. ELL (i.e. the bend in a pipe) ... BAA (as in "Baa baa black sheep") ... AVATAR ... whoops, not AVATAR, but that didn't take too long to fix (9D: Something found next to a handle = AT SIGN). That toehold gave me the NW corner in reasonable time, and it's a lovely corner (with very nice stack of long answers), and since the clues seemed to be suitably amped up to Saturday-level difficulty, I was enjoying myself early on. That SW corner really was an anomaly, both in terms of difficulty and in terms of overall likability. Everywhere else in the grid was bright and relatively breezy. It's a bit trivia-y, this one, which is gonna alienate some people, for sure. Kinda the opposite vibe from yesterday's puzzle (which felt very light on proper nouns and other potentially exclusionary stuff). But I still mostly enjoyed the challenge.
Finished up in the SW, which seems like it should've been hard but wasn't because ZEITGEISTY (best answer in the puzzle?) came real easy off the "Z" in BRATZ (48D: Toy doll brand since 2001). FRESNO would've been a gimme even if I hadn't grown up there. And while I did not know that the "T" in "captcha" stood for TURING TEST, I know what a TURING TEST is and so got it very easily from a handful of crosses. Seems like a lot of clues might need explaining today, so let's get to it:
Explainers:
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Explainers:
- 16A: Member of BTS or Blackpink, e.g. (IDOL) — these are K-Pop bands. Seems weird to clue IDOL with a catchall "I dunno, pick one" kind of clue like this. I'm sure they are all individually IDOLs in their own ways, but if they're actual IDOLs then it seems like they should have individual name recognition. Which I'm sure they do. To some. If you replace "BTS" or "Blackpink" with "The Beatles," you'll see how weird the clue is (despite being technically accurate).
- 24A: Symbol of rebirth in ancient Egypt (DUNG BEETLE) — speaking of "Beatles!" I can't spell the damned word because of the damned band!
- 29A: Subatomic particle named after an Indian physicist (BOSON) — everything after "particle" in this clue is useless to me. Am I supposed to know this physicist? I got this answer easily enough, but only because I know the subatomic particles of Crossworld.
- 32A: Count Vronsky's titular lover in a classic Tolstoy novel (ANNA) — another gimme. I can't believe they put "Tolstoy" in the clue. Take the training wheels off! People can infer the Russianness from "Vronsky" easy enough, even if they know nothing about ANNA Karenina per se (I've only read it once, but still consider it one of my favorite novels)
- 50A: Chip maker in a 1961 merger (LAY) — well I broke through the computer chip misdirection to the potato chip center of this clue, but sadly my first three-letter potato chip brand was UTZ. Pretty sure LAY merged with FRITO ... yup.
- 3D: 500 people? (RACERS) — so, Indy 500, not Fortune 500, as I'd originally thought (RICHES?).
- 12D: Pass words? (ADMIT ONE) — these words might be printed on a "pass" (i.e. ticket to an event). Really wanted something obituary-related here.
- 26D: Eur. land with more than 60,000 miles of coast (NOR.) — man, that's a lot of miles. That's more than twice the circumference of the Earth. I guess fjords after fjord after fjord will really add to the coastal surface area of a country. According to wikipedia "Norway's coastline is estimated to be 29,000 km (18,000 mi) long with its nearly 1,200 fjords" Huh. Hmm. 18,000 is a lot less than 60,000, so ... not sure where that 60,000 number is coming from.
- 29D: Competition with some defining moments? (BEE) — as in "Spelling BEE" (contestants can ask for a definition)
- 42D: Rod's employer in "Get Out," in brief (TSA) — when I had MENSA BOXER in the grid, I also had Rod working for AAA. Towing cars, I guess.
- 35D: Two-person shot (ALLEY OOP) — oy this took me way too long. Thought the "shot" was a photography term. But it's just the flashy basketball shot where one player throws the ball up and a second player grabs it mid-air and slams it home.
- 55D: Wry response to a this-or-that question (YES) — "this-or-that question" is not a question type I know. "Yes-or-no," that's a question type. I can infer what the clue means, but somehow that phrase threw me. Yet another thing about the SW that I had trouble getting a handle on. Speaking of which ...
- 34D: Not likely to leave a mark, say (WASHABLE) — uh ... something else (blood, mud, ink) leaves a mark on your clothes; your clothes (whether WASHABLE or not) don't have agency. They don't do the leaving or not leaving. But I guess this refers specifically to WASHABLE ... ink? I've only heard the word WASHABLE used in reference to clothing, but WASHABLE ink exists so ... yeah, just one more thing about that SW corner I CAN (not) RELATE to.
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109 comments:
On the Easy side of Easy-Medium for a Saturday.
Overwrites:
SwatS before SKIES for the hit in the air at 31D
At 37D, I was ShootING down before I was SNARFING down
My 40D cable in a car was ign(ition) before it was AUX(iliary)
WOEs:
Miss LALA (11A)
The Bambara language in the clue for MALI (39A)
ARNIE Grape at 40A
CHESSBOXER at 47A, but easily inferred
NOR - looks like the 60000 miles estimation includes "Norway's fjords and its islands". Seems like cheating to count the islands.
ANNA - c'mon Rex you know no one reads anymore.
WASHABLE is idiomatic - people sometimes look at a stain and say "eh, that's washable".
Enjoyable challenge, today - I don't think I would have found it as manageable without the 1-A gimme. Goodness knows though I wouldn't want to be at a KARAOKE BAR that's serving...Michelob.
PS: can anyone explain to me the clue on 17-A BACKSLPLASH?
Hard agree about the SW Corner, even for a Saturday it was awful. Rest of the puzzle was Saturday-good.
Is “Take the training wheels off” comment for Anna intentional? Very good pun given her destiny.
Same experience as Rex re: the SW corner. (and EBOY is just gross...)
I’m older than Rex, but did know about CHESSBOXER — that’s a real thing. And I found EBOY (which I hadn’t heard of) inferrable from the context.
BACKSPLASH = tiles that rise up behind a kitchen range (i.e., stove)
Nice catch!
The backsplash refers to tiles that are usually put on the wall above a kitchen sink or stove (range), to protect them from....splashes.
Chess boxing is a real thing. If you search YouTube there are many videos of matches. And it’s not a recent thing either. It’s been around for a while. I got that clue right away (but eboy was a stumper).
The Scripps National Spelling Bee, which just celebrated its 100-year anniversary this week, also has vocab rounds where the kids have to define words.
Range refers to a kitchen stove. The backsplash is behind the stove/range.
I teach a HS elective in Modern Physics, so Satyendra Nath Bose (BOSON) was a gimme. He was so insightful and respected by Einstein, that Einstein took his work, translated it into German, and had it published under Bose’s name in the major physics journals of the time. He’s one of the all-time greats.
Chess boxing is totally a thing. If pogchamps was an answer, would the reaction be the same? Online chess content is soaring, and this answer seems “culturally relevant”.
Naticked on ScARFING and ARcIE. “Scarfing down” seems way more common to me than “snarfing down,” and while Arcie didn’t sound great, it’s possible.
BTW, I met someone from Natick last night. First, I learned that it’s pronounced Nay-tick. I always assumed a short “a.” Second, she didn’t know of her town’s crossword fame, but when I explained that it means a “guess the letter” square where you don’t know either crossing answer, she said, “That makes perfect sense for Natick.” Not a fan of her town, I guess.
This was definitely challenging for me, appropriate for a Saturday. Was really hoping Rex’s WOTD would be CHESS BOXING. Now I have to look it up.
I own every Soundgarden album and saw them at Roseland before they got really big. They practically defined grunge. No one has ever described them as alt metal.
Also any FRESNO clue that doesn’t reference either Tom Seaver or Ted Baxter is not a good clue.
This was prime. First class. A worthy, worthy Saturday. A capital-P Puzzle.
Packed with beauty, yes: KIBOSH, AM I CLEAR, ADMIT ONE, KARAOKE BAR, I CAN RELATE, BACKSPLASH, DUNG BEETLE, TURING TEST, and how I loved the audacious ZEITGEISTY, which to me is so outré as to be lovable.
Artfully made, yes. A never-before-in-the-Times design that allowed for 16 longs, mixing variety and beauty, and including (for me) no-knows fairly crossed, bringing TILs and sweetening my brain’s workout ethic.
But the star, IMO, was in the cluing. The constructors took a full month to clue this, and the care put into each clue, to me, was obvious. Feints, misdirects, and witty wordplay. Original clues like [Chip maker in a 1961 merger] for LAY, [Leaves the rest?] for AWAKENS, [What may rise over a range] for BACKSPLASH – mwah!
From the start I knew I was in good hands and that I was coursing through quality. Experiences like filling in a box like this make me so grateful that all those years ago I ran into crosswords. Thank you, Adam and Ricky!
Mostly easy with a few tough spots thrown in -- mostly the far NE and SW points. First of all, Soundgarden is not ALT METAL. They are solidly grunge. Linkin Park, yes. Soundgarden, not remotely.
For the male influencer I was imagining a Joe Rogan type and wrote EBro.
Surprised Rex likes ZEITGEISTY; that made me roll my eyes.
@Rex: The Norway coastline estimate on Wikipedia is a pretty old citation. More recently new measuring techniques increased the estimate significantly. I'd look for the study, but I'm on mobile so I'm not going to try.
Soundgarden - Beyond the Wheel
extremely challenging. I blew through the NE and then stalled. The SW was nigh impossible (CHESSBOXER, EBOY), but the NE wasn't far behind, even after I threw down LOISLANE. And ZEITGEISTY? Really? I'm impressed, but it was a real slog.
There was just an article in the Economist last week about how Chess boxing is catching on. Sort of like the biathalon in that one event is very physical and then you have to slow down and focus
When, like Rex, I saw KARAOKE BAR immediately, I thought we were in for an easier-than-usual Saturday. But that SW corner was brutal, just brutal. Even with CHESS BOXING in place, I couldn’t get any traction and resorted to cheating, something I hate to do.
The only reason I knew CHESS BOXING was because I read about it just last week in the Economist. Couldn’t believe it’s a real thing.
Finished it with two cheats, to get MALI and ARI. Figured out KARAOKEBAR, but misspelled "karaoke" at first, which slowed me down. I also thought the two-person shot referred to a photo. The SW was very hard, especially since "chip maker" suggested computer chips. Had no clue about EBOY (yuch!)
Finally, a Saturday puzzle should never include an answer like ZEITGEISTY. Just very bad, especially crossing FLOATY. I didn't care for this puzzle
I, too, went with mensaBOXER. It’s what I got for working clockwise.
Really tough Saturday for me!!!! 39 minutes. Loved CHESSBOXER, ZEITGEISTY, FLOATY, ALLEYOOP. Definitely stymied by the tricky clues--like "Part of a gig" (to me as a musician) was obviously a sEt.... til it wasn't. And the Plural Suffix couldn't be ISM until I realized it meant a suffix you can put on the word "plural". Doh. Thank God I knew MALI. For me, NE corner was worse than SW. I had IcOn instead of IDOL for way too long, so just couldn't see ALTMETAL. Miss LALA was a WOE, as was EBOY. Got no traction up north initially, started from the SE corner and worked my way up. SEWER was the key to getting started in the NW. Finally seeing "MEG" was the key to getting me into the NE where I finished. Thank you, Adam and Ricky (I'm going to call you "Tricky Ricky" now, with all those misdirection clues--that's a name they used to call me!). That was a real Saturday workout!
> 18,000 is a lot less than 60,000, so ... not sure where that 60,000 number is coming from.
Enter the coastline paradox! The Wikipedia article for "Coastline of Norway" (because of course that's a thing) says "At 30-meter (98 ft) linear intercepts, this length increases to 83,281 kilometers (51,748 mi)", so if you measure even more precise, 60,000 miles seems reasonable. Although the coastline paradox means that you could have any number in this clue and be correct.
> everything after "particle" in this clue is useless to me. Am I supposed to know this physicist?
I found this helpful – it ruled out at least GLUON for me, even if I didn't know the name.
Rex, they’re specifically referred to as K-pop IDOLs. I wish I had a citation or something for you but it’s a thing in K-pop.
Great puzzle! Same issue with the SW corner, had to look up the clue for MALI but that was the only “cheat”. As for K-pop I know it’s got a lot of its own lingo and culture. I didn’t specifically know the IDOL sitch as explained above but I believe it. I was at the MOPOP (museum of popular culture) in Seattle recently and they have an exhbit on K-Pop. Great museum and great exhibit (one among many).
I honestly don’t know how long it would have took me to find FRESNO in my brain (I’ve certainly heard of it, but can tell you almost nothing about it) if it weren’t for the discussion a month or two ago about Rex not being on the page for Wikipedia famous people from Fresno (which he now is). Guess I know something about it now!
Agree about the “this-or-that” question. “Either-or” question seems much more in the language.
While solving, it felt like a lot of pop culture although looking back, the only toughies were ARNIE, TSA, ARI, and EBOY.
But I will maintain 'til my dying day that you ScARF down, but you SNARF up. And that ZEITGEIST does not take a -y suffix.
But fill-wise, this was so much better than yesterday's. ZEITGEISTY aside.
Norway's coast per the Norwegian government is 100,915km = 62,706 miles long.
SW corner was brutal - didn’t help that I had erasABLE as a surety.
This or that question (with wry response!) : Would you like fries or onion rings with that? Yes.
It's a long story. I had ANN Lennox, had to change the 2nd N to an I to get ZEITGEISTY, then forgot to change ANI to ARI. So I ended up with TUnING TEST which looked sort of OK to me. TURING TEST was one of the many things I didn't know, including
EBOY (I wanted BMOC, which didn't work)
BFF as clued (What does it stand for?)
LALA
ALTMETAL
CHESSBOXER
ALOE instead of ACAI, everyone's favorite puzzlefruit
BRATZ
A word about BRATZ. It was my only cheat, only I don't think of this process as cheating, not really. More of a "check". BRATZ made everything else work, so I typed it into Google and out came the BRATZ doll. That's right, then.
An engrossing Saturday struggle. I felt I was on the constructors' wavelength all through the NW, and then, suddenly, not so much. There were aspects of the puzzle that made me feel old. And I do wish we didn't have to have such infantile-sounding words as ZEITGEISTY and FLOATY floating around. But I enjoyed the challenge.
ISM is a plural suffix?
Spoiler alert!
Great puzzle, great write-up, and I loved listening to Dylan's Lay Lady Lay over my morning coffee
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mystery_of_Chess_Boxing
LAY was a lucky guess. ZEITGEISTY is simply wrong, and those things in the pool are FLOATies, dammit. ScARFING, not SNARFING, frat boiz. I now hate Gilbert Grape.
Thank you - was looking for this comment! There's a whole "idol system" that's highly managed by entertainment agencies in the country.
“Do want cake or pie?”
“Yes”
I also had SCARFING first because, yes, way more common, but then quickly remembered that for some reason in Crossworld SNARFING has become the default “wolfing down food” answer. *shrug*
Semi-surprised Rex wasn’t more annoyed by ZEITGEISTY because that’s terrible but I guess the SW was so much worse overall.
Finally, I really wanted CHESSBOXING to be a Simpsons FOX(E)YBOXING reference but I was able to infer it pretty easily and then went down a chess boxing rabbit hole.
Thanks foe posting Rick. My experience as well. And alley oop is not a 2 person shot. It’s a shot with an assist.
Old car folks know a this-or-that question: Which came first, the (Ford) Model A or Model T? Most people say T (1908-1927), not A (1928-1931). But Ford's first production car, in 1903-1904, was also called the Model A. Henry then went through a lot of the alphabet before introducing the T, which made his reputation and his fortune. When he finally realized the T's day was over, he started again when he called his new car the Model A. So the "wry" answer to "Which came first, the A or the T?" is YES!
I was only able to get MALI because there’s so few 4-letter country names and I knew Lao was the language of Laos 😂
It was not too long ago that I usually couldn't do Saturdays and gave up with just a few tentative words written in. This time I got three quarters of the puzzle done before deciding the SW was just not worth my time. So happy to come here and see that in fact I did not know most of the answers that weren't coming to me, meaning it would have taken me a long time; and that others were equally put off. Actually I gave up right after being forced to write ZEITGEISTY. Has anyone ever said that? I knew the word and its meaning and felt it was beyond tortured. The corner where I didn't know the words could have been anything.
Classic Saturday that I thought I wouldn’t finish, but kept the faith with no cheats for a very satisfying morning.
- I wanted some kind of bread, dough, flour, or yeast to rise over the range. Bread and yeast almost fit.
- The description of EBOY makes me think that BTS must have appropriated the androgynous look described in the write-up. So strange to me when I watched one of their videos. My kids thought it was completely normal.
- I got the Turing test off just the T, but it is hard to believe that all of that is “captured” by just one letter T.
- In case you forgot, the whole acronym is:
Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.
Hey All !
A bit of a toughie. Had to run crying to Goog a couple of times. One was for SUGAR, of all things, forgetting that Churros are a snack, and thinking they were burrito-like, so I wanted SALSA or something like that there.
Also stuck in NE corner, so LALA was a lookup. But, with those two, blam! Puz complete. I've lowered my DNF requirements, so I'm taking this as a win! 😁
@pablo
Har! Point for VAIL 😁
Is ZEITGEISTY a word? You can just Y a word like that? RooMonstery ... Nice.
A Uniclue:
Schrodinger in the pool?
ALTMETAL FLOATY
Hope y'all have a great Saturday!
Three F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Bose was one of the most important theoretical physicists of the 20th century. Famous for Bose-Einstein statistics (which was really Bose) and the theory of the Bose-Einstein condensate (which was really Einstein.). Criminally, never awarded the Nobel. Sadly, I knew Bose and I knew bosons, but somehow had never realized the connection before now.
Suffix for the word plural
Never heard the ride or die expression,
Or bratz,or Ari,or Turing test.
Southeast was my downfall….chess boxer??
Otherwise good Saturday.
NW was read-the-clue-fill-in-the-answer, and then things ground to a halt. Knew the Italian for twenty, sort of, so down to the SE. Some doubt as I think I would spell it FLOATIE, nope, never heard of BRATZ, which Z I obtained from ZEITGEISTY, which I guess is a word. SW I got from the long downs. Nice of OFL to provide an explanation of EBOY, but it was like reading about life on Mars. All news to me. See also, CHESSBOXER.
Stuck forever in the NE because I couldn't get past LILI for a name, which is at least a name, and not syllables that you sing. Finally ADMITONE made sense as did ALTMETAL, sort of, and that was that. Whew.
Nice crunchy Saturday , AA and RC. Always Appreciate a Real Challenge and that's the way it played for me. Thanks for all the fun.
Great Saturday puzzle. My only nitpick is 37 Down (SNARFING). Since when did the common term for wolfing down food - SCARFING - become incorrectly spelled as snarfing?
Churros ... yum.
staff weeject pick: AUX. Had the U in SUGAR's "Churro".
fave stuff: DUNGBEETLE. KIBOSH. Another BAR for the puz opener. SEWER clue.
Thanx for gangin up on us, Mr. Aaronson & Cruz dudes.
Masked & Anonymo4Us
... and now, for a highly "rated" puz ...
"Runt Rates" - 9x7 12 min. themed runt puzzle:
**gruntz**
M&A
I never saw the themelessness so I just solved this as a themed puzzle. Pretty clever how you have to notice that the white squares all get letters, but only some of them have pre-printed numbers.
I think I'll take a break from Scrabble/Face-Slapping and try CHESSBOXing.
Rodney Dangerfield never got no respect. His first time in a pool, instead of a FLOATY his dad gave him a stinky.
Buncha gnarly clues today. Loved it. Thanks, Adam Aaronson and Ricky Cruz.
I was really proud of myself for leaving the COMEDY CLUB at 1A and wandering down the street to the KARAOKE BAR - and from there finishing up the NE unassisted. It felt good to know that I can represent myself pretty well even on a Saturday when I am lucky enough to land in a region with . . . . zero PPP.
From there it was a quick segue back to reality - if that piece of information about the DUNG BEETLE isn’t the most useless trivia of the year, it should certainly be in the top five.
I see we are back to “genres” today after an all-too-brief hiatus. Just for the heck of it, I asked one of those AI bots what the difference is between ALT-METAL and METAL - to be fair, it came up with quite a few. I learned that METAL places more emphasis on shredding, for example.
My favorites were the clue for ARABIAN SEA (clever - and camels are kind of cool) and BACKSPLASH, a very well-done misdirection. It will be interesting to see how many people raise their hand for being familiar with CHESS BOXING - I’m trying not to be too judgemental even though it has two strikes against it (it sounds really foolish, strike one, and it sounds really foolish, strike two).
BFF is short for “best friends forever”
Someone fairly recently (within the last two years) who lives in New England corrected me on my pronunciation of Natick. I think it was @Hartley70. She also informed me it was nay-tick. But when you've been hearing a word pronounced one way in your head for over ten years -- even if it's the wrong way -- it's pretty much impossible to change the way you hear it. I haven't tried to correct my pronunciation -- "nat-ick" -- when I read it, but I know I shall avoid ever speaking the word to anyone else in the future. That is, if I remember.
ani ! same mistake here.
KARAOKE BAR was obvious, so 1-D had to be KIBOSH, only it's the wrong part of speech! Kibosh is a noun, as in "the boss put the kibosh on my idea," while Nix is a verb--I don't think you can make either one of them into the other. So I hesitated, but eventually had so many crosses that I went ahead and put it in.
The NE was a bigger problem. Never heard of Blackpink, but one of Rex's surrogates raves bout BTS, and anyway they're unavoidable -- so I put in K-pop, but then noticed that the clue was for a member of either group, not the genre they were in. Well, they're each South KORean, right? And maybe there's a genre called ArT METAL, even though ALT METAL seemed more likely; but I just couldn't get rid of that R---until I came to 51-A, which had to be ART (and I was toying with the idea that singer Lennox might be ARt, as well). So I went back to the NE, thought some more, and saw that IDOL would work, making 12-D LIE, and giving me LoLA across the type -- only as I was typing this did I realize it was Miss LALA. I've seen a lot of Degas works, but not that one. Anyway, I haven't looked at Rex's grid yet, so I feel it's fair to change what I have.
This leaves me the SE. I was tempted to look up CAPTCHA, but then I got TU from crosses, and it had to be TURING TEST. But 62-A? I finally went with ZEITGEISTY crossing FLOATY, but I don't like it. Ah well, FLOATS wouldn't work for an item, and neither would ZEITGEISTs. I'll go look now.
if you get no or few replies, it is due to the fact that this has been debated here many times before. no one won said debate btw
The clue is wrong, though. A BOSON is not "a subatomic particle," but rather a family of subatomic particles, of which the famous Higgs Boson is one member.
Me too on ScARFING/ArCIE.
One of the seminal articles in the development of the mathematics of fractals was entitled "How Long is a Coastline?" The closer up you get, the longer it is, because all the little fluctuations add to the length.
Point for you, but with a slight protest, as my last name has no shot at being a place. Also, you need more points?
I had trouble with BFF too. I've hear "ride or die," but always thought it was about motorcycles or bicycles, so I put in Bmx. Made it really hard to see FLOATY.
Reading through the comments, it’s clear that SW corner is horrible constructed. Between that and describing Soundgarden as ALTMETAL, why isn’t the editor addressing these issues?
Easy in some places… e.g. I put in KARAOKE BAR with no crosses and the whoosh was on. However, it came to an abrupt halt in the NE where LALA and the ALT part of METAL (hi @Rex) were WOEs, BTS had me looking for something to do with Korea, and ADMITONE did not come easily. I also had some problems in the SW where EBOY (hi @Rex) and CHESS BOXER were WOEs and I had Açaí before ALOE.
Plenty of sparkle and a fair amount of crunch, liked it.
Easy up top, from the KARAOKE BAR to the SEWER level, then challenging all the way down to the bottom, with a DNF staring me in the face in the SW. Tripping me up in that area were an incorrect InsET (a "minor key," because it could be a key to a map but it's small) and Acai, as well as - and I hate to admit this - "Elon" as an archetypal influencer. I was saved by suddenly understanding AWAKENS and seeing ALLEY OOP. A sigh of relief at being able to finish. Thanks to the constructors for an invigorating Saturday struggle.
Do-overs: InsET, Acai, Elon, KaBOSH, ScARFING, LiLA, ess before ISM. New to me: CHESS BOXER. No idea: LALA, ARI.
I'm with Rex all the way on the SW corner of this puzzle. I had AWAKEN, MALI, ISLET and REPS. I was sure, with C__SS in place that 47A was CroSS BOXER. I only know one 4-letter word associated with antioxidants, starting with A, and that is Açaí. But I really wanted 55D to be YES so that didn’t work. I never got myself out of that mess even after AM I CLEAR filled in and had to come here to see EBOY in order to finish, argh.
For me, ZEITGEISTY gave me BRATZ rather than the other way around.
I'm picturing the DUNG BEETLE as I’ve seen it on TV and wondering what about it evokes rebirth.
I loved the answer BACKSPLASH for the clue “What may rise over a range” which sent me both to the kitchen and the mountains.
The Miss La La painting is very unusual. I looked it up after solving. My main thought is, “What is that doing to her teeth?”
Thanks, Adam and Ricky, for a mostly easy puzzle that didn’t end well for me.
That’s interesting, Nancy. How much patience do you have for people who pronounce Houston St. like the city in Texas? What’s the grace period on that one?
Enjoyed it until the SW where I hit the wall. Even with a couple of reveals it was hopeless. Big smackdown here.
Toughest Saturday here in a long time. Got only ORSO first pass across the top, and scrabbled down to the SE where the whole block filled in, whoosh.
Then we went to the Centre d'Histoire de la Résistance, and had trouble getting home, this entire city (Lyon) is under construction and the busses don't run half the time, or if they do they're only on half the route so it's challenging when it's 85° and a couple of miles to walk...
But then the NW went whoosh, too, and I thought I was on the way, until...
Male influencer archetype? I do feel old. And it made me, like @Rex, think of the manosphere and be repulsed. So I googled it, very rare! But wasn't coming up with CHESSBOXING, either (we don't read The Economist anymore as it quickly gets overwhelming!) so needed a toehold in that corner, since AM I CLEAR wasn't helping.
All day, it took all day with one Google. So, like @Roo, giving myself a pass on a DNF.
So there!
Was happily flying through this so pleased with myself for a Saturday and then hit a brick wall, indeed over in the SW. Had YES, which made sense, my kids did that to me all the time, but with AMICLEAR, went to Acai, theb got ALOE, but just couldn't wrap it up. Couldn't see SKIES either. Tough DNF after so much fun getting there.
Didn't know ukuleles were made from Acacias. Not sure what to think of ZEITGEISTY, but know im not feeling it these days.
Pluralism is thing. Thus, ISM can be a suffix to plural.
Thanks - I was wondering what the whole CAPTCHA acronym stood for, but was too lazy to google it :)
Same same. Ani Lennox was a curveball I couldn’t lay off of, even though I am familiar with Alan Turing. Tuning somehow seemed plausible. Spent more time with a full grid looking for mistake than completing the grid in the first place.
Soundgarden was foundational grunge era. Bad clue
I think WASHABLE as in washable markers is more likely.
Tough one for anyone over 39.
Starting out in the NW, thinking, "Could this be as easy as yesterday?" Then it went down the SEWER.
The SW was appropriate for EBOYs, CHESSBOXERs and the like.
But the SE was just as bad, for me. ZEITGEISTY? Rex liked that? We can add a "Y" to any noun? So why not BRATZY? BFFY? CHESSBOXERY? DUNGBEETLEY? How about FLOATYY?
And of course who doesn't know what all the letters in CAPTCHA mean? I've employed CAPTCHA in several websites I developed and never even had any idea that it was an acronym.
Enjoyed the puzzle but the analysis was an award winner. Obsessing on eboy makes the pain go away.
As probably the only under 30 yo that's found this blog I gotta say these puzzles have had a lot more clues for the online crowd recently. Found CHESSBOXER instantly because some streamers love the sport (look up the Botez sisters). EBOY was obvious, along with YES, ATSIGN ,and IDOL. Fun to see who has trouble on what sections here!
My chessboxing knowledge is limited to this 2010 video for “Watching Birds” by the band Stornoway - https://youtu.be/GWQzwU_imT0?si=CmXMxJJpDwHDblGD
It's been a looong time since I totally gave up on a puzzle, but that southwest corner did it to me. Never heard of CHESS BOXER or EBOY, and would not have gotten WASHABLE from that clue in 1000 years. LAY clue was brutal. Even the ALLEY OOP clue was useless as I've always thought of it as basically a Hail Mary.
The northeast was unpleasant as well, with the mashup of useless nameified clues at 11a 16a 13d and 14d, although I did eventually fill it correctly. And hands up for SCARFING!
There's a good, readable introduction to the problem of measuring coastlines in the Wikipedia article "Coastline Paradox."
Executive summary: When measuring a straight-line distance, the " more precise the measurement device, the closer results will be to the true length.... With a coastline, however, measuring in finer and finer detail does not improve the accuracy; it merely adds to the total....it is impossible even in theory to obtain an exact value for the length of a coastline."
This means that you have to specify a scale in order to obtain a useful result. For Norway's coastline, using 30-meter (98 ft) linear intercepts yields a length of 83,281 kilometers (51,748 mi), the length cited in the CIA World Factbook.
¿Estoy claro?
Another tough as heck day for me. I think I was on board with this until CHESS BOXER and then I was over it as I worked up the east side with ZEITGEISTY, BFF, USSTEEL, ISM, and LALA. So the good didn't vanquish the bad here.
Occasionally people have criticized me for counting places in the gunkometer. "I love looking at maps," they say. Then the NYTXW drops the name of a building in Pittsburgh and my reasons become clearer. I know there is a football team in Pittsburgh. And I think there's baseball and hockey there too. What else do I need to know about Pittsburgh? Well, nothing. There's probably a building in Fresno that has a name. Probably one in Yakutsk, Siberia. Albuquerque tore down its most famous building in 1970.
That Degas isn't his best work, is it?
And, um, koa is the traditional wood of ukuleles, while acacia is the less desired but more easily sourced cousin of koa. It's like saying your house cat is the traditional feline of the Lion King.
People: 4
Places: 5
Products: 6
Partials: 6
Foreignisms: 1
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 22 of 72 (31%)
Funnyisms: 6 😅
Uniclues:
1 That which sounds more like skreetch skreetch.
2 Predatory cat's boomer-like self obsession.
3 Make a baby who will be bullied at school based on its name.
4 Ocean faring Muslim with a TikTok account.
5 What the NYTXW does when it needs to make up a word to fit into the squares.
6 Invisible Man's Ace bandage.
7 Labrador retriever with a penchant for eating children's toys doesn't barf up its latest culinary delight.
8 Laying on the couch after McDonald's.
9 Erica Durance, according to many.
1 KARAOKE LALA
2 OCELOT I-AM-ISM
3 SIRE DUNG BEETLE
4 ARABIAN SEA E-BOY (~)
5 REPS "ZEITGEISTY"
6 AM I CLEAR KIBOSH (~)
7 KEPT DOWN BRATZ
8 SNARFING REHAB (~)
9 FINEST LOIS LANE (~)
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Baby Lincoln's signature jammies. ABRAHAM ONESIES.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Just now reading a book called Mapmatics by Paulina Rowinska. It discusses the role of mathematics in map making. I learned about the Coastline Paradox, a well known challenge for mapmakers for centuries. The distance of a coastline varies with scale. The closer the scale (think more zoomed in), the larger the coastline. As Rowinska writes: imagine an ant and an elephant walking the coastline. The ant will travel farther than the elephant, unless the elephant steps on the ant. So Norway’s coast could be many, many miles long depending on who is walking it, or the scale being used in measuring it.
CHESSBOXing has been "hiding" for at least 33 years now, reference "Da Mystery of Chessboxin'" on Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), released in 1993. I was really hoping this song would be one of Rex's musical interludes in his post for today, but alas.
SW was tricky for sure. I had
CHAD (male influencer architype) over
ACAI (antioxidant juice) as my only entries to start. Finally and thankfully got rid of those. Also surprised Rex didn't have beef with ZEITGEISTY. I had the rest of the SE except can never remember ARI (Lennox).
I agree with "floatie" and I resisted entering that Y in the SE corner until it became inevitable. I kinda like ZEITGEISTY even though I've never heard it used.
This was Carola. I didn't realized that Google had signed me out.
Rex, we had an almost identical solving experience. You should have heard me when I finally filled in "chessboxer." "@$%%!!!, this is so *not* a real $#%^ thing!"
Me three. I've never heard of "snarfing", and Gilbert Grape was a quirky movie so Arcie seemed possible.
Sure, but each of those particles is named for Bose....
Easy for me. Michelob was a mystery but I got started with ORSO OCELOT ANKLE SIRE and built up the NW from there. The SW was the hardest corner, but I got EBOY from seeing it in crosswords, and I know about CHESSBOXing. AWAKENS and ISLET were easy.
I had STAG BEETLE before DUNG BEETLE and IBM before LAY. The [Chip maker...] clue is the type of clue that I don't consider misdirection, just ambiguous. My mind keeps switching between the two interpretations of the clue until I get the right answer.
Otherwise, Mrs. Lincoln, how'd you like the play?
They can hear Houston Street "in their heads" any way they please, Anon 11:34, as long as they don't mis-use it in speech to another living soul. Which is my default position on Natick, which you'll see when you reread my comment. Once you reread it, you might even want to apologize for your gratuitous snark -- though I'm sure you won't.
Lovely puzzle with great Saturday level clueing. At 1A I so wanted something relating to those tipsy toasts at wedding receptions - mike in one hand, beer in the other, “to the groom! Awesome dude!” But after failing to come up with anything that would fit, I waited for downs. Confession: I’ve never actually been to a KARAOKEBAR.
So many people seemed to have trouble with the SW but, because I am not trying to beat the clock, I just ambled through (bumbled around might be more accurate) until everything fell into place. A not-unpleasant experience, actually.
Even though I have an MFA and spent a lot of time in art history labs, I could not drag Miss LALA up from the depths. Never a big Degas fan, probably because so much of his stuff is so, you know, cute. Pretty little dancers in tutus and the like. But what I may have failed to notice, and what Miss LALA has reminded me of, is his use of odd points of view. (See also Two Ballet Dancers, c. 1879; Musicians in the Orchestra, 1872; and even La Toilette, 1884).
Lovely stuff: I so wanted something scarab-related at 24A but couldn’t remember that they are also called DUNGBEETLEs. For many years, before I inexplicably lost it, I wore a small scarab pendant around my neck. Then I stopped being a hippie …
Thought ZEITGEISTY 62A was ridiculous but hilarious. Loved it. And I have called that thing a FLOATY so the Y fell right in. Not sure about REHAB for 10D. I’ve been to rehab and there was nothing particularly “modern” about the standards. The Twelve Steps were formulated in the mid-30s and have never really been updated. Just saying …
Loved the Lay, Lady Lay clip, Rex. Never a big fan of Dylan until someone recommended Nashville Skyline to me. I’m listening to it as I type this.
Many thanks to Adam and Ricky for a thorny but still fun Saturday puzzle.
Same. Broke my longest streak ever on that.
I've never been a big basketball fan, Okanagener, but I kinda like the ALLEYOOP. Reminds me of the deflection goal in hockey where the D-man on the point fires the puck toward the forward in front of the net, hoping that forward will redirect it past the goalie. I was, for almost all my illustrious beer-league career, that forward. Couldn't skate worth sh*t but my eye-hand co-ordination was good. Scored most of my goals that way and always considered it a "Two person shot". The basketball version is, of course, much flashier.
Same thing I was thinking. A type, class or subset of subatomic particles is a more accurate description.
In about 2 weeks I'll be 73 and I didn't have a lot of trouble with that stuff but I have kids in the 35 to 45 yo group. Pays to talk - and listen - to them.
Wanderlust et al
Natick and snarfing
About snarfing Anonymous is right. I remembered it is always snarfing here so I immediately put it down. This site has had this discussion before.
Natick I didn’t realize people not from this area ( I am from nearby RI) were mispronouncing the name. I guess it underlines the obscurity of the town. At least it wasn’t Woburn ( pronounced woobun).
Alley oop a shot with an assist
That is. 2 person shot QED
DNF in SW
Never in my life heard of chessboxer
Had crossboxer till the bitter end
Also eboy. But should have got washable
Yes was a gimme but aloe took ages. Oh well. Had little trouble with the rest of the puzzle. Liked it anyway. Rex LIKED zeitgeisty. That surprised me. Didn’t bother me but a lot of complaints!
100% on the ScARFING team.
And to associate them with the execrable Linkin Park made me want to thow my tablet.
Oh, come on! Really??
Not that I know of… hated this puzzle started out okay, but there were so many answers that I thought were absurd. I like keeping up with pop culture, but this was stupid. Alt Metal?? Come on!!
Loved the elegant SE corner, especially ZEITGEISTY.
Hated EBOY and the intersection of SNARFED (which I really, REALLY wanted to be “SCARFED”) and {name from a movie you’d need to have seen}.
I was tickled that I knew MALI because of fellow grad student Siddiqi who taught Bambara.
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