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Crib for a doll / SAT 6-21-25 / "Ritorna vincitor" singer / Port WSW of Algiers / Name in the baking aisle / Old-fashioned club / Gram alternative / Black-and-yellow demarcation / Berkshire institution / Rita of the "Fifty Shades" movies / Donned quickly / QB Dawson who faced Bart Starr / First name of the "Princess of Pop"
Saturday, June 21, 2025
Constructor: Christina Iverson and Doug Peterson
Relative difficulty: Medium
Word of the Day: Two-Lane Blacktop (27D: Vehicles seen in the films "Dazed and Confused" and "Two-Lane Blacktop" = GTOS) —
Two-Lane Blacktop is a 1971 American road film directed and edited by Monte Hellman, from a screenplay by Rudy Wurlitzer and Will Corry. It stars musicians James Taylor and Dennis Wilson, Warren Oates, and Laurie Bird in the leading roles. The sparse, existentialist plot follows a group of street racers during a cross-country race through the American Southwest.
["Warren Oates is GTO"] Universal Pictures commissioned the film in the wake of Easy Rider's monumental success. Hellman, who had previously worked in low-budget and independent films, developed the screenplay with Wurlitzer, then-known mainly as an underground writer, during an actual cross-country road trip. Filming took place in locations around the Southwest between August and October 1970.
On initial release, the film received generally positive reviews, but was not a commercial success. Over the years, it developed the reputation of a sleeper hit and a cult classic, and has been reevaluated as a major work of the New Hollywood movement. In 2012, the US Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." (wikipedia)
• • •
Third, I liked the grid's weird, skinny shape (14x16 rather than the traditional 15x15). And then fourth, and more personally, I just liked how Of-My-Generation this puzzle was. It felt like being a kid ... or someone under 30, anyway. That is, it felt RAD. Two of my favorite movies in the same clue! (one made in the '70s, the other set in the '70s) (27D: Vehicles seen in the films "Dazed and Confused" and "Two-Lane Blacktop"). Sports legends I learned about as a kid (PISTOL PETE Maravich, LEN Dawson). Young JODIE Foster! The "Muppet Show"! The puzzle was speaking my language. Not always (LOL Frozen and Fifty Shades—still never seen either). But mostly.
So many false starts today. SUET (!?) before GHEE (23A: Kitchen alternative to tallow). DIVA before AIDA (10D: "Ritorna vincitor" singer); EKG before ORG (37D: ___ chart); "BAH!" before "GAH!" (44A: "Ugh!"); "CAN WE!?" before "CAN'T I!?" (47D: "C'mon, please?"). I almost went with RICE before ROTI, but sensed that that was probably wrong (too easy) (19D: Side order with curry). As usual, the toughest part of the puzzle was getting started. Seemed like Germany was probably good at lots of Olympic sports, so BOBSLED took some time. Parsing "I HAVE TO," yeesh, tough for me (14A: Words before ask, admit or go). I see "Berkshire," I think Massachusetts, so even though I kinda sorta wanted ETON at 6D: Berkshire institution, I didn't trust it ("Berkshire" is a "ceremonial county" in England; the Berkshires are mountains in New England). And DONG ... I must've learned this currency before, but I keep forgetting it, possibly because my brain has already slotted DONG in a different meaning category. At least a couple different categories, actually, but one ("1.") in particular.
Bullets:
- 29A: Black-and-yellow demarcation (POLICE TAPE) — another good long answer. Kinda grim, but solid.
- 34A: Foster kid in "Taxi Driver"? (JODIE) — this was a gimme, despite the attempted misdirection. Needed a more obscure young-JF vehicle. Maybe Freaky Friday, or better yet, Bugsy Malone.
- 3D: Crib for a doll (BARBIE DREAM HOUSE) — "Crib" here is just slang for "residence," which you probably knew, but just in case ...
- 12D: Mortimer who once made a guest appearance on "The Muppet Show" (SNERD) — also just in case ... just in case it's not clear, Mortimer SNERD is a ventriloquist's dummy of mid-century renown.
- 33D: Name in the baking aisle (KARO) — I think this is ... what ... like a sweetener of some kind. A corn syrup, I think ... yup, that's it. I sometimes get it confused with KNORR, which is a brand of bouillon:
- 51D: Gram alternative (NANA) — nickname for "grandmother"; I almost wrote in NANO here (thinking "Gram" was a bygone MP3 player, maybe?)
If the puzzle had too many proper nouns for you, here are some more proper nouns you're sure to love: I'm going to see WAXAHATCHEE tonight, with M.J. LENDERMAN and (a recent and, to me, thrilling addition) HURRAY FOR THE RIFF RAFF tonight at an orchard (!) in central NY. This is my Christmas gift from my wife. Then tomorrow we're off for our annual Great Lakes vacation with my best friends. I'll blog a couple of times over the next week, but it'll mostly be my tried-and-true guest writers for a while (starting tomorrow, w/ Rafa). See you (...checks calendar...) oh, Monday. That's not so long. Until then, or whenever next time is ...
P.S. Oh no, due to miscommunication, Rafa did *today's* write-up. So now there are two write-ups of this puzzle LOL. So scroll down to enjoy Rafa's work (Or click here if you’re on your phone). And then also look for him tomorrow.
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81 comments:
Lovely puzzle, but I was completely tripped up when I put in I HATE TO ask/admit/go early and had it there until the bitter end.
PISTOLPETE played in the NBA in the seventies. Before it was on tv much. I only saw him play a couple of times. He was an amazing ball handler. He's in the Hall of Fame.
I enjoyed this a lot, although it played pretty easy for me. Rice before ROTI, and more problematically for a couple minutes King (Arthur, as in the flour) before KARO. But King didn't work and I eventually figured out HEART SMART and that was that. No real trouble today, smooth and fun.
But is BARBIEDREAMHOUSE worth RAILWAYSTATIONS?
Not seeing how that answer is bad
Excellent puzzle - loved the grid layout also. Rex pal Doug has been getting a lot of airtime from Stan Newman on Mondays lately - I’ve become very comfortable with his cluing voice. This played more like a Friday for me.
LOS Lobos
STOPPED ON A DIME and HEART SMART are top notch. DONG and G SPOT work for me too. A little side eye to the SNERD - SNEERED combo and LOESSER is Don Draperish. More trivia than most late week offerings.
Two Dollar PISTOLs
Highly enjoyable Saturday morning solve. Lester Ruff’s Stumper provides more of a test today with a beautiful center spanner cross.
Sturgill
I really enjoyed this, but I don't eat much Indian food and didn't know Rita from Fifty Shades -- I was Naticked with RATI crossing ARA. A fine Saturday morning test otherwise.
Took me about ten minutes longer than my average Saturday time.
I had NAAN before ROTI
LARD before GHEE
And HEALTHYFAT before HEARTSMART
Have a great vacation, @Rex! @Rafa, thanks for the "bonus" write-up. I think I know why you found the puzzle hard: You weren't born early enough. Geezers like me are old enough to remember Mortimer SNERD (12D), PISTOL PETE Maravich (29D) and LEN Dawson (46A), and I knew Frank LOESSER (36A) from having worked on a college production of How To Succeed. Easy breezy Saturday.
Overwrites:
1D: BInS before BITS
8A: strewn before SPARSE
19D: naan before ROTI (it had to be one or the other)
23A: lard before GHEE
29A: POLICE line before TAPE
44A: @Rex bAH before GAH
Only one WOE, LEWIS, as clued at 5D. I know Sinclair LEWIS but not the books in the clue
I'm not familiar with "Dazed and Confused" or "Two-Lane Blacktop", but there are only a limited number of three-letter car names and KIA and REO didn't fit, so it kinda had to be GTO.
A-one. Top notch. This had so much:
• The spanners, part one: Fresh! Three are NYT answer debuts, and the fourth is a once-before.
• Part two: RAILROAD STATIONS is downright plain, but its clue – [Training facilities?] – buoys it into the stratosphere.
• Part three: BARBIE DREAMHOUSE throws glitter over the whole box, turns the puzzle into a party.
• Lovely non-spanners: CUDGEL, SVELTE, THREW ON, PRIVATE JET, POLICE TAPE, RANG OUT.
• As with yesterday’s puzzle, when I look over the completed grid, it is so clean that my whole being calms down, and I become 45D (AT ONE).
• Non-astronomy clue for a form of MOON second day in a row.
• 5D!
• Sweet PuzzPair© of DONG and RANG OUT.
• Plenty of vagueness, misdirects, and sharp wordplay in the cluing, just what I hope for on Saturday.
Christina and Doug, you make crosswords a fine art as well as fun. Thank you for that, and for the day-lift today – standing-O!
The NW was going nowhere so I started with the LOS of UCLA which begat LETITGO, (thanks granddaughter), which begat ROTI which led to SATIRIC, and so it went, whoosh (or woosh) all the way, with a slight pause to make STREWN into SPARSE, but that was about it.
Today's pleasant surprise was the number of propers I knew or knew from crosswords--ORA, SNERD, JODIE, LEN, PISTOL PETE, ARIANA, HAILIE, and even KARO. That's a lot of freebies which led to a lot of gimmes.
"Old Crosswordese?". I prefer long-lost friend. Anyway, welcome back ORAN. Glad you haven't disappeared.
Had a great old time with this one, CI and DP. Clever, Imaginative, and Didn't Play hard but always interesting. Thanks for all the fun.
Have a great, vacay, OFL. We're bracing for a heat wave here in NH, but that's life in the tropics.
Ridiculously much easier than yesterday's puzzle. Challenging Saturday puzzles have become vanishingly rare. We get more challenging Thursdays or Fridays.
Note to Rex: in this context, DREAMHOUSE is one word.
Tough one today - lots of little nits that add up to minor annoyances. How many “Princesses of Pop” are there - that stuff goes back to the BRITNEY days (TAY TAY fans may have a say in that one as well). GAH seems pretty arbitrary, but those types of clue/answer combinations always seem to gum up the works. I feel like the clue for GRAPH was a misfire that probably could have been edited out.
On the plus side, all of the grid spanners are real winners, and there are some good Tee-hee’s today with DONG, GSPOT and MOONING - I wonder if Gary spotted another one that I missed.
Are there any Sommelier’s in the house? How do you feel about being described as a POURER - it seems to me like it trivializes what you do, but maybe you’re cool with it.
LEN Dawson, aka Lenny the Cool, was also the MVP of Superbowl IV, back when it was called something like the AFL-NFL championship game. They beat the Minnesota Vikings, who were the NFL champions that year - hopefully you were paying attention when we were quizzed on that one recently.
I had naan initially as well, rice seemed too obvious.
Lot's to like, with a quibble and a question. Ghee is not the best alternative to tallow. I threw in suet, another kind of animal fat not derived from milk. Alternative to butter would have been a better clue. And shouldn't it be Barbie's (possessive) Dream House? I kept trying to squeeze that s in.
I feel there was a missed opportunity, SNEERED could have been SNEEZED, as in "it's nothing to sneeze at".
Great puzzle. My only quibble is with the GHEE clue — alternative to ghee is just clarified butter. There isn’t really a recipe that calls for ghee where you could use tallow and have the same flavor profile
Took a while to get going, but in the end very satisfying.
Possible dupe. I think Rex would have rated it easier than you did, Rafa. I finished it without a cheat, though I first had "sneezed" instead of SNEERED, assuming the sommelier was a Frenchman ending in "EZ." Very well constructed, I thought.
Aggh, that LAS/LOS thing really snagged me on this one, kept me from seeing POLICE (_A__CETAPE???) which also kept me from seeing PISTOL (had MISTER for the longest time) PETE and really locked me up in the middle. Once I finally remembered there was that other spelling the middle clicked and all my other snags cleared. Agree, this was a lot of fun. Love CUDGEL. Yeah, lot of names, but gimme JODIE any day. She's brilliant.
Now, that’s a proper Saturday. A first pass through the whole thing left tons of white space, but then the same two long answers that broke it open for Rex did the same for me, and soon it was off to the races. Despair, followed by whoosh! A tough nut to crack, but so many goodies inside. Thank you, Christina and Doug!
The problem is that BRITNEY is spelled wrong in 15A
Hey All !
Rex - hates to hear "moist", but is okay with DONG/penis.
He's a complicated man. 😁
Nice, tough-ish puz. Noticed the 14 wide right off the get-go, then counted the rows, and sho' nuff, 16. This grid size nets you one square less than a 15x15. I'll nominate the missing square for an F. Har
For the "Princess of Pop" clue, went Beyonce, then Taylor, before ARIANA. For some reason, I always think her name has two N's. I always liked her, she's cute, she's mega talented, she's funny, basically down to earth, and did I mention she's cute?
Scattered was Strewn, SPewed, SPARSE.
Off the STA in STATIONS, I wrote in STAdIumS.
Did get PRIVATEJET off just the J. Yay me!
pie before ORG. Silly clue.
Got a chuckle out of MOONING (never grow up!)
Clean grid, appropriately Saturdayish. Nice puz, Christina and Doug.
Y'all have a spectacular Saturday!
No F'S - GAH!
RooMonster
DarrinV
I know the names of a lot of foods I don’t eat. Roti is a crossword staple (as well as an Indian food staple).
Overall, a very pleasant Saturday outing. I loved the long downs and the sparkling fill, although tarnished somewhat by all those names, but there was much fun to be had between the lines of this SVELTE grid. A HEARTSMART MOONING, an AIR KISS in a DREAM HOUSE, ARIANA on a PRIVATE JET. JODIE under POLICE TAPE. @Gary J is going to have a heyday with uniclues.
As RP said, it was also a pleasant little trip down memory lane. Two of his favorite films and two of my favorite sports legends - LEN aka Lenny The Cool Dawson and PISTOL PETE Maravich. I got a little misty remembering hours in front of a tiny TV watching those two and others of their era with my dad. The highlight of that nostalgia reel was watching the Kings play the Lakers in KC’s old Municipal Auditorium and the thrill of seeing the incomparable Wilt Chamberlain in person. Good times.
Interestingly, “Berkshire” is often used as an adjective for “The Berkshires” (e.g., Berkshire Brewing Co., Berkshire Botanical Garden, etc.).
I slapped down STOPPED ON A DIME with no crosses, but then took it out (briefly) because I couldn’t get any crosses to work from it.
Didn't get that meaning of Crib, but still got the answer.
HOORAY FOR THE RIFF RAFF is (are?) awesome!
Wednesday level. Am I getting smarter or are these end-of-week NYT puzzles getting easier?
What a treat! Medium for me, with easy ones like SIBLING RIVALRY and RAILROAD STATIONS giving me a leg up on the ones I didn't know (PISTOL PETE). I felt like Ms. Eclectic, knowing the musical trio of ARIANA, AIDA, and Frank LOESSER...or maybe I just feel old (Mortimer SNERD). Loved writing in CUDGEL and especially ending with the cootie-free AIR KISS!
I think Super Bowl started with number III in 1969 when big Joe Willie and the Jets memorably defeated the Colts in Miami.
I don’t see Rafa’s writeup anywhere.
Rice? Naan? ROTI
Suet? Lard? Oleo? GHEE
Had a to cycle through a few before the crossers made it clear (somehow BARBIE DREAM HOUSE came to me fairly easily; I knew Rita ORA as a singer, didn't know she was part of 50 shades but it fit and led me to ROTI)
Really liked this and Friday overall - challenging and clever without many true sticking points.
was waiting for you to include an apt bullet point for GSPOT
only a bit disappointed (ironic?)
I really wanted STREWN instead of SPARSE for "Scattered," so that hung me up for awhile in the NE corner. But the rest came fairly easily for a Saturday. "Dish at times (ANTENNA) was a clever clue.
If @Roo and @Pablo are going to give each other high fives every time their names appear in a grid, let's have a shoutout to @Lewis for 5D. And while we're outshouting, @Anoa Bob deserves one. BOBSLED the anti-POCs campaign tirelessly for years with no discernible effect.
I oncestayed in a lady's house to watch her "press ons" while she was out of town. That's right, I got paid to NAILSIT.
As far as I'm concerned, the guy who wrote How to Succeed in Business is really awful and the actual music is bad to the bone. So I guess the author is the LOESSER of two evils.
And speaking of show business, remember that TV show House. Well my sister pretended her dolls just hated it, so whenever it came up BARBIEDREAMHOUSE.
Have you tried the haircream made from materials chewed by cows? CUDGEL. A little dab'll do you in.
My solve was pretty much like @Rex's. Thanks for a great puzzle, Christina Iverson and Doug Peterson.
Easyish Saturday. Can't believe Rex didn't mention the inclusion of GSPOT and DONG in the same puzzle.
Lard.
I put out bricks of suet for the birds.. Infused with bugs. Not in the kitchen, thanks!
Pretty challenging for me. Bins, lard, diva, naan - the short fill wasn't helping me get any traction. Not Britney, not Taylor, eventually landed on Ariana. Worried a bit over how Animal Farm and Don Quixote were going to be satanic. Dong and Gspot first thing in the AM woke me up. Became a football fan watching Len Dawson and the Chiefs beat the Vikings. Pistol Pete. Have to find and watch Two Lane Blacktop again. So much to enjoy here.
And those long answers were all fun and lively. Thought the whole puzzle offered an invigorating start to the day. Thanks.
Ariana may be a pop princess, but Britney is the “Princess of Pop.”
I see I’ve inadvertently posted under the cloak of anonymity again. It’s a mystery to me why Blogger keeps disconnecting my login. 🤷🏻♀️
My wife taught sex ed twenty years ago. The course didn't include the GSPOT. It emphasized VD, nothing about how to do it. I suppose that the curriculum has changed.
The reference is to B Spears and that’s how she spells it.
It was tough to get started here. I think my first entry may have been RDA. which got me to SNERD, a total gimme. But a couple more crosses opened up SIBLING RIVALRY, and I was off and running. Lora of nice long answers, more like a Friday in that way. My biggest problem was having ScoffED instead of SNEERED, but eventually I saw STOPPED ON A DIME, which fixed that. I couldn't remember QB Dawson, but I did know AIDA and LOESSER, so that was fine.
A couple of grammar/wording snags. A givn ANTENNA is either a dish or not a dish, so the clue should have been "Dish, possibly." And while TEEMED with means "was overrun by," TEEMED does not mean "was overrun."
As for "Kitchen alternative to tallow," what can I say?
Ah, KARO syrup. About 40 years ago we hire the son of a friend to take care of our kids. He decided to make popcorn, but mistook a bottle of KARO syrup for oil. The result was a sticky mess in the pan, which he poured down the drain in the sink. Naturally it solidified in the trap--turned into candy, in essence. I tried to break through the lump with a hand-powered snake, but instead it broke a hole in the copper drainpipe, so we had to call in a plumber, for a few hundred dollars--a lot back in those olden times.
Mostly easy for me. No WOEs. I got off to a slow start in the NW which was my toughest section, but the east side and the bottom third were pretty whooshy.
Costly erasures - yer before ITS, lard before GHEE, eye before ORG, SATIRes before SATIRIC, and adeN before ORAN.
Answers I should’ve remembered sooner - LEWIS and DONG.
Not much junk, more than a smattering of sparkle, liked it.
Ghee IS clarified butter, redundant and repetitive and superfluous and extraneous...
The Berkshire Mountains, aka "Berkshires," are located in Berkshire County, Massachusetts -- the whole Western end of the state. I was trying to fit in things like "Norman Rockwell Museum" or "Mass MOCA" (which may actually be in a different county), but got ETON entirely from crosses.
Just scroll down from the end of Rex's, without opening the comments.
Not only two write-ups, but two sets of comments! More for our money. I've read Rafa's write-up, but not yet the comments on it.
Re: G SPOT, I had Sex Ed in the 70s, no G SPOT found in the curriculum. But one day we had a substitute teacher, a young woman who asked the class of 14-year-old girls if we had any questions about orgasms. Although I'm pretty sure we were universally clueless, no questions arose but lots of blushing and fidgeting occurred.
MOONING again.
This played easy for me. Not the NW, but SNEaD, EASY A and RDA got a foothold in the NE and once SNEaD became SNERD, the SIBLING RIVALRY had begun.
Thanks, Christina and Doug, nice Saturday.
A good example today of how one wrong answer can hold you up for the longest time. 38A HEAlThiesT instead off HEARTSMART. Oof! That smarted. Couldn’t get downs I knew were right, like KARO, LAN, and ORG. Got all the grid-spanners with only a few crosses each, so this should have been easy. But, no. Healthiest! Gah!
Speaking of which, 44A GAH does not equal ugh. It’s more grrrr or aaaargh than ugh.
Though I’ve seen it in crosswords before I still have trouble accepting 8D SATIRIC. It’s SATIRICal where I come from. And any buffoon can be your wine 54A POURER but a sommelier knows her wine. Just ask my son’s longtime girlfriend who does this for a living.
Names that threw me today were 5D LEWIS (never read either of the cited books but if Babbitt had been mentioned I might have had a chance) and 36A LOESSER. I’ve heard the name but if the clue hadn’t spelled it out, I wouldn’t even have known that “How to Succeed …” was a musical. Musicals seem to be some sort of sacred texts for crossword folks. I’ve seen a few. Don’t exactly worship them.
Ah, well, the grid spanners were fun.
Frank Loesser is awful? He wrote all the songs in Guys and Dolls, which include "Luck Be a Lady Tonight," "A Bushel and a Peck," "Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat"°—some of the best songs ever written in musical theater.
I did too but pulled myself up with just a slight sprain.
I thought for a while that we were dealing with an unprecedented Saturday Rebus puzzle because the Princess of Pop is Britney Spears and her first name wouldn't fit. I don't know what ARIANA is, but it's not that. This impression was compounded because I thought HAILE had an extra "L". But no - just a misinformed clue on 15A that confused things for a while.
It's been years, and yet I still think it's Mortimer SNEaD. Every time. Hope I get past that someday.
Otherwise have to agree that this was an enjoyable Saturday - on the easy side for me as I fall into the right demographic for the 80s clues. 18:47.
A lively, challenging (but in a good way) puzzle. For once I was helped by names: PISTOL PETE, HAILE, and LOESSER were gimmes for me. Woe betide those of you who didn't know them:)
I saw SIBLING RIVALRY immediately, from just the SI -- but checked out the Y before writing it in.
PRIVATE JET is a world-class clue. STOPPED ON A DIME is a great answer.
Did BARBIE have a DREAMHOUSE, I wondered as the crosses started to come in? Yes, it seems she did.
Never heard the term HEARTSMART. I wanted to be told what to eat, not how smart I was to eat it.
For the "dismissed" clue, I wrote in SNEE?ED and waited to see if it would be SNEERED AT or SNEEZED AT.
I too had I HATE TO before I HAVE TO -- but I had thought of both of them right off the bat. I also had BINS before BITS -- but never thought of BITS. I still don't get it and will go back to read everyone. THREW ON -- a lovely phrase -- saved me in that spot.
A highly enjoyable puzzle to solve. Two lovely themeless puzzles in a row.
As Rex says, it's the clue that makes RAILROADSTATIONS fun.
Lotsa SatPuz-worthy clues in this here rodeo. Appropriate numbers of precious solvequest nanoseconds were consumed.
Rafa's got a more M&A-like ratin': Hard. [Maybe even harder than snot.]
Challengin but fun. Bring it, Shortzmeister [and constructioneers].
Traditional SaTPuz no-knows were not a big factor, at our house. Just had to negotiate: GHEE. LOESSER. DONG.
Nope, it was them feisty clues that slowed us down the most. GRAPH, AIDA, AIRKISS, PRIVATEJET, PLEAS, POLICETAPE clues, for instance.
fave stuff included: MOONING & STOPPEDONADIME, mainly cuz they ended up bein gimmes that bought m&e many useful letters.
Thanx for gangin up on us, Ms. Iverson darlin & Mr. Peterson dude. I suffered a duly SatPuz amount. Why the 14x16 layout? ... was it becuz of a certain BARBIE seed answer, or somesuch?
Masked & Anonymo3Us
... need help recoverin? How'bout ...
"Give Us a Hand" - 7x7 themed runt puzzle:
**gruntz**
M&A Help Desk
p.s. Two blog reviews! Different. Like.
Oh, ya está encendido.
I dropped in BARBIE DREAM HOUSE without a single cross and still can't believe it was right. I used up all my mojo dojo crossword casa house juju in one fell swoop. I am a Barbie savant. Those of you who went to see a subtitled Swedish noir film instead of Barbie will have to wait for your puzzle to celebrate the dark apartment in the flop house where they smoke cigarettes in black and white while confessing to unspeakable horrors in cryptic poetry. I also saw Frozen, and there's no cigarette smoking in it either. I'm being SATIRIC. The Swedish version of Frozen is in black and white and they smoke like fiends.
I asked my wife what Germany is known for in the Olympics and she said, "Second place." If it's not track and field, I don't think she cares. I stopped caring when they became professional sports. If a pro-golfer shows up, you know it's time to hit the power button. I do want to know what role PISTOL PETE played in getting that highly cringy nickname.
I still have a crush on ARIANA. I also loved [Cootie-free greeting] and would give one to ARIANA. An EASY D would've boosted my average. As a flat-liner, my graphs don't have peaks or valleys -- and why isn't it vallies?
POLICE LINE before TAPE. BAH before GAH. LANDS IT before NAILS IT leading to ORAL as the seaport near Algiers and I think I would have remembered such a place name. Overall another wheelhouse solve.
I suspect a sommelier job description wouldn't list "pouring" on the essential skills list.
People: 9
Places: 2
Products: 5
Partials: 6
Foreignisms: 1
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 23 of 68 (34%)
Funnyisms: 6 😅
Tee-Hee: DONG. MOONING. G-SPOT.
Uniclues:
1 Grabbed the Fuit of the Looms.
2 The kind you use for dance scenes instead of crime scenes.
3 Incident requiring (un-)rad police tape.
4 What a bug's skull sports.
1 THREW ON TIDIES
2 RAD POLICE TAPE
3 MOONING CASE
4 ON-SITE ANTENNA
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: The lesser known and altogether dismal Old Sorta Faithful. ABJECT GEYSER.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Leading to the 54a cross “POUREZ” (“Sommelier”) which sounds ok to my LePew-level French
I'm assuming your LOESSER remark is just there for the pun of it, @egs? Hope so. Because even if "How to Succeed" isn't out of his top drawer, LOESSER is the composer/lyricist of "Guys and Dolls" -- one of the greatest musicals of all time. "Hans Christian Anderson" is pretty darn good too.
Congratulations. Today you seem to be getting smarter.
Eight bits in a byte…storage units.
had the same reaction doing the puzzle at midnight last night it just opened up my brain in the best way! oddly the times chat board was filled with people complaining they're usually overly positive and that's usually for subpar puzzles... cest la vie
Reading over some of the comments, I’ve come to feel like I’ve given this puzzle a less than generous appraisal. I would like to say that I totally agree with @Lewis’s list of “Lovely non-spanners: CUDGEL, SVELTE, THREW ON, PRIVATE JET, POLICE TAPE, RANG OUT.” Very nice, indeed.
Posting again b/c I don't see my original post (or maybe I missed it)
& I wanted to say what a great Saturday this was! Really enjoyed it & leave it to Christina re: GSPOT (& maybe RobynW if it were Friday)
Thank you, Christina & Doug :)
Just to clarify, I love Frank LOESSER and the Lions Share of his works. Just making an unsuccessful pun on how I've always believed his name is pronounced.
Conrad
I heard of the 2 movies but never saw them.but I immediately thought GTO - the type of car that would go with Two Lane Blacktop but I didn’t I put it in right away. But of course the crossed confirmed.
I also knew the old ones you mentioned, including Loesser because I am into classic musicals. I made the same mistakes you did. Strewn I was so confident of till I wasn’t! At least it got us the s. Ditto BIN. I also had no idea about the Lewis books.
But overall I agree it was more moderate, not Rafa’s hard.
Haha! I got stuck with POUREZ for quite a while. Was thinking the mention of 'sommelier' in the clue was referring to a term related to an expert. C'est la vie!
John H
I understand why people get annoyed in case like today’s answer GHEE But that is part of the point of crosswords. Crosswords are not dictionaries. They’re puzzles with clues, not definitions that hint at the answer
The “best alternative “ would probably be too easy for a Saturday so that is precisely what a constructor would NOT want for the answer. That’s why years ago a commentator here came up with the expression “close enough for crosswords”
Jberg
You’re right about Mass MOCA It is in the northern end of Berkshire County. The town is North Adams I think. Wonderful museum BTW
The name of the house is “Barbie Dreamhouse.” Sure it’s hers, but to make it possessive, you’d need to write (redundantly) Barbie’s “Barbie Dreamhouse.” And the clue for tallow didn’t indicate it was looking for the “best” alternative, just an alternative.
Les S More
Of course a sommelier is a professional, who has to know a great deal about wines. That is why most upscale restaurants have them. But that description is for a dictionary not a puzzle which hints at answers. Also crosswords routinely do a part for the whole bit. Like an answer about lawyers “brief writer”.
Sex THERAPY, not sex ed.
My appearances are rare, Roo's are frequent, and I don't remember ever seeing an "egs". It may be a spelling thing.
To those who complained, Rex mention the Vietnamese currency though not GSPOT. Needless to say, Gary Jugert mentioned both.
I enjoyed this one. Made easier for me , like Nancy, because Loesser was a gimme.
I am actually surprised no one complained about the answer, liked they did about yesterday’s writer
(WELTY)
It took me a while to remember crib can mean house or residence. But I already had Barbie Dream. As with most, sibling rivalry was a gimme. But other areas slowed me down. So it was a medium.
Not too much controversy today. I immediately thought of ARIANA only because that name’s six letters are so useful for constructors I tested it out as soon as I could and of course it worked!
Britney would not have occurred to me. Sometimes if you know too much it can slow you down. I m sure some fans use that expression for Ariana so close enough for crosswords
This is a tad EERIE. I solved this very fine puzzle late last night. Today when I stopped by the YouTube page to see what line-up of videos they had selected for me, one of the first was about the career of PISTOL PETE Maravich! Coincidence or has AI assisted tracking reached the point where it picked up on me typing his name in the grid last night?
Speaking of POCs (hi @egs 10:20) this grid has a classic of that genre. As @M&A 12:23 alludes to, I'm guessing that the16 letter BARBIE DREAMHOUSE was the seed entry and the reason for the 16 rows. Thing is, that super nice grid spanner requires a 16 letter matching entry for symmetry. And not only is RAILROAD STATION a little on the mundane side compared to its counterpart, it's only 15 letters. Boosting that to16 letters by simply tacking on a gratuitous S gets a level 3 POC (out of 4 levels) rating from me because an integral part of puzzle has had to to rely on a plural of convenience to get the job done.
That did take a little shine off of the puzzle for me but there was a ton of good stuff to make for an overall enjoyable, interesting solve.
Now I'm going to get my lance, climb aboard Rocinante and go look for some windmills.
Re your YouTube PISTOL PETE experience -- not so much EERIE as CREEPY, @Anoa Bob. I don't believe in coincidence, and so Very, Very Creepy!!!
As I read in horror about all the personal stuff that DOGE has vacuumed up about every living person in these United States, I've said to myself: "Well, OK, maybe they have my SSN and my DOB and my mother's maiden name and my bank account info and my medical history and my shopping history and God knows what else -- but at least they don't have any of my political or social opinions. And that's because I'm not now, nor have I ever been on
Facebook
Instagram
TikTok
Twitter
Or any of the other platforms whose names I can't remember.
But, GAH -- if they know everything I've ever thought or said on the Rexblog, I'm in big trouble! How bad would THAT be???!!!
GAH!
Only my third ever complete Saturday puzzle! (I started December 2024). I stuck with it through some slow spots, and enjoyed "a-ha!" moments with AIR KISS, MOONING, SIBLING RIVALRY, and guessed STOPPED ON A DIME" with no crosses. Pretty fun! I don't really like the PRIVATE JET clue -- I guess many are "fancy," but it's not really a defining feature of a private jet to me. Expensive, luxury, indulgent, yes, but I'm sure many are quite businesslike in tone.
I still don't know what WOE stands for, but Rita Ora, Lewis, Len Dawson, and Loesser were Wildly Oblivious Experiences for me.
I have learned that any clue that references a 4-letter place that is somehow fancy or upper-crust is probably referring to ETON.
Actually this skewed easy for me, but . . . I would not consider BOBSLED to be an Olympic sport, rather it's a winter Olympic sport, and that's how it is always described. I still got it pretty quickly, but then put down BINS instead of BITS, so the NW took a little time to correct. But loved the puzzle overall.
WOE = What On Earth?
They are getting easier. Much easier. Ridiculously easier. Friday and Saturday have become mid-week themeless.
The Olympics comprise both the summer games and the winter games. In common parlance, the counterpart to the Winter Olympics is the Summer Olympics - not Olympics without the seasonal qualifier. The Olympic games are not complete without both.
Thanks! I asked once before, and didn't get a response.
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