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Relative difficulty: Pretty Easy
THEME: All-In-Clue-sive — The theme answers contain circled letters, and are all clued as "Apt clue for the circled letters". The answers serve as clues for the circled letters.
Word of the Day: CHER (65D: Entertainer who doesn't sound very selfish) —nothing stood out as unknown to me, so I'm highlighting an icon for my mom, who has loved Cher her entire life.
Cher[b] (/ʃɛər/ ⓘ SHAIR; born Cheryl Sarkisian,[a] May 20, 1946) is an American singer, actress and television personality. Dubbed the "Goddess of Pop", she is known for her androgynous contralto voice, bold visual presentation and multifaceted career, while cultivating a screen persona that mirrors her public image by often portraying strong-willed and outspoken women. An influential figure in popular culture, her continual reinvention has fueled multiple comebacks over a career spanning more than six decades.
• • •
Welcome back to another Eli Weekend Day! Sunday solving on the phone is always an adventure, because the size of the grid means I almost always have a typo at the end, and finding it is much harder than usual. But even with that and my bandaged thumb, I finished under 10 minutes, so I'm calling this one easy. It's a theme that feels familiar, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Let's see what we're working with here. Theme answers:
Since these are all clued the same way, I'm going to write out the answers and the corresponding word from the circled letters.
46A is solid, if a little bland. The trouble for me is really the next three. 63A is really straining the pairing. Do pacifists renounce fists, like, in general? Do pacifisit bros not fist bump? For 84A, having to describe our location as "near the sun" is a strain. There's two rocks closer (at least that's what 90s sitcoms led me to believe). And the word "really" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in 99A, which makes it feel less satisfying. 110A is kind of ridiculous, but in a fun way. I like picturing a cat death metal band called Mouse Eradicator. So, I guess the theme is a bit of a mixed bag for me. Solid, clean, occasionally fun, but it doesn't all hold up to scrutiny. But who besides me is really scrutinizing?
- 22A: TOP RANKING ROYAL (KING)
- 29A: TOLKIEN TREE CREATURE (ENT)
- 46A: NINE TIMES OUT OF TEN (OFTEN)
- 63A: PACIFIST'S RENOUNCEMENT (FISTS)
- 84A: OUR HOME NEAR THE SUN (EARTH)
- 99A: CAST A REALLY LONG LOOK (STARE)
- 110A: MOUSE ERADICATOR (CAT)
Outkast (106A) intermission!
The fill didn't stand out to me too much, but that also means it didn't irk me too much. Sometimes that's all you can ask for. Most of the short stuff felt fine. I'll call out KEN (8D: "I'll take 'Crossword Clues' for $2,000, please, ____!") for the purely selfish reason that I auditioned for Jeopardy a couple of weeks ago. It's my 5th or 6th time through the audition process, so I'm not getting too excited yet, but maybe some good crossword blog energy will help.
 |
| Jennings, you magnificent bastard. I read your book! (I'm not associating Ken with Rommel in any way, I just thought the quote would be fun). |
As you can see from that picture, I also can relate to 14A: Unlocked (BALD). The only 2 answers I marked as "Boo" in my notes are MADE PAR (47D: Did as expected on the links) and UNSHUT (104A: Ajar, say). Made Par is probably fine, I just hear "shot par" way more frequently. And I have a bit of a golf aversion these days, but that's a me problem. Unshut just feels off. I also noticed that the clue for APE (45A: Goon) is duped in the clue for EGAN (70D: Jennifer who wrote "A Visit From the Goon Squad"). I'm not the most anti-dupe advocate in Crossworld, but there's a million ways to clue "Ape" and this could have been avoided.
On a Sunday, I feel like this was all acceptable. Not necessarily ideal, but acceptable. I guess you could say the puzzle "made par." Nope, still don't like it. The puzzle shot par.
Stray Thoughts and Simpsons GIFs:
Signed, Eli Selzer, False Dauphin of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
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Stray Thoughts and Simpsons GIFs:
- 113D: Pi follower (RHO) — When I was memorizing the Greek alphabet, this pairing was always "pyro" in my head. And since I was a nerd growing up in the 90s, I would picture this:
- 58A: Corp. worker concerned with employee development (HR REP) — This has not always been my experience in corporate America. Many HR departments seem far more concerned with protecting the company & CEO at all costs.
- 70D: Jennifer who wrote "A Visit From the Goon Squad" (EGAN) — Our previous dog Maeve would go through phases of wildly excited behavior that we called "goonies." That eventually evolved into saying we were getting a visit from the Goon Squad. I'm looking forward to what inside jokes will evolve with Huckleberry (see yesterday's post).
- 103D: Video game brother (LUIGI) - Someone posted this GIF on my timeline once, and now it forever peers into my soul:
- 100D: Patty or Selma, to Bart and Lisa (AUNT) — The puzzle decided to do my job for me today.
That's all from me for now. Enjoy your Sunday!
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
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- Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)
Don’t seem to be enjoying the puzzles lately and think it might be because I’ve begun doing them at night instead of with my morning coffee. I mean I’m not really at the top of my game at 11:30 pm, especially after a full day on my feet cleaning up after my son’s rampage with a chain saw*. Then again, it might be the puzzles’ fault. Take this one. There’s nothing wrong with it, really. The themers are pretty solid but they’re hidden-word-in-a-phrase themers. They all do their job well enough but they don’t really sparkle. Not true, actually, NINETIMESOUTOFTEN had a nice ring to it and OURHOMENEARTHESUN sounds oddly poetic, like the title of a book I was supposed to read in high school. The entry that tipped me off to the theme was the Ent/Tolkien one but I’m not about to award it any sparkly points cuz I’m just not a fan of fantasy lit.
ReplyDeleteWhat was not so poetic was 104A UNSHUT. Don’t leave the door UNSHUT on your way out. Terrible.
Let me just give a shout out to the humble POT PIE (75D & A). I know they are not the same as cottage or shepherd’s pies, but they are close enough that I call them all by the same name. We order a whole lamb every year from a local farmer friend and grind up the lesser cuts and spend a day in the kitchen making these delicious pies to freeze in single serving ramekins. We improvise a bit - I don’t know that I have ever seen an actual recipe, this is just something you *know* how to make from your childhood - and use whatever veggies we have available (onions, corn, peas, and finely diced carrots are the recurring stars but green beans sometimes find their way in) and top each one with a mashed potato “crust”. The crust only becomes crusty when you finish it under the broiler.. Whenever my wife is out of town I live on these things.
@Eli. We call those canine outbursts zoomies and they are always so fun!
I was about to quit for the night but mu Female Vocalists playlist just brought up Nina Simone’s fabulous rendition of “My Baby Just Cares for Me” and so, even if I have nothing else to say about this puzzle, I have to stay and listen to this. I know Rex includes clips of her music quite often and some of you might not find her exactly to your tastes and get tired of her but I never will. She was f***ing brilliant. A national treasure.
* No, he’s not from Texas and he doesn’t wear a mask, nor does he head up any government cost-cutting programs but he is a lot younger than me and loves to wield power tools. So, knowing that I wanted to remove a number of rogue alders he decided to have a go. Mass destruction and much mess which I have to sort, transport to the back of the farm in order to shred and chip in order to turn it all into garden soil through a low level sort of agronomic alchemy called composting. He spends one day with the chainsaw and I need to spend the next four days feeding the chipper. Ask me which is more fun.
ReplyDeleteI agree with @Eli: Easy, and Acceptable. No real problems solving while watching TV news. My one major overwrite was DoPE before DUPE at 36D. That was so solid I ignored the fact that GoTS didn't fit the 40A clue. And that was why no happy music the first time through.
I’m not a fan of “clues as answers”-type themes, and this one literally spells out that the themers are supposed to be clues. I agree with Eli on the clunky ones.
ReplyDeleteThat GIF is a meme known as the LUIGI DEATH STARE (15). I could consider using it as a grid-spanning seed entry in one of my own crosswords.
If I wanted to do a cryptic I would do the cryptic.
ReplyDeleteThe Menzingers
Agree with Eli on UNHIT and HR REP. Thought Unlocked was one of the highlights.
Sundays are getting rougher and rougher by the week.
Penny laid her head down in the ROSES
Well, after I filled in a theme answer for the first time, my jaw happily dropped at seeing what was going on, and I thought, “Oh. VERY clever. This is going to be fun!” And it was.
ReplyDeleteAnswer as clue. Answer in answer. Sweet wordplay!
Sweetened even more by some lovely serendipities. Rhyming pairs COCO / POPO and HUGO / TOGO. The PuzzPair© of MANTRA and OMS.
Then the inspiring backstory. Constructor accidentally falls upon a theme, spends weeks coming up with a set of theme answers – through brainwork alone, rather than computer coding, and while I have nothing against using coding to find theme answers, I feel an inner fist pump when I learn that it was all done manually, as it were.
Then, constructor continues the brain-only work, spending SIX MONTHS to come up with the perfect clue to use on all the theme answers. Such patience and persistence! As I said, inspiring.
For me, a feel-good Sunday, for which I’m eminently grateful. Thank you, Mike!
“Very clever” is generous. Closer to banal IMO.
DeleteToday's puzzle:
ReplyDeleteTHE MElding of clue and answer.
Agree in the general okay-ness of the puzzle. Only a few problems for me (I did not know the slang “fuzz” or POPO, so I had no idea what that meant when the letters came in—had to google it later).
ReplyDeleteI know this is not technically a dupe since they’re entirely different words and spelled differently, but something about seeing crosswordese EERIE and EIRE in the same puzzle feels wrong, along with ETAS and ETS. But yeah, I get that you gotta get those e-words in there. Along with ELAN ECON EGAD ELSE—it really ran the e-section of the crosswordese dictionary, didn’t it?
COPS instead of POPO for "fuzz" slowed me down.
DeleteIs the staff symbol for violinists really the C clef? I thought it was the G.
ReplyDeleteBut what do I know? I gave up on piano in the 7th grade and don’t play ANY instrument now. 😆
Violinists use G-clef, violists use C-clef
DeleteOof, this is a genuine error: the C clef is used for VIOLA; it's even also called the Viola Clef. Violins indeed use a G clef, commonly known as the treble clef.
DeleteThe clue says nothing about violins. The clue is "staff symbol for violists"
DeleteViolists, not violinists.
DeleteI liked this a lot. Thought it was very clever, and it had to be difficult to create. My two favorites:
ReplyDelete- NINETIMESOUTOFTEN
- OURHOMENEARTHESUN
Not sure why some thought these were clunky.
AGUA fresca reminded me of Fresca, the grapefruit-flavored soft drink. I found this at the Brewster General Store on Cape Cod a couple of weeks ago. I don't go out of my way to purchase this but had to have this treat. LOVE Fresca!
@Lewis: You're always so positive when the write-up can be (often) negative. Appreciate your appreciation!
Incredibly easy without being particularly fun. A "shrug emoji" of a Sunday puzzle.
ReplyDeleteNot deep or difficult, but kinda fun to suss out the long themers just from the circles and down crosses. Agree with Eli about clunky theme clues.
ReplyDeleteI don't think it's a public service for OT to boast about his 10 mins completion time. I come here to feel good about finally completing the xword in an hour. Not to be humiliated. Seriously if I had list of the answers beside me I couldn't enter it into my phone in ten minutes. Show a little tenderness!
ReplyDeleteI was thrilled with my 29:21 solve time and that was with looking up a couple things! Rex & his buds are a whole different league. I think serious puzzlers just have different brains (and probably a longer history of doing the puzzles every day) than most of the rest of us. As long as I’m having fun and learning things, I’m happy!
DeleteYou’re reading a crossword blog; the writer (and many readers) *should* be faster than you. Do you go to concerts and complain the musicians are too good?
DeleteWhen I noticed that we were going to have to rely on the circles as an integral part of the solving experience, I was concerned that we might be in for a long day. Fortunately, it played like a Wednesday, difficulty wise (to me, that is a positive) and the theme “clues” were straightforward and came together pretty easily - although it did take me a while to recognize ERADICATOR (I blame theme fatigue and the fact that it’s a big word).
ReplyDeleteI had CIRRa instead of CIRRI and thus misspelled PACIFIST, which took me forever to track down.
I know @Nancy is even less of a fan of the circles than I am - I wonder how she is going to view this grid - I suspect it might be on the easy side for her tastes, but she may be in the mood for something easy-breezy and willing to overlook the circles.
Oh and I'm so so sorry it wasn't faster. Your poor bandaged thumb.
ReplyDelete13:40 for me. Get comfortable with the fact that others are better than you at this particular thing.
DeleteMADE PAR for expected? Not for me, nor for 98-99% of golfers. For me, that answer should be MADE DOUBLE PAR.
ReplyDeleteAgree completely with Eli on HR REP. The last one that was actually concerned with employee development (other than their own) died following a stay in the Cincinnati Zoo in 1993.
I really try to like puzzles - to find the Lewis in me - but this was just awful. The only consolation was thinking about the savaging Rex would give the puzzle, but of course he's not here.
So if you didn't get it from the title of the puzzle the first KING thing made everything clear, and then it was just finding what the circled letters were going to be and how they became the answer. I for one found this to be a nice voyage of discovery. The FISTS one was pretty clunky and I wondered what kind of a word it was going to fit into, but then there was PACIFISTS. Pretty neat.
ReplyDeleteNo real no-knows today except for RON and RITA. Pop shortcomings again.
I did feel young and hip by knowing POPO and OUTKAST, but that's more from xwords than actually usage on my part.
Most trouble in the SW , possibly because of the execrable UNSHUT but also took forever to see HINTHINT, which is a fine entry.
Also today we get an HRREP and an ITPRO, neither of which were figures in my employment, but at least I know of them.
I had a good time with your Sunday offering, MH. Not Much Harder than a Monday-level puzz, and that's OK. Thanks for all the fun.
A painful slog.
ReplyDelete¡Dios mío, Louise! La cosa es que no podrías estar más equivocada... no sabes lo que te pierdes... si me entiendes.
ReplyDeleteI had a delightful time filling this out. Many Sundays feel like a SLOG, but with so much need to rely on crosses throughout the solve, the little stuff was important.
I like POT PIE. I think if you're Irish it's in your DNA. Our local pub here does one with green chile in it and it's worth fighting Protestants for.
[Unlocked?] for BALD is epic. [Ax handlers] is also good, as is [Half and half].
Um, actually, ICE SKATES really really scratch the surface. There's a whole machine on wheels to deal with the mayhem they cause.
People: 11
Places: 3
Products: 9
Partials: 15
Foreignisms: 11
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 49 of 140 (35%)
Funnyisms: 6 😐
Tee-Hee: GOON.
Uniclues:
1 Who your daughter dates.
2 Young man whacked it good.
1 APE NINE TIMES OUT OF TEN
2 TYKE MADE RARE PAR (~)
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Mellifluous morass. LYRICAL WEB.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Considering the overall depth of skating ice compared to the actual depth of skate scratches I thought "barely scratching the surface" was pretty accurate! Granted, I pictured recreational or delicate figure skating scratches. I do believe that hockey players (and maybe speed skaters?) tend to leave deeper ruts in the ice, but that clue was approved by this Canadian!
DeleteShocking 75% reduction in Mario Bros. related squares compared to yesterday. What’s next? No Mario Bros. answers at all?
ReplyDeleteEgad!
DeleteHey All !
ReplyDeletePretty neat theme idea. The weakest two for me were EARTH and STARE.
Got your IT PRO and HR REP for the corporate types out there.
Funny, at first seeing ENT, the ole brain went to the Ear, Nose, Throat Doctor first before TOLKIEN. Weird, as how the TREE CREATURE should be front and center after doing so many puzs with ENT as clued.
Did like the puz, wasn't as quick as Eli, 10 minutes on a phone! With a bandaged thumb!
While trying to avoid sloppy kisses from Huckleberry! After taking him for a walk while solving! In the rain! Uphill! My solve was quick fore, 30 minutes.
Not completely BALD here. My front (top of head 😁) hair is still clinging on! Not yet connected to the giant BALD spot on the back of the head. Why does hair do that? Remaining is mostly gray.
Welp, gotta run. Have a great Sunday!
Four F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Easy for a Sunday, even though I needed an alphabet run for the COCO/CLEF cross. I also had COPS for "fuzz," at first, and I didn't understand POPO (even though I got it from the crosses).
ReplyDeleteEnjoyed the puzzle, with one loud objection...it isn't normal or expected to shoot PAR, unless you're a pro or top-rated amateur golfer. I'm sure others will join me in that argument, which has been advanced previously.
The rare occasion where I actually liked a puzzle with tiny little circles.
ReplyDeleteI thought this was pretty clever and pretty enjoyable. I liked that absolutely no help was provided for the theme answers and that filling in a fair number of crosses was essential to getting them. I also like the fact that it seems highly unlikely that this was done with the aid of a computer program -- I sort of feel that the constructor had to dream these up out of his own head.
Of course, with my complete ignorance of computer programming, I could always be wrong.
What keeps this from being the highly compelling solving experience that last Sunday's was is that it was so easy in the surrounding fill. I wasn't stymied anywhere -- and at no point can I say I was truly "puzzled". I wasn't bored either, but I was easily able to put it down yesterday and leave some solving for today. I didn't expect it to take long, and it didn't.
Really did not enjoy the solving experience created by this theme today, I was looking forward to hopefully seeing Rex tear it apart! So many long theme answers with nothing to go on at all and having to wait for so many crosses to fill in the circled letters before being able to even look at the marquee answers... Just really unpleasant and choppy to solve, for me. TOLKIENTREECREATURE was the first to fall and I did enjoy that, but the smile did not redeem the overall experience. UNSHUT deserves a hearty round of boos.
ReplyDeleteOne thing for sure, no one was plonking in themers with no crosses today.
ReplyDeleteFor those who incessantly decry dupes as being TACHy, check out 36D. I think it's a DUPE!
We've now had an uncanny progression from EERIEPA to ERIE to EERIE. Perhaps tomorrow we'll have a reference to creatures with large numbers of hearing organs being EARY.
I understand that in the sequel to COCO, the POPO go to TOGO with HUGO in slo-mo.
Are French ocean-view building sites MERLOTS?
I like the theme. If you read the "clues" as if they were really clues alongside the puzzle and the circled answers as if they were really just short answers to the clues, I think 63A FISTS is the only one that simply could not be believed. So, I'd say they were OFTEN good. Thanks, Mike Hobin.
Liked this one and found it relatively easy but nowhere near as easy as Eli did. The circles actually played a role in the solving so made a real difference. Hand up for having cOPs before POPO—haven’t seen that in a puzzle for a long time. Liked POTPIE but had to figure out which was the across and which was the down. BALD for unlocked? Was great. UNSHUT for ajar not so much. FIST buried in PACIFIST is super.
ReplyDeleteFor me, this puzzle has big "What you can do to avoid starving at the beach" energy.
ReplyDeleteEat a SANDwich....
Popo??
ReplyDeleteLuigi for president!
ReplyDeleteEasy and enjoyable. I thought the theme was different, but in a good way (other Midwesterners will understand what I mean). The early appearance of KING gave the game away, and for the next one, having TOLKI in place from crosses made it pretty evident that an ENT was going to come next. The others, though, were harder for me, and fun to puzzle out. Loved the MOUSE ERADICATOR. One do-over: PACIFISTS RENOUNCE them.
ReplyDeleteThemers nice, otherwise meh in between.
ReplyDeleteGood, mindless puzzle to solve at lake this AM with just enough to keep me going. Beautiful summer day here
Nine times out of ten doesn’t necessarily mean often. It means ‘relatively’ often.
ReplyDeleteYep, pretty easy. No real problems with this one. My only “dilemmas” were IMAM vs. Emir at 1a and type vs. SORT at 107d.
ReplyDeleteClever idea, liked it.