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Relative difficulty: Easy + TENREC (!?)
THEME: none
Word of the Day: TENREC (15A: Hedgehog-like mammal of Madagascar) —
A tenrec (/ˈtɛnrɛk/) is a mammal belonging to any species within the afrotherian family Tenrecidae, which is endemic to Madagascar. Tenrecs are a very diverse group, as a result of adaptive radiation, and exhibit convergent evolution, some resemble hedgehogs, shrews, opossums, rats, and mice. They occupy aquatic, arboreal, terrestrial, and fossorial environments. Some of these species, including the greater hedgehog tenrec, can be found in the Madagascar dry deciduous forests. However, the speciation rate in this group has been higher in humid forests.All tenrecs are believed to descend from a common ancestor that lived 29–37 million years ago after rafting over from Africa. The split from their closest relatives, African otter shrews, is estimated to have occurred about 47–53 million years ago. (wikipedia)
• • •
[Please enjoy this footage of men being extremely horny for cakes]
There were a few other moments that stood out enough for me to find them comment-worthy. I completely no-looked FRIENDLY REMINDER. Still haven't looked at the clue, as I type this sentence. I drove so many crosses through the answer that by the time I went to look at it, it was already about a third filled in, and those letters (which included the "NDL" and most of the back end) were enough to make FRIENDLY REMINDER obvious. Gonna look at the clue now: 36A: Gentle nudge. Sure, that seems accurate. There were two EYEs in this puzzle (RED EYE / SNAKE EYES), and while two eyes might be standard for humans and many other of God's creatures, in a grid it's un...sightly. A conspicuous dupe. Boo. Also boo to exhumed crosswordese like ELIA and ERST. Unlike yesterday's puzzle, this one didn't seem so polished around the edges. I mean, "PAH!"? I say "Bah" to that answer (I actually had "HAH" in there at first) (5D: "As if!"). Never heard of GOTCHA DAY. Do people really celebrate that anniversary? I loved my dogs Something Awful, but I have only a vague sense of when they were adopted. Time of the year, I could tell you that. Actually, my chocolate lab came from a breeder so there were probably papers, but shrug. Gabby was a total last-minute decision when my friend went to pick up her chocolate lab puppy and said "you know, there are still a couple unclaimed..." And yoink, just like that, I had a second dog. What a sweetie. Crap, where was I? Oh right, never heard of GOTCHA DAY. Not mad at it, just took a while to parse. I LOL'd at GALUMPHED, what an ungainly, ugly, but also kind of magnificent word (32A: Moved clumsily). Might be the highlight of the puzzle for me. That, and NINA SIMONE.
[Singer with the 1991 autobiography "I Put a Spell on You"]
- 1A: Go over lines, say (READ PALMS) — good clue. Fooled me, though my wrong assumption (that the word started with the prefix "RE-") ended up yielding quick dividends ("ROGER" and ENOLA, specifically) (1D: "I got you" / 2D: Sleuth Holmes).
- 26A: Film lover's haven, in brief (TMC) — there's only one "film lover's haven" on television and it's TCM (Turner Classic Movies). Still don't know what The Movie Channel is or who (in the world) makes it their "haven." Whereas TCM fans ... have you met them? They're ... avid.
- 40A: Relative of a skeleton (LUGE) — "skeleton" would've been my Word of the Day were it not for the pesky TENREC. It's just another kind of racing sled.
- 12D: Sticky-footed amphibians (TREE TOADS) — another answer that gummed things up a bit in the TENREC / CROCKER area. I wrote in TREE FROGS, which are also "Sticky-footed amphibians."
- 45D: Warmly welcome at the door (SEE IN) — reminded me of this WSJ article I read yesterday on the new prevalence of the greeting "welcome in" (used, apparently, with increasing frequency at various retail establishments, to the annoyance of people who (like me?) hate the "off-putting faux-warmth" of retailspeak) (h/t to Jesse Sheidlower for the link).
- 36D: Oldest sports franchise that has never won a championship in the "Big Four" leagues (N.F.L., N.B.A., M.L.B., N.H.L.) — used to love their helmets, back when I really cared about football (i.e. in elementary school). Got a whole set of football helmet magnets from IHOP when I was like 9 and I cannot overstate how much those magnets solidified my understanding of the league and its iconography. I can still feel those damn things. In the olden days, we didn't have "devices," so we had to play with refrigerator magnets for fun. It was that or hoop rolling. And we were happy.
Have fun and stay safe at your various "No Kings Day" demonstrations today. Here's some more NINA SIMONE, for inspiration.
See you next time.
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
ReplyDeleteEasy except for the NE. I needed Sergey and Larry for 15A TENREC, which was out of WOE territory and into WTF. It stopped progress in that corner.
Overwrites:
@Rex hAH before PAH at 5D
CheCKER before CROCKER at 16D, as if the clue were "Apt surname in a grocery store"
At first I was thinking of a math prof at 41A, so their "words" were QED. Then lEC(ture) before REC(itation?)
BETTy before BETTE at 48D
One WOE besides the aforementioned TENREC:
BBC ALBA at 53D
Recommendations
DeleteNot easy for me. I needed two cheats (TENREC, ALBA) and a lot of sweat.
ReplyDeleteSome nice clues, for READPALMS, YARD, AORTA, HIBERNATE, SNAKEEYES,
DECATHLETE.
I didn't think that GROUPDATEs were amorous.
I don't remember having seen ELIA since my early days of solving, over fifty years ago.
I guess Iceland has natural SAUNAs.
I thought the same thing about GROUPDATES
DeleteDitto. I was like group...orgy? No no, orgy by definition is a group. Uhhh group...play? Feels a little too risqué for how staid the puzzle is thus far ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
DeleteTen double-EE's! Or, to echo Thursday's puzzle, a DECTUPLE DOUBLE.
ReplyDeleteOh, one more serendipity: A rare-in-crosswords five-letter semordnilap (ENOLA).
DeleteYes, I am a crossnerd.
Lewis
DeleteIn all the years during the reign of ______ GAY clue for ENOLA. I never realized that reversed it spelled ALONE Today it took me a while to remember the answer here. but I think the new clue/ answer combo will now stick. (I know nothing about this the character except from crosswords)
BTW as with many uncommon names, the origin of ENOLA is not completely clear. The majority opinion is that it is of American indigenous origin. (Plains Indians) But it may have come from the reversal of alone! Both sources may have reinforced each other. That latter would be my guess.
Another grocery store surname that would be great in a crossword (and give us all a little chuckle, although it wouldn't fit today's puzzle): BUTT, as in Howard Edward Butt; aka HEB, the Texas-based chain.
ReplyDeleteCROCKER is a bad choice, for the reasons Rex lines out here.
Also (and unrelated to crosswords), the FALCONS have some of the nicest "throwback" uniforms in sports, but continue to wear their terrible, "Nike-fied" modern look. Fans want the classics, Atlanta! Give the people what they want!
Thanks Anthony. I always wondered what the H-E-B stood for. I spent a couple winters in South Texas and loved those stores. I agree with you 100% on those uniforms too.
DeleteSo you know how every grocery chain makes their own generic version of sodas and gives them house brands? Well, HEB has a generic Dr Pepper clone that they call Dr. B. Because on a hot summer day, nothing beats an ice-cold Dr. Butt.
DeleteI’m another who’d never heard of TENREC or BBC ALBA. My GROUP DATEs aren’t amorous but maybe I’m hanging with the wrong crowd. Today I’ll be honoring the US Army, established June 14, 1775 by the Second Continental Congress, thank you to all who serve(d).
ReplyDelete👍 🫡 ❤️
DeleteStrands today was a little "flaggy" for my taste, I was going to get a "Stars and Bars" flag and hang it upside down in protest but......
DeleteAnonymous 11:09 AM
DeleteI am a Boomer. The old vibes still make me pause about flag waving but I have come to accept that humans have a powerful attraction to it. As long as a person keeps their head, I see nothing wrong with it. The flag should not be a fascist emblem nor the military a fascist plaything. Actually the Stars & Bars was one of the Southern flags and would be an appropriate MAGA symbol.
Super nice puzzle. I loved Barbara’s work with @Lewis last year - just a comfortable but nuanced cluing voice. The READ PALMS x SKY DIVERS cross is prime example.
ReplyDeleteDIANE
Daunting grid to open - but a few gimmes here and there helped - NINA and as Rex highlights FRIENDLY REMINDER dead center went right in. Backed into TENREC and needed most of the crosses for GALUMPHED. Was looking for Stiller for the 11d pair.
The Triffids
Highly enjoyable Saturday morning solve. Today’s Stumper is by an unknown to me constructor but offers some crunchy spanning stacks.
Swan Upon LEDA
Another oversized grid. Seem to be a lot of those lately. It is rare that a single entry brings down a whole puzzle for me, but GOTCHA DAY did just that.
ReplyDeleteTENREC, on the other hand, was a gimme. Google yourself an image of a streaked tenrec and prepare to be delighted.
Thanks, they are cute!
DeleteDncncn
ReplyDeleteWhat I want in my Saturday puzzle is a riddle fest – misdirects, vagueness, unknowns, lesser-knowns, and wicked wordplay. And from this soup let there be a few – but only a few – footholds, just enough to get the ball rolling. Where a cross triggers a pop, which may trigger a couple more, and where suddenly a smallish area of the puzzle becomes a beget-fest.
ReplyDeleteBut let there also be areas of stuckness, where you have to dig deep, places you return to again and again in hopes of a revelation ping.
These are things I want on Saturday, and here they were today, bringing brain sweat, and reward. Adding newness to the fray were eight answers never seen in the Times puzzle before.
Barbara, you found that perfect Saturday line beyond a trot and short of a trudge, and I loved this – thank you!
tenrec, pah, gotchaday...HOW do they get away with this SHIT!!!
ReplyDeleteI’ll give you pah, but just because you don’t know something doesn’t make it shit. Gotcha day is a phrase I’ve heard many times, and a tenrec is an actual animal (with an unfair cross as Rex points out).
DeleteFinished by running the alphabet for that C. Yes, that one.
ReplyDeleteElsewhere, knew the answer was NINA SIMONE when Screamin’ Jay Hawkins wouldn’t fit.
I wanted Screamin Jay Hawkins there too, or at least Credence.
DeleteAlso wanted Screamin’ Jay Hawkins :)
DeleteI put in Jay Hawkins, since of course Screamin' wouldn't fit. Since the crosses didn't work, I took out his name. I knew Peggy Lee also sang this song, but obviously her name was too short.
DeleteWow, I totally assumed Crocker was a regional supermarket chain I had never heard of ... Betty Crocker didn't occur to me.
ReplyDeleteThe NE killed me. Ditto to RP with TENREC/CROCKER being nearly inscrutable, but also have never heard of the comedy duo MEARA and ANNE?? Heard of Abbot and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, etc, but never MEARA and ANNE. Finally, still don’t understand how BEEPS = OK sign. Whole section threw me.
ReplyDeleteIt is Anne Meara (Ben Stiller’s mother) of the duo Stiller & Meara
DeleteAnne Meara is half of Meara and Stiller (Jerry Stiller). I'm with you on "beep" - don't understand that one either. I think of a beep as a lot of things, but not "ok" -- "backing up" (a truck), "done" (a microwave), "wrong", etc.
DeleteI had the same problem, until I re-read the clue and realized that both answers make up half of a comedy duo. I haven’t looked it up, but I think she was Jerry Stiller’s wife. My fault for not reading that clues closely enough. Tenrec is junk-fill masquerading as cleverness, and that is the constructor’s fault. No problem (for me) with the rest, though.
DeleteAnne Meara is half of Anne Meara and Jerry Stiller. I don’t think it was long ago that we saw her in a puzzle, which is how I finally got the answer because they predate me.
DeleteWhile I knew of and love the comedy duo of Meara and Stiller, once I got "Anne" in 11D, I rushed to put "Jerry" in 8D - my silly mistake!
DeleteI thought the clue was a clever misdirection, since it could have meant one of two people (and indeed, that was also my original thought).
DeleteRP posted about Stiller and Meara when he was on his Love Boat kick. Stiller was the same character that he plays on Seinfeld. I wonder if Meara was considered for the role of George’s mother?
DeleteAnonymous 7:57 AM
DeleteStiller & Meara were a famous comedy team ( and couple)in the sixties and thus Anne Meara is a gimme for me once I got a few letters. She died ten years ago. Her and her husband Jerry Stiller’s son is Ben Stiller the well known actor. So it’s an age thing. She was a successful actress after the couple ended the comedy team but never got a role like Jerry did with Seinfeld. She was a brilliant comedian.
Got it done without a cheat or an erasure, but don't ask me how. Never heard of a TENREC and never GALUMPHED (at least no one ever told me I had). Didn't know TREETOADS (never seen or heard of one). PAH is a made-up word, I suspect. And I agree with Rex that CROCKER is poorly clued, even though I finally guessed it correctly. For once, guesswork paid off on a Saturday.
ReplyDeleteI envy those of you who can characterize a grid like this one as easy - today I feel like I missed out on an opportunity to really dig in and get my hands dirty as the longer stuff was all pretty good. I just can’t get enough traction with crosses like LEDA, ELIA, PAH (I’ve never encountered that in a grid, or in the wild), etc. Hell, I was even stumped by ENOLA, which I know only as the plane that dropped the big one in the big one (WW2).
ReplyDeleteThe highlight of the day for me was GALUMPHED, which is definitely my kind of word. It just looks and sounds goofy, and the cool thing is it describes someone who is bumbling around and looks goofy. Rumor has it that it also describes the sound made when one of those weird Star Wars characters in the bar sneezes.
"Galumph" seems to have been coined by Lewis Carroll in the poem "Jabberwocky" in THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS: "He left it dead and with its head/He went galumphing back."
Deleteyou forgot to add (FALCONS) to your 36D bullet! probably since the clue ended in a parenthetical. this clue confused me in the moment because I wasn't sure how a team could be a member of all of those leagues... but then I realized here that it means their standing / no-win percentage is like 1/200 and not 1/50. woof!
ReplyDeletewow. this puzzle took me 22 minutes longer than usual. I had to run the alphabet on so many squares. I couldn't unlock any region, SW being hardest and last.
ReplyDeletePAH, TREETOADS, GROUPDATES? What in the world ...? Who's ever heard - or said - PAH? Maybe Dr Seuss. And everyone knows it's tree frogs, not TREETOADS. Come on now. Is a date ever amorous, group or solo? No. A date may lead to amorous excursions but a date is a public event, not a private one. And when does a professor ever say REC? This was a good puzzle in most respects but whoo, was there a problem with the clueing!
ReplyDeleteREC isn’t what a professor says — it’s what a professor writes (recommendation). The shortened form of professor in the clue (prof) is what tells you that the answer will also be shortened. You’re welcome.
DeleteOOOOOHHH! I was thinking REC was short for recitation, which is usually conducted by a TA, not a prof. Recommendation makes much more sense. THANK YOU!
DeleteThank you for that explanation… Still isn’t a great clue.
DeleteThose all sucked, pah is not a thing, rec has never been used as an abbrev for letter of recommendation, tree frogs are about 10 million times more known than tree roads, group dates are not amorous. Crocker as clued was awful, tenrec is as obscure as we get for animals.
DeleteFor Anonymous: Tricky cluing on ANNE MEARA. Will Shortz intuited that solvers would assume it was a comedy team, but if you read the clue a second time, that isn't specified. BEEPS is also OK...if someone thanks you visually, for being courteous behind the wheel, you might honk your horn in reply.
ReplyDeleteMeh. I could do without tenrec. Was there a funny tenrec character in a Pixar or cartoon movie that I missed? If so, my bad; if not, it’s obscurity for the sake of obscurity and not clever. On the other hand, tenrec has helped me recognize my first-world problems as such, so maybe it was just a sleeper.
ReplyDeleteHey All !
ReplyDelete16 wider, just a FRIENDLY REMINDER.
Would 2-1=1 be a FRIENDLY REMAINDER?
Or a courteous bibliophile a FRIENDLY REBINDER?
Had DE_ATHLETE, and was stumped. Wanted the DE_ to be a separate word. What kind of ATHLETE is it? DEF? DEN? Finally clicked when trying to parse both that and GOTCHA DAY.
Thought of Wiggly for the Grocery store surname. Good ole Piggly Wiggly. Too short, though.
Got a chuckle out of clue for ASSES. I had thought ASSHOLES first. Close enough.
ONCEdaily for the Ozempic clue. Isn't that what they say in those annoying dancing/singing ads? Or is that another drug with ten thousand side effects?
EASY PEASY fun to see. SPLEEN is always a funny organ. Surprised the FALCONS have never won a Superbowl. They've been in 2. Side note, there are four NFL teams that have never been to a Superbowl, Cleveland Browns*, Detroit Lions, Houston Texans, Jacksonville Jaguars.
*The Cleveland Browns have won multiple Championships in the 1950's, however. They dominated then.
Anyway, blathering aside, a good FriPuz with the NW again the toughest spot. I think it's psychological at this point ...
Have a great Saturday!
One F
RooMonster
DarrinV
I hadn't thought of organs as funny before. But I can see it, and I agree on spleen. Pancreas, bladder, and liver seem funny too. I can't see prostate or heart bringing the house down though.
Delete@Liveprof
Delete🤣😎
I thought I was the only one annoyed by the Ozempic singing/dancing ads. I still question the wisdom and morality of marketing directly to consumers. For one thing, they are unusually long, and based on the casting, it doesn’t seem like the product works very well; not to shame anyone.
DeleteI'm here early, because a) it's No Kings Day, and we have to leave for the protest in an hour or so, and b) it's also the midst of the Boston Early Music Festival, and we are putting up two young members of a Taiwanese recorder orchestra, and I needed to have breakfast ready for them by 8. So here I am--will maybe try to come back after the protest.
ReplyDeleteOK, it's Saturday, and there is a TENREC in the grid. New to me and, unless maybe there's a lovable one in some Disney cartoon, probably to most of you. In fact, my first entry was good old reliable ELIA, from which I somehow remembered Sherlock's sister ENOLA. Not much of a misdirect, since Sherlock wouldn't fit, but I don't know how I remembered it. I guess it's a real name, not much used since the ENOLA Gay.
Most of the far-fetched clues were fun to work out, e.g. SNAKE EYES and AORTA. I thought cluing REDEUE as a verb was a step too far, however.
As for TURNT, I'll have to take that one on faith. And although SAUNA is easy enough, and they probably have some in Iceland, they're culturally Finnish, aren't they? Fortunately the answer that springs to mind, geyser, doesn't fit.
Maybe I am the only person who didn't always know this, but I was delighted and astounded to learn a few years ago that the word GALUMPHing was made up by Lewis Carroll. I knew very well that the hero of Jabberwocky "came galumphing back" but I'd always figured it was a common word in his time.
OK enough for now.
Folks probably know this, but Lewis Carroll also invented the word “chortle” in Jabberwocky (“He chortled in his joy.”).
DeleteI’m impressed jberg! I have a busy day ahead, but you make me feel almost guilty in comparison.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteAs a Finn, I'm glad someone pointed out that calling saunas Icelandic is weird. It actually made me hesitate to put in the word "sauna" for a good while. Very strange clue. I don't think I've ever seen anyone refer to saunas as being Icelandic before so I'd love to know where they got that idea from.
DeleteHad to play with refrigerator magnets made me spit out my coffee! Up hill both ways :). But alas, my recollection of refrigerator magnets were those colorful letters that helped the kids learn to read.
ReplyDeleteEasy?!? Wow. The hardest in a long time. Even when I had 1/2 of a region I still struggled to get crosses. Not. On. My. Wavelength.
ReplyDeleteAgreed!! This puzzle broke my months long streak.
DeleteVery much same. Some constructors simply have a way of writing clues that some solvers just don’t click with. It took me forever to understand the logic of 4-down. DECATHLETE is one with ten reasons not to skip a workout. But I read and re-read and re-re-read that clue as “One OF ten reasons…” not “One WITH ten reasons…”
Delete@Anonymous 11:43 AM, commenting on @Rick 9:29 AM:
DeleteSame exact problem -- with /of -- for me with DECATHLETE. Drove me BATS!
Rex's remarks today really brought home how much younger he is. We didn't have any magnets on our icebox, we had to amuse ourselves by breaking maple twigs and coming back a day later for the maple-flavored icicle that formed. (It only worked in the winter, though; in summer we had fly-swatting competitions.)
ReplyDeleteI can live with TENREC (learn something new every day) but PAH is gawdawful.
ReplyDeleteHave a daughter who grew up loving hedgehogs so I know my tenrecs and my echidnas. Cute little pincushions.
ReplyDeleteWell, I heard Pah or maybe read it.
ReplyDelete"Pah' crossed with 'gotchaday' is a crime. Both more or less made up or at best, non formal words. So dumb.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous 9:52 AM
DeleteThe Times puzzle is full of informal words these days I don’t understand why people pick out one or 2 words complain as if they are exceptions
PAH is not that common an exclamation so it is a little annoying. But I have no problem accepting words that many denigrate as “informal”. They are still words. And often very interesting. Gotcha is very much a common English expression made up of 2 words compressed together I T has been in the language for centuries. Certainly long enough for crosswords!
Yaaa! TENREC = Trainwreck for me. Also I got ENOLA and ACTIN immediately then totally stalled in the NE. Oh well, in hindsight some terrific clues so even though I crashed on the puzzle, found it fun to eventually solve for words like GALUMPHED and TREETOADS. Tiny green tree toads/frogs show up often on the outside of our cabin windows at night during the summer. And where else can you find SPLEENS and ATHLETES on the same page on a dreary Saturday oring.
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone know what REC refers to. It appears to be an abbreviation (prof is in the clue) for multiple words. I keep thinking of RECESS which of course is basically what 4 years at as state school basically is one long of.
ReplyDeleteRECommendation
DeleteRe tenrecs, allow me to recommend Williams' Ooh Odd Zoo, a set of Ogden Nash type poems, including:
ReplyDeleteDid you know that tenrecs
That look like they're made of special effects
Are so quick to startle
That when something perturbs them they fartle
Te entendí.
ReplyDeleteI let my poor attitude take over today and just knew I would eventually need to look up the hedgehog, so I did it right out of the gate and I'm sure that made everything more enjoyable. Plenty of other speed bumps, and the more I dug into this gunky thing, the worse it ended up.
Let's start with 🦖 complaining about the dupe (which the NYTXW editors have told us quite plainly they're going to be giving us on a regular basis so our weeping out here will be without end) meanwhile stays silent on the ghastly in-yo-face Ozempic clue. Jingles about chemicals pandered by Big Pharma shouldn't be normalized. And with the glitterati of the current clown car we voted into leadership, we're only at the beginning of the golden era for snake oil salesmen with long legs, short skirts, and shiny stilettos.
Where I work, the youngsters were all trained to yell "Welcome In!" at the front door and it's almost impossible to untrain that ridiculous behavior. "My pleasure!" or "No problem!" as substitute for "You're welcome" are like dupes in Rex's puzzles -- literary cockroaches you stamp at in the kitchen while the hive thrives in darkness under the sink.
Today I learned to my ignominy EASY PEASY has the same number of letters as EASY AS PIE
Other gross stuff: ELIA, HAWS, DIANE, REC, PAH, MEARA (way to double up on proper nouns with one dead comedian), a RED EYE is a *flight*-by-night, right?, WMD, TURNT, ASSES. It's an awful collection of offal.
Loved GALUMPHED, and a warm feeling about anything Icelandic. I had BETTY, for BETTE, and I liked it better cuz it's funnier.
I hope to go to Buenos Aires one day. My second favorite guitar teacher was from there. He probably played AIR GUITAR too sometimes, he just played more complicated air songs.
People: 9
Places: 3
Products: 6
Partials: 6
Foreignisms: 1
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 25 of 71 (35%)
Funnyisms: 4 🙂
Tee-Hee: SPEEDO. GROUP DATE. ASSES.
Uniclues:
1 Predict the future of a flying rat.
2 Beaming in the nude.
3 What happens in my tighty whiteys.
4 Take a role in a ground-breaking silent musical.
5 Sounds of a heart monitor after one too many dead pigs.
1 READ BAT'S PALMS (~)
2 NATURE TELEPORTS
3 STAINS HIBERNATE
4 ACT IN "AIR GUITAR"
5 PRE-DIET BEEPS (~)
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Barely scratch the scared. ETCH TIMID NUDE.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Could someone please explain how “Haws” means go left?
DeleteHaw (v): to turn to the left side
Delete@Anonymous 12:11 PM
DeleteWell, it appears it doesn't. In crosswords, it must because I filled it in like I knew it was real, and I assumed when I dug through Google just now, I'd find it came from a 16th century nautical term meaning hemming and hawing right and left as the boat rocks, but it doesn't. It's always meant the way we use it in the normal world ... stuttering and indecisiveness. So HAW meaning "left" continues to indicate the NYTXW team is too busy to make sense and their fact checker is on vacation.
Thank you! Learn something new every day…( I don’t have a horse).
Delete@Gary
DeleteHAWS, for right turns isn't nautical. Farmers use Haw and gee as commands to mules, oxen, etc when they want the animal(s) to turn right (HAW) or left (Gee).
@JC66 4:51 PM
DeleteThanks for the clarification. I should've searched for Geeing and Hawing apparently.
Easy-Medium. It felt a little on the slower side, but now I see the grid is oversized.
ReplyDeleteI don't know why I instinctively typed in TREE TOADS instead of FROGS (off of just the first T). I guess I got lucky there. Then I crossed it with TMZ, because I always get TCM/TMC/TMZ mixed up. My last square was, unsurprisingly, TENREC x CROCKER. I didn't know Betty CROCKER as a non-American, but I guessed C because I've heard of the last name CROCKER, only in The Fairly OddParents.
DECATHLETE - I got the bottom half first, and it was -TZLETE because I had ZAGS for HAWS. So I figured it was some dumb ATHLETE portmanteau. Later on I saw what the 10 was doing in the clue, duh.
READ PALMS - When I see a short, clearly misdirecting clue that mentions "lines", I just skip it until I have a lot of crosses. Way too many possible meanings.
My version of “welcome in” annoyance is when I was first referred to as a “guest” instead of “customer”.
ReplyDeleteI wanted gAH or bAH, which were my reaction to GOTC”H”ADAY to finish the puzzle.
It looks kind of cramped, but there are a lot of 8s and 9s.
I, too, wanted KROGER or WEGMAN somehow, but realized it doesn’t have to be the name of the store, called it a misdirect, and moved on. Crocker’s cookbook was my first go to for all the basics when I was learning how to cook ANYTHING after college (all parents and meal-plans before that, thanks mom!).
I’m sure there are lots of Crocker products still on shelves, but all I can picture is cake mix.
Clue for 48D could have been “singer being interviewed on NPR talking about childhood trauma while I’m working the puzzle”. (Not sure if she mentioned gambling:)
I really wanted a Z at the 28 crossing but was twice denied: ZAPS for nuke, or ZAGS for turn left didn’t pan out…
Clues took a good deal of mental shifting to get up to speed today. Having SPLEEN filtering the skeleton clue almost sent me to the ER; getting out of that mindset took Olympian effort. Ditto TENREC, etc. as many have said
ReplyDeleteA smooth and polished grid chock-full of interesting answers plus some really fiendish cluing. This extremely entertaining puzzle makes a strong case for more themeless puzzles in the NYT. When you don't have to accommodate a theme, you can -- especially if you're as talented a grid-maker as Barbara Lin -- avoid all the short junky crosswordese that clutters up so many puzzles and focus on the quality of your fill.
ReplyDeleteWhat wonderful clues for READ PALMS; DECATHLETE; HIBERNATE; STAINS; SNAKE EYES; TV SET and VET.
I found this on the hard side throughout -- and very hard in the SW where I didn't know FALCONS, LUGE as clued and CPU as clued. Couldn't remember what instrument was played in the AIR -- and STAINS baffled me because I had written in ?EINS thinking that the instrument would end in ER.
A real joy to solve. Very Saturday-worthy, but without any suffering involved.
Who still refers to a TV as a TV Set, nooooobooooody
DeleteMedium or maybe a tad easier than medium…I had to chase down a couple of typos, plus it’s a 16x15 grid.
ReplyDeletei did not know TENREC (of course) and ALBA and, HYACINTHS and GOTCHA (as clued), and how to spell GALUMPHED.
Costly erasures - me too for hAH before PAH and TCM before TMC plus erse before ALBA
Very helpful gimmies - ANNE MEARA and NINA SIMONE
Solid with plenty of sparkle, liked it.
Easy? One of the toughest Saturdays in months for me — 20 minutes over my Saturday average. I just didn’t connect at all with the constructor’s cluing style. Wanted the comedy duo answers to be two last names. Also, hatehatehate 5-down — PAH, but could be BAH, NAH, GAH. Most of it was a worthy challenge, but easy it wasn’t.
ReplyDeleteThere is always a shelf of Betty Crocker cake mix in supermarkets https://citymeatmarket.com/cdn/shop/files/81oOq7OJesL._AC_SL1500.jpg?v=1707320816&width=480
ReplyDeleteUltra-challenging for me in the upper tier, due to GOTCHADAY and TENREC, with an added unnecessary stumbling block at a misspelled ELIe. Taking a break did the trick: when I came back I understood ANNE MEARA and was able to get the rest. Sigh of relief.
ReplyDeleteThis was Carola.
DeleteJust here to confirm that GOTCHA DAY is definitely a thing, mostly for rescue dogs whose actual birthday is unknown. This past March was my ridiculous dog Charlie's tenth. He got some steak to celebrate.
ReplyDeleteThis was a total bear for me. 36 minutes. I had no idea about ENOLA holmes, and no idea about Lamb's Essays--so that L was a total Natick for me! Had to run the alphabet there at the end to get the happy music. ANNE MEARA was also a WAG for me, but I did get that one right, so TENREC fell in place through crosses. Loved the puzzle otherwise, enjoyed the 16 wide grid, filled with FRIENDLY REMINDERs. thanks! : )
ReplyDeleteUnless I’m reading the clue wrong, I don’t think FALCONS is correct. If it’s referring to the Atlanta Falcons, they were founded in 1965. The Minnesota Vikings were founded in 1960. As a long-suffering Vikings fan, I know the Vikings have never won a Super Bowl.
ReplyDeleteGood point. Nearly as I can tell, you are correct.
DeleteThe Vikings were the NFL champions of 1969, pre-Super Bowl.
DeleteAlthough Minny never won a Super Bowl, I think their NFL Championship in 1969 would count as winning a "league championship." The leagues merged the following year.
DeleteHad the same exact magnet set, though I don't remember the board being from IHOP. Got endless pleasure out of that thing. In fact, through all the years and moves, 4 of them have survived and are on my mini-fridge in my office as we speak.
ReplyDeleteTough NW. Annoyed I couldn't remember LEDA after seeing the exact same clue recently in another puzzle. GOTCHA DAY is cute.... I adopted my previous cat on the same as the Pacquiao/Mayweather fight in 2015. Her original name was Gabby, but her official name on the adoption papers is Jubjub (Jabberwocky bird). I later ended up calling her GG. Looked just like Rex's white cat (but all white cats look the exact same).
ReplyDeleteTIL: Betty CROCKER wasn't a real person. ALBA is the Scottish Gaelic name for Scotland.
Nice puzzle overall. Also, 31D is missing the closing parenthesis. "I Put a Spell on You
Interestin SatPuz-level feisty solvequest. M&A kinda galumphed along, burnin up valuable nanoseconds either tryin to decode sneaky clues or slowly get the no-knows to arise from their crossers' ashes.
ReplyDeletePuz did, as often noted here, go total beast mode with TENREC, an item that last appeared in a 1993 pre-Shortz NYTPuz. Them were 32 good years...
staff weeject pick [of only 8 choices]: PAH. Better clue: {Mah's main squeeze?} = PAH.
honrable mention to: REC, which can be expanded to "Glowin words from a prof maybe" as TEN REC.
some fave stuff: FRIENDLYREMINDER, an entry that M&A nailed with only a few letters visible, which really helped his solvequest out. Clues for: BETTE. SNAKEEYES. READPALMS. SKYDIVERS.
Thanx for the primo opportunity to suffer, Ms. Lin darlin.
Masked & Anonymo6Us
... and, now for a gotcha day extra ...
"Get the Upper Hand" - 7x7 12 min. themed runt puzzle:
**gruntz**
M&A
A hard(er) Saturday for me - but enjoyable except for GALUMPED, TENREC, PAH, GROUP DATE (I had "Cloud Nine" of all things), QED.
ReplyDeleteREAD PALMS was a great opener at 1A, good to see NINA SIMONE &
@Rex - having pets I'm surprised you didn't know "GOTCHA DAY" especially if they were adopted/rescues.
Thank you, Barbara :)
Loved grinding this one out! I am thankful that my wife, who does not do crosswords, walked by and plopped in GOTCHA DAY before I even picked up my pencil. Otherwise I might still be grinding. Some mighty fine clues in there today.
ReplyDeleteTENREC
ReplyDeletefErREt
lEmurs (which I happen to know are very common in Madagascar... from, among other things, the movie Madagascar)
Is a ferret a type of lemur? (Not even the same order, but it's not like I knew that before this puzzle) Not like TVSET off of --S-T is a gimme and it's not like T-OC... is an unreasonable pattern for a surname...
I'm just lucky that TREEfrog (at first) made lEmurs (and their lack of similarity to hedgehogs) impossible
Medium or maybe a tad easier than medium…I had to chase down a couple of typos, plus it’s a 16x15 grid.
ReplyDeletei did not know TENREC (of course) and ALBA and, HYACINTHS and GOTCHA (as clued), and how to spell GALUMPHED.
Costly erasures - me too for hAH before PAH, zags before HAWS, and TCM before TMC plus erse before ALBA
Very helpful gimmies - ANNE MEARA and NINA SIMONE
Solid with plenty of sparkle, liked it.
No one else seems to have had the brief idiocy I had at 31D. I had _INAS in the grid and actually started putting in dINA Shore, all the while trying to imagine Dina ever singing "I Put a Spell On You". (I hadn't deciphered Rex's bete noire, CROCKER, yet, so DOO_ wasn't necessarily a deal-killer.) As soon as I bowed to CROCKER (yes, Kroger's was a possibility I considered), NOOK made Nina Simone appear along with the memory of her singing that song. Much more appropriate!
ReplyDeleteThe clue for READ PALMS was nice. I was thinking acting and thought there might be READ nights so 5D could be nAH but naw, I got MEARA and SKYDIVERS and the NW was done.
GALUMPHED, a word from Jabberwocky that I love. HYACINTHS, another great word.
Thanks, Barbara Lin, for the breezy Saturday puzzle!
Solving last night, I finally decided on TENREC crossing CROCKER and snorted in disgust, thinking: I hope Rex hates this. Yay Rex!
ReplyDeleteBut for me there was an even worse area at 1 across for which I had READ -AL-S. I had HAH then BAH at 5 down, and -EARA at 8 down which could be basically any consonant. READ HALLS? READ BALLS? READ BALMS? READ HALFS? Painful.
Oh and hands up for TCM at 26 across; I don't know why the NYT always prefers TMC.
You know what they say about NINASIMONE. That GALUMPHED.
ReplyDeleteThere should be a crosswords & anagrams place called the TENREC center.
Gotta run to protest the moron/king. Very fun puzzle. Hard enough for a brain workout, but completely solveable. I appreciated the CROCKER clue. Thanks, Barbara Lin.
Most of the puzzle took 15 mins. NW took more than double that time. Could not get smuCKER out of my head for the grocery store name answer. Just seemed like it should have been right. Only broke through when I gave up on it and allowed myself to imagine other vowels before the "...CKER" and tried an "O" which gave me SPEEDO. And then the rest fell pretty quickly. Would have preferred a more even solve but fine for a Saturday. 34:40
ReplyDeleteMy wife and I do celebrate the anniversary of the days we adopted each of our pets, but have never used the term Gotcha Day. We’ve got Grendel Day, the day we adopted Grendel, Ravenpaw Day, the day we adopted Ravenpaw, Tazzy Day, the day we adopted Tazzy, etc., etc. If we ever adopt a “Tree Toad” we’ll celebrate Tree Frog Day, because we’re not in the habit of misclassifying an animal just to fit into a crossword puzzle.
ReplyDeletewho puts a TV SET on a wall? we stopped calling them TV SETs when we started putting them on walls.
ReplyDeletethe C in TENREC was easy but the N was my last entry because i couldnt figure out the duo ANNE and MEARA. TERREC made more intuitive sense, so did she work with some comedian named ARNE before stiller? in retrospect the clue does clearly refer to a single half.
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ReplyDeleteFactual Error!!! I’ve been waiting years..
ReplyDelete37 D - Lords CANNOT, by law, be MPs
Saunas are Finnish, not Icelandic
ReplyDeleteGalumph is in Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll.
ReplyDeleteOne, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
GOTCHA DAY was a gimme for me—quite popular on social media—but then I found myself doubting it when the clue for 1A, crossing it, was “I got you,” and I thought, “surly you can’t have an answer GOTCHA crossing a clue ‘got you.’” Turns out you can, and I was curious to see if Rex would call it a dupe, but he didn’t.
ReplyDeletePAH would have been less objectionable had it been clued with "Two of them follow OOM."
ReplyDeleteMuch better.
DeleteLate to the party as a granddaughter had an away playoff soccer game. The hour and a half drive took me back to going to my sons' away sporting events when they were in HS, since in NH high schools of a similar size can be wildly separated. An entertaining 4-3 match, and our side one so wll worth it.
ReplyDeleteDid today's upon returning, kind of a slow start but steadily progressed and ended of course with TENREC, which had to be right, and gives me a word for Scrabble that someone will challenge and lose, so an asset there.
Nack! Whereya been?
I enjoyed this one a lot, snazzy answers, fun misdirects, and I learned some stuff, which means it has everything I want in a Saturday. Nice work, BL. I Bet Lots of folks wish they could construct like this, and thanks for all the fun.
Nack=ELIA when you're a key or two off.
DeleteApologies if this has already been commented but Lords are not MPs. The House of Lords is completely different to the House of Commons. Lords can be MPs but they have to resign first i.e. no longer be a Lord.
ReplyDeleteThe Mariners, of which I'm a long-suffering fan, are the only MLB team never to have appeared in the World Series much less won it. But they didn't fit at 36D. And the franchise is not quite 50 years old, started in 1977. But there is a Saturday clue for a fiendish constructor to use.
ReplyDeleteI had _ _ _ CKER for the supermarket name, and couldn’t decide between SMUCKER and SNICKER…
ReplyDeleteI agree that TENREC and CROCKER was a problem area. I also complicated things because I couldn’t remember if it was DIANE or DIANa for the designer
ReplyDeleteEventually, I sorted it out through. I figured since it was Saturday, it could be a trick question and that saved a lot of time. Rex implied it was a natick. If you get the trick, Crocker is not exactly obscure, so I disagree.
Of course many people don’t know Meara but most Boomers knew her, so not part of a natick
The ALBA area took a while. but I agree with Rex that the puzzle was mostly easy ( for a Saturday) except two corners
Agree that read palms a great answer.
I wonder if an error was made by editors because technically MP could stand for a lord in the House of Lords A lord can’t be a member of the House of Commons
Maybe the didn’t understand that MP implies Commons in British usage?
That is NOT what “galumph” means. See not only “Jabberwocky” but THE HUNTING OF THE SNARK. To galumph is to gallop triumphantly. This clue is a huge insult to Carrollians.
ReplyDeleteGreat puzzle a little on the easy side for a Saturday. Today conservatives are honoring the men and women who’ve fought for our freedoms and our right to exist in the greatest nation on earth. And the left is marching to honor MS13, criminal cartels, human traffickers, rapists, killers, and anti-Americanism. Cheers.
ReplyDeleteTrumpistas are celebrating a man who has never read nor understood the constitution.
DeleteI'm going to see the massive changes that are coming because the silly orange man has seen the protests! Oh, the humanity.
DeleteTook me over an hour to finish without a cheat. Started solving in bed with tea, got a few answers, used the throne (best place to grind out a few answers), then drove to Carmel and had a nice lunch. Bathroom again when I got home, worked on it while I watched US Open golf. Might be the reason it took an hour. Finally hit the sack and finished with great sense of satisfaction. Honest puzzle worth the grind.
ReplyDeleteGuess no one is bothering with the MPs and Lords clue. But it bothers me! Is this referencing the UK parliament? If it is, then it is incorrect. MPs can never sit in the House of Lords. And for the most part vice versa.
ReplyDeleteSaw a few tenrecs playing with cats on my honeymoon to Seychelles! Excited to see them in the puzzle!
ReplyDelete