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Sing like Ella Fitzgerald / TUES 6-24-25 / Ouzo flavoring / Regular at the Met, maybe / "Yadda, yadda, yadda"
Tuesday, June 24, 2025
Hi, everyone! It’s Clare for the last Tuesday in June. Hope everyone is staying cool in the middle of this crazy heat wave — D.C. is currently horribly hot and humid. I’m writing this after attending an outdoor concert where the temperature was 90-plus degrees (the concert was amazing but ended a few songs early because of the extreme heat), and I’m now enjoying the AC in my apartment… In more important news, this month, the rest of the BTS members returned from their military service, so get ready to hear a lot more about them in future write-ups:)
Anywho, onto the puzzle…
Relative difficulty: Medium (if you're not solving the crossword at a concert)
THEME: PARAS (54D: Law firm aides, informally … or a hint to 17-, 26-. 48- and 62-Across) — Each theme answer is a “pair o’” something and when combined with “para” forms another word
Theme answers:
- DOCKS DOCKS (17A: A couple of places to secure boats ... or a logical contradiction?) [Paradox]
- DICE DICE (26A: A couple of sets of game cubes ... or heaven?) [Paradise]
- LIES LIES (48A: A couple of fibs ... or incapacitate?) [Paralyze]
- FRAYS FRAYS (62A: A couple of melees ... or put into new, simpler words without changing the meaning?) [Paraphrase]
"Smells Like Teen Spirit" is a song by the American rock band Nirvana. It is the opening track and lead single from the band's second album, Nevermind (1991), released on DGC Records. Having sold over 13 million units worldwide, it is one of the best-selling songs of all time. The success propelled Nevermind to the top of several albums charts and is often marked as the point when grunge entered the mainstream. It was Nirvana's biggest hit, charting high on music industry charts around the world in 1991 and 1992, and was number one on the charts in Belgium, France, New Zealand and Spain. (Wiki)
• • •
The theme was quite inventive. It took me a while to understand, but once I did, I really appreciated it. Though, the theme answers looked quite strange on their own, without reference to the revealer (DOCKSDOCKS, LIESLIES, etc.). The repetition really helped with the solve after you got the first couple, but the theme itself did skew a bit later in the week for me. I enjoyed the multiple layers to each clue and answer and how it all came together. But — and this is a huge one — I will go to the ends of the Earth to shout from the rooftop that PARAS (54D) is not a short form for “paralegals.” I don’t care what Google or Wikipedia or anyone else may say (though I think they mostly agree with me anyway). It’s just not a common way to refer to that profession. I work in the legal field and work with a lot of paralegals, and I’ve never once heard someone be called a PARA (54D), let alone heard that word around the office. Sorry, that soured me some, apparently! Otherwise, the puzzle felt like a pretty standard Tuesday solve. There were some fun words in there — SCOFF (43D: React to a ridiculous suggestion, maybe), BUNGLE (19A: Muff), DRAM (67A: 1/8 fluid ounce), and SCRUM (23D: Rugby pile), to name a few. If you say each of those words out loud, they just have a certain panache (another favorite word) to them. APOGEE (4D: Pinnacle) is also a good word. And then the answer YEA (63D: Word said in passing?) was clever.
Overall, the fill was fine but nothing much to write home about. The long answers outside the theme were okay. OPERA FAN (56A: Regular at the Met, maybe), I can see. SEATBELT (21A:
Thing to be clicked in a "Click It or Ticket" campaign) wasn’t horrible. MINISTERS (35D: Preachers) was meh. NANNY CAMS (3D: Surveillance systems installed by parents) was probably my favorite of the long answers other than the themes, though they’re rather creepy (unless you put one in your room when you go to a concert to keep an eye on your puppy to see if you need to ask your roommate to look in on her).
22A: 1917, 1984, 2001 and others with YEARS seems really basic. Having RPMS (61D: Tachometers measure them, in brief) plural is redundant, as the R stands for “revolutions.” And I don’t have any idea if it’s proper, but DEWS (37D: Morning condensations) as a plural also looks weird, and I’m not sure I’ve seen it written like that before. I struggled a bit with ASSAI (41D:
Very, in music) and GELID (33D: Very cold), particularly with them so close together in the puzzle.
Misc.:
Misc.:
- With PACER (10D: Indiana basketballer), all I feel is sadness for the team and Tyrese Haliburton and his stupid Achilles tendon. Poor guy. (For those of you who didn’t watch the NBA Finals — he led his team to the seventh game of the Finals, and into the lead, despite a serious calf injury, then tore a tendon.) Having that answer in the puzzle next to ANKLE (11D: Body part that may be twisted), clued as something that can be twisted, felt ominous.
- My puppy has an ID TAG (15D: Canine collar attachment) that, on one side, says “Red” and has my phone number. On the other side, it says “Oh f*** I’m lost. Call my mama.”
- MANO a MANO (16A: (how two foes confront each other) is an interesting one to me because many people seem to think mano a mano means man to man, but it means hand to hand.
- LEO (6D: Actor DiCaprio, in the tabloids) doesn’t make me think of Leonardo DiCaprio but rather my cousin’s son who’s only five and is trilingual. (My cousin is American, her husband is Italian, and they live in Spain, so little Leo speaks three languages quite well). I feel inadequate.
- Right now, instead of APRIL (51D: T.S. Eliot's (and the I.R.S.'s) "cruellest month"), June is feeling like the cruelest month because of this heat!
Signed, Clare Carroll (I’m signing off now, so I guess that makes me a PARAGON)
P.S. I really did solve the puzzle at the concert—
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126 comments:
I agree with you regarding PARAS. I worked at a major law firm for nearly a decade, where I worked with paralegals on a daily basis. And yet the only place I have ever encountered the term PARAS is in a crossword puzzle.
Easy, although I didn’t get the theme until after I’d finished.
No costly erasures but I did not know ASSAI.
Reasonably smooth grid, cute theme nicely done, liked it.
@okanaganer from yesterday - apparently the TV show version of Friday Night Lights is no longer on Netflix. We watched it a few years ago.
Alright, get out... I was with you until the Paragon pun.. /s
1. A couple of bamboo twigs...or jumps out of a plane.
2. A couple of aiming devices...or ones who eat their hosts.
3. A couple of Scottish heathlands...or lovers
(answers below)
A good name for Musk's Artificial Intelligence venture would be ASSAI.
I think there are a few missing items in the clue for YEARS, but I won't bore you by listing them all.
If MINISTERS are good, imagine how great MaxISTERS would be.
Really enjoyable debut puzzle. Thanks and congrats, Ingrid Steffensen.
1. SHOOTSHOOT
2. SIGHTSIGHT
3. MOORMOOR
Did not understand the theme until reading the blog.
Got Egs three quickly once I knew the scheme.
Qiute and easy and enjoyable puzzle except for not getting the theme.
Clare, "paragon LOL
Apobangpo! I came here for an explanation of the themer, but stayed for the dominATE photo. π
Although I was born and raised on Long Island, I have always been pleased to find that the people I encounter in my years of flyover exile do not discern a New York accent. That is, until I talk about my "parents" and blow my cover. "Your what?!"
It is impossible for me to imagine any of these themers pronounced like "pair." New Yorkers do not and will never talk like that. Yuck. Mary was merry when her parents got married.
I’m struggling to find the best time of day to do the puzzle. Mornings I’m groggy and don’t really get going until about 9 or 9:30 (post newspaper, post toast and coffee). That’s the way it’s been since I retired from newspaper work about 15 years ago and decided I no longer wanted to be perky and productive first thing in the a.m. Afternoons are the best. I’ve got some chores/errands done and I’m awake and somewhat perceptive. But it’s much too late by then to post comments. Everyone else will have checked out and whatever absolute gem of a comment I make will not be read. Lately I have been solving late in the evening, a compromise that takes advantage of the fact that I’m not ready to go to sleep and might be able to post early enough to enlighten, or at least entertain, a few readers here. The trouble with this last scenario is that it only really works I you’ve had a relatively easy day. All of which is a long, long lead in to the fact that I’ve had a tough day. I know, boo hoo.
Also boo hoo (yeah, go ahead) to me cuz I solved it downs-only, as is my usual Tuesday practice. But it was kind of fun. Goofy, silly fun. Only thing that really brought me to a screeching halt was 41D ASSAI. I know a few musical terms - largo, lento, crescendo, glissando (is that a thing?) and a couple of kinds of clefs - but I swear I’ve never seen ASSAI in my life. And I had no crosses to help me out. Is that a chorus of taunting boo hoos I hear?
Fave themer? 26A DICEDICE because when I was a kid our family used to go on these Odyssean road trips across western Canada to visit relatives and I would often see a sign above a farm gate or a motel or a campground entrance that showed two black and white dotted cubes and the words “Pair o’ dice”. At first I thought this was the epitome of wit. After a few more vacations I found myself just spitefully counting the miles from one instance to the next. Thus is born cynicism.
I still don’t understand the “word said in passing” // YEA clue/answer? Can anyone help me?
I'm English so the bit when it was supposed to sound like 'pair o' was completely lost on me so I didn't grasp the theme even at the very end. Nice to have the write-up tell me what I missed.
Moors are English. "A couple of Scottish heathlands" would work better for "...or, whence a Scot might defend their castle".
I must disagree with @Cakes: I liked the paragon pun.
How about one more?
A couple of piscine appendages ... or candle components
FINSFINS
Easy, even for a Tuesday. No overwrites and the only WOE was ASSAI. @egsforbreakfast, I love the ASSAI pun too!
I found it easier than Clare did. Didn't recognize the "para-pair of" pun until I was almost finished, but the crosses mandated the fill. Clever idea, and well executed.
TWENTY CENTS...or, PARADIGMS (sorry, Mr. Egs)
For Anonymous: Think of passing a bill in Congress (YEA, NAY).
In the San Francisco schools, teacher aides were technically called paraprofessionals but were usually referred to as paras.
I don't recall having seen ASSAI before. Is it commonly used?
ASSAI is ridiculous for a Tuesday. I wanted mEALS on wheels at first, but once GELID became obvious DEALS fell right in there. Are "para" and "pair o'" supposed to be pronounced the same? They're not. The first "a" in "para" is pronounced like the "a" in "have"; "pair" rhymes with "pear" and "air". I enjoyed it regardless.
Perhaps "rephrase"? (not paraphrase)
When legislators vote for passing a bill they vote "yea."
You vote YEA to pass a motion.
‘Yea’ votes pass legislation or a motion.
Enjoyed it—the theme had some extra bite for a Tuesday, but since the themers themselves lent a bunch of extra letters it made it easy to fill in. Like many others, I solved first and figured out the theme later, which made it an experience of two puzzles in one.
My only mistake in the end was gRAM for DRAM, which I vaguely knew was wrong when I entered it but failed to listen to the voice in the back of my mind. Not familiar with LLOYDS, but LLOYgS should have also struck me as implausible.
Made me chuckle. :)
Passing a bill-yea
PARAGON but not forgotten.
¡Oye! ¿CuΓ‘l es la gran idea?
You can ignore the second half of the theme clues, and the revealer didn't make any sense to me. Add in 37% gunk and, alas, this one wasn't ready for the big stage.
Thank you Clare for clarifying how the PARAS work, and the BTS news.
I had MINIS- in place before I reached the [Preachers] clue and I was certain the rest of the word would be MINISKIRT, but then I had to try to imagine how miniskirts go about preaching. Perhaps there's a Church of the Perfect Knees? Its central tenet is Thou Shalt Sashay. Its holy book is Summertime. We pray for those who helplessly LEER AT ANKLES. Our punny patron saint is a baby cow, ya know, a calf. Our holy dinners include a turkey leg or chicken thigh.
Our favorite anti-semite TS Eliot appears for the zillionth time this year. Maybe the NYTXW team is reaching for a quota?
I like the verb BUNGLE. I don't like the noun DEWS
If you didn't make it to the end of the comments yesterday, you should know the tragedy of youngsters not knowing canning involves jars and occasionally pickles continued unabated and with ever greater ferocity right to the bottom. This blog is often a museum of misplaced righteous indignation, and dill pickles created an hilarious exhibit. I'm going to recommend we at the Church of the Perfect Knee do quarterly outreach to youngsters who've never learned canning and teach them Ball jars aren't just humorous ale glasses.
People: 11 {how is this a good idea?}
Places: 0
Products: 4
Partials: 10 {no, just no}
Foreignisms: 4
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 29 of 78 (37%)
Funnyisms: 1 π€¨
Uniclues:
1 How to meet a windshield.
2 Summary of the daily news.
3 One burning the village down all thanks to the diva's aria.
4 Inside a teddy bear.
5 Prepares for carboloading.
6 What I do after finishing the crossword.
1 BUNGLE SEATBELT
2 LIES! LIES! ETC.
3 OPERA FAN RIOTER
4 NANNYCAMS REALM
5 LADES TOAST
6 ORDER IN SCOFF
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Good place for a long nap. HEARSE BACKROOM.
¯\_(γ)_/¯
If you're "passing" a bill in the legislature, you say "yea" (rather than "nay")...
As a child, I liked to read mystery novels by Ellery Queen, handed down to me by my father. Anyway, in one book, the murder victim’s last words were "paradise", or so thought Ellery (and the reader). Of course, the mystery was solved when Queen realized the victim said, "pair of dice". It had something to do with a casino and a secret message or something…it was 60 years ago, I don’t remember.
Lovely side road moment #1:
Realizing that the theme is even cleverer than simply the PARA angle, because homophones are involved – DOCKS represents “dox”, FRAYS represents “phrase”, etc. Props to Ingrid on this!
Lovely side road moment #2:
Finding alternative theme answers (Hi, @egs!): SIGHTSSIGHTS, DIMESDIMES, LACKSLACKS, TROUPESTROUPES, BULLSBULLS, SALESSALES, SHOOTSSHOOTS.
Beauty in the box moments:
SCRUM, GELID, BUNGLE, SCOFF.
Remarkable moment:
I’m in the midst of writing lyrics to a song. One of the lines includes the word BUNGLE, and I’ve been unsure if it’s the best choice. Then here it pops up in the grid – for the first time in 64 years in a Times puzzle! – filling me with the feeling that the universe is applauding my choice.
Add fun moments, and this turns out to be a momentous puzzle. Thank you, Ingrid, congratulations on your debut, and I’m eager to see what you come up with next!
In public education, classroom paraprofessionals are referred to as paras.
I was done in by GELID (I don’t remember ever hearing that word before). I didn’t get much help from the crosses as I don’t know much about Nirvana, and there are probably dozens of things that rhyme with wheels - I chose meals. Oh, well, better to have loved and lost . . .
Had mEALS before DEALS which left GELIm which looked wrong, but not much more wrong than GELID
I sing with several groups and play piano. I don't recall ever seeing ASSAI. It's always MOLTO
See Thursday, July 13th 2023 (https://rexwordpuzzle.blogspot.com/2023/07/1995-coolio-song-featured-in-film.html) for a much better version of this theme. Also notice how the "pairs" in the Thursday puzzle are made up of two SINGULAR things, so the "pair o' dice" is [DIE][DIE], and so on.
I enjoyed the clever theme and didn’t even notice the gunk until I read Gary’s gunkometer. I’m also enjoying my fellow puzzlers’ contributions of other themers. I came up with one, but when I tried to write the clue, I came to appreciate Ingrid’s work even more: in her themers, the “para” word is singular and ends with an “s” sound. So far, I don’t think any of us have come up with an example that meets that criterion. Any takers?
Another problematic plural is DEWS, about which I am not wild. I thought I remembered Shakespeare using “dews” as a verb, and he does. But he uses the infinitive when, in A Midsummer’s Night Dream, a fairy sings:
And I serve the fairy queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green.
Years ago I wrote incidental music for a local production of that play, including that fairy’s song, “Over Hill, over Dale.” The music was not too fast, not too slow. I suppose it was Moderato ASSAI.
Agreed!!
There are plenty instances of assai such as allegro assai.
Cute theme but unoriginal fill.
I’m a lawyer at a big firm. I’ve heard the litigators use the term “para” before. Outside of litigation, no one uses it.
I don't know, I've been hearing this kind of pun since (grade school? middle school?) and as I whooshed down the left coast I ran into DICEDICE and the other themers became obvious, especially given the two-part clues. Which is a long way of saying that this was a very, very easy Tuesday. The only slightly unfamiliar answer was ASSAI, and I'm with @Mike Herlihy as one who has been involved with music for a very long time and yet have never seen it. Learn something every day.
Pleasant enough Tuesdecito, IS, and maybe I'm alone in thinking I've Seen these before. Thanks for a fair amount of fun.
Hey All !
Unsure how to feel about this puz. As a non-puz-published/accepted constructor, it seems that a double-word Theme like this is elementary and shouldn't have made the grade, but as a solver, it was neat to try to figure out the doubled-up meaning. (Even though the ole brain wouldn't let me change LIES to LYZE, e.g., I needed Clare to spell it out.)
I see a lot of good Uniclues for @Gary in here.
I'm sure this is already done, but ...
20 Cents ... or a typical example?
DIMEDIME
TuesPuz, kinda sums it up. Liked the Double-Double F's!
Have a great Tuesday!
Five F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
The word play doesn't work if you are from the NYC area. We don't pronounce the first syllable of the theme answers to rhyme with pair. Ironic since that's where this paper is published.
I would have been happier with something cluing a PARAgraph. “Short units of prose?” I’m an old attorney and have never heard PARAS to refer to my colleagues.
Finally solved a puzzled downs only! Pretty straightforward today.
Couldn't agree more! And don't forget: "Hey Dawn, give the pen to Don" or "Hey Don, give the pin to Dawn" - New Yorkers hear the difference, other parts of the country can't.....
A couple of members of German nobility, or blocks of writing.
GRAFGRAF
I have a similar time dilemma, plus being in a different time zone puts me one hour behind the blog. I normally solve in the evening and write my comment before going to bed. Then I cut and paste it from the Notes app to the blog first thing in the morning. It won’t be “first” but it’ll be timely and best of all, no perkiness required.
Exactly how it went for me.
As with others, I had MEALS and GELIM. GELIM didn't look right but I couldn't come up with GELID. Doesn't seem like a Tuesday-level word.
Mozart's symphony no. 40 begins Allegro Assai. Lots of classical sonata movements are marked that way. And there's an aria early in La Boheme where the tenor (Rodolfo?) takes Mimi's hands and sings "Che GELIDa MANinA", meaning 'What cold hands you have'. Knowing that helped with two clues
Extremely easy, but I'm not at a concert.
Clare's comments are right on today.
Boola Boola!
I worked at a law firm for 40 years, and paralegals were often referred to as paras.
I currently work at a major law firm and we use the term “paras” on a daily basis.
This seemed unusually easy, too easy even for a Monday. Seemed more appropriate for an airline magazine. I thought the themers would be something sort of clever like DOCKS/DOCS or LIES/LYES and could hardly believe my eyes when I saw that the second word was simply a repetition of the first. Plus the trivia, although not difficult at all, seemed excessive and I see our resident gunk statistician @Gary J has confirmed that.
Sorry to say that I agree with you @RooMonster about 'making the grade.' Cute, but left me wanting more.
I fondled my NYTXW-solving certificate, wondering if I'd have to give it back. If I was still worthy enough to have one. So ignominious! To not understand a Tuesday theme at all. Should I admit such a thing to y'all? Or should I just fake it?
I skimmed the comments to see if there were others in the same boat. And there were. Enough to make me feel a little better. Not enough to make me feel a lot better. But I'm going to blame it on the pronunciation thing: Here in NYC we do not pronounce PARA anything like PAIR O'. Not even close.
But should I have seen the trick anyway? Of course. It's a very clever wordplay theme and I'm sorry I missed it. My loss. For those of you who do pronounce PARA to sound like PAIR O', your "Aha Moment" must have been huge.
Yes, very easy for a Tuesday & even for a Monday. Don't mean to say anything discouraging but I was surprised to see it with all the unpublished puzzles sitting out there.
TY Les, for taking the time to write an indeed entertaining me!
Will thinking that "DEALS on wheels" is a reasonable answer over Meals when the cross is Gelid... I think it's fair to say the entire xword is just that one box and everything else was cute but not interesting.
I came to say I’m a para educator and we do call ourselves “paras,” so seeing it in this context was odd. π
Kind of a one-trick theme, but OK, it's Tuesday. And although it's definitely not a pair, I'd still have rather not seen "yadda, yadda, yadda" in the clues. Much more pettily, OPERA FANs generally call themselves "opera lovers," but again, OK. That's all from me.
On the other hand, many New Yorkers can't pronounce the G in strength or length.
I like to think of Nanny Cam as a camera who acts as a Nanny when your baby is sleeping in another room as opposed to it being a creepy spying device. I got stuck on Gelid, not a word i’ve used before. Assai is a little too Friday for me.
I once posted at about 5 PM, and commented that I didn't expect anyone to read it. Some time later (Rex gives the exact number of days in his FAQs) I got a very kind note from someone who said she solved the syndicated puzzle and always read and enjoyed my comments. So you're not just blowing into the wind.
Yeah, 'meals on wheels' is on thing, deals on wheels not so much.
Not as common as MOLTO, but definitely exists, more commonly in tempo titles, I believe. Despite knowing this, I had a really hard time the first time I saw it in a xword - Bank it, it’ll be back.
According to Rex, the syndication lag is 5 weeks-- so @Les, check back then and see if you got a reply!
Damnit, I was just reading the responses waiting to post a reference to Che GELIDa MANO a MANO;) I wonder how much opera clues diminished in Will Shortz’s tenure.
In rare form! Bravo!
I’ve always thought a pair of dice should be 4 dies. And a pair of pants …
I thought this was as easy as they come, testing my clue reading/typing speed. EXCEPT for needing to understand the theme, which I had to look at post solve until the wonderful AHA moment.
I have noticed that when attempting a foreign language, there are native speakers who can hear past your pronunciation mistakes to be able to understand you. People who can’t tend to be people who lean heavily into their regional accents. I find it hard to fathom that although NYers may differentiate between pair o’ and para, they wouldn’t really be able to bridge that gap. It is one of the most cosmopolitan places on the planet, although possible to be one made of insular villages.
Thinking of Nancy with her comment last week about how hard it must be to come up with original and interesting themes, and here is yet another!!
Maybe someday I’ll be able to remember when to use OLAF and OLAV. Maybe F is for Frozen in the GELID puzzle will help, but not counting on it…
I saw another mention of the NYC pronunciation. Out of curiosity, how do you say it?
My Downs Only solve also got stuck at ASSAI. π
I heard the phrase "wheels and deals" right away, meals didn't occur to me even though I used to deliver them once a week for a year or so
I thought it was "wheels and deals" as in "finagles and haggles out an agreement". There is/was a TV show about buying and reselling cars called "Wheeler Dealers".
@Whatsername: PAIR rhymes with fair or fare, spare, chair, where. The PAR of PARA has an "A" sound like: have, sat, mat, batter, castle, fabulous.
(Of course if you pronounce "fabulous" as "fay-uh-bulous", then it's all much harder to explain and we'd need to discuss it in person or at least on the phone. Because New Yorkers don't.)
π€£ assai!
Clever and different TuesPuz theme. Like.
PARAS seemed A-OK close enough, for a revealer "hint".
ASSAI note: Has been used in lotsa TuesPuzs, but I didn't retain it ... maybe cuz its last appearance was in 2017.
LENA was a kinda lead-off no-know oof, but got 'er ok from crosses.
staff weeject pick: HAR, of course.
fave stuff included: Puztheme ahar moment. BUNGLE. SEATBELT. OPERAFAN.
Thanx, Ms. Steffensen darlin. And congratz on yer neat debut. Virtually a GONEGONE of puzthemin.
Masked & Anonymo3Us
... and now, in contrast ...
"Vice Versa" - 8x7 12 min. themed runt puzzle:
**gruntz**
M&A
Uh, am I the only one who thinks that DOCKS DOCKS, et al., make no sense at all? And DICE DICE doubles down on the goofiness. DICE is already a pair---one is a DIE---so that comes out as "a pair of a pair of DICE"
All the themers strike me as a stretch and a half of anything coming even close to standard English usage. I got to say it. They look childishly silly.
And to further furrow my brow, I never say pair o'. What am I, a 19th century Scottish poet? It's always pair of.
At least we get a two for one POC (plural of convenience) in the lower right corner where RPM and SSN share a final S. Okay, I'm just being TESTY there.
My recent post may have been Anon. It was me.
Former big firm litigator AND teacher here. My experience is that para-professionals/educators in schools are routinely referred to as paras, whereas "para" is a rarer but not unheard of term for "paralegal." As to the latter, my gut feeling is that it is more common as a collective term: e.g. "I'll get the paras working on it."
I’m thinking the constructor was going for "Wheels and DEALS" as in "does a lot of negotiating"
Clare: are the Stray Kids better than BTS?
I lived in NY for 40 years and always pronounced Paradox pair-a-docs. Although I find at my age the hardest chore for me daily is to don a Pair-a-sox.
Liked puzzle a lot.
To my ear the first syllable in "pair o'" and the first in "para" are identical. I remember seeing this subject discussed, quite heatedly, before in this comments section. The examples then were "marry" and "merry", which I also pronounce the same. I'm going to have to Google "how New Yorkers pronounce stuff' and see if I can find some audio clips.
p.s.
Well, hey — today’s puz was a kinda neat followup to the recent rare BLOGWRITEUPSBLOGWRITEUPS at this here site.
M&A
It's not so much about getting a reply, though that's nice so thank you, but more about feeling you're right in the middle of something and you might be read. And you're right, it is 5 weeks. I know that because I spent about a dozen years in Syndiland, as its regulars call it. I would read the entire comments section, composing answers to questions asked long ago, in my head but never typing them up for publication because ... well, why bother? It's like coming across a crime scene long after the police have taped it off. @Diana, @spacecraft, @thefogman, and other Syndilanders, I hope you don't think I'm dismissing your wit and wisdom. It's just the time thing.
It took me way too long to figure out what the trick was. In fact, I finished the puzzle at ~ 7:30 pm PDT last night, and just figured out the trick 10 minutes ago.
An interesting feature of the theme is that she has used pairs of plural nouns in the grid answers, but all the "para-" words are not plurals.
Typeovers: LEASH before IDTAG, and SNEER then SCOWL before SCOFF.
Any regular reader would know this; you had me at POC:)
In my profession we normally called paraprofessionals paras.
I've been trying to donate for several days but every time I click on Palpal it goes to a page that says "Somethings not right. This page doesn't exist" I've used Paypall in the past with no problem.
Not hard to resolve but the pluralization of the repeated words makes this feel wrong to me. Paradise would be DIEDIE. DICEDICE is a pair of dices. So the resulting answers are Paradoxes, Paralyzes, Paraphrases, etc. and should have been clued appropriately.
Major law firm litigator here, and other major law firms before that one. Everyone uses the terms "para" and "paras" to talk about staffing and client budgeting -- e.g., "we need two juniors, three paras, a mid-level, and another partner." It is used in that group context all the time. Although you wouldn't say "are you getting the experiences you want as a para?" or "what other training can we give to the paras?" -- for the indicated uses, the term is ubiquitous (and used by clients too).
@Nancy: My British accent put me in the same boat ... PARA was not a helpful clue.
"Yea though I walk thru the valley of the shadow of death..."
Is this where we are now in crossword puzzle land? At the edge of some kind of event horizon of wordplay cleverness that it takes this amount of work to get? Jeez! It was not a hard solve, just hard to understand. Please, can we not do this again? I'd be happy to go back in time (every now and then, anyway) to when we substituted one letter for another – or added one – and WORLD OF PAIN became WORLD OF PAINT. At least I would chuckle instead of whatever I did today. Grimace?
@Nancy at 11:50 - Interesting distinction. I think my own pronunciation falls somewhere in between the two.
this is a brilliant debut its a tongue twister deluxe to boot nitpicking this puzzle makes me question even being on this blog if you don't get how good this puzzle is you're just mean spirited
Dr. Fancypants and a lot of others
I am a retired attorney ( retired exactly ten years ago) While I don’t remember the term being shortened, the odds I did hear it. Anyway , those who were bothered by it like the blogger should accept the commenters who say para for paralegal is a thing. It is a big country with lots of lawyers, judges, magistrates, hearing officers, court clerks etc and lots of separate communities who develop their own terminology. Just because you never heard it, even during a long career, doesn’t mean it isn’t used elsewhere.
Something almost NORMALNORMAL about that coincidence.
22A: 1917, 1984, 2001 and others - fell for FILMS before YEARS
Creative theme.
Les S. More et al
I live on the East Coast but I almost never do the puzzle in the Am. I am a night owl. I am one of those who regularly read your late comments so again you Les have readers.
I was surprised to see ASSAI on a Tuesday. Fortunately for me it was a gimme because I can read some Italian and know the word. Il
Anonymous 6:23 AM
Doesn’t work for my accent either but remember there are a lot of accents in the US which it works for apparently. Didn’t bother me. Close enough for a pun I thought.
Southside Johnny
FWIW
I learned gelid from doing crosswords. Maybe tough word for a Tuesday? I put in meals but I know LLOYDS of London so switched to DEALS.
Les S. More
As someone said above
Mary Merry and Mary each have different vowels in ( the US ) Northeast including New England as do para and pair Once I saw PARA my puzzle brain made the connection but I can understand why Nancy had trouble. To help, in our accent pair rhymes with air but para’s first a is the same as the a in par.
Anoa Bob
Ditto. Of course we knew it was you
About the pronunciation controversy, it really isn’t pair o’ In US spoken English many if not most people do say pair uh in the middle of a conversation. I would bet that many who say that they don’t would find out otherwise listening to their own voice on tape And crosswords rely on what people say as well as write not just “standard English “ whatever that is. As for the question of how pair and the first syllable of of para are pronounced it is clear that the country is split on it. My guess would be that more than half pronounce them the same but a large minority like me do not. So there is no standard way to pronounce this pair in the US. In any case even with my accent I thought it was close enough for a pun. (I had forgotten about the vast Midwest accent)
I do strongly disagree with your criticizing the theme for lack of standard English
Great range of reactions to this puzzle.
I noticed that the last 2 comments posted before me are diametrically opposed. As for me I liked the puzzle. But on the other hand I did enjoy reading the “nitpickers” even though I disagreed
I ‘ll repeat one thing I said before, it’s a big country, and I do wish commenters would realize that just because they never heard an expression or word. doesn’t mean it is not thing The same goes for American accent variations.
Reading this blog for ten years has taught me that.
Just remembered that in my southern hometown, pair is pronounced payer - hi, LMS if you are lurking.
Same. An evil crossing, especially for a Tuesday
@dgd. Thanks for the explanation. I don't think I've ever heard anyone say par-a-medic or par-a-legal, but if I do I'll have a pretty good idea where they're from.
I had a ton of fun with this one. Born and raised in New York City with all the pronunciation/enunciation nuances that that brings and I have no problem at all with these themers. Got the gimmick fairly quickly and it brought a big smile. So very clever and It was a real joy figuring each one out.
I also worked at a law firm for several years and the term "Para" was thrown around often enough.
My only holdups were ASSAI and GELID - two words that I just do not know but fell easily enough with the crosses. Nice to learn these two little nuggets today.
Truly nothing at all to complain about - VERY clever theme, relatively gunk free grid, and a Nirvana reference. I'm walking away happy. Thanks Ingrid! I think I saw that this was a debut - congrats!!
Wheels and DEALS is a phrase I've heard often enough (more usual to hear “wheeling and dealing”) that DEALS splatzed right in. An online definition says, “If you say that someone wheels and deals, you mean that they use a lot of different methods and contacts to achieve what they want in business or politics, often in a way which you consider dishonest.”
Don and Dawn, pen and pin, each have a distinct sound here in the upper Midwest. But yes, Mary, merry and marry are all the same sound here.
I'm not seeing where pair o' comes into play - I got the theme right away because my o' was an uh, pair a', because “of” sounds like uh to me as does the (second a) schwa in para.
Nice job, Ingrid Steffensen!
wow, that's rude.
Yeah loser talk from ac for sure
I’m English and I think you misunderstood. Not pair o’ but para - paradox, paralyse, paraphrase, paradise. Defo works in British English just as well…
You aren't the only one: the doubles make no sense. Thank you for pointing out that the emperor has no clothes.
Agree 100% on PARAS. In my mire than 40 year career as a lawyer, never, ever heard a paralegal called a PARA. Legal Assistant occasionally; some preferred that to Paralegal. And many states’ licensing statutes use Legal Assistant for the licensed paraprofessional folks.
@ega: Hahaha. I was expecting one or more folks to offer up additional theme answers.
Ditto everybody with “time dilemma.” After a whole year out here in Pacifictimeland, my body has yet to adjust completely, and simultaneously adjusting to retirement is kind of the confusion sauce on the top of my burrito.
However, to all and sundry, after years of reading and posting, I know that many of our neighbors here do read all the posts regardless of time. I am often surprised by things that resonate with readers who share a reply or an offline email with me. In my experience this is without a doubt one of the kindest, cleverest, most creative and astute assemblage of people one could hope to meet out here in the blogosphere. I have found this portion of my day to bring such enjoyment and I feel very connected to the group as a whole. I hope to meet some of you at the various in the various crossword gatherings in the next years.
The clue never mentioned "on". The missing conjunction in this case is "and", as in wheels and deals.
I am absolutely thrilled, tickled pink (or tickled in the color of your choice - mine would be bright green) by the number of posts by folks for whom today’s theme was new. Many of us with decades of solving behind us (i.e. we, in the Social Security Club) will have encountered this very enjoyable theme and its variations before. I really like this one for the precise reason that once you get it, you can’t help but think of all kinds of additional possibilities. Clare, your GONEGONE was superb, and exquisitely delivered.
For me, this was a joy. Not only did we get a worthy theme, its freshness for so many of you just reminded me of the appeal of crosswords to so many folks, and the power of this appeal to enable us to connect with each other. In these fraught times, we need more connection. If we fail truly to connect with and appreciate each other, and thereby to find common ground, we are doomed.
Thanks to everyone here who takes the time to share a bit of themselves with this community.
Muff no one on the planet says “you muffed it” and paras for paralegal- nope
I loved this one, mostly because of the number of solvers for whom the theme was new! Those of us with decades of solves (i.e. members of the Social Security Club) will have seen this theme and its variations before. What (to me) makes this a very special theme worth repeating and varying, is that you can’t help thinking of additional theme entries as and after you solve. Clare, your use GONEGONE with its double reference to the puzzle’s PARA answer was for me vintage ClareCleverness! I truly look forward to days when you sit in for @Rex.
This theme also highlights one of my favorite things about excellent themed puzzles: the best ones highlight and play games with language.
Another exceptional element of Ingrid Steffensen’s brilliant debut today is the lack of junk fill! After completion, my review of the grid made me smile. Very few three letter answers, no overuse of proper names (although as a huge fan, I’m always happy to see DUA Lipa) and even the abbreviations were few. ASAP and SSNS have appeared a lot lately, but so many times, they are just two of way, way, too many acronyms and initials. Just so clean. Ingrid made my “I hope to see this byline again, often!” list. First one in quite a while. Work fast, Ingrid!
Seeing all the added theme answers and so much enjoyment from the neighborhood’s comments today, has me thinking about the importance of both finding common ground and being able to receive and accept as valid, a variety of viewpoints. For the most part, that’s what happens here every day. Would that the world could work harder to do the same.
Peace out. Love y’all!
Clare, who was performing at the concert?
Agreed ‘pair o’ does not work in my accent either! I just try to put on an American accent when solving these puzzles π
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