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Athlete tackling El Capitan, e.g. / THU 9-4-25 / Designation for some audio connectors / Jungian archetype / Lion keeper? / Locale for a couples cruise? / When ties get untied, for short / World capital in central Anatolia
Thursday, September 4, 2025
Constructor: Colin Ernst
Relative difficulty: Easy
Theme answers:
This one started somewhat disappointing, and then got promising, and then went back to disappointing again with the revealer. I understand the phrase "DOES IT SCALE?" but I care so little about "investors" and start-ups and businessspeak in general that the phrase just leaves me flat. Worse, it's kind of off-putting. If the phrase were truly colorful or involved great wordplay or were particularly apt, my aversion would not have mattered so much, but something about "scaling" as the core concept was such a letdown that even if I *had* been a venture capitalism admirer and fervent Shark Tank watcher, "DOES IT SCALE?" would have landed with a bit of a thud. I really thought the theme was going to be about hanging. I think of a rock climber hanging from a rappelling rope
- ROCK CLIMBER (upside-down) (3D: Athlete tackling El Capitan, e.g.)
- SPIDER-MAN (upside-down) (35D: Who popularized the proverb "with great power comes great responsibility")
- WINDOW / WASHER (upside-down) (49D: With 7-Down, worker who likely knows the ropes)
- GRAPEVINE (upside-down) (8D: A bunch of fruit may grow on it)
The Flying Wallendas is a circus act and group of daredevil stunt performers who perform highwire acts without a safety net. They were first known as The Great Wallendas, but the current name was coined by the press in the 1940s and has stayed since. [...] In 1944, while the Wallendas were performing in Hartford, Connecticut, a circus fire broke out, killing over 168 people. None of the Wallendas were hurt. // In the following years, Karl developed some of their most impressive acts, such as the seven-person chair pyramid. They continued performing those acts until January 30, 1962, when, while performing at the Shrine Circus at Detroit's State Fair Coliseum, the front man on the wire, Dieter Schepp, faltered, and the pyramid collapsed. Three men fell to the ground, killing Richard Faughnan, Wallenda's son-in-law; and nephew Dieter Schepp. Karl injured his pelvis, and his adopted son, Mario, was paralyzed from the waist down. Dieter's sister, Jana Schepp, let go of the wire to fall into the quickly-raised safety net, but bounced off and suffered a head injury. // Other tragedies include when Wallenda's sister-in-law, Yetta, fell 50 feet to her death in 1963, after fainting during her act. Wallenda's son-in-law, Richard ("Chico") Guzman, was killed in 1972 after touching a live electric wire while holding part of the metal rigging. Nonetheless, Karl decided to go on. [...] On March 22, 1978, during a promotional walk in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Karl fell from the wire and died. It was between the towers of Condado Plaza Hotel, one hundred feet high. He was 73. (wikipedia)
• • •
Also also, the fill was kinda weak in places. God spare me from any more "playground retorts," particularly long and contrived ones like "I CAN SO" (pretty formal for a playground—you'd think "CAN SO!" would do). Crossing SAO and 'TIS, blargh. Things are also a little blarghy in the ANIMA / "I'M ON" / KARO region. KARO is one of those crosswordese brand names that is well worth avoiding. Everyone knows OREO, but KARO ... bah. Looking over the rest of the grid, there's nothing particularly bad going on. An MSG here, and ESP there, a TBAR, an INOT. Once again I plead with editors and constructors not to clue TMC (The Movie Channel) as having anything to do with "cinephiles" (43A: Inits. for cinephiles). "Cinephiles" watch TCM (Turner Classic Movies). Whereas TMC is just a channel you get with your basic cable package that you probably don't even watch unless you're bored. I don't remember ever watching it. If I search [TMC] I get the weirdest assortment of hits and I don't get The Movie Channel at all, which should tell you the kind of clout that channel has with cinephiles, or anyone.
Bullets:
- 23A: Genre for "Sunset Boulevard" (NOIR) — directed and co-written by the great Billy Wilder. They play this movie a lot on TCM. Again, I have no idea what they play on TMC.
- 63A: Locale for a couples cruise? (NOAH'S ARK) — if you've done crosswords for any length of time, you've heard this one. A lot. A lot a lot. The phrase "couples' cruise" (or "couples' retreat") has been used multiple times, just in the past few years, in clues for ARK (also "couples' getaway," "ship that was double-booked," etc.). The ship that spawned a thousand puns (all of them basically the same)!
- 49D: With 7-Down, worker who likely knows the ropes (WINDOW / WASHER (backwards)) — coming back to this one because the clue really cries out for a "?" The specific play on words ("knows the ropes"), and the fact that it's not a phrase anyone would use to describe the specific professional abilities of a WINDOW / WASHER, means a "?" is called for. Wouldn't have made the answer any easier to get, necessarily, but that's not the point. The point is, if the clue doesn't really literally make great sense, if the literal meaning is being severely bent to accommodate some kind of wordplay, you should have a "?" on there.
- 62D: Lion keeper? (MGM) — what is the wordplay here? I've heard of "lion tamer," but "lion keeper," not so much. I know that MGM's logo contains Leo the Lion, that's obvious. What I'm asking is: why is the clue phrased this way? What's the "ha ha, good one" angle? (if you google "lion keeper" right now, the *only* hits you'll get are (cheap, ugly, borderline illiterate, severely ad-laden) automated crossword answer sites. MGM movies are seen frequently on TCM. Whereas what's playing on TMC, nobody actually knows.
- 64D: Start to count? (ONE) — uh ... I guess. Again, what is the wordplay involved? What makes this clever? I see the misdirection (I wanted to write in CEE, i.e. the letter that literally starts the word "count"), but I'm clearly failing to appreciate whatever is supposed to be clever about the clue phrasing. I cannot deny, however, that if (for some reason?) you "start to count" (to 10, say), you would likely start with ONE.
That's all. See you next time.
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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109 comments:
Easy. It took me a bit to get that the theme clues "scaled" the grid.
Overwrites:
My 13D Cape Verde island was SAn Tiago before it was SAO
At 14A I tapped a keg before ALE
My 43A cinephile inits. were TCM before they were TMC
No WOEs
I had never heard of BATIK or KARO, so that was a pretty gnarly natick for me. Ran the alphabet to get the music
uncle ben popularized the phrase, not spiderman. if they wanted spiderman it should have been clued as "what movie", not "who"
The rice guy?
Agree completely re: TMC. I had TCM written for nearly the whole time and then shook my head when I realized I had to change it. And though I thought of MATE IN THREE, I also thought “that can’t be it”. Why not mate in two? Or four? What’s so special about three that it becomes a well-known phrase?
i came here to say literally this. (although i would say the comic books popularized it, but the underlying point stands)
Easy except for the SW, where I couldn't convert "circus" into BIGTOP for the longest time. I had no clue about SPIDERMAN, and kept trying to remember which statesman had made the pronouncement (was it somebody named Sherman?). The trick became clear with the upside-down GRAPEVINE.
I don’t ever remember being so bored doing a crossword puzzle - it felt like sitting through a class in high school that I had no interest in (and knowing that I was skipping class with a pretty girl the next period). Really, reading and writing words and phrases upside down? I would have thought that was too juvenile back in the boring high school class I just had unpleasant flashbacks about.
Hopefully a chess player among us can provide some insight regarding MATE in three. I believe there is a common three step mate involving a bishop and the queen on opposite flanks - something like that, perhaps. I don’t know if it is possible to MATE in two steps.
I was disappointed that I had already forgotten BATIK - I just looked it up when we had it recently, like what, two or three days ago. I have a mind like a steel trap - once something gets in, it’s never getting out again.
the bottom up theme answers are such a tired gimmick at this point. not really worthy of a thursday puzzle.
TCM = Turner Classic Movies
Pretty fun. One of my recent NYTXW submissions was rejected because I had three themers running backwards, and the comment was that people solve on the app now and entering things backwards is difficult for them.
I wanted Stan Lee there. But he doesn't scale.
I guess I’m easier to please. I loved this one. The themes all being things that go up, the answers going up, and the answer to the revealer clues using the less obvious word scale,instead, of climb or up
Well, I kinda agree with all of Rex’s comments but still liked the puzzle more than he did. Good catch by @Anon identifying Uncle Ben as the source of the good advice, but at least we realized it wasn’t Shakespeare or Plato. SCALE was decent as a revealer but maybe it went better with NOTATE. OK, maybe not so much…
Hey All !
Was wondering why my Themer Downs were starting off as gibberish. Took a minute to see that they would be in the puz backward. First thought after having 3D start REBMIL was that the Themers would be made up of abbreviations. But then the ole brain grokked what in tarhooties was happening.
If Noah had a pet Mako on board, would it be NOAHS SHARK on NOAHS ARK? Is Noah where these crazy kids these days want to change WHOA to WOAH?
Decent puz. Liked the concept.
Props to Joel F for representing the F's in the Mini. *Pounds chest* Respect.
Have a great Thursday !
One F
RooMonster
DarrinV
Best moment for me was seeing the first long backward word. I have no idea why, but there is a tender place in my heart for backward words
Even post-solve, when my eyes fell on DOOR, my brain called out “Rood!” I knew it was something but forgot what, then found that it’s an old term for a quarter of an acre. That there is a term for a quarter of an acre just seemed so random to me that once again – and I don’t know how many times a day this happens – I fell in love with humanity.
I liked the echoes of the climbing theme:
• TBAR.
• NOAH’S ARK, which rose as the downpour continued.
• CABIN as part of an airplane.
I liked that moment when I looked at NOTATE and saw it as two words, as in, “That’s a very nice modern art museum, but it’s NO TATE!”
I liked seeing BIG TOP, because the constructor said in his notes to a previous puzzle that he worked as a circus juggler for ten years.
So, smiles on top of the fun of filling in. Thank you for a lovely start to the day, Colin!
Yes, the rice guy. His promise of great rice in just one minute is an incredible power, and a great responsibility
My experience agrees with Anonymous 6:30AM: TCM or Turner Classic Movies was my go-to, and I took too long to change it.
MATE IN THREE wouldn't usually be announced during a chess game; in fact, just about never (it would be kind of a jerky thing to say). The phrase comes up as a caption in chess puzzles, as in "White to mate in three", and essentially nowhere else. And certainly you could have "mate in two" or "mate in four", but "mate in three" seems to be rather more common, probably because it hits a sweet spot in difficulty better than two or four.
Rex has done a good job summarizing things that are not great about the puzzle.
I feel your pain, Johnny. Ever find yourself solving a puzzle and thinking, “This is taking forever,” only to get the notification at the end that you finished under your average time? Filling in answers backward is tiresome enough on paper, but on the app it’s even more annoying. I’m not sure why I didn’t bail when I sussed the gimmick. I suppose it was so I could come here and moan about it. Oh well, tomorrow’s Friday, so there’s something to look forward to.
I expect not the rice guy (that would be pretty funny, first that he would ever speak in a commercial, and second that this of all things is what comes out of his mouth). Then again, I've never heard anyone refer to Ben Franklin as "uncle ben", so who knows.
Caught on right away with the ROCKCLIMBER going up, as all the crosses except ANKARA were absolute gimmes. Kind of fun to uncover the other bottoms up answers although it took a while to parse SPIDERMAN, I don't think he ever said that in the comic books, which is how I know him best. only real WOE was ELLE, another one of those classics I have never seen. Oh well.
Biggest downer for me today was the reveaaler, as I may be even less interested in business and finance than OFL, and I have never, ever heard the expression DOESITSCALE. Also in agreement that it doesn't really fit the themers without some contortions. At least KARO syrup was a staple in the kitchen when I was a kid, so that doesn't bother me. Ditto for TCM vs. TNC, don't really watch either of them.
OK Thursday, CE, with the Clear Exception of the mystery revealer. I'm curious to see how many folks are familiar with that one. Anyway, thanks for a medium amount of fun.
Naticked on BATIK/KARO.
The largest island in Cabo Verde is Santiago. Very frustrating when there are simple mistakes in the crossword!
“Mate in three” isn’t something you’d say to your opponent while playing chess. But it is something you might see when doing chess puzzles. As in “white to mate in three” or something like that.
There is a way to MATE in four moves if you are the White pieces. If you're experienced at all, you'll see it coming and can block it easily. But if you're playing someone casually, it gets quite the "Huh" response! (And anger)
RooMonster Not A Chess Ace By A Long Shot Guy
Same here. Complicated by the fact that I had DISH instead of DIRT for “Gossip,” momentarily obscuring the r in Ankara. Otherwise easy.
I solve on the app. It was pretty grim, but I gritted my teeth and soldiered on.
I've often heard the expression as "does it scale up" which would make the revealer and the theme much better.
This puzzle was pure 45-down.
To quibble, Uncle Ben is the character who said the phrase first, but Spider-man IS the one who made it popular.
No one was out there buying “Uncle Ben” comics every month.
Coming from the world of business and venture capital, i enjoyed the revealer. I find very few answers or references to commerce or finance in the puzzles, so this was a nice exception, at least for me. Fun puzzle otherwise.
Santiago is correct. The island isn't called Sao Tiago
I wrote in TCM stubbornly, knowing full well it was going to be TMC because that’s become a go-to in the Shortz 2.0 era for some reason.
Also, I think TCM basically shows Shawshank or Con Air marathons all the time. But I could be conflating it with AMC.
Same. I thought it was Caro.
100% should be Uncle Ben or clued differently
"Askup" ???
A quarter acre isn't random. It's the basic Ottoman land area unit known as a "dunam" still in official use in Turkey,, Israel and other countries of the old Ottoman empire. It was originally the area plowed by 2 yoked oxen in one day now standardized to 1000 square meters (aboutcl 10,750 square feet). In contrast an acre (43,560 square feet) was the area plowed by a team of 8 oxen.
So if I am launching a start-up and you ask me DOES IT SCALE, I'd look at you blankly and ask: "Does it what???
The rest of the puzzle is less baffling -- or at least it became less baffling when I realized that certain Down answers were to be written in upside down. The revealer clue was very helpful in pinpointing exactly which answers they were and I was gratified to see that they were exactly those answers with impossible letter combinations.
In went the rest of REBMILCKCOR; ENIVEPARG; NAMREDIPS; REHSAW and (written in from scratch) WODNIW.
I love clues that create curiosity with quotes -- like the BABE RUTH clue and the SPIDERMAN clue. The SPIDERMAN quote, though, seemed far too worthy and important to be the musing of a [gasp!] cartoon action figure. I thought it should have been from someone more like Aristotle or Voltaire.
Once the weird letter combos fell into place, I quite enjoyed this. And I thought the revealer played very fair.
I thought that with MALE AROUSED ERECTS and the backwards themers, the revealer might be "GETITUP". I was jumping out of my chair! But then I got DOESITSCALE and my ASS SAGged right back down.
One nice misdirect was when I threw in ROCKCLIMBER (spelled forward) off just the "R" in CAR. Gotta say, I did actually like the mental discipline involved in entering the themers backwards on the app without going to the bottom and working my way up tediously.
I took my automated fish cleaning machine idea to a venture capital firm and their first question was "Does it scale?"
Thanks for this quick pick-me-up, Colin Ernst.
I took a bit of time to see the theme because I ignored the e.g. in 3D's clue and tried to believe that REB MILCKCOR was someone's name. Not until the ENIV of 8D screamed “eureka, vine!” did I go back to 3D and read it going up. This discovery was delayed because I had written REHire in at 7D thinking someone who was rehired would certainly know the ropes.
I know that the NYTimes crossword continues to make the TMC error so although I put in TCM first, I was well aware that it might need changing, and it did.
I have a bottle of KARO syrup in the cupboard, so no issue for me. I can't decide if the clue for TIC, 45A, is cute or irksome. But I did like the clue for EUREKA, “Problem solver's cry.”
Thanks, Colin Ernst, for a scalable Thursday puzzle.
Gorgio Armani just passed away. Sad.
After reading the explanation, I see a theme which makes a fair amount of sense. However, while solving, I had no inkling what the question DOES IT SCALE meant in relation to investments ... or anything else for that matter. As a result, I didn’t connect with the idea that to CLIMB is ONE definition of scale. So the theme, primarily because of the foreign-to-me revealer, was a total bust. Thankfully, the fill was not difficult and the trick became obvious pretty quickly.
Now that I’ve been enlightened, I see how each themer scales in its own unique fashion, but WINDOW WASHER seems like a stretch since they are actually lifted by an apparatus. Finally, like others, I first entered TCM and cringed as it soon turned into TMC. Again. [Sigh] Not a big fan of this one.
Most of the puzzle was easy but it took me a while to figure out that the theme answers were upside down. Until I got a few more crosses, I kept staring at the rock climber clue trying to figure out what obscure word referred to those athletes and why it was spelled so strangely.
Yikes. I need to trade my oxen in. They're not coming close.
I should've been prepared when 43A wasn't TCM but rather TMC. I really really didn't like this puzzle. Almost would've preferred a rebus Thursday :(
Solved this pretty easily and expected the happy music but didn't get it. Couldn't figure out my mistake without checking; alas, I had DISH instead of DIRT for "Gossip" and didn't see that ANKASA shoud be ANKARA.
I like these bottom-to-top puzzles but am not familiar with the question "Does it scale?" so was glad I could work everything out from the fill. Haven't read Rex yet but need to understand how "scaling" relates to a grapevine.
Agree completely with the TCM/TMC complaint. Also, can we please get rid of tbar? I haven’t seen one in 40 years!!
Easy. I caught the theme fairly early and mostly whooshed through this one. No WOEs was helpful.
I did need some extra nanoseconds to read/enter the theme answers up-side down.
Costly erasures - Rush before RACE, DIsh before DIRT, and pie before ABC.
Liked it a skosh more than @Rex did.
The revealer is off, isn't it? The three are supposed to reply "yes" to the question.
@Anonymous 8:49 Evidently it is, in Portuguese.
This constructor is just asking for a write-up. Rex's write-up is right on.
What’s up with the bizarre and relentless ,es TMC animus?
So as someone who works in venture capital, I will say that it is a common framing / question that is asked about companies and around partnership tables. does that make a good theme, don't know, but it is common enough phrase / refrain in my niche of the world.
Oh well, you win some, you lose some. Go ahead, ask me just how much I care if a project scales or not. No, don’t bother. Not at all interested.
Construction was fine. Almost fell for circus at 65A but held off and put in BIGTOP. Not a lot of junk but not a lot of interest for this non-business oriented solver.
Big positive: I solved while listening to a Pentangle playlist. Two great acoustic guitarists (BertJansch and John Renbourn) and the fabulous Jacqui McShee providing vocals. So it wasn’t a complete waste of time.
I suppose business people have to have their day in crossworld. There’s always tomorrow.
@Beezer, from yesterday: yes, I hate those clues but I can’t hate Malaika for liking them. She’s her own person with her own preferences. We may not always agree but I very much appreciate that she and Clare and others step up to help Rex out and keep this thing going.
Okay, the vines climb up a trellis, I guess. Got it.
Thank you to @Rex and to commenters for waking me up laughing after kind of a snoozer of a puzzle. Solving down the right side, I got to the reveal before having to deal with more than the first few letters of the other theme answers; I actually had to do an alphabet run on DOES IT S?ALE, as the investment-related concept is unknown to me. After that I saw the climbing ENIV, and the others came quickly, except for SPIDER-MAN - that one was a fun surprise.
Do-overs: Rush before RACE, Ease before EDGE, DIsh before DIRT. Surprised: I thought KARO was a universally known household brand, like Jif, or Coke - everybody had a bottle in their cupboard.
@liveprof. Yeah, see if you can upgrade to e-oxen.
When was the last time we saw ARMANI in a puzzle, and today of all days.
Rex I love the commentary and read the blog every day, but man I get you hate business people, and business, and capitalism and all the things but stop for one moment and ponder… if there weren’t “investors” you wouldn’t have the internet to write your blog, or the laptop you write it on, or the chair you sit in to write… or god forbid you use a stand up desk because that certainly came from an Entreprenuer… iPhone, yes. Oh wait you hate Steve Jobs and Apple and you are an android fan??? Also from an entrepreneur (Larry Page)… who subsequently is spending all of his time currently making sure AI doesn’t end it all. So, for once… enough with bashing entrepreneurs as a class of humans… it’s no better than all the other things you are “against”.
Armani died today--or at least announced today. Coincidence?
Well, I’ll just start off by saying I didn’t find the puzzle annoying and I enjoyed it similar to @Nancy, even though I had never heard the phrase DOESITSCALE…hey…now I know (if I remember).
Second, I appreciated the theme clues/interplay even more after completion. Love the Rex, but think he was a wee bit too critical ie…SPIDER-MAN mostly associated with swinging from building to building (rather than crawling/scaling a wall like a spider), as well as his notion that ROCKCLIMBERs mainly hang. Then there is the “know the ropes” comment. Maybe it’s a bit outdated but here’s what AI found for me (and maybe I’ve even seen an old movie on TCM that showed this):
Old-fashioned building window washing involved workers using safety harnesses and ropes to hang from window ledges or steel pins attached to the building.
At any rate, THOSE guys definitely had to know the ropes to do the job as they SCALED a building. Good grief. For most of my life they use steel CABLES for their box platforms. I guess my point is…we can probably pick a nit about everything. But, that’s why we come here… to validate or point out flaws. It’s Rex’s job, and I DO appreciate it!
Definitely too easy. My first entry was CAR. The clue for 3 down told me the answer would end in ‘ER’. Oh look, there’s the ‘R’. The answer probably goes up instead of down. Off to the races…
Learning more about El Capitan (which, by the way, I wouldn’t have if Rex had made his comment). Rappelling rope is only used to descend El Capitan. To scale it, they are either free climbing or using a combination which does involve safety ropes, of which I feel pretty sure they hope NOT to be hanging from. Also found out that you can get to top by way of the challenging El Capitan Trail (if you are a rappellor -only) for the rappelling time of your life!
Now there's a question for which the revealer makes sense. Way better.
The fastest a chess game can end is a MATE in two moves ("fool's mate"), where one player carelessly moves a couple of pawns leaving their king defenseless against an enemy queen attack.
MATE in 3 (and by extension "mate in N moves") normally means that one player has a strategy that allows them to win the game in at most three turns, no matter what the opponent does.
Hi and thanks for reading. I will never stop bashing the so-called “entrepreneur”-ial class. The very prevalence of that pretentious French word makes me feel good about the bashing. “Business” people have reduced the entire world to AI-controlled ashes. They have all the money. They care only about money (pleasing shareholders, ROI, etc). Everything transactional. It’s repulsive to me, whatever benefits might accrue from some few businesses. Just let me have my hate. 🙏 Businessspeak is an ugly scourge rooted in dissimulation. Further, I do not understand regular human beings caping for billionaires and I never will (esp the billionaires at Google, who have over time made searching for anything accurate or useful well nigh impossible; it’s all AI slop and ads). Billionaires hate you. They are largely anti humanists who would kill their own grandmothers if it meant marginally higher profits. Am I being hyperbolic? Seems possible! I hope you keep reading though. You made your point very nicely, which is rare on the internet, so thank you —RP
Does it scale up
I thought the "scaling" answers were fun - once I caught on. TMC sounded right to me. I'm sure that channel has changed names (maybe a couple of times) since first founded. Was it once TMC?
I worked for decades in finance and product development in the insurance industry, frequently reporting directly to the CEO. I once had a CEO tell me he wouldn’t approve one of my product designs because he felt the concept could be confusing and lead to misunderstanding by potential customers, which was incongruent with our corporate mission statement (even though missing sales goals would adversely impact him financially. I even had to defend our position to pesky Board Members).
On a different occasion, Sr. Management allowed me to partner with a local university department head to institute a robust internship program to get their students some real-time experience and hopefully a leg up when they graduated.
As an executive, my favorite part of my job was training and developing less seasoned employees. My central message was that this profession has been very good to me, and I want to provide you with every opportunity that I can to enjoy similar success.
Some of my fondest and most satisfying employment related experiences involved company-sponsored volunteering opportunities to teach third and fourth graders financial concepts in partnership with organizations such as Junior Achievement.
To painted us all in one fell swoop as money-grubbing misers abusing employees and cooking the books is unfair and grossly mistaken. It’s obvious that Rex has little, if any, experience in the business world.
No. I'm pretty sure Will Shortz had him rubbed out to increase the relevance of today's puzzle.
Least favourite type of clues are vague, boring one-word clues. This puzzle had a lot of boring clues.
Armani on the day of his death. Is something going on?
Surprised by the people who didn't know KARO. As a kid, I poured that stuff on lots of things, most frequently on pancakes and ice cream. But I haven't noticed it in the house in years so I called my wife and she assured me there is a bottle in the pantry. Apparently some jam recipes call for it. "And baking?" I asked. "Yup, in things like pecan pie." She pronounced it PEE-can and I immediately recalled my Texas born and raised friend telling me, "Y'all have to learn, it's puh-KAWN." Thanks, Kyle, I'll spread the word."
@East Coaster you are of course 100% correct. I’m surprised your comment was published. Cheers
RIP 60A
Hmmm. The question is “does IT scale?” so I guess WE answer the question. But…Haha…so now we can all pick the nit of whether rock climbers and window washers are ITs!
@Beezer, I often watch the local rock climbers at Skaha Bluffs. They attach their safety ropes to existing cleats as they go up. The first time I saw one fall I was shocked, but of course he only fell about 5 feet, and since he was scaling an overhang he ended up swinging back and forth in the air. Do you know how his wife reacted when he fell? She laughed. Not what I expected!
I didn't mind the theme, which I got about halfway through. But there did seem to be a lot of clunky clues and answers. MATE "in three"... what? Oh well, learned something.
Hands up for liking TCM; actually I've never gotten TMC but maybe it's not available in Canada.
Funny about pecan pie and KARO. I buy ONE bottle of KARO syrup at whatever big holiday I am the chief cook and always make TWO pies because it’s one-half bottle per pie and I DON’T want half a bottle hanging out in my pantry. But. I guess I’m not that surprised a lot of people here weren’t familiar with it. So my PSA for KARO is: Anyone in RexWorld that is interested in making a VERY easy and delicious pecan pie…KARO syrup has the recipe on the bottle. I guarantee it is easy as pie (pun intended), and is MUCH better than most you can buy (unless it is a super pricy bakery)
I have actually lost at chess in three moves (yikes). Takes a special talent!
This was a crossword for people not used to reading words upwards. I was perplexed. I always learn interesting things from this blog.
@Anin 12:16
Two moves? It would take you two moves just to move a pawn, then get your Queen out. Mayyyyyybe three, but two?
Please explain.
Roo
If you'd like to try a delicious and easy pecan pie recipe that contains no corn syrup at all, try Trisha Yearwood's, which has never failed me!
Recipe
As in, "I'll ASK him UP to my second-floor studio."
Estoy en racha.
My three favorite things: Thursdays, backward words, and vertical layouts. Loved this one, but it was over way too fast.
It seems a little gross that we still define audio and plumbing connections by male and female. Can't we just use innie and outie ... and trans?
ANKARA looks like a beautiful city. Good week for a BATIK freak.
People: 5
Places: 5
Products: 8
Partials: 6
Foreignisms: 0
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Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 20 of 78 (26%)
Funny Factor: 3 😐
Tee-Hee: ASS. ERECTS. [Lose firmness].
Uniclues:
1 Mythical land populated with drunken French women.
2 Why Florida leaders hate vaccinations.
3 Turks worked up.
4 Kenny Bania's suit in the rain.
5 Sad swinger.
6 Glass transparency engineer after the cable snaps.
7 Short poem on a theme of impoverished burro owners.
8 Capitalist's proudest moment.
1 ALE ELLE NARNIA
2 IMMUNE SAVES
3 ANKARA ROUSED
4 NOAH'S ARK ARMANI (~)
5 BLUE SPIDERMAN
6 REHSAW WODNIW
7 ALAS, ONE ASS (~)
8 ERASED UNIONS
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: To make money from lap dances. CAMI ACT MOTIVE.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Hand raised for TCM not TMC. Why can't it EVER be TCM? Seems like it's always TMC, which as Rex notes, is a combination of blah and meh on a good day. Whereas TCM has Classic in the dang name. And means it.
Beezer, you are a smart cookie! What I do is buy the bottle of KARO at holiday time, make one pecan pie, then the half-empty bottle sits in the cupboard for the next year til it’s time to make pecan pie again and I have the annual “is it too old to use?” debate. I should make two pies, like you!
The NW corner started out easy but as I got deeper into the puzzle it was much harder for me than it seems to have been for others. And, the SE corner was brutal. If the “couples cruise” pun is as common as Rex suggests, I don’t know how I missed it, because I’ve been doing this puzzle for years, but anyway, NOAHSARK, MINCES (which just didn’t come to me as a synonym for chops) and the complete unknown of MATE in three conspired to kill me.
Otherwise, I do kind of like backwards or upside down answers, but DOESITSCALE was another one that was hard for me to come by - I had all the theme answers long before I figured out DOESITSCALE, not knowing venture-capital-speak.
For 3D, I tried to jam in ALEXHONNOLD but he couldn't get a toehold.
The Merry Widow
Nobody is safe.
ARMANI. On the day of his passing. Whoa.
Yes, Reb Milckcor was a brilliant Talmudic scholar. He and Reb Hillel would argue fine points of Hebraic law into the wee hours. :)
Do you think that the presence of ARMANI in today's xword was just a coincidence, or did Will Shortz have puzzles in the hopper ready to go for whenever GA died? Armani was 91, so his death was not exactly a surprise. Newspapers like the NYT have pre-prepared obits for famous people, so it is not inconceivable that Shortz had crosswords ready too. Or maybe it is just a weird coincidence.
Go ski Whistler, one there. Tho TBH I first had tram
Voltaire the French author first coined the phrase that Spiderman then others used its still valid and I don't get the complaint why can't you use a common business term in a crossword? crossword correctness has reached a Zenith there's a lotta good stuff here yeah the bothersome 3 letter fill is there an antidote for that? I wish!
In Christianity, a crucifix is sometimes called a "rood." When you read period literature about the Renaissance you also come upon someone swearing "by the Rood!"
Anonymous 8:49 AM
Look before you comment or leap.
As JT said, Portuguese, one of the official languages of Cape Verde (formerly a colony of Portugal. )
I guess you can say grape vines scale the trellises, but mostly they grow sideways along wires -- but they scale in another way, in that are infested by the eponymous insect. See this reference page.. If I could convince myself that this is what the constructor had in mind, my respect for the puzzle would go way up.
Beezer
I was expecting a lot of nits picked about “it”.
Surprised no one complained!
Yes! What a sad coincidence.
@Roo: Fool's mate, if you know chess notation, is 1. f3 e5. 2. g4 Qh4++ (Black mates in two moves).
Oops, math... gunk is 24 or 31%.
Armani died today. Weird
That was one of the hardest weekday puzzles I can remember in 30 years. Cheers to the creator!
This is probably the worst puzzle I've ever seen. I can ALMOST forgive "rock climber" despite it's inaccuracy because it's at least something a layman would say even if it's wrong, wrong, wrong ("free climber" would be a fine substitute), but "spider man" is unforgivable. The character that popularizes the phrase is Uncle Ben, and that is undebatable. They could have changed "who..." to "movie that..." but apparently the NYT no longer cares about clues matching answers.
Really enjoyed this one. Maybe it was the 25 years of rock climbing. One of the few themes i actually got before solving the whole thing.
The Flying Wallendas write up was so interesting! What a way to go at 73. My father, also a climber, died of heart attack at 73.
Funny how many climbers lived through daring feats only to perish by doing something that seemed relatively safe. One was just posing for a photo by the sea and got swept out by a rogue wave.
Lol
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