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Botanical bristles / SAT 9-13-25 / Found darling / Italian pianist who composed the scores for "Nomadland" and "The Father" / Octet on a chessboard / DNA compound whose name includes the letters D, N and A / Sort of habitat in a bottle garden / Petunia's partner, in cartoons / Rolled chip brand from Mexico / The solution referred to in Sherlock Holmes's "seven-percent solution"
Saturday, September 13, 2025
Constructor: Alex Jiang
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium to Medium (Easy, but for one very disruptive obscure answer)
Word of the Day: LUDOVICO EINAUDI (16A: Italian pianist who composed the scores for "Nomadland" and "The Father") —
Ludovico Maria Enrico Einaudi OMRI (Italian: [ludoˈviːko eiˈnaudi] ⓘ; born 23 November 1955) is an Italian pianist and composer. Trained at the Conservatorio Verdi in Milan, Einaudi began his career as a classical composer, later incorporating other styles and genres such as pop, rock, folk, and world music.Einaudi has composed the scores for a number of films and television productions, including This Is England, The Intouchables, I'm Still Here, the TV miniseries Doctor Zhivago, and Acquario (1996), for which he won the Grolla d'oro. His music was used as the score for the Golden Globe and Academy Award-winning films Nomadland and The Father.
He has also released a number of solo albums for piano and other instruments, notably I Giorni in 2001, Nightbook in 2009, and In a Time Lapse in 2013. On 1 March 2019, Einaudi announced a seven-part project named Seven Days Walking, which was released over the course of seven months in 2019. (wikipedia)
• • •
Anyway, in a certain corner of the music-listening world LUDOVICO EINAUDI is very popular. But even though I am really quite adjacent to that world, nope, no way, no idea. Nothing about the clue, nothing ... well, nothing was going to help me with his name. 15 random letters. Total chaos. I have no idea how well known he is, but I would be willing to bet that I am not the only solver to be completely flummoxed by his name today. For me, he was certainly the most obscure thing in the grid by far. And because of that, and the fact that I have no idea what a "bottle garden" is (17A: Sort of habitat in a bottle garden = CLOSED ECOSYSTEM), the top section of this puzzle was ... an adventure. Even ACADEMIC PROGRAM gave me trouble (1A: Student's plan). I'm the most terminally on-campus person you'll ever meet (35+ years straight on college and university campuses), and yet I got ACADEMIC and then ... nothing. It's such a dull phrase, it didn't even occur to me. ACADEMIC RECORD, ACADEMIC PROGRESS ... my brain just couldn't find the handle on PROGRAM, which means all three long answers up top were ??? for a bit. Here was the (otherwise promising) start of my solve:
From there on out, things got easy. Very easy. Comically easy. I slid down that rightmost diagonal section like wheeeeeeee...
Seriously, never saw a single clue. Once I brought those answers down the west side, I basically had the front ends of every long answer, and based solely on letter patterns, I wrote in each one of those long answers. No clues needed. I think you could have done it too if you'd been presented with PLU-TUCK-------, and ASL-OSEA-------, and WEL-ITSN-------. There's really nothing else that any of those answers could be than what they are. Still, I don't think I've ever no-looked every answer in a triple stack. Insane. I felt immortal. Which is the opposite of how I felt up top. So, if nothing else, this puzzle took me on a ride from one solving extreme ("wtf!?") to the other ("I am a solving god!"). I can't say that aspect of the puzzle wasn't a little fun. And, difficulty level aside, I really do think that bottom stack is good. Way way way better than the top stack.
Didn't love having both A-OKAY and A-ONE in the grid. Also, I nearly threw my laptop across the room when, after struggling so much with LUDOVICO EINAUDI, I got handed a former Australian PM (!?!?!!). But actually, with a few crosses, I remembered his name, so my fears were unwarranted. Not much else to say about this one. The bottom section was finished in a flash, so none of the answers made much of an impression. You always remember the struggles more than the successes... or maybe that's just my particular brain type. That wouldn't surprise me.
Miscellaneous:
- 17A: Sort of habitat in a bottle garden (CLOSED ECOSYSTEM) — literally just a garden in a bottle, it turns out: "A bottle garden is a type of closed terrarium in which plants are grown. They usually consist of a glass bottle or carboy with a narrow neck and a small opening. Plants are grown inside the bottle with little or no exposure to the outside environment and can be contained indefinitely inside the bottle if properly illuminated" (wikipedia).
 |
| [Why, though?] |
- 34A: Petunia's partner, in cartoons (PORKY) — they're pigs, but you probably knew that. I don't really remember Petunia cartoons. I was aware of her existence, but she seems like a late add. Wikipedia tells me she actually appeared quite early (1937), but she "made only a handful of appearances in Warner Bros. cartoons." Nonetheless, she did appear frequently in their merchandising, particularly their comic books.
- 3D: Found darling (ADORED) — very confusing clue. I was reading "Found" adjectivally, and wanted the equivalent of "adopted puppy" or "rescue cat," i.e. a "darling" who has been "found" (by you)
- 39A: Botanical bristles (AWNS) — most days, crosswordese annoys me. But there are times when I'm grateful for the gimme, and today, after that experience up top, was one of those times. Crosswordese to the rescue!
- 28D: Octet on a chessboard (RANKS) — ah, chess terminology. My, let's say, favorite. I assume RANKS are just the rows. I know a chessboard is 8x8. [...Looks it up...]. Yes, horizontal rows. You could just say "rows," you know.
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138 comments:
Easy-Medium to Medium for OFL ... except for the ways it's not
Easy. Very easy for a Saturday.
Overwrites:
ELvIN before ELGIN at 22D
honDA before MAZDA at 31A
PApaya before PAWPAW at 34D
Only the one WOE:
LUDOVICO EINAUDI at 16A. Never heard of him, didn't even know where to put the space between the first and last names. He was the reason I was surprised to get the happy music.
The term "rank" in chess comes from warfare. Reminds me of one of the greatest lyrics in rock-music history, from "Us and Them" by Pink Floyd:
"Forward!" he cried from the rear, and the front rank died
And the generals sat, and the lines on the map moved from side to side.
Had the total opposite experience as OFL with this one (did it last night). 22 minutes, so probably "Medium" for me for a saturday. I was able to struggle and fill in the top and start working down the diagonals without too much trouble. Then I was able to get the bottom 3 grid spanners without too much trouble. But TAKIS, TURNBULL, AWNS, PORKY (as clued) were all WOEs for me. So that SW section just above "WEB" was not easy. pAwnS before RANKS (as was intended, I'm sure) tripped me up for a while too. Wound up running the alphabet for the Australian PM (?Burnbull? Cornbull?) before I finally got to T and got the happy music. Anyway, it was a fun puzzle, especially enjoyed the clue on DANCES, the LAGER/PORTER cross, the PLUM in PLUMTUCKEREDOUT. Fun, fresh puzzle! Thanks, Alex!
I didn't and don't know LUDOVICO EINAUDI, never heard of him until today. Same with ELGIN Baylor. But the crosses on both were fair enough that neither stopped me. But they pissed me off. Mostly LUDOVICOEINAUDI, which was just a bunch of letters, mostly vowels.
Agree with @Rex about the bottom stack, and the bottom of the grid definitely played easier for me than the top. And still my time was under my Saturday average, although it felt more medium than easy for me. I do like the shape of the grid, for whatever that's worth.
Totally agree with OFL today. Fairly easy except for the Natick of Ludovico (on which, I must admit, I cheated with IMDB ... I know, my bad!). The only other snafu was PAWNS for the chessboard octet. Loved PLUM TUCKERED OUT. Haven't heard that one for years.
Well done, Alex Jiang! Well done.
Other than having to back into LUDOVICO’s entire name - this was fairly straightforward and fun. The tri-stacks are daunting at first glance - but they fall quickly and open up all that short stuff in the middle. The bottom three spanners are outstanding.
I Am Loved
TAKIS is showing up quite often lately - must be fee based. Liked MIMOSA, BE GOOD and the LAGER - PORTER pair. Had a delicious masala DOSA for lunch on Thursday.
Saviour Machine
Enjoyable Saturday morning solve. Pair this with Lester Ruff’s Stumper today and you get a solid workout.
I Wanna Be ADORED
I still don’t quite understand the clue for ADORED; can someone please explain why “found “?
Another hand up for never having heard of what’s-his-name. Saw Nomadland but don’t remember anything about the music, and the other stuff he did is a stack of WOEs for me.
My solve was a bit different from Rex’s. I found no traction in the NW, got the downs in the NE, had no idea what sort of PROGRAM that student had or who the heck EINAUDI might turn out to be, but it was not too hard to just continue downward. Filled in the bottom, with some hesitation around the cross of a junk food brand not sold in my region and a sportball player I never heard of, then finally finished up the NE with my old buddy LUDOVICO. All that and yet more than three minutes below my Saturday average, so not bad, not bad.
agreed. Medium. NW and SW were tough
PPOJ (Paolo Pasco On Jeopardy) report – day 3.
Sporting a bow tie and his engaging smile, Crosslandia behemoth Paolo handily won his third Jeopardy match yesterday, leading and building that lead throughout, thanks to his wide range of knowledge. His secret weapon may be quickness in his buzzer technique, but time will tell.
In “I Lost On Jeopardy” (1984), Weird Al’s listing of the Jeopardy prizes was “a twenty-volume set of the Encyclopedia International, a case of Turtle Wax, and a year's supply of Rice-a-Roni, the San Francisco treat”.
In contrast, Pasco’s winnings to date -- $79,741. Go Paolo!
Oh, that bottom stack! Look at those three answers! PLUM TUCKERED OUT, well, therein lies beauty, idiosyncratic beauty that makes me proud of our language. AS LOOSE AS A GOOSE, so playful that it’s perfect even if geese aren’t always at eese (as it were), and WELL ITS NO WONDER, gorgeous and classy.
Then on top, the composer/pianist with the sing-song beauteous vowel-rich name, who I had never heard of, and whose fill-in gave my brain the Saturday workout it craves, passed the Tussle Test – mwah! Not to mention CLOSED ECOSYSTEM, a lovely term I’ve come across, but not often, and how nice for it to stop by for a visit.
All this encased in an elegant grid design never before seen in the Times puzzle, and despite its low word count and meager black square count – it’s cleanly filled!
A proper Saturday, with color, fight, and delight. Amazing and exciting that it’s a debut, and more please, Alex. Please. Thank you for a sterling and splendid outing!
Nice.
I assumed ranks referred to the number of types of pieces (kings, queens, knights, etc.), although now I see there's only 6.
Had more trouble with the bottom than the top, despite not ever hearing of this musician. AOKAY really threw me off, since it's usually AOK, and thought it might be FLAT TUCKERED OUT. Had to google to get TURNBULL and sort it all out.
The star of the show for me was PLUMTUCKEREDOUT. That gave me the bottom stack after some work. Didn't like WELLITSNOWONDER, especially the WELL.
I measure the difficulty of a crossword by the number of mystery clue/entrys it has. Nine today, low-average for a Saturday.
Needed cheats to get the RUTABAGA/LUDOVICOEINAUDI cross. My main error was assuming Bruce Wayne was an actor who had played Batman, which if true would have left Lynda (Carter) as the equivalent Wonder Woman actress. Movie/TV fantasies aren't my specialty, obviously.
Never seen or heard composer's name before. I had zero idea if I had it right till I hit the button. But it solved quick. So I guess easy.
Hey All !
Well, my RANKS were RooKS, giving me ToKIS for TAKIS, and the HUoAN Province for HUNAN. I knew something was askance with HUOAN, but ROOKS seemed too right to change. Ah me, Finished With Errors (FWE).
LUDOwhozzit was unknown, but all the crossers worked, so wasn't really a problem.
Wanted vOL for MOL (volume) for 46D, still unsure what MOL is short for.
SE/SCenter/SW had a few writeovers, mOdelo-PORTER, BEhave-BEGOOD, slanT-JOUST, sAtAN(!)-JAPAN, PApaya-PAWPAW.
Nice grid that took some brain working to get, no lookups for me, although I did have those errors. Getting the X and Z early had me looking for the Pangram, but no Q's, and of all things, no F's! Seriously? Poor F 's.
Hope y'all have a great Saturday!
No F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
A very mixed section to this one. The top stack was kinda technical and dry with an indecipherable component in the center, while the bottom stack was relatively easy to get and pure fun. Had to Google some names in this one but didn’t mind the brain exercise. Got hung up with honDA for a while but the crosses led to MAZDA.
Well, LUDOVICO EINAUDI was the easiest answer for me today. I took one look at the clue - no way I’m going to parse together every cross and hope for something that looks like it could possibly be somebody’s name, so a quick 10 second consultation with Mr. Google and problem solved (the only difficulty was remembering the spelling while I keyed it in). That, fortunately opened up that entire section and I was able to discern the other two grid spanners up north.
Similar to Rex (and I suspect many, if not most of us), I found a much more pleasant environment as I worked my way downstairs.
The clue answer combination for OKRAS looked pretty sad (and forced) with them both being plural - I don’t fully grasp the POC concept, but if ever there was a time to just add another black square and leave it at EVE and OKRA, that was it.
It's specifically "found darling." So if someone found something to be darling (using darling as an adjective, not a noun), they liked it a lot, which would mean that they adored it.
A couple of major early WoEs in CULKIN and LUDOVICOEINAUDI, and one late one with TAKIS. But very few overwrites: zeD to END, fiNE to AONE were the only non-spelling ones. So, very easy overall.
I'd say it's impossible to make a group decision ALONE; not merely a bad idea.
Especially since the common plural for okra when making gumbo is okra
As in “I found this thing to be darling” - Found is a verb, darling is an adjective.
If you “found [something] darling” you “adored” it. The tense tripped me up, too.
I always find it interesting when my experience is the total opposite of Rex. Top all went right in, despite having no idea about Einaudi. I knew the name Ludovico from Clockwork Orange, so with a few crosses I figured that was the most likely name. And I knew CLOSED ECOSYSTEM cold - in fact the picture Rex used is what immediately popped into my head when I read the clue.
Bottom half not so much. Never heard AS LOOSE AS A GOOSE as a phrase - I’ve always heard “Loosey Goosey,” so not too far to get to the correct answer, but it feels weirdly formal in my ear. AWNS was ?!?!? and BEhave before BE GOOD held me up a lot.
Fun puzzle though!
Not a fan. Relied too heavily on names and trivia.
Just a bunch of trivia crap.
"Found" here means "deemed", "considered".
didnt know LUDOVICO EINAUDI. didnt know ADENINE. however, with crosses i was only missing one letter from each. reread the clue on 14d and boom! the clue told me the letter. so 14d's clue went from 'geez, another stupid switch around the letters crud' to 'ohhh this is a treasure map!' kinda cool.
What an exquisite piece I Giorni is. Thanks for sharing it RP. I recognized it since our classical music station in NY (WQXR) plays it now and then. Still didn't recognize the composer, of course.
Vas auto ist dat, Franz? Ein audi, Ludovico.
I’ve stopped watching in the last year or so. The cluing is so obvious, seems to be a genuine effort to dumb the show down.
Huh. I thought it was "plumb", not "plum". "Plumb" here meaning "totally", "completely", "truly". As in "plumb crazy". (Not "plum crazy".) I guess it acquired this meaning because a plumb line is truly or completely vertical. Anyway, while one can find PLUM TUCKERED OUT out there in the wild, I think it's a misspelling based purely on the sound, and without regard for the phrase origin. Similar to how people will write "tow the line" and not "toe the line". So far I seem to be the only solver a bit annoyed by this -- everyone else who has commented seems to love it (hope I didn't spoil your fun). I mean, I put in "plum" anyway without hesitation -- it wasn't as if I were stuck -- but with a slight grumble all the same.
From the beginning letters ASL, I first put in "as limp as a noodle" which happens to have the correct number of letters.
Yeah, I've seen that Italian pianist's name before, and that helped a little, but the memory was sufficiently vague that I still needed crosses.
Despite all this, I still found the puzzle relatively easy for a Saturday, and largely enjoyed it aside from the plumb/plum confusion.
For Rex: the terms are "RANKS" and "files" for the chessboard. Actually I had first put in "pawns" for the octet, as each player has eight of them. The correct answer was not immediate for me, even though I'm a chess enthusiast.
Need help with “AONE” as answer to supercal….
Hey @Roo--molecule, but lots of people are going to tell you that.
The composer of the Nomadland score may be Italian, but he greatly prefers German cars. To LUDOVICOEINAUDI is worth zwei Fiats.
I'm chuckling while thinking of the original readers of "The Tale of Genji" finishing it and declaring that they considered it the world's first novel. I wonder what the second was.
I've known a few COCAINE TOPEKANs, so I hope @Gary Jugert gives us a RANK uniclue on that file.
I expected @Rex to go apes**t over ICE. I'm not one to advocate excluding things from crosswords, but I think ICE should be clued in reference to their blatantly illegal use in intimidating a large portion of our populace.
Too easy, of course, but otherwise a splendid debut puzzle for Alex Jiang. Thanks and congratulations.
Post solve, I did a little search on Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, as after seeing Mary Poppins approximately a billion times I had never taken it to mean A-one. It’s not really how it’s used in the movie. But it is in the dictionary and predates the movie! For anyone else interested, here’s a little origin story.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/origin-supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
Didn not know the composer, and agree with OFL's assessment as "fifteen random letters", did not know CULKIN, guessed at the U as my final square, checked the blog, and hummed the happy music to myself, which this morning was "Angel from Montgomery", the last tune I heard at last night's free concert.
Other holdups were ONEPLY for ONEUSE, SAUCES for DANCES, and not knowing the Australian Prime Minister. Patted self on back for knowing COCAINE and ELGIN was a gimme. I know we just had TAKIS a while ago and lots of folks said how abundant they were in local stores, but they have yet to appear in this area. Also counter-intuitive as the Spanish alphabet doesn't have a K. I may remember this, unless it appears, oh, more than a week from now.
Mixed Saturday for me, AJ, A Jumble of things I knew and total WOE's, but Just About the right amount of challenge. Thanks for all the fun.
PS- Forgot a shout out to (very) old friend AWNS. No there's a classic!
Puzzlehoarder here, this was an amazing debut due to it's striking double Z design and clean fill. Best of all it actually had late week resistance. The push back mostly came from the composers' last name and write overs I made coming down the stairs stacks. The only thing missing was a nod to that little old band from Texas.
Couldn't quite crack the SW. Never heard of Petunia Pig, Turnbull, Takis, Pawpaw fruit, or Awns. So I was doomed there. Rest was pretty straightforward Saturday. Seems like a lot of proper names, overall.
He really is extraordinary.
Oh when will I be as good as these guys?????
I didn’t find the crosses fair. Ended up DNF due to LADOVICOEINAUDI crossing CALKIN. Seemed reasonable enough for two people I’d never heard of.
You could always read the blog, since Rex explained it there…
i used that line in my high school American History essay
My millennial daughter introduced me to his music- apparently popular background study music for her era in college
I would have assumed it was "plumb" tuckered out.
This was a debut? Congratulations Alex J, very nice. Had it not been for the obvious proper name and a few other trivia stumbles, I might’ve sailed through it a lot more smoothly. I’m a fan of this type of grid design on Saturdays, love all that white space inviting me in and the challenge of those long stacks.
Kieran is the brother of Macaulay, who you may remember as the Home Alone kid, or at least the spelling of the name could be familiar from that. Kieran has had quite the run lately with Succession and is the current Supporting Oscar holder for A Real Pain.
I suppose this is a textbook example of fair crossing. Also, while I didn’t know (or remember) the name, it was constructed of regular Italian spellings. Ludovic+o. Donaudy composer with an i for y swap. Ludovic is a Latinate spelling of Ludwig, a great name for a composer, don’t you think?
I like the top and bottom equally - I know colloquial phrases are more in vogue now, but CLOSEDECOSYSTEM takes me back to childhood terrariums, and ACADEMICPROGRAM, which was wonderful until it tailed off…nonetheless a very solid phrase.
Very nice easyish Saturday. I'd agree with Rex on easy medium, 90% easy with stumbling blocks.
The bottom stack was a trip down memory lane, recalling my childhood evenings in the '60s with grownups talking to each other from sidewalk to porches. I'll have to think of some other phrases I used to hear but not much any more.
Good puzzle overall, thanks Alex. Well put together, no wasted space. Seeing good editing past few days- hey, let's recognize it when its there and not just slam it when it isn't
Worth it for RUTABAGA, a great word although a not-so-great vegetable (based on my one encounter, as a complement to shudder-worthy lutefisk [dried cod soaked in lye] as a Sons of Norway banquet). Vague notions of LUDOVICO EINAUDI, CULKIN, and TAKIS got me through those minefields, but I spent a long time trying to turn RANKS into RooKS, unsuccessfully, thankfully. On the other hand, ADORED was my first entry; it was a surprise to read in @Rex how "Found darling" can be read another way.
Wonderful, evocative lines. The best part of this abysmal solving morning. Or in my case, abysmal non-solving morning. Thank you. See below for more.
I felt like I was being volunteered for a giant research project. I could have looked up the Italian pianist and the actor and the DNA compound and the chip brand and all the other bits of random trivia I couldn't care less about, but that's the whole point: I couldn't care less. Eventually I dropped it, but probably not soon enough.
Challenge to Alex. Can you solve your own puzzle without Google at your side and three reference books in your lap? Bet you can't.
We discovered Einaudi when he scored the French film Intouables. We loved his music and having him in the puzzle today was a HUGE bonus!
My first thought when I saw (cheated to see) LUDOVIC OEINAUD :
"Was this puzzle for us or the constructor's ego -
"Look how smart I am!"
TAKIS, RANKS (& more) didn't endear me to him either. Congrats to those who solved it and/or wanted to :(
Count me as another who hesitated due to the missing B in PLUM.
Agree with you Nancy. You just put it better.
LoDOVICO and CoLKIN here. Enjoyed the rest.
Stumped on the "U" also!
I'm hoping to see Paolo up one day against Matt Amodeo,
Amy Schneider and/or Juveria (???). WTG, Paolo!
As a father of two teens I can tell you that Takis are all the rage. They’re kind of like Andy Capp’s Hot Fries if anyone remembers those.
I didn't know any of the people in the grid today. Still, LUDOVICO'S name filled in fairly easily for me, and the rest of the unknowns up top filled with crosses too.
CLOSEDECOSYSTEM was very helpful.
I shot myself in the foot by fixating on salsas as sAuCES not DANCES. That mistake gave me gibberish where I needed AONE (which also looks gibberish-y) and sOMED instead of DOMED made me doubt MOMA. Also mispelled e/ATOI so that little section was my downfall.
No idea for supercallifragilisticexpealidocious but finally WELLITSNOWONDER it's AONE!
The mimosa tree is a yellow flowered tree. The mimosa drink is pink thanks to the orange juice and champagne it contains.
Actually pretty easy for me for a Saturday… I knew Einaudis Last name, but couldn’t quite remember his first… Had never seen awns before And I am a dedicated NYT solver
So let’s go right to the big question: What on earth could compel you to spread LUDOVICO EINAUDI across the top of your puzzle? I mean he’s certainly prolific ( I looked him up post-solve and that’s an extensive CV) but, even though I’ve seen some of the stuff he’s scored, I don’t recognize the name. Loved Nomadland but don’t remember scouring the credits to find out who wrote the music. Almost spoiled the puzzle for me.
The other long crosses were pretty nice, though I noticed they went from pretty formal up top to really folksy down below. But they were certainly good. The difference in tone bugged me only a little.
A fair amount of trying too hard here. Like at 28A ROGUE, which is far more serious and complex than “Stray”. A stray wanders off while a rogue makes a decision to be oppositionally different. Or by “bad way to make a group decision” (26A ALONE) do you mean impossible way? Not to mention 43A AONE and its overreaching clue. And the LEGO clue (44D). Oof.
You might think, from what I’ve written above, that I disliked this puzzle. Not true. I actually enjoyed it. I just had too much time tonight and decided to get all critical (plural OKRAS, anyone). Sorry, Alex Jiang - it’s not you, it’s me.
So i didn’t do so well on the adenine/ano cross. I wrote ademine because while año means year, ano (sans tilde) translates as anus, and even for California, New Anus State Park felt like a step too far.
NO ! just NO ! i have never enjoyed a puzzle less !
Nice Saturday word salad, with OKRAS and PAWPAW, RUTABAGA AND PLUM, served alongside GOOSE and TAKIS, and topped off with a nice MIMOSA, LAGER, or PORTER. The fill was interesting, and I learned that another word for "tilt" is JOUST, and AWNS are bristles. Very little not to like today!
Digo, obvio. Bueno, no me extraña.
When it wasn't sucking, this puzzle was lots of fun. Horrid top three spanners and absolutely lovely bottom three spanners. Utterly terrible list of proper names, but if you can ignore or look those up, the rest of the puzzle is joyful. At 32%, it's typical for gunkiness, but those proper names take up a lot of real estate.
More than one OKRA is still OKRA and still super gross. That's an award winning clue for END. Like almost everyone will be today, the chess clue lured me into PAWNS.
I like having AONE and AOKAY in the same puzzle. Also ICE and GAS with parallel clues.
If I composed like Ludovico, my professors would have sent me home to try harder.
Today is the three-year anniversary of @Z heading to greener pastures.
❤️ Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.
😩 AWNS. ADENINE.
People: 6
Places: 6
Products: 4
Partials: 3
Foreignisms: 3
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 22 of 68 (32%)
Funny Factor: 4 🙂
Tee-Hee: Pooped.
Uniclues:
1 Where to find my brain.
2 Treats under the seats in a Miata in Oaxaca.
3 Weighty Waxiang words.
4 What makes living in Kansas bearable.
5 Futuristic novel where noodle cakes destroy the AI robots.
6 Hopeful cheer from a rootatarian.
1 ROGUE RANGE
2 MAZDA TAKIS (~)
3 HUNAN TOMES
4 TOPEKAN COCAINE (~)
5 RAMEN RISES RAW (~)
6 BE GOOD RUTABAGA (~)
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Pet-eating alien who bashfully enjoys playing the cello. XENOMORPH SHAME.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
No time to read the comments, I'll have to come back later. I think I was a little better off than Rex, in that I was able to come up with EINAUDI from the EINA, but I got LUDOVICO only because it was a recognizable name of the right length; as for the comets, they were 'gas' until I saw the Jupiter clue, than ORE for a time; only when I got the IC did I remember that they were ICE. Also, I read the 7 % solution decades ago, knew it was a narcotic, and COCAINE fit (and Doyle had him using it, too). But it was still a struggle.
I should have thought it was PLUMb TUCKERED OUT--plumb as in "entirely" -- I'll have to look that up, but gotta run right now.
It's moles.
There are four rooks on a chess board, one at each end of the black and white ranks
I grew up in rural Appalachia and we always had rutabagas in our garden. Our favorite way to eat them, believe it or not, was to cut them in half and scrape a curl of the raw flesh with a spoon. A type of instant slaw with a sweet and slightly spicy flavor.
Easy in spite of the pianist WOE.
Costly erasures - BEcOOl before GOOD and EraS before EVES.
TAKIS, TURNBULL, ANO, and ADENINE were also WOEs.
Delightful bottom triple stack, liked it.
But why would you look them up when you could work them out from the crosses? Isn't that the point of doing a crossword...filling in what you know so you can get at the things you don't, and maybe learn something new? And in the process you get to fill in fun long phrases like PLUM TUCKERED OUT and AS LOOSE AS A GOOSE. I'm glad I'm not as jaded as you are.
That would necessitate a black square at 44 A & D leaving "ager" and "ego" which works but ruins the porter/lager duopoly!
Is MOL not for Mole?
Nice Saturday word salad, with OKRAS and PAWPAW, RUTABAGA AND PLUM, served alongside GOOSE and TAKIS, and topped off with a nice MIMOSA, LAGER, or PORTER. The fill was interesting, and I learned that another word for "tilt" is JOUST, and AWNS are bristles. Very little not to like today!
A 1
Lots of whining and googling going on here today. If you google it’s a DNF. Took me 30 minutes, but it was all gettable if you stuck it out. Very nice sense of satisfaction when I got the happy music at 31:15.
1A. Student’s plan: grADuatePROGRAM and 1D. Hollow, of a sort: groOVE. That fix took up most of my solving time.
Rest of the puzzle filled itself in. First word of all the lower 3stack needed cross help but otherwise pretty breezy
We had a mimosa tree in our back yard when I was a kid, and the soft “flowers” were pink. Plus, they have a very sweet (perhaps cloying) scent.
I, too, am miffed by “plum tuckered out.” C’mon folks, it’s “plumb”!!
Delighted to see AÑO Nuevo State Park. Anyone visiting the CA central coast in winter should check it out. It's about a mile from where I got married, but that's not what I love about it. What makes it special is that it's a breeding ground for elephant seals, and I cannot adequately express to you how much bigger an adult male elephant seal is than I used to (and you might) assume. Wikipedia says they can reach 8,800 lbs. That is not a typo. They are enormous and amazing, and AÑO Nuevo is a fantastic place to see them up close in their natural habitat. You go with a docent who knows how to keep out of harm's way. Only thing is it's not accessible for everyone: it's a mile or so walk out from the parking lot to the seals. But if your body permits, it's extremely worth the trip. And it's in the middle of one of the most beautiful drives in the country--highway 1 between Santa Cruz and Half Moon Bay.
I also appreciated the bottle garden reference, because my father in law is a now-retired high school science teacher, and he would assign those to his students every year.
These two things with a deep personal connection more than made up for Italian names I didn't know.
Interesting. My mimosa (albizia) had pink flowers, as did the mimosa I saw in my cousin's yard in northern California. And the bunch of others in his neighbourhood, all of which inspired me to find and plant one in my garden in suburban Vancouver, BC, in the first place. Nursery recommended against it but it turned out to be a great tree. A bit messy, but lovely.
Me too. Help
Thank you to those who explained this! re burtonkd: I did read what Rex wrote, but still didn’t understand the clue.
Lagers and porters ARE beers. That clue made zero sense. An alternative would be cider.
A friend knowing my love of classical piano recently gifted me a ticket to see LUDOVICOEINAUDI. I couldn't conceive of going to the Royal Albert Hall to listen to him for two hours. In the background while doing something actually interesting maybe. I sold the ticket and went to Cabaret, and pocketed the difference.
One more tired plumber here
You make an excellent point. I invoke Saturday rules which allow googling proper names/trivia that are otherwise hopeless, but I don’t consider it a DNF. However if there are too many of them, I won’t waste my time on a puzzle that is so arcane there’s no joy left in the solving.
@Nancy 10:15 AM & @Tom 11:34 AM
Tom, I don't want to sound flippant, but you do know the only person on Earth, or in Heaven, or in Hell, that cares about your DNF (or lack thereof) would be you. I Go-ogle plenty of things I don't know in the hope the next time it shows up in a puzzle I'll be ready. Completing these puzzles won't have any appreciable impact on my wisdom, but reading the internet might. Like @Nancy, I often don't care about certain trivia in a puzzle, so I go grab that cartoon character's name from the web and continue on my merry way through the rest of the puzzle. I DNNF - Do Not Not Finish every puzzle I start. If I hafta research something along my journey, I do it. I feel confident constructors use the heck out of Wikipedia and Go-ogle, often to our detriment, and some days I wish the editors of the NYTXW would have done more of it. I will not remember Ludovico's alphabet soup of a last name next time some constructor finds it in his uncurated word list, but thanks to Go-ogle I will remember listening to Lud's hacky music (and thinking, "This guy's famous?"). In an effort to make Saturdays harder for the "it's too easy" crowd, the only real choice is to load up obscure proper nouns, and for me, the fun is in researching them, and not hoping crosses will rescue my ignorance.
Here's one more hand up for "plumb" as the correct word in this old saying. I agree that the erroneous spelling PLUM probably came from folks who heard the phrase but had never seen it written and didn't grasp the reference.
me, too
There are hundreds of species of Mimosa. Some of them are yellow-flowered, but most of the more commonly grown ornamental species are pink- or pinkish-purple flowered, I believe.
@Gary - you make several good points, I frequently co-solve with Uncle Google when the NYT goes all arcana on us - maybe I’ll occasionally learn something, but usually I just save myself a bunch of time by filling in all the crap that I won’t remember 10 minutes after I’m done solving.
I do disagree with you on one point (“ . . . the only real choice is to load up obscure proper nouns“) - which I believe is too strong an assertion. If WS asked Robyn to show us a good example of Gunk Minimization, I would bet dollars to donuts that she would accept the challenge and basically put on a clinic resulting in a grid that is definitely not a trivia-laden slogfest. It can be done !
In the Lake Wobegon school system, all the students are above average.
On rexword, well more than 90% of the puzzles are easy to medium.
Villager
Yes, LUDOVICO EINAUDI was a faith solve today but not all that hard. CULKIN was a gimme, so ACADEMIC went right in, leading to ADORED. I continued doing the shorter downs across the top and pretty soon, the PROGRAM ECOSYSTEM EINAUDI emerged.
My biggest hold-up was a mistake when entering MAZDA. For some reason my subconscious had me enter dAZDA. This had me scratching my head as to what dOMA was an abbreviation for. Finally checking the crosses revealed my mis-entry, and I was done!
I was sure I'd seen 45A as PLUMb TUCKERED OUT. My very brief Google investigation has not been conclusive. Neither PLUM nor PLUMB really lends itself to the meaning the phrase has taken on but it is fun to say.
As Rex says, thank goodness for AWNS (though I first put down AuNS, hey it's been a while since it was last seen, at least to my memory!) And RANKS, I couldn't think of any octet in chess (I barely know the game) but with KS in place, RooKS occurred to me but I at least know there aren't 8 of them, only 4.
I thought the clue for LEGO, 44D, was clever.
Alex Jiang, nice Saturday puzzle, thanks!
This was really quick for me at 14 minutes, mainly because Mr. Einaudi is one of my favorite composers! Although his name is tough to spell properly, I had ENNAUDI at first and had to fix that. But wait!... even with the incredible luck of knowing him, he still caused me to finish with an error because I also had it spelled as LUDAVICO (crossing DASAS). Love the guy, but kinda brutal answer even if you know him.
Only typeover I can remember from last evening was ROOKS before RANKS. But I quickly thought: there aren't 8 of them, are there?
After finishing, those long acrosses looked funny. What does CLOSE DE COSY STEM mean? And AS LOO SEES A GOOSE?
I finally remembered to record Jeopardy yesterday, so I could watch it like a normal person (rather than going back in time on my program guide, which is slow and tedious). Yay Paolo! Personally I thought yesterday's categories and questions were poorly chosen, which took away most of my fun at trying to guess the answers. But Paolo didn't blink.
Natick on DIANA/MIMOSA, completely unfamiliar and DIANE/MIMISE seemed as reasonable as anything...
@Anonymous 11:25, that sounds much tastier than the boiled version I was served.
I watched the miniseries Dr Zhivago (with Kiera Knightley as Lara), which wasn't so great. But I loved, loved, loved! Einaudi's music - so much that I tracked down and bought the CD. It is absolutely enchanting! Despite Einaudi being Italian, the music evoked all things Russian ... absolutely beautiful ... I've been following him ever since, although nothing has touched me as much as that score. I can't recommend it highly enough!
Paulo is so impressive. The subjects yesterday were NOT easy.
Your rude challenge to the constructor is so unnecessary, Nancy. Just because this one wasn't in your wheelhouse? Be kinder. There's enough bashing going around these days.
Jack London used 'plum', so I'm inclined to grant it immunity.
Another wonderful location for viewing elephant seals is at Piedros Blancas elephant seal rookery a little north ofr San Simeon (Hearst Castle) on the central California coast. Right off Highway 1, this features docents, an accessible boardwalk, and informative signage. These are the northern elephant seals (range from Mexico to Canada)and the males attain about 5,000 pounds; it is the southern elephant seals which can weight up to 8,000-9,000 pounds. You can also view elephant seals at Pt Reyes National Seashore north of San Francisco.
Yes! Seeing PLUM for PLUMB is like hearing Signor EINAUDI hit a wrong note. Ouch!
@Sailor. Part of the problem here, and in discussing plants in general, is that we too often use "common" names, which leads to confusion. I think, perhaps @Beezer and I were referring to the Albizia jullbrissin, a tree commonly called mimosa, while you may have been referring to the "actual" Mimosa, which usually presents as a shrub or an herb - and does have a tremendous number of variations, many with yellow flowers. I used to refer to our tree as the Albizia while my wife insisted on calling it a mimosa. Gardeners, you can't live with 'em, you can't live without 'em. They bring great beauty into our lives but often at a price.
It's a beer and if you don't want a lager you might opt for it instead. You can have alternates within a category.
Okras is not a word. At least not a word in English.
Tilting at windmills ala Don Quixote
Or was he just made?
😁
RooMonster Tilted Guy
Thanks for #4. I assume it was per my request. And thanks for the @Z reminder. You've either got a mind full of absolute junk or a calendar chock full of useless events and remembrances. Likely both. Keep up the good fight!
Good question! According to this site, the nonsense word is supposed to express "excited approbation: fantastic, fabulous" and this meaning is apparently documented in a 1949 song, well before the Disney movie Mary Poppins. So the "fabulous, fantastic" looks like it matches "A ONE" or A1. But yeah, this is certainly a stretch -- this meaning seems only loosely connected with the lyrics of the famous song, or at least cannot quite be directly inferred from them, although it's more or less consistent with them. (If someone has a better explanation, I'd enjoy hearing it.)
Complete opposite for me. Einaudi fell into place easily for me and the rest of the top whooshed by. And then I got hard stuck on the bottom, I just couldn't get any purchase there.
Not familiar with MOL as a MOLE abbreviation, but it doesn't strike me as a great saver of space.
I think you're not reading the clues as intended. They don't mean either is an alternative to beer, but that either alternative is a choice as a beer.
@Anon 11:29 -- But that's the whole point. I never want to look stuff up, especially forgettable trivia. I consider even one answer that I've looked up to result in a DNF and I take no pride in my "finish".
I know I look up fewer answers than 98.8% of the people on this blog. Maybe I'll look up an answer in one out of every 35 puzzles. And it has to be a very special puzzle for me to do that.
When am I tempted to look up answers? There's only one reason that's true for me in every instance: I'm adoring the puzzle. It's an interesting, curiosity-provoking puzzle. One or two bits of ungettable trivia mean that I cannot continue working on this puzzle that I'm so loving. Alas, I'm blocked. I cheat so that I can continue with a puzzle that I'm loving. Yes, it will be a DNF, but that won't diminish my pleasure in the solving process.
Cheating for me is an homage to the puzzle. I may hate this clue (and the next one too, btw) , but I'm loving the rest of the puzzle and I'm damned if I'm not going to "finish" it -- one way or other.
Today was not that day. I was bored with the trivia; not enough help was coming in from the crosses that I was likely to solve it that way and certainly not without a lot of suffering. I didn't want to "research" all those answers. I just wanted to drop the whole thing entirely.
Needing to think is what makes a puzzle soar for me. Simply knowing a lot of trivial facts is a bore. I get no kick whatsoever out of knowing that stuff. It doesn't make me feel smart. Whereas not knowing a lot of trivial facts is an exercise in pointless frustration. These are the various factors that make a puzzle exciting for me and make me want to engage. YMMV.
Ah you're right about northern vs southern, thanks for the correction!
Just remember that Ludovico bought various cars over the course of his lifetime, but only once did he ever buy an Audi.
Villager
I grew up on boiled and mashed rutabagas, though we just called them turnips. They were pretty good with lots of butter and salt and pepper, kind of an alternative to mashed potatoes. You should try oven roasting cubes of rutabaga, lightly coated in olive oil and seasoned with salt, pepper and chopped fresh thyme. Sage is good if you don't have thyme. Might change your mind.
Never saw a white turnip until I was in my twenties and doing my own grocery shopping. About 10 years ago I discovered some little white turnips at a farmers' market - somewhat bigger than radishes, but not huge - and really good. I eat them raw. Just whole, as a snack with a little salt, or julienned in a salad.My son the chef calls them Tokyo turnips and uses them in all sorts of dishes. And the leaves are really tasty braised with a little garlic and chicken or veggie stock.
Turnips - a whole new culinary adventure! Tune in next week when we explore the exciting possibilties of parsnips!
Read Rex but not the comments. I am a VERY slow solver. But my puzzle experience was opposite Rex’s. I had no clue about the Italian pianist, but I found the downs very easy and saw the Italian first name appearing. Unlike Rex after academic, I immediately thought of program and not long after thought of system after closed. That took care of Ludivivo’s last name because the d sounded right in Italian and then I remembered the cross, knowing dna from the clue. Weird how it happened.
Down below, I had a lot of difficulty. I forgot that old crosswordese AWNS! My bad. That area was the hardest for me. What broke it open was finally remembering RANKS. Also I found the lower grid spanners harder to get than the top. (L
As usual, I liked the puzzle better than Rex
I always thought it was plumb as well. Since a fruit has nothing to do with being tired.
I always assumed that word was a nonsense word with no meaning. "The word supercalifragilisticexpialidocious in Mary Poppins is said to be simply a word used as "something to say when you have nothing to say,"". So not knowing much French Etoi (s/b atoi) popped into my head as being French'ish so DNF for me. Okras is not a word
I dnf’d on the R in the RANKS/ROGUE cross. Didn’t know RANKS but should’ve known ROGUE. Oh, well. Also some news: The FBI confirms that Charlie Kirk assassin Tyler Robinson was in a "romantic relationship" with a transgender individual who is transitioning from male to female . Anyone shocked by this? Seems like a pattern.
I see that my low opinion of RUTABAGAs was shaped by an unfortunate first (and only) exposure. I appreciate being enlightened!
Check out Ludovico Einaudi’s TWO SUNSETS. Beautiful.
Same for me! I dropped Einaudi in as my very first answer; easily my proudest crossword moment ever. And then completely bombed out in the bottom half. Oh well
Okay, got it: "an Audi" in German. Now how to remember Ludovico? Ludavico, Ludovica, etc...
@Les S. More, I agree with you on two counts, that discussion of common names of plants can quickly get confusing, and that Albizia julibrissin, commonly called mimosa or pink silk tree, is in fact a pink-flowered tree. We don't know which mimosa Anonymous 10:59 was referring to, or Alex Jiang, for that matter.
My point was simply that Jiang was not incorrect to clue MIMOSA as "pink-flowered tree", whether he was thinking of Albizia julibrissin or one of the many pink-flowered members of the genus Mimosa.
Loved the process of my solve today; it was very odd. And I very nearly dnf’d. It wasn’t caused by our pianist LUDOVICO. I did have trouble with his surname and its spelling but the crosses up there were pretty easy for me. It was at the RANKS/ROGUE cross that I nesrly tanked. In fact, that little swath gave me the most trouble of the whole solve.
I can play chess, but certainly not with anyone good, but I have familiarity with the board and the items in a chess set. And I thought the octet on a chess board was likely not referring to part of the chess set but rather part of the board itself simply because pawns, while it fit is technically not right for the clue. Sure, each player starts with an octet of pawns, but there are 16 in a set. So I thought if it’s the board itself it has to be columns or rows but those wouldn’t fit and I was certain about ROGUE. Ugh!!! What I learned today was lots more about the process of chess.
The diagonal piece from 30 through 39 across. Took way too long for me to connect Petunia and PORKY, but I did know that one.
I had real trouble with AOKAY because something that’s just AOKAY doesn’t mean “fine” to me. “Fine” is either really excellent, as in “fine china” or “he’s so fine!” The old crosswordese “aces” is also “fine.” But AOKAY is either “I receive you loud and clear,” or “gotcha,” or it’s “serviceable.” That’s just the way my brain worked through that one. Or didn’t as it happens.
As for the TAKIS, the clue was darn near meaningless to me and I had to leave it alone. Until the bitter end, I had ALONE, ROGUE, HUNAN and PORKY going across in that area.
My brain just did not connect well with our constructor. WELL ITS NO WONDER I was PLUM TUCKERED OUT by the end. I finally asked my almost 13 year old granddaughter, “is there a rolled chip brand from Mexico?” Immediately I got “Duh, TAKIS, grandma, my favorite snack!” I blame the fact that I have never looked closely at them to know they are rolled up like a tube. I thought the word “rolled” in the clue meant that the product was made from a dough or a mashed corn batter-like product like Fritos! Live and learn.
I really enjoyed this one. It felt like a legit Saturday for s change.
Agreed. Looked off to me, too. Google AI seems to much prefer "plumb" over"plum".
I’m one of the lucky millennials who got to fill LUDOVICOEINAUDI breezily. I even screenshot it during the solve to commemorate (what I assume is) his debut? I also can’t recommend him enough! The albums Nightbook and In a Time Lapse come to mind. Enchanting is a great word for his music. “Lady Labyrinth” is an AONE solving song. A good backing track to having a mission.
Ditto! My overlong comment below spells out my exhaustion by the time I finally finished. Top half and the SE corner were nicely whooshy, but a portion of the SW quarter nearly did me in.
My granddaughter actually gave me the answer that allowed me to finish. While I have seen TAKIS in a package, I have never seen what they look like and had no idea they are from Mexico.
That was fun. I loved those cartoons when I was young about fifty (gasp) years ago. Loved seeing Antifa in the puzzle. Can’t get more on brand for the NYT than having them in the puzzle a few days after one of them assassinated a young conservative. Kudos.
Agree with Rex-- medium/ easy; very enjoyable and a great debut
Italian pianist was a non starter, plus too many other names/foreign words. And the bottom long clues were awkwardly worded than normal speech (if anyone still says these). This one felt too out of date.
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