Getaway where guests are out of fashion? / MON 9-1-25 / RMS Titanic's undoer / Demilitarized space between antagonists / Annoying fee added to a price / Indicator of a half-price deal / Lustrous sheet material
Monday, September 1, 2025
Constructor: Lynn Lempel
Relative difficulty: Easy (solved Downs-only)
Theme answers:
- NUDIST CAMP (17A: Getaway where guests are out of fashion?)
- NEUTRAL ZONE (25A: Demilitarized space between antagonists)
- NUISANCE TAX (51A: Annoying fee added to a price)
- NOODLE SOUP (59A: Ramen or pho)
- (derogatory) A tax imposed as a percentage of the selling price of goods or services, payable by the customer and transmitted by the seller to the taxing authority; a sales tax. (thefreedictionary.com)
• • •
The preponderance of short stuff was advantageous to me, as a Downs-only solver. Generally speaking, the shorter the answer is, the easier it is to get with no help from crosses. I ran BIN EDU ROD and GLIB one after the other, no hesitation, which put me in great position to guess my first themer:
My Downs-only struggles were few today. I don't really know the difference between SATEEN and satin, which is to say I don't really know what SATEEN is, but since SATIN wouldn't fit at 5D: Lustrous sheet material, I figured it must be SATEEN. This resulted in an answer that started BOE- in one of the crosses, which initially set off alarms in my head, but then the "S" went into the end of that same answer and I remembered that BOERS exist, so in went the "R," in went ACCRUE, and on I went. I wasn't entirely sure about ACCRUE at first because I wasn't sure how the term "interest" was being used in the clue (6D: Build up, as interest). I was thinking maybe you were building up interest in something in the sense of hyping it. But no, interest was simply building up in a savings or money market or what-have-you account. Wanted YAKKED (sp!?) before TALKED, as TALKED seemed too plain an answer for [Gabbed], which seems to imply a certain chattiness as well as a certain ... gossipiness or excess or something. I also wasn't sure how to take [Dispatches] at 52-Down. I thought maybe KILLS was the answer, but thankfully at that point I knew that that theme answer down there was going to start with a "new" sound, which got me NUISANCE TAX, which got me out of my [Dispatches] conundrum (it's SENDS). In keeping with the theme of "how is this word being used?," I sincerely thought that 36D: Spot to tie the knot (ALTAR) was going to have something to do with a necktie. Alas, NECK wouldn't fit. Maybe I thought the clue said "a knot," not "the knot." At any rate, none of these minor misunderstandings held me back for very long today. I don't time myself anymore, but I feel like if I did, today's would've been one of my fastest Downs-only solves ever.
Bullets:
- 23D: Indicator of a half-price deal (BOGO) — Buy One, Get One. Common retail parlance.
- 50D: Shaft on which a wheel turns (AXLE) — I taught myself the difference between AXLE and AXEL in the most ridiculously gendered way possible. That is, guys are into cars, and women are into ice skating, and since guys are generally bigger than women, the one with "XL" in it is the car one, and the other is the ice skating one, and no I don't care that my "logic" is based on all kinds of false suppositions. It works for my brain, and that's all that matters.
- 1A: RMS Titanic's undoer (BERG) — never really liked this term. In fact, never heard of this ICE-less BERG until I started doing crosswords. Maybe ICEBERG is redundant? Are there other types of BERG? I guess a mountain or a hill can be a BERG (it's literally "mountain" in German). ICEBERG is such a nice-sounding word, whereas BERG just kinda lies there like a lump. Blargh.
OK, that's enough for today. Happy September! Happy Labor Day! See you next time.
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