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Field of unknowns / SAT 10-4-25 / Vulcans, for one / Vittorio who directed "Bicycle Thieves" / Home of Banff National Park / Result of sleeping in , say / ___ Johnson, inventor of the Super Soaker / They may stop the presses
Saturday, October 4, 2025
Constructor: Ryan McCarty
Relative difficulty: Easy / Medium
THEME: None
Word of the Day: FARRO (37D: Grain with a nutty flavor) —
Farro (/ˈfæroʊ/ ⓘ) is a grain of any of three species of hulled wheat, namely einkorn, emmer, or spelt, sold dried and cooked in water until soft. It is used as a side dish and added to salads, soups and stews.
• • •
This kind of wide-open middle is pretty much Ryan McCarty's trademark. I find that these kinds of grid have a very specific solve flow. They always start slow for me. There aren't too many toeholds, particularly in the middle, since there is no short fill with familiar cluing to help anchor the solve. But, eventually, one of the long entries falls into place, then another, and it all comes together *so fast* and it's *so satisfying* ... since the middle is super interconnected, each answer gives lots of new letters in other answers in an insanely gratifying crossword snowball effect.
 |
| This is Banff National Park in ALBERTA |
The price to pay, however, is that the NW and SE corners are pretty disconnected from the rest of the grid. I guess there's no crossword free lunch. They are meaty enough that they feel like a satisfying puzzle in themselves, but it can be frustrating to feel stuck getting into one of those corners after already having made the initial breakthrough in the center of the grid.
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| This is PATAGONIA (the place in South America, not the brand) |
OK, let's talk about this specific puzzle. I really enjoyed it! Ryan really always brings his absolute A game. Nobody else is making this kind of puzzle like he is. Just look at the 7(!!!!)-stack in the middle: PATAGONIA, ALIEN RACE, GLADSTONE, BABY STEPS, RIDESHARE, GAG ORDERS, FIRST TEST. And all that crossing BIG SCENE, PLAYS DEAD, HE SAID SHE SAID, LATE START, CAR LOANS. It's just amazing. I'll nitpick by saying I'm not really sure if FIRST TEST is really a thing. Sure, those two words can absolutely go together, but it feels a little Green Painty. I'd also never heard of C STORES, but that's probably on me. Is that expression familiar to you? But I really cannot emphasize enough how impressive it is to have all these juicy long answers in the center with no gluey bits of short fill.
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| This is an ELAND |
Maybe another nit is it didn't feel like there were too many satisfying tricky wordplay clues. With a grid like this, though, I tend to find that satisfaction comes more from chipping away at the giant gaping center than from the cluing. And too many oblique wordplay clues can make it too daunting to get any sort of foothold. Anyways .... tradeoffs, as always!
Alright, I hope you all are well! Somehow it's October already. (The older I get the more I find myself saying "wow time goes by so fast now!" and I don't think it's ever going to stop. Oh well!)
Bullets:
- 2D LORELEI [Legendary rock singer?] — I loved this clue, actually! Lorelei is a siren (of the kind that stands of a rock and lures sailors to their death by singing hypnotically)
- 31D RAREBIT ["Welsh" dish with melted cheese] — This was new to me but I looked it up and it looks kind of amazing. Melted cheese? Yeah, sign me up.
- 16A MRS MAISEL ["Marvelous" TV character played by Rachel Brosnahan] — This show has been on my to-watch list for ages! Is it worth getting into now? Is it not cool anymore? Let me know please!
- 12D YREKA [California town thought (incorrectly) to be named from a backward "bakery" sign] — Loved the Northern California representation! (The most accepted origin for the name is from the Shasta language)
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127 comments:
Solid, if not exactly scintillating.
I have driven through, or rather, by 12D YREKA numerous times and have always assumed its name was related to the California state motto, Eureka, but a California cousin told me it was pronounced why-ree-ka. Okay, but the eureka connection still makes more sense to me than the bakery story so I’m sticking with my version.
Started out nicely with 1A ALGEBRA, quickly followed by 1D ARMREST and 2D LORELEI (all well clued) and I was off and running. Thanks to my oldest son, with whom I’m going fishing on Tuesday, I’ve seen that 24A PATAGONIA logo a lot of times in the last 10 years. My son lives in Queensland, Australia, where there aren’t a lot of fly fishing outfitters so he orders most of his gear online where PATAGONIA has a big presence. I can’t afford their stuff and so frequent my local shops for more reasonably priced alternatives. (Also the local guys - some of whom I have fished with - profit.)
FLOUNCE is a fun word. FIRST TEST is just dull. And who actually says C STORES? I know “convenience” must be a tough word for some people - after all, it has more than one syllable - but C’mon.
And who really cares who invented the Super Soaker?
Tried for the longest time to fit ALLERION (with an extra I in there) instead of ALIEN RACE. Tried real hard to make MCFLY be MIKEY (hey Mikey, gotta go to the bathroom?) from the Goonies. At least I got first and last letters in there. Still was trying for YORBA and not YREKA. Fun fact, Eureka, CA is at the same exact latitude as my hometown of Butler, PA. That means we share the same exact amount of sunlight per day but Eurekans don't have to suffer through Januarys and Februarys where the temperature rarely exceeds 20 degrees. That's probably why I live in New Orleans now.
Love it when I get 1 across on a Saturday as my first entry! I’m usually a slow solver and never time myself, but if I had I’m sure this would have been my fastest Saturday ever. Felt like a Wednesday. That said, I really enjoyed it, liked the clueing and longish answers.
Lack of “satisfying tricky” - you are correct, sir.
“Org. with jumps”was about as close as we got.
Banff is the most beautiful place on earth. Of course, I haven’t seen 99.99% of the rest of the planet. But I’m still right.
I will never remember prone vs supine. At least today I could just put in the one that fit.
Last I looked, 12 states had Ag-gag orders (laws.) As the great Z once said in these pages, kinda makes you want to know what they don’t want you know, no?
HH
I’ve lead a very sheltered life, so I have no idea why Quixote’s squire was relegated to riding an ASS, and I’m not yet ready to concede that I have nothing better to do than to try to find out.
I tend to be satisfied with BABY STEP successes and moral victories on Saturdays - I count dropping in HE SAID SHE SAID just off of the initial H among them today.
I agree with Rafa that the center stack was stellar. It would have been Hall of Fame worthy if he could have pulled it off without the brand name and the actress.
FLOUNCE sounds like a pretty cool word. I wonder if it will make it onto Gary’s favorite word list.
Found this one incredibly easy, much faster than my average time (which is very very slow). However, the cross of an obscure proper noun with an equally obscure other noun was quite unfortunate for me.
I have never heard of Bicycle Thieves (apparently a very very old foreign movie???) nor the bizarre word for drapes that it crosses. Rude puzzle creation in an otherwise breezy solve.
Rafa, you were early with your write up! I couldn't sleep--ate too much, and woke up. So I took my rolaids and worked on the puzzle. 16 minutes for me--love these low word-count puzzles. 62, if I'm not mistaken--is that the lower limit??? Anyway, I agree with your write-up 100%. I was very happy for a few straightforward clues to get me started, esp in the SE (like the clue for HUMIDOR). Actually, had a mistake in the NW--had RAmp instead of RAIL; of course, I wasn't too sure of Halley's name, and MRSMAISEL was MRS MAmSEL for a while. I knew RECuIp didn't look quite right... finally figured out the RAIL and got the happy music. Thanks, RYAN, for an awesome Saturday puzzle!!!!! : )
Very easy and extremely whooshy. No costly erasures and LONNIE and GLADSTONE were it for WOEs. My only hiccup was the CARLOANS / LUNK cross which took a few nanosecond of staring (you don’t see LUNK all that often).
Fun solve with plenty of sparkle…other than being a tough Wednesday themeless…I liked it.
@Rafa - MRS MAISEL is still cool.
CStore = convenience store.
Mnemonic:
SUPINE is just one letter away from SPINE. Think of lying on your spine versus on your belly.
Drapes? Do you mean serapes? They are large Mexican shawls, meant to cover the shoulders. Drapes cover windows. And Bicycle Thieves is a classic—well worth watching, even if it is “very, very old.”
I absolutely loathed this puzzle. The grid was very impressive and very clean but my god, the clues were terrible for a Saturday! I flew through the puzzle today, and not in a good or satisfying way. (The data backs this up—it’s my record time in the app.) If this constructor is all about getting the grid excellent, he should partner with someone else for cluing. Everything was incredibly obvious unless it was a truly unknown fact. I’m so mad about this puzzle. I feel cheated.
MartY before MCFLY, I wanted o'er before TIS, and LONNIE was a WOE, but otherwise I quite enjoyed this one. Except for C STORES, which no one ever says. I had to run the alphabet--thankfully it was a C (couldn't figure out "sucker" from VA_; I was thinking a dupe or an ass, but that was already in there for Sancho Panza). A fun Saturday, if a little easier than the rest of the week has been relatively.
Seemed odd that the answer ROADRASH was followed immediately by a clue with “rashness” in it. It’s different meanings of “rash,” but I stopped and wondered if ROADRASH might be called something else just to avoid that.
Another terrific looking RC offering with top quality clean fill. However I was shocked by the complete lack of resistance. ASS and MRSMAISEL were gimmies. After BRAID dropped in ROADRASH and ALGEBRA became obvious. The rolls over and PLAYSDEAD resistance kept up in every section. Going into the SW I did have a BIGORDER/GAGORDER write over and briefly thought FARRO might be KAMUT. Both were easy to fix.
Going into the SE it took me a little while to recall that DIVVIED has two Vs. With UP in place ICECUBE, SERAPES and HUMIDOR dropped right in. The D of DESICA was my final entry.
This was the fun Friday that we didn't get yesterday.
Friday level puzzle - solid as always from Ryan. Daunting grid architecture with that open central region but a few gimmes here and there help the footing. HE SAID SHE SAID opens up the entire experience.
Manic Street Preachers
LORELEI, PATAGONIA, FLOUNCE, RAREBIT, HUMIDOR are all top notch. Some crosswordese here and there but I’ll look past that. Slightly heavy on the trivia for a Saturday - MCFLY, GADOT, GLADSTONE etc.
The Chinook wind is a-movin' in
Tomorrow night I'll be ALBERTA bound
Enjoyable Saturday morning solve. Another new to me constructor - Lars Doubleday provides a handsome grid layout and a bit more challenge in his Stumper today.
Colter Wall
Easy. My only problem area was the NW, and that was because I misspelled LORELEI (2D) and couldn't remember EDMOND Halley's first name (4D). And if I had remembered it before I got RECOIL at 19A, I would have misspelled it.
One overwrite:
dolt before LUNK for the muttonhead at 22a
WOEs:
Super Soaker inventor LONNIE Johnson (11D)
YREKA California (12D), but with a couple of crosses the answer was right in the clue
Never heard the term C-STORE (49A), but it was easy to infer.
Half easy (SE and SW), the rest hard. Needed cheats for EDMOND (Halley) and MRSMAISEL, also for the MCFLY/LONNIE cross. I had "macabre" for "field of unknowns" before finding ALGEBRA. Clue for ARMREST is clever but wicked.
Very easy. Perhaps too easy for Saturday … but enjoyable.
I have never heard “c store” before either. I was going a bit slow, until I decided I would be easy on myself on a saturday morning and googled “antelope varieties” - once I had eland, things started to open up.
We use vegetable broth instead of beer when making Welsh rarebit, as the beer can dominate the cheesy taste.
Super easy Saturday - has to be in my five fastest ever. I had a minor amount of trouble in the SE, with DESICA, CSTORES as WoEs and my initial DIVidED UP.
Lorelei as the name for a siren is not, as you might think, part of ancient Greek or Roman mythology, but is a 19th century German invention.
I have never heard “c store” before either. I was going a bit slow, until I decided I would be easy on myself on a saturday morning and googled “antelope varieties” - once I had eland, things started to open up.
RAMP instead of RAIL led me to MIRIAM___ instead of MRS MAISEL, but that was the only thing that really slowed me down.
Hey All !
Surprisingly fast today. The ole timer says 16:11, which is fire behind the feet fast for me for a SatPuz. Oddly enough, it didn't seem like it was that quick. I had resistance in every area.
Managed to fill in the Center vastness first, which usually doesn't happen to me. Then went NE, NW, SE, SW.
Apparently the ole brain is firing on most cylinders today. (Notice not All !)
Nice puz, always wonder how long it takes to make an open puz like this without glaring junk. It's tough to do.
Well, hope y'all have a great Saturday!
Two F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Am I the only one who had never heard of a C store? Only rough stop in the puzzle
Delightfully whooshy, as you say.
Re Mrs. Maisel, Rachel Brosnahan is fantastic, the clothes are to die for, and there are many wonderful characters & episodes that successfully, inventively balance between drama & farce. Every so often it’s infuriating in being too farcical without enough depth, or in ascribing too-modern attitudes to a period piece. Definitely worth watching. Never dumb.
Polished, oh so polished, this grid! An uber-low 62 words, chunks o’ white aplenty, not only packed with a cluster of varied and interesting answers, but void of clunkers anywhere. Simply gorgeous.
Ryan likes this grid design – he used it in January. In that puzzle, tough for me, I went from headstrong, to humble, to hope, to happy – one sweet solve.
Today, therefore, I started humble, and as a result, every answer I filled in felt like a happy surprise. Being pummeled by happy surprises, hey, that is a sweet solve as well.
And then FLOUNCE, a word that brightens my day every time it crosses my path. Today it triggered the image of an ostrich doing ballet. I also loved [Focus of an airplane battle] for ARMREST, not to mention the PuzzPair© of DADS TO BE and BABY STEPS.
Ryan, you are one of the kings of Saturday, and I never know what to expect, except gladness for having done them. Thank you for your humor and mastery, and for a splendid outing today!
Very easy for me except VAC crossing with CSTORES. I don’t think of VAC as being short for vacuum (unless talking about a shop-vac), and though I know it’s been in the puzzle before I have never heard anyone use the term CSTORE(S) so I stared at that for a while. I agree with Rafa that it wasn’t exactly satisfying. I agree with others that The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is worth watching—Rachel Brosnahan and Alex Borstein paired together is solid entertainment.
I’m with you. It’s been in the puzzle before but I still didn’t get it until I had VA crossing.
Never
Just watched Bicycle Thieves last month for the second time. The first time was nearly 50 years ago. Yep, still a great movie.
Bicycle Thieves (AKA The Bicycle Thief) before MRS MAISEL
Actually, Bicycle Thieves before just about anything else.
"People should see it -- and they should care."
Agreed. As Rafa noted, turning up the clue trickiness would have made this a true Saturday puzzle. I solved this in slightly over half my usual time, closer to a Wednesday and much less that yesterday’s excellent puzzle (well done, Rafa!). Good fun today, but over too soon.
Tony Shalhoub as her father is also worth watching.
Lovely grid, super easy over here. Eight minutes which is like an easy Wednesday time for me. Thanks for pointing out the amazing central stack, I just whooshed right through it.
Before corporate chains like 7-Eleven and Circle K took over the market and put tens of thousands of moms and pops out of business everywhere, each region of the country had its own unique local term for these sorts of stores (none of which was CSTORE) with the advantage of having all sorts of hidden goodies for all ages on the shelves. In Greater Boston, they were known as "spas." I can't imagine that, given the choice, anyone would choose to go to a CSTORE over a spa.
I guess I’m the only one but I don’t understand the clue and answer for 1 down. Can someone explain it please?
This was my second record time for me this week (along with Wednesday). 12:10 on a Saturday. Everything clicked, even with a few clues that I were knew to me.
Just a lovely puzzle. Smooth as silk. Yes, it played a little bit easy, could have been clued harder, but I'm not complaining.
Just a few stumbles: MRS MAISie before MRS MAISEL, EDMuND before EDMOND.
Neato words include RAREBIT and FLOUNCE. I just like the look of the first and the sound of the second. Although -- the first is thought to be an alteration of "rabbit", and the full name of the dish is Welsh RAREBIT, and one explanation is along the lines of this being a poor man's substitute for actual rabbit. Arguably one of many examples of the English making fun of an entire people. We also have "welsh" meaning to renege (on a deal), or to fail to repay (a debt). The Dutch come in for abuse as well: Dutch uncle, Dutch treat, Dutch wife. Anyway, this is by way of admitting that the word origin of RAREBIT may strike many as unsavory, although the dish itself is quite savory.
There was some complaint about the obscure cluing for LONNIE. Fair enough. Wikipedia lists a whole bunch of LONNIEs, and I invite the knowledgeable sports fans (for example), or musicians, to weigh in as to whether there's a less obscure LONNIE out there who could have been fairly used. I wouldn't really know.
Cuban container: of course I thought of the sandwich first. HUMIDOR came as a nice little aha.
As Bob Mills noted, ARMREST was amusingly clued. Wow do I know that feeling on a plane. The middle seat sucks.
Take care, fellow solvers!
I had the same thought. Thinking of sliding across pavement first thing in the morning was also not pleasant. On a motorcycle, you’re lucky if it’s only ROADRASH.
Rafa, congrats on the puzzle yesterday and the write-up today was spot on! I was trying to remember if yesterday was the ONLYFANS puzzle or the ARSE/HALFASS one:) Looking back, I noticed LILY to pair with today’s GLADSTONE. I thought that last name would be something impossible, but enough crossing letters brought that into view.
Hands up for MartY before MCFLY.
Thanks for the juxtaposition of pics of PATAGONIA and BANFF. I think Patagonia clothing may have moved into the realm of aspirational outdoor clothing rather than actually used by people in the field.
I enjoyed watching Marvelous Mrs Maisel, but it has been off the air long enough that it is really more about seeing if it is your cuppa. Hacks has kind of replaced it in the lead female comic TV lane
Cstore is widely used in retail lingo to decribe 7-11s and store attached to gas stations.
Lonnie is my dad, so I really care who invented the Super Soaker.
ALGEBRA was an easy way in, confirmed by BRAID. Which meant I was saved from making the legendary rock singer mistake I otherwise would have made: CALYPSO instead of LORELEI. The hardest clue for me was when I had MCF for the highest grossing lead role. Was that one of the "Stars" or a LOTR? Oh, wow -- MCFLY! A movie I actually know. A movie I actually saw. A movie I actually loved.
Absolutely everything fell into place for me and I found this puzzle quite easy. Colorful and very fairly clued. The high point was HE SAID SHE SAID which I wrote in with almost no crosses. My only write-over was DIVIDED UP before DIVVIED UP. This had a lot of whoosh -- but was never boring.
Absolutely. I have never heard anyone say, I'm headed to the c-store for some nachos, man
Yes, Banff is the most beautiful. Went there in my 20s & decided it would be the perfect place to visit at least twice a year (winter & summer) for the rest of my life. Too bad I lacked the capital to realize this fantasy.
Super easy for me. Just one minute longer than my personal best Saturday. Enjoyed the cluing and the block in the middle is impressive construction. Was briefly Naticked by the VAC/CSTORES (TIL) crossing — otherwise, might have had my record Saturday.
Roo, I felt the same way about my brain being on all cylinders today and you were more than several seconds below my time. I was actually surprised it wasn’t my Saturday PB, but apparently my cylinders were firing faster some time in the past!
Think of being in the middle seat of an airplane and both the aisle and the window seat people use “your” armrest and you have none.
Nice seeing FLOUNCE after FLOUNCED was a Spelling Bee pangram a few weeks ago.
I also had MARTY before MCFLY.
1-down refers to passengers fighting over who gets the ARMREST on a long flight.
There is a suburb of war-torn Portland named GLADSTONE. It is referred to with a wink as Happy Rock.
In TV land it's hard to know what will be a hit, and even the misses may sell.
If someone would include the (unfortunately now defunct) YREKA Bakery in a crossword, @Lewis would be able to reference the incredibly-rare-in-crosswords 11 letter palindrome. I seem to remember Herb Caen occasionally referring to the YB, but I'm not positive.
If you take the "HE" side in the HESAIDSHESAID face-off are you a HEIST?
One Cuban to another on a sultry day: Is it HUMIDOR what?
Having to start over on arranging that rope into concentric loops made me RECOIL.
I think they have a lot of CSTORES in ELAND.
Note to @Nancy. It is wonderful to have you back and horrifying to hear of your suffering from COVID and at the, possibly intentional, hands of the moderators. I'm personally relieved that your bonds with our little community enabled you to overcome your anger and frustration. As some may have noted, my contributions are seldom very short, meaning some effort has gone into them. It is frustrating that once a week or so my comments don't appear. This may be some glitch in the Matrix, but my "freewheeling" style may at times be the cause. It would be nice to know the reasoning behind spiking one's comments, but I doubt we ever will. So I accept it as part of being a willing and happy member of the community. Again, welcome back.
And thanks for a very fun puzzle, Ryan McCarty.
Haha! As for the middle seat…I found out not that long ago that actually the middle seat is supposed to be “entitled to” BOTH armrests. I’ve been lucky in recent years in that my husband and I will get aisle seats across from each other. However, usually people are pretty polite (at least they used to be) and I typically only lost personal space due to people who physically can’t help extending into my space.
It will stop. For all of us it will stop.
The arm rests of the middle seats on a commercial airplane.
Can someone explain how send goes with delight? Thanks!
Count me in with the crowd that really enjoyed this puzzle. I thought all the long stacks were great and there was a lot of clever clueing with ARMREST being my favorite. My biggest “hangup” was the southeast corner with SAP before VAC plus, like others, never having heard the term CSTORES.
I’ll just go ahead and peg CSTORES as the only thing I didn’t like. When would you say that? You go into a city you’ve never been to and say, “Could you tell me if there are any CSTORES nearby?” I dunno. Seems like most people would just say “convenience.”
This puzzle was very whooshy except for the NE. I had the F in FLOUNCE and that meant the movie had to be ALFIE! That hung me up for quite a while. Anyone else?
the Marvelous Mrs Maisel is completely absolutely 100% worth watching for Tony Shaloub alone. Probably my favourite role of his. Oh - and the dresses!!!! (Mr Shaloub is not in any of the dresses, these are separate things I adored about the show.)
Easy and delightful. I'll qualify the "easy": I couldn't enter anything but VALOR in the top two rows; it was only MRS MAISEL x HE SAID SHE SAID x PATAGONIA that opened the door for me. After that, fun all the way. Loved FLOUNCE!
For Vittorio DE SICA fans - if you're not familiar with him as an actor, check out "Too Bad She's Bad" (Italian title translates as "Too bad she's a con artist"), a charming bit of Italian fluff from 1954. The "She" is a 20-year-old Sophia Loren in her first role with Marcello Mastroianni, with Di Sica playing her con man dad. He's a great comedic actor.
C-store is industry jargon; I learned it when I worked in food packaging.
Niche term, though.
Having fallen off many a motorcycle, road rash an absolute gimme & saw he said she said just off the h. Only troubles the double v in divvied & the lunk yreka cross.
Loved it!
Yep, RAMP/RAIL confusion, EDMOND, GLADSTONE,LONNIE and MRSMAISEL, who dat?, lots of similar experiences to others this AM, including the general whooshiness of the whole thing.
Randomly:
Been singing "Guess I'll go out to ALBERTA weather's good there in the fall" from "Four Strong Winds" for about 60 years now and it never gets old.
Just heard Jimmy Kimmel commenting on our Bully in Chief, JK said no thanks to Biff, he's always rooted for MCFLY so that was fresh in my mind.
As @tht has explained, I had heard of Welsh RABBIT and had to count squares to see which one they wanted.
Sancho Panza can be freely translated as "holy belly (paunch)", as the character is far more earthy than cerebral.
Really enjoyed your Saturday offering, RMC. A Ready Made Cure for any Saturday blahs, and thanks for all the fun.
How old was I when I first realized that it was Welsh Rarebit and not Welsh Rabbit? I certainly wasn't young. But I'm pretty sure that my very well-educated mother always said and wrote "Welsh Rabbit" whenever she planned one of my all-time favorite dishes. And I'm also very sure she had no driving wish to make fun of the Welsh people. So could it be that just about everyone in the world at that time thought the correct term was "Welsh Rabbit"? And how and why did that change? Was it because some really swanky restaurants began to put it on their menus? Making it from scratch instead of from the frozen Stouffers package that turned out to be just swell as long as you knew how to doctor it? Why even I knew how to doctor it* -- and I don't even cook. Doctoring it wasn't the problem; melting it was.
*Note to kitshef -- Oh, no, you simply CANNOT eliminate the beer! the beer is EVERYTHING! But it has to be stale beer. I had to remind myself to open a can of beer the day before and let it sit on the counter before using it. Trust me -- it makes all the difference. And then of course you need Coleman's English mustard; no other mustard will do. Let's talk.
I'm glad I eventually learned to call the dish "Welsh Rarebit". To melt some tiny defenseless little rabbit in a big pot of cheese: why that would be truly indefensible.
Is that actually true? If so it’s very cool. I find all of the backstories around the inventions that turned into toys to be so interesting.
I was just making an AeroPress which i often tell people has the same inventor as the aerobee frisbee.
Wow! Thanks. Devilish clue.
Convenience stores
A great Saturday! Everything just flowed & it was a joy to solve (unlike some of the puzzles lately).
Thank you, Ryan :)
LONNIE for me will always be LONNIE Donegan, who famously sang "Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor on the Bed Post Over Night?" Also, I have always found it interesting that the English take French leave and the French take English leave. Take that, you furriners.
Cool!
Well, the deluge of proper nouns in the SE killed me. You'll laugh at me but I had HAMODOR for Cuban Container. It stands to reason that a Cuban sandwich would contain a ham odor. I have no idea who Henry Luce or Vittorio DeSica are, so LACE and DESOCA seemed perfectly reasonable. It seems the only way they can add difficulty lately is by throwing in a hundred proper nouns. Really frustrating.
I liked the whooshing, but solved it in 9 minutes, which the app says is 8 minutes faster than my average Saturday. I wish the clueing had been trickier.
Patagonia apparel may be expensive, but is very durable. My rain jacket is at least 15 years old. . Plus they give 100% of profits away to fight climate change and to nature conservation. Most recently saving the Okofenokee Swamp from a polluting mining operation.
LORELEI is also a rock song by Styx
Completely agree. If you haven't seen it, do. One of the best series offerings ever.
I usually find McCarty puzzles more entertaining. The only sparkle for me came from "Legendary rock singer?" for LORELEI and HESAIDSHESAID. But it was crunchy enough.
A great movie
C store? Never heard of it
The grid looks promising, with lots of space for longish entries, but then we get PLAY DEAD, RIDESHARE, FIRST TEST, LATE START.... Doesn't really live up to its potential.
I saw that DE SICA back in the early 1960s, and I'm 99% that it was called "The Bicycle Thief" at the time. That's what this review by Roger Ebert"calls it, as well -- though the headline for his review gives both titles. Great movie, anyway.
But there are many movies I've never seen, including "Back to the Future," and I had always thought that California town was named "Eureka," so I finally OPTED for a Y in the crossing, and then searched for MCFLY to see if I'd guessed right. Yay!
No yay for C-STORES, though. Why would you bother to call them that?
Yes, exactly on everything you write about the Welsh rabbit, just the way my mother prepared it. Somehow I never thought of the term as derogatory. Welcome back. Missed reading your comments.
Got the NW corner filled in pretty quick. But that led into that there ginormous center, which was hard for m&e to just canter right into.
Sooo ... went over to the smaller, friendlier-lookin NE corner, and got rollin again.
staff weeject picks [of only 8 choices]: SAC & VAC.
lotsa fave stuff here, includin: 4 Jaws of Themelessness. DIVVIEDUP. BABYSTEPS. ALGEBRA & clue. Clues for: CARLOANS, ARMREST, LORELEI.
Also found the mysterious YREKA real interestin.
Thanx for the feisty solvequest, Mr. McCarty dude. M&A didn't exactly MC-FLY thru it, but liked it.
Masked & Anonymo4Us
... M&A goes all Jack Kerouac-like on y'all ...
"On the Road with M and A" - 7x7 themed runt puzzle:
**gruntz**
M&A
I literally had that battle this week. I kept fighting this guy’s anonymous elbow on a night flight and being very pushy about it. When the plane landed, he turned to me and said hey how are you? It turned out. He was an old friend and I had been completely rude..
Loni for me will always be Loni Anderson
I just put the sliced cheese on top of the toast and stick it under the grill (broiler). Butter and or mustard on the toast first is optional.
Straightforward to you, but I spent some long seconds trying to figure out what kind of bread one used to contain a Cuban sandwich.
I'm lucky if I can attribute a movie to the right decade, and we've been hearing about "Jaws" a lot likely, so I almost put in "shark." Fortunately, I had VALOR already, so 8-D had to be MVP; that saved me from the error.
¿Ya terminaste de adivinar? ¿Te das por vencido?
Nice puzzle despite being so gunky. Kept thinking I would fail especially after the first dismal pass, but stuck with it and finished in typical time. SERAPES/LUCE cross was my only error.
Surprised I was able to navigate sooo many names. And naming a dish RAREBIT seems un-Welsh-ish in my mind. The possible other answers that flashed through my mind for [Cuban container] were very dark.
❤️ LUNK. DIVVIED UP.
People: 11 {You can stop now.}
Places: 2
Products: 5
Partials: 2
Foreignisms: 1
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 21 of 62 (34%)
Funny Factor: 6 😅
Tee-Hee: ASS.
Uniclues:
1 Trait demonstrated by those with Bactine and gauze pads.
2 When you need to invade a planet, but don't want the negative PR hit.
3 Pirate handed out the loot.
4 What safer sex does.
5 Sad announcement from the local theater indicating A Midsummer Night's Dream is canceled.
1 ROAD RASH VALOR
2 SEND ALIEN RACE
3 REBEL DIVVIED UP
4 RUINS DADS TO BE
5 ASS PLAY'S DEAD
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Holding a cat at the vet. IN HAND CHAOS.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
See this this song by Sam Cooke.
Me too on thinking it was rabbit.
LUCE/LUCA/SERAPE/SARAPE. Boo.
It seems like 'TIS is always clued only by the Christmas Carol. Has it ever been clued as the Frank McCourt novel? Or is that too obscure? (It's a sequel to his "Angela's Ashes," which won him a Pulitzer.)
Here's a statue of LORELEI,on a rock on the Rhine, near St. Goar. About every 5 minutes a cruise boat comes along and plays a song based on Heine's poem over its PA system. Wikipedia says there's another statue, complete with fountain, in the Bronx, but I've never seen that one.
For Anonymous 9:54...Think of "send" as a verb. If you delight someone, you "send" them. It took me a while, too.
@SouthsideJohnny 3:06 AM
I am listening to Don Quixote on tape so this is the least irritating ASS I've endured in the puzzle lately. By the way, the novel is absolutely divine. A perfect "crazy old man" read.
I've added FLOUNCE to my favorite word list in your honor as you are right. It's a great word. It's sitting between FUNK and RUBBISH right now.
You're right, that TIS clue would be perfect for a Saturday.
I kept reading that clue as SCRAPS instead of SCRAPES. As in pieces that break off of the motorcycle (??). I only read the clue right when I had all the crosses.
There is also a Eureka, CA, the largest coastal city between San Francisco and Portland. Yreka is northeast of Eureka by about 200 miles, and inland.
Anonymous 3:15 AM
I know it can be very annoying to ace most of a puzzle but fail at one cross. So we want to dump on the cross. But neither cross you mentioned is all that obscure There are a lot of well known foreign and old movies. And DESICA’s movie is one of them.
SERAPE has appeared fairly often in the Times puzzle, enough to be crosswordese. It is the shawl associated with traditional Mexican clothing. I am sure you would know what a is if you saw a photo
We all have gaps in our knowledge But don’t be unfair to the constructor.
Thanks, anon 10:39 - I just remembered reading a long article, perhaps in the NYer, about the company, its founder, and philosophy. Hopefully the new stuff is still the same quality as your 15 year old jacket!
Re: Yreka. I hope to visit this town, in the far reaches of Northern California, some day, if only because I love the name. It is not to be confused with Eureka, another town I hope to visit some day, which is also in far Northern California, but on the coast (Yreka is inland, not far from the Oregon border), and whose name, derived from the Greek for "I have found it," also serves as the state's motto.
I am currently in Ukiah, another town in Northern California, where my wife lives and is a tenured prof at Mendocino County (I have lived in Chicago for almost half a century but will probably move out here; I'm tired of a long-commute marriage). Ukiah is about two hours north of the Golden Gate Bridge. Many people unfamiliar with Northern California assume Ukiah must be close to the Oregon border, but no, it's about another five-hour drive.
Ukiah's name, like Yreka's, is a source of mistaken mythology as well. Given that Ukiah for decades has had a reputation for attracting San Francisco bohemians weary of city life and looking for and escape to a more sylvan setting, a legend sprang up that Ukiah's name was "haiku" (as in the highly-disciplined Japanese poem form) backwards, and had been named by Zen-besotted Beat and hippie types. Not so. Like Yreka, Ukiah's name is from indigenous sources, in this case the Pomos, and is from an indigenous word meaning "deep valley."
Because I have my oldest son here for a few weeks, I was able to interrupt his morning espresso with, "What do you call 7Elevens in Australia?"
"Um, 7Elevens."
"Real smart, pal. I meant generally, like what do you call those kinds of retail outlets?"
"Convenience stores?"
"C'mon, you're practically a native Aussie now and you guys abbreviate everything. Try harder."
"Oh, well, if they are attached to gas stations, they're servos."
Hmmm. I like that a bit better than CSTORES.
tht and pabloinnh
My guess is most cultures dump on neighbors this way. I studied French and the worst insult expression from French I remember translates “You speak French like a Spanish cow”. Ouch.
Pablo another French English insult exchange is French letter vs capote anglaise.
I don't think we have an alternative term for convenience store out here on the west coast of Canada but in Quebec they are called depanneurs which, weirdly, translates as repairmen.
Not too easy but okay for a Saturday. Ruined a bit by all the names, several Unknown to me: LONNIE, GLADSTONE, DESICA, and MRS MAISEL as well as the actor in the clue. Thankfully I knew GADOT pretty much from crosswords. I had EDMUND for Mr. Halley's name, and of course RAMP for the skateboard park fixture, so getting RECOIL was challenging.
My funniest typeover was BUFFY at 8 across. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was the highest grossing film of 1985?
I feel like I started reading C-Store a couple of years ago. I'm in Minnesota. Though yeah people wouldn't say they are going to a C-store, it's more like "going to the Quik Trip" or whatever. More of a business type abbreviation.
Took me nanodays to parse my punk/carpoans error. Good puzzle, we call them party stores in Michigan so CStores took awhile to get. Rafa very nice puzzle yesterday, good writeup today!
@Beezer I've heard something like that too. But my outstanding memory of all this is 32 years ago, my wife and I flying back home after our honeymoon, with me in the middle seat, my bride to my left, and a dude to my right. A dude with manspreading tendencies. I was bound and determined to claim my rightful space in the middle, to the extent where I planted my leg at a certain point, like a flagpole, and was not going to move it for anything. The dude and I were both wearing shorts and I could feel that his left leg hairs were butting right up against my right's, but I was not going to leave my post. My jaw was grimly set. Every now and then my wife would lean in for a kiss, and I would meet her in the middle as far as I could, so long as it meant that my leg would not have to cede any ground.
I've never done a Ryan McCarty Saturday this fast before! I've heard that exercise gives you a little IQ boost and I ran a 10K this morning so maybe that's why. I kept waiting for the slowdown to appear but it didn't. This went faster than yesterday's puzzle.
It helps that I knew right off that A'ja Wilson had been named MVP four times, not because I follow basketball but because I learned it in Joon Pahk's Rows Garden puzzle this week. Thanks, Joon!
I was playing a trivia game with friends a while back - the question was "What was Don Quixote's squire's name?" but my friend misread it as Don Quixote's squirrel's name. I still laugh whenever I think of it.
I was briefly taken aback at seeing DAD STOBE at 47A. What? Oh, a three word answer, DADS TO BE.
Vittorio DESICA rings no bells.
Thanks, Ryan McCarty!
I believe he is still the only person named Tony to win a Tony award for acting.
I picked an easy Saturday for my return. It seemed more like a Tuesday to me.
@jberg
There are both a Eureka and a Yreka in California.
Roo Strange Fact Guy
Thanks for Gordon
Beezer
Someone said earlier that CSTORE is from people in the business. Makes sense to me. Every in group likes to have their own lingo. So far the term hasn’t escaped to the general public (except crosswords!) I guess
Fortunately.
Fun puzzle. Yes, watch Mrs Maisel - excellent for the first 2 seasons. Lost interest after that.
Ditto!
I confess that I'm baffled by the answer to Uniclue #5. But I also hesitate to inquire into ASS PLAY.
I found the puzzle easy except the NE corner, blocked off as Rafa said. I had trouble remembering McFLY so I at first couldn’t figure out-CF- at 8 across. I eventually figured it out. But it shows how much we vary in what we know. It seems the most complaints came up about DESICA the director, and to a lesser extent SERAPE. the shawl. Yet they were gimmes for me.
FWIW I looked up the Bicycle Thief aka Bicycle Thieves. It has been consistently in the top fifty, often top ten movies rated by critics since it came out in 1948. DESiCA is equally highly rated as a director. He and other directors in devastated post War Italy created a new genre of movies called neorealism. It had a great impact on American movie makers. Some have called the Bicycle Thief one of most influential films ever.
I think it’s a fair subject for a Saturday clue/answer.
Actually it was more like nano-centuries not nano-days
This. 14 min. All show, not much go.
Did he do it playing Tony in West Side Story
@tht 4:47 PM
It's a bit of a stretch, eh? In Midsummer Night's Dream there's a character who is transformed into a donkey. Hence ASS PLAY. If you cancel the performance, then the ASS PLAY is DEAD. All my other options for ASS PLAY seemed rather questionable DEAD or alive.
We used to see TIS clued that way fairly often, but as far as I can tell not since 2017. It was once common enough to appear on a Tuesday.
Ah, thanks Gary. Being such a heathen, I didn't know that!
First, for OFL: 1. Yes, at least to me, “C STORES” is very much of the language, at least when describing the genre of “bodega -gas station” combos so prevalent everywhere. I do hear bodega more here in Cali when one refers to needing the local “crap, I’m out of milk and bread” purveyor, but C STORES are often mentioned too. In Canada, you see and hear depanneur; 2. I can take or leave MRS. MAISEL but agree that at least the first season was fun.
For Rafa: I enjoyed yesterday’s puzzle! You gave me less of a tussle than you usually do, but maybe it was Rebecca’s influence 😇 I love you both- especially when you do a collab.
Today was mostly easy for a Saturday. The middle chunk was an absolute delight. Superb clues and answers. GAG ORDERS made me smile as I remembered two instances where but for our desire to appear professional at all times, opposing counsel and I might have had to “tale this out back” as they say in Oklahoma when arguing the necessity of GAG ORDERS.
Speaking of delight, I would not have gotten SEND at 26A had I not banged in everything else except ALGEBRA in the NW corner. Typical tough Ryan McCarty word play right out of the gate. I was so thankful to have so many of the ACROSS squares filled or I would not have remembered EDMOND Halley. The clue for LORELEI was great. Got it instantly, but then, I’m always looking for that type of fabulous word play from Mr. McCarty. Still, great job up at the starting gate.
Plenty of the sound of screeching brakes during my whooshing though. The NE was by far where I could easily have crashed and burned. Couldn’t think of “the ‘Back to the Future’ guy” to save my ASS, but I was certain the 1985 film in the clue had to be that one! Hate it when that happens. LUNK took me a while to suss out. I think I thought if every other possible 4 letter synonym. Oof.
The SE would have been tough if not for rhe downs. Overall, this was such a well balanced puzzle, not that I expected anything less from RM. No complaints, no nits, just pure fun on a Saturday. Took me a good long time to finish with the baseball playoffs, (ugh, Cubs canNOT beat the Brewers!) football (go SOONERS) and a full slate for women’s pro soccer. I love fall!!!
I had ROADRASH then deleted it because “rash” was in the next clue and I just assumed they wouldn’t do that.
Never heard that term and ran through all the letters.
Much of the cluing difficulty is set by the editing team. We have no idea how hard the constructor did or did not make the original clues.
C-Store conventions all over the world!!!
Yes, Herb Caen is where I learned about Yreka and its bakery. Miss him.
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