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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.
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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.
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| 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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14 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.
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