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Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
Word of the Day: Fannie HURST (1D: Novelist Fannie who wrote "Imitation of Life" (1933)) —
Fannie Hurst (October 18, 1889 – February 23, 1968) was an American novelist and short-story writer whose works were highly popular during the post-World War I era. Her work combined sentimental, romantic themes with social issues of the day, such as women's rights and race relations. She was one of the most widely read female authors of the 20th century, and for a time in the 1920s she was one of the highest-paid American writers. Hurst actively supported a number of social causes, including feminism, African American equality, and New Deal programs.Although her novels, including Lummox (1923), Back Street (1931), and Imitation of Life (1933), lost popularity over time and were mostly out of print as of the 2000s, they were bestsellers when first published and were translated into many languages. She also published over 300 short stories during her lifetime.
Hurst is known for the film adaptations of her works, including Imitation of Life (1934), Four Daughters (1938), Imitation of Life (1959), Humoresque (1946), and Young at Heart (1954, a musical remake of Four Daughters). (wikipedia)
• • •
STENO TEAT ATSEA NSA ADES ... plus a no-longer-famous author of yore (HURST) and neo-crosswordese ELOTE (I still like ELOTE, both as a food and as an answer, but it really is starting to proliferate like an answer that's going to wear out its welcome, eventually—first NYTXW appearance in 2023, one more appearance in 2024, and now four appearances in 2025 (with ~eight weeks still left in the year). I'd include NAST in this crosswordy onslaught as well (20A: Illustrator of the Tammany Tiger) (I actually learned who NAST was from crosswords, way way way back in the early days of this blog—Jan. 23, 2007: Puzzle: [Tweed twitter Thomas]. Me: "!?!?!?!?!"). It was hard to appreciate the longer stuff in the NW with so much tired short stuff to hack through. But then I, and the puzzle, put the PEDAL TO THE METAL, and whoosh, off I went.
 |
| [ENNEAD, i.e. a set of 9] |
Did the fill improve? Yeah, a bit, but it still had a leaden, draggy feel here and there. It's probably strongest in the NE and into the center: FLIP OUT ON and LET IT RIDE are a great pair, and there's no compromises with the crosses up there. Things get a little uglier at ENNEAD and T'NIA Miller, a name I'm hearing of for the first time right now (and a debut answer). She seems to be a successful British actress who is in a lot of things I've never watched, mostly things I didn't know existed. If you say "Fall of the House of Usher" to me, I think Poe, and if you say "no, the movie," I think "Oh, Vincent Price! Cool!" But no. There was a TV show? Oh, a Netflix show. Shrug. Not a subscriber any more. And even when I was, I couldn't keep up with all the damned shows. Today's Fall of the House of Usher was actually a miniseries. I think I'll just stick with King Vincent, thanks.
The clue on PEDAL TO THE MEDAL felt bad, in the sense that it's not a complete command in that form, the way the clue suggests (8D: "Step on it!"). You need "Put the" at the front for it to be a plausible command. I guess I can imagine shouting the phrase without the "Put the" at the beginning, but it feels pretty contrived. The clue on LIKE A BOSS also felt slightly off to me (34D: In an awesome way, slangily). Something about "awesome" is too vague and not competence-specific enough. If you do something LIKE A BOSS, you do it with confidence, skill, and authority, which I suppose falls under the umbrella "awesomely" if you squint hard enough, but the clue just isn't on-the-nose enough. Anyway, "in an awesome way" is already slang. [With skill and panache, slangily] makes more sense.
Bullets:
- 57A: Modern identification method (RETINA SCAN) — and here I've been wasting valuable nanoseconds saying "RETINAL SCAN." Possibly because that's the actual term. But in common usage, the "L" gets dropped, it's fine. Slowed me down only as long as it took me to delete the "L."
- 15A: Synthetic upholstery material (ULTRASUEDE) — in Japan it is sold under the brand name ECSAINE, which is the kind of answer I see in my crossword nightmares. The very first paragraph of the wikipedia entry for ULTRASUEDE states that "It is used to make footbags (also known as hacky sacks) and juggling balls." Which is bizarrely specific. Did a hacky-sacker write this entry?
- 51A: Victuals, informally (GRUB) — I wanted EATS. See also CHOW.
- 52D: World capital on both banks of the Daugava River (RIGA) — had the "R" and "A" and completely instinctively wrote in ROMA. The crossword probability part of my brain simply overrode the "look at the actual words that are in the clue" part. Actually, it turns out, ROMA is only slightly more common than RIGA, in terms of all-time NYTXW appearances (309 to 298). This is the fifth RIGA of 2025, making this the most RIGAful year since 2003. Oh, maybe I should add that RIGA, in case you didn't know, is the capital of Latvia.
See you next time.
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Fastest Friday ever. Zero resistance. I’m elated but also annoyed.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteMedium Friday. No real hang-ups, a lot of the same complaints as OFL.
Overwrites:
ghENT before TRENT for the 4D council site. I'm no historian.
My 18A hot pair were aces before they were an ITEM
nEt for the mesh at 23A before GEL
Considered eats before GRUB for the victuals at 51A. Never considered chow.
Thought oslo might be the 52D capital but it didn't cross with either eats or GRUB. So RIGA.
WOEs:
Fannie HURST, the 1D novelist
The ULTRA part of ULTRASUEDE at 15A
T'NIA Miller at 29D made me doubt YURTS at 28A
I too had GHENT - for the longest time - and NET . Great minds…
DeleteLiked it - yup it started out a little flat but picked up from there and finished strong. The crossing spanners are top notch.
ReplyDeleteI beg your pardon
The IDLE RUMOR - LIKE A BOSS pair was cool. YURTS, TRANSVERSE, FLIP OUT ON all neat stuff. ENNEAD had me thinking as did SILK MOTH. A true leap of faith with T’NIA.
LET IT RIDE
Enjoyable Friday morning solve.
Another Girl, Another Planet
Saw The Only Ones in NYC 100 years ago. Great band. Thx for jarring the memories.
DeleteEasily the hardest Friday in months. Obscure novelists and actors from the 1920s and 1930s (Ok Garbo is not obscure, but unless you're a film fanatic her oeuvre is not well known). Lots of difficult misdirects. Challenging for sure.
ReplyDeleteWhat Rick said. 100%.
DeleteThis Rick agrees with the other Rick! challenging.
DeleteI’m not even a Rick and I agree with Rick!
DeleteStarted slowly, but got a foothold in the SE and took it from there (no cheats). I knew YURTS as shelters for wanderers, but was still reluctant to put in the "T" because I couldn't imagine TNIA Miller. She ain't an anagram, she's an actress,
ReplyDeleteI feel like there are some compromises today to make answers fit. For example, "an oldie but a goodie" would work, and "oldie but goodie" would work, but having the indirect article on only one part feels off.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, and as Rex points out, "pedal to the metal" is missing its "put the". And "flip out on" feels like it wants to be "flip out".
The NSA/NSC symmetrical pairing is cute.
Yeah, that unmatched indefinite article really bothered me, too. I'm surprised Rex didn't mention it. It was easy enough to get, but the cheating to make it fit took the fun out of it, at least for me.
DeleteThe other possibility is that the clue "Step on it!" is one of those clues you often see that asks you to identify the "it", hence a noun phrase. I'm not a fan of those clues, but there's ample precedent.
DeleteThere was enough to allow me to get a foothold and keep things moving, which is a win for me on a Friday. I stumbled over at the section with YURTS, ENNEAD and AEONS (all of which I am familiar with, but also keep forgetting what they mean, or in the case of AEONS, that it’s actually a word). TNIA didn’t help any there either - not familiar with the spelling so I just thought I had a mistake.
ReplyDeleteDid anyone know HURST and TRENT as clued, without any crosses? If so, you get the NYT honorary Doctorate of Arts and Letters for today - raise your hand and be recognized (actually, stand up and take a bow - you earned it).
I don’t bake much - my mind originally went to curries when I saw Elephant Ears as a clue. I took it on faith that they were also pastries (and the crosses worked).
Out of curiosity, I checked the “Easy Mode” NYT clues for today - for Ms. Hurst, they used basically the same clue with the name of the novel as “Back Street” instead of “Imitation of Life” (I’m glad they cleared that up for me). Apparently, TRENT is the first name of one of the members of Nine Inch Nails.
DeleteThat's pretty funny, that "easy" clue for Fannie Hurst. There are other Hursts out there. I wonder whether Bruce Hurst would have been easier for more people? I'm not a baseball watcher, so I wouldn't know.
DeleteTrent Reznor IS Nine Inch Nails (or was for a couple decades, until Atticus Ross joined later on). He's won multiple Grammys, Oscars, and Golden Globes, and is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Really shouldn't be obscure.
DeleteHurst shifters might have been another option. They were big with muscle car owners who hated to sacrifice a nanosecond when street racing. Hmmm, maybe not. Maybe just stick with Fanny (which I, strangely, knew) or Bruce.
DeleteApparently I know of Ms Hurst but not how to spell her first name.
DeleteRe: knowing HURST and TRENT - I'd heard of Fannie Hurst but didn't know anything about her novels, so for her I needed -URS-. I remembered the Council of Trent from the N in STENO.
DeleteWhy is Easy Mode? And where do you find it? I don’t see any mention of it in the puzzle setting.
DeleteWhat, not why
DeleteTrent was easy for this European historian. I can't imagine it being easy for any other kind of background.
Delete@Anon 12:21 - it’s an NYT newsletter. You can sign up for it here:
DeleteEasy Mode newsletter
Apologies if I screwed up posting it as a link.
The Fall of the House of Usher series on Netflix is excellent. Mike Flanagan doesn't miss.
ReplyDeleteI couldn't agree more. Totally worth signing up for Netflix. One of the best series ever.
DeleteExceedingly, unenjoyable triviafest and crosswordese showcase. Very few clever answers. Two thumbs way down from me.
ReplyDeleteOh, that lovely feeling when I return to a sticky area in the grid for the third or fourth time and with a boom an answer hits me. That happened several times today to my delight. And – ain’t the brain amazing in how it works under the radar?
ReplyDeleteAlso lovely is when a solve is enhanced by beauty: IDLE RUMOR, SILK MOTH, FLOG (as clued), GRUB, SEEMLY, GARBO, LUCRE, LET IT RIDE.
Those first two are NYT answer debuts, and this puzzle had an ennead of them, with neverr-seen-before clues hitching on to those new answers, bringing spark.
A pastiche for me of easy and hard, hitting that sweet spot between trudge and mindless.
I got magnificently misdirected by [Shipping container], and smiled at the PuzzPair© of PINS near a backward GOLF.
Thus, I was wonderfully walloped by a dollop of good today. Thank you so much for this, Kelly!
My initial “Can’t be!” reaction to TNIA, made that name backward feel appropriate.
DeleteEnjoyed the way the puzzle unfolded, was able to drop in PEDALTOTHEMETAL and then RETINASCAN (Rex, that usages seems ok to me) and things flowed. But the WOE'S were plentiful: HURST, ELOTE, TNIA, ENNEAD and for me, the rare usage of FLOG. Looked up TNIA and ENNEAD to be sure I was right, needed help on HURST and FLOG. Medium.
DeleteOUCH!
ReplyDeleteI thought TNIA had to be wrong, but there you go. Options like Tria or Thia (also weird) made no sense. Overall, on the tough side for me but answers came in spurts.
ReplyDeleteHey All !
ReplyDeleteCouldn't get FLOG. Had PLUG there, even after erasing the P and U, I couldn't come up with anything. For Tandoor, the ole brain just kept thinking a type of bread, unaware it's the OVEN itself. Also had RIBS for PINS, so ended up with two non-words in the Downs. Threw up the white flag, and checked out the completed grid here. Is FLOG really defined as such?
Liked the Central crossing 15's. Off just the T of UTA, put in mosquiTo, laughed at how they could be domesticated. I have one (at least) in my house, biting the shit out of my legs, even have two Zevo's in the living room, but the little bigger will not go quietly into the light.
Tougher FriPuz here. 33 minutes, with errors. Can't win 'em all.
Have a great Friday!
One F (in the one answer I couldn't figure out!)
RooMonster
DarrinV
Funny to see an old favorite Klaatu at the end of the video.
ReplyDeleteMervyn Brogue's stage name was ISH Kabibble
DeleteWeird experience today, loved the clueing and no so much the answers. Felt a bit AI assisted maybe, would be good to know.
ReplyDeleteBamboozled/ATSEA, blech.
Brady Bunch/ENNEAD, yuck.
Promote shamelessly/FLOG, when everyone says plug.
Saved the worst for last, running the keyboard to get the happy music with the TNIA ENNEAD crossing. TNIA??? If you say so.
This one was a challenge. It began right away with Bamboozled which, apparently, I was. Having only ever heard of/used Bamboozle(d) as an action done against someone else - ie, "she bamboozled me!" - the notion it could also mean lost or confused was, well, lost on me. I was confused. GERM is definitely the correct answer for 30-Down so that threw me as well. Throw in a kitchen-sink of obscure names and ephemera and this puzzle felt curated towards an audience of one, the constructor.
ReplyDeleteTNIA / ENNEAD/ EGADS!!!
ReplyDeleteOof, I found it brutal. Obviously a wavelength thing, but also there were some self-inflicted wounds that took seemingly forever to patch up. "Eats" instead of GRUB being one of the nastiest. I had no idea about either HURST or ULTRASUEDE (gah, what an unpleasant contrivance of a word), and I was stuck on the notion of Worms instead of TRENT which I simply wasn't coughing up without the correct crosses. (The Diet of Worms was something that amused me as a kid, but I digress.) I resisted OVALTINE for quite a while because in my head I kept conflating A Christmas Story with A Christmas Carol, and I thought OVALTINE could not possibly go back to the time of Dickens; it's more an early 20th century invention I think. (Plus, Christmas movies that I instinctively anticipate will be saturated with schmaltz and saccharine are movies I instinctively avoid watching, so I never saw that one.)
ReplyDeleteSadly, I don't know Paris, having spent only one lovely weekend there, so I'd guessed "beer GARDEN" before ROSE GARDEN. Not especially smart. I think beer gardens are maybe more a thing in German or German-adjacent culture.
T'NIA was disconcerting to the nth degree. The idea that the NYT would publish a puzzle with a typo is nearly unthinkable, but TNIA looked so unlikely that I searched up and down for my mistake. Not being a poker guy, LET IT RIDE was new. It has a kind of jazzy ring to it (reminding me of "ride or die"), which I like, but it wasn't anything I put in with confidence. Plus, and speaking of poker, I thought I'd heard of "a hot pair of aces", and so that was the hot thing I'd put in before ITEM -- another self-inflicted wound. (I also nicked myself with wEb before GEL, but 'twas a mere scratch, not a gash.)
Well, you get the idea. My time was about 60% or so greater than a typical Friday. Still, I think it's mostly a neat puzzle. That stack of tens in the SW is lovely. I really like OLDIE BUT A GOODIE. I am less enamored of PEDAL TO THE MEDAL, but in answer to a point Rex made, I interpreted the clue "Step on it!" as one of those clues that ask you to identify the "it" -- I dislike those sorts of clues but I'm used to them by now -- so a noun phrase would fit with that. To wrap it up, I emerged bloody and beaten, but I learned a few things along the way, and it was all good in the end.
Happy Friday, y'all.
I meant the stack in the SE, not the SW.
DeleteLet it Ride isn't poker-specific. You could do the same thing with roulette (or a sports betting app), for example.
Delete29 minutes for me, so that makes it challenging for a Friday. I definitely had more trouble than OFL. TNIA looked like a misspelling of TINA (but of course with the apostrophe T'Nia it looks great). FLIPOUTON to me means someone going loco--losing their marbles over something. Doesn't indicate anything about patience to me. Thank God for OVALTINE and SILKMOTH and RETINASCAN. And especially PEDALTOTHEMETAL. Those were my anchors today. And HOURS. I wanted 62 across to be something like a rebound relationship.... so that took me a while. Finished in the NE; had a big blank up there until LEVY got me some traction, saw GYMS, finally saw FLOG. Still don't understand what PINS have to do with spare????? I'm sure one of you on here will help me !!!! : ) Thanks for a fun and challenging Friday.
ReplyDeleteThe pin that secures the spare tire in place?
DeleteBowling pins
DeleteBowling pins. Bowling spare.
DeleteA spare is a bowling challenge, the PINs are still standing after the 1st frame
DeleteFlog? Really?
ReplyDeleteYeah, I don't get that clue. That and Tnia were real sticking points.
DeleteA challenging solve for me. The NW was the one easy section. ELOTE and STENO. Kicked things off. Seeing ELOTE in a puzzle is galling as it's one of the many words that the Spelling Bee eschews.
ReplyDeleteMy write overs were GABOR/GARBO (and anagram I've somehow never noticed), GERM/SEED and EATS/GRUB. That last one froze me out of the SW corner for awhile.
TNIA was completely from the crosses. This was a good late week solve and the lively long material more than made up for the short crosswordese.
Seeing a non-accepted Spelling Bee word in the crossword puzzle is definitely one of life's little annoyances.
DeleteJust as PEDALTOTHE METAL doesn't work as a directive without "Put the" in front of it, OLDIEBUTAGOODIE doesn't work withut "An" in front of it to make AN AOLDIE parallel with A GOODIE. Surprised Rex didn't call this out.
ReplyDeleteThe puzzle seems to be getting sloppier and sloppier lately, in terms of phrasings being parallel as they should be. Disappointing.
Exactly about the correct phrasing on the central answer. It’s either OLDIE BUT GOODIE, or it needs An if you put the article in front of GOODIE. Major faux pas, IMO.
DeleteLooking into this a little, I see that "oldies but goodies" was coined by a DJ named Art Laboe back in the 50s, and he even released a compilation album in 1958, "Oldies But Goodies: Vol. 1".
DeleteMy entire life I've heard "an oldie but a goodie", but not "oldie but goodie". I'm not sure I can muster the linguistic muscle to explain why I think "oldies but goodies" sounds natural, and the hyphenated written form "oldie-but-goodie" would also be fine, but "oldie but goodie" looks off and is inferior to "[an] oldie but a goodie". I think it's something to do with "oldie, goodie" being nouns here and not adjectives, but (1) the issue may be somewhat subtle and debatable, and (2) I sense I may be in the minority here. So I won't press it any further.
Except to say: I don't think the answer quite requires an indefinite article in front of OLDIE. I take as a general rule in crosswords that a clue-answer pairing is satisfactory if (but not only if!) the answer can substitute for, or is synonymous with, the clue as written. Here, the clue is "Nostalgic tune". (Not "A Nostalgic tune".) So if someone says "Oh, what a [nostalgic tune] that is!", supplying an indefinite article before the phrase in brackets, then agreement might be expressed by saying, "Yes indeed -- it's an [oldie but a goodie]". The phrase in brackets acts as a synonym of the previous phrase in brackets.
In my world, nobody says oldie, but A goodie. The term is oldie, but goodie
DeleteDNF at the LIKEABOSS/LIMO crossing. I had LIKEABASS (short for LIKEABADASS)/LIMA. I like my answer better. Bad asses do things awesomely. Bosses don’t. As Rex pointed out, “awesome” doesn’t quite fit when describing how even a good boss does things. I would go even further and guess that at least half of working world think their bosses and how they do things are the opposite of awesome. Maybe LIMA doesn’t fit the across clue as well as LIMO, but Lima, Peru is a long way to go from here.
ReplyDeletenevermind.... PINS is from bowling. Doh
ReplyDeleteI liked it! Mostly medium. Nice mix of new and old-fashioned entries.
ReplyDeleteJOUISSANCE? Seriously?
ReplyDeleteMy words exactly. And TNIA??
DeleteA French word ending in EE? In the crossword? I initially wrote in EPEE of course.
DeleteThis one started out very rough. It seemed like all the painkiller words (analgesic, ibuprofen..) were a letter too short, I put in hype instead of FLOG (a better answer, admittedly), never been to or heard of that particular Parisian park, so I had no sure answers until NAST--whom, unlike Rex, I enjoyed remembering. He was in my high school American history textbook, I'm pretty sure, so I didn't learn him from puzzles, unlike ELOTE. Then OVALTINE helped (and I wanted "oval" for the elliptical thing, too).
ReplyDeleteBut the MOSS/MAILER combo shook my mind up just enough to get on the constructor's wave length with the trick clues, and I started having fun.
nEt before GEL gave me a lot of trouble. I still don't get it. Is it gel as a variant of jell, and mesh as in gears? It's still a stretch.
But it had to be GARBO--I don't know her oeuvre either, but a 1920s actress playing a "mystery lady" and well-known enough to be puzzleworthy, that's her.
I thought I'd never heard of Fannie HURST, but reading the word of the day bit, I realize I have --never read her, though.
I already complained about the extraneous A in 37-A, so I won't repeat myself here.
e
I've often heard the phrase "it's an OLDIE BUT A GOODIE". I've never heard "oldie but goodie". To me it doesn't sound right: the "goodie" is a noun, not an adjective.
DeleteThink of GEL as a verb as when things come together nicely. And I didn’t like that A either.
DeleteHas TNIA officially gone viral? Check out 19A in this Atlantic Friday puzzle and then 29D in today’s NYT grid. Can’t be coincidence. Somebody is trolling.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theatlantic.com/games/daily-crossword/
It’s a coincidence
DeleteDon't be paranoid. Having the same current actress with common letters in her short last name in two puzzles on the same day is definitely a coincidence. The Atlantic and NYTXW don't consult with each other, and even if they did, why would they specifically choose to start collaborating on T'Nia?
DeleteUZO Aduba maybe, AYO Edebiri, definitely. TNIA Miller? Nah. Check the appearance frequency. Ms. Miller is having quite a day. She appears in about as many British TV shows as crosswords.
DeleteGEL and mesh as verbs, as in "come together."
ReplyDeleteI hope this puzzle didn't run in Texas, because TRANSVERSE has been banned there, along with gay verse and queer verse.
ReplyDeleteIf you LIKEABOSS, you should check out Springsteen.
I sure tried a lot of ways of spelling "naugahyDE" before deciding to reupholster with ULTRASUEDE.
@Rex thinks the puzzles have gotten too NASTy.
Ike was absolutely infatuated with Tina's derrière (and possibly also TNIA's). In fact he once wrote a memo titled RETINASCAN.
Mrs. Egs recently found a UPS shipping container holding a copy of "The Naked and the Dead" on our doorstep. "Honey," she cried, "your MAILER MAILER is here."
Wouldn't it be kinda true to say that Guns n' Roses put the PEtALTOTHEMEtAL?
Nice puzzle. Not by any means easy for me, but rewarding in the end. Thanks, Kelly Morenus.
"Can". Har. Tee-Hee. (There's also "cans" for TEATs, but a memo about a can in isolation would be a reach.)
DeletePetal to the Metal -- nice.
I forgive TNIA Miller only because she was great in The Diplomat and it forced me to learn her name. Re: PINS, which seriously held up the NE, I thought of and rejected that answer several times before saying "really??". And is "FLIPOUTON" really loosing patience with something? The HURST and TRENT made a NATICK connected only by ROSE (though I had "....GARDEN"); that made the NW impossible for me to get without research.
ReplyDeleteOldie but goodie is a fitting marquee answer as this was a really old fashioned puzzle. When you see so many of the same constructors doing lively, fun, and still challenging, work in The New Yorker, and other places, it really makes one think the editorial team at the NYT is p, for all they’ve done, falling behind. This puzzle was just stale and stodgy and not very fun.
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite constructors, Robyn Weintraub is at the NYer often. I guess they pay better - ?
DeleteI prefer a good themeless & look forward to Fridays. Unfortunately for me, this wasn't one of them.
ReplyDeleteAnd there are no caps large enough on the keyboard for me to ask - JOUISSANCE??? Really?
Maybe another time - & on a different day? I'm sorry Kelly :(
I FORGOT TNIA!!!
ReplyDeleteI learned of the Netflix series less than a day before Rex did, out in the real world (if advising a student’s senior English thesis counts as the real world), but it certainly didn’t help me with TNIA. This one played hard even for me all over, even after I got the long answers across the center, so I’m glad to see other commenters agreeing.
ReplyDeleteGRUB. Where did that term ever come from? From someone who didn’t much care for food, I suspect. And, speaking of food, ELOTE. I’ve never had this - there are not a lot of Mexican street food places where I live - but it sounds great. I was raised on corn on the cob boiled in a big pot but then I discovered just how much better it was grilled with a rub of oil and finely chopped fresh thyme and sage and salt. Something about the contrast of the slightly bitter char and the sweetness of the corn itself. Lovely. But maybe I have to step up to ELOTE. Sounds really good but I’ll have to wait until next summer. I’m one of those annoying “fresh, local, in-season” nerds.
ReplyDeleteI always confuse my TRENT and Ghent Councils, not to mention tout, hype, plug, and FLOG. Had no idea about TNIA at 29D, but the crosses worked.
5D highlights one of Shakespeare’s best ever lines. And, speaking of W.S., I tried Alonso before ORSINO before realizing the former is a king.
SEEMLY is such a lovely word that, if it isn’t Shakespearean, it should be. UnSEEMLY as it may seem I must report that 39A had me envisioning a bespectacled tech in a lab coat addressing a group of SILK MOTHs on the importance of foreplay.
Had a pretty good time with this one. Thanks, Kelly Morenus.
Not easy for me, but doable with a few minor cheats. My SILK MOTH started out as a WORM, and my shameless promotion was a PLUG which I like better than FLOG. Also had DICE for a hot pair and didn’t know ENNEAD, TNIA or YURTS which made that entire NE section quite painful right up until the end. I finally looked them up just so I could finish. Everything else fell into place pretty smoothly.
ReplyDeleteDidn't know Tnia or Ennead & tried goodie & goldie but just couldn't make that little conjunction there jive. Had silkworm before silk moth, nice puzz overall.
ReplyDeleteTomorrow, if air traffic shutdowns permit we're off for the winter to an off grid home in El Carribe. Bit of digital detox does wonders I find
Shall miss everyone's comments though and look forward to seeing you all again in May.
Best, Hack
easy. musty. lame. oldie, not a goodie.
ReplyDeleteJOUISSANCE. Looked it up. French word pronounced zhwee-sahns. It primarily means enjoyment rather than GLEE.
ReplyDeleteIn The Diplomat, TNIA Miller plays Austin Dennison's sister. He's the guy Kate came on to. From what I read, she plays a significant role. I don't remember it.
There was an episode where she frolicked naked in a pond with Kate's husband.
DeleteThis is the type of Saturday solve I like, it starts with a few toeholds then evolves into whooshiness. But…for me, the whooshiness came to a screeching halt when I revisited the last unfinished part…the NE. Like @Roo, I committed to pLuG and my brain simply could not see GYMS and LEVY, and I DNFed. Boohoo.
ReplyDeleteI did look up FLOG post-“solve” and see that use is more, um, British which made feel a bit better since I’ve never heard anyone use the word for “promote shamelessly.”
Still. A fun solve and solid Saturday so thanks Kelly Morenus!
Oh. Apparently my TOTAL retirement has already feel like EVERY day is a weekend…so yes…insert Friday instead of Saturday above
DeleteThought it was Friday, but maybe I got tomorrow’s puzzle.
DeleteSaturday? It is only Friday here in France
DeleteEasy-medium.
ReplyDeleteNo costly erasures and the only non-inferable WOE was TNIA which I was sure was wrong. Getting the happy music was a nice surprise.
HURST and ROSEGARDEN were also WOEs.
Me too for gErm before SEED.
Other than TNIA this was pretty whooshy.
Solid with a bit of sparkle and two fine 15s, liked it.
Struggled on that one
ReplyDeleteProbably easy-medium for me, but I definitely enjoyed it! The SE was actually the toughest for me, with ORSINO, NSC, HAVA, and LUCRE all being unknown to me. Luckily the long acrosses down there were all gettable, and lovely answers. I think I liked this one more than Rex did.
ReplyDeleteLuck of the draw on the names helped to make this a fast Friday solve for me. My one slow spot was in the MOSS x SILK MOTH area, pleasing to unravel.
ReplyDeleteDo-over: SEdate before SEEMLY. Liked: FLOG, PYLONS, and ENNEAD. Help from previous puzzles: LIKE A BOSS. Agree on: the unfortunate "A" GOODIE.
No sweat today, with the crosses bailing me out over and over.
ReplyDeleteEnjoyed the HoU trailers! I'll be tracking that down.
ReplyDeleteThe NW and SE opened up the puzzle after some stuttering around. The happy music came when I shook my head and wrote in the T of TNIA, thinking it might be a NYTXW typo. About average time.
PINS struck me as the only bit of semi-humor, or maybe MAILER for shipping container because of the contrast. I like to see more witty cluing.
Ah, ULTRASUEDE. A friend's mother made herself a pantsuit from ROSE ULTRASUEDE back in the seventies. Extravagant (to me then) and classic.
Aha! I knew that stuff was used for more than upholstery. I have vague recollection of somebody showing up to one of my father's weddings in a blazer made of ULTRASUEDE. It was a soft brown hue and looked stiff. Kinda cardboardy.
DeletePretty easy today but I prolonged the solve by several writeovers. 4D's error held me up the most, when I conflated the treaty of Ghent with a religious get-together, making heating pad and ultrasuede hard to see. Fannie HURST to the rescue. Not that I knew her but that name ending of RST jogged the logic areas of my brain, writing and HURST going together well though I just realized that I'm thinking of Hearst, har.
ReplyDeleteTNIA had me erase YURTS, but eventually I had to accept the oddness. “Hype” before FLOG in the NE. A mesh nEt before it GELled. A hesitation when S_EM__ wasn’t bringing anything decorous to mind.
Thanks, Kelly Morenus!
Kinda hard to rate the difficulty for this rodeo. It had tough spots and real easy spots, at our house. LIKEABOSS made no sense. TNIA, a debut lass, shoulda been clued in reverse, as @Lewis astutely mentioned. ORSINO was outside M&A's very limited Shakespeare sphere. FLIPOUTON/FLOG/GYMS clues were sorta hard to decode.
ReplyDeletePEDALTOTHEMETAL made some sense, if cried out in an emergency voice, like "Step on it!" could be. No time to dally on the put-the's.
PETAL TO THE MEDAL would be a neat entry in a pun-clued puztheme, maybe?
some fave stuff: OLDIEBUTGOODIE. LETITRIDE. OVALTINE & clue.
staff weeject picks: NSA/NSC, as per @kitshef.
Thanx, Ms. Morenus darlin. Cool PINS clue, btw.
Masked & Anonymo6Us
... and now, a creation that hopefully is more refreshin to solve, than it was to constructioneer ...
"The Pause That Refreshes" - 9x7 themed runt puzzle:
**gruntz**
M&A
Is there a more grid fill friendly five letter word than ELOTE? Vowel consonant vowel consonant vowel progression, all extremely common, one point Scrabble letters. Now that the precedent has been set, I'm betting that we will see it again, often.
ReplyDeleteI can't imagine how 31D MOSS can be a "Kind of floor covering". Ground covering, yes; floor covering, no.
I play poker. LET IT RIDE is not a poker term. If you say that at the poker table, everyone will know you are a POSER. And they will take all your $ with jouissance.
I think it is a reference to the floor of a forest.
DeleteForest floor.
DeleteYour answer to 51 is another example of why we French think Americans are so prudish and afraid of saying what might offend anyone. There is only ONE
ReplyDeleteanswer that any Frenchwoman (or man, or child) would give in translating the
word "Jouissance" into English. And that word is "Orgasm."
My first thought, but it was too long, as were "enjoyment" and "pleasure". So - and this is a sincere question, @Martine - is there a difference between "jouissance" and "la petite mort"?
DeleteI jammed myself up hard in the NE, even though I wrote FLOG into the blank grid on first pass. I was certain for too long that Hot pair was ETES. I guess that would have to be Nice hot pair. I was fooled by Elliptical areas ("All the GYMS I've ever seen have been rectangular") even though I *own* an elliptical machine, and I was indignant that "no one ever talks about having spare PINS," before I realized bowling.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure it's PEDAL TO THE METAL, not PETAL and not MEDAL. I think even OFL got it wrong in his discussion.
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised people are calling this easy; like @Rick Sacra it took me 29 minutes which is quite a while and feels even longer. All those old names: 1933, 1545, 1928; and just enough Unknown ones to be annoying.
ReplyDeleteThe lower left was the worst, because for ages I was stuck with EATS before GRUB, ELAN before GLEE, and LIKE A STAR before BOSS, all of which crossed each other very nicely. What a mess.
Interesting clue for SILK MOTH!
This was a “toughie, but fairie” (no A please) although never heard of t’nia and crossing ennead— yeesh!
ReplyDeleteI too had Naugahide for a bit, while thinking that seems very old. As do I, some days.
ReplyDeleteAnd because way back when, I had a British-type education, TRENT came easily, and so did FLOG and OVALTINE (which i actually drank as a child).
How often the puz teaches us something new! I always assumed NAST's first name was Condé....