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Relative difficulty: Medium
Theme answers:
- WISHBONE FORMATION / ON EDGE (17A: Football offense arrangement that resembles an inverted Y shape / 18D: Anxious)
- FAST WORKER / YEAR OF OUR LORD (29A: Good person to give a time-consuming project, maybe / 9D: "Anno Domini" period)
- EARTH REENTRY / SATURNINE (43A: Process for a descending spacecraft / 24D: Gloomy, as an atmosphere)
Ann Petry (October 12, 1908 – April 28, 1997) was an American writer of novels, short stories, children's books and journalism. Her 1946 debut novel The Street became the first novel by an African-American woman to sell more than a million copies.In 2019, the Library of America published a volume of her work containing The Street as well as her 1953 masterpiece The Narrows and a few shorter pieces of nonfiction. [...] Petry's desire to become a professional writer was raised first in high school when her English teacher read her essay to the class and commented on it with the words: "I honestly believe that you could be a writer if you wanted to." The decision to become a pharmacist was her family's. After graduating in 1929 from Old Saybrook High School, she went to college and graduated with a Ph.G. degree from the University of Connecticut College of Pharmacy in New Haven in 1931 and worked in the family business for several years, while also writing short stories. On February 22, 1938, she married George D. Petry of New Iberia, Louisiana, and moved to New York. She worked as a journalist writing articles for newspapers including The Amsterdam News (between 1938 and 1941) and The People's Voice (1941–44), and published short stories in The Crisis, where her first story appeared in 1943, Phylon, and other outlets.
Between 1944 and 1946, Petry studied creative writing at Columbia University and worked at an after-school program at P.S. 10 in Harlem. It was during this period that she experienced and understood what the majority of the black population of the United States had to go through in their everyday life. [...] Her daughter Liz explained to The Washington Post that "her way of dealing with the problem was to write this book (The Street), which maybe was something that people who had grown up in Harlem couldn’t do."
The Street, Petry's first and most popular novel, was published in 1946 and won the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship with book sales exceeding one million copies. (wikipedia)
• • •
My software wouldn't accept the grid I have posted above, even though it's technically correct (at least for the Downs). I just discovered I was supposed to enter the circled-square part as letters, not numbers. Ah well. While the relationship between Across and Down circles was easy to figure out, the revealer seemed at least a little off in terms of describing what I, the solver, did to solve the puzzle. The puzzle seems to believe that you have a circle (the Across number) and then you (mentally) square it in order to get the Down answer to work. But for me, the Across and Down have equal weight and one does not precede (in any temporal way) the other. So SQUARE THE CIRCLE doesn't make much sense if "the circle" is both, say, "TWO" and "FOUR." I figured out the Across/Down relationship at EARTH REENTRY / SATURNINE, but I wouldn't say I got "THREE" first and then I squared it—in fact, I'm pretty sure I figured out "NINE" first. So the "circle" was "NINE" as much as it was "THREE." Thus it made as much sense to say that the Across was the square root of the Down as to say that the Down was the square of the Across. I think the thing is ... like, the revealer clue implies that you have one thing and you need to do something to it in order to figure out the next thing, but it's equally hard to get the first thing as the second thing. The revealer simply doesn't match the solving experience. This may seem like a technicality, but technicalities matter.
What's more, the fill was subpar yet again. Plural Greek letters and plural Russian negatives and at least two partial exclamations (HEE, YABBA), and some more shrieking (GAH, YOW) and then a host of hoary repeaters (ENRON (still?), ESC, ADT, UTERO, ODEON, AOLER (ouch), etc.). Also unlovely are SED and REN, the latter of which has a clue designed to make someone like me (a medievalist) nuts (33D: ___ Faire (medieval-themed festival)). Hey, do you know what REN stands for? Do you know what it's short for? I think you do. And if you do, then maybe you too had a little twinge of "huh?" when you wrote in this answer. See, the "RENaissance" (so-called) is, explicitly, specifically, self-importantly, not "medieval." Not not not. The Middle Ages (whence the word "medieval"—from L. medium aevum, "middle age") are the allegedly benighted period that the Renaissance was supposedly leaving behind. Thus the Renaissance is, by definition, subsequent to the "medieval" period. To say that a REN(naissance) Faire is "medieval-themed" ... the nails-on-chalkboard effect was real and jarring. But then ... it looks like the people who put on and go to these "faires" don't give a **** about such niceties as terminological accuracy. "Many Renaissance fairs are set during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England. Some are set earlier, during the reign of Henry VIII, or in other countries, such as France. Others are set outside the era of the Renaissance; these may include earlier medieval periods such as the Viking Age or later periods such as the Golden Age of Piracy" (wikipedia) (my emph.). I get that everyone collapses the olden days into one giant Time of Yore and that actual historical periodicity is entirely an invention of historians writing (generally) well after the times in question, and that shifts from one time to another are actually gradual and involve continuity as well as rupture blah blah blah. But where labels are concerned, "REN" is not not not not "medieval." Not. No. Stop.
This puzzle was difficult only in terms of getting the gimmick. Once you get it, it's smooth sailing (fairly typical for a Thursday). The gimmick today wasn't too hard to get, though the NW was a bit of a disaster to start, in that I had WHORL (???) for 1A: Feature of a mountain or fingerprint (RIDGE). Somehow WHORL seemed like ... maybe a snowcap formation, or maybe something happening in a mountain stream, I don't know. But five letters, fingerprint feature ... WHORL is what comes to mind. RAWER was thus hard to get (1D: More cold and wet). But eventually Idris ELBA came along to save the day (as he so often does) (5D: Actor Idris). WHORL became RIDGE and things began to fall into place. ON EDGE may have been the toughest of the theme answers to get because EDGY fit so neatly there (18D: Anxious). I wanted 27A: Low-lying area to be VALE, but couldn't make it work with the "Y" from EDGY in there. Finally I worked out the theme at EARTH REENTRY / SATURNINE, which helped me get ON EDGE, and that was that. Difficulty over.
Bullets:
- 20A: High key? (ESC) — because it's at the top of your keyboard (I assume)
- 37A: Skin-care product thinner than a moisturizer (SERUM) — if you wanna get me really truly out of my depth, give me "skin-care product" clues. I think I've heard the word "SERUM" used in skin-care ads I've been forced to sit through, but had no idea what, exactly, it was.
- 63A: Tosses out (CASTS) — Hmm. "Tosses" and CASTS seem equivalent. The "out" is weird to me here. Unnecessary-seeming. Confusing. I can imagine scenarios where you swap out "Tosses out" as CASTS, but I can imagine more where "Tosses" and CASTS are the same.
- 3D: Lucky scientist, perhaps (DISCOVERER) — this seems true enough, but presumably most scientists "discover" things through hard work, because they're actually looking for something, even if, yes, some discoveries are happy accidents. The word "lucky" feels slightly too flippant, somehow. I mean, if she "discovered" a four-leaf clover, sure, lucky. But if she "discovers" the cure for cancer ...
- 26D: "That's relatable" ("I FEEL YA") — showing my age here (56, as of yesterday), I wrote in "I HEAR YA." "Feel" in this sense has been around for decades, but is not part of my own personal vocabulary.
- 35D: Person who's off-base? (SHORTSTOP) — this was almost as jarring as the REN Faire clue for me, but for a different reason, namely: We Just Had This Clue For SHORTSTOP!!!! A merely nineteen days ago: [One who's off-base?]. Bizarre for any nine-letter word to repeat in that short a span of time, but particularly bizarre that the same "?" clue would be used in both instances. No, not bizarre. Negligent. It's a good clue but you Just Used It. If the clue were straightforward, probably no one would notice, but "?" clues are showy, ostentatious, look-at-me, so people are gonna notice. Like, the funkier your outfit, the more people are likely to notice when you wear it again. Maybe give it a few years. Nineteen days ... not long enough.
- 50D: #'s place (TWEET) — ugh, The Place Formerly Known as Twitter. What a hell hole. Anyway, "#" in this case is a hashtag, which you use to tag relevant subject matter in your posts (on Twitter, these were known as "TWEETs"). You know, like #CatsOfTwitter #ElonSucks #NoGoodBillionaires etc.
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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ReplyDeleteMedium, then Easy once I caught on to the gimmick. I liked it better than OFL did: * * * * _
My experience was similar to @Rex's but I was less upset about REN (33D). I got the rebus squares in [ON E]dge (18D) and WISHB[ONE] FORMATION (17A) and figured the three rebus squares would either all be ONEs or they'd be ONE, TWO and THREE. FAS[T WO]rker at 29A confirmed the latter, and I put [THREE] in 43A. That's where it became apparent that SATUR[three] made no sense. Come to think of it, 9D also didn't compute as YEAR O[two] LORD. I needed the revealer to figure out the bidirectional rebus squares.
Overwrites (non-theme-related):
lbS before OZS for the 6D deli units.
eDGy before [ON E]DGE at 18D. At that point, my working theory was that the rebus only applied to the across word and the down was just a single letter.
I gEt you before I FEEL YA at 26D.
WOEs:
ANN Petry at 13D.
I may have studied the 31D KREBS CYCLE in high school biology but it sure didn't stick.
FYI, to complete in the app, you have to write out the number being squared, so “one,” “two,” and “three.”
ReplyDeleteAh, thank you. Finally got the rebus thingie to work.
DeleteThank you!
DeleteThank you! It was driving me crazy
DeleteThanks, was driving me crazy!
Deleteit also accepted: one/one; two/four; three/nine. (Although the letters were so tiny as to be unreadable.
DeleteFigured out the trick, but tried to put ONEONE, TWOFOUR and THREENINE in as (double?) rebuses. Didn't work, obviously, so I just went with ONE, TWO, and THREE only in the squares, and the music sounded. My hat is off to the constructor for a remarkable grid.
ReplyDeleteJust curious...the plural of alumnus is alumni...ergo, is the plural of rebus rebi?
We're going to have that discussion again?!?! Since it's Thanksgiving and everyone is relaxed, we could make a drinking game out of it. Every time someone says "rebodes", do a shot.
DeleteMore seriously and soberly: the Latin word rebus is already a plural form (in the ablative case), so the only thing to do is try not to give away the fact you don't know Latin, by trying to fake it with "rebi". (It's sort of like pretending to form the plural of "agenda" as "agendae", not realizing that "agenda" in Latin is already plural, with "agendum" as its singular.) In my opinion, the only sensible response is to treat "rebus" as English, and pluralize it as "rebuses". But that's no fun, is it?
Rebus actually is a plural, funnily enough. I knew this - it's one of the endings drilled into you in Latin, but not how it was used in this sense. I just looked it up thanks to your comment! Comes from the phrase "non verbis sed rebus" or "not by words but by things" as in the sense of those puzzles where pictures and letters combine ( with '+"s and '-'s to make a saying. How it was first applied to xwords isn't clear to me.
DeleteThanks! How does it work in Yiddish?
Delete@Liveprof. I'm a fan of the quick and witty quip over the "set up + punchline" format that you usually employ with great facility. Kudos for this one.
Delete@tht... that reminds me that while "data" is a plural in Latin, it is clearly NOT a plural in its most common modern English use, as it means "information". (Nor does it have a plural!... Google tells me these are called "mass nouns".) So people who insist on saying "the data are" in normal speech make me crazy.
DeleteFor more on this divisive issue, check out The Rebus Principle.
Delete@Les S. More. My wife is requesting that you stop encouraging me. But thank you for the kind words.
DeleteI don't remember much Latin but in my world, the singular of data is datum.
DeleteHow do you enter the rebus?
ReplyDeleteClick in the square and hit the ESC key. A little window will pop up that allows you to enter multiple letters. After doing so, hit return to complete the entry.
DeleteI went with the full lettered spelling…One, Two/Four, and Three/Nine…and it worked without issue
DeleteAnonymous 6;30. "How do you enter the rebus?" I work on a MacBook and need to add one extra step to Anon 6:46's method. After I highlight the square I have to hold down the Command key while pressing ESC. Everything else as they stated.
DeleteRe: entering multiple characters in a rebus square, just to add that in Across Lite on Windows, the only way I know is to highlight the square and then press the "Insert" key (or from the top menu, choose Edit / Insert / Multiple Letters).
DeleteOn the website there's a button "Rebus" at bottom left, just click it
DeleteFor some reason I love the sound of wish bone formation. Not a football fan so don't know why it seemed familiar as well as sounding good. And I liked saturnine even though it got me all fouled up. I had the nine in place and could not see how eighty one worked with the across answer. Didn't mi so much that the reveal didn't exactly fit the trick, but I'd never heard the expression so it didn't ring bells for me. Love lemon tarts so loved that answer liked year of our lord and fast worker. Had NO Idea about krebs cycle. Had to Google to be sure it was right. Immediately forgot everything the paragraph about it said.
ReplyDeletePuzzle was deemed successful for me when I did one/one, two/four, three/nine in the rebus squares...though edited them to just one, two, three after the success sound.
ReplyDeleteMedium for me at about 15 minutes. Liked it more than @REX did.... And @REX didn't even mention the ever-popular REX namedrop!!!! If I ever try my hand at constructing, I definitely want to have REX as one of my entries : )!!! I thought this was a clever theme.... kind of funny, of course, when you realize that the 1st themer doesn't change, since ONE squared is.... ONE. Also fun that the revealer actually DEPENDS ON the kind of chintzy little conceit of putting circles inside special squares to highlight them and make the puzzle a bit easier for us.... without that conceit the revealer doesn't happen. So that was cute too. I loved this puzzle and had a great time with it. Especially liked figuring out/reminding myself of the KREBSCYCLE and thinking of LEMONTARTS!!! Thanks, Alexander, for a nice Turkey day puzzle!!!! : )
ReplyDeleteFor those wondering what this puzzle has to do with Thanksgiving, it’s obvious. SATURNINE means “glum” which is sandwiched by the same letters in “grim”, the ending to “Pilgrim”. Duh!
ReplyDeleteAnd wishes for a splendid Thanksgiving to all in the tribe here, for whom I'm extraordinarily grateful.
@Lewis
DeleteAnd here I thought it was WISHBONE... !
@Smith -- Hah!
DeleteCould also an oblique turkey reference in Wishbone????
DeleteAgree with Rex''s comment re "casts".
ReplyDeleteDon't think of skin care products as being out of my depth, but in total sync re "serum"
Skin care products definitely out of my depth. Saw the first words in the clue, five-letter answer, must be ESTEE. (Buzzer, try again)
DeleteI learned 35 across in first year Latin over 60 years ago. It came back to me instantly.
ReplyDeleteMe too….around 55 yrs! Eek!
DeleteI learned it from singing things in Latin. Wondering how it came to mean "thirst" in Spanish--"tengo sed"="I have thirst", of course we say I'm thirsty.
DeleteI've tried words, numbers, just the one, both, both separated by / but nothing will make the puzzle say it is complete! And yes, @ Rex, I thought cluing REN with "medieval" was way wrong. Otherwise easy puzzle, sigh.
ReplyDeleteWell, happy belated birthday @Rex and Happy Thanksgiving to all!
["I don't give a darn" in a famous skit] - there, a non-straightforward and "?"-less (so, pretty Thursdayish) clue for SHORTSTOP. I had the same reaction as 59D REX there.
ReplyDeleteKREBS CYCLE rang a faint bell from HS biology. It doesn't look like there are too many options for 31D with all the theme stuff in place. KEVIN BACON fits, but leaves O-V-- at 39A.
thrown off by the poor clue/answer to Anno Domini, which means, of course only "Year of the Lord". The 'our' is not present in the Latin. To get Year of Our Lord the clue would have to be 'Anno domini nostri'.
ReplyDeleteI was stuck there for a bit, too, for the same reason. Looking it up after the fact, I learned that AD is actually shorthand for the phrase " "anno Domini nostri Jesu Christi", so I guess the clue kinda works. But only kinda.
DeleteAlso, the clue says "Anno Domini period," not "Anno Domini in English." That would be the period between the first use of AD in dates until it got changed to CE.
DeleteONE was the first rebus I filled in, which led me to believe that the other rebuses would work for across and down – what a terrific misdirect!
ReplyDeleteI am one who has trouble saying RAWER once, let alone five times fast.
I liked the backward subtheme, with a backward SODA to go with “Coke-versus-Pepsi”, a backward GAH to go with OLD, and a backward ELBA to go with FAST WORKER. Serendipity at its finest.
Alexander’s notes gave me a highly worthwhile TIL – Maryam Mirzakhani, the first woman to win the prestigious Fields Award, the highest honor in mathematics, and the first Iranian to do so. I found the Wikipedia article on her to be very inspiring.
Here’s something you don’t see very often in a symmetrical grid – and it’s because of the theme – one answer each of length 12, 13, 15, and 17.
So, Alexander, you brought me many extras on top of a splendid solve, for which I’m most grateful. Thank you!
Inspiring but also sad: Maryam Mirzakhani died not long after being awarded the Fields Medal. She was utterly brilliant, and no telling what else she would have gone on to do. She was the first woman to be so awarded (and only one of two so far).
DeleteI'm a big fan of "Ball of Fire" and oddly was introduced to it only after I saw "A Song is Born" the remake with Danny Kaye and a plethora or big band personalities.
ReplyDeleteI would rate this as Easy. The theme was halfway cracked when I saw that SATURN had to be SATUR(NINE), and all the way cracked when I saw that the across elsewhere had to be "something WORKER" = FAS(TWO)RKER. Elsewhere the puzzle was quite straightforward. The thing that burned time was futzing about when I realized that my standard SHORTcut response to rebus puzzles wasn't working this time. I don't enjoy rebus puzzles when this happens.
ReplyDeleteAOLER is just awful. The worst of the DUDS the puzzle had on offer. C'mon, man.
The way SAC was clued was also pretty bad, IMO. GAH!
And, I'm also getting a little tired of I FEEL YA.
Well, it's OFF TO the store to pick up an ingredient I forgot TWO days ago. I'm in charge of the stuffing, which in our case I think I'd prefer to call the dressing, as we used to say in the South -- here it's really a side dish and nothing we're using to stuff a turkey with. In fact we're not even doing a turkey; instead it's a glazed ham. Anyway, gotta go. Wishing you a very enjoyable Thanksgiving, to all those who celebrate it!
Also, was AOL really pioneering? My university connected to bitnet for a couple of years before we went to the Internet, and so many years later I'm not sure which things we used when-- but I certainly used Prodigy and CompuServe before AOL appeared on the scene, but I guess maybe they were not Internet based.
DeleteSorry OFL but the revealer is truly brilliant and refers to a classical problem in geometry which is unsolvable. You can't "square" a circle with only a compass and straight edge since pi is a transcendental number.
ReplyDeleteJust to say what it is, the problem of "squaring the circle" is to construct, using ruler and compass only, a square whose area is the same as the area of a circle whose radius is given.
DeleteIf it were possible to solve this problem, then the ratio of the side of the square to the radius of the circle (this ratio is the square root of pi) would have to be a root of some polynomial with integer coefficients. A number which is not a root of any such polynomial is called "transcendental". It had long been suspected that pi (and by extension its square root) was a transcendental number -- implying that the squaring the circle problem had no solution -- but this was not known for a fact until sometime in the 1800s.
My memory (please correct me if I'm wrong) is that someone named Lindemann first proved this fact; the proof requires techniques far, far beyond anything that would have been available to the Greek (Hellenic) mathematicians who first considered the problem. (If it wasn't Lindemann, then other likely culprits in the neighborhood might include Hermite, Liouville, Weierstrass... they're sort of muddled in my head as to who did what when.) The techniques are calculus-based and quite fiendishly clever.
And that's why I only go to the rival Early Modern Faire in my area—it gives me a little more wiggle room in how I dress, what I eat, how I worship, and what I read!
ReplyDeleteHappy birthday (Rex, belated) and Happy Thanksgiving (everyone—even if you're Canadian).
kj (Bardfilm)
I was hoping for something light and airy to commence the holiday season, or perhaps a T’day related theme. It looks like we got one that’s been in the Thursday queue for a while and today was its turn.
ReplyDeleteI tend to get fatigued when the grids look like gibberish as they are being filled in, even when I know there is a gimmick underlying the whole situation, and frequently I find the payoff (in terms of an “aha!”) to not be commensurate with the effort and the mental gymnastics required to keep track of everything. I’m hoping that with more experience (and patience) that less effort will ultimately be required. It’s a slow process, but I’m getting there.
Have a great holiday everyone (and some good football games today if you are a fan). It seemed like a stretch of about 50 years where the Lions had like 10 losses by Thanksgiving each year so the early game was always a snoozer. Hopefully we’ll get something interesting and exciting today.
Hey All !
ReplyDeleteI'd be a good Billionaire. Give me the money, I'll prove it! 😁
Neat idea. I put in the entire words with a slash, and the NYT site accepted it as correct, as in TWO/FOUR, THREE/NINE. You can't really see the words, as that many letters in one square get microscopic. However, I noticed just now, the site changed it to just TWO and THREE when completed.
Does the Krusty Krab use KREBS CYCLE? 😁
SHORTSTOP clue a weird thing for Rex to go OFF about. But, we all have our bugbears, so I FEEL YA.
Hands up for who had teal first for AQUA. And lbS for OZS. Technically true, but you don't order 8 OZS at a deli, you order half a pound. Amirite?
Growing up in Northeast PA, Scranton area, we had the four channels, ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, but instead of Channels like 2, 3, 4, etc. ours were 16, 22, 28, with PBS at 44. Since I sat closest to the TV, I was the channel changer. Going from 16 to 44 was a journey!
YABBA HUBba ZOO. That was the saying, right? Har.
Have a great Thursday, and a great Thanksgiving! Don't eat too much LEMON TARTS!
Three F's (Plus a hidden one in the Two/Four Rebus) We'll just call it Four
RooMonster
DarrinV
Off to a flying start with RIDGE which led to RAWER (common term around here) and the W instantly gave me WINGBACKFORMATION. Well, the FORMATION part was right at least. Saw the necessary FOUR in YEAROFOURLORD, wound up at the bottom where the revealer was easy enough to see, but didn't get the whole concept until THREE crossing SATURNINE. ONE squared equaling ONE was pretty fiendish.
ReplyDeleteNo trouble entering the rebus answers with my pencil. TIL ANN as clued and KREBSCYCLE, a total WOE. Agree that AOLER should be banned permanently and now have a new found disgust for REN as referring to anything medieval, thanks to OFL, although my outrage will not be quite as severe. Also learned a new meaning for SERUM, not that I will ever use it in this sense.
Pretty ingenious, AL. A Lot to like here and thanks for all the fun.
Happy T-Day to one and all. One thing I am truly thankful for is our little community of word lovers that has a forum here. Special thanks to OFL for making this all possible.
Wow, lots of technicalities to complain about hiss morning, and as Rex says, they count, but I felt this was overall an imaginative theme in a relatively easy puzzle. I never complain about easiness, because they are all tough for me, but on a relative scale for a Thursday this one went fast for me. Had a bit of trouble with the YEAROFOURLORD because as at least one blogger has already pointed out, the “OUR” is part of an informal description, not actually in the Latin. And loved how @Lewis morphed SATURNINE into Pilgrim! His word-play is amazing.
ReplyDeleteTBH, just figuring out how to enter the rebus was the trickiest part of this puzzle.
ReplyDeleteMust be more fun solving online. Nothing pops in the newspaper.
ReplyDeleteThe puzzle was cute but too easy for a Thursday. No turkey theme?
The theme of the puzzle is “square the circle” and, as pointed out above, this is done using “pi” - while today is not March 14, today is unequivocally “Pie” day!
ReplyDeleteWish I'd read this piece in its entirety before giving up on the puzzle, the letters-not-numerals requirement broke my streak.
ReplyDeleteRENaissance scholar here. That clue grated hard, nails-on-chalkboard for me, and I thought, “Surely the consolation will be that Rex will rant about this publicly for me!” I am so satisfied to say that I was not disappointed. The clue felt kinda like when people ask me if my students have to read Shakespeare in Old English. [facepalm] So Rex, I FEEL YA on this one.
ReplyDeleteOh hey, but on the topic of crossword annoyances for English profs, I was delighted two days ago that BRITLIT came up as an abbr. for a course, since that is an abbr. we actually use regularly, as opposed to LITCRIT that we never ever say.
Totally agree about “REN”. This has bugged me since I first saw very medieval activities at a so-called Renaissance Faire.
DeleteThis always drives me nuts. I'm an amateur recorder player and fan of early music. Renaissance music is generally polyphonic-- 5 or 6 different parts playing different melodies that all harmonize somehow; medieval music everyone plays the same melody in unison (I'm overgeneralizing, of course). But as Rex says, it's all just "the past" for most people.
DeleteThere are bike shops on Long Island (NY) called KREB CYCLE.
ReplyDeleteHapoy Thanksgiving to all - lots to be thankful for, amdst the craziness of the world. I’m focusing on those things today. The puzzle was ok but not that interesting to me. I got the ONE rebus first and of course thought ONEs would be in every circle, but no! I didn’t quite get the “squaring” part of things until I came here, so the other rebuses didn’t make sense at first, as they seemed to work for the downs but not the acrosses.
ReplyDeleteAOLER is horrible, shouldn’t have been allowed! Ugh and yuck!
Not much fun, really. A decent idea for a theme, a couple of good long answers, and a big dose of dullness. Though I am far from religious, I’ve always found YEAR OF OUR LORD, quaintly charming. LEMON TARTS are also charming. DISCOVERER and FAST WORKER are dull and the KREBS CYCLE, while it may be essential to our existence, is non-essential jargon. Or maybe not. Maybe it's good to have a recognizable name for something most of us can barely explain. It’s too bad the theme, which is actually kind of cool, has to rely on things like FAST WORKER and EARTH RE-ENTRY to work. When you send a craft to the moon and then bring it back you have to re-enter the earth’s atmosphere. Is there any other RE-ENTRY on that voyage? So, to me, EARTH RE-ENTRY seems redundant. I am awaiting clarification.
ReplyDeleteAnd could someone, while we’re in explaining mode, help me out with SAC. I have relatives in that area. Never heard them refer to Sacramento as SAC. “Some of its nicknames”? Huh?
So, while I liked the theme, the whole puzzle just felt awkward to me.
Speaking of awkward, shouldn’t the clue for 63A be “Tosses (out)” in order to make the answer CASTS (out)? Isn’t that a sort of crossword convention? And “Tread on me!” for TIRE sucks. Trying too hard.
Thanks for the REN rant. Always aggravating.
ReplyDeleteHappy Thanksgiving!
ReplyDeleteExtremely easy - half my usual time. The revealer made perfect sense to me. So often my solve experience is very opposite of Rex’s, but so are our educations, so maybe that’s it.
ReplyDeleteI liked the puzzle, though I was kind of hoping for a Thanksgiving theme. But I like rebuses, so I liked figuring this one out. Thanks for a fun theme, Alexander!
ReplyDeleteThe fill wasn't terrible - it was the gimmick (rebus?). Now I know why I'm starting to prefer the NYer - not as many gimmicky puzzles (if at all) & has Erik A. & Robyn W. making appearances. Sorry NYT :(
ReplyDeleteAnd E. Gorski!
DeleteI really liked this one. I see @Rex's point that the reveal doesn't qui-i-i-i-te work, but still, it's such a great phrase. And I found the rebus fun to figure out: I didn't notice the SQUARE relationship between TWO and FOUR, and didn't know what to cross NINE with until I had the reveal (I'd been ready to accept "EARTH ENTRY"). So the reveal did its job, telling me what I had to do to finish the grid.
ReplyDeleteI also liked the double Thanksgiving reference of WISHBONE FORMATION, covering both the turkey and the NFL (when I was growing up, dinner was scheduled around the Packers-Lions game).
Medium except for tracking down a typo and trying to figure out what to put in the rebus circles.
ReplyDeleteSED and ANN were WOEs and Roi before REX and kIdS before RIBS were costly erasures.
I had the same thoughts about CASTS.
Clever, liked it more than @Rex did
I completely agree with Rex that the revealer does not in any way describe what is going on in this puzzle. But I just shrugged it off as "close enough for crosswords".
ReplyDeleteIdris ELBA may be unique in that I see him all the time in crosswords AND in movies/TV shows. Most crosswordese names are people I wouldn't be able to pick out of a lineup of two.
We'll be visiting St. PETE next month. It will be nice to get some (relative) warmth.
Any puzzle with KREBS CYCLE gets five stars from me.
I liked the puzzle, but still wondering why the revealer only addresses the downs when you also needed the trick to get the across answers. And wanted to say if you have not seen RP’s featured film, Home For The Holidays, it’s the perfect Thanksgiving movie. I just watched it last night as it has become an annual event at my house. Holly Hunter as a single mom struggling to keep her act together while Charles Durning and the delightful Anne Bancroft flutter about as her fussy but loving parents.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the tip. Holly Hunter is a delight; I'll check it out sometime.
DeleteAfter I finally figured out the 2/4 circle's values, the revealer did come to mind, as a possibility.
ReplyDeleteRevealer makes more sense to m&e, than to @RP, I reckon. The circle's values are: 1, 2, and 3. Then, to get the Down answers, you need to square the circle values. QED.
staff weeject pick: SED - Latin lives today. Also, it was part of the nice weeject stack, in puzgrid central.
a few faves: IFEELYA. SHORTSTOP & its clue. ESC clue. REX, of course. Just a J short of a U-know-what.
Thanx for the math lesson reminder, Mr. Liebeskind dude. Cool, sneaky puztheme.
Masked & Anonymo5Us
... and Happy Thanksgivin, y'all! ...
"Thanksgiver Runt" - 7x7 themed runt puzzle:
**gruntz**
M&A
Thanks to Anon (7:53). I knew that our crossword rebuses were an offshoot of the puzzles called rebuses where pictures represented words. I think that the early crossword rebuses called for a picture to be entered into a square. That evolved into whole words being entered into a square. So "Non rebus sed rebus."
ReplyDeleteSorry. "Non verbis sed rebus."
DeleteWhile fiddling to make SATURATED work in the third rebus, an incomplete KREBSC caught my eye, leading to presto! everything in the SE. Didn't come back to the rebus until final space, by which time ONE TWO THREE was obvious, and worked. But I (uncharacteristically) wanted to understand, so I came here. What an awkward trick.
ReplyDelete___ Faire = REN, every time, with or without an accurate clue. "Historically-themed festival" would have been better.
Had thought Rex would give this two stars, seemingly confirmed by his (overwhelmingly negative) write-up. I'll chalk up the extra half-star to the cake.
ReplyDeleteLucky recipient of chocolate (birthday) cake during Thanksgiving (typically pie) season. Assume Mrs. Rex's is fabulous.
Happy Thanksgiving to all fortunate enough to enjoy good health, safety and happiness with their families. Can't take any of those for granted in these times.
Cute gimmick, but Natick'd on ELBA / ADT (pop star / brand name). Really tired of these trivia-bait PPP crosses.
ReplyDeletePersonal best for a Thursday. Are we sure this was ‘medium’ difficulty? I didn’t really need the gimmick, in each circle I just entered something I knew for sure would work in one direction and figured i would ‘get credit’ for it even if the other direction seemed to require something else. So I just moved on. Suddenly I was filling in the last square and it said congratulations you’re done.
ReplyDeleteI still can't see the term "Krebs Cycle" without envisioning a German circus featuring crabs riding unicycles.
ReplyDeleteReading through the comments with all the praise for KREBSCYCLE made me wonder if this was the inspiration for Maynard G. KREBS of Dobie Gillis fame, which is uber generational.
ReplyDeleteI always thought Maynard's last name was a rather cruel dig at the allegedly poor hygiene of "beatniks" -- you know, that guy is so dirty he must have crabs. A little risque for the era, perhaps, but typical of situation-comedy TV, even then.
DeleteFor once I'll buck the trend and say I quite liked this. A nice tricky Thursday theme! At first it looked like: oh, it's just rebuses of "one", then "two", then... but wait! Aha, neat trick. Rex is right that the revealer is not fabulous, but it's just fine.
ReplyDeleteFor 31 down looking at -----CYCLE and reading the clue, from somewhere in the back of my brain I heard a faint "crebs?". Okay pretty close; amazing since I would only know that from science class 50 years ago! However if someone had asked me "what is the Krebs cycle", I would not have had any idea.
I like tricky clues like 22 across "Stranger" which turn out not to be a noun! And wow, lots of Latin today: SERUM, UTERO, SED, REX!
Missed yesterday's comments until now, but all that jollity about those signs about "Slow Children Playing" reminded me that every time I see a highway sign "Gas Food," all I can think of is a restaurant that serves beans.
ReplyDeleteThere's a famous joke sign: "Eat Here and Get Gas".
DeleteOn my phone, it let me put in 1/1, 2/4, and 3/9 and gave me the solved notification upon completion.
ReplyDeleteI'm also one who learned long ago that "but" in Latin is 35A SED. That's the kind of thing a high school sophomore is likely to remember, right? "But(t) = SED; tee HEE.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of Latin, rebus comes from res ("things") and means "with or by way of things". How it morphed in crossword puzzles to mean "with or by way of multiple letters or words in one grid square" no one seems to know. That would be litteris or verbis. So today would be a non rebus SED verbis puzzle.
Language scholars use The Rebus Principle to explain how early writing evolved from pictographs and hieroglyphics to modern abstract alphabets as detailed in the PBS NOVA show "A to Z: the First Alphabet".
Happy Thanksgiving everybody!! This is my favorite of all the holidays. Just hanging out with friends/family/whomever, cooking and baking for days and eating all the food. In our family Friday is poker day and the prize is the last slice of pie; the bluffing gets to be insane.
ReplyDeleteThis year is different. For the first time ever, we are going out. We’re in Chicago with my sister and brother-in-law. Long story, but we’re coping and I will cook a mini Thanksgiving for Christmas at the request of my granddaughter and my son-in-law.
Anyway, as a former Sooner and Buckeye, i know my football. As soon as the WISHBONE FORMATION showed up, I figured out how to deal with it. Took me a couple to figure it out without looking for the reveal. Pretty clever.
This week’s nit is that my posts keep not showing up. But that happens sometimes.
I truly hope you are all with folks you love. Happy Everything!
Deja los bolígrafos y los lápices.
ReplyDeleteJust got off work. Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
Really liked the rebus squares. Really did not like much else.
Aren't most nonagenarians DEAD?
Flintstones are having a good week.
If you're openly straight are you not also OUT ... maybe a less interesting form of OUT?
I'm an obnoxious sort, but never been called a BOOR ... a few other things, but never BOOR.
KREBS CYCLE sounds like what my college girlfriends went through on their bad days mostly caused by me being a BOOR.
❤️ SATURNINE. I FEEL YA.
😩 EERIER. RAWER. AOLER.
People: 5
Places: 1
Products: 7
Partials: 5
Foreignisms: 7
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 25 of 74 (34%)
Funny Factor: 3 😐
Tee-Hee: [Tee] HEE.
Uniclues:
1 Pajamas while rummaging around hopefully in the refrigerator.
2 What a short man with a big ego turns out in the kitchen.
3 Strategy of a hopeful wooer in the Urals.
4 Blog writer and university professor twisting knobs to the left on dashboards.
1 DISCOVERER DUDS
2 ELBA LEMON TARTS
3 SERENADED NYETS
4 ANTI-RADIOS REX
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Where Twitter's market value is kept. PASADENA ICU.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I turned 82 last week, and certainly hope to be a live, if OLD nonagenarian in another 8 years! But thanks for your vote of confidence! (just kidding)
DeleteMy only Ren Faire experience is the movie The Cable Guy: Come back here...so that I may brain thee!
ReplyDeleteI couldn't solve this morning, because a) I'd gone to bed last night with up cleaning up after dinner, and b) we had to leave the house fairly early to go to my daughter--in-law's for a 1 PM dinner. So I am just getting here now.
ReplyDeleteLike many, I saw the WISHBONE FORMATION, combining the two T-day essentials, football and turkeys, so I finished it was a Thanksgiving-themed puzzle. I tried putting ONE in every circle, but soon saw the need for THREE/NINE, but didn't understand it until I got to the revealer.
As for squaring the circle--yes, Rex, it's a technicality. You square the circle in the sense of writing a square inside it. Simple enough.
I really liked this Thursday rebus puzzle. Enjoyed WISHBONE and EARTHREENTRY. Had to look up KREBS CYCLE. Thank you for a great puzzle!
ReplyDeleteDelis weigh in pounds, not ounces. Scales provide a weight in pounds or fractions of pounds, never ounces.
ReplyDelete