.png)
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
Theme answers:
- DOPPELGANGERS (20A: Dead ringers)
- SECRET CRUSHES (26A: They may be betrayed by stammers and blushes)
- PAGE BOOKMARKS (43A: Placeholders for favorite sites)
Anna Lee Fisher (née Tingle; born August 24, 1949) is an American chemist, emergency physician and a former NASA astronaut. Formerly married to fellow astronaut Bill Fisher, and the mother of two children, in 1984, she became the first mother to fly in space. During her career at NASA, she was involved with three major programs: the Space Shuttle, the International Space Station and the Orion spacecraft. [...] After a leave of absence to raise her family from 1989 to 1995, Fisher returned to the Astronaut Office, where she worked on procedures and training issues in support of the International Space Station (ISS). She was a capsule communicator (CAPCOM) from January 2011 to August 2013, and the lead CAPCOM for ISS Expedition 33. She was involved in the development of the display for the Orion spacecraft until her retirement from NASA in April 2017. (wikipedia)
• • •
And what is up with PAGE BOOKMARKS? The term is just "bookmarks." All I have to do is look up to the menu above the browser that I am currently in to see that the term is "Bookmarks." Chrome File Edit History Bookmarks Profiles Tab Window Help–those are the words in the menu. Yes, the bookmarks mark web "pages," but who cares, that's not the point. What matters is the specific currency of the phrase in question, and the phrase PAGE BOOKMARKS doesn't have it. About as valid as WEBPAGE BOOKMARKS. I've never seen/heard the phrase PAGE BOOKMARKS in my life. Such a weird answer to parse. Also, sidenote, a (web)site and a (web)page are technically different things. "A website typically consists of many web pages linked together under a common domain name. The term "web page" is therefore a metaphor of paper pages bound together into a book" (wikipedia). So that's another way the clue/answer doesn't quite work together.
The fill ran a little sour today. It had yesterday's ugly short stuff problem. SFO and ATOP and ALOT and ECO and HTTP more or less right off the bat. And then INNU, yikes, I do not remember ever seeing this particular indigenous person before. I think I wrote INUK in there at one point (that's an Alaskan or Greenland native, four appearances in the NYTXW, all since 2023). INNU ... have we seen that before? Yeah, looks like once, on a Friday, four years ago. That just seems like desperation fill—perhaps appropriate for a Friday, when you have to hang a lot of colorful, interesting long answers together; that puts a lot of pressure on the smaller stuff, so it's OK to reach a little, and anyway, people expect more obscurities on a Friday. On a Wednesday, I dunno. Feels like maybe you should've made another pass at filling the grid cleanly. That INNU / ANNA crossing was a half-educated guess, frankly (7D: Astronaut ___ Lee Fisher, the first mother to fly into space). Couldn't believe there was an ATON after I'd already endured an ALOT. What is this, a crosswordese showcase? ARLO AFROS ASEA. The hits just keep coming. And then there was the supremely awkward (and awkwardly clued) NO ONIONS. The only real difficulty I experienced today came in trying to parse that phrase. Calling "NO ONIONS" an "order" is a stretch, and a big one. It's an order specification—a part of an order, but not the order itself. And anyway, do people really avoid onions on "dates"? I never really understood the whole onions/bad breath connection. Bad breath is a very specific thing that has much more to do with mouth hygiene than anything you ate. If you're gonna make out with someone right after dinner, you're gonna have the meal on your breath to some extent. Who cares!? You want the damn onions, eat the damned onions! Life's too short to be gaming the situation much.
Bullets:
- 40A: Purple-colored banknote of Canada (TEN) — I wanted something more ... Canadian-sounding here, like a LOONIE or a TOONIE. But it's just a TEN-dollar note, oh well. Let's see what they look like. Whoa, vertical orientation. I think I like my currency better in landscape than in portrait. The purple is cool, though. U.S. currency is so drab:
- 47A: 1982 film inspired by Pong (TRON) — [2025 sequel that bombed at the box office] = TRON: ARES. "Deadline Hollywood reported a total cost of $347.5 million, including production and advertising and estimated that it ultimately would lose the studio over $132 million with an estimated box office total gross of $160 million" (wikipedia). The only thing tempting me to see this movie was the great Greta Lee, and ultimately even she couldn't get me in the door.
- 49A: Vintage film channel (TCM) — Finally, the real station for movie lovers. None of this TMC baloney. I no longer have cable TV or its streaming analogues, and I'm quite happy, but Turner Classic Movies is the one channel I truly miss. Wish it were offered as a standalone app you could watch without having a TV provider. I'd pay for it. But for now I'll just do without and let Criterion Channel and HBO Max's TCM collection fill the void.
See you next time.
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
=============================
❤️ Support this blog ❤️:
✏️ Upcoming Crossword Tournaments ✏️
- American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (Stamford, CT, Apr. 10-12, 2026) (registration opens January 8!)
📘 My other blog 📘:
- Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)
I was momentarily stumped by “jackanapes”, which I assumed was plural.
ReplyDeleteI really wanted 6D to be “Stingray” bicycle - wheelies and spins for sure when I was a kid. But no flips.
ReplyDeleteHad a purple one!
DeleteYes
DeleteYes!!
DeleteI could not agree more about PAGEBOOKMARKS. Not a thing. Has never been a thing. Will never be a thing. I have nothing else to say about the rest of the puzzle. That one horror of an answer meant that I spent the rest of my time with the grid in a high state of grumpiness.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteEasy-Medium Wednesday. The top third was harder than the bottom 2/3. Like @Cimarron, I thought "Jackanapes" in the 12D clue was plural, but it didn't hurt much because UMPS (11D) gave me GUMMO which gave me IMPS. Liked the puzzle more than @Rex did.
Overwrites:
Wanted (something)cyCle for the wheelies vehicle at 8D
chasm before GORGE at 22D
Two crossing WOEs: Astronaut ANNA Lee Fisher at 7D and 18A INNU. Luckily, ANNA was easy to guess.
I left the 16A Marx Brother blank at first because I couldn't decide between harpO or chicO. Turned out to be GUMMO.
... and could have been zeppO!
DeleteI found it challenging, primarily because I first had "fake eyelashes" instead of SECRETCRUSHES (it also seemed to fit). Happy to have no cheats, but needed an alphabet run for the MEEMAW/SEWS cross. Very enjoyable Wednesday.
ReplyDeleteEverything Rex said. PAGE BOOKMARKS is super awkward.
ReplyDeleteThank goodness that banjo needed a KNEE and not a capo (though lots of players do fine with neither). And let it be said: a guitar can be properly called an AXE.
Filled in Tmc just assuming the NYT would get it wrong again. Pleased to have to go back and fix that.
ReplyDeleteAgree PAGE BOOKMARKS feels very wrong. And the clue for 9D appears to call for a noun, not an adjective (although I love having IGNEOUS in the grid).
Easy.
I love the irony of having the answer IQUIT in this puzzle, right up at the top even. Here is a constructor whose submissions were rejected more than 40 times, according to his notes – 40 times! -- AND HE CONTINUED TO SUBMIT!
ReplyDeleteHe had a dream and remained riveted to it. He followed the path of Thomas Edison, who said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work”, and forged on.
Bravo, sir. I am inspired by your example. In addition, I loved your play on the word LIKES in this theme. I loved seeing the symmetrical sing-song BUNGEE and MEEMAW, not to mention the long-O-tail set of ROBO, GUMMO, TRIO, EXPO, ARLO and wannabe AFROS.
A fun solve, topped by the puzzle’s inspiring backstory, and the hopeful reminder that a long, long period of bad news can have a happy ending – well, your puzzle was a gift, Chad, along with a dollop of feel-good provided by Jeff Chen’s generosity in helping you throughout your trek, according to your notes.
Thank you both – you’ve made my day!
I still send a puz in occasionally, even though I've been rejected way more than 40. Granted, my first few puzs were kind of sketchy, but I believe I've gotten better over the years, but have yet to crack the illusive publication. @Nancy suggested a partner, ala Jeff Chen, but I Really want to get one in solo.
DeleteRooMonster Always The Bridesmaid Guy
I found the NE corner especially tough since the only GUMMO I know is the Harmony Korine movie and Harpo seemed to fit. Until it just didn't.
ReplyDeleteHey All !
ReplyDeleteInteresting Theme. I can get the ole brain to twist enough to get the Revealer to agree, but agree to some extent that DOPPELGANGERS doesn't follow the pattern of the other two. The other two are "THE LIKES OF YOU(RSELF)", but the GANGER is someone like you. You don't necessarily "like" them. Although, most pics you see online of similar looking people, they are all smiles. So who knows?
Fill .. let's just say, Jeff Chen grids are usually cleaner. A LOT, ATOP, A TON, INNU. Dang. I'll give ASEA a pass. Abbreviations SFO and HTTP are OK, too. Haven't seen HTTP in a while, Gen Alpha and Gen Z probably don't even know what that is. I've even forgotten what it stood for. Hypertextsomething.
Just missing the Z for the Pangram. Dang. Found out ZARIA is a female WWE wrestler. Throw the Z in for the M, bam! ZARIA/ZAP.
Have a great Wednesday!
Two F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
A doppelgänger looks LIKE you.
ReplyDeleteWhich is what the clue basically said. But the revealer mentions another sense of the answer, which Rex, I and ot g erst don't see.
DeleteApparently I read this blog enough to know Rex was going to be happy to see TCM, and if he didn’t call out PAGE BOOKMARKS, I’d have been shocked. But aside from the phrasing of that answer and the awkwardness of the revealer clue, I did like the theme conceptually, with the different kinds of liking. I smiled while solving. However, in retrospect as I consider defending it, it doesn’t feel as cute as it did mid-solve, so ultimately Rex is probably right, and it was just the mid-solve crossword brain that made me think it was clever.
ReplyDeleteA day or two ago I was lamenting my lack of “intellectual curiosity” (aka laziness) - and today I had a real-life example. I’ve probably seen the word DOPPELGANGERS dozens of times, but never bothered to look it up. It’s got to be one of life’s small mysteries that I can manage to bumble my way through an NYT crossword puzzle occasionally.
ReplyDeleteI had this one in the “it’s trying too hard” category while I was solving it, for most of the reasons that Rex mentioned. PAGE BOOKMARKS just sounds completely made-up, and if you’ve been here longer than 15 minutes you are aware of how big a fan I am of the NYT’s use of quasi-words, arcana, foreignisms, and other stuff that is just flat out made up.
Jeff Chen can be hit or miss for me. This seems like one that, while it may be technically very well constructed, just never struck the right cords with me. Could well be just a wavelength thing.
Southside Johnny
DeleteWe all have varying tastes
in crossword clues and answers. I do like reading your posts because you write well , even though we often disagree (I like foreignisms for example). But….
My understanding of what you mean by foreignisms is that you are referring to foreign words or phrases. If that is so , they can’t be “made up” because they already exist by definition. Or am I missing something?
@dgd…I’m pretty sure “other stuff that is just made up” is a separate category for Southside, although I can’t give you an example…because…all words are “just made up” when they’re first used!
DeleteINNU is "desperation fill"? Probably not if you are a member of that proud nation. Come on, Rex...
ReplyDeleteIf you’re using INNU in an otherwise easy mid week puzzle you’re either desperate or lazy. The “proudness” of the people is irrelevant. The term remains obscure. Look how many people are washing out in INNU/ANNA. Come on.
DeleteWow. I guess I was working a different puzzle than @Rex today, because I found the puzzle very enjoyable and the theme very clever. Maybe I LIKE the subtlety of how the themers tie in, and maybe I also didn’t think twice about the phrase THELIKESOFYOU. For someone who watches a lot of TCM, a phrase that comes to mind is, “I wouldn’t be caught dead with THELIKESOFYOU.”
ReplyDeleteLikewise, whether of not you call the bookmarks on your computer PAGEBOOKMARKS, they are, in fact, bookmarks to a web PAGE so I have zero problem with that.
So in sum, then, what you're saying is "I Like THE LIKES OF YOU".
DeleteThat’s two days in a row you’ve made me laugh with a comment, tht!
DeleteBwahahaha…tht! First. That has to hold the record for longest instrumental intro to singing…second, I THINK you’re about my age so Vic Damone was, like, on Ed Sullivan when I was a true “kid.” I thought he was “cute,” but then again, at age 5, I cracked up my nuclear family by saying I thought Nixon was more “handsome” than Kennedy. Third…and not particularly responsive to anything…I remember when Vic married Diahann Carroll…which, at the time, was kinda huge. RIP Vic Damone!
DeleteI'm with @Roo that my brain stretched just enough to like this theme; more than Rex anyway. But agree with both about the fill.
ReplyDeleteThanks to RP for the pic of the Canadian ten spot. Not only is the purple cool, but a woman on the note, just like our own...never mind.
And thanks for ANNA Lee Fisher as WOTD. No recollection but at least this country has put a woman in space. Had the Canadian woman been a lunar astronaut, they could have called their tens MOONIES.
@DAVinHOP. Yeah, not only a woman but a woman of colour and an entrepreneur who was once arrested for choosing to sit in one of the better (whites only) seats to watch a movie. Sometimes called "Canada's Rosa Parks" but those kind of comparisons are too easy and not always fair to the parties involved - unique people in unique circumstances.
DeleteMoonies is good.
The MAX streaming service, which has a plan starting at $9.99/month that includes TCM, or streaming services like Hulu and YouTube TV, where you can add TCM.
ReplyDeleteThis played north of Medium for me. I thought I had a good night's sleep, but it was sluggish. GUMMy, you could say. Rex makes some good points. As he says, PAGE BOOKMARKS isn't really heard in the wild. By the way, speaking of the web, HTTP (for Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is a bit dated; the majority of the time it's now https for extra security, and if an address starts with just HTTP, then there's a good chance you'll get a security warning message back.
ReplyDeleteI've never heard of GUMMO. Chico, Harpo, Zeppo, yes, all five letters long. I don't know the Marx brothers' real names, so none of them was ruled out a priori. I can't believe ASICS is new to me, because athletic shoe brands are practically de rigueur for the NYTXW, and I thought I MUSTA seen 'em all by now, but apparently not.
Let's see, what else TOYed with me. Well, I had JOB liSTING before JOB POSTING. And while I got the happy music with NO ONIONS, I had a weirdly hard time parsing it. NOON IONS, what? Glad to have Rex on hand to straighten me out, but I think actually the clue is fine, if you treat "dinner order request" as a single unit: "hold the onions" is a request, no doubt about it. The "dinner" part feels rather more superfluous. If at NOON you head to the sandwich shop on your lunch hour, then maybe you skip the raw onions for the sake of your workmates that you'll be talking closely with later. (Btw, onions and garlic definitely can affect the breath.)
The puzzle certainly has its QUIRKS. I agree with Rex that the cross of INNU with ANNA is virtually a Natick. It mighta been ANyA or ANjA or even ANkA, but INyU, INjU, INkU don't look quite as plausible as INNU, so I went with that one.
Hello AXE, I haven't seen THE LIKES OF YOU in... two days.
Nice misdirection with dos and don'ts (HAIRSTYLES).
Okay, that's it for now. I expect many of us woke up happy, after the returns from last night. That was pretty darned significant. I can just imagine the rage-fest at Truth Social.
Truth Social is like Moral Majority, neither.
DeleteI thought the no onions thing related to a different olfactory issue, one that issues from a different part of the anatomy!
Only stumble today secret desires before secret crushes
I think it's both! And the thing I've heard about garlic, it lasts a long time because its sulfurous compounds are absorbed into the bloodstream (Wikipedia) and released gradually through the lungs and skin. I've heard that chewing on parsley is an old and reasonably effective remedy.
DeleteI liked this one in spite of the awkwardities in clueing and phrasing. Sorry to make up a word there but think it kinda fits the puzzle.
ReplyDeleteA guy whose trial is scheduled in a thicket often COPSE a plea.
ReplyDeleteYou wanna know what I thought when I saw [Guitar, slangily] again so soon? Don't AXE.
Of course if it's a lunch date and you feel like charging your meal you could have NOONIONS. But let's face it, IONS are great whether it's breakfast, lunch or dinner. Personally, I prefer to dine alone with a newspaper so that I can keep ABREAST of the news while I eat ABREAST of chicken.
IQUIT my traveling salesman job selling furniture to bars. Just so unpleasant having to drag STOOL samples from town to town.
No complaints from the likes of me. Thanks, Chad Hazen and Jeff Chen.
Those are good 'uns. Glad I wasn't the only one AXE-ing for IONS for lunch at NOON.
DeleteSTOOL samples: Har, as M & A might say. (Is it M & A? Hope I remembered right.)
My last word in was “MUSTA”. That seemed odd to me. Do we really say that? Otherwise the theme was fine. When I put in “INNU” I thought maybe there would be some missing letters as the theme.
ReplyDeleteDiane James.
DeleteMusta. Yes people really say ii
That type of elision is very common in spoken English. Must have is particularly awkward to say. Must’ve isn’t much better so we get MUSTA. A lot of peoples say it without realizing it. An analog is sorta which appears often in the puzzle
Could just as easily benn ANYA/INYU for all I knew. Natick.
ReplyDelete⬆️⬆️⬆️🙏🙏🙏
DeleteAnonymous 9:39 AM
DeleteI disagree about ANyA v ANNA
ANNA is vastly more common than Anya And Anya has mostly appeared in the Times puzzle referring to the actress who played a chess star in a Netflix series, don’t remember her last name. On a Wednesday, I went with the common name for the astronaut, who I hadn’t a clue about otherwise. I didn’t even consider ANyA. Not 50/50 odds. Not a natick.
As mentioned by Rex, a ton and a lot in the same grid just didn't feel right.
ReplyDeleteI both agree and disagree* with RP today. I found the theme underwhelming but for different reasons. I agree DOPPELGÄNGER doesn’t really fit with the other two, and I agree PAGE BOOK MARKER is an odd choice. One could have a PAGE MARKER at a favorite passage in a book or a BOOKMARK for a website in a device. This just seemed like an awkward combination of the two which does not really work for either one. But my biggest issue was the omission of FACEBOOK POST which seems perfect for a theme featuring THE LIKES OF YOU.
ReplyDelete*I have to disagree on the ONION breath, which is a very distinct and unpleasant result of eating one of my favorite foods. And yes, on certain occasions I have avoided them for that very reason.
It's not fair. Garlic and onions are so wonderful in food.
Delete@tht: So true and often worth it.
DeleteOk. Everyone (maybe) loves onions and garlic but on a first date? Seems like Rex went out of his way to defend his dislike of the clue. Btw…love you Rex…
DeleteBeezer, Whatsername
DeleteAbout garlic and onions. I can’t stand uncooked onions and love garlic. Something in my dna tells me onions are poison. Tried my whole life (I am about Beezer’s age) to eat them. No luck.
Easy-medium says Rex? Cool! I finished in half my usual time and figured he was going to lament the far-too-easy Wednesday offering. Being Canadian, loved to see Innu and a note to our colourful currency.
ReplyDeleteLiked it more than Rex!
ReplyDeleteHard to get excited over this one since I really hated DOPPELGANGERS :(
ReplyDeleteI don't mind the different meanings of "likes of" and thought the theme was fine, even kind of cute. But I think I audibly groaned when I saw PAGE BOOKMARKS. Took away all the good feeling I had for the puzzle.
ReplyDeleteI have to disagree with Rex about onion breath. Please don't sit beside me at the movies if you have raw onions on your breath!
In Hillbilly Elegy, JD Vance calls his grandmother "Mamaw." A variation of MEEMAW, I suppose.
ReplyDeleteJeff Chen put enough lipstick on this pig to make it acceptable.
Yet another variation, which was my first entry ... MAWMAW.
DeleteI grew up (from age 3) across the river from Louisville, Ky. There was a local kiddie tv show called T-Bar-V (ranch, I guess). Kids would go up and say, “hi, mamaw, papaw, etc” and even at age 5 I thought…”what the heck!!?” Well. You know…having been born in that erudite city of Terre Haute, Indiana…who WOULDN’T think that?
DeleteWill make sure to mark the pages in my books with the likes of bookpage marks like this:
ReplyDelete"Fascism is more of a natural state than democracy. To assume blithely that we can export democracy into any country we choose can serve paradoxically to encourage more fascism at home and abroad. Democracy is a state of grace that is attained only by those countries who have a host of individuals not only ready to enjoy freedom but to undergo the heavy labor of maintaining it."
(Topical aphorism by 5Down).
👏
Delete"but to undergo the heavy labor of maintaining it" <-- This.
DeleteEasy. No costly erasures and ANNA, INNU (tricky cross), IMP (as clued) and TEN were it for WOEs.
ReplyDeleteI know inuit (from xwords) and inuk (from North to North on Netflix ) but not INNU.
Clever with some interesting theme answers, liked it quite a bit more than @Rex did.
When Groucho was hosting "You Bet Your Life" a woman contestant stated that she had seventeen children. Groucho asked her: "How do you explain that?" and she said, "Well, Groucho, I love my husband." And Groucho said "I love my cigar, but I take it out of my mouth once in a while."
ReplyDeletefor whatever reason - a lucky path ? - this puzzle was all woooosh for me; close to if not my fastest wednesday.
ReplyDeleteis not the 'likes' in doppelganger a noun ?
LOL!!
ReplyDeleteWednesdayish Wednesday with one big problem: 43A PAGE BOOKMARKS. Who says this? Probably nobody. They’re bookmarks. That’s it. Bookmarks.
ReplyDeleteHeld up slightly by misspelling DOPPleGANGER and had trouble remembering there was a GUMMO Marx, which made the NE a bit thorny, but otherwise pretty smooth.
Whoa, just reviewing before I crash and I see that the clue for 12D is Jackanapes (plural) and the answer is IMP (singular). What am I missing here?
Jackanapes is a singular word meaning "an impertinent person."
DeleteThanks @JnIzbth. Your response triggered me to look up it's etymology.
DeleteThis from Oxford Languages: early 16th century (originally as Jack Napes ): perhaps from a playful name for a tame ape, the initial n- by elision of an ape (compare with newt), and the final -s as in surnames such as Hobbes : applied to a person whose behavior resembled that of an ape.
A very odd word.
When I saw DOPPELGANGERS, quickly followed by NIPPY and GUMMO, I thought the puzzle was doing a double-letter thing, but SECRET CRUSHES took care of that. But I'd never have guessed the revealer; I didn't even try. But once I saw it, I liked it. Maybe I went too far with Joaquin's dictum ("it's a clue, not a definition") for theme answers, which are nice if they are tighter. But it worked for me.
ReplyDeleteI also liked the A LOT A TON kealoa. If you gotta use 'em, why not proclaim it to the world? In the same way, I like the duplicate weird sisters clue for HAGS and TRIO. And in a cross-puzzle reference, the three were followers of HECATE, whom we saw a week or so ago.
I just looked it up in M-W to confirm my belief that AXE can mean pretty much any musical instrument, not just GUITAR. Of course, that doesn't make the clue wrong in this case.
And I guess the clue for ESL is also correct, but many people also get MBAS in night school.
DOPPELGANGERS brought back memories -- Read a German novel in a college German class; pretty sure it was called "The Doppelgänger", or somesuch.
ReplyDeleteSECRETCRUSHES also had some moments in M&A's past.
PAGEBOOKMARKS didn't bring m&e back much of anything.
Kinda cool THELIKESOFYOU revealer. M&A definitely has likes for U.
staff weeject pick: TCM. Agree with @RP -- they show lotsa neat old flicks. Currently airin is a former 2-time Oscar nominee: "Navajo" [1952].
some fave stuff: QUIRKS [suggestin pangrammer potential, but fell short by a Z]. GUMMO Marx [congratz to him, on his NYTPuz debut]. JOBPOSTING. IGNEOUS. NOONIONS clue. HATCH clue [the only ?-marker clue].
INNU: Well, hey -- I think I recently splatzed this puppy into one of my own 15x15 puz creations. Makes m&e feel slightly better, about doin that. Maybe it's OK for submission? [40 rejects gives m&e somethin to shoot for, after all].
Thanx for gangin up on us, Mr. Hazen & Chenmeister dudes. And congratz to Chad Hazen on his half debut.
Masked & Anonymo6Us
... and now, some food scraps for thought ...
"Play with the Food" - 7x7 themed runt puzzle:
**gruntz**
M&A
Never heard of the movie Navajo, the internet description is sounds intriguing. Last night we watched Jimmy Stewart in "Winchester 73" not his best, but plenty fun (plus young Shelley Winters).
DeleteAgree: Page bookmark not a thing. But I liked the theme otherwise. Really like the phrase"the likes of you" Liked dopplegangers best but also liked that the other two changed the meaning.
ReplyDeleteHad somehow never heard of Anna Lee Fisher and hadn't bothered to look her up so, thank you , Rex, for the word of the day info
Unlike Rex, I got a real kick out of the revealer, and I didn't mind that only DOPPELGANGER was a synonym of it. I liked the quaintness of the revealer too. Oh, and I knew he would like TCM!
ReplyDeleteFor 38 down, I confidently typed in NO GARLIC. Definitely not kealoa territory though; no common letters. And yes, PAGE BOOKMARKS is awkward and nobody says it, unless maybe you work in a bookshop or library that has paper bookmarks everywhere.
It's funny to see that ten dollar bill. I basically never use cash any more (the only time I can remember in the last two years or so was when Superstore's card reader system broke down and they rushed to open a bunch of "cash only" checkouts). Which is a shame because the new bills are colorful, made of plastic, and have a bunch of neat anti counterfeit features: "raised ink, transparent windows, and color-shifting elements and metallic images" (Google).
@okanager. I still carry cash. I feel insecure without it. And I love our colourful bills, especially the purple-ish ten with the lovely pic of Viola Desmond on it.
Delete@Les, yes I still carry cash just in case, but the "in case" doesn't happen often! This spring, my neighbor agreed to pay $600 of the tree trimming I was planning. For whatever reason, he gave me six $100 bills! (Ever heard of e-transfer?) I ended up depositing them all in the ATM and I still have about $140 in smaller bills left that should last me, oh, ten years or so.
DeleteOkanaganer
DeleteI carry boring American bills (even ones!) because there are still a few places places I use cash, regularly. Wish our bills looked as good.
I liked DOPPELGÄNGERS, NO ONIONS, and the one that made me laugh out loud, GORGE.
ReplyDelete@egsforbreakfast - Ha! COPSE and STOOL samples!
I went to Rex’s post thinking he’d have something to say about “jackanapes,” and was surprised he didn’t. I assumed it was plural as well, and thought it might be a cluing error, but figured that out with google’s help.
ReplyDeleteFun, QUIRKy, smooth. Clever reveal I thought
ReplyDeleteI'm a happy camper because I got it all right. Never heard of the INNU, but I figured the astromom had to be ANNA and not Anya. i thought it was a clever puzzle. And I remember being told as a teenager to avoid eating onions on a date. Garlis actually OK as most dishes with garlic will be shared, but onion breath is a romantic no-no.
ReplyDeleteNo surprise OFL had issues with Chen, but I thought all the answers were good, and amusing in a way,
The new Tron is like turning a cassette into vinyl...permanence reaching Platts
ReplyDeleteThis took 2 guys to construct?
ReplyDeleteloved the Scorpions video.
ReplyDeleteI liked the puzzle and liked the theme just fine. Page bookmark is of course a thing not said but it exist as someone posted today. Not best but didn’t ruin the puzzle for me. The Times puzzle frequently has things like this so I have come to accept it as part of the puzzle.
ReplyDeleteRex was wrong yesterday about a themer.
“Black suits”is very much an expression among bridge players and I would bet other card players.
Debe haber sido algo que dije.
ReplyDeleteThis puzzle has the word DOPPELGANGER in it, so all other weaknesses are hereby forgiven. It's on my favorite word list between ARMADA and MOXIE.
I just turned 61, and I write poetry, so does that make me an [Old poet] and am I therefore a BARD?
Yellow people who are fans of midday are NOONION MINIONS.
❤️ [Thrill seeker's line].
😩 GUMMO/[Jackanapes]. INNU/ANNA.
One year ago today the crossword tech people went on strike for six days.
People: 6
Places: 3
Products: 7
Partials: 5
Foreignisms: 0
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 21 of 74 (28%)
Funny Factor: 3 😐
Tee-Hee: NIPPY. HAGS. ABREAST.
Uniclues:
1 Declaration from one who won't date any more Mexican businessmen.
2 Adult oriented drawing devise with two plastic knobs.
3 Granny with a lead foot.
4 Why you're so beautiful.
5 Weird theory autism is caused by beans.
1 I QUIT BAJA MBAS (~)
2 ETCH-A-BREAST
3 STUNT CAR MEEMAW
4 GORGE ASSETS
5 RFK FAVA QUIRKS (~)
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Holy mongrel. AVE MARIA PUG.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Yes. Your freewheeling style has earned you the title of Noholds Bard. Long may you bardenize.
DeleteI LIKED this!! ALOT, ATON!! I understand every one of @Rex's critiques, but that stuff just doesn't bother me. A puzzle's gotta do what a puzzle's gotta do sometimes to make it all work. And I think everything worked just fine today.
ReplyDeleteI got a big kick out of the clever wordplay of LIKE and I found the revealer to be a charming, rarely heard-anymore phrase that did it's job and did it well.
NOONIONS charmed me as well, cluing and all.
Agree that PAGEBOOKMARK had me scratching my head a little, but that was about it, it didn't make me grimace.
JOBPOSTING also stands tall and pretty where it is. Some very good stuff here. Thanks Chad and Jeff. And Chad - I hope you get a few more passed the goalie and can team up with Jeff again.
Clue: what are page bookmarks? Answer: REDUNDANT. Ok. Got that off my chest. So, I was pretty stoked to see the duet of a debut and a veteran, and not for nothing, Jeff Chen is a favorite constructor of mine.
ReplyDeleteClearly, the collaboration was built on a clever theme idea. For me though, the reveal just didn’t land with any panache- at all. If it landed with a big stinky splat that would have been an improvement. And yet, after getting down the grid quickly, with expectation of an über-clever Chen-esque reveal, I was disappointed and the cartoon in the speech bubble above my head showed me with my face squished up and my eyes in a squint with me pinching my nose shut as I smelled something vile.
But after looking at THE LIKES OF YOU for a second, the antiquity and awkwardness of it actually made me laugh. First of all, the phrase is typically said with at least frustration as in “After your ugly gossip yesterday, we don’t need THE LIKES OF YOU offering to help smooth any feathers!” Then, as @Rex mentioned the theme and its resolution have some grammatical issues. All that aside though, I still think the problems made it really funny.
So, kudos to Chad Hazen on his debut. Next, I am always extremely happy to see how generous our most well known constructors are with their time and talents. Thanks, Jeff for this collab that introduces us to a new name in Cross World. I look forward to what’s next for Mr. Hazen.