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The Rock's signature W.W.E. move / SAT 11-1-25 / Controversial Richard Serra sculpture once seen in N.Y.C.'s Foley Square / Materialistic type of the 1980s / Campus opening? / Prez with a V.P. nicknamed "Cactus Jack" / Conflicts waged on behalf of third-party powers / Number of Spanish provincias that touch Portugal / "I'll think about this and decide later" grouping
Saturday, November 1, 2025
Constructor: Michael Lieberman
Relative difficulty: Medium
Word of the Day: TILTED ARC (17A: Controversial Richard Serra sculpture once seen in N.Y.C.'s Foley Square) —
Tilted Arc was a controversial public art installation by Richard Serra, displayed in Foley Federal Plaza in Manhattan from 1981 to 1989. It consisted of a 120-foot-long (37 m), 12-foot-high (3.7 m) solid, unfinished plate of rust-covered COR-TEN steel. Advocates characterized it as an important work by a well-known artist that transformed the space and advanced the concept of sculpture, whereas critics focused on its perceived ugliness and saw it as ruining the site. Following an acrimonious public debate, the sculpture was removed in 1989 as the result of a federal lawsuit and has never been publicly displayed since, in accordance with the artist's wishes. [...] The post-minimalist artwork was designed and constructed in 1981. Exemplifying Serra's minimalist, conceptual style, Tilted Arc was a solid, unfinished plate of COR-TEN steel, 120 feet (37 m) long, 12 feet (3.7 m) tall, and 2.5 inches (6.4 cm) thick. As its name suggests, it was slightly tilted. The steel rusted over time.
Placed in the Federal Plaza, the work bisected the space, blocking views and paths of those who frequented the plaza. Serra said of the design, "The viewer becomes aware of himself and of his movement through the plaza. As he moves, the sculpture changes. Contraction and expansion of the sculpture result from the viewer's movement. Step by step, the perception not only of the sculpture but of the entire environment changes."
For Serra, an important part of the work's meaning was that it would interact with the commuter passing through the plaza, a location usually passed through quickly on the way to somewhere else. This would subsequently become important as the basis for Serra's designation of the work as site-specific. (wikipedia)
• • •
Bunch of initial errors today, but one in particular stands out because of how certain I was of its correctness and how proud I was of (I thought) seeing right through the wordplay. I'm talking of course (of course?) about 18A: Campus opening? I had the "H" and instantly and confidently thought "Ha, that's HARD C!" Because the "opening" (first letter) of "campus" is a HARD C (unlike the soft "C" of, say, "cell"). Nice try, puzzle! Can't fool me. Only you apparently can because the answer is HIPPO (as in HIPPOcampus, the brain component). If anyone else made the "HARD C" error, please know that my hand is up awaiting your high-five. Don't leave me hanging.
Other mistakes: I wrote in PERM before PEDI (23A: Salon service, for short) and EATEN before EAT IN (28D: Put away some groceries?)—my rationale on that last one was admittedly flimsy. "He has put away some groceries," "he has EATEN some groceries." That might have worked for [Put away, as some groceries?] but as written, EAT IN is the better answer, I admit. EATEN gave me -EE for the end of YUPPIE (i.e. YUPPEE!?) and I was like "that cannot be how you spell that" (38A: Materialistic type of the 1980s). True. Otherwise, no more outright errors except the predictable PREENS before PRIMPS and the far less predictable YELLEN before YELICH (whomst amongst us has not confused Fed Chairs and Baseball MVPS!?).
Never heard of ELISE Mertens, I don't think (2D: Mertens of tennis). Getting rid of cable television means that I'm a lot less sports-aware than I once was. I used to have ESPN on in my house by default much of the time, but no more, and so names, even in sports that I do pay attention to (like baseball—sorry Christian YELICH!) don't work their way into my brain as easily. One word that apparently worked its way out of my brain today was AGOUTIS, an animal I know (or knew) exclusively from crosswords (35A: Only mammals that can crack Brazil nut shells with their teeth). Seems like it's been a long time since I've seen it. I had that -TIS ending and thought "COATIS? COAATIS!?" But no, an agouti is a little mouse-like creature ... sorry, a biggish mouse-like creature (i.e. rodent) of South America. I think I've covered all the things I absolutely didn't know today. It's a solid handful, but not enough to bring me down. This is what's cool about crosswords. You can be ignorant as hell and still get to the finish line through the magical power of "crosses."
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| [AGOUTI(S)] |
What else?:
- 10A: Like some on-the-go purchases (IN-APP) — I get that apps are found on mobile devices, which are portable, but I don't really get the "on-the-go" part of this. I can make IN-APP purchases just sitting on my couch.
- 19A: "Read Me" readers (USERS) — at first I thought this was the Neal Stephenson novel Read Me, but that book is actually called REAMDE, which I really should've remembered (it is presumably a mash up of the phrase "Read Me"). When my sister and I first discovered the book (after I read its sequel, Fall) we couldn't stop saying it. REAMDE. REAMDE. It's fun to say.
- 9D: Greek goddess whose name becomes a Mexican beer if you change the first letter to T (HECATE) — thank god I knew the goddess (and the beer) because I could easily have ended up with a controversial sculpture called the TILTED ARM or TILTED ARK (ooh ... did anyone end up with TILTED ARK? That seems at least remotely plausible, since HEKATE is spelled that way sometimes.
- 52A: Speculative venture (FLIER) — I use the phrase "take a flier on ..." more than any person should. And every time I do, I feel like "am I making this up? Is this a thing people actually say?" Thanks to this puzzle for confirming that yes, someone uses FLIER in this way.
- 8D: Toyota models from 1978 to 1999 (TERCELS) — probably helps if you lived through (and drove through) that era. I can see how this answer crossing TILTED ARC might've caused some confusion for some (especially younger) people.
- 11D: "___ am your father (often-misquoted film line) ("NO, I") — I thought the misquote was "LUKE, I am your father." So I'm confused. Wait ... OK, now I'm realizing that I'm confused because the puzzle has given us the actual line and not the misquote (which is what I am familiar with). In my head, the clue was asking for the misquote, and I knew "LUKE, I am your father" was a misquote, so ... I got turned around. OK, it all makes sense now. Phew. (I'll admit—I didn't know what the real quote was—it's no fun to say "NO, I am your father!" in the Vader voice. You need the "LUKE" part for context, and for the fun of holding the "U" in LUKE for an extra-long time).
- 57D: Prez with a V.P. nicknamed "Cactus Jack" (FDR) — never saw this clue, and thank god. Cactus Jack!? No idea. It turns out FDR's veep, John Nance Garner, got his nickname because he fervently supported the prickly pear cactus as the Texas state flower when he was in the state legislature. Despondent over the fact that the cactus lost out to the bluebonnet, Garner went on to console himself with the vice presidency.
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| [winner] |
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| [loser] |
Happy November (the best month!). See you next time.
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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29 comments:
High Five. Not only did I have Hardc, I took out PROXYWARS, because of it. And convinced myself of some type of PR contest?, campaign, etc. Anyway, made a challenging NE, really tough until finally reinserting PROXYWARS.
Hand up for HARDC at first, too! I also had SATUP instead of GOTUP for the longest time, wondering if the cross was APPLETREE.
I found this to be well north of medium particularly backfilling the NW. ETD was all by its lonesome for a long time even with HECATE in place.
AGOUTIS are one of those exotic animals that's been pounded into my brain. Like it's cousin COATI it has its own picture in my 1989 Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. You can't open to any two pages of that book without seeing my notations in the margins. Anything I've seen in a puzzle that I'm not familiar with I underline it or write it in after solving. . A few decades of this is how I can work around complete unknowns like TILTEDARC or PEOPLESELBOW. This was a satisfying Saturday level tough and in places as resistant as those "Brazil nuts" those AGOUTIS have to crack.
Hard C for HIPPO! High 5!
[Raises hand] Hard C here as well before HIPPO. But the first answer I put in the. grid as I went through the crosses was TILTED ARC; I lived in New York and worked downtown during the time it was up and I remember the controversy very well. Despite Serra's description of how the art (ARC) made people conscious of their position in space, etc., if it had a few teeth to let people (and light) through the plaza it might have been better received, but it as a huge PITA for those of us with places to go and people to see.
I enjoyed this a lot and found it easier than @Rex. I also worked in NY during the era of the Toyota TERCEL, and had little trouble with that one either. But yes, that puts me squarely in the over-the-hill crowd, and I can see how that NW could mess with anyone born after, say, 1975 +/-. Otherwise my experience was similar to OFL. Nice job.
Cactus Jack is a colorful character. He’s the one who described the vice-presidency as not being worth “a bucket of warm ”
Another puzzle with the hiccUPs: GOT and PONIED
I thought l was so clever to write in HARD C. But even worse, me a doc, didn't think HIPPOCAMPUS when l had the HI. I bow my head in shame. Only when l got PROXYWAR did l see the error of my ways.
The big guy covers all the fine points of this one - tough enough but accessible and an overall good time. The Desmond Dekker link is fantastic. The only long I didn’t know was PEOPLES ELBOW.
ARClight
I was downtown nearly everyday in the mid and late 80s and lived the controversy that was the ARC. It did affect the pedestrian flow through the square and wasn’t overly attractive but as a rusted metal wall it did have nuance and depth. One day it was gone.
GEAR Daddies
Liked OLIVE TREE, MAYBE PILE, PONIED UP and others - there’s a lot of wonderful fill here. MOM FRIEND seems a little skeevy.
Enjoyable Saturday morning solve. Lester Ruff’s Stumper today is equally as pleasant - more trivia than Stan usually provides but a neat challenge.
Patty Griffin
The hardest puzzle I ever finished. phew
I had CASE before CAPO for the mandolin accessory. No self-respecting mandolin player would be caught dead using a capo. Those are for guitar players who are afraid to play up the neck.
I had to guess at the cross between YELICH and FLIER because both were fully unfamiliar to me. Luckily L seemed more likely than R. Thanks for linking to the explanation!
Being very confident in MONIED UP, BEYOND SATIRE, and for some reason SECATE really had me blocked for an unreasonable amount of time.
Hey All !
*Smack!* - That's me connecting to Rex's high-five hand for HARDC, even had the correct H. Oh, and you better believe i was aware of that awesome F filled puz. As an advocate of the paltry used F, it ranks high in the pantheon of F-ness. 😁
Had to check out Rex's completed puz, as I got the Almost There! prompt, and wasn't going to go back through to find my wrongness. So, a true DNF, as I cheated to finish. Turns out I had PRessWARS, which got me non-word HIPPe (my rationale was a shortened HIPPIE), HEs (hey, clue Malediction has male in it ...), eARs (had eLLE for MLLE, and whilst EARS is a valid word, it would be an odd first name.) Four letter fail. Ah, me.
Pretty good puz. I was stuck in various spots, but not for too long. Fun to see YUPPIES, haven't thought about that word for a minute. Remember what it stood for? Young Urban Professionals. Yup.
I had an OLIVE TREE in my front yard, which was only causing havoc, as the olives would fall off, every pidgeon in town would come over and eat them, leaving pits strewn everywhere. I finally cut that stupid tree down last year. Sorry, Athena.
Well, as much as this post is RIVETing, I gotta go. Have a great Saturday!
Two F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Speaking of books (we were, right?), get mine! Changing Times by Darrin Vail, wherever you get your books online. 😁
I wonder if “Luuuke. I am your FAAAHTher” is familiar because of “Tommy Boy”.
Re P Proliferation, "Watch me paste dis patetic palooka with a powerful paralyzing poifect pachydoimus percussion pitch!" might be my favorite Bugs quote of all time. "Baseball Bugs," 1946.
Indeed. Doesn't appear he saw it as much of a consolation prize.
DNF for me. Never heard of AGOUTIS, but I was "confident" in "iguanas" crossing "cut'n'paste." I even confirmed online that iguanas have sharp teeth. I had HIPPO right away, so the right side wasn't a problem once I changed "sin" to HEX (enabling PROXYWARS) and changed "seven" to SIETE.
The media politely misquoted Garner, claiming he said "a bucket of warm sPit."
Etext. Yuck.
This was a good one if you were in a mood to learn things. I hadn’t even left that tiny little NW corner and already I had learned that ELISE Mertens plays tennis, Athena gave away her OLIVE TREE, Toyota made TERCELLS, the goddess HECTATE was one letter away from becoming a beer, and the TILTED ARC was a controversial EYESORE. Wow, I feel so much smarter now.
But wait, there’s more (said the PAID ACTOR, perhaps). Just drifting toward the equator, I also learned that whatever the PEOPLES ELBOW is, that it is noteworthy enough that the NYT gave it an honored place in the grid, just above ANOS and SALIVA.
I also learned something about AGOUTIS. I can only imagine the large scale study involving every mammal on the planet to discover that little tidbit about AGOUTIS and their Brazil Nuts. I would love to see the footage of the scientist who tried to convince an ORCA to try and crack a Brazil nut shell with its teeth.
For the record, it should be pointed out that a HIPPO campus is commonly known as a pod.
Couple of flinch-words in there, notably EAVED and ETEXT, but yeah, pretty decent Saturday otherwise. Didn't know the sculpture, so I had ARK rather than ARC for a minute because HEKATE is the Greek spelling and I was thinking the ship rather than the shape. PROXYWARS from the X of HEX got me off and running through the East, a little slower working my way clockwise up the West back to the top.
Hydra instead of Insta. Cutnpas t e instead of copy paste. Iguanas instead of agoutis. I do the crossword on paper in pen so it came out a bit ugly
Anyone else have CutnPASTE and then feed their Brazil nuts to iGUanaS? Cause lemme tell ya, that took a while to let go of.
If I had a pen, “Hard C” would have been in black ink!
I had HEKATE and it took me 10 min of hunting to find my error on the grid. Also had HARDC thinking I was so clever. HIGHFIVE!
I absolutely must track this one down. Never heard it!
Same here. I’ve never seen a mandolin player use a capo. Had to look it up to verify that such a thing exists. Apparently you can find a sort of all-purpose mandolin/banjo/tenor guitar capo. Ever seen a banjo player use a capo? Me neither.
Otherwise, a great puzzle and superb write-up from Rex. And I’ll second Son Volt: that Desmond Dekker track rocks!
Un montón de posibilidades.
Zero trick or treaters, and a Dodger win, and RARA in this tragedy ... so it's a hat-trick of succotash. This is why @SouthsideJohnny convinced me to add foreign words into the gunkometer. RARA! Anybody love it? Random Latin-ness. RARE misspelled by some dead guys. Our editors thought the rest of the puzzle is so pristine and gripping we'd celebrate RARA as an important addition to our lexicon for its sweet illumination on the travails of our modern times? Let's go to the crosses: I seriously question how much riveting the typical airline mechanic does. Rosie apparently did. Are we talking about her? Then [Behind] should have been arse-related. They can't feed us a steady diet of the poison and then expect us to like a warmed up gas station burrito. PARODY shows up a day LATE after making me take SATIRE to lunch yesterday. (He slurps his soup). And wrap it up today with eight Popes praying next to the PIETA. Gah. RARA. When time machines are invented, Imma goin' back to Rome to whoop Antonius's asinus. That's a donkey. I really wouldn't hurt a Latin donkey, but I would use a Latin Sharpie to put an E on RARA and a mustache on any sleeping URBANS.
And that's not the worst of it. GEAR TEETH are often engaged in engineering? Ya know what? They're more often not engaged in engineering. And I often PONY UP exuberantly.
TILTED ARC was terrible "art." Put a guy on a horse and call it a day. Or fashion a sculpture of The Rock handing out a PEOPLE'S ELBOW and spitting SALIVA. Thanks for including spit in the puzzle.
You turn HIPPO into a partial when you could have a big cuddly whatever those are in your puzzle? And YUPPIE? They were Ga-ross in the '80s and they are Ga-ross now.
I do so love that Athena gave them the olive tree. Olives are great. AGOUTIS are cute too.
❤️ One of the LOTUS cars is named ELISE.
😩 NOI.
People: 7
Places: 0
Products: 6
Partials: 10 {on a themeless ... sheesk}
Foreignisms: 6
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 29 of 70 (41%) 🔔 {The city of Gunkopolis tolls the church bells celebrating the RARA 40+ achievement}
Funny Factor: 4 🙂
Tee-Hee: MOM FRIEND {if it's, ya know, friendly}.
Uniclues:
1 The user settings.
2 What happens if you don't brush your teeth in Crete.
3 Rodent repairer.
4 A leaflet handed out on campus warning, "The Iliad is boring."
5 The parent of the kindergartener you're stalking on the 'gram.
1 GEAR TEETH IN APP
2 MOLAR OLIVE TREE (~)
3 AGOUTI'S RIVETER
4 EPIC PSA FLIER (~)
5 INSTA MOM FRIEND
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Well, somebody hasta make 'em walk the plank. A JOB IS A JOB ASEA.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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