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Yogurt-braised Indian entree / SAT 11-22-25 / Telekinetic intimidation tactic used in the "Star Wars" universe / Ruthless Records co-founder / Chris formerly of S.N.L. / Eponym of a renamed N.Y.C. bridge / Actress Kelly of Netflix's "3 Body Problem" / Transit option since 2000 / Counterpart of "pls" / Outdoor setting for Plato's academy / Charles ___, founder of Cablevision and HBO / Lead role in 1978's "La Cage aux Folles"
Saturday, November 22, 2025
Constructor: Blake Slonecker
Relative difficulty: Easy, maybe Easy-Medium because of all the names
Word of the Day: KORMA (52D: Yogurt-braised Indian entree) —
Korma, kurma, qorma or qurma (Urdu: قورمہ; Hindi: क़ोरमा; Bengali: কোরমা; Persian: قرمه; Kashmiri: قۄرمہٕ) is a curry dish originating in the Indian subcontinent influenced by Mughlai cuisine, versions of which later were modified to Anglo-Indian and then to British tastes. It consists of meat or vegetables braised with yogurt, water or stock, and spices to produce a thick sauce or gravy. (wikipedia)
• • •
[the whole show! gonna watch all of this today. children's entertainment was never better]
As for easiness (to say nothing of EAZY-Eness, which increased the easiness if you knew that answer, as I did) (54A: Ruthless Records co-founder), I don't think I've ever had a Saturday puzzle open up quite this easily:
If so, OK, I've seen it, but didn't know it had a name. ERASERMATE is product placement. UPPER BOUND seems fine, but I wanted UPPER LIMIT, which I like better as a phrase (17A: End of a set, in mathematics). In general, this was perfectly well made, but it could've used stronger marquees and fewer names (and name crosses).
- 16A: Essayist who wrote "If you wrest my words beyond their fair construction, it is you, and not I, that are the April Fool" (ELIA) — the pen name of Charles Lamb and an absolute staple of Old Crossword Grids. ELIA's frequency tapers off once the Shortz Era begins, and ELIA clues also move decidedly in the direction (!) of ELIA Kazan. The ELIA balance of power has shifted. But you still see the "essayist" clues from time to time. Sidenote: old crossword clues are wild; or, rather, they are the opposite of wild. In the '80s they'd just clue ELIA as [Lamb] or [Kazan]. No frills! Bare bones, baby!
- 29A: Number of Academy Award nominations for Best Actor received by Laurence Olivier (NINE) — one of them was for Wuthering Heights. I wonder what Olivier would think of this? (me, I can't wait):
- 26D: Certain miniature vehicle, informally (RC CAR) — radio-controlled car. Not my favorite fill. Only ever seen this abbr. in crosswords.
- 21D: Sea foam (SPUME) — went with SPRAY at first. A much, much nicer word, SPRAY.
- 35D: Beverage that Ray Charles once touted as "The right one, baby!" (DIET PEPSI) — apparently product placement bothers me a lot less when the music of Ray Charles is attached. Loved this clue.
That's all. See you next time.
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122 comments:
Easy Saturday.
Overwrites:
SOakEd before SODDEN at 9D
I started to type Dr. pepPer for the Ray Charles-endorsed beverage at 25D, but it didn't fit. DIET PEPSI did.
ORA gEL before JEL for the 46D toothache med
WOEs:
Howard ZINN at 18A
I needed every cross for 31D Anthony DOERR, even though I read the book
Charles DOLAN at 33D
MARLO Kelly at 36A. Combined with a stupid typo made WINE SELLER (12D) hard to see
18:23 for me today, so I think that’s easy-medium on a Saturday. Great puzzle. Lots of answers where I had no idea, but after a few crosses…. The aha moment comes. Knew ACRE and CENTRALPARK right away, so that was a nice start. Had drESS at 5A instead of BLESS for a long time, so that made me think 6 down was rOOMiNESS instead of LOOSENESS until the very end. Finally erased a bunch of stuff in that upper central section, saw boos was going to be “SWEETIEPIES” and not something about throwing tomatoes, and so SOakED had to be SODDEN, and then everything went into place. The other section that took me a long time was the SE—had kAnYE before EASYE, but AZURE fixed that. Liked seeing ERASERMATE in the grid. LENIN and AXIS were both gimmes and so those helped me get a foothold down there. Enjoyed the double Q QUIDPROQUO up top and the double-X KLEENEXBOX down below. This one actually fell faster than yesterday’s for me. Terrific, doable, fun puzzle, Blake!!! Thank you! : )
Despite all the names, I found the puzzle a lot easier than yesterday's. A couple of corners in the Friday puzzle had me floundering around like it was already Saturday, but today it was whoosh all the way through. I enjoyed the Friday a lot more, though.
UPPER LIMIT is not a thing in math. There's something called a "limit superior" which is a much more technical concept than an UPPER BOUND.
It's a DOUBLE pangram. JUMP FOR JOY and QUID PRO QUO are solid but KLEENEX BOX feels green-painty (TISSUE BOX is a thing, obviously, but KLEENEX BOX as a crossword answer?). Given much of the short fill and all the names, I'll say that the double pangram stunt was (unsurprisingly) not worth it.
I guessed the O in ORAJEL from ORAL. A crossing that Rex didn't mention is VEZ x ZINN. VEZ shows up in clues for OTRA from time to time, not so much in the grid. Change SANG to SAGE and you get a bit of ZING in exchange for a crosswordesey goose formation, while keeping the double pangram intact.
way way way too many marginal names. Way. Naticked in two places.
Very hard, esp. NE and SW. QUIDQUOPRO was the answer to a very difficult clue. ORAgEL before ORAJEL made the SW brutal.
“The very idea that I should know the [co]founder of” Ruthless Records (?) …
I'm a little drunk and still did this faster than yesterday's so I gotta assume it's pretty darn easy. Or EAZYE. In particular, five WoEs yesterday and I think three today (ZINN, REDD, MARLO).
In other news, I just had my first puzzle acceptance by the NYTXW (hence the "little drunk"). No idea when it will run, but it will be on a Thursday.
I have not read Cloud Cuckoo Land but a week ago I read DOERR's All the Light We Cannot See, and while I had some issues with the pacing, minor character development, and editing, I found so much to enjoy in it that I still gave it five stars.
VEZ ELIA ZINN absolutely killed me. Otherwise easy breezy!
UPPER BOUND is a thing in math, but it doesn’t match the clue. 5 is an upper bound for [0,1] but in no sense an “end” of the interval.
Well, you can do difficult “well” or you can load your grid up with gunk and trivia like ZINN and EAZYE and call it a Saturday. Today we get bludgeoned by the latter, and end up with proper names crossing proper names (DOLAN x RENATO) and foreign stuff crossing more foreign stuff (OTRA x CARA). What a dud of a puzzle.
On the positive side, this one played pretty easy for me and I didn’t get bogged down in a slogfest because I just let Uncle Google fill in about half of it. They should publish a warning when they just phone it in and publish a trivia test.
This was, for me, a wall-to-wall puzzle.
That is, I kept running into walls. Vague cluing and no-knows (11) would freeze me, and I’d go somewhere else and freeze and flee again. After ACRE / CENTRAL PARK right at the start, I thought I’d be gamboling through the box – hah!
Much lateral thinking and making educated guesses – things my brain lives for – were called on. I just kept pinballing around, and answers would come, sometimes in dribs, other times followed by mini-splats, and always with gratitude.
Hard work, but the kind I like.
Lovely wordplay clues: [Foreign exchange] for QUID PRO QUO, [Boos] for SWEETIEPIES, and [Sprinkle with oil, say] for BLESS. I also liked ERR crossing ERR in the middle east, because that's what my solve felt like often. And, as with Thursday’s puzzle, I was strurck by the profusion of schwa-enders (8).
I hope for a steep climb on Saturdays, and your obstacle course was just that, Blake. Thank you!
Dolan passes Shortz's anyone in the paper test. His son, James, is the highly visible and oft vilified owner of the Knicks and Rangers (due to the money his father made through Cablevision).
Definitively not “too easy” for me, with the proper names and cluing misdirects. But a fair puzzle, and gratifying when it all came together in the end.
Solved it with two cheats (to get RCCAR and KORDA), but the music never sounded. This has happened several times before, once recently. I'll be damned if I know why. Good puzzle with puzzling outcome.
Hey All !
Medium -touch here. A lot of names that were unknown. Stuck in NE for that reason. That NE corner, what an ICE HOLE. 😁
Boos for SWEETIEPIES was different. Couldn't get Boos as booing something out of the ole brain for quite a while.
Confess to Googing for SPUME. Just couldn't think of what that Sea foam name was, though once I saw it, got a "Dang, of course!" D'oh. That one look-up, and the puzzle fell ERRor free from there.
Double Pangram today! Nice! And mostly didn't seem forced. Liked how the Q, J, and X were Doubled in the same answers. Heck, it's close to a Triple.
Nice SatPuz that didn't drain the ever receding brain. If you read my posts and think it's gibberish, now you know the ole brain is responsible. Har.
Have a great Saturday!
Two F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Wow, congrats on your puzzle acceptance!!!! What's your author name as it will show in the NYT?
Congrats @kitshef! That's awesome! I'll live vicariously through you for the excitement. Har!
RooMonster Seriously, Congrats! Guy
DOLAN/RENATO was an extra challenge for me because I had the miniature vehicle as some kind of CAB, so BENITO seemed likely, though DOLIN was less so. When the I didn’t give me the happy music I tried the A and still no go, so had to break that section down a little bit more and find my other mistakes.
When there's no long fill that makes one stop for a moment to admire its fiendishness, it's too easy for a Saturday. Agree re too many inconsequential names, though perhaps because of my age EAZY-E (was it supposed to fool one into trying to make KANYE work? THAT'D be clever!) was a fun layup and RAY CHARLES made me thirsty. 11:44 because i wasted 90ish seconds trying to turn KORMA into the distinctly not-yogurt-braised KOFTA, which was a definite meatball move on my part. Onward!
Hey — a double pangram. That was a fun one. Maybe I’m NYC-centric, but I thought that, in addition to Cablevision, the Dolans were pretty famous as the (somewhat reviled) owners of the Knicks, Rangers and Madison Square Garden.
Names, names, and more names. I saved the RENATO/DOLAN Natick for near the ends, then finished up with mlK. No, jFK. That is, RFK.
Not much fun overall, but the puzpair QUID PRO QUO and JUMP FOR JOY brought a smile to my face.
1. This was an ugly slog.
2. ICEHOLE?? Really?
Congrats!!!
I dislike paired answers and they seem unworthy of what Saturday is supposed to be. Too gimmicky.
So EAZY(E), even a dead gansta rapper from 1990s could finish this one, unless he never heard of the esoteric law firm ELIA; ZINN; MARLO; RENATO; DOERR; and DOLAN. At least proper nouns balanced out with REDD and KOBE, actual known quantities.
Names. Boo!
unpleasant barrage of names. annoying paired answeres. Ugh.
Too. Many. Names.
Can someone explain how a DATE can be a VESSEL?
DOLAN was actually one of my favorite clues. As Evan and Keith said, it was a gimme for anyone in the NY metro area, and I like when puzzles in an (ostensibly) local paper reflect that paper's locale. This was a NYC-heavy puzzle, as far as those go, and I don't hold that against it, even if it wasn't my favorite
What is the connection between boos and sweetie pies?
Completely foreign to me..
Yup, also pretty familiar with the Dolans because they also would pay for? sponsor? the 4th of July fireworks in Oyster Bay
Many congrats, hope the hangover goes well!
Agree on All the Light We Cannot See. IMO should be required reading in all high school English courses
I figured out the names just fine. SODDEN sucks. I know it's a word, and a valid word, but so are sOakEd and SOppEd. Come to think of it I don't know if sopped is even a word but if not I would probably use it incorrectly before I would say SODDEN. Ruined that whole section for me, especially given that I had never heard of UPPER BOUND.
Now, it was also tricky to put in EAZY-E when kAnYE was a great misdirect, and I even tried to squeeze some weird version of JAY Z in there for a while. But the crosses were gettable, unlike an obscure math term. I know, I know I should have known LOOSENESS for laxity but the wrong answers in other places made that hard to see. Whatever. Not my day.
Well done you! Will be looking for it.
@Rick Sacra - I assume it will appear as Kit Sheffield, but I'm new to this so not certain. I should also mention that I solved today's puzzle and wrote up my comments last night, and am not drunk at 7am.
The music didn’t sound because it’s korma, not korda
Same problems with the names with the same names as everyone else, so I'll skip mentioning them. Didn't stop to think about a Remote Control Car and left JFK, so a technical DNF. I did find out something interesting about our friend the PRAWN and ran into noted crossword essayist ELIA, who has been MIA for some time. Welcome back.
SPUME was easy as the Spanish is "espuma". See also OTRA VEZ
Hooray for Ray Charles. In a perfect world, our national anthem would be "America the Beautiful" and it would always be sung by Ray Charles.
Nice Saturday, BS. Would have been Better Still without all the you-know-whats but still OK. Thanks for all the fun.
I have friends with a 5-year-old boy who loves rc cars. That’s what he calls them. I asked him what ‘rc’ meant - he didn’t know.
I would put this in the Medium pile. Took longer than any puzzle in the last few weeks. Despite spending untold hours in CENTRALPARK (Hi, @Nancy), I didn’t make that connection immediately like Rex.
Names are interesting in that it is fascinating to see who knows what here. I would think that Howard ZINN would be a gimme for most here. His “People’s History” changed the way history is taught by focusing on the lives of ordinary and/or marginalized people, steering away from the “great men” approach.
I know EAZYE, but not from his record label.
As others have mentioned, any fan of the Knicks has heard the “Sell the team” chants for a couple of decades - due to nepo-baby James Dolan’s meddling in team decisions, and forcing things again and again that would keep them uncompetitive for years. Their recent run has calmed that down.
Even in comedians, I would rather see REDD Foxx.
Last no-happy-music-letter was the O in MARLO. DOERR’s presence was a WOE to me and makes me ashamed not to know more authors…Netflix has a sea of garbage, but also some surprisingly good stuff as well. Adolescence was a difficult but powerful watch, and a window into the lives of youth today. Rightfully acknowledged at the Emmys.
ICEHOLE reminded me of the shacks on the St Lawrence River, and Anthony Bourdain’s fantastic Quebec episode, doing fine dining in a shack on the river.
Fun puzzle! I strongly suspect the original clue for DIET PEPSI was a reference to Addison Rae’s chart-breaching alt-pop hit. But maybe that’s wishful thinking.
Congrats!
A clumsy construction . Very NYC-centric and multiple obscure name natics.
Never heard of an RCCAR, nor of the renamed bridge, and I thought JFK more likely than RFK, so I invented a jCCAR. Otherwise, I would have been under nine minutes, which is a fast Saturday for me.
BOO -- and I don't mean SWEETPIE.
Congratulations!
AZURE sure to remember, food vendors at the early Mets games offered popcorn with SHEA Butter. Many of those games featured Mets infielders failing to step on the bag for the first out in a double play -- something known as a FORCECHOKE. They'd seldom go NINE without what became known as an EAZYE.
Given the QUIDPROQUO m.o. of the current administration, one could imagine a memo on how to extract maximum personal wealth from our European allies to be headed RENATO.
My aunt from Mississippi had a knack for mixing southern gentility with crudeness. Like when she'd reprimand me by saying "Egs, y'all don't be an ICEHOLE."
I was relieved to see that Olive Garden didn't quite fit for the site of Plato's Academy. But I could certainly envision a Platonic dialog on whether a drink can actually be bottomless or whether there is an UPPERBOUND.
I agree that the name selection slogified the puzzle a bit, but still enjoyed it. Thanks, Blake Slonecker.
P.S. Big congrats to @kitshef!
agreed. and very obscure ones, too. not worth going forward
If you really had "korda," that's why you got no music -- it's KORMA.
Like Rex, I started out on a high note—tho I first filled in FingerLakes before entering CENTRALPARK. After that I bombed on all the names, except for KOBE, a slam dunk. Apologies for that one but couldn’t resist. Never heard of RCCAR or Boos, so my education has been sadly neglected. Liked QUIDPROQOU and JUMPFORJOY, and overall thought this a decent puzzle just miles out of my wheelhouse.
JFK vs RFK? I picked wrong.
Don't want to seem like an ICEHOLE, but I thought this puzzle was terrible. Probably on the easy side if you knew the names but otherwise a mash nonsense with multiple Naticks. One star.
Congratulations, Kitshef.
Not just too easy. Way too easy.
Case in point. 1A: is there anyone who does crossword puzzles even occasionally who doesn't know, without hardly giving it a thought, that when you have a four letter word clued as "One of [some somewhat large number] in [some location]" that the answer is ACRE? Then referencing 50C: what else with 14 letters makes sense for a location in NYC where you have 843 of these 1A's if not CENTRALPARK. So on a Saturday, in fewer than 5 seconds, you've filled in 1A and 50A, not only without having to break a sweat, but not even needing to have your first sip of coffee and begin actual thinking for the day.
And if crossing names of people who may not be terribly familiar to or easily recalled by many solvers was meant to add a little toughness to the way-too-easiness of the rest of the puzzle, it seems a rather odd, and not terribly enjoyable, way to do so.
But, I don't blame the constructor. This seems to be more meddling by editors (no doubt at the direction of NYTimes Corporate) to decrease the level of toughness and challenge across the board so that the Puzzle can do its part get those subscriptions up to 15 million by the end of 2027.
Not easy at all for me; in fact, the toughest Saturday in a long time. If you draw a line from the NE corner to the SW corner, everything to the right of that line I was able to fill in without cheating (felt proud of myself for remembering ORAJEL). In the other half, I just couldn't make progress, Never would have gotten SWEETIEPIES or UPPERBOUND without getting their crosses, and they just didn't come to me. Darn.
Wow, times have changed. Two or three decades back, Howard ZINN's "A People's History of the United States" was almost universally known, though not universally loved -- it was a leftist take, enlightening but vilified by the right. He died in 2010, and I guess the political atmosphere has changed as well. But I was surprised that so many commenters hadn't heard the name.
Anyway, the puzzle. I saw and instantly solved that clue for ACRE in some other puzzle within the last month--but today I was totally befuddled, and went for treE (a ridiculous answer, if you bet the OVERs on that one you'd clean me out). But it did bring back memories of the churchyard at Painswick in England, where there are, always have been, and probably always will be exactly 99 yews. If they plant one, another one will die. Or so goes the legend. It's on the 5th day if you walk the Cotswold Way.
So that gummed things up good, as did my declining vision which makes it hard to read the numbers -- so I was trying to find a 5-letter basketball player where I needed a 5-letter rapper.
Islam before SUNNI, even though the clue needed either an adjective or a plural noun. (Rule #3: never assume that the puzzle has an error.) But the toughest part for me was that bridge crossing that toy car. I didn't know they'd renamed the Triboro at all, but was it RFK or jFK? I finally went with the former since he ended up a New Yorker, but it was just a guess.
@Nancy, who no longer comments here, has a letter about phones in today's NYT. Here's a link.
Próximo.
Been awhile, but I invited my good friend Go-ogle over for the solve and he's really good at knowing the essentially anonymous people stuffed into a weekend puzzle to make it un-doable and thereby making the "puzzles used to be so much harder" crowd cry less.
That is to say, another "not for me" outing. Nancy's wall worthy. Even before we talk about the gunk rating this was not a good idea.
I think SWEETIE PIES for [Boos] is my favorite pair. Glad we learned SPUME a few weeks ago.
People: 13 {Ya happy? Well, are ya?}
Places: 3
Products: 6
Partials: 8
Foreignisms: 4
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 34 of 72 (47%) {🔔This is one of the gunkiest puzzles ever... ever! And 13 weekend D-list names. I had to break out the calculator to add the gunk up. And as a reminder, there's no theme putting stress on the grid. A self inflicted tragedy we're roped into saying, "Well, at least it was tougher than lots of puzzles lately." I will say it: [Boos] = Not my sweetie pies.}
Funny Factor: 2 😕
Tee-Hee: SEXT ICE HOLE.
Uniclues:
1 Where you keep your crawfish.
2 Starbucks offering for fishophiles.
3 Relaxed fit jeans.
4 How you keep your garden clean.
1 CREOLE'S ICE HOLE
2 PRAWN LATTE
3 AZURE LOOSENESS (~)
4 OLIVE GROVE AJAX
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: The elf in the mall. SANTA GAL PAL.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Marlo Thomas and I come within a week of sharing the same birth day. She's been my not so secret crush for at least 60 years.
ELIA, ZINN, REDD, MARLO, RENATO, EAZYE, DOLAN...awful, just awful. No pleasure in working through a puzzle with so many junky names.
Yeah, I don't know Spanish and having it cross two difficult names was absolutely a look-up for me!
I was ice fishing and catching nothing, a fisherman nearby was hauling out one after another. I asked his secret and he mumbled "kmmph wmmz wmm". When I asked him to repeat what he'd said, he spat in his hand and said "keep the worms warm." What an ice hole!
Is this a record for the number of names in a weekday puzzle?
I stopped watching SNL about the time Chris REDD turned 10, so he was one of the many unknowns to me.
MARLA/MARLO/MARLY? DOERR/DAERR/DYERR? - the great vowel conundrum of 2025.
I ran across the trivium regarding IDAHO's international border on Sporcle last week. Never would have thought that IDAHO's border is shorter than New Hampshire's before then.
I also misread Pls as Pee-Eye-Ess, so was trying to think of another shortened plural version of TEC for the longest time.
Some good cluing (for QUIDPROQUO, WINESELLER) and interesting answers (ERASERMATE, JUMPFORJOY, ICEHOLE, ORAJEL) but then so many obscure names that just made it one big disappontment.
No indication that the answer for "Gimme a sec" would be an acronym
Maybe the music didn’t sound because it’s korMa, not korda?
I just read the recently published memoir by Anthony Hopkins; enjoyed it. It prompted me to watch Silence of the Lambs again. So nice to hear Hopkins coo, "QUIDPROQUO, Clarice."
Amen. Way too much ppp. Not fun.
Amen
Boo is a modern term of endearment. See the song "My Boo" by Usher and Alicia Keys.
Bernie
Yes
Did you really think it was ERASERDATE?
Relatively easy for me, it had to look up two of the proper name crossings. Since the clued actress name was obviously feminine, went with MARLA - as the cross was unknown, it looked fine. And I had OTRA VES, so ZENN was SENN. Again, that looked fine, but I should have known better with VEZ.
I'd say ICEHOLE was the least of the badness!
Congratulations!
Some enjoyable stuff in this puzzle, but my fun was ruined by all the trivia and a couple of brutal naticks
Apropos of nothing....
Yes, it is the RFK bridge (recall that was serving as senator from NY when he was assassinated, so not unusual to have a bridge honoring him)
A pity, though, that it wasn't JFK. Today is the 62nd anniversary of his assassination. But there is nary a word of remembrance about it or him in today's NYTimes - anywhere. I never expected to be old enough to live during a time when November 22 would pass as just another day.
"Gimme" instead of "give me" and "sec" instead of "second" tipped me off to the abbreviated vibe.
For me, easy up top, edging toward medium below, and engaging throughout. I liked the happy SWEETIE PIES and JUMP FOR JOY and Plato's OLIVE GROVE sharing space with CENTRAL PARK (with its crossing ARBOR). And now I know what Darth Vader's at-a-distance death grip is called.
Do-over: Odds before OVER. Names that helped: ELIA, ZINN, RFK, DOERR, LENIN, balanced by the unknown REDD, DOLAN, MARLO, EAZYE, RENATO.
Normally I’m a hater of names but I found this puzzle to be quite easy for a Saturday. No solver required!
Easy-medium. I too got off to a quick start by putting in ACRE/CENTRAL PARK with no crosses and it was pretty whooshy after that until I hit the SW. FORCE CHOKE, RENATO, and DOLAN were WOEs and I needed some staring to come up with RC CAR.
Other WOEs - ZINN, MARLO, REDD, EASYE (as clued…NWA would have worked), AJAX, and KORMA.
Costly erasure - UPPER limit before BOUND(Hi @Rex).
Mostly solid with just a smattering of junk (THX, TKTS, EST) off set by slightly more than a modicum of sparkle, liked it.
Here's the letter copy, for the many of us who hit the NYT paywall:
Re “Your Phone Doesn’t Have to Be Your Enemy,” by Steven Barrie-Anthony (Opinion guest essay, Nov. 13):
It’s my phone that’s experiencing grief, not I. My phone is sad and envious — envious of its smartphone brothers and sisters. They get to travel to exotic places! Give lifesaving advice — sometimes even to very famous people!
Whereas, because it had the great misfortune of being bought by a Luddite and technophobe, my smartphone sits forlornly in a dark drawer, never taken anywhere. Worse, it’s turned off for months at a time, with all of its many apps (none requested by the owner but somehow there anyway) completely ignored.
Is it any wonder that my phone experiences envy and existential sadness?
I, on the other hand, am happy as a clam.
Nancy Stark
New York
Wish they would keep the old bridge names. I still call it the Triborough and, especially, the Tappan Zee.
a double pangram improves a puzzle exactly as much as a single pangram: by none.
Solved quickly without cheats but I am, like others, very annoyed with the obscure names crossing obscure names. How aren't the editors weeding this crap out? Such a saturday dud.
Easy until I hit not-so-famous names crossing each other and Spanish crossing Italian. I still finished but working out those crosses was a slog.
Except for a double write-over at 7D, this puzzle presented little to no difficulty. EQUAL TO, EQUALED, EQUATED, fixed by the obvious crosses of SWEETIE PIES and NINE.
I couldn't remember how to spell Anthony D_ERR's name so I went elsewhere to solve and later found I had left that square blank. I'm still wondering why "All the Light We Cannot See" won a Pulitzer and I've had several people agree with me.
I have ridden the bus from LaGuardia to 125th St. many times over the RFK bridge, my main method of getting to Manhattan from Minnesota. I know many people still call it the Triborough Bridge but I've only known it as RFK.
Blake Slonecker, I wish your Saturday puzzle had been harder, but it was fun, thanks!
Well I wouldn't call it EASY but it was doable. WOES were UPPPER BOARD, RC CAR, KORMA, ZINN & haven't a clue about SWEETIE PIES (anyone?) but I'll take this over some of the gimmick puzzles any day. I did really like 65A SEXT. If I never see a reference to the current RFK (no disrespect to his Dad who must be turning over in his grave) it'll be too soon.
So after my mini-rant, thank you, Blake :)
Not easy at all. Broke my streak. Too many names I didn't know, couldn't grok.
Congrats! And thanks for the tip 'Kitt Sheffield' & that it will run on a Thursday. I'll certainly be on the look-out for it :)
This played quickly for me in the end but I struggled having a Spanish phrase (OTRA VEZ) crossing an Italian word (CARA) and two names (ELIA and ZINN). With RENATO/DOLAN and MARLO/DOERR also being in doubt, my confidence was low.
Plato‘s outdoor lecture space was called the groove of Academus or of acacdeme. Bad cluing.
Upper right was horrible if you don't speak Spanish--two Natick squares stacked. V??, ?LIA, ?INN. So many possibilities to guess. Along with the MARLO/DOERR cross and the RENATO/DOLAN cross made this puzzle butt ugly as far as I'm concerned.
Did Donald Hollinger know about this?
Seems to me that Howard ZINN is well known enough to qualify as a non-Natick name; "Boo" has been a Southern term of affection or endearment for a long time.
and in the body of the puzzle, as well. Not just in the margins.
What the bloody hell are TKTS??!!
You mean eraserMate?
PSA - The 11th edition of NYT Puzzle Mania drops this weekend. I realize it’s somewhat beyond the scope of the Rex Parker universe. Just saying happy analog solving to all here as we whoosh whoosh into the holidays.
Yeah, that Tonya Harding was a real ICEHOLE, wasn't she?
Easier than yesterday's puzzle but still well within the Saturday range. That's pretty good for a pangram puzzle. Stunt puzzles tend to sacrifice difficulty to achieve a particular outcome. The obscure names were not a problem as they helped maintain the late week resistance. In spite of the NE having the greatest concentration of these names it was the first section I solidly filled as it started with the obvious VOWS supported by VEZ of the Spanish 101 phrase OTRA VEZ. Pangrams have to include the high value consonants and they tend to be dead giveaways. Obscure names keep the solve from being a pushover.
A couple of fortuitous gimmies came from KORMA being in last Tuesday's SB and my having just driven across the RFK bridge last Sunday.
The SE portion was downright self correcting. AZURE changed KANYE to EAZYE, CENTRALPARK turned CARO into CARA and when I tried to use the word ERASABLE to start 64A FEN changed it to ERASER.
I'm not familiar with this particular DOLAN person but DOLAN is a very common name. RENATO may not be as familiar as ELIA but it's a piece of crosswordese along the same lines so that A was never in doubt.
Congratulations, kitshef! That is fantastic news and please give a heads up when you’re good work is published. May OFL treat you well.
Pretty sure KOBE was the only name in this very namey puzzle that I knew, so I agree about the unpleasantness of the solve. Also agree that I appreciated some of the spunky long answers. Rex didn’t mention SWEETIEPIES, though some above have, but that was also a great word (even if plural), and, newbie that I am, I didn’t catch the misdirect of the clue until the very end when I was finding my error in the cross (EQUALED for EQUATED). It was a delightful moment of revelation on a clue that had me beat during the solve. All that to say, a lot to like here, but the heaviness of obscure names made it impossible for this newbie to solve without looking most (all but KOBE) of them up. The fact that I could possibly muddle my way through the rest made me know that Rex would call it too easy for a Saturday. :)
Same. Today’s names I actually knew.
I suppose NY centric is excusable but the names? No.
Congrats!! We'll be looking for it!
Amen
One of my least favorite puzzles I’ve ever done. Obscure name after obscure name, several of them crossing each other… just awful. I guess it’s “easy” if you know a bunch of obscure trivia names. Otherwise was just a grueling uphill battle without any fun
Mostly very easy but I have no familiarity with ELIA, ZINN, MARLO, or DOERR, so that NE cost me a bunch of time. Just couldn’t see OLIVE GROVE for some reason, but once I got it I could infer the missing letters in those names.
It started out okay, but in the end I was so disgusted with the Unknown Names (crossing each other like crazy!) that I gave up even trying to find my mistakes. I somehow got RENATO crossing DOLAN, but I had MARLY crossing DYERR (even though I read the book... a while ago).
And then in the upper right it's even worse: ILIA and SINN crossing VIS. I tried multiple alternatives (FINN, YINN, DINN) before giving up.
@Kit, congrats on the puzzle!
DNF. Apparently MARLY Kelly and Anthony DYERS weren’t the right pair of obscure crosses that I needed for success this fine morning.
Just not my cuppa today...This was my first Saturday ever when I was able to get two answers in right off the bat with no letters entered at all - As @Rex said, it was 1A and 50A. That didn't annoy me, it excited me, but alas, from then on nothing really sparked. I think I counted 10-11 propers - many of whom I had no clue - that does not usually bother me either, but today I just didn't come away all that happy with all the new knowledge - I'll never think of any of these folks again! That's likely more a Hugh problem than the puzzle's but that's how I walked away...
So after my initial whoosh, I had to muscle through most of this, I did like all the Marquee answers that @Rex mentioned but the work to get there was not as much fun as I would have liked.
Thanks @Rex for the That Girl vid - my memories of that show revolve around being home sick in elementary school and re-runs were aired during the day. That along with I Love Lucy, Family Affair and Beverly Hillbillies. Not bad for a six year old! Nice memories even though I was mostly under the weather while watching.
Blake - there was some great stuff here - I think I was just not on the same wavelength today. Looking forward to your next one.
Also - Congrats @Kitshef for getting your first puzzle in! I'll be keeping my eyes peeled every Thursday!
JFK is the airport
Still love the NYT - but when the gimmicks (Monday through Thursday) get too annoying I go to the NYer - you can find Robyn Weinstein & Erik Agard there frequently too.
I thought that too :(
As multi-mentioned here-in already, it's a Double-Pangrammer! It's almost a puztheme in itself, with showpiece themers:
oliVegroVe. QuidproQuo. kleeneXboX. JumpforJoy.
Also, this rodeo was a Mega-Name-Grabber! Was unable to finish, without resortin to research.
staff weeject pick was VEZ, which was in a Triple-Research NE puzcorner along with ELIA & ZINN. Apt clue for that there corner:{boos!}. And VEZ was a debut word, too boot.
some fave stuff: DOERR/ERR [even tho DOERR was a no-know]. EAZYE. All four of the pangrampuzthemers honored above.
WINESELLER [Var. -- M&A prefers the WINECELLAR spellin]. CENTRALPARK, which made that openin 1-A chute into the rodeo extra-mysterious.
Thanxjqvez, Mr. Slonecker dude. Was the double-pangrammer an intentional constructioneerin quest, here? [VEZ/ZINN maybe kinda suggests to m&e that it was.]
Masked & Anonymo6Us
... and now, inspired [slightly] by the most-excellent Ken Burns American Revolution documentary ...
"Pro-Colonist Runt" - 8x7 themed runt puzzle:
**gruntz**
M&A
p.s. @kitshef! Wow! Congratz! U are now a PRO xword CONstructioneer! Really lookin forward to solvequestin it!
[M&A once submitted a puz to the NYTPuzfolks ... they said it was way too complex a puztheme. sooo ... I then submitted it to the FireballPuzdude ... and he said it was too easy for a Fireball.
Decided that makin runtpuzs made more sense, for the likes of m&e.]
TKTS is a booth in NYC (& elsewhere but I'm only familiar with the one in NY) where you can get discounted tickets to shows.
Tickets sold for Broadway shows by TDF (Theater Development Fund). You can stand in line and get significant discounts for shows the day of; There is a prominent booth at the north end of Times Square, surrounded by every single tourist to NYC that day.
MARLa/DaERR got me, and I don’t care.
Re ease of puzzles, I’ve been working through the archive, and lately the puzzles from the earliest days of Rex' blog. Oct 14th (a Saturday) took Rex an HOUR and EIGHTEEN MINUTES. Fascinating to see him in his ( relatively) novice days; he also had an adorable toddler underfoot.
I’ve been doing the puzzle for about ten years and have graduated to Friday and Saturday only. That puzzle would have been utterly impossible back then, of course. Yesterday it took me 25 mins ( with an error)
Today’s puzzle took me 10.
This blog has been a huge part of my puzzling ( mostly as a reader - I dislike the term lurker) and its kinda cool to see the early comments sections where its often Rex' wife, his response, her re-response, and maybe then a close friend. What he has done with this blog for almost 20 years is remarkable.
My hat is even further, higher, off.
@Anon 6:24. Enjoyed your comments today. Not being a math guy, I tried UPPER limit before having my hopes dashed by crosses. Your mention of the “Limit Superior” had me envisioning a proud figure decked out in full military ceremonial attire - stiff upright collar with glistening silver bars, epaulets holding golden braids in place, a chest full of medals - attended by her faithful UPPER BOUND. (I told you I wasn’t a math guy.)
As for ORA JEL, never heard of it. My mother would just give me a whole clove to suck on. Seemed to work.
Loved your suggestion about changing ZINN to Zing and SANG to SAge.That would have made my life so much easier. Not that I don’t consider Mr. ZINN to be crossworthy. Just not there. I looked him up post-solve and he seems an interesting guy.
KLEENEX BOX, however, is no more green paint than tissue BOX. I grew up using Kleenex tissues.I have grass and pollen allergies and am constantly reaching for the KLEENEX BOX. Even though Kleenex is no longer sold in Canada, every tissue I reach for is still a Kleenex and still, whatever the name printed on it, comes in a KLEENEX BOX.
Just adding my congrats to a long list. You're a very respected commenter here. Looking forward to solving your puzzle.
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