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Crispy flaps of crust on sourdough loaves / FRI 2-20-26 / Seller's shorthand for "I'm willing to haggle" / Product code used in inventory management / Pleasant chill in the air, say / Actress Seehorn of "Pluribus" / Disney character who sings "In Summer" / Miracle on the ___ (surprise French/English victory of W.W. I) / N.Y.C.-based dance group / ___ Bunny, toon who debuted in "Space Jam"
Friday, February 20, 2026
Constructor: Kate Hawkins
Relative difficulty: Easy
Word of the Day: RHEA Seehorn (29A: Actress Seehorn of "Pluribus") —
Deborah Rhea Seehorn (born May 12, 1972) is an American actress and director. She is best known for playing Kim Wexler in the AMC legal crime drama series Better Call Saul (2015–2022) and Carol Sturka in the Apple TV science fiction thriller series Pluribus (2025–present).Seehorn's performance in Better Call Saul won her a Television Critics Association Award for Individual Achievement in Drama, in addition to nominations for two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series and three Critics' Choice Television Awards. For Cooper's Bar (2022–2023), which she also co-created and directed, she was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Actress in a Short Form Comedy or Drama Series. For Pluribus, she earned a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama and a Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actress in a Drama Series. (wikipedia)
• • •
I forgot SKU existed and so tried CPU and even PCU first (5A: Product code used in inventory management). Is PCU even a thing? I think I was thinking UPC when I wrote in PCU. Oh wow, I just remembered that PCU is a thing—a Jeremy Piven movie from the '90s satirizing "woke campus culture" back before that became nearly the entire identity of a major American political party.
 |
| [seen here shouting about how he's been in the puzzle 69 times] |
So SKU was a very minor hiccup, but otherwise, the top half was a cinch. Things got a little trickier down below, but only a little. I know there was a famous Battle of the MARNE (two, actually), and I know about the "Miracle on Ice," but I did not know there was a "Miracle on the MARNE," so my first stabs there were of the RHINE and RHONE variety (helpful to have letters in place when you're looking at a clue for the first time, not so helpful if you're looking at a European river and the letters you have in place are the final -NE). Below that, I never saw Space Jam and do not consider LOLA Bunny canonical—could not dig up her name, nor could I understand what the hell was going on with the clue on PLY (54D: Carry on). I guess if you "PLY your trade," you are "carrying on" your business. Was not computing for me. I mostly only think of PLY in toilet paper contexts. In that same general area, I had SHEEN instead of STAIN (47D: Wood finish). A little bit further over, I needed a little help coming up with the DAYS part of SNOW DAYS and the FRIEND part of FRIEND MATERIAL. Oh, and as someone who loves his sourdough loaves so much he drives a half hour out of town every week just to get his bread from his favorite bakery, I was more than a little surprised to find out that the [Crispy flaps of crust on sourdough loaves] had a name (EARS). I had the "E" and wrote in ENDS. They do look more like EARS, though, it's true.
 |
| [from Sourdough Brandon] |
But none of these problems at the bottom of the grid were really Problem problems. Just minor obstacles I was able to easily work around. So the puzzle still definitely came in on the easy side.
[53A: Has to keep going (CAN'T STOP)]
- 40A: Like many working horses, but not many working dogs (SHOED) — I know you shoe horses, but once you shoe them aren't they SHOD? So many of the SHOD clues have referred to horses that SHOED now looks weird to me. Also, I know there aren't many, but ... exactly how many working dogs are SHOED, and can I see them?
 |
| [Air Bud: Unshoed!] |
- 20D: Becomes aged, in a way (WIZENS) — as someone who is becoming aged, I assumed the answer was WISENS (you know, becomes more wise). The actual answer was a rude awakening.
- 43A: N.Y.C.-based dance group (ABT) — American Ballet Theatre
- 1D: Seller's shorthand for "I'm willing to haggle" (OBO) — "Or Best Offer." Not to be confused with BOGO ("Buy one, get one"), YOLO ("You only live once!") or LOBO (a TV sheriff with many misadventures):
That's all. See you next time.
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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92 comments:
Not a bad puzzle but too Easy for a Friday.
* * * _ _
Overwrites:
LooS before LAVS for the W.C.s at 2D
upc before SKU for the 5A product code (but then I realized that the "P" and the "C" were spelled out in the clue)
BRAVo before BRAVA at 44D
My 59A Fix was a SPot ("I'm in a real spot") before it was SPAY.
WOEs:
RHEA Seehorn at 29A
LOLA Bunny at 51D
Fine late week puzzle - similar to the big guy I found some of the cluing a little obtuse - SWEATER WEATHER is a nice entry but not very temporal and I’ve never heard FRIEND MATERIAL because it’s not a thing. The spanning REVERSE ENGINEER in all of its E glory is the highlight here.
SWAGGER
ARE WE LIVE, CON ARTISTS, HERES A TIP are all solid longs. We’ve seen a lot of SASS lately. I knew ELGIN but younger solvers probably won’t.
AZTEC Camera
I’m not down on my hotel chain trivia - had to back into RAMADA. OBO and UNS should have been edited better.
LIE STILL Little Bottle
Enjoyable Friday morning solve.
SMOW DAY
‘Are we live?’ should be a callback to this classic.
https://youtu.be/D87DSLe4Eqw?si=s_odaKWYZj6vuLMA
Very quick solve, maybe record Friday time. Only tricky part was the SW, where I had to change "updos" to AFROS, leading to FRIENDMATERIAL. Relative dearth of misdirection in the cluing was a big help.
BRAVA?
Two notes for you:
"In Summer" is actually a VERY hopeful song. OLAF has never experienced summer, so he imagines it to be a wonderful time. The song is actually quite entertaining - I recommend you look it up!
And someworking dogs definitely DO wear shoes. Specifically, sled dogs. They wear little booties, and they look very cute in them. I recommend looking that up, too... 😁
I found the puzzle more entertaining than Rex, although it was WAY too easy for a Friday. The one entry that truly bugged me was UNS. Really? UNS?
Way too easy for a Friday.....and nothing of any real interest. BLAH.
Sometimes the FRIEND MATERIAL is a just a set of FINE LINENS
A fine, fun Friday, not too hard, not too easy (for me, anyway). A pleasant break from my daily WIZENing.
"Brava!" is the equivalent of "bravo!" used when directed at a female artist.
Very easy, but I loved the puzzle. Great long answers including a spanner and two 14s, only eight 3s, truly excellent 9s and 10s going down, and almost zero of what Rex would call repetitive fill. I didn't like the cluing for PLY, and that's my sole criticism (besides that this should've been a Thursday, but can't fault the constructor for that).
played real easy for me. The clock says 14 minutes--I must have gotten distracted or something. Thanks, Kate, I LOVE all the long answers in your grid! What a collection! SWEATERWEATHER, FRIENDMATERAL, REVERSE ENGINEER, CONARTISTS, SNOWDAYS! Enjoying Southeast coast of Puerto Rico this morning.... so no SNOWDAYS or SWEATERs for me this week.... All a lot of fun. Thanks!!! : )
@Rex, Here you go: Dogs, SHOED.
Brava for a diva; bravo for a divo. Depends on the gender of the person being praised.
Had to come here for an explanation of the clue for PLY, thanks for that. I knew PLT was wrong but have no idea what Space Jam is, and liked SPOT for "Fix" until I had to rethink SP-Y. Also entered WIsENS before WIZENS until the cross corrected me (we are similarly aged), and felt the same about SHOD vs SHOED
Hey All !
Trickier FriPuz than has been lately. Still finished quick, but it didn't seem fast. Unsure if that makes sense!
Writeovers, eLsa-OLAF, LooS-LAVS, cpU-SKU, sPIel-OPINE, rh_NE-MARNE, uHoh-OHNO, BRAVo-BRAVA, grAIN-STAIN. Think that's it.
No SNOW DAYS out here this year, yes, it does snow (albeit not a lot at once) here, but we've been getting rain these last few days, with some wind, so it's pretty chilly this week, 30's for lows plus wind chill. Need more than SWEATERs. But in a few months, we'll all be complaining it's too hot!
CANT STOP and LIE STILL are a stacked oxymoron.
Street name?
SWAGGER HANDLE
Hope y'all have a great Friday!
Two F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Tough by modern Friday standards, especially that SW corner. FRIEND MATERIAL does not sound like a phrase at all. Also, horses are SHOD, not SHOED.
With NENE and ORES in place, it hit me just how many European rivers end in NE: MARNE, seiNE, rhiNE, rhoNE, torNE, AisNE ... I'm sure I'm missing a few.
What bakery?
Feminine form of Bravo. Thus, a cry of applause to a female performer.
I like puzzles by Kate Hawkins.🎈🎈🎊🎊
This was not a puzzle made by someone trying to impress – it didn’t have a “Look at me!” frantic vibe. No, to me it felt like Kate worked to pepper the puzzle with feel-good answers, that is, this was made by a giver.
Answers that recall contentment: BARISTAS, SHORE, sourdough loaves, SWEATER WEATHER, FRIEND MATERIAL, FINE LINENS (those last three, BTW, are NYT answer debuts). Beautiful words like SWAGGER and WIZENS.
A puzzle AT EASE with itself.
And, well into the winter, contentment – coziness – felt good to me.
Also standing out was the quality of the grid-build, a low-count (68), low-black-square count (30) box so cleanly filled.
A couple of serendipities added to the loveliness. The rhyming abuttees MALIGN and OPINE, and the almost identical STATIN and STAIN.
Starting the day with a splash of beauty and excellence – with feel-good – well, that’s a gift. Thank you, Kate!
That’s two days in a row that I’ve sped through the puzzle. Thursday‘s was a new PR, today’s not but very fast-going. I had all same overwrites as @Conrad (6:03), but we shared only one WOE: LOLA Bunny. I knew RHEA Seehorn from Better Call Saul. I’ve never seen Pluribus, but figured there was only one Seehorn out there in the TV acting world. (And she’s fantastic.)
I liked all the spanners, particularly SWEATER WEATHER and FRIEND MATERIAL. Despite the ferocity of this winter, I enjoyed imagining the first cool hints of fall. And the pleasant dawning realization that someone you just met is a kindred spirit. Enjoyed CON ARTISTS and HERE’S A TIP side-by-side: pictured a smarmy scammer giving bogus advice to a sap.
I’m intrigued by FINE LINENS, but I’m not sure I could distinguish them from regular sheets. Is there a big difference?
Enjoyable puzzle, but it tended to LIE STILL OVERLY, when it should have challenged. Not your fault, though, Kate Hawkins, and thanks for a nice start to the day.
It seems like a pretty typical NYT grid as of late, with plenty of opportunities to keep making progress and just enough arcana to be annoying. Exhibit A among the annoyances would be WIZENS, followed in no particular order by MARNE, Nahuatl, Picts, ABT, and BRAVA. Obviously, when you can’t come up with witty clues, you can always dial up the obscurity to fine tune to the level of desired difficulty.
Note that I’m well aware of the fact that many people (especially those likely to post here) will be familiar with MARNE, et al and will not consider some of them “obscure”, but in the context of a puzzle marketed to millions of solvers, I believe my comments will have some validity.
I had OVENpans for awhile which made many surrounding answers very strange until I traded those pans for WARE.
Huelo problemas.
Super fast, surprisingly clean and uneventful. For me, themeless rarely rise above blah to meh. This one was in the better-ish group. FRIEND MATERIAL needs a girl or boy in front real bad.
If others finished as quickly as I did we should be in for another Friday session of "Add your most incensed negative adverb before the word easy." We've been doing this game for years now. Last week on Valentines day people opened up a puzzle with a giant red heart in the middle of it and some still wept about its un-Saturday-ness. Keep it a secret, but the puzzle these old timers think they're buying is not actually the puzzle they're going to be getting, and watching them wither with astonishment over and over on cue is a fun drinking game. "What is happening at the Times?! This was chowderheadedly easy." Oops! Take a shot of tequila. You can trade out the tequila for pinot noir if you're too fancy to wake up in the hospital. Hang in there purveyors of Doom Posts. I am positive next week will be the long-awaited return of the face melter. See you tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.
People: 8
Places: 1
Products: 1
Partials: 7
Foreignisms: 1
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 18 of 68 (26%)
Funny Factor: 2 😕
Tee-Hee: HERE'S A TIP ... CAN'T STOP.
Uniclues:
1 Criticize Quetzalcoatl (and then see who becomes the next human sacrifice).
2 Put down the banjo, put on your flip-flops, walk down to the Mini Mart for a pack of cigs and a fifth.
3 A cane for cool old guys.
4 When red dots on your forehead don't make you Hindu.
1 MALIGN AZTEC
2 SHOED SPREES
3 SWAGGER HANDLE
4 LASER TAG SCENES
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Make the blue babes blush. SMURF DUDE DUTY.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Any SEVERED fans here? Remember she had to say "Wizened Hands" 5000 times as punishment? I remember a reddit discussion of this word and how it is pronounced Wise- En not Whizzen !!
Otherwise this word is kind of obscure Except having seen Severed 5 times, it came right too me, but I still pronounced it wrong in my head!
I'm not much for science fiction type shows but this was excellent!
Skuas....nasty birds that practice kleptoparasitism.
During my daughter's (and therefore my) dollhouse years, I enjoyed putting together miniature furniture from kits. You'd get the tiny pieces of wood, handles for drawers, etc., and you would delicately glue it all together and STAIN or paint it, as you wish.
I noticed small bottles of various stains in the miniature store we liked to visit, but I had large containers of stain from other nondollhouse projects. So I asked my friend Jon, who I knew put together a dollhouse for his daughter, if I had to buy the special miniature stain or could use what I had left over from regular projects. We were in my work area at the time, and the tiny chair I put together was in front of us on my table. To let me know I didn't need a special stain, Jon leaned over and whispered: "The wood doesn't know it's little."
Alternative clue: Reenigne
(Answers below)
I'm never relaxed in the presence of ATEASE.
That Trump, he LIESTILL the cows come home.
Mighty easy. But thanks nonetheless, Kate Hawkins.
Answer: REVERSEENGINEER
Someone in our local buy nothing group was just yesterday giving away red rain boots for a dog. Apparently they were too tight for their large dog. Dogs have paws that are pretty sensitive at times. While it’s best to avoid putting them in situations where they could hurt their paws, maybe shoes are warranted sometimes.
I think you’re onto something there about a constructor who’s not trying to impress. Perhaps that’s why I smiled when I saw Kate‘s name on this one. I had a feeling I was going to like it and I did
This was my idea of a fun Friday. There were just enough unknowns and write overs to make it feel like I had to REVERSEENGINEER it a little. I did do Thursday's puzzle but once again it wasn't worth commenting on. Sundays are often the same way.
Easy there, big fella.
Very easy, BUT I loved ...... is a contradiction in terms on a Friday
One day I’d like to 34A be clued as [Reenigne?].
Skua you, buddy! Sincerely, skuafan64
I smiled on seeing wizen…a very very long time ago my grandfather told me “when you get old, if you don’t thicken you wizen.” …I did not wizen. (Unless I’ve lived long enough to accomplish both )
Our son and dil bought booties for one of their Aussie Shepherds who was old and kept sliding on their hardwood floors. Those shoes kept her going for quite a while!
@Liveprof 8:35 AM
❤️
Well, I remembered RHEA but could not remember that fun character OLAF, so ran down the east side of the puzzle fairly easily but really struggled in the west. Similar to Rex, ran through my old and WIZENED brain down the Rhone and Rhine until I paddled into the MARNE. After SWEATERWEATHER thought the other long accrosses would also be look-alike sound-alike pairs, so that had me looking for the wrong words for a while. Overall thought this a fun solve tho relatively easy for a Friday.
So do bald eagles, and people love them!
Mindlessly easy! Just kidding, that was purely for Gary J’s sake. Nothing mindless about this, just another smooth beauty from Ms. Hawkins. While I’ll admit I didn’t have to Google anything, which always makes me feel great on a Friday, I’ll never complain about it.
An old joke, updated.
I'm able to tell, based on "tells," when DJT is lying and when he's telling the truth.
If he rubs his chin, he's telling the truth. If he touches his hair, he's telling the truth. If he leans forward at all, he's telling the truth. When he moves his lips he's lying.
Was flying along thinking, here we go again, another easy Friday when I hit the SW and had to stop and think. Didn't know ABT or EARS, had to guess the M in TIMES to come up with RAMADA, and should have known AFROS and BRAVA and especially the much-used SASSES right away, but didn't. Also didn't help that FRIENDMATERIAL is a phrase with which I am not familiar.
Hand up for LAVS and SPOT and wanting SHOD. Boo to you, SHOOED. Also didn't know RHEA or LOLA as clued, hello there. I did approve of SWAGGER, seems like we just had SWAG (no thank you) for virtually the same clue. Also my introduction to SKU, which can now please go away.
Nice breezy Friday (mostly), KH, the Kind Half of us like and the rest find too easy. OK with me, and thanks for a decent amount of fun.
Two days in a row of "make it fit by sticking an extra letter in," yesterday an R in WHIRRS, today an E in SHOED. At least this time I knew what to expect.
I had LooS, which gave me cookWARE thereby completely tangling up the NW, and somehow led me to demand FreE LINENS at my swanky hotel, and to have no idea who those grinding people were. I finally thought of LAVS and it all sorted itself out.
What made this puzzle harder than it might have been was going deeper into the details of the trivia: which character sang the song, which bunny was in a movie, which battle was a miracle. I got that last one with alliteration's artful aid, got OLAF by figuring a snowman might sing a song with that title, LOLA just by plausibility--and went with tHEA for the actress until near the end, when I saw REDEEM.
I saw REVERSE ENG and wanted to finish with 'lish,' but that didn't fit either the length or the cluing.
Sorry to hear that people don't say WIZENS anymore; I do, but then I remember ELGIN Baylor pretty well. Maybe everybody now keeps their apples in the refrigerator--leave one on the counter for a couple of weeks and you'll see what I mean.
Skuas/jaegers are fantastic. Wonderful fliers befitting their falcon-like appearance. On the East coast we realistically only get three: parasitic jaeger, pomarine, and long-tailed. The South Polar skua and Great skua are even rarer. Only the jaegers are seen from land (always from the beach). Most often they’re found on pelagic trips. For the skuas, that percentage approaches 100%.
Three stars, huh? I'm thinking that could be either, in words, "pretty good but nothing particularly noteworthy (in a positive sense) to get to 3-1/2", or "pretty meh but nothing particularly noteworthy (in a negative sense) to get to 2-1/2)"; today (and typically later in the week) being the latter while earlier in the week typically being the former.
Thought for sure that OBO (as a 1D answer) would incur a more wrathful than playful response. Only 8 threes, but 17 plurals, led (ignominiously) by UNS.
Loved the non-mythological clue for RHEA, as well as WOTD placement for wonderful Rhea Seahorn. Pluribus was on our watch list, but neglected; it's back on...thanks, Rex!
TIL that the crispy pieces of crusty bread are ears (result of a good slash with a lame).
Liveprof,
Good one!! I heard it everywhere on The Hill back in the 90s, except the target was Slick Willie Clinton.
BRAVA gave me a tough time too. also, had eMPloyS before IMPORTS. I looked up MARNE, Fridays I allow a look-up if "needed". Liked the puzzle and actually remembered ELGIN Baylor! so proud ... I had ______MATERIAL and thought "spouse" etc, like Rex said. And yeah, SHOED doesnt look right and when I entered it I thought I'd be correcting it eventually. Really liked the NDAS clue. Great puzzle , Kate. And if you are reading this, if you don't know it, check out the song called Kate by Ben Folds, one of my favorites!
Love RHEA Seehorn - is it her first appearance in NYTXW? I’m a big fan of Vince Gilligan’s PLUR1BUS (spelled with a numeral one, not an i), though the behavior of RHEA’s character Carol Sturka has generated a lot of debate.
I lost the "Frozen" lottery today when L__S (that lav/loo kealoa) proved that 1A was eLsa. No idea on 1D though now I assume it means Or Best Offer.
I loved seeing SWEATER WEATHER which is what we've been having this past week here in the Twin Cities (though today we're back to winter). SWEATER WEATHER reminds me of a song I love, Jean Jacket Weather by Ol' Yeller.
Silliest write-over today: with _TTAC in the grid at 16A, I slapped in ATTACk and wondered briefly how that translated to "Connect".
Kate Hawkins, I liked your Friday puzzle, thanks!
‘Brava’ is for a diva, and plastic conical hats are for Devo.
Very easy and easier than Wednesday’s for me. No costly erasures and no WOES. OVERLY whooshy.
Very smooth but a bit bland. I was hoping that after last Friday’s crunchier outing these were going to get a bit tougher…alas, not to be. Liked it.
It seems that the very early posters here are the true "puzzle nerds" who almost whine about how easy the puzzle is, and actually keep detailed lists of how exact time of their solves (something I just couldn't imagine bothering to do). As the day marches on, the "normal" people, those who think of the crossword puzzle as just a little lagniappe that comes with purchase of the newspaper, become more prevalent ... PTL!!
You must mean SEVERANCE, right? I see the discussion about the pronunciation, interesting. I, like Rex, thought it was an alt spelling of Wise.
What a pleasure! After not enjoying many of the recent puzzles, I smiled when I saw that it was Kate. And I really liked this Friday. You're next in line for me after Robyn W on Friday, Kate. Thanks for the smile :)
Couldn't agree more! This puzzle put a smile on my face which is unusual lately (sorry NYT). So very tired of the "LOOK AT ME" puzzles/constructors.
My God! How have I not tumbled to that? Line do many triths it’s glaringly onvious once it’s pointrd out. I feel foolish but am very gratefull for the insight. Thank you!
BTW are yiu a Times Picayune reader? For years they had a Lagniappes column on Fridays, maybe they still do. Truly one of Nola’s greatest institutions like .25 martinis at Commander’s palace at lunch.
Got "fooled" by con artist/shady dealer, had "card sharks" or "card sharps" then lie sTill got me to "card cheaTs"
SE corner: CAN'T STAY worked as well as CAN'T STOP; to be in a SPOT = to be in a "fix"; most maddeningly, I had no idea whether that cartoon character's name was LOLA, LALA, LOLO, or something else. Hence, the entire corner ended up unsolvable.
Uniclue: Bedbugs?
(Answer below)
We buy a wonderful loaf of sourdough bread at our local farmer's market in Port Angeles every Saturday, and I build my breakfasts around it almost every day. I naively assumed that those big wings on each loaf were particular to the person who bakes those loaves we purchase each week. I had no idea that they are "EARS." A very nice revelation!
Nice 5-letter HDW (Hidden Diagonal Word) today--STEED (off the S in 22A, IRS; might clue it as Richard III's "need"?)
Other HDWs include SLAM, NEAP, and WEAN (and a pair of NAEs on a single diagonal line, so NAENAE--shall we dance?)
Answer to Uniclue: FINE LINENS
. . . and I still have no idea what the hell a SKU is.
Is "divo" really a word? Usually, male celebs/actors with haughty attitudes are called "divas," just as their female equivalents are. (And their response, of course, is usually, "Are we not MEN?")
LOL "skua" 3/4 of a bird.
Yay! No circles today.
Decent enough puzzle; just the right amount of difficulty. Only a few Unknown Names: KAREN, ELGIN, RHEA, ABT. I got MARNE from somewhere in the back of my brain, from decades ago.
Typeovers: AM I ON LIVE before ARE WE LIVE, AVATAR before HANDLE, and of course LOOS before LAVS. I got hung up at the very end, where SPAY crosses PLY, I had SPOT crossing... nothing. I thought "Carry on" meant something like WAIL or FUSS but couldn't think of a 3 letter word for that.
I like REVERSE ENGINEERing. That is, I like doing it... basically playing detective. For instance, my boss wanted to make a big email list for sending out promotions. He found a web site that had such a list but it was split into many many pages (50? 80?) and it would take someone a week to copy out the addresses. So he asked me if I could write some script to extract them: yes! I felt a bit like a black hat hacker. Also I hacked Spelling Bee to tell me how many words and pangrams there are (I dunno why they don't include that!).
Food stealing is a very common behavior among all sorts of animals.
Stock keeping unit, used in all kinds of businesses to track inventory.
Stock Keeping Unit. I asked at my grocery store once.
Late checking in this morning as I spent my time watching Olympic hockey (really the only thing I'm interested in the winter games). Canada narrowly defeated Finland. Canada has a lot of fire power but the Finns are very disciplined and their goalie was spectacular. Just, in the end, not quite spectacular enough. Now on to the gold medal game to face the winner of the Slovakia-USA match. Who do you suppose that will be?
I thought the puzzle was fun. Sort of easy, but it didn't just roll over. The three long acrosses were very good. Unlike Rex, I thought FRIEND MATERIAL was just fine; someone who's probably not going to be a love interest but would be nice to have coffee or see a movie with. I also thought a couple of the long downs were good. ARE WE LIVE and HERE'S A TIP come to mind, which is weird because I'm not the biggest fan of colloquialisms, at least not as gaga as Rex usually is. Like a lot of you, I hated SHOED, but I suppose it's the price we pay for an otherwise fine puzzle.
I'm kinda late-ish gettin here, lately. Been writin up some nice, different [a personal fave] 15x15 puzs, and, together with Olympic curlin, get mighty distracted.
[9] Weeks without the FriPuz Jaws of Themelessness
staff weeject pick [from a meager 8 choices]: SKU. Runt skunk? anyhoo, like ... cuz it coughed up one of the puz's two U's.
some fave stuff: SWEATERWEATHER. REVERSEENGINEER & clue. SASSES clue. HERESATIP.
Thanx, Ms. Hawkins darlin. Nice themeless work.
Masked & Anonymo2Us
And Bravi for multiple persons
Enjoyed this fine Friday puzzle. I think SHOED is for horses and shod is for people. Never hear if SKU but I was once attacked by a great skua once while I was walking in Orkney. It’s quite an experience!
Had a few lucky guesses to finish this one starting right away at the top when the unknown to me first name of the first female mayor of Los Angeles looked like it probably started with a K and that successfully filled in SKU, whatever that is.
Had to resort to manually counting POCs since our AI POC Bot melted down a couple of days ago. As has been mentioned, the grid is replete with them including several two for one POCs where a single S POCifies both a Down and an Across. Each S is the equivalent of a cheater square and could be changed to a black square and nothing of value or interest would be lost. Just makes it easier to fill the grid.
Two fers can be seen at WIZEN/NDA, ORE/SPREE, SNOW DAY/SASS and SCENE/UN. And there's the rare stealth two fer with IMPORT/LIE STILL.
Once used a single BARISTA as the clue for a theme entry GROUNDSKEEPER.
I agree that the easy comments are annoying. To me they smack of "in my day things were so much harder; I had to walk to school in a snow storm uphill both ways. Now pampered kids have Ubers. What's the world coming to" end rant.
Very easy for a Friday! I bake sour dough bread and had never heard the term ears. If I could post a picture of the sourdough rye with the ears, I would. Enjoyed sweater weather and reverse engineer. Pleasant easy puzzle for a Friday
It never occured to me that SHOED would be used in place of SHOD, so for awhile I was wondering if the constructor had actually spelled the word with two Ds.
Naticked by STATIN crossing ELGIN, not familiar with either of those proper nouns. Otherwise pretty smooth.
You forgot to mention anonymousses who don't comment on the puzzle at all.
Earlier today the farrier shoed ten horses and zero dogs.
jazzmanchgo
divo/a and bravo/a are gender variations of Italian words. Via opera diva entered English and is a common English word. (FWIW divo/a comes from Latin, like divine ultimately does) Divo if it is used in English would probably be used by opera professionals and aficionados. I am too lazy to look it up. But since some commenters used it my guess it is an English word too. Interesting fact that diva, a word that is not necessarily a compliment is common while the male equivalent is not.
Anonymous 9:00 AM
Very easy (for a Friday understood) is what obviously was intended by Anonymous 7:18 AM so a person like me or 7:18 AM who doesn’t mind a Friday puzzle on the easy end of the spectrum then it is NOT a contradiction in terms. Matter of what you like.
kitshef
Good point. The rivers you named are all French names except for the Rhine. Oddly the French version is Rhin. ( Ger. Rhein). Junior year Abroad in the early 70’s I lived in Caen on the ORNE river (Normandy) to add another one to your list. Also I thought of the Saône which flows into the Rhône at Lyon.
@Whatsername 9:51 AM
There it is. 🤪 I am sorta delighted with the 🦖 Mini-Mes today. They were far more reserved than I presumed they'd be. It's a good quality puzzle, so perhaps they're waiting until tomorrow for the weekly Kleenex hurricane.
Southside Johnny
I would definitely disagree about BRAVA. Besides being in the puzzle more than once before ( In general I can’t see repeaters as obscure) , the word is not in any way rare. It has become much more common in the last few decades.
Other words relate to specific interests. 20th Century European history for example. WW I is not exactly an obscure event and the battle in question is possibly the most famous and consequential of the war. I bet a lot higher %. of solvers, not just commenters, would recall the name, than you think
Similarly, women are much more interested in ballet than men. I would bet also that for women ABT would be fairly well known, at least. It is BTW one of the top ballet companies in the world.
Nahuatl is one of those clues obscure on its face but easier than it looks
Aztec is not obscure and is a very common answer in the Times puzzle. Five letter maybe pre Columbia inhabitants. I tried it and it worked. I think most Times puzzle solvers can use that trick.
Wizened is the adjective that is well known. Using it as a verb , which of course it almost never is, was simply an attempt to make
an easy puzzle harder.
Everyone has their own interests. I try to remind myself that just because I don’t know something doesn’t mean it’s obscure.
I think it’s a bit unfair to the constructor to say her puzzle is loaded with obscurities even from a perspective of solvers not commenting here.
Gary
Liked both your uniclues and your rant!
Sour dough bread is not something I was familiar with for a good part of my life. I am from an Italian American background and as the good bread we ate was strictly from Italian bakeries. (My mother did buy the Sunbeam type in the fifties & sixties for sandwiches). Somehow most of my life, sour dough didn’t register with me. My brother’s partner really likes it so I have been eating it on occasion. Pretty good, but not my favorite. Interestingly the local Italian bakeries still do not offer sour dough bread. Ditto the Italian restaurants. I had to go to a coffee shop/ bakery to find sour dough bread for my brother’s partner. My guess is sour dough bread is a bigger thing on the West Coast than the East.
I almost dnf’d because of SKU/ KAREN cross. But guessed Karen as most likely.
Enjoyed Rex’s reference to SKUas. Hopefully I remember the next time.
Slightly harder for me than most people. I liked it. Initially, I wasn’t sure about the puzzle but looking back I liked the style. What most people complain about SHOED and UNS bothered me not at all.
SEESTO did. So common crosswordese. I am just bored by it. One of those reactions. It can’t be seesto. It is. Maybe the editors?
I wondered about RAMADA also. Could be clued for an open air shelter often in people’s back yards in the Southwest or some such. I agree with Rex’s complaint ( not today) that brands can be irritating.
I don’t mind easy puzzles. I think it was not fill in the blank day easy. Typical was Friday.
One full week sans Star Wars. Poor Leia and Ren.
I picked up a draft horse's foot today to check for a problem. He was SHOD. The farmer would have looked at me sideways if I said he was SHOED.
No, i didn’t forget a thing.
Put a tony ice chip between two of your toes and see how quickly a sled dog (or any snowy weather-loving dog for that matter) would want to be shod with some warm boots.
Not a huge fan of Frozen, but "In Summer" is a great number - very funny, but eclipsed by that other song in popularity. Knew the composer, Bobby Lopez (Frozen, Book of Mormon, Avenue Q, 1st double EGOT winner), when I lived in NYC. We had the same piano teacher. Overall an OK puzzle.
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