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Spoiled girl in "Finding Nemo" / TUE 2-17-26 / Physicist Wolfgang who proposed the "exclusion principle" / Material in a classical timepiece / "Oh, that stupid little punk ..." / Workout inspired by martial arts / Tough-but-loving fathers, informally / Leafy side dish rich in vitamin K / Flavoring in an earthy whiskey
Tuesday, February 17, 2026
Constructor: Stephan Prock and Jeff Chen
Relative difficulty: Easy
Theme answers:
This is more a two- or two-and-a-half-star puzzle, but I bumped it up because it made me think of Bach, whose music I love, and it took a giant swing with that terrible pun, which I don't love, but I do respect. The problem with a theme like this is there are no real theme answers (besides the revealer). That is, there's no thematic unity among any set of answers. The musicality exists only by accident, by the arrangement of letters in non-musical answers, so the whole thing ends up playing rather like a themeless (and in this case, a very dull / easy themeless). The grid has some potential as far as interesting answers go (six different Downs of 7 or more letters), but those all come in pretty flat. Meanwhile, the rest of the grid has a dreary, olden feel to it. "NEATO, an EDSEL! You don't see many of those these days. OK, time to go to my TAE BO class, byeee!" I'd also say that the added OPERA content (including the crossreferenced ARIAS) was a bug, not a feature—you have a musical theme but no musical themers ... but then you add musical content non-thematically? And BAROQUE music at that (Monteverdi's L'Orfeo = 1607 = early BAROQUE). I don't love it. Seems sloppy, or at least inelegant.
- ALBINO RAT / ORION (oratorio)
- SNAFU / GUESS SO (fugue)
- PERSONA / TAE BO (sonata)
- LURCH / ORAL EXAMS (chorale)
Wolfgang Ernst Pauli ([...] 25 April 1900 – 15 December 1958) was an Austrian–Swiss theoretical physicist and a pioneer of quantum mechanics. In 1945, after having been nominated by Albert Einstein, Pauli received the Nobel Prize in Physics "for the discovery of the Exclusion Principle, also called the Pauli Principle". The discovery involved spin theory, which is the basis of a theory of the structure of matter.To preserve the conservation of energy in beta decay, Pauli proposed the existence of a small neutral particle, dubbed the neutrino by Enrico Fermi, in 1930. Neutrinos were first detected in 1956. [...]
In quantum mechanics, the Pauli exclusion principle (German: Pauli-Ausschlussprinzip) states that two or more identical particles with half-integer spins (i.e. fermions) cannot simultaneously occupy the same quantum state within a system that obeys the laws of quantum mechanics. This principle was formulated by Austrian physicist Wolfgang Pauli in 1925 for electrons, and later extended to all fermions with his spin–statistics theorem of 1940. (wikipedia)
• • •
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| [Roy Lichtenstein, Go For Baroque, 1979] |
I have two other music-related objections to this puzzle. Well, not "objections," exactly, more ... questions. A couple of things struck me as odd. First, I would never have thought to call BAROQUE music a "genre." To me, that word describes music from a specific time period (~1600-1750), not a "genre." Also, as far as "sonata" goes, I associate that form most strongly with the (later) Classical period (~1750-1820), not the BAROQUE. I see (now) that the term "sonata" existed in the BAROQUE period, but it's not until the Classical period that it "takes on increasing importance":
The practice of the Classical period would become decisive for the sonata; the term moved from being one of many terms indicating genres or forms, to designating the fundamental form of organization for large-scale works. This evolution stretched over fifty years. The term came to apply both to the structure of individual movements (see Sonata form and History of sonata form) and to the layout of the movements in a multi-movement work. In the transition to the Classical period there were several names given to multimovement works, including divertimento, serenade, and partita, many of which are now regarded effectively as sonatas. The usage of sonata as the standard term for such works began somewhere in the 1770s. Haydn labels his first piano sonata as such in 1771, after which the term divertimento is used sparingly in his output. The term sonata was increasingly applied to either a work for keyboard alone (see piano sonata), or for keyboard and one other instrument, often the violin or cello. It was less and less frequently applied to works with more than two instrumentalists; for example, piano trios were not often labelled sonata for piano, violin, and cello. (wikipedia)
There are sonatas in the BAROQUE period, so there's nothing technically "wrong" with including it among today's musical form, but the other forms feel very closely associated with the BAROQUE period specifically, whereas the sonata (to my admittedly untrained ear and cursory understanding of music history) doesn't.
I wasn't really paying attention to the circled squares, even after I hit BAROQUE, so as I say the puzzle played like a rather disappointing themeless. I could see that BAROQUE was the revealer, but I didn't notice what was going on until I was already finished, and even then, it took me a few beats to figure out what was "punny" about BAROQUE (you really have to imagine some emphasizing your brokeness; there's "broke," and then there's two-syllable "buh-roke," which is obviously worse). Seeing all the BAROQUE(-ish) music forms made me slightly happier than I'd been while solving, and then that pun ... it did not make me happier, but it definitely made me groan, which is, as I understand it, the singular purpose of a pun, so ... half-star bump for the pun. I am nothing if not generous.
No difficulty today except for the two names: specifically, the fish and the physicist (which sounds like the title of a popular book on physics, or else a fable by Aesop). This puzzle overestimates how much I remember about the full cast of Finding Nemo (a now-23yo movie). DARLA is the 20th (!?) listed role on the wikipedia page for this movie. This is the first time DARLA has been clued via Finding Nemo. Historically, Our Gang / Little Rascals has been the go-to frame of reference. I can see how one might wish for something more ... current. There have been a couple forays into the Buffy-verse, but otherwise, it's Alfalfa's sweetheart as far as the eye can see. There's a dearth of DARLAs, darlin' (it's a great name; more people should have that name; back in the late 20th century, I very briefly dated someone named DARLA ... I can't say her name wasn't part of the appeal; we went to see Shakespeare in Love ... and that's all I can remember) (I don't even remember the movie, frankly).
Bullets:
- 4D: "Oh, that stupid little punk ..." ("SON OF A!") — someone used this once as a crossword answer and now it lives in everyone's wordlist and I don't love it (anymore). The clue is also not really on the money—it's not partial enough, not interrupted and sputtering enough. You need something more incomplete. "Why I oughta...!" — something in that vein.
- 7D: Daniel of the "Knives Out" movies (CRAIG) — the latest installment, Wake Up Dead Man, was fantastic. I got to see it in the theater, in that brief period that Netflix allowed it to run in theaters. The place was packed, or nearly so. The only movie I saw last year that was better-attended was Sinners. I don't consider movies "movies" unless they have a theatrical run. I could barely bring myself to stream Nouvelle Vague (which I really liked, but resented not being able to see on the big screen). On TV (and esp. on Netflix, Apple, Amazon), "movies" just seem like more "content," no matter how well made they are. (Somehow, in my brain, this does not apply to old movies—how else am I going to see (most) old movies?) (I love you, Criterion Channel!). Release the movies! Let them be big!
- 58D: Material in a classical timepiece (SAND) — ah, the classical time piece, a great step forward from the time pieces of the BAROQUE period (when they measured time not in SAND but in gravel, or the blood of their enemies).
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86 comments:
Tuesday puzzles are supposed to be Easy, and Jeff Chen-influenced puzzles are usually smooth. This one was both. Nice theme, not a lot of junk. I lack @Rex's deep understanding of music and the Baroque era (genre?), so I enjoyed the puzzle a lot more than he did.
* * * * _
No overwrites, no WOEs.
Oops! After reading OFL's writeup I realize I didn't know DARLA (16A), but I had it filled in before I read the clue.
8 minutes for me, so easy-medium. Had a very easy start, with the ALBANIANS, and ALBINO RATS both eating the KALESALAD down into the middlee.... later on I got to puzzle over PAPABEARS and ACTNORMAL. I was about to DISBAND the UNIT when I finally got into the ZONE, said ALOHA and ENDed IT. The theme did help me speed up with FU.... GUE and SONA .... TA. I agree with the 3 stars rating. Wait, have we now gone 2 days w/o? Or is it 3????
Domenico Scarlatti was an important Baroque composer, who wrote over 500 sonatas for solo harpsichord.
I also groaned at the "baroque/broke" pun, but the theme helped the solve when I saw FUGUE and ORATORIO developing, so it worked for me.
Glad to be back on board after being sidelined by Google for some bizarre reason (I violated some sacred rule, without knowing I was under Google's aegis, or wanting to be).
I didn't get the pun here because my pronunciation of 'baroque' differs from US English, so the broke/ba-roke wordplay didn't work for me, but that's a me problem, so I can't knock it for that.
I didn’t like having both EATS UP and UP TO, neither of which are good answers on their own, so the doubling UP made me notice them more. Nor did I like having both PAPA BEARS (fine answer) and POPS (blah answer).
As a musician the core pun is pretty common (“if it ain’t baroque…”), but I agree that “sonata” is certainly more associated with the classical era.
Aside: Darla is the name of the little (human) girl in the dentist’s office in “Finding Nemo” (she is not a fish).
... most famously uttered by Bugs Bunny in "The Rabbit of Seville".
Felt like a very choppy grid, and I'm never going to like little circles, and I pronounce "Baroque" as ba-rock, so not a ton of joy for me today.
I do like SONOFA ..., although agree with Rex that the clue doesn't capture it well. And I love seeing the PAULI exclusion principle make the puzzle.
You say DARLA, I think Buffy and nothing else.
You rang? More circles to antagonize us haters - I just don’t see the interest in the post solve reveal. The theme has potential - liked the revealer dead center.
Steeleye SPAN
Thought the overall fill had some balls for an early week grid. Liked EATS UP, PAPA BEARS and ACT NORMAL. PAULI went right in. Needed the crosses for DARLA. Love the Knives Out series and like Rex we’ve seen them all on the wonderful big screen where they belong.
Cello Suite No.1 - Ailbhe McDonagh
Pleasant enough Tuesday morning solve.
Be Careful With A Fool
Seeing as how I spend some part of each day playing the music of Bach, you might expect me to get the revealer earlier than I did. But as Rex points out, BAROQUE is not a genre. FUGUE, ORATORIO, etc.—those are genres. But apart from that nit to pick, it was a pretty good Tuesday. Ignored the circles till after the solve.
Now, on to today’s selection: Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2, Prelude and FUGUE in E Minor. Here we go!
Hah! What a terrific theme. It employs a visual element – a black square splitting a word, a riddle (What do the circled words have in common?) that is perfectly answered by the revealer, and silliness in said revealer.
And it may be so tight that it’s a one-one-of-a-kind. Someone out there, please, prove me wrong by coming up with another one that fulfills all these conditions!
I gotta tell ya, when I uncovered BAROQUE, I baroque into a huge smile. I also loved row twelve with its unlikely rhyme of SARA and FRERE (as sung in “Frere Jacques”).
This quirky and silly theme upped my mood from neutral to tickled, and therefore to grateful. Thank you, Stephan and Jeff!
[What resulted from a muscle pull when a big lovable guy ran too fast]
PAIN IN THE GALOOT
The section with DARLA, HANS and IAMS required a bit of careful contemplation, but it ultimately succumbed.
Another puzzle that resorted to circles, which I generally ignore. So probably a pretty workmanlike effort from Jeff Chen and his colleague - albeit with a theme that is a little choppy (literally as well as figuratively, sort of like a KALE SALAD.).
BAROQUE MUSIC:Is defined by its musical "type" or characteristics: highly ornamented melodies, intense drama, contrasting dynamics (loud/soft), and the development of new forms like opera, concerto, and fugue.
In the "My Son, the Folksinger" album, Alan Sherman sang "Sarah Jackman" to the tune of "Free Jacques." A classic.
Hey All !
Mr. Rex, they now sell (or al least did during the holidays) 100" TVs. So, if you long for the movie theater, just get a big ole TV to tie you over!
Took the ole brain a second to grok the have-to-put-the-seperated-circled-answers-together to come up with the Theme. I was like, "What is an ORAT? Or an ORIO?" Then I saw ORATORIO as I read them across. Aha, says I. Silly brain.
NEATO idea. Played TuesEasy. Unknown FRERE, but gettable via crosses. J, Q, V short to get the oft loved Pangram. 😁
Uniclue: Just an ordinary day in the Army.
SNAFU? GUESS SO.
Couple of UPs unmentioned by Rex, EATSUP, UPTO.
Everyone remembers the weird front end designed EDSELs, but they actually got rid of that for the 1960 model. It actually looks like a regular car. Too bad that was the last year.
Have a great Tuesday!
Three F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
.
Took a beat to make the across connection of the split terms, which should have been obvious. Duh. Otherwise no real problems except for the usual with propers, viz. HANS, DARLA , and PAULI.
I'm with @Andy in being very familiar with this specific pun (go for BAROQUE, etc.) so not a real groaner.
Was very happy to read the explanation of the exclusion principle, but I fear I am excluded from understanding it. Not my jam, to quote my granddaughter.
Hey @Roo, I'm considering 1/4 of a point for PAULI, but I won't push it.
OK Tuesday, SP and JC. A Silly Pun from the Joke Catalogue, but not horrible. Thanks for a fair amount of fun.
As your resident alphadoppeltotter, a role I’ve inexplicably taken in the past eight years, it is my duty to inform you that this puzzle has an unusually low number of double letters, at four, where unusual is any number less than five. This is the second time this year that this has happened.
I remain your humble servant, ever on the alert.
I'll count myself lucky that I saw both Nouvelle Vague and Breathless recently at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Ross Theater, which regularly screens foreign films. I chose to see Breathless first (at the one-time-only showing), then after seeing Nouvelle Vague, wanted another chance at Breathless. But at least I saw both on the big screen.
I recall the initial description of an Edsel as "an Oldsmobile sucking a lemon".
Is there any connection between Wolfgang Pauli and St Pauli Girl beer? Or just a coincidence of being the same name?
Rex, you continue to surprise me with the breadth of your knowledge in music. As a classical music aficionado, the baroque always interested me - how did they move from Renaissance music to baroque? Almost enough to make you wish you were alive and musical when life was nasty, brutish and short!
First heard the pun while watching "Beauty and the Beast " with my young daughters 30 some years ago . Cogsworth the clock cracks, "If it ain't baroque, don't fix it!" and this puzzle brought that back, Thanks
Overall a nice easy puzzle and I would endorse the 3 stars . I'll be playing some Bach Telemann and Handel today..
Ah, why not. I believe you had a 1/2 point earlier? If so, you're at 1 3,/4 points, whilst I'm still at 2. Rex has 1, Les S More has 2.
Game on!
Roo
So old 🤦🏻♀️
No. The exclusion principle makes this impossible.
Even though I had a Natick at 61 across,I still liked this puzzle more than yesterday’s.🎈🎈🎊🎊
I got WIRED at ABASH with DARLA where I saw SARA NAILART while CRAIG tried to ACTNORMAL in the DEN where DISBAND was playing SKA. When they passed the hat I had to hit a couple of ATMS 'cuz I was BAROQUE.
It seems like a shot of a huge soccer crowd doing the ole, ole, ole, ole chant should be used in an OLAY ad.
I won't PAN this puzzle 'cuz I really liked it. But then bad puns is my home turf. Thanks for a great Tuesday, Stephan Prock and Jeff Chen.
Wonder how many times a puzzle theme has been all in the bubbles…the Baroque pun as applied is something only a dedicated crossword puzzler can appreciate. (Aside: I fumbled typing in the word “appreciate” and my AI or whatever is keeping watch over my iPad filled in “supermarket”! Where did that come from?) And wasn’t there a Pauli in The Sopranos? Actually I visualized his name ending in “ie”, but aurally….
Gee whiz Rex, if you don't pay attention to the circled squares it plays like a disappointing themeless puzzle? That's like saying that if you don't pay attention to the theme it plays like a themeless.
The creator took the trouble to circle the themes answers for goodness sake. I think it's the solvers' job to bother looking at them.
That made me laugh!
Took a couple of beats before seeing what you did there. Good one.
Gee whiz 🙄 He looked at them. Afterward. There’s no obligation to look at circled squares mid-solve. If you don’t need to why should you?
Solved downs only. SE was the hardest. The theme made me question my guess of CHORTLE.
Baroque. Thanks a lot, now I have the Petzold Minuet in G stuck in my head and can't get rid of it.
I got BAROQUE without reading the clue, so I didn't read or pay attention to the theme until I finished and saw the circles. But it's a real theme, certainly more lively and interesting than yesterday's. The puzzle went faster but was more fun. I like having LURCH and Daniel CRAIG and PAPA BEARS in my puzzle and am picturing them all on stage singing ARIAS. Lovely!
I recall my first exam in physical chemistry. Q: “Why, when we push our hands together, don’t they merge into one another?” There was space for a whole paragraph of words, but i just wrote “Pauli Exclusion Principle”. Got that one right.
A John Prine classic yesterday, a Bach sonata for violin and harpsichord today. I love it, Rex!
So it rhymes with Barack Obama? Is that an American regionalism or coming from some other historical field than music?
Okay, I'll bite. This gives me a chnace to posting a link again. I tried yesterday and wasn't successful, so if this doesn't work, I'm doing something wrong.
Petzoid
One 5-letter HDW (Hidden Diagonal Word) today:
1. AKC Registry Addition
(Answer below)
And a couple of uniclues:
2. 5-0 sheet for a bad guy
3. Jaques takes a header from Mlle. Lee
Pleasant enough Tuesday puzzle. I had forgotten the nasty little girl character in Nemo--DARLA the menace.
Answers:
1. BREED (off the B in 55A, TAEBO)
2. ALOHA ZONES RAP
3. SARA POPS FRERE
I had a t-shirt in high school to proclaim my music nerd-dom:
MY BAROQUER IS J.S.BACH. This in the days of EF Hutton commercials.
I think calling Baroque a genre may reflect the Spotification of music. Their labelling system has no idea what to do with classical music. They call a partita movement a “song” by “Itzhak Perlman” - no mention of actual composer. It is also really frustrating to find a specific orchestral recording - most are by lesser known ensembles.
@Andy Freud - we used to say that if everyone spent some time with the music of Bach every day, the world would be a much better place. Love the sentiment, but wonder how the fields would be plowed, roads cleared, etc if EVERYONE were a classical musician:)
I know this is heresy, but I couldn’t make it through A bout de souffle (Breathless), 30 years ago when I tried or this year now that it is in the air again. I get what the movement means to cinema and what was groundbreaking about it, but still find it tedious. This may be a case of the techniques being adopted and taken for granted, no longer seeming revolutionary, perhaps like the development of Opera in the Baroque Era. For underground cinema, I found “It Was Only An Accident” to be more captivating, and knowing the actual real world threats to the film-maker. Kudos to Richard Linklater for recreating the atmosphere. Amazing he put out this and “Blue Moon” at the same time (loved that one and Ethan Hawke’s performance). While digressing, I couldn’t believe that was also Ethan Hawke in “The Black Phone”!!!! Also in the excellent “The Lowdown” this year.
Love me some Scarlatti Sonatas!!! Preferably on the piano:)
I'm among the groaners at the pun - and so was gratified to see it immediately followed by ACH! I thought the theme rows were all NEATO, especially ALBINO RAT + ORION and LURCH contributing to CHORALE.
Do-over: a guess at Cantata from the C.
Maybe Rex is right about needing to see movies in a theater - after he mentioned "Wake Up Dead Man", I had to look up the synopsis to remind myself that I had seen it, yes, on TV. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure I will remember the last two movies I saw in the theater. On the other, other hand, I just saw a movie on TV, "The Life of Chuck", that was so unusual, I doubt I will forget it any time soon.
Having never seen "Finding Nemo", I would have found an Our Gang Darla reference more accessible.
I liked seeing the music composition types appear in the circles and I chuckled when I saw BAROQUE and got the pun though I tried to take it further, as two of the theme answers, ORAT ORIO and CH ORALE were broken by a "bar", but the other two merely had a black box splitting them. I guess "bar" wasn't part of the pun.
Thanks, Stephan Prock and Jeff Chen!
Nothing jumped out after SKA across the top until PAL and then the whole NW fell leading to the rest of the puzzle completed. I once bought a vinyl album Bach’s Greatest Hits a Jazz treatment by the Swingle Singers my Baroque adventure.
And, that minuet is the basis for The Toys' 1966 "A Lover's Concerto."
A Lover's Concerto
Whatever you may consider a genre, and I'll come back to this, I don't see how the clue for BAROQUE can mean anything other than if it's an ORATORIO, a SONATA, or a FUFUE, then it is BAROQUE. None of these are true. It's about like saying that the octave is associated with the baroque, or d-minor. For this theme to work, I think the theme answers need to be more baroque-specific, like the names of composers, or 415 pitch.
As for genre, it can mean anything today, little tiny segments of pop music mostly. Comic opera is a genre, not the whole baroque period -- but put period or era in place of genre and, except for my first point, it works just fine.
Aside from that, I really dislike the ATMs/BLTS crossing. I liked the clue for FIST, however. It was also nice to see Nemo in the clue rather than the grid. I've never actually seen that movie, so I had to work the crosses to get DARLA.
Hmm... no, that's not how I pronounce Barack, which for me is more buh-rahk. And yes, I know in some places 'rock' and 'rahk' are identical, but not for me. Given Anonymous 9:53's comment, my baroque is probably British English,.
Thank you Jay and Elizabeth. It worked for me.
Solved easily enough but never really fully understood the “why” of theme. I was aware the circled letters spelled answers that are different categories of music but what makes them unique to the Baroque period and why would that be considered punny? Like RP, it took me a few beats of staring at it but unlike him, I never figured it out. Of course, it soon became clear what I was missing but not until after it was explained to me. I really hate when that happens. [Sigh]
Not being fond of "circles" I solved quickly as a themeless. Then came here. A nice Tuesday, thank you Jeff (your 'touch' was all over it) &
Stephan :)
Pauli was part of the incredible brain trust that, as Jews, needed to flee Germany in the wake of the Nazi rise to power.
Rex admits generosity (three stars), but the revealer clue pun, being BAROQUE into two syllables, does add an appropriate flavor.
@JonB3, I wonder if you might be misremembering it a little bit. My recollection is “a Mercury sucking a lemon”. The Oldsmobile was a GM brand, not a Ford brand that the Edsel was.
39A: I had BAR_QUE. I entered a B in the blank. I'm that stupid. 33D, I had G_D and thought, "yeah, maybe GBD is some obscure astronomical initialization I'm not familiar with.
You see why I had to remain anonymous today...
Easy-Medium. I really don't have a lot to say. Did I think it was okay? GUESS SO. But read that as more of a meh. As I do with many Jeff Chen collaborations, I just did not find this exciting. (But I'm told there are some interesting Constructor's Notes in Wordplay, which I'll get around to reading soon.)
Moreover the cluing seems to have gotten noticeably worse in recent times. Rex was absolutely right to question "genre", and it seems to me that they ought to know better. ("Why they oughtta..."). I'm going to go out on a limb and call this another case of having a tin ear for language. It's the sort of thing where people with finely attuned ears for language would just smell something off. Maybe they need more eyes and ears on the puzzle before shipping it out for publication. I don't know what's going on.
One thing that amused me was how I had first read PERSONA as PERSON A, as if in a court case where an explicit identification by name, in public, is counter-indicated by e.g. a need to protect the individual. Actually the etymology of PERSONA is pretty interesting. There are two theories here, but they both refer to masks worn by actors on stage. The first I learned is that it comes from the Latin "per sonare" -- to sound through -- referring to how masks could be fashioned to amplify an actor's voice. The second is from the Etruscan phersu which just means "mask". But either way, in modern times, a persona in its common meaning functions as a mask that one presents to the world, a pretty picture that conceals deeper truths. A front, a facade.
There's spring in the air, which puts a little spring in my step. Hope you are enjoying this day!
Easy, didnt even look at the theme. My only hiccup was I had tAP before RAP for 67A.
Hard to beat:
1. The Circles.
2. Funny puztheme revealer.
3. SONOFA/ALBINORAT/KALESALAD.
4. ALBINO/ALBANIANS.
5. Super Bowl party hibernation sites. [sooo ... DEN gets staff weeject pick.]
Pretty smoooth solvequest. DARLA & PAULI only managed to barely munch on my precious nanoseconds.
Only 2 letters off from the Pangrammers Award [J,V]. If only their names had VARLA & JAULI ...
Thanx for gangin up on us, Mr. Prock & Chenmeister dudes. Nice TuesPuz. Baroqued M&A up.
Masked & Anonymo5Us
Number of days this week without circles, shaded squares or other silly gimmicks: 0.
Easy. I ignored the circles and figured out the theme post solve.
I too did not know PAULI and DARLA (@Rex - Our Gang would have worked for me).
Clever with not much junk, liked it more than @Rex did.
I tried down clues only but got bogged down and looked at some across clues, again. The theme was fine for a Tuesday but gee, I am sure getting tired of those circles. Rex could add a "X days without circles in the puzzle" feature.
And big news!... it snowed here in the south Okanagan all day yesterday, ending our snow free streak at 74 days. The official total was 4.8 cm (1.9"), although it was above freezing for most of the day so there is only a little snow on the grass and roofs, and none on the roads and sidewalk.
I agree with you! And am surprised at some of the grumbling. My solving experience differed from yours…I basically solved it as a themeless, and then went back at the end to see what the story of those circles was. But two or three nice aha moments when I got there. Good fun!
I can hear it now if I imagine British English - now wondering how a West Coaster picked up a British accent:)
Day 4 without Star Wars!
I thought this one was fun. For Rex: In Austin, 'Nouvelle Vague' played for a while in a theater, clearly the best way to see it, thanks to Rick Linklater being a local and being the founder of the local film society.
If "tht" introduced his verbose entry with "I really don't have a lot to say ..." God help us when he actually HAS a LOT to say!
Unlike Rex, I liked this puzzle. I did it downs-only and found it very entertaining. Only really tough section for me was the SE where I had no idea about PAPA BEARS and couldn't see ACT NORMAL for the longest time. Took a short break to make a latte and select a good cigar and returned to the grid somehow refreshed. Decided to take a big guess with ACT NORMAL and it paid off. Sometimes you just have to throw something in there. Anything. It could be wildly wrong, but at least you're doing something, not just staring at empty squares. In this case it paid off. I still had to wrestle with the dad clue and the rideshare clue. I don't use Uber a lot and when I do it's usually someone else that orders up the ride, so I don't know all the terminology but UBER X sounded vaguely familiar. So I was able to infer PAPA BEARS for the win.
I suspect Rex has a negative predisposition regarding Jeff Chen's puzzles. Not sure why. I find them to usually well constructed and most often very entertaining. I'm not a fan of 17th century music so the BAROQUE/genre thing didn't bother me at all. I'm glad you're all grooving to Bach but I'm just going to put on some Dexy's Midnight Runners and say goodbye.
No seas tan raro. Actúa con normalidad.
That was fun. Our 15-word German crossword dictionary withstands another assault with the ever popular ACH.
Frère Jacques isn't just for kids. If we don't ring those bells loud enough in that song he'll sleep right through the sermon, nobody will get preached to, society will fall into chaos, and the zombies will come. Serious business.
❤️ ZONES OUT. Furtive. SON OF A...
People: 7
Places: 2
Products: 11 {not necessary}
Partials: 4
Foreignisms: 4
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 28 of 78 (36%)
Funny Factor: 3 😐
Tee-Hee: ORAL EXAMS.
Uniclues:
1 Excuse for dirty fingers.
2 First step in the robot uprising.
3 Beat boxing in Hawaii.
4 Letting those North Macedonians hog the spotlight.
5 Subject of "It's Raining Men."
1 PEAT NAIL ART
2 ATMS DISBAND
3 ALOHA ZONES RAP
4 ALBANIANS' ERROR
5 ARIA'S PAPA BEARS
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Mistake you send to pasture. RANCHABLE UHOH.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@okanaganer. Snowed here, too. Stepped out of the house about 10 last night to go to the studio and check the puzzle out and ... Whoa! Winter has finally arrived! It's all gone now, but it was nice while it lasted.
On Thursday evening, Feb. 5 of this year, Lawrence O'Donnell, on his regular MS NOW program, aired footage of Treasury Sec. Scott Bessent responding in his usual haughty, high-handed, insolently dismissive, and fact-free manner to reasonable questioning from Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts about the disastrous and mercurial economic policies of the Trump regime-I-refuse-to-call-an-administration. Afterward, O'Donnell, a careful speaker not usually given to hyperbole, said of Bessent, "what a sleazy punk!" It was entirely accurate and made me burst out laughing. I laughed again when I saw the clue to 5-D today.
@Jeff B. and others, including Rex. How did I miss this. I am so embarrassed to admit that I did not know of the existence of this movie until today. I'm probably not going to get a chance now to see it on a big screen but I'm certainly going to track it down and stream it. I was never a big film fan until Godard and Truffaut introduced me to the "auteur" theory. I have to see this thing. Geez, I've got to pay more attention. Movies are so predictably bad these days that I've just lost interest. Thanks for letting me know.
Don't know for sure if it's the case today but I do know that if a constructor submits a puzzle to the NYTXW that has a solid theme but unacceptable fill, they will suggest co-constructing with someone like Jeff Chen who is a whiz at grid construction..
I've always thought that the front grill of the EDSEL looked like the facial expression in Edvard Munch's "The Scream". Kind of scary, right?
There were a few tidbits for the POC (plural of convenience) Committee to chew on today. It's unusual to see a seven letter phrase with three of them being Ss and yet it isn't a POC. Happens with GUESS SO. Does enable ARIAS though.
Also of note, a couple of the longs, ALBANIAN and PAPA BEAR, needed help filling their slots. And needing POC assistance for a theme entry, as happens with ORAL EXAM, was the biggest fly in the ointment. The new AI Bot the Committee just got calculated a .287 Star deduction for those infelicities.
Joe Pop
If anyone is interested, St. Pauli beer is named acts a section of Hamburg.
Darla is one of the very few characters in "Finding Nemo" that is a human rather than a fish. :)
Jberg
Matter of opinion of course. But generally crosswords tend be loose. I prefer it that way. Rex only complained about sonata so I gather you felt that all 4 terms must be solely associated with the Baroque. In my view, close enough for crosswords, and all that implies
Go ahead and ignore whatever bothers you about my posts, anonymous. I commented on the quality of the cluing, and the word PERSONA. If that was too much for you, then God help you indeed.
DAVinHOP
Thanks for the info about Pauli. To be honest , I don’t remember seeing his name before. Fortunately, universities in the US were willing to help physicists like him to immigrate here, a very difficult process otherwise,
To the BC commenters Okanaganer and Les S. More
In Southeastern New England we had 4 low snow years in a row and most were quite happy with that. This winter being much colder , it was only a matter of time. We finally got hit with a big one, about a foot where I live. Most years if we do get a significant storm, temps go up and the snow melts away fairly soon. Being a cold year , not this time ! Snow and cities do not go well together.
Now it is 3 or 4 weeks. If we could send you the snow we would.
Another indication of my age
Roo didn’t know Frère Jacques.
For some reason we learned both the French version as well as the English one in elementary school. Maybe Roo remembers Are you sleeping, (repeated) Brother John
I studied French for years, and that ditty in French has stuck in my mind. As it happens I was just thinking of it today.
Frère Jacques,Frère Jacques,
dormer-vous, dormez-vous?
Sonnez les matinées, sonnez les matinées,
din, din, don; din,din, don.
@Les, same here. The only remnants are snowmen at the nearby school field.
Sorry I missed that. And sad to say, it’s a label which could accurately be applied to a number of others in the regime. The blatant disrespect shown to elected members of the United States Congress is appalling.
@dgd, now Frere Jacques is an earworm for me... sung in rounds in English for some reason! "Are you sleeping/Morning bells are ringing, Brother John/Ding dong ding..."
Yes, heard of "Are you sleeping." Au contraire, I don't know French. 😁
Roo
"The Life of Chuck" is captivating--a reimagined "It's a Wonderful Life" for the 21st century.
I cheered Lawrence O!
@Les S, I have not followed film as closely as I used to and missed the film on the big screen too. Fortunately, now that I’m out of Oklahoma - one of, if not the state responsible for the most censorship in the US since “the regime,” I have access to several indy movie houses within an easy drive.
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