.png)
Relative difficulty: Medium
THEME: None
Word of the Day: SANSEI (22D: Third-generation Japanese American) —
Sansei (三世, "third generation") is a Japanese and North American English term[1] used in parts of the world (mainly in South America and North America) to refer to the children of children born to ethnically Japanese emigrants (Issei) in a new country of residence, outside of Japan. The nisei are considered the second generation, while grandchildren of the Japanese-born emigrants are called Sansei. The fourth generation is referred to as yonsei.[2] The children of at least one nisei parent are called Sansei; they are usually the first generation of whom a high percentage are mixed-race, given that their parents were (usually), themselves, born and raised in America.[3]
• • •
Hi, friends! It's Rafa here, and I'll be covering for Rex for a few days so strap in for a weekend of crossword commentary and good vibes! The crosswords that I have published in the NYT are almost always challenging late-week puzzles, so it's extra fun to blog those puzzles because I usually have More Things To Say about them. (I continue to try sending early-week puzzles to the editing team, but they are always rejected! But maybe you can can help me manifest for my luck to turn soon.) |
| WAYMOs are everywhere in San Francisco |
Onto this puzzle! Single-word answers are often seen as less desirable in themeless puzzles, as they can be less lively than their multi-word counterparts. It was cool to see this puzzle lean into solid one-word entries like ELECTRODYNAMICS and MIXOLOGIST and ASTRONOMER. In fact, my favorite part of the entire puzzle was the very clever clue echo in [Expert on cosmos?] (think the Cosmopolitan cocktail) and [Expert on the cosmos]. Oh, look, PANOPTICON is a single word, too. I usually see that word used metaphorically and was surprised to not see a cluing angle that reflects that common usage. But I can't really complain ... it's an accurate definitional clue.
 |
| Two TRAMs |
Outside of the clue echo highlight, the grid felt a bit too ... claustrophobic? ... I'm not sure what word to use to describe it. It's not an inherent issue with a grid, but for a themeless puzzle it's nice when there are at least a few slightly chunkier areas of white space to tackle, and this puzzle didn't really have any of those. Entries like TEETERED and TAILOR TO felt quite bland for a puzzle without wide-open-space constraints. And while I'm in a nitpicky mood ... EXTRA LARGE PIZZA feels like the kind of entry that gets included only because of its high scrabble value. Again, not inherently a bad thing, idk, just a thought. And the [Biggest restaurant size that nevertheless is often topped?] clue felt a bit too tortured to me.
 |
| LEGOS in the form of the Sagrada Família. Lego's biggest ever set, and it's coming out later this year! |
HOUSE OF PAIN and ROYAL FORK were both new to me, but were pretty inferable and cool to learn about. EDGE CASES and HARD CAP are both things I heard (and said) a lot in my software engineering career, so it was also cool to see those entries. And some lovely clues too. I enjoyed [Bar of note?] for FRET and [Copy cat?] for MEW and [Goals for those in a rush, informally] for FRAT. Though, I thought that could have used a ? as I don't think I'd use rushing a frat as a countable noun as in "a rush" ... but I did not rush any FRATs in college so maybe I have no idea what I'm talking about.
Ok, I think those are my thoughts! Hope everyone is doing great, and I'll be back tomorrow.
Bullets:
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
=============================
❤️ Support this blog ❤️:
Venmo (@MichaelDavidSharp)] =============================
✏️ Upcoming Crossword Tournaments ✏️
📘 My other blog 📘:
Bullets:
- VIET (40D: ___ Nam) — I'd never seen the country's name written out separately, but the official name is "Socialist Republic of Viet Nam."
- SANSEI (22D: Third-generation Japanese American) — This term applies throughout the Americas. I grew up in Brazil, which has the largest Japanese population in the world outside of Japan, so I enjoyed seeing this answer.
- BRAD (11D: Two-pronged fastener) — I have never heard of a BRAD as a fastener. But Google assures me that it is, indeed, a thing. Is this something everyone has heard of except me?
- TRIVIAL (39A: Mickey Mouse) — Again, I have never heard the idiom Mickey Mouse to mean trivial, but I got this answer entirely from crosses so I didn't really notice that during the solve.
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
=============================
❤️ Support this blog ❤️:
✏️ Upcoming Crossword Tournaments ✏️
- Westwords (Berkeley, CA, Jun. 14, 2026)
📘 My other blog 📘:
- Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)
As an ASTRONOMER I approve of ELECTRODYNAMICS. I saw HOUSEOFPAIN in 1992, so that was a gimme as well. I agree with Rafa that the puzzle felt claustrophobic (and too much scrabblef**king), but the clues were fresh. Too easy (again) for a Friday, almost set a personal record. Nice puzzle.
ReplyDeleteHmm, trivial for Micky Mouse?? got me to thinking I say it is equal to ‘Rinky dink’ like ‘haphazard’
ReplyDeleteUsing a hack saw and super glue is kinda micky mouse way of building the Lego Sacreda Familia set...
Way back in the late 50s in college, a Mickey Mouse course was an easy A.
DeleteMostly easy except for the NE where the costly erasure BuZz before BZZT severely impeded my whoosh…I mean is BZZT really a thing?
ReplyDeleteAlso, PANOPTICON was a WOE and tough to parse.
Other WOEs - CONRAD, SANSEI, and HOUSE OF PAIN
More than a modicum of sparkle, liked.
@BZZT Haters All Day
DeleteLast time we saw BZZT it was October 29, 2024, and Claire reviewed the puzzle. The commentariat hated it then too. 😜
She spells her name Clare
DeleteRafa does a nice job summarizing this one - between the choppy grid and the somewhat disjoint cluing it didn’t feel too much like a Friday.
ReplyDeleteI never love the double clues - this one has two. I’m assuming the “cosmo” pair was the bootstrap for this construct? LOS DOS, WAYMO, BZZT, the spanning EXTRA LARGE PIZZA are all rough. I loved the three ELECTRODYNAMICS courses I took in school but it falls flat in the grid.
Not a great Friday morning solve.
RORY Gallagher
@son No tunes today? Have I missed an announcement? I love your eclectic selections
DeleteFree Man in Paris by Joni Mitchell.
DeleteHe still has then, but for me, they no longer light up blue unless you tap on them. Today's is RORY Gallagher
DeleteRoo
ReplyDeleteEasy. Basically a Wednesday themeless, but not unpleasant. No overwrites.
* * * _ _
WOEs:
Didn't know that "American Dad" Stan worked at the 15D CIA.
SANSEI at 22D. I knew Issei but none of the later generations.
I haven't played chess in years. If I ever knew what a ROYAL FORK is, I've long since forgotten (30D).
Jazz singer Anita O'DAY at 31A
I've checked several sites online and I haven't found a definition of BRAD (11D) that involves two prongs. It's a small nail.
When I was working in NYC, our go-to place for coffee was a nearby Au Bon Pain, which (of course) we referred to as the HOUSE OF PAIN (44A).
https://www.ploma340.com.tw/product/58/data/502 here's the brad....
Deletesearch 'brad paper fastener' and you'll get it
DeleteI noted in my post below that I never heard the term “royal fork” either and I am a very experienced player.
DeleteCONRAD, you're too humble to self-congratulate for your "appearance" at 26D.
DeleteI'm sure Roo will give a +1, and welcome aboard.
DeleteThose of a certain age put together all of their elementary school book (and other) reports by placing the hand-written-in-cursive report between two pieces of construction paper (appropriately titled and decorated). hand punching three spaced holes down the left side of the report, and fastening the report by applying a brad through each hole. Back then, it was impossible to make it through elementary school without knowing what brads were, having an ample supply of them, and being adept at using them how do use them.
Delete@Conrad
Delete@pablo
Har! Certainly will! Added to my list.
(Might need a bigger sheet ...)
Roo
@Anon 1:02PM re the BRAD. Grest memories! We called them “paper fasteners.” Your description brought me back to those projects and decorating the construction paper covers with pictures from magazines stuck on with paste (way before Elmer’s). I remember the smell of gradeschool jars of paste spread with popsicle sticks or tongue depressors (I may be older than @Anon). A right if passage was to lick (and swallow) a substantial glob of paste. It didn’t actually taste that bad . . .
DeleteAnonymous 1:07 AM
DeleteI am also of a certain age and had used said fastener to create a school report. ( also received course materials with brads later in life) BUT I never heard them called brads. The term for the small nails I had heard. Thanks for the info.
The scrabblese is strong with this one, and some of it felt over the top. There didn’t seem much point in having X-MEN cross XMAS in a corner that already had an X for the (much better) crossing of MIXOLOGY and EXTRA LARGE PIZZA in the NW. Then in the NE, on the other side of that grid-spanning restaurant size, we have a third Z in addition to those on the pizza so that we can have the pleasure of…BZZT crossing CZAR?
ReplyDeleteBut I’m not really complaining…I’m just trying to learn what some of you love about themeless puzzles, and this one didn’t much of what I’ve been learning to appreciate. But it’s fine.
I gotta say I loved seeing CZAR, after a lifetime of doing crosswords and having to pretend that anyone has ever actually spelled it TSAR
DeleteJames
DeleteI disagree. It is a bit more complicated.
The answer’s spelling is appropriate here because the clue is asking for an American English term for a government official appointed to handle a special problem , like drug czar.
BUT
CZAR and tsar are in fact both used referring to the Russian ruler I have seen tsar frequently. And the trend in the past several decades is to use tsar. That spelling is a direct transliteration from the Cyrillic alphabet. Czar is said to come into English via Polish.
There is nothing wrong with using tsar as an answer for Russian ruler. Look it up.
Yes, a lot of us boomers have heard of BRADs. Also anyone who has watched the recent REACHER series (I think season 2) has heard of BRADs, since they come up prominently in the plot. They're cool and versatile. 14:24 for me, I think that's just on the easy side of medium for me on a Friday. Interesting to have both BRADs and CLASPS, and RIMS and HEMS, along with the fun cosmos pairing. The NE and SW corners took me the longest.... gong before BuZz before BZZT.... BRB to the rescue up there. And wanted some kind of hydro DYNAMICS, just wasn't thinking about ELECTRic current. Also, RANout and RANlow before RANDRY. Too bad the MISER is hanging around to spoil the XMAS celebration. I loved all the great clusters/pairs of answers in this puzzle. Rafa, I could tell you were TEETERing on the EDGE about this puzzle!!!! What would you like on your EXTRALARGEPIZZA. I definitely loved it!!! Thanks, Spencer! .
ReplyDeleteHi Rafa. Fun fact I learned today: the location of the largest Japanese population outside Japan. Thanks for that!
ReplyDeleteI believe there was a huge lush to attract that emigration - experienced agricultural workers. Today you can get some of the best Japanese food (and especially sushi!) in the world in Brazil. My sense is that they have not fully assimilated and tend to live in Japanese focused neighborhoods.
DeleteFinished without cheating, but only after accepting BZZT as a word (to accommodate NOTYETRATED). I guess it's the sound of a quiz show buzzer.
ReplyDeleteBing Crosby would have vehemently disagreed with the clue for CROON. He famously said, self-deprecatingly, "I'm a crooner," meaning "Frank Sinatra can really sing."
I put in CROON, but I don’t think it really applies to Sinatra. The inexactness of the clue made me go “meh.”
DeleteCrosby was paying Sinatra by calling himself a "crooner." You're right about the clue, which equated crooning and singing...to Sinatra's detriment.
DeleteSinatra would have agreed He said that Bing was the crooner and no one was better, so he (Frank) had to focus on swinging, instead.
DeleteLiked the puzzle, but had never encountered BZZT before — first had it as BuZz.
ReplyDeleteI liked this puzzle, though it was on th easy side (15 minutes, without any special rush). But is this proper grammar: "....help me manifest for my luck to turn..."? I fear 'manifest' has become a word-du-jour and is getting tortured for it.
ReplyDeleteSome good grid-spanners today. I thought WAYMO and WHO DAT made kind of a cute pair, the crossing propers (CONRAD and ODAY). not so much. I also thought the clue for LEGOS was a nice touch, as it acknowledges its ambiguity.
ReplyDeletePANOPTICON, EDGE CASES and SENSEI were all new to me, so definitely not a cakewalk. I did get ADIOS AMIGO, so at least I was a respectable 1 for 3 on the Spanish tests.
I’m a serious chess player and have never heard the term Royal Fork used. Has anyone else heard it?
ReplyDeleteI've heard of a fork.... so kinda inferred that when the two pieces forked are the K and Q you have a royal fork... right?
DeleteI've played and talked about and read about chess for over 50 years, and today is the first time I've ever seen this term. There seems to be evidence on the internet that some people use the term, but I have to believe it's vanishingly rare. (It also sounds a little silly to my ears.)
DeleteFork is a common term and a frequently used tactic. It occurs regularly. But the term Royal Fork is very specific, meaning only attacking the king and queen at the same time, and I have never heard it used.
DeleteMy kid used it on me the other day, and used it by name! Must be an idea growing in popularity in the online chess world.
DeleteI am a novice if that at chess and am very familiar with it! I'm now going to ask my friends, I've seen it in many contexts maybe it's a UK thing?
DeleteLow level player. I’ve heard it a few times on YouTube videos
DeleteI have heard and used Royal Fork, as well as having done and been done in by a Royal Fork. I was delighted to see it. I was also done in by the NE corner in this otherwise whooshingly easy puzzle. Brad was too quaint, bzzt bizarre, and the clue for CIA obscure.
DeleteRoyal fork is a commonly used term on the half-dozen chess web sites I follow on YouTube. (I still don't seem to be improving my chess )
DeleteI know extremely little about chess. But from the comments, it looks like it is a relatively new term, apparently popular online. So even if you are a long time player, but don’t play munch online , you might not know it.
DeleteAnother lesson in why just because you don’t know it. doesn’t mean it’s wrong!
Hey All !
ReplyDeleteDang, Rafa, I feel your pain about puz rejections. Shoot, at least you have some published. I have none, with an amount sent in that I don't want to talk about.
Liked the puz, as far as Themelesses go. BZZT is neat, had it as BuZz at first.
Not an expert chess player here, but have played a few games, and read a few columns about end games, but haven't heard the ROYAL FORK descriptor. Of course, with my wonderful memory, maybe I have and just plum forgot.
SONARS seems a forced POC. LEGOS clue is funny!
OK, SO that's about it.
Hope y'all have a great Friday!
Two F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Have you submitted your puzzles only to the NYT? or have you already been published elsewhere?
Delete@Melle
DeleteOnly the Times. I really wanted to get one in here before trying other places.
Roo
Losdos and Sansei was a rough cross.
ReplyDeleteEntão Rafa, você é brasileiro? Ou somente viviu no Brasil?
ReplyDeleteSometimes what makes an answer special is that it simply looks gorgeous in the grid. For me, there were four today:
ReplyDelete• ELECTRODYNAMICS sweeping across the box. Mwah! It was also given the terrific clue [Current affairs?] which not only plays on a common phrase, but its question mark made me wonder if “current” or “affairs” was being played on, making it a brain-pleaser.
• PANOPTICON – Never heard of it, but that doesn’t diminish its beauty, and it’s fun to say.
• EXTRA LARGE PIZZA extra largely spanning the grid.
• ROYAL FORK – Never heard of this either, but I don’t care. It looks terrific. It also had me picturing grand-looking eating utensils that royals might use.
Cleverness elevates a grid, indeed, and your puzzle had much of it, Spencer, but beauty can make it sing, and sing your puzzle did today. Thank you for this!
To the point on ELECTRODYNAMICS, I correctly assumed that it was “current” being played on, and I still required quite a lot of crosses before it came together since I was assuming ocean/river currents for far too long, looking for something tidal or what have you.
DeleteI think they gave Prince Andrew the ROYALFORK you.
ReplyDeleteYou couldn't CROON without ROO.
To be polite, if you have more than one Mayan you should use MAYI.
I think it behooves the constructor to explain who Rody Namics is and what he's running for before just posting a campaign sign in the middle of the puzzle.
Today's puzzle gives us ODAY without a Star Wars reference.
I about got laughed off the construction site when I showed up in a HARDCAP.
SARI, Rafa, but I quite liked this puzzle despite its lack of whooshing opportunities (whoo ops to those of you into EDGECASES and HARDCAPS). Thanks, Spencer Leach.
I had no idea we're not to say LEGOS. I'm so sorry, LEGO Group.
ReplyDeleteSee page 7 ("Policing Our Rights"): https://www.lego.com/cdn/cs/legal/assets/blt1a4c9a959ce8e1cb/LEGO_Fairplay_Nov2018.pdf
It's an adjective only.
That’s very strange. I can’t think of any reason why they wouldn’t be happy for their name to become the standard word for the whole category, like Kleenex and Xerox (and Coke in the south).
DeleteCompanies are jealous of their brand because, if it becomes the generic, they can lose trademark protection and their reputation may be damaged when consumers associate the brand with lesser competitors.
DeleteThat's been a corporate sore spot for a long time. "Aspirin" started its life as a brand name; so did "dumpster" (you'll still often see that one capitalized). Want to get a "Realtor" mad at you? Use that term as a synonym for "real estate agent." I remember hearing jingles for "Sanka Brand" coffee; they were trying to head off the risk of folks simply equating "Sanka" with "Decaf." It can realy get dicey with things like the names of medicines. You tell me: Which of the folloiwing is technically a proper noun (i.e., should be capitalized): Propofol? Benzedrine? Methedrine? Morphine? Methadone? The list goes on . . .
Delete@Dr Random; Here's one: if they don't protect their trademark and intellectual property, anybody can manufacture similar bricks and market them as LEGO bricks. Not a good enough reason for you?
Delete@Dr Random: Companies can lose the trademark on a product if the name of the product becomes a generic term for that type of product
DeleteCommercial law is one thing and the English language is another. I like another commenter thought LEGOS was funny. The company is trying to protect its commercial rights when it insists legos is wrong. But that is their problem not mine. There is absolutely nothing wrong with legos (unless it is used for commercial purposes outside the company’s control.of course).
DeleteLiked this one a lot. I prefer long interesting words to multi-word phrases, which so often are misclued or sound contrived.
ReplyDeleteHow on earth is HOUSE OF PAIN 'inferable'?
By a whole lot of crosses. I think I had -OUSEO—AIN and inferred the rest. The -OUSEO- couldn’t be much else, and then the final word was all I really had to guess. PAIN seemed a lot more likely than BAIN or MAIN or LAIN.
DeleteJump Around. HOP. HOUSE OF PAIN.
DeleteJump Around by House of Pain is familiar to fans of the University of Wisconsin Badger football team.
DeleteThanks Les I never saw the hop!
DeleteA nicely challenging Friday. A good portion of the time came from how difficult it was for me to fill that NE corner. The word PLATE blinded me to PIZZA for a long time. I was too fooled into thinking of restaurants in general to be that specific. It wasn't a write over just staring at blank spaces for a long time. Luckily I was pretty sure of BRB and once those PIZZA Zs went in the other two followed quickly.
ReplyDeleteRORY, ODAY and HOUSEOFPAIN were gimmies my woes were NOR, EDGECASES, CONRAD, ROYALFORK and both CIA and BRAD due to their clues. I've never seen this definition of BRAD before and can't even picture what it is.
My write overs were TETTERED/TEETERED(dyslexia), PRISON/OPTICON(try rereading the clue more often), CLONED/CLONAL and ELECTRODYNAMISM/ICS.
I was slow on LOSDOS as I was trying to think of a single word in Spanish and unsurprisingly I couldn't find one.
SANSEI is one of those pieces of crosswordese I used to be more common in the past.
NOTE TO COMMENTARIAT
ReplyDeleteYesterday I learned the very sad news that a long-time member of our crossword community has passed away. @GILL (Jill McMahon) lost her battle with throat cancer earlier this month. She had been absent from the blog for some time due to her illness, but she had continued to keep tabs on all of us. She had told me in an email earlier this year that she was still working the puzzles and reading the blog when she was able.
Jill's trademark sense of humor and off-the-wall comments were usually spot-on and always entertaining. Although I never met her, she struck me as a woman of strong character and charisma who genuinely cared about others. She was devoted to her husband, Paul, and her children and grandchildren who survive. Godspeed Jill. You will be missed.
A beautiful tribute, @Whatsername. Jill would have loved it.
DeleteI, too, knew she had been batting throat cancer since at least last October. Her last email to me was brave and cheerful and determined -- not an ounce of either pessimism or self-pity. She was going to beat this thing -- no doubt about it. But then when she failed to reappear on the blog and her off-blog communications with me also went dark, I feared the worst.
I never met her -- although we talked about getting together in NYC all the time. We discussed where we would go for dinner and what we would order. We had similar tastes in food. And we were both pretty good at bending the elbow as they like to say in the drinking biz. We would have had great fun.
I considered her a cherished friend and I will miss her terribly.
Sad news indeed Thanks for posting. Adios amiga mia.
DeleteThank you for letting us know. Jill’s posts were so lively and full of wit. We exchanged emails a few years ago about her art. She was dabbling in watercolor during COVID and said she usually preferred pen and ink. I believe this is her website: https://1-jill-mcmahon.pixels.com/#sectionDivAbout
DeleteJill McMahon
@Whatsername 8:21 AM
DeleteOmigosh ... I am SO SAD to hear about this. She was a towering figure here and one of my favorite people ever. So funny and smart. Obviously I never met her, but she was as real in my mind as my next door neighbor. Her Monday silly stories will always be my favorite example of how you can take ideas from a puzzle and put them to use for something artistic and fun. And nobody was a better grammar-schmammar than her. Safe voyages @Gill I.
Nice tribute, @Whatshername
DeleteThank you for posting this, sad as it is to hear...
DeleteVery sad - her stories about the halcyon days of air travel and growing up in Cuba were fantastic. I loved her sharp criticisms whenever Che appeared in a grid and her Monday puzzle mashups. Rest easy @Gill.
DeleteOh, no. Very sad news indeed. Thank you for posting, Whatsername.
DeleteMonday's haven't been the same without Gill I's funny stories made from the crossword entries. So sad to hear she's gone. Thanks for letting us know, @Whatsername.
DeleteThank you for the update, Whatsername. Jill lived an amazing life and had she written an autobiography, it would have been a hoot and a half. Among other things, she grew up in Cuba in the early Castro/Che Guevara years, was in The Valley of Gwangi as an extra, worked as a nightclub cage dancer, and acted with (and absolutely adored) Vincent Price.
DeleteIf you google the promo poster for the Italian version of House of 1000 Dolls (https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/68590/house-of-1000-dolls/), that's her in the bottom right in the green dress.
In a world where it often seems everything is taken too seriously, she was a high-grade injection of vivacity and levity.
Very sorry to hear this news. It's good to read the wonderful tributes. Her artwork is gorgeous, thanks for the link A. Thank you also for that image of her in the poster, kitshef. I'm guessing she loved the movie's description as "not-totally-awful." If anyone is aware of a cause or charity she favored, please let us know.
Delete@kitshef: Thank you so much for that link! I did Google it and yep, that’s her. I’m so glad I got to see that. She was also in the movie 100 Rifles with Raquel Welch. At one time she posted a short video of her scene and I watched it. She was riding a horse but you could not see her face well enough to recognize her. You are so right too. Her life - and she - always sounded like a hoot and a half.
Delete@A: Thank you for that website. I had no idea she was so talented.
DeleteThanks for the post - She has been missed.
DeleteOh, my. One of the absolute bright spots on this blog. Loved reading her Monday stories! Grateful to have her here for as long as we did. Condolences to her family.
DeleteWe'll miss you @Gill!
Roo
Thank you for this update. Very sad to hear. It's touching that she has touched so many here.
DeleteGary said it perfectly. She was a good neighbor. and funny!
DeleteI remember she loved cooking. Also she was a flight attendant for many years. And the stories about adjusting as a child to a new world.
Son Volt & Kitshef mentioned what particularly struck home. with me Her principled comments about Che. She spoke from the heart.
Very sad news indeed.
I'm very sorry to hear this. Thank you for letting us know.
DeleteI can't recall seeing the 100 Rifles clip, but here is her description of working on that film:
Delete"... I got offered a little gig on a movie called "100 Rifles." Raquel Welch was the femme fatale and she couldn't ride horses very well. In those days most body doubles were men but they fingered me. Now I resemble Raquel like Howdy Doody does to Omar Sharif. In other words....gallop your horse though the desert, hope your long wig doesn't fly off and stuff your bra with lots of tissue. Don't look at the camera because everyone will know the gig is up and don't fall off your horse. I did it once. It was worth having some Tinto with Raquel (who is just about the most gorgeous person on this planet)."
Oh Jill!! I am terribly sad to read this. She was a lovely human being and a dear friend here and on Facebook. She was such a glamour girl and a devoted grandmother. I’ll miss her fascinating tales and lovely photos. Thank you for letting me know.
DeleteIt was easy, and yet I was slow.
ReplyDeleteA commenter named Barry has already asked whether anyone has heard the term ROYAL FORK. Not me. Just FORK, no matter which two pieces are being forked, is all I've ever heard in over 50 years of playing and observing and listening to others discuss chess. There is some evidence of its use in internet-land, but it cannot be common, it just can't. (Go ahead, tell me I'm wrong, I could give a ROYAL FORK.)
Aside from that, though, I liked the puzzle. I thought MIXOLOGIST next to ASTRONOMER was cute in the way they were clued. PANOPTICON is also cool. Never expected to see ELECTRODYNAMICS in a grid, but I'm glad I did. Maybe one day we'll see quantum ELECTRODYNAMICS, which would be even cooler, although that's 22 letters long.
Nice job, Spencer Leach.
You’re woefully ignorant about the game for someone whos’s played talked about and heard others talk about chess for half a century.
DeleteThe immensely popular Netflix series Queen’s Gambit had an entire elpisode hinge on a royal fotk.
So give a fork or not, the term is used by thise who know the game.
Hi, I’m Barry. I’ve played and studied chess nearly every day for the past fifty years, and never heard of royal fork until this morning. But someone mentioned it may be something new being used by the online community, and I know nothing about that world. So maybe that explains it.
Delete.
Barry, I do follow the online chess world to some degree (I watch chess videos essentially every day), and I've not heard it used there either. I can't imagine a grandmaster ever using it. Something about it smacks me as slightly amateurish.
DeleteSure, sure, anonymous. I doubt you know much about the game, but locating a phrase in a movie script is not exactly overwhelming evidence that the phrase is very commonly used in the actual world of practitioners. Your attempt to prove me "woefully ignorant" of the game is unconvincing. Troll harder next time.
DeleteHow my grandson Isaac might describe a scary lion: RORY
ReplyDeleteSkin care product line popular among matadors: OLAY
Anagrammer: MIXOLOGIST
What a procrastinator does before hawing: HEMS
Where to toss your used two-pronged fasteners: BRAD pit
All these goddamn ads are killing me!! PROD
How Mrs. Aiken asks her hubby for more time: CONRAD, add an hour.
Britishers' bathroom remodels: LOOS change.
Toast to the reproduction of a biological organism in a lab: CLONAL klink
@Liveprof, as old as you dated yourself with the (cringy) homophone of Colonel Klink, you exceeded that with the reference to (post WW-II, but pre Hogan's Heroes) Konrad Adenauer.
DeleteDating myself, too; but good stuff!!
'Fraid so, @DAVinHOP. Thanks! "Dating myself" also describes my social life until my wife blundered into marrying me.
DeleteBRAD was one of the first words I ever learned doing crossword puzzles and playing BOGGLE in the early 80s. It was the quintessential example of a word no one knows or uses but is common in puzzles and you need to collect these words if you want to be a Boggle Champ.
ReplyDeleteI don't remember the exact way I learned it but seeing it gave me a warm fuzzy feeling from my college days.
People who do finish work in carpentry use brad all the time.
DeleteNatick at LOSDOS crossing SANSEI!!!!!
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in the army around 1960–61, we had to pick up a stray leaf or a cigarette butt or a tiny piece of paper when we could have rested after working so hard all day. That was Mickey Mouse sh….trivia.Good puzzle.🎈🎈🎊🎊
ReplyDeleteA bit too techie and technical for my liking, and so we found it harder than most here. EDGE CASES? PANOPTICON? If you say so.
ReplyDeleteEntered (and loved) WHO DAT without any crosses, but we must have erased parts of it three times before settling on it. And Seesawed before TEETERED (lots of common letters) cost us some time.
Heard of a FORK (chess-speak for attacking two pieces); the ROYAL part was inferable.
But not crazy about SONARS (POC) or CLONAL (had Cloned). The clue Mickey Mouse being capitalized threw us off a bit. Google verifies it as a synonym for TRIVIAL, but with "often lower case".
Always a non-fan of "___" clues; 57A OK SO the worst here. Personal preference, or not.
If you say so?!!!!
DeleteNo, both terms are common enough. Your attempt t to dismiss them with a gllib jibe is infuriating. Ignorance masquerading as reason.
Anon 10:58, I did qualify with "for my liking" though I omitted my typical conclusion "that's why they make chocolate and vanilla".
DeleteDid I dismiss them? Was I glib? Neither was my intention. Was I ignorant? Um, yeah, that was my point (thought I did finish the puzzle unassisted). That it was intending to be masquerading as reason was your opinion.
But it infuriated you? Seriously??
I happen to consider every participant here an unknown friend, and today even offered appreciation to someone who passed on news of a another's passing; a person whom I never knew.
I'll accept your criticism and may think twice in the future re revealing my lack of knowledge about words I didn't recognize. But you should please re-read what I wrote and try to keep in mind that no one here is intending, whether through comedic attempts or lack or erudition, to be an ignoramus.
Anonymous 9:05AM. Wow.
DeletePersonally, I knew panopticon (from my college major , American history ) and I found edge case fairly easy to get. . However, your comment was ridiculously over the top. At a troll level. And cf course anonymous. Stuff like this can ruin blogs.
I don't understand the complaint that puzzles with lots of z's (for example) are too Scrabble-like. There is only one z in the letter set.
ReplyDeleteWe used to say Mickey Mouse out here, but it meant something amateurish, as in "it was a Mickey Mouse operation," not necessarily TRIVIAL.
ReplyDeleteI'm watching a lot of World Cup. I never had before. By the time it's over, I hope to understand the offsides violation.
Everybody used it that way.
DeleteIt took me a long time to see "Mickey Mouse" for precisely this reason. It was once quite commonly used to mean "unprofessional". I've never heard it used to mean "trivial".
DeleteWe used "mickey mouse" a lot back when I was in the Navy. It was usually followed by "bull sh*t" and referred to military formalities and practices that had no useful functions. They were just a pain in the ASS.
DeleteA la Vietnam/Viet Nam, Saigon is English for Sài Gòn.
ReplyDeleteI liked this one; slightly below my average Friday time, but it still felt challenging. I thought many of the clues were clever (even the pizza one that got a bad review).
I only come here when the puzzle does something atrocious, and I need a Rex rant to condemn the atrocity. So, double my disappointment today, because the king is not here to call out the outrageous BZZT. I mean, come on. No, no, no, no, no. Yes, the puzzle was a cinch and the only challenge was realizing that the obviously accurate BUZZ had been replaced by utter nonsense, but that doesn’t give license to just string together any four letters and pretend it’s a thing. It’s not a thing. And if anyone wants to try to defend it and claim it’s a thing, well, you can just BUZZ off.
ReplyDeleteI don't share your outrage. It's onomatopoeic (onomatopoetic if you prefer). So is "buzz" actually, but this is even more specific, as the t on the end signals a pointed stop to the noise. So you wouldn't use it to refer to a steady humming, as in the buzzing of bees. In any case, it's not just any random four letters strung together, but something pronounceable and distinctive.
DeleteThousand percent same. Almost as disappointed by the lack of outrage here as I was to find that very bad word in my Friday puzzle.
DeleteI'm not sure what exactly I thought I read in the 55A clue but I was left with the impression that the inventor of LEGOS originally didn't recommend that anyone play with them. I had to go back, post-solve, and re-read the clue. Oh, that old piece of TRIVIA, the controversy about the plural.
ReplyDeleteI'm a bit muzzy this morning - I read the 1D clue and had zombies come to mind rather than mutants and couldn't come up with the word for a herd of zombies. When I finally filled in MISER, I saw my error.
Due to said muzziness, this took a tad longer than I think it should have, but over all, a pleasant Friday puzzle. Thanks, Spencer Leach!
Good work subbing for Rex, Rafa. Perhaps "Mickey Mouse" demands a hyphen when used as an adjective. It's an Americanism that not only can mean "trivial," but also "jerry-rigged," "poorly executed," or "done in a shoddy or inferior manner." And yes, brad is a thing, as anyone who has wielded a hammer to fasten together things too big for a hammer knows.
ReplyDeleteit’s jerry built, and jury rigged.
DeleteBueno, la cosa es así...
ReplyDeleteI was positive we'd be -LY EASY-ing it today, but only one at the moment I'm writing. It's an uninspiring puzzle to me, but what themeless isn't?
The LOSDOS/SANSEI cross and the MIA/PANOPTICS cross were dicey guesses, but the rest of the puzzle flowed in quickly.
I like having two top bananas and two cosmos clues.
We used to have Royal Fork restaurants in Denver. I think they were buffets. I was a kid and there was castle decorations, so I am sure I loved it.
BRADs are used to hold screenplays together.
❤️ WHO DAT. BZZT. Copy cats.
😫 CLONAL. UEYS.
People: 5
Places: 1
Products: 8
Partials: 7
Foreignisms: 3
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 24 of 70 (%)
Funny Factor: 2 😕
Tee-Hee: LOOS {this "British" joke has long outworn its welcome}.
Uniclues:
1 "Dude, you gotta stop spending money like this, you're not going to be rich forever," the accountant said ominously.
2 Bra fasteners for Lothario.
3 What comets do for entertainment.
4 Wouldn't shut up.
1 MISER RODE CZAR
2 TRIVIAL CLASPS
3 ASTRONOMER UEYS
4 TEETERED CHIN
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Boats in Davy Jones' locker. ARMADAS DEEP.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
34%
Delete@egsforbreakfast 2:19 PM
DeleteThank you. Apparently being hit in the head with an anvil or drinking whiskey at 5 am has consequences.
Easy-medium here. Messed up the top with the BZZZ thing (hello everyone) and found out that there is such a thing as an EXTRALARGEPIZZA. Where have you been all my life? We don't have any WAYMO's around here either. Life in the sticks.
ReplyDeleteMy case of knowing too much had me writing in "ambos " for "both in Spanish" but it was a letter short. Easy fix. At least I got ADIOSAMIGO to make up for it.
TIL EDGECASES. HARDCAP, HOUSEOFPAIN, and the wonderful PANOPTICON. Knew SANSEI from somewhere. Tried MUM before MIA, another easy fix. I'm with the BRAD is a small nail crew and I have trouble saying that a FRET is a "bar". Never heard a guitar player say anything close to that.
I liked your Friday just fine, SL. Scrabble Letters abounded, and thanks for all the fun.
I always used brads when I worked as an attorney. I would two hole punch the top of documents and fasten them with a brad onto a two hole punched backing. When I closed a file I would reuse the brads on new files.
ReplyDeleteReuse brads?!!!! Oof. Do you reuse the aluminum foil from your brown bag luvch?
DeleteJB. I know exactly what you're talking about, but I've never used the term "brads" for those little bendable paper clasps. Of course, I do little or no paperwork. In fact, I know I have used these things, or at least removed them from somebody else's careful work, but I have never known what they were called. So, good. Next time someone asks me to use a brad on that document, I won't reach for my nail gun.
DeleteI always thought the idiom Mickey Mouse, meaning something trivial or second-rate, came from the cheap Mickey Mouse watches sold during the Great Depression. Perhaps it's just something I picked up from my parents, who were children during that time.
ReplyDeleteMust be two defenders between the attacking player and the goal at the time the ball is passed forward
ReplyDeleteExactly. One defender is virtually always the goalkeeper. Today's technology allows offsides to be called if a toe is ahead of the second defender, and there goes the goal you thought your team scored.
DeleteThank you for this!
DeleteMedium verging on challenging for me - there was plenty I didn't know, and then I also made a few mistakes. I enjoyed figuring it all out.
ReplyDeleteDo-overs: tsAR, PastA before PIZZA, CLONed. No idea: EDGE CASE, HOUSE OF PAIN, LOS DOS, ROYAL FORK, SANSEI, HARD CAP. Help from incomprehensible grad school course on post-modernism: PANOPTICON.
Carola. I started reading Foucault between my undergrad and grad school years (Yes art students read philosophy; postmodernism was the driving force of the era.) and I've got to say that the whole PANOPTICON thing intrigued me and scared the crap out of me. Constant surveillance? From unknown spies? It's not just Bentham's building, it's a societal concept. One which we are slowly bending to.
DeleteWhen I had to read Foucault in college, I wondered what good it would ever do me. Today I got my answer: being able to fill PANOPTICON into a crossword with no crosses.
ReplyDeleteI had BUZZ and BZZZ before BZZT. But I'm pretty sure films are not RAZED. as yet. I've also never seen BZZT before and hope never to.see it again.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous 11:59 AM
Delete???? Clue for RAZE. is level.
WAY MO no-know-infested puzsquares at our house than average.
ReplyDeleteThe precious nanoseconds suffered suitably.
Always fun to have a challenge with extra jeez occasionally, tho.
staff weeject pick: MEW. For its sorta sneaky ?-marker clue.
So sorry and sad to hear about @Gill darlin -- I fondly remember her from the Comment Gallery days of olde.
some fave stuff: The cosmos pair of MIXOLOGIST & ASTRONOMER. HOUSEOFPAIN & AGONY & ROYALFORK(?) mini-theme. ADIOSAMIGO. CLONAL and its clue. Had CLONED. And the number of other times my solvequest guesses got a BZZT.
Thanx for all them edgy cases, Mr. Leach dude. Not very U-ey, tho.
And thanx for fillin in the blogs, Rafa. Sorry about all yer puz rejections -- M&A can relate, after a few recent tries. But, hey -- even Patrick Berry ain't gotten back to here in ages.
Masked & Anonymo1U [s]
p.s.
Runt puzzle:
**gruntz**
M&A
Jill told us so much about herself. Her early life in Cuba, her work in movies, living in Sacramento. She was a friend. So sad that she is gone.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was very easy for a Friday Had no trouble finishing it in ink, I too was impressed by the parallel answers and clues.The Panopticon as I recall was the invention of old Jeremy Bentham,
ReplyDeleteI hever heard the term ROYAL FORK til today but was an avid chess player in high school, and saw more than one instance of it, The highlight of my chess career was getting to play old Sammy Reshevsky in simultaneous chess with I think 15 rivals, I do think one of us managed a draw, but the rest of us were easily beaten,
Old Jeremy Bentham was a vile example of the Enlightnent. The father of iutilitarianism he was a eugenisist before the term was coined.
DeleteFor a less grotesque regerence to panopticon, watch the soectacular A Matter of Life and Death, as a good a film as Pressburger Powell pairing ever made.
Well, I really liked this one. Probably because of all the technical terms I knew. I was really glad 3 down was not ASTROLOGER. And from the clues, I actually wanted to put CARL SAGAN in either 2 or 3 down but too short.
ReplyDeleteWorking in web site programming, EDGE CASES (or maybe more commonly, "corner cases"?) are a common problem. You spend 65% of your time trying to solve issues that occur in maybe 0.1% of your customers' web sites. One time, we ended up searching through the database of all 250 of our clients, and finding 2 of them had a problem, the easiest thing to do was manually change their data.
Hands up for never heard of ROYAL FORK. I got a kick out of LOS DOS because I guess that is literally "the two" which is just like the French "tous les deux" which is "all the two".
Only a couple of memorable typeovers; SEESAWED before TEETERED caused some delay because so many correct letters. And CLONED before CLONAL because... seriously, CLONAL?
Okanaganer
DeleteI also enjoyed learning about LOSDOS. as I knew tous les deux. Happy that even pabloinnh had to think for a bit.
I definitely remember "Mickey Mouse" as a synonym for being trivial or lacking in substance, but this was years ago when the Mickey Mouse Club TV show was still a familiar bauble of kiddie-culture. In the jazz world, to call a musician or a band "Mickey Mouse" was to accuse him/her/them of purveying music of little artistic merit, often spiced up with cheap showmanshiip, to pander to the "cheap seats." Elitist. perhaps, and not always based in good-faith artistic discernment, but definitely a pretty common accusation in those days.
ReplyDeleteI've never seen a POC that couldn't be justified. I was a SONAR tech in the Navy. "Destroyers and cruisers all have SONARS." What I always notice is that the POC boosts the letter count and grid filling capacity of a word or phrase. Here it's a two for one POC where the S in SONARS also boosts LOO. See also EDGE CASE/AYE and YEN/CLASP.
ReplyDeleteI've forgotten most of what little Japanese I learned while living there back in the '80s but I can still count to five; ichi, ni, san, shi, go. So SANSEI went straight in.
What a jolt of very sad news about the passing of @Gill. She was a wonderful, lively and witty voice here among the commentariat. ADIOS AMIGA.
@Anoa Bob, in Japanese after "go" (five), the next one is "roku". Supposedly the streaming TV service Roku got that name because it was the founder's sixth attempt at starting a business. (I hope that's true cuz I like it.)
DeleteA brad is a small nail, not a two prong fastener
ReplyDeleteGreat write up, and comments, thank you! For me the NE was the hardest and I had to look up CIA and BRAD. I had seesawed instead of TEETERED forever and also plate instead of PIZZA.
ReplyDeletePANOPTICON was a bit grim, especially in this times. I expected a comment from Rex on that.
Lovely workout puzzle!! Enjoyed it
Loved how this started in the NW, playful quality right away with the twin cosmo clues and long adjacent answers. Ran pretty easy but fun. Got caught up with CLONES, which gave me SAGO (a real toy line), and confused things around ELECTRODYN-uh E something? Of course I was overthinking and LEGOS had to be and everything fell into place. A few names but get-able. Spanish likewise. Fun and fast, probably more of a meaty Wednesday solve in difficulty.
ReplyDeleteI often comment here about how pretty some words look in a particular grid. And today, holy cow, I have to echo @Lewis and say there was some Gorgeous fill today including some top notch spanners. The every day language of EXTRALARGEPIZZA may have been my favorite. That took me a while as I read the clue as referring to the size of the restaurant itself and *not* something a restaurant serves, even with the cute "often topped" cluing. But it was a lot of fun to suss that out.
ReplyDeleteEvery other long one put me in my happy place. PANOPTICON was new to me but the crosses made it very doable. Like Rafa, I also got a big kick out of double Cosmos cluing, also top notch fill.
At first, I looked at BZZT a bit sideways. Like many (probably) I had BUZZ until the crosses wouldn't let that happen. After thinking about it, that "T" at the end makes sense. Remembering all the game shows I watched, that sound did indeed have a finality to it that can best be described as "BZZT". So I ended up really liking that entry.
Ran a tad easy for a Friday but that's never a complaint.
Spencer, this was loaded with great stuff! Thank you!
I got a Tuesday-level time, but then again I knew EDGE CASES and ROYAL FORK, and I got HOUSE OF PAIN thanks to a YouTube video of Erik Agard explaining cryptic clues, in which he comes up with the clue [House of Pain debuts Jump Around (3)].
ReplyDeleteSeemed fairly easy to me and I'm not a whiz at late-week puzzles - got HOUSEOFPAIN right away - though I've not heard that track in some time - the CD is somewhere on a shelf in the den
ReplyDeleteLiked the. At first I thought it was going to be hard then it ended up easy.
ReplyDeleteKnew panopticon from reading about the early 19th century Pennsylvania prison (Eastern State Penitentiary). which was built on the hub and spoke design Nasty results so stuck in my mind.
Knew niSEI so put SEI in ang figured SAN which means 3 in Japanese.
Made right guesses. Just put the B in and eventually got BZZT. Lucky today.
Liked the review. Interesting about Brazil having such a large population stemming from Japan.
BZZT is WRONG. Just saying.
ReplyDeleteI never heard of panopticon so i had panoprison and who dat became who dar…so yeah, dynamiss didnt work…I liked the puzzle overall but hate BZZT had Beep for a while.
ReplyDeleteAnother film showing a panopticon is "Call Northside 777" with Jimmy Stewart, excellent film based on actual story; an unusal subject matter.
ReplyDelete