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So-called "Champagne of Spain" / FRI 6-5-26 / Seaweed-based gels / What might give a hand in a casino? / Small marsupial whose name is spelled using only the letters of TROP / ___ Neal, co-star of TV's "The Hughleys" / Actor Gilliam of "The Wire" / Pioneering civil rights activist ___ Arnold Hedgeman / Opposite of "stay silent"
Friday, June 5, 2026
Constructor: Kelly Morenus
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging
THEME: none
Word of the Day: POTOROO (37D: Small marsupial whose name is spelled using only the letters of TROP) —
Potoroo is a common name for species of Potorous, a genus of smaller marsupials. They are allied to the Macropodiformes, the suborder of kangaroo, wallaby, and other rat-kangaroo genera and is the only genus in the tribe Potoroini. All three extant species are threatened by ecological changes since the colonisation of Australia, especially the long-footed potoroo Potorous longipes (endangered) and P. gilbertii (critically endangered). The broad-faced potoroo P. platyops disappeared after its first description in the 19th century. The main threats are predation by introduced species (especially foxes) and habitat loss.Potoroos were formerly very common in Australia, and early settlers reported them as being significant pests to their crops. (wikipedia)
• • •
The other marquee Down is PARASAILING, which is fine, but not terribly interesting, and the rest of the puzzle is fairly blah. Fridays should not be blah. On top of the blahness, there was the barrage of names. I laughed out loud when I hit my third ???? name. Some guy who won a Chemistry Nobel 45 years ago? I guess this is the price we pay for canceling ROALD Dahl. Crossword needs better ROALDs! We have a ROALD emergency! Calling all ROALDs! Well, not all ROALDs. Not this ROALD. Yeesh. Also, somebody who acted on The Hughleys? (28D: ___ Neal, co-star of TV's "The Hughleys"). A pioneering civil rights person? (46D: Pioneering civil rights activist ___ Arnold Hedgeman). It's not that these people are totally uncrossworthy, it's just ... name name name. Or more like "unfamous name unfamous name unfamous name." Oh, dang, I forgot about SETH, another TV actor (13D: Actor Gilliam of "The Wire"). Throw him in there too. Just not my day for names. At all. But I think it was the POTOROO that really made me ... "mad" isn't the right word, but—that is not an animal I've ever heard of. And that clue! (37D: Small marsupial whose name is spelled using only the letters of TROP) ... you know your animal is obscure when the puzzle has to resort to telling you "it has these letters in it!" Also, what is "TROP"? Why "TROP" and not, say, "PORT"? PORT has the virtue of being a word. An English word, I should say. "TROP" is a French word (meaning "too" as in "excessively"). I think it's also the nickname of a ballfield where the Marlins ... played? Play? The TROP! Gah, no. Not the Marlins. Close, but no. The Tampa Bay Rays play there, not the Miami Marlins. Shows you how much I care about Florida baseball. I still don't think of those Florida teams as real because I didn't grow up with them. Also, they both used to. have different names (The Tampa Bay Devil Rays, the Florida Marlins). Anyway, POTOROO! It's a thing, apparently! Sounds like an Australian music festival, but nope. Tiny marsupial. Who knew (besides all the Australians)?
I got the top third of this puzzle easy but then oof. Right around ROALD, things got rocky. Rocky ROALD! Also, the clue on PANTRIES was tough (26A: Grocery stores?). And I thought 27D: I I I (IOTAS) was THREE. And then ELISE is there in the east gumming things up. Managed to raggedly hack my way down to the bottom, only to encounter POTOROO (again I say, "!?"), and that's where I made my biggest mistake. Put in DEMS instead of LEFT at 41D: Blue side, with "the". Blue does not apply to the LEFT. The LEFT and the DEMS are Not The Same. Just ask the LEFT. Blue is associated with the DEMS. Red, Republicans, Blue, DEMS. That is how those colors work in this country. So ... DEMS left me wondering how 41A: Not so rich, so to speak could be DIRE (answer: it couldn't be, the answer is LITE). Didn't know ANNA. Had END for AIM (46A: Destination). Was not at all confident that HOGANS were structures of the SW, but thank god that guess was correct, otherwise I might still be solving this thing. Because of all this, I had trouble seeing the long Acrosses down below. Tried to get the front ends of them, and while MRIS and AUDI were easy enough, that ugly fill-in-the-blank clue on IN ON, that got me (44D: __ a secret). I had "IT'S A" and later tried "I GOT." The clue isn't a quotation, so both those guesses were bound to be wrong, but I couldn't really see that. This made SING hard to get (53A: Opposite of "stay silent"). All of this fussing with mediocre fill and crummy clues and for what? A few good long answers. This just wasn't for me at all.
Bullets:
- 14A: "Can anyone explain this?!" ("MAKE IT MAKE SENSE!") — the clue is a question and the answer isn't, and the clue makes it sound like you're addressing a crowd, while the answer feels like the kind of thing you'd say to a specific person. But I guess the idea was to make this clue (14A: "Can anyone explain this?!") rhyme with the next clue (17A: "Let me try to explain ..."). It's a nice idea. But I still don't think this clue is right.
- 20A: Coat on a tip? (POLISH) — the coat on the "tip" of your finger, i.e. your nail. Nail POLISH.
- 30A: Seaweed-based gels (AGARS) — I'm enduring AGARS and IOTAS and EKES and EMTS and OROs rather than getting four to six more entertaining longer answers. I don't get it.
- 32A: So-called "Champagne of Spain" (CAVA) — pfft. Nope. I maybe have heard of this, but completely forgot it. I know KAVA (Polynesian plant used to make a psychoactive beverage). But CAVA, not so much. "Champagne of Spain" sounds like "Champagne of Beers," i.e. a highly dubious marketing slogan:
- 40A: Something you can see right through (IRIS) — another rough clue. You see through your IRIS. You don't see "right" through it. No one would say that. But I guess that's the point. Still, I didn't need more aggravation from the slew of short stuff today. Not helping.
- 45A: New wave band with the 1979 album "Duty Now for the Future" (DEVO) — got this easily, but I really thought the 1979 album was Freedom of Choice. Maybe that was 1980 ... yup, May 1980. I got it as a present at my 11th birthday party, at Aldo's Pizza. I got Abba: The Album. I remember very clearly disdaining the Abba (not cool by young boy standards in 1980) and my mom giving me a very stern talking-to, right then and there, about gratitude. Years later I would come to think Abba was awesome. And that is my DEVO story. DEVO: cool then, cool now ... but the album in this clue is slightly obscure. It peaked at #73 and provided only one recognizable single: their semi-cover (?) of "Secret Agent [not 'Asian'] Man":
- 49A: Provide proactive help, in a way (RUN INTERFERENCE) — that clue did little to get me to the answer. It's accurate enough, I guess, but it doesn't quite get at the whole idea of "handling a bunch of secondary problems or distractions for someone so that person can focus on the primary task," which is how I think of the phrase RUN INTERFERENCE.
- 23D: 500 competitor (RACER) — no "Indy" or "Daytona" for you, solver. Just ... 500! Is that normal racing slang? Car racing, like casino shoes, and casinos in general—not my thing.
- 31D: People not to argue with, they say (FOOLS) — this was also weirdly hard. Do "they" really say this? I mean, it seems like good advice, but this is not a saying about FOOLS that I know. A fool and his money are soon parted, I know that one. Fool me once, shame on me, etc. That's another "fool" saying. You certainly shouldn't argue with people on the internet, ever (ever), but "don't argue with fools" does not have the zippy, memorable quality I associate with "sayings."
That's all for today. See you next time, hopefully with functioning internet (still using the hotspot on my phone until the new router arrives, later today)
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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128 comments:
Easy-Medium. Liked the four grid-spanners.; all are lively and in-the-language. OTOH, too many answers seemingly came out of a Google search for "Famous people named _______."
* * _ _ _
Overwrites:
My 10A lecture was in a hAll before it was from a DAIS.
AT 44D, I briefly thought I gOt a secret before IN ON a secret.
WOEs:
I know the deity ISIS and I know about Pompeii, but I didn't know about the temple there (12D).
Actor SETH Gilliam at 13D.
The "Champagne of Spain" CAVA at 32A.
33A chemist ROALD Hoffman.
Needed every cross for the 37D marsupial POTOROO.
Civil rights activist ANNA Arnold Hedgeman at 46D.
The Hughleys actress ELISE Neal (28D).
The word of the day was also the last word in for me today. I’m absolutely certain that I’ve never, ever heard of the POTOROO. And thanks to a stupid typo, I couldn’t see that I’d misspelled it until I checked the crosses. Oh, well.
14:52 for me this morning. I liked this puzzle! And for once in my life, easier for me than for @OFL. Definitely the voice/wheelhouse thing. I just "got" a bunch of these clues. Proudly dropped PANTRIES right in with no crosses after thinking a minute. Loved the long colloquial acrosses--very nice marquis answers. And loved the POTOROO too... was confusing it in my head with a Potto... which is a tiny little primate. I've actually held one of those, they are cute. Toughest spots for me involved "G"--7A, I had the R from RKO, but just couldn't think of anything that was _R_ that would mean "get away".... So that G from GALA was my 2nd to last letter. And then just waiting for all the crosses to see what 39 would be... lIVETH? GOOSES was not my first guess for ENERGIZES. So that was the end. I like Fuji apples... not sure I'm as excited about EMISSIONS! Anyway, I liked this puzzle and it was easy-medium for me, thanks Kelly, awesome Friday!!! : ) ***.5 from me
Finally, a Friday puzzle Rex found harder than I did. It’s about time. I had a good time solving.🎈🎈🎊🎊
This one was a grinding slog for me—never got any momentum, even after I caved and decided to look up the names (which I freely allow myself on late-week puzzles—but normally it gives me momentum). Themeless puzzles have been an acquired taste for me anyway, so I wondered if my unhappiness with the puzzle was just my deficiency, and thus it was gratifying to see Rex explain to me why my enjoyment level was so low. I’ll also point out that the grid doesn’t allow for any of that Friday “whoosh” across the center that Rex has taught me to appreciate. But I do think MAKE IT MAKE SENSE and RUN INTERFERENCE both got a smile out of me while solving, so there is that.
Rex summarizes this one nicely - the highlight is the back and forth playfulness between the spanners - other than that we get oddball trivia and just plain dreck. Lolled at Rocky ROALD.
A Letter To ELISE
FLIES SOLO x PLANE is pretty neat as is the cheeky GOOSES x GIVETH cross. Geeky me actually knew ROALD from the World of Chemistry series. The overall fill here doesn’t pull its weight. The IOTAS entry is rough - two medical references is two too many.
FOOLS In Love
When I opened this one it looked promising with the two stacked spanners - but it fizzled out quickly. A flat Friday morning solve.
It was later than I thought
When I first believed you
Now I cannot share your laughter
Finished it...somehow. Looked up POTOROO (one cheat). ANNA didn't seem right before "Arnold," but I suppose that was her maiden name. EMISSIONS came very slowly for some reason. A typical Friday...some offbeat cluing and several unfamiliar names. Top half easy, lower half hard.
Crossing obscure names is lame. I propose adding the ANNE/ANNA conundrum to the KEA/LOA list along with IONIC/DORIC.
I know, right?
If it’s difficult to strike a balance between “challenging” and “enjoyable”, then this one would be an example of a puzzle that erred on the side of challenging. Rex pointed out the areas (and there are many) where this one flirted with slogfest territory. Hopefully it will quell the chorus of complaints about puzzles being too easy for a day or two.
In addition to POTOROO and ANNA, I would add HOGANS and MEWS which make the SE section very, very tough (and not particularly enjoyable).
When the artist noticed a big smudge in the corner of her painting she was pretty upset. But to undo the damage all she had to do was REDAPPLE the area.
What do you mean you're worried the cat may scare the baby?
I mean its mean MIEN and MEWS are pretty scary.
The fancy tennis club imposes restrictions on athleisurewear in its formal dining room. It's especially serious about enforcing its SKORTS bar.
Modern Navaho Indians have replaced some traditional meals with subs, eaten in their dwellings. Traditionists complain about these HOGANS heroes.
If you're like me, you spend time wondering why there aren't more (or any) knock-knock jokes using Biblical names. Well, you're in luck -- in this case, bad luck.
Knock knock.
Who's there?
Shem and SETH.
Shem and SETH who?
ShemandSeth "Hands on hips."
I found this easier than Rex but I was similarly unimpressed, too many obscure names and iffy clues.
The "Champagne of Spain" was a gimmie for me, but then I live in Barcelona and I'm a wine nerd. What made it funny for me is that the French are extremely litigious and have made it impossible for any sparkling wine around the world to market itself as "Champagne". That being said, it's common for people here to refer to cava simply as 'champán' so maybe the clue isn't that far off.
One of the signature Crosslandia moments is when you revisit an area numerous times and still can’t crack it; it still looks the same, you haven’t put in anything new in ages. But then, on the nth time a fissure opens somewhere inside you and out bubbles an answer you know is right, the tension dissolves, and you sit with gratitude and wonder at how that happens. Often that one word triggers a splat-fill that breaks open a huge area.
Is there a term for that moment?
I bring this all up because I was in true stuck-ness several times today, and these wondrous life rafts did come, just when I thought they never would.
This was, for me, a tough puzzle punctuated by these feel-good moments, created by a constructor who is skilled at making grids that RUN INTERFERENCE. I love working hard through difficult grids like this, grids that enable these wondrous pops of pleasure. Thank you, and more like this please, Kelly!
Pretty sure this is my first sub-15 minutes Friday, though I did search "toporoo" to see if it was a thing before going with "potoroo" (I had the last 4 letters and crosses wouldn't allow for "optoroo" so it had to be one or the other). I liked the long a crosses enough to not be as annoyed with the short stuff as Rex, but setting a personal record probably helped my mood
Libs instead of LEFT which led me to confidently enter DiVO just off the (errant) i. Dumb luck pays off sometimes.
Whole SE corner was a loop of try this and “Check Puzzle.”
Hey All !
Tough puz for me today. Got it all and ended up with a one-letter DNF. Argh! (Only one A, Aargh to me is an abomination.) Had ANNe/HOGeNS. Drat. HOGANS should be clued via Hulk and his family.
Had the overwrites Rex did, IgOt- INON, dEms-LEFT. Also had haVETH-GIVETH, sawINTWO-CUTINTWO, mgm-RKO, cAlLS-HAILS, SweaTS-SKORTS, think that was it.
No points for me for POTOROO. I'd rather be associated with Roosters than rodents. 😁
Nice tougher FriPuz for me. The ole brain only had a LITE char. Har.
Hope y'all have a great Friday!
Two F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Challenging to me because of the many names, but do love Fuji apples! Tricky deception using middle name Arnold to make one think ANNA was not easy answer. Right up to the end wanted LIVETH and LOOSED, but have to agree GOOSED is more proactive than LOOSED.
Nailed it.
If feeling great is, in a golf metaphor, an eagle, and feeling ok is a birdie, then I look at PARASAILING.
If Plans A, B, C and D don't work, you can always fall back on PLANE.
Hook and Smee attempt to foil anything that PANTRIES.
Mormons these days are allowed to do their mandatory two years of service online. They're called EMISSIONS.
I guess a guy who energizes water fowl GOOSES geese.
I'm writing a story about a virtual version of the Indy 500 employing a pencil and an e-RACER.
This was a solve that I didn't just MAILIN. Thanks for the tussle, Kelly Morenus.
A challenging Friday puzzle for sure, but at a cost as per Rex (and others here), warranting a rating below three stars despite a few otherwise nice long answers.
Looked up POTOROO in order to finish; had the OROO and didn't feel like guessing how to insert the P, T and O. A Will Shortz clue if there ever was one. Now I see it would have had to be either Toporoo or (the correct answer) but by then we were checked out; 3 minutes over our average.
Not so much the number of names (@Gary can count them) but the "um...who?" aspect, as Rex points out.
And Liveth/Looses before GIVETH/GOOSES; oh yeah...that G was the final entry. Happy Friday!...finally.
Bang on. Great write up, Rex.
Enjoyed this overall and thought the long crosses were nice. The SE and mideast gave me trouble, but for the most part I was able to chip away at it. Finally had to look up a name or two to finish. ANNA was particularly tough given that the middle name Arnold implies a male, and crossing the mysterious HOGANS - a complete unknown, along with DEALERS SHOE and POTOROO.
RP: As someone with a solid knowledge of auto racing, I immediately knew the answer but did not really like the clue for RACER. And yes, I am familiar with the sentiment about arguing with a fool … something along the lines of “never argue with a fool; people may not know the difference.”
Roald Hoffman spoke at my HS graduation because he was an alumnus and had just won the Nobel Prize, so that answer was a gimme for me.
Yes, I know that wondrous feeling! It happened for me today with PARASAILING when I had only the P and the ING. I think your “splat-fill moment” would be a fitting term for it.
Not a lot of time today but let’s just say that @Rex and @Dr. Random captured my feelings. I would only say that for some reason the top and bottom seemed SOMEWHAT easy, but the middle area killed me for a while because I was confident that Fuji was mountain so changed my initial RACER to ProAm…because I have heard of it and had no clue whether it was 500 miles. I also know I was happy and lucky (?) to know DAVID, DEVO, and DRNO (DRNO is probably crosswordese).
This puzzle annoyed me so much, the best part was coming here to read Rex’s write up, had my laughing very much out loud. Literally everything that was said were my thoughts exactly. I did know MEWS from reading British novels so I didn’t put END although I wanted to, didn’t know any of the names except DEVO and i never had heard of a HOGAN (or a POTOROO). Ok, live and learn!! Thanks as always.
CAVA makes delicious mimosas. Less expensive than Champagne and not as sweet as Prosecco. I like to top with a splash of triple sec. Yum!
If you read Tony Hillerman's books you would have known HOGAN right away. If you read English writers you'd know MEWS. If you are like me and haven't watched American network TV shows you'd be stymied by ELISE Neal
Hard, and a slog for me. It didn't help that there was a leaf blower going off across the street periodically during my solve, but I finished in about 133% of my average Friday time.
As soon as I saw the I I I, I said to myself "Don't tell me people thought the H H H = ETAS thing was such a good idea that they skipped theta and moved to I I I = IOTAS..." then I saw five blank spaces and grudgingly typed in IOTAS.
@Rex: Roald Amundsen leaps to mind as a reasonably-well-known-non-Dahl Roald. Also, I lived in Las Vegas for several years; Tropicana Avenue is a major street, but everyone who lives there calls it 'Trop' instead of saying the full name (e.g., it's just north of Trop). So, there is at least one more English use of "Trop"!
OK, I won't mention that you get no points for POTOROO. They seem to be marsupials though.
When I first opened this one, my first thought was, "This is one intimidating looking grid!" And that impression stayed with me throughout, but I loved this one. The (very) hard work was worth getting these wonderful, in-the-language spanner stacks.
I'll acknowledge that the names were a bit much, more so that I really didn't care about learning any of them than the sheer number, but for me, the good stuff made up for all of that.
Those spanners, I probably say each and every one during the course of a day on a weekly basis (that might say something about me that I likely shouldn't brag about but...) and the fact that they are all 15 letters and make for AGAME fill gives me a bit of a thrill.
There were a couple of things I *was* happy to learn, DEALERSSHOE - no clue. And I will admit here and now that I do not know the word PEEEN, and now I do!
Had a bit of a snag in the North as I plopped down *view* for Attitude at 15D and held on to it for too long. The other hold-ups were just the names.
You had me working hard today, Kelly. But worth every minute! Thank you for this!
Forgot to mention earlier (and don't see a comment here yet) but how are DIAPERS attire? ...that snap on? ...plural??
I'm confident someone here will educate me why it makes sense, but our reaction to that clue/answer was "Are you sh*tting me?"
Thanks for the Joe Jackson @Son Volt. Look Sharp was on repeat for me for much of the '80s. Saw him a couple of years ago at a small venue here in New Jersey, still sounds great.
Hard, and THE WAY I LOOK AT IT, not in a particularly pleasurable way -- more in a way that made me go GRR. A lot of it was simply obscure, for example ROALD (I was secretly hoping it would be the inventor of LSD, but no, that was Albert Hofmann, with one "f"), POTOROO, and ISIS (what's she doing there in Pompeii?). Some of my pain was self-inflicted: for example, for the lecture setting I had hAll, and the second of those l's looked like the beginning of lEaH (Leah Gilliam is indeed someone in show biz), seeing that I had POLISH already in place. Some disassembly required.
Some of it felt somewhat misleading in the cluing, and not because the cluing is particularly clever or devious. Rex pointed out that Blue (Dems) does not equal the LEFT: anyone who says that in front of me will be immediately regarded as a low-information voter, if indeed they vote at all. That's just lame. I was a little annoyed by GOOSES because the only verbal meaning I knew for that is where you jab someone in the butt with your thumb, which is... energizing? If you say so. Like a noogie can be said to be "energizing". I did look it up afterward and it can also mean "spurs", but I conjecture that (1) that's much the secondary meaning, and (2) it's probably derived from the first meaning. Felt relatively obscure to me. I don't know. I do know I put in rOuSES at first. "New wave" to describe a one-of-a-kind band like DEVO: it's not wrong exactly, but it's not exactly tight either. It's loose like the big suit David Byrne used to wear on stage (Stop MAKING SENSE!). It shows how broad-brush and diluted (and ultimately lazy) the term "new wave" actually is.
Those three bars to indicate IOTAS. Tough way to clue it, I grudgingly admit. Those bars could have meant just about anything. So I wag my finger at the editors -- yep, you got me pretty good there. But I won't call it clever. Just obscure.
MAKE IT MAKE SENSE: what J.D. Vance said to the poor employee at the donut shop, when he was dissatisfied with how she selected his donuts the first time around, after he told her "just do whatever makes sense". Do it again, and this time: MAKE IT MAKE SENSE!
Some good spanners, some good little nuggets of info, but it was a sweat and I did not feel energized by it. LITE on an upbeat feeling to whoosh me into my Friday. More of a "I need more coffee; not feeling too bright at the moment" feeling. Win some, lose some.
Same problem with the names as others have noted. I mean I know Mr. Dahl and Mr. Amundsen by only just met Mr. Hoffman today. Another ROALD to add to the list.
Got hung up in the NE with HALL, which led nowhere, and in the SW with SENDIN for MAILIN. Know too many biblical verbs that end in ETH. Having the letters for POTOROO was actually helpful, led to PHASE and GOOSES, both of which I was having trouble with. I'm surprised no one has mentioned RADARS yet. Talk about a POC. And I can never remember that a fuji is an apple, especially when it has that first letter as a capital thing going. MEWS I know, probably from Sherlock Holmes, and a DEALERSSHOE I definitely know from James Bond.
Nice chewy Friday, KM. I Knew Most of the trivia, eventually, and thanks for a fair amount of fun.
HOGAN's heroes. NICE!!!
Me, too.
Funny how you and I both lighted on "grudgingly" (my comment isn't up yet).
I’m really dumb but I can’t parse the Shem and Seth joke. Help!
I thought many of the answers were pretty good but that was ruined for me by some of the clueing.
"Big do" = afro; "Big to do" = GALA
Seldom do companies that REemERge from bankruptcy REOPEN(ED). They stay open during bankruptcy due to the protection it provides.
And I hated "Blue side, with the". We need to stop encouraging people to take "sides" in politics.
Damn Egs another great post.
Is PARASAILING really a "sport"? I think it the same way as "is hiking a sport?" . Thank you Rex for posting Chris Rea's "Fool if You Think It's Over" - brings back so many memories of a 19 year old me (PS Chris Rea also recorded one of the most underrated Christmas songs ever, "Driving Home for Christmas "). Surprised Rex rated it as Med/Challenging - so often he rates them Easy when I think Challenging , today was the opposite. (though I did look up ELISE). My biggest challenge was actually GOOSES... just took awhile to see that. EMENDS/aMENDS - not sure if I even know the difference. Great Friday! Thanks Kelly
Tropicana Field in St. Pete is slmost always cslled The Trop. At least by locals and Rays fans.
E-racing is a real thing. And growing in poilarity. Formula E is the apex butbthere sre lesser classes as well.
Well, we've been asking for harder Fridays, so here we have it, at least for me. I had to look up ANNA, ROALD, SETH, ELISE, & POTOROO. Once I got all those, the rest wasn't so hard.
MEWS is gettable from Agatha Christie et al., but just for the record the English word for row houses is "terraces." MEWS are stables, or housing in converted stables (which may well rowhouses, but that's incidental), or alleys.
As the Wordplay column points out, blue has only symbolized Democrats since 2000, when some TV political reporter (I'm thinking Tim Russert) colored the election maps that way. Traditionally the color of the left was red, as in this song. (Originally it was "workers' flag.") I'm pretty sure they made the Dems blue because red was the color of communism and they didn't want to echo a common Republican charge.
The clue for POTOROO is what's known in cryptics as a "letter bank" but when you have to put the whole explanation into the clue it becomes ungainly.
@ Mike Herlihy from yesterday -- thanks for catching my error, even if it did somehow get me the right answer!
POTOROO?? (Less offensive - CAVA?)
I cheated - didn't even care. A very disappointing Friday.
ROBYN WHERE ARE YOU????
I liked it a lot. I am not against having a Dahl clue for Roald. People are complex and creative people are even more so.
Agree with Rex on the Medium/Challenging today, and with the POTOROO area in the SE as the main sticking point. That section was made more difficult by my bad recall of the casino dealer's device. I remembered it as boot, not SHOE, and that caused a lot of confusion!
An enjoyable challenge for me. I made nice progress up top, until the PEEN HERE row, then stalled out, despite writing in PARASAILING (I couldn't get any crosses to work). So I went to the bottom and worked my way up from SING through the next four rows, then was faced with an impenetrable midsection. Eventually King DAVID bailed me out on the left, and finally seeing PANTRIES saved me on the right. Satisfying to finish!
Do-over: sonARS before liDARS before RADARS. No idea: SETH, ROALD, ELISE, DEVO, CAVA, POTOROO. Head-slap moment: those IOTAS!
Funny enough I know 500 from swim racing
That's an interesting point. To me, a sport involves competition. Otherwise it's an activity. To use your example, hiking would be an activity and cross country racing would be a sport.
This was such a hard one. So many words I didn't know in the context of the cluing. Gooses?! what? Also didn't know what agars or peens actually were, just knew they are words from playing Spelling Bee. Also didn't like the clue for iris.
Agsinst?!! I’m sll for it. He was great. A takent to treasure.
Add me to those who found this easy-medium. The top and bottom thirds were pretty easy. The center was a tad tougher.
No costly erasures.
In the center I did not know ROALD, CAVA, ELISE, and POTOROO.
I also didn’t know ANNA and SETH.
A reasonably smooth grid with some fun 15s, liked it quite a bit more than @Rex did.
Agree with Rex on the puzzle...but I must give a shoutout to ROALD Hoffman, prof of my advanced freshman chemistry class at Cornell 1967-68. Difficult but excellent course...how many folks have a (future) Nobel winner for a professor? Well, I ended up a construction engineer...
"Slog fest territory" for me was in the "mid-east", I guess I'm not alone😉 in that regard?
I was thinking the same thing ! it’s rather refreshing . I had to get several of down answers in order to get the long across answers.
Another Roald? How about Amundsen, the greatest explorer in history?
CAVA is a sparkling wine made in Spain. The process employed is nearly identical to that used in making champagne. The difference is the grapes, Spanish instead of French. There used to be an inexpensive cava sold widely named Freixenet. It came in black bottles.
Had an easier time with this - relatively speaking - than Rex. A little over my average time but ultimately doable and enjoyable. Also had dems before LEFT, and end before AIM. Really liked the long answers and thought the clues were fair.
The expression about "drunks and FOOLS" made that answer a gimme. ANNA was tricky given I assumed it was a man with the middle name "Arnold" - clever misdirect. haVEst before havETH before GIVETH. Fun Friday. 26:48
Marquis answers? Are those ones provided by marquises?
Easy NW corner, and MAKE IT MAKE SENSE is an awesome answer that got me whooshing across the top of the grid. And then, like in Rex's case, progress slowed down. The E/SE was rough with GIVETH GOOSES ANNA HOGANS MEWS and that clue on ICON. I tried SHOE, then erased it, rinse and repeat a few times. I see the misdirection in the PHASE clue and it works, but I think of PHASES as more of a teen thing than a toddler thing.
The middle was also crunchy, with the clues on FOOLS, ROALD and PLANE. Also IRIS (I tried LENS first).
Some clues that perplexed me:
[Coat on a tip?] - what's the surface meaning even supposed to be here?
[Attire that may snap on] - as others have pointed out, calling DIAPERS "attire" is odd
[Forbidden subject in Islamic art] - can anyone elaborate? I was considering IMAM, crossing AIM. I was looking for a more specific sort of "subject"
[Canal entry] - so... does this mean that [Door entry] for ROOM is a legitimate clue?
If you are going to sacrifice wine to brunch mimosas that are 50/50 bubbly to orange juice, use prosecco. Champagne is quite expensive and its depth of flavour is lost here. Cava also has some really subtle flavours that are overpowered by the OJ. Prosecco is the way to go. Don't even waste a Cremant here.
topOROO? POTOROO? optOROO? I had the hardest time in that east-central area, not knowing the marsupial or ELISE and trying to figure out what 27D's clue represented. IOnic columns? Did the toddler outgrow its onesie? (Too long). Was the biblical term loVETH, or haVETH? saVETH? So many questions, finally answered when I saw STIR and remembered the DEALER'S SHOE. Sheesh.
Great clue for PANTRIES.
Thanks, Kelly Morenus!
Supposed to sound like "Simon says".
Better than Magellan, Cook, Polo, for lovers of the Orient there’s Zheng He, for fans of the religion of the sword there’s Battua?
Amundsen is fantastic, but Shackleford gets my vote for sheer Irish toughness.
Let alone ANYA.
Freixenet is still on the cava shelf at the wine shop. But my goto is Jaume Serra Cristalino. Don't mix it with anything!
This was actually not a themeless. The 4 spanners are the theme.
RB Woodward and ROALD Hoffman described concepts that underpinned the way organic chemistry was done until the more rigorous quantum mechanical modeling was made possible in the late 1990’s, and is still taught to undergrads and graduate students. Modern medicine and plastics are built on it. Physicists and biologists simply have better than PR than chemists.
Same! A lot of names, but all easy to get from crosses.
ReX: re CAVA, you might recognize Freixenet, a well-known and widely available cava sparkling wine.
Sorry. Meant "traditionalist."
I had a tough time with this puzzle in the morning, just couldn't get the center section to click. But this afternoon things began filling in much more easily, except I had Rouses for GOOSES, didn't know DEVO or POTOROO, and couldn't believe DEALERSSHOE would be right. So, an hourlong solve for me, with a couple of mistakes in the end. But I thought all the long answers were quite good.
Wow this was very challenging and frustrating for me, although I did eventually solve correctly without cheating. Thanks Rex, for complaining about the Unknown Names so I don't have to for once.
I had a h*e*c*k of a time with those long across phrases. For 14 across, I struggled with something like MAKE IT CLEAR TO ME for ages. Then just below for 17 across that I had THE WAY I READ IT IS. Then, down at 52 across I had I DONT NEED TO KNOW. And the "correct" three phrases don't ring very clear to me, they seem kinda arbitrary.
I also had a typeover with WATER SKIING at 21 down. But PARASAILING is pretty great; I much enjoy watching them at Skaha Beach on a windy day. They can jump about 30 feet in the air if they catch a good wave and a wind gust!
With a relatively low black square count of 28, almost four less than average for a Friday, this looked very promising. The double stacked upper and lower grid spanners were solid if not terribly exciting. But it looks like they took a toll on the surrounding fill.
I knew DEALERS SHOE and PARASAILING (one of our regular poker players teaches that) but the remaining fill was of the RED APPLE LITE variety.
It was, however, a banner day for POC (plural of convenience) hunting. Don't think I've ever seen so many in a themeless grid. Here you go: EMEND, EMT, EKE, DIAPER, STYLE, SKORT, RADAR, AGAR, PANTRY, HAIL, FLY SOLO, IOTA, SORE, FOOL, EMISSION, GOOSE, MRI, MEW and HOGAN all needed POC help to fill their slots. Wow.
With the needle on the POCometer pegged out to the max, the Committee had no choice but to GIVETH this grid a POC Marked rating.
Tim Russert was the best. I miss him a lot.
A coat of shoe polish on a wingtip shoe...
I have to agree with Anon 9:11 here. Most Prosecco is too sweet, and makes for a rather cloying mimosa. A brut Cava, on the other hand, is just right.
But if you want to be a purist, go ahead and have Champagne with brunch; no one's stopping you.
Yes the Marquis de Cinema, he was named Marquis for inventing the sign in front of playhouse. Over time the spelling morphed into marquee
Cava is the traditional sparkling wine of Spain made using the same method as Champagne. Some is great wine, most is not though mostly drinkable. The producers would never use that phrase as it would be a trademark infringement under EU law.
Folks, you cannot see through your iris. You see through your lens and cornea. The iris is like the f/stop of your camera. You see through its aperture, but not through the iris. Totally incorrect clue/answer says this eye surgeon.
I rarely order mimosas as 50 50 is way too OJ heavy. I prefer Cranberry or Pomegranite and any inexpensive dry sparkling wine. Raventos makes some great cava & it's fairly easy to find
Great long answers, but the rest of the puzzle fell kinda flat for me, so I'm right there with Rex at 2 or 2.5 stars. Another thing that I didn't like about this puzzle was all of the wasted "S" letters, or answers whose "S" (as either a plural or verb) adds nothing to the puzzle. By my count - a whopping 20 of them today, including a couple of the longer answers: FLIESSOLO and DEALERSSHOE
Yeah its hard to equate diapers and attire. But I guess, like pants, it's one thing but still plural. I was not aware of the definition of MIEN (attitude) used by the puzzle, I have only encountered it as referring to one's facial expression.
I agree, Alice and Lynn. I do not think Parasailing is an actual sport
Agree completely with the terrible clue for MEWS
RADARS and AGARS are actual plurals in the real world?!
He was not great, he was a terrible racist anti-semitic person who wrote many great books
Amen!!!!
¿Alguien puede explicar esto?
Flew through until ROALD and ELISE put the kibosh on the fun. Do any Nobel winners have normal names? I guess some probably do, but they're not in the crosswords as you're reaching desperation level for cluing with ROALD sitting there. I am sure he's way better than the other ROALD, and he probably was part of the Georg Ohm appreciation society so I too celebrate his achievements. As for ELISE, well, a TV star on Friday so absolutely no chance I would know her, and crosses weren't flowing for me.
Puzzle seemed fine overall. Those spanners are lovely. Very little Gunk, but what's there is tough. A good sense of humor for a change. And, there aren't many names, but the ones there are ... sheesk.
The EMENDS/AMENDS punch in the face on opening the puzzle wasn't nice. Ending with POTOROO was also not nice and they're not even that cool. Only cute animals in the puzzle please. And, ugh, you go with row houses in another country for MEWS instead of kittens? ACH.
I had a total of six different Biblical verbs in that space.
I occasionally grumble about something being called modern when it seems like it's been around for decades, and today PARASAILING volunteers as our modern sport. Wikipedia says the first known description is from 1840 (or 186 years ago) and the current technological incarnation is from 1962 (or 64 years ago). Competitions started in the 1980s (more than 40 years ago). So, modern to the NYTXW crew is a little different than I think about it. They might say I'm modern, so maybe I should befriend them.
Let me toss out a ball for my favorite Chihuahua: Isn't arguing with fools the main reason we have comment sections?
❤️ GRR. [Where 22-Across is]. [I I I]. GOOSES. ISIS/IRIS.
😩 DIAPERS.
People: 7
Places: 0
Products: 3
Partials: 4
Foreignisms: 1
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 15 of 70 (21%)
Funny Factor: 5 😄
Tee-Hee: Coat on a tip. PEEN.
Uniclues:
1 Helpful note on the skull of one needing a good whack on the noggin.
2 About an hour after Mexican food.
3 Feature of a cyclops.
4 Featured activity at the old folks home.
5 Tennis attire for a varmint.
1 PEEN HERE
2 EMISSIONS PHASE
3 IRIS LITE
4 DIAPERS SPRINT
5 POTOROO SKORTS (~)
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Uh, just deleted this clue, but there was a hart involved. DOE ASS.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Had trouble in the SE, same as mosta yall. Started the biblical verb with "covets". Had to backtrack above to try other solutions: what actually is the plural of IOTA, ..not IOTAe, that would be Latin.
The only Hoffman I could think of was Abbie, he was clever, maybe moonlighted in science.
PEEN - threw me till I remembered the ball PEEN hammer.
2 x RKO this week
I try not to get polish on my fingertips, better to keep to the nails.
Average FriPuz solvequest nanosecond spillages, at our house.
Nice Across grid spanners.
staff weeject pick, of only 8 choices: GRR.
some faves: PANTRIES clue. DIAPERS & SKORTS mini-theme. FLIESSOLO. The four grid spanners.
POTOROO, huh? har. That's OK, cuz it's just goin thru a LITE PHASE.
Thanx for the challenge, Ms. Morenus darlin. You brought yer AGAME. [don't forget that there UGAME, tho...]
Masked & Anonymo1U (s)
p.s.
Runt puzzle:
**gruntz**
M&A
According to Wikipedia, There is at least one somewhat credible early-19c indication of a person being towed through the air on a kite; the instance is mentioned in passing as having been witnessed by an old sailor telling of it on the 1839-1841 cruise of the USS Constitution.
The first ascending-gliding parachute was developed by Pierre-Marcel Lemoigne in 1962.
Not sure I'd call it modern?
FLIES SOLO is not plural.
Fingertip
I liked this a lot. The grid spanners top and bottom were great and a lot of the short stuff was tricky. And CAVA! One of the joys in my life. So similar to Champagne that many people can’t tell the difference. Unlike Prosecco, which is all fizz and fruity top notes, Cava has depth. It is, unlike Prosecco, produced in the traditional champagne method - a second fermentation in the bottle - which produces finer bubbles and more “wine” flavour. But, unlike Champagne, it is relatively inexpensive. Even the “small house” or “small estate” Champagnes can be expensive (and I love them), but they tend to sell for 20 or 30 dollars less than the Moet et Chandons or Veuve Clicquots and usually have more character. Fifty to sixty dollars compared to eighty to a hundred per bottle. The Cava I buy tends to come in at about 30 to 40. Probably cheaper where most of you live, but liquor stores here are owned by the government. (Should I drop in a sad emoji here? Maybe. But those prices fund hospitals and highways. I’m willing to pay the “sin tax”.)
A few days ago my wife let me know that her book club was descending on our household and she couldn’t find any bubbly in the liquor cabinet. Could I please make an emergency run to the local liquor store to find a few bottles of chilled Prosecco. When I got there they were just restocking the coolers and all the Prosecco was warm. Cava to the rescue. Nobody complained, and there’s one bottle left over to go with the sous-vide mustard-glazed pork tenderloin I’m going to cook tonight. How could it work out better?
This post has gone too long and I’ve hardly commented on the puzzle. I may be back.
I guess that’s a valid explanation for the clue other than nail POLISH, but what I meant to ask was: what’s the misdirection? The clue [Grocery stores?] for PANTRIES works really well:
Surface reading: actual grocery stores
What it’s actually asking for: places to “store” groceries
Other classic clues are based on the same principle: [Night vision?] for DREAM, [Trip up?] for ASCENT, [One working from home?] for UMPIRE, and countless others.
So what’s “coat on a tip” supposed to mean before you reinterpret it as “coating on the tip of a nail/shoe”?
Same. Cheated and it didn't help. Definitely on a different wavelength than the constructor! And my first ever Friday DNF. ugh.
I may be confusing this, but I've heard: Never argue with a fool; they will only drag you down to their level, where they have a lot more experience.
This old timer has been to Spain several times and never found a CAVA he liked. Wine? Yes please! Every region has some good ones. And there is nothing better than sherry, especially in Jerez itself
A bit surprised Rex had never heard of a relatively famous Mark Twain quote: "Never argue with a fool. Onlookers may not be able to tell the difference."
Yup. A real stinkeroo.
Impossible for me. I blame trying to solve it on the phone, all those names. But really I’m on a different wavelength. I totally agree with Rex’s review. I do recognize and appreciate the constructor’s talent
Excellent observations and conclusion, @Anoa Bob; enjoyed it!
Yes, of course, most POCs real. The gist of a POC is that it boosts the letter count of a word without adding anything of value or interest to the puzzle. It takes up valuable real estate and makes it easier to fill the grid. More on this in the link above @1:41
Me too! He taught my introductory chemistry class at Cornell in 1977. He was pretty famous at that time. I thought he was a little overqualified for that position!
Abbie earned his degree in Psych at Brandeis, my alma.
@Les, a slight correction: most liquor stores in my town (Penticton) are privately owned and I would guess that is true in the big city too. However, most of the liquor distribution is provincial government, and the single government liquor store here has the best selection and prices.
Haha…as for the “coat on a tip” clue…I initially typed in “cotton” thinking of a Qtip. Oh, these crazy crosswords…
Huh, I guess I've just had that as a French word in my head all this time.... All the little bistros in cote d'ivoire are called maquis... And isn't it Marquis de Sade? Yup.
Yes! This seems simple enough to catch. Great clue for pupil, not IRIS.
But you do see through it in the sense that it is a donut shape with a hole (pupil).
Roald Hoffman still goes into Cornell nearly every day. His lectures on how his family survived the holocaust are absolutely riveting as are his stories of working to bring Chinese scientists to this country.
Fumble fingers here. This was intended to be a reply to MetroGnome @2:22.
Maybe. But I know where The Times is.
Liked it. Thought long answers were all good and cluing was fair. Maybe not “whoosh whoosh” but fun - and I learned about POTOROOs.
If I were limited to remembering MLB teams from my youth as Rex apparently is, I would be down to 10, with no Brooklyn, no NY Giants, no Boston or Milwaukee Braves, no Philadelphia or KC Athletics, no St. Louis Browns, no Senators, and no Indians. But Rex no doubt will in fact remember the Expos and the short-lived Pilots. Vive la difference.
It’s perhaps a ROALD too far (or too obscure) but Stewart’s sidekick in Letterkenny was Roald (played by Evan Stern). The Skids could really rock the overalls-without-shirts look.
roald Hoffmann made very significant contributions to molecular orbital theory, known to chemists as the Woodward-Hoffmann rules
One point not mentioned about POTOROO
The clue gave the 4 letters that make up the 7 letter marsupial. I have never heard of it either. But that’s a lot of information. Almost all marsupials are in Australia, where there are ROOs. Odds are very high it ends in ROO The remaining letters had to include a t , a p and at least one o. I guess it is a matter of taste whether you like clues like that (I obviously do) but it is unfair to ignore the clue! when criticizing the answer.
@Anonymous 7:26 PM
🤣 Congrats! If Google maps ever fails me, I'll call you or Petula Clark. Arf arf!
tht
I have much more often heard the verb goose in the sense of the puzzle. My point is the is not in any way obscure to me . Maybe because I am old. The first meaning would never appear in a newspaper years ago. Maybe the energize meaning is dying out but it is still very much a thing Google had no trouble finding examples I was surprised when you criticized it.
Anonymous 20:01 Am
To do is more like stir. A gals is definitely not a to do. Do is perhap more crosswordese now, but it was most definitely used for a party. That’s why hairdo is common, to specify which kind of do.
Very, very hard to get started, but then got much easier once I had a toehold. POTOROO was the key to getting going.
I was wondering about that too. The best I could come up with was the cloth DIAPERS that my sister-in-law used, which did have snaps. But that seems a reach since they are in no way widely used.
Thoroughly enjoyed this one, but mostly just because it was challenging. Took me until this morning to finish it. Please keep the challenging puzzles coming!
Yes, LOOSES upon the world. Same last letter and had to go to autocheck
CAVA was a new word for me and, to my surprise, it made a follow-up appearance in Sunday's Spelling Bee!
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