.png)
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
Theme answers:
- IRONMAN TRIATHLON (18A: *Yes—three arduous ones)
- MILLIPEDE (29A: *Yes—sometimes more than 1,000)
- DIRECT FLIGHT (37A: *Yes—exactly one, in common usage)
- YARDSTICK (50A: *No—but it does have three feet)
Pinta Island (Spanish: Isla Pinta) is one of the Galápagos Islands in Ecuador, west of South America. Pinta has an area of 60 km2 (23 sq mi) and a maximum altitude of 777 meters (2,549 ft). // The Spanish name Pinta—an adjective meaning "spotted"—honors the Pinta, the nickname of one of the three ships of Christopher Columbus's first voyage. Santa Maria Island is similarly named for another one of his vessels and Pinzón Island is partially named for the Pinta's captain Martín Alonso Pinzón. [...] Pinta was the original home to Lonesome George, perhaps the most famous tortoise in the Galápagos Islands. He was the last known representative of the subspecies Chelonoidis nigra abingdonii. The most northern major island in the Galápagos, at one time Isla Pinta had a thriving tortoise population. The island's vegetation was devastated over several decades by introduced feral goats, thus diminishing food supplies for the native tortoises. A prolonged effort to exterminate goats introduced to Pinta was completed in 1990, and the vegetation of the island is starting to return to its former state. (wikipedia)
• • •
The puzzle was on the easy side again, with only the themers providing any real resistance. If your time was a little slow, it's probably because of the oversized grid (16x15). I had one very real struggle point today, and it fittingly involved the one-word clue [Struggle] (8D). I wrote in STRIVE with total confidence and when almost every cross confirmed it, I kept it there. I just couldn't figure out why I couldn't come up with a good "V"-containing answer for 26A: Spoil. I ended up with DEVILE and every time I checked the crosses of DEVILE ... nope, no problems, everything checks out! I just stared at DEVILE like ... "well, you look like a word. You kind of sound like a word. How have I lived over a half a century and never heard of you, DEVILE?" I think the ambiguity of [Spoil] made matters (much) worse. "Spoil" as in "dote on"? "Spoil" as in "go bad"? Actually, neither of those things. "Spoil" as in "ruin, mar, desecrate," i.e. DEFILE. And it's STRIFE ... [Struggle] is a noun, not a verb. I just finished reading the first two books of Colson Whitehead's Harlem Trilogy, and much of it is set in an area of Harlem known colloquially as "Striver's Row":
The St. Nicholas Historic District, known colloquially as "Striver's Row", is a historic district located on both sides of West 138th and West 139th Streets between Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard (Seventh Avenue) and Frederick Douglass Boulevard (Eighth Avenue), in the Harlem neighborhood of Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is both a national and a New York City historic district, and consists of row houses and associated buildings designed by three architectural firms and built in 1891–93 by developer David H. King Jr. These are collectively recognized as gems of New York City architecture, and "an outstanding example of late 19th-century urban design" [...] King sold very few houses and the development failed, with Equitable Life Assurance Society, which had financed the project, foreclosing on almost all the units in 1895, during an economic depression. By this time, Harlem was being abandoned by white New Yorkers, yet the company would not sell the King houses to blacks, and so they sat empty until 1919–20, when they were finally made available to African Americans for $8,000 each. Some of the units were turned into rooming houses, but generally they attracted both leaders of the black community and upwardly-mobile professionals, or "strivers", who gave the district its colloquial name.
Constant exposure to the name "Striver's Row" over the past couple weeks made the [Struggle] / STRIVE connection feel natural, obvious. So obvious that I'm going to go on pretending DEVILE is a word. It really wants to be a word. It's got an undeniable wordness about it. I think when you DEFILE something super duper bad, you DEVILE it. Yes, that will work.
What else? Oh, PINTA???? With that clue? LOL (Galápagos island that was home to Lonesome George, the last tortoise of his subspecies). I wrote in PALAU there at first and then thought "that ... wasn't a Galápagos island, was it? They let Survivor film in the Galápagos? That can't be right." Correct: that is not right. I guess you use this seemingly obscure clue to avoid mentioning Columbus? Except the island is named after Columbus's ship, so ... as far as avoiding colonizers, that doesn't really work. Maybe the puzzle was deemed too damn easy (not untrue) and so they put in this bit of interesting if depressing trivia about the last tortoise of his subspecies, who died all alone on a rock in the ocean because introduced feral goats destroyed his tortoise ecosystem. You can sneak in the odd bit of strange trivia here and there if all the crosses are fair, and these were. I don't see any other parts of the puzzle that gave me trouble, except for my initial and fairly trivial CHIC / CHI error (1A: Smart = POSH / 1D: Letter after upsilon = PHI).
Bullets:
- 31A: Patooties (BUTTS) — lol I really got turned around on this one, anatomically. Somehow I got the phrase "cutie patooties" and "tootsies" mashed up in my head and somehow convinced myself that "patooties" was a cutesy name for hands, i.e. MITTS. (I know “tootsies” are toes or feet, that was an important step on my associative journey to hands)
- 43A: Common garnish in a chirashi bowl (ROE) — yet another "bowl" I've never heard of. Throw it on the Bowl Pile with AÇAI and POKE and the rest. "Chirashi" means "scattered: "It’s a bed of sushi rice and ingredients “scattered” over the top in a decorative manner" (The Japanese Bar).
- 54A: Country that las islas Canarias are part of (ESPAÑA) — congrats to ESPAÑA on their World Cup semifinal victory over France. Also to Argentina on beating England yesterday. I missed the England / Argentina match because I was in Ithaca seeing The Invite (worth it—genuinely hilarious), but I saw the (beautiful) late goal by Argentina. Excited for the final. Sad the World Cup is winding down. I've grown used to having high-stakes soccer to watch every day, and to seeing colorfully dressed and extremely excited people cheering and crying. August is going to be boring. Am I going to have to get into Premier League? I swore I would not do this...
- 41D: Symbol of spiritual insight, in Hinduism (THIRD EYE) — I feel like Ed Norton's character in The Invite says something about opening his THIRD EYE. I know he talks about being "almost certified" at rolfing. There's something almost parodic about his character's New Agey / wellness / sexploration vibe, but he's so honest and earnest and open that he's hard to laugh at—he becomes something much more than a figure of derision. The movie steers in and around movie tropes very deftly. Mostly it just made me wheeze laughing at how accurate all the awkward "getting to know you / dinner party" dialogue was. And all the sex stuff. That, also, funny.
- 9D: World's most populous Creole-speaking country (HAITI) — back-to-back HAITI days. I don't really have anything to say about this. Just noticed, is all.
- 12D: Feline in a 2000s meme (LOLCAT) — wikipedia tells me that an "Lolcat" is an "image macro of one or more cats." So it's not one "Feline" so much as an image of one or more felines, with "idiosyncratic and intentionally grammatically incorrect text [...] known as lolspeak" (wikipedia).
- 46D: Music genre with "walking" bass lines (SKA) — a walking bassline is: "A bassline composed of nonsyncopated notes of equal value, used in jazz and baroque music, for example." (wordnik)
That's all for today. See you next time.
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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- Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)
Today’s Thursday puzzle begins with a question, which is already suspicious. DOES THIS HAVE LEGS? Not “is this good?” Not “does this make sense?” Not even the more modest “can I finish this before lunch?” No: legs. A word that can mean limbs, duration, viability, persistence, the possibility that an idea might somehow stagger onward into the future under its own power. And then the puzzle begins offering answers. IRON MAN TRIATHLON: yes, three arduous ones. MILLIPEDE: yes, sometimes more than 1,000. DIRECT FLIGHT: yes, exactly one, in common usage. YARDSTICK: no—but it does have three feet. This is the sort of thing that seems straightforward until you realize that “legs” has become a kind of underground currency, passed from answer to answer in a network of semantic transactions that nobody has fully disclosed.
ReplyDeleteThe first three are easy enough to understand, in theory. A triathlon has three legs. A millipede has a lot of legs. A direct flight has one leg. Fine. Fine. We are all having a normal Thursday. But then YARDSTICK appears, and the puzzle says: no legs, actually, but three feet. Which is funny, obviously. I laughed. But then I began to wonder: if a yardstick has three feet, and a direct flight has one leg, and an Ironman has three legs, are we still talking about the same thing? Or have we entered a parallel measurement system in which units of distance, stages of competition, anatomical appendages, and the commercial prospects of an idea have all been secretly exchanging identities? The puzzle does not answer. It simply continues.
And that is the great trick here: the gimmick is smart enough to make you feel stupid for a while. The revealer tells you what the starred clues are asking, but not quite how far the question extends. DOES THIS HAVE LEGS is both a brainstorming-session cliché and a literal question about the answers. “Does this idea have legs?” Yes. No. Three. More than 1,000. Exactly one. Three feet, technically. The puzzle keeps changing the ontological status of “leg” while maintaining a perfectly straight face. It is a little machine for turning ordinary language into a suspicious substance.
Meanwhile, the fill keeps dropping unrelated objects into the investigation: TOE, a little dipper; SPADAY, a steamy occasion; DEET, a debugging component, because apparently the grid has decided that “bug” is now a problem to be solved chemically. IHOP offers Stackholder Perks, which is exactly the kind of corporate pun that makes you wonder whether the crossword is being quietly sponsored by a breakfast conglomerate. RAKE IT IN is a roll in dough, which sounds less like an answer than a phrase overheard through a wall at a particularly strange financial seminar. And YARDSTICK remains there, three feet long, no legs, a physical object implicated in a conceptual conspiracy it did not ask to join.
I found the puzzle confusing. Not because it was badly made. Quite the opposite. It was confusing because it was smart enough to make the confusion feel structural. The answers are all perfectly ordinary, but the gimmick keeps asking you to reconsider what category of thing you are looking at: competition, animal, flight, measuring device. One has legs. One has many. One has one. One has none, but feet. The puzzle is not merely asking whether the theme answers have legs. It is asking whether the theme itself has legs. And, irritatingly, yes. It does. It walks. It keeps walking. It may even have three feet.
"I'll have what (s)he's having"
DeleteRoo
😁
I still don't get DEET.
Delete@MetroGnome DEET is an insect repellent.
Delete@MetroGnome…DEET is an ingredient in some insect repellents. Often the repellents will emphasize on label it is DEET free…since it is a chemical.
DeleteNah. You're overthinking it while trying to sound erudite. It's a puzzle. It's fun.
DeleteI think the DIRECT FLIGHT qualifier is there because airlines get away with calling routes direct flights even though the planes land midway as long as you don’t change planes.
ReplyDeleteYes, that's it. The term for one-leg flights is "non-stop." I don't think there are many direct flights with stops anymore, but there used to be a lot before hub & spoke came along.
DeleteYup. Thank you! I was struggling with what the difference was between DIRECTFLIGHT and nonstop flight. Living in my part of fly-over country either are preferable to flying west (a bit) to get on another plane to then fly east past your origin point to your destination (and vice versa). Probably not an experience that “coasters” have to go through much, if at all.
Delete
ReplyDeleteEasy-Medium. Would have been Easy but for 8Dx26A (which is on me, see Overwrites). Not bad for a Thursday.
* * * _ _
Overwrites:
Right off the bat, chic before POSH for Smart at 1A.
At 26A, my spoil was rEvILE before it was DEFILE. This led to ...
... @Rex STRIvE before STRIFE for the 8D struggle. Both were fixed because DEUCE was inevitable at 26D, but the F was the last square I filled.
WOEs:
PINTA (16A), or any of the Galapagos Islands.
I'm no veterinarian but I thought SPAY (5D) and neuter were two different things (you neuter a male and SPAY a female).
I've always disliked when puzzles interchange spay and neuter. Generally a spay is the removal of a uterus. I believe neuter can be generically applied to either? But in vet medicine, at least when I was involved in the early aughts, spay was female and neuter was male. Altered was the umbrella term for the two.
DeleteI always enjoy 16 wide grids, opens up room for never-seen-before grid spanners. Enjoyed figuring out the theme, and especially the cute clue/answer for YARDSTICK. 13 minutes, so an easy-medium thursday. Thanks, Zhou and Mallory!!! : )
ReplyDeletePretty sure the “common usage” is using the word “leg” to mean segments of a flight, not the term “direct flight” itself.
ReplyDeleteTechnically, a “direct” flight can have multiple legs, as long as the flight number and generally the aircraft stay the same (very uncommon today), while a one-leg flight is “non-stop.” But people generally use the terms interchangeably. Thus common usage.
DeleteThat was my take as well - “LEG” being the common usage …
Delete@ElStudHombre, that was how I took it, signifying the metaphorical use of “leg,” and I didn’t think anything of it. However, Rex pointing out the doubling on “leg” as a segment in IRONMAN TRIATHLON made me realize the inconsistency of signaling the idiom later. And of course if the whole point of the theme is to play with different kinds of legs, it’s doubly unnecessary.
DeleteTootsies are toes.
ReplyDeleteThought the puzzle was OK even though I've never heard of the Galapagos islands.
@Rex. Totally with you on the World Cup games. I’m a fan of the Premier League but those games do not compare with the World Cup spectacle. There’s nothing like sudden death games that deliver the kind of spectacle and feverish urgency that these games have delivered over the past few weeks. Unlike the World Series these games truly were World in nature. Well done FIFA.
ReplyDeleteNot a big fan of soccer/football/futbol, but the WC has been a fantastic event to watch. The games have been mostly exciting, the panoply of fans (joyous and heartbroken) who came to this country/continent to cheer for their home countries was wonderful.
DeleteNot without typical officiating gaffes, or as the British commentators say melodiously, "con-TRAW-versies", not unlike any sporting event, but they didn't detract from the overall product.
And I'm one of those pre-tournament skeptics (Boston/Foxborough had its share of nonsense in the building-up) who now is glad the tournament was here. Boston was viewed favorably by the foreign visitors, even when the bar taps ran dry. ("No Scotland, no party"!)
That said, I do think (like the Olympics), every four years for this event adds to what makes it special. Leave them wanting more.
Rooting for Spain on Sunday; if they win it would mean the only team that the Spanish played but didn't beat was tiny Cape Verde.
Ah the World Cup!
DeleteThat's when American commentators, for reasons known only to them, employ British pluralization rules for group nouns.
Americans say, "France has 4 fouls." Brits say, "France have 4 fouls."
I had the GST/GMT and the STRIVE/STRIFE write overs . Shades of Cruella Deville.
ReplyDeleteInspite of NOH and WENDYS being gimmies I was slow on INLAW.
As for that "Brainstorming " clue I pictured a group of writers in Hollywood or Tin Pan Alley.
Overall this took about as long as a relatively easy Saturday.
I had to almost completely fill in the grid before seeing LEGS in 61A. Then I got it. Very nice.
ReplyDeleteToo many Terrible Threes. Twenty-six.
A YARDSTICK has three feet. Cute. Also POEM for "Frost piece."
Frost piece could be the very appropriate "rime" !!
DeletePoems have "feet," too. Would've been fun to find a way to fit a "poem" answer into the mix.
DeleteZZ and MM knock it out of the ballpark once again. I’ve learned to look forward to seeing their byline. A very fun Thursday today.
ReplyDeleteLike Rex, I made the GsT mistake, which gave me sILLIPEDE. Silly me.
OK, excuse me now. I gotta go walk my bass.
More enjoyable for me than most Thursdays. Mostly easy...my only (brief) sticking point was the RAKEITIN/ASAHI cross.
ReplyDeleteOne nit: If the question is, "Does this have legs?" then the answer should be "NO: (it's a DIRECT FLIGHT), not "YES..." etc. Almost by definition, a direct flight isn't a "leg" of anything.
Kind of a neat theme with a very nice aha moment at the reveal (I’m glad I waited and worked my way down to it). I had trouble in the usual areas with things like the Galapagos and Hinduism, but that is to be expected.
ReplyDeleteThanks to IHOP for including the word “stackholder” in their rewards program or I would have dropped IKEA in there out of habit. Thursdays are usually my nemesis, so it was nice to hold my own with one - and as a bonus, I actually knew that it was HANDEL’s Messiah - I think it used to bomb all over the country on AM radio on Sunday nights when I was a kid (that was over half a century ago, so I may have it confused with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir broadcasts, which were pretty ubiquitous as well).
A clever idea for a theme. But that's just about the only good thing I have to say about today's offering. Outside of the theme, it's a million short answers with the occasional mid-lengh like OX TEAM or SHOVELED, which hardly sparkle. And don't get me started on LOLCAT. The first time that appeared in a puzzle I went and looked it up and I just don't get it.
ReplyDeleteEverything Rex said about the PINTA clue is what I feel about the clues for e.g. ROE and IHOP. (Note: I did like the clue for PINTA, though).
Fun theme, clever cluing, and then amazingly alliterative co-constructors! I did enjoy it -- but there were a couple of minor flaws.
ReplyDeleteFirst off, the revealer. The first rule of brainstorming is that you do not ask questions! Participants just call out any ideas that occur to them, someone writes them down -- and then AFTER the session the team evaluates the ideas. This could have been fixed so easily, by changing "during" to "after." DIRECT FLIGHT was discussed above. The solution "in common usage" works, but is a bit kludgy. I can't think of an alternative, though.
AORTA has been in the news lately, so it seemed a bit macabre, but that's not their fault.
In the constructors' notes they say that they thought this would run as a Wednesday, and had to punch up the cluing when it was accepted for Thursday. That may explain the obscure references to the Galapagos and ska.
I'm not much of a fast-food person, so those answers were unknown to me. I had the WE for WENDY'S, do that was no problem, but I'm proud of myself for working out IHOP from the concept of "stackholder."
Well, how playful is that, where you have to figure out the question that the theme answers’ clues answer, in addition to figuring out the theme answers themselves. Did my riddle-loving brain like that? Oh, you bet it did.
ReplyDeleteNot to mention uncovering lovely answers IN THE BAG, SMOCK, ANOINT, and RAKE IT IN.
This pair of constructors revels in fun and silly, and so do I, and so I revel in this pair of constructors.
A serendipitous theme echo in the puzzle: there are at least six answers, such as OX TEAM and HANDEL, that yes, also have legs.
Nice to see that after being shorted a column on Tuesday, we’re given an extra one today.
Zhou and Mallory, I leave your creative and entertaining puzzles uplifted, happy, bouncing out of the room. You bring joy to the box. Thank you!
@Rex, to DEVILE something is to remove the vileness from it, so it wouldn't fit the clue!
ReplyDeleteThe first thing that came to mind after reading this comment is "deviled eggs" re-parsed as "de-viled eggs" with a pronunciation change.
Delete...Jokes aside, I had the STRIFE/STRIVE problem like Rex. It took longer to spot my one wrong square than it took to actually solve the whole thing (in easy Wednesday-level time).
Hey All !
ReplyDelete*Checks day*
Yep, it is actually Thursday. What happened to this week's Thursday Puzzle? How did another WedsPuz sneak in?
As far as puzs go, this one was good. Not a Thursday, but a good Wednesday. No tricks, no runs, no errors (to paraphrase a baseball line.)
Saw the 16 wide, making up for the 14 wide we had earlier. Did enjoy the Revealer tying everything together.
Who knew lab wearers had so many names for their clothing? I went apron-frOCK-SMOCK.
Brain lockup trying to get DEUCE. I hate that. You know something, and the ole brain flat out refuses to unlock it. Is that just me?
©Uniclue:
What the female 1000 leggers shake to turn on the males?
MILLIPEDE BUTTS
Welp, hope y'all have a great Thursday!
Three F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
I made the same error you did - STRIVE. Since I solve on paper, I walked away smugly thinking I finished the puzzle. Wrong. The rest of it was pretty easy, and not much of a challenge for a Thursday. But what else is new?
ReplyDeleteI too believed I had discovered a new word in DEvILE. Alas, no.
DeleteNot a rebus Thursday but an enjoyable puzzle. I had a momentary snag when I had Dennys for Wendy’s. El cid got me up to speed in that corner.🎈🎈🎊🎊
ReplyDeleteOne SHOVELED to another and before I knew it I tore my ACL.
ReplyDeleteHow do you get around?
IHOP.
I complained to my wife about too MANI visits to the nail salon and she gave me the finger.
Critics raved about the new Japanese drama, calling it a NOH-win situation.
By air or by sea is an ETHER/OAR decision.
THIRD EYE: good for the soul but a dilemma for opticians.
Awesome, multi-tired puns today, @Liveprof!
DeleteRoo
Thanks! Whether you intended "multi-tired" or not, it's how I feel most of the time.
DeleteBack to blog after a fairly long hiatus during which time I was often behind a day or two on my solve…so didn’t visit the blog.
ReplyDeleteI very much enjoyed this puzzle in spite of any nits pointed out. Like Rex, I figured that LEGS were involved when I got MILLIPEDE. Unlike Rex, I thought the revealer was very apt. I know @jberg pointed out that “brainstorming” usually involves throwing out many ideas (only) but my experience is that in spite of THAT, brainstorming groups will often vet the ideas during the session…so I can totally see someone piping up with “does that (even) have legs”?
My easy fixable mistakes were hEX before POX and Emma before EYRE.
All in all a fun Thursday!
@Beezer, welcome back!
Delete@Beezer 8:41 AM
DeleteI was starting to think you'd moved to Bangladesh to study with a guru. Glad you are back.
Thanks! Haha…a guru would be a good thing! On Monday I opened up the puzzle (absent-mindedly) and my first thought was…wow, this puzzle seems large. Yeah. I got down about a 1/4-1/3 and realized…I hadn’t worked the Sunday puzzle! D’oh!
DeleteRex, I've been reading your blog for a few years now and am amazed at how much info you cram in on a daily basis. How long does it take you to do your write-ups each morning?
ReplyDeleteHey thanks for asking. I do the whole shebang, from starting the puzzle to posting the write-up, in a roughly two-hour window. So: Anywhere from 1-2 hours (longer only if I fall down a Wikipedia rabbit hole)
Deleterex, what is a wikipedia rabbit hole ?
DeleteLoved this one!
ReplyDeleteWe've seen a lot of my old pal Thierry Henry commenting on the World Cup. Back when Thierry was my barber, we called him Thi. He was great at hair and would even shave beards. But I was somewhat taken aback when one day Mrs. Egs asked "DOESTHISHAVELEGS? Cuz MANI have a SPADAY coming up on VDAY and I need ETHER a shave or Nair."
ReplyDeleteAnd speaking of the World Cup, how about that aggressive play in the England v Argentina semi where one SHOVELED to another. The ref almost couldn't HANDEL it. But no matter how many yellow and red cards are given out, no one is getting a GREEN card as long as Trump's in office. I'm still psyched to watch Argentina v ESPANA. Please, play with POISE YEMEN of the finals, and don't SMASH BUTTS.
I got the LEGS thing early on and, without looking at the clue, was sure the revealer would be "But does it have legs", which doesn't fit. But I did drop in LEGS at the end and that proved correct. Wonderful and funny puzzle. Thanks,
Zhou Zhang and Mallory Montgomery.
@egsforbreakfast 9:10 AM
DeleteOngoing reminder as it's easy to forget every four years, but soccer is still stupid.
I enjoyed learning about Striver's Row, however depressing the story there.
ReplyDeleteDon't watch the Prem if you don't really care. I find it depressing how many people are watching a World Cup so rife with corruption on so many levels. And how many times do we have to see the mug of Gianni Infantino? At least they booed him at one place I happened to be. FIFA Peace prize indeed!
First learned about Strivers Row in the novel Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead. Very good book that turned into a trilogy. Great writeup, OK puzzle with nothing egregious but nothing great.
DeleteWavelength thing maybe but I found this very easy, especially for a Thursday. IRONMANTRIATHLON went in after IRON and the clue for MILLIPEDE confirmed that we were talking about LEGS so the other themers were more or less obvious. PINTA sounded like a likely Spanish name and ROE is something I've seen described as a "bowl topper" and those were the only real no-knows.
ReplyDeleteI'm no business type and have done zero brainstorming sessions, except at teacher conferences, but I wrote in the revealer after DOES. I think this expression is common enough that I have seen it parodied as typical bizspeak, otherwise no idea how I would know it.
Congrats to ESPANA and Argentina, should be a classic final. I get the EPL games and enjoy them very much, 45 minutes plus of non-stop commercial-free action and this old soccer player is always amazed at the skills of these guys.
Nice Thursdecito, ZZ and MM. Didn't really have to Zig Zag at all which Meant Many nanoseconds saved. Too easy for a Thursday but thanks for some speedy fun.
Espana?
DeleteSorry for the lack of a tilde. If I knew how to do that I would.
DeleteMe too for "Struggle" as verb, not noun. But I would be more likely to rename the tie in tennis to rEUCE so "Spoil" would be rEvILE (not exactly a close-enough-for-crosswords answer for spoil) than to keep DEvILE. I did finally see the STRIFE and changed 26A to DEFILE.
ReplyDeleteMy other write-over was drAG before FLAG, easily fixed by FLORA.
I would say the revealer had meaning for me and thus was appreciated. I did get that we were talking about legs after MILLIPEDE turned up but the revealer was still a nice surprise.
Nice job, Zhou and Mallory!
Liked this one. THIRDEYE was a woe, but the rest had LEGS, or not, as the constructors say. Kinda offbeat to refer to snow being SHOVELED given this current run of hot weather. Had to guess at PINTA but leaned on a possible relationship with the famous ship. Also hand up for learning the distinction between direct flight and non-stop after the fact.
ReplyDeleteIn the Working Mom episode of Law and Order, Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach) tells Anna Galves, the girlfriend of the suspected killer “You’re in this up to your little patootie.” Can’t remember ever encountering the word before or since. Liked this puzzle a lot. I always look forward to the Thursday puzzle and this one has the pitfalls and challenges that I appreciate. Thanks ZZ&MM. Thursday is off to a fine start.
ReplyDeleteMy error. The episode is Causa Mortis not Working Mom. In Working Mom Briscoe , when asked by a hooker if he wants a date replies “That’s what I’m here for.” quoting his Billy Flynn character in Chicago.
DeleteA fun Thursday & it wasn't a rebus.:)
ReplyDeleteThank you Mallory & Zhou.
I can't find a reference online, but I remember many years ago, John Malkovich went on a side rant during an interview (60 MInutes?) and suggested that any airline executive who marketed a "direct flight" should be executed (presumably, he'd recently booked a 'direct flight' that he assumed was non-stop given the 'common usage' and was not happy to find out there was a stop involved).
ReplyDeleteI haven't flown Southwest in over 20 years, but I used to use it semi-regularly, and the pre-departure announcements would often go something like 'Welcome to Flight 305 to Phoenix, with continuing stops in Tucson, San Antonio, Houston, and New Orleans.' I imagined someone buying a 'direct' flight to New Orleans assuming the plane would fly straight there and actually having it take nearly all day with all the stops.
The comments have gotten really hard to read - a new thinner, lighter font. Anyone have ideas about how to revert to something more legible? I’m about to give up on them.
ReplyDeleteOn the device you're using, do you have an "Accessibility" option in your Settings menu? You might be able to change the appearance of the comments text to bold or to enlarge the print size.
DeleteEl arte es la tarea propia de la vida.
ReplyDeleteBeing a big fan of legs, this puzzle was certain to entertain me with its creative takes on what a leg or foot can be. Fun and very funny by NYTXW standards. I loved this puzzle.
Before the Big Bang all the gods were having tea parties and frolicking. Everybody knows that. UGH. The Big Bang happened when The Flying Spaghetti Monster spilled her wine into the electrical breaker box.
Love me some trireme trivia. Glad I wasn't one of those OARERS.
I love seeing one of my top 50 words [Lugubrious] who lives happily ensconced between UNCTUOUS and SAVVY on my favorite word list.
❤️ POX. Debugging component. IN THE BAG. THIRD EYE. Lugubrious.
I ended up reading very late last night and found my favorite comment in a long time: "If you want to be a comments section snarker (why?), at least be clever and original." Oddly it wasn't pointed at me, but such a gem of an idea.
People: 5
Places: 4
Products: 6
Partials: 7
Foreignisms: 4
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 26 of 81 (32%)
Funny Factor: 8 🤣
Tee-Hee: DEFILE. BUTTS.
Uniclues:
1 What gets centipedes worked into a frenzy.
2 Syrup applied to look like Darth Vader by a super fan.
3 Ode about your missing reproductive organs quietly shared among those who know.
4 Directions from the crematorium.
5 The wisdom of the snarky kitty.
1 MILLIPEDE BUTTS
2 AVID I-HOP ART (~)
3 SPAY POEM ... SHH
4 SAVE IN THE BAG (~)
5 LOL CAT THIRD EYE
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Sad hero. SOMBER FOOTLONG.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
My knowledge of a piece "having legs" is from an article, a think piece being shared repeatedly to reach lots of readers. The precursor to what's now called "viral," in the days where you couldn't reach multi millions unless the message had legs to other publications.
ReplyDeleteMedium.
ReplyDeleteCostly erasures - heX before POX, Edens before ETHER, and chic (hi @Rex) before POSH
PINTA was it for WOEs.
Gave me a chuckle, liked it.
[Yes – apparently, but it’s difficult to imagine]
ReplyDeleteSEA
I had IRONMANTRIATHLON from the jump, but I was thinking there was a rebus because I thought it was spelled TriathAlon. I'll try to remember that for next time. I will probably not remember that for next time.
ReplyDeleteI did the same thing, and I was so convinced in the extra syllable that I ran the alphabet with the vowels.
DeleteThey had legs ... and they knew how to use em: ZZTop, sorta.
ReplyDeleteExcept maybe for YARDSTICK, a kinda desperate legs puzthemer.
Figured out the puztheme drift fairly quickly, in order to make sense of the "ones" in the IRONMANTRIATHLON clue.
staff weeject pick: HUH. Which coulda also been clued by the 61-Across revealer. honrable mention to LEG, of course.
some faves: INTHEBAG. RAKEITIN. THIRDEYE. ANOINT's rub-a-dub-dub clue. 16x15 puzgrid, atonin for a recent smaller-than-average puzgrid.
Dislike: Haven't been able to print off the newspaper version of the puz this week. Just the NYTPuz site's vanilla printed version.
That newspaper version option don't have legs, anymore?
Thanx for goin out on some limbs for us, Ms. MM & ZZ darlins. Nice job. And, at least, interestin FEET sub-theme, for YARDSTICK.
Masked & Anonymo3Us
p.s.
Runt puzzle:
**gruntz**
M&A
Oddly, my enjoying of the NYTXW impeded my enjoying of the World Cup here at the end. The puzzle on back 6/10 with the WOLRD CUP WINNERS and the the shaded squares for a mere eight countries made me spend the whole World Cup rooting for any team who hadn’t won before, so the semi-final bracket was a let-down. Oh well.
ReplyDeleteRex, for some reason, my social media ads keep thinking I’m interested in the World Rugby Nations Cup—maybe you can watch that next?
Am I the only one who spent way too long trying to make the started clues into questions? It didn’t really fit but I wanted each to start with something like “can it…”
ReplyDeleteMade getting the revealer way more satisfying because what had been a slog suddenly turned into a great whoosh and things started falling into place. Fun Thursday for me.
How do you see the revealer if you solve on nytime paper
ReplyDeleteThe revealer is the clue/answer that explains the theme. It shouldn't be format-dependent.
DeleteThe revealer is the entry that explains, or relates to, all the theme answers. In this puzzle, the revealer clue is the one for 61A, Question during a brainstorming session...and the answer is ""Does this have legs?"
DeleteDefinitely on the easy side for a Thursday—but much easier for those of us whose knowledge isn't skewed toward Wars/Trek, sports, and non-English words and phrases! Anything food-related is a cinch for me; "famous pinch hitter of the 1972 Phillies" (or whatever) not so much.
ReplyDeleteHad fun with this one mostly, at least until I got to YAPS/AT, which I found ridiculously clued as HARANGUES. Otherwise I liked THIRDEYE and the overall mostly smooth flow of the puzzle.
ReplyDeleteI had to get to the YARDSTICK that doesn't have any before I understood that the previous theme answers all had LEGS and was able to anticipate the reveal's question. My one sticking point was the NE, where a guess at dENnY's made the "acquisition" an "INLAd" - which I couldn't make sense of, but I also didn't know what "big day" we were dealing with. Anyway, El CID bailed me out. I noticed a nod to two Midwestern seasons with SHOVEL and RAKE. Happily wer'e now in the time of verdant FLORA.
ReplyDeleteColor me careless, but this might be a first. Error on the first letter of the puzzle, otherwise correct. I settled for cHI rather than really thinking about the Greek alphabet and then thought, “Well, it would smart if you got cOSHed.” Who’s worse? Me, or Thomas Tuchel?
ReplyDeleteI’m not suggesting that GMT is a wrong answer (it’s not), but here’s fun fact: Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) has been superseded as the primary global clock-setting standard by Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). UTC serves as the international time standard for regulating clocks and civil time worldwide. It provides the reference point for time zones and facilitates consistent international communication, navigation, scientific research, and commerce. GMT, based on solar observations at the Prime Meridian in Greenwich, London, functioned as the historical standard but has been replaced due to the need for greater precision.
ReplyDeleteI guess the big brains behind my browser have figured out that I don't need that kind of precision. When I open a new page on the browser I get a list of the times in various cities and they say "Vancouver PDT" and "New York EDT", they also say "Paris GMT+2" and "Sydney GMT+10". If they gave me a UTC figure I might be totally confused.
DeleteIN THE BAG and ON THE NOSE!
ReplyDeleteIt took a while to get the theme. I had the revealer at 61 across partly filled in by crosses, and saw -------SHAVELEGS. The theme has something to go with shaving legs? How bizarre.
ReplyDeleteIt was actually a fun theme, and as Rex mentioned the YARDSTICK clue was quite funny.
I took 5 years of French but couldn't remember what "Tout a fait" means. "All to do"? Kinda tricky clue for OUI. Along with PINTA the clue seems to have been edited up in difficulty.
It's one of those things that doesn't seem to have a literal translation. I've always heard "tout a fait" in the sense of "you're right". But I only had a couple of years of high school French.
Delete@Les, that sounds more familiar! Google translates it as "quite".
DeleteOh so very clever and fun! Had to look up ART then it all fell into place. Really nice.
ReplyDeleteI also had strive before STRIFE, then I remembered the Cockney rhyming slang for wife. Thank you all for the DEET explanation ( I was thinking details in coding!). And for the making clear the meaning of DIRECTFLIGHT
I had the STRIVE problem but it was worse. Because I filled in DEVISE for the crossing (interpreting SPOIL in the sense of PLANNING, as for a fight, and concluding that DEVISE could mean SPOIL in that common meaning of planning). The problem of course is that I can never remember the ubiquitous ACL. Ever.
ReplyDeleteBah. Fun puzzle but the revealer makes no sense. Source: I was a corporate weenie. An idea, a project, even a glass of wine “has legs” in that it has staying power. But I have never heard someone ask at the OUTSET “does this have legs?”. Whether something “has legs” is an observation made in the moment, not a question one asks ex ante.
ReplyDeleteThe best Thursday puzzle in eons! Kudos to them both!
ReplyDeleteDefinitely not my wheelhouse. (Or maybe nothing is the last couple of months.) Most of the clues meant NOTHING to me - Had to cheat for half a dozen answers to even get started. Then after I understood that the time clues were asking about legs it became quite fun.
ReplyDelete“B***h I’m morose and lugubrious, Im’ma let the uzi spit, turn his face into goopy s**t” - Lil Ugly Mane, the only reason that clue clicked immediately.
ReplyDeleteSo late to the party today! I liked this a lot. I love the whole angle of question/answer, and the revealer question is a phrase I've heard a bunch of times in corporate America. I really got a kick out of how this puzzle made my brain work, very different than most solves.
ReplyDeleteI found this properly Thursday difficult and enjoyed the workout. Thank you Zhou and Mallory for this very unique and fun-filled ride!