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Indian P.M., 1991-96 / THU 8-27-26 / 2007 horror sequel / Check-in from a texter / Gesture also known as "spirit fingers" / Apt synonym for "wake-up call" / Totino's frozen food offering / Pre-Inca civilization known for its underground aqueducts and geoglyphs / Insects responsible for virtually all fig pollination / "Sesame Street" character with a pet rock named Rocco
Thursday, August 27, 2026
Constructor: Zachary David Levy
Relative difficulty: Medium
Theme answers:
- ZZBU ALDRIN (3D: Astronaut for whom a Pixar character [Buzz Lightyear] is named) ("Buzz Aldrin")
- ZZJA HANDS (33D: Gesture also known as "spirit fingers") ("jazz hands")
- ZZPIA ROLL (10D: Totino's frozen food offering) ("pizza roll")
- ZZZZFUY-WUY (29D: Bear of children's rhyme) ("Fuzzy-Wuzzy")
The Nazca culture (also Nasca) was the archaeological culture that flourished from c. 100 BC to 800 AD beside the arid, southern coast of Peru in the river valleys of the Rio Grande de Nazca drainage and the Ica Valley. Strongly influenced by the preceding Paracas culture, who are known for their extremely complex textiles, the Nazca produced an array of crafts and technologies such as ceramics, textiles, and geoglyphs.They are known for two extensive construction projects that would have required the coordination of large groups of laborers: the Nazca lines, immense designs in the desert whose purpose is unknown, and puquios, underground aqueducts for providing water for irrigation and domestic purposes in the arid environment, several dozen of which still function today. The Nazca Province in the Ica Region was named for this people. (wikipedia)
• • •
That opening NW corner was brutal for me. Nothing. I had nothing. Nothing but PARDO! (5D: Longtime "Saturday Night Live" announcer Don). I had zero idea who the NAZCA were, despite seeing the name (I now remember) once before in the crossword, in the answer NAZCA LINES ("Word of the Day," April 20, 2024). Looks like NAZCA also appears on its own last year (though again as part of the phrase NAZCA Lines). Weird that this ancient civilization only started showing up in crossword puzzles in the 2020s. I guess xword archaeologists discovered them and then discovered that that letter pattern was useful. Anyway, a whiff from me. I also whiffed on UNZIP because of that "?" clue (1A: Open with one's teeth?). I wanted SMILE (!?!?!). I thought [Currently being tried] meant [Currently being sampled or tested], not [Currently being on trial], so AT BAR (aside from being simply an ugly phrase) was a no-hoper. That NATO clue wasn't specific enough for me to see it (2D: Allied grp.). Not really sure about UNAS until I (eventually) got a letter or two (1D: Some, in Leรณn). The other real sticking point came in and around and directly on top of SOG, a non-word that people non-use. SOP is so much the better answer there, but since I'd never heard of a -IPABYTE, I didn't write that "P" in, though I was fully prepared for it to somehow be correct. SOG. People say "moist" is a disgusting-sounding word, but have they met SOG? Things can be SOGgy. But to SOG something? Just say "soak," if only so that people will know what the hell you're talking about.
Had no idea what was going on with this theme for a while, as I say. I knew that the Totino's offering should be a PIZZA ROLL, but IMAGE would've had to become ZMAGE, so ... I was really shrugging up there. Plus the clue on EYE-OPENER was really inscrutable to me, so I just couldn't get into that top section (18A: Apt synonym for "wake-up call"—I was thinking of actual wake-up calls (like the kind you (used to?) ask for at hotels and going ".... they have synonyms for that?"). It was ZZZZFUYWUY (oof) that finally got me the theme. "I know it's FUZZY-WUZZY so ... wuzzup with these "Z"s?" Somehow it became clear. After that, other themers zipped into place.
 |
| [... not to be confused with this guy, ZZFOIE BEAR] |
- 42A: Daughter of Saturn, in Roman myth (JUNO) — I spent much of yesterday's class on the Aeneid talking about her (she's the divine antagonist of that story) and still her name didn't come to me immediately here. I guess I don't think about her lineage enough (?). So I thought of her but really worked the crosses to make sure she was, in fact, the correct four-letter goddess in question.
- 60D: Clumsy vessel (ARK) — ??? "Clumsy" Tell that to NOAH (btw how were those answers not cross-referenced!?)
- 61D: Bygone cousin of a kiwi (MOA) — both MOA and kiwi belong to an infraclass of birds called "paleognaths"—basically all your flightless birds are part of this group (kiwi, cassowary, ostrich, emu, rhea—the ratites) as well as one flying bird, the tinamou, a Central and South American bird that has appeared in the NYTXW eight times (!?) but not a single time since 1982. Bring back the TINAMOU! There are 46 species! Although, wikipedia is telling me they are "shy and secretive" birds, so maybe they don't want the limelight.
- 59A: Be a rat (NAME NAMES) — this puzzle names a lot of them. JLO APU ENO ALI RAO ZOE ZSA(-Zsa) ... and those are just the three-letter ones.
- 33D: Gestures also known as "spirit fingers" (ZZJA HANDS) — wow, RIP "spirit fingers," who says this now? This is the first I'm hearing the term at all. Whereas "jazz hands" ... was immortalized ...
- 46A: Colombian offerings that may be served with hogao (AREPAS) — love AREPAS, but have absolutely no idea what "hogao" is. Probably should've made it my word of the Day, so we'll just call it a bonus "Word of the Day":
Hogao is a variant of Spanish sofrito and is typically used in Colombian cuisine. It is traditionally made with only long green onions and tomatoes, differing from guiso, which can also be made with round onions, garlic, cumin, salt, and pepper that are sauteed over low heat during the cooking process. It is used for meats, arepas, rice, and other dishes, and can complement the famous bandeja paisa. The ingredients and naming tradition varies from region to region, though it is originally from Antioquia and the region whose people are known as paisa. Its name comes from the old use of the verbs ahogar and rehogar that reference a slow cooking technique." (wikipedia)
R.I.P. to ZZ TOP drummer Frank Beard, who died last week at the age of 77
That's all. See you next time.
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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91 comments:
Easy-Medium. I got all the theme answers from crosses and didn't get the theme until after I was done. Not a bad Thursday.
* * * * _
Overwrites:
For soak at 48D I had SOp before SOG.
My 56D bloke was a chap before he was a GENT.
WOEs:
The pre-Inca NAZCA civilization at 14A.
Didn't know the 29A Sesame Street character. Guessed mOE or jOE, but then I realized it was part of the theme and had to be ZOE.
In the 1D clue I confused Leรณn with Lyon and thought they wanted French. But I don't know the French word for some (Googled post-solve; it's quelques). So I entered the Spanish UNAS, figuring they'd be similar.
I hesitated at GIGABYTE (56A) because it's not a particularly large storage unit anymore. I was thinking, "What's the next one after petabyte?" But exa, zetta and yotta didn't fit.
These are not spirit fingers - THESE are spirit fingers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ktJ3w0RH90
Didn't know ZZTOP, but got the trick with (scrambled) FUZZYWUZZY and (inverted) BUZZALDRIN. Otherwise I needed look-ups everywhere. Tough puzzle for old guys.
@Z would be pounding his chest today and rightly so - I loved the Z trick. The resulting letter strings are a little awkward and obviously useless but it took some time to grok and actually assisted in the solve. The ZZ TOP revealer is wonderful and temporal.
Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers
The grid is slightly trivia heavy - Rex summarizes nicely. I did know hogao from my visits to the AREPA Lady in Jackson Heights. I typically top my chicharron AREPA with fresh pico - don’t love the cooked hogao. Maybe @Pablo will discuss the three syllable pronunciation. ZESTFUL, NAME NAMES, EYE OPENER - great stuff here.
Connor Oberst
I really liked this one - highly enjoyable Thursday morning solve.
Silver Haired Daddy of Mine
As they say, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything.
Three F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
Lost another fav celebrity. RIP Tim Curry.
I got the themers in the correct order to have FUZZYWUZZY be the last one, which made it good. Of course, we had to go through OOZIER to get there.
One thing that has become clear to me is I have no idea when things happened. It seemed perfectly reasonable to me that ELO would have a number one album in 2001 (it turns out they did release an album that year, but it only got up to number 94).
Was this rushed through to mark the death of Frank Beard? Sure looks like it because this was definitely not ready for prime time. Rex is dead right about the bear answer. Should have been ZZfuy zzWUY. Also I had SOt for soak for the longest time, not SOp or SOG.
More saplike? What does that even mean? Not to mention the double product placements of RENU and NODOZ.
Terrible. Worst puzzle of the year – or should that be zzpule?
Never got stuck until completely filled and couldn’t find my mistake. Finally changed OHISEE to AHISEE and got the music. Good workout.
I have met SOG, and we’re not on speaking terms anymore.
Was it really necessary to remind us of the Iran war (ALI Khamanei)? There are other Ali’s that could have been clued.
The names got me. I guess I should watch SNL sometime, but had no idea about PARDO, and certainly didn't know Totino's. Using a brand name in a trick answer seems unfair, although the basic idea of ZZPIA wan't hard to get. I did work that one out, but mostly I hit the reveal key, I just didn't have the patience to slog through the crosses.
I didn't know ARK was another word for flatboat, but here's href="https://i.etsystatic.com/13818412/r/il/3c12bb/2853351620/il_fullxfull.2853351620_sfu5.jpg">George Caleb Bingham's painting of one.
[I hope that link works. @Rex, the link to 'how to embed' in your FAQ seems to have expired.]
Tomorrow is another day!
Well, hello Thursday trick! And for me, hello Thursday difficulty. May this continue, please, editors!
Before glomming onto the theme, my favorite Moment Of Confusion came when I had FUYWUY but nothing above it, and I was confident of those six letters. Just shaking my head, trying to recall children’s rhymes with bears, wondering how you even pronounce FUYWUY, certain the answer was going to be arcane.
When that answer finally came after I understood the theme, oh yes, that was a take-a-bow-to-the-constructor moment.
Making the transition from thinking about ZZ Top to “Hey, how about taking answers with double-Zs and floating those letters to the upper squares?” That’s prime constructor thinking.
And this was a prime Thursday, got my fix. Thank you for making this, Zachary, and zzhua!
Tough one for me. Totally bombed on this one. A super-trivia fest, and never got the theme. To start, even though I figured out that Buzz’s first name had to be altered to get UNZIP, the NASCA/PARDO cross was a Natick for me. And so on. In retrospect though I can appreciate the overall construction and creative use of Z’s. In that respect, FUZZYWUZZY was genius.
Justice for zzfoie bear!
With ya' @Roo, although Rex basically didn't have anything nice to say either but still gave it 2-1/2 stars, 1/2 to 1 too many IMO. Brutal for all the reasons he cited.
OK, I do have one nice thing to say, and that was seeing Don PARDO, who not only announced for SNL, but for the original, far superior Jeopardy!, with its far superior host, Art Fleming.
One of those rare puzzles where the revealer actually helped me both understand and complete the puzzle, so thank you and you get points for that! (The worst for me is when I can’t figure out what on earth the revealer has to do with the themers.). I get Rex’s point on the four Zs, but I don’t think he’d have liked ZZFUYZZWUY much better.
Kudos to those who completed this puzzle. I got the z rebus right away. I just wasn’t able to put it into use. DNF No ๐for me.
Octavio Paz was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1990. It came as a surprise TOPAZ, but not to his devoted fans. They began distributing his poems on the streets in Mexico and became known as Paz dispensers.
I can see how "Currently being tried" works for ATBAR, but I associate it more closely with "currently getting drunk." Someone being tried aboard ship for a maritime offense in the early afternoon would be ATBAR ATSEA ATONE.
NAZCA: Pre-Inca civilization known for its devotion to auto racing.
Loved the puzzle, but got bollixed up at fuzzy wuzzy foolishly trying to work the second set of Zs into the center (after the first Y). Also could not get the N in NAZCA (didn't know UNAS).
Had the same error - hard to suss.
What AHISEE ATSEA must be a real EYEOPENER for those tuna. Perhaps the
This zzpule made me zzdiy just looking at it. Real fun time with a real original theme. Thanks, ZZachary David Levy.
I had exactly the same issue. Agree on the workout but I am so so against answers like AH I SEE. It's really not an answer at all.
This was one where I didn't run into any trouble at any point. I know this wasn't Monday or Tuesday difficulty, but once I worked out that the Zs in BUZZALDRIN didn't make sense where they were, I just breezed through. Fun puzzle, if a little easy (for me, at any rate).
There is no rebus. “Rebus” is used in crosswords exclusively to talk about puzzles where more than one letter goes in one box.
Errata: That last word should be spelled "zzhuah".
Revealing puzzle in that it clarified that making non-words into words is an elegant Thursday trick, making words into non-words is a cumbersome chore
The puzzle was fine, but these types of themes are never fun if you don't care about a particular rock band who hit their peak popularity over 40 years ago.
First thing I thought of! I haven’t seen the movie in decades, but that line was such an instant classic that I can still hear it perfectly.
Similar solving experience to @Rex's. Had almost nothing in the entire North other than IMAGE for a long while. I *did* throw down BuzzALDRIN as that seemed obvious and when the Totinos frozen food offering finally hit me, I threw down pizzaROLL as I had not gotten to the revealer yet. So that was a whole bowl of wrong right off the bat.
I will say that if a revealer ever did it's job well, this one did. Probably one of the most direct and straightforward revealers I can remember, and it made it all click immediately. I usually enjoy a thought process that takes a bit more work but I appreciated this one as the Bear of children's rhyme was driving me crazy. I knew ZOE, ZAG, ZSA and LAZED just *had* to be right and was a 100% stumped. ZZTOP came to the rescue and brought it all home. Much as they did when I was in college and came out with Sharp Dressed Man and Legs.
I don't particularly love it when the grid has nonsense words, and the one for fuzzywuzzy is especially unappealing, but I do like the theme concept. I can see Zachary looking at an old album and thinking, "ZZ Top, there's a cool theme there somewhere", and then gets to work.
Though it took me far too long, I thought some of the cluing was quite good, looking at you UNZIP, PJS, EURO, and IMAGE.
Though product naming is often frowned upon, I did get a kick out of the two here whose names are "misspelled" real words: NODOZ and RENU. That was fun.
Some of the non-theme longer fill also looks nice and tries to balance out the strange looking themers, i.e. EYEOPENER, NAMENAMES, and GIGABYTE.
Thanks for this Zachary, cool theme idea with a revealer that really answered my call for help. The themers might not be my cuppa, but I don't see how it could have been executed any other way or any better. This gave me a proper Thursday workout and that's what I look for.
Agreed. Brutal, unfair, worst in many years.
My ARuPAS/SNuS crossing kept the chimes silent until I proofed the ZZpule here, but enjoyed it, despite wanting ZZFUYZZWUY. My NW was tough because I went straight to mAyas, but Don fixed that pretty quickly.
Exactly!
All the things I didn’t like about this puzzle were nothing compared to the pleasure I got seeing that little ol’ band from Texas recognized in the NYT just after Frank Beard’s death.
Entered BUZZALDRIN because I knew BUZZ Lightyear but that was it for the NW, knew PIZZAROLL but that didn't help. Finally went over to the East Coast where FUZZYWUZZY was apparent but it looked like something was going on and then I remembered that I had filled in ZZTOP already and what if the Z's went on top? Aha! I said, rearranged some previous answers and the rest was easy.
Wanted TUB before ARK, better answer, like SOP before SOG, as OFL pointed out. Knew that OOZIER was going to be right but still disliked filling it in. And for me the ZZZZ's were the cherry on the sundae. Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.
@Son Volt-Hogao is new to me but you'd pronounce it "oh -(the initial h is silent) gow" as the ao is a diphthong. "Diphthong" is one of my favorite words, Spanish "diptongo". I used to tell students that it made a wonderful name to call someone you didn't like.
I liked this one a lot, ZDL. Clearly you think the Z's Deserve Love. Thanks for all the fun.
Sad week for pet news. On Tuesday it was Gary and yesterday we had to say good bye to our oldest cat ever, Theo, who was a month short of 22. We have had cats since we were first married, which on Saturday will be 56 years. House feels empty already.
Good stuff, @mg.
The NASCA being devoted to auto racing made me smile.
I enjoyed this one. I can see Rex’s point about its lack of elegance, and there were a lot of names, but it was just about the right difficulty for me. I picked up the theme with ZSA, and then it was fun filling out the rest. I always like thinking about Buzz Lightyear (“To infinity and beyond!”).
ZZ Top has been around (and famous) since the '70s. People born when they formed are "old guys."
I'm with you. He lost me at oozier.
What I don't like about gibberish answers is that (for me, at least), I had to put the gibberish in the correct place. So ZMAGES was incorrect gibberish. But ZZPIAROLL was correct. Wish the app would have accepted both so I didn't spend time looking for a mistake that wasn't there.
Liked this one a lot, although agree about the NW corner, that stumped me for a while. Got the hint pretty quickly, which confirmed my suspicions about the theme answers.
Toughest Thursday in a long time for me, and I like Thursdays. I got a DNF. Once I changed Gooier to OOZIER, I understood the theme, but there was so much fill that was WOE for me. NAZCA, ATBAR, UNAS—so much for the NW corner. And I couldn't even see ZZZZFUYWUY (which, I agree, should have been ZzfuyZzwuy) because I thought SAWIV surely must be SAMIV. Thought PIZZAROLL must be Pizzaroni. Didn't know SNES. Just not my day today. Oh well!
Would have been cool to have HILL, BEARD, and GIBBONS as answers.
Could someone please explain “start to type” = stereo?
Unlike RP, I got the trick very quickly at 10 down, but I mostly agree with everything he said. Seemed heavy with names and trivia, plus it annoys me to have gibberish in the grid, even when it’s correct. And don’t get me started on SOG.
Actually I liked the theme, and the Z’s being flipped was a cool idea. But once you got it, there was nothing left to do except fill in the blanks on the other themers and try to work around the trivia. Fuzzy Wuzzy is certainly a great entry for this puzzle, but the resulting answer seems wrong. If the theme is ZZ at the top, then I think it would’ve been more logical to say ZZFUYZZWUY. Still ugly but correct and consistent with the others. Overall, a good bit of fun to solve.
Didn't like it at all. Moving the Z's to the top is fine, but leaving a mess of letters behind was ugly.
When I got the Zs in the NW (before ZZTOP), my first instinct was to flip BUZZ into ZZUB, which left me very confused. Luckily I didn't miss the revealer like Rex did, short revealers can go unnoticed but it's a lot easier to spot them when you're solving online and all the theme answers suddenly light up in your face.
And if you've never heard of ZZTop? (Much less Nazcas or the Sounders? At Bar? Really? Who says that? Clearly, I hated this one.
Easy-medium. I knew something odd was going on when BUZZ didn’t work with the crosses. Shortly after that I got the revealer and the rest was pretty whooshy.
No costly erasures and I did not know NAZCA, JUNO, and SOUNDERS.
This was a lot of fun, liked it a quite a bit more than @Rex did.
Got Naticked at AHISEE / AREPAS. I had OHISEE AREPOS. Sigh.
Too damn much ZZZZRALEDALE for me.
Pleasingly tough for me and fun to figure out. I liked the zany array of ZZs, and how could I not warm up to a puzzle that features Fuzzy-Wuzzy, however you scramble his letters? In catching on to the theme, my "AH, I SEE" moment came when writing in ZZTOP prompted me to look back at the ZZPIAR string - that then made sense. And made me realize I had to change buzz to ZZBU, giving me a chance at filling in the previously impossible NW. I wonder if the constructor added WASPS for their buZZZZZZZZing :)
Absolutely terrible cross doomed me. I had AREPOS and OH I SEE there forever instead of AREPAS and AH I SEE.
I was able to cotton to the theme early enough to put this one in the eZ Zone.
I don't mind searching for my typo in a puzzle I enjoyed, but this one wasn't it - more annoying than fun :(
TOG (this old guy) got Zztop AND fuzzy fuzzy ezzily
"wow, RIP "spirit fingers," who says this now? This is the first I'm hearing the term at all."
Someone's never seen Bring It On, and it shows.
Contrived name pudding. Awful.One star.
Stereotype
No eres la รบnica.
Heavens to Murgatroyd! I am really surprised to hear the negative energy surrounding this puzzle. I thought it was wonderful. I caught on to the ZZs at the top right off the bat and then ran into ZZ Top almost immediately afterward and the jam up mess at FUZZYWUZZY is hilarious. I always love a vertical themed puzzle since most gunk in typical puzzles ends up in the down stacks. I completed it in less than half my usual time, so yay for the wheelhouse.
Loving JUNO and ZENO in the same puzzle.
NAZCA was my only sticking point, but I remember learning about those huge drawings from another puzzle awhile back. I didn't know about the aqueducts. Some serious NAZCA leadership apparently.
❤️ OOZIER. Be a rat.
Thank you all for so many nice wishes yesterday about my friend Bailey. Lots of tears here. I'd forgotten Bailey made it into the ๐ฆ Christmas pets in 2024. Here's the day:
https://rexwordpuzzle.blogspot.com/2024/12/lip-plumping-injection-mon-12-16-24.html?m=1
Fittingly it was a coffee themed puzzle.
Gunkometer--
People: 12 {oof... slow it down}
Places: 0
Products: 7
Partials: 6
Foreignisms: 2
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 27 of 78 (35%)
Funny Factor: 6 ๐
๐ฅ Ooh-la-la! ๐ฅ Unzipping with your teeth. Go the other way. ANAL.
Uniclues:
1 Homophonic system for creating late night drama.
2 The phrase, "Dude, look who just walked in."
3 An odiferous sty.
4 How to make your tongue sting.
5 Why your stuffed animal is drunk.
1 UNZIP STARZ PJS
2 EYE OPENER AT BAR (~)
3 FRAT AT ONE (~)
4 PIZZA ROLL WASPS
5 FUZZY WUZZY PIรA (~)
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: My title at the roundtable, well, really every table. SIR GOBBLE UP.
¯\_(ใ)_/¯
Yeah, that bear ain't half bad.
excuse me, jazz hands and spirit fingers are two different things. jazz hands involve motion at the wrist (i.e. your hands move), while spirit fingers involve motion of your lowest knuckles (i.e. your fingers move). crazy how that happens.
also, I have heard the word "sog" used as a verb, as in "too many wet ingredients can really sog out your sandwich". meaning "to make soggy".
@Roo…this is a first (in my blog-viewing history) for you and I gotta say…bravo!
If you start to type with both hands, the tapping sounds will have a stereo effect.
@kitshef….hmmm. Holding your tongue today? Too bad your prior pique isn’t present today…
Liveprof I also was left with a DNF at the intersection of NAZCA and UNAS. I hesitate to call that a Natick because perhaps I should’ve known NAZCA. I know the lines, but can never remember the name.
Easy. I thought this was going to be a themeless, trick-less Thursday until I hit ZZTOP and thought "AH. I SEE." Went back and filled in the themers and was done in well under my average Thursday time. Cute idea, glad to see the shout-out to ZZ TOP, but mostly agree with Rex's critique.
Well my friend…you will see a rare time a non-complainer kinda complains…
Caught on to the trick once I got to ZZTOP which is the ONLY thing I liked about the puzzle because I was a ZZTOP fan. Filled in two ZZs when necessary then later finding one had four. The rest felt like a slog and I’m surprised at 2 1/2 stars. End of story.
A tedious, unpleasant S(L)OG.
Beezer, yup. The UNAS may deny it Natick status because it's inferable via language stuff? I'm more forgiving of myself for DNFs as I get old and stop caring about most things.
Good one! ;-D
@Gary and @Pablo, so sorry about your beloved Bailey and Theo. We've been petless for a while now, and I still sometimes imagine I see our cat around the corner or our dog waiting at the door.
A couple of feral cats do occasionally come in for a snack and to play with the old leftover toys. I even bought them a few of their own for Christmas.
The puzzle? Cute idea, but....well, I'll zip it.
Condolences on the loss of your cat. My childhood cats also lived into their twenties. It's very hard to lose our pets.
@jnlzbth. I feel your pain. I thought it might be PIZZAsomething because Totino’s sounds vaguely Italian, but I hardly ever go down the frozen prepared food aisle in my supermarket. I don’t know that I’ve ever actually seen a PIZZA ROLL, never mind the ZZPIA version.
Just looked up PIZZA ROLLS to see if they are what I thought they might be and, no, they are not. Similar, but different. I imagined a roll-up, like a kind of a savoury jelly roll. But they are basically pizza pockets. Wikipedia describes them thusly: Pizza rolls are a frozen food product consisting of bite-sized breaded pizza pockets with an interior of tomato sauce, cheese or cheese analogue.
Cheese analogue? WTF?
And SAWIV! I saw a trailer for one of those movies (# unknown) and just said “Nope.” I don’t really like movies where people are held captive and tortured. I have to wonder what need they satisfy for viewers, and that frightens me.
As soon as I read 28 down, I thought: oh, they each start with a Z (at the top). So I went around and put one Z in each themer. Then a while later I realized: hey, there's two Z's! So I put a second Z in each one. Then at 29 down, I thought: oh, Fuzzy Wuzzy, so I entered ZZFUYZZWUY. It took me a while to realize all four Z's went at the top. Anyway, it was kind of a cute theme but not too elegant to look at.
A few too many product / company names today: STARZ, NODOZ, RENU, SNES. I don't much like them to start with, but ugly initials like SNES are the worst.
On Tuesday we had OH DAMN and AW CMON, and today it's AH I SEE. What's next... OO NICE, OW IT HURTS, AY MAMA?
Only minor woe not 100% sure on arepas, had it as arapos so oh I see ( which worked just as well as ah I see & an incorrect game console ( which I've never heard of).
Great puzz otherwise, had the zz top thing early, just took a while to figure out what was going on
I have to join the group of those with nothing nice to say about the puzzle, and yes, sad to lose Tim Curry. Will never forget the first time I saw Rocky Horror, so much fun.
My starting experience was like yours, throwing down little in the top other than buzzALDRIN and PIZZA ROLLS. But when I got to the revealed, I supposed ZZTOP just meant the ZZs always came in the top word and thought that was rather inclement. It wasn't until I threw down fuzzywuzzY in the east and started recognizing the across answers I was sure of, that I realized the trick of moving the ZZs to the top of the words. Suddenly the revealed made more sense, but the rearranged ZZ words were now less elegant.
In the first two themers the double ZZs were the last two letters of the first words BUZZ and JAZZ but that pattern changed when the ZZs of PIZZA were not the last two letters but rather were inside of that word. Then everything seemed to fly apart when the poster child for grid gobbledygook ZZZZFUYWUY showed up. Really?
Fuzzy Wuzzy wuz a bear
Fuzzy Wuzzy had on hair
Fuzzy Wuzzy wuzn't fuzzy
Wuz he?
My very first entry into the zzpule: BUZZALDRIN. Unfortunately, under the puztheme rule specs, I misspelt it badly -- and the rest of the NW corner made no sense. Fortunately, the ZZTOP revealer occurred in mid-solvequest, so I started to understand then.
Neat rock group, btw.
staff weeject picks: All them 3-letter names that @RP cited in his blog.
fave stuff: ATONE & HEN clues. AIRBALL. EYEOPENER.
Thanx for the Z's, Mr. Levy dude. M&A needs some extras of em, after his big Alaska trip.
Masked & Anonymo8Us
p.s.
Runt puzzle/ Alaska trip debrief:
**gruntz**
M&A
I'm in the "liked it" group. I'm not generally a Thursday fan but this was clever and fun. Well worth the gibberish. I think @Rex misses a lot by ignoring clues.
You and I both. Nasty trick for an otherwise beautiful solve.
I enjoyed this ZZTOP puzzle despite not knowing the band (but I know their music - thanks, Rex!). Had to look up PARDO and SOUNDERS too, but other names were gettable for me. Loved FuzzyWuzzy all ZZ topped - clearly opinions differ on that one! And of course ZZ gets woke up in this puzzle. Nice!
I too thought SOG ??!!! However we do have the word soggy and English allows us to make up words that way so okay.
@Les
I feel the same way about John Wick movies. How people like them is amazing. He just shoots 548 people in the head. Mass murder. Fun.
Roo
Sorry, @pablo. Cats are the best, too.
I agree with Hack Mechanic that AREPAS/AREPOS was annoying crossed with the ever-irritating AH/OH fill. Other than that it was the best Thursday in a good while: clever conceit that didn't try too hard and did something genuinely new.
@pabloinnh 9:42 AM
A big hug to you both. It's the silence that's deafening. I had a cat who lived to be 21 and the last decade he mostly sat in my lap. These little beasts find their way into our hearts, don't they.
@Beezer 12:25 PM
You are always a ray of sunshine, but light requires a little darkness so we can see the difference. And I can definitely understand today's antipathy, I just had things go well for me. I think I like Z's.
Thanks for sharing the Bailey pic @Gary.
If you're going to do a Zztop theme at least include a reference to their songs and band members. Especially since Frank Beard their drummer just passed. Craptacular.
I’m so sorry! It’s one of the hardest things in the world to let them go. My Veterinarian once told me that our pets depend on us all their lives to do what’s best for them, and making that decision is part of it. At the time, it was small comfort but since then, it has always made me feel a little better to think about it in those terms
I always thought ZZTOP could be a theme, and here it is. (Bring on the Zener cards!) I don't mind some clunky fill here and there, so I enjoyed the puzzle. It looks like Zachary David Levy is one Wed away from hitting for the cycle or whatever the phrase is. Very doable, gl Zachary!
Forgot to mention that Jeopardy! Masters began on Tuesday with Paolo Pasco as one of the six contestants (8pm Eastern on ABC). No spoilers, but he's doing quite well. One interesting question/answer, paraphrased: Latin phrase for the tombstone abbreviation R.I.P. (Triple Stumper)
Lots of unfortunate losses this week.
@GARY Glad to see a pic of Bailey again. Sorry if this is mean, but I laughed when I saw the photo. Well, more of a hahaww. Then I read the caption and felt like a d***. I have no doubt you gave her the best possible life until the very end.
Requiescat In Pace to @pabloinnh's Theo. 21 11/12 is an amazing run.
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