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Natural wonder in Venezuela / MON 8-24-26 / Clerical vestment / Presentations with an 18-minute limit / Word after Georgia, Virginia or low / Leave the cocoon / Zing ___ (brand of Bloody Mary mix) / "The Magicians" novelist Grossman
Monday, August 24, 2026
Constructor: Steven Jopek
Relative difficulty: Easy (solved Downs-only)
[8 days without a Star Wars reference, in case you're wondering]
Theme answers:
- UNDERWORLD (17A: Criminals' sphere)
- TIDAL WAVE (25A: Tsunami)
- PURGATORY (50A: Stop in the afterlife)
- ANGEL FALLS (60A: Natural wonder in Venezuela)
Angel Falls (Spanish: Salto Ángel; Pemon: Körepakupai Vená) is a waterfall in Venezuela. It is the world's tallest uninterrupted waterfall, with a height of 979 metres (3,212 ft), and a plunge of 807 m (2,648 ft). The waterfall drops over the edge of the Auyán-tepui mountain in the Canaima National Park (Spanish: Parque Nacional Canaima), a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the Gran Sabana region of Bolívar State. The height figure, 979 m (3,212 ft), mostly consists of the main plunge but also includes about 400 metres (1,300 ft) of sloped cascade and rapids below the drop and then a 30-metre-high (100 ft) plunge downstream of these talus rapids.The falls are along a fork of the Río Körepa which flows into the Churún River, a tributary of the Carrao River, itself a tributary of the Orinoco River.
With regard to overall height, a revisited validation of waterfall measurements is not available, and there is still uncertainty whether Angel Falls or South Africa's Tugela Falls is the tallest (both measurements were taken at considerable distance from the two waterfalls). (wikipedia)
• • •
The fill also got a little weak on the back end. CMA ALB ELA (and ELLA?) ... so much overcommon gunk ... and ZANG!?!?!?! (45A: Zing ___ (brand of Bloody Mary mix)). "Brand of Bloody Mary mix" lol what? Seriously, what? LOL. I know you wanted that "Z," but what in the world is happening there? This is the debut of ZANG. You can see why no one ever bothered to use it before. It's awful. A partial Bloody Mary mix name???? Purge your wordlist!!! The great Japanese director Yasujiro OZU is still waiting to make his first appearance in the NYTXW, and meanwhile this frickin' Bloody Mary mix half-name is like "hey, you mind if I cut the line, cool, thanks!" Jeez louise. I do like ZURICH as an answer. Still, not worth the ZANG of it all. Also, so many names in this one. None of them are particularly tough (except maybe LEV, if you're not familiar with modern fantasy lit), but ugh so many: NADIA OLGA POE ESTEE RHEA RIAN LOEW ELBA LEV ELI REGAN ERNIE APU, make it stop (I could've added ARETHA to that list, but you will Never hear me complain about Aretha being in the puzzle).
Bullets:
- 4D: Leave the cocoon (EMERGE) — this was maybe the hardest Down in my Downs-only solve. An odd way to come at EMERGE. Luckily, adjacent Downs allowed me to infer the first few letters of EMERGE, so no great tragedy.
- 65A: Arctic creatures with flippers (SEALS) — "Arctic" ... I mean, sure, but they're just ... creatures with flippers. There are SEALS in plenty of non-Arctic places. Coincidentally, we're in the middle of John Sayles's The Secret of Roan Inish (1994) (I stopped it halfway through to come up and write just now). It's the movie we're watching this week in my Movie Club. It's very seal-centric, and it's set in Ireland, which, last I checked ... not Arctic.
- 25D: Word after Georgia, Virginia or low (TECH) — well you got me. I was like "... REEL?" Seems kinda weak to have two of the three examples be schools, but at least it was unusual. Not "partial Bloody Mary mix name" unusual—just plain old "kinda interesting unusual." You know, the good "unusual."
- 38D: Like many horror flicks (GORY) — speaking of GORY horror flicks, I just saw and really liked Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma. The goriness is comically hyperbolic, and I'm not sure I'd actually call it a "horror film"—more a film about horror films, specifically, about the relationship between a young director tasked with rebooting a slasher franchise and the star of the original movie in the franchise (made some forty years earlier), now a reclusive figure living in the woods of the Pacific Northwest. The latter character is played by Gillian Anderson (of X-Files fame), who ends up playing a kind of spiritual/sexual Virgil to Hannah Einbinder's Dante, and let me tell you—you've never seen anything like this relationship on screen. Also, you will never look at Kentucky Fried Chicken, or hear the Counting Crows' "Long December," quite the same way again.
[I was gonna play the Counting Crows song for you here but then I stumbled on this surprising and gorgeous solo version by MJ Lenderman, enjoy]
That's all. See you next time.
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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77 comments:
My five favorite original clues from last week
(in order of appearance):
1. Cats and dogs, for example (5)
2. In place? (5)(3)(2)
3. The longer they are, the harder they'll be to beat (4)
4. Success in another's field, say (4)(3)
5. Meeting that goes above and beyond? (6)
NOUNS
WHERE ITS AT
ODDS
ROAD WIN
SEANCE
My favorite encore clues from last week:
[Private sleeping accommodations?] (4)
[Volume control device?] (1)-(6)
COTS
E-READER
I liked it better than REX did...maybe 3-stars. Didn't have the same issue with PURGATORY vs. HELL, because I don't believe in either one. My only problem was remembering how to spell MEDIEVAL (it always looks wrong).
Had *exactly* the same gripe about PURGATORY.
I"m with you, Bob. *** from me. 13:54 downs only today, so medium-challenging for a Monday to me. Take 2 pairs of long answers and tie them together with a grid-spanning revealer=a win from my end on a Monday !
Now that is a clever theme. I especially liked, after getting TIDAL WAVE and moving lower in the puzzle, wondering what the second high-water answer would be. I actually took a moment to try to guess it, and got nowhere. ANGEL FALLS, the highest waterfall in the world, was perfect.
I also liked that this Monday puzzle started appropriately with ACME, the nickname for Andrea Carla Michaels, who has made 69 NYT Mondays, and is one of the two “Queens of Monday” (along with Lynn Lempel).
Wordnerd me also liked seeing the crossing semordnilaps RIAN and IRIS, which are each proper names both ways. Not to mention IRIS ELLA sharing the box with ELBA. Hah!
Congratulations on your debut, Steven, and I’m intrigued to see more from you. You brightened my day, and thank you!
As your resident alphadoppeltotter, a role I’ve inexplicably taken in the past nine years, it is my duty to inform you that this puzzle has an unusually low number of double letters, at four, where unusual is any number less than five. This is the sixth time this year that this has happened.
I remain your humble servant, ever on the alert.
Yea - the theme is a little disjoint - it doesn’t ruin the entire experience for me but it is highly noticeable. The Catholic Church teaches that your eternal future has already been decided when you enter PURGATORY - you’re there for a final cleansing - definitely a discrete place and not HELL.
The Sugarcubes
I liked the spanning revealer - although the whole grid was gettable as a themeless. ANGEL FALLS and TIDAL WAVE were nice. Not much to say about the overall fill - Rex summarizes nicely but it’s pretty flat overall. ARAFAT can fill the MAO, CHE shoes.
How’s ERNIE
A less than stellar start to the solve week.
Tyler Childers
TIL that Geneva has the same number of letters as ZURICH. And Zing gANG seemed as plausible an answer as the correct one. Better as the name of a band, tho.
While slogging through this puzzle I felt like I was in a Hell of gunky fill. After reading this blog I realize now it was only purgatory. So thank you for that.
ELA, ELLA, ELBA. . . This puzzle has really gone to ell.
Why would 5D be CAWS?
Because.
Right. Why?
Because.
What?
Where to file Earth?
UNDERWORLD.
Why the BALEful look Farmer Brown?
So much wheat to gather!
I was so happy to solve it downs only, I didn’t notice the purgatory issue. Close enough! Had Rita before Rhea, Geneva before Zurich and was looking for some kind of “ithic” before Medieval. Good times!
The PURGATORY reference didn’t put me off the way it did Rex, but it’s actually good news to most folks that you are on the way up, not down. So maybe the reference is more analogous to a glass half full or half empty approach to life rather than a “leaner” in the horseshoes analogy to crosswords. Anyway, I share @Bob Mills feeling that somehow MEDIEVAL always looks wrong!
Ha. Well said. Couldn’t agree more.
Way too many names.
Haven’t disliked a Monday like this in a long time.
Hey All !
I believe @Gary's Gunkometer will be tilting towards the full range. Just by the names alone.
Decent puz. Agree with Rex (although not as vehemently) that PURGATORY is not HELL. I'm sure some of y'all will come up with a better Themer. The ole brain this morning is refusing to let me think of one. 😁
Funky Blocker pattern, 42 of 'em, on the high side (38 usual max.) Four Cheaters are the extra Blockers.
I guess that's it. Hope y'all have a great Monday!
Two F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
I anticipated some type of dissonance (in fact I even had some myself) when I saw how PURGATORY was folded into the reveal - I didn’t anticipate such a visceral reaction from our host. In retrospect, it makes perfect sense, as he has advanced degrees and does that stuff for a living.
They don’t have line judges or a chair umpire in ping pong (to my knowledge) but Mr. Shortz, acting in that capacity, made the call on that one and Rex went all Năstase/McEnroe on him (you can run, but you can’t hide - the infamous “Rex Rant” will come for you sometime). I guess that, in another useless and misguided attempt at removing the “human element” from Crossword Officiating, The NYT could insist that an AI chatbot “scrub” all future puzzles for accuracy, a prospect that I am sure OFL be less than enthusiastic about.
Some unusually tough stuff for a Monday. ZANG, LEV and OLGA were all WoEs; RIAN should be, but s/he has been in puzzles enought for me to remember, and even to remember it's not RyAN.
Same objections as Rex on PURGATORY and the "Arctic" part of the clue for SEALS. The majority of seal species do NOT live in the Arctic.
It was OK, I suppose. As is the case most weekdays, I wasn't really paying attention to the theme, but I agree it's weak (@Bob Mills: I don't believe in ORCS, VAMPIRES, CYLOPS, or the SIRENS, but I know they are four different things. I don't believe SCROOGE or TINY TIM actually existed, but I know the differences between them as well. The idea that just because you don't believe something is real means you can't know the difference between them is not correct!).
As a geologist who lectures on TSUNAMI in a couple of courses, I cringed to see the old, frowned-upon term TIDAL WAVE used as an equivalent (tsunami have nothing to do with tides).
I think there's something worth mentioning about the final themer: ANGEL FALLS is also a description of Satan, right? He was a fallen angel. So it's hell(-adjacent) *and* high water.
I don’t understand the gripes from a lot of you. Is it the end of vacation blues? I thought the puzzle was a pleasant, enjoyable solve.🎈🎈🎊🎊
Another name: Could’ve done without ARAFAT, the man who “never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity” while enriching himself.
It's been so hot lately that I've taken to asking Mrs. Egs to set the thermostat to cool, so the system would ACME. But then she starts complaining like, "with you it's always MEME.". I thought IDLED a good life, but EWE never know.
Isn't there a saying about Senator Cruz? When TEDTALKS an ANGELFALLS?
The other day, many of us gave a pass to the jejune/ARID combo based largely on reference to synonym sites like M-W, Thesaurus and Cambridge Dictionary. Well each of them also buys the HELL/PURGATORY tie. Just bad luck on the constructor's part to have stumbled into the netherworld specialty of @Rex. But still, a nice debut. Thanks and congrats, Steven Jopek.
I thought the theme was solid and the themers were just fine. I understand @Rex's objection to PURGATORY, if I studied/taught this stuff for years, I guess I'd be annoyed as well. As I'm a layman, it didn't bother me as much and I'll go back to "it's a puzzle, not a dictionary." But I get his rancor here, I'm sure if there was some egregious error with a Grateful Dead clue/answer or a misinterpretation of a Hebrew word, I'd be just as rattled.
Played a little tough for a Monday for me. Down at the bottom, the golfer ERNIE is unknown to me and King Lear's daughter was just not front of brain, nor was ANGELFALLS though I know it...so that whole neighborhood including the themer took a bit longer than it should have.
I always like a revealer that's also a spanner, so that was nice. And each of the themers are great fill that would make any grid look pretty all on their own.
I like @David Eisner's take on the final themer of ANGELFALLS, that adds some elegance to the whole game.
Kinda interesting that we had She, in Portuguese (ELA) along with Ms. Fitzgerald (ELLA) so close together in the SE... Now that I look, ELBA is a close neighbor! POE and POEM also caught my attention. Nothing much to comment there, just caught my eye...
And now Hugh's Monday Haiku:
Do CUMIN said POE
As I have a new POEM
You may WANT to sit.
Go Jackets!
Ooooo Good Catch!!
That was my first thought -- it took me a couple minutes more to realize that ANGEL FALLS constituted high water!
At first I completely agreed with Rex about Purgatory. But on Reading Wordplay, I did some digging.
Note the phrase is usually "Between Hell & High Water."
Caitlin Lovinger in Wordplay
"What does that expression have to do with PURGATORY and a TIDAL WAVE? The first is adjacent to HELL, of course, and the second is an example of HIGH WATER. For reinforcement, look to 17-Across, [Criminals’ sphere] — often called an UNDERWORLD, which is in the same realm as HELL — and 60-Across, the [Natural wonder in Venezuela]. This one is tough! It’s ANGEL FALLS, which has been in a Times puzzle only once before (on a Saturday). It’s the world’s tallest uninterrupted waterfall and, therefore, another great example of HIGH WATER.
Note that 17- and 50-Across, UNDERWORLD and PURGATORY, both start on the left side of the grid, above and below HELL, at 35-Across, while 25- and 60-Across, the aquatic theme entries, end on the right side of the puzzle, above and below HIGH WATER — a great touch."
The underworld is simply the land of the dead in Greek and Roman mythology. Not Hell but Hades. Purgatory a Roman Catholic concept.
Hell in the puzzle is between Underworld and Purgatory.
High Water is between Wave and Angel Falls.
Mondays can be a bit bland (with Lewis’s ACME/Lempel exception of course) but I was entertained by this theme. PURGATORY qualified in my childhood recollection of Catholic education as a place where most of us would experience the torment of HELL, just not forever. Oh goody. Tsunamis and Hades, nothing bland about this start to the week! Sounds like the evening news.
You came up with a couple of beaut’s today - but that’s not much of a surprise, is it. I’m still laughing at the skewering you laid on Mr. Cruz.
Yeah, ZING ZANG was awful, although fairly crossed. Even if you don't know your 3 sisters, OLGA is the only name you get from the crosses to it. But pre-mixed mixers is not a category in my wheelhouse.
As for PURGATORY, the revealer clue says it's a "hint"--or to cite Joaquin's Dictum, it's a clue, not a definition. Inelegant in a revealer, but not all that bad. I believe Vatican II actually abolished Purgatory, but that's not a problem for the puzzle. Anyway, it reminded me of a wonderful performance of Elgar's "The Dream of Gerontius" that I once attended. I wasn't familiar with the poem, and was very moved by it (almost, but not quite to the point of conversion)--until the end when the protagonist reaches heaven and his guardian angel lowers him into purgatory for the next few centuries to have his remaining impurities washed away.
I did think cluing MEDIEVAL as basically 'like the Middle Ages' was weird
But "plumbing conduits" for PIPES took the cake where weirdness is involved.
Thanks, EasyEd. MEDIEVAL refers to the MIDDLE Ages, so MIDIEVAL or MIDEVIAL always seems right to me.
I gave some thought to Rex's complaint after I saw the revealer and then PURGATORY filled in. And I shrugged - PURGATORY is close enough to hell for me. I haven't read Dante. Maybe someday, when I get bookshelves built and my collection of Harvard Classics gets unearthed out of the garage, I will delve into Dante.
I thought building a puzzle around HELL OR HIGH WATER was clever. I missed the LEV clue because I raced by in Across mode. "The Magicians" is a favorite of mine and I've read the trilogy multiple times. I didn't watch the TV series for the same reason I wish I hadn't watched "Game of Thrones" - it ruined the books such that I can't picture the characters the same way as I originally did when reading, I see the characters only as the actors in the show. And the same reason that any time a commercial for "Outlanders" comes on TV, I close my eyes and tell my husband to change the channel. I refuse to ruin the characters in books I've been reading for 35 years.
Thanks, Steven Jopek!
PURGATORY struck me as a little off too but after reading the explanation cited by @Jimbo my objections are overruled. I left the revealer for last but still couldn't come up with it, nice aha moment there. Had a poster of ANGELFALLS on my classroom wall so that was a gimme. Couple of names needed crosses--LEV andZANG (??!!). , otherwise Monday-easy.
Nice theme, SJ. Some Junk but not bad. Thanks for a fair amount of fun.
Thanks to all who recommended Roz Chast's piece in the New Yorker, which was I was especially happy to see that she included ADIT--tells me she's been solving for a long time. I'm still waiting for that one to reappear.
Thanks @Jimbo, that adds some nice depth here.
Are others too critical or are you too simple-minded? (See how that works?—just express your own opinions and leave others alone if you have nothing interesting, or kind, to add 🎈 🎈 🎊 🎊 )
Tsunami is not a tidal wave. From USGS site: “Although both are sea waves, a tsunami and a tidal wave are two different and unrelated phenomena. A tidal wave is a shallow water wave caused by the gravitational interactions between the Sun, Moon, and Earth ("tidal wave" was used in earlier times to describe what we now call a tsunami.) A tsunami is an ocean wave triggered by large earthquakes that occur near or under the ocean, volcanic eruptions, submarine landslides, or by onshore landslides in which large volumes of debris fall into the water.”
The amount of vitriol directed at PURGATORY as a theme answer was delightfully gratifying to read—thanks, Rex! I’m a Renaissance/Reformation scholar, and people were literally killing each other over related theological topics (that’s precisely what all those indulgences Martin Luther protested the selling of were about), so we might as well get our terms straight. Great revealer though, just needs a better second synonym for hell, like THE BAD PLACE or something.
I think Rex went a little overboard. If you can get out of your MEDIEVAList head for just a sec, you'll find that "hell" has other senses, besides that of a state of eternal damnation, by which the entry makes sense. In classical Buddhism for example, there are six general realms of existence, including heaven and hell realms, and all are considered temporary states; the hell realms are sometimes referred to as "purgatories".
I'd rate it about medium in difficulty for a Monday. ZANG was certainly new to me (and "zing zang" led to an earworm where I now have the song Witch Doctor playing in my head). I enjoyed it.
Agree on your PURGATORY take with Joaquin’s Dictum!
Not for me :(
Wow. Throw me in with the people that didn’t give PURGATORY a second thought in that some would say that it is a temporary realm of “hell-like” conditions, albeit with the knowledge it is temporary. The whole thing made me deep dive into figuring out just HOW a constructor could change that, which is nothing I usually use my brain energy on. Actual synonyms for HELL are few, but do include UNDERWORLD…and…”perdition”, which would fit in the space.
However…how do you clue THAT without obvious HELL references, ie “eternal damnation” OR using a movie reference like “Road to_____”? Seems to me that either of those options would be blasted for either “pop culture trivia” or being above Monday level.
I will just say that I enjoyed the puzzle, have read The Inferno, read a lot about the rest (getting through The Inferno was enough for me) and like @jberg, invoke Joaquin’s Dictum for a very nice Monday offering.
i briefly paused before entering ARETHA thinking "'erasure' is too long" and then remembered their songs include "chains of love" and "ship of fools". now i need a mashup with "chain of fools".
HELL OR HIGH WATER brought to mind 21st amendment brewing's hell-or-high-watermelon wheat ale. what are the odds tomorrow's puzzle includes a "brew free or die" reference?
Simpsons is the best, but c'mon! Even Hank Azaria game to understand . . .https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7588752/
I usually complain about Rex's pedantic dislikes, but this one is right on!
Gene
Ha! Me too.
This is a desperate “defense.” If you have to go to Obscure Buddhist doctrines to make the theme make sense, the theme doesn’t make sense.
Tough Monday, more like a Tuesday for me.
I did not know LEV and ZANG.
Costly erasures - Pulp before PITH and spelling MEDIEVAL.
Cute theme, liked it a bit more than @Rex did but PURGATORY does seem like a stretch.
Croce Solvers. - Croce’s Freestyle #1141 was tough for me with the bottom half more challenging than the top. Good luck!
Relax, Rex. Given that heaven, hell, and purgatory are all pure fiction, it's OK for a crossword puzzle to be allowed some leeway.
I don't find fault in anyone who didn't know ZANG, but al little surprised at the cocktail-loving Rex not knowing it. It's generally regarded as one of the best mass produced Bloody Mary mixes. No-brainer for me. :-)
The only things I learned was how to spell MEDIEVAL and the name of a Bloody Mary mix. Not enough.
Where’d you get the population data for Puratory and Hell. I.e., why do you believe most people are Heaven bound?
This old timer remembers when Zurich was famous for its gnomes. Indeed the main drag was nonstop financial institutions when I went.
Yeah, tgat’s a seing and a miss tht.
Hell and Purgatory have very different meanings because as Rex notes they are completely different things.
Similar to a comment I made above: King Lear and Hamlet are both pure fiction. Should the crossword be able to have the answer for the clue "Goneril's dad" be Hamlet and we'll just give the constructor and editor leeway because they're both purely fictional characters? Can you not distinguish any differences between Jane Eyre, Jay Gatsby, and Horse Badorties because they're all fictional?
The idea that things that are fictional can't be distinguished from each other is completely false.
Assuming you feel both hell and purgatory are non-existent, I assume you also feel heaven is fictional. Should the crossword have leeway to interchange heaven and hell because both are fictional? That's the argument you made!
Names, names, names - more and more of AI generated gunk now.
Thank you (and Anonymous 8:04). You saved me the trouble of making the exact same comment. Tidal wave and tsunami have about as much in common as purgatory and hell!
Oh jeez, again with all the @#$%& names!! Yesterday we had six down answers that were attached and were all names. Today we have something even worse: nine down answers, all attached, in a sideways Y shape! Starting at square 34: RHEA ,LOEW, WNBA, ARAFAT, LENOVO, ESTEE, TEDTALKS, ELBA, RAYS! And then scads more. Even giving ARETHA a pass, as Rex did, this is just ridiculous.
I solved down clues only but finished with a couple of errors. I remembered the Simpsons storekeeper as ABU, and the Knives Out director as REAN, and then for good measure I misspelled MEDIEVAL as MIDIEVIL! I was so fed up I just clicked Reveal Incorrect Letters. Of course I blame the names, including CMA which without the clue could be anything.
Yes, SEALS are sure nuff plentiful in lots of non-arctic places. When kayaking west of Vancouver and near Tofino on the Island, they were all over the place. I would be paddling along, miles from shore, and suddenly hear a "whoof"! A seal, ten feet away, taking a good breath and gazing at me like a faithful dog.
No comments about ORCH yet? Not as bad as ZANG, but... ORCH.
I solved Downs-only. When you have ZAN_, you normally don't have to look at the clue, the Y fills itself in. But... ZANG. Not All Debuts Are Good but ZANG it, not all bad debuts are this terrible. Luckily O__A made OLGA the only possibility there.
ZANG on its own would be bad enough, but ZANG crossing LANG crossing ALB? ALB is Wednesday crosswordese at the very least, and even then it should show up very rarely. ELA should show up less often than that. And ORCH should show up when pigs and ASPs and EWEs fly. And then there's MARDI, which is fine, but cluing it without the Gras is not Monday-friendly IMO, especially crossing DEI.
Not a geologist and the tidal wave equals tsunami error is annoying to me as well.
"Come hell or high water ', i.e. persevere despite difficulties. Underworld, purgatory, and tsunami are all difficulties - but Angel Falls? Maybe a dam break or canyon flood?
Never ever heard of between hell and high water (only google result is an obscure book title) only come hell or high water. Have heard between heaven and hell.
Good one, @David Eisner!
The details of the height and plunge of Angel Falls are staggering. Great WOTD choice.
Anon 12:05.
Don't bother. Folks who claim purgatory and Hell are fictional are not interested in the truth. Logic will not sway them. They're more interested in boasting of their atheism.
You of course are correct. In their world, Huck Finn and Emma Woodhouse are interchangeable because each is factional.
Lewis, I knew I could count (literally and figuratively) on you! As I zoomed through this, I thought we had hardly any doubles, came her and first thing scrolled down to see what you had to say. Thank you, Sir Alphadoppletotter!
Maybe Rex was a half- or even full-star light (for a Monday), but his full-throated rant was worth my price of admission today. He's been a bit conciliatory since his vacation and I, for one, do enjoy when he writes an articulate, intellectually sound, off-the-rails takedown (of course, in moderation).
The essence of Rex's issue was pretty much lost on me, though I'm not arguing the point. As he went deeper and deeper, it struck me as akin to the restaurant staff in the Monty Python sketch about the dirty fork.
At least is wasn't a clue about a "tax return filer" whose answer is CPA. The full-throated rant for that would be more up my alley.
Solved Downs only after our three-week Monday streak ended last week. Also had Reel before TECH became obvious.
My time on this puzzle was long only because I quit at PURGATORY. I had to take time to have my own PURGATORY rant. Even though the constructor tried to squeak it in, admitting that it doesn’t fit the bill, it’s just wrong. And I am so disappointed because I really like the theme/reveal. Should have been caught and fixed - somehow.
To add to the spirit of pedantry may I humbly say that a tsunami is not a tidal wave. It is a wave yes, but simplistically, a tidal wave is caused by the gravity of the moon on the ocean and is therefore regular and predictable; a tsunami is caused by underwater seismic activity and so neither regular or predictable.
Vatican II did not abolish purgatory; it is still a part of Catholic teaching.
Brits spell it mediaeval.
Found this easy and fun solving on the phone (and I hate phone solving). Weirdly my phone delivered this Monday puzzle to me midday on Sunday. I was through solving it when I realized it was a Monday puzzle. I went back and fished Sunday out of the archive. Anyway, I did enjoy this Monday puzzle, thank you
Olta is a fairly common name in Eastern Europe. Olia and Olya are reasonably common in Russia.
El período conocido como la Edad Media.
I noticed this rascal putting up a heck of a fight, but didn't really think about why. Now that I have counted the gunk, it's surprisingly obvious. And holy moly they just went for it. Eighteen names and many have been out of circulation for a while. I love this puzzle and I love the theme, but I think running it on Monday is a surprising choice.
As a fellow medievalist, I will remind 🦖 that both Hell and Purgatory are fake. I'm not going to die on the one-is-not-the-other hill. And honestly, I think Purgatory is more or less right across the street from Hell, it's just not a walled community. Close enough for crosswords as it's not the third fake place called Heaven, which is also a walled community ironically.
Just noticed GORY is basically GARY. How have I missed this?
❤️ UNDERWORLD.
😩 ALB.
People: 18 {stunning}
Places: 1
Products: 5
Partials: 6
Foreignisms: 4
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 34 of 78 (44%)
{The Ministers of Gunk have passed a proclamation today celebrating our constructor's effort at including every person ever who might go to Purgatory -- a fake place that is not another fake place.}
Funny Factor: 1 😫
🔥 Ooh-la-la! 🔥 HELL.
Uniclues:
1 A fan.
2 Reply card in an invitation to give a beloved Sesame Street denizen a ... haircut.
3 Told Yale alum to stop being gross.
1 UNDER WORLD WANT
2 SHAG ERNIE RSVP
3 IDLED GORY ELI
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Whispers, "I love you." AIRS OUT EROS RHETORIC.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
EasyEd
You reminded me of a quirk I have. Every time I am writing out MEDIEVAL I always sound it out how it’s spelled in my head. medi plus eval That way I have always gotten it right. But I have to be careful not to SAY the word that way! Nee
The English spelling (non) system is by far the worst of any of the major languages.
What we’re all forgetting is that Dante has to cross two rivers at the very peak of Mount Purgatory.
Water doesn’t get much higher than that!
kj (Bardfilm)
Kitshef
I disagree with Rex. about the SEALS clue. The clue says “Article creatures with flippers” There are seals in the Arctic who are therefore Arctic creatures. The answer fits the clue The clue does not say the creatures in question are only in the Arctic. Clues like the appear often in the Times. It is in a way an early week trick question taking advantage of the tendency to make an erroneous assumption.
Anonymous 8:04AM
When I saw that clue I knew that it would get complaints. I understand the criticism but this is a crossword not a dictionary. The Times chooses to reflect popular language however erroneous the word is scientifically.
Tsunami was imported into the English language in an attempt to replace it.While news reports have generally adopted the import, apparently tidal wave is still in common use. Certainly, most people would have no trouble with this answer.Popular language is the key here not scientific language.
Olta might be the most popular name in Russia but that’s irrelevant. It isn’t known in the US. Female Russian name Monday four letters = OLGA. first guess.
Yeah, kitshef, what are you thinking! What does the popularity of names in Russia have to do with a Russian character in a play set in Rusia written in Russian by a Russian author.
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