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Relative difficulty: Medium-Hard
THEME: None
Word of the Day: TILSIT (6D: Cheese names after a Prussian town near the Baltic coast) —
Tilsit cheese or Tilsiter cheese is a pale yellow semihard smear-ripened[2] cheese, created in the mid-19th century by Prussian-Swiss settlers, the Westphal family, from the Emmental valley. The original buildings from the cheese plant still exist in Sovetsk, Russia, formerly Tilsit, on the Neman River, in the former German province of East Prussia.[3]
• • •
Unfortunately I did not think that this puzzle was AMAZEBALLS ... it felt like more of a big flop, to stick with the modern parlance. For starters, I had KAMA SUTRA in my puzzle *checks notes* yesterday! It felt weird to have the same memorable long entry in back-to-back days, though of course that's more of an editorial concern than a construction concern. I wonder if it was intentional to run these puzzles back-to-back. Some people will appreciate the callback, others will be annoyed. Let me know what you think!
 |
| This is what an obelus (pl. OBELI) looks like |
My issues are mostly with the rest of the fill. ABRUPTNESS and ANTEDATED in a 70-word themeless in the year 2026?! Not to mention the MET PAYROLL (fine, but I've only ever seen "made payroll") / DYSPEPSIA stack. And so much missed opportunity for more fun entries in the mid-length slots: LESSENS, UTILITY, RIVERAS. A plural name! Sure, it's a bit better when it's an artist but still ... not my favorite. GARGANTUA has big Saturday energy. Not the kind of entry I gravitate toward, but kinda cool to learn the origin of the word "gargantuan." I also have no idea who SUSAN LUCCI is, but that may be a me issue!
 |
| This is me providing evidence for my claims! |
At least, the shorter entries were mostly clean. OBELI feels kinda clunky, something you would see in a crossword 20 years ago. Though my apologies to the writers / editors who felt seen by it. APBS is a pet peeve of mine, as I've never seen it outside of a crossword in my life. (I know it's a thing, just feels weird how much I see it in crosswords. I'm sure I've put it in a puzzle, too. Actually, yes, February 6th 2026 -- a NYT puzzle I made with APB. Look, I never said I was perfect.)
And all that meh ... for what? The 15s don't feel that special. DIA DE LOS MUERTOS is great and fun and worthy of crossword representation but I feel like I've seen it several times in crosswords already, so it didn't feel fresh. And CORONATION ROBES gets a big shrug from me. AMAZEBALLS is the kind of thing that was super in-the-language a while ago but nobody really says anymore. The puzzle just felt like a was waiting for some payoff that never came.
 |
| The APSE referenced in the clue |
Okay, I'll say nice things now!!! The [Dis/cuss?] clue at 1-Across for TRASH TALK was a banger. I also liked [Red light district?] for DANGER ZONE. [Base unit] is a sneaky good clue for the pedestrian entry COT. [Wear the same clothes, in slang] is a lovely modern verb angle for TWIN. That's about all I have! I hope you all enjoyed this way more than I did ... I think I'm just in a grumpy mood today!
Oh, one more thing. (I guess this is a reverse feedback sandwich where I say the nice thing in the middle in between the critical things! Sorry!) SUSAN LUCCI felt like a Natick minefield. I had SUB instead on SUN for a while (admittedly not a basketball connoisseur over here), and TILSIT has impossible-to-infer letters. Plus the choice of cluing DOT as [Hwy. overseer, for short] meant that crossing was tricky, too.
Bullets:
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- 46A: DISHY [Full of hot gossip] — I've never heard "dishy" as a word, but I guess it works!
- 48D: CABOS [Los ___ (Mexican tourist destination)] — I've been to Los Cabos once. It was really nice!
- 35A: IRANIAN [Like the 2003 Peace Nobelist Shirin Ebadi] — Was nice to see IRANIAN in the puzzle since it feels like the way less-common variant IRANI should up a lot more in crosswords
- 18D: ELK [Bugling game] — Took me a long while to figure out that game here meant animal.
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- Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)
I agree with Rafa. Can someone please explain 7D to me? What is ADOUT??
ReplyDeleteFrom Google AI: "Ad out means advantage out, a tennis scoring term used when the receiver wins the point after a deuce." Its opposite, AD IN, is much more common in crosswords.
DeleteIt’s a tennis scoring term. A “bad service” suggests the person serving has faulted on his serve and in certain scoring situations that leads to an AD OUT
DeleteAd Out - tennis score
DeleteIt refers to tennis. If you are at deuce （e.g. tied) and serve badly (i.e. “service” in the clue) you could lose the point and the score would become Ad out.
DeleteTennis score after deuce. Either Ad in or Ad out.
Delete"Ad out" is a tennis reference following deuce...
DeleteAt deuce in tennis scoring, if the server double-faults, the score becomes ad-out.
DeleteCame here for this same reason.
DeleteAd out, as in tennis!
DeleteI know what it means but can’t recall the last time any commentator has said it in a tennis match I was watching.
DeleteCan anyone handle this? Seems like OP is still waiting on an answer.
DeleteThanks everyone for the explanation
Deletei bet nancy plopped that one right in there.
Delete@Christopher XLI 8:43 The terms AD IN/AD OUT are only used only by the server (e.g., the server saying 'ad out' means the other player has the advantage). A commentator will use the name of the player who has the advantage (e.g., 'advantage Sampras').
DeleteReally liked the cluing of this puzzle and found it easier than an average Saturday, despite originally using an "O" for the TILSoT/MoTES crossing. A mote is a tiny piece of a substance, a speck, according to Oxford Languages, so I don't feel that bad about this.
ReplyDeleteIf you're of a certain age, SUSANLUCCI is iconic as the always-nominated, never-victorious actress who finally became the once-victorious actress. But I can fully understand how solvers under, say 40, would be scratching their heads about who she is.
APB as in "put out an APB" (all points bulletin) also probably trends older but sure was common in police TV/movies back in the day.
METPAYROLL is very much an expression (and doesn't just refer to combined opera salaries).
In other words, I liked this a lot more than Rafa did. But I enjoyed Rafa's puzzle yesterday, too.
Take it from me. If you don’t watch awards shows and don’t watch the soaps, you easily get to 65 with Susan Lucci as 10 blank letters.
DeleteSUSAN LUCCI is a longtime popular soap opera (daytime TV drama) actress well-known for being passed over for Emmy Award nominations for many years. Also, I was hoping to see a DAYS WITHOUT A KAMA SUTRA REFERENCE (0) monitor! 😎
ReplyDeleteI personally loved the Susan Lucci reference. Lots of lovely memories watching All My Children with my mom. Lucci has been a very important touchstone for many people, and I’m glad she’s still being recalled.
DeleteEasy-medium with the top third easier than the rest.
ReplyDeleteI did not know MORIA, SUN, TEN, IRANIAN, and GARGANTUA.
Costly erasures - TILSon (I now know that TILSon is not a cheese but stilton is) before TILSIT, Swine before SLOPS, and tOIL before MOIL.
Knowing SUSAN LUCCI was helpful.
Not much junk, a smattering of sparkle, , liked it a skosh more than @Rafa did.
ReplyDeleteChallenging. Not a bad puzzle, just not on my wavelength. Sergey and Larry were my solving partners today.
* * * _ _
Overwrites:
tEE before HEE for the 5D giggle.
My 6D Prussian cheese was TILSon before TILSIT, I had conflated it with Stilton.
I had no tip for the result of bad service at 7D (AD OUT)
At 10D, I couldn't envision ABRUPTNESS as the opposite of verbosity. This led to trying mALI instead of BALI at 16A even though I know Mali isn't an island.
I don't follow basketball and I'm only dimly aware of Amar'e Stoudemire. The only three-letter team member I could think of for 15D was net. It was SUN.
Misremembered SUSAN LUCCI (20A) as LiCCI.
ANTEceDED before ANTEDATED for the early show-up at 33D.
OVule before OVARY at 34D, So I had use ME before ASK me for "Shoot" at 40A.
crAZE BALLS(?) before AMAZE at 51A.
WOEs:
TILSIT cheese at 6D.
22D MORIA, or the character Durin from the clue, or anything from the depths of LotR.
Resisted CRAP (31D) because I've never seen it as a standalone. Craps or crap out, but not a singular CRAP.
I've never read Rabelais. I know gargantuan as an adjective but not the character GARGANTUA (38A).
Pearl Jam's album TEN at 45D. Not a fan of the group.
If I ever knew the 49D manuscript marks OBELI (or its singular, obelus), the memory is long gone.
I like The Office, but didn't watch a lot of the episodes. I'd forgotten GABE (54A).
I object (strenuously) to the repetition of CAR in 30A (R.C. CAR) and 32D (CAR SHARE). They're used in the same sense and even cross at the initial letter.
Agree with car repetition objection.
DeleteTOIL for MOIL and MITES. for MOTES had me stumped on AMAZEBALLS and TILSIT for the longest time. Nice chewy Saturday.
ReplyDeleteMe too!
DeleteBefore I knew you were blogging and read your thoughts, Rafael, I came here to mention SUSAN LUCCI. I was wondering if anyone born after 1970 or 1980 would have any idea.
ReplyDeleteThis was a gimme for me because I watched Soap Operas in High School in around 1976, which was 50 YEARS AGO!
I've not watched them since, nor do I know if anyone watches them today or if they even make them.
She is famous for a certain age group, but geezer.
I’m in my late 40s and I suspect I’m in the youngest cohort of solvers able to drop SUSANLUCCI in with no crosses. Feeling old today!
DeleteI thought it wasn’t too hard but had a hard time finishing because of 22 across, which I had answered as bites (seems reasonable for “teensy amounts”). Since I had no idea if 22 down was Boria or Moria, when everything was filled in it was very hard to find that error and it took me a lot of time.
ReplyDeleteAd Out is the score in tennis after the server has lost the point after "Deuce." Short for Advantage Out.
ReplyDeleteRafa - you provided us a gem yesterday- this one doesn’t match up. Re: editing - you just can’t repeat KAMA SUTRA back to back. The two spanners were weak and the trivia flat. Full proper name again with LUCCI taking up far too much real estate.
ReplyDeleteMarigolds and Tangerines
The Office trivia always does me in since I’ve never watched the show - needed all the crosses there. The ANTEDATED - sewerage - SLOPS x DYSPEPSIA is ugly. AMAZE BALLS belongs midweek. CAR SHARES are an urban only thing.
The Fall
I did like DANGER ZONE, ABRUPTNESS and the word of the day PATCHWORK. I guess IRANIAN is in there anti-war? ELK is neat.
Modest Mouse
Not my kind of Saturday morning solve. Anna Stiga’s Stumper today has a single spanner and a couple of huge corner stacks that are formidable - a welcome solve next to this one.
RAINY Day Woman
A tale of two puzzles for me.
ReplyDeleteTop half, a beget-fest. Where you start with little islands in a sea of white, and suddenly from crosses, or maybe the brain taps your shoulder because it just cracked a clue, an answer that stumped you moments before, hits you. That answer trips off another, which begets another, and in what feels like a wham, an expanse is filled, and you are thrilled.
Bottom half, a trek. Those islands remain stubborn. You return to them and they stay tight lipped. Where you really have to sweat, call in the reserves. Squares do eventually relinquish themselves, but begrudgingly. You end up feeling accomplished, but you don’t want to think – about anything – for a while.
I love both scenarios -- work and play -- so got my money’s worth today.
Along the way, I enjoyed the international feel, with BALI, DIA DE LOST MUERTOS, IRANIAN, REVERAS, CORONATION ROBES, RIGA, TILSIT, KAMA SUTRA, and CABOS.
Thus, a splendid outing for me. Thank you, Zachary!
It should be MET "A" PAYROLL, no?
ReplyDeleteClunky. It feels like it was constructed by AI.
The Department of Transportation (DOT) has to be the least known federal agency.
DOT also referring to local (state, county, town, etc) departments. So it’s fairly common.
DeleteNot bad, but a letdown after yesterday’s banger. Hard to get excited by long answers like METPAYROLL. For me, the toughest stuff was in the three-letter answers, the Pearl Jam album and the very tricky [base unit]. And even though I’ve watched my fair share of “The Office,” I have no recollection of either Erin or GABE.
ReplyDeleteAfter dithering on the _ITES/_ORIA cross for over a minute, I went with BITES/BORIA. Oh, well. I do think that given the MORIA cross, MITES needed a different clue.
ReplyDeleteLove GARGANTUA and ASTRONOMY, but the other long answers are either unexciting or questionable (I feel like it should be DIA DE MUERTOS, without the LOS).
I'm not much of a stickler on duplicates, but CAR crossing CAR is definitely suboptimal.
Figured out most of it, but Naticked in the SE. Had "dysentery" where I needed DYSPEPSIA.
ReplyDeleteIf Mr. Egs will forgive me, I might suggest a better clue for DYSPEPSIA would be ADVERTISECOCACOLA?
DNF here, the cross of menopause treatment with Pearl Jam was too much for me. Plus I had FTA instead of DOT in that same general area. And not a LOTR fan so that screwed me as well.
ReplyDeleteRafa at least found some nice things to say about this one, so he apparently enjoyed it more than I did. Obviously, I never enjoy it when they go the trivia exam route to increase the difficulty level, and this one is pretty much all in.
ReplyDeleteDIA DE LOS MUERTOS may as well be written in a foreign language for all I recognize it (oh wait, this just in - it is both a trivia question and the answer is in a foreign language - a two-time loser of an answer ! ). I haven’t seen SUSAN LUCCI in the wild or in a crossword grid for probably a decade now.
It doesn’t get any better down south with GARGANTUA, AMAZE BALLS, etc. They even managed to ruin an entire small corner with GORP, GABE, CABOS and OBELI as the marquee answers. Needless to say, this puzzle is the antithesis of what a puzzle that is in my wheelhouse would look like. The one saving grace is that my cousin Google solved about half of it, so it didn’t take long.
If this is your cup of tea, enjoy it, as for what it is, at least it’s “all-in”.
Way too much of a trivia fest for me but a tough enough puzzle that seems appropriate for a Saturday. The KAMASUTRA overlap was unfortunate but I was actually happy to find something easy. Sussing out DIADELOSMUERTOS and CORONATIONROBES and GARGUANTUA from a few crosses was a big help. I’m the other hand, SUSANLUCCI and AMAZEBALLS were absolute woes.
ReplyDeleteRafa, I enjoyed your puzzle. Today’s, not so much. Too many unknown clues or fills for me to grasp. The top 2/3 easy. The bottom 1/3 impossible. No 🎈for me.
ReplyDeleteMost of this was a solid Saturday challenge that seemed above average in quality. But I had problems with a lot of the fill. The TILSIT/MITES cross was SO easy to turn into TILSOT/MOTES. And MOIL is a TIL. I had TOIL but it didn’t make sense because ATAZEBALLS isn’t a thing. Also, 48A??? What how does one get COT out of “Base unit”??? That and OBELI (also TIL) was a Natick for me.
ReplyDeletebrutal. lots of answers I've never heard of and impossible to infer. Unpleasant in every way.
ReplyDeleteCouldn't have said it better myself, Rick.
DeleteAMEN Rick….past my X- Word grade level…better day to tee off or surf
DeleteTough Xword. SUSAN LUCCI is much much more widely known than DIEGO RIVERA. I knew both but LUCCI was a gimme, and I have never even seen her in a TV role.
ReplyDeleteJust the opposite for me. DIEGO RIVERA was a gimme, whereas I'd never ever heard of SUSAN LUCCI, even though I'm supposedly in the right age group to recognize her.
DeleteIt’s almost criminal to clue DANGER ZONE to anyone but Kenny Loggins or maybe Archer, but that combined with SUSAN LUCCI probably would have set off another tiresome “You’re old!/You’re dumb!” debate.
ReplyDeleteEverything I know about tennis I learned from the NYTXW and then promptly forgot.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed your puzzle yesterday. But actually I liked this one too. It had its weaknesses which you highlight. But for me they weren’t glaring. Saturdays are still a slog for me sometimes yet this one flowed smoothly. I guess I am dated too! Love the kamasutra callback as well.
ReplyDeleteHaw's pronouns: HEE/Hem
ReplyDeleteVW Rabbits: CARSHARES
Without ADOUT, 7D is a tennis term.
TIL TILSIT sits near the Baltic coast.
MORIA: Wind misnomer.
Trail mixes from around the globe: The world according to GORP.
Rodney DANGERZONE: Close!
And since he came up again, here's a joke of his we might classify as TRASH TALK:
I don't get no respect. The other night my wife said, "Rodney, take out the garbage." I said, "I already took out the garbage." She said, "Well, go keep an eye on it."
"Haw's pronouns: HEE/Hem" -- Hah! Clever! Good one!
DeletercCAR crossing CARshares???
ReplyDeleteNatick in the SE. Had DYSENTERY instead of DYSPEPSIA. Apologies to Mr. Egs, but a better clue for DYSPEPSIA might be "advertise Coke...aggressively."
ReplyDeleteI tried to cheat on Erin's love interest, and the web told me it was petE. After that, I gave up. In retrospect, I should have known OBELI, but it was clued weirdly--they're found in printed books, not just manuscripts. And I didn't know Los CABOS, so I was lost.
ReplyDeleteI also had to look up Susan LUCCI. I'm old enough, but never watched or followed soap operas.
Tricky today in a couple of parts! Hadn’t heard of MOIL so was praying that was correct. Got stuck on TILSoN/TILSiT MoTES/MiTES for a few minutes. Thankfully, my elder millennial brain remembered SUSANLUCCI — she’s famous to me for how long it took to win the first Emmy!
ReplyDeleteWhile a total gimme, inclusion of Pearl Jam elevates the puzzle.
ReplyDeleteBut boo on the car double.
I struggled because I thought the soap opera star was SUSANn LUCCI, but it turns out that there are LESSENS than I thought.
ReplyDeleteGarbageman's Wife: Honey, can you please talk about something other than work? I'm tired of all your TRASHTALK.
In @Rex's absence let me condemn the NYT for providing product placement space for the amoral neonazi trillionaire with TESLA.
I thought a lot of the clues were good, resulting in a kinda tough outing. Thanks, Zachary David Levy.
Thoroughly loved the struggle. I am of an age where SUSAN LUCCI was a gimme. KAMA SUTRA and DYSPEPSIA helped, too. Liked it much, much more than Rafa.
ReplyDeleteI have to say I found this one easier and much more fun than yesterday’s puzzle. I always like a Friday or Saturday with grid-spanners, and DIA DE LOS MUERTOS is great (and I don’t remember seeing it in the NYTXW before). The other long answers were also really good. Oddly enough, as a book editor for 30+ years, I was stumped by OBELI, though got it easily with crosses. Now I know what those secondary footnote marks are called. Rafa’s digression on APB made me laugh—that was kind of a journey, wasn’t it?
ReplyDeleteWho besides me knew Tilsit only because of Monty Python?
ReplyDeleteIt's week's end - out of stock. Try back Monday. (Sorry, hit wrong key a minute ago.)
DeleteMe, me!
Delete"What about Cheddar."
"We've not much call for it around here."
"Not much call! It's the single most popular cheese in the world!"
Roo
Never heard of AMAZEBALLS but SUSANLUCCI was a gimme. I've played craps in various casinos over the last x years and nobody - I mean nobody - ever says "I rolled crap." The name of the game is CRAPS. You roll craps (or not); that's the whole game. There is no singular. Other than that, this was a fairly easy Saturday puzzle.
ReplyDeleteI have to say that GARGANTUA and Patagruel is quite a fun read, as 16th century literature goes. Extremely vulgar, while also erudite. I doubt I actually got through all 5 books but it sat by my bedside for a few months, or maybe years.
ReplyDeleteHaving guessed gaStritIs for DYSPEPSIA to start, the SE took me a long time. I found the whole thing pretty tough.
I'm with Rafa on this one; mixed bag of sparkle and (huh?).
ReplyDeleteNever watched her show, but certainly knew the soap queen, SUSAN LUCCI. Good clue for AD OUT. Back-to-back KAMA SUTRAs! And DIo (before DIA) DE LOS MUERTOS. All of those opened up the top third, with the glaring exception of (TIL) TILSIT; had not-a-cheese TILSon crossing MoTES (which fit) and ???. I see DOT now, but crossing MORIA and TILSIT was where the DNF horn sounded.
Isn't it CRAPs (plural, not singular); resisted that for too long, especially because it started 30A with RCC. Conversely, SLOPS (plural) just sounds awful. I don't get ANY being equivalent to "Your choice", conversationally.
Rafa gave us a chuckle by saying nobody says AMAZEBALLS anymore. Our dearest friend, a highly educated professor, dean and author, uses that word, with elan, regularly.
Top half a piece of cake, or at least had various cake-like qualities, I was congratulating myself for DIADELOSMUERTOS and GARGANTUA and ABRUPTNESS and MORIA and even remembered poor SUSANLUCCI. More of a struggle in the bottom half, finally guessed GABE and OBELI but having TOIL and not knowing either HRT or TEN or AMAZEBALLS (??!!) meant no way to infer those crosses so technical DNF, oh well Life goes on.
ReplyDeleteInteresting mix of "hey I know that one" and WTF here, ZDL. Zoomed, Dodged and Lurched my way through this one and had some fun at least along the way, for which thanks.
Average Saturday time but struggled- TILSON causing MOTES and DON. Also not familiar with AMAZEBALLS and had TOIL making that even tougher. The fact that I had average time while spending quite a bit of effort working around these problems means I found the rest of the puzzle easier, and I think it was.
ReplyDeleteGrumpy about clue for 10D- could have been more accurate. The opposite of verbosity is being terse or laconic, not abrupt.
I liked most of of the long answers, but just felt the whole puzzle was a bit off. No hangover to explain that.
I have to agree with Rafa on this one. It didn't feel especially fresh, and it had some real clunkers like ABRUPTNESS, DYSPEPSIA, ANTEDATED. (SUSANLUCCI was a gimme to me, but I think it would have made more sense as an answer say 20 years ago.)
ReplyDeleteToil for MOIL. I don’t know how, but somehow I had SUSAN LUCCI right there in my brain.
ReplyDeletetoil for moil crushed me.
DeletePregúnteme.
ReplyDeleteToo difficult for me. Learned some stuff from Wikipedia. Nothing worth knowing. The longer stuff doesn't have enough horsepower to overcome the mountain of dreck. I imagine the early solvers will be okay with this and later solvers will have much less positive things to add. Hopefully I'm wrong and it's a me-thing.
😩 AD OUT, OBELI, MOIL, IMAM, MITES, ORS.
People: 8
Places: 4
Products: 6
Partials: 9
Foreignisms: 1
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 28 of 70 (40%)
{The Saturday sun rises in Gunkopolis, Gunkmenistan and Mayor Gunk is in Gunky Square handing out gunkpops to all the children from Gunk Elementary and the Gunkettes are making music in the gazebo. It's a good day for those living in the Gunkodrome.}
Funny Factor: 4 🙂
Tee-Hee: HEE. CRAP. KAMA SUTRA two days in a row. Hello, need to hire a grownup at central command. Or, maybe we could put it in every puzzle?
Uniclues:
1 Where one finds a beckoning bubble bath beauty.
2 Gunkifies an otherwise pleasurable word wrangling activity.
3 When you spill champagne on the instruction manual.
1 SUDS DANGER ZONE
2 LESSENS UTILITY
3 KAMA SUTRA SLOPS
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Kiss thrown by a politician. SCAM ARTIST MWAH.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Rafa - I enjoyed solving both.yesterday's and today's puzzles.
ReplyDeleteWay too much trivia, way too many “stretchy” answers that were just plain bad. Maybe this sort of puzzle would have fit in back in the Maleska era, but not today. Editors?
ReplyDeleteGood writeup, Rafa. And wonderful puzzle yesterday.
ReplyDeleteLiked this more than Rafa did but not nearly as much as his gem yesterday.
ReplyDeleteMuch I didn't know. GORP?? Unknown to me. MOIL as clued?? Same. DIADELOSMUERTOS, unfamiliar but most of the crosses were fair so that didn't cause all that much trouble.
Some very nice long fill and cluing i.e., TRASHTALK, ASTRONOMY and VAGUEIDEAS. I thought the other, more straightforward long ones were just fine, no complaints. I have no problem with ABRUPTNESS or ANTEDATED and CARSHARE and DANGERZONE are good fill if you ASKME.
Agree that the spanner landed with a bit of a thud but it's still kinda impressive.
The reappearance of KAMASUTRA was glaring. Rafa - your brilliant cluing on it yesterday made this appearance a little tame but as you said, this is not a nit on the constructor, more an editing thing.
Bit of an interesting medical mini theme going on with ORS crossing OVARY along with HRT. If you throw in DYSPEPSIA, that's a whole lotta doctor stuff! As well as a little bit of a mood killer... But I still enjoyed the solve.
Thanks Rafa for the great write-up and thanks Zachary for a Saturday that made me work and think.
This one was a mishmash for me. Some answers were screamingly easy, like SUSANLUCCI. It’s nice to throw the geezers a bone. Thank you very much. Erica Kane was THE iconic soap opera star from the 70’s until the death of the genre. But she was also a People cover story in January of this year. She’s still in the news and it wasn’t the AARP magazine that featured her. Hi Susan!
ReplyDeleteI had to squeeze DIOSDELOSMUERTOS out of the ether because I never read the book. I hear volcano and Pompeii is my reflex. I tried to use toil not MOIL, greg before GABE, DPW before DOT, and the overkill of dysentery before DYPEPSIA, but nothing I couldn’t put right in the end. I had a good time with this one!
I agree with @Rafa's "medium hard," the "hard" part in my case increased by mistakes that obscured the crossing answers for a good while. Like others, I wrote in MoTES and tOIL, but the one that really messed me up was "eRT" ("estrogen"), which had me looking at an incomprehensible CARSEARES. Happy to finally remember it's "hormone.". Otherwise, I thought there was a lot to like: GARGANTUA, ANTEDATED, ABRUPTNESS, PATCHWORK, MET PAYROLL, RAINY as clued.
ReplyDeleteMOTES before MITES, plus TILSIT and then my confusion at CABOS/COT cost me a bunch of time
ReplyDelete"Unfortunately I did not think that this puzzle was AMAZEBALLS ... it felt like more of a big flop, to stick with the modern parlance"
ReplyDeleteExactly. I wanted to put in AMAZEBALLS from the get-go, but said to myself, this is way too dated to be considered "modern" and moved on.
This was nearly a DNF for me. I also had MoTES for MITES (and hence TILSoT), hadn't heard of Los CABOS, and I was vaciillating between (L)OT and COT. The "Base unit" clue still doesn't make sense to me (I guess military base, and COT as a ... unit? ... of furniture? The use of "unit" seems off here).
ReplyDeleteSo I wound up running the alphabet twice on _OT, once with MiTES and once with MOTES. Kind of feels like not solving, but there you are.
Had I not known my Tolkien I'd have been a goner.
Crossing RCCAR with CARSHARES??? Give me a break.
ReplyDeleteI try to be positive, but I hated this one. Didn’t know TILSIT or ADOUT (two completely new words for me). Likewise have never heard of GORP, OBELI, and don’t watch the office.
ReplyDeleteI’ll concede that sometimes the puzzle wavelength just doesn’t meet my own, but to me this felt like a few too many crosses where if you don’t know the trivia you’re just hooped. And throwing in “AMAZEBALLS” just felt like they were trying to give a nod to you get silvers by using a phrase no young person actually uses, ever.
Oh well. Yesterday was great, here’s hoping for a better outing tomorrow!
Average Saturday solve. I had a dnf thanks to MOTE. I "finished" in the SE after successfully smoking out the unknown OBELI only to get the "So close " message. It took me almost 10 minutes to track down the mistake. I finally was reminded that the MITE/MOTE kea loa has come up before and that's what tipped me off.
ReplyDeleteAgree and annoyed !!! Kama Sutra two days in a row. With Friday’s solution right there no less.
ReplyDeleteHad COMBAT ZONE for Red light District, but that’s a Boston thing.
ReplyDeleteSaturday themeless tough, at our house. Areas of trouble brewin included:
ReplyDelete1. DIADELOSMUERTOS no-know crossin TILSIT no-know.
2. SUSANLUCCI near-no-know. But was able to get all but the dreaded TILSIT's "S" from crossers, so SUSAN became an obvious enough choice, eventually.
3. MORIA/RCCAR/IRANIAN [as clued by a no-know Nobelist]/GARGANTUA [which was a no-know that I somehow guessed, anyhoo].
4. HRT/AMAZEBALLS/MOIL/OBELI.
5. Did guess RIGA & CRAP, pretty early on in the CRAP-filled #4 area, at least. For those that don't like CRAP [understandable], them dice rollers do use the term "CRAP out", when one loses.
Sooo ... lost precious nanoseconds all over tarnation, hesitatin and eventually havin to do some "research".
staff weeject pick: DOT. Clued up as the Dept. Of Transportation abbreve meat outta shear SatPuz orneriness.
fave stuff: PATCHWORK. ASTRONOMY and clue. RCCAR/CARSHARES traffic collision. DANGERZONE, mainly cuz it gave up lotsa precious letters.
Thanx, Mr. Levy dude. Wonder if you had to do as much research as M&A's solvequest had to, in comin up with yer feisty puzgrid.
Masked & Anonymo6Us
p.s.
Runt puzzle, this time made by a [masked] human:
**gruntz**
M&A
I started this last evening but gave up; too tired. This morning it went a little better but still tough, not really on my wavelength. I finished correctly but lots of typeovers... PIECE WORK before PATCH WORK, etc.
ReplyDeleteAnd so many Unknown Names in the clues and answers: SUSAN LUCCI, Shirin Ebadi, Rabelais, Erin and GABE, Amare Soudemire, Durin and MORIA, help!
And then the festering turd that is KPH... I will keep on saying it every time I see this nonsense: it is KMH (actually lowercase km/h). I dare you to do this: Google images for "KPH speed signs" and count how many of the images it shows you actually have "KPH" in them. My count is zero. This answer is garbage.
@okanaganer. What you miss is that the [Unit on the autobahn] is actually Kollector Personische Haus (KPH) which is a toll booth. If you had the same deep and multifaceted knowledge of Germanic languages as I do you would have known this.
DeleteMy first instinct for 7D was NOTIP, have never heard of ADOUT
ReplyDeleteI liked this puzzle. I threw down KAMA SUTRA as if I had seen it yesterday! It worked little by little, and I really struggled in the center west. What 4 letter Italian city starts with A? Once I committed to DANGER ZONE I had the E and saw APSE. Good one. Unfortunately I didn’t proofread my remote toy and left in trap instead of CRAP, which I see here is reasonable to resist. Help from husband for MORIA and GARGANTUAN.
ReplyDeleteI liked seeing PATCHWORK, VAGUE IDEAS, TRASH TALK. The bottom of the puzzle was less engaging. ANTEDATED was clued well. Not up on AMAZEBALLS type of lingo so that took nearly every cross.
I guess COT is a unit on an army base? I think SUSAN LUCCI came after a few crosses, I could see Erika but her real name is mainly familiar from crosswords. Not a soaps watcher, but I've been in checkout lines at the market for decades.
I liked this more than Rafa did, which doesn’t mean I found it faultless. KAMA SUTRA 2 days in a row! Rafa clued it brilliantly as [Sex work]. Zachary clued it as [Ancient text whose Sanskrit title means "Principles of Love]. Um, not he didn’t . That was the editors. His original clue was [Library of Congress]. Also brilliant. Why would the editors change that? Except for the capital C in Congress, it was excellent.
ReplyDeleteHad the same MITES/biTES/MOTES/bORIA/MORIA confusion as many other commenters. I know very little about LotR.
SUSAN LUCCI dropped In fairly easily, which puzzles me a bit because I’ve never been a soap opera viewer. Must be a crossword memory thing. Wish I could say the same thing for TILSIT. No idea. This is a bit embarrassing because I am a cheese freak. There is no dedicated cheese monger working out here in the sticks but my local grocery store sometimes gets a bit adventurous. I often spend half my time in the store reading cheese labels. A few days ago I found a Delice de Bourgogne. Heavenly. Look it up and track it down; it’s like a Dolce Verde Gorgonzola without the green mould. But I digress …
When I entered KPH at 23A, I began muttering, “No, no, no”, because I have driven all over Europe and never seen KPH on a sign. In fact, most European speed signs are just a bold black number in a red circle. But you could lawyer this one because the clue makes no mention of signs. OK.
And, speaking of no mention … the clue for the “Under the Volcano” festival day gives no indication that it wants it in Spanish. I had “the day of the dead” for far too long. Malcolm Lowry’s masterwork, is one of my favourite novels. It’s depressing as hell. Really. An account of an alcoholic former British consul in Mexico whose meaningless life spirals toward an equally meaningless death. A must read. (By the way, he wrote most of it in a little squatters’ cabin about 30 miles from where I’m typing this.)
Liked your puzzle, Zachary. More hard wok than breezy fun, but solid.
Poor, such a disappointment after Rafa's banger yesterday. Terrible clue at 22A, naticked at the cross with 6D. Big thumbs down.
ReplyDeleteGlad to have so much company on the TOIL vs. MOIL confusion. MOIL I knew but just didn't think of it, and I know it from "The Cremation of Sam McGee"--
ReplyDeleteThere are strange things done neath the midnight sun By the men who MOIL for gold.
Outside of crosswords and SB, this is the only time I have ever seen it.
Susan Lucci was the first clue I got, and my anchor for the whole puzzle. Yall are whack.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if the puzzle made anyone else think of Darkling (A Threnody):
ReplyDeleteBlack branches,
Like a corpse’s withered hands,
Waving against the blacker sky:
Chill winds,
Bitter like the tang of half-remembered sins;
Bats wheeling mournfully through the air,
And on the ground
Worms,
Toads,
Frogs,
And nameless creeping things;
And all around
Desolation,
Doom,
Dyspepsia,
And Despair.
I am a bat that wheels through the air of Fate;
I am a worm that wriggles in a swamp of Disillusionment ;
I am a despairing toad;
I have got dyspepsia.
You think this was medium hard? Head over to the LA times.
ReplyDelete