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Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (the "Medium" is solely for the theme trivia)
Theme answers:
- ALFRED BUTTS (21A: American architect who invented Scrabble while unemployed during the Great Depression)
- CRISS-CROSS WORDS (37A: Scrabble's name prior to its acquisition by James Brunot in 1948)
- FIFTY POINTS (53A: Bonus score for a bingo (using all seven of one's tiles) in Scrabble)
- 'ZA (1A: Slang for an Italian dish ... or along with QI, the highest-value two-letter word in Scrabble)
- [two blank squares] (67A: The two most valuable Scrabble tiles)
"BLANK" square crosses:
- WENT [BLANK] (51D: Forgot what you intended to say)
- LEFT [BLANK] (52D: Didn't fill in, as a field on an application)
adj.Of, relating to, or marked by extraordinarily detailed and vivid recall of visual images. (thefreedictionary.com)
Eidetic memory (/aɪˈdɛtɪk/ eye-DET-ik), also known as photographic memory and total recall, is the alleged ability to recall an image from memory with high precision—at least for a brief period of time—after seeing it only once and without using a mnemonic device.
Although the terms eidetic memory and photographic memory are popularly used interchangeably, they are also distinguished, with eidetic memory referring to the ability to see an object for a few minutes after it is no longer present and photographic memory referring to the ability to recall pages of text or numbers, or similar, in great detail. When the concepts are distinguished, eidetic memory is reported to occur in a small number of children and is generally not found in adults, while true photographic memory has never been demonstrated to exist.
The term eidetic comes from the Greek word εἶδος (pronounced [êːdos], eidos) "visible form".
• • •
Nothing to slow you down today besides the trivia, and maybe a couple of the longer answers I already mentioned. EIDETIC is ... not exactly an everyday word. I had seen it before, somewhere (maybe a crossword? ... yes, this is the fourth appearance in the Shortz Era). STEPWISE was totally new to me (15D: From one tone to the next adjacent tone, in music). I just built it from the crosses, and inferred the -WISE part. Obscure to me, but maybe common to music folks, I don't know. Aside from the two-letter themers and the blank squares, the only things that gave me pleasure today were WET NOSE (who's a good buddy!?) and WINGSPAN (though ... more birds, less Howard Hughes, please). I also liked the clue on SAMSON (24D: Biblical figure with a notoriously bad hair day?). Oh, and ALFRED BUTTS made me laugh, the way "BUTTS" might make a 10-year-old laugh. This 10-year-old specifically:
Bullets:
- 3D: Ones who have trouble finishing sentences? (ESCAPEES) — I didn't love the wordplay here at first, since you escape because you want to be free, not because you are unable to finish your sentence (as the wording of the clue seems to imply). But I've since warmed to the clue. Perhaps because there was so little to keep me warm today.
- 10D: Belmont entry (COLT) — this threw me, since other kinds of horses (geldings, fillies) can race at the Belmont. I needed the "O" from COLT to get "AS DO I" (ugh), which could just as easily have been "AS AM I" (16A: "Same here," more stiffly).
- 31D: Hamburger connection? (UND) — UND = "and" in German. "And" is a "connecting" word (aka a conjunction).
- 44D: Straight-horned antelopes (ORYXES) — you know you've been solving crosswords way, way too long when you can actually think of two six-letter plural antelopes that start with OR-. Nearly twenty years ago, in the first week of this blog's existence, I discovered there was an antelope called the ORIBI. And so, today: ORIBIS! Back in 2006, my suggestion that ORIBI was perhaps not a well-known word inspired a reader named "grandpamike" to comment "this blog is just a bad idea imho." Sadly, grandpamike seems to have deleted his comment in the intervening two decades; happily, I seem to have taken a screenshot:
 |
| [ORIBI: in my defense, those horns are pretty straight] |
That's all for today. This blog turns 20 tomorrow. Hope to see you then.
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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ReplyDeleteHappy 20th anniversary, @Rex!!
Easy, but boring. I'm not a big Scrabble fan but even if I were I wouldn't really care about most of the theme trivia.
* * _ _ _
Overwrites:
For "make an impression" at 3A I had dent before ETCH.
My 18A traction enhancer was a Chain before it was a CLEAT.
WOEs:
STEPWISE at 15D.
No clue about ALFRED BUTTS (21A).
I got the WTA part of the 28A tennis TOUR from crosses.
Didn't know about CRISS CROSSWORDS at 37A.
Speaking of plurals, when is it SOLI and when SOLOS?
ReplyDeleteAccording to the Standard Dictionary of Italianate Loanwords, it’s SOLI when the constructor needs to fill 4 boxes, SOLOS when she’s filling 5. SOLOES is an obscure variant for emergencies.
Delete🤣
Deletehappy anniversary Rex - the puzzle honors some wonderful people who did amazing things. scrabble is a crossword game without clues. .thought it was ingenious making the story of scrabble into a crossword puzzle - has this been done before? whatever the case thanks for your blog we all love and appreciate it.
ReplyDeleteThe 1A clue defines a tile's "value" as point value, but the 67A clue applies "valuable" to tiles that have zero point value. Maddening.
ReplyDeleteJoyless puzzle. Good write-up, though.
ReplyDeleteHey All !
ReplyDelete20 year blog. Who knew Blogger would still be in existence? Give yourself FIFTY POINTS.
Liked the puz. A tribute to Scrabble, words fine. Neat little [BLANK][BLANK] flourish at the end. I often watch Scrabble matches on You Tube, some of the words are wacky, especially the Collins Dictionary ones. I fast forward through the players-thinking parts.
Thankfully the Butts didn't name their kid Harry.
There is also a Brent Butt, who created the quite funny Canadian TV show "Corner Gas". Older show, but worth watching.
Time to get my BUTT out of here. Hope y'all have a great Thursday!
Four F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
“Harry Butts.” I haven’t had a good sixth-grade snicker like that in years. You knocked it out of the park today, Roo! Have a good one
DeleteAnother tribute puzzle this week? I love crosswords and words in general - this game not so much.
ReplyDeleteHow many points to I get for finding S U C K S?
Greg Brown
happy rexiversary! i’ve loved this blog since finding it a couple years back! thanks for the time and thought you put into the puzzle every day!
ReplyDeleteUnlike Conrad, I am a (fairly) big Scrabble fan, but I hated this puzzle, for all the reasons I generally dislike tribute puzzles, plus the dreary, HOARY fill.
ReplyDeleteWhen Mrs. Freude and I play by our house rules, ZA is not a legitimate word. But ZE, a pronoun used by some folks we know, is.
STEPWISE is a pretty common musical term. “Mary Had a Little Lamb” is a mostly stepwise melody, as is Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” theme (a personal favorite).
Rex, I hope grandpamike figured out that he can just read this blog a week later than the rest of us. Of course, he can’t participate in the discussion that way, but that may be no great loss.
Remember that Stevie Wonder puzzle we had on Tuesday? Now, that was a sweet puzzle!
Pretty easy for a Thursday. For the biblical bad hair day, my brain went to Absalom, which would not fit (his hair got stuck in a tree and he hung there for a while as easy prey and was killed), but I liked it better than SAMSON.
ReplyDeleteGlad you kept writing the blog, Rex, grampamike notwithstanding. To his point, as a newer solver myself, I’ve always appreciated that you acknowledge things you know only through crosswords. I was pretty baffled at ORYXES and EIDETIC.
Fan of Scrabble®—not of this puzzle. ★
ReplyDeleteDitto thanks for this blog and all the folks that contribute. I DNF’d on that dratted straight-horned antelope but was OK with that. The distinction made between photographic and eidetic memory was the first I heard of it. And possibly incorrect, or maybe it’s possible to have both. I have one friend who when watching football on TV can tell you in detail the movements of each lineman on both sides of the ball after it’s snapped, and after reading a book once can tell you even the footnotes on each page. I’ve met others with similar abilities, all of whom are very low-key personalities. The human mind is capable of amazing things.
ReplyDeleteSo I don’t want to pile on. More and more I admire the concept or the idea even if the execution is rough simply because I have never created a crossword puzzle and am too intimidated to try. That said I kind of sighed when I looked at the empty grid. I kind of saw my future and just decided to enjoy what I could. What bothered me was STEPWISE which could have been clued as any adjacent step progression. To the best of my knowledge the clue is commonly known as HALF TONE, HALF STEP, SEMI-TONE. I have never heard it referred to as STEPISE. And yes the plural of SOLO is SOLI. Liked EIDETIC, ONCLE, and LORAX.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know it was possible to make a Scrabble-themed puzzle that has less of a point than the "impossible Scrabble words" one (Tuesday January 26th 2021), which at the very least had a bunch of Zs (it also had STRESSLESSNESS and it wasn't a good puzzle overall, but still).
ReplyDeleteAlso, Rex makes a great point about the fill. Erik Agard's puzzle from Tuesday had more theme material AND 6-7-8 stacks right next to two of the themers, and it was much cleaner than today's grid (where the only serious constraint is the pair of BLANKs back to back). UND? ONCLE? I would understand ORYXES if it had to cross two themers, but here... not so much.
Was not sure whether to leave the squares blank or enter blank as a rebus. Either both were accepted or I guessed right.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite thing in the puzzle was MEAT PIE. Sounds so innocuous.
@Rex: how do you still have that screenshot??? And somewhere you can find it? I'm impressed. You are an academic, so I supposed you have a system.
ReplyDeleteMy mind also went straight to Seymour Butts, and I giggled.
Ha ha, the famous novel "Under the Bleachers"!
DeleteSeymour. 🤭 I had forgotten that one.
DeleteYes to STEPWISE being familiar to music folks. Usually we refer to half steps and whole steps, but a melody or a sequence can proceed STEPWISE, i.e. without skips.
ReplyDeleteHappy twentieth anniversary! Grampamike can go blow his ill wind. This blog is highly entertaining and certainly a part of my daily routine. Thank you, and here’s to another 20!
Highlights for me were the moment I realized EIDETIC, a word I’ve never heard of, was actually correct, and the lovely two-blank surprise ending.
ReplyDeleteI did check out some other Scrabble themed crosswords, and loved one by Nancy Salomon that was in the New York Sun in 2008. The revealer, SCRABBLE, was at 61-across. My two favorite clue/answers were:
[Basic necessities for a game of 61-across] for ROOM AND BOARD.
[Lucky thing in 61-across] for DRAWING A BLANK.
Today there were a couple of lovely serendipities – the rare-in-crosswords five letter palindrome (SOLOS), and the cross of CLEFT and CLEAT.
Thanks for reminding me of an adored pastime of mine, Jeff, and teaching me a bit of its history. Combining the two wordplay activities hit my happy button!
Are the blank tiles really the most valuable tiles? Versatile, sure. But you don’t get any points from them.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I had Q and Z there (the two ten-point letters, also referenced in 1 across, so I took that as an intended symmetry) and thought WENTQ must be slang I didn’t know for went quiet or, then LEFTZ was maybe left zero? I even tried putting in QUIET and ZERO as rebuses. Had to come here to get to the blanks.
DeleteI was wondering if the letter distribution in the puzzle was the same as that in a full set of scrabble tiles including the two blanks. Makes it more of a constructor-y show off feat and adds nothing to the solving experience but it’d be a slightly fun bonus. And maybe explain all the additional dull fill….
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised no one has commented on the change in how the cursor looked as you moved about the puzzle, which I found distracting and am hoping was a one-day thing.
ReplyDeleteI did notice that too! I thought there it might be because there were animations that were tied to the puzzle, but that wasn’t the case.
DeleteInterestingly, I noted that right away, but by the time I finished I wasn't seeing it anymore
DeleteI wondered about the darkened squares at first, but then realized they simulate Scrabble tiles. Clever.
DeleteHi Twangster! Check out yesterday's comments. I posted about the new look of the NYT app yesterday (first day I saw it) around 3:00 pm, and another person commented that evening that they came to Rexword specifically to see if anyone else had posted about it.
DeleteSo yes, now at least three of us have noticed it, but like you I was surprised at the lack of commenting on it. I know Rex uses an app other than NYT to solve, and from comments I believe many others here do as well (and there are a few paper solvers too), which could explain the lack of interest—if they're not using the NYT app, they didn't see anything change!
Thanks for everyone's comments. I'm so curious as to why they made this change, when it was fine to begin with. All I can think of is that it somehow saves money.
DeleteI'm thinking of switching from my Macbook to my phone, at least for Monday through Thursday.
I briefly held onto the theory that this puzzle had every letter appear in proportion to their distribution as Scrabble tiles (thanks to the single Z and X and the two blanks), but that theory was fortuitously falsified by the next letter I checked, W
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed it, but to each their own
I think this puzzle deserves a third star. We know Rex does not love the Scrabbles, but that doesn't mean it's a bad theme or a bad puzzle. It wasn't a five-star, either, but it was well made and the fill was NOT that bad. Theme-dense and architecturally interesting with those corners.
ReplyDeleteI feel bad for the constructor, who happened to get a tribute puzzle accepted only to have it run after yesterday’s truly stellar effort. It’s a bit of a shame since yesterday’s grid could have easily been published on the actual anniversary (next Monday or Tuesday) instead of yesterday, which would have allowed this one to be judged more on its own merits. A missed opportunity for Mr. Shortz to show off some (big picture) editor’s chops there, but alas, it was not in the cards.
ReplyDeleteRex and others have pointed out the lowlights in this one. The crosses were pretty trustworthy, and Ms. Russo must be fairly well known (because I recognize her name, lol) - but that whole south central section with ORYXES, EIDETIC, ONCLE, RUSSO and the Spruce Goose looks like, well, it looks like something the NYT crossword puzzle might do.
20, wow. I think I’ve probably been here for at least 15. I liked today’s write up much more than I liked the puzzle. Please come back grandpamike! It would be so eidetic!
ReplyDeleteGood one, @mmorgan. "Only" about three years for me, but entertaining, educational and enjoyable.
DeleteWe in the community (and maybe Rex too) will never know if grampamike has made a return appearance (sharing the name "anonymous"), but that would be an interesting development.
An ill wind that blows no good is actually an oboe.
ReplyDeleteI always thought the "ill wind..." was the piccolo. The oboe makes a lovely sound.
DeleteFun puzzle, especially figuring out the SE corner was just two blanks! Very easy for me except the mid-north and NE corners--everything that depended on figuring out ALFREDBUTTS' name. No idea. Saw the DA coming out of the NE and somehow couldn't think of LAMBDA for the longest time... ASDOI could have been ASAMI. LEECH could have been MOOCH. So I stared at those entries for quite a while, finally LAMBDA came to mind and the rest worked out. When I think of a COLT I think of a little baby horse.... I guess that i a foal. a COLT is a 1 year old (actually anything < 4 years old and not "fixed" is a COLT according to Mr. Google). *** from me, liked it a lot more than @REX. I love scrabble conceptually but I really stink at it! Funny how I'm reasonably good at crosswords but can't do scrabble at all (way way too slow for anyone to play with me). But I enjoyed this puzzle, and learned who invented Scrabble!!! Thanks, Jeff! : )
ReplyDeletealternate clue for 44D..... "straight horned antelopes with longer horns than the other straight horned antelope which starts with the same two letters". Or how about "Straight horned antelopes with the higher scrabble score than the other straight-horned antelopes which start with the same two letters"!!!!!
ReplyDeleteIts taken me 20 years to graduate from Monday's only to doing every daily puzzle. An inspiration that kept me persevering was Rex's blog. So many times I just didn't get the theme or trick, but I kept learning from this blog. Thank you, Rex!!!!
ReplyDeleteI liked the use of the blank tiles. I thought that was pretty neat. But I do agree the fill was pretty boring. Except for the part that was annoying tennis trivia. I guess people are supposed to know that the “WTA Tour” (which I’ve never heard of but I can guess is tennis related) is known as a ‘circuit’? Even looking at the athlete’s Wikipedia page, the word circuit doesn’t appear once. I had to fight for every single letter through the crosses.
ReplyDeleteHappy 20th Anniversary keep on keepin on!
ReplyDeleteStarting with ZA does not bode well 🤦🏻♀️
ReplyDeleteSecond appearance this week of baseball Hall of Famer Rod CAW RUE.
ReplyDeleteHappy 20th! Love the grandpamike comment! It's to your credit, RP, that you cherish it. My favorite student evaluations from my teaching years were:
1. Prof. L thinks he's so smart and funny, but actually he is a fat jerk.
2. Based on this course I've decided to become a nun.
I’ve been reading this blog for 20 years, and I stand by what I said.
ReplyDeleteAdvice, sir...life's too short; find a new hobby. (Sent anonymously to @grandpamike).
Delete2 2-letter entries + 2 empty squares suffice for a thursday?!? 2 stars is 1 too many.
ReplyDeleteA big sticking point in 34 years of marriage is that my wife is an avid Scrabble fan and I am most certainly not. There is much respect for seeing the game played well, but I get very little joy out of it. Sitting and waiting for someone to come up with either something astounding or, more often, something like... I don't know, "tad", is not my idea of fun. My wife, god bless her, can take 20 minutes for her turn, just not my cuppa. I play on her birthday and anniversaries. Fortunately, my younger son is quite good and likes the game well enough to spar with her on a semi-regular basis. My love of crosswords just does not transfer to scrabble - all this is a Hugh thing, you like what you like.
ReplyDeleteWith all that... my disinterest in the scrabble was not a factor in my solving experience today. I share much of @rex's feelings but liked it much better than he did.
While I knew one bit of trivia, FIFTYPOINTS, the inventor and original name were unknowns. *But*....you gotta admit CRISSCROSSWORDS is fun to say and it's a pretty neat spanner. I'd say the same for ALFREDBUTTS (though not a spanner), poor guy must have had some trouble in middle school. Like @Rex and others, Bart Simpson immediately came to mind. Yeah, that gives you an idea of when my maturity as an adult peaked.
It started out pretty interesting with the two-letter ZA and I thought, hmm... something really cool is gonna happen here. Alas, not much else had any real sparkle other than what I mentioned above. The two blanks in the SE were kinda interesting and easy to get but a bit anticlimactic.
I knew EIDETIC simply from watching "Big Bang Theory", again, my maturity as stated above. But that's some nice fill.
I had several hold-ups. I totally butchered WTATOUR. I was thinking U.S. Women's Tennis Org or something like that and threw those initials down - major snafu. Crosses like STEPWISE and LAMBDA didn't come easily so I was stuck there for a while. The NW was also very, very thorny for me. Tried ASAMI, ASIAM and threw down MARE for the Belmont thing. I thought a cat fight sound had to be some sort of version of "meow" so I stuck and M in 11D. So all kinds of trouble there until LEECHES hit me. But this difficulty is all "fair game" for a Thursday, and I welcome the late week work.
Thank you Jeff! This was interesting. I am going to print it out and give it to my wife, I know she'll appreciate it and if you're the one who makes her happy today, I'm happy!
Wow! 20 years tomorrow!! Well, I have the day off as the next fall Jewish Holiday starts tomorrow night. I think I'll make part of the day a Rex Parker Does The New York Times Crossword celebration... I'll think of something cool to do...
At least I learned eidetic. No 🎈for me.
ReplyDeleteI thought today's puzzle was interesting and fun.
ReplyDeleteFigured the rating might turn on Rex's enthusiasm (or not) for Scrabble, but the write-up, and puzzle itself, goes (downhill) beyond that.
DeleteNW corner began with the hideous look of ZA over ERR over ROE over OAT. Got me off on the wrong foot, as while I used to (more than lately) enjoy playing Scrabble, it's with a real (i.e., Merriam-Webster) dictionary, not an official Scrabble version with all its non-words (sorry, including "ZA"). Bah!
Agree with another commenter that the blanks are valuable in their versatility, apart from point value. To work with this theme, that's a cluing mistake.
Loved the clues for both SAMSON and ESCAPEES, like and more than Rex, respectively. Agree with Rex re why a decent answer like WINGSPAN had to be clued with that recluse and not a real bird, maybe even a (non-spruce) goose.
The two blanks at the bottom were a nice touch, getting the "happy music" without entering any letters, but unfortunately didn't redeem the solve.
Me too, Lynn. I liked the trivia. I enjoy a game of Scrabble now and then—and while I of course see the link to crosswords, I didn’t realize that the game was even originally named after them.
DeletePerhaps if Stevie Wonder had been a scrabble aficionado, the puzzle would’ve gotten three stars. :)
I'm suddenly getting a dark highlight around the selected square on the puzzle. Solving on Times site on a Mac. Anyone know if this is some awful new feature or if I have an issue with a setting?
ReplyDeleteEnjoyed this a lot. Didn't know Butts. Grandpamike wants you to get over the Stevie Wonder puzzle. This one was actually more fun to fill.
ReplyDeleteA real missed opportunity to not clue WINGSPAN as the award-winning, best-selling board game. In a board game themed puzzle no less!
ReplyDeleteI've read Rex, but not the comments, because I'm running late. I'll come back later, I promise!
ReplyDeleteI don't know how many Scrabble tiles there are, and I'm too lazy to count the fetters in the puzzle, but when I saw two BLANKs, one Z, and one Q I thought maybe each letter was going to appear with its proper Scrabble frequency--which would have made it kind of a super pangram. But no, there's no J -- that's as far as I got in checking. That speculation was prompted by the ridiculous crossing of LORAX & ORYXES; I thought the constructor must really need the X to do that. Maybe it was the EDITor's clue, but ORYX horns curve backward, sometimes quite a bit, so I wouldn't call them straight. But I couldn't remember the ORibiS, so I put in the right answer.
I thought Rex would go off on RES, an outrageous POC. C'mon, let's see you use it in a sentence. Could there be a better clue? RES ipsa loquitur!
I did like WINGSPAN, and I was fine with the Spruce Goose as a clue. I think the nickname is meant to be mocking it, so it is not celebrating Mr. Hughes, any more than ordering the tide not to come in celebrates King Cnut.
Triple dirty word, anywhere on the board, Scrabble. A fun variation.
ReplyDeleteFun start for me as our go-to pizza joint in college was Zaza's.. Who wan't to go to Zaza's for a ZA? Good times.
ReplyDeleteNo real problems, had TREAD before CLEAT and ASAMI before ADOI which slowed things dwon. Never heard of Mr. BUTTS but easy from crosses. In my long career with music I haven't run into STEPWISE and thought it might be a STEPRISE, but WTA fixed that.
Today's highlight was discovering that I shared a kealoa experience with OFL on the ORYX ORIBI answer. Happy 20th, BTW, and thanks for all the fun.
Oh, and every time I see EIDETIC I plan to look it up, and don't , so it's nice to get a definition,
OK Thursday if you're into Scrabble, JS, If you're not, Just So-so. Thanks for a modicum of fun at least.
easiest thursday in a while for me
ReplyDeleteWhenever I see AROAR in a puzzle, I picture Sam Ezersky, whose office is, in my mind, next to Will Shortz' office, shouting "That's not a word! At least have the clue say [Non-word meaning cheering wildly]". To which WS replies "Eat OLEOE and die, Ezersky"!
ReplyDeleteI'm tired of the Type A personalities getting all the publicity. Nice to see a shout out to us TYPEDs.
Foot doctors are known to often have sexual liaisons while addressing conferences. These are known as Podiatrists PODIA Trysts. And speaking of PODIA, is this how one refers to multiple PODs of seals?
Oddly, I was just talking to GRANDPAMIKE yesterday. I said "Grand Pam, you're as awesome as ever. And how's. Mr. Ike?"
I like the occasional puzzle that just reveals a bunch of obscure facts, and todays's was one of those. Admittedly not an Erik Agard-like effort, but still lots of fun for me. Thanks, Jeff Stillman.