Relative difficulty: Easy (closer to a Wednesday time, and that's with rebus squares)
THEME: JAM PACKED — The puzzle contains three rebus squares that contain the word "JAM." The down entries for these squares is a food that can contain jam, with the rebus square breaking it apart in the center.
Word of the Day: ELENA (33A: ___ Ferrante, author of the "Neapolitan Novels") —
Ferrante has kept her identity secret since her 1992 debut, stating that anonymity is key to her writing process and that "books, once they are written, have no need of their authors". Speculation and several theories as to her true identity, based on information Ferrante has given in interviews as well as analysis drawn from the content of her novels, have been put forth, and routinely denied.
• • •
Hello again, it's Eli back after our regular Malaika MWednesday. I always enjoy reading her posts, and I hope you do to. We've got a pretty simple rebus today, so after a puzzle yesterday that maybe felt more like a Thursday, today we have a Wednesday puzzle with a Thursday style gimmick.
No jammie dodger today?
Theme answers:
[JAM]AICAN RUM / TA[JAM]RT (17A: Spirit of the Caribeean / 1D: Fruity pastry)
LEBRON [JAM]ES / DOUG[JAM]HNUT (23A: Four-time N.B.A. M.V.P. / 11D: Temptation for Homer Simpson)
JAM PACKED (60A: Chock-full ... like three squares (and foods) in this puzzle)
I picked up that this was a rebus pretty quickly. I was already on alert since it's a Thursday, and then it became pretty obvious that 17A should be Jamaican Rum (I'm also always on alert for good Jamaican rum... mmmmm, Appleton), and since that wouldn't fit, I figured out the jam gimmick from crosses and was off to the races. Solid theme; I appreciated that the jam was exactly in the middle of all of the down answers, and a tight revealer - good! I find the down answers/foods less visually appealing because they make nonsense words at face value, but that's a me problem. If you imagine a dollop of a nice strawberry jam on those squares for the down answers it works just fine. I could quibble that if you packed me just a "Jam Sandwich" (34D) for a brown bag lunch I'd ask where the peanut butter was, but I could see myself having it at a high tea (should I ever find myself at high tea). It was probably too simple to truly wow me, but the puzzle didn't make me want to say, "EAT ME" (26D: Tempting words on a Wonderland cake), so I'm pretty happy.
Speaking of high tea...
Pretty much the opposite of 26D, and a good representation of 11D. Mmmmm, forbidden donut.
Only a couple of spots where I slowed down a bit today. My brain always wants "Enervate" to mean "Energize" (which is exactly wrong), so DRAIN (10D: Enervate) took me a second to get right. I also feel like AH I GOTCHA (36D: "OK, that makes sense") is more "words you might hear" than "valid, common phrase." It's not a huge problem, but it took a lot of crosses to parse it correctly.
Not sure what is going on with the two White Lotus clues. I adore AIMEE (49D: "The White Lotus" acress ___ Lou Wood) but there's no reason that ETNA has to be clued to the show (66A: Volcano seen on HBO's "The White Lotus") without there being a specific cross-reference. It's also interesting that Aimee Lou Wood is not in the season of the show with Mount Etna. And why did they specify it was an HBO show in one of the clues but not the other? Interesting editorial choices there. For more HBO content in today's puzzle, you can watch My Brilliant Friend, the adaptation of Elena (33A) Ferrante's Neapolitan Trilogy.
Mein 39D
I did enjoy a couple of trivia pieces in the clues today. I know Greek mythology is all over the zeitgeist these days, so no surprise to see HERA, but I liked the wordplay in the clue (64A: Goddess whose name is an anagram of her mother's). Her mother is Rhea, if you were curious. And 32A (Kind of seeds found in a basket in King Tutankhamen's tomb) is a fun angle for SESAME. I wonder if Howard Carter was tempted to make Tutahini with those seeds (sorry).
The only way I'd clue "Sesame"
Stray Thoughts:
50D: Arabia Felix, now (YEMEN) — I probably haven't watched an episode of Friends in decades, but my first thought when I hear Yemen is still that Chandler lied about moving to in order to get away from Janice. I even remember the fake address he gave her (15 Yemen Road, Yemen). Memory is weird.
21D: Not accept an outrade, say (PROTEST) — Like posting about a subject you find objectionable when you substitute on a crossword blog on Tuesday, maybe?
65A: Feelings of getting older (ACHES) — I turn 44 in a couple of weeks, and I'm definitely starting to feel this one.
Thanks for reading! I'll be back again for one more spin this weekend. See you then!
Signed, Eli Selzer, False Dauphin of CrossWorld
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THEME: "D'OH!" (71A: Cry from Homer ... or a phonetic hint to the ends of 18-, 27-, 48- and 62-Across) — names and phrases that end with a "D'OH" sound:
Theme answers:
RED BORDEAUX (18A: Wine choice in southern France)
JUSTIN TRUDEAU (27A: Canadian P.M. who is the son of another Canadian P.M.)
SUPER NINTENDO (48A: Platform for Donkey Kong Country)
COOKIE DOUGH (62A: Chunks found in Ben & Jerry's Half Baked ice cream)
Word of the Day: MARIO Puzo (67A: "The Godfather" author Puzo) —
My daughter is GEN Z. Solidly GEN Z. She is twenty-five. In fact, she is exactly twenty-five, as today is her birthday. True story. Anyway, I'm telling you all this so you will understand why that GEN Z clue was a huge wince (1D: Kids these days). Maybe the very youngest members of GEN Z are still, technically, kids (i.e. under 18) but kids these days are definitely, solidly Generation Alpha. That is, *all* members of Generation Alpha are kids, but only a fraction of GEN Z are kids. If you are very old and still think "Millennials" are young people (they're middle-aged), and if you don't really know anyone GEN Z, I'm sure the "Kids these days" clue seemed cute and accurate. And I'll give you cute. But accurate it is not. Really surprised the editors didn't can that one. Also, on an extremely related note, YOLO is not "modern lingo" (36D: Carefree motto, in modern lingo). It is decidedly bygone. Like ... it started dying real soon after it became a thing in the early '10s (after Drake popularized it in the lyrics of "The Motto" (2011) and then The Lonely Island put out a "YOLO" song with Adam Levine and Kendrick Lamar (2012)). You can see actual lexicographers here talking about how that term died a hard and fast death. It fared poorly in the 2012 Word of the Year competition. Here's Ben Zimmer talking with Katherine Martin in Vanity Fair in early 2013:
__Zimmer:__I was always a fan of YOLO, even after the backlash hit, because for someone who watches the rise and fall of words, it kind of gave you a whole story of this very rapid development over the course of 2012 and its fall from grace, as well. When I wrote a column on it in August, I found out around that time that Katie Couric was starting her syndicated talk show and that she was going to have this regular feature, “What’s Your YOLO?” And when I heard that, I thought that’d have to be the death knell for YOLO.
__Martin:__We’re not convinced that it will necessarily stay with us in the long term. If you look at a Google Trends for searching, searches for YOLO peaked in April and then they began to plummet again, and they now seem to have evened out at a much lower level. By the time we were talking about the Word of the Year, we felt that YOLO was already passé. It was felt to be past its heyday; there was comment about there already being a backlash against it. Katie Couric was talking about YOLO.
Katie Couric, slang killer! Anyway, GEN Z were kids in 2012. YOLO was "modern slang" in 2012. It is not 2012 anymore. Lord, what I wouldn't give for 2012 right now, but ... nope, time opens all wounds and there is no going back.
Conceptually, I think this is a pretty cute theme. Hate the revealer though. It's flaccid. These revealers with no sass or zazz or pop, no wordplay, they depress me. Just "D'OH"? Not enough juice in that thing. But I like all the different "D'OH"-sounding endings. Very creative. Didn't love RED BORDEAUX as an answer. Felt like the kind of answer you use when you definitely need your theme answer to come out to 11 letters to make symmetry work. From a Downs-only perspective, parsing that one was rough, as was parsing JUSTIN TRUDEAU. If you don't know the theme and can't look at the Across clues, well then JUSTIN is likely to look the way it did to me: like two words. "JUST IN ... what, TIME? CASE?!" And TRUDEAU crosses were hard to come by. Had DAB ON (?) before RUB ON (30D: Apply, as ointment), and no idea about RAIDED or CODDLE or AREA MAP or TOUT at first pass (I had nothing for the first three, and HYPE for that last one). I was all the way down to the bottom of the grid before I got my first themer filled in (COOKIE DOUGH! Love Half Baked!) (the ice cream, not the movie—the movie remains the only movie I've ever walked out of). But COOKIE DOUGH didn't give me the theme. Only after getting SUPER NINTENDO, and then remembering that D'OH was at the bottom of the grid, did I have my own "D'OH!" moment and (finally) come back around to TRUDEAU and BORDEAUX.
The grid is a pangram—contains all the letters of the alphabet at least once. This used to be the kind of thing that constructors occasionally aspired to, but thankfully it fell out of favor as *trying* for the pangram often compromises basic fill quality. Also, no one cares about pangrams and most people don't notice. Still, I notice, and as pangrams go, this one doesn't feel too strained. To be clear, I think it's a non-achievement that no one should ever aspire to (just make the puzzle as good as you can!), but I don't think any real harm was done today. When your themer set already has the "X" "J" and "K" in it, you've only go got the "Z" and "Q" that are likely to give you any trouble, and the "Q" is pretty seamlessly handled today with SHAQ / QUACKED, so ... no foul.
Bullets:
68A: Frequently, to a poet (OFT) — an old poet, or a pretentious poet, yes.
18A: Wine choice in southern France (RED BORDEAUX) — pretty sure you can make that "choice" anywhere in the world they serve wine? "Wine from southern France" makes more sense.
38A: Where canines sleep (DOG BEDS) — our dogs died in 2019 and 2020, respectively, but we kept their dog beds and one of them is definitely now a cat bed. It takes up way too much space on the floor, and we keep thinking we should do something different with that space, but then I come downstairs and see Alfie lounging in the middle of that giant pillow and I don't have the heart to get rid of it. So this raggedy-ass dog bed is just gonna sit on our living room floor until god knows when, I guess.
[ignoring cat bed, sleeping on (grimy!!) dog bed]
[in species-appropriate bed, when he was much tinier]
55D: Word before food or mate (SOUL) — I am remarkably bad at "word that can follow/precede x or y"-type clues. The RAIDED clue, which I also struggled with, is also in this same family of clue (19D: Like speakeasies and refrigerators, at times)
That's all. See you next time.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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Word of the Day: Salmon P. CHASE (52A: Figure on the $10,000 bill, the largest U.S. note ever in public circulation) —
Salmon Portland Chase (January 13, 1808 – May 7, 1873) was an American politician and jurist who served as the sixth chief justice of the United States from 1864 to his death in 1873. He earlier served as the 25th United States secretary of the treasury from 1861 to 1864, funding the American Civil War during the administration of Abraham Lincoln. Chase also served as the 23rd governor of Ohio from 1856 to 1860, and represented Ohio in the United States Senate from 1849 to 1855 and again in 1861. Chase is therefore one of the few American politicians who have held constitutional office in all three branches of the federal government, in addition to serving in the highest state-level office. Prior to his Supreme Court appointment, Chase was widely seen as a potential president. // Chase sought the Republican nomination for president in the1860 presidential election, but the party chose Abraham Lincoln at itsNational Convention. After Lincoln won the election, he asked Chase to serve as Secretary of the Treasury. Chase served in that position from 1861 to 1864, working hard to ensure theUnionwas well-financed during theCivil War. Chase resigned from the Cabinet in June 1864, but retained support among theRadical Republicans. Partly to appease the Radical Republicans, Lincoln nominated Chase to fill the Supreme Court vacancy that arose followingChief JusticeRoger Taney's death. // Chase served as Chief Justice from 1864 to his death in 1873. He presided overthe Senate trialof PresidentAndrew Johnsonduring theimpeachment proceedingsof 1868. // To honor Chase for introducing the modern system of banknotes, he was depicted on the $10,000 bill printed from 1928 to 1946. Chase was instrumental in placing the phrase "In God We Trust" on United States coins in 1864.(wikipedia) (my emph.)
• • •
Some good marquee answers here. Not a lot of 'em (just six that are 8+), but the ones that we do get form a worthy lattice for the rest of the grid to hang upon. "DOES NOT COMPUTE" is a funny one because I got it easily, and yet that particular "robotic error message" feels (science) fictional. Calls to mind a bleep blop blork hulking metal kind of robot from midcentury B movies. Yes, here we go—wikipedia says the phrase was popularized by The Robot in the TV show Lost in Space ('65-'68). It was also a catchphrase on the science fiction sitcom (!?!?!) My Living Doll ('64-'65), which appears to be about the world's first sexbot, wow, I can't believe it lasted only one season:
The series starred Bob Cummings as Dr. Bob McDonald, a psychiatrist. His friend Dr. Carl Miller (Henry Beckman), a scientist with the U.S. Air Force being transferred to Pakistan, shows Bob his latest invention: a lifelike android in the form of a sexy, Amazonian female, AF 709. Miller gives the prototype robot, also called Rhoda (Julie Newmar), to Bob. Bob is initially reluctant, but soon becomes intrigued by the experiment of educating this sophisticated but naive robot. The series' episodes center around Rhoda's attempts to learn how human society works, and Bob's attempts to teach Rhoda how to be "the perfect woman", which he defines as one who "does what she's told" and "doesn't talk back." He also strives to keep her identity secret by saying that she is Carl's niece.
The clue doesn't indicate that the "error message" in question is largely pop cultural, so I was surprised (but not unpleased) to have to reach back to an age of much quainter robots than the ones currently, and largely invisibly, destroying enriching our lives. I like that the scifi-ish "DOES NOT COMPUTE" sits atop IN THE NEAR FUTURE, thus giving a sense of both the impending robot takeover and how much it will suck rule.
Pretty hard 1-Across right out of the gate, unless you are an adherent of something called Read With Jenna (Jenna Bush Hager's book club on the Today show), which seems to have helped make the memoir in question (How to Say Babylon) into a legit bestseller (1A: Like the culture depicted in Safiya Sinclair's best-selling memoir "How to Say Babylon"). The only way I got to RASTA was by getting the -STA part—at that point, what else could it be. I knew of the connection between "Babylon" and RASTA culture from several mentions of the term in Reggae and Reggae-adjacent songs. It's also the title of a great movie about the Jamaican music scene in London in the late '70s. In Rastafarianism, "Babylon" represents "the forces of oppression and exploitation that Africans faced under colonialism and its legacies"
That NW corner was the hardest part, but as you know, this is often true—the hardest part is the place you start, and then once you get momentum, things get easier. I figured out that the [Younger Simpson sister] couldn't be any of the animated Simpson sisters, and so had to be the younger of the singing Simpsons sisters. Jessica, I remembered (I once flew on a flight she was on, out of Cincinnati or Kentucky somewhere, I forget—a random fact of my life), but her younger sister, even with the "A," took me a while to remember, and even then I spelled it ASHLEY, leaving me wondering how an EPEY involved "touching" (23A: Touching event?) (frankly, I wanted ORGY there at first). REKEYED before RETYPED. No idea what the context for [Rock alternative] could be until the answer (PAPER) was practically all the way filled in (context: rock-PAPER-scissors). So, struggle struggle ... but then the long answers came flying out of that section with no effort at all, and I was off.
The rest of the puzzle proved pretty easy, the hardest answer being the guy on the $10,000 bill. If you'd given me [Salmon P. ___] as part of the clue, I *might* have been able to churn up CHASE, but as it was, nope. In fact, once I got CHASE, I just figured it was the guy who founded CHASE Manhattan bank (now just CHASE). Was that a guy? ... holy &^$% it's the same guy! I mean, no, he didn't found CHASE National Bank (he'd been dead four years by that point), but the bank was named after him. I feel like I learned Salmon P. CHASE's name from a fish-themed puzzle of some sort, years back. He was def in a "guys on the money" puzzle back in '09. And here he is in some kind of fish-pun theme in 1974 (which five-year-old me might have enjoyed if someone had explained it to him)
[Check out the fill in this one! some real head-scratchers! The pre-software days of constructing were Wild]
Good grid, no cringe, a little light on the good stuff, but that good stuff was in fact good, so I can't complain. This one had a nice flow—no places to really get stuck stuck, except maybe those cul-de-sacs in the NW and SE, which were certainly the hardest for me—I blanked on DASHI (43A: Miso soup base) and needed way too many crosses to see JASMINE in the SE (35D: Fragrant flower whose name means "gift from "God").
Notes and explanations:
7D: "u r freaking hilarious" (LMFAO) — "Laughing my fabulous/fearsome/feathery ass off." Seems weird that you would abbr. "u" and "r" like that but then write out "freaking hilarious" completely. Not a plausible text. I tried to make OMFG happen here (thanks to that (sexy) "MF"), but as you can probably guess, it wouldn't fit.
21A: X, as in Mexico (BESO) — the "as" part here is not great (i.e. totally unnecessary). I guess it's trying to misdirect you and make you think the "X" has something to do with the letter in "Mexico," as opposed to what "X" actually is here (a symbol for a "kiss," which is Mexico (i.e. in Spanish) is BESO)
40A: Glazier's replacement (PANE) — a glazier cuts and fits the glass for windows
13D: Order in the court? (CASE DISMISSED) — kind of a lifeless "?" clue, since nothing about it is specific to the answer; that is, any "order" might've worked ("ALL RISE," "OVERRULED"). Nothing dismissy about the clue.
21D: My word! (BOND) — as I've said before, the lack of quotation marks around this clue, coupled with the "!," means that the answer will not be an equivalent of the clue phrase itself (the apparent exclamation "My Word!") but something that "my word" literally is ...which is "my BOND" (in a common expression)
25D: First name in late-night (SETH) — as in Meyers. I go to bed too early for late-night shows, and I gave up "political comedy" shows completely in 2016, but I will admit to watching snippets of his monologues on Insta sometimes (I watched one once and then My Algorithm, being a rather simplistic robot, decided I need to see them at the top of my feed every day) (there are worse thing to be at the top of your feed, I suppose, so thanks, Algy (that's what I call him))
45D: Place to brood (COOP) — "brood" here refers to hens managing their chicks, not you fretting about the CO-OP board won't let you keep chickens in your apartment.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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Constructor: Dena R. Verkuil and Andrea Carla Michaels
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (with one real stumper, for me, solving Downs-only)
THEME: "YOU TALKIN' TO ME?" (36A: Classic Robert De Niro line in "Taxi Driver" ... or a hint for 17-, 25-, 51- and 61-Across) — exclamations that end with a person's name:
Theme answers:
"GEEZ, LOUISE!" (17A: "My heavens!")
"WHOA, NELLY!" (25A: "Hold it right there!")
"NO WAY, JOSE!" (51A: "Absolutely, positively not!")
"BYE, FELICIA!" (61A: "I'm done with you!")
Word of the Day: "BYE, FELICIA!" (61A) —
In American English, the phrase "Bye, Felicia" or "Bye, Felisha" is an informal phrase and internet meme intended as a dismissive send-off, wherein a person or idea is rendered so unimportant his or her name is reduced to "Felicia." According to Ice Cube, who starred in Friday and co-wrote its script, "'Bye, Felicia' [...] is the phrase to get anyone out [of] your face that's saying something stupid".Nicole Richie said "Felicia is, like, some random that you just do not even care about." // The phrase originally comes from a scene in the 1995 American comedy filmFridayin which Ice Cube's character says "Bye, Felisha" to dismissAngela Means' character, Felisha. Due to the phrase being spread orally, it was incorrectly recorded as "Bye Felicia", now the most popular variation. // In an interview withVibe magazineto commemorate the film's 20th anniversary, Means said she believes the phrase wasn't in the script and Ice Cubead-libbedthe line "based off what I gave him as an actor." (wikipedia)
• • •
Gonna go out on a limb and predict that a lot of solvers (particularly older solvers) will not be familiar with the dismissive expression, "BYE, FELICIA!" It's very common, but there's gonna be a generational dividing line with that one for sure. I never saw Friday (1995) and never heard the expression "BYE, FELICIA!" until many years (decades?) later. It might even have been in a crossword context that I first heard it. Let me check ... no, I've never written about it on this blog, so it must've been while solving some other crossword. Annnnnyway, by the time I got down to that answer, I understood the basic structure of the theme, so I was looking for a name at the end of that answer, and once I got the "-ICIA" part, I had it. Definitely the newest and least broadly known of today's theme answers, but that doesn't make it invalid. I think it's a nice way to end this themer set ("BYE!"). As for the theme itself, it's very good: tight, clean, and with just the right kind of playfulness for a Monday. The revealer's relationship to the themers is perhaps a little loose—you have to imagine someone named Louise or Nelly or Jose or Felicia saying it—but it's such a good line, such an iconic line, that I don't mind the looseness. At all. In fact, I kinda like imagining the (unlikely) scenario of someone with one of those names wondering out loud if they're being addressed directly. Actually, people with those names probably get self-styled "funny" people using those expressions in their presence all the time. Is this true? Let me know, all you Louises and Nellys and Joses and Felicias out there.
The fill today definitely runs a little toward the stale / olden / crosswordesey. I don't need to list it all out, you can see it for yourself, pretty plainly. Just in case you can't, here's an abbreviated list: SRI ESTE NENE AYE SSN ÊTRE ERIES TKOS etc. etc. But you do get four solid long Downs, at least one of which (CAT PERSON) feels pretty fresh and original (10D: Counterpart of a dog lover). And the clue on MUSTACHE is unexpected and clever (39D: A milk drinker may have one). I got it off the "M," so it wasn't hard, but I did enjoy it. I have to wonder about the clue on ESSAYS, though (13D: Pieces of 1,000 words or so). Out of what orifice did they pull the number "1,000?" That seems ... totally arbitrary. Did A.I. write that clue? Nope, even A.I. (i.e. Google Assist, that annoying top search return that you have to scroll past if you want to find truly reliable information) is telling me that the number of words in an essay varies wildly depending on context.
["May contain inaccuracies" LOL I'm sure that will hold up well in court]
ESSAYS can be virtually any length. 1,000 words is ridiculous. "Or so" doing a lot of work in that clue. Can't believe someone, somewhere in the puzzle-making process couldn't have written a better clue for that one.
Solving Downs-only, there were two answers that were very tough for me. The first was ALKALI (11D: Base that dissolves in water). I wasn't exactly sure how "Base" was being used in the clue, but even if I had known it was "Base" as in "counterpart of acid on the pH scale," I probably still would've needed to run the alphabet of possibilities at T-OS (as I did) to get the "K," which got me to ALKALI. But the real toughie for me today was an innocuous-seeming four-letter answer near the heart of the grid: FLAK (29D: Carping). I had the "A" and that's it. I couldn't make anything out of [Carping], esp. considering the answer couldn't end in "-ING" (as it wouldn't fit). I was thinking of adjectives meaning "complaining," such as you might use to describe a complaining person. Maybe ... something like "SORE" or "CRABBY" or "WHINY" or I don't know what. It was very tough to infer any of the missing letters from their crosses. Lots of possibilities for S-O, -OS, and AR-. I ran the alphabet for S-O and still got nowhere. It was only when I reran the alphabet that I realized I'd missed SFO as a possibility. Thought about potential F-A- words for many seconds before FLAK finally dawned on me. You catch FLAK or you give FLAK, and while "carping" is a plausible synonym, it's not one that trades places easily with FLAK (not in the ways that I would use FLAK). I'm not impugning the clue, just trying to explain couldn't easily make the connection. Downs-only solves can get perilous quickly, and in the strangest ways...
Bullets:
24D: "___ camoly!" ("HOLY") — what ... is this? I've heard of "holy moly!" and possibly the jokey "holy cannoli!" (?), but "camoly?" What the hell is "camoly" even supposed to be doing? What sound is that? Is there a pun? Why would anyone add a "ca-" to the perfectly good "holy moly!"? "HOLY CAMOLY!" would've made a good theme answer if anyone on god's green earth had ever been named Camoly. Any Camolys out there? Calling all Camolys! Help me, Obi-Wan Camoly, you're my only hope!
58A: Murmur during a massage ("AHH") — Is "AHH" a "murmur"? Especially in this context? I know we all love alliterative clues, but ... how to say this ... I've been seeing my massage therapist for the better part of a decade now so she's heard me make any number of sounds, but never "AHH" (that's more a "slipping into a warm bath" sound). Maybe some of my noises qualify as "murmurs," but most of them are guttural sounds indicating "&#^$% that part of me is apparently really *#&$^ing tense, thank you for figuring that out." Most of these sounds are unspellable.
32D: Buyer's protection (GUARANTEE) — I tried to make WARRANTY fit here. It would not.
Glad to be back on blogging duty full time now. I had a great week on Lake Ontario with my best friends. Much needed catching up / hanging out / eating / drinking / movie-watching time. We did jigsaws:
[Puzzles of 1,000 pieces, exactly]
And went birding:
[weird red-faced chicken/duck called a "gallinule" (this is not the actual gallinule we saw)]
[at Montezuma National Wildlife Preserve]
[didn't see one of these, but now want this exact drawing tattooed on my body somewhere. If I were a bird, this is what I would look like. This is the energy I would bring. All park illustrations should be done by schoolchildren]
And on the last day we went to the Eastman House mansion and museum in Rochester, NY, where I took a selfie with a very unexpected statue of Philip Seymour Hoffman (!?)
Thanks to Eli and Mali and Clare and Rafa for filling in. You'll be seeing more from them later in the summer (I go away to MN for a weekend in mid-July to see my daughter—currently Production Manager at the Great River Shakespeare Festival—and in August I've got a full week in Santa Barbara with my extended family, followed immediately by the Lollapuzzoola xword tourney in NYC). I enjoyed sleeping in, even if my body did keep waking up very early like "Time to Blog!" I've trained it well. Luckily, it let me fall back asleep, at least a little. I'm writing this on Sunday evening, but it's back to 4am wake-up calls for me starting Tuesday. Can't wait (no, srsly). I'll leave you with two last pictures of Lake Ontario, taken from the back yard of the place where we were staying ...
See you next time.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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A long time ago, I was solving this puzzle and got stuck at an unguessable (to me) crossing: N. C. WYETH crossing NATICK at the "N"—I knew WYETH but forgot his initials, and NATICK ... is a suburb of Boston that I had no hope of knowing. It was clued as someplace the Boston Marathon runs through (???). Anyway, NATICK— the more obscure name in that crossing—became shorthand for an unguessable cross, esp. where the cross involves two proper nouns, neither of which is exceedingly well known. NATICK took hold as crossword slang, and the term can now be both noun ("I had a NATICK in the SW corner...") or verb ("I got NATICKED by 50A / 34D!")
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