Jazz great Baker / THU 11-28-24 / Nutrient-rich soil component / Digital newsletter platform / French, in England / British designer Crawford awarded a C.B.E. in 2021 / Mythological creature with origins on Sherpa folklore / Examine in great detail, as a text / '90s rapper with the hit "Still Not a Player"

Constructor: Ricky J. Sirois

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: Stacks! — four Down answers = ___STACK, represented in the grid by their consecutive rebus squares forming a literal "stack" of the relevant word:

Theme answers:

• [SUB][SUB][SUB] (i.e. Substack) (14D: Digital newsletter platform)
• [SUB]ZERO (14A: Negative)
• [SUB]STANTIVE (17A: Considerable)
• TURKEY [SUB] (19A: Common order at a hoagie shop)
• [SHORT][SHORT][SHORT] (i.e. short stack) (34D: Pancake order)
• [SHORT] IRON (34A: 8 or 9, in a golf bag)
• RUNS [SHORT] (36A: Doesn't have enough)
• STOP [SHORT] (40A: Slam on the brakes)
• [HAY][HAY][HAY] (i.e. haystack) (35D: Place to find a needle, maybe)
• [HAY]RIDE (35A: Haunted ___ (Halloween activity))
• [HAY]SEED (39A: Bumpkin)
• MADE [HAY] (41A: Capitalized on an opportunity)
• [SMOKE][SMOKE][SMOKE] (i.e. smokestack) (54D: Factory chimney)
• [SMOKE]SCREEN (54A: Ruse designed to disguise)
• GOES UP IN [SMOKE] (57A: Amounts to nothing, as a plan)
• BUM A [SMOKE] (62A: Ask for someone else's cig)

Word of the Day: BIG PUN (45D: '90s rapper with the hit "Still Not a Player") —

Christopher Lee Rios (November 10, 1971 - February 7, 2000), better known by his stage name Big Pun (short for Big Punisher), was an American rapper. Emerging from the underground hip hop scene in the Bronx, he came to prominence upon discovery by fellow Bronx rapper Fat Joe, and thereafter guest appeared on his 1995 album Jealous One's Envy.

Big Pun signed with Fat Joe's label, Terror Squad Productions and Loud Records in 1997 to release his debut studio album, Capital Punishment (1998) the following year. Met with critical acclaim and commercial success, the album earned a nomination for Best Rap Album at the 41st Annual Grammy Awards, peaked at number five on the Billboard 200, and became the first hip hop recording by a Latino solo act to receive platinum certification by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). His second album, Yeeeah Baby (2000) peaked at number three on the Billboard 200, although Pun died two months before its release. (wikipedia)

• • •

Happy Thanksgiving. Best holiday by a mile. Please don't call it "Turkey Day," which is blasphemy. Not everything has to be cute-ified. Some things are sacred. Also, not everyone eats Turkey. Although I do. And I will. Soon. With mashed TATERs, though again, why? Not everything has to be cute-ified. Just speak like a grown-up. They're "potatoes." TATER should only be used when preceding "TOTS." Or when someone hits a home run (which is the other "way" a TATER might be mashed) (27A: It might be mashed (in more ways than one!)). Wherever you are, whoever you are, even if you say things like "Turkey Day" and "mashed TATERs," I hope you are safe and warm and with people you love, and that you have many things to be thankful for. I'm thankful for Clare, who graciously filled in for me not once but twice, so that I can enjoy my birthday and sleep in for a couple days (though my body is on such a ruthlessly regular schedule that I pretty much woke up at 3:45AM anyway, though yesterday I lay there til a little after 4, much to the cats' consternation) (Alfie's "get up" routine involves crying and literally banging on windows, whereas Ida just walks all over you while purring loudly; I much prefer Ida's way, as it involves at least the facsimile of affection) (wow, that's a lot of parenthetical comments in a row) (speaking of "in a row"...). 

IN A STACK! I really enjoyed this theme, though it ended up being very easy to pick up, and once picked up, very easy to find and knock down. The first "stack" I encountered wouldn't stack right. I could see I was dealing with a rebus, and I wanted STOP [SHORT], but I also wanted RUNS [OUT], and I had no idea what kind of IRON I was dealing with in that golf clue, so I had [blank] over [OUT] over [SHORT]. Not intelligible. I'm realizing now that I didn't even look at the Down clue there. Bizarre. If I'd seen 34D: Pancake order, then [SHORT] stack would almost certainly have occurred to me right there. As it was, I went back to the SUB at the end of TURKEY [SUB] and I read *that* Down clue (14D: Digital newsletter platform), immediately knew it was [SUB]stack, then went back to the pancake clue and [SHORT]ed all those squares. Half the stacks in place, lightning quick. Then I thought "I wonder if we'll see a "smoke" stack. "Hay," I did not anticipate, though I should have. This was all happening very, very fast. So fast I never even saw some of the stuff I would not have known, or would have struggled with, like ILSE, who? That name was wonderfully absent from grids for over a decade, until it got reintroduced as a different "designer" ([Danish shoe designer Jacobsen]) in 2023, and now here it is again. Send it back to oblivion. We don't need another four-letter crosswordese name. All full up! Come back in 2028, or 2035. Or never. There aren't any ILSEs famous enough to justify crossword inclusion, though ILSE Crawford is better than ILSE Jacobsen, who doesn't even have an English-language wikipedia page. ARNE Jacobsen has a SUBSTANTIVE English-language wikipedia page, and are you eager to see him in the grid? You are not. Case closed. Au revoir, ILSE. As Bogart says in that famous Bogart movie, Key LARGO, "We'll always have Paris." [please send indignant corrections to ...]

ILSE was the worst of the fill, which ran a little rough. There are more ODISTS in crosswords than ever were or will be in real life. One texting abbr. is OK, two is too much, IMO (58D: Qualifying abbreviation). I could do without OMA DAE ACER ABA, but that stuff is all pretty ordinary (if unlovely). Mostly, the fill holds up, and you get a couple of nice longer phrases with international flair in the bargain (AMERICANOS, PIED-À-TERRE). The stack that yields the best crosses by far is the [SMOKE] stack. [SMOKE]SCREEN and GOES UP IN [SMOKE] are both vibrant and sparkly, and while BUM A [SMOKE] feels like a relative of "EAT A SANDWICH," it's a way more coherent phrase, so I'll allow it. Not only that, I like it. I quit smoking [checks watch] thirty-three years ago, but I do occasionally miss it. I actually like the smell (though only if it dissipates quickly—indoors, it would soon become unbearable). And you can look cool while smoking, which you absolutely cannot while vaping. No one, not a solitary person, has ever looked cool vaping. This is its major drawback, IMO. 


No trouble spots for me today. I am the right age to know BIG PUN, which, after ILSE, is the only name I can see giving people real trouble today. ESTES Park is right near where my mom and sister live, and it's been in puzzles a lot, so it's second nature to me, but if it's not second nature to you, then I imagine the ESTES/ILSE cross wasn't too pleasant. I can never precisely remember the German term for [Grammy] (ODA? OPA?), but the crosses there were a cinch (OMA!). I had SUBSTANTIAL before SUBSTANTIVE, which will likely be a common hiccup today. Had some trouble getting from [Uprightness] to HONOR, and a little more trouble getting from 8D: Delivery person? to ORATOR. I had the "O" and thought, "O ... B/GYN ... O? ... was its name-O?" Like maybe they were calling them "OB/GYNOs" now, slangily. I think GYNO alone can be slang (for "gynecologist"), but after "OB" ... I haven't heard that. And anyway, it was wrong. Wrong "delivery." 

Bullets:

• 65A: French, in England (SNOG) — clever misdirection here (using "French" as a verb meaning "kiss"). 
• 6D: Abbr. in a birth announcement (OZS) — as in "10 lbs 6 OZS" (which was the figure in my own "birth announcement," continued belated happy birthday to me)

[Beauty and the BAD KITTY]

• 46D: Pitcher for the reds? (CARAFE) — another good clue. Not hard, but clever (in case you somehow don't know, the Reds are a Major League Baseball team—more baseball-based humor for you on this Footballiest of Days)

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

Read more...

Eponym for a ship in a famous thought experiment / SAT 7-20-24 / Characters in "300" / David Grammy-winning French D.J. / Touring show for figure skaters / Punish like Montressor does Fortunato in "The Cask of Amontillado" / ___ Wood, portrayer of the Bond girl Plenty O'Toole in "Diamonds Are Forever"

Constructor: Ricky J. Sirois

Relative difficulty: Medium (Hard, then Easy)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Ship of THESEUS (21D: Eponym for a ship in a famous thought experiment) —

The Ship of Theseus, also known as Theseus's Paradox, is a thought experiment and paradox about whether an object is the same object after having had all of its original components replaced over time, typically one after the other.

In Greek mythology, Theseus, mythical king of the city Athens, rescued the children of Athens from King Minos after slaying the minotaur and then escaped onto a ship going to Delos. Each year, the Athenians would commemorate this by taking the ship on a pilgrimage to Delos to honour Apollo. A question was raised by ancient philosophers: After several hundreds of years of maintenance, if each individual piece of the Ship of Theseus was replaced, one after the other, was it still the same ship?

In contemporary philosophy, this thought experiment has applications to the philosophical study of identity over time, and has inspired a variety of proposed solutions and concepts in contemporary philosophy of mind concerned with the persistence of personal identity. (wikipedia)

• • •

[at Point Pelee National Park, Ontario, Canada]

Oof, I am out of practice. When I go on vacation I Go On Vacation, which means I haven't so much as looked at a crossword puzzle since my last write-up on Whenever That Was (last Sunday, I think). I'd planned to blog throughout the week, but then the internet at our lake house turned out to be spectacularly bad, and so my stand-ins mercifully stood in and I got to take the week off. Genuinely off. It was great. I stared at Lake ERIE (4) from my back deck and watched the birds and listened to Barry Manilow and Dan Fogelberg and the Bee Gees and George Benson and Ambrosia and whatever other mellow childhood radio tunes my best friends decided to play on their little outdoor speaker cube thingie. Drank cocktails, read books, walked around quaint little towns eating gelato. Zero puzzles done. 

[MARI'S Gelato in Kingsville—a must]

And then I come back to a Saturday! Thrown in the deep end. I floundered around the NW corner of this one like a total incompetent, though, to be fair, some of the clues were dumb (who has bungee jumping on their BUCKET LIST!? Is bungee jumping still a thing? Feels like an "extreme sport" from the '90s—I wanted the answer to be ESPN ... something—"Hey, you wanna watch bungee-jumping?" "No." "Cool, I'll just turn on ESPN X-TREME." "I said 'no.'") (I think I also just hate the term BUCKET LIST, the way it sounds, the very idea of it ... just do the things you want to do, you don't need some mythical list, which almost certainly is not an actual "list" anyway). "STARS ON ICE?" (17A: Touring show for figure skaters). That feels made-up. ICE CAPADES is a very real and well-known thing. "STARS ON 45," also a very real thing, and once well known. "STARS ON ICE?" Maybe it's super famous and I just can't think of anything I'd want to go to less except maybe a monster truck rally (do they still have those?). I went to grad school in Michigan and know the names of all the little colleges there (my good friend taught at Adrian College for a while), and I *knew* ALMA, but couldn't retrieve it. Access denied. No idea about the Spanish province, forgot or blanked on the Hangul writing system. Entire NW, a washout. I had YDS and LAN and TREAT, and I wasn't really certain about those last two. Pitifully, shamefully, my first toehold came from the completely ordinary and unremarkable YDS / STAT cross-reference. Got STAT because I had YDS (and the "A" from TREAT) in place. Tried "I WAS NOT!," which, while not correct, was 5/7 correct, which was enough to get me into the PEN TENOR RAPPER section, and then things began to open up a little.

Part of my NW flubbery was (somehow) not even seeing the clue at 19A: Actors Feldman and Haim (COREYS), which would've been a gimme ... if I'd been able to spell. I thought COREY was CORY, and so for my plural, I had (logically!) CORIES, LOL. I was like, "Is that right? Is that how you pluralize Y-ending names? 'I wonder how many GARIES I know...' No, that looks bad." Sigh. But I figured it out, and I (somehow!) knew David GUETTA, despite being able to name absolutely nothing he's done (32A: David ___, Grammy-winning French D.J.). I just remembered seeing "ft. David GUETTA" on a bunch of song titles earlier this century, or maybe it's "David GUETTA, ft. [someone else]" (yes, that's it—he's collaborated with a ton of singers, including AKON, who shows up in puzzles sometimes, or did, once).

I also totally forgot about the Ship of THESEUS, which made getting into the NE corner very, very hard. Well, harder than it could've/should've been. Thought maybe the ship was "THE something," like "THE ZEUS" or "THE DEUS" (deus = Lat. for "god"). Speaking of "THE," THE EYE (26A: A bad look) was rough, both because it’s hard to parse ( “THEE-?”), and because it really wants to be THE Evil EYE or THE Stink EYE. I don't think of THE EYE as a "bad look," exactly. If you give someone THE EYE, you're checking them out in an at-least-semi-horny fashion ("to look at someone in a way that shows sexual attraction" — merriam-webster dot com). Thank god I knew window shades were PLEATED, because the NE might've been inaccessible otherwise. PLEATED gave me EXPAT gave me EXXON, and I was able to get up into the corner from there. After that, the puzzle got remarkably easy. Followed ALGEBRA into the SE and, with the help of NAPE PATH PABST (all easy), got all the long answers down there, no sweat. And the SW was even easier. Lit that part up like it was dry grass. Whoosh. NO CAN DO + PROTIP + GADOT, gimme gimme gimme and ... done. 

Bullets:

• 16A: ___ Wood, portrayer of the Bond girl Plenty O'Toole in "Diamonds Are Forever" (LANA) — we're still doing Bond Girls of Yore? With so many good (and actually famous) LANAs to choose from? Boo. 

Lana Turner has collapsed! 
I was trotting along and suddenly
it started raining and snowing
and you said it was hailing
but hailing hits you on the head
hard so it was really snowing and
raining and I was in such a hurry
to meet you but the traffic
was acting exactly like the sky
and suddenly I see a headline 
LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!
there is no snow in Hollywood
there is no rain in California
I have been to lots of parties
and acted perfectly disgraceful
but I never actually collapsed
oh Lana Turner we love you get up 

    ([Lana Turner has collapsed], Frank O'Hara, 1964)

• 42D: Characters in "300" (ZEROS) — a "letteral" clue, but for numerals, which are "characters" ("a graphic symbol [...] used in writing or printing" (merriam webster dot com); here the character in question is "0" (which is in "300," twice, along with "3," obviously)
• 9D: Small denomination (SECT) — well, the misdirect worked; I was thinking currency. But are SECTs "small," by definition? Smaller than the group they broke from, sure. But if they're a full-blown "denomination," then "small" seems ... misleading. Possible, but not definitive.
• 25D: Punish like Montressor does Fortunato in "The Cask of Amontillado" (ENTOMB) — I had the "EN-" part and thought "... is ENWALL a word?" But I decided to go with the more recognizable ENTOMB. Great story, that one.
• 34D: Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest (NEZ PERCE) — my mom grew up in northern Idaho, in St. Maries (just north of the original NEZ PERCE territory), so NEZ PERCE is probably one of the first Native American tribal names I ever learned.

[Green = original territory, brown = reservation]

• 38D: Have to shave one's head, perhaps (LOSE A BET) — I had LOSE and wrote in HAIR. That's why I shaved my head. "Yes, THAT TRACKS," I thought. But no.
• 
  36D: Horses around? (CAROUSEL) — the highlight of the puzzle. Just a great clue. I live in the CAROUSEL City. Well, it's actually called "The Parlor City," but it's also known as "The CAROUSEL Capital of the World." Seriously. George F. Johnson (of Endicott-Johnson shoes) built parks for his workers all over the area, including CAROUSELs, some of which are still operational (including one in Rec Park, just a stone's throw (give/take) from my house). The local minor league team here (a Mets Double-A affiliate) is called the Binghamton Rumble Ponies (an olde-tymey name for CAROUSEL horses). 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Read more...

Ale-simmered German sausage, informally / MON 11-27-23 / French meat stew for which Julia Child penned a popular recipe / Threaten to tip, as a wildly driven car / Colorful banded rocks / Song created from multiple songs

Constructor: Ricky J. Sirois

Relative difficulty: Pretty hard, solving Downs-only 

THEME: "TO BE FAIR..." (60A: "Admittedly ...," or , when said aloud, a punny description of 18-, 24-, 39- and 49-Across) — theme answers are all "2B Fare," i.e. two-word food items where both words start with "B":

Theme answers:

• BEER BRAT (18A: Ale-simmered German sausage, informally)
• BEAN BURRITO (24A: Vegetarian dish on a Mexican menu)
• BEEF BOURGUIGNON (39A: French meat stew for which Julia Child penned a popular recipe)
• BANANA BREAD (49A: Loaf often made with walnuts)

Word of the Day: CAREEN (6D: Threaten to tip, as a wildly driven car) —

v.intr. 

1.

a. To lurch or swerve while in motion: "The Tasmanian boat was a wreck... the stove had broken free of its mounting and was careening about with every wave" (Bryan Burrough).

b. To move forward rapidly, especially with a swaying motion or with minimal control; career: "I saw my life as a car with no brakes careening down a dangerous mountain road" (Tom Perotta). (thefreedictionary.com) (my emph.)

• • •

Well, I did not fare too well. Also, this didn't taste that great. The punniness made my teeth hurt, and the grid really has nothing interesting to offer besides a BARFIGHT (admittedly, pretty exciting). It's just a list of food and then a below-average, rickety grid. The pun ... yeah, it's a pun, alright. I don't know. Just doesn't seem worth the effort. Or the (relative) boredom. Again, it's just a plain old list of food. I guess BEEF BOURGUIGNON is kind of an interesting answer in its own right—a flashy grid-spanner, in its way—but it's not enough to lift the fill on this thing above the ho-hum. Plural NISSANS, plural TSETSES. I kept waiting for something, anything interesting to happen, and it never did. ERG AGATES OLGA IBET SHEA OGRE STAT ADE ANNS ICED ADO STL NEO EMIL and on and on and on, like it was trying hard to win the BEIGEst puzzle award. The 6s in the NW are OK, and those in the SE aren't terrible either, but overall there wasn't much fun to be had here. The theme boils down to a one-answer corny pun, and the grid is largely a snooze. Compare last week's Monday, which at least had real inventive wackiness going on, and a grid that was at least trying. 

Downs-only solving was enormously challenging today, for a variety of reasons. The first very bad trap I fell in was MEDLEY for 22D: Song created from multiple songs (MASH-UP). That's ... pretty much the definition of a MEDLEY: "a song created from multiple songs." And the "M" was right, and the "E" in the second position gave me a BEEF BURRITO! The problem then was figuring out what the hell kind of [Woodsy home] I was dealing with at 7D. I was like "NEST? DEN? LAIR" As you can see, I thought I was looking for an animal's home. Oh, and earlier, I had another wrong answer, right alongside (missing) CABIN: POUND. I had POUND for 8D: Equivalent of 16 oz. (ugh, ONELB). Which, again, is technically correct. Perfect for the clue. Just ... not perfect for this puzzle. Sigh. Between POUND and MEDLEY and BEEF BURRITO, I was gummed up there for a while. But not nearly as gummed as I was in the SW, all around the revealer, which I didn't know was a revealer (this is what happens when you don't read the Acrosses), and which I couldn't make into anything. The problem of parsing "TO BE FAIR..." was seriously exacerbated by three (3) different crosses. First, and worst, was AHOOT. Oof. Just ... the worst fill in the whole grid. Couldn't do anything with it. Thought it was ARIOT for a bit. Also had the cross at 54A as AGORA for a while, figuring "no other letters but 'G' work there" (wrong!). So I kept looking at AG--- and wondering how to get to 50D: Something hilarious. It was not ... hilarious. Then there was IN A FEW (46D: "Soon"), pfft, which I had as IN A SEC, and but thought might be IN A BIT (Wrong and wrong!). IN A FEW ... did not cross my mind for ages. Then there's the worst of the problematic revealer crosses: RARES (53D: Some hard-to-find collectibles). Plural. RARES ... RARES ... Did I say AHOOT was the worst thing in the grid? I take it back.

[Woodsy the Owl! Did he live in a CABIN (7D: Woodsy home)? I forget]

Had HERE for 56D: Present (GIFT) and had to hold off on the last letter in CAREEN because I can never tell the difference between CAREEN and CAREER (turns out—there isn't one; see "Word of the Day," above). But those were minor issues. Nothing like the MEDLEY/POUND fiasco, or to the trainwreck caused by RARES & Friends. Maybe if the revealer had snapped into place more cleanly, I would've appreciated its punniness more. It's a longshot, but ... it couldn't have hurt. Look, I see the pun, there it is, it does what it does. But considering how much I had to work for that revealer, the payoff was not nearly sufficient. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Read more...