Word of the Day: IGGY Azalea (46A: Retired rapper Azalea) —
Amethyst Amelia Kelly (born 7 June 1990), known professionally as Iggy Azalea (/əˈzeɪliə/ə-ZAY-lee-ə), is an Australian model, businesswoman and former rapper. Born in Sydney, Azalea moved to the United States at the age of 16 to pursue a career in music. She earned recognition on YouTube with the music videos for her 2011 songs "Pussy" and "Two Times". She then self-released her debut mixtape Ignorant Art (2011) before signing with American rapper T.I.'s Grand Hustle Records.
Azalea's debut studio album, The New Classic (2014), peaked within the top five of several charts worldwide and later topped the Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums, making Azalea the first non-American female rapper to do so. Its preceding single, "Fancy" (featuring Charli XCX), achieved significant commercial success; it peaked atop the U.S. BillboardHot 100 and was nominated for Record of the Year at the 2015 Grammy Awards. Azalea was featured on Ariana Grande's 2014 single "Problem", which peaked at number two behind "Fancy". The two songs made Azalea the second musical act (aside from the Beatles) to rank at the top two spots simultaneously with their debut entries in the chart. The album spawned one further single, "Black Widow" (featuring Rita Ora), which peaked within the chart's top ten. [...]
A real mixed bag for me. I normally enjoy Ryan McCarty puzzles but this one ... it was like it was intentionally trying to alienate me, starting with A.I. MODEL (3D: Many a modern chess-playing program) (A.I. and chess? This clue really hates me). The encroachment of "A.I." terms into the grid has been one of the worst crossword developments of the past year or so. Whatever the opposite of "gung-ho" is, that is how I feel about A.I. Also how I feel about multi-billionaires (what an unnecessarily horrid clue for HAVE) (24D: Multibillionaire, e.g.). So I've got A.I. and multibillionaires and I've barely gotten started? Inauspicious! What else? Vaping, for one. And then there's this weird obsession with obsolescent things. An obsolescence obsession. Obsolescent office accessories! (STAMP PAD). Outmoded living room fixtures! (PLASMA TVS). Add to that embarrassing manosphere lingo (26D: Submissive sort, informally = BETA), and yeah, there just wasn't that much for me to love. A single ALARM BELL? (Just ONE?). The grid seems very solidly filled, and yet there were no points where I felt really happy with a clue or answer, except maybe early on when I semi-jokingly used "MWAHAHA" to confirm AMASS and AHOY and it turned out to be right! I do love that [Sinister cackle]. But otherwise, highs were hard to come by today.
The puzzle was also really uneven in terms of difficulty. A tough clue on HAVE plus the improbability of a single ALARM BELL meant that I couldn't get into the middle on the first pass. Had to reboot in the SW, which I did in the strangest way—I considered RARE for 24D: Multibillionaire, e.g., even though I knew it could not be right (clue is a noun, so answer has to be a noun). But for some reason I still decided to check that "E" from RARE against the cross and somehow that "E" alone got me BADE (31A: Wished). I wasn't sure about BADE so I checked crosses and confirmed it with AMOROSO (32D: Lovingly, in a score). Except then I wasn't sure about AMOROSO, so I checked its crosses, and both POP ART and AMA checked out, so I was up and rolling again.
And from here, things started to get much easier. That clue on REGGIE JACKSON was Monday-level easy (13D: Clutch hitter nicknamed "Mr. October"), and that "J" got me to VAPE JUICE (ew, the very term—I'm not sure anyone can say it out loud and maintain anything like dignity), and with those long crosses anchoring the middle, the puzzle started to fall quickly. The SE corner was done in about ten seconds, as the "V" from PLASMA TVS made VLOGGER obvious and the whole corner went down easy from there. That just left the NE corner, which didn't put up much of a fight. I rode the ADRIEN Brody SEX DREAMS into the sunset. The end. Ultimately, the puzzle ended up full of things I just didn't care for, and it didn't prove as challenging as I'd generally like a Saturday to be (or as challenging as they have been recently).
Bullets:
1A: Bring together (AMASS) — yes, I too tried UNITE here at first. Crosses didn't check out. Then I tried AMASS, and suddenly ...
19A: "Right?," in British lingo ("INNIT?") — ha. Loved this. Can't believe it's been nine years since this very familiar bit of British slang has been in the grid. Five common letters, how is this answer not more popular? Maybe it's less generally familiar than I think it is. Maybe people in the U.S. don't watch as much British TV or as many British movies as I do. It's possible.
42A: Festival flier (KITE) — what sort of festival? Is it a KITE festival? I guess I don't go to enough festivals to know why there would be KITEs there.
7D: Actor Brody (ADRIEN) — I get ADRIEN Brody and Adam Brody confused. I mean, not if you put them both in front of me, I can definitely tell them apart. But ... two tall dark and arguable handsome actors named Brody, both of whose first names start "AD-" .... wait a minute! OMG I just realized that I'm not confusing ADRIEN Brody and Adam Brody, I'm confusing ADRIEN Brody with Adam Driver, and Adam Brody is somehow acting as a catalyst in this confusion (I know Adam Brody from The O.C., though he appears to have done a lot since then, including getting nominated for an Emmy for something called Nobody Wants This (Netflix, 2024-present)
46A: Retired rapper Azalea (IGGY) — "Retired" made me laugh. Out loud. Since when is the puzzle using "retired" for anyone besides athletes?? Since never. Literally never. I just looked over ~175 clues that featured the word "Retired" and that word has never been used in conjunction with any person who wasn't an athlete. It's also been used for old aircraft (SST) and old cigarette mascots (JOE CAMEL). For a rapper? It feels at least mildly insulting that the only adjective used to describe IGGY Azalea is "Retired." Maybe her self-proclaimed "retirement" is the most famous thing about her now, I have no idea, I haven't heard her or seen her name in ages.
31D: It comes in handy when the chips are downed (BAG CLIP) — this clue is trying to do a punny thing with the common idiomatic phrase "when the chips are down" but wow it really fails on a literal level. What does the BAG CLIP have to do with chips being downed, i.e. eaten? Yes, when I eat some, and not all, of the chips, it's handy to have a BAG CLIP to keep the remaining chips from going stale. But there is no direct correlation between the eating and the clipping. The BAG CLIP comes in "handy" when you need to store the chips. If I've eaten all the chips, I don't need to store them. So the clue should be something like [It comes in handy when some but not all of the chips are downed]. Doesn't quite have the same ring to it. Or maybe "downed" is being used in some extremely tortured way to mean "depleted"; maybe the idea is that the chip level, the number of chips in the bag, has gone "down." I am overthinking this, but only because the clue is underthinking it. If the chips are, indeed, "downed" (as in "consumed"), then why in the world do I need a BAG CLIP?
6A: Alligatorid of Central and South America (CAIMAN) — "Alligatorid," what a cool word? I liked it slightly better when I thought it was "Alligatoroid," which sounds like an awesome '70s mutated-animal disaster film
That's all for today. See you next time.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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Word of the Day: GENDER EUPHORIA (14A: Feeling that a new haircut or a new set of clothes might bring) —
Gender euphoria (GE) is a term for the satisfaction, enjoyment, or relief felt by people when they feel their gender expression matches their personal gender identity. Psych Central's definition is "deep joy when your internal gender identity matches your gender expression." It is proposed that feelings of gender euphoria require societal acceptance of gender expression. In academics and the medical field, a consensus has not yet been reached on a precise definition of the term, as it has been mainly used within a social context. The first attempt to rigorously define gender euphoria through an online survey took place in 2021, conducted by Will Beischel, Stéphanie Gauvin, and Sari van Anders. Transgender congruence is also used to ascribe transgender individuals feeling genuine, authentic, and comfortable with their gender identity and external appearance.
The term gender euphoria has been used by the transgender community since at least the mid-1970s. Originally, it referred to the feeling of joy arising from fulfilling a mix of gender roles, which was different from the concept of gender dysphoria, which is used to describe individuals who wished to medically transition to a different sex.In the 1980s, the term was published in trans contexts, coming up in interviews with trans people. For example, in a 1988 interview with a trans man, the subject states, "I think that day [Dr. Charles Ilhenfeld] administered my first shot of the 'wonder-drug' must have been one of the 'peak-experiences' of my life -- talk about 'gender euphoria'!" The interview indicates he is referring to testosterone. (wikipedia)
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[15A: Child support?]
Saturday euphoria is a little different from Friday euphoria. On Friday, I like things to be a little difficult, but what I really like is whooshing and zooming around the grid by way of long, original, entertaining answers. The whoosh is the euphoria. On Saturdays, on great Saturdays, the euphoria is slower in coming, since the solve is more of a grind. Frustration, even annoyance, that then releases into "oh ... yeah, that's good, actually"—that's the stuff I'm looking for on Saturday. And I got plenty of it today. This puzzle had the kind of "difficulty" I like—not (that many) obscure answers, but tricky, mischievous, misdirective cluing that has you spinning your wheels ... until you finally get traction and (ideally, maybe grudgingly) find yourself appreciating both the answer and the clue's cleverness. The biggest "screw this!" to "wow, ok, that's good" swing I experienced today came with END RANT (2D: Means of closing up a vent). I had an inkling that "vent" was going to mean something other than the expected "opening that permits the escape of fumes, steam, etc." If you're "closing up" is the phrase you'd use for sealing a physical "vent"— that's what the clue wants you thinking about, so you don't see the other kind of vent, which is the intended one. It's Saturday, so my instinct is to look for the off-/alt-meaning, always. But even so, I couldn't find the handle on the answer today, and ended up writing in ENTENTE (a friendly agreement between countries ... maybe the countries are less hostile now and so they've stopped venting at each other? I dunno, it made some kind of sense when I wrote it in—and so many common letters ... it seemed possible). Then, because END RANT ran right through a three-letter tennis player (ANA) whose name could've been anything—IGA (an actual tennis champion's name), IDA (my cat's name), INA, UNA, ENA—I didn't have the "A." At some point I did get that second "N," but instead of helping me get END RANT, all it did was make me hallucinate an END RING (you know, the thing you pull to close up the vent!) (UGH!). But when, eventually, I got END RANT, after a second of two of "dammit!" resentment, I had to admit that yes that is a current, much-used phrase (mostly in social media posts), and a good one. An original one, at least. That END RANT fight is the kind of fight I wish puzzles gave me more often.
But what makes this puzzle really lovely are the stacks, both of which (up top, down below) are strong and vivid. Or at least two-thirds strong and vivid. Can't say I care too much for SENIOR CENTERS or ONLINE CASINOS, but the rest of those long Acrosses are solid. And I say this as someone who gave up on Marvel movies years ago—still didn't mind seeing AVENGERS: ENDGAME in the grid. And loved HALLOWEEN PARTY (as clued) (48A: Scene for a skeleton crew?), SECURITY BLANKET (as clued) (15A: Child support?) and GENDER EUPHORIA (especially as clued—the clues are the highlights today, as much as the answers themselves) (14A: Feeling that a new haircut or a new set of clothes might bring). Those answers come bursting out of nowhere. The clues get you thinking about one thing, and then hit you with another. Over and over and over. Clever misdirection—that's the key to Saturdays, I think.
[23A: Horn-heavy genre]
Now, "I SAID 'STOP'" is a bit of a made-up phrase (not as common as, say, "I SAID 'NO'"), but it seems pretty standalone-worthy to me. But there really weren't any answers that made me utter a genuine "UGH!" of disgust. And there was a HOST (31A: Bevy) of answers that made me say "Wow." KISS ARMY! (24D: Fan group that often wears black-and-white face paint) That takes me back.
SHOWBOATS is a great word, as is ESCHEWED (30D: Forwent). GETS WISE, PAPER THIN ... the hits keep coming, and the grid hardly buckles at all. The closest thing to a "buckle" for me was Charlie PUTH, but he's going to be a feature not a bug for some people—he's a very popular contemporary singer-songwriter, and this is his debut NYTXW appearance (27D: Charlie with the 2016 hit "We Don't Talk Anymore"). If you're pop culture-averse, I suppose there are a handful of reasons to dislike this grid, but if you count up the pop culture answers in the grid, there really aren't that many. I actually think there's very nice balance to this puzzle, in terms of the variety of answers. The difficulty mostly involves wordplay. That's something I'd like to encourage. We all have to deal with mystery proper nouns from time to time—as long as we're not inundated, I don't think there's a problem. Charlie PUTH's debut single was "Marvin Gaye." I think I'd rather listen to actual Marvin Gaye. Let's listen to Marvin Gaye.
[33D: Dad-blasted]
I know I said I stopped seeing Marvel movies, and I have—completely. They hold no interest for me at all any more. That said, I might be coaxed back into the theater if Marvel released a movie called AVENGERS: END RANT. And speaking of the Avengers, I wish that clue on AVENGERS: ENDGAME had included the word "ironically" somewhere (42A: Penultimate film in a series of 23). It's the penultimate movie in the series but it's called ENDGAME? Inapt! Also, is the series really over? I feel like "penultimate" implies there is an "ultimate" movie and that that movie is the last one. But I assume they will just make more and more ad infinitum. The Internet is telling me there are 37 MCU movies, so I don't really know what this "23" refers to. Are there really 23 (!!!) Avengers movies??? You know what, I try very hard to know as little as possible about the MCU, so you don't have to answer the question, I'm good.
Bullets:
41A: Approx. 25% of it consists of national forests (ORE.) — this could've been anything. [Place with lots of trees], basically. I got ORE. (i.e. Oregon) entirely from crosses. I literally looked up the location of Corvallis just yesterday! (because a reader told me he was from Corvallis and I had to remind myself where that was). No help with this clue, unfortunately. Did you know Corvallis is the westernmost city in the contiguous 48 states with a population of more than 50,000? Me neither. Until yesterday.
50A: Chucked, informally (YEETED) — I love this word. Most new slang (i.e. slang that has come into being since I was young) seems silly and I don't want anything to do with it, but "yeet"—I love it. I love how it sounds. It's like the word for chucking something and the sound that you make when chucking something, simultaneously. It's just fun to say. And it's been in the puzzle before, so you should know it by now. This goes double / triple / quadruple for ELLE Woods and her having taken the LSAT. ELLE and LSAT were gimmes—they helped give me the traction that made this puzzle doable.
3D: Some joint promotions (TIE-INS) — pretty basic stuff, but because it's Saturday, I was rolodexing through every meaning I could think of for "joint." Do they mean knee? Do they mean marijuana cigarette? Prison??? The cruelest thing a Saturday puzzle can do to me is not zag. Just play it straight. I'll never see it coming.
10D: Native American people known as the "Nation du Chat" (ERIE) — gonna start calling my house "Nation du Chat" (oh, and I had CREE here at first):
[Wintertime in la Nation du Chat]
13D: One breaking a 108-year drought in 2016 (CUB) — the CUBs (in)famously hadn't won the World Series in 108 years when they finally won it in 2016. I knew this. But my brain decided the answer should be "on a scoreboard," so I wrote in CHI. Then CHC. :(
28D: God who rides in a chariot pulled by two giant magical goats (THOR) — as divine roads go, this one is hard to beat. I had the "T," so no problem (otherwise, I might've guessed ODIN).
49A: Where one might hope to find good deals on the internet? (ONLINE CASINOS) — saw right through this one ("deals" = cards), but still struggled, as the plural was not readily apparent. I guess you could argue that the plural is indicated by "deals," but presumably, if you're playing online poker, you're playing more than one hand, so multiple "deals" did not, in fact, make me think of multiple CASINOS. Oh well, just another way that Saturdays f*** with you—by hiding plurals. It's fine.
That's all. See you next time.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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Word of the Day: FARRO (37D: Grain with a nutty flavor) —
Farro (/ˈfæroʊ/ⓘ) is a grain of any of three species of hulled wheat, namely einkorn, emmer, or spelt, sold dried and cooked in water until soft. It is used as a side dish and added to salads, soups and stews.
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Hey friends! It's Rafa here subbing for Rex. I hope you all enjoyed my Friday puzzle yesterday, but today I'm here to talk about the Saturday puzzle!
This kind of wide-open middle is pretty much Ryan McCarty's trademark. I find that these kinds of grid have a very specific solve flow. They always start slow for me. There aren't too many toeholds, particularly in the middle, since there is no short fill with familiar cluing to help anchor the solve. But, eventually, one of the long entries falls into place, then another, and it all comes together *so fast* and it's *so satisfying* ... since the middle is super interconnected, each answer gives lots of new letters in other answers in an insanely gratifying crossword snowball effect.
This is Banff National Park in ALBERTA
The price to pay, however, is that the NW and SE corners are pretty disconnected from the rest of the grid. I guess there's no crossword free lunch. They are meaty enough that they feel like a satisfying puzzle in themselves, but it can be frustrating to feel stuck getting into one of those corners after already having made the initial breakthrough in the center of the grid.
This is PATAGONIA (the place in South America, not the brand)
OK, let's talk about this specific puzzle. I really enjoyed it! Ryan really always brings his absolute A game. Nobody else is making this kind of puzzle like he is. Just look at the 7(!!!!)-stack in the middle: PATAGONIA, ALIEN RACE, GLADSTONE, BABY STEPS, RIDESHARE, GAG ORDERS, FIRST TEST. And all that crossing BIG SCENE, PLAYS DEAD, HE SAID SHE SAID, LATE START, CAR LOANS. It's just amazing. I'll nitpick by saying I'm not really sure if FIRST TEST is really a thing. Sure, those two words can absolutely go together, but it feels a little Green Painty. I'd also never heard of C STORES, but that's probably on me. Is that expression familiar to you? But I really cannot emphasize enough how impressive it is to have all these juicy long answers in the center with no gluey bits of short fill.
This is an ELAND
Maybe another nit is it didn't feel like there were too many satisfying tricky wordplay clues. With a grid like this, though, I tend to find that satisfaction comes more from chipping away at the giant gaping center than from the cluing. And too many oblique wordplay clues can make it too daunting to get any sort of foothold. Anyways .... tradeoffs, as always!
Alright, I hope you all are well! Somehow it's October already. (The older I get the more I find myself saying "wow time goes by so fast now!" and I don't think it's ever going to stop. Oh well!)
Bullets:
2D LORELEI [Legendary rock singer?] — I loved this clue, actually! Lorelei is a siren (of the kind that stands of a rock and lures sailors to their death by singing hypnotically)
31D RAREBIT ["Welsh" dish with melted cheese] — This was new to me but I looked it up and it looks kind of amazing. Melted cheese? Yeah, sign me up.
16A MRS MAISEL ["Marvelous" TV character played by Rachel Brosnahan] — This show has been on my to-watch list for ages! Is it worth getting into now? Is it not cool anymore? Let me know please!
12D YREKA [California town thought (incorrectly) to be named from a backward "bakery" sign] — Loved the Northern California representation! (The most accepted origin for the name is from the Shasta language)
Signed, Rafa
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Produced on a roughly $9 million budget, Sicko grossed $25 million theatrically in North America. This exceeded the official expectation of The Weinstein Company, which had hoped to be in line with Bowling for Columbine's $22 million U.S. box office gross. (wikipedia)
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Considering how much of this I *didn't* enjoy, I enjoyed this a lot. Maybe I'm just high on not only seeing BARRY KEOGHAN's name, but spelling it correctly on the first shot—what a rush! (26A: Irish actor who was nominated for a Golden Globe for 2023's "Saltburn"). So exciting to check the crosses on KEOGHAN and have them check out. KEOGHAN confirmed by SICKO, yes ... ha ha ha ... Yes!
And that's the other reason I probably am higher on this puzzle than I should be—the movieness of it all. Four solid (and reasonably current) movie references, one after the other. Off of BARRY KEOGHAN, I got not only SICKO but (just below) BIRDMAN, and (just above and to the right) Javier BARDEM! And then BARDEM gave me the "M" that tipped me to the cocktail that we're drinking today—the DARK 'N' STORMY (rum, ginger beer, ice, lime garnish). Movies and cocktails, sign me up! Loved the whole top half of this puzzle ... which is probably why I ended up with net positive vibes despite the load of less-than-enjoyable things I encountered on the way down, starting with ECYCLED (come on, do we need another "E-" word?) crossing RC CAR (another E- thing that is mercifully non-"E"-starting but still very ugly in the grid—the "RC" stands for "radio-controlled"). TAKES A PHOTO had me wanting to EAT A SANDWICH, and further down, well, DATA LOSS and AGEMATE and dull and awkward, to my ears, respectively. It's really just that SW quadrant that I would throw into the sea today. The SE is a little flat, but harmless. And the other two quadrants, as I say, are lovely. I can see how they would *not* be lovely if you are not into movies or cocktails or haven't heard of or could only vaguely remember BARRY KEOGHAN. I still haven't seen Saltburn, but Keoghan left an indelible impression in my brain with his performance in a great Irish film I saw a couple of years back, The Banshees of Inisherin (for which he got an Academy Award nomination). Also in Banshees was Kerry Condon, who did one of my favorite Criterion Closet videos of all time—charming and funny and sincere, full of genuine, unaffected love of movies—a real model of the form.
The puzzle was terribly easy today, largely because there wasn't a name it threw at me that I didn't know, starting with the very easy 1A: British celebrity chef Nigella (LAWSON). I don't give a dang about celebrity chefs, but I feel like her name is just everywhere, for decades, particularly in the cooking section of bookstores, so even though I spelled it LARSON on the first go, no problem there. The weirdest wtf [record scratch sound] "huh?" moment in the puzzle came with DARK [space] STORMY, where I sincerely thought "Are we doing an ampersand rebus today!?" (24A: Drink akin to a Moscow mule). I really wanted to shave a "&" in that square, but then the cross didn't look promising that way, and eventually I remembered "oh right you can spell 'and' with the 'a' and 'd' elided..." and that's what I did. Speaking of ampersands, this puzzle has a fine example of the type of answer called an "ampersandwich," where you have {letter + AND + letter}; today, it's B AND BS (more commonly spelled "B&Bs," i.e. "bed and breakfasts"). You see ampersandwiches less these days than you did 10-20 years ago, mainly because people have generally gotten better at filling grids and don't have to rely on things like BANDB and RANDD and RANDR and the like so much.
Mistakes were few today. LARSON for LAWSON, as I said, and then GAMBIAN (?) for ZAMBIAN (14A: Congolese neighbor to the south), and, probably most significant of all, PEER group before USER group (39A: ___ group). Once the "-ER" was confirmed, I felt pretty confident about PEER ... until I didn't. "What the hell kind of cheese starts 'AE-'? AENEID cheese?" I would've loved to discover that there was an AENEID cheese. But no, it's just plain old ASIAGO (36D: Parmesan alternative).
[7D: Much concert merch]
More stuff:
16A: Big name in electric toothbrushes (SONICARE) — needed a few crosses, but I know this name, how do I know this name? I still use an analog toothbrush. And then analog floss. And then these teeny tiny little bottle-brush dealies. And then Listerine. My tooth & gum game is very, very tight. Wish it had been that tight in my 20s, when it mattered much more. Mid-30s to mid-40s were some unpleasant dental years, but turns out rigorous tooth and gum care really pays off, kids, your parents aren't lying to you. I know there's more tooth disaster to come, inevitably, but the last ten years have been Great.
42A: Una hija de los abuelos (TIA) — a daughter of the grandparents. My eyes saw Spanish and didn't bother to read closely, so I wrote in DÍA here at first.
48D: Where snowboard cross debuted as an Olympic event (2006) (TORINO) — better known to English speakers as Turin. You know, the place with the Shroud. Strange that I can still remember Winter Olympics venues that aren't major cities, like NAGANO and ALBERTVILLE and LILLEHAMMER etc. Though TORINO does have close to a million people, so that's pretty major. Winter Olympics tend to be in smaller, less populated areas than the Summer Olympics. But sometimes major cities are involved. Oslo. Calgary. Salt Lake City in '02 ... and again in '34!
1D: Member of the only N.F.C. team never to have made the Super Bowl (LION) — so they're basically the Seattle Mariners of the N.F.C. Except that the Mariners are the only team in all of baseball not to have been to a World Series, whereas the LIONs have some A.F.C. company: namely, the Browns, the Jaguars, and the Texans.
18D: Something legally defined in the U.S. as affecting fewer than 200,000 people (RARE DISEASE) — not exactly uplifting Saturday morning fare, yeesh.
35A: Long, curved bike features (BANANA SEAT) — the one answer in the bottom half of the grid that I really loved. Reminded me of the bike I had in elementary school, a wheelie bike with ape hanger handlebars and a BANANA SEAT and everything. A blue Schwinn StingRay, I think it was. A real period piece. Wish it were still around.
35D: Whiny comeback to a certain parent ("BUT DAD...!") — ooh, I liked this too. Had to wait on crosses to see what parent was being whined to.
23D: Prez in the '60s (ABE) — LBJ? lol not those '60s
Word of the Day: Rig Veda (23A: River featured in the Rig Veda = INDUS) —
The Rigveda or Rig Veda (Sanskrit: ऋग्वेद, IAST: ṛgveda, from ऋच्, "praise" and वेद, "knowledge") is an ancient Indiancollection of Vedic Sanskrithymns (sūktas). It is one of the four sacred canonical Hindu texts (śruti) known as the Vedas. Only one Shakha of the many survive today, namely the Śakalya Shakha. Much of the contents contained in the remaining Shakhas are now lost or are not available in the public forum.
The Rigveda is the oldest known Vedic Sanskrit text. Its early layers are among the oldest extant texts in any Indo-European language.The sounds and texts of the Rigveda have been orally transmitted since the 2nd millennium BCE. Philological and linguistic evidence indicates that the bulk of the Rigveda Samhita was composed in the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent (see Rigvedic rivers), most likely between c. 1500 and 1000 BCE, although a wider approximation of c. 1900–1200 BCE has also been given. (wikipedia)
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***ATTENTION: READERS AND FELLOW SOLVERS*** : It's early January, which means it's time once again for my annual week-long pitch for financial contributions to the blog. Every year I ask readers to consider what the blog is worth to them on an annual basis and give accordingly. Writing this blog is a joy, but it is also a job—an everyday, up-by-4am job. My morning schedule is regular as hell. So regular that my cats know my routine and will start walking all over me if I even *stir* after 3am. You ever lie there in the early morning, dying to simply roll over or stretch, but knowing that the second you do, the second you so much as budge, the cats will take it as a signal that you're through with sleep and ready to serve them? So you just lie perfectly still, trying to get every ounce of bedrest you can before the cats ruin it all? That's me, every morning. I guess you could say they "help" get me up on time to write, but come on, I have an alarm for that. The cats are adorable, but frankly they're no help at all. After I feed them, I go upstairs to write, and what do they do? They go straight back to sleep. Here I'll show you. This was two days ago, when I came downstairs after writing:
And this was yesterday, same time:
Those pictures are from two different days, I swear. And I'm guessing when I go downstairs this morning, I'll find much the same thing. They are beautiful creatures, but they cannot solve or type or bring me warm beverages. When it comes to blogging, I'm on my own. And look, I'm not asking for pity. The truth is, I love my life (and my cats), but the truth *also* is that writing this blog involves a lot of work. I get up and I solve and I write, hoping each day to give you all some idea of what that experience was like for me, as well as some insight into the puzzle's finer (or less fine) qualities—the intricacies of its design, the trickiness of its clues, etc. The real value of the blog, though, is that it offers a sort of commiseration. While I like to think my writing is (at its best) entertaining, I know that sometimes all people need is someone who shares their joy or feels their pain. If you hate a clue, or get stuck and struggle, or otherwise want to throw the puzzle across the room, you know I'm here for you, and that even if my experience is not identical to yours, I Understand! I understand that even though "it's just a puzzle," it's also a friend and a constant companion and a ritual and sometimes a Betrayer! I don't give you objective commentary—I give you my sincere (if occasionally hyperbolic) feelings about the puzzle, what it felt like to solve it. I can dress those feelings up in analytical clothes, sure, but still, ultimately, I'm just one human being out here feeling my puzzle feelings. And hopefully that makes you feel something too—ideally, something good, but hey I'm not picky. Whatever keeps you coming back! Hate-readers are readers too!
Whatever kind of reader you are, you're a reader, and I would appreciate your support. This blog has covered the NYTXW every day, without fail, for over eighteen (18!?) years, and except for two days a month (when my regular stand-ins Mali and Clare write for me), and an occasional vacation or sick day (when I hire substitutes to write for me), it's me who's doing the writing. Over the years, I have received all kinds of advice about "monetizing" the blog, invitations to turn it into a subscription-type deal à la Substack or Patreon. And maybe I'd make more money that way, I don't know, but that sort of thing has never felt right for me. And honestly, does anyone really need yet another subscription to manage? As I've said in years past, I like being out here on Main, on this super old-school blogging platform, just giving it away for free and relying on conscientious addicts like yourselves to pay me what you think the blog's worth. It's just nicer that way.
How much should you give? Whatever you think the blog is worth to you on a yearly basis. Whatever that amount is is fantastic. Some people refuse to pay for what they can get for free. Others just don't have money to spare. All are welcome to read the blog—the site will always be open and free. But if you are able to express your appreciation monetarily, here are three options. First, a Paypal button (which you can also find in the blog sidebar on the homepage):
Second, a mailing address (checks can be made out to "Michael Sharp" or "Rex Parker"):
Rex Parker c/o Michael Sharp 54 Matthews St Binghamton, NY 13905
The third, increasingly popular option is Venmo; if that's your preferred way of moving money around, my handle is @MichaelDavidSharp (the last four digits of my phone are 4878, in case Venmo asks you, which I guess it does sometimes, when it's not trying to push crypto on you, what the hell?!)
All Paypal contributions will be gratefully acknowledged by email. All Venmo contributions will get a little heart emoji, at a minimum :) All snail mail contributions will be gratefully acknowledged with hand-written postcards. I. Love. Snail Mail. I love seeing your gorgeous handwriting and then sending you my awful handwriting. It's all so wonderful. My daughter (Ella Egan) has once again designed my annual thank-you card, and once again the card features (wait for it) cats!
Ida & Alfie, my little yin/yang sleepers! (They're slowly becoming friends, but don't tell them that—it makes them mad and they will deny it). Please note: I don't keep a "mailing list" and don't share my contributor info with anyone. And if you give by snail mail and (for some reason) don't want a thank-you card, just indicate "NO CARD." Again, as ever, I'm so grateful for your readership. Please know that your support means a lot to me and my family. Now on to today's puzzle...
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The trick today was to throw something, anything (well, anything correct), into that giant gulf in the center of the puzzle. After a fairly typical, not particularly hard NW corner, I was all set to plunge down into the heart of this thing, but nope (next Down) nope (next Down) ... nope? Front ends of three long Downs and: nothing. I had nothing:
I didn't even bother to start looking at the giant answers in the middle because traction is always Much more likely to come from shorter answers, so ... on to another corner. I tried the SW, which at first looked unpromising ("Year of Four Emperors" you say? Oh, of course, I am a learned person, that must be ... uh ... &^$$#!). I figured Robin Hood's bow was made of YEW, but that got me nowhere. What I am about to tell you feels more like a confession than a boast, believe me: the answer that got me started down there, which ended up being the key to the whole puzzle (I never lost momentum again) was: NUMETAL (31D: Music genre for Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit). Just looking at that "word" makes me embarrassed. If my musical tastes were the solar system (with me as the sun), you'd have Stevie Wonder and Lucinda Williams somewhere around Mercury and Elvis Costello and Big Thief in roughly the Venus position and then, let's see, NU-METAL, that would be ... well, the joke here would be "Uranus" but in reality we're talking Altair or possibly Zogbron (an ice planet in the Flibular Galaxy, of course it's real, shh). I am aware that Limp Bizkit (it hurts to write it) and Linkin Park (must they all do this with their names?) exist. They were pop culture phenomena. But I have never listened to a single one of their songs all the way through. And yet ... I somehow paid enough attention to know that whatever music they were making had, at some point, been given the name "NU METAL" (I don't even know if it's one word or two words or hyphenated, and I don't really care). So ... NU METAL to the rescue. I plugged that sucker in and the puzzle Lit. Up. Well, it still took a little push, a little patience, to get into the center, but I don't get anywhere in this puzzle without NU METAL.
There aren't actually a ton of names in this puzzle, but it *felt* like there were because several of them just stopped me cold, including two in that massive middle section. I know the name KATE SMITH (this helped eventually), but could tell you nothing about her. I hear a woman singing "You're a Grand Old Flag," is that her? Hmm, not seeing that. Just "God Bless America." She was tremendously popular during World War II. In my head, I get her confused with Ethel Merman (who, among other things, played Gopher's mom on The Love Boat). Both have big voices, but Merman was known more for musical theater (not radio). JAMES ROSS I got easily once I got into the middle (the Ross Sea shows up in crosswords a lot), but that JAKOB guy, yeeeeeow, oof, no (29D: Track star Ingebrigtsen who, at age 16, became the youngest person in history to run a sub-four-minute mile). I had the "K" and when OSKAR didn't work, I was like [shrug]. I also had a lot of trouble with GALBA, but again, as with KATE SMITH, at least I'd *heard* of GALBA, and so could infer it when I had enough crosses. Couldn't tell you a thing about GALBA (he succeeded Nero and ruled for seven months), but the name is there in my brain, for some reason. All the other names (CONAN, YODA, YORICK, RBG) were superfamiliar, even if the CONAN clue was no real help to me (38A: Television star who went on the "Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television Tour" in 2010). I thought it was going to be one of these guys who makes money making "jokes" about cancel culture or whatever. But 2010 was about when CONANlost his Tonight Show gig to Leno, so that must be the context.
I forgot to wonder whether I liked this puzzle or not. Hmm. I didn't dislike it, because I don't remember having any "ugh, come on!" reactions, except to SURE CURE, which is not a phrase I know (47A: Well, that works!). I know about sure things and sure bets, but I had SURE ___ and no idea what was supposed to follow. I had this same problem with DESK ___ (49A: Certain workplace protection?), and ___ PRESS (9D: Extractor used on some seeds and nuts), and GAME ___ (37A: Setting for balloon darts or a ringtoss). But no, there didn't seem to be anything wrong with the puzzle. Maybe a little trivia heavy for me, but overall it felt like a solid, sufficiently tough Saturday effort.
Points, in bullet form:
26A: Pride parade participant? (LION) — good one. Loved it. Don't know whether LIONs actually "parade," but it hardly matters. They walk, sometimes together, so that's close enough.
40A: Note extender, in sheet music (DOT) — been so long since I looked at sheet music that I forgot this. "In Western musical notation, a dotted note is a note with a small dot written after it.[a] In modern practice, the first dot increases the duration of the basic note by half (the original note with an extra beam) of its original value." (wikipedia)
41A: Lothlórien in "The Lord of the Rings" (FOREST) — absolutely no idea. Never could get through those books, and those movies ... well, I got through them, but all they made me was sleepy. Peter Jackson peaked at Heavenly Creatures.
2D: Locale of Niue and the Pitcairn Islands (OCEANIA) — I (bizarrely) had RAPA NUI here because I had CRANK UP instead of POWER UP at 1A: Get an engine going. Btw there are two "UP"s in this grid, but since they are about as far away from one another as possible, I doubt anyone but me will notice. No foul.
6D: Professional squatters? (UMPS) — excellent. Second thing I got today after PIE (7D: Bit of "Sweeney Todd" fare).
10D: Their petals are used to make a traditional Korean wine called "dugyeonju" (AZALEAS) — weird. I thought they were poisonous. I had the -LEAS part and wanted DAHLIAS (figuring maybe DATE BREAD was wrong somehow) (24A: Fruit-filled loaf).
35D: Small juice container? (AA CELL) — we call them "double A batteries," but yeah, this works. "Juice" = power.
This week I'm highlighting the best puzzles of 2024 by focusing on one day at a time. I kept a spreadsheet of every puzzle I solved last year, complete with ratings from 0-100 (with 50 being my idea of an "average" NYTXW) (They really did average out to around 50, with Saturday being my fav day (avg 57.7), and Sunday (obviously) being my least fav (avg 42.9).
Here are my Top Three Saturday Puzzles of 2024. (I'm not ranking them; it's nicer that way)
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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