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Spoiled girl in "Finding Nemo" / TUE 2-17-26 / Physicist Wolfgang who proposed the "exclusion principle" / Material in a classical timepiece / "Oh, that stupid little punk ..." / Workout inspired by martial arts / Tough-but-loving fathers, informally / Leafy side dish rich in vitamin K / Flavoring in an earthy whiskey
Tuesday, February 17, 2026
Constructor: Stephan Prock and Jeff Chen
Relative difficulty: Easy
Theme answers:
This is more a two- or two-and-a-half-star puzzle, but I bumped it up because it made me think of Bach, whose music I love, and it took a giant swing with that terrible pun, which I don't love, but I do respect. The problem with a theme like this is there are no real theme answers (besides the revealer). That is, there's no thematic unity among any set of answers. The musicality exists only by accident, by the arrangement of letters in non-musical answers, so the whole thing ends up playing rather like a themeless (and in this case, a very dull / easy themeless). The grid has some potential as far as interesting answers go (six different Downs of 7 or more letters), but those all come in pretty flat. Meanwhile, the rest of the grid has a dreary, olden feel to it. "NEATO, an EDSEL! You don't see many of those these days. OK, time to go to my TAE BO class, byeee!" I'd also say that the added OPERA content (including the crossreferenced ARIAS) was a bug, not a feature—you have a musical theme but no musical themers ... but then you add musical content non-thematically? And BAROQUE music at that (Monteverdi's L'Orfeo = 1607 = early BAROQUE). I don't love it. Seems sloppy, or at least inelegant.
- ALBINO RAT / ORION (oratorio)
- SNAFU / GUESS SO (fugue)
- PERSONA / TAE BO (sonata)
- LURCH / ORAL EXAMS (chorale)
Wolfgang Ernst Pauli ([...] 25 April 1900 – 15 December 1958) was an Austrian–Swiss theoretical physicist and a pioneer of quantum mechanics. In 1945, after having been nominated by Albert Einstein, Pauli received the Nobel Prize in Physics "for the discovery of the Exclusion Principle, also called the Pauli Principle". The discovery involved spin theory, which is the basis of a theory of the structure of matter.To preserve the conservation of energy in beta decay, Pauli proposed the existence of a small neutral particle, dubbed the neutrino by Enrico Fermi, in 1930. Neutrinos were first detected in 1956. [...]
In quantum mechanics, the Pauli exclusion principle (German: Pauli-Ausschlussprinzip) states that two or more identical particles with half-integer spins (i.e. fermions) cannot simultaneously occupy the same quantum state within a system that obeys the laws of quantum mechanics. This principle was formulated by Austrian physicist Wolfgang Pauli in 1925 for electrons, and later extended to all fermions with his spin–statistics theorem of 1940. (wikipedia)
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| [Roy Lichtenstein, Go For Baroque, 1979] |
I have two other music-related objections to this puzzle. Well, not "objections," exactly, more ... questions. A couple of things struck me as odd. First, I would never have thought to call BAROQUE music a "genre." To me, that word describes music from a specific time period (~1600-1750), not a "genre." Also, as far as "sonata" goes, I associate that form most strongly with the (later) Classical period (~1750-1820), not the BAROQUE. I see (now) that the term "sonata" existed in the BAROQUE period, but it's not until the Classical period that it "takes on increasing importance":
The practice of the Classical period would become decisive for the sonata; the term moved from being one of many terms indicating genres or forms, to designating the fundamental form of organization for large-scale works. This evolution stretched over fifty years. The term came to apply both to the structure of individual movements (see Sonata form and History of sonata form) and to the layout of the movements in a multi-movement work. In the transition to the Classical period there were several names given to multimovement works, including divertimento, serenade, and partita, many of which are now regarded effectively as sonatas. The usage of sonata as the standard term for such works began somewhere in the 1770s. Haydn labels his first piano sonata as such in 1771, after which the term divertimento is used sparingly in his output. The term sonata was increasingly applied to either a work for keyboard alone (see piano sonata), or for keyboard and one other instrument, often the violin or cello. It was less and less frequently applied to works with more than two instrumentalists; for example, piano trios were not often labelled sonata for piano, violin, and cello. (wikipedia)
There are sonatas in the BAROQUE period, so there's nothing technically "wrong" with including it among today's musical form, but the other forms feel very closely associated with the BAROQUE period specifically, whereas the sonata (to my admittedly untrained ear and cursory understanding of music history) doesn't.
I wasn't really paying attention to the circled squares, even after I hit BAROQUE, so as I say the puzzle played like a rather disappointing themeless. I could see that BAROQUE was the revealer, but I didn't notice what was going on until I was already finished, and even then, it took me a few beats to figure out what was "punny" about BAROQUE (you really have to imagine some emphasizing your brokeness; there's "broke," and then there's two-syllable "buh-roke," which is obviously worse). Seeing all the BAROQUE(-ish) music forms made me slightly happier than I'd been while solving, and then that pun ... it did not make me happier, but it definitely made me groan, which is, as I understand it, the singular purpose of a pun, so ... half-star bump for the pun. I am nothing if not generous.
No difficulty today except for the two names: specifically, the fish and the physicist (which sounds like the title of a popular book on physics, or else a fable by Aesop). This puzzle overestimates how much I remember about the full cast of Finding Nemo (a now-23yo movie). DARLA is the 20th (!?) listed role on the wikipedia page for this movie. This is the first time DARLA has been clued via Finding Nemo. Historically, Our Gang / Little Rascals has been the go-to frame of reference. I can see how one might wish for something more ... current. There have been a couple forays into the Buffy-verse, but otherwise, it's Alfalfa's sweetheart as far as the eye can see. There's a dearth of DARLAs, darlin' (it's a great name; more people should have that name; back in the late 20th century, I very briefly dated someone named DARLA ... I can't say her name wasn't part of the appeal; we went to see Shakespeare in Love ... and that's all I can remember) (I don't even remember the movie, frankly).
Bullets:
- 4D: "Oh, that stupid little punk ..." ("SON OF A!") — someone used this once as a crossword answer and now it lives in everyone's wordlist and I don't love it (anymore). The clue is also not really on the money—it's not partial enough, not interrupted and sputtering enough. You need something more incomplete. "Why I oughta...!" — something in that vein.
- 7D: Daniel of the "Knives Out" movies (CRAIG) — the latest installment, Wake Up Dead Man, was fantastic. I got to see it in the theater, in that brief period that Netflix allowed it to run in theaters. The place was packed, or nearly so. The only movie I saw last year that was better-attended was Sinners. I don't consider movies "movies" unless they have a theatrical run. I could barely bring myself to stream Nouvelle Vague (which I really liked, but resented not being able to see on the big screen). On TV (and esp. on Netflix, Apple, Amazon), "movies" just seem like more "content," no matter how well made they are. (Somehow, in my brain, this does not apply to old movies—how else am I going to see (most) old movies?) (I love you, Criterion Channel!). Release the movies! Let them be big!
- 58D: Material in a classical timepiece (SAND) — ah, the classical time piece, a great step forward from the time pieces of the BAROQUE period (when they measured time not in SAND but in gravel, or the blood of their enemies).
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