Pony car is an American class of automobile launched and inspired by the Ford Mustang in 1964. The term describes an affordable, compact, highly styled car with a sporty or performance-oriented image. (wikipedia)
• • •
I was a bit worried when I started, as fat corners can be hard to fill well, but I think my eyes were playing tricks on me—the corners aren't that fat. In fact, this is a 72-worder (maximum for a Fri/Sat themeless), and those higher word-count puzzles usually yield pretty tasty results. And I did indeed end up enjoying the taste of this one, mostly. Didn't look like there were going to be many (any?) marquee answers—nothing longer than 8 in the grid, and only four of those—but puzzle gets a Lot of mileage out of those 8s, and the 7-laden corners come in pretty clean and occasionally sparkly. I definitely had to struggle a little with this one; with only narrow passageways in, those corners can go south on you real quick. But I was able to whack my way through the often tough cluing and finish in normal Saturday time. Satisfying work, overall.
[VOW]
Despite needing lots of help with both PAN FISH (?) and PAR FIVE, I got my claws into that NW corner pretty readily. Here's the opening gambit:
IRAS first (5D: They can roll over, briefly), and then, when TAPIOCA didn't work, somehow ARBORIO leapt right to mind. (I know TAPIOCA is not "rice"—why do you still insist on logic from me?) NBCNEWS followed shortly, and that was enough traction to get through the NW. Entire center felt very easy. Blew right through it. But the path into the NE was a little ... fraught. Wasn't sure the JOKE part of SICK JOKE was right. And I totally botched 8D: Leave an online game in a huff. Not a gamer, so when presented with -QUIT, I went with HATEQUIT, which I quite like. And since the "A" was right and gave me ARAL SEA, I got stuck for a bit. Luckily I knew ALCAN MATTY and NANO, so I worked RAGE QUIT out without too much trouble. Moved into SE where I forgot the SOUL part of KIA SOUL, but somehow remembered YOSHI, or at least the latter 3/5 of him (trust me, that "-SHI" mattered). Another corner down:
That left the SW, where I for sure had the most trouble. First, as I have never watched "Grey's Anatomy," I misremembered the guy's nickname as DR. DREAMY (38A: Handsome surgeon's nickname on "Grey's Anatomy"). Weirdly, ILE got me out of that ("CL-" yes, "RL-" no at 39D: Born Blonde brand). But this corner was tougher. MISHAPS just didn't come, even with MIS---S. Cluing ARIZONA as simply a "Brand name" was borderline cruel. HIT AT is always awkward to me. Didn't know if it was TICK or TOCK. Wrote in PONY CAR then felt like I'd just made it up, so took it out. Took some self-convincing to put it back. Got EASY-E but spelled it thusly. So between TICK and EASY-E, I "finished" with the "Brand name" as ARISINA:
Getting from there to the end didn't take much mental effort.
Have a nice day. Probably won't be as nice as Friday was, but we can always hope.
Word of the Day: OMER (55D: Post-Passover period) —
Counting of the Omer (Hebrew: ספירת העומר, Sefirat HaOmer, sometimes abbreviated as Sefira or the Omer) is an important verbal counting of each of the forty-nine days between the Jewish holidays of Passover and Shavuot as stated in the Hebrew Bible: Leviticus 23:15-16.
This mitzvah ("commandment") derives from the Torah commandment to count forty-nine days beginning from the day on which the Omer, a sacrifice containing an omer-measure of barley, was offered in the Temple in Jerusalem, up until the day before an offering of wheat was brought to the Temple on Shavuot. The Counting of the Omer begins on the second day of Passover (the 16th of Nisan) for Rabbinic Jews (Orthodox, Conservative, Reform), and after the weekly Shabbat during Passover for Karaite Jews, and ends the day before the holiday of Shavuot, the 'fiftieth day.'
The idea of counting each day represents spiritual preparation and anticipation for the giving of the Torah which was given by God on Mount Sinai at the beginning of the month of Sivan, around the same time as the holiday of Shavuot. The Sefer HaChinuch(published anonymously in 13th century Spain) states that the Hebrew people were only freed from Egypt at Passover in order to receive the Torah at Sinai, an event which is now celebrated on Shavuot, and to fulfill its laws. Thus the Counting of the Omerdemonstrates how much a Hebrew desires to accept the Torah in his own life. (wikipedia)
• • •
I want to start with ME LIKEY, because it's creeping me out, but I fully realize that my reaction is not necessarily going to be the most common one. I always felt there was some element of ethnic/racial mockery in that phrase (part of that whole "ching-chong" racist caricature of Chinese English—though some other source I just read claimed the phrase derives from Afr.-Am. / creole speech). People definitely use that phrase, and I'm pretty sure the vast majority use it with absolutely no racial inflection. And yet, I found it icky. I'm not judging: just putting a big "Question Mark" on top of that answer. (Many thanks to Erik Agard for responding to my Twitter query about this phrase with a link to this WaPo article, which refers to what must surely be "ME LIKEY"'s newsworthiness apogee). (And here are more relevant links: one referring to an instance of "ME LIKEY"'s being used in a caricature of Chinese English in a 1930s Charlie Chan film, and the other going into considerable academic detail about the etymological origins of "ME LIKEY," touching on Asian pidgin, creole, Long Duk Dong, and "Family Guy").
I mostly liked this puzzle; it's loaded with colloquialisms, most of them far more unambiguously enjoyable than the one I just mentioned. "I'M AWARE," "HOOK ME UP," "HUMOR ME," and "OH BOO HOO!"—all great. This thing seemed pitched pretty hard, though it may just seem that way by contrast with yesterday's puzzle, which was uncharacteristically easy. Getting started was a bit hard. ARUGULA was a gimme (2D: Plant called "rocket" outside the U.S.), and I clawed my way from there up into the NW corner, but then couldn't escape. Or, rather, I did this weird board game-type move where I landed on one square and used it to jump to a completely different place in the board. That is to say, AGE allowed me to infer YRS (34D: 19-Across units), and then, miraculously, that "Y" bought me GUYLINER. But then I was stuck again. Grid looked like this:
[Minion's reply] = YES … MA'AM? That was all I had for a while. Just couldn't come down out of the NW cleanly. Eventually worked from NEE to get up into the NE (after changing SIGN ME UP to HOOK ME UP). Found the whole NE very hard, despite getting ON A DIME, because HEARTHS was just never gonna come with that clue (8A: Some gathering spots) and I just did an -UP answer and didn't expect to see another so soon (ORDER UP), and Kurwenal shmurwenal and tough (but good) clue on SPELLER (14D: Person breaking his word?). Had to squeeze that corner from both sides to bring it under control. Then went crashing into the SE, thought I was on a roll, but got stuck again, here:
Wanted POOL ROOM and no other ROOM at 63A: You might take a cue from this (REC ROOM). Never heard of OMER (that I could recall—I thought he wrote "L'Illiade") and was never going to get WACO. Also, I appear to have believed that the [Common combo vaccine] was MDM, which, in this case, is 100% wrong, though I am going to assume that there is some similar vaccine initialism out there with at least one "M" in it. At this point in the solve, I was a bit worried, but ETES (50A: Conjugation part between "sommes" and "sont") and NORSK (45A: Like Grieg, to Grieg) ended up being gimmes, and they got me going again in the SW; not much trouble after that. I think I have never heard of EM SPACE. Just "em dash." But inferring was not hard. The end!
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. Early-morning reader mail. This made me laugh: "I’ve never gathered at a hearth even though I have a fireplace." Read more...
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging, though maybe closer to Medium if I'd been less stubborn ...
THEME:none
Word of the Day:Victor Herbert (53D: "___ Modiste" (Victor Herbert operetta))
Victor August Herbert (February 1, 1859 – May 26, 1924) was an Irish-born, German-raised American composer, cellist and conductor. Although Herbert enjoyed important careers as a cello soloist and conductor, he is best known for composing many successful operettas that premiered on Broadway from the 1890s to World War I. He was also prominent among the tin pan alley composers and was later a founder of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP). A prolific composer, Herbert produced two operas, a cantata, 43 operettas, incidental music to 10 plays, 31 compositions for orchestra, nine band compositions, nine cello compositions, five violin compositions with piano or orchestra, 22 piano compositions and numerous songs, choral compositions and orchestrations of works by other composers, among other music.
In the early 1880s, Herbert began a career as a cellist in Vienna, Austria, and Stuttgart, Germany, during which he began to compose orchestral music. Herbert and his opera singer wife, Therese Förster, moved to the U.S. in 1886 when both were engaged by the Metropolitan Opera. In the U.S., Herbert continued his performing career, while also teaching at the National Conservatory of Music, conducting and composing. His most notable instrumental compositions were his Cello Concerto No. 2 in E minor, Op. 30 (1894), which entered the standard repertoire, and his Auditorium Festival March (1901). He led the Pittsburgh Symphony from 1898 to 1904 and then founded the Victor Herbert Orchestra, which he conducted throughout the rest of his life.
Herbert began to compose operettas in 1894, producing several successes, including The Serenade (1897) and The Fortune Teller (1898). Even more successful were some of the operettas that he wrote after the turn of the 20th century: Babes in Toyland (1903), Mlle. Modiste(1905), The Red Mill (1906), Naughty Marietta (1910), Sweethearts (1913) and Eileen (1917). After World War I, with the change of popular musical tastes, Herbert began to compose musicals and contributed music to other composers' shows. While some of these were well-received, he never again achieved the level of success that he had enjoyed with his most popular operettas.
• • •
Pretty ordinary except for the SE, where I floundered quite a bit. In retrospect, it really looks like I could've pulled myself out of the SE quicksand much faster if I'd just looked up—I had TURNED THE TA- in place in the central answer. Surely that would've been enough to see TURNED THE TABLES, which would've given me BR- at the head of 38D: Showed signs of life, which, when coupled with the smattering of crosses I think I already had, would most certainly have given me BREATHED and thus gone a long way toward opening up that corner. But I did not do that for some reason, and so BREATHED remained hidden, as did EEL (Gulper? Yeesh, no way) and MLLE. (…? I don't think I've ever even heard of Victor Herbert before today, let alone his opera with an abbr. in its title; again, yeesh, no way). BBGUNS, really hard to see. DIE LAUGHING, also Really hard to see with that clue (57A: Totally break up). So I pieced things together somewhat slowly, from OSAKA (off the "S") to OBLAST (a guess … I just know that word as a term relevant to Russian geography). So many common letters in that corner (mainly "E"s and "L"s) that the "K" from OSAKA and the "H" (!) from BREATHED ended up being really important just to get some kind of grip on how to parse those long Acrosses. Sadly, there was little that was entertaining about this struggle-corner. It is an adequate corner. Nothing wrong. But nothing great (except possibly the phrase DIE LAUGHING, whose clue I didn't really like). I felt this about most of the puzzle, actually, even though the rest of the puzzle was much easier for me—mostly adequate, partly interesting, only occasionally enjoyable.
[I saw this in the theater. I was roughly ten. I am seeing parts of it again right now for the first time in 34 years. Pretty sure it scarred me. Feels like a repressed traumatic memory. By 1980, my Bud Cort movie exposure was dangerously high. I have no idea what my mom was thinking.]
There's some gold-medal Scrabble-f***ing in the middle of this grid. When I wrote in that "Q" from COQ and then saw that the "Q" had a symmetrical "J" as its counterpart, I think I literally laughed out loud. Way to cram in those high-value tiles! That does … well, nothing to the quality of the grid. It has this superficially showy look, but the answers involved are pretty blah, even "JOHN Q" (27D: 2002 Denzel Washington thriller), a movie no one will remember but for crosswords. So depressing that STEVE CARELL gets a sad, already dated Maxwell Smart clue. He's done much better work *and* is currently an awards-season favorite for his portrayal of philanthropist / philatelist / naturalist / murderer John Eleuthère Du Pont in "Foxcatcher." He deserves better than a 2008 Maxwell Smart clue, is what I'm saying. "Daily Show"? "Crazy, Stupid, Love"? "Anchorman"? "Over the Hedge"? Holy crap, how is "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" about to turn 10 Years Old!?!? That just came out!
Otherwise, let's see … I really enjoyed 1A: "Perish the thought!" ("GOD, I HOPE NOT!"). While the rest of the grid is not bad, it's a bit dull in the long stuff and a bit creaky in the short stuff (ENE, XESIN, BIS, NOE, ATEN, NIM, ITE, TRE, IRREG, ETRE-TETE-COQ-MLLE, etc.) for my tastes.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. clue on SUN TAN OIL is quite good (31D: Browning selection?)
P.P.S. "acid" in clues (33A), ACID- in the grid (13D) :(
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This one is reasonably solid, but not at all to my taste. Felt a bit musty and not at all entertaining, amusing, fun. I taught the "Oresteia" in grad school, so I didn't have much trouble with the LIBATION BEARERS / ORESTES cross-reference, but that title is at least mildly arcane, so the pleasure one gets from solving it, if one gets any, comes more from that semi-smug feeling of being terribly well educated rather than from the answer's being inherently interesting or the clue's being particularly clever, well written, or funny. The other 15s are pretty nice, I'll admit, but most of what's crossing them is merely tolerable, and the cluing just wasn't very engaging. Puzzle has very little about it that is contemporary, and what there is feels quite trivial (here I'm thinking particularly of that clue on PATTI—18D: Stanger a.k.a. Bravo's "Millionaire Matchmaker").
The music stuff locked me out a bit (never can remember SOLFA (24D: Sight-singing technique), and had no clue ERATO was a classical music label), and I apparently have no idea what schnitzels are (CUTLETS). I know they were … some kind of meat, but that is all. But for the most part I had heard of the answers and could follow the clue logic—it just all felt a bit tepid. Your typical European rivers, your typical crosswordese answers in the places you'd typically find them, your DERAT, your SPANG (an answer that would've killed in 1830, but is perhaps less fresh today).
Outside the 15s, only "I'M IN AWE" struck me as at all interesting, though I very much liked the clue on WHEN, which it took me forever to understand, as I was thinking of a computer server (7D: "That's enough," to a server).
Had TUG ON for TUG AT, MAY I for CAN I, SAGO for TARO, LOAD for LADE, LENA for NEVA (man, even the mistakes this puzzle causes are trivial and boring). All in all, a sufficiently tough and doable puzzle, but one that I didn't particularly enjoy.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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Word of the Day: LESLEY Gore (27A: Gore who sang "It's My Party," 1963) —
Lesley Gore (born Lesley Sue Goldstein, May 2, 1946) is an American singer. At the age of 16, in 1963, she recorded the pop hit "It's My Party". // Gore was born in New York City. She was raised inTenafly, New Jersey, in a Jewish family.Her father, Leo Gore, was a wealthy manufacturer of children's clothes and swimwear.
Lesley was a junior at the Dwight School for Girls in nearby Englewood when "It's My Party" became a #1 hit. It was later nominated for a Grammy Award for rock and roll recording. It sold over one million copies and was awarded a gold disc. (wikipedia)
• • •
Another puzzle with impressive theme density. This one's stronger than yesterday's, but still wobbles a bit in couple theme answers, and still has that spotty fill that theme-dense puzzles often seem to have. I thought I would sail through this in record time once I saw the theme was just animal comparison idioms, but then a couple things happened. First, when I got to 49A: Quite cunning, I had no idea it was a theme answer (I'd already encountered two Downs and could see another Down in the center, so the Across took me by surprise). Thus, I never considered the now-obvious fox answer, and so that corner was a tad (tod?) harder than it would've been otherwise. But the big slow down, for me, was the central themer—an idiom I have never heard. I did not even know a "coot" was an animal (a bird, for my fellow ignorant folk). None. Zero. I know coots as codgers. Foolish old men. Perhaps this meaning was only ever an extension of the baldness of the damned bird-coot, but that original, avian coot-ness is something I did not know existed. Jarring to go from such ultra-familiar expressions as SICK AS A DOG and BLIND AS A BAT to BALD AS A COOT. I had BALD AS A COO- and honestly didn't know what letter went there. "Are coons bald?" I wondered, knowing the answer.
I see that the coot idiom is a real thing, though the fact that it's not Nearly in-the-language as most of the others is, as I say, jarring. Worse for me, though, was FAT AS A COW. I can imagine someone's being called a "fat cow," but FAT AS A COW could just as easily have been FAT AS A PIG, FAT AS A HOG, or FAT AS A WHALE (which googles better than all the others I just mentioned combined). BIG AS A WHALE has significantly less currency than FAT AS A WHALE, though I have no problem with BIG AS A WHALE because of the special B-52s dispensation.
TRASH CAN before BIN. DECAMPS before ENCAMPS for some reason. No idea Monet painted anything with SNOW in the title (13D: Monet's "___ Scene at Argenteuil"). Barely heard of an OSAGE orange. I think that's it for hiccups. Overall a decent puzzle, but kind of like a balance beam routine with several significant wobbles and a not-totally-stuck landing.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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According to BMI, his song "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" was the third most performed song in the fifty years between 1940 and 1990. Webb is the only artist ever to have received Grammy Awards for music, lyrics, and orchestration. (wikipedia)
• • •
No thanks. I'll admit that a list of these [Nonsense] words is fun to say, when you line them all up in a row, and yes, there sure are a lot of them in this grid. But this grid needed serious DERATting. That ANIGH PAPAW STELA section is dire, and I don't even understand the clue on the unfortunate ROWB. I'm pretty sure ROW B *is* prime-seating. What, is only one row "prime"? ROW A? Baffling. A huge lot of words ≠ theme. Not if it's gonna result in gunky fill all over the place. Please compare the fill in yesterday's puzzle to the fill in today's puzzle for a nice night/day contrast. OH SAY OCEDAR ODILE, oh no. What's the good of putting a whole herd of theme answers in your puzzle if they're just going to trample on your fill? I''m sure the avalanche of quaintness will be enough for some. Perhaps it will provide, let's say, a chuckle. A guffaw. A slapping of knees. I don't know. I just know this theme is not to my taste, especially given all the IBAR-UBER JIVE.
Til next time.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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THEME: GENERAL DISARRAY (58A: Chaos … or a hint to the contents of 17-, 28-, 34- and 43-Across) — letters in word "GENERAL" are in "DISARRAY" (i.e. reordered) in the middle of four theme answers:
Theme answers:
NUCLEAR ENGINEER
GREEN ALGAE
POTENTIAL ENERGY
RIFLE RANGE
Word of the Day: RACEME (43D: Flower cluster on a single stem, as in the honey locust) —
A raceme (/reɪˈsim/ or /rəˈsim/) is a type of inflorescence that is unbranched and indeterminate and bears pedicellateflowers — flowers having short floral stalks called pedicels — along the axis. In botany, axis means a shoot, in this case one bearing the flowers. In araceme, the oldest flowers are borne towards the base and new flowers are produced as the shoot grows. A plant that flowers on a showy raceme may have this reflected in its scientific name, e.g. Cimicifuga racemosa. A compound raceme is called a panicle. (wikipedia)
• • •
Cute theme with solid answers. If only the word GENERAL had more interesting letters. The grid is very errrrrrrr-ish. Well, generrrrrrral-ish, esp. if you ignore the obvious Scrabble-f***king in the E and W. Actually, in corners that tiny, you can get away with Scrafu™—none of the results are that dodgy. IERI, on the other hand, redefines "dodgy." Luckily, it's an outlier(i). I finished with a typo that it took me forever to track down because, as I said earlier(i) in the week, I Misspell VARIG (33A: Bygone Brazilian airline). I had VAREG. Again. Perhaps it's because I quite literally have never seen this airline. Today I learn that it's because it's "bygone." Perhaps we can stop using it, then? Please? Anyway, I scanned all the Acrosses and found no typo and then scanned the Downs and noticed two LENs. That can't be, said I. No. It's Maya LIN / LEN Berman (whom I confused with KEN Berman, who is not KEN Berman at all, but rather Chris Berman, it turns out).
[Warning: Profanity]
I had DOPE instead of DRUG (2D: Sedate, say) but later had DOPE where DOPE belonged (42A: Skinny). Never ever "got" DRAT (53D: Alternative to hell?) (i.e. needed every cross—it's not a bad clue AFTER ALL). Don't get how "good for" works with SATE (54D: Be plenty good for). "Plenty good" as in "more than enough, quantity-wise"? Stretch. ECARDS, and all E-answers, were among the most hated crossword answers in my Facebook survey of Most Hated Crossword Answers (52A: Animated greetings). Just FYI. Also FYI: not sure it's the best kind of subliminal advertising to include STALER, TIRED *and* IN A RUT in your grid.
Got to get to bed. Hope your Christmas was lovely, however you spent it.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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THEME: repeated (sometimes twice) — 16 answers are words that must be repeated once or twice to make sense as an answer for the clue. Theme answers are all clued self-referentially, i.e. 1-Across is clued [With 1-Across...] etc.
Theme answers:
CHOO (CHOO)
CHA (CHA)
HAR (HAR)
LATE (LATE)
BREAKER (BREAKER)
PROMISES (PROMISES)
"MONDAY (MONDAY)"
PETER (PETER)
"LET IT SNOW (LET IT SNOW, LET IT SNOW)"
HEAR YE (HEAR YE)
LOCATION (LOCATION LOCATION)
SAME OLD (SAME OLD)
AGAR (AGAR)
TIN (TIN)
"HEY (HEY HEY)"
"MONY (MONY)"
Word of the Day: "RIO LOBO" (43D: 1970 John Wayne western) —
It was the third film in a trilogy directed by Hawks varying the idea of a sheriff defending his office against belligerent outlaw elements in the town: the other two films were Rio Bravo (1959) and El Dorado (1966), both also starring John Wayne. (wikipedia)
• • •
The fire-bombing of DRESDENandOSAMA bin Laden and the 6/6/06 opening of "THE OMEN" remake? Cheery!
This one's dense, that's for sure. I feel sure I've seen this conceit before—the [With itself]-type cluing—but it might have been a one-off in some puzzle somewhere. Who can remember? One thing this puzzle has going for it is theme density. Crazy, crazy density. Always feels like a back-handed compliment to highlight density—who ever finished a puzzle and thought "I really enjoyed the theme density on that one"?— but from a technical standpoint, it's worth mentioning. It's pretty impressive. Delightfulness-wise, I thought this was OK. The theme cluing provided a strange challenge (having to imagine the double or triple-ness of the answer phrase), and I enjoyed it. Density creates some less-than-optimal fill for a Tuesday, but nothing repulsive. WEE 'UNS is a stretch, especially insofar as [Tots] hardly seems to cover it. I might use [Tots]. WEE 'UNS, never. It's either dated or regional or dated-regional. It's also ugly. But it's an outlier.
I STRUMmed instead of THRUMmed, like any sensible human being, so that area proved a little sticky (46A: Play lazily, as a guitar). Also went ETHOS over ETHIC and (thus) had trouble getting both IDIOM (8D: "Green thumb" or "purple prose") and COSMOS for a while. Wrote in DUO instead of DOS, which makes no kind of sense (10A: Half of cuatro). Briefly blanked on the John Wayne "RIO" film that was not "BRAVO." And yet had no trouble with OSTLERS, one of the odder words in the grid (3D: Stable employees). I thought OSTLERS were innkeepers, but I was just off—they are stablemen, typically in the employ of an inn. This is one of the reasons you rarely encounter this word any more. When's the last time you drove your horse to an inn?
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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