Relative difficulty: Easy (felt like a themeless though?) (6:17)
THEME: Common phrases turned "wacky" by removing the H, as a tribute to PITTSBURGH — City that had the final letter of its name removed in 1891, only to be restored in 1911
Theme answers:
PEACE MARCH (Nonviolent protest) becomes PEACE MARC (A farewell to artist Chagall?) when you remove the final H
PUT UP WITH (Endure) becomes PUT UP WIT (Display some humorous posters?) when you remove the final H
FIGHTING IRISH (Notre Dame team) becomes FIGHTING IRIS (Asset in a staring contest?) when you remove the final H
DO THE MATH (Figure it out) becomes DO THE MAT ("Let's see that dance move where you lie flat by a door!"?) when you remove the final H
Word of the Day: MOE (Antagonist in "Calvin and Hobbes") —
Moe is a recurring character in Calvin and Hobbes. He is a bully at Calvin's school and seems to beat up or threaten Calvin every time he appears. Moe appeared early in the strip, and was immediately shown to be merciless and have no capacity for kindness (Bill Watterson describes him as "every jerk I've ever known").
• • •
Hi friends, welcome to another edition of Malaika MWednesday! I zoomed through this puzzle without even looking at the theme until it was time for this write-up. I saw the crossed-out clues and was like "I don't feel like dealing with all that right now, I'll get back to that later" and then by the time I got back to it, I had finished the puzzle.
I am a little torn on this one-- I don't typically like wacky "remove-a-letter" themes, but I do appreciate when they have a reason for existing, and this one is pretty cute. (Maybe I'm biased because I lived in Pittsburgh for four years, though.) I didn't know the trivia that was in the revealer, but it's fun, and it perfectly matched what was going on with the clues.
Yay, Pittsburgh!!
My issue, I guess, was not the concept, but the humor. I didn't think any of the wacky phrases were particularly funny, alas. FIGHTING IRIS was the closest, but the rest fell a little flat-- PUT UP WIT was my least favorite. It is hard to get a chuckle out of me with a remove-a-letter theme though, so I'll settle with being satisfied with the reasoning behind it.
Elsewhere in the grid, we had some great long fill like FOOT REST and TOP NOTCH, and good medium-length stuff as well like PARKOUR and CRAYONS. I will confess that I have never seen the word ENMITIES in my life (I'm not dumb, I promise!! Just a weird lexical gap for me!!) and when I read through it, thought I had a mistake somewhere. Always good to learn something!
Bullets:
[Hot chocolate holder] for MUG — There should be more hot chocolate, in general. Every bar should serve hot chocolate and it should be the good kind with melted chocolate.
[Symbol in the Bluetooth logo, for one] for RUNE — I believe the rune is associated with King Bluetooth.... it sounds like I'm making this up, but that's what Wikipedia said
[Sci-fi publisher whose logo is a rocky peak] for TOR — To me, TOR is what you use to browse the deep web. I've never heard it used in any other context, aside from crossword puzzles, where the NYT refuses to clue it in that way.
xoxo Malaika
P.S. A couple weeks ago, I gave a talk about crosswords, specifically about how they are edited differently by different outlets. If you are interested (or just want to know what I look / sound like lol) you can watch here.
THEME: MUCH ADO / ABOUT / NOTHING (33A: With 39- and 44-Across, dramatic work depicted in this puzzle's grid) — circled squares (containing words synonymous with "ADO") surround empty squares (i.e. "NOTHING"). So there is MUCH ADO ABOUT (in the sense of "surrounding") NOTHING:
The ADOs:
FRACAS
FUSS
HUBBUB
UPROAR
STIR
RUMPUS
Word of the Day: ORGO (64A: Notoriously difficult chem class) —
It does seem to be a regional thing. On the west coast (of US) and Texas I have only ever heard it as Ochem, but I have had students from the east come back and ask me why we don’t call it orgo. I could say “because it sounds funny” but I don’t. ;) I would guess that it wasn’t [shortened] to orga because that had too many other possibilities. (Barbara Murray, Ph.D. Organic Chemistry, Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1984), answering a question about "ORGO" on Quora)
• • •
I don't have much to say about this one beyond the fact that I think it's probably the best themed puzzle of the year so far. I don't keep track of such things—no Top Tens or Best Ofs or "Rex's Favorites" or whatever—but this one unfolded perfectly for me, with a "huh, interesting" when I figured out the gimmick, and then a genuine "wow" when I got the revealer (that answer takes up a Lot of real estate, and contributes mightily to the puzzle's skewing Easy). Conceptually it's just ... perfect? I was just thinking, and often think (seriously, I do often think about this), that there are So Many Damn Words for ADO, all of which I know because they appear as clues for ADO, a very common crossword answer. So in addition to just being a great idea, this theme also seems like a kind of shout-out to the word ADO, to the vocabulary of ADO, which all constant solvers know well. It's like "hey, you know what word you see all the time in your puzzles ... let's do something fun with it," and then all the old familiar Hall-of-Fame ADO clues (Stir! Uproar! etc.) get to do a little victory lap in a golf cart, like old-timers being honored before a baseball game or something. We do get a lot of short fill, which usually saps a puzzle of its interestingness, but here, because so much of that short fill occurs in and around the theme stuff, I was sufficiently distracted by the theme stuff, i.e. navigating the empty squares, seeing what ADO word was coming into view in the circled squares, that I didn't care much that stuff like UPS and SIB and OFA is not terribly scintillating on its own. Also, where the circled squares are concerned, it is Not easy to navigate that many fixed squares cleanly when they aren't all on the same plane. That is, not hard to build a corner around FRACAS if it's just a simple, regular answer; but when you run its letters through four Acrosses and three Downs, getting the surrounding fill to come out acceptably, let alone entertainingly, gets a lot harder. And to have to handle not only the circled squares, but the stacked revealer in the center ... this grid is just thick with theme material. And yet it's smooth as hell. So this just was just very well done, stem to stern. NICE ONE, indeed.
This puzzle makes me realize that the key to a great solve isn't just a great theme, but a great theme that unfolds in the right way. There's obviously no way a constructor can completely control the path you take through the grid, but if you take a pretty standard falling-water path (i.e. start in the NW and just ... fall down and out of that section, as the gravitational pull of your answers takes you), you go from FRACAS surround empty squares (intriguing! mysterious!) right into the revealer (huge aha!). Now, maybe it's more fun to have the revealer hit you late, so that the mystery of the empty squares comes together in one climactic whomp, but I have to say I really enjoyed getting that whomp early and then riding the joyful feeling it gave me all the way to the finish line. There were some interesting non-theme moments along the way. Briefly got stuck thinking about lard or Crisco at 37A: Shortening, for short (ABBR.)—it's nice for otherwise unremarkable fill to get a clever little clue like that. My one big mistake of the day was actually small: I thought the [Cousin of a club] was a BAT. Makes sense. But there's no such thing as an AALEN wrench (42A: Kind of wrench); so I changed BAT to BLT, and tada. Semi-wicked that only the one letter separates two perfectly reasonable answers there. I'm very grateful AALEN looks as insane as it does, or I might not have noticed my error.
I always find the "I WIN" v. "I WON" dilemma tiresome (esp. as I rarely hear anyone "cry" either) (45D: Exultant cry), and I initially blanked on Professor X's brain-enhancing device (CEREBRO), but "O" seemed a more likely terminal vowel than "I," and crosses eventually proved me right. The only thing about the puzzle I don't really care for is also its most original answer, which means I almost like it. Almost. That answer is ORGO. I just wouldn't go with ORGO in that position. I think it's an OK term to use, but only in a pinch, when you can't get more ordinary (and broadly clueable) stuff to work. Even leaving ÊTRE and SIB in place, you have lots of different options for filling that southernmost section, none of which involve semi-regional collegiate slang (only slang I ever head for Organic Chemistry when I was in college was O-CHEM, which I would also accept as crossword fill ... but also only in a pinch). Just changing SON to SEW gives you nice answers all around, but there are many, many other options for redoing that section as well. And yet, as I say, ORGO is bizarro in a way that I find almost charming, and it wasn't tough to get, so maybe it's just fine.
Finished up with 60D: Salk and Pepper, in brief (DRS), which keeps making me smile every time I think about it. The salt & pepper pun combined with the odd-couple doctors is just ... mwah! Good stuff. Hope you enjoyed yourself at least half as much as I did. See you tomorrow.
Relative difficulty: Medium (10-something on the timer)
THEME: "Now Weight Just a Second" — familiar phrases are made wacky by changing a single two-syllable word from one whose stress ("weight") is on the first syllable to one whose stress is on the "second":
Theme answers:
SHIP OF THE DESSERT (22A: Cruise that specializes in baked alaska, e.g.?)
NOBEL-MINDED (33A: Like ambitious scientists?)
THE MORALE OF THE STORY (49A: How everyone on this floor is feeling?)
IT'S NOT ROCKETTE SCIENCE (68A: "Our lab studies regular dance moves rather than high-kicking"?)
I CAME I SAW I CONCURRED (86A: Summary of an easy negotiation?)
SEMI COLOGNE (105A: What a truck driver puts on before a date?)
MAJOR THOREAUFARE (116A: The main food served at Walden Pond?)
Word of the Day: KNUT (94A: Coin in the Potterverse) —
Wizarding money is [...] old-fashioned; whilst Muggle Britain was decimalised in 1971, Magical Britons continued with their system of 17 silverSickles to a gold Galleon, and 29 bronze Knuts to a Sickle. Also, magical currency is all metal coins, and there is no paper money. (wikipedia)
• • •
Didn't care for this much as I was solving, as I had no idea what was going on, and didn't find the puns that funny. As soon as I finished, it dawned on me what the "weight" in the title of the puzzle meant. First themer looks like an add-a-letter theme, and the third themer (which I ran into second) seems to confirm this. But then I got NOBEL but didn't know the second part and didn't know NOBEL was the altered word, so that was no help. So I stumbled to the end never once really being amused by the themers. Then, when I figured it out, I dunno, something about the way not just the stress ("weight") but the vowel sound seemed to change in the second syllable of COLOGNE and MORALE really bugged me. But I was primed to be bugged because the theme just never clicked for me (I can see already from early social media reaction that I won't be alone in this). At least I figured it out eventually, I guess. I think it's very clever, but the solving experience was kind of a dud for me, despite some real winning moments in the fill. I think this is one of those days where the puzzle is probably actually good, but just not for me.
[warning: profanity]
Here's what I quite enjoyed: GADGETRY (16D: Fancy gizmos) and DEATHSTAR (108A: Massive weapon of sci-fi)! I also enjoyed seeing HEARST(100D: Leader in yellow journalism and an inspiration for "Citizen Kane"), whose name is oddly rare given what looks like such a favorable letter combination (hasn't appeared in the NYT in four years). Did you know "yellow journalism" had its origins in the comics pages with the Yellow Kid, the world's first comic strip star, whose iconic color came to stand generally for newspapers' willingness to do anything to sell papers? The Yellow Kid was the star of a strip called "Hogan's Alley," which started in Pulitzer's New York World, but then HEARST bought it for his New York Journal. Pulitzer then responded by running his own Yellow Kid (copyright laws involving comics not being very well defined, apparently). The Kid was thus a central figure in the newspaper sales wars of the late 19th century, and since the comics pages and sensational, muckraking journalism came of age together, the yellow of the Yellow Kid became symbolic of drive to sell papers at any cost, no matter how cheap and tawdry! Extra, extra! Lesson over!
I really really liked COURT / ORDER, which is probably the only time you'll hear me say I liked a [With such and such a clue / See such and such]-type pairing (43D: With 44-Down, judge's mandate / 44D: See 43-Down). Normally I resent having to go hunt down the second (or first) half of some split answer, but here, today, the two halves stand right alongside each other like a couple of pals, each word the same length. There's something very neat and elegant about that. Here's where I struggled: first, GLASSWORK, specifically the -WORK part (30A: Tiffany lambshade, e.g.). Had GLASSW- and wrote in (I think) GLASSWARE, which actually worked with LAHORE (7D: Capital of Punjab), but then SETTO seemed right but wouldn't work, and then I somehow opted for EVENNESS at 8D: State of stability (EVEN KEEL), so there was a lot of writing and unwriting going on there for a bit. Also had no idea about BILL TO; I had SELL TO, then realized I had no idea what that answer could be (29D: Words on an invoice). I also could not get / understand 29A: Quickly go through the seasons, say (BINGE). It's a great clue, though the "the" there is kind of a cheap way to get your misdirection (making you think of winter spring etc. and not TV, where you would only say "the" if it were clear what show you were talking about, and maybe not even then). Anyway, I wanted FLY BY. Like ... Time ... quickly goes through the seasons? Throw in odd ELFIN clue at 14D: Diminutive, and you've got a real mess (in "The Hobbit," elves are far less "diminutive" than hobbits and dwarves, so I don't put smallness and elfinity together). Bottom half of the grid didn't offer any equivalent challenges.
Relative difficulty: Challenging by the clock, but it felt more Medium-Challenging, and also I've had a drink (12:52)
THEME: "MIND THE GAP" — self-referential answers that involve first word being interrupted in some way by a random circled letter, e.g. R(S)AIL SPLITTER, where "S" is a literal "splitter" of the word "rail"—the circled letters spell SQUARE PEG
Theme answers:
R(S)AIL SPLITTER (22A: Another nickname for Old Abe ...)
OUT(Q)ER SPACE (27A: Astronaut's place ...)
RO(U)OM DIVIDER (42A: Screen or partition ...)
NA(A)SAL CAVITY (51A: Where decongestant spray goes ...)
SECUR(R)ITY BREACH (64A: Cyberexpert's worry ...)
PA(E)PER CUTTER (84A: Office device ...)
S(P)AFE CRACKER (90A: Heist figure ...)
LUCK(E)Y BREAK (106: Bit of good fortune ...)
GRAN(G)D OPENING (114A: Store banner ...)
Word of the Day: ERNST Mach (13D: Physicist Mach) —
Not gonna spend much time on this one because I just didn't enjoy it. I think the theme is clever, but solving it was a drag, both because of the unchecked squares (which ultimately weren't unchecked, I guess, but whatever) and because of the annoying fill and vague clues. Just no fun. I also found this one ridiculously hard to get started on. I blame EPIZOA (!?!?) (18A: External parasites) and also UZI, which, guns, ugh, stop. In the same category of Ugh, Stop, only moreso: NOBAMA (98A: Coinage during the 2008 presidential election). Screw you. Shove your Tea Party rhetoric up [r e d a c t e d]. There. Phew, that felt good. OK, back to this mirthless, too-cute-for-its-own-good puzzle. I finished with an error, sort of. I just couldn't be bothered to look at all the circled squares; if I had, I would've seen my error, which was ARF for 116D: Scottie's warning (GRR). You'll note that the first letter of that answer is one of the aforementioned "unchecked squares," and the last letter is in the stupid answer SHEERS (122A: Some see-through curtains). I figured SHEEFS was some stupid technical ... curtain .... term? It's not like SHEERS, plural (!?), is much better. It's such an AARGH suckfest down there. Again, the whole self-referential theme gag was cute, and since the letters in SQUARE PEG all appear in circles, i.e. round holes, I guess that is also clever, but not the kind of clever that is genuinely impressive. More the kind that makes me go "oh ... [forced grin] ... I see what you did. Great."
My greatest delight re: this puzzle came when I had just finished writing "40 YEARS!" in the margin of my printed puzzle (as in "I've been following baseball for 40 YEARS and have never once heard a SOLO HOMER referred to as a "singleton") (5D: What a "singleton" is, in baseball lingo) and all of a sudden I get a Twitter DM from an actual sports broadcaster informing me, and I quote, "I played baseball in college, worked for multiple minor league teams as a p/b/p man, and have covered MLB since 1995, and not one time have I heard anyone call a solo HR a 'Singleton.'" The clue, as he goes on to say, is baffling. Get things right or don't get them. How hard is it, really?
Five things:
83A: Clutch (BROOD) — is this, like, about hens or something? I thought BROOD was the actual chicks but a "clutch" was a group of eggs. And there are so many clues for BROOD. But we get ... this. Delightful.
101A: "Spider-Man" baddie (DOC OCK) — careful with the parsing on that one
91D: "Aw, nuts!" ("FOO!") — no dumb bad stop please
45D: Publisher's announcement ("IT'S OUT") — again, no, no way, uh uh, in no universe, etc. You'd sooner say this of a SOLO HOMER. Well, *you* might say "IT'S OUT," casually, if a friend asked whether your book had been published yet. But a *publisher* would not "announce" the publication this way.
87A: "That's my intention" ("I PLAN TO") — I had "I MEAN TO," so that hurt. I also had LEAK for CLOG (108D: Problem for a plumber), but that didn't last long
THEME: “Counterproductive" — Theme answers are defined by the number of letters they contain.
Theme answers:
MIDNIGHT HOUR (22A: This clue’s 110-Across, timewise)
DIVER’S GOAL (28A: This clue’s 110-Across, at the Olympics)
VOTING AGE IN AMERICA (49A: This clue’s 110-Across, as is relevant each November)
BAD LUCK SYMBOL (64A: This clue’s 110-Across, to the superstitious)
ARGON’S ATOMIC NUMBER (81A: This clue’s 110-Across, in chemistry)
REAL LOOKER (102A: This clue’s 110-Across, in terms of attractiveness)
and then:
ANSWER LENGTH (110A: Something to count to understand 22-, 28-, 49-, 64-, 81-, and 102-Across)
Word of the Day: TOUCAN SAM (77D: One with a large bill at breakfast?)—
Toucan Sam is the cartoon toucan mascot for Froot Loopsbreakfast cereal. The character has been featured in advertising since the 1960s. He exhibits the ability to smell Froot Loops from great distances and invariably locates a concealed bowl of the cereal while intoning, "Follow your nose! It always knows!", sometimes followed by "The flavor of fruit! Wherever it grows!" Another version of this phrase in a string of commercials in the late-2000s presents the character at the end of the commercials saying "Just follow your nose!", followed by a group of children retorting, "For the fruity taste that shows!"
• • •
Alex Eylar here -- I bumped into Rex on the subway; I said “Excuse me”; he said “Hey do you want to cover the puzzle today”; I said “Yeah why not”, and here I am.
This puzzle seems... expository, I guess is the word. Take ARGON’S ATOMIC NUMBER, for example: it contains 18 letters, and argon is atomic number 18, and, well, that’s it. It’s definitely accurate, but it’s not really an Aha! moment.
It doesn’t help as you’re solving it, either. I run across 22A first and I see it references a later clue, and I think to myself, “Welp, guess I’m not filling that in, tra la la la la” And then I think those same thoughts for the next five theme answers. So it’s not as if I’m working out the trick -- I’m just waiting until I get enough crosses that I can maybe figure out what the F these phrases are.
Except, they're not phrases (with the exception of MIDNIGHT HOUR and REAL LOOKER) -- they’re just descriptions of the connotations of a number. And the sentence “descriptions of the connotations of a number” doesn’t inspire a lot of excitement.
It reminds me of this puzzle from April: self-reflexive, but not really in an astounding way. It doesn’t elicit a “Wow!” or an “Oh, I get it!” -- it’s more of a “Huh, all-righty then.” That feeling, combined with the inescapably-fuzzy language of the clues (“Something to count to understand...”) makes the puzzle a bit flat, in my opinion. An interesting idea on paper, but there’s some oomph missing in practice.
I also don’t quite see the point in including the circled FOUR, which has four letters, and yeah. It’s a number describing itself (the only number to do so, fun fact!), but it feels like an afterthought. I appreciate the symmetry and the cascading arrangement of the letters, but what does it add to the puzzle?
That said, this puzzle was definitely on the easier side; finished just two minutes over my best time.
Words of note:
TO ARMS! (115A: Dramatic battle cry) — I had CHARGE! at first, which I yell every time I pull onto the 405.
HOP IN (6A: Words said through a car window) — For some reason, I pictured the window to be rolled-up, and was searching for a phrase you’d yell through a closed window, all of which are profane. (Perhaps you’re sensing a theme here)
EVITABLE (24A: Not definitely going to happen) — I mean... I guess it’s a word, but the opposite is far more friendly.
NEVERMORE (12D: Old-fashioned “That’s absolutely the last time”) — The lack of a Poe reference is a gross failure in my book; I love that poem.
HOME MOVIE (76D: Family Night entertainment) — I grew up in a boring family too.
Winners: TOUCAN SAM, TARTARE, MAN ALIVE, PHONE IT IN, NEVERMORE, COVER ME, ALI BABA, and I’M LOVIN’ IT (apostrophes for everyone!)
Losers: PEELEandPEELER, GOLAN (looks like five random letters to my uncultured eyes), ONMARS (helluva partial), NBAERS (‘ae’ is the ugliest thing ever, trust me, they’re my initials).
THEME:THE GAP (39A: Something to mind ... in 18-, 24-, 47- and 58-Across) — you have to imagine a "gap" in the theme answers for the wacky clues to make any sense; so:
Theme answers:
URBAN LEGENDS => Urban Leg Ends (18A: Feet in the city? (3 wds.)
KINDRED SPIRITS => Kind, Red Spirit (24A: Friendly Communist ghost? (3 wds.))
QUICK THINKING => Quick, Thin King (47A: Slim monarch who gets around fast? (3 wds.))
GOOGLE IMAGES => Go Ogle Images (58A: Head off to stare at some pictures? (3 wds.))
Word of the Day: TOULON (42A: City in southern France) —
Toulon (French pronunciation: [tu.lɔ̃]; Provençal: Tolon (classical norm), Touloun (Mistralian norm), pronounced [tuˈlun]) is a city in southern France and a large military harbour on the Mediterranean coast, with a major French naval base. Located in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azurregion, Toulon is the capital of the Vardepartment. // The Commune of Toulon has a population of 165,514 people (2009), making it the fifteenth-largest city in France. It is the centre of an urban area with 559,421 inhabitants (2008), the ninth largest in France.[1] Toulon is the third-largest French city on the Mediterranean coast after Marseille and Nice. (wikipedia)
• • •
You call that a "Mind THE GAP" puzzle? That's not a "Mind THE GAP" puzzle. *This* (NYT, January 17, 2013) is a "Mind THE GAP" puzzle (and a good one) (seriously, it is—much better than today's).
So many problems. You widened the grid for this? First, the whole "Mind THE GAP" premise really doesn't have much to do with putting a break into words. Find the gap, maybe, but you "mind THE GAP" so as not to hurt yourself by tripping on or otherwise stepping into an actual gap that is there in physical space. You don't provide it. It's just there. Also, THE GAP is terrible as a revealer. Full phrase or go home. THE GAP is a store. Stop it. Further, all you're doing is breaking words into two words ... that is the Full Extent of this puzzle's cohesiveness. Nothing related to subways, nothing related to anything. Just "hey I broke a word in two and there was wackiness." In so many ways, this theme is not ready for publication. It's undercooked *and* it's missing some crucial ingredient to make it all come together. As is, it's a runny mess. Moreover. TOULON is a bonkers word to have in a Monday grid, or any grid. On a Friday or Saturday, fine, but a Monday? It is a hilarious familiarity-outlier. Like ... nothing in this grid comes close to how not-well-known that answer is. The fifteenth-largest city in France? The ninth-largest urban center? On Monday? Astonishing that no one, from constructor, to editor, to testers, thought that was an issue. Lastly, this is really more a Wednesday-type theme. Clues were Monday-easy on the the non-theme stuff, but usually this level of wackiness, with zero indication of the base phrase that is being punned on, wouldn't see light of day til mid-week. So yeah, myriad problems here. Sometimes I think no one is minding the store.
Meanwhile, I had a nice weekend.
I attended Lollapuzzoola 10, the world's greatest NYC crossword tournament, and, well, see pictures, above. My wife and I did OK. The tournament was (as usual) great fun—jam-packed, with tons of new faces—and I got to meet interesting people (a lot of younger people just getting into crossword nerddom!) and eat interesting food and see a Mets game. Lovely lovely lovely. A great way to bring my summer to an official close (teaching starts Thursday). Thanks to Tyler Clark for covering for me Friday and Saturday. And oh, yeah, if you want to do the Fantastic tournament puzzles (all by top-notch constructors) you're in luck. You can get them here, cheap.
See you tomorrow.
Signed (from 37 stories over Manhattan), Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
Relative difficulty:Medium-Challenging (slowish for Monday, though maybe that's 'cause the grid is extra-wide today)
THEME: STAKE OUT (39A: Police operation ... or, when read another way, what a grammarian would like to do to 18-, 24-, 52- and 65-Across) — ungrammatical expressions involving extra esses...
Theme answers:
ALL'S I KNOW... (18A: "The one thing that's clear to me ...")
A LONG WAYS OFF (24A: Distant)
AND THEN I SAYS ... (52A: Narrative conncector) [that is One Hell of a vague clue]
HOW'S ABOUT ...? (65A: "What do you think of ...?")
Word of the Day:TROIKA(30D: Group of three) —
noun
noun: troika; plural noun: troikas
1.
a Russian vehicle pulled by a team of three horses abreast.
a team of three horses for a troika.
2.
a group of three people working together, especially in an administrative or managerial capacity. (google)
• • •
Can't tell if this was slightly harder than the average Monday, or just took slightly longer because of the extra-wide (16) grid. All's I know is I was about 15-20 seconds slower than normal (significant on a Monday). At first, I wasn't sure why the 16-square width was necessary, but if you're gonna put an even-number-lettered revealer in the center, then yeah, your grid has to be an even number of squares wide. I didn't think the revealer worked very well as clued; that is, "a grammarian would like to 'S' take out" sounds totally ridiculous, but that's the formulation the clue specifically asks for. S TAKE-OUT is better as a noun—something a grammarian would like to perform on the relevant theme entries. Clued as a verb phrase, it's nonsense. Further, A LONG WAYS OFF seems like an outlier here in at least a couple way(s). It's the only truly stand-alone phrase, all the other being sentence lead-ins. It's the only one that is not definitively colloquial, i.e. a commonly if not exclusively *spoken* formulation. It's also the least grammar-violating, ALL'S and HOW'S being grammatically nonsensical, and I SAYS being a matter of overt subj/verb disagreement. Changing WAY to WAYS (or vice versa) just doesn't seem in the same universe as the other grammarian-offending phrases.
The non-theme stuff, on the other hand, is quite nice, with six Downs of 7+ letters in length giving the grid a lot more character than you typically see on a Monday. Plus, there's very little in the way of junk. This has all been nicely polished, with only AAHED and maybe GLO getting me even the slightest bit RILEd. I love the words FLAGON (27D: Old-fashioned wine holder) and TROIKA, for purely aesthetic reasons.
[sorry this song was in the background of the trailer for the movie "STAKEOUT" and so I looked it up and it is pretty evocative of a pretty terrible time in pop music videos so I thought 'sure, throw it in...']
Congrats to Dan Feyer, who won his 7th American Crossword Puzzle Tournament championship yesterday, beating out fellow killer-solvers Tyler Hinman and Joon Pahk. I HOPE to see you tomorrow. Au revoir.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
PS NOT SO'S YOU'D NOTICE woulda made a nice central 15 in a normal-sized grid ... maybe change the revealer to SLOP and shove it in a corner ... I'm just spitballin' here ...
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (and I imagine it's even tougher if you don't see the Note at the top of the puzzle)
THEME: Mark My Words — A sort-of double-rebus puzzle in which six quotes have quotation marks (" ") at their starts and ends in the Across direction. The quotation marks should be interpreted as ditto marks (″ ″) in the Down direction, which means that the letters in those squares in the Down direction are the same as the squares directly above them. Did you get that? If not, let me try again with the puzzle Note: "When this puzzle is completed, 12 squares will be filled with a certain keyboard symbol — which will have a different signification in the Across answers than it does in the Downs."
Theme answers:
29A: Magical phrase in an old tale ("OPEN SESAME"). First ditto mark represents a D in the Down direction and crosses the double-D in CHEDDAR(4D: Money, in modern slang). Second ditto mark represents an L in the Down direction and crosses the double-L in PULL-TAB(21D: Soda can feature).
50A: Schwarzenegger film catchphrase ("I'LL BE BACK"). Crossing Down answer: 33D: Art critic, stereotypically (SNOOT).
58A: Comment after a betrayal ("ET TU, BRUTE?"). Crossing Down answer: 34D: Not seemly (UNMEET).
74A: Catchphrase for one of the Avengers ("HULK SMASH!"). Crossing Down answer: 70D: How one person might resemble another (EERILY).
103A: What the ring in "The Lord of the Rings" is called ("MY PRECIOUS"). Crossing Down answers: 85D: ___ rate (tax amount per $1,000) (MILLAGE) and 95D: Be a gentleman to at the end of a date, say (SEE HOME).
31D: Assistant number cruncher (SUBBOOKKEEPER). Runs through all quotes.
Hey there, this is Evan Birnholz. I'm holding down the fort here in Philadelphia during Popestravaganza 2015 -- it's supposed to be a madhouse when the Pope holds Mass on Sunday. Francis might not have time to solve one of my Devil Cross puzzles while he's here -- the name of my site probably doesn't do it for him either -- but lately I've been publishing some Sunday-sized crosswords just like today's, so check 'em out on this fine day.
I've been a fan of Tom McCoy's previous puzzles, and I'm all for crosswords that force you to think outside of the box. But unfortunately, this puzzle (ahem) missed the mark with me. It's a bizarre theme, to say the least. I get that each of the six long Across answers are well-known quotes and that quotation marks can sorta approximate ditto marks in appearance, but I can't shake the feeling that the puzzle is missing something. It could be because I've been solving a lot of meta puzzles recently, but I really, really wanted the "trick" letters in the Down direction to spell something relevant when you read them in order -- some phrase that might help unify the theme, like maybe QUOTE UNQUOTE or MIXED DOUBLES. Even another famous 12-letter quotation would be something. Instead, those gimmick letters are just the same letters as the ones right above them and otherwise have no extra layer to them. That felt like a missed opportunity.
There is good stuff in there, to be sure. The six quoted theme answers are all solid -- I love "HULK SMASH!" especially -- but for something this different, it just wasn't a tight enough theme concept to really grab me. It's basically: six relatively random quotes, quote marks look like ditto marks, you get some double letter pairs .... I just wanted more out of it, and the marquee answer in the grid that (literally) ties everything together (SUBBOOKKEEPER) doesn't strike me as a strong enough hook. It's a linguistic curiosity in that it's apparently the only one-word term that has four consecutive repeated letter pairs, and that can help you grok the theme. But if you don't know that, then it just appears like an otherwise dull term that got jammed into the grid for some unknown reason. It doesn't get much play in dictionaries; the sub- prefix makes it look like someone just made that job title up. SUBBOOKKEEPER! INTERPOSTMASTER! MICROSECRETARY! There's a theme in there somewhere.
In addition, something about the puzzle's presentation seems off. The puzzle Note (if you chose to read it beforehand) gives away a major piece of information about the theme in that several squares work differently in both directions. Generally I think it's better to let solvers discover that bit of trickiness on their own, and of course you could ignore the Note while solving. But even with the Note, I still had a tough time making sense of the theme when I was done. I never saw the quotation marks as ditto marks; I just assumed that the trick was that the quote marks could be replaced with whatever letter fit the crossing Down answer, not the same letter as the one in the square directly above it. So it felt like I had to solve the corresponding Down answers with no help from the Across letters (for instance, I had UNME_T at 34D and got completely stuck, not least because UNMEET is a word that no one ever uses). Maybe others had similar confusion? At the very least, that bit of trouble gave me the fun chance to interpret some of the Across theme entries as though the quote/ditto marks were never there, so "OPEN SESAME" and "I'LL BE BACK" became DOPEN SESAMEL and BILL BE BACKO. There's probably not a theme in there anywhere.
I'm also told that, while I solved this one on paper, this puzzle does not work well for solving on a computer or other electronic devices. To get the correct solution, you apparently have to enter the word QUOTE in Across Lite in the relevant squares instead of the appropriate symbols. So for electronic solvers, you may have already lost the two-way quote/ditto mark gimmick, which a few people mentioned to me had been pretty frustrating.
Now, with all that out of the way, let's talk Fill. This puzzle has 132 words -- well below the NYT's generally accepted maximum of 140 for a 21x21 puzzle. That means you can get some nice longer fill answers like OH CRUD, NBA STAR, HIMALAYAS, KARAOKE, NO SERVICE, CUE STICKS, ANGEL HAIR,and FIG LEAVES, the latter of which has a pretty funny clue (27A: Ones doing a decent job in the Bible?). But it also means you might get some rather cringe-worthy answers like:
20A: Got up again (REROSE) — I'm fine with RE- answers that you might hear in the wild like REREAD or RESEND or REMIX, but REROSE isn't one of them.
24A: Takes out, as some beer bottles (UNCASES) — It makes sense, but do people say this? I think you're more likely to say "Let's take the beer bottles out" than "Let's uncase the beer bottles." There's also UNMAKES at 34A: Takes apart.
38A / 30D / 110A (NT WT / ESTS / SCHS)— Strange abbreviations, all of them. There's really no reason the word "net" in NT WT should be abbreviated. Three letters was too long and so we made it two? Seriously?
52A: Amazon's industry (E-TAIL)— This probably isn't the worst E-something word you'll find in crosswords, but I still rarely see people use it.
81A: Like some storefronts (TO LEASE)— That's a weird one. FOR LEASE and TO LET are much more common to my ear.
83A: Farmer, in the spring / 121A: Ones making an effort (SOWER / TRYERS) — Those "add -R or -ER to a verb to get a strange noun" answers, where the definition is just "one who [verb]s." Thus a TRYER is one who tries. You can just hear a coach telling his team, C'mon guys, you gotta be tryers out there if you wanna win!
14D: "What ___!" (cry after some spectacular goalie play) / 53D: "Lord, is ___?" (A SAVE / IT I) — I've never been a fan of partial phrases, and while IT I is common enough in puzzles, A SAVE sounds pretty arbitrary to me.
17D: @@@ (ATS)— AT SIGNS, yes. ATS, no. It's just not as common.
The aforementioned, obscure UNMEET. I wish I could unmeet this word.
69D: One seeking the philosopher's stone (CHEMIC) — Yikes. I want to unmeet this one too. Surely I wasn't the only one who thought this would be a Harry Potter-related answer.
82D: Romanian currency (LEU) — Though it's probably a better currency to use in crosswords than the outdated ECU.
92D: Dictation takers (STENOGS)— Is there some industry standard for the shortening of "stenographer"? I know STENO isn't a whole lot better than STENOG, but can't we just stick with one of them? Are we going to start calling them STENS later on?
97D: Where many shots are taken (IN A BAR) — This feels arbitrary as a phrase, like IN A STORE or IN A CASINO would.
111D: Greek portico (STOA) — A classic piece of crossword-ese that I haven't missed much.
112D: 1940s prez (HST) — He's well-known, of course, but Truman's monogram isn't anywhere near as ubiquitous as FDR or JFK.
116D: Stand-___ (INS) — This isn't necessarily a terrible answer per se, but it seems strange to have INS as its own entry when you've already got IN HERE and IN A BAR.
That's quite a few sub- and sub-sub-par entries to swallow in spite of the longer, more sparkly answers. All of this is to say: 140 words in a 21x21 grid is tough enough to handle as it is. 132 words can be downright hazardous. In fact, I'd personally be in favor of raising the NYT's maximum number of words on Sunday puzzles to 142 or 144. If it helps clean up the fill, all to the good, I say.
MORE Bullets:
12A: Cassio's jealous lover in "Othello" (BIANCA) — I got my "Othello" ladies confused; I originally had EMILIA here.
59D: C equivalents (B SHARPS) — Just can't not think of "The Simpsons" here.
93A: Travel over seas? (PARASAIL) — Nice clue.
95A: Be a gentleman to at the end of a date (SEE HOME) — The clue's a tad awkward for my taste, and the word "gentleman" shares a bit of a duplication with GENTLER at 28A.
85D: ___ rate (tax amount per $1,000)(MILLAGE)— I suspect this one could be a stumper for many. I wondered for a while why this word wasn't MILEAGE since that fourth letter was just a quotation mark in the Across direction, but that's where the "ditto mark/letter above it is the same" part of the theme kicks in.
109A: Hebrew letter before samekh (NUN) — Uh, alright. Kind of a curveball to throw at us non-Hebrew speakers when many other potential clues are available, but it's fairly crossed.
117D: Monopoly token that replaced the iron in 2013 (CAT) — I did not know this. I did, however, know that there was a Cat-Opoly version of the game that one of my friends got for Christmas many years back.
122A: Contraction with two apostrophes ('TWASN'T)— I actually have a certain fondness for this word. I can't really explain why; maybe it's just wacky enough that I'd laugh if someone used it ironically in regular conversation.
• • •
Finally, an announcement: if you live in the Tampa area, there's going to be a memorial on Sunday evening (that's tonight) celebrating the life of the late, great crossword legend Merl Reagle, hosted by his wife Marie. It's from 5-8 pm ET at the University of Tampa's Vaughn Center and it's open to the public. There's more information here, if you're interested in attending.
THEME: The Captain Goes Down With the Ship — Theme answers (which are all downs) consist of the names of captains and their ships.
Hey everyone. Happy Sunday to you. PuzzleGirl here with you on this beautiful day. Rex is traveling again so you're stuck with me. Let's just make the best of it, shall we?
Today's puzzle is a little weird to me. I'm not saying it's bad. I'm just saying it's different. The theme answers aren't real phrases and they're not even made-up phrases. They're just two (or three) words put together for effect. The words are related to each other, but they don't actually make up a phrase. That seems a little weird to me. That's all I'm saying.
Theme answers:
AHAB PEQUOD (2D: Example from classic American literature)
KIRK ENTERPRISE (5D: Example from television)
NEMO NAUTILUS (10D: Example from sci-fi literature)
BLIGH BOUNTY (14D: Example from 18th-century history)
HOOK JOLLY ROGER (52D: Example from fantasy literature)
SMITH TITANIC (60D: Example from 20th-century history)
CRUNCH GUPPY (63D: Example from advertising)
LINCOLN USA (75D: Metaphorical example from poetry)
You know what? Let's not talk about what's weird about the puzzle. Let's talk about what's good about the puzzle. But before we do that, I just want to say really quickly and with as little vitriol as possible that I initially thought RESEE (101D: Watch over) was the worst entry in the grid and then I came across FOVEA (69D: Point of sharpest vision). FOVEA. For real. Have any of your ever seen this word in your life? I know I haven't. That is one ugly entry. And that's all I'm going to say about that.
Bullets:
1A: White's partner (SAJAK) — Raise your hand if, like me, you wanted STRUNK here. Such nerds.
22A: Asian wild ass (ONAGER) — I'm just not going to say a thing about that clue. Nope.
29A: Book that needs to be read word for word? (ROGET'S) — Cute clue for the thesaurus.
42A: 7/11 product? (QUOTIENT) — I got tricked recently by the clue "1/2" for DATE. And I was tricked by this one too. So I'm starting to get the idea that when there are numbers in the clue, I need to take a step back.
51A: Word of regret (SHOULDA) — With S**ULDA in place I thought this was going to be a foreign word. But it's just plain old SHOULDA, as in "shoulda, woulda, coulda."
65A: Baseball V.I.P.s (G.M.s) — Oh man I am so ready for baseball season. My team's G.M. has made some moves during the off season that I'm not 100% sure about but that's probably why he's the G.M. and I'm not. Well, that's one of the reasons anyway.
89A: Best-selling children's series "PERCY Jackson & the Olympians" — PuzzleSon loved these books. Recommended.
100A: Claymation dog (GROMIT) — Couldn't remember this guy's name at first and I also didn't know the name of Cap'n Crunch's ship. I had PUPPY at first, which, if you think about it, is a TERRIBLE name for a ship.
102A: Helpful household pets (RATTERS) — I don't know. If a ratter would be helpful to you in your house, maybe it's time to think about moving.
118A: "No, you really must!" ("I INSIST!") — For some reason this really tickled me. Probably by favorite answer.
7D: "ARE you even listening?" — Well? Are you?
13D: Big dos (AFROS) — Not a fan of this clue. #NotAllAfros
37D: Affix carelessly (SLAP ON) — Another interesting colloquial phrase.
44D: Game center? (TAC) — As in the "center" word of "tic tac toe." Took me a minute.
48D: "I got it!" ("AHA!") and 50D: "I *finally* got it!" ("DUH!") — Nice pair of clues to jazz up this so-so fill.
74D: Told (BLABBED) — BLABBED is a great word. I want to encourage all of you to use the word BLABBED in conversation today.
85D: British Invasion band (THEM) — Never heard of them. (See what I did there?)
87D: Kind of ceiling (DEBT) — I can't see this kind of clue/answer pair without being slightly annoyed since someone explained to me why it's just not right. You see, "debt" isn't a kind of ceiling. A "debt ceiling" is a kind of ceiling. And now that I've explained it to you, you can spend the rest of your solving years annoyed about it too. You're welcome.
Enjoy the rest of your weekend, everybody. With any luck Rex will be back tomorrow.
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!")
.png)
