Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
THEME: "Lingo" - familiar terms and phrases have "LING" added to them to create silly terms and phrases, which are clued
A familiar theme conceit - add some letter combo, get new wacky terms - and yet it doesn't feel stale here because, for the most part, the wacky terms (all seven of them) are quite good. For the second day in a row I really felt like I torched the puzzle, and my time was very well within the "2 x best solver" metric (taking the top solver's time from the NYT applet, online) - somewhere in the low 14's. I stumbled twice, in both the Central and Southern California sections of the puzzle, where first a brutal crossing, and later a couple of cleverly disguised two-part phrases, forced me to flail around a bit before I set everything in order.
Theme answers:
- 24A: Bit of news at the aviary? (a starLING is born) - first one I got, thought the theme was about birds, then (like any good solver) I actually read the puzzle's title
34A: Notion of an underwater creature? (squid inkLING)- 47A: Fraternization on an army base? (military coupLING) - had MILITARY COURTING for a while, forgetting that the puzzle's title was "Lingo," not "Tingo"
- 63A: How courteous swordsmen fight? (with all dueLING respect) - nice
- 80A: Farm young 'un with a blanket? (duckLING and cover)
- 93A: Local cutie pie? (town dumpLING) - my favorite, possibly because the LING changes the context of the word So Much
- 108A: Capture of a Mafia runner, e.g.? (underLING arrest)
As I said, I tripped in exactly two places. First, there was the intersection of NONCE (
72A: Particular purpose) and HACK (
66D: Succeed, with "it"), which is nowhere I'd want to live. NONCE is a word I know only from having read a lot of Chaucer in the 90's. It's known today (I think) only from the term "
nonce word." HACK just baffled me until this second, when I understood (vaguely) how the phrase was intended to be understood. "He couldn't HACK it," e.g. "he failed or quit." In the far SW I somehow wrote in AGENDA for POINT A (
101A: Start of an itinerary) and then off the wrong "G" wrote in EGYPT for IONIA (
97D: Land bordering ancient Lydia). So that took some time to undo. Couldn't even commit to the obviously correct NOEL (
82D: "Away in a Manger," for one) because the "L" gave me a word ending in "TL" for
96A: Calf feature. It was only when I allowed my brain to entertain the possibility of a "TL" ending for a few seconds that the fabulous SILENT L leaped forth in all its undeniably correct glory.
In addition to SILENT L and POINT A, there were a couple of other words that ended in odd or unexpected letter combinations:
15A: N.H.L. great from the Czech Republic (Jagr) was rough, especially because his tell-tale first name (Jaromir) was denied to me; and in other sports-related madness,
5D: Injured, in baseball lingo ["LINGO," cute]
(on the DL). For the sports-impaired, the "DL" is the Disabled List.
As with yesterday's puzzle (and perhaps with just about any puzzle), if you solve regularly, certain "difficult" words will begin to become familiar. Here are some important words for your solving vocabulary:
- 40A: Least populous U.N. member (Tuvalu) - usually clued in terms of its tiny population, this little country involves insane but occasionally handy letter combinations
3D: Small interval of time: Abbr. (N-Sec) - because you never know when you'll need a four-letter word beginning "NS"- 8D: Work of Michelangelo, e.g. (arte) - it's just Italian. Get used to it.
- 79D: One trying to find the right combination? (yegg) - one of my favorite words, and one I actually learned from collecting vintage paperbacks (especially crime fiction). A YEGG is a safecracker, in old-timey crime "LINGO" (!)
- 71A: Elegance (luxe) - no one would use this word as a synonym for "elegance" and yet I've seen it twice clued this way in recent days
- 87A: Jordanian queen (Noor)
- 119A: Ethyl cinnamate, for one (ester) - god the puzzle loves this word
There were some cool names in the puzzle today, including two TV actresses (
63D: Comic actress Sykes (Wanda) and
54D: Sanford of "The Jeffersons" (Isabel)), a singer (
10D: Singer who spells her name in all lowercase letters (k.d. lang))
and a quarterback who played for a hard-luck team (
58A: 1980 N.F.L. M.V.P. (Sipe)). Don't think I've seen STASI (
53A: East German secret police) in the puzzle before; unpleasant subject, but cool-looking word. I would object to I LIKE YOU (
14D: Comment to a new friend), in that I do not believe you have ever said that to a new friend... but I LIKE YOU is such a well-meaning little phrase that I find it hard to be angry. I also have a quibble with
37D: Like many Scots (kilted) - really, if you go there and look around, not many of them are actually KILTED.
Stuff I didn't know:
75A: Gwen _____, Spider-Man's first love (Stacy) - I do not read Marvel Comics, so ???- 73D: Russian conductor/composer Markevitch (Igor) - luckily, his name is common enough
- 118A: "Think big" company (IMAX) - somehow I don't think of IMAX as a company
My favorite answers in today's puzzle are:
- 4D: Prolonged complaints (jeremiads)
- 103A: Junked (deep-sixed)
- 10A: Style of Japanese writing (kanji)
- 76D: What a specialist men's store may offer (tall sizes)
Trickiest clue of the day:39A: Load bearer? (dryer) - even when I had it, I didn't get it. Then the laundry frame of reference came to me, and it all seems obvious in retrospect.
Enjoy your Sunday.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of Crossworld
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I am a Red Sox fan so TED was a welcome sight (12D: Slugger Williams - he wore my favorite number: 9) and I practice TAI CHI (44D: Chinese martial art) regularly, so that was nice to see. There are some offbeat / specialized terms that I'm a little (pleasantly?) surprised to see in a Monday puzzle, like 63A: Book after Jonah (Micah) and 48D: Steering component (tie rod) and 14A: Fashion designer Rabanne (Paco) and 53D: Star in Orion (Rigel) and 57D: 1961 space chimp (Enos) and 2D: Poet Lindsay (Vachel) - the last of which I couldn't spell right at first. I do not understand EAUS (25D: Waters, informally) at all - I know that it means "waters" in French, but ... "informally???" In English? Context? Sahra has a purple bear named VIDA Blue (29A: Cy Young Award winner Blue) - I'm quite sure I had some powers of suggestion when the naming was taking place, as I have always thought that VIDA Blue was one of the greatest names in sports history. Another name that makes me happy is ENDORA (47D: "Bewitched" witch) - a character played in great, drag-queen-esque style by the fabulous Agnes Moorehead. Lastly, DICIER (34A: Less certain) is a great expression, as is DREAMBOAT (34D: Heartthrob). You know who I think's a DREAMBOAT (besides Paul Rudd)? This guy:
