Footwear with distinctive yellow stitching / FRI 2-2-24 / Party add-ons / Lomé locale / Puppet show locale, for short / Rationale for "throwing good money after bad" / Texting counterpart of "ty" / 1979 hit whose title is stuttered / Medieval Latin for "great" / Lead role of a 1979 Broadway hit

Constructor: Ryan Judge

Relative difficulty: Medium to Medium-Challenging (7:10)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Isle of ELY (27A: Isle of ___ (historic region of England)) —

The Isle of Ely (/ˈiːli/) is a historic region around the city of Ely in Cambridgeshire, England. Between 1889 and 1965, it formed an administrative county. // Its name has been said to mean "island of eels", a reference to the creatures that were often caught in the local rivers for food. This etymology was first recorded by the Venerable Bede. // Until the 17th century, the area was an island surrounded by a large area of fenland, a type of swamp. [...] The Fens were drained beginning in 1626 using a network of canals designed by Dutch experts. Many Fenlanders were opposed to the draining as it deprived some of them of their traditional livelihood. Acts of vandalism on dykes, ditches, and sluices were common, but the draining was complete by the end of the century. (wikipedia)

• • •

My grid is covered in green ink, which suggests I struggled in nearly every part of this grid, but my final time was just over 7 minutes, which ... I don't really remember what my normal Friday time used to be, but 7 isn't far off. Low 6s was probably closer to normal, but 7 feels very normalish. Anyway, the clock can only tell you so much. Sometimes a puzzle is very easy on the whole, but you get bogged down in one small section—your time (especially if you are a fast solver) might end up soaring, but you wouldn't say the puzzle was hard on the whole. Maybe you just had bad luck and some specific niche of ignorance caught up with you. Maybe you had a typo (from misentering a correct answer) and messed *yourself* up (as a Fumblefingers typist, this has happened to me more times than I care to recall). Anyway, this felt hardish, but clock says, "not that hardish." That NW was a bear. Felt like I'd ... crossed a bear (that's a callback for you Wednesday solvers out there). I finished the puzzle in that section (fittingly, with the answer I'M DONE). I'd tried to start there, as I always do, with any puzzle, but yeesh and yikes, not a lot of luck. I was sure of NATS and pretty sure of SLRS and TOT ... ooh, and I had ENMITY! But I also had SKIPS at 19A: Jumps over, say (OMITS), and when the Isle was not "of MAN," had no idea about ELY. Those Acrosses are all very hard—two of them, because they are unexpected two-word phrases (IN ECSTASY, DR. MARTENS), and one because it had a "?" clue (MONOLOGUE—15A: Solo act?). Also, they're DOC MARTENS in common parlance, so I would never think to write them out with the formal la-di-dah "DR." title (17A: Footwear with distinctive yellow stitching). Had OKAYS for YESES, which meant there was really no way I was going to get OKED, was there? (20A: Gave 9-Down). Just a mess up there. Abandon ship.

[1979 hit whose title is stuttered]

Stumbling actually continued as I moved out of that section. I got TOTO easily enough, but couldn't remember where Lomé was and (however improbably) wrote in TOMÉ (São TOMÉ and Príncipe is an island nation off the western coast of central Africa) (it's TOGO). I read The Odyssey only just last month, and I still had no idea what Odysseus's dog's name was (?!) (ARGOS) (makes sense, since ARGOS was a hundred-eyed giant who served as a kind of watchdog for Hera—after he died, she placed his eyes in the tail of her sacred bird, the peacock (some mythological etiology for you on a Friday morning!). I think the first place I got real traction in this damn puzzle was in the NE; I sidled over there from NUMBLY and HUMANE and ... couldn't make my way up from the bottom of those Downs to save my life, but jumped up and got ADELE, and then ADO, and then CAMPS and (finally) managed to close a corner out by getting METADATA (hard), PLUSONES (hard) (13D: Party add-ons) and SESAME ST. (spelling!?) (cluing?) (14D: Puppet show locale, for short). With BEAST worked out, I got BELLY OF THE BEAST (33A: Dangerous thing to be inside), and finally felt like I had my footing. 

[43A: Its famous chime consists of the three notes G-E-C]
[Its famous logo has no "eyes" in the peacock tail because of a copyright dispute with Hera]

SW was a breeze (the only truly breezy quadrant for me), but with the whole NE-to-SW swatch solved, I couldn't move into *either* corner. Had to go into the SE corner cold to try to get a new foothold. Luckily Bill HADER was there (49D: Actor Bill of "Barry"). He helped me change LOOT to HAUL (49A: Plunder) and from there I was able to back my way out of the SE and into the yucky center-middle. I say "yucky" because TUPLES is about the ugliest answer I've ever seen in a grid (47A: N-___ (mathematical sets)). TUPLES is, at best, a suffix, and even then—dreadful. A real puzzle-wrecker. I can't imagine having TUPLES in my grid and saying "yes, that's it! I will keep that there!" That's tear-it-all-down stuff. Crossing PUB (hard) (41D: Magazine, e.g., for short) and esp. "HERE LIES" (v. hard) (36D: Grave words), TUPLES was the thing that sank this puzzle from average to below-average for me. It's that bad. Speaking of sinking, really had trouble parsing SUNK-COST FALLACY (8D: Rationale for "throwing good money after bad"). My brain always thinks it's SUNKEN, but that's more for treasure, I guess? Or (according to Google's predictive search) for eyes, or some living rooms. But SUNK did finally click and that was the key to getting the NW, at last. With -TENS in there, I could see the shoes, and the rest of it fell from there. 

Missteps:

• SKIPS for OMITS (19A: Jumps over, say)
• TOMÉ for TOGO (24D: Lomé locale)
• OKAYS for YESES (9D: Nods)
• ERG for CAL (10D: Bit of energy, for short)
• CULLS (?) for FELLS (39A: Hews)
• LOOT for HAUL (49A: Plunder)
• CLASSY for CLASS A (45D: Top-tier)

Explanations:

• 28A: Noted cairn terrier of film (TOTO) — ASTA was a wire fox terrier

[from the Thin Man movies]

• 51A: Papal issue (BULL) — so, not a topic, but something issued by a pope. A papal bull is a kind of decree or edict.
• 56A: Seattle slew? (RAINY DAYS) — "slew" as in "there are a lot of them." This was probably the cleverest clew of the bunch, today.

• 4D: Things to keep in check (COATS) — you check your coat at the door in some fancy restaurants or clubs (if old movies are to be believed). Or at some museums. There used to be hat checks, but people don't wear hats anymore (or don't check them, at any rate). 
• 38A: Thrifty competitor (ALAMO) —  Thrifty = rental car company
• 7D: Lose eligibility for, as Little League (AGE OUT) — the puzzle is *weirdly* obsessed with the ages of people in Little League this week ... (see yesterday's TOO OLD clue: [Like 20, for Little League])
• 12D: Some Instagram statistics, fittingly? (METADATA) — Meta is the company that owns Instagram, which is why "fittingly?" is here.
• 33D: One way to make cookie dough? (BAKE SALE) — so, you make dough (i.e. money) from the sale of cookies (and other baked goods). Shrug. That corner was so easy that this answer just sort of filled itself in from crosses and I didn't have to think about it.
• 55D: Texting counterpart of "ty" (PLS) — "ty" = thank you, PLS = please

Happy 83rd birthday to my father, and Happy Groundhog's Day to the rest of you, please celebrate responsibly.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. Are there really earnest, non-parodic, non-punny, non-rhyming "HERE LIES..." gravestones? Google image search suggests ... not.

[There are more where these came from, sadly]

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Read more...

Cultured dessert option / THU 2-1-24 / Crown, in Persian / Cured Spanish meat / Like wood prepped for papermaking / Winged mammal with rust-colored fur / Artoo's well-spoken partner / 1957 hit by the Edsels with a nonsense title / Cue preceder

Constructor: Simeon Seigel

Relative difficulty: Challenging (largely because of the tough fill / theme material mash-up in the middle)

THEME: LOOP-DE-LOOPS (61A: Upside-down parts of a roller coaster ride—represented twice in the answer to each of this puzzle's starred clues) — three answers loop twice, through the parts represented by circles in the grid:

Theme answers:

• THIS THAT AND THE OTHER (16A: *A little bit of everything)
• "RAMA LAMA DING DONG" (33A: *1957 hit by the Edsels with a nonsense title)
• WHEN THE TIME COMES (41A: *"Eventually ...")

Word of the Day: JAMÓN (32D: Cured Spanish meat) —

Jamón (Spanish pronunciation: [xaˈmon], pl. jamones) is a kind of dry-cured ham produced in Spain. It is one of the most globally recognized food items of Spanish cuisine. It is also regularly a component of tapas.

Most jamón is commonly called jamón serrano in Spain.

Jamón is the Spanish word for ham. As such, other ham products produced or consumed in Spanish-speaking countries may also be called by this name. (wikipedia)

• • •

Looks like the kind of thing where you write some code or find some program that will search a database for answers that contain an ABCDAB pattern twice, and then you use whatever turns up to make a grid. I assume this is how it works. How else is anyone landing upon a "1957 hit by the Edsels" (?)!? This is a puzzle that's enamored with form, but not exactly precise about form. Closed circles do not evoke LOOP-DE-LOOPS. And do LOOP-DE-LOOPS actually loop ... down?? I've been on the ones that go up back and around, but *down* back and around? How does that work?  I don't really get the downward loop part, as far as the roller coaster imitation goes. The puzzle crosses NILS and NIHILO right at square one, and it lost me there, fill-wise—that's basically a dupe, what with NIL deriving directly from Latin NIHIL. And it lost me again with the eternally dumb and miserable NOT PC. And then some wordlist animal called a REDBAT (5D: Winged mammal with rust-colored fur). And the horribly forced "?" clue on CROSS ([Sects' symbol?]—why are "sects" Christian, necessarily?). If you're going to make a roller coaster-based puzzle, there should be some kind of ... whoosh. Something that evokes the thrill of shooting through those loops. But "shooting" is the last word I'd use to describe what it felt like to move through those loops. Nothing about the look or feel of the puzzle suggested roller coaster ride. Just not for me, this one. Ambitious, but MESSY as hell, and no fun to solve. 

Brutal for me in the middle, where I had no idea TAJ was Persian (31A: Crown, in Persian) and JAMÓN, yikes, my god, I don't know where I eventually pulled that from (32D: Cured Spanish meat). French, probably—which is to say I got it by analogy with jambon. Forgot the OCHS guy (46A: Adolph who purchased The New York Times in 1896). I wanted HESS, but then remembered that's a Nazi (and his name is actually Rudolf). I had MASALAS early on (38A: Indian spice mixes), but mistrusted it when nothing in that (thematically dense) middle section wanted to come together, so I pulled it. Two foreign foodstuffs packed in there! Oof, and TCBY too??? (27A: Cultured dessert option). Do those still exist? I don't live where they exist. Had the "T" and when TOFUTTI wouldn't fit ... nothing. Didn't know BAL Harbour, Fla., though I'm sure I've heard of it. SAG was the only Harbor that was coming to mind. ASANA are *all* yoga poses, not a "sitting meditation pose," which is LOTUS, so that clue was particularly confusing and awful and wrong. Oh, and the worst obstacle in that center section: I had SETTLE instead of METTLE Absolutely Locked In at 25A: Resolve. So [Brotherly greeting]? No way. Not when you've got it starting with "S." "MY MAN" was among the last answers to fall, because SETTLE-to-METTLE was among the last corrections I made. 

Notes:

• 13A: Peak of revelation? (SINAI) — Moses, Commandments.
• 18A: Org. whose initials omit its "E" (for "Explosives") (ATF) — I tend to know initialisms for the initials that *are* there, so this was baffling.
• 26A: Exposes personal information about online, informally (DOXES) — an unpleasant thing to encounter in a grid. It's sometimes spelled with two "X"s, I think.
• 
  40A: Cue preceder (PEE) — if you want to PEE in your grid, hey, it's your grid, but could you do it some other way than pretending that anyone writes "Q" that way? Please.
• 59A: Risk-taker's mantra, in brief (YOLO) — you only live once
• 37D: Measure of energy savings, as when the meter runs in reverse (NEGAWATT) — my meter does not do that, but if you say so. Funny play on "megawatt," if nothing else.
• 12D: Gradual transition, in art (SOFT EDGE) — LOL what? I ... transition from what to what? One color to the next? This was the single most baffling answer in the grid. Again, I have to believe a wordlist coughed it up.
• 49D: Like 20, for Little League (TOO OLD) — So ... [Like 80, for Little League] too? Thanks for the completely arbitrary number, yeesh.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

PS The Boswords Winter Wondersolve online crossword tournament will be held THIS WEEKEND, Sunday, Feb. 4, from 1pm to 4:30pm. Boswords does great work and solvers of all levels love their tournaments. Here are the deets:

Registration is open for the Boswords 2024 Winter Wondersolve, an online crossword tournament which will be held on Sunday, February 4 from 1:00 to 4:30 p.m. Eastern. Solvers can compete individually or in pairs and will complete four puzzles (three themed and one themeless) edited by Brad Wilber. To register, to see the constructors, and for more details, go to www.boswords.org.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Read more...