Tuesday, February 13, 2024

"Why'd you bring your slinky to batting practice?" "I thought this was spring training." (You might re-coil at that one.)

This is Peter’s 127th Times puzzle, and we see several reasons why today. He is persistent, yes, hanging on to this theme idea for a quarter century. More evidence? Peter once told me that in his experience, nine out of ten theme ideas don’t work out, that constructors get an idea, spend 20 minutes on it, get nowhere, then toss it. (I agree.) And yet – he persists! Amazingly, he continues his output of sparkling themes. He is skilled at grid-making. Where is the junk in this puzzle? (Crickets.) Then look at that double-stack of theme answers TEAM PLAYERS and GUARDIAN ANGEL, and look at the answers crossing it – smooth as can be, not a hint of desperation. Other factors contributing to his constructing excellence – he has an amazing memory, and his brain is lightning quick and clever. This became obvious to me after he edited one of my puzzles, which involved real-time online back-and-forth. Crosslandia is extremely lucky to have Peter. There was a lovely serendipitous PuzzPair©, by the way, in today’s puzzle, with BEN (as in Affleck), and ARGO. You never cease to amaze me, Peter, and thank you for doing it once again today!

The wording of the pronoun clue was very clumsy.

The constructor notes are the gold star. What a great back story! Really really fun to read. I’m always gonna celebrate a crossword with sports. But the LARRY Bird clue seemed a bit off.

As a former Cleveland, I wholly approve of the MLB team's name change. It was a great day for the city when they sent Chief Wahoo back down to the minors, and changed the name of the MLB team to the Guardians. The name was chosen to honor, and logos designed to reflect, the Guardians of Traffic, eight monumental Art Deco sculptures that decorate the pylons at either end of the Hope Memorial Bridge in Cleveland. Each Guardian protectively cradles a different mode of transportation against his bared bosom: hay wagon, stagecoach, automobile, truck, etc. Designed by architect Frank Walker and sculptor Henry Hering, and built in 1932, the Hope Memorial Bridge spans the Cuyahoga River and has its eastern terminus near the (MLB) Guardians' home Progressive Field. Formerly, and more functionally, named the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge, in 1983 the bridge was renamed to honor Harry Hope, father of Comedian Bob a local stone-mason who worked on the bridge; and, presumably, the tribute was meant to extend to all the other construction workers as well. But they didn't have famous sons. For those with an eye for bizarre detail, the areolas on the sculptures' chests are designed to resemble little wheels. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hope_Memorial_Bridge#/media/File:Guardian_of_Traffic_(cropped).jpg" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hope_Memorial_Bridge#/media/File:Guardian_of_Traffic_(cropped).jpg</a> *** If, like netizen Magali Fabre, you can handle both frets and reeds (and sing), here's what you can do. Even the Chairman couldn't do better: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCDHg0FohSc" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCDHg0FohSc</a>

Peter Gordon - I’m amazed by your patience, especially in light of the fact that you could have used TIGER CUB and few would have noticed it was borrowed from a 1997 puzzle (and wouldn’t have minded, even if they had). Impressive! Thanks for the great puzzle. How about… Clue: “Bernie Madoff” Answer: LION STEELER

Does this puzzle win the prize for the longest time from conception to realization?

"Bird with a lot of stuffing?" It was joke. A play on words. You know, like you put stuffing in a turkey, or as some people like to do, call the turkey a bird. When you are making a joke or using humorous wordplay you are allowed some leeway. Larry Bird did some stuffing. Do we need to argue whether or not he did a *lot* of stuffing? Why do people go out of their way to nitpick the puzzle? Stop being so negative and just enjoy a humorous clue.

A breezy sports-centric puzzle? Didn’t know that was a thing! Did LARRY reeeeeally “stuff,” though? No complaints. Just thing of him more as a Bird with a lot of dribbling or Bird shooter but here I sit, having never completed a puzzle to submit, so… And Clarence! The fluffy puppy Zuzu on my lap approves. Have lovely Tuesday, all!

Cool that this covered the "big 4" US sports leagues. I was thinking that the Guardians probably haven't been in crosswords much, since the moniker is relatively new; the constructor confirms that. A quarter of a century is a long time for any creative work to incubate!

Great puzzle, truly the product of long incubation and the providential renaming of the Cleveland Indians. Looking over the teams in the major sports, there really are no other choices. "Matching sports footwear?" TWIN WHITE SOX. But is a player for the Sox a Sock? Should it be, rather, "What frequently gets lost in the laundry?" SOX TWIN. Or maybe drop the TWIN and use ATHLETIC. "What's between the cleat and the feet?" ATHLETIC WHITE SOX. Well that was a pleasant cruci-cul de sac. I mused that another kind of puzzle involving sports team names could pair the names up with other words that make up commonly known phrases: "California player faces conscription in the army?" DRAFT DODGER. "St. Louis player gets thrown out of the game." CARDINAL SIN. "Bonds that should get up but continues to stay down." SLEEPING GIANT.

If anyone wants a real sense of cultural whiplash, play the old puzzles in the archives in your spare time. Then come to the current puzzle of the day and try to decipher clues based on all things that have happened since1994. The iPod, which was a now a “thing of the past” wasn’t even around then!

What I appreciate in a puzzle such as this is that - despite knowing less than nothing about sport - all the sporty answers filled themselves with prompts from the crosses or vague memories of names and phrases I must have heard in the news. Clever construction indeed. My only problem was that I tried to make it Phew instead of Whew.

Not my thing (sports teams? Meh), but I found this puzzle surprisingly enjoyable. I actually knew most of the team names (osmosis?) and thought it was pretty clever to put them together to form recognizable phrases. I am also really impressed that the constructor waited 25 years to find the perfect entries. That is dedication to the craft!

I needed Sam’s explanation to fully understand the doubling up references, otherwise it was right over my head. Good puzzle though, accessible even for the non sporty types like me and to have spent decades waiting for the right combination? Kudos sir, that’s dedication to your art. SEXES up; as has been noted by @Andy, infamously describes the method of heightening or exaggerating information for political purposes. Not a comfortable thought, but all too frequently used on both sides of the pond these days.

I was listening to the Warriors/Utah Jazz game (Warriors won it by 22 points) while I worked the puzzle on autopilot, and all the sports clues seemed to be ghosts of other games. Sort of surreal but fun. A lot of the clues were as polished as lovingly used tokens for a board game—and no wonder after all that time and all that intricately designed interplay. You must be feeling a little lonely and at loose ends, Peter, now that your decades long companion is out in the world, so I would recommend you get started on a new puzzle right away, if you haven't already done so. Who knows, it could go a lot faster this time and you could bring it in in only a few short years. So do get started. We'll all be waiting, and in the meantime, thank you for finally letting us have this winner of a puzzle. Solidly made and perfect for a Tuesday.

While I finished today in respectable time, I will be the cantankerous person who groused at all the sports references. I usually get the odd one or two through crossings without frowning but so many today 😣 due to the theme. It seems the author put so much care into the puzzle only for a know-little like me to under appreciate it! Now, I look forward to seeing how this lot does with R&B pop culture references or Black History Month themes and clues. I daresay you’d be equally befuddled. In the end, we all learn something new!

Good puzzle, but for me quite tough for a Tuesday; my weekly 2 day streak was in danger until I changed Phew to Whew.

Time for some Harry Belafonte, a cure for your troubles, and for the snowy weather today. <a href="https://youtu.be/50JW4aHHm5Q" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/50JW4aHHm5Q</a> Enjoy emus.

Great! A sports teams crossword for the unsportsed. Sam, for 53D: How about spicing up your wardrobe? I wonder: What would BAMBI think of DOGTV? Emu: Take a MEMO

Picked up the theme at 3D, despite not knowing of either team except as some background noise. Was able to solve themers on the basis of the direct clues and a “just feels like a good team name feeling.” Really appreciated the “singular player/plural team“ relationship, well worth the wait.

As a Clevelander, I approve of this puzzle. Feels like I've been getting a lot of Ohio-centric clues lately!

As one who pays little to no attention to sports, the team attributions were decidedly not in my wheelhouse. Luckily the answers as clued minus the sport league thing were, although I really wanted TRAINEE ANGEL for Clarence. Funny how sometimes a theme is no help at all with one puzzle but vital with another.

Sports. Oy. To say that I am unsportsed may be something of an understatement. So this was a slog, and ended with a complete misunderstanding, which I learned from the column. I got real proud of myself when I figured out the whole gimmick, which turned out to be wrong. I thought the first word of each theme entry would be the name of a player on the team in the second part. I figured there was someone named BROWN who played for a team called the BEARs. I thought there was someone named BLUE, who played for a team called the FLAMEs. Is there really a sports team called the FLAMEs? A sports player named GUARDIAN? So today I learned the names of some sports teams and thought I had learned the names of some players. Well, win some, lose some. I'm entering my ciomment without having read the comments that came in earlier. Busy. And I assume a lot of the earlier comments had to do with sporrts, at least tangentially, and I didn't think I could take any more.

I am glad that the constructor bided his time all these years until he could come up with an appropriate theme fill, owing to the team name change. The puzzle was somewhat harder than the usual Tuesday for me. I do take somewhat of an exception to a previously discussed clue/fill. Larry Bird in his heyday was much more apt to take the outside shot rather than “stuff” or dunk the ball. I feel , therefore, that the clue is somewhat of a stretch to use the Bird surname with the masked capital letter and the play on words with the basketball term “stuff”, as in dunk. All in all, however, it was an enjoyable puzzle with a well executed theme.

A delightful Tuesday puzzle. Thanks, Peter Gordon, for taking your time and waiting for the GUARDIANs to be a team. I’m not at all a sports person, but there was no problem getting the theme fill. Sports knowledge really wasn’t necessary, so I was a happy solver. I do at least know who Larry Bird is, and I thought that was a terrific clue. (In spite of a couple of grumpy complaints.) The daily crossword and the other puzzles I do are helping me to stay somewhat sane in these frightening times. I am truly thankful for them.

As a former player and lover of the oboe, I’m pleased to see many references to my favorite instrument. I’m considering taking up playing again, but piano practice, gardening, quilting, and crosswords take up all my time. Retirement is very busy!

Nice puzzle and a cute theme. Really struggled with this early on, and in retrospect just can't understand why. A number of things I struggled with seem perfectly obvious in retrospect. Oh well - no big deal. Still ended up being an enjoyable solve. Some remarkable puzzle finds today. I'll put those in replies. ..

I loved this. One reason I loved it is that I wasn't familiar with some clues but the crosses gave enough hints, so I can go back to enjoying the snow dump. (Clue: what the meteorologists got wrong again. Answer: DEPTH) (No, that's not in the puzzle. This time.)

A vivid, often bizarre or unpleasant nightmare experienced during an elevated body temperature. [W.N.B.A.] FEVERDREAM Quick, sharp sequences, with little or no pause, such as back-and-forth dialogue. [M.L.S.] RAPIDFIRE David, as perhaps he was known after the battle with Goliath. [N.P.B.] GIANTFIGHTER cc: emu handler

The wee pup BB gives a fruity ARF for this puzzle as it cites not only her favorite TV channel, but also two of her favorite movie heroes, Bambi and Clarence Oddbody, AS2. Her human enjoyed the clever, elusive clues throughout. Happily tricky for a Tuesday. Well done, all. Thanks for the fun. As always, excellent entertainment value.

I was completely unaware that there was a theme while I was solving, didn't look for one, didn't miss one. Then I hit the revealer, saw TEAM PLAYER, saw that there were asterisks I hadn't noticed, and thought: "Better go back and see what this was all about." Who on earth are the MLB "Guardians"? Never heard of them. Must Google. Cleveland Guardians???!!! Really? Never heard of them. Who's the Cleveland team that I actually know? Think, Nancy, think hard. Oh, yes, the Cleveland Indians. Aha, now I see! One of those names that was culturally insensitive and had to be changed like "Braves" and "Redskins". When did that happen? Beats me. That may be because my last year of watching MLB was 1969, the year of the "Miracle Mets". After my beloved NY Giants were unceremoniously whisked off to SF in 1957 by the evil and greedy Horace Stoneham, I had tried to switch my allegiance to the Mets, but failed abysmally. Gave up watching baseball entirely. There's no disillusionment to compare with the disillusionment of a young child. Anyway, while today's theme was a clever bit of construction, it was also completely miss-able while solving. Which means that it didn't do much for me.

I honestly got confused and thought today was Wednesday while doing this puzzle even though I spent the entire morning knowing it's Tuesday. Despite that I completed the grid in below average time. This made for an interesting (and very enjoyable) puzzling experience. Thanks and congrats to the constructor!

Amazing dedication to stick with the puzzle concept for so long, and what a relief that it produced a good puzzle! This was a Wednesday time for me, but a really enjoyable one at that.

Anybody want to give the over/under on how many comments will be about the LARRY clue/answer pair? I predict a total about 14.

Like several other commenters, I appreciate that Peter Gordon waited so patiently for a team name change that would give him another good theme answer. That’s so much better than forcing in a theme answer that doesn’t really work, say something like “Cavalier Warrior.” I also appreciate that this was fun and not too difficult to solve, even if one doesn’t follow sports.

To sex up... made famous by Alistair Campbell, Tony Blair's spin doctor, justifying intelligence to support the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Fun theme and a great way to debut the phrase TEAM PLAYERS. Nice extension of the sporty theme with KNEEPAD, AROD, ESPN and EPEE. And of course LARRY Bird, which made me think …. Celtic Wizard

A keg does not dispense beer. It stores it - but to dispense from it requires a *tap*.

i’m so glad 29A was TENDBAR and not BARTEND. great puzzle!

Another one from a master constructor, and this one, for a change, was in my ballpark. Got through it fairly quickly, so I'd call it a nice Tuesday. Thanks, Peter.

@Sam. While I might not have heard 53D (“spice up “) applied to a single sandwich, I have certainly heard it used on trays of food, in the sense of increasing the decoration. (Avoiding the actual entry to placate emus.)

Why is the answer for 49D 'Engine supercharger' what it is? Those two engine components (in question and in answer) are two separate devices. In case of internal combustion engines, that is not the correct answer

Most enjoyable, Mr Gordon. Thank you!

The two entries that some people had problems with are related. They are absolutely correct but the confusion arises from new usages and language evolving. Long before a basketball dunk was possible, let alone common, it would be entirely accurate to describe a a high scoring shooter as stuffing the basket with lots of balls going through the net. It was only later that the term started being used to describe a dunk and took over that term. As for the supercharger thing, as others have noted the original means of charging the cylinders with more air than the ambient atmosphere allowed was a mechanical item that was powered by the crankshaft. Later, turbochargers were developed and used the engine exhaust to do exactly the same thing without putting a load on the engine. The old standard of the mechanical became the norm for supercharger though the turbo is also one, simply powered in a different way.

GUARDIAN ANGEL is genius! (The actual Guardians are somewhat more intimidating than Clarence . . . <a href="https://www.sculpturecenter.org/oosi/items/show/109" target="_blank">https://www.sculpturecenter.org/oosi/items/show/109</a>)

A TURBO(charger) and a supercharger are two distinct things in a car's engine, so using one to describe the other isn't great. Between that and the bewildering pronoun clue other people have gone into, this one could have maybe used another editing pass.

Nice and smooth, as befits an early week puzzle. A bit under my average. No complaints, though I never heard "pend" used that way. The x in sexes was the last letter I filled, because I wasn't expecting that, but unlike Sam I have heard it used in various contexts. Apologies, but the comments were closed by the time I finished the Sunday puzzle, partly due to the super bowl, but also to the difficulty. I got a blue star due to the lateness, so there goes my streak. No lookups until my fill didn't complete, and I couldn't spot the culprit. Turned out to be gamepan/pop, once I checked it on google. Did not know the term and pop seemed reasonable. should have thought of pol. Sorry again for the late comment.

Tough TUESDAY!!

My favorite puzzle since the zingers before Christmas 23. Thank you.