Who had EPISODE for the SNL clue right up until the bitter end when they had to grudgingly admit that it was incorrect? Anyone? Just me? That was a very fun puzzle, and I solved it surprisingly quickly. I was SYNCed with the constructor!
@Catherine Nope. My mistake there was EMMY NOm, as in nomination. It was a fun puzzle. I solved it surprisingly slowly.
@Catherine. Thought about it, then realised that SNL has been running for considerably more than six years, which would have given us around 300 Saturdays. (Despite the fact that I have never seen it).
@Catherine I started with "episode", then realized they've done a lot more than 300. I switched to "Emmy nom", and held onto that one until the bitter end. .................................................
I think I liked this puzzle. I may have hated it. It’s possibly the best ever in the history of ever. Shattered my ankle. Surgery last night. On morphine. Nurses helped me. I think I cried at one point. Then slept. Came back and somehow fisished. Got lucky that the waventh and trivial answers are all in my house of wheels. Don’t shatter your ankle.
@CCNY That's devotion! Thanks for the good advice. Heal well.
@CCNY I can imagine what you're describing-- with nurses helping, the puzzle providing both welcome distraction and frustration, and new hope coming with the morning. Glad this one was in your wheelhouse, and sending hopes for good and total healing.
@CCNY That sounds terrible! Sending aLOT of sympathy. PhysDau is on your 'waventh' and said, "Ouchty-ouch." (Is that a word?) I love that you 'somehow fisished.' Women hold up the sky.
Just blew my streak because I refused to accept that the answer to 26A was not FOX.
@Nathan I started out intending to make that my first comment, got distracted, then forgot. Thank you for doing it for me! The emus thank you, too!
@Nathan Ha! I tried NBC, ABC, CBS and CNN first, then a rebus for MSNBC. Finally settled on RAG. Bingo!
I filled my pool up with queso so I could take a cheese dip. (It's cheddar than nothing!)
@Mike You gouda done better than that. I don't give edam about the emus.
@Mike But do you wear your TANKINI?
Thought 26A was FOX.
@Michael Ostroff I wanted to put Facebook, but Fox fit for a while 😄 ...................................... ................................
“Early number” got me but good. I didn’t pick up on there being other heteronyms because solving mainly on acrosses I never got to read those clues. For 2D though, with ETHE_ in place and there being left no other noun but ETHER, I *still* didn’t pick up on the silent ‘b’ in ‘number.’ I ended up finishing the rest and then running the alphabet on 2D. Other than that, this puzzle backed up so far up my alley that its back-up beeper alarm scared Señor Gato. Wait, can I pass this off as a segue to a gratuitous cat story? Yeah. I can. So Señor Gato had his senior check-up today. He waited for the doc to come in very nonplussed already, what with having been brushed first, then tricked into the cat carrier, then hauled off for what he knows is also his monthly shot and nail trim. So he was hunkered down under the bench I sat on. The doc came in, said, “Hey, Gato!” Gato glowered. The doc took out his stethoscope. Gato popped out from under the bench, ran over to his kitty carrier, hooked his nails into the mesh on its long end, one paw on each side, and started backing up back toward the bench, dragging the damn thing in front of him—tug, drag, tug, drag—until he completely barricaded himself in with it. It was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen him do—and he fills our days with funny things. All cats and dogs are special, but we really won the lottery with the two fur-kids that adopted us. Now returning to regularly scheduled Wordplay programming.
@Sam Lyons I think you posted another story a while back about Gato coming back from the vet, being very cranky, and taking it out on the cat carrier? That thing must be made out of kevlar. Not sure if related or not re: your cat's name, but I have distinct memories of my favorite song from my weekly? bi-weekly? elementary school music class. Senior Don Gato. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gqpvy8p-WzQ" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gqpvy8p-WzQ</a> Any song that can work in "solar plexus" is gonna be burned into my brain forever.
@Sam Lyons Nice to see your nomen! I also finished with 2-Down, and had to run the letters to get it. Spent Christmas/NYs out your way, in Mitchell, OR. Itsy-bitsy town, beautiful geology.
Well, Larry had me at the gorgeous blank grid, which made my Libra BENT toward balance sing paeans. This grid, by the way, has both 90- and 180-degree symmetry, that is, you can turn it upside down and the black squares will be in the same places AND you can spin it a quarter turn, and it will do the same. This dual symmetry happens about three times a year. Me, all I see is beauty there. This puzzle also has a scant 66 words, very difficult to fill without junk, and with spark. And here, on a debut – a Friday debut! – Larry succeeded on both fronts. Bravo, sir! I started out by running into a long series of dead ends, until I arrived at [Windy location of myth?], which immediately triggered [Windy part of a kite?] from Sunday (for REEL), and out, with a ping, came LABYRINTH. Then the dominoes fell; the entire grid, it seemed, filled with a splat. What a rush! The origin of THERANOS, which strikes me as a beautiful word, turns out to be rather mundane, a combination of “therapy” and “diagnosis”. So, it’s a phoenix word, beauty rising from ashes. Other lovely answers today were ARE YOU DECENT, EMMY NOD, and the musical TANKINI. Congratulations on your debut, Larry and thank you for this combination of beauty and thrill!
Great puzzle. Escher’s staircases were inspired by the real life staircases in Atrani, a small town (officially a city) on the Amalfi Coast, next door to Amalfi. It’s a magical place and is marked by a series of LABYRINTHian staircases. It recently opened a small Escher museum. If you ever go to the area, it’s worth checking out Atrani. I am tempted to post a Rilke poem, but will resist the urge. He’s a poet who can be appreciated by people not into poetry. So much to love about this puzzle, including a PIPE ORGAN, which might lure our resident organist David Connell to make an appearance. Thanks, Larry!
@Puzzlemucker I originally had “piano [something]” in the 29D slot. When I belatedly realized that it was PIPE ORGAN, I knew that David Connell would have gotten that answer instantly. I didn’t recognize the RILKE title, but I got that one just from the K in mANKINI.
@Puzzlemucker I really enjoyed the pipe organ cluing, it was so refreshing to see music references (and Rilke and Escher!) I recently discovered that my university has an organ elective, it’s one of my favorite classes. It’s actually a lot harder than it looks to coordinate both hands and feet (!), but the voices weave together almost geometrically like Escher’s etchings. Here is a recording by the Netherlands Bach Society, of the little fugue in g: <a href="https://youtu.be/vITIeoxcfdM?si=3ctJzqfAblzh23nj" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/vITIeoxcfdM?si=3ctJzqfAblzh23nj</a> It was Vikingur Olafsson’s interpretation of the Bach Organ Sonata (transcribed for piano) that made me first interested in learning organ after piano, but the sounds are quite different. I can’t call myself an organist yet but I hope to have more opportunities to play this underrated instrument : )
@Puzzlemucker I've toyed with teaching myself German just so I could appreciate Rilke even more (although there are other good reasons...liking helping with crosswords). His poems are timeless even in English.
I really enjoyed this Friday. Great clue with ARO- to all who have things to say about it, remember the decades of crosswords we've had with primarily white, straight, cis men and their interests being the clues and trivia we're supposed to know. A tiny bit of queer rep is a step in the right directions. THERANOS, LABYRINTH, SLUMBERPARTY, and EMMYNOD were some of my favorites, but I genuinely enjoyed the whole fill. Great work by Mr. Snyder! :)
Cool grid. First pass through I was despairing that I would ever get anything. The first entry I felt secure enough to put in was SRO, but then magically I was dialed in to the puzzle's wave length, so of course it became fun. Congrats on the debut, Larry
@Vaer I don't get the sellout clue (was actually my last entry). What is SRO? "Standing Room Only"? Never heard that abbreviation -- is it a common term?
Congratulations on your debut, Mr. Snyder! Had it not been a great solve for me, it would have been enough to take in the Escher-inspired grid. Had that not done it for me, it would have been enough to find RILKE hidden in the grid. (His "Letters To A Young Poet" made my heart flutter, at the age of fourteen, when I first read it... "Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves [...] Live the questions for now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.") And had none of that done it for me, the way all of it did indeed do it for me, well then, Teena Marie and Soul Train would have been enough to wash away any solving blues. Yet there weren't any solving blues, only red hot entertainment all the way through, and joy from beginning to end. Mr Snyder, thank you so very much for a Fantastic Friday outing!
@sotto voce Do I detect a hint to a Passover song? Not even sotto voce.
@sotto voce My second wife and I employed a couple of writings from Rilke at our wedding ceremony. As a lover of his poetry since my college days, I was happy to see his name in the puzzle.
Ether is the earliest of the original five elements (air, water, fire, earth come from it) in ayurvedic thought, so I said "ooookayy" and popped it in, never knowing a homonym was smacking me upside the head. Numb & number, that's me! I didn't catch the Escher design till the constructor's notes; glad I read the column first before complaining about the swastika. Just kidding! Plus Escher's stairs are amazing, how the knights atop the castle just keep on going up up up, endlessly. <a href="https://web.sbu.edu/theology/bychkov/escher_stairs.html" target="_blank">https://web.sbu.edu/theology/bychkov/escher_stairs.html</a> My old dentist had Escher's "Day and Night" (the geese), and every time he worked on me, numb and number on Novacaine, I'd glaze over thinking about the plots of farmland morphing into geese and the two towns below, one white, one black, but identical, next to identical rivers, and was there any interaction between the two, any cross-town romances, any rivalries, gangs of farmers... <a href="https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/216231" target="_blank">https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/216231</a> A couple other things I loved: TOLD ALL crossing with the SLUMBER PARTY where "truth or dare" is played. "Theranos" next to "alleged" -- talk about an unreliable news source! The combo of Cheese Dip, Haute Cuisine, and Ate One's Words: many a gourmande has succumbed to a delicious queso & been forced to eat their words -- & more dip. It's not a sacrilege to enjoy yourself! The classic economy of "whence the phoenix" - wow! <a href="https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.54256.html" target="_blank">https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.54256.html</a> (Escher LABYRINTH)
@john ezra My itsy bitsy (walla walla, as is said whence I hail these days) nit with “whence the phoenix” is that “thence the phoenix” would have been grammatical. It’s not being asked as a question: “From where [did] the phoenix [rise]?” It’s a clue, i.e. a statement: “From there (the PYRE) [rose] the phoenix.”
@john ezra I've really spotty with doing puzzles past 5-6 weeks, and while reading after-the-day wordplay comments can be interesting, certainly, it is not 'interactive.' That said, I wanted to post on Jan 30, 2024, that on that day, the year prior, you posted on one of the most memorable comments I had/have read. Jan 30, 2023 [ENTO was new to me, but it seems it's only used as shorthand for entomology in college course lists & curricula; no one goes around saying, "John Ezra's really into ento these days," or "Dude, you're so ento" or "I know that butterfly chaser over there, she's an ento from Tulane." No one has ever said any of those things ever.] I don't know how long you had commenting before then, but comment made you "must read," going forward, for me. Anyway, it is easy to look up the date on xwordinfo, because the entry ENTO hasn't been used since. Like I said, I don't really 'remember' you before that post, but I would say 2023 was probably "the year of Ezra," if I were to hand out 'newcomer' of the year. That said, you have probably been commenting for years. I just didn't remember your handle (because your stuff before 1/30/23 was so boring/unmemorable). xoxo
After learning ARO, I would say I have met several people in my life who might fit that description, though none of them carried a flag. A side note - I'm not ARO, but it's been a long time since I've had a RO! LOL
Really smooth Friday. Was syncing very well with the clues and beat my average by about 9 minutes which is unheard of. Impressive fill for such an open grid too. Only confusion I had was me guessing TATTOOED instead of TATTED UP. And yes I see you NUMBERS and FLOWERS of the world. You sneaky little clues you.
Just a general comment about something I see illustrated almost every time I read the comments section. It’s fascinating to me that there are so many of our species who are so absolutely certain they are correct about some detail or other…when the evidence to the contrary is so readily available.
@Karl M - Yes, it is a perennial issue in the comments. I have no idea why, but there seem to be an awful lot of people whose derive joy from the puzzles only when they can find something -- *anything* -- to complain about. Apparently, facts and reality are of no interest to them. If they, personally, have not heard of a word before, then that word does not exist. I have to assume they either don't know what a dictionary is, to believe that they already know all the words that are found therein. Or, if they do have a dictionary, on the rare occasion that they check it before posting their "I GOTCHA!" complaint, they do not read past the first definition. Or maybe they think that only the first definition one might find in a dictionary is the only valid definition for crosswords. I just don't know.
More fun than usual for a Friday, liked the grid and the long entries, was pleased with getting ARE YOU DECENT with only a couple of letters. Hoping for more from Larry, especially on a themeless day.
@suejean I was pleasantly surprised with ARE YOU DECENT. I thought it was going to be ARE YOU Ok With This? Emu
Another satisfying Friday, one that starts out as "No way will I ever get more than those first two gimmes," then ends up getting all filled in with no lookups! Especially loved the heteronyms; though "number" was not a new one for me, it took a bit until it burst through the cobwebs. Maybe because I'm old enough to actually have experienced that awful ether when I had my tonsils removed. LABYRINTH, though, took longer. Really appreciated the absence of modern slang and truncated words by a generation too lazy to spell anything out in full! Congrats on your wonderful debut, Larry. Hope your next one won't have any math!
@Times Rita You’re right, sis, those whippersnappers are so lazy for shortening legit vocab words! Language should be static! Anyway, I’m off to sit on a comfy sofa and watch a movie while I enjoy my burger with a decaf Coke.
@Times Rita “Really appreciated the absence of modern slang and truncated words by a generation too lazy to spell anything out in full!” I guess you missed ARO, which covers both! (Shortening words ISN’T a new thing.)
I'm just here to check the Key...I have all the squares filled, but not with any faith in my guesses. The NE and SE corners were bears; I finally got the NE, but.... I'll be back in a minute. Aaaaand BLECH and BLAH would not work and I wd not stoop to BLEH I was choosing among CBS, NBC, BBC, ABC, and (my fave) PBS, and finally eliminated the ones ending with C. Mildly helpful... I knew of ITT from Addams Family (because the Girl Scouts loved the theme song) And I knew how to spell SACRILEGE correctly But I BEGAN with a couple of errors that I couldn't correct. NOTE: If *I* TATTED something, you would have a piece of hand-made lace. I do notice that we see more and more people who are TATTED UP quite colorfully. It looks sort of interesting, but I am not into pain. Or wasting money. (I pay for plenty of skin 'art' at the dermatolgist's office; can you spell Mohs Procedure?) Larry Snyder hangs the white-haired trophy on his wall and stands back to admire the effect... P.S. Our daughter had to explain ARO to me.
@Mean Old Lady I didn't have the guts to admit my ignorance to my daughter. I googled it after I finished the puzzle. It's quite comforting to see that it was new to many people.
Crosswords are crazy. Today was my 851st NYT crossword, after getting into them about a year ago now. Somewhere, sometime eons (or aeons) ago, I heard the term tin lizzie in its context. But when I saw the clue, having not encountered that term in decades, I instantly was able to fill in the answer. Brain training indeed.
"THE RANOS?" I mutter. What the heck is (are?) The Ranos? "Oh," I, say at last, feeling NUMB and NUMBER. Nice cluing today!
@NovelaMaven Theranos! Elizabeth Holmes sham blood testing company (you can visit her in the joint if you wish)
Hearty congratulations to Larry on a most excellent Friday debut! The SE corner added about 5 minutes to my time because TATTOOED seemed like the only possible answer to 52A (seemed to have been a common problem per the comments). Most of that 5 minutes I was just staring at that corner, trying to figure out any possible answers for 40-42D. But once I backed out -OOED so I could put in BEGAN (then BEGUN) and STEP, voila, it all fell into place. There seems to be some picking of nits over ARO and the clue for ETHER in the NW, but I found them pretty fair game, even if I didn't really get the ETHER clue until I read Deb's column--it seemed unlikely to be anything else. I think there was another recent themed puzzle that used that heteronym of number (#) and number (anesthesia) if anyone can find it! Congrats again Larry and thanks for the Friday morning workout! :-)
Although I filled in a lot of wrong answers on my first pass (eg. "workout" instead of IN SHAPE), this was a relatively painless puzzle. I spent years doing crosswords in pen, having switched over to online a little over a year ago. While there are some things I miss about doing puzzles physically, I am grateful I did this one virtually. It would have been an indecipherable mess otherwise. 😄
Well... this one was actually harder than the typical Friday for me. Not much was dawning on me on first pass and just chipped away section by section, just making my best guess on a number of answers. Was surprised to finish successfully. That's all on me. One (perhaps appropriate for me) fifteen letter answer that dawned on me was inspired by 34d: HOLEINTHEGROUND Never been in a puzzle, but it's in the Xword Info word lists. And... puzzle find today was a Thursday from October 18, 2012 by Samuel A. Donaldson. Five theme answers in that one: SADDLEINTHEBACK HOLEINTHEACE DARKINTHESHOT HAYINTHEROLL GRASSINTHESNAKE Here's the Xword Info link: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=10/18/2012&g=28&d=A" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=10/18/2012&g=28&d=A</a> ..
Ack! Emus ate my post from last night. It was a brief appreciation of this elegantly constructed thoroughly engaging puzzle, and a slightly longer appreciation of the poet Rene Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke AKA Rainer Maria Rilke, which included my own feeble attempt at a translation of his lovely poem Herbsttag (Autumn Day). I commend that or any of his poems, but especially Herbst, Der Panther, or Oblation, to any puzzlers who have a love of lyric poetry. They translate pretty well tooo English, but are sublime in the original German.As Sotto Voce has noted, his prose is beautiful too. Perhaps the emus found my stab at translation an insult to great art.
Very witty and cleverly misleading puzzle. A nice one!
My biggest problem was AREYOUaslEep for 6D, which wasn't obviously wrong next to TANKINI. I deleted the wrong one first and guessed keatS for the poet, because why not? I've never read anything by Rilke, but I have good memories of him. A friend of mine got on Jeopardy! and answered a $2000 clue on him correctly. (Now that I double-check it, the clue was basically "This 20th century German wrote 'Sonnets to Orpheus.' Maybe I should've known that after all!) With control of the board, she picked Sonnets for $800 which had the second Daily Double. She bet everything, got John Milton right, took the lead, and eventually knocked off a longtime champ. (We won't talk about her second game.)
@Kimble Our high school German teacher had us memorize “Der Panther” by Rilke. Still can recall most of it!
Loved this puzzle :) only slowdown was that I had to google if I was spelling SACRILEGE correctly... never been able to write that one down without second-guessing myself. love getting to do the puzzle while there still aren't many comments on the articles - hello to others in non-American time zones and to American early risers!!
@Frances But Frances, you left me out - the Night Owl!! I do the puzzle before I go to bed a 6,7 or sometimes even 8 a.m.! Are emus nocturnal?
Had to run the alphabet to get the R in ARO/ETHER (23D/2A). I understood ARO, but had to come here to understand 2D. Several curse words resulted. Excellent, excellent veiled clue. And TIL the term of art "heteronym clue." Some interesting random pairings in the grid: CHEESEDIP with HAUTECUISINE, SIRS and YESMAAM, LEGIT right next to SACRILEGE, UTTERROT and ALLEGED.... Nifty cluing throughout, and 2D is an early nomination for clue of the year (there isn't such a category, but there should be one). Thanks, Mr. Snyder!
Oh my goodness, 30A . . Had “episode” then “Emmy Won” then “Emmy Win” then “Emmy Nom” then (finally!) EMMY NOD. That, combined with having “Haute Couture” for 27A, made the NW corner an absolute shipwreck for me. Great Friday puzzle, Mr. Snyder!
@Patrick Thanks for this. I was stuck with EMMY NOM and ALLETEM for 12D. Turns out the unreliable news source wasn’t RAT, ha.
Nice puzzle, Larry. Wasn’t as intimidating as it looked at first. Enjoyed many of the clues. Boa was a nice misdirect for me. Reminded me to not ASSume based on Xword overuse. Decided to do this tonight since I’m getting numbed up for an early procedure tomorrow (please, no ether). Didn’t have to squint to see the Escher allusion. Well done.
@Warren Have a safe SLUMBER PARTY tonight for whatever's happening tomorrow. We'll all be sending you best wishes for a speedy recovery and that you'll be back IN SHAPE in no time. See you back Saturday?
@Warren Sending you good thoughts for a safe procedure and wishing you a speedy and successful recovery! Please let us know you're well as soon as possible. (And don't pass up on that ether if they offer it for free. ;-))
@Warren Hope all goes well tomorrow, and that your recovery is quick and complete.
My biggest mistake was being totally convinced that it was Twain, not Nobel. I was remembering the anecdote about Twain having read his own obituary and said something like "reports of my death are greatly exaggerated." And then there's the Twain Award for humor. Pooh.
@HEK I made exactly the same mistake!
@HEK But Twain did not establish the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. It was established in 1998, by which time those rumors were correct.
@HEK I thought of that anecdote, but I assumed that any prize named after Mark Twain would have been created by someone else. NOBEL fit with MSN, which was a guess. I wish the rest of that corner had been that easy.
Perfect Friday puzzle exemplar. At first pass: “I got [almost] nothin’” Then some fills were half right. Really enjoyed figuring it out with no lookups or help. Didn’t know why ETHER and ARO were correct until completed & checked Deb’s explanations. Nice grid shape too! Great debut!
Given the recent news article below, I was really hoping 24D was MANKINI. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/19/world/australia/australia-mankini-shane-rose-olympics.html" target="_blank">https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/19/world/australia/australia-mankini-shane-rose-olympics.html</a> Dude almost lost his shot at the Olympics. But the Aussies thought it was hilarious!
@Tom I read that story. Then I followed the links to find the photo and wished I hadn’t. I also had MANKINI in my grid for a while and wondered where MOLD____ was going.
We are very much loving this recent trend of Esher staircases with mind NUMBING misdirecting clues! Thank you Larry!
@M&M "Escher staircases" When I'm happy I type too fast
A fun Friday for me. A lot of it was on my wavelength for a change, and I picked up on the heteronyms right off the bat; the long answers came easily; and I remembered that Marie was a singer's last name. I will admit to having TATTooed in place for a while as I figured out the crosses, but it was quickly corrected. Can't remember, but I think we used ETHER in a bio lab in high school, but fortunately that would be my only exposure. Much prefer the stuff they use today for anesthesia. It's pretty obvious that we have a skilled cons tructor who's just now making his NYT debut, so welcome, Larry, and thanks for an enjoyable puzzle.
This next bit isn’t about Larry’s beautiful debut…but we’re doing something that I think some NYT solvers would appreciate. So, I hope you don’t mind my sharing: Voting is now open for the 12th ORCA Awards – the annual celebration of creativity in crosswords! Winners will be announced on March 6 during a livestream filled with games and prizes. Five long-time solvers will receive special awards. For each day of their streak, solvers can receive a chance to win crossword memorabilia inscribed to them and signed by Will Shortz. Need not be present to win. Details and voting info can be found at Diary of a Crossword Fiend.
@Rich P That sounds like a lot of fun. Thanks for letting us know!
@Rich P I saw your post in one of my Facebook groups. One thing made me curious: “Paper solvers can instead scan consecutively-solved puzzles (365 puzzles max) from any outlet, and submit this as a single attachment.” Y’all don’t really expect that anyone has a year’s worth of solved puzzles sitting around, do you? It doesn’t matter to me because I solve in the NYT games app. But it struck me as a little weird.
Smooth sailing but must confess to the R in ETHER/ARO being the last to fall with the resulting head slap. Yesterday we had *Begin and today we've BEGUN . . . . . . to laud this fine debut. Well done and thanks.
@John Same here. Since A_O seemed rife with possibilities, instead I looked at what could provide a sensible ending to ETHE_. R was the third letter I tried. I still didn't get it. (this confession will make the emus happy)
My only slip-up was putting in mankini for the portmanteau. It must have been in my head from the recent story about the australian equestrian. I know how current events sometimes seem to slip into the puzzle.
@John H. I made the same error (plus some others). Did you follow the links in the story about the Australian equestrian to the actual photo on Instagram or whatever? I wish I could unsee that.
Swiftly done, but that doesn't mean it wasn't intricately constructed and delightful to solve. I was just lucky enough to be on the right wavelength and synced with clues. Congratulations on your debut, Larry Snyder. Like the man said, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship
@dutchiris Man= Captain Louis Renault, he of Casablanca fame. I'd be, " shocked', " shocked", if you didn't know that!
INJURED before IN SHAPE Also delayed by TATTooed - and SMH at TATTED UP - just because one can imagine a phrase which might be used in some random situation ("Dude became a yakuza, got all tatted up"), doesn't make it good crossword fill. YMMV
@Bill in Yokohama But if you have some red wine the aching subsides.
A PERFECTLY calibrated Friday puzzle in response to so many criticisms of apt calibration this week. And a debut, to boot! B R A V O !
I"m a veteran of Friday puzzles and heteronyms but I had to come here to get the "number" clue. I didn't know ARO (and I'm happy to have now learned it), but luckily I didn't know any other word starting with ETHE-, so I got the music. But I STILL didn't understand the clue. I was looking for the trick in the word Early (Civil War general? like a nobleman? in an otological fashion?). As a biochemist, I'm embarrassed but give props for being fooled in a perfectly LEGIT way.
I loved this puzzle and the clever misdirects. It took me longer than usual but was one well worth the battle. PIPE ORGAN about did me in, though. Just couldn’t see it, plus a lack of music knowledge. Thanks for a fun ride!
Some very clever wordplay in this puzzle! I too love being fooled by heteronyms; it always gives me a grin when I figure one out. (Well, almost always; sometimes it gives me a groan ;-) )
Wow did I love this puzzle. And at 12 mins and 35 seconds I was more than 22 mins faster than my Friday average. What a great way to head into the weekend.
Does "Ars nova" have a usage other than the musicological one, which, I ween, is rather obscure? Here's a liturgical chant by Guillaume de Machaut, last of the great Ars nova composers, who *never* stole from the collection plate. Some lovely ranks and divisions can be seen in the background at about 5:01: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX9vph4TCjQ" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX9vph4TCjQ</a>
@Bill Having evinced an interest in the esoteric, Bill, you may be interested in exploring the growing library currently under assembly by Arthur Maud at concentusmn.org. Ars Antiqua, Ars Nova, Ars Subtilior, and beyond through Monteverdi. Built on a lifetime of research, musicology, and musical direction, his output reflects a dedication to the subject still potent in his 92nd year. (I was fortunate enough to have first joined his team at the unripened age of 17.)
Loved this one! Congrats on a great debut
I don't know how accurate it is, but my one visual memory of getting ether for a tonsillectomy back in 1959 or 60 at Columbia Presbyterian (who knew how many hours I would later spend in that same neighborhood at the Armory?) was lying on the table and seeing what looked like the bottom of a glass bottle by which the ether was administered. Fun puzzle. I'm not sure it had something for everyone, but at least it had the TILDE that people are chronically looking for.
@Jack McCullough My tonsillectomy was around the same time as yours. Sandy Becker had a kiddie show on local NYC TV at that time, and one of his bits was introduced by spinning concentric circles. And that's exactly what I saw as I was being put under by that awful ether. Thank goodness modern anesthesia doesn't have that horrendous lag time, or the ensuing nausea, either.
@Jack McCullough When I was 4, in 195?---well, Eisenhower was president, I broke my leg. After 6 weeks in traction, I had to get a body cast. I so clearly remember the anesthesia was a mesh cup with ether on a wad of cotton. The guy jammed it over my nose and mouth, and I tried to push it off, but he won. The smell was so distinctive. It is shocking to me these days because it is such a sophisticated process, and that seem so crude.
Impressive shenanigans throughout with today's labyrinthine clues. My encomium for a very enjoyable taste of haute énigme, mes amis. Well done all, as per usual. The wee pup BB fell silent in admiration.