Saturday, September 7, 2024

A perfectly cromulent puzzle. But as the notes say, this is the fifth in an intermittent series of puzzles utilizing the same exact grid pattern that started over a year ago, and will apparently run to 13 total somewhere during the Walz administration. All 13 of these puzzles are supposed to relate to a poem linked in the article. I was going to say "obscure poem", but maybe those who are into poetry more than I am can refute this and say it is an amazingly significant landmark poem among all the hundred-year-old poems out there. (I doubt this is the case.) So what I want to know is: Am I the only one who doesn't give a rat's tail about this poem, or whatever the connection between these perfectly fine puzzles and the poem is? I just can't rally any interest in the metapuzzle at all, if there is actually one. Heck, I'd already forgotten about the series, which continues only every few months, and when reminded, all I could think is "oh, that again." I'd like to hear from the other side, if anyone's out there.

I solve puzzles early enough in the morning to where, these days, it’s often dark when I begin, and grows lighter as I go along. That is how today’s puzzle went – darkness at the onset, when the clue vagueness and answers I didn’t know made for few toe-holds. There came much pinballing, zigzagging around the grid, often reaching the low point of stuckness, then flipper-ing up again to search for pings of enlightenment. Those pings did come, and they felt very well earned; those boxes filled with fanfare. And, like my dog ferreting for a treat I’ve hidden, I persisted with no intent of flagging. Pings begat more pings, less spaced apart. Much beauty was uncovered: MASSIF, MINION, SO FAR SO GOOD, DALLY, FUN FACTS, ICONIC, ABRUPT, LOGJAM, plus that lovable ragtag pair DOOFUS and DONGLE. Not to mention the sing-song NITTY GRITTY MEATY MINTY PETTY DALLY, with PETCO CONGO POCO tagging along. Plus, the wow of a meager 66-word grid with hardly a whiff of junk. When this odyssey was all over, I felt deeply satisfied, like I did something worth doing. And grateful to David, who I believe also did something worth doing in making this. Thank you, sir, for a proper Saturday!

Whoa, I’ve had way too many mojitos this evening: SWEET JUICY LIMEY and might as well try a MEATY one and a PETTY one too, in addition to the normal MINTY. We could perhaps find thirteen ways of looking at a mojito.

"Your couch is still okay?" "Sofa, so good!" ("I'll have to sit on that for a while.")

Was convinced .... • Tesla was a Serb -- and he was, but as FUN FACTS go, it wasn't very useful today. • Italian grinder was a sandwich, but on this day it wasn't something to sink my DENTE into. • Mediocre was meh -- MAN, was that wrong. DONGLE? BITTORRENTS? We solve to learn -- will just chalk this one up to retribution for that easy Friday.

Yes, Steve, Wallace Stevens is a major poet of the 20th century, and this poem from his first collection is regarded as one of his best. He led a movement against the dry and academic style of Eliot and Pound as well as those who clung to older forms based on rhyme and meter. (The "bawds of euphony" in a later stanza refers to poets, (bards), selling out by relying on those forms.) Today's stanza specifically addresses poetics, with "inflections" representing the words on the page and "innuendoes" being the associations formed in the mind of the reader. This can be applied to all forms of perception. Crosswords offer a perfect example. We have to read the clues at face value, but solving requires perceiving the puns and misdirections associated with them.

[Sausage grinder in Italy?] for DENTE was worth the price of admission, but we got so much more. There was lots of great fill, such as SEA SERPENTS, BIT TORRENTS and FUN FACTS. Then there was the cluing, which was off just enough to keep me guessing. All around fun. NICE ONE, David!

Superb puzzle. Absolutely loved it. The northwest corner took me the longest, especially after I misread Etymologists and very confidently entered INSECTS for 13A

This is a reply to Steve L. about the puzzle's relation to the poem: TWOLAABB is indeed one of the most ICONIC poems of the 20th century, much has been written about its meaning, lyricism, philosophical underpinnings, etc. I do give a rat's tail about this poem and admire Mr. Williams for his homages to it. But I have also, like you & most everyone else, given up on finding connections between poem, grid, clues, design, etc. In earlier grids in the series, there were birds, trees & elements of the poem that were likely intentional echoes but the connections were tenuous, felt like guesswork. In Section 5 of TWOLAABB Stevens addresses precisely this issue, the purported meaning of the blackbird's song and the attractiveness of alternative readings and interpretations -- the beauty of "innuendoes" -- and the difficulty of choosing, of prioritizing one meaning over another, almost rungs on a ladder (!). So far so good. But the problem of translating that tension between "inflection" (intended meaning) and "innuendo" (unintended meaning) into a puzzle is probably what's turning people off: solvers tend to be people who derive pleasure out of finding the singular solution to a problem, whereas poetry -- and especially Stevens' -- encourages readers to derive many meanings and readings. Solvers by their nature probably don't care for that much. I can see how this puzzle is meaty enough to handle various "readings" of it, but like you, Steve, I'm not doing it.

I remember a faculty meeting about 20-25 years ago where I referred to DONGLEs (probably a discussion about connecting laptops to projectors -- I don't recall the specific context) and many shocked eyes were turned my way. Awkward silence ensued. I guess the term was unknown to most of them and they thought I had used some sort of naughty slang in a meeting!

A timelapse of my NW corner would be an ugly thing indeed: strike in place of LAMAZE @ 1A, somehow managed to read [entomologist] instead of [etymologist] @13A, so "insects" lived there quite a while, giving me aces instead of ZIPS @ 5D, Deleted everything, GENEPOOL came to mind and everything slipped into place, thinking "geez this isn't so hard really" These puzzles are always beautiful.

Imagine my surprise when I read the clues carefully all the way through and realized I come to the end of the puzzle with the whole thing completely blank. I resigned myself to a couple of look-ups to get le pied dans la porte, and was off and running. GENEtics was bound to be wrong, so I tucked it away, moved on, and when the POOL filled up I knew what to do. It was that kind of puzzle. Some fills I had to take on faith (BIT TORRENTS?) and some were just there for me (SEA SERPENTS, CONGO, SEANCE, etc.). The music sounded and amazingly, it was done with no errors. So Saturday is in the bin without too much heartache, although a bit of battered brain syndrome. Thank you, Mr. Williams. Wallace Stevens is always welcome around here, but I didn't see him until I read the column.

This puzzle was stellar: it was way over my head.

I feel fully Saturday-ed. It’s a good feeling. And I’m firmly planting in my head, that when a clue says “in modern slang” it’s not a word I’ve used, or possibly even heard. Because *my* modern slang is old. If I’ve heard it, it prolly ain’t modern. It’s a very beautiful, grey, wet Saturday here. The kind that gives you a free pass to just curl up and do puzzles on the kitchen couch, looking out at the rain, that continually reminds me stay put, and ignore any impulse to get out there and do stuff. Ahh…

I liked the puzzle, which had lots of twisty clues, but which could be solved steadily with a little thought. I’m also fan of Wallace Stevens, and particularly Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Blackbird. Having said that, however, I learned of the relationship between poem and puzzle only by reading Wordplay. For this type of trick to work, the relationship should be inferrable from the puzzle itself. Did I miss something? On another note, as the roller of big cigars might say: Let the lamp affix its beam The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.

Seems to be a lot of hate for this one, so I’m chiming in with some positivity. Hard one, but it’s Saturday! Loved seeing IN-N-OUT, the best ever fast food joint, mentioned. I’m GenX and thus a lifelong Goonies fan. Plus Star Wars! I had to laugh at myself wondering who Chewbacca’s rival could be before finally remembering I just ordered some litter from CHEWY. Thanks to my teens, I got MID right away, and hat tip to the clue for SEANCE. I thought it was fun, and I don’t usually say that for a Saturday puzzle.

Useless knowledge and lateral thinking. Right in my wheelhouse . Perfect for a Saturday.

I had to use the article for help, but this is the first time I've finished a Saturday puzzle. Took 45 minutes after using the answers in the writeup. This month marks my third year playing the NYT games. The crosswords and the newest game, Strands, are my favorites.

A great and challenging puzzle. Perfectly calibrated for a Saturday. The magic of a tightened fist that slowly releases! The magic of a puzzle that denies us access but then slowly relents, letter by letter. The mix of despair and elation is divine.

Several nits to pick because they cost me a lot of time working around answers that should have been incorrect: 16A: The GENE POOL is the available set of genes one might mate with, not the ones you inherit from family. The puzzle’s answer is the exact opposite! (Now, if those two sets intersect, you’ve got a problem…) 18A: If a preposition isn’t in the clue (“Temporarily give”), it shouldn’t be in the answer (“LOAN TO”). 29A: SEA SERPENTS aren’t fears, they are things *to* fear. Otherwise, tough but fair! A good Saturday workout for a Friday night.

I'm going to land on team Tough But Absolutely Fair on this one. SE was the first place I got a solid toehold. A tough climb from there, but made it. Slippery cluing (LOAN or Lend?), and a great center stack. Great job.

Hard. Very, very hard. Had to restart at least three times, getting every attempt wrong: strikes/LAMAZE, meh/MID, LADDER at the end, not the beginning, bootleggers/BIT TORRENTS (which I’ve never come across). On and on. The only clues I hit first time were geographical with mountains, cheese and Africa. Yikes. Not familiar with the poet or the poem. Read it after the first of these grids. Interesting poetry, completely in the dark as to the connection with the puzzles. I’m off blackberrying to ease my headache.

Man, I can still remember torrenting(downloading) Star Wars in less than 12 parsecs! .

Solved it unaided, but quite the workout for me: "You solved a Saturday Crossword in 1:20:39." The design essentially consists of a main puzzle connecting the NE and SW corners of the grid, with two substantial "mini crosswords" very loosely appended in the NW and the SE. Presumably, our constructor is especially fond of the horizontal and vertical stacks that intersect to form a 3 x 3 block of letters in the very center of the puzzle. In any case, I was doing reasonably well until it came time to solve the mini in the SE corner. The clue for TURMOIL was *completely* useless to me, and I had with CORE rather than BORE, RECESS rather than MOTION, and MEH rather than MID. So, needless to say, it took me a while to sort that corner out. INNOUT crossing ATUL was also tricky. All in all, a very fine Saturday puzzle. "Labor tactic" immediately evoked STRIKE, and LAMAZE only arrived later (with a smile). So many nice *words* here too, with LOGJAM and ABRUPT being two favorites. In summary: NICEONE!

This puzzle was a neatly done little gift to the puzzleverse. It was a great challenge that I completed without lookups in just under average time. I thought the cluing was absolutely spot on and clean as a whistle. Many thanks and kudos to the constructor!

This was a GREAT Saturday puzzle! I stared at it for what seemed like hours before slowly working up from the SE corner. When finally done I felt like a DOOFUS for not parsing 31A correctly. Great one David, great one.

I was imagining a heckelphone as a PDQ Bach invention, but alas no. RIP maestro Schickele.

I would’ve done better time-wise if I hadn’t misread etymologist as entomologist, causing me to create a logjam in the NW corner with the word “insects” instead of “origins”. But aside from that, fun puzzle!

Oof...ouch...harrumph...ta-da!

First pass, five answers and two more possible. Hours later, got nowhere. After reading Wordplay, I know I never would be able to solve this puzzle. Moreover, I realized I didn't care. And that has never happened. And I've been completing almost every Friday and Saturday puzzle without help for more than five decades. This was definitely not in my wheelhouse, and

Boa noite, y’all! TIL about BITTORRENTS which apparently are similar to pirating programs like LimeWire. I could never get into that whole scene because 1. I’m too chicken to do things that might get me in hot water 2. Who has days to tie up the computer downloading an album? It never made sense to me. Just buy the album for Pete’s sake! For the word in two African countries, I thought I was clever for entering Sudan so quickly. The joke was on me when the entry was CONGO! With crossings and some help from Caitlin’s column, SOFARSOGOOD on reestablishing my streak! Have a great Saturday!

All the crosswords this week have been more difficult than usual, but today's was an absolute stumper for me! I salute those who got through it without cheating. My ego looks forward to Monday's puzzle!

I really enjoyed this one. After my first pass, I didn’t think I’d be able to finish without cheating, but things started clicking pretty quickly. Good challenge level for a Saturday (I believe last week’s made me pull my hair out).

Very challenging for me (it took me 50% longer than usual), but never unfair. Slowing me down were having ROTE instead of BORE in the SW, and confusing entomology with etymology and having INSECTS instead of ORIGINS in the NE. Oops.

In the begging I thought I was doomed to fail - I had almost nothing on my first pass. There were only a few trivia clues, but given how hard the puzzle was without some crosses, I looked up the trivia - five answers or so, and the mysterious hecklephone. That allowed me to complete the puzzle without enabling auotcheck. Personally I found today's puzzle's difficulty similar to last Saturday's - hard but doable in reasonable time. My last square was the Z of LAMA_E. I fixated on "labor" being work-related and no letter made sense there in that context. I resorted to an alphabet run in the end. Too bad Z is so far down on the keyboard 🤣. I don't have children and birth-related techniques are a mystery to me, so LAMAZE looked like random letters. Before I checked the column, I thought maybe some "LA Maze" (?) was a place important for US workers' rights 🤣 (now that I wrote it, as a European, I realize how strange the phrase "US workers' rights" looks).

This is completely off topic: a few weeks ago, one of the clues solved as the town in the US version of The Office. I lightheartedly referenced Slough as the original setting, which led to a discussion of all things Slough, including Slow Horses, set in Slough House London. I hadn’t come across it before but based on people’s recommendations I blagged 3 months free Apple TV and have been binge watching since. This is to say thank you to those who recommended it. I can’t remember who you are, but well done. It’s an excellent series. I’ve discovered that my S-I-L has the books, so am working my way through them at the same time.

I find it amusing how the Saturday (sometimes Friday) comments are either "it's too hard" or "the weekend puzzles have become too easy". Where's the middle ground? While I do take issue with certain clues or answers, I rarely find an entire puzzle to be worthy of rebuke. There was "some obscure" trivia today (which I'm not thrilled by), but not any more than usual. And there were some clues that didn't quite work as well as they should (like "family inheritance?" for GENEPOOL), but not more than one or two. That kind of clue is my particular bugaboo. I love, love, love clever wordplay, but I am disappointed when the "clever wordplay" doesn't quite work. I enjoy a difficult puzzle, but not at the expense the clues/answers working well together. A few tough puzzles in the past few months had this problem. They were tough not because of well constructed and clever clues, but because the answers didn't really work well enough with the clue (IMO). This puzzle was light on wordplay (so not my fave), and the grid geometry made it more like a grouping of mini-puzzles (one in each corner plus the middle), but overall it seemed like a very traditional "more difficult" puzzle. The reason it was tricky was because many of the clues were not obvious and one really needed to work the crosses to figure it out. I thought that would please the traditionalists.

For all of you on both sides of the Wallace Stevens poem, I give you the last bit of Billy Collins's poem, "On Poetry": But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means. Google it to read the FIRST stanzas, where he tells us what he recommends instead. I would say the Stevens poem is both obscure (as in hard to understand) and not obscure (as in very much heard of, at least for those who read poetry)

I need to find out how to get my puzzle stats fixed, since they can’t possibly be correct. It says I have solved 1779 crossword puzzles, but if that were true then surely I would be much better at it than I seem to be.

I shook my head in...what...disbelief? horror? astonishment? amusement?...when [Sausage grinder in Italy?] came out as DENTE. That's the kind of thing that makes Saturdays so cussed and so interesting.

Holy moley batman it must be Saturday on steroids. Let us say we finished. Thank you David... maybe

Wow, a good hard one, took me over an hour, and I still don't know what a "Massif" is but I got the music so it must be right. This felt like a bit of a vocab quiz in various European languages... but still well-clued and well-crossed enough to be fair. Very nice!

Puzzle was fine, but awkwardly clued. Trying too hard to be clever

Great one! I had filled in around three words on my first pass and probably two of them were wrong, so I didn't know how it was going to go, but somehow it all came together! I liked the long phrases in the middle - once I got those it helped. There wasn't much trivia but I knew ATUL which helped with the SW.

Had to set the timer to 8 hours on this one, it was so tough. cc: emu handler

I circled three letters in entries that didn't make good sense to me. I've been up since 4:30, but I don't think that's really the problem. Simply, I just don't know about thiings like 'sharing pirated material' and what 'a blogroll' is (or what its 'listings' would be.) I don't get UPTAKES, either, as clued, but that was correct. That just plain shuts me out, especially since the Unknowns crossed in the body of the puzzle. I console myself with the fact that I got food chain IN 'N'OUT; (there's no such thing anywhere I've lived, or at the time we lived there, at least.) 29A eluded me, and (unwilling to walk away and give it time) I will just take the Fail. The week hasn't been a complete loss: belatedly I learned how to navigate past my printer to 'Save as PDF' and then find the Download on my Desktop and order to Print --for the next time the NYT can't be bothered to format the puzzle decently. And I am left with the rather entertaining entries that I was unable to correctly parse or suss out: TEASER PANTS? DEASER PANTS? DETES? DATES? BETTOR RENTS? BATT OR RENTS? (Note to SamE: a BATT is a thing.) So, I wish all youse guys a good weekend (and please remember to zip up those TEASER PANTS.)

Heavens to Murgatroyd. I was feeling cocky after Friday's puzzle, but boy, was I taken down a peg. Hand up for reading etymologist as entomologist and confidently dropping insects into the grid. Lookups: Hecklephone, apologue, the Primo Levi title in Italian (I always misread Italian clues as Spanish and try to cram in the Spanish answer), soffritto (a lot of Italian today). I've read Gawande's book on cancer but couldn't remember his first name. I'm embarrassed to say I entered "episode" as the first word of the Star Wars crawl, even though it's in the clue; my first Star Wars was the one where you had to line up for ages at the only theatre in town that showed it - here, it was the late lamented Cine Capri on Camelback Road - so I didn't register that Episode 1 meant the one with all the politics. An hour and 11 minutes, even with allowing myself lookups.

I'm sure I would have enjoyed this puzzle if I had been less sick. I've enjoyed this constructor's puzzles in the past. As it is, I was lost and confused for most of it. I had "insects" at 13A for a very long time before realizing it was ETYmologists, not ENTOmologists. The DOOFUS is me. I am going to take some Advil, take a nap, and await Mr. Williams's next crossword.

My breakthrough moment was So far so good. Then I got nitty gritty and thought of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Not so bad for a Saturday - just had to shake those little gray cells. Looking forward to what Sunday's puzzle has in store for our "gang." Here's to solving puzzles without becoming puzzled!

Puzzles based on a poem by Wallace Stevens? David P. Williams, I am as uplifted as I am awed. Mille mercis, as they say here. A thousand thanks to you as well, Caitlin, for a set of clues which sent us spelunking down a deep emu crevasse. From the heights of a soaring blackbird to the depths of Tiamat, the whole thing accompanied by alpine strains from Richard Strauss - I think I even spotted Caddy along the way. Peak cromulence.