Did anyone else fall hook line and sinker for MPH for the adult cheetah?
@Chiara Yes even though I should have known no cheetah can run that fast
@Chiara Yep, then ?ps when I figured 3D was STOAT. Then my brain insisted on LATCH for 1D. The p was the last to fall, but pURRO made no sense except as a new nickname for my cat...
@Chiara I knew it wasn’t speed, but I left BPM up there for the longest time. Cheetahs’ hearts beat much faster than that.
@Chiara I knew MPH couldn't be right, but I had KMH in there for a while
@Chiara I didn’t see the word “cheetah” at first glance and was wedded to “iqs” for entirely too long. Especially since I got the “u” Off the down word fairly early on.
@Chiara I got the B at 2-Down pretty quickly and was thinking it could be MBI, and then I realized that I was thinking about BMI. I suspect a cheetah's BMI is quite low, but frankly I don't know the scale.
@Chiara, yes and even though I discarded MPH pretty quickly I kept trying to make the “P” work…like it had to be “something per something.” And isn’t a “Pinto” associated with a Tex-Mex order? Lol.
@Chiara even worse I tried 'age' before I realized
@Chiara : I first put KPH, as MPH would be hilariously fast.
@Chiara i thought it was the very unamerican KMH because cheetahs absolutely do not run 140 miles per hour lol
I assume it's going to come at some point. Some cynic, someone who can't see silver linings, who struggles to conjure rainbow colored unicorns, someone who makes you question the whole concept of "soul"... someone *entirely* unlike me... will point out that HR departments are not there to help the employees, they're there to protect the company from a lawsuit from an employee. Of course I would never take such a perverse, scornful view.
@Francis Funny you should say this—I’ve been repeating this very same thing lately to a dear one who has lost their job recently, in a rather slip-shod way. I learned this the hard way, and now they have, too.
@Francis The intent might be to prevent lawsuits, but they do help people. When I went to HR to tell them that a person in charge of screening resumes said racist things about the names of some job seekers, she was immediately banned from being part of the selection process. After she loudly used a horrible stereotype to wrongly accuse a certain group for the Oklahoma City tragedy, I went back to HR, and she was soon no longer with the company. Justice is justice, no matter the reason.
@Francis Came here to say just this. (Though in my particular experience I couldn’t figure out how it was in the company’s interest to treat me like garbage either)
@Francis When I got off an elevator on my way to the basement mail room at a company where I worked, I walked full stride into a non-reflective glass wall, fell hard on the tile floor, and was knocked nearly unconscious. The company's HR reps wrote a report saying that I was looking at the papers I was carrying and not where I was going, even though I had made it clear that I was looking straight ahead, and I was concerned that the wall should have some marking put on it. I also reported it to the jittery environmental safety crew, but everyone insisted there wasn't any problem. (I am not a litigious sort of person, but when I reported it I didn't know that I had cracked some very expensive dental work and should have refused to sign the report.) About a month later, a band of opaque frosting was applied to the wall at eye level. At least at that company, there were many more examples that HR reps worked for the company, not for their fellow employees. We relied on the union for that.
@Francis That was my very same cynical thought as I filled it in, as well. I knew it had to be it but I was like yeah right... I had a friend who told me she was going to go to HR because of an issue with our shared boss. I told her not to go to HR, I told her HR isn't here for you... She went to HR. Her last day was 2 weeks laterand not her choice. Granted, my experience is based on one company primarily, where I was for 20 years, but I saw it all too much. I also saw some very kind HRREPS, who I know got in it to truly help people... but they didn't last there long. The good ones fled.
"You want to fill up my tires? No pressure." (This one fell flat.)
@Mike As they said in Troy: Get a horse! Rim shot.
@Mike Getting your air time today, I see! (Fist pump.)
@Mike In the era of bald-faced lies, your puns jack up our morale.
Anyone else get their gold star after they finally changed FLORaS to FLORES? I thought that was a great puzzle. Thanks, Rafael Musa!
@Striker Not I. FLORES was a gimme thanks to high school Spanish many eons ago.
@Striker No gold star for me today due to too many lookups, but I did manage to correct FLORaS to FLORES on my own. So… yay, me?
@Striker That was the one letter I missed in the whole puzzle.
Challenging Saturday for me, but got it with no look-ups. A nice diversion from the news, but feeling like the world is turning upside down for real, and I’m ready to march.
@Bill Yeah, I'm ready to march, too.
@Bill Today! (Saturday) <a href="https://www.fiftyfifty.one" target="_blank">https://www.fiftyfifty.one</a>/ It's no RANDOM WALK, and in all 50 states to boot.
@Bill I'm heading over there now - walking distance. I'm wearing a mask, as if I don't want to get covid, but because I don't want to be in the news or on anyone's Facebook page. My sign says: Keep [his] tiny HANDS OFF Social Security & Veteran's Benefits
Ball two is a brilliant clue.
@Joe Felice It made me think of this album: <a href="https://www.ebay.com/p/78422352" target="_blank">https://www.ebay.com/p/78422352</a> Threw me off a little.
@Joe Felice I agree . And I got it pretty quickly despite never having been one of the cool kids.
I had to look up JOSH and BURRO to get some crosses to unlock the NW quadrant of the grid, but other than that I needed no outside help. Some of the clues were quite nice, some were not. PRIORI doesn't mean "before" in Latin: "prius" means "earlier" (as in, an earlier [one]), and "priori" is one of its forms in declension. But I'm not going to get through with this to Americans, or English speakers in general, am I? The last time I tried I got nowhere. In languages with declension, a name of a thing, place, person or concept is only ever given in the nominative case: a Polish crossword puzzle only ever features words in the nominative case. For example, Warsaw is Warszawa in the nominative. The name looks different in other cases, e.g., in the vocative it's "Warszawo!" The name of the city in Polish is Warszawa, not Warszawo. And this is where I loose touch with people whose language does not involve declension: "Warszawo!" does not mean Warsaw in Polish. Only "Warszawa" does. Ditto prius and priori.
@Andrzej I am going to take your final paragraph, print it out so that I can take it with me everywhere, and spend ten to twenty hours of analysis. By then I should be able to say whether or not this comes easy to an English speaker. I may not get back to you for a couple weeks, but by then I should know if it's easy or not.
@Andrzej I took a couple Russian classes so I know what you mean, but in the Latin phrase “a priori” which is used in English, what would you say “priori” means? Do you know how this declined form of the word got into this phrase where it’s not really linked with a noun or adjective? In any case I appreciate you taking the time to share your knowledge about this subject which most Americans are totally unaware of.
@Andrzej Thanks for explaining this! I think I kinda get the valid point you are making— although I agree that it may be impossible to “grok” for us native English-speaking folk! (Just as Martian was for earthlings in Heinlein’s masterpiece!) But I do think you did an excellent job of laying it out. Suggesting that perhaps allowances should be made for clueing an American crossword feels a bit like walking a TIGHTROPE….
@Andrzej This native English speaker and lowly American understands it perfectly well because she's studied other languages, so don't say you'll never get through to us. I take your point, but would you further suggest that the clue "German article" should be only der, die or das and not dem or den? I would tend to agree for clarity's sake but it wouldn't bother me to see the answer in accusative or dative. And psst: it's "lose", not "loose" touch. Counterintuitive but true.
@Andrzej So many thoughts about your comment, Andrzej! First, the Latin: PRIORI is the dative singular of prius, which is a noun that means "earlier times". It's a good question whether a clue that asks for the "Latin [word] for 'before'" can be answered with any case of the desired word. However, as Steve L. would point out, technically every declension of prius has the same basic meaning as it does in the nominative. Most people in the U.S. learn grammar (including declension and conjugation) when they learn a foreign language. Grammar in their native tongue comes naturally. I suspect that this is true not only of Americans. Fewer Americans study foreign language than do people in other (educated) countries, and many Americans expect "foreigners" (i.e. non-Americans) to speak (American) English, whether they are at home or abroad. This makes me sad. But many Americans do know foreign languages. Some have even studied Latin!
@Andrzej Well, the one place where English does use cases is with pronouns. [Usually plural pronoun] with a four-letter answer could solve to either THEY, in the nominative, or THEM, in the accusative. If that’s acceptable in an English-language crossword, then I don’t see why clues that ask for words in other languages should be exempt from the same ambiguity—except that, in practice, you can usually expect that the word will be declined to the form most commonly encountered in speech or writing that is otherwise in English. Certainly, it makes sense that a Polish crossword would always default to the nominative case, as it would surely be painful to have to guess the declension for every single answer, but—just as there are different conventions used between even American and British crosswords—I don’t see why the use of the dictionary form has to be enforced in NYT-style puzzles.
@Andrzej I'm American, so you know that I know no language well. And I don't have the tools you wield so capably to deconstruct, and I imagine re-construct, terms and phrases and idioms etc etc. And still here we are, enjoying unraveling word puzzles together. Also, "Ditto prius and priori" belongs in someone's poem someday
@Andrzej I agree. I wanted to enter prius, but when I saw that it didn't fit I realized that I shouldn't be tied to the A PRIORI assumption that it would be in the nominative case.
@Francis I am declensing my teeth in response to Greek, Latin and now Polish languages with declension. In some usages, it's Gianni Antetokounmpo, not Giannis.
@Andrzej It’s crazy dude. When I do crosswords. I think of you. Like this puzzle. PHONEITIN and PIPEDREAM were easy for me with a couple crosses. But I swear my first thought was “ouch. Andrzej is gonna struggle with this one”.
TIL: 1) An adult cheetah weighs between 75 and 140 LBS. 2) The actor who played PEETA in "The Hunger Games" is named JOSH Hutcherson. (PEETA was a gimme but I didn't know the actor's name.) 3) The names of a couple of INCAN gods. 4) "CODA" won Best Picture. I love that movie but had no idea it had won the big prize. (The music group I volunteer with for developmentally-disabled adults is signing to "Both Sides Now" at our concert in two weeks.) 5) There's a candy called SLO Poke. 6) There's a mathematical process called a RANDOM WALK. I'm just so tickled that after doing several puzzles every day since last August, I rarely have to look anything up anymore. Everything eventually comes together through crosses and logic, kind of like a Polaroid picture, and this puzzle was no exception. Zero lookups. Feels like magical! (Okay, I now that I mentioned Polaroid, I've got this ear worm in my head! <a href="https://youtu.be/PWgvGjAhvIw?si=HuKUZ5hLCpToqair" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/PWgvGjAhvIw?si=HuKUZ5hLCpToqair</a>)
@Beth I can rarely remember with any specificity when a movie (Oscar winner or not) came out, but I remembered that CODA won Best Picture relatively recently. There aren’t many Oscar winners with four-letter titles, so I figured the odds were good it fell between Nomadland and Everything Everywhere All at Once.
@Beth I watch very few movies, and never pay attention to the Oscars. However, I was aware that there was an award-winning movie called ROMA…
@Steve L I likewise watch very few movies, but knew about ARGO...
@Beth. Thanks for the video. I suspect you are a very interesting person, like so many in this comment section.
To me there was a huge difference in level of difficulty between the top and bottom, breezed through the bottom while the top was painstaking. There were a lot of borderline clues, I thought, but I’ll take them just to get the brilliant one for the Trojan War—despite the artistic license that I doubt the warriors came out of the horse’s mouth.
@SP: isn’t it the tale of the TROJAN WAR that came from the horses mouth?
@Mike R I was being a little tongue in cheek (no pun intended) but I took the misdirect to mean a tale of something that came out of the horse’s mouth—namely the Greek warriors who came out of the horse’s mouth. I just always envisioned the hatch would be in the belly and whoever led the horse in opened it. Because it would be very inefficient to have to climb up and down and all. I still loved the clue, and anyways by now I’m beating a dead—oh, never mind.
@SP Same here! I was on a no-lookup run until I returned to the top section.
Probably bad form to comment on Fridays puzzle on Saturday, but had to relate: I was stuck in the NW corner, so went to my local pub to see if a pint would help. Got some help from the staff there, the host suggested Thailand for the elephant flag, which of course did not fit but my light bulb went off for Siam, and the young lady who poured my IPA also is a hairdresser and got me ombré. Much better than just googling any day! And who says day drinking is bad for you?
Solar Ron, A day late is perfectly fine. Hope you're not a dollar short...
@Solar Ron I think I prefer your solving technique to Deb Amlen's chocolate-based method. Also, the flag of LAOS used to have elephants on it before the commies took over and made it boring.
got stuck on the NE corner for a bit because I, a trans man on testosterone, forgot that trans men take testosterone 🤦♂️
Breezed through everything except the northeast. Once I accepted that the [Label for a pile of submissions] was just not going to be "slush," and realized the gods were not "Hindu," I was fine. Thanks, Rafa.
@Barry Ancona I got hung up in the NE, too. It didn’t help that I had a typo in AY CARAMBA (some random letter in place of the Y) that kept me from seeing MAYBE as a replacement for the “slush” that melted almost as soon as I put it in the grid.
@Barry Ancona I myself made those exact errors. I had a lot of problems with both the NE and NW quadrants today.
@Barry Ancona I had an almost identical solve today, too, once the morning coffee kicked in! Only for me, I saw the gods' names as either INCAN or mayAN, so had to hold off there. As a result the submissions were also in limbo... until in a flash [Gag order?] became all too obvious. Groan, eew, such a great pun!
My undergraduate degree was a Bachelor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences. I'm very familiar with using "random walk" processes, but upon learning it 25 years ago, my brain latched onto the much more colourful term for such processes: "drunkard's walk". It took me an embarrassingly long time to enter "random" instead of looking for a synonym for "drunkard".
There’s nothing more visually striking than a high-res image of a cheetah, running full speed across the savannah. Those beautiful coats. Apparently, each has between 75 and 140 large black spots.
@JohnWM It's a good thing I wasn't drinking milk when I read this comment. 🤭
"Hey, dude, enough with the jokes" Wow, that got personal. Fine. No jokes. No alternate clue for HELL HOLES. No musing about being IN TOO DEEP. No hilarious riff imagining present-day Hunger Games. Can I at least point out that Peeta rhymes with Cheetah?
Aw, man! (Please don’t take it as a gag order. Always love your pile of submissions. If you aren’t going to post your Hunger Games riff, could you at least phone it in? I’m at 800-565-7421)
@aa, someday, someday, I hope to be as wise a guy as you! Until then, can I at least be your brogre?
So many references to characters I didn't know, so many times I came to a screeching halt, it's a wonder I got anything in the puzzle at all, a veritable CRASH SITE for me. One way or another it's done, but with my wits strained to the limit. I'm so happy for those who breezed through it that I don't know what to say, except OK WISE GUYs. MAYBE tomorrow will be my day. A bruising trip, Rafael Musa, and obviously your trip was easier than mine, but thank you. Without tough puzzles the game wouldn't be any fun.
The NW cleared up nicely when my brain flipped on and said to me, “I know cheetahs are fast, but …”
@Paul Turner I had MPH at first, then thought, "That can't be right. Wait!! It must be KPH!" Sigh.
That was 40 minutes of “OK I’m definitely not gonna get this”, until I did! A bear though.
This one gave me fits, because almost all the general knowledge/pop culture clues were outside my wheelhouse, except for NBAFINALS. I flat out guessed INES and OLAF (although my crossword training made OLAF something slightly less than a guess I guess). Anyway I had fun eking my way through a clue here and a clue there and picking up some little tidbits of knowledge along the way.
@Marshall Walthew Hey! Seems like we solved the same puzzle. Ines? So, when the dust settled, looked up Juana Inés de la Cruz. Was expecting a 21st century word warrior. Try 1648-1695. per Senor Wiki, she is "considered one of the most important female authors in Spanish language literature and the literature of Mexico . . .She was a writer, philosopher, composer and poet of the Baroque period, as well as a Hieronymite nun." Dont'cha just love crossword puzzles!
I love solo Rafa puzzles. There's always, for me, a perfect balance of breeziness, but with lots of cleverness, and resistance, but without hair-pulling. A favorite misdirect prize goes to [House in Milan] ARMANI. Well, it was a misdirect in my book because I read "Milano" and of course wanted "casa," the Italian word for "house". ARMANI came to me with a big aha – and an extra aha, even if wrong, never hurt anyone. My favorite *real* misdirect prize goes to TROJAN WAR. Brilliant. Thank you, Rafa. You are a constructing force to be reckoned with! (My puzzle-inspired song of the day is a blast from the way, way past; the theme from a 1967 movie that i was too young to watch when it first came out – "To SIR, With Love" <a href="https://youtu.be/EV1qmmMwc9M?si=tPZf6jVsK9pXXkHH" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/EV1qmmMwc9M?si=tPZf6jVsK9pXXkHH</a>)
Random walk reminded me of Burton Malkiel’s book A Random Walk Down Wall Street. Isn’t this what we’ve experienced the last two days due to TarriffMan
Fast and fun. Had “slush” for 16A waay too long.
@kkseattle Holding my hand up for being sure that was smart! SLUSH pile is a thing!!
@kkseattle I've never heard of a slush pile. Must be a thing. I had INBOX for a while.
Wow, as a frequent abandoner of Saturday puzzles (because I find them too difficult), seeing some of the unhappy comments here was surprising! Definitely a same-wavelength puzzle for me, with the entire bottom half finished in less than 10 minutes. The NW corner had me struggling til the end, especially since I felt so confident about MPH for 1A. Also lovely to see the Inti and Viracocha clue since my recent hyperfixation on the Incan Empire. Sometimes things just line up! Really needed an easy solve this week, a great confidence boost.
@Lucy If it makes you feel better, I made the MPH mistake too before stopping to think about how fast that actually is. Also overcommitted elsewhere for much longer (I send so little email that "spam" seemed much more likely!)
@Lucy I had KPH for a long time since I was pretty sure MPH would have been waay to fast!
Ah, MAN! That slowed my solve by a couple minutes. But thankfully, RANDOM hALK just screamed, “Fix me!” I love that this one had me solving center, west, SW, and then a curly-cue up to the NW! Loved seeing Bart Simpson and Toby from the office! It’s a lazy, rainy Saturday. I do love the days when the universe commands me to hunker down with a blanket, puppies on my lap, and puzzles galore. Hubby is making avocado toast. Some days, the light shines *right* through the crack and it washes over my eyes and face... It may be a single ray, but it brightens all that I see. Wishing you all a bright beam of light to make your day glow. Even if it’s just for a while. Thank you Rafael. You never disappoint.
"Old story coming straight from the horse's mouth?" had me thinking about Mr. Ed episodes. Earworm alert: "A horse is a horse, of course, of course,..." TROJAN WAR? Yeah, I see it. But if you're going to include "story" in the clue, then the answer should really be "Iliad".
Holy Stumper, Batman! This really puts a solver through her paces... I was certainly IN TOO DEEP (in a HELL HOLE) and feeling the PRESSURE. Woof! Or AY, CARAMBA! Etc. I spent a certain amount of time erasing and rewriting answers throughout the grid. Was I aMUSAed? Oh, you betcha! The quilts I just finished are a variety of "I Spy" using blocks known as 'Pineapple log cabin.' For one of the fun blocks, I used a fabric printed with various farm animals in YOGA poses; the blocks both feature pigs. The rest of the animals were in such awkward poses as to be kind of scary/deformed/possibly injured.
This was so nice. Am realizing I really enjoy end-of-week Rafael Musa puzzles. Heading over to Xwordinfo to find the dates of old ones :)))
So close, but filled in CROPCIRCLE off the bat, which later threw me off course. Couldn’t quite get AUTOMAKER or TROJANHORSE until the very end but enjoyed those clues in retrospect. Feels like I’m finally improving my solving abilities at least.
@Brian SEAT crossed all of these and had me… puzzled.
Well I really enjoyed this one. I found myself sailing through most of it, but the northern parts slowed me down. I, too, quickly fell for MPH at 1A on my first run through, which slowed me down. I later tried KPH but that was no better. I finally removed it and one of my old gray cells saw LATCH and plucked away at the rest. Vacillated between SENT and spam at 12D, but neither worked with slush.... which I learned from previous crosswords. It helped that I trusted my entry for TRANS and felt pretty good about everything south of DAFT, so I plucked away at it and eventually it all came together... Even if I was Grandma singing (err, that was a funny voice to text error, which I caught but I'm leaving in for human reasons). Starting over, even if I was grimacing as I filled in 7D, HRREP. Yeah, they assist employees all right... They assist them right out of their jobs and treat them like criminals while they're doing it. I've seen and experienced way too much cloak and dagger and mistaken trust in HR to not choke a bit on that clue. I enjoyed he majority of the clues, though. TROJANWAR took me some doing to get, but when I got it, I got it good! Definitely favorite clue! TMI and YOGACLASS were up there for me too. Anyhow, everything felt doable by the crosses and it was one of my faster Saturdays. Of course, being such an extremely young adult myself, I loved PEETA, but my heart really wanted it to be Rue. Oh, Rue! 💔 <a href="https://images.app.goo.gl/9JLrC" target="_blank">https://images.app.goo.gl/9JLrC</a>
@HeathieJ Funny that when I tried to explain my voice to text error, I made another one, which I didn't catch... I meant to say I left the error in for humor reasons, not human. Then again what is more human than humor!?
@HeathieJ Just a quick note to thank you for the kind words on my post associated with the Friday crossword. I'm a morning/afternoon solver so my rare comments usually end up where few would see them, and I wasn't sure you would. I'm beyond glad that you found my advice useful and reassuring. It seems one of my side gigs in retirement is helping family and friends, who like me are experiencing the perils of older age, navigate the opaque and sometimes very unhelpful health care system. I have a lot of time for it recently as I am recovering from an unexpected total hip replacement, after a fall while skiing at Whistler last month resulted in a fracture. I followed my own advice, with the help of knowledgeable colleagues, and found an excellent surgeon at the "other UW" in Seattle. (I'm a Badger). I'm coming along well and I hope you have a successful and stress-free ablation--it sounds as if you are in great hands. One of the things I constantly marveled at and never took for granted when I was working was the way total strangers trusted me and the team with their lives, often with very little time for consultation. It was an amazing connection. I miss that and hope you find practitioners with a similar approach. Best wishes!
I had HALFASSIT before PHONEITIN and I was sad to delete it. that would have been awesome
A couple of us on the boat just did this one together. Fell for MPH for cheetahs, struggled in the NE corner too, overall a overly lovely puzzle! Always happy to see a Shrek reference too! We land tomorrow allegedly, just one more day on the boat. Maybe by this time tomorrow I'll be writing from solid ground!
@Michael NYTXD, same solve the world over. Pretty cool! You all must be very ready by now to get off that boat onto solid ground. Here's hoping you stay on schedule!
@Michael Wow, the Drake Passage! What's that like? I've read some about it and it sounds - challenging! Good luck in your adventure!
A pleasure to finally solve when, after 30 minutes, you are looking at maybe 10 answers filled in, and suspect none of them may be right.
@spurious same here. Today was really really tough for me. A satisfying finish when it came a looong time later.
A bit of a challenge today. Those long empty runs are always daunting at first, but I'm also probably not at 100%, having gotten home from the ER at 1:00 this morning. Nothing too serious, but the fibula fracture will slow me down for a bit. Started out with HALFASSIT for 58A, wanted HELLscapes for 31d, and slush for 16A (but do they actually put a label on it?). Started with MPH for 1A, then I realized the H would have to go if I wanted to fit SABLE into 3D. Oops. Overall fun. Not a fast time, but worth it. Thanks!
The NE corner is the only part that provided much resistance, mostly because of RANDOM WALK (??). That being said, the grid as a whole was fairly inelegant. I think this may have had the most "plurals of convenience" I've ever seen. ALOES, APS, OJS (!?), FLORES, etc.
@Shrike I wouldn't call FLORES a plural of convenience at all, any more than "flowers" would be. And I've personally used ALOES to describe the area out front that is a square-meter aloe patch with about fifty aloes. It's no odder to me than "daffodils" or "roses". APS isn't common but I can see it in context (("I'm taking (list of classes), which is three APs this semester), and OJS feels like diner-speak ("table 8 wants 2 coffees and 3 OJs"). Both are properly part of longer phrases that pluralize on the other noun -- AP class(es), glass(es) of OJ -- but in casual or fast-paced talk the shorter version seems fine.
I felt fairly confident about CRopcircle 19A until I had to gradually and reluctantly drop everything but the leading CR. Loved this puzzle.
Great Saturday puzzle! Had a nice hearty laugh at ‘Gag order?’ for TMI.
TROJANWAR's clue was an excellent joke.
How many times I have had carnitas, carne asada, chorizo, pollo, even lengua wrapped in a tortilla with rice and beans and never made the burrito = little burro connection. Dios mio!
At the 10 minute mark, this was going to be my fastest Saturday by miles. All that was left was to crack the NE, and given the crosses I already had, that would take a minute or two at most! Final time: 27 minutes. I don’t know if my critical faculties suddenly shut down, or if my total lack of sports knowledge just made me incapable of seeing NBA FINALS, or if AY CARUMBA is just not a term my brain can parse with even a single letter missing, but wow. Never have I spent so long on such a tiny part of a puzzle when the rest came so easily. None of this is to blame the constructor in any way. It was fun and fair, and deep down I know I’d rather beat my head a little on a Saturday then get some personal best I’ll spend every other Saturday chasing in vain.
@Stephen I read expression as to facial expression and was lost for quite some time.
Filled with doubt at both the outset and the conclusion yet it was all over rather quickly. Enjoyed the fill & cluing. Fewer wrong guesses than usual
Typical tough Saturday for me and had to look some things up, but managed to get through it. Actually quite a few clever clue/answer combinations in this one. Ended up being a pretty enjoyable solve for a themeless. Drifting.... one thing I've noticed lately is that there don't seem to be a lot of grid-spanning entries in puzzles any more. Yesterday's puzzle was an exception with six 15 letter answers and the April 1 puzzle had two of them. But I went and looked through all the other puzzles going back to the beginning of March and... ... There was one 15 letter answer in the March 26 puzzle and one more in the March 31 puzzle. But beyond that - no other grid-spanners all the way back to March first. Just kind of surprised. Dont' know if anyone else is interested in stuff like that, but... whatever. I'm done. ...
I felt so confident as I filled in Sign at 62 A. We just made ours last night in preparation for our local Hands Off day of action. Oops! Fixed that one fast. I always enjoy Rafael Musa's puzzles. Between the spoken words like AW MAN, AY CARAMBA, NO PRESSURE and the great clues for TROJAN WAR and AFTER PARTY, this was just a pleasure to solve.
Last night I mentioned, apropos to yesterday’s puzzle, that where I am now, Marrakesh, Morocco, the walk signals are indeed green. Today, I’ll also add that the word “panini” is singular, and the plural is “paninis” on the French menus outside cafés here as well.
@Steve L In Poland walk signals are a green silhouette, and our singular is panini, too.
@Steve L Note that Panini, in addition of being a fast-food staple, is also a European publisher in the same line of business as TOPPS. (Maybe that's why some paninis taste like cardboard?)
CRopcircle for the “supposed evidence” slowed me down. “Ball two?” would be a good clue for “Venus” I think.
Admire and enjoyed this puzzle. Was tempted to turn on autocheck early on after getting almost nothing on my first pass but persevered and on occasion looked up an educated guess to give myself confidence. Did need two look-ups to get the south-west corner. Nevertheless, a feeling of satisfaction at not having given up too soon and a few cat-that-caught-the-canary moments when flashes of insight occurred suddenly.
Considering that I got almost nothing on the first pass. I was glad to finish this one 19% under my average. I thought the fill and the clues were very good.
An awful lot of unknowns made this a tricky solve for me. Happy to finish with the Caitlin’s aid.
@Helen Wright EDIT Sorry Caitlin, the ‘the’ was superfluous!
I see all the brilliant people have chimed in, so I will represent for those of us who were not so smart with this one. I went through the clues twice, used Google, then "checked puzzle" for wrong letters, and slept on it. I had most of the puzzle done, but I still had a fairly blank NW corner. I revealed 13A. Didn't help enough to get me to finish. Had to reveal 17A, then 19A. Oh well. On to Sunday.
@jennie So many proper nouns/names that I'd never heard of. But then, I'm older than dirt.