Note to self: don’t call my sweetie “PORKCHOP” by mistake.
@Cat Lady Margaret Ha! I debated between porkCHOP and LAMBCHOP. I mean, piglets are cute, right?
@Cat Lady Margaret Might be OK for Kermit to say?
@Cat Lady Margaret Now I feel bad for thinking of that first.
Oh wow, I glanced at the comments after posting myself, and I'm surprised at the hate for the AI clue. People, first, AI is here and we can't be in denial about it. Second, as I see it, the corny "poetry" of the clue decries AI for what it is: in most cases, a sorry, inadequate substitute for human imagination and skill. We *should* be outraged by big business pirating content of independent creators by using AI to republish it for big business's profit. We *should* protest against AI used on a massive scale to replaces writers and artists. However, hating on AI featuring in a single clue of a Tuesday NYT crossword is just laughable.
@Andrzej I agree with you that using the AI-generated clue was a sorry, inadequate substitute for human imagination. Small cultural adoptions of AI like this add up over time and will lead to the widespread adoption of this technology without any safeties for independent writers and artists. It took me 15 minutes to write a comment about it and another 5 to reply here. I think that’s a worthwhile investment of my time if it means the silent majority of folks, who are put off by AI, see that it is not found acceptable by everyone. Tech companies have invested billions to create these fancy plagiarism machines. They don’t have any place in the arts, of which I count the NYT crossword (except on particularly tricky Thursdays).
@Matt H You can opt to live in a fantasy world where no "small cultural adoptions of AI" ever happen. In the real world, however, AI has arrived and it is here to stay. To protest against any instance of AI being used, even in the most innocuous manner, achieves nothing. Do you really not see how strange it is to engage in existential ruminations about the fall of humankind over a crossword clue? If, on the other hand, you refuse to use Facebook, Amazon or Google services because of their unethical exploitation of just about *anything*, including AI, and you make it known, and others follow you, kudos to you. That actually matters.
@Matt H I don't think you're being hysterial. I don't question your motivation is positive, either. However, your being so serious about this continues to weird me out. Some people I will just never understand. Thankfully us being different makes the world a more interesting place. Peace. @Bruce Of course! I work in academia and I've embraced smart and ethical use of AI, and I teach my students how to do the same. That's why - even though I see the risks of AI use, too - I don't understand some objections to it.
@Andrzej My biggest issue with A.I. is it makes prose and evidently poetry boring. This is great for some fields, but maybe not crossword cluing. My wife is a photographer and A.I. makes her job faster with the added potential to make her job redundant. I can tell you that the pictures of all her clients now have the same sky (see first paragraph).
@Andrzej Your supposition that we have to get used to AI only reinforces its presence in our world. We absolutely can reject it outright.
@Andrzej I engaged in a robust conversation about this clue in another crossword puzzle forum. Because I "got it" and appreciated it right away I didn't think much about it, but others had strong opinions otherwise. I am convinced I understood how the constructor wanted this bit of construction to be received. AI is here to stay and it, alluding to the theme song to M*A*S*H, will bring on many changes. I'm a writer of creative fiction and AI frequently causes me existential anxiety, and deserves our attention to, and conversation about, it
Cute theme. AI poetry is kind of like having a Secretary of Education who doesn't know the difference between AI and A1. Neither should exist. The clue didn't bother me because it was showing just how bad AI "poetry" is, and I assumed, laughing at the concept.
@Nancy J. I wd call it--not poetry, but doggerel. Bad doggerel.
I am sad that “barouse” (go on a pub crawl) is not a word. I think it should be (though the cross wouldn’t work…but still) Nice Tuesday!
Random thoughts: • Theme echoed by other foods in the grid: CAPER, PEA, CHIA, ACAI, CRUMBLE, and CAP’N (as in Crunch). • Appropriate that AFFAIR is on the side. • Tight theme – hard to come up with alternate theme answers. Enjoyed the effort, though, which resulted in FROG KICK, not near as worthy as @Carolina Jessamine's BREAD BOX. • Regarding CAT TOYs, my Wiley loves a ping pong ball. He lies on his side facing me, I toss the ball a bit over his head, he swats it back to me, I swat it back to him, and sometimes we create something akin to a tennis rally. • Clever theme concept: FOOD FIGHT = food word and fight word that go together. Never done before. Bravo, Joe! • Beauty scattered throughout the grid – ADDLE, BALSAM, CRUMBLE, PHOBIA, GNASH, CAROUSE, MARINA. • I looked up how ACAI is pronounced, and in case you’re wondering – ah sah EE. So, for me, much to enjoy in the box today. Thank you, Joe!
@Lewis TIL how to pronounce Açai. I’d always gone with Ackay, so thanks for that.
@Lewis My Bessie cat used to play kitty in the middle — I and a child would roll a small ball between us until (usually in about 10 seconds) KITTY IN THE MIDDLE. Very entertaining for child and Bessie.
"Remember all the food fights we used to have?" "Ah, yes, those were the trays." ("It was a meal good time.")
@Mike Peas don't remind me! I could never get down the hall to escape that beefy Wellington! He was the Chicken Alley King.
"My salad days, When I was green in judgment, cold in blood." Antony and Cleopatra (1:5) —Shakespeare
Really fun puzzle, the theme was a great little surprise. Hope we stay away from AI answers in the future, though.
Enjoyed this puzzle except for the use of an AI generated clue! Come on, how hard is it to find (or write yourself) some real poetry describing eyes? Romeo and Juliet alone must have a dozen examples. Using AI comes across as lazy and low quality, not even considering how it's terrible for the environment.
@Nox THANK YOU! How hard is it to come up with a clue for EYES? This is really troubling stuff. Next we’ll see AI clues with historical inaccuracies or hallucinations.
@Nox Was the clue generated by AI? I took it as referencing (bad) AI poetry. I googled the phrase and only found reference to the NYT puzzle itself, so perhaps it was generated by AI, but if there is an infamous AI-generated poem that actually uses the phrase, Google somehow missed it.
@Nox Agreed. As a longtime solver I had a visceral negative reaction on reading the clue. What I appreciate about creating and solving crosswords is how effortful it is—based on our shared references and knowledge, and our desire to challenge ourselves. I don’t want to comment on the intentions of the constructor but even if intended to poke fun at AI’s lack of poetic flair, or as a novel way to clue something, it fell completely flat for me. It is interesting for a solver, and requires effort for a constructor, to use wordplay or a novel reference. It takes the human element and the effort out to instead effectively create an empty reference just for the sake of a clue—with neither the cleverness of wordplay nor the opportunity to reference shared knowledge or learn something new that you get with scientific, literary references, etc. If someone’s ten-year old wrote this poem that would be perfectly nice, but I also would find it weird to see it pop up for EYES clued as ‘in my child’s poetry’ or the falsely universal ‘in children’s poetry.’ Like, fine, that’s interesting, but not really universal/well-known or noteworthy enough for a clue! I would suspect that most solvers, like myself, are not so much upset about this clue specifically or mad at the constructor as galled to see this type of clue pop up in the crossword. I admire the constructor for trying something new but there are many, MANY ethical reasons to avoid AI. I don’t want to see it in the crossword again.
I remember the Pacer, although I was too young to drive one at the time. A sales dud, but I still think they look cool. All that glass makes me think of an earthbound Jetsons car. Once you see one French Open, you’ll never forget the surface. All the red-cheeked players with their tennis whites soiled by the clay! (I’m referring to bottoms, of course, not faces.) Hey, I hate AI as much as the next person, but so much outrage over a minor couplet! I can’t speak to the constructor’s intentions, but if I had to guess I’d say that clue was a wink to the banality of AI “poetry”. I really don’t think it portends the downfall of the NYT crossword.
@Heidi Funny, I loved the AMC Pacer too. I thought it looked as if it had been squeezed out of a toothpaste tube, which made it interesting. Of course, no accounting for teenage brains. Not sure if I’d like it today.
Like others, I found the gen AI clue to be jarring and unwelcome. It's topical, sure, but it's also cheap and beneath the standard I typically expect from this puzzle. Very disappointing. There are so very many better options available.
@Deph2 I agree. It’s a turn-off and I hope it’s a long time before I see it again in a NYT crossword puzzle.
@Deph2 Umm... maybe see it as a gentle warning? Anyway, you have been warned.
TIL anti-AI-ers are (1) passionate and (2) humorless. This was pretty clearly (I thought, but guess not!) a joke at AI’s expense about how AI is hapless at poetry. Maybe the clue was and maybe it wasn’t actually AI generated but the joke works either way. This was actually a great clue
@Our AI Overlords Kind of ironic to call people who recognized that obvious non-joke for the straightforward, lousy clue it was, "humorless"
Food fights are indeed wasteful and American, the first one being The Boston Tea Party(right after the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor). They don't seem to be all that common now, unless you count newlyweds smashing each other's face into a cake. That's not really wasteful since it's just a fun way to humiliate someone you love. [Get it] and I GET IT in the same grid? Discuss. So I had to try asking AI a question: When is it okay to accept a bribe(asking for a friend)? The response: It's never ethically or legally okay to take a bribe. Here's why: Legal consequences: Bribery is a criminal offense in most countries and can lead to serious penalties, including fines, loss of job, and imprisonment. Moral and ethical impact: Accepting a bribe compromises your integrity. It undermines fairness, justice, and trust in institutions, whether it's in business, government, or any other domain. Unless it's like $400,000,000, in which case you'd be stupid not to take it.
@ad absurdum I wouldn't relate food fights as being American at all, outside of Bluto Blutarsky’s antics in Animal House. We thought it was funny once in our HS cafeteria 1972… just once, trust me. What comes to mind for me is Caligula or early Medieval warriors during a celebratory bacchanal.
@Orcas Very cute theme! I'd have solved it in seven minutes, but for a typo I was blind to see. I hunted for five minutes with the answer pdf, with no success. My spouse walked by and saw it instantly: "lampchop" for LAMBCHOP.
It seems strange that multiple early comments complaining about the use of an AI clue have been deleted. It clearly bothered many readers, myself included. Are we not allowed to express our disappointment with a particular clue?
@Gregg rolled my eyes so hard at that clue!! put a sour end note on an otherwise very fun puzzle. don’t understand the need to include the “generative ai” detail. keep it!
@Gregg It's strange. My comment calling it snake oil remains. But the one where I congratulated the setter for pulling one over the NYT was deleted.
@Gregg I just came to the comments to see how those conversations were progressing and they’re all missing!? What an absurd decision to censor our comments in this way. In all seriousness, if this game is going to fly the New York Times flag, they should really be careful with how much they decide to interfere with a healthy and topical dialog like the AI debate that was building last night. Might make users question the credibility of more than just the games app.
Please don’t ever use the word “corn” in a crossword again, because of monoculture, GMO, pesticides, high-fructose syrups, anti-nutrients, Monsanto, dust-bowl, tariffs (maybe? I dunno), big agriculture, climate change emergency, fossil fuel consumption, pop-corn chocking hazards, possible allergies, I don’t like it, cultural appropriation, rhymes with por*, disappearance of family farms, offensive corn mazes, ties to cattle farming, and its use in bad jokes in crossword puzzles.
@JohnWM Plus, my feet hurt!
@JohnWM Now THAT, my friend, is a full-fledged, teeth gnashing rant! 👏
@JohnWM corn eradicated hunger. It is less demanding a crop than wheat, as far as good soil and fertility. It can stand drought and higher temperatures. It is easier to harvest and separate from the fodder and the cob than wheat is separated from the straw and the chaff. It can be grown and harvested with less effort if automation is lacking. (Which was the case 250 years ago.) But I concur with you on GMO.
@Françoise ...and you could make liquor out of it, which was easier to transport, and farmers could use it to barter for things they couldn't make for themselves. When Hamilton decided to tax whiskey to help pay off the war debt, there was an armed rebellion in western Pennsylvania, and President Washington had to send in the militia. It's curious that Washington went along with Hamilton's tax idea, since he was a distiller himself. Was that episode covered in the musical?
@JohnWM still here defending the AI clue! Impressive!
A FOODFIGHT all right, and fun. This was a welcome CAPER that offered some relief from a discouraging day. More and more I depend on puzzles to distract me from the general direction of current AFFAIRs. Thank you, Joe Rodini. I finished this one quickly, and sometimes a little ELATION can go a long way.
Adding my voice to the chorus of “”humorless””, “”hysterical”” anti-AI commenters. If you wanted to have a joke clue referencing some bad poetry, I’m sure a Bulwer-Lytton competitor could have gotten you a much more transcendently awful metaphor for eyes than ChatGPT.
Lovely puzzle, great theme! I'm genuinely shocked by the negative reaction to the AI poem for EYES... People seem to miss that gen AI didn't write the clue, it wrote the silly little poem in the clue - AI wouldn't write a clue like that. I thought it was funny! Nice work, thanks Joe!
@Alex I agree, thought it was funny. Never ceases to amaze me how worked up some solvers can get over what is an entertaining pastime.
@Alex people look for a reason to be outraged
@Alex AI cannot write poetry. That’s the problem.
Nice and easy for an evening when I didn’t have enough sleep the previous night. Cute theme.
I somehow thought that the answer to 26A was going to be BREADBOX, which would have fit the theme. But alas, no.
@CarolinaJessamine -- Oh, great find!
Great Tuesday, surprisingly tricky until it all fell into place at the last minute. I agree with Andrzej, people lambasting the AI clue completely missed the point - it was a clever mockery of AI poetry, purposefully banal and lifeless like all AI sludge.
Perfect. I did this while drinking a Milk-SHAKE, eating some beer BATTERED cod (my wife had the SMASH-burger with her Alabama SLAMMER), which left us both KO'd by the end of the evening. I do have a phobia about banana...spiders. Bananarachnophobia I think it's called. Horrible creatures. Fitting that this is going on during the Rome Open (tennis), to have Italy & Red Clay vertically next to each other. I'm toggling back to watch Sinner PEPPER his opponent with forehands...
@john ezra -- Possible theme answer (and a real thing!) that ties your post together: BANANA PEPPER.
A headache prevented me from flying through this puzzle. But, boy, could I see food flying everywhere in a cafeteria. What a mess! I'm happy to say I've never had to experience it firsthand. I do hope it's the students themselves who have to do the clean-up afterwards. I loved how the themers all broke down into two parts, one for FOOD and one for FIGHT. Very creative. Thank you, Mr. Rodini! ERIC Clapton immediately brought to mind this performance of his with Steve Winwood. A gem (and my favorite SW song)– <a href="https://youtu.be/8L82II1lNjo?si=66FnP6XccqJ3o5Vs" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/8L82II1lNjo?si=66FnP6XccqJ3o5Vs</a> And now, time for either some FOOD or an Ibuprofen or both...
@sotto voce Thank you for the song link. Happy Birthday to Mr. Winwood. (I suppose it's belated bd greetings, as it's now Tuesday in England.)
@sotto voce Hope your headache passes soon!
@sotto voce Clapton? I thought we'd cancelled him a couple years ago. Is he a thing again?
What's going on here? Hanson's post, timestamped four hours ago, is after HeathieJ's, which is timestamped three hours ago. You can't make this stuff up.
@sotto voce And Derek Trucks in there too!
@sotto voce, Thanks for this link. Hadn’t seen the video. This was my favorite song from the 8-track cartridge that I was always playing on my car stereo.
I hope the AI clue is not the beginning of the end for human puzzle creators. But hey, it’s so much easier and cheaper, right? Kind of like junk “food.” Unhealthy and habit-forming.
@Reader Just popping my head in to say that I doubt human constructors are going anywhere any time soon. Computers don't do wordplay or nuance well.
@Reader I really wouldn't worry too much about AI-generated crossword puzzles. The giant asteroid will get us soon enough. Or the Yellowstone super-volcano will. Or ...
@Reader I would encourage the NYT and ethical people everywhere to avoid using AI to generate anything. Including cutesy clues. Do not participate in the copyright infringement, intellectual property theft, and educational and environmental dmamage.
I found the AI clue to be so irrelevant to the spirit of the puzzle that I skipped over it and let the crosses fill it in. It doesn't bear noticing, let alone obsessing about. "AI poetry" is an oxymoron.
SV CAPER Scuttlebutt May 12, 22:30 It paned me to see it. My ante Sissy mist around one too many times with ole Capn Carl. Y'all gnu him - the celeb of marinas from Wacca Wache to Italy. Well, it's like this : Acai was carying on - a sordid affair with that pea-headed celeb. Igetit - man wants a lambchop now and again, but he oughta tighten that cornbelt and put any ideas to carouse onice. But how you gonna keep away once you sip that fruitpunch? Sure, he tied to deny it. Any cookie's gonna crumble, no matter the toon some bohunk whistles, and he went too farr. (Anti telling the truth!) Sissy caught him in flagrante with his bananaslug above board! She went plumb nuclear on that little cattoy like a Ray Harryhausen hydra! That feline foodfight left Lambchop inert on the deck. Carl tried to ease out of his berth, but once panic set in, he ran aground on some redclay. Boy, if he didn't gnash some craters in that bow. They ain't gonna rehire him. Noway. Not even a water taxi.
Super excited to hit my 500 day streak, and what a fun puzzle to do it on!! Thanks Joe!
Ironically, the two mis-fills I committed by not reading the clues before popping in what fit (I don’t usually do this but I, uh, may have been solving the puzzle while hiding my phone under the conference table at a really tedious meeting) were pork CHOP and rAMaDAn. A SMH, as the kids text, as far as juxtapositions go. That’s a silly couplet, yes, but just the other day ChatGPT replied to me in about 20 lines of dactylic hexameter, and it was as hilarious as it was brilliant. As a pretty invested early adopter, I can attest to the dizzying rate at which OpenAI’s brainchild is evolving. It’s awesome. I mean that in both its modern and archaic sense. Norway in the puzzle two days in a row! Yesterday was quiet for me despite it, but this morning I did get a text from an extended family member to commemorate it. It went something along the lines of, When was Utah last in the puzzle two days in a row? Okay, fair; maybe I should dial back on always asking my Norwegian great-aunts whether my home state’s caught up with their population yet. Fun puzzle, enjoyed it a lot. One of these days AMC will get clued as the name behind the Eagle, the no-no-no-it’s-a-tough-4WD-not-a-station-and-we-took-it-across-the-Henry-mountains-with-Sam-and-the-dogs-in-the-back-seat, and both my dad and my childhood photos will be validated. Until then, there’s those other AMCs. NYT puzzles: It’s what memories are made of, if only clue-adjacent sometimes. Cheers, everyone. Have a good Tuesday.
@Sam Lyons *4WD-not-a-station-wagon I salute those who proofread before hitting submit. Not doing so is an incurable tic—and a shameful one.
@Sam Lyons "That’s a silly couplet, yes, but just the other day ChatGPT replied to me in about 20 lines of dactylic hexameter, and it was as hilarious as it was brilliant." When ChatGPT-3 first hit the public, my friend Tom bade it "give me a recipe for croquembouche, written in the form of a Petrarchan sonnet." The result was a disaster, both culinary and poetical. Were the hexameters in English, Greek, or Latin?
@Sam Lyons Ramadan as being the time for a tailgate party is quite funny!
(This is in response to @Andzrej, but I don't trust the comments anymore) The sickly sweet bowl of (fruit) punch, with globs of neon-colored sherbert floating in it, may be quintessentially 1950's-American, but the drink originated in British India (perhaps)--one etymology derives it from "pañch," the Hindi word for five, referring to the five ingredients used: alcohol, fruit juice, water, sugar, spice; although this is questioned. But it was really after the Brits started importing rum from Jamaica that it really took off. In any case, the labor of an oppressed people, far away so that we don't have to think about them, was involved. Anyway, it's not Polish.
@Bill Bill, I tried twice to reply to you under my post. Both times it wouldn’t appear. Yes, ChatGPT rhymes with humor in excellent Epic Greek. After all, ChatGPT has “read” all epic poetry ever scanned into digital form. There was a time, too, when it entertained me one evening—alongside helping me pull up cites—with Law & Order Athens episodes for the 410 BC season, as written by Aristophanes. Definitely niche humor; definitely my cup of tea.
Did I miss where the constructor or editors said or evidence was found that the 72A entry was actually created by "generative A.I." and that the clue wasn't just a human joke?
Barry Ancona, No, I suspect you can read and understand things adequately to not have missed that. How interesting that people are so enraged about AI doing our writing, but can’t spot the (not very) subtle humour written by a human.
@Barry Ancona There's arguably even less support for the notion that it's a joke, as "Isn't it funny how A.I. can write cliche-ridden poetry?" would be a rather strangely dull attempt at a joke.
@Barry Ancona You didn't miss it, because it wasn't there to miss. What would the "joke" be? What are you talking about?
Hah! You had me at BANANA SLUG. More funner than most Tuesdays. In these parts, a lot of farmers went for SOYA in a big way instead of CORN. With buyers taking their business elsewhere, growers are pretty worried. On our drive to Central Arkansas last week we saw huge new silos...and fields that were not yet plowed and planted. Historically, when farmers suffer, things get shaky...
The time stamp bug has hidden a reply of mine to Mean Old Lady in Steve L's car-related memories thread below. Since it's a midly amusing story, I'm reposting it here. @Mean Old Lady Well, many cars were very small once, weren't they? Maybe not in the US though :) My maternal grandfather was something of a bigshot in Poland in the 1960s, so he owned what was considered a *very* fancy car back then - simply because it was Western - a VW Beetle. You can't possibly imagine the strings you had to pull to privately import a car from the West! Well, anyway, my mother, 16 at the time, drove that car a lot all over Warsaw, usually without her father's permission. Once, she was out on the town with the car when she realized it had got late. Her father was coming home and would notice the car missing from in front of their aparment building! She rushed out of wherever it was she was having fun only to find the Beetle blocked on both ends by other cars parked too close. Oh, no! What was she to do? She looked around and spotted a group of young soldiers walking down the street. She asked them for help, and... They lifted the car and carried it out onto the road :D. She arrived home just in time to avoid a row with her father, who apparently never bothered to check if the engine was suspicously hot :)
Now that I reposted it, the original post below showed up. Doh. MOL's post that inspired me to reply (to Steve's original post) is still only visible after clicking the time stamp... Working as intended :D
@Andrzej I have no problem with repetition, but I wanted to let you know that I can read your comment to MOL just fine. Sometimes, when I can't find the replies I have posted, I click on the "time stamp" of the original post, and all is revealed. (I don't know why this happens, and I don't know if others can see my comments.)
@The X-Phile At the time of my reposting - and I triplechecked everything - my reply to MOL (technically to Steve, with the @ manually changed by me to MOL) was visible via clicking the time stamp, but invisible otherwise. Once I reposted, the original instance of the post became visible without clicking the time stamp. There is so much wrong with how this board functions I just can't get my head around it.
Andrzej, But if you leave the Comments and return, the additional posts you revealed earlier will have vanished, and you will again need to click on a timestamp. And then you get kicked back to the Newest post after "returning." Definitely still in Beta. Or did they really want this mess?
@Andrzej - you simply must read up on Bertha Benz! A woman after your own mother’s heart, it seems.
@David Connell I might, tomorrow. Today I spent too much time posting here, and between that and work, I don't have time to read about Bertha :D
College girlfriend's dad had a yellow Gremin. It was nick named "the cheese" or "the BANANASLUG." And, LAMBCHOPs for dinner last night! Six degrees of Kevin Bacon. Thank you Joe, a fun Tuesday outing.
Add me to the crowd of those displeased with the clue referencing generative AI. I thought we were starting to realise that as cool and useful AI is, it doesn’t create unique and interesting art. Do the robots really need to do everything? Why are we even obliquely supporting AI doing the sorts of things we humans actually enjoy, taking away at the very least recognition for human artists? Ugh. Otherwise, a fun, breezy puzzle.
@Bryony Isn't it possible the constructor used that clue as a way to mock AI? There's not even any guarantee that the rhyme is what AI came up with. It could just as well be something the constructor himself created to deride AI.
the use of gen AI soured this otherwise enjoyable puzzle. i frankly don't care if it was just for one clue, or if the generated response was ham-fisted, we should continue to shame and refuse to endorse the inclusion of gen AI in modern society. fun little things like cursed DALL-E images paved the way to where we are now. i can't get with the whole 'cmaaahhhhnnn it's just one little clue relax' vibe anymore. with love from the friend who's too woke 🤷♂️
Is AI scarey? Sure, can be, depending on how it's used. Is it amazing? Yeah, especially if you know something about information processing, cognitive science, etc. Do most people want artists, musicians, photographers, etc. replaced with AI? I doubt it. Does including a clue that refers to A I in the new york times crossword puzzle advance the cause of A I and encourage the replacement of human workers? I'd bet my house and life savings that the answer is no.
@Renegator Just look at what Netflix studios is doing with script writing. Not to mention today's "music." Call it ai, call them algorithms, or whatever comes to mind. Financial advisors have been using "smart" software for quite some to manipulate our portfolios. "Help" desks, chat bots, yes, it's scary. For the generations to come who don't have a reference, it'll all be normal. That's what scares me.
This is not a complaint, at all, just a fascinated observation from overseas: this was one of the most American puzzles I have ever solved. The very concept of a food fight seems quintessentially American: it is alien to Polish culture, anyway. Most of our schools have cafeterias, of course, but nobody ever throws any food around. I can only imagine the outrage if somebody did. The concept of a punch bowl seems American, or non-Polish, anyway, to me, too. I keep seeing punch bowls in works of American pop culture, and I've never encountered one in the real world over here. Then there was the tailgate party on GAME DAY: pickup trucks are much less common here than in the US (in agriculture, tractors rule, and businesses love vans; almost all pickups in Poland belong to American-wannabe city folk who never use their trucks for work). If there are any parties on game days (and that would be a football, as in soccer, game here), they will be at bars or people's homes, not outside - unless the supporters organize a parade after a particularly important win. Then there featured not one but two defunct American car brands of AMC and REO. A baseball player. The CORN BELT. American through and through. I needed to look up the MLB player as the SW corner was arcanely strange to me and I needed more crosses to deal with it. I still don't understand why AIDE is supposed to be a personal shopper. In fact, I don't get what a personal shopper may be. Any help, please?
@Andrzej AIDE - person who acts as an assistant. Shopping aide, more commonly personal assistant, mught be in-person, online support for your home, food, fashion needs, pretty much anything. You'll probably find more punch bowls in second-hand stores than buffet tables. They were all the rage in 1950s, with odd concoctions made with floating rings of sherbet, dairy products and fizzy drinks. For a fun look at a defunct European car, se the Yugo in "Drowning Mona"
Ok, I looked up "personal shopper". So it's basically a shopping assistant. But... But... They are not a shopper, are they? They just assist the shopper? What a strange name...
@Whoa Nellie Thank you. I broke down and looked up personal shopper as you were replying to my question. That movie you mention has a 5,7/10 rating on IMDB. Doesn't that mean it's unwatchable? About Yugo. Before 1989 anything foreign was considered exotic in Poland. This included most other Eastern Bloc cars, like the Yugo. It turned heads on the street. It was such a surprise when I learned in the US Yugo is considered the worst car ever.
@Andrzej Absolutely loved your take on food fights in school cafeterias being quintessentially American. I am pretty sure food fights became a thing after the release of the popular film Animal House in 1978, which is, of course, a very American movie! Thanks for your comments. Truly enjoyed reading them.
@Andrzej FOOD FIGHTs are more the stuff of legend than reality. I've only seen them in movies, "Animal House" being the classic example, but there are many examples from classic "slapstick" comedy, like the Three Stooges. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqUmdAaGq-4" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqUmdAaGq-4</a> Still I think you're right that there is something quintessentially American in the concept: a symbol of extravagant prosperity (even if you're poor by American standards) that you have the "freedom" to use food as a weapon. And the battle is an outlet for aggression, but it's all in "fun". Anyone can attack anyone, and no one really gets hurt, except for the mess that some poor, minimum-wage worker has to clean up.
@Andrzej I never once saw a food fight in all the years I attended public school in the US. Maybe they're more common in summer camps. Also, my parents grew up in the Great Depression, and I inherited their attitudes about wasting food. If you make enough money and your time is valuable, and especially if you're famous enough to be mobbed in public, you might employ someone to do your shopping for you.
@The X-phile Yours is exactly my interpretation of a food fight. I started primary school in the 1980s, when few went hungry but equally few had an opportunity to eat to excess. People treated food seriously, and with a certain respect, even. I seem to remember a quite horrific short story we studied at school as 8-ish year olds. It was about a girl our age who discarded a perfectly fine piece of bread. The people gathered at night and drowned her in the sea. Negative attitudes against wasting food are still the norm here, even though levels of prosperity are high (soon to be higher on average than in the US, especially with your most recent decline in public services...) and poverty is uncommon. If a school allowed a food fight, all hell would break loose over the school letting kids be wasteful and simply rude.
@Andrzej These replies are classic examples of adults overthinking stuff. Yes, I was in a cafeteria food fight in early high school or late jr high. It was nothing more than kids being kids as summer break approached. That's it.
@Andrzej I think a food fight is a lot like making a grand gesture to ask the popular girl to go out with you. It happens only in movies. Kids who try to do it in real life quickly find that it doesn't work. Nobody I ever knew had the social influence to yell "food fight" and have anybody else join in, had they tried.
@Hanson But that's just the thing - I've never pariticipated in, had an opportunity to participiate, or even heard of a food fight over here. Kids throwing food around would cause a scandal and would never be dissmissed as "kids being kids". Even though my upbringing was not strict at all, all my life I've been taught not to waste food, at home and at school. Not letting wood go to waste is a major consideration for the government over here, and the press often write about it, too. For example, the city hall of my Warsaw district features a "Jadłodzielnia", a "Foodsharer" - essentially a huge fridge were anybody can leave food they don't need for others to take home.
@Thomas [Stream of consciousness below, beware] American movies though, right? I think my point still holds. I can't name a single Polish movie featuring a food fight (or a punch bowl :D) Polish people are not big on grand gestures, either, or expressing emotions outside the home, btw. In that respect we are more like the Finns than Americans ;) I find it borderline offensive when I sometimes overhear Americans discussing in public in Poland how rude everybody is, because people don't generally smile at each other in the street, shop assistants don't cheerfully greet customers and then also rudely refuse to prostrate themselves to thank the customer for their business. When I visited the US, I actually found it quite creepy how I was treated as a shopper or hotel guest. I kept thinking: "Yes, I know you work for tips, but do you really have to treat me like I'm some emir? I'm just a regular guy, and I respect you as a human - I don't want you to humiliate yourself for my sake!" Also, personally I've never made a grand gesture or appreciated anybody making one in the 44+ years of my life :D. A certain family member of mine is in a miserable marriage - he had proposed with pomp and circumstance though. I casually asked my future wife if she wanted to get married because it would make our finances and property management much simpler, and she agreed (well, duh :D). We have our problems but we are far from miserable.
I’ve never considered a food fight fun, but this Tuesday puzzle was and just about right for a Tuesday.
Fun puzzle. TIL BANANA SLUG. Sounds horrific, ordinary grey slugs are quite icky enough thank you. Fun fact: Alpaca fibre is a brilliant anti slug barrier. Wrap it around the base of the plant, it absorbs the slime so the critters can’t move. Not so fun fact, the dog thinks it’s a new toy for him and runs around the garden with it. My 30th birthday party ended in a FOOD FIGHT. We deliberately didn’t decorate our new home until after the celebrations. Scrubbing guac off the walls, not so much fun. Ahem. 47D is a normal Friday round these parts. All the cider farms run bars with street food and live music every Friday, April to October. The trick is to cover most of them on foot through the orchards, then try and remember which one we left the car in the next day.
@Helen Wright You Brits are....not all that formal and proper, after all, eh? LOL I see we should have visited Somerset instead of concentrating on the area around Salisbury!
In the late 60s and 70s, we were an AMC family. The family car was an Ambassador wagon at the beginning of that timeframe; we were living in Brooklyn when we got it. When we moved to the suburbs, my mother learned to drive, and she got a Javelin, which was a very sporty-looking full-size two-door car. Having another full-sized car, my father replaced the wagon with a little sporty Gremlin with the sharply sloping hatchback. Also a very distinctive-looking car. When I got my license, I bought a used Hornet. It was a small sedan and much more normal-looking than the Gremlin. After four years of college, I moved back to the city and junked the ready-to-die Hornet. The junkyard man wanted to give me $25; I held out for $50, saying at least I drove it in. I figured not having to tow it was worth the other $25 to him, and I was right. One impetus of my parents moving out of the city was that my dad had an office in the suburbs. One Saturday, my parents and my 3- or 4-year-old brother went up to the office in the wagon, and came back on the train. Why? In those days, the gearshifts didn't lock when you parked your car. My brother somehow got out of the office and into the car, which was parked on a hill, put the car in reverse, and wound up against a tree on the other side of the street. Luckily, he didn't get creamed by an oncoming car. What great memories of those old AMCs!
@Steve L Most people in the 1980s did not own a car. The most common auto was the Fiat 126p (a Polish-made, atrocious version of the Italian Fiat 126). Look it up online, now, please, for example here: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_126" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_126</a> So now that you know what car it was, imagine a family going on vacation in one, with luggage for 2 or 3 weeks of hiking. The car had no boot to speak of (the engine was in the back, and in the front there was a tiny compartment that could fit one small bag, maybe), so much of our stuff was in the cabin, with me squeezed between the bags and the metalwork of the car's body. Of course we had a roof rack, too. The 650 cc engine with its 20-ish BHP propelled us over uber dangerous Polish roads for hundreds of kilometers. In the mid 1980s my parents replaced the Fiat 126p with the East German Wartburg 353W: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wartburg_(marque" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wartburg_(marque</a>) It was much larger, but it broke down all the time, and the ventillation never worked well, so when the windows misted over, you had to drive without seeing anything. Often my father would have one hand on the wheel, and in the other he would hold a rag to wipe the inside of the windshield time after time. It smelled of motoroil and gasoline inside, which meant I was nauseous all the time on all our travels. The engine was more powerful (over 40 BP!!!!), and my mother drove the car like she was crazy. 140 kp/h across Warsaw? Why not? How am I still alive?
@Mean Old Lady Well, many cars were very small once, weren't they? Maybe not in the US though :) My maternal grandfather was something of a bigshot in Poland in the 1960s, so he owned what was considered a *very* fancy car back then - simply because it was Western - a VW Beetle. You can't possibly imagine the strings you had to pull to privately import a car from the West! Well, anyway, my mother, 16 at the time, drove that car a lot all over Warsaw, usually without her father's permission. Once, she was out on the town with the car when she realized it had got late. Her father was coming home and would notice the car missing from in front of their aparment building! She rushed out of wherever it was she was having fun only to find the Beetle blocked on both ends by other cars parked too close. Oh, no! What was she to do? She looked around and spotted a group of young soldiers walking down the street. She asked them for help, and... They lifted the car and carried it out onto the road :D. She arrived home just in time to avoid a row with her father, who apparently never bothered to check if the engine was suspicously hot :)
@Steve L I remember that the AMC Javelin was pretty cool. I had a neighbor who "collected" three of them, including the iconic red-white-and-blue one. ...and I read that the baby blue Pacer from "Wayne's World" was sold at auction for $70 grand.
@David Connell Polish roads are still some of the least safe in the EU, but much has improved over the decades. Speeding is less of an issue (almost everybody speeds, but by much less than before), driving on sidewalks is virtually non-existant, and recent changes to the law finally provided some real safety for pedestrians on crosswalks. But yeah, the 1990s were a crazy, lawless time in Poland, especially on the road. I'm sorry you had to experience that, and I am glad you survived!
@Steve L I wonder if my dad bought your $50 junker. Did it happen to be olive green? 😜 In 1980, my family of five moved from St. Paul, MN, to Northport, NY, in a blue AMC Sportabout with a Sears X-Cargo strapped to the top. Needing a second car, my dad (who commuted via bus in MN) bought an older model Hornet and drove it until it fell apart. He replaced it with a fluorescent yellow VW Bug, which was almost as embarrassing to this 8 yo as the puke green Hornet. (Eight years later my sisters and I would have killed to have that back...in theory.)
I, too, was startled by the clue for 72A. I thought maybe I was missing some memetic context for the clue. Maybe a post on Twitter or Bluesky about bad AI poetry had caught constructor Joe Rodini’s eye? Unfortunately I wasn’t able to find anything of that sort, which would serve only as a marginal excuse for an AI-generated clue. I suppose Joe is an early adopter of generative AI, that technology which hopes to do all the fun of thinking for us. If you believe, like me, that good crossword construction is an art form… (buckle in for this analogy, please…) seeing an AI-generated clue is like finding out a visual artist I trust uses AI to colorize their work. It’s like finding out a musician I respect uses AI to write their melodies. Notice I’m using the present tense, here. If Will Shortz and the rest of the team allow AI clues once, then it’s open season going forward. We’re “fortunate” that Joe included a disclaimer this time; next time we may not be so lucky. The creation of a good crossword is arcane enough that they could easily decide to use AI to speed up the process in the future. In fact they may already be doing it, and we’d never know. Next time that I see an AI-generated clue in the NYT crossword, I will cancel my sub. If the constructors (and editor) feel they can use this artificial shortcut past a human’s authentic and artistic act of creation, then I don’t feel the need to provide a human solver.
Matt H, The clue was not generated by AI. The clue used a reference to something (purportedly) generated by AI for humour, and likely for poking fun at the inanity of such poetry. Maybe yours, and all the horror-stricken posts here are likewise satire, and not truly bothered by humour in a clue “about” something. But I am not too hopeful…
What did Hank Snow say after the food fight? I’ve bean everywhere. (Just to clarify, I am not actually Hank Snow.)
As for Tom Swift: "I've been bulking up for the food fight," said Tom beefily.
@JohnWM Fun fact: Hank Snow was Canadian. Even funner fact for NYers: He was born in Brooklyn, Queens County, Nova Scotia. That last bit sounds so odd to a NYer.
It’s supposed to work this way. Really. Said no intelligent human, ever.
Steve, My younger daughter taught school (for one semester) in Brooklyn, Iowa. Her students were amused to learn that she too had gone to school in Brooklyn.
It's always impressive when a group of two-word answers like this have connections between the first and second word. Great theme and construction. Slightly too easy for Tuesday, but fantastic puzzle. 9/10
It’s GAME DAY in Golden State. By the end of the night I’m hoping the Warriors will have RALLIED and we can head back to Minnesota (via SFO) with the series tied at two and a best of three AFFAIR ready to BEGIN. If the swelling in CAP’N Curry’s hammy should ABATE, and he’s able to return for game five (to the ELATION of Dub Nation), our team will once again have the AIM required to hit from RANGES FARR beyond the arc. Lord knows we’ve MIST way too many threes without him. He has a way of putting defenders ON ICE and the whole team plays with considerably more EASE. Hard to win without our first and best OPTION. (At half time, my teeth are getting a good GNASH as the head ref is being ABUT. What else is GNU. No time to PANIC!)
@Striker I hope CAP’N Curry is floating in peaceful bliss or freezing his buns off at one of the combo flotation/cryo therapy spas in the area. There was one up the street from me when I lived in Oakland that the Warriors reportedly frequented. That company has locations in SF too, so they won't miss out now that they've moved.
Once I figured out that the theme required the answer to have a food item and a fighting term, I entered "BREADBOX" for 22A, "The Midwest states, agriculturally speaking." While of course it was wrong, that solution could have worked as another answer for this theme.
Wow, are these getting easier or am I getting better? Has someone below already commented on the crossing of SEE and EYES in the lower right corner? Well, yay BANANA SLUGs!! Those creatures are so cool. I love seeing them. On behalf of distant solvers I'm glad it was not clued as the mascot of UC Santa Cruz.
@Charlie No one likes a bragger Charlie
Adding to my previous comment, the AI clue is also clearly plagiarizing a real poem by civil rights activist and poet James Weldon Johnson. Here’s the full text for those curious: Her eyes, twin pools of mystic light, The blend of star-sheen and black night; O’er which, to sound their glamouring haze, A man might bend, and vainly gaze. Her eyes, twin pools so dark and deep, In which life’s ancient mysteries sleep; Wherein, to seek the quested goal, A man might plunge, and lose his soul.
Right. AI took that poem, changed twin to two, dropped the mystic and added a mirror. Case closed. Eyes right.
Smooth puzzle, but now I’ve got quite a hankering for a late night snack.