Being able to get LUDOVICOEINAUDI purely from crosses may be my proudest achievement in puzzle-solving yet.
@Francis I was so proud that it was one of the first clues I got (maybe because I'm a professional pianist ...), and it was probably the only reason I was able to last as long as I did in today's puzzle.
@Franci hi twin! Lol. There were so many tough clues but I somehow got this one
Not allowed to complain about Saturday puzzles... Not allowed to complain about Saturday puzzles..... Not allowed to complain about Saturday puzzles.........
@Eric Sure you are, but prepared to be told, "It's Saturday. What did you expect?"
@Eric Is complaining about not being allowed to complain better? Dunno. May as well go with the original complaint. Rant away! (Nicely)
Working all day at a fruit stand leaves me plum tuckered out. (But tonight I have a date!)
@Mike I hope your date goes peachy.
@Mike Going out with some gorgeous, tall tomato, right? Kind of an eyeful tower. Better turnip early and don't overdo it on the sauce. Tired as you are, you could just go SPLAT.
@Mike A date!? Well, orange you a lucky boy then? I hope the two of you make a nice pear. The trick is to find someone with a nice fig-ure who would make any mango ki-weak at the knees. Kumquat may, I hope you both live apple-y ever after!
@Mike. Everyday, I have a steady descent into something close to a mild paroxysm of laughter as I read your comment followed by the replies. Usually, when I read yours, it's a mild laugh with a smile and a groan, followed by a steady sinking into guffaws and groans as the puns pile up and get worse - as in funnier. Thank you cherry much Mike and everyone for this daily break!
Those spanner stacks are awesome! I got LUDOVICO EINAUDI totally on crosses and still thought it looked wrong. I wasn’t even sure where the first name ended and the last name began. I chuckled at “You and me both!” for PEOPLE. Congratulations, Alex, on a most impressive debut.
@Anita …which has the same number of letters—and three are the same—as COUPLE.
@Anita yeah, that OEI in the middle threw me. At first, I assumed the first name was LUDOVIC, which made the last name close to unpronounceable. Never heard of the guy.
@Anita I was determined to make "couple" fit. Thwarted!
@Anita I got the name solely on the crosses too. The only reason I didn't panic was because I knew the name was Italian and a few extra vowels and ending with an "i" might be okay. I eventually recognized the first name as an Italian name.
The puzzle utterly defeated me, especially the bottom part. I have never encountered two of the spanners before, I have no idea why that extra weird word (is that from some musical? I seem to remember it in that context - somebody tried to impress me by pronouncing it 30 years ago, if I remember correctly) solves to A ONE, and much of the clueing around there was not on my wavelength, at all. I had problems elsewhere, too. Of course I did not know the pianist, and his surname looks like a letter salad to me. There are surprisingly few Chinese restaurants in Poland, and none I know have HUNAN in their name. We have loads of East and South Asian restaurants, of course, but almost all of them are Indian, Thai or Vietnamese. I needed lookups all over the place. In the end I checked the puzzle and actually revealed several entries when it became obvious I would not be making any more progress on my own, even with assistance. I remembered TURNBULL, of all people. Why? How? No idea. I'm going to have an interesting day today. Friends are visiting us from another city with their two children - it will be the young ones' first trip to Warsaw. I'm not good with kids but I thought I'd work on that. My wife will stay at home with Lucyfer the puppy and I'll accompany the friends' family as they take a ride on the metro (a first for the kids), explore the toy museum and the Old Town. Who knows, maybe it will be fun.
@Andrzej Letter salad was my thought as I worked through the Italian pianist's name, myself! I hear you on that one big time!! The extra weird word is from the movie Mary Poppins. I didn't really get the AONE reference on my own. I hope you have a really wonderful time with your friends and their kids! I hope it'll be surprisingly enjoyable for you and I have no doubt it's going to be enjoyable for them!! Be sure to give us a report!! ❤️
@Andrzej dude...the idea that you gleefully tilt at the toughest english-language crossword on north america every weekend armed only with english and anglophone culture as your plan b...mindboggling and even a bit inspiring.
@Andrzej That weird word from a musical is known to most Americans who grew up in the '60s or later, as it became a memorable song, and the musical a classic children's movie ("Mary Poppins").
@Andrzej "Marry Poppins" was the first movie I ever saw in a movie theater, and I've seen it many times since. It's best seen as a child, but I'd recommend it to anyone. Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke are divine. I'm surprised that no one has yet included a link to this song, a song that is memorable because it includes that "weird word". (If you saw it as a child, you'd remember it for the rest of your life.) <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZNRzc3hWvE" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZNRzc3hWvE</a>
Our friends have just left. I had a nice time with them and the kids (6 ad 8) on the town. I expected I'd like the toy museum, but I found it even more interesting than I had thought it would be. At home the children adored Lucek the puppy. I was impressed how they respected his limits once we explained them: they played with him but left him alone when he went to his dog bed for a bit of a rest. Actually, this may have been the best experience of my life involving kids.
A nitpick: I don’t think, per Mary Poppins, that “supercalifragilisticexpialadocious” means A-One. It doesn’t mean anything—it’s just a word so long that saying it (especially loudly, so as to sound precocious) impresses and distracts the listener to somewhat magical effect. Hence, saying it to his abusive dad saves Bert’s aching nose, and another man uttering it to his girl led to his girl becoming his wife. “A-One,” despite its value as crossword fill, seems decidedly lacking by comparison.
@sbs in fairness, the last verse of the song does suggest the neologism can be used complimentarily: One night, I said it to me girl and now me girl's me wife Oh, and a lovely thing she is, too She's Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
@sbs I had the same quibble; I never thought the word was supposed to mean "really good," (the "super" at the beginning notwithstanding) and so I was thrown off for ages -- the only possibilities for _ON_ I could think of were "song" and then, surely-not-but-I-am-desperate, "long."
@sbs The clue is correct because the dictionary says so, not Disney: <a href="https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" target="_blank">https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/supercalifragilisticexpialidocious</a> PS I’ve read that although Mary Poppins popularized it, the word predated the nanny.
@sbs As a "Mary Poppins" lover, I (strongly!) disagree. In the movie, Mary has just won a horse race (riding a merry-go-round horse), and is told by the reporters that her feelings must be indescribable at the moment. She responds that there is a perfect word to describe what she is feeling. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZNRzc3hWvE" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZNRzc3hWvE</a>
A Saturday puzzle! Thanks, Alex. Come back soon.
Just a nitpick on 18A, having grown up in Louisiana and eaten and made my fair share of gumbo.... there aren't multiple types of okra wherein this would make sense as a plural. Okra is one ingredient in gumbo. Were you to list "gumbo ingredients" as the clue asks for, the answer would be along the lines of onion, green bell pepper, celery (Holy Trinity), along with shrimp, sausage, okra, spices, etc... That is all. :)
@Kathy Right? I may be Polish not American from Louisiana, but I've never encountered OKRA in the plural.
@Kathy I really say this in good humor and zero disrespect, but I have to laugh because when I acknowledged OKRA as a plural was the answer (which popped into my head my very first go round, but wasn't willing to put it in yet), I wondered how many comments in it was going to be before someone stated your nit!! 😂 Hey, on a somewhat related note, how did you feel about TATERSTATER the other day?
@Kathy Agreed, okra is not a countable noun. But I knew it would be the answer so I held my nose and entered it.(Nothing against okra. I like it! ) Nice puzzle overall but three brand names is three too many, plus product names and the obligatory sports, movie and cartoon figures, with superheroes thrown in. Oh well. Whatever my preferences, it was a nice job for a newbie.
@Kathy Gratuitous/dubious pluralization is a mainstay of crossword puzzles — that’s all that’s going on here :)
@Kathy Yeah that’s one of many clunky and inartful answers today. But you have to remember that the editors absolutely do not care about accuracy at all. No one says “okras?” Print it anyway!
@Kathy Duck Duck Go's AI Search Assist--who makes a mean gumbo, I've heard--says "There are many okra varieties to choose from, including Clemson Spineless, Emerald, Red Burgundy, Cow Horn, and Burmese. Other notable varieties are Perkins Long Pod, Cajun Delight, and Baby Bubba, each with unique characteristics and flavors." Wow! That's a lot of okras! (Whenever faced with plurals of mass or uncountable nouns, I imagine a conversation between a store manager and a stockboy/girl; here, perhaps in a garden shop, arranging seed packets on a display: "put the rutabagas on the top shelf, and the okras on the second.")
@Kathy That threw me, too. I'm not from the South, but I know that okra is a main ingredient. So I didn't know what to do with five blank spaces. I finally had to bite the bullet and put "OKRAS" when that turned out to be the only word that would fit after I started filling out the down answers. Thanks for confirming that it's a kludgy answer.
Oh, that bottom stack! Look at those three answers! PLUM TUCKERED OUT, well, therein lies beauty, idiosyncratic beauty that makes me proud of our language. AS LOOSE AS A GOOSE, so playful that it’s perfect even if geese aren’t always at eese (as it were), and WELL ITS NO WONDER, gorgeous and classy. Then on top, the composer/pianist with the sing-song beauteous vowel-rich name, who I had never heard of, and whose fill-in gave my brain the Saturday workout it craves, passed the Tussle Test – mwah! Not to mention CLOSED ECOSYSTEM, a lovely term I’ve come across, but not often, and how nice for it to stop by for a visit. All this encased in an elegant grid design never before seen in the Times puzzle, and despite its low word count and meager black square count – it’s cleanly filled! A proper Saturday, with color, fight, and delight. Amazing and exciting that it’s a debut, and more please, Alex. Please. Thank you for a sterling and splendid outing!
@Lewis Not you, too! Even my Super-Yankee DHubby knows better than PLUM.
That settles it--I'm going to learn French in order to do English crosswords. I guess the "explosion in the vowel factory" nature of French makes it irresistible to constructors.
@Francis Wasn’t the explosion in the vowel factory Italian this time?
@Francis Don't forget Spanish. And the occasional Latin.
@Francis I started Duolingo Spanish for the same reason ;)
@Francis my HS French (> 40 years ago) is good for most of the French xword fill I come across, but I’m mostly useless when it comes to even the simplest Spanish. I’m somewhere in the middle with Italian. 🤓
initial fear of a bout of snow blindness on a bleak tundra of too-uniform white soon gave way to a wonderful walk in a lush and cleverly landscaped garden. thank you, alex, for a delightful debut.
@Matt Took me a couple of tries, but I finally got your first paragraph. I was never very good with literature, metaphor, stuff like that.
@Matt oo I thought you were in Siberia or Alaska for a moment there. Very clever way to describe this puzzle.
@Matt And yet: The average number of blocks (black squares) in Saturday puzzles is 30.9. This puzzle has 29 blocks. There’s just something about the arrangement of the blocks that makes it look like there are many more white squares than usual.
This was one utterly beautiful puzzle. The layout, the three uninterrupted rows on top and another three uninterrupted rows below, really gorgeous. And the parallel stairsteps...genius. My deepest respect, Alex Jiang.
Too easy, too hard, never heard of so-and-so, should have been spelled with a B, naticks everywhere. Excellent representation of the breadth of the solving community today. I liked this one a lot – good job, Alex.
What beautiful triple stacks! Thanks for such a fun puzzle, Alex, and looking forward to seeing more from you in times ahead!
Well, IT'S NO WONDER that Alex's puzzle reads like someone who might be PLUM TUCKERED OUT after surviving a rigorous ACADEMIC PROGRAM, listening to compositions by LUDOVICO EINAUDI. Hopefully, with diploma in hand, they're now A-OKAY and AS LOOSE AS A GOOSE. I'm guessing they majored in plant biology and studied the CLOSED ECOSYSTEM of terraria, had their skin scratched by AWNS from wild grasses, and traipsed through woods looking for MIMOSA and PAWPAW trees. (I can't tell if RUTABAGA and OKRAS were also part of their field of study or their diet, and the RINDS aren't a helpful clue.) HOW ELSE do I know this? Other evidence of university life include the quiet coffee shop ALCOVE, which provided a space to be ALONE when cramming for finals, the late-night take-out orders of DOSAS, RAMEN, and HUNAN, the empty bags of TAKIS on the desk, the empty bottles of PORTER and LAGER on the couch, and the beat-up MAZDA (made in JAPAN) filled up with GAS when needed for field work.
Thank you, Alex, for your fantastic debut. What better way to describe a crossword puzzle than as a CLOSED ECOSYSTEM, where TOMES and TAKIS can co-exist. And thanks for the beautiful “Nuvole Bianchi” by L.O. Thought it might be fun for people to post who/what they like to listen to when working/writing. My fave legal brief-writing music for the past few years has been Hang Massive. I tune them in and the wisdom just flows out (if only that were true, but they do help me focus). <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rELbE3Lij8E" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rELbE3Lij8E</a>
@Puzzlemucker I used to listen a lot to Dire Straits when I was doing software development, a group I only discovered long after they'd disbanded. Something about their music just gave me energy and, strangely, something like peace. I must have half-listened to "Sailing to Philadelphia" twenty times before I realized it really *was* about the Mason-Dixon line, that it wasn't just a metaphor. An additional thing that stunned me about that song was I really, really loved the singer who sang the "Charlie Mason" part. I didn't know at the time it was one of my all time favorite singers, James Taylor. I was also very slow to appreciate that "Boom Like That" was about McDonalds. The first couple dozen times I heard it I was only alert to the groove of the song and the chord progression. So their music just bowled me over, over and over again.
@Puzzlemucker and Francis The score for The Princess Bride is inconceivably beautiful. Composed by Mark Knopfler.
@Puzzlemucker @Francis @ad absurdum You might appreciate Mary Spender’s videos discussing Dire Straits’ music. Here she is unpacking Sultans of Swing. <a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_g00S-a_0lo" target="_blank">https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_g00S-a_0lo</a>
@Puzzlemucker I like to listen to Philip Glass, especially Aguas da Amazonia (Portuguese spelling) or anything else by him. His overall, minimalist sound is much like Einaudi's.
@Puzzlemucker I can rarely ignore lyrics, so if I'm going to have to concentrate the background music has to be instrumental. Believe it or not I listened to a lot of Eno. The first time I encountered him in a puzzle I was so chuffed--I figured a lot of people wouldn't know him and would rely on crosses. I was wrong. ;)
I myself am PLUM (no B) TUCKERED OUT: Two trees, a dozen pints of jam, 3 gallons of juice, desserts galore, breakfasts ditto, foisted on neighbors, even some in the compost… and they still aren’t done!!!
haha, now I see I should donate some to Mike at his fruit stand.
With no real thanks to the help of Ludovico Einaudi, Malcolm Turnbull, or Elgin Baylor .. I actually really enjoyed this puzzle lol! There's a certain euphoria in getting a puzzle spanning answer and getting to type the whole thing in! I hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend!!
Here's a semi-serious comment on the plum/plumb controversy. The first time I dared comment here my point was that crosswords employ "fuzzy" logic. Imperfect logic. Logic which doesn't really adhere to the Formal Rules of Logic. In fact, we all employ fuzzy logic just to get through the day. Reading over (and completely missing) typos, determining what a person meant even if the syntax was odd, that sort of thing. Even our eyesight is fuzzy in the sense that much of what we think we are seeing is actually the brain filling in some of the field of vision. This speeds us up, whether we evolved as predator or prey. Sometimes we have to stretch our minds a bit into not entirely perfect situations. So, yes, there may be a loss of "accuracy" when something like this occurs, but the alternative would be to sacrifice this gorgeous puzzle for the sake of accuracy, something I'm glad the "accuracy-hating editors" we willing to accept. To paraphrase something Barry once wisely said, don't do brain surgery or proctology based on what you learn in crosswords. That's not what they are here for. My four cents (inflation).
@Francis Nothing like some cognitive psychology to spice things up. :-D
Is anyone else a little sick of the "Upgrade to Times Family" banner promotion over the crossword? I don't know about anyone else that does the crossword on their laptop, but the little banner makes it very hard to see both the clue at the top and the very bottom rows, meaning I'm constantly scrolling just because of the ad.
Shane, Everyone else has been praising it for the past week.
PLUMB tuckered out, not PLUM.
@Ann Young Yes, I agree. But “plum” is probably common enough to be considered an alternative spelling now. Like “woah” which bugs me to no end but has appeared in the puzzle.
So...here we have a distinctive and attractive grid--alluring and pristine. The epitome of Saturday Joy! ...This certainly put me through my paces, including generous use of the eraser on my FriXion pen. My cup of half-caf got cold, too. Wow, Alex! Time to update the dart board! Mostly I was muttering, "Oh....THAT kind of __" as I removed SAUCES, SCADS, HONDA, HBCU (desperation guess) and cudgeled my brain for a synonym for 'Tilt' that went - - UST. If not for Sir Walter Scott and his Ivanhoe, the Other Kind of Tilt might never have come to mind. And I'd like to enlighten everyone about the expression at 45A: It's PLUMB TUCKERED OUT. You want things to be PLUMB, square, and true when constructing. What would you do without a PLUMB BOB? No PLUMs were employed in the coining of this homely expression. Thank you for your attention in this matter.
@Mean Old Lady "Thank you for your attention in this matter." Slowly I turn....... On another note, congratulations on making it into the grid at 46D.
The best thing about this puzzle is that it introduced me to LUDOVICO EINAUDI, who's music is the perfect antidote for the news of the day.
I’ve said it before and I say it again, though technically correct, I can assure you, as a lifelong Okie, that no one who eats it say okras. The common plural is okra whether two pods or two bushels.
Random comments on today’s crossword- 24 Minutes without Autocheck 🤷♂️ guess I’m not nerdy enough to be on this forum 😅 WORD REVIEWS: 16A is one of those entries practically asking to be in a Saturday. It seems to have the perfect combo of a lot of vowels and relatively common consonants without overusing “S”. 22A is an anagram of 21A with an added letter, interestingly. 45A is a phrase more people should use. I don’t have a problem with the lack of a B, especially considering it’s already been used in such circumstances before. I had 28D as PAWNS for a while, which I was confident was correct. Spoiler alert- it isn’t. 28A is a lot easier to figure out when you don’t think it starts with a P! 49- and 50A weren’t exactly common phrases, but they were pretty self-explanatory with the other cross-references. Seeing 11D in a Saturday was cool, considering it’s a very inconvenient word to incorporate, especially directly off of a three stack. What on earth is a 34D, by the way?! 😭 And finally, say your goodbyes to 33D, because I highly doubt that niche answer will ever appear again 😅 Great puzzle, Jiang. I hope to see more Saturdays that maintain the excitement this one gave me. And this might sadly be my fastest Saturday solve with no auto check.
@Peter A PAWPAW is a fruit designed purely to make people put "banana" into crossword puzzles.
@Peter I had 'pawns' for far too long as well. Would never have got RANKS without the crosses. I grew up eating PAWPAW in Nigeria and was confused when I moved to the UK and no one knew what I was talking about. The simplest way of describing is it's like a softer, yellower papaya. We also call it OKRo, not OKRA. That was another culture clashing cause of a culinary conundrum when I went searching for it in the supermarket one day.
@Peter A lot of times when I’m asked where I parked the car, I say ‘Way out yonder in the paw paw patch’. Today’s puzzle made me wonder where I got that expression, and I found this <a href="https://youtu.be/vsGJm10nJ6w?si=RE9hJEfS1q7zCgm5" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/vsGJm10nJ6w?si=RE9hJEfS1q7zCgm5</a>
@Peter Spoilers are OK here for the day’s crossword, although not for the other games like Wordle and Connections. So when you write a lengthy post with just clue numbers, it becomes very tedious to keep going back and forth to find what you’re referring to. Please consider saying the answer you mean instead of the clue number.
@Peter, I hope Topekans aren’t going away. I don’t know any, but geez. Now if the answer had been COLUMBUS … 😄
I don't think I've ever seen it spelled out, but I've always heard PLUM TUCKERED OUT spelled without the B--I don't think I've ever imagined it any other way. Interesting how our mileages vary. . . .
@Liz B To my ear PLUM and PLUMb are pronounced almost identically, so if you've only heard the phrase, it would be hard to detect the difference.
@Liz B I agree. It’s always been a “down home” colloquial phrase in my experience, where spelling is often simplified.
Anyone who wonders where the idiom "loose as a goose" comes from only needs look at the ground that a flock has been walking about on for about a minute.
@Francis These constructors have a talent for evoking memories. Loose as a goose reminded me of when I rode in the car with my parents and we would see geese in a straight line crossing the streets. I fell in love with those silly birds. Supercalif... made me think of the von Trapps.
Caitlin says: 23D/28D. The clue at 23D, [Who you would be in France?], solves to VOUS, but “êtes” would be valid here (and was my first guess). I don’t think that clue can solve to “êtes,” since that means “are” when used with VOUS. You would not be “êtes” in France.
@Steve L Wait, doesn't êtes mean 'are', as in vous êtes (you are)
@Steve L It applies the "would" to "be" rather than "you".
@Steve L you are correct. You = tu or vous "You would be" = tu serais or vous seriez "You are" = tu es or vous êtes
@Steve L Agreed, I don’t think there is any way to parse that clue such that “êtes” would have works as an answer. I could perhaps see it if you were to substitute “how” for “who”…
Oh right! LUDOVICO EiNADO a lot of piano practice together in our own little CLOSEDECOSYSTEM, sipping MIMOSAs, reading TOMES, and trying to find solutions to puzzles. He's very smart, though I don't TAKIS word on everything, but he does know a lot. For instance did you know that a TOPE KAN be a DOME-shaped monument, usually for Buddhist relics?
@dutchiris, How do you do it? I am in awe of you! 🫢
@dutchiris Knock-knock! Hello, Mike? Is that you in there? Why are you disguised as Iris?
I just started with the NY TIMES. How do I know if I actually solved the puzzle? I finally did reveal and it highlighted “rbis” which is correct. I’m still getting used to these puzzles. I thought I’d never even get close to finishing any NY Times crossword but this one was a doozy! It’s an excellent first time puzzle for your debut. It took me almost 3 hours but it was very enjoyable and challenging. I rewrote the bottom 2 answers twice almost completely because they were challenging but solvable. That’s the very best ones. Thank you and Many Blessings
@Melissa Wolfenstein You’ve solved the puzzle when it congratulates you with a pop-up! Though usually, to be honest, the pop-up says “Nearly there” and then I have to dejectedly comb through my work to find the error. I commend you for working on this one while being new here. It was tough!
@Melissa Wolfenstein Welcome!! And congratulations on working it through!! Saturdays are always the toughest, or they're supposed to be, and today was definitely not easy. If you didn't use any of the built-in helps, like reveal or check, when you put the last square in, you're going to get either a gold star or a message telling you that you're nearly there but that something is amiss. If you used a reveal or a check on the puzzle, when you finish correctly, you'll get a blue star. If you start to care about streaks, only gold stars count toward a streak. Does this help?
@Melissa Wolfenstein Getting to the finish line on this puzzle if you're not doing NYT crosswords is a stunning accomplishment. Did you do other publications' crosswords before this?
@Melissa Wolfenstein Congrats! If you didn’t sit continuously for 3 hours then section 326.2a, subsection ii in the code for filing xword time returns states that you can deduct all the time where you put the phone down to do chores.
PPOJ (Paolo Pasco On Jeopardy) report – day 3. Sporting a bow tie and his engaging smile, Crosslandia behemoth Paolo handily won his third Jeopardy match yesterday, leading and building that lead throughout, thanks to his wide range of knowledge. His secret weapon may be quickness in his buzzer technique, but time will tell. In “I Lost On Jeopardy” (1984), Weird Al’s listing of the Jeopardy prizes was “a twenty-volume set of the Encyclopedia International, a case of Turtle Wax, and a year's supply of Rice-a-Roni, the San Francisco treat”. In contrast, Pasco’s winnings to date -- $79,741. Go Paolo!
@Lewis Pablo gets to come back tomorrow, but they stopped giving away lousy copies of their home game long ago.
@Lewis I couldn't resist: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvUZijEuNDQ&list=RDBvUZijEuNDQ&start_radio=1" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvUZijEuNDQ&list=RDBvUZijEuNDQ&start_radio=1</a>
@Lewis Thanks for these updates. Jeopardy is on at 7 here and I always manage to doze off briefly during Double Jeopardy and wake up when it's over with no idea who won.
Beautiful Saturday puzzle; the right level of challenging. Gorgeous grid; beautiful triple spanners at the top and bottom, with one notable exception: LUDOVICO EINAUDI was completely unknown to me, as I assume it was for almost every solver, but it was quite possible to get from the crosses. Completely fair game for a Saturday. Similarly, with TURNBULL, although that was possible to guess with a couple of crosses. Fortunately, CULKIN and ELGIN were gimmes for me. (I'm surprised there hasn't been more noise from the proper noun complainers.) On the PLUM vs. PLUMb debate, I'm ashamed to say that I'd never thought about it before. I had assumed that it was PLUM without thinking, but clearly PLUMb should be correct. Chalk it up to misspellings becoming alternate spellings when enough people use it that way. Ah, the descriptive vs. prescriptive problem of language! Nit du jour (there's always got to be a nit): A-ONE and A-OKAY in the same puzzle? It's just not right. Ah, let it go, X. Thanks, Alex Jiang. Tremendous debut! Is it "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious"? I don't know about that, but it's definitely A-ONE in my book!
"(I'm surprised there hasn't been more noise from the proper noun complainers.)" The X-Phile, They haven't finished the puzzle yet.
@The X-Phile But... I complained about them below? I'm feeling ignored now! 😢
@The X-Phile I have to say, I'm totally with you on the PLUMb issue. I'd really never thought about it.... I don't think I've ever had a reason to writte it before so when it was clear that's what it was, it was a familiar saying, so I just really didn't worry about whether it was to B or not to B... Sometimes my ignorance is bliss! 😏
Too many naticks for my taste. ELGIN/TAKIS? TURNBULL/AWNS? I ran aground in that section and finally looked up ELGIN and TURNBULL. The rest of the puzzle was fairly straightforward, though it took me a little while to correct SAUCES to DANCES and COUPLE to PEOPLE. I’m surprised anyone (including Caitlin) would have guessed ROOKS, since there are only two per side and therefore they do not comprise an octet. The obvious answer is PAWNS—which is, of course, incorrect.
Wes, As noted earlier by others, people not familiar with chess might have guessed rooks. Speaking of not being familiar, are you very new to the crossword? TAKI (singular) has appeared here twice this year. AWNS is a crossword staple but it has not been seen lately, but what other letter did you consider for the P.M. when you had TUR_BULL? Glad you (re)moved your PAWNS!
@Wes "Pawns" was one of my first entries, and I hung onto it for a very long time. I wasn't familiar with RANKS. Filing that away along with AWNS!
@Wes My husband and I keep meeting to take up chess, but we haven't yet. The fact that I knew rooks and pawns existed in the game of chess made them both fair game for me. Once I entered rogue, I entered rooks. I only knew that it wouldn't be king since I was certain there would be only one per side of a king. Fixed it it on the crossings!
Are you and me a couple now? No, I'm seeing other PEOPLE. We're in prime PAWPAW picking season as it happens; My sister and I picked a few pecks last week at Elk Neck State Park, for preserves. Anyway, nice to see the "redneck mango" finally got spelled correctly. That didn't stop me from putting in PApaya first, though. On the subject of fruit, PLUM is "straight up" wrong, Loved the Saturday stackers, even the unknown pianist.
@Grant Confidently entering couple. Probably cost me 20 minutes. I believe you are of East Asian descent. I had durian. Proud of myself for entering a “Saturday level” answer. Until I wasn’t…
@Grant I knew there was something niggling at me about "PLUM"! Thank you.
@Grant does Elk Neck still have problems with tree poachers going after the pawpaw wood?
Tough puzzle especially the bottom half as a couple of the spanners aren't common British English idioms. However, I always smile when I hear the clue to 43A to think of one of the few newspaper headlines to have its own Wikipedia page: "Super Caley go ballistic, Celtic are atrocious", referring to a famous soccer match upset
How embarrassing for me to have to reveal most of the letters in the Italian composers name before I realized it was the same music I have set as my digital alarm music! Overthinking obscures the obvious!
What a nice puzzle! (What a very not nice comment section format user experience! Just, again, lost my comment while I was trying to copy it in case I lost it. Ughhhh!!!) Okay, refocusing, the puzzle was both AONE and AOKAY in my book! Very fun!! Not easy for me but I came in just faster than average, which surprised me. I am shocked at the current average mean of 16:10. 🤯 It's just hard for me to believe but it's also AOKAY because I enjoyed doing it! Amazed at getting LUDOVICOEINAUDI. Thank you, crosses!! The top three stackers were the toughest for me. Really wanted ACADEMIC to be graduat___. And I couldn't decide, being not astronomically inclined, if comets or Jupiter were GAS or ICE. Proud of getting ADENINE on only one cross... it wasn't immediate but I knew it was in my previously mentioned bingo ball spinner cage thingy that is my brain, and sure enough... out it popped! Lots of this before thats (BEhave before BEgood, RookS before RANKS, bAnAna before PAWPAW, and I had ALONE in and out so many times it was PLUMTUCKERED. Was glad to put it back in because it was one of my few first go-through answers. Anyhow, a fun challenge!!
@HeathieJ We've had amazingly different experiences today 🤣. Example: ACADEMIC (with a fee crosses) was one of my few gimmes today, and I needed to look up ADENINE, a word I can't recall ever encountering. "Nice" is the last word I would use to describe this puzzle. Horrifying? Impenetrable? Humbling? Whatever the exact opposite of "nice" is? Those would all be better fits for me 🤣
Well done, Alex! Ludovico Einaudi has got to be one of the most puzzle-ready, 15-letter spanners since Arrivederci, Roma. [Dean Martin song] Bravo!
I feel like I just went to the archives and picked a Saturday from 20 years ago. This was the hardest puzzle I can remember doing this year. It was so hard that I got mad and refused to hit check puzzle after 40 minutes. 1 hour and 15 minute solve. Of course, when I finally finished the grid, I had one or more cells wrong. Of course it had to the be the vowel salad composer. Right? Nope. It was DIANe/MIMOSe. I only know mimosa as a breakfast elixir after a night of “7% solutioning” I liked the puzzle because it humbled me so much. And I can’t hate on the composer since he was the inspiration of the puzzle, based on constructor notes. But if I hadn’t read the notes, I’d be hating on that spanner. Letter salad. Fine. Letter salad on a Saturday with tough clueing on the crosses. There is zero doubt this kid goes to university of Chicago. “Where fun goes to die”. Haha. This puzzle wasn’t fun. But it was a nice change of pace. Literally and figuratively. Nice job bro.
@Weak Dude, that was a *Thursday* puzzle.
Judging from comments here (and my own experience), I'm betting that LUDOVICO EINAUDI is getting a major bump in the number of listens his songs get on YouTube and Spotify. I hope Alex Jiang gets a piece of the action!
I forgot to add in my rewritten comment, when I first looked at the blank grid... I felt a little shiver of fear. I think it is quite a beautifully intimidating grid!! I appreciated that right off the bat!! Not that I know anything intelligent about grid designs, but that was my first feeling.
@HeathieJ I felt the same way, making the solve all the more rewarding.
@HeathieJ, And there certainly were plenty of Mister X! (That’s become my new favorite term! 😅)
Of course being a Warner Brothers cartoon Kid i knew right away who Petunia Pig was stepping out with. And I got PLUM TUCKERED OUT in a burst of inspiration. AWNS was new to me and I had to look twice. LAGER and PORTER are not alternatives to beer they are alternate Names for kinds of beer. But the crossings were kind. ("I have always depended on the kindness of crossings") I wanted the chess octet to be PAWNS and hated to give it up. and Supercalifi - etc etc etc means A ONE, well it means whatever you want it to mean. So OK Fun solve for a Saturday. Congrats to the setter hope to see more from him
@Jim in Forest Hills Grains have particularly impressive and prominent AWNS... I am drying some stalks right now (thanks to the bird-feeder and the sloppiness of the patrons.)
@Jim in Forest Hills -- "I have always depended on the kindness of crossings" -- "Hah!"
@Jim in Forest Hills Around these parts, Yuengling Brewery is best known for their LAGER, but they also produce a PORTER, as an alternative.
On my walk this morning, I listened to 'The Atlantic's Out Loud' podcast. The episode is titled 'The Ghost of Mrs. Murasaki". Mrs. Murakami wrote the 'The Tale of Genji' more than one thousand years ago. So I immediately knew the answer to the clue was JAPAN. The podcast is an interesting story I would recommend. Truly a piece of ancient history.
Top half like buttah...Botton half like muddah. Great Saturday debut, Alex!
A fantastic debut and a fun, educational one for me. It came in fits and starts. Stymied a little at the top until some of the shorter answers started to fill me in (glad I read Sherlock Holmes and watched “Succession”, and have some astronomical and biological interests). The middle was pretty smooth, and the SE, but as Caitlin pointed out getting TUCKEREDOUT and ITSNOWONDER didn’t automatically solve the SW and having PAPAYA at first didn’t help (but thanks Disney and “The Bear Necessities” for ultimately triggering it for me.) Loved the clue for PEOPLE and TIL Mary Poppins didn’t invent that word. Finally I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who had to run through vowels for the DOSA and LUDOVICO cross (after finally correcting ETOI to ATOI); no worries, an educational Natick is always appreciated on a Saturday.
@SP Cheers! 🍺 My last error correction was eTOI to ATOI. By the way, I want to apologize one last time about blowing up at what was a funny comment about a month ago on a Saturday. Every post you've made since makes me realize what a rhymes-with-stick I was being. I hope when I say that I was in a mysteriously awful mood you'll take it an explanation, but by no means an excuse.
@SP Wait, what? I didn't understand Caitlin to mean that SUPERCAL... was used by Lloyds. That's where A-ONE comes from, no? The other word is a modern invention.
Today I Learned that the title, "The Seven-Per-Cent Solution," refers to a chemical solution in which the solute (cocaine) is at 7%. I always thought it referred to the solution of a puzzle!
@Bob There’s a 1974 novel called The Seven-Per-C ent Solution by Nicholas Meyer in which Sherlock Holmes kicks his cocaine addiction with the help of Sigmund Freud. It was made into a pretty good movie with Nicol Williamson as Holmes and Alan Arkin as Freud. I haven’t read the novel or seen the movie in 50 years, but COCAINE was a gimme.
@Bob hey fellow Bob. I don't think I ever read the book or saw the film, but Stephen Sondheim did write a song for the latter which I've always found pretty amusing, and was the reason I knew enough about the film to fill in COCAINE early on. I went looking for a particular recording to link, and was surprised to find this version by Jinkx Monsoon. Got a kick out of it, but YMMV. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jWa-LANX24" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jWa-LANX24</a>
Quite a few stumpers, but I got lucky and made it through this Saturday fairly quickly. My last entry was the A in A ONE, which I input with crossed fingers because there were a handful of letters I wasn't entirely confident in. Luck was on my side tonight.
That was a doozy of a Saturday grid! 😅 What a workout. On my first pass I had DIANA, TAKIS, PORKY and PLUM TUCKERED OUT (although I started it as PLUMb but backed out b once I was one letter short). Started comet as gas until I got to Jupiter, then switched the answer to ICE for comet and FAS for Jupiter. Tried pAwns, then RooKS and finally RANKS. Final correction was eTOI to ATOI. Really tough one for me, which made the gold star all the more fulfilling 🤩 Thank you, Alex and congrats on the debut.
@Jacqui J make that GAS for Jupiter 🤪
@Jacqui J I was so annoyed with myself that I couldn't think of Diana on the first pass... All I could think of was Linda Carter, of course my first introduction to Wonder Woman... I knew that was the actress though, so I waited and got Diana once I got one cross, but I feel like that was a little disrespectful of me . 😏
While technically correct, I wouldn't say a PORTER and a LAGER were alternatives to each other. I know there are dark lagers, but most of the stuff is light and milder than a porter which was anecdotally designed to be a meal in a bottle and even party of the recovery for new mothers
@Søren Thustrup I am sooo glad I never had to give birth to get a beer.
N.B. "Alternative" does not mean "equivalent."
@Søren Thustrup Yes. In Ireland, many years ago, I was told that Guiness Stout (even heavier than a porter) is a meal in a bottle.