I’m here on a weekend to express my astonishment at GENUS AND SPECIES, because I don’t think I’ve ever been tripped up so hard by a conjunction.
@Sam Corbin The bees were the best ones! I love that clue and answer. I really was looking for HOMINID or something similar.
Sam Corbin, Irony on the Northern grid. My astonishment stemmed from the upstairs neighbor of the answer that Y’ALL were Nothnagled by. Thought for certain that 1a was waffle irons. So, not an appliance but a real live homo sapien serving up those the delightful cakes.
For me, END was the problem, not AND. It was AND that got me to END. In fact, END is so "seldom-used" a key that I can't find it on my keyboard. If I could find it, I wouldn't have the slightest idea what to do with it.
@Sam Corbin Yes! You said that better than I ever could.
@Sam Corbin Me too. Only got the first part by getting the surrounding words -- even there, I though for sure 14-D would be 'noway' lol
The "END" key moves the text cursor to the end of the current line. I use it often. Ctrl-END moves the cursor to the end of your document (usually). The HOME key does the opposite, moves the cursor to the start of a line, or the top of the document with CTRL. Also, I just found a bug in the app and website, is there someone I can email about that? Basically, in the archive, it mistakenly displays puzzles you've started (clicked on the PLAY button) but haven't entered any text into as un-started. They will also count against you in your "Solve Rate" in the statistics.
It's so weird when you hear an obscure word and it ends up in the NYT crossword the next day. Yesterday, I was randomly watching a YouTube video of Andy Samburg being interviewed by Sesame Street's Bert, and Bert asked him, "If you could wear a sock from any time period, what sock would that be?" After Andy answered the modern sock, Bert said his choice would be the "fifth century PUTTEES." Then he spelled it! Thanks, Bert!
@Jim Mind you, Bert seems to have been off by about 15 centuries, and they're not exactly socks according to today's puzzle. But still pretty good for a Muppet
@Jim I just saw that recently too! I think it popped up after watching the old Jim Henson "King of Eight" video. Unfortunately for me, PUTTEES didn't stick.
@Jim Suppose you're thinkin' about a plate o' shrimp.
@Jim Once again life imitates "Slumdog Millionaire", or perhaps it's the other way 'round.
"We should probably put another name before the species." "Oh, you're a genus!" (I told my family about this one.)
@Mike Mike, you're a class act. You just knock out the puns and phylum away...
Mike, C’mon, names are just what we call ‘em.
@Mike When you have good ones like this, I phylum away in chronological order.
@JohnWM unsapiens Got it the first try, even.
In what kingdom do you people live?!!!
@Mike Oaky dokey. Would this be another use for nee?
Did this puzzle feel fresh? That is, did you feel like you ran into many answers you’ve never seen before? Well it is. Amazingly is. This puzzle has eight answers of 11 letters or more, and every one is a NYT answer debut. That includes all six answers of the top and bottom stacks and those two long downs at 7D and 19D. Wow! There are actually 11 debuts. Not all have zing, but, IMO, many do, such as MACARONI SALAD, ROPE INTO, WAFFLE MAKER, and GOOD SPELLERS. New answers and their clues remove the easy gets that come from having seen them before in puzzles. They happify the brain by giving it new territory to conquer. Mark has been making Times puzzles for 42 years, and it’s clear he’s sharp as ever, crafting this uber-low 62-worder with plenty of GRIT and yes, pulsing with freshness. BTW, I love those photo-album corners! Mark, I found your puzzle satisfying and richly punctuated with pleasurable moments. Thank you, and don’t wait so long, please, before your next one!
@Lewis, I know how much you like to find patterns: I particularly liked GENUS_AND_SPECIES balanced by RETIRE_THE_SIDE (with, I suppose, READY_TO_GO in the median.)
I found this one delightful from start to finish. Despite the many decades of puzzles I’ve worked on I still get flustered when I see a lot of open white space and long answer stacks in the grid, even though experience has taught me that all it takes is enough crosses or good guesses to get one or two of the long entries and then there is enough information to make the puzzle unfold like a rose. Sure enough, I got RETIRETHESIDE and TOENAILSCISSORS and was able to build the puzzle from the bottom up — until I got to the top third that is. Up top, I had screwed myself royally by filling in COFFEECAKES (based on the K from KAEL) for 1A. My ignorance of all things car-related also led to my entering El Dorado, instead of ELCAMINO (Chevy, Cadillac what’s the diff, they both begin with C). Apologies to our resident car buff Grant for this bit of automotive ignorance. Having sorted that out I tried coffee maker before finally stumbling on WAFFLEMAKER and was able to cruise to a reasonable Saturday finish. Favorite entry: GOODSPELLERS I got DAB by recalling old Brylcreem ads, “A little dab’ll do ya.”
@Marshall Walthew Yes, and you'll look so debonair.
@Marshall Walthew I like to think I'm relatively unaffected by advertising, but "A little dab'll do ya" came to my mind immediately. Wouldn't it be funny if down the line we find that advertising takes an average of 25 IQ points off of everyone, by filling their neural networks with stupid slogans, and mindless mush, and asinine alliterations?
COFFEEMAKER stymied me for a good long time
@Marshall Walthew "unfold like a rose"? chef's kiss.
Good puzzle. First Saturday I've gotten in six weeks. Last square I got was STUPA/PUTTEES cause I haven't heard of either of those and they phonetically work with any vowel.
@Chris Somehow I knew both of them, but mistrusted STUPA, an early fill, because I couldn't remember how I knew it. PUTTEES are those canvas things that cover the bottom of pants and the tops of boots. Hey, they wore them all the time in WWI, remember?
@Chris I knew that square needed a vowel, but I also had a blank where KAEL met SOLANGE (which I knew needed a consonant). Went through a few dozen combos but finally got gold.
@Chris Same here! U was my last vowel guess
A nice Saturday puzzle: fun, bright, and fresh. When your top 2 rows are waffle maker and macaroni salad, it's time to get comfy and enjoy the ride 😄
[The state a boxer may be in when the fight is over] STUPOR [The state Rocky Balboa may be in when the fight is over] STUPA
The ROSY BOA instantly made me think of this adorable moment with Zohran Mamdani and a little boy telling of his golden snake: <a href="https://youtu.be/pgxVmTADJPY" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/pgxVmTADJPY</a>
What a fine Saturday. Nicely stacked, white as the noonday sun over the New Mexico desert, and with interesting fill to boot. Thanks, Mark.
@Sam Lyons What a perfectly accurate yet succinct review 👌
@Sam Lyons Glad to see you back here. Hope everything's OK. Beginning Chapter VI. Time is starting to speed up. Hans has declared, (and consummated? Settembrini speaks of "one night of evil"), his true love for Claudia. She has left to rejoin her husband in Dagestan. Naphta has yet to appear. I haven't found anyone but Settembrini that thinks about the state of the world. Ironically he thinks that "Asiatic" Vienna should be crushed, yet the war will have his Italy fighting alongside Germany and Austria-Hungary.
Bottom half warm and welcoming and top half icy and inhospitable (but in a clever, griddy way). Always an invigoratingly disorienting experience when a puzzle has such strikingly divergent levels of geographic difficulty. I wonder how often it's by design.
@Matt My experience also. Apart from the PUTTEES / STUPA cross, the bottom half to 2/3 of the puzzle went quite smoothly for a Saturday. The upper 1/3 was a more typical Saturday grind for me. Nevertheless, I was successful and my streak stays alive. Edging ever closer to my personal best.
@Matt, that was my experience also. Got the bottom half relatively quickly, and then got hung up on a few at the top. I got WAFFLE… right away, thanks to the crossing FASTS, FRAY and LON, but couldn’t for the life of me think of what the second part would be (stack?). MAKER didn’t come to me till quite late, because I call them waffle irons (and I didn’t know Paula, the former critic). That, combined with a few holes remaining in the bottom (PUTTEES/STUPA, for one), and not knowing the baseball reference at 42A (I had RETIREONESIDE for too long) led to a great Saturday solve!
Yikes that was a toughie! It went pretty quickly once I dug in, but it was still hard to complete for me. Cera was of course the starting gimme, but every last answer felt hard-won. Oh, not El Dorado and Lea Salonga? Close quarters, close at hand, close something. Not toenail clippers? So very many dead ends. I'm sure we will hear how Naticky Stupa and Puttees was, because it durn sure was! A real workout for me. Surprised XWStats only has it as "Hard" at this writing...
B, Hand up for wanting clippers before SCISSORS.
Were this a puzzle, without cross in a STUPOR I'd have been lost. Yet every ODDITY I met shared A SPOT with some sure bet. So, with GRIT, luck and ACUITY t'was NARY a fatal ODDITY! So, to those in the MIRE or on the FRAY, BLESS Y'ALL and have a lovely day.
I guarantee that most of the complaints today will be the PUTTEES/STUPA cross.
@Steve L I just came to complain about it (or at least note it as maybe a touch Naticky).
@Steve L It was my last square for sure, but my first guess in that square. It's the vowel that made the sense. I thought for a while it might be POT TEAS. I had a vision of British soldiers use their leggings to steep tea in the trenches
@Steve L It was the last square I got but it had to be a vowel so all I had to do was guess all vowels. NE was the hard area for me.
@Steve L Not me - I dug PUTTEES out of the vault. I read a lot of Victorian literature when I was a kid and the oddest words stuck. My sore point was the NW corner: GENUS AND SPECIES completely defeated me, I can't even visualize an END key on a PC keyboard (it's been a while since I used one), and I was sure it was nO way - GOD NO didn't even occur to me. I read the column, which didn't help, and ended up having to check the answer key. Sigh. Hope to have better luck tomorrow.
not a Natick. If for almost everybody it’s the only square, then you can figure it out.
@Steve L. But then, given a different background, I had both as gimmes.
@Steve L No complaints here because I only had to run the vowels on one square to get it.
@Steve L no clue about PUTTEES but STUPA went in on first pass FWIW
@Steve L My third to last square at which I guessed the most likely vowel. Turns out my guess was right after filling my second to last, and then last, squares which were of the “Doh, how did I not see that earlier” variety.
@Steve L I'm surprised STUPA is not a gimme. I've known the word since I was a kid. The other thing I can only name in Polish though...
@Steve L I knew I'd get a lot of "not me's" on this one, but a few points: 1. I never called it a Natick. But I'd say that details about a religion that not many English speakers practice and a makeshift legging worn over 100 years ago in the trenches of Belleau Wood are pretty esoteric knowledge. Surely there are many in the crowd who know one, the other, or both, but just as surely, there are going to be many--maybe most--who don't know either. 2. If you have to run the alphabet (or even the vowels) in a tournament, that's not a clean solve. You get only one guess. 3. Early results are bearing me out.
@Steve L Another hand up for getting STUPA on the first pass. One of the few I knew immediately. Probably from travelogs rather than from religion. @Francis I agree that would be a dreary stat. When solving from collections with the answers in the back of the book, I'd put an X wherever I'd missed a square. When the NYT first started putting these online, I found that "At least one word's amiss" warning to be gracious, giving permission to rethink. It made the whole experience more relaxing and provided a level to the solve that was not there before. For those who like a stricter experience, I could see providing that as an option. But after a few years with the present system, I think I'd miss it if it disappeared.
@Steve L with a few crosses I remembered PUTTEES from Slaughterhouse Five, and STUPA sounded vaguely familiar.
@Steve L I'd never heard of PUTTEES, but got STUPA after a crossing or two. There are many recent examples of STUPA from major publications, including the NYT. <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/sentences/stupa" target="_blank">https://www.merriam-webster.com/sentences/stupa</a>
I always read Wordplay after I complete the puzzle, just to see what clues were tricky, what the constructor has to say, etc. I'm not expecting to laugh out loud at the columnist's comments. Well done Caitlin, you had me giggling throughout!
With @Bill doing such a good job praising the poet of LESBOS, I think we can take a moment or two to praise the great New Yorker writer, Pauline KAEL, not only the greatest film critic, but one of the greatest essayists of our time (if your conception of "our time" is the second half of the 20th century). I didn't always agree with her assessments of films, but her writing was always crisp and fresh and thought-provoking. She taught me (and many others) how to be better viewers and better thinkers.
I found the puzzle very hard yet in the end I solved it in Friday time - curious. I needed to look up one thing when I did not get my gold star - and sure enough, I had made an error in the military leg wraps - I know their name in Polish ("onuce") but not in English. By now I've had enough experience with NYT puzzles that my guesses as to the many late-week unknows turn out to be correct most of the time. That sure helped today with the trivia, slang and sport terms. I enjoyed the solve. However, to satisfy bloodthirsty Tim in the UK, here goes: If I wanted to fall asleep over a simplistic grid peppered with demotic Americanisms, I'd turn to USA Today. I'd tell the constructor to "Do better" - if I believed they could.
@Andrzej Your last paragraph definitely proves you can be a meanie when you want to.😀
@Andrzej I don't know if you've read any Kurt Vonnegut Jr., but I read my brother's copy of Slaughterhouse Five when I was about ten, and that's where I learned the word PUTTEES. I then went on to read everything he had written up to that point; my mother had to vouch to the librarians that I had my parents permission to read adult books despite my children's library card.
Hi, Mark. I really enjoyed your puzzle and look forward to more from you. I am a relative newbie NYT puzzler (only solving consistently for a year) so I get a little intimidated on weekend puzzles; however, this one was so satisfying! Not typical solves, and challenging , but I finished it earlier than my average and no clues! I think our brains must work similarly. Happy Birthday!
All the long horizontal spinners scared me, so I abandoned my usual routine and started with the Downs. This turned out to be a good strategy, as I gained enough letters to figure out MACARONI SALAD and TOENAIL SCISSORS pretty quickly. It was still tough going (STUPA had me in a STUPOR!) but a few lookups kept me from being hoisted by my own PUTTEE and I finished in OPTIMAL time. Happy birthday, Mark. The spelling bee clue made me smile.
@Heidi Spanners, not spinners. (Thanks, autocorrect.) Although some of them did make my head spin!
I think great themeless puzzle creators descended from waffle makers. They slowly and warmly squeeze our minds into their mold, and we end up smiling, with dimples. Enjoyed it, like the very sharpest toenail scissors (?).
My flyspecking blind spot today was ASeaT instead of ASPOT. Somehow my addled brain didn't notice GENUSANDSeECIES might have something wrong with it, and SaL ANGE's career has yet to take off. Welcome back, Mr. Diehl, and thank you. This Saturday was just right for a cozy Friday evening. It must have been nice to find that you haven't lost your touch!
I have a strict no look up/no help policy. The only exception is things in my immediate field of vision. It just so happens I have an unopened/unread set of the Divergent book series on my book shelf. Would have needed all four crossings for that one otherwise...
@Steven M. so then we would have heard the gripes of ROTH?
What an interesting grid; lots of stuff I had to guess at; MACARONI SALAD for one, I’ve only ever called it generic pasta salad, plus the usual SPORTS references, but they were all gettable with the downs and a bit of head scratching. PUTTEES a rare gimme. I love the sound of the word, if not the reason behind the need. My Grandma spirit has well and truly established itself. I’ve just spring cleaned my son’s already perfectly clean home, ahead of the little prince’s arrival. And I HATE cleaning. What’s happening to me? I’ll be carrying Werthers toffees in my pocket next, rather than Alpaca pellets and the odd mini bottle of craft gin. Gah.
@Helen Wright 😂 Yes, being a grandma or a grandpa definitely changes a person. For the better, I think.
@Helen Wright Congratulations on the impending joy of grandparenthood. My six year old grandson, now living in Glasgow, continually brightens my world. And keeping up with his interests has helped me solve quite a few puzzles.
I so glad to see that this is considered to be a solid Saturday puzzle, and not yet another example of my struggling when others are snuggling. (That doesn't quite work, but I liked the "uggling" connection, and, I suppose if this were a pre-bed ritual, it might be not totally stupid.) And yet, I didn't struggle with it, exactly, but I sure did have a lot of answers that I needed to change: ELdoradO, ASeaT before ASPOT, WAFFLEcAKEs, I was sure the last three letters of 14A was going to be "ape", nOway before GODNO, aint before NARY, I was sure somehow INCISORS was going to be a part of TOENAILSCISSORS...it goes on and on. So today, for me was an exercise in sniffing out reasonable but wrong answers. I think that makes a puzzle pretty difficult, even if the eventual right answer is pretty obvious once determined. The exception to that, of course, is PUTTEES, which is brand new to me. (I think STUPA came out of the mist and clouds at some point). Really like Pauline KAEL being in the puzzle, even if she did hate "2001: A Space Odyssey". Everyone's entitled to a few bad misjudgements.
@Francis PUTTEES were a gimme to me. I used to get around mainly by bicycle, and used something similar to keep my right trouser leg away from the oily chain. I once wore actual puttees in a movie back when I semi-regularly got work as an extra. They were accompanied by a khaki uniform, boots, a WWI-style helmet, and a gigantic heavy bolt-action rifle. No ammo, of course.
@Francis It's extraordinary how many pantheonic films she savaged. In addition to 2001: Chinatown Bladerunner The Shining Gandhi Godfather II Many others. Seldom agreed with her growing up but read her faithfully since she was such a good writer.
@Francis I thought "2001: A Space Odyssey" was a horrible, boring, pointless film 🤷🏽♂️
@Francis My opinion of 2001 didn't make it past the emus 🤣
Just here to say that End and Home are two of my most frequently used PC keys. There's no faster way to get to the end or beginning of a line or a document (when combined with Ctrl), or to make a selection (when combined with Shift). I use these constantly when programming, word processing, writing emails, etc. Kind of shocked that someone considered End being infrequently used "shared truth" enough for a crossword. Our country truly is divided...
@McGuffin I agree and came her elooking for this kind of comment! I am a user of both PC computers and Macs, and the End key is the one I miss the most on my Mac. I use the End key about 100 times week for my work.
For SONYREADERS: Can we put a moriatorium on including obscure-ish products that have been off the market for more than a decade? This is bringing flashbacks to seeing HBO GO in crosswords way after HBO changed the name.
@DB The clue here does explicitly state that the product in question is defunct. Not quite grasping the crux of your gripe.
@DB agree. particularly when it was not some groundbreaking or memorable product. I’d be good with SKYPE (as of now), but at this point, SONYREADER just felt like green paint.
@DB, funny, that was one of my first entries in the grid. Just another example of how one person‘s Natick is another‘s gimme. I have always been an early adopter of technology, and I bought a SONYREADER when it first became available (though I misremembered it as “Sony e-Reader,” correcting myself when it didn’t fit. Perhaps because it pioneered the use of E Ink.) Regardless, I thought the clue was fair, as it described it as a defunct device. After all, we have DODO in the crossword frequently!
@DB I look forward to all the variations of HBO Max Go Now Plus haunting puzzles for years to come
This one took some GRIT. About half of it felt hard and half came very quickly. Somehow I finished up about 20% faster than my average. Some of that may have been some lucky semi-educated guessing that worked out. I thought it was a fun one! The grid looked a little intimidating to me when I first opened it, but I also love all the stacks on stacks and space, so it was also exhilarating. I have to admit I was a little bit annoyed when I entered wordSPELLERS and very, very happy to see I was wrong about that stinker. 😆 Sounded like it was the greenest of paint! Happily it didn't last too long before I saw the error of my ways.
@HeathieJ Ok, two comments within a couple of inches about "green paint" -- what's that? I googled it, and not surprisingly only got ads for green paint. I thought I was dialed into all the lingo, so spill.
@HeathieJ I posted an update on my ablation, today, but I do not think you have seen it. In brief, it has been a year since my procedure. It has turned out to be one of the best things I have done for myself.
Happy Birthday Mark! Six years was worth the wait. I had to solve from the bottom up, like some other commentators. The top was one of those puzzles I just had to stare at for awhile and hoped something magically popped in (and GOWNS before FASTS and ASEAT before ASPOT didn’t help). Had LON, FRAY and MEDIAN and nothing else for a long while. I guess MISSILETEST finally helped give me a foothold? Loved the TOENAILSCISSORS clue. Don’t remember SONYREADERS but guessable. That and RETIRETHESIDE aren’t going to enthrall our non-American solvers—it means getting the last player out in a baseball inning. Andrzej, you get a pass on those but not STUPA because I know you played the Civilization video game as much as I did. Yeah, that would have been a Natick for me too if not for that. I thought “ensnare for” was a bit clunky but the rest of the clues seemed spot on, challenging but fair. Best Saturday challenge in a long while for me.
@SP I've known STUPA for decades, since I was a kid, because of my life-long interest in other cultures, and in architecture, too. I had been familiar with it for some 30 years, probably, before it debuted in Civilization... VI, was it? READERS were a gimme, but I had to rely on crosses for SONY, as well as for the majority if RETIRE THE SIDE. The solve involved loads of guesses, but in the end I only had a square or two wrong, and I knew which it might be.
I'm surprised no one has commented on the clever crossing of STUPA and its (near) homophone STUPOR. There is an old joke about an intoxicated monk falling into a....
@Algernon C Smith STUPOR is STUPA in Brooklyn.
Algernon C Smith, You missed the earlier STUPA/stupor comments.
I’m slightly concerned about how quickly my brain filled in [As good as it gets] with OPenbAr.
Health update for @heathieJ and others here who have contemplated/shown interest a cardiac ablation to remedy Afib. It has been a good year since my ablation, a transformative year, one without my heart beating so fast I could not catch my breath. My resting heartbeat is now a steady 56 bpm. Yesterday I scaled the foothills of the Sandia, climbing 1400' during a five-mile hike, without fear of my heart going berserk. I have also mastered the BiPAP (Bilevel Positive Airway Pressure, similar to CPAP) machine that I use to control my breathing due to central apnea (Electrical not mechanical problem). My oxygen level is now normal nearly always. Now that the electricians have fixed my faulty wiring, and I no longer drink any alcoholic beverages, I have great energy and renewed mental ACUITY. I feel as if 70 really is just a number. My advice: get the ablation, force yourself to master your breathing machines no matter how untenable using the contraption might seem, and quit drinking. You will feel so much better.
@Mark Good for you. That is great to hear. However, I don't think I'll be following you down the tee-totaler path. Too much pain in the world for me to consider that, even though I know I would be better off, in most ways.
@Mark, congrats on your perseverance at improving your health. You certainly sound like a very young 70!
Wow, that grid was intimidating at first glance. Remain calm, I reminded myself. Many misfires, like Corvette before ELCAMINO, seat before SPOT, luxe before POSH, Cyprus before LESBOS (although I thought that one was pretty iffy). I filled in STUPA on my first pass, but I was hung up on SPORTSBETS. What kind of bets?? Oh, just sports, duh. And RETIRETHESIDE?? Why does baseball have so many terms that sound ridiculous as phrases themselves? Like "for the W" when win is easier to say than double-you. And a team from where, Charleston? Chattanooga? Charlotte? Champaign? Chamonix? My lack of sports knowledge led to that H being the last square. Very fun spanners, but the starting of TOE had me pretty worried. Is there some gruesome surgery I don't know about that makes toes smaller? Thank goodness, no, at least not today. I found it enjoyable from start to end, and I look forward to more from Mr Diehl.
@Nora You say: "Very fun spanners, but the starting of TOE had me pretty worried. Is there some gruesome surgery I don't know about that makes toes smaller? Thank goodness, no, at least not today." Yes, there is but it's only for cats. it's called declawing. I believe it is illegal in some states now. For more on this fascinating subject, see a movie called The Paw Project.
It's a good morning for poetry: That man is peer of the gods, who face to face sits listening to your sweet speech and lovely laughter. It is this that rouses a tumult in my breast. At mere sight of you my voice falters, my tongue is broken. Straightway, a delicate fire runs in my limbs; my eyes are blinded and my ears thunder. Sweat pours out: a trembling hunts me down. I grow paler than grass and lack little of dying. --William Carlos Williams, 1958 <a href="https://tinyurl.com/2u6f96ty" target="_blank">https://tinyurl.com/2u6f96ty</a>
@Bill That's a gorgeous poem, but you shouldn't make people click the link to discover that WCW isn't the author of this poem, only the translator. The author is that great Greek poet from around 600 BCE, Sappho of LESBOS.
Some say thronging cavalry, some say foot soldiers, others call a fleet the most beautiful of sights the dark earth offers, but I say it's what- ever you love best. And it's easy to make this understood by everyone, for she who surpassed all human kind in beauty, Helen, abandoning her husband—that best of men—went sailing off to the shores of Troy and never spent a thought on her child or loving parents: when the goddess seduced her wits and left her to wander, she forgot them all, she could not remember anything but longing, and lightly straying aside, lost her way. But that reminds me now: Anactória, she's not here, and I'd rather see her lovely step, her sparkling glance and her face than gaze on all the troops in Lydia in their chariots and glittering armor. --Sappho , "The Anactoria Poem" from The Poetry of Sappho. Copyright © 2007 by Jim Powell
@Bill Thank you, Bill. What a way to start the day! The power of love. I felt a little weak in the knees just reading that poem.
Mark Diehl hangs a head on the trophy wall! I couldn't get past the EL DORADO/ "Save me A SEAT" error, given that the crossings were just Killers. The Grammy winner, the author, the "recognition"..... GENUS AND SEE-----, I could never get past the roadblock. Maybe if I took a break? But that's not going to happen today. I doubt my "Comment-in-Chief" ever got released yesterday, after I committed the unpardonable sin of bashing ANGI (in all its iterations.) 19D made me think (just briefly) that we were speaking of a quilting party, and GRANDMOTHER would have fit (into the grid, not as a descriptor for the MOL) but I had to take it all out except for the G and the R. I'll have to settle for being proud of how much I did get in this puzzle, and bask in my rep as a GOOD SPELLER. (When I was typing papers back in the day, I charged 35 cents a page OR 50 cents a page to correct spelling and punctuation. Heh ...usually got the higher pay.) All Y'ALL have a good weekend. See ya in the funny papers!
I was also stuck with doradO and SeaT for a good while.
I don't know how many people are familiar with Bob and Ray, but they were comedians from the last century who perfected deadpan when Stephen Wright was still in diapers. I highly recommend them (all 3, tbh) when you need a respite from today's news. Anyway, Bob and Ray had a routine about PUTTEES that I found quite helpful when attempting to solve today's absolutely fabulous crossword: <a href="https://bit.ly/3LWbTZ1" target="_blank">https://bit.ly/3LWbTZ1</a>. On another note, our short, free, ad-free, family-friendly and we like to think hilarious in a Bob-and-Ray-sense podcast, Jean & Mike Do The New York Times Crossword, is still going strong: it's available wherever you get your podcasts.
@MP Rogers Bob and Ray are incomparable. Once you've gone through the House of Puttees, you might want to visit Friedolf and Sons to get your shoelaces cleaned, and then stop by the House of Toast, where you can get your toast buttered on the near side or the far side. <a href="https://youtu.be/pRGIF0NtBEA?si=kOhebTMNEbvKNCJr" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/pRGIF0NtBEA?si=kOhebTMNEbvKNCJr</a>
@MP Rogers Installation service... Guaranteed for six months or twelve miles... Hilarious, thank you! 😂
@MP Rogers OMG, Bob and Ray were masterful dry comedians. One that I love is when Bob is interviewing Ray, or visa versa, and the interviewee is constantly giving more information that the question asked. Then the interviewer's next question is precisely what the additional answer was. And then the interviewee goes on to add an additional fact, which is of course next question the interviewer has. Utter genius.
@MP Rogers You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?
I don't know where I learned about PUTTEES, but it was not from speaking with the WWI vets in my family (one of my father's older brothers, and my mother's stepfather). I don't remember when I first learned STUPA, but I ran into it most recently yesterday in the archives.
@Barry Ancona I don't think I've ever heard of PUTTEES before, but when I had that section filled out except for where it crosses with STUPA, U was the only vowel I thought was correct for ST_PA. So I think it must live somewhere in the dark recesses of my brain, unlike the other word, which I thought could use any vowel.
@Barry Ancona I knew PUTTEES from reading historical fiction (Sepoy Mutiny, probably) and I have lots of photos of STUPAS from my travels in China. I can understand why those were not in the common wheelhouse.
@Barry Ancona - I remember STUPA from the Northern Exposure episode where Christ went on a spiritual retreat.
When I saw how few black squares there were I decided to change my usual solve strategy which is to go through all the across clues quickly, then all the down clues quickly and from there work with footholds. Today I started with the short words, words of 3 or 4 or 5 letters, then tried to build on any of those answers. Once stuck there then I went through all the across and down answers. Don't know if it helped, but I completed the puzzle in 43% less time than average.
At first glance, all the white spaces were intimidating, but it all fell in place nicely. Thank you for a great puzzle.
OUTSTANDING Saturday puzzle. Minimal PPP, tough but fair. Loved this one! TIL that Corvette and El Camino have the same number of letters.
@BR To add - other than CLOSERANGE, which has been seen twice before, the other nine entries 10 letters or longer are debuts, and none is particularly obscure. 97% freshness factor overall. Amazing construction overall.
@BR Not to mention Biscayne and Chevelle!
I solved in less than half my average time, yet it didn’t feel easy. I had only a few answers after my first pass and was able to build on those. That was the rewarding aspect of this puzzle.
Yowch! That was a toughie for me. I was pleased with how far I got this time 4/5’s and 30 minutes before understanding that my skills are still limited. I believe it was a fair puzzle. And as I like to remind myself, I really can’t be a know it all if I really don’t know it all!!
The grid alone was enough for me to give this puzzle a thumbs-up. The beautiful spiral with the lovely stacks at the top and bottom. I hope everyone took a few seconds to appreciate it. The level of difficulty was well in the Goldilocks "just right" zone, although it felt a little on the Friday side to me. YMMV. Plenty of fresh answers and cluing with little stale fill. Very nice! My favorite was "Long shot practice". It had me thinking about "Hail Marys" in football. And that it crossed with the clue "Misdirect" was especially enjoyable. Overall, a very satisfying experience. Thanks, Mark Diehl!
Good tough Saturday. One hour and 7 minutes with no lookups.
Despite stalling in the N, I came in well under average. I enjoyed the interesting fill throughout. Was there a mini lit theme in the S? Sappho, Hesse, Oberon, fiction, reader, speller... I gave one of my sons the middle name Auberon, of which Oberon is a variant. It means both "elf king" and "noble bear." I got it from the book Little, Big, which I would highly recommend.
@Paul What a great middle name!
@Paul Oberon is the name I gave the captain of my company of Space Marines. (Hardly anyone here will know what I'm talking about - maybe Andrzej has played the video game?) But I smile every time that name comes up, even as a clue. First impulse was for Ariel as the answer, though.
I had a bit of a challenge finding a toehold here, and was pretty far into the south before I had any fills at all -- and ended up solving this pretty much SE to NW...still once I found my way in it went fairly quickly, and I solved around 40 percent under my Saturday average (and, great for me as far as time, less than a minute over the median time on XWStats). I appreciated a number of the clues: 14A "Homo sapiens, e.g." for GENUS AND SPECIES. I got the SPECIES fairly quickly and then spent some time thinking, "okay, what sort of species?" Wonderful clue of the answer. I also appreciated 43A, "They make low digits smaller" for TOENAIL SCISSORS...and was glad I got the SCISSORS before TOENAIL since, if I had solved it the other way around I would have gotten stuck trying to figure out the crossing fills for TOENAil clippers." One small bit: This may be just me, but given the sacking of the Washington Post this week, Pauline KAEL gave me a twinge. Yes, I know she wrote for the New Yorker and no the WaPo, but the two events reminded me of so many things we have lost in the way of excellence in print.
@Joe What we've lost indeed. It used to be that every little town in the country had an independent newspaper that specialized on that town. There's a lot of discussion about how rural American has been forgotten--that's one way it's been forgotten. No real news comes from them anymore.
Happy birthday! Thanks for that. The northwest part stumped me until "Homo sapiens e.g." Just popped into my head, then everything else fell into place. Bravo.
Having lived in Charlotte, NC, for almost 30 years, I confidently entered CLT for 45D, since it (airport code) used as the abbreviation for the city in almost everything. Obviously, I never watched an NBA game while living there.
@Mark Smith don't remember seeing CHA ever on a scorebug, either.. Poor clue.
Interesting how my puzzle time these days is almost invariably well below average. I feel like I'm living in Lake Wobegon...
@CarolinaJessamine IMHO it is not a good idea to try for short times in solving smart puzzles. In fact the process of trial and error brings the joy no matter how long it takes. if you want quick you can google which is not considered cheating, I believe.