Greek poetry: F EPIC FAIL The emus sent me to Scylla and Charibdis yesterday - what will happen today?
@Cat Lady Margaret Glided right through. No cata-strophe.
@Cat Lady Margaret Sex ed: “See me. I shall have to involve your parents in this matter”. OEDIPUS COMPLEX
@CLM I was going to post the same clue/entry, but you beat me by about eight hours! Great minds fail alike.
A ute is not a "sporty vehicle." It is a type of pickup truck (to use the American term) employed by Australian tradespersons. To "seep" is not to soak slowly, it is to leak liquid slowly. "Steep" would be a better answer but that of course didn't fit.
@Max Nicks "Soak" with the liquid as a subject can also mean to permeate (e.g. My spilled milk soaked into the floorboards). A "seeping" liquid can be penetrating as well as leaking out of the object, so in the penetrating sense it can legitimately fit "soak slowly." I'll defer to you on "ute," but I think in some places it might simply be a shortening of "sport utility vehicle."
Why is a B "fine" and a B+ "average"?
Good question. I would have expected C+ for average.
That didn't seem right to me as well. (I understand that at some elite universities the average grade *is* a B+, but I doubt that's what the constructor or Will had in mind).
@jam At least when I was in high school, anything better than average in gym class got an A. Average would take you down to some kind of B. You'd really have to be totally uncoordinated to get a C. No such thing as a D or an F in gym class! This was many long years ago, though... They had to be stricter in Driver Ed, since the kids were preparing for the DMV exams, which were no cakewalk.
@jam Wife: How does this look? Me: Fine. Wife: (daggers…)
@jam I also thought the grading was a bit muddled. If I were just given the words in a vacuum and had to attach grades to them, I would personally have said something more like: FINE = C AVERAGE = C SUPER = A+ PERFECT = A+ Others will have different grades than me, but that's one of the problems with the puzzle, in that different solvers will have different ideas about what the letter grades should be.
@jam c' and b's are average or fine it could apply to c plus b minus b and b plus - c minus is where its not fine or average. average does indeed mean c's and b's that's what Most student score in testing. fab puzzle!
@jam If I’m going out of my way to accommodate the theme: that entry was about *gym class*, right?
I haven't finished the puzzle yet as I'm finding it very challenging in places, but there is one thing I have to get off my chest: I object to UTES being called sporty! I know they are perversIy marketed as *sport* utility vehicles, but what is sporty about them? The bloated, heavy body? The performance, sub-par when compared to that of a smaller, more agile car with the exact same engine? The high suspension incompatible with taking bends quickly, as it makes the car likely to roll? A late-model Corvette is sporty, a Porsche 911 is sporty, but a Mercedes GLS or a Honda CR-V is anything but. Trucking is not a sport!
@Andrzej it doesn't mean sport it's sporty with a Y - it's adverbial add a Y and it mean 'like a sport' it's not a mistake Andrzej it's English!
@Andrzej I concur! Best explanation i can think of: they were originally marketed as “sports utility vehicles”, to make us think they were not just bloated polluting monsters. Hence the “sporty” and the “ute”.
@Andrzej A “sports utility” vehicle was never supposed to be sporty. It was a way to pack up all your gear and your family, and go wherever you do your sports-related activity. You could take it off road, and nobody cared if the back seat got dirty. So, utilized for sports. Of course, most SUVs are driven to the office or the grocery store, and have never been defiled by a dirty bicycle. Mine is mainly a dog limo. Although they can get a little sporty, so maybe that counts?
@Andrzej I so agree, I call them UAVs, Urban Assault Vehicles. I suppose the sport derives from trying to park them or fit them into a garage.
@Andrzej Marketing is a lie? Right. And I suppose my aviator ray bans don’t make me look like Tom Cruise. Wait…what?!
@Andrzej The original 'SUV's-- Jeep Cherokee, original Toyota 4runner--were built on truck frames ('utility') but not intended for truck usage. 'Sport' is just supposed to mean for fun, as opposed to for work. The misnomer here is 'sporty' in the clue, because that usually means (as it does for you) an MG or Alfa Romeo or Miata kind of 'sports car'. In short, 'Sport' in SUV is fine. Nobody (except apparently NYT puzzlistas) ever thought it was synonymous with 'sporty'.
@Andrzej 100% agree! As "j Lawrence g Home on the range" so succinctly states "Urban Assault Vehicles" is a far more appropriate moniker for this bloated guzzlers.
Curious as to why ALFA is not ALPHA in the Nato alphabet, I dug around and ended up on a thread (ama?) in a subreddit of air traffic controllers and pilots. ALFA, they say, is simplified because not every country or language pronounces "ph" as "f" -- and in fact, other consonant digraphs -- e.g. TH, SH, CH -- get pronounced by their first letter: "tree" for "three" and "tousand" for "thousand," because NATO is intended to be clearly pronounced in as many accents as possible, and phonetically legible with as many language backgrounds as possible. Some pilots chimed in that only the pedantic users of the Nato Alphabet say "tree" and "tousand" (and also FOW-ER for "four" apparently) but all conceded that "niner" for "nine" was nearly always used so as not to confuse it with the German "nein." Right on cue, a pedant joined in to correct someone who said "f" is a "softer 'p.'" sound. Pedant: "In this context, f is an unvoiced fricative with your top teeth on your lower lip. Whereas p is an unvoiced plosive with upper and lower lip. So I don't think of the phonemes as related." Further, "The historical explanation seems to be the Greek letter phi was pronounced with a hard p plus air from the h, and so the spelling reflected that. Then Greek pronunciation changed over time to say phi with an f, but the spelling didn't change, so the old ph spelling got the association with the new f pronunciation." Reddit airplane geeks vs. Wordplay xword geeks? Right out of Monty Python!
@john ezra A for information and E for effort!
@john ezra love hearing about other pedant communities. We are not alone!
@john ezra - I should have read your excellent response before making a similar reply to a newer comment.
@john ezra In ham radio class, we were told that "niner" came about because over noisy and band-limited audio, it can be very hard to distinguish between "nine" and "five".
@john ezra That 'air from the h' is the only H-sound in Greek. (Confusingly to those reading Roman alphabets, the letter H in Greek is the capital version of the vowel eta, pronounced 'ei' as in 'feign'.) It's called a rough breathing, shown as an apostrophe ' and, when there's a prefix in front, it transforms the prefix. Examples: epi- plus ' becomes eph-. Kata- plus ' becomes kath-. And (my fave) eks plus ' becomes ekh (usually spelled in English derivatives as "ech") and pronounced with the gargly -ch of 'loch'. In each case, the transformed sound is written as a single consonant: phi, theta, and xi.
[Driver's Ed: F] No, it isn't consistent with the theme. BRAKING BAD
Thanks for the fun Wednesday, Rebecca!
My two favorite parts: • The theme concept itself. Original, fresh, out-of-the-box. Seeing the term “science fair” one day and visualizing this theme (per your notes) – that’s top notch constructor’s mind, and I who love crosswords am so grateful for people who think like this. • The perfect-for-Wednesday difficulty level. This day is the bridge between easy and hard, and, IMO, Rebecca perfectly captured that not-too-easy and not-too-hard place. There were slippery but not opaque clues, some ARCANE answers but just the right amount of footholds. Neither a plod nor a dash. Wednesday. Bolstering the above were lovely answers, such as ARCANE, KNOTTY, LAID BARE, KAPUT, and BUM KNEE (a debut). And I adored [First and last, say] for FULL NAME, which had me going in circles until it finally hit me with a splendorous kapow. Rebecca, this was fun, satisfying, and lustrous. Thank you!
@Lewis Same here for FULL NAME. I'm still amazed how much mental exercise went into completing that one when I already had 5 of 8 letters! I'm happy.
Road construction workers truly make the grade. (They spend time in the passing lane.)
@Mike Orange you gonna ask me for a pun. Sorry I’m in the cone of silence.
@Mike When my dad did a bad job paving, the results were Pop asphalt.
@Mike Reminds me of the warning sign I once saw on a cross-country drive: ROAD ORK AHEAD.
This was a fine puzzle but personally I found it too difficult to finish without lookups. When I fail to complete a grid on my own, it's usually due to my being Polish, and thus being unfamiliar with American proper names, culture and slang. Often I get this stuff from crosses, but that's only possible when the crosses are gettable without their own crosses 🤣. Thus, when a puzzle features proper misdirection (which is great!), it will defeat me if I can't get enough letters from gimmes - and Americana (in the broadest sense) is not gimme material for me. Today I had to look up the two actors, the sport team and the school. I had no idea what "Tender bend-er" might signify - I only understood it when crosses gave me BUM KNEE (itself a mysterious thing to me, for a while, as the BUM part was not instantly understandable): slanginess combined with misdirection was my undoing here. I know nothing about cruise ships so while ___DECK was obvious, I had to get the first three letters from crosses (at some point I thought it might be a gUN deck 🤣). So yeah, it was a good puzzle but I was not good enough to solve it on my own.
@Andrzej. We are all constantly amazed at your abilities in a second language. I've lived in the US 40+ years (a native Brit) and a lot of this modern slang goes right over my head. Like others below I found some of the clues a bit iffy, to the extent that my solving time was similar to many recent Fridays.
@Andrzej Not sure if it’s a ‘good’ puzzle. The clues were strange and not easily guessable from the crosses for a Wed. i give it a C.
@Andrzej I hear you: there were plenty of answers I sussed out today that being immersed here in the USA probably helped a lot! The hockey team, for example: a team called the Mammoths has to be in a fairly northern location; also a newer franchise, because I'm not familiar with the team. Then, I got the first letter and realized there's only one state that starts with U... Separately, ALAN Cumming is a favorite of mine and thus a gimme; having that A meant the other actor likely is ANN, especially with a particularly Anglo last name. And while I don't know cruise ships at all, either, once I had ___DECK, I tried to picture those behemoth boats — they are a constant sight here in NYC — and realized SUN was as good a guess as any.
4/5 nutritionists recommend following a crunchy Tuesday with a chewy Wednesday! … Geology: D+ ROCK BOTTOM
This being the sixth week since Labor Day and the beginning of school in New York City, it's the last week of the first marking period (of six, in the high schools), and the report cards will be coming out soon. For the latter part of my career, one of my duties as the head of programming was to collect all the teachers' grades electronically, inform them of any missing grades, keep pushing and pushing them until they finished the task, and ultimately producing the report cards. After ten years of retirement, I had to remind myself that I once did this task six times a year. Thanks to Rebecca for reminding me in my retirement that I don't have to have anything to do with this process anymore.
@Steve L Amen! After many years in adult education, I allowed myself to be lured into teaching Gr. XI English. Lord, was that a mistake! Aside from the degradation of my student population from adult volunteers to adolescent conscripts, the hardest part was the paper work. The quizzes, the tests, the short essays, the long essays, and (oh, joy) the final exam — the results of all which had to be entered as data in the hotsy-totsy Board-approved program. I did have some good students who loved to read and write, but shovelling paperwork really restricted the time I had for the others.
A real master class in colorful, imaginative, engaging cluing. This puzzle sparkles with the infectiousness of Rebecca's personality. Just look at the irresistible clues for IRATE, BUM KNEE, CHASE, ACED, BIO and especially PENGUIN. And I haven't even mentioned the entertaining theme clues and answers. I was thinking about 2D that I would be more "disappointed" than IRATE if a puzzle were already filled in. But then I thought: "Yes, I really would be IRATE if THIS puzzle were already filled in! Absolutely delightful to solve. Thanks, Rebecca.
Earth Sciences: D DIRT POOR
Um…is it just me? Are we regularly getting more crunch? I do have a wee fever, but the last couple days I could *not* solve with my pre-Thursday pattern. I was jumping from zone to zone! Like a crazy person! Fantastic. And Rebecca, you never disappoint. Brava!
@CCNY I've definitely noticed. I got my second blue star Tuesday in the two or three years I've been keeping track. The last time I failed on a Tuesday was because of a BELA/LANAPE cross. (The "Bela" was for Bela Fleck, the banjoist). So, yeah, I've noticed. Yesterday it was WEENIEROAST/LEE, where the third E in Lee was one of the two E's between the W and the N. From what I can tell, WIENIEROAST, WEINIEROAST, and WEENIEROAST were all precedented spellings. So the entire solve came down to knowing the gymnast is Sumi Lee, as opposed to Sumi Lei.
27:29 I found the theme thoroughly enjoyable! The puzzle took a lot longer than my usual Wednesdays (seems to be a trend for puzzles this week). I will admit I was not a fan of UTE but other than the top right cornder I had a lot of fun. Favorite entry by far was BUMKNEE. Archery: F CRAPSHOOT
Grid: A. Honestly I’d probably give this an A+, personally, but took a few points off because realistically some will say a bit more trivia than desired for a Wednesday. But nothing that was too TOUGH a NUT to crack and any grid that calls out ALAN Cummings gets high marks from me. Check out his show “The Traitors” to see him at his nuttiest (and naughtiest). And what fabulous stacks on the corner for a Wednesday! Not surprised from a consummate grid artist like Rebecca. Cluing: A. I’m always a fan of more misdirection but really perfect clues that weren’t gimmes but not too ARCANE. “Tender bender” is a gem and ALFA was a great trick— how many put ARIA? I actually thought of ALFA but forgot it only had 4 letters. Theme: A minus, just because I’m going to nit and say how is B+ “average”? Talk about grade inflation! And even if it is, not sure you can justify FINE being less than AVERAGE. Nit aside, though, thoroughly clever and well executed. Challenge: I’m gonna say A+ for a Wednesday, if you like a challenge. I ended up solving mostly from the bottom up which is more like a weekend themeless for me, and didn’t get the themers for a long while. Bravo! Rebecca goes to the head of the class and definitely my teacher’s pet (what a great clue to start off this puzzle!)
@SP I went to the NATO alphabet, which spelled it ALPHA, so I left it blank for a while. Crosses showed me it was ALFA, which seems wrong.
@SP, Alan was hilarious in Celebrity Edition Traitors! Got that one quickly as a result. Absolutely had AriA for the longest time, but knew something was off after LAIDBARE and ANN were solved.
All this snuffling and shuffling about grades must be left over from high school competition, but it's a crossword, not a rerun of how well, or badly, we did in adolescence, learning a thing or two about life. Of course, I'd give this puzzle an A+, for freshness and fun.
I had a doozy of a time wriggling my way out of PARKINGpass 🥴 Also: Gardening: A+ ACE OF SPADES i know it’s the wrong order thx 🙏🏼
I love how the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday puzzles have become more challenging lately.
@Minimum well...this week anyway
SCREAM, Nightmare on ELM Street, CARRIE. A mini theme of pre-Halloween movie viewing for some? And I'm wondering will we be getting any comments complaining that ARCANE is too ARCANE? Thanks, Rebecca for another fun one.
@Vaer Forgot to post this PENGUIN clip. <a href="https://youtu.be/tlRpLGEwssA?si=10g5HHBbvTmmAwJl" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/tlRpLGEwssA?si=10g5HHBbvTmmAwJl</a>
Interesting to see both "legit" and "licit" in the same puzzle. Both are derived from Latin, and both stem from the language of the law. (OK, "legit" is a clipping of "legitimate," but the clipping was done in the 19th c., if not before). But beyond that, they are not etymologically related, despite the initial "l"s. And legal scholars will make a subtle distinction between that which is licit, and that which is legal, but I confess, I don't understand what it is. In Latin, the verb form "licet"(="it is allowed") appears so often, that I tend to misspell the English word with an "e." Same with "tacit" and "tacet."
This puzzle was not KNOTTY and it wasn't DULL. It was, as is true of all Goldstein puzzles, DOPE and LEGIT. Thank you for the SUPER PERFECT Wednesday puzzle, Rebecca! And thank you for jogging my memory and reminding me of this timeless song: Exile with "KISS You All Over" – <a href="https://youtu.be/GyCvWowx15c?is=sRgXOjC1JOyiwADF" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/GyCvWowx15c?is=sRgXOjC1JOyiwADF</a>
@sotto voce Hah! That took me right back to high school sock hops. Kind of a dumb song, listening to it today.
@sotto voce @Nora College senior when that came out. Still makes me want to run screaming from the room. Was more into Patti Smith and the Clash then.
Hand up for an A+ on this one 🙋🏼♀️ Rebecca, you and Adam are the perfect tag team to bounce ideas between you. I say keep doing what you’re doing!! Always a pleasure to solve ☺️
for the nitpickers out there - C's and B's are indeed considered average, fine, in the middle, okay, good job. only A's get super perfect, wonderful etc. while poor D's get the drubbing - poor, needs help, look at yourself etc etc etc. classic puzzle Rebecca it's faultless A PLUS! that's pejorative of course there's really no A plus or D minus and that's Finite.
@acjones Not being familiar with American terminology, I struggled with translating the letter grades (sort of known to me) into actual words. Over here we use numerical grades, and the scale is 1 to 6 in elementary and high school, and 2 to 5 at university. At school: 1 is niedostateczny (not enough) 2 used to be mierny (essentially, meh), but it was deemed to be offensive, and the name was changed to dopuszczający (passing grade, as in, ok, you pass, but barely) 3 is dostateczny (enough) 4 is dobry (good) 5 is bardzo dobry (very good) 6 is celujący (perfect) At uni things are similar, but 2 is niedostateczny, and the scale ends at very good.
I gave this puzzle high marks because it had a bit of bite and a fun theme, but it was not too KNOTTY. I tried alum before GRAD and legit before LICIT. I did a double take when LEGIT appeared elsewhere in the puzzle. I had never heard KISSUP. I’m more accustomed to suck up or kiss ***. I just got back from a long weekend hiking in coastal Maine with a college friend whose family has a camp about an hour northeast of Bangor. The fall color was outstanding and the views from Schoodic Point and the cliffs and bay of Fundy as seen from the Cutler coastal trail were gorgeous. I didn’t have time to comment, but thought the Friday, Saturday and Sunday puzzles were all quite nice.
@Marshall Walthew It might have been clued to include “with (to).” I think “kiss up to” is more commonly heard in the wild.
@Marshall Walthew - Congratulations on getting to the best part of the Maine coast -- most people don't venture any further downcast than MDI/Bar Harbor. The Cutler coastline is pretty amazing, and usually not crowded at all -- although it's been a few years since I've been there. Mostly, though, Fundy is obscured by Grand Manan from there.
Thought this was funny for the connections solvers: ) <a href="https://www.instagram.com/reel/DesX04wPYua/?dlrf=MThndGo4b2hjMWNxZA" target="_blank">https://www.instagram.com/reel/DesX04wPYua/?dlrf=MThndGo4b2hjMWNxZA</a>==
@Kerem Oh, lordy! Don't give Wyna Liu ideas.
@Kerem I laughed out loud 🤣 I stopped doing connections months ago because it just got so ridiculous. Maybe 1 or 2 good ones a week.
@Kerem Hilarious! And not far-off from actual purple connections...
26A was a favorite for me! As a goalie mom, my brain went straight to my goaltender, and his bum knees due to the constant up-down of the butterfly position. 🤣🤣 Although that doesn’t seem to be the way the clue was intended, it made me smile. Thanks for a great puzzle!
poem made from words in today’s puzzle a/ life may be at that point in the well of sorrow opium-thick with regret you look d/ out discovering you are a bird you are ready crack a/ on!
F+ clueing. Utes!? I think Joe Pesci saw two utes driving down the street. When nobody uses these terms it's just lazy construction. Either clue poor construction better or build around it please.
Hey, I'm in the puzzle!
@Carrie And... you've been in 30 puzzles, going all the way back to 1953. ....
fun, breezy, fabulous and FLAWLESS. a diamond of a puzzle. thanks Rebecca!
I always enjoy a Rebecca Goldstein puzzle, and this was no exception. Head of the Class!
There are so many very clever additional theme clues that Rebecca should make us another puzzle or two--right?! Hop to it!
Looks like my comment got emued, presumably because I mentioned two alternatives to KISSUP that were more familiar to me. Suffice it to say, I gave the puzzle high marks, for having a bit of bite and a charming theme, without being too KNOTTY. I also thought the Friday, Saturday and Sunday puzzles were quite nice too. I spent the weekend hiking on the Maine coast with a college friend. The fall color was spectacular and the views of ocean and coastal cliffs at Schoodic Point and Cutler Coastal Trail were breathtaking.
What a fun theme- it had me smiling every time one of them fell together, the mark of a good Wednesday theme in my book. Well done!
I really liked the theme. However, I would have preferred "C+" to be part of the clue at 28A instead of "B+". <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grade_inflation" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grade_inflation</a>
I'm a newbie and this is another day in a row without lookups, "one and done," gold star. Yay. Fun puzzle. And I've finally written down the NATO alphabet so I can use it when needed. I haven't seen 61A [Stephen King's telekinetic teen of horror CARRIE, but Dreiser's "Sister Carrie" was scary enough in college.
"I'm a newbie..." lucky13, How much longer will you still be a newbie?
@McFly Tell me you were never in the military without telling me...
@McFly et al As @Grant was inferring and many others have stated previously in these comments, ALFA is how it's spelled in the NATO alphabet: <a href="https://www.nato.int/content/dam/nato/webready/news/2010-2019/2017/12/21/20180111_nato-alphabet-sign-signal.pdf" target="_blank">https://www.nato.int/content/dam/nato/webready/news/2010-2019/2017/12/21/20180111_nato-alphabet-sign-signal.pdf</a> (Thanks again to @lucky13 for the reference link.) But also: we have @Marty and @McFly on the same thread?! From opposite sides of the country?? Does the flux capacitor make one whole? ☺️
I always perk up seeing a Rebecca Goldstein byline: I know there will be some excellent fill! Today was no exception. By now my puzzle solving is many hours behind me, and I have read more than my share of comments about grade inflation. But perhaps it took all of that for me to see that the grades go from B > B+ > A > A+ in a grid inflation of their own! For that, I'll not quibble over FINE vs. AVERAGE. Thorny before KNOTTY (and alum before GRAD). Loved seeing ALAN Cumming in the grid, and both RUE and WOE — the pair of which belie the sunny nature of this puzzle! Subsequent to my finishing the crossword, Edvard Munch's The SCREAM and the new tv series of CARRIE each came up in conversation. What's next, Freddie Krueger? [Track team: C] RUNNING PASS
I liked it! At first I thought it was going to be tough, but figuring out the theme helped me make some headway and I finished below my average. I'm puzzled as to why Tender bend-er is hyphenated. Wouldn't bender also make sense?
@Laura V Good question! Feels like a typo, now that you pointed it out.
@Laura V I understand it intuitively better than I understand it grammatically, but I think the -er is meant to indicate an agentive reading (something that bends and is also tender) instead of an instrumental reading (something that bends tender, like a folding wallet, maybe). This wikipedia article helped me think through it: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominalization#Examples" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominalization#Examples</a> . A direction in place of a misdirection, perhaps.
Very cute theme! A fun and witty Wednesday.