Bruce
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@Steven M. .and here I am to deliver the lecture, as follows: Eudora Welty is far from an obscure author. As noted in the clue, she won a Pulitzer Prize. At least five movie have been made from stories by her. She is an absolute giant in Southern literature, right up there with Faulkner, Harper Lee, and Flannery O'Connor.
@Vy They've cut back on them. They favor non-rebus puzzle submissions now. This one was just the same word, ANT, used ten times as a rebus, and the revealer specifically tells you what the rebus is and how many times it appears...surely not that difficult, right? Some of us enjoy a good rebus-infested puzzle, especially on Thursdays. Please don't grab the bug spray and exterminate them entirely.
Just a note about the planned change to the way your comment is displayed when it's a reply to another post: Currently, you see the original post plus ALL the subsequent replies. Now, though, all you're going to see is the original post, followed only by your reply and nobody else's. This is spoken of as an "improvement." It sure doesn't seem like an improvement to me! I want to see the whole thread! I already know what MY reply was. I'm not so egocentric that it's the only one I want to see. If I get to the point where that's all that matters to me I might as well just hang it up and retire from human contact altogether. PLEASE DON'T MAKE THIS CHANGE.
So there I was, in the northwest corner. I've read "The Catcher in the Rye" (read it in my twenties after walking the streets of a city for hours, depressed, and picked it up in a bookstore knowing nothing about it but the title, thinking it might cheer me up), and "Franny and Zoey," but had never encountered ESME. I've been a vegetarian for about fifty years, so chicken recipes, much less Japanese chicken recipes, are not part of my life. I've never encountered the phrase ICE IT before today. I've never memorized the motto of the United Farm Workers. I was left trying to figure out one across strictly from the mysterious clue, because I had none of the crosses. It didn't help that I don't think of KITEs as toys. Hobbies, scientific tools, jury-rigged propulsion methods for boats, an art form...sure. But not toys. I know the argument can be made for it...it's just not how I see them. So now I'm all bitter and frustrated about my ignorance, and I'm going to deal with it by blaming the totally innocent constructor and the entire staff of the New York Times, and finish with some idle lies about cancelling subscriptions, and stomp off somewhere and sulk until tomorrow. I'm fine with rebus puzzles, though.
13-year-old me, along wirh the rest of my seventh-grade English class, got an assignment: memorize a poem, and then recite it in front of the class. Now, most of the boys in the class figured out a way to fufill the requirement: memorize these lines...actually a small part of a larger poem, but presented as a complete poem...slouch up to the podium, drone this out: "Your little hands, Your little feet, Your little mouth — Oh, God, how sweet!" ...and plop back down at the desk. But not me. Oh, no. I was a Poe fan, and I was going to do this right. So I memorized "The Bells." The whole...damned...thing. And I walked up, stood at the podium and remembered: Oh yeah...I'm an acne-covered 13-year-old with paralyzing stage fright. By th time I got towards the end, and my final repetition of "of the bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, of the bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells.. " there were several kids with their heads on their desks, moaning loudly. Anyway, THE BELLS was a gimme for me.
A small nit to pick: Although most people interpret Occam's razor to mean "the simplest explanation is the most likely to be correct," it actually says that the explanation with the fewest assumptions is probably the best one. And yes, the explanation with the fewest assumptions can also be the simplest one...but not necessarily.
@MarkN I'm sorry, but I refuse to believe that the ease with which I blew through this one was due to anything but my towering intellect.
I have to wonder what the people who were complaining about the difficulty of Thursday's puzzle thought about this one. I'm picturing phones flying across rooms, cursing, angry letters and cancelled subscriptions. Somewhere in the world there is probably someone who solved this easily, without lookups and without frustration, but I have to wonder if a person with abilities like that hasn't just transcended what it is to be human and gone on to some higher plane. I absolutely couldn't do this one. I looked up maybe 70% of it.
@Michael I never realized that taking algebra in high school made me an "elite." I really should have taken to wearing a tweed suit to all my factory and warehouse jobs. I could have smoked a pipe during breaks, too.
@Nancy Babies need to nurse. Moms who are breastfeeding sometimes have to use pumps. A lactation room allows them to do so in private. How can that possibly be seen as nauseating or offensive?
@Dave Rosenbaum Purgatory is part of the Greater Metropolitan Area of Hell.
I thought I knew baseball, but it turns out I don't know JACK.
@Emma Some were going up, others were going down. Like elevators do.
@TLB Frankly, my dear, I don't give it much thought.
@Mellow Mebble Much too difficult for me...I had to cheat many, many times to finish (although actually getting GESTALT from the clue given made me ridiculously happy), and, cheats and all, it took me well over an hour. But it's Saturday, and I'm not going to stamp my little foot and demand some dumbing-down for my sake. I guarantee you, there was someone out there who blew through this puzzle in less than fifteen minutes without breaking a sweat. They deserve something that's worthy of them, and the rest of us can just look at it as something to aspire to.
I happen to know that a screwdriver is usually garnished with an orange slice rather than a rind (it even shows that in the recipe linked in the commentary), so now I can get all huffy and entitled to indulge in self-righteous solver indignation.
I almost looked up 52 across. I think that counts as irony.
I'm a perfect solver. I get the gold star every single time, and if I can't get it legitimately, I cheat until I can.
@Patrick Ryan It's one of those rare ingredients that adds itself.
My younger sister was idly singing the national anthem to herself when she was about 13 years old, which is how I found out she thought the opening line started with: "OK, can you see..." I kind of like it, though. It seems more American.
The crossword equivalant of a killer dungeon. If there's anyone out there who solved this cleanly, my hat's off to you, because you are so far beyond my skills that you probably qualify as a different species than me.
From National Lampoon's "Bored of the Rings:" As Goodgulf stepped onto the bridge the passage echoed with an ominous dribble, dribble, and a great crowd of narcs burst forth. In their midst was a towering dark shadow too terrible to describe. In its hand it held a huge black globe and on its chest was written in cruel runes, "VILLANOVA." "AIYEEEEEE!!!" shouted Legolam. "A BALLHOG!!!"
@Steve L It's just plain incorrect. It's an extremely common for people to confuse "its" with "it's," too, and you can always figure out what was meant from context, but that doesn't make it acceptable usage.
I was mentally composing a complaint about the injustice of crossing the name of a French holding company with a subdivision of a currency I knew nothing about when I realized that, somehow, I knew the answer. I had to look up the rapper, and even after I got the music ACUNIT had me staring at it baffled me for a while (yes, I did eventually figure it out). Running two words together always throws my pattern recognition for a loop. You'd think I'd watch for it, but no...it trips me up like Lucy holding the football, every time.
I am studying classical guitar. I've just moved beyond the more basic pieces and am currently working on Tárrega's "Adelita." The infamous twelveth measure that has a barre chord and an ornament that asks for an impossible (for me, at this stage) reach has me really discouraged. My lesson is at two o'clock, and one again I will show up having made zero progress. I was seriously thinking of just giving up the guitar. I just did this puzzle and read the commentary, which includes the phrase "has a good beat and you can dance to it," which is a link. I hit the link; it links to an article which talks about the phrase as used on the TV show "American Bandstand." But... I continued to the rest of the article. IT'S ABOUT THE DIFFICULTY OF PLAYING BARRE CHORDS ON THE GUITAR, AND CONTAINS THE PHRASE "DON'T GIVE UP." What are the odds? So, OK...I'll go see my world-class instructor today, tell her what's going on, bring her my copy of Segreras exercises, and plead for help. But I won't give up.
@Andrzej I first encountered an oral vaccine at about age five, when everyone in my school got lined up to receive the new polio vaccination. I was bracing myself for a needle in the shoulder. Instead, I was handed a sugar cube with a little red stain on one side. It made me happy enough that I still remember that moment.
I had SUN TsU, and CUs seemed plausible for a few seconds.
@Andrzej Polaroid photography does have its charms. The pictures can have a weird sort of washed-out immediacy to them sometimes, and pulling the photo out of the camera and watching it slowly develop before your eyes is a unique experience. There's been a few photographers that used them exclusively. I'm not even sure you can still get film for them, though. You used to be able to buy a Polaroid back for Hasselblad cameras, which, given the huge assortment of lenses and attachments available for those excellent machines, opened up a whole world of possibilities. My father was an insurance adjuster. He was provided with a Polaroid camera by his employer for use on the job almost immediately after they became available, and I often accompanied him if he had to travel (for instance, to a small town where a tornado had struck, or by plane to another state to recover a stolen vehicle). The series of sounds a Polaroid camera makes and the smell of the chemicals when the backing is peeled away and the picture starts to develop as you watch are all a source of intense nostalgia for me.
@Andrzej So is objecting to it if it's uncalled for. The constructors often read the comments. They put a great deal of effort into the puzzles, and the payment they get from the Times isn't nearly proportionate to what they have to go through to get one accepted. Most of us appreciate that effort, and don't care for it when they get dumped on when someone gets frustrated.
@Joe P It's like "penultimate"...once you get the hang of it, you can shoehorn it in almost every day, until nobody can stand to have a conversation with you. You have to make the effort, though..
My first impulse for 25 across was NOPE.
It was one of those puzzles that seems impossible, then allows you a tiny bit of traction, like a tiny crack in a dam almost imperceptibly lengthening, but at the end you get the deluge.
Now you've done it. Next Saturday's puzzle rushing towards you now, like a clown with a concrete pie in one hand.
Got the trick fairly early on, and went through it fairly fast until I was left with mostly the northwest corner. I hadn't heard of SEA NETTLES or IMPANEL or the infused water, so I cheated until I got it. Last letter to get filled in in this puzzle was also the very last letter in the southeast corner, so the last word I filled in was DIE, which pretty much put a stake in its evil heart. A clever puzzle, but tough for me.
@Katie I saw it twice in its intended setting - a Cinerama theater - when I was 13, using money from my paper route to get in. I saw it again maybe a dozen more times over the years. I've seen several of Kubrik's movies multiple times. I can understand why a lot of people find 2001 to be slow and boring. It's one of those movies that you had to see in the context of the era in which it was made. For one thing, science fiction special effects hadn't gotten much further than small wobbly spaceship models on wires, so the leap forward was spectacular. Another aspect was the fact that it was made as a Cinerama film, with its huge curving screen, high resolution, and state-of-the-art (for then) sound, and it's a shame that most people will never experience it like that. It was immersive in a way that movies had never been previously. In some ways it's almost a lost film.
I have the complete works of Edith Wharton on my Kindle, and am sbout three books into it. I've read a bit about her life, including her long-term friendship with Henry James. I've seen photos of the house she lived in, exterior and interior. I know that at one point she bailed out Henry James financially, and that he never knew who did it. But when this puzzle asked me for her first name, I drew a blank for several minutes and had to wait until I got three crossing entries before it finally came to me.
@Chris G Like the rest of us, you've become more and more brilliant as the years passed.
For those of you not familiar with "Tilted Arc:" it was a huge metal arc that blocked foot traffic in a formerly open square, forcing pedestrians to walk around it. New Yorkers don't tend to appreciate people or things that block their way when they're trying to get somewhere.
I just completed this puzzle from the back seat of a car driving down bumpy roads in Puerto Rico with unmarked speed bumps, while looking at lots of chickens, dogs, cats, and the occasional horse. It took a bit longer than usual.
The diagram of imperial measurements looks weirdly like The Tree of Life from the Kabalah, I feel like I should be either disturbed, enlightened, or having it printed on a t-shirt. Maybe some or all of those options simultaneously.
@Francis The Marlboro Men are all dead. Dick Van Dyke, though, is still dancing.
There was a moment, after being stuck for quite a while, when I said to myself: "Wait a minute...is it possible that "pomelo" has only one "l?" It was kind of like that moment in "2001: A Space Odyssey" when the ape starts looking intensely at the bone in his hand.
@Neil I'm approaching my 3000th New York Times crossword, but I can count the number of times I've finished a Sunday puzzle in less than an hour on one hand. I spent a lifetime doing blue-collar jobs where the only metric my bosses cared about was speed. It was stressful. It made me dangerous when I was operating heavy machinery, it made me a menace on the road, and it made everyone around me cut corners in ways that never should have happened. Things got damaged and people got hurt. The last thing I want to do is insert that mindset into something I do for fun.
Per 103 down: Sometimes dad jokes are mom jokes. I had to become a dad to understand why dads tell dad jokes. Here's the process: You discover, when you have preschool-aged kids, that really corny jokes will crack them up, but you fail to take into account how quickly your kids develop...within a few months they aren't laughing so much, and shortly thereafter you catch them rolling their eyes. Of course, if you enjoy making them roll their eyes, you can continue right on into their teens.
@D Sometimes you defeat them. Sometimes they defeat you. Don't take it personally. They're supposed to be challenging.
@Anna The COVID epidemic shut me and my son up alone in my house in 2020, and an incorrect diagnosis of Alzheimer's made me scramble to find a way to keep my brain functional and my vocabulary and ability to communicate intact for as long as possible. Near brushes with death are great for forcing one to re-evaluate their lives and start making the most of each day. I highly recommend them.
Doing this puzzle made me feel like I'd been given a pile of tiny gears and parts, and, with a few false starts, managed to reassemble them into a working watch. It was a pleasure to set the last letter in place.
@Andrzej Dissent is fine when there's some specific valid points made, but when it's just anger and frustration because the puzzle was beyond someone's ability it merits a rebuttal. It's not just a knee-jetk reaction to all criticism of puzzles.
"Dark Academia" as a style, a pose, and a decor? I guess it's fun and harmless, but it gives me the creeps. I learned about Antoni Gaudi when I was still in my teens. I was reading William Gibson's book "Count Zero" and got to the scene that takes place on a bench in a computer simulation of Park Güell, was curious about the place, and since I was in a library at the time, found a book that included many illustrations of Gaudi's architecture and became a little obsessed. So, fifty years or so later, I finally made it to Barcelona, and was actually sitting on that very bench. And about ten feet away from me was a perfectly coiffed, perfectly dressed young woman. She set up her ring light, attached her phone to her selfie stick, got her shot, then left. She got her proof that she was there, although in a sense she never really was. I never thought I would live in a time when narcissism is seen as a virtue.