Oikofuge

I can see why some people object to IMMIX. Maybe you just need to be a Scot of particular temperament and habits: Ye heathy wastes, IMMIX'd with reedy fens; Ye mossy streams, with sedge and rushes stor'd; Ye rugged cliffs, o'erhanging dreary glens, To you I fly, ye with my soul accord. Robert Burns <a href="https://www.public-domain-poetry.com/robert-burns/elegy-on-miss-burnet-of-monboddo-10012" target="_blank">https://www.public-domain-poetry.com/robert-burns/elegy-on-miss-burnet-of-monboddo-10012</a> I've been declaiming those lines on wet days in the Scottish Highlands for nigh on half a century.

Had never heard of Steven Wright or his alleged quip, which made for a rather gloomy start to this one. Not a big fan of "Isn't English crazy!?!" jokes, or of rebuses that involve "/", so that made me even more downcast. But plugged away at it, finding enough crosses to fill or guess the inaccessible clues, and actually began to perk up as stuff started to fall into place. So even a theme I don't like can give me a puzzle I enjoy. There's a lesson, right there.

Nice one, again. Anagrams---almost like home! And these were well found, unforced phrases. Applause. So it was a shame I didn't puzzle out the theme until I'd filled most of the themers. Picked it up with SWITCHED GEARS, and only had TWISTED SISTER left to fill, so not much help, but still a pleasant Aha! My command of "currencies of the world" has been paying off of late, though I had two attempts to get the correct spelling of RIEL, which still doesn't look right. Last to fall was the P at the cross of COMP and PREK. The latter unknown, the former never (I think) encountered as a verb, but guessable. ODIE, the dog, and SARA Lee, whoever she may be, known only from what feels like frequent exposure in previous puzzles. [Author's assistant] cluing TYPIST was like a little visit from the 1930s, but it made me smile.

Pleasant, and for me brisk. But the /skw/ for /w/ theme was a vexation to the spirit, though it didn't create any solving problems. I pronounce "wh" and "w" differently, and I'm still trying to imagine how SQUIRRELLED can sound like (I guess) "world", so the phonetic substitutions just don't work for me. These are examples of a class of homophones that are only homophones in some accents, and a while ago I suggested (in New Scientist, no less!) that these should be called homoiophones (from ὅμοιος, "similar", rather than ὁμός, "same"). I'm having trouble getting any traction with that proposition, as you might imagine ...

Here's Izaak Walton, in "The Compleat Angler" (1661 version), the chapter on salmon from my father's well-thumbed facsimile copy: The Salmon is accounted the King of freshwater fish; and is ever bred in rivers relating to the sea, yet so high, or far from it, as admits of no tincture of salt, or brackishness. He is said to breed or cast his spawn, in most rivers, in the month of August: some say, that then they dig a hole or grave in a safe place in the gravel, and there place their eggs or spawn, after the melter has done his natural office, and then hide it most cunningly, and cover it over with gravel and stones; and then leave it to their Creator's protection, who, by a gentle heat which he infuses into that cold element, makes it brood, and beget life in the spawn, and to become SAMLETs early in the spring next following.

The juxtaposition of CIRCE and SPRIG prompted me to track down the source of some lines of poetry I've (as it turns out) been misquoting for about fifty years. The opening and closing quatrain of Edith Thomas's "Moly": Traveler, pluck a stem of moly, If thou touch at Circe's isle,--- Hermes' moly, growing solely To undo enchanter's wile! It's the (misremembered) SPRIG of mythical moly that prevents CIRCE from turning Ulysses into a pig, along with his men. <a href="https://tinyurl.com/3r92uaev" target="_blank">https://tinyurl.com/3r92uaev</a> (I also had the distinct impression the line was "Holy moly, growing solely", which works nicely, and would offer a fine, if completely erroneous, origin for the minced oath "Holy Moly!")

That was a fairly quick solve for me, despite having no clue what the theme was about. I spent some time trying to puzzle out the connection between Shetland ponies and merino sheep, before the crosses forced me to think of OVINE. Was bemused to discover that a WORKBAG is a stylish tote for an executive, rather than the battered canvas bag full of tools that the phrase conjures up for me. NONETHEWISER was also a surprise, there being no connection to something nefarious, hereabouts. I most commonly hear it as a criticism of a bad explanation: "Well, he gave me a long lecture about it, but I ended up none the wiser." Fun, all in all, but the theme left me NONETHEWISER until I came to look at Word Play.

In other news, after scrolling through the comments, I'm much heartened to see that I finally got a gimme on a piece of American geography/history that gave some US posters pause. Alaska is the only US state I've travelled in extensively, and I've always been fascinated by its complicated history, along with Yukon next door. So there was a brief period when SITKA was the only solution I had on the grid!

Slow but steady for me. Periods of blankness, followed by inspiration, followed by an outburst of solving, followed by a period of blankness. Repeat. Hugely enjoyed this one for its clever cryptic cluing combined with proper nouns that were actually in my cultural wheelhouse. Was there a single clue relating to American sport, education or chain restaurant food (my usual downfalls)? Can't think of one. NOVOCAINE is an American trade name but very familiar in the UK. Not sure if Miracle-GRO is sold over here, but I seemed to know it once I got a cross. Applause.

Another travel-related solve, this one at a hallucinatory early hour in the hell that is Heathrow airport. I know just enough about baseball to get the theme very quickly (and to know that "fourth" gets you HOME. One natick for me, at the cross between unknown abbreviations in 49D and 59A. Picture my delight, as I settled down to run the alphabet in order, to get a hit on A! CLICHE as an adjective still makes me wince, having been brought up on cliché as the noun and clichéd as the adjective. But of course it actually works fine as a participle adjective, being the past participle of French clicher, to copy or stereotype. Yet still I wince, for no defensible reason.

Well, the less said about that, the better. Not only did I feel I was on a different wavelength from the constructor, I seemed to be searching for an AM station using an FM radio. Not my favourite. So here's a bit of crossword inspired trivia, instead: The CONSTELLATION Mensa is not a table, as its Latin name suggests, but a mountain. It was originally Mons Mensae, Table Mountain. It was named by Lacaille during his time at the observatory in Cape Town, when he had a good view of both mountain and constellation. He chose the name because the constellation wears the Large Magellanic Cloud like a hat, just as Table Mountain is often capped with orographic cloud.

"Baby"salmon? I haven't heard that expression, or SAMLET. They're fry, parr and smolts in these parts. Not a fan of the theme, which felt a little laboured, but it sure helped with the solve, so no complaints. Why the question mark on [Marquis name?]? It threw me off the obvious DE SADE for quite a while.

Gad. The only thing I fear more than a grid rich in American sports references is one, like today, with American food references, particularly if they're referred to as "treats", which pretty much guarantees I won't have a clue. I should by now recall the name of ELIE Wiesel and the KHAN Academy, but of course I don't. Had RuCKus for RACKET, and POKERfAcE for POKERGAME (while thinking grumpily that a face isn't an activity). So that was an epic slog for me. Not a big fan of EST for a guess, unless it's short for something other than "estimate", or I'm missing some subtle wordplay. An estimate as anything but guesswork. [But spare me the dictionary link, thanks. I'm aware that people use it that way, just as they use "theory" to mean "stuff I just made up" and "research" to mean "reading my social media".]

I've kind of abandoned early week puzzles, but I did this one during a train journey. I cheered aloud at the cluing of SINCE with [Because]---good to see the contrived rule about since=time/because=causation being so succinctly trashed. The meaning of "since" has involved causation, as well as time, for pretty much as long as the word has existed. The OED's earliest citation for the use in the sense of causation dates back to the FIFTEENTH CENTURY, for cryin' out loud. <a href="https://oikofuge.com/sith" target="_blank">https://oikofuge.com/sith</a>/

I loved this one. Pleasantly complicated and obscure. Just enough fill that I knew to get me past a barrage of cultural unknowns. My previous post has been emued, perhaps because I spelled out the pejorative associations of MIDINETTE. Don't use it as a form of address unless you want a slap!

Here in the UK, long ago, we used to have a lovely TV programme entitled "One Man And His Dog", in which hill shepherds and their dogs competed to move sheep around in very precise ways. I tell you this because the first time I saw ROLEO on TV, I thought it should be called "One Man And His Log." (And, yes, women are involved in both activities. We're going back a few years, and the chance to play with a line from the children's "... Went To Mow" song seems to have trumped any impulse to find a gender-neutral title for the shepherding contest.) Anyway, that's how ROLEO became a gimme for me today.

My heart always sinks when clues involve food, which generally involve references to chain restaurants, supermarket products, and recipes unknown on this side of the Atlantic. Fortunately the rest of the puzzle was solidly "in my wheelhouse" (an expression I've only learned since I started hanging out here). I needed to solve every crosser to get BAKEDZITI, and was still doubtful that it was a thing---I wasted quite a few minutes revisiting the crosses. PONE eventually dropped after I had the last three letters and the phrase "corn pone" popped into my head out of nowhere. The only real sticking point was my ignorance of Slack. I solved to MSmEAMS, (TATTOOARm on the cross, stupidly), and hung up staring at that for a very long time. But this is the first time, in months of lurking, that I've turned up here to discover that Word Play found a puzzle harder than I did!

So many unknown proper nouns, unheard-of cultural references and abbreviations, and a theme I'd never heard of. Absolutely skin-of-the-teeth solve without lookups. Day saved in the NE by the late realization that [Minnesotan trio?] was wordplay, not another flippin' sports reference. In the SW by realizing that ["Same here"] was DITTO, not meToO. In the SE by belatedly noticing that Guddi isn't actually a designer brand. In the NW by the surprising discovery that Diana RIGG had a role in Game of Thrones. The only upside was that I have actually SKI BOARDed, so got a welcome gimme there. Not a fan of themes that involve a grid full of non-words, but hey-ho, it's a thing, and at least it didn't stop me completing, albeit in what must have been considerably over my usual time.

Jeez-o, as we say in these parts. Various unknown cultural references, combined with a completely impenetrable theme for a non-US solver. I've somewhat astonished myself by chipping through that without lookups. But, like the Battle of Waterloo, it was a dem close-run thing. I don't use the timer, but suspect that was twice as long as usual, with umpteen trial fills and deletions. I'm stll in mild shock to have pulled KAMEHAMEHA and RUSSETPOTATO out of the hat from some fairly sparse crosses, against a background of complete bemusement.

Nice fill today. Glad I took a chance on it. Got stuck for a while in the west because I'd confidently entered I teLL EM AS I SEE EM as soon as I saw the triple E in the east. This was compounded by an inability to parse DOGEAR from [Turndown], and unfamiliarity with SAY THE MAGIC WORD. (I think if my parents had ever said that to me, I'd have said "Abracadabra" in puzzled tones.) Good to have some fill that was solidly in my "general knowledge" wheelhouse, for a change, and I see that my total ignorance of American football was a positive advantage in finding OWNER.

Good one. Some lovely ah-ha! misdirections. The Pittsburgh tower broke it for me, forcing a lookup. I knew it had to be __STEEL, but unfortunately had kNockING for [Downing, with "down"], giving me a bad cross at the critical cell. Kicked myself several times when US turned out to be the required initialism, and then saw my way quickly to SNARFING, which is a known but very foreign word for me. Lots of stuff solved on the crosses, including CHESSBOXING, which seems more like a companion to extreme ironing than an actual sport. And TIL what a "ride or die sort" is---when that solved on the crosses to Best Female Friend I was completely blank. [Male influencer archetype]? EBOY? I had a lot of potential four-letter words for that one, and one surname, but that was a new one.

All the themers were opaque to me today: JANELLE MONAE's name unknown, though I'll have seen her in "Hidden Figures". TICKLE MONSTER more disturbing than endearing---a concept I can only associate with Scary Uncles. ANKLE MONITOR seems like something with which you'd monitor your ankles, but I'm guessing it's what I know as an "ankle tag". Wanted LAIty rather than LAICS, of which I'd never heard. Likewise for OPDOC (what?) and AMC cinemas. BTUs always make me laugh when they come up in the NYT---are they still in use in the USA? On the other hand OPAH was a gimme, a favourite ever since it was the "O" in my animal alphabet as a child. And I'm a little surprised at the reaction to LATENS, which seems like a routine sort of word to me. I'd use it for seasons, and phases of the moon, as well as the time of day. But, to be honest, as the day gets darker I'd say it "advesperates"---because why wouldn't you? <a href="https://oikofuge.com/advesperate" target="_blank">https://oikofuge.com/advesperate</a>/

That took up a Wednesday-worth of my time. A lot of rearranging and guessing. I'd have worn through the paper with an eraser if I was solving on paper. I couldn't unsee FAT ONE when I had gathered enough crosses for JOEY FATONE's surname, and assumed he was the victim of a cruel nickname---which seemed plausible since we were teasing about Arnold Schwarzenegger's accent yesterday. Was fortunate to know about "charley horses" and "supermarket RAGS" from time spent living in Canada, which probably saved the day, but it seemed like a hard Monday. I found the theme more "Ew" than "Aw", but I do develop Cute Toxicity Syndrome when exposed to even low doses. And unlike many happy reminiscers here, I never experienced PUPPY LOVE and am not entirely sure what it entails, or the derivation of the metaphor.

Sigh. You wait all week for a Sunday puzzle, and then THIS comes along. Where are my rebuses? Where are my mutilated and bent solution words? Got the theme with TITANIC SINKS, by which time it was obvious that, as a foreigner, I was going nowhere with either the fill or the theme. Killed it with Reveal, spent a bit of time snorting incredulously at some of the answers, and then flounced off to the archives. There's always next week, I suppose...

Nice theme. Got it early from BLUE DENIM and DATA MINED, and found it very useful in helping the solve, given the usual number of unknown proper names to be worked around. I'd never heard of ICE MILKS, but got it from the crosses; struggled with [Brit's jolly cry of approval], presumably heard on "Downton Abbey"; and entered NAE for [Scot's denial] through the usual gritted teeth. But otherwise the vocabulary was familiar and seemed to flow naturally from the clues. Brisker than my usual Sundays.

I'm struck by the symmetrical setting of 44D, GIOTTO, and 63D, GOOD OH. Surely that's a reference to the famous story about Giotto, who painted a quick, perfect circle to demonstrate his skill for the Pope? If it's not, it should be.

Interesting how "fey" seems to have converged on the meaning of "fay" (yesterday's FAE), despite being etymologically unrelated (Germanic, as opposed to French), and originally meaning "fated to die" or "nearly dead". I'd never encountered the usage clued today. Otherwise, that was full of hilariously obscure cultural fill for me. I needed a couple of reveals in the SW and the E to get anywhere.

Further to the discussion of INNKEEPER ... Not only is there no infamous innkeeper in the Biblical account of Mary and Joseph's arrival in Bethlehem, there may not even be an inn. The Greek word translated as "inn" in the King James version of this story is "katalyma", which can mean a room in an inn, or a guesthouse, or a guest room in a private home. Elsewhere, Luke uses the word "pandocheion" to refer specifically to an "inn" (which would be more accurately described as a caravanserai) in the parable of the Good Samaritan. And the KJV elsewhere translates "katalyma" as being some sort of guest room. So one alternative reading of the story is that Mary and Joseph had planned to stay with friends or relatives, but the upper guest room was too crowded to accommodate them, so they were housed downstairs, with the family and their livestock---it being common to keep the animals indoors for safety (and central heating!) Hence, then, the ready availability of a manger for a crib. So no heartless innkeeper! I actually find the alternative version of the story more pleasing and plausible, but that's perhaps just me.

While others are enjoying pleasant childhood memories from THE FLOOR IS LAVA, I'm having unpleasant flashbacks induced by PREFAB. I grew up in a post-war Arcon Mk V prefab housing scheme. While they could be erected in eight hours by a sufficiently large team, they generally took longer. They were so poorly insulated that the toilet cistern (which was mounted against an external wall) used to freeze solid during winter nights, and when the house was quiet you could hear the larger birds walking along the roof ridge. <a href="https://tinyurl.com/4jsyumpe" target="_blank">https://tinyurl.com/4jsyumpe</a> The strange brick and corrugated-iron structure in the first image at the end of my link is an "Andershed". These were garden sheds built from some of the components of a wartime Anderson Shelter. The originals were cheap personal bomb shelters for people with gardens large enough to accommodate one. They required an excavation so that they were buried to roof level. When the war ended, the materials were repurposed to provide above-ground sheds---we had one behind our house, identical to the one in the picture.

Thought I was going to crash and burn on this one. Volleyball! I saw that played once, in 1973. Various cliff-hangers ensued, followed by hairs-breadth escapes. The realisation that I actually knew the name of an actor in a film I'd never seen; that TUPPERware was presumably named after someone; that I'd filled the name of an unknown noodle entirely on the crosses... Filled the grid... no happy tune. Scrolled through one clue at a time. Wondered if BUMPSEySPIKE might not be as plausible a volleyball thing as it had intially seemed. Hmmm. Maybe I needed *three* words to match the three other clues this one was supposed to "reveal". Minutes go by. Maybe that entirely impenetrable down solution is EAST, rather than EASy? Ta-da.