Roberto
Spain
7D is IDO? What does that have to do with Me! 8D is SINGIT? Do I have that right? She might be a Broadway great but I never heard of Idina Menzel so I had a hard time with the top middle section of the puzzle. Aside from that I can't imagine going beyond 16. I just ran thirty-two through Google translate and the prospects for a puzzle entry are pretty bleak. Well, TIL kanakolukumamālua is thirty-two in Hawaiian.
@LBG If you really want to impress someone, you can tell the story of how the motto oro y plata was adopted as the Montana state motto. It refers to the thrilling upset double victory of Team Montana in the 1888 winter Olympics snowboarding competition. Few people in Montana understood Latin at the time, and so they opted for the Spanish. Uva uvam vivendo varia fit was an alternative choice, but it was rejected as no one was certain what it meant. We had ORO in the puzzle last week, by the way. Never mind.
@Katrina S. Congratulations! You seem delighted and rightfully so! Now that you know you can do it I'll bet you'll be knocking off Tuesdays pretty shortly! If you do tomorrow's puzzle let us know!
Steven Wright was the voice of K-Billy in Reservoir Dogs, the host of the radio program K-Billy's Super Sounds of the 70's. That was The Partridge Family's "Doesn't Somebody Want to be Wanted?", followed by Edison Lighthouse's "Love Grows where my Rosemary Goes" as K-Billy's Super Sounds of the 70's weekend just keeps on... truckin'. Just a bit of trivia for all you SW fans. I see from the comments there are quite a few of you, not just the constructor. As a side note, things are easier in Spanish! A photo is a foto and a pharmacy is a farmacia, and yes, phonetic is fonético.
I thought that was an excellent puzzle! Thanks RL! Was it hard or easy for me? Well, at first I thought it was hard, but I did not abandon hope. I had about half of it filled in and could not go any further. I took a nap. When I got back to the puzzle, the answers seemed to just fill in by themselves. So it was hard until it wasn't. I have posted more or less this same comment a thousand times. For those of you who get totally stumped by a puzzle, take Sam's advice, don't abandon hope. Just put the puzzle down, go do something else, come back later and for some reason your brain will have it all figured it out. One other thing. I live in Valencia, where we had the devastating floods a few weeks back and thousands of people lost their lives, their homes, their entire neighborhoods, so I may have some idea about how terrible the devastation has been in southern California. What can I or anyone say?
A flotilla of frivolity! A lighthouse of levity! Are we on the HMS Pinafore here? All seriousness aside, AS TO 41D: Sawyer for me is Tom's last name (to pick one instance) and I have never heard anyone referred to as a sawyer. Nor have I ever known anyone to set up a saw practice. An upscale term for cabinet maker? So, agent nouns. Worker, driver, teacher, dealer, seller, buyer, baker, puzzle solver, there are a lot of them. As an expat I find when I go to a restaurant the waiter always has to practice his English with me. Since it is a restaurant naturally the conversation will often have something to do with the kitchen. Many times I have had to explain that the person who does the cooking is the cook, not the cooker. I tell them it's a common mistake, and a perfectly logical one, but alas, it's wrong. In Spanish nothing special happens with the cook. He's a cocinero. Or she's a cocinera. Does"ero" in Spanish agent nouns have anything to do with "er" in English ones? I don't know!
There once was a teacher named Bonkers Who helped PAVE THE WAY up to Yonkers He planned it like Moses A path strewn with roses But got just a parkway with honkers. I will, to use the parlance of the comments section, see myself out.
I wonder if anyone else screwed up the northeast corner by putting in tEnD for 18D. I had the E and the D, so it seemed pretty logical. So then I have tOoTRUE which kind of makes sense, but then 12D is AoO_EN and all I could think of was the Australian Open. So 25A is SnEp??? I don't think so! Being up is one thing, the caffeine kicking in is another. I went through all the comments in search of enlightenment but nobody seems to have had the same problem. Finally AWOKEN, I realized I had 18D all wrong. HOWTRUE! SEEK and ye shall find. Otherwise, I am glad to see Trenton Charlson again. Who else is going to construct a puzzle with entries like MADAME TUSSAUDS and TRIASSIC PERIOD? Loved the photo of the executed murderers at Madam Tussaudis, by the way.
So, the athlete going over the bar is a visual pun on having people over? I don't know! As for WAWA, we don't have to bring Gilda Radner into this. But I'd like to mention that the child of an ex-pat friend of mine, faced with the insoluble choice of water or agua, settled on Wagua as a viable compromise. Hey, slake your thirst now and you can worry about the right word later.
@Ιασων A part of everyday’s comment stream makes one thankful for @Barry Anaconda!
This puzzle did not sit well with me at all! Sorry! Going through the comments: I agree with Teresa, too many random phrases, and Chris had a good reply to that: "sneerat and yellat do not belong in the same puzzle. Once is pushing it, twice is lazy." TMD didn't like the cluing and thought the puzzle a slog with few fun answers. My opinion as well. Rajeevfromca found too many vague clues, and I agree STETS is not "leave" strictly speaking. I might add that I never see it as a verb, nor do I ever see the plural EROSIONS. Many people didn't like 13D [card letters] for STL and I didn't either, it's not a vague clue, it's just obscure for no reason. While I'm at it, 15D [color for un campeon] is the best clue you can come up with for the Spanish word for gold? Besides, do gold silver and bronze really refer to the colors of the medals or the metals they are composed of? 30D SUPER. Really? 50A PEG [Part of a violin quartet?] Please. Hopefully better puzzles will come. Development through experimentation! What else. Yeah, Pepsi's ok.
Congratulations Carly Schuna on a great Saturday puzzle. It was challenging but with patience I finally solved it. The puzzle was notable for the lack of bad fill, such as strained words (like MERER from the other day) and no off the wall clues. Clever, tough clues, yes, but with a letter here and there the answers all fell into place. I really enjoyed the puzzle!
In the Goofs section for O Brother Where Art Thou? on the IMDB site we find: "Nelson asks if any of "you fellers" knows his way around a Walther PPK. He then pulls out a sub-machine gun. The Walther PPK is a pistol." It's one of my favorite Coen Brothers movies, and it has a great soundtrack. I have watched it 4,356 times and that's why I remember the line.
@Michael Crossed with a random foreign name that no one could possibly know. Anna Magnani: I got to work now, you gotta go. Marlon Brando: I got no place to go. Anna Magnani: Well, everybody's got a problem, that's yours. -The Fugitive Kind (1960) Sorry you don't know the movie. But yeah, Kieron Moore in David and Bathsheba (1951), that's a tough one. It's just that the story of David and Bathsheba isn't exactly pop culture trivia. Even if you don't read the Bible, art museums are filled with paintings of David checking out Bathsheba's charms in her, well bath. All David has to do is get rid of her husband, Uriah. Gregory Peck and Susan Hayward as D and B, in case anyone was wondering.
IMPOSSIBLE COLORS Well, hemoglobin is not stygian blue, we can agree on that. As for the origin of brownie points, I always thought... well, never mind, it won't pass the breakfast test. Go to Wikipedia if you wish. Aside from that, I enjoyed the puzzle, not too difficult, not gruesome puns to groan over. And TIL that a KITE is a Chinese symbol of hope and prosperity. I'm ok with that, it's easier than trying to fly an anchor.
That was an enjoyable Wednesday. Wasn't there an RANDB group called Gladys Knight and the Humdingers? They had a song about a train but exactly which train and where it was going I can't recall.
I enjoyed the puzzle! But I didn't like like the clue for TILT at 2D, [pinball infraction]. An infraction is not a big deal. The adjective minor often precedes it, and MW in a usage note points out that in Federal law an infraction is even smaller than a misdemeanor and penalized by a mere fine. A TILT is a heck of a lot more than an infraction! It's game over baby! No more balls. Flippers don't flip. Bumpers don't bump. Lights are out. Weird sounds are mute. It's the arcade equivalent of capital punishment. Always gets a prize, Never seen it fall, That deaf dumb and blind kid Sure plays a mean CLAWMACHINE.
A well constructed puzzle, I enjoyed solving it. It was definitely Friday level, but the grid being open allowed for many crossings, there were a lot of ways into it. Puzzles with words tucked away in corners are hard to solve because you don't get much help from the rest of the puzzle. Today I felt confident that with patience it would all fall into place nicely. And it did. I liked the long spans, which were great for misinterpretations as you filled in various letters. 10D, alas, is not summer sale event. But it was a nice try.
@Moira A little while back Tom Selleck did a commercial for some outfit selling reverse mortgages, where he informs us that "this isn't my first rodeo" and so you can trust him when he tells us that a reverse mortgage isn't some kind of trick to take your home. Seth Meyers astutely asked why he would feel a need to mention that it wasn't some kind of trick in the first place, but I'll just leave it at that.
4D Fine leathers, ok, I SEE. But she's not wearing suede. I would have liked to see Jerry Seinfeld in his suede jacket from the episode The Jacket. The one where Lawrence Tierney plays Elaine's father. Nevertheless, that is a great photo!
I liked 31D and 34D, but normally a girl is a chica. MUCHACHA isn't wrong but I don't hear it often. For 8D] ["___ bien!" (All right!," in Spanish)] I had todo at first but soon realized ESTA was going to be the right answer. All right would be literally translated as todo bien, as when you you meet someone and ask everything good? ESTA bien for me is more like it's ok, don't worry about it. With no exclamation point. Just nitpicking! But what do I know, I'm not a native speaker. Aside from that, very impressive puzzle from a 14 year old! I'm afraid to ask how many languages he's fluent in.
I hope this doesn't hurt Pascal Siakam's feelings, but 36A made me immediately think of Caitlin Clark. WNBA is popular these days! 119D, SUE Bird, no problem! I quite enjoyed the puzzle. My Irish side is smiling. I got it done early. I'm certain the Spanish will be smiling when Carlos Alcaraz wins Wimbledon and going totally NUTs when the national team beats England in the EURO 2024 championship. A busy day ahead!
I had no problem with Lewis's favorite original clues from last week, specifically 1. Wheel on a school bus-themed cake, perhaps (4) OREO But I have to say, nobody but Christina Iverson could possibly pull off 54A, [black and white cookie], OREO. There you have it, the quintessential Monday puzzle clue and answer.
That was quite a photo for today's column! I can't find a definitive answer as to when they sold their first million burgers, seems to be around 1952. Maybe someone who knows automobiles can date the photo from the cars. And maybe someone who knows photography can say something about the photo itself? Mr. Simon? Kodachrome They give us those nice bright colors They give us the greens of summers Makes you think all the world’s A sunny day, oh yeah One nit about 43A. I found there is such a word as rocketEER but I'm thinking there may be a typo in the clue as racket would be a lot better. Nothing more. I see we're all clear on pit.
@Henry Su My take was the photo referred to 31A. The guy just had a Red Bull and now he's racing down the road pushing his 54 pound cabbage. But then, if that's not a swelled head I don't know what would be, so I am inclined to agree with your interpretation. Senorita Corbin has not lost her touch as we move into the new year!
@Lewis My thoughts exactly! Your well expressed comment deserves kudos of its own! Yours was the comment on top of the list. Now I'm going to scroll down and see what others thought. It's hard to imagine anyone not liking the puzzle, although somebody is probably going to complain about BABYMOON. Or give us an alternative definition?
@Maddie Yes, that was one tough puzzle and I had to take a couple of tries before i could solve it, and even then I needed a little help. I didn't think of Dr. Stangelove at the time but now that you mention it, sure, it's Peter Sellers as President Merkin Muffley on the phone to the Russian premier trying to avert a nuclear war. The People's Central Air Defense Headquarters... Where is that, Dmitri?... In Omsk... Right... Yes... Oh, you'll call them first, will you?... Uh-huh... Listen, do you happen to have the phone number on you, Dmitri?... Whe-ah, what? I see, just ask for Omsk information...
@Sylvia That's understandable. Party in the clue means person in some cases, such as party to a transaction to use an example from MW. It's used that way in law courts. Green meaning inexperienced. The clue is a bit of a stretch.
I'm just going to quote Caitlin because she says exactly what I think and says it better than I could: "Of course, there are soft spots among the prickles; once you touch enough of them you’ll get some momentum. It’s a worthy, enjoyable Saturday challenge, but not as tough as it first looks." I really enjoyed this puzzle! I don't think too many people are going to complaining it was too easy. On the other hand, it wasn't so hard that I had to put it down and return to it later. Ryan! I laughed when I finally got 40D, NEPALI. I started out with Buddha! But don't get too cocky! You're no Robyn Weintraub (yet!). 14A from Friday: Queen Suthida Bajrasudhabimalalakshana, e.g. I think we're all looking forward to more from you, hopefully old age will not slow you down. Happy Birthday!
@Alex Barry One would think that reading the Wordplay column and the associated comments would be done after solving the puzzle, or when you are totally stumped and you need answers. All you are going to find here are spoilers! Oh, and a few proudly posted wrong answers which might be welcome if they were indeed funny but otherwise just waste everyone's time.
That was a difficult puzzle and I needed some help to solve it. I find myself agreeing with a lot of people who complained about obscure clue and answers. And of course when I come to the comments section looking for answers, I find everybody flaunting their WRONG ANSWERS in all caps which completely adds to the confusion, plus not bothering to tell us what the correct answer is. The answer to 33D is GETSMART, which I don't see anywhere in the comments. GETSassy is all over the place and I too had that at first. Didn't see any point in mentioning it. For those of you stumped by the southeast corner, 31D is TAKEADIVE and 32D is ICANTEVEN. You need KIVA and KEG for 55A and 55D and I salute anyone who figured those out on their own.
@JohnWM There seems to be a limit on just what foreign language words will make it into a puzzle. Colors, numbers, basic verbs and the like qualify, as they are words you are likely to encounter, if only on the menu in a Tex-Mex restaurant. The answer to 12D Blue, in Spanish is never going to be triste.
Happy New Year to one and all! Hi Sam! Happy New Year. I don't see anyone asking about the photo so I guess I'm missing something obvious. I'm not going to ask because I'm afraid everyone is going to laugh at me and call me stupid. It's a visual delight, but what is it? Jellyfish? And what does it have to do with the puzzle!? Alas, I'll never know. I might be all aglow having solved the puzzle but the photo leaves me totally in the dark! Talk about something nefarious! But don't think I'm handing over my stash of chocolate coins in exchange for an explanation.
@Shrike There's a few comments on this already. I believe (with) being in parentheses in the clue means that the word "with" is understood to follow the answer in the puzzle as well, so it's ON A PAR WITH, which for me is a pretty common expression. Commensurate is often if not almost always followed by with, the same goes for on a par.
Here in Spain we had a slight problem with our POWER GRID two weeks ago. Seems a lot of people have a problem with this one as well! I didn't like AFTER ALL for 60A [At the end of the day]. The entry in MW has "in spite of considerations or expectations to the contrary" and suggest nevertheless as a synonym. To me, at the end of the day has the sense of everything being taken into account, not specifically contrary considerations. I might add that many people complain about that expression, at the end of the day. I'd say I'm OK with it although probably some people don't like that expression either. Aside from that, I prefer a Sunday with a wacky theme, and I could do without IMMIX. Which I have done for my entire life.
@Andrew It was a tough corner for me too and I came here to the comments looking for answers. Could you save the CAPS for the correct answers, please? CORER, not CidER for example? DETER, not DEfER. I mean, is it Tee off or Tee pee? You're not helping anyone with the puzzle, just adding to confusion.
Really enjoyable puzzle to solve. Not so challenging for a Saturday, but after Friday's puzzle I could use a break. Not much to add, except 62A is not the Dirty Dozen. I haven't read any of the comments but I'll bet many people made the same mistake. The fog may come in ONLITTLECATFEET, but the foggy make a little more noise.
If you're wondering where you can get your SEXTOY Rickie Lee Jones may be able to help. Sal was working at Nyro's Nook in downtown Selling articles of congress to these people downtown He was pretty sleazy when I met him... Weasel and the White Boys Cool off of her debut album. Before your time kids, but great songs.
@Teresa All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms...
Sam! Thanks for the clip. Once Upon a Time in the West has to be one of my all time favorite movies, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do. When Charles Bronson is standing in the doorway and says "Someday" I enter western genre movie nirvana. Aside from that, a favorite book is Les Chants de Maldoror, Chants being translated as Songs, Dirges, and Lay. It is the only time I have ever seen lay in the sense of 6D, so I can understand why some people thought the clue pretty obscure. I highly recommend the Sergio Leone movie, and strongly advise against reading Maldoror. The Alexis Lykiard translation is by far the best for those who do not know French, but that doesn't really matter as I'm certain you will heed my advice.
@Grant That was a pretty tasteless joke. I guarantee no small number of people will be offended by it.
@SPi I didn't say she was niche, I just never heard of her.
@Eric Hougland A visual onomatopoeia! Brilliant!
@Jordan I'm sorry you didn't enjoy the puzzle. I solved it in less than an hour (I am not a speed solver by any means) without any lookups. It's a Saturday puzzle and meant to be challenging, and it was. And where is the esoteric trivia and all these naticks that you don't like? 25A DAMES is about as esoteric as it gets. But you couldn't solve it so you blame the constructor?
I couldn't figure the trick out until I had almost the whole grid filled in. It hit me that 45A wanted to be lost opportunity, I had the LO but where is the ST? Well, at the end of RED and down one line there's the ST at the end of VAST, and the letters O and P are right above. Should I be going backwards or what? It finally dawned on me I need to stop at the RED. It's only looking at the puzzle a second time that I see if you go counterclockwise from the last two letters in VAST you have STOP which I don't think was intended! I hope nobody made that observation and went crazy trying to figure out how that STOP fitted in. It doesn't! I enjoyed the puzzle, I love stuff like that, I like rebuses, I like Thursdays. Some people obviously don't! What can I say, just skip the Thursdays, problem solved.
@Jack Some of them have made me literally laugh out loud, I guess there's no accounting for taste. No matter, it seems you can save hundreds on your car insurance no matter which company you choose.
I enjoyed the puzzle! A challenge but there was nothing oddball that you couldn't get with crossings. Took me a while to get traction but the southwest corner gave me a toe hold. ASTOR and MIATA I got immediately. Only problem was, I got the lower half and then ran into a wall! Only one thing remains. The flamingos. Even Sam Corbin couldn't come up with a more cryptic photo. Anyone?
@Puzzledog It's been a while since I played a game of pinball! I imagine it costs more than a nickel these days. But thanks it's good to know I can play on after a tilt. There's a local bar that has a machine, I may give it a try!
@Discontented Producer There was a cartoon (reprinted, I think) in the New Yorker recently where two dogs are watching the Olympics. One says to the other, "I guess everyone winds a gray medal?" Yes, the colored squares were disorienting and I had to rely on the numbers. Fortunately such puzzles appear once in a blue moon.
David and MB in an earlier post cleared up 24D NES which I didn't understand either. Nintendo Entertainment System. Thanks. I also didn't get EBT for 44A. It's Electronic Benefit Transfer which come to think of it I've seen in previous puzzles. Had to Google that. Some folks didn't like the clue for 8D [Grand opening?] and I agree, it's a bit of a stretch. Grand is a noun meaning 1,000 and KILO also refers to 1,000, yes, but grand is a noun and KILO in this sense is a combining form (as the MW dictionary has it), so the one is not strictly a SYNONYM of the other. People who make Ultraconfident (is that even a word?) affirmations are so often proved ultrawrong and so it was with me when I wrote in absolutely for 54A. Well, it fit. I enjoyed the puzzle overall, liked 27D YOU PROBLEM which is new to me but probably something I will say in the future. I imagine it comes from somewhere, anyone know?