Grumpy

With Deb's permission, I shake my fist at the sky over ESPIAL. I can't argue against it being valid, but I can certainly choose to give it an 🙄, some 😒, and a bit of 😠

I agree with others that MINORTEAM is awkwardly clunky. But is nobody else bothered by DUNZO?!?! I hate, abhor, revile, and detest it!

Sorry, but Boo-o-o-o-o! Long list of clues/answers that were one or more of - US (or NY) only trivia, or - just plain bad (esp. AMUCK, ICKYPOO, OVERHOT). 21A, 57A, 77A, 84A, 96A, 4D, 6D, 8D, 10D, 28D, 34D, 46D, 52D, 63D, 71D, 77D, 81D, 82D, 88D, 94D, and 97D And I wasn't a fan of the theme either.

I know essentially no Spanish, don't follow any basketball, and have never heard the term c-store, so that made for some awkward moments. Eventually I had to google "c-store", which opened things up for me. And apparently I was still well below my average time, so make of that what you will. On a different topic, I have to call out our columnist - the ONE REEL of a Loony Toon short was *film*, not tape. (Grumble grumble. Kids today don't know nothin' 'bout technology older than they are, and won't even bother to look it up. Grumble, grumble, eye roll etc.)

Regarding Sam's question about 28A: Yes, you are overthinking it.

NOPE. Just no fun. No, not "just" actually ... much more than that. The opposite of fun. Un-fun. In an unpleasant way. Silly (and next to impossible to follow on the Android app) theme trick aside... How does this one annoy me? Let me list some ways: TORTORO? PABLO? ALAIN? Japanese liqueur? There's trivia. And then there's Trivia. With a capital T. TAUTEN? So obscure a word that I, a word loving life-long reader (by which I mean I've been reading for 65 years or so) had to check the dictionary to see if it existed. (According to Google's ngram viewer, it had a peak popularity in 1929 at a bit less than 1 in a trillion printed words, or 0.0000000986%. Since 1950, it hasn't been above 0.5 per trillion). The perfectly cromulent pronoun THOU, familiar from both the King James Bible and Shakespeare, clued as an amount of money with no hint towards it being either slang or an abbreviation. SEEP not= permeate (to permeate is to suffuse; be ubiquitous; fill. To SEEP is to slowly leak) MOPE not= "Be" anything - not even down in the dumps. (MOPE is something one does, or a person who mopes, not a state one can be in) Also, as a non-American, ESPNU, CNN (as clued), and MTA might as well be Japanese hooch.

EYELENS? No, seriously. EYE LENS ?!

Just a quick note on cultural dissonance I read the clue to 49A as 'Where Zed is in the alphabet", and spent a confused 15 seconds trying to figure out how to get England, Canada, or any short form of those to fit in 3 spaces, all while wondering why it wasn't clued to indicate a shortened form. Then the penny dropped, and I realised the clue was about where in the alphabet the letter I call zed appears, not where in the world the letter you call zee is called zed. The mind is a funny place.

I enjoyed that one, thanks guys. But as a Canadian, I couldn't for the life of me think of a SARI homonym that's the name of a board game. So after finishing, I checked online and was surprised to find that you Yanks apparently pronounce the "o" in Sorry the same as the "a" in SARI. I'm sahree (😩), but that just sounds so wrong to my ears. But then, you guys do lots of weird stuff ... at least it doesn't have an 'ou' or 'z' (pronounced 'zed', BTW) in it to be messed with! 😄 [Also BTW, and quoting Google's AI Overview: Canadians typically pronounce "sorry" to rhyme with "sore" (SOAR-ee), rather than sounding like the fabric "sari" (SAH-ree)".]

Looking at posts ahead of mine, it seems I'm a minority of one, but that was no fun for me. (I'm expecting a bunch of kickback and negative feedback after posting this, but I don't care. For me, the flaws just sucked the joy out of the solve). Chef, comic, novelist, screenwriter, actor, president, a news channel clued with a person's name, the nickname of some school clued by its mascots name, and a reference to two proper names from some movie. Proper noun trivia much? In her constructor's notes, Ms. Abidi says that her algorithm includes "... aggressively downscore any questionable or so-so entries, ensuring a high-quality floor...", which sounds admirable. But I don't think she was anywhere near aggressive enough, because I consider the clues for PEAPOD, ATLAS, MOMA, and MINI to be highly questionable. (Not to mention obscure esoterica like ANTIPATTERN). Some of this puzzle was of very high quality, but the floor was well below that. On a different note: Not only have I never heard of NITRO coffee, I also wouldn't know where to go to order one, or even why anybody would either invent or want such a thing. (I assume it's something enjoyed by hipster dudes with man buns?)

The 'theme' trick was cute. Not Sunday-worthy, IMO, but cute regardless. However, not only did I (along with others) have to run the alphabet on MUKBANGS/IGA, I also didn't know either of the Pixar movie/author pair, giving me the reasonable guess of dIANE/dUCA. After several stabs at the tennis player, I thought the unknown rapper CUDI might be wrong, so changed it to CoDI/oHNO, and went back to run IGA again. Still no good. Sigh... move on to the coming of age movie as one I'm not sure of, and start running through the possibilities for that one, trying lots of guesses for our tennis star at each guess for the movie title. Still nothing?!? Grrr! Change oHNO back to UHNO, and do the runs again. Finally (!) get told I "solved" the puzzle. But did I? When you've got (imagine bold italics here) THREE (emphasis off now) Natick-y crossings to guess at, it just makes for a lot of boring work, not an enjoyable intellectual exercise. I can see that there might be times when crossing proper names is acceptable, but it should be a last resort for constructors, discouraged by editors, and should only be allowed for ultra-mega-well-known famous names. (For instance, I'd be OK with Bob Hope crossing Bing Crosby at any "b" or "o"). Again - IMO.

I'm not sure what to say about this one. It wasn't all that difficult (app says 36 minutes under my average), and the trick was clever enough but a bunch of fills were just ... unsatisfying. IPS? Computers don't each have an IP (Internet Protocol), they each have an Internet Protocol Address. So "Computer addresses, for short" should be IPAS. (If the clue had been singular, and the answer was IPA, I could live with that. I still wouldn't be happy, but I could live with it). And as others have pointed out BATTLEROYALES doesn't "feel" right. Merriam Websters prefers it without the final "E", but does have "BATTLE ROYALE" as a variant, so that's OK. But then it goes on to list lots of plurals: "battles royal or battle royals or battles royale or battle royales" - the last of which was chosen by the constructor. Still, it feels ... unsatisfying. And there's more. I won't go into detail, but MESH, OMG, OPTOUT (among others) feel forced. Then there's things like LAS, BEG, DUD, and ROO (among others) that felt like lazy cluing. Almost as if, after getting all the clever fill done, the constructor got tired of thinking and just went with Monday-level clues for the short glue words. Such an odd (and unsatisfying) mix.

Grr. It's things like this that make me grumpy. I do these puzzles on my phone (Android), so no title visible. And I've always done puzzles starting with 1A, then going through all the across clues before looking at any downs. So I confidently fill in LINE this, and LINE that, and LINE the other, till I get down to 117A, where I started to be concerned about all those LINE answers. But, carry on. I considered "dotted LINE", but chose "broken LINE", since it seemed obvious that the LINEs were breaking up the down answers. After a while, it became clear from the crosses that it had to be DASHED LINE (even though that's not a common phrase), but I stuck to my guns till every square was filled in, only to be told _Not Quite_ Fly specked my way through it, only to decide that the powers that be want a dash (but what kind of dash? m-dash? n-dash?, hyphen? minus sign?) in those squares. So I laboriously go through all 20 of them, using 6 screen taps to replace each letter with a hyphen, for a total of 120 actions. All the while hoping - like _really_ hoping - that they didn't want both a dash and the letter, or a different kind of dash. After all that effort, I finally get the gold star. Yay, I guess? But it stopped being an enjoyable experience, and just became work the moment I realised that those five words had to be rebused. Bleh.

My favorite clue/answer pair was "What's Kraken". And crossing an unfamiliar actress with a dog club (who knew there was a Thanksgiving competition?) felt unfair. But I really came to ask if anybody can explain the Midi's 16A. WARRENG makes no sense to me whatsoever! I understand that one or more rabbits can live in a WARREN, but what's the G got to do with anything? And aside from Warren G. Harding (who, as far as I know, didn't have any connection with either Bugs or Lola - or any other rabbits for that matter), AFIK, WARRENG isn't a thing.

Really? Nobody else calling out SETI or DRIP? The Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) doesn't send signals *to space, they analyze signals *from space! And DRIP is not a sound, its a thing that makes a sound. BTW - I'm old enough to remember when AGLETs were usually made of metal. (As long as I'm complaining, I'm not a fan of HELL either. It's not wrong, but I still don't like it).

Two quick things: 1) I second Andrzej's comment on ACC. From the context, I assume the second C must stand for Conference, but have no clue what the full initialism means. 2) My streak hit 365 today!

TROUTS is used without comment in the Canadian Encylopedia (<a href="https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/trout" target="_blank">https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/trout</a>) as follows: "Trouts include the brown trout (Salmo trutta) and Atlantic salmon (S. Salar). Rainbow and cutthroat trouts are placed in the genus Oncorhynchus(O. mykiss and O. clarki respectively) along with Pacific salmon". And for the Yanks out there, Merriam-Webster says the plural is "trout also trouts" (<a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/trout" target="_blank">https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/trout</a>) So I conclude that as long as we're referring to multiple varieties, TROUTS (like fishes) doesn't really deserve any side-eye.

I know that the WII and the Switch were both game consoles, but I must've blinked when something called a WIIU existed, because I've never heard of it. But, OK, fine. There are lots of things I've never heard of. However - I strongly protest against SUHWEET! It's not a word; it's not a name; it's not an initialism; nor is it an acronym. It simply doesn't belong in a game with the word "word" in its name. And another thing: Janis' version of the lyric was clearly "nothin' left to lose", not NOTHING(LEFT TO)LOSE. If you're going to clue it using Janis Joplin's name, then the answer shouldn't have that "G" in it.

Why so many complaints about PRATE? I though it was an easy gimme! It's a perfectly cromulent word that (according to xwordinfo) has appeared as an answer 32 times in the modern era.

Overall, a nice puzzle. I had almost nothing on the first pass, and guessed wrongly a number of times along the way, which slowed me down a bit. But despite all the good things in this puzzle, I have to complain about 30D and 46A. What has how a SASH fits got to do with Royalty outside of beauty pagents, which tend to be contests for those to whom the gendered term "King" doesn't apply? And while "Consumed" is perfectly valid for ATE, I don't see how "with grief" is supposed to lead us to STRESS. I eventually got it from the crosses, but the clue makes no sense to me - question mark or not. (As an aside, years and years ago I got curious about this OMOO novel that kept showing up in crosswords I was doing, so I requested it from the library. I can't remember if it was Wikipedia or the preface to that novel that told me it was a sequel, but also ended up reading Typee. My point is that if it wasn't for crosswords, I never would've know anything about Melville aside from Moby Dick).

_Absolutely_ a US ONLY puzzle! Figured out the theme (with rebi/rebuses) fairly early. Then had to Google what the "original 13" colonies were. Then had to search for what their USPS 2-letter codes are. NYT wants our (foreign) money, but doesn't give a *bleep* about foreign customers. Bleh.

Regarding INSULATIONS: I agree with others that it sounds clunky and wrong in the context of top floors. But I searched Meriam-Webster and of course found the entry for 'insulation' (no 's'). They don't list a plural, but in their example sentences, they cite this quote [I changed the answer word to all-caps]: So I'll admit that there are different kinds of INSULATIONS, making it a valid crossword answer. But it's still an awkward clue...

On my first run through I confidentently (?) filled in "selfreferential" for 20A. It didn't survive long, but I still think it would've been wonderful if it was right.

I finally got around to reading the column, and two surprises jumped out at me. Never having used a Mac computer, and being of a certain age, I only thought of a typewriter for the return key clue. (So this is how I learn that Macs don't have an ENTER key)? And Deb says she's surprised that Apple didn't give users the ability to EDIT till 3 years ago, yet the NYT still stubbornly refuses to give us that ability in the comments section.

Naticked by 54A crossing both 3D and 9D. I've never heard of either the poem or the observatory (or the term ADU, for that matter). On top of which, the phrase FAST CASUAL is new to me, and I just don't see how FAIR is related to Upright. Oh - almost forgot: LECHE didn't make sense to me, because café is a French word (we do French here in Canada, not Spanish). That whole NW corner was a complete mess for way too long. Not to mention (but of course I will) the crossing of a rapper's given name at 42D with an artist. Since you only need 1 hand to count the paintings I know the title of, I figured 47A could've been either MaNET or MONET, and both MONTERO and MaNTERO sound equally likely names to my ear. As it happened, my first guess was right, but if I'd gone the other way, it's only one letter that I'd have to change.

I came here from the Mini to say "Uff-da"? "Uff-da"!!??!! YEESH! Can we at least have generally accepted onomatopoeic exasperation sounds as clues, instead of something only the constructor (and presumably their close family members) has ever said?

I found the main puzzle wasn't a particular challenge, but struggled much more than usual on the Mini. I've never seen the Today show, have never read The Hungry Caterpillar, have no clue about US college sports fandom, and have never heard of that magazine. All of which turned the crossing of the proper name CARSON with the 3 proper names CARLE, ESSENCE, and KANSAS, into a lot of time consuming guesswork.

Not much to complain about, but I managed to find some anyway. 😁 To my ear ORE and O'ER are not homophones, because O'ER has two syllables ('oh', followed by 'er'), whereas ORE only has one, the same as the actual homophones 'or' and 'oar'.