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LAHR x ARABY was a bit of a Natick for me. There were honestly a few clues here that I had to Google, which feels like cheating for me. Not really a satisfying solve!
CROCHET very specifically does not use a needle. Like. That's kind of its defining characteristic. C'MON now.
Come on now, NYT. The singular is Inuk. The plural is Inuit. "Inuits" is no more a word than "Maoris" was the last time we had this conversation.
@Bill in Yokohama an excellent reminder that "illegal" and "immoral" are not SYNS.
I spent way too long agonising over what I had wrong in the centre of the puzzle before finally googling and discovering that ELHI is indeed a word, and that my mistake was actually putting CFa/WaNG in the northeast corner instead of CFO/WONG. There's what I get for not learning my Hollywood history.
This was frustratingly naticky for me. I figured out the rebus pretty quickly (just had to look up what the original 13 were) but the density of the trivia together with a lot of pop cultural references from before my time made it a difficult solve. I didn't particularly enjoy it, but then I'm not the target audience for this one so I guess that's okay.
I flyspecked this whole puzzle twice before I thought to check Beau GESTa and Mount aLBERT. Ouch. Loved the theme, though!
My jaw dropped when I saw the constructor's age. Well done, Mr Matz. Well done. I will admit there were a couple clues here that I solved by crosses and still didn't get - I assume TDPASS is something from either American slang or sports? (Or both?) - and some factoids that I had to Google to check, which made the solve just a little bit less satisfying, but overall this was a nice Friday. I did love those long spanners. And "needle on a thread" made me chuckle.
I finished the puzzle, frowned at the themed entries for a solid thirty seconds, and then groaned when I finally got it. I'm sure I would have gotten the revealer, even if not the application of it, much sooner had it been better clued – "forgo" means to do without, but the connotation is of necessity, not rejection. Renouncing implies a level of intentionality. You forgo something because you can't have it all and something has to give. You renounce something because you have chosen to distance yourself from it. Also, no animation here either.
I sent myself on a frustrating ten-minute detour on both sides of the grid by entering PLEADS InNOceNCE and THROb. The rest came easily once I figured out my mistakes there! I do wish to lodge one objection, though: the Brothers GIBB continued to produce top-ten hits through the 90s, and their last album came out in 2001. I ended up getting that answer by crosses because a clue looking for a 60s-80s act immediately ruled them out in my mind!
@Antonia I came here to say this. Clue should have been "Alaskan nativeS" - if you want the answer to be plural, then the clue needs to be plural too, NYT. The fact that Inuit are native to more than just Alaska is a separate point, but also worth thinking about. "Nunavut natives" is so satisfyingly alliterative!
I really made this one hard for myself by misremembering the quote as "... an obvious fake". Made the whole northwest corner much more of a headscratcher than it needed to be! I do love the clueing of ELLIOT PAGE with reference to the Umbrella Academy. That show was probably the best project he could have been involved with at such a crucial moment in his life.
@Kristin thank you for such a helpful illustration of the clue! One of my favourite things about the NYT crossword is that you never know quite what you're going to get – some entries reference 1950s television, others are internet neologisms, and yet others draw from French, Russian, or Chinese. Some are serious staples of crossword history; some are tongue-in-cheek, irreverent debuts. In a puzzle whose catalogue includes BOOBOOs and ORGYs, I have to ask: what do you believe to be the standard of worthiness for inclusion here?
A really nice balance of some obvious answers and others solvable with crosses. But what on this fresh earth is GORP??
@kkseattle think more akin to "a feathered flock" solving to "geeses". The word is already plural. If you wouldn't say "mices" or "childrens", then don't say "Inuits".
40D made me do a double take when I solved it. I was not familiar with the German usage of this word - in Danish it's what you say when someone sneezes!
@Jennifer I wouldn't call fight nights domestic violence, unless of course the competitors are brothers. Or if you're broadcasting illicit MMA/boxing matches from your living room... Hey, I guess weirder stuff happened during lockdown.
@Petrol re: PECAN – it's less a matter of not being able to pronounce it and more there being more than one accepted regional variation. Where I am from, it's a PEE-can. In some parts of the USA, I know they say peh-CAHN. There may be others, but those are the two I know. For my part, I was sure the answer was going to be cEdAr!
Near, far, wherever you are, I believe that the hot dogs go on...
Solved in 6:13. Barely even had to think about the answers - the ones I didn't get the first run through the list I got as soon as I had a cross or two. This Friday felt more like a Tuesday.
@David I was chuffed to see that too. I See Red and Message To My Girl are always in my regular rotation.
The crossing of MELLON and ROHE was a Natick for me. Having never heard of either of them, it took me a solid five minutes of flyspecking before, having tried every vowel in that spot and still not gotten a solve, I took to googling every single answer in the puzzle to make extra sure I had my basic trivia right and discovered his name was not Andrew rELLON. Oh well. I did my DArNDEST.
@The Whip lucky just to keep afloat!
I must protest the wording of 39A. Moa were never found Down Under. They were endemic to Aotearoa New Zealand, which is down under Down Under.
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