Tim
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London, UK
@Andrzej Or, as per the Rolling Stones: But it's all right now, in fact, it's a gas But it's all right, I'm Jumpin' Jack Flash It's a gas, gas, gas
Want some Saturday wordplay? Here's some, it seems el presidente is "bored of peace".
For the website devs, I've previewed the update designed to "improve how you see replies to posts" and I can officially provide my feedback. It has worsened how I see replies to posts! Replies to replies are now nested and much more difficult to spot, requiring extra clicks to un-nest (there's a new word for you, setters). Works fine as it is, methinks - it's pretty obvious from the @s at the start of a message who the message is directed at. And much nicer to just read all of the replies in one flat list. Just my two cents! Anyone else agree with me?
@Steve See also yesterday's discussion. In rough descending order of popularity (according to me). Not exhaustive. At home: Loo, Toilet, Bathroom (if there's a shower/bath), S*****r, P****r, Lavatory/Lav if you're 100 years old In public venue: Toilet(s), Loo(s), Gents/Ladies, Bog(s), Little Boys' Room, WC, Lavatory/Lav if you're 100 years old
If bacon is a side dish at breakfast, you're doing it wrong.
Given that US exam abbreviations can be just about anything, I had GUNS for "The lowest form of human behavior". But maybe that's just me (and John Oliver).
The juxtaposition of RON Howard and "I've made a huge mistake!" made this Arrested Development fan very happy. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwQW3KW3DCc" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwQW3KW3DCc</a>
@Andrzej A Polish friend at uni used to bring in his Zubrowka vodka, the one with a blade of grass in, and speak very seriously about how some vodka is better than others. I wasn't convinced. It does a job when you add other stuff to it! Interestingly, in reminding myself what that vodka was called, I see that the Polish version is banned in the US because the grass used to flavour it contains a substance called "coumarin", which can be toxic in extremely large doses. Wait until they find out what alcohol does...
I think the complaints about the GALOIS LEA SALONGA crossing are partially valid, but to me, the L in GALOIS is guessable, and the most likely letter to form two sensible looking names. But maybe that's because my father, a proud Welshman, used to wear a T-shirt on holidays to France which read: "Suis pas Anglais, je suis Gallois." And on the same holidays, I used to sing along to "A Whole New World" with my sister, doing our best impressions of Brad Kane and LEA SALONGA.
@Barry Ancona For an international solver EUNICE, UPI and WELCHS were particularly tricky (although don't know if that would be the case for Tim from Chicago!). UPI may be international in theory, but does not have nearly the name recognition that its rivals (AP, Reuters etc.) have. And WELCHS could easily have been WELSHS for all I knew. Which meant coming up with a name for E_NI(S/C/?)E. Guessable eventually, but tough - who knows what the Kennedy family might call their kids! Still, now I know...
If SNOCAPS don't exist in your country, and you haven't heard of max BAER, then SNOCAnS and BoER fit well with ConT, a pretty acceptable abbreviation for America. I'm probably with Andrzej on this one...
In order to do my part to emphasize that men should not run the world, I entered hOTTIE for "Role for Geena Davis in 'A League of Their Own'". I thought maybe she had an unnamed role... My bad.
ICBMS is a little gnarly for a Monday, particularly when you start with aCBrS thanks to DRaB (a reasonable answer) and rCA (when you know the Beastie Boys, but can't quite recall their names). I guess because I've only heard or seen people say or write "inter-continental ballistic missiles" in full. But maybe I'm listening to the wrong podcasts and reading the wrong war propaganda.
Loved it. This is the kind of puzzle that's very satisfying. Only a couple of answers on the first pass but, without too much trivia, everything is work-outable until it all just sort of falls into place. Bravo!
@SP As a Brit, living just over La Manche from France, we have always had a friendly/warring rivalry with our neighbours. They call us "les rosbifs". We call them "the frogs". I've never met any English or French person who is particularly offended by either term. French people, please do admonish me if I'm wrong. It's also highly unlikely that the term comes from their delicious dish of frogs legs as it's been around since the middle ages and may have been coined as a general term for the French by Parisians themselves (see <a href="https://poitoucharentesinphotos.wordpress.com/2016/01/29/why-do-the-english-refer-to-the-french-as-frogs" target="_blank">https://poitoucharentesinphotos.wordpress.com/2016/01/29/why-do-the-english-refer-to-the-french-as-frogs</a>/)
Enjoyed learning about SACAGAWEA, but as a Brit, no way I could have got her first letter without a look-up given 1-down. As your esteemed president would say, "SADD". (But I actually enjoyed this puzzle a lot).
@Andrzej Weirdly, Lipton is a very old British business, whose tea is rarely ever seen in the UK. We only ever see it when we're on holiday (mainly in cheap hotels). (Though having just Googled it, I see it's now owned by Pepsi, so suddenly that all makes sense...)
Sam, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that over here 2-1 would not be considered a low soccer score - in fact, it might be considered quite an entertaining match 🤷
@Bill in Yokohama I pretty much doubled my time because I was happy with AaH and MWAa for too long. Whichever way you spell it one of them looks wrong.
Anyone else think that US universities should be able to come up with unique nicknames for their sports teams, especially, like, when they're in a conference comprising only 12 teams? I mean, 2x Cougars + 2x Wildcats? Come on people, there are loads of animals to choose from... Or maybe even go for non-animal nicknames cause you're not in high-school any more!
@Tim Woah woah woah, I'm Tim from London. We're going to have to settle this somehow. A duel?
@Andrzej I think we need to talk more about what that banana's doing in the naan. I guess if it's not a garlic naan that might be acceptable. But surely if there's leftover naan, there's also leftover curry, which makes the best breakfast! And if there's no leftover curry, well that means you've got your ratios all wrong. So much to unpack.
Enjoyed that, thank you Kyle. Not too hot, not too cold, just right!
@Belinda I think John was agreeing with you. It's definitely a Welsh term (or at least stereotypically so). But you know, Australians, Welsh, English, all drive on the left and swear a lot so pretty much the same thing.
@Ben I'd have to agree with other commenters that VIGODA and IMPEI crossing is not Monday-level. Monday-level doesn't mean "under 4 minutes for a seasoned puzzler", it should mean, "all answers gettable for a new puzzler".
Had to enter CREATIVE LICENSE through gritted teeth. I mean, hardly anyone over here spells it properly these days either, but I reserve the right to be pedantic. Would you take some advise from someone? Or would you take some advice? Don't worry everyone, I'm fully aware that's the official spelling in Americaland, language evolves, yada yada, my beef is with someone several hundred years ago, not you ;-)
@Eric Hougland Ah, but if you get to the place where you know you don't know how to spell it, then as soon as you know how to spell it, you think, "ah, but it's spelled the way I don't spell it", and so you no longer know how to spell it. Just like the traumatic event of my childhood when I spelled "separately" "seperately" in a spelling test because the teacher had taught us that it's not spelled how you think it's spelled. Never been so angry.
@Andrzej I recommend that you make room in your heart for savoury porridges. My wife is Cantonese and her mother makes delicious congee with pork and salted egg. Plus, if you eat congee at a congee restaurant, you get to order it with fried doughnut sticks, and who doesn't want doughnuts for breakfast? See also, cheesy grits in the Deep South. Delicious. I need to find out where to buy grits in the UK - that stuff is good.
Happy Weintraub day everybody!
Just came across this gem from 2023 in the BBC World Service archives: <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct4yfk" target="_blank">https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct4yfk</a> "Tara Gadomski follows Robyn over three intense days as she constructs a new crossword puzzle from blank page to completed grid."
@Andrzej DITs and dahs seem non5en5ic@l to my English brain too. Just call them dots and dashes people! There's probably a really interesting explanation of why they're not... ...ok, I looked it up, it's because of the way operators used to vocalise the Morse Code. So they needed short and long syllables, "di dah di dit" (they used di and dit for the short tone, but we'll never see "di" in a crossword...). Hopefully writing this down will forever cement it in my mind.
@Andrzej Can't speak for North Americans, but in the UK we very rarely (almost never) say AMPere. If you were to ask anyone what the unit of current is, they would almost always say AMP (or AMPs). Ampere probably sounds too French for us 😉
As children, we used GALUMPH as as verb to describe the most efficient way of moving down a Welsh hillside covered in heather. Clumsy, but speedy.
@Kanye Your sarcasm may not be clear enough for all to see. Maybe add a wink emoji next time 😜
@Steve L I'm a Brit in my early 40s and I knew STAX! I guess you know what you know.
MINNESOTANICE? Come on. I've watched all of Fargo. I know what's really going on behind the friendly hellos...
Lovely stuff Adrian. Firm but fair with some real crackers in there. 👏
@Sam UMPS = umpires who squat during baseball matches I think! A few key bits of US sports knowledge required for this one (END RUN and SAC FLY). I always allow myself to look them up, as I figure "well I'd know the answer if it was about (English) football or cricket".
Assuming that Superboy was something to do with Superman, I first had Lois for LANA, and then, later, confidently had LANe. Not worrying too much about ADo being US legislation, that gave me PeSToWATER for liquid gold. Why not, I thought?!! Maybe there's a particular way of cooking in the Italian American community involving getting your pesto all watery before adding it to a dish. So my nit here is with whoever decided to give Superboy a crush on someone called LANA when there's already someone called Lois Lane in your world. But maybe that was the point.
@Andrzej Sure, on a warm day you *can* spread Brie. But being able to spread something does not make it a spread! Though as per your other replies, it seems that the supermarket Brie brand "Président" does in fact sell a "Créme de Brie" spread. 'The rich and creamy essence of brie without the rind', they say. Just don't tell the French.
TIL that to create an ENDASH on a Windows machine, you type Alt+0150 – I'll definitely remember that. (And an em dash is Alt+0151 — I'll probably remember that too...)
Beautiful puzzle. Congratulations Joyce! And you couldn't have picked a better mentor...
@Andrzej In the US and the UK, "BIZARRO-world" has leaked out into more common usage (e.g. "What, he got elected again? We must be living in bizarro-world."). I didn't know the term's origin story, so this was interesting for me at least!
@Andrzej My theory is that vowels don't matter much in English. You can leave vowels out of longer words and not have too much problem parsing a sentence. "The prcl is in the WRHS", for instance. Pronunciation of vowels in English is so regionally variable (we have 4+ distinct accents in London alone), that I think our brains are adapted to ignoring them somewhat. Probably why we don't really have any consistency as to how we use vowels to spell words. An expert may have a more informed view, but that's my theory until proven otherwise!
What a brilliant Monday! I never enjoy early week themes, but this one I actually savoured and deliberately tried to get without the crosses. I must have got out of the right side of the bed this morning. Although SUBS IN dampened my mood slightly. It reminded me of one of my current pet peeves - the Americanisation of our sports broadcasting here. In good old English soccer-ball we don't have players coming "in" and "out" we have players coming "on" or "off" (the pitch). Yet broadcasters have started to use "in" and "out" in their graphics, and this makes me sad for some irrational reason. As does the mid-half ad breaks we're going to be subjected to at the World Cup this summer. But that's another story...
Great puzzle today. I'm thankful that, for no particular reason, I decided that my soundtrack to today's crossword would be Back to Black. A pretty random choice for a Saturday morning - isn't it funny how utterly meaningless coincidences can brighten one's mood! It didn't stop me getting pretty stuck in the bottom section though after breezing through the rest of it. Luckily my wife happens to know that Mark Zuckerberg owns two PULIS. The rest fell into place after I finally decided to change "spam" to BILL. I mean, don't some people want to receive bills?
@Andrzej I've seen a DINNER THEATRE in a US TV series (the excellent Hacks), so it must be a real thing! It's a theatre that looks like a jazz club, where patrons get to watch a play whilst being served dinner at their table. I can't quite imagine whether that would be a pleasant experience or not - maybe it depends on the play...
@Andrzej POPO you can only really get from the crosses and a guess. My wife is a fluent Cantonese speaker and it would never occur to her to spell the word for Grandmother on your mother's side like that! From how she pronounced it, I'd say it's closer to PAWPAW, but even that's a stretch.
@Francis I guessed "pike" from "turnpike", which I've heard of (I assume the former is a shortening of the latter?) As in Paul Simon's lyrics, "counting the cars on the New Jersey turnpike..."
As someone who has eaten a lot of Chinese food, but not American Chinese food, the "Y" in EGGFOOYUNG was a lesser-spotted self-Natick for me. I guess most Americans will be familiar enough with the dish for that not to affect them. But nevertheless, I call foul!