Nora

Nit Warning: Quartzite is not harder than quartz. They both have a hardness of 7 on the Mohs scale. For more detail, quartz is a mineral, and it defines hardness of 7 on the scale. Quartzite is, in modern geology, metamorphosed quartz sandstone, so a metamorphic rock. Quartz sandstone is sandstone made up almost exclusively of quartz grains, plus quartz cement in varying degrees, so a sedimentary rock. (Quartz sandstone is called quartzite sometimes, but that's not currently cool, and only muddies the waters.) If you take quartz sandstone and squash the heck out of it, you wind up with quartzite. Squashing it, though, doesn't change the hardness of the quartz that both rocks are made of. Squashing gets rid of the holes and recrystallizes some or all of the quartz grains, but it's still quartz, and the hardness of that is 7. Countertop manufacturers are known to exaggerate. In case anyone wants a better example for 28A: like graphite vis-à-vis diamond. Both are carbon, but wow are they different hardnesses!

Since when do I get my mind blown so many times on a Tuesday? First there's 66A. I was suspicious that something funny was up after about six Os. Brilliant!Then the two links in Sam's column about what is a word. Pow, pow! Then dutchiris' link to Church Rock. Holy cow! I worked in environmental remediation, including many Superfund sites, and I'd never heard of Church Rock. No wonder the Navajo Nation resists uranium mines. Well-funded, independent state and federal environmental protection agencies are vital to our well-being. I believe in using our natural resources, but never trust industry to police itself. Never. When push comes to shove, they will always chose the bottom line over public health.

I liked this puzzle a lot. Not a ton of gimmes, even spacing of hard and easy parts. TSHIRT CANNON made me laugh, especially because it took me a while to get. Since you asked, 33:49, which is 8 minutes faster than my average. I do not solve for speed, on the contrary. I enjoy coming here to read interesting posts, like word history or unimportant (but fun) trivia. Overall, it's an interesting and intelligent community. Seems like no matter what the weird topics is, someone here is an expert on it. I love that. I hope we can move past the whining about puzzle difficulty. Let's just not replace that with excessively-PC hectoring or whining about the software, price, whatever.

I call foul on ICE RAIN. The link doesn't even include the term, it refers to freezing rain. I had ICy RAIN until the bitter end. Crosswordese run amok.

11 down reminded me of my mother! She was 80 years old, and I was visiting. She hosted a party for her lady friends, very proper ladies one and all. My mom told me she wanted me to make Jell-O shots for the party, because she had one recently and thought it was fun. So there I am at her party, handing out Jell-O shots to her senior friends! It was a fun party, for sure. Good old Mom.

TARA ROAD was a huge novel for Maeve Binchy. Granted, 26ish years ago. But here's the thing, it was written by a woman for a primarily female market. That, however, does not make it at all obscure. I'm sure the book had its own display at the front of the bookstore. Consider that not knowing something might reflect more on you than on the obscurity of the item. If all the non sports fans griped every single time there was some dopey statistics abréviation that could be anything (RBI, etc) or really old football player (SWANN) who played in a game 49 years ago (I looked that one up), this comments section would be beyond tedious. This puzzle was super crunchy. Lots of words I've never heard (IMMIX, MIDINETTE, par example). Tough for a Sunday! I enjoyed it, and I was pretty surprised that I didn't have to remember the location of all the letters I was unsure of. I was so sure about tesla... then gauss... Laughed at TOMB but considered womb for a while. Thank heavens for homo SAPIENS or I never would have gotten a toe hold in that section.

Fun puzzle, interesting entries. Very funny column, Sean. Sherpa, indeed. I laughed. Today I got a request in the games app to fill out a 10 minute survey. I thought it would be about the games, so I did. Generally I never complete surveys, but the games app could be an exception. Nope. It was really a survey trying to figure out how to sell me an all-access subscription. I resent surveys like that! "Here, answer a bunch of questions so we can figure out how to get more money out of you." Plus it was loooong. Ok NYT, that's my last survey. Hope it was worth it. Next time do your own g-d work.

I look forward to reading comments, especially because the international solvers weigh in early and provide a fun perspective. Today was no exception! I thought about the cereal brands and how tough that would be for non-Americans, plus a lot of names and places. Some days you're the pigeon, some days you're the statue. As an Ohioan, I had to laugh when AKRON Rubber Ducks revealed itself. As a sports ignoramus, I didn't know the team, but Akron is known as Rubber City, because it is the rubber capital of the world!

What a delightful puzzle! At first, I thought it was an easy theme, too easy. I filled in CRAYOLA and ROMAN, so ROMAINE was a gimme. At which point, I thought, oh we're building a salad in honor of Caesar. Italics and everything. Whoop de do. But I had a few entries that defied me. Now, if I hadn't already discovered the theme, I would have suspected a rebus. But noooo, I already had the theme, so my Rebus Radar was completely down. Hah! At 69A, I was sure I was supposed to BEWARE something, but what fits? Then all of a sudden, MIDDLEMARCH. What the heck? But it's a salad! I think my favorite rebuses are the short ones, because they are easy to miss. This rebus only needed two extra letters, very easy for me to miss. That was a great workout, I enjoyed it immensely.

Am I the only one excited about the clue for 42A, the Burgess Shale?! After many clues I couldn't guess, this one was an "aha!" Ok, it would only appeal to a geologist or fossil fan, but it is a very famous shale formation in western Canada.

I laughed out loud at NOONE. Especially crossed with STONER.

Good column today, Sam. I know I'll try harder to say nothing if all I can think of is snark. And heaven knows I'm tired as heck of the repeated complaints. I hope that all solvers and constructors feel welcomed here. There are some brilliant regulars who I like hearing from, and the fun banter is priceless. Thank you to all who make me smile here. I liked this puzzle. It really helped that I didn't know the Part II movies, other than vague bell-ringing. I was stuck in the NW, absolutely confident about SAFARI, but stumped and questioning it over a few of the downs. Actually I was stuck on each corner for a while. Whoopi Goldberg was buckin and kickin the habit for a bit, and that kid was briefly fost in NY. Jeff Stillman's comments were interesting, a window into the process. But I think he might have given us too much credit for the nuances of which sequel to pick! Puzzles with grid art are often contrived, but for me this one walked the line between forced and fresh, staying on the fresh side.

Happy birthday, Kevin! XKCD is a favorite of mine, nerd humor. <a href="https://xkcd.com" target="_blank">https://xkcd.com</a>/ My all time favorite, which sums up the difference between scientists and everyone else: <a href="https://xkcd.com/242" target="_blank">https://xkcd.com/242</a>/ The phrase OH LA LA (not ooh) is used quite commonly in France. The oh is pronounced like owe money. The number of las following reflect the intensity of the situation, and are always in pairs, like two las, four las, or six las for something that's really quite quite. GOAT for 47D was genius!

I liked this one! I think my favorite clue was the one for MRSPOTATOHEAD. Imagine packing extra eyes. Made me laugh. John MCPHEE is a gifted author, a favorite among geologists. His first geology themed book that everyone I knew read was Basin and Range, about Nevada and Utah. My favorite, however, was Rising from the Plains. I read it while living in Wyoming, and its sense of place was extraordinary. At the center of the book is a geologist born in Wyoming. His life, and those of his ancestors, paints a vivid picture of this beautiful state.

I'm surprised there isn't more beefing about STARVE. In my head, it doesn't fit. To starve someone of attention means to deny attention. To be starved for attention means to long for attention. I can't create a sentence with "starve for" that makes sense. I don't think "they starve for attention" works. Am I missing it? Unless as SP mentioned, we're talking about a hunger strike.

That was a great puzzle! I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you for not marking the rebus squares. Plus refreshing a bunch of US history for me. Sean McGowan, your column today made me laugh out loud several times. Well done.

I loved this one! Right off the bat, I noticed that each colored line was the length of the color's name. That realization didn't make it easy, though, which for me was a relief. I was afraid it would solve way too easily. Lots of clues I had no idea about, and then the top center section took me forever to figure out. "Gotta be Acer. Hmm, no. Or maybe yes. Or no." and on it went. The science angle was delightful for me, but I'm a geologist. Isaac Asimov´s terrific quote about "that's funny..." is a cornerstone of the scientific method. One can be doing just about anything when something happens that doesn't fit with everything else. "That's funny..." is the start of an exciting tangent, which might lead nowhere, but also might lead to a huge revelation. Like a rebus! "Wait a minute, something doesn't quite fit here..." is often the start of a rebus. And I agree Adam Wagner, indigo deserves more respect. I'm glad you left it in, I would have noticed and thought "well, fun, but where the heck is indigo?"

My first thought was "can't be IOUS, can it?", but I believe 3D has a pun in it, as in why would a stud buckle down and study? Because he owes money, say student loans. Everybody else got that, right? In my book, that puts it in the "very funny" category, not lame at all.

I found this pretty challenging for a Wednesday. The NW corner was tough for me, although Viola DAVIS should have been a quicker gimme. I do not, however, resent NARKED. We were warned that it was a variant, which means brace yourself for a crazy spelling. I take that as a clue to move on to the next word, as I do with any clue that ends with "on scoreboards." The root in this case is narc, from narcotics. The problem with "narced" is that rules of pronunciation tell us to rhyme that word with parsed. (See forced, paced, lanced, and narcissus, but not arced.) Plus the crosses were easy enough. Ok, go ahead, tell me I'm wrong.

I thought the revealer at 71A was confusing, until it wasn't. Once I read it carefully, it made perfect sense. Two parts to 71A. 1. After 1A, shelf accessories. Ok, that's BOOKENDS. Check. 2. What can be placed around the halves of... to make new phrases? BOOK at the ENDS. Not BOOK and ENDS. You bookend the answers with BOOK. So you've got four familiar phrases that can be split in two, and BOOK goes before the first word and after the second word. The result is eight new familiar phrases that have nothing to do with the original phrases. That's clever in my BOOK. And why this is considered a puzzle.

41A: old slang! Who you calling old? I use "HET up" all the time. No idea it was old. You kids... Still finished in 4:27. I'm kidding. The solve was delightfully long for me, considerably over my average. I was tripped up by several misdirects and quite a few I simply did not know. Had to put it down and come back a couple of times.