Emma S

@Michael I suspect you’re just looking to express frustration rather than to actually seek answers but mud/MUDS is like fish/fishes—the singular can stand in for the plural, but the plural refers, often in scientific or industrial context, to different types/species: “the various muds used in drilling come from different soil compositions depending on the desired effect” or what have you. And I can tell you for sure that it is factually untrue that “no one could possibly know” Anna MAGNANI, since I did.

Unknown _to you_ is not the same as unknown and “littered” is a real choice when talking about “foreign” words. Think of the puzzle as an opportunity to expand your vocabulary and your worldview and you’ll be happier, probably.

@Melissa Sutherland you are missing out! They are “kid movies” only on the surface—plenty for adults to love, Both the humor and the deeper emotional impacts are worth your time.

@Mean Old Lady I have a doctorate in literature and my primary area of expertise is 18th/19th century British novels, with teaching responsibilities spanning from Beowulf to Zadie Smith. I assure you that my working vocabulary is just fine, yet I use both terms you’re complaining about here as part of my everyday speech. I encourage you to keep your mind open to the ongoing growth of language—after all, if we hadn’t done that, we’d still be saying things like "aglæc-wif" instead of “Mean Old Lady.”

@dutchiris My feelings exactly—normally I might be a little grouchy about such an easy Saturday but honestly this week it felt like a little bit of respite from the horrors and I was grateful. And I too was pleased to see Sojourner Truth, and Nella Larsen as well, here at the start of Black History Month.

@Helen Wright Helen, I obviously don’t know you but your comments generally make me think I would like you if I did :) Great visual of bedraggled but happy young punks sitting on a curb eating late-night chips with brightly colored striped faces!

@Andrzej You do give back indeed, and are also an inspiration for me—as someone working hard on learning a second language, I’ll know I’m getting reasonably fluent (and reasonably culturally competent) when I can do crosswords in it, so I always love seeing your feedback as a bilingual solver!

@dk it’s not spelled with an O either—it’s CYMBAL

@Roy W I had most of the letters for that but refused to fill in the rest because of how wrong the clue was!! (Or at least how wrong it can be—I’m sure some technocrats could be skilled at governance but recent history begs to differ.)

@Andrzej It’s a phonetic rendering of “goes into,” which US English at least uses to talk about mathematical division, as in “ten goes into 100 ten times” or “how many times goes 7 go into 21?”

@Liz Evans This is how I (begrudgingly) made it make sense, but even as I filled it in I thought “this is going to produce some comment quibbles”

@Chungclan Glad I’m not the only one who was instantly earwormed 😂

@Nancy Not a lisp (typically that’s a speech impediment that renders “s” as “th”) but what a linguist would call an “apical s.” Apparently it’s characteristic of certain urban working-class Scottish accents. It became more pronounced in Connery’s speech over time but if you listen to someone impersonating him it’ll be one of the things they lean on most heavily.

@Barry Ancona That’s the joke.

@SBK “There is heartfelt joy in small things even as the night draws in. I hope you can find some.” Welp wasn’t expecting a comment on the Sunday crossword to be the thing that finally brought the tears after yesterday’s horror but here we are. Thank you for the reminder of humanity.

@Andrzej Well thanks to your comment I learned something that I didn’t know I didn’t know! It was common in the Northeast US city where I grew up to be able to get what we called “bulky rolls,” especially in Jewish delis. I always just vaguely assumed it referred to the size of the roll—kind of like an oversized burger bun, I guess?—but apparently we were just asking for “rolls” in Polish(ish) when we ordered them! Love happening upon a random etymology lesson, thank you!

@Rich in Atlanta Nez per-SAY, French for “pierced nose” but up until today had mentally had them vaguely in the plains/southwest! Happy to have had that corrected today.

@Helen Wright pots de crème are very similar to what’s underneath the brûlée-d part of a crème brûlée and don’t have the caramel layer of a crème caramel :)

@Nancy 2 o’clock = hands because there are two hands on an analog clock: two o(f the) clock :)

@Andrzej Aw, that’s so kind, thank you. The American education system has a lot of failings but not mandating foreign language instruction from elementary school onward is an especially big one, I think!

@Dave I think it’s less about group messaging vs direct messaging and more about the fact that as long as you and the person you’re messaging are both on slack, you can assume they’ll see your message instantly

@DT Got this one from the crosses and had a bad moment wondering what industry had a fancy term for shadiness (in the sense of not-quite-legal) from the French: “bon saitree???” Happily for my self-esteem the penny dropped before I opened Google Translate!

@V So as a non-Canadian, the CBC was the only answer I could think of here but after seeing this comment from multiple Canadians I looked it up—per their website, the CBC is headquartered in Ottawa; French-language programming is based in Montreál, and English-language programming is based in Toronto. So, not outright wrong (esp as Schitt’s Creek is anglophone) but definitely imprecise!

@Helen Wright US thing too, at least in any part I’ve ever lived in (New England, the Midwest, Pennsylvania, Texas)—I would expect to see the cut-up fruit offering at a restaurant called a “fruit cup”

@Xword Junkie Don’t think it’s a translation issue as the “valley” is easy to visualize—it is created when initial positive feelings toward something that is technologically created to be humanoid dip well into the negative the closer that thing looks to an actual human, and then those feelings return to the positive as the thing trends toward the definitively non-human. So, if you have on an X axis C-3PO from Star Wars (definitely humanoid but not mistakable for human, therefore acceptable and even pleasant to have around), then the robot in the photo accompanying the column (could be mistaken for human at first glance and therefore unsettling and offputting), then Wall-E (100% not humanoid but with just enough anthropomorphism to be adorable and evoke sympathetic responses) you can easily visualize the dip from positive to negative feelings and back up to positive on the Y axis.

@Mrs Kirk I don’t think we’re supposed to put spoilers for the mini here but for this one the clue was your, well, clue here. De instead of Te—it’s transliterated both ways but whether d or t it needs to be consistent.

@Helen Wright The connection between the three films in each answer isn’t thematic in relation to their content as far as I can see—it’s just that their title words strung together evoke the title words of a fourth film.

@Lewis if you’ve never made kale chips, give those a try—incredibly easy to make and definitely midnight snack material! (Curly is much better than lacinato for this application.)

@Andrzej Fat and salt don’t hurt one bit, it’s true, but for me it’s the pleasant bitterness of kale against those flavors that makes them an addictive snack!

@Andrzej Thankfully, it’s just a (usually harmless) prank. New campers are told that there’s an animal called a snipe in the woods and are sent out to find it. In fact, there is no animal called a snipe (well—there is, it’s a bird, but never mind that), so typically the snipe hunter just wanders around in the woods getting mildly lost and majorly frustrated!

@Weak I think of it as Saturdays are hard and Sundays are easier but long. With that said, I was only a minute over my personal best here, which in turn is about half my average solve time, so yes, I would say this was a bit easier than the typical Sunday.

@Bill To which I would recommend as a companion Anna Laetitia Barbauld’s poem “The Mouse’s Petition”—a poignant little plea voiced by one of Priestly’s mice that’s also an important part of the 18th century discourse around abolition and human rights.

@Moops Impressive! I was pleased with a new personal best today but after seeing your comment went and added up the week: 66.07. Now I have a new fun goal for next week!

@Helen Wright Now I find myself wondering if I could do this if the clues were for English counties. “Matched clothing for hot weather”? “Barriers in a maize maze”? “The bride doesn’t want to walk on a red carpet, she wants an….”? “Prince Andrew’s new butler”?

@KK Haha when I saw the first comment my immediate mental reaction was an indignant “Aaron Burr, sir!”

@RichardZ thank you for that link—that is my favorite arrangement and indeed a beautiful performance!

@Pani Korunova Galentine’s Day comes from Parks and Recreation :)

@ELANOR Precisely the same, except I’m not an archaeologist. “Good thing I’ve watched so much Time Team!” I thought smugly.

@Randy Two different use cases. “She has it down pat” vs “she’s got it, hands down.”

@Steve L I’m seeing an increasing number of “please submit this timely” type emails at work lately…

@Laura wait do people actually refer to it that way now? I don’t live in Chicago but I’m only a couple hours away and we visit frequently as both my husband and I have family there—I haven’t heard anyone call it anything other than Lakeshore Drive!

@Andrew I am so, so glad I decided to read the comments today! What a delight.