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I propose a more specific clue for 69A: "Exclamation made by unobservant solvers who only realize after completing the puzzle that every clue has begun with the same letter." (This refers to a friend's experience, of course.)
Brilliant. Getting the AC rebuses at the exact center of both the down and across entries couldn't have been easy. A very well-constructed puzzle that was satisfying to solve.
And now I can't get this out of my head: "Quick start? Young at heart. Second in line? Pay up front!" I'm looking forward to throwing that into a conversation with a smile and a wink. It sure sounds like it should mean something!
Regarding those OCTILLIONDRESSES being "billions and billions of boutique items," I would note that it takes an awful lot of billions to make an octillion--in fact (in the American system for large-number nomenclature) a quintillion of 'em!
I came here to mention that H is a musical note in German nomenclature, only to find I was late to the party. So I'll just add that H (= B natural) allows the creation of the familiar BACH motif in classical music. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BACH_motif" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BACH_motif</a>
@Steven M. The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea, The plowman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
Once I grasped the trick, this went fairly quickly for a Sunday, and I mentally placed the puzzle in the "pleasantly clever" category. Then I read Caitlin's column and realized I had totally missed the HEREs that signal the starts of the downhill tumbles, at which point the puzzle went from clever to OMG! What an amazing feat of construction!
This puzzle was absolutely wizard. Quite spiffing, really.
Loved this puzzle. It was clever and crunchy, and the theme was perfectly executed. It certainly had lots of proper nouns, many of which I was unfamiliar with, but with some analysis and educated guesses, I was able to 51A them all out with no lookups. Kudos to the creators!
Never having heard RIDEORDIE, I thought it had to be LIVEORDIE. AVA sounded like a perfectly good first name for a poet. Trouble is, that gave LIBS as a barbecue order. I thought, "Well, maybe in some parts of the country?"
Brilliant puzzle. But regarding MTDOOM, is it not a rule that an answer containing an abbreviation must have an abbreviation indicator in the clue? Or do I have that wrong?
@Gregg I agree. Thursdays are the puzzles I most look forward to, but this one was flat. More of a Wednesday vibe, I thought, or even a Tuesday.
I was sure I would have to throw in the towel on this one. But after a ridiculous amount of time and several iterations of putting it aside and coming back to it, I got the happy music without any research or lookups, I'm not sure I feel proud of myself or just exhausted and happy it's over. One major error I held onto for too long was YOURSTRULY for 18A. I still like it better than LITTLEOLME. Mr. Walden, please note for the future.
@Tim I remember a teacher in an early grade telling us, "There's a rat in 'separate'." I've never forgotten that.
I finished this considerably faster than my average Friday time (always with no research or lookups). Don't ask me why. Sometimes you're simply on the constructor's wavelength, I guess. As an added plus, I now know what a "Cool S" is and how to draw it! Thank you, Sean!
@Peter C. Seeing "mistypings" in your comment just now, my brain initially broke the word up into "misty pings" before it reset. But I rather like "misty pings," and I'm trying to imagine what they might be.
Perhaps someone who knows more about Indian classical music than I do can verify this, but I don't believe a raga is a composition. It is, rather, a melodic framework for improvisation. Calling it a composition is rather like saying that in western classical music, C Major is a composition.
Although tempted more than once to throw in the towel, I finally finished it with no lookups. Took an embarrassingly long time, but the eventual win was satisfying. A very tough and very fine puzzle, I thought.
My fastest Saturday ever. Sometimes you feel you're channeling the puzzle constructor and things quickly fall into place. Of course, being an Angeleno didn't hurt when it came to SANTAMONICAPIER.
This was, in a word, and as others have noted, delightful. I actually found myself exclaiming "Oh wow!" and smiling broadly when I discovered the falling MEs. I love it when that happens.
@The X-Phile What a great post! Thank you! Couldn't agree more with everything you said.
@Mortiser And lest we not slumber And grammar encumber, 'Tis wise to remember That "Well Done!" has number: Bravi tutti! Well done, everyone!
Wonderful stuff in this Saturday. I nominate SOFAS clued as [Remote locations] for misdirect of the year (so far, at least). But the bottom third did me in. I was sure the non-live SNL features were PRETAPEDSKITS . . . I mean, it fits perfectly! And for [Flip remark?], I tried to recall some catchphrase Flip Wilson used to say as Geraldine. (I'm dating myself. Anyone remember Flip?) Oh well. CRASHBLOSSOM was a great TIL!
I first thought the "Pineapple Isle" in 8D was KAUAI. Given the crosses I already had, that meant the angry spitting animal in 9A was likely a KOALA. I thought, "What? Those adorable little teddy bears spit when they're angry? Can I even imagine them GETTING angry??" It was a disillusioning revelation. Fortunately I eventually caught my errors and got the happy music. So TIDL that koalas have a nasty side!
When 10D turned out to be OTC, the connection seemed clear: A scene in a play or film that's unscripted is done ad lib--i.e., Off The Cuff. That wouldn't have merited the question mark, however. Great puzzle!
Guess I've lived a deprived life. TIL that a t-shirt cannon is a thing. Who knew. The things you learn from NYT crossword puzzles!
We've had plenty of comments of the "too easy for a Friday/Saturday" type. I guess "too hard for a Monday" balances those out? The cruciverbal Goldilocks Zone for any particular day is evidently a contentious issue.
@Nora A definite improvement. Thank you!
After a long slog, I thought I finally had it, but couldn't understand why I wasn't getting the happy music. So I threw in the towel and checked the entire puzzle. Turns out I had SPYPHONES--I mean, a spy phone could be a thing, no?--WHOLESONG, which I assumed was a new musical genre the kids had come up with, and OSHIN, a phonetic respelling of "Ocean" I was sure some singer unfamiliar to me had adopted. Oh well . . .
TIL that BOOKSMART is a thing--or rather, I gather, a movie. (Had to look it up after i got the happy music. Fortunately it turned out to be GOOGLEABLE.) RAISINET and its clue made me grin. I love when that happens. My own personal solving rules state that it's only a legitimate solve if I look absolutely nothing up and get no outside help. So 17A was a conundrum for me. If I glanced at my keyboard, which I did, was that a violation? Hmm . . .
Wow. Brilliant puzzle. Loved it.
15A was a gimme for me, since I had learned at some point that ALBANIAN is one of the few Roman-alphabet-using languages that include ë as a regular letter. I was once taken to an Albanian restaurant in Manhattan for a birthday dinner, but I don't recall if tavë kosi was on the menu.
So, regarding 46A. I personally have no problem with it. But I'm puzzled about where the line is drawn between acceptable for the NYT and beyond the pale. In this case, the phrase spelled out in full would be a no-no, but the abbreviation is acceptable? I'm not complaining, only trying to understand what the rules are.
The late, great American linguist Victoria Fromkin, who did important work in the area of speech errors and what they tell us about language organization in the brain, once wrote an article titled "Tips of the slung--or to err is human."
@SP "CAT IN THE HAT—is there anyone who has read or seen this that won’t remember Thing One and Thing Two?" Perhaps not. But for those of us (I'm assuming it's more than just me!) who had passed childhood when Cat in the Hat came out in 1957--and who didn't have kids of our own to read it to--Thing One and Thing Two was totally opaque, and the answer only emerged from the crosses.
@Eli Edwards Yup. Me too. And I was sure Satie's first name was ERIC! But I felt a bit better when I learned that his birth name actually was ERIC and he changed it to ERIK later: "In 1884 Satie wrote his first known composition . . . . He signed himself "Erik" on this and subsequent compositions, though he continued to use "Eric" on other documents until 1906." [Wikipedia]
Six spanners was indeed impressive! Well done, Ms. Hand. On the other, um, hand, this was my fastest Friday ever, and I thought the cluing could have been more challenging. On the third hand, maybe at this ripe old age I'm just getting better!
@HeathieJ I had pretty much the same experience. The puzzle seemed smooth and easy for a Friday, until . . . a name that ends in CX??? Never having heard of Charli XCX, nor of MIIS, and forgetting OSX, I was lost. Oh well. You can't win 'em all.
@Barry Ancona Thank you for that. If Merriam-Webster is the arbiter, then yes, I see your point. But in my (admittedly limited) experience, I've never heard "raga" used as in their def. 2. Also, doesn't it seems rather circular to include the word to be defined in the definition of that word? ("A raga is an improvisation based on a traditional raga." Huh?) For what it's worth, AI defines raga only in the sense of def. 1: "A raga is a melodic framework in Indian classical music used to evoke a specific mood or emotion through a collection of notes and patterns. It is not just a scale but also includes rules for how notes are used, with performers improvising within these guidelines. Ragas are fundamental to Indian music, and their performance can be influenced by factors like the time of day or season."
18A, before the RED --> STOP substitution, is rather alarming.
@Sharon And not just Leif. Satie was ERIC before he changed it to ERIK.
@NYC Traveler Thanks for that! I wasn't previously aware that "table" had those opposite meanings. The example I have in my head of a word with opposite meanings is "sanction," but "table" is a great one. I wonder how many other such confusion-inducing words we have in English.
@Francis I'm far from a genius, but if the matrix were a diagonal one, and it was the third movement of the Chopin B Flat Minor sonata, I think MAYBE I could pull off your challenge. ;-)
@Rahul When I was young, I misheard the phrase "six of one, a half dozen of the other" as "six 'n' one . . . " I could never understand how seven could equal six.
@RozzieGrandma My favorite mondegreen: The Beatles's "the girl with kaleidoscope eyes" misheard as "the girl with colitis goes by."
@SBK There used to The Green Book. Now maybe we need The Blue Book.
@SP Whether NOT and NAUT, or FOLL and FALL, are homophones for you depends on whether your dialect of English has what linguists refer to as the "Cot-caught merger," a phenomenon widely discussed in English dialectology. At the risk of TMI: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cot" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cot</a>–caught_merger
@Lo Like others of my ancient vintage, I've noticed that "thank you very much," the natural standard in my native dialect, has almost totally capitulated to "thank you so much." The "so" version was always an option, but used only as a strong expression of appreciation for something extraordinary. Anyone have a sense of when this transition happened?
@SBK Same here! It's going through my head right now. "S'io credesse . . ."