Fidelio

Today’s theme reminded me of TV closed captioning, from which I get almost as much amusement as improved comprehension. Some examples of bloopers, real or potential: my asthma (noxious vapor) bear astir (British lawyer) acid nation (tryst) eyeful tower (imposing Paris monument) purr dishin’ (HELL, or gossip in CATDOM)

The theme, which I took a while to catch on to, stirs to action the idle “er” element in words like NUMBER, giving an ordinary noun or adjective the new meaning “one who does (X).” It activates in two senses. While the puzzle’s title “Er, In Other Words” nicely captures that transformation, the hesitant “Er” may still seem at odds with the theme. As an alternative title, I’d suggest one likely to appeal to social activists as well as ivory-tower linguists: Agency! ANOFFERYOURCANTREFUSE for “the Grim Reaper” was a stroke of genius.

THISISNOTADRILL -- What a surrealist dentist said to calm his patient?

A possible title for today's puzzle: De (ICE)ification.

I visited CICERO, who LEFT ME SPEECHLESS. I visited ELISHA (Otis), who GAVE ME A LIFT. I visited EEYORE, who KICKED UP A DUST. I visited the GNOME and GOT BENT OUT OF SHAPE.

This was a real workout. The NW came together surprisingly fast, setting me up for a record Saturday finish that never happened. COUNTCHACULA was never on my breakfast menu or TUVALU on my world atlas, and I’m sure I’ve never seen or heard of ARYA Stark. Still, I surprised myself by finishing just a couple of squares shy of a clean solve. SOLI Deo gloria, I guess. Church Latin aside, the puzzle had a kind of kinky vibe, what with MASTER(SWITCH) at the top and SUB(WAYSYSTEM) at bottom, the latter entry intersecting with SANDM. TALENT (30D) at the center of the grid seems innocuous enough, but it’s clued via a quote from Erica Jong, who courageously followed her own talent into “dark places.” I put SWITCH above in parentheses, but the crack of the whip is, after all, also part of the game. The Guinness feat in 51A – a chain of BRAs stretching 120 miles --- was news to me. The feat itself is remarkable, but so is the fact that it took place in Rhode Island. Is it even possible to go 120 miles along a straight line in our smallest state without tumbling into Narragansett Bay? Sounds to me more like a squeeze than a stretch.

I found this a challenging and thoroughly enjoyable solve. The NE and most of the S came together reasonably fast, while the NW and part of the mid region were locked in a deep freeze. Once I tumbled to PARKA and PUNK, the rest of the northern ice cover (consistent with 16A and its clue) gradually melted. For a Friday, there seemed to be relatively few obscure (for me) items (AYI, LUMIERE, KINPIRA, KCUP) but all were finally gettable from the CROSSES. In a themeless puzzle it’s always fun to find correspondences among the entries: here SANTA FE and SAINTLY echoed at a distance across the grid’s diagonal axis, while the light of LUMIERE matched the heat of CALORIE. Among the several French entries there was also one cleverly fractured word: (5D) TOMB - (16A EAU (de Napoléon). This was, I think, my first exposure to KCUPs. It occurred to me that if we replaced the initial W of 38A WAXFIGURE with an M, it would make an ideal cross with 32D.

I found this a tough puzzle, though not exceptionally so for a Saturday. Luckily, there was enough familiar stuff in the NE (BIZET) and SE (CONAN, YORICK, ADASTRA) for me to gain a decent toehold. KATESMITH for some solvers must be as obscure as NUMETAL is to me, but I was lucky to know 17 D off the bat, and that opened up the center. I don’t remember Ms. Smith from radio, but the Kate Smith Hour was a fixture of 1950s afternoon TV. I thought placing the contralto singer at right angles to the composer of the “Habanera” was apt in a perverse sort of way. Smith’s rich, low-register voice would have been ideal for the part of Carmen, though her body type was all wrong for the role and seduction was hardly her thing. Smith radiated a ma-and-apple-PIE wholesomeness, and her repertoire was as much God and Country as romance. In her day, she was almost as much a patriotic icon as 24D. If you think that popular entertainers have gotten involved in culture-war issues only recently, consider that she campaigned vigorously against releasing the noir film “Double Indemnity” (which apparently boosted its box office). On the other hand, pre-Vegas Liberace was a regular on her show, playing Liszt and Chopin under the signature candelabra.

This puzzle works its magic on more than one level. The LOVELETTERS theme, with the gray thematic squares in each the four corners arranged to form one of the letters of LOVE, is ingenious enough. But that’s not all. While the four thematic words are all abstract nouns, the physical, cardiopulmonary (see 49A) aspect of love also gets its due: the four corners of the grid are reminiscent of the four chambers of the heart. The “chambers” on the E side of the grid (right “atrium” and “ventricle”) carry the relatively colorless, low-oxygen FONDNESS and RESPECT, while their W (left chamber) counterparts ROMANCE and PASSION are full-blooded, suffused with hemoglobin. Ms. Dershowitz never fails to amaze.

These days the morning doesn’t feel complete until I’ve had a go at Wordle, Connections and the Crossword, in that order. Today our internet connection went out around 10 and didn’t come back till mid-afternoon, which brought home to me how much I’ve come to depend on that ritual. Having to put it on hold for several hours left me feeling something like caffeine deprived. Anyway, by now I’ve done all three puzzles, so the buzz has returned and all’s right with the world. One of the nice things about Connections is that you need to get just three sets out of four to solve. But I don’t feel like I’ve nailed it unless I can figure out what those last four (usually purple) items have in common, which is rare. The reveal often delivers a pleasurable kick: how could anything be so out-of-the-way yet so obvious? Today was one of those rare days when I got the purple set first (a lucky guess), which is sort of like getting Wordle on a second try or solving the Saturday puzzle in under 20 minutes. It more than made up for having to wait.

Whether you’re in a post-election high or funk, or not sure where you are, this puzzle has a presidential sub-theme in an appropriate populist key. In 62A we have Jefferson, Nixon and Truman, as they were known familiarly. Then there’s ABE in 23D and 12D, IKE in 9A, and (O)BAMA in 42A. Finally, the “huffer and puffer” in 25A… oh, never mind!

You could say that Edison’s invention of the incandescent light bulb was the lux fiat of our modern electronic and media-centered world. As with the account of the creation in Genesis, everything else follows from it. The clue to 72D refers to an “American icon,” and Peter Koetter’s grid is iconic of the Menlo Park wizard’s achievement, with the light bulb at its center, and his other inventions positioned around it like the planets orbiting the sun. 66D: SPIRITPHONE -- a 1920 project that didn’t quite pan out (one wag called it his “dial-a-ghost machine”) -- might give the impression that he dabbled in mysticism. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. Edison gave a lengthy interview to the NY Times in 1910, which still makes fascinating reading. “Searching the inner structure of all things for the fundamental,” the interviewer notes, “Edison told me he had come to the conclusion that there is no ‘supernatural’ or ‘supernormal’ as the psychic researchers put it – that all there is, that all there has been, all there ever will be, can or will, soon or late, be explained along material lines.” The full interview is available on TimesMachine: " NO IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL" SAYS THOMAS A. EDISON; In Fact, He Doesn't Believe There Is a Soul -- Human Beings Only an Aggregate of Cells and the Brain Only a Wonderful Machine, Says Wizard of Electricity. - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

Though few Poles would recognize BIALY as part of their native cuisine, the word is Polish for ‘white’. The roll is named after the Polish city Bialystok, located on the White River (Bialka), where some of my ancestors lived. It has a sweet onion filling and is usually topped with coarse salt and poppy SEEDs; the fancier bagels probably arose by imitation. To the proud baker who claimed to have done it all by himself, the proper retort would have been IT TAKES A shtetl. As one who’s worked in the Slavic field, I’m ashamed to admit that this is the first I’ve heard of the old legend of Lech, Czech and Rus. I would have taken them for a 1930s Sunday features cartoon trio. Also, I should have tumbled to CCCP sooner than I did. You may have come to the Saturday crossword for a respite from politics, but the mirror-corresponding entries 16/17A and 56/57A won’t let you forget.

It's a pleasure to solve a moderately challenging puzzle like today's, and learning something I didn't know before is icing on the cake. Until today I would have sworn that PARADIDDLE was a word invented by Dave Brubeck back in the cool 1960s. His song "Paradiddle Joe", performed here by the Brubeck Quartet with soloist Carmen McRae, concludes with the question answered in the clue to 74 Down. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf2NzwN93hU" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf2NzwN93hU</a>

One way to get around “the talk,” consistent with 56A, would be STORK BUNDLE.

While the word LONGJOHNS refers to vertical enlargement, the four theme entries stretch out horizontally. The constructor must have had spandex underwear in mind. Along grid’s diagonal axis, the depressed DEADSEA contrasts nicely with the upward-aspiring ADASTRA. Clever theme and nice Wednesday-level challenge, fun to solve.

A LOTTO DOG ID’D. YUP. The terrier in that game-of-chance TV commercial held up at airport security. It’s come to that.

Clever puzzle. It took me longer than it should have on a Tuesday to suss out the theme, since in my dialect the first vowel in "para-" is different from the one in "pair". Ms. Steffensen may have gone to UVA, but I take it she hails from somewhere west of the Hudson.

What do you call a word game in which you use seven letters to make only 12 words, sweets? BLOSSOM DEARIE

“Gavrila Derzhavin’s ‘God’” is a most original way of cluing ODE. I’d never heard of the Persian mystic RUMI, but I wager more solvers are familiar with his name than that of the 18th-century Russian poet. Derzhavin’s poem is a typically turgid product of its period, yet very modern in its conception of God as infinity itself, existing outside space and time and not reducible to human categories. This very impersonal God becomes, paradoxically, the subject of an ode.

Never knew till now that Anita O’DAY was nicknamed the “Jezebel of Jazz.” I’ve always liked Ms. O’Day’s edgy style, though as temptresses go, I’d say she ranks second to the more low-keyed June Christy, with whom she’s often paired. Talking about nicknames, there’s Old Nick directly underneath in 49A. It occurs to me that DIESIRAE might be translated as “O DAY of Wrath” or, with a Gospel twist, “O(h) Angry DAY!”

As long as I can escape with a Saturday Times puzzle, there’s usually no reason to despair over the state of the world, but today’s inner grid is a veritable heart of darkness. We have WEIMARERA stacked over DEPRAVITY, with COWTIPPER to the NW and DONDRAPER to the SE. Is Evans Clinchy trying to tell us something -- like there’s no refuge? Love, pace the Mad Man, may be real, but here it’s love in lockdown (Garcia Marquez’s AMOR), unfulfilled (49A; LONGED), or in urgent need of consummation (54A: PDA). This is the first I’ve seen or heard of COWTIPPER. My first guess for 25A was LOWTIPPER. I imagined that “bulldozing” must be waitpersons’ slang for being dissed by customers, an expression that would have started in Soho or Williamsburg and gone viral. Wikipedia says that cowtipping is a so-called “urban legend” – which in this case could be a city person’s idea of how some folks in the hinterland amuse themselves. So the center of the grid isn’t all noir, but includes some timely red and blue. For me, the really tough parts of this puzzle were the NE and SW quadrants. Once I let go of MORMANS for 12D and ALGERIA for 37D, everything came together pretty fast.

My first guess for 44D (clued as "Fall accessory?") was APPLETREE. The correct answer turned out to be PARACHUTE, but was I maybe anticipating the adjacent (42A) BADAPPLE? I thought ESCAPEACT was an apt revealer. When I first look over an intricately constructed grid like this one, I often feel like Houdini chained up in a vault at the bottom of the East River. Though there's not the same urgency for me to find my way out and up, finally coming to the surface still feels great.

Any puzzle from Erik Agard was bound to be a challenge, but this turned out to be a bit more manageable than yesterday’s. The top quarter of the grid was maybe Wednesday-level difficulty, and I got off to a good start, which made the rest less daunting. I finished in decent time for a Saturday, with only one square amiss. DAP was not at all in my wheelhouse – since Covid I’ve done some elbow, but no fist bumps -- and I may not remember the word the next time it crops up. Until yesterday, when it broke my 40-day Wordle streak, I had no idea what a LORIS was either, but now that primate is a permanent part of my mental menagerie.

Ms. Franklin’s 1964 recording of “(ITSIN His KISS)” may, as Deb says, be the best, but the rendition by Phoebe Snow and Linda Ronstadt on a 1970s SNL show is a close second. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2phd-QgU-g" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2phd-QgU-g</a>

Though the constructor may not have intended it that way, I thought 3D UVEA intersected nicely with the puzzle’s theme. It brought to mind the old hymn “GLADLY the CROSS-eyed BEAR.”

Caitlin’s review was, for me, another reminder of how different our solving experiences are. I’ve seen my share of “daunting” Saturday puzzles, but this must be the first I managed to finish in under 20 minutes. It certainly helped that I knew the opening 15-letter entry off the bat, and that far-out stuff like HYPEMAN and NITROCAR was balanced by more conventional fill (ATHENA, OPRAH, THE BARD). Like others, I’m sure, I originally had CHASTITY for 3D -- why does CELIBACY seem so much more a MALES’ state of HOLIness?

Interesting that two of the puzzle’s leading ladies, LIBERTY and MARMELADE, have French connections, with NOTREDAME soaring at right angles to the theme entries. Of course, given the symmetrical (MC)GRID(DLE) and IRON(SIDES), you might also associate 32D with the Fighting Irish.

The cross of 55A and 49D reminded me that while OYVEY is often heard on shore, its equivalent on the high seas is AYE, Yai, Yai, CAPTAIN.

For some reason I’ve always thought that BOSSANOVA meant “new beat.” Like a lot of notions I got back in the 1960s, this turns out to be wrong, and I guess it’s never too late to be set straight. Meanwhile, I can’t shake the association I’ve always had with the word for “barefoot” in some Slavic languages (bosonoga). Thanks to Caitlin for that wonderful “Girl from Ipanema” video. Getz’s sax and Gilberto’s singing create a warm ambience, especially with the storm raging outside, and though the women in the video aren’t barefoot, they might as well be. I was curious how Portuguese BOSSA came to mean “trend.” It turns out the original meaning is “bump” or “protuberance,” so the cross with POP, clued as “Really stand out,” is apt.

For 21A, I confidently entered SASHA, which turned out to be incompatible with AFICIONADO. After several minutes of cluelessness, it dawned on me that the clue for 21A --“Nickname for Alexander in Slavic cultures” – was a bit of a misdirection. The puzzle constructor was apparently looking for a way of cluing 21A other than “British actor ___ Baron-Cohen.” SACHA is a specifically French spelling (though found also in Britain) of a name which in every Slavic language has a “sh” sound.

We all know that clues don't have to be definitions or neat equivalents, but “jouissance” still seems a poor match for 51D. GLEE is what IAGO likely experienced when he fanned Othello’s jealousy, but it was the lovers’ jouissance, at least as he imagined it, that spurred him on. Ms. Morenus recalls reading “Othello” in high school and discovering the pleasures of wordplay, such as “a 400-year-old euphemism for sex.” In a similar vein, Deb writes about the 37A/8D cross, “There’s something about writing in those long, exciting, entwined entries that is incredibly satisfying.” You could call that feeling delight, joy or jouissance, depending on its intensity. GLEE is what I feel after a clean solve of a puzzle that looked impossible at first (didn't quite make it today).

Evan Mulvihill’s grid cleverly combines the nocturnal gloom of Poe’s RAVEN with the doomsday glow of Frost’s “Fire and Ice.” The title of Poe’s 18-stanza poem (a lot longer than I remembered from my junior high school English class) occupies 11 D, while hints of Frost’s 9-line poem are scattered throughout the grid. FIRE and ICE are overtly present in 15A and 17A, and ICE even occupies the tail end of 34A: MINNESOTANICE (recalling the initial DIAMOND of 32A). Throw in 4D: PYRO for the “fire” theme. The shared letter I of FIRE and ICE occurs twice in all three of the long central across entries as well as in 7D and 33D , and their shared diphthong AY is found in several additional entries (ZION, EYES. HI) In all, a suitably cheery offering for the day(s) at hand.

STOOLIE near the center of the grid turns out to be quite apt. There four symmetrical theme entries, each with a pair of rebus squares showing opposite sequences of the two letters E and I, and their sequence is flipped again by the intersecting words. You could say the puzzle’s theme is the double cross.

Caitlin claims that this puzzle doesn’t contain “many really knotty entries.” That wasn’t at all my experience, but to my surprise, after taking a few breaks, I managed to unravel all but one square. (54 A/D was a Natick, if the concept still exists.) Lots of interesting fill, and a little something for everyone. In case your FEMININESIDE doesn’t do it all for you, there’s a hint of Papa Hemingway in BLUEMARLIN, and there’s also CARNIVORE(S) rhymed with BARBIECORE. NO TAR worth his salt doesn’t know that (St.) LUCIA lies NE of the ABC ISLANDS, but here the compass is turned around. I’ve always found it curious that St. LUCIA, whose veneration began in Sicily, is celebrated with a festival in distant Scandinavia. I remember my surprise on hearing a Norwegian version of the Neapolitan song “Santa Lucia.”

If Ms. Robbins hadn’t told us she’s a retired librarian, I would have taken her for a classicist, though of course there’s no reason she couldn’t be both. The very clever clue to 23A seems to hint at Catullus’s poem “Odi et amo” (I hate and I love), and there’s also TELOS, GAEA, EPITOME, GEMINI and OLIVETREE (“Athena’s gift to Athens”), plus the neo-Greek coinage UTOPIA. For 33A, PACKYOURBAG(EL)SAMIGO seemed obvious at first. With 23A still buzzing around in my head, I figured it’s what one partner might have said to the other after the match (an ill-advised multicultural experiment, perhaps) had lost its salsa. Consistent with 35D, this created gridlock in the NE. Once I tumbled to SNARLUPS, the grid came unlocked. Thank you, Caryn Robbins, for a fun solve.

When I sit down to solve one of Robyn Weintraub’s puzzles, a first pass can be intimidating. There’s usually very little I know off the bat, yet I proceed in the confidence that once I tumble to the (always clever) misdirections, I’ll find enough in my wheelhouse to finish successfully That was my experience today, and it felt especially good coming off of Connections, where I was tripped up by my ignorance of 1980s toon characters. (My solve rate these days is about 74%.) I don’t remember ever TWISTing to Chubby Checker, but he was a rock icon in my adolescence, his rhythms pulsing from every juke box. It was nice to see him at the center of today’s grid, and finally catching the relevance of the clue gave me added pleasure. Offhand, I don’t think 37A would qualify as SPIRITANIMALS, yet I can imagine MEER KATS as C.S. Lewis’s humble sequel to his tales of Aslan the Lion (Afrikaans version). Alternative title: “MERE Felinicity.” We find SPIRITs of a different kind in 31A and 40D. WINESNOB looks contemptuously down on (Joe) SIXPACK. From a certain perspective, I suppose, a distillation of the culture war.

Thanks to Ernest Lim for an enjoyable solve, and hoping to see his byline here soon again. What did the surrealist (or gaslighting) warden say to the guys just sent up the river? THIS IS NOT A PEN.

The cross of LIFEBAR with ESSIE is what they used to call a “Natick,” but times (and puzzles) have clearly changed. I plod on with my meager store of trivia and proper nouns, and today was happy to finish just a few squares shy of clean solve. It was a fun workout, but I still found this puzzle a little disappointing. The wordplay in the theme entries ought to deliver a kick, but today’s punning was too strained to be effective; when I finally figured out the trick, I felt nothing more than a playful tap on the shoulder. For me, dialect was a big issue, and it seems other bloggers had a similar reaction. If you don’t pronounce the same first vowel in LYRICAL as in “Lear(JET)”, in NAUTICAL as in “note,” or in FOLLICLE as in “fall,” it blunts the edge. A good puzzle should be dialect-neutral.

i got all the theme entries but missed the revealer. There are some expressions you simply can't know if you lack the right amount of body art, and ZHUZH UP has to be one of them. It occurs to me I may have to swallow my pride and ink up to stay competitive in this game.

I surprised myself by finishing this toughie without help (don’t ask how long it took me), even though I knew almost none of the pop culture fill. What really stands out for me in this grid is the prominence given to female celebs (the only one at all familiar was TINA Fey), along with what looks like a studied avoidance of males, at least as positive role models or COOL people to hang with. Men figure in the grid either indirectly, by their association with women -- (George) Clooney, via AMAL; Jean-Paul Gauthier, inventor of the Cone BRA – and, for the rest, as heavies: Yosemite Sam as EBENEZER, Stinky PETE (my first encounter with either). In cluing 40A: IRONS, Ms. Golden avoids reference to the famous actor with a clever misdirection. I suppose the ogre category would include also the opening horizontal entry: GREAT APES. Sure, there were females as well as males among the hominids, but they’re not the first thing that comes to mind, are they?

The revealer nicely captures the intricate interweaving of linguistic clues and fill, but TONGUETWISTER really applies only to the words in the clues to 27A and 53A. For native English speakers, Croatian *kabanica* doesn't exactly roll off the tongue like *raincoat*, but it’s no competition for Polish *płaszcz nieprzemakalny*.

GETTIN G UP TO SPEED - NASCAR Technical institute?

One thing you know for sure about a CATDAD is that he's probably GONEAWOL

Nice, for once, to have a Monday puzzle that was something of a challenge to solve, and a pleasant challenge at that. Although I correctly entered 48D, I had Oliver North confused with Oliver Stone, so the connection to the theme at first made no sense. Both Olivers, as it happens, are associated with late 20th-century conspiracies, real or imagined (North for his role in Iran-Contra, Stone as screenwriter and director of “JFK“). There used to be a professor of ancient and modern languages at Urbana-Champaign with the palindromic name REVILO Oliver. One of my college pals did graduate work with him. When he wasn’t parsing Vedic sutras, Oliver was busy purveying exotic conspiracy theories, most having to do with an ethno-religious group plotting to rule the world. Eventually, Oliver’s notions proved too extreme even for the Birch Society, and he died a lonely man. Think of all the fun he’d be having today.