Greg Chavez
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SATAY, PREGO, NIHAO and AGHA in one corner. On a Tuesday. Seems a bit cheeky. Cannot recall the last time I couldn't finish a Tuesday. So it goes, so it goes...
Because I knew that "boot" is the UK term for what we independence-minded English-speakers call "the trunk" (natch, as "trunks" refer to methods of storage, and a car's trunk is the anthropomorphic analog of the rear end, not the feet, which is where one generally affixes a "boot", do you put shoes on your butt, I think not), I immediately understood that: 105D. Some carry a spare one in a boot referred to those round rubbery things that keep our sedans (not "saloons", because saloons are places and don't move without considerable effort, I mean really, zoning permits alone, can you imagine?) in motion without creating a fire hazard. What I didn't remember and likely never will remember is that the Brits cheekily spell "tire" with a "y", sort of like how I spelled my name Gerg when I was five and didn't know how to tie my shoes or regulate my consumption of cereal. Seriously, I will **never** remember this because I never do. Anyway, I had a feeling that the answer might be another bit of mental jabberwocky, but the crosses were all in agreement but one. As I hadn't cracked the theme yet, I couldn't yet be sure that "ANNOFFERIOU CANTREFUSE" was objective nonsense. Boot... saloon... petrol... glove box... what do they call sweaters again? In other words, it's more fun to blame this on Britain than to resolve to remember more things.
Like Jon Michnovicz, I also did 1st grade in Albuquerque, way back in 1980-1981. While I don't recall any concern about our capacity to grok the "I before E" rules and its various caveats, the school board seemed very concerned that any of us might flee the state at some point and spread misinformation regarding the spelling of our fair city (Bugs Bunny had the pronunciation covered ... well enough anyway). Let's face it, is a nutso-looking series of letters. Worse, it doesn't match the spelling of its eponym, Francisco de la Cueva, AKA The Duke of Albu*r*querque. Where'd that "r" go anyway? None who made serious inquiries in that vein lived long enough to report back with their findings, so we may never know. So this is how they learned us: every so often, we'd stand up and intone: AL..... BYOOOO ...... QUARE....... KWEEEE. Over and over again. Kind of screwed up our pronunciation for a while, but once we nailed the spelling, peer pressure and idle threats from adult authority figures set us straight. And the school board was right to be paranoid. My dad got a job in Maryland two years later and we made east whereupon my lifelong mission began to spread the good word, or spelling as it were, to folks who habitually mispronounced my last name and didn't believe me that New Mexico is a state of the United American variety. I have been asked to show my green card more times than is remotely reasonable. Fun puzzle.
@Pat Coo coo ka choo. I still hate that feeling I get when I *know* there's some gnarly rebusy rebusness afoot but I lack enough fill to suss it out. But it's like resolution in music or storytelling... once that arrives, frustration morphs into a largely undeserved swagger. (I am the walrus)
@Cindy While I was growing up in the late 70's and 80's, my mother would get the late edition of the Sunday Times from 7-11, mostly for the crossword; she finished most every one she tried... By scanning the the four bookcases she stationed at each corner of our family room, searching, searching: Witches of Eastwick.... John... UPDIKE! By strolling over to the giant globe that forever flanked our fireplace, spinning, spinning: St. Chrisopher and.... NEVIS! By moseying over to the foot of the stairs, yelling, hollering: "Greg! Five letters! Duke Boy Tom! I got W-O! Eh...? Hmm... WOPAT.... Fits!!! Thank you!" And when she was done she was done. No music to reward your, or silence accompanied by a taunting "Not quite, Copernicus!" message to crush your soul. Maybe she'd check it the next Sunday edition, maybe not. All of which is to say... Your streak counts. And so does mine! Once I hit the 40 minute mark and I haven't made progress on a section, I know there's a disconnect that's never going to resolve itself without a trip to Word.Tips for salvation. Such was the case here. TEENTSY??? Ok, whatever, fair enough, but in my 50-plus years that has only ever been TEENSY or TEENSIE in my head. And there was _no_ getting me off NFL for "Raiders' org". What is this, the PSATS? The MCATS? The LSATS? No, respectfully. It ain't. Cheers.
"I built a scaffold of entries pretty easily, but took a long time to fill in all the empty patches." I find that most crossword hurdles are difficult to describe succinctly with maximum vocabulary accessibility (to wit: the fullness of the sentence proper avec parenthetical). Deftly described and economized, Caitlin.
@Rod First, this has nothing to do with legendary Miami Dolphins wide receiver Mark Duper known to fans as -- you guessed it -- Super Duper. Despite being thrown to by no less than Dan Marino in his prime, setting team and league records along the way, he only made it to the Super Bowl once in a losing effort. And he wasn't considered important enough to work into this theme clue. Double whammy. So we can eliminate that sorry angle and, instead, move on to breaking down "ape". If you are an ape, hopefully you are a human, but if not, you could be a chimp, a bonobo (i.e. a randy chimp with a funky caboose and gender-neural-pattern baldness), a gorilla, an orangutan or even a gibbon (the only extant "lesser" ape, which isn't very nice, but I don't make the rules and honestly I don't think they mind). You can also be one who apes, meaning one who mimics someone or something. Mimicry is a form of deception. The verb "to dupe" means "to fool" or "to deceive". So if you are a great ape, you may be a kind of bipedal menace OR you could be a super -good at duping AKA a super duper. Took me a while to noodle this one too. Side note: Dolphins were eliminated by the Chiefs. No comment from Mark Super Duper as of yet but stay tuned.
@Veronika I often find that a Friday or Saturday can turn on as few as two answers that I just can't get and that prevent me from uncovering everything else. If I don't run into those, I can finish it in a good time, even if it's not that easy. And this one was not *that* easy -- I thought a SETTEE was a boat -- so you got a clean solve on what I would say was a reasonably tough puzzle.
I agree with those who hold that the various gripes about some of the clues are misplaced since the English language is nothing if not malleable, seemingly to the NTH degree, and xwords take great advantage of that. No, the issue here is one of proportion. Rex Parker's blog is a terrific read, even though I find the vast majority of his gripes to fall under the aegis of one of about... oh a dozen or more arbitrary, subjective standards. If an answer doesn't cromulate with his politics, he complains. If an answer -- like MERER -- is not a feature of spoken English, he complains. He dumped on CARELESS MISTAKE because the clue was phrased "this clue" and not "a clue" (the clue itself was written as intended, i.e.). That aside he nailed the problem with this one, the crosses for PHYLLIS WHEATLEY: "My main gripe with crossword editors, across the board, is that they aren't careful enough with their proper nouns. No matter what sphere or time period they come from, names that are not universally famous can be dangerous—they're gimmes for some and total blanks for others, and so already have the potential to create a very divided solving experience. So it's crucial that the less famous, and the more unconventionally spelled, the name is, the more you have to ensure that every cross is fair." And they were fair, just... far too tricky or obscure. This just wasn't very fun.
For those of you who don't consume enough anime to remember MECHA but who are big fans of wackadoo alt-rock band The Flaming Lips, I've a trick to share that has been working for me lately: their 2002 album "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots", which is said to be a metaphor for a Japanese woman's battle with cancer. From a recent, glowing review in The Lazer Guided Reporter (capitalization m-phasis mine): "There is an augmented vibe that ties the whole album together, as a way of illustrating the MECHA universe that acts as the stage for Yoshimi’s battle with disease. Unit 3000–21 opens its eyes in ‘One More Robot/Sympathy 3000–21’, and in the background of some strangely happy sounding lyrics ABOUT A ROBOT developing emotive capabilities, there is a constant flow of glitchy radio fuzz, and those augmented vibes and sounds that prevent any of these tracks from falling into the pop realm. Towards the end of 3000–21’s bouncing story, these monotone noises are the only things left and they bring us back to the uncertainty that surrounds Yoshimi and her future." If I can attach a difficult to remember word to something important to me, it instantly becomes easier to retrieve and deploy. Cheers. <a href="https://lazerguidedreporter.com/2017/10/16/album-review-yoshimi-battles-the-pink-robots-2002-by-the-flaming-lips" target="_blank">https://lazerguidedreporter.com/2017/10/16/album-review-yoshimi-battles-the-pink-robots-2002-by-the-flaming-lips</a>/
@Darren I apply a time limit to each puzzle I do, partly informed by the day, partly by how the particular puzzle is playing. Today, that limit was 35m, and I was done. I research-cheated NINE answers, which is a honkin' lot, but... as a marine biology major, I shouldn't have needed help for NEURO or REACTANT. Sometimes when I struggle a lot, I get dumber the more I overthink it. FONTANE was all I needed to get the SE, but the middle and the SW... phew... massacre. Seemed like I didn't know anything! But I didn't listen to myself and refused to accept LOUDSHIRT and DIRTYNAME... killed me. Were those the made-up phrases you were complaining about? They're not made up. They're brutally logical, unerringly plain, and without pretense. As for the more abstruse, well... yeah... it's a Saturday, man. Chalk it up.
@Anita Nice. "Elroy and Astro get crossed up" BEEFED Without re-reading the across portion for "5-down's pet", I brashly decided that this was going to be a rebus Sunday: E L R J E T S O(n) Y By the time I had filled out most of the rest of the puzzle, I had forgotten that I had done this. The cost of untangling it later was significant. Such hubris.
@Striker Man, you ain't whislin' Dixie. Finished this one in, for me, a crisp 31 min whereas I cried uncle and settled for a blue star yesterday. Some puzzles are evil in their presentation, depending on the solver.
If not for two errors that I had to hunt down -- had PALPaTATE for 49A and oNSCALE 108A -- I nearly finished this puzzle at my record Sunday time which is around 30 min. But it didn't start out that way. My Sunday and Monday strategies are similar: lay down the low-hanging fruit as quickly as possible on the first pass and avoid thinking too much. My success with this varies as it's tempting to check crosses on a long puzzle, but usually I net 40 or more answers about 8-10 minutes, but today I doubt I got half that. As I slowly made my way down, I wondered if I'd be able to clear one hour. And that's when I got to 58A - Approach something with gusto. I was fortunate to have G O W _ _ O G, telling me that its crosses were wildly wrong or this was a rebus puzzle. Adele andele arriba yeppa from that point forward, setting aside a couple headscratching moments in the SE and SW. Fun puzzle, cool gimmick.
@Kelsey I liked it also. I had to fight hard to get out of each corner, with only the center falling easily. Fifty minutes, it took me! Ten more minutes, and I *would* have started to look things up. Still... it had a sensibility to it, didn't it? Once I latched onto the ineffable "something" that ran through answers like OUTATIME, ATECAKE, ESCARGOT, SENSEI and SALES TAX, something clicked and I was finally able to crack the NW. Normally, I would not reach so easily for ARMHOLES and SCHMEARS, *not* for those clues anyway, but... I had a feeling. Cheers.
@Theo Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian President, was a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize with Menachem Begin in 1978. He was assassinated in 1981.
@John Xinfo is what you want. It's an indispensable resource once crosswords right after it becomes an obsession but hopefully before your family and friends arrange an intervention <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=1/18/2024" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=1/18/2024</a>
@Andrzej Und wie! as the Germans said, then (apparently) so did we English speakers. Or at least that's one thought as to its origin: <a href="https://ask.metafilter.com/16692/And-How" target="_blank">https://ask.metafilter.com/16692/And-How</a> It's one of those old-timey, folksy (read: white) American expressions like "you ain't whistlin' Dixie" or "ain't that a fact" that were common in Hollywood serials from the 1920's to the 40's that became common afternoon fare for kids in syndication when the television became ubiquitous in middle class homes in the 50's. "Our Gang", which was aimed at children, ran in theaters from the silent era to the late 30's. It was redistributed under the new name "The Little Rascals" in the 50's, just in time for the swell of the Golden Age of broadcast TV. Anyone born during WW2, Boomers, GenX and Oregon Trail Millennials are thus very familiar with this phrase from watching it after school or on Sundays. To wit, from the one of the recent film revivals, here's (I assume) Buckwheat (in disguise), intoning the idiom: <a href="https://www.getyarn.io/yarn-clip/69b28929-62a6-4f6a-9e78-c80036675423/gif#tdAQMcvS.copy" target="_blank">https://www.getyarn.io/yarn-clip/69b28929-62a6-4f6a-9e78-c80036675423/gif#tdAQMcvS.copy</a> Other more modern forms largely come from 20th century African American vernacular, such as: - And you know that! - Damn straight! / Damn Skippy! - Mos def (most definitely) - Fo sho (for sure) - Sing it, sister! And of course, there's the great poet Glenn Quagmire who would translate all of these variations to its core sentiment: Giggity!
@Amy I'm sure that someone else has pointed this out but NOR is not a boolean operator in math or programming, since math doesn't care about English grammar. But I suppose there is a non-technical sense to the meaning of boolean, so... [EDIT] Never mind! NOT(OR) = NOR. Didn't know that.
@Steve L I blanched at ACER as well and, indeed, it was the last solve for me. I also don't see why PDFS are any easier to share then .docx, .odf, .txt, .xls, .csv or any other file format... like .JPG(S) or .jpeg. And furthermore, any well-read sophisticate with a minimally discerning palate-- *moi*, par example -- wouldn't dare confuse the restrained format of OPEDS with the free-flowing whimsy of a proper think piece. Not in mixed company, at least! But... here's the thing. I got all three of them. A person who performs a feat known as an "ace", according to the rules of English, is an ACER. A PDF is easy to share. I often think while I read OPEDS.
I find it far more bizarre that a dictionary would be banned than a Where's Waldo book. Some of those beach scenes are a little sketchy in places! What a wally.
@Jon I had virtually the same experience. I hate it when this happens, nice steady progress and then SLAM! Face in the dirt. Despite having almost everything in the bottom center I couldn’t make hay with the SEASONPASS and HOGSHEAD connectors. RDA and aHME (thought it couldn’t get worse than “ah, me” but nope, we have OHME too) weren’t enough to seed my brain and with that… I was grumped out and a proper menace to fair play. That should have been the signal to hang it up, go to bed and try again in the afternoon. But I was weak and I looked up the answer for HOGSHEAD, but that didn’t help either and I ended up going to bed anyway. Instant DNF with a side of still-not-done. Ignominy. Disgrace. After putzing around for the first part of the day, I opened the puzzle and bing bang boom. NBA, ANGLE, REHANG, DAMSEL. Didn’t need stupid HOGSHEAD after all. Had to keyboard cycle to get the “T” for the BINET, ADESTE cross but it ultimately was not unsolvable for me. Curse my late night crankiness.
@Justin AND HOW! (Because that's a way to express overwhelming agreement on a topic such as the fact that four letters and something to do with ice cream is almost always EDYS and I'm sorry for the run-on sentence but I have to say more stuff and things and such or this will get filtered out again) WOH... DNA!
@Wayne Harrison 452 days! I lost my all-time best 116-day streak to a Saturday puzzle, ten days back. If I'm ever forced into vegetarianism by dietary restrictions or a PETA-backed junta, I will avoid INCOGMEATO like death. Is it better to end a streak because of time constraints or failure to know brand names that tie together an entire quadrant of the puzzle? AH ME, I just don't know. But congrats for re-acquiring the third digit of glory for you stats.
@Liz B We had a similar experience. THIS THAT AND THE OTHER (just common usage but also a funny line from an early Seinfeld episode) clued me in to the mechanics of the theme and RAMALAMADINGDONG caused me great consternation, largely because I could have sworn it started off with "shama". Everything else clicked once that was in place.
Streak-ender. There were some really good clue/answer combos in this one, so I won't blame the puzzle -- fair puzzle -- I just could not noodle FIREWATER, FINE or COMPOSTBIN, the most gettable answers I had left on my grid. The rest, like INCOGOMEATO, were un-gettable and on, STARSEARCH, was was out of reach because of foolishly arbitrary limits I placed on how far back in the past we were going to find the America's Got Talent precursor. Saturdays are supposed to be annoyingly deceptive, but I managed to not DNF the previous 18 Saturdays, so... hats off to Caitlin and Matthew.
@CityDad You are seen. Filled it entirely via crosses, so had you not pointed this out I wouldn't have notice. I thought ESTOP was bad, yeesh.
@N. Hornblower Reminds me of a lovely, peaceable Scottish friend of my mother's who sometimes would say about a person, rather unexpectedly, something like, "they quite fancy themselves, don't they?"
@Andrzej You crack me up, Andrzej. My Catholic upbringing brought me into the ranks of The Alter Boys, so I am well aware of the incense problem and the fact that it is distributed via a baroque inlaid metallic ORB that is wielded by a chain, not unlike a medieval MACE. Also, you reminded me of a scene from "Orange is the New Black" in which a prison guard is watching over a gaggle of nuns who have gathered at the main gate of the prison to support a former nun who is fasting to protest something or other. Initially, he resents having to watch over nuns, the bane of his childhood: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLD-FO7cdDM" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLD-FO7cdDM</a> In an unlikely twist, the ex-nun ends her fast and aids in the escape of another inmate who flees in a van, nearly running over the Nun Collective. Enter the Embittered Ex-Catholic Prison Guard plot twist: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCrsD19t1-I" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCrsD19t1-I</a> Run, nuns! RUN!!! (... never thought you'd habit.... )
@Amy I'm sure that someone else has pointed this out but NOR is not a boolean operator in math or programming, since math doesn't care about English grammar. But I suppose there is a non-technical sense to the meaning of boolean, so...
@Nate Right with you. This was poorly conceived, constructed, edited. Fair, ultimately, but designed to absolutely stymie a certain percentage.
@David Connell **SLAPS FOREHEAD** Never made that connection before (I didn't make the Flaming Lips one until a few weeks back, but still). I'd like to blame it on the fact that I hate that episode, but I must have seen it 50 times if I've seen it once. It's still a South Park episode after all. I don't skip tracks on classic records, you know? Thanks for the 411. MECHA possesses additional staying power in my brain now.
@Kris T Not my favorite puzzle but I'll defend the constructors with respect to 37A. Had it been clued as "What Yosemite Sam might say to Bugs before demanding a duel", you might have a point. However, "fighting words" is well worn in less idiomatic contexts, to say nothing of the legal doctrine which speakers tend to cite within the bounds of proper grammar: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_words" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_words</a> Furthermore, the clue made no mention of fictional dialogue, let alone Westerns.
@David I did that several times and even allowed the clock to run while I leaned back and stared at the ceiling. Eventually, the SW corner fell, then the SE, then the NE and -- but for the B in BOPS/BASH, which I know I would have figured out eventually -- the NW. But the upper midwest, North Dakota and Minnesota, down to Nebraska and Iowa. I had all of the answers *except* for ESP and ROSTRA. But I couldn't hang my hat on *ANY* of the surrounding answers! KOS... but what if it's a strange variation on "kitchen patrol", like KOP? ATHOME... but maybe it's really ATEASE? WIMP, right? But what if it's WUSS? Since I was clueless on ROSTRUM, I was semi-uncertain about REWRITES.... that seemed correct but.. was it? Well yeah, it was. But then the clock said 1hr 15m and that was officially too much time to stare at one xword. Reveal, reveal... oh... reveal, reveal.... dangit... reveal, reveal.... heavy sigh... this was not fun. I think I could have pulled it out with more time, but I was weary. Glad you could though. Gives me hope for the next time I face a ballbuster like this.
@ChatGPT-1 If you will, some mild pushback: of *course* there were gimmicks. Just the more subtle kind. Where to begin? 22A Ground rule ... gimmick 32A Forgetting to finish this clue, for examp ... big gimmick 47A Bit of deductive reasoning ... accounting gimmick And so on. Hardly straight-forward. But I get your point. No themes, no animations, no rebusistic tomfoolery.
@JayTee Same. Lots of griping here, but there always is when there's a rebus or other non-intuitive trickeration. What bothers me is when none of the rebus answers is definitive -- i.e. there is no alternative -- such that it's impossible not to suspect one. That rarely happens on Thursdays, though, if ever.
@Justin AND HOW! (..... now..... .... brown cow?)
@Barry Ancona Grounded rule. The xword can get crazy with the Cheez Whiz all it wants, I'm not going to complain. But let's not pretend that, outside the xword matrix, anybody says "ground rule" unless they're talking about a fortuitous outcome for a the batting side of a baseball at-bat.
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