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Albany, CA
What a work of balance. TIGHTROPEWALKER crossing EGGANDSPOONRACE.
I’m relatively new to these puzzles and this forum (for example I only recently figured out what all this talk of emus was about) and I enjoy sharing clever clues and themes with my non-X-worder (but mean Wordler) wife. She usually just shakes her head. Tonight she’s recuperating from yesterday’s knee replacement so I sat up in bed next to her to do the new puzzle. Looking over at my screen, she asked, “What’s a NOTUS?” (Rhymes with POTUS.) I was happy to be able to reply, “That, my dear, is a dook.” BTW, she quickly came up with the Egyptian ONION from just the spoken clue while I was drawing a blank. TIL the expression DUNZO and have no problem with it, but MINOR TEAMS is beyond the pale. Overall, fun puzzle, clever theme.
First time I completed a Thursday and still had no clue what the gimmick was. Got the starred clues by the crosses only. Seems a bit of a stretch to me but who am I to say?
The people who insist on the Oxford comma include my parents, Ayn Rand, and God.
Until I read the comments I assumed HET HEY was a pronoun pair in some language like Danish. Thought it was a little advanced for a Tuesday.
Yeah, I thought eARRINGRESQQS were perfectly reasonable quests for gallant knights.
@Barry Ancona I don't think EAST was the problem for Dave. It was U_ES crossed with _BS.
@Dave S I know it from an alternate spelling as the title of Joni Mitchell's masterpiece album of songs written on three journeys, apparently of escape.
No one else's mind went into the, er, gutter when confronted with P_ _ for [Whiz]? Or will admit it here?
@Steven M. I figured it had something to with mis-hearing when I parsed out SPEECHTOTEXT just from the crosses. But really, "gray day quality"?
@Sam Lyons Slik moths are but grown up silkworms.
@Steven M. Yes, I very confidently put "scrub" there. My sister worked for NASA and my son and I had the distinctly unique disappointment of having to go home from Cape Kennedy after a shuttle launch was scrubbed due to weather.
@Red Carpet Yeah, four months in and I'm still writing 5785 on all my checks. Sorry, old joke.
Was scratching my head at TOE for [Winning X or O] until I wrote it here as a question just now. Aha! The penny drops. Nice.
@Hitch Before today I’d never heard of BRENDA Howard, RENEE Fleming, WEEB (!) Ewbank, Helen HONG, or DORIS Burke. Margaret CHO was iffy and HENRY Louis Gates was the only truly familiar name to me. However, I was able to get all those TILs because they were sprinkled evenly throughout cleverly clued but gettable words and phrases, and 3 out of 5 were standard first names. You might have a point with CREAM SODA but, again, gettable with crosses. Nary a Natick to be seen. So sorry, I don’t buy the Americo-centrically unsolveable accusation.
I'm gonna object to the use of "comprise" in the clue for the theme revealer while I send my thanks to Sam for using it correctly. And before Barry Ancona links to Merriam Webster with its snarky summary of the dispute, I'll just say this: either the whole comprises the parts (music to the ears) or the parts comprise the whole (ew!)--you can't have it both ways!
The usual initial Saturday despair lasted only a few minutes and then this one fell into place for me rather smoothly. Only hang-up was the SW; never would have come up with GALBA on my own (even though I recently read Mary Beard's SPRQ) and the crossing fill of 42A, 46A, and 48A simply evaded my consciousness. Maybe I should have given it more time, but for me, one look-up on a Saturday ain't too shabby. Was misled by cross-pollination from Spelling Bee and had monOCRATS for a while. Minor quibble: where I come from, to be PANTSED means to have your trousers pulled down to *expose* those briefs. Including them to also "de-brief" the victim takes it from a prank to a criminal offense, thus outside of the usual meaning of that word in my mind.
@STU I just looked it up: a personal pronoun can be 1st, 2nd, or 3rd person. I wasn't sure myself.
@Lige Fell flat to me.
interesting word, HOLLA. I always thought of it as a noun ("give me a holla") but TIL it can also be the actual expressed greeting. And while current use surely harkens to "holler," Dictionary.com (can I trust it?) says it dates back to the 1500s as a contraction of the French "ahoy la," apparently kin to the Spanish "hola." Strangely, I had never put holla and hola together before. I love crossword puzzles. Great debut, Mr. Hall.
Ah, Pittsburgh, where I spent my first year of college and the first city I ever lived in. "I'm goin' dahntahn to buy a pahnd of grahnd rahnd." Black snow, the smell of the steel mills at night (it was a while ago), Yuengling beer, and don't forget those Stillers!
Sticky but fun. I have one quibble. It is indeed possible to answer "no" to the question, ARE YOU AWAKE, especially when some annoying caffeine-head is trying to rouse you from a delicious late-morning slumber. A more appropriate clue would have been [Question the can't *truthfully* be answered "No"].
@Chris Agreed. Especially when "et alia" IS one of the meanings of et al. (the neuter one) and is most often cited as the full term. I had to resort to looking at Sam's column to find my error, a Class 3 cheat in my hierarchy.
@Francis Punts are flat-bottomed boats propelled by poles. Punting is using such boats, so .... My dunderheadedness was not getting STILL MOOING until Caitlin explained it.
@Bay Area Native And I already had FAke for leatherette, so there's that.
Just right for a Sunday for me. I cracked the theme on L/G AS T/P, went back and sorted out D/H EA D/T and with that, realized all the rebi were at the intersections of four-letter downs joining longish acrosses near their centers. Smooth sailing from there (except for a minute scratching my head at the double themer CINDERBLOCK). I understand the frustration of those who found parsing the theme difficult. I often feel that way when trying to learn a new card game and I just have to decide whether it's worth it - without blaming the card game.
Gee, @Puzzlemucker, can't imagine where you were going with that deleted middle paragraph ...
@Rachel Samesies, word for word.
@Wayne Harrison Exactly where I was stuck as well. Couldn't get how PaCKS could be "goal seekers" and had to resort to Wordplay for the first time in a while.
@Ιασων NE was my downfall as well. I've been a fan of Beyonce since Cowboy Carter but I would never know her previous incarnations. I probably could have landed on "what the kids are saying these days" to complete _US by marching through the alphabet but the alternative to Kanji put 9A out of reach for me. Had to resort to a "semi-lookup:" typing a guess at Beyonce's former persona into a search engine and seeing what correction came up. Not quite a Natick for me but close. Still, I breezed through the rest and came close to my best Saturday time with the half-cheat
And yes, @Andrzej, Toto was Dorothy's dog in the Wizard of Oz. His name lives on in the expression, "Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore," for times when things have suddenly and unexpectedly changed. #4 in AFI's top 100 movie quotes, I read.
@Nora I had it as "jumbo rent." Some parallel to jumbo home loans?
@Bryan "I see," like "I get it." "See" often shows up here used in that sense.
Not knowing my NCAA conferences, I had lSU (LSU) in the Big 12 and luTES as having strings attached. Just figured uMS was some tech acronym I was unaware of. Had to resort to this fine community to find the error in my ways. And, yeah, that was a slog but I have to hand it to the constructors for the beautiful layout and the wonderful spanners.
HAP for [Chance]? I'm clueless.
@Moira Don't forget ALOE and SLR
@SP Like @Francis I also had the objection to Mars being in the Milky Way but I luckily saw the big picture before I made a geocentric fool of myself here. In defense of BADRAP: that is usually "undeserved," as clued, while a BAPReP (which I had first as well) is more often deserved.
@Bay Area Native Meant to put that in reply to DIVAS IVLIVS below.
@Eli Edwards Same here. After a day of skiing it seemed perfectly appropriate. Had to get corrected by our friends here.
@Francis Well, if you wouldn't mind located to my and Dr. Goldstein's neighborhood for a while, and are OK with psilocybin instead of LSD: Investigating the Persisting Effects of a Single Dose of Psilocybin on Structural Plasticity in Healthy Older Adults <a href="https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT06367738?locStr=Berkeley" target="_blank">https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT06367738?locStr=Berkeley</a>,%20CA&country=United%20States&state=California&city=Berkeley&intr=Psilocybin&rank=1 Unfortunately, I was disqualified for having some titanium coils in my head; it's an MRI scanning study.
@VN The Times has noted your comment and made a correction.
@Bill Yep, in my world lesbians and Subarus is definitely a thing. In the old days, I seem to remember a similar association with those small Toyota (Datsun?) pick-up trucks. And sorry, there's a logical fallacy in your response to Steve L. Either it's: Everyone who drives a Subaru is Lesbian. I drive a Subaru. Therefore, I am a Lesbian. Or: All Lesbians drive Subarus. I am a Lesbian. Therefore, I drive a Subaru. But maybe that was your point?
@Seward Parker I'm assuming it refers to babysitting a kid, but I wouldn't say one sits "for" a kid. One either sits a kid or sits him/her for their parents. But maybe I misinterpreted the whole thing?
@Brian Sinclair I'm with you. I'm familiar with "nom nom" but shrugged my shoulders at this answer. I just figured it was the version said by meditators in the lotus position.
@Barry Ancona Doing a quick DuckDuckGo search on my guess at "Mountain: comb. form," autocomplete suggested another possibility: "Botanists' familiar term for the Svelte Undermost Fern." Just stumbling across that name (both common and Latin) made my day. Thanks.
@Laura Whitaker At least no one used "is comprised of" (shudder). @ Steve L Note the use of prepositions to denote the different meanings in your example. Makes a world of difference.
@Steve L The more parallel rendering of your example would be: Smith leased the apartment. The apartment leased Smith. Nope.
@Andrzej Thank you, now I know from whence comes the Yiddish term "shmata"--old dress or other article of clothing. Lots of Yiddish derives from German but not shmata.
@Desert Dweller Agree. Novel + theater + TV personality were a double Natick for me.
@Amy Yep. Had bullfrOGS, then after getting PRONTO and BOOK(something), I thought POndfrOGS might be a thing.