Patrick J.
Sydney Aus.
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Sydney Aus.
Another one for the pedants. I’m not sure of the American usage, but here to call an accountant (CPA) a [bookkeeper] would be at the very least insulting. They are distinct, albeit related, activities Note, for example, that there are both Accounting for Dummies and Bookkeeping for Dummies available in the shops.
Saw the roundabouts, but had to remind myself that I had to turn right on entry instead of my usual left
Naticked in the SE corner. EZER sitting on DEDE (now there’s an interesting image), with the American specific GRE to complete, left me without my usual “try the most obvious” approach. Having UTILIsE for 42D didn’t help.
Many years ago, when I was still a child, when a fresh oven-warm loaf of bread was broken into halves, there were two particularly favoured pieces. The first slice off the outie end and the two crust ends, or heels. The latter particularly cut at least half an inch thick and liberally spread with butter, or even better real beef dripping, complete with chunks, direct from the Sunday roast.
@Daryl It’s been said before but I’ll say it again. The prohibition is on the repetition of a word from a clue to the answer for that clue. There never has been any constraint on words from other clues.
@Dave K. Yes, THOS is an archaic form of abbreviation, but in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was commonly used when signing documents. In the case of your Declaration of Independence it occurs four times as noun the clue
@Joy Harkin. ADZE is to woodworking as “Oreo” is to cookies, at least in NYT xwords
@Ace. While the plural of Attorney General is indeed Attorneys General, there is a convention that initialisms for the plural by treating them as a single entity and adding the “s” at the end. So, AGS.
@Chris. Certainly 1976, 1980 are some years ago, but Nadia C’s feats were and remain memorable
Let's put this to rest once and for all. I have consulted four dictionaries (Oxford Dictionary of English, Chambers, Collins, and Macquarie). They all have the entry: "B (or) b n. The second letter...." That is, they all ascribe the status "noun" to the single letter word "B" Bear in mind that it both the symbol for, and the name of the letter.
@Keith Law. I would argue the exact opposite. Whereas “arty” can be a neutral description, both ARTSY and [chichi] tend to convey a sense of pretentiousness.
@Mike. Joule pay for such revolting puns. . .
An observation on scavengers. Many years ago while travelling in Africa, I was informed that, if you saw a group of lions eating some prey being hungrily watched by hyenas, then the is good chance that it was the hyenas that in fact did the hunting and were then chased off by he lions.
@Greg Anderson. If you look at the down theme entries, you will find that the repeated letters are not doubles within words but all form the end of one word and the beginning of another. So we have TEACUP POODLE etc. This makes a tighter theme than you are suggesting.
@Steven M. Exactly what I did. The phonetic substitution seemed to me what the puzzle was seeking.
@CT. It’s Thursday. Some non-linear thinking is to be expected.
A nit about 99A [Rugby scuffle]. In Rugby (Union, the form most seen in the USA) a. SCRUM is a highly structured and controlled action. It is in the rucks and mauls, related but quite different actions, that we see what appears to be scuffling.
@Mike Related factoid. The square of 1 is 1 11 is 121 111 is 12,321 1111 is 1,234,321 All the way up to The square of 111,111,111 is 12,345,678,987,654,321
“Extra, extra, read all about it! One man swindled.” “I’ll have one … Hang on there’s nothing here about anyone being swindled.” “Extra, extra, read all about it! Two men swindled.l
@Barry Ancona. To you, but, clearly, not immediately to @Shaun. Remember that not everyone is as crossword savvy as you think you are.
While we don’t have TRASH PANDAS, or anything even remotely related, here, we do have the “bin chicken” a.k.a. Australian whit ibis.
@Patrick J. Whoops make that : November oscar tango tango oscar oscar bravo alfa delta.
As an old maths teacher I read [Four square] as being 16. So, even after the hint about cross referencing, I was still scratching my head about X.
25A gave me pause. To me the centre of Kennedy is a single “n” ( en in NYTXWese or “nne”. I felt that ENS meaning “nn” was stretching my friendship more than just a little.
Fascinating that we are getting complaints about not being able to enter the = sign today when not so long ago the complaints were about anything other than letters being required. You can’t please all the people all the time. P.S. As @Deb pointed out the rebus works as well, but then there’s another group who complain about them.
@Francis. ACETIC is the adjective derived from the Latin “acetum” meaning vinegar, so it literally means [vinegary]
@Jake Roberts. CHER pronounced “share”
@Robco “…was impossible” to you.
A hint for all those who wanted some form of “yes” in the across themers. The revealer contains the term [interpreted] as applying to them. This is almost always a signal that what is to be entered will not readable directly as the solution, but, as noted, interpreted. In this case. NO NO is entered but read (interpreted) as “yes”. Not the first time we’ve had this situation.
@Spmm. Unless you happen to live in America. I know that I have the same reaction every time.
@Mike. You orca be congratulated
@Emily. If your problem is with HARPY, the classical definition is precisely “half bird, half woman”. Modern usages expand on their malevolent nature.
@Jack G H. Well known in my part of the world, “Put the KIBOSH on,” is standard vernacular. Emus strut.
@B. (Un)fortunately the ALOU brothers, because of the vowel richness of their name, make regular appearances in the NYT xword. Don’t think of them as “sports trivia”, but rather as crosswordese.
@Andrey. The OED gives usages of “sphere” as meaning “orb, ball” i.e. solid as early as 1428. Its earliest citation of the topological definition is 1934. The use by mathematicians of an existing word with a specific narrower meaning only applies in that area of discourse. It does not affect the pre existing meaning
All these wine valleys. I’m waiting for Barossa, Hunter, and Yarra. (Victoria, NSW, and South Australia respectively) They’re where emus get their wind
@B. As has already been pointed out by @Barry Ancona and @Someone above. There is no “random repetition” of any clue parts. The structure of the first themer, with the central ellipsis, clearly points to the repetition of the opening phrase to precede the ellipsis in the remaining themers.
@Ιασων. And alloys are still metals, they just happen to be mixture not pure
@Barry Ancona. May I suggest that you DROP IT?
@Boris. Might I observe that the clue reads […bubbly] not fizzy. We could even be talking about a spa.
@Patrick J. P.S. I am sure that the post was meant more as a shout to Andrzej, our regular Polish correspondent.
When AS ABOVE SO BELOW fell into place from crosses, I didn’t look for any arcane history, but rather, saw a neat paraphrase of an expression that is probably used millions of times each day: “On earth, as it is in heaven.”
@B. Perhaps surprisingly there are IGAs here in Australia. Emus sometimes shop there.
TAXICAB is, to my understanding, a portmanteau of TAXImeter CABriolet. The first term, itself a compound word, refers to price (TAXI, from the French taxes, cp. tax) and measurement (METER), while the latter is a type of carriage. This gives us a passenger vehicle for hire that charges for the distance travelled. Other uses of taxi are all derived. So, no redundancy
@Beth. Perhaps I did miss the nuance in Barry’s post that rendered it benign. But I did so in the context of his practice of making short sharp corrections which predisposes a direct reading of all his entries
@SP. Whence the Britishism “blue blood”, meaning an aristocrat who didn’t have to work hard and so had such fine skin that the blue veins could be clearly seen.
Got tied up in the NW corner. Started with dADJOKES for 1D, felt right. Then with ERiS for 6D, my Spanish is rudimentary, crosses gave me DRE_IL for 17A. Left me wondering how Austin Powers’ nemesis could have a university named after him
@Barry Ancona. GDAŃSK was somewhat in the news in the time of the Solidarity uprising, home base of Lech Walesa. (My apologies for the lack of diacritics, iPhone) But then again, that was around forty years ago.
@Wr Google can and does get it wrong. If you search sites that sell licensed material you will find “la, la,…” Listen and you will hear what you expect, I hear “la la la la Lola” P.S. the NYT copyright team are almost certainly more likely to be correct than all those who transcribed what they thought they heard and then published on the web.
@Eric “unifying clue” Do you mean you want something like 46A? Or are you still complaining about 2017? And I’m not sure that getting three sets of four entries neatly meeting fits my understanding of “lazy”.