Warren

@Francis I don’t pay attention to the clock. But I know some people are worried that the NYT might try to make their puzzles easier to attract more $$s. Also, some really look forward to the end of the week and have trouble hiding their disappointment when the clues aren’t as fresh as in other weeks. Whether a clue seems fresh depends on how long you’ve been doing these. Luckily, there doesn’t seem to be a toxic level of Xword consumption, or the ERs would be filled with strung out nerds screaming “Stuff the Oreos, doc, I NEED a seven letter word that anagrams to Latin for forbearance!” That said, the differences in perceptions of easy vs. hard always remind me of George Carlin’s observation: “Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?”

@sotto voce Prepare to be bored: There’s actually a plastic or pvc cup inside the hole on each green. When I was on a greens crew as a teenager, one of our first jobs in the early a.m. was to move each hole on each green, to keep the course interesting and shift the wear and tear around the green. First, you would use a simple tool to extract the cup from the existing hole. Then, you use another tool to cut out a new hole, like extracting a cylindrical soil core sample the exact same circumference and depth as the old hole. You drop the cylinder of soil with its turf top into the old hole, drop the cup into the new hole, and then place the flag in the center hole of the cup. Believe it our not, there is some thought into where you cut a hole. It can’t be too close to the apron or the old hole, can’t be on a ridiculously difficult slope, or in a ridiculously easy gully. Regardless of how careful you are in choosing a given day’s cup placement, there will be members who complain that the day’s configuration was too difficult, and others who will complain that it was too easy. It reminds me of something else, but I can’t quite put my finger on it…

@Jeremy I don’t get how this has already gotten so many recs. Shah, Sahl, Mao, EAP, erg are all pretty standard Xword fill. (Geez, erg is making a run at emu triteness, almost half an oboe.) Aro has also made a comeback, albeit with a more contemporary definition. As BA notes elsewhere, we’ve seen arepa and arepas recently, a number of times. Sensate shows up every now and then. All pre-Fagliano as editor. Nyuorican was fresh, and discoverable from the crosses. That’s a good thing.

@Ashley FWIW, personally, I did not read Deb’s comment to be in any way dismissive or disrespectful of Hawaiian culture. I read it as poking (appropriate) fun at dense people like me who can never remember how to spell it no matter how many times I’ve seen it. Every time, afterwards, I stare at it, say “oh, I see, that’s easy. Nice repetition.” And, then, the next time, I start doubting myself and say, “is there an ‘n’ in there?” I can’t explain it, other than I have a dumb mental block. To paraphrase Richard Brautigan, it’s like a penny in my mind that’s never been minted. (It also didn’t help that I didn’t know how to say “hello” in Chinese, but that is also on me.)

@archaeoprof Give it hell, Prof! There’s no shame in the occasional/piecemeal lookup to enable fun. And they’re learning more every day. Peace and best wishes to you and yours!

@Striker Oh man. Enjoy every millisecond of that. Our baby girl just turned 32. I can still feel her sleeping on my chest & shoulder. There is no feeling in the world more content and at one with existence than your child sleeping in your arms.

@Dorothy To my parents’ generation, Tojo was as infamous as Hitler.

@Rich in Atlanta Thank you, Rich. Some of the younger solvers may not realize that Casablanca came out while WWII was still blazing, the fall of 1942. Some of the actors in that scene were French refugees, including the tearful 20 year old woman (Yvonne Lebeau) who shouts “Vive La France! Vive La democratie!” at the end. “As it turns out, Lebeau herself had fled Nazi-engulfed Europe with her Jewish husband, Marcel Dalio, who plays Emil the croupier at Rick’s Café and who was already famous in Europe for his winning performances in Jean Renoir’s La Grande Illusion (Grand Illusion, 1937) and La Règle du jeu (Rules of the Game, 1939). In an ugly turn, close-ups of Dalio, taken from those films, were appropriated on anti-Semitic Vichy propaganda placards. Shortly before the German invasion of Paris, Dalio and Lebeau made their way to Lisbon, that prized destination for languishing refugees in Casablanca, and from there, using forged visas, secured passage on the S.S. Quanza, a Portuguese ship carrying hundreds of émigrés to the New World. Landing in Mexico, they were able to get temporary Canadian visas and, with them in hand, crossed the border to California and eventually to the back lot at Warner Bros.” <a href="https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2017/winter/feature/in-casablanca-madeleine-lebeau-became-forever-the-face-french-resistance" target="_blank">https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2017/winter/feature/in-casablanca-madeleine-lebeau-became-forever-the-face-french-resistance</a> Thanks to the National Endowment for the Humanities for the nice background. Who knows if it will survive the upcoming Vichy regime.

@Super8ing I, on the other hand, think this forum is the perfect place for civilly pointing out errors due to imprecisely (or not) reading what was written; errors in fact—with references that can be checked and challenged, if one wishes; errors in logic; and noting the traditional standards, usages, and quirks that have developed over the many decades of the NYT Xword. Limiting posts to two per day makes no sense to me, as there seems to be no limit to the need for the above.

@B <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/03/us/nancy-schuster-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.pk0.1Laq.0wyNJBO0Mpwo&smid=url-share" target="_blank">https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/03/us/nancy-schuster-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.pk0.1Laq.0wyNJBO0Mpwo&smid=url-share</a> Emus, don’t look an attempted gift link in the mouth.

@john ezra You missed TAXI BIAS. They’re always leaning to go right on red.

@Kathy wigg At least check Webster before stating something as if it were a fact. Or many of the posts below.

@Nancy J. The savings to anyone’s taxes will be minuscule. It is all just performative cruelty by the rich and in charge.

@L.A. Sunshine Surely you remember the old mnemonic “righty, twisty; lefty, untwisty”? … … …

@CCNY Love the story.

@Stew Don’t get personal? You gave your personal opinion about Mr. Lieberman’s puzzle (including giving it the imperial thumbs down) and Ms. Lovinger’s “elaborate” explanation for those who needed it, Nancy responded that the elaborate explanation was not required for her (indeed, for many, if not most, of us), thus not the indictment of the puzzle you seem to think it is. That is not an ad hominem attack, simply challenging the premise of your criticism. My experience was different from yours and similar to Nancy’s and Barry’s. And I second the emotion that it was good that the editors did not circle the rebus squares. Seeking them out was part of the fun.

@CCNY Glad you’re on the mend. And now you have a bionic ankle. Yesterday, before they put me under, they asked “do you have any metal in your body?” All my bad brain could think of was the Sopranos. Now I know what they meant.

@Helen Wright Well, I’ve heard of tin ears and being tone deaf, but TIL the expression “cloth-eared.” And that it comes from working in the loud, textile-dusty cotton mills in northern England in the early 20th century. Maybe that will show up in a future puzzle. Thanks!

@Anita Yep. My English teacher would have circled “apter” and written “w/c awk” (word choice, awkward) in the margin.

@Kate Tani My dog is staring at me wondering why I can’t stop laughing.

@Doug Agreed. I didn’t catch on as fast as Nancy, but I like crosswords because they constantly make me reconsider my assumptions and mind set. I first entered “L I N E” in 22 across, but thought it was odd that the four crosses for it could be four letter answers instead of 5. So, I looked at the title and got it. Seeing the revealer at 112 A confirmed it (although I first tried putting dashes at the end of that answer until I worked those crosses). Perfectly fine Sunday puzzle. If your initial thought seems a little off, consider that your initial thought was wrong, and think of something else. Or, I guess, you could blame the puzzle for puzzling you.

@Skeptical1 Bill the Cat from Bloom County, and Cathy are two that come to mind. Comic strips. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_the_Cat" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_the_Cat</a>

@john ezra Your ability to turn a crossword puzzle into an entertaining stream-of-consciousness narrative is amazing. Someday I’d like to construct a puzzle for your review, just to see what you might reveal about my inner psyche. Well done.

@CaptainQuahog There. You nailed it. Proud of ignorance. A lot of that going around these days. Weird, since it has never been easier to learn about anything. A simple google away. Why wouldn’t you want to know what you currently don’t know?

@Becca Yes, Nancy, you are much more tactful than me. For example, you didn’t specify what hole their heads go in. (I’m talking about Fox holes, of course. What else would I mean?) I know I should, by now, be numb to the attempt to marginalize someone’s existence and shrink it into a convenient box they label “political agenda,” but they’re trying to dismiss people I love. Time to grow up, troglodytes. Do you have what it takes to do that?

@Nancy J. And twee. That Thursday dish is just twee. And the restaurant owners pick chefs who constantly push their “foodie” agenda on me even though I chose to pay for this “food.” Thank you, Nancy, for standing up for good old fashioned unseasoned meat and potatoes!