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Fun, breezy puzzle with an enjoyably innocent theme!
Our columnist thinks the grey-square shape is the Enterprise from the front, but on a bias. I’m no serious Trekkie, but don’t we all agree it is the Enterprise IN PROFILE, with the front disc to the right?
@Barry Ancona Well, having gone on a few grade school outings to “historical“ sites, I’m very familiar with what an old-fashioned butter churn is. I even spent a few minutes working one — and boy, is it hard work! Perhaps some machines in industrial dairy works are actually called “churns,” and perhaps they aren’t. But the clue had resonance for me, and it was nostalgic to see the noun form of the word.
CL: you mean PACK a punch, i assume. Pulling a punch means the exact opposite. “Kameron Austin Collins as a sharp, witty constructor whose grids can pull a fearsome punch.” If you’ve heard the expression “don’t pull any punches, you probably know it means “tell me the unvarnished truth — i can take it.” Good pro wrestlers are quite accomplished at making harmless blows look real. I’m sure I could have broken this to you more gently, but the irony would have given me indigestion. Thank you.
A rare incident of what I think is a typo, and a formatting error in the column. Maybe I’m just parsing it incorrectly, but I can’t make any sense out of the sentence, “ What I do miss ease I once felt at food-filled events.” should it be “ What I do miss IS THE ease I once felt at food-filled events?” The formatting error is that the below quote is all bold, and should not be: “Minifig, and” This may be fixed by the time you read it, fellow crossword puzzle solver.
@Shrike I’m 64, and have volunteered for political causes occasionally over the years, and to me it was as nearly as accessible as HERE COMES THE SUN and RENE DESCARTES.
Tootsies are toes, not feet. The singular is tootsie, I believe. Has anyone pointed this out? Am I wrong? Also, I don’t see how loading and unloading a dishwasher is dissonant. These are just 2 tiny quibbles about clueing, though. GREAT puzzle!
One of the actors to play MR NOODLES was the big-hearted diminutive Michael Jeter. I first saw him dance his heart out in Grand Hotel on Broadway, and many more will remember him in The Fisher King. Just wonderful. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jeter" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jeter</a>
What an intersection: Sec. of State Rubio, and Ruth Bader Ginsberg! Oi.
I did not know about “Gator-aid.” From Wikipedia: “The University of Florida researchers initially considered naming their product "Gator-Aid", but eventually settled on "Gatorade". Darren Rovell notes in his history of Gatorade, First in Thirst, "the doctors realized that they probably shouldn't use the 'Aid' suffix, since that would mean that if the drink were ever marketed, they would have to prove that it had a clear medicinal use and perform clinical tests on thousands of people."Gatorade co-inventor Dana Shires explained, "We were told that you couldn't use that because the Food and Drug Administration prohibited that. That would classify it as something other than a cola or soft drink, so we changed it to ade."”
@MFSTEVE art thou still bewilderéd? Or rather, are you still confused? “Art” is old formal English for “are.” You find it in Shakespeare and the Bible. A lot. Even when Lot is speaking with his wife. I was confused by “Tahoe“ as well. It’s probably the name of an operating system that runs on Apple Mac computers. Anyway, that’s my best guess without looking it up.
Has anyone already pointed out the error in the column concerning oars and locks? In this case, “locks” does not refer to chambers of a canal, but to oarlocks, the Y-shaped pieces of iron alloy that connect the oars to the gunwales.
Wonderful puzzle! Not really a quibble, but here’s an observation about a slight inconsistency: two of the “measure twice“ clues use repeated words: FIFTY/FIFTY, and MINE/MINE, and a third is almost verbatim, with GALILEO GALILEI. But the fourth is a different format with FENNEL BULBS, which I actually see is a higher level of craft than the blunt repetition — but in any event it is a slight inconsistency.
@Derek — three of the five theme clues seem flawed — and the flaw for two of them is the idea that any uniquely female term can be used for any woman, whether it’s appropriate or not. Dorothy isn’t a queen, Elle isn’t noticeably a sister — if the character has a sister, it’s incidental to the story, and the actress who played her is certainly not a “sistah” sister. Also, the hyphens are unnecessary and misleading. Also no one I’ve seen in the comment section has a plausible explanation for what specifically makes Nancy Drew more of a “cover girl” than hundreds of fictional characters whose name appears in the title of their respective books, from Emma & Jane Eyre to Anna Karenina & Eleanor Oliphant. “Cat lady” and “Wing woman” are great clues, though.
Food related: Cash cow Gravy Train Bread & butter And or for Dutch frisians, to make one’s sandwich — “ goede boterham verdienen.”
@Shrike — “Tony“ is frequently used to mean posh or classy.
@Lpr For our descendants’ sake?
I’m sure I’m not the first to point out the error in the column; homophones are words that sound alike but mean different things and may be spelled differently, NOT words spelled the same, but with different pronounciations. PERfect and perFECT are NOT homophones. The “phone” suffix is an important clue.
So, three things: 1) WHY NOT have a column picture that INCLUDES a hecklefon? We’ve got a bass clarinet and a contrabassoon in there. Yeesh! 2) A “youth” explained to me years ago that “no cap” means honest, as opposed to wearing a baseball cap to hide one’s baldness, so really unrelated to ‘cap’ as slang for “lie” in an older sense — but how reliable are “youths” (or “utes”)? 3) using the word “species” to categorize dinosaurs is more nonsensical than “race.” Are dinosaurs an order, like mammals? A subgroup of reptiles, at the family level? I don’t think there’s a good answer that leaves us with a joke clue.
@Jimbo Cute! … but I think you mean 19A, not 10A.
I LOVED this puzzle! Understanding the alternation of vowels and consonants led to me solving this much more quickly than I usually do on a Tuesday. By the way, I have a slight confusion: the constructor refers to “téte-a-téte” has alternating vowels and consonants, which, of course it does not. What am I not understanding here?
@dutchiris — some work, some don’t, but the trick is to create the clue with the blank in the middle.
The intersection of BROEY and SOAPY is, for me, a bit problematic. The former is an artificial word, and the latter is clued imprecisely. Yes, it can be used for “melodramatically,“ but I just don’t accept it as an adverb to mean “serialized,“ especially when there are so many ways SOAPY could be clued. I had OHbOY instead of OHJOY, which made the sports intersection of LAMARBAC_SON and 57D, _MS, a false hunt-and-peck job with no success. Oh, well! I came so close to a clean solve, but I will learn to live with my disappointment!
@Glenn — edit — it turns out elk DO bugle. In fact, they frequently do it in Estes Park.
@Sara W — I knew the expression, but as “ I calls ‘em as I sees ‘em;” a bit more colorful!
@Tain I grew up in New England, third generation American of mostly Scottish heritage, and the phrase, “beyond my ken” was not uncommon in my extended family as an easy way to say “I don’t know — it’s beyond me.” As I discovered wonderful old BBC comedy radio on newsgroups and YouTube, I found the delightful “Beyond Our Ken” comedy show starring Kenneth Williams, which has cemented that usage of “ken” permanently in my brain.
I particularly enjoy the scattershot pinwheel shape of this puzzle.
I’ve listened to jug bands, and hillbilly bands of all sorts — I have no idea what a”STOVEPIPE” is in this context. Anybody know?
If this is already pointed out in the comments, I haven’t seen it. In today’s column, the high-scoring scrabble letters that appear two times within single entries in this puzzle are listed incorrectly. There should be an X on that list, but not a Z.
@HeathieJ — I believe the reference is to a certain political office, not to anything delightfully salacious!
@Pat And there are so many other potential clues. _SSENTIALS. _USTS. (Musts, not lusts) _ECESSITIES.
@Grant I see 24A as a cheat, because the first word is, as far as I can tell, is never used in a different context than the nursery rhyme and without the second word. MODEL, BOSS and QUITE our full real words with versatile lives. Good luck typing JIGGETY with spellcheck on without having it turn it into Jiggery. Otherwise, a puzzle of great fun, with one of my favorite clues in a long time,3D. Also, Mr. Offerman‘s brief essay here was delightful, reminiscent of early Woody Allen.
This puzzle was quite a challenge for me, and mostly fair challenges, but a few things seemed really stretched. The one that stood out for me is RADIO SETS, and it’s clue. That clue is apparently from the editors, not from the esteemed creator of the puzzle, and I’d be interested to know what the original clue was.
@Eric Hougland — I worked with Lea for the entire run of GLEE, and the truth is she was born to play Fanny Brice. It’s hard to imagine anyone with the exact right vocal type and the particular kind of acting strength in the English speaking world who is more appropriate for that part. (And the inside scoop says she was well-behaved for her entire run of Funny Girl, so she doesn’t deserve any negative scuttlebutt there.). But the truth is, she was a replacement in a revival, so one might be forgiven for thinking of Barbra or Beanie first. Now that I think about it, I would also pay to see Alex Newell in that role. Alex has got the vocal chops and the unstoppability that the role requires!
@el I loved the puns in the puzzle, but I’m here to agree — AUTOTUNER is an absolute cheat. I know no musician or engineer who would make this error (and more often than not in the Autotune-as-effect heyday, the software being used was actually Melodyne).
I enjoyed this puzzle. My quibble is that too many of the BEDs are …UBBED. Is that too picky?
@Mads — well, for me, when I can’t find an error in spelling, I look out for hard to detect typos, especially zero for the letter O.
@Nic I agree. It’s not really a pun if the literal answer is meaningless, like FORZA MOMENT or STANZA CHANCE. This ruins an otherwise fine puzzle. It is what I call “clever adjacent,” which is far worse than not clever at all.
I quite enjoyed this puzzle, and its theme. One clue, however, I reject: Groucho Marx is not a “co-star” of DUCK SOUP, he is one of the stars, and in fact, of course, the principal star. For over a century in Hollywood, “co-star” is a lower rank — for example, Eric Blore or Edward Everett Horton in Fred Astaire movies.
A sitar is NOT a LUTE. They may be grouped together in various ways, but “lute” is not a venereal term for guitars, kotos, banjos, etc. Not in any way that plectrum players I associate with have ever used.
@Jonathanq — Funny ... I loved that clue, and it made me laugh out loud. I don’t see how you get lazy from that, but to each own!
@Barry Ancona So why not use a specific? “Percussive technique for Jaco Pastorius,” or any recognizable bassist who uses the technique? The fact that “bass” occurs in the answer doesn’t give a pass to an inaccurate and careless clue. :)
@Adam G I got through the puzzle, and never caught on to the slanginess, and even the column didn’t help. I’m assuming ARIA KIDDING stands for ARE YOU KIDDING? Others are STANDS A CHANCE, CODE OF SILENCE, FOR THE MOMENT (the weakest) and IT’S NOT A THING. what’s missing for me is that they are not puns. “Aria kidding” doesn’t MEAN anything.
@Roberto But WINLESS SEASON is the only one that can’t be interpreted as a definition for the clue; ENDEAVOR is a bit weak for being an ENDLESS STRUGGLE, but it would be acceptable. AGELESS BEAUTY is absolutely brilliant, and CARELESS MISTAKE matches the full clue of BAD CAREER MOVE. In fact, these last two simply don’t fit your WINTER justification as I understand it. Perhaps the puzzle masters are referring to the bleakness of December, but to me it looks like a flaw in an otherwise brilliant puzzle.
@The X-Phile I like the link you posted, which makes me think: Nina created a work of art by covering a Broadway song — all of the brass, the rhythm of this version are unique and fresh; the original song from ROAR OF THE GREASEPAINT or STOP THE WORLD (I can’t remember which at the moment) by Leslie Briceuse (sp.?) and Anthony Newley has none of the signature features of Simone’s version. Bublé’s version is a direct lift of Simone’s creativity. Is that appropriation? What she added is so personal and powerful, and Bublé seems to be wearing it like a fashionable fur coat. but I digress: I thought NEEDLEDROP referred specifically to the early film scoring practice of playing pre-existing recordings under films, without regard to synchronization with the action, for example in Laurel and Hardy sound movies, or Our Gang reels, as opposed to “song placement” and “montage” which might be more apt to the given clue. Did NEEDLEDROP acquire a new meaning in recent decades while I wasn’t paying attention?
@McT well, yes, and no, I think. I didn’t think of the noisiness for a kind of comic reason: for some reason, my wife and I compete to see who can empty the dishwasher first, before the other one thinks of it. So when I’m unloading the dishwasher, I’m in a stealth mode, and can do it almost silently. So when I read the clanging and clinking idea, that made sense. However as a musician, I think of that chaos of sound as an arhythmic cacaphony, but not really a dissonance, since that requires pitched sounds, at least to a musician!
@B perhaps Kool-Aid was grandfathered (grandparented?) in, and the regulatory climate had changed. By this time next year, you may be able to market Murcurochrome as a food coloring.
@Ιασων — I understand your mistake about come hither. Put quotes around it, and it’s a perfect substitution for flirtatious. The most famous type of phrase using those two words would be: She approached me with a “come-hither“ look in her eyes. // she approached me with a flirtatious look in her eyes. I went to grade school in Lexington, MA in the 60s, and while it was truly great for new math and less “America is always right“ history, they never taught us the traditional rules of grammar, but I suspect in this context “come hither“ is an adjective, or an adjective phrase?
Congratulations to the puzzle constructor; there is a lot that is good, however, I found some problems with the theme clues. Some of that could be my failure to get it. What is “cover” about Nancy Drew? The fact that she’s a character in books? What is “queen“ about Dorothy Gale? Simply the fact that she is female? The same with Elle Woods: is she a “sister“ because she is a woman? For me, “sister” works a little better than “queen. ” I thought the Tinker Bell and Hello Kitty clues were terrific. A solid construction from a young creator, I thought.