CrispyShot
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@Tom Bantle But what if that castle were built of sand?
@Heidi just wanted to give you props for a thoughtful comment. This one didn’t click for you, and you stated why clearly and without venom. I wish more commenters followed your example.
@John I really don’t understand how you can make that accusation, especially given the constructor’s notes. I can only imagine the intellectual effort that went into constructing this puzzle, which can be solved four different ways and places the geographical features appropriately. Not your cup of tea? Fine, just say that. Don’t assign demonstrably false motives.
On another note (haha): Bill in Detroit commented about never having seen a conductor in a TUXEDO; it's usually white tie and tails, or something else altogether. Putting aside* whether or not a tailcoat could be considered a form of tuxedo (I have no idea), or whether Pops conductors routinely wear "plain" tuxes, this puts me in mind of a welcome movement in classical performance. Orchestras, soloists, conductors, and, yes, choruses are abandoning the traditional dress codes that were very male-dominated and restrictive to gender nonconforming individuals. My own chorus has ditched the "tuxedos for men and very specific dresses for women" code in favor of "wear black - no bare arms, shoulders, or legs." In addition to not forcing nonbinary people into specific categories, it also allows different body types to wear clothing that they look best in. (* as well as an assumption that conductors are men)
Not directly related to the puzzle, which I enjoyed but found crunchier than the usual Monday (not saying it was too hard, just observing that it had some words that I’d expect to see later in the week, e.g. ROUE), BUT: I happened to be driving in Massachusetts this morning, Imagine my excitement when I saw an exit for Natick! I had to explain its Crosslandia meaning in to my fellow passengers, who listened politely. And then informed me that it’s apparently pronounced “NAY-tick”, not “NATT-ick”, as I’ve been saying for years. The word “endonym” came up in the ensuing conversation. Anyway, nerdily exciting for this midwestern Xworder.
As a longtime member of many choirs, including symphony choruses, I also balked at SO (instead of SOL). No matter how you pronounce it, I thought, you *spell* it SOL. And I came harrumphing here to say so. Eventually, though, the crossworder in me was won over by the arguments. SOL appears to be somewhat regional (thanks for that learning, Aussies!), and SO has been an accepted form for at least half a century. In any other context, in any other crossword, that would be enough for me to accept it. And this is a crossword, not a concert hall or a music theory classroom. (Also, my wife, who is a much better singer than I and not a crossworder at all, thought I was being silly about it, and she is very wise. Plus, I enjoyed all the other musical references.) So, two thumbs up from me :)
@Mark P Grills to cook food on, grilles on the fronts of the vehicles.
I will almost certainly be diagnosed with Too Close Syndrome™️, but this a hill I will die on: the “h” in “hat” is absolutely not a glottal. It is an aspirate onset. “The ‘h’ in ‘hat’” is actually the classic example of an aspirate onset. I will also contend that if you know what a glottal is, you know that the “h” in “hat” is not one.
@Charles ugh. I wish the emus would start penalty-boxing people for using the L word. But since they haven’t: in my opinion, calling the constructor or puzzle “lazy” is itself a lazy criticism.
Re: 57A - We had the good fortune to be in Rome last fall, and during our tour of the Colosseum, our Italian guide told us how the Empire's aristocrats would buy sections of seats to accommodate both the family and their servants, who would bring in small grills and prepare food. "Ah, the origin of tailgating," we joked. Our guide looked blankly at us and asked, "What is 'tailgating'?" So we explained, and his expression went from polite amusement to disbelief. "Really? People do this for sporting events?" he asked. We just gestured to the Colosseum. He shrugged and said, "Well, we don't have that here anymore."
TIL MOIL, which I thought was an alternate spelling for moel/mohel, and TILSIT. This one was a struggle for me - definitely not on the constructor’s wavelength. Thought I was going to lose my streak, but, like others, made the switch from MoTE to MITE and got the happy music. (I’m working my way forward through the archives - I’m up to February 1999! - and this felt closer to those older Saturdays than many recent ones.)
@Robin your comment made me curious, so I went looking. If I’m understanding the usage correctly, the clue and Caitlin’s column are correct. Both “stank” and “sank” are the past tense forms of their respective verbs (“The ship sank” or “my shoes stank to high heaven”), while “stunk” and “sunk” are past participles (“The ship has sunk to the bottom” or “these shoes have stunk for years”). So “I STANK AT math in high school” vs. “I have stunk at math all my life.” Or “…what they had in common sank in” vs. “what they had in common has not sunk in yet.”
The constructor notes are just delightful. What a fun, supportive family!
Really loved this puzzle! Well done, Barbara and Lewis! So many great clues, adding up to a great Saturday. I am in the apparent minority of people who haven’t heard of ALMA Mahler, which made the tippy-top of the NE a challenge: I started with oHiTSNOTBAD, which give me ACCo, which seemed odd, but not entirely unreasonable. Took a bit to sort it out.
@Josh I certainly think we should feel free to express our opinion, whether favorable or not. And others can agree or disagree, as long as it’s respectful and couched as opinion and not unassailable fact (there are a few commenters who do that regularly). I draw the line at commenters who question the motives of or outright drag the constructors. Calling a constructor lazy or smug is uncalled for. A puzzle didn’t do it for you? Fine, not all of them will. Just don’t insult the people who worked hard to offer you something to entertain you. Feel free to tell them why you didn’t like it - maybe they’ll craft something more to your liking in the future.
Like Caitlin and many other commenters, I associate 80s hair bands with power ballads. I am informed by my 27yo daughter that this is a generational thing: when I read her the clue, she immediately said, “CELENE Dion.” Which led to a fun round of playing power ballads at each other.
@Lauren how do you avoid “lazy clueing” in the crosswords you construct?
@Margaret I assumed it was a benign “Dumbo” reference. And, if I’m honest, I think the world would be a good bit more interesting if elephants COULD fly. 😊 …though maybe “interesting “ isn’t the right word…
I was amused to note that BUYAVOWEL includes the “sometimes” vowels Y and W. Nice. :-)
Fun to see PENTATONIX - been a fan ever since their debut on The Sing-Off. And to paraphrase a quip about the Kardashians: Everything I know about VANDERPUMP RULES I’ve learned against my will.
@Jack McCullough I’ll see your RICK DEES and raise you a Casey Kasem AND throw in a Wolfman Jack as a bonus. Of course, none of them fit, but, man, did I try.
This seems to be an appropriate time to mention the relationship between solfège and the word "gamut": <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/gamut" target="_blank">https://www.britannica.com/art/gamut</a> (I did my best to see if anyone had mentioned this earlier, and couldn't find anything; so if they did, my apologies for the duplicate!)
Heh - before I corrected the typo, I had IDEa instead of IDES, which made me wonder why I should "Beware the IDEA of March." To be fair, it is a rough month in the upper midwest. While other places have spring (or its beginnings), we still have two more months of winter to look forward to.
Spending time in the archives certainly helped me on this one - Sam SNEAD and Arturo TOSCANINI are frequent guests. (I’m working up from the bottom: started with the first one (11/21/1993) and am up to 11/9/1996. Got a ways to go.)
@David summer = someone doing sums ( I groan-laughed after I got it)
This was great fun! Enjoyed some of the crunchier-than-usual-Sunday clues, loved the double theme, and as ever enjoyed the rebus. My only… it’s not even a nit, barely a quibble… maybe a quibblet? My only quibblet was that 85D was clued with the Greek god rather than the Roman, which in my mind would have been more consistent, theme-wise. But I’ll throw that one on the editors. Lovely seeing all the reccos for MIDDLEMARCH. I’ve never read it, and will add it to my list. (Many years ago, we had a Holstein-marked cat who had a perfect black mustache on her lip. We named her George Eliot. She was a true love.)
@Mu I like my e-reader because I can have hundreds of books on it without taking up physical shelf space. Much more convenient for travel, too. That’s my kind of volume control 😊
@Francis This a thousand times.
@Brandon This was absolutely a challenge for me, and I think I’m a reasonably consistent solver, so I hope you don’t get too discouraged by this one. Almost all of us, barring a few savants, have been where you are. It took me lots of reps to build up my solving muscles. I learned standard fill (OREO! EPEE! ORR and OTT!), and how to spot tricky clues (Veiled capitals! Bad puns! Reeeaaal stretches!), and, honestly, when to walk away and come back later. If you find it to be fun more often than it isn’t, sticking with it eventually pays off.
@Asher just wanted to applaud you for how you expressed your reaction to the puzzle. I you gave specifics about what didn’t work for you, and didn’t accuse the constructors of anything. I found it refreshing, and I hope others follow your example. Thank you!
@Mary Hudson I raised an eye, too, at PALACEGUARD. However, re: BIGUPSET… my understanding is that a calling card is/was something you presented when you “came to call.” You gave your card to the servant who answered the door, who then presented it to the person you wished to visit. In that context, it seems to me that it works as a clue here. A Cinderella team announces its presence with a BIG UPSET. (Related: how about them Gophers playing for the WNIT championship today? Sure, it’s not the Big Dance, but they’re tearing it up! SKI-U-MAH!)
@Mean Old Lady His choral works are just stunning! However, I’ve only ever seen it spelled “Pärt,” so that would have stymied me. Could be I just haven’t read widely enough. (Funnily enough, just this weekend I started an email chain with some high school classmates about our upcoming 40th (yikes) reunion, and Neal Peart was mentioned almost immediately. Weird.)
TIL that “two thumbs up” has the same number of letters as PINKY SWEARS. Do emus swear? Or just utter minced oaths?
@sonnel I’ll never pass up an opportunity to recommend The Incredibles. IMHO it works on many levels (not just the superficial Pixar-superhero-animated-superhero-feature level, but it excels at that, too) and is definitely worth watching. EDNA MODE is a wonderful character hilariously voiced by director Brad Bird.
@Rahul there was a Hannah-Barbera cartoon character on television in the 1960’s named Atom Ant whose battle cry was, “Up and at ’em, Atom Ant!” Or was it “Up and atom”? Now I’m not sure…
@Mean Old Lady I’m thinking of books for toddlers with flaps that you lift to reveal a bunny, or similar.
@Desert Dweller hard disagree. This was my favorite clue of the puzzle. “ whenever we see Denver, we understand it is a stage name?” Of course not. It’s a clue for this puzzle. And a really clever one at that. Also, “actor/Colorado” makes no sense in the context of the other clues.
@Oliver I read Bob T’s response as a reference to the other comments Moira had made regarding the L(s) word, and Bob T inferring that it was important to Moira. I can see where “die on that hill” might seem a rather extreme expression; it’s pretty common in the US, but I don’t know if it’s used as much elsewhere. In any case, I interpreted it as mild humor. I didn’t see his response as p/a, but maybe I’m naive.
@Foster One of the core ideas in R. F. Kuang’s “Babel, or the Necessity of Violence” is the tension inherent in translation, and the novel has some wonderful discussions about what translation is and what translators do. It’s a beautifully written book.
@Bill A fellow chorister once told me of a conductor he sang with who, when asked about what some score marking in Italian meant, said, “They all mean the same thing: LOOK AT ME.”
@Stephen Blythe There’s a term for that: RAS syndrome, where RAS stands for “redundant acronym syndrome” 😊 (I may have made this comment before, but it really tickles me because a) I work in IT, a field infested with acronyms and initialisms, and 2*) my team is the Research Administration Services team, so I say RAS a LOT.) * shout out to Paul Reiser. IYKYK.
@Roberto in the show, she dons the jacket when she decides she must “go bad” (18D) to get the guy; she’s also blonde (33A). So while the jacket might relate to 4D, I don’t think it needs to for the photo choice.
@Warren I held on to NNE for way too long for exactly that reason. I think it’s a wrong clue, but I may be attributing more precision to “center” than it deserves. I would have felt less annoyed with “middle.”
@Tess oooohhhh… I did not think of cake pops, but now I want one. They are indeed very popular (with me). Pop goes the emu?
@CrispyShot Should have mentioned the clue: 4A. Also should have mentioned that except for that and the VERGEINYEAH/YAMA crossing, for which I had to run the alphabet, I really liked this one!
@Darren it’s getting late, so I don’t know if you’ll read this, but I encourage you to reconsider ascribing such motives to the constructors. If the puzzle didn’t click for you, that’s fine. But that doesn’t mean the constructor was out to make solvers look like fools, any more than it means that you’re deficient in some way. It’s a puzzle, not a judgment.
@Mark wishing you good luck and sound sleep!
@Francis Re: actors who play characters with the same name - Roseanne Barr, Lucille Ball, Jerry Seinfeld, and Ray Romano all come to mind. I’m sure there are others.
@mcmax honest question: in what way do you find it offensive?
@dutchiris Happy birthday! (And what a wholesomely sneaky way to crank up the comment count! Well played!)