Peabody

I forget the source of this, but it’s relevant today: An MIT linguistics professor was lecturing his class the other day. "In English," he said, "a double negative forms a positive. However, in some languages, such as Russian, a double negative remains a negative. But there isn't a single language, not one, in which a double positive can express a negative." A voice from the back of the room piped up, "Yeah, right." Cheers!

I’d be happy if I never see another non-descript sound like BLEH in a puzzle again. Seems like the lowest kind of filler.

It’s all been said before, so I’ll just add that this was the most unenjoyable NYT Xword I’ve ever tried to do. I got part of the theme but the fill-in letters made gibberish entries. I gave up and read the column. Still not finished. Yechh!

Pink panther theme is running through my head: Dead ant, dead ant Deadant deadant deadant deadant deadant Dead Ant…

What a wierd set of memories this puzzle brought up. In my grade school days we would do a different rhyme instead of eenie meeney… It went: Inca binka bottle of ink Cork fell out, you stink Not because you’re dirty, not because you’re clean. But just because you kissed a girl behind a maga-zine. And whoever got “zine” was IT!

I had LEaSEE and ISOSCELEa, as I was not very familiar with the LESSEE spelling and thinking the latter was a variant of ISOSCELES. It took me a few minutes to find my mistakes. Could someone who rents out garden bugs in pairs could be called the Lessor Of Two Weevils?

It seemed intuitively obvious to this casual observer that the revealer DASHEDLINE meant to put dashes in place of LINE. Cheers!

No underlines for me on the iPad app. I got MOMANDPOP early on crosses then guessed by following the pattern for the other theme answers. One of my fastest Thursdays. I often don’t get the theme until reading the column.

Easy-as-a-taco Tuesday. Wasn’t sure how to get NOCAP from dead serious, though. Oh well.

I’d be interested to find out what instruments are made of pear wood. I’ve seen guitars and other stringed instruments with spruce, rosewood, mahogany, koa, sapele, ash, maple, and ebony.

I just want to say I’ve had Certs which were not minty.

I really like double and triple entendres, and this theme fit the bill! From answers that climb/scale to words you read up instead of down to a question every kickstart solicitation should answer. I’ve never watched an episode of shark tank but know the concept. An earlier comment sent me down this rabbit hole: KARO syrup is the best known corn syrup in my experience, which includes working in the grocery industry. People in the US may see more corn syrup because government subsidies to corn growers create a large surplus every year. As a brand name, KARO doesn’t seem to be used generically like heroin, flip phone, and escalator, which have all gone generic. Wikipedia has a dynamic list of genericized brand names - many of which were new to me! <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericized_trademarks" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericized_trademarks</a> I was surprised to learn Bayer still owns the trademark for aspirin, but lost it for heroin!

This was hard. I turned on auto check after 75 minutes of being less than half done - all but one of my answers to that point were correct, but I felt lost. I’m more irritated than usual from the modern slang, celebrity branded fashion and obscure (to me) playwright references. Most of the fill didn’t click with me so it just took too long.

Speaking of septets, a message popped up on completion - it was my 7th consecutive TUESDAY in a row.

Challenging on many levels, even though I got the answers filled after a couple of passes. Took me 10 minutes over average because not only am i colorblind and forced to guess the colors, but I also thought it was a rebus puzzle and entered each letter of the color alongside the down entries. No joy after filling it out and checking each answer. Finally I removed the rebus letters and got the happy sound. The cross answers made no sense without the color names.

I got stuck on 13D. YeP/YUP and I-WiN/I-WON gave me eND-O-BUTT-iN, which fit the clue as well as UNDO-BUTTON, at least it did for me. Went well over my average just on that mistake.

I got the theme early on, though each clue needs some thinking. I had CAKE/CAPE, as in piece of cake. I reasoned, wrongly, that cape was a variation of caper. Unlike most people here, I did know JAKE in this context, but JAPE is new. Took me a few extra minutes to find that, and still got just above half my average time.

I liked it. All down entries were whacked, so I filled in just a few acrosses, until I got to the revealer. After that, having the first 2 letters made the rest EZPZ. 20+ minutes better than average.

A blocked shot is also called a stuff. Larry bird averaged 0.8 blocks per game and played in 897 NBA games. That’s around 718 stuffs, which would be a lot in anyone’s estimation, I’d wager. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_(basketball)#:~:text=Nicknames" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_(basketball)#:~:text=Nicknames</a> for blocked shots include,during the 1973–74 season.

This one had several entries I’d never heard of, unusual for me. I got most through crosses but I had to lookup the aquifer and the grape, so I learned something new. I still don’t get the hairstyles name, even after reading the Wikipedia article linked below. Did I miss something that resembles LOCS?

Works for me. Was mostly fun and just hard enough that I had to fire up the neuron bank for many answers. Got stuck in the south central until I took a break and realized the S in GPS was not satellite, but SYStem. Fun solve and 1 minute above my average.

Really clever puzzle. I caught the trick almost immediately, but this still took me a lot longer than average. I got stuck at the Natick of a Jersey borough and the name of 5 Popes. I guess a Catholic from NJ would have gotten it. It took me extra long because I had another error the first time I ran the vowels to get the U.

A nail polish brand crossing with pfft crossing with an Indian wrap got me. Once I looked up Gossip N Spill I was still reluctant to let it DIE, but DOSA kind of rang a bell.

This was fun, sort of. I got the revealer and gimmick quickly, but the NW had me stumped. After 2 breaks and 1 hour I looked up cat people and the rest fell in place. Amazing puzzle, but felt more like a Saturday in that corner. On iOS the circles did not go blank after completing.

Quick and satisfying. Thank you! First comment?