NYT 4:16 (Amy)
LAT 5:46 (Gareth)
CS 10:16 (Ade)
WSJ (Friday) 11:25 (pannonica)
CHE 5:36 (pannonica)
Peter Wentz’s New York Times crossword
NY Times crossword solution, 4 11 14, no. 0411
Well! This is exactly the sort of themeless crossword that floats my metaphorical boat. Utterly fresh fill? Check. Some pop culture from my generation? Check. Funky words? Check. Scrabbly letters without ugly compromises in fill? Check. Absence of grievous junk? Check. Crispy clues? Check. To wit:
- Fresh* fill includes MOVE BACK, B.B. KING, “I REALIZE…,” KAFKAESQUE, TAP DANCERS, SHED TEARS, NO-LOSE, TED TALKS, VELVET ROPE, KINESCOPE, BLUE JEANS, BIG GAMES, and SQUARE DEAL. (*Note: “Fresh” doesn’t necessarily mean “not seen in the NYT crossword before.” Just means “certainly not overused in crosswords, and nice to see here.”)
- Pop culture up my alley: KURTIS Blow of “Rapper’s Delight” fame, model KATE MOSS, Darth VADER. NATE Ruess of fun. is more of my son’s generation, but hey, I know who he is.
- Funky words: POOBAH! Much zippier than its fellow -AH word, RAJAH.
- Scrabbliness galore: six K’s plus a Z, Q, X, and J. KAFKAESQUE is particularly Scrabblicious.
- Absence of junk: [this space left intentionally blank]
And here are some clues I appreciated:
- 18a. [Home of Bwindi Impenetrable National Park], UGANDA. “Impenetrable”! I suppose there are a lot of roads in.
- 27a. [Things worn at home?], FACE MASKS. For the baseball catcher at home plate.
- 10d. [Bowls, e.g.], BIG GAMES. As in the college football bowl games. They ain’t small.
- 14d. [Part of a moving cloud], GNAT. Been through a city-sized gnat cloud just once, and that was one time too many.
- 20d. [Foe of the Vikings], Green Bay PACKERS. You were thinking of Picts and Normans and Visigoths and whatnot, admit it.
- 24d. [High beams], RAFTERS. Wooden beams up high, not the brighter setting of your car’s headlights.
- 32d. [Part of a TV archive], KINESCOPE. This thing right here.
4.5 stars because I so enjoyed this puzzle.
Patrick Jordan’s Washington Post/CrosSynergy crossword, “Time Consuming”—Ade’s write-up
CrosSynergy / Washington Post crossword solution, 4 11 14 “Time Consuming”
Happy Friday everybody!
Before I start on today’s review, let me apologize for being young…and because of that, not recognizing that yesterday’s theme involved words that informally meant getting high/drunk. I pride myself in being an old soul, but I might need to go back to the drawing board! OK, off to today’s review…
Listening to a good joke is never a bad way to start a day, and our thanks to Mr. Patrick Jordan for providing us a chuckle with a little play on words, as well as a hungry clock that needs more than just batteries as fuel to keep on ticking.
- A CLOCK DID NOT GET ENOUGH TO EAT AT A BUFFET SO IT WENT BACK FOUR SECONDS (17A, 26A, 42A. 56A: [Start of a joke…End of the joke]).
It always amazes me when I see a quote or a joke as a theme and the clean word breaks on each part of the entry. Can only imagine how many possible ideas to do likewise in a grid came to their demise because of a bad word break at the edge of the grid. Even if I’ve never heard the quote before, it’s still an accomplishment to seamlessly incorporate it in a puzzle, and this is no different. That, and it’s humorous as well. Good job!
Some really nice fill in this one, including the rarely seen or heard FREE ZONE (38D: [Area without duty payments]), as well as PANCREAS (9D: [Insulin producer]). At one time, my home page was the ONION (14A: [Satirical Web site, with “The”]). We also go back to school with ELIHU (26D: [University founder Yale]) and with the home of St. Bonaventure University, OLEAN (19D: [New York city on the Allegheny]). Have heard of someone caught between two minds much more often than NOT OF one mind (27D: [_____ one mind (in disagreement)]). NOT OF crossing OHO (39A: [Realization vocalization]) was probably the most unsightly part of the grid. OHO is Ohio without being high in the middle.
“Sports will make you smarter” moment of the day: KONG (18D: [King of filmdom’s Skull Island])- “Kong” was the nickname of the 1970s-80s baseball slugger Dave Kingman, who played for a myriad of teams, most notably with the New York Mets (two stints) and Chicago Cubs. Even without his last name that allowed for the obvious alliteration, Kingman might have had the most apt nickname of any player in baseball; he was huge (6’6″) and consistently hit mammoth, tape-measure home runs. He ended his career with 442 career dingers, but because of his consistently low batting average (.236 career BA), propensity to strike out, and poor defensive skills, Kingman eventually became the first player to hit at least 400 career home runs and NOT make it into the Baseball Hall Of Fame. (He was disqualified from future eligibility due to his low balloting numbers in his first year up for induction.)
Here’s a joke involving numbers/math before signing off. Why did I divide sin by tan?
Just cos.
Have a great weekend!
AOK
Marie Kelly’s Wall Street Journal crossword, “Oh Yeah?” — pannonica’s write-up
WSJ • 4/11/14 • Fri • “Oh Yeah?” • Kelly, Shenk • solution
Phrases with a long O sound suffixed. Good variation here, with what seems like all the common English spellings of /ō/ included.
- 22a. [Designer’s color suggestion for sprucing up gray uniforms?] REBEL YELLOW (Rebel Yell). You’d thing designers would have a better appreciation for metaphor.
- 24a. [Winter treat made with Splenda?] DIET COCOA (Diet Coke).
- 30a. [The Magi?] CHRISTMAS TRIO (Christmas tree).
- 42a. [Comedy team pairing Red with a clown?] BUTTONS AND BOZO ( … and bows). That’s far too disturbing a concept.
- 48a. [Come into part of a house?] INHERIT THE WINDOW ( … the Wind). Clever phrasing, with “come into” doing a bit of misdirection—alas, it isn’t 100% seamless.
- 70a. [Rescued after shouting for help?] SAVED BY THE BELLOW ( … bell).
- 91a. [Wine served in the dining hall?] SCHOOL BORDEAUX (school board, not to be confused with boarding school, nor with wine in a cardboard box).
- 101a. [Find some change on a Tijuana sD\idewalk?] PICK UP THE PESO ( … the pace). Not to be confused with Pace picante sauces and salsas, made in Paris, Texas.
- 112a. [Store chain specializing in replacement joints?] KNEE DEPOT (knee-deep). A modest little gem, this one.
- 114a. [Tea marketed to surviving spouses?] WIDOW’S PEKOE (widow’s peak). Trying to imagine the cutesy packaging that oh-so precious Celestial Seasonings would come up with for such a variety.
In addition to the many /ō/ spellings, we see quite a bunch of transformations to the base word after the suffix is added. Fun theme, very well executed.
More:
- 17d [A group of them is called a knot] TOADS; 46d [A group of them is called a parliament] OWLS. Factette*: the collective noun for the flammulated owl (Psiloscops flammeolus) is a funkadelic.
- WSJ-inflected clues and answers (some gratuitous, but pardonable): 80a [Canner’s job] AXING; 95 [Some mortgages] JUMBOS; 96a [Stock character?] TRADER; 97a [Business letters] INC; 99a [balance sheet list] ASSETS; 19D [Contract components] TERMS; 53d [Exchange places] PITS; 68d [Major suit] EXEC; 1a [Their business is picking up] BUSES; 88a [One might be bailed out] BOAT.
- DIVAS/OPERA/ARIAS. Also, CROONS. (82a, 52a, 27a, 40a)
- Some of the strong long non-theme fill: SABER TOOTH, UNCENSORED, LIGHT SPEED, BACKSIDE, OLDSTERS, LAWBREAKERS. Also nice to see 66d [Metal band that holds an eraser on a pencil] FERRULE, which is exactly how I think of WILL (the nearby 57d) Ferrell—cylindrical, with an odd tuft on top.
- 120a [All-inclusive word] EVERY / 73d [Under any circumstances] EVER. Uh-oh. Bothe from Olde Englishe ǣfre.
- Non-theme entries ending with /ō/ are I’M SO, ROW, ROLO, HIDEO, RIO, SILO, CAIRO, OLEO, SANYO. Though there are a bunch, they don’t intrude on the theme too much, and only a few make (homophonic) sense sans the terminal vowel sound. (20a, 50a, 118a, 10d, 14d, 28d, 39d, 78d, 100d)
- 121a [Cones’ counterparts] RODS, right beneath 117a [Seeing things?] EYES.
Strong puzzle. My only question is, why didn’t Frank Longo and not Mike Shenk construct it?
* Not a true factette.
David Poole’s Los Angeles Times crossword – Gareth’s review
LA Times
140411
I really like the central premise of David Poole’s puzzle. It’s pretty obvious, but you need to add a vowel that is its own syllable to the beginning of the first word of the theme phrases. These progress from A to U. Like all wacky-style answer puzzles, entertainment value is highly subjective, but these kind of just sat there for me. I wasn’t familiar with the middle phrase “pad of paper” but it seems to be a thing. The answers, in full, are:
- 17a, [Cost to join the elite?], ALISTPRICE
- 25a, [Kindle download that’s too good to delete?], EBOOKKEEPER
- 35a, [Origami tablet?], IPADOFPAPER
- 49a, [Expert on circular gaskets?], ORINGMASTER
- 58a, [List of reversals?], UTURNTABLE
The two “big corners in the top-right and bottom-left corners were particularly well-filled today! Along with the long CHEAPTHRILL and TAXIDRIVERS we get Dr. Seuss’ YERTLE (who is a terrapin not a turtle, while I’m here!) and the kind of fun to say MINARET. LEONIDS, CURACAO and EUREKA are all punchy for one word answers.
Elsewhere, [Hitching aid] THUMB is a cute way to open the puzzle. In the same corner, BETHESDA seems to be one of those names that has been given to a lot of things. I’m not sure which the [National Institutes of Health home] is. Apparently that’s BETHESDA, MD. So sayeth Wikipedia. The clue [Wee bit o’ Glenlivet, say] seems to be a deliberate trap! I put in DROP first and I assume I’m not alone!
So-so theme, but the rest of the puzzle provided more than enough to interest me! 3.5 Stars
Gareth
Amy Johnson’s Chronicle of Higher Education crossword, “It’s Not Easy Being Greek” — pannonica’s write-up
CHE • 4/11/14 • “It’s Not Easy Being Greek” • Johnson • solution
Nifty theme with a great title, playing on the now-iconic song “Bein’ Green” from Sesame Street, written by Joe Raposo (who’s also responsible for the show’s title song, the Three’s Company theme song, and many other insanely catchy tunes).
Only three themers, but they’re all long, and all good. Characters from Greek mythology, in adjective form and with a sort of ordeal.
- 17a. [What a difficult task may require] HERCULEAN EFFORT. Referencing his ten—then twelve labors.
- 38a. [Impossible-to-complete endeavor] SISYPHEAN TASK. He of the boulder and the hill, in perpetuity.
- 61a. [Arduous trek] ODYSSEAN JOURNEY. Ten years, people. Ten years to get home. After ten years of fighting in the Trojan War. And you know what? After 20 years away, his loyal and faithful dog Argos is there to greet him, just before expiring. Assuming the two had a number of years together to build a relationship, just how old was that dog anyway
Minimal but disproportionately lengthy critique: (1) the first two themers are prevalent collocations while the third is not overly familiar to me. Let’s see if Google Ngrams bears out this notion … yes, it does. But it isn’t completely unheard of, and it allows a second 15-letter spanner to match the first. (2) The first uses the demigod’s Roman name while the other two stick with the Greek; however, in contrast to many Roman/Greek equivalents, for Herakles the later name has eclipsed its Greek analogue. It seems very willful and deliberate—possibly pedantic— to say “Heraklean effort.” Back to the Ngrams! (Notice also that “Herculean task” is markedly more common than “Herculean effort.”)
45d [Listening to Muzak, maybe] ON HOLD. Oh, that’s definitely a PANNONICAN ORDEAL (16, alas).
13a [Rigel’s constellation] ORION, the hunter from Greek mythology. 71a [Praiseful pieces] ODES, ultimately from the from Greek ōidē, literally, song, from aeidein, aidein to sing; akin to Greek audē voice (m-w).
Further:
- 11d [“The Color Purple Setting”] threw me, because AFRICA is not the primary setting; that’s Georgia.
- 19d [Like the swankiest hotels] FIVE-STAR, where you might be lucky enough to spend an extended LAYOVER (30d). Other long ballast fill: KIRIBATI and SIPHONED, plus INGÉNUE, clued with via the crossword-friendly-but-horrific-looking Christine DAAÉ. I mean, her name is horrific-looking; her suitor, the Phantom of the Opera, he’s the one with the grotesque physiognomy.
- Least favorite fill: 9a [“First in Flight” st.] NCAR. Also, I ignored the clue’s abbrev. signal and casually went with OHIO, forgetting Kitty Hawk and thinking of Dayton, not to mention all those astronauts.
- 64d [Jargon suffix] -ESE. I love jargonese.
Good puzzle, and unlike the theme items, an enjoyable experience.
I suppose I shouldn’t downgrade an otherwise enjoyable puzzle too harshly just for the crossing of 29d and 38a, but it is very annoying, and certainly one I would label as totally unfair. I’ll sleep on it.
Just now many first names that fit the NA*E pattern are there??
For me, it wasn’t just that single letter. It was the whole combo…
True. I was tired last night and am feeling less surly about it this morning. Excellent puzzle. Particularly liked the stacked region between 27 and 39a.
NYT: The NATE and KURTIS crossing was rough. Otherwise, an excellent puzzle, and I agree with Amy’s overall take on it.
I admit it– the Vikings threw me. For a while I wondered whether there were people called the SACKERS. I imagined that those Sacker Visigoths were pretty terrifyingly impenetrable.
Favorite answer: KAFKAESQUE… I actually used it today in conjunction with something relating to a federal grant process– impenetrably Kafkaesque.
Sorry, but “Rapper’s Delight” was by Sugarhill Gang. Kurtis Blow’s biggest hit was “The Breaks.” He was also the first rapper managed by Russell Simmons, and probably the first famous solo rap star.
I also liked KINESCOPE, KAFKAESQUE, and VELVETROPE. Good long fill.
It’s not that I don’t believe everything you say. Of course I do. But all those titles and names might as well be nonsense syllables to me. It reminds me (at this point fondly), of the time my first wife expected me to carry our large, clunky old TV set from our second floor apartment to the car. When I complained about how heavy it was, she apologized, saying “I’m sorry. I couldn’t budge it, so I didn’t know how heavy it was.” That’s how I feel about those names. Since I can’t budge them, I have no idea how heavy they are. As I say, I liked the puzzle a lot, and especially appreciated some of the same things as other people.
I grew up thinking hip hop was just the coolest new form of pop and rock thanks to Run DMC being one of the first new groups I got into as a young kid. I loved the whole subculture: breakdancing, rap, and the art of the DJ. So to me, classic rap songs are like classic rock or oldies, and bring up fond memories.
So you’re saying you have a budgeting issue, Brucenm?
Ah, of course you’re right. My best friend in 7th grade was big into rap and she absolutely knew what Kurtis Blow did. I was more into top 40 and rock.
NYT: The crossing of KINESCOPE and KAFKAESQUE is a standout.
The bellow answer in the WSJ made me laugh.
NYT: Liked it, as did others, but had some clue issues.
Also, the umpire.
My own mis-fills: 14d [Part of a moving cloud] G–––, put in GYRE before GNAT. With a number of letters in place, read the clue for 34d [Model introduced in the 1990s] but tried to put it at 32d (=KINESCOPE) and ‘invented’ the KIA ESCAPE. Ford makes the Escape, yes?
To end on a positive note: the puzzle was overall great, the fill exciting, and many of the clues clever and wonderful.
You know, the weird ways that musical performers stylize their names are a constant issue for Trip Payne and me in our editorial work on the Daily Celebrity Crossword. We’ve opted for fun., yes, and we have had Ke$ha before (although now that she has left an eating-disorders rehab facility, she’s announced that she is returning to Kesha), but it seems more confusing to use P!nk for Pink or ?uestlove for Questlove. There are several rappers who use a dollar sign in lieu of an S (e.g., A$AP Rocky), so Kesha’s change will hardly restore the world’s stocks of dollar signs. Also! Jay Z dropped his hyphen and CeeLo Green closed up his space.
I’m also not a fan of pandering to brands that like to appear in all caps. Sorry, Fox and the Gap, I’m not going to shout your name for you.
hmm, it’s more of a dilemma than I’d appreciated.
This has been an issue since the days of “? and the Mysterians”!
Ha! Nice reference, Gareth! Uh oh, here comes that earworm…
You’re gonna cry
96 tears…
Loved it. Every Friday should be Wentz-day.
You people quote from wikipedia in your comments. A lot. Without attribution.
Yours in pretend erudition,
RP
What the…? Are you suggesting that Bencoe doesn’t actually know any hip-hop, or that everyone here knows nothing and cuts & pastes freely?
I’m guessing Wiki has the same info I do–the notes to my Kurtis Blow’s Greatest Hits album. Haven’t read them in years, but that’s where I got my knowledge about Russell Simmons being his manager.
Here’s to assuming everyone knows less than I do about a particular subject…
I have often done a Web search prior to posting here, usually to assure correct spelling or to confirm my facts, but I have never copied and pasted anything I may have uncovered, without citing the source. (I would suspect the times that I have done that can be counted on one hand.)
So, who are the “You people…” you refer to? If you mean everyone who has ever posted on this blog, I think you have a lot of apologizes to deliver.
By the way, reading your closing – “Yours in pretend erudition” — makes it seem that you include yourself in that which you condemn.
I had pretty much the same reaction to Rex’s post.
In fact, I might go so far as to say that I found Rex’s post mildly offensive, but I will refrain from offering ‘tu quoque’ arguments in rebuttal.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
“Tu quoque . . . (Latin for “you, too” or “you, also”) or the appeal to hypocrisy, is a logical fallacy that attempts to discredit the opponent’s position by asserting the opponent’s failure to act consistently in accordance with that position; it attempts to show that a criticism or objection applies equally to the person making it.”
Of course, I wouldn’t have had the slightest idea what this meant if I hadn’t looked it up in Wikipedia first.
I went over to Wiki and read the (rather short) article on Kurtis Blow, to see if there were any direct matches to my post. They named him the first commercially successful rap artist but didn’t qualify it with “solo” ( Sugarhill Gang were earlier). They also, although listing Russell Simmons as one of the many people who worked with KB, did not mention anything about Simmons managing him. So I really have no idea where Rex’s post came from at all.
Since when do we need to footnote our blog comments, anyway?
This NYT themeless makes me see how many compromises appear in the one I’m working on. Makes me not want to settle. It’s beautiful! Lots of plurals yes, but dreck-free.
Peter Wentz: nice face, nice puzzle.
I liked the puzzle a lot, but I’m of two minds about DELTARAY. On the one hand, it’s good to see a smidgen of science in the puzzle. On the other hand, delta ray is pretty obscure and antiquated. Out of curiosity, I searched the titles and abstracts of papers in thePhysical Review, all the way back to its founding in 18whatever, and ‘delta ray’ appears precisely 5 times, most recently in 1960.
So we have pop culture from today and a bit of science terminology that was drug up from the basement.
I don’t understand 52 down.
“Dos Equis” means Two Xes, and the logo is XX, so “Pair of Dos Equis” is the pair of Xes that comprise the logo.
Isn’t a “Pair of Dos Equis” two Dos Equis?
Yes. A pair of Dos Equis is Cuatro Equis.
Since we’re being so picky — not really.
A pair on Dos Equis would be two X’s or, if you belive the Spanish is indicated by the clue (which I do not), it would be cuatro equis. As the clues says, “A pair of Dos Equis.”
It’s not a cut and dry clue. (“Cut and dry”! What the heck does that mean?)
Re Papa John’s comment above (I can’t reply to it directly): the meaning of of in this case is “associated with” or “referred to by” (senses 7 and 10 here, if you like). Very standard cruciverbalism.
Thank you, Gary. Of course, I know the commercial, but being a non-drinker, I don’t pay much attention to the logo and didn’t know Equis meant “x”.
face mask at home could also be like a mud pack?
Cluing NODE as “network connection” feels a bit off. I think it would be more correct to say that nodes are connected by a network, rather than a node being the actual connection. It’s a vague term, so perhaps there is another connotation of node/network that I’m not seeing right now.
Overall, though, a very good puzzle.
Tim and I and Gregg are all remote Friday WSJ puzzle aficionados. Many miles apart but always connect to compare notes on the quality of the puzzle and our own individual ratings of each issue. Father, son and son in law really like the experience. Keep up the good work! Trey