Elizabeth C. Gorski’s Cr♥ssw♥rd Nation puzzle (Week 380), “Three Times a Lady…and One Gentleman”—Ade’s take
Crossword Nation puzzle solution, Week 380: “Three Times a Lady…and One Gentleman”
Good day, crossword savants! I hope you’re doing well today and enjoying some decent weather to begin your Tuesday. It has been a while since I’ve come across the “different interpretation of the same exact clue” theme in a grid, but that’s what we have here. (I’m sure someone will be able to explain this specific type of theme much better than I just did now.) Anyways, JULIA is the clue to each of the four theme entries, and each of the entries describes a different person who happens to actually be named “Julia,” real and fictional.
- CHEF CHILD (17A: [JULIA])
- BEATLES BALLAD (23A: [JULIA])
- JANE FONDA FILM (46A: [JULIA])
- ACTOR RAUL (58A: [JULIA])
Not sure if there was any intent with this, but loved the clue for (town) CRIER (42D: [Colonial newscaster]), especially since it’s in the same grid as AMERICA, with bellmen being a staple of the Colonial era in America (43A: [North or South continent]). “Oyez!! Oyez!!!! Today’s crossword is helping to keep alive the history of the town crier!!” There’s a 15 percent chance that I’ll dress up as a town crier for Halloween now. Does someone have a bell that I can borrow?
For those of you in the know about these sorts of things (and I am sure many of you are), seeing the clue to MINAJ might have reminded you of an incident a couple of days ago when she and another hip-hop star, Cardi B, got into a skirmish during a Fashion Week event in New York City, one that led to the latter having a hematoma-looking knot above her eye (31D: [“Va Va Voom” singer Nicki]). Speaking of leading ladies, we have a number of women in this grid, real and fictional, from LADD (1A: [“Charlie’s Angels” actress Cheryl]) at the very beginning to KAREN (33D: [Carpenter with a memorable voice]) to ELSA (54D: [Anna’s sister in “Frozen”]) to the ladies mentioned in the first three theme entries. But there is one lady mentioned in the grid that is currently trending worldwide and is soon to be, possibly, the next big global star in sports.
“Sports will make you smarter” moment of the day: OSAKA (60A: [Tennis star Naomi _____, winner of the 2018 U.S. Open (she’s the first Japanese tennis player to win a Grand Slam singles title)]) – I can imagine Liz just waiting for match point on Saturday night to officially green-light this clue for this week’s puzzle!! It is indeed true that the 20-year-old Osaka, born in Japan before moving with her family to Long Island when she was three and to Florida when she was eight, is the first Japanese singles tennis player to win a major, doing so just three days ago when she defeated her childhood idol, Serena Williams, 6-2, 6-4, in the US Open final. If you’re interested in knowing a little bit more about her, I encourage you to read this feature on Osaka from the wonderful website called A Lot of Sports Talk, one that includes the story of how Osaka, born to a Japanese mother and a Haitian father, completed a book report on Serena while in third grade and dreamed about one day playing her in a US Open final. Dreams do indeed come true, folks!!
Thank you very much for the time you took out of your day to read this blog! Have a great rest of your Tuesday and, as always, keep solving!!
Take care!
Ade/AOK
Timothy Polin’s New York Times crossword—Amy’s write-up
NY Times crossword solution, 9 11 18, no 0911
Quick recap tonight, as I want to finish editing another puzzle before bedtime! Theme is 35a. [High-flown speech or writing … or a description of 17-, 22-, 51- and 57-Across?], FLOWERY LANGUAGE. Various phrases that include flower names round out the theme: SHRINKING VIOLET, ENGLISH ROSE, GILD THE LILY, and AS FRESH AS A DAISY (that first AS felt weird to me). Works fine.
Four things:
- 8d. [Record of a year’s events], ANNAL. You know the singular ANNAL isn’t accepted as an answer in the daily Spelling Bee puzzle on nytimes.com? I try it every time, hoping it’s been added, but no. If it’s too uncommon for Bee, maybe it oughtn’t be in a Tuesday puzzle.
- 50d. [Lustful goat-men of myth], SATYRS. *shudder*
- 1a. [Information about other information], METADATA. I know you can view the metadata for a web page; not sure if the term has other uses.
- 15a. [“Original copy” or “open secret”], OXYMORON. Great clue!
Four stars. Good night!
Gary Larson’s Wall Street Journal crossword—Nate’s write-up
Umm, have the crossword gods been listening to me? Talk about a dream puzzle! Gary Larson (not the cartoonist, so I’m told) is here with his fabulous WSJ debut:
WSJ 9.11.18
20A: KIRSTIE ALLEY [*1991 Emmy winner for “Cheers”]
29A: ETTA PLACE [*Real-life companion of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid]
49A: DIANE LANE [*Oscar nominee for 2002’s “Unfaithful”]
58A: PICABO STREET [*Super G gold medalist at the 1998 Winter Olympics]
37A: ON THE ROAD [Kerouac novel, and a hint to the four starred women in this puzzle]
The last name of each themer is a synonym for ROAD that you might see on a street sign: ALLEY, PLACE, LANE, and STREET. Nice!
Let’s talk about all the reasons I am specifically in love with this puzzle:
– The theme entries are all accomplished women, clued specifically with respect to their accomplishments. Only ETTA PLACE is clued with respect to the men in her life, but it feels more like a “she was important but has been overlooked for years, so let’s include her now” kind of thing. (See Rosalind Franklin with respect to Watson & Crick.)
– This same theme could have been made with all male themers or themers representing a mix of genders … but it wasn’t! The constructor made the conscious decision to feature all female themers and I am HERE. FOR. THAT. <3
– There are a number of women included in the puzzle that weren’t even theme-related: INDIRA Gandhi, HER, Suze ORMAN, and Tori AMOS. Bonus female representation! <3
My only ding against this puzzle is that, aside from INDIRA, every other woman (and person, for that matter) in the puzzle is white. We do have lesbian (ORMAN) and gay icon (AMOS) entries, but some additional inclusion of women of color would have brought this puzzle to that next level of representation. But, compared to the limited amount of non-“white/straight/male” representation most puzzles provide, I’m counting this in the win column. ENCORE!
#includemorewomen: See <3 this entire puzzle <3 ! Future constructors (including myself): This is the current standard to which I’ll be comparing all future puzzles. I’m realistic in that every puzzle can’t have eight women represented … but there are plenty of puzzles out there with eight or more men represented! Let’s start seeing more like this.
Matt Jones’s Jonesin’ Crossword, “TL;DR” – Derek’s write-up
“Too Long; Didn’t Read” is what this stands for. Yes, I am guilty of this, especially on several Facebook posts that are obviously too long for consumption, especially while I am scanning at work! I am a little old for a lot of this text abbreviating, but I know most of what is in the circled spaces:
- 18A [Does some present preparation] GIFT WRAPS – For The Win (I had to look this up; I thought it might be vulgar!)
- 20A [New pilot’s achievements] SOLO LANDINGS – Laugh Out Loud
- 38A [Historic castle officially called “Her Majesty’s Royal Palace and Fortress”] TOWER OF LONDON – Rolling On Floor Laughing
- 55A [Like a government wonk, say] POLICY MINDED – In Case You Missed It
- 58A [They may be receding] HAIRLINES – In Real Life, mine has been receded for many moons now!
Fun times! As far as the title goes, there is an entry here where Deb Amlen, star of the NYTimes Wordplay blog, is quoted in the dictionary for this very entry. How cool is that? Talk about being immortalized! (At least in the online version!) Perhaps this was part of the inspiration for this puzzle? A solid 4.5 stars from me.
Just a couple more things:
-
- 30A [Elba who recently announced he won’t be playing James Bond] IDRIS – But he should!
- 62A [For some reason it’s National Soft Pretzel Month] APRIL – Because soft pretzels are awesome!
- 4D [“Break Your Heart” singer Cruz] TAIO – Slightly obscure, but this is a Jonesin’. You’re welcome:
- 8D [Mario Puzo subject] MAFIA – I finally watched two of the three Godfather movies. I haven’t had a free three hour block to watch the last one. I did read Omerta by Puzo, and it was really good; he tells a good story.
- 25D [2012 Affleck thriller] ARGO – Never saw it!
- 44D [2016 Dreamworks movie with Justin Timberlake] TROLLS – One of my son’s favorite movies!
Thanks for reading!
Bruce Haight & Natalie Murphy’s LA Times crossword – Derek’s write-up
Am I missing something, or is this a themeless on a Tuesday? Oh wait: look at the clues!
- 11A [Cease and desist order?] CUT – A little quirky, but it works.
- 18A [Court order?] ALL RISE
- 27A [Reverse order?] ABOUT FACE
- 45A [Money order?] STICK ‘EM UP – This is quirky, toO.
- 58A [Work order?] GET BUSY
- 65A [Gag order?] SHH
- 5D [Restraining order?] STOP IT!
- 46D [Pecking order?] KISS ME – Best clue of the bunch!
I almost missed it! Lots of different “orders” at work here. Very clever, and I sure this was fun to brainstorm. Still a fairly easy puzzle, but I think the theme is hard to find a) when you’re solving quickly, and b) when they aren’t all the longest answers in the grid, like we’re used to. Some of the themers are three letters long! 78 words in this one, which is up near the upper limit, but a relaxing solve nonetheless. 4.1 stars from me.
A few more things:
- 14A [Stuffed oneself] ATE A TON – I am guilty of doing this too much. I need to watch my portions more carefully now that I am largely sedentary at my job.
- 21A [NBC weekend fixture, briefly] SNL – When does the new season start??
- 64A [Muzzle-loading gadgets] RAMRODS – This took me a long time to recall. Perhaps because I don’t own any guns!
- 4D [Beach city near Hollywood] MALIBU – Also an Anderson .Paak album title. A couple of these tunes are really catchy.
- 29D [President between Bush and Trump] OBAMA – Even though it’s Tuesday, you can clue this harder!
- 38D [Bill for drinks] BAR TABS – I’ve had one or two of these in my day…
- 40D [San Francisco’s __ Tower] COIT – I have never been to SF. I need to remedy that someday!
Have a great week!
Another example of metadata is in relation to databases, It describes the fields or columns of a table e.g. name of field, field size, type of data, constraints, etc.
Yes, a formal database has metadata. It’s also called its schema. But less constrained systems, like web content managers, also have metadata. We call them “tags.” So finding this comment by clicking on Timothy Polin is using crosswordfiend’s metadata.
I was giving some simple examples inre a DB. A subset of the available metadata would definitely be a schema as I was enumerating briefly. Other metadata in a DB could be the semantics behind the meaning of the fields and what they might contain which are independent of the schema in the sense of generating a table. If you are one of the unfortunate ones to have been saddled with supporting an old legacy system, and had to reverse engineer the code to figure out what it was doing, this can be helpful… first to document it for the next poor sucker that inherits it, and second to decide if it needs to be refactored or restraints put on it. It is also useful to call out if the column is used in audit logging. Erwin type data modelers do lots of good things with meta-data. For more on this go to StackOverFlow.com lol.
Yep, I’ve had my share. I’ve worked on relational and non-relational engines at Informix and IBM, so I know it’s never-ending. I just meant to relate the average solver’s experience with tags to metadata. Sorry if it sounded like I was contradicting anything you said.
I didn’t mean to imply you were.
NYT – I love metadata! It’s data about other data.
For computer files, metadata can include information created by the operating system such as file size and file location. The application which created the file may have a whole set of metadata such as word count, page count, last saved by, company. If someone reuses an old document for a new purpose (say a legal filing which is mostly boilerplate) but forgets to update metadata, information may be revealed in that metadata if you forget to update it.
Photo files have a ton of metadata – image size, camera used, GPS location, megapixels, etc.
So, basically, any computer file has metadata.
your listing of and information on types of metadata is, of course, metametadata
:-)
It’s usually spelled meta-metadata, but it’s a thing! An example would be an aggregated search system that has an integrated index of the different search engines’ metadata, so that it can turn one search request into multiple searches, and then provide a union view of the hits. That index is meta-metadata: information about the various search engines’ information about their content.
Google probably has more meta-metadata stored than the Library of Congress has paragraphs.
That was a great Tuesday NYT. Smooth and well-done
Agree. Great selection of in the language phrases. Wish they all could be as good as this.
Thirded. The grid was gorgeous and the theme and fill proved likewise. I don’t know what a five-star Tuesday would look like, if not this.
Speaking, as we were, of words not recognized in Spelling Bee, what’s the issue with Hittite? I mean, I found my favorite word of all time (Twit), but they’ve got to do something about what they consider “fair” words to be.
Proper noun, with no auxiliary, common-noun sense.
cf. iliad, apollo, et al.
Yes, Hittite is clearly not acceptable but the most frustrating thing about Spelling Bee is the huge list of words they apparently consider obscure or variant. Some recent irritants have been “annal,” “canna,” “cavy” and “bairn” (but not “bindi” on the same day, so foreign derivation isn’t a consistent eliminator). ANNAL just appeared in a NYT crossword but was rejected by the Hive a day or two before.
I do fall for proper nouns now and then. I would have sworn “lenten” was a word, but it’s only “Lenten.” But I’d never have tried “Hittite.”
At least they’re consistently inconsistent; you gradually learn the “good” words not to bother trying.
… until S Ezersky modifies the database.
I have not done the Spelling Bee online, but I am wondering what’s wrong with “canna”. Does “type of lily” mean that it is a proper noun?
No, Lise. There really is no rhyme nor reason. For one thing, I think you’re thinking of calla, which is accepted by Spelling Bee. (It’s not in the lily family, but it is also called the “calla lily.”)
Canna is a different flower, and just about as equally popular with gardeners. Calla, yes, canna, no is what’s so frustrating about the word list Sam uses.
In an attempt to make it fairer by eliminating obscure words, one curator’s definition of obscure becomes an element of the puzzle. I much prefer the approach that 3-D Word Search uses: only words in the Merriam-Webster 11th Collegiate dictionary are acceptable (except for abbreviations and proper nouns), and all of them are. Yes, it will allow a few obscurities and reject a very few common words, but you know where you stand. It’s even available online.
CANNAs are one of the most common shade plants here in South Africa. Maybe only behind IMPATIENS in that regard… I bet it’s more of a thing in the warmer parts of the US than say NYC though…
what about metadada?
https://metadadajournal.wordpress.com/
Hi Ade – If a cowbell would be acceptable for your Halloween Town Crier costume, I have one that is yours if you want it :-)
WSJ: Isn’t INDYCAR and INDIANA a dupe?
The Jonesin’ was a wonderful family solve; the perfect cross-generational theme. We usually work this one on Tuesday evenings at our local bagel joint, but circumstances put this one off until today (Thursday). I’m glad it’s not too late to give it some love.
I (of the older generation) knew three of the text abbreviations, and now I have FTW and ICYMI under my neural belt. I doubt I’ll use them much; I just love knowing them.
Thanks, Matt Jones!