WHAT IN THE WORLD IS GOING ON HERE ?
Good Morning, Cruciverbalists. It is Friday and it is time for yours truly, Malodorus Manatee, to present a recap of today's puzzle by veteran (and that's an understatement) constructor Rebecca Goldstein.
Today's solve was no walk in the proverbial park as there were several elements in this eclectic mixture that challenged this solver and, perhaps, you, too.
Depending on what one wishes to include, there are roughly fifteen proper nouns in this puzzle. Proper nouns are great if you know the answer but they can be trouble if you don't. There are several foreign-language answers in the grid and several answers that, again depending on what one wishes to include, consist of more than one word (e.g. does I-beam count?). Toss in a couple of references of the wurst kind, two (or three) Greek alphabet references, and some obligatory oblique (Friday) cluing and the head scratching becomes inevitable. . . and that's before we deal with the clever theme.
Upon completing the puzzle, and for some time thereafter, this solver was not able to identify a theme. A unifying clue/answer would have helped - but there was none. I saw the "international" two-word clues, each punctuated with a question mark, but failed to put the pieces together. Perhaps I was a bit word weary from the solve itself or maybe I just could not see the forest for the trees. In any event, I reached out to the Crossword Corner blog staff and, with their assistance, the fog lifted. Each themed clue is a common expression in English which includes a country name. Each themed answer fits the clue but requires that we re-imagine the expression as being defined in terms of something other than its common meaning. The theme is not in the answers. It is to be found in the clues themselves.
Here are the themed clues and their answers:
17 Across: American cheese?: POTUS. Not as in what you might have used last Friday on National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Day. As in the idiom the "Big Cheese". The President Of The United States is a "Big Cheese".
19 Across: Irish cream?: EUROS. Not Baileys. Cream can be used, apparently, as a slang term for money. Irish money. See #27 in 100 Slang Words For Money
36 Across: Spanish inquisition?: COMO ESTAS. In this case not THE Spanish Inquisition. As in to inquire, in Spanish, "How are you?" Well, I guess the answer to that depends:
7 Down: Australian open?: G'DAY MATE. Not a tennis tournament reference. Open as in an opening comment/greeting, I suppose.
41 Down: French press?: LE MONDE. Not a coffee brewing reference. The French newspaper (press).
43 Down: English channel?: THE BEEB. Not as in what we just now crossed to get to Great Britain from 41 Down (the English Channel). A television channel. Slang for the BBC. British Broadcasting Corporation
49 Down: German mark?: UMLAUT. Not the former German currency that was replaced by the Euro. A punctuation mark used in the German language.
Let' take a look at the completed grid. Its symmetry is elegant even without the placement of the themed answers. With the placement of those answers it is even more impressive:
Here are the rest of the clues and answers:
Across:
1. AMC car known as "The Flying Fishbowl": PACER. If you knew your American Motor Corporation models then this one was fairly easy. If not, you had to wait for the perps which is a tough way to start a puzzle especially, in this instance, where the crossing with 1 Down might have formed a Natick.
6. "Saltburn" studio: MGM. As a further sign of the "updating" of our puzzles, a 2023 film was chosen to clue this instead of one of hundreds of classic MGM flicks.
9. Office characters: STAFF. Because of the obligatory leading "cap", the clue might have been thought to refer to the cast of the TV show. The answer did not require that degree of specificity.
14. Meaty flavor: UMAMI. One of the five so-called basic tastes (together with Salty, Bitter, Sweet and Sour), UMAMI has been defined as "savory - characteristic of broths and cooked meats".
15. Nev. neighbor: IDA. IDAho What did Ida Ho? She hoed her Mary Land while wearing her brand New Jersey.
16. Undefeated Ali: LAILA. A frequent visitor.
18. Goldin of "All the Beauty and the Bloodshed": NAN. A reference to the subject of a 2022 documentary about the activist named in the clue (and who's first name is the answer).
20. Uncertain syllables: UMS. The topic of the inclusion of these sounds-people-might-make answers has previously, and extensively, been debated on The Corner.
21. Long-horned grasshopper: KATYDID. A funny word and a funny-looking insect.
24. Captcha capture: BOT.
25. Slip through the cracks: SEEP. The clue might have been taken as the idiom but that would have thrown one off the scent.
27. Ramblin' man, maybe: NOMAD. Well, Rebecca and Patti did tee it up:
Allman Brothers Band - 1972
28. Root vegetable with purple-flecked flesh: TARO. A starchy vegetable frequently served up in our puzzles.
29. Actress Taylor-Joy: ANYA. Although a winner of both a Screen Actors Guild Award and a Golden Globe, this actress' name was unknown to this solver. Perps to the rescue.
30. Spoken exams: ORALS. My son recently took a battery of ORAL exams in hopes of qualifying to become a pirate. His grades were okay, but not great. He got high C's.
31. Washington University's business school: OLIN.
32. Arterial insert: STENT. Today's let's-pass-on-the-graphic moment.
34. Fig. texted from traffic: ETA. Or, a Greek alphabet reference.
35. Actor Nick: NOLTE. This actor's name was known to this solver.
39. Some charcuterie slices: SALAMI. One of the wurst clues.
42. Polling place sticker: I VOTED. They now include the sticker with our mail-in ballots.
46. Walk through knee-deep snow, say: TREK. A bit misleading (hey, it's Friday) because the answer is not snow-dependent.
47. Unrefined: CRUDE. I recently heard a dirty joke about oil drilling. It was really CRUDE.
51. "Goodness": OH MY.
52. Pinnacle: ACME. Sometimes it turns out to be APEX.
53. Alfa __: ROMEO. Wherefore art thou? Nah. An automobile reference.
| 1964 Alfa Romeo Giulia Sprint |
54. "Ja" opposite: NEIN. Today's German lesson.
55. Letter before sigma: RHO. One of today's Greek (alphabet) lessons.
56. Spicy sausage: HOT LINK. The other wurst clue.
58. Lingerie buy: BRA. There are many possibilities here but the three-letter requirement cuts things down to size (number and letter) pretty (lace, different colors) quickly.
59. Packed tightly: DENSE.
61. Tiny powerhouses?: AAS. This one was not another of those sounds-people-might-make answers.
62. Part of building bridges: I BEAM. Named for its shape when viewed in cross section.
64. Boss (around): ORDER.
65. "For shame!": TUT. This is yet another one of those sounds-people-might-make answers. It might have been clued as yet another proper noun.
66. Sell a bill of goods: LIE TO. Everything You Want to Know About the "Sell A Bill Of Goods" Idiom
67. Daisy known as the "Rosa Parks of the North": MYERS. The Myers Family Story
68. UFO beings: ETS. Extra TerrestrialS Unidentified Flying Objects are now called Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena or UAPs
69. Neuroscience segments: LOBES.
Down:
1. Food with a national holiday in El Salvador: PUPUSAS. If you started the puzzle at 1 Down then it might have been a rough start. Oddly, while working on this recap I asked Valerie what I might snack on. She served up a PUPUSA that she had recently purchased at that temple of Salvadoran cuisine - Costco. It was delicious.
2. Terse request to chat: A MOMENT. The only way this one seems to make sense to this solver is as a request to talk to someone and not as a request to chat electronically. As in "Have you got A MOMENT?"
3. Reflective effect in some gemstones: CATS EYE.
CATS EYE Gemstones Looking For Their Royalty Checks
4. Bird in a eucalyptus forest: EMU. Eucalyptus tells us to conjure up something Australian.
5. Chance: RISK. Noun or verb? It didn't matter this time.
6. Cookie with green creme: MINT OREO. How do I clue thee? Let me count the ways.
8. Geometric designs that represent spiritual journeys: MANDALAS.
9. Toy in the final "Calvin and Hobbes" panel: SLED. Here it is. Bill Watterson walked away at the top of his game after declining to monetize his characters by, among other things, turning them into plush toys.
10. Letter after sigma: TAU. Another one of today's Greek (alphabet) lesson.
11. Big whiff: AIR BALL. A basketball reference.
12. "Go! Go! Go!": FLOOR IT. As we move into the electrified automobile future, FLOOR IT might survive whereas "Step On The Gas!" probably will not. She's real fine my 400 NM?
13. Trick: FAST ONE. As in to Pull a FAST ONE.
22. "I'll take that as __": A NO. Yes
23. Face cards?: IDS. Not IDS as compared to EGOS. I.D. as in an identification card with, in this case, a head shot photo on it.
26. Blowout patch, at a diner: PANCAKE. New jargon for this solver. Usually, it is a sheet rock (drywall) reference.
28. "That may never be funny": TOO SOON. Often posed as a question: "Is it TOO SOON?"
33. "Top Chef" judge Colicchio: TOM. Thanks, again, perps. Often clued with a turkey reference.
35. Pt. of Loran: NAV. Long Range NAVigation.
37. Prefix with economics or biology: MICRO.
38. Attach: TIE ON. As opposed to a Liger? (well, it was close)
39. Fame and fortune: STARDOM. I always thought that I was destined for STARDOM but then I realized that my mass was below 0.08 solar masses.
40. Shooting sport: ARCHERY. Hand up for first trying to make something firearm-related work out.
44. Kuwait or Qatar: EMIRATE. People in Qatar don't like "The Flintstones" but people in AbuDhabi do.
45. Real powerhouses: DYNAMOS.
48. Turn: ROTATE. A clue to be taken literally. Not as in, for example, a baseball game at bat or a time to spin/roll the dice when playing a board game.
50. Many of the founding fathers, religiously: DEISTS. Deism is the philosophical position and rationalistic theology that generally rejects revelation as a source of divine knowledge and asserts that empirical reason and observation of the natural world are exclusively logical, reliable, and sufficient to determine the existence of a Supreme Being as the creator of the universe.
56. Women's health brand: HERS. Lots of possible ways to clue this. This way was fitting for a Friday challenge.
57. Decide not to run: KILL. A press (run) reference as in to KILL a story.
60. Honorific in "Game of Thrones": SER. I might be the only person around who has never watched an epidsdoe of "Game of Thrones" so thanks, perps.
63. Book jacket blurb: BIO. Short for BIOgraphy and also a short biography.
That includes our international tour for this Friday. Have a great weekend, everyone. If you go exploring, please travel safely!
______________________________________________________________
55 comments:
At first, I thought someone had snuck in a “themeless” Friday, but then I went back and saw all the nations and their puns and realized that there was a theme, after all, and a pretty clever one at that. Anyway, FIR, so I’m happy.
Good morning!
Yay, no reveal to miss. D-o actually managed to suss the theme. Amazing. That "Allman Brothers" photo was timely; Dickey Betts passed on just yesterday. Read the clue as "Point (Pt.) of LORAN" and was looking for a compass direction. Nope. "Pt." was Part. Mal-Man, I'm pretty sure there'll be several cornerites who've never seen Game of Thrones. My hand's up. Thanx, Rebecca and Mal-Man. (Loved the "Abu Dhabi do." Your Katydid and I-Beam illustrations didn't make the trip -- not on my PC, anyway.)
Just pathetic with all the question marks,abbreviations ,proper names. Can we get a real clue somewhere?right in the trash?
DNF, not even close. Filled 39, 38 correctly.
Today is:
NATIONAL GARLIC DAY (CSO to Garlic Girl - glad to hear you get unwired today. Do I remember correctly that you are in Gilroy?)
NATIONAL CLEAN OUT YOUR MEDICINE CABINET DAY (if you have any good stuff, send ‘em my way)
NATIONAL OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING COMMEMORATION DAY (death penalty well used for the dastards responsible)
NATIONAL HANGING OUT DAY (no, no, no – don’t become a mall rat, or indulge in indecent exposure. This day encourages using a clothesline for drying laundry)
NATIONAL AMARETTO DAY (no, no, no – the stuff Poe was obsessed with was amontillado – a cask full of it, in fact)
Just couldn't get into this puzzle. Erased the correct DEISTS for the wrong Tsk. OTOH, I got KATYDID, COMO ESTAS and NAV right off the bat.
LORAN was discontinued in 2010. GPS made it moot. I had a LORAN unit, which gave me lat/lon position, but not course to steer, distance to waypoint, time to waypoint, speed over ground, and several other goodies that GPS provides. It was also almost $1,000, and required an 8' external antenna. Still better than the radio direction finder (RDF) I used before that.
I received an I VOTED sticker with my absentee ballot package. I waited until election day, then put the sticker on Zoё's collar.
This week has largely been consumed by trying to restore my cox.net email addresses, after Cox decided it didn't want to be in the email business any longer. My email addresses didn't change, but the POP and SMTP servers are now on yahoo.com. I also learned more than I ever wanted to know about "app passwords," required to use Outlook with the Yahoo servers.
Enough about my Friday flail; on to my Saturday stupor.
FIR. What a struggle! This had Saturday puzzle written all over it, and it's just Friday.
I never saw the theme. But there were enough proper names to choke a horse. And the misdirections were just cruel.
Overall this puzzle was not enjoyable, but I stuck with it and saw it to the end. But, really, yuk!
Took 11:15 today for me to finish this trip around the world.
I was torn between this being a welcomed return of a themeless Friday, with the unpleasantness of many of the clues/answers.
I knew today's actress (Anya) and today's Spanish lesson (?como estas?).
I didn't care for and/or didn't know: mandalas, pupusas, Nan, Tom, Myers, Olin, nav, tau, rho, lemonde, ser, etc.
Not sure why I knew/remembered, but I quickly entered "sled" for the Calvin & Hobbes clue.
I knew Gremlin was wrong (and wouldn't fit), but struggled to recall "Pacer."
Never heard of a pancake being called a "blowout patch".
Good Morning:
One of the most, if not the very most, important factors to me in critiquing a crossword puzzle is whether or not the solve was enjoyable. A successful solve is not the same as an enjoyable, satisfying solve and today's fell far short on the latter, despite achieving the former. Although there were some clever clues and some interesting and lively fill, there were equal numbers of too "cutsie" and esoteric clue/answers. I solved this as a themeless and had absolutely no idea of any connection throughout the grid. Perhaps that's a failing on my part, but as it's the first time in over 40 years of solving that I missed a theme, I'm not sure I'm totally at fault. Props to Rebecca for her ingenuity and creativity but, IMO, this puzzle was a constructor's dream and a solver's nightmare.
Thanks, Rebecca, for your efforts, and thanks, MalMan, for the excellent overview and your ever-present humor and punny punchlines. I'm sure Anon T will appreciate the Alfa photo.
FLN
Lucina, good luck with the results of your monitor test.
Have a great day.
I always look forward to Rebecca Goldstein's puzzles, but after today's slog, I may need to reconsider. Clever clues are one thing; impenetrable clues are another.
American cheese = POTUS? Meaty flavor = IMAMI? Pt. Of Loran = NAV? and on and on, from THEBEEB to PANCAKE (blowout patch?) to EUROS to AIRBALL.
And then all the proper names, like Ms. Taylor-Joy or Mr. (Ms.?) Goldin.
I can take Rebecca off the hook a little bit, I guess, because I've had the TV on, and Turner Classic Movies is showing a comedy from the '30's starring Jimmy Cagney, Pat O'Brien, and Ralph Bellamy, where the plot seems to consist of them just yelling at each other. Oh my gosh, Ronald Reagan is in it, too.
My lesson for the day: don't attempt to do the crossword and watch TCM simultaneously.
Thank you Rebecca for lots of Friday fun. To borrow a phrase from our friend Jayce -- "I liked this puzzle".
And thank you MalMan for a fun, punny recap. And thanks for the theme explication, which I didn't get. As has we've seen in the past, sometimes the theme is in the clues, not the fill. And I luvved the TUT routine! Oh and be on the lookout for manatee cams - you may be on your way to STARDOM!
We're taking the "littles" to soccer practice, so I've only got time for a few favs:
14A UMAMI. I think I first encountered this term in crosswords -- adult continuing education.
11A POTUS. Got it, but didn't see why.
24A BOT. They'll outsmart us in the end, but they'll keep us around -- somebody has to feed them.
27A NOMAD. Second favorite video (see 65A TUT for the first).
53A ROMEO. A CSO to Tony.
9D SLED. GOAT cartoonist.
Cheers,
Bill
Nope. Too obscure in so many ways.
Hand up for never seeing GOT.
As a vanity project for the constructor it was a huge success ("watch how clever and tricky I can be")! As an enjoyable exercise for the solver, not so much. Oh-so-cute clueing and obscure references are getting out of control with too many of these puzzles.
This puzzle killed my mojo for solving. When I stopped having fun I cried "Uncle," leaving some gettable answers unsolved. The whole NW corner was cruel.
PUPUSAS to begin. Ouch! Anya Taylor-Joy, who?
POTUS could be called the Big Cheese, but not just Cheese. Too clever by far.
I guess water can seep between the cracks in the wall. I didn't think of it that way. Does water slip?
I use TSK and TUT light heartedly with an ironic smile. It never is resented that way.
Maybe I am just grumpy today. At 6:45 AM there was a major schedule change of our square dance graduation date, with many moving parts. It was scheduled for this Monday. Rush! Rush! I deserve double my salary. LOL It is $0.
FIR. This was a shotgun solve today. P&P all over the place. I finally got a toe hold in the SW with SALAMI and ACME in place. The NE fell, when I realized that 9A was nor a plural ending in "S"
The NE resolved itself when I had UMAMI and POTUS in place. Quite a terrific theme by Rebecca today. Malman, your recap was top rate as well.
Everything in excess! To enjoy life, you must take big bites. Moderation is for monks. - - - Robert Heinlein "Time Enough for Love"
Ambition?
Cheese, as in Big Cheese, an Important person.
Is it Saturday today?
I’m surprised I filled as much as I did, but no joy here. What others have said about the obscure/ unfair clues, and especially what Irish Miss ☘️ wrote, I second.
Thank you so much MalMan for your wonderful and enlightening recap.
Ack! Gah! Yeet! My weeks long string of FIRs was broken by today’s mind bender, couldn’t WAG my way out, especially in the NW. Not familiar with Salvadoran cuisine so PUPUSAS was a bust. It it UMS or ERS 🤷♂️. There was a theme? Even after Mal Man’s expo I still don’t get it. Very perplexing cluing didn’t help in my attempt, just not on the same wavelength as Rebecca and Patti today. IM’s☘️ summary of this puzzle pretty much echoes my sentiments.
Just a little bit to our south is a little restaurant (I'm being generous -- it's more like a food truck on an empty lot). The sign reads "PUPUSAS and More."
Wow! (And Ack!) Wotta workout!
I'm used to playing whack-a-mole with the vowels, but not the consonants...
Theme? There was a theme? I couldn't see it thru all the ink smears!
No offense MalMan, loved the write up, (especially Mel Brooks) but I read the theme explanation twice, and I still don't see it!
I will go back for a third read, maybe there is a V8 can in there somewhere...
But first,
I have another puzzle (mystery) I need to solve!
Every once in a while, I get so sick of how slow the Blog is to load because of all the ads, that I try to use the reader version.
(You know, that aA thingie up top in the browser.)
Maybe it works on the iPhone, but I can't get it to work on my iPad. It's always something different. Yesterday the "show reader version" was in dull font like it was not available.
So today, I call up the blog, and put the iPad down to do some excercises, thinking I would give the dang thingie time to load.
When I came back, IT WAS THE READER VERSION! I dunno, did I accidentally hit something putting it down? Is the universe out of alignment? Whatthefrackhappened? So I read the blog, and copiously drank in the blog WITH ABSOLUTELY NO ADS, and all the videos intact. (Well, not all. Allman bros was copyrighted, and the cats eye image was missing.) but it was not until I went to read comments that I realized I WAS LOOKING AT THE IPHONE VERSION! ON MY IPAD! I have no idea how this miracle occurred, but I am keeping the page open until I can figure out the browser settings...
The only problem was I could not comment as this version had no place to sign in.
But if I can find out how to do this again, THIS WOULD BE THE BLOWOUT PATCH FOR THE BLOG I HAVE BEEN LOOKING FOR!
Oh, and while I am researching this new mystery puzzle, here is something for you to chew on!
a blowout patch taken to the Nth degree!
My first dnf in a long time due to NW. unfortunately I didn’t recall Pacers coupled with unsolvable Pupusas, stretched a moment, and a miss on cats eye along with thinking it must be Anna instead of Anya as I don’t know her. Also took swags on Myers’s, ser, and hers which worked out thankfully. The Beeb? Seriously?! While i swagged it correctly I also don’t know what a neuroscience lobe is either! Or a mandala without the help of our resident solver today. Never saw the theme. Glad I for for 90%, but not very fun as nobody travels to El Salvador and if they did, odds of knowing pupusa must be almost nonexistent for a foreigner!
Yooper Phil here reporting from my phone. MalMan ~ forgot to thank you for the “Ramblin’ Man” video, how appropriate for today. Dickey Betts was definitely a guitar idol of mine, nobody could make a Les Paul sound sweeter! “Blue Sky” and “Jessica” WOW! RIP Mr. Betts.
It is nice to know (and it really should come as no surprise) that others here also eschew GOT.
Adhesives, suction cups, and peduncle belts!? OH,MY!
As most of you probably know, the bloggers here receive the puzzles in advance so that they have time to prepare the write-ups. The Dickey Betts video was inserted well before yesterday's news. I hope that there is no cosmic linkage and that it will never happen this way again.
Thanks for the kind comments and apologies for whatever I missed (e.g. explaining the idiom "Big Cheese").
Hola!
Wow! It's been a very long time since I've seen so many comments though I realize I'm later than all of you here in the Southwest. But unlike others, I found this fairly easy at 5:30 A.m. then returned to bed for a spell.
Wait! It wasn't all easy. The SE corner had me consternated and I slept on it. No. Nothing. Nada. I do know THE BEEB and EMIRATES but had DYNASTS instead of DYNAMOS and that gummed up the works. Sigh. Finally I had to come to the BLog for assistance and saw the error of my ways.
I agree about the obscure clues, though. I mean, OLIN for example; two actors have that name but we get a newspaper that is so specific it must be known only locally. And kudos to anyone who knows Daisy MYERS. Not me. Etc. etc. etc.
Garlic gal, how very nice to see your comment last night and thank you for those encouraging words. I get my device on May 7th so I'll report on it after that.
Tata for now. Have a wonderful day, everyone!
Long live Dickie Betts. Just heard he died yesterday. Gregg and Duane gone. Barry Oakley and Duane both died in motorcycle wrecks. Even Charlie Daniels sang about Dickie Betts and his red guitar. Well let's hope my short write up will not be "Wasted Words". Hello to our own 'Sweet Melissa'.
I won't LIE TO you. Too tough for me today. Filled it all below COMO ESTAS but the 'big cheese' POTUS and UMS kept the NW from being completed. The NE was almost white with STAFF, BOT, TARO, & OLIN unknown. The rest of the proper names were mainly done using perps.
Ok, this is fascinating!
I just did some research and discovered 99% of the fixes they tell you to do to enable reader mode when it is greyed out WILL NOT WORK.
Of course, your mileage may vary if you have some setting functions turned off. The easiest way to check is to call up someth8ng on Wikipedia , something long, (I called up Joni Mitchell) and press the aA button on left side of your browser. If it shows reader mode available, your good to go. If it does not, check your settings under "reader" and/or safari.
THE REASON reader mode sometimes does not work is that it has an automatic activate setting (which you cannot change) which detects how much text is in an article on a website. There has to be a lot of text for reader mode to be a available. I found a trick to fool the iPad into how much "text" it sees.
Open your main crossword blog page.
In the beginning it says "Friday April 19 Rebecca Goldstein."
If this text is in blue, you will never get reader view available.
What I did was tap the words "Friday April 19 Rebecca Goldstein." and it changed from blue to black...
Note: you may have to try this several times, as the touch has to be just right, and make sure all the Ad crap has loaded and the website is ready.
Once that first line is black, tap on the aA and you will see that now reader mode is a available.
This is what I must have accidentally done when I put the iPad down and walked away. (or when I picked it up ten minutes later.)
Note that there is a lot of eye saving gadgets available in reader mode, play around with the drop down menu. And if you still have trouble reading it, you can have Siri read it out loud for you.
this is the video that tipped me off to what happened.
I welcome any and all future Game of Thrones crossword entries. Seasons 1-6 were masterful storytelling accompanied by movie-scale action and cinematography. Everyone’s tastes are different, but I’ve never understood the pride some people take in never watching certain shows.
Thanks, Rebecca for a beautiful grid! I did notice several "?" clues but did not recognize that as the theme until MalMan showed the highlighted grid. Very impressive!
FAV: Face cards? and clue for SLED
PACER was in the punchbowl, but not until the 3rd lap.
Thanks to MalMan for sorting this one out for us! Well done! I LOLed at the cats waiting for their royalty checks! Also, hand up for never seeing GoTs.
I FIW, largely because I felt certain the women’s health product is HERa. There is a beauty line called Hera, but apparently health and beauty are not synonymous in this instance. Obviously I also didn’t know SER or MYERS, but I wouldn’t have whiffed on those two without the HERS error.
I enter the Corner expecting lots of pushback against PUPUSAS (we frequent a Honduran purveyor) and the PACER, which was always maligned, but also wondering if Inane Hiker (our Missouri expert) knew the Wash U biz school name. I thought that, and the cluing on the NAN Goldin entry, were/are grounds for criticism. The clue for PANCAKE was no help either.
Not realizing they were part of a theme, I marked the American and Irish clues as dislikes, as well as the misleading aspect of “inquisition” in the Spanish clue. I guess that means I disliked the puzzle pretty much for the reasons Irish Miss cited. However, I was happy to see LE MONDE among the answers, as well as KATYDID, Alfa ROMEO, and CAT’S EYE. As MalMan knows, a display at the Future Fair in Firesign Theatre’s “I Think We’re All Bozos on This Bus” proclaims that the Earth is “a cat’s eye among aggies.”
Anonymous @ 12:04. Not pride...just never got around to it.
Anonymous @ 12:04. Not pride...we don't have an HBO subscription.
Musings
-Sorry Irish, I thought Rebecca’s puzzle and gimmicks were a hoot
-The most (only) famous PACER
-Three-letter movie companies, lingerie and birds are usually gimmees
-I loved the “High C’s” Mal Man!
-ANYA was fabulous in The Queen’s Gambit
-I asked the owner of our town’s Guatemalan restaurant for a true treat from her country. Bingo, I fell in love with PAPUSAS
-PP&M singing The Great MAND(E)LA
-Some of you might know what woman’s name one is called today if they are prone to TUT, TUT.
-TOO SOON? Comedians have to gauge that interval
-In the early versions of American Idol, Simon brutally dashed some dreams of STARDOM
-Some TV news shows and Newspapers use political filters for what stories to KILL
Puzzling thoughts:
As one of those to whom MalMan reached out for help, I somehow forgot this ... until I started solving today's puzzle ... and then I realized that I knew what was going on, but forgot many of the ancillary fill answers
But solving it made me appreciate even more the recap by my "brother from another mother"
Thanks MM for the "Inquisition" and "Ramblin' Man" videos ... those were the only two I had time for, but I certainly had time to grown about your dad jokes/puns
Anonymous @ 12:04 ~ Not pride, just no interest in that genre.
HG @ 12:51 ~ 😉 Vive la Différence!
Ok,
I read the write up for the 3rd time, and yes, now I see the theme.
But I must say it is refreshing to read the blog with white letters on a black background and NO ADS!
It's a little tricky getting that first line of text to switch from blue to black, but it helps a lot if the page is fully loaded.
MalMan, it's not you, it's me!
Every time I got to Le Monde, I saw Frawnche, and my brain just shut down.
I had the same trouble in high school, when they tried to teach me Spanish. 1st year was great, 2nd year the new teacher insisted that no one spoke English in class. I came away from that torture knowing only one phrase. "No se nada."
( I do know a lot of curse words though...)
Greetings! I gave today’s puzzle a try in a couple sessions. My success was the middle from north to south, The SW and NW needed some help to finish the section. TITT by the time I got to the NE. Overall, too much of a grind for me.
Clues with question marks can be either obtuse or gettable only with perps. You’ve got a word, surely there must be a clue to fill that word directly without any trickery.
Thanks, Mal Man. You summed it up greatly. I loved the Calvin & Hobbs finale.
Pretty terrible clueing, no fun at all, as per the current LAT crossword tendency.
I thought it was a great puzzle! I thoroughly enjoyed it!!
I thought it was a great puzzle! I thoroughly enjoyed it!!
Double dose of Rebecca Goldstein today! "Do You Follow" in The New Yorker today. Ugh!
Thanks Rebecca Goldstein for a great puzzle! It was such a joy to fill!
Anonymous @12:04 PM I'm not proud, but then I'm not ashamed that I can't afford HBO. 🙂
Husker @12:51 PM Thanks for the PP&M clip. That brought back some old memories.
It's a nit (I know) but AA batteries are not tiny, they are larger than AAA batteries. I could see the plural in the clue - just begging for an 's' ending - but couldn't see past the size issue. Of course that gave me 'deiats'. It looked wrong, but not impossible. :-(
Plus, while I'm whining, may I take another opportunity to point out that 'English' and 'British' are not synonyms!
I thought I was so smart putting in CHORIZO for spicy sausage. Nope.
I thought I was so smart putting in WRECK for ramblin' man (from Georgia Tech). Nope.
SLOG had to be changed to TREK. Of course it wasn't APEX; it was ACME. And AXONS became LOBES.
In so many English shows, a terse request to chat is often, "A word?"
MACRO became MICRO when it turned out SALAMA is not the plural of SALAMI.
I agree with what Irish Miss said.
From yesterday, Lucina, that is exactly why the term "Sandoval hearing" caught my eye.
Good reading all your comments.
The puzzle was quite empty in the northeast when I left this morning. Driving home, the B in BOT came to me. Then, like Lee at 9:58 AM, I solved STAFF, which corrected my guess at S for a plural ending in space 13, giving me FAST ONE. Never heard of cash as cream, but it had to be EUROS, and the rest of the corner fell quickly. FIR -- on paper, no cheats. What's not to love?
DNK Ms Goldin, the business school, Daisy, blowout patch, the Top Chef judge, loran, or the women's health brand, but conquered the challenge and enjoyed the accomplishment.
*Loved* MalMan's King Tut video with Steve Martin, greatest entertainer of our time. When you get a chance to see ANYA Taylor-Joy in "The Queen's Gambit" (yes, chess) you will not forget her. Last to fill was AIR BALL, not realizing that "big whiff" was sports jargon. Give me French and Spanish over sports any day!
With at least 9 unknowns for me today, and quite a struggle, I'll say it was a marvelous puzzle, and I am indebted to Rebecca, Patti, and MalMan for the entertainment.
Got about a third of the way through before losing interest, and tossing the towel. Could probably have figured out a few more, but just wasn't enjoying myself. Nice write-up by Mal Man, but I still can't grok the theme. Pretty much what Irish and others said. Anonymous @12:04...not pride, just don't watch enough TV to justify paying for premium channels when there are so many books in my "to be read" pile!
Watching Game of Thrones wouldn't have helped with the clue as "ser" and "sir" both sound the same. You'd have to read The Song of Ice and Fire to see how it's spelled in print.
I inferred "sled" from the Calvin clue and perps, but after seeing the comic strip, it's actually a toboggan. As us kids who lived in Upstate NY know, we could use our toboggans early in the season as it floated over thin or flaky snow, while the metal runners of sleds just dug in.
Good point. That “sled” that Calvin is riding is really a toboggan.
Charlie Echo @ 7:27. I’m pleased to hear I’m not the only one who doesn’t watch much, if any TV because “there are so many books in the to be read pile.
Monkey, if I ever had to choose between a good (or even pretty good!) book or the TV, the book wins, hands down!
Okay, so the definition of “sled” is “a small lightweight vehicle, either on runners or having a smooth bottom surface, used for sliding downhill over snow or ice.” So I guess that means a slab of cardboard is a sled.
I've been out in Colorado catching up with granddaughter and fam- so I've done the puzzles but not much time to go through the blog.
But watching "Tangled" for her 20th time (my 2nd) -I have been able to read through
Enjoyed the puzzle today - very creative theme
I've been to El Salvador several times for medical mission trips and we always celebrate on the last day with a feast of homemade PUPUSAS made by the local church ladies - yummers! as Susan would say!
Yes - @CopyEditor - I've heard of the Olin School of Business since Wash U-STL is my grad school alma mater. John was quite the philanthropist so the library there is also named after him as well as the library at Cornell and one of the halls at Johns Hopkins University.
His brother Spencer also endowed many university buildings including the health sciences graduate housing which is part of the med center
Movie is over - so time for bedtime routine
Thanks MM for the fun blog and Rebecca for the puzzle!
AS I mentioned this morning, this was an enjoyable solve all he way down to the SE corner and when I saw the fill, the V-8 can made a dent!
I'm looking forward to tomorrow's struggle.
Was not impressed with this effort.
I’m in camp with KS, Tehachapi Ken, IrishMiss et al — this puzzle was “cleverness” so far up as to be stratospheric. Theme? That’s a theme?? If you say so…
Don’t get me started on our fave peeve — proper names. My default form of protest against use of these now? I just Google them and drop ‘em in. I’m DONE with dealing with pop culture references in crosswords — it isn’t “knowledge” in my book. I will give props to Ms Goldstein for some snazzy clues for ROMEO (thank you for not using a Juliet reference!), and NOMAD, which (likely unintentionally) pays homage to the late great Dickie Betts — “Ramblin’ Man” was a big Allman Bros. hit.
As usual, MalMan, you saved the day with your engaging review; I especially got a grin out of your collection of groaner puns today! So thanks for providing at least some relief after this slog (not a TREK — that’s a more enjoyable journey…).
====> Darren / L.A.
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