Saturday by Stacy Yaruss McCullough & Matthew Stock
Today is the Winter Solstice which means Nebraska will only get 9 hrs 11 minutes and 47 seconds of daylight. Tomorrow we will add four seconds to that total as we head towards spring. This puzzle kept me in the dark most of the way through. What a slog!
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On a personal note, this week marks the beginning of my eighth year of blogging Saturday themeless puzzles for C.C. at her wonderful site.
Across:
1. Bad Bunny genre: LATIN TRAP - I found out it is not LATINO RAP. Here is what it is.
10. Maker of Cleansing Melts soap pads: OLAY.
14. "There's a storm brewing": I CAN FEEL IT - As seen from Nebraska Memorial Stadium last spring
16. Traffic sign: CONE ๐
17. Digs at the beach: SAND CASTLE - I got "Digs" as a noun and eventually the rest came
18. New clothes hangers?: TAGS - Minnie Pearl's iconic TAG
19. Yurchenko double __: vault now called the Biles II: PIKE.
20. Stick in the water: POOL NOODLE - BOAT PADDLE worked for a long time! Is this really a stick? ๐
22. Oaf: CLOD.
24. CrossFit moves: BURPEES.
25. Neither early nor late: ON BEAT ๐ Rhythm!
28. Dark: MORBID.
29. Artistic hot spots: KILNS ๐
30. Products of deductive reasoning?: TAXES ๐
31. Study: DEN - Noun not verb
34. Loads: A LOT.
35. Yarns: TALES.
36. Exclamation of approval: VIVA - _ _ V _ turned out to not be RAVE
37. Bow wood: YEW -
38. Acts like a gobstopper: LASTS - We called them Jaw Breakers in my misspent yute
39. Unspoken: TACIT.
40. News segment: SPORTS.
42. Grapefruit relative: POMELO.
43. "Do I look like I care?": SPARE ME -
45. Word with freeze or fry: DEEP.
46. Precursor to getting one's just desserts?: CAKE BATTER ๐
48. "Well, that used to be true ... ": I WAS.
52. Quarreling: AT IT.
53. Lao Gan Ma condiment: CHILI CRISP - ¯\_(ใ)_/¯ Lao Gan Ma (old grandmother in English) was invented in a small Chinese town by Tao Huambo. This has become very popular and made her very wealthy. All you'd want to know. From C.C.: This brand is hugely popular in China. [My brother] Andy puts it in everything. Cantonese food is mild. Not much chilis. But Sichuan food is super spicy.
55. Eerie spray: MIST.
56. One of three in the Girl Scouts logo: SILHOUETTE.
56. One of three in the Girl Scouts logo: SILHOUETTE.
57. Bridesmaid's accessory: POSY - Today I learned a POSY is simply flowers joined together by stems or floral wire to make it easier to carry.
58. Entertainment on a carousel, once: SLIDE SHOW - This fabulous scene from Mad Men is great TV writing and would have made for amazing ad copy.
Down:
1. Condition whose therapy may include hissing like a snake: LISP.
2. __ palm: ACAI - A Swiss Army knife of cwds
3. School house?: TANK ๐
4. Overexposed?: INDECENT.
5. George Halas Trophy org.: NFC - The Philadelphia Eagles were champions of the National Football Conference of the NFL but lost to the AFC champion KC Chiefs in the Super Bowl.
6. Vessel at a teddy bear picnic: TEAPOT ๐
7. Task on a postseason to-do list: RESOD - We chose to merely RESEED and it worked out fine
8. High, in Italian: ALTO - L'affitto รจ molto ALTO. (The rent is very high)
9. Some brimless hats: PILLBOXES - On 11/22/63 Jackie gave this hat to her secretary Mary Gallagher at Parkland Hospital but no one knows what happened to it after that.
10. Deep-ocean mollusks: OCTOPI.
11. Funny bones?: LOADED DICE.
12. Perspective: ANGLE.
13. Party planner's list: YESES.
15. Grants for researchers?: TENURES - Getting that grant can go a long way toward keeping your job
21. Contact juggler's props: ORBS - Contact manipulation is a form of object manipulation that focuses on the movement of objects such as balls in contact with the body.
25. 3 out of 5, say: OKAY.
26. __ Valley sunbird: Middle Eastern species: NILE.
27. Air busses?: BLOWS A KISS ๐
28. Soda shop treats: MALTS.
30. Spoon-fed line: TASTE THIS ๐
32. Profoundly bad: EVIL.
33. Gp. with a compass rose emblem on its flag: NATO.
35. Southwest expanses?: TARMACS ๐
36. Many "What We Do in the Shadows" characters: VAMPIRES.
38. First unsigned artist to record a Billboard No. 1 hit: LOEB.
39. Golf club part: TOE - Not where you want to hit the ball
41. Sort of: PRETTY.
42. Stopping point: PERIOD ๐
43. Rascal: SCAMP.
44. Grillmaster's domain: PATIO.
45. Territory nearly surrounded by Haryana: DELHI - As you can see, DELHI is mostly in the state of Haryana (yellow below) but extends into Uttar Pradesh
49. "__ pleasure!": WITH.
50. Regarding: AS TO.
51. Be effusive: SPEW.
54. Prompt: CUE.
42 comments:
This one eluded me.
I won’t go into all the reasons why, but suffice to say I couldn’t even complete one across ( or one down ) !
I’m not particularly happy about that. But it am happy to be on this site and see how the rest of you did. Blessings!
DNF, filling 15, a dozen correctly. Spent very little time in deciding this one wasn't for me.
I see that Gary got the joke at traffic sign->CONE. I don't get it. I had "stop." Is it that sometimes cones cause traffic snags?
Congrats to H.Gary for your tenure at the Saturday helm.
This was the kind of puzzle where I didn’t understand many of the clues or answers even when I filled them correctly. I finished only with substantial help from red letters and seemingly endless alphabet runs.
Good morning!
This one took me only five minutes. Reading Husker's recap, I can see I was smart to throw in the towel.
Encountering clues such as “Bad Bunny genre”, “Acts like a gobstopper”, “Yurchenko double _____”, and “Lao Gan Ma condiment” to name a few, I knew I didn’t stand a chance of a FIR. Never found a foothold to get any perp help, so after about 45 minutes I was still looking at a sea of white. I don’t remember a LAT puzzle that I could only fill about 25% which was the case today. Oh well, I lost today’s game, but there’s another one tomorrow! Kudos to those who can figure this one out. Thanks HG for making sense of it all.
Saturday puzzle. Couldn’t even find a Hail Mary in this one.! Fortunately didn’t waste a lot of time….threw in the towel.
Greet the day.
HG ~ thanks for your efforts in your 8 years of the Saturday blog, always a good read! I’d guess that in your career days you were an outstanding teacher.
Well, it was good for avoiding shovelling snow for a while...
From yest, I was wrong, I am familiar with spoonerisms. I had just forgotten.
I was indoctrinated by Benny Hill's "Arts and Farces..."
I passed on this one. I see I was wise in not wasting time on it.
For the first, after a quick pass through this puzzle, I came to this blog’s comments first and I see I was wise. I won’t spend more time on it. I have too much to do. Thanks early risers.
I meant for the first TIME
FIW. For some reason I spelled pike with a "y", and never noticed the acai as a palm.
The NE gave me fits until Olay came out of nowhere and the rest filled in up there.
I can't believe I finished this puzzle. At one point, staring at a field of white, I was ready to quit when suddenly silhouettes arrived and the bottom started to fill in.
This puzzle was a bear, filled with off-the-wall cluing and I feel some possibly questionable.
But it's done, so there's that.
Good Morning:
It took me 1:12:04 to finish w/o help but there was no satisfaction nor enjoyment, just frustration and disappointment. This offering, IMO, is just another example of the constructors’ (and editing staff) putting their personal whims above the solver’s ability and/knowledge. Much of the cluing today was so show-offy over the top that too cute by half doesn’t do it justice. Suffice it to say that I didn’t care for the puzzle, despite the fact that I solved it.
Thanks, HG, for your 8 years of dedication and success in entertaining, educating, and enlightening us. Your Saturday blogs are always a treat and, in many instances, much more enjoyable than the puzzle itself! I firmly echo YP’s assessment of your teaching abilities. Congrats, Gary!
Have a great day.
Wow. It took me a little over an hour but I managed to get this one done. Almost gave up several times.
A typical Saturday disaster. But more of the “you know the answer or you don’t” type clues than usual. If I had any idea for a clue answer if was often the wrong length …. Bear picnic vessel: honey pot too long, “stopping point” pause too short. “Dessert precursor” not CAKEwalking.
“Territory” around “Haryana” (sounds like a name for a “bearded lady”) but side show wouldn’t work . “George Halas”? “Yurchenko” leap fit but was wrong. Lao Gan Ma?? …BURPEES? (Does the seed company know about this?). Don’t consider a DEN (more like a rec/entertainment room) a study . “School house” I kinda figured fish but aquarium waaay too long. Inre versus ASTO .
I’ve seen “Bad Bunny” as the musical guest on SNL but that’s about it. LOEB? Who? (The pic of the LISP kind of stereotypically homophobic)
Inkovers/errors: veil/POSY, boor/CLOD. Pins, ORBS, vote/TILL, itsa/WITH, date/ACAI
If you watched “Shadows” you’d know they were mostly VAMPIRES. A much raunchier/baudier adult version of “The Munsters” … after 6 seasons the finale was last Monday. It was PRETTY “0kay”
My applause ๐ to those who FIR!
Anyway. Time to wrap her Christmas presents while DW is off getting her hair done
Have a great weekend
As always, Irish Miss said what I was about to say, only much better.
Another vanity project designed to frustrate the solver and offer only a slim chance of success.
I finished it with the help of red letters and a few vowel runs, but I pretty much hated every minute of it.
Thank you HG for your consistent dedication to this blog. I always enjoy your write ups, sometimes more than the puzzles, and this morning was no exception.
IM, I finished the darn thing, but like you, I had no love for the result. I had to look up several things to even get an idea of what some clues even meant.
Crash and burn today, beginning at 1A. Too many unknowns, starting with Bad Bunny and LATIN TRAP. I guessed RAP but with only ACAI, NFC, TEAPOT, & ALTO filled, the NW was unsolvable. I've never heard of Lao Gan Ma or CHILI CRISP, knew nothing about the Girl Scout's logo or Haryana, and I kept thinking of a merry-go-round carousel, so the SE was almost all white.
38. Acts like a gobstopper: LASTS - looking at the picture, shouldn't the G be a capital G? Just curious. I wouldn't have filled it anyway- total unknown.
The NFC was previously called the NFL but changed its name when the AFL merged with the NFL.
RESOD- not necessary around here
OCTOPI or SQUIDS- Olay made that decision for me.
I managed to get a toehold in the East middle, but it didn't go very far.
I also entered LISP for 1D, and ACAI at 2D but it stopped there. Put in SCAMP for 43D and, nothing. Definitely not my cup of tea.
SubG, Jinx and DO were right on with their opinions.
Sometimes you just can't win for losing.
Bonkers.
Challenging puzzle but pieced together slowly but surely.
I knew, from some show he was on, that Bad Bunny was Latino and that he was a rapper but haven't heard of LATIN TRAP before - learning moment of the day.
By the spelling, haryana was somewhere in central Asia and Lao Gan Ma was southeast Asian but needed perps to get a foothold. CHILI CRISP sounds like a snack instead of a condiment to me.
As HG said, last year as in 2023 the NFC champs Eagles lost to the Chiefs, but the last Super Bowl 2024 the NFC champ 49ers lost to the Chiefs.
The AFC Championship trophy is named after Lamar Hunt, the founder of the AFL predecessor to the AFC and founder/owner of the Kansas City Chiefs.
I'm a Lisa LOEB fan - but didn't know that about her
Thanks Gary for the interesting blog and congrats on 8 years, we should have celebrated that at lunch!
Ta da! I had the same experience as Flatbeded - an hour of erasures and WAGs finally paid off. I was down to clue 37 YEW before I wrote my first word that I knew for sure. Then just circled round and round, adding bits and pieces here and there.
2D ______ palm isn't fair for someone in S Florida...I can name over 20 palms by sight so sorting through them all took a while. Shoulda just guessed it would be the xword friendly ACAI. Then for the next clue School house I wrote dorm (too clever by half), then figured fish so changed to pool, and finally to TANK. And so it went, my first assumption nearly always wrong.
My dad always said, "Beware of people with long pencils and short erasers." Today, that was me!
Fuhgeddaboutit
This one went so far over my head that it couldn't even be seen with the telescope at Mt. Palomar. After about 15 minutes, I finally threw in the towel. I'll just Echo Irish Miss on this...she summed it up to a T. I couldn't describe it better!
On a more pleasant note, thank you, Gary, for 8 years of interesting, insightful blogging. I always enjoy your posts.
Irish Miss has "ditto'd" my comments in the past; today I return the favor. She expressed my sentiments exactly regarding today's aberration. Like IM I plodded away to completion, and it was clear to me during this unpleasant experience that constructors/editor did not have the solvers' best iinterests in mind.
This is not a whine about a difficult Saturday puzzle. My favorite puzzles are generally Saturday's (and Friday's) because they are challenging but fair, and ingeniously clued. And therefore enjoyable. Today's fell well short.
Kind of sad when most of the comments were about taking a look and deciding to do something else.
Me too…my “go to” move on Saturday is to take a peek and give it a short try, and move on. With anything else.
Took 38:41 today to for me to finish, but I needed some red letters.
As usual, I totally agree with Ms. Irish Miss.
This puzzle had no enjoyment. The part that annoys me is that I was probably 10-12 clues in when I could just tell that enjoyment wasn't the plan for this one, instead it was to be deceptive.
Once again, obscure foreign foods/words do not equate to good clueing.
HG: For scores (of reviews) and eight years (of dedication), ... I want you to know that I appreciate your efforts and work product.
Interesting tough Saturday puzzle, many thanks, Stacey and Matthew. And thank you too for your commentary, Gary.
Well, I often cheat to solve Saturday puzzles, and this was no exception, though I still enjoyed it. I CAN FEEL IT got me a bit alarmed, and I too wanted to say SPARE ME--especially after I also saw MORBID, and EVIL, and those VAMPIRES. We probably all headed to our PILL BOXES after seeing all that negativity. But, hey, things cheered up a bit with someone urging us to TASTE THIS. Now we were able to enjoy at least a little bit of food, those CHILI CRISPS and MALTS, and knowing that that CAKE BATTER was going to get us a delicious CAKE. Not bad for a Saturday, I'd say.
Have a lovely pre-Christmas weekend, everybody.
I also had a lot of palms in mind before i settled on date. Guess I had Jackson Browne's Rosie Palm in mind.
Hand up this was fiendishly difficult. More about misdirection than obscurities. But there were some obscurities. Looking at you LATIN TRAP and CHILI CRISP. Last to fill was LASTS/LOEB. Utterly unknown to me. Lots of round to FIR.
I will take a CSO with CONTACT JUGGLER.
This gentleman was very skilled at CONTACT JUGGLING with ORBS at our annual festival.
You may notice he has only one arm. Due to a failed suicide attempt. I am sorry to report that after I took this photo he tried again and was successful. So sad.
I can’t remember the last time I TITT, but I couldn’t get traction in the upper half of this puzzle, not even after breaking down and looking up Bad Bunny to get LATIN TRAP. That meant the brimless hats weren’t yarmulkes. The only way I could have gotten PILLBOXES would have been a mention of Jackie Kennedy in the clue. Even with those unknowns penned in, I couldn’t make progress without help. When I saw the completed grid, all I could say, repeatedly, was, “well, no wonder!”
I can quote a couple of young constructors who contend there’s nothing wrong with looking things up to solve a crossword. Many solvers still disagree, and I’ll always be one of those.
I managed to fill the lower half, but even entries I got right were obtuse. My breakthrough in the SE was I WAS, but even then I wasn’t familiar with CHILI CRISP and I couldn’t have gotten SILHOUETTE from that clue without perps. I’ll admit the misdirection regarding carousels was clever
The surest sign I should go all-Thumper? Even my longstanding adoration of Lisa LOEB turned to hostility. And that was an answer I got right.
I’m in your camp about never looking things up (except when all through with the puzzle and blog I look all kinds of stuff related to the CW and the blog and comments). If I can’t solve out of my own head, so be it, no help, no red letters, I won’t even use DW’s vast knowledge as a resource. But to each their own on how they approach a puzzle.
My experience and thoughts exactly. Too stubborn to throw in the towel and felt no satisfaction in finishing.
If my choice is between not completing the puzzle or LIU/ red letters, I prefer the help. After I getting a helpful boost on one or two cells I can go on and have fun completing the rest of it. Then I admit to finishing with help. If I have to use more than a few helps I just stop because it kills the fun. Accepting a little help when I need it turns the puzzle into a learning experience. I don't have the patience these days to spend an hour on a puzzle. To each his own.
My solve time wasn't all that much slower than what I'd consider "normal" but it still felt hard, with tortured clues just for the sake of misdirection. A POOL NOODLE is a "stick"? What's "reasoning" got to do with tax deductions? A SAND CASTLE counts as "digs"? Good luck living in one of those. And so on. I wanted CAKE BATTER and TILL but I thought, "if those are the ACTUAL answers, then the clues are so dumb."
Speaking of SAND CASTLE, my first guess for 2D was FACE, even though "facepalm" is one word, crossed with OCEAN something (HOUSE? VILLA?). Not exactly a strong start.
Pet peeve #1: TEN "?" clues is just overkill. The more of those there are, the higher the chances that some of them just don't land. "Funny bones?" for LOADED DICE is probably the closest this puzle gets to a good "?" clue.
Pet peeve #2: Even on a Saturday, you DO NOT obscure glaringly clunky fill with extra-tough/vague clues (RESOD, YESES).
On the plus side, I liked I CAN FEEL IT, SAND CASTLE, POOL NOODLE, and LOADED DICE.
I finished it but didn't "solve" it. I had to resort to internet searches for almost half of the entries and I used "Check grid" at least a dozen times, which almost every time revealed how badly I had gone wrong. A slog indeed.
Oof! I could not let go of this struggle, but couldn't quite finish it, either. I listen to rock en espaรฑol, but am not cool enough to know LATIN TRAP (although I filled it via perps). I thought the maker of the soap pads would be a kitchen cleaning brand (which I couldn't complete), and the traffic CONE was another surprise. Desper-otto showed more sense by wrapping up his efforts in five minutes.
On the other hand, I'm grateful to HG for slogging through and explaining it all, all these years. Thanks, too, to our constructors for separating the wheat from the chaff. I'm chaff today!
Thanks to Stacey and Matthew for your work on this.
Hand up for TITT. After filling about 50% of the squares I was not getting anywhere so I turned on the red letters to see how I was doing so far. 28 letters were incorrect. No wonder my perps weren't helping. Oof!
H-Gary, thank you for today and for your 8 years of explaining the most difficult puzzles of the week! We are all so lucky to have you here on the Corner!
It was truly a challenge. I did have to “learn” some new things, using the internet like dictionary/encyclopedia. It took me a long time - stopping to play w/ my visiting 1yr-old grandboy along the way. And, I (pretty - uh, no - sort of) know some new things now: Lisa Loeb, pike, Delhi, NFC, Latinwrap …. I like the misdirects - sort of like puns, which I love to groan at. And look forward to the swift solve of a Monday …
Saturday's keep getting worse. The combination of obtuse cluing and too many proper names seems to be the norm.
At least it appears I’m sitting with the majority here in thinking today’s puzzle sucked like a Dyson. KS @9:25a, you were far too charitable; “off-the-wall” and “questionable” clues? I think Irish Miss nailed it, thus saving my adding an opinion (which likely would have resulted in my being censored…). The few likable clues were overshadowed by the garbage ones, I’m sorry to say. Even knowing the Bad Bunny fill (thanks to having just read a review of his stuff) didn’t help. Not a rewarding time.
Speaking of reviews, I’d like to add my appreciation of Husker Gary’s efforts in service of this blog. I can’t imagine figuring out how to write a recap of one of these things — and make it as entertaining as you do! ๐ค๐ฝ๐
Oh well…onward to tomorrow’s.
And wooHOO, our days will be getting longer from here on out! Being a summer solstice baby (yup, born 6/21…and never mind the year ๐) I live for DST!!
====> Darren / L.A.
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