Saturday Themeless by Stella Zawistowski
Stella is posing as an angel on the right side of this picture from her CrossFit Gym in South Brooklyn, NY.
1. Crunk kin: TRAP ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Don't know either one, except they are both full of lyrics that can't be published here. Google if you must.
5. Throw again: REROLL 😀 If the throw of the dice in craps is judged to be unfair or illegal, a REROLL must be done
11. Omaha prize: POT - There is no real connection to the city 20 miles from me
14. Supportive of: WITH.
15. Target of some copyright infringement lawsuits: OPENAI - Hard to tell what is original and what is not
16. Hardwood: ASH - The source for many Louisville Sluggers
17. Dad, in Korean: APPA ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
15. Target of some copyright infringement lawsuits: OPENAI - Hard to tell what is original and what is not
16. Hardwood: ASH - The source for many Louisville Sluggers
17. Dad, in Korean: APPA ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
18. Jarring tonal shifts: DISSONANCE - I supervised JH lunch rooms for 23 years 😳
20. Two-part bet: PERFECTA - In a PERFECTA bet, a winner has to name the winner and second-place finisher in that exact order. This ticket below would only win if the #2 horse won and the #6 horse finished second
22. Union station?: ALTAR 😀
23. __ Drafthouse Cinema: movie chain based in Austin: ALAMO.
23. __ Drafthouse Cinema: movie chain based in Austin: ALAMO.
24. Believe: HOLD - "We HOLD these truths to be self-evident,..."
26. Generational wisdom: LORE.
27. Unsatisfactory explanation: BECAUSE REASONS - ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
26. Generational wisdom: LORE.
27. Unsatisfactory explanation: BECAUSE REASONS - ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
"Because reasons" is a colloquial, often dismissive, phrase used to indicate that no further explanation for a decision or situation will be given.
If someone asks why you are wearing a silly hat, you could reply, "Because reasons," instead of explaining that it was a gift from your grandmother.
30. "Oh my stars!": I DECLARE.
31. Change places: MOVE.
32. Year of the Four Emperors emperor: OTHO ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It was the year 69 A.D. More
34. Only city in Samoa: APIA
 |
| Togafu'afu'a Rd Corner Vaea St, Apia, Upolu Samoa |
35. Seen: REGARDED.
39. Self-awareness?: PROPRIOCEPTION ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Yikes! Proprioception is your body's ability to sense its own position and movements. It's a complex automatic process that you can also fine-tune.
39. Self-awareness?: PROPRIOCEPTION ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Yikes! Proprioception is your body's ability to sense its own position and movements. It's a complex automatic process that you can also fine-tune.
41. Alison Bechdel's "Fun __: A Family Tragicomic": HOME - A discussion and a sample page
42. Condiment made with pickled mango: AMBA ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ A middle eastern condiment
44. Shinto shrine gateway: TORII - This red TORII gate in the background is in Omaha's beautiful Lauritzen Gardens. It was a present from Omaha's sister city of Shizuku, Japan.
46. "Day by Day" musical: GODSPELL - One of my fav musicals
48. Make no progress: TREAD WATER - A skill needed in water polo
50. Work hard: MOIL ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
53. Thin layer: LAMINA - Our laminated countertops have all been replaced by granite.
54. "Black Beauty" novelist Sewell: ANNA.
55. Ten chin-ups, say: SET.
56. Throws up: ERECTS 😀 - Some new, small houses are being thrown up near us but still start at $300,000.
57. Minimal noise: PEEP.
Down:
1. Name on a JFK hotel designed by Eero Saarinen: TWA - You can see TWA on the hotel in the middle of the background at JFK
2. Had far-reaching effects: RIPPLED.
3. Chill: AT PEACE - Chill as an adjective. "He is really chill."
4. Reference in a doctor's office: PHARMACOPOEIA ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ The 2019 edition
5. Teased relentlessly: RODE.
6. Literary figure who embodies the values of a civilization: EPIC HERO - Homer from ancient Greece
7. Make whole again: RESTORE.
8. Less, in a way: ON SALE.
9. Language known as Isan in northeastern Thailand: LAO - A crossword friend dressed in Saturday cluing
10. First Asian player inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame: LINA ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ My first thought was of Michael Chang.
11. Color of the Year company: PANTONE ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I got this but thought of Crayola first
12. Accolades for "Flow" and "The Shape of Water": OSCARS.
13. "Et voilà!": THERE.
19. Full of jarring tonal shifts: ALL OVER THE MAP - Jarring is in two clues today
21. Third strike, at times: FOUL TIP - If the catcher catches it in his glove, it is a strikeout.
23. Singer Carter who won "American Idol" in 2024: ABI ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
25. Price, informally: DAMAGE.- 😀
28. Region whose name means "desert": SAHARA - The great desert of northern Africa, 1610s, from Arabic çahra "desert" (plural çahara),
29. Moxie, e.g.: SODA POP.
34. Subject of some air battles?: ARM REST 😀
35. Without emotion: ROBOTIC.
36. Start to make a call, perhaps: DIAL ONE.
37. Celeb news site: E-ONLINE.
38. "The Double Helix" subject: DNA.
39. Pitiful cry: POOR ME.
40. "Sign me up!": I'M GAME.
41. Letters signifying encryption: HTTPS - Our website: https://crosswordcorner.blogspot.com/. where the S stands for secure.
45. Not serious: IDLE - IDLE threats are not good strategies for teachers
47. Sp. titles: SRAS.
49. "This means __!": WAR.
51. Spot for a toy: LAP 😀
68 comments:
By virtue of the fact that
I have struggled mightily and been set free of the need to “solve” every last puzzle, I played around with this and enjoyed myself.
First, when I found I was getting nowhere, I put on the “red letters” and saw all my mistakes. Then, I did something that I never would have done in prior times, I requested that the whole grid be revealed to me. I saw such things as “because reasons,” things I never would have thought of if you had given me a million years to solve this puzzle.
Thus I revel in my new found freedom to solve or not to solve. Thanks be to God!
DNF, filling 26, 23 correctly. For me, that's about par on Saturdays.
I liked REROLL next to POT. Back in the day I used EZRollers to avoid the need to reroll.
"Throws up." "Hurls," "pukes," and "barfs" were too short; "drives the porcelain bus" and "sows pizza tomatoes" were too long. "Ralphs" fit, but didn't seem likely, so I left it blank.
I knew that "Moxie" was a SODA POP, because I had a neat little Canadian Martan 242 sailboat by that name, and looked for logoware to match the name. Moxie, not SODA POP. (I sold it to a guy who made his fortune selling gourmet popcorn. He had an old Indian motorcycle, still in the factory crate, in his garage. He liked his toys.)
What is this DIAL TONE of which you speak?
Thanks to H.Gary for another interesting tour. I used to play a lot of craps in Vegas, and the stickmen (female croupiers were called "stickmen" as well) had sayings for events requiring REROLLs. If one of the dice flew off the table, the saying was "too tall to call," and if it came to rest on the players' chip racks it was "there's no number on the lumber."
Make that "EZ Wider," a play on Easy Rider, a popular movie back then. The papers were half again as wide as conventional rolling paper.
Horrible horrible horrible
Husker, thanks for confirming my decision to give this one a pass.
Agree agree agree
I enjoy a challenging puzzle but this was utterly ridiculous. A total waste of time.
Why did I dislike it? Because reasons.
Seems like this is a wiki reply puzzle
Good Morning:
I don’t think I’ve ever tried to solve a puzzle with as many unknowns as I encountered today, tried being the operative word. The cluing and the fill practically guaranteed frustration and surrender, IMO. Yes, Saturdays are supposed to be difficult and challenging; No, Saturdays are not supposed to be unfair and constructor-driven clever ego trips.
HG, thanks for always being fair-minded and balanced in your reviews.
Have a great day.
Same here...needed red letters to slog through this.
Well, at least they saved the worst for last. If there was a dumber, more tedious, more awfully clued slog of a puzzle this year, I missed it. Sundays through Fridays are typically very fine efforts from the LAT. They just seem to have a different mindset on Saturday. Today looks like it was the end of the year clearance, where they just put all of the leftover garbage in this grid so they wouldn’t have to take it out to the curb.
P.U.
Stella is 1b to Erik Agar's 1a on my list of constructors not to be bothered with. I saw the byline, looked at the first five or six clues out of curiousity, then shut it down and headed to the Corner, where I discovered that I made the right decision.
Vanity project. Ego trip. "Look how clever I am." Cruel intentions. Words and terms that only the tiniest percentage of the population moght know. Twisted clues for common words.
I like a challenge as much as the next person, but this puzzle was designed to encourage frustration and failure. She is mounting a serious challenge to Erik Agard's top ranking.
*curiosity
Well said!
I don't see what the fuss is about. I FIR in under seven minutes, thanks to the fair and straightforward cluing.
Just kidding. It was the worst puzzle I've ever seen.
I was afraid I would be the only one here who felt so utterly frustrated by this CW. Now I see I’m in good company. There were some good clues, by that I mean long and difficult but with the help of perps, the solver can go, oh, yea, I got this. Unfortunately those few clues are surrounded by such obscure references as to make it impossible to solve.
HG as IM☘️ stated you always so admirably keep your cool and give us a fair review of the difficult Saturday puzzles.
For me crosswords are about enjoyment, distraction, and a bit of challenge. This was godawful and no fun at all. I was able to fill in very little without Googling.
Oof. Tough one. At various points had to google ABI, PANTONE (which I couldn't dredge up) and "GODSPELL d..." to confirm my instincts on the answer from ???S??LL. PHARMACOPOEIA x PROPRIOCEPTION/HOME/TORII to finish was a grim exercise in running the alphabet for logical possibilities as I was too stubborn to google a fourth time.
POT is Omaha as in the poker game, not the place.
Took 1 hour and ten minutes today. I wanted to finish so that next time I see this constructor's name, I can refuse to do the puzzle with no shame.
You have to admit that it is impressive how someone could make a puzzle so "unfun." How does a puzzle like this get published? Why does it get constructed? Korean dad, Shinto shine, Lilo & Stich theme (which oddly I knew), and many others were simply poorly clued.
I look forward to the Saturday puzzles because it's the one day out of the week that are themeless. Imagine my disappointment today.
I’m ashamed to even hint at how much time I spent on this puzzle, but I wouldn’t have done so if Stella’s puzzle hadn’t been so worthwhile. I’m not ashamed to say I didn’t quite FIR without help. I googled something similar to PROPRIOCEPTION after I finally figured out the paraphrase entry POOR ME. That helped open up PHARMACOPOEIA and enabled me to fill in TRAP.
I also needed help from DW, who knew the Alison Bechdel title, PANTONE, the ALAMO entry, and DNA.
The two 14-letter horizontals were the key, and the BECAUSE REASONS entry was the one really awful one. It would have been a thrill to already know PROPRIOCEPTION. Other problem entries and unknowns included RE-ROLL, MOIL, AMBA, OTHO, and APPA. Oh, and ABI, which was my dog’s mother’s name.
I did know DISSONANCE straight away, and I got TREAD WATER and GODSPELL early on. I reviewed (favorably) a production of Godspell at William Woods College in Missouri in 1974, my first review as a professional. Our octet used to sing the other Day By Day, a Four Freshmen arrangement not at all like the Sinatra version more of you know.
This was a challenge - finally had to get some red letter help Ohio to North Carolina area to finish with help. Hadn't ever heard of the word MOIL and was frustrated that the answer wasn't toil. Only heard of mohel - the person that performs the bris (circumcision) in Judaism
A few helpful gimmes - my son of few words anyway often uses the phrase BECAUSE REASONS
Back in the day, we did have PHARMACOPOEIA in the office - now everything is online or in an app
I regularly taught my older patients some simple exercises to improve their PROPRIOCEPTION to decrease their risk of falling
Thanks HG for the write-up and to Stella for the challenging puzzle!
I forgot to mention that "GODSPELL" is a favorite musical of mine as well - coincidentally I saw a production at William Woods too probably 10+ years ago with my kids. It's a good one for high school/college because of the minimal sets
Didn't know there was another Day by Day. The one referenced today is quite simplistic by comparison, but I knew it right away.
Some things really bothered me about this puzzle.
1. you have two longish entries which are medically based: Proprioception - not only totally unfamiliar to most non-medical solvers, and it is clued in a very general way "self awareness", rather than more specifically e.g. a sense of position or movement. And Pharmacopoeia which I hope never again to see in a puzzle. The only -opoeia word that I would ever like to see in a crossword in ONOMATOPOEIA! 2. Obscure entries and/or clues: OTHO a 3 month Roman dynast, APPA as korean "dad" (why not clue as main character in "Avatar"- give the solver at least a chance!)
TORII, MOIL (my dictionary refers to it as "archaic, dialect"), POT as "Omaha prize". 3. CRUNK kin for TRAP - a bad start - a rather obscure genre (imo) cluing for a rather obscure entry (imo). "Throw again" for REROLL - again a rather general clue for a specific action when a more specific and/or clever, interesting clue would have been better, IMO.
I can understand why so many had issues with this puzzle.
Just awful, period.
Inanehiker may be amused to know that I worked in Fulton during a newspaper war. Our paper, the Kingdom Daily News, was formed to challenged the existing (and equally awful) Fulton Daily Sun-Gazette. Our reading area crept pretty close to Jeff City.
It appears none of us finished without help. That's pretty damning, Patti Varol.
Love “to solve or not to solve” - oh the freedom 😊
I can usually do Saturdays around the 15 minute mark. After half an hour, I started Googling which is something I never do. Even after googling, there were a couple of places where I just kept going "huh"?
🤣
I've been ailing the last few days from aFib, vertigo, and nausea. I saw Stella's name and figured the puzzle would add to my nausea if I seriously attempted to solve it. I didn't,. I read the clues ONCE, wrote about six correct gimmes, made a few WRONG WAGS and clicked on The Corner.
Stella, like Eric, tries to be cute with idiotic clues and adding fills no reasonable person would ever know. PROPRIOCEPTION is a turd of an example. At least I knew PHARMACOPOEIA but not the P-OE-IA spelling. I made no attempt to MOIL (never heard of that word) on this puzzle.
LI NA's name is NA LI in the English form. She was hilarious. Her husband was her coach and she was unsatisfied with her play- SHE FIRED HIM and hired somebody else. Just like a football team, it's not the player's fault they played badly or injured players. Let's fire the coach.
Who will be first 'prevaricator' to claim a FIR with no help? Speak up.
Yes - it was a thrill to already know proprioception, and pharmacopoeia. Especially, since there were so many others I did not know.
"He had an old Indian motorcycle, still in the factory crate, in his garage. He liked his toys.)" Like his toys you say?
A man who lives about 100 yds away from me as the crow flies on the next street , bought the lot next door to his house, built another "house", and what's in it? THIRTEEN CORVETTES. . I've never seen him drive one yet. He drives a Suburban
Ya gotta be kiddin. Even after bailing out and heading to Huskers explanation, nothing about this puzzle made any sense. 90% of the answers came up WTF? instead of AHA! or D'OH! Not a V-8 can in sight. This wasn't a puzzle, it was a STELAGARDEGO trip. A pox upon both their houses! "There are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who MOIL for gold. The arctic trails have their secret tales that would make your blood run cold. The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, but the queerest they ever did see was the night on the Marge of Lake Labarge I cremated Sam Mcgee." (Robert Service)
Like the only words Mark Twain knew in German. VOMIT and damit.
Thank god you were kidding. I don’t have to jump off the pier now.
Well, definitely a “learning” day. No “ta-da!”
First run thru yielded about 11 fills. From then on it was a hunt. I probably finally got about 2/3s done with crossings and ruminating. I looked up a record 13 items - outside my fields, interests, or accidental discoveries — like Korean, rap music, poker, Roman history, comedians, religious architecture…. Never got “moil”; just rationalized “all over the tap” as some arcane “musical” thang, and I prefer it😊
Thanks for the challenge, the explanations, the shared frustration, and the learning.
Y’all have a great week ahead!
I also new MOIL from "The Cremation of Sam McGee".
Pharmacopoeia when I looked it up is USP , which is a orgnization that sets and provides standards for drugs and and other things. No doctor would have that in his office. They would have PDR - Physicians Desk Reference.
BTW - PM is Prime Minister, hence Canadian leader. Member of parliament is MP and includes anyone who sits in the House of Commons.
I’ve never constructed a puzzle, so my question is for those of you who know more about CW construction. Did today’s constructor know all those words and names we found totally obscure and unknown or did she need certain letters to fit an entry and then went looking for words that would fill it, and where would she look?
Pure Evil.
Wow, first run for me ended with three fills. I’m just happy I finished with only about 6-7 wrong! And that’s after googling some of my swags to see if they were correct! And one of my easy answers was toil - which was wrong! Korean dad? Give me a break! Pharmacopeia was a swag that seemed right. Torii! Never heard of that phrase‘because reasons’ either. Never heard of a lot here. I’m used to spending time on a Saturday but this was ridiculous and not even NY Times worthy in my humble opinion.
The latter
Constructing software includes a wordlist and even a tool to auto-fill a grid. However, wordlists include entries that are technically valid but in reality are abysmal fill. It’s up to the constructor to judge whether or not a grid is filled cleanly enough. Autofill can help but a LOT of intervention from the constructor is required.
Today’s grid has a fairly low word count of 66, and the max for a themeless is 72. The lower the word count, the harder the grid is to fill. This grid shape looks particularly daunting because of the intersecting 14s and 13s, with the 13s also being stacked with 7s in the NW and SE. ABI OTHO APPA etc. is a byproduct of all the constraints that come with the grid shape.
I’d say that in a corner with TWA APPA PERFECTA ABI, at least TRAP should not be clued as MORE trivia.
CE - the paper that survived was the Fulton Sun which is part of the same newspaper collective as the Jeff City News Tribune now. My favorite paper name around here that survived the Civil War was the weekly paper out of Linn, MO: The Unterrified Democrat
Tough Saturday puzzle, but then Saturday ones are supposed to be challenging, so this wasn't easy, but also that wasn't surprising. I still found parts of it here and there fun, so many thanks, Stella. And I loved your pictures and funny comments, Gary, thanks for those too.
Well, as soon as I saw TRAP, I was ready for some negativity in this puzzle, with words like REROLL, having to throw yet again, and really difficult situations like DISSONANCE, I guess BECAUSE two groups might have different REASONS on how to handle things. I DECLARE, I have to admit that I hate things like a FOUL TIP, and I wished we could have had it RESTORE a return to a more PERFECTA puzzle. Wish this were a night when we could watch the OSCARS on TV, and have a SODA POP or two. And then we might go on a trip--not ALL OVER THE MAP but how about to an interesting, neat place like the SAHARA. That would be fun, wouldn't it.
Have a delightful, happy weekend, everybody.
As a Canadian, FYI, the Can. Leaders clue answer PMs means a group of Prime Ministers. The Prime Minister is the PM for short. We only have one at a time, but a group of them would be PMs. Members of Parliament (the group of elected officials that gets together to pass laws, etc. which includes our PM) are called MPs as a group for short (one MP, a group of MPs). I tried MPS first when I tried to solve the puzzle.
Thanks for the Robert Service reference. Remembered the poem but not the obscure moil
Tried pen-on-paper, got 11 fills, then was totally stumped. The beating started with "Krunk kin". Wait, WHAT?? Went online, turned on red-letter help, but it soon became apparent that I would need to do an alpha run, or maybe two, for every second fill. Or massive Google searches. No fun there. TITT. WAY above my abilities. Coming here and finding all the fill I didn't know reinforces my decision to TITT. I feel really ignorant getting beaten SO BADLY by this CW, but some fill is TOO much of a stretch: I'm looking at you IDLE and TOY. Other answers are colloquialisms that, unless you live there, I don't understand how anyone would be able to fill, especially since the perps are also difficult fill. Then we have foreign language words, and 12 names, DNK 9!! :-(( SZ, you pose as an angel, but you're really a devil! Tough to say if I don't like this CW simply because it beat me to a pulp mentally, or if it was poorly clued, but in either case, I REALLY didn't like this CW. HG, great job explaining it in your write-up, and I really liked all the shrug symbols, made me feel a tiny bit better that you and so many others also struggled with this one. Looking forward to Monday. I do believe in the future if I see a SZ CW, I'll just skip it.
Most of you people that comment should stick to the USA Today crossword puzzle.
Thank you.
I can't comment, because I went and did an easier puzzle.
But after reading the comments, I'm glad I did...
Anon at 3:17PM: Did you finish this puzzle correctly without any help? Did anyone here do so?
My grid bled red.
My sister's late husband had four vintage vettes, and a newish one as his daily driver. They had a house with a big garage, but since it was stuffed with vettes, she had to park in their driveway. He only drove the vintage ones to car shows and parades, and he had to jockey them around to get the one he wanted for the particular occasion. (He also had a Tommy gun. My nephew went to a range with him to fire it, and my sister said they were both frightened after shooting it just a little. Dangerous situation.)
Reading all today's comments, I think we all have PMS.
"There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee."
I love that poem.
Didn't love this puzzle.
Good reading you all.
Sorry, I published my comment before noticing that a couple of you had already referred to the Robert Service poem.
😆👍🏽
I write DNK next to the clues where I Do Not Know the answer at all. I wrote a record number of DNKs today, and no, I did not finish in spite of them. I did not finish at all. Tha answers I read here amazed me. Sorry, Stella, this was a stinker. Husker Gary, thanks for explaining it all so charmingly.
But you put up the poem for all to read, Jayce! 👍🏽
====> Darren / L.A.
I’m happy to find I’m not an outlier on thinking 🤮 (a.k.a. 56A) on this one.
I don’t keep track of unpopular constructors — but this author is now on my Don’t Fly list. My first run-through gave me a grand total of six (count ‘em: 6) fills, and after taking another stab (or 20) at it and getting nowhere, it went directly to the trash, do not pass Go, do not collect $200. After coming here and seeing the grid solution, I’m glad I did — there’s much better stuff to waste time on than this falderah. Korean dad?? MOIL?? Medical vagaries; “Oooo, look how obtuse I can be!”. No thanks.
At least Gary’s recap was good fun, as were most of the comments — Jinx, I too confess to preferring E-Z Widers back in the hazy daze 🤙🏽😁
====> Darren / L.A.
LAMINA? Did anyone else put PATINA?
This is Jayce. I put in VENEER at first.
Jayce...I learned that poem over sixty years ago from my Grandfather, who was born in 1877 and was a great admirer of Robert Service.
"On a Christmas day we were mushing our way, over the Dawson trail. Talk o'your. Cold, through the parkas fold, it stabbed like a driven nail. If our eyes we closed, the lashes froze 'till sometimes you couldn't see. It wasn't much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam Mcgee."
I can still recite the whole thing after all these years.
Patina for me!
The most recent quotation for MOIL in Wiktionary is from 1907!
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