CrossEyedDave here... When CC asked me to fill in, it was a Saturday morning, and i thought, "Great! I can do this instead of the Saturday Stumper!" Well, right from the get go, 1Across just screamed out "Cube!" And with that, my Saturday turned into a Wednesday Stumper... I did finally work my way out of a DNF/FIW/TiTT, and was looking forward to reading the write up for someone to explain it all. (Wait! What! I have to splain this!! Aw nuts and dang it all...)
Well, at least Rebecca provided a title:
16. Intentionally delaying, or a punny title for this puzzle?: PLAYING FOR TIME.
"Playing For Time."
Now unless you can play Tetris blindfolded, i don't want to hear any complaints in the comments about circles. I would still be trying to solve this puzzle, if it were not for these life saving theme circles, that helped me discover all of the "off my wavelength" clue/answers that tripped me up.
The Reveal:
54. Constant reshuffling of one's schedule, or what's depicted in this puzzle's circles: CALENDAR TETRIS
The Calendar items circled included: Gala, Game, Work, Yoga, Call, Date, and Trip. You could possibly turn this into another puzzle by trying to find "another" calendar item that wasn't circled. Please let me know if you find any, I'm already too exhausted by Rebecca's offering to even try...
Here is a short Bio:
 |
Across:
1. Sugar serving: LUMP. My horse sense told me this should be "Cube." I mean, you don't give a horse a lump of sugar, you give him/her a sugar cube! Which led to disastrous stabs at the early downs.
5. Crockery flaw: CHIP.
Hmm, i wonder what was wrong with the kid "before" the spell?
9. Paper or plastic items: BAGS.
13. Microbiology lab gel: AGAR.
14. "__ that the truth!": AINT.
15. "At your earliest convenience," less politely: ASAP. (Not STAT!)
19. Error message?: SIC. Latin, literally ‘so, thus’. used in brackets after a copied or quoted word that appears odd or erroneous to show that the word is quoted exactly as it stands in the original.
20. NYC nabe near the Bowery: NOHO. (Not SOHO, or South of Houston, but North of...)
21. Added to the team: HIRED.
22. Kicking sport: SOCCER.
24. Actress Palmer: KEKE. The second K was a personal Natick with 9 Downs Batik, and caused and alpha run ending to this almost DNF/FIW/TiTT...
25. The Queen of Pop: MADONNA.
27. Network featured in "Good Night, and Good Luck": CBS. (3 letters awaiting a perp)
30. Low voices in a women's choir: ALTOS. (Really?)
33. Lav: LOO. (What? Not Water Closet? Hmm, which reminds me...)
34. Sailor's assent: AYE.
35. Shabby: WORN.
36. Rare opening in 54-Across: SLOT. (A Clecho! Or Clue Echo...)
37. Screen writing?: BLOG.
38. Squeak (out): EKE.
39. Tom, Dick, and Harry, for example: MEN. (Not "anybody"...)
40. Name after peach or before toast: MELBA.
41. Mom, to Auntie: SIS. (I don't know why I wanted "Tia" here...)
42. "Be glad to": SURE CAN. Or put another Glad Bag in the Trash Can...
44. Image file format: JPEG.
46. Like the pick of the litter?: CUTEST.
49. Beefy, casually: SWOLE. Learning moment, i can't complain if it's legit...
51. Move like a hummingbird: DART. (Not flit)
52. D-backs, in box scores: ARI. (A crossword fill staple...)
54. [Theme Reveal]
57. Shawkat of "Search Party": ALIA. (Either you know her, or you dont. Perps to the rescue...)
58. Team with a red-tailed hawk mascot named Swoop: UTES. (If you say so...)
59. California county with a wine train: NAPA. More info here:
60. Ran in the wash: BLED.
61. "__ there, tiger": EASY.
62. Gender-fluid pronoun: THEY. (Could have been Them, I could blame Them. But I can't blame They...)
Down:
1. Slurps (up): LAPS.
2. Uniq fruits: UGLIS.
3. Body shop franchise: MAACO. I must have misread this clue, because Maaco with lump and laps turned this corner into a nightmare...
4. Ask too much, say: PRY.
5. Paddled about: CANOED.
6. One regularly experiencing bettor days: HIGHROLLER. Not familiar with this, I wonder why...
7. IT part: INFO. (New to me)
8. Vacay from work: PTO. Paid Time Off (another tricky clue/answer)
9. Patterned fabric that originated in Indonesia: BATIK. I'll let A.I. explain this Learning Moment
4. Ask too much, say: PRY.
5. Paddled about: CANOED.
6. One regularly experiencing bettor days: HIGHROLLER. Not familiar with this, I wonder why...
7. IT part: INFO. (New to me)
8. Vacay from work: PTO. Paid Time Off (another tricky clue/answer)
9. Patterned fabric that originated in Indonesia: BATIK. I'll let A.I. explain this Learning Moment
10. "If memory serves": AS I RECALL. (Without the spaces, reminds me of nothing...)
11. Up for a challenge: GAME.
12. Went a mile a minute, maybe: SPED.
17. Quechua speakers who didn't have a written alphabet: INCAS. Not entirely true They used ropes!
18. Seehorn of "Pluribus": RHEA. (If you say so, but I say its just a smaller Emu from a different country)
23. "Please be serious": CMON. (I am serious about the Rhea/Emu's)
24. Twist into a pretzel: KNOT.
26. "Sounds like a you problem": NO ONE CARES. (Ouch!)
28. Notation on an invite: BYOB. Bring Your own Bottle/Beer.
29. Sonic the Hedgehog developer: SEGA.
30. Leaves speechless: AWES.
31. Norse god of mischief: LOKI. Around long before The Marvel Universe took over his image on the internet. And is now invading politics?
32. "Ooh la la!": TRES JOLIE. It's French...
36. Self-satisfied: SMUG.
37. Good start?: BENE. Italian. Curiously, when I went to research,
IT WASN'T Bene Nota?
(I get this confused with Bella Notte.)
40. Low-gloss: MATTE.
42. Checked out: SEEN. This nose wrinkle really gave me angst crossing 49A. Swole
43. Bow alternative: CURTSY. (Not bow,,, bow... AhNuts!)
45. Be appealing?: PLEAD. (Cute)
47. One of the Torah's four matriarchs: SARAH. (Perped in, because i always leave off the H.)
48. Type of offal: TRIPE. (Anyone want a picture?) Offal is the internal organs and parts trimmed off an animal for food, although tripe has other meanings as well...
49. Sign of healing: SCAB.
50. Muralist's canvas: WALL.
51. Target of some mining: DATA.
53. "My word": I SAY. (Sounds kinda British to me, an I do say so myself...)
55. Expected any minute: DUE.
56. Explosive used in some mining: TNT.
Well, that about does it for this year. On to the next!
Happy New Year!
CE:D Out...
Once again, they got
ReplyDeleteme on a single letter. “Tres JolLe and
“AlLa.” I think that is a bogus combination, OBSCURE French term and very OBSCURE person. What do folks call that?
A “Natick”?
Anyway, I’ll try to do better tomorrow.
Subgenius out!
ALIA Shawkat is an instant fill for me at this point, but I can totally understand getting Naticked there. There's just no way to remember all those crosswordese clue flawlessly. I always get tripped up by Gasteyer and Garten, are they ANA? INA? ANI? ARI? IRA?
DeleteI really like how all 7 Tetris shapes are included (notice that the YOGA and DATE squiggly shapes can't be overlapped by just rotating, and the same goes for the CALL and TRIP L-shapes), and using 7 letters from the revealer for CALL, DATE and TRIP is a clever way to minimize the amount of theme squares. But you can definitely see the strain on the grid that comes from all these wacky shapes used as theme material.
Good catch, Anon, on those Tetris shapes. Unsurprisingly, d-o totally missed that.
DeleteGood morning!
ReplyDeleteIs "Sounds like you a problem" missing a verb? The only "Tres.." phrase I know is "Tres bien" -- JOLIE never occurred. Thus ALLA/JOLLE got to stay. Bzzzzzt. Skewered on the last day of the year. Rats. Thanx, Rebecca and C-E-D. (Methinks your Aussie roots are showing in that Rhea comment.)
Not clued as "Sounds like you a problem," it was clued "Sounds like a you problem," which makes sense to me.
DeleteI like how tripe and data were also spelled by an adjacent letter making another Tetris shape (?) And call to called; game to gamed. And with Rebecca's bio, is it a coincidence that woke is in the puzzle 2 Tetris shape ways? Like CE:D cube instead of lump got me off to a bad start and made this Wednesday offering a challenge. Good way to end the year. HNY!
ReplyDeleteDart and darts
DeleteI FIR but could not figure out the theme. Thanks CrossEyed Dave for trying to explain it. But I still couldn't figure it out. Then anonymous at 4:35 talked about the tetra shapes. This did not help me either. It is very rare I don't catch on to a theme, but this is one of those times.
ReplyDeleteWell I managed a FIR w/out help in one tick under 15 on a Rebecca G puzzle, so I’m a little happier than SubG this morning, feeling SMUG even. I have to admit though, even with the triple reveals, I still had no idea what the theme was all about, the circled words didn’t seem to have any relation to one another, and it took the expo and the comment from Anon @4:35 to make me realize it was the shape of the foursomes that were central. I got CALENDAR TETRIS by perps, I knew TETRIS was a game but I am not familiar with it at all. My last fills were successful first try WAGs at the J, O, and I in TRES JOILE (I thought of ‘mpeg’ first, but went with the J), ‘rsvp’ quickly changed to BYOB. Other unknowns were RHEA and KEKE. I liked the clue for BLOG. Thanks Rebecca for the challenge, and to C-E-D for taking the reins today and explaining it all in layman’s terms.
ReplyDeleteFIR, but didn't have much fun. Got my WAGs @ KEKE x BATIK, KEKE x RHEA, and ALIA x TRES JOLIE. C'MON, man! Erased utah, then utep for UTES, tech for INFO, able for GAME, and rsvp for BYOB (which DOES NOT mean "bring your own broad.")
ReplyDeleteAlthough I'm not likely to convert, I'm thinking about studying Judaism. The more I learn about it, the more respect I have for it.
The sure-fire Mexican hangover-curing soup is menudo, which is made with TRIPE. But to be honest, I haven't eaten any since I gave up the bottle nearly 10 years ago.
I have no problem with THEY/them as plural pronouns, but I will never, except under threat of bodily harm or financial ruination, use either as a singular pronoun. Your desire to be special doesn't override my need to improve my hillbilly vocabulary. Until recently, I thought it was "youens."
Thanks to D-O for the fun review.
Today's review was written by C-E-D.
DeleteTHEY- Patti can't help herself, or after reading "About the Cruciverbalist" maybe Rebecca can't help "theyself" for including some of those TRIPE clues.
DeletePretty fast solve from wily veteran Rebecca, even though it solved as a themeless.
ReplyDeletePluses - I liked the new-to-me term CALENDAR TETRIS and that all the scheduled items were shaped like in the game.
Minuses - These are all DATEs of one sort or another, so having one be "DATE" (as in on a DATE) seems an bit redundant. Also, since these items are generic things that many people schedule (WORK, GAME, TRIP e.g.) a GALA seems like an outlier.
Nice job, CED, of pulling of this all together. Happy New Year!
Gala can mean a fancy ball that would be scheduled
DeleteGood Morning:
ReplyDeleteThe only thing I know about Tetris is the name, so I have no idea whether this puzzle does justice to the theme or, for that matter, what the theme actually is. Even though I was totally lost throughout the solve, some interesting fill and clever cluing kept me engaged. I just think Rebecca and I usually are on very different wavelengths, especially with this offering.
Thanks, Rebecca, and thanks, CED, for trying to make sense of it all, especially for the non-Tetris crowd.
Nope - A FIW on the last day of the year :-(
ReplyDeleteHi All!
Thanks Rebecca for the puzzle. The theme was fun (and I saw the Tetris bits) but the names in the fill sponged up some of the fun.
Nice expo, CED. LOL Emu comment.
WOs: hand-up "cube" & UTEp
ESPs: I mentioned names, right? TETRIS - CALENDAR TETRIS is a new-to-me phrase but I like it*
FIW: TRES JOLlE | ALiA
Fav: c/a at HIGH ROLLER
The office is a ghost town today. Most everyone is on PTO or working from home -- there's only three of us on the floor that usually houses ~85 IT peeps.
Happy New Year!
Cheers, -T
*Remembered2Refresh says: I see RustyBrain thinks so too
I also thought of Texas Western, aka UTEP until I made my CURTSY.
DeleteSorry, the Publish button is too close to the writing area. Continuing to CED. I think you’re adapting to the Blogger role very well and have found your own voice. Congrats!
ReplyDeleteHappy New Year, everyone.
FIW. Like SubG a single letter got me. I've never heard of calendar tetris so I took a WAG at tres jolie and was wrong.
ReplyDeleteThere were way too many proper names for me, and even some crossing. I give you Keke and Rhea. Quite nasty!
I also failed to see the tetris shapes in those stupid circles. Circles, yuk!
Overall not an enjoyable puzzle.
Blah. FIR but did not enjoy this one
ReplyDeleteMy Frawnch AIN'T that good and the SW was the last to fall into place today. SWOLE and ALIA are unknowns, and it was either MPEG or JPEG. JOLIE looked better than MOLIE, so I did FIR. I noticed TETRIS filled by perps and guessed CALENDAR from the rest of the available perps. KEKE and RHEA were others filled by perps.
ReplyDeleteWrong Wednesday. Thanks for the fun, Rebecca and CED.
ReplyDeleteOfficially a DNF since I struck out in the North of NOHO.
That personal Natick cross of RHEA and KEKE left that NE corner unfinished, and my total ignorance that the “sugar serving” could be anything other than a CUBE left the P in PLAYING blank, the unknown-to-me body shop as BAACO, and “ask too much” as Err.
Hopefully I do better in 2026.
Happy New Year’s Eve to all.