Saturday Themeless by Kyle Dolan
I liked Dr. Dolan's puzzle and never felt I was not going to solve it. My issue became trying to decipher what Kyle meant by his "off-the-wall"cluing. As has become my custom with Kyle's puzzles, I did have a one-cell problem where you see the red cell in the grid. That high intensity exercise crossing an obscure "legal term" was never going to happen. I always wonder whether terms like that are already known to the constructor or a happy result of a desperate search of a piece of crossword software. Follow me as I embark on blogging my 24th Dolan Saturday themeless.
1. Sign of puppy love?: TUMMY RUB 😀 Ah, it is an activity by someone who actually loves a puppy.
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| Uh, are you sure you know what you're doing? |
9. Folded dish: OMELET.
15. Evidence that may not be fully reliable: ANECDATA - ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ In casual conversation, business, or media, "anecdata" refers to anecdotal evidence presented as objective fact. The Problem: It relies on a very small sample size (e.g., "My grandfather smoked three packs a day and lived to 100, so smoking isn't harmful"). It ignores biases, coincidence, and statistical anomalies.
16. Mottled: CALICO.
17. Mud slingers?: BARISTAS - Even in this election year, Kyle is referring to the euphemism for coffee
18. Shiver: TREMOR.
19. Deuce follower: AD IN - I held onto TREY but eventually the cows came home. AD IN is simply overtime in tennis after the game ends tied which is called deuce.
20. Level: SHIM.
22. Teatime bite: SCONE.
23. Pacific nation whose national sport is rugby: TONGA - Rugby is also the national sport of SAMOA that are both Pacific nations ending in A, but...
25. Server reset?: LET - Kyle comes in with another tennis term. A LET is called when a serve hits the net but lands in bounds. The reset is that the server gets to serve again with no penalty. To reset the server in my house, I do the "unplug/plug back in" strategy.
27. Pants, informally: TROU.
28. "That's __ from me": A NO - He made a career out of this phrase
29. Couple: TWO and 35. A couple: GOING STEADY 😀 and 41. Couple: DUO.
32. Day on 10-Down: SOL - From the movie The Martian
34. Scamp: IMP.
38. Place that may have a "no phones" rule: DINNER TABLE.
39. Beer and skittles: LIFE OF RILEY - A 50's TV show starring William Bendix. Derivation of the phrase
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40. Kick: JAG - Unrestrained activity (bureau/spree): An informal term for a period of excessive indulgence or uncontrolled emotion (e.g., a "crying jag" or "drinking jag"). Something from which you might get a "kick"
42. Org. preceded by the Cipher Bureau: NSA ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ There was a 1939 movie about it.
43. Vane dir.: SSE.
46. Country whose motto was "Workers of the world, unite!": USSR.
48. Best: TOP.
50. Walks down the aisle, casually: USHES - The walk is not casual, the word referring to ushering is.
52. Rafael with a Golden Slam: NADAL - These three men have won the four major tennis championships plus the Olympic gold medal.
54. Clucks: TSKS.
57. Light color: TINT.
58. "Point taken": I GET IT.
60. Nickname for the Southern city whose motto is "Resurgens": HOTLANTA - Resurens is Latin of "rising again".
63. "Farewell, mes amis!": A BIENTOT - French for "see you soon" or "bye for now"
64. Amplify, in a way: REPOST - 😀 Sharing content someone else has posted
65. "This ends now": WE'RE DONE.
Down:
1. High-intensity exercise method: TABATA - ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ TABATA is a high-intensity interval training (HITT) protocol developed by Japanese scientist Dr. Izum Tabata
3. Sheep from Spain: MERINO - I learned this doing crosswords and was able to retrieve this from the deep recesses of my brain
4. Running with a mic, maybe: MCING - 😀 The EMCEE runs the show
5. Some penalty units: Abbr.: YDS.
6. "Phooey!": RATS.
7. Jazz venue: UTAH - This NBA team nickname originated in New Orleans where the name fit like a glove and for some reason they kept it when the team moved to Salt Lake City. The same goes for when the Minneapolis Lakers moved to Los Angeles.
8. Pho herb: BASIL - I know Pho is Vietnamese soup and a five-letter word herb starting with a B leaves few candidates
9. Feast of St. Francis of Assisi mo.: OCT - Omelet at 9 Across starts with an O, so...
10. Destination of NASA's Escapade mission: MARS.
11. Pick: ELECT.
12. Long road trip?: LIMO RIDE - The trip is not long, the vehicle is
13. Coach: ECONOMY - This is where all my airplane seats have been
14. Made unreadable, say: TORE UP.
21. Portable cooker: MESS TIN - I felt pretty good with MESS KIT...
24. Took one's medicine, in a way: ATONED.
26. Arrivals for the summer?: TOTALS - 😀 People who do addition arrive at a total that is also called a sum and so I guess these people could be called a summer.
30. Triumph through adversity: WIN OUT - The Knicks two nights ago
31. Common length of a wooden ruler: ONE FOOT.
33. Defensive coordinator who helped the Steelers win the Super Bowl in 2006 and 2009: LEBEAU.
35. Pic file: GIF - I'm a big fan
36. Warning sound: GRR.
37. Pop duo __ & AJ: ALY ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
38. Finds an extra gear: DIGS DEEP - What the Knicks did Thursday night
39. Dish often served "al forno": LASAGNE Al forno (Italian for "from the oven") refers to food that is baked or roasted in an oven.
43. Worship of entities known as kami: SHINTO.
44. Forwarded: SENT ON.
45. Coffee grounds?: ESTATE - Coffee can be grown on one ESTATE or plantation rather than on various small operations which are consolidated
47. Pi, for one: RATIO - The RATIO of a circle's circumference to its diameter.
49. "I don't believe that!": PSHAW.
51. Selling point?: STAND 😀
53. Lens covers?: LIDS.
55. Capital city of Hyogo Prefecture: KOBE.
56. Hubbub: STIR.
59. Parlor piece, informally: TAT 😀
61. Greta of "The Morning Show": LEE - ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I'm guessing you can pick out Ms. LEE
30 comments:
A few mistakes kept
this from being a true FIR. “Mess kit” instead of “mess tin” kept “dinner table” from being clear, for example.
Oh, well, better luck next time!
Thank you, Kyle and Gary.
That took a while, but I loved it. FTW. Longest Saturday for me in recent memory.
Most of the time was consumed by self inflicted slowdowns due to having coNceERT--LE where DINNERTABLE belonged. Instead of I GET IT, I had agreed. Trey before AD IN. SamoA before TONGA. BellYRUB before TUMMYRUB. Adieu--- before A BIENTOT. Glad that one perped in.
On the other hand, I had enough gimmes. Including LeBEAU, NADAL, HOTLANTA, and LASAGNE that perhaps other solvers may have struggled with. Al forno (from the oven) told me that the E ending was needed instead of trailing A of lasagna. Well, that and all of the cooking shows we watch...
ANECDATA is a new term for me. It makes sense to me. I had an early mentor that taught us that we should never argue a point or build a business case based on anecdotal data. Don't rely on it. Good business decisions require empirical data as proof of facts.
TABATA is also new to me. I wanted Crossfit, but it obvi wouldn't fit in the allotted spaces.
Some devious and circuitous cluing, Kyle. Keep them coming! I enjoyed the challenge.
Good Morning:
Close but no cigar due to the NW corner and the unknown Tabata, Unadon, Anecdata, etc. I’m getting better in deciphering Kyle’s off the charts cluing, the one for Totals, e.g., but he is a master of deception and misdirection. I fell into the Samoa/Tonga, Trey/Ad In, and Even/Shim, but perps were kind, mostly. Trou and Ushes brought on the usual nose wrinkle but all was forgiven by the evocative Tummy Rub.
Thanks, Kyle, you’re slowly winning me over and thanks, HG, who won me over many years ago. Your analysis was spot on and the photos of the adorable puppy and shaggy sheep won the day.
The Saturday win streak ended today. I was foiled by Kyle in the SE. I guessed PSHAW and HOTLANTA. I couldn't think of KOBE I've never heard of A BIENTOT and tried ADIEU___ but could get nothing to work. Not a chance after that. The 30 minute bell rang.
I had to take a hard look at ANECDATA after filling it. The perps were solid but it was unknown.
DINNER TABLE- our no phones rule is the bedroom. We leave them charging in the kitchen.
MESS TIN, ALY, and LEBEAU came strictly from perps.
DNF. The SE did me in. The clue for estate still does not compute for me. And my French is rusty as I tried to fit in au revoir in that space.only to miss a bientot completely.
I really thought I would ace today's puzzle when I filled in the center, top right and lower left, without hesitation. But it wasn't to be.
So overall a so-so puzzle.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/estate
"Plantation" is the SIXTH definition here. A bit much even for a Saturday clue, perhaps.
Calling TOTALS "arrivals" is... inventive, for sure. I have mixed feelings about that clue.
I stumbled out of the gate with the same problems as everyone else in the NW and FIW. Kyle kept the rest difficult but doable.
I don't quite get how "Couple" = GOING STEADY. I can't come up with a sentence where they are interchangeable. If there was an "A" out front, then yes, "They are A couple" = "They are GOING STEADY."
AU REVOIR and A BIENTOT both have 8 letters, but AU REVOIR means "goodbye" while A BIENTOT means "see you soon." Which do you think better fits the clue "Farewell, mes amis!" ?
A "Selling point" was sadly in the news this week as a lemonade STAND in Boston was robbed at gunpoint. That's ridiculous.
Thanks, Gary, for your steady guidance through this one.
The clue for GOING STEADY does have the initial A. Clues on DUO and TWO are just [Couple].
I did not FIR. I had one faulty vowel, in ABIENTxT, and I got unstuck in the NE only because I got so frustrated by the Steelers assistant coach with a six-letter name ending in U, who surely was known to me, that I tried to stumble upon the name in a manner less overt than googling “Steelers defensive coordinators.” I hadn’t thought of Dick LeBEAU in years, but I remember him as both a player in the 1960s and a coach at a ripe age.
But even if I had thought of him, the double Natick involving 1D (TABATA) crossing ANECDATA and also UNADON would have stymied me. MC-ING didn’t help either (I’m more OK with emceeing), and neither did the aforementioned second-year French term.
LeBEAU wasn’t the only sports term in the puzzle, it turned out. The “Jazz venue” is a recurring trick, and I forgot “deuce” can be a tennis term. Although the term “AD-IN” usually gets ignored on sportscasts, it’s common in crosswords.
I did get USHES, which certainly wasn’t obvi, but it wasn’t the most convoluted entry in the puzzle. That would be a close contest between a statistician who is a “summer,” and the mess kit that turned out to be the who-calls-it-that MESS TIN.
Kyle Dolan doesn’t need misleading clues to make puzzles challenging, and he doesn’t need recently concocted vocabulary to be a challenging constructor. I wish he’d cut out the crap.
I thought I overcame plenty of unfairness to come close, and I applaud anyone who FIR without help.
Actually, you eat off a mess tin, not cook with it.
I was trying to formulate my comment as I scrolled through the responses, and came across Copy Editor's summation, so I will borrow from his.
"I wish he'd cut out the crap."
So much ridiculous cluing and so many obscurities. Not an enjoyable puzzle at all.
Took 27:02 today to, finally, get the "weredone."
The top-left section was a real doozey. Side-by-side unknown Japanese words of "tabata" and "unadon", next to "merino" and crossing an unknown "ancedata" were brutal.
The Saturday streak of including obscure foreign food fill continues (unadon), and although I didn't know her, I got the Actress of the Day (Lee). I failed the foreign language lesson of the day (whatever the french word/phrase is), so I'd like to thank all the perps, including more Japanese (Kobe & Shinto).
I'm glad I was familiar with Lebeau & Nadal.
Challenging puzzle but eventually got 'er done in a longer time than usual.
UNADON I learned from crosswords - if it has something to do with eels and Japanese food then give it a try.
Sussed out ANECDATA as a portmanteau of ANECdotal and DATA.
I used to face that in my medical practice - we colloquially would call that "Aunt Minnie medicine" when a patient doesn't want to hear about the big picture or data about a disease - this is what happened to their Aunt Minnie or this is what she did and that trumps any scientific data.
One of the coffee shops downtown had SHIMs under the legs of most of the cafe tables until they finally replaced them
Thanks Gary for the blog and Kyle for the puzzle
Thank you so much for your write-up!
I had not not the slightest clue how "Totals" related to summer arrivals lol
Or why it was "LasagnE" instead of lasagna
And without your explanation I thought "Tat" was referring to a tatted lace piece in a grandma's parlor
Cheers to all the solvers!
29:25. Oof. Hardest Saturday for me in a very long time. Had a horrible time getting into the NW corner. Don't like puzzles which are so segmented--at times it seemed like five mini crosswords put together. Overall, I wanted to really like it but some of the answers like "messtin" turned me off a bit.
You're right. I need new glasses.
We used the term “Aunt Minnie” to mean an obvious diagnosis without a bunch of tests. You recognize your Aunt Minnie just by seeing her walk down the street
I finished all corners except for the NW, and a smattering in the middle. ANECDATA? USHES? TABATA, yikes! SOL? I don’t get it. I remember “LIFE OF RILEY” and “what a revolting development this is” for that clue.
au revoir just didn’t work but fits better with “farewell mes amis” than À BIEN TÔT which means “see you real soon” (agree with Rusty B)
MESS TIN, crockpot wouldn’t fit
ESTATE for “coffee grounds” and ECONOMY for “coach” ridiculously clever but hey all bets are off on a Saturday
I’m doing this puzzle in NYS’s ONEIDA county but the city of ONEIDA is in the next county (Madison) on the border of the village of ONEIDA Castle (which is in ONEIDA county) got that?😃
Beautiful day ☀️ enjoy the weekend
When the JAZZ played in NOLA, a friend worked as a CPA for a large company (Fluor Corp.). They had bought four season tickets that would now cost big money- box seats on the court. He would call me when none of the higher ups wanted to go. The box seats were next to the coach's wives. Elgin Baylor was the coach. Got to see all the big names from years past when they didn't have a hundred teams. Maravich, Bill Walton, Kareem, Gail Goodrich, Rick Barry, Walt Frazier, Havlicek, Elvin Hayes, Earl Monroe, Wes Unseld and other from the early 1970s. Didn't have to pay a dime.
Lucky guess with "a" for square 15. Enjoyable Saturday puzzle and write up.
Stuck with it until FIR, but boy oh boy, what a slog! I too had mess kit, Trey, lasagna with the ‘a’, digs down vs deep, at first - which makes getting it correct very difficult. Question though - for Country whose motto is ….; don’t constructors have an obligation to abbreviate the clue? If I hadn’t thought so, that would have come so quickly!! No clue on so many: tabata, Aly, abientot, and I always thought it was ‘Life of Reilly’ as I never saw a tv show. But happy to arrive eventually!
Did anyone FIR without help? So frustrating to get everything correct and run into one constructor mistake at the end. TOBATA seemed just fine as did ONE-C DATA. I figured the latter meant that there was inadequate data in some technical statistics terminology.
Yikes. At what point does a crossword stops cross wording and just becomes a schizopost for the constructor?
I’m also wondering what the editorial process is, for a puzzle like this to make it to the LA Times. Very disappointing.
Totally agree. Some of the worst cluing I’ve experienced.
Challenging Saturday puzzle, but I think that's what they're supposed to be. So many thanks, anyway, Kyle, and thank you for your always helpful commentary too, Gary.
Well, it makes sense that after you eat an OMELET, you might need to get a TUMMY RUB. Let's just hope that we're not going to have another one of those TREMORS that we get as a storm warning coming up. And let's just hope that the rest of this morning and the afternoon will be peaceful, so that we can have a SCONE and some cups of tea in the afternoon. That'll help get us settled before supper at the DINNER TABLE later on. Not exactly the LIFE OF RILEY we might have been expecting, but if we make it through the evening by watching TV, we can happily say WE'RE DONE and take off for a peaceful night of sleep at the end. Not a bad way to spend a part of the weekend, I'd say.
Have a lovely rest of the weekend, everybody.
I finished it with a lot of help. Some of the answers didn't make sense until I read Gary's excellent write-up.
What's with the new font today? To me it seems a tad harder to read, not easier or better looking.
"I wish he'd cut out the crap."
Me too
I’m also wondering what the editorial process is, for a puzzle like this to make it to the LA Times. Very disappointing.
You must be new…our “editor” is a mess in action
Some of the worst cluing I’ve experienced.
Agreed
Waiting for Jinx to clear up the incorrect RATIO definition.
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