Tuesday's New York Times crossword puzzle solved: December 15, 2020

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My time: 5:27, just over a minute slower than the record.

Theme: common sayings clued as if they are puns based on the names of newspapers.  "Where one might find Boston news reporters?" is AROUND THE GLOBE.  "Where a Baltimore news reader's desk might be found?" is UNDER THE SUN.  And "beaten to a news scoop in Los Angeles?" is BEHIND THE TIMES.  That's the best one.

Well, we have a rilly big shew for you tonight, and long-forgotten comic TOTIE Fields, who was mostly active in the 1960s and early 1970s.  Sadly, she suffered a variety of health problems and died at the age of 48.

"Crab traps" is POTS.  That's the term for the mesh cages the trappers use.

I remembered that "org. for Kings and Senators" is NHL, but I continue to detest clues about the ACC ("UNC and Clemson are in it" — so what?). 

I also dislike the phrase US OF A.  And, as I have mentioned, blank clues like "______ anything."  ASK ME why IT'D be a better idea to come up with an interesting clue!

OPRAH Winfrey's birth name is Orpah Gail Winfrey.  Orpah is a Biblical figure in the book of Ruth, the daughter-in-law of Naomi.  She is the sister-in-law who goes home after her husband dies, rather than sticking with Naomi, like Ruth.

"Annual video game competition, for short" is EVO.  It stands for Evolution Championship Series.

Cal Ripken, like Brooks Robinson, was an ORIOLE his entire career. 

Sports sports more sports ughzz: The 1967 NFL Championship Game was called the ICE BOWL because it was played at about -15°.  It was between the Packers and the Cowboys.  The Packers took it 21-17.

This crossword teaches us that in Monopoly, there are 28 DEEDs and 17 AVENUEs.  How boring!

TEAK just came up on December 11 as "deck wood."  Today it's clued as "cutting board wood."

Clever clue: "Go for the gold?" is MINE.

I was pretty meh on this one.  Some of the clues were just so-so, and the theme, with only three examples, isn't terrific either.  Well, they can't all be gems,  TRUE DAT!

Friday's New York Times crossword puzzle solved: July 10, 2020

My time: 12:36, five minutes faster than average.

No theme, but some smart clues and interesting fill (BASILICAS!  LITE BRITE!  GRAYBEARD!  TERRY CREWS!).  "Reunion attendee, informally" had me stalled on school reunions, but it's one who goes to a family reunion — AUNTIE.

I've heard the title TRUE WEST, but I didn't know it was a Sam Shepard play.  It's about two brothers, one a screenwriter and one a drunk and thief.

Why on earth is there a 23-foot bronze statue of EL CID in Balboa Park, San Diego?  Is there some connection?  No one knows.

I didn't know MOVEMBER was an annual event to grow awareness of men's health issues.  I honestly thought it was an annual event to raise awareness of mustache-growing.

A SCHUSS is a straight downhill run in skiing.

I rolled my eyes as I wrote TOON for "Linus or Lucy, e.g."  They aren't toons in my eyes.  Comic strips aren't toons, dammit!

Apparently Rita Moreno played someone named ANITA in "West Side Story."   Anita is a Puerto Rican immigrant. She is the girlfriend of Bernardo and a close friend and confidante to his sister Maria. Anita's character is based loosely on Juliet's Nurse in Shakespeare's "Romeo & Juliet."

So apparently the parallel of a soccer mom — left-leaning, high middle class — is NASCAR DAD, blue collar and right-leaning.

A LETT is a Latvian, the people living on or near the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea.

"Duke's grp." is ACC, which has come up so often before. I just don't care about sports conferences.

SEGNO, the musical repeating mark, came up way way back in 2017.

Clever clues: "Garb for the masses?" is ALBS.  "Causes for alarm?" is HEISTS.

Nice puzzle!  SLOW CLAP.

Thursday's New York Times puzzle solved: January 4, 2018

My time: 19:31.

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This is one of those puzzles that is baffling at first and then, once you've caught on, practically fills itself in.  Daniel Mauer asks up to find the 4WARDING ADDRESS of the themed clues, which are then put in verbatim, as the written clue, rather than as an another answer.

For example, the answer to "ten cents" is 12 DOWN, while at 12 Down the clue "answer found elsewhere" gives us... TEN CENTS.  "Allowed in" turns out to be 44 ACROSS, while the actual 44 Across ("answer found elsewhere," again) is ALLOWED IN.

I would be more impressed --- and it would have been much more of a challenge --- if the clues had led to original answers.  For example, if at 12 Down rather than repeating the clue as an answer, if it had said *TWO NICKELS or something.  Or if "Sea cow" gave 48 DOWN, as it does in the puzzle, but instead of giving SEA COW for 48 Down, if it had been *DUGONG.  That would have been deviously tricky to solve.

Anyway, it is what it is.  The format allows for a lot of words with syllables that are homophones of numbers, like 1SIES ("toddlers' attire"), 4AGE ("gather food") and CRE8 ("make").

The IOLANI Palace was the official residence of the Kingdom of Hawaii.  It was used at the capital building until 1969.  Today, it is a museum.

I have never heard of Century 21 competitor ERA.

"Virginia Cavaliers' org." is the ACC, which I covered way back in October 29 of last year when it was the Blue Devils' turn.

A CASTER is the wheel on a desk chair.

Henderson is a city in NEV.  It is the second-largest in the state, although it is technically part of the Las Vegas metropolitan area.  It is often named one of the safest cities in America.

I don't have any idea why "U.S. 1?" is PRES.  No clue.

The last pope named Pius, Pius XII, was a critic of Nazism.  He also said Communist Catholics should be excommunicated.  He died in 1958.

Another musical term I've never heard of: OSTINATO, a repeated musical phrase, usually in the same pitch.  It seems like most modern rock and pop is all ostinato.

I had a lot of trouble with "historical group of 15, for short," even though I know perfectly well what the SSRS were.

"WINE is one of the most civilized things in the world," wrote Ernest Hemingway in Death in the Afternoon.

ACR- is a prefix meaning height, but I didn't recognize it as such until I found it in its more familiar acro- form.  As in acrobatic and acrophobia.

"If music be the food of love, play on" is the first line of "Twelfth Night," spoken by ORSINO, the Duke of Illyria.

Clever clues: "Yelp alternative" is ARF. "Angels might come to its aid" is START-UP.

It was fun trying to make SENS of this puzzle.

Friday's New York Times crossword puzzle solved: November 6, 2020

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My time: 10:41, five minutes faster than average.

We open with EMMA Chamberlain, a YouTube social influencer!  That will enrage the traditionalists who are still fuming that "The Simpsons" is ever referred to in the puzzle!  Such PHILISTINES the puzzle panders to!  Apparently EMMA just posts funny videos. 

"Abbr. on a family tree" is DESC.  This is short for descent. 

Perhaps Will Shortz felt that the election dispute would be at its BITTER END by the time this puzzle was published.  Well, it isn't, and the answer is a little too raw, Will Shortz!

I was thinking something like pottery for "crafts created on a rotating platform" but it's SPIN ART.

The answer to "easy-listening music" turns out to be EAR CANDY.  I don't see those as having a huge amount of overlap, though.  EAR CANDY is pleasant but perhaps shallow music, bubblegum pop. I think of easy listening as 70s type of AOR rock, like standards and vocal rock.

I dislike bland clues like "political ____" for ARENA.  Or "____value" for RESALE.  What a nothingburger of a clue.  BLAH.  Or the worst offender, "now ____ the future" for OR IN.  Not challenging, just frustrating, teaches nothing.

"Rutherford and Shackleton, for two" is ERNESTS.  Ernest Rutherford was a British physicist who is considered the father of nuclear physics.  He discovered the concept of radioactive half-life and came up with the model of an atom that bears his name.

My knowledge of roots led me to pretty quickly get NAVELGAZERS for omphaloskeptics.  The first part is straightforward; "-skeptics" might make you think that it refers to people who don't believe in bellybuttons, but it comes from a Proto-Indian root meaning "to observe."

"!, in some programming languages" is NOT.  For example, in the C languages.  I don't know anything about programming.

"ACC basketball powerhouse" is UVA, a periodic answer in this blog.  Their sports team is the Cavaliers, like their newspaper.

Clever clue: "Loaded questions?" is BAR TRIVIA.  "Strip at the beach?" is TAN LINE.  "Sides of a conversion" is FAITHS.  Take a long, good look at yourself" is EGOSURF.  "Pickup order?" is TAXI.

Well, CIAO.  I hope the country doesn't succumb to Vatican Law enforced by fascist redcaps by the end of the year.

Wednesday's New York Times crossword puzzle solved: October 7, 2020

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My time: 5:25, only eight seconds from the record!

Theme: LOOK MA, NO HANDS, or "cry while doing a stunt."  Three themed Down answers hint at things with a lack of hands, the word "hands" being used three additional different ways: WATER CLOCK, GHOST SHIP, and TOUGH CROWD.  Now this is a clever fun theme!  The best puzzle in a while, I think.

O'SHEA has come up a couple of times before as Irish actor Milo O'Shea.  This time it's a first name: actor O'SHEA Jackson Jr, who is the son of Ice Cube and portrayed him in Straight Outta Compton.

The MUIR Woods National Monument came up on September 12, 2018.

"Duke's NCAA div." is ACC or Atlantic Coast Conference, which has come up quite a lot before.

Actor Rami MALEK has come up a few times as well. 

Another repeat customer is California city San LUIS Obispo, of the famed gum wall.

As I noted I really enjoyed this puzzle.  The reveal was a surprise — I was wondering what the hell those three Down answers had in common — and it took a minute to click even after I put the last letter in the capper.  I love it when the puzzle's theme comes together like that.  Lately we've been having somewhat BLEH themes.  ALL TOO TRUE.  Luckily this is a high point.

Saturday's New York Times crossword puzzle solved: October 24, 2020

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My time: 18:06, two minutes faster than average and quite lucky to get it.

There was a lot of new material in this one, sly clues, and a lot of fresh fill.  In general today's grid construction is quite a NEAT TRICK.  I actually came close to saying I CAN'T while trying to finish this, so I'm surprised I beat my average.

The famously walled Spanish city of AVILA appeared a cuple of times in this blog, most recently February 4, 2019.  However, I didn't remember, and didn't put it together with the Spanish languge clue "Muralla de" AVILA.  Their official name is Muralla y Puertas.

For "categorized by district" I put *ZONED but it's ZONAL.  This messed me up a bit in the northwest.  Similarly, I put *AUTOPILOT for the clunky-sounding AUTO DRIVE.

"Sazerac cocktail ingredient" is RYE whiskey.  I'm not a drinker, and when I was, never drank RYE.  Apparently it started with brandy, though.

I am still puzzled about this one: "in-person setting for the Emmys, but not the Oscars."  PDT.  Pacific Daylight Time, surely.  But... aren't they both held on the west coast?  Am I missing something?  Is it because the Oscars are aired later?  I have no idea.

"One of 30 on a regular dodecahedron" is EDGE but I put *AXIS.  (A pyritohedron has 30 edges: six corresponding to cube faces, and 24 touching cube vertices.)  This caused me to think that its Across contact, "hole maker," ended in -axe but it's SPADE.  

I had a little trouble spelling TREF, or non-kosher.  (trif? tryf? tirf?)

"Going from petticoats to pants, once."  I was looking for a synonym for being bold or breaking tradition, like when women started wearing pants.  But that's barking up the wrong historical tree.  It's BREECHING.  I must confess I had no idea about how this one works, either.  I had to look it up.  BREECHING is the term marking the rite of passage when a young boy moved into wearing pants.  From the mid-16th century until the late 19th or early 20th century, young boys in the Western world were "unbreeched" and wore gowns or dresses until an age that varied between two and eight.  Breeching was an important rite of passage in the life of a boy, looked forward to with much excitement, and often celebrated with a small party. It often marked the point at which the father became more involved with the raising of a boy.  In more modern times in Britain, a parallel was going from short pants to trousers.

I had to reply on a lot of crosses to get BAD BOUNCE ("challenge for an infielder").

For "eternally, in religious parlance," I put *AGE ON AGE but it turned out to be AGE TO AGE.  This kept me in tangles down in the southwest corner for a while.  Especially since I stayed with *SOIL for "pileup after digging a hole" but it's a financial hole and DEBT.

HAL's earthbound "twin" in Arthur C. Clarke's 2010 is SAL 9000 (I had *SAD and thought that couldn't be right).  SAL had a female voice.

Never heard the term OBAMACRAT!  It means, obviously, a Democratic supporter of Obama, but on the net I've also seen it defined as a person who might have voted for Obama but isn't necessarily a Democrat.

The Hokies of the ACC is VA TECH, more properly abbreviated VT, sometimes VPI, and formally Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.  Hokie sports!  Go Hokies!  Ha ha!

I only didn't have trouble with this clue because of the wording: "'This is prophetic' in 'Nixon in China,' eg." Title in title is an example of what four-letter word?  ARIA.  This one is sung by Pat Nixon.  The opera was written by John Adams, not only our second president but an accomplished composer and conductor as well as veteran time-traveler.

"New Hampshire's Gate City" is NASHUA, a burg of 86,000.  Built around the now-departed textile industry, in recent decades Nashua has been swept up in southern New Hampshire's economic expansion as part of the Boston region. It was twice named "Best Place to Live in America" in annual surveys by "Money" magazine.  Why is it called Gate City?  I don't know.  Because it's on the border with Massachusetts?

I didn't know there was a Disney show called "TRON: Uprising."

Icelandic currency KRONA has some up quite a lot, but I still mistakenly spelled it with a final E.

The ABBA song "I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do" appeared on August 15, 2018.

I never remember that KSU is home to the Wildcats.

A plethora of clever clues today: "Jacket material" is COVER ART, as in book jackets.  "Function with no limits?" is not about math but refers to an ORGY.  Let's keep it PG-13, New York Times! "Takes a ride?" is one I've seen before for REPOS, so I got it fairly quickly.  "Passing options" is A, B, C, D.  (I initially had *ABC'S.)  "Intellectual property?" is IVORY TOWER.  "Digital access points" has nothing to do with technology and is FINGERTIPS, hardy har har!

This was a fun, well-thought-out, challenging Saturday!  Some of the cluing was RAZOR SHARP.  I liked "things relied on in desperation" as a clue for A WING AND A PRAYER.

Thursday's New York Times puzzle solved: March 22, 2018

My time: 11:39.

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Ross Trudeau recasts social media phrases as literal wordplay in this puzzle. "One with a lot of likes" is VALLEY GIRL.  "One with a lot of tweets" is "ROCKIN' ROBIN" (the song by Bobby Day includes the word "tweet" a lot).  "One with a lot of shares" is MAJORITY OWNER.  "One with a lot of posts" is FENCE MENDER.  And "one with a lot of followers" is the least clever one, MOTHER DUCK.

Yukons and Envoys are GMCS.  I've heard of the Yukon but not the Envoy.

"Round after the Elite Eight" is SEMIS.  I've never heard of the Elite Eight.  It means the final eight teams in the NCAA basketball tournament.  So the next round is the semifinals, I guess.

"Dutch financial giant" is ING.  It's a banking and insurance concern.  Its logo is an orange lion, alluding to its origins under the House of Orange-Nassau.  ING doesn't appear to stand for anything in particular.

EDM stands for Electronic Dance Music, and techno is a subgenre of it, I guess.

I feel like "YEA big" deserves a little more context in the clue, something like "...how one might informally approximate," or similar.  Also, I'm not satisfied with the spelling, though I also dislike the idea of "yay big."  To Google!  "Yay big" gives 371,000 results, while "YEA big" gets only 265,000, and many of those seem to be someone's hip-hop moniker.

Did you know that a walk is not counted as an AT BAT?  Me neither.

The EPA was established on December 2, 1970, during Nixon's presidency.

In Giacomo Puccini's opera "Tosca," all the central characters die.  It's set in ROME.

Arthur ASHE was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1993 by Bill Clinton.

I've never heard of the cartoon dog McBarker, but I somehow intuited he belonged to Mr. MAGOO.

On the other end of the brow spectrum, "Lucia di Lammermoor baritone" ENRICO is a baffling series of words to the uninitiated like me.  So, "Lucia di Lammermoor" is a tragic opera by Gaetano Donizetti, loosely based upon Sir Walter Scott's historical novel The Bride of Lammermoor.  One of the characters is Lord Enrico Ashton, played by a baritone.

If I watched "Game of Thrones," I would have gotten boy king JOFFREY right off instead of needing a lot of crossfill.

I forgot that Mississippi Masala director MIRA Nair appeared December 17, 2017.

ACC (Atlantic Coast Conference), the "Blue Devils' grp," has come up before more than once, with the same clue on October 29, 2017.

Clever clue: "Thyme piece?" is SILENT H.  I guess that's a "piece" of the word thyme.  Ugh?  "Hard-to-hit pitches" is HIGH CS.

More than A DAB of new and troubling stuff in this puzzle.  I did GNAT do as well as I'd like, but I MAI do better next time there's a question about Lucia di Lammermoor!

Sunday, October 29, 2017

My time: 26:41.

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I've feeling pretty crappy, so this one will be straight and dry.

This puzzle, by Ross Trudeau, has an impressively clever theme.  The themed answers are lines from movies, and their clues are the movie titles.  However, linked to those theme answers are hint clues, taking the form "[actor's name] line." This creates some puns which also serve as hints to the movie quote answers.

For example: "The Lion King" is the clue, HANKUNA MATATA is the answer, and the hint clue is "pool divider," or LANE LINE.  Get it?!  Then there's "Jerry Maguire," the clue for the answer SHOW ME THE MONEY.  The hint for this answer is "Carnival," which is a... CRUISE LINE.  Ha!  One more: "The Dark Knight" is WHY SO SERIOUS, and the hint clue is "musical score marking," or LEDGER LINE.  Okay?  OK.

I thought "canine supporters" might be *PAWS, but it's GUMS.

For "judge's seat" I didn't know why "bench" didn't fit, but it's the term of art BANC.

"Neural conductor" is AXON.  All I could think of was "ganglion."

I am the single-most clueless American male about sports, an ongoing series:

"Blue Devils' org." is ACC, which is the Atlantic Coast Conference, a collection of collegiate sports teams.  The Blue Devils are the teams of Duke University.
"Hockey feint" is DEKE. It is an abbreviation of the word decoy.
I have never heard of Jose, Bengie, and Yadler MOLINA, "catcher brothers with five World Series rings between them."

"The Merry Drinker painter" is HALS, as in Frans Hals, a Dutch painter from Haarlem.  He is also famous for Jester with a Lute and for many portraits of people sitting down with the arm over the back of the chair.

LEHI, "where Samson slew the Philistines," famously with the jawbone of an ass.  Not to be confused with EL-HI,  a way of referring to K-12 education that absolutely no one ever says.

An AD VALOREM tax (which I first erroneously spelled *AD VALORUM) is a tax levied "according to value" of the goods in question.

The SAN Gabriel Mountains are in California.  Fun fact: the highest peak in the range is Mount San Antonio, which you and I know as Mount Baldy.

I knew that the Uzi was named for its Israeli designer, but I did not know it was a diminutive of his first name, nor that his last name was Gal: UZI GAL.

Metathesiophobia is the fear of CHANGE, which I had as *CHANCE until I realized that grad schools probably want your GRE SCORES, not your *CRE SCORES.

I've never heard of jazz pianist McCoy TYNER, but I'm sure he's quite good.

GESSO returns, this time clued as "artist's base" rather than "artist's surface."  A-ha!

SLR in camera lingo is "single-lens reflex," which a mirror and lens show the photographer the exact image being captured.

And I'VE reached the end.  Maybe tomorrow I will RYES to the occasion and be less boring.