Excellent debut Jamey! I enjoyed it and have no nits to pick - - except I have to figure out why AIDEMEMOIRE (French?) is an appropriate answer to a totally English clue.
I’ve never NIPped a PINK MARTINI - but the reference to “Pabst Blue Ribbon” took me back FIFTY years to The Pleasant Lake Tavern - a very rusticated, run down (and later to burn down), lakeside tavern about half a mile from my first home. They served PBR long-necks out of a cooler - - full of ICE - - not a “refrigerator” - - so they were truly “cold ones”. And they had a couple of pool tables - with timeworn felt and a quarter feeder to drop the balls for racking. And most of the cues were a little less than straight.
But I had a perpetual thirst going (from the effort of a top-to-bottom rework on our first house) and my neighbor from across the street (a journeyman plumber) would - when he got home - frequently holler across the road, “How `bout a couple of PBR’s?” - - - and we would put a dent in the rest of the evening - - much to the distress of our respective spouses.
THEM were the “Good old days”!!
An “aide memoire” is simply a memorandum one dictates to him/herself after leaving a meeting or encounter whose impact may be felt in any number of ways in coming days. It is a (self-serving) attempt to chronicle the events contemporaneously in case they crop up in a legal or other perilous setting in the future.
A good example of an aide memoire are the notes James Comey dictated after his meetings with President Trump.
2
Too many abbreviations in this puzzle.
Fridays are my favorite puzzle, difficult but with no fancy tricks.
This one fit well, and from a new composer!
Re the mini: RAWR?? Please ...
3
@Ron
It’s also what the dinosaur toy on peppa pig says.
I liked this puzzle quite a bit. The alcohol selection was varied. Loved the long fill and clues. Very clever, and the PIGLATIN was just plain weird!
This is way off topic, but I have to share a conversation I had earlier with a business professional:
BP: Oh, today’s St. Patrick’s Day isn’t it?
Me: Not quite, it’s the Ides of March... bad day for Caesar.
BP: Hmm. Yeah. And why’d he have a bad day?
Me: Uh, he was killed by the senate. Stabbed. Even Brutus got in on it. Et tu Brute?
BP: How about that. (He nods slowly.) Hmmm. So when’s St. Patrick’s Day?
Diplomas on the wall, framed nicely. Confidence in his ability to advise was not instilled. If not getting Shakespeare in college, how about world history?
Sorry that PIGLATIN reminded me of this when it was such humorous fill.
Nicely done Jamey Smith!
:-)
6
It’s a quibble, but I want to say a fairer/more accurate clue for 44 across might have been “Leader of Troy” instead of “Ancient Troy,” since “alpha” wasn’t the expected answer
2
@Steve,
"Ancient" was needed to clue this as Greek instead of English. Maybe "Leader of Troy, long ago"?
2
Steve,
Would I be quibbling with your quibble to point out that "ancient" was not capitalized in the clue ... and that the entry was to be only three letters?
1
Off-topic but well worth it for this audience. The following is an exact transcript of the condensed weather report as it appeared in the upper RH corner of the front page of today's NYT. Is proofreading a lost skill?
Late Edition
Today, mostly cloudy, showers and
storms, mild, high 64. Tonight,
morning showers, clearing late, low
43. Tomorrow, clouds and sunshine,
high 50. Weather map, Page A18.
4
@Dr W where’s the problem
2
@Ezekiel
Clouds and sunshine, perhaps? Which is essentially the definition of "partly cloudy," at least during daylight hours.
@Hildy Johnson&Ezekiel
"tonight, morning showers"
2
I had that problem for a bit, and I also had PINAMARTINI rather than PINKMARTINI, somehow in my mind confusing grapefruit with pineapple. I’m not a drinker so ... maybe Pina Martini could be or should be a thing. Or maybe I should be a drinker.
4
@Mr. Mark
I had PINEMARTINI for a while. Hard for me to break that association with gin.
OT (again). I mentioned yesterday that I've been reviewing old (pre-Shortz) puzzles for errors.
One thing I've noticed is the surprising number of very common words and phrases that have appeared in older puzzles but never in the Shortz era. Two of them jumped out at me today:
No COMMENT and no COMMENTS. I have to think about that one.
1
@Rich in Atlanta
Oh, No LINKING or DIALOGUE either.
Funny that the Mini has "Competitor in a regatta" and the puzzle itself has "Regatta host"
3
@Gerhard
Synchronicity strikes again? Who can compute the odds of it being a random occurance? Or is it the invisible hand of the editor of the Puzzles section?
1
A decently clued puzzle for the most part, and I solved it unaided in a better than usual time for a Friday. But gentle advice for the constructor:
"will might change" TENSES I don't get this.
pig latin= Be Trash?
No warning that the mnemonic device is a french phrase rather than the English "memory aide" Luckily I speak French, so ERE was not a stumbling block.
1
@Babel64
The definition of aide-memoire appears in the Merriam-Websters dictionary.
2
@Babel64
Concerning TENSES, take the verb "to go".
The 1st person present tense of the verb "to go" is "go". The 1st person future tense of "to go" is also "go", provided the word "will" immediately proceeds "go".
2
@Babel64
Although Deb (and the editor she asked) say this doesn't apply to Mr. Shortz, I'm sure he would change the tense of a clue if it didn't match the tense of the answer, if necessary.
I have one quibble. BASSOS at 45D strikes me as contrived. In English they are basses. Basso being Italian, it seems the plural ought to be bassi.
That said, immediately after finishing this puzzle last night I happened to work the puzzle from November 7, 1995 and found the same word (clued “Ones deeply involved in opera?”) at 25A.
8
@Rick Montgomery ... aah. Another case of kwinkydink. Your mention of "bassi" brought Shirley to mind and there was only one of her and she wasn't a bass either. Go figure.
@Rick Montgomery This is late, so probably no one will see it, but I just had to say that in my musical world, no one would call the guy with the deep rumbling voice a "bass". He's a basso, and the section he sings with are the bassos.
Yeesh, from the comments it appears I'm the only one who trundled along to well past the 1:00:00+ mark!
Where I got held up:
20A: "Output" cluing didn't immediately indicate a plural answer to me?
27A: Missing the "et" that would indicate French plural
38A: "N.B.A." in clue made me think answer would have an abbreviation, should have used "NBA"
63A: No indicator of French (though I got it by guessing)
4D & 22A: total Natick for me! Too young :)
5D: Crimson indicates the answer will be a mascot. Muddled the NW far too long for me.
Overall, a fine puzzle, just far from my favorite due to some of the nits in cluing and difficult (for me) short crossings. Could certainly not do better myself, I promise!
4
@Ryan
“Too young”
Don’t rub it in!
2
@Ryan
N.B.A. is required by NYT (N.Y.T.?) style.
Crimson is the team name, not a mascot. The mascot is John Harvard.
Libertarians are current. Not before anyone’s time.
AIDE-MEMOIRE is considered an English word. Google it. It IS, of course a French loanword, but then again, so is mayonnaise. Likewise EAU, albeit usually used in conjunction with perfumes more than regular water; even so, EAUX is not just an acceptable English plural, but the preferred one, as per Merriam-Webster.
As for the plural OUTPUT, you just have to stop thinking that plurals have to end in S. OUTPUT means all that is produced, and most people don’t stop after making one of an item.
1
But Perrier and Évian are French waters, therefore eaux.
The ATOMSMASHER referenced in 55A is CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.
In January, CERN announced a plan for a new particle accelerator, the Future Circular Collider, 4 times longer than the LHC. Cost? A mere €9 billion to €21 billion.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00173-2
5
Overall I liked this puzzle and thought it was worthy of the Friday slot. Congratulations to Jamey Smith for an impressive debut. I do have one nit to pick --- I thought the answer to "Quick turnaround" was always spelled "uey" not "uie."
4
That "Quick turnaround" word specializes in being spelled each time in the way you aren't expecting. I seem to recall that there are more variant spellings, but every one of them is counter-intuitive.
2
@Leapfinger ... this would not be an issue if you didn't miss the turn in the first place. Pismo Beach comes to mind.
1
I couldn't get AIDE MEMOIRE (never heard of it) or CALORIE BOMB. I could have gotten the latter had the crossings in the SW been friendlier. But OME? PBR?? Next to each other??? Seriously????
I couldn't get PINK MARTINI either. But that one's on me. After all, both individual words are common and the crossings were all fair.
So I must say, this is not one of my favorite unthemed offerings. IMO, the best ones have long answers that are tough, fair, and most importantly, gettable.
PIG LATIN/ATOM SMASHER had me so confused for the longest time. Unless it is a recent meme I missed, I don't think "be trash" is really a phrase.
5
Krista,
Please join those of us who don't need to consider whether "be trash" is really a phrase because we think the only PIG LATIN in the clue *is* "ashtray" for "trash" (which is purchased on eBay).
2
Fortunately, I'm not highly persnickety about my stats since I left off last night without closing the window and racked up a solve time of 10:09:56. Ouch.
Overall a tough Friday (not 10 hours tough, but still) and an impressive debut, second one in as many days. Nicely done. Definitely worth the money.
7
@Hildy Johnson
Been there, done that, and on a Thursday as well.
That was actually less crushing to my (also fortunately not so worried about) stats than dozing off on a Monday with my thumb on the tab key of my laptop. Usually, with the window left open and no activity, the puzzle will automatically paused (except, apparently, on occasional Thursday nights) - but repeated tabbing definitely keeps it open. Interestingly - the 2+ hour Monday solve took a lot longer to recover from with my usual sub 15 minute average than the 8 or 10 hour Thursday with my 1+ hour average. Take heart - I've been solving now for about 2 years, and even with one full night in there on Thursdays, my average is now down to less than an hour. Time heals all wounds - and smooths out all averages.
1
Deb, your dates for yesterday and today are wrong! Yesterday was March 14 (my mom’s birthday), today is March 15 (my birthday).
Beware the Ides! :)
1
Alyssa G,
Which of Deb's dates are you seeing? The column says March 14 at the top because it was released on March 14 (last night); in the Wordplay columns listing, it shows March 15 for the puzzle date. (Similarly, yesterday's says March 13 at the top and March 14 in the listing.)
2
@Barry, perhaps it only stood out to me because I definitively know what date today is, and I’ve glossed over the rest? Hadn’t noticed that before. Interesting.
Alyssa G,
I'm used to it, but it still bothers me to see Thursday's date over FRIDAY PUZZLE.
1
Why stylize just one of two letters in EBay? ‘eBay’ refers to the site, so ‘Ebay’—not ‘EBay’—would be more accurate for the clue, no?
2
@Austin
That's what I think: "Ebay trash," not "be trash."
1
@retired, with cat
First letters of clues are always uppercase.
This puzzle, and more specifically AIDE MEMOIRE, just pushed me down into the mid-March slush and took all my lunch money. Doubled my average Friday time getting stuck in that SE area.
I had everything right except an ‘E’ in place of the ‘O,’ in MEMOIRE. I’ve been trained to swap between BASSES and BASSI, but never expected BASSOS. Just one more blind spot to work toward eliminating, I guess.
I still feel raw and defeated. I’ll be eager and girded for your next one, Mr. Smith! Good puzzle for the ides.
7
My birthday gift today was hitting 600 straight. Thanks again to the emus for correcting two high-anxiety-inducing statistic bugs along the way.
Today’s near disaster was convincing myself that a pinamartini was a thing, even though I was troubled by the idea of a cooper making casas, but hey.
My advice to nascent streakers: blow one before it’s too late.
9
Congratulations! Wow, that’s a streak!
2
@Doggydoc. congratulation on the 600 'straight' [hehheh] and on the birthday as well.
I think you got another present from the emus, seeing you made it with last sentence in tact. I had an innocent reply elsewhere mentioning those Shaeffer ink-pens that had a little rubber bladder inside, to squeeze air out and s**k up the ink, and that is pining somewhere in quarantine. So you might have had a little special birthday treatment. ;)
1
@Leapfinger, do you think? Now I feel doubly (triply?) awarded.
I liked those little bladder pens too, possibly because, as a child of depression-era parents, I felt terrible about throwing away the empty cartridges.
1
Alas, a wrong letter! Had the clue at 27A been ALL in French (et instead of and) I might have thought to use a French pluralization instead of using an S. PROTAS did not make much sense, but since I didn't know the crossing beer for sure (Schiefer? Schaefer?) I just moved on and failed to go back or run the alphabet.
And no hint whatever at 63A that it was to be a French phrase. Is our new constructor a French major? AID TO MEMORY wasn't working.
No room for ATOMIC COLLIDER
Al.....GORE? UNSER? iBABA?
Recalling the standoff at Quemoy and MATSU...did not know it was an island chain! Maybe next puzzle, Jamey can put in MUTSU (a very nice variety of apple) and MITSU(bishi)....? Just an idea.
For 21D I really wanted our son's name! (He is a Son of the Golden West--and 25 years after we moved away, he returned as a computer engineer, now living and working there in Sunnyvale.) Tsk. Not enough spaces!
Okay Jamey, you get to hand my old gray head on your trophy wall ...THIS time.
6
Great Friday-worthy puzzle, Mr. Smith. Thank you!
1
Congratulations, Mr. Smith! A challenging debut puzzle. I had EAUs for far too long; it is not the first time I have had to X out S and add X.
Loved the puzzles:
X EAU X EAU X EAU
10
I had sUIcIDE shot before OUTSIDESHOT. Anybody else?
I thought all of the three letter answers in the NW and SE helped me with my solve which by no means was easy. This was a most enjoyable Friday "struggle."
Thank you, Jamey Smith, and congratulations on your debut!
FWIW, I liked this Friday just fine. EBay ashtray made perfect sense to me. EBay stays as it is. Trash gets PIGLATINized. On EBay an ashtray is an item unlikely to get any bids and destined for the trash heap. We ex-smokers all have a ton of them in cupboards or under plants to catch the water runoff.
I thought the long answers were challenging and fun. NAPOLEONIII was a shocker. He must have been cheesed to miss the Emperor Era. CALORIEBOMB you bet, or a heart attack on a plate. I wanted collider instead of SMASHER, but SMASHER sounds like more fun. I’d like a tour of Cern!
I have no complaint with the fill either. I was happy to find TIA as a gimme because there weren’t many, except maybe old UIE.
No carping here on the constructor or Will. I thought this Friday was dandy.
3
"EBay ashtray made perfect sense to me. EBay stays as it is. Trash gets PIGLATINized."
Hartley,
I agree, and echo earlier thoughts here that "Be" in PL would be written Ebay, not EBay (as in the clue).
2
@Hartley
NAPOLÉON III didn’t miss the Emperor era; he brought it back.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_III
Unless you mean “miss” in the sense of “longed for.”
@Hartley
Clearly nobody ever required that you read _The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon_ and then follow the path of the family tree through its history... This bit of trivia does me absolutely no good most days, but when I put the N in Box 17, Boom!
1
This puzzle made me a HAPPY CAMPER, offering plenty of resistance, but I'll still have to go back and read y'all to see if someone has made sense out of the clue for PIG LATIN (48A). I just can't get that from EBay ashtray. Ashtray = trash, but what on earth is EBay?
I was delighted with ITS ME as the answer to "Caller ID". I didn't know exactly what Will was going to be changing over at 14D, but I got the Will Shortz reference right off the bat. Not such a surprise that that's the way my mind is working today. I also learned where the world's largest ATOM SMASHER is located, and I'll try to work it into a conversation at a party sometime.
I don't know a lot about CASTE SYSTEMs, but I question the 65 Across clue. Can't you be an individual in your own CASTE? What's to stop you? Who's to stop you? Just as long as you don't try to move to anyone else's CASTE, right? I would have clued this answer: "Social hierarchy that wants to keep you from going anywhere."
An enjoyable Friday that required plenty of thinking.
3
@Nancy
Not as good as Thursday ; )
2
No one else thought 14D referred to WILL Shortz, then? Just me?
6
Elly,
Deb did (as she mentioned in the column).
4
@Elly Trickett
Guilty, as charged; but only for a TENSE(S) moment.
1
@Elly Trickett
I did; still would, if not for Deb's comment.
1
Fun Friday filling! Congrats on a debut puzzle. Lots of gems buried within.
1
Letter Boxed
Not too difficult:
D - Y 10
Y - P 4
1
@DH
Ditto.
Cern, baby Cern. I proudly sussed 55a and will bask in that illuminating aura. Today was a best/worst of times enigmatic embroilment that ultimately dead-ended smack dab in mid-grid. The cruciverbal mashup of CUP/TAU/Ig Lay Aton Pay GAMES and VEGA laid to ruin any expectation of my racking up two solves in a row...Welcome to WP Jamey Smith, I like your creative style. Congrats; I hope to see more of your craft soon...The late Gord Downie was a devout hockey fan and fronted Tragically HIP. This is a paean to the WHL’s Brandon “Wheat Kings.”
https://youtu.be/agr_wTBvhJs
Warily,
Bru
3
Not sure I could have finished this one without my son, who put in almost every long answer. I believe an exact quote from him was "I've never felt this smart in my life!"
Unfortunately, we somehow ended up thinking OFFSIDESHOT was correct, and even though FIE and FNN didn't seem right, we just weren't seeing the alternative.
Congrats on your debut, Jamey!
5
Lots of fun long entries in this one! Congratulations and thank you to Mr. Smith!
Two questions for the brilliant, learned people here(you know who you are!):
1. In Pig Rome(which I assume is where they speak Pig Latin), would the B in EBay be capitalized?
2. In merrie olde ancient Troy, did the residents call their home Troy, which does start with tau, or did they call it something like Ilium, which doesn't start that way(although I hear they had Topless Towers)?
3
@ad absurdum,
I'm not a Pig Latin scholar but I did also wonder about the capitalization of the "B" in "Ebay."
I think the Greeks alternately referred to ancient Troy as Τροία and Iλιον but since it's a crossword, I'm not give this issue one more iota of thought.
7
Edit:
"I'm not going to give"
Morning Poem
Not enough REM
No PEP
My HIP is ELD
Time for a UIE
That would EBAY EDBAY
How about EAUX?
7
What a GREAT debut! Very tough, but very fair. Sometimes a long, difficult solve is a slog, that when finished makes you go *meh*. This was not one of those grids. This was more like rock climbing. A foothold here, a place to put your hands and work your way up there. And when reaching the top, you look down and exclaim, "That was really fun!". Thanks Jamey and Will.
8
Strictly speaking, "will" is not a future tense. English doesn't have a future tense. There are different ways of referrring to future time. "Will" just happens to be one of them.
2
Hi Neil,
Still strictly speaking, English can *also* be said to have *four* future tenses...
https://www.ef.edu/english-resources/english-grammar/future/
1
(I will not be found to have commented on this topic.)
9
@Barry Ancona
This is a split between serious grammarians, who take Neil’s position, and grammar school/ESL teachers, which is EF’s position.
As an ESL teacher, I always had to teach what would make sense to the students. It wouldn’t be fruitful to tell them that English didn’t have a future tense.
But true linguists would say that English has a modal construction and some other expressions which cover the sense of a future tense without there being an actual future tense, with inflections.
1
Deb, I too failed to understand TENSES until I read your column. I thought “Will” must be be “volition,” as in “will power,” but that didn’t make sense.
Really tricky clues today. Thanks for a great puzzle, Mr Smith! (& thanks for the shoutout to PINK MARTINI. Love their Auld Lang Syne.)
Not too great with my geography, I fortunately hesitated before putting lake ONtario at 24D. Only scar today was BASSES for BASSOS.
Happy Friday, Everyone !
:-c)€
1
I liked this one a lot. Hard enough to make me feel very good about filling it (without googling!) in little over half an hour (excuse my bragging but this is a rare occasion for me!).
Don't you love it when an answer puzzled together from the crossings makes you actually learn something interesting? The connection between the very 21st-century Macron and Napoléon III was one of those.
6
@Robrecht
No need to apologize! That's a great solve time for this tough grid!
1
@Steve Faiella
Thanks! Somehow, to borrow the rock climbing metaphor from your other comment, all the footholds along the way were perfectly placed for me.
1
No splash fill-ins today, just ticking off boxes in a scattershot fashion; a slow march to victory, like a hard fought chess win, where the winner feels like it could have gone either way. Gratitude for ATOM SMASHER and EMERALD ISLE, the springboards that pushed me just enough to make it to the finish line, and the childlike-silly PIG LATIN clue/answer -- the laugh that rang out the moment that answer hit me provided the perfect comic relief.
3
Sea monster for 32A as I cannot read the clue as written, messed up the middle til i realized pro = good.
Otherwise 32 minutes of joy.
Thanks
1
@dk
I had SEAFARER in there for a while.
1
Pretty typical Friday for me. Nothing, nothing, oh wait, I know that. Very few short gimmes and then I resorted to tentative guesses on short answers until I would have just enough crosses for one of the long answers to dawn on me, starting with HAPPYCAMPER. Ended up being a quite enjoyable solve. The long section down the west side was the last area I worked out, with HUDSONRIVER being the turning point there.
My very educated mother did these for many years, and I'm sure she would have done better on this than I did. But at least I didn't give battle in vain.
3
@Rich in Atlanta
"My very educated mother" is a start of a now outdated MNEMONIC DEVICE for the planets of the solar system. My Very Educated Mother Just Sent Us Nine Pumpkins.
Poor little Pluto was always my favorite, mostly because its moons had the coolest names (Charon, Styx, Nix, Hydra, and Kerberos).
Long live the Oxford Comma!
6
@Steve Faiella Mine served us new potatoes.
But, nonetheless:
I thank you,
my mother thanks you,
and Richard of York thanks you.
2
@Rich in Atlanta & Steve Faiella, SRSLY? They were Pickles. Pickles.
2
I got how "will" changes tense, but how is "UIE" a quick turnaround? Preparing to be embarrassed...
1
@Kurt Hansen
UIE, or more commonly UEY, is a shorthand for U-turn.
1
@Kurt Hansen
U N
T R
U
4
U turn in some circles is known as a.....
1
This was pretty good for a debut, but tough to follow yesterday. Most the long entries execute, which is the biggest hurdle for a Friday. CALORIE BOMB, HAPPY CAMPER, and OUTSIDE SHOT are my favorites. EMERALD ISLE is meh, but AIDE-MEMOIRE was the only real groan. I've heard of it, you can tell it's French-ish from memory aid, but no one says it and if they did it'd be hard not to roll your eyes at them. Biggest hitches were ERE before ELD (making actual ERE wait). Then EMOrap before POP since it's much more common rn than EMOPOP, but got a chuckle thinking back to 2007 when EMOPOP was popular. Naticked big time at SCHAE_ER/CLEE_ never seen the beer (we drink Natty Boh here) and CLEEF is waaaay BMT and mostly in Westerns which isn't my cuppa. Plenty of glue holding this together, which is fine, but not so fun.
Good Fill: EMOPOP METIME PROTAX NOSIREE(kinda cute) PIGLATIN ADVENTURER ATOMSMASHER CALORIEBOMB CASTESYSTEM HAPPYCAMPER NAPOLEONIII OUTSIDESHOT PINKMARTINI; the longs hit so no complaints
Bad Fill: AAA AMA ELD ERE OME TIA TNN UIE ADAS(agree w/ Deb here) BONA EINE VEGA CLEEF IWERE MATSU REICE YALIE(as clued) MERRIE ; nothing egregious, but it can pile up
Best Clues: 25-D Issa of HBO's "Insecure" (ask and you shall receive! everyone watch this show) ; 14-D Will might change them (trickyyy)
Worst Clues: 5-D Crimson opponent (opponent implies sports which would be the Bulldogs IMO) ; 2-A "I ___ Camera" (1950s play and film)...eh
tl;dr Solid debut! :) only a couple nits
3
@Will From College - "Yalie as clued" reminded me that I had intended to comment on it. Crimson rival should be Bulldog. Team moniker for team moniker. I knew it was supposed to be Yalie, but didn't enjoy filling it in.
12
Olivia Jade is about to get kicked out of USC...
Will,
It would be after the fact, apparently...
https://www.tmz.com/2019/03/14/lori-loughlin-daughters-olivia-isabella-usc-bullying-college-bribery/
2
@David Connell
Or Daily News (shortened to DAILY). School paper for school paper.
2
SPELLING BEE
Lbhiory
27 words, 87 points, 1 pangram
B x 8, H x 7, I x 1, L x 5, O x 2, R x 4
4L x 16, 5L x 7, 6L x 2, 8L x 1, 9L x 1
4 5 6 8 9 Tot
B 5 2 1 - - 8
H 2 2 1 1 1 7
I 1 - - - - 1
L 3 2 - - - 5
O 2 - - - - 2
R 3 1 - - - 4
Tot 16 7 2 1 1 27
16
Hints:
Look for adjectives and adverbs.
There is one adverb that is sure to draw a complaint.
Not allowed:
BIRL, BOLLY, BROLLY, HOLO, LOLLY, OBOL
2
@Ron O.
If you mean the 5R yes. That was my last try, on the principle of throw Ys at words to see what sticks.
6
@Frances
That’s a good strategy. Also look for an adjective that can be made into an adverb.
Nice use of cromulent. Words like that embiggen the smallest (wo)man
5
Thumbs up from me. I didn't really notice the 3-letter entries because I was focused on the ten robust 11-letter entries, the inclusion of which made ten of the 3-letter entries unavoidable because 15 = 11 1 3. You can't really rework the grid when you have a bunch of 11's.
1
I think this puzzle has a theme: excessive self-indulgence and what can happen.
ME TIME, IT'S ME, NO SIREE
CALORIE BOMB
SCHAEFER, PBR, PINK MARTINI
ATARI, GAMES
HIT, HAPPY CAMPER
ODS
Just my POV.
20
@Henry Su
Amazing. The dark twist at the end was the masterstroke.
1
Mr. Smith's debut puzzle provided a Friday-tough but smooth solve.
There were just two places where I hitched. One was AIDE MEMOIRE, which I figured was a French loan word but I was nonetheless unsure of the "r" crossing with ERE so I left that square blank.
The other place was in the N, where I first had DAISY PICKER, which threw off the crossings. I also could not believe that someone with what looked like the Roman numeral III in his name could ever be le Président de la République française. (As Fact Boy points out, he turned out to be an imperialist at heart.) Finally I stopped thinking too hard and replaced 1A with HAPPY CAMPER and the crossings gave me NAPOLÉON.
Thanks, Mr. Smith!
@Henry Su,
I’d give your comment a reco but it would ruin its contrast with yours just below (or above, depending) which, as of now, has 15 recos. Together, they form a kind of conceptual art piece, which I hope this comment does not spoil.
Not much of a drinker, so this is my favorite PINK MARTINI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0JREwyJK2M
I thought the was a very good debut puzzle! It was right at my Friday average, and a bit easier than yesterday's. Might have done it a bit faster if I'd gone looking for clues that I knew the answers to.
CALORIE BOMB reminded me of the Heart Attack Grill that started up in Arizona in 2005 with its single-, double-, triple- and quadruple-bypass burgers and potatoes fried in lard. It's still a thing, but only in Las Vegas. It's not a place I would patronize.
4
@JayTee
Ha, love that you said this! I used to live down the street from the one in Phoenix, this place was so gross and sleazy. Bizarre little restaurant that was always very empty.
@JayTee
Don't the wait staff dress in nurse's uniforms? I would go there *once* for the experience, but never again. Like Five Guys.
@Steve Faiella
Not only did the waitresses dress as nurses, they dressed the patrons in hospital gowns, and anyone who weighed in over 350 pounds ate for free.
Morbidly fascinated by it when I heard about it because I was working in healthcare at the time. I'd have gone by it just to see it, but I'd eat somewhere a bit healthier.
The crossing of the beer and cable TV wasn’t palatable to an abstaining cord cutter like me...
otherwise an enjoyable Friday offering!
3
Well that one was a pizza cake. Barely half my Friday average. I enjoyed it though.
PIG LATIN made me think of ubbi dubbi, a language game dating to when my kids were young watchers of Zoom. It’s pretty entertaining to hear fluent speakers converse in it. Didn’t care much for be trash as a reasonable PIG LATIN phrase, though. That would be bubbe trubash in ubbi dubbi.
5
@David Meyers
I’m not a fluent speaker any longer, but at 50 today, I was a Zoom kid & very much remember ubby-dubby!
I wubbunder ibbif ubby-dubby has ebbever been ibbin a pubbuzzle. Probbabbably nobbot.
I even still remember their mailing address because they sang it on every episode: Write ZOOM! Z-double-o-m, Box 350, Boston mass 0... 2, 1... 3, 4
—F
@Floyd
I think the instruction was “send it to Zoom...”. The only part I remember is the ZIP code and the tune that accompanied it. Couldn’t have told you the Box number. Trivia question: Anybody know what ZIP stands for and what it replaced?
Nice puzzle. Question: why "just love" and not just "love" for 7D?
I think just here is used as an emphatic word. Think of “I love it” vs. “I just LOVE it”
7
@Jy Thank you. That sounds good to me.
An unexpectedly quick solve for me; about half the time I took on Thursday’s puzzle (and half my average Friday solve time). Sometimes puzzle answers flow smoothly, and sometime extracting them is like pulling teeth.
SCHAEFER beer was the brand of choice for my grandparents when I grew up in Newark in the 1950s. I can remember sitting at their kitchen table when I was probably ten years old, trying my first sip of beer. “Ugh! Who would want to drink this!” was my reaction. How times have changed...
2
I remember the Schaefer Circle of Sports sponsored the Knicks in the late 1960s, and Schaefer sponsored the Mets in the early 1970s. A regional beer sponsoring professional teams in a major market. How the times have changed.
1
@Brian
Before the Giants and Dodgers moved west,
Schaefer and Rheingold had them. Ballantine sponsored the Yankees. Three teams. three beers.
@Ron O. Also grew up in NJ, but in the 60s and 70s, so I remember the jingle, "Schaefer is the one beer to have when you're having more than one"...
4
and Elke
My POV 0n 23D is : "a double cheeseburger with extra bacon" is NOT a CALORIE BOMB if you are on the Mosaic Law diet and don't eat it ;)
TIL- AIDEMEMOIRE , and that two Singers share a first name : ISAAC Bashevis S. and the sewing machine guy.
Interesting fill; congratulations on a nice debut, Jamey S.
5
and Elke
My CC clue- if you want to RE ICE a rink surface, a Zamboni comes in handy. 11D
1
@Robert
Yay for I.B. SInger. A great short story writer.
3
Great debut, Jamey. We look forward to many more.
I had PROTAS for the longest time because the clue for 27 across had the English "and" rather than the French "et." That kind of goes against the normal clue protocol, from my POV.
10
Now that you mention it, I agree, though I just left the X/S choice to the cross, so wasn’t bothered by it. OTOH, how would EAUS ever be right?
2
@Wags, I think it's the accent on Évian that does it. The product itself is stylized as evian.
3
David (Meyers), I looked up EAUS on XwordInfo and it has been used, but only twice.
From what I know, a Pink Martini is traditionally made with vodka. You CAN, however, make a gimlet with gin and grapefruit.
Otherwise, a food and challenging puzzle!
👍👍
3
@Emily
Was that a Freudian slip for "good"?
1
@Emily
Round here, we call gin-and-juice cocktails Greyhounds.
Grapefruit juice, that is.
An enjoyable puzzle and a debut worth celebrating.
I was wary when I saw the number of 3-letter entries to be filled - and some were not entirely fun - but the interesting bits certainly more than balanced that in my books.
Two words that I lift up as the word-history buff: eld and "if I were".
O / E alternation in old Germanic words is slowly disappearing from English, but we still have some. Eld/elder/eldest is an interesting halfway-case just now, dying out for sure, but still encountered especially when there is a nice distinction between old (in absolute time) and old (in relative time). My elder brother, my eldest aunt. An older school, the oldest school. "In days of eld" is fairly well obsolete, but "in olden days" (with the old Germanic suffix) still hangs on.
R / S(Z) alternation is another feature of old Germanic and particularly when the letter is sandwiched between vowels. In the old Runic alphabet, the Z rune could be read either as Z or as R. We see it in the verb to be: IS / ARE; WAS / WERE. It curiously survives in the pairing HURRAH and HUZZAH.
16
@David Connell Thanks for that, David, most interesting.
@David Connell,
In case you haven't seen it, there is an NYT article today on a theory that dietary changes occasioned by the transition to agriculture (and thus softer foods) altered our bite configuration, thereby making it possible for words starting with "f" and "v" sounds to enter our languages, https://nyti.ms/2TG0Bvy.
1
The long stuff made this worth the price of admission and the short gluey stuff kept me going in a few spots. I loved each of the ten 11-letters entries — they made me a very HAPPY CAMPER.
SCHAEFER beer will be an instant trip down memory lane for many, myself included. Same with Lee Van CLEEF. Nice that they MET.
Two great debuts in a row. Bodes well for a LOAMY weekend.
2
“Schmidt’s of Philadelphia; Schmidt’s’ll ring the bell for ya.”
1
@David Meyers
At the other side of the state Iron City is the name. Now brewed in Latrobe, PA.
Btw, thanks for pointing me toward the Wikipedia article on the Taconic. I didn't expect such depth of detail. Great stuff.
1
@Al in Pittsburgh
You’re welcome! RE: Iron City, I was born where you live now and grew up in NW PA, so I’m very conscious of it. I was a big fan of Rolling Rock when I was younger. In fact, it was my house beer for a decade or so. (Also from Latrobe, as I’m sure you know.)
I think my first fountain pen was a SCHAEFER, so that was easier to remember than the beer. Never did get in the habit of solving crosswords in ink. Now that I'm doing them online, I can say, like Frasier's fiancee on "Cheers" when asked if that's what she did, that I type them. :-)
7
@Michael Dover - as a fountain pen fanatic, I remind you that Sheaffer is the way the pen maker spells the name. (Headquarters right up the road from here.)
2
@David Connell
Thanks for the correction. Since it's been more than 60 years since I owned one, I'm not surprised that I didn't remember that (If I ever did know it in the first place).
@David Connell, one of the things I thought to be a good idea when I used one, was to hang on to the cap so I could be sure to get it back when I loaned it to anyone. Later I learned that some tribesmen somewhere carried the cap (only) in their breast pocket as status symbol.
1
Charles-Louis Napoléon Bonaparte was the youngest French president before Macron; his alter ego Napoléon III was France’s oldest Emperor. Batman is not a wealthy young man about town, and Superman is not a reporter at the Daily Planet.
7
22A. Jamey Smith. 7 letters. Answer: SHOWOFF.
It's meant with respect. Having your first puzzle on a Friday is quite an accomplishment. Kudos!
13
in ancient Troy, NY, I well remember the SCHAEFER beer ads and PIG LATIN. We indeed were HAPPY CAMPERS!
5
judy d,
On the HUDSON RIVER, no less.
4
@judy d and Barry
Yes, a few gimmes for us ancient New Yorkers. All the short fill made this a quick one.
Lots of variety: Greek, Latin (2 kinds), French, and German. SCHAEFER, PBR, with CASKS and CUP to hold them.
As I recall, PIGLATIN and the stars of the summer triangle were discussed here recently.
3
@judy d Schaefer was my dad’s beer of choice (or, Genesee, which appeared very recently in the grid) and yes, we lived in Troy, NY (I still live 10 miles from good ole Troy)..😳
5
I hope Jamey Smith is a HAPPY CAMPER seeing his first puzzle in The Times. i'll save my POV for later.
6
@Barry Ancona
He gets extra points for providing a photo...and of course, I meant AHNG my old gray head, but stiff hands make typos...
1