Western Grouse

TIME INC is one of those answers that makes me angry. (You wouldn't like me when I'm angry. But you might not like me anyway, so...)

Great clues, awesome answers. One quibble. The old ball and chain would be a flail, not a MACE (which is a weighted ball on the end of a fixed shaft. add some spikes and it's a morning star.) As a dweeb I got a little hung up on that bit of pedantry, which cost me some time. WIFE didn't fit, though.

Hey, Martin! I just noticed as I was bookmarking today's column that -- I think -- David's name doesn't appear anywhere? Clearly you were very caught up in analyzing and explaining his work! And I notice (for the first time) that there is no attribution under the constructor's comments. Hey, all of us regulars know David Steinberg, the man whose puzzles need no introduction. But I knew you'd want to correct that. Hasta manana...

I enjoyed this a lot, but got stuck because 44A was obviously ROUTS... except that it wasn't. I don't think I've ever heard ROMPS in that context.

OT: In an article in the NYT, referencing the "DOTARD" saga, there is a bit of incomplete statistics: "The word has appeared on the pages of The New York Times just 10 times since 1980, always in the paper’s arts coverage. “A favorite theme of the medieval fabliau is the May-December tale of the dotard husband cuckolded by his young wife,” began one book review in 1986." But that doesn't include the 6 additional times since 1980 that it appeared in the NYT CROSSWORD PUZZLE. Doesn't the puzzle "appear on the pages" of the NYT? see: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/22/world/asia/trump-north-korea-dotard.html

Straight from the temporary Director (me) of the Glucose For Comfort Department: It used to be an O'HENRY bar, and THIN Mints and BAZOOKA Bubble Gum and Vanilla Fudge SWIRL Ice Cream and TAPIOCA Puddin' and ICING ON THE CAKE -in the cake, under the cake and on the mixing bowl and whisks. For an antidote, a yard or two of Ballantine India ALE, guzzled, to snap me out of my glycemic coma. Needless to say (but I will) the brewski was a poor selection of means to an end. You can fight fire with fire, but introducing one poison to combat another is ill-advised. My DOCTOR has proscribed all of the above. Last check-up I received a gold STAR when I reported my weight to be under 200. It has been a good long while since I have SEEN that kind of readout. Never a reformed sugar junkie, I'm now an informed one.

A rather tough Friday puzzle with two triple stacks that I loved! It was all over the map with entries from disparate realms of the universe. But any puzzle with MI CASA ES SU CASA in it has to be great. Also loved seeing THREE-CAR GARAGE, I NEVER SAID THAT, ICING ON THE CAKE, TAPIOCA (one of my favorite desserts), SHTICK, and HOMERIC. This challenge required going around the puzzle repeatedly to all the huge seas of white space to see if any new insight has occurred since the last visit to that area of the puzzle. Finally thought of (yard of) ALE, which led to finishing the top left area ... and later that ONE is a "Small square" (number), which led to finishing the bottom right. And also that MIR went around for fifteen years, which led to ... etc. Did not know SIGURD. I wonder about the clue "Part of a cardioid figure" for ARC, since that's like having the clue "Part of a basilica" for the entry WALL. It's the disproportionate specificity that I'm not so crazy about. The clue "Beta preceder" for PHI seemed strange to me, since this seems to refer to PHI beta kappa, where "kappa" is not omitted. Or does it refer to the PHI beta fraternity? Inquiring minds will find out when they read what others have written.

Nice tough puzzle. Hurt my Friday average. Two small cavils - I guess the formal address used in 1A is legal, but the familiar form is the idiom we use in English. Also 29D: one SIDE of the pH scale is much more accurate than one END of the pH scale.

Why is label producer AVERY? Great puzzler workout, but I still do not understand this answer.

I've been solving NYT crosswords for many years (including several by David Steinberg) but am new to Wordplay. Therefore, my initial reaction was amazement that so young a constructor could pull off such a feat! Bravo, David. I especially enjoyed your stacks.

sorry to be late, but yesterday's puzzle was one of the best weekday puzzles in a long while. very clever, good clues and few google look ups and proper nouns.. buy more from the author.

Earlier this morning, before I had worked this puzzle, a colleague asked me what exactly is so special about the NYT crossword. I am going to show him this fine work of art by young Mr. Steinberg. Three writeovers today: ShARp/STARK, esc/DEL, and vHs/PHI. But can someone explain to me in what sense "PHI" is a "Beta preceder"?

I wrestled with this one for ages, in part because I was trying to find some way of altering "have one's cake and eat it too" to fit that clue, forgetting about ICING. Kudos on a tough but fair challenge, and no hard feelings here for CTRL and CTR together.

Delightful puzzle today, which I found easier than usual thanks to the O. HENRY gimme. ("O. Henry's Full House" is one of my favorite all-time movies. Oscar Levant was a riot in the Ransom of Red Chief segment. And I bawl like a baby every time I catch the ending of "The Last Leaf.") Other thoughts: I felt certain that 22A would be ICING, Fortunately, I got to 54A, and quickly disabused myself of the first notion. (I didn't think 10D was ABZUG anyway. Then I finally recalled UDALL and relaxed.) One question: Could someone please parse REI for me at 46A? I enjoyed running down the alphabet for the R that completed 33D, but I'm still confused about tent sales.

A really swell puzzle, David, so much so that I assumed it was recently constructed. But no...still in high school. Astounding. I read the clue "Welcoming words" and immediately counted the spaces for PLEASE DO COME IN and found it fit! The constructor being you, however, I did not write those words in and proceeded with caution. There were times I thought I might have to Google something or give up (Brynhild? Any relation to Broom-Hilda?), but that is where my tenacity reflex (a.k.a. "sheer pigheadedness") kicked in and I stuck it out and then came that magical moment when the scales fell from my eyes and it all started falling into place, yay! Thanks for the excellent workout! P.S. It's always nice to learn something doing a puzzle, and today I learned that I did not know what "attenuate" means. It seems to be lodged behind "extenuate" in my brain and never got proper attention before. Next time, THIN it is.

Stacks intimidate me, and I didn't get much on the first pass - which only makes it that much more satisfying to finish with no checks, reveals or errors. Had YALE before ARMY; I once went to the Harvard-Yale game in New Haven, and now I know how the rich tail-gate... Fun puzzle, David.

Psst...hey pals, INHERES... With long stacks like this, the thing is that when one response seems to appear out of thin air, the rest usually topple quickly, and so it was today. Actually, a slow start for me, with just UDALL, ESA, and THEMAMBO (I may be a pop music fanatic, but I'm not totally ignorant of other genres). Soon, with a few more crosses, first 54A and then 1A became apparent, and I was off to the races. Plenty of entertaining shorter fill, including SHTICK and HOMERIC (d'oh!) and ATELIER etc. Didn't we just have BAZOOKA Joe in the grid a week or two ago? "TAPIOCA Tundra" by the Monkees was written by Mike Nesmith and is a favorite among hardcore aficionados of the group (there really are such people, take it from me). The song was popular enough to make the Top 40 in 1968, despite being tucked away on the B-side of the group's final Top 10 hit, "Valleri": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WlB1KXK_y4

I have a generic fondness for stacks, and this was a good one, esp for a HS student. Gives me hope for another MA-S in the pipeline. I couldn't remember if Martin H had told us that first name to remember was ESA or ISA, but having ARC, -SA and SARDINE highlighted the -CAR-, so THREE_CAR_GARAGE had to be, and that opened the door to the top. It wasn't hard to get past my preference to just say MI CASA SU CASA. Was enormously pleased with INHERES, which I would've clued with "Common answers to 'Where are you?"s. I figure UDALL enjoy that also. The potential for merging the automotive fills to get THREE CAREER CRIMINALS' GARAGE was just ICING ON THE CAKE. Their hideout for drinking their ESCAPADE... Had a moment's pause on the 2nd vs 3rd degree DOCTOR, and remembered another variant that was in effect at Yale when I was there: a 7-year program that conferred both the undergrad and MD degree (iirc). I mightn't have recalled that but for one such student who did his research project in our lab; it's mainly because he was as nice and unassuming as he was smart that I remember 'Bobby Di'. I guess it's a SAGE HEN knows its own chicks. Thanks again, DS/WS.

An excellent workout. Thanks, Mr. Steinberg. You had me noodling and pondering in all four cardinal directions, only to be rewarded with aha moment after aha moment. I had STREET CRIMINAL at the bottom and IDIDNOTSAYTHAT up top, so some fix-up, clean-up was in order. I liked the tent sale clue, but as a long-time theater critic, I would suggest that the critic's assignment is never the star, but the whole of the production. A minor quibble that shouldn't deter from full enjoyment of this puzzle.

The long entries on top came very quickly. The ones on the bottom were like pulling teeth. I didn’t mind paying for the juicy longs with CTRL, CTL and DEL.

Just got off the phone with my DOCTOR, seeking CARE for the angst I am suffering from a futile try-on for size of this brain-bending stumper. I left this with the calling service. The lower stacks came willingly, the upper wasn't quite the same. You are one winsome, lose some constructor Senor Steinberg... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLNAkPsjAEk The lower stacks came willingly, the upper wasn't quite the same. You are one winsome, lose some constructor Senor Steinberg...My analyst just returned my call offering this SAGE remedy; "watch this clip twice tHEN call me on Monday" and summarily billed me for service rendered. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiMvRqEtv4E Adios Verano, Bru

Why does everyone think it's O'HENRY? It's O. HENRY.

For "One who can't turn right?" I really wanted CAREER SOCIALIST. Beyond that disappointment, I found this a rather easy Friday, with easy short crosses offering enough letters to open up the 14's. Was it just me, or was there a minimum of misdirection in today's cluing? Our constructor noted that he submitted this one two years ago; maybe today was a slow puzzle day? No complaints, mind you, but no rave either.

Seeing the stacks, I realized I had to go through the down clues first if there was to be any hope for solving this one. This helped but not as much as I had hoped. I blithely typed in SEEN and debated SARDINE but later deleted them. Having discovered O'Henry as a child, his name was nowhere to be found in my head but B(ret)HARTE came dancing out. Ignoring all usual puzzle protocol I put that in. I was trying to get LAKE DISTRICT in before I succumbed to ROMANTIC PERIOD. I finally had to look up Ransome of Red Chief author and realized I hadn't thought of O'HENRY in years and years. Might have to do some rereading there. I'm still rather astounded that I am managing to finish Friday puzzles with fewer and fewer look-ups. Nice feeling. As I've begun to attempt to downsize my possessions it's a good thing that I don't have a THREE CAR GARAGE!

ROMANTICPERIOD emerged as I was printing out our 2 copies, and we were off to the races! Loved the stacks and the trivia-free atmosphere. The most fun all week. Thank you, David.

I do like stacks. It is a great feeling when the correct answers pops into my head with few or no letters, but also when staring at a strange combination the penny suddenly drops. MI CASA ES SU CASA is an example of the latter feeling, ICING ON THE CAKE was the one that occurred to me with very few letters. Like others I had a slightly different version of I NEVER SAID THAT at first. Only a couple of gimmes, O'HENRY and MERCI, but not quite as difficult as I usually find on a Friday. I DEEM this a success for David.

I NEVER thought I would finish that, but I NEVER really stopped solving and voilà. Last to fall was MI CASA ... I was thinking of a country for 1D. For some reason, I saw CAREER CRIMINAL with A VERY few letters. Love the word MIAMIAN for its repeat of MIA. David, MI CASA ...!

A bazooka is not a really big gun; it isn't a gun at all but a pipe which guides a rocket toward its destination.

Nice long entries in this one. I mostly worked out the top half on my own but just couldn't get going in the bottom. The clues were not leading me anywhere. I feel like the clueing has been getting stranger, but for whatever reason I am clearly worse at Fridays and Saturdays than I used to be. I'll keep making the effort, but I just don't enjoy them as much as I do the rest of the week. That's all on me. OT (maybe MAMBO is an excuse): TCM showed the documentary of Monterey Pop last night and I watched most of it. And then for some reason they showed Woodstock starting at 1:30 a.m.. I caught the last part of it early this morning. Watching those reminded me of something about my generation: We really couldn't dance.

A couple of days ago I asked what makes for a high quality puzzle, and now we've had two exemplars in a row, IMO. There was hardly a gimme here, but persistence paid off and produced "Got it!" after "Got it!" Tentatively put in THE MAFIA while my inner voice kept saying "Not exactly!" SIGURD popped right out of my brain, I know not from where. Lovely clues for OPEDS, STAND, TIMEINC, and more. Nice pairing of "MI CASA ES SU CASA" with MIAMIANS. And a second day mini-theme of double EE's (5). I plugged and plugged away at this but it never ever felt like a trudge. Best kind of puzzle for me. Gracias, David!

I had I didn't say that before I NEVER SAID THAT and fringe benefits before ICING ON THE CAKE, but neither slowed me down too much. I enjoyed the triple stacks.

As MI CASA ES SU CASA was forming and I saw all those a's, especially the one at the end, I first thought it might be that Swahili phrase from The Lion King I can never remember. But HAKUNA MATATA wouldn't have fit anyway. INHERES was a new word for me. I like learning new words in my old age. Enjoyable puzzle. I love stacks. And I finished in better than my average Friday time.

excellent puzzle. I like stacks. All of a sudden you see it -- I saw mi casa es su casa and I NEVER SAID THAT all at once with about 6 or 7 key letters. Loved TIME INC as Life preserver. Definitely a good challenging Friday puzzle.

Love the mambo video. I played trumpet in many types of bands, but missed that one. Great puzzle, considering the constraints. I'm not a fan of the weak fill, though. Thanks.

Wow., that was difficult. Yet I finished it faster than yesterday for some reason. I'd say I got lucky on some of the entries, especially the very impressive 3x14 stacks at the top and bottom. The last squares I filled in were first two letters of 33A. Unfortunately, reading the blog and these comments has influenced me to think NA should go in front of TICK. There were lots to like and this was doubtless a Friday puzzle. Thank goodness I saw through 45D Nice thanks as the French city and put down MERCI, which led to 45A MAZ, then 38D BAZOOKA, 48A DEMO, then 48D DEEM (guessed). That lead to MIAMIAN (I saw in the news some time ago that Miami was referred to capital of Latin America and thought, "what CHEEK!"). Knowing that 49A ended in PERIOD, 54A in CAKE, and 55A in MINAL quickly led to getting those. I had SHARP instead of STARK at 22D. I also had I DID NOT SAY THAT for 15A before having to change that. I knew about the Western Sage Grouse because...PBS Nature but forgot the SAGE part until much later. Only learned the meaning of ATELIER this year. I had MI CASA ES TU CASA before realizing that I had to change the TU to SU. Also learned that you get a kiss with a LEI. I liked the clue for 41D re: third degree, and 30D re: Viewpieces. 4D - sadly, I knew exactly what this was having spent much time with office stationery. Excellent puzzle and very challenging. Great grid crossings and good tricky cluing.