Gestures of Gratitude

Creative, punny puzzle! I enjoyed it. "Instrument with cane blades" seems rather esoteric. Fortunately for me, I play the OBOE, so that was as easy one. "Comes with buds" had me thinking of flowers initially, but considering I'm solving this on a mobile device and my ear buds are on the table right next to me, it didn't take me long to get to IPOD. I'm still quite a long way off from dropping off a child at college, but I have often imagined this will be a bittersweet SAD DAY.

I thought the clue for MARINE BIOLOGIST referred to the way some marine mammals are studied by listening to their clicks and whistles.

This puzzle was too hard and today was my birthday. :(

A tight and fun Tuesday puzzle!! Solvable, but still requires a little bit of figuring. This is exactly what I love about Tuesdays :) So happy to see Allen Ginsberg - a personal favourite; I teach high school English and 'Howl' is a favourite with the seniors every semester. Thanks, and congratulations, to Mr. Smith and Ms. Burnikel on a successful collaboration :D

It was easy enouh but I looked for a sea-related answer after seeing SAILOR and MARINE. Could this possibly have been a sly reference to the old joke “Iceberg, Ginsberg”?

I'm still working on the Sunday puzzle, but took time off to enjoy this fun Tuesday offering by CC and Mr. Smith. I did need the blog to get the theme, unusual for a Tuesday. Quite clever, and I enjoyed reading the notes from the constructors.

Not too easy for a Tuesday, I think it was just right. :)

While symmetry can add a bit of elegance to a puzzle, I am pleased that the constructors are not tied to that format. A little variation is a good thing. Loved the WHARTON clue and wish more Hollywood moguls had attended.

The black squares have a different kind of symmetry from the usual – reflexible rather than rotational. When that's done, it's usually so the black squares can have an arrangement related to the theme, but I don't see that here. Have I missed something?

The December entry in our celebrity crossword yearlong celebration already? My, how time flies! Found it a bit trickier than the usual Tuesday, but finished in good time. Didn't get the theme until I was done. Nice job, Mr. Smith and Ms. Burnikel. In 1996, ALLEN GINSBERG recorded a one-off single, "Ballad of the Skeletons," with some superstar help: composer Philip Glass, ex-Beatle Paul McCartney, and Lenny Kaye (Patti Smith's guitarist/co-songwriter). The attendant video became something of a left-field hit (GINSBERG appears to be channeling Dr. Demento in appearance and Bob Dylan in vocal delivery). He passed a way about a year after this recording. (N.B.: highly political content.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdvM0IB5Sbs

Hit my "Tuesday Personal Best" time today!

Okay, maybe it's just me, but to refer to a scientist as a mere 'technician' seemed a little disrespectful of the studies and skill sets required for a career as a MARINE BIOLOGIST.... I liked the rest of the 'job title' clues better. Maybe a HYDROLOGIST or a water quality monitor would be more of a 'technician?' CC always turns in a great grid. Sorry I did not know Harry Smith, but now I will be on the lookout, as we do watch NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt. On with the day!

An exceptional Tuesday, easy and elegant. One writeover: aetNA/CIGNA. Anyone else out there for whom it was _not_ a SADDAY when your youngest went off to college?

No mention yet of the world's most famous "MARINE BIOLOGIST"? ...The sea was angry that day, my friends: https://youtu.be/0u8KUgUqprw?t=51s

Harry almost makes me wish I had a TV. Packed my City Lights t-shirt last night as I get ready to head to the other end of the Mississippi. So at least one fill was a gimme. As an homage to my former employer I penned in NSA and well, that was wrong. I raise a hand to Stan from NJ. UGH is what comes out when I read of our fearless leader's "historical traumas." Puzzle LOL moment was entering POPEYETHEtAILOR. Missed the gold star by one letter. Thanks neighbor CeCe and Harry.

Before I entered YARNS I thought of yores. This was on account of the fact that I mis-spelled the creepy-crawly from Egypt, scarob. That was the only de-bugging required. Busy day ahead, no time to YAK (early APP(t)S) so I'll close with HAT TIPS for the constructing team and two links to celebrate the crafty word portrait created by Harry Smith and Zhouqun Burnikel...Both clips contain songs that sprouted from the Philly area, sowed by a capable group of ARTistic PROs not the LEAST of which were the sound technicians. During the sessions, dating back to the early 60's, the MICS belonged to a pair of hot singers; first, Chubby Checker with "Popeye (The Hitchiker)" then balladeer Barbara Mason with "Yes I'm READY." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDn5hqCLwHk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y70rva97auM Again, C. C. and Harry, many thanks.

A better clue for SADDAY might have been "election day 2016"

Easy, clever Tuesday. Really liked the clue for ALLENGINSBERG. Got MARINEBIOLOGIST without really understanding the clue. Got hung up for a while on SUEBEE/SCARAB cross, but only for a short time.

This filled in easily, but because the first two long answers were Popeye the Sailor and marine biologist, I assumed the theme would have to do with oceans or some such thing. Anyone else think the same way?

As always, the constructor notes are pointed and showed the amount of effort put in to make it Tuesday-ish.

Heavy on the AHHs, no UGHs. I liked the theme, especially the clues for WHARTON and MARINE BIOLOGIST. I like that only the theme answers have question mark clues; that is elegant, more so than if the puzzle also had non-theme q.m. clues. I like that exactly one week after having GOTYE we get a GOTYA. And it makes haters of AL GORE happy (SAD DAY is on the same line as he is), as well as lovers of the man (he crosses with SEER). Fun, fine Tuesday. And, @Liz B, nice to see your sister Sue in the puzzle!

Did you know there's a MT NESTOR in the Canadian Rockies near Banff? It seems there are no little peaks around. http://www.peakfinder.com/peakfinder.ASP?PeakName=mount+nestor Covering for missing the theme. A SAD DAY, Mr, Smith, when a news junkie is blind-sided by a South Carolina ARAB and an Air-Conditioned CENT. It's as shameful as a WHARTON ST. EROID's face. Tuesday 'pologies offered.

Intriguing figuring out how the theme worked. When I already had POPEYE and GINSBERG filled in and had enough crosses to suggest BIOLOGIST I actually stopped and checked the down crosses on that to see where I could be wrong; didn't seem like it could fit with the other two. Took me a while to figure out that the theme was in the clues and not so much the answers. The little mid-bottom section was the last thing I filled in (I struggled a bit there) and finally seeing WHARTON and realizing it was another theme answer was the final nice 'aha' moment. I guess I'm a bit surprised that I'm first to mention this, but then I was slack-jawed last week when no one answered the GINSBERG/Howl question on Jeopardy. The only other Harry Smith I know (and, with apologies, the first one to pop into my head when I saw the constructors names) might also have qualified as an answer to the GINSBERG clue. He was a friend of GINSBERG and a central figure in the beat movement. He is most well known, I guess, for his 'anthology of American folk music,' but also did a lot of film, art and musical stuff that was pretty well known at the time. So I also paused over the GINSBERG answer when I filled that in, wondering if there was some strange connection, though of course it didn't make any sense. Here's a brief sample of the other Mr. Smith's work. Dated, but kind of remarkable given the time frame: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yghe3A2wANo ..

When the speaker is native to the language it is a dialect. When the speaker is not native to the language it is an accent. This would give us a Southern dialect and a French accent.

This was a creditable Tuesday puzzle, though I could do without some of the fill: UGH, YEOW and both OREO and OBOE. The clues to the latter two were more original than usual, but still ... The cleverly clued themers came easily enough, but I did not get the journalistic theme before reading the article. A general comment about my experience with themed puzzles: The fill in Thursday puzzled is usually difficult enough for the theme for be useful for filling the grid. For example, in the recent Shell Game puzzle, though I missed the full implication of the theme, I saw the nutshells early and the circled letters were useful in getting the fill. In solving early week puzzles the grid, including any themers present, is usually full before I start figuring out the theme. I then often forget about it until Deb or Sam explains it in the article.

Nice Tuesday puzzle... to be a 25A was my ambition in college - inspired partly by Steinbeck. Still enjoy tidal pools! I noticed that this puzzle only had lateral symmetry. Isn’t it the norm for the grid to have rotational symmetry?

and Elke Liz B already spoke for me re watching out for question marks in the clues. At first missed the WHARTON tie-in. Am wondering whether Grads of that institution are warned re venting their URGES on hot MICS ......and then try to lie about it. Really think that 39A and 29D should be switched : many parents might be heard to say ''I'M NOT READY ''. Good thing that there is GREY Goose to wash down that nosh consisting of an OREO dunked in SUEBEE honey ,followed by a DILL pickle and an OH HENRY bar. YEOW /UGH. Fun puzzle . Now to research why CHICAGO is said to have big shoulders. (Have not heard from John in C. in a long time ). CC- since this is your 50th puzzle, there should be ''Gold'' not IRON in the puzzle...Congrats, and many more. Too early for BED.

Whoops -- Looks like SAD DAY has actually appeared in The Times once before, back in 2011! Not sure how I botched that, but thanks to the few that pointed it out to me. Solvers: 1, Sam: 0

39A: Expected RELIEF

SAUNA at 5a brings to mind a trip to Latvia in 1997 when our group was shown around the Latvian Open-Air Museum, viewing various examples of wooden architecture from a variety of Latvia's ethnic regions. One of the buildings featured a facility that our guide/interpreter called a "banya." Someone in our group asked if that was like a SAUNA, which in his American ACCENT he pronounced "saw-na." Our guide, though thoroughly fluent in English, took on the most quizzical expression as she tried to understand this alien-sounding word. As our companion went on to describe a SAUNA with its hot rocks and all the sweating involved, she finally understood. "Oh, you mean a SAH-OO-NA!" very slowly and explicitly sounding out the word which I guessed would be more like "sow-na" than "saw-na" if not drawn out so protractedly for demonstration purposes. (And yes, she agreed that a "banya" was like a "sow-na.") (In the above, please read "sow-" to rhyme with "cow" and "saw-" to rhyme with "law.")

A bit tough for a Tuesday, Sam? My reaction was the opposite. But a very enjoyable puzzle.

I tried to look up the music type RANDB. Luckily the Google search gave me R and B. Parsing is hard. Fun puzzle. No real problems. I finished slightly faster than usual. Thanks.

Random notes: 1. Regular comments readers should have guessed the 25A immediately, since we so recently discussed who would find an F under a shell. 2. Waiting for Deb's comment on 39A. 3. 48A is Jack Kerouac, not Allen Ginsberg. And that's the way it is.

The puzzle felt nicely challenging to me. At first I thought the theme was going to be nautical, what with a SAILOR and a MARINE. So I had trouble figuring out how ALLEN GINSBERG fit in. Eventually I saw that the theme was in the clues, although I never quite noticed that "executive producer" also fit the theme. Note to self: Pay attention to question marks! And at least we didn't have GOTYE today!

Ahh, yes, those Wharton grads, they know all the best words. (Apologies to the other 99.999999 percent of Wharton grads.)

easy peasy! no resistance. Read Allen Ginsberg's Howl as an impressionable youth!