The clue for posterize included the word “tone” which was also the answer to another clue. I thought there was an unwritten rule to not use an answer in a clue.
Tough! The NW corner was the biggest problem: Never heard of POSTERIZE and I mistakenly interpreted the clue for 15A as "FAR out in space" for much too long!
Finally, I was left with two empty squares with no idea of how to fill them (other than needing to be vowels): LAOTZ_ and ARH_T. (I was completely unfamiliar with the vertical entries.) The former I knew was either an E or U, while the latter I had no idea. I simply guessed at U and A, respectively. Imagine my surprise upon hearing the happy music!
1
Good one! Nice challenge, but doable.
Favorite clue: Way out in space = ESCAPEPOD
Love it.
Well I don’t get it. It’s one in the morning here, and I rushed to ‘comments’ to cheat and finish my last two stumbles (STASH and TASTE) which weren’t working because I had COde ANALYSIS instead of COST, just as Sunday’s puzzle became available. Filled in TASTE thanks to someone who’s job is being a COST analyst, and the rest fell into place - and I got the gold star ! I was convinced we has a midnight cutoff. I could’ve maybe made it and finished a Saturday puzzle unaided.... Hurrah for timezones ! Who said this planet was flat ? N’importe quoi :-D
2
POSTERIZE
Haven’t seen this word since I indulged in developing my own prints (B&W). Posterized prints resulted when you stopped the Developement prematurely and immersed the print in a stop bath.
Posterized NUDESCENE https://preview.tinyurl.com/y7tp2l5u
Today's puzzle, seemingly insolvable at first struggle, went together nicely after heavy frustration. I must commend yesterday's, the one co=authored by Rachel Maddow. So indicative of who she is, her erudition, Rhodes Scholar aptitude. Great fun!
5
In the struggle for ARHAT, I became convinced 11D’s “Ishmael’s people” was AHABS, as in belonging to Captain Ahab in Moby Dick. I was so proud of myself. . .
*headdesk*
5
Likewise, I began to question ARABS because of my ignorance of ARHAT. However, I was not able to come up with any reasonable alternative that would make "ARHAT" recognizable.
I seem to remember ordering my cheesesteak “Whiz wit’ “, that is, shaved ribeye on a roll with Cheezwhiz and grilled onions. But I don't think everyone in the Philly area thought that Cheezwhiz belonged on a cheesesteak.
2
That’s the ONLY use that I know of for CheesWhiz!
3
Put it on apple pie if you don't have slices.
2
I had a much easier time with this Saturday puzzle than I did with Friday's. Maybe just a wavelength thing. REM, RUR, and SAYSAYSAY were early gimmes. Took a bit too long to remember Ron SANTO. Came down to the unknown 16A, where I did an alphabet run to see if anything besides R would slot in there, but ARABS had to be right.
Caitlin, I hadn't thought about "Far Out Space Nuts" in decades, but when the theme song kicked in, it came back instantly...just how my brain is wired.
British singer Johnny Wakelin scored a Top 20 hit in the US in 1975 with the novelty/tribute song "Black Superman - Muhammad ALI." He followed up in 1976 with "In ZAIRE," a musical retelling of the famous ALI/Forman fight. This one was a flop in the US, but a big hit in the UK.
"Black Superman - Muhammad ALI":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cq04qeVMCQE
"In ZAIRE":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiftWLA1wTI
1
erm... Not my best start.
Had OSHA, IPO and ZORA in place, but not a prayer for SANTO, OMAR and EDER as clued. The shooting self in foot part came from thinking THEREFORE could work at 17A, though I had sense enough to doubt COLOURIZE at 1A. Have seen enough colorized old B&W movies, and may be the last roundball fan to not know the term POSTERIZE.
Shot self in other foot thinking GO_SEEK worked for 29A, which seriously had me thinking that Harry 'Lime' might have been an EXILE in Vienna.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oEsWi88Qv0
Alan J, see if you agree that the 3rd Man makes a pretty good substitute/cure for LAZYBONES.
Caitlin, I do admire the delicate illustration you chose -- when you might have opted for the TAKE I of a TASTEful NUDESCENE. Not really.
Interesting finale with the news about ARISTOTLE, but shall have to SAYSAYSAY "Well, EXCUSE me" if I finished with a TASTEless definition of SCAT, and some residual grumpiness about those unknown names in the NW.
Decent Saturday, but I really revelled in yesterday's.
4
Just yesterday, I looked up Costa Farms about their miniature orchids, and ended up reading about feeding EPSOM SALT to your plants. So that helped.
2
Friday ended my current streak. Today was my fastest Saturday ever.
2
Can I just say that 26D is my profession, and I never in a million years expected to see it in a crossword puzzle!
3
I've been doing crosswords my whole life but only started doing the NYT on a regular basis starting this year, so I'm just starting to build up the crosswordese word database that is needed to get better at solving. When I run across an unknown word or name (like Linda EDER), I just chalk it up to my phrase silo not being full enough. So, it is very encouraging to read that even the most experienced solvers weren't at all familiar with an obscure word like ARHAT! It's reassuring, in a weird way! Thanks for the honesty, Caitlin!
5
Did anyone from the Midwest watch the Big Ten basketball tournament this week when an ad for Indiana University featured a graduate of their Individualized Major Program who got a degree in “enigmatology” - our very own Will Shortz?
9
GESUNDHEIT follows a sneeze. SALUD precedes a toast. They are not synonymous.
2
In Spanish, SALUD also follows a sneeze.
GESUNDHEIT follows a sneeze in German,
SALUD follows a sneeze in Spanish.
(TASHMEET)
Sneeze or no sneeze, both words mean health in their respective languages. So they are synonymous.
After going under par for MTW, ended the week with birdie-double bogey-bogey for TFS. Lao and Gogol tripped me up today.
Challenging and satisfying puzzles, all the same!
2
Was on a roll to finish in half my average time, but then spent 10 minutes trying to figure out what my “at least one error” was. Turned out to be “Lao Tse”/“CheesWhiz”/“RER” instead of “Lao Tzu”/“CheezWhiz”/“RUR”. Jeeze!
3
You are not alone.
1
An excellent Saturday that fell surprisingly quickly.
TIL vs TIF (things I forgot): ARHAT
Did not know that Aristotle was the father of zoology. I thought it was Linnaeus. TIL.
One of my favorite REM songs is the enigmatic "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" heard here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jK-NcRmVcw
from their 1994 masterpiece Monster.
1
Oops - wrong link. Here is the correct one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWkMhCLkVOg
3
We started with Linnaeus too. Botanist though.....
Yesterday's gem was a very tough act to follow, yet Mr Gulcynski is more than up to the task. One writeover, at 50D, when I tried OmAhA before OSAKA. Is Peyton Manning somehow responsible for that??
4
REM’s Monster is indeed a monster. Never has so much reverb been packed onto one slab of vinyl.
3
I had to google a few things—SANTO, father of zoology, the Paul M and Michael J song—but mostly I slogged through it. Not sure I’ve managed a Saturday puzzle this well before.
1
Caitlin, Bob Denver. Not John Denver. John Denver wishes he had an escape pod.
1
True, but it’s ironic that John Denver used to always say, “Far out!”
2
Mea culpa!! Terribly disrespectful of me to mix those two up, especially in this context. Fixed and thank you.
3
ASIAGO or ROMANO? My brain wedged upon ASIAGO and it took me a while to let go. But it was grating on me - something wasn't right. After the clue ripened I made that hard change and the answers sprinkled out from there.
15
So, I popped GRAYSCALE into the grid at once, and it went downhill from there.
A 60's-70's baseball guy, A Broadway actress, a TV show I never saw, a 1983 hit, something for a spa, and 'high-speed initials' (has to be internet-related, right?).
I got close, but no cigar. Googled the actress and the 'hit' (I had 'HAY x 3') because I had AHEM as a way to hint that I was waiting (for inspiration, no doubt)......
I'll take the Fail, but I must say that , once again, Damon the Demon earns his moniker.
Oh, one final thing: I was an ARMY KID! I was never a BRAT, but I am sorry I wasn't more trouble; maybe it would have been a lot more fun. In retrospect, I am grateful to have lived in different cultures and countries, but it was not an easy way to grow up--rootless and forever being 'the new kid'-- so enough with the name-calling, eh?
6
I wonder if anybody else grew up on the rhyme we had in grade school:
first grade babies
second grade brats
third grade angels
fourth grade rats
Second grade brats nearly drove me out of the teaching degree program. In the end it was the teachers' lounges that did me in.
The teachers' lounges did used to be the prime location for second-hand smoke exposure. Awful!
I admit I enjoyed Jr high kids much more than the preschool age (which was my first job out of college.) One does get tired of 'training' vs 'teaching'.
There was no teachers’ lounge where my mother taught in the 50s-60s. The smokers repaired to the furnace room.
I enjoyed this! Got OMAR, SANTO and ARHAT from crosses, but that’s part of the fun. Good clues for ARMYBRAT, ESCAPE POD, NUDESCENE.
I admire TAKEI.
Child is taken to hospital by his father after an accident and the brain surgeon says “ but it my son”! How is this possible? The answer is of course the brain surgeon is a woman, the boys mother; the catch is “women can be brain surgeons”. i celebrate PANTSUITS an common business attire: Visibility, even as misdirection, is welcome!
3
In the original version, the doctor was just a doctor. That long ago, it often didn't occur to people that the doctor--any doctor--could be a woman.
I'm glad that now she has to be a brain surgeon to catch people off guard.
2
Laura, I can remember when that riddle was posed to Archie by Gloria on 'All in the Family.'
At the time I suspect it was a real puzzler for almost the entire audience. Just not something that would have occurred to most of us. Times have changed, though were certainly not there yet.
2
I never understood "PANTSUITS" at all (or as Andy Griffith would pronounce it, "a tall". Virtually ALL Men's Suits are "PANT SUITS". We don't wear skorts or shorts with the matching jacket. I know some who where kilt and a jacket, so that would not be a "pant suit." "Slacks and a Jacket" has no gender, and why should suits? Maybe women's suits that don't have pants but have matching skirt and jacket needs a different name? The leisure suit was spawned by Satan's tailor. I just never understood why pant suits ever got that name.
1
Puzzle delays last night were all on me, confusing myself by jumping Down too quickly on 3 (xray) and 4 (tatartist) and, for 33, forgetting exactly how to [mis]spell brand names. Needed an ESCAPE POD; crosses worked. Fine mix of entries; the SE stack of three 9's covered the cultural waterfront:
SAYSAYSAY
ARISTOTLE
PANTSUITS
Looking forward to MOL's comment on 20A.
Waiting for 17A to be clued as "Response from a campfire glutton."
2
You'll be waiting a long time.
1
You know me too well, eh, Barry? Hope my response satisfies....
Love your clue! Teehee.
1
Not 21D? She was my 1st thought.
4
Past few days puzzle does not exit when I finish filling all the spaces. I have to exit the puzzle and come back in, then erase and put in a letter to trigger the exit. FYI.
About as close as I ever come on a Saturday. One failed check, which turned out to be unnecessary and completely useless (I just needed to wait a bit).
Thought it was a pretty good puzzle - all the 9 letter entries were fine and the fill generally fairly clean. But, ARMYBRAT was the only clue/answer combination that really stood out for me. Still an enjoyable solving experience.
1
As I gaze upon the "POSTERIZEd" soup can on my kitchen wall I am reminded of the days or daze of NYC in 1969-1970. Artists like Andy W., Robert Maplethorpe along with musicians David Johansen, The Ramones etc. etc. were everyday people. Anne Leibovitz was getting started and was somehow friends with sorta kinda GF Kim. We talked one afternoon about "capturing one's soul or essence" in portrait photography. Drawing comparisons to Olmstead" "clearing in a distance." And, there was solving this papers puzzle in places like the "green room" at the Fillmore. Sorry wool gathering on the sunny slope of memory as the sun rises here in The Shire.
Nice one Damon. Have to look up ARHAT.
9
Which has me reminiscing of opening night at the Fillmore (East, if you insist) when we went to hear Tim Buckley and “discovered” Janis Joplin. According to Patti Smith (Just Kids), Robert Mapplethorpe was working security that night!
2
The top two-thirds flew (for a Saturday), filling in like a Tuesday or Wednesday; it felt surreal, actually. But the bottom third fought me in typical Saturday fashion. I didn't know SAYSAYSAY or that fact about ARISTOTLE. And -- good lesson here -- I had SUITS and kept trying things to precede it, "work", "blue", "gray", etc. That is, I kept viewing this business attire as being worn by a man. Shame on me in this day and time! When LAOTZU finally popped into my head, the southwest fell, and the final two letters of ITSAWRAP gave me ASAP and PARA and finally the puzzle fell. That tussle in the south gave this puzzle a lovely exclamation mark.
1
By the way, Damon had an interesting comment re POSTERIZE in xwordinfo, to wit: "I made this one many years ago. It sat in the queue even longer than usual. It looks pretty good to me now, with one major exception. 1-Across was a seed answer, and the original clue was something like 'Humiliate on the hardwood.' As basketball fans know, to POSTERIZE somebody is to dunk on them in such an impressive fashion that the image is worthy of being put on a poster. It's a fun, lively term evoking basketball awesomeness. Why, why, why then would you change the clue to reference a mundane, technical printing process? Maybe it helps the non-sports fan, but at the expense of watering-down the puzzle for everybody – it doesn't seem like a good trade-off to me."
4
I wouldn’t have known the basketball reference, either, not being much of a sports fan. But, I had no idea who 8D and 9D were, so I came up with my best guess: POSTERINO, figuring it was a fancy schmancy Italian term. Sorry, Zora and Linda.
1
The clue “Crackerjack” is either a singular noun or an adjective—so how do you get ACES?
Consider them both interjections meaning "excellent."
party on
3
Aces can be an adjective: “That tattooist was aces!” I think it’s a regional thing. Maybe British?
5
Crikey!! Not us! ( as far as I know....)
1
I was surprised how quickly this fell. The NE offered the only real resistance because of ARHAT. I agree Durham Allan J that Kelley was the third of the STARZ. Is replacing him DeForestation?
5
Thanks for the endorsement, Paul.
Be sure to mind the L's and spacing. I'm a one-L Alan with a space before my J. The gentleman from Olmpia (Olympia?) is a two-L Allan with no space before his J. (There's an Ogden Nash spoof lurking in here somewhere, but I'll let it pass.)
I don't know about DeForestation, but given the crossings, maybe Mr. Gulczynski couldn't see DeForest for the CHEEZ(WHIZ).
7
Google and I solved this puzzle in record time (my longest), and still failed by several (3) errant squares, which I won’t bother to specify.
TIL: POSTERIZE, ARHAT and a lot of pop cultural, commercial and culinary trivia, most of which I will forget.
Nuff said.
4
Great collection of clues for a weather eventful Saturday, cheezwhiz and all.
i won’t attempt to distinguish between a bodhisattva and an ARHAT (the definitions have changed over the years).
But an arhat is (traditionally) a “perfected” person who has attained nirvana.
My time spent reading The Diamond Sutra finally paid off.
Great puzzle.
2
I should have said a Bodhisattva is an advanced devotee of enlightenment.
But i will leave it to others to explain the relative hierarchy.
it's always been my understanding, as a devotee of Buddhism, that a Bodhisattva is a being who has reached enlightenment, but when they die, instead of spending forever in Nirvana, they choose to be reincarnated again to be a teacher/guide for us here on Earth to the road to enlightenment.
Also a great song by Steely Dan.
6
AR HAT's off to you, Allan. Chapeaux!
1
Why do entered letters start appearing in gray?
You’ve hit the pencil button near top right. I guess it’s used to put in drafts - I never use it myself except by accident! Just toggle off and re-enter letters.
4
Thanks so much! I really appreciate your reply!
Always confuse Sal Bando and Ron Santo. . . today was no exception.TATTOO fixed it. 3-letter band. . AHA, ELO, REM. . . pick one. . . I'll be interested to see if certain discussions come up again (YIN v Yang as not being opposites or the light and dark sides of anything, for instance). Everybody loves (Ray) ROMANO. A few letters short of a pangram. Some very fun cluing (ESCAPEPOD, e.g.)
A nice way to start to the weekend/end of the week.
3
If RON SANTO had performance incentives in his contract would it have been a SANTO clause?
10
When I filled in LAZYBONES, this earworm started started up:
https://youtu.be/wWNoKIrH7ms
I tried to insist that Shatner and Nimoy's co-star was the misspelled KELLY, because DeForest Kelley was the third-billed star of the original series, while George TAKEI was down among the also-withs. But in a larger sense, the entire recurring cast become stars and functioned as an ensemble. So co-star is not really wrong.
The story goes that when Roddenberry hired George TAKEI, he made the mistake of pronouncing his name "ta-kye." TAKEI told him it was pronounced "ta-kay," and that the Japanese word pronounced "ta-kye" means "expensive." Apparently Roddenberry got it right from then on, not wanting him to be any more expensive than necessary.
7
I've heard George Takei himself also say that it's pronounced 'ta-kay - it rhymes with gay'.
I'm a fan, and think he's wonderful.
4
Love his voice.
I had never seen that particular LAZYBONES clip, definitely a period piece. Hoagy Carmichael does it proud, but I think I like the Mills Brothers -- or the Louis Armstrong/ Bing Crosby version.
1
Cheez Whiz! I'm too religious to use that expression, but man-oh-man did its appearance in this puzzle make me think it. That middle Z was my last letter (because Lao Tsu is plenty fine) - and I'm glad the clue doesn't say anything about the orange gunk beyond there's a bunch of people who eat it, apparently. Even then, 51% of my average Saturday time, a quick solve.
Just got power back, but the wind is still blowing hard. There was one point during the thickest part of the storm that the local wind eased up for a bit and I heard this loud thrumming sound - thought "oh, good, the power's back on!" - only to realize I was hearing the background wind noise from all over town. Hope everyone stays safe.
3
I had the same problem with S/Z. Although, it's always been LAO TZU, LAO TZE or LAOZI, never LAO TSU, I looked at LAO TSU and thought it was ok, even after going through the entire puzzle twice after I'd completed the puzzle. Finally figured it out on the third pass.
CHEEZ WHIZ - never had the stuff, so wouldn't know how to spell it, at least that's the excuse I'm sticking with.
2
I got hung up looking for the error that kept me from breaking my Saturday record and finally found it in the LAOTZU RUR cross, after two minutes of sifting. I should always look at the various spellings of Chinese answers first, I guess. Still, I would rather have had the record than another lesson in humility, which is common on Saturday.
A bit too tiresome to be pleasant. This is intended to be (one hopes) a recreation after all, not a thermo-nuclear event. Perhaps Mr. Gulczynski should attempt to cool his jets.
3
Back to your general nastiness. Where specifically is this tiresome? I found it a good challenge for a Saturday, but I finished it in about 1/2 my Saturday average. So, again, why "thermonuclear, and where were the jets overheated.
8
Bruvver, your first sentence was completely uncalled for.
..
6
"A bit too tiresome to be pleasant."
Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but we all know what is said about opinions. You've stated "how" you felt, Mr. Innes; now perhaps you could share with us -- and the constructor and the editor -- "why" you felt that way (i.e., a few examples of clues and/or entries you found tiresome).
4
started with LAZYBONES and finished with OSAKA. good selection of clues for a muscular Saturday! glad to have escaped the Riley wind rain and snow storm!
I think it needs to be said that we came within an ace of not having the word "robot." Karel Capek, the author of RUR, did not coin the word himself; it was suggested by his brother, cubist painter Josef, who thought Karel's neologism "labori" sounded stilted. What if our electoral system were under attack by Russian *bories*? It just wouldn't be the same.
8
I was disappointed that STEPPENWOLF didn't fit into 6D! Now I have their "Monster" as an earworm.
ARHAT filled in from the crosses; otherwise I'm not sure how long it would have taken me to remember it. This was one of those puzzles where I didn't have a whole lot on the first pass through the Acrosses, but the first pass through the Downs really filled in a lot.
I'm watching a lot of Weather Channel today. Hope everyone on the east coast, and especially in New England, stays safe and dry. I'm glad I don't live in Boston any more!
7