As someone who dislikes puns and cares/knows nothing about sports, I'm wondering if the NYT puzzle remains my metier.
38D: the great Poland-born pianist Rubinstein (whom I had the pleasure to hear play in a concert in Newark, NJ, some decades ago, and whose LPs of Chopin, especially the Ballades, still serve as emotional calmers) hated being called "Artur" (as in Toscanini). His name was ARTHUR. To make him sound...what? more European?...impresario Sol Hurok billed him as Artur...against his will. A piano competition and award and a street in Tel Aviv named for him use "Arthur." His birth name was Leo.
P.S. Yes, I know that Signor Toscanini answered to "Arturo." Heaven knows he has appeared in enough puzzles. But this time there were only five squares. What definition have been used instead? That's not for me to say.
Of course, BUSSED MY BUTT as a first spelling could have properly used the clue "kissed my ass".
The shorter puns were the most fun especially "Elton's johns" being "loos." The longer puns seemed a bit forced but if you really want to see torturously forced puns read Pearls Before Swine on a regular basis.
https://www.arcamax.com/thefunnies/pearlsbeforeswine/s-2085055
2
Finally got it done. Thought the shorter puns were funnier, especially AMOEBA and ENAMEL. Had some trouble with CRAMPINGMYSTILE and BUSSEDYOURBUTT, although I didn’t “bust” anything in the attempt ;)
3
Tougher than usual Sunday for me, the top section in particular. Had SOAMI for 1A and ROUTE... for 55A (never heard of a roadway "chute"), giving SCRT ("secret?") for 1D and OOOO (!) for 2D. My first thought regarding the latter was that this was a trick clue, that there would be others, and that I should be on the lookout for a revealer. Finding no further stumpers, I revisited the area and figured out the correct entries.
Was unfamiliar with FILI, SEPTA, MEDEA, CHOPRA, USHED (?), GARROTE (agree -- unfortunate timing), OMERTA, ROSERED, and LENA, but got them from the crosses. Regarding 15D, whats a "teem" anyway? Is this NYC-centric?
The puns were cute, but I expect more from a Sunday puzzle, i.e., some trickery such as rebuses, especially because Thursday's puzzle was also devoid of such fun.
1
The teeming crowd
I am in agreement on GDR. If DDR, there should be a little German in the clue.
Either Deb or Caitlin used to comment on the current Acrostic puzzle. Is that gone for good or just so complicated to access that I can't find it?
Charles, I think what you are looking for can be found by clicking on the 'Sunday Puzzle' link in today's column, which will take you to this week's Wordplay column, and there you can find a link to the Acrostics column. [whew, yeah that's a lot of work. But I hope it works for you.]
Thanks - it worked!
126D Like legalized marijuana TAXED. Is this the NY Times latest attempt to normalize abnormal behavior? See, it must be on ok thing. We’ll get tax money “for the schools”. How can anyone be against that? Except there’re 3 major flaws. 1. Taxes never add up to what is promised. 2. The revenue received is always outweighed by the numerous costs. 3. And children and teens are disproportionately adversely affected. Often for life. Worse. Too often with their life. Lastly today's word is G-A-T-E-W-A-Y-D-R-U-G "Marijuana Has Proven to Be a Gateway Drug" Source: The NY Times itself.
https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2016/04/26/is-marijuana-a-gateway-...
1
As I'm you know, Tensace, the 126D clue and entry are perfectly correct. You may wish to avail yourself of the Times' Opinion section; this is the Crossword.
P.S. As long as you mentioned it, (a) do you have any links to hard evidence for points 1,2,3 and (b) did you notice that your "proof" is in something called "Room for Debate" and that it *also* contained this opinion:
https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2016/04/26/is-marijuana-a-gateway-...
5
I did not interpret 126A to have any editorial opinion at all. I completely respect your points of view on the subject, but in reality, legalized marijuana is TAXED. To associate anything in the puzzle with some deeper motive on the part of the NYT is rather bizarre. If that were the case, then I suppose that they are condoning such diverse activities as saying grace before meals, and strangulation with piano wire.
OK. Gotta go catch up on my Tom and Jerry cartoons.
7
Enjoyed every one of the goofy puns in this puzzle, and none more than BUSSEDYOURBUTT. Surely that exquisite turn of phrase deserves an honored place in xword lore.
Also enjoyed the Godfather subtheme in GARROTE and OMERTA.
Leaving tomorrow morning for Israel and this summer's dig, but will check in whenever I can from over there at our 125A.
5
I felt like I was riding the HOV lane from start to finish: fast and fun!
My favorite by far was BUSSED YOUR BUTT especially because it can also mean "kissed your ****."
Thank you much, Ms. Margolin! (Loved your comments, too!)
2
Yikes! The emus struck my comment. All I said is that BUSSED YOUR BUTT was my favorite especially because BUSSED can also mean kissed.
I also sped through this puzzle like I was in the HOV lane making it fast and fun!
Many thanks to Ms. Margolin ... beep! beep!
4
I expected to arrive here and see the column TEEMing with nits and complaints. I was not disappointed. My main gripe was that the puns seemed a little bit forced. I do understand what a challenge it is to come up with multiple puns on a fairly narrow theme, but the best of the puzzles seem to somehow do so without any feeling of labour. Looking back though, I do appreciate most of the puns and they did provide an occasional smile.
Perhaps the No-nonsense quartet would have fared better as the Nonsense trio?
Here is the legendary Artur Rubinstein playing Chopin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehSKhRburRQ
2
"...the puns seemed a little forced." Andrew, puns are always foist a pun the listener, aren't they?
9
Mike, Foist of all - foist or foisted?
Right you are though, the listener rarely has the option to refuse a pun, no matter how awful, but instead must take it like a groan up.
4
The best puns are foist and last.
Bumper sticker for the day: HONK IF YOU LOVE CHEESES
Took a bit longer than my average, but only because I had Akiba, the chess player, not Artur, the pianist. Doh!
It also took me a bit longer to figure the QEII / QATARI crossing.
I enjoyed all the theme puns and the two verticals were a bonus.
All in all a very enjoyable Sunday fill. Thank you Ruth!
I am surprised no one has commented on the particularly poor taste of a clue like 66A in a week in which there were two high profile suicides by hanging. I realize that it was just unfortunate timing, but it really made me cringe to have to rack my brain for 7-letter methods of strangulation.
7
If you "realize that it was just unfortunate timing" why not just say that and skip "particularly poor taste?"
7
I would think that the puzzles are scheduled far ahead of time, so changing or swapping another one in would be difficult. That being said, I never think of crosswords as needing to be aware of the "real world". The clues/answers always strive to be entertaining and not commentary. Also, a garrote is not about hanging at all - it's a short instrument (although I always thought it was metal, like piano wire) used by another person from behind the victim to choke them to death. Really not about hanging at all. Just my 2 cents... Cheers!
7
Totally agree as far as the GARROTE is concerned. The classic garrote scene will always be Lucca Brazzi being done in by the attack from behind in the Godfather. The fact that the clue dealt with strangulation methodology in a week where we sadly lost two celebrities to suicide is an odd coincidence and nothing more.
I found some of the puns in the answers a stretch, but also fun. Always confused by the ambiguous forms of BUS. When driving on the NJ Turnpike years ago, I was always amused by the sign at the rest stop, "Busses Allowed". Kisses allowed at the McDonald's. Really?
3
Slightly OT, but I was wondering about all the statistics that the NYTimes gathers through the app -- how many users complete each puzzle; how many give up and when; are there any genuine mistakes in a puzzle; what does the graph of time to complete v. day of week look like, etc. It'd be fun to take a deep dive through that data. Does anyone know if the editors pay much attention to it?
6
Interesting idea! I wonder if the different ways of completing the puzzle would taint the sample if they are sampling. E.G. many people print the puzzle and solve with pencil or pen. Some complete it on the web site, which can be monitored but some geeky types (like me) can turn off such traffic. I would love to see such data as well if they are collecting it though! Hey NYT! Fess up! :-)
1
Wonder if Cambridge Analytica all ready has the data ?
I remember a mistake in the March 2016 time frame.
This is either a quibble or a carp: I don't understand 118D. There is nothing special about the kind of paper for the entered fill; any sheet will do as long is it's the proper weight.
2
While that's true for today's fax machines, it wasn't always so. For a long time they used thermal printers and you needed special paper for them.
7
Hey, kids...
Once upon a time, but not too to open long ago, FAX paper was a spooled roll of shiny, heat-sensitive paper prone to curling, fading, and running out mid-transmission.
3
How soon they forget.
(The waste paper recycling container at my desk is a long-empty box for a ream of 9-1/2 x 11 1-part continuous form paper. The extra 1/2 inch on each side was perf'ed and had pin feed holes.)
1
I told Mrs W was looking forward to the puns and anagrams puzzle and she reminded me this wasn't the weekend for it. After working out today's (and not quite finishing it) --it hit me that what we have here today is a giant panda -- so I got my wish after all.
Yikes.
2
All in all, a disappointing puzzle. The difficulty level seemed about right, but I thought some of the puns were a stretch, and the cluing was less elegant and amusing than usual, especially 82A: what does having your wheels at the shop have to do with taking the bus? And alternate spellings hung me up a bit: GARROTE instead of GAROTTE; BUSSED instead of BUSED.
It was interesting to see East Berlin appear two days running. My sister lived in West Berlin for a while in the '80s. Going through Checkpoint Charlie was always a little nervous making, and East Berlin looked as if all the color had been drained from it. Everything for sale was drab, gray. Even the wall was drab, graffiti-free, because of the no-man's land preventing escape.
2
"...what does having your wheels at the shop have to do with taking the bus?"
If the shop doesn't provide a loaner....
2
Love the puns, but too much struggle to be satisfying.
And I had a coupla cups o' coffee.
Four Ns in "no-nonsense"? I mean ... OK, but ... really?
There's clever and then there's a poke with a sharp stick in the eye.
Maybe I'm just 15 degrees off with this constructor. Happens.
11
Here’s a nit: 61A should be GDR, not DDR, since East Berlin, not Ostberlin, was used in the clue. It cost me a streak, because I didn’t know CHARD from CHARG, being exclusively a microwave man.
13
Hmmmm.... I think you're right, Nobis. There should have been something in the clue to let the user know the answer was in German, not English. Since there wasn't, the answer should be GDR, not the same name in German DDR.
Unless of course this is just another example of the NYT XWP rules not being the rules because they say so.
3
Yes, I had the same problem, but then, I had KLUTZY for CLUMSY for the longest time...
1
Nobis,
I wonder if you would be told -- by those who tell -- that German *was* clued: by the use of "land" for "country."
I liked ROUTE OF ALL EVIL but felt the clue fell short. Construction and detours aren’t exactly evil. Maybe “highways traveled by criminals and liars?”
4
I agree completely. Several better clues could have been used: "The Devil's highway", "The road to Hell", "What's paved with good intentions", ...
3
I don't think that those clues would have stayed within the theme of "Rush hour headaches". Someone in a hurry to get to work (or back home) would probably find accidents, detours and construction about as evil as it gets.
1
I nominate all approaches to the George Washington Bridge from the Jersey side on a late Sunday afternoon...
1
Kind of cute as Sundays go, but some of the theme answers were better than others. What does CHUTE have to do with lanes of traffic? And I don't know how I feel about I NEED TO LOSE WAIT. Best is ROUTE OF ALL EVIL.
If you close a lane to traffic, even going as far as to barricade a lane so that a motorcade can bypass traffic (highway) or traffic lights (surface), you create a “chute” for them to run through. But generally I think of motorcades as involving politicians not celebrities or “stars.”
1
Thank you Jim.
That was fun, in a low-key way. Little bit of a stretch in places, but I'm in a charitable mood. JOIN THE TEEM works better than MAKE THE TEEM, IMHO.
Now, on with the show.
I hate that the Spelling Bee expires before I get back to it (snivel, snivel) but there just are not enough hours in the day. Or so it seems.
On with the week!
4
I haven't determined the exact timing of it, but I'm pretty sure Spelling Bee lasts a couple of hours past midnight of its "day", well past the change of the crosswords. KenKen and Set update at midnight eastern time no matter what day.
I had almost the entire bottom half, the NW corner and bits and pieces elsewhere in fairly reasonable time. Figured it was just a matter of working out from what I had, but traffic ground to a complete halt. Kept my nose to the GRINDSTONE, tried to be patient, took some breaks, took some deep breaths and I just couldn't find anything else.
I don't like to look things up, but I looked a couple of things up. It didn't help. Finally realized I was starting to get irritated and decided to call it a day. As usual, it looks doable after the fact. Don't think I've ever had so much filled in and then found myself unable to proceed. Seems like a nice puzzle. I liked the theme idea even if a couple of them were a bit of a stretch. I wish I was better at these.
3
I had GRINDSTaNd for the longest time.
Kept at it hammer -n- tongs, tho.
(I confess to a pair of lookups.)
1
Punfill is funfill.
7
Got stuck for quite awhile with AS DO I instead of AS AM I, CARAVAN instead of DURANGO and TELE instead of XYLO. I'm still wondering about OBLA ??
I knew of ROSE RED but didn't know the story. Just checked it out on Wikipedia and I'm pretty glad I never heard it as a child.
OBLAdi OBLAda
Life goes on...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJoQbLV2sQU
5
... bra
Nooooo! Not another BRA!
This was such a fun puzzle! Especially clever clueing; kept me smiling the whole time. Cheers to Ms Bloomfield Margolin.
2
Can someone please explain 68D No-nonsense quartet?
3
four Ns in No-NoNseNse.
2
Duh! I shouldn’t have seen that. Classic internal. Thank you!
This was horribly clued. Sorry. It detracts from an otherwise fun puzzle.
1
I do believe that, as solvers, we should think and comment charitably of the constructors. And I do. That said, in my little pea-brain (thank you, Tennessee Ernie Ford), "teem" is a verb, and nothing but a verb. I mean, I got it, and it was amusing, but - it's a verb.
OARMEN - look, the "oarsmen" man the "oars". Now I'm thinking of a bunch of guys manning one huge OAR and rowing in circles, as I did about this puzzle for a minute.
BUSSED YOUR BUTT was thought provoking for me. I'm a fair hand at grammar and spelling in English, but, truth told, I've long known that I missed some basic concept concerning the doubling of consonants before adding a particular suffix; e.g. - I want to write "travelled the world" instead of "traveled". I recall driving up to the Greyhound station in Reading, PA years ago. There was a large, vertical neon sign announcing, "BUSES". "B-yoo-zes?" thinks I. Like, "fuses", or "muses", "Well, perhaps they don't want it confused with a Kissing Booth."
8
Each person controls (or mans) one oar, so it doesn't seem that far-fetched for OARMEN to be a variant of OARSMEN.
I looked twice at BUSSES, too.
MmmWAHs are BUSSES.
Greyhounds are BUSES.
It's BUSSED, not BUSSES.
Not a lot of stop-and-go, pretty smooth commute through this grid, which, by the way, if you look at the scattered black squares and rectangles in the big middle area, looks like cars, buses, and trucks heading east or west in a big traffic jam. This puzzle took my puzzle-working chops around the block yet again, which is a good thing, because if you keep them garaged for too long, you become a rustbucket of a solver, or so I've been tolled.
3
Looks like gridlock with the cross traffic waiting across the north and south....
23A and 98A, in particular, were just awful theme answers. They are words strung together and that's about all you can say for them.
1
USHED. Another word added to my vocabulary, although I had to look it up to be certain it wasn't an invention of the constructor.
And my thanks to those of you that explained MET.
USHED - Cockney synonym for "silenced."
e.g. the room was 'ushed. You could 'ear a pin drop.
4
Did what an USHer does.
I normally don’t nit pick but all of the many theme entries, except 82A, were familiar phrases with a homophone of one of the words in the phrase substituted to comply with the “Rush Hour” theme. In 82 A, the word “bussed” was substituted for the word “busted” in the familiar phrase, and those two words are not homophones. When I get stumped, as I often do and as I did on this one, I am invariably humbled by what turns out to be a fair solution. Not this time.
4
BUSSED is a homophone for bust (present tense).
8
Reco (for Ralarson).
Gotta bust your butt to get this one!
2
Argh! Took forever to turn xenophon(e) into XYLOPHONE. And we still don't see the "s" in aisle as ASONANT. What are we missing here?
1
If you do not "sound" the "s" in aisle it is ASONANT.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/asonant
1
...or did I misunderstand what you were missing, RA? Do you sound the "s" in aisle?
AUS
Aisle say!
1
SOHO is correct for 2D (there are "many" galleries), but it's a dated entry; Chelsea has had many *more* galleries for years.
2
I couldn't agree more! SOHO is one big shopping mall today. You'd be hard pressed to find a gallery there today.
5
There are still a few there, Floor...
http://sohostrut.com/soho-art-galleries/
See how old I am? My first (fleeting) thought was, "How can I fit 57th Street in that space?"
I loved all the theme answers except 15D: MAKE THE TEEM? I've never seen or heard "teem" used as a noun. Didn't work for me.
11
I agree. I kept thinking it’s wrong but couldn’t think of another word that fit.
Same here. The only thing I can come up with is Grand Central is teeming with people at 5 pm. Hence getting there at that time is making the teem. Loved the puzzle but not impressed with that clue.
8
GCT *is* teeming at rush hour, but I can't find a dictionary that shows TEEM as other than a verb. I think the objection is valid.
OARMEN is an unusual spelling of OARSMEN
3
It’s a nonexistent spelling. I Googled it and only found oarsmen. Maybe an oarman only uses one oar??
1
It is unusual but not incorrect to not have the "s" (assuming you accept dictionaries as a source of correctness).
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/oarman
I wonder if Spelling Bee would accept it.
5
I guess you could say I'm feeling right Justified.
Isn't *this* right justified?
Or did I miss something?
Margin of error?
Sorry. Right justified is not available at this time. Perhaps it will become available when WORDPLAY provides a link to the Wordplay home page.
Very well, BA. I'm *feeling* right Justified, while actually being left Justified.
In the currant media environment, there is no margin for airer.
Anyway, I thought it was GAROTTE. The Dictionary says:
gar·rote /ɡəˈrät,ɡəˈrōt/
verb: garotte
1. kill (someone) by strangulation, typically with an iron collar or a length of wire or cord.
"he had been garroted with piano wire"
noun: garotte
1. a wire, cord, or apparatus used to strangle someone.
Seriously??!! Sic, sic, sic.
I'm stumped here. Could someone explain 8D---Brave adversary. MET....am I being dense?
2
Short for New York Metropolitans. WS Champs of 1969 and 1986.
1
Thank you! Of course.....doh!!
Baseball - Atlanta BRAVEs and New York METs.
2
FUN! And a bit of work! Sundays are not my favorite puzzle of the week usually, but this was GOOD!
2
Merciful late week after an epically tough Thursday.