Huh ?
1
and Elke
A hearty Mazel Tov on the safe arrival of Cecily Judith.
Jacob-you say that she arrived shortly before this puzzle.
Question- is she your new FOUR AM ALARM ?
I notice people have commented in Wordplay on the daily Spelling Bee puzzles. I like them very much but agree that some of the rejected words should be accepted and some of the acceptable words are too far out. I always send in my rejected words in hopes they will be accepted if they arise in the future.
2
I enjoyed the puzzle, but the cluing of AME bothered me a bit. I know the term "black church" exists but I don't like it in my crossword puzzles.
Curtis Blake,
If you're still there, please read the post by David Connell from about 8 hours ago.
1
P.P.S. Easily got 3D because such a tower has recently topped out here in Austin. It will be our tallest building at 58 stories. Groupings of floors are displaced laterally from neighboring floors. There's a good picture of it here: http://www.independentaustin.com.
P.S. Scientific journal articles are almost entirely in the passive voice. Once, I tried to change that for my own papers but failed miserably. As I remember, all the sentences would start with "We (did this or that)." It sounded ridiculous.
1
Ron,
Are you sure you're not confusing active and passive with singular and plural?
No, he’s correct. My favorite example of why the passive voice might be a preferred choice is its use in autopsy reports. We do not want to read a series of sentences that read, for instance, “I cut through the epidermis and fat layers from sternum to groin. I removed the heart and weighed it.” Etc.
El Jay,
"We cut through..." is still active voice.
Am I the only one who remembers the wonderful AMATO Opera Company, a gem on the Lower East Side for decades?
Didn't really tumble to the theme until i got to the revealer. Although I'm an editor, I'm pretty self-taught about the rules of English grammar, and often forget the labels applied to those rules, or how they are worded. And I'm not totally authoritarian about avoiding the passive voice. Sometimes it just sounds right. Righter.
Finished with an error. I never remember whether Kurosawa is AKIRi or AKIRA, and didn't know whether Perino was DiNA or DANA. I guessed wrong. (I avoid Fox News, but my mind's eye and ear can picture and hear Ms. Perino, but spelling her name is another matter.)
Congratulations on a fine puzzle, Jacob, and on your new offspring.
1
Just a couple of quick comments:
Not my best time, having had problems at the bottom. Last changes were GDP to GNP and OSSO to OSSA to get the happy music.
I was somewhat dissappointed with the puzzle, not being "tricky" enough for me. (Sorry for the quotations, Amy G.) However, the passive voice being an abomination, a kick out of the puzzle was enjoyed by me. ;)
3
I need a change and I’m feeling creative. Anyone know if it’s possible to change the name you post under?
@Michele Topol
Okay, autocorrect changed your last name to Tool when I hit return.
You should be able to change it in your account settings. But the last time I tried to change my avatar photo, it took weeks (literally) to make the change, so I don't know how well it's working. Upstate Kenny has changed his screen name fairly recently, so I know it can be done.
@Michele Topol
Click on "Edit" to the right.
I may be atypical but I like solving the puzzle without resorting to Google. I love the Sunday puzzle and I don’t mind esoteric clues provided the crosswords give me a chance. Today’s crosses included PITSAW/RILKE, ADOBO/MTOSSA, MTOSSA/ESE, NONUPLE/ (GDP or GNP?), and AMATO/AME. To those who solved this without help, congratulations on your encyclopedic knowledge. May I suggest you go on Jeopardy?
4
Babel64,
For me, some of it is knowledge that would be useful on Jeopardy, but much of it is more limited knowledge or just plain logic, which would not.
I didn't know NONUPLE from the clue, but with everything in from crosses save the initial D or N, I assumed N since I know NON as a numerical prefix from NONET. Worked for the crossword, wouldn't have worked for Jeopardy.
I knew RILKE was a poet, but not from the clue. I knew PITSAW from somewhere, but having RILKE helped. No Jeopardy there.
I knew AME, but needed to confirm AMATO. Split.
I enjoy Mexican food and know a bit about hockey and Greece, so ADOBO, ESA and MTOSSA would been OK for Jeopardy.
@Barry Ancona As you know, there is more than knowing the correct question to win at Jeopardy. One must also know the chance of success in order to wager properly and also have the reflexes to be the first to respond. Also one must be visually appealing and socially outgoing. This is why you've never seen me on Jeopardy and to make matters worse, I never even got to meet Art Fleming.
@HALinNY
You are a very funny man!
1
23 Across is incorrect. The answer to the Spencer Tracy narrated classic is "How the West Was Won". I remember seeing it in Stamford, CT when it was released in 1962. It was also filmed in Cinerama. IMDB has no reference to "How They Won The West".
Young Geezer,
The movie title is in passive voice.
The 23A entry is in active voice.
That's the theme of the puzzle.
2
@Barry Ancona
Yes, I see that. However, over the last several years the NYT crosswords have had too many gimmicks and "cutes", IMHO.
@Young Geezer
36 Across is incorrect. I met Queen Victoria once and I am quite sure that she told me "We are not amused".
1
Tossed "ORC" in just a little too fast-- messed up NW for a while.
EMOTE took a while but broke that corner open.
Good puzzle I think because you could solve it on brute strength (i.e. Without the theme) but were rewarded with speed if you saw it( which I didn't).
Ps how about nicotinic in B???
Maybe because I do the puzzle in print, I notice every now and then that the column mentions clues or words that are not in my version. I finished it fine - it was hard, but no ridiculous clues - but I seem to have no KRIS, DANA, ESCAPEE, or PANTS. The letter K is the easiest to check for, and it's in there three times, but no KRIS. So weird.
Mary,
I do it in print too.
KRIS is 96D.
I'll let you look again for the others.
Let me know if you don't find them.
@Mary
I'm confused!
KRIS is the answer to 96D. DANA is the answer to 79D. ESCAPEE is 53D. PANTS is 101D. I looked at the Newspaper Version online (PDF of print version) and the clues are the same as the online version.
@Liz B
Oh, you are so right! I must have filled them in sideways and never really saw them.
Does anybody know how to access today's acrostics online? I haven't been online for a while, and the screen looks different. There seems to have been some re-organization. Help!
@Lily O'Connor
If you go to the crossword page at https://www.nytimes.com/crosswords
and scroll all the way down to the bottom (past Sudoku, SET, and KenKen) there should be a link to the Acrostic.
For some reason, I've had trouble getting that page to load on and off today. Hope you have good luck with it!
@Liz B. Try using a different browser.
@Lily O'Connor I use Chrome on my MacBook, which works well
Loved this one: consistently interesting, never a dull moment.
Apropos of the clue for 73D: maybe the clue should be "many" rather than "some" golf shots. The overwhelming majority of golfers are slicers, chasing that banana ball around the course all day long, frustrated and loving every minute of it.
1
@archaeoprof
But there are a fair number of hookers out there also.
1
@archaeoprof
"The overwhelming majority of golfers are slicers"
I think that a fair number of golfers are hookers as well.
@ Rich
You read my mind!
Got stuck for longer than I should have on IVORIES / AST. I quickly threw in adt in my first pass (not being clear to me whether to enter daylight time or savings time) and didn't read ivories clue carefully enough to know that it was a plural answer. For a good ten minutes, I couldn't find my error because "ivoried with adt" seemed plausible. Sunday trickery!
I did a little googling afterwards and it seems that most of atlantic time zone does not observe daylight savings....
I liked this theme very much, speaking as a language teacher.
I agree with all the other folks who mildly objected to Queen Vickie's quote being included in a list of passive-voice sentences.
When I'm teaching the passive voice in German class, I (and my textbook) call this verb usage the "static passive," a form that describes a condition rather than states an action.
In German there are different helping verbs for those two forms. Makes it a little easier to conceptualize. In a German passive sentence, something "gets" done (Etwas wird gemacht = Something gets done) as opposed to having "been" done (Mein Auto ist repariert = My car is fixed).
ADOBO was the secret sauce for me today that held me up. I wasn't familiar with it, nor with the name of the Greek mountain. Had to Google that to finish today.
2
moved right along. had to change GdP to GNP at the end to get Mr Happy Pencil! We are not amused!!
3
112D, AME points of interest:
Not just "Black church inits." but specifically referring to the African Methodist Episcopal denomination, born in the early days of the United States. The history is relevant to current movements like Black Lives Matter and kneeling protests, because the AME church was also born out of a desire to be treated equally and fairly, and also misunderstood to be about separateness.
In the 1790s, black members of old St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia were required to sit in a rear balcony, out of view of the white members downstairs, and barred from serving in leadership roles. They eventually left St. George's to found Bethel Methodist Episcopal Church as a place where everyone was equally welcome. Over the next two decades, other churches followed the lead of Mother Bethel church, and several congregations joined to form the African Methodist Episcopal denomination (AME). Another of the founding member churches, and the oldest in the south, is Mother Emmanuel AME in Charleston, SC, site of the horrible shooting three years ago.
The story of the founding of Mt. Zion AME in Charleston,
scroll to the very bottom of this page
https://www.mtzioncharlestoname.org/our-heritage8
makes for compelling reading.
12
I wish so very much that links worked in the iOS version of the Times app.
1
@Dave S
I agree! I didn't know the links in the comments didn't work in iOS. I'll try to find out more about that and get it fixed.
1
@David Connell Hi David, I am a reporter with the NYT and I was hoping to ask you a quick question. My email is [email protected]
1
My answer to Lowe was marked incorrect but when I checked it was correct. In the meantime my streak was broken. Do I have any recourse?
@Linda Shevlin
This is a stretch, but is there anyway you could’ve entered the digit zero instead of the letter O? I think that the app should display zero in a different color for safety’s sake
1
@Linda Shevlin I am having the same problem....
@Linda Shevlin
HI! for all of you losing streaks on LOWE or encountering issues, try emailing [email protected] -- I think someone there will be able to set things right.
Not too easy; needed five googles to do fills which were (as usual) personality or team names. 56D is pretty highbrow for such.
Had a chuckle at the 111A fill: it's also an electronic circuit element.
I agree with MOL about 85D.
I have a quibble about 73D: the golf shot is not a verb in the past tense: it's a noun.
1
I'm puzzled by your quibble, Dr W. The 73D clue doesn't call for a particular part of speech, nor do crossword "rules" require that two examples in a clue be the same part of speech, so why does it matter whether the golf shot is a verb, a noun, or anything else?
But “sliced” here is an adjective.
@Barry and Nobis:
If you look it up using Google, this is what presents: 'A "slice" is a type of golf shot in which the golf ball curves dramatically in flight from left to right (for a right-handed golfer). The slice can be played intentionally, but is usually the result of a mishit.'
This is clearly a noun. The fill for 73D is past tense verb. My quibble is about that inconsistency. Bolognas can be actively sliced. Golf shots can't. Slice in the golf genre is a type of shot that was made; you won't know it's a slice until you see it happen.
I am one of those who always reads the title of Sunday puzzles and I use that clue to help decode the theme entries. So today, I figured we were looking for familiar phrases with some alteration to the subject. At first I tried to make "They are not amused" fit, but came up short. I also didn't get too hung up on the PASSIVE RESISTANCE aspect of the revealer. Although it seems to have a witty connection to the theme, it did not factor into my solve, and in fact "We are not amused" is no more passive to me than "I am hungry".
What I did find interesting however is that each original phrase implied an indefinite agent which became the subject of the re-jigged phrase.
I chuckled at DC's comment re 29A. Not wishing to change the subject, #I too could imagine alternate clues for that one.
1
In honor of today's puzzle, let's update old saw: Cliches, and the passive voice, should be avoided like the Plague.
7
Congratulations on the birth of your daughter, Mr. Stulberg.
App Solver Typo of the Day: Hit “S” instead of “A” on 80D, which yielded TOGS (an arguably alternate, if not precise, answer). Did not notice until I entered the theme answer at 91A, and had to laugh at the irony of my MISTSKE.
Perhaps the theme was a little too highbrow for me, but even though I understand it, it was a decidedly “meh” theme for me. I’m more of a fan of puns, anagrams, juxtaposed words that oddly make sense in the context of the clue, etc. Finished with the happy music, and a nice challenge (ended up 5 min. below average), but the theme was a dud for me. To each his own, I suppose!
6
The theme was cute, but this puzzle seemed to contain a lot of trivia and naticks — I will try and file them away for next time, but was stumped at the corners of MTOSSA and ESA, AMATO and AME, and PITSAW and RILKE. Didn’t Deb or someone once compare a Sunday to a larger version of a Wednesday? I’d say that’s about 98% true, but that 2%’s a killer!
1
@mprogers, indeed!
Thankfully, as an Edmonton Oilers fan, ESA was the single easiest clue in the entire puzzle for me.
The other two Naticks were the last clues to get filled.
Use of passive voice was intentional.
1
@Stuart Moore
Well, I sheepishly admit to being a Sens fan, but I too got ESA immediately. I seem to recall that the Oilers were quite a force in the 80's!
Well, I was amused, Mr. Stulberg, thank you very much for that.
But the big news today isn't your entertaining Sunday puzzle, it's the birth of your daughter. How exciting! And I just want to say that you chose a beautiful name in Cecily Judith. She sounds like a star already!
3
As usual, I didn't look at the title of the puzzle and I wish I had. I thought that was a much more lively 'reveal' than the one in the puzzle.
As it was, I was thoroughly puzzled for quite a while as I worked my way through this one with unlikely pieces of each theme answer in place. When I worked out the reveal there was a long pause and then a sort of combination doh!/aha moment when I finally understood what was going on.
Had a tough time with a lot of the non-theme fill and just thought there was an unusually low amount of bonus material for a Sunday puzzle. Still a clever idea and a good workout.
Never dawned on me before, but I guess the oft-quoted line from Pogo would actually be the perfectly proper royal version of "I'm my own worst enemy."
We have met the enemy and he is us.
5
@Rich in Atlanta
I agree with everything you said. I had a tough time too and didn't read the title of the puzzle until I'd been at it for too long because I'd forgotten that Sunday puzzles have titles. By then I had mostly figured out the theme, though in many cases, I wasn't sure about the original quote to change it around. My time was above my average for Sunday. I've been bringing it down from my early days and it's not gone in the right direction for this one.
I did read the title of the puzzle, and it actually led me to thinking about other possibilities for what the theme meant. The more I looked at the title and the themers, the farther astray I wandered. I kept looking for some sort of change in meaning rather than in voice. It wasn't until I got to the revealer that the Aha! happened.
Then I had flashbacks to journal abstracts and the convention of writing them in the passive voice.
Welp, I finished with one wrong letter. I slapped GDP into the grid and didn't look back at the improbable DONUPLE thus created. DHubby DON sat silently by (though he did help me out with Bluesman LOMAX) and just let it happen. (You did know it would be his fault, right?)
Nits:
I object to GENOESE. GenoVese, yes; Genoese, NO. I'm sure they looked it up, but it's just Wrong.
LOWE's is much more than an appliance purveyor; we remodeled this entire house, and I can attest that 'building supplier' or some similar umbrella term would be more acccurate.
This puzzle was just Okay, for me (and not because I scored a Fail.)
Then I looked at my missing 5 words from Yesterday's Wee Bee, and there were two, or perhaps three, I should have gotten. A fourth one I've missed before; maybe next time? And the fifth I'll look up because I don't like its looks.
And as for today's Wee Bee: I'm at 42 words, 180 points. Shortly I'll scroll down and look at the hints, but without hoping for much improvement. I will say, though, that I have EIGHT perfectly good words that were not accepted! Kind of a record number(!), to wit: COITION, CROFT, COIR, CROTON, INTROIT, OTIC, TIFFIN, TOFF. Humph.
This is how head-bangers are created.
6
Oh, duh. COIR doesn't have a T; it's just a word I automatically test to see if it's finally gotten vetted and added to the list. Nope.
And I see I'm missing 8 words today, so far.
1
@Mean Old Lady and here I had just made ROTINI last night, but couldn't find any in my Bee!
1
@Healthy Nurse
I agree that ROTINI should have been there, esp. since a delicious Italian dessert, Indian flatbread, Spanish finish, and Japanese gate all made the grade.
Other irksome exclusions besides those mentioned by MOL: FRONTON, NONTONIC, NICOTINIC, FRIT, and ICTIC.
I am trying to accept the capricious nature of what's in and what's out as part of the puzzle's charm, but head-banging may commence shortly, since I am stuck at 48 words and 217 points with just one or two 4 letter words to get to QB!
Somehow 99A led me here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvUZijEuNDQ
2
I liked this out-of-the-box theme as well as the puzzle's clever title. Because of some names I didn't know and many clues that had more than one possible answer, this puzzle gave me *active* resistance, making the completion quite satisfying.
Afterward, I took a few moments to become a NONUPLE pupil, because that goofy word sounds so Seuss-ilian. The investigation took me through math, and somehow veered into "hoople", which introduced me to "hoople house" and reminded me of Mott the Hoople. Not a bad side journey to start a Sunday.
Then there was the mini-theme of: ALA / AKIRA / ESA / GOUDA / ELSA / ILYA / TYRA / DANA / DAYSPA / ISTRIA / TOGA / MT OSSA .
The spot was hit by this, Jacob. Thank you!
2
A mixed reaction to this puzzle from me. The fill was basically two passes but I will probably never really understand the underlying construction. The rules of English and the nomenclature thereof have escaped me for most of my life and continue to do so. All of the explanations presented here put me in a trance of ignorance. You experts may as well write in some arcane Asian dialect that uses pictorial glyphs.
But as it happens here quite often, one does not always need to understand the mechanics or the underlying objective of a puzzle to enjoy solving it. And I did enjoy filling in all those little squares with the appropriate glyphs even though I do not understand the rationale for the theme answers.
5
@HALinNY Here’s my take on it (deep breath). There are two elements at work here. The “voice” of a sentence, and the part of the sentence referred to as The Subject. The voice of the sentence can be Active or Passive. If it’s active, there is a specific entity performing some action (e.g. “People Made Mistakes”). Who made the mistakes? People. The Passive voice indicates that some action has occurred, but does not say who did it. (Mistakes were made). But it doesn’t end there. The subject of a sentence is the person, place, thing, or idea that is doing or being something. In the two sentences from the puzzle that I gave as examples, the subject of the sentence is not the same. In example 1, the subject is “People”. In the second, its “Mistakes”. Hence the puzzle’s title, “Changing the subject”. The constructor takes a known phrase and makes a new one by changing the subject of the sentence. In all cases, the subject is changed from an active (“People”) to a passive (“Mistakes”). And here’s where the revealer ties it all together - Passive Resistance, in the case of the puzzle, indicates that the constructor is resisting the use of the passive voice as the sentence subject and is replacing it with an active voice subject. Whew! Hope that helps!
4
Steve,
Herculean effort, but don't believe everything you read. It was understood by Hal. Also, Hal understood the the theme.
@Barry Ancona LOL okay, thanks Barry... I guess the old phrase "once a teacher always a teacher" applies to me...
In re BEE
A trifling 50 words to conjure up today (219) points, helped by just the one pangram. Notable absence: COITION (too naughty; the Queen Bee doesn't like to talk about it all that much – We are not amused.....).
There are no (new) Clotburs
There are 7 words beginning with CON-
6 words ending in -TION
2 recent Italian imports (one for Mussolini-the-elder)
2 bits of geometry
3 radical/acidic types
That short archaic word we had the other day.
That chapeau we had in the crossword the other day.
2 other French-derived words.
2 more Japanese words, but not tea this time.
And Indian bread, but not NAAN.
An obligatory piece of obscure fauna named after a minor mythological Greek god; also may be known as a detergent to some, a small moon to others.
The rest we have seen before, further demonstrating a penchant for abbreviations that have made it into the mainstream.
12xC, 7xF, 2xI, 4xN, 1xO, 6xR, 18xT. Bingo!
7
@nice cuppa
Thank heavens you came along, I was going crazy.
Two more unaccepted words are croft and tiffin (I guess not originally English enough).
1
@NICE CUPPA
Very helpful. Given what isn't accepted, I was surprised at some of the food-related words that were (especially since MACHE wasn't accepted the other day).
@NICE CUPPA FWIW, I am not done but already have 7 ending in -TION.
I take issue with Queen Victoria's statement:
"We are not amused" being in the passive voice.
I quote "A distinction is made between [the passive voice] type of clause and a superficially similar construction where a word with the form of a past participle is used as predicative adjective, and the verb [to] be or similar is simply a copula linking the subject of the sentence to that adjective. For example:
I am excited (right now).
[We are not amused]
is NOT passive voice, because excited [or amused] here is not a verb form (as it would be in the passive the electron was excited with a laser pulse), but an adjective denoting a state."
9
@NICE CUPPA Agree! Some people call this a pseudo-passive, others (like this source) a semi-passive, and not a true passive:
https://www.thoughtco.com/passive-voice-grammar-1691597
I think the same holds true for "Batteries are not included" and "This film is unrated".
The key distinction between a true passive and these other constructions seems to be the lack of an obvious agent. Who or what didn't amuse Queen V? Who didn't include the batteries - the VP in charge of product development, or the packer on the assembly line, or the penny-pinching CFO? Who didn't rate the film - MPAA? or the British equivalent? Or perhaps Rotten Tomatoes or some critics' group?
But the topic of passive voice remains hotly debated (see what I did there) and I'm sure others have differing views :)
Yours in pedantry
4
@Magpie
I came to comments to confirm my doubts about the Victoria quote being considered passive, but the movie trailer answer didn’t make me blink, as the original is typically “This film has not been rated.”
@NICE CUPPA
The passive/active distinction makes sense to me only by looking at whether the sentence conveyed meaningful information. (Notice that the preceding sentence is passive, but it makes the point I wanted to make.)
Passive is a problem in sentences such as: The pennant was won last night. The reader is left to wonder which team won. So, rewrite needed!
“Batteries are not included” presents no such problem because the reader simply does not care who was responsible for those missing batteries. So, leave the sentence in the passive voice. It’s fine the way it is.
Rules of grammar are best appreciated as an aid to clear writing, not a system designed to trip up the unwary.
2
@Caitlin
If I may be an insufferable pedant for a moment (and I certainly hope I can be here!), Russ Meyer (rather than Meyers) is the name of the (ahem) titillating B-movie auteur. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russ_Meyer
2
Howww did I do that?!
Thank you Irene — I will fix in the am. Not pedantic at all.
1
Oh, and one other thing: I looked at the winning Scrabble board and didn’t recognize about half of the words. I just counted up the ones I maybe knew and arrived at 16, and a few of those were questionable. Braconid was not among them. I’m glad those guys don’t construct NYT xword puzzles.
3
I've always been taught that passive voice should be avoided. But, I found the theme answers to be jarring, probably because I'm accustomed to hearing the passive voice versions of those expressions. (OK, enough of that.)
I knew the theme had to do with expressions that use passive voice, but I kept looking at those answers and thinking, "but that's not passive." It took solving all of them plus the revealer before it dawned on me that this was the point!
I found it a fun puzzle, with plenty of challenge, but ultimately solvable. I did some information lookup at the end when looking for an error, but only confirmed answers I already had. I finally realized the mistake that had been made must be in the unknown word, "DONUPLE". Eventually deciding that GDP must not be right, I changed to "N" and heard the happy music.
Congratulations to the Stulbergs. The world is no doubt a better place with Cecily Judith in it.
5
The D in DONUPLE was my last letter too.
4
@David Meyers
Me, too. GNP used to be the major indicator of economic growth, but sometime a decade or so ago, GDP replaced it in the media. I had to make a conscious effort to remember to go to GDP instead of GNP when facing clues like today's.
Of course, today they pulled the old switcheroo.
@David
Also DONUPLE before NONUPLE. I tried that change and the cross OSS_/ES_ from O to A to hear the happy music.
I struggled through this puzzle more than the usual Sunday, but the payoff was more than worth it. Passive voice in writing is one of my main pet peeves! That and, of course, "unnecessary" quotation marks.
Welcome Cecily, and may this theme inform your approach to writing and to life.
5
@Amy G
I'm afraid I am guilty of using "unnecessary" quotation marks in my "comments". ;)
Congratulations on the birth of your daughter, Mr. Stulberg.
5
When I was a child, we were very rarely taken to the movies. One of the few times we went was to see How the West was Won, in Cinerama. It starred everybody! (more or less). I had forgotten that Spencer Tracy was the narrator. So I figured out the puzzle trick pretty early, and the rest of them were fairly easy, although I did translate the royal "we" into ME at first, before I realized it was US.
I've been watching the Great British Baking Show this summer. One of the things that has always stuck out about it is the British pronunciation of "genoise" as "GENOESE." The only explanation I can think of is the historical English dislike of the French. But for a while I had wondered if it was a different kind of cake.
3
@Liz B We recorded the finals of the GBBS, Liz, so don't tell me who won. Great show. When are you off to Italia?
@Liz B
Génoise is simply the French form of Genoese, the (respectively) French and English forms of the Italian, Genovese. The object in question is in origin an Italian cake, so there is no etymological reason to adopt the French form in this context, and it might even me considered insulting to/by Italians.
2
@Wags and NICE CUPPA
It was a very close finish, Wags!
We leave next week. We'll be in Padova for a while (but not Mantova) and around much of northern Italy. Suggestions for good restaurants?
Thanks for the info, NC! Maybe the Americans are trying to sound fancier than they are, and everybody should be pronouncing it in Italian.
The film narrated by Spencer Tracy is actually titled "How the West Was Won". This puzzle incorrectly has the answer as "How They Won the West".
2
Carol,
*All* of the themer entries have been changed from the "correct" passive voice to the "incorrect" active voice. That is the theme of the puzzle.
21
Fun puzzle! Got hung up with FASOLA for What might follow me (mi).
Also ADOBO. I never thought of it as a marinade so I filled in salsa. The Puerto Rican family I married into taught me that Adobo is an “all purpose seasoning” made by Goya. A necessity for good rice and beans.
4
@Ken (formerly Upstate Kenny)
"Fasola?"
1
Doremi....
Nice puzzle that.
5
Re 71A, there’s no mock in my horror when referring to the subject as a “singer” or “musician”. She may be an artist and various other fine things, but those two she is not.
3
@David Meyers Somewhere in storage I still have the original Plastic Ono Band album (the Yoko Ono version).
I actually listened to it once and my reaction to it could be summed up quite nicely by the title of the first track:
"Why?"
3
NONUPLEs are not up my alley, and since I filled GDP instead of GNP... Oh, well. But the rest was good! Tricky cluing for a Sunday, I thought.
In other news, I've been accidentally robbed! I had a wire compost bin in the front yard with a hand-painted sign that said "FREE," meaning free bamboo (for when I thin the crop). It was empty of bamboo but I hung up the FREE sign on Thursday and put my dogs in there for a photo op (ha ha, no?). Then neglected to take the sign down and now it's all gone. Except the dogs, of course. "@#$!"
1
I, too, had GDP and spent the last several minutes of my solve time looking for my mistake.
Maybe the dogs didn't think the photo op was funny and they got rid of the bin?
P.S. I'm guessing you make a mean DONUPLE...
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@Suzy M. A friend in Nashville had an old exercise bike she wanted to get rid of. She put the bike in her front yard with a sign saying “The bike works but my knees don’t. Take the bike and leave whatever you think is fair.” Later that day the bike was gone and $25 was left under her door.
3
I give up. What would have been the original passive voice phrase for PLEASE SEDATE ME? I didn’t think imperatives could be turned into passive voice.
2
@Steve L
It's a song by the Ramones-- I WANNA BE SEDATED.
3
I Wanna Be Sedated...please.
- Tom
2
Also see
"Please Release Me"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ch_Fz2Np-Z4
and
"I Shall Be Released"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjtPBjEz-BA
Mazel tov for little Cecily Judith!
29A ha ha ha that's just for the folks who complain about politics in the puzzle...
104A makes for good practice in speaking Dutch: wat goede Gouda! although it ranks low among cheeses in my books...
42D makes for very sad memories of a great tragedy at a crucial moment in the race to the moon; NASA bigwigs were going to take away the name Apollo I but were talked out of it by more sensible people...
and from the Mini, Gamut joins Ela in what is called "crosswordese" but both had real meaning, in the musical world, once upon a time. The old scale ran from Ut (the note we call "do") through re-mi-fa-sol-la. ["Ti" (Si) was added much later.] Each note on the staff was named by its letter (C, D, E, F, G, A, B) and the tonal step it occupied in C-, F-, or G-based scales. So "Alamire" was the old name for the A below middle C - it was an "A" that was "la" in the C-scale, "mi" in the F-scale, and "re" in the G-scale.
Ela, often met in crosswords, was the old name for the "highest" acceptable note, high E at the top of the treble clef, which was "la" in the high G-scale, thus Ela.
Gamut was the old name for the "lowest" acceptable note, G at the bottom of bass clef, which was spelled with a capital Greek-letter "Gamma" and served as "ut" = "do" in the lowest G-scale, thus Gamma-ut = Gamut. Eventually, Gamut came to mean the whole range of notes in use, and then the word was taken over into general use and forgotten as a musical term.
16
To quote Popeye, that’s faskinatin’. (If Popeye never said that it’s something he could have said.)
@David Meyers
Thanks for sharing your esoteric knowledge! It made a nice encore to a fun puzzle.
P.S. Here's a song for our constructor, his wife, and their star.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-1s2gqDs_U
3
The title and a few cross letters for 23A gave me that entry and the theme, and that was that. Perhaps it's the 50+ years of editing, but 36A about spending a Sunday puzzle changing passives to actives (I'm not The Village Voice). I am the editorial "us" of 36A, but if many other solvers have the same response, 91A.
I do have an editorial question about question marks. What was it about 71A, 49D and 53D that warranted a question mark when 78D did not? And why the question mark for the revealer?
I believe the pun-ish nature of the reveal merits the question mark. PASSIVE RESISTANCE is a common form of non-violent protest, whereas resisting the passive voice is what’s implied by the clue.
3
Irene,
I'm familiar with PASSIVE RESISTANCE. Let me rephrase my question:
"Why does the 'pun-ish nature' of 71A, 49D, 53D *and 111A* merit a question mark but the 'pun-ish nature' of 78D does not?"
Is there a quantifiable level of "pun-ishment" that mandates the "wink-wink?"
1
@Barry Ancona
I am not totally familiar with question mark etiquette. I just know that when I see one in a clue, I try to think of a context different from the most everyday meaning of the clue. In that case, I think all of your examples could use the question mark, including 78D. Not having one in 78D implies that an everyday understanding of "out" means "asleep". Still, the lack of a question mark did not seem to affect my response to this clue. My thinking is that the level of "pun-ishment" requiring a question mark is a judgement call, and may not always be totally consistent.
1
I haven't quite finished the puzzle yet, but I had to jump on here and comment on 86D. It only takes 8 letters to span two triple word scores in Scrabble. So, while a "NONUPLE" could also do the trick, it doesn't seem to be a very good answer for the clue.
That being said, I would love to use NONUPLE in a game of Scrabble sometime, and perhaps even hit two triple word scores with NONUPLES.
Anyway, back to figuring out those last few pesky little stumpers in the puzzle...
@Dan From Portland
I just read the explanation given in the column and I guess I have to cede the point that by tripling twice, one is getting nine times the score. I was thinking of the very first definition below (consisting of nine) but I guess it can also refer to nine-fold. My bad.
Still look forward to using the word!
Definition of nonuple
1 : consisting of nine : being nine times as great or as many : ninefold
2 : taken by nines or in groups of nine
Congratulation on the birth of your daughter, Mr. Stulberg.
9