Fun puzzle -- my only gripe is that "jeu d'esprit" is NOT two words! Apparently Cox and Rathvon don't speak French. "D'esprit" is not one word.
Very fun quote. Really enjoyed the unexpected Donkeys. Knew quite a few words: ODETTE, WEST END, ETUDES, LAMENT, HENDRIX, VERDI, MANDOLIN right off the bat so it went fairly quickly. For Lenny Bruce, I initially thought of indecency, but knew it wasn't quite right, and OBSCENITY came to me shortly. JEU D'ESPRIT was great; hadn't heard that in a while. Thanks for the fun.
Note for the tech squad; if I do the acrostic on my iPad, I can finish it if I do it in one go, but it will disappear soon thereafter. However, I can still find the finished puzzle by going to the NYT puzzle page on my laptop. It's kinda weird.
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This one went remarkably fast, in part because I guessed JEUDESPRIT and OUTFOXED practically off the bat. It didn't hurt that there were also, for me, more than the usual number of gimmes: ODETTE, ETUDES, YAWN, VERDI, WESTEND and (southside) CHICAGO. Speaking of the pleasure of FRUSTRATED EXPECTATIONS: I initially assumed that "criminal" in clue Q must be a noun rather than adjective, so I had LAWMAN at first, even though it didn't feel quite right as an antonym. Tumbling to the misdirection and correcting to LAWFUL felt good, without making me feel DONKEY.
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So many Ys! So many Ks!
My only real mis-step was assuming the Coaster's novelty hit was POISON IVY -- also two words, and the same letter count.
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@Madeline Gunther
Hand up for POISON IVY--I'd spelled YAKETY as YACKETY at first, so it didn't fit.
lots of gimmes and a quick solve. My favorites were VERDI and Jimi HENDRIX!
Had enough gimmes for a toehold, and then pieces of identifiable words within the text itself. Not too difficult, yet fun.
Fun puzzle, and a medium-difficult one for me this week.
SPOILERS AHEAD...
My gimmes were OUTFOXED, NEWTON, ODETTE, WEST END, ETUDES, LOW-KEY, HENDRIX, OBSCENITY, VERDI, UNLUCKY, and CHICAGO.
I thought that would be enough to make the puzzle go quickly, but there were enough unexpected words in the grid -- like WILDLY DONKEY -- that I still stumbled around for a few minutes longer than usual.
(Actually, the word "wildly" tripped me up more than "donkey." Or rather, the two words together resulted in such an odd sentence construction that I was sure I must have something wrong.)
All in all, a very satisfying puzzle with several themed clues and a clever quotation solution choice that led to a bit of head-scratching and finally an "aha" moment. Just the way I like my acrostics... :)
Thanks, EC & HR!
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Whirlpool is always one of my favorite “middle” puzzles.
[MAJOR SPOILER ALERT]
My gimmes were CASINO, SWEDEN, APOLLO and RENEE.
I had to seach to get CARRIE.
Sometimes you have to trust your instincts.
I was somehow not totally sure that the fifth line across was PANTRY, so I held off on putting it in. I sure glad I did, because it turned out be what almost certainly was intentional misdirection for the now-archaic LARDER.
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@Jerrold --
I did confidently put in PANTRY, but that's why pencils have erasers!
And into my seventh decade, I've finally mastered that APOLLO has two Ls, not two Ps.
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@Madeline Gunther Both of us must vividly remember watching that first moonwalk, fifty years ago next month.
I know that maybe I’m beginning to sound like what used to be called a broken record, but it is so darn frustrating when I don’t get the final “music” indicating the successful completion of an Acrostic, because one letter would not register. This time it was the “V” of VERDI.
It would not go into the grid or the Author and Title either.
[SPOILER ALERT]
My only absolute gimmes were YAWN and OUTFOXED.
(Even though I’m surprised at myself for not getting LAMENT and OBSCENITY.)
The answers that I got by searching were too numerous to mention.
There is always at least one part-of-speech trick.
LAWFUL depended on “criminal” being an adjective; I got it only from the “crossings”.
That business about “donkey” reminded me of an Acrostic some time ago in which the quote was about comedy writing. He was making a point about ending with a word that makes people laugh. The quote itself ended with the word “underpants”, which did not have any logical relationship to the rest of that sentence.
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P.S. And it is still equally frustrating that if I try to go back to the completed Acrostic to better understand Caitlin’s piece, it has gone back to the very beginning, with everything blank.
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@Jerrold though i’m able to fill in that pesky square, i’m also unable to return to anything but a blank grid. and it’s been a couple of years since i’ve been notified of my posted comments. grrr!
thanks for a terrific workout, as per usual, echr.
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@Jerrold This happens to me, too. Very frustrating! Sometimes I can refresh the puzzle, re-do it (which is much quicker the second time around), and all is well. Today, not so much.
In my attempts to get the puzzle to work, I noticed that the square that will not fill is always the first square I attempt to type into. Nothing is entered, and from that point on, that square will accept no input. Refresh, start by typing into a different square and that time around that is the one square that will accept no input.
I have no idea if anyone ever monitors these comments, but just in case they do, and technical info is useful: Safari 12.1.1 ( but this also happened with earlier versions), macOS Mojave 10.14.5. multiple platforms (Macbook Pro, iMac, both under 3 years old).
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