Started 1A quickly with "the old" HEAVEHO, which got the old HEAVE HO very quickly.
Agree that ANODYNE is a lovely word, but it's been rather tainted by the recent tendency to parse anything that's not nailed down. Considering that DYNE is a 'measure of force' (as every good cruciformist knows), combining it with ANO should give pause for some cruciformidable implications.
As has been mentioned on so many ANO appearances, it wouldn't hurt to have a tilde.
How could I not mention this was a veryvery good Friday?
Thought the grid looked line a bevy of BATS or Stealth Bombers, so that may have helped me wing it. Evenso, I fell in with the Ottawa Andrew crowd at 41:09 and don't mind that a bit, as it gives me my money's worth in time enjoyed. When it comes to pleasure, I'm a LeapLinger.
Gentlemen, thank you! This was no fly-by-night effort.
1
I'm not a big fan of grid art (don't mind it especially, but it's just not my thing), so didn't notice anything until I read the clue for 17A. I thought they were birds. But I was still able to fill in SPREAD ???? WINGS, and then the BOOKIE resolved my ONE'S/YOUR problem.
The D at the crossing of ELROND and DR. DREW was a total guess. I also didn't know MR. GREEN.
Fun puzzle, even if not particularly chewy. Nice to see that Our Little Boy is growing up and, of course, SPREADing his WINGS.
1
Beautiful grid, really enjoyed this puzzle, thanks gents!
2
Wordplayers might enjoy Nicki Minaj on Jimmy Fallon having to rap with "hexagon", "yeti", "edible arrangement".
What composure under pressure.
I would like to see a rap puzzle. Freestyle or old school.
6
@Andrew - BTW, TIL Bovril which I hope makes it into a puzzle, although I have no idea how to clue it. "Sacred bevvie in Britain?" (riffing on the cow part).
I know it was the sports section, but agreement, people, agreement: "the idea of roving vendors in Britain are alien".
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/27/sports/yankees-red-sox-london-stadium.html
I do still believe the puzzle would be enriched by drawing on words appearing in the paper within the previous say 90 days. That is a challenge for construction, of course. Daily readers of the paper can attest that most fill appears on a daily basis. I mean exclusive of the daily crossword itself.
I really enjoy getting to the end of the puzzle and getting rewarded with that nice jazzy tune. It would be nice if the powers-that-be would do the same for the Spelling Bee.
Toward that end, can I suggest Flight of the Bumblebee be played when one achieves Queen Bee status. Anyway, that's what we play in our house every time one of us gets Queen Bee, and believe me, it's not that often.
5
@Nick Schleppend - I actually mute the jingle because it makes me jump out of my skin, which is already sagging; I would mos def mute the Flight.
But extending your idea, I would love to hear a different Queen B song aka Beyoncé as I reach each level. It would probably require great skill just to acquire the rights to sample them. The selling point would be exposure to a whole new audience that probably skews older.
33D: COT [Place for a retired soldier?]
Not an error report, not even a nit, just an observation: during my time on active duty, at several stateside posts and quite a number of overseas locations, I never slept on a COT.
3
@Barry Ancona I don't recall any cots stateside either, but I'm pretty sure we slept on cots in tents when we were at our base camp (Camp Evans) between missions. But the place I very specifically recall them was at Eagle Beach, which was the 101st's R&R site and where we got to stay a few times while waiting for replacements. The cots were in open huts on the sand.
Those were the best vacations I ever had, though they never lasted more than 3 days (2 days was more common). That's where I came to realize that how enjoyable a vacation is can be largely a matter of what it's a vacation from.
8
Rich,
There it is.
1
@Barry Drifting, but I would imagine you also remember everyone singing along (loudly) to this song. It was always Korean bands for us - you too?:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2s4GHY-fpOc
Oh, and this one too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUpBSvN1a50
..
3
Love the little bats! But we do not get why a BOOKIE is a line setter?
@Laura Rodrigues In London Betting "the line" in sports essentially means betting the point spread; since a BOOKIE takes bets he can be considered a "line setter."
2
@Laura Rodrigues In London
Thanks for asking that. I’d meant to. Now, TIL...
:-c)€
Tony,
From what I understand, the clue and answer are fine for the puzzle, but don't work in the street. A BOOKIE takes the bets, but the line is set by an oddsmaker.
4
In today's paper, "The RealReal IPO: Secondhand fashion goes mainstream" echoes the recent puzzle pun on HAND HAND.
Unfortunately, the reporting doesn't mention the puzzle. Maybe the departments should talk more?
Also, I used to see more ironical headlines that read like a crossword clue, basically any headline ending in a rhetorical question mark. I looked the other day and found only one. Today, I might nominate "Who gets to sit on the Supreme Court?" only because it sounds like "Who's on first?"
1
MARIETTA was surely not the first permanent settlement in what is now Ohio. Native Americans had been there for more than 10,000 years when Europeans arrived and undoubtedly some of their settlements lasted more than a piddling 231 years. That was certainly true here in the PNW, where favorable sites (including Seattle) were occupied for millenia before white men arrived.
The NYT is usually not parochial (I remember when "President during the Viet Nam War" was THIEU) so I was disappointed in this clue. Just adding "European" to the clue would have fixed it.
8
"MARIETTA was surely not the first permanent settlement in what is now Ohio."
Doug,
I agree, but that's not exactly what the clue says. As the clue is written, I suggest the Eurocentricism is either minimized or not there at all.
1
@Barry Ancona
Parsed very closely, the clue is gibberish because there wasn't a "state" of Ohio until 1803. I'm having a hard time seeing a non-Eurocentric interpretation of the clue unless you define "permanent" as "persisting until the present", which is not what the dictionary says. My mother used to get "permanents" that lasted a month or two.
3
Doug,
To the clue: were there (still) Native American permanent settlements in 1803 in Ohio?
1
There's a problem with this weekend's puzzles: when I printed out A Little Variety (as I do every week) I got the solution to Going Halfway instead of the puzzle.
To whom can one complain?
@RJ
You just did... :)
Worth noting that another measure of puzzle quality is the quality of the comments section. Today was especially good, thanks to all the contributors for their wisdom and anecdotes. The comments were possibly a little thin on puns, but HIGHEST REGATTA made up for it.
No one else mentioned SWIMWEAR before MENSWEAR for suits and briefs. We all know that MEN SWEAR. I think we recently saw POTTYMOUTHED?
3
@Andrew
The highest regatta is the high point of my day.
:-c)€
1
Zippy puzzle, way below average. Took me a bit to get started and a bunch of my initial answers were missteps. However, once I got following things fell nicely into place.
Visually appealing puzzle, as well! Wasn’t a fan of FURRIER, though. Just a visceral response.
@MJ - no way, I'd have to check but this was above average for me, including missteps like "take to ONES WINGS." which could have read something "DONE SWINGS"!
I spent a minute on like FURRIER vs FARRIER. Both are professions where you do stuff to animals.
This was a real toughie. Over half an hour in three sittings to let some preconceptions melt away. Far above average time for a Friday and very fun. Thought I was not going to be able to solve. Northeast was the last to fall for me, but after it did, I find it hard to explain why. Most of the answers I had at one point but erased because I couldn’t find fits.
5
From constructors' notes: "it didn’t drive us batty."
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
4
@Robert Michael Panoff
Ha, ha!!
:-c)€
1
Got the snail logo today.
One big slowdown came because I had the “I” and “O” in 40D and filled in NIKON, which seemed obvious based on my decades of experience with professional SLR cameras. When crosses forced the change to “RICOH,” I thought to myself, “It would be news to Canon that Ricoh is a competitor.” I had thought Ricoh was out of the camera biz for decades. I see now Ricoh is still in cameras, but not the kind that would ever generate an invoice for me.
The forehead slap came when I realized, “COPIERS, not cameras...”
Cursory (read “sloppy”) Googling led to “ATHENS” for 41A which caused a logjam in the Southeast quadrant. Once I did some real reading on Theseus and came up with ATTICA, the rest fell in about a minute.
4
I have a sense of DEJA VU when answers re-appear in grids in a short period of time. TODAY'S puzzle in particular has three answers that have appeared rarely in the Shortz Era but have appeared recently.
AP EXAM(S) has only appeared 3 times, 2 have been this month
NAMETAGS 14 times, twice in the last 2 months
MENSWEAR 5 times total, 2 this year
Also:
ICEE 31 times over 17 years, 3 times this month, 4 this year
SNEAD 57 times over 25 years, 2 out of the last 3 days
4
@ColoradoZ
I am thinking of puzzles with many DOOK-able alternative clues. MENS WEAR v. MEN SWEAR is a good example of the kind of answer, maybe "suit"able for cryptic's too.
3
Just a note, a "one-two" is a jab followed by a cross. If your stance is that of a typical righty, you'll stand with your left foot forward, so the one-two is a left jab, followed by a right cross.
As a fencer, I always found this a little disconcerting, since in fencing, you go engarde with your dominant foot and hand forward.
On that note, here's a plea for SABRE or FOIL to appear every once in a while, instead of the ubiquitous EPEE (with its three Es).
I really enjoyed this puzzle--thought it had some nice chewy bits (RAMP crossing PASTA as clued, for instance), LISSOME, which I think is a lovely word, and neat grid art.
Thanks Bruce and David (and Will and crew)!
7
@Puzzledog The power from a punch comes from the ground up --- a boxer needs maximum momentum to deliver the best shot. With the dominant hand and foot behind, a boxer will have the distance and torque to do this. Even though a stiff jab can hurt badly, it's mainly a set-up punch or an annoying distraction. Teddy Atlas says multiple jabs are "like flies on the windshield" to your opponent.
1
@Puzzledog The power of a punch comes from the ground up --- a boxer needs maximum momentum to deliver a punch from his dominant hand, hence the non-dominant hand and foot are forward. While a stiff jab can hurt like hell, it's mainly a set-up punch; jabs can also be used as a distraction --- Teddy Atlas says multiple jabs look like "flies on the windshield" to your opponent.
1
I'm actually from MARIETTA Ohio. It's not only the first settlement in Ohio, it's the first organized settlement in the Northwest Territory. It's a pretty little town, where the Ohio and Muskingum Rivers meet; and that's the extent of my positives.
10
@Zachary people lived permanently in what’s now called Ohio for 10,000 years before Marietta was settled by Europeans.
Also in 1788, Robert Patterson and Daniel Boone biographer John
Filson traveled north from Lexington, Kentucky, crossed the Ohio River and laid out plans for what was to become Cincinnati. This area was remote and isolated at the time, and Marietta drew settlers more quickly. Patterson and Filson named their prospective city Losantiville. During the expedition, Filson disappeared and was never heard from again.
3
Had to pop in to agree with everybody who loved this puzzle. It's not often we get a really fun Friday solve ... and this one with grid art, too: heaven!
Also I identify with BATS IN THE BELFRY as I have them.
I thought MARIETTA might be HAMILTON where I live however we were founded in 1791, a few years later.
We have BATS in Hamilton, too.
Thank you, Bruce and David! You both made my morning!
9
An ad for Wordplay, with a picture of the boxers, appeared right below the puzzle on the web page. I got a hint when I didn't want one!
@adean
I've said it before, but it seems to me that the picture rarely adds anything to the column, and could just as easily disappear. This isn't by any means the first time that a commenter unexpectedly sees a picture before solving, for an unwelcome hint, but here's what I do to avoid this.
If I'm using my phone or tablet, I use the Crossword app. No pictures show on it. Then I go to Wordplay ON THE WEB (because I hear that in the NYT newspaper app, you don't always get to see all the comments).
If I'm using my desktop, I open the Wordplay column in a tab, and do not close it, even when I'm finished. Then I can access the next puzzle from the link at the top, and after completing the puzzle, I can hit the Back button and get a link to the current Wordplay. This works fine even if I'm not doing consecutive puzzles on the desktop.
It's a lot of steps at first, and granted, the NYT should do better, but once you get the hang of it, it's quite easy.
Relaxing Friday fill -- top half went smoothly -- LEFT JAB was gimme since I spar at a boxing gym. The only minor stumble was RAN LATE; I first had RAN over, then RAN Long. The bottom half went a bit more slowly but fell into place without any angst. Overall this was a fun puzzle. Many thanks for MOE -- the Stooges are the kings of physical comedy not to mention experts at really bad puns.
5
@Tony Santucci - me too on RAN follower, in the same order.
A possible answer for "Ran follower" is YUME aka Dreams, Kurosawa's next film.
1
@Andrew That would cause some grumbling!
1
@Tony Santucci
Something told me that I should fill in RAN and wait for crosses for the rest; something can RuN LATE, OVER or LONG.
And this was not because I have encyclopedic knowledge of the history of crossword clues. In retrospect, I should have just put LATE; RUN LONG has never been in a puzzle, and RAN OVER has only been clued with the sense of "trampled."
Now I'm gonna be listening to this in my head all day:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMc0ok9_V7Q
The bats are in the belfry.
3
There's writing on them there socks!
Take a look. (This'll work in Windows...) Right-click on the photo of David Steinberg, and select "View image" from the pop-up menu. When it occupies the browser window on its own, click again to size it up to its 100% size. Zoom in as far as you can by Ctrl-scrollwheeling upwards (works in the Firefox browser, maybe others), and look as closely as you can at the socks.
Some of the squares are filled in. I'm wondering if the socks were designed as a legit crossword puzzle with a clue set that came with them, or if David decided to fill them (at least partially) for himself? David, any comment?
Anyway, I thought that was worth looking at.
1
@Alan J
I couldn’t quite make out any words on the socks. I was rather disturbed though by the lack of symmetry between the socks!
Could you make out any words?
@Andrew
Can't quite make out any words, though the darkest lettering on his right sock looks like it has numbers in it ("8000"?). There is an unchecked Across square at the start of that entry which is either empty or too faint to see, and an unchecked Down square farther up.
There is a similar unchecked Across square on the left sock at about the same height as the right one, so the two socks may be two copies of the same asymmetrical grid. If so, the left sock is shifted quite a ways further around to the left than the right sock. Or vice versa.
Enough already. They're eye-catching socks, which David seems to have partially filled for purposes of his own. I'll stop now.
@Alan J
IFYOUCAN (Clued "Catch me _____ ") READ ("Color homophone") THIS ("Not that") YOU ("The one answering this clue") ARE ("More than one is") TOO ("Number homophone") CLOSE ("Warm").
With an "800" thrown in for fun?
2
I grew up a fan of boxing (before baseball grabbed my heart), and the only heavyweight champ I knew for the first 10 years of my life was Joe Louis. I've always believed he had the most amazing, lightning-fast LEFTJAB of any heavyweight boxer I've seen, with the possible exception of Muhammad Ali. At any rate, 1A was an easy solve, and that started me on the way to a relatively quick Friday triumph.
Friday is usually my nemesis, but not today. And it was nice to remember The Brown Bomber from Detroit, who once said, "There's a lot of things wrong with America, but Hitler ain't gonna fix 'em."
Something to reflect upon in these unsettling times.
17
This one was *tough* for me. After two passes there was a lot of white, and it turns out that a lot of what I had put in on those passes was wrong. I had to pause and leave it several times before anything started to happen. Finally in frustration, I decided that I had to put something in 1A as a stake in the ground. Luckily for me, I guessed right with LEFT JAB, and like magic the grid started filling in. Came in around 4 minutes under average. Whew! Thanks to our constructors and editor for a great Friday morning challenge!
4
After two passes, a lot of what I put in was right! I undid four of those right answers with dubious crosses and the puzzle started to drag. On a whim I went back to my original entries, crosses ignored. The puzzle then fell together nicely. My first fill was Moe Howard and the smile never left my face, all of the above notwthstanding.
2
I found this only slightly easier than a typical Friday, but was delighted with the theme. I have a lot of the same favorites as others and would add the clue @39D for NAME TAG (maybe because I am so bad at names)
Our trips to the continent would usually start with the overnight ferry to Zeebruges and then start driving through Belgium to LILLE. The problem the first time we did this was that there were no signs to Lille, a major city, but quite a few to Rijsel, a place we had never heard of. We finally asked someone if we were on the right road for Lille and then found out that Rijsel was the Belgian's word for Lille.
My favorite Friday puzzle for a long time.
14
I thoroughly enjoyed this puzzle, although I was underwhelmed by the grid art, such as it was. You see what you see and I'll see what I see. BIRDS OF A FEATHER is also a grid-spanner and would have worked. So would A MURDER OF RAVENS, for that matter. Look, you want bats, you can have all mine.
It was hard to see ALLOW ME at first because DR GREEN, not MR GREEN was my suspect in Clue. Had RAN LONG before RAN LATE. CAR LOAN was cleverly clued (61A); I wanted CAR SEAT at first. Liked the clues for WRISTS (46A); RAMP (49A); and LIMO (52A). One possible Natick: Is it DR DREW crossing ELROND? I must remember to look after I post this. Either way, I pronounce this enjoyable puzzle "solved".
5
@Nancy
I love your “birds of a feather” idea as well as “murder of ravens,” but just to let you know, a group of ravens is called a constable, an unkindness, or a conspiracy. A group of *crows* is a murder.
You should try constructing a puzzle with “birds of a feather”!
5
@Nancy
I'd SET an odds-on betting LINE that a majority of Wordplay commentators think ELROND was a gimme.
@Al in Pittsburgh
Put me in the minority. (Ashamed to admit it.)
1
This seemed easier than usual, but the clever long entries make the less-rigorous solve a pleasure.
RAN LONG before LATE was my one re-do.
I am mystified by 45A AMA for Q&A on Reddit (of which I know nothing; DHubby says he thinks it's just 'common knowledge' site...) Maybe someone will have answered that by the time I get through all of the Comments...
(I don't much see the black squares SPREADing their WINGS or being BATS, but okay. The Ms *kind of* serve to illustrate both.)
4
@Mean Old Lady
I was trying to come up with a succinct description of Reddit for you, but I'll let Wikipedia do the work:
"Reddit is an American social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website. Registered members submit content to the site such as links, text posts, and images, which are then voted up or down by other members."
Kinda sorta like Pinterest if you're familiar.
One of the fun things on Reddit is the AMA (Ask Me Anything) where someone famous in their field (actor, tech guru, etc) will be online live during the AMA, and Reddit users can ask them questions - any questions they want - and the subject of the AMA will answer. It's a ton of fun and the AMA subject is usually very candid in their responses.
5
This was so much fun. I do these things every morning to wake up my aging brain. Still needs some work, evidently. For a long time, I've inexplicably thought that Bruce Haight was the guy who does the hilarious drawings in the New Yorker (that's Bruce McCall), and I thought David Steinberg was, well, David Steinberg (the comedian). I always wondered how these guys found enough time to construct all these puzzles. True confessions.
8
Some number of years ago I was working with designers of what have become smartphones. A controversy at the time was CAMERAS. Designers considered the cameras to be of such poor quality that consumers would complain. The designers were using Canon and Nikon as reference points. Consumers however used a Brownie Starmite and welcomed the ability to send pictures, even fuzzy ones, over the phone. Interesting to note is that phone cameras are approaching the quality of the early Canon and Nikon digitals.
Odd the greatest Athenian hero has a prison named after him.
Nice puz lads although it took me a while to see the bats.
4
@dk - ATTICA is a place name. Note the clue: Home of Theseus. Upstate New York is loaded with place names from ancient times: Ithaca, Rome, Greece, Troy, Syracuse - and Attica (plus others I'm not recalling at the moment). The prison takes its name from the town it's in, as do most if not all of the prisons in NY. (Sing Sing, by the way, was the original name of the town now called Ossining, and the official name of the prison is the Ossining Correctional Facility.)
6
@Michael Dover
A few more up by Seneca Lake: Ovid, Hector, Romulus.
The other day, maybe in the archives, there was a clue referencing the Seneca Indians and I was wondering if their name was in any way related to the ancient Roman.
3
...Homer, Carthage...
3
I was somewhat familiar with ANODYNE, but mostly as a dated (or pretentious,) medical usage for painkiller. It makes sense as being bland or inoffensive.
3
@Doggydoc
Of the 37 times ANODYNE has appeared in the NYT XWP, this is the first time that it has not been clued as “Pain reliever” or a variation thereof (e.g. “Analgesic”, “Soother”).
https://www.xwordinfo.com/finder
6
@Puzzlemucker
A strength of both these constructors is that they do not rely on previously used clues--in fact, they seem to eschew them (and bravo!).
:-c)€
6
@Floyd
Makes their puzzles eschewier.
16
There’s hope for me yet!! I managed to “solve” another Friday puzzle with only two external forays for spelling verification and one to “remember” the name from LOTR. (I pictured Legolas - - which didn’t help the retrieval process.)
For a (pleasant) change, the grid artwork and two themed answers DID help - but I thought they were BIRDS until I got to 57A.
Had NIKON in place of RICOH and TRY OUT instead of SPREAD and NIMES for LILLE. (It IS in France but about as far from Belgium as you can get without stepping into the Balearic Sea.)
All was happily resolved, though, and victory was mine this morning.
Excellent construction job!!
4
@PeterW
It happens that I am (re)reading Lord of the Rings at present, so ELROND was a gimme for me today.
An aside: I've read LOTR three or four times before, but all others were before seeing the movies. I loved the movies (pretty much), but now I see a drawback to watching them that I'd not anticipated: it's hard to read the book without picturing (and worse--hearing) the actors in all the characters' roles. I can't quite summon up now however I once pictured ELROND, but now he looks a lot like Hugo Weaving.
:-c)€
3
@Floyd
Just so he doesn't look like Orlando Bloom!!
@Floyd - my stupid hangup since childhood is Elrond Hubbard, probably because of all the tv ads for Dianetics when I was in middle school, when I read the books.
1
Always delight to see a Haight/Steinberg offering. Congratulations, David! Am I the only one who doesn’t know what your degree was in? English? Linguistics? Or is Stanford now giving degrees in Cruciverbalism?
4
Solved the bottom half quickly, but the top half took longer—I had trouble with the clueing for the northwest west corner. Gotta love a mini themed Friday!
3
LETTER BOXED THREAD
nice to see an official 13 yesterday. I was shut down entirely.
Today I have T-G(10),G-S(4).
I am certain there is a 13 there. But off to work I go...
Hint warning
Incomplete ideation
@Kevin
S-G (10), G-R (6).
@Kevin
My first solution came quickly: T-T(7), T-S(8).
I found a couple more, including H-S(5), S-G(8)
@Kevin
Dissertation on a word accepted in yesterday’s Letter Boxed.
The word is ROCKSTEADY. I had STEADY and noted the word ROCK in the remaining letters and was surprised it was accepted. STEADY as a ROCK is, of course an idiomatic phrase but rarely, if ever, have a heard something described as ROCKSTEADY and think it would be considered to be two words.
As it turns out, ROCKSTEADY as one word is a genre of reggae music.
To finish off the 13 letter solution, the second word was YUP. Yep, YUP is a word in M-W. So my yesterday’s “solve” was two words I didn’t know actually existed. (Although ROCKSTEADY is not in M-W)
The top half went very quickly for a Friday. The bottom half less so.
Nobody seemed bothered by “skinny” for DIRT. I was expecting it to be in the Tricky Clues category. I always considered “skinny” an adjective and DIRT a noun, but I guess there must be some usage that I am unfamiliar with.
I fell for RON Howard instead of MOE, even though OPIE made that a sort of dupe. And RON was not overly comical.
2
@Andrew In informal American English, "skinny" can refer to inside or confidential information.
4
"What's the skinny?" is another way of asking for gossip, i.e. "What's the newest dirt?"
2
@Andrew
If we had solved together, we might have beaten 8:12 (top was hard for me, bottom easy), though my typing skills probably would have slowed us down.
p.s. When old friends chew the fat, they often dish out some skinny.
2
I sure loved this puzzle! Smileys all over! Deb pretty much highlighted my favorite clues, except for 62A Meet at the river (REGATTA) which also made me smile. Also 49A Way off (RAMP) which tricked me longer than it should have. (I was thinking “not even close”—like I was at that moment.)
And she didn’t put exclamation points all over her favorite, so: 52A Wheels of fortune (LIMO) Ha!!!!!
I really liked the birds and the bats, although the birds sadly made me think of migration and then shortening days. It was briefly wistful.
I had only one scar today, a hasty RAN OVER before RAN LATE. I still don’t get 45A Q&A on Reddit (AMA).
Thanks Bruce & David! Happy Friday, Everyone!
:-c)€
4
@Floyd
AMA means ask me anything.
6
@vaer
Thanks!
It's nice to have an alternative to the "Docs' grp." we so often see!
:-c)€
3
@Floyd
Or the Latin verb form...
1
A couple of constructing pros paired for a treat -- I loved this puzzle. When I saw who made it, I knew it would be a trove of entertaining word-playing clues, and it was. Those that made me smile were those for: FURRIER, AP EXAMS, MENSWEAR, RAMP, PASTA, REGATTA, CAR LOAN, and LIMO. The clue at 46A about the body parts -- had to be Steinberg's. He loves to clue words via their eccentricities.
My first thought was, "What a gorgeous looking grid!" And I love the backward DENIM to echo the JEAN jacket.
Truly a treat, and one that felt good to conquer. This was a pleasurable B&D session. Please, please, gents, encores!
7
@Lewis
Bondage & Domination??
LOL
1
@Steve Faiella
I thought this was a family-friendly area! :-0
2
@Andrew
Where I used to live, we had a repair shop named B&D Auto, and we laughed about it all the time. Now, when I see B&D it's my first thought... :)
1
The Freanau section of Matawan NJ, named after Revolutionary writer Philip, is the local POETS Corner... Speaking of corners, I knew I was going to be IN FOR IT at the lower right section... I was able to duck the 1.) LEFT JAB- but the follow up, 2.) the right hook, had me on the ropes for the duration of the match🥊...Here are the punches the formidable tag-team of Haight & Steinberg landed: appears/IN FOR IT, car seat, cushion/CAR LOAN with ?/LILLE and ?/ANODYNE all sending me to Reveal Street after respective counts of ten (minutes)...A heartfelt thanks to today’s punishing, perplexing, pugilistic enigma-tics, Haight & Steinberg...Your construction was a knock-out...Did you catch yesterday’s 7th inning stretch at Wrigley? This clip is a cutie as hysterics abounded during “C’ IS (IN) FOR Cubbie.” “Lets’s get some cookies; and runs!”...Spoiler alert, they obeyed the Monster and whooped the Bravos, 9-8.
https://youtu.be/zK3I1AyJOfI
Just For KIX And Giggles,
Bru
2
Were our constructors inspired by Sesame Street?
https://youtu.be/N7yAe2MBIpE
2
My first Friday crossword I managed to complete without the help of autocheck or any reveals! Needless to say, I loved this puzzle!
13
@Daniele I
Congratulations! 🎆
1
@Daniele I
Cheers! Almost through the 7th and last season of Offspring, set and filmed in your lovely city. Will miss Nina and the gang, and Melbourne.
@Daniele I
And wishes for many more! It truly feels like an accomplishment once the late weekers start filling in!
Thank you David and Bruce for a delightful Friday. Struggled in the NE until I finally let go of FLAK (jacket). A gentle zephyr of smug EMANATEs.
5
Can't claim a complete success but I came closer than I usually do on Friday. Had to look up a couple of things that I should have known and at the end got stuck in the SE. I had enough down there that I should have been able to work it out, but I just went blank on some of the answers.
Side notes: I'm sitting here about 5 miles south of MARIETTA, and with enough crosses did vaguely recall that there is also one in Ohio. Oh, and if you live down here you pronounce that 'may-retta.'
Wondered if ADVERSE had ever been clued to 'Anthony.' Yep, but not in the Shortz era.
Also wondered if a clue for ATTICA had ever referenced a memorable scene with Al Pacino in 'Dog Day Afternoon.' Nope.
And lastly the highlight of the day (maybe the week) for me. With all the things that I 'know' but can't remember (today that included LEW and ELROND), I somehow recalled SENECA Falls from the clue.
2
@Rich in Atlanta
Attica! Filmed about 13 blocks from where I am right now.
https://youtu.be/lB6Gk5EtunI
2
@Rich in Atlanta - years ago, I played an organ recital in Marietta, Ohio - it is on the river just across from West Virginia, which makes sense of the historical clue. While filling it in, I remembered that strange trip.
I had driven from Toledo to Marietta and went in to practice on the instrument. It was a beautiful organ, but I was surprised that the low B-flat on the pedal board was dead: none of the pipes played. I checked the trackers and couldn't understand why I'd been invited to play on an instrument with a major flaw like that.
After my practice session, I started up my car to head to my overnight hotel. I heard a dull humming sound - at low B-flat. My car muffler had developed a hole that made it sing loudly at that pitch. During the drive, I had gone imperceptibly deaf to that one sound. It was my ear, not the organ, that was dead for low B-flat!
22
@David Connell, that’s a scary story, especially for a musician. Hope your hearing recovered ok, or at least that you were able to overcome it like Beethoven. I have had decades of tinnitus which I can trace it directly to a specific event like you described.
4
Strangely enough, I got PEEPERS immediately with no cross letters (too many old films, I guess), along with MARSBAR and BATSINTHEBELFRY. Small stumbles with SPREAD"YOUR"WINGS instead of ONES, and RAN"LONG" instead of LATE. But ANODYNE was a new one for me.
3
@BW
I got PEEPERS pretty quick too... and it reminded me of “Jeepers, Creepers.”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1hZySbS2_Dw
:-c)€
2
@Floyd
Reminded me of Wally Cox.
1
Fun puzzle. Was happy to see ANODYNE as an answer. Thought that was an old word everyone had forgotten. Has it appeared before?
Favorite clue: WRISTS/waists. Close behind: BOOKIE, REGATTA. Best reminder you can’t assume any word means what you first think of: “short” in short driver. (I was thinking maybe TWO IRON.)
60-odd years ago I read a book about boxing that said that a 1-2 punch was a LEFT JAB followed by a right cross. This may be the first time that was useful.
How does anyone do a puzzle like this in 8 minutes? I was happy to finish in a little over 38.
7
@Doug Same thought on TWO IRON - or ONE IRON. With Sammy SNEAD in the puzzle, that reminds me of this old line from Lee Trevino (had to look that up - couldn't remember who said it):
If you are caught on a golf course during a storm and are afraid of lightning, hold up a one-iron. Not even God can hit a one-iron.
12
@Doug
My timer read 43:41 and that was a fast Friday for me.
1
@Doug
Unless I were to see it done with my own eyes, I would greet any claim to an 8-minute completion time for this puzzle with EXTREME skepticism - - - and probably with a one-word response involving a male, bovine creature’s scatalogical functions.
1
It seems like just yesterday David Steinberg was a freshman at Stanford. Congratulations!
I enjoyed this one. I had nothing but MOE at first, which led me to think 1A was an EYE POKE in the 16A.
4
Enjoyable! Went fast until I had never heard of a RICOH.
You all might think I'm BATS, but we
saw a fiddler last night who made me cry, here in Dingle. She gave us some DIRT on a trad fest in Dungarven so we are scrapping our Kenmare/Kinsale plan and heading across country instead. The joys of SPREADING out and WINGing it in Ireland!
4
Spelling Bee
40 words, 179 points, 1 perfect pangram, no bingo
4 5 6 7 8 10 Σ
A 1 1 1 - - - 3
D 3 4 1 - 1 1 10
I 3 2 - - - - 5
L 2 3 - 1 - - 6
P 3 1 2 1 1 - 8
V 1 4 - 3 - - 8
Get to bloomin’ work on these adverbs unless you’re a good-for-nothing.
35
That’s a Dx7, not a Dx8—sorry!
4
@Ben
Am among the new and naive...pangram I get, but what is a perfect pangram (all seven letters used once each?) and what is a bingo? Thank you, God of Bees.
1
@Ben
Thanks for the grid.
My “But these are words!” list:
ILIA, ILIAL, PALLADIA, PALLIAL, PIPPY, VIVA,
and for the speech therapists: PALILALIA.
2
Everything went zippy for me until there were four little squares left that added half my time again before I could fill them in. Those were in the lower right at the intersections of limo, carloan, cameras and Lille. I just wasn't seeing any of those, for whatever reason - Deb made me feel better by citing two of them in her post. (It was Lille that broke the log jam.)
Congratulations to David and good luck with everything.
3
52D was an absolute gimme for me. In August 2017, I was taking the train from Brussels to Ypres, and I saw the conductor making an announcement but all I heard over the sound system was static. After we started up from the next station, I eventually noticed that the signs outside the window looked different from the signs in Belgium. Surprise! The announcement was that my half of the train was breaking off and crossing the border to France, where my BeNeLux train ticket was *not* valid. So I stood on the platform in Lille for 45 seconds before getting back on the train, which was returning to Belgium. I supplicated myself to the conductor, he scoffed at my idiocy, I eventually made it on the next train to Ypres. So, yeah. LILLE.
7
Lille is the home town of Amandine Henry, captain of the French World Cup team that is about to do battle with the US today. She was playing for our Portland Thorns in 2017, and I was in Europe to watch her and a couple of other Thornies in the Euro tournament. Accidentally visiting her home town seemed like the biggest mistake of the trip until I tore my Achilles tendon a couple of days later running off the ferry in Amsterdam to (not) catch a train for the Denmark v Austria match.
@Morgan
Thanks for the anecdotes. They add life to Wordplay. Sorry to hear about your Achilles injury, among the worst fears facing aging, (speaking only of myself), recreational athletes. Hope the rehab went well.
Have to log off now, the game's about to start.
Typically "watch" a sailing REGATTA or two every year at Lake Dillon. Watch is a euphemism for sitting on a restaurant deck overlooking the lake and drinking adult beverages.
Lake Dillon claims to be the home of the "highest regatta" in the US. It originally meant at the highest altitude but with legalization of marijuana in Colorado it now has a double meaning
7
@ColoradoZ
Ha!!!
:-c)€
@ColoradoZ
This would have been a good puzzle for BAThymetric to have made its NYT XWP debut.
1
and Elke
What a TREAT and KIX a Haight/Steinberg collaboration can be.
The "kid" has shown us how to SPREAD ONE'S WINGS. And now he has graduated and WENT PRO and will work for a living (at AnDREWs McNeei Universal).
Does that mean no more NYT puzzles ?
How will I keep the BATS out of THE BELFRY ?
David - congrats and much luck in your future endeavours.
5
PB for a Friday! Maybe because I somehow immediately intuited LEFT JAB?
A hearty congratulations to David on both his graduation and new gig!
4
Lots of gimmes made this a fairly fast and fun Friday: LEFT JAB, ESPAÑOL, ETRE, LEW, MERV, PERM, MOE, ELROND, SNEAD and a few others. Appreciated the clues for LIMO, COT, and WRISTS.
1
@JayTee
Those were terrific clues, weren't they?
:-c)€
This one was tough for me even though I got the two theme answers pretty much right off the bat (ha-ha). I had a lot of the same misdirects as others have mentioned.
Had to look up ELROND and MARIETTA.
Athens instead of ATTICA and wavering between Don and SAN Juan kept me stuck in the SE for way too long.
And even though Meet at the river, perhaps/REGATTA also took forever to see, it's one of my faves.
4
A fun and fast Friday. Got off to a good start with LEFT JAB, ESPANOL, SARAN, ETRE, LEW, WENT PRO and MR GREEN.
Saw the “Wings” theme right away and that helped a lot.
Slowed down by SPREAD YOUR WINGS before SPREAD ONE’S WINGS, PEDI before PERM, RON before MOE, CAR SEAT before CAR LOAN, and RAN LONG before RAN LATE, but these errors were quickly fixed.
Got smiles from figuring out “Wheels of fortune?”, “Some bow ties”, and “Place for a retired soldier?”
Finished well under my Friday average, but still enjoyed the puzzle immensely.
1
Uncle Tupelo (which morphed into Wilco) with their swan song from the ancient days of 1993, ANODYNE:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=akuLsdAiNP8
2
Although I voiced pride at knowing Sam SNEAD in a previous puzzle, I tried to fit Sosa into 5 letters. Cub fan. No apologies.
This was a really nice puzzle. Not nearly as difficult as I feared seeing who the constructors were. Difficult enough...
Loved the pic of Mr. Steinberg. Stylin’ hard he was.
Haight and Steinberg deserve a box of MARS BARs for this effort! Stellar!
:-D
6
For about a second I thought of Slammin’ Sammy Khalifa, who AFAIK is the only MLB player of Egyptian descent. Lifetime .219 batting average so the Slammin’ is meant to be ironic.
3
@Just Carol
I was also vexed by the extra square! I just HAD to be Sosa... until it wasn't... :)
1
Fun puzzle, more chewy than crunchy, but tasty all the way.
I had RUN LONG first, and wondered briefly if there might be a famous Theseus from OTTawa. I needed ICEE to correct that to RUN LATE, after which ATTICA followed on very nicely.
We saw Slammin' Sammy SNEAD very recently. I nearly referred to him by his nickname in comments at the time, and I don't recall now if anyone else did, which could have been a leg-up for some folks for today's puzzle.
Years ago when I was a computer geek for a pharmaceutical company, the Epidemiology Department dressed up as "ADVERSE reactions" for Halloween one year. I don't recall details, but just remember that tracking ADVERSE reactions to our products was their bailiwick, and so they chose some of their "favorites" as costume ideas.
Nice photo of David Steinberg. I particularly like the gridwork socks. (What, no grids on the shorts and sneaks?) Congratulations, David. (It seems like only yesterday he was our high school whiz kid. Now he's our college grad whiz kid!)
8
Wasn't exactly easy, not was it particularly hard. Just wasn't in tune with the constructors on some entries, which made it a bit slower for me. Took embarrassingly long on some entries.
Liked EMANATE, ESSENCE, LISSOME, MENSWEAR, FURRIER, WENTPRO, and of course, ANODYNE.
Gimmes - LEFT JAB, PEEPERS, ETRE. LEO, AMA, RAMP, AT A TROT, ESPANOL, RICOH, NAMETAG, PASTA.
Finished the SW first, then SE, then NW, then NE.
Had DON before SAN, ATHENS before ATTICA, RIYAL before DINAR. RON (OPIE!) before MOE, IN ON before ON IT.
Maybe not as hard as one would expect. But out of my wheelhouse enough to present something of a challenge for me. Still working on bringing that very high Friday average down.
6
Friday is never a breeze for me but the bottom half came close. The top half not so much. Mostly blank up there after my first pass. But then some not so old friends showed up: LEW Wallace, WENT PRO (first cousin to yesterday’s GO PRO), SNO CONE (no W), OPIE, DINAR, and the rest emerged from the mist. Thank goodness for those friends. This was a summery, LISSOME puzzle. Especially liked SPREAD ONE’S WINGS.
8
ALLOW ME to say: "A TREAT of a :Puzzle!" I enjoyed it, especially POET'S Corner.
2
Fun, but it went by way too fast for a Friday. Of course, that means I can go on to other things tonight, but still.
I kept wanting to read 8D as APEX AMS. Didn't know NINA or MARIETTA or DR DREW, but I could fill them from the crosses. And I did know ELROND and SNEAD (and MR GREEN, etc) so I did okay on the names.
4
@Liz B
Similarly, I wanted to read I SIN FOR...(your temptation here!)
2
@Alan J
“...more chewy than crunchy, but tasty all the way.”
Sorta like MARS BARS?
1
@Alan J
Oops! Meant for your longer post obviously!
8:12. Interesting theme, but not tough enough for a Friday. Had to fix one mistake - MIXED instead of MINED for 56 across, otherwise no mistakes at all.
2