I am immensely grateful to Mr. Deeney and Ms. Lovinger for the introduction to that Edward Thomas poem, which I loved immediately. Thank you both.
From the Constructor Notes:
"52-Across, though I liked my clue for that last one well enough, [Rules with force of will?]”
I'm assuming that clue was changed by the force of Will.
5
I'll just have to assume and hope that nobody intended to order that LEAP OUT specifically at me, but will admit it made a small sad TEAR A PART of my NorthWest solve. All I know is I fell apart in every section after that, starting with DEBTS for 'red ink' and downhill from there.
Still, there was A LOT tA LIKE, from the DISHES that weren't YENTAS to the ANNULMENT without DIVORCERS. Kate Hepburn said she appreciates the shout-out to Spencer TRACY in ADAM'S RIB, and I liked the DEAR READ on the PEAR JUICE as well. Add me to the fan club for ALONE TIME -- great clue.
Time for one last round of get-togethers than a pack-up for the trek home. Here's to a safe, timely and (with luck) uneventful return to everyone's home turf.
Abyssinia!
CEYLON, it's been good to know ya!!
4
Mjolnir
Oops, sorry! Fat fingers pressing submit instead of typing on first thing this a.m. I thought the emus had weeded it out.
@Sam Lyons
I think the emus had their code breakers working on it all day, just to be sure there wasn't some subversive message in there...
1
Re Spelling Bee:
Today’s SB yielded a plethora of unacceptable proper nouns that formed themselves in my mind into an odd scenario. ZORRO, ZORBA, Greta GARBO, and Hank AARON meet in ZARAGOZA, ARAGON. ZORN shows up too, with his lemma. And then they all fly to BORA BORA.
I’m not sure what they discussed.
3
@Paul Frommer - I'm sure that ARAGORN protected them from the dreadful spider ARAGOG.
4
@David Connell
But even he is no match for the BALROG.
1
A wickedly wonderful puzzle, from high-culture LAERTES to pop-culture MJOLNIR. Had to check with my college student nephew to make sure about that one.
And TDPASSES is right on target for a Saturday afternoon in the fall.
Thank you, Mr. Joe Deeney!
1
@archaeoprof - so strange to see a thousand-year-old folkloric name reduced to "pop culture"!
9
@David C, with a lesser time-frame, that's what I felt with the arrival of the new band Steppenwolf.
4
I got stuck with PRAT instead of PHAT, thinking “dope” was referring to a fool. SYNC before TOTO, and NOISE before BETTY.
3
A bit of a tough one today, although there were a few gimmes: AEON, ANNULMENT, TTYL, STROP, BOXSTERS, ARIE, and surprisingly, LAERTES. They were enough to get me started and work through the rest of the puzzle. A lot of entries were filled in after just a few crosses, which was nice. Among my problems were SEER before EMIR, DAM before JAM.
Liked the clever clueing and misdirection. A good Saturday challenge.
3
I loved this puzzle. Today marked one year since I subscribed (day 365 of my streak). I would have really struggled with this puzzle a year ago. What Deb and Caitlin say about practice making a difference is so true. Thank you to all of you for this community.
21
The “return to puzzle page” link has been broken for a couple of days. (Also really need easier way to get to other puzzles!)
@Geophany
One of the easiest ways to find any 11/1993 and later puzzles is to go to the Archives, which also lets you retrieve variety, acrostic and mini puzzles.
https://www.nytimes.com/crosswords/archive
Another alternative, and for older puzzles, there's XWord Info.
https://xwordinfo.com
At long last, victory. A very enjoyable battle that took quite a while. Only the SW got filled in on the first pass, then the NE, the NW, and finally the SE, thanks to guessing read for "Went over". But "Forceful one" made no sense since I'd fallen into the dam up trap, jamnit. When there was no other option, noticed it might be jam up and then Jedi came to the rescue. (Aha, so the singular isn't Jedus after all.)
Puzzle: What baseball phrase is suggested by the NW corner of this crossword?
(Answer: "Two outs in the top of the seventh" [puzzle of the week].)
How is a Canadian supposed to understand 51A "Sarcastic Sorry!"???!!! We own this word and it is never, ever sarcastic!
(Sorry for that rant...)
This was like four difficult puzzles in one. Each corner was a slog, and finishing one corner didn't do much for helping anywhere else. I guess that's part of what made it enjoyable. The SE came first, followed by the NW, NE and finally the devilish SW. I confess to having Googled "Thor's hammer", without which I don't think I would have finished. My starting Biblical starting material was DARKNESS (literally), followed by CAPITAL B (ugh!). I thought duels were at NOON, not at DAWN, had brown SUGAR, and I can't even repeat what crossed my mind for "Dope" when I had _ _ AT. What a total mess!
I had TAHITI before CEYLON. At least "Abyssinia" was a gimme.
5
@Andrew
Eh?
:)
1
Shootouts are at noon on our continent. Our European forefathers were more given to overall self-flagellation and got up at the crack of dawn to get their woolies on before potentially meeting their Maker.
1
Sam,
In your part of the continent, a bit later in American history, and I'm not sure I'd call them duels. Hamilton - Burr was a morning affair.
3
Loved the photo.
1
Easiest Saturday puzzle in memory. Well, except for Abyssinia. Tata!
@Sammy
Wow! Replace "Easiest" with "Hardest" and you have my thoughts exactly!
9
@Andrew Same. Dnf, twice in one week...
@Sammy it took me 3 days to solve the SE corner.
2
Tough but very satisfying Saturday! On the first pass I could only get TRACY, STROP, AEON (hiding somewhere in my brain, tho I’d never seen the film), BENE, BAKER (Street), and LAERTES. I struggled on womanfully (as Nancy put it) for awhile until I asked my husband about the Porsche two-seater, and he immediately said Boxster, something I never could have come up with! Somehow that gave me a better foothold and things got better. I had a vague idea about the name of Thor’s hammer, but it took a few crosses to give me MJOLNIR. I loved the clue for ADAMS RIB, and of course that brought the wonderful (though slightly dated) Hepburn/Tracy movie to mind. We still have lots of Sierra Cement (local name for heavy wet snow) on the ground squashing our shrubs, but it will melt eventually. Having completed this great puzzle in better-than-average time, I am ready to bundle up and go out with my kids and grandkids to cut our own Christmas trees
4
Still getting dumber. Thirty-six minutes in, the only things I had with any confidence at all were AARP, Bien, BANTAMS, BAKER.
ESTATELAW, TOTO and EWERS probable, SE. ENROBE? TEATAX? ANNULMENT?
Wild guesses NW of LEAPOUT, ASPENS, SOAK, SURE, TTYL lead nowhere. LAzaruS on the right?
Many clues meaningless to me. Time to ask Caitlin.
So ART before my CLASS, but I don't see how it fits the clue.
ESCA before my PEKEY; that one I should have had. But I would never have come up with ZERO before my ESOUT.
Given DA and N of DATAMINER I think SE is done. SW this morning (MJOLNIR?! Wow!) and NW. But NE still mostly empty. None of the downs (unless noPASSES is something real), suggesting my acrosses are mostly wrong. When I started the puzzle it said I had 48 Saturdays in a row, certainly closer to "solves" than this one I'm about to reveal.
Aha! All my acrosses were indeed wrong except STROP, ASCOTS, and ARIE. Even if I had noticed the "e" in "Come va," and remembered who Lazarus really was, I would have been doomed in that corner.
2
Got completely JAMmed UP in the SE corner. Knew the London street had to be Holmes' but Downing parked itself in my brain and wouldn't budge. Ended up googling Holmes address and Porsche models.
There, I feel better having got that off my chest.
Abyssinia,
Hildy
1
@Hildy Johnson
FleEt before BAKER.
4
@vaer
The demon barber!
3
TIL QB is Quarterback - not QuickBooks.
Aha moment. Actually an Ahaahaa moment.
2
I wanted ImOut for IFOLD at 16A to go with ZEROES OUT and LEAPOUT, but alas I was OUT of luck.
1
Well faster than average despite two answers I wasn’t thrilled with. MJOLNIR for its obscurity and PEARJUICE which seemed forced. And they crossed.
4
@Mr. Mark
Agree about PEARJUICE. If you ferment it, then you get PERRY, which would have made much more sense as an answer because it's the pear juice equivalent to cider.
1
IMO as a high school saxophone player back in 1975, the most notable hit song with a sax solo of that year was in "Pick up the Pieces" by Average White Band. It actually pushed Linda Ronstadt's "You're No Good" out of the #1 spot on the charts.
A notable near miss with more poetic lyrics (and a memorable sax solo) was Al Stewart's "Year of the Cat" released in 1976.
Alas one of the greatest musical stars of all time ALSO had a song with a notable sax solo that year. But how am I supposed to remember THAT?
Thus that NE corner was my sticking point in part because I couldn't trust that "TDPASSES" was correct for quite awhile even though I filled it in very early on.
2
@CasaRaymo
Multiple better sax solos for Bruce songs, particularly in "Jungleland", and certainly the classic for rock and roll, Lou Reed's "Walk On The Wildside," with the sax solo on that cut actually played by David Bowie. Fun puzzle because I solved it with two of my children, or I would never have known "phat," the Thor hammer name, etc., but even they groaned at some of the clues and answers.
1
Oh, and one more thing. I so wanted ROAD TEST to be the answer to "where one might be graded on a curve". It was such an idee fixe for me that it took me forever to see ART CLASS. I suppose if you'd been as traumatized as I was taking Driver's Ed at age 16 and being taught on the Taconic, of all ridiculously winding roads, you would have wanted ROAD TEST, too. P.S. I never did take my ROAD TEST and never did become a driver. The world is much safer for it and I'm still alive.
8
@Nancy -- I wanted HIGHWAY EXIT to be the answer to that clue, equating "graded" with "sloped".
But curves are not graded (as Caitlin wrote), they are superelevated (as Caitlin's link notes).
1
Yes, that's a new piece of knowledge for me!
SORT before SOAP before SOAK. WONKA before REESE. SPARE RIB before ADAMS RiB. TOTO appears again after one day break. IF OLD before I FOLD. :) TTFN before TTYL.
Was thinking *tennis* court instead of judicial court so UNROBE before ENROBE.
Was thinking BAA HUMBUG could be a LEA POUT?
Is it still Saturday? That's what it has felt like schedule-wise since Thursday. Puzzle wise, this was a good Saturday!
Greetings to Andrew from Ottawa and other Andrew's on your saint's day.
1
@Robert Michael Panoff
Why, thank you Robert! I had no idea, (although November 30 does TOLL a vaguely distant bell)!
2
Although I struggled womanfully everywhere, it was the SE that defeated me. I couldn't even cheat, though at the end I tried desperately to. It was a combo of:
Wrong answers: REPAY for REMIT (26D); in SYNC for in TOTO (54D); and CODE for JEDI (35D) (no I didn't understand it, but that's what I had because of CAP UP instead of JAM UP).
Lack of knowledge (that stupid hammer and the OLINE, whatever that is. Also DATA MINER for "one who might find a pattern in the noise" where I wanted SYNESTHETES).
Senioritis: "It's the Sherlock Holmes street, I bet!!!!" I thought excitedly, as I looked at the B at the beginning of 49D, but it wouldn't come to me. I finally wrote down BEALE, thinking of something totally unHolmesian and completely wrong.
Much struggle and a dismal DNF. One of the toughest puzzles I've ever wrestled with. And excellent, btw.
6
@Nancy I think it would be fun and interesting to have a Sherlock Holmes spinoff set on Beale Street.
I like to see nods to Holmes in other shows. House, M.D. also lives at 221B BAKER Street.
1
"Holmes in other shows"
Like Goren, Robert?
1
Everything pizza.
1
What a great idea — bagel-flavored pizza!
1
Brilliant new cluing for the perennial EDAM in 25D! (Or at least new to me.) Excellent puzzle.
6
@retired, with cat
I guess it helps to know geography. I don't. Lucky EDAM filled.
@kilaueabart
Actually, it helps to recognize "kaas" as being the word for cheese.
2
@Steve L Yup! I was at a loss there until I remembered KÄSE for cheese in German. Simple transition to KAAS in Dutch. And EDAM is one of those tried and true XWD fills.
1
I raise my light saber to whoever came up with "Forceful one?" For JEDI. That struck me as a perfect clue. (But will it make Lewis' list?)
I found something to love in every corner of this puzzle.
Thank you, Joe Denny, for a most enjoyable Saturday morning solve!
7
Wow. This puzzle was hell.
I am glad I finally got the solve, but it was a terror to complete.
PEAR JUICE instead of apple cider, eh?
I think Scotch.
Time to update the dart-board!
5
Biggest gift of this puzzle for me was the SW quadrant, which, because of its difficulty for me, brought me back to beginner-solver mind, that is, what a, say, Wednesday puzzle felt like to do in my first months of solving, or a Saturday during my first year-plus. Beginner-solver mind -- a place of frustration and helplessness -- presents me with a litmus test: Will I continue this endeavor or shall I abscond? It also awakens humility. This combination thrusts me into a place of innocence that is rare and wonderful. And here it was again, after what feels like a long break. Oh, I did like the excellent puzzle clues for ESTATE LAW and ESCAPE KEY, and the mini-victories that came in the solving of the other three quarters of the puzzle. But that SW, for me today, that was special, and I'm especially grateful for that, Joe.
8
What a difficult puzzle, perhaps because I did it in the early morning, still half asleep. I chipped away and finished it, but it took me a while to change after cure to after care. Arie Luyendyk who? I am always amazed at how many people have already commented so early.
1
A joint solve with son that took substantially less time when done together as MJOLNIR rolled off his tongue, while I merely typed. I won't remember it tomorrow! A well-crafted Saturday puzzle.
5
Why does the clue for REMIT have a question mark? Seems like a straightforward definition clue to me.
I have seen every last one of those Marvel movies thanks to my teenager's obsession and still had no idea what Thor's hammer is called. The bottom left took me ages.
But it was a nice Saturday puzzle with plenty of challenge. I appreciate attractive grids, and this one looks quite pretty to me.
4
@Bess
Re REMIT clue’s “?”, I agree except that “compensate for something” has a more common idiomatic meaning I suppose, e.g., “His oversized Hummer suggests that he might be compensating for something.”
5
@Puzzlemucker
Don't you mean oversized Hammer?
4
@ad absurdum @Puzzlemucker
Ah, I see. Indeed.
There a great in-joke in the SE.
Gerry Rafferty's BAKER street is another classic late-'70s (1978) tune with an iconic sax solo.
I was about to rebus that into the NE from the B(ake)R_T____
before a couple other letters spoiled it.
I guess it just wasn't at Holmes there.
(Don't like bad puns? SUEME!)
5
@mjengling - ha ha
https://youtu.be/rlFGmGaq-0M?t=19
"Gerry Rafferty's BAKER street is another classic late-'70s (1978) tune with an iconic sax solo."
mjengling,
Hope you scrolled down after posting and listened to it!
@Barry Ancona
Not sure what you mean...
I scrolled to the "sosumi" in David Connell's post. Fun!
Also, I have a Pandora channel seeded with "Baker Street". I played that...and am still playing it.
I checked before posting to insure I wasn't stepping on somebody else's Baker Street post. Never want to steal anybody's Thunder Road.
1
This one felt very fresh. Maybe I did, too, when I put in DISsES for DISHES. Aside from that, the east side went in fairly quickly; the west (which is a great setting for duels, amiite? No, iamrong, its DAWN) took all my concentration. Im gonna start calling my friend Mary Jo Olsen "MJOLNIR" from now on.
I liked remembering Laertes, the anti-Hamlet, a caution against reckless action.
1
What is a forceful Judi, fretted Tom forcefully?
A recent reading of Norse mythology helped this AM.
Thanks Joe.
2
Feeling much better now that AFTERCARE corrected "that's it for me" to I FOLD from I'M OLD.
10
For the second day in a row, the upper left corner stayed largely blank until the very end. But it gave me a powerful punch at the end...
I figured out "escape key", but the wording of the clue (it gets pushed in a corner) led me to a reflection on musical instruments. The accordion's left face is covered with buttons for the bass notes and chords, but up in the very corner is a button that doesn't play. It opens a valve allowing the air to go in or out freely as needed. That led me to thinking of similar "escape keys" - the "spit valve" on brasses, pushed in a corner to allow the condensed moisture out; the "whisper keys" on reed instruments, opening tiny holes that create the acoustic nodes that allow for very high notes to happen; the "general cancel" button on most organs, "pushed in a corner" to silence the instrument instantly. They're all escape keys.
So, a minute later, when "zeroes out" appeared in my grid just above "escape key" - well, it was a powerful punch, as though the puzzle had followed my own thinking.
9
@David Connell - putting the personal anecdotes in a reply...
My father hardly ever left a roomful of people without saying "Abyssinia!" That was an ultra-gimme for me.
The "general cancel" button I mentioned in my first post is an important part of an organist's experience on the bench. When one finishes playing, pressing the general cancel is an automatic action, returning the instrument's settings to neutral. Like the "Reset" button you wish your colleagues would press on the photocopier machine...
So, when I applied for graduate school, the current students warned me: "don't hit general cancel in the practice rooms! it calls the police!" Indeed, the campus had installed panic buttons on the consoles of all the practice room organs - exactly in the location where the general cancel button should go.
The police came within 20 seconds, which was impressive. They appreciated my explanation of exactly _why_ they kept getting false alarms to the practice rooms, too!
By the time I enrolled on campus, the panic buttons had been moved.
4
@David Connell
I love when a puzzle does that to my brain!
David, what in the world precipitated the school installing panic buttons on a practice room organ? Were you at Virginia Tech or some other university that had undergone a tragedy? Did every room have a panic button?
1
Wow, the SW was hard. The PEAR JUICE/PHAT crossing had me foxed for a while. Not my instinctive reaction for either. Filled with great entries and all the clueing in the bottom half was nice and astringent. A workout.
2
@Frances - For "Dope" I went from "info" to "dirt" to "twit," never considering "dope" as an adjective until I got PEAR JUICE and the "h" in HOW GOES IT. And *those* only happened when I let myself look up Thor's hammer - I never would have gotten that on my own.
I'm almost always somewhat surprised that I'm able to finish a Saturday puzzle, even with looking up a word or two.
1
@Frances - For "Dope" I went from "info" to "dirt" to "twit," never considering "dope" as an adjective until I got PEAR JUICE and the "h" in HOW GOES IT. And *those* only happened when I let myself look up Thor's hammer - I never would have gotten that on my own.
I'm almost always somewhat surprised that I'm able to finish a Saturday puzzle, even with looking up a word or two.
P.S. Are we the only two commenters from W. Mass.?
Enjoyable Saturday puzzle with very helpful crosses. Lots of creative tricky clues for interesting two words in stacks:ARTCLASS, ALONE TIME, ESCAPEKEY.
TIL the origins of the term SERENDIPITY, which was vaguely in my list of things to learn: similar to uppity, I had wandered? So great to find about Serendip, although it’s really Sri Lanka, isn’t it? There’s a lovely little book by Humberto Eco called Serendipities, Language and Lunacy.
TI also L about OLINE and TDPASSES! Also learned about Abyssinia, how quaint!
LEAPOUT ENERGY , going down from 5d, reminded me of plasma globes and TESLA COILS
https://youtu.be/-f6GijQXaBI
Happy thanksgiving across the Atlantic. We don’t celebrate thanksgiving here, although we have a lot to be grateful for. Maybe because our gun control laws, recent terror attacks have used knives not guns, and victims were on single digits.
6
@Laura rodrigues In london
I have that Eco book! A great read for word people.
Our Thanksgiving story is full of myth, the bad kind that obscures truth. It should include atonement in its traditions. I love how it has come to be celebrated, though. Friends, family, food and NOT shopping, in our house. A quiet ushering-in of the coming (hopefully not) frantic season.
5
One thing missing from yesterday’s excellent column was that a puzzle’s perceived difficulty sometimes comes simply from whether EWER Sluggish-feeling when you solved or not. Today’s puzzle was in my wheelhouse and I was on the constructor’s wavelength and yet it all fell in more reluctantly than usual. Which is perfectly OK because it prolongs the enjoyment. It’s just funny how at times answers that should be gimmes come slowly, iPH AT all.
Well, Abbysinia-ll the comments later, when my mind doesn’t feel like it’s on MJÖLNIR’s receiving end.
Btw, LAERTES’ line came to me without a second thought. I’m on a Shakespeare revival kick and just last week I was savoring “Hamlet” line by exquisite line. What a treasure trove it is with a riper mind than the one with which you experienced it for the first time some decades earlier.
7
This one definitely goes in the “completion” column.
My only research was to find out who poisoned the epees for the last act of Hamlet. But I had to turn on AutoCheck and do lots of guessing for about a quarter of the puzzle.
I’m not sufficiently “with it” to have recognized Dope and PHAT as synonyms (if that’s what they are).
MJOLNIR was - - and will forever remain - - WAY outside my ken.
ARIE WHO?!?!? Not wasting any brain cells on that one either.
“Abyssinia” and its corresponding answer are just - - - “too too”.
BLECHHH!!
Everything else was entirely fair - in retrospect - and I heard more crunching sounds as I worked through it than if I had been walking on pistachio shells!!
Even so, I have to salute the effort that went into this puzzle’s construction as WAY larger than what I had to put in to solve it.
6
Full slab of a puzzle!
I briefly thought "That's it for me" was going to be I'M OLD.
3
@ad absurdum
Very same thought here...
Well, if my rules allowed look-ups (several today) this one would almost have been a success for me. As it was I also had one failed check, which was 43d. The parliamentary measure was the TEA ACT and that's what I had. Just couldn't get past that without that failed check.
Music link today is an old favorite that will always remind me of our Jimbo. I once asked him to name every song he could think of with 'rolling stone(s)' in the lyrics and this was the only one he didn't get:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FSm2kw6W_k
Thinking of him will always bring a smile to my face. Still miss him. Always will.
5
Rich,
I had the same TEA ACT before TEA TAX; also I'M OUT before I FOLD and LEAPS UP before LEAP OUT. Blame it on bad hair (boo font), but I first used the 37A clue for 27A (AT DAWN) -- they look ALOTALIKE -- which had me fit to be tied. After those delays, BORN TO RUN and BOXSTERS had me speeding along.
3
@Rich in Atlanta , Luckily I didn't realise that it was called the TEA Act.
1
@Barry Ancona
I wonder if many people are familiar with BORN TO RUN and BOXTERS? Way out of my ken.
2
This is one of those puzzles that hits you before you even enter a single letter or read a single clue. That grid! Horizontal stacks, Vertical stacks... stacks, stacks, stacks! :-)
There was suitable Saturday crunch, but clueing and crossings made it quite solvable with a bit of outside the box thinking. The fun thing about Saturdays is that they're so crunchy, you can have MJOLNIR staring at you and you think, "OK, it's odd but it's Saturday, and the crosses are definitely right so.... MJOLNIR it is!"
Really fun solve today, Joe! Kudos to Joe, Will and team for some really fun clueing, and a great writeup from Catilin. Off to Hilton Head Island for a family Thanksgiving with my sibs and sib-in-laws. Safe travels home for everyone who's doing so!
7
I liked seeing TOTO and TATA in the same grid--they look A LOT ALIKE. I look forwartd to my ALONE TIME with the puzzle every most mornings; I am an early RISER--pre-DAWN. A musical number for 51A:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z94bUB32Bv8
3
A thought on 28D as CIDER is to APPLE JUICE so is PERI to PEAR JUICE. In each case the first is fermented and naturally alcoholic.
4
LETTER BOXED THREAD
B - E (9), E - Y (5)
2
@Mari
YESTERDAY:
WORKAHOLIC CUBIT
2
Like this grid. The corner blocks are solid enough to make room for interesting words, gags, etc., but not so dense as to generate a ton of small fills.
Very enjoyable puzzle.
2
@CAE
Speaking of "Abyssinia," just remembered: There is a long-ish string of imaginary dialogue built on US state names. All I can recall now is "What did Delaware?" "I don't know, Alaska." It goes on and on.
4
CAE,
She wore her New Jersey.
Here's more:
https://www.scoutsongs.com/lyrics/delaware.htm
2
@CAE
Yes, Joe Deeney made a richly fun puzzle. Definitely can't say he Egypt me.
1
I'm always pleased if I get something quickly on a Saturday, and today it was CEYLON ( Sri Lanka was one of my favourite places to visit) and CORAL. Then STROP.
I was proud of sabot for Clog, pity it was wrong. I was also proud of TEA TAX which was right.
I always need lots of help for Saturday puzzles, so SUE ME, I still have fun with them and that's what matters.
13
@suejean
Also had a lot of fun with this puzzle and needed lotsa help. My dad used a STROP, so I heard the word but didn’t know how to spell it; thought it might be straup, which didn’t fit, but finally got it. My gimme was AZTEC, I’m an SDSU alum. Finally thought of BAKER street when I got A LOT ALIKE and that pleased me. I also thought of sabot, but I had JEDI.
2
@Beejay , we'd make a good team
SPELLING BEE GRID
Nov 30 2019
R A B G N O Z
WORDS: 34, POINTS: 115, PANAGRAMS: 1
A x 5
B x 11
G x 7
O x 4
R x 7
4L x 18
5L x 9
6L x 5
7L x 1
8L x 1
4 5 6 7 8 Tot
A 1 3 1 - - 5
B 7 2 2 - - 11
G 4 1 1 - 1 7
O 1 2 - 1 - 4
R 5 1 1 - - 7
Tot 18 9 5 1 1 34
46
@Mari Solution set includes: A couple of Elements from the Periodic Table, a silk fabric, a type of shoe, a chickpea by another name, a rice-like pasta, a soft wool-like fabric, an Indian musical form, an equine coat pattern and a marketplace.
Panagram starts with the 7th letter of the alphabet.
18
@Mari, thanks for grid. It’s fun when the pangram is the first thing to pop! I had one marketplace, but needed your hint for the other one.
3
@Margaret Ah yes - I forgot there were TWO marketplaces - one ancient!
2
So much to love about this puzzle-ADAMSRIB, ESTATELAW, ALONETIME. A difficult SE corner, until SLAB and BAKER helped. But I have to call foul (and not the BANTAMS kind) about the clue/answer at 42A. Seriously! Not a homophone, homonym, homograph; not cute or cutesy; not an alternate spelling; not a visual pun. Maybe an aural pun, depending on one's accent? A real place, that one is supposed to reinterpret as a pronunciation of a mispronounced phrase, but the answer is the casual, seldom-used response to said phrase? Seriously?
7
@MichelleB It's an old joke, that means "goodbye" just like TATA does—I believe the quotation marks in the clue are meant to tell us it's an expression, rather than a straight clue. This use of the word has made it into Wiktionary, and at least one Oxford dictionary if Wiktionary's citation is to be believed, as well as Urban Dictionary and its spiritual ancestor, Green's Dictionary of Slang. Folks of a certain age (or with an addiction to YouTube lists) might also recall a famous episode of M*A*S*H entitled "Abyssinia, Henry". The clue certainly is on the obscure side, but with a short, super-common crosswordese answer it seems fair for a Saturday.
6
As Michelle says an old joke. Haven’t heard it in conversation for over forty years, but fifty years ago quite common, at least in my circles.
2
Must be still thinking of all the Thanksgiving food and drink:
EDAM, PEAR, SLAB of RIBs, TEA, JUICE, REESE's and ENERGY bars, JAM, Brown BETTY and ICING for the RUM cake
4
@Colorado Z. And dishing bantams!
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And maybeDISHING BANTAMS?
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@Laura rodrigues In london
Gossipy little chickens . . . love it.
“What do you think of Puzzlemucker?”
“Just another gossipy little chicken, if you ask me.”
“A DISHING BANTAM?”
“‘Fraid so.”
“Ah well. Abyssinia later.”
“Not if Abyssinia first.”
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BORN TO RUN is from 1975? Ouch. The less said about Thor's hammer, the better. Medium-tough puzzle for me. No look-ups, but I did employ check puzzle on occasion to stay on track. Carb-brain fog is finally wearing off.
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@vaer - I had the same thought about BORN TO RUN - I thought it was from the '80s, maybe because MTV.
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@vaer Like when I learned last year that the classic 2001: A Space Odyssey was 50 years old. Although it couldn't be, because that would mean I was . . . well . . . a bit over 50. Today was medium-tough for me too; medium for everything but the lower right, which was a yawning abyss until my third or fourth visit when it magically revealed itself. I find that revisiting is more powerful than lookups, and leads to commensurately greater smug.
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@AudreyLM
Just a bit, lol. Napping, which is just revisiting carried to the extreme, is also very helpful.
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The things I knew were correct were MJOLNIR, AEON, and JEDI. Not sure what that says about my childhood (or adulthood, for that matter).
Had VERY ALIKE before A LOT ALIKE. NOOB before USER. SOAP before SOAK. I'M OUT before I FOLD. TTFN before TTYL, Speaking of which, that clue for TATA...wow, talk about tricky. Here I was thinking...was it some aria in an opera? 'Twas molto BENE. There was A LOT tA LIKE.
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@Wen Hand up 🙋♀️ for I'm Out.
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HOWGOESIT, Crosswordland! Pardon the non sequitur, but recent California laws have revealed that weed should go with Thanksgiving right along with stuffing and cranberry sauce. Gives you the munchies, relaxes, reduces conflict: it’s perfect. “Dude, this turkey is so good.” “Duuuuude. Soooo good.” Now replace “turkey” with, well, everything.
So that’s where I was last night. Then tonight... half a bottle of wine, no weed, and the puzzle’s done in half the time. Now, was yesterday’s puzzle not in the wheelhouse and tonight’s was? Or is wine a better lubricant for crossword-solving than weed? I say to you, Crosswordland, I will continue to boldly experiment until discovering the truth. Onward!
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@David G
I find that wine helps the solve immensely.
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The grid art eerily echoed my wheel-spinning as I snowplowed through the blizzard of white space. A really fun solve, though.
I appreciate how the absence of three letter entries pretty much eliminates the glue. Each corner had its gems, my favorites being ADAMS RIB as clued and the alliterative ALOT ALIKE.
Bet I'm not alone in that LEAP OUT was not, in fact, "immediately obvious".
JAM UP job today, Mr Deeney.
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Very slow going for me.
I did like ALONE TIME, though.
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@Benjamin Teral
Several solvers have liked ALONE TIME. I'm puzzled. Why?
"Abyssinia" was like a lead pipe to my head. I had to work around it at great length, and then I groaned when I finally figured it out. (This is not a criticism.)
I really liked ALONE TIME.
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@Chris R. What does the answer mean? I don't get it...
@Sonya
As Caitlin wrote, you have to sound it out. It sounds like “I’ll be seein’ ya . . .”, leading to the entry: “TATA.”
Pretty strehhhhhtchy.
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@Sonya If you read it out loud, it sounds like "I be seein' ya!" hence Deb's comment.
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Today I solved my first rebus puzzle myself - Wed Oct 2nd, after subscribing last month - I am a true newbie. I just wanted to share that with people who understand. Your comments always help - thank you :-)
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@Sonya
Welcome to the land of RA(RE BUS)INESS. Congratulations!
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@Sonya Good on ya!
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Was ready to cry I FOLD a few times, but I was able to MJOLNIR this one out despite myself (e.g., thinking that the “still-life fixtures” were probably PEARS until I realized that PEAR JUICE was the apple cider alternative):
Corner by corner difficulty ratings (for me):
NW: Tough but with give
NE: Smooth
SW: Other than MJOLNIR (and that was a big “other than”) relatively smooth
Middle: DAM UP jammed me up, till JEDI spung me loose.
SE: Until BANTAMS rose to the surface of my mind, I feared a DNF down there -- got off on wrong track with PEARS for EWERS and thought “get ready for court” was referring to basketball, so I had LACE UP and then TIP OFF before ENROBE. But BANTAMS, bless ‘em, saved my turkey.
In TOTO, a smug-deserving Saturday, imo. And while my Thanksgiving with family featured harmony over strife, I know for some others this might be a good weekend to get in some ALONE TIME.
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