Don't you mean knuckle down? What exactly is buckle down? Well, whichever you choose to do, this was a grind and not much fun. I did learn a few words that I'll never use again, thanks.
1
Ecotage? Definitely a made up word.
HHHHH - etas? Is that even a word?
Verboten? What language is this puzzle in?
And in whose book is Mott Street an artery in Chinatown? It’s a side street at best.
Awful puzzle. You can’t just make up words because you don’t have a better fit.
3
@Mike
VERBOTEN--English, in this case:
https://www.google.com/search?q=verboten+definition&rlz=1C1FGUR_enUS808US810&oq=verboten+def&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0l7.5567j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
ETAS--ditto:
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/etas
Note: It's the plural of ETA, which is an English word.
ECOTAGE:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ecotage
I agree with you on MOTT ST.
UNSOBER? Ugh. 😑
6
There were just too many fills in this puzzle that I had never heard of and that is pretty rare. All filed away for future reference here in the box of otherwise useless words. I mean seriously, LADMAG? I thought a maxim was something like an adage so I was waaaay off on that one. ROIDRAGE, SANDRP, SIGILS - oy vey. I finally got HOED for 5D but it hurt by brain before I figured it out. I'm not complaining - perfectly legitimate just frustrating that I'm still so slow at getting these! Same with 39D. But at least I got NOOB right away so yea, I do have a learning curve after all!
5
@Lin Kaatz Chary "Lad mag," in this case, would be the Britishism for any of those sorts of magazines with scantily clad women very clearly aimed at young men and only young men.
After last week's epic Saturday fail (over 5 hours and still incomplete), I thought this would be another because of the SIGILS/APIA/PLAYERS/DULLY convergence. (I insisted for too long on SIGma for 20A.) Finally broke through with DULLY (Really!?)
Coincidence: My wife had just seen the touring production of DEAREVANHANSEN.
2
Went to sleep last night after 90 minutes with 3 words solved. Opened the puzzle again this morning and added 0 answers in 30 minutes. Tried again after dinner and the words literally spilled out of my brain, one after another, until I got the Gold star. Odd and exhilarating experience. Imagine a 58 yo woman jumping up and down with her Nook, yelling "I own you, puzzle. Who's the boss? I am!"
13
I thought that last Saturday was an awesome test. Today, crossing APIA and SIGILS, a let-down, although to be fair to Ryan McCarty, his puzzle was following a Saturday true masterpiece. Hope he goes on constructing, and goes after that higher bar.
I was pretty baffled by the NW corner, and had to resort to Wordplay for some hints.
And for those still puzzled by the clue...the card game "Hearts" is for four players.
6
@Sheila Morris Yeah, that one took me right until the end. I kept thinking physiology!
"Sigil", however, seems common parlance in role-playing games, which made it easy fill for me.
I would say it’s a bit of Serendip to have DAIRY COW near to MAST, it is.
(Any large animal vets in the house?)
1
@Leapfinger ,
No, but I read way too much James Herriot in my younger days, so I'm familiar with dairy cows and mastitis.
1
@Adina, there's no such thing as too much James Herriot, young days or other. ;)
The PBS TV series was also top-notch.
1
Challenging and fun. SE corner was the last to fall, finally finished when I gave up on MANMAG and DADMAG, and tried LADMAG. That was a TIL for me, as were ROIDRAGE, and ECOTAGE. Always love learning new words.
1
Editor alert: Deja vu is "seen double", not the act or process of seeing double
Skeptical1,
It's a gerund in the clue. Noun, not verb.
much crosswordese ...doable but..bleh
2
@lioncitysolver
I think I'm seeing doable. (DEJA VU)
4
@Andrew - non, c'est DÉJÀ RÉSOLU.
much crosswordese ...doable but..bleh
@lioncitysolver
I think I'm seeing double. (DEJA VU)
1
Excellent, crunchy puzzle, and Fact Boy's multiple postings made the comments a special treat.
1
Utterly creamed. After an hour last night I had only, across, DEJAVU, PLAYERS, EMIT, NOOB, HITAT, ERRS, BUENOS, SANDP,and TAKETIME. Down, I had IGETIT, ETAS, VERBOTEN, UNSOBER, BORAT, EXTRAONE, ARNICA, AMPERE, GATOR, HELM, TEA, and KOI.
Before heading off to bed, I looked at the column hoping I would retain enough to get going this morning. I remembered ELEVENTY and that was enough to finish NW. I half remembered something like "Man Ray" for the Dadaist, so filled it in. I remembered ECONOCAR where I had __O_OCAR, but that didn't help for anything but 46D SEND. I remembered a politician should take TAX something personally (I had the X) but not what. I remember being horrified by the frozen dessert rhyme, but all I can remember is the TACO where I had the AC already. I have blown almost an hour and a half on the thing, have 40 blank squares (have I ever had more than one or two before?), and too much to do today, so I will reveal puzzle.
Glad I quit! I can see a bunch I perhaps should have had (RUNES, the CARPET after FLYING, maybe METS after THE, BOGUS, and I did have the AIR of DAIRYCOW), and the MAST I had erased came back, but would I ever have had enough crosses to get DEAR wotsisname, MILEY, MOTTST, ECOTAGE, LADMAG/ROIDRAGE? MYA would have come out, but I would have doubted it was right.
HHHHH - Santa Claus with laryngitis?
15
Some challenging clues in this. For the 4 of hearts clue I narrowed it down to PLAYERS, PRAYERS, or EBAYERS, but none made sense (to me). The ELEVENTY answer reminded me of an old Beverly Hillbillies episode where Jethro uses "tenty" and "eleventy" while counting. I don't know why I still remember this. For the sans sparkle clue I was thinking the answer should be in French. Though MATTE is not the French word, it is close to MAT, but alas did not work. I loved the GREEN MONSTER" clue. GO SOX !
34d. Casey Stengel (the legendary Yankees manager) was The Mets first manager from 1962 to 1965. During his tenure, they played 579 games and lost 404 of them. I remember newspapers quoting Casey asking “Can’t anybody here play this game?” In regular season play, Mets and Yankees have played against each other 122 times, with the Yankees winning 71 of those games. In post season they played against each other in the 2000 World Series which the Yankees won 4-1. I’m glad I’m a Yankees fan. I don’t think my heart could take being a Mets fan.
1
@Queenie
Try being 9 years old in Baltimore in 1969! Mets, schmetz!
1
@Queenie I was (and still am) a Red Sox fan. The 70s were a very hard decade.
@Puzzledog
Not to mention 1986.
1
Was stuck forever in the NE corner with "Four of hearts" entered as LETTER R. It felt so right. Sigh.
2
Sans sparkle should be DULL, not DULLY.
4
Clovis,
DULL is an adjective, DULLY is an adverb.
Both fit the clue, only one fits in the grid.
5
This was mostly in my wheelhouse (got ECOTAGE on my first pass as an avid monkey wrench gang fan), but I was convinced the answer was One Tenty instead of ELEVENTY, since that made as much sense as anything to me. My lack of knowledge of French held me back in the NW until something clicked and I figured it out.
1
General question: all my completed puzzles show up as Golden with a star. Last Monday's is blue with a star. I know I completed it and it has "broken" my streak, so I'm not sure why it looks different. Any explanation will be gratefully received. Cheers.
Did u finish it after midnite?
@Jonathan Leal No, I'm in California and I did it before 8pm our time. Good question.
@Sophia Leahy did you get any help (reveal square) or check the puzzle?
Since I've never heard of ELEVENTY, I ended up with ELo VENTY/I GoT IT and just said "Huh?" Was that the nickname of someone who was #110 on the Billboard Charts? So a DNF -- but on a puzzle where I thought it was going to be much, much, much worse.
Didn't know SIGILS. Didn't know ARNICA. Didn't know APE HOUSE in that context. Had RHOS instead of ETAS for the HHHHHH. (Don't ask.) Almost didn't finish the NE because of it. And why didn't AUTOPEN come to me sooner? When I was very young, I wrote a poem to Adlai Stevenson and "he" sent me an answer. Dad took one look at it and said that it had been signed by an AUTOPEN.
I finished the puzzle thanks to Larry Hart. Though I'm a lifelong New Yorker, I couldn't for the life of me think of what the main artery through Chinatown was. I never go down there -- too narrow, too crowded, and for my money, rather ugly. And then I remembered the lyrics to "Manhattan":
So tell me what street
Compares to MOTT STREET in July...?
July's the last month I'd go down there, but thanks anyway, Larry. A real struggle for me today, and a very enjoyable one.
3
Wow! I solved all clues, though some seemed so obscure that I had to revert to Google Assistant to reassure myself that I got them correct. But, what oh what is ROID RAGE? I get the pun vis a vis ROAD RAGE, but ROID = hemorrhoid? And if so, what’s the connection with bodybuilding?
@SteveG
steROIDS. Roid rage has been used to explain why some football players and pro wrestlers and (sigh!) high school wrestlers and football players go wacko, punch lockers, girlfriends, etc.
2
SteveG,
It's not a new or obscure term. ROID RAGE was used as a defense on "Law & Order" 17 years ago.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0629162/
1
@SteveG In this case it's short for "steroid", but I do occasionally get hemorrhoid rage.
Took me a while to get ECO-TAGE (had ECO-RAGE first) and even longer to understand ECO-NO-CAR. How is having no car cheap? I guess it is, no insurance, no gas, etc. . . DOOK'd again.
Had the "I" in POLICE vehIcle before cruIser.
Made the earth MOVE would have been a more clever clue?
Visually enjoyed so many "O"'s along a diagonal from 51A up to 22A. Nice Saturday! Go Navy!
1
@Robert Michael Panoff I read it as Econo Car, as in economical. I've come across that term in real life, but I'm old. Ecotage was more obscure for me - I had to Google it to see if it's an actual word (again, I'm old).
The synonym for Joe Biden's catchword seemed off to me - maybe I'm not old enough?
I had a wicked time in the NW corner, although the rest fell relatively easily, aided by a couple of gimmes on the long answers like GREEN MONSTER, FLYING CARPET, DEAR EVAN HANSEN.
I am appreciative of a week of more challenging puzzles in the last week or two.
6
Caitlin, I love it when you find a picture to highlight unusual relationships between unrelated entries. Keep it up!
Like most everyone, I had severe Naticulitis in the NE. For once I wished I was solving on paper with an AUTOPEN. My final alphabet runs were fruitless because of an undiscovered ECOTAGS and UTSP. I had wrongly assumed a plural for the first, and wrongly assumed that there must have been a San Something in Texas with a University. I straggled to the end, but can't really call it a complete success. Still nothing like last Saturday's nightmare.
2
@Andrew
Naticulitis. . .nice.
1
The thing that helped me was El Paso being in the news so much and being on the border, so my guess, which worked out, was Univ of Texas, El Paso.
1
For those of you who have been tempted to try Spelling Bee, this is a good day to take the plunge. Today's is more like doing an early week crossword versus later week. There's only 21 words to get, and they are almost all very common. If you have any questions, just post them here or below under RON O, and if not me, someone else will answer them, I'm sure. Give it a try!
7
@Lewis I agree. First time I scored Queen Bee. I usually stop at Genius but when I saw that bar move so far with each 5- and 4-letter entry, I persisted. I'm relatively new to the Bee and wonder why it isn't archived the way the Crossword is.
1
What a wonderful puzzle! So evocative for me. Like recalling my little family of four PLAYERS enjoying our nightly after-dinner game of hearts on our screened porch (where we wouldn't be EATen ALIVE by those nasty Minnesota mosquitoes.) Plus we could smell the peonies that grew all around the porch.
And watching a game at Fenway Park where the GREEN MONSTER lurks.
It's so special when a puzzle can re-create memories. Read @dk's post for more!
Thank you, Ryan McCarty! Add to my memories the first time I heard the lead of DEAR EVAN HANSEN sing at the Tony awards. I think when you include entries in your puzzle that are close to your heart, they touch ours.
6
@Johanna
Does Hearts have to be with 4 players? To think all those wasted years when we played Hearts or Spades with however many wanted to play. Didn't know there was a rule!
2
@Robert Michael Panoff, we were just the four of us so I never thought about it until you asked. It looks like five can play, too, with some adjustments.
@Robert Michael Panoff
I seem to recall playing with three players. Since the cards don't divide evenly, I think that one of the deuces (not hearts) had to be removed from the deck. Of course I may be wrong...
Oh happy day! High Jackman singing “You Will Be Found” with puzzle constructor extraordinaire Ryan McCarty? Win, win, win!!
3
Still trying to catch up after a week away last week. Why does it always seems that you need a vacation after you take a vacation? :-)
Good challenge today, and only one or two nose scrunchies (when an answer doesn't fit my own definition of proper crossword entries - don't judge, we all have them!) :-)
UNSOBER is just not a word used by anyone that I've ever met, and AUTOPEN seems like a word that you'd not be aware of unless you used one ("another NYT XWP blog" has a photo, and mentions that it's used by famous folks to autograph photos and such for fans). Good solid Saturday though, thanks to Ryan, Will and team, and Caitlin for her usual enlightening review! Happy weekend everyone!
3
@Steve Faiella UNSOBER left me needing a drink but apparently it's a word though hardly ever used. "Undrunk" is a word as well but it refers to an unfinished beverage as opposed to "sober." Gotta love the English language.
2
@Steve Faiella Agree. Also I had ROBOPEN so the tangle was bad...
ometimes there's a SatPuzz that the solver EATS ALIVE, and sometimes the vice is versa.
Today, my theme song was "Hello, DULLY!"
If not for CIVET, MANRAY and a fair shot at a SIGIL vIGIL, I would have been left in BILGE to EAT SALIVA on a FLYING CARPET ride. Mes FRERES m'ont dit que c'est BON AMI, and Ralph BELAMI didn't say otherwise. Adding Motor OIL to the NorthWest made it erm evermore INNpossible.
NorthEast was a JOY to solve (though I prefer a garage to an AUTOPEN), and filling in the UISER of 29A let me back into the POLICE CRUISER. Sadly, that was my only sMILEY face in the staggerstack, as I was sure cAmPAign MONEY was off-limits, and EVAN HANSEN, DEAR though he be, is not my BEL AMI.
Well, Ryan McC, it kind of RUNES my day to find that getting a great d'ECO[LLE]TAGE means you gots to TAKE TIME and TONES UP till you SWEATS. Evenso, I appreciate that you TooK TIME to SANDP APER this GRAM so smooth of all her POCKS Marks.
We never even noticed any pain ;D
9
P.Ess: Shall have to hunt around why PLAYERS answers 'Four of hearts'; I chunked in ATRIUMS.
@Leapfinger I think it's because the card game Hearts requires four players.
5
@Andy, I know that’s true of Bridge, but I spent a whole summer in college playing Hearts every lunchtime on the grass in front of the Bio building with Anne and Joel and not one of us was the kind to break rules. That we were aware of.
Klootch my pearls
3
A fine challenge, with the lower right, lower left, upper left and upper right getting filled in that order. Very much a fingerhold and toehold kind of solve. Very enjoyable. And the harder the puzzle is, the longer it takes and the more fun it is! Not to mention, the longer I can be distracted from the woes of the zeitgeist.
2
"20A: This was the location of my intractable blank box, the second I in SIGILS. This isn’t a debut, and it makes sense that an ancient word for 'symbol' would share its root with 'sign', but I knew signum, not sigillum."
Sure you do!
"Sigillum Civitatis Novi Eboraci" should be familiar to an attentive New Yorker.
1
Etaoin Shrdlu,
The only NYC seals I ever paid any attention to were in the Central Park Zoo.
4
Was shocked to see the word DIXIE appear in a NYT puzzle. Thought that was one of the cool words the PC police had nixed by now.
Was very refreshing to still see one of my favorite words in print.
Jack,
I gather you don't do many NYT Crosswords. This is the 70th time in the Shortz Era "dixie" has appeared in a clue (it was just here two months ago) and it's been an answer 16 times (including earlier this year).
@Jack O. Lantern
There's a difference between using "Dixie" in a crossword puzzle and erecting a statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest in a public park.
13
@Jack O. Lantern - today's puzzle might have been sponsored by a certain cup maker.
1
My 426 day Crossword streak just disappeared. I completed the Saturday puzzle this morning and looked at my stats. I saw a time for my Friday afternoon solve and the streak. As I watched, the time in the stats for Friday changed from 27:52 to no time filled in and a reset streak. I can open the Friday puzzle and it still shows a 27:52 time and a correctly completed puzzle. Still no time for Friday in stats. Closing and reopening the app didn’t change anything.
Any ideas?
@Iris
That happened to me a month ago. I reported it to [email protected] and they were able to fix it.
Good luck. It’s very disheartening to lose a streak that way.
1
@Iris Since you did it, you didn't lose your streak. You don't need external validation from the website. Continue to celebrate your crossword acumen!
4
Thanks, Midnightpurl, for the suggestion to email the crossword. I’ve sent one and hope for a solution.
Thanks, too, to MisterK. I really do want that external validation and for the automatic arithmetic!
1
Evil, wicked, mean and nasty puzzle, and I loved it.
FWIW, 20A SIGILS comes from the Latin word "sigillum" meaning "seal." Ancient magic operated on the idea of compelling spiritual powers to act as desired. The same root is used to describe luxury pottery from antiquity which was stamped with the maker's seal, referred to as "terra sigillata."
8
What is a ladmag? A magazine for boys? Never heard it or seen it in print. I got it, but didn't "get" it.
1
@CKent
Basically a girlie mag. Lad in UK usage, means a kind of young partying drinker ogler, who sometimes makes a nuisance of themselves. Their spiritual home is Ibiza.
7
@Frances
Thanks, Frances. This may be the most obscure puzzle clue I've ever encountered. Are we NYT crossword solvers expected to know stuff like this? I guess having to work around it is part of the fun, but jeez Louise, Mr. McCarty! Still, now I know "ladmag" and what it means. Whoopee.
1
CKent,
The same answer with the same clue appeared in August. Don't forget it; it'll be back.
Precious. Just precious.
1
Hands up from those who 'confidently' entered YANKEES before switching sides to THEMETS
23
RAH,
When YANKEES didn't work I wanted DODGERS.
@Barry Ancona
O'Malley's curse strikes again.....
I was having so much fun cruising along and then I got completely stuck at the end. LADMAG crossed with ALA and SANDP threw me. Is ALA supposed to be Alabama? I also could not get ETAS, APIA, PLAYERS (I didn't like that clue), and SIGILS. I guess I learn new things each time.
CIVET! SIGILS! I needed more than a DAIRYCOW to solve this one, mooed Tom mournfully.
As a young dk mon pere moved us from the suburbs to an old farm in Upstate NY. He said it was for us but when he made us refer to him as my liege we had our doubts. Our neighbors delighted in the fact they had a city slicker in their midst, and would both help us and use us as the butt of more than one joke. One involved Holsteins. We were told that on alternate days they gave chocolate milk and through the use of SIGILS and mirrors would present us with cartons of said milk when we came to see this miracle. At age six I did not question how a cow could produce a milk carton, as they had Elise on them after all. One day the neighbor’s cows we let graze in our field escaped into the garden my father and mother had created. This garden was a source of pride and conversation for all of Huff-tail Hollow (name given our little valley). Needless to say the cows made short work of the corn, tomatoes, melons, etc. Fast forward to harvest time when almost daily a basket of corn, tomatoes, etc. would magically appear on our doorstep. The end of this vignette was a bbq in our yard where our neighbor’s learned my father was an economist and CPA, years of bartering and annual harvest bbqs commenced and all was well in The Hollow.
Thanks Ryan
13
@dk
Can we call you My Liege now?
2
Nice to see a little baseball love in the midst of all this football drama. Most of the answers were pretty familiar, but not MYA or MOTTST or SIGIL. I could show you around Chinatown in DC, but only been to New York's a few times, and that was a while back. This puzzle took me a long time to get through, so I had a fun morning!
3
Too many no knows for me today.
I did like DEJA VU.
3
GRRRR!!
CAMPAIGN MONEY fit SO nicely at 34A that I just would NOT give it up!! And JUNK HEAP was pretty solid at 52A - but not for as long.
ELEVENTY is just DUMB!!
Still don’t get ECOTAGE???
@Catilin: There are four PLAYERS in the game of hearts (usually/always?).
“Drunk” as an excuse for UNSOBER??? Gimme a BREAK!! How clunky can you get? EXTRA ONE comes pretty close - but doesn’t quite measure up.
Same for “Maxim” and LADMAG - - in spades - - not hearts!
RUNES - I got - but not SIGILS.
Thought WEEGEE might have fit at 24A. Didn’t!!
Never heard of MYA - nor do I care to.
The rest was fair game - - although I never think of HOEing as “Turning” the earth. HOEING:WEEDING::PLOWING:TURNING.
Sunday will be more than welcome for my puzzling brain - - such as it is.
4
@PeterW
ELEVENTY is adorable and Hobbity so I must protest.
10
@PeterW
Ecotage is like sabotage. Or, at least I assume so, I've never heard the term.
3
PeterW,
Mean Old Lady will approve your HOED message.
WEEGEE *without* a camera?
3
I almost got through a whole week with no eye roll, but LADMAG laid waste time that goal. Jeez.
4
I thought the 110 was going to refer to sports talk and "giving it 110 percent" somehow. Then a head-slap for a Tolkien maven, when it turned out to be "eleventy".
Then the thought - ah, time to link to Tom Scott again...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4bmZ1gRqCc
I'm in the club of those who filled in some very long things right away, which made for not the toughest Saturday ever.
3
@David Connell
Great Tom Scott piece. At first I was like,”What’s he wearing?”, but then I realized it’s not his video. I wish someone would get him into the puzzle.
I filled in the Fenway Park wall right away (I don’t really care about baseball, but I know the cultural references) so the puzzle was fairly easy for me, too. Bottom easier than top, despite not knowing what ecotage is, even after reading Caitlin.
Continuing on from an earlier comment of yours about teaching kanji, you probably don’t use 姦. Doesn’t have the kindest overtones. The nicest meaning is noisy, which shows the traditional view of women, and which there’s actually a saying in Japanese. Of course, there are a lot of views buried in English like that as well. But characters like that are really interesting, especially in how they developed in usage over time. I’d be interested to know the different nuances between related characters in Chinese and Japanese, but my Japanese would have to be better, and my Chinese reading is at kindergarten level.
@David Connell
Of course the piano nerd in me wants to now perform a recital with Beethoven's Op. ELEVENTY and ELEVENTY-ONE!
1
@Andrew - there is only one obvious reply to that...
Bruckner's Symphony No. 0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rf_NN97etgc
CampaignMONEY first for anyone else? Yesterday set a personal Friday best and today one of my worst for a Saturday. Does anyone really think today was easier than the last Erik Agard puzzle that got so many complaints for being too hard?
6
@Blue Moon - hand up for both campaign MONEY and this being easier.
2
@Blue Moon Campaign funds was my first guess!
4
@Blue Moon ,,
I found this at least as hard as last week's puzzle.
1
Didn't come close on this one. GREENMONSTER was a promising start, but I ground to a halt pretty quickly after that. Not familiar with DEAREVANHANSEN and that was hardly the only thing. I do see some things (FLYINGCARPET / ELEVENTY) that should have jumped out at me, but I don't think that would have gotten me there.
3 day win streak followed by a 3 day losing streak. I guess tomorrow will be the tiebreaker.
Oh, and couldn't help but note that a crossing in the SE could as easily have been KOA and ROADRAGE. I'm sure the editors noticed as well. Will always wonder what the basis for those decisions is.
2
@Rich in Atlanta While I'm up....
Inspired by 1d, I did an extensive search and finally found that the New College of Florida has V, W, X, Y and Z dorms, and even a B dorm.
But I couldn't find a college that could provide a Dorm A view (perhaps to a fraternity jock).
Ducking and hiding.
3
Rich,
Ducking? Canard!
3
@Rich in Atlanta
"Will always wonder what the basis for those decisions is."
Early week - ROAD RAGE?
Late week - ROID RAGE?
Just guessing here...
1
Credit to Ryan and the editors to create answers and clues that result in revelation after revelation leading to a solve which earlier seemed unreachable. That requires art, talent, a drive for excellence, and a desire to serve the solver.
Lively long answers and lovely riddles abounding in the clues -- what a rewarding use of time, solving a puzzle like today's. I salute and thank you Ryan plus the editors for this wondrous thing you do.
7
I was sure I was going to have my 4th Saturday in a row streak breaker after my first pass through. I had only DEAR EVAN HANSEN. But being the middle row, it gave a nice symmetry to the grid. Everything above and below was blank
1
An enjoyable "chip away" Saturday. I only had four entries after my first across pass (HBO, NOOB, BUENOS, and lucky guess ROIDRAGE), but added a few more on downs (yay for Boston-themed clues!). Had Yankees and NYCMets before THEMETS and angels before SIGILS. Stoat and oil slowed me down - and led top some awkward across fill - before I got CIVET and INN. Overall, it was fun to see my slow but steady progress, and it led to a great sense of satisfaction with the solve!
3
LETTER BOXED THREAD
P-S (9) S-M(6)
Yesterday I got the NYT solution after Liane posted RIGMAROLE as 9 letters. I had rigamarole and couldn't figure out why it wasn't accepted. A lifetime of putting the extra "a" between the
"g" and "m"
3
@coloradoz Same here today - and same yesterday - without the struggle with the 'a'.
@coloradoz
Sounds like solving yesterday was a real RIGMAROLE.
1
@coloradoz
Even if the online solve didn't take it, RIGAMAROLE was a perfectly acceptable spelling supported by the dictionary so take full marks! After it was not accepted on my first effort yesterday, I checked my spelling in the dictionary and then saw it referred to as an alternate spelling. I didn't drop the "a" until then.
Today I've exceeded my self-imposed time limit with no solution, once again finding too many options leading to dead ends.
This one took quite a few passes (and a strategically placed Saturday sigil for extra luck). Am unable to access the potent cloud of Saturday smug however because I too only escaped a fatal Natick at the cross of SIGILS and APIA by a lucky guess.
J'aime M. de Maupassant. He had quite a range--most know the Necklace but I recommend Boule de Suif in which he EATS ALIVE his countrymen . . . he was more than a bit mechant (which can be a plus in a novelist IMHO).
3
SPELLING BEE
Uabcflk
21 words 55 points 1 pangram
B x 7, C x 6, F x 4, L x 4
4L x 15, 5L x 5, 8L x 1
4 5 8 Tot
B 5 2 - 7
C 4 2 - 6
F 2 1 1 4
L 4 - - 4
Tot 15 5 1 21
46
@Ron O. I was so disappointed when I saw how few words there are but now I’m still missing one, a B5 that’s not a poker strategy.
One new word for me, an anatomical one similar to a couple biblical names.
Pangram is sports-related.
3
@Kevin Davis nevermind, got QB with a B5 Southern good ole boy.
9
@Ron O.
Thanks Ron! Almost a Mini Bee today.
First two letters list:
BL-1, BU-6
CA-2,CL-2, CU-2
FL-2, FU-2
LU-4
11
Great clues, great puzzle. I was sure the school was ucsd but it was UTEP, which I never heard of. I also thought Mueller was a us Marine but he was an FBI AGENT.
2
University of Texas, El Paso. Closer to Mexico than SDSU
2
FBI CHIEF!
I don't think of CHOCO rhyming with TACO. I also don't get the PLAYERS clue, is there a clever pun?
1
@Susan The card game “hearts” has four players.
4
Caitlin, did you notice the pairing of 20A: SIGILS with 22A: HBO? That was a nice reminder of Game of Thrones , which used to occupy my Sunday nights for years. It was all about great houses, all bearing meaningful SIGILS. I was House Targaryen 🐉.
6
@Pani, thank you, I was trying to figure out why SIGILS was tripping people up when it seemed like such a common word to me. Of course, GOT!
1
Can someone please explain 18Across: Four of hearts as PLAYERS? Is it referring to the card game Hearts, which usually requires four players (though I think I've played a three player version)? Or being a "playa" cause you are stringing along four different peoples' hearts? Or something much more simple and obvious, that I am missing?
2
@Newbie
Nevermind. I should have scrolled all the way down to the first comment in this thread. I guess the consensus is that the clue is referencing the card game, Hearts.
3
Alas, sometimes you fall in love with an answer. I desperately wanted BIGAMY for 9A (had APEHOUSE!) and it cost me, but worked it all out in the end.
I have fond memories of CHOCOTACOs. They had them at our middle school cafeteria, and with good old-fashioned paper lunch cards that didn’t track your purchases and tell your parents, I probably had a few I shouldn’t have!
3
This has been an incredible week of solving for this tues/wed NOOB. I have solved quickly and been one letter off everyday this week.
Today (sat), it was ELE_ENTY. I solve electronically, and it never occurred to me to just cycle though each letter until I hear the solve music. So thanks Caitlin for the “pro” tip. Of course that requires no other mistakes in the puzzle.
I also noticed all the constructors this week were on the younger side. Maybe this old man relates better to the “kids” because I get seem to get the long entries so quickly. So as we young kids like to say, “constructors, I appreciate you”
6
Coming back to say that when I was poking around Friday trying to find out what happened to the Wordplay column, I went to the Wordplay twitter page. When there I saw a tweet letting tweet-readers (the twitterati?) know that the special Puzzlemania section, which is only in the hard copy of the paper, will be in this Sunday's paper. So if you don't get the paper delivered, you may want to venture forth to buy it. Or ask a non-puzzling neighbor if you can have theirs.
5
@vaer
Thank you for that! Usually I don't find out about it until after the fact. I don't understand why that isn't part of the subscription.
2
@vaer
Thanks for the tip, that’s a great section.
1
@vaer
Thanks for the tip, that’s a great section.
It's always thrilling when you know one of the long answers right off the bat. Tonight I had two. DEAR EVAN HANSEN and GREEN MONSTER, though I do have to say the clues were not very Saturday-like.
Not to worry, the many iterations of forbidden (too long), forbaden, forboden, VERBOtEN before VERBOTEN for Taboo made up for it, along with not knowing the island world capital APIA. Also, seems as if NOOB or NEWB is on its way to becoming something where you drop in the N and the B and then wait and see.
3
@vaer
After checking NOOB v. NEWB at xwordinfo, I was surprised to see that that NOOB led in appearances 9 times to once. It must have been in some other publication's puzzle that I recently saw Newb.
@vaer
As a newbie, take it on my counsel, that the abbreviated version is indeed spelled noob. From well known video game phrase “pwning noobs”. Which has an interesting backstory in itself
1
@Newbie
Newbie has been clued 5 times; noobie never.
1
Recent news about Rep. Duncan Hunter made me enter "Campaign Funds" instead of TAXPAYER MONEY, which slowed me down.
20
UNSOBER? DULLY? Does anyone ever really use these words? I like a good challenge but these are just “clunky...”
8
@Mark
Normally, his conversation sparkled. But when UNSOBER, he prattled on DULLY, mostly about LAD MAGs and dECOlleTAGE.
16
@Mark
Agreed. I filled them in cause they fit, but it did seem like BILGE to me...
LADMAGs: man, those died quick with the accessibility of, you know, internet picture stuff...
4
@Puzzlemucker
As I said to the hubby this morning, although UNSOBER may be technically a word, have you ever in your entire life heard someone say "I'm UNSOBER, man!" or "S(he) was very UNSOBER last night. If you have, you may be hanging out with odd people... ;-)
4
So, I fully admit I did not understand the 10D clue: “HHHHH.” How does that lead to ETAS?
2
The capital Greek letter, eta, is written as "H".
3
H is the Greek letter ETA.
2
@Daniel
Put that one in your back pocket. It'll come up again. And again.
ETAS has been clued with some form of multiple Hs for literally dozens of times. From the more obvious "Greek H's" (14 times) to just "H's" and things like HH, HHH, and H H H H.
Hubert Horatio Humphrey would have been proud.
10
First complaint in almost two years of solving. LAD MAG. Really? My first thought was MENS MAG but when that didn’t fit I went with MAN MAG. Ugh, but fine. That was a tricky section for me so it took a while to realize MAN should be LAD. Double ugh.
However, CHOCOTACO negates all my ill will. It’s my absolute favorite ice cream treat and far too few bodegas stock them. ¡Viva el CHOCOTACO!
4
@Denice - I'm not sure if you are objecting to the content of the mag, so to speak, or to the phrase "lad mag" - if the latter - it's a real thing. Mostly British, though:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lad_mag
7
Denice, "lad mag" is an actual thing. (Though it sounds more British to me than American.)
@Denice I too was miffed by lad magazine. That's Brit speak, not a regional dialect . Miffed because it was so obvious in the end.
Nice and crunchy!
Unlike Caitlin, I got SIGIL with little struggle, but couldn’t get APIA from the unfamiliar island name.
I was so proud of myself for finding a good fit for two long entries. MONOCHROMATIC at 29A, and CAMPAIGN CASH at 34A. This obviously slowed me down a bit, so with no clarity on crossings I had to go to google to find DEAR EVAN HANSEN. Then everything sorted itself out.
3
Main arteries in Manhattan's Chinatown are Canal St. (east-west) and the Bowery (north-south). MOTT ST. is a very busy, touristy street with a lot of Chinese restaurants and souvenir shops, but it is a narrow, crowded, one-lane, one-way street on which you usually can walk faster than you can drive, and people do, both on the sidewalks and the street itself. An artery, it's not. Unless you like clogged arteries and coronaries.
26
@Steve L - yes yes, that was my progression as well.
4
@Steve L
Would have been fun if clue had been “Home of Hop Lee restaurant in NYC’s Chinatown.” My favorite place in Chinatown for lunch.
7
Steve,
If "Chinatown" refers to the original store and restaurant area -- between Worth and Canal, Bowery and Baxter -- then MOTTST *is* the main artery. But that's a good fifty years ago. Today, for a long stretch of "main artery" in Greater Chinatown, don't forget East Broadway.
4
This was tricky and pretty tough, but I finished well under my Saturday average. Mainly thanks to some lucky gimmes and guesses.
Gimmes - NOOB, HBO, ROUTE, KOI, JOY, BUENOS, TEA, SEND, and of course, GREEN MONSTER, which is less than 2 miles away from me. I had already thought about POLICE CRUISER when I saw the clue, but waited for enough crossings to enter it.
At first I thought SIGILS would be RUNES, but it didn't fit, and then RUNES came along, so that wasn't right.
Had EMIT, then erased it and then put it back again. TILL before HOED, CAMPAIGN MONEY before TAXPAYER MONEY because I saw FLYING CARPET forming. Wanted to put NYMETS (didn't fit), then NYYANKS, and finally THE METS. Thought CANAL ST first but didn't fit, before BOWERY before MOTT ST.
ECOTAGE - that was an early one. After I saw ___TAGE, it's got to be ECOTAGE, right? I never heard of the word, and here I was making it up. ELEVENTY was the last entry completed. I just didn't even want to think about what it was until it became obvious.
Good solid Saturday. Lucked out on entries which made it easier than I deserved. Loved many of the entries.
4
@Wen -p.s. those who commit ECOTAGE - are they GREEN MONSTERs?
p.p.s. I forgot I had CHAMBER before PLAYER. Because there are 4 chambers...in...the...heart. Yeah, it wasn't plural and I realized my mistake quickly enough.
9
@Wen
Same thought process with Chamber.
4
@vaer
Yes, it was that way for me as well.
At 31 minutes, well longer than average Saturday. The cross of SIGILS / APIA required a guess at the I. Fortunately it was a vowel!
This does show that solving in the app is easier than on paper. Paper won’t tell you when you have it.
3
SIG(e)LS / AP(e)A
SIG(u)LS / AP(u)A
SIGILS / APIA
My definition of a streak allows vowel runs. My one-week streak remains alive.
Whew, that was a GREEN MONSTER.
2
@Puzzlemucker
SIGUL is the Special Interest Group: Under-resourced Languages of the European Language Resources Association and "apua" is part of the name of a Hawaiian trigger fish (humu humu nuku nuku apua'a). You've got the beginning of a pair of alternative clues there.
3
@Fact Boy
Would be gimmes if clued like that. Maybe appropriate for a Monday:
“Humu humu nuku nuku ___’a”
“ELRA body involved in syntactic parsing of Tibetan”
But seriously, your reply led me down a SIGUL rabbit hole and the discovery that 2019 has been the International Year of Indigenous Languages. There are over 4,000 indigenous languages worldwide, spoken by about 370 million people. They are disappearing at a rate of one every two weeks.
https://www.iwgia.org/en/focus/international-year-of-indigenous-languages
Puzzlemucker, I'd seen the word sigil somewhere in the past but with no idea what it meant. That sufficed for entering the I when it was down to SIG_L.
I think of ELEVENTY as something children say when they're applying their impressive internal logic to learning numbers. But I guess humorists pick it up and use it for fun.
2
"Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday." — Fellowship of the Ring (1954)
OED lists attestations of "eleventy" from 1841 to 2015; DARE localizes it to South Midland, in the sense of an indeterminate number.
11
@Fact Boy
DARE is the Dictionary of American Regional English. A wonderful resource!
2
@Liz B
The editor, Frederic G. Cassidy, died when DARE had volumes out only through the letter O. The epitaph on his tombstone reads "On to Z!"
3
Taxpayer money never seems to be taken seriously....
2
Most Saturday puzzles TAKE TIME -- this one was no exception!
2
This felt toughly challenging, but I solved it in almost exactly my average Saturday time. Bits and pieces of things fell into place with a few cross letters--SIGILS, DEAR EVAN HANEN, and ARNICA for example. At 34D I pondered YANKEES or DODGERS for a while before realizing that neither one would work; left it alone for awhile until I had THE_ETS and MYA seemed more likely than NYA. JYA not even considered! I was pretty sure of MAN RAY and MOTT ST from the recesses of the dusty attic of my mind. I thought I might be interested in trying a CHOCO TACO, but I looked it up and now I'm not so sure. At any rate, this felt like a worthy Saturday.
4
I interpret 18A to refer to the card game and it’s number of participants
16
@Joe Olson - Me too. Four players for the game of hearts.
2
@Joe Olson
Oh good golly, that's totally it. Thank you. I wish I could clear cache on my brain this week!!
11
@Joe Olson
Agreed. The lack of capitalization of “Hearts” seems ripe for some minor controversy, notwithstanding the “?” in the clue.
8