I've heard three dozen ice cream truck themes in my life from all around the country and never once did I hear turkey in the straw.
1
Not fun.
1
This is “history” for everyone else - but I got “distracted” by other things and just finished it.
It’s a “completion” (not even a capital ‘C’) because of the extensive ‘trial and error’ I used with Autocheck.
Finally figured out the theme but in the end, I was disappointed that the online version accepted the rebus “SPARE” - which doesn’t work for AC/DC at all. Particularly when “X” was the correct entry for ‘STRIKE’ and “XXX” served for “TURKEY”.
OK. I’m caught up. Now to wait for the Sunday puzzle.
1
Wonderful, clever, puzzle, not a fan of bowling, but how can you not love an AC/DC fill? Would have been outstanding to find a way to reference in Angus' knickers...)
This puzzle was too cute by half. Not a fan.
2
I once scored XXXXX which, according to Wikipedia, would be called a "front five- bagger," ie, strikes in the first 5 frames. I ended up with my lifetime high score, 217. To show what a fluke this really was (for me), the score of my previous game has been 114. :)
1
Wonderful cluing, lots of fun. But I agree with Mike about SKEG...surfers call them fins.
3
Thought this was a fun puzzle. I was well aware that three strikes is a TURKEY, but having read the cover story on Peter Lynch in Barron’s this week, I started with the answer to Magellan, e.g. as MUTUAL FUND before realizing that didn’t work.
2
I’ve surfed for 30 years and I’ve NEVER heard the term “skeg.” Between that and the ridiculous “theme,” this was an awful puzzle.
4
And yet, somehow, growing up in rural western North Carolina in the 1960s, I heard/read the word “skeg” more than once in my youth. That was one of the easy answers for me today. Go figure.
1
As a college freshman many years ago I took bowling one semester for my phys ed requirement. The hardest part was figuring out the scoring system, and this puzzle reminded me of that. Now days it's all automated, I think.
3
Me too! Did you go to DU? Pretty much the only college I’ve heard of that had it’s own bowling alley (back in the 70’s)
1
Wags,
Most bowling establishments today have automated scoring systems. Bowling was my minor "carryover sport" in college (we bowled in town, not on campus), but I had learned to score going bowling after school (elementary school).
1
Amy, I did bowling at UNC/Chapel Hill for physical education class in the fall of 1971.
Pitch-by-pitch documentation of a baseball game on a scorecard is one of the arcane and sublime pleasures of summer I shared with my late wife. If I’d had the same knowledge of the scoring of bowling, this puzzle would not have blown me 22 min. past my average Thursday solve time.
I first got the slash in AC/DC, but then changed it to ACXDC because I thought the gimmick was to subsitute X’s for bowling terms “strike” and “spare.” I knew “turkey” as a bowling term but did understand why it took three X’s to represent it. I stared blankly at the filled grid for a long time before restoring the slash in AC/DC and getting the happy music. Full understanding only came when I read Word Play.
Challenging, and I learned a little something.
3
I've bowled my entire life and never heard "turkey" as a term for three strikes in a row. Is it a regional usage? I grew up in Michigan.
1
I’m no bowling aficionado, but bowling tournaments advertised here in Indiana are often called “turkey shoots.”
I did some light Googling for etymology on the term, but did not see reference to regionalism.
@Paul McBride
There probably isn't a person in the N Central US who doesn't know that three strikes (XXX) is a turkey. Surprised by the amount of comments to the contrary. I thought this was common knowledge. My kids had bowling in HS and they make the kids score manually even though all alleys are automated.
2
@Paul - it is indeed a regionalism, used only among English speakers who play tenpin bowling in the US and British commonwealth countries.
4
I solved it, but what the heck is a turkey? I’ve bowled a little, but never heard that term. I’m going to assume it’s when you finish with three consecutive strikes. Bad in baseball, great in bowling!
1
I’m old enough to remember manual scoring on the overhead-projected clear scoring cards, so it was pretty nifty when computer-scored TV screens replaced them. It provided some extra incentive to string our strikes just so we could see the new fancy animated 8-bit turkey do a dance on the TV screen above our lane for a few brief seconds, a fun way to brag by proxy to the surrounding lanes. Anyway, a turkey is any 3 consecutive strikes during a single game.
After Wednesday might as well be a different game.
2
Fun theme! Way to X a nice chord.
2
Purely as an aside: ECOTONEs may not appear very often in the NYT crossword but they were tremendously important in ecological history. In the first half of the 20th century standard ecological theory held that the natural world was composed of a group of discrete, repeatable communities, each of which had its own set of plants, animals, fungi, etc. If, for example you went up a mountain in New York starting at about 1000 feet, the species composition of the forest would be constant and predictable until you reached the upper limit of the oak-hickory community, at which point there would be a sharp border (the ECOTONE) and then beyond that you would be in spruce-fir forest with an entirely different set of species. Pioneering (and paradigm-changing) research by Bob Whittaker and others showed that this wasn’t true; as you go up you actually lose low-elevation species and gain high-elevation species at different points, so there is no clear line between them. This discovery effectively destroyed the old, rigid community concept and led to the more fluid understanding of communities that exists today.
Just in case anyone was wondering.
10
@Doug - I disagree very strongly with your reading of the word "ecotone" and the cultural history.
Ecotones are the overlapping edge communities between discrete / distinct zones. Ecotones are where it's at. Nobody never said "forest end" "mountain start now". The ecotone is the place where "forest ending" meets "mountain starting." That's the definition of ecotone. The ecotone was _never_ defined as the sharp borderline (a la "build a wall") between communities, but rather the shared space where one community was edging out and another edging in.
In the end, I think you and I both value ecotones - you just have a way of reading the history (either of the word or the thing) that I really can't jump on board with.
7
For 10A, I had to REJIGGER my answer, as first I tried "Joe," and then "Doe," and finally (at last) DOW.
9
A lot of "aha!" fun stuff that went quickly but enough unknown crosses that it took an hour to get to that "Sorry! You've still got at least one booboo" point and hit the hay.
This morning I decided to go to Deb for help, but nothing there. Well, I worked part-time in a library for a year to supplement my GI Bill, but still had to put eSBN into a search engine before finding out the guys name was AMIS. Lost another 12 minutes getting there.
1
Fun puzzle. After I got the sport clue figured out the first answer clue. Was going to write in spare then hubby said AC/DC spell their name with slash. Reminded me / was written for spare in bowling. After that figured the rest of the puzzle out. Great puzzle. Loved it.
5
The occasional bowling night with friends is fun, and I probably never heard of a turkey because I never bowled one. This puzzle was fun + educational!
2
Loved this puzzle. Of course, I used to bowl a lot.
2
@Sammy this was FUN! I have bowled, too, but I didn't know Turkey. Luckily, I knew the song, so once I figured out what the heck was going on, I was okay!
3
This one belongs in the TINN ("Things I Never Noodle Now") category. For one, what that ice cream truck jingle we had our Pavlovian response to was, but sussing out from the fill wasn't too bad. OTOH treating the triple X as a thanksgiving bird totally eluded me, never heard of it before. So... I had OENO for 56D and spaces for 55D which pretty much clobbered that corner. The rest of it was good.
Oh, and yes it's a 16-column grid -- anyone else catch on?
3
Just starting to do puzzles instead of the mini. Bamboozled by the Xs and slash some answers. Is this a normal part of puzzles?
2
Dr. Conde,
Thursdays are often tricky. The tricks are often rebuses. Read up!
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/crosswords/yes-you-can-write-more-than-one-letter-in-a-square.html
2
Only on Thursdays
4
@Dr. Conde
For a Thursday, it’s the norm; and an occasional Wednesday. Squares might also house symbols and multiple letters on Sundays also.
1
Is it just me/my computer or is the Set puzzle not working today? I usually do it with my first cup of coffee, but it's not there. At least for me.
2
Set is not working for me either.
@Elizabeth G. --
Same here. No Set puzzle displays at:
https://www.nytimes.com/puzzles/set
(i.e., website, not mobile site)
@Elizabeth G. --
Fixed! Set is now accessible.
Golden ager memory struck by this puzzle - when I was a kid, the Friday night fight on TV was followed by a brief show called "Make That Spare," in which two bowlers tried to make such all too common first ball leavings as the "dinner bucket" and the devilish 7/10. Back then, bowling alleys were frowned on by uptight parents. Some of them even had (gasp!) pool tables!
5
@John Dietsch
Pool or billiards? As I recall the latter were consiodered a bit more "high class".
1
@John Dietsch did anybody ever come to your town to sell you musical instruments?
5
Personally I don’t care for the gimmicks. Using a slash in a puzzle is silly. Spent five minutes I’ll never get back, flyspecking for an error that wasn’t there. I knew ACXDC didn’t make sense, but I didn’t consider the slash because ... why would you ever do that?
Why don’t we start making puzzles with commas, apostrophes, asterisks, etc.? Or in other words, #!?!&?#^!
12
"Why don’t we start making puzzles with commas, apostrophes, asterisks, etc.?"
Mr. Mark,
For more than 40 years, the rebuses in the Times Crossword were punctuation marks, numbers, symbols and other entries that were *not* two or more letters squished into one square. Today's "slash" is an ORTHODOX rebus.
4
Not to mention numerical entries and entries "outside the box"....
1
Yah. Don’t like those either. Am I a curmudgeon? Perhaps.
6
Normally, I neither notice nor complain about three-letter answers. But the overabundance of them was hard to ignore in this puzzle. And the fill was so...crosswordesy. "This better be worth it," I said to myself through gritted teeth, as I waited to see what trick would justify so much ugliness.
After not being able to understand XTHERIGHTBALANCE, I got the trick at "SPARE ME THE DETAILS". "Aha!", I said, "BOWLING!" It was the theme answers that got me the Revealer -- which is, of course, bass-ackwards.
Since I always put my fingers in my ears when ice cream trucks play music (or should I say "music"), I had no idea what they played. But once I had "....IN THE STRAW", there was only one tune I knew in the entire universe that fit. I hemmed and hawed over 56A until I finally, dimly, remembered from my limited bowling experience that XXX was called a TURKEY. It was nothing I, as a bowler, would have ever had any occasion to write or say.
Would love to say that the cleverness of the theme and my genuine "Aha!" Moment made up for the unpleasant solve. In my case it didn't. Results may vary.
7
Nancy,
You don't think the symmetry of ORTHODOX JEW and DELI COUNTER was DELIciously value-added?
Sometimes you just payess you go...
18
@Leapfinger
Actually --- 40A fill applies. :-)
2
A very pleasan, albeit too fast solve, with the brain power of two. I highly recommend doing this periodically as a family exercise, especially during holidays.
Only ten more days of delightful co-solving with grad school boy. Then my average will suffer, but who cares?
7
@Liane aka "typing challenged today"! My holiday travel also was "pleasan." Wish it had risen to pleasant, but alas, aging relations seem to fare poorly at holidays. I beg forgiveness for my errors across the board today.
1
@Lianey
My 15=year-old and I just recently started tackling the daily puzzle. Our 3-day streak from Monday was broken today, but we were close. It is the most fun we've had together in a while.
4
My 9-year old and I do Mondays and Tuesdays (we get the physical paper, too, and fill in the grid). My 11-year old used to just watch us, and now he sometimes joins. I don't think I'll regret the time spent.
2
A very fine puzzle that was heck to complete because I hadn't bowled more than three times since 1962 and who knew the word for plant that needs little water? But all's well that ends well. A very challenging and enjoyable solve!
Happy Boxing Day!
4
PS — I knew of spelunkers and spelunking, but hadn't known you could just spelunk until today. Also, don't know of a word "skeg" and wonder if 34D suggests that a surfboard becomes stabilized when the surfer clams down after he or she has partaken of a spare keg.
2
polymath,
SKEG, serving the same function, predates surfboards by a few centuries.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/skeg
1
@Barry Ancona
"Wrathful was Thor when he awoke
and [vainly] sought his hammer;
he shook his beard* and tossed his locks..."
— Thrymskvida (ca. 1200 AD)
*Skegg nam at hrista
4
A drawback of solving on paper is there's no way to know you've made a mistake that needs fixing.
I thought it was pretty bizarre that Seurat for some reason specialized in RIVER SEIGES, but there it was! (And mis-spelled, too, I noticed too late.)
That gave me ECOTOGE, which looked weird, but then, so would ECOTONE.
I got the theme pretty early on, but did not know the symbols. Thought it would be X, XX, and XXX, but...nope!
Had fun anyway. Very clever, Trenton Charlson!
6
@spenyc
I always found that to be a plus of solving on paper!
In pre-online days, when the solution was printed the next day, I rarely bothered to check it. Instead, I confidently threw out the paper believing I'd completed it correctly. Even today, if I do the puzzle on paper, I rarely check answers unless I have a specific doubt. Optimism is my friend!
On the other hand, my father-in-law used to fill in and complete puzzles with errors, hand them to me and expect me to correct them.
5
I'm left pondering how a strike in baseball is noted as "K", but in bowling with an "X" - and then, how three K's in a row is a bad thing in baseball - but three X's in a row is a good thing in bowling - and then my mind starts to wander among triplicated letters. ¡Ay, ay, ay!
Raised by a mother who played at whiles on three teams in three different leagues each week - I didn't have any problem sussing out the theme or getting the themers filled in without crossings. This is one of the puzzles where the difficulties of multiple platforms come to the fore. Because that / square shouldn't accept the word "spare", but only the symbol "/", to be read differently in each direction. The editors had to make a choice to accept "slash" or "spare" or "lightning bolt" or whatever, in order for non-pencil-and-paper solvers to get a credit for the win. But it's a little bit bad form. Like throwing the ball underhanded as though one were a softball pitcher or a soccer player, instead of a bowler, as we see horrifyingly depicted today.
4
@David Connell - oh, yes, MOL's post reminded me to speak up for my beloved "ecotone" - the word that describes an edging or buffering space within the variety of environments. I live at one, and spend some energy and time maintaining and defending it. Neither forest nor lawns - the place for animals, birds, insects to get about their business safely and happily. Ecotone!
6
@David Connell
Three K's in baseball aren't a bad thing if it your team is pitching!!!
6
David Connell, it's a serious glitch in the computer programming of Across Lite that it can accept only certain keyboard characters as entries and not others. But I hope this is fixed in the next version.
Although I found this difficult in a few spots, I thoroughly enjoyed the mental challenge. Once I got the revealer, most of the theme answers fell into place. The first was the XXX or 3 strikes in a row for the nickname Turkey. I have only bowled twice in my life, but remember the term from the unlikely local TV show "Bowling For Dollars" of my youth. / and X quickly fell into place afterwards. I had GATE and DOOR before the correct AGER. A not too difficult, but fun Thursday puzzle.
2
Thank you! I had AGEs instead of AGER, and needed this to complete my puzzle :)
2
Well, I'm a little the wERSE for wear, but Quite an accomplishment, yes, Quite an accomplishment!
'Prefix with -phyte' to follow *another* 'Prefix with -phyte'? Tell me, Charlton Trenson, are you spoiling fora -phyte?
Not this guttersnipe, who's putting that Bill Murray/ Woody Harrelson movie on her ToDo list. Lots of pins await the day, so back later and thanks fora great set-up.
Super Bowl
6
As a photographer, my mind went immediately to the golden houR for 37D. And I thought that jOe was a pretty average name for 10A -- so those two answers led me astray.
An enjoyable puzzle. Thanks, Trenton.
4
@dlr
Usually my bowling scores look like good golf scores and vice versa, so you can tell what a fantastic sportsman I am...
7
My BOWLING class was in hmm 1958, and I knew SPARE/ and STRIKE-X but I've never heard of XXX being called a TURKEY. However, the Downs made it clear this was the right way to complete the grid.
ET ALII saved me from entering ECOZONE; ECOTONE is my new word.
SPELUNK as a stand-alone? Nevah heard it that way. One 'goes SPELUNKing'....this is in the class with "I knew a man both ept and ane..." So, for Trenton, the rules were ABEYANT? (another questionable word...) I guess Trenton found himself in a 1A.
For the "What a long week!" exclamation I entered WHEW, then WOOF. Had to give both of them up for the moth-eaten old TGIF.
Not that I didn't enjoy myself.. but it was over too soon.....
Might have to stop by BEQ's for an additional fix.
Happy Boxing Day!
3
"I've never heard of XXX being called a TURKEY."
"Might have to stop by BEQ's for an additional fix."
MOL,
The constructor to use XXX for turkey most recently in a Times crossword was ... BEQ.
2
@Mean Old Lady
If you're in touch with @Just Carol, please let her know she's been missed of late and hope she is doing well.
1
Mean Old Lady, yes, spelunk as a stand-alone verb was new to me, too.
I guess you could say that whoever used that verb for the first time decided to back-form it.
1
Alternate term for today’s theme: ROLE PLAYING...When I was a Good Humor vendor, I pulled the cord and rang the bells. The ankle biters came a’ runnin’; no music player was provided....The SW corner was a solve buster, forgetting alley jargon for a kegler’s triple. Now I’m in a Gaffigan mood.
https://youtu.be/OM0RNArg69M
AT BAY,
Bru
4
Analysis of an A-HA.
I had most of the grid filled in, except for some squares in the midwest. It was obvious that there were hijinx afoot, as the theme answers were missing their first (and first three for one) letters. I had the end of ORTHODOX JEW (the JEW part) and the O_TH in the beginning. Normally I'm not a huge fan of answers pertaining to religions, because I'm not familiar enough with any of them to get the answers. Bible books or clues are the worst. :-)
Anyway, I concentrated on figuring out what the beginning of that entry would be, and, well, duh! It had to be ORTHODOX (a term that I am very familiar with having spent a lot of time in NYC's Diamond District (No, not for the diamonds, but for what once was the most awesome photography store in the land - 47th Street Photo, which I just Googled.. it's still there!). Anyhoo, when that filled in, I saw the "X" in front of IN THE STRAW, and knowing the name of the song, a quick glance back at the revealer was the coolest A-HA. A Turkey in bowling is three strikes! XXX!
Wheelhouses... sometimes everything just comes together. :-)
Hope everyone is enjoying their holidays! Looking forward to what 2020 will bring in terms of cool, new puzzles!
7
@Steve Faiella
With all that going on, did you even register your name rhyme PAELLA?
3
@Steve Faiella I never bowled, so this was a weird solve for me, but just seeing 47th St Photo makes my day. I bought Nikon gear from them many years ago.
5
@Leapfinger
No, I didn't! I think that I kiss a lot doing the grid at 5am on minimal coffee...
what is a golden age-r?
1
lioncitysolver,
A senior citizen.
(A person in their golden age.)
4
@lioncitysolver
After I left Montreal, my mother moved into an apartment building on Westbury Ave that was specifically designated for seniors, or, as she called it, the Golden Age Club. It was new when she moved in, and all the mailboxes in the lobby sported the residents' names on cheerful yellow labels. With the passing years came the inevitable turnover, and as the new residents' mailboxes were given green labels, the number of yellow name plates gradually decreased in number. On one of my subsequent visits there, Little Mother mentioned this diminution, noting at that point there was only one other name in yellow besides hers.
It was just about then that my sister and brother-in-law found her a nice high-rise around the corner from St Joseph's Oratory, before she got too depressed wondering who was going to be the last yellow name on the mail boes.
5
@lioncitysolver
After I left Montreal, my mother moved into an apartment building on Westbury Ave that was specifically designated for seniors, or, as she called it, the Golden Age Club. It was new when she moved in, and all the mailboxes in the lobby sported the residents' names on cheerful yellow labels. With the passing years came the inevitable turnover, and as the new residents' mailboxes were given green labels, the number of yellow name plates gradually decreased in number. On one of my subsequent visits there, Little Mother mentioned this diminution, noting at that point there was only one other name in yellow besides hers.
It was just about then that my sister and brother-in-law found her a nice high-rise around the corner from St Joseph's Oratory, before she got too depressed wondering who was going to be the last yellow name on the mail boxes.
1
Extra points for REJIGGER. Such an evocative word. It brought to mind an old tinkerer working on some wooden-geared contraption with his tongue sticking out the corner of his mouth.
9
I guess I'm alone in having failed miserably on this one. I did get the theme fairly early and filled in 21a, but I was stuck in multiple places after that. Like others, had JOE before DOW and RIVERSCENE instead of SEINE, but those were not my big problems. Don't recall the term TURKEY in bowling and while I might vaguely recall that there was a song called TURKEYINTHESTRAW, I have no idea what it sounded like and would never have connected it with ice-cream trucks.
Put all that together and I just can't see any way that I ever would have gotten that answer or the SW corner. And you can toss in REJIGGER and ABEYANT and a couple of others.
I can see how I might have (maybe) filled out some of the rest of it that I ended up leaving blank, but I was so focused on getting that last theme answer that I finally just called it a day.
Even after seeing the solution, I can't say that I particularly liked this puzzle, but I stress that that's a purely subjective opinion.
10
"I guess I'm alone in having failed miserably on this one."
No, you're not, Rich. Another miserable failure was posted much earlier, and other failures (if not explicitly miserable) have been reported. Misery has company.
9
I got a little hung up at first because ACDC actually separates the AC from the DC with a lightning bolt.
8
@James Hamje I also wanted a lightning bolt and was hopelessly hung up on it.
3
@James Hamje
The lightning bolt is a logo stylization of the name, which is properly AC/DC. You can find this on their Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC/DC#Background_and_name
and even on their website every time the name is written in plain type:
https://www.acdc.com/news
1
@Kate and James (any relation to LoAnn?)
See? Not knowing the rock groups can be an advantage!
1
It's been a while since I've done any bowling. I got the reveal before I got the three references. Then I saw the spare symbol for AC/DC and the strike symbol for STRIKE THE RIGHT BALANCE. The last one had me scratching my head but I filled in the middle X and got the Congrats and it took me a few seconds to remember that a triple strike is called a TURKEY. Clever use of the bowling symbols.
2
Actually managed to get the whole puzzle, but the clock wouldn't stop. Eventually just did a reveal to find golden ages/esse was GOLDEN AGER/ERSE (never heard of either one). Sad ending to a really tricky puzzle, where after / and X was looking for - or F in the third theme entry (maybe somehow for x-ray?); but not XXX. And xenophyte/XERO? A little too much today IMHO.
5
@Blue Moon
Same Problem
2
Agree. I had AGES instead of AGER and just stared and stared at the puzzle trying to figure out what was wrong. Until I came here!
2
@Blue Moon exact same issue
2
Re: Letterbox
Dear Constructor,
What is the goal? I mean, what is the goal to have the _best_ solution? I assume that it is to come up with a two (or even one!?!) word solution to the puzzle.
Beyond that, I assume the less total letters in these two words make for a better answer (min = 13).
For example - did my solution yesterday:
TROPES SHADILY (13 letters)
top the NYT solution?
HOLIDAYS SPIRITED (16 letters)
Or, perhaps having most interesting (timely) words in the solution is the goal. I don't know.
I am not competitive per se but I like to met a challenge and that involves understanding the challenge.
If it is intentionally unclear, that is fine.
Cheers
S. Lord, Monrovia CA
@Steven Lord - There is usually a thread in these comments that is devoted solely to Letterbox and contains lively discussion of the possibilities, different takes on the game play, and general camaraderie / commiseration. Scroll down to find it, usually someone posts before 8 am Eastern.
2
@Steven Lord
Wordplayers quickly figured out there was a two word solution daily based on the given answers. Collectively, we have had a one word solution (besting the constructor) at least twice, probably thrice.
Some shoot for the most economical one or two word solution. Sometimes we get silly and go for the longest two-word solution. I think we've topped out at 26 or 27 so far.
Please do join us in the LETTER BOXED THREAD where solvers post hints at solutions, frustrations and their prior day's full solutions.
@Steven Lord Thanks, folks, for the kind replies and your directions to the clubhouse.
(You'd think the NYT could afford a separate
posting area for Numberbox ;-) )
I was a bit thrown because rebus “spare” worked but not rebus “strike”. I needed X’s for strike but a rebus for spare. Eventually got there, but it wasn’t consistent.
6
@FrankK
Were you using Across Lite? AL did not accept punctuation (the slash) even as a rebus, but did accept SPARE. Since the Xs are alphabetic characters, it did accept those, and there was no other way to handle the XXX/TURKEY issue.
The web version took the "/" without a hitch.
JayTee, and when Across Lite accepts a multi-letter rebus, it also accepts just the first letter alone.
With a bit of help of Deb's write-up, an entertaining one to solve. Played bowling twice last week: a strike, some spares, but no turkey. Enjoyed the turkey yesterday though.
4
I would like to thank Chris Schenkel, broadcaster of the PBA Tour, for teaching me that 3 consecutive strikes is a TURKEY. I wasn't sure how to enter the BOWLING terms into the grid, but eventually it X'ed me. Please / me your groans, but I'm on my way to the fridge for some leftover XXX.
Fun puzzle. Happy Holidays to all.
4
Ah, yes. Top bowlers like Don Carter and Dick Weber. Announcer Chris Schenkel. Names I hadn't thought of for over 50 years, easily.
1
As with @brigid earlier, I love the word SPELUNK, and, in the spirit of this puzzle's theme, may I suggest that it's a good word for the sound of a gutter ball.
Also in the puzzle's spirit, I think that the best clues were spare: those for PETS [Vets' charges], DOW [Average name], and AMA [Residents' org.].
And may I note that the puzzle has a backward SEWA, as in "needle pulling thread".
A lovely, enjoyable solve (thank you, Trenton), and may everyone's day go just as well!
2
Average Joe anyone?
17
My first thought
3
Joe,
I'm not surprised!
@Elke
I put in DOE. Doh.
BOWLING is one of the few sports I've participated in, so although it's been several decades I certainly knew all the terms. It still took me quite a while to get it, but when I did it all came together at once, really satisfying. I can't do a / in Across Lite, but an S worked. To be honest, with my complete lack of knowledge of pop music there could be a pop group called ACSDC.
I think that Trenton struck the right balance of easy and tricky clues for a Thursday puzzle. A nice start to Boxing Day.
9
@suejean
Lots of great memories generated with this puzzle. My dad loved to bowl and taught is all. One afternoon he arranged for the four of us kids to bowl at the local alley while he and Mom had to go to an appointment. We had a blast. So, got home from family Xmas celebration where we played WII bowling. Even so, when I got to this Xword, it took getting the revealer for the last pin to fall.
1
LETTER BOXED THREAD
Thursday Dec 26th 2019
Best I could find:
C - R (12), R - P (3)
2
@Mari
Same here.
Yesterday PARALYSIS SHORTED and POLARITIES SHADED.
@Mari
Same, I presume. (Of course, the three letter word has two options for a center letter and a preceding P-C was also acceptable with the large word) . Softball today and I appreciated it. Much to do upon returning home.
Yesterday, my variant solution was SLOSHED DISPARITY. My HOLIDAYS were more akin to that than SPIRITED!
@Mari
Yesterday HALIDES SPORTY
SPELLING BEE GRID
Thursday Dec 26th 2019
L E H M N O T
WORDS: 43, PANGRAMS: 1 (Perfect), BINGO
E x 1
H x 9
L x 9
M x 12
N x 2
O x 3
T x 7
4L x 20
5L x 10
6L x 8
7L x 2
8L x 3
4 5 6 7 8 Tot
E - - - 1 - 1
H 5 2 1 - 1 9
L 6 3 - - - 9
M 4 4 3 1 - 12
N 1 - 1 - - 2
O 1 - 1 - 1 3
T 3 1 2 - 1 7
Tot 20 10 8 2 3 43
52
@Mari reposting my hints with 2 words left to go. We had dino yesterday but today no helo or holo. We have an Italian word for slow (a musical term), but no molto, another term used in music. One pangram so far, a flavoring made from peppermint oil. There’s an archaic synonym for copse, a compound word made from 2 others that’s a nasty place to be, someone who performs a Jewish circumcision, a synonym for Christmas, 2 spellings of a filled egg dish, a charity fundraiser, a pin found in a rowboat, and playing around on an instrument.
16
@Kevin Davis found 1 missing word, mark with spots of color.
3
@Kevin Davis Thanks Kevin - forgot to post the POINTS TOTAL: 163
8
SPELLING BEE
Stuck right now with 13 points left to go. I have 41 words 151 points. We had dino yesterday but today no helo or holo. We have an Italian word for slow (a musical term), but no molto, another term used in music. One pangram so far, a flavoring made from peppermint oil. There’s an archaic synonym for copse, a compound word made from 2 others that’s a nasty place to be, someone who performs a Jewish circumcision, a synonym for Christmas, 2 spellings of a filled egg dish, a charity fundraiser, a pin found in a rowboat, and playing around on an instrument.
2
Cost myself several minutes by entering a dash instead of a slash for AC/DC, having not bowled or seen a bowling score in (mumble mumble) decades (and being a listener more to Brahms and Ella Fitzgerald), and then fruitlessly re-examining the spelling of every other entry. At long last, that square was my only hope, but by then I’d kinda sorta dimly remembered that a spare got a slash and lo, there was the “completed” graphic!
3
When checking for an error at the end, I had to change Golden ages to AGER. The cross was unfamiliar to me (Highland language) so that didn’t help me.
2
Same here.
3
I guess everything you’d expect from a Thursday. Creative and infuriating in the beginning before you figure out the theme.
I put X in the theme squares and was surprised AC X DC was wrong. Even though I was reading it as “spare”. Never occurred to me to add a “symbol”. Gold star...poof.. gone...
My only question is how “not much work” is erg. Because 1 erg (singular) is not much energy? I knew erg was probably right, but didn’t really feel like the clue fit the answer.
ABEYANT. no way I’m getting that without literally every cross.
Again, nice Thursday.
7
@Newbie
Apparently energy is work: "An erg is the amount of work done by a force of one dyne exerted for a distance of one centimetre. Wikipedia."
@Newbie
It's really a very tiny amount.
kilaueabart got the definition of erg, but to convert it into more commonly used terms, there are 10^7 ergs in a joule, and one joule/second is equal to 1 watt. Another way is that 7.5 X 10^9 ergs is very roughly equal to 1 horsepower.
1
@JayTee
it should be ergs/sec in that last sentence.
1
I swear I would have finished this puzzle a half hour earlier if I hadn't been stumped by ERSE (which I admit I had to look at the answer key for). But I have to hate the player not the game.
9
@Allan
File it in your Crosswordese folder between ANOA and ETUI.
2
Spent far too long trying to fit some variation of "split the difference" in the middle clue, although maybe the scoring notation for a split doesn't translate super well to a crossword.
2
The word SPELUNK brings me so much joy. Not quite enough to take up spelunking, but enough to get a thrill when I finally made it fit (I went from deli freezer, to deli cooler, to DELI COUNTER).
4
These crossword creators need to get their heads out of the gutter.
(Time for me to split.)
33
Mike,
My initial short response must have been too short, and awaits liberation from the emu filter. Until then...
Spare us!
5
@Mike - please spare us, you turkey, or we may strike you.
(five more needed for a frame of ten-pun)
4
David,
Automate the thread with a punspotter?
5
That SW corner hurt!
3
and Elke
Since I know nothing about BOWLING (except that the b*ll is round and heavy and has a place for my fingers ), the / ,X and XXX left me puzzled and with much TIL. Thanks, Deb.
BATCAVE and SPELUNK reminded me of Leapy's recent post of the Castle Guard Caves near Banff National Park.
11D-mentions " typically OVAL ice rinks". An atypical ice rink is the Ottawa River, where our resident poet laureate , Andrew, lives.
When it gets cold enough, the river freezes and becomes one long icerink.
Andrew, thanks for your most recent Greetings to Friends.It's great.
Finally, some ORTHODOX JEWs I know (both socially and in the biblical sense), prefer calling themselves "Observant JEWs."
Four candles ARE being lit tonight to celebrate the victory of the JEWs over the imposition of the Hellenic culture and practices . ORTHODOX has its roots in the Greek language (ortho and dox ).So, why describe oneself by the Greek term?
Time for latkes and sufganiot-yum.
7
@Robert
Lots of words come from Greek, but they're English words. So viewing it that way, there's nothing wrong (at least in my opinion) with saying ORTHODOX JEWS.
What bothers me is the meaning of the Greek words that make up the word ORTHODOX, which is "correct opinion." What that implies about the rest of us Jews, which unfortunately is how many ORTHODOX JEWS view us, is that our less ritualistic belief system is less correct than "orthodoxy".
Some of the ORTHODOX JEWS I know would consider their denomination "religious Jews" or "frum," which is Yiddish for the same thing.
"So, why describe oneself by the Greek term?"
One answer that comes to mind is that conservative, reform, and reconstructionist Jews might feel slighted if they were not considered observant. (Also, the "Greek term" has been an English word for a long time.)
2
There are two distinct words for people who consider themselves "right" - "orthodoxy" and "orthopraxy" - "teaching the correct/upright way" and "doing the correct/upright things". Orthodoxis always has to do with an authority authoritatively interpreting what "correct/upright" means and requires. It must, perforce, involve an authority, whether the local Rabbi, the Dean of Students, the Grand Mufti, or His Holiness the Pope, to prescribe what "correct/upright" consists of.
Orthopraxis has to do with a person authoritatively interpreting for that person's own self what "correct/upright" means and requires. What am I supposed to do or not do, now, in this case? That is a question for orthopraxy. The person who is observant is always asking this question. The orthodox surrenders the question to others. "It isn't done", "We don't do that." Anybody raised in a conservative religion, no matter what stripe, will understand the distinction between: what's right is what you're told to do and what's right is what you understand to do.
Underscoring polymath's point - there are a huge number of English words from a variety of roots that might be synonyms for "catharsis" - but there is none of them that is an exact match. The word for "catharsis" is "catharsis" and comes from Greek. The word for "orthodoxy" comes from Greek. Both come to us with all of their baggage and no porter to carry it.
3
Apparently a turkey is only a good thing in Thanksgiving and bowling. Who knew?
7
Quality Thursday puzzle. Infuriatingly obtuse, then delightfully amusing. More please.
11
14D was really tough for this old headbanger trying to figure out how to represent the lightning bolt that is the delimiter in the band name AC/DC.
23
I caught on pretty early with AC/DC. For “Average name” I had JOE at first. That made the place for cold cuts start with JE, so I wanted JEWISH DELIS until the ORTHODOX JEW came along. (An ORTHODOX JEW and an average JOE walk into a JEWISH DELI...).
So three consecutive strikes in bowling is a turkey. Three consecutive strikes in baseball and you feel like a turkey.
If there happens to be a movie called XXX IN THE STRAW, I don’t expect it has much to do with ice cream trucks.
Happy Bo STRIKE ing Day, everybody!
24
@Andrew
Jeff over at xwordinfo.com opined on what the XXX IN THE STRAW movie might be like. It's a tad risque, so proceed at your own discretion. :-)
1
A few excellent long entries ... and too many blandish short 3 and 4 letter entries. Aha moment was very nice - good thing I knew that a spare was represented by a slash!
1
@John S.
Seems like an appropriate place to insert a (mostly) glue poem:
SPARED
IAN, an ENGR,
Drove his GTO far and near,
But got in a JAM in the NNE;
YOWsa, those ice storms
ARE a beast.
EVA, a doc in the OR,
Top TIER, an AMA star,
(Famous for her AFRO
And her poodle named FLO)
Was at TGIF’s
When paged to GOETH.
Not a SEC to SPARE
FOR even an X-RAY
EVA worked with care
As godly as RHEA,
At the end a happy CODA,
An ending happy, per YODA:
IAN was lucky to have EVA’s talents
B/w speed and precision
She STRuck THE RIGHT BALANCE.
18
Oh brother. Over the years I have occasionally hung out watching other people bowl, having determined that I was utterly unable to hit a pin unless by mistake -- the primary location for my ball was the gutter. I never learned the marking system since I never had anything to keep track of, unless I might have wanted to count French fries consumed while spectating. I think the symbol for French fries is |||.
Which is to say, this puzzle was a very blind ALLEY for me at those 3 beginning squares, which felt like a shame because I knew so much of the rest of it.
5
23 minutes. Come on, challenge me!
@Julie
Be careful what you wish for. I was a bit quicker today and I'm nowhere near the top performers here.
5
@Julie
You could always try speed solving. There is plenty of room to challenge yourself that way on this one.
1
Does bowling qualify as “sportsball”? I think for me it must.
1
@Margaret I thing it’s more throwing things st other things. Sportsball involves people fighting over possession of a ball.
@Rich, well I meant they were similar areas of ignorance for me. But your explanation suggests there could be a new sport where teams vie for possession of the bowling ball. Shin guards required.
Deb picked the perfect clue to headline her column, because I spent what seemed like eternity down in the Southwest trying to get XXX IN THE STRAW, and even after I finally got it, thought to myself, “Strikes In The Straw?”, I must be missing something. And of course I was.
Thought the cluing was top notch, and loved the SAT vocab entry ABEYANT and the fun SPELUNK. Thought the theme was clever but “easy“ but the “easy” part vanished when I reached the final themer, especially since the rest of that SW corner (XERO and XRAY) was prickly.
Saw “Knives Out” today and enjoyed it very much. Funny and smart movie with the wonderful Christopher Plummer in a perfect role for him.
9
@Puzzlemucker
I had forgotten about a turkey in bowling, so I was also trying to figure out 56A. XXX IN THE STRAW may have been a code for a roll in the hay.
7
Um. Are you certain? I have 42 words and 162 points. I have 5 words beginning LO. The list posted of 2- letter beginnings has 6 for LO. If I ever get it, that would give a 168 point total.
My mistake. Sorry.
Deb, ecozone could not have been the answer because the word zone was in the clue. That said, I also had a TIL moment when the word filled in with crosses.
5
The BOWLING theme was pretty evident and helped with the solve, although I never heard of a turkey in bowling. When I took phys ed in junior high school, they'd load us up on the activity bus one day a week and take us to the bowling alley. So we learned to bowl--but I don't think any of us were ever good enough to get three strikes in a row. I certainly wasn't. So that never entered my vocabulary. I also didn't know that LOIS was Beetle Bailey's sister. Then again, it's probably been since junior high school that I haven't read or thought about Hi and Lois.
We've had ECOTONE in the puzzle before, and I dredged it out of memory at that time and decided it was worth remembering, because it just doesn't sound like that's what it should mean. RIVER SCENE before RIVER SEINE, and Average JOE that got changed to DOE with DELI and finally to DOW at the end.
8
I had RIVEGAUCHE straight out of the box, which kinda made sense and fit like a glove. Quickly figured out the correct answer from the merciful crosses.
2
@Brian
Hand up for an immediate RIVE GAUCHE also
@Leapfinger
Moi aussi!
Even the unsportsed should be fine with this sports-theme puzzle, because bowling.
P.S. Great photo selection, Deb. I've watched Jesse Lingard play many times (and I'll watch him again at 12:30 pm ET), but I've never seen him bowl!
4
There's even a video!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpsGba7qVcU
I don't know who Jesse Lingard is, but he threw that ball instead of rolling it.
2
@Barry Ancona Except that you have to know (a) bowling--which I do, or thought I did; (b) the scoring system, which I never learned; (c) the term "turkey," which I've never heard; (d) that STRIKE = X, which wasn't obvious since I had put D in the space above, not E, and was struggling to make sense of all that, (e) the word XEROPHYTE, which I've never seen, and (f) that a rebus could be non-alphabetic, which I've also never seen; I kept trying the words STRIKE and SPARE. For me it was too many unknowns and variables. I had to reveal the answer and blow my streak. This puzzle was mostly frustration and not much fun.
4
That bottom corner nearly got me. It was a real turkey.
8
Some nice misdirection.
TROUBLE vs DETAILS added a little time.
Over all a cool puzzle.
2