50A (SNIPES AT): At first I thought the answer was ANAPESTS, except that the clue ("Criticizes pettily") was two dactyls with a spare unaccented syllable in the middle. And of course it didn't work with either GARMENT (incorrect) or RAIMENT (correct) in 43D.
Help - 61D Perhaps is the same as “Say”? Can’t decipher this one. This corner held me up for a while.
@DebK
Colloquial and more than a little forced. But it squeaks by.
"Say the train was going 101 miles per hour...." or:
"She wanted something pretty to wear--a pink ribbon, say...."
Puzzles are quite poor this week.
3
Oooh, I liked this puzzle!
I’ve only been solving for a few months now, and most themes are way over my head. But oh, these clever clues! Unripened bananas,spare parts, grody, and left on the table. Thank you Mr. Eaton-Salners for a wonderful puzzle!
2
Neat.
Now if the consrtuctor had been Gary Cee ....
CAR ANTENNAS is a stretch.
@Jim
Yes, they extend.
7
About average Wednesday. Loved “Spare part!”
1
@suejean:
Instead of using the NYT apps, you should be able to go to your phone's browser (Safari, Chrome, Edge, Firefox, etc.), log into your Times Crossword account, and then go to Wordplay. You should be able to see all of the replies when you enter that way, rather than just the three replies you can see with the apps.
Regarding your computer difficulties, is it possible that you got logged out of your crossword account? Whether you did or didn't, another thing to try would be intentionally logging out, then logging back in; and another would be to clear out the website data that your browser stores, which would give you a clean slate to start working with.
Good luck!
4
What is(are) coinops?
COIN-OPerated arcade gameS.
2
Thanks!
@Ryan
I think of COIN-OPS as washing machines, but I don't think I've ever seen one in an arcade.
But then again, I don't think I've ever been to an arcade.
3
I'm glad everyone seems to have sailed much more smoothly on AES' C's than many did on his T's on the Thursday before last. That said, I found his (Seven-C-)notes today, although not as prodigious as his most recent effort, to be no less brilliant.
2
Yes, CARANTENNAS had me stumped for a few beats and when the correct parsing came to me I chuckled. I had to work for a few clues, a few came easily. Perfect Wednesday with a really fun multilayered theme.
4
Cute theme. Some of the entries were a bit much for me. I saw someone didn’t like SNOB, but that was my fav. Bananas!
Here’s why I have to resort to auto check sometimes. Forget the Horeshoe Falls were in Canada do I put NEWYORK which fit right in with NITPICKS. Couldn’t dig out of that mess myself without losing the fun so I let the auto check help. No streak for finishing without assistance, but another day added to my I had fun total.
3
I loved this puzzle! I really had a hard time parsing CARANTENNAS... CARAN what?
The SEVEN SEAS were the icing on the cake, because the clues did not give the theme away. Only thing missing was Sinbad or Bluebeard... (Maybe next time, Alex?)
Great start to the day.
Rain in the forecast for tomorrow. Booooooo!
7
A good challenge (for me), especially on a Wednesday. Some good cluing I thought such as CAR ANTENNAS, TEN PIN, HUSK. ARE was understandable, but I’m not sure I would have thought of it. In fact I think êtes or es would have been a better answer with the French cluing 😊. Enjoyed the puzzle.
2
CRUNCHY Wednesday!! But I “Solved” it - with a capital “S”.
I was going to “complain” (polite word for “bitch”) until I read Deb’s WoW. Specifically about Art/ARE. That was a stretch.
Enjoyed the puzzle very much - - but didn’t come close to my newly established average time - - but that’s OK.
4
I'm a new solver, things were going quite well until I got very stuck at Car Antennas and Snipes At. I had almost every letter in Car Antennas and I new it wasn't Car And something because the T in tip was correct. I kept reading it CARANTA. I finally googled caranti and CARANTA and saw it!! I always fell so bad when this happens. So far I'm learning all sorts of things: architects, capital cities, bodies of water etc. If I keep this up I'll do much better playing along on Jeopardy. Btw it's Ethel M. Potter, I've changed my user name to the nickname my grandpa called my grandma.
9
@CALPURNIA
I’ve been at this for about two years - - and there are days when I feel like a “new solver” too. CAR ANTENNA was one of the last to fall for me today too.
There is NO reason to “feel bad” about hiccups when solving. The whole point is enjoying one’s self in the process - and learning new words - - and about new things.
If my experience is any indication, you WILL get better at solving as time passes. Just have a good time at it and don’t get “too” frustrated.
3
@CALPURNIA
Me, too!
Mostly it's just the occasion for a good laugh, eh?
1
@PeterW thanks for the encouragement. I'm actually getting better at breaking down phrases than I was. After initially staring at NOTV and seeing NOT V instead of NO TV as a child's punishment, I've tried harder! It is fun!
1
I hated 1A, and not just a little. A person who enjoys sampling and describing wine isn't a "snob". He or she is more accurately a connoisseur. Heaven forbid someone should enjoy and/or be knowledgeable about something in life.
7
@E.W. Swan
I think that you need to lighten up here just a bit. A "wine snob" is definitely a term in common parlance. Just Google it and you will see many entertaining and informative articles. The "snob" aspect is not to put down a person for being knowledgable, but rather to poke fun at someone who considers themselves superior to others for presumed superior knowledge, and who demonstrates it by repeating platitudes with the sole aim to impress.
I thought the "unripened bananas" bit was hilarious!
17
@E.W. Swan
/suspecting the commenter may have been overheard suggesting a wine had notes of "unripened banana."
3
"...the 'unripened bananas' bit was hilarious!"
Andrew,
Shows how little you know about wine.*
*j/k
3
re NIAGARA Falls (it certainly does)
Next time, I’d like to meander over to the Canadian side, check out the Cave of the Winds viewing area behind Bridal Veil Falls and ride the Maid of the Mist.
'Slo-o-oowly I turned....'
Huhn. I thought all the White Star Line (except for the Queen Mary) had names ending in A. Like the Samaria that brought us to the New World. So that's what I plopped in square 26.
TNT an alternative to gunpowder? Yikes. Maybe for shooting off your mouth... and neighbouring parts of the associated anatomy. My first thought was for the much more IRENIC gunpowder Tea.
As Deb said, a beautifully layered theme, very nicely tide together. Nice marine touches to have the QUAY and the ALBINO whale, yet not a trace of anything EELY atoll.
So thanks, Alex E-S, I had a swell time playing the numbers with your pelagic theme. And don't think I missed your ABEL Tasman.
2
@Leapfinger
RMS Samaria was apparently a Cunard ship. White Star and Cunard merged sometime during the Depression, under the name Cunard White Star Line. Below is what Wikipedia says about the last years of RMS Samaria. Were you part of the child evacuation?
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s Samaria was frequently employed as a cruise ship. In September 1940 she took part in the evacuation of children from the UK to the US under the scheme set up by the Children's Overseas Reception Board (CORB). In 1941 the ship was taken over by the Royal Navy and served as a troopship until 1948 when she was returned to Cunard and refitted for passenger service. Between 1948 and 1955 Samaria was assigned almost exclusively to the Canadian route with service to Montreal, Quebec, and Halifax along with her sister-ship RMS Scythia. In November 1955 she completed her last transatlantic crossing and was subsequently sold for scrapping, which was completed in 1956 at Inverkeithing, Scotland.
Leapy,
I believe Cunard ship names (with the royal exceptions you note) ended in "a" (Carpathia, Lusitania, etc.). I believe Cunard absorbed White Star.
@Leapfinger
The Titanic was a White Star ship.
2
My email account says that my comment was accepted, but I can't find it. Let's try again...
When you start with a 1A clue that I absolutely love -- the wonderful clue for SNOB, and I actually know someone like that! -- you put me in a mood to love the puzzle. And then I realize later on that I don't love the puzzle. Because I sort of think that you can't have "C"s that are circled when you also have "C"s that aren't circled. It's arbitrary and it annoyed me.
And, while I had no attention of connecting any circled letters -- not in a punny way, not in any way since I don't/won't do grid art -- I was so focused on this as the "trick" that I completely failed to notice CARIBBEAN, CORAL, ADRIATIC, BALTIC, et al until the entire puzzle was filled in. The fact that they're clued in such an oblique way that you don't notice -- or at least someone as unobservant as I didn't -- is definitely a plus. So a mixed bag for me. If the constructor had managed to get rid of all the uncircled "C"s, it would have been a much better puzzle.
As for difficulty: Very easy except for my one write-over section, where I had garMENT instead of RAIMENT. This slowed me down a lot in the SE -- especially since it was next to the outstanding TEN PIN clue which I couldn't initially figure out.
@Nancy
Sounds like you are giving this puzzle about a C.
1
Nancy,
I think I found your missing comment. I was checking the comments for yesterday’s puzzle to see if a question of mine had been answered, and there was a comment from you about RAIMENT, etc. Clearly about today’s. Not sure how that could have happened.
1
@Shari Coats -- Mystery solved. Thank you.
Sigh... I have used up the archive. Except for Sundays and I’m not really a fan of Sundays. I’m doing them though. I wish the app got on board with the Pre-Shortz project.
4
@Frances You can find all the pre-Shortz puzzles on Xword Info:
https://www.xwordinfo.com/
..
3
@Rich in Atlanta
Thank you for the tip. Like @Frances, I am working my way through the archive. I found myself wondering what I was going to do for my daily treat when I got to the end.
@Rich in Atlanta
You can’t solve them on an iPad. They don’t seem to work in mobile browsers. Can’t import them into AcrossLite, either.
I thought wave targets was ocean tennis and it threw me for a loop hahaha
4
It was one of those days when the theme hit quickly and the tiny fill took forever to gel. Very impressed by the C's in the shape of a 7 though.
1
I don't know why I persist in believing RAIMENT is spelled with a second "N."
According to NOAA, membership in the Seven Seas has varied with time and location. https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/sevenseas.html
I thought this was a charming puzzle.
1
@Puzzledog, me too
RAIN Man: I'm an excellent driver, you know.
5
@Puzzledog me three
1
@Puzzledog
Everybody loves RAIMENT.
3
Wow, very cool theme. I quickly got the seven seas pun after filling in a couple of the Cs and noticing the shape, but completely missed that the Cs were the name of seas until I read Deb's column. What a great theme!
6
Couple new ones for me that I didn't get, and had to complete by getting every intersecting word:
6D - IRENIC (new word for me)
51D - ETSEQ (not familiar with it, kept trying to make ET SEC happen)
2
wxactly.
1
@Daniel same for me to both of those. I looked up irenic post solve.
What helped me with IRENIC was knowing that the name Irene meant “peace.” And I finally got ET SEQ with crosses, but had never seen that abbreviation used. So that’s a TIL.
2
I don't know why, but somehow this puzzle made me think of SEAgram's 7.
I got the number 7, no problem. But I missed Cing Alex's tour de force: the fact that all the C's touched on the 7 seas!
Oh my! What a beautifully thought out and constructed puzzle! Thank you, Alex Eaton-Salners!
2
Reply to Vaer about Harrogate Monopoly. Here are a few.
Royal Hall, Turkish Baths, Great Yorkshire Show, Harlow Carr Gardens and the famous Bettys Cafe Tea Rooms
4
@suejean
Glad to see your name spelled like your name!
Next challenge, fixing your reply mechanism.
Never give up!
3
I’m lucky to have help from my son, and very glad to be back, even if it is on the small screen.
1
@suejean
Thanks.
This evening I will participate in a reading of excerpts from Melville's Moby Dick (23D) at a local bar. Maybe we should have scheduled the reading at Starbucks??
15
[spews coffee]
I foresee a barrage of recos
3
@archaeoprof
I remember some years ago being pleased to learn that the state organization of veterinarians was meeting in Bufffalo.
4
I don't think Moby Dick was an albino. He had a lot of white, but he was also streaked with it. Here is part of the (public domain) novel:
"For, it was not so much his
uncommon bulk that so much distinguished him from other sperm whales,
but, as was elsewhere thrown out—a peculiar snow-white wrinkled
forehead, and a high, pyramidical white hump. These were his prominent
features; the tokens whereby, even in the limitless, uncharted seas, he
revealed his identity, at a long distance, to those who knew him.
The rest of his body was so streaked, and spotted, and marbled with the
same shrouded hue, that, in the end, he had gained his distinctive
appellation of the White Whale; a name, indeed, literally justified by
his vivid aspect, when seen gliding at high noon through a dark blue
sea, leaving a milky-way wake of creamy foam, all spangled with golden
gleamings."
Carry on.
12
It's been a while since I've solved a grid and taken longer than my average for that day. Granted, when I first started solving the NYTXWP I stunk pretty badly, so the averages have a lot of long times to skew them up. I should probably get them reset and start again at my current level...
At any rate, that long explanation was my way of saying that this one was C-R-U-N-C-H-Y (at least for me). I sat staring at the crossing of ET SEQ and QUAY (the former being new, and the latter clued in a somewhat obscure way - again - to me) :-)
I did really like the theme, and had the same experience as many solvers... Oh, 7 circled letter "C"s. Meh. But then.. Oh wait! The entries with the circled "C"s are all.... SEAS! Cool! I did miss the shape of the circled letters though, but was suitably impressed when I read the reviews.
This was a great, fun grid that revealed itself in layers. Thank you Alex, Will and Team, and Deb, for starting out the "tuff" part of the week with a gem!
4
@Steve Faiella - my time showed as well over my Wednesday average, yet short of my Thursday. That's a sweet spot to hit, for me - a tough opponent, but in the right league.
6
I got stuck on a QUAY, as I had ETCET instead of ETSEQ. This puzzle was a GAS alright.
1
Mr. Eaton-Salners - loved your puzzle, and had to search for that seventh circled C, thanks to the notes from you and Ms. Amlen. And here's my Niagara Falls travel tip - riding the Maid of the Mist is a life-changing experience - do stand near the bow of the ship if possible, and get a good grip on the rail. Your shoes will be drenched, and you can FEEL the roar of the falls in every cell of your body.
4
I thought a constructing rule was that when a letter is used prevalent in a theme like “C” , then that letter should not be elsewhere in the puzzle. It didn’t take too long to abandon that notion. The rest of my struggle can be chalked up to not knowing the dress code.
2
LETTER BOXED THREAD
Jan 22nd 2020
TODAY:
S - K (5), K - E (9)
YESTERDAY:
ZIRCONIUM MAJORLY (NYT)
4
@Mari needed your hint, but i finally got there! whew.
Emu for EMO, emoted Tom earnestly.
I do not know what targets what vis-a-vis an antenna and wave but the fill elicited a groan... in a good way.
My sister collected Homies and affixed them to her car’s dashboard.
I had a large white Chrysler Station Wagon we named Moby. It accumulated and number of NYC parking tickets and was harpooned by NYPD. The cost of the tickets were far more than the value of the car. I assume it is part of a reef somewhere as it met its end in a crusher.
Thanks Alex.
4
@dk Ask the Internet, and it provides.
I give you EMU Rock....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIlyYijQ7iE
1
Just a note--actual music begins around the two-minute mark.
I liked the puzzle. It’s interesting to me that I can solve the puzzle and there be so many (10) answers that i’ve never heard of or at least in the context used. Like others, I missed that all the c answers were names of seas.
1
I got stuck on a couple and had to look up some things (mainly the Monopoly question (as I'm used to the UK version), LEE Meriwether and ILENE Graff.) But overall, I found it quite enjoyable.
Also, who says punk doesn't teach you anything? Thanks to Bad Religion for teaching me that the Santa Ana winds are thing:
"Somewhere high in the desert near a curtain of blue
Saint Ann's skirts are billowing
But down here in the city of limelights
The fans of Santa Ana are withering"
4
@Chris Finlay (Also, I REALLY wanted to fill in SNOB with a different letter at the start. I'm sure you can guess which...)
3
My Harrogate version doesn’t have Baltic either.
@suejean
Interesting. What does it have? And welcome back.
Music for sleeping after finishing this puzzle:
https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=mcafee&p=sweet+dreams+video#id=1&vid=d0185932043d3000b48d310a26e5e8d2&action=click
2
Barry, I left a comment on my thread, but I can’t see it.
suejean,
So noted. Or not, as it were.
1
Another fun theme that didn’t over-complicate matters! Well done! I was almost done but got stuck on one clue I couldn’t make heads or tails of until I gave up and pulled up the Wordplay column. And wouldn’t you know it? It was the topic of today’s title! Thanks, Deb! I feel a lot less dumb for not seeing it. Lol
It also doesn’t help that I’m not much of a radio-user, so the concept of PRESET completely slipped my mind, even with all the other crosses filled in. That one DID make me feel like a dodo when I realized what it was. I blame a lack of caffeine for that one!
2
First two letter list:
DI-1, DO-5
FO-2
GO-4
HO-6
ID-1
TO-2
Thanks to the Hive for the help and friendly, supportive atmosphere this new member has enjoyed. A great way to start the day!
7
Coincidentally, SEVEN is also the number of times I looked at my watch to make sure it was really Wednesday.
7
While I really enjoyed the puzzle, I was working it under the duress of knowing that my "streak counter" stopped working. My "Archives" page showed the correct number of consecutive solves but my "Stats" box showed "0." It's definitely Pavlovian, but I get a kick out of seeing that historical record of my accomplishments.
1
I'm never sure if I feel smarter or dumber when I fill a grid without comprehending the theme. I noticed that all the circles seemed to be"C's"and crosses strongly suggested SEVEN SEAS for 57A, but my eyes were not resolving the shape and failed to notice the preponderance of "sea" names.
I quickly guessed "IC" for the last two letters of a White Star liner. ADRIATIC is far less famous to me than her sisters Britannic, Olympic and of course Titanic, but all I needed was the opening "A" to finish out a correct guess that fit the apparent White Star naming convention.
At doctor's suggestion, I'm working on reducing triglycerides, so a previously unheard-of NICOISE salad may be worth a try.
3
Solving the West side was quite the rush. Felt stubborn at first but I had this great sensation of alternating down and across fills after getting NIAGARA (initially waffled between RESORTS and CASINOS for whatever reason). Was absolutely convinced that 50A was NITPICKS and could be nothing else, but SNIPESAT was a delightful way to be proven wrong.
Timely theme for me - spent most of the past couple of days daydreaming about life at sea. Don't think those daydreams are going away any time soon now!
3
@Andrew
I started out with ONTARIO.
I enjoyed everything about this puzzle.
8
Wow; what a puzzle. I had multiple 'aha' moments in the course of working it out and was certain I was never going to finish it more than a couple of times, but somehow managed to get it with no help.
Can't even even remember at this point how I managed to guess SEVENSEAS correctly fairly early on. But at that point I also had BLACK filled in. Thought about it for a second and went ahead and filled in all the circles with C's. Then thought - really? Seven C's? That's it? And then didn't really catch on until I had 3 of the theme answers filled.
Got the bulk of the left side in reasonable time, but had very little on the right side and really had to chip away to finally work all that out - CARANTENNAS being the main stumbling blck .
And then that still left me with one little section - highlighted by NICOISE, COINOPS and HUSK. Had no idea on any of those. Finally seeing the misdirection in the clue for HUSK somehow let me fill in the rest.
And I'll end as I began: Wow.
5
No wine snobs in my wine tasting group, thank goodness. The wines we tasted last evening were all yummy.
I was so delighted with the seven C’s forming a 7 that I also didn’t notice they were all actual seas, absolutely amazing! What a fabulous puzzle.
10
suejean,
Good to see you back with your original screen name!
5
Yes indeed!
4
suejean,
And can you read more than three replies?
This was a kind of solve I love -- stop and go. A passel of gimmes mixed with a passel of can't-fill-in-yets. When driving in stop-and-go traffic, the "go" is the best part, but when doing crosswords, it's the stop, because of the superb feeling that comes with eventually filling in said stop.
So, while this very impressive extravaganza theme didn't help my delectable solve much (a few c's going in circles), it didn't detract from a terrific solve, as extravaganza themes sometimes do, and added a layer of wow to the glow that the solve gave. Thanks for all of this, Alex!
QUAY and NIAGARA added some water-related echo, but I especially liked the two oblique sea-related captain references:
* The nod to Ahab with the ALBINO Moby Dick, as the Pequod sailed in three of the seven seas.
* OMEN, which backwards is the captain of the Nautilus, in "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea".
10
@Lewis Omoo in the Mini
1
I had 'dip' for 32A even though I usually leave mine on the sideboard, and thought a Carandenna must be some obscure kind of sea-going vessel. Then I finished the sw corner and got the error screen. I knew I'd gone astray somewhere 11D, but I just tested all the crossings for alternate answeres. Even after I got the happy music I thought for several moments that a 'Carantenna' (pronounced 'Care-En-TEN-Uh') must be an obscure kind of sea-going vessel. And that such a think, together with 6D was really too much for a Wednesday.
5
Today's spelling bee won't accept 'Dogtooth'. It's the latest word I've been told is 'not a word'. And yet it is, it is.
8
@S North
You can email [email protected] to lobby for any words not accepted. The Bee Keeper expressly excludes (some) purportedly obscure words and (some) potentially offensive words. Also, there’s a separate thread on here each day for the Spelling Bee, labeled as such. It can usually be found at or near the top of the “Reader’s Picks.”
5
@Puzzlemucker - thanks for stepping up to the plate!
@S North, do note that the bee tells you "not on wordlist" and not, as you wrote "not a word". When it first rolled out, it used to say "not a word" but that was changed fairly quickly due to the feedback.
1
And thio and iodid and, as usual, other words that scientists use all the time (at least I do and I’m a scientist so there you go!).
Congratulations Alex! Your puzzles are a joy any day of the week. Art Nouveau is brilliant and went right over my tete.
6
SPELLING BEE GRID
Jan 22nd 2020
O D F G H I T
WORDS: 21, POINTS: 73, PANGRAMS: 1
Starting Letters-Frequencies:
D x 6
F x 2
G x 4
H x 6
I x 1
T x 2
Word Lengths -Frequencies:
4L x 12
5L x 4
6L x 2
7L x 2
8L x 1
Grid:
4 5 6 7 8 Tot
D 3 2 - - 1 6
F 2 - - - - 2
G 3 - - 1 - 4
H 3 - 2 1 - 6
I - 1 - - - 1
T 1 1 - - - 2
Tot 12 4 2 2 1 21
(Y-Axis: Starting Letters, X-Axis: Word Lengths, X/Y Co-ordinates: Frequency/Number of Words for that letter and length)
59
@Mari
Tough short Bee for me. A few hints (alpha order):
Fierce contest; in hiding (also slang term for a certain animal); archaic word that often precedes “protest” when used today; divinity; “I put a spell on you”; to run or childhood prank.
4 compound words.
10
Also, just noticed that two Bee words not hinted at above can be used synonymously with each other. I didn’t find the more common of those words until I saw Mari’s grid. Perhaps because I’m so dense at times.
6
Kevin’s clues, which I had completely overlooked before leaving mine:
3 words with a canine component, including the pangram: an aerial battle, a sausage, and standing motionless and quiet to avoid detection (I never knew the meaning of this word). One word meaning same here, extinct bird, remove clothes, concept of divinity, style of rock derived from punk, bad luck or African American spirituality (think dolls with pins), a gag with a match and a shoe (I’ve seen this in old cartoons but never in real life).
14
SPELLING BEE
January 22, 2020
H T G D I F O
21 words, 73 points, 1 pangram
10
Apparently I’m still missing three words.
@Kevin Davis that was quick today. 3 words with a canine component, including the pangram: an aerial battle, a sausage, and standing motionless and quiet to avoid detection (I never knew the meaning of this word). One word meaning same here, extinct bird, remove clothes, concept of divinity, style of rock derived from punk, bad luck or African American spirituality (think dolls with pins), a gag with a match and a shoe (I’ve seen this in old cartoons but never in real life).
11
Stuck in G7, but I think you may have already offered a hint for it.
Seeing 23A in a puzzle intensified the melancholic mood I've been in lately, so whether appropriate or not, I'll share something I wrote quite some time ago...
Of all the bonds I forged with the Adriatic Sea, my mother’s death in it – on this day, 20 years ago – still stands apart.
I learned to swim in it, I dove my first shell out of it, I learned the joys of sailing on its waves and had my first kisses on its shores. Yet, when this date rolls around, the Adriatic is first and foremost the gateway to the memories of my late mother, the place where I can remember her the best and see her face the clearest.
Sitting on these rocks, even more so than with sorrow, my mind is filled with beautiful stories of her love and devotion and with my gratitude for them. Time flies, Mum, but you are still with me as much as ever.
49
What a beautiful tribute to your Mother. Thank you for sharing it with us.
1
You have to C this puzzle to believe it.
(I had to Cs this opportunity.)
13
The photo in Deb’s column is unsettling. The art nouveau sign is pleasing until you notice the spy cam above
She had the chance to study at Penn. Dr Meyerhof, impressed with her lab work, offered her a scholarship. But she was young, and the war was on (this was 1942), and she decided instead to join the Marine Corps. She packed parachutes
Sorry. This should be attached to David Connell’s comment, below
@Tom, I can’t be certain, but I believe that’s just the lamp globe & ornamentation. Found a similar picture you can zoom in on - I believe this link works:
https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-france-paris-st-germain-des-pres-the-metro-station-st-germain-des-47457628.html?pv=1&stamp=2&imageid=7432EF9C-12AD-4402-B5B8-F8E29FFE647C
A lot of fun when those unexpected answers finally popped into my head. And I beat my average, which had got dragged out to 35 minutes as of December.
3
I apparently misread the time as 32 something. I was about two minutes over my average, so the sad average lengthening continues.
Deb, I think you meant to SAY that CARANTENNAS catch radio waves and then the radio EMITs sound waves.
6
Groaty, not Groady. There's no such thing as Groady. Please.
I’ve only seen it as “grody,” as in “Grody to the max!” from somewhere back in the 80’s...?
9
C P Sowell,
"Groaty" is a thing, but so is the puzzle's clue "grody."
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/grody
(The cite cites bratschegirl's cite.)
4
@Barry Ancona A cite for soar ayes.
5
I think the clue for 11D probably refers to radio waves.
and Elke
Ahoy there- what a NEAT trick.
As others did- tried "garment" before RAIMENT was manDATEd by REINAS .
When I had D---ERS for "casino personnel", I was sure it had to be DancERS, but I was DEALt out of this .
Like seeing BLINI. Our Russian neighbours serve them with salmon roe - a pink "Caviar". Instead of using tiny spoons (recently in a puzzle), they use large serving spoons.(as a joke !)
Now that the Seas have been covered, how about the Oceans- like Pacific or Atlantic or the Great Lakes?
This puzzle was a GAS, and I don't mean NEON.
Now have to decide which I like better- the "T" puzzle or the "C" one.
Those who are not doing the puzzle on-line, ARE missing a really cool "7.
4
well, that was just swell!
6
Wow ... pretty clever finish, working NW to SE. QUAY and CARANTENNA were struggles.
A bit over my Wednesday average, but an enjoyable puzzle.
Speaking of CASPIAN:
https://youtu.be/IbhjxHR7ivs
Cheers!
My first thought was, how can I connect the circled Cs to make it look like a sea? Instead, it looks like a 7 drawn with a pencil held between my teeth.
Eliminating the 3 out-of-place seas would have made it more elegant, but it's a small stain on an otherwise terrific puzzle, clever concept, well executed. I enjoyed it tremendously.
2
No mal de mer here! Nice to sea (sic) the seven bodies of water enclosed by this puzzle. Ingenious construction and some interesting cluing made this a fun one. Top section was smooth sailing, and then I started going into choppy water and the solving slowed down for a bit. Got out of the doldrums thanks to the crossings and once I got past the equator, and finished just cruising along.
15
@JayTee, well done! I had been thinking along similar lines with much less luck. I think my brain shriveled at the idea of working in 'tsunami'.
Mainly, I need to thank you for reminding me of my college freshman year, when a group of reprobates laid claim to one particular table in the Union cafeteria. The cast would turn over as people came and went to class, but there was always a quorum. On of the many word games we played was taking turns around the table, with each person having to say something H2O-related. The game tended to move quite quickly, and if the brain didn't kick in fast enough, there was a variety of standby's a body could spit out to keep your turn and avoid elimination: "Well, well, well", "I see (Icy)", "Water you know!" and, of course "Oh shun the thought"
Thanks for the memory!
3
I got nattick-ed at ETSEQ. Kept thinking Berth was a city. In general the right side below the diagonal proved trickier than the rest of the grid.
2
@Doug
Conflating Berth and Brest?
Probably my favorite so far from this constructor.
The Caspian is neither a sea nor a lake - as was a clue in last week's Jeopardy Greatest of All Time games. It is unique in its geophysical and geopolitical status. It's - a body of water with a lot of money underneath it, more than three times as big as all the Great Lakes combined. Water flows into it, but not out of it.
I'm always amused at how the tilde is absolutely essential and wakens dozens of irate posters every time it appears - or rather, fails to appear - yet we never hear a peep about the cedille that is required for salade niçoise to avoid being salade nee-kwaz.
Nice is named for "Nike" the Greek goddess of victory, because there was a Greek victory in that place (the Greeks dominated the Mediterranean before the Romans did). Antibes is across the bay, and it is named from "Antipolis Nikaeae" - the "city across" from Nike. The beaches there are not beaches, rather they are rock collections and not at all pleasant.
I believe we'll see the usual complaints about UPenn, but my major teacher taught there, my mother went there, my whole family is from there, and, yes, UPenn is a thing people say, just like PSU is a thing people say (for the home of the Nittany Lions, where my brother and sister, nieces and cousins all went).
9
David, We compared notes some months ago on our grandmothers. Now I see your mother went to Penn. My mother didn’t study at Penn, but she worked there in a lab. Her boss was Otto Meyerhof, who had earlier won the Nobel Prize. He came to Penn from Germany, escaping the Nazis
4
@David Connell I went to UPENN and we totally called it that. One funny story--in the Pleistocene Age (1979) when I was in college, UPENN made it to the NCAA final four. Not only was that unprecedented (and it had to be big news if I heard about it because I am two with sports) (see Woody Allen and nature), but also in that final four were a couple of unknowns from other schools--Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. Quakers fans wore hats and T-shirts that read "Not Penn State" to assure the unbelievers that yes it really was UPENN.
4
@AudreyLM - we share memories of the same town, then - and at the same age. Maybe TLA midnight showings of Rocky Horror? or ice cream at the Rocking Horse? or somewhere, we crossed paths unwittingly.
@Tom Downing - my mom also worked at UPenn - in the hospital system!
3
I C what you did there.
16
As usual, as a non-visual person, didn't notice the big old seven. And, as someone who sometimes forget to look at circled letters, I didn't notice that there were in fact seven Cs.
And yet, somehow, I got the whole thing. And enjoyed it.
And then there was retrospect, and much greater enjoyment. Seeing all seven of the seas was more than enjoyable; it was exciting.
Thanks for making me feel like (a) a fool and (be) pretty clever.
16
This puzzle was delightful! I was so happy to have discovered SEVENSEAS before actually filling the revealer! It was plenty tough, but mostly in the wheelhouse. I always phone a friend (or text a relative) for Spanish.
Happy to see my alma mater clued, UPENN. Locust walk is filled with memories. Yes, there’s actual ivy on some buildings, located right in West Philadelphia.
I had sign before OMEN and plaid (not a fabric) before TWEED.
Loved it!
5
Loved the clue for 1A and filled in SNOB immediately. My most profound assessment of a glass of wine is “Mmm. I like that.”
Is BLINI some sort of reverse tamale trap? M-W seems to have BLIN as a singular, while other sources have BLINI as singular, with the plural as BLINIS or BLINI. I’m sure this must have been discussed here before.
Enjoyed the puzzle and thought I saw the whole theme. I missed the number 7 made by connecting the C’s, however.
Salade NIÇOISE is named for the city of Nice, which is on the Mediterranean SEA. So there’s that...
1
@Andrew
When I read Deb’s column and saw that the circled letters formed a 7, I thought about Lewis’ comment from yesterday about his eyes getting wider and wider. Add one more layer and this theme would have been deeper than the CARIBBEAN.
(Per Xwordinfo, BLINI has always been clued as plural (31 appearances) and BLIN has appeared 15x. BLINIS and BLINTZ have appeared one time each. )
1
@Andrew - definitely a tamale trap word. The singular "blin" is used in Russian as a minced swear word, being a step away from a more serious swear word.
Had ERS for ORS and UCK for ICK. Still managed to solve slightly faster than average for a Wednesday.
It would have been a more elegant solve had "C" appeared only in the circled squares but _AR ANTENNA doesn't leave many options.
Looking forward for the appearance of IRENIC in a future Spelling Bee puzzle. I'm talking to you, Sam Ezersky.
2
@RAH plenty of real words don't make it into the Spelling Bee, while inventions like 'noob' do.
1
@Barbara
You realize, of course, that all words are inventions at one point. I believe the word you’re looking for is NEOLOGISM.
@Steve L well, sure - I just don't get why so many words are disallowed in Spelling Bee. If there's a system, I can't figure it out. I find it more frustrating than enjoyable.
2
Very clever and visually amazing theme, with a ton of great clues, but if it takes Deb an entire paragraph to explain ARE to those like me who didn't get it, then perhaps Alex should have gone with another clue.
5
@Wags disagree. Yes it was a hard clue but if you think of all the uses of art then are works.
2
@Wags
Perhaps “Modern art?”
3
Wags,
I trust you were joking about a correlation between the difficulty of a clue and the length of Deb's riff on it.
(I thought the clue was great; I enjoyed Deb's riff, but her last sentence alone explained it, oui?)
2
“Philly Ivy” was a fantastic clue
2
I tried CORKED (think baseball bat) at 45D, and it worked there, if only DIRDE had been a thing. And I guess I think horizontally, because CAR ANTENNAS and RELEASE DATE were both really difficult for me to figure out and parse as they filled in.
This was a neat theme. It was good to see the names of the seas clued to things that weren't the seas. I read all the Narnia books when I was a kid, and remembered Price CASPIAN's name but nothing else about him. I enjoyed taking a look at the names of the White Star Line's ships on Wikipedia--after 1870, almost all of them are names that ended in -IC. As well as the ADRIATIC, including such intriguing ship names as Magnetic, Medic (as in Persia), Canopic, Traffic, Ceramic, and yes, Titanic.
9
@Liz B
If I remember correctly. “Prince CASPIAN” is the title of the second book of the series. Like you, I remember little about him except for the cover picture of him riding a horse through the forest.
1
@Liz B
It took me until after I finished and stared at CARANTENNAS for another to parse it correctly. Most cars have what looks like a dorsal fin these days.
1
@Paul
I guess CARANTENNAS must be a super-dook.
1
A clever theme, and I appreciate the effort that went into it.
The final clue (61D - "Perhaps") left me mystified, though. It seems like an awfully awkward clue for SAY. The only example I can think of is something along the lines of "I'll be there, say, at 10 AM," but that still doesn't quite fit. Perhaps someone has a better example.
But that's a minor nit in a nicely executed puzzle.
1
@RichardZ
Yesterday’s puzzle had the clue, “Healthy diet and regular exercise, say”.
5
@Andrew - Thanks, that's an excellent example.
3
The puzzle contains ten letter Cs. Wouldn't a construction purist demand that the three not circled be eliminated?
I have no other complaints. This was a quick solve compared to Mon. and Tue. but enjoyable nevertheless.
2
@Kiki Rijkstra
10 letter C's but only 7 of them are part of a word which is the name of a SEA. . .
4
@Kiki Rijkstra
Jeff Chen over at xwordinfo.com agrees.
1
@Steve Faiella
Jeff did agree:
Reaction 2: CUTTING. What, you couldn't cut out the other Cs that weren't in circles? CCCCC the opportunity to make it more elegant!
... but seems to be forgiving in later reactions.
https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=1/22/2020
I MADE THE TIMES CROSSWORD PUZZLE!
YAY!!!
45
@Guy Quay
And for the 52nd time!
https://www.xwordinfo.com/Finder?word=QUAY
Do any of the clues fit you?
I'm definitely more jetty than jetsetty but possibly more like Worf than wharf. Perhaps the fit should be decided by a jury of my piers?
Regardless it's mar-ghee-ritas on the house until closing!
12
@Guy Quay
Have you met Mike from Munster?
4
Managed to not even notice the names of the seas. Thanks Deb for another enlightening column!
27
@Tom Kara
I didn't notice that the C's were actually in sea names either. In fact I resisted the P in Prince CASPIAN as long as I could because that was the name of a sea, not a man.
3
5 favorite entries:
RAIMENT
QUAY
CARIBBEAN
IRENIC
BLINI (blueberry please)
3 favorite clues:
“It’s often left on the table”/ TIP
“Spare part, perhaps” / TEN PIN
“Moving targets for waves”/ CAR ANTENNAS
Theme Aha! rating: 5/5
ICK? Saved by its proximity to ADRIATIC and BALTIC
5
Left off NICOISE, which I order just because I like to say the word.
4
@Puzzlemucker I feel the same way when I make ratatouille.
3
@OboeSteph
Yum!
1
Alex Eaton-Salyers, how do come up with so many fresh and enjoyable puzzles? Just wonderful!
11
@Ann
Oops, sorry, I mean -Salners! I am not a great speller (and I don't mind being kindly corrected!)
My 1,000th puzzle of this streak.
60
@Libby
Wow! That's an amazing accomplishment!
1
Congratulations! I'm approaching 500. You set a high bar.
3
@Libby
Congratulations!