I wanted to gripe about the difficulty of this puzzle ; twice as long to finish a Sunday puzzle and then I saw all the complaints about "no likely" and realized that you have enough weenies complaining about silly stuff that you didn't need my gripes about clever difficult stuff.
1
The link in the wordplay article to the fandom wiki page for “Super Mario Logan”, whatever that is, is very strange and has some weird, inappropriate content on it. I think that’s someone’s strange fanfiction universe. Certainly not officially-sanctioned content.
I thought the theme was clever, but stopped short when I got “no likey.” I actually googled the clue because I couldn’t believe that was the intended, old-school-racist answer. You’ve got to be kidding. This merits an apology, as well as an upgrade of your test group.
1
Inuit aren't First Nations.
6
Created an account just to say this, too. Very jarring to see this in the crossword
2
surprised not to see more Canadians commenting on this. As soon as I saw the clue I was wary, apparently with good reason
1
I fought so hard to complete this puzzle and am so disappointed that I put in the time and effort. Sunday morning with a side of racist, outdated lingo boldly showing up the the crossword puzzle. Ew. I’m left with the most disgusted feeling. I expect much greater awareness from the NYT and its editors.
8
@Emily Will Shortz needs to find a more diverse group of test solvers, because he is oblivious to things like this.
7
@Santi Bailor I think that means we should do it do it do it!!! There’s a Facebook group focused on this, but I can’t afford the cost of the software 😬
@Emily
Me as well, Emily. I was enjoying the cleverness and challenge of the theme--until I hit "long time no see", and "no likey", at which point I felt sick. I live in a Commonwealth country, and my city has a large, longstanding, respected community of people with Chinese origin--who have enriched our culture, become community leaders, and married into communities from other backgrounds for generations. Even in the 1950s and 60s when I was growing up, and Hollywood was still putting out films and tv shows with offensive, demeaning portrayals of Chinese people (amongst others) in them, we knew those expressions were racist. We wouldn't have said them either to someone of East Asian origin, or used them amongst ourselves--and if someone did, or one heard it happen, it would be very upsetting.
2
SPELLING BEE GRID
L F G H O R U
WORDS: 22, POINTS: 63, PANGRAMS: 1
First character frequency:
F x 9
G x 5
H x 2
L x 5
R x 1
Word length frequency:
4L: 15
5L: 4
6L: 1
7L: 1
8L: 1
Grid:
4 5 6 7 8 TOT
F: 5 3 - - 1 9
G: 3 1 1 - - 5
H: 2 - - - - 2
L: 4 - - 1 - 5
R: 1 - - - - 1
TOT:15 4 1 1 1 22
Two letter list:
FLOG-1 FLOOR-1 FLOUR-1 FLUFF-1 FOOL-1 FOUL-1 FULL-1 FURL-1 FURLO-1
GHOUL-1 GOLF-1 GOOGO-1 GULF-1 GULL-1
HULL-1 HURL-1
LOGO-1 LOGRO-1 LOLL-1 LULL-1 LULU-1
ROLL-1
How many letters? 2
SPELLING BEE GRID
L F G H O R U
WORDS: 22, POINTS: 63, PANGRAMS: 1
First character frequency:
F x 9
G x 5
H x 2
L x 5
R x 1
Word length frequency:
4L: 15
5L: 4
6L: 1
7L: 1
8L: 1
Grid:
4 5 6 7 8 TOT
F: 5 3 - - 1 9
G: 3 1 1 - - 5
H: 2 - - - - 2
L: 4 - - 1 - 5
R: 1 - - - - 1
TOT: 15 4 1 1 1 22
Two letter list:
FL-4 FO-2 FU-3
GH-1 GO-2 GU-2
HU-2
LO-3 LU-2
RO-1
2
Ack!!! Apologies! My program spit out more than I meant.
4
I was so excited because it went so fast. :’-(
2
@Doug
Flag Doug’s grid post above. Contains the Bee words (I actually got to QB on my own today because I was so afraid of looking at any Bee posts).
1
I got hung up on 78D, because Tina Fey would be an alumna of SNL, plural alumnae. But, as I’m sure David Connell will presently point out, if two are mentioned and one, Will Ferrell, is masculine, the masculine plural is used, feminism not having taken hold in ancient Rome. Must have been a very relaxed atmosphere.
1
Would it be horrible to say that I have not been enjoying the many many puzzles by extreme youngsters that we have been treated to for quite some time?
1
Fairly steady string of successful attempts over the past few days. Typically I stumble a bit over the weekends and don’t always catch those small deviations.
Friday and Saturday both went well for me, as did this enjoyably challenging Sunday puzzle.
Getting the themed clues to reveal a familiar phrase was a process of uncertainty though; BOWSERJR held me up pretty well, with BOO instead of BOW being the penultimate snag.
After that, I had to amend LONGTIMETOSEE to accommodate NIQAB, and voila, done.
A bit better than my average, without crutches. Nothing to crow about but enjoyable and approachable.
Cheers!
3
Only a few weeks after Deb's eloquent, full-throated and irrefutable defense of so-called "political correctness" I was appalled to see "no likey" in this puzzle. Inexcusable!
4
I had BLEEP SENSOR rather than BLEEP CENSOR as my last problem for a very long time. A censor is so 20th century.
— now we should be able to use machine learning to build sensors for such things.
4
I just don’t see the point. If it helps, I’ll concede that who put this puzzle together is smarter than me. Now can we get someone who wants to put together one that’s enjoyable and doesn’t feel the need to prove how smart they are?
3
No likey!
5
Took much longer for me than the most Sundays. I finally got ERG from the crosses but have never come across that term for a rowing machine—perhaps because I haven’t been to a gym in many years. The theme was tricky and very clever and I liked it once I figured it out—at SPLITPEASOUP—but even then it took some wrangling to get all of them.
1
Loved this puzzle! Tough cluing and tough theme, but so satisfying to finish it. Thanks, Sam.
3
Anybody figure out the "Trivia" theme at the end of the Constructor Notes? 🤔
Ron,
Scroll down....
Man that was difficult! I simply never got any momentum going. Nearly double my normal Sunday time, but I was so pleased to finally get the trick.
3
Shocked that this only took me 12 minutes longer than my average. Hit the last letter and got an ‘aw shucks’, which I was totally expecting. Corrected the spelling on PASETA (PESETA) and bingo, happy music. So after solving all those tortured clues, I only got one letter wrong, which felt pretty good. But ultimately this was like solving a jigsaw puzzle with ill-fitting pieces: everything goes together easily, but you have no confidence that you’re doing it right.
5
Awesomely broad scope in this terrific Sunday puzzle. Gnarly clueing.
3
Phew
1
@Paul
Many are called, but Phew are chosen.
6
Leapy,
I guess Paul is one of the chosen phew.
2
@BarryA,
I know! I was cursed with the compulsion to be grammatically correct.
My fella and I truly enjoyed this one, but are now feeling as though we may be the only ones. I thought it was an easier solve than most, even though we were majorly held back by ARGOT, IDEE and NIQAB. In all three cases, I learned something, which is largely the point.
The same is true for clues that many of you are calling potentially racist. I can't tell you how many times I've said LONG TIME, NO SEE without any negative or racial connotation. And as much as I can't stand baby-talk, that is how I view NO LIKEY (or as some sort of Chris Farley reference), certainly not with any tie to Chinglish or some other offensive language.
I'm sad that what I found to be a rather enjoyable solve is tarnished by this. Either way, I'm sure that isn't how it was intended by Mr. Trabucco. I say Bravo, sir!
21
This was a great brain teaser. I'd love more Sunday puzzles to be pegged at this challenge level. Thank you, Sam Trabucco!
5
Blech.
4
@Caitlin, thank you sooo much for your para on the cryptogrammischkeit. Have to say that I'm head over hills for "typoglycemia", which couldn't be sweeter.
As a PS, I think the only way Vera Wang will let me think of ANNA SUI is if I can link her to ANNA SAZI
Have to now search the comments to see if anyone figured out The Bucco's BuzzFeed revealer, bec I could not.
4
@Leapfinger
Go to xwordinfo for the revealer.
2
A late thought: Is the clue at 35A correct? Is there some way that OREOOS (shudder!) can be called a cereal? I guess there is wheat flour in the cardboard part of the Oreo cookie (shudder!), and wheat is a cereal, but still ...
Oatmeal is a breakfast cereal. As are corn flakes. Wheaties. Rice Krispies. Presumably some of the ones I've never had, like Kix/Trix, Cap'n Crunch, etc. But OREOOS? Doubt.
1
Deadline,
For your reading -- if not eating -- pleasure:
https://www.postdreamcereals.com/products/oreo-os/
1
(Click on Nutrition Information)
4
@Deadline
You're not the target demographic.
2
You're right on the money, Caitlin — I loved the Bowser Jr. clue, and I do have a box of Oreo-Os in my pantry :)
Great puzzle!
3
FYI, the "Super Mario Logan" mentioned in the column appears to be a fan YouTube channel, and the linked Wiki is related to that. I've never heard of it. Bowser Jr. is an antagonist character from the main Mario games who made his debut in 2002's Super Mario Sunshine. Might want to correct that.
6
Liked the theme, except the first (SPLITPEASOUP), which didn’t seem as precise as the other entries. Along with the aforementioned complaints about NOLIKEY, my additional nit is why “informal ‘UGH,”? Isn’t “ugh” informal already?
6
@Kate If "split" is thought of as slang for "leave," then the P left the gazpacho.
8
@jg That makes sense—thank you!
3
@Kate
If there were "Pee" in my gazpacho, I'd be upset...
4
Today's puzzle blew past my Sunday average by 20 minutes and took close to three times as long as my best solve time. Granted I forgot to put it on pause a couple of times when I went about some trivial endeavor like living my life, but even so, it was a plodding task with a dispiriting outcome.
I do love the Yarmouth boys on the barrels—took me back to the good old days of the Monty Python skits like the competition for High Class Twit of the Year.
8
Excellent variety in this theme. Had to approach each one afresh to see what the angle of attack would be. Loved how that kept you/me on my toes. Each one seemed better than the last (ie, previous).
Had ADVANCE, so KILLFEE was a TIL, and GEOTAGS was odd after just hearing about GEOduckS being affected by coronavirus. CRYER had me think the US would never make war on YEMEN. (That Jordan clue may have had an effect there.) Also had a heckuva time coming to terms with WWIACE, and I can just see SamT, that LAZY BUM, saying YEAH, WHY NOT? CifU can figure this out AZURE solving. [Evil chuckle, twirls mustache... umm, Sorry, that's a puzzle passe]
It may indicate a L-APSE of judgement, but I could see Sig. Trabucco's puzzles becoming A-HABit with me . And I'm not even fishing for compliments
BWITCHB, I have to get all my GEOducks in a row, and practice how to not keep saying Gooey-TAGS and Gooey-logy.
Super Sunday on all parameters!!
10
I needed more help than ever for this one! Find a list of skin care products to see if any have a VEE in their name (found one I don't remember ever seeing before but it fixed my wild guess MWuH for "big kiss"), searched "fashion anna" to get the S and I of supposedly well-known ANNASUI. Only then did I realize what four-letter word starting with N means "get perfect," something that would have been obvious a few years ago. Looking up "pele" had failed to fill in N_SL with the A. The theme answers were fun enough to make the puzzle worth the horrendous time.
Now I've read Caitlin's take. She had some problems with things I found easy, but I wonder how she solved the ones we both found hard?
Now finally off to fix my calendars.
1
@kilaueabart aha! Thanks for your note; turned out I had misremembered the last letter of the skin lotion, despite having bottles of it all over the house. Happy music at last!
Earlier this week, consecutive days with OPALS
Now consecutive days with BOSSA nova.
The only link I can find is that Annette Funicello was born in October.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trD1cEPuJ2E
1
@RAH
Um, the hit version was by Eydie Gorme.
@Steve L
I guess you missed the discussion of Eydie Gorme in yesterday's thread -- had links to both of her versions -- English and Spanish.
She was born in August so her birthstone would not be an opal.
Yeah, I get it, it’s a Sunday puzzle and it’s supposed to take longer, but after 90 minutes of trying to decipher what “TECHNIQUEO” and “ENTURIES” mean, I’m just frustrated. I can make a really tough puzzle too by using gibberish for clues. And that doesn’t even get into the esoteric clues like 72A or 14 D.
Sure, we have more time on a Sunday but that doesn’t mean we want to spend ALL of it on the crossword. Disappointed.
9
To each their own. I do crosswords for the fun of deciphering the clues. But that’s just me.
12
"But that's just me."
Mr. Mark,
From the comments I've read on this puzzle, I'd say it's closer to "just Mike."
7
Pretty harsh to call those clues gibberish. They are puzzles in themselves, to be decoded.
7
Very clever puzzle, a fun solve laced with plenty of unladylike snorts of hilarity . . . and I loved "Are you going to Washibngton, D.C. this week?" at the end of Deb's blog.
7
Im not a fast solver but this was a longer slog than usual. I admired some of the cleverness in the theme but the rest of the fill, not so much. As though I never got in sync with the constructor. Well, win some and lose some - Friday and Saturday were both enjoyable struggles so theres a balance.
6
As much as I enjoyed the theme clues, I was not at all pleased with some of the fill --- NO LIKEY, MWAH, GENYERS, and BLEEP CENSOR all left me underwhelmed. I guess I wanted the entire puzzle to match the skillfulness of the theme.
6
This was a really fun puzzle inn all respects. The theme clues were good because sometimes you subtracted and sometimes you added, and, oh by the way, this created some problems for me because I got "split pea soup" almost immediately. As a result I was thinking" subtract" when I should have been thinking "add" when looking at clues like TECHNIQUEO. Also nice mix of stumpers like censor bleeper and easy ones like efts.
5
@Scott Roland
Why was "split pea soup" easy? I just now looked up "gazacho" and got "gazpacho" (!?) but I don't see the "split pea" part. "Spilt pea" maybe.
Bart,
The pea split.
3
@kilaueabart
The P in GAZpACHO made like a banana and SPLIT.
3
DWADE is not his nickname, his nickname is Flash.
Does anyone edit these puzzles for correctness anymore?
2
@Sushi lover - There's a guy name of Dwyane who seems to disagree:
https://www.espn.com/blog/truehoop/miamiheat/post/_/id/360/dwyane-wade-dont-call-me-flash-anymore
3
@Sushi lover His Twitter handle is literally DWade. Smh.
5
EEL sauce is not a thing, it’s called ponzu. Only white people would call it this.🙄
5
Sushi lover,
Whitish person here, but aren't nitsume (eel sauce) and ponzu two different things?
4
@Sushi lover
I grew up calling it kabayaki no tare and it’s really different from ponzu.
3
@Sushi lover
I’m pretty sure kabayaki no tare isn’t making it into the puzzle.
3
Had to change hijab to NIQAB which finally made me go look up the difference between them. A bit late, I know.
4
I researched that too. Niqab was a TIL for me, but I’m hoping to remember it now, which I find is more likely when I read a Wikipedia article on the subject.
Much harder than the usual Sunday for me, too. A couple of times I muttered words which would have called for a BLEEP CENSOR.
10
Me NOLIKEY this puzzle. Tricky but not in a fun way. :-(
8
Particularly enjoyable Sunday puzzle that for the first time in some time required careful thinking and wasn't like a Tuesday. It took a bit to get the nicely innovative theme, though split pea soup for GAZACHO certainly conveyed the main idea. (Bleep censor is a thing?) By and large the answers were pretty pedestrian words, other than the intriguing niqab. (And a helix isn't really a spiral, even if mistaken usage — like "octopi" instead of the correct "octopuses" — has led to its being listed in dictionaries.) Odd to see both long time no see and no likey stacked one on the other, each from a similar stereotyped Oriental immigrant's speech. A few very cute clues, like "Something that's hard to blow" for smoke ring and "Get perfect" for nail, and "Obstacle-free courses" for easy A's.
3
@polymath
If memory serves, you're, shall we say, of an older demographic (as am I, to a certain extent), and as such, we need to realize that language evolves (of course we think we know this) but further, that it evolves during the course of our lives, to the extent that what we learned in school is no longer true, just as much as there's no Soviet Union anymore, and that there are only eight planets.
OCTOPI started out as a mis-formation of a Latinate plural tacked onto a Greek-rooted word. However, it's all actually English, and both plurals have equal acceptance in 2020. So dictionaries list HELIX and SPIRAL as synonymous because they're used that way. SPIRAL staircases and notebooks are HELICAL, and the thing called the HELIX on the New Jersey side of the Lincoln Tunnel is just an ovoid ramp used to allow an elevated highway to become a tunnel. (The whole thing is just one 3600-degree turn resembling one turn of an elongated SPIRAL staircase.)
And in a similar vein, ORIENTAL is no longer considered a proper way to say what we now call ASIAN (although clearly, the latter is technically broader, but we distinguish by employing SOUTH ASIAN and MIDDLE EASTERN for other peoples of that continent.) At least that's the case in the US; it may be different in Canada.
3
(The whole thing is just one 3600-degree turn resembling one turn of an elongated SPIRAL staircase.)
Steve,
The helix in question is just 270 degrees; the other 90 is in the tunnel. I've not encountered any of 3600 degrees.
3
@Steve L
"one 3600-degree turn"
Surely not! Or, if so, it might explain why so many of the drivers coming out on the NYC side of the tunnel seem to be very dizzy. And here I'd been blaming it on their diving for their cellphones after having been cut off from the world for actual minutes.
2
Ironically, this one took me a very long time mainly because I stuck with PRIX fixe even though I could not get it to work on the crosses. I guess you could say I had an IDEE fixe, at the same time I didn’t have it. I’m inventing the term Schrodinger’s fixe for this.
22
25A: Once I referred to a toilet as a "john" in front of my friend John and realized I'd made a terrible faux pas. I don't use "john" that way anymore and I kind of wish puzzle constructors wouldn't lean on it so much.
2
@Rrrockhound Constructors use "john" as a clue for toilet, or loo, or bog (still waiting....) precisely because it can be a great misdirect. Particularly when it is the first word of the clue, because it is then capitalized, by NYT convention.
I know you can't dispute feelings, but I haven't seen too many folks named "John" complaining about this cluing. Or folks named "Louis" complaining about the answer.... YMMV, as always.
5
@Rrrockhound
Good thing your friend wasn't named Dick.
2
No offense taken, but then, I'm a Jon, not a John. (Or a john.)
QUUCERY. It's all a question of what you see, isn't it?
Like, for example, at 47A, ENTURIES, I didn't see [C]ENTURIES because I thought the pun would be based on ENTRIES. So my mind was going in the absolute wrong direction.
But what makes this puzzle really, really hard is that none of the theme answers can be figured out without a lot of crosses. I mean a lot of crosses! So doing the puzzle with ease (pun intended) means knowing a lot of those crosses. And I didn't. Not even the short ones like ERG (what on earth does that stand for?) and DWADE, for example.
I struggled everywhere. I thought the theme was clever -- with some themers better and fairer than others. BE IN THE MOMENT is fabulous. YEAH WHY NOT not so much. But I prevailed -- and I'm feeling pretty clever myself.
8
ERG is short for ergometer, a rowing machine
https://breakingmuscle.com/fitness/everybody-hates-the-ergometer
1
@NickS
I just knew ERG as a measure of energy, so I wasn't surprised to find that it had somehow found its way into a gym.
1
LETTER BOXED
I went long and kitchen-related today.
B - S (10), S - T (8)
I hope these letters make it past the emus...
1
@Andrew
A-E (8), E-S (7)
A-E (8), E-S (9)
Yesterday
SKIPJACKS STREWN
Letter Boxed solution
SKIPJACK KNITWEAR
1
@Lou Same as you yesterday ...strewn.
Today:
A - E (8), E - S (7) ... same again!
Started the morning at 4 a.m. by achieving QB, then reading some news articles (BARREL OF unFUN) and at last taking Dictation from Sam Trabucco. These were hard to figure out unless I had at least a word entered....last one into the grid was OH, BY THE WAY. Hardest was 22A, as I have a long record of not playing any computer/video games. The only time I played one--PacMan--I was reduced to hollering, "Run!"
Wanted YOSEMITE for the half-dome, and STOKOWSKI for the violinist Leopold.
Nobody writes QED anymore, I suspect.
Happy March!
4
@Mean Old Lady - modern mathies use a little square box, some of them color it in and others don't - I've never understood the difference but opinions run strong!
@Mean Old Lady
Same problem with 22A, except I loved PacMan and Ms PacMan, and all of the wonderful mystery/puzzle games from Infocom, and the Zorks, and similar things. I wish they were still around.
But I digress. I had entered BOY at 11D, thinking of Playboy magazine, but that would have meant that 22A was BOYSER JR, and I was pretty sure those BOYs shouldn't have appeared together, much less crossed.
MOL,
YES for Yosemite, and the AA picture in my M"I"ND's
Among many problems that caused me to spend way more time than normal on Sunday, LONG TIME NO SEE " bean" wasn't the counter we were looking for. We CPAS think that bean counters is the usual reference. However, I rarely count the beans in my chili from the DELI
3
As an owner of the Charlotte Hornets, Michael Jordan still belongs to the NBA, so I have a sizable 55A with 55D.
Other than that the puzzle was a total 14D!
4
This is one Sunday puzzle where I wanted to INSTBANT for longer than it took me to solve. I didn't want my marveling at Sam's creativity to end! My favorite, ENTURIES, is pure genius.
Thank you, Sam Trabucco!
10
@Johanna
BE IN THE MOMENT?
@Puzzlemucker
I mean, be in each moment of solving for longer. In other words I didn't want the solve to end because I was enjoying it so much.
1
@Johanna
It’s excellent. The “?” was just to signify that I wasn’t sure that was the answer.
Clever construction in the best way, meaning not designed to make the solver think wow that was quite a feat of engineering to have constructed that, but rather to give the solver a little jolt of pleasure in decoding each mystery theme word. In other words, solver-oriented, which I appreciated. And a lot easier than cryptic crosswords, but sort of the same reward.
10
I have always been a terrible proof reader and today it was the first theme clue that I had to look at 3 or 4 times before I realised it was missing a letter.
Once over that hurdle I loved figuring out all the expressions, although I didn’t find it all that easy, so spent most of the morning taking little breaks and coming back to it.
Favourite was LONG TIME NO SEE.
8
Thanks to Loren Muse Smith from the Rex Parker site for the insight that LONG TIME NO SEE also derives from an imitation of pidgin English, spoken either by Chinese or Native Americans. That phrase is now ingrained in American English and lacks the sort of mocking racist overtones as NO LIKEY. (LMS gave Sam and Will a pass with NO LIKEY, but Rex definitely did not and once again went off on a tirade about Will S., which might carry more weight if he didn’t do so in every other column I’ve ever read by him).
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/03/09/288300303/who-first-said-long-time-no-see-and-in-which-language
7
Also from RP site. A commenter suggested a relatively easy fix: HONES (“Sharpens”) for HONEy and NO LIKES for NO LIKEy (possibly clued as: “Unpopular Facebook comment’s fate”).
6
@Puzzlemucker
Without going to the Rex site (which I will never, ever do again), I'm pleased that LMS pointed out the racist origins of LONG TIME NO SEE. I've heard the phrase all my life and didn't know that. Even having been made aware, I still feel as if it's a stretch. Certainly not in the same offensive league as NO LIKEY.
3
@Deadline
I too have heard the phrase in question all my life without being aware of any racist origins or intent. After this discussion I probably won’t use it again though. Word choice can be so tricky.
2
very clever! TRES BON! ACES!
6
Oh, these theme answers are very very clever, and all revolve around everyday phrases. SPLIT PEA SOUP and LONG TIME NO SEE plopped in boom boom, each drawing a big grin; the others took work, and when they did fill in, they drew not only smiles, but nods of awe.
The cluing fought me hard. Many of the answers, when I finally got them, felt like victories, and I was justly rewarded by being able to build on them.
Grins, awe, and the glow of accomplishment -- this was a puzzle that delivered, one of those special ones. Many thanks, Sam, and very well done!
13
In the apparently unlikely event that anyone else struggled with this puzzle, trust me - you almost certainly did better than I did.
I'm quite sure I've never had so many blank spaces when I ground to a complete halt.
Beyond that, no comment. Don't quote me.
13
Really ENJOYed this one, even though I GIVETHESTINKEYE to NOLIKEY, like many others.
Even GREENTEAEXTRACT can't mitigate the damage to our way of life by the introduction of OREOOS to the cereal aisle. What a travesty! Plenty of good crunch in the puzzle, though!
9
A helix is not a spiral. The reverse is also true!
A helix retains the same diameter throughout its form. A spiral doesn't.
*Pushes specs up the bridge of my nose*.
20
@Niall
I'll remember that next time I go up (or down) a HELIX staircase.
6
@Niall
And I'll make a note of it in my HELIX notebook.
9
Poor James Garfield. I wonder whether he ever feels (yonder, behind the veil, that is) that his parents had given him a raw deal by christening him with a middle name that it would become such great crosswordese fodder. I mean, how many of us know that LBJ’s full name was Lyndon Baines Johnson or RMN’s Richard Milhous Nixon? I didn’t. I just plugged “presidential middle names” into Google. (Rutherford Birchard Hayes is now part of my Am. Hist. vernacular, btw.) But James ABRAM Madison rolls of the tongue as if I were asked about John Wayne Gacy or Harvey Lee Oswald. Not entirely fair to a President who’d lost his life to assassination.
2
Argh. James ABRAM Garfield, not Madison.
[note to self: no posting before 5am]
6
@Sam Lyons
I'm guessing you didn't live through the sixties (or weren't paying attention). Baines and Milhous are gimmes.
13
@Sam Lyons
As a non-American, I had no idea of Garfield's middle name, but I was quite familiar with Baines and Milhous, (although I would have misspelled it Milhaus). As for Oswald, I believe it was Lee Harvey rather than Harvey Lee. At least that is what rolls off of my tongue! ;-)
5
SPELLING BEE GRID
L F G H O R U
WORDS: 22, POINTS: 63, PANGRAMS: 1
First character frequency:
F x 9
G x 5
H x 2
L x 5
R x 1
Word length frequency:
4L: 15
5L: 4
6L: 1
7L: 1
8L: 1
Grid:
4 5 6 7 8 TOT
F: 5 3 - - 1 9
G: 3 1 1 - - 5
H: 2 - - - - 2
L: 4 - - 1 - 5
R: 1 - - - - 1
TOT: 15 4 1 1 1 22
Two letter list:
FL-4 FO-2 FU-3
GH-1 GO-2 GU-2
HU-2
LO-3 LU-2
RO-1
54
@Doug
**U S E T H I S G R I D**
The one below contains accidental spoilers.
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@Dave I find that when my posts don't show up right away, I see them 12 hours later.
@Doug I’ve tried every combination possible for L4 that is not a company’s symbol, a doozy, or a slow period. Since I also know the second letter, it seems impossible not to power through, yet here I am. Can’t imagine how I’m missing it, but any hints appreciated!
HEADS UP!! AVERT YOUR EYES!
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@Doug I sure wish you could edit or delete your posts, especially when your post contains an error.
People will just have to pretend not to see your post below.
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@Kevin - I feel awful, but what’s done is done
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@Doug Perhaps if people 'flag' that post it will be deleted?
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**S P E L L I N G B E E H I N T S**
22 words, 63 points, 1 pangram.
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Glug, which is in today’s crossword, is not accepted! Yesterday’s Bee word “orate” is in there too.
Hints:
To whip severely
Clump of soft fibers
Roll up a flag
Leave of absence or layoff, pangram
Evil spirit or phantom
Large number similar to a search engine
Throw, or throw up
Company’s graphic symbol
Balance contest with tree parts
Doozy
41
I just realized that yesterday's words were orator & oratory, not orate, as we didn't have an E.
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@Kevin Davis Yet another short list. Only 22 words, and not very challenging.
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Had to really work for the themers in this one. First got BE IN THE MOMENT which I thought was quite good, but GIVE THE STINK EYE elicited an audible snort. I first learned the term a couple of years ago from a fellow juror, and it still makes me laugh every time.
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"No likey" - sounds like Chinglish. This smacks of "the white racial frame" type of insensitivity perpetuated by language stereotypes and the cartoon reference doesn't save it from being a form of racism.
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Nnaiden,
Is it or isn't it? And to what cartoon reference do you refer? I've always thought of "no likey" and "me likey" as fake baby talk, often used in a sexual setting. Jeff Chen raised his eyebrows at it (in xwordinfo), but then he offered a variant that would absolutely be racist; I'm not sure this is.
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@Nnaiden
How long before the ultimate origin of something becomes irrelevant because no one except maybe a lexicographer remembers where it came from?
As pointed out elsewhere (or maybe it was on a different blog), it's no longer clear who we're insulting when we say LONG TIME NO SEE. Some think it's the Chinese, others, the American Indians. If we can't remember, perhaps it doesn't matter.
How many people who say "that sucks" these days realize its original reference to a sexual act? Perhaps you do (if you're a wordsmith and interested in the derivation of words and phrases), but enough people don't anymore that in my lifetime, it's gone from a rather taboo phrase to a rather common one. True, some would adhere to the notion that it's still vulgar, but more and more use it freely without any mental connection to oral sex.
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aside from EEL SAUCE (which I've not chanced upon at a sushi counter, it was a very fun Sunday solve.
3
Leopold Auer. Nice.
2
Soooo clever!!! And lots of fun! Thanks Mr. Trabucco.
4
Less appetizing dish: banana split pea soup
(That has no appeal.)
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@Mike
Unless it's a top banana split pea soup.
1
I enjoyed this one probably more than any other I've done. Not that it was easy, but it was truly fun, with some laugh out loud puns and misdirects. Figured out the theme with ARE YOU WITH ME but still had to scratch my head to fill in the other themers. Thanks Mr. Trabucco for an entertaining puzzle from start to finish.
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“No likely” is a better theme for this puzzle. I still don’t understand some answers even though it’s complete. Maybe someone else answered, otherwise I don’t care as long as I finished.
10
Apparently no one else had the same questions. For those of us not journalists, kill fee is not in our argot. Can someone explain Loo as “John, to Lennon”? A Beatles reference? I’m not sure what apse has to do with a half dome. The only one I know is at Yosemite, but I’m not a church-goer or architect. Never heard of Anna Sui, Leopold Auer, or King Ahab. How is an orb a mystical ball? It’s just a generic term for sphere. Garfield’s middle name was not at the tip of my tongue. Emoter is not something I’ve heard outside of puzzles. I’ve heard of a hijab but never a niqab. Eft is also an unfamiliar term.
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@Kevin Davis John Lennon was British, and in the UK a bathroom ("john") is a loo
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@Ella Luce Thanks. It came to me just after I posted. I suppose “kill fee” was also in the news from Ronan Farrow, but I didn’t recall it immediately.
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RETRy lead me to ask the question: YEAHWHYNyT?
4
I thought this was a toughie. Because many the themers were, how can I say, like filler phrases (no meat). Specifically OHBYTHEWAY and YEAHWHYNOT. They just don’t register with me.
But definitely made me think outside the box. So great for a Sunday. I spent a lot more time on it than I would have liked to, though...
GREENTEAEXTRACT was definitely my fav.
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What a clever, thoroughly satisfying Sunday puzzle!
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This was among the toughest puzzles I have done. It was DEFINITEL fair, but the themed clues were a real challenge. I particularly liked GREENTEAEXTRACT and SPLITPEASOUP. For the Play’s final act clue, I initially filled in BOO thinking that the play was closing due to bad reviews. BOW is definitely a more optimistic answer. A demanding end to the XWord week.
14
My game of “Let’s try to think of another one” (which usually just increases my admiration for the constructor’s sheer cleverness) yielded this attempt:
SEUENQCE =
JUMP THE QUEUE
28
@Margaret
Great!
Less great: KSMOOCH - EVERY KISS BEGINS WITH KAY
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@Margaret
How about this:
TEAM - THERE IS NO I IN TEAM
(That is why I am a solver rather than a constructor.)
5
@Andrew
BeginE does not describe you. YOU DON’T HAVE A BIG EGO.
The Office obviously aired on NBC. Unless of course you’re talking about the original British version. Because having 60D as NEAST wouldn’t make any sense, even if you don’t know who Grendel is.
Which brings me to the Answer Key. Is anyone else getting an error message when they click on it, or is it just me (I’ve tried a few different browsers)? Or perhaps no one here really needs it, being expert cruciverbalists and all. But for me, it definitely helps, especially when I’ve mixed up the US and British versions of The Office, NBC and BBC and I’ve spent quite a bit of time looking for my mistake. Which probably would have been easier to catch if I had put it down and picked it up later so my REFRESHED eyes could see that I mistakenly classified Grendel as a NEAST instead of BEAST. Being the glutton for punishment that I am though, I am the type who needs to finish crosswords in one sitting. Do or do not. There is no try ... ing to do it later.
2
JH,
I just clicked the answer key link ... and got the key.
If it's not working for you, see it at xwordinfo.com
https://www.xwordinfo.com/
(If you don't want to type it in)
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@Barry Ancona Thanks!
Solvers who insist that all answers must be real words will be happy with this one. Now, about those clues...
(I'm hardly surprised to see that Deadline enjoyed the puzzle; it's a good one for editors. Much fun.)
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I always have trouble with Sam Trabucco puzzles because he’s so creative. But I somehow managed to finish this in under an hour!
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Quite an enjoyable puzzle, because this is the sort of wordplay that my mind wanders off to when I'm supposed to be doing something productive. Sorta like wacky wordies.
I'm one of the ones who missed, on first reading, the clue at 20A. But with a couple of other entries, the SOUP part became clear, followed quickly by the PEA, then a rereading of the clue. Aha!
The next themer I got to was 29A, which gave me the most trouble of any in the puzzle. I think it was because I was still hung up on the missing letter in GAZACHO and didn't think of adding a letter in other clues. Anyway, I had a lot of the entry but wasn't sure even whether the first letter was G or L, so went about my puzzle until I circled back up to that area and saw what I'd been missing.
Very proud of myself for remembering what the Elizabeth Tower is and that there is some disgusting-sounding cereal based on the already-disgusting Oreo cookie. I even figured out what its name might be!
The one thing I never did get was 86D. Yeah, I got all the letters from the crosses, and I knew it was a sports clue, but I didn't/don't know what game the Miami Heat plays or what the actions enumerated in the clue are. But, if MHP says that DWADE is the right entry, I'll accept that.
Quite an enjoyable puzzle, and (without going back and looking at the past week's puzzles) I think I agree with Jeff's POW.
9
Deadline,
DWADE (Dwayne Wade) is a retired basketball player.
http://dwyanewade.com/
@Barry Ancona
Thanks, Barry.
I knew there was some sports person somewhere named DWAYNE, but I thought it was maybe boxing or wrestling and that there was some other last name. And a nickname that wasn't the one clued.
Sports is confoosing.
5
In case his first name ever comes up in a future puzzle, do note that he spells it “Dwyane.” (A fact that I’m sure will lead to much consternation in the comments!)
5
Nice! Challenging enough, yet do-able. I liked SPLIT PEA SOUP and really loved GIVE THE STINKEYE. AFTS and EFTS, BOW and BOWSER JR (whom I did not know) and BOWER (I had ARBOR for a while there). HOPE TO GOD seems like way overkill for a clue like "With any luck!"--to my ear, there's much more desperation in it. Anyway, overall I thought it was quite good.
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Good point about "With any luck." That seems to happen often, where the difference in intensity between clue and answer is so great that they don't seem to mean the same thing.
2
Did anyone notice that we not only had BLEEP CENSOR, but EMU in this puzzles well?
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@JayTee
I hate when I don't hit all the letters correctly!
"…this puzzle as well."
2
@JayTee
...and #$%* US SENATE.
1
YEAH, WHY NOT finish in the center with this statement that DEFINITELy doesn't seem that definite to me. The other theme entries did make sense. A good one to while away a lazy Saturday afternoon.
A bowl of SPLIT PEA SOUP sounds good to me right now. Too bad I don't have the ingredients. I'm a guy who likes to make his soup from scratch.
2
Great puzzle, deserving of Jeff Chen’s POW! So much to love that I gave NO LIKEY a pass, though it clanged pretty hard. Not sure when Sam came up with LONG TIME NO SEE for “ENTURY,” but Andrew Ries included the same clue and answer in a terrific Puns & Anagrams variety puzzle back in August (which Steve L. helpfully alerted us to at the time).
Rare to get a hat trick on Sunday: killer theme, great cluing, and interesting fill. Sam definitely scored an “ADDA” / A PLUS PLUS with this one.
(the answer to Sam’s question at the end of his Constructor Note can be found at the end of Jeff Chen’s Xwordinfo.com column).
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@Puzzlemucker
Crikey! Thank you for that tip -- I would never have figured that out either. Never.
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@Caitlin
I suspect that we are among the 99.9% on that! Funny, for NO LIKEY, I first tried to come up with a variation of “Crikey” (CRAIKEY?).
2
@Puzzlemucker
Me NO LIKEY NO LIKEY.
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