Adherent to the Five K's / FRI 11-11-22 / Sportscaster Adams who hosted Good Morning Football / Film technique for revealing a character's psychological state / Chamber oriented so that those who face it also face Jerusalem / Hit HBO show whose main character worked at the nonprofit We Got Y'all / Popular paper flower variety / Blended style of facial makeup / Creamy South Asian drinkConstructor: Brooke Husic and Erik Agard Show
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium  THEME: none [UPDATE: apparently there is a theme: FANTASY SERIES, WISH LIST, DREAM SEQUENCE ... this explains so much, most notably why the overall fill felt comparatively tepid for a themeless puzzle, esp. a themeless by these particularly stellar constructors (when you have fixed theme answers, your grid freedom is perforce limited); it also explains the weird grid thing I definitely noticed, which is the fact that it's 16 wide ... it appeared to be 16 wide For No Good Reason, but now that I see WISH LIST is a themer ... there's your reason (grid has to be an even number of columns wide in order for a word with an even number of letters to sit dead center). Anyway, the write-up below was composed under the mistaken impression that the puzzle was themeless—I don't think it matters much, but who knows? That's all. Apologies for the confusion.] [UPDATE UPDATE: apparently it's not just the first words of the themers that have something in common, but the second as well—SERIES, LIST, SEQUENCE] [Really wish for my brain's sake they would run themes on theme days and keep Friday and Saturday sacred] Word of the Day: ESMÉ Weijun Wang (20A: Writer ___ Weijun Wang) — Esmé Weijun Wang is an American writer. She is the author of The Border of Paradise (2016) and The Collected Schizophrenias (2019). She is the recipient of a Whiting Award and in 2017, Granta Magazine named her to its decennial list of the Best of Young American Novelists. (wikipedia) • • • Saw right through 1A: Launch party? and so dropped NASA ARK ROCK and then OVER into the grid in quick succession, right off the bat. Seemed like a precursor to certain success with all those long Downs up there in the NW, only ... SECOND LINE was the only thing that went in clean (3D: Dance section of a 33-Across brass-band parade). AVO- seemed like it wanted to be AVOCADO-something, but I couldn't figure out how in the world AVOCADOs heated anything (I was picturing an AVOCADO-green ... oven??) (2D: Option for high-temperature cooking). But the real hold-up in this section was my absolute certainty that the answer to 1D: "You bought it? It's yours" was "NO RETURNS!" I mean UDDER worked, SINGED worked ... so I thought maybe there was some nickname for New Orleans *besides* NOLA (ROLA? RULA?), and as for 37A: Introspective question ... maybe the LINE part of SECOND LINE was wrong and the answer was "NOW?" But that's not very "introspective," really. *Then* I thought "oh god there's some kind of theme involving letter switches, and the "RN" in RETURNS turns to "NM" for some reason (at *that* point I thought the [Introspective question] was MOI!?). But that didn't really make sense. And then I just gave in to NOLA and erased everything after "NO RE-" and I saw REFUNDS immediately. What a stupid hole to step into. A stupid, deep, sticky hole. "NO RETURNS!" ... so certain-seeming! After that, it was back go Very Easy and whoosh whoosh all over the place, and by the time I hit GIDDY-UP I was (appropriately) really flying: There were many strong spots today, but my favorite moment was probably the clue on WISH LIST (nice to have your apex clue go with your marquee, dead-center answer). That clue is baroque ... and perfect (38A: Noun phrase that's present perfect indicative). A WISH LIST ... is a list of things one would like to receive, so it indicates ... perfect ... presents—just a great repurposing of the grammatical mood ("present perfect indicative"). The puzzle's main strength wasn't so much scintillating answers as overall smoothness and subject variety. This puzzle goes a lot of places, and it goes there so deftly and unclunkily. When I think about what *polished* grids look like, this is something like what I have in mind. It's not that there are *no* repeaters or otherwise familiar crosswordy answers (NOLA LEIA ESME ALOE ECO OLAY ... you see these all the time, of course). It's that a. there are relatively few, b. they are propping up gorgeous longer answers, which are the things that really grab your attention, and c. even as repeaters go, they are real, solid, familiar things. AUK is definitely a Crossword Bird, but it's also just a bird, a real thing, so it doesn't play as tiresome, and it especially doesn't play as tiresome when it's not offered up in a glut of other superfamiliar short stuff. Choose your repeaters wisely, spread them out if you can, and for god's sake let them be in the service of longer, more impressive stuff. Today's puzzle does all this perfectly. The difficulty returned, a little, at the end of the solve, specifically in the SE corner, which, like the NW corner, gave me some trouble, though this time the trouble came not from my making a highly intractable mistake, but from plain old toughness. The first issue was ... well, it was also a mistake: MEAL for MENU at 30A: Chef's creation. That wrong answer gummed up the works, since those two wrong letters would've provided the first letters in two of the long Downs in that section. Crucial letters ... wrong letters. Sigh. After that, there was a crush of sports trivia that I struggled with to varying degrees. Had to stare at the phrase "sports theater" a while to figure how to get from there to anything that might fit at blank blank E. The staring worked, thankfully, but it definitely caused a solving lull. Then there was TIM Anderson, whom I know very well, but somehow, out of context, and with such a plain last name, I blanked on him. Then there was KAY Adams, whom I didn't know at all because football shmootball (57A: Sportscaster Adams who hosted "Good Morning Football"). Thought she might be a FAY. Anyway, between the incorrect MEAL and the proper noun sports answers, things were slower going in here. Other issues in this section: an owl says what now? ("WHOO!"). Is that ... canonical? I had the "W" and then no idea. That seems like a stretch, and also like a clue that's *designed* to make you write in a wrong answer, namely HOOT. Not thrilled about that. I love SMOKEY EYE as an answer but it still took me a while to pick up. Also, the only association I have with the concept comes from a very stupid controversy involving an innocent joke about a putrid right-wing politician ... so I like it as an answer even though it forces me to remember said putrid human being (never fun). Just a few other missteps. Empty NETTER before Empty-NESTER (66A: Empty ___). PRESS OP (?) before PRESSER (11D: Event for journalists, informally). Overall, this was a fun, flowing Friday, easy but with enough spice and kick to make things interesting. See you tomorrow. Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld [Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook] Read more... Beekeeper Shavitz who lent his name to a popular lip balm / THU 11-10-22 / Small shell-shaped confection / Dmitri formulator of periodic law / Radisson competitor / Ugluk or Gorbag in The Lord of the Rings / Rupiah spendersConstructor: Dan Caprera Relative difficulty: Easy THEME: PLOT (62A: What's spelled out, appropriately, after mapping the coordinates indicated by this puzzle's circled letters) — theme answers contain letter strings (in circled squares) that serve as plot coordinates, and those coordinates (N2, A9, D1, and K7) lead you to the letters P, L, O, and T, respectively: Though you do need the actual coordinates in your grid in order to "solve" the theme part (my software doesn't show them—here's what the puzzle grid looked like online): Theme answers:
Word of the Day: Dmitri MENDELEEV (32D: Dmitri ___, formulator of the periodic law) —
• • •
Baffled by this—not so much by the fact that you would go to all this architectural fuss for a thematic element that doesn't affect the solve one iota, but that the end result of said fuss would be so astonishingly anticlimactic. It's like some kind of anti-puzzle, a joke about puzzles, a send-up of puzzles. Is it art? I have no idea. I just know that you *told me* that PLOT was what I would get if I plotted ... so why ... would I bother ... to plot, then? Couldn't I just take your word for it? There should, at the very least, have been *some* element of revelation to this thing—even if we do end up with some non-answer like "PLOT," at least Let *Us* Arrive At It. Make this a contest puzzle or something, where solvers have to actually *find* something. This is like handing a kid a connect-the-dots puzzle or a maze that has already been solved—have fun, kid! From where I was sitting, this was just an undersized, extremely easy (i.e. non-Thursday) puzzle with black bars on two sides ... for some reason. My software was screaming at me "There are notes! We can't replicate some of the grid elements! Do it onliiiiiine!" but as usual I ignored my software and plowed forward, only to find out that I didn't need those grid elements At All except to figure out some post-puzzle thing that the puzzle had actually already figured out for me. Seriously, what are we doing here? The puzzle was very easy, which I think is the new way of appeasing solvers, of distracting them when there's no there there—when you're high on success, you're far less apt to be critical of the puzzle. I was slow in only a couple of places. ENTRAP, for some reason (27D: Set up, in a way). Just took me forever to see. And then I still don't know what the hell kind of "exercise" TOETAPS are supposed to be (23D: Core-strengthening floor exercises). I'm tapping my toes right now. [Looks at core] ... Not seeing it. I guess I need to be on the "floor." Anyway, slowish there. And then I couldn't quite spell MENDELEEV's name right. I think I thought he was some other scientist guy. A geneticist, maybe? Ah, here we go: Gregor MENDEL. That's what my brain was thinking. Ah well, not like the answers crossing the end of his name were hard. The doubling of the letter string "INCA" was really distracting, mostly because they are side-by-side just one column apart (in INCAS and INCANT). Since both of them run through the always horrible UNPC, I think I'd've torn allllll of that section out and rethought it. I like MADELEINE (10D: Small shell-shaped confection), and I really like the MADELEINE / MENDELEEV symmetry. Mellifluous. TATAS in the plural, on the other hand: hard no (17D: Farewells). My only true mistake was STORK for OTTER (2D: Animal with webbed feet). Special thanks to the OMNI for being a familiar friend (first thing in the grid!) despite the fact that as far as I know I've never seen an OMNI irl. It's a mythical place to me. I imagine the fancier ORCs stay there. See you tomorrow. Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld P.S. the term is STUNT DOUBLE. Lucy Lawless had a STUNT DOUBLE. Of course that STUNT DOUBLE was (I'll take your word for it) a STUNTWOMAN. But when you phrase it [Lucy Lawless had one ...], the only reasonable answer there is STUNT DOUBLE. [Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook] Read more... Mattel acquisition of 1997 / WED 11-9-22 / Prophetess in the Torah / 1987 thriller featuring the same characters as TV's "Californication" / 1990 action film featuring the same characters as the film "Collateral"Constructor: David Tuffs Relative difficulty: Easy THEME: "same characters" — famous movies are clued as having the "same characters" as some other movies (or TV shows), only in this case the clues (obviously) mean "characters" as in "letters (in the titles),," not "roles (in the shows themselves)" Theme answers:
Word of the Day: "GOTTI" (22A: Travolta film with a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes) — Gotti is a 2018 American biographical crime film about New York Citymobster John Gotti, directed by Kevin Connolly, and written by Lem Dobbsand Leo Rossi. It stars John Travolta as Gotti, alongside his real-life wife Kelly Preston as Gotti's wife Victoria in her penultimate film. [...] Gotti underperformed both critically and commercially; it grossed just $6 million against a $10 million production budget and received universally negative reviews from critics, who lamented the writing, aesthetics and performances, although its use of makeup and Travolta's performance received some praise. It is one of the few films to hold an approval rating of 0% on the website Rotten Tomatoes. (wikipedia) • • • As for the theme, I never saw it. That is, as I was filling in the last themer ("SINGIN' IN THE RAIN"), I thought "wait, there's no revealer clue? ... what is this theme?" Then I noticed that the theme clues had information in them beyond "1987 thriller" and "2003 Marvel movie" (which had been all I'd needed to get the answers). So the first themer clue I actually read all the way through was the last one. I of course knew instantly that "SINGIN' IN THE RAIN" and "Stranger Things" don't share any characters, so I knew instantly that "characters" meant "letters." And that was that. I'm kinda glad I spared myself that revelation until the very end because it meant that as I was solving I at least had some *hope* that a clever revealer was on its way. If I'd seen the "character" pun first thing, well, the puzzle would've been even harder to endure than it was, and it was pretty hard to endure, *in spite* of being *exceedingly* easy to solve. Once again (this is happening an awful lot lately), I couldn't even make it out of the NW corner without thinking "that's a lot of subpar fill for one small corner, I hope it's not all gonna be like this." But it was. ADE to ATT to ITT to OER to OBI to ETE to IDA (crossing IDAHO). And I'm leaving a lot of other sad repeaters off that list. The fill was so complacent. So yesteryear. I don't understand the total lack of emphasis on clean grids at this establishment. The theme is (apparently) everything, and all you have to do is get the fill into plausible "yeah I've seen that before" shape. I will say that the SE corner is 10x better than the NW corner, and "I CAN'T SEE!" is an unexpected answer, lively in its urgency (41A: "It's too dark in here!"). But for the most part, filling this grid in was a dreary exercise. I was writing in answers almost as fast as I could read the clues: still dreary. There's something depressing about wasting one of the longer answers on a cross-reference that sends the solving clear to some other part of the grid for the other part of the answer, which ends up just being bad short fill they're trying to dress up (in this case, the DEE from DEE / REYNOLDS). That's like someone noticed "Hey, we've got this cruddy DEE sitting here, maybe we can spruce it up by tying it to REYNOLDS?"). But you're not "sprucing" anything, you're just making the solve more clunky and awkward (and not fooling anyone: DEE is DEE is DEE, below average). MAPLE / TREE was also a disappointing crossref. I have to go back to my left to get a second word as obvious and semi-redundant as TREE? Come on. [MIRIAM!] Back to the theme. I don't know how hard it is to find movie / TV titles that share "characters," let alone find movie titles you can do that with that also fit symmetrically in a grid. But I don't know if it matters. The concept, done once, sort of merits an "oh, cute." But turned into a theme, the cuteness wears off. Or, in my case, you don't even notice it because the movies are so easy to guess without the theme part. I thought the theme was going to have something with "ACT" at first (after "FATAL ATTRACTION" and "SISTER ACT"). Something about ACTing ... in movies ... I dunno. Anyway that's not where it went. It went to "characters." OK. I think using TV show titles is a glaring inconsistency. If TV shows had also been among the theme answers, *or* if all the titles in the clues had been TV shows, I wouldn't have cared, but as is, it looks like your movie theme just wouldn't work so you cheated and went to TV a few times ("Californication," "Riverdale," "Stranger Things"). I like movies, and I like seeing them in my grid, and I like "The Well-Tempered CLAVIER," so maybe I'll try to take whatever joy that offers me and head into my Wednesday. Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow. Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld [Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook] Read more... Colombian cornmeal cake / TUE 11-8-22 / Award-winning Chinese artist/activist / First noble gas alphabetically / Activity tracked by the Nest or mySunPower app / Bad-tempered and combativeConstructor: Enrique Henestroza Anguiano Relative difficulty: Easy THEME: EYE-OPENERS (67A: Enlightening experiences ... or what 18-, 26-, 41- and 54-Across have, phonetically speaking) — four theme answers all "open" with a homophone of "eye": Theme answers:
Word of the Day: AI WEIWEI (41A) —
• • • Well, that's a better revealer than what I was expecting, which was "FOUR EYES!" With "EYE OPENERS" you get both a revealer *and* a fifth themer (i.e. it describes the conditions of the theme *and* satisfies those conditions, "opening," as it does, with "EYE"). Whereas with "FOUR EYES!" you'd get a rude expression as well as a fifth ... eye, rendering the revealer itself nonsensical. Annnnyway, hi. How are you? This puzzle started rough for me, as the fill seemed (as it has often seemed lately) somewhat clunky. ILIAC, which for me completed the INTL ISIT NOLA SOAMI ILIAC cranny up top, was the answer that actually made me stop and take a picture. There just wasn't a thing in the NW to be interested in (AREPAs and DOLMA are tasty, but not interesting enough on their own to hold up a whole corner). Doesn't help that the first themer is also the most boring / crosswordesey of the bunch (ay ay ay, it's AYE again!). Even when I dropped down and got all of the NW corner (including ACADEMIA and the decent ENERGY USE), there just didn't seem much to be interested in. And the first themer wasn't too promising. And I don't know that the fill really ever got off the ground. EREADER ESME ADIEU GOTTI DEE IOTAS ALTOS CARTA OSTER YEESH OARED ... I'm looking for any part that seemed particularly clean or any (non-theme) answer that seemed particularly entertaining, and ORNERY is the only thing that actually made me smile—I love the countrified quaintness of that term. AREPA ARENA AMANA, NONA NOLA—the fill isn't horrific, by any means, but it just ... gets by. The theme, however, ended up being solid, and the themers that followed "AYE, CAPTAIN!" were all far more lively and welcome. I was so happy to see AI WEIWEI, a crossworthy figure whose crossworthiness I was pushing for ten years ago. I actually misremembered debuting his name in the NYTXW—he must have just been in an early draft of one of my puzzles. I searched and found the record of me asking my more experienced crossword friends (in 2012) if AI WEIWEI was OK as a puzzle answer: Despite AI WEIWEI's international fame at that point, it was not a given that the NYTXW would deem him well known enough to appear in a puzzle. In the same Facebook conversation pictured above, a veteran constructor revealed that Shortz "once singled out HU JINTAO as an obscure entry in one of my puzzles. You know, the president of China." Anyway, AI WEIWEI ended up debuting in the NYTXW in 2014. I can't remember if I used him in a puzzle for another outlet or not. The point is, he feels like a friend to me, and I was happy to see him (he's also the reason this puzzle is 16 (instead of the usual 15) wide—in order for an answer with an even-numbered letter count to sit dead center, the grid has to be an even number of columns wide). He was the best answer in a good set of themers, and, as I said up front, the revealer really was a winner. Nice to end on a high note (even though I apparently technically *literally* ended on TERROR!) Notes:
Enjoy the rest of your Tuesday. See you tomorrow. Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld P.S. UPDATE! I wasn't dreaming! When my one Sunday NYTXW puzzle (co-constructed w/ Caleb Madison), came out in 2012, I *wrote* about how Will had balked at AI WEIWEI. His words, verbatim:
Oh well. He was right about IS DONE, at any rate. Read more... Extinct megafauna species whose name derives from the Greek for "breast tooth" / MON 11-7-22 / Why the troubled look / Stage name for rapper Tracy Lauren Marrow / Like thick-crust, rectangular pizza / Kind of phone signal that's nearly obsoleteConstructor: Jill Singer Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (***for a Monday***) (just a tad on the slow side is all) THEME: "WHAT'S BUGGING YOU?" (36A: "Why the troubled look?" ... or a hint to 17-, 24-, 48- and 58-Across) — metaphorical insect phrases signifying disturbance: Theme answers:
Word of the Day: SOBA (1D: Japanese buckwheat noodle) —
• • • Gonna have to be a quick one today because despite the "extra" hour I am somehow strapped for time this evening. Conceptually this theme is very good. As for the execution, I wasn't so into it. Really didn't care for the split first themer, mostly because it slowed me down considerably, but also because splitting a themer that badly (putting part 2 wayyyy on the other side of the grid) kind of deadens its effect. I don't *want* to go all the way over the other side of the grid in the middle of solving my Monday puzzle. So I don't. I just wait. Which means I just get BUTTERFLIES. Which isn't terribly interesting. Also, I don't know how great the whole cluing conceit is. The use of imagined quotations, where we're supposed to complete the elliptical phrases ... I guess all those theme clues are supposed to be *responses* to the central question "WHAT'S BUGGING YOU?," but again, everything is so out of order that the theme just doesn't have the impact that it should have. It truly wasn't until I was all the way done with the puzzle that I was able to go back and see how everything was supposed to work. It felt a bit labored and awkward in execution. But I do think the core concept is very clever. The fill, however, yikes, I remain baffled that constructors aren't held to higher standards, aren't ordered back to the drawing board to make the fill smoother, cleaner, more polished. That BUTI ENTO IONO ECRU UNUM ESE center is pretty much inedible, and much of the shorter stuff all over the grid isn't much better (MTS ICET PHYS YAYAS APRS (!!?!!?!) etc.). I liked MASTODON, especially because it's having a (social media) moment right now as untold numbers of people flee The Bird Site. Bye bye, TWEETs! (I'm on MASTODON now @, by the way, not that you should care in the slightest) (10D: Extinct megafauna species whose name derives from the Greek for "breast tooth"). I liked BY MISTAKE as well—that's a prepositional phrase I can get behind. I was slow today because of UDON before SOBA and ISH before EST (4D: Approx.). Also ENDO- before ENTO- and ATMO- before IONO- and absolutely no idea about BORN until I get Every Single Cross, what a weird clue (38D: Created). That's it. Oh, and one last thing: please go see DECISION TO LEAVE (2022), both because it's great and because I have questions. Oh, and one *last* last thing: Happy 30th birthday, Andrew. Keep solving crosswords with your awesome girlfriend, Sophie—she sounds like a keeper! Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld [Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook] Read more... Marbled savory snack from China / SUN 11-6-22 / Electronic toy with a blue pull handle / Flat-topped military hat / The Tasmanian one has been extinct since the 19th century / God who was said to be in love with this sister while still in the womb / Support group with a hyphen in its nameConstructor: Michael Lieberman Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium THEME: "Length-ening" — familiar phrases get two changes: the addition of "EN" and the changing of the spelling / meaning of the word that follows "EN"—so the phrases have been "length-ENed" but also respelled: Theme answers:
Word of the Day: "The MEAGRE Company" (Frans Hals portrait) (30A) —
• • • Liked the way this one started, with the BLURRIER TAQUERIA of the NW corner, but with the revelation of the first themer, SQUARE EN ROUTE, I could feel my spirits deflate a little. "We're just adding 'EN'!? That's what 'Length-ening' means!? O... boy." There was something that seemed so, well, MEAGRE about the concept (more on MEAGRE later). And then came MARINE ENCORE, following the same add-an-EN pattern, which felt even more flaccid, and I reconciled myself to merely enduring yet another Sunday. But I will admit that "HOW EN SUITE IT IS!" ... well, it didn't win me over, exactly, but it definitely brought me around a bit. That is the kind of all-out loopiness I really want, in fact *need*, to see in themes that are this basic (e.g. add-a-letter (or two), drop-a-letter (or two), etc.). You wanna do some dumb puns, well OK, but please, nothing ... MEAGRE. Go for it. Better to be really truly gorily horrible, completely loony, then merely mildly chuckleworthy. "HOW EN SUITE IT IS!" has a fearless insanity that I admire. I also really do like that we're dealing not just with an "EN" addition, but with a complete word change as well (in the word that follows the "EN"), even though the title of the puzzle doesn't capture that aspect of the theme At All (it's a really bad title, tbh). I even retrospectively went back and gave a little credit to the clue on SQUARE EN ROUTE (24A: Why the party's about to get less hip?). It creates a ludicrous situation. Now, not all the themers (or their clues) do this, but there were enough that did. Enough, that is, to make me like this puzzle somewhat more than I like your average straightforwardly themed Sunday puzzle, and way more than I liked it at first blush. THE ROYAL ENNUI is very clever, and, well, I find it very difficult to be mad at an answer like "EN GARDE, IANS OF THE GALAXY!" That is a Marvel movie I would actually see. There is some "oof" fill here and there, though. Let's start with MEAGRE, which clearly I am not yet over. I am kinda happy to learn about the Hals painting, which has a cool history, and which Van Gogh apparently rhapsodized over in a letter to his brother, Theo. But as fill, MEAGRE is super-ugly, and today it's also ridiculously hard. I needed every cross and was still certain something was wrong. Apparently this is how Brits spell "meager" (!?), but in its (very few) recentish past appearances, solvers were always alerted of both its meaning and its Britishness—we get Neither here: nothing to tell us that meagerness is at issue, and nothing to tell us about the British spelling. Worse, we get a *Dutch* painter, so the hell knows what letters are going to show up, really. MEAGRE made me MOAN even more than ÉTAPE (oof, crosswordese of the oldenest kind) or EWASTE (a thing that I acknowledge is real but that is still bottom of the E-barrel fill). Then there's the execrable and always unwelcome EL*N MUSK, why!? That is a choice. I do not understand that choice. I also do not understand putting "IT" in your puzzle not once not twice not thrice but quattrice! HOW EN SUITE *IT* IS, IN *IT*, "*IT* CAME!," BOP-IT! make it stop. A couple of "IT"s in a Sunday-sized puzzle is probably not going to draw anyone's attention, but four ... four is four, and it's a lot. You may think, "I ... CON DU IT ..." ... but you really shouldn't. Round-up!:
All hail the return of Standard Time, the Best Time, God's Own Time. Please enjoy the hour you were denied by Demon DST. See you ... soon, I hope. Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld *kealoa = short, common answer that you can't just fill in quickly because two or more answers are viable, Even With One or More Letters In Place. From the classic [Mauna ___] KEA/LOA conundrum. See also, e.g. [Heaps] ATON/ALOT, ["Git!"] "SHOO"/"SCAT," etc. [Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook] Read more... Average American allusively / SAT 11-5-22 / Alternatives to baskets / Famous game-saving 1954 World Series play by Willie Mays / Peter Pettigrew's animagus in the Harry Potter books / Brined white cheeses / The beginning and end of all music per Max Reger / Traditional Polynesian beverage that numbs the mouth / One in a nursery rhyme pocketful / Location of a daith piercing / Cardamom-containing coffeehouse creationConstructor: John Westwig Relative difficulty: Medium THEME: none Word of the Day: THE CATCH (13A: Famous game-saving 1954 World Series play by Willie Mays) — The Catch was a baseball play made by New York Giants center fielder Willie Mayson September 29, 1954, during Game 1 of the 1954 World Series at the Polo Grounds in Upper Manhattan, New York City. During the eighth inning with the score tied 2–2, Cleveland Indians batter Vic Wertz hit a deep fly ball to center field that had the runners on base poised to score. However, Mays made an over-the-shoulder catch while on the run to record the out, and his throw back to the infield prevented the runners from advancing. The Giants won the game 5–2 in extra innings, and eventually the World Series. The Catch is regarded as one of the greatest plays in baseball history. (wikipedia) • • • Weird U-shaped beginning to this solve, as I went ETHOS, SEEPED, and then, tentatively, JIBED (8D: Agreed). IRANI was also tentative, though JAM UP was more confident, and finally UNO CARD went in, the first thing that actually felt rock solid (11D: Skip or Reverse). That answer may also have been the highlight of this puzzle for me, as PINERY (?) set things on a rough track (12D: Dole Plantation, e.g.), and then the first marquee answer, HOLD A SEANCE, continued down that track, only a little more so. Look, HOLD A SEANCE is not exactly EAT A SANDWICH in its arbitrary verb-phrasiness, but it's definitely EAT A SANDWICH-esque. HOLD A SEANCE is tighter, for sure, more focused. I don't even dislike it, really. It's just that ... there are only two other answers in the whole puzzle that are this long or longer, so it's bearing a lot of weight, this answer; maybe if the rest of the grid had been really humming, HOLD A SEANCE would seem like a fine, even colorful addition to the party. But the bright, longer answers are simply few and far between today, and the other stuff is merely OK. HOLD A SEANCE isn't really up to the task of being one of so few marquee answers today. Early in the solve, that answer just felt a bit clunky, *as marquee answers go*, and it didn't feel like a harbinger of good. Once I dropped through NOT GOOD and CRAPPY, it felt like the grid was trying to tell me something. Confessing something. I don't actually think the puzzle was CRAPPY, but ... take CRAPPY (38A: Bad). I really hate it in my grid. I mean, I say it, from time to time, but it's an ugly word. It makes the grid ugly and depressing in a way that CRUMMY or CRUDDY just doesn't. IOSAPP is also ugly, in a different way—a somewhat worse way, because it feels like it wants to be original and fresh, but it just looks made-up and weird. I mean, it's a real thing, but it's just not an entertaining answer. Feels forced. PRSAVVY also feels forced. Very forced. Like, extremely forced. PRSKILLS googles twice as well, and even that feels a little iffy. I get that the it must be tempting to debut an answer, but maybe that answer in your swollen wordlist isn't ... great. Consider it. HIDE AND GO SEEK ... is a thing (14D: Game where it always counts) (cute clue, clever use of "it"). I wouldn't say the "GO" part, nor would most people in most circumstances, but it's definitely ... a thing. I do love PRIVATE EYES—a very big part of both my leisure and working life—and I love both the movies in the clue, so that was the real winning answer today, for me (50A: Figures in "Knives Out" and "The Maltese Falcon"). But it just wasn't enough to lift this one out of the humdrum. The puzzle was properly tough, so I got a good workout, but I didn't get much of what you'd call "enjoyment." The one thing this puzzle did give me was a feeling of vocabulary power, as I had no trouble with [Ochlocracy], a word I learned from a *brutal* Bob Klahn puzzle back in 2007! Always nice to learn something from a crossword and then be able to put it to use ... fifteen years later (!). What else? Not sure why we're still doing Harry Potter clues, honestly. I mean, if you've got SNAPE, then you don't really have any other cluing options, but RAT!? To be clear, I am, in fact, trying to "cancel" J.K. Rowling. That is precisely what is going on. I won't succeed. But she's the rich white nice-lady face of a global bigotry movement, so ... pass. "RAP GOD" feels exceedingly hard as clued (17D: Eminem track with the Guinness World Record for "most words in a hit single"). I'm not nearly as rap-averse as many of you—not rap-averse at all, in fact—but the very existence of this song was news to me. But I don't mind it, in that you can infer the answer from fair crosses, and you learn a bit of trivia along the way. I got super-annoyed at the puzzle when I tried to move up into the NW corner from below, towards the end, and while I could work out CHAI TEA from -TEA (2D: Cardamom-containing coffeehouse creation), the other two 7-letter Downs leading up into that section were giving me -ING and ... -ING (not helpful!): Luckily THE CATCH ended up being a gimme, and the corner fell from there. Only real error today came slam-bang in the middle of the puzzle, where, faced with -DDAYS at 34A: Romps, I wrote in SALAD DAYS. But then I got out of that jam with the help of the LADIES, who gave me the "L"—"Take the L," they said (This seemed unkind ... but then I understood). The "L" helped me ditch SALAD and replace it with different greenery: FIELD! I finished the puzzle having no idea how I was supposed to get from [Unsalted, perhaps] to ICY. Just baffled. Was thinking about snacks, cocktails ... people's dispositions ... it was only after I started down the road of "what are some things that are ICY?" that I hit upon "sidewalks in winter," and bam, the connection between salt and ice all of a sudden made sense. Maybe if I'd solved this puzzle in winter, that connection would've been clearer. We certainly salt our walkway and sidewalk multiple times each winter to keep ourselves and our neighbors from, you know, dying. But here in early November, no ice as yet, so the clue did not compute. And today, no ice again. 70 degrees in fact. Gonna go soak it in while I can. Enjoy the rest of your day. Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld [Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook] Read more... What does a dash mean in NYT Crossword?You've probably noticed that some of the clues are nothing but dashes, and the entries for those clues are not numbered. Those are not production errors. The dashes represent the end of the entry after we've added the SUN back to the entry on the other side of it. Let's take a look at 20A.
What is your favorite old TV show crossword?Recent Clues
We found 1 solutions for What's Your Favorite Old Tv Show? . The most likely answer for the clue is BJANDTHEBAYER. We found more than 1 answers for What's Your Favorite Old Tv Show?.
Is there a Saturday NY Times crossword?The Saturday New York Times crossword puzzle is the most challenging puzzle of the week, which is why it has gained such an eager following. The most serious solvers know that actually finishing the puzzle is no small feat.
Does not include crossword clue?We found 1 solutions for Does Not Include. . The most likely answer for the clue is OMITS.
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Fare thats eaten hands free nyt crossword
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