"Duality Quality," 5/7/17

Hi, loyal readers; guest introduction-writer Jamie here. I won't aspire to duplicate Allie's quipping, delightful written voice, or exhaustive lists. Let me get straight to listing a few facts about this week's puzzle that feel particularly salient to me:

• We finished this week's puzzle quickly. (24:33)
• We both enjoyed the theme and the execution of the theme.
• It's nice, I guess, to know that there are enough "Funny Amy"s with precisely seven letters in their last names (POEHLER, SEDARIS, SCHUMER) that one really has to struggle with the clue.
• This puzzle included the word "SWOLE." So.

First Fritz out!
------------------------------

Allie in. Should I take a hint about how "exhaustive" my lists are? Should this be the end of the post?

Haha! Of course not! ONWARD!

Clues I especially liked! Yay!

• I think it's a little unfair to use Game of Thrones clues multiple weeks in a row, but I benefit from it! Not only was IMPS easy enough, JAPES is one of GRRM's favorite Tyrion words. Which drives me crazy. I hate that guy and his stupid addicting books.
• I liked the cluing of Uncle Sam/GOATEED.
• TACOS/GUACAMOLE cross. Happy belated Cinco de Mayo!
• BASELINE VASELINE was certainly my favorite themer.
• Shout out to EMERSON, where my talented sister-in-law Marissa went.
• Took us forever to get ACTUALSIZE for Not blown up. Cute.

I'm too young for this $h*t

• Abie's Irish Rose, which was an audience success and a critical failure, apparently. The Fate of the Furious (aka Fast and Furious 8) of its day.

Really?

• Can we spell go-kart with a c? (That's c for cart, not co-kart.)
• Can we spell schnozz with one z? 

Things I learned today:

• LBO is a Wall St Thing. (Leveraged buyout. Uncle Dicky, if you are ready this, I'm sorry.)
• MIR means peace in Russian. I thought it just meant space station.
• Kachina dolls are from the Hopi people.
• Xian is the home of the Terra Cotta Army. I looked this up and it's pretty amazing. Seems like a good travel goal.

Things I have learned from previous crossword puzzles:

• DORAG. A rapper topper. I mean, I knew what a do-rag was before I started this blog, but I now store it in the part of my brain reserved for crosswordese. I keep it next to EOS. And across from AGLET.

Times I got to use my French major this week 

• No French here? We did get Spanish and Italian though, which are all basically the same.
• Wait there was one! MADAME. Come on though, everyone knows that. I'm not special.
• Also, "The Adventures of Alix" is a French comic book. But I didn't know this. Check out this picture from Wikipedia though: sign me up!
  

Second Fritz out!

"New England Chatter," 4/30/17

YOU GUYS. This puzzle was an unmitigated disaster for me. I'd like to think it's also a disaster for the NYT, the crossword community, and the world at large.

Time to finish/time I gave up: 1:23:39. I did finish the puzzle, but only because Jamie looked at the answer and helped me with the end. And even then we had 4 letters wrong. It was ugly.

Commentary:
The sad thing is, I actually liked this theme when I started out and got SPOCKPLUGS. I thought it was kind of funny. The bottom half of the puzzle basically went fine. And then it went south in the north. (Ha.)

Instead of my usual post sections, I thought I would just list for you all the things that I didn't know or generally went awry with this one.

• Let's start with the the clue that makes me think the apocalypse is nigh: ACALLTOOMS (24A Yoga teacher's invitation?) No one in their right mind pronounces "om" as "ahm." Rex blasts this failure, of course. Even the official NYT commentator gently says that this clue "falters a bit in [her] opinion because OMS is typically pronounced with a long O." You think???

We did eventually sort out that section of the puzzle (2nd last part we got.) The part I was so lost on that I needed help to finish was the center.

• PASSINGMOCK (69A Ridicule shouted out of a moving car?) "Passing mark" is barely a phrase. Using the word "mark" for "grade" seems old-fashioned to me. We had the MOCK part filled in, understood it meant "mark," and still couldn't come up with anything.
• So, struggling mightily, I got no help from any of these crosses. Maybe I should have known some of them, but I didn't.
• EUTERPE Sister of Erato
• SACCO 1920's anarchist in a prominent trial. Ok, in hindsight I think I learned about this in 11th grade.
• EFS Buffet centerpiece. I actually considered the little "trick" going on here and still didn't understand that it was supposed to be EFS. I thought about EFF, but that didn't work. I also considered EYE (center of a buffeting wind?) and EGG (a giant chafing dish of scrambled eggs?)
• TALIA Shire of Rocky
• END Squash.This one is a "maybe" on the scale of whether I would have eventually figured it out.
• AGITA Aggravation. I looked up this word. It's not even related to agitate, which is a word I know. Efs you, agita.
• To recap, not knowing any of this horsepoop left me with _A_______MOCK. Hard to believe I couldn't get it from that.

Moving on. Here are some of the other bad things. I honestly can't list all the things I had wrong at one point or another without breaking Blogger with an infinitely long post.

• Roster shortener ETALII. Et al, I know. This was two letters beyond my ken, and both of them were I. Not easy to guess. Especially when the cross is...
• First daughter of the 1960's LUCI. Granted, I didn't even know the answer, but why didn't she spell it Lucy like everyone else by that name?
• Inclined ASLOPE. Blech.
• Flower arrangement RACEME. According to Wikipedia, a raceme is an unbranched, indeterminate type of inflorescence bearing pedicellate flower. Must have missed that day in...herbology.
• Where Einstein was born ULM. "Germany" was too long, so that was the end of that for me.
• Strict Sabbath observer of old ESSENE. Now I know.
• Chrissie HYNDE is from The Pretenders. She looks like a badass. 
• ___-turn NOU. For a long time I thought this was going to be YOU, as some sort of terrible non-pun. While I'm glad it's not that, I still hate this one. I think the ___- construction is confusing. So, that was stopping me from getting ASNAP (also lame), and it didn't help that I didn't know...
• ANGELA Cartwright was the real name of one of the von Trapp children. Who knows this? It looks like she has done some other projects, so maybe that's why people know her, but it would take a real die-hard fan to know all the kids' names.
• In case you didn't look it up--she was Brigitta, who was the books one. Not to be confused with Louisa, who was a nasty trickster.
• Mother of Helios THEA. I have really got to study mythology one of these days if I ever hope to be a giant in the crossworld.
• Nitwits SIMPS. Neither of these words is useful.
• Shere HITE wrote Women and Love, which I have not read, but perhaps that's my own fault.
• I will admit that I had no idea how to spell MOHEL. Would have guessed MOYLE. In fact, did guess that, and spent a long time being wrong in that part of the puzzle.

And there you go. Taking all of that into account, I'm actually glad I finished in under an hour and a half. Oh wait, I didn't finish, I had to cheat. Well, at least tomorrow is Monday. Oh wait, Mondays are the worst. There is nothing good left in the world.

Fritz out!

"A Century of Song," 4/23/17

Hello, readers! Did you miss me last week? I did not enjoy this puzzle, so if you read this blog primarily to get your own complaints validated, you'll be glad you came back. If you like Ella Fitzgerald so much that this puzzle was still ok for you, you might want to just quit now. Go read Rex, he thought it was average.

Time to finish/time I gave up: 34:04

Commentary:
This is my first of what Rex calls "once you've finished, draw on it!" puzzles. I was concerned, since we always do the puzzle on the computer, like normal people of our age bracket (and most others at this point perhaps?) (how else do you even know if you got it right??? what would you do, check an answer key? ew, too much work.) (let's be real, you would just assume you were right and move along with your day.) Luckily, the NYT website traces the shape for you. Less luckily, it starts with the wrong box.

Instead of "QUEEN OF JAZZ," I am led to believe the answer is "ZQUEEN OF JAZ." Maybe they are just trying to show me the crown shape, not the correct answer. Now, I won't be too picky about the shapes you can make by connecting the dots of a crossword puzzle, but I do have to point out that this crown looks very evil. More fitting for a Lannister (JAIME of 51A?) than Lady Ella.

Clues I especially liked! Yay!

• I kind of liked 87A Frank HOTDOG. We had the _OTD__ part first and were feeling really concerned about it, thinking of the adjective frank, of course. But it turned out we both hadn't made an error *and* got to think about hot dogs! Yummy!
• 34D Unlikely book club recommendation SMUT. Maybe it's unlikely in your book club...

I'm too young for this $h*t

• Dallas actress Sheree J. Wilson. Unless the clue is "Who shot ___?" I am going to be out of luck on Dallas-related clues. And I don't know the answer to that question, or who J.R. is.
• Record label KTEL. Lol records.
• Ok, we do have a record player, like good hipsters, but still.
• 3 things in one clue: Ovaltine, Little Orphan Annie, and radio shows.

Really?

• Agreed with Rex that ENNUIS is unacceptable, as well as ZTILES (as much as I like Bananagrams.)
• Also, did not know about ZLOTY. Did not like that section.
• 53A Stone Age relics NEOLITHS. As far as I can tell, a "Neolith" is something that is "Neolithic." This is a lame word.
• 60A Talk endlessly to JAWAT. We put in GABAT at first, because why not, when you are coming up with things no one ever says.
• TNUT. Just look at that. When that is in your puzzle, you know you've gone wrong.
• ARIOSI. Bleh. I guess this is the plural of "arioso," which is a word I am barely cognizant of to start with. I keep thinking of "wingardium leviosa" instead. (It's ari-OH-sa, not ario-SA.) 
• And, right next to ARIOSI, MISSEND, which is apparently what the rest of us call "reply all fail."
• 8D Close again, as a purse. RESNAP. Setting aside the annoyance of "RE-random verb" clues, is a purse really the snappiest thing you can think of?
• ACETAL. Not even acetyl, which I would have accepted.
• Skating champ Brian ORSER. Do people know this? Does this belong as something I learned, not to scoff at?
• Bubs = MACS. Whatever. But also, Lil Bub the cat:
  

Things I learned today:

• Et seq. I think it's kind of unfair that "et cet." also fits here. Come on, Latin. Although I do acknowledge that "et cet." is not a thing.
• Have we talked about Dad's on this blog before? Dad's is a root beer maker. I don't like root beer, and I don't know about Dad's. I do like my own dad though.
• "Sic parvis magna" means "greatness from small beginnings." I'm still not sure what "sic" means though--apparently not "always" or "tyrants," since there's not a lot of overlap between those two phrases.
• Reminding me of one of my favorite West Wing lines, regarding the meaning of "post hoc ergo propter hoc": "after hoc, therefore something else hoc."
• AGHA is a Turkish title. Although to be clear, it's from the Ottoman Empire and Turkish language, not modern Turkey. Now I know.

Things I have learned from previous crossword puzzles:

• ELHI
• EOS
• Rapa NUI

Times I got to use my French major this week 

• Nice is in the sud of France. I have been there and can attest that it is, in fact, nice.
• Edith Piaf songs, which I listened to as part of a teacher's lesson plan multiple times.

Fritz out!

"Having Nothing On," 4/9/17

I must say, I highly recommend puzzling at your local brewery. A tasty puzzle for a tasting flight! Milo came along in the stroller and we had a grand old time.

Time to finish/time I gave up: 48:27. We had to check the puzzle again this week after getting the dreaded "you're wrong" message around 36 minutes and spending 10 minutes failing to correct the problem. We had 2 mistakes--1, we had BEAT for 72D Overcome instead of BEST, leading to the "duh" moment that Elizabeth with some memoir was EDWARDS, not EDWARDA...whoops.
I feel less guilty about mistake #2, where we had ACTS for 50A Parliamentary procedures and VACUS for 31D Empty spaces...granted that "vacus" is not really a thing, but "vacua" is not a word that I use often either. We were already guessing on LARUSSA and AEREO so that whole section was a mess. (We also tried LAROSSA, LARUSSO, and various other combinations. Aereo seemed the most likely--I assume this is airmail-related?--but you never know with these dang foreign languages. Speak American, crossword.*)
*This is a joke.

Commentary:
It took reading Wordplay  column for me to really understand that "nothing on" means OON. We got the pattern within solving a few of the themers but the "nothing" = O part escaped me...I kept trying for "having no thin goon" as the key to the puzzle. That said, I thought the themers were pretty funny, for the most part. My favorite is probably SAUSAGEFESTOON.

Another funny mistake I made: for a little while I had TBJ for the Toronto Blue Jays instead of TOR (don't ask me why...probably those beers...) which led to the 2D Sign of spring being BLOB_. Ah, let us herald the return of the spring blobs.

Clues I especially liked! Yay!

• 22A Home for Bilbo Baggins HOBBITHOLE. What, not Bag End? #nerdalert
• Shout-out to Frances Bavier, Aunt Bee of The Andy Griffith Show. I spent many a half-hour watching reruns with my dad, who also taught me crosswording, so this was a happy confluence.
• OTOH, if this were any other tv show of its era, I would probably not know the answer and file this under the following category.

I'm too young for this $h*t

• Rene Clement is a French director whose famous movies are from the 50s-70s. I'm not sure if I'm too young for this or if it's just the puzzle reminding me of my lack of highbrow cinema knowledge.

Really?

• 10A Blood enemy? CRIP. I mean damn, NYT.
• SPLEENY! What is this delightful word?
• What is the cross-section of people who do the crossword and people who listen to shock jocks? Especially OPIE? If it's not Howard Stern, I'm out of ideas. Besides, if you have another Andy Griffith clue in the same section, why not go for the one-two punch?

Things I learned today:

• I did not know that My Gal Sal is a musical. Via my father and my husband, I think of myself as knowing more than the average bear about musicals, but not this time. This oversight made me think the themer might be punning at the sentence "My gal's a loon," which would have made me mad (don't call a woman crazy, hypothetical speaker!) so I'm glad for the existence of My Gal Sal.
• Romain de Tirtoff was a Russian-born French artist and designer known by the pseudonym Erté, from the French pronunciation of his initials.
• That is a great fun fact! Go French!
• Confession: sometimes I mix up Belgrade and Belfast. Thanks for stopping me before I destroyed a corner of the puzzle with "eire" or something instead of SERB, Jamie.
• Jean Adair is an actress from Arsenic and Old Lace. I haven't seen the movie, but I saw our high school's version of the play and even that was hilarious.
• Selma is the "butterfly capital of Alabama." Glad they have another claim to fame down there.
• Polo has "chukkers" instead of quarters/periods/halves/etc. 
• Apparently there are usually six of them and they last 7.5 minutes each.
• Polo, you're ridiculous.

Times I got to use my French major this week 

• Not a ton of French in this week's puzzle, besides La Loire, but we did have acht and ocho, so that was cute.

Fritz out!

"Initial Description," 4/2/17

Apologies if you have been feverishly awaiting this post. (Ha.) I got back from a little weekend trip with my girlfriends in the late morning and have been reuniting with my baby all day. Ah, parenthood.

Time to finish/time I gave up: 53:08. I guessed on some stuff at the end, checked the puzzle to see how bad it was, had 5 letters wrong (all in the SW corner), but managed to get them all without revealing. (Also without typing in every letter in the alphabet but not technically clicking "reveal," a strategy by which I have been tempted in the past but is definitely cheating.)

Commentary:
I did not enjoy this puzzle. I liked the concept of the theme, but I didn't like any of the actual answers. They weren't cute. Rex was less perturbed by this than I thought he would be, and I thought his examples were pretty funny actually. But when it came down to it...a swan is a "swimmer?" Three "rolled into" one? It all felt too stilted for not enough payoff.

Here's all the stuff I messed up in the SW:

• Michael Stich. I believe our first try was Smith. Which I thought was as good as anything else, as far as guesses about names.
• Egon Spengler.
• Dys. (Not dis.)
• Bad start? is a terrible clue.
• Therefore, we also had STEER and ACRONYM wrong, but I was guessing on Rene for Preval, and O. Henry, so I needed the Check Puzzle to guide me towards getting these right.

Also, I don't enjoy being reminded of Sean Spicer during my fun crossword time. Or Ayn Rand, for that matter.

Clues I especially liked! Yay!

• The line starting with 84A was a big win for me:
• Jose Cuervo
• Dora the Explorer
• I don't really care about Dora (yet?) but I was very confident I was right about this one.
• UNC (GO TAR HEELS!!! AHHHHHH!!!)
• Saga
• In context, not interesting, but I do really enjoy the graphic novel series by the same name.

I'm too young for this $h*t

• The song "Once in Love With Amy." Now that I have listened to it, it sounds vaguely familiar. However, if you are looking it up, you should know that there is a Muppet Show version, and while there does not seem to be any actual footage on Youtube (copyright issues?), someone has delightfully recreated the number with puppets, and the original audio in the background. Well done, sir/madam.
• Alan King, who spoke at Kennedy's inauguration, died in 2004. Wikipedia says he inspired Joan Rivers, Jerry Seinfeld, Larry David, and Billy Crystal, among others, so I guess he's worth looking up.
• "Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay." This is from vaudeville, so everyone would be too old for it, except I guess Howdy Doody kept it alive?
• Loni Anderson. WKRP in Cincinnati is before my time.

Really?

• 20A Togalike Roman cloak ABOLLA. Two issues here: 1. Togalike is not even a word, so we are off to a rough start. (Why not "toga-like"?) 2. No one knows ABOLLA. I think this is the only time I have ever seen Google so short on related searches, meaning not only does no one know this word, no one even cares to find out about it:
  
• That's it. 4 suggestions. You've reached the end of the internet.
• The cross of the largest city of Yemen (SANAA) and the capital of Uganda (KAMPALA). Help a sister who's bad at geography out! 
• I did guess at this, but I felt pretty good about it. I'm 99% sure Sanaa has already been in a Sunday puzzle I've done. Crosswords > high school.
• Things I am almost certain I have complained about before, but like a bad penny...
• Gists = NUBS. If you say so.
• Cole Porter's "Well, Did You Evah?"

Things I learned today:

• I don't think I knew the word dotard? I'm not sure I like it. Looks like the r-word for old people.
• Rapa Nui is a Polynesian name for Easter Island and its people. I'm glad to know this!
• VSOP (Very Superior Old Pale) is a brandy grade. I think we could have been a little more creative here, brandy-grading committee. Very superior?

Times I got to use my French major this week 

• La terre. That's all I got this time.

Fritz out!

"Mixed Results," 3/26/17

My sister- and mother-in-law are here! I won't have time to write a full post today since we are busy hanging out with the baby. But I did do the puzzle while they were at the grocery store buying food for our poor empty fridge, so here are the results:

Time I finished: 46:33

It took me FOR.EVER. to figure out the theme of this puzzle. The themers were almost the last part I finished. Finally broke it open with the blue+red=purple one (blue hearts, red people eater) when we had _LU_HEARTS. I thought this was a clever puzzle and the fill was fun for once. Rex disagrees with me, but there's no pleasing him.

What did you think, loyal readers? What were you too old or too young for? What made you say "really?" Did you use your college major this week?

What did you learn? I learned that ERSE is a European language (apparently it's Irish/Gaelic). Given that I work at a language services company and know the names of probably at least 300 languages, I was pretty concerned that I couldn't fill this in early on, but I feel a little better now that I know it's an alternative and/or old-fashioned name.

"111-Across!" 3/19/17

It's a joyous weekend for my family; my dad was inaugurated as the 31st president of Centenary College on Friday. Congrats, Dad! We have all converged on Shreveport, Louisiana and have had a ball. Including the very best of activities...family crossword. We had 4 deft solvers on this one, leading to a nice time of...

Time to finish/time I gave up: 39:33. Not too shabby, especially considering that includes the time it takes to read the clues out loud.

Commentary:
Hey all! Guest poster Fran here. It's always great to get a chance to puzzle with the family when we're together. It's also not always so great because it reminds me how much less crystallized intelligence I have than most other members of my family (but I do know what crystallized intelligence is, so school psychology for the win). I don't know what Allie is going to say about today's puzzle yet but I enjoyed the theme, especially the Harry Potter theme clue. 10 points to Hufflepuff for any puzzle with HP references. That said, 10 points from Slytherin for Snape killing Dumbledore (spoiler alert). Frannie out.

Allie in (?). I, too, thought that the theme was fun, and was glad that there were no spoilers that I didn't already know. I don't know what crystallized intelligence is, and Frannie is very smart, even though she's a Hufflepuff.

As I am writing this post and my list of complaints grows longer and longer, I realize that I quite liked this puzzle but maybe only because it's easy when 4 people are thinking about it at once. Some of this might well have frustrated me if I had been on my own.

Clues I especially liked! Yay!

• 35A Product of Boston or Chicago SONG. Cute. We spent a lot of time trying to make this Sox-related. (SOCK? SOKS? SOXS?)
• 44A "Phooey!" DANG. As we all know, I normally dislike these clues, but my lovely sister (see above) says "dang" so it gets a pass.
• "A day without a friend is like a pot without a single drop of honey left inside" Small tear.

I'm too young for this $h*t

• I'll just leave this here:
  

Really?

• 7A Pale-faced ASHY. "Ashen" would be fine. "Ashy," when applied to skin tone, means (at least in modern parlance) white coloring on dark skin. Just Google it if you don't believe me. Therefore, I don't think this clue means what Thackray and Shortz think it means. Watch your privilege, NYT.
• I don't usually know the geography clues, which is often my own failing, but I do think it's a stretch to have Indonesian islands featured twice in the same puzzle. (BALI and ARU)
• 53A Bad luck, old-style UNHAP. What? Pretty sure this is like, medieval old-style, not weird 50's slang, saving it from the previous category. Urban Dictionary points out that "unhaps" is currently used as an abbrev for "unhappy," as in, "this clue makes me unhaps."
• 61A Peeping aid SPYHOLE. Gross.
• 90A Relating to the sun HELIACAL. The root helio is fair game, but this word was not familiar to our solver group, which would also be acceptable except that it crossed with 84D Interest for a limnologist, which turns out to be LAKES. It's a good thing that LOKES is not a word, or we would have been out of luck. Tough cross.
• 2D Tomboy HOYDEN. It's unhap that this word is no longer in use at all. When the dictionary lists it as "dated," maybe don't put it in your crossword.
• 12D Muddles MARESNESTS. I guess this means "muddle" as a noun, which I already dislike, but no one in my family knows this phrase, which means it doesn't exist. Also, "mare's nest crossword" is one of the Google auto-fill suggestions, so that's strike 3 for this one.

Things I learned today:

• Sir Basil Urwin Spence, OM, OBE, RA was a Scottish architect, most notably associated with Coventry Cathedral in England and the Beehive in New Zealand, but also responsible for numerous other buildings in the Modernist/Brutalist style.
• I also did not know there is a Brutalist style. I gotta say, I don't love it. The name isn't doing it any favors.
• Marshal Lon Nol was a Cambodian politician and general who served as Prime Minister of Cambodia twice, as well as serving repeatedly as Defense Minister.
• My dad knew this one (of course). From my end, all I know is that his name is a palindrome.
• A ferrule is a ring or cap, typically a metal one, that strengthens the end of a handle, stick, or tube and prevents it from splitting or wearing.
• File this in the crossword section of the brain next to aiglet. 
• Sometimes Shiva is spelled Siva.
• John Andre was a British Army officer hanged as a spy by the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War for assisting Benedict Arnold's attempted surrender of the fort at West Point, New York to the British.
• Again, good thing my dad was here for this one.

Times I got to use my French major this week 

• Eau flows in a riviere. (Sorry for the lack of accents, Blogger is pretty terrible.)
• La fin. How appropriate.

Fritz out!

"Taking the Fifth," 3/12/17

This puzzle was terrible! I felt very vindicated to see that Rex also thought it was bad, and then also a little ashamed because he said it was easy but we couldn't finish it. :(

Time to finish/time I gave up: 55:11. I really gave up on one letter and guessed on a few more. It was a sorry state of affairs.
When I checked puzzle there were...I want to say four wrong letters? I don't even remember, it was so unfortunate.

Commentary:
I ended up just throwing in the towel on the LEU (Romanian currency)/AUTORACE (500, e.g.) cross. I should have just stuck it out and tried every letter, but I was so exhausted from ODER (Baltic Sea feeder)/POTHERS (Commotions) that I just gave up instead. Are you kidding me with POTHERS??? Also, the reason I have heard of the word HEGIRA is Joni Mitchell's album, which she spells Hejira. So I was already annoyed with that whole box and ready to be done with this stinker.

The theme was a mixed bag for me. I enjoyed HOTCROSSBUNNY (Sweaty, irritable rabbit?) but really, really hated IRRESISTIBLEUIE (Turnaround too tempting to pass up?) Definitely not good enough to make up for the disaster that was the rest of the puzzle.

Clues I especially liked! Yay!

• I don't think there was any clue in this puzzle that I liked because of the cluing. Here are some things that were in this puzzle that I like as things:
• Roo, from Winnie the Pooh
• Jai alai (because it reminds me of the exchange from Archer where the guy says he's going to hunt "the most dangerous game," and Archer responds, "Jai alai?")
• Waldo
• Chicken wings
• Geese
• Just kidding, I hate geese. They're loud and messy.
• Sydney Poitier

I'm too young for this $h*t

• Nothing specifically here. Let's just move on to all the other terribleness.

Really?

Here are all the things that were at least questionable if not downright terrible, in addition to the stuff that I listed in the first section,

• STERNA (Chest protectors)
• NAUGHTS (The 2000s, with "the")
• YAW (Go off course)
• ISTH (Panama, e.g.: Abbr.)
• TOLDTO (Shared with, as a story)
• ADEE (Ending with chick)
• INOT (Playing a fifth NFL period, say)
• ULE (Suffix with nod-)
• ITER (Road to the forum, e.g.)
• RELO (Move, informally)--I've complained about this one before and I still don't like it.
• NINON (Curtain fabric)
• Exercitation (EFFORT)--in this case it's the clue word to which I object
• SAWII (2005 horror sequel)
• ABATER (Lessener)
• UTERI (Centers of early development)--see also sterna

Things I learned today:

• I learned this a few months ago--Fisher of fashion has reappeared, and her name is still Eileen. Every week I write down things I've "learned," but I wonder if I will really retain them. Here's one I stored away for good! Probably the least useful.
• Teena Marie also making a reappearance. That's two!
• Tampa is nicknamed "The Big Guava." A cursory read of the Wikipedia article on the subject tells me that there aren't actually guavas in Tampa at all. This is not helping Tampa's image in my mind.
• Sanaa is the capital of Yemen. How has this not come up before?
• "Alo" is a greeting in an unidentified South American language. I'm not sure this counts as learning something.
• Erno is Mr. Rubik's first name. "Erno's cube" didn't take off in marketing I guess.

Times I got to use my French major this week 

• Menthe. It's something that there is a creme of.
• Affaire is the French spelling of the English word affair. Which I think could just as easily have been the answer to Romantic liaison. Even the French part of this puzzle was no fun.

Fritz out!

"It's Elementary," 3/5/17

Happy first Sunday in March, loyal readers! Spring is in the air (sometimes) and the crosswords are fine.

Like, fine, but not great, as far as this week's puzzle.

Time to finish/time I gave up: 1:02:01

Commentary:
Another slow solve for us this week as we split puzzling and baby watching. I also thought this puzzle was pretty hard for two reasons:
1. The theme--which I enjoyed because I am always proud of myself when I remember things from high school chemistry like element symbols--was such that you couldn't really guess the answer until you had a decent number of letters filled in already.
2. A lot of the fill was hard for me...or, as Rex puts, it "dated/stuffy." That section on being too young is going to be a long one this week.

We got particularly stuck in the mid-SW corner around SCION, ILDUCE, LUCKYDOGS, GINSU, ECOLI [this one was troublesome because we had EBOLA for a while] and also in the NE at BABOON, BLOAT [we had BLOOM], BETHEL, ZORRO, ENCORE, etc. Complaints about some of these forthcoming.

Clues I especially liked! Yay!

• 65A Existentialist Kirkegaard SOREN As a philosophy wife I am always proud when I know the answer to phil-related questions.
• 75D Modern acronym for "Seize the day!" YOLO!!!! Mostly I like this because it broke open DAGUERREOTYPE for us, but also it made me laugh to yell out yolo.
• 101D Ballet school supporter BARRE. I kept trying to make, like, Ailey...or Medici...or something fit in here so the pun (if we can call it that) amused me once Jamie got it.
• 117D Image on a Wisconsin state quarter COW. Is this a shot from the author about how lame it is to put a cow on your quarter? Or just a statement of fact that I have shaded with my urban elitism?

I'm too young for this $h*t
This week, let me just prepare a list without a bunch of comments so as to keep this a readable length.

• CECIL the sea serpent of old cartoons
• EDSEL the bomb (I take it this means "bomb" for sales) developed in the 1950's
• ENL is presumably short for "enlargement," like an 8 by 10 photo. Haha photo labs, so retro.
• ZORRO rides a horse named Tornado (which I have learned from Wikipedia is usually pronounced "tor-NAH-do," i.e. in Spanish.)
• LILABNER married Daisy Mae in 1952
• The phrase SONNYBOY
• The phrase GALPAL
• GINSU infomercials
• Side note: I am exactly the right age for the Olsen twins. Fun fact: they are 3 days older than I am. And almost as successful.

Really?

• CAPRI is a chocolate-banana cocktail. I'm not much of a liqueur drinker to start with, but this sounds vile. (The "really?" in this case pertains to the existence of the drink, not the cluing per se.)
• Now hear this! SOUND. Like...a sound is something you could now hear? Or "Sound!" like an interjection that means "now hear this"? (Sound! We will be having Kraft macaroni and cheese for dinner!) I am missing the boat on this one.
• "That's great!" GOODY. I think the last person that said "goody" was Shirley Temple.
• Seaman's chapel BETHEL. This definition is not on the first page of Google results, therefore it's not real.
• Think piece? IDEA. This is lame and doesn't merit a ? clue as if it were cute.
• It's time to retire the word "muff" from non-slang usage. Too awkward. [If you, dear reader, are too old for this reference, just trust me.]

Things I learned today:

• TNOTE is...something about finance...yawn.
• NUN is a letter on a dreidel. I need to learn my Hebrew alphabet better if I'm ever going to be a true crossword expert.
• A PEWEE is a bird. Also, flycatchers are a type of bird. I learned both of these things at once. (My theory prior to googling was that this was "pee-wee" baseball and the kids were fly (ball) catchers. Cute, right? No? Allie, you're ridiculous? Ok.)
• The capital of Togo is LOME.
• KPMG hires CPAs, so I guess this is also something about finance. Zzzzzz.

Times I got to use my French major this week 

• DAGUERREOTYPE is French in origin, je crois.
• SARTRE wrote "I exist, that is all, and I find it nauseating." That guy was always a barrel of laughs.
• Quatre halved is DEUX.

Fritz out!

"Mixed Feelings," 2/26/17

Jamie and I alternated jobs this morning: one person plays with the baby, one person solves/reads out crossword clues, then switch when the baby watcher gets bored. [Usually we do the crossword while the baby naps, but we are sleep training him right now and his naps tend to be short and filled with crying.] So our solve time is slow since we were down to one brain at a time instead of two, and it was less fun solving by myself. Everyone should be so lucky to have a solving partner spouse!

Time to finish/time I gave up: 44:06

Commentary:
I thought the theme was fun because I like anagrams. It took us a long time to figure out what was going on though--we had TINYAXEATTACK (Assault involving a hatchet?) and STRUTWORTHY (Fashionable enough for a runway model?) done before understanding the anagram piece.

A lot of the clues this week were pretty straightforward/boring. I don't have a lot to write about (especially since I didn't even do approximately half of the puzzle, Jamie did), but here goes nothing.

Clues I especially liked! Yay!

• Of the themers, I especially like CURBYOURSUNATHEISM ("Stop insisting Ra doesn't exist!")
• 13D Character resembling a hat CARET This made no sense to me for a while but once I understood it I liked it.
• Just gonna leave this here...MOMJEANS

I'm too young for this $h*t

• Charo. I'm vaguely familiar with her name. Check out this description from her official website:
• "Only a few people in show business are recognized by just one name. Only a few people bring a smile to everyone’s face when that name is mentioned. Only a few deserve to be called 'multi-talented.' Charo is one of those few."

Really?

• "Bohemian Rhapsody" strikes again! I think it was two weeks ago that I admitted I don't like this song. If it keeps coming up in crosswords I'm going to have to learn it better I guess.
• Aleatory means depending on the throw of a dice or on chance; random. I could put this under "things I learned today," but since neither Jamie nor I have heard of this word I have decided it's too obscure for crosswords. 
• I recommend this Wikipedia article, it's pretty interesting: Aleatoric music

Things I learned today:

• Jean-Paul Marat was a French revolutionary dude who died in a bathtub. I am amused by his Wikipedia entry's organization, which contains the following heading/subheading combination:
• 6. Death
• 6.1 Memory in the Revolution
• 6.2 Skin disease
• 6.3 Tub
• I'm unfamiliar with the word "noodge." The internet leads me to believe it's sort of Yiddish. Do people say this?
• Gil Scott-Heron is a spoken word poet/musician. The New Yorker website informs me that he is the godfather of rap. Jamie informs me that he is sampled on Kanye West's "Who Will Survive in America?"
• Adding to the list of cities I haven't been to in Ohio yet, DAYTON, which I learned is home to the National Aviation Hall of Fame. Makes sense, what with this being the Birthplace of Aviation.
• Yall know that North Carolina is first in flight though, right??? 

Times I got to use my French major this week 

• Not a lot of French in this week's puzzle. What we had was history and geography, which we already know I'm bad at. We did get Spanish (ORO) and Italian (DIO) though, huzzah Romance languages.

Fritz out!

"Uh-Oh!" 2/19/17

Uh-oh indeed. This one was a doozy for me. I found most of it challenging but doable, but one part stumped me.

Time to finish/time I gave up: 1:39:20. Although to be fair probably 20-30 minutes of that was time I was not solving but just looking at things I wanted to write about in this post, which I did while I pondered how to finish this demon puzzle.
Did I check puzzle? Yes. How many letters were wrong? Just the one. See below.

Here's where I was when I threw in the towel:

You can see I have a lot of pencil going on here. It took me a long time to get this far. I was sure that FEEDER was right, and pretty sure about STENO, and therefore ESC. The rest was dicey. 

I was so close at this point. But I thought to myself, there can't possibly be 59 King Charleses, it must be 19. So I was questioning which letter(s) were wrong, and checked puzzle. It was only the X, so I disbelievingly tried "LUDED" (not a thing) and then "DUDED" before the magic music played. Duded up? Please comment here if you have ever said this. I'm bitter.

It was not until after I wrote a paragraph here bemoaning how there could not possibly be over 500 King Charleses that I read Rex and found out that it's the word "dix," meaning ten. I'm so ashamed! French major, you have failed me! Or have I failed you? Zut alors encore.

Commentary:
I did enjoy this week's theme, especially "stoned silence" (33A What one might sit in at a Cheech and Chong movie)* and "no goats, no glory!" (46A Herder's mantra?) *despite the fact that I have never seen a Cheech and Chong movie, I still thought it was a funny pun. Rex has seen it all before and was not amused, but that's the benefit of being a newcomer. I picked out the ones I liked before reading his column so at least we agree on what the good puns are. His column is downright scathing and pretty funny.

Clues I especially liked! Yay!

• I like getting started off with JABBA (1A Blob-like Star Wars character) crossed with JANKY (1D Of poor quality, in modern slang.) I do say janky sometimes, like a modern woman, but I could see people not liking this clue.
• 69D Hiking group, with "the"? FED. Haha wonk joke.

I'm too young for this $h*t

• Raul Julia is an actor who, according to IMDb, is best known for the Addams Family movies, which I haven't seen. He died when I was 8.
• Also, I definitely googled "Julia Raul" since the clue is Julia of Hollywood and I foolishly assumed Julia was the first name. This clue is kind of cute because wouldn't it seem to point to Julia Roberts, megastar of the modern era? However, the answer was only 4 letters, and I was pretty sure it wasn't going to be RBTS, but you never know on Sundays.
• Julia Ribbits would be a great name for a pet frog.
• 37A "Puppy Love" singer, 1960. ANKA Just a reminder that 1960 is 57 years ago. I do actually sort of know this song (I feel like maybe from Full House? Can anyone back me up here? Or maybe just my dad? Dad, do you sing this?) but I honestly don't really know who Paul Anka is besides Lorelei's dog on Gilmore Girls. (Yes, I know that Lorelei named him after the real person.)
• I'm too old for this one: 48A Virtual cat or dog, maybe NEOPET. What happened to Tamagotchis? That's what I'm talking about. 90s KID FOR LIFE.

Really?

• 28A "Rats!" AWHECK Faithful readers know how I feel about these sayings clues. This one particularly suffers from looking like it says "a wheck" in my mind (speech-impaired way of saying "a wreck" perhaps?) Or maybe just one word "awheck," which would mean something like off-balance, e.g., "That frame looks awheck; can you tilt it to the left a little?"
• 50A Glaciate ICEUP What? I don't know where to start with this one. Let's just move on.
• 54A In a pretentious manner ARTILY. I think a lot of us who do the NYT crossword know a lot about pretentious people, yet I don't hear this word getting thrown around often. Doesn't work for me.
• I feel like ATAPRICE and TOTHEMAX right next to each other (72/73D) is bad fill. Am I coming up in the crossworld (see what I did there) if I have opinions like this?

Things I learned today:

• There's a college in Maine called Bates. Go Bobcats!
• Burma's first prime minister was named U Nu. How has this not come up before in the ~13 weeks of my crossword life?
• Contrast with its nextdoor neighbor in this puzzle LEI (Something about Hawaii*) (*not the actual clue) which I think has been in every puzzle so far.
• A dory is a fishing boat. Seems a little cruel that Pixar named one of its most beloved characters after its predator.
• Another word for arroyo is wash.
• Another word for wash is dry creek bed. If the clue had been "dry creek bed," I still would not have known to put either of these words. I learned a lot from this clue.
• Another gap in my Spanish knowledge--"nenes" means kids. I thought this would be ninos (sorry, putting accents in Blogger is too much work, but you know what I mean) and second-guessed myself a lot on this section.
• The MiG is a Cold War plane. I think we are all starting to understand that I have a blind spot about military stuff..and vehicles...and history.

Times I got to use my French major this week NONE BECAUSE I AM A FAILURE

Fritz out!

Dispatch from the front, 2/19/17

I'M STUCK. It's been 58 minutes and I feel pretty good about all of the puzzle except I cannot finish the SE corner. WHO IS THE MOTHER OF ARTEMIS? Don't really tell me, that's cheating.

"Do The Splits," 2/12/17

We came perilously close to a DNF on this one. I didn't like this puzzle, and I thought it was hard, so it wasn't much fun for me. Rex's column is quite cheery by comparison!

Time to finish/time I gave up: 47:17

Commentary:
At about 35 minutes we were still missing most of the bottom of the puzzle. It was looking grim. We took a break for several hours and came back to it with fresh eyes and more caffeine, and cracked it eventually.

I agree with Rex that FATALATTRACTION is kind of mean, and JUSTICEFORALL doesn't make much sense. Let's move on to some more specific complaints.

Clues I especially liked! Yay!

• I did like BRAINWAVES (55A Result of a serious wardrobe malfunction at the beach).
• 8 and 34D Longtime public radio host IRAGLASS. Talk about knowing your audience.

I'm too young for this $h*t

• Quo Vadis is a 1951 American epic film made by MGM in Technicolor.

Really?

• I don't like NUB for 83A Gist. Neither did Rex. It didn't help that we had "rattles" instead of NETTLES for 83D Annoys for a long time, which crosses on the N.
• This was also caught up in our error with 69D "Grand Hotel" star, 1932, where we had GA___ and went with Gable. Instead of Garbo, which crosses on the B. B is for Blah.
• 91A What's right in front of the tee? ESS. Not only are alphabet clues stupid, saying "the tee" makes this whole thing really awkward. S ('ess,' ugh) is in front of T, not "the tee." If there is some Boston mass transit thing going on here that I don't know about, I'll forgive it.
• ABBA again? (101A "Waterloo" band) I've already learned like 2 ABBA songs from writing this blog, and that was 2 more ABBA songs than I needed in my life.
• 5D "What's the ___?" DIF. NOOOOO, wrong, no one says this and even if they did it would be DIFF.
• Here's a word to the wise: don't Google the word PEENS. Trust me.

Things I learned today:

• The Organization of American States, or the OAS or OEA, is a continental organization founded on 30 April 1948, for the purposes of regional solidarity and cooperation among its member states. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States, the OAS's members are the 35 independent states of the Americas.
• Also, it only gets 3.1 out of a possible 5 stars on Google.
• Does anyone else confuse the words "turbid" and "turgid"?
• Diane Arbus was an American photographer and writer noted for photographs of marginalized people—dwarfs, giants, transgender people, nudists, circus performers—and others whose normality was perceived by the general populace as ugly or surreal.
• We had a conversation about whether this was going to be DIANE or DUANE. Glad it turned out to be a female photographer!
• Fu Manchu is a "villain in comics" (although apparently the "comics" part is debatable).
• Also, the Fu Manchu is a category of competition in the World Beard and Moustache Championships. This is an event I would like to attend.
• Tam o' shanters are those Scottish hat things. The ones that bagpipe players wear. With kilts. Now I have exhausted my Scotland knowledge.
• The first hit on Google for Tam O' Shanter is location-based--not only is there a Tam O'Shanter golf course in Canton, OH, there's also "Sylvania Tam-O-Shanter" in Sylvania, OH, which is apparently an ice skating rink?
• Dava Sobel is a writer. I can see her appearing again in a crossword in my future.

Times I got to use my French major this week

• If I had learned more French history I guess I would have known Rene Coty, but zut alors, I didn't.

Fritz out!