"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!