"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!

"First Ladies," 2/5/17

YALL. Jamie and I successfully completed the Saturday puzzle yesterday. I didn't have time to blog about it, but I wanted to brag anyway. (One note in case anyone else did it--we got realllly stuck on that one that was "work-related" something and the answer ended up being COMPANIONPIECE. We had completed the whole puzzle but had COMPANYONPIECE, which obviously is not a thing, but we really thought "company" was right and it took a long time to sort that out.)

Anyway, today is a new day. Onward!

Time to finish/time I gave up: 31:27

Commentary:
Hooray for celebrating pioneering women! This puzzle was made much easier by the fact that none of the "first ladies" were obscure, so we filled in both the theme answer (BREAKTHEGLASSCEILING) and all of the examples before doing anything else in this puzzle. Nice way to start! Also felt like kind of a cop-out? But we needed the help on some of the other parts, so I was glad for the leg up. I thought the physical aspect of breaking up the top line clue/"ceiling" was also cute. Confession: I had written this whole post and complained about a couple of the "ceiling" clues not making a ton of sense before I realized that they all also go with the word "glass." That's downright impressive! [Second confession: I didn't even realize this on my own, I was reading the constructor's notes in the NYT blog post about the puzzle.] Luckily, my ignorance didn't hamper our solving strategy.

Fun puzzle! But as always, I have some complaints. :D Let's start with a new section though:

Clues I especially liked! Yay!

• 61A Part of a stock exchange MOO

I'm too young for this $h*t

• Sidney Poitier's 1980 autobiography? I have a great deal of respect for Mr. Poitier (shout-out to my mom, who met him once and got him to say "They call me Mr. Tibbs" !!!) but don't know about his 37-year-old autobiography.
• If you just became alarmed that 1980 was 37 years ago, join the club.
• I don't know who Sheena Easton is. Is this a failing of my musical taste or my age?
• 1941 chart-topper "Maria Elena." Lol 1941.

Really?

• I dislike the answer "IT help." Partly because I'm not convinced that is a phrase, and partly because I can't stop seeing "it help," a non-verb-agreeing sentence.
• I get irritated by lots of "saying" answers. They seem like too much of a blank check for weird phrases that are convenient fill. I know there are going to be a few every week, but this week was excessive:
• ITSOK
• NONETAKEN
• DIDIWIN
• IAGREE
• IMEANNO (I made a face at this one)
• ILOSE
• ISPOSE (audible pshh at this one)
• OHGEEZ
• YOUIDIOT
• IMSLEEPY
• 60A Running behind LATISH. Rhymes with radish.
• Can we really say that "tree rat" is slang? I do like making fun of squirrels, though.
• 108A Remove fat from, as a soup DEGREASE. Ew. Also, I think the use of soup as the example points more toward something like "skim."
• If you need this to fit in the puzzle, just put SKIIIIIM.

Things I learned today:

• The pieces of mosaics are called TESSERAE. All this word makes me think of is, "there is such a thing as a tesseract," a quote from A Wrinkle In Time. 
• Raise your hand if you're excited for the 2018 movie version directed by Ava DuVernay! Look at this cast list!
• Flexagons are little paper model thingies. Wikipedia notes that one type of flexagon is called a hexahexaflexagon, and includes this excellent sentence: "Note that the word hexaflexagons (with no prefixes) can sometimes refer to an ordinary hexahexaflexagon." NOTED, THANKS.
• We got totally stuck on the cross that Jim, guest poster on Rex Parker, complains about. Make sure you check out his video of "Iseult crossing the Negev"--get it? Crossing? Cute. Ended up guessing at the vowel until we got it right.
• Guido Reni painted "Massacre of the Innocents"
• I was glad to find out that Guido was actually his name, not just a clue that he was Italian.
• Speaking of casual racism, isn't GYP offensive?

Times I got to use my French major this week

• 24A They're measured by pluviometers RAINS. Pleuvoir = to rain.
• I dunno about the noun "rains" though.
• I bless the rains down in Africa!
• Cheesy song confession: I don't like "Bohemian Rhapsody" (of 96D ISEEA) but I do like "Africa."

Fritz out!

"Hit the Deck," 1/29/17

It's 10:30 on Sunday morning and I've already eaten breakfast, fed the baby and put him down for a nap, and finished the crossword puzzle. Feeling very productive!

Time to finish/time I gave up: 28:51
[Will put back the entries about how badly I failed when applicable.]

Commentary:
I thought this puzzle was pretty fun--it's like a little card game played out right before my very eyes! Rex thought it was boring. For any consistent Rex readers: does he ever enjoy Sunday puzzles? This is my 11th post on this blog and I don't think he has unequivocally liked a single one yet. I will cut him some slack, though, because his post addresses his depression about the current political climate, with which I can sympathize.

If the puzzle timer included the amount of extra time it took me to understand 7A Strip of buttons TOOLBAR then this puzzle would have taken us 35 minutes or so.

I liked the timing of the two tennis clues with the Australian Open (10D One may get smashed LOB and 28A It's unreturnable SERVICEACE).

I said "bofa" (rhymes with "sofa") out loud before I got my brain to B of A (40D Citi rival, informally). Yikes. Maybe another coffee needed?

80D Container that may have a sharpener CRAYONBOX simultaneously made me nostalgic for crayons and frustrated by those stupid sharpeners. They just make a mess and the crayon is still never as pointy as it was when it was new.

I'm too young for this $h*t

• Dyan Cannon belongs in this category, but puzzle authors Jim Hyres and David Steinberg are really lucky that she was also on Ally McBeal, which was one of my favorite shows when I was growing up. (After all, it featured another Allie/y.)
• Jami Gertz (of 106D and "Twister") was actually also on Ally McBeal, but not enough for me to remember her name. I looked her up after the puzzle and recognized her face.

Really?

• I'm not thrilled about 30A Musicianship EAR. I just don't feel like they quite match up.
• 52A Celebratory request GIVEMEFIVE. Not only should this phrase be "Gimme five," as Rex rightly complains, I also don't think anybody actually asks people to give them five unless the giver is a child or a dog, aka someone who doesn't necessarily respond to the universal signal for giving five, which is simply holding one's hand in the air. But I'm just nitpicking. This wasn't that hard of a clue.
• On the other hand, COOLBEANS is something that, seriously, no one says. (58A "Great!")
• Does anyone consider "six degrees of separation" to be a party game? If you answered yes to this question, remind me not to come to your parties.
• Speaking of which: the typical subject of this "game" is Kevin Bacon, of course. I am a fan of the blog Young House Love, and I recently learned from their podcast that Sherry met Kevin Bacon once. I met Sherry at a book signing in DC a few years ago, so that brings my degree to 2, and all of yours to 3. Congrats!
• 94A "Damn right!" YES. Couldn't we at least get "yas" instead?
• 39D Total SUMTO. Ugh. This feels like an Excel command. Something from the TOOLBAR perhaps.

Things I learned today:

• Taft was our last mustachioed president. That is a great fun fact! Thanks, crossword!
• Cash is king, apparently? I have a mild aspiration to get an MBA someday, I'll update this post with more info at that time.
• A.J. Foyt is a driver of...those kart things they drive in the Indy 500. As we learned last week, auto racing isn't really my thing.
• Unless it's Mario Kart.
• Salvador Dali said the excellent quote, "I don't do drugs. I am drugs." It takes a real baller to say something like that.
• Eric Heiden is a speed skater. Ok then.
• People call marijuana "endo" these days. I'm out of the loop, I guess.
• Max Steiner is "the father of film music." As a film soundtrack fan, I will have to look him up!
• Akron is home to the Firestone Country Club. It's a good thing there aren't that many cities that go into "_K___" or I would have been out of luck on this one. Guess I gotta get over to Akron more. Haha just kidding, no thanks.

Times I got to use my French major this week

• Oeuvre. This is also an imported word in English but studying French makes it easier to spell. 
• See also Yves.
• In theory, 102A Countenances MIENS but I didn't get this one. As an English word or a French one.
• Fifi? Poodles are French right?
• Also technically "sans" serif I guess. I just used my life knowledge for that one though.

Times I got to use my Rosetta Stone free trial of introductory German this week

• Drei
• Grau
• I didn't actually know this one. The colors I know are weiss, schwartz, blau, and grun.
• Blau + grun = grau in letters but not colors.

Fritz out!

"Mishmash," 1/22/17

I don't want to get too cocky, because some week coming up will probably be a disaster, but we nailed this puzzle. We've been pretty on top of things for a few weeks in a row now. Maybe it's time to try some Thursday/Friday/Saturdays? Then again, Rex says this puzzle was easy and I thought it was kind of hard, so again: check yourself, self. I have a lot of gripes with this puzzle, so let's get going.

Time to finish/time I gave up: 38:47
Did I finish it without help? Indeed
Did I check puzzle? If yes, how many letters were wrong? N/A

Commentary:
We got off to an extremely ugly start on this one. Nothing in the top half was immediately obvious. After almost 10 minutes this was all we had:


You'll note that several of those paltry few answers are wrong, so it wasn't promising. I'm proud to say that it was not long after this photo that I got the first of the theme clues (66A "America"? OFTHEEISINGSONG), which cracked open not only how to do the theme but a lot of the surrounding fill. Unfortunately, that was my favorite of the theme clues--the rest of them are either not funny or nonsense. I take particular issue with 81A Grant a girl permission to dis Drake? LETHERRIPRAP. "Drake" does not equal "rap." Drake is a rapper. Grant a girl permission to dis Drake's genre, I guess? Also, what is riprap? (Answer: this rock stuff. Thanks, internet.) Rex does a lovely job of complaining about 3 of the other themers.

I did think a couple of the clues were cute, especially 38D Half of a swinging couple? JANE and 52D One lifting spirits? TOASTER.

I'm too young for this $h*t

• I'm slightly too young for Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, but I have seen it, and also it's not that hard to guess that Daffy dueled with Donald, so this one is ok.
• Cale Yarborough is a NASCAR racer from the 60s to 80s. To be fair, I don't think I can name any current NASCAR drivers either.

Really?

By Isaiah Thomas - A Little Pretty Pocket-book, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3205574

• What is ONEACAT??? (19A Baseball-like game) The picture on Wikipedia is from 1767. And it's from the article called "Tip-cat." One-a-cat is the 4th name on the Wikipedia article for this stupid game. It's particularly cruel because it has the same number of letters as "cricket," which is something that people have actually heard of.
• 26A Copies, informally REPROS "Hey dude, those are some sweet repros you made of the Mona Lisa. How much you charging?"
• 27A It shows who's who or what's what IDTAG. Nametag, yes. ID card, maybe. ID tag, blech.
• 65A A- NINETY. I am still not sure what this is, even after googling. I guess probably this plane thing? That is the first hit for the search "a-90." However, first I searched "a-ninety," (which, let's recall, is what the puzzle actually says) and Google provided me with:
• the definition of the word ninety (a number that is ten times nine, in case you weren't sure)
• the definition of nonagenarian (a 90-year old person)
• an article called "45 Life Lessons Written by a 90-Year-Old Woman," from the esteemed PopSugar
• an article called "Trump and Clinton Get Ready for a Ninety-Minute Campaign," from The New Yorker. If only I could go back in time and tell Hillary to opt for a slightly longer campaign.
• EDIT (later that day): My loving father has explained this to me--not "A (dash)" but "A minus"! Aha! This is sadly ironic because I tried to fit "minus" into the spot for "ninety" at least once, even though that doesn't really make sense.
• 77D It lies between Cleveland, O., and Buffalo, N.Y. Having made this drive many times in my life, I didn't have any trouble coming up with Erie, PA. My question is--why O? Why not OH? I happen to live in O. and I can tell you that people don't call it that.
• 88D Relative of "Aargh!" ACK This clue brought to you by Cathy.

Things I learned today:

• An alienee is one to whom or to which ownership of property is transferred. Can someone explain the root of this to me? Is it alien? Lien? A cursory online dictionary search was unhelpful. (I get the -ee part.)

• Julie Chen is someone from TV.

• Pamulaparti Venkata Narasimha Rao (28 June 1921 – 23 December 2004) was an Indian lawyer and politician who served as the 9th Prime Minister of India, from 1991–1996.

• "Rostra" is the plural of "rostrum," which is a platform or stage for public speaking.

• That T (crossed with 119D Poland's main airline LOT) was the last letter we filled in, and a good guess by my husband. Can't wait to fly LOT air sometime!

• Terri Lyne Carrington (born August 4, 1965) is a three-time Grammy Award-winning jazz drummer, composer, singer, record producer and entrepreneur.

• Lorna Doone is not just a cookie.

• Thyroids need iodine. I know both of these words, but I'm so tired of looking things up that someone will just have to tell me the science about this later.

Times I got to use my French major this week

• Semaine
• 104A French ___ FRY. Just kidding.

Fritz out!