1021-23 NY Times Crossword 21 Oct 23, Saturday

Constructed by: Kelly Morenus
Edited by: Will Shortz

Today’s Theme: None

Bill’s time: 15m 14s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

17 Like many attics : MUSTY

Something described as “musty” has a stale or moldy odor. The term derives from an obsolete word “moisty”, as in “moist”.

20 Modern way to pay : VENMO

Venmo is a smartphone payment app that is now owned by PayPal. The first version of the product was introduced in 2009 by two entrepreneurs who had met as freshman students at the University of Pennsylvania. They sold the company in 2012 for over $26 million, and then PayPal acquired it the following year for a whopping $800 million. I wonder if PayPal ever buys blogs …

21 ___ Domino : FATS

Antoine “Fats” Domino was born and raised in New Orleans, with Creole as his first language. He made it into the big time in 1949 when he recorded an early rock and roll record called “The Fat Man”. That record sold over a million copies, the first rock and roll record to achieve that milestone.

25 Chick with multiple Grammys : COREA

Chick Corea is an American jazz pianist. Corea is noted for his work in the area of jazz fusion, as well as for his promotion of Scientology.

27 Trading off? : EMBARGO

“Embargo” and “blockade” are two similar yet different terms. An embargo is a legal prohibition of trade with a particular country, whilst a blockade is an act of war, a militarily enforced prevention of the movement of goods and services. The term “embargo” came into English from Spanish, in the late 16th century.

34 Haka dance performers : MAORI

The haka is a war dance used by the Maori people of New Zealand. Famously, the New Zealand rugby team performs a haka before each of their matches.

35 Home, spun? : WEB

The silk that makes up a web is a protein fiber that is “spun” by a spider. Spider silk is about one sixth of the density of steel, yet has a comparable tensile strength.

39 Astronaut Cooper, informally : GORDO

Gordon “Gordo” Cooper was an American astronaut who went into space as part of both the Mercury and Gemini Programs. Cooper had the honor of being the first American to have a snooze in space!

40 Cocktail fruta : PINA

“Piña colada” is a Spanish term that translates into “strained pineapple”. The piña colada cocktail was introduced in the Caribe Hilton San Juan in 1954, and since 1978 it has been the official beverage of Puerto Rico. The mocktail version of the drink is known as a nada colada.

41 Corp. debut : IPO

An initial public offering (IPO) is a significant event for a company as it marks the first time it becomes a publicly traded company. IPOs are often accompanied by a so-called “lock-up period.” This is a period of time, typically 90 to 180 days after the IPO, during which company insiders, such as executives and early investors, are not allowed to sell their shares on the open market. The purpose of the lock-up period is to prevent a flood of shares from hitting the market and potentially driving down the price of the stock.

Down

4 ___ Radcliffe, pioneer in Gothic fiction : ANN

Ann Radcliffe was an English author famous for her Gothic novels, a genre that she helped to pioneer in the late 18th century. I’m not a huge fan of Gothic novels, Gothic horror in particular …

5 1781 Mozart opera seria : IDOMENEO

“Idomeneo” is a Mozart opera first performed in 1781, when Mozart was just 25 years old.

6 Jeffersonian design at the heart of the University of Virginia : ROTUNDA

The University of Virginia (UVA) was founded by Thomas Jefferson, who then sat on the original Board of Visitors alongside former US Presidents James Madison and James Monroe. In fact, the original UVA campus was built on land near Charlottesville that was once a farm belonging to President Monroe.

10 ___ mater : PIA

Pia mater is Latin, and means “tender mother”. It is the name given to the mesh-like envelope that surrounds the brain and spinal cord. The pia mater brings blood to some of the exterior parts of the brain, and provides physical support for larger blood vessels passing over the brain’s surface.

14 One crossing the line? : SCAB

We first started calling strikebreakers scabs in the early 1800s, and before that a scab was a person who refused to join a trade union (back as early 1777). The word “scab” probably comes from the use of “scab” as a symptom of a skin disease, and so is a term that is meant to insult.

15 Autumn hue : RUSSET

Russet is a color made from an equal mixture of pure orange and pure purple. The term comes from the French adjective “rousset” meaning “reddish”.

21 Many Laplanders : FINNS

Lapland is a geographic region in northern Scandinavia, largely found within the Arctic Circle. Parts of Lapland are in Norway, Sweden and Finland. The people who are native to the region are called the Sami people. The Sami don’t like to be referred to as “Lapps” and they regard the term as insulting.

24 Ibram X. ___, author of “How to Be an Antiracist” : KENDI

Author Ibram X. Kendi wrote 2020’s “How to Be an Antiracist”, which made it to the top spot of the New Times Best Seller list. Kendi also founded and serves as director of the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University.

26 City with the oldest metro system in Africa : CAIRO

Cairo is the capital city of Egypt. It is nicknamed “The City of a Thousand Minarets” because of its impressive skyline replete with Islamic architecture. The name “Cairo” is a European corruption of the city’s original name in Arabic, “Al-Qahira”.

28 Tech support? : MONOPOD

A tripod is a three-legged stand that provides stable support for an object, often for a camera. A bipod is a similar two-legged support. Bipods are commonly used to support and steady rifles and automatic weapons. A monopod is a single-legged support. Sports photographers often use a monopod under a long, telephoto lens to reduce camera shake while allowing relatively free movement to capture the action.

32 Magazine that originated the words “payola” and “striptease” : VARIETY

“Variety” is a trade magazine dedicated to the entertainment industry. It was founded in 1905 in New York, but is now based in Los Angeles.

Payola is the illegal practice of paying radio stations or disk jockeys to repeatedly play a particular piece of music. The impetus behind the crime is that the more often a song is played, the more likely it is to sell. The term “payola” comes from the words “pay” and “Victrola”, an RCA brand name for an early phonograph.

36 “Man has no greater ___ than himself”: Petrarch : ENEMY

Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca) was an Italian scholar and poet who lived during the Renaissance. Petrarch gave up his vocation as a priest, and soon after spotted a woman named Laura in his church in Avignon, France. He was so taken by Laura that he wrote many poems dedicated to her. He later clarified that he could not approach Laura with his feelings, as she was a married woman.

40 Ones going through a stage : PUPAE

A pupa is a stage in the life of some insects. All four stages are embryo, larva, pupa and imago. Pupae can look like little dolls, hence the name. “Pupa” is the Latin for “doll”.

42 Bandmate of Keith and Brian : MICK

Even though Mick Jagger and Keith Richards have been the driving force behind the Rolling Stones for decades, they didn’t start the group. The band was the idea of guitarist and harmonica player Brian Jones, and it was he who invited Richards and Jagger to join, as well as Ian Stewart, Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts to make an original lineup of six band members. Jones called the band “Rollin’ Stone” back then in 1962, named for the song by Muddy Waters. Jones was the leader, manager and decision maker for the first few years until songs written by Richards and Jagger became hits and he started to lose artistic control. In 1967, Jones was arrested for drug possession, and again in 1968. When his trouble with the law prevented him from getting a US work visa, Jones wasn’t able to accompany the Stones on a 1969 US tour. That was the last straw, it seems, and Jones and the Stones parted company. Famously, one month later, Jones was found dead, at the bottom of his swimming pool.

43 Country duo Brooks & ___ : DUNN

Brooks & Dunn are a country music duo made up of Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn. They hold the record for the most wins of the Country Music Association’s Vocal Duo of the Year award.

45 Inspection org. : TSA

Transportation Security Administration (TSA)

46 Joey of children’s literature : ROO

In Australia, male kangaroos are known by several names including bucks, boomers, jacks or old men. Females are called does, flyers, or jills. There seems to be just one name for young kangaroos, i.e. joeys. A group of kangaroos might be called a mob, troop or court.

Complete List of Clues/Answers

Across

1 Stores with fixed costs? : REPAIR SHOPS
12 What might be sought before a major decision : SECOND OPINION
14 1998 rap hit by Big Pun (feat. Joe) : STILL NOT A PLAYER
16 Shortcut, of a sort : CANAL
17 Like many attics : MUSTY
18 N.C.A.A. women’s basketball champs of 2023, for short : LSU
19 Settled : ALIT
20 Modern way to pay : VENMO
21 ___ Domino : FATS
22 Son of, in Hebrew : BEN
23 Ships : SENDS
24 Some beach fliers : KITES
25 Chick with multiple Grammys : COREA
26 World Trade ___ (fixture of Hong Kong or Toronto) : CENTRE
27 Trading off? : EMBARGO
30 Least robust-looking : WANNEST
31 “Get it?” : YOU SEE?
32 Cancels : VOIDS
33 Word often accompanied by an arrow : ENTER
34 Haka dance performers : MAORI
35 Home, spun? : WEB
38 A bunch : LOTS
39 Astronaut Cooper, informally : GORDO
40 Cocktail fruta : PINA
41 Corp. debut : IPO
42 Kind of badge : MERIT
43 Coastal formations : DUNES
44 Reprimand to one who spoke too soon : DON’T INTERRUPT ME
47 Nonessential, as spending : DISCRETIONARY
48 “I HAVE to have this — whatever it costs” : TAKE MY MONEY

Down

1 Curb, as spending : REIN IN
2 Sparkle : ECLAT
3 Sample, say : POLL
4 ___ Radcliffe, pioneer in Gothic fiction : ANN
5 1781 Mozart opera seria : IDOMENEO
6 Jeffersonian design at the heart of the University of Virginia : ROTUNDA
7 Some contractions : SPASMS
8 Aware of, informally : HIP TO
9 Sole : ONLY
10 ___ mater : PIA
11 Vegan coffee order : SOY LATTE
12 Lacking creativity : STALE
13 Ones who build their homes bit by bit : NESTERS
14 One crossing the line? : SCAB
15 Autumn hue : RUSSET
20 Cusp : VERGE
21 Many Laplanders : FINNS
23 More irritated : SORER
24 Ibram X. ___, author of “How to Be an Antiracist” : KENDI
25 Concerns for a linguist : CASES
26 City with the oldest metro system in Africa : CAIRO
27 Blinker : EYELID
28 Tech support? : MONOPOD
29 “Shut your pie hole!” : BUTTON IT!
30 Feature of a Craftsman home : WOOD TRIM
32 Magazine that originated the words “payola” and “striptease” : VARIETY
34 Post-___ : MORTEM
35 Bleak : WINTRY
36 “Man has no greater ___ than himself”: Petrarch : ENEMY
37 Foundation : BASE
39 Mystery, e.g. : GENRE
40 Ones going through a stage : PUPAE
42 Bandmate of Keith and Brian : MICK
43 Country duo Brooks & ___ : DUNN
45 Inspection org. : TSA
46 Joey of children’s literature : ROO

17 thoughts on “1021-23 NY Times Crossword 21 Oct 23, Saturday”

  1. 13:32, no errors. For me, a straightforward solve, though I didn’t really think about the clue for 1-Across and started off on the wrong foot with RETAIL SHOPS. LOTUNDA for 6-Down clued me in that there might be a problem … 😜.

  2. 20:55. Really had to get the upper third little piece by little piece. The rest of the puzzle went quickly by Saturday standards.

    I have a photo in my office of GORDO Cooper, Jim Lovell, and Gus Grissom in a convertible with Grissom shooting the bird at the photographer. Grissom of course died in the Apollo 1 fire, but anyone who knew him said he had that kind of cantankerous personality. They also said they’d trust him with their life.

    Happy to be home after 3 trips out of the country and one to Houston – all in the last 7 weeks.

    Best –

  3. I’ll pose this question to Dave, Glenn (when he sees it in 5 weeks), or anyone else who does multiple puzzles daily with some frequency:

    Let’s say, for example, you do 8 puzzles in a day. I realize you guys don’t do quite that many, but you get the point. By the time that you are doing the 7th or 8th puzzle, are you so attuned to puzzles in general that your times get better? Or is there a fatigue factor and your performance actually diminishes?

    Put another way, let’s say you can do a puzzle first thing in the morning in 20 minutes. If you tried that puzzle as your 7th or 8th puzzle later in the day, is your time more likely going to look like 18 minutes or 22 minutes?

    Just curious how doing multiples like that affects performance.

    I’ll hang up and listen now…

    Best –

  5. 24:27 To answer Jeff’s question: it does seem to be the case for me. I get bogged down(usually) on a Saturday puzzle, then end up doing Sunday through Thursday in one sitting, and although my times are sometimes embarrassingly slow compared to most of you solvers, the answers seem to come quicker as I get into a flow.

  6. Hmmm. I think other factors influence my solves more than the number of puzzles I’ve done in a row (but I’d need to think about it a bit more to be sure of that).

    Just to be clear: Currently, I’m only doing about 40 puzzles a week (and some of them are pretty easy).

  7. 12:54, 1 error. Evidently, Shortz et. al. think 5D is common knowledge…

    @Jeff
    I notice how I do on a specific puzzle is directly related to the amount of mental fatigue I have going, along with other factors. For instance, I’ve been mostly off caffeine for good for a while and am noticing my mental reactions are a lot quicker in the last month or so

    To address mental fatigue specifically, I find how I do a good measure of how tired I am. Before I started recording, I used to do all my crosswords late at night (mostly to match their releases), and will notice I’ll be less sharp on those than the morning. I can also look at stress level and how calm I am, which especially comes out in online things. You’ll see signs of some of it on that recording above.

    As for numbers of puzzles, I don’t find much difference between the puzzles if I spread them out in the day. I have to have an adjustment time for reasons I’ve described many times on Bill’s blog on each one. But if I do a bunch of puzzles in a row, I find I don’t need that time to click things in on the second one. Of course, the difficulty of the puzzles matter too, but I find there’s a certain amount of time I can go before things shut down. I can say too there’s a certain physical fatigue there, too for various factors, but that was beyond what you asked.

    But like anything, it involves the amount of physical and mental effort you can do, and giving yourself adequate rest when you need it.

  8. DNF- took too long and it day after thanksgiving?? Enough excuses. Got about halfway again.. then did 2 lookups. I had no idea.

    @nick- watched your video. I would have loved to know what you were thing.. especially towards the end. I’ve watched some other people. They do a narrative. Not sure if that’s your cup of tea or not.

    @jeff – I’m not as experienced as Glen or Dave but I do 4-5 a day , back to back. LAtimes, Nytimes, WSJ, Newsweek and New yorker. On Sunday, I do the Washington post also. It replaces the WSJ.
    I definitely get tired on Sunday but those aren’t as mentally fatiguing for me. I find myself fatigued on Friday nite trying to do NYTIMES.

    I’m no good enough yet to clean sweep Mondays New yorker but I’m getting there. I do pretty well the rest of the week. I absolutely do find that when I get tired, I just stop. Sometimes I come back. But I hate unfinished business.

    I also have another crossword book at my bedside and will go long enough to get tired and pick that up later. It’s my version of a sleeping pill. I don’t think of the book as a daily.

    Anyway, whether u wanted to hear all that or not….

    FWIW- Glen, Dave, and others share their thoughts and its helped over the many years. I’ve been on this blog for about 10 years or so.. its helped my game!

    1. Narrative: That was my original intention, to not fast solve, but try to help some people get to the point they can do all the puzzles in a week. My mic broke though, so that’s not going to be a thing for a while. Over the 6 years I’ve been doing this, there’s been people that have shown up here (and since gone) that I would love to sit down with and try to walk them through how to do some of these things. I think they would have enjoyed it a lot, I’d imagine. I can’t say I’m nowhere near perfect, since I think I still DNF way more puzzles than I would like, and catch way many more errors than I like too. But it’s hard when you do want to help someone and can’t for the distance.

      Fatigue: I thought on that some more, and actually have stopped doing puzzles for that reason (Washington Post being a prime example, I’ve found 4 21x21s on a Saturday night is usually too much for me). I need to stop doing a more, but it’s hard to scale back without losing something I do potentially enjoy, as opposed to some of the others that I don’t end up liking, like any of the Shortzian dirty tricks.

      Fatigue plays into stuff like the ACPT and whatever, too. I thought about repeating the ACPT 19 puzzles from when I played “stay at home” and seeing how I’d do this time. It’s too easy to just start into the next one straight-away, and not have fatigue play a factor in that, especially since they give you pause/walk away time during it too.

      As I’ve remarked, I do keep other puzzles around, but I seldom get to those for several reasons. Right now is the 2023 NYT calendar, but I don’t think I’ve touched it in probably three weeks.

  9. I’d love to say something profound in response to Jeff’s question, but, basically, I got nothin’.

    FWIW: This morning, I did the Newsday (11:12, no errors) and the New Yorker (18:01, no errors). And, just now, I did three puzzles in a row: the Tim Croce (1:09:41, no errors), tomorrow’s LAT (27:46, no errors), and tomorrow’s NYT (13:47, no errors). (Some “walk-away” time is included in these, as I don’t care all that much about timing.) I don’t think fatigue played much of a role in any of them. Most embarrassing moment: I drew a complete blank on the three-letter initialism for a substance Rachel Carson talked a lot about and had to get it from crossing entries. But, I also remembered a lot of really obscure stuff, deciphered a lot of really deceptive cluing, and came up with a lot of correct guesses on entries I’d never heard of. And I didn’t see much difference in performance as I went along.

    (I will admit that I’m glad I don’t have to face another puzzle until tomorrow morning … 🙂.)

  10. I was over 95% done within 20 min. but ended up clockin in at 56:42 , almost 30 min. of that a handful of squares in the centre and a bit east, with 3 errors. Problem was,without realizing it, I had the wrong “post- _ _ rtem.” I had partem instead of mortem—birth instead of death. MAORI actually flashed before my eyes before calling time, but I was stuck on birth and failed to see death.

    I kept wondering a bit about 26 Across because I was born and raised in Toronto and lived here all my life, and this is the first I heard that we have a “World Trade Centre.” It’s hardly a well known ‘fixture’ like the CN Tower. I remember when the CN Tower first went up and we climbed up on the roof of my neighbour’s house and saw it for the first time all the way downtown from the burbs. But the World Trade Centre of Toronto? Never heard of it.

    However on the whole it was a good week. Errors cut down from 17 last week to 6 this week, though clocking in longer at over 4 hours in total for the 7 puzzles.

    I would give Jeff Chen’s Sunday puzzle the prize for the best one of the week, along with Friday’s. I had harsh words for the Thursday puzzle, and this week’s oldie but goodie Thursday, for Mar. 22, 2021 illustrates to me the difference between worthy and gimmicky. The Oct. 19 2023 Thurs. puzzle, if stripped of the gimmick, was a Tuesdayish puzzle, and not a great one. I see it’s pretty new puzzle author that just debuted a couple of years ago. To my mind, get good at the conventional one first before indulging in 27 rebus squares. Once you got the gimmick there was not much interesting about the actual clues and words, they inevitably had to be contrived to serve the gimmick. It did not take very long to finish it off once you caught on to the gimmick. By contrast, the oldie but goodie definitely had a theme in the background but it did not dominate the whole puzzle. It was a tough one— the NW was the problem— that took me 1:07, with one error. In case anyone is going to do it I won’t include any spoilers.
    If you brown-nose every NYT constructor and have nothing but superlatives for everything the NYT does, when a really good one comes along your praise is gonna be hollow.

    2. Indeed. The NYT freebies are always a lot better than the ones they turn out today, in any forum. For sure. This said:

      >If you brown-nose every NYT constructor and have nothing but superlatives for everything the NYT does, when a really good one comes along your praise is gonna be hollow.

      Definitely agreed 1000%. There’s a lot of pressure in a lot of places (including this one) to give only superlatives if anything at all. There’s always offense if you really honestly offer criticism on a puzzle. Really anyone that can’t say anything negative (or mildly tepid) about any puzzle experience really can’t be taken seriously, and it’s really better treated that they have no worthwhile opinion at all on anything.

  13. The grid looked ominous at first glance but things went together smoothly. Last to fall was DUSTY vs MUSTY but M seemed to be
    the logical choice for 5-D. Enjoyable.

  14. As a New York Times subscriber, I can access any puzzle in the NYT crossword archives using its publication date, but the link to “NYT freebies” that non-subscribers see in the app is not shown to me. (It took me some time to figure out what others here were talking about and a bit longer to come up with a way of finding the link.) So I don’t do those puzzles, but I would observe that they are probably not chosen at random. Does this explain why the people who do them feel that they are of higher quality than the puzzles appearing in the paper now?

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