Orange, REPIPING is pretty common in the plumbing trade (very recently acquired knowledge).
karmasartre | 08.21.08 - 11:45 pm | #

A few missteps and a few self-amazing entrees for me. I thought the dance step would be the plural of La Motte. I mean how many dance steps do you know from 18th Century France? Tried Aligrave for the picante city, but that would be more likely in Portugal. I admit getting SERTS without any idea what it was, thanks Orange. STEEVE is a word I knew and INTERLEAGUE came from very few letters and opened the North. I know AUER from a puzzle discussed here. Thought the Biblical town was Colossus, but I am an IMAGINER.

Nice feat of construction, but I say let's skip 17 blocks and go right to 16. I know a guy at Slate.
PhillySolver | 08.21.08 - 11:52 pm | #

I could not get a toehold in the NYT, aside from the few gimmes like AUER, SENTA, and PALOS. Afterwards I counted squares and realized it was a record-breaker, which makes UNSAFER and UNSHUT more palatable to this solver. Loved both sets of triple-stacks too. Congrats Kevin!

The NYS, on the other hand, was too easy for a KMT WW... maybe just because the long 15s fell quickly for me.

Wanted to thank Al for the tip yesterday on getting the CS puzzle from the WashPost site. Now I can solve it before 1am ET! Also, seems there's no CHE puzzle today - summer break?
Dan | 08.22.08 - 12:07 am | #

orange, i stuck with ...ALPHABET long past the point when it was clear that none of the crossings worked. i really don't like the pairing of that clue with that answer; the RUSSIANLANGUAGE has words, and it's the cyrillic alphabet that has those 33 letters. i also found it very tough to shake URI for RIC (ick).

i wish TORRES had been clued as euro 2008 star fernando, if not dara. (it may well have been finalized before dara won her medals.) it turns out that there are a lot of joes in baseball, so that wasn't a very helpful clue until several crosses were in place.

tough puzzle.
joon | 08.22.08 - 12:12 am | #

Although I posted an embarrassingly high time, I'm pleased that I finished the thing. Did Saturday come early? Since I finished it..."Wow, what a Great Puzzle!"

First entry was CYRILICALPHABET but of course that's wrong, but nice how it eventually materialized. After the first across/down pass I think I had about 5 answers: NUNNS, EMOTES, TINTO, PALOS (am going to "P.V." on Monday, how lucky) and the hilarious "EYE"GOR. My favorite line was -- Wilder: "What knockers!" Garr: "Thank you Herr Dokter."

How the heck Orange does these things in such a short time just boggles my mind!
brownshk12 | 08.22.08 - 12:25 am | #

...but...but. And I have a journalism degree. Note to self: "Tsk Tsk."
brownshk12 | 08.22.08 - 12:26 am | #

Whoops, mark me down for an error on the NYT. I saw the "and" in 13D and thought it had to be plural, so I pre-entered an S in the last square. Since SSE seemed as valid as ESE, I didn't catch it. Guess I better bone up on my Spanish geography. I need to get in the habit of checking answers before posting times. I missed the fact that it had a record low number of squares, that's pretty cool. Thanks for pointing that out.

All the pop culture in the Weekend Warrior seemed to click for me today, so that one fell pretty quickly. Very smooth solve.

We saw "I.O.U.S.A" tonight. Once again, Patrick Creadon and Christine O'Malley have done a great job. Brian Oakes' graphics really hold the movie together, just like they did in Wordplay. The live panel discussion was interesting as well, although Warren Buffett was disappointing. The audience in our theatre applauded when David Walker finally had the guts to disagree with him. I also noticed that Patrick Creadon dressed much better for this event than he used to for the "Wordplay" screenings! I think Patrick would say the crossword crowd is a little more fun to be around than the financial crowd, so take that, Ron Rosenbaum. Patrick and Christine will be in Denver for the convention this weekend, so I hope I get to see them.
Al Sanders | 08.22.08 - 12:56 am | #

Tough but fun puzzle. I'm a native NYer and have been to Rockefeller Center many times and was clueless as to Serts and Senta. Disappointed with the Senta/ Serts crossing as that was my only mistake and had to Google it. I would have preferred crossing yenta with yerts, fun words but not as obscure as Senta and Serts.
profphil | 08.22.08 - 2:15 am | #

Amy,

Persepolis is a terrific movie. It is also a city in Iran, which I know because I have a free subscription to National Geographic, which devoted much of its current issue to Iran and included a huge fold-out map. I knew Senta but did not know SERT and was just guessing between SERES/SERTS and TINEO/TINTO.

Steve
Steve Manion | 08.22.08 - 3:18 am | #

Oops-- entered my NYT time into the NYS slot. Wondered how everyone got so fast...

For the NYT, first got the top half right-to-left, then the bottom half also right-to-left. Lots of incorrect first guesses, like RETAILER for 7D 'Store figure' and INDEED/AGREED-- but once the longer entries started making sense, it finished up relatively quickly.
Matt | 08.22.08 - 6:02 am | #

Count me among those who googled the SERTS/SENTA crossing...and though I've heard of MARES NEST, I was thinking of HORNETS (and then WASPS) at first and finally settled on MAGES with the crosser of FIG TREES. (Thinking of angels hovering over the Garden of Eden....busy place with snakes, apples and angels, huh?) I did think a nest of mages would be rather chaotic, no?
Evad | 08.22.08 - 6:28 am | #

...You know, maybe if SENTA Berger and muralist = SERT weren't such gimmes for me, I would have done something with my life by now. Rosenbaum is right—such a tremendous waste of one's memory to have done so many crosswords! Why, I might have sent a manned mission to Jupiter and cured cancer among the Jovians.

Although it would be very hard to win any ACPT trophies without doing a lot of crosswords.
Orange | Homepage | 08.22.08 - 7:47 am | #

P.S. Thanks to PhillySolver for e-mailing me last night and alluding to Kevin's record, spurring me to start counting squares.
Orange | Homepage | 08.22.08 - 7:50 am | #

i remember the first time i saw SERT in a crossword puzzle. the clue was basically [He designed the Science Center at Harvard University], and i had No Clue... even though that's the building where my office is located! (yes, i'm in it right now.) the amazing things you can learn from puzzles! however, even though there are bio labs in this building, they're teaching labs for introductory courses. i think they only cure cancer over in fairchild, up the street a ways.
joon | 08.22.08 - 8:48 am | #

Orange's solving time notwithstanding, I Declare this a Very Hard Puzzle. Both congratulations and thanks to Kevin Der, since the high white count greatly adds to the suspense -- how can I possibly finish this?! -- and the ultimate pleasure when the job is finally done.

Senta Berger - maybe you have to have watched a lot of old movies while your brain was still forming long-term memories. Sert - yeah, I know it from the Rock Center tour a million years ago, when the brain ... well, you know.

Put down the puzzles and get outside this weekend, everybody.
Jim in NYC | 08.22.08 - 8:59 am | #

holy crap, yggdrasil! in a crossword! my life is complete. thank you, harvey estes & mike shenk!
joon | 08.22.08 - 1:28 pm | #

NYS - I had two of the exact same problems: played the Alphabet Game with the BDAY/BLOTS crossing, and PYRAMID took many crossings (partly because of the wrong kind of SHOE).

LAT - there's a similar issue here as with the NYT record-breaker. Are the five theme entries and nice long fill in the grid worth it when you've got awful answers like CLK and INCR? And OON, STAC and ITY? In this case, I vote no.
Dan | 08.22.08 - 1:33 pm | #

i liked the LAT. there were some short clunkers, but not any awful-sounding UNSAFER-type words. and it was a 16x15, too, so we were treated to a little extra on the long fill side--only 75 words, quite low for a 16x15. plus, all five theme answers were good--very famous people, and tight theme (except that i think ROBBINGGIVENS works a little different phonetically from the others).

the WSJ was probably my favorite puzzle of the day. easy, yes, but with so many great answers. and the aforementioned yggdrasil appearance.

i miss the CHE, though.
joon | 08.22.08 - 2:06 pm | #

Orange!
Fabulous write up...I feel like a newbie asking "did you really solve the NYT in under 7 minutes!!!???!!!!"
Wow. BravA.
Got STEEVE only from guessing about Stevedore, so nice to see that cofirmed here.
I was right with ProfPhil that I did YENTA for SENTA.
(Maybe a star of Yiddish theater?)
Senta Berger reminds me of that tune "Santa Baby" sung by everyone from Marilyn Monroe to Kellie Pickler!
Maybe someone should write a song parody of that!
Senta Berger is one of those TOTAL unknowns to me that was almost a gimme for the older crowd, which, until today, I thought I was part of!
andrea carla michaels | Homepage | 08.22.08 - 5:33 pm | #

Responding to Dan:

Imo, none of today's puzzles was without inferior answers. The NY Times had 'em, the Sun had 'em (GRIPPY, REIT, BEBE, VIER, etc.). Anytime I see a complex construction, and I think all of these are complex, I expect concessions. Some of your "awful" answers were legit abbreviations. I guess "awful" is a judgment call, but I thought all the constructions were so impressive that a few clunkers in each didn't bother me a bit.
Jim | 08.22.08 - 6:03 pm | #

I think the NYT team desreves a break on TORRES. Back (a year ago?) when the puzzle was probably constructed, probably only a few outside of the small group of hard core swimfans (I know, I should be curing cancer instead of watching swimming!) would have heard of her. But oh how sweet it would have been to see Dara pop up in the middle of the Olympics.

Is YERT(S) a word? It doesn't show up on dictionary.com or Matt G's clue database. UNSAFER doesn't look great in the middle, but lotsa great stuff there to make up for it. And a record. Chapeau!

Cool 15x16 in the LAT. I noticed that when I got thrown by an 8 letter central across.

Karen Tracey is one of my faves and did not disappoint (never does!)
Scott Atkinson | 08.22.08 - 6:59 pm | #

Andrea, thank you for saving that dreadful song for me. It's hard to get through December without hearing "Santa Baby" at least once, but now I will hear it as "Senta Berger." Much improved!

I will say "amen" to Jim. Patrick Berry does seem to have a knack for limiting the crap quotient more consistently than most, but yes, a few "clunkers" (a subjective term) really are par for the course in even the most mildly ambitious puzzle. And what a puzzle editor deems smooth might well displease a newer solver who doesn't know, say, the card game SKAT. SENTA Berger gave me zero pause—is it a terrific entry? No. But a seasoned Friday/Saturday NYT solver is likely to have at least a vague recognition of the name, and this is a weekend themeless here.

Scott, yes, this puzzle was edited and put into the NYT's publication pipeline before Dara Torres's latest medals. Rex suggested chocolatier Jacques Torres for the clue, and that would've been solid. Torres had/has a PBS show, and he's got stores in NYC—much tastier than Joe Torre and his relatives. I don't think YERT is a word—yurts, yes, and Yertle the Turtle.
Orange | Homepage | 08.22.08 - 7:28 pm | #

Sert's mural in Rockefeller Center replaced the fresco by Diego Rivera, which was controversial because it featured Lenin, and was destroyed after Rivera refused to change the face. Daniel Okrent wrote a wonderful book on Rockefeller Center, which includes a lot of details on the art. If his name seems familiar, he is the former public editor of the NYTimes featured in Wordplay who keeps a daily log of his times.
Jan (danjan) | 08.22.08 - 9:49 pm | #

Jan, Okrent's segment of Wordplay was one of my favorite parts of the movie. He cracked me up with the "because I'm an obsessive creep" line, and the explanation that his log of solving times would help him to track the deterioration of his mind.
Orange | Homepage | 08.22.08 - 10:17 pm | #

Yeah, "awful" was too strong a word. I see that all those entries had appeared multiple times before per Cruciverb... I guess they were just particularly clunky for me.
Dan | 08.22.08 - 11:32 pm | #

I am belatedly noticing that each of Kevin's triple-stacks intersects only one 3-letter answer, two 4's, and one 5—11 of the crossings are 6- to 9-letter words, which is truly impressive. The 12 top- and bottom-most rows contain just 8 black squares—those zones are just 4.4% blocked.
Orange | Homepage | 08.23.08 - 1:36 pm | #

I have noticed that all the hard puzzles always have bad or misleading clues.Example-clue,"it has 33 letters" answer "RUSSIAN LANGUAGE".That is blatantly wrong. A language does NOT have letters. An alphabet has letters.

The most repeated violation is singular clues for plural answers and visa versa.

And almost all puzzle creators do it. If they are so clever, they should be able to do correctly.
ron scacco | 09.26.08 - 5:30 pm | #