Thought the puzzle wasn't *that* out there, although SAROD was pretty random-seeming.
It looks pretty cool in pictures, though.
My one peeve was [Fluffy, say] for HOUSEPET.
The clue is too loose in one direction, because
you could dump any name ([Dupre, say] ) in
there, and too vague in the other, as there
is nothing suggestive of the HOUSE part in the
other. Fortunately, I didn't fall for HOUSECAT,
although there's nothing in the clue to prevent
it.

As to the applet, the simple fix would be just omit the diacritical marks in the clues. Even
something potentially confusing like "pate" would be easier to figure out than "p?t?".
Byron | 08.31.07 - 11:13 pm | #

Wish I had a little more time to comment but that's quite a good write-up on the Times. No need to hold back. And btw, if you want to skip the "Read More..." cut in the future, no complaints from me.

My two cents: I didn't get the feeling that this was one of those MOAH Saturdays. That's subjective. I didn't time myself, and did the puzzle while snacking, watching TV, talking, etc., so the time stretched out anyway. But that I didn't need to go off to a quiet room to finish it made it feel somewhat easier than some other Saturdays.

The central 15, JACQUELINE DUPRE, was a name I knew from the movie "Hilary and Jackie" a few years back. I had a ..._U... across and a ..._U... down and knowing Karen I guessed there had to be a Q in there, which gave me the full 15 off a couple of letters.

That said, I did find some of the obscure (to me) names in the clues a bit frustrating. Seemed in a couple of places the cluing was trying just a little too hard.

There were a few hard words in the grid too, but the only crossing that I thought might be unfair was MALONE/ELZIE. I thought the L might be a Z (there was a famous baseball name MAZZONE so I wasn't sure).

I did like a lot of the longer fill. There were about seven to ten real sparklers, and that to me made the puzzle well worth it.

By the way, I never heard of the Gomer Pyle SHAZAM either, but when I asked my wife what she thought of "Gomer Pyle expletive," she said it had to be "Golly!" or "Shazam!"

- John
JJF | 08.31.07 - 11:34 pm | #

1) AOLIAN HARP vs EOLIAN HARP...had I found that single-letter mistake rather than spending time trying out alternatives for MALONE, ELZIE, and a couple other unfamiliars, I might have finished ahead of Amy for the first time ever on a Saturday NYT (I finished 2:35 behind).

2) JACQUELINE DU PRE, conversely, opened the middle for me quickly. Other than Yo Yo Ma and Mstislav Rostropovich, who qualifies as a famous cellist?

3) Somebody run Byron through airport security. Gotta be some bionic parts in there...

4) I'll go for the "eminently fair but tough" view with a side comment that the trivia required diverse knowledge. Thanks, Karen.
Brent H (floridaqqq) | Homepage | 08.31.07 - 11:50 pm | #

This seems to have been an uncommonly hard end-of-week set of puzzles. To me, Thursday felt like a hard Friday and Friday a hard Saturday. It sounds like Saturday is continuing that trend. Sorry it frustrated you! I'll be interested to hear how universal that reaction is.
kmtracey | 09.01.07 - 12:04 am | #

p.s. has the applet always had a problem with diacriticals or is this something new? I gather the NYT recently re-did the software used to typeset the puzzles -- I wonder if that is related. The applet is written in Java so can certainly handle special characters. It looks to me like the actual code page of the data files the applet reads is different from what the applet is expecting. It should be a simple fix to the applet to specify the correct code page and have characters displayed correctly [she says blithely, having no actual knowledge of any of the code involved...]
kmtracey | 09.01.07 - 12:26 am | #

I just found your blog ang the NYT applet and really enjoy both. Had to guess at the Elzie/Malone crossing.

Cote d'Azur and Jacqueline Dupre in the same puzzle-loved it. I do not at all think Mme. Dupre's inclusion is unfair. Sarod, though, meh, but I guess I learned something. Sarg I never heard of, but found out the fun fact at Wikipedia that he was involved in the Macy's parade balloons.

Chapeau to Karen for a brain-bender
Scott Atkinson | 09.01.07 - 12:28 am | #

The NYT was actually somewhat easier for me than yesterday's puzzle. JACQUELINEDUPRE was, in fact, quite famous in the classical music world, so I think that clue was fair. On the other hand, the crossing of MALONE and ELZIE was just a guess, even though I know something about old comics-- and it's true that there were quite a few 'who the heck is that' proper names in the grid. Also, I had HOUSECAT rather than HOUSEPET for a while.
Matt | 09.01.07 - 6:46 am | #

I thought this was fair for a Saturday, ie, I wasn't shouting at the constructor while doing the puzzle. (That's ok, Byron, keep them coming!) Actually, I started the puzzle thinking it was easier than the typical Saturday, and then found those tough crossings mentioned above. I fell for HOUSECAT, and thought that was the kind of tricky clue/answer combination we all like. One of the few movies I saw in 1998 was "Hilary and Jackie".
Jan (danjan) | 09.01.07 - 7:20 am | #

I, like Amy, am a big fan of Karen Tracey's puzzles. I knew I was in for something when, after 3 minutes, I had 4 boxes filled in, three of them with an S.

Although I do have to agree with those who griped about weird crossings (the D of SAROD was the last letter I filled in), I snookered myself on quite a few occasions: I had UNDETERRED in the back of my mind for a long time, but couldn't bring myself to plug it in officially; I must have erased and rewritten RDS six times; and I can't even remember how long it took me to realize that BAD RAP wasn't BUM RAP.

I must have been one of the lucky people who didn't fall for HOUSECAT, if only because I got the -PET part first, and then the H.

All that said, the vertical stack of AVAST MATEY, MICKEY FINN, and SQUARE-CUT is one of the best I have seen in a long time. Brava, Karen!

MN
Nothnagel | 09.01.07 - 10:19 am | #

Brutal, and a bit frustrating with all the French names and musical obscurity (to me), but that's just the limits of my knowledge. I think those that had an easier time with this one just knew Jacqueline Dupre off maybe a couple letters, and built from there. Anyone else with classical musician knowledge find the puzzle overall a bit easier?

There were at least 8 to 10 answers I had never in my life heard of (including that name), which made for a really tough solve overall.
It's always fun to learn new words and names, but so many of them crossed each other, with plenty of global obscurity mixed in, that a bit of a guessing game resulted.
Karen, I should have been prepared for your cool, Scrabbly geography at Cote D'Azur, but that one blindsided me as well ;).

At least they led up to this one with some tough late-week puzzles. It was a satisfying feeling to finish this one, though. At this difficulty, that's really the goal - can you go beyond your knowledge and make enough educated, experimental guesses to complete the puzzle?
Howard B | 09.01.07 - 10:31 am | #

I agree that ELZIE/MALONE is an unfair crossing... There's no reason MALONE couldn't be clued more in a more familar fashion. I got stuck on COTE D'AZUR for ages because the crossings were arbitrary, but it was very satisfying when I finally got it, and I was confident with all the crossings once I filled it in, so I'll let that one stand.

Overall, I enjoyed it, but difficultywise it was brutal. First Saturday over 20 minutes for me in a while.
The Dan | 09.01.07 - 10:54 am | #

Wow, you blogged the hell out of Karen's puzzle. You should hate a puzzle more often. . .

I adore this puzzle, though I recognize its unfairness and prickliness. I don't think very many constructors are as wide-ranging in their fill as Karen is. It's a kaleidoscope of fabulous vocabulary, and almost none of it made me choke (SAROD came close - but every cross was gettable). Very very very few people are going to know Any Fr. "departments" off-hand, so I just took ORNE as yet another "better-know-your-crosses"-type clue. HE/SHE, AVAST, MATEY, POINDEXTER, MICKEY FINN, THX, and SQUARE CUT all strike me as Highly original. In short, I thought this puzzle ruled. But I'm very partial to Tracey puzzles in general. She and Nothnagel and Quarfoot and Walden almost never fail please. Me.

mds
Michael | Homepage | 09.01.07 - 10:57 am | #

Amy, you make me feel considerably better about my performance on today's NYT. First time I've taken over an hour of direct head-beating on one of these since I've been paying any attention to times.

I got absolutely slaughtered by the COTE D'AZUR corner. I started out by getting the last name of the cellist wrong, never having heard of Ms Dupre, but otherwise did mostly okay with the corner, initially, except that I couldn't enter the specific cup size without knowing the cross-entry, had no idea about the 1986 TWA purchase, and didn't have any clue about the Indian lute. Oh, and I didn't know the Basse-Normandie department, and entered it as ARNE, rather than ORNE. This is the point where I question how much my own predilections got in the way of my finishing the puzzle. Having the resort area entry starting with ?ATED and having been lingerie shopping with my fiancee within the last few months, I immediately thought GATED????/G-CUP, and it took me almost an hour to straighten that part out. I felt really stupid when I eventually got to GATED AZUR, went to Google, and got back something about a "gated cote d'azur community" and realized that I had been misled (which my fiancee frequently pronounces like the past tense of an imaginary verb, to misle, in an old case of reader's vocabulary).

And should I go on to say anything, Amy, about your comment that "... GAS GUZZLER and ... MISS SAIGON made a great pair of stacked entries...?"

Looking forward to a nice, easy 12-minute monday,
Russell
Russell Brown | Homepage | 09.01.07 - 11:51 am | #

Jackie Du Pre, well you probably won't forget her in the future, but though it was a gimme for me, it didn't give me nearly the help that I hoped it would. Orange, she has a direct Chicago connection, too; up until her death she was married to Daniel Barenboim, who was the CSO's music director until, I think, last year. Otherwise, I'm not qualified to comment on your question since those structural issues still elude me. I went unusually far unassisted for a Saturday puzzle because I tend to find myself on Karen Tracey's wavelength but still had to google extensively.

Even stuff that's in my life eluded me! I have a TREO but it's the crappiest phone on earth so I don't use it for that and didn't think of it in terms of one until the bitter end. I've used RENU contact lense solution on and off for years, but couldn't call it to mind for the life of me. But otoh, POINDEXTER, hey, no problemo!! ;)
Wendy | 09.01.07 - 1:38 pm | #

BTW, my favorite sailor/salt/tar-related clue remains Byron's [Salty hail], for AHOY MATE, a year or two ago. Sounds like you need some crazy meteorological phenomenon there, doesn't it?
Orange | Homepage | 09.01.07 - 3:49 pm | #

Drat! Here I am on vacation without my HaloScan password and unable to delete comments I deem inappropriate. The e-mail address associated with "moi" in the past included the name Harriet, which somehow evokes some cognitive dissonance with the tenor of his/her comments.

This is the third comment posted by "moi" and they've all been fairly crude undertakings.
Orange | Homepage | 09.02.07 - 7:08 am | #

Other than Yo Yo Ma and Mstislav Rostropovich, who qualifies as a famous cellist?

Just for the record ... Lynn Harrell ... Pablo Casals ... and for the older folks, Janos Starker. I'm sure there are others. These are all that came to mind.

Jim
jim | 09.02.07 - 10:06 am | #

Morey Amsterdam? Didn't he pluck around on the cello?
Dave | Homepage | 09.05.07 - 3:52 pm | #