Redd's Roster of Crosswordese: Do not read if you hate DRNO

or
ELO
ENO
ONO

or
ONEA
ONEL
ONER

or
ATT
ITT
OTT

or if you have
ALOTONONESPLATE

This may not be the Best Thread Ever but hey
ITRY

EKE
ALOU
ETA
ANTE

ANIL
ANILE
ANISE

ERE
ESNE
UTNE

I discovered the ETUI from my US crossword app

ADZ

ETUI
ETTU
ERITU

OSHA
EPPS
AETNA

ESAI

what vistas would open up to american puzzlemakers if these supermarket brands ever opened their doors in north america:

LIDL
ALDI

also ASDA

ETD
AONE
ASTI

I'm a big fan of working in five or ten minute chunks on a hard puzzle, for exactly the reason mookie just gave. Conveniently, five or ten minute chunks what my schedule permits. I'm also noticeably better at solving puzzles between, like, 6am and 4pm. Before/after my brain is mooshy. I don't like a lot of the NYTimes regular constructors, but I (honestly) don't know where to go to find other free, dece quality puzzles I can do on my phone. I'm so weary of the ETTA / ASTA /ARIA / ERIE / ETALIA fill style.

soda on the main thread

AIDA
ARIA
NORMA
TOSCA

(xpost!)

ETAL
ETALIA
EIRE
ODED
CCED

ELLS
EELS

EIRE really grinds my gears

UEY (as in u-turn) is the worst

north america has ALDI!

ASTA
ELOI

^Two favorites

*Note from OP: repeats are allowed and encouraged, bonus points awarded for any kind of rhyming, internal or external, wordplay, word ladder, etc you can make out of your grouped entries

UEY (as in u-turn) is the worst

agreed, for many reasons, not the least because the "UIE" spelling makes a lot more sense

this thread could go on for EONs

AMNOT
ARETOO

ASAMI

brb gonna board an ELAL SST and fly NNE over the URALS

ERN
ERNE
ENYA

xp while performing an ARIA?

ASAMI
SODOI

You know I started a parody song using this stuff once for a theoretical performance at the dreaded ACPT talent show. Maybe I post what I had later if I can remember it.

this year there's been a weird shift toward THE___ clues a la

THESOX
THEFED
THEBREAKS

and I hate them all and they make me go

ERR
IRR
ARR

I despise clues of the 'direction between CITY 1 and CITY 2' sort where the answer is

ENE ESE SSE SSW WSW WNW NNW

Yep

(To the tune of "Take a Letter, Maria")
Last night I was ONKP
Across from the APO
I was EYED up by a dog named OTTO
Who report to the NCO

reports

ENE ESE SSE SSW WSW WNW NNW

What's the big deal? Just travel to one of those cities, find a high vantage point, get out your lensatic compass, and point it at a known landmark in the target city. Easy peasy.

Take your dog ASTA with you.

(some story about receiving a Dear John letter I haven't flesh out yet. Then...)

IBEX

So take a letter, a rebus
With pen or pencil you can write
To solve it electronically
You'd better find Across Lite

(Which is the chorus, which will repeat, with the last chorus changing to)
So take a letter, Merl Reagle
Address it to Will Shortz
Sit on a potato pan
I put soot on warts

There's just a weird lot of common / borderline crosswordese stuff. Seems like with a theme this (relatively) light, the fill wouldn't be so IRR AROD RIIS ESTA TELEX ORES ORSO ACTI ANTE AXLE etc. The worst of the short fill, though, was the GPO / EEOC crossing. Truly awful, if only because their crossing *initialisms*, which means if you don't know what the letters ... stand for ... you have no hope.

from rex parker's blog entry today. when i used to do the NYT crossword more often i enjoyed reading his takes and particularly his low tolerance for lazy crosswordese, when applicable

I think reviewing the crossword every day for however many years has driven him to madness, like Andy Daly in Review

I know it drove me a little mad, just doing them every day. Duolingo is a moderately better addiction.

ISSA RAE

ooh one i hate is EAPOE. have seen it in at least three xwords

ooh nice, will try the NYer first

xxp ERMA bombeck will live forever

Apparently 'alit' and 'asea' aren't very common English language words based on usage frequencies on books released since 1980. Wouldn't have guessed that from doing crosswords.

http://app.aspell.net/lookup?dict=en_US-large;words=alee%0D%0Aalit%0D%0Aasea

Been feeling very annoyed lately by the proliferation of "schoolyard comeback" "schoolyard retort" etc. - AMTOO, ARENOT, CANSO, etc

yeah if there was one crossword cliche I could ban it would be this one

with some incomprehensible to me Britishisms)

lol yes, as an American learning cryptics, learning to bung in ER anytime I saw “queen” or AB for “sailor” was the most arcane and incomprehensible stuff when I was starting. My best tip is don’t get too hung up if you don’t complete a puzzle. It just means either you were just not on the setter’s wavelength, or perhaps the clue was just wonky. They’re not all perfect. Just check the answers on fifteensquared or elsewhere, and learn from your mistakes.

There’s a cryptics thread here, but it’s been quiet lately.

asea

This should be easy but I can never distinguish between the clueing for it and "alee"

Cheri OTERI hasn't been a member of SNL since 2000

And it's been quite a while since there was an ALOU in baseball.

Been a while since anyone wrote a significant ODE. Or cooked with OLEO.

The last time someone seriously sought the help of a Muse such as ERATO? Longer still.

Crosswordese is its own dialect and its own cluster of references. It is white and it is eastern and it is boomerish or older. If you were a decently acculturated sports and film fan in 1958 in Manhattan, you will do okay; the rest of us just learn that vocabulary through trial and error.

It sucks but that is where things stand at present. I love and applaud the constructors who push at the boundaries and get more DRDRE into the mix.

Came across an old pre-Shortz piece of crosswordese in a recent cryptic today: CYMA.

cover your motherfucking ass?

don't think that's what it means, lol, although perhaps that's what it says in the urban dictionary, will have to check

cyan, yellow, magenta, and ass

Sung to the tune of
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUZvfpVfW0k

RIP, Felix Silla aka Cousin ITT.

beedybeedybeedy

Pre-Shortz word with exactly one appereance in the, um, modern era:
SLUB

CYMA was/is a curvy molding.

https://www.memphisdailynews.com/news/2012/aug/2/spare-moments-of-litzing/

KRAAL was popular throughout the first three NYT editor eras but disappeared in the Shortz zone, but KRAIT managed to live on for a quite a bit.

My mother gave up crosswords for good over ANOA ("Celebes wild ox") and I think that one has lingered a bit into the Shortz era.

Most of those I'm glad to see aren't in circulation.

They're still using "sea eagle" (ERN/ERNE/ERNES) and the anti-Crosswordese faction hates it. Me, I just shrug and fill it in because it's part of the culture. SNEE and SMEE remain frequent.

Wasn't that the email of Will's assistant, celebe✧✧✧@fu✧✧✧.c✧✧? Let me check.

celebesox

As seen here: https://wordplay.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/american-crossword-puzzle-tournament-brooklyn-or-stamford-a-special-message-from-will-shortz/

Old school variant spelling: FIORD. Although four uses in the Shortz era.

Now I want to call a trivia team or suchlike
CELEBE SOX. DO U SEE?

I doubt anyone will want to follow me down this rabbit hole, but really enjoying doing these Dawn of the Shortz Era puzzles.

Do you mean like deep 90s stuff? More power to you, JR+tB. I have only dabbled in that area.

Currently I am working my way backwards into the archive, year by year. Currently on 2012, generally doing Wednesday through Saturday. (I usually don't bother with Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday except to keep the streak alive.)

2012 has a couple of decently clever Thursdays and some tough Fridays, but it's all pretty recognizable Shortziana. Looking forward to some baffling stumpers and Celebes Oxyness as the project proceeds. I am getting a graduate-level education in baseball-playing Alous.

At the same time I am trying to nurse a decent streak of current puzzles. Hope to hit a year in March or April.

The only time I think of ANI Difranco is when I do the crossword.

November 21st, 1993 was the beginning of the Shortz Era, which began with a splash with a Sunday puzzle by Peter Gordon, who therefore has a Shortz Number of one. I have yet to encounter Celebe’s ox or even DRNO himself.

Actually I must have seen him on December 27, 1993, but won’t see him again for a year.

Kind of like the retro nature of doing puzzles that are from before the blogs and before XWord Info comments, but still in the database so I can see the stats along which answers and clues are still used.

You can even solve the Pre-Shortz puzzles if you want, but I don't want.
https://www.xwordinfo.com/Calendar/1993?type=pssolve

I have a book of Eugene Maleska-era puzzles, and trying to solve them is like getting ice water thrown in your face. They’re so insane you wonder how people actually finished them back then.

In Infinite Tuesday, Mike Nesmith talks about how he had an uncle who would do the Sunday crossword pretty quickly– presumably some Texas paper– and then throw it away. One day young Michael fished the paper out of the garbage and saw all these unpronounceable nonsense words. It was like that moment in the documentary when R. Crumb finally looks at his brother’s sketchbook to see his latest work.

Part of the enigma that was Uncle Chick came into a degree of focus one Sunday after he had finished the crossword puzzle and left for the golf course. It didn’t make sense to me, this extraordinary word skill, and Chick didn’t really discuss anything with me that gave any hint about his thought processes. So on this Sunday I pulled the paper out of the trash, where he had thrown it, and looked at the puzzle, searching for clues. When I first looked at the filled-in puzzle, it seemed normal. Words like moon and igloo and kayak were in their proper place. Then I started to notice words like fonqi and nmfberhng and qplltrkller. Then I finally saw that most of the words were unrecognizable, and weren’t words at all. As this sank in, I was glad I was alone in the house. I carefully folded the paper up, put it back in the trash, and backed away.

That is funny. I bet Maleska could find a way to clue fonqi though.

I remember being able to do early week puzzles and even a leisurely Sunday puzzle solve back in those days, although I never attempted to speed solve and barely even tried Friday and Saturday.

Interesting to see how the cluing of EGAN has evolved.

Check it out: EGAN was in three puzzles in a row, Sun through Tuesday, starting the week of Jan 9, 1994.

Prefer this clue for one of today's answers from 1994: Hagar the Horrible's honey.

bobdole/clinton entry in the NYT sunday puzzle apparently

Monday's puzzle chock-a-block with classic crosswordese.

crossword constructors breathe sigh of relief as ESAI morales is cast in the new mission impossible movie

Lol!

Was just reminded on Novelists No One Reads Anymore of SOBIG, which I recall seeing a lot although doesn't seem to be that often in Shortz Era NYT.

Have to ask - is there anyone who calls a peanut butter and jelly sandwich a PBJ irl? PB and J to be sure, or even PBNJ, but PBJ? this has recently risen to the top of my bugaboo list

i am okay with that one

less so with TAX BITE, which appeared the other day

Agreed, I remember that puzzle seemed to have a few answers that were questionable