MEOW #189 All or Nothing

[DrTom]

Woohoo! Solved! Cat clean out of the bag first thing this morning. (Too much milk last night?)

I've had that happen when I use some of those nut/grain milks. I bought a combination of corn, rye and barley milks that someone had left sit in a barrel once and drank way too much of it. I could do nothing until the morning because I was George Staggering all around the house.

Glad morning brought a clear head of steam.

[woozy]

About 36 Across. I was today years old when I found out the title wasn't Jules Verne being surprisingly innumerate about ocean depth but the length of how far the Nautilus traveled while under sea.

24 hours and some an utterly unsolicited hint and I've got a pile of lint. People were actually able to solve this?

[DrTom]

Thursday night update:

25 Danny K Bernstein
26 Tyrpmom 
27 Larry Edelstein
28 rvkal 
29 Berto 
30 rjy 
31 omnilynx 
32 woozy 
33 Pair O Ducks
34 John Oresko
35 SJMcK 

[DrTom]

Wow, this is playing much harder than I anticipated:

Nudges

There are 9 things in the Grid that share a single characteristic

Those "things" are symmetrically placed

The "double cross" clue crosses two of them.

You do crosswords all the time, what favorite word in that same class is missing?

[Ergcat]

Cat is finally free! Needed the nudges and, even then, still a wild guess! I’m not good at these “infer” ones! thank you, Tom!

[DrTom]

Cat is finally free! Needed the nudges and, even then, still a wild guess! I’m not good at these “infer” ones! thank you, Tom!

I'll try to be a bit more explicit in future puzzles (explicit as to the answer that is, we are not ready for an R or X-Rated MEOW).

T

[woozy]

Retaliation!

"All for Nothing (and vice-versa)" meta

[DrTom]

A good number of solvers continue to roll in, no doubt to a fairly readily solvable WSJCC?

36 kurtalert
37 ergcat
38 CPJohnson
39 mardel
40 JM 
41 Alvibu67 
42 Carolyn

[DrTom]

One more cat fancier:

43 Cinny

If the usual hold true that may be the last solver, or certainly one of the last

[KayW]

All or Nothing: An entry you were sure you would find but didn't.

OREO

Nine symmetrically placed entries are notably black and white. As hinted at by 35 and 41 down, the entry you were sure you would find in the grid but didn't is that ubiquitous "double-crossed" OREO cookie. Yum!

[DrTom]

I want to thank @KayW for jumping in to save the day with a reveal. I did not think I was going to be able to do it and she did a last minute graphic that is a lot better than mine (less wordy, go figure).

Still there were some things I wanted folks to know so, you are not done with me yet....

The "All or Nothing" title, I hope everyone realized, was carefully chosen for the puzzle since depending on which way you look at it either all the colors together is black and none of the colors present is white! Interestingly enough there is a line of thought that states EXACTLY the opposite - figures, but it is still Black and White.

The "double cross" which was so neat and tied in so well was, in truth, serendipity. The placement of the clue that crossed two B&W entries was intentional, but it was only later that I realized the symbol we see on Oreos (and the Nabisco logo itself) is:

A circle topped with a two-bar cross and is supposed to stand for a European symbol of quality. Experts believe the design for the Nabisco symbol arose from the Cross of Lorraine, which was carried by the Knights Templar during the First Crusade in the 11th century. I have looked at that symbol (as I am sure we all have) just before one of those delicious B&W treats (often dripping with milk) disappeared down the hatch and never thought of it.

Ever wonder just how ubiquitous the word OREO is in crosswords? It is the most common brand name in the NYT puzzles, having been used over 3000 times (in the NYT) since they started doing crosswords (though it wasn't until 1993 that it referenced the cookie instead of another meaning) and is popular because it has three of the five most common letters used in crosswords (A and S are the other two) and is the 7th most used answer (AREA, ERIE, ALOE, ARIA, ELSE and ANTE beat it). Now for some real trivia - know what is considered the oddest clue for OREO? It appeared in the USA Today puzzle 2/12/2020 "Cookie that some people eat with mustard". Yep, that would have been a real head scratcher. Editor Erik Agard said credit goes to a coworker, who spotted it in Shay Mitchell’s pregnancy craving mukbang YouTube posting.

OK, that is a LOT more than you wanted to know, but for the 44 people who solved it (Thank you!) and for all the rest who just HAD to know more about Oreos, there you go.

[KayW]

The "All or Nothing" title, I hope everyone realized, was carefully chosen for the puzzle since depending on which way you look at it either all the colors together is black and none of the colors present is white! Interestingly enough there is a line of thought that states EXACTLY the opposite - figures, but it is still Black and White.

VERY clever, Tom! I'm afraid I did not catch that nuance.

The "double cross" which was so neat and tied in so well was, in truth, serendipity. The placement of the clue that crossed two B&W entries was intentional, but it was only later that I realized the symbol we see on Oreos (and the Nabisco logo itself) is:

And leave it to me to find the inadvertent nudge rather than the intended. I guessed OREO immediately but thought to myself "what's with that double cross clue?" I usually inhale those cookies too fast to notice any patterns printed on them, so I turned to Google ... et voilà! I didn't even notice that BOTH 35 and 41 down are crossed twice by the theme entries

Well done, Tom!