The New York Times International - 30.08.2019

THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION FRIDAY, AUGUST 30, 2019| 13

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GARFIELD

KENKEN

Answers to Previous Puzzles

WIZARD of ID

DOONESBURY CLASSIC 1993

CALVIN AND HOBBES

DILBERT

Created by Peter Ritmeester/Presented by Will Shortz

SUDOKU No. 3008

Fill the grid so

that every row,

column 3x3 box

and shaded 3x

box contains

each of the

numbers

1 to 9 exactly

once.

Fill the grids with digits so as not

to repeat a digit in any row or

column, and so that the digits

within each heavily outlined box

will produce the target number

shown, by using addition,

subtraction, multiplication or

division, as indicated in the box.

A 4x4 grid will use the digits

1-4. A 6x6 grid will use 1-6.

For solving tips and more KenKen

puzzles: http://www.nytimes.com/

kenken. For Feedback: nytimes@

kenken.com

For solving tips

and more puzzles:

http://www.nytimes.com/

sudoku

KenKen® is a registered trademark of Nextoy, LLC.

Copyright © 2018 http://www.KENKEN.com. All rights reserved.

(c) PZZL.com Distributed by The New York Times syndicate

Solution No. 2908 CROSSWORD | Edited by Will Shortz

Across

1 Certain “work spouse”

11 One with a handle

on the transportation

industry?

15 Alternative to

Mountain Dew

16 Caption on breaking

news

17 One who might cackle

“Mwa-ha-ha-ha!”

18 Years and years

19 X or Y preceder

20 Walks or runs

21 “Nice thinking!”

22 Like a Hail Mary pass

25 Amplify, with “out”

27 Kissing in a restaurant

or on a bus, for short

28 Lad

30 Scurry

32 Levels

34 Bit of protective wear?

35 Name given to

toughen up a boy, in a

song

37 What a person with a

poker face doesn’t do

39 Writer Deighton

40 With complete care

42 Bris officiant

44 riday and Saturday F

Broadway showtime

46 Paparazzi targets,

briefly

49 Orch. section

50 sland of myth in I

Homer’s “Odyssey”

52 Soak

54 On the verge of crying

56 Gospel singer Winans

58 ___ Balls (Hostess

product)

59 Ancient Norse work

60 Old Native American

carvings

63 Like comments that

require apologies

64 Question always best

answered “no”

65 Springs

66 Previews

Down

1 End of fraternity row?

2 101, 102 and others

3 Draw back

4 “___ say!”

5 Small part of the

works

6 Things in orbits

7 Was released

8 Related to the hip

9 Set at a cocktail party

10 Canon camera

11 Shut (up)

12 Home of the Met ... or

the Mets

13 “Hunger Games”

protagonist Katniss

___

14 Common fix for

computer problems

21 Bogus

23 Consumes, biblically

24 TiVo, for one

26 Give a withering

review

29 One edition of The

Wall Street Journal

31 Retro hairstyle

33 Uncle ___

35 Dressed for the game

36 Highest-quality,

according to govt.

food regulators

38 Longest continuous

sponsor of the

Olympics (since

1928)

40 Court players

41 Pause in a legal

process

43 wo-time U.S. Open T

champ of the 1990s

45 rench leader after F

Hollande

47 “Take care!”

48 “Where the Wild

Things Are” author

51 Spooky

53 Parts of earrings

55 X-ray units

57 Popular “Star Wars”

doll

60 Them’s the breaks!

61 Problem for an

infielder, maybe

62 Barely manage, with

“out”

PUZZLE BY TRENT EVANS

Solution to Aug 29 Puzzle

R A J A C A S T S P I S H

A R A B A L L A H O B O E

G I V E O R T A K E D E J A

M A I T R E V E E P F O R

O N E B F F I N O R O U T

P A R M R I O S P E R R Y

U B E N D S O P E N

F R I E N D O R F O E

P O M P S E R I F S

A R G U E D R E N E A T S

D O O R D I E S G T D E A

A R F S S N S T A R Z A N

G A W P B O O M O R B U S T

E T A S A C T I N I K E A

S A R I R H O N E S I T S

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

15 16

17 18

19 20 21

22 23 24 25 26 27

28 29 30 31

32 33 34

35 36 37 38 39

40 41 42 43

44 45 46 47 48

49 50 51 52 53

54 55 56 57 58

59 60 61 62

63 64

65 66

Sports

Seven years after “Linsanity” took over

the N.B.A., and months after he became

the first Asian-American player to win a

championship ring, Jeremy Lin has

signed with the Beijing Shougang Ducks

of the Chinese Basketball Association,

the team announced on Tuesday.

There was a chilly N.B.A. free agency

market for Lin, 31, who split last season

between the Atlanta Hawks and Toronto

Raptors. He played only 27 minutes for

the Raptors in the playoffs, including

just one mop-up minute in the finals.

But to his legions of fans, he always

meant more than his on-court numbers.

He is one of the few players of Asian-

American descent to make it to the

N.B.A., and the first to become an inter-

national phenomenon. That happened

in 2012, when he went on a stunning run

for the New York Knicks. Once over-

looked by scouts, he has earned more

than $65 million in his career.

“To challenge stereotypes, make his-

tory, rep Asians at the N.B.A. level and

pave the path as others have done for

me has been an absolute privilege,” he

said on Instagram.

Signing with the Chinese league does

not necessarily end his N.B.A. career.

The C.B.A. season ends in March, giving

him time to sign a late-season contract

with an N.B.A. team in need of a veteran.

But it’s a clear indication that N.B.A.

teams had little interest in a 31-year-old

guard who has gradually seen his role

reduced since injuries sapped him of his

once-electric athleticism. After the

Hawks waived him, at his request, in

February, he played 18.8 minutes per

game for the Raptors, averaging 7

points and 2.2 assists. Playing behind

Kyle Lowry and Fred VanVleet, he was

removed from the playoff rotation.

In recent months, he made clear he

did not want to give up on the N.B.A.

“In English there’s a saying, and it

says once you hit rock bottom, the only

way is up,” he said in a speech in Taiwan

in July. “But rock bottom just seems to

keep getting more and more rock bot-

tom for me. So, free agency has been

tough. Because I feel like in some ways

the N.B.A.’s kind of given up on me.”

It’s not the first time N.B.A. teams de-

cided he couldn’t play. Daryl Morey, the

general manager of the Houston Rock-

ets, said that he and others mistakenly

saw the Harvard graduate as unathletic

when they decided not to draft him.

“I can’t think of any reason for it other

than he was Asian,” Michael Lewis

quoted Morey as saying in his book “The

Undoing Project.”

Lin got spare backup minutes for the

Golden State Warriors in 2010-11, but his

Linsanity run for the Knicks in 2012

lifted him from obscure bench player to

genuine international star. He signed a

four-year, $28.8 million contract with the

Rockets the next summer, and he has

also played for the Los Angeles Lakers,

the Charlotte Hornets and the Brooklyn

Nets.

Lin, who grew up in Palo Alto, Calif.,

and whose parents immigrated from

Taipei, Taiwan, already enjoys celebrity

status in China.

Spurned by N.B.A.,

Lin heads to China

Jeremy Lin playing for the Toronto Rap-

tors in the N.B.A. playoffs in May.

VAUGHN RIDLEY/GETTY IMAGES

HONG KONG

BY DANIEL VICTOR

As a high school freshman in Greens-
boro, N.C., weighing his prospects for a
basketball career, John Isner was forced
to admit that dribbling was not his spe-
cialty.
“I couldn’t handle the ball at all,” Isner
said. “Not even average.”
That has changed in adulthood: Isner
is a standout dribbler in an entirely dif-
ferent sport. His penchant for bouncing
the ball between his legs as he plants his
left foot and squares up to the baseline is
a key component of the buildup to his
serve — one of the biggest ever.
Isner used his pet basketball move,
virtually without fail, to usher himself
into position on the 91 serves he un-
corked in his straight-sets, first-round
victory over Guillermo García-López at
the United States Open on Tuesday. It’s
not exactly reminiscent of the fancy
dribbling that Kyrie Irving will soon
bring to the Brooklyn Nets, but the bas-
ketball-style bouncing gives Isner’s
service routine a hint of flash.
“Now it looks like I know what I’m do-
ing,” Isner, 34, said. “But the ball is tiny
— and there’s a lot of space there.”
Isner was 14 years old and 6-foot-
when he reluctantly stopped playing
basketball to focus on tennis. A growth
spurt between the ages of 16 and 18 put
him on a path to his listed height of 6-
foot-10. He became the tour’s tallest
top-10 player in 2018.
Isner is the rare tennis star who is
built like a basketball star — only two
top-100 players on the men’s tour, Ivo
Karlovic and Reilly Opelka at 6-foot-11,
have been taller. He said bouncing the
ball from back to front and between his
legs before his serve, in a quest for com-
posure and consistency, has been part of
his game “as long as I can remember.”
Serving rituals generally are not as
rigid as free-throw routines; tennis
players often will mix things up on their
bounce patterns depending on how a
match is unfolding. Isner sometimes
makes as many as three between-the-
legs bounces before a serve — and, occa-
sionally, none. But most of the time he

slings one bounce before cracking his

serve, which has delivered 11,720 career

aces, second only to Karlovic (13,508)

since the ATP Tour began tracking the

statistic in 1991.

“I’ve seen old high school footage of

myself, ninth grade, and I’m doing it

then,” Isner said. “That’s when I was

playing a lot of hoops — that’s obviously

where it comes from.

“I actually don’t know why more play-

ers don’t do it. It’s just a good way to

start the routine.”

It hasn’t been seen often from Roger

Federer in recent years, but the 20-time

Grand Slam champion has been known

to sprinkle in a few dribbles along the

baseline before serves. The recently re-

tired Marcos Baghdatis, who reached

the Australian Open men’s final in 2006,

used the move heavily. Ditto for the for-

mer pro Paul Goldstein, who rose as

high as No. 58 in the world in 2006.

“The first player I ever saw bounce

the ball through his legs — at a young

age, and he became a superstar — was

Boris Becker,” said the ESPN analyst

Brad Gilbert, who played on the men’s

tour from 1982 through 1995, rising to

No.4 in the world.

Yet it is not a widespread habit among

current pros. The 28th-seeded Nick Kyr-

gios, a basketball aficionado, went the

Isner route before several serves in his

first-round victory over Steve Johnson,

but Canada’s Denis Shapovalov and the

American veteran Lauren Davis are the

best-known practitioners besides Isner.

The 5-foot-2 Davis frequently does

two such dribbles before serves — dou-

ble Isner’s norm. But Davis called an au-

dible to close out her comfortable first-

round victory Monday over Sweden’s

Johanna Larsson, slowing her routine

down and using just one basketball

bounce before serving an ace out wide.

“I actually used to play basketball, be-

lieve it or not, in eighth grade,” said Da-

vis, who lost to No. 2 Ashleigh Barty on

Wednesday night. “I honestly think

that’s part of the reason why I do it. Now

it’s a habit and I don’t even realize that

I’m doing it. But why stop?”

Isner, seeded 14th at the U.S. Open,

has finished six of the past seven years

as the top-rated American man in ten-

nis, but there are times he still plays the

what-if game and asks himself what he

could have achieved on the hardwood

rather than a hardcourt.

“That’s the thing — I didn’t know I

was going to be this tall,” said Isner, who

was to play Jan-Lennard Struff on

Thursday. “If I got one of those tests

done when I was younger and knew I

was going to be this height, I probably

would have stuck with basketball.

“It would have been interesting to see

what I could have done. But I think I

made the right choice.”

Still creating shots off the dribble

John Isner stopped playing

basketball at 14, but he

still likes to bounce a ball

BY MARC STEIN

John Isner dribbled a ball between his legs during his match against Guillermo García-

López. He said the move had been part of his game “as long as I can remember.”

DEMETRIUS FREEMAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

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