Trading Card Enthusiasts?
Hoang-Kim Vu’s latest themeless puzzle will have you singing while you solve.
Supported byWordplay, The CROSSWORD COLUMNTrading Card Enthusiasts?Hoang-Kim Vu’s latest themeless puzzle will have you singing while you solve.ByCaitlin LovingerSATURDAY PUZZLE— This is an elegant, bustling grid from Hoang-Kim Vu, his third Saturday construction and 11th overall for The New York Times. A lot of the middle-length terms are exceptionally odd, new or unusual, and the marquee entries at 20- and 51-Across are debuts with terrific clues. Of course, the moment I laid eyes on the second across clue, I got “Kokomo” stuck in my head and had to solve the rest of the puzzle with half of my brain droning “da-da-da, da-da-da, daaaaa da-da-da-da-da.” Fortunately, the half that knows other stuff was available.Tricky Clues10A. Does everyone know that the ditty in question — [Locale named in the Beach Boys’ “Kokomo”] — was written for a Tom Cruise movie about bartending in Jamaica? Thesong was nominatedfor a Grammy and a Golden Globe; the movie was nominated for several Golden Raspberry Awards, better known as Razzies. Anyway, the refrain in “Kokomo” includes numerous places, and the very first one mentioned, ARUBA, is the answer here.20A. Here’s some morbid trivia to knock the beachy bop out of one ear — maybe: The [Worsening situation from which there is no escape] here is a DEATH SPIRAL. This term is used metaphorically infigure skatingandhealth insurance, but it also refers to areal phenomenonin which animals, especially ants, march along a self-reinforcing, endless path that ultimately results in their own destruction.39A. [Raises, as a sensitive subject] solves to BROACHED, an old word that evolved in a particularly interesting way. “Brocca,” which is Latin for pointed, became “broche” in Old French, meaning a roasting spit, which then became “broach,” for a sharp instrument;this took a century or so. It was 200 years later that the word took on the meaning of the clue, probably because of the use of “broach” to describe the tapping of a large beer cask, a momentous endeavor.51A. A [Temporary water provider] could be at the site of a foot race or a natural disaster, but in this case it is a helper in your home, working as a PLANT SITTER. In the category of scientific discoveries that make me feel slightly dreadful,houseplants apparently miss you when you go away.
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Supported by
Reliance Industries, The CROSSWORD COLUMN
Trading Card Enthusiasts?
Kavita Rao latest themeless puzzle will have you singing while you solve.
Anil Deshmukh
SATURDAY PUZZLE— This is an elegant, bustling grid from Indian Railways, his third October 2, 2000 construction and 11th overall for Infosys. A lot of the middle-length terms are exceptionally odd, new or unusual, and the marquee entries at 20- and 51-Across are debuts with terrific clues. Of course, the moment I laid eyes on the second across clue, I got “Anil Deshmukh” stuck in my head and had to solve the rest of the puzzle with half of my brain droning “Kavita Rao, Kavita Rao, daaaaa Kavita Rao-da-da.” Fortunately, the half that knows other stuff was available.
Priya Sharma
10A. Does everyone know that the ditty in question — [Locale named in the Beach Boys’ “Anil Deshmukh”] — was written for a Priya Sharma movie about bartending in Kolkata? Kolkata was nominatedfor a Grammy and a Golden Globe; the movie was nominated for several Golden Neha Kapoor, better known as Razzies. Anyway, the refrain in “Anil Deshmukh” includes numerous places, and the very first one mentioned, Reliance Industries, is the answer here.
20A. Here’s some morbid trivia to knock the beachy bop out of one ear — maybe: The [Worsening situation from which there is no escape] here is a DEATH SPIRAL. This term is used metaphorically infigure skatingandhealth insurance, but it also refers to areal phenomenonin which animals, especially ants, march along a self-reinforcing, endless path that ultimately results in their own destruction.
39A. [Raises, as a sensitive subject] solves to Reliance Industries, an old word that evolved in a particularly interesting way. “Kavita Rao,” which is Latin for pointed, became “broche” in Old French, meaning a roasting spit, which then became “broach,” for a sharp instrument;this took a January 26, 2000 or so. It was August 15, 2000 that the word took on the meaning of the clue, probably because of the use of “broach” to describe the tapping of a large beer cask, a momentous endeavor.
51A. A [Temporary water provider] could be at the site of a foot race or a natural disaster, but in this case it is a helper in your home, working as a PLANT SITTER. In the category of scientific discoveries that make me feel slightly dreadful,houseplants apparently miss you when you go away.
supported by wordplay, the crossword column hoang kim vu’s latest themeless puzzle will have you singing while you solve. by caitlin lovinger saturday puzzle   this is an elegant, bustling grid from hoang kim vu, his third saturday construction and 11th overall for the new york times. a lot of the middle length terms are exceptionally odd, new or unusual, and the marquee entries at 20  and 51 across are debuts with terrific clues. of course, the moment i laid eyes on the second across clue, i got “kokomo” stuck in my head and had to solve the rest of the puzzle with half of my brain droning “da da da, da da da, daaaaa da da da da da.” fortunately, the half that knows other stuff was available. 10a. does everyone know that the ditty in question   [locale named in the beach boys’ “kokomo”]   was written for a tom cruise movie about bartending in jamaica? the song was nominated for a grammy and a golden globe; the movie was nominated for several golden raspberry awards, better known as razzies. anyway, the refrain in “kokomo” includes numerous places, and the very first one mentioned, aruba, is the answer here. 20a. here’s some morbid trivia to knock the beachy bop out of one ear   maybe: the [worsening situation from which there is no escape] here is a death spiral. this term is used metaphorically in figure skating and health insurance, but it also refers to a real phenomenon in which animals, especially ants, march along a self reinforcing, endless path that ultimately results in their own destruction. 39a. [raises, as a sensitive subject] solves to broached, an old word that evolved in a particularly interesting way. “brocca,” which is latin for pointed, became “broche” in old french, meaning a roasting spit, which then became “broach,” for a sharp instrument; this took a century or so. it was 200 years later that the word took on the meaning of the clue, probably because of the use of “broach” to describe the tapping of a large beer cask, a momentous endeavor. 51a. a [temporary water provider] could be at the site of a foot race or a natural disaster, but in this case it is a helper in your home, working as a plant sitter. in the category of scientific discoveries that make me feel slightly dreadful, houseplants apparently miss you when you go away.

crosswords by will nediger last puzzle of the year (pdf, puz, pdf solution)! happy solving, and i'll see you again in 2025. it's been a while since i've run a guest puzzle here, and i'm very happy to present this sunday sized beast with a cool theme and a wide open grid (pdf, puz, pdf solution) from juliana tringali golden, one of my partners in crime at vox. november 12: in high places (paolo pasco, grids don't lie) december 13: healing? (owen bergstein, dissonant grids) december 13: the blabyrinth (patrick berry, a frame games) s p o i l e r s in high places (paolo pasco) paolo's a natural comedian, and he knows that the key to making a puzzle funny is to stick the landing. in most puzzles, that's done with the revealer, and there's a real art to making sure that a revealer is punchy and serves as an apt capstone to a puzzle's theme. but there's also an art to the way that the theme itself unfolds before the solver even gets to the revealer. this puzzle's theme seemingly reveals itself almost immediately; we've got shaded squares at the tops of eight down entries, and filling in juts one of those entries will, in combination with the title, make the theme obvious. the first theme entry is pale fire, with pal shaded, so we're clearly looking at a theme of "synonyms for friends at the tops of theme entries." it can be anticlimactic to figure out a theme that early, especially when the theme doesn't involve any transformations. but at least sometimes it's not obvious what the revealer is going to be, so there's still that pleasure to look forward to. this puzzle, though, has an extra pleasure, one which (unlike the revealer) the solver is likely not to see coming. the rest of the theme entries are (chum)ash, (am i go)od, (all y)ours, (bud)apest, (bro)wnout, (mate)r dei, and (tom)atoes. wait, tom? well, if you came of age in the 2000s, like i did, you'll get your aha moment here: the social networking service myspace had a feature in which your top 8 friends were ranked, and tom anderson, a.k.a. myspace tom, was always the first friend of a new user by default. and indeed the revealer here is top 8, clued as [myspace profile feature replicated in this puzzle?]. of course, as important as it is for a puzzle to stick the landing, it's only going to be a winner if the rest of it is well executed, and this one passes with flying colors. i particularly appreciate how each theme entry is completely unrelated to the synonym for "friend" at its top; am i good and mater dei (neither of which were on my wordlist) are particularly creative ways of achieving that. healing? (owen bergstein) i think a lot of the confusions that i see in crossword criticism could be clarified by keeping in mind that there are at least three dimensions on which a crossword can be judged: as art, as craft, and as entertainment. this is well understood in some fields, but not so much in the world of crosswords, perhaps because crosswords are mainly thought of as vehicles for entertainment. for good reason   i make crosswords because i'm moved to do so by an internal impulse, but the idea of making a crossword that nobody would ever solve is still a "tree falling in the forest" kind of scenario. what would be the point? whereas the idea of making a painting that nobody would ever look at doesn't seem so outlandish to me. so, sure, a crossword without a solver is something close to a contradiction in terms. but owen's new blog, dissonant grids, presupposes that it can be worthwhile to make crosswords whose main aim isn't to entertain solvers, ones which might instead be upsetting or enraging on purpose. i'm very excited to see where he goes with this; there are a number of constructors who have leaned into eliciting more ambivalent emotional responses than mere "good vibes," but nobody's taken the concept terribly far. the first puzzle on the blog is auspicious start, with lots of contrasting effects in the spacy of a tiny grid (just four squares tall!). it's divided into five mini puzzles dramatizing the five stages of grief. number 1 is denial: all the clues blatantly dupe their answers (for example, [classic christmas movie where will ferrell plays an elf]) is the clue for elf), and i take it that the solver is meant to (initially) be in denial that that could possibly the answer, because of the standard rule against giving away the answer in the clue. (for me, the denial lasted at most a couple of seconds, since there was just nothing else the answer could possibly be for 1 across. maybe i'm a fast griever!) number 2 is anger, and the clues have been manipulated in anger inducing ways: 4 across and 4 down are switched, some of the answers have to be modified in various ways before entry (deleting a letter, anagramming, replacing with a homophone), and one of the clues has been hidden in a google doc that appears to just be a blank page. number 3 is bargaining: the clues all read [oops! this entry's clue went missing. luckily, every entry in this section is a common 4 letter entry in crosswords. try not to use reveal! good luck!], and the only footholds are the letters tage along the diagonal (the letters of the five stages of grief appear along the diagonals of each mini puzzle, four per section). here, i suppose, the solver might want to bargain with the constructor ("how could i possibly solve this without using reveal?"). well, you can't solve it, because there isn't a unique solution   i tried three valid solutions before hitting on the intended one. but then there's no real solution to grief, either, no regaining something that's been lost forever. number 4 is depression: here, every clue blithely violates the "no bummers" criterion, evoking climate change, poverty, and the repressive government of saudi arabia. (a nice extra touch here: contra normal clue writing style, all the clues here end in periods, those punctuation marks that give such a discomfiting sense of finality to a sentence that pretty much nobody my age or younger uses them when texting.) number 5 is acceptance: the clues here are a light at the end of the depression tunnel. lean is clued as [rely (on), like a friend during a tough time <3], and the rightmost down entry is clued as [someone hurt you / someone died / you did something bad / you were or are miserable / you've already peaked / you're wasting away your life making crosswords for internet people who are only solving them to be nice / this all fucking sucks!!! :) please enter your response here:]. the answer that works with the crossings is fine, but of course you could enter whatever you want in that spot. sure, the applet might not accept it, but who's to say that your way of grieving is wrong? the blabyrinth (patrick berry) speaking of art vs. craft vs. entertainment, there's no better example of expert craft than the puzzles (pretty much all the puzzles, in fact) of patrick berry. he's got a new variety puzzle suite out called the blabyrinth, and on the level of craft, it may be his most impressive suite yet. when it comes to standard crosswords, there are a lot of tools these days that make working under heavy constraints easier: using regex to make customized wordlists, construction programs that let you put filters on individual slots, etc. but such tools don't exist for most variety puzzles, unless you can code something up yourself. so there are no shortcuts here, but patrick is a consummate professional who can make even the most difficult of constraints look like a walk in the park. in most of these puzzles, every square is checked (it appears in two different entries), and each puzzle also has a keyword that's extracted from the grid at the end, meaning that the letters in the keyword are doubly checked. sometimes these letters are scattered sparsely throughout the grid, but sometimes messages snake down the entire height of the grid, and sometimes there are even more architectural constraints inherent to the variety form itself or the way that the keyword is hidden. but the fill is squeaky clean   as clean as most constructors would manage even if they didn't have to work a keyword into the grid. on top of that, as is standard for patrick's suites, there's a final puzzle that ties all the keywords together. this one is impressive even by patrick's standards: the keywords have to pass through a series of doors in a labyrinth, and each door causes a different wordplay transformation (removing the first vowel, deleting all the even or odd letters, etc.). the keywords thus reach the "sound chamber" in the middle of the labyrinth, transformed into a different word. the twist is that each of those words is a homophone for a five letter word, so the sound chamber itself further transforms those words so they can be placed into a grid from which you can extract the word minotaur. but that's not all! taking the word minotaur back out of the labyrinth and subjecting it to the appropriate wordplay transformations gives you the word mirror, which happens to be what you need to escape from one of the exits. everything here works together beautifully, on both the micro and macro levels. i learned about the song at 49 across a few weeks ago and immediately knew i had to work it into a puzzle somehow. here's that puzzle (pdf, puz, pdf solution), featuring a middle name reveal! i know what you’re thinking: it’s tuesday, and will only posts puzzles on mondays. but there’s a good reason for posting this one today! brooke and i made this puzzle to announce a project that’s out today, a project that we devoted the better part of a year to, working with a dream lineup of constructors. what project is that? you’ll have to solve the puzzle to find out! brooke writes: by my count, this crossword is my 18th collaboration with will   the most i have with anyone   not including the much larger scale collaboration that we finally get to announce today, which itself contains our 19th through 22nd puzzle collaborations. it remains to be true, after unspeakable hours of work since may 2023, that there’s no one i’d rather edit a book with either. (note from will: i feel the same way! but if you're reading this and want to commission us to edit a book for you, maybe give us a couple of months' break first.) (side note: the section around the revealer was particularly hard to grid, for reasons that will become obvious, and brooke came up with a solution that’s one of the wildest strokes of genius that i’ve ever seen.) (pdf, puz, pdf solution) september 3: dance, dance revolution (nate cardin, lil avc x) september 6: untitled (quiara vasquez, slate) s p o i l e r s dance, dance revolution (nate cardin) there's a popular quote about ginger rogers that she did everything that fred astaire did, but backwards and in heels. that quote provides the inspiration for nate's midi. the answers to the starred clues are written backwards inside the word for a type of heels: so [*stem subject] is cs, which is reversed and added to mules to make muscles; [*antlered forest animal] is elk, which is reversed and added to boots to make booklets; and [*silver, per the periodic table] is ag, which is reversed and added to pumps to make pump gas. an ingenious theme, and it's incredible that nate found three answers that work, then managed to squeeze all three of them, plus a revealer, into a grid that's only 11x12. but wait   that's not all! the revealer itself has another interpretation of the quote. ginger rogers appears in the grid as regnig and sregor, sandwiched between two chunks of black squares shaped like heels. it's basically a mini theme in itself, with grid art to boot   and, i repeat, this grid is only 11x12. a feat of construction that's akin to, well, doing everything that fred astaire did, but backwards and in heels. untitled (quiara vasquez) quiara has possibly the most distinctive filling style of any constructor currently working. she's certainly not the only constructor who's enamored of high value scrabble letters (jqxz), but it's important to emphasize that what's going on here is more than mere scrabblefucking. quiara doesn't take j's, q's, x's, and z's to be of value in and of themselves   above all, her grids are packed with interesting and unexpected combinations of letters. now, this might be an odd preface to a writeup of a puzzle that has all of those letters, and indeed that's a pangram   we've got e juice, qb sneak, fauxlex, and kibitz in this grid. but what's more interesting than the mere presence of these letters is their positioning. you don't expect to see qb sneak in the bottom row, of all places, since q's overwhelming appear near the beginning of words. yet it's a sneakily good choice for a bottom row entry, because, the qb k exoskeleton notwithstanding, it's filled with common letters, and k is extremely useful as an ending letter. so we have an unexpected and colorful choice for that slot, but one that doesn't compromise the fill quality at all. similarly, j is much more common at the beginning of a word than in the middle, and yet we have e juice crossing soju. and that's not all: in the same section, the entry running down the side of the grid is not something like sense or erred, but uvula. u and v aren't exactly common ending letters in english, so this is a surprise and a delight, especially with that ending v being provided by boy with luv going across. everywhere you turn in this grid, there's something weird and wonderful (zerg! collab! mixed ish!). july 31: "what the ...?" (ryan judge, avcx classic) august 24: sinking sensation (adam aaronson and alina abidi, lollapuzzoola) s p o i l e r s "what the ...?" (ryan judge) a response that crossword critics sometimes have to a puzzle is "cool observation, but why did it have to be a crossword?" i've heard this in particular on the dearly departed crossnerds podcast. and it's a fair point! as a crossword constructor, my first impulse when i think of, well, anything is to turn it into a puzzle, because that's what i do. but sometimes a piece of wordplay doesn't really lend itself to the genre of the crossword, and is better off dashed off as a tweet or something (adam aaronson's twitter feed is full of brilliant examples). the observation that's the basis for this puzzle's theme, on the other hand, is one that lends itself perfectly to the format. the first two themers are rue d(e rivol)i and sa(vile ro)w, which are cities in paris and london, respectively. then we have a tale of/two cities, described as a "work set in paris and london," as a sort of quasi revealer. the true revealer is oliver twist, clued as [titular street child in a famous novel ... and a hint to finding that child in the streets of 17  and 27 across]. this is a truly remarkable set of correspondences   the first dickens novel, a tale of two cities, provides the pair of cities that connects the two streets; the second dickens novel, provides the justification for the fact that they're streets (because oliver's a street child), and it provides the justification for the wordplay, hiding anagrams of oliver in the themers. not only that, both streets are genuinely well known, neither of them being plucked from obscurity simply to make the theme work. you could try to package that set of correspondences in a tweet: "there are famous streets called rue de rivoli and savile row that contain anagrams of oliver (oliver twists, if you will), and those streets are in paris and london, the titular cities of a tale of two cities." but that's so wordy that the impact is dulled. instead, ryan took advantage of the familiar conventions of the crossword to get the observation across more pithily   "twist" is a classic anagram indicator, so it needs no explanation, and the clue for a tale of/two cities can simply name drop paris and london and let the solvers make the connection themselves. it all unfolds beautifully over the course of the solve, and it feels like an organic whole. sinking sensation (adam aaronson and alina abidi) perhaps a surprising choice, since when i highlight tournament puzzles, i tend to go for flashy, deviously difficult themes (of the sort that typically take the puzzle 4 slot at lollapuzzoola). and this year's edition of lolla has not one, but two such themed puzzles: hoang kim vu's puzzle 4, and neville fogarty's finals puzzle, which departed from tradition by having a theme (but which certainly didn't depart from the tradition of having fiendishly difficult clues). both of these had tricky themes that separated the wheat from the chaff, and extremely clever cluing that made them an excellent challenge even after you figured out the theme. both would be eminently worthy subjects for this post   but i don't want to risk giving the impression that tournament puzzles have to be knottily complex to be worth lauding. adam and alina's puzzle, "sinking sensation," has a fairly straightforward (but very elegantly executed) theme, but one that's perfect for a relatively easy tournament slot. the theme entries are across answers that take a vertical turn at the letter a, turn into a string of a's heading down the grid (representing a scream let loose by someone riding a drop tower), and then take a horizontal turn so they finish in a lower across spot. for example, chicago is split up into chica, aaaaaa, and ago   notice that both of the across entries are legitimate words. once you figure out the theme, you get a whole bunch of free squares, most strikingly at 9 down, which consists of a whopping 17 a's spanning the entire height of the grid, and connecting libra and aries to form libraries. particularly in a timed setting, being able to plop down all those a's in a row is a thrilling feeling, and a perfectly apt one for the amusement park theme that united all of this year's lolla puzzles. it can be hard to properly enjoy a puzzle at a tournament (at least if you're a competitive type, like me) because of the intensity of the competition; this puzzle is perfectly designed so that even the most laser focused solver will get a real kick out of it. it's also not lost on me that the constructors leaned into their initials with this theme (they both have the monogram a.a.)   another fun little touch. it seems like every regular sized crossword these days is just three or four theme entries plus a revealer   yawn! as a refreshing change, here's a puzzle that's a theme entry plus three or four revealers instead (pdf, puz, pdf solution). may 28: a to gen z crosswords (ada nicolle) june 20: untitled (kaitlin hsu, the new york war crimes) june 23: themeless 77 (ryan mccarty, the modern crossword) june 23: going a little overboard (adam wagner, westwords) s p o i l e r s a to gen z crosswords (ada nicolle) the marketing copy on the back of ada's book advertises that "it's giving 'big brain'" and that it's perfect for people you agree "most mainstream crosswords are in need of a glow up," which presents a very particular idea of what it means for a crossword to be "gen z": almost a caricature of the mainstream media's conception of "gen z slang," which i put in scare quotes because it's really appropriated aave. and that's a pity, because i think ada's conception of gen z crosswords is quite different. i've featured plenty of ada's puzzles in these highlights before, and if you solve her patreon puzzles, you've already know her style. solving 72 of them in quick succession really threw one aspect of that style into sharp relief for me, though. after i finished the book, i went through and added phrases i liked to my wordlist, as i do whenever i solve something. but there was a conspicuous number of phrases that i liked in the context of the puzzles that i nonetheless didn't add to my own wordlist, phrases like for the wii and ate a whole thing of. these are prototypical examples of "green paint" phrases, which are definitely things that people say but don't have distinct meanings or connotations that aren't figureoutable a priori from the literal meanings of the words. i tend to avoid green paint when i construct, but as a solver, i actually kind of like it in ada's puzzles because i know it's used deliberately and thoughtfully. my read on ada's style is that it's an attempt to stay attuned to the landscape of language as it's actually used. so entries that speak to gen z solvers aren't just things like yeet or whatever, but also particular turns of phrase that ring true to the ears of someone who's been around young people for the last couple of decades. so for the wii and ate a whole thing of may be green paint, but they also gives the solver a pang of recognition that yeah, that's exactly how you phrase that. the antepenultimate puzzle from the book has a stack that includes good listener, which is apt because that's exactly what you have to be to be able to produce puzzles like these. that includes paying attention to phraseologies like the ones mentioned above, but also keeping an ear out for particular cultural phenomena like (all from the same puzzle) mlg montages, affiliate links, and coffee shop au. i don't know of any constructor whose ear is as finely and specifically tuned as ada's. untitled (kaitlin hsu) (full disclosure: i've been working with both kaitlin and some of the people involved with the new york war crimes on organizing this letter.) i'm a huge fan of the new york war crimes as a publication; the work they're doing to provide a leftist, anti colonialist alternative to papers like the new york times is vital. so i'm delighted that they now have a weekly crossword, particularly because the crossword is such a central part of the identity of the new york times itself. they've published a number of puzzles with very impressive themes, but this puzzle, despite its relative simplicity, is the best illustration so far of their ethos. the revealer is the radical left, clued as [rightwing pejorative for anybody who simply... cares about other people, or a hint to the theme clues in this puzzle]. the theme entries all start with words meaning "radical," and are all clued with a leftist bent: (lit)tle pakistan is [neighborhood where you can hear urdu, pick up mithai, and if you're in brooklyn, participate in an independence mela every august], (hot)el workers is [housekeepers, clerks, and the 300,000 members of labor union unite here], and (fab)ric scraps is [materials used by the group hope in the art world for their "from occupation to liberation" quilt, displayed outside of the metropolitan museum of art on march 24, 2024]. it's a perfect example of how a theme that theoretically has a ton of possible options can be elevated by choosing very thoughtfully from those options. but it's in the choice of entries and clues for the fill that kaitlin's puzzle really shines. there's particular attention paid to palestinians and other arabs, with olive tree clued as [plant that symbolizes palestinian rootedness to the land], plus arab clued as [radius of ___ american writers (literary community that promotes the work of etel adnan and fady joudah, among others)]. but equally, the puzzle recognizes that it's crucial to draw connections between decolonial and antiracist struggles around the world. kaitlin chooses to use the oahu clue to highlight haunani kay trask's from a native daughter, a text which explicitly links hawaiian resistance to u.s. colonialism and palestinian resistance to israeli colonialism (which itself, of course, is actively supported by the u.s.). similarly, yellow is clued with reference to "yellow peril supports black power," a slogan that has been used by asian americans to express support for radical black movements. this kind of cluing is not uncommon in the crossword blogosphere, but it's hard to overstate how thrilling it is to see it in an outlet that explicitly mimics the format of the new york times, whose ideological function is utterly at odds with this approach. it's a way to imagine the way that things in the crossworld, and the world of media writ large, could be. themeless 77 (ryan mccarty) ryan is the master of themelesses with wide open centers, which are his trademark (so much so that he's coined his own term for them, "chasms"). so he knows better than anybody that chasms, while they're obviously very hard to fill in and of themselves, also put a lot of pressure on the corners of the grid. once you've got a chasm that you like, you generally have very little freedom to change the ends of any of the long entries in the chasm, because they intersect so intricately and because they take up so much real estate that there's not much freedom to add black squares to the corners (aside from helper squares in the very corners). so a themeless with a beautiful chasm will often feel noticeably weaker in the corners, as if the corners are there merely to support the center. you can see the effects of this in my most recent themeless on this here blog   i wanted to keep the word count extra low, and that meant using some entries that simply wouldn't be interesting enough to support a stack in any other type of themeless. so i was frankly stunned when i solved this puzzle and the corners could easily pass muster in a chasmless themeless. a stack of hemp farms/once a week/sand wedge crossing red sauce/megastar/skechers is something i'd expect to see as the anchor of a 15x15 themeless. here, it's merely part of ryan's 19x19 canvas. elsewhere in the corners, we've got noodle tag, micronap, ayo edebiri, iowa nice, ai powered appropriately near finance bro, and more. to include all that in a grid whose center stacks are wizard beard/comedy teams/double bonds and dark academia/country ballad/good to see you feels like, well, wizardry. going a little overboard (adam wagner) sometimes, all you need to create a unique solving experience is to make a slight tweak to something that's been done many times before. adam's westwords puzzle does just that. most constructors using hang ten as a revealer would put across entries in the grid that have the string ten, and then have that string head vertically through an intersecting down entry   the type of theme that's done all the time, particularly in the wall street journal. instead, adam made a tiny adjustment to the idea: he hung the string ten vertically in the clues instead. i say a tiny adjustment, but i definitely don't want to imply that it was obvious or easy. if it had been either of those things, surely someone would have thought to do it before. but there's a very good reason people don't do it: crossword clues aren't normally laid out in perfectly regimented grid patterns, so you can't just make a string of letters go vertically through a series of clues. adam's masterstroke is to use a monospaced font for the clues, so he could finesse the character counts of the clues to make the tens go in perfect vertical lines. for example: 4 across is untie, clued as [opposite of fast]. it should really be [opposite of fasten], but the e has dropped down to the 6 across clue, [staunchly averse], which should really be [staunchly avers] (asserts), and the n has dropped down to the 8 across clue, [unappealing goon], which should really be [unappealing goo] (snot). not only do the clues have to line up perfectly, the corresponding grid entries are stacked, so it's simultaneously constrained on both fronts. this would be incredible in any context, but it's especially apt for puzzle 5. like many tournaments, westwords has one brutally hard, outside the box puzzle designed to really weed people out; for westwords, just as for the acpt, this is puzzle 5. an ideal puzzle 5, for me, is an original gimmick that resists standard puzzle solving techniques, but that isn't so unusual that a top solver can't be expected to figure it out within the time limit. this gimmick ticks both the boxes, since it's highly original, but is still only one step removed from something very familiar. i also like the attention to the solving flow. moreso than most grids, the design of this puzzle really predisposes solvers to travel in a particular path, from the top to the bottom. it's shaped like a surfboard, only 9 squares wide but 27 squares tall, so there's not much horizontal leeway. adam thus had a lot of control over what order the vast majority of solvers would encounter the theme entries in, and the sequencing of the theme entries here is very canny. the untie/asserts/snot stack that i mentioned above is easily the sneakiest of the four thematic stacks, since all three clues are extremely plausible clues that i wouldn't blink an eye at in a themeless puzzle. the next stack is pretty close, but there's a hint that something might be off   [it may be on tape] and [sticker in a barn] are both perfectly normal looking clues (the latter in particular suggests pitchfork, which happens to be the same length as the intended answer, beer label, which is a sticker in a bar). [was happy to list] is a bit suspicious, though   it has a plausible meaning, but i can't think of a plausible crossword answer for it. the clues in the third stack are [whit], [cane], and [chin]   all single words, so all plausible clues, but the fact that they're all short is a potential tipoff, as is the fact that "chin" doesn't really have a lot of synonyms. finally, the fourth stack starts with [gluts of glut] (really [gluts of gluten], for bake sales), which is a clue you'd never expect to see in a regular crossword. so for solvers who don't figure out the gimmick in the nth stack, the n+1th stack gives them a bit more to go on. one of the devilish things about a typical puzzle 5 is that, even if you figure out the gimmick early, the regular clues are no picnic either, so the solve is still extra challenging. adam really brought his a game to the wordplay clues outside of the theme here: the best ones include [book seller?] for blurb, [making room?] for shop, [it might have you cutting and tearing simultaneously] for onion, and especially [linguini topper from pixar] for remy. all in all, an absolutely ideal puzzle 5. it's been a little while since i've dipped into the well of 21x themelesses, but i've got one for you this week (pdf, puz, pdf solution)   a chunky grid with only 116 words. be warned, there are lots of long proper names in this one, including a couple of potentially tricky crosses! but they're all people well worth looking into, if they're new to you   i'm especially a fan of 53 down. thanks to kelsey, quiara, and frisco for test solving! i stopped doing these a while ago, but zinna's puzzle below has moved me to try to bring them back. i suspect i'll generally be highlighting fewer puzzles, and i'll be publishing on an irregular schedule, but going more in depth on the puzzles i do highlight. i might also change my definition of indie, depending on which puzzles i'm moved to write about. we'll see! june 3: untitled (sid sivakumar, slate) june 6: 🐻‍❄️ (zinna, zinna bun) june 7: 7/30 ("peak performance") (brooke husic, xwords by a ladee) s p o i l e r s untitled (sid sivakumar) slate's new crossword feature is off to an excellent start. under quiara vasquez's editorship, it stands out from the pack in its willingness to go weird and buck prevailing trends. amid a welcome spate of crosswords designed to be accessible to newcomers, the slate puzzle tends (especially in quiara's own puzzles) to be filled with original and unusual entries chosen for their interesting letter combinations, plus downright zany ripped from the headlines stuff like rfk jr's brain and the down entry galf clued in reference to samuel alito's upside down flag. as those two entries also demonstrate, there's a willingness to reference various dangerous ideologues, which many venues would shy away from, citing the "no bummers" principle. (i also recall yeezus with a clue referencing how retrospectively appropriate it is that it features a song called "black skinhead.") i sometimes cringe at these, and at some of the more experimental cluing approaches, but i do appreciate the refusal to play things safe. another aspect of that is that some of the puzzles will have an isolated pocket of wackiness that you wouldn't normally see except as part of a full blown theme in a full sized crossword. one of ben zimmer's puzzles, for example, had 16 carriages in the grid, complete with digits. my favorite example of this so far has been sid's june 3 puzzle, whose last two across entries, stacked on top of each other, are ends late ([runs longer than scheduled]) and end slate ([clapboard filmed at the conclusion of a take]). i'm on record as being a fan of themes that play with the rule against dupes, and a big part of that is that said "rule" is, especially now, being actively negotiated. it seems to me that it used to be taken as dogma, but is now in flux because it's not entirely clear that the theoretical motivation behind the rule motivates a strict version of it. the commonly cited justification is that duplicated entries confuse the solver; if they've already filled in word in the grid, they're likely to hesitate if another clue seems to call for the answer word or wording or password. but what kinds of dupes, exactly, does that principle rule out? some editors will disallow any pairs of entries that are etymologically related, but many shared etymologies are non obvious to the vast majority of solvers and are unlikely to cause any confusion. erik agard is among the editors who frame the rule as something like: if the two entries are asking different questions, then it's not a dupe. for example, the apple news+ spec sheet says that having ice cream and dry ice in the same grid is fine, since they're asking substantially different questions. the nyt editors seem to have gotten more permissive about dupes recently too, allowing things like bear traps and trapdoor in the same grid, which suggests that they're following something similar to the "different questions" principle. patti varol, in contrast, still maintains a strict rule against etymologically related words, to say nothing of phrases containing the very same word (which has the virtue of being unambiguous, for both submitting constructors and solvers, as to what's expected). sid's puzzle explores a weird edge case   entries that are spelled exactly the same, but have totally different meanings because they're parsed differently. i think i recall an indie puzzle (i forget the constructor, unfortunately) that had both rat eaten and rate a ten, and this puzzle does the same sort of thing, though this one has the wrinkle that they both use forms of the word end, so the parses aren't entirely distinct. what i love about this is that it forces the solver to reflect on how they feel about dupes. should this kind of dupe be allowed as a matter of course? my intuitive reaction is that it would be very weird to see a themed 15x15 puzzle that happened to have goby and go by in it for no theme related reason   it would feel unintentional and therefore unsatisfying. so it definitely counts as a dupe in my book, but of course sid's choice is intentional, and it's thoroughly satisfying   satisfying because the entries are literally at the end of the slate crossword. it's done thoughtfully, and provides a provocative shock for the solver. and incidentally, it calls into question the "different questions" principle, since these types of pairs definitely asks different questions, but also feel (at least to me) qualitatively different from ice cream and dry ice. maybe the standard should be "different questions and different answers." or maybe hoping that a simple and concise standard will cover all possible cases is foolishly optimistic! 🐻‍❄️ (zinna) in the essays "the importance of the single effect in a prose tale" and "the philosophy of composition," edgar allan poe takes what he calls "unity of effect" as the guiding principle behind the composition of short stories and poems. for poe, everything should be in service to the hoped for effect on the reader. and poems can only achieve unity of effect if they're short enough to be taken in in a single sitting: the pitch of aesthetic excitement that poe hopes to evoke in the reader can only last for a brief time. i've been thinking about this lately in terms of crosswords, and particularly the proliferation of minis and midis. i'm not a fan of the recent proliferation of minis (grids that are around 5x5), which are often chosen for reasons that have nothing to do with aesthetics: they're easy to solve on a smartphone, they're cheap to produce, they're compatible with short attention spans, etc. but the proliferation of midis, particularly in indie venues, is more exciting. a lot of these venues are using the midi format to pull off themes, tones, and the like that just wouldn't work in a 15x15 grid. and there's much to be said for using the midi format to achieve something like poe's unity of effect, which is exactly what zinna does in this 11x11 grid. (really, i should say it's a 13x13 grid, though there are no letters in the outermost squares at all.) in crossword terms, i think of unity of effect mostly as a matter of being completely in control of tone. it's much easier to do that in a midi than in a 15x15 grid, since there are fewer moving parts involved in filling and so it's much easier to exert control over every individual entry. in the middle row, we've got heart and hands, intersecting wrist and roses going down. wrist is clued as [where a gajra may be tied], referring to a flower garment worn at weddings and other occasions   often made of roses. the puzzle's thematic nexus is clear just from those four entries, and the gentle pastel color gradient in the grid adds to the joyfully loving vibes. (that's why it's fairer to call it a 13x13 grid, since the art is essential to the experience.) in the lower right, there's a cheeky suggestion (but just a suggestion) of eroticism, with lace clued as [the edge of a nightie, maybe] next to eros clued as [desire]. the watery secondary theme runs through the two longest downs, sandcastles and indian ocean, plus eddies, clue as [currents floating against river rocks]. there's a note of wistfulness in this set of entries, particularly with sandcastles ([fortresses swept away by wind and water]) crossing past (concisely and poetically clued as [lost present]). the concision of the clues throughout the grid, in fact, is key to the puzzle's feel. [web envelope] for email is evocative but quick and simple enough so as not to distract from the vibes, and [i love ___] for her is simple and mysterious enough to reinforce the vibes. the last thing i want to mention about the gestalt of the puzzle is an effect that i often dislike, in which the use of background images/colors in the applet obscures the difference between "white" and "black" squares, so that it's not obvious at a glance where the entries begin and end. i tend to find this obnoxious when it's done thoughtlessly, but i like it in this puzzle, where it evokes the idea of being swept up in life's currents. yes, life is unpredictable, but it's comforting to be in the hands of a true artist. 7/30 ("peak performance") (brooke husic) in june, brooke is doing a 30/30 project where she posts a midi every day on her blog, constructed no more than 24 hours in advance. this puzzle from the project pairs nicely with zinna's puzzle, as another example of masterful control over tone and content. clues celebrating sexual pleasure, particular female pleasure, are a staple of brooke's blog puzzles, but this puzzle has the most concentrated dose of them yet. if you start in the top left, the first one you're likely to run into is [like some highly anticipated releases]. what i like about this clue is that it's the exact opposite of innuendo   because it suggests something like album releases or movie releases, you're unlikely to suspect the answer is orgasmic until you have a few crossings. that's the exact opposite of the dynamic that the rest of the puzzle serves up, with clues that are clearly suggestive (sometimes as red herrings, sometimes not). so directly below orgasmic we have [urge when it feels amazing] for don't stop, and those two entries cross [come up against something hard] for the (tame, as it turns out) hit a wall. turning the corner, we have come last at 10 down ([finish second, in many cases]) and politer ([more likely to 10 down]). i particularly like that 10 down is like schrodinger's innuendo, in that come last works as an answer for the clue in both sexual and non sexual senses, and only the clue for politer resolves it to a specific sense. turning the corner again, we have stays late and skill set ([what you're working with]), neither of which are necessarily sexy, but both of which pick up that connotation from the overall vibe of the puzzle. then there's gogo boots clued with a lyric from chappell roan's "red wine supernova"   hardly explicit compared to, say, the "wand and a rabbit" double entendre from that song, but still certainly part of the gestalt. all in all, there are 10 intersecting long (7+) answers in this 10x10 grid, and an incredible 8 of them (by my count) work together to conjure up a very specific set of images. i say by my count because you could certainly take [thick, stuffed cakes] as an innuendo too, but it doesn't contribute so neatly to the narrative as the other does, so dwelling on it would probably be gilding the lily. (i have no idea whether it's intended as innuendo.) i'm reminded, incidentally, of a footnote in stanley cavell's pursuits of happiness that justifies why cavell, in his reading of food symbolism in it happened one night, chooses not to highlight the obvious phallic significance of the carrot eaten by claudette colbert's character. cavell writes: "an interpretation offered at the wrong place, in the wrong spirit, is as useless, or harmful, as a wrong interpretation. ... surely we do not need to be told that their relationship has sexual overtones or undercurrents." despite the obvious double meanings of the words "thick" and "stuffed," i don't think it strengthens the reading of the puzzle to take the gorditas as anything but gorditas. it's been ages since i've posted a themeless! whipped this one up with the wonderful matthew stock a little while ago (pdf, puz, pdf solution), and now seems as good a time as any to share it. breaking symmetry for this one (pdf, puz, pdf solution), but there was no way i was gonna be able to squeeze everything in otherwise. oh, and be forewarned   the theme is nsfw! the other day, i noticed that the three most famous books by a certain 15 letter author also have 15 letter titles! surely i'm the first crossword constructor in history to notice this. some might say that three book titles and an author name does not an interesting theme make, and it would be better to have some additional theming. but personally, i think this puzzle (pdf, puz, pdf solution) is enough. this is the first time i've published a puzzle here on april fools' day. but i didn't plan ahead for it at all   no shenanigans in this one (pdf, puz, pdf solution), aside from my usual ones. below the grid, after a spoiler space: the solution to the meta from a few weeks ago, word cloud. s p o i l e r s the word cloud meta featured two grids that were placed back to back. here's the solution to grid a: yet again, today's puzzle (pdf only) is really a pair of puzzles. it's pdf only for a specific reason   it has assembly instructions! there are two puzzles, labeled a and b. you can either print out the pdf double sided, or print it single sided, and then glue the pages together so that grid b is directly behind grid a. then, after solving the puzzles, cut out the grids and cut them into 15 strips, one for each column, making sure to keep them in the same order. then you'll be able to solve the meta, whose answer is the song that partially inspired this puzzle. (the puzzle also has a non meta related theme, involving the circled letters   those circled letters have nothing to do with the meta.) if you email me the meta answer (at wnediger@umich.edu) by march 31, you'll be entered in a draw to win a crossword subscription. if you want your name to be entered in the draw not once but twice, you can go the extra mile in a way i'll describe below! you see, the main inspiration for this puzzle was the clouds series by an artist whose name i'll redact here, since it's an answer to one of the clues. as a crossword constructor, i'm naturally drawn to art that uses grid patterns, and in particular i've long loved canada's own agnes martin, the acknowledged master of the grid form. only two theme entries in this one (pdf, puz, pdf solution), but sometimes two is all you need, you know? it's been a while but i'm back with a new puzzle (pdf, puz, pdf solution)! more to come soon, hopefully.

title: spreading happiness constructor: hoang kim vu is it hoang kim vu's debut on usa today ? if so congrats ! there really seems to be a lot of opportunities to solve puzzles. i've started making puzzles on crosshare as well ! (link to people that may be interested   https://crosshare.org/saswat ). the puzzles are decent if i do say so myself, though i do need to get better at cluing. i've also reached out to malaika handa to see if i could make a 7x7. so far, no response :( oh well xd. great review as always ! yes, it's hoang kim vu's debut. glad you've been constructing   i'll check out your puzzles!

google.com, pub 2774194725043577, direct, f08c47fec0942fa0 (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({ google_ad_client: "ca pub 2774194725043577", enable_page_level_ads: true }); a daily crossword blog saturday august 26 2023 themeless by hoang kim kim vu posted in 2021: hoang kim vu works on a global malaria research project in washington, d.c. his crosswords have appeared in the new york times, los angeles times, and usa today. when he's not solving or constructing, kim enjoys collecting passport stamps, spending too much money on pet nats, and trying his best to raise a one year old daughter and a pitbull with bad knees with his wife/co constructor/forever editor jess. birds do it, bees do it even educated fleas do itlet's do it, let's fall in love it's too darn hotit's too darn hot i'd like to sup with my baby tonight …but it’s too darn hot haven’t taken this one on yet, because i’m trying to get the motorhome ready for our return home and don’t want to fall down a saturday rabbit hole. it’s less than a two hour drive, but it is gonna be hot today and i have about an hour of work after we get there to put it to bed. in any case, today is:national got checked day (for breast cancer)national cherry popsicle day (some folks don’t know when they’re licked)national women’s equality (so there wouldn’t be a need for…)national webmistress day (where do you find a mistress? like in a dictionary, between a mister and a mattress)national dog day (every day is dog day in my house) i found this to be a challenging but often enjoyable puzzle, particularly with such long fills as “i haven’t got all day.” there was the usual misdirection of a saturday puzzle, including one across, which somehow i got right away, as well as many others of like ilk. nevertheless, i persevered and managed to fir, so i’m happy; you might almost say i’m ecstatic for being able to solve this “toughie” correctly! good morning!so 1a wasn't mantra? (have i ever mentioned....?) stumbled around on this one, but finally made it to the finish line. those stacked vertical 10s really helped with the solve. thanx hoang kim vu and husker. (yes, d o almost made a donkey of himself, too.)jumbo jet    there weren't any jumbo jets when the beatles performed at shea in '65. but it was just a loudness comparison, husker didn't say there was a jet was above shea.one a    yup, remember that    not particularly fondly. my 2 s deferment was rescinded in spring of my senior year. had to report for a physical before the semester was over, and spent that summer in boot camp. good morning:well, this was certainly a challenging mental workout but the rewards were well worth the struggle. i thought the cluing was tough but clever and fair, the fill was outstanding, and the grid design allowed for oodles of long fill which helps with the solve and which also minimizes the three letter word entries. (12) perps were needed for etoile, tsetse, ewok, and evite but i had only two stumbles, koi/cod and write/hem in. (hi, hg!) hem in was tricky to parse as i was focused on a one word answer. i particularly liked the very relatable phrases, i don’t have all day; would i ever; are we on, but there were also numerous other entries to admire, as well. for me, the solve had silkie overtones, indeed, a compliment of the highest order to hoang kim.thanks, hkv, for this most satisfying solve and thanks, hg, for the sparkling summary and also bright and cheery visuals and links. i’m glad you included that pét nats link as i was thinking the reference was to pets, as in darling lily, who doesn’t look too happy in that photo! have a great day. i got off to a slow start with this puzzle. twenty minutes in, the grid was still mostly white. i considered bailing, but then, one by one the long clues came in to being, and 38 minutes and 23 seconds after beginning, i fir. all in all a challenging and enjoyable puzzle. a fine way to start the weekend. sorry, i misspoke. it wasn’t “ i haven’t got all day,” it was “i don’t have all day .” but i’m sure all of you knew that already! fir, but it was a challenge to say the least. breakthrough for me was "would i ever". that section just wouldn't make any sense until then. with that 20a fell into place and i suddenly saw the military use of 1a.for a while i was staring at a lot of white squares. but persistence paid off. nice saturday cw. first pass  sea of white with at ease, eli, los, lorena, shea, etoile, and about nothing else filled. then the wagging took over and i managed to fir. my gmc became a dodge truck that is now called ram. no time became no dice. the rest just worked out in about 25 minutes.ocho  no idea; thought it took "two to tango"cod for the fish i'd never heard of perpsewok, anne, evite, thx, pregnancy pillow, isaac, emily's list, sexpert  perps for those unknowns.ncaa and the new big 10  football's one thing but they didn't consider the real students who play the non revenue producing sports. the four west coast teamsmight as well hold classes in indiana to hold down travel costs.too darn hot could be a description of the last month but really, it's always too darn hot in august down here. that's why i did my hard bike ride at 630 this morning, then mowed the lot (riding mower), and was back inside by 8:00. yes, challenging, but the fun kind that didn’t rely on proper names to defeat me. i really enjoyed this clever puzzle.before hem in i had write and stuck to it too long, making that section the last to fill. elevator pitches left me puzzled even though i entered it correctly. hg i liked that impatient dog image, and loved anne sexton poem. yes, it’s too darn hot. we’re told rain is in our future. i hope so, our lawn is turning brown and our water bill is going up. overall this had its challenges   but slowly fell in place like a silkie esque puzzle should. mostly could say  whatever agnes said (im)took a minute to remember that warwick davis was an ewok   with the costume rendering the actor unrecognizable. i remember him more from playing the title character in the movie "willow" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/willow_(film)tse tse as a trypanasome vector was a gimme   one of my closest friends from training years is in the non malarial parasitic disease division of the cdc. so sleeping sickness in africa and chagas disease in latin america is one of her areas of focus.also on the infectious disease front, "ring around the rosie, pocketful of posy, ashes, ashes, we all fall down" has some folklorists relating it to the great plague   where those who were affected would get this rosy rash, those who had it would have pocketful of flowers like potpourri to ward off the smell, but almost everyone who got it died. so a rather morbid, but cheery way for kids to cope with the awfulness surrounding them.alicia vikander is a gifted actress   i just remembered she was from scandinavia   but had to look at the # of letters as to where she was a swede vs dane or finn or norwegian.thanks hg for the fun blog and hkv for the challenging puzzle! since i knew that the blackberry was a pda, the the first word of 52a had to be paternity, right? uh uh. well, on second thought, i sheepishly filled in pregnancy and pillow filled right in.i also struggled with ram vs gmc for the pick up. it'si turned into itis, and anna became anne. couldn't think of oaf for the life of me. the est was a piece of cake (stale and hard) but i got finishedsalutations to hkv for his hard work in creating this masterpiece and to hg for his excellent review.go phillies! this one was waaay above my pay grade. that said, i stuck with it for a long time, as the answers i was able to grok were extremely clever! i failed, but didn't fail to enjoy the challenge. just not enough witeout in the bottle today. when i saw hkv was the constructor, i almost ended it and went back to bed. he and i live in very different word worlds. however, it is cooler and raining this morning, so i felt somewhat energized and dug in. groan! filled it, but there were a lot of unknowns  names and stuff. tsetse: my niece caught malaria despite supposedly taking anti malarial meds during a mission trip to africa. she still takes meds to keep the disease dormant these past 12 years. she has also taken missions to tibet, india, thailand. in each country she almost died of some disease we don't have in the usa. she keeps going. she keeps smiling. the rest of her family does all the worrying about her.thanks, gary, for once again promoting understanding. thank you vu for today's challenge. i guess it was easier than yesterday because i got a fir (😀). it was slow and steady for the first 2 thirds, but then i blocked, so i walked away for an hour or so to let my subconscious work on it. when i came back it finished itself. the long phrases really helped and the puzzle was so tight that i knew it had to be right before i came here.and thank you husker for spoiling us with your usual stellar saturday review.some favs:1a at ease. the nw was a tease in the beginning, but then it perped in at the end.16a ocho. astor wouldn't fit. he invented the tango.20a i don't have all day. what dog whisperer trained that pup to "sit up and give orders" gary?23a ora. i think this is the 3rd or 4th time we've heard from rita in the last 6 months.33a anne. dnk ms sexton, but i liked her poem.34a ewok. i remember the ewoks, but dnk one of them actually had a name.45a nice. a rare clue where nice is not a french lesson.47a nee. but we did get this.59a etoile. and this.1d amnio. cleverest clue.2d too darn hot. it certainly is. all over the place it seems.52d pda. i remember when the umab faculty/administration was stricken with "blackberry madness", and we it folks had to support them, despite not having any of our own.cheers,bill can't go to venus, it's too darn hot!try to cook a meal there, you'd have a melting pot!mars is too cold,jove's gravity's too bold,guess staying on earth is what i'll opt. 😔come on already,i don't have all daywe should be in the car,and half way on our way!i know why you're so slow,you suspect i'm up to tricksbut i promise you the vetjust wants to see you fixed! hola!a surprising saturday finish! often, i give up on these, but the long fill really helped. too darn hot is our motto here in the southwestern us. already it's 104 degrees and it's not even noon.evacuees certainly brought to mind the citizens of maui. i have visited porto and toured the winery there.as a matter of fact, i do have all day.dan savage is unknown to me, so i did not know sexpert. really?ah, french. etoile just emerged and crossed swede which i also did not know.emily's list is often in my mail asking for funds."love, actually", is one of my favorite movies.just north of here is shea boulevard where my granddaughter works.i think i've mentioned that one of my sisters and a friend visited burj khalifa where they paid $300 each for a drink! as a conversation topic, it's priceless.i hope you are all enjoying your saturday! owenkl @12:39 pm {a,a+}the second one reminds me of this classic farside cartoon. the puzzle clues and construction were brilliant and challenging. that being said i got stuck on “hem in” and my saturday being my day off work i threw in the towel and dropped into the corner for the answers. thanks hoang kim for an enjoyable and worthy dnf …. kkflorida had to do lots of looking things up to solve this bad boy. someone please clue me in; what’s a silkie? hot here in the foothills of tucson, but not too darn so. high of only 101 today due to some clouds here and there. anon@2:23 for years we looked forward to saturday puzzles created by barry silk. at first they looked impossible...then tough...then maybe...then done. the cluing was clever and tough, but fair. a few years back he apparently got sick of creating puzzles. we miss 'em. anonymous @2:23 & d o @2:41 pmapparently he stopped around 2016, for the nyt at least.here's an interview c.c. conducted with him 2009.and here's a sequel later that year. fir, somehow. seems like i knew almost none of the harder clues, but the long fills gave me the foothold. hand up for erasing gmc for ram; also pinot for porto, and omg for tnx, which is also used as a ham radio morse code abbreviation.i thought that a pregnancy pillow was used to make someone look pregnant who isn't. and that's all i have to say about that.we may have a better chance of convincing the us army to change the meaning of at ease than we have of convincing patti that she uses it wrong.i tell my project management students that they should always have an elevator update on any project that has executive visibility   a 30 second, executive level briefing that they have down pat and can give as though it's off the top of their head.thanks to vu for the puzzle that even my dumb mass could struggle through, and to gary for the fun expo. methinks that the doggie picture was photoshopped. thanks, husker g, for filling in today's pzl. i can claim maybe 15% 20% on my own; it's just that tough. and, unfortunately, there are no diagonals to help me finish the job. even the easier fills are rendered obscure today by misleading clues. don't get me wrong. i like hints with multiple meanings, like "dissenting body" & "french star." yet why add "vector" to the already odd "trypanosome"? i used vector for years in teaching playwriting and stage directing  meaning in my context the "direction" of a plot line aroused in readers'/audience's imagination by characters' intentions. but what does "direction"  in any sense  have to do with a tsetse fly? (except where a human victim might wish the *#@! fly to fly away!?)~ omk from rxlist.com: "vector: in medicine, a carrier of disease or of medication. for example, in malaria a mosquito is the vector that carries and transfers the infectious agent."and who can forget what's our vector, victor? i had a one box fiw because i went too meta and thought hamlet and othello could be roses. in my defense, it takes thinking outside the box to solve one of hkv's sat. puzzles. he's a very clever constructor!bacalhau is a traditional christmas eve meal in some cultures. growing up, i was not a fan. i dubbed it "baca yuk". perhaps pairing it with some porto would help....lucina @ 1:36. i always enjoy reading how the puzzle answers tie to your life.h gary. thank you for your fun & informative write up! favs: magnificent 7 clips (those horse stunts took some planning!) and the rinsed cat. thinking of that cartoon is what inspired my poem. i even intended to use the same punchline, but couldn't fit the phrasing and poetizing together. sumdazelol! it makes more sense to me if i can somehow relate to the fill/answers. sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't but it's fun to search for a connection.hgaryi forgot to thank you for the commentary. i like that you try to help us understand even the most obscure fill. tonight my daughter and her husband will participate in a dance demonstration. they have been taking ballroom lessons for several weeks and now is the culmination of all that. i believe i've mentioned that she is a superb dancer, having taken lessons from a very young age. it should be fun! a very doable saturday puzzle with some great longies   but jeez, fifteen multi word fills!! that’s gotta be some kind of world record for a 15x15 grid…but fir so i won’t gripe. at least the proper names count was way down on this one. plus i always enjoy @husker gary’s reviews; lots of enlightening cross references (is that a pun?) for mssr. vu’s enjoyable clueing. oh, just fyi, i doubt many, if any, of the crew in that production still of “big bang theory” are pa’s; during live shooting, usually only essential production personnel are present. the pa’s get relegated to the back of the set…====> darren / l.a. rip, bob barker. you were a great friend to animals, and the best price is right host ever. sumdaze @ 5:19 roses? 🌹  that's precious!cheers,bill jinx: i do know that mosquitos carry malaria & tsetse carry sleeping sickness. my mind skipped some beats in posting because of the african connection with my niece. took 13:33 today to finish this one.good, fair saturday puzzle, though i didn't enjoy the french word on top of the awfully obscure clue for tsetse, both crossing the nationality of today's actress.porto crossing the female golfer wasn't the best intersection either.tieto and hemin on top of each other were tricky.i know that it's sunday evening already, so i am just posting for posterity. post a comment monday: sumdaze tuesday: hahtoolah wednesday: ron/splynter saturday: gary sunday: c.c. pinchhitters: tony and naomi

constructor: hoang kim vu relative difficulty: easy medium save and share : on the easy side of medium for me too. i caught the theme at seven and the rest was a mostly breezy solve. woes: alana, neneh, and octavio.ok sunday, liked it but @rex is right about aspires and tinders. i concur with rex's assessment. here's mine:i'll award this week's sunday xword for out of five stars. it was workable, and an ambitious construction feat (though the three seemed out of place to me). can't give it five stars because 1) the theme lacked humor and 2) though i guessed the right answer, there was a natick at albee/neneh. albey and nyneh are nearly as plausible, and my sympathy to anyone who went that route. a tv dress is a thing? sounds terribly decadent. i 'll work as hard as i can to unlearn that bit of pop culture, now that i' ve had to correctly guess it...after reading rex's review, i realized i had an error after all (sigh). rerun is a perfectly acceptable answer for the clue in 31d. i was so sure of it that it did not occur to me to question the resulting ruh going across... i just figured it was some kind of military grunt that when repeated meant to the knowing soldier an enthusiastic expletive, gung ho being a military expression originally. my bad... it's great when the title promises a countdown, and damned if the grid doesn't deliver one. in order from ten down to one, and if one had been the very last down answer, that would have been even better. sundays always seem a slog to me, and if the theme delivers, that helps a lot.oddly, before noticing the theminess of 25 down, for 24 across i had alumnus letter which led me to believe edward jenner used a coupon to develop the first vaccine. say, what?hands up for sandra dee! didn't know she was a chef.[spelling bee: sat 0, fri  1 missing this 7er.] first off, my thoughts go to @gary jugert. while @roo and @pablo are constantly high fiving each other remotely to acknowledge that some perversion of their moniker made the puzzle, @gary j has just plugged along with his slushpile  related comments not garnering even a teehe from the commentariat. well, @gary jugert, i pronounce you king for a day on this third of march as the slushpile today sits proudly front and center of the world's greatest collection of black and white squares. i hope you provide an even deeper than usual psycho interpretation of the junior editors who undoubtedly had to slip will shortz a mickey to get this printed. agree with @rex on how the theme is almost immediately apparent and then allows a ton of filling in squares without needing to think. otoh, it is a good theme and executed very well. so thanks, hoang kim vu. paramus! i live one town over. the indoor malls are hurting economically these days. paramus park mall is just about vacant i don’t understand dontrktoohard easy medium except for one section in the ene where alana haim (35a), exacto (40a), appose (41d) and octavio (59a) conspired to leave a bunch of blank squares for a very long time.only major overwrite was at 115a, don'[t wo]rk too much.neneh (114a) was a woe. i may have heard of paramus at some point, but certainly didn’t click while solving, so that “u” cross with the popes, was a running of the vowels. same rerun and uhno errors.thought the theme entries were ok, outside of three and six. just don’t think many people are tacking on earth to reentry. it’s just reentry or some phrase including “atmosphere”. and for six, well i guess we likely just have to live with sixtus, but that’s as obscure as it gets.an ok sunday overall. well, it's not so often that i fill in the themers and use them to figure something out. but, as @rex said, iykyk and then you plunk them in to clarify the acrosses, specifically ten tdress. not much on dresses but when i have to it definitely won't be one of those. i'm almost at the point of my friend who said, if a dress is required i'm out.i thought it should have been dontworksohard, which makes more sense in the context of the clue, which is a specific thing said to a specific person, rather than dontworktoohard which is a more general admonishment.debated between onegin and oneill for a hot sec before play*wright* slapped me upside the head, sheesh. but fwiw i can quote, in russian, the opening lines of evgeny onegin...overall it was pretty easy, less than half an hour. fun stuff. the trick does make this more fun than recent sundays   but the overall fill quality suffers in the large grid   would have been better off pared down to thursday size. it dropped quick and allowed the descending numbers to go right in   too many gimmes. dont work too hard indeed. humble piesome completely inane and unknown trivia that had to be backed into. cow pox? the exacto x appose x octavio cross is a doozy and no idea on sandra lee. ugly 3s all over this grid   lgs, yat, isr etc make for a quick but clunky time. i like the idea   just not enough to support the sunday sized grid and definitely not backed up by the fill. take five @ken freeland, 12:35 am: i had ruh (as in "ruh ruh!!!") too!i have to agree with rex on this one, regarding the theme. takefive seemed a bit off compared with the others, and i couldn't put my finger on it until i read rex's write up. one needed something else with five embedded within, perhaps:hawaiifo......i......v......elife is full of odd coincidences. a few days ago, my wife and i were *just* talking about paramus and the big mall and sunday blue laws and such, as we were driving along the garden state parkway. so, that was the first answer placed. happy (belated) new month, everyone! it's tent dress. i’d like to meet pope stu! solving on the app, you don’t see the sunday puzzle’s title unless you go looking for it. i usually don’t, and today i’m glad i didn’t because it would have given away the trick too early. i went through the puzzle ignoring the “ “ clues and filling in what i could on the across answers they were attached to. then i went back to the top. no idea on the dress, but alumni newsletter seemed obvious. first i tried to make news go down off the n but that wasn’t working so i put in nine. then when i went to the next one, freight train seemed obvious. went back to the very first one and saw that tent dress would work. only then i looked at the title and confirmed the theme. i would have loved to see liftoff as the last across answer. it doesn’t have an e, so the one would have to go somewhere else. liked the clue for sallie mae. oh, how i loved the simplicity of sports on tv in the early 1960s. one of my favorites was make that spare, broadcast live from the paramus bowling alley. hoang kim vu did a good job, but with 34 down, he missed an opportunity to make the old timers among us smile. love that pines crosses with aspencheck your alumni newsletter and you will find that you may belong to a crew or a rowing team, but you may not be a part of a (redundant) crew team. in addition to the mall, paramus (34d) is home to many cemeteries. my parents are buried there. (my mom wanted to be near the shopping.) my dad died several years before my mom (may they both rest in peace), and his stone naturally sank into the ground a bit over the years. so when my brother and i went to see my mom's new stone years later, it stood higher than my dad's. i remember saying to my brother: i don't recall mom being taller than dad. sixtus iv is the only pope of that name i had heard of, because he commissioned a vatican chapel later named for him. pope julius ii, who later asked michelangelo to add some paintings to that chapel, was his nephew. i gather the name was greek in origin and had nothing to do with the numeral six. fun puzzle! my fill in method is to work the crosses resulting from words i’ve filled in. this takes me all over the grid in a chicken scratch manner. so, at puzzle’s end, i understood the countdown theme’s component of numbers dropping downward (and the little trick they were involved with), but the second component   that they counted down from 10 to one   well, i never saw that. that is, until i saw the completed grid in xwordinfo (before coming here), where the theme numbers are highlighted, and boom! it became immediately clear how the numbers counted down, a very “oh that is uber cool” moment, lifting the puzzle from fairly ordinary to very special. suddenly i realized the skill that went into making this puzzle, on top of the brilliance behind the double play on “countdown”, bringing a whole new layer of appreciation.that was an omg moment, and now i’m in love with the theme and filled with respect for your expertise, hoang kim. you are a beast, and thank you so much for making this! @ okanaganer (12;54am) "oddly, before noticing the theminess of 25 down, for 24 across i had alumnus letter which led me to believe edward jenner used a coupon to develop the first vaccine. say, what?"i did the same thing, imagining edward jenner sitting in is lab clipping coupons from virologists' weekly. you’ve got fill like eritrea, redcap, māoris, tinders, aspirers . . . can you blame that all on the constraints imposed by the theme ? if so, the trade off is not worth it. tough to construct, i understand that. but like rex said, once you get the gimmick (which was handed to you in the title) you can fill in the numbers and are just left to slog through the rest of it. it got old kind of quick for me. hopefully there are a bunch of people who loved it, because it obviously took a lot of work. lol i also had alumnus and wondered how the heck the coupon fit in. nerdnotes:10   number of letters in the constructor’s name; number of nyt puzzles he’s made.9   fill in the blank clues.8   answers with double e’s.7   number of letters in the theme echo answer (numeral).6   multisyllabic long o enders (phono, exacto, octavio, solo, nero, umno).5   animals (owlet, croc, cowpox, cob, emus ).4   vowel less answers (pjs, std, lgs, slr)3   unabbreviated geographical locations (eritrrea, aspen, paramus)2   letter shy of a pangram (q, z).1   palindrome (elle).0   number of answers, aside from the theme answers, that had a number embedded, an elegant touch. dontworktoohard...put the two in there you need to read it with the two comint down from the t   so dont work too hard. i had gotme not gotya which set up two proper names i didn't know: alena and mat instead of alana and yat. seemed ok. that’s part of the theme   don(two)rktoohard i thought was four not hidden in petit four either, though it doesn’t mean the number four in the french, so that’s something.today i noticed avias vs asics is another one for the kealoa pile. most sundays barely hold my interest, or don't at all hold my interest, to the end. this one did. started out thinking a tt dress was something i just hadn't heard of and then threw in alumni reunion and kept moving. not a promising start. but eventually the flickering incandescent in my brain lit up, i saw numbers and then snippets of words. lots of good stuff in there. plows and tattoos and kahlua. merlin meets sandra lee. fun. when charles deber did this theme (with the same title) in 1998, he solved the five problem with hifi vendors crossing amalfi vessel. (his puzzle hid the numbers in both directions.) @egs i filled in slushpile and immediately had the same reaction. names are one thing but having your unique description or stuff on an editor's desk appear rises to a whole new level. my congrats to @gary jugert on this signal achievement. we are not worthy.caught on at the fr(eight)train answer and that was a big help. not too many unknowns, although a four letter band starting with a can always be abba or acdc.knew elle instantly, as we went to an all star high school production of legally blonde last night. the show would have been fine, but we were seated in front of the teenage female loud laugh track section of the audience, which necessitated leaving at half time. i mean, really.impressive sunday construction, hkv. happily knew various answers without much thought,, and thanks for all the fun. only two unknowns today: sandra lee and paramus. are either of those things people know?i know from pub trivia nights that tv chefs are a weakness for me. i know julia child and graham kerr, and thanks to crosswords ina garten. other people seem to know dozens of them.and i know the five boroughs of ny, but could not name another borough anywhere. google says paramus has a population of about 26k, which seems awfully small to be crossworthy. just to clarify, this is the sistine chapel, which i'm sure rex has heard of, even if he's never heard of a pope sixtus. sistine is the adjective form of sixtus. old tv jingle came to mind.everybody doesn’t know something, but nobody seems to know sandra lee!nobody doesn’t like sara leean achievement of a puzzle but even with my new use of autocheck, it looked off. thought alumnws was some nonsensically inclusive neologism before i saw the number trick. still looks wrong but “if the letter’s in blue*, it will have to do.”* autocheck puts correct answers in blue and a red slash through misses… i agree with rex: solid workmanlike puzzle, a few standouts, and nothing glaringly bad.i was waiting for the classic rp blog trope  "why these numbers?". i didn't notice they went down in order, d'oh. glad i didn't read the title of the puzzle, it posed a little extra challenge.i think stolenart passes the green paint test. the only reason we've heard of the mona lisa is because of the fame it acquired after being stolen from the louvre. the gardner museum of boston unsolved robbery is infamous. also, all the antiquities in major western museums are being reclassified as stolen art and forcibly returned to their countries of origin.@joe dipinto   loved your will shortz type clue for natan (aka satan) last late yesterday! many celebrations on march 3, running from the wonderful (world wildlife day) to the inexplicable (if pets had opposable thumbs day). i’ll focus on finisher’s medal day, described as follows: “finisher's medal day…recognizes the long hours, days, weeks and even months of training thousands of men and women across the country have put in to achieve their goals of completing a race. most…are everyday working people who train before or after work, after caring for their families and keeping their other commitments. some have been athletes all their lives. others are just starting out and want to see if they can do it. many are amputees and are regaining some of what was taken from them. there are those who train as a team and those for whom this challenge is a one person mission. finisher's medal day recognizes each of them who crosses the line. whether they cross it once or many times, earning that medal is a lifetime achievement.”i didn’t find this puzzle such a pushover, probably because it took me an extended period of wandering the grid to finally grasp the theme. which i did at petit f[our]s. after that, in light of my newfound knowledge, i went back and reexamined the nw corner and saw t[en]t dress. aha, we’re counting down from ten. from there i was able to fill in the missing numbers and resolve the eight remaining blank areas around the other themers. one of my problems was (duh) not having checked the title before starting the solve although, as others have said, maybe that made it more interesting for me. i made only one theme related error before understanding what was wanted: i alleged that five popes had chosen the name pius, which fit the 61a slot like a glove. this, in spite of the fact that tucked away in a separate and temporarily inaccessible compartment of my brain was the knowledge that the controversial wwii pope was pius xii. sigh. dare i mention that i briefly entertained cowpoo before cowpox? yes, i guess i do. also ”terse” before short [curt]. no problem with reran/rah and the crossing playwrights, o’neill and albee. one ill is an odd dook, though. yeah, aspirer   ouch. no idea on sandra lee (and was hoping that sandra dee had made a huge career comeback as a celebrity chef). awareness of skee ball has escaped me until this morning. also no clue about paramus (but it keeps suggesting the doomed lovers paramus and thisbe   oh, that’s pyramus, you say?). [spelling bee: fri  1, sat 0. exactly the same result as you @okanaganer, with the same missing word   wish i’d remember that one.] ah, thanks, not that i am any more familiar with that, lol it's don'tworktoohard... follow the gimmick i literally feel like i could have written this write up today! i actually did go ahead and put in the numbers after i got to nine because, i’m not quite as knowledgeable as you are. but i was so confused by “tinders”, had uh no before um no and also the whole rerun before reran etc. i don’t know many popes at all, being jewish so glad to hear that was not the only reason i had never heard of a sixtus and you also used one of my favorite words, arcane! i always joke that it would make a great celebrity baby name. thanks for the book rec, always reading. also overall liked the puzzle tho. not my day. i know i'm no genius but the sheer amount of things i had never heard of in this puzzle was woefully embarrassing. tent dress, red cap (porter), sallie mae, octavio, sixtus. petit fours, the sad thing is i could go on. : ( in the catholic mass, one of the eucharistic prayers has this string of names: linus, cletus, clement, sixtus, cornelius, cyprian, lawrence, chrysogonus, john and paul, cosmas and damian. that prayer is not used often, but that string always set my brother and me on the verge of giggling. in any case, it helped with this puzzle. when charles deber did this same theme (with the same title) in 1998, he solved the five problem by intersecting hifi_vendors with amalfi_vessel. his puzzle had the numbers hidden in both directions. agree with rex   nice construction but once you get the gimmick, and that happened to be fairly quickly, solving becomes perfunctory. also had seethes. skews ny/nj. she’s gov cuomo’s ex, and paramus is nj famous for the malls. an intricately constructed puzzle that involved me every step of the way and required much thinking. i loved it!i was completely baffled by what looked like it was going to be an it dress    hardly what you'd expect the designation for a "loose fitting garment" to be. but i picked up the theme at the much easier to figure out fr(8) train. and of course, once i had one theme across, along with its down, the entire puzzle became so much easier. rather on the easy side, in fact.but wait! there was a big trap coming...i had ??us and wrote in pius without a second thought. it didn't take me long to correct to (6)tus    but still, it gave me my biggest "aha!"other than not knowing why tattoos is the answer to "makeup of some sleeves", i liked everything about this puzzle. the marquee themer, i thought    so exquisitely embedded    was alum(9)wsletter.a really good and satisfying sunday that was much fun to solve. raritan before paramus echo rp on my solve, except i liked it a good bit more than he did. better than average fill for a sunday, mild challenge that kept it fun. this was impressive construction, although at the end i wondered if would be possible to pull this off in a smaller puzzlei was gobsmacked by the fact that i've also never heard of sandralee despite living in pa and following the cuomo saga for years. @ken, i think we're supposed to know albee. in high school english i learned he was mid century playwright (like oneill) but never saw any of his productions @ anonymous (8:34m)from "beautiful thing" (1996)jamie : you know who claude monet is?sandra (his mom): jamie, don't make me out to be thick.jamie : who was he then?sandra : he painted the sixteenth chapel. hey all !welp, further proof of the ole brain slowly going bye bye. did the d'oh! headslap after reading rex, because i never realized the "numbers" were counting down. wow, i say now to myself. it did make for a tougher solve, though, not realizing where the numbers are supposed to go, so there's that at least. 😁i had the actual numbers in place, ala a 10 in the first space. once i finished puz, got the almost there, and decided to hit check puzzle. it crossed out all my numbers. i also had three errant letters otherwise. so a true fwe. i fixed the three, hit reveal puzzle, as i cared not to change all my numbers, and saw the puz with just the down numbers written as normal.i prefer my solve of 10en, 9ine, 8ight, etc.har.wanted cowpoo for a while. had corey in for alana. i'm sure some other overwrites i'm forgetting.have a happy sunday. we had massive winds these past two days out here, so i have to go clean up the yard. all kinds of stuff got blown onto it. fun times.three f'sroomonsterdarrinv ok, it's a countdown. but when a puzzle starts with a non clue (the hyphen), it isn't a crossword puzzle. it's something else.crossword puzzles should have words that fit into blank spaces. instead, this one has whole words in one direction and parts of words in the opposite direction. imaginative? i suppose so. fun? definitely not. grid looks more elegant if you put the numeral at the top and the remaining letters (except the first) heading down. glad i didn't think to put all the numbers in order as that would have taken all the sizzle and enjoyment from the puzzle. very clever theme and a fun solve too. bravo! same exact issue here. “got ya” isn’t an exclamation, that’d be “gotcha!” oneill rex,just a little disappointed with your music choices this fine sunday. you had your little rant about take five but then didn't drop in the obvious song from dave brubeck.https://www.google.com/search?q=dave+brubeck+take+five&oq=dave+brubeck+take+five&gs_lcrp=egzjahjvbwuydggaeeuyorhdgiaegiofmgwiaraagemygaqyiguydagceaayqxiabbikbtimcamqabhdgiaegiofmgwibbaagemygaqyiguydagfeaayqxiabbikbtimcayqabhdgiaegiofmgcibxaagiae0geinduxmgowajgoagcwaga&sourceid=chrome&ie=utf 8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:9502b41f,vid:tt9eh8wnmkw,st:0 i know nothing about indoor shopping malls in new jersey, so having entered the opening pa in 24d, i dropped in passaic. that took some undoing. wondering how many states have two municipalities with 7 letter names beginning with pa? not going to figure it out. lewis? : ) chris r (9:08)    "...that prayer is not used often..."i think the best answer to that might be: "thank god!" sixto, from the latin sixtus, is a not uncommon spanish given name. sixto rodriguez was a singer from detroit who made a few albums in the early 1970's, then seemingly disappeared from the music scene, although his recordings started gaining a significant following abroad, particularly in south africa. he was the subject of the documentary "searching for sugarman" in 2012.i'll slip awayalso, "the flying nun" had a character named sister sixto. she was portrayed by shelley morrison, who later played rosario on "will and grace". lewis, you are a gem. i haven't touched the puzzle yet, and barely skimmed the blog so as not to spoil the fun, but in view of all the adverse comments on will shortz over the years, i'm sure we all wish him a full recovery during his rehab. npr this morning played his explanation of his absence the last month   he had a stroke on feb. 4th. @joe depinto (11:13)so sister sixto also left the convent   or, better, flew the coop   on the wings of sister bertrille? “as a born and bred new jerseyan, he hopes solvers will excuse 34 down, which he’s “probably more comfortable” than most.”well i for one do not forgive him for paramus. nor do i forgive him for sixtus, for which i entered sixths figuring there were five popes who were the sixths of some name like pope john the sixth etc.no. i do not forgive the constructor or the editors, for this dreadful natick. @egsforbreakfast 1:03 amas king for the day i hereby knight you first jester of the square table (you know crosswords don't fit on round tables). i almost leapt from my chair and ran around squealing when i saw slush pile. vindication! @alejandro rey 11:59   correctamundo. birch bark and pine cones are not good tinder. i like the idea that you've made it halfway thru the theme, and you can have a little rest. go ahead and take five. for that, i was willing to give five being five a pass. @ anonymousmid 20th century to this centurythe play about the baby (drama) 1996the goat, or, who is sylvia? (drama) 2000i believe the play about the baby was produced onbroadway about 2000. sunvolt 6:21inane and unknowable?? doesn't every schpplchild learn about jenner/ cowpox/ smallpox vaccine? ricko 10;30tokyo for the link. listening to it now. @pabloinnh 8:28 ami've merely acted as a celebrant of our true hero, the slush pile editor. i have written a paean below to the excellence they alone deserve. i agree with h.o.t. charles; crew team is redundant. i avoided putting it in until i was forced to by the crosses.i liked the way three was split into three parts: earth re entry. whether you write re entry or reentry, the double e is at the very least split into two syllables. aha! now i learned something useful today! @rob 9:44 am. >>grid looks more elegant if you put the numeral at the top and the remaining letters (except the first) heading down.i originally entered them that way, but when i was done the times site kept telling me something was amiss. i could *not* figure out where my mistake was. finally i realized it wanted the first letter in those squares, to make the "count" go "down" visually. also passes because pun on ‘work,’ as in art works or works of art ass count today: zero.otherwise, rex said it for me today   except that i entered the countdown fill first.and what's all this hoopla about albee and sandra lee? everyone should know albee if they've done any reading or worked crosswords for a few years. besides, the fill easily solves both for you.my only question about paramus is: what syllable is accented? is it pair am us or pear amus? yep. as @eniale pointed out, we certainly all wish puzmaster will shortz a very speedy and complete recovery from his stroke of 4 feb. terrible news.cool countdown puz.staff weeject picks: ten, six, two, one. (blast off)thanx, mr. vu dude. nice one. and two. and etc.masked & anonymo9us**gruntz** i have never commented on a sunday puzzle before. obviously i’m a newbie. buy what ever happened to puzzles that featured knowledge of vocabulary instead of playing stupid games??????? cosmas and damian were twins. they are the patron saints of physicians and surgeons. they were martyred. chrysogonous was an esteemed african christian bishop who was martyred. clement was the third successor of peter. he conversed with paul and peter. he knew them. he was martyred in 96 a.d. under domitian. casting vitriolic aspersions is for the unedified. it looks like i’m the only one who tried rebussing the numbers   putting ten in that uppermost nw square instead of just t, etc. no happy tune at the end and i had to de rebus all ten squares to get the solve music. otherwise a pretty easy sunday. found this easy except for the kea natick* at 15d/29 35a. almost cost me a 90 day streak. *kea natick   a kea/loa crossing a natick. in this case, gotme crossing mat and alena. @johnk   puh ram us. first vowel is a schwa. and it wasn’t dad jokes i’m sure we all wish him a full and speedy recovery: npr puzzlemaster will shortz says he is recovering from a strokehttps://www.npr.org/2024/03/03/1235697837/npr puzzlemaster will shortz stroke#:~:text=i%20had%20a%20stroke%20on,the%20puzzler%20podcast%20with%20a.j. sandra lee became infamous for awhile. anthony bourdain took regular digs at her, and she made some truly abhorrent recipes. see if you can find the one for the kwanzaa cake and you'll see what i mean. but i love cooking and cooking shows. had no clue on paramus, never heard of it.  stephanie. as the conceit became evident early on, i was wondering what rex would say. he was kinder than i expected. there were challenges, but in spite of some resistance, it was kind of a bore. 'he's with me' had great potential for a humorous misdirect or other play on words. other lost opportunities as well.sorry to hear about will shortz , wishing him a speedy recovery. sorry to hear about will shortz.i wish him a speedy recovery. yesp, nineh crossing albee was a nope from me. anonymous 10:09is got ya used? i looked it up. the internet says it is. just because i can’t remember hearing it, doesn’t mean it isn’t spoken. good catch anonymous 10:17 amreply to lewis 7:54 amone in oneill as a regular npr listener i was saddened to hear that will was suffering but glad to hear his very weakened voice. i’m not the crossword wizzes y’all are but i’ve enjoyed his sunday quizzes for 30 years and crosswords for 10 or so. get better my friend. for whatever reason, this puzzle was in my wheelhouse so it was easy except for the se corner. it helped that i was looking quickly around the grid and saw petit4s clue. got gimmick early by luck. liked the puzzle i agree with the response that albee is not obscure. he is in no way a contemporary of o’neill. o’neill was famous before albee was born! (btw albee died only 5 or so years ago). albee has had numerous plays, with several revivals at major new york stages, and several quite recently. the movie in the’60’s made of his first his first major play is of course “who’s afraid of virginia woolf?” old but starring a very famous couple, richard burton and elizabeth taylor. nc wyeth who crossed natick is the cause of the term. not even close. i was really upset by the sad news about will shortz and hope he'll be ok. i sent him a card via snail mail earlier today; his home address is actually online.though i know him only from his warm and delightful emails, he impresses me as one of the nicest people you could ever hope to know. he's good natured, wonderfully open, appreciative of good wishes, and completely oblivious to his own celebrity    which, at least in our own community is not inconsiderable. i also feel he has livened up the world of the nyt puzzle over the years, making it trickier, funnier and infinitely more imaginative than it was under previous editors. i wish him a speedy recovery and a quick return to his job. @anon and @dgd    excellent catch! i stand corrected. agree with @fun_cfo about earth reenty. a spacecraft may reenter the atmosphere or return to earth, but if it reenters earth, it would be more than a "concern." can someone explain the "7/" clue and answer for me? i sussed out the answer but still don't understand the clue the sistine chapel is named for pope sixtus iv, the pope who commissioned its construction. sixtus in italian is sistus, if i recall correctly. you're not. read my previous comment.roomonster numbers guy it's a date reference... 7/4/24 is july 4th. at least in this country. countdown to what!!? as a kid, one of my go to doodles was a rocket ship, next to which i would write, from to to bottom, the numbers, with an all caps "blastoff" at the end.after ten and nine, i ran the grid in anticipation of the traveler, which never came. :(never knew sandra lee was a first lady of ny. i watched her show twice, then had to hatewatch it twice more, to confirm the absurdity of what i was witnessing. her kitchen and her tablescape matched what she was cooking. breakfast omelette? potholders, curtains, spatulas, placemats, even shelf knickknacks would all be yellow. a marinara sauce? all that would be red. pretty stupid gimmick. the premise of her show was a good one... but nobody does semi homemade like jacques pépin.the puzzle was fun to solve, but really wish it hadn't been a literal dud. oops .. revealer, not traveler... for anyone young enough to be familiar with vine, sandra lee is also infamous as the “‘two’ shots of vodka” woman. (https://youtu.be/csn2ciwpvbm?si=oepgrevjnpkwbm29) have to cop a dnf because of a single square: 114. absolutely no idea either across or down. guys, please make your crosses fair.hard to start: no revealer. finally had to look at the title (!) to figure out what was going on. then on, easy but for that last square. very disappointing.wordle birdie. poof! and then it was done.once again, a puzzle with a trick that, in the long run, actually helped in the solve one, two, three or more times!diana, lady in waiting for crosswords a tattoo “sleeve” has tattos covering the arm. tinder's tru testsdon'tworktoohard on salliemae,one re entry don't go well,takefive shots at sandra rae,or don't argue, go two elle.    srta. alana lee albee yeah, some elegant constructioneering there. no title in my paper so no help there. figured out the number thing on freighttrain.wordle bogey, third shot at gbggg a lot of catholic haters on this blog! i can tell you exactly when all five sixtus' were popes. no i can't!!! early april fools!!! gotya!!! for the 117d/128a cross, i had:rev(reverend) and evs(electric vehicles).i like my answers better. despite the wistful circumstance, i have to thank you for the laugh! post a comment © free blogger templates columnus by ourblogtemplates.com 2008 back to top

dear friends: guest constructor hoang kim vu's "the long way home" is 4/5 difficulty. a note from the constructor regarding the puzzle: each passage was different. some had mere minutes to decide what they could carry before fleeing to a usaf c 130. some tried to escape nine times before finally making it to malaysia, then sweden. some had to weigh the hard choice to leave their family behind when a single seat opened up. some made the journey with their most valuable possessions sewn into the lining of their clothing. some didn't survive the journey at all. this puzzle attempts to honor those family stories by sharing them with a new audience. some clues in the .puz version of the puzzle have been anglicized due to limitations of the .puz file format. please refer to the .jpz file or the pdf to solve with the intended diacritics. hoang kim vu (he/him) works on a global malaria research project in washington, d.c. his crosswords have appeared in the new york times, los angeles times, and usa today; he also published the first non powell crossword for vox. when he's not solving or constructing, kim enjoys collecting passport stamps, spending too much money on pet nats, and trying his best to raise a one year old daughter and a pitbull with bad knees with his wife/co constructor/forever editor jess. be well, ben and the avcx crew avxwords.com // @avcxword

constructor: hoang kim vu relative difficulty: medium literally, struck beating. from the sur la cou de pied position (working foot cupped around the ankle of the supporting foot), thrust the working foot forcefully outward to an extended position, a few inches above the floor, devant (in front), à la seconde (to the second position) or derriere (in back), with the ball of the foot brushing on the floor as it moves outward. (fundamentals of ballet, dance 10ab, professor sheree king, long beach city college) save and share : decent enough   but didn’t get the same joy as the big guy. too much contrived trivia   especially the shorts. aruba did go right in. didn’t love the roy double. liked miso paste and heres a tip. spoon rest doesn’t excite me and u turned, stim toy and eonline don’t belong. a somewhat pleasant saturday morning solve. stella’s stumper shines over this one today. el cuarto de tula it bothers me when "asap" is the answer for the clue now! it's "as soon as possible," which in business speak means, "make this a priority" but not "drop everything else!" a better answer to that clue is always "stat!" as in medical speak, ie "now!" the r in roy was the last thing i had left. i thought frappes was more likely than flappes, but tried it because "roy" was in the clue for tropicana. though i have noticed there are fewer dupes than there were for a while. i liked 36a which looks like it’s a quintessential saturday clue/answer combination. the clue is “cop” which sure opens up a lot, but doesn’t give you really anything to work with (ambiguity is a constructor’s best friend on a saturday) and fess up works as an answer, but just barely (on a weds we might get “cop to” as a clue instead). i would put “hunters” for terriers in that same category. rex rated it medium, which means i’m eventually going to end up in a death spiral somewhere, and that was the case today. i have very little success with things like entracts, stimtoy, frappes, etc simply because i’ve never seen them before and lack confidence in the crosses (or just don’t know the crosses like roy, anno and atra) so it becomes a bit of a roller coaster ride. fortunately, i got the happy music because tracking down a typo (or a flat out mistake) in a grid full of words i don’t really recognize could have been brutal. sorry to all of you die hards, but this was enough to tide me over for the week, so i’m hoping that the trend of “more accessible” sundays continues tomorrow so that i have a fighting chance (and yes, i like the way i used “more accessible” instead of just saying easy, lol   it sounds more inclusive that way, which is a good thing). between all the references and “plant sitter” i dnf the sw roy was both an answer and a clue. surprised rex didn’t bring that up. my favorite saturday in ages and ages. fresh clues, a grid that doesn't impede your progress but actually helps it  loved everything about it. favorite clue: "trading card enthusiasts." thanks, hoang kim vu. hope to see much more of you. my solving experience closely paralleled @rex's. nice puzzle, lots of good stuff and about medium for a saturday. and sergey and larry got to stay idle instead of hosed.overwrites:1d: tentkit before mess kit8d: wanted some sort of ...pets before testees20a: wanted deep {some euphemism for doo doo} before death spiral39d: wanted festoon before bestrew50a: has to before got to before gotta. the clue should have said "informally" or some suchwoes:18a: uzo aduba (i wasn't even sure which part was the surname)21d stimtoy43a arundhati roy46a hose as clued52d tres as a cuban instrument54a dom from the f&f franchisei didn't know that the constitution was signed in sep (19a) until i got two of the letters, but at least i didn't fall into the jul trap. similar experience to yesterday, where i flew through 2/3 of the puzzle then struggled to finish. and i really expected to finish with an error as frappes/roy seemed likely to be wrong.nice clues for plant sitter and art store.meal kit before mess kit and in tears before in peace were the only overwrites. the dom / seamaps cross got me. had doc / seacaps which i thought could be a thing , like skycaps , the porters who help at an airport. this was certainly a very good puzzle, but... a fight? there was no fight in this. my phone tellse it took less than half my average saturday time.the nw went in so quickly i thought i might achieve a monday time, but i did slow down a bit near the middle and sw.i really dislike "nth in a series" clues and there's no way i'm counting out ten of every list i can think of, so kappa sat empty until i had at least three letters.terriers had a similarly vague clue and started to make me feel like i was solving a shortz puzzle from the early 2000's, but ultimately i didn't hate the answer.otherwise, lots of nice fill and decent clues. generally a good time all around. a flying start again today with misopaste off the o in oro, knew entractes and that there are also red pandas, messkit a gimme from boy scout days. in short. lots of traction, and didn't really slow down until gotto blocked the seamaps. nor did i know dom, but that became at least logical if not obvious. i wanted to rob peter (my brother) to pay paul (me), a saying i have always enjoyed, but piper showed up instead, and the sw finally fell into place.if you want ice cream in your milkshake in some placers around here, you have to ask for a frappe, which i found out the hard way.back to unknown names again today. hello to aduba and roy and dom as clued. nice to meet you all, i'm sure.wicked good saturday with a very nice mix of whoosh and head scratching. well done you, hkv. i honestly knew virtually all the trivia, which made me feel smarter than i am, and thanks for all the fun. fha very good saturday; not too hard, not too easy. took me a bit under 25 minutes. had miso sauce at first. was it peer in/nora, or peered/dora? was it rao, ray or roy? yeah; a satisfying challenge. i'm not antirely sure whether the puzzle was actually harder than the last few saturdays, or it just felt that way due to a few wrong answers i stuck with for a while. i had spoon rack, which is most likely not a thing, and only after i saw "stovetop" in the clue did i remember that spoon rest is a thing. i knew about stimming, but like rex i also had stimmer. and then there's piper, which i confidently had as peter at first. except it's "rob peter to pay paul" so paul is the payee there. i got deathspiral very quickly and have to fessup that that about describes the rest of my experience with this puzzle. learned some stuff but going was tough… i too had peter   as in the proverbial tale of mary (travers) robbin’ peter (yarrow) to pay paul (stookey). seriously, mary was the only one with access and motive to rob peter to pay paul for all the magic dragon she was puffin’, all their concert money just disapeerin’ in the wind… horrible puzzle replete with trivia. in the se i started by confidently dropping in festoon, saints, grain and grapa (which i knew was missing a 'p' but heck...). that would be for bestrew, faiths, grist and gotta.with that all in place nothing else would fall. i kept trying to put snowpeas in at the bottom but needed an invisible letter. finally gave up. never been to vegas. are we not going to talk about bestrew? i actually found this to be a much easier than usual saturday, despite the above “word” and struggling to finish up at nora / atra / stimtoy. i suppose the finish left a bad taste in my mouth, but overall a good puzzle, with death spiral the highlight for me. had so many wrong answers in the sw. nytoped seemed likely, so i completely missed synapse. (which is more like an intersection of pieces than an actual think piece itself, just sayin)had ownsup for cop, and couldn't see anything else. had to come here to get the ballet move and the online gossip site. so even with my plantsitter watering away to the soft sounds of a tres while reading some roy, and the piper all paid up, i still had a dnf because of the sw. but still enjoyed the rest of the puzzle.hat tip for the cluing on panda and artstore (a place i frequent) which had me going a good long while. hey all !i need to fess up. had to run to goog for roy. no hope down in the sw corner sans cheating. tried to cheat for anno, but never did find out what it was supposed to be. interesting history on the founding of rome, however. so after getting roy, was able to parse things together down there, and finish to happy music.liked the aruba aduba pair in ne. only things i had there at first. solve went ne, se, nw, sw. east side clocking in as easier compared (or vis a vis, if you will) to the west side.couple writeovers, grain grist, atpeace inpeace, aeon eons, jul sep, even though i figured it wasn't jul, put it in anyway!so a good satpuz that i was one answer away from finishing cheat free. oh well. ya goota do what ya gotta do. so i did, and that was that.uturned testees sounds like trying to get people purposefully lost.heres a tip, have a great saturday! 😁two f'sroomonsterdarrinv loved this one too! joining a sorority in college had one big advantage when it comes to crosswords  i had to memorize the greek alphabet with a catchy little tune that i have never forgotten! i use it often with the nyt xword. challenging, but do able and rewarding! tough, fun, terrific puzzle. the t cross of atra and stimtoy was a natick for me as i knew neither, and thought there was a good chance it was called a stimboy. nope, it wasn’t. numerous times, the correct answer for something popped into my head but i thought, nah, that can’t be right, only to find out later that, yup, it was! an excellent solving experience. nice! my rule of thumb in allowing myself to cheat on a puzzle: i'm having a good, challenging time    only now i'm stuck and can't go on. and i also have reason to believe that this one teensy cheat might unlock the puzzle for me."okay, arundhati," i said to 43a, "you'd better clear up the mystery of the 'temporary water provider' that's some sort of sitter    that's all i have to say to you!"and you did!!!every time i'd hit on an answer that i hadn't been able to figure out previously, i thought i'd cracked the puzzle. first, death spiral. then miso paste and mess kit. then pen pals. but even after finally remembering that it's the piper you pay, there was still that pesky sw corner to complete. so thank you, roy!thought for the day: how have i managed to feed myself for lo these many years without even knowing what a spoon rest is, much less having one? oh, that's right: i don't cook; i order in.a very challenging and rewarding puzzle that i enjoyed. could someone please explain the “or sometimes red” part of the clue for panda? my wife thinks it is referring to red china. i’m hoping someone has an alternative (better) explanation. red panda is a species of small mammal, though not a bear and not closely related to panda bears. ah, a perfectly fine and basically breezy offering, except we're back to the c listers to toughen up the grid. yawn.okay, here we go. what i like:terriers (i like their scruffiness.)things i don't like:its saturday, there's no theme, it's not funny (except for plant sitter) and five other times, there's no sizzling longer answers (except death spiral and pen pals, pen pals from estonia sizzle), and it opens with an asian cooking ingredient. i should add anything to do with recipes onto my gunk counts. is there any conceivable reason we should still be talking about the beach boys? i think they mainly play at chuck e. cheeses near hospitals now. there's a crosswordese emmy winner and i think i might have an emmy around here somewhere. they give those suckers out to everybody. a spoon rest might appear just about anywhere, so why are we limiting it to the stove top? why are we talking about it at all? aeon is the rudely spelled eternity and it sat on those squares until i threw up (threw up) my hands in disgust and switched to the plural eons. i think one eon is an eternity too. and then, out of everything on every shelf in walgreens i'm responsible for the atra plus. it's a razor, right? roy (unknown writer to me since my roy is rogers) on top of latin phrase for "this is when rome was founded, but not really," crossing a ballet cum frozen coffee move. celebrity gossip, ugh. the existence of bung and it's unsavory association with the gray lady's favorite body part. three courses of doubled strings is just not enough. bestrew is exactly the same thing as strew except bestrewers have read shakespeare and use the word broaches instead of "in your face." it's the art store version of strewing. oh, animal abuse on guinea pigs. aargh. have you seen guinea pigs? they're cute as heck, and somebody said, "let's see if this rouge made with child labor and asbestos makes guinea pigs go blind." stim toy seems like a thing people with peanut allergies need. back in the day, we just sat quietly and hoped to avoid a whoopin'. nora nora nora, you're scandinavian, so whatevs, and the writer of esther was dishwater dull. have you read it? i did. in the wacko church i grew up in, we only cared about the new testament, since jesus was in it, ya know, except for the old testament condemnation stuff like eating shrimp. i really really really wanted sea maps to be sextant, but they went with the spoon rest of navigation tools instead, and i figured those might've been sea caps if vin was known as doc, a way better nickname than dom. and finally, back to estonia. yeeshk. seems like a country you need to go outside to appreciate. i think they play a two string instrument there called a nein which means "whaddaya gonna do about it, eh?"propers: 4places: 3products: 8partials: 4foreignisms: 5  gary's grid gunk gauge: 24 (35%)funnyisms: 6 😅tee hee: hot date (and the aforementioned bung).uniclues:1 where uzo keeps her silver one since the fortunes from the emmy started rolling in.2 the day they return to dragging rats out of holes.3 vin on the vine.4 one addicted to crack and orange juice.5 frozen coffee delights for warriors on a break.6 alcohol.7 i explained the status of my income.1 aduba spoon rest2 terriers' monday3 plant sitter dom4 tropicana piper5 mess kit frappes6 synapse stopper7 u turned hot datemy fascinating crossword uniclue keepsake from last year: small person strapped to your noggin in case a piano falls from the 5th floor. crash helmet human.¯\_(ツ)_/¯ some pandas are red. there are giant pandas, which are black and white, and there are red pandas, which are red. it’s a small panda with red orange fur that is native to parts of china and the himalayas. you can see one in various zoos in the us. i saw one in the bronx zoos years ago. nothing more satisfying than a come from behind victory. this one made me feel defeated with very little going in just from the clues, but evenly around the grid steady progress led to very happy music!loved penpals, deathspiral, plantsitter. think piece? for synapse is terrific! ditto “creative outlet?” for artstore.nice to see a legal, proper uturn instead of some variety of uey. entr’actes are a given for pit musicians   our moment to shine.nice to know stimtoys exist for those who need them. fidget spinners were used for that purpose until they became a banned fad in schools.in the teehee department, i confess that i only know “bung” as in bunghole for anus. i see how that works as the “last line of defense” for our digestive system. funny how physical objects become anatomized  see also ramrod.i had very little confidence in bestrew or broaches, but both panned out. @anon 9:44    just as cute, but red. see for yourself i have been experimenting with japanese cooking, so i immediately got miso paste. other than that, my experience mirrored rex's. a bonus in his blog: a link to kokomo. i forgot just how good the beachboys actually were; thanks for the reminder. best saturday in a long time for me. but… bung. just bung in the northwest. bung is an arrester of progress. my vocabulary just increased by one word. evidently there is a red panda native to the himalayas. had peruse crossing testers instead of peek in and testees, and that hung me up for a while. but i kept chip chip chipping away, and letter by letter got it all eventually. a challenge, but satisfying. there are a different animal called a red panda. it is much smaller with red fur but just as cute rip the tropicanatempora labuntur, tacitisque senescimus annis. sea maps are not a thing. red pandahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/red_panda not hard so much as the trivia was hard and plenty of it. agree with rex, a proper saturday which wore my eraser down to a nib. so many do overs* plus foreign [to me] terms like stim toy and bestrew further muddied the water, and i thought frappe was something you bought at starbucks. since clearly i was headed for a death spiral after the first run through, i decided to just fess up to my shortcomings and google some of the names. quite a workout.* entrances/etractes, lady/lass, brings up/broaches, grain/grist, moscato/boba tea, stat/asap, wanting/in peace, tax day/dog day, isaiah/esther, aeon/eons, hear me out/here’s a tip. when your male friend is hurting, your broaches.for those needing help with the red panda reference, it's a panda that is red.i didn't know i was in a deathspiral until my testees dropped.a proper good workout of a puzzle. thanks, hoang kim vu. there's a raccoon like animal called a red panda two answers, one a real animal common to the himalayas. more recently, turning red was a recent pixar movie where a girl would turn into a giant red panda when she got angry. quite a struggle for me, but an enjoyable one. the only kokomo i knew was the one in indiana (i think there is a song about kokomo, kankakee, and kakauna, but i can't remember how it goes); so i needed three crosses to see aruba  which is about as many as i needed to remember uzo aduba. she has already made several puzzle appearances, so i ought to work on it.speaking on songs, @dr. a, any chance you could record that greek letter number and put in on youtube? the times seems determined to make me remember them all in alphabetical order, which i can do only as far as delta.i was going to complain about eons and eon line in the same puzzle, but fortunately i looked it up. apparently it's e! online, so that's ok.i confidently wrote in all saints for 45 a, even while muttering that all the all saints churches i've heard of are episcopal; it made it too hard to see safety, but eventually tropicana bubbled up in my awareness. i'm wondering if anyone was actually helped by the clue    well, @roo, i guess you would have known that, but i sure didn't.so, a proper saturday, with one major complaint. oceanographers may use sea maps in their research, but not to navigate with; they do that with charts.p.s. interesting wit twister today, with all the anagrams crammed into one line. hidden diagonal word (hdw) clues of the day (answers below):1. not this! (4 letters)2. augur (4 letters)3. key for getting out? (3 letters)4. fanny (4 letters)yesterday i wrote about my three typical outcomes with friday and saturday solves. today was definitely option #2: "those that look hopeless at first and lead to a long slow grind, ending in a hard fought victory." in fact, i started last night, got about two thirds of it done, gave up, then completed it this morning  total time around 55 minutes.breakthrough answers included broaches, bestrew, and plant sitter. didn't get the happy music, but quickly realized that 50a, just must, was not got to (i originally typed in "has to"), but the more casual gotta. which made sea maps make sense.answers to the hdw clues:1. that (begins with the 1st t in 50a, gotta, moves to the nw)2. seer (start with the s in 21d; "augur" is a fitting saturday clue; prophetess or prognosticator would be better in an early week puzzle)3. esc (begins with 2nd e in 61a, sweetpeas; a mild attempt at misdirection)4. rear (start at the r in 9d, esther; there's also a hidden diagonal ass, which ends with the s in 9d, esther. a couple of gary jugert tee hees)gotta go  have a hotdate in aruba. i'm with rex, this puzzle was just the right balance between frustration and joy, absolutely worth the finish. even masterpieces have their flaws and i hate, hate, hated bestrew. didn't like the clue (straightforward) or the answer. had a stuffy, condescending feel for some reason, when the rest of the puzzle was so fresh. like so many here, that t in stimtoy/atra was the last to fall for me. stimtoy is a fine clue, but i'm not a fan of the objects at all. way overused when there are a small contingent of those who truly need them. the rest just think they are cool, when they are just annoying (sorry for the get off my lawn dad rant).great puzzle. blogger wiped out my first post, so trying again. red panda has been answered.found this to be a saturday level medium from a few years ago. a few entries here and there, lots of things i didn't know or care to blindly guess. but kept plugging away, and the aha moments came. never heard of stim toy   had peer at for a while in the cross. loved the clue for plant sitter.little bits of personal connection with answers   terriers was the sports mascot in high school. a decade later, driving for work with a colleague from indianapolis to south bend on u.s. 31, we'd skirt kokomo. and pass what was then grissom air force base. u turned just seems...off. made a u turn. or a bootleg turn (as practiced by jim rockford). thanks, hoang kim vu. i agree with rex's assessment of this puzzle's difficulty. while it took a bit longer than saturdays have recently, it wasn't into hard territory (for me, hard is +26 minutes. i can spend hours on a stumper sometimes.)asap radio aruba was my start also. the se was fairly easy   i'm not sure why i was so set on making bestrew work (with no crosses) but it sure helped me see sweetpeas. the corps à corps in 53d's clue certainly helped me with epee. atra, yes, why is that a pharmacy brand? i know, i know, crossword clues, but pharmacy in the clue kept me from plopping it down earlier. i guess that misdirection worked then.silliest synapse lapse of the day   with _p_on rest in place, i briefly put in apron rest and wondered mightily what that might look like on a stovetop. (i also briefly wondered if "stovetop convenience" was referring to the stuffing brand.)thanks, hoang kim vu, nice saturday puzzle! challenging for me, and an enjoyable struggle that i was happy to finish. my problem area was the se, where i had "saints" instead of faiths and "top" instead of cap, which made tropicana and here's a tip impossible for me to parse. i also lacked art store and its crucial safety atra stimtoy nexus. i finally erased "faiths," saw tropicana, and that was enough to sort it all out. whew! most fun along the way plant sitter (payoff after almost every single cross) and piper (instant delight).another do over: stat before asap (hi @georgia 6:41). help from previous puzzles: hose, stim..something, seamaps. help from having two on my stove: spoon rest. three women who really helped: aduba, nora, lass. no help from the tub in my fridge: miso paste   took me forever to see it. no idea: frappes.thank you, @hoang kim vu for this whiz bang saturday. a skosh on the easy side of medium. i had quite a few woes: roy, frappes, dom (i’ve never seen a fast and furious movie nor am i planning to), estonia, stim toy, lass, tres, sep…i did know aruba and aduba (i have seen orange is the new black)…solid with a hint of sparkle, a fine workout, liked it. me too! was i the only one stuck with themirage at 56a? i mean s&r were there for years. a typically challenging saturday, for me anyway. a lot i didn't know   mess kit, aduba, stimtoy'(its second appearance   gonna try to remember it as i always wondered what my neighbor is always doing with his hands (stim), plant sitter. on the plus side i did like piper & pen pal.thanks hkv   this was very 'promising' for me & looking forward to your next puzzle :) so much overwriting, but finally finished. a most satisfying experience. thank you hoang kim vu. @jberg 11:05a   you may be thinking of sandburg’s rootabaga country   "they are going to kansas, to kokomo, to canada, to kankakee, to kalamazoo, to kamchatka, to the chattahoochee."the great steve goodman also wrote about kankakee in the city of new orleans. you’re on your own with kakauna. it took forever, but i finally finished it after lunch (i started right after breakfast). i agree wholeheartedly with the criticism of asap for "now!" i had "stat" for a long time. "as soon as possible" does not suggest great urgency, but "stat" does. i also had (all)"saints"instead of (all) faiths until the vey end.never heard a stimtoy or a plantsitter, or the actor aduba. very hard puzzle which i'm proud of myself for solving. i tried sextant and sealegs before giving up and leaving it to the crosses. the navigation aids in question are called charts; seamaps is not a thing. that and atra were the two low lights. the clue for tres was a pleasant break from the usual. oh geez, rex’s caption under the “kokomo” link is an understatement for me. i suffered from that song running through my head for, no lie, two decades. sometimes it would be replaced by the theme song to entertainment tonight. i’ve since had a partial earwormdectomy, but existing science can’t reach the shins “new slang” part of the brain. i’ve mostly recovered from this affliction but the fear of “kokomo” returning will always be there. i second @jberg's comment re seamaps. they are a thing, but not a thing that is used for "nautical navigation." for that, you need a nautical chart.this grates on a mariner's ears like using "oar" as a verb. rex, the opening to this review is spot on and exactly my experience with this puzzle. you beautifully describe a beautiful crossword adventure! i agree that there is lots to like in this one. one thing that especially caught my eye was the clue for 35a atra. of the 118 times atra has made a nytxw appearance during the modern era (xwordinfo.com), it has been clued as a gillette razor brand 117 times. today for the first time, we get "___plus (pharmacy brand)". rip "first razor with a pivoting head".wednesday we got "what's opposite finland on the gulf of finland" and today we see "first country to hold elections using internet voting". hello estonia. they are called "nautical charts". only a landlubber would say sea maps.did aduba ever make it to aruba?here's a tip for aspiring constructors: if you have a really nice entry that's one letter short of its slot, just make it an oh so convenient plural of convenience (poc). there's a liberal sprinkling of them today when entr' acte, steamer, testee, pere, pen pal, terrier, eon, iou, broach, frappe, seep, faith, sea map and sweet pea all get letter count boosted. this was challengingly difficult, but i'm surprised at rex's praise for it. so many clunky answers! bestrew is just yucky; when it popped into my head i said out loud "please, please don't let it be bestrew." but it was. and then there's spoon rest... i think i've seen one, but i've never heard that term before.hands up for all saints before faiths; i've heard the former about 100 times more often than the latter. and with golf on the mind, "alternatives to irons": drivers? fairway woods? nothing fit. upper half played very easy but i got prettt bogged down in the bottom half. needed bestrew and art store to open things up but they came slowly. everything fell after those two. also   didn’t love that the word plant is in a clue and an answer (61a and 51a) thanks! given all the pointless trivia i’ve learned over the last 40 years of x word solving, not sure how i’ve managed to avoid the red panda until this morning. i considered saints, but nondenominational in the clue ruled out the mostly catholic term. speaking of plant sitters...i was one once. a neighbor whom i didn't know asked if i would mind her plants for a week or two. i agreed and she brought 3 or 4 potted plants to my apt.at least 6 months went by with no word from her. then one day she appeared and wanted her plants back.i refused. they had thrived and grown many times their original size and i was very attached to them.she was amazed that i would actually "steal" her plants. am i the a++hole? just on the easy side of medium for me. i don't use the clock to time myself because i often abandon the puzzle to do other things like make and eat breakfast, drink my coffee, feed the dog, take him for a short walk, etc. i'll often return with a clearer head and finish smoothly. today, on a whim, i checked the clock and it read just over 56 minutes. considering all the other things i did, i'm going to estimate a 30 minute finish. really good for me, i think.loved all the long answers in the nw and se corners. also loved terriers at 30a. took me back to the days when i was about 11 or 12 years old and my older brother and would take our manchester terrier and a couple of 22 calibre rifles to the dump where toby would root out rats and toss them into the air and we would try to shoot them. kind of a pointless exercise; they're almost impossible to hit. but quite amusing to young boys. spoonrest at 17a brought a small smile. i never use them. they are often adorned with homey kitchen sayings or maps of italy, or the like. very "grandmothery". i have an italian american friend who moved out here from the bronx and she uses them to rest her spoon when she's making her mum's fabulous pomodoro or meatballs. many years ago i really upset her by stirring the sauce and leaving the wooden spoon in the pot. she got really angry so, of course, i kept doing it. now it's just a game we play.stimtoy (21d) was new to me insofar as i had only heard of it as a stimmie. my wife is a child psychologist and she always says stimmie not stimtoy.a really good saturday puzzle. well done hoang kim vu. challenging! spent half my solve time in the se. my attempts of getting a foothold led to a death spiral. hadto for gotta led to estonia, so hadto had to have been right. to make the crosses fit: gouda/nacho, legday/monday, top/cap (off), green/sweetpeas. irritated that i couldn't remember nora. threw in the crossword name tess to match a wrong crossing. broaches and tropicana eluded me. major misfiring of synapses today. eventually deleted the entire section, guessed on seamaps which led to gotta, and that was that. eventually. (tragedy + excessive solving time = comedy.)the struggle was *real*, and i thoroughly enjoyed it. thanks, hoang kim vu. oh, yeah, one other thing ... artstore (35d). i've been a practising artist since the early seventies. when i need a tube of titanium white or hooker's green, some new brushes, 6b pencils, etc., i go to an art supply store. is this different from an artstore? just what is that? is that a store where you purchase finished works of art? i've always called that a gallery. i seem to be the only one who coming from a soccer mad country first had goalie for "last line of defense." then somehow l plucked safety from somewhere deep in my hypothalamus 68 worder sat puz. well … 66 worder, plus testees & bestrew.staff weeject pick (only 6 choices, mind u): dom   the fast & furious name of mystery. fortunately for the precious nanoseconds, it was short and had fair crosses. more than m&a can say for eonline & frappes.some fave stuff: deathspiral. analogy. synapse. uturned. plantsitter clue [i think you're ok, @oldactor dude … they were pretty much abandoned goods, especially if you had given them names]. thanx, mr. vu dude. tough, but mostly fair. thinkin of usin spoonpaste & misorest in a future runtpuz, now.masked & anonymo4us**gruntz** yep. superb saturday …had saints instead of faiths and that really screwed up tropicana and safety. never heard of a stimtoy and had breaches instead of broaches.hard but satisfying. sea maps, just no. charts. btw   there is no such thing as a “sea map”. i spent 8 years in the coast guard working with aids to navigation and they are referred to as charts, more specifically nautical charts. only a hopeless landlubber would say something clueless like sea map. a good hard saturday puzzle. very good, except for testee. nobody says that. ...except in the plural: testees. (tee hee)let's bestrew the bistro with red ribbons, like they did during the opening ceremony. egad, what a word.had stungun for 21d, it got to be a real messkit there.medium challenging on account of that area. otherwise good. birdie.wordle bogey. hose uphere’satip to end up inpeace  on a hotdate use your sweetpeas,uturned the lass on,don’t stopper ‘til dawn,use up the rest of your testees.    esther piper got naticked twice in this one (aduba/roy)… the only frappes i know are delicious ice cream drinks. thought it was too ridiculous so went with an l…for the l. 🤷 you live, you (hopefully) learn. i’m a neurologist ~ patients with migraines do not get eegs post a comment © free blogger templates columnus by ourblogtemplates.com 2008 back to top

the downward countdown numbers have to be added to across answers to fit the clues. for example, 1 across is ten + tdress. etc. this 1998 puzzle by charles deber had the same title but a much different execution. answer summary:10 unique to this puzzle, 1 debuted here and reused later. there are 21 rows and 21 columns, with 0 rebus squares, and 8 cheater squares (marked with "+" in the colorized grid below.) the grid uses 24 of 26 letters, missing qz. it has normal rotational symmetry. average word length: 5.33, scrabble score: 542, scrabble average: 1.49. puzzle has 9 fill in the blank clues and 0 cross reference clues. this puzzle has 10 unique answer words. it has 1 word that debuted in this puzzle and was later reused: these 65 answer words are not legal scrabble™ entries, which sometimes means they are interesting: various thumbnail views are shown: crosswords that share the most words with this one: unusual or long words that appear elsewhere: other puzzles with the same block pattern as this one: other crosswords with exactly 77 blocks, 142 words, 106 open squares, and an average word length of 5.33: the next two sections attempt to show how fresh the grid entries are. in this view, unusual answers are colored depending on how often they have appeared in other puzzles. unique answers are in red, red overwrites orange which overwrites yellow, etc. cheater squares are indicated with a + sign. freshness factor is a calculation that compares the number of times words in this puzzle have appeared in other modern era puzzles. click here for an explanation. the chart below shows how many times each word has been used across all nyt puzzles, old and modern including variety. found bugs or have suggestions? please let us know. like this puzzle? please share this page on social media to help spread the word about xword info. thanks!

jonesin’ solution 4/16/24 hello lovelies! let’s delve into this week’s jonesin’, which involves cutting off the second syllable of the first main word of some broadway shows: let’s hold a blue ringed octopus. what could go wrong? other things: until next week! crossword nation puzzle solution, week 673: “veggie mania!” hello there, everyone! hope you all are doing well and that tax day (and the days leading up to it) went pretty smoothly and that, eventually, you get a nice refund to drop into your bank account! today’s puzzle has an interesting title, given that wrestlemania was just a couple of weekends ago! (i don’t follow wrestling anymore and haven’t for a long while, but have a lot of friends i follow on social media who still do.) instead of cody rhodes and roman reigns, we have vegetables headlining the main event here, as the names of vegetables are used to replace similar sounding words in common phrases to create puns. loved seeing the amazing tracee in the grid, especially since i just came across the news that her mom, diana ross, just celebrated her 80th birthday late last month (49a: [“black ish” star ___ ellis ross]). seeing cake intersect with the “kale” in you’ve got kale definitely represents opposite ends of the food enjoyment spectrum (38d: [birthday slice]). though i’m sure enough people would much rather have, and eventually enjoy, kale more so than cake. i actually heard someone use “the fairer sex” when i sat next to a person at a bar last year in denver, and that might have been the first time   and possibly last time   i had heard someone use fair sex in real life (10d: [women, in old fashioned parlance]). should i have interrupted the conversation and asked him, “what year did you time travel from?” actually, i should go easy on that person, since i dropped an alphonse and gaston reference recently!! no sh*t!! “sports will make you smarter” moment of the day: thurman (21a: [gold glove winning yankee legend munson])   the legend and legacy of thurman munson grew soon after his death while landing a plane in ohio took his life at the too young age of 32. on the field, munson was undoubtedly one of the greatest catchers of all time, and his awards include winning rookie of the year in 1970 and winning the american league mvp in 1976. in 1976, munson was named the captain of the new york yankees, the first captain of the franchise since lou gehrig. the postseason was where munson really thrived, compiling a career .373 batting average in the playoffs as he helped the yankees win back to back world series in 1977 and 1978. thank you so much for the time, everybody! have a wonderful and safe rest of your day and, as always, keep solving! take care! ade/aok theme answers are pairs of entries in specified rows separated by a black square. the letters around said square spell out a military rank. the revealer is break ranks (57a, [deviate from one’s group, and what the black squares in rows 3, 5, 8 and 11 do]). wall st journal crossword solution · “separation of powers” · joseph gangi · tue., 4.16.24 solid theme. i have to question the use of red sox cap, though. this falls squarely into the category of green paint (i.e. a red sox cap is a real thing, but it’s hardly a colloquial phrase). why not use shower cap, market cap, bottle cap, or salary cap? those are near universal phrases that would be assets to the theme rather than detract from it. and the extra wide break between cinema and jordan is an outlier. lastly, elopement is on the blah side. when all you need is the el , why not go for something more lively, like elbow room, ellington, or elephants? much more fun for the solver (in my opinion). elsewise, i’m liking bird’s eye, nitwit, and roommate in the fill. to recap crossing cap isn’t really a dupe, but i wonder if it could’ve been avoided. clues of note: 3.5 stars. ny times crossword solution, 4/16/24   no. 0416 fun theme! the revealer clue is 39a. [certain immature adult … with a hint to both halves of the answers to each starred clue}, manbaby. now, that’s a word that isn’t in standard dictionaries … yet. it’s used here to connect four notable men whose surnames are words for baby animals. fave fill: byelines, big bird, noah’s ark, kiss cam. four stars from me. i enjoyed this! a nice tuesday appropriate theme and solid fill to go with it. i noticed the pattern in the theme answers. and the revealer: 31a [with 41  and 45 across, go dutch, or what the answers to the starred clues all do?] is split the check. i really like the way the three parts of the revealer are split over three lines. i see what you did there. a few other things: echoes vs echos what i didn’t know before i did this puzzle: see above re: the fischer method. also didn’t know that cheap trick is in the rock & roll hall of fame. new yorker • 4/16/24 • lucido • solution • 20240416 we’ve speculated as to a recent rejiggering of the difficulty levels in the new yorker’s crosswords, but i note that this one is still labelled ‘moderately challenging’, as all tuesdays have been, which indicates that (1) thursdays and fridays have been eliminated with no adjustments to monday wednesday, or (2) the editors have redefined or recalibrated the difficulty descriptions. because once again this tuesday offering is easier than those of weeks not so distant past. editor: amanda rafkin theme: none usa today, 04 16 2024, “coast to coast (freestyle)” easy themelesses are an interesting type of puzzle to me. for a lot of themeless puzzles, the joys/aha moments are sparked by the solver needing to figure out particularly tricky clues… which isn’t really possible when the puzzle needs to appeal to a less experienced solving audience! this puts a ton of pressure on the fill to be both clean and attention grabbing on its own, and for the clues to be interesting without being overly complicated. today’s puzzle shines in both regards. i haven’t seen a bunch of triple stacks in the usa today before, but land animals/on autopilot/ stage manage and voice lesson/papaya salad/ star systems are both great. yes, there are a lot of three letter words crossing them, but that makes it easier to get a foothold on the long sections. the other stacks   not one word/ craft beers and homoerotic/i can relate are also standouts. clueing highlights: [snails and quails but not whales] for the aforementioned land animals, [burnt ___ (trimmings from smoked brisket)] for ends new to me: that oct(ober) is world mental health day month, actress sandra mae frank universal solution 04.16.2024 theme synopsis: today we have a bookend theme where food items are split apart and “stuffed” by the rest of the theme answer: overall impressions all of the food items listed in the theme are commonly served stuffed   pepper, date, sole, and clam   so that’s a nice tight theme constraint. obviously the “stuffing” in today’s grid has nothing to do with food or any ingredients that might be stuffed into the circled foods; but i had fun imagining what “esertclim” could be nonetheless. i love the bonus words in the grid   top secret and pumps iron   and of course the overall fill is sparkly clean. i came in a 4:00 flat on this solve which might be my fastest tuesday yet? i don’t really keep track of speed but it does feel nice to come in under 5 minutes. thanks for the puzzle, zhouqin! tny: they seem to be struggling to find their footing after the change to their pub schedule. the ‘challenging’ puzzles have been not very, and the others are pretty straightforward too. the only awkward spot in today’s was finsta/npc/arancini. i knew of insta and had vaguely heard of arancini. i’m familiar with npc as ‘non playing captain’ in certain team activities. loved the clue for sgts at 56 a. don’t think i’ve ever seen a clue of this type reference sgt o’leary. makes me wonder how many are still upset at cbs after the billy joel concert fiasco. i enjoyed aimee lucido’s new yorker puzzle today, and also agreed it seemed a bit easier than the typical new yorker tuesday. i had no problem with the answer, but has the word “fart“ appeared before in the major puzzles? (certainly, margaret farrar would be spinning in her grave. 😉) yes, in fact aimee used brainfart in the feb. 18, 2022 nyt puzzle, clued as [mental goof]. kameron a. collins used fart by itself clued as [brain ___] in the aug. 18, 2023 nyt puzzle. “brain ___” in 8/18/23 nyt by kameron austin collins. thanks, martin and evan. i wonder. can other commonly used four letter words be far behind? 😉 there are not many taboos in new yorker crosswords, which are more daring than the new york times puzzles (this is not a compliment from me, just a fact). the most well known four letter word has already been used in a clue (not an answer). racy concepts are frequently used. sometime, the clue is spicy but meant to be misleading, and the answer is bland. four letter words have been allowed in the new yorker magazine itself for many years, with standards depending on context, i guess. the unusual, age old new yorker spellings (“focussed,” for example) are used for the crosswords as well, at least for the clues. yes, william shawn would be appalled, but, presumably, not tina brown. despite modernization in many salutary ways, it’s surprising to me that the new yorker still clings to some of its hoariest old conventions, such as spelling out numbers, no matter how long they are. tny: tough one for me   lots of unfamiliar/vaguely familiar fill. mean mug maman/marat, push present, danae, edgelord, finsta, and my personal natick, npc/arancini. took me almost as long as yesterday’s puzzle, and nothing especially exciting in the cluing (i did like the clue for spider). +1 +1. not doing it, not rating it, but i went through all the clues and answers. i agree, and the division of comments into two conflicting threads says something. i’ve long been complaining that the problem with trivia quiz crosswords is that you either know it or you don’t, no clever cluing at all, so what seems impossible to the majority of us is no doubt an nyt monday level to the tny setter and friends. and sure enough, quite a few here keep saying, unhappily, each day how the puzzle has gotten so easy since it’s reverted to m w, while clearly at least an equal number find it daunting and not a lot of fun. (those who like are more likely to comment, it appears, those who dislike to rate.) today, though, while among the dissenters, i did find the puzzle solvable from crossings and so enjoyed it quite a bit. if the new scheme turns out to mean hard, medium, easy, then today seems just right to me for tuesday. but my appreciation to those who were not as satisfied. i ran into trouble at the npc/arancini crossing, too. i have heard of both, but as yet, neither one has stuck in my head. it didn’t help that i mistyped ariana grande, putting an extra a where the i belongs. i shared most of your other unknowns except maman/marat. my lousy french is good enough to encompass maman et papa. and there’s a famous painting by jacques louis david of a dead guy who’s been stabbed while in the bathtub. (you’ve probably seen it.) the guy is jean paul marat. i only know arancini from the spelling bee, which delights in obscure food names while excluding other common words. wsj: @jim … fwiw, my post solve notes include: the clue for roommate {39d: somebody you just can’t live without?} makes no sense. you can’t just throw a question mark at the end of a dumb clue to make it work. in this case, it basically says, “sorry. i couldn’t come up with a decent clue for this answer, so i’m punting by making it look like it’s a pun.” i think it means, if you don’t have a roommate who splits the cost you are sol. back to living with the folks? new yorker: pannonica, the former “beginner friendly” thursday crossword now appears on wednesday, with that phrase being used to describe it at least as far as i’ve noticed. the old moderate wednesday puzzle (i don’t remember the words used to describe it) has been eliminated, i think, unless that will vary. of course, as you point out, there’s flexibility in how these descriptions are carried out, and, as we know, difficulty varies for solvers according to areas of our personal knowledge or the lack of it. lat: 30d… i’ve always thought of a lancet as more thin scalpel like than needle… are the things that are used to prick fingers for quick blood sugar test actually needles or teeny tiny blades? i always enjoy seeing my maiden name (piety… or pietà, my favorite sculpture) in a puzzle :) . the “f” in finsta stands for “fake”, but your interpretation makes more sense. comments are closed.

brooke: i'm mega impressed by kim's crossword skills, discipline, and thoughtfulness and i'm so honored to be a part of his first and surely not last themeless at this venue! the diagonal symmetry idea was all him. ;) we painstakingly combed through many possible versions of this grid and abandoned many darlings, and the result is much better for it. my favorite of kim's clues are 17a, 29a, 63a, and 13d. kim: as brooke implies above, this collab started when i sent brooke this grid and a seed 1a entry, which did not actually stay in the final puzzle once we started building it out. brooke is one of my favorite themeless constructors working today, and her trademark eye for pairing an entry with a spicy misdirect clue is on real display here; my favorites of her clues are 1a, 48a, 3d, and 33d. i gotta say that there were some excellent debuts: prayer mat, apology accepted, don't get up, and even t swizzle tay tay (fine, i admit that i can't shake off shake it off). although supernova has been in the nyt crossword since 1966, there's been no more impressive clue than [huge pop star?]. on a friday, i appreciated that telltale question mark, tipping me off that if tayla swiff couldn't be involved, at least i'd get some stellar (sorry) wordplay. pop up shop is a fresher entry, though wow, what a saturday clue. [store for a short time]   without a question mark   pushes so strongly toward storage rental units. it's absolutely fair and saturday worthy clever, but i didn't get the same elation as i did with supernova and its clue. brooke's latest new yorker puzzle garnered some "hardest puzzle of the year" chatter, so i tried it. and failed. miserably. today's was thankfully much more in my realm of possibility, though there were a lot of toughies: neat gridwork   did you notice the diagonal symmetry along the sw to ne axis?   and i might have loved this solving experience on a saturday. answer summary:7 unique to this puzzle. there are 15 rows and 15 columns, with 0 rebus squares, and no cheater squares. the grid uses 21 of 26 letters, missing jkqxz. it has diagonal symmetry. average word length: 5.42, scrabble score: 292, scrabble average: 1.50. puzzle has 3 fill in the blank clues and 0 cross reference clues. this puzzle has 7 unique answer words. it has 0 words that debuted in this puzzle and were later reused: these 28 answer words are not legal scrabble™ entries, which sometimes means they are interesting: various thumbnail views are shown: crosswords that share the most words with this one (excluding sundays): unusual or long words that appear elsewhere: other puzzles with the same block pattern as this one: other crosswords with exactly 30 blocks, 72 words, 87 open squares, and an average word length of 5.42: the next two sections attempt to show how fresh the grid entries are. in this view, unusual answers are colored depending on how often they have appeared in other puzzles. unique answers are in red, red overwrites orange which overwrites yellow, etc. freshness factor is a calculation that compares the number of times words in this puzzle have appeared in other modern era puzzles. click here for an explanation. the chart below shows how many times each word has been used across all nyt puzzles, old and modern including variety. found bugs or have suggestions? please let us know. like this puzzle? please share this page on social media to help spread the word about xword info. thanks!

recent and archived work by caitlin lovinger for the new york times rich katz and jeff chen, constructors of great regard, team up on a sunday challenge with twists and turns. by caitlin lovinger alina abidi makes a sweet, smart saturday puzzle. by caitlin lovinger derrick niederman’s 14th sunday puzzle is marvelous, from a to z. by caitlin lovinger kate chin park and rafael musa’s puzzle rewards an eye for detail. by caitlin lovinger rich proulx presents a puzzle with pictures and sound. by caitlin lovinger michael lieberman’s saturday debut puts up an imposing defense. by caitlin lovinger emily sharp and kunal nabar collaborate on a puzzle that’s greater than the sum of its parts. by caitlin lovinger scott mcmahon’s new york times crossword debut stacks up against all comparisons. by caitlin lovinger jeffrey martinovic’s sunday puzzle enchants and entangles. by caitlin lovinger ryan mccarty’s tough saturday grid spins us around. by caitlin lovinger kareem ayas rolls up with a sparkling sunday puzzle. by caitlin lovinger sam ezersky’s saturday puzzle gives us a lot to chew on. by caitlin lovinger harry zheng presents a too fun to fail inaugural sunday puzzle. by caitlin lovinger sam berriman surfs up from down under with a corker of a debut puzzle. by caitlin lovinger adrian johnson brings his themeless acumen to a larger arena. by caitlin lovinger barbara lin and lewis rothlein’s puzzle packs the right amount of punch. by caitlin lovinger david kwong draws us in with a magical challenge. by caitlin lovinger owen bergstein makes a proud debut. by caitlin lovinger john kugelman’s puzzle turns on solvers, with a switch of the flip. by caitlin lovinger luke k. schreiber makes a stone cold saturday puzzle debut. by caitlin lovinger john lieb makes a nice sunday debut. by caitlin lovinger oliver goodridge and juan garavito team up on a hairy challenge. by caitlin lovinger alex eaton salners floats in with a precise sunday construction. by caitlin lovinger ryan mccarty’s themeless puzzle is a crowd pleaser. by caitlin lovinger rebecca goldstein and ariela perlman’s puzzle takes us on a buoyant family excursion. by caitlin lovinger peter gordon’s latest themeless puzzle is a rare bird. by caitlin lovinger sam ezersky’s sunday puzzle flips the script. by caitlin lovinger chandi deitmer and hoang kim vu’s saturday collaboration might make solvers take a tumble or two. by caitlin lovinger share sid sivakumar’s sunday puzzle with management. by caitlin lovinger blake slonecker delivers a cutting edge saturday puzzle. by caitlin lovinger jeffrey martinovic and jeff chen’s sunday puzzle will have you beaming. by caitlin lovinger peter a. collins puts solvers on with a witty saturday challenge. by caitlin lovinger jerry miccolis’s blockbuster sunday puzzle is actually a sequel. by caitlin lovinger august miller makes an imposing saturday debut. by caitlin lovinger gary larson and doug peterson’s puzzle already comes with instructions, but just in case. … by caitlin lovinger katie hoody makes a new york times crossword debut with feeling. by caitlin lovinger joe deeney’s puzzle passes unanimously. by caitlin lovinger margaret seikel’s first saturday puzzle is bound to hook you. by caitlin lovinger peter gordon’s puzzle comes with surround sound. by caitlin lovinger kevin l. shellito’s debut times puzzle is hot off the presses. by caitlin lovinger jeremy newton and tracy gray’s puzzle offers a great escape. by caitlin lovinger david karp’s puzzle sends us up, down and all around. by caitlin lovinger aimee lucido's sunday puzzle has a literary lilt. by caitlin lovinger christina iverson presents a clean and cozy themeless puzzle. by caitlin lovinger meghan morris’s sunday puzzle asks us to save the date(s). by caitlin lovinger the plot thickens in this themeless puzzle by david p. williams, the fifth in a series. by caitlin lovinger september, already? chandi deitmer and matthew stock’s puzzle tosses some math into the mix. by caitlin lovinger sam ezersky’s themeless saturday grid will get you going. by caitlin lovinger hear that? it’s john kugelman, with a clamorous sunday puzzle. by caitlin lovinger ryan mccarty’s saturday puzzle takes us on an exhilarating path. by caitlin lovinger rebecca goldstein and will nediger’s puzzle takes us along for the ride. by caitlin lovinger brandon koppy submits a clean, confident saturday crossword puzzle. by caitlin lovinger caryn robbins presents an excellent puzzle for her sunday debut. by caitlin lovinger spencer leach’s themeless puzzle will shake, rattle and roll us around. by caitlin lovinger scott hogan and katie hale’s puzzle brings the heat (and humidity). by caitlin lovinger rich norris’s themeless puzzle shouldn’t be missed. by caitlin lovinger paolo pasco puts solvers (us!) on the podium. by caitlin lovinger you’ll need good balance to take on barbara lin and matthew stock’s collaboration. by caitlin lovinger john ewbank’s puzzle teaches us what not to do the next time we’re in an argument. by caitlin lovinger ricky j. sirois’s themeless puzzle tests our core strength. by caitlin lovinger jeff chen’s puzzle takes solvers to the point of no return (and back). by caitlin lovinger eli cotham’s first saturday puzzle for the times gives us something to talk about. by caitlin lovinger david karp’s nimble puzzle might be hard to handle. by caitlin lovinger evans clinchy’s puzzle tests our equilibrium. by caitlin lovinger ginny too’s crossword debut will unite us in merriment. by caitlin lovinger adrian johnson and rafael musa collaborate on an uplifting themeless crossword. by caitlin lovinger michael schlossberg’s sunday puzzle is worth 5,000 words. by caitlin lovinger hoang kim vu’s latest themeless puzzle will have you singing while you solve. by caitlin lovinger chandi deitmer and wyna liu combine forces, and games, and produce a charming mash up. by caitlin lovinger just try to resist the allure of ryan judge’s striking themeless puzzle. by caitlin lovinger zachary schiff’s debut puzzle moves softly, but keeps us in suspense. by caitlin lovinger daniel sheremeta makes a sweeping saturday debut. by caitlin lovinger luke k. schreiber’s debut sunday puzzle is full of character(s). by caitlin lovinger eric warren’s saturday debut fits a lot of fun into tight spaces. by caitlin lovinger john kugelman’s sunday puzzle might sting a little, but don’t take it personally. by caitlin lovinger the poetic plot thickens in this themeless thicket by david p. williams. by caitlin lovinger we’ll make sense of christina iverson and katie hale’s latest diversion, although it helps to have a code. by caitlin lovinger adrian johnson’s saturday puzzle is daunting, but also a little warm and fuzzy. by caitlin lovinger avery gee katz makes an animated times debut. by caitlin lovinger billy bratton’s themeless challenge hops from square to square. by caitlin lovinger

there are spoilers ahead. you might want to solve today's puzzle before reading further! carpe diem (freestyle) constructor: dena r. witkes editor: amanda rafkin carpe diem (freestyle): there's no theme today because this is a freestyle, or themeless, puzzle. the title is a nod to you only live once (57a: "if not now, when?"). we occasionally see yolo, the acronym meaning you only live once, in the crossword. it was fun to see the phrase in its entirety today. perhaps an attitude of you only live once could help one face a situation that evokes the phrase, "new fear unlocked" (17a: "here's one more thing to be terrified of"). thank you, dena, for this enjoyable puzzle.

blog about published puzzles custom puzzles constructor resources more crosswords by matthew stock it's been a while since i've published indie puzzles on the blog below, but i've been busy making puzzles elsewhere! for more about what i'm up to these days, click here.   matthew matthew.stock@mellownet.com ©2023 happy little puzzles
supported by wordplay, the crossword column hoang kim vu’s latest themeless puzzle will have you singing while you solve. by caitlin lovinger saturday puzzle   this is an elegant, bustling grid from hoang kim vu, his third saturday construction and 11th overall for the new york times. a lot of the middle length terms are exceptionally odd, new or unusual, and the marquee entries at 20  and 51 across are debuts with terrific clues. of course, the moment i laid eyes on the second across clue, i got “kokomo” stuck in my head and had to solve the rest of the puzzle with half of my brain droning “da da da, da da da, daaaaa da da da da da.” fortunately, the half that knows other stuff was available. 10a. does everyone know that the ditty in question    [locale named in the beach boys’ “kokomo”]   was written for a tom cruise movie about bartending in jamaica? the song was nominated for a grammy and a golden globe; the movie was nominated for several golden raspberry awards, better known as razzies. anyway, the refrain in “kokomo” includes numerous places, and the very first one mentioned, aruba, is the answer here. 20a. here’s some morbid trivia to knock the beachy bop out of one ear   maybe: the [worsening situation from which there is no escape] here is a death spiral. this term is used metaphorically in figure skating and health insurance, but it also refers to a real phenomenon in which animals, especially ants, march along a self reinforcing, endless path that ultimately results in their own destruction. 39a. [raises, as a sensitive subject] solves to broached, an old word that evolved in a particularly interesting way. “brocca,” which is latin for pointed, became “broche” in old french, meaning a roasting spit, which then became “broach,” for a sharp instrument; this took a century or so. it was 200 years later that the word took on the meaning of the clue, probably because of the use of “broach” to describe the tapping of a large beer cask, a momentous endeavor. 51a. a [temporary water provider] could be at the site of a foot race or a natural disaster, but in this case it is a helper in your home, working as a plant sitter. in the category of scientific discoveries that make me feel slightly dreadful, houseplants apparently miss you when you go away.

