Please don’t publish puzzles that do not work for all of the ways you sell access to the puzzles.
@Paul Well, the truth is that the underlining was obvious in the print version ONLY (no underlines) if you knew to look for it. Faint and indistinct enough to just seem like unintentional blemishes otherwise. Or maybe I've just gotten old.
Not sure if it's just me, but solving on the iPhone app right as the puzzle went live, I do not see any underlined letters in the capitalized clues. Was able to finish the solve fairly quickly with the crossings (and figuring out the "____ and ____" format of the themers), but had no clue what the theme was until opening Wordplay. Anyone else?
@Mike not just you. I did not get the theme because the app version had no underlines. 😕
@Mike Samesies. Still was easy to fill, but had to read Deb’s reveal to finally appreciate the creative clues.
@Mike same. Solved it and got the first association, but without the underlines I was at sea for the second…
I’m using the Games app on my iPhone and also didn’t see the underlined letters. I finished the puzzle pretty quickly but had no clue what the theme was before reading Wordplay. Not only are the ongoing app issues frustrating as a solver, they’re frankly disrespectful to the constructors who put so much effort into the puzzles.
@Laura And there’s a Unicode combining low line character that solves this problem: C̲
I really wish NYT would stop publishing puzzles that don’t work in all formats. It’s an insult to solvers. (Underlining did not show in the app).
@Michael Especially when the format is THEIR OWN APP
@Dylan THEIR OWN APP that they force digital solvers to use, ever since they discontinued the .puz format back in August 2021. Their excuse for ditching .puz back then was that they wanted to be able to showcase more solving features, bells and whistles and what not, which they could only do with their proprietary app. …except they can’t even so it with their proprietary app.
It’s truly astonishing that the NYT looks at its puzzle solvers who don’t use print as second class citizens. It’s still ridiculous that you can’t get the weekly variety puzzles…even in PDF on the apps or web. This puzzle’s problems are just a symptom of that. Print is going away…they better get used to it.
@Paul I've said this before, and I guess I have to say it again: The variety puzzles are available at xwordinfo.com. You have to pay $20 to be a member, but you also get to use the rest of the site as well.
@Paul I saw them fine on my Mac. Not boasting or anything but they have to figure this out. If it's OK on the Mac (Safari) how come they can't get it right on phones?
I am on iOS. The underlines did not show up for me. This is like the third time in the last three months, NYT. Get your mobile development team together and figure it out. This is unacceptable (in a “first world problem” kind of way).
@Selective Walrus Another commenter pointed out that if the underlining didn’t work for all, using a mix of upper case and lower case letters would have done the trick. For Sunday puzzles, the Info button flashes to show that the theme can be found there. A note in that space would have been helpful. I had no problems solving, but the thrill and the fun of revealing the theme wasn’t there.
@Selective Walrus It truly is unacceptable. For a corporation as large as NYT to not take a few minutes to verify functionality of a puzzle on all the standard devices is pure negligence.
With 2.6 million daily users of the NYT Games app (per a Vanity Fair article citing data from mid-October 2023), and the NYT using Games as a centerpiece of its growth strategy, you’d think they could figure out formatting on the app… A real disservice to the constructors as well as the users. If underlining doesn’t work, what about italics, or displaying some letters in a different font color?
I don't understand how they got confetti in there but apparently not underlines! (Though I did see them in the Android app.)
@Gabrielle This is the group that stopped publishing the digital acrostic, so, no, they don’t get it.
The odds against snake eyes are 35:1, not 36:1. The probability is 1/36.
I was surprised to read about underlined letters. So for us IOS users it was a Thursday themeless.
Formatting issues on the app have been quite common lately, and really take away from the user experience. The constructors put in so much effort to create fun and challenging puzzles, only for them to be let down by software issues. Is no one at NYT testing these before release? Very disappointing.
Hi all, Sorry about this. I've reported the issue. If you would like to see the clues with their underlined letters, they are: 17A. CAROL BRADY, with C, O, L and A underlined 26A. MOOSE ANTLERS, with M, A and R underlined 40A. ACTING ROLE, with A, C, R and E underlined 51A. SACRAMENTO KINGS, with S, C, A, M and S underlined 64A. TOP ROUND STEAK, with T, R, O and T underlined.
How many great puzzles is the NYT app going to ruin because they can’t check how it works on the app? Does no one at NYT use this app? Is this acceptable?
Well Gosh I don’t know what all the phone app users like myself are complaining about. The theme was simple, each answer is a synonym for the clue, the word “and” and some other word that has nothing to do with the clue but finishes a common expression. How very clever! Seriously though this could have been a simple fix why not capitalize some letters but not the rest? CarOL brAdy. Pretty obvious, but so would have been the underlines if we saw them. Either way kind of tame for a Thursday, and frankly a slap in the face to the creators. I’d be pretty disappointed putting all this work in a puzzle, getting it published, and having probably a majority of solvers not get to enjoy my theme.
@SP As you wrote, “why not capitalize some letters but not the rest?” Well, if you go to nytimes.com to print out the puzzle, the “Standard Layout” option does exactly that. On the other hand, the “Newspaper Version” option has all CAPS with appropriate underlying in the themer clues, which is the way Deb describes the correct cluing. Apparently thought was given to writing the clues for differing formats — just not enough thought.
Deb-- out of curiosity why don't they put the technical note in the "i"? They could make it flash like how they do on Sunday's. Seems like a very easy fix that can be done at any time (even now...) Incidentally I solved it without knowing there was an issue and that I just couldn't figure out the theme. Would have been so much more satisfying (and a quicker solve) to have gotten it.
@Sammy That’s exactly what I thought. There have been several puzzles recently where the app couldn’t show some special formatting/presentation, so they just described it in a note and made the icon flash so you’d click and read it. It’s not perfect but it’s good enough. But why wasn’t that done today?
Epic fail on the part of the editors. When the top TEN Reader Picks are all complaints about something that is no fault of the constructors, the editors have screwed up big time. FWIW, acknowledging the problem in Deb’s column is no help at all. How many people read Wordplay BEFORE they try the puzzle?
It’s 2024. Can’t NYT games get an app developer? It’s not even a free app. Think I paid $40 for it. Features that are essential to solving the puzzle that aren’t available in the app. Crazy!
@Hi hi agree 💯. We pay for this. Put it in the notes!
@Hi and pay a UX consultant to explain why adding additional/interstitial pages (that offer zero information) to click through is horrible. Why do I have to confirm that I really DO want to solve a puzzle that I just selected?!?!
@Hi Also no system for being notified of a reply to one's comment is just bizarre at this point
You have to let those of us using the app know we’re not getting the full clues. It’s hard not to feel cheated.
@Prose Especially when NYTXW are one of the biggest revenue drivers for the whole paper. VERY hard not to feel cheated.
The puzzle a couple months back with the musical notation that showed up as black boxes I (sort of) understood. But this? Underlining letters was too hard for the app? Sheesh. We can get a puzzle with an animated Eve Knievel jumping over buses but we can’t get four letters underlined?
Here comes another comment storm… the underlined clues don’t appear in the app.
No underlines on NYT iPad app. I’m tempted to use profanity.
I feel so bad for Christina and Chase. Would have been a lovely Thursday, if not for the unforgivable lack of testing. Given the long lead times before submission of a crossword and publication, is it too much to ask to have a small team of (volunteer?) beta testers to check the different platforms before going live?
Since the NYTimes makes the app available and charges for it monthly, it seems unfair to have a puzzle without the clues needed to understand it completely when using the app.
Solved it but didn’t “get it” on my iPad. Seems to me that blending upper and lower case letters would have achieved the appropriate effect in a better way and without leaving half of us in the dark.
UTES, SOBE and SEPTA (which sounds like a sewage company rather than anything else) all crossing was brutal for me as a non-US solver, the mother of a natick. I know that is on me as I am not the intended target of this puzzle, but to get a feel for what I experienced today imagine the answers to the following clues crossing: 1. Warsaw's public transport system, for short. 2. Kraków's team not currently in the Ekstraklasa. 3. The chocolate and snack brand sharing its name with a socio-political movement. Fun, eh? But at least I had no technical issues, solving on Android. Spoiler below. . . . . 1. WTP, 2. WISŁA, 3. SOLIDARNOŚĆ.
@Andrzej I came here to write about this Natick, but you've saved me having to do so EEM-YOU never EE-MOO
@Andrzej Tough clues! Even as an American I didn’t know the answers from the puzzle (thank you Down clues), but at least I know how to pronounce them once solved, unlike yours!
@Andrzej If it's any consolation, I think that crossing is difficult regardless of nationality/geography. (I did many alphabet runs there before discovering that my error was elsewhere.)
Well that was annoying. No underlines for me, so I was just throwing guesses with no idea what was going on. Didn’t have a clue until I read the column AFTER I finished, as I do. Thursday puzzles are very tedious when the technology isn’t solid.
C’mon, NYT. *Please* do better. Even though it makes for a subpar and disappointing experience, I’m willing to accept that on rare occasions the app fails to represent key elements of specially designed puzzles, even though in this case I have to think there are ways you could have gotten around this to convey the key message. But even accepting that, is it too much to ask that you indicate the shortcoming on the puzzle’s title page, instead of making me go to the clue page to discover this information? I *won’t* go to the clue page, because I want to solve the puzzle without help. And in this case I did, even though I had absolutely no idea why my theme answers were correct. It’s an extra bummer too, because now understanding the intent, I think this was a very cool design, and I’m sad that the authors won’t be sharing their puzzle as it was intended with so many players.
@C. Robert Dimitri agree 💯. We pay for this. Put it in the notes!
Do subscribers to the puzzles app get a refund? Seriously… unsolvable except by process of elimination Why can’t letters be underlined in the app? It makes no technological sense!
Deb, you allude to crossword solving as taking you to a happy place. I was feeling glum so I got out of bed to sit by the tree lights and solve the crossword — a lovely habit of the past few weeks. I don’t mind not getting every theme but it is rather disappointing that there are so many simple solutions to the underline issue — in addition to those already mentioned, why didn’t the editors just include some directions on the title page (which they have often done in the past) to read your column first? I know you are not responsible for the issue but I hope that the frustration many of us are feeling gets forwarded on to those who handle the tech side: like many have said, it seems a real shame for the constructors to go to all the trouble of creation just to have so many of their audience get left in the dark. Thanks for listening, Deb. Off to bed…can’t imagine how many comments there will be when I wake tomorrow.
@Browncoat I second this. This not the first time I’ve solved a Thursday without knowing what the trick is, but I generally can figure it out after the fact. In this case, it was just annoying to see in the column that there was essentially no chance. Doubly annoying that, as you point out, there was no need for it to be this way.
@Browncoat Sitting by the tree lights. Yes, that is often magical in the way it can smooth out one's rough edges and glum moods. Me, too. I do prefer the old incandescent lights to these dadgum newfangled eye-piercing LEDs. But still, lights are wonderful.
Easy enough for a Thursday, even without the underlined letters (solving on an iPad). I know this makes me sound like a crabby old lady (which I am) but this isn’t the first time we’ve had a technical quirk like this and while it’s a small thing to deal with given the lousy state of our world today, the fact is that I’m paying for this app, dammit, and it ought to work right every time. If the puzzle doesn’t work across all platforms correctly, you shouldn’t run it, period. But why didn’t it work? Underlining is easy! And if that were a challenge, why not capitalize them instead (CarOL brAdy)? It just ends up feeling like no effort was put in to give the app customers a quality product. Come on guys, you’re the New York Times! You should be setting the standard here, not phoning it in.
@Susan M I have to get used to the fact that if I can’t figure out the theme as I’m nearing the puzzle’s completion, perhaps I shouldn’t worry about it :)
Look forward to Thursday twist all week. Bummer on digital.
To the constructor: I loved this puzzle. Sorry the tech glitch is dominating the comments.
Solved on the web, so no issues with the theme clues. However, I don't see any excuse for why something wasn't done to clue in the iOS app solvers. Either include the proper clues in a note under the Info icon, or do what they did for the PDF print-it-yourself puzzle: CarOL brAdy, etc. Nice thinking by the constructors; not so good thinking by the NYT staff. Anyway, it was a pleasant puzzle and a nice evening's distraction. Thanks Chase and Christina!
I solved the puzzle, but it seemed sort of mindless and too easy for a Thursday. No idea that clues were supposed have underlines until I read the column and saw the comments. Mega apologies are due to Chase Dittrich and Christina Iverson from the Times for essentially wrecking their puzzle.
This puzzle made no sense on the iPhone app; nothing was underlined in the clues. Absolutely terrible, NYT, that you’d allow this to happen.
Okay, so no underline. But would it have been so difficult to make those letters lowercase rather than caps? Or italic rather than roman? ???
Grammatically distressed every time I'm reminded that 'wrack' is being inevitably replaced by 'rack.' It's like the slow phasing out of the word 'whom,' from the language. No one is doing it on purpose. And to whom does one petition for its preservation? Re: wrack: even a quick, cursory internet review of the etymology of the word would prove just how important that 'w' is, to the meaning. There is no such thing as 'rack and ruin,' just like a ship is not 'recked' and one does not 'reak' havoc. I'm no linguist, and it took me all of 7 seconds to find on Wikipedia: "[rack and ruin]: Etymologically incorrect, due to confusion of rack (“torture, suffer”) with wrack (“destroy”). Correct is wrack and ruin, which is accordingly preferred by style guides; however, both are common and well-established. Unusually, rack and ruin replaces wrack with rack, presumably by alliteration; other confusions instead replace rack with wrack"
@Chris I'm reminded of the etymology of 'whale' provided by Melville at the opening of Moby-Dick, in which he quotes Richard Hakluyt's observation: "While you take in hand to school others, and to teach them by what name a whale-fish is to be called in our tongue, leaving out, through ignorance, the letter H, which almost alone maketh up the signification of the word, you deliver that which is not true" Leaving out the letter W from wrack, which almost alone makes up the signification of the word, delivers that which is not true.
@Chris I have never seen this version of “wrack” before, and it left me hugely confused. (Not to mention endlessly deleting words thinking they must be incorrect as surely “rack” wasn’t the answer.) I’m very surprised it made it through the editing process!
@Chris Yes, but this is just punning cleverness, no? That is, rack being a correct term for a pair of antlers, the missing 'w' implicitly attaches by means of the pun, am I right?
Another formatting bummer! Lovely puzzle otherwise.
I'm embarrassed by how long I wanted CARESSBALL to be a thing.
There should have been a workaround for the underlined letters for app users. Tho I solved the puzzle, it was only intuition and guesswork that allowed me to solve the capitalized clues. And of course they made no sense.
I finished the puzzle (on the app, no underlining) and still couldn’t for the life of me figure out the theme. After reading Wordplay for some enlightenment, I’m a bit bummed out NYT published an incomplete puzzle for us IPhone users. A simple fix would have been to use a mix of lower case and capital letters, instead of all caps and underlining.
Well, "finishing" and actually "solving," where that means gaining the satisfaction of seeing how the whole thing works including the non-existent underlines are two very different things. Sheesh does nobody test-drive these things?
Why wasn’t the lack of underlining mentioned in the notes under the “i” icon on the app? That’s usually where the editors let us know the app is lacking.
Well, I guess we can feel good about our crossword skills if we managed to solve the puzzle despite missing essential information for the theme clues? Sadly, though, it meant missing out on Deb’s endorphin-boosting smiles.
This one made me smile too, and you are so right about all that, Deb. Sorry the puzzle and/or the format were frustrating for many folks. My version (app on my iPad) had parentheses, and I was working on the bottom part when the theme suddenly made sense to me. I woke up in a very low mood, and the puzzle definitely cheered me up, as did Deb’s commentary. I’m grateful for this pastime and for this community of puzzle people.
@Shari Coats ABSOLUTELY! You put it very nicely and my words PRESACTLY! Thanks, Shari
@Shari Coats I was working on the iPad games app, and neither parentheses nor underlines appear. ☹️
It’s sincerely unacceptable for a puzzle to be published in a state that it isn’t functional for all subscribers, especially when subscription prices are rising. But even worse than that, it’s an insult to Chase and Christina who put so much time into what is otherwise an excellent puzzle. One of my goals for the year is to submit a puzzle I’ve been workshopping with a friend, but technical issues like this make me question if it’s worth it. We’ve spent several hours brainstorming themes and how to implement and clue them, and it’s frustrating to now have to consider technical limitations like this. Hopefully the rest of the years publications will put me in a more productive mood.
The underlined letters did not show up in the app version of the puzzle. Such poor execution of what would have been a great puzzle. Why wasn’t there a notice on the app or something? They could have found a way to communicate the hint. And the fact that Wordplay had the underlined letters at the start of the article made no sense. Who reads the article before solving the puzzle? An unnecessarily frustrating solve to say the least.
@CK They were clearly underlined in the app on my phone, which is a OnePlus Nord (so Android). Maybe there's a mess up on the iOS version?
Deeply disappointing. I got the format quickly, and it was a speedy solve, but like others, I couldn’t see underlined letters solving digitally, and the clues didn’t make sense.
A bit of a letdown. Not even a flashing “i” to explain what was missing in the app. Today’s constructors deserved better, as do the paying solvers. Would have been a more satisfying solve. I did it in 15:02 anyway.
@Jerry Aulenbach agree 100%. We pay money for this. The least they could do was explain it in the notes.
Yup, piling on! Stop having puzzles that don’t work in app, or come up with different work around (shaded boxes, maybe?) With the volume of submissions, hard to see the need for this.