I hope it's okay to share this here because it's not about today's puzzle. As I've mentioned before, I only started doing the crossword in August. And I'm actively trying to be better at it. Part of that is that I have started going through the archives, now that I've been getting a bit better. I had been doing it kind of randomly, like picking a random birthday or some such but then I started a few weeks ago with January 2023. Today, I did Thursday, January 18th. The blog column is labeled Accumulate Charges. And it was the first time I completely and all on my own got the trick and worked it all out by myself! All of it! No lookups, nothing! Not only did I identify there was a trick, I worked it all out! I figured it all out!! Squeal!!! I am over the moon!! And it was a little bit under my average. I read the blog and the comments section after, and, as usual with Thursday tricky themes, there was a lot of controversy about it but I enjoyed it very much!! I am just tickled pink!! Huzzah!!! Now to see if I can figure out this fine Thursday puzzle! 🤗
@HeathieJ Of course it's okay to share your success story! We all love it when someone breaks through to this side of Tricky Puzzles Fandom! Congratulations and thanks for all the excitement. It's put a smile on my face!
This is the moment when i found out that it’s not easy to find the Equal sign on my phone keyboard.
This is not really germane to the theme or purpose of this article, but because I am just a pedantic nerd: The ACA is the Affordable Care Act not the American Care Act. Sad that it takes a Canadian to school you on that point.
I solved in the app, and wasn’t able to find the equal sign on a keyboard. So I went to the NYT site and opened the puzzle there, and was able to get to a keyboard with an equal sign. (iPhone). Another tech glitch- so annoying
@Julia thank you! I abhor wasting my time trying to figure out something the editors should have caught. Quite frustrating. Why put the puzzle in the app if it can’t be solved there?
@Julia In the Android app I used the rebus option (key that has ... on it) to enter 'EQUALS', but could have just have easily while in rebus entry mode used the '!#1' shift key to get to the non-alphabetic keys and enter an equal sign. I could presume the IOS app behaves the same, but don't know.
@Chris I typed equals as a rebus and it worked great
What a brilliant theme. I had no idea what was going on until my very last entry (the = sign), at which point I went back, applied the rule, and had an aha moment (x 5). Congratulations, Damon, really well done.
@Anita Totally agree! What a pleasure! I'm thinking most people had this experience? Total joy :-)
NEATO isn't a real word. Nobody says HIREE. No RAP, please. Or LIL rappers. I don't like DEVO either. Bring back Pluto. Too many foreign language words. Too many proper nouns. Too much literature. Too much math. Real crosswords have only one letter in eaxh square. Did I miss anything? Thanks, Damon!
@Barry Ancona Too many brands. Emu boots are the original Ugg boots.
@Barry Ancona Great list. I guess we could add “BRAZILIAN is too risqué for the NYT crossword”, but that’s nether here nor there. And just in case I’ll add some space Because I fear My words might disappear.
@Barry Ancona Assuming this is snark... too many clues for old people, too many clues for young people (take your pick, whichever you think you are not!)
I'll help you with solving equations, but the coordinate plane is where I draw the line. (These puns make me graph out loud.)
@Mike That's not too complex, sez i. I hear they fly great circles over the polar coordinates.
@Mike I can't function, plane and simple, at this hour of the day. Y I'll never know.
A fun, fast Thursday with some clever cluing and a good theme. Was a little thrown by no equals symbol in the app keyboard, but luckily the rebus worked fine.
@Nick I tried just an E first, which should have worked acc. to Newton’s First Law of Rebuses. Will teeth be gnashing tonight?
The ACA was the Affordable Care Act, not the American Care Act. The "affordable" part was the point of the act. How many of you put IPA in for the hoppy beverage first? Just plain ALE this time. Two letter substitution themes in a row. I wonder if the same people who complained in the Wednesday comments about how that theme made no sense are going to complain about this one as well. "Flower girl" is ROSE..but could be IRIS, LILY... "One joining a union", five letters...BRIDE? Or would it be groom? I got all the answers with the help of crosses until I got to the last one, when I saw that DAS KAPITAL was a work of MARX, not Mary. And so I knew the revealer when I got to it.
@Steve L Me too. Das Kapital - one of those books like A Brief History of Time, that many people have on their shelves but have not got to the end of the first chapter (pleads guilty) - was the giveaway here before the revealer.
Quick for a Thursday, but enjoyable work from Mr. Gulczxnski. Glad that the rebus worked--couldn't find the right sign in the app!
Ah, a proper THursday, filled with many a “Wha?” and “Huh?”, and when the riddle is finally cracked, it’s with fireworks and the feel of the choir singing “Hallelujah!” Took me way too long to think of looking at the clues for the trick. Man, I was parsing the theme answers every which way, and nothing was working. That was a gift, actually, because the size of the “Aha!” and the breadth of relief at the moment the curtains part is proportionate to the amount of failure that precedes it. Me, I went kaboom. Sweet, sweet, sweet, Damon! And clever. The clues to the theme answers are perfect – normal sounding clues that didin’t make me suspicious that they were the perpetrators. Trickiness like this is why I love Thursdays. Payoffs like this are why I love Thursdays. Damon, I haven’t had a boom like that in quite a while, and I’m extremely grateful. This was kapow city, and I loved it. Thank you in the highest, sir!
MEGA accomplishment, Mr. Gulczynski! Thank you! I loved this puzzle. And I mean *loved*it. At first, I was all over the grid, filling in everything I was sure of, so I ended up with DASK in the SE, not knowing what to do with it until I came upon Y=X. Aha! From then on, DAS KAPITAL and all the other themers rolled off the tip of the stylus, unhindered. I appreciate that this puzzle was on the easier side. It allowed me to deliberately slow down after filling in the answers, for the sheer pleasure of taking in and admiring the cluing. This gave me a much richer and more satisfying experience of solving. As for the music in the grid, despite adoring George Michael and having a blast with DEVO's "Whip It," it was THE SHOW MUST GO ON that gave me the soundtrack for this puzzle. Here is Queen with this very poignant video that always moves me, seeing that the phenomenal Freddie Mercury was already very ill yet courageously pressing on because, well, because THE SHOW MUST GO ON... Legendary man. <a href="https://youtu.be/t99KH0TR-J4?feature=shared" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/t99KH0TR-J4?feature=shared</a>
@sotto voce Thanks for the epic video. I have never seen it before and it brought back memories. I saw Queen in Madison, WI in 1976 during a wonderful semester off between undergrad and grad school. Brian May played the guitar god role to the hilt with his huge hair, strutting to the front of the stage at the beginning of every solo. He could do that because he had the chops. And Freddy...talent like that is the rarest of rare in the rock world. Such a loss but such a legacy.
Is it OK to say I solved this in a linear fashion? Sorry - I was helping an 8th grader with algebra homework earlier: m=1, b=0 🤓
@Brian Funny. I learned y = mx + b about 63 years ago (thank you Maj. Allen) (wartime commission, still insisted that we address him as such) and it has stuck with me although I am not entirely sure what I had for breakfast this morning.
@Andrew, I am only 61, so it wasn't quite that long ago for me - I don't remember when I learned y=mx b, but I do remember my calculus teacher (Mrs. Caplinger) who made us memorize the definition of a continuous function - my first fling with epsilons and deltas...those were the days 🤓
@Brian And the grid features an umimpeded line from NW to SE. Though I suppose that would technically be y = -x !
Fascinating that we are getting complaints about not being able to enter the = sign today when not so long ago the complaints were about anything other than letters being required. You can’t please all the people all the time. P.S. As @Deb pointed out the rebus works as well, but then there’s another group who complain about them.
This is nitpicky, but as a math educator, I was annoyed by the puzzle calling y=x an expression. In math coursework, we differentiate between expressions (e.g., 4xy^2) and equations (e.g., y=x). And that distinction is important when we assess students’ math understanding.
@Thom G Calling an equation an expression is just an expression. Please oh great ones Spare me the ax. Don't use my words As emu snacks.
@Thom G Yeah, I think they were trying to avoid the word “equation” in the clue since the answer was “equals.” Maybe they could have used “function” or “relation”?
@Thom G Warren NAILed it. Interesting how so many complainers understand the field the apparent "mistake" was from so completely and thoroughly, but fail to notice that using the word in question (i.e. "equation") would violate a basic tenet of crossword construction, and therefore had to be sidestepped. The vast majority of solvers did not notice the substitution, nor care that it was technically wrong.
Very frustrating and dissatisfying to have an = sign in a crossword answer when The NY Times Games iPad app doesn’t allow you to enter it. The = sign is not listed under the Rebus symbols. I had to resort to the “Reveal word” option to complete the crossword. So disappointing.
@Pam but why not just spell out EQUALS? I too had no = as an option so I just spelled it out. Worked fine.
@Pam As pointed out by many, just entering EQUALS as a rebus worked. It never even occured to me to try to find "=" on the keyboard... the down entry, ASEQUALS, just made more sense that way. I did overthink the trick for a while, though... I was picturing an actual graph of x=y, and checking if the answers to the clues were in diagonal 45° lines.
What a fabulous theme! It illustrates two of my most deeply held puzzle mayims: 1) A trick puzzle is almost always trickier when you put the trick in the clue rather than the answer. 2) A one-time-only rebus can be trickier than a recurring rebus because it's so unexpected. This had both elements. And for me, the "Aha Moment" was huge. But -- and I imagine you'll pretty much all agree -- the surrounding fill was much easier than usual for a Thursday. I think I would have preferred it quite a bit harder, but I can't be sure. I can only solve the puzzle I solved and not the imaginary puzzle I didn't solve. So I'm wondering: If you combined the trickiness of the theme with challenging fill all around it, would that have made the puzzle more frustrating than pleasurable? I don't know. I adored the theme, but I sort of feel I got off pretty easy today.
@Nancy, I felt very similarly — including thinking that the “aha moment” was a particularly bright one for this puzzle, and that the rest of the fill was on the easy side. To your question, which is a good one — my inclination is that for a puzzle like this one, the beauty lies in the theme. And one can often appreciate the theme more if one isn’t banging one’s head against the wall for the rest of the puzzle. The fact that the cluing was kind in the rest of the grid is one of the factors that allowed the enigma of the theme to unfold and stand out more clearly. In other words, the contrast helped to heighten the effectiveness of the theme. Rather than just feeling stymied in general, I was mystified by the themers in particular, which gave the aha moment more oomph. To be clear, I often enjoy being stymied by really tough cluing. But perhaps that feeling is best savored in a themeless, when it’s the main point of the puzzle. Does that make sense? Of course I recognize this is incredibly overanalyzing things (but isn’t that what this forum is for?) and I reserve the right to reverse myself completely (“consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds” after all!)
@Nancy I agree on the one-time rebus. I can be overly resistant to reaching into the rebus bag, and therefore delayed entering the "=X" part of the equation. That resistance helped me out when I really wanted to enter EXtrACTING before realizing EXACTING worked just fine. I did get tripped up on some fill. I really wanted face palm instead of ACAI, sore instead of ACHY, and rock instead of REDD, all of which slowed me down.
This one made me smile. I mostly had the starred clues answered from the crosses, but once the revealer popped up: aha!
As a math teacher i have to quibble: x=y is a linear equation, not an expression. The two words have very different meanings in math (we drill this into our students). I understand the need to avoid the word "equation" in the clue since the answer has an equals sign, but in that case, "linear relation" would be a better choice. Other than that, very enjoyable puzzle with clever themed clues!
@TH I agree. I spent a half hour of the hour it took to solve this one before the idea of using a symbol occured to me. It would've happened sooner had the instructor used the word "equation" in the clue rather than "expression."
@TH Absolutely! An "expression" is not an "equation" any more than a "prepositional phrase" is a "sentence." Although I understand why the editors didn't want the word "equation" to clue an answer with an "equals" sign in it, they could have perhaps clued it as a "mathematical formula" instead.
@TH Term is a better term, imo. They name things, while formulas have truth values.
Haven’t read down too far in the comments yet but, from what I’ve read, people seem a bit ornery? Not sure what about. This seemed to be standard issue Thursday fare. A darn good puzzle, if you ask me. I solved the revealer early on (using a rebus) but, I’ll admit, I did not understand to look for the ‘X’ and the ‘Y’ in the clue, so I was scouring the grid looking for opportunities to apply my secret code. I ended up filling in the starred clues using crossers until enough of a familiar phrase formed to fill in the blanks. Couldn’t believe the gold star popped up without getting to do a single X Y swap, but I got a good chuckle after reading Deb’s column and going back to read the clues again. Mayim / Maxim should have tipped me off! Will remember to consider the clues more closely in the future! Thanks for the great puzzle, Damon Gulczynski
It's NOT a linear expression!!! It's a linear equation. (That is like confusing a phrase and a sentence.)
@Michael A You are right, but we have to make allowances... (1) "equation" in the list of clues would violate the Law of Clues: Thou shalt not use a related form of the answer in the clue; and (2) the crew working for the NYT Games and Puzzles might not have known there was a difference--possible English majors. Others may have additional reasons....
Very fun and just tricky enough for my taste. I entered the rebus as EQUALS and it worked fine.
What a delightful, clever puzzle. Thanks!
I like that I didn't know the trick of the puzzle until the very last clue :)
I solved this one sorta counterclockwise, starting with the NW. As a result I got to the revealer before I had entered all the themers. I then looked back at the first four I'd already entered (17A, 39A, 49A, and 59A), marveling at their cleverness, and then confidently entered CAT PEOPLE for 26A, which made me recall my adolescent crush on Nastassja Kinski. Wonderful puzzle, Damon. The only thing that's missing is a visual flourish -- a diagonal line from square 67 to square 12 upon a successful solve.
@Henry Su I like your Cartesian flourish.
@Henry Su CAT PEOPLE was where I figured out that X was to be substituted for Y in the clues, then used that for the other starred clues, leading to a low low Thursday time, though not a PB. Fun puzzle. You brought back my adolescent memory of the famous photo of Ms. Kinski with the snake. Couldn't tell if a Brazilian was involved or not, but it didn't really matter.
Emus ate this comment last night. As is often the case, I solved this without understanding how the theme worked, even after getting the revealer. I always feel I’ve let the constructor down when I fail to grasp the clever things they’ve done. Happily Wordplay clues me in when I fall short on that score. Auden’s September 1, 1939 seems a very apt poem for the times in which we live: “Defenceless under the night Our world in stupor lies Yet, dotted everywhere Ironic points of light Flash out wherever the Just Exchange their messages: May I, composed like them Of Eros and dust Beleaguered by the same Negation and despair Show an affirming flame”
@Marshall Walthew I and the public know what all school children learn Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return. Don't know why I remember this from freshman year at Nontre Dame 1973...
That math guy's bakery is kind of weird; all of his pies are squared. Where was I? Oh yeah - clever puzzle and a good workout for me. And... finished with an error that I couldn't find, and finally hit check puzzle. Turns that it's one of the primary topics of discussion today - I had entered EQUAL as a rebus; I guess I must have left off the final S, but I'm accustomed to puzzles just taking even just the first letter of a rebus as correct. Never occurred to me to try entering "=." End of streak - no big deal - I ain't gettin' paid for this. Oh, and one more appropriate answer in this one: It looks like we might be headed for a BRAZILLION comments today. Might put a puzzle find in a reply. ..
@Rich in Atlanta I must remember your dad-joke for my favorite holiday, two months and two days from now:-)
@Rich in Atlanta As threatened: A quite appropriate Thursday puzzle from August 11, 2011 by Parker Lewis. Here are the theme clues and answers: 17a. "3, 6, 11, 18, 27 ... :" XSQUAREDPLUSTWO 34a. "4, 2, 4/3, 1, 4/5 ... :" TWENTYOVERFIVEX 57a. 8, 1, -18, -55, -116 ... : NINEMINUSXCUBED And, the, uhh.... reveal(s)? 3d. "Any of the clues for 17-, 34- or 57-Across :" SEQUENCE 37d. "In the answers to 17-, 34- and 57-Across, it was replaced in turn by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ... :" VARIABLE I was initially a math major in college but... I don't think I would have had a chance in heck at that puzzle. Oh, here's the Xword Info link: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=8/11/2011&g=17&d=A" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=8/11/2011&g=17&d=A</a> ..
I am not one who laments “too easy” Thursday puzzles. I am not one who laments “too easy” Thursday puzzles. I am not one who laments “too easy” Thursday puzzles. For a great Thursday, see Damon’s 9/5/13 puzzle.
@Puzzlemucker I have read your comment 100 times. I don’t understand what “too easx” means… But I will do the puzzle you just suggested. ThanXs.
20A could also have been clued without the “Abbr.” note. A SEN is one hundredth of a (Japanese) Yen. 100 emus in a line.
@Patrick J. It's also one hundredth of a Malaysian Ringgit!
Loved this puzzle, Damon. Actually solved it fairly quickly, but it took until the last clue to understand why there were so many excruciating txpos. ACAI is the new, plant-based Oreo.
Stands out prominently as one of the darned cleverest puzzles I've done here at NYT. The shift being in the clues was a neat innovation!
Great puzzle ... very smart! But, afterward when I glanced over the grid, I asked myself: "who on earth is Pia Noleg?" Really... I was Dooked big time. Onto reading...
@Bonnie i love it! I think I might make Pia Noleg one of my aliases!
@Bonnie Pia Noleg is the pirate's moll. Her nickname is Peg. Her sister is Mia Oneleg, but they call her Eileen.
The keyboard on the NYT games app does not include the = symbol which was necessary to complete today’s puzzle. Very frustrating!
First time commenter, but I've been reading the blog comments here/there for the last couple of years, usually feeling a bit unworthy and envious of the great solvers on here. Last week, I solved Mon-Sat with no help for the first time, and today solved the puzzle without understanding how (I even had the equals rebus filled out), my "aha" moment came after i solved, realizing the Xs and Ys were in the clues and it all made sense haha! Very cool and a feeling that keeps me coming back. Maybe I belong now?! Looking forward to what Friday has in store! Cheers!
@Jimmy Batt's You TOTALLY Belong!
@Jimmy Batt's You always did 'belong'! Just now you are unmasking! Come back often....and comment, please.
Asunder will always bring this great Irish tune to mind: The Minstrel Boy, who, fallen in battle tore all his harp strings asunder rather than let it be played by the enemy. <a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GaSb_OpJXNw&pp=ygUbdGhlIG1pbnN0cmVsIGJveSBjaGllZnRhaW5z" target="_blank">https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GaSb_OpJXNw&pp=ygUbdGhlIG1pbnN0cmVsIGJveSBjaGllZnRhaW5z</a> —— On a related note, our organ department had a permanent posting on the bulletin board - the US Army’s official field manual for the complete destruction of a Hammond organ. (The instruments, used by the corps of chaplains, were made up of all kinds of useful goodies that could find a home in a radio unit, transmitter, receiver, …).
I've often wondered why symbols and numbers are not used in puzzles. At least now I know that their presence is not an unpardonable sin. Maybe we could see a & next week
pollyq, The ampersand [&] has appeared periodically in the crossword since 1965. Here's a link to its first appearance: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/PS?date=5/30/1965" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/PS?date=5/30/1965</a> This was in the days before emus...
Just consider not being able to enter the equals sign to complete the puzzle as a bonus puzzle.
SHUTE switchup: make the SH-->C transition in the SHLUES, not the answers! Puzzle, Mini, Wordle, Connections all done starting at 4:30 am...now with the first round of chemo injections behind me, (actually in front of me as they were in belly fat), will head back to bed!
@Robert Michael Panoff Rest well, and best wishes. From the emus, too.
@Robert Michael Panoff It's great to have these types of puzzles to distract us at times like these. Try adding Squardle and Waffle to your list. Bob, best wishes on on your treatments. Hope everything goes well for you!
All the people complaining to the times about there not being a = sign on their iPhone keyboard should probably be complaining to Apple instead. How do you all not have access to such a basic symbol. = = = = = Set from my android.
@george Apple mobile keyboards do have ‘=‘, but apps can customize the keyboard to add and remove keys and symbols. The Times has done so and did not include it in their custom keyboard.
@george affirmatively voting for something to grind
@george It’s the nyt app that has truncated the keyboard. The iOS keyboard is complete. Bot bot not a bot 🤖
Challenging puzzle! Can happily report I was equal to the task.
Brilliant theme; I’m just sad because I didn’t get it. I wish now that I’d tried a little harder. Deb’s first “tricky clue, “Sonja” was a gimme for me, beautiful skater. I didn’t have many of those. As always, not a complaint.
It has been several years now since Car Talk went off the air. and so I expect that the phrase "SONJA Henie's tu-tu" is going the way of Fibber McGee's closet.
@RDJ My peeps still use it. (Irish heritage. ) Anyone know if there's a link to a movie?
@RDJ If I recall Colonel Potter of the MASH TV show had a thing for Sonja Henie. In the episode about a cold snap, He was really annoyed when he had to leave early from the screening of her movie “Sun Valley Serenade”.
This is really frustrating. I do the xword on my iPad mini. NYT app won’t let me get to the keyboard with the = sign or rather, weirdly, it gives me a completely different symbols keyboard without =. I tried typing in “equal” or “equals”. No dice. I’m bummed. Goodbye streak! Please fix these glitches that are irritating app players! Aye, axe those flaws!
@Judith Nelson “EQUALS” as a rebus worked for me. Sorry for your trouble. Maybe there’s a letter off somewhere else in your grid? For the emus And a bit more How about now?
@Judith Nelson — I’m kind of peeved at this myself. I entered “equals” as a rebus but it’s still saying there is an error. A rebus should also be acceptable, right? I have a streak going back to late August, which I’ll probably now lose. I’m afraid to hit “check puzzle.” I’m going to read through the rest of the comments to see if there are any other workarounds — but that is beside the point. These gimmicky crosswords that many seem to so love need to work across *all* platforms and should tested before they’re unleashed on unsuspecting solvers.
@Judith Nelson I spelled out EQUALS on the iPhone app, which worked. I also had no “=“ as an option.
Thank you to the people who clued me in re: how to keep a streak going even when you cannot access the puzzle for a day or two or more. Power outages, traveling, etc. always interrupted my streak, until I was informed that the simple act of completing them in order, even if a day or two late, retains the streak. Today I reached one year. 365 days. My longest streak before being told the how to retain it when you cannot get online for a few days was about 320, IIRC. Of course, this is a leap year, so I probably should see if I manage to complete the puzzle tomorrow. I'm pretty sure I will.
FYI, I was unscathed by this more recent storm. It was almost as windy here as the pre-Christmas storm that knocked out my power for four days. There were many outages in the Bangor area, but I was spared. But much of the coast is in bad shape. I hope our coastal Maine folks are OK. I have spent a fair amount of time in Castine, and used to sail out of there. Eaton's Boatyard, a long-standing institution in the town, was heavily damaged. Denett's Wharf, a place I've enjoyed many a meal, was engulfed and has suffered major damage. Many other coastal communities have had similar damage. The dock facilities on Monhegan were seriously damaged. Last I heard, there won't be any ferry access (it's really a small mail boat) until tomorrow at the earliest. Camps have been washed into the ocean, waterfront facilities -- parks, roads, etc -- all damaged by the high tide that coincided with the peak of the storm. The causeway to Deer Isle was inundated. Fortunately, it was not damaged, so when the waters receded it was re-opened. And we are getting a repeat storm on Saturday, when the tide will be even higher. I don't think much media outside of Maine is covering this. But if you google it, you will see some interesting video coverage by local media.
@CaptainQuahog said "the simple act of completing them in order, even if a day or two late, retains the streak. " I did not know this. Thanks for mentioning.
I'm so proud of myself for getting this one with no lookups*. I was on the verge of giving in on many occasions because I could not crack open the west side at all. Still, I took breaks, pushed myself, and resisted temptation. I knew the revealer must be something like Y is X or Y = X, but this meant nothing to me until, squinting, I realised that DAS KAPITAL fit! Then came the lightbulb and aha! moment wherein I squealed with glee. Suddenly, I could fill in CAT PEOPLE, THE SHOW MUST GO ON and BRAZILIAN (my favourite clue/answer BTW) and the puzzle cracked wide open. It's for this reason that Thursdays are my favourite puzzles of the week. *although I knew there was a rebus, after I filled it in and didn't get my gold star, I had to come to the column to find my 2 errors Flower girl? could be a ROLE someone plays, and al equal is close enough. Likewise, ACHE fit the answer, but for the life of me, I couldn't figure out why editors were concerned with STELE. Still, this is my favourite puzzle of the year so far, and I'm going to bed with a big grin on my face. My goal this year is 366 gold stars. 11 down, 355 to go.
I would have switched today's and Wednesday's. I don't usually do the crossword at night but I had to vindicate myself after doing so poorly on Wednesday's puzzle. (My streak is intact but now tainted by the knowledge that I peeked at the answers - it's not worth it, folks!!) Anyway, notes on the puzz: Two letter-switching themes in a row? Hmm. Enjoyed the little kick at the very end from the "=". Cute. (And not too cute by half, IMHO!) Had STeLE for STYLE until the very end (+ ACHe for ACHY) until I realized that made no sense. But what do I know? I'm just a copy editor. :D
Since AS EQUALS was a fine answer to 62D, the rebus was called for. Until that moment I was swimming around. Great puzzle and Thursday fun.
Well, this was hilarious, if over way too soon.
Loved it. One of the great “aha moment” puzzles of recent memory. I was able to get most of the fill pretty readily and KNEW something was up with the themers but couldn’t see what it was. Started to get an inkling with DAS KAPITAL — like the theme was just there, out of the corner of my eye — and then I got to the revealer and broke into a huge grin. Thanks Damon. I’m still chuckling.
Hey Everybody, puzzle constructor here. Love the lively discussion. If the mods allow a little self-promotion, I’m plugging my book “Will Must Send Regrets: 101 Rejected Crossword Puzzles and the Stories Behind Them”. Buy it! It’s inexpensive and not terrible! Will Must Send Regrets: 101 Rejected Crossword Puzzles and the Stories Behind Them <a href="https://a.co/d/gIgs5Zr" target="_blank">https://a.co/d/gIgs5Zr</a>
@DJG Fabulous puzzle, DJG! Will be chuckling all day! Thank you!