3 clues really wowed me in today's puzzle: ungulate spelled backward in ungulate (I'll never think of ungulate again without whispering "Cha-Cheng") NUN for woman with a habit (don't know if it's original but I loved it), and ALOHAS / come with big waves in Waikiki -- loved that, too. Which made both Ella AND Etta sitting like 2 queens atop their respective columns somewhat acceptable. Omaha over combat vehicles caused an ECHO of D-Day, Omaha Beach, the vehicles mainly landing craft. Likewise, Eliza Dolittle over sleeveless top summoned a vision of the singer known as Eliza Dolittle who, from her many pics, eschews the very idea of sleeves, whereas Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady never met a sleeve she didn't like, nor a hat she couldn't rock: <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058385/mediaviewer/rm2231777280/?ref_=tt_md_3" target="_blank">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058385/mediaviewer/rm2231777280/?ref_=tt_md_3</a> Likewise, the intersection of pea, eggs, idiot, think tank, made me think of pea brain, then that old PSA of eggs frying ("This is your brain on drugs.") then back to idiot, then saying to myself, "an idiot is what happens when your thinking tanks." I've dropped many an object on my toes over a lifetime of ineptitude, and on many of those times -- including, yes, stones, toasters, dictionaries, jars, wine bottles, tables, credenzas, boxes full of books or records -- YOW was the first thing I uttered, followed by a string of words no nearby nun would tolerate: I'd get pined with teak for sure, or vice versa. Already a great puzzle week! YOW!
@john ezra Great post, as usual! (I'm sorry but I can't help laughing at the suffering of your toes...it's just the way you tell it, you really have a knack for humor.) So glad you brought up the clues for NUN and ALOHAS. My favorites! And I did get them straight off the bat -- a bit of a miracle considering many straightforward clues had me at a loss for the answers today. I'm hoping Lewis will include them in the list next week. (I'm also hoping your snow day bruises have healed.)
Well, my moment of revelation in this puzzle was massive, and I earned it. I left the revealer blank and didn’t read its clue, but uncovered the four theme answers, and tried to guess what that revealer was. I tried everything – first words, last words, initials of the words in the phrases, commonalities, double letters, words backwards – and nothing came. All roads led to nothing. So, I admitted defeat, uncovered the revealer, and KAPOW! A true OMG moment, where I thought, “Oh how clever! How perfect!” One of those once-in-a-blue-moon Crosslandia moments where a puzzle blindsides you in the best way. Here, it was a riddle that after my best efforts I couldn’t solve, and I’m actually glad I didn’t because of the pure revelatory pleasure of that KAPOW! Oh, I liked the SETS down, the woody cross of PINE and TEAK, and the parade of schwa-enders led by three jazz greats (ELLA, ETTA, DINAH, SHIVA, ELIZA, TUNA, MECHA). But it was being bested by a magnificent riddle that I remember most today, and I’ll probably remember it for some time to come. Thank you so very much for making this, Freddie!
I’m finally back to a 100 day streak. 100 days or so ago I lost my 452 day streak due to time zone issues and carelessness while travelling in England. This time I’m in Tanzania but I’m being compulsive about not missing a day. I even did the Sunday puzzle while riding back from Ngorongoro crater.
@Wayne Harrison Would you rather not concentrate on your trip? When I travel, I don't care about any of my games or streaks in them. I travel to escape all routines and I would be much less rested if I stuck with them. I hike, I climb, I visit the sites, I enjoy the sun - not a puzzle (or RPG, or FPS) in sight.
@Wayne Harrison Well done! I’m sure many of us can identify with the overachieving cruciverbalist’s version of the sunk-cost fallacy 😂
@Wayne Harrison 452 days! I lost my all-time best 116-day streak to a Saturday puzzle, ten days back. If I'm ever forced into vegetarianism by dietary restrictions or a PETA-backed junta, I will avoid INCOGMEATO like death. Is it better to end a streak because of time constraints or failure to know brand names that tie together an entire quadrant of the puzzle? AH ME, I just don't know. But congrats for re-acquiring the third digit of glory for you stats.
"I can't believe my garden is so dry." "Yeah, well, water you going to dew about it?" ("Not sure. Feels like I mist something.")
I love words that have so many different meanings, and what a perfect revealer. This made for a great start to my day. Tank you, Freddie.
Man, crossword constructors love them some Edy's.
@Justin AND HOW! (..... now..... .... brown cow?)
@Justin AND HOW! (Because that's a way to express overwhelming agreement on a topic such as the fact that four letters and something to do with ice cream is almost always EDYS and I'm sorry for the run-on sentence but I have to say more stuff and things and such or this will get filtered out again) WOH... DNA!
For 69 Across “Gumbo or goulash” I almost wrote cats. I worked at a cat cafe and got the chance to name three male kittens that came in. I chose a soup theme and so named them Goulash, Gumbo, and Gazpacho. Their sister came in already named or else she would have been Bisque. When they got adopted, Gumbo’s new owners kept the name. It’s my proudest moment from working there. Anyways, I wrote soup to start so I wrong either way.
@Julie I also started with soup. Always forget goulash is an American stew, while Hungarian gulyás is soup. Get it wrong every time.
Fun theme. ELLA and ETTA on the first row, followed by the not as frequent DINAH was a mini theme. I really enjoyed the cluing on the fill, especially for NUN, OMAHA, and COIN.
Great theme. Took a couple beats (well, maybe more than a couple) to get it once the grid was filled. “It’s Imperative” would be a good jazz tune for one of our three greats to sing. It’s imperative To understand The revealer Or you’ll tank It’s just imperative . . .
ETTA: “Don’t Go to Strangers” <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBLaJtXbpRg" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBLaJtXbpRg</a> ELLA: “It Don’t Mean a Thing” (w/ Duke Ellington) <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myRc-3oF1d0" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myRc-3oF1d0</a> DINAH: “That’s All I Want From You” <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiLevPQAAAc" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiLevPQAAAc</a>
I just want Sam to know that I wasn’t keeping the word from her 😏…I didn’t know know she didn’t know 😉🤓😄
Very quick followed by slightly difficult for a bit there in the midwest and southwest. DINAH was new to me and LONE EAGLE isn’t really on my radar as a symbol of freedom. A LONE wolf is free, in its way. And a bald EAGLE, of course, is like,” joe freedom”, but LONE EAGLE, not so much (for me). Come to think of it, I guess I really don’t say “DROPS LIKE A STONE”. Sinks LIKE STONE? Sure. Definitely in my quiver. And I might say DROPS “off a cliff”, or something along those lines, but can’t really think of a circumstance where I’d use DROPS LIKE A STONE. Not complaining or calling foul, just trying to rationalize what slowed me down after a quick start. In fact, I loved this puzzle for those reasons. Thank you, Freddy Cheng!
I had to smile at the clue for HEN - “a layer of 61-A” (EGGS). Did not see that one coming :)
This was much easier and much more pleasant than yesterday's puzzle, but I had to look up a lot of trivia to complete it without autocheck. I did not know AND HOW at all, nor COIN clued as it was, so those two things crossing gave me some trouble but I figured it out in the end. At first I was surprised by the AND HOW expression, but then I realized we have pretty much the same thing in Polish: "Jeszcze jak." "Jak" (pronounced yak, like the animal, which is also called "jak" in Polish) means "how," and "jeszcze" (pronounced something like yeah-sh-ch-eh - our j is always pronounced like your y, e like the e in egg, sz is sh, and cz is ch) can mean a lot of stuff, mostly "yet," but when comparing two things (like the extents to which you can miss somebody, say - how much you can miss them, that is) it indicates one of them is better, grander or more intense, ergo "jeszcze jak."
@Andrzej Und wie! as the Germans said, then (apparently) so did we English speakers. Or at least that's one thought as to its origin: <a href="https://ask.metafilter.com/16692/And-How" target="_blank">https://ask.metafilter.com/16692/And-How</a> It's one of those old-timey, folksy (read: white) American expressions like "you ain't whistlin' Dixie" or "ain't that a fact" that were common in Hollywood serials from the 1920's to the 40's that became common afternoon fare for kids in syndication when the television became ubiquitous in middle class homes in the 50's. "Our Gang", which was aimed at children, ran in theaters from the silent era to the late 30's. It was redistributed under the new name "The Little Rascals" in the 50's, just in time for the swell of the Golden Age of broadcast TV. Anyone born during WW2, Boomers, GenX and Oregon Trail Millennials are thus very familiar with this phrase from watching it after school or on Sundays. To wit, from the one of the recent film revivals, here's (I assume) Buckwheat (in disguise), intoning the idiom: <a href="https://www.getyarn.io/yarn-clip/69b28929-62a6-4f6a-9e78-c80036675423/gif#tdAQMcvS.copy" target="_blank">https://www.getyarn.io/yarn-clip/69b28929-62a6-4f6a-9e78-c80036675423/gif#tdAQMcvS.copy</a> Other more modern forms largely come from 20th century African American vernacular, such as: - And you know that! - Damn straight! / Damn Skippy! - Mos def (most definitely) - Fo sho (for sure) - Sing it, sister! And of course, there's the great poet Glenn Quagmire who would translate all of these variations to its core sentiment: Giggity!
@Greg Chavez — Whenever I hear “And how!” Our Gang comes immediately to mind. I don’t think I’ e heard it outside of those movie shorts.
Funny solving moment illustrating how one can be influenced by recent puzzles: Came across today’s clue “___ well done (good work)”, and had the initial A filled in. First answer to pop into my head was, no lie … - - - - - - - - - - - - - ATTA!
Asheville Attaway Lewis strikes again with his fondness for words that just pop in!
Loved this revealer. Smart cluing and good fun. I did have SHIV instead of BAIL for a bit. However, it was quickly apparent I didn't need a blade: this Tuesday puzzle is sharp enough on its own!
@The big Q Same here. It made me smile when shiv made a sneaky appearance later on in the puzzle.
@The big Q I also started with shiv 🤣 . . . . . Do emus shiv other emus?
@Andrzej the ways of the emus remain, as ever, deeply mysterious.
Even though the verb thing at 17A bothered me too once I knew the revealer, I did think this was a very cute theme -- and one that happily couldn't be guessed at in advance. Or at least not by me. What's more, to get that sort of grid symmetry when you have a dense theme AND such limited theme options -- well, that's really amazing. This is the sort of puzzle where one imagines the constructor leaping out of bed and crying "Eureka! Got it!!" Speaking of constructors: As a sometime constructor myself, I find this puzzle encouraging. I'll explain. It's Tuesday, but the cluing is quite imaginative in many places: NEIGH, ECHO; GNU; OCTET; ALOHAS; EGGS; BAIL; and especially COIN. I've always worried that if I come up with a theme that's "only" Tuesday-level, my clues will be dumbed down, so I try to come up with themes that are definitely late-week candidates. This makes me feel that an early-week puzzle might be satisfying to create too. I liked this puzzle a lot, Freddie.
Great use of the ambiguous nature of words. It took a few beats for me to pull the theme together, but when I did, I thought, "A JOB well done, Mr. Cheng!"
I will ECHO what many have commented here... it was a great Tuesday puzzle, with a clever revealer. Thoroughly enjoyed! .....................................................
I can't tell you why, but I stumbled through this one drawing blanks, and having to work the crosses for really basic words like WEAN ad SPEWS. Even poor ELIZA's name would not come to me, though it seems that, in trying to retrieve it, I rewatched the whole movie in my head. My words failed me and my memory TANKed. But in no way does this mean I didn't have a blast with the solve. It was a very tight puzzle, with a great theme which I had to ponder at the end for the ahas followed by the bravos. Well done, Mr. Cheng! And with a nod to Stephen Rea in the memorable "The Crying Game," here is Boy George with the fabulous movie theme: <a href="https://youtu.be/-EPGhjxm0G0?feature=shared" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/-EPGhjxm0G0?feature=shared</a> Thank you, Mr. Cheng, for the puzzle and for sparking the memory of the movie and its title track.
@sotto voce Probably a west coast NYT Xword thing. Doing Xwords at night means your brain is carrying all the day’s baggage. This a.m., I opened my eyes, picked up my I-tabula, and was mostly rasa. (Save for whatever last night’s dreams did to me.) It flowed, probably because my think tank was pleasantly running on empty. <a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hrPuj69J1BA" target="_blank">https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hrPuj69J1BA</a>
Nice puzzle, Freddie. I focus on speed-solving early in the week, so I often don't get the theme until after it's all over. Today, none of the long entries came immediately, but with a few crosses and solid, straight-up clueing, they popped into place and I continued on my merry way until the end, when I finally looked back. Thanks for ELLA, ETTA, and DINAH, all favorites. I have no idea why or when or where I would have seen "Gojira Tai MECHAGojira", but I did, and I loved the title so much I used to walk around growling the words in what I imagined was a Japanese accent. I used to clean think tanks for a living when I was a teenager. It was mostly just sweeping up the ideas that were thrown against the wall and didn't stick. It paid a little bit more than mowing lawns.
My first Tuesday without looking anything up other than spelling! I had FALLS and SINKS, before DROPS, but got there in the end when the only prefix to EAGLE I could come up with was LONE
@Park. Good for you! No lookups, no emus.
A nice, straightforward, enjoyable Tuesday puzzle, with some jazzy kinks to keep it lively. Great fun, Freddie Cheng—thanks for making it all come together and brightening my evening.
Fun revealer! Clever puzzle all around. Thank you Mr. Cheng! …
Great to see Ella, Etta, and Dinah sharing a bill.
For those of you who don't consume enough anime to remember MECHA but who are big fans of wackadoo alt-rock band The Flaming Lips, I've a trick to share that has been working for me lately: their 2002 album "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots", which is said to be a metaphor for a Japanese woman's battle with cancer. From a recent, glowing review in The Lazer Guided Reporter (capitalization m-phasis mine): "There is an augmented vibe that ties the whole album together, as a way of illustrating the MECHA universe that acts as the stage for Yoshimi’s battle with disease. Unit 3000–21 opens its eyes in ‘One More Robot/Sympathy 3000–21’, and in the background of some strangely happy sounding lyrics ABOUT A ROBOT developing emotive capabilities, there is a constant flow of glitchy radio fuzz, and those augmented vibes and sounds that prevent any of these tracks from falling into the pop realm. Towards the end of 3000–21’s bouncing story, these monotone noises are the only things left and they bring us back to the uncertainty that surrounds Yoshimi and her future." If I can attach a difficult to remember word to something important to me, it instantly becomes easier to retrieve and deploy. Cheers. <a href="https://lazerguidedreporter.com/2017/10/16/album-review-yoshimi-battles-the-pink-robots-2002-by-the-flaming-lips" target="_blank">https://lazerguidedreporter.com/2017/10/16/album-review-yoshimi-battles-the-pink-robots-2002-by-the-flaming-lips</a>/
@Greg Chavez - I have to confess that it was South Park that introduced me to the word “mecha” (which I always enter in Spelling Bee just in case Sam has decided to add it) — in the episode where Mecha Barbra Streisand attacks the town.
I liked it. Typical Tuesday workout for me, and then didn't notice the variation in the use of 'tanks' until I finished. That was just a great extra touch. Went down a twisting road on my answer history search today. Inspired by 43a, noted that DINAHWASHINGTON is 15 letters. Only been an answer in one puzzle - a Monday from September 14, 1992. But the other two theme answers in that one were: GEORGELONDON and IRVINGBERLIN And... in a roundabout way, Mr. Berlin led me down a different path. I'll put that in a reply. ..
@Rich in Atlanta As threatened: Irving Berlin led me to discover one 15 letter song: PUTTINONTHERITZ. That's been an answer in 13 puzzles, but several of those had rather similar themes, because... some other 15 letter answers: BLOWININTHEWIND JUMPINJACKFLASH SINGININTHERAIN And... various combinations of those answers have been grouped as theme answers in multiple puzzles. Here's one example: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=3/4/2002&g=65&d=A" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=3/4/2002&g=65&d=A</a> But... BLOWININTHEWIND also got paired up with a couple of other 15 letter theme answers in a clever Monday from June 16, 2008. The other theme answers in that one: HERECOMESTHESUN RHYTHMOFTHERAIN And... those last two led me down another theme path and a bunch of 15 letter answers. One more example: HERECOMESTHESUN paired with ONCEINABLUEMOON and FORBIDDENPLANET And there's more, but I'm done. ..
"Tanks" for the memories Mr. Cheng!
Oh this was positively delightful. It took a few moments after staring at the revealer to unveil the theme. My smile got bigger and bigger with each across answer I made the connection on. Truly a fantastic little Tuesday for me. It hit the sweet spot of difficulty (for a Tuesday) with an absolutely guffaw-inducing theme. My hat’s off to you, Mr. Cheng. TANKS for such a wonderful start to my day.
great puzzle until the SW corner. Three proper nouns crossing each other and then the really poor clue for 'LONEEAGLE' when bald makes 100x more sense really ruined that entire corner. Really feels like you gave up in that corner, if i'm being honest.
@Charles You're falling for one of the biggest crossword traps there is: The most obvious answer has to be the right one, or even the best one. Bald Eagle would be a great answer if the clue were "High-flying metaphor *for the United States*". But for the clue "High-flying metaphor for independence", Bald Eagle is not the best answer. Because you're conflating the general concept of independence with a symbol for the US. And strange as it may seem to many, the US does not have a monopoly on independence. Anywhere else on the planet, your answer would make zero sense. And everywhere on the planet, even including the US, the concept of LONE matches well with the concept of independence better than "bald" does. You're not the first person who insisted that the clue was wrong or that the answer should have been Bald Eagle, but that doesn't mean any of you were right.
38A. Site of a 1989 protest. TIANANMENSQUARE Bodies of gracious refusals… or, when reinterpreted as an imperative, a hint to 38-Across THINKTANKSBUTNOTANKS cc: emu handler
@Steven A very nasty Winnie the Pooh lookalike frowned at your post from his supervillain lair. . . . . Demucracy.
Very nice theme for a Tuesday. Enjoyed today's puzzle. At first, with Ella and Etta and Dinah, I thought we were being treated to a musical extravaganzana. Fully expected more female singers in the SW and SE. When that didn't materialize, I turned my attention to the real theme. It was pleasant to not have to feel like a curmudgeon for this one! Thanks, Freddie@
Not much to add, great Tuesday puzzle, full of great interesting entries and a fine theme. Thanks , Freddie.
When, as a wee child, I first encountered the term "Think Tank"--it was coined some time in the late 1950's, per OED--I thought: "You just it around all day, with a bunch of other smart people, and *think*? sounds like a great job to me!" Although I did imagine have to spend your work-days in a rather sterile room, sort of like an in-ground swimming pool drained of water. As a clue, 11A, [Not musically dissonant, say] for TONAL may work in Crosslandia, but in the real world, Dissonance is not the same as Atonality! There, I've said it; now I can get back to listening to a very dissonant Sonata, but firmly in the tonal key of b minor: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVkhnBNnNjE" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVkhnBNnNjE</a> Now that's music even Shiva Nataraja can dance to!
@Bill thanks for sharing this piece by the inimitable Glenn Gould. I also thought THINKTANKS were places where groups of very bright people would actually climb down a ladder into a well of sorts--in my mind it was a metallic tank. And the thoughts would flow out of the thinkers like water. Eventually, the tank would be full, and that would be the end product. Everyone would get paid, and they'd do it again next month.
Enjoyed this Tuesday puzzle (despite getting stuck with LICIT instead of LEGIT). Tanks a bunch for this, Mr. Cheung. ….. ????? Emus, begone!
@Strudel Dad Oops! Mr. Cheng, I meant to say. ……… !!!!!!!!! Emus, begone!
@Strudel Dad "SINKS LIKE A STONE" over "DROPS..." had me stuck for a while.
@Strudel Dad On “licit”, and a nod to 32 D. What is the difference between “illicit” and “illegal”? One means unlawful and the other is a sick bird. Emus do groan.
Nice to see pop/jazz singer Dinah Washington clued. She had quite a heyday in the 1950s and unquestionably influenced Diana Ross.
@John Dietsch That was my favorite entry. "This Bitter Earth" will never fail to move me.
I got stuck at the top for a long time because I thought oak trees were more stately than elm trees
@Pat I think the only elms that grow in Poland are not the same as American elms. The Polish variety is ulmus minor, much smaller than an oak. Our obvious, Polish choice for a stately tree is an oak (and our oak, quercus robur, is different than the American one - it grows more slowly and has different leaves. When new Polish coins were issued in the mid 90s, the designer didn't know this and so our Polish coins feature oak leaves from an American oak, which is considered an invasive species. The irony...). Over time I learned that if a NYT puzzle inquires about a stately tree, it is an ELM much more often than an oak. Possibly also because American grids are always hungry for more Es? Epees, eels and the like would surely indicate that.
@Pat Both are stately trees, but ELM has appeared about twice as often as OAK (by 499 to 254), with "stately" in the clue for ELM 13 times (never for OAK). The 2 to 1 ratio also applies to the plural forms (267 to 121), but at least there was one "stately" clue for OAKS (meanwhile, there were 16 for ELMS). It's obvious why ELMS outpace OAKS in appearances; the K is a less useful letter among all the other more common one. Why the ELM, however, is viewed as a more stately tree in the clues, is a mystery. But it is, and so to my mind, ELM was the first thing I thought of.
When I lived in Kenosha, my house was on the bottom of an inverted T-JUNCTION. It was not fun clearing the driveway in snowplow season because we got extra snow from the intersection piled on our side of the road. A lot more difficult than this puzzle. This was fun and entertaining. A few answers required either thought or crosses, but no "erasures" other than correcting typos. The revealer was interesting to me because THINK TANK is also the name of the company that made my camera bag. Thanks, Freddie!
@JayTee Your move south was subtlely influenced by the bad feng shui of that location. You probably feel better down there, especially in winter.
On 45A. At least in my part of the world, most NUNs I know, including my sister, haven’t worn habits for over fifty years. Of course some still do, so the clue is quite fair.
@Patrick J. Sounds like they just got out of the habit.
@Patrick J. Really? That's very interesting. Over here all nuns and monks wear habits, and let me tell you, in a modern city like Warsaw it looks very, very strange. They also smell weird - and no, I don't go around sniffing them. The odor - of incense and candles, with just a hint of dust - is so intense you can smell it when passing a nun in the street. I lived by an abbey full of nuns for 15 years so I'd know.
I filled pretty quickly for me (slow by any rational measure). But, had a bad letter. I just tend to look at my entries for typos first, and everything looked good except 50D - ATIT had to be wrong... until I read the clue. Went back reading clues, fixed 4D and was done.
I miss the etuis. Have etuis been banned from the NYT puzzles?
It has been three years since we've seen an etui: Tue Jan 19, 2021 20A Case for small toiletries Olivia Mitra Framke ...and more than a decade since we've seen more than one at a time: Mon Mar 7, 2011 4D Needle and thread holders Mike Torch Perhaps etuis were confused with emus?
@Barry Ancona Wow I can’t believe it’s already been that long since the last ETUI!
I found lone eagle to be a poor clue, as bald eagle also fits and is much more common term. This mixed with multiple proper nouns on the SW side made an otherwise strong puzzle cumbersome. I provide this feedback constructively as I do appreciate it is hard to make puzzles. God bless America.
@Jon Benjamin Franklin, in a letter to his daughter, jokingly made fun of the (apparently badly drawn) bald eagle as the choice for an insignia of the Society of Cincinnati, suggesting it looked more like a turkey. Many think Franklin actually preferred the turkey for the Great Seal of the United States, but that seems not to be true. Here’s a partial quote from his letter: "For my own part I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen as the Representative of our Country. He is a Bird of bad moral Character. He does not get his Living honestly. You may have seen him perch'd on some dead Tree near the River, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the Labour of the Fishing Hawk; and when that diligent Bird has at length taken a Fish, and is bearing it to his Nest for the Support of his Mate and young Ones, the Bald Eagle pursues him and takes it from him…like those among Men who live by Sharping and Robbing he is generally poor and often very lousy. Besides he is a rank Coward: The little King Bird not bigger than a Sparrow attacks him boldly and drives him out of the District…For in Truth the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America. Eagles have been found in all Countries, but the Turkey was peculiar to ours…He is besides, tho' a little vain and silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on."
@Jon Charles Lindbergh was hailed as the LONE EAGLE, because he flew across the Atlantic without a navigator, so I'll allow it. Dude didn't even have a radio, just a map and a compass.
@Jon LONE EAGLE is an answer, not a clue, so what are suggesting is the problem? Is it clued poorly? Does the most obvious answer have to be the correct one? Also, see my comments to Charles, who commented after you, but whose comment I saw first because of the Newest first default.
Light and breezy, yet still pleasantly crisp and chewy. I had no idea what tied the long answers together until I got to the revealer at 63A. It was much too short however, as I had a two-hour wait at the doctor's office. Luckily I had a book of sudoku stashed in the car. MECHA sounds like fun.
@Linda Jo Oh yes, it's all in fun, until Tokyo gets trashed :-)
Great puzzle. Thanks. Needed to run through the list of vowels to fill the crossing of REA and MECHA. Two and done. Do the emus know they have two vowels in their title?
@Carl exact same last square for me. I’ve never heard of either! MaCHA is where I started. Learn something new every day.
For no apparent reason, southwest gave me trouble. I hate when my brain goes out of sync.
Enjoyed this puzzle (albeit I thought it was more challenging than the usual Tuesday puzzles), but more so after reading the article. So clever! Kudos to Freddie and also to Sam.
I wish to register a complaint. 31D is "Lead-in to -pod" [note the hyphen before "pod"] while 56A is "Lead-in to pod" [no hyphen]. This formatting led me to believe the answer to 31D contained a hyphen while the answer to 56A lacked one. So you can only imagine my surprise and disgruntlement when, after solving this here crossword in record time, I googled the answer to 31D and learned it does NOT contain a hyphen. I would have expected better from our world's paper of record. I humbly request either a) a formal retraction, or b) indication as to where Your Humble Narrator's logic may be incorrect. Yours truely, K.T. Reno, NV
@Keeylay Tehran The hyphen in "-pod" doesn't mean that there is a hyphen in the combined word. It simply means that the answer (TRI) and "pod" combine to one word (tripod). The other "pod" has no hyphen because it doesn't combine with its answer, PEA. It's "pea pod". Hyphens are often used (especially in the dictionary) to indicate combining forms (that do not have a hyphen once they combine). See the entry for "-pod" at the end of this bunch of definitions: <a href="http://tinyurl.com/bdzxk237" target="_blank">http://tinyurl.com/bdzxk237</a> Note that the example given, pleopod, has no hyphen.
@Keeylay Tehran - pod and -pod are entirely unrelated. The word pod (as in bean pod, pea pod or pod vehicle) is from an English (West Germanic) root meaning “covering, husk, container”. The word element (combining element) -pod (as in octopod, tripod) is from the Greek root pous, pod, meaning “foot, feet.” The clues simply acknowledge that one pod (pea pod) is a word, and the other pod (tripod) never stands alone.
ELIZA (not Doolittle) was the first chatbot. Has it ever been clued that way?
Jumped down and worked out the revealer first which made each unfolding themer even more entertaining. Today's expression of gratitude prompted me to look up *aitch* which has appeared 42 times (11/30) with fairly straightforward cluing ("gee follower", etc) but a few standouts including "Cockney's problem" and "Common aspiration".
Fun and nicely crafted puzzle, but I must note that TONAL music is often “musically dissonant”… 🎶. TONAL music is defined by patterns of dissonance and resolution! Sorry, 11D
Heather, That's why the clue had ", say" at the end of it. As we say whether or not there is a ", say" in the clue, "Don't use crossword clues and answers to perform surgery." Or music.