My mother told me that she was about twelve before she figured out that a hymn sung frequently in her church, "Gladly the cross I'd bear," wasn't about a bear named Gladly who suffered from strabismus.
@Fact Boy This is actually a joke told by the Candice Bergen character in a scene from Mike Nichols’ 1971 movie, “Carnal Knowledge”. Maybe she heard it from your mother? !!!!!! …… Rheas, begone!!!
@Fact Boy As a kid my father thought New Testament events took place in Poland, because he kept mishearing a line in church. He interpreted "umęczon pod Ponckin Piłatem" (tortured by Pontius Pilate) as "umęczon pod płońskim powiatem" (tortured in the Płońsk district - which was an area near to where my dad lived). So yeah, these things do happen 🙂 . . . Are there emus in Płońsk?
Today officially marked my 1000 day streak!
@Coleman Maberry, Now that is a milestone! Congratulations!!
@Coleman Maberry Congratulations!! That's a commitment.
I enjoyed this puzzle for the most part. The clueing was on my wavelength, and I understood the "crossed a bear" part of the theme, but the "sounds like" feature was lost on me (and, really, having read the column - those answers and expressions they supposedly sound like don't actually sound the same, do they?). Sadly, there was a lot of trivia, and much of it was of the worst kind for a foreigner like me - American sports teams, sports organizations, universities and a guy from SNL. As always though, that is on me, as nobody is forcing me to solve American crosswords. And this puzzle still felt easier than this week's Monday!
@Andrzej You can always come here for pop culture hints. Really, I’m amazed that anyone whose first language is not English isn’t using the Reveal button in every other word.
@Andrzej it’s a pronunciation thing, particularly in American English: we often pronounce the D sound like a T and use schwas instead of stronger vowel sounds. So “Crossed a bear” sounds like “crost uh bare”, and “Cross to bear” sounds like “cross tuh bare”. BTW, I always love seeing your comments and am super impressed that you can do our very idiosyncratic American puzzles! <a href="https://punchng.com/when-you-have-to-pronounce-d-as-t/?amp" target="_blank">https://punchng.com/when-you-have-to-pronounce-d-as-t/?amp</a>
When Nathan Hale was in middle school, his teacher asked if he could use an asterisk in a sentence. He said "I regret that I have but one * for my country".
Kudos to Nathan for just putting this grid together. First, it’s a tight theme, I believe. Finding “A to B” phrases that can convert to “A’ed a B” phrases, well, I don’t think there are that many out there. Up-to-speed → Upped-a-speed, maybe. Signal-to-noise → Signalled-a-noise, maybe. But these are hard to come by, and then their letter lengths have to meet the requirements of symmetry. Tough! Second, the three bears must cross these answers, and a grid must be designed to accommodate this. Tough! All this on a NYT puzzle debut. Bravo, sir! Hail Nathan! But also – what an original theme! Double-layered and never done before. Again, on a debut! Throw in a trio of words I adore – OUTCROP, USURP, SKEDADDLE – and, for me, all in all, this adds up to quite an impressive creation, debut or not. Nathan, your theme is so interesting and unusual that I’m hoping for more from your fertile mind. Please? Congratulations on your debut, and thank you for making this!
@Lewis Agreed. It's an outstanding debut, and a lot of fun to solve! Thanks, Nathan.
So I thought the "DA" themed answers and "Bears" were totally unrelated. Then of course thinking of the old SNL skit, "Da Bears!" made it much more sensible. Great and fun puzzle.
Mr. Hale, if you really, really really -- and I mean really --enjoyed making this puzzle, then yes, I enjoyed solving it as much as you enjoyed making it! I confess I hadn't gotten the second layer of the theme until Sam pointed it out, but the first layer was stand-alone sweet and entertaining. As I took my time savoring the cluing, the one that I found the most joy in was "Article in Le Monde." It's not an uncommon misdirect, I know, but that's exactly what brought a smile to my face. Just three years ago, when I started doing puzzles, I would have muttered "Well, how am I supposed to know which article they're talking about?" And now here I am, filling in that UNE without pulling any hairs, and remembering an old Virginia Slims slogan for its cigarettes ad: "You've come a long way, baby." And so I say thank you to all of you commentors and column writers who have brought me this far and helped me learn and understand the magical world of crosswords. I couldn't have come all this way without you. And to you, Mr. Hale, thank you for this very satisfying honey bear of a puzzle and congratulations on your début! May this be only your first to be published here.
@sotto voce Did I really write "commentors"??? I have no idea where that came from. Please forgive the cruciverbalist botch, fellow commentErs! . . . . . . Omus. Oops. Emus.
Rabbit's visited his friend all week: he's on a Winnie streak! (Will it continue? That remains to be ursine.)
@Mike And if I messed up the pronunciation of that, it's ursine of the times.
@Mike This pun bears safeguarding. Gold T-locks could fill that need. 🐻🧸🧸🧸🧸🐻🐻🐻🐻🧸🧸🧸🐻🧸🧸🧸🧸🐻
@Mike Far be it for me to pooh-pooh eeyore contributions here. I think even the emus like them.
Here I am again, your resident alphadoppeltotter, after a visit one week ago, to report that today’s puzzle has an unusually high (20 or more) number of double letters. There are 20 in the grid. How unusual is unusually high? The last time this happened legitimately, that is, not theme related or the result of a grid with an extra row or column, was more than three years ago (12/25/20). BTW, I also report on unusually low results (fewer than five). Inexplicably, I’ve taken on this role for more than seven years, and thus this post. I remain your humble servant, and ever on the alert.
@Lewis "I’ve taken on this role for more than seven years(...)" Yet one more reason why we love you here! Thank you, with bear hugs. . . . . . . . No bear hugs for emus.
Sometimes I think to myself, “I could write a book…” but then I read a book that blows my mind with how brilliant the author must be to have written such an impressive work, and I don’t pick up a pen. Sometimes I think to myself, “I could write a crossword puzzle…” Well, you get the idea. This puzzle stops me from picking up the pen. Wowwwww.
Liked this one. Sleepily, slowly, took my thumb and pinky and made the *Y* in a very just-woke-up kind of way. Husband said, “Um…what are you doing with your hand..?” I said, “…hang ten…no…ASL…” He may or may not think I need medical attention.
I’m in awe. Three bears dividing 3 of the 4 clues that all sound like phrases I know but spoken in the accent I hear from everyone around me right now…with a bad cold. Great puzzle, and right for a Wednesday!
It seemed to me that there was an additional mini-theme of doubled letters. OOMPH, EERIE, RADII, UPENN, GREGG, ALLOTS, REDD.
Golly, but wasn't that a jolly romp? Very well done and thanks to the puzzle team for the fun. How you do it day after day so sparklingly well is in itself a puzzle. On a completely different note, I must make mention of this because my mind is still glowing from the magnificent performance we heard last night in St. Paul of Bach's "Goldberg Variations" by Vikingur Òlafsson. Essentially note perfect (and I had the score in my lap), but beyond the technical prowess on stunning display was the psychological and emotional penetration of his performance that sets him apart as a musician of rare ability and genius. On a par with Gould. Plus, he's a kind, outgoing person who treated us afterward with deference and charm. What a gift! I cannot recall a performance of any kind as thoroughly, tremendously moving on both an intellectual and emotional scale. He's playing it again this morning and I've taken the morning off to attend one more time.
I wonder if this is the same Nathan Hale that writes and illustrates amazing kids comics. Could be a coincidence, but it would be cool (and jealousy inducing) if it were the same person.
@Allie I'm also curious! We love love love the Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales in our house, which have wordplay and all kinds of cleverness in them. For those asking about the Revolutionary War figure, you might like these books, and what a wonderful thing it'd be if this was the same fella who wrote today's puzzle.
Dear Nathan Hale, It must be a burden to share one's name with a Revolutionary War hero & martyr who was captured (later, executed) by the British while on an undercover mission to gather intelligence in New York City. But now you've lived up to his legacy by your SUB-mission to New York City's paper of record, in the games section no less, where there is a gathering of intelligence like no other.* OK, the connection is a bit strained -- I'll keep working on it. Also, it shows noble character that you happily credited the editors for one of the better clues (POLYGRAPH). Funny puzzle, and this is probably the carping of a puzzle-twit, but I'd have preferred the long themers to have some kind of relationship with the particular bear they are crossing; I imagine that would have taken more intelligence gathering than humanly possible. On the other hand, the elegant working of the dizzying amount of double letters including twin vertical ING/INGs in the SW corner was dazzling. Bet I wasn't the only one who filled in Chris ROCK at first up in the NW, only to have to REDDY up the ROCK soon after. (Man, my quips are so rough this time around I might need to gather a bit more intelligence myself!). * this has probably been talked about on the chatline, but there's a great article in one of the latest Vanity Fairs about the game staff and puzzlemeisters at the NYT, worth the read... <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/inside-the-new-york-times-big-bet-on-games" target="_blank">https://www.vanityfair.com/news/inside-the-new-york-times-big-bet-on-games</a>
@john ezra - Sly move, sneaking the constructor's namesake punctuation into your comment at the bottom, when it fits in so very well with his debut puzzle's theme! I refer, of course, to '*' aka Nathan Hale. As Eric Raymond's _The New Hacker's Dictionary_ explains, it derives from that patriot's best-remembered utterance, "I regret that I have but one asterisk for my country!"
Congratulations on your NYT debut, Mr. Hale! I admire your persistence! Your grid took me back to my childhood, reminding me of the stuffed Toucan Sam that I got by eating way too much Froot Loops cereal when I was about six or seven, and the Matchbox cars that were among my brother’s and my favorite toys. I don’t hear SKEDADDLE often, which is too bad. It’s such a fun word. Thanks!
@Eric Hougland The matchbox reference took me back to my childhood, too. Those toy cars were a luxury here - barely available and prohibitively expensive in the 1980s, and still not cheap in the early 90s. "Communist" Poland had virually no imports from the West, and what little was imported (the state had a monopoly on foreign imports, btw) was sold in special state-owned shops, called Pewex. That name was an acronym, formed from Przedsiębiorstwo Eksportu Wewnętrznego - meaning Internal Export Enterprise. Internal Export? What on earth was that? Well, whatever the state imported it was then free to sell domestically, and that was called Internal Export. That economy made no sense at all. Well, anyway, in the 1980s you could buy matchbox toys in Pewex only, and you had to pay in dollars. Exchange rates for dollars were crazy - an average person made enough złoty (Polish currency, złoty means golden) to live well, but in dollars a monthly salary was like 10 or 20 or thereabouts. Very few of us kids had any Western toys. And yet I am nostalgic about my childhood.
When I finally said ixnay on the ULNAE for the arm bones, things started to come together… Cute theme, although too bad that POOH couldn’t have fit somewhere. Congratulations on your debut, NH! Emus, you were totally upstaged today. Go, RHEAs!
@Kate -- I would like t have seen GOLDILOCKS as well! et tu emu
“I regret that I have but one like to give for my crossword.” Nice debut! Was so relieved that “Booboo” turned out to be the bear rather than that atrocious reality show star.
@Wspd (This may be but a whiny post by an academic bemoaning our youngest generations’ lack of historical literacy, but) this should be the day’s most recommended post. Thank you for the chuc… er… lol.
I’ve never left a comment in 10 years of doing the puzzles. I want to thank the creator for adding “I’m On A Boat.”
@Michelle - The please don’t destroy segment from the latest SNL was a roast battle between the boys and Dakota Johnson. The build to the last line is steady and sure - I believe you’d appreciate the final zinger… <a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XX_Rxvg8vdo&pp=ygUUcGxlYXNlIGRvbid0IGRlc3Ryb3k" target="_blank">https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XX_Rxvg8vdo&pp=ygUUcGxlYXNlIGRvbid0IGRlc3Ryb3k</a>%3D
Ugh. Way, way too many proper names in critical places. I don’t normally comment on Wednesday puzzles, but I was seriously out of sync with this one, and we all know it can’t possibly be my fault. I’ve enjoyed puzzles that I had trouble with. This one was just annoying.
Loved the INGs next to each other in SW corner. I thought, that can't be right...
I found this puzzle to be a little obnoxious. I love a challenge, but these clues were vague, not clever. Getting a hard one should make you think “oh of course! I should have gotten that,” but instead I found myself rolling my eyes a bit when certain answers finally filled in.
@William Beare, Looks like Nathan CROSSEDABEAR(e)! (My apologies to all. It was just lying there waiting to be picked up, and I just couldn’t help myself)
@William Beare I agree. Annoying. None of the crosses made sense.
Ha! Yeah, I liked it. Clever construction that went half a level deeper than most gags.
This theme is really amusing. I appreciate that it's about the sounds words make, and how your ears can get tricked in to hearing funny things. Thanks for an enjoyable puzzle!
Seems like Nathan spent some time deciding to take a stab at sending in puzzles for publication: He WEIGHED A GO. In other news, I misread 16A as “measurement on a blender” (yeah I can’t explain it) and was trying to come up with words like “purée” or “shred” etc starting with “u”. Good to give the old think tank an extra bit of exercise!
I’m sure Mr. Hale gets this way too often, and perhaps one should know better than to make a joke about someone’s name, but let me at least be the first to inaugurate it in the NYT crossword community: Nathan Hale did not “regret that he had more than one theme to give to his crossword”. Honestly nice debut. I got the bears quickly (even Boo-boo, I guess that shows my age) but the across clues gave me some paws. It’s a bit of a nit that the across theme really didn’t have anything to do with the down theme, but heck two themes are better than one and it was really fun and clever. Great debut and a revolutionary idea.
@SP As mentioned earlier, in Chicago it's Da Bears! Tiddley-pom.
Until I came here, I didn't understand READIEDAROCK -> READY TO ROCK, or any of the other theme answer morphing, at all. It didn't help that READIEDAROCK is the first theme answer, and READY TO ROCK is a phrase I've only vaguely heard before. I also think it's because when I say READIEDAROCK, it's "reh-dee-duh-rock," while READY TO ROCK is "reh-dee-two-rock," which is close but not the same.
The theme was interesting but felt disjointed with two independent gimmicks, and only one acknowledged. The constructor could have tied it all together by changing the clue for 51 Across to "Betrayed Paddington in Chicago? ..."
A mash-up of this theme with Tuesday's: “Sued the Brookings Institute, or what I did for five minutes after reading Tuesday’s revealer?” TRIED A THINK TANK On Monday we had ppalindromess, Tuesday we had that dastardly imperative to think imperatively, and today we had a double shot (aural and visual) of Bearitude. I will dream of an ingenious Thursday that borders on evil. Perhaps nothing but black squares in the grid with each clue consisting simply of “—“? Well done, Nathan, on a sparkling debut.
Loved it! I solved it last night before Wordplay was published or the comments section was opened, and was eager to read the comments this morning. Seems like most thought it was fun, clever, and a great debut. I loved the three bears!
What an enjoyable puzzle! Congratulations, Nathan. SNL was an answer, but the clue to USSR made me think of another classic late night show, SCTV, which had a running series of skits in which CCCP TV interrupted their broadcast. The Second City in that case was Toronto, not Chicago, but close enough.
@Kris T “Next on Three-C-P-One: Tibor’s Tractor” The weird things that get lodged in my brain…
My mother always used to tell me about a song they sang in church, “Gladly, the cross-eyed bear.” Thanks for the Wednesday fun. Although how can you have Booboo without Yogi?
Huh? Two non-related themes, of which one was not even a theme?!? Won’t give you a ‘dee’ for the puzzle but C- will have to do.
Hey, BOOBOO. Any puzzle where you have to SKEDADDLE is okay by me. On the crunchier side for a Wednesday which was greatly appreciated. The college nicknames almost did me in again. And was chuffed (hi, Sue Jean) to see and know ELON as a gimme.
@Vaer SKEDADDLE is just a great word, isn’t it? I was surprised to learn just now that it’s apparently of British origin. I would’ve guessed that it was an Americanism.
Thank you, Mr. Hale!! I had such great fun and enjoyment with this puzzle, especially because it’s rare for me to solve anything past Tuesday without a single Googling! At least there were enough crossings to help me solve the trivia clues I didn’t know. I was totally able to hear—and ENJOY—the long theme entry puns. 👏🏻👏🏻 Please send more! I will be watching for your name on future puzzles.
@GingerR Way to go! It’s very fun to see a puzzle come together. Congratulations on a nice achievement. I’m sure there are more to come.
Started off quite quickly (more so than Monday and Tuesday); loved the clue at 20A. However I slowed down quite a bit after that. Back on track with CROSSED A BEAR which made me LOL. All in all a great Wednesday puzzle and another great debut. Come back soon Nathan.
@suejean Just try some other trivia than American sports and colleges next time, please, Nathan ;). . . . . UEmu
With most puzzles, I end up with a favorite word; usually one we don't see often. Today: USURP! A great word, and one of those words that looks kind of funky when you write it out, at least to me.
@Anne SKEDADDLE on out of here before I USURP your EARLdom and steal all your tea and sandwiches. You are right, USURP does look funny.
@Anne it looks funny written and sounds funny spoken, which puts it pretty high in my word pantheon, up there with boondoggle and chiaroscuro.
I guess I'm too much of a simple-minded literalist. I solved the puzzle in my average time, but without reading the blog, I would never have guessed what the theme was.
@Eddie Don't be so hard on yourself. Some commenters after you didn't grasp the theme even after reading the column. (It's no longer considered a blog.) But for heaven's sake, didn't you notice the shaded squares?
For some (very) odd reason I always thought CCCP stood for Central Committee of the Communist Party but that was in the days before Google Translate. Sheesh. The original software related clue would have been a cool dook (API's) but it is always nice to be visited by our pollinating pals. Must have been tough coming up with the *x DA y* theme. Best I could come up with was . . . . . . "Halved the taper candle?" SAWEDALIGHT Many thanks.
Kudos Nathan on your debut! I enjoyed the puzzle very much. My favourites today were PRAISED, DANDY and EARL. But lots of clever clues, some I got because I have been solving for several months now, while other words were new to me like RHEA. Just a pleasing combination.
Constructors are so clever! Loved it. (Took me embarrassingly long to find SKiDADDLE crossing UViA.)
One of the most baffling puzzles I've ever done. The peculiar, not-in-the-language phrases that no one said ever are NOT the answers that are highlighted in gray. And the [crossing] answers that ARE highlighted in gray are not the least bit interesting or unusual. It's puzzles like this that originally drove me to the realm of the crossword blog since there is no way in the world that I can wait until tomorrow to find out WHAT THE BLEEP IS GOING ON HERE... So now I've read Rex and I still don't understand WHAT THE BLEEP IS GOING ON HERE. How does SMOKEY change "EDA" to "TO". How does TEDDY? How does BOOBOO? This puzzle either sailed right over my head or right under my head, and I don't know which. Maybe I'll crawl back into bed now.
Nancy, When you get up later, reread the revealer clue and answer. The theme is really quite simple and quite elegant. Sorry, and a bit surprised, that the first pass didn't work for you.
@Nancy Yes, the puzzle sailed right over your head. The revealer is CROSSED A BEAR. It is a play on "cross to bear". Similarly, the theme answers are all similar plays on words. READIED A ROCK is a play on "ready to rock". You can figure out the others. All of the theme answers cross a bear. TEDDY is a bear. SMOKEY is a bear. BOO BOO is a bear. (I suppose you might not recognize the latter, but he is Yogi's sidekick.) Got it?
enjoyed this puzzle but the theme didn't really seem to make sense as a cohesive theme, more of just multiple themes in one puzzle. still confused about LESS for "taking off" in 46A.
@maya and ant “Less” as in minus— “taking off” as in subtracting.
@maya and ant I'm guessing it's a forced expression for subtraction; if so, "Take away" would have been a better clue, as in 5 take away 3 is 2, or alternatively 5 less 3 is 2.
@maya and ant I thought of it as on a bill...$40, then, LESS the discount is _ or $40, then take off the discount is _
For a change as an Aussie I felt some advantage coming from a place where “t” and “d” are routinely interchangeable in speech, and the use of very neutral vowel sounds means all our vowels can sound similar,. This meant the across themed words solved fairly easily,…although I still struggled with the usual football coaches, sports teams etc :)
So we have homophones for "ready to rock", "time to get up", "back to work" and "cross to bear"? And the first three of these literally CROSSEDABEAR, namely TEDDY, SMOKEY and BOOBOO? This has to qualify for one of the oddest "themes" I can recall. Certainly quite a few elements, so the constructor really challenged himself to put this all together. And, on the whole, the fill is pretty solid. Liked the parallel INGs in the SW corner. Congrats on the debut.
I had to read the column to understand those entries. And I certainly did not see the TEDDY, BOOBOO and SMOKEY references on my own. Good puzzle and fun. For 31D I had 'Bills' for too long. And it's nice to see ELI as something other than a Yalie.
@Andrew - The 18th-century patriot Nathan Hale was an Eli, and is honored by a statue on the Old Campus at Yale. So the Yalie lurks in the background anyway.
That North West really got me. Always fun to battle through a tricky chunk of squares. The rest of the puzzle went pretty quick. Similar story to yesterday. Another great puzzle. Thanks, Nathan Hale!
As a non American, I found this very tough due to a large number of US-centric trivia today (sports, colleges, TV…)
@Melanie Understood. It would be fun once in a while to see a puzzle (with appropriate warning) with lots of common, but not in the U.S., answers. One can only imagine the wailing and gnashing of teeth on the blog. Not to mention the crying over broken streaks. Oh the humanity!
This puzzle is clearly going to go... ___d__ history ___w__ ___n__ We might be headed for a brazillion comments today. Anyway... a struggle for me off and on for a while, but just a quite enjoyable workout and I did manage to get it all together. Had a few kind of interesting puzzle finds today. I'll put those in a reply. ...
@Rich in Atlanta As threatened: First puzzle was a Sunday from September 13, 1998 by Cathy Allis, with the title: "Getting A-Long." A couple of theme answers: BAKEINTHEUSSR BLUEGRACESTATE BAITATHOUSAND LACEYCOMEHOME Here's the Xword Info link: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=9/13/1998&g=106&d=A" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=9/13/1998&g=106&d=A</a> And then... A Sunday from June 16, 2002 with the title: "Working over C's." Some theme answers: DUSKBILLEDPLATYPUS MUSHTOBEDESIRED BASKINTHEUSSR FASTSANDFIGURES Here's the link for that one: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=6/16/2002&g=63&d=A" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=6/16/2002&g=63&d=A</a> And... there were a couple of others, but I think I'll leave it at that. ..