NPR just announced that NY Times Puzzle Editor Will Shortz had a stroke on February 4. He is recovering and was well enough to speak at the conclusion of the Sunday Puzzle. I’m sure the thoughts of puzzle-lovers everywhere are with him.
@Maryland Bear Oh, my! Wishing him a full and speedy recovery!
@Maryland Bear Thank you for informing us. May Shortz have a smooth and rapid recovery!
@Maryland Bear My heart just sank. Mr. Shortz, may your only stroke now be one of great good luck for a speedy and complete recovery. Sending you sincere high hopes and loving wishes for your wellness!
Wow! Finding ten phrases, and then placing them in order from TEN down to ONE is quite a remarkable feat of construction. And in most cases the number spans across two words. This was great fun, and definitely a case where getting the theme early on was a big help with the solve. SIXTUS, TENT DRESS and EARTH REENTRY are so clever. Congratulations, Hoang-Kim. This was a blast!
For 24 Across, “It might help you keep up with old classmates “. I confidently entered POLICEBLOTTER. just me? hello emus
@Disco Volante LOL! Pray tell, who on earth did you go to school with? Still LOL! I can't seem to stop. . . . . . (How do emus get away with so much?)
@Disco Volante I’ve got two classmates who became newsworthy. One got national attention when he was running a used car lot and ran a “buy a car, get a free gun” promo. The other, who bullied me in elementary school, is now in prison for murdering his mother for money to buy drugs,
I was really grossed out by the fact that COWPOO was used in the creation of a vaccine until I realized my error!
Incredible constructing feat and a joy to solve. I wish I hadn’t read the puzzle title before starting. Got EIGHT and then TEN pretty early and realized what was going on based on the “Countdown” title. Still blown away that Hoang-Kim Vu pulled this off! But I shouldn’t be - his 9/11/23 “Still I Rise” puzzle was one of the most ingenious Monday puzzles ever. A star in the making. I love how much more diverse the constructor pool has become over the past several year. And so much youth. Very hopeful for this crazy pastime of ours.
@Puzzlemucker, Same here both in the admiration for the puzzle and its constructor, and the twinge of disappointment that the title was so revealing — especially when compounded by Will’s note (“fitting, given the theme”).
@Puzzlemucker - I agree! "Still I Rise" instantly became my favorite Monday puzzle ever.
NerdNotes: 10 – Number of letters in the constructor’s name; number of NYT puzzles he’s made. 9 – Fill-in-the-blank clues. 8 – Answers with double-E’s. 7 – Number of letters in the theme-echo answer (NUMERAL). 6 – Multisyllabic long-O enders (PHONO, EXACTO, OCTAVIO, SOLO, NERO, UMNO). 5 – Animals (OWLET, CROC, COWpox, COB, EMUS ). 4 – Vowel-less answers (PJS, STD, LGS, SLR) 3 – Unabbreviated geographical locations (ERITRREA, ASPEN, PARAMUS) 2 – Letter shy of a pangram (Q, Z). 1 – Palindrome (ELLE). 0 – Number of answers, aside from the theme answers, that had a number embedded, an elegant touch.
@Lewis DOS counters your last point.
@Lewis Love it! That's the countdown I've been waiting for! Emus -- cue up Bowie's "Space Oddity"!
@Lewis DOS is a numeric non-theme answer. Dos Equis refers to the XX on the label of the beer. Emus Have Green Eggs sounds like a book title.
My abacus is reliable. I can always count on it! (Others leave a lot to bead desired.)
@Mike I'd rather use my logarithmic rule instead. But I'll let it slide.
@Mike Back in the day (1980s) it was very common for proprietors of small shops in Japan to add up purchases in an abacus. Their kids may not have been so adept, and thus the introduction of the abacus with a built-in calculator. Not sure if those are still sold!
Caught on to the notion of the numbers but I filled them in with rebuses at first, and then saw the trick so had to change it to get my gold star. Blown away by the construction! How do they do that? I can’t help but see STU for the name of five popes though! (I know it’s Sixtus but it jumps out at me as Stu).
@Ann I had them filled with the corresponding NUMERALs. (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻
Here’s something I don’t understand….I get that people may not like a certain style of puzzle because it just isn’t fun to them…Such ias it is with the weekly hate on rebuses. What I don’t understand is them then complaining that it hurt their solve time. Don’t they do the puzzle for fun? Wouldn’t more time solving mean more time with something they like? Isn’t that why we’re given an average on the stats page? Because we’re competing with ourselves and sometimes we’re better than average and sometimes worse? Conceptually….wouldnt the satisfaction of solving be greater after working through a harder slog? Isn’t the whole reason a person does the NYT puzzle is because it’s hard? There are certainly easier puzzles out there is someone wants a fast solve.
@Paul I agree 100%. It was ages before I even looked at the solve time. I just love doing the puzzles and I admit there’s a little bit of melancholy when I finish one! I’ve been solving for a long time, first in the newspaper, then I bought some NYT books and now on the app. For me the pleasure is in figuring out the clues and solving the puzzle. I could t tell you my average times!
@Paul Bingo bingo bingo! And hear hear! What a strange society we live in, where competitive speed seems to be a central criterion for many. I can't imagine someone saying "I went to this fabulous French restaurant and it was great, we finished the six courses in 45 minutes! Best restaurant ever!!!!" but to me that's kinda what this time-obsession about the crosswords is like. But then I used to mostly take AMTRAK when traveling (it started from avoiding flying which I don't like, but it's also really cool, at least if you have a way to sleep). A few people would be utterly puzzled by the concept. "Why would you sit on a train when you can get there so much faster by plane?!" I guess the "Desert Wind" would be lost on them... Mmmm, for dinner tonight I might eat some wonderful delivery leftovers from an Indian restaurant, I look forward to achieving the BEST kind of meal, scarfing down those samosas and Fire Chicken in record time— let's see if I can eat it all in 6 minutes even though it's not Monday! Urp! "Well, we know where we're goin' But we don't know where we've been And we know what we're knowin' But we can't say what we've seen And we're not little children And we know what we want And the future is certain Give us time to work it out We're on a road to nowhere Come on inside Takin' that ride to nowhere We'll take that ride" [Talking Heads] <a href="https://youtu.be/LQiOA7euaYA?si=Cbz6TbIeYnQw_Cgu" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/LQiOA7euaYA?si=Cbz6TbIeYnQw_Cgu</a>
@Paul Agree. About 25 years ago my son did data entry in an office with all women. The atmosphere was very relaxed. Then he moved to a bigger city where he had two male coworkers. He said they'd be looking at each others stacks of completed work and race to outdo each other. He said to me, "Guys are so weirdly competitive." Any more, not just guys, most everyone gets caught up in the game. Yesterday's NYT had an article called "Hurry up and Wait." It was worth the 2-3 minutes it took to read read it.
My fill-in method is to work the crosses resulting from words I’ve filled in. This takes me all over the grid in a chicken-scratch manner. So, at puzzle’s end, I understood the COUNTDOWN theme’s component of numbers dropping downward (and the little trick they were involved with), but the second component – that they counted down from 10 to one – well, I never saw that. That is, until I saw the completed grid in XwordInfo (before coming here), where the theme numbers are highlighted, and boom! It became immediately clear how the numbers counted down, a very “Oh that is uber cool” moment, lifting the puzzle from fairly ordinary to very special. Suddenly I realized the skill that went into making this puzzle, on top of the brilliance behind the double-play on “COUNTDOWN”, bringing a whole new layer of appreciation. That was an OMG moment, and now I’m in love with the theme and filled with respect for your expertise, Hoang-Kim. You are a beast, and thank you so much for making this!
@Lewis - I, too, had solved the entire puzzle without realizing the numbers appeared in order from 10 down to 1, not just occurring on the "down" clues. Once it was pointed out on Wordplay, my mind was blown! Any quibbles I had about one answer or another were forgiven, once I realized how complex of a task the constructor had set for himself!
@Lewis Understanding the second part of the theme, counting down the numbers in descending order in the grid, helped me fill in some answers that were giving me trouble. My time was already 117% longer than average, and without that help from the theme, would have been much longer.
This puzzle is like great artwork that mesmerizes. I know nothing about construction, but I can tell when something is a tour de force. A countdown two ways, and in a Sunday-sized grid? It takes my breath away. Thank you, Mr. Vu. Your talent is phenomenal!
I heard a Will Shortz recording on PBS this morning. He told us that he was absent from "The Puzzle" because he is recovering from a stroke. He sounded pretty good though a bit weak. I wish him a full recovery.
One of those rare ones where the constructor's skill is impressive AND the puzzle is fun! I think the name SIXTUS stopped at five popes because no one could get their mouths around Pope Sixtus the Sixth.
@Teresa , when some of his flock fell ill, the papal bulletin could say "The sixth Sixtus's sixth sheep's sick." And when he himself followed suit: The sick sixth Sixtus's sixth sheep's sick. I couldn't help it. No disrespect to the sheiks who originally inhabited this phrase.
I’m nearing the end of my first solving year, and this puzzle really opened my eyes to how far I’ve come. I was worried at first when I realized there wasn’t an explainer clue but then EIGHT popped out at me. That combined with the title did the trick! It still took several more crosses and a confused googling of TTDRESS before I got the rest of the gimmick but get there I did. Though I’m still not beyond needing a little Google to get me through, I was nowhere near being able to complete a Sunday puzzle without autocheck a year ago. To small victories and big improvements!
@Anna Congratulations! How far you’ve come!! Enjoy this word-nerd journey. It’s lovely in so many ways. Well done!
@Anna how wonderful to hear such a progress report! I've been doing the NYT for at least 53 years, starting in high school, and still delight in the "aha!" moment I get when working an imaginatively constructed puzzle like today's. Keep it up and you'll be solving without google and autocheck in no time!
This puzzle really had my number, or should I say numbers. I wasted a lot of time filling in rebus answers where a single letter would have been enough and had more than my usual quota of typos and false starts. But I had a blast and enjoyed every minute spent on this cleverly constructed gem. I found the crossing of ALBEE and ONEILL rather dramatic.
This was a brilliant puzzle, although the comments section is exactly what I expected.
@David funny, I like a puzzle, but I HATE the gimmicky ones, - as a first clue… seriously… read through, was not interested at all… even the bonus puzzle… I don’t watch or listen to podcasts, I don’t have time and so many are just a waste of time with people who haven’t a clue… and are trying too hard to be the next kardashian… I’m sticking with vertex, Wordle, connections, letterboxed… not enjoying crosswords anymore…
Dear Will, if i may call you that, sending you my very best wishes for a speedy recovery. I’m sure you know that thousands of us are rooting for you. And while i am at it, also sending you big thanks for so much happy puzzling. 🌸❤️🩹❤️🩹❤️🩹 Susan Mango
I love this puzzle on the micro level but have mixed feelings on the macro level. The virtuosity of the count-down numbers -- in order, all going down, is extraordinary. Little things caught my eye: aspirer resting easily atop "Don't work too hard"...the threesome of freight train / red cap / steel ...the Italian sub theme of Corleones (and their various alliances and avengers) / meatballs / Nero & Sixtus / Michelangelo's pieta ...the rhymes of owlet & snippet, phono & exacto... Yet overall I had mixed feelings about the countdown theme, wanting it to end with a cool graphic takeoff effect (bound not to work on various apps and platforms, since the tech emus in the Games Dept. don't always BETA TEST, yo!) or some fill at the end to blast us off. Instead, we get the opposite, "Concern at the end of a space journey." I so wanted something to happen after I did the count down, which is all about the anticipation of release. Relief denied is justice delayed! Or something. "Red caps" have an interesting history. They were first worn by Black porters, starting in 1890, to distinguish them from the blue caps (mainly white) who had other duties. The red cap then became symbol of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters as they organized under the guidance of the great A. Phillip Randolph, which was largely Black until well after desegregation. As I rarely take trains I'd be interested to learn if there are still red caps and if a racial element is still associated with the term.
@john ezra Thanks for that historical reminder and reference to A. Phillip Randolph. Our old landlord’s deceased husband had been a sleeping car porter. She had some great photos of him in uniform in his heyday. She ended up living to be 101 and was the granddaughter of slaves. A remarkable woman - at 90, she would still drive “old folks” to church and deliver food to people. Thanks for stirring up those memories.
@john ezra -- Yes! I too wish there were cool graphics at the end. Maybe highlight each theme number, one at a time, a second apart, from ten to one, then keeping the numbers highlighted. Or simply just highlighting the numbers, as they did in XwordInfo, which made the 10-to-one countdown aspect obvious to me, whereas I never saw it while solving the puzzle.
@john ezra, As a pen-on-magazine Sunday solver I didn’t mind the lack of special effects, which I would have missed anyway. So I enjoyed all the good elements you mention and then some. I would add the delightful cross of ONEILL and ALBEE to the list.
Finished it with (except for confirmation of a spelling) no look-ups. Whew! I wandered through the puzzle, catching a word here (ETRITREA, PARAMUS) remembering a name there (OCTAVIO, ALBEE), and the lights really went on with the PETIT FOURS clue because I knew what it had to be, then figured out how. After that, it was like a treasure hunt, and I dashed to the end—well, not exactly dashed, forgetting to pause it while I saw to the pots and pans on the stove, so who knows how long it took, and who cares with such an ELEGANT masterpiece of a puzzle. I wish it would just keep unfolding, so I could go on working it forever. I am blown away, Hoang-Kim Vu, when I look at the finished grid, full of admiration and wonder, and I find it reassuring, even comforting, that you are working in such a vital field. Thank you, and I do appreciate it, but DON'T WORK TOO HARD—try to save something for us.
Here is Will himself on today’s NPR puzzle segment announcing his own stroke and recovery. I’m sure I speak for everyone here on the board….except for that one guy in Natick…Get well soon. <a href="https://www.npr.org/series/4473090/sunday-puzzle" target="_blank">https://www.npr.org/series/4473090/sunday-puzzle</a>
Beautiful, elegant construction. Clever theme. Great clues. Challenging, fun solve. Naturally, some members of the drama department were unhappy due to the plot twist, but for me, a puzzle like this leaves a uniquely cruciverbal afterglow. I remain in awe of constructors in general and of Hoang-Kim Vu in particular for today’s gem.
At last, a sweet addition to the tamale club! Even if you only had room for one tamale and one panini, you can have multiple “petit fours” after, because they are small. I enjoyed the delayed aha of this - the numbers made their presence known quite awhile before I knew what to do with them.
@Cat Lady Margaret A Kudo for your comment.
it was all fun and games until nope... that's not a rebus. LOL! I noticed the theme immediately which made the whole solve more enjoyable. And I'm actually not mad at thinking the clues were supposed to be entered as a rebus because it actually helped me make sure I had all of them. And replacing the rebuses with the proper letters in the end wasn't all bad lol.
@Joya For me half the fun is figuring out when it is and isn't a rebus
I am completely in awe of this puzzle. Just getting the directional shift to work is an accomplishment; having the downturns be the cardinals was mind-blowing. This was my favorite Sunday puzzle in many years. Keep 'em coming Hoang-Kim Vu!
I was so proud of myself for figuring out maybe a third of the way in that this was a rebus puzzle—and quickly filled in each dash square... then patted myself profusely on the back and imagined how joyously I would proclaim my ultimate victory! What!? No happy music!? What the what!? Welp, if pride goeth before a fall, I can be happy that I didn't completely fall and smash my face. Maybe I just tripped a bit before catching my balance and deleting my rebuses. To be fair, I also hadn't caught that I had SEEthED at 129A instead of SEES RED, which doesn't work with the crosses, of course. There were some tricky crossings for me and I had to do one look-up, as a result, but I was able to eke out the rest. Came in over average time, as a result but that's okay. It didn't feel like it and I had fun! And learned some things. I've never tried to construct and am still so new to this but this had to be one heck of a tough puzzle to create... and to keep it so fun and lively, at the same time is quite a feat! I smiled all the way through it—err, especially in my brief but undeserved flirtation with my own brilliance! :-) Thanks for a great puzzle!
@HeathieJ me too! I also had seethed and didn't notice until much later.
@HeathieJ I you thought SEEthED was a problem, you should have tried "got mad." It was so far off that it almost corrected itself.
@HeathieJ My least favorite moment in a Sunday puzzle is filling in the “final” letter and getting the notation that something is wrong. Especially in this puzzle, where there were more than a few guesses, I resigned myself to a long period of flyspecking, starting in the NW corner. Sure enough, the SEESRED/SEEthED entry was the last answer on the grid. Nevertheless, I take my hat off to the constructor for a brilliant puzzle. Well done!
This was a very impressive construction with little compromise to achieve it. A perfect Sunday puzzle from Hoang-Kim Vu! STU would be a great name for a pope. I was disappointed that it was actually SIXTUS. So boring. I cottoned to the theme with FREIGHT TRAIN, which always brings Elizabeth Cotten to mind, so now I know where my playlist will start today. <a href="https://youtu.be/IUK8emiWabU?si=QeDvhv0qTEhb3HuH" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/IUK8emiWabU?si=QeDvhv0qTEhb3HuH</a>
@Nancy. J Absolutely made my day. Thank you for that.
@Nancy. J I’m so glad you posted this. The popes were the one that I didn’t understand. Four popes chose the name SIXTUS? Huh.
@Nancy. J You "cottoned" to the theme. LOL. Good one. (I guess you were on the right track). The train that inspired Libba Cotten's song is about a mile from my house. That train only comes about once a week now, and has to leave the same way it entered the town of Carrboro as it dead ends at the UNC plant.
Will Shortz had a stroke?! Am I the only one who just learned this? (He delivered a brief message about it on NPR, he's in rehab and said he's making progress.)
@J-J Cote I think the NPR announcement was the first public mention. I had noticed his absence from the Sunday Puzzle the past weeks and had been Googling for news about him. I’m a little surprised the Times hasn’t mentioned it. He’s got a right to his privacy, of course, but it’s public knowledge now, and by his choice.
Toughie for me. I justikes more than a few times. w e n t y But I prevailed in the end. Yespos failed to thwart me. e v e n t y Okay, so I didn't embed the numbers above in known phrases or put them in the proper countdown order, let alone put them in a filled grid. I don't belong in polite society.
As usual, a Sunday puzzle with a gimmicky theme causes us to have to read all of the negative comments. As someone astutely pointed out, not too long ago, it’s a puzzle and it should be puzzling. Always expect some kind of gimmick on Thursday and Sunday. My first pass through the clues yielded very few fills and my usual frustration with the “dash” clues. I eventually caught on to the trick and then things began to fall into place relatively quickly. It was a very good feat of construction and a nice challenge to this veteran solver. Best wishes Mr. Shortz for a speedy recovery.
Fun to have a tricky theme on a Sunday. Well done!
If I am ever the pope, which is unlikely, I will not miss the chance to be Pope Sixus the Sixth. Come. On. Missed opportunity, right there. But a beautiful Sunday. Had GOTme/mAT/ELeNA for a while at the end, but otherwise just a solid, SundayFunday!!
@CCNY Aaaarrrgh!! SIXTUS the sixth. I will pay twice for my subscription to be able to edit my comments. Nay, thrice!! EMU 🪺
I liked the clue for 123A, but CREWTEAM is a little awkward -- it's either rowing team or crew, seems to me. In the case of 45A, I think we've had this discussion before. The preferred plural for MAORI is MAORI. Anglicizing petits-fours is fine (those little cakes don't care), but when it comes to how people refer to themselves, when speaking English, I think the NYT should respect that. Overall, though, I really liked this puzzle.
@Esmerelda Sorry, when I posted this I hadn't read the lengthy thread below about 45A.
Like most everyone I was very impressed by the construction, must have been really difficult. It certainly was fun to solve. I caught on with the frEIGHTtrain , 32D, but never noticed the progression of the numbers. Caitlin brought back a nice memory by mentioning 38A REDCAP. As a little girl in the 40’s I used to travel by train alone to visit my grandparents and my parents always had one of the red caps looking after me.
Well, I loved this. What a clever concept; loads of fun, tricksy enough for a Sunday but not impossible. It’s not often I get a theme straightaway, but this shone out to me with FR(EIGHT)TRAIN. It was then a question of working out which number would fit the clue. Brilliant. I still had to work hard for the gold star. Clues like 9a and 34d were never going to come easily for me. Oh and Caitlin, you can add non-Americans to that list for 7 down. I had no idea what it was 🤷♀️ Along with everyone here, I wish Mr Shortz the very best of luck with his continuing recovery.
Intelligent, sophisticated concept brilliantly executed. Daunting at first but ultimately doable. A perfect Sunday puzzle. Constructed by the one and only, Hoang-Kim Vu, Superstar ✨️
Love the troll move at 75D with “Missing work?” Might be my favorite clue of all time. I had been battling with 115A when I read it and I just knew the constructor was laughing at me. Well played. Figured out the theme a moment later, thanks, in part, to that down clue. What a great puzzle. One of those where I made my wife check out the grid for some bragging rights. Thanks for the wonderful time, Hoang-Kim Vu!
This one took me forever, as usual these days. I had to look up most things related to names, Only ALBEE and ONEILL came very quickly, and I had ASICS for AVIAS for over an hour. Then I started to catch on just where Caitlin did, when I changed my very unusual (but not entirely unheard of) TAKE5, trying to figure out what 5IVE could mean at 72D. That led to repairing ALUMNWSLETTER at 24A with the same trick, and I realized that it really was Count DOWN and filled in the rest of the numbers and worked fairly satisfactorily across them. Too much fun, though, for someone as behind on everything as I am.
Bart, You may be behind on some things, but on this puzzle you were way ahead of many people one quarter your age. (You'd be surprised how many people didn't know ALBEE or ONEILL ... and never did figure out the theme.) .....
Makes up for Saturday puzzle’s difficulty, even with the clue about the dark green egg of the . . . . You-know-what
I was hoping for even more of a countdown coincidence since there was supposed to be a Space X rocket sending a few folks to the ISS this evening, but alas, it was scrubbed but it's tentatively rescheduled for late Sunday evening eastern time, so that countdown will hopefully coincide with this one. Worked on my iPad this evening, trying to keep my left foot up, as I'm dealing with a newly officially diagnosed 5th metatarsal fracture that's a little over two weeks old. (Yes, I'd been walking on it, and I finally asked my doc for an x-ray order, then got referred to podiatry, so I'm now in a boot and am to stay off of it as much as I can). Nurses (like myself) are horrible about going to the doctor. Don't be like us. Speaking of nursing, I finally let my license lapse (it expired March 1) after being retired since 2013. As for the crossword, I'm impressed with the construction, but managed to figure out the countDOWN fairly early with TENT DRESS, and FREIGHT TRAIN, which made it a little easier since I knew what to do when acrosses didn't seem to be all there. A few gimmes, several helpful crosses and I was even able to fill in the names of authors and TV personalities. I even remembered PARAMUS even though my time in NJ was probably before the malls were built. A great exercise—thanks, Hoang-Kim Vu!
I saw that “-“ in each case was to be replaced by a digit’s name spelled out. But, I underthought (almost as bad overthinking) the “Countdown” of the title as being satisfied by their mode of entry, downwards in grid. This meant that I lost the chance of getting immediate entries for later occasions. A pity, not only for that reason but the failure to recognise a seriously creative constructor’s work.
I got the theme early on (so I thought), "oh, we are counting down while entering the count down, how clever!" I quickly entered all the -'s with numbers in order. I was halfway through the puzzle before I realized what those numbers were doing. Suddenly some weird entries made perfect sense. Mad respect for the constructor, this is multi-layer clever! Would have had a great finishing time too, but I had 3 typos that were a pain to find.
An intricately constructed puzzle that involved me every step of the way and required much thinking. I loved it! I was completely baffled by what looked like it was going to be an IT DRESS -- hardly what you'd expect the designation for a "loose-fitting garment" to be. But I picked up the theme at the much-easier-to-figure-out FR(8) TRAIN. And of course, once I had one theme Across, along with its Down, the entire puzzle became so much easier. Rather on the easy side, in fact. But wait! There was a Big Trap coming... I had ??US and wrote in PIUS without a second thought. It didn't take me long to correct to (6)TUS -- but still, it gave me my biggest "Aha!" Other than not knowing why TATTOOS is the answer to "makeup of some sleeves", I liked everything about this puzzle. The marquee themer, I thought -- so exquisitely embedded -- was ALUM(9)WSLETTER. A really good and satisfying Sunday that was much fun to solve.
@Nancy I do not have any tattoos, but I know that when people get their arm covered in them, oftentimes to the wrist, it looks like a sleeve. So they’re called “sleeves.” Tattoo Sleeve Emu…
I'm sorry, I just didn't find this puzzle elegant. I had more trouble with it than most other puzzles I've done. It seemed quite a bit more difficult than my expectation of a Sunday puzzle.
Great puzzle. (Are there really people who don’t eat their favorite thing on a plate last?? No wonder this country is messed up!)
@kkseattle I'm completely with you and Caitlin on this point! Though sometimes I have a hard time deciding between two favorite things and it can become quite the quandary. But it's a good problem to have!
@kkseattle My eldest, when he was about 9 or 10, created a new rule for himself. (He has many, many rules for himself.) We were eating at an Italian restaurant and I said “Don’t fill up on bread! Great food is coming!” He said, “But fresh bread and butter is also great food. I never maps up good food now, hoping for good food later.” I looked at him. We all looked at him. Then we polished off the bread, asked for more, and enjoyed our leftovers later that night. I have never gone back!
Why does NYT continue to create puzzles that mess around with how one enters the answers?? I tried using numbers in the boxes - didn't work. I tried spelling out the numbers in the boxes - didn't work. Finally had to check the answer key to see specifically how to enter the trick clues. Added about 10 minutes to my solve time. Very annoying!
@/PRS I’m with you - solving on my phone, I’ve tried four different ways of entering the numbers. All apparently wrong. I give up. Fun puzzle but way too frustrating to get hung up on this entry-specificity.
@/PRS agreed- sometimes you have to spell out the number in the square other times you don't. It's just a pain and time consuming when you know the puzzle is all correct and then have to go back and change all the entries.
@/PRS the name of the puzzle is Count*down*. The down answers with hyphens for clues all contained the exact number of spaces needed to write each number out... going down. I'm not sure whether you considered the title before starting, but it's usually a really good clue to what you'll need to do. Oddly enough this is one of the most straightforward answer-enterings I can recently recall from a trick puzzle.
Wow, I always love a Hoang-Kim Vu puzzle. He’s one of the few constructors I recognize, because every puzzle I do by him feels so great to fill in. I loved the theme. It took me a second, because I couldn’t figure out how to fit “petit-four” until I started working my way through the down clues. I had such a great time with it when it clicked! I always come away from one of his puzzles having really enjoyed the experience.
I won’t read through all the comments as I’m late to the party. But you should know ‘Māori’ as a noun is very much not ok. As an adjective, yes.
@Al Most of us didn't know that, but it was explained earlier in the comments. I knew having an "s" at the end was incorrect, but I thought it was a grammatical error. I had no idea it was considered offensive. Hopefully future constructors will be more careful about adding an s to a word just to make it fit in the grid. (I'm sure it was done with no ill intent)
The theme didn't hit me right away, but when it finally dawned on me about a quarter of the way through the grid the first word to come to mind was "brilliant!"
I didn't get the countdown until I was almost finished the puzzle. Knowing where to place the two helped me finish that southeast corner. Lovely puzzle. I'm amazed at the talent constructers demonstrate with these wacky ones. Such smart folks! Thank you for the hard work.