16?! Debuting on a Friday (with a tough Friday)? Way to go, Jackson! You remind me of myself at 16. Well, with drive, focus, talent . . . but otherwise, a lot of similarities. A coda to yesterday’s puzzle. This morning, our local radio station had a short bit on “Stopping By Woods …,” as today (Thursday) is the 101st anniversary of its publication. It was Frost’s favorite of his poems. The backstory is poignant. Frost wrote the poem when he was struggling financially and feared he would not be able to buy Christmas presents for his children. An unsuccessful farmer, he rode his horse to town to try to sell some produce so he could purchase presents. He was unable to sell anything and rode back home in the snow. He stopped beside the neighboring woods and began to sob. His horse, Eunice, had the grace to let him have a good cry. Finally, Eunice jingled her bells and they continued their journey home. The story is related here: <a href="https://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php" target="_blank">https://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php</a>%3Fdate=2012%252F03%252F07.html
@Puzzlemucker Sorry for broken link: <a href="https://tinyurl.com/25e9tznk" target="_blank">https://tinyurl.com/25e9tznk</a>
@Puzzlemucker A tiny url link to the Writer’s Almanac story: <a href="https://tinyurl.com/25e9tznk" target="_blank">https://tinyurl.com/25e9tznk</a> And Jackson, once again, impressive puzzle from CLAMORS to I’M THERE. May you never have any OLD SCORES to settle.
@Puzzlemucker Thank you for sharing this, despite it having made me sad. Had I known this before doing the puzzle yesterday, I might not have been able to laugh the way I did... . . . . .
A golden goose may make you go "Au," but a silver goose will lay an Ag. (Now I'm in my element.)
@Mike, you're a rare gem. [Emus got my previous post]
@Mike oxygen potassium, iodine carbon. (I felt I had to compound this.) Hi, emus!
TROLL may have the clue of the year so far. ICOULDEATAHORSE was the gateway to the east, and SILVERBRACELET quickly followed. The west was a much harder nut to crack for me. I liked the grid layout with the long verticals. Interestingly, the longer answers were easier to fill for me than many of the shorter ones.
There were many clever clues in today's puzzle, but my favorite was 16A "Needle on a thread?". When I read that the constructor was only 16, I just about fell off my rocking chair! .........................................................
I'm very impressed, Jackson. At sixteen, you've already had a Friday puzzle accepted by the NYT! Kudos to you for that, as well as for knowing how to make time for your varied activities. Such is the stuff that smart self-investment is made of. The puzzle was challenging and clever but completely doable, which is how I like them. I loved the clue for LESS, "what some consume on a diet." Very witty! Many thanks for this gem, and congratulations on your precocious debut. I hope this is only the first of many more to come.
I’ve said this before in a different way: What I love about this community is that in response to a delightful, difficult and impressive debut puzzle, the comments include (in addition to well-deserved praise and encouragement for a young constructor) the poignant backstory to an iconic Robert Frost poem alongside a bit of shade for choosing the Jonas brothers to clue “threesome”. (Thanks PM and Andrzej!) I sometimes feel, dare I say it, that the comments are almost more fun than the puzzle. But the cart doesn’t come before the horse. Thank you Jackson!
@M. Biggen Great comment. Let me add that I also enjoyed re-visiting flotsam vs. jetsam (and lagan vs. derelict) vis á vis who actually threw the stuff off the ship and why, and if it sank or floated. Not to mention the whole Civil Procedure(s) discussion. Great Friday puzzle and a bunch of TIL’s…
Quite the debut, Jackson! I hope you'll make crossword construction your fourth sport. (Now I have to explain to Deb that the WHOOPEE CUSHION *is* the "Butt of a joke?" because it makes the sound of said butt.) Emus are having NAAN of it.
I continue to be impressed by all the very young people making very good crossword puzzles! Nice job, Jackson! I got I COULD EAT A HORSE very quickly, which set me up for a pleasant solve. Don't know that I've ever seen a TIARA with cameos on it, but I suppose you could do that. Overall, I thought this was a nice debut.
@Liz B If they actually did show up on a tiara, I guess that would be considered a cameo appearance. > > > Please do not remove this comment under penalty of law. That ought to do it. Or not.
@Liz B One of my all-time favorite royal tiaras is Sweden's Cameo Tiara: <a href="https://www.thecourtjeweller.com/2023/05/swedens-unique-royal-cameo-tiara-on-display-to-celebrate-a-golden-jubilee.html" target="_blank">https://www.thecourtjeweller.com/2023/05/swedens-unique-royal-cameo-tiara-on-display-to-celebrate-a-golden-jubilee.html</a>. It was commissioned by Napoleon for Josephine, ended up with the Swedish royal family, and was worn by Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden on her wedding day in 2010.
That was a nice, fresh challenge. If you throw something off a ship, it’s JETSAM, not FLOTSAM. But we know what you meant, because Boston Harbor.
@Alan Young Wait, I thought the rule was that if debris floats it's flotsam, and if it sinks it's jetsam. Have I been wrong all these years?
@Tim G Jetsam, cp jettison, is anything thrown off a ship. Flotsam is anything that floats off a sinking ship. At least, that’s my understanding of the relevant maritime law, something not in ONEL. Emus don’t sail so have no née to make this distinction.
@Patrick J. Neither seems right, because the tea was not thrown off the ship by the crew of the ship, so it's not jetsam per maritime law. <a href="https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/flotsam-jetsam.html" target="_blank">https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/flotsam-jetsam.html</a>
Lots of promise here from this new voice, this 16-year-old constructor. Putting together a grid with three spanners (with one intersecting the other two) plus two 14s, without ugliness (that is, a spate of junky answers) – as Jackson has done – is puzzle-making acumen no matter what the age. Coming up with memorable clues that have never been used before, that’s a talent that marks a constructor as special. [Needle on a thread?] for TROLL is just such a clue. Building in bite fairly in a themeless is an art, and this puzzle is not encumbered by the arcane or overly stretchy clues, yet, for me at least, it has areas that made me work, the kind of work my brain finds delicious. So, the seeds are here for glimmering grids to come, building on what for me today was a splendid outing. Thank you for that, Jackson, and congratulations on your Times debut!
The time has come. I'd doing crossword puzzles written by people younger than my back pain. Sigh.
Wow, Jackson, a weighty entry for your college applications. Sports? Great. Warbling? Cool. Both very nice, but not uncommon. However, debuting on the NY Times Crossword scene with a Friday puzzle? I can almost hear the CLAMORS of excitement in admissions offices far and wide! The puzzle was lighthearted, but it wasn't easy, especially because I was determined to get "hungry as a HORSE" in there somehow and did a lot of entering and deleting before I finally accepted that it was time to move on. I enjoyed the solve and I trust there won't be the kind of SHREWish grousing that greeted yesterday's debut. Thank you, Mr. Matz, and best wishes for what promises to be a rich and fulfilling future.
I imagine there are some proud teachers in the staff room today - with nods to algebra, biology, chemistry, social studies, and literature. Here’s to the educators who provide fuel for bright minds like Jackson Matz!!
The link to the completed crossword is to Thursday’s puzzle, not to today.
@Elie Levine Actually it is still set for the Thursday puzzle, help!
Great debut puzzle, Jackson! Especially loved the “troll” clue. My teenaged granddaughter gave me cool points for knowing this without her help. Thanks for a fun Friday!
As a chemist I have to object to APOLAR. Technically correct but almost no one uses that term. We prefer NONPOLAR. Rest of the puzzle was fun though.
@Ern I can assure you, APOLAR was definitely NOT fun 🤣 . . . . . Aemu.
@Ern It’s another example of the editors not caring about accuracy. Stick around. It happens often.
@Ern When I first learned about molecular polarity (1966) the term we used was 'apolar.' Probably more common in those days and especially in UK. 'polos' was orinally a Greek word, hijacked into Latin as 'polus' - so 'a' as a Greek prefix negating the meaning is probably more pedantically accurate.
That was a very unexciting way to clue THREESOME. I still have not finished the puzzle as I'm writing this. I've had a good streak this week but it's over now - I've just had to enable autocheck and look up loads of proper names and trivia personally alien to me, and yet I am still mostly clueless in the western half of the puzzle. It's just one of those cases when you just don't click with the constructor I suppose, and these things happen, especially to non-native English speakers outside the US. I did remember DEB Haaland though, and I learned of her from these puzzles, so at least that's something 👍🏾. Also, I COULD EAT A HORSE was a rare case of a long entry I knew instantly. Still, not a personally enjoyable puzzle for me, this.
@Andrzej Ok, my wife finished the puzzle quickly, weilding my phone and stylus with great poise, confidently dealing with clue after clue (but even she had to get ISOPODS from crosses) - and looking beautiful doing it. She is so much better at this (and many, if not most, other things) than I am. I'm a lucky man. . . . . Isoemu.
A fantastic debut—full of sly humor and clues that celebrate idioms and have multiple possibilities for answers. I relish simple clues like "Get down" which fill my mind with everything from alighting to dancing to ducks...then lead to something completely different. I'm old enough to be relieved there were no references to rappers or the Marvel Universe, but am patting myself on the back for guessing TROLL nearly off the bat. As an oldie to a newbie, all I can say is, You're in the groove, Jackson.
@Lorel Very nice point about how the mind fills with possibilities, none of which are correct. I can completely relate to it. When my mind goes off like that, I especially get a kick out of the humorous answers it comes up with, making me laugh. It's a welcome addition to the process of solving.
Kudos to Jackson Matz! Very enjoyable solve. Tough. Baffling. Perplexing. But slooowly, my brain caught up to Jackson's. Catchy clues. Clever language. Memorable debut. I raise my coffee cup to our young puzzler. More please!
Oh boy, another excellent, crunchy debut from a teenager. Mr. Matz is clearly already not a hedgehog, but a fox, who knows many things. Along with producing delightful puzzles, Mr. Matz and his fellow young constructors give me hope for the future. It takes flexibility, wit, intelligence and knowledge to make a puzzle like this one. Those are also traits that we desperately need now and will need in the future to counteract and correct the damage done to our nation and our environment by destructive and ignorant policies, and to overcome the tide of the witless, which I hope has already passed its high point. Thanks, Mr. Matz!
Congratulations on a fun debut, Mr. Matz! I zipped through the right half, but the left side was a bit more challenging. But even there, one answer would make another one apparent, and before long, I was done. That’s my favorite kind of crossword-solving experience. I especially enjoyed seeing CARE TO ELABORATE and I COULD EAT A HORSE. The latter reminds me of a song by the always amusing Greg Brown: <a href="https://tinyurl.com/yc4uux32" target="_blank">https://tinyurl.com/yc4uux32</a>’ I hope we’ll see you back here soon!
A typical difficult Friday solve for me and I loved the long vertical spanners ( and near spanners). It was especially fun to find out that we have a new young constructor making a very impressive debut puzzle. I’ve been having extreme difficulty with posting a comment for quite a few days now as my screen goes crazy, asks for password and email address and other things I can’t remember right now. I’ve asked for help, but that advice has been too complicated to help at all.
Hi @suejean! I’m sorry you’re having trouble. Is there anyone locally who can help you update or perhaps fix your computer for you?
Wow. Such an impressive grid from so young a brain. I can only bow down in respect. Tough enough to need to engage the little grey cells but not impossible. My favourite kind. Excuse me now while I go and stick this under DH’s nose. Where was my SILVER BRACELET?? We hit 40 years this year. I’d better get a ruby the size of a duck egg or there’ll be trouble. (Doesn’t hold breath).
@Helen Wright Congrats on your 40th anniversary! A wonderful milestone. Please tell DH that you've just made him accountable to this whole commentariat. We'll all be waiting to see that duck egg-sized ruby posted here as your picture! ;-)
If this level of difficulty is a NYT debut at 16 without excessive references to typical teen cultural interests, I have no trouble calling it the work of a prodigy.
The clue for 53A confuses flotsam with jetsam
@Stylus Happenstance What’s your bag, Stylus? Are you saying the price of this usage error is steep, grinds your gears, leaves a lot desired until the matter is kettled? cc: emu handler
@Stylus Happenstance You seem to be confusing flotsam and jetsam with vandalism. What’s it called if you throw an emu overboard?
Yowza, Mr. Matz! The whole west half of the puzzle was a perfect example of "close the PC--walk away--do something else (balance the checkbook)--reopen the PC--complete the puzzle." But MAUVE sent me down a lovely rabbit-hole. As a color term, "Mauve" doesn't predate the late 18th c., with the accidental synthesis of the first aniline dye by William Henry Perkins in 1859. That much I knew. What I was surprised to discover was that the chemical structure of mauveine (as it's known today--a complex of at least 12 molecules) was not fully determined until 1994! Is mauveine apolar? Not sure . . . any chemists out there welcome to fill me in. Cameo-studded tiaras, silver bracelets on mauve (satin gloves) bespeak a fin-de-siecle opulence unexpected from a 16-year-old. I look forward to more.
@Bill I should clarify that "mauve" was used as a color term since the late 18th century, but only rarely before 1859. Emus dorés
@Bill I am trying to recall who wrote _The MAUVE Decade_ which was about, well, the society as a whole, 1880-1890 (when my grand-parents were born....) But I put ROAST for the cameo appearance. I sincerely doubt cameos would be mounted on a TIARA... Not sparkly enough, for one thing...
Bravo to Jackson for such a fun and challenging debut (and at such a young age on top of it). Impressive 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
Great puzzle! Loved the long down entries. I had almost nothing my first time through, but slowly filled in the east side, then the northwest, and finally the southwest. Nice job!
Very solid puzzle that’s a perfect Friday. A fair challenge and an excellent debut for the constructor.
Took more than 2x my average time for a Friday. Not a fan of the clues. Not fun, just difficult and vague. I wonder how many were made by looking for the biggest stretches of synonyms in the thesaurus.
Almost exactly what I am looking for from a Friday / Saturday puzzle. I thought I was in a lot of trouble my first time through most of the clues... then I tried a few things in the SE corner and things came together... then it was a real struggle to branch out, but eventually, slowly, things filled in in fits and starts. In the end, I had to fix WAITONIT as the 4D and 5D weren't making any sense, but just getting the grid filled felt like an accomplishment. Ultimately, I was in the middle of my usual time band for a Friday and it felt like a good challenge that I could chip away at without having Naticks or other unsolvable sections filled with proper nouns. 5 stars, would solve again
The eastern half of this puzzle came pretty easily to me, but the western side was TEEMing with difficulty. I didn’t know about isopods or water shrews, and I struggled for far too long trying to make sense of “SIEIN” as a synonym for “welcome”. But once I finally realized there might be another way to spell “WHOOPIE”, it all made sense. Nice debut.
Dear Deb, After deliberation, I think the whoopee cushion could be considered to play the roll of the artificial butt of the target of the joke. Therefore, butt of the joke. A bit convoluted, but I think it works!
Hello @C, I did not consider the guest starring role that it plays. Thank you. :D
@C Right — and I assumed the “?” made it clear that we weren’t looking for the actual butt of joke, as the phrase is used. Regardless, my juvenile mind went straight to whoopee cushion for the clue! :)
What a great puzzle, debut or not! I'm not sure why some are skeptical about the clue for 49A. My tiara boasts both Alfred Hitchcock and Stan Lee.
Deb: Oboe comes from the French hautbois, or “high wood”, so the clue works and is very clever!
What a terrific debut for young Mr. Matz! I was a a little surprised to find that out after finishing this delightful and challenging grid. It was full of charm, and at times made me feel very smart—when one of those long grid spanners popped into my head and turned out to be right, and when I filled in TROLL and it turned out to be right too. TIL there is such an animal as a water SHREW, and that some TIARAs contain cameos. I look forward to more puzzles from this talented young man.
I was starting to worry when my first two passes netted very few solid entries. Then the information from dusty corners of my brain started to creep forward. When I got TROLLS, the dopamine surge was great! Then my stomach growled, and I realized ICOULDEATAHORSE! It’s still the wee hours here in Portugal but I’m thinking I’d better wait until sunrise. The grid began to fill, to my surprise. THREE—— for Jonas Bros 15A. But TIARA felt like a stretch, and I’m with Deb (not DEB) on WHOOPEECUSHION. Amazing debut!
23A APOLAR is not used in chemistry. It's either nonpolar or polar. But not apolar.
@Evon You may be right about that but that doesn’t mean apolar is not a word. It’s in the dictionary.
@Evon Definitely agree. As a 30 year member of the ACS I’ve never used Apolar. That clue stumped me for a while.
The word OBOE is derived from the French HAUTE BOIS which translates to HIGH WOOD, and wood instruments are sometimes called "winds"...
"Non-polar" vs. "apolar" "floatsam" vs. "jetsam" oboes being "winds" vs. "reeds" They ought to call this forum "The Pedants' Corner"
@Francis Details matter. To emus, at least.
Terrific puzzle. Like many others, I breezed through the east on the back of I COULD EAT A HORSE and SILVER BRACELET, and i caught on to the wonderful SELF-DRIVING CARS soon after. The west, however, took much longer — to the point where I thought this puzzle might be the backbreaker that would force me to sneak a peek at Google. (Okay, that was maybe a bit premature because I was still only 15 minutes at that point — but I had that *feeling* like I might never get another answer. And then, as happens with the most satisfyingly challenging puzzles, I got a toehold here and there — TEEM led to STEM, I remembered that there were three Jonas Brothers rather than two, I stopped thinking dice and saw TD PASS, and the rest started to fall into place. Then I read the comments and saw that Jackson is 16, and — wow. Great debut, Jackson. I look forward to many more!
Of all the benefits AI could initially provide humanity, as a commercial maiden voyage, why we chose SELFDRIVINGCARS, probably the most sophisticated and mortally dangerous enterprise in the raffle drum of ideas, will always baffle me. Then, again, let me tell you why Huey Lewis and the News’ “Fore!” is their most accomplished album… cc: emu handler
@Steven Because SELF DRIVING CARS do not text or make phone calls while they are driving. Because SELF DRIVING CARS never drive drunk. Because SELF DRIVING CARS never drive stoned. Because SELF DRIVING CARS never drive tired or sleepy. Because SELF DRIVING CARS don't suffer from road rage. Because human drivers do all of the above things. Because SELF DRIVING CARS learn from their mistakes. Because a lot of human drivers do not. Because SELF DRIVING CARS can work when all their occupants are sleeping. Because SELF DRIVING CARS (and trucks) can work when there are no occupants. Any questions?
One day in high school I was over at the house of a friend whose charming and sophisticated mother was not a native English speaker. She walked into the room and announced, with great aplomb, “Girls, I am so hungry I could eat a cow!” In the moment, it felt like the funniest thing ever. Still a memory that makes me smile.
@Jannicut I saw the story going a different way, using a different answer from the puzzle, and I even posted about it but the emus ate it (perhaps there wasn't a horse available, or a cow). A tragic loss for the humorously-inclined. Btw, the Polish thing to say when famished would be "I could eat a horse, hooves and all" - "zjadłbym (or zjadłabym, for a woman) konia z kopytami" (koń=horse, kopyto=hoof). . . Emu brothers.
Nice puzzle and a typical long Friday workout for me. In the end I got stuck in the very middle and had to go into my... 'run the alphabet' mode on a couple of squares. That's what finally got me to JINX, which was never going to dawn on me from the clue. That's all on me. And... 16 years old! Wow! just Wow. I have a feeling that Jackson Matz is going to become a very familiar name around here. And... answer history search today led to a very puzzling result, though something I've kind of come across before. Today I'm going to put that in a separate comment rather than a reply. ..
Great workout! Amazing debut! I found this challenging but fun—perfect for a Friday. Bravo, Jackson!
Outstanding debut puzzle by a brilliant young constructor. I didn't have a problem with the "stretch" on the whoopee cushion clue, since it's the butt that makes the joke. Congrats Mr. Matz!
CARE TO ELucidATE? It took a few rounds to get that southwest corner whipped into shape. but I got there. Can I have my TIARA now? Good, crunchy puzzle, Jackson, thanks. I went back to yesterday's column, saw that there's over 480 comments. Even though there were no rebuses, no app malfunctions, no tricks beyond a paraphrased poem. That seems like a Thursday number of comments, so I guess the puzzle proved itself Thursday-worthy.
Wow, delightfully hard puzz today. This was one of those that made me say to myself "Oh this one is too hard I won't bother" But then I came back to it in the afternoon, and, with a little luck, and a little pluck, I got my jazzy leitmotif after an hour and 3 minutes or so!
Nitpicky note: TEACHEST wouldn’t be flotsam, but jetsam, having been tossed overboard.