Impressive feat, like a triple axel, coming up with the phrase that repeats the double circled letters phonetically and coming up with a clue with those letters repeated. Well, it's past my bedtime and you know what they say: What does earl_ to bed & earl_ to rise make one? HEALTH(Y), WEALTH(Y) and WISE.
@john ezra Wow, wow, wow. My jaw just dropped. Bravo!!! . . . . . . 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
@john ezra Ar_ti_, North Atlanti_, South Atlanti_, North Pa_ifi_, South Pa_ifi_, Indian, and Southern The seven seas How I wish there were only seven _ (underscores). …
It’s a Wednesday! Not Thursday tricky but still cleverer than a Tuesday. Homonyms for how we say letters was pretty easy to spot. I have realized that I never have complaints about the crossword that are worth airing. My gratitude for the diversion, and what it teaches me, always wins!
@Clare The kind and modest nature you express in your second paragraph is why the snarling and snarky East Coast was not for you. I had to chill out on the West Coast before I could move back east.
@Clare I wholeheartedly agree! I am always grateful for the amount of thoughtful effort that constructors, editors, and columnists put in to create clever and engaging entertainment for us.
@Clare Hear hear. I too strive to remain polite and courteous. Whatever we may feel about a crossword, we should applaud the work that has gone into it. Occasionally I do come across a clue/answer that really triggers me, but it’s rare and I hope I make my complaint reasonable and not whiney /aggressive. It’s only a game after all.
"Those lovebirds sure drink a lot of tea!" "Once smitten, twice chai." ("Yeah, they seem to get oolong.")
@Mike It's a major Grey area for tea totalers, something to do with Earl-y to bed and Earl-y to rise, and one hears Constant Comments about the Twinings of two hearts beating as one.
First, one of my favorite grid designs of all time was made by Alex. It melts my heart every time I see it, and I believe it’s worth a reprise: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=3/13/2020" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=3/13/2020</a> . Second, what an elegant, tight, and quirky theme concept today, three qualities I love in a theme. I love how three of the theme answers rhyme – it’s a shame there wasn’t a theme answer that could end in “ease” or “seize”. My brain let out a big “Huh!” at learning the concrete fact. It also keeps reparsing DARK ALES as DARK ALLEYS. I can’t believe TREE RING has never appeared before today in a NYT crossword! (It has elsewhere, once clued "Circle of life?") Also, I love the misdirecting clue – [Not fantastic], for REAL – which had me thinking along the line of SO SO. And, in the GRUB category we have RIB, PURPLE PEAS, OAT, LEG, OREO, EGGS and FILETS. Alex, there was much I liked about your puzzle, but your theme is what sealed the deal. This was a jewel that made my heart smile. Thank you!
@Lewis Thanks for the reference to the 3/13/20 puzzle. I glanced at it quickly and saw how lovely it was—quickly closed it to avoid seeing the answers, and went to the archives. I've been working through 2023 (I only started in August of '23) but I'll do that one next, instead! :-)
This was fun. But I think Tuesday and Wednesday could have switched places this week.
@Michael Weiland For me it was close, but I was about a minute faster on the Tuesday than today's. Monday's my slowest so far this week.
@JayTee Monday was slowest this week for me, too.
This was a great Wednesday for me. Interesting theme. Kinda a safe entry to Thursday. Many fill clues were misdirects, but not diabolical. I learned stuff -interesting but sad fact about concrete -never heard the word MEEMAW, and I guess I know how to spell it now. And of course, am saying it with sober country fried scent in my head -UTE is plural Homage to crossword stalwarts. OREO. And EMU. Alex touched all the bases on this one.
@Weak I learned MEEMAW from watching The Big Bang Theory and Young Sheldon. Sheldon Cooper, a character in both, who hails from Texas, refers to his grandmother as MEEMAW.
Fun theme. Nicely done, Alex. SMILING EYES made me think of this alternate clue for 55A: SA_NT PATR_CK (I)R(I)SH EYES
What a great puzzle! – A quasi architectural theme, with the double letters as pillars for the entries, creatively holding them up! – And the clueing...a peppering of interesting factoids, and clever misdirects that were gentle enough to not hold up the flow. Altogether, a wonderful Wednesday. Thank you, Alex! Of course I can't see BUMBLEBEE without thinking of Rimsky-Korsakov's 'Flight of the Bumblebee.' I've always thought it too erratic, but this one video is worth watching for the experience of seeing an accordion virtuosissimo in action: <a href="https://youtu.be/FxTOwXEy2Mo?feature=shared" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/FxTOwXEy2Mo?feature=shared</a> However... should the sound of it leave you a tad frazzled as it does me, I give you the beautiful and mellow SMILING EYES for a soothing musical interlude: <a href="https://youtu.be/siVHgbn36Ys?feature=shared" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/siVHgbn36Ys?feature=shared</a>
@sotto voce Dear sotto voce, Loved the accordian solo! The accordianist seemed to be enjoying the hell out of it! :-) Thanks for the AM wakeup! emu food
Thoroughly enjoyed this. It helped that I cottoned on to the theme with the TEAS, but still needed to put some effort in to complete the grid, as expected for a Wednesday. Parsing the full, phonetic part of the theme was an extra gift. Bravo. NICENE creed took me back to childhood Sundays, forced to sit through the mind numbingly boring drone of our vicar’s sermons. I guess I picked up something from them though, as PAUL was a gimme, unlike most of the biblical clues I come across. (I’m agnostic now, in part due to said vicar’s horrible attitude. A very unpleasant fellow). I collected 8 38d’s from our girls this morning. They’re proper little layers, but voracious velociraptors if you don’t feed them quickly enough. I’ve had enough jabs to the shins to appreciate the term ‘hen pecked’. Ouch.
@Helen Wright Oh, please elaborate! What are 38d‘s?
Sam, you have added a most lovely dimension to the WordPlay blog with your photos/captions punning off one of the puzzle answers I always look forward to these! Et tu, emu.
When I got to "Nincompoop, in Nottingham", I was afraid that the anatomically based answer which would have brought out the pearl clutchers--you know, the word for a Brit's patoot that has already appeared three times in the past two months. So I imagine how relieved I was to find that the answer wasn't the anagram of the Greek god Ares, but rather the simple PRAT. And then, it occurred to me...PRAT means the same thing, literally, to a Brit. BUMmer.
@Steve L The first word that came to mind, rhymed with prat, but that wasn’t it. It’s a very different word in the States, with a different pronunciation.
@Lori I came within a letter when I initially entered twit
It has been an answer in the crossword many times, but today for some reason 30A - UTE - tickled my funny bone. It reminded me of one of my favorite movie lines: Fred Gwynne as the Judge in "My Cousin Vinny." <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1109119402565333" target="_blank">https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1109119402565333</a> And that led me down the rabbit hole, remembering all the lyrics to the theme song for "Car 54, Where Are You." Jeez, I am old. "Khrushchev's due at Idlewild" ????
A few seconds off my PB. Nice to see that we gave a shout out to the EMUs who keep us all out of mischief.
Always a treat to get an AES puzzle any day of the week. Will the EMUs be appeased by their appearance in the puzzle today? ???????????????????????? ????????????????????????
That was fun. I do find it interesting — as opposed to what many of you appear to find tiresome — to observe how many different ways constructors seem to find for clueing the word _RE_. !!!!!! …… Emus, begone!
Not a homophone, unfortunately, but how about: _.L. West te_m, for now O(A)KL(A)ND A'S
Initially had CASINa for ‘house of cards’, Italian for hut, shack, or hovel. Not knowing the Sicilian Mafia’s ‘thing’, CASa for 10D looked reasonable to my anglophone eyes! Took me a while to twig that house of cards didn’t mean a flimsy structure, premise, or venture, but the more obvious CASINO! Am English—well, originally at least—and used to use ‘prat’ often until I started high school in NZ with a lovely lass surnamed Pratt. I now realise that I’ve rarely used it since, despite not having seen her for near three decades. An excellent and most serviceable word that shall verily reenter my vocabulary.
Nice Wednesday, Alex. Cute theme with some fun clues. CASINO for House of cards? at 15A, ROBOT for Metal worker? at 34D and especially, EGGS for Animal crackers? at 38D were favorites.
Fun puzzle. Typical long Wednesday workout for me, with a whole lot of working the crosses, but catching on to the theme was a big turning point and that's always a nice touch. Brief pause when I noticed 'Chesapeake bay' in a clue, but I know that's just an odd coincidence. Side notes: My paternal grandmother (in Kentucky) was a MEEMAW, though I had always thought of that as just MEMA. And... my puzzle find today was inspired by a search for SOS. That was actually the reveal in a Tuesday puzzle from August 17, 2010 by Michael Sharp. The theme answers in that one: SAWEDOFFSHOTGUN SLIPONSHOES SAMEOLDSONG SOUNDSOFSILENCE I'm done. ..
OMG what the heck is ‘instant tea’? Stop getting tea wrong, America! 😅
@Jonathan Baldwin It’s powdered iced tea mix, usually with sugar or artificial sweetener as well as lemon or some other fruit flavoring. It comes in two-quart packets, individual size packets and canisters. Hope that helps!
@Jonathan Baldwin Lipton makes INSTANT iced TEAS over here, as a drink mix. Not hot tea, if that was your concern. It's not terrible.
@Jonathan Baldwin Your comment, made me think of this funny scene from Ted Lasso. As a tea lover in the US, I get your take on how tea is often done badly here. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJn17lwukCc" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJn17lwukCc</a>
A good exercise, with no unknowns, but clued to be slightly difficult. Had to rely on a few crosses from time to time, but the answers came steadily. Figured out the theme without difficulty, as I noted the circled Ts and then the "TEAS" at the end; thought it was clever. Thanks, Alex.
Well, that was a different take. Literally letterly. Done with ÉLÉGANT EASE. Thanks, Alex. Hello darkness, my old friends. EMU and OREO. The clues were fairly fresh. May I opine , Lipton INSTANT TEAS are an abomination.
@Linda Jo It was a fun puzzle! (I agree with you on the TEAS, we're a loose-leaf household.) Some milk oolong tea for the emus, and gluten free oreos!
this was one of the best & fun puzzles i've done in quite some time. great job, thanks!
Raise your hand if you set a new Wednesday record. I did. The puzzle flowed ever so smoothly from the NW to the SE with an early aha for the theme. Also, no typos! OREO did hang me up for a cross or two.
What a romp! Not one lookup. I forgot two names: INA (I put iva and ida) and FOGG (I put herb ?? and hogg). Knew these but forgot these. Put John before PAUL until I remembered the many letters he wrote to the Corinthians, Philippians, and other “home churches” during his travels. Speaking of churches, I visited Barcelona for the first time over the Easter holiday. The Sagrada Familia, the still unfinished masterpiece of Antoni Gaudí, was breathtaking. It was a spiritual experience on par with my first visit to the Sistine Chapel — perhaps even more compelling. I’m still processing it. Finished with a quick stop in Lyon, where nearly everything was closed for the national holiday Monday. Walking through the Parc de la Tête d’Or was a spiritual experience in itself. Such beauty! The Jardin Botanique of Lyon within the parc was so colorful and fragrant, awash with peonies and tulips. Returning to this puzzle, Mr. Eaton-Salners would see my SMILINGEYES as I finished the puzzle 2’18” faster than my Wednesday average. Quite enjoyable!
@Pani Korunova Ooh, sounds like you had a lovely holiday. Barcelona is on my to do list. Been to the Algarve many times for family beach holidays, but I’ve saved a visit to Gaudi’s creations to savour sans offspring.
the introduction to todays crossword, with crosswords either using exclusively or missing the letter E altogether made ma think of two novels by French OULIPO writer George Perec, which liked to write with constraints. La Disparition (A Void), a lipogrammatic novel where the letter E is never used. Later, he also wrote Les Revenentes (couldn't find an English translation), which is written using only one vowel : E. fun reads if you like writing with constraints !
@Théo Yesterday, I did a 2006 puzzle with the clue “Georges Perec's 1969 novel "La Disparition" is written entirely without this”: AN E. I knew the answer ought to be something like “The letter E,” but since that didn’t fit, I left that blank a while. (The actual answer seems a bit off to me. Maybe it would have been better clued as “What Georges Perec's 1969 novel "La Disparition" does not contain”?)
@Théo The book title is translated as "The Returned." Revenant is an archaic term for spirits returned from the grave.
Well...a trick-free puzzle. I did like seeing the elevated vocab-- CATAPULT (ha), ESTUARY, URBANE, and even PRAT....but then you had to go and drop MEEMAW in there (which I heard in as a child in Arkansas, but never in Georgia.) Ugh. Besmirches the puzzle. Four fill-in-the-blanks aside from the themers seems like a lot of lazy cluing. (I am waiting for the wave of protests about the "obscure" NICENE Creed. I myself recited that from memory more times than I can count, but American society has seen a vast wave of Post-Boomers who have never attended Sunday School or church. Main-line Christianity has not recovered...) Yesterday morning it was cloudy and 73 degrees; today it was 46 and clear. The storms bypassed Central Mississippi; hope all y'all to the North and East are staying safe.
@Mean Old Lady MEEMAW is often used by Seth Myers when parodying Lindsay Graham talking to his mother. So it's more well-known than you might think. Still not a lilting appellation. We're under Tornado Watch here in Georgia, "Level 2 Severe Risk". I'll probably get bumped off the internet for a while.
@Mean Old Lady I expect the folks who will complain about the NICENE Creed (haven't seen any yet, to be fair) will be the same ones who complain about ADESTE Fideles. In other words, "Look at me, I don't go to church."
A puzzle with cryptic-ish pretensions, but no teeth and no bite. You could remove the tiny little circles and it would essentially be the same puzzle. You could fill in the oh-so-obvious missing letters in the clues and it would still essentially be the same puzzle. Nothing for the solver to do here theme-wise at all -- except notice it.
I shouldn't have started this puzzle so late last night because I made some bone-headed errors that really tripped me up. As soon as I read the Lip_on produc_s clue, I popped in Ice T and figured I'd get the rest of the answer on crosses and moved on. Then, embarrassing as this is to confess, I had a major duh in the NE where I put REsolE in. 🫣 Yeah, I know the word sole is actually in the clue... 🤯 Nothing made sense with the crosses that those caused and I hung on for ridiculously long until lunchtime today when I decided to blow up those two corners and rework them. Got them fixed almost INSTANTly with proper-ish sleep and nutrition. The theme and the rest of the grid came together nicely for me except what was impacted by my BUMBL(ing). But now my SMILING EYES are errr, well, they're smiling again! Especially enjoyed the clues for EGGS and CASINO and appreciated that NICENE and PAUL came to me right away. My theology profs from back in the day would be so proud! The TYPE a in me sort of wishes that all four of the themers rhymed, instead of only three, but TYPE a me only has 49% control most of the time, and it's OKIE DOKIE ARTICHOKIE with majority owner TYPE B me! Probably the first and last time I'll ever use that phrase, but couldn't resist. Cheers and happy Wednesday to you all!
@HeathieJ TYPE a me is back to clarify that in my first bone-headed error, I put IceTea in and waited for the rest to come to me. I didn't stop at the T as it seems above.
The puzzle only lacks a gnu to achieve the quadfecta of zoological fill, an EGIL. (Emu-Gnu-Impala/Ibex-Llama) crackers.
Another solve without ever understanding the theme. But it was fun enough.
@Michael How could you not get the theme? It was spelled out for you! (I kid) ;) ........................... ....................
Went through several English insults till we got to PRAT. We, shall I say ko, got the theme while I intoned, like a ROBOT, the easy ones. Thank you Alex
Such a fun one today! Thoroughly enjoyed it.
Fun and super-fast for me. The theme was both cute and enabled me to really fly through the grid. Thanks, Alex! The only problem was that I actually ended up with time to respond to emails before my morning coffee kicked in. (Actually, my coworkers may thank you for that.)
I was so hoping that the answer to 40A would be a slight variant on twit but didn't think that would be appropriate for the NYT!
@Joel I had the same thought, especially since the grid showed "__AT" when I came to the clue. "If only, but no way," I concluded. That said, I was also skeptical at first that Monday's "spanner" could actually be AWAIT ANAL ORAL. So never stop dreaming!
Wow! Solved it working from SE to NW. I hardly had anything doing my usual tabbing Across horizontally; gave that up did some Downs to fill. A smile came to my eyes at 55A...Excelsior!
I loved this theme; all the theme entries were fun. I do agree with many of the comments that Tuesday and Wednesday should have been switched. Hopefully my eyes will be smiling when I tackle the Wordle.
Something about EGGS for "Animal crackers?" rubs me the wrong way. I get it -- eggs come from animals, and you crack an egg. But "Animal crackers?" implies either that the answer is a type of animal that cracks, or that "cracker" is a type of object and we're looking for the animal variety. The former would have an answer like "chick" -- that it cracks the egg from within as it hatches. But the answer is "eggs", and it seems like a stretch too far to call an egg a "cracker" just because we crack it. Like, you'd never clue a loaf of bread a "slicer" (e.g. "grainy slicer"), or a jar of pickles an "unscrewer" (e.g. "briny unscrewer"). So I just don't think an egg should be clued as a "cracker". The person who cracks an egg is a cracker. The egg is not a cracker.
@Michael The question mark in the clue as written, "Animal cracker?" grants much leeway in the interpretation and indicates that something is afoot. You have to expect the unexpected when you see that punctuation. The answers often elicit groans. I'm sorry it bothered you. It was one of my favorites.
I enjoyed the theme, and was quite pleased that I spotted the extra layer of PEAS, TEAS, etc. "House of cards" for CASINO got a chuckle. The house always wins in the end. ESTUARY was a gimme, as I'm not far from the Chesapeake Bay. Likewise, the DuPont family built lots of CHATEAUS up the road from me. Many of them are open to the public.
I really enjoyed today’s puzzle. Thank you for a fun solve.
Very straightforward today. Thank you, Alex Eaton-Salners! Got the idea with "friendly facial trait" == SMILING EYES! Eyes == the letter I's ... I's are used to fill in: "Fr_endly fac_al tra_t." Get it? Anyway, much easier than most Wednesdays. Agree, fellow puzzlers?
Hmm, that was more of a struggle than it should've been. It was the puzzle's theme that enabled me to cinch it. Very nice!
The SE corner the last to fall as I just could not remember TIVO. Apparently still around and especially useful to OTA (over the air) viewers. To this day Janet Jackson's 2004 "wardrobe malfunction" is the most recorded broadcast segment per the Wiki oracle. Was amused to see EMU pop up in Patrick Berry's Monday New Yorker puzzle. They are everywhere . . .
Not a record time, but faster than my Wednesday average. Z_ro difficulty? GR(E)AT(E)ST OF EASE Note to @Sam: I went to the archives and did both of the puzzles you mentioned, but in both cases I'd have appreciated a heads up that you would be giving spoilers for the solve, or maybe put the spoiler in a link or click-to-reveal. Thx. P.S I found the Saturday, May 19, 2012 puzzle to be brutal!
@Bob T. Just finished the May 19, 2012, puzzle. It took me a bit longer than a typical contemporary Saturday, but I didn’t think it was a real beast. It’s got some really good clues. I made a lucky guess for the “Game in which players offer a few words” that broke open the last section of the grid for me. I needed to do an alphabet run where the “Austin Powers” character crossed the “Heady time for soldiers.” Mike Myers has always creeped me out, so I haven’t seen any of those movies. And the other answer is just not a thing.
This felt more like a Monday or a Tuesday, but I am having a difficult Wednesday so I didn’t mind at all! Cute puzzle, even if I didn’t even C the homophone twist until it was explained to me.
A fun puzzle that I solved in four seconds under my average. EMU’s cluing was informative. I, like others, cycled through multiple possibilities before settling on PRAT. I knew the most offensive possibility to American ears would never make the cut, so I left that one out.