Guys, gals, and NB pals, I finally did it!! It took me since starting NYT in November but I *finally* solved a crossword with any lookups, not even spelling checks. I didn't want to get distracted by the squares this time so I solved in the clue list mode, mostly, until needing to see crosses better to finish the grid. When I went back to normal view on the app, I could see the lovely theme AS/SO boxes and connected it to the themed clue. Lovely! Thank you to Amanda Winters for a fun puzzle with few enough American-isms that I was able to manage on my own. I owe you some MASONJARS of ASIANPEAR jam, I guess! Hurray! ✨
@Katrina S. Congratulations! You seem delighted and rightfully so! Now that you know you can do it I'll bet you'll be knocking off Tuesdays pretty shortly! If you do tomorrow's puzzle let us know!
@Katrina S. Congratulations!!!! As a newer solver, I can relate to that feeling.
@Katrina S. Congratulations. I remember that feeling, which gets repeated with other milestones, like first Thursday with no look ups, first Sunday with no look ups, and best of all, first Saturday with no look ups. It warms my heart to see new solvers experiencing the joy of mastering crosswords.
I hope many of you heard Will Shortz, back on the NPR Sunday Puzzle, this morning. He continues to work at recovering from the stroke he suffered, but it was a blessing to hear him and to know that he was able to co-host again. My best wishes for his continued recovery!
I started doing crossword puzzles a few months ago when my daughter was born, and they have kept me company during many late-night nursing sessions. I really loved this puzzle. I tried to save half of it for later but it was too fun—so here’s hoping my baby sleeps through the night tonight! Thank you, Ms Winters!
@Emily Don’t forget you can also solve puzzles from the archive. I only started daily solving in 2021 but I’ve completed more than 2500 using the archive.
My five favorite original clues from last week (in order of appearance): 1. Ritual performed to break a spell (4)(5) 2. Butt to bum (3) 3. Fit for a queen? (4) 4. It's sharp near the bottom (6)(3) 5. Results of an iron deficiency? (7) RAIN DANCE CIG DRAG DIAPER PIN CREASES
@Lewis - I don’t know why is has taken me so long reading your best of the week posts to come to realize this: since your recap of last week’s top five comes out in the comments for Monday puzzle, they do a service to early-week solvers who are likely to drop by and see them. Showing the range of clever and creative clues, and considering how a clue and answer relate, all invite newer solvers into the wider world of crossword play. Thanks for curating them as carefully as you do!
Good gravy! Id've been zapped by a cattle prod if I'd used anything stronger than a tack to hang a poster! Try blu tac!
@Whoa Nellie but, of course, blu-tac can, if left on for any period of time, also do damage, particularly to painted surfaces. It is like Velcro, a product that works well in its correct place, but elsewhere…….
@Whoa Nellie I too wondered who uses a nail to hang a poster? I suppose maybe if it’s framed.
@Whoa Nellie I was imagining a publicity poster for an event being being tacked up on a telephone pole, but even then I've only known people to use staple guns.
I would make the eggs again, but I'm above re-poach. (I yolk too soon.)
@Mike I'll bet that while you were scrambling around to get today's puns you thought it was difficult, but now that it's over, easy. Emus with spam, please.
@Mike You're pun is little iffy, but omletten it go.
I wasn't familiar with AS ABOVE, SO BELOW, but I like it. A lot! It is a bit reminiscent to me of the Lord's Prayer. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven... Nice puzzle and an interesting theme to ponder. On a completely different note, I feel a need to tell you all that tonight my husband and I watched a British mystery, which is very much not unusual for us, but in this one, a person was murdered by a sword... Or was it an epee!? As soon as I saw the murder victim with the fencing weapon in him, I said to my husband, who fenced for many years when he was younger, do you think that's an epee? He was like, what!? And I said "An epee, man! An epee!" He said, "Uh, I guess I need to see the it better... " And I said, "I don't, it's an epee!" What I lacked in actual knowledge, I more than made up for in jesting confidence. As the murder case went on, it was indeed an antique epee. My husband, as is often unreasonably the case, was incredibly impressed with my brilliance. I in my usual fashion did some ridiculous version of a touchdown dance. Life is hard, but good! I did then confess that the only reason I know of the existence of epees is from my new journey into crosswords. When I first started I had no idea what a "foil alternative" or some such was. It's nice that my new hobby / obsession has allowed me to continue to impress my husband after almost 25 years together. 😂❤️😂
@HeathieJ I think that’s actually a pretty funny story, thanks for sharing it. I’m sure you and I are not alone here as those who let xwords really permeate our lives. How often do my daily conversations with my partner begin with, “Well, in the puzzle today”….more often than not…
@HeathieJ The blade was most likely a rapier, as an épée is fairly slender and, though it could certainly wound, it would be unlikely to kill, unless lunged with incredible precision. What was the show, so we can confirm?
Great debut, Amanda! Fun, interesting and learned something new, which is always a bonus. Looking forward to more puzzles from you.
Sweetest moment for me was uncovering the reveal, then seeing it reflected in the gray squares. Simultaneously, two happy-pings rang out. One, because the AS above, SO below in the gray squares is so elegant. And two, because I was vexed as to what the letters in the gray squares could mean, and this beautifully solved the riddle. The best I could come up with, to that point, was that this was a tribute puzzle to Sammy SOSA, but my brain kept saying, “Nah”. There were plenty of serendipities to buoy my mood: • Given than Amanda is a data scientist, lovely to see a backward DATA in the grid. • Two M-sandwiched palindromes (MUM, MAAM), to accompany OSSO and ESE. • Seeing that SONIC BOOM is a NYT puzzle debut. How could this not have been in the puzzle for more than 80 years? • Some lovely rhymes among the answers: SPAM/MAAM, CLASS/SASS/ALAS, and the terrific BASIN abutting MASON. Much to enjoy in this, your NYT debut, Amanda. Congratulations and thank you so much!
@Lewis I enjoyed the near palindromic AESOP - ASEA. Also amazed that SONIC BOOM is a debut. I remember the first time I heard one, while at the beach in NJ as a kid: my dad said it was from a Concorde. And my gut had a positive response to the exotic and mainly umami Mediterranean-Asian cuisine on the menu here: Asian pears, pesto, miso (soup), feta, squid...yum!
@Lewis I grew up in Pasadena, Calif area, just over the mountain from Edwards Air Force Base. My elementary school years -- 1950's to 60's -- were often disturbed by the sounds of planes going too fast to be quiet. And knowing that to see the plane we had to look far ahead of where we heard the sound. So SONICBOOM was a gimme for me. As kids we loved it. But I guess other local residents did not, because they made the planes fly the other direction over the desert instead of over highly-inhabited Los Angeles. Or go a little more slowly until they got out over the ocean. Too Bad.....
coming from a place very far and very different from NY, this was a fairly easy solve with no lookups. Learned a few different words and alternative spellings of words, very fun and uplifting start to the week. Thanks!
Who uses a nail to hold up a poster? Not someone I'd SUBLEASE to. Nice theme, but this didn't feel like a Monday puzzle to me. Just a few too many Tuesday-ish elements: URDU, SATEEN, EFFACE, MISO, BALI, ASUS, IPSO, SQIN, HAIFA, OSSO, BESO, UMAMI. Then again, the theme---once you see it---basically fills in 24 squares for free. Congrats on the debut!
Hi Sam, Perhaps you and Caitlin and Deb could rename the Tricky Clues section of the Wordplay column. None of the six clues cited today are tricky. People may not know the answers, but the clues are straightforward. ASUS (56D) is debut, and not in my vocabulary, so I filled it from the crosses. But the clue -- Taiwanese tech company -- was hardly tricky. 32D was tricky only if you misread "green house" as "greenhouse," and that may have been helpful as a "trick" to avoid. Otherwise, you're just giving answers to random clues, which is fine but IMO should have another heading. I wish Tricky Clues actually just gave advice on dealing with tricky clues. You emu may vary
@Barry Ancona agreed! I actually never find the ones I had trouble with in that section. Great suggestion.
@Barry Ancona Keep in mind that it's Monday. None of the clues are going to be that tricky.
When AS ABOVE SO BELOW fell into place from crosses, I didn’t look for any arcane history, but rather, saw a neat paraphrase of an expression that is probably used millions of times each day: “On earth, as it is in heaven.”
Easy but fun, great start to the week. Loved the clue for SANTA. What a great debut!
Philosophical principle applied to crosswords: AS ABOVE (theme or concept or clue is birthed in the brain of the constructor), SO BELOW (said idea is transported to the brain of the solver). We’re all philosophers here!
Great job, Amanda! Really smooth, but not something where every clue was a no-crosses-needed certainty, either.
The phrase “sicut in caeli et in terra” - in standard English versions the nouns are reversed to “on earth as it is in heaven” - is a direct counterpart to the theme as found in the Lord’s Prayer. The idea has had a major impact on the unfolding history of Christian theology and sects, both for good and for ill.
@David Connell Thanks for that; a bit clearer than Earth mirroring Heaven.. I had heard the phrase before, but never even pondered what it meant.
@David Connell and so I paused my day, and recited a Pater Noster.
Absolutely Fabulous! The theme was unique and I've already bookmarked the links. I especially liked all the British references. I'm still hopeful for the NYT Games Team to add a British Style or Cryptic Crossword into their stable.... I enjoyed the puzzle immensely as it also one of the more challenging Monday crossword in memory. Thanks Amanda, you & the editors really hit the mark and for a fun time. I'm looking forward to more NYT constructions from Ms Winters in the near future.
Quick and easy. Nice debut. Small nitpick: CPLs don’t have ‘stripes’, they have chevrons. A two ‘stripe’ military rank would be a captain.
Sam, Interesting. Was that your personal experience? If so, when? In my personal experience (69-71), when I was a hard five (in the days when there were also SP5s), I was sometimes called a three-striper, even though the "v-shaped stripes" are chevrons. short!
Easy and fun Monday! I noticed the repeated letter pattern before I got the revealer, and didn't really understand what was happening. It was a nice feeling when I filled it in and everything came together in a nice "aha!" moment.
Nice Monday puzzle, felt a little harder than the average Monday but I didn’t struggle too much. I confess I wasn’t aware of the theme quote; as Sam mentioned, I was wondering what ASOS the clothing store had to do with anything! I don’t recommend them; along with Primark they sell the clothing equivalent of junk food… cheap, not built to last, destined for landfill within 3 months. No idea what happened to yesterday’s post. The emus have eaten it; clearly I’ve upset them but I don’t know how. All I said was it was a great, but tricky puzzle and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Oh well. Let’s hope they’re not ASOS fans.
Not that there was anything wrong with this puzzle, but the payoff would have been much greater for me if I'd ever heard the expression AS ABOVE SO BELOW. I'm not sure if it's not all that common, or just one that has flown by me, but it just seemed like something random. !!!!!
Steve, Interesting take on not knowing the revealer. Frankly, in a Monday puzzle, if you *had* known the revealer, wouldn't you have gotten it ... and been bored ... after the first of the four-letter themers? This way, you have ... or may have ... learned something new from a Monday puzzle.
Great start to the week! Good job on the theme, too. Easy and fun!
Finally, ASUS! Every time there's a similarly-clued four-letter word, my head goes straight to ASUS and it's interesting to receive confirmation that I have never been right on first guess. It always ends up being ACER. What is admittedly a bit of bias for me goes back many years to when ACER was well-known for being a bargain-peiced manufacturer of computers and parts, whereas ASUS was one of few that seemed to focus on the higher performance end of the spectrum. Everybody makes "gaming" stuff now, so I don't know if my biases are accurate but, ALAS, they remain.
@Carl Reed Clayton Christensen's book "The Innovator's Delimma." You will learn how Acer started out to make some Dell parts, then Dell motherboards, then Dell Computers, then undercut Dell by selling its own brand. It also explains the demise of the US Steel industry. Interesting history of US manufacturing.
Fantastic debut! And didn’t feel like a too-easy Monday, just a light, refreshing fun one! Hoping Amanda is planning on making a habit of this! Happy Monday!
I did not have to move Heaven and Earth to solve today's puzzle. Amused that SONIC BOOM was a debut, given the frequency of SSTS. Hidden gem of the day was 13D, because MUM's the word. From the WWII poster: Be like Dad, keep MUM.
Based on time to complete, shoulda been a Tuesday. Fun though.
A nice Monday puzzle to ease myself back into the Crossword after a long hiatus. Congratulations on the debut, Ms. Winters!
Nice puzzle, and looks like it was a bit tricky to put together. The revealer/theme was not readily apparent, but sounded familiar once entered. I was tempted to enter Acer, after having the A, but held off, knowing there were other four-letter electronics companies whose names started with A. Aiwa is Japanese, so didn't fit the clue, but I did know ASUS, and filled that in after getting one of the Ss. Noticed lots of double letters (12), and almost half of them SS (5). Nice debut, Amanda, and thanks!
Congratulations on your NYT debut, Ms Winters! Nicely done! I wasn’t familiar with the principle of AS ABOVE, SO BELOW. On the other hand, I just came across ASUS in another puzzle yesterday or earlier today. Thanks!
The wee pup BB offers a ringing ARF! for today's debut. (She is offended at the notion that she yips.) She also is puzzled by the vast number of humans, particularly among the youth, who still believe in irrational notions such as astrology. "Aren't we the inheritors of The Enlightenment?" she queries with head cocked at the perfect 45° angle for a candid canid question. Her human can only shrug in blank dismay. (She doesn't intend to be impudent, but BB holds Benedictus de Spinoza in high regard.)
Congratulations on your debut, Amanda. Give the constraints your theme put on the puzzle, you still managed to keep it fun for the solver. Thanks!
Puzzle was fun, maybe a tad tricky for a Monday. I’ve never heard of the revealer but it wasn’t an issue. But calling this a “philosophical principle” seems like a stretch to me.
@Intermediate level Maybe you would call Ms. Winters a sophist?
@Intermediate level Never heard of it either, but I looked it up and the origin is from ancient hermetic texts of philosophical and religious views of the world.
I'll echo the general sentiment so far: great puzzle (especially for a debut), but the theme--while unique and interesting--makes this puzzle a better candidate for a Tuesday...
Great puzzle. Really enjoyed it but I think Sirs counterpart should have been Dame. 😊
@Kerri I entered dame until the crosses told me otherwise. But "dear sir or madame" is in the language, and it's a short hop from madame to MA'AM, so I'll allow it. ;)
AS SO often, most found this excellent puzzle easier than I did. I wondered if I slept through Monday. Lots to like though, so looking forward to more from Amanda.
Interesting puzzle for a Monday... Learned something about the phrase! Thanks, Amanda! An incredible debut! emu food
Congratulations, Amanda Winters, on a terrific puzzle and a clever theme. (I was fooled by 21A and perplexed by 6D.) Look forward to next time.
Just dropping by to say that the 6 June 2015 (Saturday) puzzle is a stunner. Your emu may vary.
@PuzzleDog 30 minutes in and I *just* figured out how it works. The Darwin clue finally got me to see how it fit.
@PuzzleDog What an amazing puzzle! It's probably one of my favorites ever. I started solving in 2016, so I missed that one, so thank you for pointing it out. If it ran these days it would likely crash the comments for good.
@PuzzleDog It definitely was a stunner! Needed some help to solve that one. Very clever execution.
Challenging Monday for me, but a quite clever theme and an enjoyable solve. Only vaguely recall the theme answer phrase, but worked it out and that did help with some of the other sections. Great to see a new constructor - looking forward to more. And a side note to Ms. Winters: umm... I'll be going to Chick-fil-a tonight. Of course I had a puzzle find today. I'll put than in a reply. ..
@Rich in Atlanta As threatened: A Sunday puzzle from May 8, 2011 by Daniel A. Finan with the title: "Working in Opposition." Some theme answers: LONGSHORTS ROUNDFLATS BADFAIRGOODS LEFTRIGHTS TOPBOTTOMS Here's the Xword Info link: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=5/8/2011&g=83&d=A" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=5/8/2011&g=83&d=A</a> ..
Cute stunt, Straight forward fill. Thank you Amanda and Hope to see you again.... PSA: Make sure you report the absolute accuracy (what really happened vs. what was predicted) of your machine learning models. Hint: It is often below 13%. Meaning a model is incorrect 87% of the time.
What's not to like? Great debut. Many thanks.
nice lil Monday puzzle. congrats, Amanda! have a great week, all :)
If you've never heard of the phrase (like me) this was very hard for a Monday. My time was under average but, I wasn't sure my answers were correct until I got the happy song.
@Juli agreed, although the theme did help me pre-fill some of the shaded boxes… I think it was kind of a forced theme
@Juli I only knew the phrase in a way (I knew a Polish variant, which is not a word-for-word translation) and yet I found the puzzle easy - once it became obvious all the shaded squares contained the same letters, I could fill in much of the squares without even looking at the clues. The clueing itself was Monday-style, and there were few unusual words.
Too many clues in the last few days utilizing hate.
@L.A. Sunshine Are you talking about DISS? Or dat? Genuinely confused though, care to elaborate? ......................................
I got the Taiwanese tech clue, but I had one of their laptops and built computers using their parts. I knew it wasn’t ACER but suspected it was because the NYT Crossword loves to use it. Glad I was right, surprised to see it was a debut.
For anyone unfamiliar with the book *Invisible Cities* by the great Italian author Italo Calvino, here's a description of the town of Perinthia: "Summoned to lay down the rules for the foundation of Perinthia, the astronomers established the place and the day according to the position of the stars; they drew the intersecting lines of the decumanus and the cardo, the first oriented to the passage of the sun and the other like the axis on which the heavens turn. They divided the map according to the twelve houses of the zodiac so that each temple and each neighborhood would receive the proper influence of the favoring constellations; they fixed the point in the walls where gates should be cut, foreseeing how each would frame and eclipse of the moon in the next thousand years. Perinthia -- they guaranteed -- would reflect the harmony of the firmament; nature's reason and the gods' benevolence would shape the inhabitants' destinies. Following the astronomers' calculations precisely, Perinthia was constructed; various peoples came to populate it; the first generation born in Perinthia began to grow within its walls; and these citizens reached the age to marry and have children. In Perinthia's streets and square today you enter cripples, dwarfs, hunchbacks, obese men, bearded women. But the worse cannot be seen; guttural howls are heard from cellars and lofts, where families hide children with three heads or with six legs.
(cont.) Perinthia's astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong and their figures are unable to describe the heavens, or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters. Sorry for the morning downer. Best to listen to some ABBA instead.
@Bill … wooowwww I have never read that book but that setup sounds fascinating. Is there sufficient payoff on the premise to actually read it?
@Bill Thanks for reminding me of this remarkable work. I'm going to search for my copy in the stacks and clutter of what I call my library. @Laura W The book is a series of imagined conversations between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan who has asked the Italian to describe the cities of his home country. Each entry is short and thought-provoking as in Bill's example. Could there be such a place? I recommend it heartily.
Fun Tuesday puzzle on a Monday. So on Tuesday we'll get a Monday puzzle?
@Margrethe I’m curious what makes it a Tuesday for you? It was a sub-6 minute solve for me. Easier/quicker than other Mondays. Was it because there was the “theme”? Or is it based purely on time to solve.