Reluctantly on the ABYSM/ABYSS crossing with MAXIMUM/MAXIMUS complaint train. Kind of rained on an otherwise enjoyable solve.
@Tony So agree . Not okay with using archaic versions of common words just because it’s a great theme idea.
cute theme, but when the answer clued "spelled unusually" isn't the most contrived one in the grid......
@cal Especially when they could have changed MAXIMUM to MAXIMUS (Circus in Rome) and had the cross as the normal word everyone expects for that clue. But that's what makes it a puzzle, I guess. As I said after doing yesterday's puzzle, there's apparently an infinite number of undiscovered puzzle themes.
Sing a song of six kips, a puzzleful of ryes Mr. Mom and Mamma Mia making pizza pie. When the pie was slit, Ethan Hawke began to sing: "Woah, wait what? Abysm, how is that a thing?" The CEO at LGA is flying straight to Maui while Mr. Mom tends to Stewie, putting aloe on his owie And Oprah is on the set, quizzing Simu Liu. "Say hi to Gayle," said he, ere he said "Adieu." Isaiah's in the garden, singing Mwa-ha-ha; he turned Imodium into Scope and then proclaimed "Ta-da!" Arcadia's been lumbered for tables at West Elm, Pan's flute is heard no longer in that barren realm but you can see him at the Apollo, doing his scaly jam. Sam listens at his table with a cocktail, green eggs, and ham.
@john ezra This comment is the best part of this puzzle! Emus in the abysm
@john ezra -- Wow! Bravo! Standing bravo! You have brightly shined today, sir, and thank you! Et tu emu.
@john ezra Respect. And smile with laughter :)
Abysm prevented me from solving but it's in the dictionary so I guess I can live with that. However, non-words like mwahaha, woah, erm, eww and ums, while gettable, were downright annoying, verging on amateurish and "wait, what" wasn't much better. Limn was the best part of an otherwise sketchy puzzle.
@Ed In Frozen, Anna's "Wait, what?" in the boat with Hans made me do a spit take first time I saw it.
@Ed it’s the mwahaha for me. Feels like blind luck is needed to guess the spelling they’re going for with these words.
I had a calculus joke, but it's pretty derivative. (Still, puns are integral to my life.)
The entire middle and lower middle is just bad. I've seen puzzles rejected that are so much more clever than this, very odd
Funny to look at the Google trend for the word “abysm” - there’s nothing and then it peaks at about 11:30 last night.
I might understand the grumbling about ABYSM if it weren’t for the fact that the theme pointed directly to the need for a symmetrical letter. Look, I had ABYSs, too, but my failure to recognize my error is on me, not the puzzle. It’s not like the unfamiliar word was just dropped in with no context. Clever puzzle, good challenge. I may have fallen into the ABYSs, but I still had a great time. And I learned a valuable lesson about attention to detail.
ABYSM? Oh, dear. Not a fan of that. MYST... Great game.
Add me to the chorus of folks not pleased with ABYSM.
I thought I was going to come here to complain about WOAH but that was before I got to ABYSM. Can we talk about WOAH though? I hate seeing it (mis)spelled like that. It's not an unusual spelling, it is an incorrect spelling!
@MB I don't mind the word, but I'm not a fan of the clue. To me, WHOA means slow down, and WOAH is an expression of wonderment or amazement. It's more a variant of WOW.
Concerning the most talked about cross of the day: I think some people solved this cross vertically first, in which case the obvious answer is MAXIMUM, whether or not you considered making sure it fit into the theme requirement (assuming you'd even discovered the theme yet). MAXIMUM sounds mathy, while MAXIMUS sounds, well, Roman and ancient, and would not be anyone's first choice for a math context. But if you solved horizontally first, you almost surely entered ABYSS, which was wrong here. But so right otherwise. It was a cross that seemed impeccable, so if you didn't think to check, you wouldn't think twice about it. And if you did check cursorily, you'd see MAXIMUS and say, hey, that's a word. And since the vast majority of people either never knew anything about calculus, or have spent their entire adult lives trying to forget about it, even if you had checked, you might not have noticed anything wrong with MAXIMUS (unless of course you knew what the theme was and realized it was a theme answer). But if you solved down first, you might not have even looked at ABYSM, since MAXIMUM is also a solid answer. I might also suggest that adding "poetically" to the ABSYM clue could have helped a bit, since it's only Wednesday. So I think that's why so many people were upset with this cross. Not an excuse for anyone, but just a reasoned analysis.
@Steve L Well, ha ha, that was an excellent exegesis (which was superfluous, in the case of MOL.... that's not where I was having trouble.) But good on you for taking the trouble!
@Steve L Right? I went across first, entered ABYSS and then went on to complete the puzzle. I know nothing about calculus, neither in Polish nor in English, so when I got MAXIMUS from the crosses I just accepted it. I needed autocheck to sort out the mess that resulted. I like your suggestion of adding "poetically" to the clue for ABYSM. I mean, it would not have helped me, as I just did not know the word, but surely some people would have been alerted to the fact that ABYSs was wrong.
@Steve L I initially had ABYSs, but when I looked over my grid and saw MAXIMUs, I thought, "What's that, a condom brand or something?" So I looked at the clue and thought MAXIMUM fit better. I still wasn't sure it was correct because I'm not familiar enough with calculus to know that MAXIMUs is not also a thing. That's where the theme came in and made me certain. I think it's perfectly fair to incorporate the theme in that manner. It's a little extra bonus for those who crack it. Back in August, I made a mistake on a puzzle because I didn't take the theme into account on one entry, so I know it's frustrating, but it was my mistake. At that point, I decided to see if I could make it a full year with perfect solves, so I've been looking for every advantage possible in the clues and the themes. So far, I've been successful, but if I mess up, I will own it.
Nice puzzle, but ABYSM?? C'mon now. That's really stretching it.
Harumph 😤. I was sailing along preparing for a record-setting finish and — no music. It had to be LIMN because I was already worried about that. Unfamiliar with the term, I inspected every crossing and they checked out. 😤 Then, I looked at MAXIMUs. I’d wanted to put MAXIMUM but the crossing wouldn’t work. Tick, tick, tick. Being no math wiz, I trusted ABYSs more than MAXIMUM. Back to fly specking. Finally, in frustration, I placed an M to make ABYSM. 🎶!! What in the world?? An error? I flew to the column to learn about that ABYSMal word’s existence. Usually I like learning new words. Today felt like the LEAST SWELL bit of knowledge I have attained in a while. LATERALSYMMETRY my Aunt Sally! 😤 Anyway, some of the other clues were nostalgic. IAMSAM were the first words I ever read. Thanks, MAMMA, for buying Green Eggs and Ham because I was bored, bored, bored playing by myself at home before beginning school. Unlocking reading was my ticket to amazing new worlds. I still finished faster than my usual Wednesday time, so I will stop fussing about ABYSM. 😝 Happy Wednesday!
@Pani Korunova My experience was a lot like yours, and you described it well! I'm not usually grumpy about new words, but ABYSM really tested me.
@Pani Korunova Almost exactly the same experience except a) I am very good at math, and b) I ended up at about double my Wednesday average.
@Pani Korunova and my experience also reflected yours…. except I never did swap the s for an M. No gold star today.
Like with a lot of recent puzzles it was a clever construction held back by sub par cluing. I hope editing starts to improve.
I'm staring deep into the ABYSM... and I'm not annoyed at all. MAXIMUs did seem weird, and it violated the puzzle theme, so when I flyspecked I found it and fixed it. Happy music! And I'm only a week and a half away from making my streak four figures. Wish me luck please. I actually care about this for some reason.
@Classic Hip-Hop Fan That's absolutely exciting. And rest assured, you're not alone in caring about streaks: Just yesterday, a commenter shared that he and his wife had traveled to Paris to celebrate their year of daily solving. :)
@Classic Hip-Hop Fan Good luck! (I don’t think you’ll need it.)
I came here specifically to see how many other people had trouble with ABYSM. It was an interesting ending trying to figure out my error. Oh well!
Apparently if an ABYSS and a CHASM have offspring it's called an ABYSM
Not my fave. The gimmick was clever enough but we paid the price with no fewer than four brand names, six TV shows or actors, one car reference, at least three "words" that could be spelled several different ways along with one more that admitted it wasn't normal (the dreaded "alternate spelling" of the old days -- guess I brought it myself on by mentioning it the other day), and a good few Naticks. Oh, and one wordplay clue lacking the requisite question mark. Didn't finish and didn't care.
For perhaps a silver lining, ABYSM for ABYSS is almost as stupid as MAXIMUS is for MAXIMUM, so I guess maybe that was a hint for perhaps the worst Wednesday clue pair I've ever seen? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
“Among the treasure-trove of puzzles that play on mirror symmetry, I was shocked to discover that none centered on symmetry of letter shapes.” I’m probably just annoyed that I spent too much time trying to find an error that (surprise!) turned out to be ABYSM/MAXIMUM, but I don’t find the lateral symmetry of the letters in the theme answers interesting enough to build a puzzle around. I also don’t understand what’s “appropriate” about Oprah Winfrey’s middle name, unless we’re meant to believe her surname is Windfrey.
@Eric Hougland OPRAH’s decades-long best friend is named Gayle (King). Though spelled differently, it’s kind of cool that OPRAH’s middle name is Gail.
For someone who has never watched an Oprah show in her life and couldn't care less who her best friend is, this kind of clue is absolutely silly.
I for one was truly delighted to (finally) switch my S for M and learn a new word! Why do we need to grumble about the puzzle’s creator and editors, when we could simple acknowledge something well-played?
@Lisa AC Fussing is human nature 🤷🏽♀️ Plus, ABYSM felt less like a challenging new word than out of sync with the rest of the entries. Those are my reasons. As I said, the remaining puzzle was enjoyable to me.
@Lisa AC I'm with you. I stared for so so long before noticing the S could not be right. MAXIMUM was more in keeping with what I remember about calculus. ABYSM seemed inferable from ABYSMal. And I do enjoy learning new words.
Would still be in a bottomless pit had I not done puzzle check at the end for ABYSM. Unfortunate theme. And how many times has abysm appeared in the NYT crossword? I’d say never since 1851.
@Kevin I was surprised to see that ABYSM is making its 10th appearance in the NYT crossword. I must have run into it before, but it didn’t stick. Perhaps this time it will. (Which will probably mean that I will never see it again.)
A very fair loss today because of ABYSs. I should have noticed that the letter S is not symmetrical and breaks the theme of the downward cross, but I couldn't decipher my mistake without Autocheck. I didn't remember MAXIMUs from my calculus classes, but I figured that was simply because the classes were over 35 years ago - because ABYSs seemed obviously correct! LOL Oh well, on to the next one...
I'll take a moderate position in the ABYSM controversy. The real burn is that it's so similar to the much more common ABYSS (yes, that last S fails the lateral symmetry requirement). I think if the clue had the modifier "to Shakespere" or "Archaically" it immediately becomes an entirely reasonable clue.
Enjoyed the puzzle, but it seemed a bit high on the crossword misery index: 3-letter words (23) plus product/personal names (11) = 34.
As I continue my slow and steady battle against Alzheimer's, I am getting used to the fact that the puzzle stumps me more often than it used to. When I crashed and burned on this one, I thought, "Well, this is the way things are now." So it came as a nice surprise to see that many were somewhat displeased with this puzzle. On to tomorrow! (what day is it, anyway?)
@My dear archaeoprof, If it's any comfort, I also find them more difficult than I used to, but I think it's because they sometimes play fast and loose with the cluing and because there are so many references I just haven't the foggiest idea about. Second-string TV actors, brand names, auto makes, teenage slang -- to me there's too much junk. The puzzle used to challenge with clever wordplay and interesting entries, including things not everyone would know but that would be worth learning. Keep at it! All the best to you.
@archaeoprof I'm in the same boat. It doesn't help that as we age we naturally dissociate from the younger culture. I'm driven crazy by rapper names, rap song lyrics, and actors and actresses in teen and Young Adult dramas. Did you teach at Centre College there in Danville, archaeoprof?
So, I guess if you put “abyss” and “chasm” in a blender? First time in my seventy relatively erudite years that I’ve run into this word….
@Judith Nelson Also made me realize that I really should have watched the Simpsons! Happily, it’s never too late.
@Judith Nelson ...but I'll bet you are well-acquainted with ABYSMAL, eh? I'll be 77 soon; maybe the 7 years made the difference....
ABYSM/ABYSS and MAXIMUM/MAXIMUS. So frustrating. I figured it out eventually, but this seems like a poor decision.
Loved it and marveled at the skill in construction. And because I don't care about streaks, I hit reveal when I just KNEW every word was correct but the happy music wasn't forthcoming. Which is when I learned a brand new word which I will never use, ABYSM. Spread peace and kindness, my friends. There's enough cruelty in the world.
Not a fan of today’s puzzle. I was thwarted by the word “ABYSM” as I had “ABYSS” instead and I could not figure out why the puzzle would not solve. Who uses Abysm anyways?
@I Thee Mack That was my last letter solved, but my eye kept coming back to that because it was one of the themes and my subconscious caught that the S didn't fit.
Comments on the NYT crosswords could fuel a doctoral thesis on provincialism--the certainty that because a term is unfamiliar to them, it must be bogus. Certain ERM fills that role in today's puzzle, as does ABYSM. OAR as a verb as well as a noun. Those kind of things can astonish a person who's lived a whole life and never run across those usages. I'm not immune. I think DONUT is in invalid spelling of DOUGHNUT, even though I see it everywhere now. But that's just me.
@Francis - Yup. I often see stuff in the puzzles that I don't know. Like ABYSM. When I do, the first thing I do is hit up Google and see if it's a real word. It almost always is. Then I feel grateful that I was able to learn something today. Many solvers have a different response. If it's a word they've never seen before, then it must not be a real word. Or, if it is a real word, it must be a bad word, unworthy of the puzzle. Because they, personally, had not heard of it. Another from today: LIMN. How many people have complained about it? I don't consider it an uncommon word, and it certainly isn't a "bad" word. It should be welcome in any crossword puzzle. Frankly, if you had asked me yesterday if I think it would be a word that would be a problem for solvers, I would have said "Seriously? Isn't that a word most people know?" When I breeze through a puzzle and know every single word*, and don't need any crosses to figure out the ones I don't know, I feel let down by the puzzle. I mean, if everyone is supposed to just know the answer to every clue, what's the point of the crosses? You might just as well have a long list of clues with blanks after them where people can fill in the obvious answers. I don't think that would be much fun at all. * This is more of an abstract concept, because even the easiest of Monday puzzles is sure it include stuff I don't know - sports, rap/hip-hop, etc. But I don't hate puzzles that don't cater to my own interests...
Wow. Lost my streak of 619 because…ABYSM? In a Wednesday puzzle. Done with this and praying for Will Shortz. A good editor is invaluable.
@Laura Chandler Inexcusable for a Wednesday. Feel for you. Lately the editing of the puzzles has been highly questionable. Really takes the fun out it.
I understand that ABYSM had to end with an M to preserve LATERAL SYMMETRY but the fill in that whole area could have been easily improved by just changing 3 letters: LAG instead of LAB SKI instead of SPY SHAKEUP instead of SHAPEUP AGISM instead of ABYSM
Hans, Easily improved? You mean the answers could have been made easier. This is a Wednesday puzzle. It's supposed to be somewhat puzzling. SRSLY!
In abysmal times like this, I find myself wondering what it was like back in the old abysmaler times, when they too were guessing at crosses like the dickens, but never once saw the parchment light up before their eyes (or catch fire or whatever) to indicate success or “so nigh”. Blissfully un-aware of their S and M mix-up, or doomed to an eternity of “Maximus? It seems a little odd, but surely it can’t be…” Then there were those mail-in, wet chemical photo labs.
@JohnWM Thanks for the chuckle. One of the funniest comments I’ve ever seen, and it was good to have a laugh after all the time I spent flyspecking to locate the same mistake toy reference. You made my day 🤣
@Shari Coats I just read my reply and have no idea what “toy reference” was supposed to be. Autocorrect 😝
I enjoyed the puzzle today, count me in on the "learned abysm was a word" crew. I was so confident in ABYSS that I never even considered MAXIMUS could be wrong, I just assumed I'd forgotten it in all the years since calc class.
@Dave - Same. That single square delayed my solve considerably. Though if I had understood the theme I might have gotten the correct letter sooner.
TIL: ABYSM. Makes perfect sense, since we use "abysmal" all the time. I never thought about the noun form of that word. I love learning stuff like that!
I convinced myself that, despite having a near minor in math and never having encountering a MAXIMUS, surely ABYSM is not a word. Nope.
Help me out. Usually the veterans here will tell you to be grateful for the chance to learn a new word, and that if it’s at all in the dictionary then it’s fair. That seems to fly out the window with ABYSM and I’m not sure why this one is the exception. If you even remember what Calculus is about (even if you can’t remember how to do it), then MAXIMUM is pretty straightforward. There’s also the added clue of lateral symmetry in addition to a fair cross. So I’m trying to work out when people are allowed to complain about an entry and when they’re not. Maybe it has something to do with abyss being such a common crossword answer that people are on autopilot and are averse to even trying to change it.
Hi Chris, I think you've answered your own question. (1) Everyone who didn't know before now knows ABYSM is a literary or poetic term for abyss, but that's not the brand new concept or data point that usually generates "grateful to learn" comments. (2) Since, as you note, 46D has to end in an M, not an S, both by definition and by theme, ignoring or missing that seemed to me more of an issue than not being aware of a little-used word. I posted last night shortly after the puzzle dropped. It did not occur to me that ABYSM would be an issue.
I was so proud to have breezed through this puzzle. But pride cometh before the fall --- and my fall was straight into an ABYSs. I'm still down there, in MAXIMUs shock, eating humble PIE. Touché, Mr. Martinovic, touché.
LIMN and ABYSM belong in a Friday or Saturday, not a Wednesday.
@Hugh I only found LIMN due to the other clues. I definitely had ABYSS until I gave up on SE corner! I then read the comments that said ABYSM and suddenly it all ended well.
@Hugh LIMN was a familiar word to me, and the intersecting clues didn’t leave much room for doubt anyway. But it’s clear from the comments that people are unhappy about ABYSM, because the intersecting letter isn’t terribly obvious either. It’s been a while since I’ve done calculus so “maximus” seemed just fine to me. What would’ve been a record-setting Wednesday time for me ended up being a failure- I gave up and turned on hints after staring at what I thought was a completed puzzle for twenty minutes.
I gave up after about 30 mins and consulted the column where I discovered my issue: ABYSM rather than ABYSS. I suspected MAXIMUs should've ended with an M, but ABSYM?? Other difficulties were the crosses STEWIE/ELIE (both obscure names), HAWKE/KIP (both proper nouns, the latter obscure), and LIMN(?)/WANNA(slang). To cap it off there was the SE corner with MYST (obscure) and "Host" = ARMY. ? Too tough for a Wednesday and a lame theme. ⭐️
Ron, I know you took calculus; I'm surprised you didn't stay with MAXIMUM. And the "lame" theme required the M at the end of the word. Sorry the other words were too obscure for you. Better luck tomorrow.
@Ron I thought I was going to lose my long streak to a Wednesday puzzle. First I checked that all the theme entries obeyed the symmetry rule. Then I spent forever in the upper right corner. Then I checked the entire puzzle over twice including rechecking symmetry. Finally on the last pass I saw it had to be ABYSM instead of ABYSs and have no idea how I missed the S symmetry problem several times.
@Ron Myst sold over 6 million copies and held the record for the highest-selling PC game for almost a decade. It was responsible for popularizing PC gaming and introducing the hobby to many newcomers. Just because you are not familiar with something does not make it “obscure.”
"abysm"? "woah"? Disappointing...
Like in one entry on Sunday, the puzzle constructor forced us to actually pay attention to the theme (or the cross as well in this case) to get an answer correct. What nerve! I guess some people don't check their puzzle before calling it done because if they did, I think MAXIMUs would have looked wrong, and they could have corrected it. Why get mad at the puzzle because you failed to check your work? You can't always have speed and accuracy. Anyway, I thought this was a fine puzzle, and even if I had fallen into the ABYSM or the ABYSs, I would have been annoyed with myself for missing it because 2 clues were there. It must be a personality quirk.
Too many obscure words and/or clues took away from the novelty of the construct
Really did not like ABYSM Let's not look in there again
Abyss vs Abysm was my main time suck today! Everything else flowed easily, but maximus felt like it could have worked so I ignored it 🤣I had assumed that the lateral symmetry applied to the placement of the clues in the puzzle, not the letters, so it took me a bit 🤣
Wow this was not a fun one at all. Way too many esoteric “crossword-y” words that no one would ever know without spending years of their lives solving crosswords. LIMN? ABYSM? Sure, Jan. Also doesn’t help that the revealer is an in-the-weeds reference to crossword conventions (rotational symmetry vs lateral symmetry? And?). The lateral symmetry of the letters in the starred clues has absolutely nothing to do with the answers either. I feel like I wasted my morning on this puzzle.
On ABYSM/ABYSS— this got me too, I had to go to the column to see my mistake. I put MAXIMUM first and changed it. It’s not the end of the world, and I’m glad I learned a new word, but especially for a Wednesday it would be nice to get some inkling of nonstandard or poetic usage. Otherwise clever puzzle and kept me guessing what the theme could be. Funny coincidence, was listening to a lecture on tape today on particular physics and the topic was—wait for it—mirror symmetry. Go figure.
@SP true, a "poetically" would have helped it feel more like a Wednesday.
Who in the world says ABYSM rather than ABYSS, or ABYSSAL over ABYSMAL? I have heard WOAH every now and then, so I won't criticize it, but ABYSM? ABYSSAL?