I already used one cow pun. I'll have to think of an udder. (But I'm not in the mooed.)
I miss Checker cabs the way my mother who just turned 90 today still misses the Horn & Hardart automats that were a real treat for a Jersey City girl on the rare occasions she went into Manhattan. The A11 and A12 Checkers were basically unchanged in their design since 1961 and on the streets well into the 1980s, big grilles, raised double headlights on either side that gave the car a pleasantly intelligent, if bored, visage; a ponderous, heavy car with a roomy interior, and a distinct smell, musty seedy notes of wet wool, quiet desperation, cigars, mammalian and boozy, which I found heavenly, at least in my current nostalgic haze. 90 years. I know some of you are close to that (among my favorites here), and she still does the puzzle in pen, rapidly with that confident perfect handwriting; when I visit she might save a few words for me to fill in, never pretending she found them too difficult to do herself, for she prizes honesty above all other virtues, just to share, that's all. What's not to love? Trigger word for me: Fanduel. If I could cast it and its ilk into a bottomless abysm (woot!), like the empty holes in this puzzle, I would to the maximus! They've ruined watching not only sports, but now invest even dramas about Swedish depressives of the 19th century. And I think of all the poor schmos giving their savings to those orcs, it leaves me ENRAGED. As does Moscow and Idaho (see SCOTUS coverage for 4/24) for my wife. Give me oreos any day.
@john ezra - a high school classmate of mine drove us around in a Checker (this was in the late 70s). Very roomy front and back seats. Great car for drive-in theaters. When he signed my yearbook he wrote out a bill for cab fare.
@john ezra Hi from the home of Checker cabs. There's a really fun documentary on the Automats on prime.
This puzzle should have run on Holy Thursday. Sorry.
@LBG At this writing, there are 42 reccos for what is quite a humorous post. But if they actually had done so, I'd bet someone would have complained it was disrespectful, and there would be at least 42 people who agreed. !!! !!!
I think we should take a moment to reflect on the unsung heroes of the electronic version of this crossword -- the programmers, who I am sure over the years have responded more than once with, "wait, you want it to do what??". In this case, I would guess that until ... today, they have *always* worked on the assumption that the puzzle must be filled in to be correct. But Hanh and Joel switched the rules, and they responded. Bravo, unsung heroes (not to take away from the sung ones, the aforementioned Hanh and Joel).
@MP Rogers I love your comment, giving props to the programmers. And, I plan to drop “sung heroes” in conversation next chance!
@MP Rogers: There was an amazing one, a Sunday maybe two years ago? It played on various words meaning “nothing”, and blank areas were encircled by letters spelling out a thing that encircles “nothing”. One of them might’ve been “much ado”. I tried to find it but ran out of steam. Maybe Rich can find it. It was, of course, one of those puzzles that generated a flood of outrage in the comments…
“Where peas are queued” - what a fantastic clue for a common fill word.
Ooh! Ooh! I spot "Musician Brian", 3 letters on my first pass. Is today the day it will be MAY??? I check the cross for the first letter. I sigh. It will not.
@ALH I am also eagerly waiting for the legendary (and favourite) Brian May <3
I absolutely loved this puzzle. I was suspicious when SCOWL didn't fit at 14-Across, and when SIMONCOWELL didn't fit at 21-Across, I decided to just fill it in, leaving the holes empty. When I did so, the penny dropped on the theme and I was off to the races. The down "hole" entries were all good, but I especially like CHOLER. Finally, I really appreciated being able to ljust eave the holes blank.
Hi! For anyone who lost their streak today because of the technical issues, you can email <a href="mailto:NYTGames@nytimes.com">NYTGames@nytimes.com</a> to have it restored! (Our team is aware of the fact that not everyone was able to solve today's puzzle the same way, and working to make sure that doesn't happen again.)
@Sam Corbin Any suggestions on how those of us on digital platforms can actually “solve” these puzzles? I guess I need step-by-step instructions how to enter multiple letters into a single entry. “Creative” is another person’s “misleading”…
Great Thursday puzzle. I was among those who thought we were supposed to leave the HOLES blank, but when I didn’t get the happy music I entered the HOLE rebus. This was definitely a fun puzzle for a rebus lover. It’s been a while since we’ve had such a good one. Many thanks, Hanh.
It's rare that a theme makes me genuinely smile like this one did. I had a pretty sparse first pass, and then I saw C◯O◯W -- HOLY COW! What a reveal!
I love this theme! (Though I must confess I didn't notice the C O W part until I filled in the revealer.) My 8 year old son, however, rolled his eyes at the theme when I showed it to him. (Too many dad jokes in his life??)
I am one of those who gets excited when it's a Rebus Thursday. A puzzle within a puzzle. So thank you! I got the theme right away and it just seemed more intuitive to leave the circles blank. (I solve on my PC.) But I would be happy to put the word in if need be - it only takes seconds. I take the time to enjoy and savor the puzzle. I'm happy to say I am over trying to solve it in the fastest time possible. Maybe that's one of the benefits of, ahem, maturing.
@Kelly me too! I understand that rebus puzzles aren’t for everyone but I just love them.
@Kelly I wish I could disable the timer altogether. I enjoy taking my time working on the puzzles, often in spurts throughout the day. I don't need to know if I was faster or slower than usual when I finish a puzzle and it annoys me to have it forced upon me.
This was a before-and-after puzzle for me. Before SUSSing the theme there was the fight for fill-in that both frustrated and delighted my brain. Post-SUSS, there was the sledding downhill thrill of the splat-fill, with “Hah!” after “Hah!” after “Hah!” Where inscrutable clues became suddenly obvious. A beast of an experience. Today, there was so much beauty in the box. Beauty in theme, capped by uncovering the reveal and, with an OMG, realizing that the circles were in COWS. Beauty in answer – PACECAR, HEDGED IN, PHENOM, DISMANTLE. – all set in a clean hardly-a-whiff-of-junk grid. Beauty in playful clues, such as [Where peas are queued] and [Like like like this clue clue clue … ]. And beauty in serendipities. Three involving backward answers: OUT (of HOLES OUT) and a backward OWT, a backward ONE to go with TWO, and a backward ATE next to CORN. In addition, two Boggle-style HOLEs echoed the theme, one beginning with the H in HOE, and the other starting with the HOL of the revealer. So, a beauty and the beast puzzle. My heart has been charmed and my spirits stoked. Two puzzles into the Times, Hanh, and I’m a huge fan, hungry for more. Thank you for a splendid solve!
BTW, feel like you’ve seen this theme before? Well, there was an echo of it on a Sunday late January, the WACAMOLE puzzle, which had five rebus circles representing the word HOLE across and down. But they were representing Wacamole holes, nothing like today’s HOLY COW.
I'm pretty new here. Have the comments section always been such a cheese and whine party? Really depressing how many people feel that they, and they alone, know exactly how puzzle-like a puzzle should be.
Francis, Read comments from Wordplay columns (and before that, blogs) from 2-4-6-8 years ago and make your own determination. Older columns/blogs and their comments are easy to find on xwordinfo.com There is a link to Wordplay on every puzzle page.
@Francis - There is always a lot of whining in the comment on puzzles from later in the week, especially on Thursdays, when interesting wordplay is king. People who don't like wordplay, rebuses, etc. dismiss these things as just "gimmicks". It gets really, really old.
@Francis Your best bet is to enjoy the puzzle, form your own take/opinion, read a few comments from your faves (Lewis is alway complimentary, Mike in Munster always has a punny take, etc.) and solve on paper with a pen!
It seems some people were able to register a completion by leaving the holes blank. On my iPhone, this did not work and I had to fill in each of the blank squares with the word HOLE, at which point the music played. I would have preferred leaving them blank, and having just the visual image of the holes. I tried the alternate spelling WOAH for 4A but there were not enough squares.
@Andrew This is a to each his own kind of thing, I guess. I liked having the words in the rebus spots because they made the Downs make sense.
@Andrew I definitely wanted them empty, but that was a no-go on my iPhone 🙁. It seems like some platforms allowed you to leave them empty. .:.:.:.:.
@Andrew What's quite odd is that on my desktop PC, Google browser, I filled in all the HOLEs, and later, when I looked at the puzzles, the 'holes' were empty! POOF! What strange magic is this?
Anyone else having issues with iPad app? I have tried leaving the holes blank, but then they show as incomplete. Tried rebus “HOLE” and just H’s, but both report errors. Am I just being blind to some mistyped letter?
@John Kroll HOLE works on the iPhone app- hopefully they’ll get a fix out.
@John Kroll i solved on an iPad using the app and had no problems, I filled each circle with the word “hole” and got the happy music at the end. I have found with previous gimmicks I’ve had to shut the app completely and the reopen to get it to register, however this is usually not a problem with a rebus. If this doesn’t work it’s possible you have a letter wrong somewhere else perhaps?
@John Kroll. Worked with rebus HOLE on my iPad. So, it looks as if you have to look elsewhere for your problem.
What a very cool puzzle! So many sly clues and an easy rebus made it hum, a relief after a rocky day. Just a (W)HOLE lot of fun, Hanh Huynh. Thank you! 😇 🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄v🐄 🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄v🐄🐄 Emu, it's a herd of holy cows
That was a w(hole) lotta fun! Very accessible rebus puzzle.
My hat's off to Hanh Huynh! I managed to get the "holes" before seeing the revealer, but only got the "cows" after finishing the puzzle. It provoked an audible groan loud enough to scare the cat once I got it. That's a compliment for a pun!
I am a "normal, educated human," (in Kevin's words) -- and found this puzzle a delight! "Wholesale" was what broke open the theme and the rebus trick for me. Thank you for a fun and enjoyable solve!
Wonderful ride. This is what I look forward to!
First few complaint comments i read were as i expected. My take(possibly unpopular)? A relatively easy Thursday. I beat my average by a large margin. Thanks to the constructor.
Reading the comments, it seems a number of solvers are wasting time trying to figure out what to put in for the gimmick to work. What fun is that?
I think this is a great starter puzzle for folks getting indoctrinated on Thursdays. Easy enough rebus to suss out. The same rebus every time. I’m spoiled. So I found it a bit anticlimactic. But reading the constructor notes gives me greater appreciation for the theme set. Shoutout to CASSETTE. Bittersweet memories of making and receiving mix tapes from high school /college romances. Fun fact. Not really a fact. Or fun. But the car I drove has a stock cassette player and 6 CD changer. There are still cassettes in my glove box. But I’m afraid to play them. I know they’ll be ripped to shreds.
Didn’t like it. Too many holes. Every time I tried to fill, it leaked all over my keyboard. cc: emu handler
Thanks to Sam for explaining Wicked Wax to this obtuse reader! First I thought maybe there was some weird thing about Wax in the musical Wicked. Then, I searched on Wicked Wax and lo, there is a product with that exact name for protecting knife blades. Golly, could the constructor be a fanatic woodsman? Sometimes you have to laugh at yourself....
@Sal This was one of my six 'cheats', I didn't understand it at all, but dutifully typed in the word. Not until reading the Wordplay did I understand, the wick in a candle! All told, a much more fun puzzle than Wednesday's. I was pleased I figured out the rebus on my own.
@Sal, thank you for this refreshing view. We could do with a bit of laughing at ourselves these days!
@Sal I thought it must be a (probably apocryphal) product for making things REALLY shiny. So I'm chuffed to hear there actually is such a thing. But how does waxing one's knives help them? Keep off rust?
HOLYCOW! A relatively easy Thursday puzzle! I had bocce before CORNHOLE and THEATer before THEATRE. It was 44D’s WHOLESALE that had me say aha! TIL about Granita, the LOLITA parody. Now I have to read it. I got Detroit RED right away, having read the Autobiography of Malcolm X several times. If you have not read it, it’s an excellent collaboration with the late Alex Haley, probably better known for Roots. Do y’all like the trend of having to SCAN many menus now? It’s probably more hygienic than physical menus that likely aren’t cleaned between diners. They allow for more updated menu information. However, sometimes they fail to work properly. Anyway, nice Thursday that starts this 50th anniversary of Portugal’s Carnation Revolution off on a great note. Liberdade!!
@Pani Korunova No. I'm against technology at the dinner table. Also though, I have a habit of reading the menu of the person sitting next to me. Food tastes better that way.
@Pani Korunova I prefer a traditional menu. Now, if only restaurant staff would not place them on my plate or cutlery 🤢…
@Bunny my mom always looks at our food and says “I should’ve ordered that!” 🤣🤣🤣
Calling Idaho part of the Pacific Northwest is wild to me
@Hannah right!?! My hubs said the same thing! “It’s landlocked! How is that part of *Pacific* anything!”
@Hannah I grew up in Washington (state) and the term Pacific Northwest was understood to mean Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. It’s roughly what had been the Oregon Territory.
@Hannah I never ever think of Idaho as in the PNW, only Washington and Oregon. But, yes, it's "officially" a part of the PNW region. Go figure, right?
HOLD COW????? What on earth? So I thought I'd figured out the whole HOLE thing at SCOWL. But, as it turned out, I'd only figured out half the HOLE thing because I hadn't noticed the HOLE-Y C-O-W. What came in first, because I had ECHOED at 43D (and btw, didn't all of you too?) was HOLD COW and I thought I was losing my everloving mind. A minute or two went by before I figured it out. ECHOEY? I said to myself. ECHOEY??? Surely, you're kidding me, right? But when I noticed for the first time all the interrupted COWS in the theme answers, I had to give it my full respect. "This is pretty darned clever," I thought. I might have put it into my running list for POY if it weren't for ECHOEY. It seems like a glaring weakness. Also, there's a lot of not-so-great three-letter fill. But still I found it an entertaining and surprising solve with not just one but two big "Aha Moments". First the HOLE moment. And then the COW moment. Very nice Thursday.
This was a fun puzzle. My quibble is with the rebus “interpreter” in the app. The NYT crossword instructions explain that when a rebus requires different entries reading across and down, a slash is used to separate the two - ACROSS/DOWN. Because of this I entered “/HOLE” for each the the rebus spots in this puzzle; that’s nothing in the across direction and HOLE in the down direction. This solution was deemed incorrect. I checked my answers and then changed all rebus cells to “HOLE” which completed the puzzle. I think that the app could have accepted both “HOLE” and “/HOLE” for this scenario.
The other day, I commented that it's clear that there's no end in sight to how many new theme ideas there are out there waiting to be discovered. Case in point, today's puzzle. Three in a row, by my count, since Monday's Earth Day word ladder puzzle (word ladders being a much-used type of theme, though not much recently) that we have had ideas no one has thought of. Today continues that streak. HOLY COW! (I hope Hindus won't be offended.)
I'm starting to come around on rebus puzzles, and this one helped. Knowing the Simon Cowell clue made this go much more smoothly for me than other rebus puzzles. Very enjoyable!
@sunny617 Good to hear. There's a certain feeling you get when you go from, "What the heck is going on here," to, "Hah! You can't fool me, not today!"
Cowabunga! I figured out the circles held holes fairly early on, but not why until 61A gave me the phonetic hint. Fun puzzle, Hanh. And a fun one to come back with. Did y'all miss me?! I've been mostly off-line for a couple weeks, traveling to see my mom. Health problems are not fun.
@Linda Jo We missed you. Hope Mom is feeling better.
To the naysayers and it-was-too-easy crowd, I liked it and didn’t think it was too easy.
Wednesday ease with Thursday charm. HolyCow made me laugh. Delightful puzzle...just moovelous!
Just a few of my favorite Harry Caray quotes: "I don't know about you, but I'm ready for some booze and baseball!" "If you're not having fun, you're doing something wrong." "You can't sit on a lead and run a few plays into the line and just kill the clock. You've got to throw the ball over the damn plate and give the other man his chance. That's why baseball is the greatest game of them all." "HOLY COW"
I think this was a poorly done crossword despite a silly gimmick. Lots of words/clues were just poorly implemented/chopped up for the theme rather than concise spelling/sensible clues. Appreciate the time and effort put in though, but just not fun for me
This was a pretty fast solve for me especially after I realized the rebus gimmick. It took me a little while to understand the across concept but once the light bulb turned on, I thought it pretty ingenious. Speaking of ingenious, I read 22D as ingenious rather than ingenuous for about five minutes. That's what happens when I'm rushing. I knew the answer was NAIF thanks to the crosses but couldn't understand why. D'oh. That was rather naive of me.
@Allen I read it as "ingenious" myself and probably for more than 5 minutes. And as usual (I should know better by now) I suspected the constructor and editors of making a HUGE dumb avoidable error. Hah. Then on the 15th time I saw the clue I suddenly read as it actually was. Oops! Naif! Nerf! Oof! 👓👀
Holy smokes, Batman, a wholy perfect offering for those dipping their toes into rebus puzzles! <a href="https://youtu.be/AghRNrrnXoE?feature=shared" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/AghRNrrnXoE?feature=shared</a> I hope this will be the puzzle that instills the love of rebuses into those just starting out, gentle as it was to figure out. Reading the constructor's note, I see it wasn't as gentle to construct vis à vis the inherent constraints of getting HOLYCOW to work just right. And so, thank you for sticking with it, Mr. Huynh, and bringing us a very fun Thursday. Well done!
Possible the worst puzzle yet. Gimicky, boring, unchallenging.
SUSS'd the theme at 4D so a smooth solve except for plugging in rinGEDIN which caused some angst in that block. Detroit RED was my last fill. There must be a more scientific name for that "Oh, right!" moment as you recall something once known but long forgotten. Anyway, a chance to spend some time re-reading his biography on the Wiki. A fun fact: "He befriended John Elroy Sanford, a fellow dishwasher at Jimmy's Chicken Shack in Harlem who aspired to be a professional comedian. Both men had reddish hair, so Sanford was called "Chicago Red" after his hometown, and Malcolm was known as "Detroit Red". Years later, Sanford became famous as comedian and actor Redd Foxx" <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_X" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_X</a>
@John I got “Detroit Red” right away, but I did not know about the connection with Redd Foxx!
@John Hence the name of Foxx's sitcom in later years, Sanford and Son. !!! That's all I've got to say, emus. Take it or leave it. On second thought, just leave it.
Good puzzle, but I am unclear as to what to put in the "holes". The games app thinks that I still working on the puzzle. Every square is filled except the circles, and it all matches the downloaded solution.
@Dan Using the desktop-Windows-browser Puzzles page (sometimes these things vary depending on what app you're using), I entered a rebus (by clicking the Rebus button up top and then typing "HOLE") six times, once in each circled square, and that worked. Somebody below did it by just leaving the six circled squares empty. If you've tried both those approaches and neither worked, there probably is an error somewhere you aren't finding. People will commonly point out in this situation that the O key and 0 are next to each other on the Qwerty keyboard, so that's the most common error people make when they think they've solved it but haven't really done so. Sometimes the eye just isn't spotting a different problem. Very rarely I've had to clear a puzzle and retype in the answers to get credit for the solve when I can't find the one square that's somehow off. Easy and fast for a touch typist on a keyboard but maybe not so fast in a phone or tablet app.
@Dan Try entering "HOLE" in the circled squares, as a rebus. That worked for me.
@Dan Me too! I finished the puzzle (except the cells with circles) and obviously understood the holy cow theme but the timer keeps running… I even turned on Auto Check then tried every single letter of the alphabet and the were all incorrect…
Okay... today's puzzle. I got lucky today because MOSCOWIDAHO dawned on me right away. Between that and WHOLESALE I caught on to the trick quite early and was able to work out the rest fairly smoothly. Not a record time for me but well below my Thursday average. I enjoyed it. Oh... and I entered HOLE as a rebus in each of the squares and that was accepted. I'll put my other puzzle find in a reply. ..
@Rich in Atlanta Okay - my other puzzle find, somewhat inspired by a number of comments on today's puzzle. Anyway... what led me there were actually three answers that appeared adjacent to each other in the middle of the puzzle; and they were the 'reveal' for the theme. Those answers: MUCHADO ABOUT NOTHING And then there were six areas with one or two blank squares and each of them had a theme answer that circled around those blank squares. Hard to describe but one sample section: -cUBic -H__Bo imBUe_ So the highlighted circled squares spell out: HUBBUB. A couple of other circular theme answers: FRACAS and FUSS. Here's the Xword Info link for that one: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=3/18/2021&g=33&d=A" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=3/18/2021&g=33&d=A</a> ..
@Rich in Atlanta Thank you for the hint about putting “hole” as a rebus. Really helped.
I love the “Holy Cow” answer. Reminded me of Phil Rizzuto, long time announcer for the New York Yankees whose signature call was of course “Holy Cow!!” Overall, very interesting puzzle
Somehow I thought that the Pacific Northwest include only the US states with a Pacific Ocean shoreline... and British Columbia, so I was surprised to find that Idaho is included...
@MaB Good point! It kind of makes “Pacific” in the name “Pacific Northwest” somewhat redundant.
@MaB It seems that one interpretation of Pacific Northwest is, as you believed, limited to States with a Pacific Ocean shoreline. Wiki does state however, “Though no official boundary exists, the most common conception includes the U.S. States of Oregon, Washington, northern Idaho, and the Canadian province of British Columbia.” — — — — — — — —
What a great puzzle today!! Absolutely loved it.
Quick one today, a lot quicker than yesterday's. For me, a fun, breezy (for a Thursday) puzzle with enough chewiness to keep it interesting. A lot of answers that I knew that I knew, but just couldn't quite remember. But once I got the theme, then yes, I did know the name of that long-time judge and the city in the northwest. My favorite was 3D. It was unexpected.
How the hell do enter “enter a rebus” on the app? Even after figuring it out there’s no apparent way to complete the puzzle in the app. Annoying.
@David Mann You hit the “more” button at the lower-left of the keyboard, and then click “rebus”. It completes just fine, and rebus answers are far from a new thing for the app.
@David Mann I completed the puzzle on the official NYT Games app on my iPhone, without any issues. I entered the word HOLE (as a rebus) in each circled space. Worked for me.