59 down should be SOL. It's Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti Do. That's a pretty major (excuse the pun) error.
@JDJ So and Sol (and Soh, in British English) are different names for the same note.
@JDJ I’m used to SOL as well, but either spelling is considered acceptable
@JDJ Have you ever seen The Sound of Music? The alternate fomr SO has been in existence since Oscar Hammerstein II willed it into existence in or around 1959. Note the title of the puzzle.
A really, really enjoyable Sunday. I loved the theme! The hill I’ll die on this morning is that a sampling of scotch is a nIP, not a SIP, but I’m willing to overlook that in exchange for a great crossword!
If ever, oh ever, a Wiz there was Then Wiz Khalifa is one because Because, because, because, because, because Because of the way he raps while buzzed
"Any sharp music puns today?" "No, they'd fall flat." ("Come on, you're a natural.")
Careful, Mike. Watch your footing. Don't fall off the clef. EMU or DMU?
@Mike No puns -- a note worthy day! I'll give the emus a rest.
@Mike Note to Mike: Your puns are the staff of life. We need them. 🎼🎼🎼🎼🎼🎼🎼 (Hum a few bars, Emu)
This was a tasty palate cleanser after yesterday’s tougher, more chewy meal. It also referenced more than a few of my favorite things. (Cinderella TV musical! Beyoncé! The Wire!) Like a brown paper package tied up with strings, this was a delight to unwrap.
@Heidi I remember watching that musical on TV, and I loved it so much! It really is a fun production of Cinderella.
Not going to name names, but there were a couple of comments today that were downright mean, directed at a debut constructor. It’s one thing to feel and to say that a given puzzle isn’t one’s cup of tea, but why be mean about it?
Any puzzle cluing Steely Dan, Miles Davis and Pavarotti is winner imo.
@John Dietsch I enjoyed MILES Davis crossing ELLIS Marsalis and ADELE. Imagine what those three might have collaborated on.
Confidently misled to “MSJACKSON” for 111A during my first pass (“I’m sorry Ms. Jackson / I am four eels / never meant to make your daughter cry / I am several fish and not a guy”)
Mike, thank you for an absolute delight!! Seeing CRESCENDO and GLISSANDO in the same puzzle made my day! As a Juilliard violinist this puzzle was filled with so much that fills my musical life with joy. First opera at the MET...PAVAROTTI in Boheme when I was a student. CINDERELLA...My daughter's first opera at NYCity Opera, where she later sang in the children's chorus... Have worked with both Wynton and Branford, and it was lovely to see their father ELLIS in the puzzle...Have also had the pleasure of working with Victor BORGE – What a treasure! Subbed in the pit for the original Les Mis, so WHO AM I was a trip down memory lane... TUXEDOs – the bane of most of my male colleagues' existence. They are relieved that many orchestras now allow a toned-down all-black version of the dress code! I had no problem with DO RE MI FA SO LA TI DO...Although in solfège class at Juilliard it was do re mi fa sol la si do, your title clued me in to this being an homage to the film version of the scale. And now...I must go scale up as well as SCALE DOWN!
@Laura Fantastic that you've had all these experiences. Thank you for sharing them here. You bring up something interesting. Do re mi fa sol la SI do. Whereas there's been much brouhaha in these comments about so vs. sol, I believe you're the first to mention si as opposed to ti. The way Julliard taught you is also the way I learned it from my piano teacher eons ago. I feel appeased!
I liked the theme echoes in the non-theme answers that ended in scale notes: AGLARE, ACTI, ESSO, BLARE, OGRE, CRESCENDO. And, as if to emphasize that SO is acceptable as the fifth scale name, it’s even spelled out in 127-across (ESSO). Very impressive to debut on a Sunday, and the constructor’s passion for music shines through, IMO, giving the puzzle an aura of delight that added to the solving experience. That he only started solving crosswords five years ago makes this puzzle even more impressive. Because there was an effort to clue as many answers musically as possible, may I suggest that 112-down (SLIP) could have been clued [1977 hit “___ Sliding Away”]. And maybe others can find more. Congratulations, Mike, on your first NYT puzzle. I’m intrigued to see what you’ll follow it up with, because I enjoyed this one so much. Thank you!
Solving tip: When you see that the theme elements (in this puzzle, the gray squares) are mainly occurring in the eastern half of the grid, there’s a good chance that they have something to do with answer endings. There’s also a decent chance that there will be a revealer in the western area, as swaths of non-theme white are discouraged in themed puzzles.
@Lewis Have you ever tried the Muller Monthly Music Metas? I find them a lot of fun. I’m four for four on solving the metas this year, which is better than last year. When you submit your meta answer, there’s room for comments about the puzzle. Many solvers use that space to submit musical clues for answers that lacked them. I have almost as much fun doing that as I do solving the puzzle. Today’s NYT puzzle reminded me of a MMMM puzzle because it was so saturated with musical answers.
On another note (haha): Bill in Detroit commented about never having seen a conductor in a TUXEDO; it's usually white tie and tails, or something else altogether. Putting aside* whether or not a tailcoat could be considered a form of tuxedo (I have no idea), or whether Pops conductors routinely wear "plain" tuxes, this puts me in mind of a welcome movement in classical performance. Orchestras, soloists, conductors, and, yes, choruses are abandoning the traditional dress codes that were very male-dominated and restrictive to gender nonconforming individuals. My own chorus has ditched the "tuxedos for men and very specific dresses for women" code in favor of "wear black - no bare arms, shoulders, or legs." In addition to not forcing nonbinary people into specific categories, it also allows different body types to wear clothing that they look best in. (* as well as an assumption that conductors are men)
@CrispyShot Wave baton until the music stops, then turn around and bow.
Had a "P" at 10 A/D which gave "PRO" and "POO" Didn't get the happy music so I eventually figured it out, but I like the P better!!
GLISSANDO When I read the clue I thought, this is too good to be true. I never hear mention of my favorite word in the “english” language. I know musicians who have never heard this term. At first I was tricked that it didn’t fit because of today’s theme but quickly realized that was the answer. Thanks so much for using this very rare and beautiful word! It made my week!!!
As a longtime member of many choirs, including symphony choruses, I also balked at SO (instead of SOL). No matter how you pronounce it, I thought, you *spell* it SOL. And I came harrumphing here to say so. Eventually, though, the crossworder in me was won over by the arguments. SOL appears to be somewhat regional (thanks for that learning, Aussies!), and SO has been an accepted form for at least half a century. In any other context, in any other crossword, that would be enough for me to accept it. And this is a crossword, not a concert hall or a music theory classroom. (Also, my wife, who is a much better singer than I and not a crossworder at all, thought I was being silly about it, and she is very wise. Plus, I enjoyed all the other musical references.) So, two thumbs up from me :)
If MI ever sound smart It just can’t be SO I was FA off the mark But finally said, D’Oh! I entered a RE bus On TI top shaded locus, Then doubled LA lettres Underneath, like a DO-fuss.
I always enjoy being reminded of Victor BORGE. I saw him in concert in Boston in my teens and still have the playbill squirreled away somewhere. Thank you for that, Mike. I was sailing along pretty well until I got to WIZ KHALIFA, where I had to rely totally on crosses. Thank goodness for Gladys Knight and KALE. PINOLE was no help, sadly, but even it made sense once I got the rest. I guess I have to listen to more rap. This was a good Sunday puzzle with an engaging theme. I have to admit, though, that I didn't really appreciate how well designed it was until I stood back and saw that the greyed boxes followed the scale down - DO TI LA SO FA MI RE DO. Very nicely done.
@StevenR I feel the same way about Victor BORGE. That was a welcome blast from the past 😊
As a music lover, I enjoyed this puzzle chock full of music related clues. Because the trick was flagged by the grey squares I caught on right away — sort of. I entered the appropriate note as a rebus in the topmost of the themed answers and when no rebus seemed appropriate for the lower answer, I just entered the second letter of the note. I thought the gimmick was a bit awkward, but eventually figured out that by bending the notes, as say MILES Davis might, it actually worked just fine. I had never heard the eely pun based on THATSAMORE, which tickled me no end. Off topic, but a short while back there was a discussion here about hot tea no longer being free at Chinese restaurants. Last night my wife and I went to a local Chinese restaurant that we hadn’t been to for several years, and when the waiter brought the menus he also brought a pot of hot tea. I was so pleased that I broke my no caffeine after lunch rule and had a cup.
@Marshall Walthew Really liked falling leaves theme which I worked out. Am not musical and no little about it so much of puzzle inaccessible. Better editing on the cluing could have made this clever instead of dense.
I firmly insist on referring to a sample of scotch as a NIP!
This was ever so fun! DO MI DO MI SOL (that’s a fanfare) for this debut. Extra points for including Wordplay’s favorite joke (that’s a moray). It must win a record for the number of incidental theme-related entries. So much so, that you could even stretch more of them to do that: “EXTRA for guacamole?!” to be uttered in coloratura tones. CONIFER: O Tannenbaum? HOME MOVIE: my sister’s 1975 production of the Aeneid, using last movement of Dvorak 9 in the soundtrack. BAD DREAM: performance anxiety? OK, I’ll stop now, except here’s a beautiful polska called Beethoven’s Tenth: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1hL_M6Ae3k&list=OLAK5uy_mTdzpdKnpC9KJR5XxQ0eVlmfZEADtAsmM&index=9&pp=8AUB" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1hL_M6Ae3k&list=OLAK5uy_mTdzpdKnpC9KJR5XxQ0eVlmfZEADtAsmM&index=9&pp=8AUB</a>
@Cat Lady Margaret The most intriguing part is your sister's 1975 home movie production of The Aeneid -- sounds like you are part of quite a family!
What an admirable puzzle. My first reaction when simply looking over the clues, before I filled in even a single letter, was that this was going to be impossible, filled with musical arcana that would be way too obscure for me. I even got a little huffy about it, and thought of Kincaid of San Diego's drive-by comment a day or two ago (something about boring and awful and he'd rather thaw his freezer, garnering a hundred likes from the like-minded). But then I got to work, hammering in a piton here and there and commencing the climb. Eventually I summited. I caught on at Wiz Khalifa and once I got the trick, boom! Though I can't understand why a three-cornered hat is not a tricorne, but I'll look into that and get back to you. Hats off to Mr. Ellison! As someone who tends toward the organic (in the metaphorical sense, I'm not talking about Whole Foods aisles), and who thinks computers & technology have caused us -- humans -- to radically mentally regress as a species, I'm troubled by the increasing reliance on technology to create puzzles, and (irrationally or not) fear that handing over 50% of puzzle creation to a "fill engine" will lead to a general atrophying of that part of the creative brain responsible for the fill. On the one hand, Mr. Ellison is a genius for building such an engine. On the other, it's a death knell. The cat's out of the bag with AI: that's what's next, right? Soon I'll be saying, "Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto, your debut puzzle was so clever!"
@john ezra Napoleon did not wear a three-cornered hat like Louis XVI but rather a two-cornered one.
@john ezra Oh wow I hadn't read his note. So a form of pseudo-AI / LLM has already entered NYT Crosswords. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but doesn't that take all the fun and challenge out of it? I'm quite sure a relatively primitive algorithm could regenerate tons of such iterations based on past puzzles and general LLM datasets, but I'd still rather be challenged by a clever human. Perhaps it explains why I found almost all of the "cluing" so simple. Dunno. But this doesn't really bode well. Several formerly reputable online publications have had minor scandals for publishing machine generated articles as real ones. I naively didn't expect the NYT to join in quite yet. :(
I loved this - it was one of my easier Sunday solves! I played the violin for years, so many of the music-related entries were quick for me and helped me solve chunks of the puzzle I might have been stuck on otherwise. I’m still very much a beginner with rebuses and the kind of grid-play present here, but between TUXEDO and PAVAROTTI, and with the help of the grey squares, I sussed out what was happening pretty early on. Not everything was smooth sailing, but overall I really enjoyed it. I can see why some didn’t care for this one or felt it was too niche, but that’s how I feel every time there’s a sports-heavy puzzle or one with endless Americanisms. Not every puzzle is going to land in my wheelhouse, but I appreciate when they do!
Clue: Gladys Knight's backup group Me for a half second: Wait, like when THEPIPS aren't available?? Why would they be somewhere else such that she'd need a backup? ....ohhhhhh.
@Classic Hip-Hop Fan I could see doing the same thing
As a musician, may I please have the last word on sol vs so ? If you have a problem with "so," then why don't you have a problem with "do," because Guido said it was "ut." And where did "ti" come from ? Not Guido. People ! Actual musicians don't give a flip whether it is sol or so. They just want you to sing that pitch in tune ! Got it ? End of discussion.
Congratulations on a melodious NYT debut, Mr. Ellison! I enjoyed the musical clueing throughout the grid. Your mother would have been proud of you.
"A destroyer of cattle, perhaps." Well, that kept me stuck, even when the answer became obvious. And yes, I was wearing my glasses. Amazing how often that happens... about once a week. And yes, I'm old.
Jeff Z It took me a very long time to see what you did there. And then it hit way too close to home . Made me laugh!
@Jeff Z I feel you. I read the clue for 42A as "Like many roots."
A lovely puzzle, with a really delightful theme. Congratulations on your debut Mike Ellison. Please give us more.
The title of the puzzle is "The Sounds of Music" which is obviously a (pluralized) reference to the musical, in which the note is called "SO" (/sew - "a needle pulling thread"), not "sol". So, "SO" is fine in this context, despite the insistence of the compLAiners, who seem to need to go outside and get a RE/drop of golden sun. I loved this puzzle. Awesome debut. It has a perfect mix of classical culture, vintage culture, pop culture, language, history, obscure/niche references, and common knowledge. And it has a universal theme. Great job, Mike!
I thought I was done, but no happy music. I went over it all again and couldn't find a mistake. Finally looked at the answer key. I thought "That's such a bummer" should be pOO, which crossed perfectly with pRO for "Jockish sort." Changed that p to a B and got the happy music. I liked my solution better.....
@Sue, thank you so much for your comment! That was the only thing between me and the happy music. Same answer as you, originally.
@Sue absolutely. I had the same issue.
CAROM, CIERAS, BANYANS, BICORNES, SCOW, PARR with. Now that is the toughest grouping I’ve seen in a very long time (including Saturdays)! TIL all of these. Oh, and HINKY/CIO was a bit cheeky as well.
@Aaron Hollon Correction: CAROM, CIERAS, BANYANS, BICORNES, SCOW, PARR. Now that is the toughest grouping I’ve seen in a very long time (including Saturdays)! TIL all of these. Oh, and HINKY/CIO was a bit cheeky as well.
@Aaron Hollon I had to do trial and error with a,e and then i to get hinky and the music when the puzzle is complete. Overall it was a good Sunday offering without a lot of goofy gimmicks.
@Aaron Hollon For the record, the Oldsmobile 'model' was the Cutlass. The CIERA was the station wagon version of that platform. To be fair, they stopped making them thirty years ago. (We called it the Gutless, because it was heavy and underpowered.)
My first thought reading through the clues of this crossword was "Wow! There is a lot of musical trivia today". Then I peeked at the title of the puzzle and laughed. Good one! I then realized the shaded squares were the phonetic scale and was amused, but wondered why they weren't in order. Then I filled in the two revealers and suddenly it made sense, we are going down the scale... and the tones are falling down which is why PAVAROTTI is (no longer) misspelled! So many layers! I loved it. A number of clever clues as well. "Bumpy ride" for CAMEL was my favorite. BOO to my 5 (!) typos which stretched out my solve to an EON.
Just checked out my Saturday solve time, and it shows 6 min 7 seconds. No, I am not a crossword wunderkind, here's what happened. I finished the puzzle, got the happy music and congrats screen, and went to read and comment on Wordplay. When I checked the game page again, it showed the puzzle as unsolved and the timer was still going. I doubled checked (answers were all correct) and I wasn't able to edit answers anyway. NYT help suggested clearing the puzzle and reentering the answers, which I did successfully, and I now have a new record Sat solve time. It looks good on my stats, but it doesn't feel right as it's nowhere near accurate, lol. (At least I kept my gold star) It did make me wonder though, it seems like an easy way to manipulate one's stats. No one sees my times except myself, so I don't know what the point would be.... maybe no one does this and I'm just being overly cynical. 😄
Seems most enjoyed this one and I'm glad to hear it! This puzzle was definitely not for me but there were four clues that I did really appreciate: bumpy ride for CAMEL, cost of guacamole for EXTRA, classical singers for SIRENS, and especially the as all get out clue for HOUDINI. I thought those were clever and fun! Much of the rest was outside my wheelhouse with loads of crosses that I just didn't know and couldn't work out. I enjoy hard puzzles especially if I can crack a fun theme or rebus or whatnot but this one was chock full of stuff I simply didn't know. And that's okay, it's bound to happen sometimes... Just like when the dog bites, when the bees stings, when I'm feeling sad... 😉 I appreciated the theme and those few clues at least, as I do cream-colored ponies and crisp apple strudels, doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles.... Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings... The theme actually came easily to me with PAVAROTTI, one of the few proper nouns I knew easily, along with my love for Sound of Music. Figuring that out so early helped me a bit with answers I didn't know, but not enough. Boy, did I ever dream of wearing a wedding dress like Maria's, as a kid! My dream wedding! When I actually got married I wanted nothing like that, I wanted sweet and simple -- no train for me to trip over, let alone one a mile long! Although It might have been fun to have had someone singing How do you Solve a Problem like HeathieJ?!
@HeathieJ Nice to see that you remembered your favorite things. Brought a big smile to my face. Thanks again. ..
@HeathieJ Hah! Great comment. And you just reminded me: I used to have a boss with whom I got along swimmingly, so I had a lot of latitude to joke. When, on occasion, she called my attention to something she needed fixed, I would immediately sing, "How do you solve a problem like [my name]" and we'd both crack up.
What a great and enjoyable puzzle. Congratulations to the constructor. And BOO to the unnecessarily mean-spirited comments.
A tip of the BICORNES to our debut constructor. Or should I say composer? The sounds were pleasant, the clues were gentle, and the trick was gentle too. Mike Ellison; I read your note. Did you grow up in the Midwest near AMANA? Were you a band director in River City?
@Barry Ancona Oh, we got trouble. and not the wholesome CAROM kind.
Enjoyed the puzzle! My giveaway was Tuxedo. Mike Ellison: my Mom did the NYT and SF Chron Merl puzzles in ink. She passed on in 2018, and since then my bro & I & his wife have started doing them. New favorite clue: "bumpy ride". I drive a Jeep!
26A- Inadvisable Wordle start word. I took that as a challenge. Well, it DID eliminate all but 95 words. Not bad. Results ? meh Wordle 1,044 4/6 🟨⬜⬜🟨⬜ ⬜🟩⬜⬜🟩 🟩🟩⬜🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
@Jim I have to say I considered that challenge as well, but opted for my "usual" starting word. This allowed me to get it in a respectable 3.
@Jim I have to say I considered that challenge as well, but opted for my "usual" starting word. This allowed me to get it in a respectable 3.
One clue asking about Steely Dan and I’m listening to their songs for an hour! So fun! Thanks!
Having gone through all of the comments from oldest to newest, I am happy to see that so many people enjoyed this puzzle. But if the subject matter is way outside your wheelhouse (raising hand), then you may have a different reaction. This one played liked bar trivia night for me. Got through it, eventually, but it was a slog. Having said that, any puzzle that references Steely Dan will always get a thumbs up from me. Seen the Dan live 22 times, most recently in Boston opening for The Eagles. Hope y'all enjoy your Sunday and keep those scaries away.
@RI guy I felt the same way about a puzzle referencing Alice Cooper *and* Adam ANT.
@RI guy Steely Dan the band, or Steely Dan the eponym?
@RI guy I wonder how many people doing this puzzle know the origin of the band name Steely Dan. I won’t give it away. It’s more fun to discover it on your own.
I loved this puzzle. It was fun to work. I have a tiny nit to pick, though. The actual solfège scale is do re mi fa SOL la ti do. The Sound of Music reinforced the idea that the fifth note was so (with no l), but it’s actually SOL. Goodness knows why that is; it makes far more sense to drop the “l,” but it is what it is.
Two misdirecting clues that made me smile: [What a guacamole often costs] for EXTRA, and [Bumpy ride] for CAMEL. And one that made me laugh when I finally got it: [Whose performances were as astonishing as all get-out?] for HOUDINI. Et tu emu.
Ugh! Defeated by a BRO ("A jockish sort"?? - what do bros have to do with sports??) and BOO, which could mean almost anything. So unsatisfying to spend almost 90 minutes on this puzzle and have to give up because of two nondescript words that were badly clued.
@Fred Same here. I had PRO and POO, Thought PRO was more "jockish" than BRO and POO expressed disgust more than BOO.
@2Woofs I did too, but had already noticed the ambiguity so was waiting until the end to try both ways
Thank you for the fantastic puzzle, Mr. Ellison, and, with happiness in my heart, I say... Thank You For The Music: <a href="https://youtu.be/4069PUk3aM0?feature=shared" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/4069PUk3aM0?feature=shared</a>
Glad you all liked it. So much trivia, I can’t even come close.
@Crevecoeur I feel you. Trivia-heavy puzzles are never easy for me.
@Crevecoeur Whenever I am upset about the amount of trivia in a puzzle, I ask myself, “is this really important enough to post in the comments?” (my threshold is very high, so I’ve never actually been upset by trivia :-)
Loving the way the constructor worked in the little-known scat scale: SHE RA ME SA CUR BEE SEE YA (Gonna be humming that one all day now, aren’t we?) (No.)
Nice puzzle! Great debut! Congratulations! Some of the clues had me laughing, like the one for HOUDINI and the “needle holder”. Very smart!
Nice puzzle, felt a little on the easy side for a Sunday but the theme was interesting. Love FALL TONES. Worth the price of admission alone. I’ve always known 62D as a nip, not a SIP, but not worth getting irritated by. I’ll have a nip of gin instead and contemplate the watery sun trying to peek through the rain clouds. Will this rain never end?
Cute, but the fifth tone of the scale is SOL not SO
@James Low It actually depends on who you are, where you're from, and whose book you are reading. Spelling of spoken (or in this case sung) language is often arbitrary and is subject to regional or even generational differences. We all know SOL as a regular occurance in the NYT puzzles. But SO is also acceptable as the fifth tone.
Solved this morning in the magazine, over brunch at our favorite diner. 24A & 28A were a gimmes, so we just sang along after that. Went straight down the center doing all the theme answers and their surrounding fill first, to confirm. Forgot about the theme revealers (even though they were mentioned in description), until the very end, since we were more entertained by the musical fill. Seems like Mike's software makes for nicely themed fill. Looking forward to more from him.
It would've been the icing on the cake if at the end of the day, instead of the usual happy music, we had DO RE MI FA SO LA TI DO. But that doesn't detract from a great puzzle, kudos, Mike!
@MP Rogers *that's* a crackerjack idea!
Just have to shout out Caitlin Lovinger for the excellent “Under Pressure” joke in the column. Well played, and a great puzzle today!
Enjoyable Sunday puzzle. I actually caught on to the trick fairly early and that was a big help, but still needed a few googles and ended up being another longer than average workout for me. Just a lot of nice 'aha' moments when something dawned on me from the crosses. Answer history search led to a couple of interesting finds. One a Thursday from June 9, 2005 by David J. Kahn. In that one the middle across answer was 15 rebus entries: DO RE MI FA SOL LA TI DO TI LA SOL FA MI RE DO. But the other search is way off topic and was inspired by the name of a commenter earlier today. Was bit surprised by this. First.... ...GUPTA has actually been an answer in 5 puzzles, with 'Sanjay' in the clue every time. But... SANJAY has never been a part of any answer. In fact, the closest any answer comes to that sequence of letters is - SANJACINTO, which was an answer in two pre-Shortz puzzles. Sorry for the drift. I'm done. ..
@RiA Ya know, Rich, I view your posts rather like Schrodinger boxes--I read one of your puzzle finds, like today's, and think "Gosh, I'd love to do that puzzle!", but then think, "but what's the point? I already know the gimmick :-("
@Rich in Atlanta To drift further, SAN JACINTO is a great song by Peter Gabriel. Not sure how many would know it, but it did make the 'best of' album, Shaking the Tree.