What did we do to deserve two ASSHATs in one week?
@Sonja It's a reflection of our Times...
@Sonja It's a sign of the Times
Two ASSHATs in one week. It's a sign of the Times.
@Olaf Schmidt ohhhhh there were plenty of asshats this week. Only two in the puzzle though.
Once again – this if four times in a row, now – David has filled in this elegant uber-low 66-word grid design cleanly. Spotlessly, actually. That’s tough enough to accomplish once – try it sometime! – and here it seems habitual. Wow! Not only spotless, but gorgeous answers all around, a grid bathed in beauty: WAMPUM, FOIST, PULL STRINGS, BASKET CATCH, HIATUS, AGE OUT, PACK IT IN, GAUCHE, BOO BIRDS, ALL EARS, and WIFFLE. WIFFLE! Who can’t smile at WIFFLE? Not only gorgeous answers, but pop spread all over – especially in the grid’s major bones, the six answers of the crossing triple stacks, none of which has appeared in the 80 years of Times puzzles more than three times before. Again, wow! That pop, for me, was boosted with lots of yippee in the solve, sweet splat-fill thrills; yet, for me, enough bite to keep things honest, a most lovely combination. To add to the good vibes, the rebel in me liked seeing GAUCHE on the right, and I enjoyed seeing HACKS show up, a series I’ve adored, including the current season. Thus, beauty and bounty in the box, and my day is so much richer for having done your puzzle, David. Thank you so much for making this!
But is BEA really an apt name for a spelling champion or is it humorously inapt?
Ended a stressful work week, drank five beers and killed this thing in under 10 minutes. Fun puzzle, no complaints. I'd say that in the days or weeks after Shortz, there was a lot of uproar over some puzzles that Ezersky had a hand in that were fiendlish/unfamiliar/hard. Fagliano's approach for the weekend is more like Wednesday/Thursday without a theme, with a little corner here or there where it hinges on a trivial cross. Everyone is grappling with how attuned we'd become to Shortz's style. I'd just be glad the NYT is soldiering on. They have archives back to the 90s. If you're breezing through these, roll back the clock a decade or two, find something you haven't done. Or get serious and construct a puzzle. That'll fill up your day.
@Some guy in I second your archives recommendation. Anyone going in, just be aware the earliest days of the Shortz era were wildly inconsistent - most of the easiest *and* a few of the hardest puzzles I've tackled are from those first few years.
I am finding that as a long-time solver, probably close to 2 decades on-and-off, my times are extremely consistent. I'm sure there are others like me out there with a massive, massive data set. Interestingly too, my average times and PB times for each weekday show a startling consistency - both are almost linear from Monday to Saturday. So I am not blowing my own horn when I say Joel's calibration seems a bit off. Friday PB yesterday by over a minute. New PB for Saturday today. A third PB for a Wed a few weeks ago. I am indeed enjoying the new Fagliano regime and I am finding some of the clues and themes are fresh, which is great. But my take is that the difficulty level needs an end-of-week tweak. I am definitely not getting smarter - so says my wife.
@Richard 3784 puzzles solved and I finished this in ~40% of my normal Saturday time.
@Richard 7,379 NYT puzzles solved. Five personal bests in 2023 and none so far this year. It’s possible that my eye-hand coordination is not what it was even a year ago, but I doubt it. Sometimes you click with a puzzle and sometimes you don’t. (I was slower than average yesterday.)
Some nice clues in this puzzle. Besides, I will like any puzzle that has FESTIVUS in it.
I breezed through it, and you know what? It's nice every now and then to come across a Saturday puzzle that doesn't brutally crush your soul.
Puzzles need not be a fight to the finish, a struggle, a proof of braininess, but a pleasure to solve, whether leisurely or at breakneck speed. I enjoyed this puzzle, had fun puzzling over tough spots, delighted at seeing unexpected "friends," WAMPUM, BIERE, IGUANAS, SRIRACHA, MAMBA, and the rest, and enjoyed figuring out the other half of fills I knew part of (MASTERMINDS, BOOBIRDS were two). I don't feel the need to prove anything, but I want to keep my streak, and if I need Señor Google or Madame Wikipedia to help, I'm just happy they're there. Sometimes when they fail miraculously the clouds in my head clear and I remember what the answer will be without them. But sinking into a Wikipedia flurry of information I didn't come looking for can be an unexpected and enriching prize. I look forward to the puzzle every evening, and I'll admit that sometimes I'm disappointed when it's over too soon or so far over my head it's like trying to find the keys to open a double locked trunk in the dark, but they're always a welcome and distracting entertainment. Thank you David P. I needed that.
"Hey, can my marionette and I perform?" "Yeah, I can pull some strings..." ("...but if I can't, don't shed any puppet tears.")
After struggling yesterday where many of you didn't, I whooshed through this one at breakneck speed. Every answer turned out to be exactly what I thought it would be when I read the clue and when I didn't know immediately, like with WAMPUM, the right crosses were immediately available to help me. There was no junk; the entries felt lively; and I found it quite enjoyable. Some thoughts: I always thought FESTIVUS was a made-up holiday invented by George Costanza's father on "Seinfeld." It's a real holiday? The History of Baseball According to Nancy: The BASKET CATCH was invented by Willie Mays of the New York Giants. (Don't let it be forgot that once there was a team called the New York Giants that was not a football team.) No one had ever caught a ball in such a manner before. Willie's most famous BASKET CATCH was off of Vic Wertz in a World Series game. You should Google the play. In 1957, the evil owner Horace Stoneham whisked the Giants off to San Francisco. And no one other than Willie Mays ever made a BASKET CATCH after that. Don't tell me that they did, because if I never saw it, it doesn't count. After the evil Horace Stoneham took my team away from me, I stopped watching baseball entirely. Well, I did make a brief attempt to switch my allegiance to the hapless Mets, but it was unsuccessful and very short-lived. And that, Dear Reader, is my very brief history of the BASKET CATCH.
@Nancy festivus is made up. It wasn’t made up for the show though. It was made up decades earlier by one of the writers of Seinfeld to commemorate something. Since the show it’s kinda taken on a life of its own and people celebrate it. I mean kinda like people celebrate May 4th, Pi day. Everyone who celebrates is in on the joke.
And now the airing of the grievances.... Love the Festivus clue!
David P. Williams's 4th installment of his 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird series, apparently an homage to the 13-part poem by Wallace Stevens, does contain words related to the poem -- union, boo birds, nests -- and I've gamely made efforts to decode the first 3 installments with limited success, as have other commenters (Henry Su, Puzzlemucker and several others), but I'm getting a little tired of the game. Maybe Williams has deployed SECRET CODES we are meant to decipher, but I feel more and more like a PATSY, trying to glean something meaningful from the clues and the fill that is likely just a chimera. Perhaps Mr. Williams will clue us in as to what it was all about a couple years from now when we get the 13th installment, but at this point I'm packing it in. One of the lessons of many of Stevens' more philosophical and metaphysical poems is that there's no there, there: it's only in our minds. And that is probably true of this puzzle in trying to establish links to "13 Ways" -- there's simply no there there.
@john ezra So today's puzzle was supposed to be about the 13th installment of the poem? If so, I would like to dive into that poem. emu food more emu food
john ezra, If future installments continue to get easier, we'll all be able to pack it in and still solve them. As I was going to St. Ives, I meta... Nah.
@john ezra Hang in there, John. Some of the best parts are still to come, especially those that deal with poets and poetry. Can't wait for "bawds of Euphony". This one seems too short for much speculation. Not too much room for anything other than the blackbird as reality and natural lifeforce. I suppose we could think about the bird representing variety and imagination in all aspects of creativity.
Nice puzzle - not all that easy for me, of course, and maybe a few more look-ups than I should allow, but was surprised to finish successfully. Answer history search today was based on an old joke, inspired by 21d. Specifically - "We don't need no stinking badgers." Anyway... I'd done this one but had completely forgotten it. A Thursday from February 28, 2019 by Randolph Ross. This was all in the clues. Thought this was enormously clever. Theme clues and answers: "Blue jays :" JASMINEANDJEANS "Honey bees :" BADGERSANDBEARS "High seas :" COMEDYANDCRIMES "Green peas :" PEACEANDPEPPERS And all of those theme answers were 15 letters. That's just amazing. I'll shut up now. ..
@Rich in Atlanta Not a math major any more but I can still count. Anyway... I won't post any more answer history searches. You're welcome. ..
Funny that lots of folks found this one too easy. It wasn't that easy for me! Seemed about right for a Saturday! Nice puzzle :)
@Dave Munger But we wouldn't know how ingenious those folks are without them telling us. Seemed about right to me, too.
Nice to see the shout-out to TINA Brown, who, when at the helm of Vanity Fair, made it a must-read. Also great to see TETRIS. I used to play it listening to Led Zeppelin's Kashmir, zen-like hypnotized, in sublime meditative state. The puzzle didn't have that effect, but it's an altogether different kind of game. I was held up for a bit in the NW, but then again, I always am. I haven't yet figured out why, for me, the NW is always the last to fall in late-week puzzles. It all came together smoothly when I broke into the NE and made my way down the right side and up the left. This was a very enjoyable puzzle and I thank you for it, Mr. Williams. I hope the SECRET CODE hidden within it will one day be revealed...
@sotto voce Hi there, dear friend! emu food more emu food
@sotto voce I slowed myself down by messing up the NW: bee instead of BEA; “areole” (a conflation of areola and aureole, maybe?). As usual, thinking of food saved me and led me to SALAMI (CIRRI not “cirrs,” doofus).
This puzzle certainly brought many Horatios to the comments sections - Hornblowers, that is.
Minor nerd nit to pick. Blame the CS degree. ASCII - AMERICAN Symbolic Code for Information Interchange which uses 8 bits to encode information. (ok, ASCII needs 7 bits and Extended ASCII needs 8, but work with me on this one) The first 31 bit patterns (0x00 - 0X1F) are non printing characters and contain control codes like SYNc, ACKnowledge, Vertical TAB, Horizontal TAB, Carriage Return, LineFeed, Bell, etc. As such, they do not represent text. ASCII has insufficient patterns (2^8 = 256) to encode the symbols of non-western languages so the current system for encoding human readable text is Unicode (<a href="https://home.unicode.org" target="_blank">https://home.unicode.org</a>/), of which ASCII is a subset. Mainly I'm salty because I really wanted the fill to be AFAIK
@Will Can you say that in English? LOL just kidding! We Luddites don't need no stinkin' ASCII!
@Will I thought it was IYKYK for “If you know you know” :)
I got the puzzle! wow. I need a nap. 44A really takes the cake for me...as in "the last straw" or "the ultimate mystery" ...It's a game, it's a thing, it's...a joke? Definitely did not get it. What Ebenezer said. OCTETS... you call that a 'big band'?? Our HS band was 100 strong (and the school wasn't all that big.) Doesn't the psalm differentiate between thy staff and that other thing? Pretty sure Mr. Tricky knew that TRENCH COATS fit perfectly in 14D. Rascal! The 'stinkin' badges' make appearances in "Romancing the Stone" and "Blazing Saddles"...so of course I was far afield for a good spell. 21D was a real dud of a movie, IMHO. I tried ILE de Glace before it was drowned by le MER. MITES are horrifying little arachnids, and if you clean out a birdhouse or handle NESTS, wear surgical gloves and securely bag the material you touch. Bird MITES will infest/colonize a human and it's an unbelievably awful experience. (Hosting three nests-ful of baby green herons was a wonderful and unique thing, but ....) This concludes my Saturday morning....
@Mean Old Lady Glen Miller’s orchestra is the canonical big band, much larger than eight. But we have to agree to disagree about “Treasure of the Sierra Madre.”
@Mean Old Lady In TETRIS one has to fit a variety of differently shaped blocks, each composed of four squares, as compactly as possible to avoid filling up the game area.If you create solid horizontal lines, they disappear. So, if one is TETRISing, one is packing a box or a suitcase as efficiently as possible, leaving no space unfilled. Kind of what moving companies try to do to your furniture when they pack it on trucks.
A fun Saturday solve. Southeast corner came together first, I attribute that to too many years watching South Park. Always get a chuckle when ASSHAT shows up in the NYT.
@Clifford ASSHAT delighted me twice this week.
This was a high risk puzzle. Its layout means that there are only two crosses linking the NW and SE with the rest of the puzzle: in other words, if you don’t get SUNSETSTRIP or SECRETCODES or FESTIVUS, your efforts in the corner are segregated from the rest, and you are effectively solving two puzzles. If you can’t bridge the gap, you’re on your own! I enjoyed this one a lot. Somehow I got lucky: SUNSETSTRIP popped straight into my head, and everything unfurled from there.
@Petrol Great explanation!!! emu food more emu food
Petrol, Medium risk, IMO. High risk is only one entry square. (Save for thematic purposes, we rarely encounter the latter except in the archives.) ....
Ate Skibidi Cap I oop I oop. Ate Skibidi Cap I oop I oop. This phrase will haunt me until my dying day, I think. If you make merch that says "Ate Skibidi Cap I oop I oop" on it I'll buy it.
This fourth in a series puzzle from Mr. Williams has the same exact grid design as the previous three. Interesting. I finally remember how to spell SRIRACHA. Great word GAUCHE. Time now to PACK IT IN.
@Anita I'm almost with you about the word GAUCHE -- it is kind of fun to say in an exaggerated tone of voice to decry someone or something. But in the end I can't abide by the original derivation from left-handedness! Like a number of other words with negative meanings, such as SINISTER. It's so hard for me to imagine a world where one's handedness determined one's character. And yet it still was so looked down upon in the 1950's, my dad had his hand tied to his desk to force him to be a rightie! (Didn't work.)
Is it official? Has Will Shortz retired? I am hoping he will be back.
@Pru He’s a pretty private man. There hasn’t been an update on his return since his stroke was announced March 3. We all obviously wish him the best of health and recovery. It too a number weeks for his editing to not be recognized on the puzzles. So assuming that he returns, it will take a few weeks for puzzles he edited to return as well. It’s only the end of May…so a few months recuperating from a stroke isn’t that long.
@Pru He is back doing the Sunday morning Puzzle show on NPR. There seems to be a slight difference in his speech?? And these puzzles are edited months in advance, so he might be back at NYT now for all we know.
I must respectfully disagree with Caitlin’s statement that ASCII is” the internet’s character encoding format for text data.” 7-bit ASCII can only encode upper- and lower-case Latin characters, decimal digits, some punctuation, and 31 “control” characters. It has no coding for ñ and ö, for example, and none whatsoever for Japanese (Hiragana and Katakana), Chinese, Thai, Arabic, etc. The Internet’s default character coding is UTF-8, a compact and efficient form of Unicode, that also happens to be ASCII-compatible. (That is, unmodified ASCII can be carried unambiguously in UTF-8.) Use of UTF-8 (or any other Unicode variant) allows encoding and storage of characters from most if not all languages on the planet. Handling UTF-8 (or any Unicode variant) in software requires some extra care because characters are no longer equivalent to 8-bit “bytes.” Python 3 supports it natively. Mark
@Mark Cousins If your disagreement was actually respectful you would have followed the link and read that the IETF: “…standardized the use of ASCII for internet data and was accepted as a full standard in 2015” and not belabored the point.
@Mark Cousins I should have read down the list before posting my comment. It sounds like you might have had to revise code that at one time assumed 8 bits for text encoding. If so, I feel your pain. hats off to you, nerd brother!
@Mark Cousins “The Internet’s default character coding is UTF-8” That’s a mighty broad brush to be painting with in a comment that’s intended to nitpick a technical note, written for a lay audience, that was basically correct to begin with…
I have come here to air my grievances. Nah, just over too quickly. And my husband *forced* me to endure Top Gun last weekend. I was so proud I’d avoided it for ages. But, there it was in the puzzle! So, a good day. But I’m gonna grab one from the archives now. Too soon to put the puzzling down! Happy Saturday!
Got through it fast, but was endlessly delighted along the way.
Festivus over Foist. Are we sure Larry David isn't a constructor?
@Randy Stern I’m not sure it’s in his DNA to create a crossword puzzle, but I think I’ve seen him lurking in the comments. Yadda yadda yadda.
@Randy Stern I'm not sure, but it's a pret-taay, pret-taay, pret-taay, pretty good guess. ... ... Curb your short-post flagging. Pls.
This puzzle took me about 2 minutes less than the Friday puzzle, and came in at about 53% of my Saturday average. <a href="https://goodcalculators.com/time-percentage-calculator" target="_blank">https://goodcalculators.com/time-percentage-calculator</a>/ I'd say that whether it took you ten minutes or an hour, this is going to be a relatively easy puzzle for most of you.
This one went so fast my stylus got hot cutting the stone tablet. That's never happened before on a Saturday. Only hesitation was a five-second delay wanting slice before CRUST. ................
@Steve L Thanks for the calculator link. 59% here.
I started with pounds for 1a and pickle for 1d and thought, well this is going to be easy for a Saturday. It was, but not until I cleared up the mess in the NW corner. The long answers in the middle came fast and resulted in me finishing at less than half my average time. I, like many others, am waiting to see if Will will return, or is just on hiatus. Wishing him the best of outcomes either way.
As an invented holiday, Festivus is all well and good, but it doesn't hold an aluminum pole next to Christmahanukwanzikah: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73vcbde8Cb8" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73vcbde8Cb8</a> Never trust anyone who leaves the crust of their pie uneaten.
@Bill I'm sure this would never happen with any pies you were involved with, Bill, so your imperative holds true for yours, but I've had some pretty bad, tasteless, overcooked, undercooked, mealy, cardboardy crusts in my day. I was a baker for many years in another life, and all it left me with is a tendency to secretly judge every baked good I encounter, and pie crusts are at the top of my picky list.
@Bill To my enduring sorrow, I once overworked the shortening when mixing the crust, and of course it was as tender as oak... just awful. But sometimes when you are worrying, you can't get off the treadmill, so to speak.
Was this week easier than normal or am I getting better? Broke my Saturday record with no look-ups (literally gasped when I did it because I almost always have to Google something on Saturday). And it's the third time record I've broken this week. Not complaining at all. A very satisfying week!
sunny617, You are probably getting better. And. This week was easier than normal. Glad you enjoyed the week! .....
@sunny617 Perhaps easier than normal for you, but not for all of us, I would wager.
@sunny617 Easier than usual - I’ve been well below average most days. AND you’re probably getting better :)
At 1D, I had _I__LE, so I confidently filled in PICKLE. You wouldn't believe how hard I tried to make that work, before finally admitting it couldn't possibly be correct. Argh!!
Less than half my average time. I mean, cute little puzzle, but somehow I expect a bit more for a Saturday...
This was a fun one. It went much better for me after I benched circus catch and subbed in basket catch. Also nice to see the great East Coast Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery make an appearance.
The first half of 10 down and 15 across. Getting a little risque!
@John H. Hopefully that's an indication the puzzle mavens have refocused and shaken off their recent derriere fixation.
@Ed We can only hope. But apparently not yet, with the inclusion of A**HAT twice in one week.
Like CL, my immediate reaction to the “ascii” clue was to worry about younger solvers’ knowledge banks; ditto with Lucy M.M. – have the young ones met Anne of Green Gables? But perhaps there are few to no younger xword enthusiasts anyway, and solving these puzzles is a sign of aging out? :-/ At any rate, has some local NY event, like a court case or something, led to asshats spilling over onto the grid these days?... Thanks to those who reminded us that we can mine the archives for past xwords btw.
@Sunny Indeed the "young ones" have encountered Anne of Green Gables. She's been brought alive in an excellent Canadian adaptation series called "Anne with an E" available on Netflix.
LOVED FESTIVUS (and how quickly and confidently I was able to plug it in). HATED the y I misplaced in SUNDAE. Sigh. I dont love closed off sections in puzzles but this was less painful than others. I was able to knock out the NW and SE fairly quickly. ASSHAT in The NY Times puzzle will never not make me chuckle. And I was most surprised by the accuracy of the clue for AREOLA.
@Joya As far as 15A, AREOLA, I agree with you the clue is accurate. But what about the constructor’s alternate clue in his notes, “A barbell might rest on one”. I have heard of J-hooks or J-cups in the gym, but never that term. Am I missing something? — — — — — — — — — — — —
A quick perusal tells me many found this an easy puzzle. Not surprisingly, 'twasnt easy for me. However, though it took me a little over my Saturday average, I didn't use a single lookup or a puzzle check, which I often need on Saturdays! So I guess my experience perhaps supports it being easier, despite my long time. It was fun and I was able to complete it help-free during my MIL's nap--a win in my book! So again I say, huzzah! 😉 My favorite was SALAMI for substack. I love being messed with! I also enjoyed BOO BIRDS! I've never heard it before and I thought it was awfully cute! The SE was definitely the hardest for me. Like many, I'd put marinara and had a few other wrong things. Nothing was working out, so finally, as I do when I reach a rather tricky section, I started singing part of the pater song from Only Murders in the Building, season 3, "Or, coochie-coochie-coo What if none of it is true? Has my inspection been too cursory? Should I look outside this nursery? What if none of the Pickwick triplets did it?" When that comes to my mind, I delete all of that section. When I went back, the SR was a good giveaway and the rest filled in. Sidenote, I don't know how often iguana shows up here, but it doesn't seem endangered like it is for the species endemic to our little island second home. It's critically endangered and I hope they are going to be able to save them! I'm always rooting for them, so I like to see it in the puzzle!
Slowed a bit by diving instead of BASKET CATCH and marinara instead of SRIRACHA. Pretty quick otherwise. But what’s with all the ASSHATs these days??
@Peter M nounVULGAR SLANG•NORTH AMERICAN a stupid or contemptible person. Guess it must be OK, though I never hear asshat spoken! Have you? Thanks for your text.
Really enjoyable solve. Thank you for a nice puzzle.
Marvellous puzzle - this was almost Saturday PB for me, but I’m stunned by how gorgeous this solved. Bravo.
Maybe it's because I grew up around here, and the history lessons may have been a bit more Massachusetts-centric, but I got WAMPUM right off the bat, then the bat off the clams. Fast start with some PPP slowing me down, but no real stall points. The NE was definitely the hardest for me. I'm enjoying this series. No idea what connects them all yet, but I've liked the general vibe of the puzzles so far. Fresh-feeling clues, not a lot of fill (due to the low word count I'm sure) and wooshy solves.
@Jay Speaking of 'wooshy' solves. I would spell that WHOOSH....and WHIFFLE, WIFFLE, Ball. What 'bat' off what 'clams'????
This was a fun, fast, breezy puzzle which took 1/3 the time of yesterday's 2017 Saturday puzzle from the archives. I have a split puzzle personality, depending on what I have going on that day. Today I need to get crackin' so it's all good. I do, however, relish a good challenge on a couch potato day, so bring on the brain pain 😊.
Nice one David - smooth solve. re 14D, I wonder how Zimbalist Jr ended up in acting rather than music, given his parents’ many talents. Still, 77 Sunset Strip made for good early tv.
Always hate when I breeze through the puzzle and come to the comments to see that everyone else solved it at or close to their personal best. Granted, at this point, we're a self selecting audience having solved it first, but still. Two minutes off my PB, so mistakes
@Steven M. PB for me as well, but I only have about 250 puzzles under my belt. Will be interesting to see what later puzzle solvers have to say.
@Steven M. I figured the first few years worth of Shortz-era archives had put all my PRs out of reach, but got awfully close today: within 13 seconds of my Saturday best from 4 Dec 93.
Slow start with hardly any acrosses filled in my first time through, but the downs gave me a toehold and I finished pretty quickly without resorting to Google. I always think that movie quote is from Blazing Saddles.
@Shan Yes--a variation of it. (PhysDau was recently with us for 2 wks post op, and we watched it..) And "Romancing the Stone" had another version... But the original was never as entertaining as those two occasions. IMHO, of course.
Chewy like a good sourdough. I enjoyed this one - especially the red sauce and bargain hunters. Good job, Mr Williams.
Went past an alarming number of clues without being able to fill in a single answer, but then this turned into a sprint. That said, boy am I relieved those alternate clues weren't used, they are brutal!