I think a clue and answer got switched: “Way up in your business” should be OBGYN, no?
@Kate Tani My dog is staring at me wondering why I can’t stop laughing.
@Kate Tani The original clue made me laugh way harder than it should have.
@Kate Tani 😂😂🤣 Good thing I wasn't taking a sip of coffee when I read your comment, or my spontaneous explosive laugh would have drenched my computer.
Thursday is still hard for me...but I'm getting there! Over the past couple of weeks. I've gone into the archives and completed a bunch of Monday puzzles. It gave me a little confidence :) . It also helped me learn a little bit of crossword-ese. I was able to get much further in today's puzzle than I normally do on Thursdays. If someone else is new, perhaps this is helpful for them as well.
@Jenny I love diving into the archives. When I’m on a plane I’ll sometimes sit there and do Thursday puzzles the whole flight!
@Jenny I always recommend this to my friends who are interested in crosswords but feel like they're too hard. A lot of the time they're jumping into a Saturday for their first go and don't realize the differences in difficulty/theme throughout the week! I started by going through Mondays and was amazed how quickly the familiarity with crosswordese helped me move through to the harder puzzles.
This puzzle's theme was MAGNI(F)ICENT. . . . . . . . . . (random EMU reference here) . . . . . . . FINAWESOME!
@Xword Junkie -- Stellar! Et tu, emu.
Some vegetable farmers have people lining up for miles! They mind their peas and queues. (A few also tend sheep: they're between a flock and a pod place.)
@Mike Those sheep are both pastorized and pastureized. It's rumored that they follow a crook.
@Mike I've got to hand it to ewe, I can't beet today's offerings.
@Mike I've bean expecting something like this would turnip. It ap-pears the only thing missing is an orchard, but maybe farmers should squash the impulse to add one. They might ask themselves what are watermelons for?.
It’s a complex theme, yet easy to grasp. Props to the creative mind that came up with this! I love the different levels of wordplay in the theme. Some other things I loved: • [Padded piece of paper, perhaps?] for RESUME. Hah! In all the major crossword venues over all the years, this answer has never been clued like this. Bravo! (Hi, @Eric Hougland!) • HEADER on the top row. • GDAYMATE looking like a theme answer, but isn’t. I had a good time for a while trying to come up with a clue for it that would fit the theme, even though I was unsuccessful. • That even though I grasped the theme, I still had to work to come up with each theme answer. • Five palindromes in the grid! (EKE, PIP, DID, PUP, ENE.) I left the puzzle with two main thoughts, Kevin. One, that this was fun to fill out. And two, high respect to you for coming up with and expertly executing this theme. Just a splendid outing all over. Thank you so much for this!
@Lewis Hi to you, too! Don’t disappoint me by leaving that RÉSUMÉ clue off your list. I’m glad to hear that it’s original, as I forgot to check xwordinfo.com’s database before I commented.
(Y)AHWEH would be a better clue for 23 across
@Chris g It is a fallacy that the Tetragrammaton, or four Hebrew letters, יהוה, is pronounced YAHWEH or any other specific way. Hebrew, both ancient and modern, is normally written without vowel markings (there is a modern system of vowel points—see example below—that is used in some cases, but didn’t exist in ancient times). So that name, or Jehovah, or anything else, is just a guess, since there’s no way of knowing how the name was pronounced when it was supposedly revealed. It is etymologically related to how God responded when Moses asked who he should say sent him, אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה, (I am that I am). Many Jews will not write Yahweh, Jehovah, God, Lord or many other words out in full, nor will they say any of the possible names of God. Instead, they will write G-d or L-rd in English, and substitute another word, such as Adonai (my Lords) in Hebrew (using a kind of royal plural). A religious Jew would not be able to complete this puzzle if it meant having to write Yahweh in (although it has appeared in the puzzle 11 times). But a religious Jew wouldn’t be solving crossword puzzles today anyway, as it is the holy day of Shavuot, when among other labors, writing is prohibited. At least until nightfall.
It's always funny to me when commenters insist that a puzzle was "easy" or especially "too easy." That's really dependent on one's knowledge base and the vibe of the puzzle. For me, yesterday's puzzle had much more flow and today's felt bumpier. It took me the longest time to understand HEADER because I'm almost always solving on a phone so I don't often see the Across and Down HEADERs. And the northeast might have been easy for some, but without poker experience (I despise card games), a memory of The Jungle Book, or a memory of ever having learned ACTIN - I got stuck for a good while. It was ultimately all solvable but not particularly "easy" for my brain today.
@Gregg The NE was a real bear for me today.
I always bump on SKITS being used to describe what SNL does. I recall from my improv troupe days that the preferred term is "sketches", although making that distinction may be limited to the pedants of the comedy scene (many of whom are never seen in comedy scenes). I've been playing for less than a year, so the thrill of completing a Thursday puzzle without consulting anything but my own brain is quite the rush!
@JonathanT You SHOULD be proud, that’s amazing!
@JonathanT I think you're right about the pedant's take, as opposed to the peasant's. I like to watch movies, not "films" or "pictures," as they say in show biz speak. Congrats on no lookups, BTW.
@JonathanT Congrats on the 'no cheats'! This puzzle was harder for me than the average Thursday, as I needed fifteen 'cheats'. That's a bit more cheats than I usually need on a Thursday. I've been solving cross word puzzles for many years (having acquired 'many years') and maybe a cheat less Thursday only happened once or twice.
Fun solved. I smiled when I finally worked out Leash.
A very clever and fun to solve. I especially like P’S IN A POD and the spanner I OF THE HUURICANE. Trying to think of other phrases that fit the theme brought this to mind. Along the lines of 53A, something the world needs more of. PEA(C)E C OF TRANQUILITY
This was lots of fun. I caught on to the trick at PSINAPOD, and it was smooth sailing thereafter. I liked clueing GDAYMATE as Australian Open (perhaps because I managed to guess it without any crosses). LEASH for line on a doodle made me chuckle too (although I needed crosses for that one).
@Marshall Walthew And I was the opposite on those two! I read the doodle clue, thought *wait* a minute, a doodle is a line -- and by the time that thought reached the end, I knew the answer had to be LEASH. I kept thinking the tricky Australian clue must have something to do with the bush. But then it didn't! Very fun!
Monday was unusually clever, Tuesday found just the right degree of difficulty, Wednesday was a perfect paean to papas everywhere, and today was funny, a little crunchy, and fun throughout. I even shared a screenshot of P'S IN A POD with my spouse, who despite not being a puzzer always appreciates a good clue, especially when it's SET up as a DAD JOKE. Because work's been nuts this week, I haven't been coming here to sing the constructors' praises each day, but this has (IMHO, of course) been a fantastic week for crosswords. So thank you, Kevin Curry and (belatedly) Kareem Ayas, Chloe Revery, and Simeon Seigel--& eds. of course!--for these wonderful prework diversions.
SANS WHEEL, UNCORK OATH TOO IOFTHEHURRICANE WAITITOUT PILOT GENTLE ANT, RESUME PACKON MOOR LUAU'S HONEY MOOR PSINAPOD EKE! ONLINE HEADER GOB-ISH NOIDEA PRINT FLAW! ALIENLIFE? YES. Emu san
I have not been sleeping well lately, and I drove about 900 miles over the last two days, so I’m not functioning at my best. It took me until P’S IN A POD to make sense of the theme. Then, I got mired with C OF HUMANITY. “Sea of humanity” is not as familiar to me as “eye of the hurricane” or “[two] peas in a pod.” For whatever reason, I had PACKed at 31D and wasn’t fully sure about ISLA Nublar. It’s been a long time since I have seen “Jurassic Park,” and while the Spanish made the most sense, it could have been ISLe. I also forgot about mouse PUPs and got snookered by the clever “Frontier figure” clue. (“Who in the American west had a vaLeT?”) (I was primed to miss the veiled capital by my earlier attempt to watch “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” which we put on hold when we both began nodding off.) But at least I had a few answers in that area that I was certain of, like ACURA, HOODS and Mel TORMÉ, so I eventually figured it out. I hope to see “Padded piece of paper, perhaps?” on Lewis’s list on Monday. Alliteration and a humorous “aha moment.” What’s not to like?
Ambrose Bierce deserves to be better known today than he is. Here is his comment on 32D: DIE -n. The singular of "dice." We seldom hear the word, because there is a prohibitory proverb, "Never say die." At long intervals, however, some one says: "The die is cast," which is not true, for it is cut. The word is found in an immortal couplet by that eminent poet and domestic economist, Senator Depew: A cube of cheese no larger than a die May bait the trap to catch a nibbling mie.
@Jack McCullough I found out recently that no one knows quite how Ambrose Bierce died. He set off on an adventure late in life, and was never seen again. There are suspicions he purposely killed himself, probably in some fantastically witty and cynical fashion.
@Jack McCullough even though I didn't know the term PIP (English is not my mother tounge), I have often used "die" when playing DnD, since it makes sense to say: "you should use your other die" as in D20 or such. Warm wishes from Switzerland x
This is for Sam C. Maybe you'll be reading the comments today, or someone will alert you to this. Yesterday, your column was headed OBSTACLE TO CHANGE. Below it was a photo of five wind turbines, captioned, "Can you guess how these wind turbines relate to the article's headline?" A number of people, in the comments, tried. IMO, nothing sounded right. I was thinking that toward the end of the day, you'd chime in with the answer to the riddle, but alas no. But the riddle is still nagging at me, and maybe others as well. Would you be kind enough to post your riddle's answer???? Thank you in advance.
@Lewis I have heard of a debate regarding windmills. They are powerful *winds* of change (wink, wink), but many consider them bulbous eyesores. They block the sunsets, the view, etc. So, maybe obstacles in the name of change..? That’s all I got. .
@Lewis Yes please, Sam. While I liked my guess, I think it suffered from one of Steve L’s traps. Oh great Sphinx, please take pity and reveal the riddle’s answer!
Perhaps think how it might relate to Don Quixote. . . . . . . . . . . tilting at emus
This puzzle was a real EXC(A)V(A)TION. (“Ace in the hole,” emus.)
How do I remember that Matso Bashō wrote HAIKUs??? Theory: Bashō is mentioned in a James Bond book (not the movie) that I read a long time ago. After a discussion of the poetic form with Tiger Tanaka, Bond writes the following: You only live twice Once when you're born And once when you look death in the face. It's funny what the mind retains.
@Grant I didn’t recognize either name, but they appeared to be Japanese names. Given that this is the NYT puzzle (i.e. mainstream), HAIKU seems a pretty safe bet.
@Grant Basho was all it took for me, having had the luck years ago of my husband sharing a collection of haiku poems he treasured. There are so many haiku poets, including women, who wrote those deceptively simple lines that distill a whole story, sometimes wise, sometimes funny, sometimes achingly poignant.
This was a delightful puzzle. Lots of aha moments for me: "Frontier figure," "Padded piece of paper," for two), and most importantly, a poetry reference! In the West we learn almost nothing about haiku, especially not about the fact that they were the center of one of the richest poetic cultures ever to exist. In Basho's time, haiku masters (tenja, or "graders") would hold contests that would have 10s of thousands of entrants. In bars, tenja would be paid to score haiku for groups of friends: everyone would throw money into the pot, the judge would give points to each poem along with witty commentary, and the pot would be split proportionally to the points awarded. The practice was so widespread and occasionally contentious that the authorities considered banning it as a form of gambling. Remember that Edo, the capital city, was one of -- if not the -- most populous cities in the world in the 17th century, with almost a million inhabitants. Basho ("Banana Tree"), in fact, was not always known as Basho. His first nom de plume was Tosei ("Green Peach"), and he made his money as a haiku judge until he grew disallusioned with the competitive vibe of Edo's haiku culture and retired to the country and renamed himself after the Japanese banana tree that grew outside his front door. Nowadays, those of us with a penchant for pithy, surprising turns of phrase have to content ourselves with crosswords. Padded piece of paper, perhaps? Resume.
This felt easier than yesterday's puzzle, but YMMV, of course. A lot of clever clues, ACER being my favorite. I shared that one with my tennis friend who doesn't do crosswords. He guessed it without my help. I figured out the theme almost immediately from YINGODSNAME, but the theme was fun. 19 minutes, no mistakes
You say skits and I say sketches Let's call these questions qvetches Fun with a NE corner that put up quite a fight. AFRICAN DESER(T) T in the Sahara
@ad absurdum How dare you not link a video: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYIF9YiUZyg" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYIF9YiUZyg</a> Emunicity
Four things in the NE that are now in my crossword glossary. But somehow got there. We solve to learn.
That was fun. Typical slow start for me but finally caught on with PSINAPOD and then just an enjoyable time working out each of the other theme answers. Actually ended up well below my Thursday average. Roundabout answer history search today led to one of the most remarkable puzzles I've ever encountered. I'll put that in a reply. ..
@Rich in Atlanta As threatened: A Sunday puzzle from October 19, 1975 by Frances Hansen with the title: ""Paging Mr. Tell." That puzzle had nine rebus squares, with each of them containing the rebus - ARROW. That meant there were 18 answers that included that string of letters. Some examples: STREETSBROADANDN(ARROW) crossing MRD(ARROW) WHEELEDHERWHEELB(ARROW) crossing (ARROW)LET ARETHEYH(ARROWED)TOTHEM(ARROW) crossing (ARROW)ROOT and (ARROW)HEAD Here's the Xword Info link: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/PS?date=10/19/1975&g=34&d=A" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/PS?date=10/19/1975&g=34&d=A</a> ..
IN TOUCH and GENTLE SANS a single FLAW, I’M SURE HUMANITY, YES! emu, oh emu haiku, shall it ever be? else you shun me …
Made me smile, lots to like about this puzzle :)
Lars, Yeah, who knew? I was thinking of when the pizza burns the roof of my mouth… (Sorry any breakfasters. But cold pizza would pass the test.)
@Lars I got it from the crosses and spent a lot of mental energy trying to figure out what I had wrong. I'm glad I've never embarrassed myself by calling it a pizza stick.
@Lars We make pizza a couple of times a month. The peel is essential for getting it onto the hot pizza stone.
I really enjoyed this puzzle! A good challenge, lots of great clueing, and a “aha moment” theme!
I would call this a perfect Thursday puzzle. Thank you, Kevin Curry.
Fast but fun. I caught on to the theme with Y IN GODS NAME and enjoyed figuring out the rest. My favorite was PS IN A POD. The meta HEADER at 1A was a nice touch.
I kind of got the theme at 39A "Trop(i)cal storm", but eye OF THE HURRICANE didn't fit, so I decided to 36D "let the storm blow over" and moved on. Like most others, it was 67A PS IN A POD that clued me in to the puzzle's trick, and the rest of the theme answers became clear. I thought it was a great Thursday puzzle, definitely trickier than a Wed, but not as difficult as a Fri.... not to mention the anti-rebus crowd should be happy. (I do miss the rebuses though)
Hi Sam! Are you swole, jacked, or YOKED? This article might help: <a href="https://www.muscleandstrength.com/articles/swole-jacked-yoked-lingo" target="_blank">https://www.muscleandstrength.com/articles/swole-jacked-yoked-lingo</a> And there are at least 97 more ways to say it (some of whicjh the emus moght not approve of), as Dom Mazzetti is happy to explain: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XrgkvzAorM" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XrgkvzAorM</a> But in researching this, I discovered that "yoked" is a slang term in Northern Ireland for "high on Ecstasy," as in "I was so yoked at the Snow Patrol concert in Derry last night." Which meaning did that drugged-out gym-rat Georg Frideric have in mind? We may never know . . .<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNqamx8uUdA" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNqamx8uUdA</a>
@Bill Maybe I'm "shredded" in the sense that, after any attempt at intense physical exercise, I feel as though I have been put through a tree incinerator. On the bright side: Now I'm mulch!
Solid puzzle today, I enjoyed the theme a lot - it's always fun to hit that sweet spot where you can guess a couple themed answers on sight, but the others still need some cross letters to solve.
I wasn't familiar with the phrase for 53A, but was still able to suss it out with other clues. Besides that one stumble, I worked through this Thursday puzzle at a much better clip than average (though still well off of my low Th time). Start to finish, this was a highly enjoyable and rewarding puzzle by Mr. Curry. Well done!
Fun theme and cluing today! 65D was a gimme because I attended the Women's Euro soccer/football tournament in Nederland in 2017. (The big loser was my Achilles tendon while I was running for a train to see Danmark v Österreich.)
This was a rare Thursday I solved without lookups or help from the Wordplay column. The theme was easy. I got SNL SKITS immediately without crosses. The NE corner was the last section I solved. The dominos quickly fell once I figured out GDAYMATE. I enjoy these breezy puzzles without too much crunch. Keep them coming! PS: Tuesday this week was much tougher for me which required several lookups.
@Sam I also got this Thursday without lookups, but not the Tuesday this week.
Today was such a fantastic puzzle! I loved the wordplay and as a science teacher, I was surprised but delighted to see ACTIN make an appearance. I got it instantly but put in in pencil because I doubted it could be true, but hey, Thursdays are tricky. I still needed a couple lookups but I solved it nearly twenty minutes faster than my average. I guess I was on the same page as Kevin was. What a swell puzzle! p.s. for Kevin: STR(I)PED CAT'S GAZE could have worked for your IOFTHETIGER dream.
@Katrina S. very good! But you wouldn't even need the "gaze" part--[STR(I)PED CAT] would satisfy the theme. Fifth of the season, hurricane Emu.
Y in god's name made me laugh. Clever and fun puzzle...Bravo, Kevin!
Cute and clever theme in this smooth solve. RESUME for "padded piece of paper" my fav. Reminds me of when I had to submit the annual mileage report for the company car and I called it "My greatest work of fiction". Many thanks.
Very clever. Took me an hour but finally got the ( ) trick. But I admit I had to look up muscle protein to complete that gnarly upper right grid.
Fun puzzle. When I finally got PILOT I immediately thought of “The Right Stuff” with space as the final frontier … too deep, apparently. But then again, I had “tissue” instead of RESUME for a while, thinking of some nice padded Charmin, which was clearly the opposite of deep. Fortunately my love for Night Court means I will always know Mel TORME.
Did not know baby mice are called PUPS nor did I know the name of the utensil used to remove pizzas from the hot oven surface (PEEL). Fortunately I was saved by the crosses and I did learn something. Overall I thought it was a good challenge.
@Robert Kern Exactly the two same difficulties, Robert. I got lucky too. I had a terrible time but greatly enjoyed this solve because the rest of the puzzle was so interesting.
Today’s crossword strikes me as mainly obtuse Has many strained, non-intuitive clues and answers. Just saying.
@SuzieQ So interesting how mileages vary! I'm sure you're not alone in having disliked the puzzle. I, on the other hand, found it to be superb, forcing me into lateral thinking for all the clever misdirects, making me have to walk away and come back to it, use quite a bit of reasoning skills, and rely on crosses where necessary. In my view, a triumph of clueing. And therein lies the beauty of different experiences. ;-)
@sotto voce, I heartily concur! I loved this puzzle, for the same reasons as you. I enjoy being forced to think differently, to challenge my synapses to fire in new ways. This was just the right level of challenge and flexible thinking for me. Thoroughly enjoyable.
@Susan E I’m right there with you and @sotto voce. Perfect blend of interesting wordplay and nuggets of knowledge. And the theme clue/answer sets were a lot of fun.
I loved the clues and the witty answers. What a fun solve!
Nice theme. Took me til PSINAPOD to get an opening, but fairly straightforward after that. As usual it was the US/British differences that threw me. I spent forever looking for my error; COmP vs CORP. the President’s name being an unknown, TYLEm could have been right for all I knew. I was exhausted just reading Mr Curry’s bio; what an energetic chap.
@Helen Wright Even from England, I'm sure you'd agree that TYLER is far more likely a surname (and these days, a given name) than TYLEm. Tip for the future: Except for Martin Van Buren, all the early presidents' names were solid English names.
I thought KATR(I)NA might be a better clue for 39 across, since a tropical storm technically isn’t a hurricane. Enjoyed the puzzle though!
Alex, In a scientific journal, the clue would have been TROP(I)CAL CYCLONE. In The Times, any port in a STORM. Tropical Storm A tropical cyclone that has maximum sustained surface winds ranging from 39-73 mph (34 to 63 knots). Hurricane A hurricane is a tropical cyclone that has maximum sustained surface winds of 74 mph or greater (64 knots or greater). <a href="https://www.weather.gov/mob/tropical_definitions" target="_blank">https://www.weather.gov/mob/tropical_definitions</a>
@Alex, In this case, I parsed "tropical storm" as two words (adjective noun) denoting something general (a storm in the tropics), rather than the unique concept "tropical storm" usually denotes. That said, I like your clue more! I wonder if the editors/Mr. Curry worried it might be triggering for some?
@Barry Ancona. To be fair, he didn’t say it was “wrong.” He just offered “better.”
I really enjoyed the theme and finished 15 minutes faster than my average. Would have finished faster if I didn't always mix up the surnames of Marissa TOmei and Mel TORME!
This was a tough one, but rewarding once finished. My first foothold was in the southwest corner where I found the first themer. Then came the northeast corner, where the G in OBGYN helped me spot GDAYMATE. After that I sailed along beautifully until the ITY of 53A convinced me the the answer ended in PITY, which convinced me that 31D was PACKUP and the erroneous U told me that 48A ended in UT so that gave me SCOUT. What next? C of HAVE PITY? .VSURE? Finally, the beautiful aha moment of IMSURE and COFHUMANITY and PILOT and, uh, like I said, rewarding once finished. Whew!
Calling ACER a company that makes servers is a bit of a stretch. They are best known for their consumer-grade desktop and laptops.
Joe, Of course it's a stretch. I didn't even know they made servers. But expect stretches in the crossword, especially in some good wordplay. ADIN
@Joe Accardi The clue says nothing about what they are best known for. Acer does indeed make servers, as the clue says, so how can it be a stretch?
@Joe Accardi Acer thinks they make servers… “Acer servers feature 80 PLUS® power supplies at the bronze level or better across all platforms, with 80 PLUS® platinum-level for our most mission-critical products. Responding to data center demands requires eliminating all bottlenecks, including IO performance.”
Overall pretty straightforward, although the SE gave me pause as I had PICKUP instead of PACKON and DIETED instead of EDITED. TIL baby mice are called PUPs. Can anyone explain how PEEL is a pizza implement?
@SP Never mind just looked it up. TIL that too
@SP A peel is the tool with a long handle and flat, wide head that is used to transfer the uncooked pizza from the bench to the oven and then back bench when it's done.
@SP I was wondering the same thing about PEEL. I looked it up after my solve, and it's pretty much a large spatula.
There is a difference between a padded RESUME and a bald face lie. it depends on how much money the boss loses when they figure it out.