Step one: pick two three letter names. Let’s say DEB and GUS. Step two: find actual words that contain those names: guiDEBook and disGUSt. That was easy! Step three: check that when you trade names you still get actual words: guiGUSook and disDEBt. Uhoh. Step four: return to step one. This is why we admire our constructors for what they do!
@Cat Lady Margaret didn't even notice they were names until I was done solving! This was fun. It's great when the trick to the puzzle helps fill in other answers, as it did here.
"Step three: check that when you trade names you still get actual words: guiGUSook and disDEBt. Uhoh." --@Cat Lady Margaret A funny, droll, interesting and perceptive post today that I loved, @CLM. It richly deserves the 91 Recommends that it's already gotten -- and it will probably garner even more before the day is over.
Really did not enjoy this, a combination of very US-centric clues made grappling with a theme that wasn’t readily apparent quite difficult as I wasn’t sure of so many of the answers. One of my least favourite puzzles for a while, although obviously much appreciated by others.
@Spacebabe Ditto, with of course largely the same geocentric rationale. I am glad to learn of US-centric things every day with these puzzles, but this was a span too far. Once I gave in and checked Wordplay for the skinny on this name swappy business I filled the couple of theme crosses I had left, but this grid felt a joyless one overall.
@Spacebabe Isn't the NYT Corporation a US publisher, though? Wouldn't one expect its puzzle to be US-centric? When I've tried the Times of London puzzle, l've found lots of UK-centric clues. I'd have been surprised if that hadn't been the case.
Brutal, brutal puzzle. Lots of new things which is great, but I take issue with “Get bronze” and not “Get bronzeD”. I also don’t live 37D’s spelling of OMIGOSH. That’s a bit of a stretch. The theme was well executed though, but definitely made it hard.
@Selective Walrus I object to both of your objections. ;) The answers seem fine to me.
@Selective Walrus Say OMIGOSH fast, as one word, and it sounds as spelled in the puzzle. I don't have a problem with it.
Did not like todays puzzle Not against trying something a little different and making Thursday hard, but the words only made sense going across (not down) when you switch the three letters…. to me thats not good construction
@tom I think the fact that the clues only work on the downs before you swap the names is the whole point of the puzzle. Otherwise it would work either way and there wouldn’t be a unique solution.
@tom I agree. With a bit more work this could be the latest Schrödinger puzzle, of which we’ve had almost twenty. It wouldn’t break any rules, especially for a Thursday. Constructor/editors probably thought it just wasn’t worth the extra effort, they likely are correct. Didn’t have any recollection of SHMOO so got it on the crosses. TIL it’s out there all over the place from M*A*S*H, to the Simpsons, to the Flintstones. Also, “You had me at hello: frisky YEAST know who to ‘SHMOO’ after two minutes” from the Imperial College London: <a href="https://tinyurl.com/2wk5hk8p" target="_blank">https://tinyurl.com/2wk5hk8p</a>
@tom I don’t think this is a fair criticism. The revealer says that trading names will fix four pairs of answers, not every answer they touched. Making the downs work with ways would be almost impossible, if not completely impossible, and likely would have made the grid a lot less clean for minimal extra benefit. I thought this puzzle was admirably conceived and constructed.
Please don’t bake with crisco (unless you’re baking for vegans or folks who don’t eat dairy). Butter will always taste better. Baked goods are treats. Don’t have them too often, but make them worth it when you do!
@Jannicut I always assumed Crisco contained animal fat. Thanks for enlightening me, and I agree that butter is better in baked goods!
@Jannicut I’m a big fan of butter, but I believe the use of Crisco in baking is more about texture. Personally, I like the flavor of an all-butter pie crust, but a recipe with Crisco will give you a flakier result, which is more desirable by some bakers (and some pie-consumers) in some (many) cases. Also, a pie-crust made with Crisco will have a milder flavor profile, which may be desired if you don’t want the flavor of the crust to clash with or overpower your pie filling. Crisco is also useful in other recipes, again mostly for the texture and consistency of the resulting baked good. .:.:.:.:. .:.:.:.:.:.
I had to comment because this was one of my absolute favourite Thursdays - ever! It was a truly lovely challenge that relied more on clever clueing, wordplay and the theme puzzle than on obscure references and names, and I had a blast solving it. So many aha moments, from getting how the theme worked to actually using it to solve clues. 'Tough but fair' is exactly what I want Thursdays to be, and this was perfect. Some of my favourite clues: Get bronze > SUNTAN was my last holdout, because in my mind I kept trying to link it to being in third place, and it felt really satisfying to finally finish it. Dancer's haul > SLEIGH was just fun wordplay, and gave me a smile to solve. Roger's cousin > YES SIR was fun, I had 'AYE SIR' in for a long while and that just had me stuck for a good bit - totally on me and not on the puzzle, though.
I forgot one more - [Monk's style] with BEBOP as the answer was fair to me, but I kept trying to put in HABIT because that is absolutely what a monk would wear. The B in the centre really tripped me up.
@Evan. Agree, great puzzle. Made me work hard and long, and even though I had no idea on many, the crosses saved me, and got it on my final letter fill. Very satisfying. The gimmick, once I got it, was very helpful, but challenging.
I'm not sure of the directionality of this, but as I've become a regular player of the NYT Crossword, and more recently an everyday-finisher of the NYT Crossword, it's become clear that there is a correlation between being successful at these puzzles and being able to control your emotions and not panic in a sticky situation. What pushed me from giving up and/or using hints 3-4 days a week? Literally, it was emotional emotional intelligence. Being able to bear the knowledge that something is wrong, and calmly work through understanding what the problem is on your way to finding possible solutions. Being able to walk away and come back later with a fresh eye on the dilemma. Possessing the confidence in yourself to know that you are capable of more than seems possible given the mess you see in front of you. Anyway, I definitely would have given up on this puzzle a few months ago. So glad it was published today, because I had so much fun picking my way through to the finish line. Took me a bit to find my error - AWVS instead of ATVS. I never remember if lachrymose means tired or sad. WEARIEST turned into TEARIEST, and I got my happy little finish music. Thanks for a great puzzle today!
@Withers Wither With Her Good advice! For a long time when an answer didn't come to me, I just figured that it was a word I didn't know. Later, when solved, I realized I did in fact know the word, that it just hadn't come to me. As I became more confident, I wouldn't give up that easily. That's made a lot of difference.
1) A satisfying aha moment, getting the switcheroo shtick midway through. If I was a marathoner, my concern would obviously be to stay HALE & hearty. 2) Brackets around clues in the Gameplay columns from now on? It's the small adjustments that are signs of real revolution. The winds of change are afoot! But hark, the road to perdition leads straight from brackets to sports betting. Soon, we'll all be on Fanduel wagering on how quickly we solve puzzles, or on the number of complaints in Comments about hetero-normative from the triggered-happy. Or about the appearance of CANNON and her trusty STENO, the judge Trump has in his pocket. Just thinking her name makes me break out in a fit of lachrymose meiosis. 3) It took until today to realize that toddlers are those who toddle. 4) Seems we're not the only ones who have fraught encounters with emus. I take it you all read the Times article today on RFK Jr.'s pet emu he refuses to give up, even though it jealously attacks his wife, Cheryl Hines. Best part: “She had a big fight with my emu.” Back at the house, Ms. Hines confirmed: “This emu was so aggressive.” The emu, Toby, had moved out to Malibu with Mr. Kennedy in 2014 and took up residence in the backyard. But Toby was jealous of Ms. Hines, and took to charging at her violently. She started carrying a shovel in self-defense whenever she stepped outside. Every morning, she wondered: “Is today going to be the day that I wake up and kill an emu in my backyard?”
john ezra, “lachrymose meiosis” I’m laughing, I’m confused, I’m saying it over and over in my head like I’ve come down with a bad case of it. It’s reduced me to half of my normal self, splitting my sides with tears of laughter (which now mate with my beads of sweat). You make phrases turn up the corners of my mouth!
@john ezra And in the end Toby was killed by a mountain lion.
Holy smokes, I thought I'd met my match with this puzzle. But I worked on crosses until the theme FINALLY came to me, and I thought I was home free. Until I put parole for pardon and went sideways for a spell. Some terrific clues here. Nice puzzle!
Wow, the comment section seems to be people not from America complaining that this American puzzle is too American. When I lived in Germany I would attempt German Kreutzwortraetsel from time to time and I have to admit....there were often too many references to German things that I had no idea about, and it did make it tougher.
@Eddie I feel obligated to come to the constructor’s defense on this matter. When I was solving this puzzle the thought never even crossed my mind that it might be filled with too many esoteric Americanisms. A lot of the comments make it sound as if this should have been blatantly obvious to the constructor. This criticism seems a bit extreme to me
I'm an average red-blooded gay man--does that make me homonormative*? I had a college professor who would regularly say "normative" when he meant "normal," and "holistic" when he meant "whole," and "heuristic" when he meant, well I don't know, something that wasn't holistic or normative, I guess. He would smoke pot with, and married one of, his students (not me). He came to embody everything I found risible about Academia. *although in neither the OED or M-W, "Homonormativity" is, in fact, a term coined by Queer theorist Lisa Duggan, around 2003. But I prefer Practice over Theory: I'm a practicing homosexual, and, as we know, practice makes perfect. Or is that TMI? Nice chewy Thursday puzzle, with a lot of misdirects. Thank you, Ms. Dershowitz!
@Bill If I understand correctly, a person can't be *anything*-normative since it's a term that applies to a culture's tendency to explicitly or implicitly designate certain identities as normal and then define all other identities by their distance from that norm. Most cultures, at large, are heteronormative. The culture in a gay bar may be homonormative in that a man there is presumed to be gay (or at least curious) unless stating otherwise. I imagine you know this. I just like talking about language so thanks for giving me an opportunity :)
@Bill I didn't worry about any of the normative stuff. I knew people used it so I went with it, despite not having a clue as to what it meant.
Not only was it a huge "Aha Moment" for me when I finally saw what was going on -- it was also a huge relief. I had been SO completely in the dark for what seemed like forever. If I had only gone to the revealer immediately, I probably wouldn't have "suffered" so much, but my "mens rea" left a great deal to be desired this morning. I love you, President MONROE!!! You were my salvation. That "E" in PICKETed absolutely had to be an "O"! PICKETed couldn't be PICKETed. I got to you, President MONROE, a few nanoseconds before I got to TRADE NAMES. At which point the scales fell from my eyes and all became clear. Aha! DON/TED!!! And then back to ANN/RAY!!! ALI/LEA!!! And finally TIM/HAL!!! I had the final "E" in what had come in as HALE (19A) and I couldn't come up with the "marathoner's focus." RACE? TAPE? CORE (as in a runner's sixpack abs)? But RAC, TAP and COR are not names. INTIMATION belatedly gave me TIM. Aha -- TIME!!! One of the hardest Thursday puzzles I've ever done. Solving it makes me feel very smart. If you solved it, you're very smart too. I didn't find it much fun at all until I cottoned on to the trick -- and then I found it enormous fun!
@ I always go to the reveal first, or early on.
That was really tough for me and I loved it! Thank you and great job, Zelda! (If you're gonna use "mens rea" in a puzzle, maybe your name should've been Elle. IYKYK) Deb, I love your name tag idea. My mom was always mixing up my younger brother and our dog, which was understandable as they joined the family at about the same time. Due to this, our dog was consistently sent to school. We eventually figured out what was happening, but since my brother's grades were improving, we let it continue. Tasha was a smart pup and I'd love to end the story with her getting into a top university. Alas, she didn't. But she was happy just being an Eli.
@ad absurdum Ella doesn't have to change her name to Elle (I got the reference). Because she's Ella DERSHOWITZ. (Get why?) If not, Google her, or even better, Google just her last name. !!!!
@ad absurdum Good thing Tasha didn't go to Princeton, or she might have ended up wearing one of those funny little hats, in a clown act. (IYKYK)
This was a challenging and fun one! Some of the clever answers that kept me stumped for a while were ONT (I thought Can. but not ONT), VALENCE (I kept thinking VALENts), BEBOP, and even CSI which I originally guessed was TEC. RUN kept me guessing for a while because I'm just never a sporty guy. OMIGOSH also threw me off but I'm glad to learn that is the correct spelling when written as a single word. A very fun, educational puzzle all around. Bravo!
@Gregg I differed a little bit from Deb on how the clue for RUN worked. Yes, a home RUN is a [Homecoming, of a sort?] as Deb suggests since the batter, starting at home plate, rounds the bases to come home again. But a cleaner fit of the clue to the answer is that *any* RUN, not just a home run, must reach home plate and therefore is a [Homecoming, of a sort].
I thought this was an excellent Thursday. The gimmick was very clever, and for once I needed to get it to finish the puzzle. And also, for once, I needed the revealer to get the gimmick. I thought it was a smart concept, very well executed, and it made for a very satisfying solve.
I love reading Deb’s column and sighing “oh, ah, I see”. For this non-local, non-native language solver it simply became too convoluted. Pick your fights and know when to throw in the towel. I’ll be back tomorrow.
This is exactly the type of puzzle I enjoy the most, one in which understanding the theme actually helps you to solve it. I was not exactly sure of the meaning of MENS REA but I knew the crossing clue had to contain a persons name (TIM) to make marathoner’s goal work out. Without the theme I would have had a much more difficult time. As a scientist I appreciated the science clues dealing with electrons and cell splitting but can understand why some may not. For me it was a satisfying solve.
@Robert Kern Good morning Mr. Kern!
Such a clever theme and how very impressive that it went from inception to completion in a single day. All that stuff I learned in high school sure came in handy. MEIOSIS, VALENCE electrons, the MONROE Era of Good Feelings. SAT words lachrymose and itinerant. Amazing how quickly that all comes back to you. Excellent clues for SLEIGH, BEBOP and DELETE. Well done, Ella!
Now that was an excellent Thursday puzzle. All the clues were fair, many were fun. Great theme and not a cake walk to do the theme clues even once you understood the theme. Clues about biology and chemistry. 21 minutes, no mistakes. 11 day streak
@Steven M. Congrats! That seems fast. My streak is longer than that but my time on this one was quite a lot slower than yours! Somehow I convinced myself that the circled letters were repeated in each row, and it took me a while to unwind that assumption. Fun puzzle overall, I thought it was a good challenge!
A clever theme with many layers, and some nice clues. Not the hardest of Thursdays, but just hard enough to me worthy of the daily slot. I wasn't a fan of OMIGOSH, but that's a personal gripe. Overall, pretty fun.
@Ash I take it you had no problem with 10D. I had TAR for a while.
Really disliked having clues that weren't correct if you weren't in on the theme. Felt cruel to the puzzle solver. Wasnt able to complete it and left frustrated.
@AB Welcome to Thursdays in the New York Times Crossword. By your comment, it seems you are new to the weekly progression, well and long established by the NYT Games staff: Monday is most straightforward, increasing in difficulty to the apex on Saturday. Friday and Saturday are themeless. Thursday always has some "trick". The more you attempt them, the more you "clue" into what's going on! Sunday is clued at roughly a Wednesday level, but is of course the largest grid. And it may have some kind of trick, such as a rebus.
A bit on pentad… when Greek numbers form the root of a word for “so many of something”, the Greek suffix -ad is what accomplishes the function. monad - 1 of something, a unit, an individual duad/dyad - 2 of something, a pair triad - 3 of something, in music a chord of 3 notes tetrad - 4 of something pentad - 5 of something hexad - 6 heptad - 7 octad - 8 ennead - 9 decad/decade - 10 of something, not just years All of these will come up in the puzzles; decade, triad, dyad and monad are not unknown in real life. The Latin equivalents duet/duple(t), trio/triple(t), quadruple(t)/quartet, quintuple(t)/quintet, sextuple(t)/sextet, septuple(t)/septet, octuple(t)/octet, nonuple(t)/nonet are probably more familiar. The one that raises eyebrows most in the crosswords and Spelling Bee is “ennead” for a group of nine.
@David Connell Long ago, back in another me, I composed a Toccata for organ whose climax was a sustained dodecuplad. Both feet on the pedal board, and you had to catch e/f with your right thumb. Very old-fashioned, of course, but then I am Arnold's grandson.
@David Connell - the “other half” in this case is the suffix: -don = tooth (monodon, one tooth) -gon = angle (pentagon, five angled) -meter = measure/pace/step (hexameter, 6 paces, six “put your foot downs” while speaking poetry) -pod = foot/feet (bipod, two feet to stand on) -athlon / -athlete = physical competition (triathlon, 3 contests) -cle = necks/narrowings (pentacle, 5-point star) etc.
Cute! YESSIR it's fun to see HETERO show up in a June puzzle. Gonna TODDLE along now. DONE.
@Barry Ancona I see TIM and HAL plus DON and TED in addition to ANN and RAY and ALI and LEA. Vaguely unsatisfying that the trade doesn't work with the Downs.
@Barry Ancona I wonder if those who were up in arms about cisgender the other day are going to complain about HETEROnormative. !!!!!
@Barry Ancona And that's why we love you! Room for everyone under the flag. Except emus.
Claiming you know with any certainty when and where a given mixed drink was invented is usually risky, unless you just enjoy arguing with drunks.
OMIGOSH, this is the best puzzle of all time. Because, SHMOO. Gotta go dig out my dad's copy of the Shmoo book. Fun trick. Though after I found TED, I was expecting the rest of the names involved in swapping, Bob & Carol & Alice. Thanks for this puzzle, Ella.
@Linda Jo reminds me of P.D.Q. Bach's "Hansel and Gretel and Ted and Alice", an opera in 1 unnatural act.
I usually get a theme quickly, but not today! When my downs weren't working I thought I had to scramble the circled letters to make new names, which worked for some of the downs but made the theme answers nonsensical. I'm embarrassed to say I had to read the revealer a couple of times before it dawned on me that just needed to swap the names, and the fact that it formed new words when I did blew my mind. Maybe I'm just easily impressed, but I am in awe of the constructor. (Dancer's haul) for SLEIGH slayed me, lol
Bravo. Most fun I’ve had in a crossword in a long time. Got the revealer early enough to help with all 8 clues, yet they were still tough even with that knowledge. Nice mix of clue difficulty (not too easy to make the revealer superfluous, not too hard to make it impossible) and cleverness on the theme.
This is where it's at. Make me think. Scratch my head. Walk away and come back. Make me have no clue until reading the revealer clue. Thank you, Ella. A stELLAr puzzle. Your parents absolutely gave you the right name!
"Who donated all these writing implements?" "Not sure. He used a pen name." ("I guess we'll have to ink it over.")
@Mike These puns are a marker of mental illness. I'll pencil you in for an appointment with a therapist.
@Mike "But don't stylus as being BLASE about your puns -- we get a BiC out of them !!" .. .. Now a little something for His Nibs, the head emu.
Re: Americanisms. I’m a Canadian daily solver, and once you’ve done enough puzzles (I’m at 1200 or so) they get a lot easier to identify. Like “Eli” or the myriad US govt org acronyms. I thought this was just the right amount of chewy for a Thursday.
@Jeremy I trust you got [Neighbor of New York] without a blink. (I can, quite literally, see Ontario from my dining room window.)
@Bill I did! But — Canadian provincial abbreviation is ON, not ONT. I often also see ALB but we use AB for Alberta. Editors could take note…just sayin
To the folks complaining about not getting today's puzzle: - Expect most Thursday puzzles to have a "trick" to them - This puzzle literally tells you that it has a trick to it in clue 55A - The letters that are part of said trick are circled I do understand not liking rebuses and other such tricks in general, but for me, this puzzle wasn't particularly hard.
@Pax Ahimsa Gethen Well not hard once you solved the revealer, but otherwise was a difficult solve by downs only puzzle as the acrosses made no sense and the down clues tricky. I don’t mind misdirection clues, but ever since Joel became editor, the clues have become vague, lazy and not clever. A typical example that continues to irritate me: snack = Oreo. Yes technically an Oreo can be considered a snack, but so are 100K other food items. I soon expect the clues to devolve into: noun, verb, adverb, etc.
Gosh, I enjoyed this puzzle. Just the right amount of challenge, cleverness, and wit.
Condolences to the non Americans attempting to solve this puzzle. I’ve tried a few Brit cryptics and although I lived in London for a year long ago the cultural references are too much for me. (I miss the New Yorker cryptics). I was waaaay over average on solving time here. Really great Thursday puzzle! More please, less rebuses
@Banjo Nelson I miss American cryptics, too, the New Yorker, and the Baltimore Sun. I've tried British cryptics and Australian, but no joy. Anyone know of a current source of cryptic puzzles? Maybe a website although I prefer to solve on paper. The emus can be cryptic.
Absolutely devious! Ella, you are an evil genius. I’ve never put in and taken back out and put back in so many letters. I saw the circles and thought “oh I’ll read the message when I’m done,” forgetting it was Thursday. Then the revealer told me why I was struggling so much. This was a worthy non-rebus challenge. And as an aspiring constructor, I’m awed by the work that went into building this theme and grid!
@Elly Zee My thoughts exactly, an evil genius, and she constructed it in one day?!! That was such a fun puzzle, tricky to realize that the word written with circles has no clue, loved the challenge!
Wowzers! Indeed... This one, as I just observed to DHubby, was a "Bain Bruster." (I wasn't intending to joke; I actually think my mental capacities were over-taxed--strained beyond the bounds of reason and safety. ) I wonder how Ella D. did it. I wonder what WE did to deserve it. I wonder if the Emus and Editors have ever seen anything like it. I wonder if this might not be the epitome of trickiness, never to be surpassed. DHubby had the nerve to try and tell me something in the midst of my agonizing solve, and I bit his head off. (I apologized later, though--in my defense-- the yard guys were outside the windows running mowers, edgers, and blowers--all at the same time. Overload!) Woof. I got the SCHMOOs and the Tribbles kind of mixed up in my head (wow, the SHMOOs were really, REALLY a long time ago...like early 60's. I don't miss L'il Abner, but Pogo...now, THAT was a cartoon!) I miss Walt Kelly...and Art Buchwald. I've just subscribed to the newer iteration: The Borowitz Report. I'm haviing a little extra coffee, and I'm feeling better now. I did complete the puzzle, and it was right. I got the Wordle in 2. I guess I'll live after all.
@Mean Old Lady - every time I guess Wordle as “no repeat letter”, I’m wrong. Every time I guess Wordle as “a-hah! repeat letter”,… I’m wrong. I should have had a three today. Oh, well.
Deb - I just want to say thank you! I’m fairly new to crosswords. I’ve used your past advice and started with Monday puzzles and I have finally starting a Thursday puzzle. I have a ways to go to get even half of a Thursday complete without googling hints. Thank you for the great commentary and help! 😘
Wow, hard to believe there are complaints about this. It's one of the most clever constructions I've seen in a decade of solving. A++
This was a good one. It took me about half the puzzle to figure out what was going on with the circled letters; and then, of course, I got a bit confused and started entering the "correct" answers in the wrong spots, but only with the last group. Got that last one sorted pretty quickly, though. There were some good clues, whether from Ella or the editors. I liked the clues for YES SIR, BEBOP, DELETE and MONK; and had me trying to remember back to high school for MEIOSIS and VALENCE. ANACONDA was cute, and my wife was an itinerant teacher with usually three to four schools where she saw kids, so NOMAD wasn't a big stretch. Thanks, Ella.
Oof. That was hard. I won’t go on about the difficulty/inaccessibility for us non Americans, it’s the subject of multiple posts already, but it did add a Teflon layer of difficulty over an already tricky grid. I needed all of Deb’s hints to even get a hand hold; understanding the TRADE NAMES theme helped a little, but it was still headache inducingly tough. A couple of clues I loved: Dancer’s SLEIGH. Nice misdirect. CRISCO. I learned about this from the film The Help. It’s not going to go down as one of my favourite puzzles, as it was so opaque for me. But I can still appreciate the work that went into creating it.
@Helen Wright Yes, I'm sure you did, but that wasn't the main ingredient! ;-) !!!!!!
Today my top-to bottom, left-to right method was the worst way to go. It failed me, and how! I needed downs! I needed a revealer! So I *hated* the top half, peeked at the revealer clue, looked at the odd answers I’d shaken my head at, and suddenly it came together! Pretty gritty one, and that’s no complaint. Thank you Ella!
I rarely add comments here, but this puzzle (and AI the puzzles thus far this week, actually) have been super clever. Brava, Ella.
I thought this was a fun puzzle! I don’t always comment but felt the need to do so today to balance out reviews from the non-American subgroup of solvers! Thanks!
Fun and excellently constructed. Solved it pretty quickly, but only because I dropped down to the revealer faster than usual because the top wasn’t getting anywhere for me
Fun puzzle, just a little bit hard, and the theme obviously took a lot of work to execute. One of the few times I could feel it paying off to be old. Shmoo and Ed Asner, we salute you. (I understand they both tasted like chicken.). Same with meiosis and valence and steno and Thelonious and even atomic clocks. A real feast for the aged. :) Emus are the new shmoos.
@B Also old enough to remember SHMOOs even though not remembering how to spell it. Ed ASNER voiced Carl in Pixar's Up!, so a lot of younger folk are probably aware of him as well.
I DOUG this cROSSword. Clearly not as clever as Ella, haha. Maddeningly fun.
Ugh. How are you supposed to know whether to do rebuses, get the downs right, or get the acrosses right? I didn't get the memo. But then I'm no Lynn Hill either.
@wendy We don't know… and that's part of the challenge and fun of a Thursday. Constructors are always coming up with new ideas and tricks, but the editors are probably keeping them from making them impossible to solve. I look forward to figuring out the tricks and twists as much or more than solving the puzzles.
@wendy Generally speaking, when there's a trick like today's, there's a clue somewhere in the puzzle, called a revealer, usually near the bottom. Today's was at 55A: TRADE NAMES. Once you knew what you had to do with four pairs of answers, that is, TRADE NAMES, you should have the key. The revealer did not specifically say that the pairs were the two answers on each line, but that was the most logical guess. Other puzzles work differently, but if there's a revealer, you can figure it out.
I enjoyed this Thursday puzzle a lot more than I usually do. To me, the horizontally-placed theme squares were intuitive, and the crosswords helped me figure out the rest. Some of the clues were frustrating at first, but were so satisfying when I finally solved them. Very clever! Thanks Ella!!
I haven't read through the comments yet because I only just got done with the puzzle and need to get some dinner going. Thursdays are always the hardest day for me to get a puzzle done because of my work schedule... It would be better for me if Mondays or Tuesdays fell on Thursdays but it turns out that things aren't all about me. Who knew!? 🤷 Anyhow, I see there are a lot of comments and I hope that means that people liked it as much as I did! Granted, it was a harder one for me than normal, and I went over my average, which is already pretty high and I normally beat it these days. But I figured it out without help at all and it was a lot of fun! When things didn't make sense, I first thought it might be a rebus but I don't know if they would do a rebus combined with circled letters, so I focused on the revealer. I was slowed down a bit first because once I had NAMES in, I immediately put in brand.... Figuring out the real theme did help me, starting from the bottom and then heading up but certainly not a gimme! Especially in the Northwest. Anyhow, I thought it was a lot of fun and I enjoyed the theme and the misdirection clues. Loads that made me smile!
@HeathieJ The obvious solution to your Thursday problem is just to retire!
That was a lot of fun. I spent too much time mentally confusing Al Capp with Andy Capp so I got SCHMOO only from the crosses - "I don't remember that!" Some excellent cluing even without the trick. Nice!
After 40 years in the law I am pretty confident that "INTENT" is a subset of mens rea, not vice versa. There might be a jurisdiction somewhere that uses these terms otherwise, but I doubt it. And "ATTN" is not part of a *subject* line. But apart from those two stumbling blocks I have only myself to blame for taking way too long on this one.
@DrewT I think you can read it as mens rea, now give me an example of that. It's Thursday, inside out clues are par for the course. I for one had to look up the meaning of mens rea, because although I can come up with the phrase, I'm never sure what it means. That corner was the last to fall for me. That said, not so keen on Attn being in the subject line (but I've seen it there in a real memo). Of course I had in re first.
@DrewT Hm. Doesn't "mens rea" mean "guilty mind," i.e. the intent to do something you know is wrong?