Beautiful message from the puzzle constructor.
Random thoughts: • This is a lovely grid design, sporting 15 bigs (answers of eight letters or more), which can bring such color to the answer set, and they do today, my favorites being A LITTLE HELP HERE, I NEED TO RUN, TABBY CAT, and TRUST FALL. This grid design, BTW, has never been used in a Times puzzle before. • Also bringing color are eight NYT puzzle debuts (Hi, @RIA!), all of which are bigs, including the ones I just mentioned, all worthy additions to the oeuvre. • I like the symmetrical mini-story of TRUST FALL / A LITTLE HELP HERE / LET’S PARTY! • Sweet PuzzPair© of SHRUG abutting YESNO. • TSA has shown up in the major crossword venues more than 500 times, but never with the clue or anything like the clue [Air force?]. Bravo! • A very-rare-in-crosswords six letter palindrome (HEHHEH)! All wrapped in beautifully-expressed constructor notes stressing the need to focus on our commonalities over our differences. It sounds like a platitude, but OMG, if only, if only – what a different world we’d live in! Thank you for this critical reminder, Trent, and for a fun and satisfying trip through the box today. I loved this!
Trent belongs in the constructor notes Hall of Fame, Deb aced the column today, and the puzzle was great fun.
@M. Biggen I just read it. Mr. Evans writes beautifully. What he wrote and how he expressed it was very much how I feel on the solver end sharing my brief collective journey with all of you in this lovely community. I hope he knows how thrilled I am that he does this wonderful creative work for us to enjoy. Thank you all constructors out there. It is a lovely gift.
Loved your message in Constructors Notes, Trent. A relevant and timely reminder. Great puzzle, too!
"I forgot your gloves." "You've got to be mitten me!" ("Sorry I couldn't give you a hand.")
@Mike You've put your finger on it, hit the nail on the head. I dig it.
@Mike Thanks for the daily work. I glove it. You arm my hero.
@Mike Are you knit picking here? 🥊🥊 For you, Emu! ☔
Thanks for the thoughts in the Constructor Notes, Trent. And thanks for puzzle #11, a gentle Friday to solve without the fireworks just ended. I hope not too many people will need ALITTLEHELPHERE.
@Barry Ancona I think 59A was a shout-out to you. SRSLY? SRSLY! ;-)
I'm a little bummed out that 1 Across did not turn out to be PainTbALL, but UCLA disabused me of that very quickly. The summer of 1977, before I was a junior in college, our family acquired an orange TABBY CAT whose official name was St. ELMO's Fire (way before the movie). He made it into the 1990s. So naturally this puzzle is okay by me.
So much to love here. The elegance of the solve. The exact number and placement of crosses that came rushing to the rescue when I got a bit stuck. Each area flowing into the next like a word waterfall… Lovely column from Deb. She gets me. Then, the constructor’s note. Added glitter to a beautiful Friday solve. Thank you Trent! Nailed it.
I can’t decide whether the clue for 16A was a Monday worthy effort that slipped by the editors, or if it was elegantly devious. I am leaning toward the latter. Because I for one read the clue, joked “ALONE” to myself and moved on leaving it blank. Even when I had AL… from the crosses I could just not convince myself it could be that obvious. Yep, definitely gotta go with elegantly devious.
I was nauseated* that I had to check the puzzle to find my error. *Did I spell that correctly?
@Bubba Last letter to fall for me. In my head it's always been nauseum, even though I'm sure I've seen nauseam written plenty of times. But then I'm looking at ERuT and thought, hey, that's not like any Latin word I've ever seen...
@Bubba Exactly my experience. The u looked great across, but not so pretty going down… Last square for me, too.
@CCNY Me as well. It seems this was a common experience for a lot of solvers today!
I didn't get hopelessly stuck anywhere in this puzzle, nor was I breezing through it at any point. Just right. [Worrisome words at a TRUST FALL?] "Catch you later!"
@ad nauseam - Ah, but did you find it at all annoying, to any degree? ;^)
@ad nauseam So happy for your just right solve! After all, some Fridays can be either too breezy or too convoluted, ad absurdum, eh?
Mr. Evans, your constructor notes were beautiful. And so here I insert my first thank you, for the inspiration. You speak of no longer feeling elation for getting published, but betray a sense of contentment that I find just as magnificent. That said, as a solver, I did feel elation for going from zero to a hundred, tackling the misdirects with many ahas, thrilling at the correct guesses, happily zig-zagging my way around the grid. Yes, I was exponentially elated, before finishing into contentment. And so here I insert my second thank you, for a terrific puzzle! The fireworks were (still are) raging all around me, so I solved donning headphones while listening to SADE and SIA. For those who don't know SIA, here she is when she first went solo: On the David Letterman show- <a href="https://youtu.be/0laf7XR_QAo?feature=shared" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/0laf7XR_QAo?feature=shared</a> At an Austin radio station during SXSW- <a href="https://youtu.be/5YzzNQ5U1Ts?feature=shared" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/5YzzNQ5U1Ts?feature=shared</a>
I'm still newish to the community. This is probably only the 2nd or 3rd Friday I've done with (almost) no hints (SISAL/RIC cross was too tricky for me) Discovering the long entries in this puzzle was some of the most satisfaction I've gotten doing crosswords. Well done
A reasonably straightforward Friday; some nice clues. We need more PRIDE FLAGS and SOLAR POWER and it was good to see them lined up together there.
I'm an e-book reader but I still have my tattered old paperback of Animal Farm on my bookshelf from high school. Thinking back on the book, I don't think I want to re-read it anytime soon. Reality is more than enough for me at the moment. Thought this was a terrific puzzle today! A few tricky spots for me, but I found the crossings gentle when I didn't know something. (Looking at you, SISAL!) I did not get immediate happy music though... like many of u, I'd put a u in NAUSEAM and moved on. Would have been a Friday best otherwise but I should have known better there. SRSLY! Happy to have had no lookups or helps again! My favorite was "Green juice" for SOLAR POWER. "Tom sporting a striped coat, say" made me think of yesterday when I wanted to put Tom for, "Peeper that doesn't make a sound," before I figured out EYE. Deb's column, always great, was extra terrific today! I appreciate the explanation of a themeless—and especially of soup dumplings! I've always been a bit curious but have so far stuck to the safer sounding regular dumplings... and then forget to look up what the deal is with soup dumplings. I'm going to get them next time! Lastly, I add my voice to the praise for the constructor's notes. They were the brandy soaked Bing cherries on top! If anyone knows Gallup's "Strength Finder," one of my strengths is interconnectedness, so this was totally my ASPIC, err, jam! Beautifully written! So much amen!
@HeathieJ I remember reading both "Animal Farm" and "1984" in horror as a young teen. I also remembered that I thought the threat was from communism, the Soviet Union, instead of "the-forces-that- the-emus-will-not-allow-to-be-named".
Mya, Sia and Sade walk into a puzzle bar. The puzzle bouncer says, "ID please?" The three of them look at each other, puzzled. Picking up on their social cues the bouncer says, "You can come into this puzzle bar if you can sing to me from one of your songs." They agree to this and Mya starts it off: I cook your dinner I wash your clothes Baby hell no that's not the way it goes It's All about me tonight (yea) I can't stop lovin' you Puzzle bouncer motions her in and points to Sia, who belts out: I'm unstoppable I'm a Porsche with no brakes I'm invincible Yeah, I win every single game I'm so powerful I don't need batteries to play I'm so confident Yeah, I'm unstoppable today Puzzle bouncer nods enthusiastically and she waltzes into the puzzle. Sade steps up and delivers: He's laughing with another girl And playing with another heart Placing high stakes making hearts ache He's loved in seven languages Diamond nights and ruby lights high in the sky Heaven help him when he falls The puzzle bouncer shakes his head. "Never heard that." Sade glares at him and continues: Diamond life, lover boy We move in space with minimum waste and maximum joy City lights and business nights When you require streetcar desire for higher heights "Huh? What is all that stuff? No ID no entry!" Sade stalks off in a huff. Puzzle bouncer mutters to himself, "She didn't even know 'Smooth Operator.' Who does she think she is?" (Based on having never met anyone who knew Smooth Operator's lyrics!)
@john ezra Me, me! I know the lyrics! "No need to ask, He's a smooth operator, Smooth operator, Smooth operator, Smooth operator" Oh, right. Touché, JE, touché.
@john ezra And then the Deejay played Trustfall by Pink.
I am not a constructor, nor do I know how to assess a good construction. What I do know is when a puzzle flows smoothly and is a pleasure to work no matter the difficulty. This was one of those delightful ones. I went back and looked at it following Debs advice and I noticed how beautifully compact it was. I can only begin to imagine how difficult it was to produce. I got hung up on solar...had cells, panels, then finally thanks to spoilers-- power. That helped me finish the puzzle. I hope everyone had a fun 4th. We have a few fireworks violators outside breaking the law in the middle of the night getting the neighborhood dogs to tattle on them. I think that ended the party. Good on the pups!
Impressive puzzle - eight debut answers, most of those quite familiar terms. Anyway... not all that easy for me, of course, and had to cheat a bit in a couple of places but managed to work it all out. Kind of a fascinating puzzle find this morning. A Sunday from May 3, 1992 by Rosalind Pavane with the title "Heavies." Some theme answers: JOHNSILVER LUCREZIABORGIA MARQUISDESADE BORISKARLOFF LIZZIEBORDEN DOCTORFUMANCHU BELALUGOSI MADAMELAFARGE I could think of another name currently in the news that would have fit in that theme quite well. Oh, and that's been an answer twice. I'll shut up now. ..
Tabby cats are my favorites. No, calico cats are. Wait, I love Siamese and ragdolls. But tuxedo cats, in gray or black, are so charming. Never mind, I just plain love cats, in crosswords or IRL.
I feel a little better that I’m not the only one who thought the penultimate letter in “ad nauseam” was a “u”. I was actually more certain of that than I was that “erat” was spelled with an “a”. But ERuT seemed less likely that ADNAUSEAM, so after leaving that square til the end I tried A first and got the happy music. I thought there’d be more comments by now on this puzzle given a few of the clues/answers that tend to rile folks up, like 0! (“I was told there would be no math”) and SRSLY, not to mention some of the proper names (I needed all the crosses for MYA, even after filling in the M and A). As for the link to the 0! explainer in the column, I wish it had been left out. I have a degree in mathematics, and I thought that explanation was more confusing than helpful. I’d look for a better one to post, but I don’t have the energy. Maybe someone else will. 🤓
@Jeb Jones N! (N non-negative) can be defined (recursively) as N*(N-1)!, and for that to work for N=1, 0! Has to be defined as 1.
I really liked this! I thought it was a straightforward Friday but in a good way - some fun, chunky clues (and the grid spanner is of course fun as always). The bottom right pair of QED and EGOT was actually fun; I changed my answers a couple of times for that (EMMY? TONY? All I know is we want to PARTY), and it was nice seeing Ren Faire get a shoutout. The clueing felt at just the right spot, with some of the easier ones making it easier to get crosses for the more vague side. Just a really solid puzzle overall.
This puzzle struck at my weakest points...pop this and that, TV shows--esp those cartoon sitcoms that I avoid like poison ivy, and slangy sayings. I actually remember seeing episodes of "The $64,000 Question"...when I was a PREteen. I even wrote a skit for our science 'team assignment' in which we aped the show; I did an excellent 'Van Doren thinking hard" imitation... Tricky, tricky clues! I had to admire them through gritted teeth. ROYAL before REGAL And now I find (thanks to PhysicsDaughter--who's here for the food) that I have two incorrect letters!! GET SPORTY sounded like it might mea "Time to light it up!" And I never went back to check the crosse at 56D that might have saved me. HAG March sounds like a name for a Fifties game-show host, right? Oh, well. I hope Trent is happy with his white-haired trophy mounted on his wall. I sentence him to a diet of ASPIC!
Great Friday puzzle! I especially appreciated the irony in that NOBRAINER was the last clue to fall for me.
Oh MYA! My knowledge of three letter singers was tested by this one and found wanting. Luckily three letter fill falls fairly easily with crosses. Happily I was well familiar with four letter jewel SADE. I thought this was a nice puzzle overall, which came together steadily with the NW corner the last to fall.
I definitely needed more than A LITTLE HELP HERE, as always late in the week. I really enjoyed Trent's notes.
Nicely challenging for a Friday. I thought I’d end up having to lookup a few so I could finish and get on with what will be a good day, but then things started clicking into place. Sussing A LITTLE HELP HERE actually, um, helped a lot as it was the key to opening up a good part of the quadrant. Really a delightful puzzle, so, kudos to Trent H. Evans.
Thumbs up to RIC and SADE. Thumbs down to SIA and MYA. Which is perhaps just another way of saying that I am a solver of a certain age.
What lovely sentiments in Mr Evan’s notes. Thank you for a fun and interesting Friday puzzle from a damp but beautifully green Somerset. The gentle rain is plumping up the apples and strawberries, yesterday’s UK election had the perfect result for me and your puzzle granted me a lovely afternoon’s cruciverballing with the obligatory cup of tea. Nothing too difficult; the crosses were kind for the tricky sections, love SADE and SIA, now have Smooth Operator blended with Chandelier as an earworm, which is very pleasant. Nice.
@Helen Wright I knew that was the election result you were hoping for, so congratulations on your landslide win and wish come true! May it spell better times for all Britons. (And may we follow suit here across the pond.)
@Helen Wright I watched the British returns wistfully, wishing it was my country that was finally heading away from hatred towards anyone or anything slightly different. I hope I'm not getting too political for the head-in-the-sand emus. But if I am, please nuke only my comment, and not the beautiful ones above.
ENOS/SEGO might have been one of the toughest crossings I've ever seen. Needed almost 26 guesses for that one, but it was my only open square. 15 minutes. Was particularly fond of the 0 factorial clue
@Steven M. If there's one thing I've learned from the NYT. it's that SEGO is the state flower of Utah.
@Steve If there's one thing I still HAVEN'T learned from the NYT is that it isn't spelled SaGO. Every. Single. Time.
@Steven M. Learn both of these. They are pretty standard crosswordese. You WILL see them again! ENOS is usually clued around child of Adam or Eve. Friday clues have to be harder, so he's tied to the whole book of Genesis! SEGO is usually tied to being the state flower of Utah. Aren't all lilys bell-shaped? But since SEGO is so often in puzzles and is the requisite four letters I plopped it in the hoped the crosses would show me I was right. They did....
Everytime I started to take a break, I would grab another answer. I really enjoyed this one.
I was hoping 1A would be avoidance because that's what I'd be doing if I ever had to go on a company retreat. I enjoyed this despite putting in Tiger CAT instead of TABBY CAT and having to work my way around that. ALL ABOARD [Training announcement?] and NO BRAINERS [They're a snap to get] were favorites. Can anyone write ALL ABOARD and not here it in *that* voice?
@Nancy J. I had alleY CAT which took a bit to correct.
Kudos to Trent for his puzzle, and thoughts for the day.
The NW was exceedingly hard for me, so I went elsewhere and came back. But because the grid is so segmented, I almost couldn't finish it anyway. I had TigerCAT instead of TABBYCAT; RatE instead of ROLE for the "billing matter"; and I didn't know TRUST FALL. I guess that's where you deliberately fall and trust that someone will catch you? We didn't have such activities at the companies I worked for (they didn't invite us to "retreats" either) and thank heavens they didn't. Lots of luck getting ME to fall deliberately!!! I don't trust you or you or you or anyone in such an absurd endeavor. I have spent my entire life trying really, really hard NOT to fall and that pursuit has become even more all-consuming at the advanced age that I have now reached. Will your company fire you if you refuse to TRUST FALL? Minor rant coming about two very rude clue/answers: 1) I would clue 35A (A LITTLE HELP HERE) thusly: "Rude demand for assistance that's likely to be ignored." Has anyone ever heard of asking CAN YOU PLEASE HELP ME? 2) I would have the answer at 15A changed from SOCIAL CUE to SOCIAL NO-NO. If they're SOCIAL CUEs, then they're CUEs from very rude people. End of minor rant. I had a very enjoyable Friday struggle with the NW corner of this puzzle. The rest of it was much easier for me and the cluing was lively everywhere.
@Nancy Agreed! (especially the trust fall thing).... but social cues can be rude as well. Crossed arms or yawning can be a sign of anxiety, discomfort, or boredom. A social no-no, but also a cue as to how a person is feeling. They would probably be my social cues if someone asked me to do a trust fall.
@Nancy I kept trying to get SaCriLege to fit there. Thinking that yawning and bad body language is what I tended to do in church.
Happy day after! Did anyone get to see fireworks? Ours were washed out, but not until after we had a lovely BBQ at the home of nearby friends. The teeming rain stopped pretty much no one in our vicinity from setting off firecrackers, though, throughout the storm and well past most folks' bedtime. On to the Friday puzzle, which I flew through at first...because I filled in almost zero answers. Hah! Feeling pretty stupid after my first run-through, then had to stop and find my thinking cap. (Does that date me? Probably.) Couldn't find it...had to think the old-fashioned way: using my brain. Second pass through, I started to fill in answers, with a chuckle here (AD NAUSEAM) and an answer there (REN FAIRE) and I was on my way. Not a bad time for me, for a Friday, and a great way to start my day. (I didn't do well on Connections, but did great on Strands, so I needed this win to boost my ego.) Now off to my shift at the ER to see who will come in with an owie from yesterday's festivities. Have a lovely day, friends, and happy solving!
Hard fall? Is that what happens when you play Trustfall?
RATEDE? have no idea what that means. The central part of the puzzle was the most challenging for me. But I finished in pretty good time.
Fabulous, loved it. Tough to pass up a nod to the Duke Boys here, and the wildly inappropriate legacy of their adventures. Cheers
Great column today about construction and a lovely note from Trent to us all. Along those lines, my daughter and I solve these together online. Me in California and she (now) in Latvia. We allow ourselves to get help from asking anyone in the room with us. It builds a great vibe wherever we are!
Pretty easy except for the bottom right. A nice puzzle although I wish it were funnier. A good iteration of YATC (yet another TSA clue).... And it helps to remember that Luke is New Testament, and that kind hearted Enos had his very own (and at least equally terrible) TV show. All in all it was... fine?
If I had inclination towards constructing--which I don't--I could envision a themed puzzle with entries like MADONNA,* ADELE,* STING, and BONO--each perhaps clued only by hit song title and year or something. I could even work in ["So What," 2008](4)**, crossing [Rogers and Hammerstein debut of 1943](9). The central square, surrounded by black and unchecked, could be ["Kiss," 1986 (after 1993)]. The revealer would be MONONYM. This puzzle comes close. As for today's puzzle, I really wanted [Beethoven's cry] to work out to ARF. *Ms. Ciccone and Ms. Adkins, respectively **I haven't been keeping up with her discography: here's a 2023 song germane to today's puzzle: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2KE2a5qo0g" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2KE2a5qo0g</a>
@Bill That was the Beethoven I thought of too.
@Josh Wand ENOS has been a staple of NYT and WSJ puzzles for years. SEGO, not that often, although we get a lot of clues that solve to SEGA. But the crosses are what make it easy to solve. What I enjoyed was that in a 15x15 puzzle there were *eight* debut answers. Usually, there might be one or two. So--kudos to Mr. Evans, who has published 11 puzzles in the NYT.
Fun Friday puzzle! Had trouble with the northeast corner. Did anyone else have “carabiners” for 12D by mistake? It works really well with the “snappy” clue!
@r High marks for divergent thinking and good vocabulary! I now see that Trent missed a terrific opportunity here... But I guess he was busy planning how to bring down the MOL. I'm left with SCARS. SRSLY!!!
Late puzzle find - just stumbled across this one. Anyway - a Sunday from August 28, 2011 by Patrick Berry with the title: PARDON "E" INTERRUPTION Thought this was pretty clever. One clue/answer example: "Lively dance performed as a six-pack is being laid to rest?" BEERBURIALPOLKA And some other theme answers. REIGNOFTERRIER BOTANICALGUARDIANS KODIAKMOMENT PARTYINGGIFT PARKINGMETEORS MILESPERGALLEON Was truly amazed when I realized that every one of those was simply adding one long 'E' sound to the phrase it's derived from. That's pretty incredible. Here's the Xword Info link: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=8/28/2011&g=108&d=A" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=8/28/2011&g=108&d=A</a> ..
@Rich in Atlanta Oh... and wondered how hard it would be to come up with some other answers with that type of trick - i.e. adding a long 'E' sound to a familiar phrase to make another possible phrase. Here's one I thought of: THEGUARDIANOFEDEN I could think of some others, but instead... let's have a little challenge. Come up with something and post it in a reply. ..
One second off a Friday record!!!! Ugh
Enjoyable solve. Flowed pretty steadily to the finish except for a slight stall in the SE. time was 29% less than average. Some clever clues.
As a German speaker, I'd like to express my boredom at 99% of the clues requiring me to write "Ach". The word is not used like most clues imply. I wish puzzle makers would improve the clues, or stop asking for the word.
@Masonbee How about telling us, 99% of whom don’t speak German, know how ACH is used in German? As written, this non-German speaker thinks it’s fine: Beethoven is the cue for the German language, and a cry can be anything said out loud or with emphasis. What’s wrong with the clue?
@Masonbee I started with “arf,” thinking clue referred to Beethoven the movie dog.
A rare Friday where I didn't have to Google anything, yay! I did misspell a couple of words so that held me up a bit (I'm sure you know which ones), and I also got misdirected by a few clues. I don't mind the misdirection though, the "aha!" moment when you realize where you've gone wrong is all part of the fun.
I always wait to read the column til after, of course it contains spoilers. I thought that was part of the point. And I find it useful when I’ve filled the grid but have no idea why a certain answer worked. TIL 0!—though I thought I knew it, but the link cemented it. I got the gold, but don’t really deserve it because ad nauseam, the spelling of which I also learned today. Always great to learn a few things. I did think erat and ad nauseam was a low blow. And ditto what someone said about Animal Farm.
Regarding 0!, one simple explanation is left out of the article linked to in today’s Wordplay column. Note that, for the first few factorials: 1!=1 2!=1x2=2 3!=1x2x3=6 4!=1x2x3x4=24, etc. Thus, we have: 1!=1 2!=1!x2=2 3!=2!x3=6 4!=3!x4=24, etc. Hence, conversely, 4!=24 3!=4!/4=6 2!=3!/3=2 1!=2!/2=1. and… wait for it… 0!=1!/1=1.