How in the world is this an acceptable puzzle, let alone for a Tuesday? DASHIT may have been acceptable in 1733. SENSATE, NYUORICAN, SHAH, INNO, ARO, SAHL, MAO, EAP, ERG, AREPAS are all terrible entries, and most of them gluey at best. Allowing this as acceptable is becoming a Fagliano trademark in the worst possible way.
Jeremy, You really must send Joel your list of acceptable words for the Crossword. From your cited unacceptable ones, the pattern is not clear (to me anyway).
@Jeremy I don’t get how this has already gotten so many recs. Shah, Sahl, Mao, EAP, erg are all pretty standard Xword fill. (Geez, erg is making a run at emu triteness, almost half an oboe.) Aro has also made a comeback, albeit with a more contemporary definition. As BA notes elsewhere, we’ve seen arepa and arepas recently, a number of times. Sensate shows up every now and then. All pre-Fagliano as editor. Nyuorican was fresh, and discoverable from the crosses. That’s a good thing.
@Jeremy Too bad Daniel didn't include "AS CROSS AS TWO STICKS" in the puzzle.... EMUs cowering in the corners for fear of tongue-lashing....
No one in the history of the world has ever said "dash it" out loud, ever.
BK, I suspect some of our U.K. friends have heard it IRL; I've heard it in period films. And Crossword words are fine even if they only appear in print. SRSLY! <a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dash_it" target="_blank">https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dash_it</a>
@BK You evidently haven't read any PG Wodehouse,
AS the world turns, suddenly there comes a Tuesday puzzle that takes me a bit longer than usual. It wasn't the theme. I got that well enough. It was the spattering of tricky fills for me that kept throwing me off my game. DominICAN before Nuyorican (did not know that one! Had to get it from the crosses.) Makes do before MANAGES. And a big "huh?" for [Hole in the head] as a gruesome vision popped into my head before the "aha!" of SINUS. And so it went, with much thought having to be put into it, here and there. Thankfully, no lookups were needed for the proper nouns, so I'll take that as a win. In the words of OSCAR Wilde, "I am not young enough to know everything." But one thing I do know for sure: this was a great puzzle, with surprising crunch for a Tuesday and a very creative theme. A really enjoyable romp! Well done, and thank you, Mr. Raymon!
really didn't enjoy this puzzle. too many proper nouns, SAHL/SHAH crossing, and i've never heard of NUYORICAN ?!? frustrating to have to do lookups on a tuesday
I like how the theme pronouns contain representatives from first, second, and third person, both singular and plural (with YOU pulling double duty): I, YOU, IT, WE, YOU, THEY. I like how the theme features a lovely language quirk. Quirks in English are maddening to some, but I love them – they make our language human, a living breathing entity. Many of Daniel’s 18 Times daily puzzles focus on “Huh!”- and “Wow!”-worthy language quirks, by the way. He’s got that radar, and, IMO, his 18 Times daily puzzles have highly enriched Crosslandia. Serendipities in the grid are lovely quirks themselves. Today we have two AE-enders, four palindromes (CDC, EWE, MAAM, TAT), plus the neighboring ITs of DASH IT and CHEEZ IT echoed by AS IT HAPPENS. And I love the clue for RAZE – [Verb that sound like its opposite]. This is an answer that has appeared a couple hundred times in the major crossword outlets, but never clued like this. So, the box for me today was like a box of chocolates, filled with sweet treats. Thank you, Daniel!
I like how the puzzle ended with ASAP ("As soon as possible") -- that's nailing the dismount. Difficulty Level: 5.75 Execution: 9.4333 Yeah, it's Paris 2024 24/7 chez J'Ezra. Volleyball, water polo, wrestling, badminton, tennis, shooting, equestrian, field hockey, or any combination thereof (equestrian wrestling - yesh!), we're there. Heard the Aussie Emu team basically took bronze, silver and gold in their event, Sinkronized Flying. Their plummeting after being dropped from drones far above the Seine was simply sublime. As I live and breathe I shall never forget seeing these dots in the sky grow larger and larger till you could see they were full grown 800 lb. emus in golden helmets dive-bombing into the Seine with a crowd-drenching splash, dash it! They put up scores not seen since Arianna Huffington was knee-high to a ripsaw. Raw talent, baby, raw talent.
Didn't seem like a Tuesday puzzle. Way too many questionable clues.
R.J., It did seem a bit on the harder side for a Tuesday If you didn't know some of the answers as clued, you didn't know some of the answers as clued. It happens to all of us. Which clues did you find "questionable?"
@R.J. Smith We each know different stuff. I sailed thru this in about 2/3 my average Tues time. SHAH was easy for me. My Sister lived in Iran for 2 years just before the SHAH fell.
I love when I learn new stuff from a puzzle. NUYORICAN! How awesome is that?? I love how it rolls off my tongue -- and I hope I retain this for future use. Not often that a Tuesday puzzle presents me with stuff to learn, but there it is!
DASH IT ALL, @CaptainQuahog! That kind of attitude will get you nowhere!! AS THEY SAY, it's better to curse the darkness than light a candle.
Fun, challenging Tuesday. I had CHEETOS fora long time for orange crackers, thinking the entire time they aren’t crackers, but then what are they, so maybe they are. Also had DRAWL for some time instead of TWANG. Tx for a great puzzle!
@Ann CHEEZ-IT came to mind pretty quickly, because I had just seen a commercial for a CHEEZ-IT spin-off product called Snap'd while watching the Olympics and I'd wondered if I would ever see that as crossword fill. (Worlds collide.) TWANG seemed slightly off for the clue, but as you note,Drawl was wrong today.
I almost had to turn on auto check when I did not get my happy music - then I realized I made a mistake at the naticky crossing of KH_N and _RIANNA. I have never heard of KHAN academy, but I have a neighbor named oRIANNA, so KHoN made sense. NUYORICAN was cruel, as was RAH and DASH IT - I suppose mostly because I am neither a New Yorker nor a native speaker. In the end the puzzle was doable but not as comfortingly easy as I like my Tuesdays to be.
@Andrzej I'm a New Yorker, born and raised, and I didn't love RAH and have never ever heard anyone say DASH IT in that way. Probably never at all actually. I'm trying to picture myself saying it and it's not even going over well in my imagination.
Andrzej, At "doable but not as comfortingly easy..." you seem to be way ahead of some of the native speakers/readers of English who attempted this puzzle. Non-New Yorkers who are not poetry fans or sociologists would get a pass on NUYORICAN but for the gentle crosses. I thought the RAH clue was funny. We're more likely to read DASH IT or hear it in a period film than to say it. I don't say FIE either, but I know it too. Is this an emu I see before me...?
Enjoyed this one. Always appreciate an early-week that doesn’t fly by before I get a sip of tea, and this one was chock-full of, well, non-gimmes. Non-gimmes. That just looks so wrong, but I’m sticking with it. Thank you Daniel! Happy Tuesday all!
@CCNY I agree. When I first started doing the CW six years ago, I dreaded Thursday-Sunday, but now I approach Monday and Tuesday without a lot of enthusiasm since I expect they won’t be challenging, but today’s did present some relatively difficult clues, which I appreciated.
Nuyorican? This stinks. Local jargon.
Riley, You're from Missouri. You're supposed to say "Show me." Then you would be directed to various posts in these comments that would show you that NUYORICAN has been a term for more than fifty years and is known more than locally (even if this is a New York paper, where locally still carries a bit of weight). #####
@Riley I think of jargon as exclusionary, like "corporate jargon," where the acronyms don't represent more than the words they stand for (e.g. OOO). Nuyorican is a word that represents a larger migration and arts movement — embodied by movies/ musicals that are popular outside the northeast, like West Side Story — and is worth getting to know! <a href="https://poets.org/text/brief-guide-nuyorican-poetry" target="_blank">https://poets.org/text/brief-guide-nuyorican-poetry</a>
I don't think it stinks, I'd just never heard of it, and questioned it up until the moment the crosses told me it must be correct. TIL moments are part of crossword game. I finished the puzzle in less than my average time, so no complaints here.
AS I LIVE AND BREATHE, another terrific Toughened Up Tuesday. I've really been enjoying them the past few weeks. Thanks, editors and constructor.
Wow, this one was incredibly tough for a Tuesday, in my opinion. I should say that I love learning new terms with cultural significance (even though I know that varies), such as NUYORICAN, as they make up such a large proportion of New York City's population. However, plenty of other terms which seemed very obscure for a Tuesday. Clues like ERG/BARRE, RIPSAW, and EAP were incredibly tricky for me. While "ASILIVE" "AND" "BREATHE" were nice, the rest of the themed hints involved a lot of unsatisfying guesswork and lacked any "Aha!" moments. Sadly, it broke my 4-time Tuesday streak and it was the toughest Tuesday puzzle I've seen in a while. That being said, TRAP and WORM had nice clues, and it was nice to see PALAU, POLYP, ARO and RAWTALENT. I did learn a lot of new things from this puzzle, so for that I am very grateful. Thanks, Daniel!
I took a little longer on this one than the usual Tuesday. I didn’t get much out of the acrosses in the top half, and didn’t start to really make progress until I got to the bottom half. The downs were sufficiently easy to make it all come together fairly smoothly. For a theme with no revealer, the pattern became clear fairly quickly. A bit a quirky puzzle for Tuesday, and a nice change of pace.
You've gotta be kidding me? Tuesday? Someone mixed up the days of the week over at the Gray Lady.
@Hooper So is this a Monday puzzle or a Wednesday puzzle? I beat my Monday average by a few seconds, but according to xwstats.com, most solvers found it harder than the typical Tuesday.
How many people will come to say: They used the same word (AS) in answers five times. Doesn't that break some kind of rule? Pre-emptive answer: No, it doesn't.
@Steve L I don't know--even AS WE SPEAK, the Cruciverbalizi--the dreaded secret police of the NYT Games Department--are knocking on Mr. Raymon's door, coming to arrest him for infractions against the Crossword Code.
That was a doozy for a Tuesday. Some long and rather difficult fill. Something about the North West has been killing me lately. I’ll cruise through the rest and then struggle in the North West. Then again, it took me forever to find my first theme word in Strands today. For no apparent reason. It seemed very standard and went quickly once I found the theme. Maybe this puzzle wasn’t as difficult as I thought and I’m just off? Early to bed, for me. It was a fun and interesting puzzle. Thanks, Daniel Raymon.
@Striker i had saul and arapas. that took me a long time to figure out :/
This continues the trend of more interesting Tuesdays, and I like it. The subtlety of the theme was unusual but nice. Now I feel like going back and checking out Daniel's Thursday and Friday puzzles.
What a meh puzzle. A few very questionable crosses like a Latin plural and a monogram from Poe. Also crossing the Spanish "arepas" with not one but two proper nouns? Do better. (PS and "nuyorican"??? Don't care if that is actually a thing - just...don't).
Would just like to say that I don't find "Dash it!" to be weird or difficult. Also, it emerges from fairly easy crosses.
Has anyone said "dash it" in the past 200 years or ever for that matter? Also finding a clue for EAP is quite the stretch........
@Michael S The EAP clue is straightforward as can be...what did you find to be a stretch? Quoth the emu, nevermore! !!!!!!
@Michael S POE gets a lot of space in X-World. Hardly new. And I plan to say "DASH IT!" quite often now (as necessary, as when the ice cubes miss my glass as they shoot out of the dispenser on the fridge.) Join me!
@Michael S I nominate the phrase for rebirth as a recipe instruction when trying to add a very small amount of spice
Felt like a Friday puzzle till I stopped attempting the northwest section and saw the rest was a solid Tuesday. Then was able to come back to NW. But man was that a rough quadrant.
I always enjoy hearing from the constructors-what’s easy, what’s hard about building a puzzle. Thanks for a fun Tuesday (definitely not a Monday). And thanks Sam for the Princess Bride clip. A great way to start the day.
Fun Tuesday puzzle. Learned a new word, 3D. It kept me all twisted up for while. A regional lacking on my part. I'm from the south and have never heard that word before. With my crosses it spelled out exactly what it was. imagine my surprise when it was correct. The rest of the puzzle was charming. Although, and this is just nitpicking on my part. Dropping an anchor isn't really 20Aing it. All part of that worrisome NW corner. To secure that boat, one might want to do both, drop anchor and 20A. If you are dropping the anchor, you're just dropping the anchor. To 20A it, you have to attach the boat to something. Like wrapping the line around a dock post on a pier. It can even be a buoy if you're away from the dock. Point being, these are two distinctive and separate actions. You can anchor a boat to something without dropping the anchor I suppose. But the clue was specific. Like I said nitpicking. 🤓 LOL. Hopefully all our SE coastal folks have anchored all their boats securely and are drying off tonight. Cheers from Texas, stay cool, dry and safe y'all. Turn around don't drown.
@Bonnie Ann My most memorable boating experience with 20Aing took place in 1954, when a naval vessel was not allowed to dock in NY Harbor because one (military) family had failed to have their children immunized. We were on board (and bored) for three days before the ship was able to MOOR.
My vote would be for more Tuesdays like this one! A fun theme and some answers that were off the beaten Tuesday path and were made accessible with standard crosses. DASHIT brought a smile and took a nice turn away from more obvious fill. I loved learning about NUYORICAN. Thank you to the constructor and editors for your thoughtful and creative approach to an early week puzzle!
@Alex Thanks for the earworm! Fabulous Michael Jackson song and video. That's what you were referring to, right? <a href="https://youtu.be/dsUXAEzaC3Q?feature=shared" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/dsUXAEzaC3Q?feature=shared</a>
"We're competing in a playground game right now! They're hiding, even as we seek!" (Their genes must be recess-ive.)
Boy oh boy, Daniel Raymon, did you have a surprise in store for me. Not only did I spend far too long on this Tuesday, I enjoyed ever second of it. So much so I had to take a little intermission mid-crossword, and come back for more later. Can I just say, you outdid yourself with this one. I thoroughly relished this puzzle like a hot dog on the 4th of July. Can't wait for your next puzzle!
Always happy when a puzzle includes the Woodstock stars Shah Na Na! (Would you consider Bowzer a headliner?) Dash it all, that was as fun! An earlier thread here made me realize what a missed opportunity it was when they named the game "Texas hold 'em" and not "Drawl poker".
Just about the time I thought I was settling in as a pretty competent crossword solver, I get two Tuesdays in a row without a gold star. Last week and the week before I just completely crumbled under the pressure of a Tuesday. Today, I managed to pull it out, but it was a close one.
Busy morning - late to the party. Nice puzzle - a bit on the slow side for me but thought it was a nice trick and enjoyed the solve. Interesting puzzle find today - I might have done this one - I don't recall. Anyway, a Sunday from June 9, 2019 by Seth A. Abel with the title: "Don't quote me." All of the theme answers had a clue in the form of "Line never said by... xx across." And then the referenced clue had the supposed speaker of those lines. Anyway - some examples: FLYMYPRETTIESFLY BEAMMEUPSCOTTY METARZANYOUJANE JUSTTHEFACTSMAAM Here's the Xword Info link: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=6/9/2019&g=121&d=A" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=6/9/2019&g=121&d=A</a> ..
Is this puzzle AS You Like It? Who GNU? Did anyone else first want AS YOU Prefer? MEA [culpa] Were EWE done ASAP?
Felt quite tricky for a Tuesday! The NW had me stuck for a duration that would normally not happen until much later in the week. Very nicely constructed though.
At first I thought this was a bit easy for a Tuesday, but that didn’t last long and I ended up needing more help than usual on a Tuesday. Quite nice not to have to read a bunch of “far too easy for a Tuesday “ comments. “AS I LIVE AND BREATH “ was fun.
AS A RULE, I pay scant attention to day of the week assignments. But, AS A RESULT of of reading Daniel's constructor's comments I learned that there is a negotiation on which day the puzzle is slotted. AS FAR AS the smoothness of today, will I complain? AS IF.
As a solver from the UK I found this extremely hard to complete without any lookups. I thought I’d learned the lingo after a couple of years completing NYT xwords daily, but this one got me good! Not to complain of course, enjoyed getting there in the end.
@Tom Out of curiosity, what were some of the toughest bits of lingo for you?
@Tom @Brendan Yeah, I'm curious, too. Because if it's NUYORICAN, I promise you it's just as exotic to a midwesterner (mostly) like me as it is to Brits.
A tough Tuesday for me! I put a fair amount of time into trying to get rid of NUYORICAN as it seemed that something was clearly wrong. I could see the portmanteau in there, but it seemed like it couldn't fit in the available space as I wanted it to be (the perhaps more boring) NEWYORICAN.
As i was attempting to finish up my main thought was, "NowayICAN imagine that NUYORICAN is correct!" Surprise!!
Nice, slightly crunchier than usual Tuesday puzzle. I hadn’t come across NUYORICAN before either but it was fun to discover it. That was my last spot to finish, because RAZE took me longer than it should have to come up with.
@Shari Coats Nuyorican was certainly new. Also, not crazy about “dash it”. But overall fun puzzle.
This was a slog for me. Just couldn’t get it. I normally get the gimmick early on too. I blame Hurricane Debby and the grey rainy skies over Philadelphia.
@Sarah Somehow this felt easier than yesterday's puzzle after the giant downpour this evening! Who knows what will make a crossword click for whom?
As it happens, dual gaps in my knowledge, 52d and 58a, conspired to torpedo my Tuesday, and that’s my cross to bear. Well that and 3d, which as portmanteaus go is, in my not so humble opinion, nuyucky.
@Snorting Elk I had the same problem. Luckily the R in MARA was my only error, so going through the alphabet got me the win. Kind of hard for a Tuesday.
Yuck, this was a slog especially for a Tuesday, not fun.
@Sam A wise man once said "Today's slog is tomorrow's gimme". In reality one may have to slog for longer than one day before a puzzle like today's becomes no big deal.
A lovely Tuesday outing. Chewy but doable; I thought 3D was going to solve as NUYOIKER, if that’s a correct way to spell the TWANG. Hadn’t heard of the correct answer but Sam’s explanation made sense. I’m afraid the rest of the grid got lost in the haze as I was distracted by the Princess Bride clip. I really must get round to watching the film. Everything I know about it has come from NYT crosswords or attached clips. One day.
@Helen Wright I haven’t seen “The Princess Bride” in years, but I remember it being quite funny and charming.
@Helen Wright I do hope you can finally watch The Princess Bride. When I finished the puzzle I went to check my DVD library to make sure I still had it, and I will be watching it again soon, someday when I need a good laugh. (Yes, I’m old and I still have DVDs and a working DVD player. I seldom resort to them, but nice to know I can.)
Not that it bothers me, but 9D was certainly unexpected. I didn't know that would be allowed, so that threw me off for a bit.
@Dave K. You're misreading, it's DASH IT.
AS IT HAPPENS, a morning SINUS headache pushed my time way over my Tuesday average. PER Mr. Raymon's comments, I don't find it counterintuitive at all that a Monday crossword is more difficult to construct than a Tuesday or Wednesday. As a composer, I know that music that it easy to play or sing, but is still of high quality and interest, is much more challenging to write than that which is difficult.
@Bill DASH IT, that headache made me forget to mention that I found the grid placement of AS I LIVE/AND/BREATHE very elegant indeed. As the emu flies (which, being flightless, is nowhere.)
Wow.... I think this was my slowest Tuesday ever and that's a good thing. I usually just get the early week puzzles quickly out of the way en route to the (more fun) end-of-week challenges. But this puzzle got my attention! It was only after reading the comments that I was able to grok the raze/raise clue. How do these constructors come up with gold like this?
Way over my Tuesday average! Enjoyed 'ASILIVEANDBREATHE,' though.