Is it my jet lag, or was this Wednesday a bit tougher than others?
@Bill in Yokohama I managed to not need cheats, but it took some doing (and re-doing). Glad to know I'm not the only one who found it tougher than usual.
@Bill in Yokohama I was two seconds under my Wednesday average. The first few them answers took a minute, but once I saw what was going on, it wasn’t too difficult.
@Bill in Yokohama My time was 12% less than average, but did not feel like an easy Wednesday.
The many pronunciations of OUGH has long fascinated me, but it never occurred to me to try and build a crossword puzzle around it. Thanks, Ms Morris!
I think I broke my record for number of changes needed to complete. Is it “eenie”? No, “eeney”. No, EENSY! How about “uies”? No, must be “uees”. Or possibly UEYS. Is it “ahh” or “OHH”? “Ahs” or AWS”? No matter, I made it threw. I mean through. (It wasn’t too tough.)
@Heidi YES! I entered many answers provisionally and had to change. I originally thought that 46 across was going to be "Cooee" or some variant, as one hears in BritBox shows when characters enter an area.
Seems like I'm in the minority, but I really really did not enjoy this puzzle.
@Chris you are not alone, it was very hard for a Wednesdays, the theme was awkward, many clues didn't make sense to me There will be some people here soon to tell us our opinions are wrong
Wonderful idea for a crossword. I really enjoyed the themed answers for this one.
I found a lot of fun things in this puzzle. It put me in mind of the Theodore Geisel cartoon captioned “the tough coughs as he ploughs the dough,” which highlights why ENG. can be such a pain to master. I may be wrong but I think there may also be some who pronounce slough as slew, when referring to a swampy area. It also put me in mind of the Seinfeld episode where Kramer made FUSILLI Jerry - because he was so silly. Any puzzle featuring the word MENDACIOUS is ok in my book, and I also liked BUMDEAL and HRISSUE.
@Marshall Walthew (Have you changed your name?) I too enjoyed seeing MENDACIOUS in the grid. It’s a great word. I can still hear Burl Ives in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” complaining of the mendacity.
@Eric Hougland Name’s the same. I somehow managed to get the cursor up in the name line and deleted a couple of letters without noticing. My lack of nimbleness with cursor and keyboard explains why I’ll never be a speedy solver.
I did it, but I didn't like it.
Second day in a row with a puzzle focused on a quirk in our language: today, the myriad ways to pronounce OUGH. I love that English is such an amalgam of quirks, because aren’t we all? English is so human! Best moment for me was, with few crosses and the clue [Untruthful], slapping down MENDACIOUS. Not even counting the squares to see if it fit before filling it in! And such a gorgeous word! The combination of getting it, seeing its beauty, and actually using it, even if just in a crossword, got me feeling triumphant – I felt like bursting out of my chair, standing tall and strutting around the room to “Pomp And Circumstance”. That kind of feeling. My Libra love of balance was very happy with where the five theme answers began – one in each corner and the fifth right in the center. I also oohed over the plethora of answers (10!) ending in the oo sound: EWE, HUE, THROUGH, RUE, LIEU, NEHRU, HR ISSUE, SNAFU, SEE TO, and UNTO. (Hi, @Striker!) BTW, this is Meghan’s fourth puzzle, her others appearing on Sunday, Friday, and Tuesday. Thus, she has an opportunity to do what only one other constructor (Andrew Ries) has – hit the cycle (have a NYT puzzle for every day of the week) in her first seven puzzles. Go for it, Meghan! And thank you for a most splendid outing today!
@Lewis I thought the mirror symmetry of the grid also complemented the theme.
What a joy, this puzzle! I can't seem to wipe the smile off my face. It should have been prefaced with "WARNING: THINKING REQUIRED." And I loved every minute of the thinking it required, both for the puzzle within the puzzle and for much of the fill. There was a lot of deleting and correcting going on for me, so my proudest moment was getting SOPHIE'S Choice just off the initial S. You see, I have a bad habit of sparring with the puzzle, hence on my first pass-through I cried, "How am I supposed to know what kind of 'choice' you want from me?" So of course I was elated when it popped into my head. A bit of nostalgia set in for when I used to teach ESL in my younger years. I made a point of letting my students know that they simply had to learn the words along with their pronunciations, and not look for rules because there aren't any. The examples in the puzzle always came up. Thank you, Ms. Morris. This was a solid and clever puzzle, and I had a glorious time! (And now, off to rewatch "Sophie's Choice" I go...)
@sotto voce On first pass, I really wanted Taster's Choice in there! Good thing I held off, or there would have been plenty of deleting and correcting going on for me, too. (Instead, it was just a vast sea of white in the grid for a very long time! Only after a good dose of *good* coffee this morning did the mist clear and the answers arrive.) With just the S, I haughtily assumed I wouldn't get it... 'til all of a sudden I remembered the film! Any frown instantly evaporated. Definitely due for a re-watch!
Really enjoyed this one. As an English teacher of German pupils, I have spent many a lesson coaxing them through sentences such as, "Although she was tough and thorough, she was not tough and thorough enough to get through the rough slough without a cough." They take it with good humour, for which I admire them.
AFLAC isn’t the only insurance company with an avian mascot, but the other one didn’t fit. On the other hand, Liberty Mutual’s avian mascot would have been more appropriate in a NYT crossword. !!!!!
@Steve L: LIMU EMU!!! . . . (& doug)
Spanish has a Royal Academy to keep spelling in line with pronunciation to a great degree. English has no such thing. So while Spanish spelling has been consistent with regard to its pronunciation for centuries, English spelling is more or less fossilized while pronunciation changes. The biggest pronunciation shift, of course, was the Great Vowel Shift during the Middle English period (1400-1700). This took place just when spelling was being standardized thanks to the invention of the printing press, but the changes continued for centuries. No such major shift occurred in Spanish.
@Steve L That is interesting to learn about, just looked up Great vowel shift, never heard of that, thanks!
This was a really good Thursday puzzle.
Poor Ricky, losing his FAME, and not getting the hat tip he deserves in this puzzle. <a href="https://youtu.be/uZV40f0cXF4" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/uZV40f0cXF4</a> OTOH, those of us that saw it, probably had way more fun with it.
@Red Carpet What a find! Absolutely perfect.
@Red Carpet I thought of Ricky while doing this puzzle! 😂 Thanks for the link!
@Red Carpet , I thought of that as soon as I saw where the theme was going. I don’t know how so many people learn it so well.
Fun puzzle, nice theme. Not too tough, but not *too* easy to get through, required some thought, a thorough and pleasant Wednesday workout. One that ought to receive kudoughs. Take a bough, Meghan Morris. (BTW is your first name pronounced "Mayfan", "Mahan", "Mayan" or... fancy this... "Maygan"? tough to suss out) . Sam Corbin said: "Please share your best Gilbert and Sullivan puns to celebrate the occasion." [Well, first a question: Would "Einstein On the Beach" be considered a [relatively] "Light Opera"?] Mikado stop making physics puns. Iolanthe stop but I just can't. If I were Catholic I would probably be asked to do penzance for this. I think I'll just take a breath and have a nice hot cup of Koko... And maybe listen to a nice Romantic piano CD (I have a little Liszt) emus are such susceptible cancellers
@Becca Yo,man. That was a fun puzzle. My wife was looking for her etui, but a found a pin afore she did. Is an emu anything like a modern major general? Asking for a friend.
@Marshall Walthew Should be “I found a pin afore she did.”
It is really hard to believe the US has an actual gun regulating group.
@Andrzej They're allowed to regulate the A and T more so than the F.
@Andrzej Yeah, that does seem preposterous. Like @SSteve says, it was much more of a gun regulation thing in the past, when the NRA considered some guns too dangerous to belong to civilians. Since then, they've discovered that the gun industry will pay them tons and tons of money to promote the use of ownership of *all* guns, no matter how devastating, no matter how many people, including scores and scores of children, are gunned down. The only time they don't support gun ownership is when someone who's the wrong color, like Philando Castile, owns a gun. Then the police are entitled to shot him even as he's admitting he has a gun. So, yeah, we worry way, way more about vaccines in this country that we do monsters with high velocity rifles and bump stocks.
more thoughts: in the column, Sam writes "(And, in case it’s not clear, the word THROUGH doesn’t have a homophone, nor do the other words clued this way. That aspect of the clue is intended to hint at the answer, because THROW would be a homophone of THROUGH if both -OUGH words were pronounced with that long O.)" I would respectfully posit that both THROUGH and RUE have homophones, "threw" and "roux". On another note... for years I confused the words "don" and "DOFF". You cannot imagine the forehead-smacking moment when I realized they are literally the words "on" and "off", preceded by a "D". D'oh.
Reminded me of the Dr. Seuss book “The Tough Coughs as he Ploughs the Dough”
This is one of those where (a) I appreciated the idea of the theme and the work it took to implement properly, while (b) simultaneously finding it annoying and superfluous in filling out the puzzle. Sometimes you just want to get on with it. /Through with emus and thorough crows
This one was really ruff, but I made it threw. I dough my cap to Meghan Morris, and bough my head. Such construction is no mean feat—it must have been incredibly tuff to put together. Thanks for a delightful Wednesday!! P.S. What did Bilbo tell his nephew when they were baking cakes for the birthday? THROW DOUGH, Baggins!
I did it! I figured out all of the rhyming/not homophone clues. It was like a puzzle within a puzzle. I say it every week, I love Wednesday puzzles. This one is definitely a favorite. Thank you Meghan Morris and NYT puzzle staff. I haven't read/listened to the article yet (I'm so tired), I came right here to celebrate my completing the puzzle and read comments first. Excellent construction, clear clues, no naticks, beautifully done. Yay! Cheers from Texas. Good news on the TV news tonight except for hurricane Debbie wreaking havoc up the east coast. Stay safe and dry crossword community. Turn around don't drown.
Having initially put in AHA for the exclamation of understanding, I momentarily found myself wondering if Sappho's Choice was a collection of ancient Greek poems (it isn't)
Can’t get much better word play than this excellent Wednesday puzzle, really had fun with it. Keep them coming, Meghan.
The reference to LIGHT OPERA reminded me of a recording I have of John Reed, one of the great Gilbert and Sullivan performers of the 1960s and 1970s, particularly of the "patter songs" from their comic operettas. Here are links to a couple of performances (audio only) which showcase his talents: - <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsApWFFL1yQ" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsApWFFL1yQ</a> - <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyZu7mQt18Q" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyZu7mQt18Q</a> The first is to "When I Was A Lad" from H.M.S. Pinafore, and the second is to "As Some Day It May Happen (I've Got A Little List)" from The Mikado.
@RichardZ The Gilbert & Sullivan song that I am most familiar with is the unlikely but rousing and very enjoyable combination of Todd Rundgren singing 'Lord Chancellor's Nightmare Song' from 'Iolanthe'. Don't knock it until you've tried it! <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuWTNLdKSOs" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuWTNLdKSOs</a>
This puzzle further proves that the English language is not meant to be understood.
This puzzle won me over! I was a little annoyed by the request to jump around the clues so much at first, but as I figured out how to use those coupled clues, I came to enjoy the hunt. [Not to] had me stumped for a good long time, but was a great feeling when it dropped.
Incredible puzzle, made me feel very smart once I got my head around it! Had the vibe of a rewarding Thursday, so made for an amiably frustrating Wednesday, and really drove home the extent to which the day of the week influences my mindset going into a crossword. But I'll forgive just about anything for audacious fill like MENDACIOUS.
@IL I quite literally gasped when I got to MENDACIOUS. What a joy!
I approached theme clues in this puzzle as I usually do, and just skipped over them. Once I had crosses, themes were easy, and the puzzle came in under my average. That doesn't mean i don't thoroughly enjoy the weirdness (to borrow a Waltz word) of the English language. When we are first learning to read and speak our native tongue, it can seem impossible to predict which way a spelling will go, but we do learn it. There are other times when spelling and speaking seem to be at odds, and it can happen a lot with foreign languages. In an oral test when I was a kid I was asked, "Who wrote 'Faust'"? I had grown up listening to the Saturday Met broadcasts, and without hesitation said "Gounod (I correctly pronounced it Goono) wrote the opera and Goethe (blush, Go-eeth) wrote the book." I had seen only a reference in a story I was reading the day before, and didn't even know it was a play, much less how to pronounce the author's name. (Profound look of confusion on the questioner's face.) Spanish was a joy to pronounce: If the letters were there, you knew they were meant to be said as written. Muchas gracias y muchos besos, mis amigos y amigas! (But after all this time, that's about all that I remember.) 💋
@dutchiris An odd question occurred to me a while ago: are there spelling bees in Spanish-speaking countries?
Very nice. Love the games we play with English. My son’s Japanese friend visited us for the first time a little while back. His English is very good, but he asked questions about our language and syntax that we all had to stop and think about; why the same letter formation can sound so different, (see any if today’s examples) why the same word sounds and identifies completely differently dependent on tense, (read, read), why do we have tenses? My inadequate reply to that one was ‘the French have more, plus that whole feminine masculine thing’. Good job I didn’t apply to be a teacher.
@Helen Wright The short answer in the case of -ough endings (and any other spelling oddities, for that matter) is that they all were once pronounced the same, with a guttural sound like the "ch" in loch or Bach. When that sound gradually disappeared, it was replaced in various ways. Printers, however, continued to set these words the way they were spelled when the printing press was first invented, so their spelling became fossilized all the while their pronunciations were changing. And that's all there is to that.
Fun! Reminded me of the cool calendar I had when I was a kid in the late 1960’s : how you could pronounce “GHOTI” as ‘FISH’ - “GH” as in ‘enough’… and “TI” as in ‘notion’. Alas, I’ve forgotten the “O” pronounced as a short ‘i’ word.
I came here to say that was terrific. A really fresh idea, and i enjoyed thinking of the homophones/ not homophones.
I really enjoyed this puzzle. I'm retired from teaching now, but I used to try to explain these word sounds to elementary school kids and to adults learning English. Brought back memories! I also loved "mendacious" and "light opera". Thanks for a great puzzle!
this was really hard and kind of annoying for a wednesday and i won't be gaslit into pretending that it wasn't.
@grif I agree with you completely subjective opinion. But… do you think “gaslight” just means “disagree with”?
Brilliant theme. Cleverest Wednesday I can remember.
I feel like the puzzles have been notably trickier for the past week or so and I’m loving it!
Solved it in about twenty minutes, but didn't enjoy the experience. Found the theme disorienting rather than interesting, but it did occupy a *large* fraction of the grid. As a result, the remaining fill consisted of a lot of three-letter "words", and uninspiring stuff like SEETO, RUBON, STOODON and ONENAME. DOFF and COUGH don't even rhyme---at least not for me. Did like LIGHTOPERA and MENDACIOUS, but HRISSUE seemed like desperation. Feel like I got a BUMDEAL today.
@Xword Junkie I’ll bite: how in the world do DOFF and COUGH not rhyme for you?
Well, to be frank-- (Not going there)-- I really didn't feel like hippity-hopping all over the grid to find out which set of moth-eaten OUGH/UFF/OFF/OO/OW/OH words went where. I stayed up late to watch the videos (guess which ones), woke a bit late for my usual tussle with the Bee and a major wrangle with Wordle, got a love-fest visit from Charlotte the Kitty who is apparently auditioning for a role in LIGHT OPERA....and then up at 6 to walk, and now it's 8:30 and I need a nap. I always thought it was "INTO the breach."
Fun puzzle! I felt compelled to go to the source for "UNTO the breach" and was rewarded by learning that the same speech is the origin of the phrase "the game's afoot"! <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56972/speech-once-more-unto-the-breach-dear-friends-once-more" target="_blank">https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56972/speech-once-more-unto-the-breach-dear-friends-once-more</a>
It was another tricky one today for a Wednesday, following on from yesterday's very tricky Tuesday, but I found this one immensely more satisfying. Plenty of "Aha!" moments, and the theme was very enjoyable to try and work out! It makes me think of people I know where English isn't their first language, and they say English is confusing - I agree, and this proves it entirely! Unfortunately I couldn't finish this one due to a few clues I was completely stumped on. I wasn't familiar with "On the LAM", AFLAC, ASSAY or ATF. LEA and FEN caught me out as well. BOSC was unfamiliar to me, too. However, I can't really fault this puzzle otherwise; there will always be American-centric clues that I won't get from time to time, as well as things I'm unfamiliar with, no matter how much prep I do. It was a lovely fill for the most part - ISLE, MOUSIER, AVE, MENDACIOUS, NEHRU, SAMOA, FAME, and LIEU were all lovely. ISLE is probably the best clue I've seen for a while! Thanks, Meghan, for a wonderful puzzle!
Some days I'm glad I'm not trying to learn the English language. It makes no sense at all.
Fun, though tough enough. Probably difficult for our solvers from other languages, unless they've seen the memes about -ough words. But slough it off, then go for a ploughman's lunch. Thanks, Megan. Strands, anyone? Strands #157 “Oh, oh, oh!” 🔵🔵🔵🔵 🔵🟡🔵
@Linda Jo How are you guys doing there??? Emus to the rescue?
@Linda Jo Strands #157 “Oh, oh, oh!” 🔵🔵🔵🔵 🔵🟡🔵 It took me longer than it should have because the word in the lower left corner is misspelled. I hope the rains haven’t been too bad. Stay safe!
Good morning! Enjoyed this! Here is an one of my favorite clips from "I Love Lucy" - apropos for this puzzle. <a href="https://youtu.be/jcvs8odvrP4?si=8o0lH2EYjxvie_pA" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/jcvs8odvrP4?si=8o0lH2EYjxvie_pA</a>
@Amy this also came to my mind. I figured somebody would post it! Thanks.
Oof, that was a hard one at first. Great feeling when it cracked. I, too, was an English teacher, and whenever my students complained about inconsistencies, I'd tell them that that was just one more way English messed with them (I used another phrasing, but NYT has standards, apparently)
I DOFF my chapeau to Ms Morris. Not to for FRO, so devious. Emus, if you don't watch it, you may be replaced by the AFLAC duck. ENOUGH? I can't go on.
5D. Ms. Morris clearly has a "pretty taste for paradox." Thanks for a great puzzle!
In general I don't like puzzles that force me to go scrolling through the clues to look at related clues, so when I realized how integral that was to this puzzle I was expecting a slog. Pleasantly surprised that once I had several crosses it all fell enjoyably into place. After the solve I went down several rabbit holes; I've posted the "MENDACIty" quote elsewhere in a reply. I'll talk Bill Bryson here, and then give other thoughts their own threads. In the early 90s I found a remaindered book called "The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way". Had never heard of the author, but it was a dollar well spent. The NYTimes seemed to agree: here's their review. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1990/07/16/books/books-of-the-times-english-a-linguistic-success-story.html" target="_blank">https://www.nytimes.com/1990/07/16/books/books-of-the-times-english-a-linguistic-success-story.html</a> I haven't re-read it since my first time, and it was lent and not returned so I don't even have it on my shelves anymore. But I seem to remember something about the fact that English has more words than most languages because we steal from EVERYONE and give the slightly different versions of the words nuances. Two examples I remember were break/breach and channel/canal. I also seem to remember a suggestion that the many ways "-ough" can be pronounced is at least in part based on which language the word came from. I then went on to discover his many travel books, and enjoyed them as well. Carry on.
@Bob T. Nice to be reminded of Bill Bryson, one of my absolute favorite authors. I think I’ve read every one of his books, but I may have to fact check myself on that as he has written so many.
@Sam "I am the very model of a crossword individual ...." With existing lyrics like these: "I answer hard acrostics, I've a pretty taste for paradox," it shouldn't be too much of a stretch to adapt the lyrics for an operetta instance.
@Mark, from BART Maybe check out my stab at "The Wordplay Mikado" that I just posted above... I adore The Mikado, also love Iolanthe. Other than those I'm only familiar with the main, very famous songs from some of the other operettas (Major General, Queen's Navy, etc). Other than exposure to those famous ones by osmosis, I eventually got turned on to G&S from finding a free VHS of "Topsy Turvy" years ago (in my building laundry room's free "running yard sale"), and fell in love with The Mikado. Ebert had given it a big thumbs up so I had to grab it. I've played some of the Mikado songs for Ballet class, lot of good stuff.