We interrupt this program to send Will Shortz loving thoughts on his birthday today. We raise our glasses to you, sir, wishing you a year ahead blessed with Happiness and Health Health Health! Please know that there is a worldwide cruciverbalist community, built and nurtured by you, that every day thanks you and, on this special day, celebrates you. Mr. Shortz, here's to you and a life that's made a positive difference in the lives of countless many. Salud and Happy Birthday!
@sotto voce Hear hear, here here. This makes me glad I stopped in for an exceedingly rare Monday forum visit. Happy Birthday Mr. Shortz! We all miss you and look forward to your return. I hope you are doing well in your recovery and, most importantly, are happy. Best to you and your loved ones. /emus salute
My five favorite original clues from last week (in order of appearance): 1. Premier couple's retreat? (4) 2. Small marching band? (4)(4) 3. Makeup ingredient? (3) 4. They often roll around in the snow (6)(5) 5. Shock proof? (4) EDEN ARMY ANTS DNA WINTER TIRES GASP
@Lewis I'm not sure if you come back here after you finish posting but I wanted to let you know that I really enjoyed doing your Sunday puzzle from April 2023! I just finished it today and was so impressed and delighted with the theme -- especially when I realized there were more layers to the theme! Really fun!! Other than the themers, my favorites were: 1)Can you dig it? Yes you can! for DIRT, 2) When you get it you might say it for AHA, and 3) Ones getting hit on at parties for PINATAS. I also got a kick out of RICK simply because I was wondering just yesterday (before doing your puzzle) if there could ever be a theme around being Rick Rolled. Probably too obscure but it amused me to think about. Anyhow, thanks for a super fun puzzle to enjoy!
"Do you know how to play Scrabble?" "I'm drawing a blank." (I racked my brain thinking of this one.)
I hope I am not the only person who got stuck with 14A as RUMBA and 14D as RIPBY… ZUMBA is admittedly a better answer than RUMBA, but RUMBA still feels valid. RIPBY and ZIPBY meanwhile are pretty much interchangeable.
@Eric Ditto! Couldn’t find the error even after fly specking (on a Monday!)…
@Eric That was my error too.
@Eric RUMBA is a type of ballroom dance, not a dance fitness program. Yes, ZUMBA is a better answer, so I don’t see how RUMBA still feels valid. I’m sure you’re not the only person who put that R, but I doubt it will be a common error. Plus, ZIP BY seems to me to be much more normal-sounding than RIP BY.
Thus puzzle was the WURST! But I really like wurst 🤣
Nice, punny theme. Good fill. All-around good Monday puzzle.
I grew up playing Scrabble with my parents and still love the game. We played a slightly looser version than the printed rules: had a good sized Webster's 2nd International nearby and anyone could use it to make sure a word was spelled correctly, and there were thus no "challenges," but we did believe in the honor system: you couldn't just go fishing for words. It certainly improved my vocabulary. I think I broke 500 in a two person game just once. 503 if memory serves, but quite often I scored in the high 400s. But I know that at the higher levels, top Scrabble players score 500 like it was nothing. They would ZIP BY me with ease. For a while I enjoyed playing online Scrabble on Facebook, because you could actually chat with random people and strike up a conversation. Then they changed the rules, probably because there were issues -- stalkers and creeps and cheaters -- and made it harder to play with any enjoyment. Then Scrabble was replaced with Words with Friends which was not the same. Some of my buddies continued to play online at sites in Estonia, Romania and Russia, and maybe they still do. Like everything online, online Scrabble got stale, weird, corporatized, monetized, creepy. Thank got all you need is a board, 100 tiles, a pot of hot tea or a couple beers and a bowl of chips, a pad, and a friend and life is good again. I would very much like to hear from you People of the Word as to your highest Scrabble scores. I bet there will be some pretty big numbers!
@john ezra. Not a particularly high final score, but I can’t resist a chance to boast. Somewhere around fifty years ago my first three plays in a game with my mother were bingos. No cheating and no phone to save an image.
@john ezra I don’t know my best scores from “real” Scrabble games (those with a board and wooden tiles). Against my computer, my best game was 609 points. But I am more proud of having once played “vaporize” across two TRIPLE-LETTER SCORE squares and made 257 points.
As I filled this out from top to bottom, I was thinking it would just be a listing of repeated-words song titles, but no – Zachary tied the whole theme up with the perfect revealer, in which SCORE emphasized the music aspect and TRIPLE WORD emphasized what the titles have in common. Then, this puzzle is a pangram (using every letter of the alphabet) underscoring the Scrabble aspect. A nailed-it theme, IMO, and triple props to Zachary for crafting it. Glancing at the finished grid, things kept popping out at me: • A strong geographical element, with CAPRI, MAINE, TEXAS, ROME, NAMIB, KENYA, STAN, not to mention ESE an SSW. • Lovely PuzzPair© of WURST and I HATE IT. • The presence of trochaic long-e-sounding enders: YURI, JUMPY, ALI, ALY, GIMME (3x). And in Italy, Capri is pronounced KOPree. • TEXAS abutting ROME made me think, even knowing there’s a Rome in Georgia, “Isn’t Rome a city in Texas too?”, and a quick check revealed that it isn’t. However, I did learn that Rhome is (population about 1,800). • A LEAK, A TOP, and A BET. Sometimes I finish a Monday puzzle, smile, and move on. Sometimes there is something special about it that makes me linger, not want to leave, impressed and grateful. That surely described today’s puzzle for me. Thank you, Zachary!
@Lewis I noticed we had both a BARN and a ROOF, and adding to your geography list, San JUAN as clued. I loved LEAP crossing SPIN -- and only wish ZUMBA were closer in the grid! It may be pushing the correlation a bit, but NICER crossing the FUN is cute, too.
I did my puzzle this morning, got in my car, and the 2nd song I heard (on WUMB at 6am) was: Robert Plant and Alison Kraus covering The Everly Brothers Gone, Gone, Gone
A Scrabble themed pangram? Impressive!
26 of 27 possible Scrabble tiles used. I would have been very impressed if there had also been a blank.
This was a quickie even by Monday standards as the theme became clear immediately and made for some very quick fill. The revealer made it all worthwhile though, and in the end I found this one FUNFUNFUN.
As a puppy might say, "Of all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these: 'Bye bye bye.'" But when you get home, said pup will Zum and Zip by, get jumpy, luv and leap all over you(beware the incidental head-butt). "What do you say to a walk?" "Fun fun fun! I'm in, mate! Kinda need to take a leak. Or ten." "Lemme just get a snack first." "Gimme gimme gimme!" "What's on top of the house?" "Roof!" Thank you, Mr. Levy, for helping us all celebrate National Dog Day! A dog truly is a man's best stan.
Saved by the triples! I was fit to be tied when I saw the theme clues and had my arm already cocked in the "throw against wall" position when I realized that all those title words from pop songs I didn't know were going to be filled in not once, not twice, but THREE times! Yay! Even if I'd been living under a rock (pun intended) I would have been able to figure it out with just a few crosses. Let it never be said that pop song titles are sophisticated. I mean where are your "Begin the Beguine"s, your "Some Enchanted Evening"s, your "Don't Rain On My Parade"s? But here, the simplemindedness of the titles was a godsend -- at least for me. The revealer is terrific, though. And even though this isn't a Nancy puzzle, I can imagine the constructor having a true "Eureka moment" when he found that all three titles and the revealer had perfect puzzle symmetry. A nicely executed theme, when all is said and done.
Happy birthday Will Shortz. I miss you.
First, it seems I predicted today's puzzle in my comments on yesterday's puzzle: www.nytimes.com/shared/comment/41dcbr?rsrc=cshare&smid=url-share Crazy! Normally I see it in the puzzle first and then find it showing up in my everyday life. This time I clearly manifested it! 😉 Second, this was a lot of fun and I enjoyed it! I'm not great with music... I love songs and singing, but I'm terrible with remembering names. For example, at 21A, I initially filled in, Tell Me Why! 😂 What can I say, it's one of my favorite Brooklyn Nine-Nine moments! Wrong band, wrong title... 🤷 At 20 across, now, in my defense, I was very tired from a very long and very emotionally taxing weekend, but I thought YANGLE sounded like a good answer. It wasn't! Hahaha! Regarding Scrabble, gosh, I have some fantastic memories of Scrabble over the years! I still cherish my official Scrabble dictionary signed by Scrabble loving friends!! I play Words with Friends because I have friends who like to, but I honestly just miss the board game! I also remember the first time I played Scrabble with my boyfriend, now darling husband! It was all good until he was like well, I guess we should call it... And I'm like wait what!? We aren't done! We play till we're done! He's like that could go on for another hour and I'm like, yeah, and!? That's when we realized we were on slightly different perspectives of such games. He still plays with me but we have to set time limits. He is worth it!!
Solved just before sleep and ended up dreaming of scrabble tiles strewn in the bed. Every time the game is mentioned the memory of our kid's fierce objection to the entomological term "frass" returns. Fun puzzle and many thanks. (Did Daddy ever give the T-Bird back?)
Always eerie when I’d just filled when my house in suburban Lisbon started shaking. 🫨 How strange is that? We had a 5.9 earthquake here in Portugal this morning, the strongest earthquake since 1969. It scared the heck out of my cats and me. My husband snored through it but claims to have felt it, as did all of Portugal, southern Spain and Morocco. We are hoping the big one from 1755 that reduced Lisbon to rubble doesn’t happen again. It was really jarring, pardon the pun. One question — shouldn’t the clue be Lisboa greeting since the answer is OLÁ?
@Pani Korunova EMU got me above 👆🏾. I I was talking about filling the Lisbon greeting when my house started shaking.
@Pani Korunova. I was completely unaware of any tremors in Portugal when I wrote my comment. Which could be seen as a callous one in the light of potential serious consequences from your quake. My bad and apologies, no sick pun intended. Had I known, I would have made a different triple word choice. Are emus sometimes sheepish?
@Rusty Wheelhouse Very thoughtful of you to post this. I did see the irony but with the timing, I knew it was yet another coincidence! Thanks! The whole country is nervous because we’re hoping it’s not a prelude 😬. The chats have been going crazy all morning.
Of course, my heart sank when I saw names of bands and the years of their hits...but it turned out I didn't actually need to know any of them. I guess that's more proof that it is, indeed, MONDAY. (It's the 4th Monday, so I have quilt guild to get to...) FUN, FUN, FUN puzzle, but ...over too soon! I gather we have a pangram puzzle here, as well; (yesterday's was close.) Nice try, Deb, but your attempt to pretend that there was anything tricky or difficult about this is a Fail. No harm, no foul--we know it's your job. Speaking of 'difficult'--we've all learned Portuguese for 'hello,' so it's time to move on to another vocabulary word. There is only ONE true version of Scrabble. My grandparents bought an original set whe it came out...and now I own it, wooden tiles and all, plus the improved tile-racks my grand-dad designed and made. Alas, with our son grown and gone, I have no opponent; DHubs claims that I "know too many words." Or was that "worms"?
@Mean Old Lady - tennis, chess, scrabble, piano duets… what do they have in common? It doesn’t matter whether you’re good or bad or anywhere in between… it only matters that you are evenly matched. None of these are enjoyable unless the pairing is at a par.
@Mean Old Lady Sticking up for the less senior among us, I'm sure you meant to write "Nice try, Sam..."
This puzzle was 'fun, fun, fun'! Sam is right, at least by me. Scrabble is one of my favorite games. I don't often win, (as I make rather hasty word choices). In our group, the player who spends a long time deciding is usually the one with the winning score. But I have fun! Happy Monday, everyone!
SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE (Your Scrabble Tile Bag)
@Rusty Wheelhouse ....the ketchup bottle? (First a little; then a lottle.)
Scrabble solver here (though it’s been awhile). And yes the puzzle was FUN FUN FUN Thank you!
Living in Scotland I have to say I’ve never heard a highlander described as a Gael…
@Jonathan Baldwin Yes. Teuchter maybe, but that's not a word you want to use around the Park Bar inn Argyle Street!
@Jonathan Baldwin et al Wouldn't you think they would ask? These are clued (and queued) well iin advance--plenty of time to seek information at the source instead of assuming, etc.
I loved this one so much!! Felt good to know the music references, which helped with a lot of the ones I would have normally gotten stuck on. Clues made sense, and some were super cute and fun! Thanks!
Slower solve than usual!! The theme was easy enough, but ALY, YURI, and UCONN were all tentative fills - I didn't expect to hear music when I finally filled in the NAMIB/IN APP.
I actually got a music question straight away, GIMME GIMME GIMME which was fun, and helped to get the others. I did find it a bit difficult for a Monday however. ( but fun) I haven’t played Scrabble for years and was never very good at it.
@suejean I have always loved it... but if I had a wonderful word, I would play it even if it opened a TRIPLE WORD SCORE square for an opponent. Then our son grew into a lethal challenger and made me pay big-time. He would slip in a single tile to make multiple words and outscore me dreadfully. Ruthessness pays.
@Cloudy Rockwell I recommend Bananagrams! Everyone makes their own Scrabble-like board and when someone has used all their tiles you call out Peel and everyone grabs one tile and tries to fit it in their board. For me, much more fun than Scrabble since play is simultaneous and you don't have to worry about those triple letter and word spots. Bananagrams is all about speed and how well you can incorporate new tiles to make new words.
What a fun Monday puzzle! I didn’t know any of the triple word songs except fun, fun, fun and still solved way below my average time! Thank you for a great start to the week!
Nice Monday puzzle. None of the theme answers were dawning on me on first pass, but worked through the downs and that led me to FUNFUNFUN and I caught on to the trick and was able to fill in all the others, even though a couple of them were not terribly familiar to me. Answer history search today was inspired by the Beach Boys song. Did a search for TBIRD and that led to a couple of really unusual puzzles. I'll put those in a reply. ..
@Rich in Atlanta As threatened: First puzzle was a Sunday from November 21, 2004 by Kumar Balani with the title - "National" Holiday Theme clues in that one started with: "Step 1 of a Thanksgiving dinner." and then the others were "Step 2," "Step 3," etc. Theme answers: YOUREGHANABUYAFATBIRD STUFFANDPUTITINJAPAN TAIWANLEGWITHTHEOTHER DONOTLETANYONERUSSIA FEEDYOURHUNGARYGUESTS Don't recall seeing anything quite like that before. I'll put the other puzzle find in another reply. ..
This one was FUN for sure. I had taebo at the top for a while, but soon saw my mistake and replaced it with ZUMBA. The only songs I knew right away were ABBA’s and The Beach Boys’, but the others soon became clear. Just a little crunch on a Monday was great! Thanks, Mr. Levy.
It's been a while since we've had a puzzle which uses up all the tiles. (In other words, a pangram.)
In this city (and nowhere else), 61d is a MALKY (after a notorious one-time gang enforcer). Elsewhere in Britain it's a GLASGOW (or GLESCA) KISS. I like this topological formations, others being Bronx Cheer and Birmingham Screwdriver (a hammer) I'm not sure that there's a word for them though. If anybody would care to add to my collection I'd be delighted.
@Rosalind Mitchell In carpentry there is a technique of lightly hammering a screw to get it started, rather than drilling or punching a pilot hole. Growing up in Philadelphia this was referred to as to "New York a screw". I can find absolutely no reference to support it though. (Perhaps in New York they called it "to Philly a screw").
@Rosalind Mitchell Gracious! I thought of a goat--notorious for being rather prone to warfare-- (or perhaps a male sheep during mating season). Wouldn't a GLASGOW KISS be as likely to harm the one delivering it as the recipient? Because I have a scar on my forehead from when I managed a 'head-butt' to the tile shower surround....
@Rosalind Mitchell Chelsea tractor, a posh SUV that's unlikely to ever be driven off-road. Often purchased by a young football player with his first big paycheck.
Loved the puzzle--I'm a lyrics nut! Hate Scrabble, though. Too restrictive and rules-bound for my word-game passions. In all my years a playing with my family, I never managed to achieve any great coup on the TRIPLEWORDSQUARE. But today, the joy in seeing GIMMEGIMMEGIMME pop into my scope! I definitely had FUNFUNFUN! Somehow I can't summon a good joke for the GIRLSGIRLSGIRLS, so...BYEBYEBYE!
@Cloudy Rockwell Always hated scrabble. So boring and plodding. Boggle was a revelation. Such open ended fun, and everyone plays at once. /emus tile their nests
I smashed my personal best record by almost 8% today! Very exciting! I guess I know my music!
LOL! 14 across! I Should have had a new Monday time record… After completing the puzzle I didn’t get the lovely victory tune and had to recheck. I was confused because EVERYTHING appeared correct until I realized I had RUMBA as the popular dance fitness program and it sort of works going down (RIP BY).. Oh well I still have time to get to the gym for my RUMBA class
@Darren May as well. I think ZUMBA is now passé.
I found this one a bit challenging for a Monday, since I don't know any songs by 'NSync or Motley Crue, and few by ABBA. Still, it was possible to deduce them all by a second pass. Good start to the week, even if it took me almost my Monday average.
Well aren't we having FUNFUNFUN lately! Mondays are fairly zippy and I rarely make mistakes but this time I did and lost my patience and checked. The dance thing tripped me up, ZUMBA not RUMBA silly. Your basic reading comprehension fail.
Poor Josh SHAPIRO, known to most (outside of PA, anyway) for not being picked for the Veep slot on the ticket. How many governors does anyone know, apart from Texas, Florida, and California? Take pity on archive puzzlers of the future!
@Grant I'll give you an IOTA (or maybe ATAD) of sympathy about not knowing lots of state governors, but so many of the crosses on SHAPIRO were GIMMES that that's all you get from me. (I always TRY to do Mondays as downs-only, so I got that one that way. But not to sound like too much of a smart-A*S, I'll also confess that I couldn't do this puzzle that way; had to look at a couple of acrosses.)
@Grant Well, unfortunately, we can name Sarah Huckabee Sanders (Arkansas) and Mississippi's "Tater" Reeves.... and after that a number of EX-Governors of Michigan (now or recently in the slammer) and then the NY Governor Elliot Spitzer, who had to resign...
@Mean Old Lady I bet someone could make a fun puzzle of all the governors who have done time. Though I'd probably need the crosses to remember how to spell Blagojevich.
I’m definitely getting slower. My PB on Monday has been 4.34 for a long time. Even though I flew through today’s grid, with no hold ups anywhere it still took me over 7 minutes. Not that I’m a clock watcher, but it felt so fast I checked my stats. Methinks the stopwatch emus were playing tricks on me sometime in the past; it’s not possible for me to type any faster than I did today. The little scamps. Anyhoo, the crossword was a delight. I now have those tunes earworming their way around my brain in a weird mash up.
@Helen Wright It was sower than usual for me also today. But I think this was just a puzzle with more ambiguous clues than normal for a Monday; I found myself skipping a lot of clues and circling back later.
@Helen Wright I'd expect that of a Brit. You guys make the most devilishly difficult word puzzles in the English language . I could occasionally complete a cryptic puzzle in the Financial Times. But the Times of London and the Listener? Forget it!
I just had one of those Duh moments. After you said Namibia was named after the coastal African desert, I had to look it up, wondering what sort of after dinner treat namib was: banana bread, cherry pie, peach cobbler, I dunno. Always have trouble with that word and the one with two s's...
@Ken I had to make myself a mnemonic to remember the difference: A dessert is Something Sweet. A desert is Sandy. To desert is to Scram.
@Ken Thanks Elana and Grant! I'll use both of these -- getting tired of looking this up every time.
The only song I actually know is Fun Fun Fun. Fortunately the theme became evident fairly quickly, and I was saved. Happy Monday!
Surprised to see no other pedants in the comments pointing out that it’s all his exes who live in Texas, not his ex’s. Maybe I’m more annoying than I thought.
@Chloe Atwater Theoretically, the apostrophe could elide “girlfriends,” “wives,” etc. Not that anyone ever writes it that way, but if pedantry is our goal, I’m willing to help us to get there!
@Chloe Atwater In song, as the clue says, it’s “ex’s,” regardless of your opinion or Webster’s: <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_My_Ex's_Live_in_Texas" target="_blank">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_My_Ex's_Live_in_Texas</a> And here is the song in question: <a href="https://youtu.be/QuJroujjYDk?si=xWNVtg_cvPKCef6P" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/QuJroujjYDk?si=xWNVtg_cvPKCef6P</a> That’s why I hang my hat in Tennessee!
@Chloe Atwater Don’t blame the constructor or the editors. That’s how it’s spelled in the George Strait song.
Yes Sam! Put me down for loves Scrabble(in person more than online). I think some here are also Jeopardy fans!
Another fun one, and other than an elusive typo, no problems. Theme answers were quickly filled, as I was familiar with all of the songs, and Scrabble has been a favorite game when I can find someone to play with. Thanks, Zachary!
Having ALI and ALY I felt was a bit weak. Slow solve today for me. Didn’t get much on my first pass until I hit the theme and the song titles came quickly. Also hit RUMBA/RIPBY instead of ZUMBA.
Well, the theme seemed fine for a Monday, and the repetitions offered lots of easily filled boxes. Some of the fill seemed a bit tough for a Monday: NAMIB, GAEL, CAPRI, GAR. Lots of five-letter geography today: NAMIB, KENYA, CAPRI, MAINE, TEXAS.
I was OF TWO MINDS on the Beach Boys answer, and a quick correction of "SUN SUN SUN" (I mean, it could be a song, right?) to "FUN FUN FUN" made this a fun puzzle.
I posted this below in one of the Scrabble threads, just repeating my plug for the game Bananagrams! Sort of a faster version of Scrabble where everyone makes their own board and when someone has used all their tiles everyone takes one more from the pile and incorporates it into their board. I love the aspect of quickly trying to form new words. And not having to wait for everyone else to finish their turn and no need for strategizing to hit those triple letter etc tiles.
@WM That's what I like about Boggle. Everyone plays. /emus would probably love a banana
@WM Maybe it's more fun with a group. When PhysicsDaughter and I played it, we found it only mildly interesting and not engaging enough to play again. Rats.
What a fun puzzle! I loved that I was able to solve without looking at the Gameplay and only had to ask my husband for assistance on a few clues, none of them being the songs, surprisingly. I'm notoriously bad at remembering song titles!