This puzzle was made by two pros, Jeremy with 28 NYT puzzles and Tracy with 37. They put their skills on display in this grid, no? That freedom route in the lower grid is masterful, remarkable grid building. Look, please LOOK at its elements: It starts in a small rectangular cell which gets broken out of, then moves through a matrix of constricted spaces, and ends up right at the edge of the grid, ready to burst out into freedom. Not only did they find nine synonyms for narrow spaces, but they interlinked them, made every one of them a part of a word or phrase, AND found a way to have the letters of Andy’s full name appear IN ORDER through the escape. And with all this going on, they filled in the whole area cleanly!!! Hello? Hello? Is this not a feat of feats? Plus, it’s cool, giving the solving experience a visual layer. Having the theme be one of my favorite movies ever, well, that’s piling on, piling on with goodness and having me leave the puzzle feeling warm all over, excited about what can be done in a box of squares, and, corny as this sounds, happy to be alive. Thank you, Tracy and Jeremy, for a puzzle that’s going to stick with me for a long time. Brava and bravo!
I read each clue in Morgan Freeman's voice. cc: emu handler
@Steven Morgan Freeman's voice in any movie is worth the price of admission. 📽️ (Are you ready for your close-up, Emu?)
@Steven the shawshank REDemption. Coincidence? I think not!
@Steven I only wish there was a way for you to voice record your comment
Quite clever how the words IN and OUT mark the beginning and end of the "tunnel" complex.
Did anyone catch the black squares make a little figure with his arms outstretched and rain droplets falling on him? Including the bag he tied to his leg that contained soap and a change of clothes. In the puzzle, it’s the bottom ANDY. I can’t unsee it. This puzzle was already impressive as it was, but if this was intentional? Just wow!
@Jenaro Can you tell me where you bought the stuff you had tonight? Because that sounds awesome!
@Jenaro Oh I see it!! That's so cool, I can't get over the bag tied to his leg
This is brilliant. I loved every part of this crossword. The theme is very fun, I've always liked themes where there are words hidden inside other words, and I like the unique grid and style. 18x23 is something I'm relatively sure has never been done in an NYT crossword before and I think it was executed well. I've never actually watched The Shawshank though. Excellent work!
I am probably one of the three people on the planet who have never watched this film. Now that I've tunneled out of this puzzle, I feel an obligation to give the movie a go sometime soon. An enjoyable solve and an admirable feat of interlocking theme answers, even if I had no clue about the film references.
@JBW Me, too. I just purchased it and added it to my watch list.
STP has never been a competitor of Pennzoil brand motor oil. When STP was introduced in 1953, it was marketed as an *oil additive* which purported to increase the lubricative quality of the oil, a claim which was stopped with a consumer protection order from the federal government in 1976, a penalty of $800,000 in 1978 and an $880,000 settlement payment to the FTC in 1995 for false advertising. In recent years, STP has been marketing a gasoline additive which claims to clean engine valves.
Fact Boy, Thanks for the blast from the past. Today, STP and Pennzoil are both brands of motor oil. <a href="https://www.stp.com/products/engine-fuel-systems/motor-oil" target="_blank">https://www.stp.com/products/engine-fuel-systems/motor-oil</a>/ <a href="https://www.pennzoil.com/#iframe=L3NvcHVzL3Blbm56b2lsL25ld3NsZXR0ZXI" target="_blank">https://www.pennzoil.com/#iframe=L3NvcHVzL3Blbm56b2lsL25ld3NsZXR0ZXI</a>
CHW, I'm familiar with it in real life as it was clued here last year (and similarly many times earlier): Sat Nov 25, 2023 51D X-ray ___ (novelty purchase)
@Barry Ancona Also a great punk band.
@CHW I saw them at the Roundhouse in '78 One for the yoof.
This puzzle thrilled me, as much as the movie – one my favorites ever, which I've watched quite a few times. I SPOSE another go at it will be forthcoming, in honor of its 30th anniversary. This was an ingenious puzzle, with a jaw-dropping construction that left me AGAPE. My thought: How is it even humanly possible to make Andy's trajectory fit so perfectly? I peg it as a runaway success! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Thank you, Tracy and Jeremy, for this sparkling gem.
@sotto voce I've watched it a bunch too! It was fun filling in so many of the themes from memory. I only needed crosses for TORNADO. And I needed the AN to jar my memory on Andy's name, which naturally popped into my head in Morgan Freeman's voice.
32 Across, part of H.M.S. Sorry to be picky, but as a king now sits on the UK throne, it is His Majesty's Ship.
@Max Nicks Didn’t specify time. How about HMS Pinafore?
@Max Nicks I came here to say this too. But otherwise, what a clever puzzle!
@Max Nicks Yeah, that was a good bit of misdirection.
Happy Birthday fellow Mainer Steven King
@mainer Wow, good catch! Born September 21, 1947. I wonder if this puzzle running today was coincidence or intentional...
@mainer Here's to you, Mr. King. I was a doubter for a long, long time. Now I think you're nothing short of brilliant. How often does a once in a lifetime writer decide to write primarily horror? In 300 years, I'd bet Poe and King are often used in the same sentence.
Was hoping for an animation at the solve. Oh well…
ESCAPEArT looked fine, as did MArON. I suppose ESCAPEACT was a slightly better fit for the clue, but I was fixated on the term "escape artist". I also know very little about Georgia, and I thought that maybe the actor's Marc Maron's name derived from a city there. Anyway, I had to enable autocheck to catch that mistake. It was my personal natick. I also struggled in the NW and directly north. Oh well, can't win them all.
@Andrzej wow this was exactly the same thought and mistake I had :) I filled the whole puzzle and it took me five plus minutes just to find it and think to change to a c, and that closed the puzzle
I'm not a fan of the institution myself, but Britain is currently ruled by a man.
@Aria Many puzzles are submitted far ahead of the publication date, and there is a possibility it was HER at the time of submission. It's one of those cases where it could have been either one, so I let the crosses determine it for me.
@Aria I think it’s pretty common to see clues involving HRH/HMS where the solution can either be “his” or “her” and you have to rely on crosses to get it.
New Sunday PR! It would have taken a lot longer if the constructors had ZIHUATANEJO waiting for ANDY on the other side of that TUNNEL. Thanks Jeremy Newton and Tracy Gray! SHAWSHANK is one of my all time favorites. Can’t say how many times I’ve been trapped when I’ve stumbled across it while flipping channels.
@Striker Same, if I stumble on it while I'm flipping through channels, that channel is staying on!! What an absolutely perfect movie!!
This is an astonishing puzzle. The movie title, hero and actor, yes, but then ANDY is IN his cell (read the letters upward) and breaks out with a Y (arms uplifted). Then he moves through the TUNNEL CHUTE PASSAGE etc with the letters of his name (circled) in order and finally emerges OUT. I got held up on BUSTS, UPN and other trivia but i stuck with it because i was in awe of the theme. Bravo
I was not clear why we had the y filled in? Feels like IND could have been clued…
@Apeksha when Andy escapes in the movie he raises his arms in victory….or freedom…or Christ imagery…. Y
@Apeksha They needed the Y so the circled letters could spell ANDY as he tunnels out of the puzzle. It drove me nuts trying to figure out a graphic reason for the unchecked square but there it is.
Hmm, not a fan of this one I'm afriad. The themed entries (and especially the circled squares) didn't play any significant part in the solving process, rather it was just something that you notice when you finish, like an "aren't we clever" message from the setters. Enjoyable enough as a simple solve, but not much of a puzzle.
@Alex Kind of where I was at. At least there's two of us. :) ____________________ Jesse Goldberg 8/28/2024 for Puzzle of the Decade (I do this instead of emuing)
TBH I understand tepid comments much better than the enthusiastic ones, and not just today. After all, these are just crossword puzzles, and we get hundreds of them every year. Are they all really brilliant, inspired, thrilling? Most of them are fine, sure, but they can't ALL be the best ever, can they? Maybe I'm a bit blasè, but I can't remember ever being wowed by a crossword puzzle.
Clues like 41A are why I generally don't care about my "score" on Sundays. Who the heck calls it a DOL, anyway?
Luckily, the movie wasn't crucial for the solve, because I never saw it, so I put my head on autopilot and the fills dropped in one after another. TRENCHCOAT? I love them, and so went with it. Ratso's line? I did see that one, so did the same. DUCTTAPE? We do that a lot around here. ANDY's last name looked pretty iffy, but wrote it in anyway. The puzzle got done in record time—delirious fun, like skating on thick ice for a change, but....oh Noooo! Not another fly speck search! Mr. Houdini's specialty had looked off to me, but I'd entered it anyway, and of course it took about maybe an hour or two to get the DOH! moment and achieve REDEMPTION. I loved this puzzle, Jeremy Newton and Tracy Gray. The clues were just skewed enough to need a second thought or two, and when they were right, it was so satisfying. Thank you!
Fun, quick Sunday! I got the theme early on and was looking for Zihuatanejo!
They even got Andy’s bag of clothes tied to his leg in there with the extra Y! Wow. An homage to a fantastic book and classic movie. Fun in so many ways. Thank you!
@CCNY Well, yours is the first enthusiastic review I've come to so I cheer for a great work of film art which I have watched several times, and the amazingly imaginative crossword artists who honored it today. Even though the bottom half of the puzzle was a quick solve for me. the top half challenged me for quite a long time. I could hear the cogs of their brains, locking and unlocking as they figured out how to deceive me honestly. (That oxymoronic phrase is purposeful.) A very fun experience!
@CCNY The Y is also where he breaches the wall to reach the SHAFT....
A puzzle of uncomfortable plurals. Although I can imagine the manager of a New-age boutique telling their employee: "put the crystals there, and the TAROTS over there." Anyone pretentious enough to talk about more than one agape would most likely spell it "agapæ"--complete with ligature--or even "agapai." The OED lists the plural AGAPES as "rare." Like, how common is the word "agape" in the first place? (The OED's first citation of "agapes" is from *The Corruptions of Christianity* (1782) by the polymath theologian/chemist Joseph Priestley. He probably used it just to irritate the establishment CoE sorts. A shout out the fascinating biography of him, *The Invention of Air*) Similarly TEMPOS. I'd like to think that all *real* musicians would only use "tempi," but, sadly, they don't. With a subtle air of British snobbery, the Oxford (English) Dictionary lists the first citation of "tempos" as an entry in the (American) Webster's New International Dictionary (1934), but by 1980, they had to concede its use in the music reviews of the Times (of London). Whither journalism?
I don't know whether its the setters or a long backlog of crossword submissions that are two years behind the curve, but the solution to 32a should of course be HIS. Which is what I put in at first, causing me all sorts of problems! As one who spent a goodly chunk of her career supporting a large FOREX desk along with other financial shenanigans, I put USD in 41a. I've never seen DOL as the abbreviation; outwith financial markets wouldn't it always be $? I could also have come unstuck if I'd followed my first instinct and put TAROCK in 63d. Partly because I've never heard TAROTS as a plural before, but mostly because as an enthusiast for traditional card games I have a lovely Austrian Tarock pack (deck) of a much older design than the 1909 Pamela Coleman-Smith one commonly used for divination. I can never find anybody to play Tarock with but just possessing the pack is a wonderful thing!
@Rosalind Mitchell The clue HRH has nothing to indicate it should be linked to the current Royal. His or HER are both possible answers, and today it is HER.
Rosalind, Re: forex In the Business section of The Times, I'd expect USD too. In the Games section, anything goes. The crosses chose the answer for me (as they often do).
Bravo! What a puzzle! One very small nit: the Tarot major arcana begins with 0 (The Fool), not 1 (The Magician).
I'm at a loss as to why there was no black box separating "Indy" and "Duct Tape," only a white box. When I went back trying to erase the "Y" in the white box, the puzzle wouldn't let me. My cursor kept jumping over it. So, "IndyDuctTape" became one long word.
Michael, The paper version has some black in the square but outside the circle, so it's clear that's where Andy breaks out of his cell. You can see it here: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/svc/crosswords/v2/puzzle/print/Sep2224.pdf" target="_blank">https://www.nytimes.com/svc/crosswords/v2/puzzle/print/Sep2224.pdf</a>
@Barry Ancona the online version didn’t have 1/2 black square. Also, I never saw the movie, so any underlying gimmicks alluded me. I don’t remember the column even addressing this. Nevertheless, thanks for your explanation.
@Michael FWIW, the android app version is the same as the pdf print version, it helps to turn off 'Dark Mode'
What a theme! I really love THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION! It is definitely one of my favorite movies of all time, and arguably one of the greatest movies of all time, so I was really tickled to discover that this was a tribute to it so early on. Though some of the fill (FISH FIN in particular) seemed a little so-so to me, I didn't mind because of the overall loveliness. And how often do we get both EMU and EEL in one puzzle!? 😉 Loved that INDY would be followed by 500 and that ANDY crawled 500 yards (That's the length of 5 football fields, just shy of half a mile) to his freedom! Being a super fan of the movie, there are things I wish they could have added, like Morgan Freeman, Zihuatanejo, and a quote about hope, but I can't even imagine what it took to create this masterpiece... (Was it as painstakingly meticulous and hopeful as Andy's 20-year tunnel dig?) And I can only imagine that, the constructors being big fans as well, they would have loved to have fit more in. Their love of the movie certainly shone through! My thanks to both!! "Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies."
@HeathieJ Omg! The 500. I didn’t even think of the way. Soooo clever. I loved this puzzle.
I got it right from the crosses, but it took too long to figure out what MAN-DMS were.
@Ibehooved That’s because there’s no such thing.
@Ibehooved Where do you see MAN DMS? ??
Fantastic puzzle! It was a joy to solve. Love this movie! Even better than the book.
@ab spex aka specs aka spectacles Not my favorite either, but enjoyed the puzzle nonetheless.
@ab I've worn glasses since I was 4 and have never ever... and won't.
I got AGAPES from the context clue of it being a meal of *love* — surprised the column didn’t mention AGAPE is also a Greek word for the unselfish love between friends. I learned this fact only because there is a wonderful piece in the score for If Beale Street Could Talk by composer Nicholas Britell named “Agape”. Anyway, I enjoyed this puzzle greatly and came in under my average time with no lookups!
@Michelle i never knew the form of agape used in this puzzle before, but I've known the "unselfish love" (also, non-passionate love, is how I learned it) since I was in high school. Unfortunately, knowing one made the other one of the very last words I could fill in to the puzzle. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing...
I've been sentenced to life without parole for unarmed cruciverbalism. But, in all my years doing Times, I have never watched these two perps create such a clever diversion. Is today Sunday? I lose track in here. But the worst obfuscation wasn't evident to me until I filled in the final cell, incorrectly: I had found Andy's plot, but wracked my brain trying to find the clue "Red Side" tied somewhere to Andy's friend and narrator. Alas, I failed! In this election season I took a stab at the remaining blank cell in _OP and was assaulted by the Puzzle's sneering put-down "You're never getting outta here alive." And, I didn't see Andy working his way through the grey labyrinthine circles until Warden Lovinger explained. Congrats to the constructors! Search them for clues next time, before we are subjected to their recidivision.
@William Schrader Errr, that last word was supposed to spell "recidivism!" --dang autocorrect
A thing of beauty! Thanks for a very fun puzzle.
That is what I call one intricate puzzle. I would eagerly watch a documentary on the making of this puzzle. Eagerly. Really enjoyed solving this one.
Fall Out Boy is not "Emo pop", as Fallout Boy has no roots in Emo at all. Jimmy Eat World is Emo Pop. Orchards is Emo Pop. Fall Out Boy is Pop Punk, or more generally, Alt Rock
@Kevin T As Mr. Joel so wisely put it: "Emo, Pop Punk,"/ Post Punk, Alt Rock/ It's still Rock 'n' Roll to me. Uptown Emu
@Kevin T Sugar (we're going down) makes a lot of music critic lists as a seminal emo song. If a single tune is being called pop, punk, alternative, and rock, there's a good chance it will be included under the emo or emo pop descriptor as well. Fallout Boy was earlier emo, contemporary with Dashboard, so naturally their roots were earlier than that.
Even without having seen the film in years I managed to get all the film related clues using the crosses. But was stuck forever on eyeglasses because I had only ever known of them as SPECS. DOH
Thankfully I didn’t get a personal best. Because I didn’t want this puzzle to end. Lovely movie and a lovely puzzle that reads like an ode in places. Thanks!
I only saw the movie on cable once way back when, but was familiar enough with it to get the title with just having HANK from the crosses and got the Tim Robbins clue, because I knew he was in it. Everything else came from the crosses. (And I did keep thinking where is Morgan Freeman?) I'm glad that so many more familiar with the movie got so much enjoyment from the puzzle's construction. Aside from the movie associations, I thought there were a lot fun clues. Finally, I am eternally grateful that the constructors did not go with a Mario Brothers theme.
@Vaer "Where is Morgan Freeman?" That is a *great* question. I think they should do another one like this only this time featuring Red.
Has the complaint that the plural of "tempo" is "tempi", not TEMPOS, come up yet? Can't remember how many pluralization debacles I've seen here. Loved every one of them. Maybe this will get OKRAS off peoples' minds.
Impressive construction! I like the cell in the dungeon with Andy’s breakout. All the narrow pathways of his exit connecting. Too much to ask that it all ended in Zihuatanejo, a place I had visited around that time and thus will always remember the ending. I saw the movie when it came out and confidently entered the title in the two downs. I can remember Robbins and Freeman but not the character’s name. I needed crosses for that and to solve AGAPES and BEAU. Haven’t heard either of their clues before. The only Swain I know is Boatswain pronounced Bosun.
My favorite movie turned into a super-creative puzzle?!? What's not to love?? Bravo!
Record solve for me today. It helps that I've seen this wonderful film dozens of times. Lord, it's a miracle!
I watch it whenever I can. Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things. I had a typo but the circled letters actually found it for me!
A pure solving pleasure. Swain and slewed were new to me. Indy had me confused so I solved around it. Keep at it!
A record Sunday for me as well. I don’t know where Andy Dufresne was stored in my brain given that I haven’t seen the movie since it came out!
A crossword with a narrative about a narrative! Clever and so much fun. More of these, please. Thank you, Tracy and Jeremy!