Way too many obscure clues in this one. Vietnamese fruit cocktail, first Italian to win an oscar, liquids used in oil drilling … who do you think I am, Merriam-webster?
@Keith Law Someone who enjoys learning new stuff?
@Keith Law All crossword puzzles require some factual knowledge. This one did too so it's just standard operating policy, at a Saturday level of difficulty.
@Keith Law I understand your frustration, and I shared it for a long time, but please consider the following: I just Google this stuff and get on with solving. American crosswords, with the requirement to have no square unchecked, often necessitate the inclusion of some niche entries. This simply cannot change as I have come to understand that over the 16 months I've been solving NYT puzzles. I really do not understand why some solvers refuse to Google trivia - what is the difference between knowing it outright and Googling it? Those who know all those names of people and places learned them somewhere, maybe on the internet.
@Keith Law It’s like you were in the room with us! Those were the stumpers for us, too
I can't believe that we're at a stage in crosswords where debuts feature two 3 entry stacks. I've tried making a crossword with just one 3-entry stack and it was grueling. I cannot imagine doing 2 in a debut puzzle. Amazing work. Definitely one of the year's highlights for me so far.
@Holly Puzzle-construction software, perhaps, but that doesn’t require AI.
Between THATSIMPOSSIBLE, ITTAKESAVILLAGE, HITTINGADEADEND, and WHATDIDITELLYOU, I got the distinct impression that the constructor was trying to tell me to hang it up. Well, the joke's on her, and the joy's in me, because I managed to persevere, so GEEWHIZ! ... and thanks for an awesome crossword, katie.
First pass, nada. Second pass, maybe three fills. Started to feel like a trivia game instead of a crossword. Finally rattled the cage, and amazingly, it started to fill up from the bottom. Went back up to the top, armed with the knowledge that the long fills were really straightforward, and the HONEYMOON started to unfold. This was some debut! Good for you, Katie Hoody. (Bet we'll be seeing more of you.) Thank you!
"You bought lawn service for everyone?" "It rakes a village." ("Well, thanks so mulch!")
Somehow, Mike manages to rustle up another one of these gems every day. I’m sure they take work - it’s not autumnatic.
@Mike A pun? Me? That's impossible!* Hmm...words on view... Do something seed with heed? OK, what about . . . Courtroom drama: Bakers shamed into revealing they'd poached their bialy recipe...nosh? brawl? Am I nuts? Gotta cite something - Gee whiz... I'm hitting a dead end here. "The beeline stopped at dawn. It was a honey moon period" Phew! *what did I tell you? 😉
@AGW That is a fair, succinct assessment. And I'm sure you well get a lot of feedback trying to turn the criticism back on you. Don't worry about it. ____________________ Jesse Goldberg 8/28/2024 for Puzzle of the Decade (I do this instead of emuing)
"I hope the puzzle is fun to solve despite DESE less than ideal entries!" It was for me, Katie! Quite the debut. Glad you made it.
For those who were stumped by the SYN clue, I'll admit it was a trickier-than-usual one for this sort of clue, as you don't easily see "zest" and "life" as synonyms unless you realize the high-number-definition of "life" that's needed. But here are a few "x for y" clues for SYN that have been used before (all with "Abbr." tags): Money for bread; Lacking, for short; Individual, for one; United, for one; Illustration, for example; Looks for ganders; Specimen, for example; Case, for example; Loads, for many; Example, for instance; Abridged, for short; and Single, for one, which ironically was the only one used twice. For the full word SYNONYM as the answer, we also have had Contracts for shrinks; United, for one; and Instance, for example, which apparently was the first time (2007) this kind of clue was used. With just a little variance, we also have: Try to stab and Lay to rest. When the answer is SYNS, the "for" becomes "and": Terms and conditions; Destiny and fate; Warm and toasty; Aid and abet; Bits and pieces. We also have seen Prim and proper for the full word SYNONYMS. Many of these clues include "e.g." at the end. These types of clues are worth familiarizing yourself with as you continue your solving journey.
For once, the spanners came to me quickly and the shorter ones often had me stumped. It was an unusual mix that I thoroughly enjoyed.
@MA - same here. It took me quite to realize "what flashers do" wasn't BARE.
The awe in which I hold anyone who can whip up two triple stack 15s is on a par with that in which I hold Schrödinger constructors. And anyone who can understand that sentence. The mind boggles this morning. Even the emu is speechless. A genuine ‘tour de force’. Outstanding, Katie.
Caitlin is a wonderful Wordplay columnist. Always insightful and has pencils at the ready.
Thank you to everyone who commented on the loss of my beloved pup yesterday. I have been mostly offline since I posted -- a sort-of relative (my brother's nephew through my sister-in-law, but no relation to me) came to Maine to hike in Acadia. He arrived yesterday afternoon and we had a nice dinner together, where he got to meet several of my misfit friends. He also got to meet my remaining pup. My friends and I gave him a lot of recommendations for which trails to check out in Acadia, and a recommendation to swing through the Whites on his return to McGuire AFB. I met him about 30 years ago, when he was a toddler, so he doesn't remember me, and I had no idea what he would look like. It was a good meetup. He's an interesting guy -- USAF pilot who flies big planes. He just returned from a 6-month deployment to the Middle East. He is considering moving to Boston to fly for a commercial airline when he leaves the USAF in about a year. So, I was offline most of yesterday. I did check in just now and the cockle of my simple heart was warmed by all your well-wishes. Thank you all. Now, if only I can post this before the power goes out. It's blowing a full gale out there and much of Maine is already out of power...
Finishing this puzzle has been the proudest moment of my life. I want to thank the Academy for this huge honor.
Dave, I loved you as “Veda” in last week’s Spelling Bee. And I really respect that you didn’t get all political during your speech.
Excellent debut, Katie. I was shocked to see that this was a debut due to the high quality. This is exactly what I look for in a Saturday puzzle. First pass, almost nothing. Picking up a few on the next pass, then slowly building to a completed grid. [Zest for life: Abbr.] was such a great clue for SYN. I got it from the crosses, and when I saw it, I groaned. We've seen clues like that before, and I tell myself I won't get fooled again, but here we are.
Well that was painful. The "long stacks" weren't nearly so much the problem as was the more questionable cluing. "Last to fall" for me was the pair of accessories. I'd never seen decoct or the Slavic brothers, and I suppose "syn" is supposed to refer to synecdoche? Maybe. Least favorite for me. Glad to have gotten through this but I can't say I enjoyed it. Despite the difficulty I didn't find it all that clever.... Certainly not funny or witty. ____________________ Jesse Goldberg 8/28/2024 for Puzzle of the Decade (I do this instead of emuing)
@B Ah, @Nancy J. explained zest and life are syn.onyms. Wow, I might like that clue even less now. ;) ____________________ Jesse Goldberg 8/28/2024 for Puzzle of the Decade (I do this instead of emuing)
As I began to go through THIS puzzle, my first thought was, THAT’SIMPOSSIBLE. Sadly, however, that thought did not immediately tip me off to the answer to 1A. The combination 6 grid spanners and a plethora of general knowledge clues that were outside my ken, had me flummoxed for the longest while. To top it off, boldly putting in bean for chickpea, instead of SEED, made it very hard to see SUCKSWIND. And as if all that wasn’t enough to induce despair, I had not one but two typos to ferret out at the very end. This was a great challenge for me, and balanced out yesterday’s easy cruise. A HAT tip to the constructor for a wild ride with a satisfying ending. Seeing DESE in the puzzle reminded me of one of my mother’s favorite stories about my childhood. I was 3 or 4 and we were visiting some family friends who had a boy a couple of years older than me. Apparently (I have no actual memory of the events in question, but know the story only through repetitive tellings) my erstwhile playmate had trouble making the TH sound and was saying dis and dat. I piped up and said, “Mom, Bruce is a dis, dat, dese and dose boy,” causing my beleaguered mother no end of embarrassment. It seems I was born to be a word pedant.
@Marshall Walthew I had that "TH" speech impediment for a few years, the result of having two front teeth loosened and lost too early (thanks, sis). When I realized I could not make those very important sounds on my own, it became a real embarrassment. A quick course of speech therapy solved the problem for me. It was anything but funny to deal with it at the time.
Ah yes, the satisfaction of completing a puzzle when you start by not knowing a single answer. Excellent exercise for a Saturday morning.
Thanks for highlighting DO (Osteopathic physicians) instead of MD (Allopathic physicians)! Both DO and MD applicants take MCAT entry exams to get into medical schools. We are colleagues who often train and work side by side in all medical specialties and settings If someone reading this comment wants to learn more, look up www.osteopathic.org Be Well!
@Hallie Robbins, DO My primary care physician is a DO. He's the best I've ever had.
I enjoyed this puzzle with it's quite fresh and inventive clues. However, I needed quite a few lookups for the trivia and the mysterious word for BRAWL, donnybrook. It has a nice ring to it, I hope I will be able to remember it. There are three things I don't understand. It would be nice if the community explained them to me. Polish roll: BIALY??? I'm Polish and have no idea what's going on here. "Biały" is Polish for "white" (masculine version; feminine would be "biała" and neuter "białe"). "Biały" on its own only means a white person. "Roll" implies something bread-related, maybe? "Białe pieczywo" is the cheapest, least healthy type of bread over here, and it can be represented by both loaves and rolls. A roll is "bułka", and it's feminine, so it would be BIAŁA. I'm really confused by this entry... Zest for life: Abbr. SYN? Syn. is short for what, exactly? Approaches, briefly: MOS? I only know mos. as months.
@Andrzej a bialy is a kind of flat bagel here in ny with I assume polish origins - we could google it but this is more fun :)
Ah geez, I used bad online shorthand for annoyed surprise and the prudish emu quashed my second post. Here it goes again without the offending three letters. First, Google "corrected" its to it's above - I know the difference so please don't think less of me. Second, RUS was a gimme. The legend about the brothers Lech, Czech and Rus founding Poland, Czechia and Rus, respectively, was first written down in the 13th century. However, it was appropriated by Soviet-aligned propaganda between 1944 and 1989, so nobody tells it any more over here: it's been tainted forever when the Soviets falsely equated Rus with Russia. Rus, the Polish Ruś, is a catch-all term for the many Eastern Slavic states of the medieval era. Eg. Kyivan Rus was the predecessor of modern Ukraine. The word survives in our "pierogi ruskie", "pierogi (dumplings) of Rus" (not Russia!), with cottage cheese, potato and onion stuffing.
@Andrzej Zest is a SYNonym for life. The bialy is like a bagel without a hole, as far as I know - probably someone from New York can explain it better. Wikipedia claims it originated in Bialystok, Poland. M.O. is a common abbreviation in old detective novels & movies. It stands for modus operandi and the M.O., or the way a criminal committed a particular crime, would help the detective solve it, or eliminate a suspect because the M.O. doesn't match.
@Andrzej Google Bialy - apparently named from its city of origin. Mao is modus operandi and syn stands for synonym - what zest is to life. I loved this puzzle a lot. Felt impossible but then came together.
@Andrzej A bialy is a roll that Polish Jews brought to America. Its name comes from Białystok, the city from which it originated. So, it's an English word for something of Polish origin. It's chewy and round, like a bagel. But, it's not boiled and instead of a hole, there's a depression that often has diced onions.
@Andrzej SYN = synonym; the clue intentionally misdirects. Imagine a comma after "zest"... MO = "modus operandi" Bialy is as Tony said; it's specifically of Jewish origin, and its name comes from Bialystok.
@Andrzej Thanks for the updates on BIALY and RUS. During the Second World War there was a B-17 bomber named “Belle of the Brawl,” a clever pun on the phrase “belle of the ball” (the beautiful girl at the dance). Sometimes humanizing a word can help to remember it.
@Andrzej According to Wikipedia, "Former New York Times food writer Mimi Sheraton wrote The Bialy Eaters: The Story of a Bread and a Lost World, a 2000 book dedicated to the bialy and its role as a symbol of the Jewish heritage of Białystok." That sounds interesting to me. When you visit New York, try a bialy. People looking for good pierogis should try Cleveland (which even has a Pierogi Week) or Detroit. <a href="https://pierogiweekcleveland.com" target="_blank">https://pierogiweekcleveland.com</a>/; <a href="https://detroit.eater.com/maps/best-restaurants-pierogi-detroit-southeast-michigan" target="_blank">https://detroit.eater.com/maps/best-restaurants-pierogi-detroit-southeast-michigan</a>
@Andrzej Well thanks to your comment I learned something that I didn’t know I didn’t know! It was common in the Northeast US city where I grew up to be able to get what we called “bulky rolls,” especially in Jewish delis. I always just vaguely assumed it referred to the size of the roll—kind of like an oversized burger bun, I guess?—but apparently we were just asking for “rolls” in Polish(ish) when we ordered them! Love happening upon a random etymology lesson, thank you!
Over the years, my feelings about stacks of grid spanners have evolved from "they're intimidating" to "they're intimidating but they are almost always well-known phrases and once you have a few letters you might be able to guess what they are and then they are actually of great help for the difficult short words that cross them". I felt like a very bad Slav because I got both RUS and BIALY on crossings and had never heard of either of them - but then I read that even Andrzej didn't know the latter and I feel better. As a Southern Slav, I feel very excluded by the "Lech, Czech and Rus" legend. What brother am I a descendant of?
That's the thing about legends - they are often exclusionary, and they breed misinformation and often lead to stereotyping. Possibly because of the Lech, Czech and Rus thing many people in Poland often don't even know which nations in the Balkans and South-Eastern Europe in general are (largely) Slavic. My parents, as historians, always encouraged me to look beyond legends, into the historical records, and interpret legends not as records of history but of culture, which may sadly also include preconceptions, politics and stigma. I suppose if the legend featured a brother who went south, he would have been called Yug?
I get so excited as soon as I see stacks like these! Great puzzle! TIL Enya recorded songs in fictional languages like Elvish and French.
ad absurdum, Heh heh. (Despite studying and passing it all through school, my second “official” language … let’s just say any similarity to a real language, living or dead, is purely coincidental.)
I can forgive overuse of clues that are too clever by half to make up for easy fill or clunky fill to make double triple stacks work, but not both. Sorry to the constructor and editor but I gotta rate this one a POOR.
If you are trying to make it difficult then at least make it challenging to the solver instead of using this awful method. I have no issues with the full grid phrases, but the rest is a different story. Random trivia scattered throughout creating multiple Naticks. Many entries were unclever and forced. 11D, 22A, 30A & 30D: Lame! I'll just leave it at that. 43D: Who on Earth says this? At least the crosses were reasonable. 44D: Sure, everyone remembers this bit of relevant pop culture trivia from 1951. 51D: That's not how anyone spells that word when using slang. 39A & 39D: No one pluralizes that word with an S, even if it's in the dictionary. Use it in an intelligible sentence to prove me wrong. Crossed with a random foreign name that no one could possibly know. DeJa'Vu from when I got stuck for 6 minutes scouring the grid to fix "aunaturel" from "aunatural" last week. At least the rest of that puzzle was fun and challenging.
@Michael You should be careful when you say "no one could possibly know". I was able to pull Anna MAGNANI's name out of deep in my subconscious with a few crosses. I'll bet some others knew it immediately. Other answers, like SELENITES and URIAH, can be inferred if you have a well-rounded education or are otherwise well-read. SELENE was the Greek goddess of the moon, and URIAH comes from the Old Testament. I found this to be a hard one, even for a Saturday, but as I said earlier, I made the poor choice of trying to solve it while watching a baseball game. But I didn't find anything to criticize in the cluing. Obscure trivia can often be inferred by carefully considering the information given. And experience is needed to solve any Saturday puzzle, not just this one. Good luck to you next time!
@Michael I suspect you’re just looking to express frustration rather than to actually seek answers but mud/MUDS is like fish/fishes—the singular can stand in for the plural, but the plural refers, often in scientific or industrial context, to different types/species: “the various muds used in drilling come from different soil compositions depending on the desired effect” or what have you. And I can tell you for sure that it is factually untrue that “no one could possibly know” Anna MAGNANI, since I did.
"If you are trying to make it difficult then at least make it challenging to the solver instead of using this awful method." Michael, This puzzle was clearly a serious challenge for you as a solver. It was less of a challenge for me as a solver. Saturday puzzles are supposed to be challenges. The methods employed in this puzzle are normal for a Saturday crossword.
@Michael Several 'are u serious' moments of eye-rolling exasperation during this solve, will grant you that. But with Steve L on this. Half the fun of Saturdays is divining answers of obscure trivia through intuition and logic -- without lookups. That's what makes it a puzzle.
@Michael This post is giving the vibe of a kid frustrated by unfamiliar material or methods at school ("That's lame!"), but it happens to everyone at some point so I'll let you have your moment. I come here to acknowledge one of my quickest solves of today's puzzle, Anna Magnani, whose performance in "The Rose Tattoo" was deserving of her Oscar win for Best Actress. Ciao Bella. Then again, while I'm here, if there are sand, clay, silt, peat, chalk and loam types of soil, wouldn't adding water result in muds with different characteristics?
@Michael Crossed with a random foreign name that no one could possibly know. Anna Magnani: I got to work now, you gotta go. Marlon Brando: I got no place to go. Anna Magnani: Well, everybody's got a problem, that's yours. -The Fugitive Kind (1960) Sorry you don't know the movie. But yeah, Kieron Moore in David and Bathsheba (1951), that's a tough one. It's just that the story of David and Bathsheba isn't exactly pop culture trivia. Even if you don't read the Bible, art museums are filled with paintings of David checking out Bathsheba's charms in her, well bath. All David has to do is get rid of her husband, Uriah. Gregory Peck and Susan Hayward as D and B, in case anyone was wondering.
@Michael TADR; (Too Angry, Didn't Read) Not a fan of full-on rants unless they are chock full of humor.
@Michael I didn’t know MUDS either but according to Wikipedia, “In geotechnical engineering, drilling fluid, also known as drilling mud, is used to aid the drilling of boreholes into the earth.” So, not mud in the colloquial sense. The plural form appears throughout the article. SELENITES was fun. I got it half from crosses, half from guessing. I’ve seen enough Mystery Science Theater 3000 to know an old timey alien species ending in -ITES is a pretty safe guess.
I LOVED this puzzle. It was extremely difficult and I wanted to give up several times and concede defeat. However, I just kept plugging along and felt a great sense of pride upon finishing it. Thank you.
Wow! That's a lovely puzzle. The spanners were the relatively easy bits, once I got a few letters into them and could see where they were headed. The middle, though? .... I fiddled for a long time with the crossing of SUCKS WIND with DECOCT (neither of which is usually in my daily vocabulary), even though I had NOSH and SKYWAYS early on. I had to walk away, refresh the coffee, and take a second (and third) run at things before they made sense. The cross of URIAH and PRO stumped me too, because I had entered wHEW (which seemed obvious at the time) instead of PHEW (which has always meant "That smells to high heaven!" to me). And then there was CEES, crossing CHE. I know zip about Thai cocktails, and it took way too long before I saw the double letter C in [aCCessories] and gave myself a dope slap. Altogether, this was a great, fun puzzle for a Saturday. Lots of clever clues, some challenging word choices, and a good grid. Thank you!
@StevenR PHEW definitely means “Just made it!” to the NYT Games team. That’s the message you get in both Connections and Wordle when you solve the puzzle when making the maximum number of mistakes allowed.
@Eric Hougland Yes! My thought too.
Meh. Way too full of "either you know it or you don't." Maybe I'm complaining because mostly I didn't, but still. I actually got all the long ones and failed on the trivia. Thumbs down - not well balanced at all.
Congratulations on your NYT debut, Ms. Hoody! I got off to an unpromising start, with little more than HOTH, ENYA and MCAT, but I was never stuck staring at a bunch of empty squares. Thanks for the challenge!
A first-timer acknowledging puzzle shortcomings? What a refreshing take. Thank you. You've a wonderful future.
Uncomfortably far out of my wheelhouse. I appreciate all of the commenters here owning up to the clues they had trouble with because I was DOA. After 20 minutes I had a smattering of non-connecting clues filled in and acres of grid left to SEED. First, the blog. Lots of help there. Then, the comments thread. Even then, I’m befuddled with MUDS and CHE and CEES (aren’t there a pair of ESSES also), and nothing popped into my head at the spanning clues (all six of them) as sometimes, rarely, maybe on a Monday I guess, happens. Obviously indicative of a broken streak, though my “solved” streak of 2,316 remains intact. A real stumper. Kudos.
@Michael MUD is simply what people who drill for oil call the stuff pumped in to lubricate the drill. A former speaker of the Texas House of Representatives made a pretty good living selling mud.
"... I’m befuddled with MUDS and CHE and CEES (aren’t there a pair of ESSES also)..." Michael, Eric explained MUDS (which I recalled from somewhere). I had not heard of CHE [Thai] either, but the crosses were kind. Yes, there are also a [Pair of] esses in [accessories], but only CEES fit in the grid.
@Michael If you have spent time covering the seams in drywall with successive layers of joint compound (I have lots of experience...) you will call that MUD, also...
now THIS is a proper Saturday crossword 😊 What a great accomplishment of construction...and a NYT debut at that! I needed just a couple of lookups to jumpstart the solve, as there were quite a few obscure (for me) factoids. Once the eggshell was cracked a bit, this puzzle was delightfully evil yet fair. Thank you Katie...let this not be your last late week puzzle.
AM I NUTS, or was that one heck of a debut effort?? Missteps here were UCSD (not SDSU), deduct (not DECOCT), melee (not BRAWL). On the strength of that double triple alone -- Katie Hoody, you are MY IDOL.
My favorite kind of puzzle in that there was no way I knew every answer but was able to infer or sometimes outright guess the most likely answer. It pushed to the limit my primary mindset when solving: Always assume your answer might be wrong!
I just hope all the folks who routinely complain about new terms and pop culture and stuff that they're too old for are also complaining about how narrow and esoteric it is to know who Keiron Moore is and what character he played in 1951...
@Marcelo My first thought as well was Who??? But then I thought, well, the three main characters in the story are David, Bathsheba and Uriah. Both male names are 5 letters but surely David was played by someone much more famous (I looked it up later and it was Gregory Peck) so Uriah it was.
Marcelo, Nobody knew (IMNSHO). It was a delightful distraction. G L and everyone else who got the answer got it some other way.
I should know better than to do the Saturday puzzle while watching a baseball game; in this case, the final game of the Dodgers-Padres series to determine whom my Mets will play next week. It took me way above my average, although I realize that it probably wasn't anywhere near as hard as it seemed to be while I was doing. The top half was impenetrable for the half-paying attention me and the bottom half was slow but doable. Many of my eventually correct answers were wild guesses, like RUS for the Slavic lore character, and ETUDES because Lizst. URIAH was deep cut Old Testament, but with that initial U, was a fair guess (and of course, UGH was a good guess, too!) Some of my missteps included being sure that the LA museum was the GEHRY instead of the GETTY (again, just not paying enough attention); the former, of course, was the architect who created many structures in LA and elsewhere. Also, ANTARCTIC finally came to me with several crosses already in. I had ON SHOW instead of ON VIEW for a while, and BRB for the text abbreviation. In the end, IT TAKES A VILLAGE opened up the top for me, and the other two spanners up there were in fairly quickly. And the Dodgers won the game, if anyone cares.
@Steve L “URIAH was deep cut Old Testament, but with that initial U, was a fair guess . . . .” I’m not really up on my Old Testament stories, so I tried URiel* first. It worked until it didn’t. Reading Wikipedia’s summary of the story of David, Bathsheba and Uriah leaves me with a distinctly unfavorable opinion of David’s character. (What I really think wouldn’t get past the emus.)
@Steve L I had many of the same misdirections, possibly because I was also watching the Dodgers-Padres game. And putting away the dinner dishes.
Satisfy a midday craving? Would that be for nooners, naps, tokes, or smokes? I was totally at sea on my first pass through this puzzle, did not enter a single answer. Almost every clue suggested multiple answers or no answer at all. Took a break, finished my coffee and bagel, then slowly started again, from the bottom. Whew. Ooops, make that PHEW. Do flashers bARe or WARN? Airways, flyways, or SKYWAYS? GEE WHIZ. Good chewy puzzle, Katie.
@Linda Jo Midday assignation was such a great clue the other day.
I’ve been doing crosswords regularly for over fifteen years, and even won a tournament or two (full disclosure: easiest level). 40A — the zest/life — is the single worse bit of cluing I’ve ever encountered.
@NYEDMD It ain't good. ____________________ Jesse Goldberg 8/28/2024 for Puzzle of the Decade (I do this instead of emuing)
@NYEDMD I don’t even get it. It was the last word filled in on my solve, and I’m still mystified.
This is one of the worst Saturdays that I've ever worked. If obscurity had an odor, this puzzle would STANK
Character played by Kieron Moore in "David and Bathsheba" (1951) / URIAH Yeah, I am a little weak on my "73 year old movie featuring an obscure actor whose last IMDB reference was a single appearance in 1974 TV show that I've never heard of called The Zoo Gang" trivia. I have heard of URIAH Heep though---both the Dickens character and the band. But I got there through the crosses.
RI guy, Distraction/misdirection by overly detailed clues is one of my favorite late-in-the-week pleasures. I seriously doubt that any solver would have known the answer from the actor alone. I just ignored the casting reference, saw the names David and Bathsheba and the U from UGGS, and entered the rest of 44D.
@RI guy I don't think you're supposed to know the actor. I think you're supposed to get it from "five-letter character associated with David and Bathsheba" plus the crosses.
@RI guy in fairness - the clue was guessable to anyone with a decent amount of Old Testament familiarity.
Was so sure "Lead Follower" was talking about the element on the periodic table.. Here I thought I was clever for once!
@Jim Yes, I didn’t want to give up BIS for bismuth until nearly finished.
Nope. Too much for me. I had biaS for 23A, and none of the three downs helped with the first wrong letters *at all*. I never could understand Lovecraft. These gigantic, ten-story monsters who somehow manage to live off nothing more than the occasional human. It's be like me going a year on a chicken wing. And I spent about 30 minutes trying to figure out what was wrong with DECOCT. Never have I ever heard the opposite of CONCOCT. Ends my modest streak. Ah, well, time to dust off the old Zen books.
@Francis Decoct slowed me down for a while, too. Good luck with your NEXT streak!
After midnight, dishes done, feet up, listening to music, could I do a Saturday puzzle with my ear buds in? I usually like it quiet when I take on the hard ones, but I immediately got THATSIMPOSSIBLE and ITTAKESAVILLAGE, and the rest filled in nicely at a satisfying clip. I enjoyed this puzzle a lot. Nice debut, and thanks for the fun.
I was sitting on an airplane, waiting for maintenance to fix it, when the puzzle was released. I think I audibly gasped when I saw the two triple stacks. Not unlike my flight, this crossword took a lot longer than normal for me, some outside help was enlisted to get to the destination, and I got there eventually. And ultimately, the journey was difficult, yet satisfying.
All riiiight!!! First to post! I’m chuffed. Was really on the constructor’s wavelength here, about a third under my average. Loved it!
@NYC Traveler Different strokes. Fifty percent over average and I enjoyed it. AMINUTS? Great to see the shout out to Anna MAGNANI.
I thought this had a distinct Robyn Weintraub quality to it. Absolute gem of a puzzle.
Tough one for me and cheated a bit to get through it, but well worth it. Just an amazing feat of construction. Four 15 letter debuts, and one other that only appeared in one previous puzzle. And all of them quite familiar terms.That's just... incredible. And on that note - a puzzle find. Kind of a cute theme - a Monday from November 25, 1996 by M. Huret. Three 15 letter theme answers. PRINCEOFTHECITY ASTRANGERINTOWN ITTAKESAVILLAGE I'm done. ...
What a daunting sight greeted me as the page came off the printer! Lotsa WHITE space! After I read the first 10 or so Across clues, I went to the bottom of the puzzle and started over. THAT was the ticket! As clued, 44D was opaque, but if you knew the stories from the Bible, you know what David got up to with Bathsheba, and how he engineered it. (Nice knowing you, URIAH. BTW, Joseph Heller's book, _God Knows_ was quite entertaining.) This was actually a lot of fun to solve--plenty of AHA and OHO moments. I went from THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE to AM I NUTS? to GEE WHIZ! A moment of looking askance: 1D and 51D.... PHEW--as in, those were a pair of stinkers. However, if solvers have enough fun, they'll generally forgive almost anything. WHEW (I left the first square blank in case it was the P version...which I never say, although Wordle Bot does.)