As a parent to two and four year old kids who love both Daniel Tiger and the Ada Twist series and are schlepped around town in a Sienna, I felt seen!
@Molly Right there with ya. I told my daughter about the Ada Twist clue in “my puzzle” when I was tucking her in this evening. We call Daniel Tiger “DTN” and this week I’ve been (kinda sarcastically) singing “Enjoy the Wow That’s Happening Now” (a song from DTN) to my 9 year old boy who is going through a phase of wanting things and then not enjoying them once he gets them because he already wants something else. And, whenever I need to pick up extra kids, I’ can be spotted mobbing Grammy’s Sienna - custom plate GRAMS SW. (SW = Swagger Wagon… IYKYK)
@Molly My kids are too old for me to know about those shows. Count me among the ADAM WEST wishers for 35D. But I still drive the same Sienna I used to schlep them around in when they were young.
I usually can understand the logic behind clues, but I think “Local legislation passers” resolving to STATEREPS is misleading. “Local” typically means municipal or county governments, not state governments. Ask a citizen in El Paso if they think their state legislators are “local.”
@Dan I also would have liked to see an abbreviation or casual phrasing in the clue, to match the use of “reps”
@Dan Agree, "Regional" would be better
@Dan With a few crosses, this was a rare gimme for me in this puzzle. I can see your point about, say, El Paso vis à vis Texas state legislature, in terms of feeling like their interests are being considered. Regardless, local legislation *is* determined at a state level. Here in NYC, no small amount of local regulations are determined up in Albany -- whether or not we feel adequately represented!
Way too many pop culture references for my taste. Beyoncé, Daniel Tiger, Ada Twist, Rick Steves etc…. all this stuff you either know it (unlikely if you don’t live in the US), hope to get it on crosses or have to google it. What’s the point?
@Ant I have no problem getting entries via the crosses, mostly because this is a crossword puzzle.
@Ant I didn’t know a single one of the references you mentioned, and that’s a huge part of why this puzzle took me over an hour to complete…which is the whole freaking point of Saturday puzzles! This isn’t mean to be a digitized, solo pub trivia — the idea is that a given solver might know some of the trivia right off the bat, be familiar enough with another subset of the trivia entries to fill them in with a bit of help from crosses, and get the rest from crosses alone. The same principle applies to entries involving obscure vocabulary (of which there wasn’t any in today’s puzzle, at least off the top of my head).
This was one for those who complain that perfectly good puzzles are too easy. I hope they enjoyed it. I found it awful, full of arcane trivia and dreadful clues.
If my cat needs something, I put my movie on paws. (Looks like my feline made a cameow.)
@Mike Hisssssssssssss
"Nuuk. Nuuk." "Who's there?" "Greenlanders."
@ad absurdum Thank you for this! I legit LOL'ed. I will now never forget the capital for Greenland again!
This entire puzzle felt like when someone reaches around your back to tap your left shoulder, but they're actually on your right. Disorienting, clever, frustrating, and oddly satisfying. Well done!
My high school vehicle was a Caprice Classic and there was nothing "classic" about it, but plenty of "caprice:" falling cloth roof (that I stapled); an exhaust system that seemed to begin and end under the dash; a speedometer only lit to the 35 mph mark (fun times at nighttimes); it didn't turn so much as loped; a radio that only picked up the AM channels that put you on list merely by tuning in -- despite, by all appearances, a functional antenna; windshield wipers that, even if replaced, left in their wake what can only be described as cuneiform script; a trunk I dared never open and a backseat lacquered with a courtesy package from the previous owner... it ran on unleaded but, in retrospect, I believe chanted for "regular." You can imagine its effect on my dating life, which is to say, as a four-seater, it never sat more than one. The ladies repulsively referred to it as my GETAWAYCAR. (I'll show myself out.)
@Steven I took my driver's test in 1978 caprice classic wagon in carmine red metallic with a 350 cu in V8 that got somewhere around 12mpg. Memories!
@Gary I grew up driving, when I could borrow it, my Dad's 1956 Thunderbird. It got 8-10 mpg, but Dad would give me $5, tell me to fill the 20 gallon tank with premium leaded gas, and I'd bring him back the change! Now I still have that car. In about 1988 we re-worked the engine so it now runs on regular unleaded. But it now costs me usually $60 to fill the tank. We don't drive it much.....
This was a CLASSACT Saturday that came to me only bit by hard won bit. Many unknowns and no gimmes had me searching for footholds, and figuring out the twisty clues without many crosses was very satisfying. Favorites were lab evidence for PAWPRINTS, priors for HOLYMEN, and plant material for URANIUMORE. I was slowed by removing PLANETARIA after boldly entering it without any crosses and I hesitated at the very end, because it just did not seem that AAVE could be correct, but I trusted the crosses, and, lo and behold, another Saturday had been conquered. STICKUM made me think of Lester Hayes, the former Oakland Raiders cornerback who used gobs of the stuff to improve his grip on errant passes before the NFL outlawed it. I can’t believe that memory bubbled up. The brain is indeed a strange cauldron of memories.
@Marshall Walthew Raiders wide receiver, Fred Biletnikoff, introduced Stickum to Hayes, who took the use of the substance to another level.
So I had a little bit of stress this morning when I realized that I had never returned to the Friday puzzle after starting it Thursday night. I was very sad to say goodbye to my streak, and especially because of my own forgetfulness and not because of being stumped by a puzzle. I decided to go ahead and continue working on the Friday puzzle before starting Saturday's puzzle. To my happy surprise I got the gold star when I completed the Friday puzzle. And then I remembered reading from other commenters that that had worked for them as well to keep their streak alive. I never want to put this to the test again, but I'm happy to report it worked. With the Saturday puzzle also now done my streak is 1,170. Wooooot wooooooooooot!
@Classic Hip-Hop Fan: Yes, you've got most of the following day to finish a certain day's puzzle and still have it count toward your streak. I finished Friday's puzzle later Saturday, and it still counted. And I just finished Saturday's puzzle at noon on Sunday and it counted as part of my streak.
"Plant Matter" was a terrible clue.
@bruhaha I agree. This being Saturday, "plant" could not refer to something that grows in the ground and probably referred to something industrial. When "uran" showed up as the first four letters, it had to be "uranium"....."core", perhaps? Too many letters. "Ore"??? Really?? I suppose you shovel ore into some kind of processing facility that you can call a "plant," but it just seems that there must be clues that are just as mysterious but more precise (when one finally sees the light) than "plant matter."
@bruhaha Agreed. Could have been any material that enters any kind of factory making URANIUM ORE totally random.
@bruhaha I understood this perfectly. A nuclear power PLANT runs on URANIUM ORE, right? So, the material going into that plant is the URANIUM ORE.
@Sue It doesn’t, though, a nuclear power plant uses enriched uranium.
NW, NE, SE took 20 - 30 minutes, tops. Nice! I’m rolling! 1 hour… maybe 1:10 for the Southwest 🤦♂️ I found that quadrant difficult from top to bottom. New words. Misdirects. Unfamiliar language. AAVE [TIL] CRED (“Indie CRED”? TIL) ANDRA (TIL) CLUE (shag?) LAS (what is LV in roman numerals?) BUS DRIVER (Networks? Bell Hops?) TIRE (Does a TIRE “attach” to a rim?) SANK (SiNK? SuNK?) T’was an awesome Saturday puzzle. Thanks, August Miller!
@Striker same. Thought after the NW I was on a wavelength but it wasn’t to be. Still not happy with the bus driver solution - it makes sense but only after the fact, which is better than not at all but not very satisfying (I got PAWPRINTS straight away - that was satisfying!)
@Striker Thank you! I had almost nothing here.
@Phil Agreed -- SW was the hardest corner for me, too. I had trouble with [LV] because I also assumed roman numerals, but it's 55, so the half part doesn't work. Then I got the Las Vegas reference and that fit. Bus Drivers always open the bus doors for me when I'm standing and waiting at a stop, or when I push the buzzer that says I want off the bus. That one was easy after I had the BU and knew that Butlers was too short. Rims often refers to basketball, but it seemed to be singular, so nets wouldn't work. Then my husband was watching a car race on TV and the pit crews were doing their amazing tire-changing routine and the TIRE went in easily. But I had to look at the answer key for AAVE and CRED, and Google ANDRA Day. I had Doris first, but that didn't work with crosses pretty quickly.
Oh yes, this one did feel to me like a proper Saturday, where I resorted to throwing in stabs and hoping they would stick, where clues pointed to many possibilities, where fill-ins that I was sure of felt fabulous (not routine), and where the solve was peppered with moments of triumph, when after grimacing over a clue for ages, its trick finally clicked. This is what I want on Saturday. Oh, by the way, there are only two NYT constructors over its long history with the name August, and both showed up this week (August Lee-Kovach’s puzzle appeared on Thursday)! Cue Twilight Zone theme. A terrific part of the solve today was coursing through freshness, answers and clues never or seldom used before in the 80+ years of the Times puzzle. In fact – and I did the math – one out of three answers in the grid has appeared only five times or less over that great span. That low “I’ve seen this before” factor got my brain cranking, which it loves, and gave the puzzle the same kind of charm one gets when visiting a new country. August, you’ve had three NYT puzzles on three different days of the week. Only one NYT constructor has ever hit the cycle – a puzzle for every day of the week – in their first seven puzzles, and that was Andrew Reis. Go for it! And thank you for this tough nut to crack, perplexing in the very best way!
Lewis, Do you think two Augusts showing up in October is a result of global warming? (As I noted last night, I liked the puzzle too!)
@Barry Ancona We are definitely having August weather. 81 degrees today in the Bay Area! We usually aren't even that warm in the summer. But we had a 100 degree week in September. Unheard of! Global warming is real to those of us who don't have A/C in our homes because we so seldom need it. The times they are a changin'!
Anyone else hoped it would be Adam west not ada twist? No just me...
@Erick I had Adam West for the LONGEST time. Would actually be an interesting book!
33A (Half of LV) is so great. I was baffled at the idea of how to do 1/2 of a V in roman numerals. Then I thought the answer might be ELL or VEE. When I got it, I was very pleased.
@Greg4734 For a second I was thinking the V was the Roman numberal for ten, so the answer would be thirty or XXX. I was really excited because "X" words are typically easier to get than non-X words. My world came crashing down when I realized it was 55 in roman numerals, and I didn't know how to do fractions in Roman numerals.
Note to self - don’t stare at the puzzle willing the clue to solve it self. Put it aside and come back to it and it will. Now if I can only remember this profound realization.
Personally, this puzzle was among the most impossibly difficult ones I have ever attempted - and failed - to solve. My experience and intellect being what they are, there was no way I would be getting the witty clues without plenty of crosses, and those involved trivia beyond my ken. In the end I needed multiple lookups, autocheck and reveals of two squares to fill the grid. STICKUM looks ridiculous so of course it is an American brand 🤣. Having looked it up I understand the "etymology", and I know this is the result of your trademark laws and being unable to use regular words for brands, but to a European, or me anyway, all those silly brand names look really strange. For me a silly name means a bad, silly product. It's interesting how culture may influence marketing, perception of brands and purchasing decisions. It's not like I did not appreciate today's puzzle BTW. My lab Jorge and I both liked the clue for PAW PRINTS - it alone made this a cool grid 🐾🐾🐾
@Andrzej To me, STICKUM is a slang word for any tactile substance that can be put to use (chewing gum, tree sap, etc.) I had no clue somone had tried to copyright or 'brand' it. We live in difficult times.
Emus are to blame for my double post - when my first attempt to comment failed for no apparent reason, I tried again with some minor trickery. Of course now both posts appeared... Emu, be more predictable and less touchy.
@Andrzej We Americans are a silly bunch, and we like it that way. We are much faster to laugh (at ourselves and others) and to make light of a situation. I think the French look at me as somewhat insane.
@Andrzej It’s not so much that American trademark law prohibits the use of “regular words” for trademarks as it is the fact that it’s easier to protect a trademark that is either a newly-coined word or something unrelated to the product or service to which it’s attached. My intellectual property professor was from Philadelphia and constantly lamented the difficulty of finding a good hoagie in Austin. He much preferred the ones from Delaware Subs to those from Thundercloud Subs, but he considered the latter name to be a much better trademark. Don’t be too disappointed that you struggled with this one. I found it harder than any Saturday NYT puzzle since the Sam Ezersky puzzle at the end of August.
Now that is what we expect on a Saturday, Thank you
Mr. Miller, I anxiously await your next creation. This was marvelous!
Very sloggy and tedious. And 56A's clue felt way too vague for the intended answer and made the twist less fun. bleh
Educational rather than enjoyable. Too many obscure clues to make this anything other than an exercise in using Google, which I hate and is not in the spirit of crossword-solving in my book.
You would be hard pressed to find URANIUMORE at a nuclear power plant. There you will find pellets of highly purified uranium (in terms of U-235). Uranium ore is not directly fissionable in a chain reaction sense or we would be in big trouble. If the constructor is referring to a plant that does the purification, that would be outrageously arcane. C'mon editors...
@Super8ing I had BEASTS for BEAUTS and for the life of me couldn't parse URANISMORE... had to come here to find this hint, ha.
@Super8ing Thanks for this! Of course Saturdays are tricky and the cluing can be really tough, but I just couldn't "get" this one -- even after not only solving the puzzle, but reading pretty much all of the 150+ comments currently posted! TBH, it took me a while to even get from (generic) manufacturing plant to "oh of course, a *nuclear* plant". But the whole thing seemed quite opaque to me... At least now, thanks to your comment, I understand the fission process a tiny bit better!
@Super8ing About 1.7 billion years ago, in what is now Gabon, uranium ore apparently underwent natural nuclear fission. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor</a> I didn't like the clue either, but wanted to share a link to this rather remarkable phenomenon.
@G As info, uranium ore is about 0.7% U-235, the fissile isotope. It needs to be enriched to 3% to work in a nuclear power plant and much higher, maybe around 90%, for a nuclear submarine and near 100% for a weapon.
@Super8ing Remember, the editors don’t care about accuracy.
@G Sure glad to help but those last 2 %s are just guesses based on what I've heard anecdotally, I have no special knowledge there.
I feel like all the Games editors got together today and said, “Yeah, let’s really stick it to ‘em today. Weed out the weak and anyone who thinks they might be good at this.” Spelling Bee, Wordle, and the crossword were all just brutal today IMO. Feeling humbled and testy lol.
@Emilie I went to Wordle after reading this and thought I had it in 3 for sure. Then I played a yellow in the same place. Per Wordlebot, I narrowed it from 1,038 words left to 1...to 1. 🤣
@Emilie I thought today's Spelling Bee was great — lots of uncommon words to find. I needed five guesses for Wordle. It's not my favorite game and I don't usually play as analytically as I should. And it annoys me to reach a spot where, say, you have four letters in green, three guesses left, and there's four or five equally plausible possibilities.
When I started, I failed to see the clue for PRE-CODE ERA (a gimme), so I moved over to the NE. The combo of MAPS, MACBETH and THANE made me think I would breeze through this. Such hubris! Despite having spent almost 30 years working for STATE REPS, I interpreted the “local” as “municipal” and had a hard time finishing the NE corner. The SW corner was little better. I learned the term AAVE from a New Yorker puzzle about a year or more back. I plugged it in quickly, but took it out when the V seemed to make the crosses unworkable. Then I misinterpreted the “Indie” of 55A as “india.arie,” a singer whose music I don’t know and whose exact name I can never remember. And I know the difference between AUGUR and AUGeR, so it’s a mystery why I chose the wrong word. But that made it hard to see the cleverly clued URANIUM ORE. I didn’t have any major sticking points, just a lot of little ones. Thanks for the challenge, Mr. Miller!
@Eric Hougland Three of my posts just got quashed by emus for no reason I can understand. Posting here to see if anything I write goes through. .
A toughie! For quite a while I thought my streak was over - and I was just 12 days shy of my 186-day streak. But several breaks later, I finally figured out URANIUMORE (such a weird sequence of consonants and vowels! I was sure my crossings were wrong) and my streak was safe. Hoping for a 200 this time! November 13 is D day (CC day?). Did anyone else want to divide the (odd) Roman numeral LV by two? Would have preferred fewer proper names, but a great puzzle overall.
Hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor! If it weren’t for MACBETH and his title, I’m not sure I could have started this one, let alone finished.
This puzzle was a little frustrating. It has its charms but it needed more finesse. It's like they tried to force a hard Wednesday to become a Saturday. I'd like to see the editors tighten up the cluing overall. There have been some clunkers recently and clunkers crossing clunkers, which can be really frustrating.
This puzzle felt like a themeless exercise in random obscurity. A few of the clues had good puns, but those weren't enough to make up for the overall obscurity of the puzzle. Thumbs down for me.
Nice Saturday offering. I don't know my Toyota models, but the crosses were kind. I hoped for MAKESpeace; I'll settle for A DEAL. Otherwise smooth sailing. Thank you, August. And Caitlin, are corners with three separate entries really an issue? Try the PreShortzian archive for single square entries!
I cheated and cheated and STILL couldn't finish. Almost everything here ranged from a bafflement to a misery -- including some of the non-PPP answers. The less said about the PPP, the better. But let's start with my bafflement at "Half of LV". Thinking back to my Latin numerals, I was pretty sure that LV is 55 -- and 55 cannot be halved. If not 55, what? I had no idea. Now that I've looked up the answer, LAS, I see that LV is Las Vegas. Don't ask. I misread 40A as "One of a maRching pair" and confidently wrote in OOT without the first letter. For either FOOT or BOOT -- and then I clapped myself on the shoulder for my wisdom. Oh how the OD at the end of what was to be ABOUT FACED screwed me up. I didn't know the DOOK-y PBS KIDS and wanted a vowel where the B went. I didn't know ADA or RICK, but I guessed both successfully. I started my cheating with NUUK (choosing the PPP answer that an educated person should know),I didn't know the dook-y PBS KIDS and wanted a vowel where the B went. But I was too proud to cheat on that bit of TV trivia. "Block"? Don't understand that clue at all. This puzzle succeeded in riveting my attention, but it ended up causing me more frustration than pleasure.
XXVII.V, maybe? I had no idea that LV referred to Las Vegas... got it purely from the crosses. Even when the idea that it might have been a Las Vegas reference finally occured to me I still wasn't at all sure that was the explanation.
@Nancy A portion of a tv schedule can be referred to as a “block”. It’s often used informally (ex. prime time block), but I’m pretty sure PBS KIDS is a name created by PBS to market a specific set of children’s shows always broadcast together.
@Nancy I'm sorry for your DNF, but per the usual, your post put a smile on my face - there's something so lovely about the way you voice your despair! I was also stumped by LV when I realized one half of it, were it Roman numerals, wouldn't fit in three squares. And all that kept coming into my mind was LVMH (Louis Vuitton Möet Hennessy) despite knowing it couldn't be that because LV is already half of it. Thank goodness for the commenters who saved me from my misery after I got the LAS and still never thought of Las Vegas.
Even after solving the puzzle, I had to come here to find out what half of LV meant. I don’t love the answer. There are 8 letters in Las Vegas, so it’s more like ⅜ of LV.
@Boo-urns and who says LV anyway? I went to Vegas with my friends. Not LV.
@Boo-urns I didn't "get" the answer til I read this. This puzzle was torture.
@Mike Any sports scoreboard ever says LV. Abbreviations like UNLV.
I agree: we’ll remember ADATWIST the next time it appears because … based on recent experience, it will probably be in the next three days lol
I am so glad that others found this a tricky one too; I thought the gin had permanently destroyed a few more brain cells. I couldn’t find a toe hold anywhere other than MACBETH and THANE. That was literally it, no pun intended. Crikey. Thank goodness I solve on the iPad, if it was pen and paper I would have rubbed the entire grid into dust I had so many wrong moves. Therefore an excellent grid! Well done. NB. Every time I type gin on the iPad it autocorrects to gun. What’s that all about?
@Helen Wright GUN to GIN. What a wonderful world if it worked the other way IRL. Sounds as if your operating system must be MADE IN THE USA. Any way to install a British one? Or wouldn't that be an improvement?
@Helen Wright Tricky indeed. I drifted all the way to the bottom of the grid before finally breaking with the GETAWAY CAR. Took me forever to refine the URANIUM ORE, though.
I really enjoyed this one (guess my pop culture knowledge overlaps pretty neatly with the constructor’s) but most just here to say if you have a kid in your life who doesn’t have Ada Twist, Scientist, or its companion Iggy Peck, Architect, remedy that immediately! They’re my baby shower go-to gifts and part of that specific and fantastic subset of kids’ books that are just as delightful for the adults reading them as the kids listening to them.
Whew, that was quite a workout! Went way over my Saturday average time, but glad to stick with it and finish.
One of those puzzles where you have to remind yourself, It isn't that, think again. Knew 1A would be some kind of dog evidence and was relieved when PUMP gave me PAWPRINTS. Pumpkin was indeed sweet, and a perfect seasonal misdirect. So many tangents to go off on! NUUK was a fluke fill—I read Elizabeth Kolbert's New Yorker article about climate change and Greenland last night. It was a hard puzzle, but made easier by a couple of gimmes like MACBETH and listening to the Warriors' 58 point blowout against the Lakers (eat your heart out, Jack Nicholson) while I took a leisurely approach to solving. This is what a crossword should be: A puzzle made of words, with maybe a very few trivia proper names sprinkled in. Thank you, August Miller, and I hope for many more from you. Pleeeease don't make us wait two years for another.
@dutchiris I know Nuuk from the delightful YouTube channel Q's Greenland... Where I also learned there will be direct flights from a few cities. <a href="https://youtube.com/@qsgreenland" target="_blank">https://youtube.com/@qsgreenland</a>
Today’s puzzle had too heavy with trivia that I am jot familiar with. But the clue for MACBETH made me remember “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” by Gabrielle Zevin was the best book I read recently, especially for someone who lived the 90’s as a young person. It’s the kind of book that you want to tell everyone about. Sorry for the tangent. Back to your puzzle, please.
@Andy K loved that book! Marvelous character development. Now run out and get The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry.
@momonjava I read that one too! The movie was enjoyable as well.
Argh. Got all the way through and was defeated by TEL of all things. I wasn’t getting priors at all. I finally settled on TED (as in the Talk) as something that might be on a C.V. I don’t think people even put their phone numbers on there anymore. What are HODYMEN then? Not sure, but they sound pretty creepy and probably have a bunch of priors.
Hi, FYI. The NYT is selling comments data. Yesterday I commented in a famous actor in the puzzle and mentioned he had a condition, rhymes with timers. This morning I got emails from the (rhymes with timers) association. It’s a very worthy cause to be sure, but all it did was annoy me and give me the creeps. When are the companies going to accept the fact that targeted ads will never no work no matter how much data they have.
Ann, I'm not an ITGUY, but my understanding is that the connection is on your browser, not on The Times. I've never gotten emails or ads about emus....
This one just felt wonky to me. A lot of “Huh? Oh, right, I suppose” soured me a bit on some of the more fun wordplay. STICKUM is not a word I’ve heard before, achieved on crosses through the mildly archaic AUGUR. TACH for “dash device” felt needlessly oblique, as most people hardly call it that (not to mention it’s technically a shortening of “tachyometer” clued sans colloquialism.) URANIUM ORE was chuckle-worthy, but frustratingly difficult to deduce given the somewhat contorted “BEAUTS” (itself clued pretty ambiguously.) Not my preferred cup of tea, but I can see some folks enjoying the challenge this one serves up.
@Edward First of all, it’s a tachometer, not a tachyometer. Secondly, the word TACH is a word unto itself by shortening for tachometer. Thirdly, the shortening signal is in the word “dash”, which is a shortening of “dashboard.” Fourthly, I think more people call it a TACH than a tachometer.
Worthy Saturday, tough as nails. As a legislative employee I’d quibble a bit on the clue for 13D; the defining work of State Reps is to pass statewide, not local, legislation.
@Eric Yeah, I thought of city councils, looked at the letters I already had, and gave up until I had enough crosses to make it obvious. I guess "local" is a matter of perspective, though.
@Eric Here in NYC, no small amount of our local legislation is set and administered at the state level: non-trivial issues such as the MTA and housing regulations, for example. This clue was a rare gimme for me in an otherwise tough, worthy puzzle!
@Eric My initial reaction was the same as yours, but G’s comments have me rethinking that a little. I drafted legislation for the Texas Legislature for years. The Texas Constitution prohibits the lege from passing “local laws,” but STATE REPS (and state senators) were forever asking us to drafting bills “bracketed” to a specific municipality. It’s easier for someone from Dallas to get a bill that affects only Dallas passed, because the members from the rest of the state usually don’t care.
Oof. LAS? Nope, I went Roman numeral. Macbeth? Nope, I went Hamilton. And PLANETAReA PoMP CAP or bAn? I’ll go bAn! Had a filled grid that full of gobbledygook. One by one, deleted and tried again. The happy music scared the skittles outta me. That there’s a Saturday. Proper and tough and clever and so very impressive. Thank you August!
@CCNY I, too, thought LV referred to Roman numerals at first but rejected it since the answer would contain a fraction. Took me too long to figure it out.
@CCNY -"AReA" had me for a while as well.
Let's be PRECISE: Had absolutely no CLUE regarding 19A, 21A, 24A, 30A, 37A, 48A, 35D, 46D, 51D. Still managed to finish sans lookups. It's why we Saturday. That, and 31D -- I AM still chuckling at that one.
This was a delightful Saturday! I had to "cheat" twice, but both were great TILs--I should have known NUUK, since my husband is a circumpolar specialist, but somehow Greenland's capital hasn't gotten into my vocabulary until now. And I had to look up Anrdea Beaty, and found myself a whole new author of kid-lit, which is my guilty pleasure! I'm surprised that STICKUM gave so many folks trouble--I didn't know it was a brand name, but the folks where I grew up used that term all the time for glue, etc. RICKSTEVES was my first fill-in--I own that book! And can someone explain how indie CRED is a phrase one should know? I get the idea, but when did it become common enough to be a clue?
Cloudy, There is no reason why any one person should know any one phrase, but [Indie] CRED has been around for a while. <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-indie-cred-test" target="_blank">https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-indie-cred-test</a>/
Very relieved to see that I’m not the only one who had to beat their head against the wall in order to solve this challenging puzzle. I’m currently very, very far away at the moment and thought jet lag had irretrievably fried my brain. Still well may have done, but the puzzle is first-rate. Animal traces could be used in forensics, right? It didn’t hit me until reading the comments that PAWPRINTS refers to an actual dog. And who said «Emus delendae sunt »? Emus in vita et aeternitate.
It was a good challenging crossword that I was able to complete it in a reasonable amount of time. The last word to drop was uranium ore .
Absolutely loved this one. Starting with RICKSTEVES put me in a good mood to take on the rest of the puzzle, even the tricky bits.
I've just had two attempts to post a long, civil comment frustrated by emus. I think I will be taking a break from commenting here after a few recent and ridiculous experiences with "moderation" on this board. The unpredictability of the "system" is more than I can deal with. Shame on you, emu. Bye.
@Andrzej Well, the emus finally let your comments post. Who knows? But Please, please, please do not give up on posting. I think I can speak for many here when I say your non-American viewpoint is a valuable part of this community. Emus delendae sunt!
@Andrzej Don’t let the emus keep you away! I look forward to your reactions daily.
@Andrzej Don't stop posting! Maybe a little more patience.
@Andrzej It’s true there are many of us who enjoy your commentary and would miss you in this forum. Your intelligence, wit, and compassion come through loud and clear in your posts, and I am inspired by your determination as you tackle NYT puzzles in English. I thought this was a difficult Saturday with some very tricky clues. It made me smile to read that you and your lab Jorge liked the PAW PRINT clue. My fox terrier, Oliver, didn’t get it and was no help at all.
@Andrzej Please do not suspend posting. There are a few commenters who I relish their thoughts and you are at the top of the list
@Andrzej Let me join the chorus: I hope you don’t abandon this forum. I enjoy reading your comments and I’m continually impressed by your ability to solve puzzles in a language that is not native to you. And it’s always good to see how people in other parts of the world view this weird society we’ve created.
@Andrzej Let me add my voice to the others. Your perspective on the puzzles and thoughtful commentary are always appreciated.
@Andrzej, Along with the other commenters here, I am simply amazed that you can not only solve challenging crosswords in a language quite different from your own, with our own peculiar idioms, but that you’re also able to discuss them articulately and intelligently with other members of this community. We have valued your insights and contributions for years. Please stay.
So. Many. Challenges. --"Decamps" instead of RECEDES was rough because I'm not a film guy and never heard on ANDRA Day --"Atad" instead of ABIT --"Fees" instead of DUES --Misspelled PLANETARIA --Typo in IPADMINI --AAVE ? Totally new to me, but good to learn this. Daily lil learnings are a plus point of the puzzle-solving experience for me The following were layups for me: PICTIONARY, RICKSTEVES,GETAWAYCAR, THATSNEAT, PEABODY,MACBETH,THANE. Rough going all-in-all but exactly what I'm looking for in a Saturday. Thank you...