This might be a perfect Saturday puzzle. Unique grid shape, good mix of clues. Light on proper nouns, heavy on clever word play. Relies on a wide variety of genre. Every clue felt fair and every answer felt earned. 22 minutes, no mistakes
@Steven M. I’d like to politely disagree with the “light on proper nouns” assertion: -THEUSA -MEHTA -DIOR -TOM -FUJI -INOUYE -OTOES -FARR -BUSHISMS -LINDROS -OJIBWA -SKYE Many of which were either clued pretty obliquely or are obscure trivia in their own right. Not to say the puzzle was bad, but that many proper nouns made it quite a bit less fun for those of us not on the same trivia wavelength as the constructor.
"Your mechanic gets up at 5 am?" "He's an oily riser." ("That would leave me exhaust-ed.")
@Mike But he will get a lot of brakes and real axle lot. He has drive but he's no fuel. ____________________ Jesse Goldberg 8/28/2024 for Puzzle of the Decade (emu filler)
@Mike He may not be a big wheel, but if he works tireless he can get a great rep in the 'hood.
With _ _ _ CUS in place for “In which you might confront the elephant in the room,” I confidently plonked down CauCUS.
@Sam Lyons Nice to see you back again.
OMG look at that mid-puzzle mass of white! Three 11’s crossing three 11’s, with the supreme challenge to a constructor being to fill it cleanly. I implore you, get a piece of graph paper, recreate this design, and just try filling in that center, cleanly or junkily. Just try! Here Luke succeeded, and not only that – all six of those 11’s have only appeared in the 80 years of the NYT puzzle four times or less, for some serious pop. In addition, there were lovely sights in the box. That LEAD BALLOON dropping down the middle. In the SE, two things I love – NECK RUBS, and the word TUMULT. Also, CANARY in one of the puzzle’s islands. And that gold clue – [Stressed half the time, say] – for IAMBIC. Luke, you’ve had four puzzles, all on different days of the week. Only one constructor has ever hit the cycle (had a puzzle for every day) in their first seven puzzles (Andrew J. Ries). Go for it! And thank you for satisfying my workout-hungry brain as well as for the rush of pleasure at being immersed in a thing of beauty.
Nerd alert! This grid design, by the way, has 90 and 180 degree symmetry, which reminded me of one of my favorite grid designs ever, that had the same symmetry, and which looks absolutely nothing like this grid, a puzzle last year by Simeon Siegel, which I believe is worth a look: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/crosswords/game/daily/2023/12/30" target="_blank">https://www.nytimes.com/crosswords/game/daily/2023/12/30</a> .
@Lewis Loved your WAPO puzzle! Thanks for telling us about it.
@Lewis Thanks to the comment reminder, I found and tackled your WaPo puzzle. I did the NYT puzzle in twenty three minutes, with eight cheats, while the WaPo puzzle was done in sixteen minutes, and only four cheats (but many, many, many 'check grids". Both were fun! Thank you!
@Lewis Wapo xword spoiler below, beware!!!‼️ Apparently I'm not smart enough to solve yours and Rachel Fabi's crossword, but my wife is loving it. With her help I'm finally making serious progress. She really enjoyed your clue for dip 😍
@Lewis I found your and Rachel’s puzzle nicely challenging and satisfying. Well done! However, I did it through the LAT because…Bezos. (Yes, I know that had absolutely zero effect on him. It was a me thing.)
@Lewis Thank you all for your comments re my LAT puzzle, which are so helpful in helping me improve my puzzle making. It was a tough puzzle. I hadn't looked at it in quite a while, and when I did it today it was no walk in the park! Et tu emu.
@Lewis TIL WaPo runs LAT puzzles. For a minute I thought (without doubt) you had two published on the same day! I was excited to tell my dad that someone from the Comments (my new cult) constructed today's LAT puzzle, but they're delayed a week in his local paper. I expect you'll have new fans on 12/14!
What a terrific puzzle, so elegantly woven with fresh clues that were simple when you were patient and found crosses that might guide your search for a fill to a different direction. It's the kind of puzzle that inspires so much trust in the constructor that you're never even temped to go for a lookup. You will find everything you need in the puzzle. Luke Schreiber, this is the best debut I have seen in a long, long time, elegant and satisfying. Thank you.
This was pretty tough for me at first, but it’s a Saturday so it’s supposed to be, right? Once I made some headway things fell into place pretty easily, but it didn’t help that two of my early lookups were just plain wrong. The Internet told me that the Bombay-born conductor was “Solti”, and that “Mull” was the largest of the Inner Hebrides. It’s a sad day when you can’t believe everything you read on the Internet.
@Heidi Ha! Today and every day...
@Heidi Zubin or MEHTA was my question. Who wd have thought Sir George was born in Mumbai-once-Bombay.....but today we see he dates back to The Raj! Wow
@Heidi I knew immediately that it was Zubin MEHTA, a brilliant conductor and wonderful to watch. Sort of the Charles Boyer of the concert world.
@Heidi i got all the corners but the entire center section left me stumped. ugh
Wowza. That took a minute. A bunch, actually. Many. Minutes. Oddly, the little three-letter football clue finally was the key to open up the whole center. TBD! I overthought that one in *so* many ways! Love the struggle and the love the star. It’s been a rough, trying week (or three) and I’m so very thankful for this space. Thank you Luke, Caitlin, Joel, Deb, Sam… and all of you that gather here. Some days, y’all keep me tethered and I appreciate you.
Very solid puzzle, that I finished in average time. I’ll be interested to see how many people get Daniel INOUYE. I didn’t know off the top of my head that he was the highest ranking US politician before Harris, but I got it quickly from the crosses. I got sidetracked a bit in the NW by trying badrap before BUMRAP. I also tried Jim as Huck’s pal before TOM.
@Marshall Walthew I got INOUYE with a few crosses, but not because his name was a mystery to me. There were several people I could think of, and I was puzzled as to what made him the [Highest-ranking Asian-American politician before Harris]. In the early 2010s, he was president pro tem of the Senate for about 2½ years, which put him very high in the line of Presidential succession. Somehow, I didn't remember that fact, and thought he had equal standing with any number of US Senators.
@Marshall Walthew I entered INOUYE immediately but thought I was wrong. I was surprised to find through crossings that my memory was correct!
@Steve L This threw me at first, because I didn’t remember his service as President Pro Tem in the Senate. That would definitely place him higher in the Presidential succession order than any of the cabinet members I first considered. By the way, he is buried in a rather plain grave in the National Cemetery of the Pacific near Honolulu. The marker notes his Medal of Honor.
@Marshall Walthew I had MINETA, thinking that a Cabinet member outranks a Senator (as Hillary was generally referred to as “Secretary Clinton” rather than “Senator Clinton”). Maybe the Transportation and Commerce Departments just aren’t as glamorous as the State Department. 🤷 (Both have international airports named after them, so that’s not the tie-breaker, either!)
This one took me way too long, mostly due to me trying to force DEEPTROUBLE in place of DIRESTRAITS. Oh well. I also really wanted LEOTARD in place of UNITARD. Pretty proud that IAMBIC came to me right away, at least. Great puzzle overall
I shan't soon forget Luke K. Schreiber (interestingly, surname translates to 'writer') after having caught my foot in every pothole, bear trap, and MISdirect laid in my path. RED herrings all over. I got the SE and NE corners first, which gave me a false sense of confidence. MISstep after MIStake. I mistook the speech for the speaker (STEMWINDER would have been a great entry! Alas.) FEDERAL BANK. LEOTARD. REDFLAGS. CRISIS. BACK RUBS. Video game? Hockey player? Srsly? Of course I can't wait for the next one...
Interesting the Otoes were clued as a (small-t) "tribe," but the Ojibwa--an exonym, btw--as capitalized "First Nations." So what should one call persons who have roots which go back to the Pre-Columbian Americas*? There are no perfect solutions. The most obvious one would be to ask the persons with that ancestry themselves, but even then there is no consensus. "Indians" is so wrong, for even the most basic factual reasons. "Native Americans" has always bothered me--I am an American, I was born here: am I not, therefore, a native American? Similarly , "indigenous," "aboriginal;" and who wouldn't want to be described as "autochthonous"? No, I think the Canadians got it right with "First Nations"--they might not have been technically "first"--who knows what other peoples they displaced, in that ROAD RALLY across Beringia--but they were established here before the Europeans, and they were (and are) nations, with as much political unity and as complicated international relations as the kingdoms and republics of Europe. (Did I mention I was re-reading Charles Mann's *1491*?) Or as that guy says in that commercial for Ancestry.com, which airs on PBS before *Finding your Roots*--"We all come from somewhere you never can tell." (He's so cute it doesn't matter that what he's saying is total gibberish.) *and lets not even drag Cristobal Colon and Amerigo Vespucci into it!
@Bill I agree. When referring to a specific tribe, it should be capitalized. So the Otoe clue should have been “Midwestern Tribe.” I think the difference in names is that the clue First Nation, tells the reader it’s a tribe that also has geography in Canada. I think both terms remove the essence of sovereignty from the group. So if you know someone from a Sioux nation, they will probably prefer you use which nation they are from.
@Bill As an Ojibwe person, tribe is fine. So is First Nations, although the concept of a nation wasn’t really a thing before colonialism. I don’t usually capitalize tribe, but folks should always capitalize Indigenous and Aboriginal when referring to people. Same with Native. Indian is even okay depending on the person using it. It’s built into names of systems we have no control over, so sometimes it just makes sense to say. And it’s been in use for hundreds of years. But most people prefer to be referred to by their tribe. I’d rather be referred to as Ojibwe or Anishinaabe over Indigenous, First Nations, etc.
This went all very smoothly except for the Southeast corner, where I was stubbornly convinced that Huck's friend must be JiM. Um, no. I thought the elephant in the room clue clever, though fewer and fewer CIRCUSes have elephants, which is a good thing. The more I learn about them, the more I marvel at them. And then DIRE STRAITS sent me down a musical rabbit hole for quite some time, so thanks for a fun evening, Luke.
@Vaer PS Kind of fun to see the STONE gargoyles mentioned on the day that Notre Dame reopens.
Fun and challenging. I laughed once I realized the true intentions of the punny clues for IAMBIC and ISOTOPE. Re: the latter, my mind swapped “nucleus” in for “nuclear,” so I’d left NEUTRON dangling in there for a while). Speaking of addled brains and nucular, remember when Bushisms were the absolute worst word salad we’d ever heard from a leader?
I so wished that "In which you might confront the elephant in the room?" had ended up being CAUCUS!
Fabulous clues for RULER and BIT OFF. Both of them were great big "Huh?"s for me and I had to abandon the NW at this point -- not sure enough if the highly segmented grid would give me any help. I left with leoTARD confidently in place. And LEOTARD was "confirmed" I thought, by DIRE STRAITS. But there were still other hills to climb elsewhere. I had ONEIDA for the First Nations people, "confirmed" by the Apple MINI. Don't ask. I straightened this out only to end up with OJIBWA. Can this possibly be right? I forgot to check. Anyhow, I eventually changed LEOTARD to UNITARD and finished the NW corner. Whew. Loved this crunchy and very interesting puzzle!
@Nancy When a lookup is necessary, most reliable sources for me are always Wikipedia and Google.
@Nancy I definitely thought Ohlone…
A lot of nice long entries, quite an impressive grid, nice that Luke was so pleased with getting his first themeless puzzle accepted. I liked the grid with all those long entries ( although I needed help as I always do for end of week puzzles). Looking forward to more , Luke.
I was delighted to see ROAD RALLIES in the puzzle, as I have competed in several, and even have a winner's trophy. (Okay, it's a beer mug, but it counts.) Our motorsports club holds an annual Braille Rally, in which students from the local School for the Blind get to serve as navigators. The kids absolutely love it. Also, thumbs up for the gargoyles at Notre Dame, which re-opens today.
For anyone that saw my comment last week, I actually did manage to complete the puzzle on surgery day before I went under. Then I did the next day’s puzzle at the last minute, so the streak remained. However, my brain isn’t working very well for me and I needed assists today. I opted to keep my solve streak going despite needing assists, though. So 326 days without assists, and a 327 day solve streak. Not bad for my first surgery.
@Elyse Respect! You're better at this after surgery than I am as my usual self 👍🏾
@Elyse - For future reference, you can maintain a streak as long as you do the puzzle in order. For example, if you miss a Tuesday, you can come back on Wednesday (or even a later day) and complete the Tuesday puzzle BEFORE you do the Wednesday (etc.) puzzle. As long as they're completed in order, the streak seems to be retained. The upside is there is less stress to complete a puzzle on a day when accessing it is difficult. The downside is that you might care about your streak even more. I never cared about my streak until someone posted this out to me. Now I do care about it. I'm not sure that has improved my life one bit. I'm glad you seem to have come through surgery and are on the way to recovering.
@Elyse That’s my story, too! Did the surgery-day puzzle the night before and was ready to get back at it on Wednesday. I’m hoping to beat my longest streak in a couple of months. Hope you’re feeling as good as I am in recovery! And I can relate to the brain thing. A bit muddy. Stay well.
In addition to doing the puzzle, I love the Comments. Mean Old Lady (Now in Mississippi) is my favorite-maybe it's partly the name but she always comes up with something interesting!
@Indy Puzzler Aw, thanks. The Comments often give us valuable insights and fast friends.
I really enjoyed that one. Great fill, great grid.
As I was working the puzzle I felt like I was getting nowhere. The occasional short answer would drop and then a lot of “Nope, next, next,next.” But, the little pieces of fill paid off with some quick spanners. Suddenly, I was done, with a time that surprised me.
Motor oil greases the wheels? Seriously? I hope not. Even slangily, it's a very lazy usage. Remind me never to buy your used car.
@jp inframan One may call their car "wheels", right? And you use motor oil to grease some of the inside bits of your "wheels". The clue works, especially on a Saturday.
@jp inframan It has the wordplay question mark in the clue. And here I was going to make the comment it was potentially to literal of an answer for that. I guess not...
Had malaprop before BUSHISMS -- obvious case of faulty xword strategery.
Wow, this is a great Saturday puzzle. My first break was the 24D hockey great. Not being any kind of fan, I have no comment on how great he was or not. But it always amazes me how much hockey knowledge I've absorbed over the years through totally passive diffusion. Lindros' fight with Les Nordiques over their draft pick of him was a major news item for many days. I think his parents were involved.
Was initially committed to "leotard" which gave me fits in the top left. Enjoyable Saturday puzzle. Have a good day.
Goodness that was a toughie (again). Completed it this morning but only have time now to post, in between battling storm damage and fretting animals. Storm Darragh is a nasty piece of work, I’ve never heard the wind scream like this before. Exhilarating but a bit scary. Our village Festive supper is going ahead this evening despite weather induced power cuts. We shall overcome. Onto the grid. A great workout with some real head scratchers plus an awful lot of unknown names (sports men, tribes, Presidential oopsies etc). On the upside a few gimmes at 14 and 17D which were a big help. Now have Sultans of Swing stuck in my head, which of course is a good thing. My experience of 3D makes me want to put EN in front of it.
I received a huge hint to 17D. As I was reading it my husband was listening to a story about the release of the new Led Zeppelin documentary. Got it.
Tough one for me. I had fEderALBANK gumming up the puzzle and “You don’t have the votes” running gumming up my brain for much of it!
Thank you to Luke Schreiber for a birthday puzzle that was a challenge but not infamously difficult for me. Don’t blame me for the musical theater clue that is somewhat central in the grid.
@Justin Happy b-day. Being a retired economist, I enjoyed the Hamilton clue—but not as much as Vaer’s prior Hamilton/South Pacific mashup.
@Justin Wishing you a Happy Birthday and a wonderful and healthy year ahead!
Lewis — I enjoyed your Los Angeles Times puzzle, but it was considerably tougher than I expected. [Account shortcut] and [Plot with a shameless beginning] are great clues, and [Doctors or nurses] is just plain sneaky. Thanks!
@Eric Hougland Yes, it seems like he's not as nice as we all think. Excellent puzzle with some tricky cluing.
@Eric Hougland Senseless and impenetrable cluing. Until it wasn't. Loved it.
Please see my comment around the bottom of the string of comments after my main comment -- a thank you for those who commented on my LAT puzzle. Et tu, emu.
Excellent Saturday challenge with a scary open grid that fell nicely into place after finding a few long answers (with a misstep into FEDERAL BANK instead of CENTRAL). Loved the Bushisms - I thought maybe Yogi Berra, but I couldn't make it fit. And thanks for honoring the eminent Sen. Inouye. He is missed.
Wow, this was a workout. Wearing a leoTARD meant that even Googling didn't help much. Once that switch flipped, the puzzle finally started moving. Almost nothing on the acrosses; some help on the downs, but every inch of this puzzle was hard-won. "naked" gargoyles (what was I thinking?) and only knowing one hockey name (ORR) and deciding that HEISMAN would do (can you tell I don't follow sports?) made the center an utter muddle. I had convinced myself that DON'T BLAME ME didn't fit, when in fact it did. (BLAME the lack of coffee, I guess.) Looking back up at this mountain from the other side, it's a great puzzle, with fantastic, sparkly fill. And ultimately fair. But I could really use a NECKRUB.
The fact that I live in Honolulu helped with the NW corner, for sure. This one took me a while. I had lots of good guesses that ended up being wrong, logic that was full of HOLES rather than LEAPS. I now am in need of BACKRUBS, but apparently all I'm going to get is NECKRUBS.
Nice Saturday workout. Not all that easy for me, of course, but cheated just a bit and then enjoyed working things out from the crosses. A couple of puzzle finds today, each of them using a similar trick in different ways. First one - a Thursday from November 10, 1994 by Alfio Micci. Four fifteen letter theme answers in that one. Clues and answers: "M" FIRSTOFTHEMONTH "O" SECONDINCOMMAND "E" BEETHOVENSTHIRD "Y" THEFOURTHOFJULY I'll put the other puzzle in a reply. ...
@Rich in Atlanta As threatened: A Sunday from July 12, 2009 by Alan Arbesfeld with the title "Links to the past." In that one, the theme answers were clued straightforwardly, but all of those clues had an asterisk. Beyond that there was no additional hint as to the trick. Here are the theme answers, and I'll put parentheses around the letter suggested by the answer. MIDDLEOFNOW(H)ERE MED(I)CALCENTER (S)PIRITUALLEADER BEGINNINGOF(T)IME SECONDINC(O)MMAND ENDOFDECEMBE(R) BROADWA(Y)CLOSING So.. the 'links to the past' take you to ...HISTORY. Here's the Xword Info link for that one: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=7/12/2009&g=87&d=A" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=7/12/2009&g=87&d=A</a> ...
@Rich in Atlanta I remember that one! (From when I started the Archives this summer. Not from 30 years ago. 😉)
I would argue there is no hockey player with the first name of Eric who is considered great, certainly not the one whose last name is used. "Overrated Flyer with concussion issues" would have been a better clue.
Duffy, Number 22 “rating” all time in points per game. Probably didn’t self-inflict the head injuries - and even if he did, that makes ppg harder to achieve. “Great” is just a word.
@Duffy I was at a Flyers game and saw a guy wearing an 88 jersey with MAMA'S BOY across the shoulders. Not universally loved here. Still, pretty impressive in the Legion of Doom line with Renberg and leClair. @JohnWM The local rumor is that Lindros got one of his concussions from a teammate, who was subsequently traded to the Hurricanes.
Can't remember the last time I enjoyed a Saturday puzzle this much. It was a challenging yet peaceful solve. I generally prefer the themeless puzzles especially when they are as elegantly constructed as this one. Absolutely delightful. Puzzles like these keep me coming back for more and inspire me to learn and improve my solving skills. I am definitely one of those "befuddled solvers" too young for BUSHISMS (especially having grown up in Germany) but regardless of that and the fact that I puzzled over it until there was nothing else left to solve... I love the clue! Thank you for a memorable Saturday Puzzle, hopefully won't be your last themeless, Mr. Schreiber!
An enjoyable Saturday solve. Having recently rewatched the Lead Balloon episode of Myth Busters made 17D funnier to me than maybe most. Thanks Luke - love this grid pattern and your clue design.
Thrilled to get a Saturday PR just 24 hours after receiving my first NYT crossword rejection (for my first submission)! Thanks to Luke and the editors for a reason to be undeterred.
It's been quite a while since I have balked at a clue, but since the puzzle is named "siege deterrents," when I came to the Wordplay column, it reminded me of my niggle. The answer to this clue is not a siege deterrent but actually a siege encourager. Without the answer, a siege would not be as necessary. A siege is basically an encampment, a stationary front so to speak. (Go ahead and correct me, if you wish.) An impediment to entry does not deter a siege, it contributes to the need for a siege. Yes, I know, this is a crossword puzzle, blah, blah, blah (or et cetera, if it pleases you - but not et al!), so I am over it already.
@Renegator Right? This was my first thought, too. The more defenses there are, the more likely you are to lay siege to a place rather than storm it. Still, I instantly knew what the answer would be so the clue worked, which makes it good.
@Renegator This really bothered me as well. I wanted to complain about it before, but I was too preoccupied with Indian Affairs (see below). A moat might be a deterrent to a "siege engine," but not to the siege itself. But making sure I had all my facts and definitions straight led me down a lovely rabbit-hole, full of trebuchets, harpaces, and mangonels.
@Renegator I came here specifically to make the same point. A moat deters a direct assault, not a siege. And while "moat" occurred to me immediately, that quadrant of the puzzle would have gone faster if the clue had fit the answer.
I want to conquer a castle. I bring my host. I've heard that there are big and sturdy walls, and so I bring with me some machines that later historians may call "siege engines" and I am prepared to set up camp as this may take a while. I arrive, and I set out to roll my siege engines up to the walls to attempt to break through them... and, much to my chagrin, there is a moat that absolutely prevents me from placing my machines where they will do the most damage. Are you saying that my attack has not been deterred in any way?
@Renegator TO continue.. what about the Siege of Znojmo (Bohemia, 1404). Was that siege not abandoned because of how effective the moat was? The Siege of Torun (Poland, 13th Century) Again, the moat flummoxed the siege and the attackers gave up. Had the moat not been there, the siege would have continued. I really do think the use of the word "deterrent" is defensible here.
Loved it. Pretty good time for a Saturday.
Strange, the mental blocks that can hold you up. Looking at it now, there is no danger, nothing to fear or radio ahead about, but that southwest corner was drawn out almost as long as the rest of the puzzle, for me. Favourite answer today: whichever one it was that finally got me going in that lower left corner - can’t remember now.
Well, I think I laughed a little too hard at 10d, plus stayed married to leotard (13a) and gala (43a) way too long. Very enjoyable puzzle!
Pretty easy for a Saturday, man. I think this past Wednesday remains the most challenging puzzle of the week. Which is... just not how it's supposed to go? Quick and moderately satisfying. I slowed a bit in the upper left. Somehow "The USA", like all "the" prefixed answers, never seems quite right. A cromulent affair overall. I did notice the cute grid shape this time. (I just hope it doesn't get called another you-know-what.) ____________________ Jesse Goldberg 8/28/2024 for Puzzle of the Decade (emu filler)
@B My time came it at just about ⅔ my Saturday average, with no major hiccups along the way. Certainly, I didn't breeze through it like a Monday, but everything was gettable. I prefer to think that I'm improving so much that what might have been difficult for me years ago is considerably less so these days. It can't be that they're all that easy, and a lot of people always report that they're not. I had the same thought about the grid design. Now I'm looking out for something that isn't really there. Pareidolia. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXr2EFomFkU" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXr2EFomFkU</a>
@B my time was about 5:30 longer than my Wednesday, so I'm not complaining about which days the puzzles ran on. In fact Thursday and Friday were the outliers for me this week on the inexorable march to Sunday. Which I think I will wait until tomorrow to tackle. g'night!
Fun puzzle, I only looked at the comments to see if there were a lot of “too easy” complaints as there usually are, and I was pleased that there were only a few. The long answers fell into place, which is as it should be.
@Larry Berger Agreed. I hope that a critical mass of commenters can push the Saturday “It’s sooo easy 🙄”-niks into more mature, selfless contributions to the conversation. This is a nice group of very smart people and it should stay that way!
Another Saturday where we got the Gold Star and looked at each other with expressions of shock and disbelief, We kept landing on the hockey guy, we had no idea who he was so we took a logical LEAP.......... Nice one Luke: Whose your daddy. See Toby Keith and Star Wars for a clue to this lame attempt at humor.
Really solid puzzle. My one quibble is OJIBWA which I’ve never seen before. Google tells me it’s a legit alternative to the far, far, farrrrr more common Ojibwe with an E, so I’ll allow it, but it seems like too much of a stretch just to make the cross work…
@pitypie That was the hardest corner for me. Was unfamiliar with either spelling of the First Nation, refused to consider any alternative to JiM, and still have no idea what COD stands for. However, I did fill in the NE corner entirely and quickly with the Across clues.
@Vaer COD is the Call of Duty franchise. War-fighting game with good narrative and evolving mechanics, with franchises set in a variety of time periods and battlefield conditions.
@pitypie Ojibwa is less common now, but it used to be more common. Ojibwe is the correct spelling when using the vowel sounds in Ojibwe language (Anishinaabemowin). The government still uses Chippewa and I’ll take Ojibwa over that one. (I am Ojibwe.)
Maybe it’s just me, but the reason I got 19A was the meme-fest of the Lorde “Royals” lyric “Let me be your ruler” (in which many things were measured in Lordes) about a dozen years ago.
This was a fairly straightforward solve for me until I hit the SE corner. The [Mouths that don't talk] was clearly meant to be DELTAS, so I filled that in quickly (despite the fact that a delta is actually the fan of silt at the mouth of a river, not the mouth itself). Being a Minnesotan, though, I knew that the Anishinaabe people here use the spelling OJIBWE, so I lost some confidence in DELTAS and things started to go downhill. It didn't help that I had decided that [Huck's pal] was JIM, that [Popular apple variety] was GALA, and that [Rest stop sights, informally] were VIEWS. However, those possibilities all clashed with each other and with OJIBWE or any other [First Nation people] I could think of that started with O. When I finally sighed and accepted OJIBWA, the corner came together and I got the happy "Congratulations!" screen, but it was an uncomfortable conclusion. Once I finished the puzzle, of course, I Googled a bit and found that OJIBWA (or OJIBWAY) are acceptable alternative spellings, so TIL.
@StevenR Fellow Minnesotan, and I had OJIBW(e) early on (as well as MISSE(d) instead of MISSES), and spent some time trying to shoehorn a logical answer into "_ ELTED." Eventually I came to the same reluctant conclusion as you.
@StevenR Fourth Minnesotan who struggled a lot with OJIBWA! Would have been fun to see Anishinaabe though.