"I am uncertain what gift to buy!" "That's the present tense." (But the wrapping still looks tear-ific.)
@Mike The time for uncertainty has past. Even though your choice might be imperfect, a gift in any condition'l lead to a brighter future. I guess that's enough ribbin' for now.
@Mike You have to start thinking outside the box. 🎁
@LGinDC I don't know if you regularly read the comments or not but on December 5th, you commented on my post where I talked about the time I was held up at gunpoint when I was 21 years old (because the constructor had talked about being held up recently) and you suggested that I watch the movie, Inside Out, which was the revealer's theme. I wanted to let you know that it was a movie option on our plane, when we were coming back from vacation yesterday, so I chose to watch it on your recommendation. I'm not much for Disney and Pixar films and whatnot, so I usually don't pay much attention, but I'm really grateful that you encouraged me to watch it because it is lovely! Absolutely lovely! What a thoughtful, apt, and sweet film! I've heard that the second one is equally if not possibly better, so I already have a tentative date to watch that with a friend. ☺️ Perhaps I shouldn't discount animation so much. So thank you! ❤️ And I also wanted to thank all the others of you who left recommendations and/or incredibly kind and thoughtful messages for me that day. I don't share about that night very often but it felt appropriate that day, and I really appreciated your kind, empathetic responses. ❤️
Compliments to the chef! Well constructed grid with that classic feel of extremely well constructed, in this case, that feeling that it's going to be quite hard to solve, a first pass yielding only a few fill-ins (like what Deb had going at first in her really superlative walk-through of her solving process), then a few more, then using those fill-ins as roots from which to branch out. Gilbert O'Sullivan AND Gilbert and Sullivan, what ho! Great to see the screen-bean is Sean! Got to know him as an Irish republican terrorist in Patriot Games (1992) going up against Harrison Ford: he plays a good bad guy! Cava, eh? Alas, I had Brut, then Asti, and then, my vena cava workin' hard, I came up with Vino Cava, I remembered drinking a glass of it in San Sebastian in another life, thinking it was sharper and more flavorful than champagne or prosecco. It comes from Catalonia originally, but I guess you can get it anywhere now. Drink it very cold on a warm day with some manchego (sheep's milk cheese) and olives. You'll be reciting Lorca and Jimenez in no time.
@john ezra Sean Bean came up on my radar in the early 90s because of thebPatriot Games, a BBC/Masterpiece Theater mini-series of Samuel Richardson's Clarissa and the Sharpe's Rifles series. In the Patriot Games, he and Polly Walker were the chicest terrorists I ever did see.
@john ezra Thanks for the kind words, John!
I made today's puzzle -- thanks for all your entertaining commentary! It's always a joy reading through folks' post-solve thoughts. I've been leaving lots of replies below (and will continue to do so); hopefully they actually stick and I don't break the system, haha. I thought when I submitted this that it might be a Saturday, but the eds removed some of my nastiest clues, including: [It encapsulates the present] for GIFT BOX [S as in Seine?] for MEANDER [Software for non-Slackers, in brief] for MS TEAMS [Opts out of a mating ritual?] for RESIGNS [Noteworthy people?] for MUSICIANS I get it, though; I suppose it's more of a Friday-style grid. And the team did add some spice to the lower right with the SNEAKER clue. :)
@RPS Love your GIFT BOX clue. Your MS TEAMS clue or the revised one is a wash. RESIGNS: I'd have bought [Opts out of mating]. MUSICIANS: In the same ballpark. MEANDER: Probably a little much for most people.
@RPS Thanks for a fun one! The SW corner was especially tricky, even though I guessed COTAN right off the bat like Deb did. AAACARD was my favorite! Having needed to use mine many times, I was able to guess that one immediately, too. 😄
@RPS I enjoyed your puzzle and love your original clues. Hopefully we'll see RPS unleashed on a Saturday soon.
@RPS "It encapsulates the present" is indeed nasty.... and I love it!!! Thanks for a fun puzzle!!
@RPS RPS--This was a very good effort and a lot of fun in many places, but I thought the SW corner would have been perplexing and complicated even for a Saturday. But keep em coming!
I couldn't solve it until I finally let go of THIN MINTS as the "makeup of a sleeve," which back in the day, for me anyway, equalled one serving. I dearly love living in France now, but I do miss Thin Mints.
I just noticed that it's interesting that Sean Bean doesn't rhyme.
@BJ Sure it does. With Lorne Greene. (In some dialects.)
@BJ So true! Thanks for pointing it out 😂
It would be an act of insincerity to claim that I found this puzzle easy. I kept thinking, let's get it on, but most of my fills were dead on arrival. There were those Oh, hello! moments when the right word popped out, but mostly I wrote something in too soon. My thoughts started to meander and I felt kind of spacy and I thought, oh dear, I overdid it. The odds of finally figuring out how to unzip the whole puzzle were very low. The smart person resigns herself to being the dummy in the 'hood, and I almost did that, but suddenly it was filled up, and regrettably, over too soon! Ryan Patrick Smith, I see this one as an early holiday gift box. Thank you! Do come back soon.
@dutchiris Constructor here! Reading through this comment was delightful, cheers. :)
To just characterize ALONE AGAIN (Naturally) as just a [1972 Gilbert O'Sullivan hit with a melancholy title] is like saying that Charlie Manson was just a guy with an odd hobby. For those of you who don't know, the song is about a guy who is giving serious ideation to committing suicide: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_P-v1BVQn8" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_P-v1BVQn8</a> And it spent six weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 that year, one of 1972's biggest hits. Go figure.
@Steve L It's regularly played on The Bridge channel on Sirius. I think it's a well crafted little song, but I never thought I'd see it in a crossword.
@Steve L While on the topic of Billboard's Hot 100, I just finished watching the Billboard Music Awards (and this time did not stop for pie before doing the puzzle). As expected (as the only criterion for these awards is chart position), Taylor Swift took, as they apparently say, the lion's share of the major awards, on the eve of her 35th birthday. The notion that rap is the world's most popular music (as mentioned recently) did not seem to be confirmed, at least from what I saw. Of course, awards shows like this are tailored (or even Taylored) to the local audience. As a result, there were several country artists there, too. The biggest single of the year was a country song, A Bar Song (Tipsy), by Shaboozey, which is also notable because he is a Black country artist. The sudden success of him and several other Black country artists in the last few years may or may not have been thanks to the efforts of Beyonce, who may or may not have recorded a country album on which Shaboozey and several other Black country artists appeared. Thankfully, A Bar Song is a lot more fun than ALONE AGAIN.
@Steve L And if you need a happier song after Steve's link, here's Marvin Gaye's LET'S GET IT ON <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQj1kPmQXwE" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQj1kPmQXwE</a>
@Steve L Thanks for solving, Steve! Fwiw, I originally clued the two crossing songs as "Amorous Martin Gaye hit of 1973" and "Dolorous Gilbert O'Sullivan hit of 1972," as I liked the parallelism. :)
@Steve L Wow. I had no idea, though I do remember the song, vaguely.
Any puzzle with both Gilbert O’Sullivan and Gilbert and Sullivan clues is alright with me.
@Bill I loved it. Princess IDA was an instant get for me and then when I got to 5D my brain parsed the clue as "1972 Gilbert and Sullivan ..." and I was momentarily flummoxed.
SW was nearly impossible. Way too obscure answers and the crosses didn’t help either.
The top third or so of the puzzle solved fairly smoothly for me, but the bottom half was another story. Perseverance got me through. My last fill was the ESA/ACT/COTAN area. It's a worthy Friday.
A thought about Deb's strategy of putting in S's for every plural from the onset. This can really mess you up sometimes. Not all words are pluralized with an S (remember LIRE from the other day's Mini?), and not all plural clues result in an answer in plural form. Only the sense has to match. [Odds] has been used to clue RATIO, for example, and [Brains] has been used to clue SENSE and GRAY MATTER. [Lots] clues A TON as well as TONS, among others. Yes, 99% of the time, there will be an S at the end, but the 1% that it doesn't can bring you to a crashing halt. At least be ready and willing to put it if it's not helping. And having just one letter isn't usually that helpful, anyway. A corollary of this is not to think an answer is wrong immediately if it starts or ends with a combination of letters that don't play well together. Sometimes they're initials or abbreviations. For example, if you had GS--- for an entry on Sunday, you might have thought it couldn't be possible. But it turned out it was possible. It was G SPOT. This kind of thing happens all the time. If you had --NDB on Tuesday, you weren't wrong, either, It was R AND B. Some unsolicited advice for possible newbs (or is it noobs?) who might find it helpful.
@Steve L I usually put the S's in too but with the proviso that it could be wrong so I keep my eye on them.
@Steve L and sometimes it’s a two-word answer with the S at the end of the first word.
@Steve L S being the plural seems to be about 2/3. Depends on the context, root of the word sought, etc.
Spent too long convinced that 27D was What’s Up Dog. Felt like a challenge but one where I’m always making forward progress: my favorite kind of puzzle!
@Katie Right answer, wrong puzzle. That joke (which was new to me) was in a New Yorker puzzle just last week.
@Katie I confidently filled in WHATSUPDOG on my first pass and was so pleased with myself. 😂
@Katie Constructor here. So glad you enjoyed it! :)
Tough one for me. Ten debut answers and a few others that only ever appeared once or twice before. And some things that were never going to come to me from the clues. So - cheated just a bit, but did manage to get through it. Had a number of puzzle finds today, but I'll just leave it at this one. A Monday from September 28, 1992 by Jeanette K. Brill. Just four theme answers with clues: "Start of a quip." and then "Quip - part 2," etc. Those answers: MUSICIANS DONOTDIE THEYJUST DECOMPOSE Oh... and then one other puzzle. Won't try to completely explain this one. A Sunday from January 15, 2012 by Finn Vigeland with the title: "Weather report." I was led there by somehow thinking of one 21 letter answer. This puzzle was it's one and only appearance and it was the reveal: ITSRAININGCATSANDDOGS Won't try to explain the rest of it. You can guess. Here's the Xword Info link if you want to go see: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=1/15/2012&g=66&d=A" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=1/15/2012&g=66&d=A</a> I'll shut up now. ...
As for 10 down, I beg to differ. A flan is baked in a bain-marie, a water bath the baking dish is sitting in, rather than a double boiler, which is a pot of boiling water on top of the stove with another pot sitting on top of it over the water, not in it.
@Bruce Horowitz Constructor here! I'm definitely seeing flan recipes calling for double boilers and even specifically labeled "flan double boilers" for sale online. And Wikipedia's page for bain-marie gives double boiler as a synonym. (Can't say I make much flan myself, though! Do you?)
I didn't start to sweat until I got to the SW. COsiN, TATTOOink, and OPaLS oh my! I did get it sorted out, but it took a little unraveling. Unlike Deb, the M of SAM was my final fill. I guess my brother-in-law didn't invent the joke at 27 A. Next, I'll find out that "Is that your high knee or your low knee?" isn't original material either.
Still working this. Still have hope to complete with no "cheating." But frankly the entire lower left corner is like my 8th Grade social studies class: a complete blank.
@JB The SW was the toughest for me as well, still largely blank when the rest was done, so I was surprised when Deb’s column, tracing her efforts to solve, showed that as the only place she could get a toehold.
@JB the SW was tough for me - especially not getting the spelling right on two answers that I kinda knew: OPaLS, and ADELai (which I guess I thought was a derivative of Adelaide). Despite that, it was the NW that was the last to fall for me. W hotel was not a thing I was previously aware of.
The SW area is a bunch of random junk and is very unbalanced. The rest of the puzzle was fine and on par for a Friday.
Low to moderate difficulty for me, not too hard. I took issue or had questions on several items: 1. The clue for Erring seemed unnecessarily overdone. Trying too hard and still mundane. 2. Meandering seems to have more turns and purposefulness than drifting. 3. Bury for lodge seems pretty stretchy to me. Something is lodged by sticking in or getting stuck. Something buried is covered. 4. Hypocrites rarely appear insincere. Quite the opposite. Oh you say, but it's their actions that belie their true intentions, not that their outward presentation is insincere. Still wrong. A hypocrite most often is unaware that they are being contradictory. That's really the whole point of the concept. 5. Under where may be a "classic gag" to the constructor but I am old and have never heard of it. 6. Main course for sea lane? What is the joke / point here? Is "main" nautical in some way? Because otherwise it seems both stretchy and boring to me. I liked the Jordan clue at least... ____________________ Jesse Goldberg 8/28/2024 for Puzzle of the Decade (emu filler)
@B 5. What's under there? Under where? Haha you said underwear! It's a very old one, your age is no excuse, maybe you just have better taste though. :^) 6. I just looked up Spanish Main, but that's no help, because it refers to mainland, not a waterway. I'm at a loss too, it was the last answer I filled in.
@B 6. Main as in the open sea. As in, “Long we’ve tossed on the rolling main.”
@B 2. While I agree with you if the drifting/meandering is in a physical sense, once I got the answer, I (immediately) saw it as the mental variety. Physical: a leaf might drift on a breeze, versus a person meandering across a field. Mental: my thoughts may drift, or meander, when I am daydreaming... // Totally agree with you on (1) and (3), and the awesome Jordan clue. (4) Didn't occur to me in the solve, but your explanation makes total sense to me. (5) I'm with Josh on this one! But that L in SEA LANE was the last to fall for me *and* I had an A instead of E in the auto, plus I couldn't see my mistake because I wasn't thinking of the ocean! {facepalm}
@B 1. Overdone? Funny, I have never seen this answer clued that way. 2. You're looking for Tuesday clues on Friday 3. Ditto. 4. Agree, but nowhere near the hardest answer in the puzzle for me. 5. It took some crosses, but once I said UNDERWHERE out loud, I figured I had arrived. I've not heard of either, but that was probably true of at least a dozen answers in this Friday puzzle. 6. This is one maybe you should have checked around a little before speaking up. You were on the right track, but since you did not understand the clue, how could it be stretchy or boring? Google "nautical" + "main". Sounds to me like you went a little far out of your way to find issues with this puzzle.
@B Constructor here! It sounds like my puzzle today just didn't really land for you; sorry to hear. Nonetheless, thought I'd take a stab at addressing your points. :) 1. I thought it would be fun to include a personal pet peeve for the ERRING clue. 2. I'd say this clue's vague but not inaccurate. My original was [S as in Seine?] (an S shape in a river is called a MEANDER), but the eds found that too hard. 3. "The assailant buried/lodged the knife in the victim's chest." Not stretchy! 4. Some dictionaries give pretense as a synonym for hypocrisy, so I don't think INSINCERITY is far off the mark. 5. The commenters here seem largely familiar with it, but I'm sorry it didn't click for you. It was actually my seed entry! 6. Main = open sea (as noted by others), course = route
My Jordanian acquaintance was useless in getting 58A. The rest was a fair fight for a Friday.
My heart always sinks when clues involve food, which generally involve references to chain restaurants, supermarket products, and recipes unknown on this side of the Atlantic. Fortunately the rest of the puzzle was solidly "in my wheelhouse" (an expression I've only learned since I started hanging out here). I needed to solve every crosser to get BAKEDZITI, and was still doubtful that it was a thing---I wasted quite a few minutes revisiting the crosses. PONE eventually dropped after I had the last three letters and the phrase "corn pone" popped into my head out of nowhere. The only real sticking point was my ignorance of Slack. I solved to MSmEAMS, (TATTOOARm on the cross, stupidly), and hung up staring at that for a very long time. But this is the first time, in months of lurking, that I've turned up here to discover that Word Play found a puzzle harder than I did!
@Oikofuge I also had TATTOOARm, which prevented getting MSTEAMS for a longer time than I'm comfortable admitting, especially since I understood the clue from the start and I use Teams every day at work. So, job well done by you, at least in comparison to me, which I will admit is a low bar when it comes to Fridays. (I will admit to using the "solve a Friday puzzle in easy mode" clues when I am stumped.)
I've decided to quit Connections. It's too duplicitous. Too many twisted meanings and multiple possible solves where finding the "right" one is a matter of luck. Playing it makes me feel like a rube, and a little sick. I have this reaction to many of Wyna Liu's puzzles.
@MmmmHmm I bombed on this one, too. If you don't drink soft drinks, eat candy, play video games, or do fantasy stuff, it is difficult to sort...and only 4 errors allowed. I prefer spelling bee and sometimes wordle, though I went down in flames on today's wordle puzzle...dull of wit at 3 a.m., apparently!
@MmmmHmm I’m often delighted by the misdirections in Connections. But really: Starry soda?
@MmmmHmm Glad I’m not the only one. It all feels a bit too random to work, plus a lot of the Connections are so US centric I don’t stand a chance. Life’s too short…
@MmmmHmm I’m beginning to sour on Connections, too. I hated the graphical one from the other day.
@MmmmHmm I quit Connections month ago. In the end it's a poorly designed (and sometimes poorly executed) game, often (or always?) at a single person's whims. I feel as if the Times has invested far too much into it. ____________________ Jesse Goldberg 8/28/2024 for Puzzle of the Decade (emu filler)
@MmmmHmm Yes, I find Connections to be arbitrary and capricious. I play it fairly often, but give up quickly if it just isn't clicking. Too many groups that depend on pop culture and many groupings that are ridiculously tenuous. Fun when it clicks, just annoying when it doesn't. Took me seven tries today, phew. Seemed like a lot of overlap between the blue and yellow groups.
@MmmmHmm I always type the 16 words into NotePad, and solve it there first. Many times, I will find 5 words that fit a category, and have to work out which one to pull somewhere else. Is that considered cheating?
@MmmmHmm I and my kids (both under 18) love Connections, although we don’t always win. If the NYT cancels every feature that appeals to a younger gen, there eventually won’t be any puzzles, or possibly any NYT!
@MmmmHmm ---I absolutely agree, but I keep doing it even if I find it often arbitrary because, just like Letter Boxed, Wordle and doing the mini for sub 1 minute times--it seems to be a very good part of a warmup for the xword puzzle. I often end up rolling my eyes at Connections.
Deb's experience was the complete opposite of mine. I breezed through most of the puzzle (compared to my own experience), but just could not figure out that bottom left corner. I had to come to the article for hints.
@Michelle I had the exact same experience; found the puzzle easy until I had to fill out the bottom left. A lot of stuff I didn't know there.
@Michelle @Teddy Same with me! Until I got stuck on the bottom left, I was expecting a new Friday personal best time was coming. I was also imagining how the comments were going to be full of people complaining about how easy this was for a Friday. Then it all came to a screeching halt and I had to come here to get over the finish line.
@Michelle Add me to the list! I struggled with that corner and had to get a hint from Deb's column.
Got it thanks to crosses but I can't be the only one out there who had absolutely no idea about KON Mari. My spouse came to the rescue and told me it's from a lady who became a gazillionaire by showing people how to fold their UNDERWEAR. The stuff we learn doing the XYT Xword...
@CatDad But did the puzzle bring you joy?
This one was puzzling until it wasn't. [Drift] = MEANing? Nope. [W] = pOTus? Nope. Once those were crossed correctly (and not with elephants), no further ERRING; a smooth SEALANE to a timely ARRIVAL, but not TOOSOON. Thank you, Ryan.
I didn't find this particularly difficult for a Friday, but enjoyed the MEANDER through the puzzle. Liked Han Solo's catch phrase being so near SPACY.
I kept trying to think of Jordanian exports for 58A
@Santiago Me too! And even after completing my solve, the true meaning didn't occur to me until after reading your comment. I thought I had learned something new about the nation of Jordan today...
@Santiago Yeah! Dates? Plus does Michael Jordan actually have anything to do with production? He just lends his name and fame, or so I thought....
@Santiago Jordan almonds were the first thing that came to mind, but I don't think they actually come from there. The candy-coated ones, I mean.
@Santiago Constructor here! This misdirect was added by the eds (I'd originally just done a cross ref with TOE CAPS) fwiw -- which I found interesting, since they dialed down the difficulty of some of my clues elsewhere. I suppose they were going for better balance in diff across the grid. :) This clue's a little loose to me, but I still like it.
@Santiago --Hey! Don't feel bad. I tried to shove ALMONDS in there.
I just read, or skimmed, through many of the comments, and saw several folks who said they didn’t know ADELIE penguins. Am I the only one who loves the movie “Happy Feet”? That’s why it was one of my easier spots to fill. My 3 year old grandson adores it and will watch it as many times in a row as we let him, which is not very many—maybe two. In fact, I might just put it on and watch it now. It’s a rainy day, and I’m fighting a virus of some sort, so why not?
“Vive la différence when it comes to wheelhouses.” Indeed. I was apparently in the minority yesterday, feeling it wasn't such an easy Thursday (especially compared to recent weeks). I found today's a breeze (for a Friday), finishing within 30 seconds of yesterday's time.
@Bill in Yokohama I struggled a bit yesterday, too. I got to the comments late and was surprised to see that almost everyone else had the opposite experience. Oh, well. In contrast, I also found today’s pretty easy (save for the SW corner, where I had to do a couple of lookups in order to get a toehold). We must have a similar wheelhouse.
It took a while, but the sudden breakthroughs are why I enjoy challenging crossword puzzles. I am miffed because RIHANNA appears to be ONLEAVE as a MUSICIAN 😤, owing us that next album for years! How long do fans wait for its ARRIVAL before we get MEAN? My main trouble was the southwest corner, where Deb started.
I was opposite from Deb - SAM Altman was almost the very last thing I filled in, and the only thing in this puzzle that I had to Google. It didn't help that I thought the champagne-like beverage was cuve (which is actually spelled cuvée, apparently), making the bottom word -STEeMS. Probably something I've never heard of, I grumbled as I tabbed over to look up Altman. Once I had SAM which took me to SEA LANES it occurred to me I'd heard of something called CAVA. Audible dope slap applied to forehead when I finally recognized MS TEAMS. Good puzzle! The expanses of white scared me at first but as it turned out, I was able to fill in everything but that one bottom corner answer all by myself.
@Shan The M of SAM was the last letter I put in. I sort of paid attention when Altman was ousted at OpenAI but haven’t seen his name much in the past year. I held out because it could easily have been SAL. I was surprised when the M turned out to be correct. What, I wondered, was M STEAMS, and how was it an alternative to slack?
@Shan et al. Had TATTOOArm for too long. Also dithered between SAM and SAl. Totally forgot about MS TEAMS even though we also used it during the pandemic. Among the many things I’ve tried to memory hole from that time.
I need to make the following comment, which I hope will resonate. I remember Gilbert O'Sullivan and the answer was easy to that clue. But what do Gilbert O'Sullivan, Jane Seymour, Tom Jones, Engelbert Humperdinck, and Mt. Rushmore all have in common other than they weren't born with those names? Ans: their names echo famous fictional or real historical characters. Instant name recognition on the part of their targeted audiences who probably heard the names before but couldn't quite place them: "Oh yeah, Jane Seymour, the famous actress!" (not the queen of England). Or "Tom Jones that swinging singer!" (not the title of a Fielding novel). And so on. That's marketing for you. As for Mt. Rushmore, I just felt like throwing that in there.
@JB And who could forget Sebastian Bach, lead singer of Skid Row? Then there's Bobby Dall from Poison. Both of those stage names were derived from their real names, BTW. C.C. DeVille, not so much.
Crikey that was a toughie. Like Deb I had almost nothing first pass. Thank goodness for Gilbert O’Sullivan. I remember him performing this on Top of the Pops; a vital programme to watch each Thursday if you didn’t want to look a complete dweeb the next day at school. Other than Gilbert, that top left corner was a beast. TIL 1 and 21A plus 2D, an embarrassment of tumbleweed. The rest fell very, very slowly, but fall it eventually did.
@Helen Wright Also, a round of applause for including both Gilbert & Sullivan and Gilbert O'Sullivan into the same puzzle.
@Helen Wright I'd forgotten the name of the singer and at first misread the clue so was racking my brain for G&S operettas! Found this video: <a href="https://youtu.be/D_P-v1BVQn8?si=0oi-QMB80gE4wiXq" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/D_P-v1BVQn8?si=0oi-QMB80gE4wiXq</a>
As a sneakerhead, it was good to see the GOAT, Michael JORDAN in the crossword today. Fun fact: When Nike made the first Air Jordan sneaker, they hoped to make $3M in the first three years...today, they make that every 5 hours.
@Paul According to a docu-drama I saw, it was Jordan's mother who adamantly insisted (successfully) that Michael get a little $ for each pair sold.
Imagine being sure that the answer to "DRIFT" was "MEANING" then being confused by the fact that the first four letters definitely worked but the next three didn't. Oh, MEANDER! I "reveal(ed) puzzle" with a few entries in the bottom left area unfilled ... I shouldn't have, I would eventually have gotten it. I know French, I don't know Spanish articles! I still have to get used to the fact that answers no longer have to be a single word. After all this time! Nice puzzle!
I am reminded of that favorite phrase from Latin Class - Semper ubi sub ubi". Great Friday puzzle!
@Suzanne Ha. "Semper ubi sub ubi" came up in the Comments yesterday, and I think I solved UNDERWHERE today quicker than I might have as a result. I've certainly never heard the joke referenced in the clue---probably because it wouldn't work in Scotland, where "wh" and "w" sound different. <a href="https://oikofuge.com/the-sounds-of-wh" target="_blank">https://oikofuge.com/the-sounds-of-wh</a>/
@Suzanne Constructor here! Thanks for sharing this -- hadn't heard it before. Amusing :)
Whew. This one took several lookups. I'm not familiar with Nosferatu or teen lit or antarctic penguins or Spanish wines or tv channels. This was like a tornado just leveled my wheelhouse. But all is redeemed by Marvin Gaye. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6QZn9xiuOE" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6QZn9xiuOE</a>
Chance meeting greeting for someone you dislike, OH HELL (llll...) O(hhhh)! 😉 Thought this was a fun and enjoyable puzzle. Also thought I was well on my way to a personal Friday best until I hit the southwest quadrant. That took me as long as the first 3/4 but it was engaging. For some reason, "Touchdowns, eg" made me overthink. I couldn't make a decision whether it was referring to airplanes or football scoring or something else. I'd have been helped there if I would have just settled on something to see how it worked out. I thought ESCOOTERS early on but I struggled with the crosses so took it out for a while. I forgot about CAVA and wanted to have asti. Silly me, since we purchased the CAVA for someone's wedding recently. It was their present from us, though it didn't fit in a GIFT BOX. What some in the comments found to be stretchy clues, I rather enjoyed. MEANDER for drift and BURY for lodge, for example. And I really felt like a dunderhead when it took me so long to get LEACH. Also really enjoyed the clever clue for SNEAKERS. I also really enjoyed the silly ones, like for ORCA. Usually such a common, boring entry made me giggle this time thinking of the old what's black and white and red all over joke. I don't think I was part of the UNDERWEAR joke at 27D ever but I immediately got it and snickered... thought of similar jokes from my juvenescence. (Look down your shirt and spell attic.) And on that very mature and classy note, I shall take my leave!
@HeathieJ ESCOOTERS looks like how "los estudiantes españoles" rode to "la escuela."
Phew. That was tough, very tough. But I got it, unaided to boot. Definitely needed to take breaks to let the old subconscious chew on all that gristle. As others have said, for me it was fair and fun.
Alone Again. As soon as I read the clue, I couldn't recall the name of the song but I had that tune running around in my skull. Until I was able to get enough crossers to fill in AGAIN... The rest was easy.
I definitely got lost in the Great Northwest this time! Deb, As the TV title put it, Diff'rent Strokes"--- watching your evolving "solve" series was interesting until I realized that the clues you got first were my last ones! We could have nailed it in a team solve. I had to ask my guru "Reveal Word" a couple of times for some timely additions. It was a tough beginning to my Friday!
Although I follow your system of solving, the LAST letter I put in was the M in sam. I guess we have totally different wheelhouses.
@John That was my final entry, too. MSTEAMS is an unknown, and (apparently) so is "Slack." Slack: half of a trouser?.
@John I'll join this "Me Too" parade. That M was my last entry before I got the Happy Song! Different strokes...
@John Same here. M STEAMS made no sense (until it did), so I was surprised that the M was correct.
Chewy puzzle with lots of clever misdirections. I struggled a good bit, but then it came together very quickly. It took me awhile to figure out that the Jordan in the clue was Michael Jordan and thus that the product was a SNEAKER. That’s a sneaker of a clue indeed. I loved the crossing of ALONEAGAIN and LETSGETITON - musical polar opposites in many ways. Marvin Gaye is very high in my pantheon of singers. Another great one gone too soon. I finished the super mega puzzle tonight too. I thought it was a tad more challenging than in past years, but that the secondary puzzle was essentially a gimme.
So there are hotels named W, as I just learned. I got that entry from all the crossings, and then said W_T_F? Having now done my research, I see there's no such hotel within 500 miles of my home.
@Gary K Same, except 30 miles. :^)
After yesterday, this was enjoyable. I dimly remembered lid as a hat, as is tile Old song, "Where did you get that hat, Where did you get that tile?" More trivia: a hat could also be a 'titfer" from old rhyming slang 'tit for tat' = hat. I tried with W using phonetics and linguistic history (double V) and was surprised to see from the crossers it was an hotel. The only tricky clue was HOOD! What I call a car bonnet.
@Jane Wheelaghan A rhyming slang puzzle would be awesome
@Jane Wheelaghan Well, you live and learn - I always thought the second line ended with 'style'. Thanks for putting me right!
@Jane Wheelaghan I'm glad someone else mentioned this clue, I never heard of lid as slang for hat. Also never heard of MS TEAMS, live and learn
Just plain fun. UNDER WHERE. HAT RACK. BAR NONE. Solid! Loved this one.
Eyeball before HAT RACK. Yorga before ORLOK. Ditsy before SPACY. Talk about ERRING. Solid Friday fare. A minute below average.
@LBG Present before gift bag before GIFT BOX. Leech before LEACH. Metal before HOTEL. I can't be the only one who thought of tungsten, right?
Welp. BAKED ZITI is just as cheesy as you care to make. It, by definition, must contain ziti, and be baked. Some sauce would be nice,as well. You could have cheese in the sauce, or melted on top, or none at all. I would prefer lots, but that's just me. Just don't use that vegan cheez. You know what else is usually baked? FLAN! Typically custard mixture poured into a caramel-lined mold, then baked in a water bath. Then chilled, and unmolded. There's also the British flans, in which the custard is baked directly in a pastry crust, like a sweet quiche (savory ones exist, too). Now there's also the "fruit flan"--which is a thinnish pre-baked tart shell, into which pastry cream is put, then topped with fruit, and usually a clear shiny glaze. The pastry cream might be made over a double-boiler, I guess, but usually I'll do it over gentle direct heat. Of course there are those creepy instant flan mixes, full of weird thickeners and stabilizers like carrageenan or xanthan gum (so creepy, even spell-check doesn't recognize them), which they've probably been using at the hotel while I've been on leave. I shudder to think. But--idiot-proof as they are--those are cooked over direct heat. For corn PONE, I'll defer to @MOL. *** *** Do they serve baked ziti, flan, or corn pone at this restaurant, where hungry people like to eat?: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJJL-NoeFmA" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJJL-NoeFmA</a>
@Bill A veritable encyclopaedic survey of flans. Fruit flans used to be popular but not now really. Made one at school cookery classes in the 1960's (we did laundry and ironing too!) but not since. Fruit (tinned of course) was laid out in concentric circles on the base, a cherry in the middle, and then covered in jelly. We didn't use anything called pastry cream - maybe it's confectioner's custard? I've never heard of a pone, but we don't use corn starch in the UK. Not heard of the baked ziti dish either - zits make me think of pimples, which is not the best image.
@Bill I waited forever to enter FLAN for exactly that reason. Then I got the L on my first pass of the downs... Still I resisted. I even knew the To/From tag must be some kind of GIFT. Continued to hold off on both answers... Weird clue! On the other hand, the Z from UNZIP made BAKED ZITI pretty smooth. What you described as a fruit flan, I've always known as a fruit *tart*, a classic of the French patissier. Delicious, no matter the name!
@Bill Immediately thought "What's a 4-letter custard?" "Oh ok, FLAN. Wait - isn't that baked?"
@Bill Ha ha, ya got me! I also meant to protest on the FLAN cookery description! Who ARE these people??? I finally divested my FLAN mold, because, while FLAN was delicious, a plain baked custard was just as lovely--and who needs more sugar in their diet? The double boiler at our house is for finishing the grits and for keeping the gravy hot...(but not at the same meal.) You know, these clue-crafters have but to give one of us a ring to double-check before embarrassing themselves (and/or misleading aspiring chefs or home cooks.) sigh.
@Bill Did I choose today to fast? Why, yes. Of course I did.
I've been up all night with the second-worst toothache of my life. There was a lot of ERRING on this grid before I got things straight. To the dentist!
@Katie Bummer. Hope the dentist will make it better.