Wednesday, December 18, 2024

This was, in my memory, the best crafted crossword in the NYT in *quite* a while. To me, at least, it seemed exceptionally tight in its construction. The fact that the clue/answer pairs worked both ways, both with the trick and without, was *really* nice. Note to constructors: This was an example of cleverness meeting elegance. Bravi to the constructors!

I wasn't sure if I was going to see you frolicking in the meadow, but I took a gambol. (Still, it's pasture bedtime.)

My five favorite original clues from last week (in order of appearance): 1. Fly ball? (5) 2. Word after one fell? (5) 3. Contribute to a company, say (3) 4. Garden-variety poker? (5) 5. A little bit of everything? (6) SWARM SWOOP ACT THORN SESAME

A few words about stuckness in solving a crossword puzzle. I love it for two reasons. First, when the answer finally comes I feel happy and proud and good. And second, the kind of brainwork involved in getting from stuck to unstuck – that makes my brain come alive in a most wonderful way. I came across this poem by Wendell Berry, not written about crosswording per se, but it so beautifully applies to that second point. I’m hoping some readers here will relate to it as I did, grateful for its beauty and wisdom: THE REAL WORK It may be that when we no long know what to do we have come to our real work and that when we no longer know which way to go we have come to our real journey The mind that is not baffled is not employed The impeded stream is the one that sings

Absolutely everything I know about baseball comes from doing this crossword.

Nicely put together puzzle with a cute revealer. I liked morel support as the clue for STEM. Bonus points for working in the word CINEASTE

Morel support? and Sending help? were worth the price of admission.

This was great fun! I loved the Mendel clue and answer(s).

I enjoyed this puzzle, even though initially I was put off by the multiple trivia entries, especially the trivia nexus in the NW. In the end I needed only two lookups. I managed to recall many answers I have learned from NYT puzzles over the past 18 months, like RADON TESTS (unknown in Poland, as far as I know) and RBI. Good to know my memory is better than I usually think it is. The theme was pretty neat.

Odd puzzle. Evenly clued. Oddly enjoyable. Even entertaining! I don’t feel like I did after thanksgiving day dessert- PaInEd. (It’s early. And I’m not nearly as clever as Jeffrey and Will.)

Just finished, incredible. Couldn't be more delighted. Besides the themed clues being works of art, I'd like to thank the constructor for 'morel support'. I think I'm in love.

THIS AWFUL PUZZLE OBJECTIVELY WAS NOT REALLY THAT CREATIVE [Reaction to this crossword that could be a themer if the theme referred to words instead of letters] And if you're wondering which one was my reaction, consider that I'm nothing if not odd.

Language quirks like what Jeffrey and Will found set me agog as a kid, and still do today. I jawdrop and “Huh!” at finds like this. Then, when they are all tied together with a revealer that perfectly lands, and set in a grid with spark like CINEASTE and FRAZZLE, and clean as a whistle, I slowly nod side to side with respect and gratitude. I wish EASES had been EESES, which would have been a stellar revealer for the mini-theme of double-E’s, of which there are eight. Oh, and I did love [Morel support] for stem. Double bravo on that. Thank you, Jeffrey and Will. Your puzzle started my day with a big “Ain’t life grand?”, and that is a gift!

I like a puzzle with a lot of theme entries, so had fun with this one. It also seemed just about right for a Wednesday . I bet Jeffrey and Will could do a great Thursday puzzle as well.

So these are sort of like kangaroo words, right? Except the subset word isn’t quite a synonym of the whole, but it’s congruent to the whole via a common clue they share. What should this be called: Wombat words? Koala words? Bandicoot words?

I just got 18 and 20 across and I'm SO IMPRESSED. I filled 18 (thanks, A-level biology) and said 'Really?! No way!' out loud, and confirmed the theme with 20. This is surely a hall-of-famer.

Lots of fun, some tricky cluing. Never thought I’d see Sylvan ESSO in a crossword!

Delightful!

This went very fast, and I regret it, because the theme was so cleverly done. I wish the overall puzzle were a bit harder so I had more time to savor how good the double "odd" answers were. The rest of it felt like a Monday to me. We are fortunate to have such clever constructors featured here (most of the time if you catch my drift without directly raising how bad Sunday's puzzle was again). :) Good work, and thanks. ____________________ Jesse Goldberg 8/28/2024 for Puzzle of the Decade (emu filler)

Wow. Typical Wednesday workout for me. Managed to finish it but have to admit that I remained puzzled about the theme until I stopped and pondered for a while. What a great 'aha' moment when it finally dawned on me. Can't help but wonder how many other possibilities there could be. I mean - every one of these with the alternate letters. That's just amazing. Oh, and of course I'll put my puzzle find today in a reply. ...

A very satisfying puzzle, particularly in light of recent offerings. This puzzle offers two different theme answers for each starred clue! All of them provide elegant sets of answers. Knew we were gonna be thrilled when we ran into Mendel. And of course if you're stuck all the crosses work out smoothly as well. A good tight puzzle reveals even more ways to solve as you proceed. As you proceed, your work should continue to confirm that you are on the right track. That is why the crosses are so important in a 'crossword puzzle'. They provide a cross check. Any puzzle that eliminates the opportunity to use the crosses is by definition inelegant. This puzzle was a great example of breezy fun. Thank you to Jeffrey & Will

Clever and fun. Well done.

A couple of quibbles about a fun puzzle. 1A: while POSY might now have expanded in meaning to include “flower” (c.f. MW, but not recognised by the OED) at the time of creation of the rhyme, no later than 1840, it had only its original meaning of “small bunch of flowers.” This makes for a disagreement in number between clue and answer. 23A: the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification has been concerned with UAPs (Unexplained anomalous phenomenon) since 2023

I feel like I'm seeing spots....This is clever construction, and it's not Jeffrey Martinovic's and Will Nediger's fault if the messy-looking grid makes it heard to look at.... Then again.... New word: CINEASTE.... perfect for the dustbin. YUTZ? Oy. I've never heard of "The Texas Triangle" despite having lived in that state, but "southwest" and SAN- were pretty good hints. We spent a whole summer there *without a/c* in 1956, when our dad had TDY at Ft. Sam Houston. This was so long ago that the newspaper vending arrangement was a cigar box on top of a stack of papers, for folks to drop their coins in. RADON LEVEL had to be revised... Last night I watched Sherrod Brown's farewell speech on the floor of the Senate chamber. For me, he will always be more than a FOOTNOTE.

Great puzzle! Enjoyed very much. But another quibble: “ROGER” (5D) in radio communications means only that the person saying it -received- the prior message. It doesn’t indicate comprehension, compliance, agreement, or anything beyond reception. So “understood” isn’t an accurate clue. Mark (pilot and occasional user of “roger” 😊)

When you think about it, Drew TREES is a much better name for a guy: GREEN (like PEAS), in a way, and so artistically evocative. You see, an uncaffeinated mind CONSIDERs THE ODDS of TBA being the answer to “Check back later,” in brief, and discards it because it’s stuck on textspeak for some just-now-torn-from-a-REM-cycle reason. “What’s another way of saying TTYL,” said mind muses, patting itself on the back in ways heretofore unknown to neuroanatomists as it affirms to itself that it would never, ever but ever, use textspeak itself. Even if it had fingers. Which it doesn’t, self-administered back-slapping notwithstanding. Because it is an elusive and diaphanous mystery that defies anatomical reduction and scoffs at the sterile logic of Cartesian dualism, spun as it is from the gossamer threads of the cosmos itself— Ah, sorry about that. Coffee truly is a prerequisite for coherent posting. Anyhow, “If not TTYL, surely TTA has been used for Talk To [ya] After?” says my sleepy mind. And immediately answers (again, this us all pre-morning-coffee), “Sure it has.” And that’s how my puzzle came to take an extra x minutes of flyspecking until an old echo of hubby’s NFL games blaring out of the family room offered up Drew BREES. A shoutout to my adopted hometown, Seattle, and a goodnight to my fellow WordplayASTEs. Time to start the day.

Always happy to see an Eeyore reference in the puzzle. Enjoyed the chewiness of this puzzle and I admit to getting stuck in the SAW/WORSE corner. Thanks guys.

Morel support? tickled my funny bone. Odds are, our fungi Mike will have the puns mushrooming up. Thanks, Jeffrey and Will, for a quick and lively Wednesday puzzle.

Fun and interesting, oddly enough. Nice job, guys!

A thoroughly enjoyable Wednesday outing. Just crunchy enough to make me pause occasionally, with a lovely Aha feeling when I got the theme. Delightful.

I plugged in ARCHERS before getting to the revealer - so seeing ACES was so fun Thank you Jeffrey and Will !

Great Wednesday puzzle. But also worried about what that means for tomorrow. 23 hours until we are intentionally deceived.

I enjoyed this puzzle a lot, but cinéaste really primarily means filmmaker - not film buff.

Jeffrey and Will are another dynamic duo. What an excellent theme idea and a perfect implementation. Not a stretch among them.

Love these types of puzzles. Feel it would be better thought of the grayed boxes would only be revealed after solving to increase the “AHA!” moment.

Resisted POSY for a long time, since it's always been a small bunch of flowers hereabouts--- as carried by some bridesmaids. I was also unhappy with LASED. It's the laser emitter that lases, when it emits the light---an ugly back formation, but well established. The thing that is zapped (like my detached retina) is lasered. Or so it goes in ophthalmological circles in my part of the world.

Clever puzzle -- though technically, the term "gene" wasn't coined until decades after Mendel's work - what he really studied was inheritance, being too early to study the biology behind it.

This goes out to @CQ, (who has stopped in for minute to comment on "gene", and will hopefully stop back again), concerning the dispute we had over the abbreviation "cres." for crescendo, used in Sunday's puzzle. I Admit I Was Wrong--(I'd do all caps, but the emus don't like shouting.) I looked back over the Google Image results for "cres in musical notation,' and yes, there were some--some in holograph manuscripts, some in printed editions; but all 18th-19th c.--IOW, the octopodes of musicology. (Interestingly, one was written as "cres:" rather than "cres.") Nevertheless, "cresc." has been the standard abbreviation for more than a century; if I came across "cres." in a modern printed score, I would surely know what was intended, but I would question the quality and professionalism of the composer/editor/publisher. (And trust me, there are some pretty bad engraving jobs out there!) The exception being a scholarly publication which was intended to reproduce exactly an earlier edition.

Once I had FRAZZLE/FAZE and GREEN PEAS/GENES, I wondered if I'd be able to get the other theme answers without crosses, but I couldn't -- not even close. This is what I often try to do when a theme is doing something quite intricate and clever, but that fails to involve me in any way. I try to do myself what I wish the constructor(s) had done: make the puzzle impossible to solve without figuring out the trick -- whatever the trick is. Here, we're told exactly that: we'll need to understand the trick to "fully appreciate each starred clue." Appreciate it, not solve it. Still, I'm not completely unhappy that I didn't have to work all that hard this morning. A printout of Lewis's crunchy LAT puzzle arrived by snail mail late yesterday and I haven't fully recovered from wrestling with it. So my little gray cells were perhaps too tired for another big challenge today. This puzzle was cleverly conceived and executed, but pretty easy when all is said and done.

Very clever Wednesday puzzle. Enjoyed it very much though I took an inordinately unhealthy amount of time to figure out ISAW and UPS. Which is funny because I 'didn't see' and was desperate for someone to 'send help'. Tee-hee. Yup, I know. There's a lot more where that came from. I'm here every Mon-Sun. 🤣

I love how the theme entries had two layers of meaning--the first being the whole word and the second being the word formed by the letters in the gray squares. I enjoyed this puzzle even though I messed up in the southwest corner for eye exam and send help?

Another clever puzzle, although just a tad bit form over substance. I marvel at how much must have gone into constructing the word-within-a-word theme, however the fill was not that challenging for a Wednesday. It's uncanny that for two days in a row I've matched my best time to the second!

Very clever and enjoyable puzzle, favorite clue "Sending help?". I stared at UP_ and still wasn't sure of answer, and even after filling it in, still didn't understand it right away, love that! Sam explained it, and love her tip about emphasizing other word, will remember that. Thanks to the constructors!

Nice theme. Got caught up for a while because I took way to long to realize that the Cartesian clue was IAM and not suM. Then a fair bit of time to correct pUTZ to YUTZ when I didn't get the Gold Star.

SITUATION / STAIN didn't wow me. I think of a stain as the aftermath of a mess, not the mess itself. A mess is a situation? I guess - situation is a broad term. Sticky situation? OK. The others were tight and clever.

WORSE for the gold. Fun solve fellows. Thank you

That was fantastic. I loved Saturday’s puzzle and I loved today’s puzzle. I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed two puzzles so much so close together.

Anyone else find the theme answers strangely uneven in quality? And yet, overall, somehow it worked for me.

I still can't get my head around CINEASTE, as I can't think of any other word ending in -aste. Anybody? The only thing that comes close is "enthusiast." (Enthousiaste, in French.) Did we just borrow a French word for people who bristle at being called a "movie buff?"

Since you have an international following, fewer name brands might be helpful, or at least international ones.