Fun puzzle, but should have stayed a Wednesday, IMO.
Whoa, as a newbie to this forum and a middling solver I am so embarrassed by the personal attacks on the constructor. Unless you are a multi-published constructor maybe take a step back and a deep breath, then hit delete. To rant about what is supposed to be entertainment is more about what is lacking in your own life than what is lacking in the puzzle. Maybe X is a more appropriate forum for you. My “nice” Canadian persona is being stressed out.
@Wark I couldn’t possibly agree with you more. Welcome to the forum!
@Wark welcome and you are so right. That being said, I’m sure the constructors understand what people are like and don’t take it too personally. Over time, I’ve actually started to come here just to see what people are complaining about each day. For example, I was expecting all kinds of complaints about whether this was an appropriate Tuesday puzzle, but the constructor and the column saw that coming and already addressed it at length. For the constructor: great job. Loved the puzzle and thought many of the clues were unique and clever. I love to see some new slang like “yeets.”
@Wark I agree, sometimes it can be pretty nasty around here. I think it’s gotten worse sense the election. I suspect the stress so many of us feel is showing up in our interactions.
@Wark, For being a newbie to the forum, you have some remarkably accurate insight. Glad to have you here.
@Wark I've been here awhile and I find it curious too, but I am more used to it. I don't read all the comments, and I tend to glide over the negative ones. JSYK, it's not going to change.
@Wark I hope you stick around a while! Your Canadian kindness may just rub off on others (said my naive Canadian optimism).
@Wark " Oh Canada, we stand on guard for thee"!
@Wark Constructor of today’s puzzle here, and just wanted to say thank you! I don’t take the ad hominem criticism personally—I mostly find it funny, bewildering, and a little sad, for the reason you stated—and I’m buoyed by the balance of positive comments :) But I nonetheless appreciate you and like Sam hope your Canadian kindness rubs off on others. We could learn a thing or two from our northern neighbor. Thanks for solving!
Loved the theme clues, but overall it was tough for a Tuesday. It was perhaps my longest solve time ever for a Tuesday. It would be fun for the NY Times to publish data on median solve times and create a query-able database.
I'm relatively new to NYT crosswords and have been working my way up to more difficult puzzles (per the NYT suggestion to start with Monday puzzles, etc., since they get progressively harder throughout the week), and I just have to say, this was NOT a "Tuesday-level" puzzle! I love a good challenge, but this was downright discouraging at times.
@Herstorygirl Don’t be discouraged! I have no doubt you’re doing great. Every now and then I am humbled by a Tuesday or Wednesday puzzle, and sometimes I breeze through a Saturday so fast that I wonder whether I’m secretly a genius. It ebbs and flows, regardless of skill levels, and no single puzzle should convince you otherwise 🙂↕️
@Herstorygirl It was objectively on the difficult end for a Tuesday puzzle, and probably among the hardest Tuesdays I’ve done. Every so often they throw in a challenge. I will say to anyone working their way through the week: if you finished this one you’re probably ready for Wednesdays!
@Herstorygirl I typically master Tuesday puzzles and couldn’t finish this one on my own. When I have the time, I practice with older puzzles. It helps because I can turn on auto check as those don’t count towards streaks. And I can also move faster if I see I’m wrong right away.
@Herstorygirl i've been solving for many years now and am still challenged by end of the week puzzles. But this one was way harder than the typical Tuesday for me. I just didn't click with it and It wasn't fun for me. I read the Game Play and saw that it was considered for Wednesday. Perhaps I would have been more forgiving if it was Wednesday.!
@Herstorygirl Me too. I've been soving Tuesday puzzles with just a few look ups, but this one was completely beyond me. Massively discouraging.
@Herstorygirl I feel you!! I’ve been doing Tuesdays for 3-4 years now and I’ve NEVER been stumped like this! Even reading the tricky clues in Word Play didn’t help me. Hang in there, you’ll be doing great in no time.
@Sean Take another look at the clue.
@Sean Yes, absolutely. It's depressing that the NYT got this wrong.
@Sean You may not be able to see it on the device you're using, but in the clue "It's hard to believe," the "lie" in the middle of believe is in BOLD face type.
@Sean Surprised me, too, but only because I sadly missed the formatting hints entirely when solving... haha As @dutchiris points out, in the clue 'hard to believe', [lie] is in bold. Likewise, [ism] is capitalised in 'dismantle' of 17a, [ion] is subscript in 'conditioned' of 27a etc. As a writer I don't love it, but for a themed puzzle, it's fun, and creative at that. :)
@Sean <a href="https://dictionary.com/e/slang/bold-faced-lie" target="_blank">https://dictionary.com/e/slang/bold-faced-lie</a>/ Origin of bold-faced First recorded in 1585–95 Origin of bald-faced First recorded in 1640–50
@Sean maybe read the clue like a “bold faced name” where the name happens to be LIE.
@Sean Lots of back-and-forth on this so far. Just want to put my vote in for bare-faced, which is the phrase I grew up hearing (if you get my drift).
@Sean Enough people say "boldfaced" that it's become correct usage. What's correct depends less on what's set down in books and more on how people actually use the word.
Ummm… did you get the days mixed up? This was way harder than even a tricky Tuesday. The themed clues were clever and cute and fitting a Tuesday… but the rest of the fill was very tricky and frankly felt more like an easy Friday solve.
This is a gimmick I don't recall ever seeing before. When we had the "dISMantle" clue, I noticed that the answer used the ISM from the clue, but it took a couple of theme answers to notice that another element from that graphic representation contributed to the fill. Very clever, Mr. Edwards!
I lived to see IRENA Szewińska in a NYT puzzle 😮 Her name was one of the few gimmes in this puzzle. I haven't struggled so much on a Tuesday in many months. Especially the NE corner was a beast for me. In other places some things I have learned from these puzzles helped, like RBI. This was a pretty cool crossword puzzle, but for me the difficulty and solve time were Wednesday-ish.
Strangely enough I needed no lookups. And I am fascinated by the bald/bold furore. Personally I never stopped to think how the expression should be properly spelled. I've learned a new thing.
@Andrzej As a very competent solver for nearly 6 decades, the NE corner was a beast for me, too, and ending with 41A. Those conversational phrases are almost never anything I'd say.
Wow, Monday and Tuesday both take me 20+ minutes?! Were these actually so much more challenging than usual, or is my brain still in Bantayan?!
@Bill in Yokohama Yesterday, I had my worst time for a Monday in quite a while. Today, I had my worst time for a Tuesday in quite a while. Let's see what happens tomorrow...
@Bill in Yokohama Agree. Shortz is back and we get two out of the ordinary puzzles? Maybe a little recalibration is needed. Also odd to have a Tuesday theme, of course (as usual of little help).
@Bill That is so interesting to see, how different it is for us. Yesterday was my personal record, I just kinda knew at least half of the solves in the first run through. Today was difficult though.
@Bill in Yokohama If you consider obscurity in language challenging, then perhaps they were challenging. If you consider the relationship of the language to culture and history, then they were boring.
@Anna Interesting indeed…I found both yesterday and today to be easy and finished in under my average time. And I fairly frequently need a hint on Tuesdays
"Can you help me renew my magazine subscription?" "Yeah, I got 'Time.'" (Some 'People' will like this one.)
@Mike Well, you can't get 'Mad' when they ask, but don't blame 'Us".
@Mike Get a Life. Add Variety. Seek your Fortune Avoid going from best to Hearst. Signed: GQ Forbes, Esquire
@Mike You really like to play, boy. ____________________ Jesse Goldberg 8/28/2024 for Puzzle of the Decade (emu filler)
@Mike There are already SO many puns that it's to much for readers to digest. Can you pare this down to just the Highlights?
Glad to know it was not just me, this took double my average Tuesday time. Nice chewy puzzle and I enjoyed it but tough for a Tuesday.
@Revati No, it wasn't just you. I needed three 'cheats', which I normally don't need for a 'Tuesday'. This was more like a fairly difficult Wednesday, a good fairly difficult Wednesday, though.
Well, I can see from the comments I've read so far, that my prediction last week has been validated, that the return of Will would not result in whine-free comments. It puzzles me in the extreme that so many people get upset whenever a puzzle is puzzling.
I’m shocked this is a Tuesday puzzle; I can’t figure out nearly any clue.
@Susan Avallon It's not a Tuesday-level puzzle, period. There is no reason this would not qualify as an average Thursday themed trick puzzle, and it seemed even harder than most of those. I have NEVER been frightened about possibly not finishing a puzzle this early in a week, even on Thursday. I enjoyed doing it though! :) ____________________ Jesse Goldberg 8/28/2024 for Puzzle of the Decade (emu filler)
@B Wednesday time for me. A little work though and it’d be a Thursday. Definitely not a Tuesday, as yesterday wasn’t a Monday.
@B I am baffled reading these comments…I came in under my usual Tuesday time, and looking at my archive I average one Tuesday a month that I can’t solve without assistance. Thursdays are 50/50 at best for me. But apparently I was one of the very few who found this one easy
The answers weren't what I expected. But that's what you get in this doggy dog world.
@Atavistic Cringeworder L M A O
Loved the theme! But when I saw so many comments on a Tuesday I could only imagine the forum would be filled with excited chatter about Zendaya and Tom Holland getting engaged in Northern Ireland! Hee hee. Naw, that's a Belfast lie.
@ad absurdum Well-played! I actually laughed out loud. That’s a good thing, since I’m iced/snowed in here in a frozen flyover state. Thank you!
Double my usual Tuesday time. Relieved to see all the comments that it’s not just me!
OOH BABY! I came into this puzzle in a neutral state, and left it on a high. I, a wordplay lover, stepped into the box, and my whole time there, I was in my happy place. Happy to have plenty of unknowns and not-sure-of’s to overcome, and happy to have landed in a word playground. This was remarkably satisfying and entertaining to fill in. Such lovely touches! That wonderful Faulkner quote transforming LAIN from ordinary to a delight. Words never seen before in the Times puzzle, such as WHAT’D I SAY, NEOLOGISM, and FLAUTAS – and can you believe SUBSCRIPTION has never appeared in a Times puzzle in its 80+ year history? Or even in any of the major crossword venues? Then the sweet wordplay not only in clues, like those for DIE, ONES, and more, but as the basis for the theme itself -- the cleverness of CAPITAL ISM and my favorite, SUBSCRIPT ION. Sweet discoveries popping out all over the place. Even a rare-in-crossword five-letter semordnilap (DECAF). What a mood lifter! Dana, I hope you find crevices of time amidst your studies at Columbia to eke out some more puzzles. Thank you so much for this!
@Lewis The WHATDISAY got to me, I kept saying this can't be it, but got the music for completion.
This was a wonderfully sophisticated Tuesday puzzle, with a lot going on. There was general knowledge/trivia galore (to the consternation of some I’m sure), lots of misdirections, and a cute little gimmick in some of the clues. I found it a little harder than the average Tuesday because I didn’t know a lot of the general knowledge stuff and because I tried “I’m so sorry” before getting OOPSSORRY. Catching the theme at RENTSTRIKE really helped me because it gave me SUBSCRIPTION (I had entered CAPITALISM without seeing the trick.) I hope everybody found a little something to like in this one. It definitely brightened my day
I know it fits the theme, but I don’t like the incorrect term (“bold-faced lie”) in 46A. Still a fun puzzle!
@Rick Y. For your interest: <a href="https://merriam-webster.com/grammar/is-that-lie-bald-faced-or-bold-faced-or-barefaced" target="_blank">https://merriam-webster.com/grammar/is-that-lie-bald-faced-or-bold-faced-or-barefaced</a>
Did I sleep an extra day and wake up on Wednesday??
Wow, 3x my average for a Tuesday. This is...something.
The test solvers were wrong, this should have stayed a Wednesday. The theme clues were relatively easy but the fill was too broad a culture/generational mix for a Tuesday, IMO. In addition to the quasi-error everyone else is pointing out, having Dua LIPA and HEYYA in the same puzzle as NINA Simone and Frank ZAPPA is challenging. YEETS and TROLL ARMY with PATSY and SCARAB? Crossing one of Shakespeare's lesser known works with an obscure Polish athlete from the 1960s? This puzzle was all over the place. Not a bad thing, or even a hard puzzle, but not a Tuesday.
@Dan I always felt like a range of generational trivia makes a puzzle easier…if it’s all old trivia then it’s hard for younger folks, and if it’s all new trivia the old folks complain. When it’s a range everyone has just a couple they don’t know and then you can fill it out from the crosses
Here’s a BOLD-FACED take for you: I don’t care what day it is! I like easy puzzles; I like hard puzzles. The hard ones are harder. I like the variety. Some, of course, I like more than others. I like the general weekly progression, but to me it doesn’t have the stature of the laws of thermodynamics. In puzzle land, you can have the wrong amount of entropy, or whatever (already regretting the analogy). There. I said what I said. I’d include some subscripts just for fun, if I knew how.
@Cat Lady Margaret -- Amen. Tough for a Tuesday, yes. Lots of vague cluing, not to mention a grid design that is more Thursday or Friday. In any case, the day is the editor’s call, and let that take nothing away from the constructor. This puzzle was a delight.
Is it Friday already!? Have a great weekend!!
Way too tough for a Tuesday! I like the clever theme but I didn’t like some of the fills, especially the crossing of 18D, 21A, and 5D
I am looking for something really easy on Thursday.
@Sue Hah, that's funny (at least I sure hope you're kidding), but as a couple of people suggested I'd be happy to have this level every day. It's just that this was such an unexpected shock to the system this early..... ____________________ Jesse Goldberg 8/28/2024 for Puzzle of the Decade (emu filler)
Wicked puzzle for a Tuesday! Really fun but I wasn’t prepared haha.
Loved the theme, but my favorite part was the crossings of BEET/YEETS and HEY YA/BEEB/OOH BABY. That is some silly perfection.
Let's hear it for another Toughened Up Tuesday. I got a little thrill battling to the end of this one, refusing to cave to the lure of Check Puzzle. And any puzzle warning ITS A TRAP is okay by me. Nice job, Dana.
@Vaer Nice job, Dana - yes. But worse job, editors - maybe? I join the many voices below in suggesting this was too hard for a Tuesday.
I continue to wish for a filter that will hide any comment that mentions “for the day of the week”. So tedious and meaningless. The structure of the week’s puzzles was an invention of Will Shortz at a certain point in his curation of the puzzle. It was not handed to Moses on Sinai thousands of years ago. I’m now near the end of 1999 in my journey through the archives, solving with an eye to the crystallization moment, and no sign of it yet. The placement of themes, lack of themes, difficulty, tricks and rebuses - is quite unstructured before Y2K. If Will Shortz made it - and only within the past 24 years - he can unmake it. This comment is par for a Tuesday. That’s the day when “Waah! Not a real Tuesday!” is the most frequent (and annoyingly useless) comment here.
David, This one was somewhat tougher than one might have expected on a Tuesday over the past two decades, but it's hardly the first time a Tuesday has been tougher or easier than expected. If puzzles were always what we expected, they wouldn't be puzzling.
@David Connell You should filter yourself out of the comments on Tuesday's and come back on Wednesday's. That would solve your ire of having to see the comments while allowing people to voice their opinions freely. Or on a computer do a search for "Tuesday" and skip the comments that have the word highlighted.
@David Connell Amen! The “tablets handed down to Moses” metaphor perfectly captures the too-hard-for-day-of-week genre of carping — reading all those comments, I understand neither the sense that such categories are set in stone, nor the fierce insistence that they must be treated as such 🤷♂️
@David Connell Laughing out loud at ". . . not handed to Moses on Sinai. . ." Good one. I've not yet commented on the puzzle itself mostly because, c'mon, 433 comments on a Tuesday?? It was definitely a welcome bit of chewiness not because of the themers but the unknown (to me) names. But clearly doable. FWIW I also did not see the strikeout in the clue for the TENANT action and did wonder how that answer fit in.
@David Connell Not all “day of the week” comments are complaints. I was one of the people who surely irritated you today, but my comment was aimed at those who might feel discouraged or not up to the task of an “easy” Tuesday. Personally, I like it when the puzzles are a little harder, and I enjoyed this one. It appears to me that other “complainers” feel the same.
@David Connell Maybe you could provide us with a list of allowed and not-allowed topics, so we all can be sure to make your comment reading a greater pleasure?
Sorry, wait, what day is it? This went quickly enough in the end but for me it felt WAY too tough for a Tuesday. Wow. So chewy. The theme was pretty good and I see others have already questioned the extreme artistic license taken with bold instead of bald; maybe it was supposed to be a joke? I have to say I enjoyed this; I was just not expecting such a workout on Monday night! Fun. ____________________ Jesse Goldberg 8/28/2024 for Puzzle of the Decade (emu filler)
An altogether disagreeable puzzle. No fun had...no joy gleaned.
Absolutely loved a more challenging Tuesday. When you’ve been solving for several years like I have, Mon-Wed sometimes tend to solve themselves on autopilot, so this was an awesome surprise. And the puzzle had spunk—at one point I actually clicked the info button just to see whether this was a Robyn Weintraub brainchild. About IRENA: I got curious about the Irena Szewińska (Wikipedia spells her name with an acute accent over the n, which is missing from the clue) since I’m a runner and, like the constructor, I’d never heard of her. Actually, I got curious about what IRENAs may have been more well-known to the average solver, and was rather surprised there aren’t many. There’s Irena Sendler, a social worker who saved 2,500 Jewish children during the Holocaust by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto and then there are two rather minor literary characters, one from Turgenev and one from Milan Kundera. That’s it, though my “research” was limited to Wikipedia and ChatGPT. … Which of course made me wonder about the Tuesday clueing of the name of someone whom the constructor himself notes he’d never heard of, but that’s a nit for another day. Of course the crosses were kind and I always appreciate a TIL moment. Happy Monday or Tuesday, y’all, depending on your time zone.
@Sam Lyons I hope none of the crossword setters use ChatGPT for "research," given that it's not a search engine and doesn't even claim to give accurate answers, which is good, since it very rarely does. Which "Irena" did it suggest for Turgenev? Happy Tuesday to you too, but please reconsider using ChatGPT as a research tool.
I thought this was a tricky but fantastic Tuesday, with some out-of-the-ordinary fill. Finally, life is returning to normal after a crazy winter break. Eerily quiet days lie ahead, following all the end-of-year chaos. In my house, that chaos seems to start in mid-October, with birthdays sprinkled between the holidays. Thanks for a great puzzle, Dana Edwards!
This was significantly more difficult than the usual Tuesday.
Toughest Tuesday solve since I can't remember when. Totally missed the "typeface" clues in the theme entries. I had RENTER instead of tenant, TIMON instead of Titus, and am still scratching my head about ETCETERA. Got the famous sprinter from the crossings. WHATDISSAY looked wrong even though it was right. . Felt like a Wednesday. Felt like a HARD Wednesday. But got the music in the end. Whew!
It seems like the sincere effort of the constructor has been lost in the drama of the comments. I am guilty as well. Dana if you are reading this I hope you don't take it personally. It appears that many of not most people prefer not to be surprised by certain kinds of challenges. I had fun with the puzzle and I had fun in the comments too. Take care!
Late thought - just a bit of wordplay. Wouldn't it be interesting to... ...go hiking on Hochkonig?* *which in English is... high king. I'll shut up now. ..
Boy howdy it’s nice to have Will Shortz back in the game.
Fun puzzle! A little bit harder than your average Tuesday? Maybe, but so what? Don't we all like a challenge? Brilliant clue and solution for SUBSCRIPT-ION. Amusing solve for CAPITALISM. Very clever for RENT STRIKE! And as for the BOLD-FACED, bald-faced, barefaced controversy? I tend toward the prescriptivist side of linguistic usage, but for a very clever crossword idea, I'm more than willing to make an exception!
I seem to be in the minority about the difficulty of this puzzle. Clues others saw as vague i saw as intentionally clever and fun. I trusted the crosses and didn't enter anything without first confirming some of them (as I always do). I thoroughly enjoyed working this one and have no quarrel with either the clues or the Tuesday placement of the puzzle. Lighten up, people. You're meant to be having fun, not taking a final exam, and you can expect some obfuscation in the cluing of every puzzle, every day of the week. I love it.
@dutchiris Same. I found this one to be fun and fairly easy. And I rarely finish fridays and probably only get half of Thursday’s. I’m not sure exactly which clues people felt were particularly unfair. I guess this one just played to my strengths somehow
This is a good puzzle, but substantially harder than a typical Tuesday offering. Some of us do this as a time trial, so we appreciate the consistency in the level of difficulty. Agree on the question concerning boldface; am I missing something?
Ooh, a non-rebus puzzle that contains rebuses! I love it. Like many others, I thought this was more Wednesday-level difficulty. The NE corner was the last to fall, mainly because I had “check” as the after-dinner order until the last minute. Unlike many others, I had no problem with BOLD FACED. In fact, this is how I learned it and have (mostly) heard it. To me, lying boldly makes perfect sense, while lying baldly is the stretch. To each their own.
@Heidi Bold is being used to modify the word face, not the word lie. That is why it is incorrect - it's nonsensical. When written properly, as the Merriam Webster column linked from Wordplay makes clear, bald-faced is a metaphor and analog of the previous bare-faced, with both describing the straight, brazen face through which the lie is told. If anything, that deceptively straight, bare, bald face is the OPPOSITE of a "bold face". It's silly and just wrong. No offense intended but it's used by people
@Heidi Except that bold is modifying face, not lie. A stoic, placid, baldly lying face is actually the opposite of a "bold" face. That's why it's completely incorrect. ____________________ Jesse Goldberg 8/28/2024 for Puzzle of the Decade (emu filler)
Just as most solvers state, this felt more like a Wednesday. Took me quite a few minutes more than usual. A great puzzle with many clues that took a bit to crack. Quite a few aha moments! Loved it, Dana!
I agree with the many commenters who have observed that today’s puzzle was noticeably more difficult than the average Tuesday. However, I was happily surprised by the tougher-than-usual puzzle, as I wish there was generally more variance in the difficulty level of the early-week offerings — you know, to spice things up and keep me on my toes! A question for any of the folks who have *complained* about today’s difficulty: what is your rationale (in contrast to my own reaction described above)?
@Man and 2 dogs As a new crossword solver at my current skill level I am pretty much only at a Monday/Tuesday level solve. So when puzzles like this come around where it is obviously a more difficult solve (I couldn’t even get anywhere close on this particular one) it’s just so inaccessible to new puzzle solvers, to where my two puzzles a week turns into one puzzle a week.
@Luke To the regular puzzlers welcoming the more challenging Tuesday, that’s what the rest of the week is for! You have Wednesday-Saturday to get your challenging puzzle fix in. Be grateful the crossword on average is more challenging than isn’t to most people and move on.
I agree that this one was tough for a Tuesday! I thoroughly enjoyed it. I want to go on record, however, to say that EHOW is the most useless DIY site on the internet. I've wondered if it was early AI. The answers are simplistic and often completely wrong. It pains me that the site got even this small amount of publicity.
Let’s be grateful for the time to escape the woes of the world and the tasks that await us. The time spent solving a puzzle should be joyous and potentially a learning one. Let’s celebrate the crossword creators, game editors and solvers.