Ice rain... not a thing. It's freezing rain.
@TJ @TJ Yeah I never heard that term either. Wonder if anyone has. ____________________ Jesse Goldberg 8/28/2024 for Puzzle of the Decade (emu filler
@TJ I had icy rain and couldn't find my "typo" until I came to the column. ICE RAIN is hail.
@TJ I had ICY RAIN for a long time.
Did not enjoy. Weird cluing, clunky fill. No one calls it "ice rain." It's freezing rain.
@Jamie Or "sleet". And I do not understand "atoz" for "The whole shebang".
Couple of November alpha tango igloo Charlie kilo sierra in this one
@Jive Miguel clever. i see what you did there
@Jive Miguel Meet me at midnight at Mr. Chow’s
Pretty easy for a Thursday but I didn’t catch on to the puzzle til the clue-answer that spelled it out for me. ON ANOTHER NOTE, PLEASE HIT “RECOMMEND” IF YOU RESPECT THE WISHES OF CANADIANS TO REMAIN INDEPENDENT.
Byron, Remain independent? Aren't you still a Commonwealth realm? I liked the President of Mexico's idea to rename the U.S.A.
@Barry Ancona Canada's Constitution was patriated in 1982 which means that while we are nominally part of the British Empire, it truly is nominal as all constitutional power resides in the elected federal and provincial governments. I'm guessing you know this but worth mentioning for those who don't.
@Barry Ancona Ha ha. But further to what Scott said, technically our Head of State is the King of England as represented by the Governor General so in theory Parliament only governs with the consent of the Crown. In practice the GG doesn’t do anything. A number of years ago PM Stephen Harper prorogued Parliament for blatantly political reasons (to avoid a vote of non-confidence) and the Opposition parties hoped the GG would not consent to the prorogation. GG Michaelle Jean gave her consent and would not step in. The benefit to having a Head of State that is not the elected leader, by the way, is that citizens are loyal to the Crown and not the President. Seems to me the US sometimes gets hurt by this.
Byron, I would “recommend” that, if I didn’t feel that at this time in history doing so may be interpreted as giving credence to the ramblings of a mad-man (not you! :), and lending support to journalists who choose every day to do just that. I hope this isn’t taken as being negative or confrontational. I am happy to live in Canada, and am glad you are too :)
@JohnWM I hear you. I often think of we ignore him he might go away, but it looks increasingly like he’s for real and his ramblings are real too. He will, after all, be the President again with all the power that comes with the office.
Not my favorite puzzle. As several commenters point out, some of the clues/answers were a little off, and the 'trick" (simply that the answers started with a certain letter indicated in NATO code at the beginning of the clue) didn't seem clever enough for a typical Thursday.
@Ann Young Thanks for saying this. I was trying not to be too critical. (Some people here may not believe that. ;) ) Exactly right. ____________________ Jesse Goldberg 8/28/2024 for Puzzle of the Decade (emu filler)
@Ann Young Yeah, I felt the same way about some of the clues. Fine theme, but just felt off.
@Ann Young Totally agree about the trick. I actually groaned when I got to the revealer - it felt WAY too straightforward for a Thursday.
Ugh. What’s with the proper noun bloat/Naticks in this one? By my count: ARSENE SERGIO OLSEN WELCHS DAVIES QUITO ARTHUR ASHE PEZ BBC EVAN JJWATT LISA SELENA EUNICE COCO NATO WATUSI IGOR SAS I may be a bit of a grouch-o when I say “yuck, yuck, yuck” to this one.
@Edward I thought the NE was especially dense in proper names, and especially since one of them was [something][something]WATT. When it comes to initials, almost any letters will work. I had JtWATT, and tEDI. I thought maybe that was how Ted Knight (of the Mary Tyler Moore show) signed.
Crossing two Italian words (TUTTO and COTTA) seems like a bad idea in an English crossword.
@Shimmer Besides which, it could be either COTTO or COTTA depending on the gender of the thing being baked, and HIYO is every bit as good a greeting as HIYA. (I had this "wrong" (i.e., the other right) and it took me forever to figure out what the puzzle was asking for.) That's just a terrible crossing and should have been nixed or clued differently.
@Marie Italian speaker here. I totally agree. I had the puzzle completed but because of COTTo / HIYo I couldn't get the music. It drove me crazy and added many minutes to what would have been a very low Thursday time for me. Grrr.
@Shimmer I'll disagree. Pretty much all the Italian I know is from cooking or music but that means I am solid on both TUTTO and TUTTI and know COTTA but not COTTO. So both were gimmes.
The southeast part of the puzzle was brutal IMO. Too many obscure proper names and acronyms. TAUTEN is also a stretch (pun intended)
@Tim I wasn't a fan of TAUTEN either. And I had tutti before TUTTO -- maybe there was a plural form of cold vegetable soup I hadn't heard of before. I'm not familiar with ICE RAIN -- though I do dread icy rain this time of year. TIL about BODHI TREEs too.
Tim, Really? Which names and acronyms in the SE did you not know and could not get from the crosses?
@Tim Don't bother answering Barry's question, the end conclusion will be that you're wrong no matter what you say.
How many proper names were there? Twenty? More? It sure felt like it was a lot. I sort of got the theme (NATO alphabet was a gimme, and the themed entries were witty, I guess), but with how many lookups I needed to deal with the trivia-heavy fill I did not enjoy this puzzle at all. Also, ATOZ? I see now that it should be parsed A TO Z, but that was just not gettable for me as I was solving, especially with the (for me) unusual cross of TAUTEN (I know it's a valid word but not one I've encountered often enough to come up with it today, having trouble with _TOZ and never knowing whether DoH or DUH will be the answer to 'Obviously!') I needed to check the puzzle for the first time in weeks...
@Andrzej I employed all the lifesaving devices allowed by the app. And it made me wax nostalgic. I should cut myself a little slack, though. At the end of the day, my problems were: GAZPACHO (the crosses were the real problem) ATOI (no hablo francés) TAUTEN (are we verbing a noun?)
@Andrzej As I mentioned in a comment over one-third of the total entries today were proper nouns. As an American, I had trouble with a couple myself. I can only imagine this was incredibly frustrating for anyone not living in the U.S. My condolences!
@Andrzej I hear and feel your frustration; blue-star Thursday for me too.
So many proper names crossing one another (ARSENE/EVAN, JJWATT, SERGIO and OLSEN/SELENA, DAVIES/EUNICE, ARTHURASHE) and many that I wasn't familiar with that this one involved a lot of tedious flyspecking for me. Otherwise I thought the theme was fun.
I feel like 57A would be better clued as [Info often frustratingly missing from a job listing].
@Sleepy Murph It's now (recently) required here in NYC... as a *range*. Still frustrating! Lol. And it took making it a legal requirement in order to get that much... It's a weird clue, imo. Incorrect, even. But there were so many odd ones today that I'd overlooked this one!
Thanks to the crossword comment section posters for providing such a reliable daily dose of negativity and absolutely pointless complaining. And thanks to the constructor for giving everyone here something to complain about today. Ice rain, the horror! Really, I’m surprised so many people here continue to do the crossword daily. If something I did VOLUNTARILY caused me such IRE every day, I’d stop doing it. Half of our number should give it up or get a grip. Or maybe they’re just masochists. Either way, I never cease to be amazed by how many people get so bent out of shape by our daily puzzle.
@Erin yeah, i don't get it. they rail about some person or word they've never heard of, proud of their ignorance and stagnation. and yet, they come back for a new puzzle - why? i usually only post on the wordplay blog when there's a particularly interesting, different, or clever puzzle--because i want to be a voice that is congratulating the constructor and encouraging them to do more--and today is no exception. thank you
@Erin I agree. Anyone who wants a simple puzzle can find books of them in the supermarket magazine rack. I come to the NYT puzzle for a challenge and I feel a bit disappointed when I can breeze through one. Naticks and foreign words are par for the course, learning opportunities. Like many people, apparently, I had a tough time with the NE corner. I had absolutely no idea who might be a [Three-time N.F.L. Defensive Player of the Year] or who [TV journalist Ling] was, so I had to walk away from the computer for a while. The stumper for me was _ED_, which didn't suggest any actor named KNIGHT. It took my brain 20 minutes to finally say, "Aha! An initial capitalization, not a name!" and see the answer as JEDI. Despite the two proper names and the unfamiliar Shelley quote, that was enough to limit the possible ways to fill in the rest of the corner. I enjoy a good, tough challenge like that. I come away from it feeling that I have truly solved something, not just whizzed through a fill-in-the-blanks grid. Thank you, David Williams, for starting my Thursday properly.
@Erin +1000. People seem to get *very* different things out of crosswording as a hobby.
@Erin I agree with some of what you said about folks who like to complain all the time, and particularly about some kinds of complaints. However, this particular puzzle, while solvable (in less time than average for me) felt poorly constructed. My primary gripe (on the rare occasion when I complain) is when a puzzle is made more difficult by the use of niche answers/clues (ARSENE, JJWATT, SERGIO Leone, LISA Ling, and others), and cluing that tries to be clever but doesn’t quite work (not so much of an issue in this puzzle). Some folks may like a puzzle that is hard because it is full of trivia and questionable cluing. I prefer a puzzle that is hard because the cluing is clever and devious - which takes effort and skill. Not much of that on display in this puzzle.
@Erin I don't get it either. I do NYT crosswords because I enjoy being challenged from different angles. Having similar cultural references as the constructor makes it easier but there's all sorts of people (and constructors) out there with different references and that's what makes these crosswords enjoyable to me. I'm afraid those who complain have a hard time accepting such differences in their NYT crossword, but also in other aspects of life.
@Erin It's super weird how offended the "every puzzle is awesome" crowd gets when legitimate beefs are raised. Sure, some folks are just upset whenever everything isn't sunshine and rainbows, but given the endless flood of (often unearned) positivity in these comment threads, I'm thankful for folks who will raise their head, ignore Barry, and note problems in construction or executions.
@StevenR Ive tried 2-3 lately that I couldnt get without revealing a lot of squares and even some words. But I keep trying so I’ll learn something I did not know.
@Erin It's a comments section. People comment. Sometimes they comment about things they like or thought were done well, sometimes they comment about things they didn't like or thought were done poorly. I find it amazing how many people seem to feel it's their job to police the comments section and only ever say things they think are "positive" or that they agree with.
@Erin In general I agree with you. Some don't ever seem to like any puzzle. I think the key is to note who is making the comment. When people *only* comment to gripe, it makes sense to simply ignore their complaints. However, a lot of people commenting here *sometimes* complain and *sometimes* praise and defend.
@Erin I like doing the crossword and as a hobby occasionally construct some of my own. I usually pop in here to join the discussion, and yes I do criticize as well. I love crosswords, and I did not know that discussion about something needs to only be positive. So what if people have complaints? Let them complain! Is a comment section not meant for people to leave their comments?
I'm just going to pretend this puzzle never happened and look ahead to Friday.
Somehow I managed to gold-star this one without any look-ups or hints (which for myself I would consider cheats)— but I sat seemingly forever trying to unlock that NE corner with little hope of success. Only my stubbornness prevented me from throwing in the towel; I think I might have spent 3x what I spent on the entire rest of the grid getting nowhere there. In retrospect, I recognize that I got in my own way, but still: it did seem needlessly natick-y! I had no hope of getting an NFL player from ten years ago without serious help from the crosses, especially when I was thinking of only a last name rather than two initials. And even acknowledging early on that the “knight” might have a lower-case “k”, I managed to take a ridiculously long time to twig to JEDI. 🙄 LISA Ling should have come easily, but paradoxically she was TOO familiar: I had convinced myself that this was a newer name that I didn’t know and would have to guess at. D’oh! (I still don’t understand the Shelley quote, which I had never heard before. Wouldn’t Hope expect finite woes? 🤔) Even owning my ignorance & obtuseness, I think most of the objections posed by other commenters here have validity. Over one third of the entries were proper nouns— which seems excessive. Most were well-known to me—but I pity the non-American solvers! Also, I would love to see a citation for ICE RAIN. “Freezing rain”, “sleet”, or “icy rain”— okay, but ICE RAIN? This one, IMO, has some serious issues.
@Darcey O’D I really like your analysis and the empathy towards us non-Americans. Thank you 🙂
@Darcey O’D On the Shelley quote, the second part clears it up: "to suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite ... is the greatest joy and freedom you can achieve" (paraphrasing).
@Darcey O’D This is kind of picky, but JJ Watt only retired in 2022.
Freezing rain is a thing. So is sleet. "Ice rain" isn't.
I liked it, especially the subtly clever clue [Long, long time]. AEON is not just an "alternate spelling" of eon, but a longer spelling. It is not just a very long time.
Yikes to that NE corner. A few unfamiliar names + an unknown quote= several puzzle checks and a blue star for me. If you don’t know, you don’t know. On the plus side, the theme was as easy as Alfa Bravo Charlie to decipher. But that’s not necessarily a plus. Ultimately, this puzzle was challenging for me, just not in the right way. I think I deserve a whiskey. (And a tango, if anyone’s up for it.)
@Heidi Well put! The NE corner was a slog, which felt especially jarring considering how easy the theme was. Didn't help that I was assuming a veiled capital for [Knight of film]! And, uh, wouldn't have a clue for the footballer. Ever.
@Heidi @G NE was tough for me as well, the last section to fall during flyspecking.
WELCHS is a soda? GAZPACHO = course? I get it but... SERGIO Leone had to google. I like a tricky Thursday and I enjoy NATO alphabet puzzles but this theme seemed to be stretched a bit far. Hope we get a good Friday puzzle for the impending Nashville snowstorm (3 to 5 I inches! Might as well be a blizzard ❄️)
@Lpr I had to look up Welch’s as soda as well. They only made juice, as far as I know. They do make soda but it’s certainly not what I associate with them.
Not a fan of this one whatsoever- one of the more unenjoyable Thursdays in recent memory. Far too many proper name crossings, foreign words, stilted entries, poor cluing, and a fun but somewhat half-baked theme made this one an absolute slog to go through. SE corner was one of the worst offenders with WELCHS, WATUSI, TAUTEN. ICERAIN and ISON felt terrible- Never have I met someone who calls it ice rain instead of freezing rain or icy rain, and perhaps it's my inexperience, but I still have no clue how you get ISON from 55A instead of ISUP. I got the theme immediately, and actually enjoyed quite a few of the entries, though I do think it would've been much more satisfying if the NATO alphabet portion of the clue had more to do with the entry. CLYDESDALE, PANDA, and SERGIO set up expectations for the theme nicely. QUITO was one I frankly just didn't know, but otherwise same as above. I thought THIRTEEN was a bit lazy, and would've been a great opportunity to make TWENTY work instead. GAZPACHO is where it fell apart for me- getting that out of "course"is a stretch. Then we have ARTHURASHE, which is just unforgivable. Not only does it break the established pattern of one word theme entries and two word clues, but expects an obscure, proper full name out of "male (double)". In no way, shape, or form do I consider myself an authority on construction, but IMO, this one needed serious revisions and should not have been published in its current state.
@Drew “Is on” refers to being at first base after a hit or walk. “Is up” means currently batting, at home.
Then we have ARTHURASHE, which is just unforgivable. Not only does it break the established pattern of one word theme entries and two word clues, but expects an obscure, proper full name out of "male (double)". Drew, Did you read the entire clue for 51 Across?
@Drew Arthur Ashe is hardly obscure for anyone who follows tennis at all, not to mention his name (albeit most often just his last name) has been an answer on the order of 200 times.
Oh, my brain was on high alert before entering the first square. The constructor’s name rang a bell, I looked him up, and oh yeah, he’s the guy with those identical-grid “looking at a blackbird” Saturday puzzles that gave my brain a Crossfit-grade workout. So, I’m not surprised that the box held many riddles for me today. Names I didn’t know, deeply-submerged-in-memory words that took a while to pry out, and actual riddles, such as the sensational [Mystery writer, in brief?] for ANON. Story of my solve: Vague mass of hardly anything, steeped in slowness, leading to islets of fill-in, morphing into blobs, crescendoing into a mad dash to the finish, with a highly-satisfied brain. Figuring out the theme, with a resounding aha, was the catalyst. This grid is so well filled. What a high-quality answer set with hardly a whiff of junk and a wide variety of fields represented. Look at that gorgeous filled in grid! I thought the cluing was high quality as well, with the Thursday-right level of vagueness and sparks of wit. David P., you can make a capital-C crossword, and I savored what you made today. Thank you so much for this!
@Lewis I admire your positivity. I wish I were able to have such an outlook at everything much more often. Maybe some day...
Interesting theme but the rest ? Meh. Too many proper names you either know or you don't. Having obscure clues cross, just tedious. I had hoped with Will Shorts returning this sort of editing would cease. It isn't clever to just be obscure.
Everyone who has ever had to work with the NATO alphabet has a story about how they can’t live without it. It’s burned into our memory banks. So, I’d love to hear your stories about how the NATO alphabet was horrendously massacred at your work. At a former job, they tried to move away from the NATO alphabet after a telecommunications system’s merge for PSAP services. One deputy asked for a name to be run with “z as in xylophone.”
Can’t be the only one that thought it was a pangram and went back looking for a k and an m..? Really had fun with this one! I’ve never memorized the NATO alphabet, which is odd, now that I think about it. I memorize everything! And I’m horribly, terribly, embarrassingly bad at spelling things out on the phone. Me- That’s Jones, j, o, n, e, s. Person on phone - How do you spell that? Me (panicking) - Okay, uh, J as in…jumprope… O as in…Ottawa… N… as in…next-of-kin… E, like in… epiphany…? and S like…uh…slippery..? Person - What? Me- *hangs up*
CCNY, 🤣 That is so me, too! As a crossworder, you could fall back on some even clunkier ones: M as in mazy, A as in aroar, O as in orale… no, wait, as in Oreo - that’s a double! Hello? Hello?
@CCNY I thought about a pangram, too. Went looking for a K, couldn't find it. I'm surprised there's no M, that's a common letter. I wonder how many crossword puzzles have been made without an M. M as in Mike. One of the first commenters today also was looking for the pangram.
this puzzle Sierra Uniform Charlie Kilo Sierra.
COTTA means cooked and TUTTI means everyone. Those irked me a bit. Al forno would be baked, intero is entire.
@Ashley I was thinking of Petrossian’s exterior (terra Cotta in mid-town Manhattan)when I got to COTTA. Initially, I TUTTially agree with you. After all, Mozart’s opera is Cosi Fan Tutte (Women All Do It), which presupposes a masculine form. But the clue wasn’t “everyone “ but rather, “entire.” Just as Le Monde is French for the whole world, is it hard to imagine Italian gives it a masculine form:TUTTO? Memories of my big brother demonstrating the WATUSI made me glad of the time spent.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. 😉 Great fun.
OK, ready? The Budweiser icon woke everyone else up groaning about leg pain. Goldilocks tried branching out to other mammalian genera. The Spaghetti western may have originated in Western Africa? There were enough Astor Piazzolla pieces to play for the lengthy dance contest. The exclusive clubhouse prided itself on its cold soup. Single malt, with grape flavoring. Yum. Oh dear, is Ecuador now part of the U.S. along with Canada? That guy was the absolute GOAT in tennis.
“Alpha” is not part of the NATO alphabet; “alfa” is the code for A. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) does use “alpha”, which made 38D pretty confusing for me.
Interesting phenomenon re: ICE RAN that I just noticed. Like many others, I had never head freezing RAIN referred to as ICE RAIN. So I looked it up. Unlike many others, I don't automatically ASSume that if *I* have not previously seen a particular usage/word/definition, that it MUST, therefore be WRONG WRONG WRONG! I usually check to see if it's a regionalism that I was not aware of, or a word that was not in my lexicon, and so on -- I try to find an opportunity to learn something. I don't get angry at the puzzle. So I fired up the electric google machine and entered, in quotes, "ICE RAIN". Right at the top was a definition for ICE RAIN at Dictionary.com. I don't usually use that as a source, and the results here might illustrate why. Dictionary.com defines ICE RAIN as freezing RAIN. A synonym. But if you check out the example sentences, they are all - every one - like this: "Forecasters expect the storm system to hobble the upper Midwest with ice, rain and snow for days, as well as move into the Northeast and central Appalachians." Dictionary.com is based upon Random House Unabridged Dictionary, with borrowings from several others, including American Heritage. The only dictionary listed that I own in hard copy is an old (third edition, ©1996) AH Unabridged dictionary, and it lacks an entry for ICE RAIN. I conclude that Dictionary.com scrapes online sources for entries and is befuddled when a comma comes between two words. I concur that the answer is dicey.
@CaptainQuahog - Of course, I had to start off my comment with a typo. So it goes...
@CaptainQuahog - I should add that M-W does not have an entry for ICE RAIN. That speaks volumes.
@CaptainQuahog Like you, I look up expressions I don't recognize before assuming that they're wrong. On this occasion, I thought I'd discovered an interesting article, written by a meteorologist, for a meteorology site, explaining the difference between "freezing rain" and "ice rain". <a href="https://meteonews.fr/en/News/N13065/Freezing-rain-or-ice-rain" target="_blank">https://meteonews.fr/en/News/N13065/Freezing-rain-or-ice-rain</a> But suspicions began to mount when I got to Figure 2, which purports to show the difference between freezing rain and freezing rain. And then came the warning "The content of this article has been at least partially computer translated from another language." Oh-oh. The original German is here: <a href="https://meteonews.ch/de/News/N13064/Gefrierender-Regen-oder-Eisregen" target="_blank">https://meteonews.ch/de/News/N13064/Gefrierender-Regen-oder-Eisregen</a> It's about the difference between gefrierender Regen and Eisregen, which is "freezing rain" and (I believe) "sleet". The latter literally translates as "ice rain".
There were a few Kinks in this puzzle. Two to be exact: Ray and Dave DAVIES. The constructor really got me going, really got me, with the NATO alphabet theme, which I enjoyed, especially golf course for GAZPACHO. At first I thought this was going to be one that I filled in with answers that seemed to make no sense, but I actually figured out the trick before seeing the revealer. There was more filler than I would like, but on balance, more fun than not.
I really liked this puzzle, and yet, a panda is not a bear.
@Lorel I think that used to be a popular perception a few decades ago. The general consensus amongst scientists based on DNA testing etc seems to be that pandas are in fact bears.
@Lorel, Thinking of Koalas? They are not bears.
@Lorel pandas are indeed true bears. Koalas are marsupials, and are thus not family Ursidae Bear down!
@Rahul, thanks for the update! I consider myself duly schooled.
@Michael Weiland, you’re half right: I was thinking of pandas with a little koala clinging to my useles—I mean eucalyptus brain. :-)
@Lorel To be fair, a red panda is not a bear.
Is a panda a bear? Yes and no. A giant panda is a bear. A red panda is not a bear. Maybe Schrödinger had a panda too.
I gave up toward the end. I do this for fun (?!) so finally figured out how to turn the timer off. Timers are never fun. Then tried to remember how I started doing these in the first place. 2010 or so. The NYT delivered every morning around 5. In a plastic bag if it was raining, otherwise just a rubber band. The smell of the ink on newsprint as I started with the important part of the paper (the puzzle), folding the section in half and then in half again while I poured the coffee. Mechanical pencil out, wondering how far I’d get in the allotted 15 minutes I had with it before I had to start getting serious about the day. On an occasional Monday or Tuesday I’d get it done. Otherwise it would still be waiting on the dining room table for after work. Life was better when That unsaid, I really liked the theme here, even if I didn’t finish the puzzle. And I would have then, too.
@Justin As a retired housewife, I’ve wondered recently as I read the comments how the solving experience must differ quite drastically for those who have a distinct time limit. I wake up early and have hours to puzzle my way through my mornings. So I love a challenge. The crunchier the better. I want the puzzle to take forever! But if I had to jump in the shower or get to work, I might get more frustrated with any puzzle that simply took too long. Is it the ease of a forgiving schedule that makes some of us less critical of the proper names and trivia? Truly curious!
I was surprised by the negative comments because I loved this puzzle! Usually my husband and I are in synch with the ethos of this group. As we do the puzzle we chuckle about what our friends online will have to say. We don't need to say anything because others say it well. A couple of answers here weren't great - agree with the comments about "tauten" and "ice rain" - but "all in all" I give a "nod to" Mr. Williams for this one!
More of a crossword-look-up-the-answers-you-don’t-know or a crossword-guessing-game than a crossword puzzle.
It didn’t hold me up, but I thought it was kind of wack having two words in Italian cross in the center.
Ice rain? I've never heard of ice rain. I've heard of freezing rain. Icy rain is what made sense and that messed everything else up. Ice rain is not a thing.
I add to the chorus of no, ice rain is not a thing. Ice storm, freezing rain, and sleet are commonly used, but I have never heard of ice rain. That clue really tripped me up! I simply could not accept that was the answer lol. For a while I was working around ICYROAD.
Surprised at how many thought this was easy. I found it to be incredibly frustrating. Even though I am familiar with the NATO alphabet.
feeling validated by all these comments agreeing it was weirdly hard but not in a satisfying way. i straight up had to look at the answer key to finish the SW corner and i've never done that before 😭 lol. like other comments pointed out -- too heavy on the proper nouns. i did enjoy the theme though!
@Anna Agreed! And I just Googled it. It doesn't appear in any of the top hits, which all referred to sleet and/or freezing rain.
@Anna we get it a lot in the pacific NW. Never called ICE RAIN. It's actually called FREEZING RAIN.
Ice rain? Can't say I've heard that ever used here in Wisconsin! TAUTEN and WELCHS also stuck out as weird and clunky answers. Lot of proper nouns too, and having two Italian words intersect is...interesting for a puzzle in the New York Times. Not the biggest fan of this one but a Thursday with no rebus puzzle is always appreciated!
@Craig Yep, hope we can all be heard about the inferiority of this puzzle.
Count me among the solvers who found Tuesday, Wednesday, and today’s all harder than usual. Still fun! They just seem to have more tricky clueing and/or less immediately recognizable names than I’m used to.
A sort of fun, sort of annoying crossword. Great theme but too many proper names. Solved nearly the entire puzzle but got stuck in the weird and unseemly convergence of highbrow and lowbrow stuff in the NE corner. It turns out I was vaguely familiar with all but one of the answers. I needed one look up - Lisa Ling - then the rest came to me. So a fun puzzle overall but lacking some thoughtfulness with the crosses.
@Mark i am unfamiliar with JJ Watt and i deliberated a long time between rail and jail for the monopoly image.
Clever puzzle. Putting the theme clues in italics made it much easier. I agree with others regarding ICERAIN. It's called freezing rain, and believe me, it's more than just a driving hazard (anyone else remember the 1998 ice storm?) Polar instead of PANDA slowed things up for me in the NE corner
@Esmerelda That 1998 storm that left those huge electrical wire transports Crushed from the weight of three-quarter inches of ice? Freezing rain… terrifying. ICE RAIN? Hail.
This one defeated me. In fact, I had two squares wrong when I first finished. Can't remember the last time that happened. Both mistakes involved names, of which there were an *awful* lot today. And both errors were my fault, and could have been avoided with some reflection. But I simply wanted to be done with this one, which I found one of the least enjoyable (especially on a Thursday!) puzzles in a long while. I had HEX rather than VEX, and failed to notice that EVAN made more sense than EHAN. But I didn't know the director, and was also unsure of the N since I didn't know the thief's name either. I also had JTWATT, since I didn't know the football star, and I was misdirected (nice job there) into thinking Knight was yet another proper name. About the puzzle---no idea why this is running today. This seems a Wednesday puzzle. The theme was simple enough, and seemed to involve no Thursday trickery. Some of the fill was ... well, pick your own adjectives for TAUTEN, ISON and ... ICERAIN (no such thing). For the constructor's and editor's sakes, I sure hope other folks enjoyed this one more than I did. No way on Earth I'd have run this puzzle, no matter what day of the week.
@Xword Junkie That really was wince-worthy! It's FREEZING RAIN, folks, and it is more to be feared than snow....at least until the thaw/freeze cycle gets under way.
@Xword Junkie I had practically the same experience, and reaction. Well said! The clue [Film writer/director Goldberg] felt especially galling. Okay fine, the clue author wanted to call out this particular movie maker, for whatever reason. Then make it a clue that actually provides the context, so we all can appreciate it! I have since discovered his oeuvre -- but IMdB lists his work first and foremost as a producer, which isn't even in the clue... Keeping the vague/tricky quotient, how about [Seth's longtime production partner] -? Or easier, [Sophomoric humorist ____ Goldberg] ... <a href="https://imdb.com/name/nm1698571" target="_blank">https://imdb.com/name/nm1698571</a>/
@Xword Junkie if this was a Wednesday then I'm truly cooked. I've been doing Wednesdays for a few months and I barely filled half of this puzzle. Surely you jest.
This was quite the brain-twister! Fortunately for me, I started with 30D. (I'm not really DRESSED TO THE NINES--I have on LLBean flannel Jammies) but I quickly had a trio of entries that led me farther South.... and suddenly, ARTHUR ASHE stood before me. Alas, TUTTI didn't work with GAZPACHO, so I tried TANTO for 27D, then revised for BUOYS at the crossing. I didn't go back to reconsider, so I have an incorrect letter! Waaah. Does this make me an ERSATZ Solver? We enjoyed the (impossible but endearing) Lupin series. Less enjoyable: JJWATT (Who? What? Was this trip necessary?) Neither have I heard of the DAVIES, who are, it seems, Kinky. Ha. I have never heard of a WELCH'S soda (soft drink, pop, carbonated beverage)...it sounds like a tummy-ache waiting to happen. Well, enough about my life of deprivation (vehicles, sports, junk food in plastic containers.) Enlightenment is hard to come by!
@Mean Old Lady JJ WATT has been in a lot of TV commercials lately, notably the Peloton one with his lesser-known brother, AJ. Not a fan of grape soda, either, but I knew it wasn't Nehi.
I have to agree with others. This was a bad week. I’m fine with words that I don’t know the meaning of on a Thurs but can someone explain how Authur Ashe pertains other than he is a man who had two names that start with A? And soda for welches? There is no such thing as a gazpacho course. It’s a dish you serve during a course. It could have just as easily been gravy or Gouda. Lots of good stuff in there but the theme was just bad.
A mixed bag for me, which perhaps makes it a good Thursday. Started well, without understanding the theme. A proper headslap when I got NATO. DUH! I’m pleased as punch to get WATUSI. I’ve been bingeing Swing dancing on YouTube for a while, the incredible dancers have introduced me to the moves for that, plus the Nitty Gritty amongst others. Ray’s surname was a gimme, but the other names were complete unknowns, making that whole right side almost impossible to fill. Is 42A a soda brand? I’m on a bit of a high this morning as we won the pub quiz last night. A very rare event which of course necessitated extra drinks. Probably why my eyes are struggling to focus on the puzzle. That’s the excuse I’m sticking to anyway.
@Helen Wright Congrats on the pub quiz win 👍🏾
@Helen Wright Yes, 42A is a soda brand. WELCH'S is actually a company owned by a grape cooperative that makes grape products, such as jams and jellies, juices and the like, but licenses out its name for a line of fruit-flavored sodas to another company. The name is much more associated with the various grape products than the line of sodas, which are very much niche brands. I did a double take when I saw that as the answer to the clue, because I hadn't even remembered that there were sodas with the WELCH'S name; they're that little a deal.
I found this to be a serviceable puzzle, but that's not what I expect on Thursday. It seemed rather lackluster, and once I saw the author's credentials in the column (i.e. that he was the one who constructed the five "Blackbird" puzzles), I wasn't surprised. I can't get into that set of puzzles, and have no idea so far why I should be interested in that poem. At least I didn't come into this one with those preconceived notions, since I didn't realize who the constructor was. In other words, I didn't find much excitement in this one on its own merits. Two inelegant things were that "alpha" in the 51A clue is not the spelling used in the NATO alphabet, and "Charlie" used in the 17A clue, although it is the NATO spelling, is not the usual spelling in the phrase "Charley horse". And WELCH'S as a soda brand? Technically correct and admissable, but très niche.
Really disliked this one (although I solved without lookups). Chock full with proper names that I don’t care about, indeterminate foreign words, etc. DAVIES crossing WATUSI and COTTA (which could equally well have been COTTO) crossing HIYA (not a word)? Give me a break. Even for the glue (of which there was plenty!) the cluing was subpar. An ALP is a [Challenge for a skier]? In what sense other than it’s a mountain? What else would one ski on? I’ve skied in the Alps and there are plenty of easy trails to choose from. How did that clue make it past the editors? It’s not even cute: it’s just wrong. A sparkling theme would have made up for the decidedly mediocre fill. But the execution was poor. ARTHUR ASHE is indeed a male, yes. But that hardly seems his defining characteristic. Similarly, one can serve GAZPACHO as a first course, but that’s true of many many foods. I understand that a clue is not a definition. But these are really terrible clues IMO. It was basically a thematic equivalent of green paint. The other themers were better (I admit that I cracked a smile at SERGIO) but not enough to make up for the stinkers. I have enjoyed being perplexed by David’s enigmatic homage to Wallace Stevens. Let’s hope he goes back to that soon.
@Nat K I'm wondering - what do you mean by green paint?