When it comes to calculus puns, I have my limit. (Besides, they're pretty derivative.)
@Mike Unless they're irrational. (Ok, I'll log out now)
@Mike Just be sure to brush your teeth twice a day and floss at bedtime. That should take care of it.
@Mike If I had a penny for every time I’d laughed at one of your puns, at least I’d know my rate of change
@Mike There's got to be a trig to it. Now I'll jabber a bit at the emus.
A first for me: being happy about getting SCIATICA
@Lisa I got that one at once, too. I once wrote about the experience, using the title "Report from Planet SCIATICA."
Turns out I have no idea how to spell Kilimanjaro 🤣
@Alison It’s the second time in about a week that I’ve done a puzzle with that answer. Both times, I’ve had to leave the third vowel blank and fill it in with the cross.
@Alison Isn’t it a wonderful word though?
@Alison One of my favorite photos from my Kenyan safari was taken from that same spot as the column photo.
@Alison I know that I must do what's right As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti I bless the rains down in Africa (just in case you're missing an ear worm)
@Alison samesies! PREMaSo gave away something being off so hopefully it sticks. Don’t recall ever trying to spell it out until this puzzle came along.
The most amazing thing in this crossword is the notion that a dessert could be topped with Gummy Bears and chocolate chips. Oh, America!
@Petrol I once ate a candied bacon cake in Bend, Oregon...
@Petrol And people opt for frozen yogurt because they think it's healthier than ice cream. (American who used to sell ice cream.)
@Petrol Yup. I actually said, "Gah!" aloud in a public place when I hit that one.
@Petrol Absolutely my first thought, followed by overwhelming nausea.
@Petrol I fully expect there's worse
@Petrol Two words: ortolan bunting 😉
@Petrol If you eat Chunky Monkey, you don't need no stinkin' toppings! Now that I'm lactose-intolerant, I have to do without ice cream unless I'm willing to take the consequences.
@Petrol My take, exactly. Spoiled my breakfast, that clue. @Steve L I'd forgotten that about Season 1. Those writers were brilliantly fiendish.
Trying to come up with my own... This puzzle was the perfect amount of [Tr°uble] for me! (degree of difficulty)
The math wasn’t hard, because each entry fit its clue so well. Fun! Here’s what I got: d/dt (tragedy + time) DERIVATIVE COMEDY
Fun theme but poor execution with too much junk (ASSAM, KARO, FAA, ESE, NENES, NGOS, AGA, RKO, MOS, IVE, ESO, SRA, SUPE, UFC, OPI, RAITA, ETTE, MSS, AGEE, OGEE) plus the dupe of LETUP and LETON. Yuck. A whopping 34(!) 3-letter words that were, for the most part, bad fill really soured the experience. Plus the longer entries like ESOTERICA and SCIATACA just weren't that enjoyable. More time should have been spent on grid construction/layout IMO.
@Joe Do you create puzzles ? It is SO hard to make a good puzzle . Try it before you criticize how many three letter words appear in the grid . Kudos to Emily and Kunal - great work - and fun as well .
@Joe I don't remember most of the junk entries you mentioned, I must've got them from crossing letters alone but I take your point - they look pretty ugly all together like that. ESOTERICA is lovely, though, and SCIATICA? Maybe not "lovely", but a nice word! Overall I was very happy with this puzzle, the theme and other clever clues made up for any necessary filler for me.
@Joe Kind of the opposite of my experience. Fun theme, yes, but a little too easy to figure out. But the unusual fill kept it interesting.
@Joe I agree sciatica isn't enjoyable, But don't knock esoterica if you haven't tried it.
Strangely, the integral sign ∫ was missing from my online clue for 99A “workout routine”, so I was a bit confused by that until reading the column. But I figured out the answer easily enough. SQUARED UP and ADDED COMPLEXITY are my favorites. Nice debut of DIFFERENCE OF OPINION. I’m surprised that has never appeared before. A clever theme and a solving experience that I enjoyed to the nth degree. Nicely done, Emily and Kunal.
"... the integral sign ∫ was missing from my online clue for 99A ..." Anita, What format/platform/blah blah blah? (To see if others are also missing it.(
@Anita Same here, I’m on Chrome on iOS, no integral symbol for me. I can see it in the article though. The minus sign was also so small it looked like a spec of dust on my screen.
I love how this theme originated – that Kunal has a habit of imagining phrases that contain a math word as math formulas, and thought, “Maybe there’s a theme here…” Then he and Emily brainstormed and came up with enough theme answers (7) to make a Sunday puzzle out of it. Stellar constructor Peter Gordon, who, with 130 NYT puzzles under his belt, ought to know, told me that 9 out of 10 theme ideas fall flat for lack of enough theme answers. So, the goddess Fortuna smiled on Kunal and Emily today, providing sufficient answers, not to mention giving them the talent to find them and create perfecto clues for them. Their grid contains ten NYT debut answers. Debut answers can bring spark to the solve, giving solvers clues and answers they’ve never encountered before. They can also be dull and not contribute anything to the fill-in. Almost all of today’s are of the former type, IMO, my favorites being DIFFERENCE OF OPINION, SQUARED UP, GO TOO FAR, and, as clued, the exquisite IN A PAST LIFE. And so, much fortune in the box today. Congratulations on your first Sunday, Kunal, and your NYT puzzle debut Emily, and thank you so much for making this!
If only "one term" applied to someone else! Black Monday ahead. Otherwise, Emily and Kunal, you can return as often as you wish...
Voting is now open for the 2024 Puzzle of the Year awards. Nominees are in four groups: Early Week (Monday–Wednesday), Thursday, Themeless (Friday & Saturday) and Sunday. As in years past, there will be two rounds of voting. In the first round, you may select up to five puzzles in each group. The five puzzles receiving the most votes will move on to the second round of voting. First round voting ends January 24. Here's the link to the ballot: <a href="https://form.jotform.com/243358842724059" target="_blank">https://form.jotform.com/243358842724059</a> Many thanks to everyone who nominated a puzzle. I don't think I missed any nominations, but if I did, let me know ASAP and I'll add it to them to the ballot. Thanks also to John Ezra and Cat Lady Margaret for their help with this project. If the third-party ballot doesn't work for some reason, blame me and not John or Margaret.
@Eric Hougland Voted! You and John and CLM did a truly amazing job! The ballot is easy to navigate and it was a lot of fun to revisit so many excellent puzzles.
@Eric Hougland I appreciate all the hard work that clearly went into its beautiful construction, but it was way too easy to complete.
Eric, There's an error in the Nominations for Best Early Week Puzzle The September 2 puzzle was by Sala Wanetick and Emily Biegas, not Alex Eaton-Salners I think the description matches Alex's puzzle, but not the Sept. 2 puzzle by Sala and Emily
@Eric Hougland Check the spelling on Simeon Seigel (not Siegel) for the Thursday and Sunday ballots?
@Eric Hougland Thank you(and your cohorts) so much! You made it all so clear and easy, although choosing winners from amongst all those winning puzzles was tough.
@Eric Hougland Bravo! Standing ovation for the impressive work! For those who haven't yet voted, please know that this terrific trio has broken it down to remind us, in a few words, of what each puzzle entailed, making it very easy to jog our memory. I'm in awe. Thank you, Eric H, John E, and CLM!
@Eric Hougland First, thanks so much to all three of you for doing this. Second, I tried to submit but I keep getting this error: Incomplete Values Nominations for Best Early Week Puzzle (select up to 5): September 2 (Alex Eaton-Salners) — Each theme answer was a type of party and circled letters in each theme answer was a different type of party: TUPPERWARE included circles spelling TEA; SOCIALIST included circles spelling CAST. The central revealer was TWO-PARTY SYSTEM. option(s) unavailable I took them all out and reselected them but still get the message. Any ideas? Maybe I'll try a different brower... ;-/
@Eric Hougland Will my “I voted” sticker be arriving by mail? Thank you!
Easy but fun Sunday puzzle. And nice to see some representation with quite a few India-themed clues.
Lovely Sunday puzzle, with just enough ESOTERICA for ADDED COMPLEXITY. There will be DIFFERENCEs OF OPINION on that amount, I'm sure. Thanks, Emily and Kunal.
If it weren’t for crossword puzzles, the IDYL spelling would go the way of the dodo. Or of aeternall. The only way it would move the Google Ngram Viewer needle would be when new editions of Tennyson’s ‘English Idyls’ were digitized. But here we are, celebrating its 99th appearance in the NYT. Noah Webster is doing cartwheels in his resting place. Unnecessary double Ls enjoyed a special place in his craw. Even Tennyson didn’t stay faithful to his IDYLS, He turned right around (we call it a UEY in common xword junk fill) and we got his ‘IDYLLS of the King’ just a couple of decades later. You could say he got right, er, past oral influences. (Go ahead, groan away.) Like all misguided things, we got IDYL from the French who, in the wild and orthographically crazy 17th c., spelled it as idyle instead of idylle, and for a couple hundred years IDYL was good enough. Blount’s and Phillips’s early English dictionaries in the 1650s gave us IDYL; Noah Webster gave us IDYL in 1806. But then the Victorians said, “Ooh, Hellenism! What a bright and shiny thing.” And they trudged out the Greek eidŭ́llĭon to bring IDYL back to its classical roots. Tennyson was thus corrupted in 1858, and the OED published the fascicle with IDYLL in 1899. Noah would have disagreed. He thought silent letters superfluous. He said that if we were to honor Greek etymology, then we should have “fyzzic, karacter, [and] korus.” But crossword puzzles are keeping IDYL alive.
@Sam Lyons Sam, you should try out for American IDYL.
@Sam Lyons "But crossword puzzles are keeping IDYL alive." ...and Spelling Bee
@Steve L I am, on the other hand, suited for American Idle.
I found this an appropriate Sunday challenge; there were quite a few delightful clues, including those for the theme, which put me in mind of my father who, when I was a kid struggling to multiply and divide fractions, bought me a mathematical encyclopedia that I still have 60 years later…though I still struggle with multiplying and dividing fractions. I thought of my sister, too, who failed geometry in high school, said it wasn’t going to defeat her, and went on to become a professor of mathematics.
Excellent puzzle, many thanks to Emily and Kunal! The themed entries were satisfying to work out with just a few crossing letters. Wonderfully clever clues and entries. My favourite Martin Van Buren fact: he was the first US president born in the United States of America
@Alex It seems that Van Buren is the only US president for whom English was not his first language. He spoke Dutch first, even though he was indeed born in New York state. (Jackson was born in one of the Carolinas, but prior to the formation of the US.)
For 92A, did anybody else want to tie a cherry STEM into a knot with their tongue, a la Sherilyn Fenn in "Twin Peaks?" That would be my tribute to David Lynch. Fire walk with me.
There are frequent questions posted here that can be answered by a quick query on xwordino.com I want to remind everyone that for a mere $20 per year you can sign up and support the invaluable work that Jim Horne does.
@Nancy J. Thanks for answering my question about POLARVORTEX.
@Nancy J. <a href="https://xwordinfo.com" target="_blank">https://xwordinfo.com</a>/
@Nancy J. I've been signed up for almost a year and really enjoy it. There are so many other features in it that I haven't even explored yet. Definitely worth the cost of admission!
Emily and Kunal, thank you. Brilliant puzzle, wickedly clever theme. First Sunday I’ve solved without any hints or lookups. I’ll tell ya what though, trying to spell KILIMANJARO without any crosses was a test of my memory that’s for sure.
How is anyone supposed to solve this if they don't tell us when he won the Hugo?!
@ad absurdum Crosses, my friend. Crosses. But I see what you did there ;)
@ad absurdum Hugo to google. I go to crosses.
@ad absurdum "We'll always have Google. If we lost it, we got it back yesterday, when you reminded us how to find the date of awards." Enough!
I just want to point out that HOTEL CALIFORNIA won in 1978, not 1976. ;)
Bob, (1) Wrong Comments. (2) Please reread the clue.
@Bob T. That’s really pretty funny. We have a few nicknames (I think Steve L came up with several of them) to refer to certain types of situations that arise related to clues/answers or types of criticisms in the comments. Natick, KEALOA, DOOK, and such things as the tamale trap, too-close-syndrome, etc. This thing with the dates which arises with Award years I think has no name . The HC thing is kinda the same…which year the album came out, the single came out, the award was given. It begs for a moniker. I’m thinking….
I found this very arcane with references to things I never heard of. I walked away.
@Asher "things I never heard of". Hah, I usually have a half a dozen or so of those on Thursday through Sunday puzzles and still manage to complete them without outside help close to 100% of the time. Sometimes you have to walk away from the puzzle, and come back later to take another stab at it. Repeat as needed.
Nene is a Hawaiian goose. Bébe is a Spanish baby. Did the constructor mean something else?!
@Tania I have no idea why it was ninos.
@Tania Nene is a Spanish colloquial word that can be used for a baby or child, as well as a term of endearment, just as "baby" might be used in English.
You know what? You CAN'T win 'em all. Tsk. I had to give up in the SW corner. IN A PAST LIFE I might have gotten this, but not today. This is all the time I have to devote to Fun and Games! Some kind of RAT, and 87D's entry of "CHECKED" (off) --you tick things off on your To-Do List-- and of course "singer-songwriter" is a fatal category for me... So, 4 wrong letters. Neither the sun nor the MOLE RAT could ARISE for me today. It's pretty cold, the winds are high, and the clouds are amassed. Very clever puzzle concept, ad I really enjoyed sussing the themers out. I always like to be reminded of "Mr. Hartje" at Florida Southern (later he earned the PhD and returned for the rest of his career.) He was a wonderful teacher of "The Queen of Sciences," as he called it, and for the first time I really understood what we were doing and why. It was a revelation! He urged me to change my major, and maybe it would have been a good thing to do--but this was back in the day when a woman could be a teacher, nurse, or secretary--and I didn't question the "acceptable choices." (However, I did know every possible way to be confused, and I was a grand math teacher for my special ed students... LOL)
@Mean Old Lady If you'd grown up watching Disney cartoons of the early aughts, you would have known 107A. Kim Possible's friend Ron Stoppable had a pet naked MOLE RAT, named Rufus. The cartoon is cuter than the real thing, let me tell you.
@Mean Old Lady Or an airline stewardess!
@Mean Old Lady Your high regard for your mathematics professor prompted me to look him up. Seems Dr. Henry J. Hartje Jr. had a lot of fans. If you haven’t already, you should see his “In Memory” page on-line. Seems he was an inspiration to many and was the reason quite a few people ended up in fields related to math. He must have been quite a teacher. <a href="https://tinyurl.com/2ekc4j5r" target="_blank">https://tinyurl.com/2ekc4j5r</a>
@Mean Old Lady I loved math, but didn't want to teach HS math. What else could a woman do with a math degree?? My Dad introduced me to a female friend who programmed computers at Lockheed -- this was 1968. I went back to college, took a FORTRAN class and the rest is history! I met my husband that same Fall. I say it's the year I fell in love twice.
Deb was told there would be no math. Good thing Caitlin caught this one. Lots of fun in the puzzle, and I'm also enjoying the posters' themers! Thanks, Emily and Kunal, ETAL.
I am mathematically challenged, so I ignored the signs and did the words. Worked for me.
As an ed. who works mostly with math-related mss, could you guys have not used a proper division symbol (÷)? Aside from that, fun solve!
Ok, so Caitlin’s column cleared up why I found the theme clues impossible; maths. Ugh. I have dyscalculia, confirmed in my 40’s when my youngest was ‘diagnosed ‘. Before that I was just thick, according to every maths teacher I ever had. How times change. As I was thrown out of every maths class and was never allowed to take physics or chemistry (see teacher’s assessment of me above), I have no idea what all the squiggles mean by the theme clues. I tell you, it triggers my PTSD just looking at them. Thank goodness my kids had a smoother ride through the education system. Anyhoo, the puzzle was good, if I ignore the maths stuff. The Indian based clues were interesting; I love RAITA, but haven’t come across the chickpea balls before. Gummy bears and other super sugary stuff on an already sweet dessert fairly turned my stomach, but each to their own.
@Helen Wright So dyscalculia is a real thing? I always just say "I do words, not numbers. I'm dismathic," assuming I was making up a syndrome or disease or condition. But numbers, and especially word problems, make me sick to my stomach. And people like my son and my husband, who are both right-and left-brained leave me gobsmacked. I have no idea how they can keep that stuff in their brains AND be so creative at the same time. On top of that, my son was born with learning disabilities. Well, as we like to say, if you didn't know, you wouldn't know.
Got this one in max(d/dx displacement) for a Sunday.
I thought it took me a long time to solve this but apparently, this was 5:24 faster than my average. Yikes. I guess you could say me and my time had a DIFFERENCEOFOPINION. No? No takers? I guess I'll stick to puzzle-solving then 😉
This is the first Sunday puzzle I could complete without going to the hints. Enjoyed it!
I will commit OPI to memory. I will commit OPI to memory. I will commit OPI to memory. Fun puzzle with just a few look ups.
Took me much too long to guess Raita and Assam, but thoroughly enjoyed the references to Indian cuisine, geography and mythology.
Caitlin, excellent video choice 👏. Mitchell and Webb are just the best! Puzzle was enjoyable as well - nice work Emily and Kunal!
Typical tough Saturday for me, and did have to cheat a bit in a couple of places. And... must confess that I wasn't entirely catching on to the trick in some of the theme answers. Had to go back and ponder after I was done, and even then was a bit unsure of a couple of them. No big deal; that's me. A quite unusual (and appropriate) puzzle find today. This one was also all in the clues (and some quite unusual answers). A Thursday from August 11, 2011 by Parker Lewis. Here are some sample theme clues and answers: "3, 6, 11, 18, 27 ... :" XSQUAREDPLUSTWO "4, 2, 4/3, 1, 4/5 ... :" TWENTYOVERFIVEX "8, 1, -18, -55, -116 ... :" NINEMINUSXCUBED And... the 'reveals' (both of them down answers): "Any of the clues for 17-, 34- or 57-Across :" SEQUENCE "In the answers to 17-, 34- and 57-Across, it was replaced in turn by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ... :" VARIABLE One time math major here, but I'm quite sure my chances at that one would have been zero (appropriately). Here's the Xword Info link: <a href="https://xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=8/11/2011&g=17&d=A" target="_blank">https://xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=8/11/2011&g=17&d=A</a> I'll shut up now. ....
@Rich in Atlanta Oh... and one more puzzle find. Probably a bit more appropriate tomorrow (that's a really big day here), but... whatever. Anyway - a Monday from January 20, 2014 by Elizabeth C. Gorski. One clue/answer combination: "Site of a 1963 speech by 38-Across" LINCOLNMEMORIAL And the other theme answers: MLKJR IHAVEADREAM WEAREFREEATLAST Here's the Xword Info link: <a href="https://xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=1/20/2014&g=38&d=A" target="_blank">https://xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=1/20/2014&g=38&d=A</a> .....
More often than not, a puzzle's theme is a nuisance to work around. But this puzzle's is GREAT! (Read in Tony the Tiger voice.) It's one of the rare ones that both entertains and facilitates solving. Rare for me, anyway. I'm not as sharp as I used to be. Very well done!
@Jeff Z fun fact: the guy who voiced Tony was also the singer of "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch".
I was just thinking today, and congratulating myself because I never look stuff up, except once a couple of years ago - do Americans really spell IDYLLS with just one L - thus IDYLS? As a Brit resident here for 40 years, it's a word which has never come up AFAIK, and yes it really is spelled so in US English.
@Andrew Yank here, and I never knew it could be spelled with one L.
@Andrew Aesthetically, idylls (as in "Idylls of the King," my first encounter with the word, when I was a little girl playing a card game called "Authors") seems the only acceptable spelling. At first I couldn't figure out what the clue was referring to.
@Andrew It's one of those annoying words that can be spelled both ways.
I can’t believe it! I have Pachinko right on my bedside table (I have yet to read it but now I’m definitely going to!). Absolute fate.
@Han -- And I do believe you will enjoy it!
Nice puzzle. Straightforward Sunday early morning. Had to come here to understand DEMO but then again one doesn’t need to get everything. Natnicks, at least for this member of the international contingent, at AYO FROYO, DAN RAITA, and KARO PAOLO but they were all guessable. Thanks
@Ιασων I'm not quite sure froyo and raita are naticks but agree with the rest.
@Ιασων DEMO in this case is short for demographic segment, such as females of a particular age group. I think only statisticians would ever use the term "demo" on the regular - to me, just "demographic" is enough. Demo also means "demonstration" in the world of software development, and that's what I automatically think of.
Really enjoyed this one. A clever theme, well-executed, easily justified (to me) the fill needed to get it done. I like a theme that gives me an “aha!” moment early on and helps me complete the rest of the theme set. In this case, once I had DIVISION OF from the crosses, I saw … LABOR right away and then had fun with the other themers. As a result, this was a rather quick solve although I got a bit stymied in the SW — REP and SAC didn’t come readily, I still think CHEESED should have been clued as a Britishism (have never heard anyone say it on this side of the pond), and my initial purchase of an IpAd rather than an IMAC didn’t help. But I straightened that out soon enough. Thanks Emily and Kunal — look forward to the results of your next road trip!
Fun solve and clever theme. Thank you! Almost nailed it with a personal best time were it not for a typo while attempting to "Fard" the river at 70D.
I always like when you can discern something about the author from clues/themes in the answers. This one had: Aga Khan Raita Assam Mahabharata Ginger Was pretty sure we had an Indian author!
@Tim And no NAAN or SARI either, which indicate not an Indian background but a familiarity in Crosswordese and the land of Crossword.
@Tim I'd rather not have a puzzle where you have to share a background with the writer to know what's going on. Math is universal, obscure ESOTERICA isn't.
I got stuck in the SE for a bit, and *almost* had to do a lookup, but I left it while I filled in the rest of the puzzle, and suddenly (it always works that way, right?) the rest was a breeze. Weirdly, EXEC is what I was really stumped on for the longest time.
We love to the print the puzzle and leave it on the island in the kitchen. Anyone cruising by is free to play. Sadly, this one is just one page with very small print. and puzzle. Is there any way you can make into a 2-page puzzle like previous ones? Many thanks!
@Lexi Lexi, what a wonderful way to do and share puzzles. You created such a warm and beautiful picture for me and I thank you for sharing. Have a wonderful week,
@Lexi I “kind of “ miss the days when we would lie around with the Sunday times spread all over then work the puzzle together,sometimes for a few days. No answer key, no Google.
@Lexi you're right, the "large print" link seems to lead to the standard pdf. I'll report it.
Another breezy puzzle, filled easily then the search for typos…. Found three and was rewarded with a gold star! Bested my Thursday average time so that hints to it being pretty easy for a larger puzzle. I thought idyll had two l’s…
@John Idyll does usually have two l's, but IDYL is a less common variant.
I thoroughly enjoyed this puzzle. It’s an amazing feat to construct clues to math symbols. Kudos to you both for a fun puzzle!