@Logan I blame the editors — Will Shortz et al.
@Logan Et alii, aliae and alia are the same thing, just with different genders. Masculine/mixed, feminine and neutral respectively.
@Logan It's appeared so often recently I've added it to my KEALOA list. I just fill in the ALI- and wait for the cross to tell me which is right.
Is it just me or are Tuesday puzzles harder these days? So many obscure clues (some of them, I know the words but not in the way they’re clued) and proper nouns for me, granted I could manage most with crosses. ISOLDE, NIP, BARD, DAR, DARKSHADOWS, DANDER, TALESE, OKIE, ROD. Too many for Tuesday imho
@Intermediate level My experience says no. I have a couple of Tuesdays in the past few months where my time was significantly longer than usual, a couple where it was significantly faster than usual, and the vast majority were around my average Tuesday time. This as per xwstats.com. So as they say, your mileage may vary. None of the answers you cited seemed particularly difficult to me. And I didn't think any of those were crosswordese, either. Hope the next one is easier for you!
@Intermediate level A question of wheelhouses, I'd say. Opera, Shakespeare, Geography, and Psalm 23 clues are somewhat specialized areas but not particularly esoteric examples. A certain maturity, (age), helped with DARKSHADOWS and TALESE.
@Intermediate level My Tuesday times have gotten faster each week this month. I found January 7 way hard for a Tuesday (nearly thrice today's time) and today was standard Tuesday time. Middle two weeks were roughly 1.5x today's time.
@Intermediate level – Agreed, some clues felt a bit esoteric for me too. But I also realize we might be in the minority, esp if the constructor is from a diff generation / region
@Intermediate level I agree completely. I only do Monday and Tuesday puzzles as I am elderly and never did crosswords until 3 years ago. I started with the mini. It took me a year to work up to the Monday crosswords. I started Tuesdays about a year ago and could get about 75% done. But this last month, I started having difficulty with whole sections.
@Intermediate level I agree with the "wheelhouse" comment, as this puzzle was one big "gimme" for me. Looking at your list, I'm surprised at the inclusion of dander and rod.
@Intermediate level It's all in what esoterica you know. I did this one in not much over half my usual Tuesdays. None of those answers you listed were current pop culture. That's my big weakness....
I had a wry grin on my face when I finished this one.
"You lived at this bakery growing up?" "Born and bread." ("Most days, I'd just loaf around.")
@Mike Thanks for your rye sense of humor. I can rely on you to make me smile. Let the good times roll! (I wish!)
@Mike I couldn't stand the heat, but looks like bakin' eggs you on. 🥓
@Mike You knead to up your game. Some of your material is half-baked.
Appreciated the wordplay in retrospect -- didn't see it while solving. But as the great-grandchild of Swedish immigrants, I do have to point out that the puzzle omits the best one of all: Swedish rye bread. My mother, an excellent baker, spent much of the 1960's and 1970's trying to match Great Aunt Alice's rye bread (and quietly suspecting that Alice had omitted something important from the recipe she provided). Mom finally got there through considerable trial and error. It's one more thing I really miss about her every Christmas. Anyway, that's why I teared up just a little at the end of this crossword. Miss you, Mom!
@DYT I love Swedish Rye and baked it as a teen. I used my Swedish grandmother's recipe and even made it to take to the county fair. It went to the state fair! Great puzzle with a wonderful theme. Thanks Dan Margolis!
After “SEEDED” and “JEWISH” I was thinking “rye”, then that terrific revealer practically made me stand and applaud. Just a wonderful theme experience. RISE by itself could have worked as the revealer, but ALL RISE adds a terrific layer – nice move! EASE is a fitting answer, IMO. The NE and SW corners had to be given very easy clues because they are almost completely disconnected from the rest of the grid, and the whole puzzle, to me, felt traditionally Tuesday-easy, after several recent difficult-for-Tuesday puzzles. As I scanned the grid, I liked the near-dupes AWE/AYE and EARN/EARL, and the cross of AYE and EYE. Lovely answers in SNOUT and SLOSHES. Sweet to see Dan back after four years. His last puzzle, a Sunday (12/13/20) had a scintillating wordplay theme as well. Thank you, Dan, for a great “Oho!” moment at uncovering the revealer, and for stimulating my taste buds by bringing a bread I love to the fore!
I solved this in Tuesday time without lookups, which is very strange considering I did not get the theme (even though the revealer was a gimme) and for this time in the week there were surprisingly many clues I did not know the answer to. The bottom where an unknown title crossed with unknown names and terms was especially nasty. Can you imagine my horror when I saw the first themed entry and considered the possibility the theme would be sports-based? 🤣 In the end the theme turned out to be impenetrable for me, anyway. So the theme was about rye bread? Poland has great bread, the best I've tasted anywhere in the world: high quality, tasty *and* cheap. Our sourdough is incredible - so good I sometimes slowly munch on a plain slice smiling like a madman. Alas, I know very little about American bread. I just remember being unimpressed by it in general on our American holidays in 2011 and 2013. Most of what we were served in the Western states we visited was strangeiy sweet, dense and either too dry or too wet, without any crust to speak of. Maybe when we finally visit New York we will be pleasantly surprised by its bread - a rye, possibly?
@Andrzej Yes, there is some rye bread in New York that is delicious. However, the bread in Europe cannot be compared to the bread in the U.S. My husband used to complain all the time about the bread in America. Now that I have traveled to many European countries, I get it. Bread is *serious* here. There is a bread truck that comes through my neighborhood daily with a loud, distinctive horn. It’s like the summertime rounds of American ice cream trucks. The worst supermercado in Portugal has bread made fresh and daily. It’s an experience I wouldn’t have understood if someone explained it to me before moving here.
@Andrzej You might be disappointed by an American "Rye". As far as I can tell it has very little rye flour in it, or at least, a very light variety of rye - it just means, "not completely white bread". Delicious for sandwiches, sure, but don't go in there expecting pumpernickel!
@Andrzej There is very fine bread available in the US, but the bulk of the widely available commercial breads are pretty bland and very highly processed. I am fortunate to live within walking distance of a very fine French bakery, which makes great baguettes and the best croissants I’ve tasted outside France.
@Andrzej There is great bread to be had in New York City (and a few other big cities in America) if you go to the right bakery (preferably one with Jewish origins). But bread that one finds in American supermarkets is sad stuff, created to have a long shelf life...and very little flavor or texture. As Sam points out in her column, many of these tasty breads (and bagels and bialys!) have their origin in the immigration of Jews from Eastern Europe. Some of them probably left their recipes behind, so I assume there is sill excellent bread to be had in Poland. I'm tempted to make some comment about the Jews of Poland, but I prefer to leave this comment more upbeat.
A general comment: I developed the habit of copying any long comment I didn't want to lose onto the clipboard until I could verify that it posted, and many were the times when it was a good thing that I did. Sometimes, the comments didn't go through, and I had to paste them back into a new comment box for them to post. Recently, though, I haven't noticed any problems with comments posted within a minute or two of being submitted. This is a noticeable improvement for the tech crew, and should be noted. This should go hand in hand with the puzzle going live every single day at 10 pm Eastern (or 6 on the weekends) on...the...dot.... That didn't always use to happen. But it seems that that issue is also in the past. (But it has been fixed for much longer than the first issue.) Now if only we could get Wordplay to be available directly from the main Games page every single day, starting right away. (There was an issue one day recently, maybe Friday.) But I don't think the same kind of issue. I think when this happens, it's because someone submits an URL with an error in it. Overall, though, there's been an improvement in the user experience, technically speaking. It should be noted.
@Steve L I have been having technical issues for a few weeks now, trying to comment on the Wordplay forum. I get caught in a circular log in loop, and NYT Games support have not been able to help me resolve it. Luckily I can comment right now, but I probably won't be able to reply later as it will more than likely stick me in the log in loop again.
@Steve L My comment would have been lost today had I not copied it to clipboard before posting. And it was just one of many such cases in recent days. In my experience, the software is just as bad as it has always been. Also, "moderation" is still erratic and unpredictable. A few days ago one of my comments did not show up, even though others did. I have no idea why, as there was nothing objectionable about it. I have lost any hope of the NYT doing anything about any of this.
Definitely feel like the Mondays and Tuesdays have gotten harder since Will came back. Solving them in what used to be my typical Wednesday times
@Steven M. Just for fun I went back and did the very first Crossword in the archive, which is also the first one Will ever edited. It was a Monday puzzle from 1993 and it took me 3x as long as a Monday nowadays. So it could be a lot worse.
TIL "zeugma" (thank you, @Sam!), and, from a dive into examples, my favorite, from Groucho Marx: “Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.” Et tu, emu.
Have you got a case of FOMO about chiming in on Puzzle of the Year? It’s not too late! You can still vote for your favorite this week in the final ballot. Anyone can vote, whether or not you voted in the first round. <a href="https://form.jotform.com/250186385916162" target="_blank">https://form.jotform.com/250186385916162</a> That’s where to go. ALL RISE! YOLO! (Okay maybe I’m getting carried away.)
This one solved as a true themeless for me. I got all the way through the theme answers, didn't see any pattern, and soved the bottom answers entirely through the crosses. Finished the puzzle and didn't even see that 68A and 69A were the revealer. And then, once completed, I forgot that I was going to try to figure out what the theme was post-solve. Then I pulled up xwordinfo.com, as I always do before looking at the Wordplay column and comments. And there I saw a note to "Read ALL RISE as ALL RYES.." And at that point, it occurred to me that I hadn't seen the theme yet. Question: Isn't DARK RYE just pumpernickel?
@Steve L I too had to go back over it at the end to figure out what the theme was.
@Steve L "...there I saw a note...." the number of half-baked attempts I made trying to get the first to work in 69A....
@Steve L Real pumpernickel is made from the entire RYE berry rather than RYE flour, making it harder to digest for the uninitiated. The name comes from pumper, which refers to flatulence, and nickel, which refers to the devil.
@Steve L For a similarly unappetizing food name origin, see pets de sœur.
@Steve L Wow, your post really surprised me, since you're also an MOT!
4D “Item on a fire truck” 🚒 was my *hook* into this puzzle since I spent an hour Sunday carefully unscrewing a dozen tiny screws from the bottom of a Hess toy fire truck in order to unjam its car and loading ramp (because that’s what Grandma does — she fixes broken toys).
@NESB is Still thinking What a great post! Hess trucks bring back great memories for me. Perhaps your grandchild was lucky enough to have gotten a 60th anniversary, 2024 ladder truck with fire chief’s car and motorcycle. What a LADDER too… “The triple-tier aerial extension ladder, with click-turn 360 degree rotation and 60 degree elevation, extends to over 15” ”. They’ve only had about three firetrucks in the last twenty years. These sold out quickly and are available on EBAY now for a small fortune. See the Hess truck holiday line-up and find your childhood favorite: <a href="https://tinyurl.com/yc4ub4ut" target="_blank">https://tinyurl.com/yc4ub4ut</a>
Lol at the thought of David or the Venus de Milo made out of marbles. Maybe somebody here will be more successful than I was at finding an appropriate image. SEEDED meaning: 1. with the seeds removed: 2. containing seeds Cleave me alone.
@ad absurdum I am sanctioning this comment.
What a lovely amuse-bouche! Finished in 6:38 (4:40 faster than Tuesday average), bringing my streak to 590 days. As soon as I saw the first theme clue highlighted, something made me click on the lower left corner for the revealer, and I guessed it immediately based on the length of the two words. That gave me quite a boost with the remaining theme entries. And now I want a Reuben 😜
Lol respect for a theme that is a homophone of 4 specific varieties of a specific variety of bread. As a bona fide fan of a good Reuben (and having eaten them at maybe 5 different NYC delis), I approve. Fun crossword. The theme didn't really add a ton to the solve, as others have mentioned. But I appreciated some of the clues. Nice misdirect at 53D x 65A. I had AWRY and had a heckuva time finding my error. Which is apropos considering the theme itself was A RYE. I'll see myself out.
Perfect Tuesday, in my view. Nice variety of clues. I didn’t get the theme at all until I read Sam’s column. I’m introducing my husband (finally!) to Seinfeld. I honestly didn’t think he’d get the humor but he finds it as hilarious as I do. We just watched the Soup …. episode. Looking forward to viewing the MARBLE rye episode through his eyes. Remember the answer from last week FEDERALGRANTS? I was concerned that they were on the chopping block. Welp, today’s NYT says these grants as well as federal loans are suspended. I feel sorry for students, nonprofits and small businesses. I wonder if HARRIS would have done the same thing? 🤔 Of course not! I’ll ABSTAIN from further comment. I hope you have a great day
@Pani Korunova Indeed, lots of scientists are feeling pretty mad today.
It's funny how different people find different puzzles easy or hard. I came here expecting to see "difficult for a Tuesday comments, but instead I see "easy even for a Tuesday" and the like. I take solace in knowing I've come here and had the exact opposite experience. This one just wasn't my jam.
@Jamie Take heart and read more comments. Quite a few found it HARDER than usual.
@Jamie fully agree. I thought this would be filled with spicy takes about ISOLDE, DANDER, JEWISH (bread), TALESE, TAM, SLAP…. I could go on. Sometimes I feel super on the same wavelength with the creator, but this was not one of those times.
I have to wonder how many solvers actually figured out the theme. I had to read Wordplay to get it, and I said, "hmmm".
@R.J. Smith I think most New Yorkers did long before reading Wordplay.
@R.J. Smith No problem here. It jumped right out.
Zipped through the crossword with Tuesday ease. Absolutely no clue as to theme, even after uncovering the revealer. Felt quite relieved on reading Wordplay that TIL it’s species of bread that just don’t exist here (London possibly, but 99% of us don’t live in the capital). I’ve seen sliced rye bread in supermarkets, usually a German or Dutch brand, but that’s it. No idea it came in different flavours. Does each one actually taste different or is it a decorative topping thing? Would you eat specific breads with specific fillings? I find the differences in our cuisine fascinating. ION and with apologies for bringing RL into the comments. I’ve cancelled my subscription to the news part of NYT. Not a comment on the excellent journalism, but I can’t read about what’s emanating from DC anymore. I’ll stick to this lovely puzzle community and keep my head down.
@Helen Wright First of all, this site shows that it’s more like 20-30% of the UK’s population who lives in London: <a href="https://reddit.com/r/MapPorn/s/FnoUVC5SHE" target="_blank">https://reddit.com/r/MapPorn/s/FnoUVC5SHE</a> Which of course is not to deny that if you don’t live near good rye bread, you would have difficulty with this puzzle’s theme. Rye bread is particularly well known in NYC because of the high Jewish population, for whom rye bread is the bread of choice for deli sandwiches like pastrami and corned beef. If you recall “When Harry Met Sally”, what Sally was having was on rye bread. And although Harry was Jewish, she wasn’t. She just knew that when you go into Katz’s Deli, you don’t get your sandwich on white bread. <a href="https://youtu.be/lNEX0fbGePg?si=Gx400qSMacr9Da-Q" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/lNEX0fbGePg?si=Gx400qSMacr9Da-Q</a> JEWISH rye, the kind available at Katz’s, is firmer than other kinds of rye bread available in the US. If it has caraway seeds in or on it, it’s a SEEDED rye. And a MARBLE rye is a swirl of regular rye bread and pumpernickel, a dark brown bread. DARK rye can be pumpernickel or a lighter brown bread. I’m sure that with a substantial Jewish population in London, you could find good rye bread next time you’re there. Bon appétit!
@Helen Wright I don’t blame you for wanting to skip the US news. Many of us here have cut way back on the daily news because it’s just too disturbing. I get most of my news from the comedians like Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyer. And I don’t know what I would do without daily puzzles to solve.
OHhhhh—the first half of the four longest answers are sub-types of the type bread which is a homophone of the second half of the revealer! I don't know why that did not jump out at me immediately!!
Trippy puzzle. one neither SLOSHES through it nor solves on STEROIDS. Perfect Tuesday. Thank you, Dan Margolis! (What kept you?)
@dutchiris Thank you! I knew there was something awry with my entries DADA and PLASHES!
Dark Shadows! Thank you for recalling some delightfully scary afternoons.
This was fun but I'd forgotten ETALIA could also be ETALII so had to check that cos I couldn't figure out what an OKAE was (now I know it's OKIE as in a person from Oklahoma). I'd also never heard of the author so the cross with SEEDEDTEAMS and SYST were lost on me. At least I know what CBS stands for now, I'd never thought about it before. Doh! And not being a fan of rye breads, the revealer remained veiled until I checked the comments. Despite this, I still enjoyed the solve. Thanks, Dan!
One of the few themes I haven’t gotten until reading the article.
There were too many trivia clues required to get the bottom-most theme clue without hints. It itself was a trivia clue, as I was unfamiliar with not only the show but of the type of rye bread. Otherwise a well done puzzle. For editors I hope there is some attention paid to these concentrations of trivia clues in one spot.
@Bob That bottom section was nasty! I managed to deal with it without lookups in the end but enjoy it I did not.
I enjoy all the different clues used to add Oreo into puzzles.
Typical Tuesday workout for me. Actually ended up almost exactly at my Tuesday average, but... must confess that even when I was done I was not really grasping the theme. Had to come here and read before I really understood it. No big deal. A couple of puzzle finds today. Here's one - quite appropriate for today. Probably did this one, but had completely forgotten it. A Monday from September 9, 2019 by Dan Schoenholz. A couple of clue/answer examples: "Very soft loaves of bread?" TENDERRYES "Neckwear with the letters A, B, C, D, etc.?" ALPHABETTIES And the other theme answers: STANDARDDYES SOCIALLIES Here's the Xword Info link: <a href="https://xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=9/9/2019&g=17&d=A" target="_blank">https://xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=9/9/2019&g=17&d=A</a> I'll put the other puzzle in a reply. ....
@Rich in Atlanta As threatened: Another Dan Schoenholz puzzle: This one a Tuesday from September 3, 2013. Don't recall another one quite like this; thought it was very clever. The theme clues and answers: "Wii :" XBOXRIVAL "Oui :" FRENCHFORYES "We :" PERSONALPRONOUN ""Whee!" :" CRYOFDELIGHT "Wee :" MINIATURE Here's the Xword Info link for that one: <a href="https://xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=9/3/2013&g=23&d=A" target="_blank">https://xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=9/3/2013&g=23&d=A</a> ....
Ha! super cute. I love an early-week themer where I can avoid the revealer until the end. It makes that final clue less revealer & more punchline—and this was a good one. Thanks, Mr. Margolis & eds.!
@Josh Same here! I purposely try to avoid looking at the theme clue until I can guess it from the theme answers.
I completed the puzzle 4 min faster than my Tues average, but I don't consider it finished until get the theme. I spent quite a bit of time trying to parse the revealer in different ways, but I just couldn't make a connection with the theme answers. I finally gave up and looked at the column, where it was clearly explained in a forehead slapping kind of way.... of course! I'm familiar with rye bread, I just didn't realize it had so many varieties. I felt a little better when I read the comments and saw that more experienced solvers than I also felt the whoosh of the theme flying over their heads.
I get "radius" and "radii." And I know crosswords needs some flexibility, poetic license. But I just looked up "et alia" at Merriam Websters and Cambridge. I always understood it to mean "and others," and that is what they say it means I plunked in "et alii" easily enough, but it nagged at me. It seems it would have to mean "and multiple groups of others" or something like that. I am not sure what the plural of a plural would be exactly. It may have been discussed elsewhere. I do remember seeing it for the first time a few months ago and there being a bit of a stir in the comments. But I felt like bringing it up. Haha, Dark Shadows. That takes me back. Never watched more than a few minutes. {I think it was considered a soap, and I was busy playing hide and seek or playing army.) But I remember it being a thing.
@Renegator It's used for a group of males others. The female equivalent is et aliae.
@Renegator I had a similar situation. I had entered "et alia" myself and only switched to "alii" later. Thankful for the explanation from @Oikofuge!
Enjoyed this one, but like others here, I didn't grasp the theme until after I read the column. No worries though--I love reading the column and learning new things!
I finished the puzzle (relatively quickly), but still couldn't figure out the theme. I had to ask my wife, who saw it quickly, before I opened up the Wordplay column. This is especially embarrassing since I grew up loving Jewish, seeded rye, always purchased from the local bakery, never from the grocery store. Writing this, I can hear the whir of the slicing machine behind the counter and smell the caraway seeds.
I was born and bread for a puzzle like this. Loved the theme. The rest of it didn’t stump me much and I got the solve in about 12 minutes. I keep going back and forth about the clue for DERAIL needing to be “Force off track” since it’s usually a transitive verb. But I guess it can be intransitive too. It just felt slightly a rye.
@Charles Nelson Reilly AWRY was my first guess at 53 down, way before I got the theme!
An amusing and satisfying theme for this breezyTuesday puzzle.
Great fun! Plenty I didn’t know but the crosses revealed all. And a clever theme too.
I found this puzzle delectable! I love rye bread in all its forms.
I would like to say that I sincerely appreciate myself in handling the aggravation this puzzle gave me. And all from no fault of my own, other than early on deciding that 67A just had to be amuLET, So blameless was I. Having never heard of an EYELET, it couldn't be the answer. The first rule of crosswords is that there are no answers than I have not heard of. About. Of. But I took this with good humor, with only minimal damage to the door frame that I took it out on.
@Francis An AGLET is the plastic-encased tip which goes in to the holes in your shoe. An EYELET is one of those holes. AYELET is a common Hebrew girl’s name. Hope this helps you in the future! (The name is pronounced in three syllables—eye-ELL-et.)
@Francis I find your claim of "having never heard of" very hard to credit! You lace up your new tennies, running the shoelace through eyelets, or fancy lingerie might have narrow lace running through the eyelets in the camisole's fabric, or your hoodie might have a drawstring that runs through a channel with eyelets at each end.... it's just not an unusual thing.
I feel now I have now graduated as a NYT crossword solver. OREO went in in a flash. Clues about T.S.A.? Nae bother. Got ESC, LSD, AWOL, EMU in a trice. I couldn't get the CBS clue (TV channel?) or DARK SHADOWS but you don't need 100% to pass. I didn't know there were names for different rye breads, it's not really very popular where I am and choice is usually sliced or not-sliced. I'll have to go for the PhD next in order to figure out themes.
@Jane Wheelaghan Congratulations on your commencement! Yes, Columbia Broadcasting System started in the US in 1927 as a radio network and expanded to TV. In High School (when dinosaurs walked the Earth) kids would rush home to watch DARK SHADOWS. Not me though. I knew the reveal would be some wry twist.
@Jane Wheelaghan I have a PhD and I was as lost as you were 🤣
@Jane Wheelaghan Yes, the theme was a closed book to me, too, despite a bit of a rye bread habit. Unfamiliar terminology.
As a big fan of bread, I’m disappointed that I didn’t get the theme until reading the column. I’ll chalk it up to being Australian and unfamiliar with the bakery culture of the US. Really enjoyed this one :)
This felt more like a Wednesday puzzle to me. Too many obscure clues and while I did appreciate the theme is was just way too niche, unless you’re into rye bread… I’ve been disappointed with the quality of puzzles lately. Hopefully things pick up again soon
Would have been nice if 43D were clued as "mononymous Korean singer"
@Nick P It would be fun for the paired clues. I'm sure there'd be complaints though, about crossing two names.
@Nick P Yeah, but...then there would have been a chorus of solvers screaming "Natick." I like your idea, and it would have been okay for most of us, but there's often some resentment when two pop culture proper nouns share a letter. Just sayin'.
Nick P, Great clue pair for a Friday or Saturday!
If I'd been a mere second faster with this puzzle, I'd have beaten my best time for a Monday puzzle. Still, it’s nice to have a new personal best.
@Eric Hougland Wow! This was NOT an easy one for me, about 4 minutes slower than my usual Tuesday times
I thoroughly enjoyed the clueing to Barnabas Collin’s and “Dark Shadows”. It brought back childhood memories of racing home after school to watch that spooky, mysterious series. 🦇
@Tim P I’m not a fan of the horror genre, but I had the same experience. For several months, my brother and I watched DARKSHADOWS religiously after school, unless our bus was late. We’d talk about it at the dinner table until my father would throw up his hands and say he didn’t want to hear any more about that “spook tripe.”
@Tim P I remember the craze, but couldn't really enjoy it. I watched one episode all the way through, and it seemed to suffer from the same thing most daytime soaps do: one small thing per episode that advances the plot, with the remaining time taken up with scenes involving two people talking about what happened recently, what might happen, who might be responsible, etc., with the occasional insinuation, insult, or threat thrown in.
D7: DANDER It’s up. A CSD ™ production.
@Puzzlemucker -- DARK SHADOWS abounding through MADness and DERAILing.
Should the "fill" in this puzzle be LOX and CREAM CHEESE?
Allan, No bagels today. Earlier posters have made Reubens.
14 proper nouns, not to mention DARKSHADOWS crosses with 5 others. the middle bottom is literally 5 proper nouns crossing each other. i think i can figure out where the puzzler gave up
@Charles I'm just luck I'm old enough to have had a Grandma who loved that show. If not I might still be working on it.
@Charles I've never heard of the show, but I was able to guess it from _ _ R _ S H A _ O W _ , partially because of the "creepy main character" part of the clue. I did struggle to get some of the crossings even with that, though.
This was lots of fun. A clever and simple theme, seemed like a perfect Tuesday level. Thanks, Dan Margolis. It’s good to see you back. And thank you, Sam, for your wit and whimsy. These days we need all the whimsy we can get.
This was a SERENE solve for me. Except for DARK SHADOWS which I got from the crosses, everything was up my alley with the fill. That includes Gay TALESE which popped into my head with just the TA, and I have no idea why. I've never read a book of his. It's possible I've read *about* him, maybe in Vanity Fair. As for the theme, it went over my head. Should I attribute it to being possibly the only Jewish person who dislikes rye bread (and pastrami)? I'll stick with bagels (she says as she savors her daily one, with lox and cream cheese...) Despite this puzzle not making me at all hungry, I found it very enjoyable. Thank you, Mr. Margolis, with apologies for missing out on the clever theme.
@sotto voce I prefer bourbon over rye, as well. Not my favorite grain.