This puzzle will test your metal. (Assay that one a lot.)
@Mike Poor Mike! Deb nearly stole your thunder today.
@Mike It's an unalloyed pleasure, wouldn't you say?
I disagree that zero-sum game is a good clue for WASH. A wash implies a player ended up where they started, not that the sum total of all wins and losses among all players was zero, with individuals gaining or losing. Poker (if no casino is taking a rake) is always a zero-sum game. It is rarely a wash.
@Rick Box I read zero sum game as a game where no one scores any points.
@Rick Box You are right. I was trying to find another example of a really bizarre combination, and this was one. A wash to me has always been just what you said--some things happen, but nothing really changes. In an actual zero sum game, eventually someone ends up losing it all to someone else. Like almost all of us in our country's economic system.
@Rick Box I assumed it was intended as misdirection/wordplay between the technical meaning in game theory and the more everyday idea of a match of some sort concluding in such a way that a competitor or team has not affected their standing in a league or series of competitions, either positively or negatively. @Andrzej Using the technical definition, a person depositing money in a bank is, in fact, a positive sum game (on average) between the two parties. The depositor gains a small amount of interest, or even if the account is not interest-bearing, at the very least the benefit and security of not needing to keep track of literal stacks of cash. Assuming the bank isn’t going to go bust, it will have made (again, on average) some return on the investments it made with the depositor’s money before it was withdrawn. That isn’t to say that there aren’t legitimate criticisms of the banking sector overall, nor that everything is guaranteed to work out in a completely laissez faire system without any regulation, but that particular abstract interaction is still not zero-sum.
So very Thursday. I had so many cavities as a kid you'd have thought my teeth really did GROW IN GOLD, made sense to me. Loved seeing Dari & gari, very rare in a puzzle those two, and Lydia Oh Lydia!* And yes, we are so dead. It's a wash. We were busy helping our Latino brothers and sisters avoid The Clamp and meantime the sly dogs came to town like it was a Nevada casino, rolled down their ski hats, kicked the guards in their shins, took scads of prize money and fled -- to another venue to do the same thing, all the while singing how they're at war against corruption. The irony! *But at least we can enjoy Groucho singing about Lydia: Oh Lydia, oh Lydia, say have you met Lydia? Lydia, the Tattooed Lady She has eyes that folks adore so And a torso even more so Lydia, oh Lydia, that encyclopydia Oh Lydia the Queen of Tattoo On her back is the Battle of Waterloo Beside it the wreck of the Hesperus, too And proudly above waves the red, white, and blue You can learn a lot from Lydia When her robe is unfurled, she will show you the world If you step up and tell her where For a dime you can see Kankakee or Paris Or Washington crossing the Delaware Oh Lydia oh Lydia, say have you met Lydia? Oh Lydia the Tattooed Lady When her muscles start relaxin' Up the hill comes Andrew Jackson Lydia oh Lydia, that encyclopydia Oh Lydia the queen of them all For two bits she will do a mazurka in jazz With a view of Niagara that nobody has And on a clear day you can see Alcatraz
@john ezra The Philadelphia Story! That's where I know the song Lydia from. (For those unfamiliar with the movie: Teenage sister of Katherine Hepburn plays the song on the piano and sings. Tune is very bouncy. In the stuffy Main Line family, the lyrics are considered much too racy for a young girl.)
@john ezra Lydia reminds me of the fisher king and the balloon delivery. Different song I realise.
@john ezra I adore your puzzle-fueled stories. Today's is so great! Chef's kiss! And Groucho's Lydia is a rollicking earworm of the best order. I cannot see the name Lydia without hearing it in my head. (Even for the Pride and Prejudice character-!)
@john ezra I grew up with that song...as sung by Kermit the Frog! (On the original Muppet Show LP). I didn't realize it had been a Groucho Marx song until much, much later in life.
@john ezra I talked my Dad into taking me to see Groucho in San Francisco, along with his gal-pal Erin and music producer Bill Graham, because I said Groucho wouldn't be around too much longer. Groucho survived many years after the show but Bill Graham died in a helicopter crash soon after. It was a great show. Even Bill got up and danced a bit.
For me, five no-knows to overcome, and that was sweet. Even after all the years I’ve done crosswords, it still feels like a miracle when there’s an answer in the puzzle that I’ve never heard of AND I STILL GET IT! I also like what I need to do to get those no-knows. Often, I have to leave the area where a no-know is and eventually circle my way back, and by the time I’ve returned there’s enough there to fill in what was once un-gettable real estate. There’s magic in that too. What I’m saying is that five no-knows in the box will spark my day. It will satisfy my brain’s workout ethic and bring me the pleasure of conquering obstacles. I know this will happen because it’s a Times puzzle, and almost always, IMO, Times puzzles are so well edited that difficult answers, even no-knows, are crossed appropriately. So, thank you for including such answers in your puzzle, Jem, and gratitude to the NYT team for your dedication and expertise. This on top of a clever never-before-done theme, created a splendid outing. Thank you, Jem, for making this!
@Lewis Hmmm, GEMs are also MINED.
@Lewis Yes I love the "How did I know something I don't know?"s
CR Day 23: ANNA I Taught Myself To Live Simply I taught myself to live simply and wisely, to look at the sky and pray to God, and to wander long before evening to tire my superfluous worries. When the burdocks rustle in the ravine and the yellow-red rowanberry cluster droops I compose happy verses about life's decay, decay and beauty. I come back. The fluffy cat licks my palm, purrs so sweetly and the fire flares bright on the saw-mill turret by the lake. Only the cry of a stork landing on the roof occasionally breaks the silence. If you knock on my door I may not even hear. - Anna Akhmatova CSD ™
Puzzlemucker, Thanks for the wonderful and free day pass.
@Puzzlemucker Came to read the crossword comments, and found this beautiful poem. Thank you!
@Puzzlemucker Having just come home from a funeral (feeling a bit fragile) the lovely poem you posted brought tears to my eyes, but in a good way. Thank you.
@Puzzlemucker Thank you. The poem is just what I needed today. She is one of my favorite poets. BBC's In Our Time podcast has a very informative show about her. Her poetry reflects her lived experiences. Thanks again. "Always be kind. Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. "
Not my finest hour (or 25 minutes)--I don't expect myself to know the names of 21st century starlets--even Emmy-award winning ones--but, given my interests in languages and food, DARI and GARI felt like things that should have been gimmes, but weren't. Although not a problem for me, I wonder how many solvers can pull a Latin third declension neuter plural off the top of their caput. And there have been so many kingdoms in the the long history of Asia minor, xYxIA could have been a lot of things (although I dismissed sYrIA pretty quickly). And SKxHxx suggested a headgear from a culture not mine--Arabic? Indian? Hebrew?--even thought I'm not planning to be bare-headed when I go skiing later this morning. Also, unable to unwind the theme without the revealer (I know Lewis likes to challenge himself with that, as well)--GROW IN and GROWING OLD both have "grow" at their roots, and some people do sport GOLD teeth, although usually not from birth; and THEIR(s) seemed like a perfectly good pronoun to find in THE IRONY. Now that the puzzle is done, I will be frustrated all morning, trying to think of some common two-word phrase with the form xxxSIL VERxxx or xxxCOP PERxxx. Anyone? Or even xxxNEODYMI UMxxx. (Did you know that Neodymium [magnets] come [in bars]? Or that NEOPETS live in the Kingdom of Neopia? I do, now.) (In case anyone should misread this post, my frustration is entirely with my own dimness, and not with any flaw in Mr. Burch's puzzle.)
@Bill I don’t like to show off, but right off the top of my head- Basil versus oregano. Supercop person. Can’t get through a day without using those puppies. I’m a rocket surgeon. Don’t be jealous.
Bill, I decided to think more holistically (lazily): [Definite article?] THEM, ET AL.
@Bill tough to come up with any where it's still a word after you scrap the metal baSIL VERse roboCOP PERversion yeah, not quite there. Not many words ending in SIL or COP to work with.
@Bill DARI was easy. I got that from Pete Buttigieg when Chasten kidded about having to learn it for his date with Peter.
@Bill TIL that GARI is the Japanese word for pickled ginger, which I love, so I'm happily adding that to my sushi lexicon. Now, if I could only add to my knowledge of Indian cuisine, because those entries always trip me up. Thankfully, none of that today.
@Bill I made some minor light switch error and my companion said, “I dream of genius with the light brown hair”, only a mild neg haha!
This weeks Thursday: I DID IT! That was a clever trick. I was prepared for a rebus, but when I got to SCRAP METAL and LATINOS, the way was PAVEd to get ‘er done. Learned something new. And how is Alaska not the right answer? How is it Nevada? I was truly expecting it to be Alaska.
@Red Carpet The clue says “percentage,” not absolute amount. Alaska contains 225,848,164 acres of federally owned land, versus 56,961,778 acres of federal land in Nevada. However, the former is about 62% of the total land area of the state, while the latter is about 81%.
Deb: I'm too old for a puzzle the test my mettle like this one did. I'm way past metal age, so stop meddling with my thought processes like you usually do on Thursdays.
@William Schrader Not sure what you're talking about but a pharmacological med'll probably help. Or perhaps just chill to some ska. <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toots_and_the_Maytals" target="_blank">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toots_and_the_Maytals</a> ____________________ Jesse Goldberg 8/28/2024 for Puzzle of the Decade (emu filler)
@William Schrader, That’s a gold medal comment.
@B : I can tell from your clever contraction that we're on the same wavelength. Ms. Amien evokes these reply threads. When she starts a line of puns we can't just let her get away with it! Thanks for the pharmaceutical tip, and the hyperlink! I'll wait for this evening and have the music with my customary cocktail, a ska-and-soda
Oh Jem, you SLY DOG… Truly clever clueing, and I sure do love completing a grid with names ( and languages ) I did *not* know and seeing them filled in by the crosses. Like a free basket of knowledge nuggets to put in my cap and save for later! ⭐️
Nice punning, Deb - I rate your efforts a tin.
Magnet school focus at 49A and I confidently and quickly put in ARTS at 49A. Silly me, I am not keeping up with the times, STEM is the only thing that matters these days. And maybe not that any more.
@Gary Meanwhile, some lawmakers in NH propose that we eliminate the arts, world languages, engineering, technology and computer sciences from the statute defining what the state has a constitutional obligation to provide students.
@Gary Hand up for wanting ARTS, so I took OUT "OH STOP" and then I thought, "Oh. Stop." Sigh Maybe take out the ARTS so kids can study WAR some more?
@Gary I work for a low-income, low-performing school district -- the 3rd world city of Silicon Valley, But, thankfully, we have a strong STEAM component in our schools. It's paid for by grant funds from a local education foundation. And that foundation is supported by wealthy people in neighboring cities who think all of STEAM is important! We have wonderful art, music, drama, dance teachers. Their students are struggling to learn to read and to speak English, but they are being exposed to many facets of education and it is so good for them!
Excellent puzzle. It nice to see an appearance by the criminally underrated Paul Pena, who wrote Jet Airliner. Steve Miller's version was great but Pena's original is better: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cjr5U7g6aiA" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cjr5U7g6aiA</a>
@Ed Awesome! No idea about this, or apparently the name of the song, even though it was part of my youth.
@Ed I was happy to see Paul PENA here also. Another favorite: <a href="https://youtu.be/nm4hbORBbQ0?si=KaPNdYSuKDEYAxhM" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/nm4hbORBbQ0?si=KaPNdYSuKDEYAxhM</a>
Not too tricky, but fun. Extra points for Paul PENA. I also liked that the metals moved over by one place with each answer. GOLD was at the end, IRON was second from the end, and so on. Just a nice little extra touch.
I struggled initially: the clues were not at all on my wavelength. However, as is often the case, I looked up the trivia to get more crosses, and that allowed me to complete the grid quite quickly. The theme was OK. I liked that the themed entries were not gibberish before applying the trick to them. It would have been awesome if there were another layer of the theme connecting the entries before the metal was scrapped from them - but I suppose that would have been impossible to construct. I've been eating sushi for decades yet I can't recall ever encountering the name for that pickled ginger. Maybe I'll remember it after today ("Suuuure," says my brain). I only got how TIPS is a *punny* reply to "What are you waiting for?" as I was writing this comment, wanting to ask the community to explain the pun to me. Apparently I'm not very quick, but I'm terribly slow either 🤣. I have another question though. Serving staff are called servers now, not waiters. But is what they do still called waiting (on on somebody)? Or did that clue scrap modern lingo for the sake of the pun?
D'oh. ... I'm *not* terribly slow... This board needs new software with an "edit" option.
@Andrzej My thought process was like, sushi ginger...? What is sushi ginger called? I mean, hell's bells, it's called ginger.... When I want more of it, because of how much I love it, I ask for more ginger. And it always arrives.... usually by a waiter / server, but a local place that we used to love has recently gone the route of robot waiters. 🤯 End of days, my friend! First they come to serve you sushi ginger.... Before you know it, they're running the place... Next you know it, you are serving them! And it isn't sushi ginger they want..... It's your soul Okay, sorry I might have gotten a little dark there... 😂
@Andrzej We still call the people who take your order/bring your food and drink waiters. I would say that servers and bus boys (is that how you spell it?) are still very much American terms.
@Andrzej The verb “to wait” isn’t itself gendered, so it’s’ still used even if the nouns “waiter”/“waitress” are (quasi-)outdated. Collectively, “waitstaff” is generally considered fine, I believe.
Interesting theme. Somewhat remarkable to find enough thematic entries to make the theme work, and also to have entries of the right lengths to satisfy the constraints of symmetry. Nice fill too---very fine puzzle!
@Xword Junkie I agree. I should have said so, but I was still recovering....
Some nice wordsmithing in the theme answers and some fun clues. I got the theme only from the revealer. It took me a good while to get COOS partly because I’ve never photoshopped anything and hadn’t yet come up with TIPS as the punny answer. I tried moos for way longer than I should have. I balked a bit at DIDOK for got a cee. That wasn’t the rule in my house when I was growing up, although my dad did make an exception for penmanship, about which he didn’t care. Even Bs were dubious in his book.
@Marshall Walthew Yeah, but it's the C (or lower) students who ru(i)n the world. Just look at the majority of our "leaders".
really enjoyable theme today - LATINOS is where it clicked for me Initially I had CLIPPY in place of NEOPET. There are quite a few 2000s virtual companions to choose from there. My favorites were WEBKINZ but sadly those have yet to appear in a crossword. One day! ----- jackie n shadow 4ever
SCADS of good entries and a fun theme, so I don’t mind no rebus.
@suejean LOL, my Friend Across the Pond! I read your sentence and thought, "Oh, it can't be suejean making that egregious error!" Then I parsed it... And now I want to say, "We don't need no stinkin' rebus!" LOL I'm sitting at the dining room table laughing to myself....silly me.
Hated it! Latinos is a country I grumpily asked? Then I peeked and came to love it. Maybe there is some hope.
Fun, but a tad easy for a Thursday. Or maybe I just lucked out in that, literally last night, I was reading all about the Anatolian kingdom of Lydia. I wanted to know more, having just finished Colin McEvedy's book "Cities of the Classical World." An hour of Wikipedia rabbit-hole armchair research revealed that grammatical gender in Indo-European languages originally was "animate" and "inanimate" (maintained only in the branch that included Lydian), but then, to make it easier to understand which nouns went with which adjectives in speech, "animate" divided into "masculine" and "feminine," and took a bunch of inanimate nouns along with it.... But I digress. :)
@John "animate" divided into "masculine" and "feminine," and took a bunch of inanimate nouns along with it.... That actually explains a lot. I always wondered about the arbitrary-seeming gender choices for certain inanimate nouns in English. Even more so in French. Thank you for your digression!
@John For me, it was reading a lot of military history. For example, knowing that DARI was the language spoken by fighters in the Afghan Northern Alliance, as opposed to Pashto, which is spoken in the south. And then knowing about the Plain of Jars in LAOS, where the Air Force dropped many tons of cluster bombs in an effort to interdict the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The prehistoric stone jars mostly survived that effort, but it's difficult to visit the sites because there are still millions of unexploded munitions. NZAID is leading the effort to clear them, and it's now a UNESCO world heritage site. (That was my rabbit hole.) But I digress. Anyway, LA(TIN)OS finally tipped me off to the gimmick, although I was suspicious of the GOLD answer. Once I let go of PLEADing, I was good to go. (Because "ding" was the bell sound.)
@John & @Lynn Funny, I've recently been doing some reading on the same topics. I've come across some sources which posit that it was the inanimate gender which split into feminine and neuter, while the animate became exclusively masculine. Don't hate me, the misogyny is entirely the Indo-Europeans, or at least the scholars, not mine. I tried asking my gal-pal H₂éwsōs about it, but I had trouble understanding her through all those thick laryngeals. When I asked her to clarify, she just gave me the rosy finger.
@John - I invite Andrzej to comment on the Polish system of adjectives, which gets quite particular in terms of animate/inanimate masculine/non-masculine. He’s a constant advocate for how sensible Polish is, but that is one place where Polish grammar descends into madness… osobowe/nieosobowe itd. The other point is common to all slavic languages: 1 something 2, 3, 4 somethings 5 of somethings 24 somethings 25 of somethings … 😵💫
A puzzle full of clues that made me think and then made me laugh. A theme so clever it snuck up on me until I slapped my forehead and said "of course!" What's not to love? Some say it was too easy for a Thursday... some say it was too hard and they didn't get the theme. I found it just right. 😊
I got GROWINGOLD first, but assumed that the rest of the "metal" answers would consist of the clue answer followed by the name of the metal, and I filled in LAos, etc., accordingly, which left me almost hopelessly jammed up. I finally broke down and looked up the Afghani language (my only lookup), which made ATWAR obvious, which revealed the error, and the whole thing crumbled pretty quickly. That one guy in the photo looks too short for a stormtrooper...which brings up something that always bothered me about that line: If Luke Skywalker is too short to be a stormtrooper, then how did he find a stormtrooper who was wearing a set of armor that would fit him?
@Bruce Exactly the same for me. If the scrap followed the same construct across the clues I think I would’ve enjoyed it more. Maybe just me though.
I can't wait to get to Mike's pun-o'-the-day...bound to be a... I kept filling in spaces with the help of crossings, and each time it got more off-the-wall and off-topic. Then I spotted all the metals...and THEN (belatedly) I saw (smelt?) that after the METAL was taken out, the clue was satisfied. Language of Afghanistan. Blind Blues Paul. Ancient Asia Minor Unknown Actor Person Diety here, diety there (one of which I certainly knew; one of which DHubby owned when I met him long, long ago) OoooooKAY! Mission Accomplished. Heck of a job.
I really like when I find the theme, then look back at a themed answer with only 1 to 3 letters filled in, then am able to figure it out just by thinking about it (in a reasonable time frame) I did that TWICE today, with LATINOS and THE IRONY. Highly rewarding puzzle for me. Took me quite a bit longer than my Thursday record, but better than my (beginner-biased) average. Hats off to Jem Burch for a challenging but doable Thursday grid.
Is there a maximal maxim for making the maximum from the minimum, Maxine, my Milanese mum? Or is my fear best allayed by an alloy of aluminum and aluminium forged by an alliance of aging alumni of my alma and pia maters, my mammalian mamma from Milan?
Oh... have to add this. I looked at our constructor's page on Xword Info. This is his seventh puzzle, and only his second one with a theme - all the others were Friday or Saturday puzzles. But... his first ever puzzle was a Thursday from April 22, 2001 and was an amazing feat of construction. Many of us may have done this one (I'm pretty sure I did), but some may not be familiar with it. Anyway - that one had three theme answers, each just clued with a time span. e.g.: "*1962-67, 1971, 1983 :" SEANCONNERY The other two were: PIERCEBROSNAN DANIELCRAIG But then there were seven rebus squares in the puzzle, each of them just containing the letters: 'OO' And there was no hint as to that. So... OO? Seven? Get it? Here's the Xword Info link: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=4/22/2021" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=4/22/2021</a> ....
YADIG crossing with LYDIA and GARI? Oof. "Ya dig" sounds like something the guy who speaks "jive" in the movie Airplane would say . . . just ridiculously outdated and stereotyped jargon. Other than that, I thought it was a fun puzzle with a cute theme.
@Dave Wasn’t the Airplane “jive” speaker Barbara Billingsley from Leave It To Beaver?
Whew. Typical long Thursday workout for me, and whole lot of working the crosses to figure out the theme answers. And... have to confess that I was just not getting the trick at all until I was almost done and stopped and pondered for a while. Just made for a nice 'aha' moment at the end. A couple of puzzle finds today. With my memory, I'm not entirely sure that I didn't ever notice these before, but... whatever. I'll go ahead and post them in replies. ....
@Rich in Atlanta As threatened - I think I'll just go with one puzzle find, and... yeah - I may have mentioned this one before. Just my memory. Anyway - a Sunday from March 19, 1995 by Alex K. Justin with the title "Double features." A couple of them clue and answer examples: "Western rain attire? :" DODGECITYSLICKERS "Experienced, if overweight, equestrian? :" THEBIGEASYRIDER "Halloween cutout smacked? :" PAPERMOONSTRUCK And a couple of other theme answers: MYLEFTFOOTLOOSE BLEAKHOUSEPARTY And there were more. Here's the Xword Info link: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=3/19/1995&g=110&d=A" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=3/19/1995&g=110&d=A</a> I'm done. ...
As is usually the case with Tricky Thursday's (or any other day for that matter) I'll just say to myself, "Yeah, something is happening here, but I don't know what it is" *. Cruised along with partial fill on the themers until I got to the reveal and, "clang!", the penny dropped. Well done and thanks. * When the Dylan movie screened here, every time a recognizable location in Cape May was shown everybody cheered.
As someone else said, I found the theme and wordplay clues interesting and clever, (SOAP, EEL, PAVE) and COURT EVENT - was that law court, basketball court, Royal court, go courting? but so many of the other clues a complete mystery. It almost felt like a foreign language to me. Cultural clash. Didn't know or hadn't heard of SCADS WASH WE'RE SO DEAD YA DIG IHOP BYES IDOL ANNA TIPS (how is that a pun?) You're too much and slight confusion for me - "on" next, not UP NEXT and "buckets" for PAILS! The theme is really ingenious, but I spent so much time working around and about with crossers that I didn't really appreciate it. Carry on with the ESL classes!
@Jane Wheelaghan The fate of us non-Americans, eh? :D WE'RE SO DEAD has appeared many times in NYT puzzles - so much so that it has become a gimme (for me). The first time I encountered it I had to get it from crosses. SCADS is also worth remembering because it is quite common, too. Maybe one day I will enter that as my first attempt on its clue... BYE as clued confused me today, too, but then looking at the comments I realized I had seen it before. I just didn't remember it because it seems so alien. Waiters wait for TIPS, for sure in the US.
@Jane Wheelaghan IHOP -- short for International House of Pancakes, restaurant chain in the USA. They are pretty much everywhere, and always have the blue peaked roof.
I really enjoyed this. Usually on a Thursday even with hints and comments I have to resort to autocheck and when really desperate, running the alphabet. This one, a few helps and I got there! A lot of times I'm done in by crossing entries that don't help me fill in particular areas but this one seemed to have a nice balance of crosses to more obscure (to me, anyway.). Not that I didn't have wrong answers that misled in places.. Before I knew the theme, THEYTHEM fit nicely and even though the mismatched tense bothered me, it matched the clue and the few crosses I had in place. It wasn't until later when I sure couldn't find a metal in there that I erased some letters. Oh, THEIRONY of the other fitting! Anyway, I don't usually comment but wanted to say I really enjoyed today's puzzle.
This was okay, although I found yesterday (Wednesday) both tougher and more fun. Just me or does this theme seem a bit underdeveloped? It seems so promising. I didn't love some of the cluing, and things like "oh stop" felt weak, but a reasonable if unexciting Thursday. At least this week overall is harder than last week (though marred by a weirdly harsh Tuesday). ____________________ Jesse Goldberg 8/28/2024 for Puzzle of the Decade (emu filler)
@B It may just be you, but I am curious why you consider the theme under developed. I disagree because 1. All the theme answers are recognizable phrases. 2. All the theme answers contain a metal. 3. Removing the metal leaves the answer to the clue. 4. The revealer is a well known phrase that also tells you how to get to the clue answer. How much more can one develop this theme?
Fun puzzle with a few bumps. PART before PAVE. many states before NEVADA. and can someone explain Top Seed Perks BYES? Thanks. Loved the clue for TIPS. AND THE THEMES WERE GREAT (once I figured out I didn’t have to know the chemical formula). TIL GARI, DARI and MAZDA. THANKS constructor, whose name I’ve forgotten. 😊😊
@SusanEM From the sporting world in American parlance, a "bye" is a round in a tournament bracket where a top seed (higher ranked) team doesn't have to play a game, hence it's a perk as they get more rest.
@SusanEM BYES are weeks when top-seeded teams don't have games scheduled in the playoffs. They get an extra week while the wild-card teams compete.
A not too difficult Thursday, for which I’m grateful as I seem to have woken up this morning with a stinker of a cold. Having to screw my eyes up to see the screen. Ugh. Love the theme, which I finally got with GROWIN/GOLD. The rest was crunchy enough to make me think, but all doable from crosses. Lovely.
Picturing a knight, paused on a mighty steed, sun glinting off a scrap of metal armour, clumsily unfolding his precious cheat-sheet detailing the known weaknesses of dragons. A fun questword. And didn’t take a(n) bronzeage to solve it, either.
I solved it without understanding the theme. I just knew each starred clue had a metal in the answer. Didn't quite realize you had to read over the metal though
Breezy 25 mins without understanding the theme. I only figured out that the asterisks answers contained a metal, but didn't make the connection that the clues actually makes sense when you remove the metal from the answer. I thought GROWINGOLD was GROWINGOut at first, and THEIRONY containing the pronoun THEIR only added to my initial confusion.
Like others have already mentioned, it took me a long time to get the theme. That said, things became much easier after that, and I went from "this is too hard for a Thursday" to "wow, this is really clever!" I especially enjoyed 40A. I've been driving one for 8 years and never knew the origin of the name! 🤦♂️😄
Haven’t heard from BA in a couple of days. What’s with that?
@Hardroch - I wouldn't blame him if he gave up on this place. I'm pretty much there myself.
@Hardroch I've always thought that was the one creepy thing about this place. If someone disappears, unless there is some other connection, no one even asks why, and those that do get no answers. It makes me sad that someone could actually croak and no one would even give them a second thought. I'm pretty sure, though, that wouldn't happen with BA. He seems rather central to all of this.
@Hardroch - There was a conversation on Tuesday in which somebody was saying nasty things about Barry, who hadn't even chimed in at all in that thread. The entire exchange has been deleted. I wouldn't blame him if he chose to ignore this place for a while.
I have tried to respond to a couple of threads without success. Refreshed, and back. In the pasr, loved ones have let us know wjen a cherished member has died... Mac Knight, Manny Nosowsky, etc. ...so lets just allow for Time-outs and such. Leave a note if you are missing someone...they may see it, or someone in touch via other means might ler them know they are missed.
Clever and fun, but seemed easy for a Thursday. L
UNIX was in and out twice sigh. CROP is available in any photo editing app/program. CLONE I haven’t seen outside of Photoshop yet :)
@Spmm "CROP is available in any photo editing app/program." That's totally irrelevant in this context. If it's true for UNIX, the clue is fine.
Because my first themer was 17A and I excitedly filled in LAosPDR for 37A (I've been! And it was very cool, partially because no one knows exactly what all the ancient jars were for) it took me a while to realize that the metal didn't have to be the end of the answer. I spent a few mins staring at LAos and trying to figure out a metal that would make sense. Overall enjoyed the puzzle and finished in a reasonable amount of time for a Thurs. And TIL about Lydia!
Almost had it ORE filled.I did it on my ComPEWTER.I will COPPER to a couple of mistakes on my part.
I was a little dumb about the theme this time. I got SCRAPMETAL before I got any of the other theme clues, and immediately thought, okay, so metal is cut out of the answers. And then got GROWINGOLD and thought, oh, they just have metal in the answers. I don't really get how that works for teeth emerging though. And then proceeded to never apply any critical thinking to this.
I had a lot of fun with this one! Is it cheating to jump ahead to the revealer? I sure hope not; It all made sense fairly early for me. The upper right quadrant did slow me down a bit. Thursdays- the puzzles- are awesome! Too bad I don't have the patience to actually wait until Thursday to complete them. It makes Thursdays- the days- kind of anticlimactic.
So in the mini - can someone please explain how CISCO suggests the Bay Area? (Argh. As I typed that question, San FranCISCO popped into my head. So I get it now, but I think it's a horrible clue).
@Grumpy they did leave it out of the clue! I had a harder time with rhino as I'm from Indonesia and we also have rhinos (not very many left sadly) so African didn't immediately evoke rhino.
@Grumpy Hi, I haven't looked at the mini, so I legitimately have no idea what either of us is talking about here, but I do know that Cisco Systems is a company headquartered in the bay area, does that help?
@Grumpy The logo for the CISCO networking company can either be looked at as a stylized network traffic graph or the Golden Gate Bridge.
Did I ever know that MAZDAs were named after a God? It seems like something I should have known, and there seems to be a vague shadow of a memory in there, but... A Zoroastrian God??? Ah, but MAZDA is also related to its founder's name, Jujiro Matsuda. Will this memory stick?
@The X-Phile Will this flash drive? Sorry. ____________________ Jesse Goldberg 8/28/2024 for Puzzle of the Decade (emu filler)