Somebody congratulate me! This was my first Sunday ever that I used no hints or clues and that I looked nothing up! And I set a personal best record for a Sunday (I will not share that time LOL). I didn't even need help figuring out the word-play theme. I know some of y'all do this all the time, but this was my first! Yay!
@Chris Congratulations!! 🎉🍾🎈 That’s a huge first! Enjoy the feeling. (And get used to it. Methinks you’ve just opened the Pandora’s box of solving!) Here’s to many more! 🥂
@Chris That’s terrific. Congratulations on your milestone.
@Chris Congratulations! I managed this and last week's Sunday with no cheats, a rare thing. It makes up for Saturday's twenty cheat struggle.
@Chris I'd say SQewe Hoo, except that sounds way wuder than I mean it to sound. Congrats, my friend!
This one brought to you by tomorrow’s weather: “Aaargh! I’ve lost my glasses again!! Why is the world against me?! I can’t bear it!” SQUINTER STORM
@Cat Lady Margaret [Crush, mash, flatten, …] SQUISH LIST
@Cat Lady Margaret Be a chemistry denier? SQUANDER LUST
@Cat Lady Margaret How about [*Ring of Fire* backup group?] SQUAD OF CASH
[What Superman gets when he crushes a piece of coal into a diamond?] SQUISH FULFILLMENT
@Lewis Love the answer, not thrilled with the clue. How about: [The pleasure of playing with a stress toy]?
Crossword Revolution Day 26: HUMBLE PIE The Real Work It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings. - Wendell Berry Crosswords Saved The Day ™.
@Puzzlemucker -- I love this one!
@Puzzlemucker Beautiful! Thank you for sharing!
@Puzzlemucker thank you! The Anna Akhmatova was also lovely. Beauty will get us through.
I thought the longest one-syllable word, and indeed the longest word, was SMILES because there is a MILE between the S's.
@L.A. Bruce D Old joke and a sweet memory. Thanks. I just read some George Carlin quotes. - The shortest sentence - "I am." The longest sentence - "I do." Playing with words is really so much fun. Happy week to all!
A supremely SEUSSIAN theme. “Whimsically imaginative” is the perfect description! Well done, John. What to do with your walrus mustache after diving in a blue hole? SQUASH AND DRY
I thought the best theme answers were the four where the non-SQU words took on a different meaning than in the original phrase they came from, such as CAPITAL of SQUIRRELLED CAPITAL originally, in “world capital”, being a city, but now meaning money. The most elegant, IMO, was GREAT SQUALL OF CHINA. That one landed perfectly, I thought, because its clue – [Tempest in a teapot?] – is a lovely phrase in its own right. Mwah! I enjoyed the fun in the box today. After cracking the gimmick early on, I loved trying to get the remaining themers with as few crosses as possible, which pushed my brain’s happy button. I also liked those long down answers WALRUS MUSTACHE and DEEP-FRIED OREOS. The latter is a TIL, and Wiki tells me that they are dipped in pancake batter before being deep-fried and that they are a “cult favorite” at carnivals. John, your childlike joy at creating puzzles, as described in your notes, made me smile all over, and I’m grateful because you SQUoze much entertainment in this puzzle. Thank you!
@Lewis I didn't get the squirrel one until I read your comment. Squirreled and world don't rhyme (?) But I did enjoy the rest
We solve today Today, I say! And when we solve We drift away To lands and seas To Rocs and trees We smell the breeze And fill with ease To you, I say ‘‘Twas twee today! Today was twee Oh, yessiree! I thank you John And Caitlin too! And all of you Who knew of roo! Don’t you achoo! Stay healthy, do! Because of you I drift here too.
TASER is formed from "Thomas A. Swift's Electric Rifle," named after the book "Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle". (I had LASER at first)
Couldn’t agree more with Caitlin here, there is no such thing as AI Art.
@Dougie I saw a bit of art that is claimed to be AI. I'm not sure I believe it. I can e-mail it if anybody wants to view it.
@Dougie & Caitlin, I understand resistance to the concept of AI ART. Not long ago I might have felt the same. Now I see many contemporary artists using AI to create surreal portraits, landscapes, and abstract visual content. But is it art? (I am a lowly mortal unable to answer that question.) One very interesting example by Refik Anadol was exhibited recently at NY MOMA on a giant wall screen in the entrance atrium: <a href="https://youtu.be/S9J96Pq_rvg" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/S9J96Pq_rvg</a> Thoroughly enjoyed today’s puzzle, Caitlin’s column, Will’s intro, and John Kugelman’s notes. Thanks to all for perking me up at 5am!
@Dougie @M. Biggen "But is it art?" That's the question that's been plaguing aesthetics for the last 100+ years. Artists have been pushing the boundaries of just what art is since the beginning of the 20th century. And "computer-assisted" art has been with us even before the advent of PhotoShop. AI Art? I don't like it, but it's here whether we like it or not.
@Dougie If taping a banana to a wall is art, anything is art.
Anything with Hoi Polloi is a winner in my book! Todays throwback Sunday for me was: 10/3/21 with Z madness.
@Red Carpet I flashed back to Caddyshack, when Danny turns up at the party in full yachting costume, and the snooty rich kid says, "Ahoy, polloi." (Because 15D)
my favourite: SQUAWKAFINELINE I saw a sign for deep fried oreos on a visit to Coney Island. I thought at the time that this would make a great xword entry. It appears to be a debut! Congratulations John Kugelman -- fun Sunday puzzle.
WARNING: The following may not pass your Breakfast Table Test. (But it’s the best I’ve come up with.) [School personnel tasked with removing illicit deposits under students’ desks] SQUAD OF GUM
Really dating myself here, but… it popped in my head: [A tussle over retro toys?] WEEBLES SQUABBLE A super fun puzzle for days when fun is really needed. Thanks John!
@Jason Really dating myself here, but . . . .:-)
@Jason They don't fall down! <a href="https://youtu.be/2dsj-wNvmWs?si=HNQItdDy9cKJFo6A" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/2dsj-wNvmWs?si=HNQItdDy9cKJFo6A</a>
@Jason LOVE this!! my son looked over at your comment and asked, "is weebles wobble a thing?" so of course i had to sing the jingle and search the interwebs for MY old weebles! thanks for a sweet memory at a time when sweetness is desperately needed!
I’ve only been doing these NYT crosswords for a few months, and I have to say, this one was absolutely my favorite. It was a big puzzle, like most Sundays, but it was a fun theme and it went faster than expected. Great one, John!
Pleasant, and for me brisk. But the /skw/ for /w/ theme was a vexation to the spirit, though it didn't create any solving problems. I pronounce "wh" and "w" differently, and I'm still trying to imagine how SQUIRRELLED can sound like (I guess) "world", so the phonetic substitutions just don't work for me. These are examples of a class of homophones that are only homophones in some accents, and a while ago I suggested (in New Scientist, no less!) that these should be called homoiophones (from ὅμοιος, "similar", rather than ὁμός, "same"). I'm having trouble getting any traction with that proposition, as you might imagine ...
And in case anyone's interested, here's more than any reasonable person would care to know about the wh/w distinction: <a href="https://oikofuge.com/the-sounds-of-wh" target="_blank">https://oikofuge.com/the-sounds-of-wh</a>/
@Oikofuge This is fascinating thanks for sharing!
@Oikofuge There's a fairly common pun: "Whirled Peas" for "world peace" used on posters and bumper stickers in the US. It was easy for me, as a general-American-English-speaker, to make the conversion from squirreled to world, despite my usual two-syllable pronunciation of squirrel. And I pronounce my Ws and WHs differently. I found both the w/wh and rhoticity blog articles interesting and informative, thank you for posting it.
@Oikofuge As an Aussie I was definitely confused by SQUIRRELLED. It only clicked when I remembered that in some American accents it would be pronounced “squorled”.
@Oikofuge This is tangent on my part, to be sure, but I also distinguish between wh and plain w, and your comment made me think of another modern pronunciation annoyance: the addition of an H sound to “str” (pronouncing “street” as “shtreet,” for example). This seems to be a thing among younger folks (say, below about age 40) and it’s very common now even among professional speakers such as news reporters. And it drives me nuts! Please, folks, str has no H sound!! End of rant 🤣 Mark
@Oikofuge as a native New Yorker who has lived in Scotland for more than a quarter of a century, I put this to you - in some Scottish accents, words you would think should be one syllable are pronounced with two. I give you warm, pronounced war-um. Perhaps world should be pronounced wor-uld to sound more like SQUIRRELLED?
@Oikofuge Say whip. Now say Cool Whip. YOU’RE EATING HAIR. <a href="https://youtu.be/CMopBpOfv_E?si=mfhAA-K0vMIzyQY6" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/CMopBpOfv_E?si=mfhAA-K0vMIzyQY6</a>
@Oikofuge what does your username mean? Home Escaper?
This puzzle was worth it, if only for GREATSQUALLOFCHINA.
Dude, I totally played a knight’s assistant at the Ren Faire last summer. It was my high squire act. (Did you remember Ctrl-Q today? Did you keep your quits about you?)
Warning: Don't use Pledge as a floor cleaner. It's a furniture polish meant to make surfaces very slippery in order to prevent dust adhering to them. And the last thing floors would do if one put Pledge on them is squeak.
@jbesen Sensible warning... Unlikely that the Editors (mostly male) use PLEDGE on anything; they just needed some way to clue PLEDGE (WEEK) so as to avoid a REDO.
@jbesen Odd. I have a bottle of Pledge "Gentle Wood Floor Cleaner" at the back of a cupboard. Perhaps there's some sort of regional product variation?
@jbesen Yeah I found that clue/answer to be from someone who heard about PLEDGE but never actually used it on a floor IRL
@jbesen There is a Pledge floor cleaner. Although, when I think of Pledge I do think of just dusting.
@jbesen Truth! Been a long time since I've used Pledge, but I can attest to this.
@jbesen Have you tried Shimmer? Its a dessert topping AND a floor wax.
@jbesen Nor as a dessert topping.
@jbesen Don't use PLEDGE furniture polish on anything you might ever want to refinish. It leaves a nice shine, but never comes out of the wood. Silicone, or some such.
A fun bit of word play; thank you for driving me bonkers for a while. It really was fun, once I caught on. GREATSQUALLOFCHINA was one of my faves, but most of them were just lovely. A great Sunday type of puzzle, perfect for a snowy day. Tomorrow, it will be a rainy day. Maybe, since I've already done the puzzle, I'll bake instead.
@Momerlyn Great idea! I stocked up at the grocery store yesterday. I hadn’t bought eggs since the holidays. Oof! 9 dollars a dozen! I’ll skip the custard pie this time :-)
What a silly way to Fail...one letter for an Unknown Writer crossing a nickname for a Basketball Legend. I put in "His SIRNESS" ...must remember to try vowels as well as consonants when stuck. And think of shoes. Other than that...I enjoyed tumbling to the trick and sussing out the entries before getting them from crosses. Clever! I'm torn between GREAT SQUALL OF CHINA and SQUEAL OF FORTUNE for Fave clue/entry. I briefly stopped at yesterday's Comments (my main one never appeared) and I see I was schooled by more than a couple of guys. Why don't you go to London and call it "The METRO" and see how appreciatively it's received...? Should be fun. (The citizens of the UK elected Margaret Thatcher *and* Boris Johnson and still come out looking smarter than Americans...) If you're feeling up to it, read the Google News report re Zelenskyy's dilemma. Even if we promise support, can Ukraine trust the USA to honor the commitment? Oops Off Topic Again! SQUAWKING A FINE LINE, indeed!
@Mean Old Lady Wow Posted this around 8 a.m. CST and it was quarentined all this time! Over what?
@Mean Old Lady I was also stuck on sIRNESS. That and LASER instead of tASER. Light Emitted by Stimulated Emmision of Radiation! My husband did his master's degree on a LASER in 1972. The smallest one barely fit in the trunk of our Olds Cutlass. Now every power-point presenter has one in their pocket. But, thought the theme was great fun.
This was a completely delightful puzzle! Thank you, John Kugelman! More, please!
Terrible. The fill was too easy, the theme was weak, and some of the 'homophones' only exist in some US accents, namely 'squirreled' and 'world', and 'squatter' and 'water'. Not fun. 2/10
@George Agree. Weak verging on cringe.
@George I agree. Both of your examples make zero sense in my native Australian English tongue.
@George They don’t work in my Brooklyn accent either, so don’t feel bad.
@George I learned from this thread that the entries were supposed to be homophones. I just thought they were somewhat funny variants...
George, I long for the day this forum adds an audio function, so I can hear how the constructor and the solvers say all these words. For the life of me, I can’t even imagine how water and squatter could *not* rhyme. Except if they just went completely sideways. And maybe the audio wouldn’t help me, but it couldn’t hurt.
@George spare a thought for the Brits who have to regularly Americanise their thinking to get through puzzles
Have been compiling a Glossary of Crossword Esoterica for years now. Today ROC came to the rescue ... and TENON was a new entry. As Rod Stewart frequently says to creators: You square it well. Sorry.
@LBG The mortise and tenon joint is very common in woodworking and will be well known to anyone who builds or appreciates wood crafts. I, who am not a woodworker, filled it in with no crosses. One person's esoterica...
@LBG would love to know what else you have in it!
Working my way backwards from the beginning of January, nearly done with 2024, and forwards into February with a 38 game streak, I am reminded of what I enjoy best about the good puzzles like this one: When you see it, it feels so good! And this goes for many clues in this puzzle, not just the theme ones. I also love it when the answers are things my parents used to say - "Hoi Polloi" felt really nice.
Well, I’ll certainly be interested to see what comments appear in re 88A. This was a gimme for me only because in the mid 70’s, when I was in college in Amherst, MA, the local movie theater had an early screening of “Supervixens” in which Russ Meyer personally attended and gave a brief speech. Mind you, I was in my early 20’s and walked to the theater with some fraternity brothers from our house two blocks away (this was before the school admitted 25A and later banned fraternities). Hey, the film was a bit of a classic and was referred to in Springsteen’s “Pilgrim in the Temple of Love”. Not proud of all this, but just honest…
@Hardroch The crossing of MS_P and _USS was cruel for me. I have no idea what MSRP is, as clued, (I thought it was something price-related? How it ii specific to cars is beyond me) and I've never heard of RUSS Meyer. So there, one comment to satisfy your curiosity ;)
@Andrzej Interesting point. It made me look up MSRP and I found this, FWIW: <a href="https://www.capitalone.com/learn-grow/life-events/what-is-msrp" target="_blank">https://www.capitalone.com/learn-grow/life-events/what-is-msrp</a>/
@Hardroch I did remember Russ Meyer because of that Supervixens movie coming around in the 70s. Didn't see the film and don't care to. Yet Russ's name lodged in my memory. Who else could we clue for "Russ"?
Squell, that was a squirk-out. Fun puzzle, John. Your accounting team SQUAD OF CASH Warning to wilderness trekkers 'SQUATCH OUT FOR YETI Makes wine SQUELCHES GRAPES Vegetables past their prime SQUASHED UP
I always pronounce squirrel as 2 syllables.
@Jones so do I. I think it is only a one-syllable word in the USA, and even then maybe not with all American accents.
@Jones I think of it as two syllables in my head but when I said it out loud just now it was just one syllable. Fascinating—I am going to have to pay attention to how friends/fam members pronounce it now to see if I’m a loner here or if we all share the same pronunciation.
@Jones Based on this and earlier thread(s), I'm a bit surprised to be in the minority (seemingly of one?) here. I'm firmly in the one-syllable, rhymes with "twirl" camp.
@Bill in Yokohama As happens more and more frequently, clues or answers only work in an accent not related to NYC. This is true here as well as with squatter/water. I get that the match doesn’t need to be 100% for the joke to work, but these two seem a bit far off for me.
@Bill in Yokohama It's just one syllable for me. I can only hear it as two syllables if I put on a Scottish accent, and, to be fair, I don't even know whether I'm doing that properly.
@Ali I come from Ohio, a land of very hard Rs. I say skwerrel, two syllables, heavy emphasis on the R. American accents are all over the board with the R.
@Jones Earl loved Pearl who could hurl a Squirrel.
@Jones Do you say "squirrely" with three syllables? (Assuming you ever use that word, of course)
Funny how dialect changes the syllables in a word. I suppose 'squirreled' would be one syllable if you say it 'skwurled', but in England it's pronounced 'squi-rrelled'. I spent a long time trying to find a single-syllable longer than 6 letters in the grid!
@Chris I was led to some interesting discussions of this topic. It seems that speakers of non-rhotic varieties of English always use two syllables for squirrel, which would sound pretty funny otherwise. Rhotic North Americans mostly say it as “skwurl” in ordinary speech, although we might use two syllables if asked to pronounce it carefully.
@Chris As the Scottish Sergeant-Major shouted: "On the second syllable of the word - "Turn"
@Chris Squirrel is one of those words that almost sounds as if it has only one syllable, but actually has a very subtle two-syllable intonation, at least where I grew up in Connecticut.
@Chris After reading the comments, I was sitting here saying "squirrel" out loud in various pronunciations, and realized all of sudden that my dog was getting very worried 😂
First Onomatopoeia, now Hoi Polloi! The NYT Crossword has become my go-to for a Todd Rundgren flashback. What’s next, Lysistrata?
@Heidi Well, we could all use a laugh!
Well, I visited the Florida State Fair in Tampa on Valentines Day, and did not indulge in deep-fried oreos (yes, they had them), gator mac & cheese, or any new "fair food" options, although some of them looked tempting. You can find them here: <a href="https://floridastatefair.com/fair/food" target="_blank">https://floridastatefair.com/fair/food</a>/ So, I had at least one gimme at the start, but the puzzle, although entertaining, didn't offer a lot of resistance. Where I wasn't sure of something, the crosses almost always gave me enough to get my answers. The themers were fun, and after figuring out 23A, it was fairly easy to come up with the others. Thanks for a fun evening, John!
@JayTee I was visiting the Tampa area probably two decades ago and just so happened to be there during the state fair. As a agricultural fair fan, I had to go, to my wife's mild chagrin. Spent all day, eating all sorts of things, marveling at cracker country (a living museum on the fairground), talking to many booth people, taking the aerial tram back and forth. It was great. Until I got the pork-butt-on-a-stick. It was delicious, but it was a morsel too far, and left me nauseated for the rest of the evening. Even now, we use "pork-butt-on-a-stick" as family code for overindulgence.
Really enjoyed this one. Typical slow start for me, and was stuck in multiple places early on. But finally tumbled to the trick with enough crosses to work out SQUAWKAFINELINE and then going back and figuring out the others was the key to opening up the other areas. Couldn't ask for anything more. A couple of puzzle finds today. I'll put those in replies. ...
@Rich in Atlanta As threatened - first a Tuesday from July 23, 2019 by Kyle T. Dolan. A 14 wide puzzle with 4 grid-spanning across entries. Clue and answer for the 'reveal' in that one: "1981 hit with the lyric "We can make it if we try" ... or a possible title for this puzzle" JUSTTHETWOOFUS And then the other three theme answers, all clued quite straightforwardly. Took me a long moment to catch on: EXCUSESEXCUSES MARCUSAURELIUS WALRUSMUSTACHE Here's the Xword Info link: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=7/23/2019&g=42&d=A" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=7/23/2019&g=42&d=A</a> ....
Does anyone else think of PLEDGE WEEK as the time of the year (or quarter?) when all the shows on PBS run long? This was a a fun solve. For me it feel faster than Saturday's puzzle. The cute theme helped a lot.
@Michael Weiland - My memory is that this was called Sweeps Week -- I don't know if it still exists.
@Michael Weiland - Derp! Of course, I neglected to see that you specifically mentioned PBS. Yes, that was PLEDGE WEEK, as you stated. Still exists, too, except it seems to last a lot longer than a week, but that might be a faulty impression on my part.
85D reminds me of a friend of mine, a professor of Germanic linguistics, who said that the issue with "Ich bein EIN Berliner" is exactly the difference in English between saying "I am Danish" and "I am _A_ Danish."
Fun puzzle but Mr. K. please spend your vacation time with your family!
Loved this one. Almost got it without help but got tripped up with TENON and DECON. Great fun theme. Lots of clever clues.
@Bob That was the last one to fall for me. I finally just went through the alphabet for inspiration.
I had a pet chipmunk named Eddie, And I really don't want to sound petty: I treated him like a dear child, But mine Ned, well, he grew to be wild: Around the house he would race, And hide acorns all over the place. So I had to get rid of my feral Ed And all of the nuts which he'd squirrellèd.
"My idea for 'walk' was 'squawk this way,' but I wouldn’t know quite how to clue it." "Style guide for parrots?"
I so wanted sweepssqueak. Fun Dad-joke puzzle!
Pledge, iirc, is not a dessert topping, however.
@Tom Wild It's both. We've covered this in some detail. Makes kissing the floor during pledge week more tolerable. ____________________ Jesse Goldberg 8/28/2024 for Puzzle of the Decade (emu filler)
CLUNK. Though I have to give props to the novel inclusion of DEEPFRIEDOREOS, if we're going to use the O-word, why not have some fun with it?
[Native fauna of Krypton] SQUIRR-EL (N. B.: this is not intended as an extra theme entry, although it has potential as the germ for a different theme, which I generously offer to any would-be constructors--Lewis? But, what with the w/wh distinction, rhotic vs. non-rhotic accents, and L-as-a-sonorant, we're gonna see a lot of comments today about pronunciation and accents.)
GREATSQUALLOFCHINA, what fun. Lovely Sunday treat, looking forward to more, John.
Hazard Cleanup = DECON is new to me.
@Ernest That was the last to fall for me. Got it by typing in every letter until I got the music lol
@Ernest Definitely new to me too.
@Ernest it's short for decontamination, I believe.
Lots of fun, but it took me several rounds to finish it. I loved the theme once the penny dropped. Don’t know what I would do in these crazy days without the distraction of puzzles. Thanks for the puns and the fun and the challenge, John Kugelman. Please keep them coming.
In advance of the question: @Andrzej, Jane, Helen, et al... Yes, 27A, SAC fly is baseball. When a runner is already on third base and there are fewer than two out, a fly ball (i.e. that doesn't hit the ground) hit far into the outfield, even if it is caught, can allow the runner to score. If this happens, it's a SAC(rifice) fly. The batter is still out, but it doesn't count against him in his statistics. The runner scores if he stays on base until the catch is made, and then can make it home. (Note: If there are two outs already, a ball caught on a fly is the third out, and the inning is over.) Any other base runners can advance similarly, but it's only a SAC fly when a runner on third scores.
Steve, Unless the rule has changed since 1956. the scoring runner can have been on any base (although it is rare from second and I've never heard of it from first). It's also credited as a SAC if the fly is dropped and in the view of the official scorer the runner would have scored it had been caught. This dates from when I watched SEVEN play Center (and Eight was catching).
@Steve L That's so funny--I thought of Andrzej when I filled in that clue too! (As well as the breakfast cereal one. Okay, and the high-calorie state fair one. American culture, alas.)
@Steve L Scoring from second on a sac fly is very rare but it happens. Here are a few examples: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZb-McPFAhU" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZb-McPFAhU</a>
We laughed hard at some of the themed answers --- the clues alone were great.