This was a workout I really admired and enjoyed. All the complaints about the use of gimmicks and the infamous rebus had me thinking about growing up in Brooklyn during the 1950's & 1960's. My mother was a wonderful cook and baker and each night we'd sit down to dinner - whatever mama made. If we weren't happy with that option, there was always a large bowl of salad and fresh bread & butter. There was a lot of work & love on the table and we knew that. That's what made me think of all the creators of these puzzles. The work is so evident and , dare I say it, (I dare. I dare.) done with love. Maybe the complainers need to reach for the salad if the main course doesn't suit you. The archives are full of other choices. I hope I didn't offend anyone. I was just happy to recall a sweet time growing up. It really helps me get into a better mind-set. Happy & peace-filled week to all.
@Min Thank you for sharing this touching story and turning it into an appropriate metaphor. How kind your mother was! Even if it was bread, butter, and a salad, you were actually given an option. That's so generous and thoughtful! Most households i know of, my own included, the option for us kids was to just leave the table and go to bed hungry. 😂
@Min Reminded me of freshman year in undergrad. People complained so much about the food they just put out two big bowls of peanut butter and jelly at every meal. (There was always bread.) Complaints died down.
@Min Love this! Great story and apt analogy. Like the infamous Natick, perhaps we should dub some puzzles "have the salad" moments...
When it comes to this puzzle, color me impressed! (Hue knew I would say this.)
@Mike You're looking at this through rose tinted glasses! (I was dying to say that.)
@Mike Who hews hues? A promising premise presumes a prism.
@Mike I just knew Mike would show up with one of his off-color jokes. I'm seeing red!
Mike, The emu who pulled my reply to you to "watch your tone" should not be working the Wordplay comments. SRSLY!
This was almost like an anti-rebus. Less letters than more. This puzzle was brilliant. Crosswords are all about the challenges it offers. This challenge was worthy of my time.
@Michael. Or, maybe, the colour stripes are themselves rebuses.
@Michael I don’t really consider this a rebus, either. In fact, I thought the rebus haters might enjoy this one because they got to drop a letter rather than squeezing two into the box! Silly me.
@Michael I first thought rebus and when I looked at the colors, I giggled happily! Wow!
Crossword Revolution Redux (Thanks for your your indulgence; such a remarkable speech that it deserves highlighting): “scorching IRONY” “At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.” Frederick Douglass (from “What to the Slave is the 4th of July?”, 1852, speech presented to the Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society of Rochester, NY). See <a href="https://edsitement.neh.gov/student-activities/frederick-douglasss-what-slave-fourth-july" target="_blank">https://edsitement.neh.gov/student-activities/frederick-douglasss-what-slave-fourth-july</a>
@Puzzlemucker Missed your wisdom last few days, Mucker! Thanks for the Douglass speech. Although I'm thinking IRONS are what we need, and the sooner the better!
@Puzzlemucker Bravo. And very apropos. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
@Puzzlemucker Thank you. This is a message we all need to hear right now.
@Puzzlemucker Thanks for sharing that excerpt. Yes, it’s sadly as relevant now as it was in 1852.
My favorite puzzle in a long time, and color me impressed that every missing letter entry was also an acceptable word (as noted in the column). Kudos for the work on construction this must have taken.
Rainbow puzzles have been made before – but never like this. Credit to Adam for coming up with this concept. Credit to him for much more, which I’ll get to in a moment. First, though, the most important question: How was the solve? For me, it brought much pleasure, as there were a good number of areas that puzzled me, that I had to return to, and that I was able to crack. I get much pleasure out of figuring things out. Now, dear reader, look at the build of this grid: • The lines that include color are symmetrical! • The colors are in the order of the rainbow’s colors! • Every theme word is legitimate as well as that word with the color letter inserted, such as CANTEEN and CANTE(V)EN! • Those theme words are stacked in a certain order to spell the names of the colors! • Those theme words interlock! Are you kidding me? This is a bow-down wow build. And bravo to you, Adam, for pulling it off. So, my brain thanks you, and that part of me that loves beauty, such as the beauty in this construction, thanks you. This was a stellar outing!
@Lewis I was just about to write a comment, but your comment said it all!
I am always amazed by the number of people who hate it when their puzzles are puzzling. I thought this was brilliant. Like many others, I started out thinking this was a rebus. But I soon realized a traditional rebus fill wouldn’t work because that just created a long incompatible string of letters for the Down entries . (A rebus always has to be legible in both directions, if I’m not mistaken.) That told me something was amiss. My strategy when confronting a puzzle like this, that I don’t immediately understand, is to first avoid the areas that are obviously “tricky”. In this case, any fill that intersected a line. After I got some adjacent clues filled in, and especially once I revealed the revealer, the light bulb went off and the rest went smoothly. For me, this was all sunshine and rainbows. Sorry others had a different experience.
@Heidi You are the Sherlock Holmes of crosswords. You're learned not to jump to the conclusion of a rebus at the first hint that something in weird. And you've learned to steer clear of puzzle strangeness, to the extent you can. It's interesting how much of the game is feel. Is this a rebus? What's with the colored lines? What's with that weird little feature there? Am I imagining things? I suspect our brains figure out which puzzles were dangerous in much the same way they used to figure out which other animals or people were dangerous.
@Heidi I, too, thought this puzzle was a tour-de-force! When reading these comments, I found myself becoming increasingly cranky at the number of whiners. This puzzle, after all, had a revealer which literally explained the trick! There are times, certainly, when I may not be especially quick-on-the-uptake, due to attempting a solve when I’m overly tired or otherwise stressed, but I try to simply slap my forehead and acknowledge a “D’oh!” moment (or moments!). The strategy you delineated in your comment is one I also employ. I hope some of those who were genuinely struggling will read your suggestions and find them helpful in the future. Of course, not everyone will enjoy every puzzle equally, but it seems sad to me that so many are so quick to dismiss a clever, artfully constructed puzzle because they are unwilling to think outside the box.
@Heidi I had to read the column to discover the trick, and even then I found it hard to follow, but that's because I'm still not used to the way these things work. In fact I clicked on rebus and filled in all the letters, the letters were accepted, but were wrong. This was the first time I'd tried to do a rebus, because even I could see something was different! I usually don't notice, because there are a lot of US English words that I don't know especially sports, cars, TV programmes, idioms etc. And word like BURG instead of 'borough'. I got there in the end. It was very clever.
Honeslty don't know what people are complaining about. I thought this was a fun and impressive puzzle, especially that all of the compressed words are functional crossword answers. CANTE(V)EN, GALL(E)ON, G(Y)RATE? I think this is a masterfully built puzzle.
I'm impressed at how the constructor found 36 pairs of words created by the addition or removal of the colorful letters of the rainbow. While it’s true that most are 3 & 4 letter words pairs, there are some good longer ones like GRATE/GYRATE, MANET/MAGNET, CANTEEN/CAN’T EVEN and GALLON/GALLEON. Even though you could easily discern which letter was missing by the color of the line, it was still fun because I used the theme considerably in the solve. I assumed a rebus wasn’t necessary since the clue for the revealer stated the seven words (colors) were “hiding”. Well done, Adam! Color me happy.
The photo for today's puzzle really struck me. I have loved space since as far back as I remember. When I was 11, my mom and dad bought me a telescope. A little one, good for the moon and, on a good clear night you could make out Saturn and Jupiter and Mars and Venus if they were up. And there were a lot more clear nights in those days. I'm pretty sure most people don't realize the extent of our light pollution. But I could never see what I saw in books about space--the nebula, the galaxies, the clusters. Anyway, a few years ago I decided to spend a little of my children's inheritance on a pretty nice telescope, one that could see all those things. I was trying to figure out how to use it one night, and a did all the calibrations and I asked the mount to position to look at the Ring Nebula....and there it was! The Ring Nebula that I read about in Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke books. I think those moments are the meaning of life. Those jolts of interaction with everything else, observer and observed. So, that picture was very triggering for me. In a very, very good way.
@Francis Dang, that was actually quite moving. Thank you. I have a somewhat similar yet less romantic story. As a teenager I was fascinated by space, too. It was the 90s, when only dial-up internet access was available in Poland. Can you imagine I actually spent some of my extra valuable internet time downloading space telescope images of nebulas? It wasn't all pictures of bare bosoms.
@Francis Love this, Frank! Thanks for sharing! Such a thing as glory! (And it's nice to have good triggers sometimes, eh!?)
@Francis You should check out NASAs APOD. <a href="https://apod.nasa.gov" target="_blank">https://apod.nasa.gov</a>
I just took the time to go through the top 30 comments or so, making sure I thumbs-upped every single kudos. If Adam Wagner happens to look in on this forum, I'd like him to know how many people loved his puzzle. A colleague who teaches undergrads back home in the U.S. said this to me the other day (with apologies to undergrads back home in the U.S. who don't fall into this category): "A majority of my students see 'challenging' as 'gatekeeping.'" C'mon, folks, don't you want your puzzle to, well, puzzle? (Purely rhetorical question, btw., as I'm about to close this Safari tab and spend the day actually working. Have a good Sunday, everyone.)
I'm a little surprised that so many people disliked this puzzle. I don't comment much, but I'd like to throw a vote into the "loved it!" column. I truly have no clue why anyone would have thought it was a rebus. I got through it too quickly, but it was constructed well and a joy to solve. Thank you, Adam!
@EmptyJ I tried Rebus answers because some of the answers were obvious, but didn't fit. Like ABBA. But only in 3 letters? Which square is the rebus? Then below it was COLT? But again, only 3 letters. How to make it fit with the downs? That BLUE was the one that solved the puzzle for me. extra B in ABBA, extra L in COLT. What comes next? Extra U in TRUE. Ah Ha!! Then I went back to the top. [Town] I had the G. Put the R in red and had BURG. After that I flew thru the puzzle -- except for all the pop culture trivia that I always have to look up. I don't much watch movies or TV.....
I normally don’t use a comment to whine about other commenters, but the number of people who think this was a bad puzzle because “using a rebus makes more sense” is just baffling to me. The revealer is literally to color “INSIDE the lines. How would using a rebus next to it be inside the lines? And how would that make the down answers make any sense? I myself have been stymied by not understanding how they wanted me to enter a rebus, but this one just doesn’t seem to be the hill to die on….. INSIDE the lines…. Sorry for the negativity! I thought the puzzle was good, although it still took me awhile even after getting the theme. Fun though! Agree they should at least put a “make sure overlay is on” warning for people who don’t know theirs may be off.
@Amanda thanks Amanda, for the follow-up post. To answer your questions: Tidy way to color - as in a coloring book - we color shapes “inside the lines” - not “inside the line”. Not a stretch to think of a rebus as a color inside the lines of the grid squares. To me, anyway. Especially since the answers were only correct with the extra letters. Seemed extremely unlikely to have to imagine invisible letters for answers to be correct. The down answers made sense to me when reading left (answer) vs right (color). In retrospect after reading a lot of posts here - this is a controversial puzzle because the theme can be interpreted different ways - inside the lines vs inside each line - and either way, the grid as read does not show correct answers. (Rebus - downs are problematic, invisible inside the lines- across answers as written are incorrect) Thanks again for posting! And I hope you find a peaceful moment to enjoy your day!
Our Sunday crossword puzzle solving group found this one perfect, with something for everyone. The description offers up 5 trivia clues for a fast trivia nerd fest. Then the puzzle title led us to debate the colorful grid until we had a strategy for solving for the theme. After some experimentation with the crosses, we deduced that there was an easy way and a hard way to go about this. We found that all the colorful across entries were going to require extra brain power, even as it became clear what was going on here. However, if this becomes too taxing to deal with, we could always default to just solving all the down entries we could. The downs seemed to provide smooth sailing. At a certain point, we decided to see how far we could get doing only the across entries (yes, we enjoy debating that kind of headache). Then we realized that every colorful puzzle entry would solve to both a solution to the provided clue and another completely different, but reasonable crossword entry if the 'color' is ignored. We very much appreciate puzzles that provide some method of "cross checking" your entries. Isn't this what crossword puzzles are all about? By the time we got to 113A we were ready to applaud Adam Wagner, Thank you!
I got every word correct with no lookups, but didn't get a win because I entered standard rebuses, which in my opinion, should have been allowed. This is not fair. It broke my streak of 34 in a row with no lookups. However, it did take my mind off of the appalling political situation we are now experiencing, so thank you for that.
@Laura Stratton Concerning your last paragraph, I often these days think of the Gordon Lightfoot song, "Sundown". "Sometimes I think it's a shame When I get feeling better when I'm feeling no pain." That seems to be the zenith for me right now. Not happiness, not joy, not even contentment. Just no pain.
@Laura Stratton A rebus with more than one letter in a cell wasn't an option because the missing letters don't fit in either (left or right) down answer.
Hardly ever comment, but this one was fantastic. Great job.
Great puzzle, but.. Gotta say, Sydney is the worst place in Australia to be running around saying g’day mate to people. Try saying howdy pardner at your local bagel shop in NYC. On second thoughts, come on over , put some corks on the old akubra, hit up a Darlinghurst cafe and put on your best croc Dundee accent. It’ll definitely break the ice.
@RP Um, first, no one would give two hoots hearing "howdy pardner" in a bagel shop. It sounds friendly. And most of the staff are bilingual Hispanic people. It's still a relatively pleasant melting pot in NY and people generally live and let live. I don't understand any of the other words you used except for the Paul Hogan reference. ____________________ Jesse Goldberg 8/28/2024 for Puzzle of the Decade (emu filler)
@RP Eavesdropping on a conversation like this, from people completely across the globe....it may be almost worth the price of the subscription all by itself. A really stupid question: why wouldn't "g'day mate" in Sydney be wise? I'm assuming there are culture differences across Australia just like anywhere else, but I have absolutely no idea what they are.
Group project! Because the colored entries made real words with and without (kudos, Adam!), it cries out for stories. I tried it out for VIOLET - anyone want to try the other colors? I CAN’T EVEN with this CANTEEN, it barely holds enough for two swallows! I asked SIRI what would be a better option, but she had to check with another expert called SRI Baba. Who in turn had to consult Carrie COON - she said she’s aware of a CON going around involving substandard canteens. She performed an ODE about some OLDE Shoppe which maybe had some better canteens. As PER her instructions, I entered said shoppe in order to find the PEER of the best canteens in the world. Alas, I was already late to return to my shift at the newspaper - the EDS were impatient to know the ETDS of Carrie and Baba so they would quit wasting my time.
@Cat Lady Margaret - I’ll give it a whirl! INDIGO Moody’s SON, TEX, gave a TEDX talk about the TAIPING Rebellion. The TAPING didn’t go well. “Too ORNATE,” was the common sentiment.. “Too SOON,” the verdict on TEX’s attempt at humor. Even INDIGO’s brother, Nate, joined in. “I can’t concentrate when TEX ORATEs,” he pronounced. INDIGO was so irate even the LOGO on her shirt looked angry. She went AT IT with Nate. “Remember when you worked for AT&T and took that business trip to London and got locked in a LOO? Well, I wish you were still there!” The TAIPING Rebellion lasted 14 years. Happily, INDIGO and Nate mended their rift the next day. TEX hit his stride as a speaker and now hosts the fourth most popular podcast about the TAIPING Rebellion.
@Cat Lady Margaret YELLOW + one more I slipped in for fun So, I ended up at this club called the ROYALE which was recommended by my niece and her friends. Sorry, but ICANTEVEN. The kids these days, they don't dance, just GYRATE. And the music, if that's what you call it, GRATEs on my nerves! Not to mention the smell of REEFer or POT or whatever the word is nowadays wafting through the club. Felt like a PLOT to destroy my last nerve. I need a REFerral to a good PSYchotherapist. The last one I saw didn't really talk but would just APE my facial expressions and insist on using the ROYALWE. Maybe instead of a head shrink, I just need to close my eyes and return to my happy place in the ALPEs in Springtime, a picnic basket in my hand and a POSY in my hair. Ahhhhhh...
What a slog. Just didn't jive with this one. Recognized the theme right away, but still was a pain. Also, I felt like there were a ton of naticks as well. Made what could been a fun theme and made it brutal.
@Jamie yes agree! Too many proper nouns that made it more frustrating than it needed to be!
@Jamie was going to say same. Loved the theme but ruined by the obscure trivia & worse they crossed.
The author is no doubt a gifted puzzle maker. I wish he'd had another option than to drop it on recreational solvers who look forward to a potentially solvable Sunday puzzle, not one featuring missing letters. Not really crossWORDS. Leave the goofiness for Thursdays, and the impossible for Saturday. Bring on the hate!
@Mike These are the big leagues. You have to learn to hit the curve ball.
@Mike Just a note that it's fairly common for Sunday puzzles to have some sort of a gimmick, but not to the level of Thursday trickery. I disagree that there were missing letters. They were there, just in the form of the color bars that were the same length in squares as there were letters in the color names. It's a trick that we don't see too often, but we've seen similar in the past, with letters under black squares or indicated by shapes of black squares, or even placed outside the puzzle. Also, as noted, the entries without the color name letters are also valid crossword entries—we've seen them all at one time or another.
@Mike I understand your perspective. There are tools to use to help in solving - so you can turn on Autocheck, the feature that tells you if your answer is correct. And if you really get stuck on a clue - particularly names - then "cheat" and put the answer in. Of course, this is not possible in crossword tournaments - but a Sunday puzzle should still be FUN to solve - so adjust accordingly! (And old-timer here who's been there and done that.)
I liked this puzzle once I figured out the theme, and entered the color names as a rebus, so the across answers would be visible. But upon completion I could not figure out what was wrong. Really hate having to look at the key. I no longer like this puzzle. I absolutely despise the assumption that those second letters must be hidden and not a rebus. To me, that makes each of those across answers incorrect. A town is a burg, not a bug. Having to imagine letters for THIRTY-SIX answers is simply annoying. ROYGBIV is the visible spectrum, after all.
@Patti Couldn’t have said it better myself. Right on Patti
@Patti In other words, you weren’t able to solve the puzzle and somehow that is the fault of the constructor? OK, then. (Putting some letters INSIDE THE LINE is not some arbitrary assumption. It is the literal theme of the puzzle.)
@Patti absolutely agree! It was hard to figure out some of the answers while keeping the hidden letters in my head, so I started entering them as a rebus. For the rebus to NOT be accepted as a possible valid answer is, imo, unfair.
@Patti Yeah it’s a burg, because the r is “INSIDETHELINE”, like all the rest of them. It’s the whole theme, the colour is inside the line. This isn’t a rebus puzzle, because otherwise the downs make no sense
@Patti Respectfully disagree, but I love your last sentence!
A lot of people are saying that this should be a rebus puzzle, putting the color letters I guess, in one or the other squares? I guess I can see that. But the clue [Tidy way to color … and where seven words are hiding in this puzzle? ] and the answer INSIDETHELINES, seemed to say to me that the letter was *already there*, hidden inside the line, or, in other words, the line represented the letter. What letter? The letter that was in the spelling at that part of the word. Anyway, that's how I interpreted. I finally saw the light when I realized that the red line was three squares long, the blue four squares long, etc. Bid D'OH moment there for me. I think it took me a lot longer than a lot of people here. I'm really impressed that some saw through it very quickly.
@Francis I was personally surprised to learn from the comments some people expected a rebus. I got the revealer late so it was irrelevant for my solve but the letters in the names of the colors were right there, were they not? I guess that's what can happen with a tricky puzzle - some slightly dim people like me will get it for some random reason, while some more inteligent people will miss it for another.
@Francis, thanks for posting! Your post is really interesting to me because we have the same input but different conclusions: “Tidy way to color… inside the lines” - to me this was like coloring inside the lines of the grid square. So it seemed obvious to enter each as a rebus (which the app did not recognize as correct, which led me to the key and this forum). So if the grid is only correct with invisible letters, then “inside the lines” means inside ALL of the colored lines, not the lines of the grid square. I posted my annoyance with this in a separate post, and someone pointed out that the down answers make no sense if entered as a rebus. (I read left vs right, so that hadn’t occurred to me.) But, the across answers are incorrect as written, unless invisible letters are added in your head. So - 2 interpretations, only 1 is correct, but it requires invisible letters - Clever, or annoying? (Both?) Again, thanks for posting!!
I had a blast with this puzzle! "I'm very happy the constructor went with all seven colors." -Indigo Montoya
Bravo! Bravissimo! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 It makes my day to not only enjoy the solve but also admire the construction, and this puzzle checked those boxes with an amazing cherry on top - that every across word with a missing letter became its own word. Truly magnificent! Mr. Wagner, would you care to keep going and make puzzles for every Pantone color in existence? Please and thank you!
@sotto voce I’m relishing the prospect of a puzzle that has a pop up with a box you need to check to confirm that you are not Anish Kapoor; you are in no way affiliated to Anish Kapoor; you are not solving this puzzle on behalf of Anish Kapoor or an associate of Anish Kapoor; and that to the best of your knowledge, information, and belief this puzzle will not make its way into the hands of Anish Kapoor.
Color me impressed! Guessing I’m the 47th commenter to say it, but that’s the luxury that comes with my comment first, read second system. Gotta add, solve time was sped up considerably because hubby was home, patient, and he knows pretty much everything like JACOBIN DILI NOSHADE milliner… Once he retires, my stats are gonna get all kinds of upgrades! (And he’s cute. So, there’s that, too.) Loved the puzzle. Ate. It. Up. Thank you Adam! 🌈
Very impressive and enjoyable! I skipped over all the entries around the color lines, not knowing which side of the line might contain the two-letter answers. Then I made it allll the way to the explanatory 113 Across. "Oh! The lines ARE the letters!" And in ROY G BIV order, no less. Great work. I can't imagine the dedication required to construct such a puzzle.
Adam, regarding your question in your notes – IMO you easily made the right choice. INSIDE THE LINES, with “color” in its clue works just as well as COLOR INSIDE THE LINES. Heck, even Rex Parker said it was “right on the money”. And leaving out indigo and making this simply about six colors and not about the rainbow? No! The rainbow is far more interesting, brings in a new dimension. If I had come up with the “six color” idea, then someone came along and said, hey, how about making this about the rainbow? Well, I would have wowed and jumped at the chance. And I’m very glad that that’s just what you did. I love how you pulled this theme off.
A sumptuous feast of challenge, but with no suffering. For all of you who think you hate Sundays and for all of you who think you hate rebuses, here's a puzzle I highly recommend. Well maybe there was some suffering for me in the name-riddled SE -- but once I got the slyly clued SPACE TELESCOPE, even the most unknowable names fell into place. Oh to know my INDIGO from my VIOLET. It was so thrilling when those two interchangeable colors became clear. The other colors were easy -- and once I had the trick, I found myself writing them into the squares closest to the color lines first. They helped me solve many answers. What revealer would explain what I was doing? I got to the revealer clue, saw the "L", and blurted out "INSIDE THE LINES". Perfect! The hardest part of my solve was seeing the teensy tiny letters I had jammed into a space much too small for them. I'm having issues with my eyesight anyway, and this was almost impossible to see. In the case of this puzzle, an app might have helped me. But a riveting and compelling solving experience. Kudos to Adam for coming up with a puzzle that was as challenging and entertaining to solve as I imagine it was to create.
@Nancy Hola. Glad to see you, even though you probably won't see me, since so much time has gone by since your post.
@Nancy Welcome back! You've been so missed!
@Nancy Add me to the list of people who missed your comments. Welcome back! Sorry you had an unpleasant experience here. I hope it was a one-off occurrence.
Roy G. Biv, you rock! Kept hoping for a comedian named EMU Phillips. Crossing AGUEY thus, not agony. What I would give to see Emu Phillips do some standup. "G'day, mates! Did you hear about the emu who was taller than his friends? He was ostrich-sized. Hey, what's with all the booers out there? No shade here. Don't dis me. You want me to flip you the bird? Add fuel to your agony? Sir. Sir! No shade here. Don't call me a femu. I'm no femu, mate! I'm no Michelle Yeoh. No shade! No shade!" Roy G. Biv, we could use you about now. I'd give anything for a rainbow. Anything.
You've got a weird brain, @john ezra. I like it! Always a delight to read your posts.
@john ezra EMO Phillips was one of the few standup comics I really enjoyed. Picture a male Olive Oyl. It’s been years since I have seen any of his routines, so I won’t do him the disservice of trying to recreate one of them. I particularly liked one about being stopped for speeding (hi, sotto voce!)
Mr. Wagner, I’m wowed (and a bit jealous of) your ability to come up with puzzles that are both novel and fun to solve. I’m particularly impressed by two aspects of this puzzle: That you got the colors in ROY G. BIV order and that every entry crossing a colored line was a valid word with or without the letter from the color. I only wish I hadn’t been as tired as I was started when I was started solving. It took me much longer than it should have to understand why a gimme like PREGGO wouldn’t fit. It wasn’t until I was sorting out the SE corner that the trick clicked. After that, I could use the theme to help me getseveral of the color-spanning entries. NYT editors and tech folks: This puzzle might have benefited from a note that online solvers should make sure that they had Show Overlays turned on. I hate to imagine how difficult this would have been to solve without being able to see the colored lines. Thanks, y’all!
Found that an enjoyable solve, and was impressed with the ability to create a puzzle where every word with the hidden letter was a valid word! I feel the pain of those who inserted rebus answers, only to have them rebuffed. What a frustrating waste of time. However, the clue said the words were hidden, which warned me we were handling a different type of puzzle today.
I loved this incredibly clever puzzle, and I have to admit I’m a sucker for Sunday puzzles with a little color in the grid. The mental process of remembering what letter was inside the colored lines did slow down the solve somewhat, but I viewed that as pleasure prolonged.
I loved this one! Right off the bat, I noticed that each colored line was the length of the color's name. That realization didn't make it easy, though, which for me was a relief. I was afraid it would solve way too easily. Lots of clues I had no idea about, and then the top center section took me forever to figure out. "Gotta be Acer. Hmm, no. Or maybe yes. Or no." and on it went. The science angle was delightful for me, but I'm a geologist. Isaac Asimov´s terrific quote about "that's funny..." is a cornerstone of the scientific method. One can be doing just about anything when something happens that doesn't fit with everything else. "That's funny..." is the start of an exciting tangent, which might lead nowhere, but also might lead to a huge revelation. Like a rebus! "Wait a minute, something doesn't quite fit here..." is often the start of a rebus. And I agree Adam Wagner, indigo deserves more respect. I'm glad you left it in, I would have noticed and thought "well, fun, but where the heck is indigo?"
@Nora My first thought for 51A was that it was obviously TSMC, but crosses quickly disabused me of that notion.
Roughly 8% of American men have some level of difficulty distinguishing the colors red and green. I’m one of them. I often get cranky about trying to read graphs or charts or buttons on websites when I can’t distinguish the colors that carry meaning. In the case of this puzzle, I just consider the mysterious colored lines an added challenge. But, the puzzle isn’t “for everyone else.” Also, the word for red-green color blindness is “deuteranopia” which would be a good crossword puzzle clue.
@MGS. Yup. As a sailor, I often wonder how the 8% of us allowed red and green to be the two navigational buoy colors! And you are right, the first thing I did was make sure the colored lines letter count followed the roygbiv order.
Looks like I'm in a minority here but I found this one to be an absolute slog. Wasn't particularly impressed that the fill without the colors formed legit 'words' since they were mostly 3-letter crosswordese anyway. Way too many naticks and proper nouns/obscure names for my liking.
@Rahul I feel you. I liked the puzzle but possibly because I always Google the proper nouns, abbreviations, etc. The effect for the solve is the same as if I knew the answers, and since they are of no interest to me (what do I care about some actor's name or an abbreviation of something random?), I don't even pretend I'm "learning" anything. Today I got to enjoy the innovative theme without the frustration of dealing with arcana. To me that is a win.
If you were looking for the target audience of people who’ve never heard of either Sebastian STAN or Josep Maria SERT, I am raising my hand. Why cross two trivial names like this??
Paul, OK, you didn't know either of them. It happens. Since you have never heard of them, how do you know whether they are trivial or important?
Sorry if this appears twice. OK, you didn't know either of them. It happens. If you did not know either of them, how do you know whether they are trivial or significant?
@Paul R I had never heard of either, either. However, given the phonotactics--ooh! what a word!--of English, by far the most likely letter was "S." (Although "Eert" sounds like it could be a Dutch name, I guess; and Sebastian Étan, French). I felt like I should have heard of Sert, tho.
It took me less than 15 seconds to figure out the theme and how to handle it, and the generally easy clues made for a very fast (but untimed) solve. I found the puzzle remarkable, clever, colorful, charming and unchallenging. Meat Loaf, anyone? Thanks, Adam.
@Barry Ancona Meat loaf? Again? I agree. It solved like a straightforward themeless puzzle where a lot of letters were pre-entered into the grid (though in a clever way). Must have been super fun to construct. Not too satisfying to solve.
@Barry Ancona wow we’re so impressed you must be a genius with the best words
Clever and brilliant but to me more annoying than fun to solve. However I can see that a lot of work obviously went into it. 🌈
Sorry, but I gave up after five minutes. I’m a traditionalist and I don’t care for puzzles with gimmicks like this. See you next week.
@John. Agree. Not worth my time. I’m getting more and more tired of these cutesy puzzles
@John. Is this a case of one person’s “gimmick/cutesy” being another’s “Aha, clever”?
This puzzle was a joy to solve. The frisson as we crossed each line and saw the perfectly normal fill even without the hidden letters … magnificent! Goodness knows there have been crosswords that have infuriated us in the past — usually when the grid ends up looking like gibberish or the mental gymnastics are out of proportion to the payoff (we’re looking at you, art heist). This puzzle made up for so many past sins!
Filled in the whole thing correctly using rebuses along the colored lines. Drove me nuts trying to figure out why it wasn't giving me a completion. You should have allowed rebus entries here!
I'm a new solver, about a year in. Only did Mondays and Tuesdays for about 9 months but now have a 103 day streak. I LOVED THIS PUZZLE. Very creative. Still had to Google a few to complete, and was around my Sunday average, but proud to figure out the theme without looking here first.
I loved this puzzle. I found it clever, and I welcomed the rainbow in this challenging time.
Enjoyable Sunday puzzle. If I had to pick a nit, it’d be that I entered in all of the line colors as rebuses (rebii?), mostly for my own sake, and I had to go back and remove the rebuses for it to give me credit. Not the end of the world, certainly, but definitely slightly annoying.
Just finished. This puzzle was so pretentious. I couldn’t wait to be done with it.
@J Just curious: what does it mean for a crossword puzzle to be “pretentious”?
A delightful puzzle! One frustration: I inserted the color names in rebus entries to the left of the color lines (could as well have been to the right). The app didn't credit the solution so I rechecked everything and found no errors. It was only when I read Caitlin's column that I learned that I should not have entered the color names at all. The app accepts alternate correct answers in other puzzles where the intended entry method isn't clear. It's too bad this one wasn't as forgiving.
@Bill Falls But the problem is that the missing letters don't fit into the down clues to the right or left of the color lines. The R missing from BUG wouldn't fit into either USOPEN or GASSTATIONFOOD. A rebus with more than one letter in a cell needs to work in both directions. If it doesn't fit in both directions, something else is afoot.
It’s annoying to break a streak on a technicality, and totally detracts from one’s enjoyment and marvel at the puzzle. How am I supposed to know that entering the solutions as rebuses leaves the entire puzzle “unsolved”?
FR, (1) The revealer clue, 113 Across, tells you not to enter the seven words: they are already "hiding in this puzzle." (2) Rebuses must work Across and Down: entering those letters (again) anywhere else in the grid would not work in both directions. The colored lines *are* rebuses: the letters spell out the colors Down and make the Across answers match the clues.
Okay: Why I Loved 3-Down! We lived in NE Ohio down the road from neighbors who owned the original farmhouse and much of the original farmland. They raised horses and goats, rabbits, ducks and chickens (fox food), and children. One of the horses was promising enough to be sent to a trainer, and he won some races, including a couple at Oaklawn in Hot Springs. After DHubby and I moved to Arkansas, one of the daughters and her fiancee took a road trip, arranging their route to head our way after visiting the Gulf. Describing the drive, they told us they had decided not to stop for lunch until later, when they had crossed into Arkansas. Both DHubby and I involuntarily cried, "Oh, NO!" ....because there is nothing but soybean fields, silos, cotton fields, and emptiness for MILES and MILES! (We had a broken timing chain once--in 95 degree heat-- on that route...) Anyway, those kids drove and drove, getting increasingly hungry, until they saw a GAS STATION....where they stopped....and ate GAS STATION PIZZA!
@Mean Old Lady "where they stopped....and ate GAS STATION PIZZA!" Sounds like a horror movie, and it's why I always pack peanut butter, jelly and bread for road trips.
@Mean Old Lady I LOLed at "fox food." That should be a crossword clue for chickens. Arkansas sounds a lot like Delaware below the C&D Canal; nothing but chicken farms and cornfields, to feed the chickens, of course.
@Mean Old Lady Heading the other direction, our place Up North is in a small town, with two gas stations, one of which serves GAS STATION PIZZA--it's really quite good! You can buy it by the slice, or order a whole pizza, made fresh (frequently the more economical option)--24 HOURS A DAY! It's by far the best pizza option in town, and saved us on many a late night arrival!
@Mean Old Lady On one of our US vacations we were driving from California to Nevada, or maybe it was from Nevada to Utah? Anyway, somewhere on the way we got hungry. Used to European gas stations, which usually stock decent food, we stopped to get a sandwich at a station on the outskirts of a gray, industrial town at the foot of arid mountains. There was nothing fresh, just a row of sad looking, packaged, industrially made sandwiches in a cooler. I reached for one, wary of it - somehow everything in it was strangely pale, and it looked... I don't know... wet? But a distrubing sort of wet, soggy and slimy like something unspeakable Stephen King might write a short story about. So I looked at the ingredients in small print on the label. Ye gods! Turns out the thing that sort of looked like cheese was a "processed non-dairy slice," and the other ingredients were equally scary. I put that abomination back in the cooler, resigning to be hungry rather than violate myself by eating whatever that was. Gas station food indeed. /shudder
Sweet way to tie the week together: Second puzzle this week to be inspired by the constructors' activities with their children, the first being Greg Snitkin's Monday puzzle. Second puzzle this week where, rather than actually filling them in, you imagined the letters in the grid, the first being David Steinberg's Thursday puzzle, where the letter U represented a pocket, and the solver imagined the letters in the U square rather than filling them in.
@Lewis on Thursday's puzzle you could enter just "U" for each of those rebus squares. Normally the first letter of each rebus is accepted as an alternate.
I really enjoyed this puzzle, but no one in Australia says “g’day mates”, it’s always singular… also would have loved some Kermit / Muppet / rainbow connection clues!