It was 4:30am in Switzerland and I thought, surely I'm hallucinating that IMCOMING over "Tenderly stroking".
@K Sounds like you're having more fun in Switzerland that we are over here.
@K I think Lewis is going to have to start a new category ‘Best Comments’.
Is that what you do to a polaroid? I always just lazily waved it around, like a Victorian woman at a ball coquettishly trailing her kerchief between thumb and dainty forefinger. [Make two dos...] simply brilliant. I haven't checked its originality but it's new to me. I heart that clue. Also like the cross of PHENOM and PEN, which is how many people probably spell the capital of Cambodia. And am intrigued by I'm coming & I'm shook at opposite vertices. Do tell! (Or better yet, don't.)
@john ezra same here re: Polaroid. But I do remember when the camera spat out the photo and you peeled off the backing, I used to give it a quick shake. A photographer introduced me to take a ballpoint pen with a cap on and scratch the photo to draw on it while it was developing. It added some artistic flair - back in the day, it made mundane subjects stand out as if it was drawn by Keith Haring (giving away my age here 😄).
@john ezra polaroid picture is probably a reference to outkast's hey ya (2003) lyric "shake it like a polaroid picture"
@john ezra brilliant image. thank you. and to think i almost forwent my daily check-in on the commentariat!
When a baby has to depart quickly, he shakes rattle and rolls. (Sorry to toy with you.)
Well, I didn’t remember the part about having to shake a Polaroid picture, so my efforts to guess the revealer came to naught. I kept trying to think of something that included “hands”. No matter. Also, no matter if there were any flaws in the puzzle – and there weren’t. Any nits – and there weren’t – wouldn’t have mattered either. Why? Because this solve ended with a pleasure punch that rocketed me smiling into my day. Those two OMG clues right at the end: • [Make two dos, say], for TRANSLATE • [A red one is rare], for STEAK Leave me with a kapow like that, puzzle, and I’m your friend for life. Thank you for that, Hanh, as well as for a lovely theme, for a make-my-heart smile clue – [“Such a charmer!] – for OH YOU (a debut clue, BTW), for a spotless grid despite the backward SPOT, and for a rare-in-crosswords five-letter semordnilap (SNIPS). Yes, a heap of gratitude for this gem, Hanh. Bravo!
@Lewis If the puzzle had been clued with Elvis OR the complete line, it might deserve a pass, but it's not, and it doesn't BLAH. CLUNK. (UHs aren't strong enough.)
For some reason, that “Oh hi” always makes me laugh. Were you caught doing something sneaky? Or is the person you’re greeting your disliked coworker? Etc. “Oh hi. Um, yeah, um, you mean this can of SPRAY PAINT?” “Oh hi. MISS ME!?!” “Oh hi. OH, YOU.” “Oh hi. Yes, that was me practicing the TAMBOURINE.”
Fun Tuesday though on the easy side. Not on the easy side is what’s going on between our two countries today. I just want to let my American crossword community friends know that we are unwilling participants in Trump’s trade war. It’s unfortunate how divisive this is but we have no choice but to fight back. All the best…
@Byron Just wanted to let you know that I grew up north of where you are... in the U.P. Oh, and lately I've pondered the possibility of moving to Canada more than a few times. ...
@Byron Please know that many of us are also unwilling participants.
@HeathieJ Thanks. Whenever I despair I try to focus on the fact that the popular vote between Trump and Harris was around 50.75% to 49.25%. Could easily have gone the other way.
I genuinely grinned at the solution for “make two dos.”
@Ingrid That would have been a great late-week clue, but for me it was too witty, or perhaps too-knowledge-based, for a Tuesday. It had me completely stumped: probably because first, I don't speak Spanish and even though I understand much of it, I dont casually think of it when misdirected, and second, on Tuesday I'm not expecting to be wittily misled to an extent typical of Saturday, say.
@Ingrid me dos! I didn't understand it even after I filled it...had to come here to the column for an explanation (and then forehead slap!)
Very satisfying—one of those puzzles that develops in front of your eyes—soothing after another fraught day. Tricky fills, but not too tricky ("Make two dos" was a beauty); entertaining crosses that were not strained; a few that made me feel a little smart, and none that made me feel dumb (not exactly like a phenom or make me an egomaniac, but maybe at least just one up). After the news of the day I'm shook, but at least a more relaxed kind of shook. Thank you Hanh Huynh, and thank your friends as well. I'm sure that many of us would love to join one of your delightful brainstorming parties!
I usually don’t post because by the time I do the puzzle most of you are long gone. This puzzle was fine and fun, like almost all of them are to me. But I want to celebrate my 500-puzzle streak! I started doing them in 2022, and now I do most of them without lookups. So let’s also consider this an encouragement to those who are just getting started on their puzzle journey.
What got you lot started with the NYT Crossword? I'll start: I subscribed in 2018 after I watched the Crossword episode of Brooklyn 99. Amy Santiago's and Captain Holt's fascination intrigued me. I am sure, today I would also fangirl hard to see Will Shortz in that episode!
@Anna Since you asked: I’ve always enjoyed words and wordplay, having inherited my dad’s punny sense of humor. I don’t remember solving crosswords as a kid in the 1960s, but I must have, because I do remember making a few grids of my own then. (Unpublishable ones; imagine a cryptic crossword grid’s many unchecked squares but without the clever clues.) My college newspaper ran the syndicated NYT crossword, and I frequently solved that in the late ‘70s—early ‘80s. In the ‘90s, my husband and I solved the Sunday crossword together. When digital solving began, we started doing the daily puzzle in AcrossLite. We must’ve stopped because I was too busy with work when the Texas Legislature was in session; the last laptop we owned had in folder full of puzzles we never started. It wasn’t until the end of 2019, when we switched our NYT subscription to the all-access electronic version, that I had online access to the puzzles. I was already retired, so when COVID kept us from leaving the house except for necessary errands or bike rides, I had plenty of time to develop a crossword-solving habit. It was around then that I discovered the electronic communities that had built up around crosswords.
By June 2023, my wife had been doing American crosswords for several years. Her office gets some American newspapers (not the NYT though) and during her breaks she enjoyed doing the crossword puzzles because of how different they were from Polish ones: much more witty and interesting. On our daily evening walks with our dog my wife would tell me about the most interesting clues she had encountered, and I tried to solve them. I became intrigued by the exercise, so I decided to have a go at an American grid myself. For no particular reason I picked the NYT app, and here I am, almost two years later, getting better and enjoying it.
@Anna In the ‘80s, I was a teenager and the Sunday Times was delivered to our home. I’d solve with my dad (who was left paralyzed after an accident in 1980) chipping away at it for days. My Swedish mother and my father’s mother would usually pick it up and fill in a blank or two. There was phone number you could call to get an answer if you got stuck, but each call was $1! During college I’d buy the paper to combat homesickness. My husband gave me a daily subscription in 1992, and I’ve solved daily ever since. It’s my wild field of strawberries, where every day begins. On vacation, in a hospital bed, the puzzle is my gentle entryway, easing me in to whatever my day will hold. Thanks for asking!
@Anna Thanks for asking. To be honest it has been so long but I'd have to assume that it started with the Sundays in the magazine. When I bought the Sunday paper at the Acme the checkout clerk would always remark on the price ($5 was a lot in those days). I'd tell her that it took me all week to read all the sections so I was getting my money's worth. The Sunday puzzles would sometimes take all week as well. Two key memories: Group family solves on the beach with our daughter's and, later, their boyfriends/husbands. And laying in bed stumped by a Friday and my wife saying, "You have not written anything in a while". (Grrrr!).
@Anna The COVID epidemic shut me and my son up alone in my house in 2020, and an incorrect diagnosis of Alzheimer's made me scramble to find a way to keep my brain functional and my vocabulary and ability to communicate intact for as long as possible. Near brushes with death are great for forcing one to re-evaluate their lives and start making the most of each day. I highly recommend them.
@Anna As a youngster I watched my dad do them every Sunday. Every now and then he would laugh and show me some clever wordplay that he figured out. So smart! When he collapsed and died a half- completed Sunday slipped from his hands. A while ago - pre internet - I picked up a Sunday and after a struggle was able to complete it. Then my wife and I would do one every now and then. But I really got going during COVID. Subscribed, and have done over 800 so far, and got my daughter hooked.
@Anna Sunday paper (The Plain Dealer--Cleveland's major newspaper back in the 1990's when there was such a thing) had the NYT's puzzle (in syndication) and I would work that puzzle,, which often took me all week. After we moved away from our Ohio home (both kids in college) and settled in Arkansas (escaping the long, bitter Winters) there was a hiatus, but after I retired in 2006, I got a subscription and printed the puzzles each day. I followed Rex Parker's blog for a while before finding WordPlay....
@Anna My mom is a crossword junkie, and she got me started. I bought crossword books, picked up newspapers and magazines with puzzles in them, and worked on them whenever I had a spare moment. It didn't take me long to realize the NYT were the pinnacle of crosswords. We would only get the local Sunday paper which carried both the NYT and the LA Sunday crosswords. I liked the LA one too, but it wasn't as hard. 2 yrs ago I discovered the online app, and realized the rest of the week could be really challenging as well, and even harder than Sunday. My mom is turning 97 soon and sadly can only do the easy ones now, but she still loves them.
@Anna My mother got me started, first just watching and later joining in. (She also was a whiz at the acrostics--and I'll take my obligatory opportunity here to lament the disappearance of the variety puzzles from our online subscriptions.) In college the Sunday crossword became a household activity with my roommates. And then it was every day, on paper, with my morning coffee at a cafe on my way to work. With COVID I went virtual, and now only rarely indulge nostalgia and buy a hard copy; I admit to missing the ink-stained fingers...
@Anna I grew up in the 50’s in a suburb of NYC. My mother would sit at the corner of the sofa and do the NYT Crossword every Sunday. In pen! The phone was nearby so she could call her closest friend and discuss it. The image endures in my brain, and I still can hear her laughing and chatting. Of course I followed suit…and have been doing the puzzle myself for 60 years or so. God I’m old!
@Anna Fun question and so many great stories here. Sadly, I don't have any great and meaningful story. I too am a big fan of Brooklyn Nine-Nine though and noticed their love of crosswords and Amy's indignation when she saw an error in the puzzle. I do a lot of other games and I guess one day after doing a wordle after it moved into the New York times, I thought, huh, wonder if I could do a crossword puzzle.... That was about 18 months ago or so and I've done at least one most days. Most other games come pretty easily to me, but the crosswords were more of a challenge and I like that.
@Anna To be completely honest, boredom and procrastination. I subscribed to the NYT in college for the news. No one in my family did crosswords, but I have always liked wordplay. I needed a study break and thought I'd give it a go. That was 15 years ago and here I still am. My only memory of it as a child was my gma pretending to let me help on a Sunday puzzle during Christmas one year. I've since gotten my mom to play, so we can chat about it! Our text thread is like 45/45/10 crossword/spelling bee/other chat.
@Anna I started doing the LA times crossword when I'd walk to my Dad's office after high school to do my homework. Much closer than walking home. That was in the 1960's. Didn't do them much for years, but then my Mom lived in Salt Lake CIty and the NYT Puzzle was in the Deseret News every day. She thought it was too hard, so she would do the Deseret News one and I'd do the NYTs one when I was there to visit. Then a few years back I got a 'free' subscription to NYT with my contribution to KQED -- local NPR station. Once I had the subscription I started doing it every day, instead of now-and-then. That was May 2018. I've done 2572 of them now! Longest streak was 625 -- then I got busy one day and didn't finish a Saturday that I was going to come back to. I started Sunday without noticing Sat wasn't done, so the streak was gone. I'm now up to 125. I always finish every day, but I often have lookups. I figure it's my time to lean something new.
Nice Tuesday. Good tension and effort required, but still steadily progressing. Hope everyone had a nice day.
I don't always do the Hokey Pokey, but when I do, I shake it all about.
What a beautiful, clean fill. And such witty clue-ing. Thanks!
Last month we re-surrendered our adopted cockatoo after five years. Cockatoos and apartments don’t mix. I miss her crest and her sweet, if noisy, disposition.
@Justin I loved having birds when I was a kid. But I have to admit that seeing them forever in a cage really bothers me now. I had a couple of love birds that I bought as a wedding present in 1994, and I tried many times to find a refuge for them in some appropriate bird sanctuary. Unfortunately, they both died before the internet might have made that possible. I feel guilty to this day.
@Justin I grew up with a cockatoo that my dad brought home from The Philippines. Molly lived 30 years and would often be out of her cage and riding on his shoulder. He also built a large outdoor enclosure. She loved to eat anything, from peas to ice cream. But we also teased her with peanut butter. Hard to eat if you’re a bird! Sorry you couldn’t keep yours.
@Justin Your comment made me smile a bit as just recently I read the NYT piece about the Goffin’s cockatoo in the Gramercy Park co-op that created such a years-long stir. Perhaps some of you missed it, it’s definitely worth a read. I’ll try a free link: <a href="https://tinyurl.com/374r9duj" target="_blank">https://tinyurl.com/374r9duj</a>
Hit my Tuesday PR! Got in such a groove, super straightforward Tuesday yet still satisfying :-)
@Evan D Congratulations on the personal record! By starting these puzzles when I’m too sleepy to think clearly, I’m doing my part to raise the median solving time at xwstats.com. (I solve most Friday and Saturday puzzles in less time than this one took me.)
The crossword was just fine, and gotta say I’ve been enjoying the Crosslandia “mix tape”! 😁
Er, um, UH. Aha! I got it on the third try. Sometimes the smallest clues can hang you up. Going through old family photos recently I came across quite a few badly faded POLAROIDPICTURES. I remember thinking how miraculous that technology seemed in its day, and now it seems so obsolete.
Since we're talking about songs... This in no way describes the puzzle, but it is the first song I thought of when I got the shake theme and had POLAROIDPICTURE. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWgvGjAhvIw" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWgvGjAhvIw</a> Skip to 1:00 for the actual music Skip to 4:00 for Shake it like a Polaroid picture! Fun puzzle! Thanks for making me think of this song.
@CCed and @Andrew Thanks for the Hey Ya link! Never saw it before but got a real kick out of it. I was dimly aware of the retro-Polaroid fad in the early 2000's, but I really remember the late '60's in 8th grade when a dear friend saved up from his paper route to buy a Polaroid. I saw plenty of Polaroid pics taken and developed but I never saw or heard of anyone shaking them, so that theme entry today was a mystery-- explained by the video!
My post has been held up for 3 hours so far, so I'll try again with potentially triggering words removed. RE: POM POMS My great-niece, who is almost 6, is on the cheer squad at her Long Island school. This is the cheer she learned: Boys have the muscle, Coaches have the brains, girls have the spirit to help us win this game. Keep in mind that was in 2024, not 1950. Luckily, she knows it's ridiculous. But still..... Is this common or is her school particularly out of touch?
@Nancy J. Thanks for cheering me down. Is that for real?
@Nancy J. Well I guess it’s better than the original Firecracker cheer: Firecracker Firecracker boom boom boom Firecracker Firecracker boom boom boom Boys got the muscles, Teachers got the brains, girls got the sexy legs, they win this game Though I think is was maybe a jump rope song?
@Nancy J. Just have to do one more yikes to that one! Ugh!
Let me be the first: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1iw8v-Dnu0" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1iw8v-Dnu0</a>
@Steve L I was expecting Guns and Roses when I clicked the link. Your choice was better.
Brag time: finished in 15:36 without looking at any of the Down clues! This is how I spice up an “easy” puzzle.
@Petrol IMSHOOKeth 😳. That’s amazing!
@Petrol Lately, I’ve been spicing up the easy puzzles (and the hard ones) by starting them when I’m so sleepy I can barely keep my eyes open. After a few hours of sleep, I come back to the puzzle and I’m amused by some of the nonsense answers that I entered earlier. I rely on letter patterns a lot when solving (I think it was Vaer who called that “Wheel of Fortune” solving). Sometimes I don’t read all the clues, which leads to things like having RAdIO instead of RATIO and consequently being unable to make sense of TRANSLATE.
@Eric Hougland I love this! Hilarious!
@Eric Hougland I do this, too, though not by design. I’m just starting to wake up at 0300 hours! I’ll do some or all of the puzzle and then go back to sleep. Unfortunately, if I finish I’ll sometimes “sleep post” on here and wake later to read some utter nonsense 😬😬😬😬
@Eric Hougland @Vaer Love the Wheel of Fortune mini game! Sometimes I fill most of an answer with the crosses and try to deduce the clue. My RAdIO is respectable.
Excellent puzzle, especially the TRANSLATE clue! 👌
Unlike most, this was slower than my Tuesday average - mostly because something about dos two amazing clues wouldn’t let my brain translate the souvenir slogan. Brilliant misdirects! (But I remembered the sushi.)
@JohnWM FWIW, xwstats.com said this puzzle was Easy, with 92% solving faster than their Tuesday average. My experience was in line with this, with a 28% faster-than-Tuesday-average time for me. Goes to show you that if one (or two) little things trip you up, your stats are going to be off. After all, 8% did solve slower than usual.
IMSHOOKeth (that’s how we say it, or used to a few years ago) that I was not the only person to come on here and mention the song that features actual shaking like a POLAROIDPICTURE. The “Hey Ya’”music video (see link @cced’s post, below) is still a straight up banger. I miss that era of Andre 3000 and OutKast, both musically and on film. Today, he mostly does collaborations and seems quite taken with playing the flute (like Lizzo). His recent solo album features a 12-minute long ambient track with lots of flute music, “I Swear, I Really Wanted to Make a 'Rap' Album but This Is Literally the Way the Wind Blew Me This Time.” This was a very my-wheelhouse puzzle. Hanh, I enjoyed your theme. I can hear the balls clattering together in a SPRAYPAINT can. TRANSLATE was clued terrifically. Happy Tuesday everyone!
@Pani Korunova I'll have to check out the flute album. I hadn't heard about it.
Enjoyable.Did not need clues but did have to use my brain. Sorely needed as an escape from reality. Thank you.
Interesting: the puzzle felt tough as I was solving, and I actually worried I may be forced to look up some stuff, but in the end I filled the grid without any outside help in my average Tuesday time. The theme was well implemented but not particularly interesting to me, as apparently my Polish life experience and Polish culture involve much less shaking than their American counterparts: Cheerleaders were unknown here in my formative years, and the only pom poms I knew were attached to my beanies (the Polish word is "pompon": the same as in the original French. I wonder how the American spelling substituted that N for an M? The internet says it was a simple case of mishearing the French word). Polaroid's American heyday was in the 1970s, and the technology did not make it past the Iron Curtain, that I know of. Nobody I have ever known here has ever had a Polaroid camera. By the time Poland opened up to the world in 1989, the technology was no longer attractive enough to become a hit over here.
@Andrzej Polaroid photography does have its charms. The pictures can have a weird sort of washed-out immediacy to them sometimes, and pulling the photo out of the camera and watching it slowly develop before your eyes is a unique experience. There's been a few photographers that used them exclusively. I'm not even sure you can still get film for them, though. You used to be able to buy a Polaroid back for Hasselblad cameras, which, given the huge assortment of lenses and attachments available for those excellent machines, opened up a whole world of possibilities. My father was an insurance adjuster. He was provided with a Polaroid camera by his employer for use on the job almost immediately after they became available, and I often accompanied him if he had to travel (for instance, to a small town where a tornado had struck, or by plane to another state to recover a stolen vehicle). The series of sounds a Polaroid camera makes and the smell of the chemicals when the backing is peeled away and the picture starts to develop as you watch are all a source of intense nostalgia for me.
@Andrzej Polaroids are in use again, I gather they have a retro appeal to younger generations (similar to vinyl over CDs). Must've been all those filters in apps like SnapChat that made them want the "real thing." :-) And as far as pom-poNs are concerned, my middle son once dated a girl who was on the pom-pon team for her high school. He corrected me more than once after I tried to use the more familiar pom-pom. But I do think that form is rare.
Might as well describe the puzzle in general: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Flt4klIkYhU" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Flt4klIkYhU</a> Nice Tuesday! Over too quickly. Thanks, Hanh.
@JayTee Thanks for the memories, JayTee. I was at that fabulous concert in Cleveland in ‘95. Still remember seeing the New York Times in a blue plastic bag in my driveway when I got home at 4:30 in the morning!
@JayTee Go Clarence. Fun to see Bruce tip-toeing around like he was playing with live dynamite. Which he was.
I’m shook that the title isn’t “shake it”. Ykno like a Polaroid picture????? It seems a prime editing pun was missed. And before you object to that with a quip about puns being the lowest form of humor - this is crosswords where puns are the highest form of humor.
@Red Carpet I think that would make sense, but I quite like the way it is now. The answer to "What do I do with you?" would be the pompom saying "I'm shook" to describe what to do with it.
@Red Carpet Only Sunday puzzles have a title. The title for the Wordplay columns is usually inspired by one of the clues. And Sam does it as pun play.
@Red Carpet TBF, I don't think I've ever heard some on say "shake it like a tambourine" or "shake it like a pompom." Or at the very least, I don't think they're common phrases.
POM POMS: My great-niece, who is almost 6, is on the cheer squad at her Long Island school. This is the cheer she learned: Firecracker, firecracker, boom boom boom! Boys have the muscle, Coaches have the brains, girls have the spirit to help us win this game. Really? Yikes!!!!! Luckily, she knows it's ridiculous. But still......
@Nancy J. My other comment to you didn't come through, so I'll just echo your yikes!!! Glad she's sensible about it though!
Very fun puzzle! Loved STEAK and TRANSLATE, though my brain was fuzzy and didn't pick up on them and the T in IHEART as fast as it should have, I loved it when the aha came!! Otherwise, pretty breezy. For the foreseeable future, IMSHOOK will be my response every time anyone asks me how I am. Also really like the crossing of OHHI and OHYOU. A strange remembered bit from a thousand years ago when I used to watch the Simpsons, and since the Simpsons was mentioned here today: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89hkmQKx9p4" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89hkmQKx9p4</a>
More shaking music. Any Florence and the Machine fans out there? <a href="https://youtu.be/WbN0nX61rIs?si=uZbX6DjFlzbaYerw" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/WbN0nX61rIs?si=uZbX6DjFlzbaYerw</a>
PHENOM? SHOOK? Civilisation is coming to an end! Oh, wait ...... Lovely crossword. Only stuck on YOSHI, of course. Cheer-leading still exists? I read that they must "maintain their tryout weight and appearance" and I expect Messi and Ronaldo are told the same.
@Jane Wheelaghan You should visit (for instance) Texas--a football and cheerleader culture! And that's just junior and senior high schools and colleges and universities--not just pro ball. (DHubby loves college football, but strongly supports only Penn State--undergrad alma mater--and any teams that battle Penn State's arch-rivals. He ignores details like cheerleaders and the bands. I loathe football season...)
@Jane Wheelaghan Cheerleading has evolved into a highly competitive sport of its own. College championships get TV coverage. Routines are quite athletic with moves from acrobatics, gymnastics, and dance. Coed teams incorporate lifts and throws that can be quite dangerous. The old model still exists on "game day" in many places.
Smooth solve and the interspersed LOL funny clue/answers made this a real treat. Well done and thanks.
This millennial found this puzzle an absolute delight. I already had the themed answers by the time I reached the revealer and thought IMSHOOK was so charming.
I second the motion <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lo2qQmj0_h4" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lo2qQmj0_h4</a>
@STEVE G Gotta say the subtitles are a big help.
The I HEART - TRANSLATE crossing was the last to fall for me, but so, so fun when it clicked! Thanks!
I don't know if it was the fact the weather is turning, the kiss from my wife this morning or just an all around good Tuesday, but I felt it when I sat down in front of today's puzzle. 4:05 later, a new Tuesday best!
Call back to @Andrzej and others: there was recent discussion of NO SHADE, "shade" being unfamiliar to many. I was amused to find this paragraph in the NYTImes coverage of the Oscars, specifically Hulu's livestream: The best-actress disturbance came shortly after the “Anora” director Sean Baker encouraged the audience to watch movies in cinemas instead of from home, adding to the pile-on of shade thrown at streaming services throughout the evening.
Although I'm often 65A these days when it comes to the news, this puzzle was a lot of fun. 60A and 53D were real gems! [Make two dos, say?] [A red one is rare]
That one went smoothly. Time to head over to the archives and try to fill some gaps from the calendar.
I loved this one! Way under my average Tuesday time, so I guess I just happened to be on the author's wavelength today.
Just as I got to 53D, a red one is rare, what did I hear on the radio but Sunday Bloody Sunday. Answered the clue and appropriate to the times. I can't believe the news today Oh, I can't close my eyes and make it go away How long, how long must we sing this song? How long? How long? <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8FYJ9qvegI" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8FYJ9qvegI</a>
12D brings back memories…When hiking in the mountains of Jamaica several yrs ago I sliced my hand open on some rusty barbed wire. Was easily 2 hrs from the nearest medical clinic. Our trusty guide dug some dirt from the ground and rubbed it on my cut wrapped it with a cloth and we proceeded with our hike. I ended up with 10 stitches and a much needed tetanus shot. Great and fun puzzle! 👏👏
To add another song to the mix: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWgvGjAhvIw" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWgvGjAhvIw</a> A fun puzzle and a Tuesday best for me! The clue for 60-Across was my favorite.
I was a mere 20 seconds off my PB with this one! Loved it! To add to the theme songs being posted tonight, I leave you with these… <a href="https://youtu.be/nfWlot6h_JM?si=qRpK3rbGzbor8bmQ" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/nfWlot6h_JM?si=qRpK3rbGzbor8bmQ</a> And <a href="https://youtu.be/K3SA5Z-cbC8?si=V4IEuClOSgrHglBa" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/K3SA5Z-cbC8?si=V4IEuClOSgrHglBa</a>
@Jacqui J I thought Steve L might have posted the TSwift. Bonus points for the cheerleaders with POMPOMS.
@Vaer I clicked on all of the links prior to mine to make sure I wasn’t duplicating anyone else! 😉 That TSwift song/video was the first one I thought of as I solved the puzzle. The Cars “Shake It Up” was the other.
Nice Tuesday puzzle. On the slow side for me but a good workout. Didn't really catch on to the trick until I was almost done and that just makes for a nice 'aha' moment. 'Shook' led me down a path on my answer history searches today. First wondered about 'SHAKEYOURBOOTY.' Nope - but at least it is in the Xword Info word lists. And finally drifted to Frank Zappa and Sheik Yerbouti. Nope on that one too, but 'Sheik' did lead me to an interesting puzzle. I'll put that in a reply. ..
@Rich in Atlanta As threatened: A Sunday from August 4, 1996 by D. Tuller with the title "Speesh problem." Answer that led me there: "Like some Arabs' conversations?" SHEIKHTOSHEIKH And some other theme clues and answers: "Wine connoisseurs at dinner?" SHERRYPICKERS "Goes on a diet?" SHOOSTHEFAT "Sheriff's grain harvest?" POLICESHEAF "Monastery no-no?" GREGORIANSHANT And there were more. Here's the Xword Info link; <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=8/4/1996&g=3&d=D" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=8/4/1996&g=3&d=D</a> I'm done. ...
I almost blew this one owing to my mixing up Japanese foods. To wit unami instead of unagi. I figured emomania (obsession with angst music) could be "translated" as extreme self-obsession, but when that seemed the only changeable option I made it and eh voila! Cost me five minutes of reviewing and a Tuesday high 27 mins!
@Calhouri As far as I know, there’s no such thing as “unami” unless you make it two words in reference to your French friend. Maybe you’re thinking of “umami,” a taste sensation? In any case, it helps to know your eels when solving the NYT crossword.
My comment is a general one and it is this: X word constructors of the world: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE STOP USING TEXTING ABBREVIATIONS IN YOUR PUZZLES. This is slothful and an unrestricted license to enter practically any mumbo jumbo you might find yourself in need of, e.g. in today's online New Yorker we have "SMFH" . This is degrading and also unfair to those of us who don't spend 6 hours a day staring at our phones . Thank you.
@Bruce D SMS (Short Message Service) is not an initialism used in text (sorry if this is triggering, but, LOL as laughing out loud, for example). Rather, as the clue correctly implies, it is the format by which most texts via cellphone are transmitted. Would you object to, say, HTML in a crossword clue as "Website format, for short"? Kind of the same idea.
@Bruce D Ironic you should refer to “X word constructors of the world”!
@Bruce D Also, we don't spoil puzzles from other sources here. SMFH.
@Bruce D Are you serious? Text abbreviations have been a thing for decades, and they are part of modern language. Are you trolling? (And I don't mean demanding tolls at a bridge)
@Bruce D TIL “SMFH” Oh my that’s lol.