Oh. Well. Thing of beauty in so many ways. The elegant grid design, allowing for a spectacular 24 longs. Longs bring the fun of guessing the answer with as few crosses as possible, and today ahas and ohos overabounded. What a pleasure ride! Pleasure also comes from answers and clues never or rarely before seen in the NYT puzzle. Listen to this incredible fact that I gleaned from XwordInfo data: 199 of the puzzle’s 225 squares belong to answers that have been in the Times puzzle only four times before or less. That's practically 90% of this puzzles squares. 90%! Amazing! The freshness includes lovely debuts ADDED BONUS, APPLE PRESS, CLASSIC CAR, and even the make-me-smile quaint HOT AS HADES. So, add spark to the fun of this puzzle. Not to mention the pleasure that comes from wit in cluing, as seen in the clues for SNOWSTORMS, NOT A, STETSON HAT, and the marvelous [This might come after the check] for MATE. I crow. I know. I crow for Joe today, for this panoply of pleasure, this sweet outing flecked with beauty. This one was special. Bravo, sir, and thank you!
@Lewis Oh, Mate is pretty good, thanks. I completely missed it since it got filled in automatically. I hate when that happens for exactly this reason, missing a clever clue. So I usually take the time to read through everything, even on a Monday. Drat. ____________________ Jesse Goldberg 8/28/2024 for Puzzle of the Decade (emu filler)
"Hey, what's with this new concert hall?" "Now you listen here!" (Posting this was a sound decision.)
@Mike I thought I heard about a pool hall with good cue sticks. I felt bad but I'll chalk it up to experience. Good thing I have deep pockets.
@Mike @dutchiris @ai You don't know how grateful I am that all your puns *almost* made it bearable day.
For the longest time I had 'AN EN' as the answer to what had to be added to one to make zero. I was so sure it was true I kept it well beyond its 'best by' time and consequently took a shade over an hour to do this, worthy, puzzle.
@Andrew I was sure it was NINE, as in 1 plus 9, write zero, carry the one... :( ____________________ Jesse Goldberg 8/28/2024 for Puzzle of the Decade (emu filler)
@Andrew I, too, had “an en” as the answer to that clue, and liked it so much it was hard to let it go! I still contend that it was a better answer than NOT A. (Other than the part where it needed to fit the crossing answers, and other such foolishness.)
@Andrew I made the same mistake - thought I was so clever! That southeast section was tricky.
Regarding 53D: ABDI is not an Arabic name you’d normally ever see used by Arabs, and it doesn’t mean “servant of God” in Arabic. It means “slave” or “servant”—it would need to be Abdullah (or the like) to mean “servant of God” in Arabic. While this name might exist in Turkish (and other languages), it doesn’t really make sense to call it an “Arabic man’s name.”
@Michel I suspected as much. ABDI looked very wrong. With the Mustafa/Mufasa blunder last week I was thinking how long it would take before some potentially more offensive mistake was made or allowed by the editor, perhaps involving an Islamic name starting with an M. Omitting the God part of Abdullah seems quite bad...
Interesting. Some people seem to use it. <a href="https://www.momjunction.com/baby-names/abdi" target="_blank">https://www.momjunction.com/baby-names/abdi</a>/
@Michel ABDI is a common name among Somalis, as both a given name and a surname. If ABDI meant "slave," I'm not sure people would be naming their kids that. It's possible that the meaning of the word changed when Arabic was introduced to the Horn of Africa. I'm no expert, though, so take that with a grain of salt.
What a weird puzzle for me. The NW, NE and middle quadrants were strangely easy - I solved them in what must have been Tuesday time. However, the SW and SE quadrants were just impossible, for me. UTNEREADER? Oyez? Antonyms in an unidentified language? (I actually know HAI from Japanese commentary to climbing competitions, but I had no idea what its antonym may be). Also, HADES being *hot*? The Greeks and Romans envisioned their afterlife as cold and damp - totally unlike the hell of Christianity. Hades being hot is the equivalent of hell freezing over (possibly with pigs flying overhead). And there were more of these arcane mysteries. I needed loads of lookups to get a foothold there, which personally made the puzzle annoying more than anything. I'm not a fan of Mr Shortz's editing since his return, and this feeling is getting stronger every week.
@Andrzej Must be an American Idiom then. Because I know Hot as Hades and have said it, and have heard it. The idiom is for when it’s steamy outside, because it’s impolite to say Hot as Hell. Saturday’s seem to have more idioms than other days. I’m fine with Will’s work. He suffered a major TBI through a stroke. It’s not as difficult as what he was doing in 2021. Which I have found particularly difficult. It’s gonna take some more time before he gets fully back into his groove.
@Andrzej I have found the last few weeks to be a little easier than they had been at the second half of 2024. BUT I’ve found them more enjoyable. Not so much for the difficulty…but because of the word choice. They’ve just had more words which are enjoyable to figure out and fewer ones where on my best day I wouldn’t know them…it’s not a “knowledge level” thing…more about having answers which fit in the schema in my head if things I could possibly know.
@Andrzej I don't disagree with the gist of your comments but ''hot as Hades'' is often uttered or written by those whose first language is English.
@Andrzej I had the same problem. That SE quadrant was absolutely punishing (UTNEREADER/ABDI natick?) while the others were pretty smooth.
A very pleasant challenge that felt/solved like 5 puzzles; NE followed by SW, then center, SE and finally NW corner.
@Bill in Yokohama I had pretty much the same experience, but in a different order. Mine was NW followed by NE, then SW, Center, and finally SE. It felt so strange to have sections of the puzzle completely filled in while others were completely empty! An unusual solve for sure.
We are getting more formal. We have exchanged Friday's SUNDRESS for today's TEA DRESSES. That was an ADDED BONUS. Thanks, Joe.
@Barry Ancona Sun dresses are proof that there is a God and he wants us to be happy.
Great puzzle, and what a lovely grid, whirlpool center or some kid doing cartwheels, which makes for those beautiful quartet of four-stackers, quite the feat, and good way of dealing with that awkward "altho" -- a word so uncrossworthy that even typing it out made me cringe. And the masterful stetson cluing, and the nice puzzpair (cf Sir Lewis of Asheville) "Listen here" and "Good ole boy." (To be honest, I'd spell it good ol' boy and it grated on me a bit, but I can live with it). And the cluing for HAI was ridiculous. I bet even Bill in Yokohama was going What the Hades for that clue! Private agreement -- loved that one, too. Yes SIR. It's good to see the Utne Reader here in its full name. So often we just get the Utne. You know? I've never looked at it. I never even think about it, even when I'm searching for alternative media (I'm getting pretty sick of mainstream media for its superficial coverage of worrisome events -- I'm looking at you, Gray Lady!), and I have no idea what its purpose would be in the current cultural discourse. All I know is that the owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates, Bob Nutting, is apparently also the owner of the Utne Reader. He is the worst skinflint MLB owner imaginable. Every time we have an up and comer, off he goes next season to the Yankees -- we're their triple-A farm team. Thanks a lot Bob, see you in Hades!
@john ezra Agree with throwing shade the Gray Lady's way.
@john ezra Great read. Loved the Pirates bit.
@john ezra You'll find a lot of good OLE boys at the Grand OLE Opry. However, Waylon Jennings might have agreed with you: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36VSeVjLKVI" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36VSeVjLKVI</a> But ol' Waylon usually stayed away from the "establishment" establishments...
Nutting is not the owner of the Utne Reader, which is published by Ogden Publications, which is different from Ogden Newspapers, a Wheeling WV company that publishes news journals and weeklies in the local market; Nutting is its chairman. Nutting routinely keeps revenue that is earmarked for spending to field a competitive team, which keeps the Pirates starved for talent and dependent on ticket and concession sales for their salary; ticket sales of course are dependent on fielding a competitive team -- there's the rub.
@john ezra As a lifelong Pirates fan, I can attest it’s been really rough.
@john ezra Wasn't the UTNE READER started by a guy named UTNE? Decades ago I had a subscription and even had a letter to the editor published, so I kept it for years until I had to sell the house and move.
@john ezra Re: “And the cluing for HAI was ridiculous. I bet even Bill in Yokohama was going What the Hades for that clue!” I can’t actually speak for Bill, of course, but I assume this is meant as hyperbole? It’s hard for me judge how fair the clueing was for the average solver, but surely [Antonym of “non” in French] would have been a gimme for virtually anyone with the slightest hope of solving a crossword from at least Wednesday onward.
This one is for @Andrzej after his complaint about gratuitously violent shows...the series "Foyle's War" about a detective chief inspector in the English coastal town of Hastings during WW II. I think it was a BBC production; available in USA via PBS (Public Broadcasting System). Touches on the fear of invasion, the Mosleyites, anti-foreigner hysteria, rationing, Land Girls, Dunkirk, children evacuated from London and much more.
@RozzieGrandma Thanks, I'll see if it's on any of the streaming platforms we subscribe to 👍🏾
@RozzieGrandma I loved that series! It was really very well written and acted!
@RozzieGrandma I loved that show! I watched it on PBS, but it's on Acorn for streaming. Very cerebral, and only occasionally violent. And just for Andrzej, I remember that there was a later episode dealing with Polish RAF pilots who didn't want to be repatriated now that Poland was under communist rule. (They would likely have been shot by the Russians.)
@RozzieGrandma It's Anthony Horowitz! For those who like English mystery, he is the best. His books are fun, and he wrote the first season of Midsomer Murders.
how many languages do we need to know to solve an English language crossword?
@Keith Feel free to stick to early week puzzles which have both easier vocabulary and trivia.
@Keith Nie wiem - ty mi powiedz! (I don't know - you tell me)
@Keith You don't really have to know any, most of the time. Almost all foreign language clues are fairly crossed and often can be sussed out logically. Note first and foremost, I'm not calling you out; I'm explaining a strategy to get you over the finish line next time. For the Japanese clue, you don't have to know foreign opposites. You just have to know what may be the one Japanese word that Anglophones know that hasn't been borrowed into English like "karate" and "sushi". That word is HAI,meaning"yes", and it has an opposite. Now you know two words, HAI and "iie" (no). Believe me, I didn't know the answer from the clue. I just thought, "What three-letter Japanese words do I know that have an opposite?" And I could only think of one. If I couldn't think of any, the crosses were fair and would have helped me. The Spanish clue might not make any sense to anyone who doesn't know any Spanish, but again, you're limited to three-letter words, and the crosses are fair. If you can't reason the word out from the clue, you have a fair chance of getting the three crosses. If you can't get those three crosses (in either example), you've got a bigger issue than knowing a couple of foreign words. BON VIVANT is borrowed from French, but its use as an English term is well established. You just have to know--or figure out--that both words are pluralized in French. BONS is apparently needed to make that area work, and is likely unavoidable. Hope this helps!
@Steve L. Thank you for this thoughtful response to Keith. I am glad someone has the decency to be kind and helpful. My faith has been restored.
@Keith I am a monolingual English speaker, and solved today’s puzzle in average time (by the standards of the current era’s Saturdays). So, empirically speaking, the answer to your question is: to solve today’s crossword, knowing one language (English) is quite sufficient.
@Keith @Andrzej I'm just curious where The Times describes their puzzles as "English language?" Of course, the answers are mostly in English because the majority of its readership reads/writes English. But does that mean all words must be English? Languages are just another area of expertise, like sports or pop culture, that some people are good at and others aren't. Give me the non-English words over sports trivia any day. Why are sports a topic everyone "should" know but languages are not? I guess I'm extra brittle about this since the recent "English as official language" action in D.C.
Should actually have read “Bird whose name is CORRECTLY spelled… Then, kahakō, with diacritic over ‘o’ and no ‘s’ since no ‘s’ in Hawaiian alphabet. But WAY cool to see this attempt
@Kamaka My first thought, but I was going to wait for a native speaker(?) to make the point. Perhaps the fine citizens of Hawai'i should petition the USPD to change the official abbreviation to H'.
@Kamaka Serves you right for not speaking English your entire history. All Americans know that we invented English and everyone has to do it our way, or else. (I'd like to disclaim the above statement as sarcastic black "humor". It was a momentary loss of emotional control.)
Wow, this is indeed a most unusual and mesmerizing design. It is so perfectly symmetrical that you can just keep spinning it around and see the same pattern no matter which way you turn. I even solved it in a circular way, starting from EAST TO WEST. I love the abundance of 10-letter entries and clever wordplay. It all felt very fresh. Great job, Joe! All the time you spent was well worth it.
@Anita It briefly started spinning on me. I knew it was time for bed. :) ____________________ Jesse Goldberg 8/28/2024 for Puzzle of the Decade (emu filler)
You just know it’s gonna be a fun ride when you open the grid and count the black squares. So much to fill! Like a word buffet. Love it. Which parts did I dislike? Not a one! Hope you all have something really unexpectedly lovely happen in your day today!
The first sign was the grid--vast swaths of white space....one might even have said, "Hoo, boy. Blanks ABOUND." Whether it is possible for something to OVERABOUND, now, that is another question. At one time DHubby and I owned a cider press (in aid of his wine-making) to deal with the bounteous harvest from my home orchard. We did not call it an APPLE PRESS. (One could press other fruits as well...) It has been quite some TIME since The UTNE READER made an appearance. I have not always gladly embraced advances in home computers...and I once overheard PhysicsDaughter telling DHubby --in withering tones--"Dad, I think Mom is just a DOS person." Ha ha. (I found making the mouse behave to be very challenging.)
@Mean Old Lady Anyone who has seen the original Star Trek episode "The Trouble with Tribbles" knows that it is quite possible for something to OVERABOUND.
It's so funny what is easy for some then others of us needs lots of help! Here is how my week goes: Monday: it's usually in my range of doable, no hints. Tuesday: I might have one sticking point, like a cross with two names I don't know. Wednesday: I might use hints from the column, but I feel okay leaving my star gold because I did most of it on my own. Thursdays: the dreaded possible rebus day! I don't mind the rebus but I don't know always when they are in play so it's almost always going to be a heads up from the column! I'm mixed bag -- the more I've done, the more I can fill in natively and feel okay claiming the win, but there's some point that I've used enough hints from column and comments I'll run autocheck to not get a gold star. (Am I weird there's a level of help that the integrity kicks in whether I've earned gold or not? Probably!) And then later in the week, puzzles like this that even with hints I turn on autocheck and know I'm not doing this one with my ability at all! And yes, there are times I have autocheck on and run the vowels and fill those in and then figure out the answer, and if that doesn't do it, run common letters like t, s, r. I admire those of you who tackle these and say how easy they are as if it were a Monday solve for me, but I know I'll never be one of y'all. That's okay, I still have fun meeting the challenge at my ability level even if it's not up to par! Happy weekend, fellow puzzle solvers!
@Linda I don't know how long you've been solving, but when I first started some 25 years ago, with only the Sunday available to me, and paper only, it took me months before I could solve it in its entirety and even then it took me a week to do so. Fast-forward and it's been a decade since I couldn't solve any day of the week. All to say, even though it doesn't seem so, crossword puzzling is a learned skill and I suspect you'll see improvement with time.
@Rob Definitely a learned skill. I have no idea how many puzzles I've done and when I see comments asking why "X" wasn't correct, I feel like I intuitively know the answer.
@Linda Keep at it. It can take years. At this point I almost never leave a white space on any day of the week unless it represents a cross of two clues from sports, most music written after 1975, or geography. That was not always the case, by far.
Wow... 20 ten-letter answers and no clunkers! I winced a bit at OVERABOUND but it's fine.
@Okanaganer I agree with both of your points. I wanted to complain about OVERABOUND, until Caitlin's comment in Wordplay pointed out the connection to "overabundance."
Oyez, this was CLUED SERTA CLASSICARly, EASTTOWEST, ALTHO that DEPENDS on what CHEW want. LISTENHERE, I'd go on, but it's PASSED my bed TIME, and I'm OUTTA ideas. EYREally must go. BON SAI !! Thanks, Joe. I just polished off the last of a pint of Jamoca Almond Fudge, and this was an ADDEDBONUS.
@dutchiris How I wish I were able to engage in such brilliant wordplay in English myself! I loved this, thank you 🙂
WastED too much TIME with wasted in the SE, which was my toughest area, but I enjoyed the puzzle and the time spent. My favorite was the ranch dressing clue for STETSONHAT, followed by private agreement for YESSIR. "Big blanket makers" for SNOWSTORMS was cute too and thankfully had nothing to do with quilts... 😉 Har! All of it felt fresh and fun to me! Thankful for another fun puzzle! Lately, I fear I'm absorbing myself a bit too deeply in puzzles in an effort to escape things, which is fine in balance, but shouldn't be OVERABOUNDing. I'll get my bearings but in the meantime, I'm glad for the pleasant diversions! Cheers to the weekend!
@HeathieJ Ha! The very same thought entered my mind when I saw “Big blanket makers”…..now there is a synapse in my brain that goes directly from blankets to quilts, thanks to MOL.
‘We’re so dead’ strikes again. What’s that ? 3 times in the last couple of months ? Can we take a break from using this for a long time please ?
@Nom De Plume It’s apparently something you’ve never heard of, but it’s actually quite common an expression for kids to say. It’s appeared twice within a month, and only once before, in 2023. I’M SO DEAD also has appeared once, in 2023. You may not like them, but I’d hardly say they have been overused.
@Nom De Plume As Steve L points we did have it once last month, and it was so fresh in mind that I filled it in immediately and was thrilled I was able to keep it. Different strokes…
Was stuck in the SE corner because I was convinced AnEn was the answer to 50D. Can’t get attached to my possibly wrong answers!
@Pcraves I also had “an en” there. It’s a much better answer to the riddle posed in the clue IMO. 😊
@Pcraves Me too! I was convinced it was the right answer as well. The SE section almost did me in because of it. 😆
I've read 196 comments, and no one's asked about DRIP being a "cause of insomnia, maybe" so I'll go ahead and be the one, prepared for a big head slap. Grateful if someone could explain it. The only DRIPs that come to my mind are IV DRIPs and nose DRIPs. Yes, I'm thick as a brick this morning (cue Jethro Tull: <a href="https://youtu.be/hFYOcOBPkzg?si=6YzY4GHrZ4IzxKTn" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/hFYOcOBPkzg?si=6YzY4GHrZ4IzxKTn</a>) Thank you to all who explained the dook NOTA, yet another low point which I had to get from the crosses. That said, my real downfall was the NW, with absolutely nothing coming to me, not even ATTA. I needed ADDED BONUS and APPLE PRESS from the column for the light to shine on everything else. Thank you, Mr. Deeply for so lovingly dedicating yourself to this puzzle. The shortcomings are all my own. It's a beautiful grid, and expertly CLUED. It's also alerted me to today being a day best served by avoiding anything that requires logic, thinking, or deducing. The Universe has spoken and I'll be [taking a hint.] Netflix and chill, here it come!
@sotto voce My guess is that you're kept awake by a faucet dripping.
@sotto voce I'm assuming a faucet dripping somewhere and the noise being annoying, keeping you awake.
@sotto voce i took DRIP as the sound of water dripping SOMEWHERE and then either the worry of having got out of a nice warm bed to look for it and not found it OR the guilt about not having got out of said nice warm bed at all.
@sotto voce I took it as drip coffee but I seem to be the only one!
@RozzieGrandma and @Courtney I really appreciate you taking the time to respond. I might have suffered insomnia tonight from the nagging thought of what DRIP might mean! :-)
@sotto voce I see several people have helped explain the DRIP clue. It reminded me of this scene from my favorite show: <a href="https://youtu.be/_hdHX9Y8HCE?si=GpLH3q-ukH_y5B5n" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/_hdHX9Y8HCE?si=GpLH3q-ukH_y5B5n</a> Enjoy! ---
@sotto voce Thank you! That 14 minute JT clip made my day, “the one-legged pop flautist” IA was such a showman. I heard a story about his daughter Gael who was inspired by him to take up the flute…as a young teen she came home to tell him his self-taught fingering was all wrong. How ‘bout a little Bourèe…. <a href="https://tinyurl.com/jzvbhyrp" target="_blank">https://tinyurl.com/jzvbhyrp</a>
@sotto voce It used to be a standard comedy bit. Someone, or a cartoon character, tries to get to sleep but is disturbed by the water torture of a slowly dripping faucet. I haven't seen it for a long, long time, and was surprised to see it in the puzzle.
@sotto voce Yes to JT in the R&R HOF! Which reminds me to go vote for Phish in the probably inconsequential fan ballot.
Great puzzle. I realized I had no idea what is in ranch dressing.... and then I realized it didn't matter. Nota one confused me for the longest time. And I appreciate Joe Deeney's tip re flexibility in the long intersecting answers. I've been working on constructing xwords lately, and find it incredibly fun and satisfying .... until it isn't anymore-- when I reach a roadblock and have to start all over.
@Esmerelda I wanted, simply, "AN N" to transform ONE and make 'zero.'
@Esmerelda I still don’t understand NOTA.
Fun puzzle, thanks for that! I got stuck for a while because I was a little too proud of my cleverness by adding "an en" to "one" to make "none" for zero (instead of NOTA). Held onto that for a little too long.
I was totally frozen in the SE (schoolmarm for GOODOLEBOY was unhelpful), but Sammy, Steven M. and Steven saved me. Thankyou. And I do like puzzle entries that send me careening down memory lanes… TRAVEL VISA had me back in 1976, at a Romanian border crossing, a whole long train kept waiting for three hours while they decided what to do with a lone young American woman with that stamp in her passport.
I'm sure lots of people have already said it, but I loved this puzzle. At first thought it was going to be impossible, but I kept at it. So many wonderfully clever clues -- "Stetson hat" was an utterly delicious figure-out!
@Kenneth F Strangely, nobody has said today that you loved this puzzle :O
Typical tough Saturday workout for me, but a pretty amazing layout. All those 10 letter answers? - Nine debuts and ten others that have only appeared once or twice before. Don't recall seeing that much freshness in a while. Anyway - a number of things I wasn't going to get from the clues and just had to work them out from the crosses. Just made for a nice challenge. A couple of interesting puzzle finds today. I'll put those in a reply. ...
@Rich in Atlanta As threatened. First one a Sunday from February 22, 1953 by Herbert Arensberg with the title "Double diversion." Seventeen theme answers in that one, all with the same pattern. A few examples: HEARYEHEARYE KITTYKITTY PANGOPANGO GOINGGOING YESSIRYESSIR HELLOHELLO PETERPETER Here's the Xword Info link: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/PS?date=2/22/1953&g=123&d=A" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/PS?date=2/22/1953&g=123&d=A</a> And the other one - a Sunday from January 9, 2000 by Charles M. Deber with the title "Playing favorites." Hard to describe this one - I'll just give a couple of examples: "Gene & Eliot's favorite vacation area?" WILDERNESS "Grant & George Washington's favorite artisan?" WOODCARVER "Curt & Bill's favorite parts of dams?" FLOODGATES And there were more. Took a bit of pondering before the trick finally dawned on me. Here's the Xword Info link for that one; <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=1/9/2000&g=90&d=A" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=1/9/2000&g=90&d=A</a> ...
I enjoyed this one, not too tricky except for the magazine, the Southern expression, the company name and the bird. Can it be that this crossword had no sports clues? No rap or film stars? That helps me such a lot. I wondered - could 'entry form' could have something to do with a birth certificate?
@Jane Wheelaghan well it did reference 50 Cent (a rapper) in 36A.
@Jane Wheelaghan Interesting that you missed 36A as rap and 11A as film star. But I have had a similar experience when trying to count proper names; I usually miss a couple of the ones that were either gimmes or impossible but then filled in from crosses.
@Jane Wheelaghan A birth certificate would be an 'exit form' rather than an 'entry form 😁
Can’t believe I solved the WHOLE thing. On first glance I thought, “No way, José!” Not even one or two short fills that I could use as hooks. The only gimme that gave me hope was 22A: YES SIR.
In the SE I correctly had BONS and EYRE (despite the preponderance of orphans in Brit Lit), but incorrectly had BOOTY (for 47d Treasure) and GUFF (for 52d Flack). And with those 4 crosses, VANITY FAIR fit perfectly at 59a. That had to be correct for a publication of 10 letters matching so many crosses, right? And then AMAL was surely correct for 53d (a name ending in AL, the beginning of Allah). It was just a shame that “AN EN” (which seemed like it must be the answer for 50d) didn’t fit 😂. It took a long time to unwind that mess! 🤓
@Jeb Jones Yes I guessed EYRE (Jane would have required a word ending in a J so I decided against it) but like you, I scanned the memory banks and quickly realized just how many there were. Dickens had a few, and I briefly considered Little Nell.
Great puzzle! Completely stuck in the southeast and about to give up, but then got RIGUP which somehow illuminated GOODOLEBOY… and that broke it open. (I really impressed myself; hope the Comments don’t say it was easy!)
@Joe P This is so often how it goes on the harder puzzles. It's a great feeling and the reason the long time solvers clamor for harder puzzles.
TWENTY ten-letter words in a Saturday puzzle!?! WoW! Who could possibly complain about a puzzle like that??? [X-Phile timidly raises his hand.] Did anyone else think that this grid felt like four (mega-)minis, plus a mini-mini in the middle? Was it only me? OK, I'll be quiet now. Still I enjoyed the puzzle...but those nits are in me, and they just gotta get picked.
@The X-Phile I saw the minis, but I think I see them quite often here. For me, it can be annoying to get little leverage from a hard fought quadrant, but that is how they do it here, IMHO.
@The X-Phile You're not the only one. Not a fan of grid designs with a bunch of isolated sections because it doesn't feel like a cohesive puzzle. I'm just solving a bunch of mini puzzles, which is tedious.
I finished the top half of the puzzle fairly quickly, but the bottom half was quite a challenge. I'm glad I'm not the only one who found the SE section especially tricky! "Western hat" instead of STETSON threw me off for a while, but having "an en" for 50D instead of NOTA really messed with my brain.
Thought for sure there must be POODLE BOYS somewhere in the South. But no. Lot's of GOOD OLE BOYS however. Great Puzzle!
@Ragland Haha I live in the south and it's true, but I needed your comment to get the answer! Thanks!
So nervous today! We have a silly tradition in the family that however you do on the crossword on your birthday determines how good your year will go. My son’s bday is today, so I had to work EXTRA hard to get this one right! 😃😂
@Jacob I love that tradition! Hope you did great!!
Crossword clue: Capital of Georgia. My immediate answer: Tbilisi Wrong! I keep forgetting this is a game not suited for people living outside the US...
@Zbambo Tbilisi and Atlanta would both be valid answers as would The Lari or Dollars.
@Zbambo In a cryptic crossword, "Capital of Georgia" would be an indication that there was a G in the word.
A proper workout and a bit like solving 4 minis. This morning's rabbit hole was checking out ABDI, which I learned is related to Abdul. Some ABDI's of note: Abdi İpekçi (1929–1979), Turkish journalist Abdi Kassim, Zanzibari footballer Abdi Pasha (disambiguation), various Ottoman people Abdi Toptani (1864–1942), Albanian politician Abdi Haji Yaris, Somali politician
@John Carson I had a classmate whose last name was ABDI, but I don't remember her being Arabic. I had no idea it was a first name.
@John Carson I wanted ABOU ....which was about half-right....
Admirable construction and cluing. Almost all the answers are "gettable" through logical thinking, rather than accumulated knowledge. If you are giving up on this one, I hope you persevere. Speaking of TIMEPIECES....my grandfather clock fell over and literally went to pieces the other day. Believe me - not a chance of repair. I am simply devastated.
@Amy That is sad news, and sudden. I'm quite attached to the various old clocks in my house. Coincidentally, this morning (before I finished the puzzle) I contacted a clock-fixer in New Jersey about one of mine. [<a href="https://g.co/kgs/nG4zrDy" target="_blank">https://g.co/kgs/nG4zrDy</a> The Village Timekeeper ] From his website, he seems to be a serious craftsman in his trade, including old clocks such as yours. While it may not be repairable, maybe he would buy the parts of yours to fix others? Kind of like organ donation at the end of life....just a thought.
The missing diacritic in 16A's clue, plus the odd pluralization, made me miss the answer on my first pass. It's a diacritic that saves a bit of ink and a bit of paper, but its cons include being too hard to type and too easy to leave out, cons it shares with the 'okina (and the Spanish tilde). The kahakō represents a doubling of the vowel it is written over, and it would make better sense to write the vowel twice. <a href="https://bartssite.net/hawaiianspelling.html" target="_blank">https://bartssite.net/hawaiianspelling.html</a> Granted, most people who don't know the word would mispronounce "kahakoo." Big deal! Call me kiilaueabart.
Not much to add to the earlier comments, a disadvantage of west coast living, but to say that is remarkable how much wasted time results from an incorrect but otherwise perfect 10 letter answer.
@Kevin D One of the hardest things to learn when solving crosswords is when to abandon that “perfect . . . answer.” If I have any doubt at all that an answer is correct, I’ll try to verify if with a crossing word. Most of the time, that helps.
@Kevin D Along with what Eric mentioned, I've learned that sometimes I just have to rip it out, no matter how much I think it's a great or right answer. If I can't get any or hardly any crossings with it, in what I consider a reasonable time, I just take it out and more often than not, I find myself filling in crossings and discover the right answer.
Kevin, Solving as I do with a chisel on a stone tablet, I check the crosses before entering answers I *know* are correct.
Interesting grid. Wouldn’t it be fun if the long answers all read counterclockwise around the pinwheel? So the NE block would be upside down and the NW block backwards. I can hear you now: BAH! LISTEN HERE! WE’RE SO DEAD! But just maybe: ADDED BONUS!
@Cat Lady Margaret I miss the NYT novelty puzzles that did this, sort of. I think it was called Spiral. I also like vowel-less puzzles and the clueless puzzle. Those went away for us merely digital subscribers.
@Cat Lady Margaret Regarding my comment yesterday, you are not on my hit list. Anyway, on a different note, I descend from the earliest settlers of Maine. My mother was born in Houlton. The Sleeper family had a potato farm in the Sherman area which was known as Silver Ridge Plantation (before the term plantation became tainted). When it was potato picking time, school was let out and every kid in town who was able picked potatoes!
NW and SE were Saturday sticky for me, which I appreciated. Clue for NOT A was my favorite (once I finally got it) out of many good ones. Always nice to see Joe’s name in the byline. If anyone has done the 4/1/05 puzzle and can explain the (April Fool’s) gimmick to me, I’d appreciate it!
I thinking get it re the 4/1/05 puzzle. Thought there was a second layer I was missing, but now I realize there probably was not. It’s a fun puzzle. I am very fond of Friday puzzles from the aughts. I thought I’d done them all but this evening I realized I had somehow overlooked April and May 2005 when I was going backward through the Archives. They feel like an ADDED BONUS.
@Puzzlemucker Just did that puzzle. Won’t give me the song, so maybe I’m missing the right rebus and I don’t know how to complete, but I think it is how the puzzle “fools” you.
@Puzzlemucker I did that puzzle. Spoilers!! There are three Ss scattered through the grid which turn twelve answers to gibberish. If they were black the answers would make sense. But since it ran before wordplay started I don't know how they got there. I can't imagine I would have entered them, they make no sense. Maybe when we entered 43 across they filled into the grid
@Lynn More spoilers! I just solved it in the app on an Android phone and got the happy music without entering anything where the /s are in the clues.
I found that challenging, and really enjoyed it. For a good while I had COWBOYHATS for the “ranch dressing” clue, and was patting myself on the back for my cleverness, but that of course didn’t last. Luckily, in NYC I live around the corner from the Stetson shop…
@Jaze You still have the right idea! And that's always a good thing!! ☺️
Same as others — I found the SE corner to be so much harder than the rest of the puzzle. Lovely though. Thank you!
Tangent of the day: Anyone interested in TIMEPIECES and horology should try the book I am reading now, “Hands Of Time: A Watchmaker’s History” by Rebecca Struthers. It is a wonderful book.
Enjoyed that…. Breezed through the top right section thanks to SWIT but struggled on the bottom right and top left…. Got there in the end… an hour… felt like a Saturday crossword!
Took me about 15 minutes to do 90% of the puzzle then got stuck in the SE for an hour. A complete dead end. After lots and lots of playing around, I finally figured out GOODOLEBOY/ADORE and the rest fell into place pretty quickly. Probably been a year since I've taken over an hour on a non Sunday
@Steven M. Playing around for an hour in a single quadrant without giving up--that's a puzzle solver. I maintain that the mark of a true expert is not the successful solve, but being able to figure out an hour's worth of new things to try when stuck.
I liked the grid, and found it just right for a Saturday, so needed my usual amount of help for late week
Was sailing along until the SE. ProPublica crossing with Amir were mistakes 1 and 2. It's like that some Saturdays.
@LBG yup, I confidently started the NW corner with "dose" for 9D, did the entire rest of the puzzle, and abandoning that mistake to try APPLEPRESS as the [Cider mill fixture] is what unstuck it for me