Since yesterday's installment was so popular, here's a new list of the anticipated nits from today's puzzle: Theme: --How do I write the rebus? --It's not a rebus? --Circles are bad enough; triangles, too? --I'm supposed to go up and down and up and down? --The triangles spell what? --The circles spell what? --I don't get it. Clues and Answers: Foreign languages: EAU--I'm supposed to know French? ALEPH--I'm supposed to know other alphabets? MAIS OUI--More French? Computers and phones: MSN--What is this, 1990? AGE--Ugh, online dating. OTOH--Ugh, textspeak. TBH--Ugh, more textspeak. DMED--Ugh, social media. LCD--A kealoa. Could be LED. Or even CRT. WIFI--Nothing wrong with the clue. But how many tech words are there going to be? Abbreviations and initialisms: PLO, IED, LCD, TBH, OTOH, DMED, DJS, IPASGSU, STP, GSU, CSIS--How many flippin' letter salads are there going to be? APT--Wait...that's not an abbreviation?!?!?! Sportsball: GSU--I'm supposed to know random abbreviations about college sports teams? TIPINS--Come on, it's not even clear what sport that is. Basketball? Golf? Both of them? END--Football is too violent. I never watch it. Also: ATOMIC DOG--I'm supposed to know some song that barely made the charts over 40 years ago? UVEA--Too obscure. MEDEA--Wasn't she in those Tyler Perry movies? MEDIA--Wasn't she in those Tyler Perry movies? ESSIE--I'm supposed to know nail polish brands? OCCAM--I'm supposed to know a 14th century dude? Happy solving, folks!
@Steve L Note: Yesterday's similar comment was the top reader's pick for the day, and had the longest thread of replies I've seen in a while. Overwhelmingly, the response was quite positive, except for a couple of people who didn't understand the concept of satire. Some asked me not to stop, so I've produced a new list for today. However, I can imagine that coming up with a new one of these every day could be a part-time job all by itself, and I anticipate that I won't always have the time to produce a good list every day. Plus, I fear it would get repetitive rather fast, since the same concepts come up over and over again. What's more, I'll be traveling domestically next week, and I will be in Morocco for a week in early April, and although I expect to be able to do the puzzles and contribute to the comments on most, if not all, of those days, I can't see myself creating this kind of list day in and day out. So I will commit to encore performances sporadically on days when I'm less busy, but nothing like a regular basis. I hope that will be a good balance.
@Steve L No one is complaining that proper nouns, trivia and cultural references exist. The complaints are about the frequency of them, the ones that cross, and the obscurity of them. So what you call "satire," is just an excuse for you to be smug and mock fellow commentators. It makes it really unenjoyable to participate in this thread.
@Steve L I didn't see yesterday's installment so I don't know what you're referring to, and I could be way off base here, but the tone of your comment seems churlish and a tad condescending. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
@Steve L Have fun. I won't be reading it.
@Steve L You forgot SIMULCASTED when it usually doesn’t include the -ed, even in past tense. At the same time, you do come off a bit like the Crossword’s customer service department. Just remember you can’t please all of the people all of the time.
@Steve L Put me in the "I've really enjoyed these" column. I'll look forward to the sporadic encore performances.
Comments Section: Wait, I’m supposed to have a sense of humor now? @Steve L I very much appreciate your good-natured witticisms, and look forward to future installments whenever you care to share them. Happy travels!
@Steve L You forgot: “How dare they include 19A with a neutral descriptor for the clue! I’m cancelling my subscription!” and “I have *absolutely* nothing against people who are 32A, but do they have to bring up that sort of pernicious ideology in a crossword? Why won’t somebody please think of the children!”
@Steve L Maybe it's time for a new hobby.
@Steve L I really enjoyed yesterday’s comment and you made your point. But I do think it will get old fast.
@Steve L: Well, TBH—PLO, IED, LCD, TBH, OTOH, DMED, DJS, IPASGSU, STP, GSU, CSIS--How many flippin' letter salads are there going to be?
@Steve L thank you! That’s really all that I can say. You’re always such a valuable part of my day every day.
@Steve L Brilliant and hilarious. You know satire is hitting the mark when self righteousness responds.
@Steve L These are super funny and unironically a good last resort to check before going to the answer key outright, please keep doing them lol
@Steve L You can pick your friends and you can pick your nits, but you can't nit-pick your friends' nits!
Very fun! The comments today are also great fun. This is typical, of course, but sometimes a particular puzzle brings out even more (unintentional?) hilarity. Everyone who's upset - at a puzzle, no less - and everyone else who's strutting around, puffed up - again, about a puzzle... - and then there's always someone over to one side, hollering about random minutiae incorrectly yet with strong conviction, while the rest of us softly cluck and concentrate intently on our grubworms, hoping the offending bird will discover, unassisted, awareness, and pipe down before someone has to take it by the wing for a little walk around the yard and an explanation. ain't nobody here but us chickens! 🤣 Being one myself, i enjoy this community of other cluckers and the amusement it brings: a daily Fowl Ball 🤣. i'll see myself out. Have a great day, all!
@JJ On some days I think I do the NYT puzzles mostly for the comments. The human interest factor is so high here! It's like people watching: I may not be sitting on a wrought iron chair in a sunny Sicilan street, sipping an Aperol Spritz, and imagining the life stories of the people who are passing by, but the experience is surprisingly similar.
@Andrzej i remain astounded that emus allowed me to call us all "other cluckers" 🤣🤣 Your people-watching analogy is perfect 👌 🙂
@JJ Being one myself, i enjoy this community of other cluckers and the amusement it brings: a daily Fowl Ball I AM NOT ONE OF THOSE the author fondly mentions, and associate s with! power to you and your faithful comrades! i’M NOToNE! dON’T do REBUSEsS, or anything that sounds like it! create your own little club, and rebus to your pea picking’ heart’s content!!
@JJ Well now I have to go read all the comments of course
In all my years, I have never heard anyone say "simulcasted". "Simulcast" is a portmanteau of "simultaneous" and "broadcast", and the commonly used past tense of "broadcast" is "broadcast". Similarly, the past tense of "simulcast" is typically also "simulcast".
@DW Agree. The only times I see casted used is in making pottery or going fishing. But let he who cast the first stone...
@DW 100%. That threw me off so much that I didn’t even grok the overall idea in spite of solving the revealer and most of the puzzle, as I was stuck on wondering how Simulated could mean Simulcast.
@DW Yeah, but it was the only way SIMULATED would work. I gave it a pass.
@DW I’ll take an invocation of crossword license over pedantry in the comments. Rigid adherence to only what you’ve experienced will not serve you well solving NYY crosswords.
@DW I have worked in broadcast media for 15 years, and I agree. It's simulcast, not SIMULCASTED. Though, as I'm typing it out, SIMULCASTED isn't flagged as misspelled. It appears this is quite a common mistake. Is there a "remove from dictionary" option in Firefox? I'm officially mad about this. I'll have to write a strongly-worded letter.
@DW "Simulcasted" is in Merriam-Webster.
@DW, Merriam Webster has a usage note about this. In short, broadcasted, forecasted, telecasted, and simulcasted are less common than their -ed-less equivalents, but they are used enough to warrant entry in the dictionary. Thanks, I hate it. <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/is-it-broadcast-or-broadcasted-forecast-or-forecasted-usage" target="_blank">https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/is-it-broadcast-or-broadcasted-forecast-or-forecasted-usage</a>#
@DW Hah this is where I got tripped up the most. Started with broadcast then went to simulcast and nothing was working. Thought to put simulated (because I knew end-around) and quickly dismissed it. I usually think of broadcast and especially simulcast as nouns. I guess I just bananaed this clue or something.
"You eat your Pringles so messily." "Yeah, I have a chip on my shoulder." ("Didn't mean to Ruffle your feathers.")
Mike, Well done - you avoided the Lay’s-y pun. (But if you want to go that direction in the future, feel Frito.)
@Mike I've heard that punsters, when they die, go to The Bad Place, where they are burnt to Crisps!
Before the most important question – How was the solve? – an observation about this amazing grid-build, in which Rich and Simeon had to: • Find answers that with and without the double dipping were bona fide words. • Place them symmetrically, which required that theme answers consist of equal length pairs. • Have the triangle letters spell CHIPS, and the circle letters spell SALSA. • Ensure that the answers containing shapes are bona fide words. Wow! A huge bow to the grunt work behind this! Now, the solve. For me, riddles aplenty to crack – Why shapes? Why two types of them? What is the reveal (after I purposely left it blank)? All on top of filling in the box. When there are riddles aplenty, my brain hums with happiness. The trying, to my brain, is as sweet as the succeeding, and today, there was plenty of both. Rich (10 NYT puzzles) and Simeon (15), this was the first NYT collaboration for either of you, and it was stellar. I felt like a kid in a candy shop. More please, and thank you!
On all other crosswords, we don't even dip once. Why on this crossword do we dip twice? Seriously, terrific theme and wonderful execution. It would have been fantastic to save this one for Passover, but... dayenu!
OCCAM’S razor of Thursday crosswords: Trying to finagle a meaning out of “Simulated mopeds bringing freight to the Capitol carets” is wrong. “Chips and salsa” is much simpler! And more fun. Don’t forget to add cilantro!
I didn't realize until I came here that the shapes spelled chips and salsa. I'm so grateful to have this column! Thanks, Deb!
Thanks for the explanation of the triangle and circle shapes. I would not have figured out the extra layer (CHIPS and SALSA) on my own. At least I figured out the double dips before I finished the puzzle!
@Liz B I just assumed they were 2 styles of chips…round and triangle
I never quite know what to think about a gimmick puzzle that I only understand after solving. The best ones are when I'm stuck and understanding the gimmick allows me to get unstuck.
@Maverator Me too. I managed to solve this (somehow) and still had no idea what was going on. Reading the explanation made me appreciate the cleverness of the puzzle, but I agree it should also be clever enough to figure out whilst solving. Some puzzles are too clever for their own good.
A small nit to pick: Although most people interpret Occam's razor to mean "the simplest explanation is the most likely to be correct," it actually says that the explanation with the fewest assumptions is probably the best one. And yes, the explanation with the fewest assumptions can also be the simplest one...but not necessarily.
@Bruce Thanks for this. Occam's Razor makes more sense to me now.
When I was first getting started on NYT crosswords a couple years ago, an answer like 43D, MAISOUI, would have driven me crazy. I knew no French at all. I still know no French at all. But this time I immediately skipped it, and after I'd taken my best guess at the crosses, I looked at it and said "Looks French to me. Lotsa vowel, oui at the end looks like a word in French, so I guess I'm ok." No biggie now. Seismic eruptions then.
@Francis If you were living in Big Swamp when you got started with the crossword, then you did know at least two words of French ;-)
@Deb Amlen suggests that the triangle and the circle represent two differently shaped chips, but I think that the triangles are the tortilla CHIPS and the circles are the bowl of SALSA.
@The X-Phile That's possible too. The beauty of grid art is that it's in the eye of the gridholder.
@Deb they can’t both be chips because if you used two different chips then no “ double dip” infraction has occurred! Ask George!😉
@The X-Phile Ooo... I think you're right.
I didn’t interpret the triangle as one chip and the circle a second chip as Deb says, but as a triangular chip and round bowl. After all if you have two chips you are not double dipping, George dipped the same chip twice!
@RonH Good point! Though then the chip isn't dipped into the word twice... hm... Perhaps, then, the snacker dipped all the corners of the triangle into the dip (word above), bit off each corner, and is now left with a (roughly) circular chip to dip back into the word above.
Completely unrelated to crosswords, so feel free to skip this post. I wonder how many of you have heard of Takotsubo cardiomyopathy? In layman's terms, it is known as broken heart syndrome. The name itself has interesting Japanese origins about hunting octopodes, but that is besides the point. For those who have not heard about it, it is when a spouse dies and the surviving spouse, seemingly in good health previously, dies shortly thereafter. I posted in December when my grandmother passed away. My grandfather lives in a care home with dementia, but otherwise seemed to be doing well. My aunts finally cleaned out their condo last week and moved/sold everything. They told grandpa that it was done a few days ago. 2 days later, he developed liver failure. I just came back from the hospital; he has metastatic cancer to all of his internal organs. Now, for the cancer to be this widespread, it MUST have been present for a long time even before my grandmother's funeral. That's the scientist in me talking. The timing is just an odd coincidence though. He was doing fine, grandma died, his affairs were settled, and then his body decided that "it's time". There is definitely more to our spirit that science does not yet fully understand. Ironically, I'm boarding a plane for NYC in a few hours (and part of our visit includes an NYT tour). So I'm glad that I got to see him one last time, because I'm pretty sure he won't be here when we get back.
@DocP I had an SCA fifteen years ago and was later diagnosed with Taketsubo Syndrome. Fortunately, I made a full recovery. My in-laws died months apart, which I agree is not uncommon, especially when the survivor has medical issues of his/her own.
@DocP I had not heard the term Takotsubo cardiomyopathy but I have heard of the phenomenon. Yes, there is a lot that science does not fully understand. When my father was alive, I felt I had to go to him or call him to spend time together. Since his death, I feel he is always with me, in some sense, wherever I am. I wish you, your grandfather, and everyone who loves him peace.
@DocP I had a similar expierence when my parents passed. They were inseperable, and after my dad died, my mother just gave up on life. She died six months later. The doctors gave several medical reasons for her death, but I know she just died of a broken heart. She didn't want to be here without her beloved partner of sixty-seven years.
@DocP I have not heard the term but it definitely is a thing. Knowing the issue I was terribly worried for my dad when my mom died 3 years ago. They married young and were together for 50 years (mom died of cancer at 70, seven months short of their 50th anniversary), and while they may not have been the perfect couple (who is?), they were very close and their union simply worked: they complemented one another perfectly, and I could see how they enjoyed spending time together. Their marriage taught me how silly most stereotypes about gender, relations between women and men, and between spouses were. So yeah. When mom died I was terrified my dad would deteriorate. He has some health issues of his own, so the threat seemed real. I tried to support him in any way I could, but he comes from hardy stock, the proud people of the Mazovian countryside, so emotionally he would just not open up to work out grief. Still, I started to spend as much time as I could with him, and also talking to him on the phone daily. I made sure he stayed active, and that he engaged with other people. It helped that he must have realized the risks himself. He turned 75 last year. He is very physically active, walking as much as 12 km daily. He writes books. He meets friends and family. He is a pillar of his local community (he was elected to the disctrict council last year). He takes his health seriously. He's doing great - but only because he apparently wanted to make the effort to become so.
@DocP Here's my theory: Especially in social organisms, evolution doesn't favor survival of individuals unless those individuals contribute to the survival of the species. If not, they're just a drain on resources. If, in a person's own evaluation, they no longer have a purpose, then maybe our bodies have evolved to self-destruct; our defences go down, and nature takes its course.
@DocP A friend had an attack of this, completely unrelated to any emotional stresses going on in her life. She was riding her bike to work, a strenuous trip in NYC traffic, for the first time in months when it happened. I don't want to dismiss anyone's experience of grief and loss, but sometimes an association is just an association, not causation.
@DocP very sorry for your losses. I hope our city offers you some solace.
@DocP I’m sorry to hear about your grandfather’s decline, but glad you got to spend time with him. Safe travels.
The effect "Seinfeld" had on the American culture is just stunning.
@Francis "Not that there's anything wrong with that."
@Francis Sorry but how does that have anything to do with today's puzzle? I obviously missed something so please educate me.
Even a clue about Tesla hurts. I didn't want to do the puzzle.
@SK I don't understand why everyone is on Elon's case. All he wants to do is to strip government of all its regulatory power so he can do exactly what he wants with no interference whatsoever. And exactly what he wants to do is to turn all of America into his fief, in which we supply the labor to make his life more opulent. What's so bad about that?
C’mon, everyone knows that a circus performer would never juggle chainsaws on a tightrope! They’d be on a unicycle: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amV8yoDISRM" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amV8yoDISRM</a> Nice to have a Thursday with some “bite”.
Not sure about the "homemade bomb" clue...i had to look it up and now i'm sure i'm on some sort of list :/
Great Thursday puzzle. Nice fill without esoteric trivia. Good difficulty and although similar themes have been done before, this was done well. 9/10
Ooh, that was fun. Took me forever to work out the trick, though I could see there were ‘missing’ letters in certain answers. Needed Deb’s explanation on the CHIP/SALSA thing for it to land. A lovely AHA moment when it finally did. FREIGHT was the one that stumped me the longest. Yes, DOUBLE DIPping. I’m with Timmy. It’s a disgusting habit that will bring my full wrath to bear if I catch anyone doing it. Just stick your toothbrush in the hummus why dontcha? Yuk. Love the MEDIA/MEDEA crossing, with MAMAS above.
@Helen Wright "Love the MEDIA/MEDEA crossing, with MAMAS above." Thank you for pointing that out. Medea did not prove to be the best of mamas, in the end. (She was also the only chick on a boatload of fifty-plus dudes.)
Fills popped up, dropped in, then I stalled, stymied by the left midsection. I confess I ignored the delta/omicron pairs and solved with what seemed to make sense until it didn't. Then figured out that Mopeds were MOPHEADS and puzzled out the rest. Thank you, Rich and Simeon. Some lovely slants on some familiar fills. Nice puzzle
I picked up on the DOUBLE DIP trick at CAP PISTOL for “Toy Shooter”. But why, I asked myself, is one dip represented by a triangle and the other a circle? I finished and was still puzzled. I stared and stared at the completed grid. Surely there is reason for the different shapes. MAIS OUI! The triangles are CHIPS and the circles are SALSA. What a brilliant Easter egg. Thanks, Rick and Simeon. That was fun!
My first stop was straight to the revealer. When I saw the words foul play my heart sank. Oh no, not a sports revealer! I was ready to walk away from the puzzle, which I never do. But suddenly there was a vision of George Costanza standing over that plate of chips, and it was mostly smooth sailing from there. However, I totally missed the second part of the theme. I figured the triangles were chips, but in my haste to dot the last I and cross the last T at 5 a.m. PDT, I didn't realize that they actually spelled chips and salsa until I read Deb's column. I would have enjoyed the puzzle more without the overabundance of initialisms, which are taking over the English language in all walks of life. I'm sure I'll have an opportunity soon to rail against that.
@Times Rita overabundance of initialisms? idk wym!
@Times Rita You could suggest redefining TMI as Too Many Initialisms. (Ducks and runs.)
@Times Rita I too enjoyed this one. I only hoped to find GEORGE and CANTSTANDYA, tho I love ya, in there. Appreciated the clueing and fill as in spite of the initialisms and my ignorance of French I was able to solve without lookups.
I think that was likely more difficult to construct than fun to solve. I appreciate how the non dipped answers form alternative words. I didn’t notice chips and salsa but it’s clever. OTOH, simulcastED seems tortured No one wants Car boy in their puzzle. And actors say, “I’m on” Baseball players say “I’m up”
@heironymous where is Car Boy in the puzzle? others have commented same...?
I was nowhere near smart enough to figure out the theme, some of the fill was unknown to me (TIP INS?), and I just not tune in to the constructors' wavelength (I seem to remember that's a recurring thing for me with Mr Seigel's puzzles). I needed lookups and auto check to finish. Not my proudest moment, this. But it's on me, obviously.
I _could_ not tune in* Missed a word there, doh.
Saw the shapes. (Please no math please no math please no math please no math…) A puzzling little puzzle yet a great feat of construction! Saw the names and knew that Rich and Simeon were going to give me *just* what I come here for- …to be puzzled! And snacks. And tea. And to wake my brain gently. Done and done and done and done! Happy Thursday! It’s the Friday of Fridays all!
Lots of fun, and remarkable feat of construction! Nice to see the recognition that it's the mamas who deliver their babies, in most cases, and not the OBGYN who shows up when almost all of the work has been done.
I figured out the trick with relative ease, though the odd shapes seemed rather arbitrary and strange (and I never did tumble to the CHIPS and SALSA until I read the first few Comments here.) However, I *did* see that we got two words for the price of one, and it makes my head hurt to think how this might have been constructed... (as in, what EVIL, twisted brains could conceive such a complexity?) Ha, ha, just kidding, I recognize the names and they seem very normal ...on paper. (Note to self: Must check for photos..) No, really. Kiddiing! I reckon that the FIVE Themers plus Reveal forced the rest of the puzzle to be fairly easy, Fine with me! I'm still off-kilter from the DST transition. It appears we will have overcast skies for the eclipse. Oh, well.
@Mean Old Lady I meant to add: It's WILLIAM *of* OCCAM. Also...where is there any Tesla reference?? People are scowling, and I don't know why....
Mean Old Lady, If the skies are overcasted, then the eclipse won’t be simulcasted, or maybe on TV it will just be simulated.
Re 10D: Did you know that the entire crew list of the Argo has been preserved? Of course, the list differs slightly should you ask Apollonius, Apollodorus, or Hyginus. The Greeks cared about these things, you know . . . Or you could ask Don Chaffey, director of the 1963 film *Jason and the Argonauts* (with special effects by the great Ray Harryhausen). A film which was so formative to my future character, in so many different ways. Here's the scene in which Jason (Todd Armstrong) meets Medea (Nancy Kovacs): <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40TSBMyfik8" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40TSBMyfik8</a>
@Bill Omg! I hadn’t thought about that movie in years. I loved the skeleton battle when I was a kid.
@Bill Shipwrecked, but kept her hair and make up immaculate. What a woman.
@Bill This sent me down a fun little rabbit-hole: Todd Armstrong's bio is quite spicy, but, in the end, rather sad. Nancy Kovacs, OTOH, was also cast as Nona, a Neuralite(?), of the "Hill People," in the TS:TOS epsiode "A Private Little War." Unusual, in that she *didn't* fall in love with Kirk. IRL, Kovacs *did* fall in love with, and marry, conductor Zubin Mehta. Straight out of Apollodorus! (Sorry if this post appears twice. Did I forget to hit "submit"?)
@Bill I have an action figure of one of the skeletons from the movie. It fits right in with all my figures of cute anime girls.
@Bill Wouldn't it have been funny if ALL the Argonauts had jumped into the water, and they couldn't get back on the ship?
I've recently had a life change that seriously limits my ability to focus and think clearly (causing me to misread clues and misjudge if words can fit into boxes) so I've stopped noticing my times and just enjoyed the solve. But today it worked in my favor when I confidently filled in "mopeds" when I thought I had written "mop heads". When I came to the revealer clue and checked the answers with shapes, it clicked and helped me fill in the rest of the trick clues (which is my favorite part of gimmicky puzzles!). I missed the chips and salsa bit though. I thought the constructer was just trying to make my life difficult with the different shapes!
Very crunchy puzzle, great Thursday! (And no lookups either, woot!)
The CHIPS and SALSA part of the theme really rounded it out, I only wish there was a hint to that in the puzzle because I never would have noticed that on my own
Not knowing the title of Atomic Dog, I was content with A Toxic Dog. Finally figured out that exit should be emit.
@Justin 'A Toxic Dog' is a nice description for my poodle if he goes too long without a bath!
@Justin "A Toxic Dog" sound like such a good idea for a parody song, I was really hoping someone had done one, and posted it on youtube. But, alas, all I could find were videos people had posted of their dog "singing" along to Brittany Spears "Toxic":-(
A perfect Thursday puzzle IMHO. As I sit here on a lunch break, listening to the birds and enjoying a sunny 72F day, I’m grateful more than ever for these moments. Additional thanks to the puzzle creators and this community for this moment of peace and small joys.
Eh. Didn't thrill me, though it's cohesively enough constructed. I didn't realize the circles spelled salsa... But why? At least the triangles look like chips. More interesting is the brand new article about Will Shortz's recovery published today (repeat post from the Wednesday forum): <a href="https://archive.ph/20250312123951/https://www.vulture.com/article/nytimes-crossword-will-shortz-puzzle-editor-interview.html" target="_blank">https://archive.ph/20250312123951/https://www.vulture.com/article/nytimes-crossword-will-shortz-puzzle-editor-interview.html</a> (Paywall-free with a CAPTCHA)
@B Did you realize that the triangles spelled CHIPS? Or did you not realize that the circles looked like bowls of SALSA?
@B Thanks for sharing the New York Magazine article.
@B Thank you for the updated article. It's good to hear about Will's continuing improvement.
Couldn't make out the circles and triangles in dark mode in the dead of night. But I can imagine the California Highway Patrol's Ponch and Jon dancing a Salsa and double dipping as they do it.
It would be quite the CIRCUS STUNT if the SIMULCASTED MOPHEADS performed by FIRELIGHT while the audience shot off CAP PISTOLs from their CAR SEATS. Somebody's gotta link it. Dog of the world unite Dancin' dogs Yeah, countin' dogs, funky dogs Nasty dogs <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdM8vmTTYZ4" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdM8vmTTYZ4</a> Bow wow wow, yippie yo, yippie yay.
@Linda Jo Well, the emus held that up for a couple hours. Having their own dance party?
Interesting theme, and as usual I'm gratified that it's pulled off without creating nonsense fill. No idea what DOUBLE DIP means in the context of the clue, though, so came to the theme in the nick of time, solve-wise. Lots of other unfamiliar usage in this one, too, and got through without lookups only by the skin of my teeth. Today's weird synchronicity: I encountered [Face on a fiver] a mere ten minutes after I'd explained to a friend who the oddly Native-American-looking woman is, whose face graces a Royal Bank of Scotland fiver. Nan Shepherd is sadly less well known in Scotland than Honest Abe is in the USA. <a href="https://oikofuge.com/shepherd-the-living-mountain" target="_blank">https://oikofuge.com/shepherd-the-living-mountain</a>/
@Oikofuge: on our recent trip to Scotland, I was hoping to snag a used copy of this book at Leakey’s in Inverness (nope - the proprietor said I’d need to be there the instant one came in), so I had to settle for this paperback. I enjoyed reading your review!
@Oikofuge Interesting read, thanks! I've never had the opportunity to visit Scotland, nor have I seen a golden eagle, but Shepherd's writing and yours have indeed brought the hills alive for me, at least with the excerpts you provided. And a mention of Csikszentmihalyi! Going by your description of Shepherd's work, her walks do sound like what I've experienced of flow state -- absorbed in the present, both physically and mentally, with little ability to later recall with detail what one experienced.
Goes ipo isn’t a thing (goes public is) but ok.
Enjoyed it. Did not see the chips and salsa thing until I came here. Understood the significance of the triangles and circles on MOPEDS MOPHEADS and confirmed it on CARETS CARSEATS. Meaty, a good Thursday.
Tough crowd today! I thoroughly enjoyed it. MOPEDS unlocked it for me fairly quickly. I’ll admit I was stumped for a bit on the tense issue of the tense of CAST/CASTED.
@AK the proper past participle of “cast” is “cast” (and the hiring of a particular actor for a role is “a casting choice” not “a casting”, but that’s getting a bit beyond our scope here), and “broadcast” is the same, so I was wincing at “simulcasted”, but Oxford American Dictionary insists that “simulcasted” is right. I hate this timeline, as the kids say…
Based on this and the Connections, do you guys not say things like “See you anon” anymore on your side of the pond?
@Phil Not really, although I know the phrase. We also dropped "fortnight" ages ago and we definitely don't say "cheerio", "chap" or "lad", but we hung on to "gotten". Curious, what?
@Phil "See you anon" sounds very Shakespearean here in the US.
@Phil I remember it from Shakespeare!
As someone who has a hate hate relationship with cellphones and texting, those acronyms are a strain.
It seems to me that if the past tense of simulcast is SIMUL(C)A(S)TED, then a role that is [still to be filled] must be UNCASTed. No? (And, yes, for the irony-impaired, I am joking.)
@The X-Phile 😀 That's English for you.
Figures out the going-up-and-down thing right away, and enjoyed the puzzle, but did NOT grok that the triangles and circles spelt CHIPS & SALSA. Very cool! And now...it's 1030 AM and I want a margarita to go with!
Could do without finding the “car name”in the Mini puzzle. I come to puzzles to get away from political reminders. META was bad enough. I would rather come across the word “en**a which, as per a recent article, the crossword editors think we might find distasteful at breakfast.
So many people here saying how quickly they got the theme - I'm super-duper happy for you all!! I couldn't get it for such a long time, and everything seemed to be wrong around the shapes! Had I filled in lots of wrong answers? Had the constructors made lots of mistakes? The penny finally dropped very satisfyingly around the FREIGHT/FIRELIGHT entry, phew a wonderful end to my suffering. The night is darkest just before the dawn :) Many thanks Rich & Simeon, great puzzle!
@Alex Sounds like you went through all the standard levels of anxiety. When I see scary things like circles and triangles, I do everything I can to solve whatever is around them. Trying to walk through the minefield, only putting in answers that I'm really sure of, until I see what kind of legerdemain is afoot.
A pretty great Thursday puzzle in my book! Took me a good while to get what was going on, but was happy to get it solved with no lookups just a minute over my Thursday average.