Hard but fair (choosing to pretend “hegiras” didn’t happen). Felt Saturday-ish to me.
@Aaron Teasdale I had never heard of the word but all my crossings matched.
A few months ago Deb wrote a remembrance of her dad and talked about how he invited her to solve with him when she was a kid. I am a mother of three school age kids and have always had a pang of guilt about time spent solving puzzles - a hobby I love. Deb’s story helped change my mindset so instead stealing moments when my kids are occupied, I puzzle in front of them and have been able to bring my oldest in to solve with me sometimes. It’s so fun to delight in wordplay and aha moments together. Plus I get to feel more joy and less guilt in my own solving. Just want to say thanks to Deb, and to others who have reflected fondly on puzzling with their kids or with their parents. Your stories changed me for the better.
@Aly What a great story! So glad you shared it.
@Aly Thanks for that story. I hope you and your kids have many happy days of puzzle-solving.
@Aly I wrote once before about engaging my 8-year-old son by asking if he could tell me the answer to a clue. In the 11/8/98 puzzle, the clue was something like "Country on the Red Sea." He said Eritrea, but the answer in the puzzle was "Ethiopia." He wrote a letter to Will Shortz about what he thought was a mistake. I just looked to see if I could locate the hand written reply. I found it! "Dear Ian, ... You're right that the modern country of ETHIOPIA no longer borders the Red Sea. However, the ancient land of ETHIOPIA did - and it was this meaning I was using...Keep helping your mom with the crosswords." He didn't for long, but taught me lots of stuff (video games, heavy metal, basketball) that continues to help me.
Hi Deb, Re: 16 Across comment In my experience, re-entry before touchdown refers to spacecraft, not aircraft. (Re-entering the Earth's atmosphere.) Your orbit may vary. Your PLANET may too.
This was easy…until it wasn’t! Great Friday puzzle and a lovely opening to the weekend. Happy solving, and please don’t annex my country. Thanks.
@Jeremy How could we possibly annex so polite a people? You have saved Canada!
@Jeremy Is it too late to annex us, by any chance?
@Jeremy My thoughts exactly. Flew through it in 10 minutes and spent another 10 in the NE alone. Great puzzle.
@Jeremy We will annex your country, and you will be happy about it. Just kidding.
I didn't think I would be able to finish today's puzzle without a lookup, but I did, and I'm so proud of myself! WHO'S A GOOD BOY? I am! This afternoon, I leave for a weekend retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani, where Thomas Merton made his home. In the spirit of spiritual contemplation, I won't be bringing my electronic devices with me,... I know that I'll be able to do the puzzles I missed when I return, but.... I will lose my streak! I think that this is a good thing. Isn't it good to be reminded that there are more important things in life than our silly, precious streaks? Thinking about my streak, I sometimes fantasize about seeing a tombstone in a graveyard inscribed, "TODAY HE ENDED HIS 1,563 DAY STREAK. Silly, no? And yet it hurts a bit. So, I'm compensating for that loss with this bit of virtue-signaling. WHO'S A GOOD BOY??? I am! I am!
@The X-Phile I think if you open them and solve them in order you can maintain your streak.
@The X-Phile I think Roger is right but even if the app doesn’t record your streak “officially” you will still have the satisfaction of knowing you kept it alive.
@The X-Phile what @Roger said. It's not a sure thing, but there is a bit of a grace period. Somebody did some experimenting and found that they could solve at least a day or two late and still get a gold star. But you have to solve them in order. OTOH streaks are indeed silly in a way, so if you want to, you should just make like ELSA of Arendelle and Let It Go.
@The X-Phile Think of it as the best way to end a streak. Voluntarily.
Brandon Koppy usually presents an enjoyable, reasonably challenging, and reasonable puzzle. The stretches are usually fun, and fairly crossed. I thought this was a nice one.
I meld with @Deb today. Oh, the longs, the lovely longs: BRUSH ASIDE SCORCHER I GET THAT A LOT ANTS ON A LOG MIND BOGGLING PUT ME IN COACH WHO’S A GOOD BOY That last one won me over as it brought my sweet dog Teddy, who floods my heart with smiles, to mind. And for that, Brandon, you are a very good boy. Those last three longs on my list are all NYT puzzle debuts, by the way. Beauty and freshness in long answers, just the gallery I want to uncover on Friday. And the box brought welcome bite, for me at least, after a string of relatively sweat-free Fridays. No-knows and wicked cluing generated a steep hill feeling, which my brain loved attacking, and every time it cracked a nettlesome riddle, it seemed, I was rewarded with a mini-splat-fill thrill, going from fraught to frolic. That wicked cluing included [Question to one’s best friend, maybe], and even the simple-yet-marvelously-thorny [Stop by] for END AT. Stellar, Brandon, one splendid outing. Treasure in the box today. Thank you so much for this!
Most of this puzzle was MIND BOGGLING to me; colossally hard. The fun part of it for me was thinking of my great and lovely friend Silvia who worked in the women's shoe department of a large store. With a German accent in her English, she'd always and only refer to customers as M'LADY." "How can I help M'LADY today?" "Does M'LADY need a different size?" "Will M'LADY be putting that on her card?" "Thank you and enjoy your new shoes, M'LADY." From the very first moment I heard her say it, I excitedly proclaimed that I never again wanted to be called ma'am, only M'LADY. The movement hasn't yet caught on, but I cling to hope. My heart was also warmed by seeing The Little TRAMP in the grid. I loved Charlie Chaplin so much, I even dressed up as him for Halloween when I was nine (and tirelessly walked like him from door to door!) His speech from "The Great Dictator" is one of the most beautiful ever delivered and I leave you with it, unfortunately not apropos of nothing: <a href="https://www.charliechaplin.com/en/articles/29-the-final-speech-from-the-great-dictator" target="_blank">https://www.charliechaplin.com/en/articles/29-the-final-speech-from-the-great-dictator</a>- Thank you for this puzzle, Mr. Koppy. It was no SPEED RUN, but still time we'll spent!
@sotto voce Wow wow wow! I have never heard that speech before - thank you for sharing that! May life imitate art!
@sotto voce given the recent outstanding documentary on Sly & The Family Stone, I would have loved to see their song M’Lady highlighted here.
@sotto voce There's an old Britcom called, "Are You Being Served?" which takes place in a department store. The customers are all referred to as "sir" or "madam," as in, "Would madam care to see it in blue?" I found that to be delightfully quaint.
@sotto voce Love the visual of 9-year-old you painstakingly maintaining the characteristic waddle for the whole trick or treat. Also marvel at the saintly patience of your parents following along at what must have felt like a glacial pace!
My Claudius knows he’s a good boy, and scoffs at the lesser canine beings that need to be told so. Just kidding; I tell him all the time.
Kindness and Questions Thread Hello, Crossword Friends! I thought I’d start this little experiment — a thread specifically for friendly discussion. Whether you want to share what you enjoyed about today’s puzzle, ask about a clue/theme that stumped you, or just chat about something nice that happened to you today, this is meant to be a space for kindness and curiosity. I happen to be partial to fun factoids, so bring those too if you have them! This thread isn’t meant as a statement on the rest of the comments section — just a little pocket of positivity for anyone who wants it. I hope you all have had a great day and have a great tomorrow and a fun solve!
@CCed WHO'S A GOOD BOY was my favorite of the grid. I'm away of vacation right now, otherwise I would have said it to my dog immediately. As someone who enjoys the speedrunning community, it was fun to see that in a puzzle. And everyone likes a good SPIT TAKE, right? Thanks for a great Friday puzzle, Brandon!
@CCed I never thought of pluralizing the word hegira, but it makes sense as there are different ones. Two interesting ones are the Ethiopian Hegira and Joni Mitchell's album.
@CCed This was a delightful Friday puzzle. I mostly solved the bottom half first, then looked up a couple to break through to the north. (I’ve never watched Frazier and don’t really know rock bands, but always happy to learn new things!) As a lifetime Girl Scout, 3-Down was a gimme with a heaping helping of nostalgia. Back in the day, we had ANTS ON A LOG at nearly every hike or camping trip. In today’s world, of course, you have to sub out the peanut butter to protect those with allergies. We also made “walking salads” by scooping out the inside of an apple and filling it with a Waldorf-style mixture. Nothing to take home; the napkin & brown bag went in the campfire :) Normally, we had water in our canteens, but occasionally got Tang the morning we broke camp. Such a thrill to “drink like the astronauts” while they were walking on the moon. That was nearly as long ago as the last appearance of BRUSH ASIDE! Great grid layout & nice mix of clues. Thanks, Brandon, for the puzzle & the trip down memory lane!
@CCed PUT ME IN COACH will forever remind me of the great John Fogerty song “Centerfield,” which I haven’t heard in years. I hear Creedence Clearwater Revival quite often, but oddly none of Fogerty’s solo work.
@fionatimes I got that one from surrounding clues and had to look up what it meant. An unexpected pluralization for sure.
@CCed I like how the crossword solving portions of my brain are connected to so many other things in life. Because of this, however, today the music portion of my brain is now stuck on Sugar Ray’s Every Morning. An ear worm if there ever was one.
@CCed Even 5 years in, Fridays can be pretty challenging. This puzzle was the perfect level of crunchy and fun for me. I wish I hadn’t stuck with Oct-AVE for as long as I did. And I must have skipped class when HEGIRA was taught 😊 Off to enjoy a ridiculously warm (and windy) day in the Windy City. Peace
@fionatimes I had never heard of hegira before, so that was a fun one to learn about (and now I have a Joni Mitchell album to check out). Sending out a "Whats a good boy!" your kitty from across the interwebs.
@JCA I remember ants on a log from going to summer camp! The walking salads sound very tasty, I wish me had had that too. Tang was always a staple in my household. My dad loved tang, so he always bought it when we went to costco.
@KLW Clues remind me of songs all the time! The songs from 31A immediately got stuck in my immediately, but I not remember it was SUGAR RAY. It is fun to so the leaps my brain makes when I solving.
Fresh and fun puzzle! Spent quite some time trying to figure out what a ROSEBEL is, until it dawned on me that DYES are also used in tanning, as well as LYES. Loved the long entries!
@Yiannis L. Hand up for LYES (even though I did not like the plural) before coming to my senses....
Blimey, that was a tough one. Acres of white space for a worryingly long time til I gave in and read Deb’s column. So many things I didn’t know; the band, the sports phrase, the tv channel, the journey. SPIT TAKE and SMASH UP more TIL’s. On the upside I did know both NILES and DINAH for a change, plus Mr Chaplin’s alter ego. ROSE BED brought up a lovely memory of being given rosehip syrup as a child. Delicious. My characterful Shiba isn’t often called a GOOD BOY as he’s prone to biting anyone who dares come near the house (perfectly behaved away from his turf). Worse, we currently have our son’s Lab; she’s a delight but mad as a box of frogs and a total escape artist. She got into the Alpaca field yesterday causing utter bedlam. No harm done, my girls can put on a spurt of speed when needed. We’ve now barricaded all the fences to stop her jumping through. I’m expecting her to tunnel her way out any day now.
@Helen Wright Thank you for “mad as a box of frogs”— odds are I’ll get to use that today!
@Helen Wright "mad as a box of frogs" This is my new favorite saying.
@Helen Wright I actually thought about you partway through this one, wondering to myself if you were struggling with it.
@Helen Wright yes I needed plenty of look ups to get started and to confirm some feelings. There's even the difference in grammar. I can imagine a British footballer being asked to be "put on" but not "put in".
@Helen Wright Thanks all 😀 I had no idea my ‘mad as a box of frogs’ phrase was unusual! @Bruce, maybe I need to visit Georgia. I’ll leave it four years though. @Peter, do we even call it a bench? I thought it was the subs box. I take no notice of the footie and in the absence of DH (Exeter City fan so ‘football’ is a loose term) I have no expert at hand.
This was definitely NOT in my wheelhouse! I struggled and finished 35 minutes over my average. Great challenge! It feels good to have a tough workout.
Perfect blend of frowns (“Hmm?”) and smiles (“Aha!”). A good crossword is “a small pleasure in a fractious world.” You can say that again, Deb! Always like to see Brandon’s picture with his two young daughters over at Xwordinfo: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=3/14/2025" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=3/14/2025</a>.
@Puzzlemucker Assuming that picture is from 2018 when Brandon debuted, those daughters are not so young anymore. :)
What a fun and clever puzzle! One of the fun things about crosswords is the associations prompted by the clues. Today 25 Across had a completely different association for me than the Shakira song, of which I was ignorant. For years, across three sports (soccer, ice hockey and lacrosse, I had coaches tell me that the "Hips Don't Lie". This was advice to the defender to watch your opponent's hips as it's harder to fake your opponent with your hips than with head, shoulder or foot fakes. In this case, I was faked out as the hips in question belonged to a rose. Still, like a good defender, I was able to recover and get the solve.
Whenever I see the name Brandon Koppy, I feel the urge to give my neurons a little pep talk, words along the lines of, c'mon, it's *only* Brandon Koppy, how hard can it be? Put your backs into it! At which point, after just pausing briefly to point out that they don't have backs, they're neurons, they go into a sullen sulk and I have to rely on my cerebellum to do the heavy lifting, which is why it's taking so long for me to get to the point ... ... namely that this was a fabulous crossword, with several nicely laid traps that I walked *right* into, Roadrunner-style. For instance, I was absolutely, 100% certain that 29A, Big orbiter, was SPACEX, until ... it wasn't (but what an awesome clue for PLANET). I felt slightly less sure, but still quite confident, about 25A, ROSETEA, but eventually cooled on the TEA and bed, er, bet, on ROSEBED instead. And then there was the west-central region of the grid, OIL-vey! 🙄 In short, a great crossword, I can't wait to see Brandon's next effort. P.S. Our podcast, Jean & Mike Do The New York Times Crossword, is still going strong, still ad-free and chuckle-rich, so feel free to check it out wherever you get your podcasts.
This was a tough one for me, and at times felt like I was forcing in words that didn’t quite fit. Many of my entries required REENTRIES, and it didn’t help that some of them were just a bit off: WHOS A GOOD dog instead of BOY, lyes instead of DYES, etc. I plowed my way through, but was ultimately defeated at the intersection of HEGI_AS and C_U. Guess I’ll just have to write this one off among my LOSSES. I did enjoy SPIT TAKE and SMASH UP, though, and was amused by the cozy coexistence of ROACH, LICE, and ANTS ON A LOG. Someone call an exterminator for that top left corner!
This was the hardest puzzle for me in decades. Even with several lookups I didn't finish without a puzzle check which destroyed my streak. But kudos to constructor, I learned so much which is why I still torture myself.
Found this one *very* difficult. Hardest puzzle for me in a long time. Got it unassisted, but took me almost an hour. That said, I might have dozed off once or twice, since I got up at 2:45 this morning to drive someone to Newark airport for a very early flight. My reward for the early start was a nice view of the lunar eclipse. Nap time now.
@Xword Junkie I just wanted to say that I like your profile name: Xword Junkie.... Nice!
Lots of white space at first but it filled in nicely with a bit of a fight. Like @Rich below, I had Sigur Rós at 31 A for too long. I know enough about them to know that they were around in the 90's but not enough to know any song titles. That really messed me up for a while. Great clue for REENTRIES. When I stopped trying to make it about football, that fell into place. This was about as perfect a Friday puzzle as I could ask for.
@Nancy J. Oh, so that was not about football? I thought it was an American football thing so I just ignored it :D. Does it have something to do with reentering the atmopshere by a space shuttle before touchdown? That's the only thing I can come up with... I see now the column says it's about airplanes, but they don't leave the atmosphere, so what are they reentering, exactly? I like the space shuttle theory better. Please tell me if you think I'm wrong.
Well when I started this one I was afraid it was going to be too easy. But then it wasn’t.
A terrific variety of entries which for me is important for the non theme days.
Loved it! What a good natured puzzle-reminds me of a Robin Weintraub one. Strayer seemed a bit of a stretch but if that's what it took to get the rest of it-OK!
Wow. I failed so badly today it's actually kinda funny. I knew almost nothing in the NE corner: SMASHUP, SPIT TAKE, REENTRIES across and ATT and STRAYER down were my undoing. I've never seen these words before, or maybe they just did not register. Elsewhere in the puzzle I just could not associate POSH with "glam" (I know glam from rock only, and there is nothing POSH about it, is there? Flamboyant, as glam rockers were, is not the same as elegant or upper-class, is it?), and I had no idea what HEGIRA was (I looked it up - so yeah, I have heard of hijra - hidżra in Polish transcription - but not this other spelling). Also, I have no idea how "bench press?" solves to PUT ME IN COACH. Is that about a benched player asking a coach to put them on the field? And so press means pressure? That's the only idea I can come up with. Other than that that phrase sounds like somebody is buying plane tickets, but that makes no sense with the clue. Finally, why *do* hips lie on a ROSE BED? I feel like this was a good puzzle, in principle, and I failed it as a non-native English speaker and a non-American. I needed reveals and auto check to fill the grid, in the end.
@Andrzej I feel for ya, man. Every one you mentioned was tough. HEGIRA was also brand new, and is SPIT TAKE is a vaudeville kind of thing that was the favorite physical gag that a former director I knew did every show he could shoe-horn it into. It's when a character receives some news at the exact moment they are swallowing, and the surprise causes them to lose muscle control and the liquid comes out every where. But you nailed the PUT ME IN COACH! That was dead on. I saw your ballet picture from yesterday. Yeah, absolutely amazing, like they're not affected by gravity. But sadly I watch for a while but I soon wander off to wondering if we could invent an anti-gravity machine so I could do that.
@Andrzej Exactly the same for me. I could do most of it without lookups, but the NE corner was too hard for me this time.
@Andrzej I am a native English speaker. I've lived in 4 English speaking countries so have good understanding of localisms. Went to school for many years in US, have American father and half siblings. I had no clue on many of these even once I looked up the answer.
@Andrzej glam and posh simply aren’t synonymous. At all. Nearest I can fathom is maybe if a woman gets glammed up they can be said to put on their posh frocks? But it’s a leap followed by a short haul flight. Rose hips are seeds, I think? Or rather the little fruit things that hold the seeds of roses. And yeah, the put me in coach (or, as I had it until way after the end, on coach) was sports. I’d never heard of hegira either; as an English teacher of 18 years who worked with an on-average 50% Muslim cohort I’m gonna go ahead and call that one obscure.
@Andrzej Rose hips are the widened area just at the base of the flower. They sometimes are bright red and quite showy after the flower has died and fallen off. They have various culinary applications, and being very high in Vitamin C, are sometimes available at health food stores in pill form. Some are decorative as well and are planted for ornamental purposes.
@Andrzej I do love a good SPIT TAKE, and I'm sure you've seen them in movies or on SNL. Under certain circumstances it's also fun to wait until someone is taking a sip and then say something you know will make them laugh. ;) I found some compilations I didn't really like; this segment on James Cordon isn't bad, but I think you don't like short videos. this is about 3 minutes. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRZC58WbMaQ" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRZC58WbMaQ</a>
Not a SPEEDRUN for me. I had my doubts but pleased to finish it. HEGIRAS is a new word for me.
@Roger I'm somewhat surprised that the Hegira is not more widely known. Granted, it's not as common as the Biblical Exodus or the various diasporas in history, nor has it been applied to non-historical events. But we do refer to gambling and shopping Meccas.
There was a band from Iceland in the 90's called SIGUR ROS -a somewhat avant garde duo. Boy did I try make that work in 31 Across. But I was not a good boy today, and while eventually searching for alternative spellings of Sigur Ros, finally realized that the correct spelling was SUGAR RAY. Duh! A devilish puzzle for me, but the very clever cluing eventually outweighed the critiques.
@Ragland ha that's a good deep cut although from what I remember and confirmed by Spotify, Sigur Ros had almost no songs with names in English!
Oof! Lots of quite specific trivia relating to growing up in the 90s US, and pseudo-Natticks, rather than more standard cryptic Friday clues with dictionary-word answers. Examples such as 1D, 3D, 31A., 40A. You can’t please all the people all of the time, I suppose!
Challenging but fair! A testament to the art of “just think harder, dammit!”
A fun one with many LOL moments. Our constructor's comments spurred this morning's rabbit hole: "It actually proves fairly easy to locate the true originator of the phrase. It was Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (1863–1944), a man of letters now largely forgotten except for his long editorship of the Oxford Book of English Verse. He offered his vade mecum, a version of Johnson’s, in a 1914 lecture titled “On Style”: “[I]f you here require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: ‘Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it — whole-heartedly — and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.’ ”" <a href="https://harpers.org/archive/2014/11/spare-the-darling" target="_blank">https://harpers.org/archive/2014/11/spare-the-darling</a>/
Nice smooth solve...but the military waiting clue..I have not seen sieged as a verb..just besieged?
@chris Good call. The online dictionary I checked does list 'siege' as a verb, but it does read to me like a mis-usage that has gradually become tolerated. (Which for a crossword is, of course, good enough.)
This is a terrific puzzle. Fun misdirects, way longer than my average time, and full of good humored answers. Loved it!
Assume I’d see a bunch of “too easy”. “Wednesday on a Friday” type of comments. Glad to see, as of this post, I have not read any. Really nice punchy long entries. With, I think, zero garbage fill. Very impressive. At least to me it was.
Great puzzle! I particularly loved the WHOSAGOODDOG clue. I love dogs and can't imagine life without them, but I still didn't think of this angle when reading the clue...until I finally did and then a ha! So fun! HEGIRA was lodged somewhere on a dusty shelf in my brain, but I did look it up to confirm. That's the fun of puzzles; learning (solidifying?) new things!
TGIP -- Thank God It's PI-day And whatta perfectly crusty slice of a puzzle. Although it did take me longer than 31:41.59 to complete -- at least double that! Circling back... I believe I eclipsed my previous record for a single sitting Friday with no autocheck. Loved and agreed with much of the commentary. Which I usually peruse when a puzzle leaves me with an -- I wonder if anyone else ______? I am at least 3.14 X happier with the crossword since I went digital and stopped monitoring my times and streaks and stick to Th/F/Sa/Su. If I dry up or get flustered or stumped... I go start another one and then come back to the tough one -- the next day... With my fresh new next day brain! And inevitably ask myself: Where was that brain YESTERDAY? Abby Something?! And... sometimes... I read some of the paper that is attached to my xword subscription?! PS Best ever? Mum's holiday cream cheese pie with the graham cracker crust!
Every now and then I can feel so dumb after completing a puzzle. I am very familiar with the name REO Speedwagon, referring both to the vehicle and the rock band named for it, but somehow I never knew, or forgot, that it was a type of a pickup truck. Somehow I pictured some quite different vehicle. I guess there’s only room for a certain amount of ‘stuff’ in the old (and getting older) cranium.
A tough one but a fun one for me! Particularly liked the debuts today, ONCELER, SPEEDRUN, and PUTMEINCOACH all felt fresh.
What is going on?? Two days ago I happened upon a TV show called Hudson and Rex, a ridiculous, barely written, yet delightful piece of junk cop show starring a dog sidekick who does basically nothing. I later that night went down a rabbit hole reading about it and happened to learn the original dog's name... And Diesel is the (now deceased) dog staring up at me from the headline of today's Wordplay column! I barely watch TV. I picked the title among hundreds of other ephemeral flotsam across 6 streaming services while scrolling around looking for something else entirely, as a favor to someone. This dog show is an obscure Canadian thing I had to watch on "Ion" with commercials. So what a freaky little coincidence for me. Anyway, the puzzle. It was decent, mostly pretty easy even though there was some questionable-to-me cluing. But what hung me up for a little bit was the deathly crossing of lice epizoa and hegiras, which I've never heard of. I also didn't know "sego" or whatever they quarterback statistic is supposed to be. So not my smoothest performance. :) ____________________ Jesse Goldberg 8/28/2024 for Puzzle of the Decade (emu filler)
@B Sigh. This looks to be the original of 4 different attempts I made starting Thursday evening, with increasingly desperate attempts at self-censorship to appease the emu deities. I guess I hope the other 3 don't appear 13 hours after submission as this one did... :( ____________________ Jesse Goldberg 8/28/2024 for Puzzle of the Decade (emu filler)
Listening to the Warriors/Kings game while I worked the puzzle (Warriors won), which must have eased the solve, because although I had a couple of look-ups, plus Hegira to confirm spelling, and a Doh! when it took me a while to figure out the pressure from bench—I mean, I was listening to a basketball game, fer cryn out loud!—the puzzle did not seem Friday hard, just fun. Thank you, Brandon, and I join the chorus of "Awes" about WHO'S A GOOD BOY—I can't imagine there was anyone who didn't get a sweet buzz out that one.
I misread the clue for 16 Across as Hurtles before touchdowns so entered Hail Marys and congratulated myself for being a genius. Not so fast. I really enjoyed solving this puzzle, so thanks, Brandon. WHO'S A GOOD BOY?
@Vaer Hah! Sometimes my best moments in a puzzle come from misreading the clue! That "ooooh, oops" moment makes me laugh.
@Nora I enjoyed that feeling after trying to figure out how IS TO are "Words of compassion."
As well as the obscurities, this one had a bona fide grammar error in the cluing: Completing a video game as fast as possible, say Speedrunning Complete a video game as fast as possible, say Speedrun Feel like this week’s puzzles have all had entries that have been just a bit off. I don’t for a second think they’ve entrusted their editing to AI, but the issues that have come up have all had that weird sort of feel.
@Phil I think this is the gerund form of "Completing" so both the clue and the answer are nouns.
@Phil As well as the gerund thing, I think that this also reflects the difference between Araucarian and Ximinean cluing as has been an issue of contention in British cryptic crosswords.
I enjoyed this puzzle a lot (even the parts that others didn't seem to) - sometimes you just need an edge of a few clues in your wheelhice to really get going - having SPEEDRUN and EATME as certainties, and then making just the right guesses for crossers to build more of a lattice, and continuing on from there. Also some experience of answers that I only know from this crossword (SEGO / OSA). It wasn't my fastest time, but I didn't erase much at all. I think MISSES for LOSSES? And then POP IN for 58A, which I definitely have a question about... I can see two connections between "Stop by" and END AT, but they both seem loose: 1) both words refer to a point on a journey, but to my ear, "Stop by" indicates that this is not the final stop, which END AT of course is. 2) and both can refer to a time of cessation: "The concert will stop by / end at 11PM". But stop by means it may stop earlier, and end at is more nailed on (again, to my ear) And I missing a third connection, or just being a little to tied to my understanding?
@Andrew F ENDAT was one of a handful of entries on the right side that made me take double my normal Friday time today, in part because of a couple nearby entries that ate my lunch (ONCELER and SOO were both completely unknown to me, and opaque to the eye once filled in via crosses), but also due to the fuzziness of the match between “stop by” and “end at”. That said: I’m pretty sure the intended manner of connection is your #2, and while those phrases aren’t *exactly* synonymous, I’d say they’re close enough for crosswording.
@Andrew F Late in the week I try not to enter non-gimme answers until I get a cross, but today I entered "visit" for [Stop by] without giving it a second thought. Between that and not knowing ONCELER, I spent a long time in the SE.
Friday, Friday, Friday!! Fun, frisky, fiery, fierce, and feisty, forcing me to forage and funnel, flummoxed, yet finally finding my way to the fabulous 🎶!! Phew! Fantastic. Fanks Mr. Koppy.
I was tempted several times to hit Reveal, but resisted. Felt great when I finished the puzzle unassisted in around my usual time. More like this, please.
My mind was boggled by ROSEBED as the place where hips do lie, which was made particularly tricky for me because, as a non-gamer, I had no idea what a SPEEDRUN was (although it makes perfect sense). I had hopefully entered speedwin, until SUGARRAY set me straight. I got a kick out of WHOSAGOODBOY and PUTMEINCOACH.
@Marshall Walthew I was in the right ballpark with "rosebud", which seemed more obvious and more in-the-language than ROSE BED (I usually say "bed of roses"), but obviously "uase" wasn't a thing, so I had to think on it a while. Not knowing "The Lorax," I was also stymied by ONCELER, which looked like it couldn't be right, but all the crosses were 100% locked in. Overall tough cluing slowed me down more than usual for a Friday, but I got it done. BTW, people do talk about SPEED RUNs for crossword puzzles, too.
@Marshall Walthew As a woman who's battled her weight for too many years, I thought "InSpanx" would have been a funny answer to the clue "where hips do lie".
After blitzing though the NW corner like a Monday I was prepared to be disappointed, but gems like WHOSAGOODBOY, ROSEBED, PUTMEINCOACH , SKIPCLASS and REENTRIES proved me wrong. Also, while still a gimme for me the clever clue for SIR made me laugh!
Hmmm, too American for me from 1D onwards (Joke!) Even 'total', and I couldn't have guessed NILES. I've had lots of good ones recently, so not complaining,
@Jane Wheelaghan Ironically, the name 'Niles' was almost certainly chosen for that character to be as pretentiously British-sounding as possible! But still a totally American reference, of course. If it makes you feel any better I don't have a snowball's chance in hell of doing your crossword puzzles!
@Jane Wheelaghan I needed to google about half a dozen American things such as 1D to get going. There's also an assumption about knowing Spanish which makes sense on that continent, while growing up in England, French, German and Russian were the foreign language options I had.