When my chicken flaps its wings, it's poultry in motion. (I'll have to re-coop-erate from these puns.)
@Mike Chicken wings? Now I'm feeling peckish. Thirsty too. Hail the cocoa van.
@Mike Nice pun, eggshuly. 🐣🐣🐣🐣🐣🐣🐣🐣🐔
Mike, Every day, when you need a pun, you just pullet out of your hat. (Today’s is just another feather in your cap.)
@Mike I sometimes think of your puns as hatchet jobs.
@Mike I was on vacation last week, and didn't keep a breast of your puns. Now I'm back.
Super fun Tuesday. My only note - golf courses typically don’t allow anyone to play in a tee!
@Rocky I was thinking that too! Don't most golf courses have dress codes?
@Rocky I am so not a golfer, but... outside the world of country clubs, I've seen people play in just about anything.
@Rocky yes, I wanted to call a FOUL on that as well. Pretty much the only time I saw my college-aged sons *not* wearing a TEE was when they were headed to a golf course!
@Rocky I had the same thought, but I think some courses are a bit more relaxed these days. My husband would never wear a T shirt for golf.
@Rocky Agree. I am an avid golfer and on most golf courses, public or private, men never wear tee shirts, although a woman might wear a nice one. It has become more of an accepted custom than a “dress code”.
Well kids, you won’t believe this, but “Disco Duck” was the #1 song in America in October of 1976… ahead of (for example) More Than a Feeling by Boston and The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot (neither of which ever reached #1). Strange days indeed!
@Joe P I couldn't remember the song, despite being just shy of 18 yrs old in October 1976 and your comment inspired me to find it. That was crazy! But fun! A good start to Tuesday morning, thanks!
@Joe P I remember that "Disco Duck" was a thing. but I don't remember anything about it, other than a poor imitation of Donald Duck's voice. I was hating disco and listening to Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath by that time. Oh, and "Convoy" hit #1 in 1975.
@Joe P Nobody told me there'd be days like these!
Laugh out loud fun—thank you!! Not sure why or where DISCODUCK was living in the recall unit, but it was immediately at the ready—probably where the periodic table or french verb conjugations should have been.
My first thought upon finishing this was that this was a high-quality puzzle. Fun theme in which every answer brought energy, and which had a nailed-it revealer. Well-scrubbed answer set. Early-week cluing that didn’t feel stale and included a few later week zingers. Touches of beauty in RENEGE, MASTODON, and FULL OF IT. This from a pair of relative NYT newcomers with a total of three previous puzzles between them, all solo, all themeless, and all superb. The constructor notes today indicate that they are perfectionists, and I believe it. I would add that they are talented as well. Speaking of three, today’s offering came with a trio of echoes – It’s our second party foul after Thursday’s double dipping, our fourth TENET since February 9, and the theme echo today in ORIOLE. May the echoes continue from this pair. What a gift for us solvers when scintillating voices join the puzzlemaking cadre. Thank you, Larry and Jonathan, for a splendid outing!
Lewis, Is it just my weird sense of humour, or is the beautiful touch in FULL OF IT a comedy nugget you threw in there, to see if we’re paying attention? :)
@Lewis Speaking of echoes, yesterday's puzzle also included ARES and EARN, plus OPTIONS (to today's OPTION). Not to mention, ARROW yesterday and ARO today!
I'm one who prefers platonic relationships, ideally with people similarly committed to the environment and sustainability. I'm a green aro.
This took longer than expected, which made me feel like a bit of a birdbrain, but I finished it, and that's the important thing. I was listening to the Warriors game (they lost—sob); while we were cooking this evening a jar fell out of the top of a kitchen cabinet and hit my husband on his lower lip (no tooth broken, thank heaven); we had a 4.0 earthquake on the other side of the hills about 7:30 pm; mammoth trucks had rolled up and down our street all day, gouging and grinding and beeping and banging—the water company laying new pipes; news of the day in short bursts (all we could manage before we had to turn it off); plus a lot of other stuff, all of which has made for a stressful, fragmented Tuesday and stretched my solve past a usual Tuesday time—which actually was kind of good. Don't misunderstand, I'm just venting. So much worse is happening in the world that make my whines seem trivial. Thank you, Larry and Jonathan, I did enjoy your puzzle. You make a nice team.
@dutchiris And here the radio reported "no injuries" - I guess they didn't think to ask DutchIris's husband if he was okay!
@dutchiris I'm sorry you're having a bad day, but at the same time I like windows into people's lives such as this. They make me feel connected to others all over the world, and the connection is optimistic, somehow. Thank you 🙂 I will be picking up our old Jorge the Lab from my father today - the dog has been staying with him for a few days so my wife and I would get some sleep. Jorge has some health issues which cause him to do weird things in the middle of the night, and in the long run being woken up by him night after night after night is unsustainable. So we share caring for him with my incredibly loving father. Thanks, dad ❤️ I am a procrastinator (as must be obvious from the amount of my posts on this board) so of course the stuff I have to have ready for tomorrow I will be doing today, regretting not having spread out the task over several days. Sigh.
@dutchiris I lived in Palo Alto for several years, the only time I've lived in a geologically active area. I remember I'd often have the sensation of a big, lumbering truck rolling by outside, and it would actually be a tremor. Earthquakes are really hard to imagine until you actually experience one.
@Francis Everywhere on the planet is geologically active. Geology happens nonstop, whether we like it or not (rivers, landslides, erosion, deposition, mountain building, etc.). Some engineers have a hard time remembering that (see Mississippi River "controls"). Seismically active is what you have in Palo Alto. As a geologist, I really enjoyed living in the SF Bay Area, although scary outweighed cool during the 1989 quake. Officially the Loma Prieta quake, it was referred to (by us geo-nerds) as the "kinda big one." The big one was in 1906, and something similar will happen again.
@dutchiris A lot of aftershocks in this thread.
@Andrzej I loved your post and you’re so right about how nice it is to feel connected with others, at least all those who are kind and have interesting observations to make. Thank you for reminding us of that aspect of this forum. We need all the positive feelings we can get these days. I really enjoyed hearing about your dog and your wonderful family arrangement to deal with the problem. Be well, and thank you.
What a fun puzzle. 17A set me to singing that "classic". Any puzzle that has both Tabby and Van Gogh is A-OK with me. Had never heard of a party foul, but it was easy to fill in. More from this duo, please! Signed, A Proud Canadian
The theme was largely a mystery - I was clueless about two of the entries (yes, the ones from before my birth, duh), I needed crosses for the other two, and as per the revealer, the thing was about homophones. My heart sank when I saw that - homophone-based themes have defeated me many a time. My English is fine, including my pronunciation. However, recognizing homophones apparently requires something a non-native speaker lacks. Perhaps some organic feel for the language? Anyway. I need not have fretted about any of it. The downs were so easy I solved the puzzle faster than some Mondays, and much more quickly than an average Tuesday. I'm not complaining btw. From my perspective, when the acrosses, including the theme, are quite tricky early in the week, I want the downs to be easy. PS. I consulted my wife on the sandwich, and bread and roll debacle from one of yesterday's posts. You may remember I was unsure how exactly something is qualified as a loaf ("chleb"), and something else as a roll ("bułka") in the Polish language and culture (because at present size and ingredients are not always so different between the two). My wife's theory is: historically, bread was made cheaply, from cheaper ingredients (such as, rye flour rather than wheat), as it was plebeian food. Rolls on the other hand were made for rich people, using expensive wheat flour, without bran etc. They were small and dainty, brilliantly white inside - unlike the commoners' huge, rough loaves. Plausible!
@Andrzej That's a really good question about homophones. I have to admit that I'm not sure I've thought about something like that. I didn't much jive with the theme of the puzzle personally. I'm really too old for DISCODUCK and FUNCKYCHICKEN, thought I have to admit OLDTURKEY was quite familiar.
Fun puzzle . Tight , well made, and nothing FOUL about it-- Thanks to the constructors!
I really liked the theme and, as always, I quail before the ingenuity of our constructors. The puzzle solved very smoothly for me, except that I briefly had Cold Turkey for 54A, what with bleary-eyed, 5am solving to the tune of Señor Gato’s shrill meow-MEOWING to high heavens to honor the nautical sunrise. Nautical. Not the official sunrise, no. Nautical. He started this lovely ritual three days after my husband left for the States last week. My husband will be gone seven weeks. By the time he comes back, the day will be something like 27 hours long in Northern Europe. And I will be but a sun-bleached husk of my former self. On that note, have a good Tuesday, y’all.
@Sam Lyons An intriguing, puzzling comment. Wondering: are you perhaps in Svalbard, or Umeo? Didn’t your doggy make it to the old world? Please pardon my curiosity.
@Sam Lyons Your posts makes me think I would enjoy reading a book about your experience in the Old World 🙂
@Sam Lyons You know how much I enjoy hearing about your expat experience. I hope the point will come when you feel comfortable sharing your location. I’ve spent more years than I care to mention living in Wassenaar and Amsterdam, and the long, long Spring evenings were always welcome but of course balanced with the very short December days. The egg experience was a big thing, not only for the feathers (and residue of bodily fluids per Andrzej) and that they were in a different part of the grocery store. The shells seemed *much* harder than I was used to and you could buy cartons of “dubbeldooiers”….eggs with two yolks each. As for the chicken sold in the meat department, there always seemed to be a choice between regular chicken and “maïskip”—bright yellow, corn fed chicken. As you say, actually living over there is a very different experience than visiting for a few weeks. Please keep reporting!
Very entertaining theme! Much easier than Monday, which I appreciated. I remember watching Rick Dees perform DISCODUCK on American Bandstand when I was little, and found the ducks cool and terrifying at the same time. Be still my Gen X heart when I saw the song in the puzzle. Have a great night, everyone!
I've kind of abandoned early week puzzles, but I did this one during a train journey. I cheered aloud at the cluing of SINCE with [Because]---good to see the contrived rule about since=time/because=causation being so succinctly trashed. The meaning of "since" has involved causation, as well as time, for pretty much as long as the word has existed. The OED's earliest citation for the use in the sense of causation dates back to the FIFTEENTH CENTURY, for cryin' out loud. <a href="https://oikofuge.com/sith" target="_blank">https://oikofuge.com/sith</a>/
@Oikofuge Thanks so much for clarifying the use of the word "since". I suspected that it had been used to mean causation for centuries, but did not have an example at my fingertips. (Possibly there is a quote from Shakespeare?) Used that way since the 15th century? That's good enough. Thanks again.
@Oikofuge Did you're cheering draw any stares from fellow train riders? 😊
There is little for me to say about this puzzle, really. I thought the FOWLs were fun--though I did not know the song or the dance. I dredged WILD TURKEY out of my long-term memory --my mother, a cartographer for the county Planning Commission, told of a case being delivered to their office for Christmas--I'm sure for charitable reasons. And I often have occasion to look in the mirror and say, "27A." It has been quite some time since I bound a large quilt (have been creating a lot of smaller art quilts) and yesterday puttiing the binding onto a 45" x 61" quilt took three hours (leaving out cutting and joining bias strips for that binding)...and that was just step one. Hope I'll speed up. Then I'll address the second quilt (same size, same pattern, slightly different focus for about half the blocks.) Put me on the prayer list!
@MOL Those are some big blankets!😆 — — — — — — — — — — — —
The Jacques Brel song "Le Prochain Amour" quotes an old French saying: "Un homme averti en vaut deux"--literally, "A man who has been warned is worth two [men]" In other words, "Forewarned is four-armed"!
@Mark I don't know that I understand the final sentiment but I respect the journey we take to get there!
Nice Tuesday workout. Not all that easy for me, as none of the theme answers were coming to me just from the clues, so all of them had to be worked out with some crosses. Nice moment to finally tumble to the trick. Couldn't help but wonder about a reverse version of the 'foul' homophone and yep - it's been done more than once. One amazing puzzle was a Sunday from September 25, 1994 by Nancy Nicholson Joline with the title "Beastly puns." Some theme answers in that one: MISSINGLYNX BEARESSENTIALS FOWLLANGUAGE BADGNUS EMBRACEABLEEWE CHOCOLATEMOOSE GORILLATACTICS HARERAISING Here's the Xword Info link: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=9/25/1994&g=53&d=A" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=9/25/1994&g=53&d=A</a> Might put another puzzle find in a reply. ...
@Rich in Atlanta BADGNUS! Love it! These run the gamut from grin-inducing (see above; also MISSINGLYNX) to straightforward (CHOCOLATEMOOSE) to an actual phrase/not a pun (GORILLATACTICS). But wonderfully clever overall!
We are in the second of our spree of trips that somehow got scheduled within a very short period of time because of my wife’s recent retirement and some weird circumstances. So I wanted to say I’m checking in from sunny Boca Raton, Florida, where the morning temperature is just about what it was in New York yesterday. We flew down yesterday, and I did something I never did before on the flight. Some of my comments yesterday were sent during the flight! JetBlue now has its own inflight internet setup, and now I can solve puzzles online, send comments, and anything else I need to do online. This may be no news to some of you, but it was to me!
@Steve L What a world, right!? It feels shocking to be able to be online and interacting in flight. Hope you have a wonderful vacation!!
@Steve L On your next set of flights to/from North Africa don’t be surprised if you’re solving crosswords using Space X’s Star Link! A bunch of airlines have partnered with them (e.g. United, Air France, Qatar Airways).
Ever SINCE I realized I'm only half a day away from reaching the max vacation time I can accrue, my work email currently responds with OOO! As such, I'm coming to you from two crossword favorites, the spa getting a ped. Maybe I'll drink some WILDTURKEY at lunch and do the FUNKYCHICKEN AND DISCODUCK and generally behave like a SILLYGOOSE. Very fine puzzle with a fun theme! No FOUL here, PARTY or otherwise! Cheers, all!
@HeathieJ Too bad it's not GRAY GOOSE for a (vodka) martini! While bourbon is my preferred liquor, I've never been much of a fan of WILD TURKEY, unfortunately. Enjoy your day! Thank goodness you're not letting that vacation time pass by UNUSED!! (At least in the pre-pandemic times, I would regularly see headlines stating that most Americans didn't use up their PTO. Crazy!!)
Zip-zap-zoom and it's done, too soon. Had tons of fun with this puzzle, so thank you, Messieurs Snyder and Kaufman! A slight mistake wanted to happen with MAmmoth instead of MASTODON, but the crosses quickly stepped in to correct that. No harm, no foul. ;-)
P.S. The mention of DISCO and FUNK took me straight to this: <a href="https://youtu.be/u5lSeYd_riw?si=frm2tjam_U3VxBY7" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/u5lSeYd_riw?si=frm2tjam_U3VxBY7</a>
@sotto voce I also put mammoth first and realized it was wrong when I had an extra square. Mastodon wasn't at the front of my brain storage so I too needed a few crosses to "joggle" the memory loose.
Just what I needed tonight, a fun, quick puzzle with an amusing theme.
Oops, accidently hit submit. I'm still in the hospital one more night, but my appendectomy went amazingly well. Thanks for all the well wishes! I feel much better now, and needn't have been so apprehensive (I've never had surgery before). I had a great team of Dr's and nurses. The ER was a little scary, but have my own room now. They even brought me snacks! Best part of course (as Francis pointed out) no medical bills. Well, they may send me a bill for the ambulance ride, which I've heard is about $50 or so. I hope to be home tomorrow night in my own bed 🤞
I love this puzzle. Funny, playful theme that made me smile :)
enjoyed this puzzle more than most over the past little while. thank you for a fun tuesday
Seemed maybe about right for a Tuesday, though for some crazy reason we've had several recent Mondays that were harder than this! I didn't realize Rick Dees' "band" was called Cast of Idiots. It's very likely he stole that from Mad Magazine's Usual Gang of Idiots. He does not seem to have had an original or clever thought in his life. He did have Osmond caliber teeth though. I guess he was briefly the Ryan Seacrest of his day. There was some fun cluing here. Enjoyable. ____________________ Jesse Goldberg 8/28/2024 for Puzzle of the Decade (emu filler)
@B Sigh, the second post in three days that took over 12 hours to appear after submitting. Not cool, emus. ____________________ Jesse Goldberg 8/28/2024 for Puzzle of the Decade (emu filler)
Very fun! I think that today's and yesterday's puzzles may have accidentally been switched, but just my opinion. Thank you for bringing a smile to my face while solving!
@Sarah Yup. me too. Found this one far easier than yesterday's. :)
@Sarah totally agree, yesterday’s was like a (badly constructed) Tuesday and today’s was like an easy Monday…
I’m pretty sure DISCODUCK was the first vinyl I ever bought for myself. 8 year old me was quite proud of it, too.
Fun all the way through, and just right for a Tuesday, can’t ask for anything better. Well done Larry and Johnathan.
Lots of fun with the bird theme…Funky Chicken brought back some memories! A good, tight puzzle to start the day.
Typically, a golfer is not allowed to wear a tee shirt, or is at least strongly discouraged.
@Bob in Tennessee One of the delights of publicly-owned city courses is how welcoming they are to all. I remember playing a course in the Bronx that had a wrecked car on the edge of the fairway as a hazard. I doubt that anyone was patrolling the patrons for collars.
@Bob in Tennessee Really? They are so formal?
@Bob in Tennessee I will never understand dress codes. Seriously, if I'm paying to use your course, I'm going to wear whatever I want.
My favorite Tuesday in a long time, loved it! Great debut, you two egg-cellent puzzlemakers
Correct me if I'm wrong, but (for the MOVERS clue) wouldn't it be WHO to call, not WHOM? I liked this puzzle. Couldn't think of any avians I'd like to add. No one wants a STOOL PIGEON at their party, especially when a SITTING DUCK might be the perfect friend to spin some records with at home. I might like to see a CORNISH GAME HEN at a party. But not a PEEPING TOM.
@john ezra Not sure if you're joking? Whom is correct. Whom should we call? Must be the influence of those pesky Ghostbusters. Johnny Carson used to bemoan that the show he once hosted was grammatically incorrect. (It was called Who Do You Trust?) ____________________ Jesse Goldberg 8/28/2024 for Puzzle of the Decade (emu filler)
@john ezra Whenever I'm not sure, I substitute she/her and reverse the order and see if it works. You would say "I called her," not I called "she." Her and whom are both objective pronouns. She and who are subjective.
@john ezra the way I untangle who or whom is could the answer be he or him. WhoM would you call? I would call hiM. Who helped you move? He did. Took me to the age of 40 to get that one down.
@john ezra Are you thinking that whom can only be used for an indirect object because it’s derived from the Old English hwæm? Because yes, OE had two distinct forms of hwa (who) to use in a transitive sentence: hwone (in the accusative case for a direct object and hwæm (dative—indirect object). So, for example, if you wanted to say, “Whom should I call, Beowulf, to move Grendel out of this hall without breaking anything?” You’d have, “Hwone (NOT “hwæm”) sceal ic cigan, Bēowulf, þæt Grendel of þissum healle āwecce, nān þing tobrycende?” But by late Middle English, the two forms collapse into one objective case, which survives into Modern English as “whom,” regardless of whether it’s found in the accusative or dative case. … And, of course, these days we can also just say, “Who ya gonna call, Beowulf?”
@john ezra It goes without saying, inasmuch as I believe everyone realizes it, that the word WHOM is moving to the same place in the linguistic junkyard as pronouns like THEE and THOU, HITHER and YON. This is because, much like the short people in the Randy Newman song of the same name, WHOM has no reason to live. Most other languages do just fine without two separate words for words in the subject and the object position. WHOM hangs on mostly for set expressions that sound funny with WHO, like “for WHOM the bell tolls” and “to WHOM it may concern”.
@Steve L "Most other languages..." I have to disagree, even though I can't prove it, since I have no idea how many languages/dialects there are, and therefore no idea how many "most" might be. Just two common counter examples: In French: je/moi and in German: ich/mich. I think it's sad that we might be losing parts of our language simply because of laziness.
Excellent puzzle, excellent theme. Tidy, funny. I like the prime numbers clue. As I guessed and correctly predicted, this was far easier for me than yesterday's.
No hints needed with this pleasant puzzle.
After a real wild party no-no, give a call to the legal eagle. (I’m off to, once again, try to figure out why I say it “wren-egg”.)
Mondrian legs! Wow wee! Smooth solve and rebus free, our day is complete. Thank you Larry and Jonathan.
Hmm, with a 16 x 15 grid, an opportunity was missed for a spanner: FIGHTING BLUE HENS. Because maybe the party got a bit out of hand.
@Grant Sure, up in The First State. Here in South Carolina, we have a different Game bird that would easily fit in the grid! — — — — — — — — — — — —
Thrilled with the casual inclusion of ARO :)
Watching the Warriors game while I solved and this theme made me realize — with the addition of Jimmy Butler, it sure has been nice to have another BALL HAWK on defense.
Had to use check puzzle on a Tuesday, couldn't work out where I went wrong. My first thoughts were SHO or ARO were wrong, but after running the alphabet for both, no joy Turns out RULE for 1A was wrong making 2D URIOLE, looks just as plausible as ORIOLE Speaking rule and supporting rule kinda make sense? Unless I'm just coping really hard. Fun puzzle otherwise!
@Ciptir I see you’re Irish, and as such, may not know much about baseball team names, or even that there is a specific bird called the Baltimore ORIOLE, after which the team was named. But is the word ORIOLE in general not commonly known as an avian species on the Emerald Isle?
So now I have Disco Duck going through my head... Party Fowl - good Nashville hot chicken restaurant if you get down that way. Wicked insomnia last night. I could be any of the words featured in Strands today. Just saying.
Another week where (for me) Tuesday is easier than Monday. Cute theme, I remember both DISCO DUCK and the FUNKY CHICKEN. Ridiculous songs both, but we can’t be serious all the time (especially these days). I see the queries re because=SINCE. @Oikofuge explains it best, but it was a no brainer for me, perhaps because our schooling involved so much Shakespeare, Aphra Behn et al, where it was frequently used.
Cute theme, tight puzzle. Nice! TIL that DISCO DUCK was performed by Rick Dees -- and that they (the song and the performer) date all the way back to the mid-70's! These are new facts to me because, while both song and performer were on the air... let's just say a lot... in the 80's, I did my best to avoid them-! I only knew Rick Dees as the Top 40 presenter; apparently he still puts out a list on his socials every week. And that "song".... Just no. Give me FUNKY CHICKEN any day! Though really, novelty songs are not my thing. How about a Buffalo STANCE instead? <a href="https://youtu.be/JWsRz3TJDEY?si=1Cf9neX8UQZjpcvP" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/JWsRz3TJDEY?si=1Cf9neX8UQZjpcvP</a>
This was the first non-Monday puzzle I've managed to solve without looking anything up, using this article for help, or using Autocheck! I'm proud, especially because I haven't been doing crosswords for very long. I will say, as much as I love the theme, I will go on record to state that Disco Duck is one of the worst songs that my eardrums have had the misfortune of hearing. If I ever hear it again, it will be too soon.
@Sheri Congratulations! What a great feeling to make that progression in your crossword solving. I am so with you about that song, and additionally I can't even read the title without the chorus running through my brain. For you, at least now when that happens, you can also remember this happy moment tied to that song!
I used to avoid Monday and Tuesday puzzles and felt about the same about them as when I do my taxes. But these dayss I enjoy their banality as it is a good warm-up for the words that come out of our "leaders" mouth later in the day.
And here I thought the revealer was going to be a recipe for Turgooducken:-( Which makes me think: anyone who wants to taste some really good foody writing should read Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin's account of going on a WILD TURKEY hunt, in rural Connecticut, in 1975--from his *Physiologie de Goût*. Try to find the M. F. K. Fisher translation. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEcjgJSqSRU" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEcjgJSqSRU</a> There! Now you'll never forget Darth Vader's childhood nickname, ever again!
@Bill Did I really type 1975?!? That is, of course, 1795.
Needed this puzzle after yesterday lol
I've enjoyed the debates below about the use of "since" below. I went through a phase when I was in my twenties and thirties to really refine my English, obey all the rules pertaining to ending a sentence with a preposition, splitting infinitives, starting a sentence with a conjunction, as well as the proper use of "since" and "hopefully". I read randomly from Fowler's "Modern English Usage, which was brilliant. A favorite passage was "mixed metaphors" where he offered "This is a virgin field, pregnant with possibility". Anyway, even in the early 20th century he didn't think much of the so-called "rules".
Interesting. I solved the whole puzzle on my first go around (one run through the across clues, one run through the down clues), but my solve time (slightly over 6 minutes) was about 90 seconds off my Tuesday PB (slightly under 5 minutes)
@Steven M. Similar for me. I went through 2 times and was one minute slower than my best time 13 to 12 mins. 2 weeks in a row the Tuesday was easier for me than the Monday. Fun quick solve though.
@Steven M. I get why it might have initially seemed a bit odd to you that a single pass through the across and down clues would be so much off your PB. But, the way I would look at it is that if on the first pass through the across clues you answered each correctly, you would not need to spend any time even reading the down clues. The time for puzzle completion would simply be how fast you could write in each answer. Similarly, the more across clues you could *not* answer, the more down clues you would need to spend time reading. Thus, there can be quite a wide range of completion times on a puzzle solved in a single across and down pass through.
Set my Tuesday record on this one (4:03), but I put that down to far fewer typos than usual.
@Jamie Wow, less than half my time, and I was proud of you. Congratulations!
@Jamie Do you solve on PC? I solve on phone and couldn’t complete that fast if I was given the answers instead of questions. One day I’ll get off my rear and make the switch, for the sake of my eyesight if nothing else.