Nathan, you really hit it out of the park with this one.
There have baseball-bases-based themes in puzzles before, but not like this. This is a new wrinkle, and props to Nathan for his originality. You would think that at some point, all the crossword themes would be used up and we’d be going into reruns. But no, no hint of that happening. The creativity of the crossword creators shows no sign of abating, and our quirky language seems to have an infinite capacity for wordplay. Crosslandia, the gift that keeps on giving. Also, props to Nathan for finding theme answers that not only are gold – lively and interesting – but also, remarkably, fit the requirements of symmetry. Wow to that. Lovely serendipities abounded: BIC crossing BUC, semordinaps BUC and CUB, TWO crossing the second base answer, and PuzzPair© BERET / OLD HAT. Plus, words I love SPRIG, VISAGE, and HOOCH. A bright start to the day, and that’s a gift. Thank you for making this, Nathan!
This was fun. For longer than I should have, I wondered why I hadn't heard of the popular wedding song, "Shoot."
@Kathleen It's what is played at shotgun weddings. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shotgun_wedding" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shotgun_wedding</a>
@Kathleen Definitely not a wedding song in UK. I could barely remember it and had to look it up!
Really fun puzzle. Time was, I would be jonesing for sativa! Fun days. Loved the reminder. And it’s my birthday! So I’m gonna party like… it’s a middle-aged lady’s birthday on a Wednesday. Falafel pita and vodka spritzer. Bed by 9:00! Woohoo! Happy hump day all!
@CCNY it's my birthday too! Let's party like it's 1999. That’s what middle aged ladies do, right?
@CCNY A very Happy Birthday to you! May you have a joyful and healthy year ahead, and continue sharing with us your daily lovely posts. I wish you nothing but the best!
Ya hit it out of the park, Nathan...a cracker-jack of a Wednesday puzzzle!
I'm delighted to see such solidarity among the (many) solvers who tried to make "write fourth about" happen. I just dropped in to say that. Write forth in the comments!
@Sam Corbin I was one of those! Maybe too much thinking about 4th Base in high school?
Hi Sam Corbin 😊 The hand is a unit of measure of a horse’s height. I’m reasonably sure that’s what the clue is referring to. <a href="https://equineworld.co.uk/about-horses/horse-height-measurement/measuring-a-horses-height" target="_blank">https://equineworld.co.uk/about-horses/horse-height-measurement/measuring-a-horses-height</a> Mark
@Mark Cousins Sam, my apologies. I missed that you posted a link. Sorry for the noise from my side! And thanks as always for your great columns. Mark
You know what they say: Small hands, big horse.
@ad absurdum Here in the Bluegrass, the self-proclaimed horse capital of the world, you can get hung for horse jokes like that.
I’m rather intrigued by the objections to “beer me” today. The queen knighted Richard today. She knighted him. They feted the Oscar winners today. They feted them. They crowned the derby winner today. They crowned her. Nominal verb with object. Applaud me. Sing me. Lullaby me. Beer me. Tequila me. King me. Queen me. English is a beautiful and fluid language. Only English teachers stand in its way and clip its beautiful wings.
@David Connell - Just in case it isn’t clear (because it takes all types…) King me. Promotion in Checkers/Draughts Queen me. Pawn promotion in Chess. Normal, usual, absolutely fine English language. As the language is actually spoken in the real world where English teachers have no power. <a href="https://youtu.be/m_mPE9gcQJo?si=PRdS8u208YTF2MVr" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/m_mPE9gcQJo?si=PRdS8u208YTF2MVr</a>
@David Connell I applaud your post and celebrate the flexibility of language in general, and English in particular, but... I'm wondering whether you're suggesting that any and every noun can be "verbed" in this way.
@David Connell I remember walking through a park in Weston and seeing Paul Newman riding a unicycle with his shirt off. I asked him for an autograph and he spit on me. Years later we were married in Honolulu.
Just wanted to give a little heads up to a new show called Ludwig on Brit Box. It is a puzzle person, a big time puzzle person, who has to fill in for his detective twin, who's gone missing... I mean you know standard weird cozy mystery situation, but we enjoyed the first two episodes quite a bit! Love the puzzle connection!
@HeathieJ Me too! I find it challenging to find new TV shows that I like and happily found Ludwig when I googled new Britbox offerings. Looking forward to more episodes!
@HeathieJ : And there’s another puzzle component: to identify the Beethoven compositions used in the score. Bonus points for annoying your non classical partner by shouting them out.
@HeathieJ The Leopard on Netflix is brilliant, especially if you know di Lampedusa's book. I love how they translated the book into a modern series - almost all details have been changed because of the different medium, but the spirit of the original has been immaculately preserved (unlike, for example, the travesty that was The Witcher, which butchered the books, making the story and characters worse. Wiedźmin, The Witcher, is the best Polish fantasy series, and it pained me to see how it was treated by Netflix...).
“I’ve been HAVING THOUGHTS” mumbled old Dusty. “It just seems like this is NOT MY RODEO anymore. It used to be that the journalists would WRITE ABOUT how exciting our daredevil riding was. Now the boss just GIVES THE DEGREE of difficulty to them, and no one even bothers to come and watch us ride. They just write a paragraph while hanging out at the bar.” His pal Lefty agreed: “Yeah, they might as well go write about the baseball game instead. Then at least they would COVER ALL THE BASES.”
I actually cruised through this one - might be a wednesday record for me, with no look-ups. I got the theme early and easy, Go me!
@Charlie same here, new record for a Wednesday.
Another travel-related solve, this one at a hallucinatory early hour in the hell that is Heathrow airport. I know just enough about baseball to get the theme very quickly (and to know that "fourth" gets you HOME. One natick for me, at the cross between unknown abbreviations in 49D and 59A. Picture my delight, as I settled down to run the alphabet in order, to get a hit on A! CLICHE as an adjective still makes me wince, having been brought up on cliché as the noun and clichéd as the adjective. But of course it actually works fine as a participle adjective, being the past participle of French clicher, to copy or stereotype. Yet still I wince, for no defensible reason.
@Oikofuge You are absolutely right about the abominabe CLICHE usage. I meant to fume about it in my comment. It is a short step from atrocities like that to saying, "Me and her went shopping." You hear sloppy grammar like that ALL THE TIME on this side of The Pond, even from people who certainly should know better and who should be mode;ing precise English.
@Oikofuge Both PSA and IRA are such common fill that you should commit them to memory, if you're a regular puzzle solver. PSA = Public Service Announcement IRA = Individual Retirement Account Of course, there are many other ways to clue IRA as a name.
@Oikofuge - Cliché is actually an adjective in the original meaning in the original language. What an abstruse complaint to lodge. Of course, hereabouts it is totally cliché. And tired - or should it be “tyred”?
I’d confess that I spent a few minutes trying to decipher WRITE FOURTH ABOUT, but that would make me look foolish.
Nitpicker, Not here, it wouldn’t. It’s the new normal. :)
@Nitpicker So glad I’m not the only one!
Solved this (delightful) puzzle, then sat for a minute wondering why I’d never heard the idiom “WRITE FOURTH ABOUT” before the truth dawned on me. I’m sports savvy, I swear!
Let's all hope Nathan has more than one puzzle to give for his country...er, fans! Right off, let me confess I went hook, line, and sinker for the 4th themer, so of course IRL was my last entry thanks to my state of confusion. Other than that, the only source of confusion was the 3D/31A crossing. I cry Natick here. I think having to learn more Portuguese than SÃO is unfair. And varieties of pot? Come now. Mr. Hale has had a previous puzzle in the NYT, but has not submitted a photo, which I think should be mandatory. Does he wear his hair in a queue, ala the late 1700's? Perhaps a tricorne? Is he young or old? Hath he the SLY VISAGE of a fox? Or a lean and hungry look? Inquiring solvers want to know...
@Mean Old Lady I highly recommend learning a romance language. It helps immensely with any clue about Portuguese, Spanish, French, or Italian. I had no problem with ELA, as it's just the Spanish ella minus an L. (Thanks to my high school Spanish teacher, Sra. Gunderson!) You don't even have to be fluent. My Spanish is certainly not that good. But I know the pronouns, and that's what counts!
@Mean Old Lady I had a college classmate named SATIVA. Her parents were children of the 60s and the result was that I learned a new word that stuck with me to this day. I don't know any Portuguese but I've now seen enough in xword puzzles to know that it is basically abbreviated Spanish.
@Mean Old Lady - it’s not about submitting a photo. No new constructors have had photos since the shake up at xwordinfo. They made it clear: minimal upkeep once the sands of time ran out.
@Katie Latin works too, of course. I never learned Latin, but I do like to look up the etymologies of words, and I've picked up a fair number of Latin roots in the process. That's helped me many, many times...selecting the correct answer in a test, sussing out the probable meaning of a word when I couldn't look it up, legal terms, etc. And, of course, crosswords.
@Mean Old Lady ? Dangit! There's only one reference to the one answer I don't understand, and I don't understand your answer eiither. What's a 4th themer? What's an IRL?
@Mean Old Lady What's wrong with including a cannabis strain? Just because you don't know it doesn't mean there aren't a significant number of people who do. Sativa was a gimme for me, as I'm sure it was for plenty others. (Although I do prefer an Indica gummy while I'm lying in bed rushing to solve the NYT puzzle before it knocks me out.)
Shout is not a Motown song! The Isley Brothers were briefly signed to the company but that was years after the song’s release on RCA in 1959.
@Robert I came to the same thing. Such a common misconception. I see it a lot with Fontella Bass’ “Rescue Me” too. Poor research.
This is a response to Sam Corbin's column. Hands, as a unit, is a measure of how tall a horse is. I have no idea why. It just is.
Is there a wedding-famous cover of Shout by a Motown artist that I'm not familiar with...? The Isley Brothers recorded briefly for Motown in the mid/late-60s, but Shout was recorded for RCA Victor. Unless the constructor is using "Motown" as an absorbent genre of any kind of "classic soul" – which I am not on board with.
Hope I'm not the only one to ponder what "write fourth about" means before getting it and feeling silly Lol
I got the trick even though it was baseball related. However, I've never heard the expressions: GIVE THE (third) DEGREE and WRITE (fourth) ABOUT. Especially the latter looks very weird. Am I missing something? Is the final base not called "fourth" but something else? In general the puzzle had many more words and expressions unknown to me than usual. On most days trivia stumps me (and sure enough, today I knew neither CASS nor BUC - "buc" is a very rude word in Polish btw), but today it were those two expressions and things like JONESED.
@Andrzej In baseball the fourth base is called home.
@Andrzej As Sam said, it's HOME. I wonder how many fourth/home comments there will be. So many people comment without reading the column.
@Andrzej i can see how all of those would be difficult if not american imo. thanks for calling them out. i wouldn’t expect anyone internationally to know “jonesing”
@Andrzej Nothing to write home about is like saying no big deal. Hey, how was your trip? Well, it was fine but nothing to write home about..... Does that make sense?
@Andrzej Nothing to write home about is like saying no big deal. Hey, how was your trip? Well, it was fine but nothing to write home about..... So, though I haven't really heard about it, I guess the opposite would be something to write home about.... It's a little bit of a stretch for me too because I only ever heard in the negative. As usual, that's all I got! 🤷♀️
@Andrzej I'll agree with you; as in Heather J's sample setence, the expression is used almost exclusively in the negative.
@Andrzej Yeah, I don't know if you looked this up already, or it's interesting to you, or helpful, but the team name is the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Which gets shortened to "The Bucs" - always plural. And a buccaneer, of course, is another name for a pirate.
@Andrzej on “the third degree”. It’s an American idiom which means severe questioning to get a confession typical to the police…close to torture…in the old movies it’s where they shine the overhead lightbulb right in the accused face. It’s one of those idioms so ingrained in the American film noir psyche we don’t even think about where it comes from. It appears to come from severe questioning one would get as they tried to level up to the third level of freemasonry…and was eventually transferred to NYC police work.
@Andrzej I believe the clue is referencing the phrase that you are familiar with. "Nothing to write home about" is the same as saying "Nothing to rave over." So "WRITE (HOME) ABOUT" is equivalent to "Rave over."
@Andrzej To be more complete, it's home plate And if you think about it, when you run around the bases. When you've completed the diamond - you're back where you started home sweet home. This is where home run and homer (slang for home run) come from.
Fairly straight forward, definitely fun. A few unknowns as usual; I’ve heard the term JONESED from US tv shows, without actually understanding what it meant, so thanks for that. TIL BEER ME is an actual thing, thanks to @Bruce for the explanation below. Explaining to DH that people actually throw beer cans/bottles to each other earned a frown and a tut. We expect a head on our beer when poured, chucking it about would result in all head (froth) no beer. Definitely not cricket.
@Helen Wright I've never heard BEER ME uttered by a Brit, but I got it quickly, courtesy (or otherwise) of a South African man I once knew. He, sprawling in his armchair, was in the habit of holding his empty hand aloft and shouting, "Beer me, woman!" At which point his wife would scurry off to the refrigerator and return with a Cold One. It was astonishing that the relationship lasted as long as it did. (Which wasn't long.) But the whole business of chucking bottles and cans across the room is alien to me, and bespeaks a less-than-serious relationship with the beer.
@Helen Wright That's an interesting crossing there, as Pabst ran the slogan, "PBR ME, ASAP!" several years ago. And no, it's not a viable alternative for Stella Artois, but it is a lager. I still wouldn't throw one.
@Helen Wright It’s definitely an American frat boy/bro expression, for people who want to get drunk cheaply and quickly.
When I was a student in the '70s, I knew many slang terms for marijuana -- pot, weed, ganja, reefer. herb, mary jane -- but the most amusing one for nerd smokers was to call it by its Latin name, Cannabis SATIVA. Years later, when industrious pot-heads (is that an oxymoron?) were pushing for legalization, I learned that there were other species of Cannabis, and that many of this country's founding fathers grew Cannabis on their plantations, claiming that it was used for hemp and rope-making. It was intimated that they sometimes filled their pipes with the crop. I hope this story is true.
@The X-Phile - Sativa is the species epithet for any plant that is intentionally grown in a garden. It simply means “sown and tended by a gardener.” Nothing to do with marijuana without the genus name Cannabis. Garlic, oats, cilantro, cucumber, carrots, arugula, alfalfa, rice, peas, and many more all bear the species epithet sativus/a/um. It just means “garden-variety.”
I, too, am HIPTO YAMS! Nathan Hale's debut (January '24) is a favorite of mine, so I was glad to see his name again. This was another fun one! Always love the aha moment when I get the theme, and this was a good one. Apparently, however, after today and yesterday, I best start getting HIPTO more cannabis varieties.... Here I am, like... "Uh, there are different varieties...!?" No problem getting them on crosses but I'd be more familiar with HOOCH varieties, I'd say. And though I'm not much for beer, I would be REMISS to not mention that lovely crossing of PBR and BEERME! Now that's something to WRITE — ABOUT.
the height of horses is measured in hands....
Enjoyed this very much. Figured out the dashes relatively quickly. Got bogged down in a couple of places (had romeo instead of rodeo for a while) and another typo, but thoroughly enjoyed it and just enough of a challenge for a good brain workout
@Megan - I can see various occasions where "not my first romeo" could come up! In fact, it's a great variant.
@Megan "Not my first Romeo" is hilarious. I'm surprised that's not already used in forums discussing online dating.
Bottom left corner was infuriating.
@Jake Jortles Shows how different people's frames of reference are. Bottom left was smooth for me, but I found the bottom right infuriating, which was ironic, since I am a more than casual beer drinker.
@MExpat Haha, in my estimation, if the only alternative to Stella or Sam were PBR, the answer would be "vin."
@Jake Jortles YES! Dont get "write" as answer to "Rave over, Metaphorically."
A horse "hand" measurement is 4 inches and I don't remember why I know that.
If the constructor were a regular commenter here, he would surely have dedicated this puzzle to Steve L, our in-house baseball aficionado who tries and tries to make us HIP TO the game. So far, I've only committed to memory RBI, but thanks for trying, Steve! Despite my rudimentary notion of the game, I was able to COVER ALL THE BASES of this puzzle with no problem, though before I figured out the trick, I had "HAVING cold feet" which fit perfectly. Figuring it out put a smile on my face. Loved it! Yet again, a puzzle that leaves me in awe of constructors' imagination and ingenuity. Thank you for a superb romp, Mr. Hale! Others here have pointed out having a natick at the crossing of SATIVA and ELA. It wasn't the case for me. I have no idea why I know SATIVA; then again, I have no idea about any of the other kinds of pot. And ELA came easily, what with Portuguese being my second fluent language, but I did wonder how my fellow solvers were expected to know that. On that note, here is the bossa nova great Tom Jobim with "ELA é Carioca" (carioca is the term for a native of Rio de Janeiro, coming from the indigenous Tupi language "kari'oka", meaning "house of the white man"): <a href="https://youtu.be/tiMpPVDLhgc?si=rysYsIeHbHGcHP0F" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/tiMpPVDLhgc?si=rysYsIeHbHGcHP0F</a>
@sotto voce My 'natick' was the intersection of "llc' and 'buc', not knowing sports teams. But other than that, this was a fun puzzle.
I'm a baseball fan - look at my avatar. Go, Red Sox! (Love that dirty water...) Enjoyed the puzzle. I like how Nathan worked CUB, RBI, and DIV in there. Surprised he didn't use "Pittsburgh MLBer" for 24D, in keeping with the baseball theme. PS Thank you NYT games for fixing the format glitch from yesterday.
(Love that dirty water...) Amy, Have you ever had to explain the second verse to the youngs?
It’s been a long long time since I’ve done an early week puzzle. (You know, because imma genius that can’t be wasting my time on no ez puhzuls). I’m glad I picked today to do one. Very fun. And way to make Wednesday pop. Thank you
@Weak Oh. I forgot. Shout out to TLC. For a time in the 90s. They ruled the world. I think I still have a thing for TBoz. RIP left eye lopes.
Lots of junk today. ELA DIV WAS IRL RBI PBR BAS. Consequently a slow solve and not much fun. The theme was good. A massive pity the bases could not be arranged in an approximately diamond shape.
Happy baseball season to all! Love this puzzle to pieces.
Absolutely wonderful. Well done. Just a perfect theme and a perfect Wednesday puzzle.
Play ball! ⚾️ 🧢 🏟️ YAAAAAAAY Opening Day (tomorrow)! Go O's!
@Jennifer I would say "go Twins", but I know it's futile. In fact, baseball is eternally futile for all but about six teams a year. Everyone else might as well stay home.
Late to the party today! Another instance where saving the revealer to the last paid off--got the gimmick of the missing {FIRST}, {SECOND}, and {THIRD}, but what does WRITE {FOURTH} ABOUT signify? And then --Aha! What a fun puzzle to come home at the end of stressful week at work! Thank you, Mr. Hale!
Not knowing baseball I was looking to fill in with a fourth base.
An IRA is not a “Portfolio holding”. It is an account in which those “holding(s)” are kept.
@Colorado Certainly, a good IRA consists of various investments. But a good portfolio may contain the IRA and many other investments. I don’t see anything wrong here.
@Colorado I agree. This definitely led me to pause before entering an answer there.
@Colorado This didn't occur to me while I was doing the puzzle. I filled in IRA without much thought. But since you mention it, I agree with you. An IRA is simply a container for stocks, bonds, mutual funds, ETFs, CDs, savings accounts, and probably eventually crypto. I suppose it's possible to open an IRA account and never fund it, in which case, it would be ridiculous to call it a holding, but I doubt the investment company or bank would allow it to exist for very long.
Fun puzzle and a good workout. Took me a while to catch on to the trick and... a dim-witted moment was when I was pondering 'fourth' at 63/64 across. And yeah, I'm a baseball fan. duh. One puzzle find today was inspired by the constructor's name. A Sunday from February 25, 2018 by Will Nediger with the title: "Letter recycling." The trick in that one was pairs of across and down answers that crossed each other and each of which used the same letters. One example was: ETHANALLEN crossing NATHANHALE A couple of others: OUTSTANDING/ASTOUNDING PISTACHIOS/POTATOCHIPS IRONAGE/GEORGIANERA Don't recall seeing another one like that. Here's the Xword Info link: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=2/25/2018&g=28&d=A" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=2/25/2018&g=28&d=A</a> I'm done. ...
Horses are measured in hands.
@Marilyn Yes, we know. Was this linked to someone's protest? (Well, it could be something in the column....)
Great puzzle. From 1A on, I felt comfortable with it. The theme was clever, fun, and above all, not hellishly difficult to figure out. Even the unfamiliar items had crossing words that helped. I only had to look up one term in the SE corner. Congratulations to Nathan Hale! (Did not know he was still active.)
Eminently do-able, and enjoyable, with absolutely no idea that there was a baseball connection! When you have a phrase like BEER ME (is that really real?) then NOT MY RODEO and HAVING THOUGHTS just seem like more odd Americanisms. I always thought COVER ALL THE BASES had a military connection. Like cover with camouflage. I only had trouble with PBR (I know Stella is a lager) IRA, RBI (something to do with boxing?) and LLCS.
@Jane Wheelaghan "Beer me" is real. You call it to a person across the room, generally, and they toss it to you underhanded (while it's still unopened in its bottle or can, if course). You get extra points if you catch it one-handed, and even more if you do so without looking up. Some people look down on this practice as being boorish. It's one of those unbridgable cultural divides, I guess.
@Jane Wheelaghan RBI is a baseball stat- runs batted in. A good hitter is called a slugger , I can see how it might seem like a boxing thing. I find it fascinating to see the challenge these American expressions pose for solvers in other countries. Maybe I should try a British puzzle!
@Jane Wheelaghan "Beer me" goes back well over three decades, as evidenced in this episode of the American sitcom "Parker Lewis Can't Lose" from 1992. <a href="https://youtu.be/Gj1qlrbu4tU?si=r-u1h3IqF7G4AJvf&t=866" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/Gj1qlrbu4tU?si=r-u1h3IqF7G4AJvf&t=866</a> After he says "beer me," Parker says "Brewski number two-ski." This was until quite recently my white whale of pop-culture reference that I pursued over the internet sea without success for a long time. Last week it was happily found, and with it, "beer me" evidence to boot, which came in handy today!
@Jane Wheelaghan To add to Ron’s reply: A slugger is a power hitter. He hits the ball hard and far. While some batters’ job is primarily to get on base, a slugger’s job is to bring those runners home. So generally, the slugger is not first but rather third through fifth in the lineup. An RBI is any run scored as a result of a hit (or sacrifice fly, described recently in these comments) or even an out by the batter (including his own, if he hits a home run). Hope this didn’t get too complicated to be helpful.
@Jane Wheelaghan An LLC is a limited liability company. It, in some ways, bridges the gap between a sole proprietor or a partnership and a corporation in that if the company goes under your personal assets (like your house, your car, your investments, etc) won't be seized in order to pay off the company's debts. PBR is short for Pabst Blue Ribbon, which is an an inexpensive beer favored by working-class folks and college students. It's place in our culture is perfectly illustrated by a line in David Lynch's "Blue Velvet," which I unfortunately cannot quote here. I'm kind of a beer snob, but I won't turn down a cold PBR. An IRA is an Individual Retirement Account, and is intendted as a way to provide individuals with a method for saving for retirement that has tax advantages.
@Jane Wheelaghan I can attest to Beer me being older than thirty years. And you seem to be missing the theme Not my (first) rodeo Having (second) thoughts Gives the (third) degree Write (home) about The missing words are the bases in baseball which has opening day tomorrow.
@Gary Love the Parker Lewis clip, and I'm so happy that you were able to track it down. (I think we had some DVDs once but gave them to my little brother when he was old enough to appreciate them.) Thank you!
What a great, fun puzzle! Really enjoyed the trick that was made accessible through the idioms being so familiar. Have to admit I finished the puzzle still wondering about the O-Neg answer, so was glad to see that addressed in the column here! :)
@Anthony One G ....did you skip the clue? (That often gets me into trouble when an entry is filled by the crosses and I thereby misread it.)
My personal pot Portuguese natick kept this from being a personal best. But it was a fun romp around the bases
Clever Wednesday offering, and not so easy for me. Not familiar with JONESED and can never remember IRL. Knowing JEREMY and ABRAM helped in the SW corner. PAMPHLETS and VISAGES are interesting words. Enjoyed this one.
@Xword Junkie Yeah. I know it’s slang. But I never heard jones with a past tense -ed at the end. I actually ‘challenge’ this. It sounds very strange to my ear. I have always said “I was jonesing for” when expressing past tense yen.
@Xword Junkie Knowing Jeremy saved me a lot of pain.
Any other dumb dumbs frivolously try and make FOURTH fit in the final themed clue? Hit a HOME run in the end, but that had me questioning everything I knew before it finally clicked lmao. Fairly easy Wednesday all said and done, but a super fun puzzle and generous clueing. Thanks Nathan.
I tried to comment last night, but the comments were glitching like the desktop puzzle was yesterday morning. Judging by when the first comment posted, the comments were finally fixed around 1 am ET. At which point, it was actually only one day before Opening Day. Which makes me wonder, why wasn’t this run on actual Opening Day? Was it deemed not tricky enough for a Thursday? Of course, by now I’ve mostly forgotten what I was going to say last night,,,except: Play ball! (Note to newer solvers: It always pays to reflect on what day it is…not just the day of the week, but if there are any special events on the day or imminently.)
@Steve L I'm sure you're right, but is everyone aware of the existence of an Opening Day?