Unhappy comments on a twisty Thursday? CROSSCROSSWORDSWORDS (Does not apply to fun Sundays!)
@Cat Lady Margaret Omg this was the entry that sparked the theme in my head originally!!!
@Cat Lady Margaret Could also clue that as: Puzzlers prepare to duel? CROSS CROSSWORD SWORDS
As the first resident HEATHER to comment on today's puzzle, I want to thank all you little people who helped me realize my previously unknown dream of appearing in the New York Tmes crossword. It's truly an honor! (Insert me bowing to roaring applause here.) Also happy to have a drunken sailor and a Cuban dance crossing me. Sounds like a fun night! This was really fun with all the themers - loved the word play - but it did go very fast for me. The lower part got a little bit trickier but I quickly knocked out the top themer at 25A and so that made the rest of them very achievable. Had some trouble at 62A crossing 67D... Didn't know the bird or the book title, but the long legs in the clue was a good hint. SPAMSPAMSALOTALOT it's probably my favorite if I had to pick one, but I really enjoyed them all. My last name hasn't been in the puzzle since 2021, but man that would have been something if it would have made it in. It's been in 20 times in the Shortz era, so the odds weren't nothing. But just imagine the big EGO I'd have about that! This is probably for the better. Instead I'll just go do the CHACHA! TLDR: How very! 😉
@HeathieJ I had to go back and reread your first couple of lines before I realized Heathie is a nickname for Heather. I'm terrible with nicknames. A lot of them make no sense at all to me, like Peg for Margaret, or Jack for John, or Bob for Robert. Yours is one of the somewhat rare name/nickname pair that the nickname is no shorter than the original. Like Jack for John. I'm sure now that I've brought it up, most of you will come up with a half dozen examples in your first ten seconds of thinking about it.
@HeathieJ I had the almost unbelievable pleasure a few years ago of having my first name AND my husband’s first name appear in the puzzle one day. I know how fun that is!
@HeathieJ Note to self: HEAT HEATHER HER celebratory whoopie Pie.
@HeathieJ Just weighing in as another Heather. Other than an uncle with Down Syndrome who called me HeathersAnne (including my middle name) and now a four-year old Sunday school student who calls me Miss Feather (like a bird, he told his mom when she tried to correct him), I've never had a nickname. Embarrassed to say it took me and my husband of 33 years 2 passes and a couple of crosses to get that answer!
"Isn't your plate of ham still under the weather?" "No, it's cured." (Sorry to Spam you with this one.)
@Mike A pun of yours always has a twist in the tale. I've loined to expect it. It's never boaring. .
@Mike It snow wonder omelet you get away with this pun. Fry as I might, I could not pan it.
@Mike This brings up a question: would you rather eat a HAM....or BE one? We see that you have already made your choice...
@Mike What do you call a session with a paid photographer? A pro shoot (oh!). I taylored that one for you.
Okay, all. No more crudité comments, please.
Man. Our quirky language. The things you can do with it! I actually did a double take when I saw what was going on in the theme answers. I am still childlike when presented with wordplay like this, and there I was, with my jaw dropped and thinking, “This is amazing!” So, I rode though this outing with an inner smile. A trio of memorable moments: • Shook my head at how quickly I had forgotten PPE, the term that was everywhere during covid. • [Liver spot] for ABODE was so silly I immediately fell in love with it. • DEMAGOG won me over because it contains Biblical pair Gog and Magog. Eight long theme answers for a Sunday puzzle is impressive. One thing that helped the constructors do it was the addition of an extra column. Thank you, Victor and Tracy, for finding this quirk in our language and flying with it. What fun – this was a hoot!
@Lewis agreed! Thanks for your observations, this was so well put. I enjoyed the silliness of the theme entries and the satisfaction of working out the shorter entries. I almost always love the Sunday puzzle but even still, this one stood out. I join you in the praise and the thanks!
@Lewis Thanks for pointing out the extra column. I need to get better at noticing such things. You might be interested to know that this theme, or at least variations on it, have appeared before: * June 20, 2021, “Familiar Surroundings” by Michael Lieberman (which included PRO PROCURES CURE). * November 18, 1984, “Double Doubles” by George P. Sphicas, which had theme answers like MAN MANDATES DATES.
@Lewis PPE was such a common abbreviation during the Covid era, and I can only remember it being used in that context. This clue made me wonder if it's commonly used outside of a pandemic. Do construction workers refer to hard hats as PPE? 🤔
Uttered a CROSS CROSSWORD WORD at the cross of DANAE and URACIL. Never CENA word like that. Theme revealed itself early in my solve, twas fun. Happy Easter, 420 day, last day of Passover, National Look-Alike Day, Chinese Language Day, National Mail Order Catalog Day, Serendipity Day, International Orangutan Day, National Cheddar Fries Day, Pizza Delivery Driver Appreciation Day … yada yada.
@Linda Jo Today I learned URACIL. (Tomorrow I will forget it.)
@Linda Jo National Look-Alike Day, huh? At various points in my life, I’ve been told that I look like the actor Dick York (the original Darrin on the 1960s sitcom “Bewitched”) and the country singer Randy Travis. Neither resemblance was all that apparent to me.
@Linda Jo Naticked there, but solved it for the win. Mostly easy with some real puzzlers thrown in
I needed some 30 lookups for the trivia, and I found the theme extremely annoying - recently most Sunday themes have been dad-joke-level, cringey puns or wordplay, and this was no exception. I tried to enjoy the solve, anyway, but in the end I just revealed the 10% or so that was left. Meh. I've never seen the words DRUPE and URACIL. They look very weird to me but maybe simply because they're unfamiliar. I checked whether I know the Polish counterparts. Nope. DRUPE is "pestkowiec" (literally "one with a pith"; the term is apparently only used by botanists and never comes up outside botanical science: I can't recall learning the word in 8 years of Biology classes), and URACIL is "uracyl": the word is as alien to me in my native tongue as it is in English.
@Andrzej DRUPE was new to me, too. Also aggravatingly close to "grape" which filled me with hope of learning something completely new about that part of the world. URACIL wasn't as hard for me, as in one of those foggy decades long ago I was a chemist, and for a time found biochemistry the most fascinating of all. However, the third letter in URACIL was pretty much up for grabs amongst the vowels in my mind.
@Andrzej you’ve had a hard week, I’m sorry. Maybe the coming week will be better.
@Andrzej I learned all the types of fruit in a horticulture class. Botanists do know these terms too.
Today is Day 1,622 of my NYT crossword puzzle streak, and this puzzle is my all-time favorite. Bravo!!
@RS Congrats on your streak! This was my first Sunday puzzle with no lookups and my best Sunday time so far! I enjoyed this one as well!
Oh, come on! How can *anyone* resist crossword puzzling when gems like this baby are out there? How? SPAMS SPAMALOT A LOT? WHOO WHOOPIE PIE? That’s just word-joy.
I remember when I was very young my parents gave me for Christmas a pair of corduroys. I spent a Child’s Christmas in WALES.
Andrew, I'm glad you liked the present. If not, you might have spent a Child's Christmas in wails.
@Andrew Great to see you chime in again, Old Friend!
@Bill Will try to do so more frequently. Thanks for the reply!
[Potent potable for cunning actor Sylvester?] SLYSLYSTALLONETALLONE
@Lewis Amazing! Don't know how you wordplay mavens do it.
@Lewis I think you're missing an S.
@Lewis That is kind of breathtaking! Are you like David Copperfield (the magician not the Dickens character) or something?
Little flap PETDOOR gave me a non-themed chuckle
@Eddie It'll be interesting to see how the "Recommend"s for your posts go. Will they tail off, or will they keep growing as the streak goes longer and longer?
@Francis As a former Kentuckian who just got back from a visit, I feel committed to finding out every day whether Eddie done did the puzz or if the puzz was too hard.
Lots of fun to solve! My favorite was probably SPAM SPAMALOT A LOT.
Neat idea. I definitely wondered if I was seeing double. Here's my contribution: "Swindler mischaracterizing his misdeeds in court?" CONCONTORTSTORTS Interesting solving week by the way. My solves, from fastest to slowest: Mon Thu Sat Tue Fri Wed Other than Monday, the solves were within four minutes of each other time-wise.
It's good to see you, Henry Su!
@Barry Ancona Thanks, Barry. I will try to be more frequent in my appearance. But the return-to-office initiative has left me more tired in the evenings.
@Henry Su Nice to see your name again. Hopefully more often!
NABOB for Honcho is extremely tenuous clueing, especially for a word that's not part of most people's vocabulary, including mine. I had to look it up, and the only similarities between the two is that they can both refer to a business leader, but that's not the primary definition of either term. Even within that definition, NABOB requires extreme wealth or status, while Honcho is simply someone who has people reporting to him in a managerial capacity. Add to that the crossing of BILOBA and it ruins a perfectly good puzzle otherwise. Also, in close proximity STILT, which is not familiar to me, but I assume familiar to plenty, but there's no shortage of _A_S words that can hang (jaws, maws, caws, paws, yeah, I had swift instead of STILT)
@Steven M. There are over 27,000 Ginko BILOBA trees in NYC. You can find the ones closest to you if you use the map in the attached link. <a href="https://tree-map.nycgovparks.org/tree-map/species/38243" target="_blank">https://tree-map.nycgovparks.org/tree-map/species/38243</a>
@Steven M. - Ginkgo biloba is the only species in its genus in its family in its order in its class in its division It is all alone among our trees, yet it thrives in the yuckiest places (like, say, Manhattan). The leaves are beautiful. The loneliness is beautiful. Ginkgo should never be brushed aside. Ancientry deserves respect.
@Steven M. I'm sure I am not the only codger here who knew NABOB principally from Spiro Agnew, Nixon's erstwhile VP, who called leftists "nattering nabobs of negativity". Actually, that would be so much nicer than what we're called now. If it wouldn't make my physically ill to read anything further about Agnew, I would go look at his obituaries and see how many of them have that quote in the first paragraph.
@Francis That was actually 'nattering nabobs of negativism' -- take it from a card-carrying 'impudent snob.'
@Francis. I know it’s rare to see any nitpicking in the comments but to be precise, the quote was “nattering nabobs of negativism”.
@Michael Muscato I was about to point out the same error when I came across your post. Still, fun to see that more than 50 years later, everything old is AGNEW again.
The theme idea is fun, but the topmost themers came to me so quickly in the sea of Monday-level fill clues that I thought I would finish before I started. Luckily(?), finding more obscure themers and Tuesday-level fill clues as I went south made this fine (double) vision of Sunday wordplay something approaching a puzzle. YMMV, of course, and frankly, I hope it did.
@Barry Ancona I too zipped through the top part and found the bottom part a bit more challenging.
@Barry Ancona I concur that it started real easy, but got a fair bit tougher as one progressed. Finished it 20% faster than my normal Sunday. Started this response primarily out of curiosity as to what the M in Your Mxxx May Vary meant but got it before I finished opening sentence (DOH) - I’m slower than most normal human beings, but get to the end eventually! Thanks for all your great insights every week.
Victor and Tracy, You HAD me at SPAMSPAMALOTALOT. (You almost lost me at the cross of ARC WELDS and WALE.) Still, great fun. I had a WALE of a time!
[Check the fine print?] REREADAD A fun one.
I discovered the theme very quickly (I thought) as the NW-quadrant was solving rather easily. When I got POST POST, I thought to myself, "Oh, I see. Very clever." And I thought it would conclude POST POSTAl time, or something similar. When I saw the duplication with AGE, at first I thought it didn't make sense. And then the penny dropped, and I thought "Brilliant!" None of the other themed answers topped this one for me (although I did enjoy hearing about MAD MADISON), but the verdict is still "Brilliant!"
@The X-Phile Similarly I got POST POST and figured it was POST POST OFFICE... which fit until the acrosses ruined it and I realized I was not *quite* as clever as I thought I was, and that the puzzle was the cleverer one.
Do lasers treat scars? Maybe they do; now I’m not certain. It sure took me some rebuilding around that section to find out that they treat ACNE. I had to remind myself again: Never plonk in a word you’re not 100% sure of, self, unless you have two—TWO—crosses in place. Otherwise it always ends badly. I appreciated SNORES sitting smack dab in the middle of the puzzle as I solved it with my person gingerly arranged around a snoring feline NABOB passed out smack dab in the middle of the bed. Señor Gato has found that a 10-lb body stretches so much better across roughly half a king-size bed in the absence of one of his people. Like the ASWAN dam across the Nile, come to think of it. My husband may have a hard time with cat REtrACTION ACTION when he gets home next week. Happy Easter to ye Eastering folks, and a relaxing Sunday to everyone else.
@Sam Lyons Lasers do treat scars! <a href="https://www.medstarhealth.org/blog/how-does-laser-therapy-work-for-scars" target="_blank">https://www.medstarhealth.org/blog/how-does-laser-therapy-work-for-scars</a>
Great puzzle! The theme was very clever and cleanly executed. Eight themers! Whoopie! Nicely done. As many others have said, the top seemed maybe a little too easy, especially after parsing the theme entries, but the bottom was tough! Several things I didn't know, like the RNA base. Fun crosswordese, like NABOB. I think both Spiro Agnew and William Safire have achieved immortality for using that word so effectively. The clue for 56D lured me into thinking "well certainly this one will have Oreo in it!" Hah! I very much wanted a word like oof for Pound sound, thinking of the sound you get when you pound something. ARF was much better.
@Nora Trying to get OREO into 56D probably took a third of my solving time. What other “sandwich cookie” could it be?
Just my little peeves: URACIL/DANAE and PAEAN/ASWAN are a little obnoxious as crosses. You either know them or you don't which is OK for a Saturday but a little nasty for a Sunday. One would be OK because you could play the vowel game but two...
Eric, The entries in the two pairs come from completely different areas of learning, so I think the editors were correct assuming most solvers would know at least one answer in each pair. Most solvers.
@Barry Ancona Strange reasoning...there are thousands of "areas of learning" it doesn't make it any more or less likely you'd know 4 random crossing answers just because they weren't all like chemical compounds.
@Barry Ancona Off topic but you were right that today’s Washington Post puzzle was good!
Top-tier wordplay. Difficult solve requiring lookups but still a lot of fun. Extra points for the theme playing out both horizontally and vertically.
Wonderful! Reminds me of the hilarious 30 Rock joke when Angie says “My album ‘my album is dropping’ is dropping”
I enjoyed this but wish [Overlook a frosty patch?] NOT NOTICE ICE [Funny scam at a nerdy San Diego event?] COMIC COMIC-CON CON made the cut. Thanks, Tracy and Victor!
i thought the theme was very contrived trying to be amusing. The cross of uracil // danae was impossible .
@Robco “…was impossible” to you.
@Robco Well aren't crossword puzzles, by definition, contrived things? I mean, somebody has to make them, no? And also, I got uracil right way and Danae with a bit of thought so, again by definition, possible. It's fine if you don't like the puzzle; just go easy on the absolutes.
@Robco Both RNA and DNA have four bases; URACIL is the only one found in RNA and not DNA. DNA consists of adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G), and thymine (T), while RNA consists of adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C), and uracil (U). At least in New York State, this is taught in high school biology. The fact that the clue focused on RNA made the answer obvious to non-science major me. As for DANAE, I recognized it as a name from mythology, but did not know the details.
I tore through the top section feeling a little disappointed about how fast it was going. About halfway through I had to engage the part of my brain that was tied behind my back. The themers were less obvious, and the rest of the fill offered a little more resistance, making this a fun Sunday. Bonus points because I had the opportunity to use the theme to assist my solve. I always appreciate that. Extra, extra bonus points for The Cure: Friday I'M IN LOVE <a href="https://youtu.be/mGgMZpGYiy8?si=hCrFTgurFltgNHbM" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/mGgMZpGYiy8?si=hCrFTgurFltgNHbM</a>
@Nancy J. Ha! I put the Cure video in my Fiend review! Not only does the grid have I’M IN LOVE, the band itself shows up in 104A PRO PROCURES CURE. (I was interested to see just now that PRO PROCURES CURE was also in the June 20, 2021, puzzle by Michael Lieberman that appears to have the same theme.)
Fun puzzle, but not overly difficult. If i know this group, there will be alot of appreciation for the SPAMALOT answer. Me, Iike Aaron Burr, I want to be in the room where it happened with MAD MADISON, Jefferson and Hamilton. <a href="https://youtu.be/zwfNRzCXsug?si=vIv3N2-jbPAnaE-V" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/zwfNRzCXsug?si=vIv3N2-jbPAnaE-V</a>
Thanks Tracy and Victor! This was a very enjoyable solve. I am surprised by all the negative comments as I thought the concept was refreshing and fun, and not too difficult. A lot of the complaints mention drupe, Danae and other words that have long been part of crosswordese. Commit them to memory because certainly you will see them again.
Enjoyable puzzle! (Although the crossing of “Mother of Perseus” and “RNA base” was a little harsh).
@Joe P Brutal was the word that came to my mind for that crossing. To make matters worse for me, I didn't know the actor-wrestler John either. I had to play alphabet bingo on two squares of those three crossing answers to get the happy music, but that did get me there. Loved the puzzle overall.
This was an absolute delight. A masterpiece and a delight. Thank you!
Haven’t enjoyed a Sunday puzzle this much in a while. I was smiling the whole time while rushing to the next clue. Not because I was timing myself, but because I couldn’t wait to see what it was. Great fun - thanks constructors!!
LOVED today's theme. As a newer puzzler (just hit my first 30 day streak!), Sundays are always difficult for me. The fun theme made it so much more enjoyable! Thank you, Victor and Tracy!
This was a good one. Mostly easy. Had Psalm for Paean for far too long. Lots of fun! Thanks!
Could not get into this puzzle.Had to look up too many of the trivia questions.
@Laura Just don't look them up. Rely on crosses and things like plurals, part of speech (adverb? Particiiple? Past tense?) and wild guesses. It's more fun... also, be willing to jump around, start at the bottom, etc. (Speaking as a pen and paper solver....)
At the intersection of 3D and 65A I had and L for lAPS. This made 3D POSTPOSTAlEAGE, which seemed kinda right, although I was confused by an E I didn't think I really needed. I had several errors when I finished, and found two or three before I stumbled on this one, thinking about what would fit better than lAPS. I had just given up while I was literally on my way to the next check, when GAPS popped into my mind. And it was even more satisfying that GAPS made POSTPOSTAGEAGE, getting rid of the nasty E. And that was when I finally got the relief music. "Relief" because it's really hard to go over and over a chunk of real estate that is the Sunday puzzle.
@Francis "it's really hard to go over and over a chunk of real estate that is the Sunday puzzle." Right? I'm finding NYT puzzles less and less enjoyable (is it my personal burnout? Mr Shortz's editing since his return? Who knows), and Sundays especially so. The huge grids make spotting any errors such a chore I never bother any more. These days I very rarely get a gold star on Sunday because checking the puzzle or using reveals is a painless alternative to poring over the intimidating sea of letters.
@Francis I don’t share your pain but I can appreciate how annoying it must be to have something enjoyable turn sneakily into such a pain sometimes. I do the puzzle on my iPad Air, meaning it’s pretty easy to see the whole thing at once, even on Sundays. I’m sure it would drive me nuts trying to do it on my phone after Wednesday. On the rare occasion (no more than ten times a year) when I have a mistaken entry or two, it’s sort of fun and good temperament management to hunt it down. I don’t compete or compare with others for time scores, and i even adopted a friend’s “no down clues” challenge on mondays and tuesdays to savor the puzzle for longer. I only truly succeed at the no-downs every once in a while, there’s almost always a section that does me in. I wonder if the “pencil” feature would be helpful to you? Does the puzzle still have that? You can highlight (or maybe lowlight) “weird” crossings so you can drill down on those without truly erasing things. But I’m not sure if those pencilled entries need to be “in pen” to actually finish the puzzle.
@Francis Oh thank you! This was the exact error I had in my grid that was threatening my gold star. My secret to making the hunt a little less stressful is to take a screenshot of my grid, so I can easily review it without worrying about the clock. It would probably be easier to just not worry about the clock, but...
WOWWOWSHOWHOW it's done when a crossword genius runs with a theme! this is my favorite puzzle of all time as of today! So varied, so rich, so sneaky in the best clever way! I feel like I known this constructor's wide ranging eclectic interests intimately now that I finished after more than an hour and a half!
Awesome Easter egg at 47A! Well done! /decloak
@CaptainQuahog I thought 1A was a nod to the date as well
Good puzzle IMHO. I was utterly defeated by 104A because I was so sure of "chanty". Nope; turns out there are MANY variant spellings. So I "took a peek at the answer" and got THAT fixed. I had confidently deleted the dowloaded pdf (phone has been griping about storage lately). So then when STILL no happy music I was too embarrassed to download it again. Anyway my phone has decided that Minivan is the default app for pdfs. (For those of you not into political door-knocking, that's the app that gives you the list of addresses with voter names plus mapping help and lets you record responses.) Luckily I did realize 3D was wrong; had POSTAL not POSTAGE and had ignored that the ending made no sense (somehow LAPS did????) Slightly under my (unimpressive) Sunday average but definitely not too easy.
@RozzieGrandma THANK YOU! I had postal as well, and managed to make enough incorrect cross clues make sense that I couldn't figure out where the error was.
After a relatively easy Thu, Fri and Sat this week, this was the perfect level of difficulty for a Sunday. Some slightly obscure trivia but I was surprised how things just fell into place when I wasn't expecting them to.
It makes me happy to see that so many people loved this puzzle. For me, many of the clues were too far a stretch to be fun. Fan mail isn’t SPAM, no matter how much of it you get. WOOD SCREW does not indicate hanging wall art. I just don’t vibe with these meanings of AGOG and NABOB. Bleh. Anyway, onward.
@Noemi It's fan mail because it is going to a Monty Python production. The "en masse" is what makes it spam. I think it is a misinterpretation to think the clue was inferring all fan mail is spam.
@Noemi I think because of the theme you have to give a little bit a of leeway there. Certainly a woodscrew could be used to hang art. I never heard of a woodscrew crew, but if such a thing existed, who is to say Tiger would not employ them to hang some art? Sorry you missed out on the fun.
Doesn't the grid look like a huge bunny with a basket, or am I just stoned?
a a, If not stoned, perhaps double vision?
@ad absurdum If I squint,it looks like a bunny trail moving diagonally from SE to NE. PS, Your Heathie/Heather comment doesn't deserve to be buried.
@ad absurdum 420 Day, again?
Appreciated, but not enjoyed.
Spent hours on it. Just couldn't quit. But when I finally had it all filled in, I got the "at least one" notice. I looked and looked, but then took advantage of being a subscriber ("t[ook] a peek at the answer key) and found my error to be, after all, the T I had at the 69A/D crossing. I now have my first seven-day phony streak in years. I don't think I'll try that again. It's time to make lunch and I haven't got to Spelling Bee, Wordle, Waffle, email, and my Sunday morning paper yet!
One of the cleverer schemes I've encountered here, but once you get a few crossing squares filled in, the pattern of the theme actually helped fill the rest in until I got the wordplay being sought.
Got stuck at the intersection of CENA and DANAE -- but, hey, Natick begins with an N, right?
@LBG I always get confused over the actors CENA and CERA. I know they are completely different but still ... Couldn't make anything work with DAR_E since I didn't know URICAL so I changed to CENA and DANAE looked right
Love the shout out to Heathie! Good puzzle. I appreciate all the word play but as an ASIDE am hard-pressed to think of a hotheaded liberal demagogue, although I think we could certainly use one. You might say Corey Booker, Bernie Sanders or AOC but they aren’t illogical or lying. Demagogues are usually purely rhetorical and try to stir up emotions often with little regard for safety(Sarah Palin) or the facts(One very famous faux populist is coming to mind/Oh, it’s just on the tip of my tongue)! But it’s not like this is a very important time to get this right, is it? :/
@Convoid-04 PS: Wait I got this wrong 😑 I guess I am eager so I admit I’m AGOG to hear ANY DEM DEMAGOG…if you can show me one :)
@Convoid-04 Thank you!! ☺️ And to think, you can say you knew me when... 😉
Always happy to see my own identity, ARO, in a solve! I suspect the NYT agrees with me. We love nothing more than three of the most common letters in the alphabet :)
This is truly one of the best most clever and creative puzzles I've ever seen. It was also a great deal of fun. Thank you.