We should move past the incorrect stereotype that most Swifties are teenagers. Regardless of what the media would have you believe, you don’t get to achieve the number one most lucrative tour in human history with a fan base that has limited financial means 😉🫶🏼
@Anthony if their parents have financial means ... though I have to say, my observation is that the parents are often Swifties too, and not teenage(d).
@Anthony IMO “Like many a Swiftie” does not stereotype that most Swifties are teenagers. The people I personally know buying TS tickets are parents for their kids. (Also just one dad’s anecdote and not meant to generalize.) Multigenerational fans in my family including this 40-something :)
@Anthony It is a tribute to Swift's broad appeal that many of her fans weren't even born when she began her career. Many teens got into her because of their parents' fandom. I would imagine that their children will also be able to appreciate Taylor's talents.
@Anthony Teenagers are a lucrative market for high margin products because they have significant disposable income, either from after school jobs or the Bank Of Mom And Dad And Grandpa And Grandma. Clothes, makeup, and new gadgets as they are often early adopters of tech.
@Anthony Regardless of age, my guess is once they walk into that ARENA, after countless hours of waiting in line, they all become teenagers for the duration. That's the power of stardom, I suppose.
How cute to have GOODMORNING on the side with sunrise and NIGHTYNIGHT on the side with sunset. I dutifully filled in IRON, but didn’t see the connection to decrease until after I completed the whole puzzle, which led to a belated chuckle.
"You got up because the guy was fixing your gutters?" "I had a roof awakening." ("But he did that all by himself?" "Shingle-handedly!")
@Mike A true ladder day saint. Well, employ yourself. It slater than you think.
@Mike “Roof awakening”? Your jokes are going right over my head this morning
@Jack M. Today, the rejoinder might be, "Ohtani?"
@Mike I can't eaven imagine what I could add to this, but I'll see what I can shake loose. (I've got a full slate today.)
Some of us filling in the grid right now are saying GOOD MORNING, and some NIGHTY NIGHT. I had to smile at both of these side by side in the puzzle, like a nod to our internationality.
Meh. Trivia, unfamiliar terms and a musical theme made for an unpleasant experience for me. SMOKE_S crossing EMER_... Cool! *Of course* I can recite US CB radio slang in my sleep, and I know everything about mani/pedi terminology. SMOKErs and EMERr looks good enough, doesn't it? Especially when you have no idea what EMERY is. _AYONNE crossing with A_A was equally enjoyable. I had TEEN fan for Swiftie (seriously though, I know many of Taylor Swift's fans are in their teens, but there is something annoyingly stereotypical about clueing the world's most successful artist this way. Do you agree, Steve L?. The clue/answer were not literally wrong but I did not like them). All the letters for 'fan'/AGE crossed with American abbreviations. Brilliant. I loved it. No, really. Even the European clue annoyed me - first, G6 was (it's G5 now, since Britain's blunder) not an alliance, but an informal group of some EU states. An alliance can't be informal, c'mon! Second, it is only ever written down as G6, and never spelled out as G SIX. I actually needed a lookup for it, I was so confused! The theme was implemented quite well, I guess, even if it left me cold because of my dislike of musicals (and I needed a lot of crosses to get it). However, omitting "on the roof" by claiming familiarity of the shortened version seemed like an easy way out of there being no room for it in the grid...
Of course everybody else loved the puzzle and found it easy. Polish people, eh? 🤣
@Andrzej Didn't love this puzzle at all. Never heard of SMOKEYS. Misspelt EMERY as EMORY, which did not help with FIDDLER, which was missing 3 words from the title. Don't understand why 38A is not TEENAGER - how can "many a Swiftie" be TEENAGE? Never seen G6 spelled out. ASCH and BAYONNE were beyond me. Didn't know PEU ("petit" is as far as I go) in French. XEDOUT seemed slangy without indication. INES / INEZ caused some confusion, as did ANEG / ONEG. I know rock music (as much other music) can be performed in an arena, but did not know ARENA rock is an actual genre! POINT A seemed rather pointless. While every clue / entry can be justified, many felt forced / awkward to me and the entire puzzle did not come together in any satisfactory way. No joy today...
@Andrzej I agree on the Taylor Swift point. Not to mention that the people who were listening to Taylor during the bulk of her discography are now in their late 20s and 30s. It's an antiquated stereotype from 2010.
@Andrzej This was a lookup puzzle. Little as clue for peu is forced, better to say a bit. G6? (And so agree re the 2016 debacle and refusal to fix it) Editor was asleep
@Andrzej I fount the rest of the puzzle easy, apart from more or less the exact clues you stated. Those just stumped me and weren’t even that fun to figure out. I usually resign myself to some American abbreviations, but it’s really annoying when the crossings offer no help at all.
@Andrzej Despite the fact that I found this surprisingly easy, a rarity for me, I agree with your points; the crossing of 27D with 43A was brutal to those of us based outside the US of A. Yes, it’s G6, never SIX. Blunder is correct. Thank goodness the grown ups are back in charge. My DD would argue with being called a TEEN. She’s followed her idol since she was indeed a teenager, but is now 31 for goodness sake.
@Andrzej Taylor Swift’s first single came out in 2006, so her career is almost twenty years old by now (she’s 35). Her earliest fans, therefore, are certainly not TEENAGE, and her TEENAGE fans weren’t even born when her first hit came out. But the clue did say “many a Swiftie,” not “most Swifties,” so there’s that.
@rajeevfromca The clue was [Like many a Swiftie]. That first word is what makes the answer work.
@Helen Wright With lookups of the arcana, I finished the puzzle in Tuesday time, but without outside help I would not have been able to fill the grid - this is my least favorite kind of "challenge": an otherwise too easy puzzle with several hellish trivia spots. My wife and I both like Taylor Swift, and we're almost 45. We only "discovered" her recently, too, after years of misinformed unappreciation.
@Lauren J’en veux un PEU. I want a little. Clue works fine. You got hung up on “petit” and couldn’t see past it. That’s all. At least Rajeev just admits he didn’t know more than “petit”. Don’t blame the editor.
@Andrzej It wasn't easy for me either... alfas, deism, and xedout almost got me. I should have gotten smokeys faster than I did given that my dad had a CB back in the day, but I still found it to be at least as tough as most Wednesdays.
@Steve L I know the clue and answer are technically correct, but I'm really displeased with how they reenforce a stereotype. It's not wrong but I truly dislike it.
@Andrzej I kind of agree with you about the clue. I don't think that any misdirection was intended, so it was just technically correct (which, as we know, is the best kind of correct). I agree that her talents are underappreciated by the crowd that dismissed her as a teen idol at the start of her career; I liked her as a teen country artist in the 00s (naturally), and I still like a lot of her stuff. My wife, on the other hand, dislikes anything country, so she was dismissive in the early days of Taylor's career, and hasn't been willing to budge since then.
@Andrzej I sometimes wonder if there are Americans out there complaining that they don’t understand the clues in Polish crossword puzzles …
@Jin I'm not complaining - I'm truthfully describing my experience with today's puzzle. For a solver like, this was not enjoyable, at all. My posts are always about me and my solve. Also, I understood all the clues, I just did not know the answers to some of them. That's not the same thing, is it?
Hi, @Andrzej! Completely off-topic: Since our recent conversation about Stanislaw Lem, I've been reading some of his Ijon Tichy stories, which I assumed were "hard science fiction," but are anything but! In one of them, the Eleventh Voyage, Tichy infiltrates a planet inhabited by robots, ruled over by an autocratic computer. Fore reasons explained in the story, the computer is programmed in, and the robots communicate with, an archaic version of the language; which is rendered in the English translation as a fake Chaucerian Middle English (13-14c.): "ye hallebardyeres of Hys Myghty Inductivitee, Calculon the Fyrst." At times, it's damnably difficult to make out, even for a literate reader. I can only wonder what it reads like in Polish; and what a job the translator (Michael Kandel) had . Also, it's so obviously a satire of Stalinist Russia, it's amazing it made it past the censors. Thoughts?
@Bill Censorship in Poland was pretty light compared to some other places, like USSR. Also, censors tended to be quite reasonable (believe it or not, my maternal grandfather was responsible for censorship at Polish Radio :D). My father has been publishing books and articles since the late 60s, and before 1989 he had many conversations with censors. They often retracted their interventions when my father explained to them they changed the whole meaning of the text. Also, works critical of the regime, both realist (like Wajda's Man of Marble, Człowiek z Marmuru, for example) and satirist (like the works of Lem, or the brilliant 1980s movie Seksmisja) were often not withheld by the censors. The regime understood the people needed to vent, so it let them. I just looked at the Polish original of that 11th voyage. The language used in the passages you mention is 17-18th century Polish, which was characterized by frequent use of Latin words, syntax much different from the modern one, and different spelling. It reads exactly like Nowe Ateny (New Athens), Poland's first encyclopaedia, published ca. 1750. Making the English Chaucerian in the translation makes some sense, probably.
@Andrzej I'm so sorry you don't like musicals. FIDDLER is one of the best! Strength of family and faith, even under difficult circumstances. Zero Mostel singing "If I were I Rich Man" puts life in perspective.
I do not comment often, though I enjoy Wordplay and how much it improves my skills as a solver. I do construct, but only as vocabulary tests for my college biology students. :) To my mind, this was a perfect Wednesday. Chewy in places, but sprinkled with “gettables” in critical locations. The one that locked my solve was XEDOUT in the SE, because no way am I getting GSIX. Also loved the post Memorial Day hat tip ARMYVET, and the OCANADA reference with the Kings visit to that lovely country today.
For 21A, "beyond my ken" is a phrase I've heard. (I want to make a Barbie joke.... "for reasons beyond my Ken" ...)
@Isabeau That phrase is in a song from another musical, "The Sound of Music", "Sixteen Going on Seventeen": <a href="https://rodgersandhammerstein.com/song/the-sound-of-music/sixteen-going-on-seventeen" target="_blank">https://rodgersandhammerstein.com/song/the-sound-of-music/sixteen-going-on-seventeen</a>/
@Isabeau Old song: "Do ye ken John Peel" Ken is used a lot in Scottish dialect in the Edinburgh area. Like the German "kennen" to know.
@Isabeau It's been around a long time. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4yNcJS4ahg" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4yNcJS4ahg</a>
Well, this is the first non-Thursday/Sunday in over 3 months where I failed to get my gold star. Went over it twice, and everything looked like it made sense. The mistake? DEISt/StOKEYS instead of DEISM/SMOKEYS. Hadn't the term before, and Stokeys sounded perfectly plausible with deist being a correct answer to the clue
@Steven M. I had the same problem. I finally looked up all the words that looked suspicious and when STOKEY came up empty I took another look and then it was obvious. So I did get my gold star but had to flyspeck awhile. But otherwise pretty easy puzzle for a Wednesday
@Steven M. DEISM is the faith; deist is one who follows it. That having been said, I didn't look too closely at the clue and put deist in at first, but when I got to SMOKEYS, I realized deist was wrong. I'm guessing you don't remember/weren't around for the 70s, when the CB craze was at full tilt. SMOKEYS was a gimme for me.
@Steven M. State troopers in many states wore hats that looked like park ranger uniform hats, and specifically the ranger hat worn in the Prevent Forest Fires posters starring SMOKEY Bear (NOT Smokey the Bear). Smokey was an orphaned cub that survived a nasty forest fire in Capitan, New Mexico. His survival and treatment made him famous. He was given to the National Park Service to be used as a mascot for the prevention of forest fires program. He spent the majority of his life at the National Zoo in Washington DC, but when he died in 1976 he was returned and buried in a park dedicated to him. Another orphaned bear from a fire, Smokey II, took over in 1975 through 1990. The Smokey Bear Fire Prevention Program advertising campaign is the oldest continuing ad program and is over 80 years old.
@Steven M. If I were your teacher, you'd tell me I was wrong. If I pointed it out in the book, you'd tell me the book was wrong. This is not an opinion. This is a clue and its answer being crafted with precision. The ability to recognize what answer is expected can keep you out of pickles like the one you had. DEISM is the faith. A DEIST is the adherent. Christianity, Christian. Protestantism, Protestant. Catholicism, Catholic. Judaism, Jew. Islam, Muslim. If you're unwilling to accept this, you'll keep making the same mistake. TCS has nothing to do with it. That's when you work in an area where specific language has specific meanings, and the real world has different meanings. Which is why everyone, including mathematicians, stand on a line, and not a line segment.
@Steven M. To me it is 100% obvious the answer to the clue may only be DEISM. Much as my faith (or lack of it) is atheism rather than atheist. Franklin was a deist, his faith was deism. How can it work any other way?
@Steven M. What Bill said.
@Steven M. You might say Deist / Christian faith, but the religion would be Deism / Christianity, i believe.
@Steven M. Smokey is familiar for many Gen Xers and Boomers for the movie Smokey and the Bandit and the song Convoy, which also has a movie. I knew Deism, because it specified religion. A deist follows the deism religion.
I started at the bottom of the grid, so when I got FIDDLER and had the first S in place, "SUNRISE, SUNSET" came easily. Beautiful song. <a href="https://youtu.be/nLLEBAQLZ3Q?si=dV1yIAOtIzVGef5J" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/nLLEBAQLZ3Q?si=dV1yIAOtIzVGef5J</a> There is no other musical I love as much as "Fiddler on the Roof" (though "South Pacific" comes close.) It makes me laugh and cry, and dance and sing along. I was lucky enough to have seen it at Radio City Music Hall, with Topol playing Tevye, when I was twelve years old. Later, when we got our VCR, my father got us the VHS tape if the movie, and I now have it on DVD (yes, I kept my player.) One of my brothers, a cinephile back in the day, wore down that VHS tape. One day he called me into the den and played the intro credits for me. Then, very seriously, he asked, "Have you noticed that you can't tell if the fiddler on the roof is facing us or has his back to us?" Exasperated, I cut him off and pointedly said, "Really? That's your takeaway?" But all these decades later, it still haunts me that I can't tell which way the fiddler is facing! <a href="https://youtu.be/tn4R9XCPoG0?si=vsC6p8hXCvCQy-bg" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/tn4R9XCPoG0?si=vsC6p8hXCvCQy-bg</a> Thank you for this puzzle, Mr. Collins. It was as engaging and tranquil as watching a SUNRISE or SUNSET.
@sotto voce: the fiddler is facing you! His bow arm (his right) is to your left. Unless…he is a left-handed fiddler. I guess you will still be haunted by that possibility.
This has helped crystallize something for me - despite her first album coming out in 2006, Taylor Swift will remain a "teenage" sensation in (the slightly stuffy end of) the popular mind for a long time, just as people are only just starting to realize that Millennials are not the kids with the avocado toast, and are instead solidly middle-aged.
@Andrew F Or perhaps it's the themes and musicality of her songs. Yawn.
@Andrew F too true! Even as an aging millennial, with friends who are fans my age, I think of her base as teenage.
@Andrew F I can imagine people describing Elvis or the Beatles that way long after their audience grew up. Ditto Sinatra.
@Andrew F ... solidly middle-aged with the avocado toast.
@Andrew F I was doing a puzzle in the archive (2000) and was pleasantly surprised when "Singer Taylor" solved to DAYNE.
@Andrew F I feel like that clue is wrong, though. Taylor's fanbase is largely in their 20s and 30s too
@Andrew F If by people you mean boomers, yes! It struck me as quite out of touch, the archetypal Taylor Swift fan is certainly in her late twenties or thirties and has been for years.
Everyone has a favorite Zeno paradox. Mine is: ""An arrow in flight is motionless at any single instant in time. Since time is composed of instants, and the arrow is always at rest at each instant, it never moves." I love all the twins in this puzzle: Sunrise/ Sunset; Good morning / Nighty Night; Anemia / Iron; Astaire & Rogers; Omitted / Averted; Smokeys / Vape; Army vet / Naval; Aware / Awake... (Displaying my ignorance): Is "Fiddler" the same as "Fiddler on the Roof?" Is it like saying Les Miz? Our family was never into musicals and I never developed a taste for them. "If I was a rich man..." -- that the one? Once when the kids were young, I splurged on good tickets to Les Miz. We all hated it, the songs were unmemorable, the actors bored, and the woman in the row in front of us used enough Chanel No. 5 to fell an army. We stumbled into the daylight, blinking in Midtown's brilliance, where the sun never rises and certainly never sets. Let's hear it for rice-a-roni, food choice of the week in Cruciverbia. Zeno's Paradox: How can something so horrible be so delicious?
@john ezra FIDDLER is indeed Fiddler on the Roof. And the song is the grammatically correct "If I Were a Rich Man".
@john ezra But is it really horrible? My roommate and I used to have Rice-a-roni with turkey schnitzel every Thursday night while watching "Beverly Hills 90210." Good times in the 90s!
@john ezra About that paradox, John, it doesn't fly. 🏹 ⤵
@john ezra Unlike you I enjoy musicals, but I’m glad to find someone else unimpressed by Les Miz, because I have always struggled to understand its popularity, and, like you, I find the songs singularly unmemorable.
@john ezra, I believe it was Zeno who once said, “Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.”
As a solver from across the pond, it gave me great joy to see Sam describe 'Ken' as crosswordsese. It was one of the first clues I was sure about! So much so, I even started to doubt myself, thinking it was too Scottish to be right!
@Tain I maintain my adage for the puzzles: One person’s crosswordese is another person’s gimme. I’m delighted to know this word is common elsewhere!
@Tain I grew up in New England, third generation American of mostly Scottish heritage, and the phrase, “beyond my ken” was not uncommon in my extended family as an easy way to say “I don’t know — it’s beyond me.” As I discovered wonderful old BBC comedy radio on newsgroups and YouTube, I found the delightful “Beyond Our Ken” comedy show starring Kenneth Williams, which has cemented that usage of “ken” permanently in my brain.
@Tain We use "ken" all the time, many generations of greatly mixed heritage with parents from the south and midwest. Everyone seems to understand it.
@Tain KEN was a gimme for me for two good reasons. I'm doing the puzzle sitting next to my husband KEN. I know the word KENnen as "to know" from German, my 2nd language. Although it has the connotation of to know a person in German. Verstehen is to understand, and wissen is to know a thing.
My Libra BENT toward balance found sweet fulfillment in the complementary phrases SUNRISE / SUNSET and GOODMORNING / NIGHTYNIGHT, not to mention the lovely symmetry of the circles, and in the rising and falling of the sun. Any aberrant vibes nagging my inner sensibilities have instantly vanished, and I am one. NO LIE. Om, namaste, and l’chaim. Can it get better? Yes it can. I am also charmed by beauty in the box, with GURGLED and ACUMEN. More moments like this, please. A couplet from “Sunrise, Sunset” that I love: “One season following another Laden with happiness and tears”. File today’s puzzle under “happiness”. Thank you, Peter, for making this!
Heehee. I went looking for “Tradition!”, and there it was, sneaked into Mr Collins’ constructor note. Nighty-night, everyone.
Sometimes it’s a New York, New Yorker, New York Times reader’s puzzle, and I think that’s fair. Liked this puzzle a lot! Broadway, New Jersey, classic JAZZ. I’ve never had a single French lesson but even I know that the American’s answer to “parlez-vous Francais?” Is “En PEU.” Yes, those of us familiar with theater call it FIDDLER. I live close to Citifield (née Shea Stadium) and being genX I know all about ARENA rock. I’m no expert solver but I didn’t have to look up a single thing. What I didn’t know I got from crosses. Boo to the naysayers. I especially liked IRON for [Decrease] —got it right off the bat and had a nice morning chuckle there. I have jury duty today on a criminal case and not looking forward to that, but a little Wednesday puzzle is a good soother of nerves.
@Noemi Actually, it's "Un PEU," and Citi Field sits in what was Shea's parking lot. Shea was adjacent and both were standing while Citi Field was under construction. Where Shea was located is now Citi's parking lot, and the old home plate (and I think the bases) are marked. Sorry for being in a pedantic mood...
@Noemi Kind thoughts your way re jury duty. For years I had wanted to be on a jury (kept getting excluded or case got settled), but finally became an alternate on a rape?/sexual harassment case. Gut-wrenching because family members on both sides were there in court in huge numbers every day, glaring at each other and at us jurors. I was only the alternate but would have been very unsure how to decide.
"You heard the rumors from INEZ You can't believe a word she says, most times But this time, it was true" - somebody who's merely popular with teenage girls The more I think about it, the more the clue for TEENAGE bothers me. It belittles both the artist and the "hysterical" teenage girls, and of course women. (No, the clue did not say only teenagers, nor did it say girls, but let's be real) Like many a fan of musicals - gay. Like many rap fans - urban(!).(Yeah, let's not get started on the rap comments we get here) Someone smarter than I(i.e. anybody reading this) can certainly say what I'm trying to say more smarterly. Sorry, maybe I'm just pessimistic, grouchy and sleep-deprived because I've spent the past few months sitting by the deathbed of my country. I actually did like this puzzle, but then I like musicals.
@aa Good call!: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TAPqXkZW_I" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TAPqXkZW_I</a> If you need a little shut-eye, I'll take a bedside shift for you, Dear Friend!
@ad absurdum Who Run the World? Girls. --Beyonce
@ad absurdum Amen. (And I couldn't say it any smartlier than you did.)
ZZ TOP is certainly getting their share of attention lately.
@Nancy J. I'm always glad to see them mentioned. I saw them fairly early in their career, and it was one of the high points of my life. One of the tightest bands I've ever seen, and they did it all with just two guitars and a drummer. I had actually seen all three of them the previous day, when I was stuck in traffic and the three of them edged by the front of my car on foot, peering at my through the windshield as they passed, smiling and waving. I had no idea who they were.
I've always liked the fact that the drummer is the only one that doesn't wear a beard, except in his name: Frank Beard.
@sam -- Speaking of Bingo, I like the echoes of that game in the cross of G SIX and XED OUT.
@Lewis Ooh, astutely observed!!
@Lewis Except six wouldn't be in the G column with the standard bingo layout.
@Sam Corbin I hate to be that guy, but is there anything going on to fix the horrid comments codes regarding replies. I'm ostensibly replying to you, but I actually activated this field by "replying" to Lewis. I think you'll find a lot of regular posters are posting quite a bit less frequently. That may or may not be a good thing, but I'm almost certain it's because of the uncertainty of whether posts will show or not. And just as a reminder, these posts are NOT being emued. The posts have been accepted. They simply do not show up under in certain contexts.
It seems like a lot of people struggled with this, so I'm inserting an explanation. State Troopers are called "bears" in CB slang because many of them wear wide, flat-brimmed hats similar to the one worn by Smokey Bear, the fire-prevention mascot of the US Forestry Service; he consistently ended public service announcements with the phrase "Only you can prevent forest fires!" By extension, a State Trooper was sometimes called "Smokey." A little aside here... Forest fire prevention in postwar America was seen as best accomplished by making sure that fires never started. At the time, the fact that fire is a necessary element in maintaining a healthy forest wasn't understood; it burns away underbrush, and the ash contributes to the soil. There are also some tree seeds that need exposure to the heat of a fire as part of their life cycle. The efforts of the Forestry Service were successful in that they did prevent fires from starting for long periods. Unfortunately, this caused large buildups of underbrush. When a fire did eventually start, that buildup caused more intense fires, which caused large trees to burn that normally would have survived the fires. So Smokey, for all his good intentions, was making matters worse. The Forestry Service conducts periodic controlled burns now in order to maintain forests and keep underbrush from accumulating to dangerous levels.
@Bruce ...except in California, where responsible management is seen as disrespecting the forest spirits. I believe Canada has the same policy, which is why last summer's wildfires were so massive,
Second try. First try included a free link to a NYT article, so maybe that's the holdup. Coincidentally, ?? today is the first day of the 2025 Manhattanhenge season, which are the two days in May and July when the SUNSET lines up with the crosstown streets. However, the weather tonight is not promising.
Nice puzzle. Typical Wednesday workout for me and a lot of working the crosses. And.. must confess I was confused about the theme until I was almost finished and reviewed. Can't help but wonder if it would have been possible to put THEROOF underneath FIDDLER. I guess that wouldn't have worked out well but would have been a nice touch. And... drifting even further: Seems like it would have been another nice little touch if 34a could have been changed from BAYONNE to BAYONET / across from ARMYVET. And, of course I have a puzzle find today. I'll put that in a reply. ...
@Rich in Atlanta As threatened: A Tuesday from February 2, 2016 by Peter A. Collins. This was just one really amazing feat of construction. At the very middle of the top line: 6a. "Blue expanse" - SKY At the very middle of the bottom line: 70a. "Blue expanse: - SEA At the middle of the puzzle: "Line dividing 6- and 70-Across" HORIZON And then two other theme answer symmetrically place on the top half and bottom half of the puzzle; "Group found above the 37-Across" FLOCKOFBIRDS "Group found below the 37-Across" SCHOOLOFFISH To fit all of those in symmetrically is just amazing. Here's the Xword Info link: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=2/2/2016&g=37&d=A" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=2/2/2016&g=37&d=A</a> ...
Sholem Asch, author of “Children of Abraham,” makes an interesting near-theme relation. That collection of short stories related to the experiences of Jews in the diaspora from the perspective of a Polish Yiddish writer in the 1930s. Sholem Aleichem was the author of the collection of short stories about the experience of Russian/Ukrainian Jews in a shtetl (village) about 30 years earlier - the stories that were woven together to make the book for the musical “Fiddler on the Roof.” Though the stories told by Asch were not the basis of Fiddler, the similarity of their content to those of Aleichem, added to the two authors sharing a name (Sholem = Peace) and a background in time and place, make his appearance here seem like an extension of the theme.
@DC As I had never heard of "Children of Abraham," specifically, or S. Asch, but had heard of S. Aleichem, I wondered (briefly) if there was a rebus involved. It's worth mentioning that Sholem Aleichem was a pen-name, which is a greeting which literally means "Peace to you." The response is "Aleichem sholem."
I had the honor of being part of Yiddish Fiddler in NYC, so this puzzle made me especially happy this morning. Tog-ayn, tog-oys!
@Rocky I saw that production! Loved it!!!!
ZENO, ASCH, BAYONNE, ACUMEN, NARITA, DAK, and ROGERS & ASTAIRE made this puzzle unenjoyable for me personally.
cameron, IMO that does not bode well for your personal enjoyment of many NYT Crossword puzzles.
@cameron I got all of those immediately, except for BAYONNE and ASCH. I guess it helps that I grew up in South DAKota. I can understand getting upset about proper nouns, but why ACUMEN? It's a fairly common word.
@cameron Perhaps this is an age thing? The puzzle did feel to me like it slanted to the older crowd. Knowing things from your parents' and grandparents' eras is often helpful in doing the crosswords.
@Cameron I was ignorant of even more than you, but still enjoyed the crossword. I just accept that I will have to look up/reveal a few, and guess some from the crossers and that's OK - like EDY (not available in UK), NARITA, BAYONNE, DAK, ELI, XEDOUT, TVA (but I know now) NEMO (not watched film) ASCH. I learned about the rice-a-roni from other crosswords.
Charming puzzle. Easier than yesterday's.
It took me until I was in my 40s to see a stage production of Fiddler on the Roof, from the audience. I was in a stage production of it in high school and then almost 30 years to the day again but it got shut down due to COVID. One of my all time favorite shows to sing, act and watch. Fun puzzle
Somewhere along the line we seem to have lost the understandiing that songs are poetry set to music. When Taylor Swift's songs are read aloud, they still have the impact of their poetry. Poetry has power, and she is writing it.
“I get the sense that some people are going to like this puzzle, and others who favor tradition maybe not so much.“ If I were a rich man, I might understand this reference.
Fun puzzle and the "Sunrise, Sunset" circles even helped a little bit with the solve, which was fairly fast, though I wasn't rushing. No problem with SMOKEY, as I well remember "Smokey and the Bandit", and also remembered that the "Smokey" reference actually started because troopers wore hats like Smokey Bear "wore" in the "Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires" ad campaign, which started in the early 1950s. (For more on Smokey Bear, see my reply to Steven M earlier.) Thanks, Peter.
Despite some crunchy fill I found this strangely quick to solve. The junction of 27D and 34A was a beast, but I struck lucky with my first guess. As has been mentioned already in earlier posts, it’s G6, never SIX, but hey ho. Love seeing KEN and NARY. Sam, both are still in common usage here. I knew SMOKEYS from being forced to watch those terrible Convoy films in the 70’s with Burt Reynolds. My Dad loved them. ‘There’s bears in the air’ still makes me wince/chuckle. Finally O CANADA. Oh yes. You can keep HM if it’ll help.
@Helen Wright Burt Reynolds was "Smokey and the Bandit". "Convoy" was the Sam Peckinpah film starring Kris Kristofferson. Easily confused... :-)
@Helen Wright @Oikofuge Before there was a movie, there was a song: "Convoy" by C.W. McCall. It sparked the short-lived fad for CB-radios in the 70s, and the brief period when it was cool to be a long-distance trucker and everyone wanted to learn CB-slang. Ah, Ten-Four, Pig Pen what's you're Twenty? Omaha? Well, they oughta know what to do With them hogs out there, fer sure. Well, mercy sakes, good buddy, We gonna back on outa here. So keep the bugs off yer glass And the bears off yer...tail. We'll catch you on the flip flop. This here's the Rubber Duck on the side. We gone.
@The X-Phile Followed by a parody in the UK, Convoy GB!, by Laurie Lingo and the Dipsticks. It was a foggy day on the sixth of May In a Scammell haulin' bricks It was just crackin' dawn and I started to yawn Cos I couldn't find any nice chicks.
@Oikofuge Which is here, if you can bear it: <a href="https://cybertrucker.tripod.com/convoygb.mp3" target="_blank">https://cybertrucker.tripod.com/convoygb.mp3</a>
@Helen Wright I knew I had to get this one in. And they say rap was invented in the Bronx in the late 70s... <a href="https://tinyurl.com/bdz7pv84" target="_blank">https://tinyurl.com/bdz7pv84</a>
Steve, Rap and Talking Blues are different genres ... but you know that.
@Helen Wright The link seems to have died on me, as well. But here it is on YouTube: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWFgKJ_aY_U&ab_channel=StateRecordsMusic" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWFgKJ_aY_U&ab_channel=StateRecordsMusic</a>
I’m one of those who Peter sensed was going to love the puzzle, a fine example of a really fun and clever theme. Looking forward to more from Peter.
Puzzle was pretty breezy for a Wednesday, quite a bit under my average time. The theme reminded me of a story: In my second job after college, I had a boss whose wife fancied herself a singer. Even before I met her, I knew all about the career she’d walked away from to marry him, as an operatic soprano. It couldn’t have been much of a career, as they married when she was 17, but so be it. I met her at my first holiday party for my division at the company, at my boss’s boss’s house. More than once, people said, “Oh, you must sing for us.” She demurred a couple of times but at one point whispered to her husband, “Did you bring the music?” He had and went out to their car to retrieve it. After he brought it in, he sat at the piano in the living room, she stood beside him and, after a few introductory notes, began to sing the song that gives us our theme today…badly, full of exaggerated pronunciations (it was not sunrise, sunset, but sun-ah-rise, sun-ah-set, with the emphasis on the “ah”) and many missed notes. After two painful songs (mercifully, I forget the second one), I said to my wife, “Don’t we need to get back for the sitter?” Even now, nearly 50 years later, I cannot think of that song without hearing her voice.
@Joe Too bad she spoiled a nice song for you! We have fond memories of our daughter in Fiddler in high school as one of the dancers-balancing-bottles-on-their-heads, which they actually did without resorting to trick hats. (She's more of a dancer than a singer and unlike that boss's wife, aware of her limitations.) So the clue was a gimme for me.
Wow! Two fun puzzles in a row! Any puzzle that has ASTAIRE and ROGERS is my jam. Not forgetting, of course, FIDDLER, and the clever circled letters. Then there was INEZ and the ever-reliable Julius Caesar (he might have boasted, but he had a lot to boast about). The most fun Wednesday puzzle I can remember. Please, more from this constructor.
A couple of late puzzle finds, inspired by the multiple comments about TEENAGE. First a Sunday from September 17, 2000 by Nelson Hardy with the title "Wash your step." Clue and answer that led me there: "TV character, to some adolescent boys?" SABRINATHETEENAGEWISH And some others: "Jacques Cousteau's life, in a nutshell?" FISHANDSHIPS "What Broadway backers may have?" MUSICALSHARES "How OPEC communicates?" SHEIKTOSHEIK And there were more. Here's the Xword Info link: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=9/17/2000&g=66&d=A" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=9/17/2000&g=66&d=A</a> ...
in the less than important notes, "ken" was used in a song from The Sound of Music -- Sixteen Going on Seventeen. Fifty some years later I still remember that as I its use was a bit forced.
@pollyq That’s also how I know KEN. But isn’t that kenough?
This was one for confident errors, 36A "veteran" and 34A "hobOken" tripped me up for a while... Ashamed of the geography on the second one ;(
It never occurred to me that KEN was invoking the Scottish verb. Isn't the noun usage in the stock phrase "There are things beyond our ken" a better match for [Understanding]? That's certainly what popped into my head as soon as I saw a three-letter word was required.
@Oikofuge Oh. And since Sam mentioned the inexplicably popular "Outlander", I'll just note that you should take their Scots and Scottish Gaelic with a pinch of salt. In particular, they perpetuate the myth that the word "sassenach" (in Gaelic, "sasannach") is used to refer to Lowland Scots and other, ahem, outlanders. Gaelic sasannach has a very particular, and non-pejorative, application to the inhabitants of Sasainn---England. A Lowlander is referred to as Gall, plural Goill, a word that in the past was also used to designate all sorts of non-Gaels. As one example, the Outer Hebrides were long known as na h-Innse Gall, "the Islands of the Foreigners", because of their Norse heritage.
For those not up on their CB slang, you should know that SMOKEY is short for Smokey T. Bear, that icon of the U.S. Forest Service. "Bear" was the more generic term for police officers patrolling the highways. (So a rookie cop was a "Baby Bear" and a female cop was a "Mama Bear".) (It seems fair to assume that "Bear" was preferable for police officers to "pig", which was also slang at the time.) The popularization of all the CB-slang goes back to a song by C.W. McCall, "Convoy", which spawned a short-lived fad, when it was cool to be a long-distance trucker, and suburban dads would say, "Breaker, breaker!" and "Ten-four, good buddy." Not to mention the movies starring Bert Reynolds and Kris Kristofferson.
@The X-Phile Not sure the bear reference came from not wanting to be insulting. In many states, including mine, the highway patrol uniform uses that flat brim distinctive hat that cartoon Smokey always was sporting.
A seriously clever and well-constructed puzzle – well done Peter!
Not knowing what the TVA is points to the age of the article's author. Any Boomer studied this and the CCC in the 5th grade. Makes me feel better since I miss so many Millennial and Gen Z references!
@No Miso I'm a millennial, and I knew TVA. However I also knew that there were about a bajillion other three-letter organizations and agencies that popped up around the New Deal, so I'm never able to fill in answers like that until I get a couple crosses.
No Miso, My children learned about the TVA, etc., in elementary school too. The author went to school in Canada.
Brooks babble water fountains GURGLE: Just sayin. Nice one Peter, thank you
Really liked most of this puzzle! Flowed nice and smoothly throughout, but I ended up being hard locked out of the NW corner due to an unfortunate confluence of unknowable variants and unknown cultural references. Every time I’ve seen the rare blood type clue it’s been ONEG (which I believe is also the rarest), so I had that instead of ANEG. I’ve also rarely (ever?) encountered the spelling INEZ before, so I had INES there (that one might be because I’m Canadian - I assume Inez is more common in Spanish speaking areas). I happen not to know Count Basie or Charlie Parker, and I couldn’t guess the genre from my incorrect _O__. I know the name ZZTOP but none of their songs, and I couldn’t guess the band from an incorrect _STOP. I’m not familiar with ZENO, nor am I strong on sailing terms - though I’m tickled to learn where the expression “I like the cut of your jib” comes from! While it felt like a preventable impasse (even “rarer blood type” would have given me a chance), and discovering that there was no path through which I could have solved it on my own was frustrating, I also recognise that it resulted from an incredibly specific set of misdirections and lack of knowledge that would have been tremendously difficult to envisage by anyone who didn’t happen to share them. It’s hard to know what you don’t know, but the inverse is also true. Happy Wednesday my dudes!
Gael, ONEG (as a blood type) is [almost] always clued by another characteristic, as it was earlier this month: Sat May 17, 2025 39A Type that's compatible with everyone, in brief Ryan Judge (My dog tags have O NEG)
@Gael ABneg is (was) the rarest, but there have been a few new types discovered that only a handful of people in the world have.
A second Monday puzzle for the week! A pleasant confection, but SRSLY!
@Barry Ancona A second Monday for you, Barry. For me it was impossibly difficult in places, and overall unpleasant. Seriously 😢
Of course everybody else loved the puzzle and found it easy. Polish people, eh? 🤣 Andrzej, Nah! But domestic, literate solvers who don't dislike musicals had a much better time! (You are literate.)
@Barry Ancona I just thought your post needed a counterweight 😉
In the northern hemisphere the sun is to our south, so as we face south the sun rises on our left and passes to the noon and sets on our right - just as the puzzle shows. But in the southern hemisphere, east is on the right as we face the sun, and sunset in the west is on our left. I wonder if this made any impact for our antipodean solvers? I often have similar questions when winter, summer, spring, fall are clued always from a northern-hemisphere point of view.
@David Connell Which, we presume, is why the hands of analogue clocks rotate clockwise---because they were invented in the northern hemisphere, where the sun moves clockwise, and the gnomon shadow on a sundial therefore also moves clockwise, so the dial of a sundial is numbered in a clockwise progression.
Really enjoyed this one. Love the musical, love the song, and I do love subtle themes that are visually, just…lovely. And it was one Q away from being a pangram! Have a lovely day all!
I enjoyed this one. Better than my average Wed. Thanks!
I’d really held on to ZErO for so long bc I know little about philosophy but I know an outsized amount about Fiddler since I played Golde in my high school’s spring production my senior year. I wanted the constructor to be getting clever with another hidden, secret nod to the show
@Lauren Ford I had to look this up. O+ 37% A+ 32% B+ 9% O- 7% A- 6% AB+ 4% B- 2% AB- 1% A-neg is not the rarest blood type but it can considered one of the rarer types.
So much "glue" to make this grid work. Down clues for 27, 28, 31-33 were all abbreviations. Have to question whether it was worth it!
One of those days I want to hug the constructor. A theme that invokes fond memories, a welcome ear worm, massively occupying the entire grid and arranged perfectly both geometrically and meaningfully. Wow! And no rap trivia as a bonus. A big hug. No, FYI, leaving it up to me to understand the titular clue out of respect for the allegorical show title would NOT have increased my enjoyment 🤯