Loved the Faux Gardener clue. That was very clever.
@Red Carpet I can't claim credit for that one, which makes it a good opportunity to thank Christina Iverson and the editing team for their wonderful work getting this puzzle to publication.
I had SWITCHEsGEARS which tripped me up and I had to come to the column to peek (luckily Caitlin had that one first). Did I lose my streak? No! I keep my gold star for Silly Typos and Naticks I Didn't Notice. Those are my Personal Streak Rules and we all have our own rules which is Totally Allowed because "It's Your Puzzle"! And your streak! (In case anyone was wondering what the "rules" are. We all get to make them up) 🌟
@Lpr 100% agree we all make our own rules!
@Lpr Amen! I give myself credit and get the yellow star even if I have to do lookups and/or peek at the answer key. That means I learned something new, and that's always good for a yellow star. Today I loved the theme and had just two lookups -- Cambodian currency -- the down answer meant nothing even after running the alphabet. It took me several readings to parse into I REPEAT. I kept wanting it to be 'something' AT. And the spelling on ALOHAOE threw me. Tried I and Y on the end, but then gave up and asked my friend Google. Even with all that was a few minutes under my average.
"Do you have the gift of GAB?" "Meh. It's kind of a mixed bag." (I got that one from my friend Anna Graham.)
@Mike i came here looking for “punky idealism” and somehow I ended up with “Mikes daily pun”
Re: 82 down, the notion of an ALPHAMALE being the leader of a pack is inaccurate. (Which I'm sure toxic right-wing influencers would be disappointed to learn, if they bothered to read.) Wolf packs are highly social and decisions and responsibilities are shared at least by the top breeding pair. The Alpha FEMALE is often the one who makes decisions about when the pack should move and where they should go. Bloody battles for supremacy are very rare among wolves in the wild. There's a Yellowstone park ranger named Rick McIntyre who has written some absolutely riveting books on the subject, for anyone interested. The Rise of Wolf 8: Witnessing the Triumph of Yellowstone's Underdog <a href="https://g.co/kgs/azudrJp" target="_blank">https://g.co/kgs/azudrJp</a>
@Michael B. To your point, isn’t it great that the clue was “He’s a head of the pack” and not *the* head of the pack!
@Michael B. Funny you should mention that. I originally avoided that entry because of its scientific inaccuracy and cultural misuse. After some changes to the grid, there weren't many options for that spot, so I reluctantly went ahead with it. I'm glad you pointed it out!
@Marc A. Leaf Ha in my self-righteousness I glossed right over that! I think the term itself is falling out of favor though, and "Wolf 8" was indeed riveting and beautiful.
Congratulations on your debut Mr Brody. NYT Sunday crossword puzzles with anagrams always remind me of a lazy Sunday morning over 40 years ago when I was a student in New York. I had just moved into a shared apartment, and a couple of my roommates were working on the Sunday puzzle, which had an anagram theme much like today’s. After I (politely, of course) suggested a couple of (incorrect, I should add) answers to clues they were discussing, they asked me to join in the solve. It was start of some great friendships and I’ve been doing the NYT crossword ever since.
@John That's a lovely story, and I'm glad my puzzle brought it to mind.
Ananagraphia (n.): The inability to see or appreciate anagrams. :-(
Random thoughts: • Sweet backstory, where after the thirteenth NYT rejection, Sam doesn’t tuck his tail and slink away; rather, he grits his teeth, forges on, and three acceptances follow. Uber inspiring. • Enjoyed the fauna (DUCK, PIGS, ANT, WOLF, WREN), not to mention the clues based on “Ducks in a row” and “When pigs fly”. • Thoroughly charmed, and that’s saying something, because I don’t see anagrams easily. But the theme answers were so solidly in-the-language and fun to guess at I was wowed rather than cowed. • Remarkable finds in GENETICALLY ENGINEERED and TEMPORARILY OUT OF ORDER. Furthermore, these are very worthy answer debuts not only in the Times, but in all the major crossword outlets. • Terrific never-before-used clues: [Center of mass?] for CHURCH, and [Faux gardener, so to speak] for SCARECROW. I, who adore language quirks, loved this theme. Bravo and thank you, Sam, and congratulations on your NYT debut!
@Lewis Nominating Desirable formation for ducks as a clue of the week. So sweet and funny. My OP lauding it never showed up last night.
@Lewis Thank you! It's a great feeling when others enjoy your work.
@retired, with cat -- They are both original clues.
I'm not a big fan of anagrams, but this puzzle won me over. Terrific theme cluing. Got the idea with 23A, thought 39A was sweet, and loved the other spanner (117A). The other three were fun too. Between grasping the themers quickly and racing through (what I found to be the) very easy fill clues, I was done almost too quickly, but not so quickly that I missed the callout to Andrezj at 31A. I'm glad Sam made it to The Times; I'd love to see a more challenging puzzle from him.
@Barry Ancona this about sums it up for me. Anagrams aren't always my cup of tea, but enjoyed these ones, and found the rest of the puzzle below average in difficulty. Would love to see something from Mr. Brody with a fun and clever theme, but a bit higher on the difficulty scale. Lots of potential there.
@Barry Ancona So I'm not the only one who thought of Andrezj right away! I think he said recently he's swearing off late-week puzzles, but I hope he sees it.
@Barry Ancona Me, too, immediately thought of Andrezj at 31 across. But I think he's forsworn Sunday puzzles for the nonce.
@Barry Ancona I'm glad you enjoyed it. My puzzles tend towards the easy, even when I try to be a little tricky. Both my upcoming puzzles are designated for Thursdays, though, so hopefully you'll get a bit of a challenge from them.
Sam, I'm looking forward to those Thursdays!
@Barry Ancona and @Linda Jo yes I thought of Andrzej for 31A too. I'm going to post tomorrow to suggest he do it from the archive because so many inquiring minds will want to know what HE thought of 31A. So is this one trivia-free enough that he won't hate the suggestion? Maybe I'd better check.
@Barry Ancona -- I also thought of Andrezj at 106A.
“Desirable formation for ducks” I confidently entered VEE. 😀 And it stayed there for a long time.
@NYC Traveler I toyed with vee, too. But the actual answer was so much better, wasn’t it?
@NYC Traveler Your vee was my Ivan at 10 down. ☺️ Though if I hadn't had CLONE and HEWED already, I'm sure I would have also put vee in.
@NYC Traveler So did I! ...until it didn't fit and I re-read which type of bird it was :)
@NYC Traveler Hah! I put that in, grumbling that ducks do not really fly in formation....!
When I see ROYAL PERMIT my inner anagram alarm goes off. (It sounds like this: “Arugula! Arugula!”) Fortunately, real phrases like “temporarily out of order” came to my aid, so I didn’t have to struggle with “portlier yam out of order” or “morality rep out of order”! You people that are good with anagrams would have no problem with a morality rep, I’m sure.
@Cat Lady Margaret A morality rep? I’ve no wish to parrot Emily (nor politer Mary) but as a literary Pom please allow me to orate primly…
OK, whose mind was in the gutter with the clue about cup sizes?
@Steve L You oughtta be AMASHED of yourself.
@Steve L Not me, I was vacillating between 32D and 72D, unable to reach a firm decision. But it did make my 81D.
@Steve L even if my mind had gone there, I wouldn't consider it the gutter! While I've never had to think about my cup size, I assume that for a large portion of the population it's just a normal thing.
@Steve L Busted! Was bent out of shape at the thought of some artsy underwire mail order shop, filling orders for all shapes and sizes - whaa no, not ANOTHER fadword to remember? BOOBIES? KUPKAKE? Ha! Was left with chocolate in the ole peanut butter.
@Steve L Why, whatevah do you mean, sir?
Things I never can remember: * whether it's Evel or Eval (I always want to put Evil but I know that's not right) * whether it's Odie or Opie * that it's 'oe and not 'oí for the song * the last letter of Mr Rubik's first name Hmmm. Though speaking of BOWING, I'm a bit late doing this puzzle because I was at a concert tonight -- SF Symphony with Hilary Hahn on violin (*not* fiddle lol). Most excellent.
Well, it was fun, but left me feeling a bit lopsided - still looking for that other legwarmer, dontchaknow.
@Whoa Nellie feeling twisted, sister?
Hey, kids! Are there any Elks out there? The June issue of The Elks Magazine includes a feature article on the history of crossword puzzles. I was surprised to see that the NTY was a relative latecomer to publishing crosswords, only agreeing to publish them once WWII began, mostly to provide a diversion for anxious people during "blackout hours" when they were supposed to hunker indoors with the drapes closed. Once the puzzles became a daily feature in the 1950s, the first NYT puzzle editor, Margaret Petherbridge Farrar, supposedly instituted the progression in difficulty during the week, from easiest on Monday to most difficult on Saturday. But I have seen many people who comment here say it was a policy instituted by Shortz. I have been working through the archives and I do not see any progression in difficulty in the older puzzles. Is this perhaps because the policy was suspended at some point and re-instituted by Shortz, or is the article wrong about this? Any clarification? Anyway, I thought I'd de-lurk to mention that the article is out there and also to ask this question that popped into my head when I read it. Carry on.
Hi CaptainQ, I've spent some time in the "Pre-Shortz archive" on xwordinfo.com, and I have not encountered a day-by-day difficulty progression with any of the editors. And in the "modern" era only after about 2000.
CaptainQ, David Steinberg (when he was a child!) and a number of the older commenters here "litzed" every pre-Shortz NYT Crossword to create the archive. You can see them completed or solve them online. It's well worth it. <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com</a>/
@CaptainQuahog I've been doing the puzzle since the 1960s, when I could get my hands on one and my homework was done, and fairly regularly since the 1990s. I can remember the progressive difficulty through the week as always being a feature of it.
@CaptainQuahog Early on, my girlfriend would pull out a Maleska puzzle so we could do it together. Then as our relationship progressed she would say, "Let's try getting together on Friday or maybe Saturday". It took me a while to realize the relationship got better because we ere doing harder puzzles together... Now my wife and I have spent decades working through the "Maleska and Shortz eras". There has always been a progression from easy to harder over the week, but maybe not always rigidly enforced. YMMV
Nice one, again. Anagrams---almost like home! And these were well found, unforced phrases. Applause. So it was a shame I didn't puzzle out the theme until I'd filled most of the themers. Picked it up with SWITCHED GEARS, and only had TWISTED SISTER left to fill, so not much help, but still a pleasant Aha! My command of "currencies of the world" has been paying off of late, though I had two attempts to get the correct spelling of RIEL, which still doesn't look right. Last to fall was the P at the cross of COMP and PREK. The latter unknown, the former never (I think) encountered as a verb, but guessable. ODIE, the dog, and SARA Lee, whoever she may be, known only from what feels like frequent exposure in previous puzzles. [Author's assistant] cluing TYPIST was like a little visit from the 1930s, but it made me smile.
@Oikofuge PREK is Pre-K for before Kindergarten. Sometimes the lack of spaces can be misleading (as when PERSE is meant to be PER SE, or an old TV show is not THEDA, but THE D.A.)
@L.A. Bruce D Thanks. I figured it out retrospectively, once I'd entered the P and got the gold star. Neither "kindergarten" nor the "K" abbreviation are used in the UK. But I've seen enough references to US grade spans like "K-5" to be able to see "pre-K" in PREK, given the context of the clue.
@Oikofuge Odie is from the comic strip "Garfield". Sara Lee is a company famous for its desserts - now defunct in most regions of the world. In the UK, they were most famous for their Double Chocolate Gateaux.
@Oikofuge Off topic, but I really loved the SCE to AUX shirt you mentioned yesterday. What an inspiring moment! It shows how paying attention to oddities can sometimes save you.
Thanks all, for the SARA Lee information. Maybe the fact that I eat dessert about once a year, and haven't bought a frozen dessert in my life, goes a way towards explaining my ignorance of SARA Lee. ( Whenever I see a clue here that includes the phrase "sweet treat", I know I'm in trouble---that's pretty much an oxymoron for me.) Our bread a deli stuff is generally locally sourced, so I guess I wouldn't know if they're on the supermarket shelves at those counters either.
ADENINE crossing ALOHA OE was pretty darn tough. I had ADaNINE and ALOHA Oa as my last fix before success.
@Shrike Me too. This answer resurfaced a regularly occurring unpopular opinion of mine. That is, if you’re an app/online solver and get the dreaded “Grrr Keep Trying” after a complete fill, then you should not get a gold star. There, I said it. Perhaps others have previously as well. This one would have gotten me today, as would have snarfed v. my entry of scarfed earlier this week. Maybe there is an additional layer of award that makes the distinction of 100% accuracy on the first try. Kind of like how Marriott keeps changing their status levels. Sigh. I know people love their gold stars and their precious (and braggadocious) streaks. I do too. And I acknowledge that large thumbs on small phone screens can lead to errors. However, if this were a competition—thinking the old pen and paper days—then these instances would constitute a losing entry. I don’t feel as passionately about this as I do about Chicago trains not being “Els” (they are “Ls”) but it is getting close. Anyway, I digress. Congrats to the constructor. Enjoyable puzzle and another gold star* for me.
@DJ Perhaps someone can revoke your undeserved stars? Maybe try contacting <a href="mailto:nytgames@nytimes.com">nytgames@nytimes.com</a>. As for other folks' stars, that's up to them. But I agree with you. If I finish with even one box incorrectly filled---end of streak. What I wish we had is a submit button. Too often I fill my last box without realizing it's the last one---and before I've had a chance to review my grid for possible mistakes. (If I remember at the start, I intentionally leave the NW-most box empty, to compensate for the missing submit button.)
@DJ If you want a platinum level, I can see that. But not changing the gold star rules midstream. When I started my streak several years ago, I accepted the rules as given by the site: asking for an answer invalidates the streak, but being informed that something is wrong somewhere in the puzzle and then finding it on your own does not. With this in mind, my personal rule is not to do a search on a clue, because that seems an end run around the rules, as implemented. Adopting competition rules implies adding competition stress. On Sunday morning I'm not looking for that, I'm looking for relaxation along with fun mental exercise. For the same reason, I don't solve these as fast as I can. I see my streak as a marker of dedication and completion, not of perfection. Maybe there is a way we can both have our wishes. But if the current rules got changed to be more stress/competition-oriented several years into my streak, I would not be a happy camper.
@DJ Actually, I could see a 3-tiered streak: blue, gold, and platinum. Blue doesn't care when you finish them. Might require a few more lines of code because a streak could get filled in retroactively. But hey, that would pull a lot of us back into the archives more often.
@DJ Not ELs? Really?? I've only been to Chicago once, but have seen these clues/answers in the puzzles many many times and assumed the EL was short for Elevated. Not so?
@Xword Junkie Don't you get the "Oops something's wrong, try again" button? That's what I get in iPad App. Then I go back and hunt for typos, or zeros instead of ohs, etc. When the puzzle is fixed I get the happy music and a gold star.
This was absolutely brilliant.
That was fun! I chortled when I got TWISTEDSISTER.
Very clever, quite tricky. I'm not crazy about puzzles with anagrams but this one won me over. The faux gardener clue was fun, "what you will" was funny and Etsy/Ebay had me going for a while. Good puzzle.
Loved it. Good long workout for me, of course, but finally tumbling to the trick was a HUGE turning point and that is always a great touch. And just one amazing piece of construction. Coming up with all of those anagrams (two grid-spanners!) had to be one long piece of work for the constructor. Just really something. Two thumbs way, way up. And... puzzle find of course. Very similar kind of trick. I'll put that in a reply. ...
@Rich in Atlanta As threatened: a Thursday from January 18, 2007 by Randolph Ross. That one actually had one clue and answer that was exactly the same as in today's puzzle. That one was: "EARTH" CHANGEOFHEART And the other theme clues and answers: "ANTE" NEATARRANGEMENT "ERIC" CONVERTEDRICE And finally - the reveal: "SWORD (or a title for this puzzle)" ANAGRAMMEDWORDS Here's the Xword Info link: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=1/18/2007&g=26&d=A" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=1/18/2007&g=26&d=A</a> ....
Congratulations on your NYT debut, Sam. Very impressive. All six themers were very much in the language, and yet four appeared for the first time today. Well done!
Did not get the trick of this puzzle at all, so it was basically just a giant crossword puzzle with a lot of trivia. After reading Sam’s column and looking back at each of the theme answers… WOW! Just so amazing that someone was able to figure all this out. Unfortunately, re-scrambling or unscrambling letters to make new words is my absolute kryptonite… I’ve always been just horrible at it. But that doesn’t take any of the shine off this puzzle, even if I can only enjoy it after the fact.
@John Peil I really appreciate your comment. So often, people get mad at the puzzle or the constructor or the editors when they don't understand the theme or the trick. Not you! Thank you for being a shining example of understanding that something is your kryptonite or just not in your wheelhouse and being able to appreciate it anyhow. Love it!! ☺️
Some days I have a kryptonite wheelhouse. Those are bad days.
My favorite kind of Sunday puzzle--beautifully constructed, cleverly but fairly clued, with delighted ahas at each reveal. Thank you, Sam Brody!
A puzzle full of MIXED BLESSINGS—clues I knew fills for and crosses that OPENed DOORs to untangle my errors. A solid, enjoyable puzzle, just hard enough to be engaging, clever enough to be challenging, and fun to work. Thanks, Sam Brody, and welcome to the Times.
I'm surprised no one yet has pointed out the synchronicity of NO-BRAINER and SCARECROW: <a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuMbJsjy-zg&pp=ygUidGhlIGNvY29udXRzIGlmIGkgb25seSBoYWQgYSBicmFpbg" target="_blank">https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuMbJsjy-zg&pp=ygUidGhlIGNvY29udXRzIGlmIGkgb25seSBoYWQgYSBicmFpbg</a>%3D%3D Whoops! Wrong cover! <a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nauLgZISozs&pp=ygUVaWYgaSBvbmx5IGhhZCBhIGJyYWlu" target="_blank">https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nauLgZISozs&pp=ygUVaWYgaSBvbmx5IGhhZCBhIGJyYWlu</a>
@Bill Yes -- it was in the column, as the "revealer" of sorts.
No mixed blessings, here. I love this type of theme. You get one, and then your brain goes into theme-mode, arranging and rearranging letters so that by the second half, you see the jumbled word and immediately know the phrase! Fantastic. A spot-on Sunday with ARUGULA, one of my favorite words. Because I *cannot* say it without sounding like an old-timey car horn. Thank you Sam!
@CCNY It always reminds me of this <a href="https://youtu.be/HVbFk8-eP7c?si=KJ6M2OiVlzpox3D0" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/HVbFk8-eP7c?si=KJ6M2OiVlzpox3D0</a>
@CCNY Indeed, by the time I got to 83A, I was in full Wheel of Fortune mode. TW...filled in without even reading the clue.
All in all a fun puzzle, had to experiment with spelling to get the solve on ALOHAOE crossed with ADENINE, sheesh
my son and i loved the subtle wit of the anagrams, and many of them made me chuckle out loud. (lucky for me, my son's younger brain is much better at anagrams than i am!) i agree with barry and others that the rest of the puzzle was a bit easier than a usual sunday, but i find that is often the case when the theme is particularly clever. i can accept that trade-off every now and then. i'm glad to hear sam has had two more puzzles accepted by the nytimes, and i look forward to solving many more of his creations in years to come!
Truly elegant. I love puzzles that gradually unfold, where an inkling of the theme starts to emerge and then … aha!
Altogether satisfying puzzle for my taste. Always happy to get a Sunday with no look-ups. Had to work for it, though.
Fun puzzle!! I'm not a natural anagrammer, so it took me a minute or two after getting MIXEDBLESSING from context to understand it, but when I did, I quickly became a big fan! It helped me sail through the rest of the themers, since I had a lot of crosses. Really cute theme!! Great debut! The trouble I had was keeping iVaN in for too long at 10D. I don't know the movie but I could have sworn there was an Ivan in it. Getting GENETICALLYENGINEERED fixed me right up, which was good as I at 10A was not helpingful. I think I'll change the ole "There is no I in team to "There is no I in SVEN or STEAD." I already get a lot of odd looks, so why not push the envelope a bit. Har! Especially enjoyed the clues for EDIT, DORM, and ESTATE. I do wish the app had a submit button instead of automatically either giving you a gold star or a mistake message. Often, I feel like I want to revisit an area before considering it my final answer. In this case, I had SrGT at 92A, which didn't make sense for the down but sometimes I don't see why an answer is what it is at first so I wanted to look at it again. Also, I was pretty sure I had ADENINE right but when I happily entered SWITCHinGEARS, it changed. I corrected them easily when I got the horse feathers message but I would have felt better if I had a chance to revisit those areas that were iffy before I finished. No big but in my IDEAL world, there would be a submit button.... And a lot of tacos to scarf, snarf, and/or bolt down. 😉
@HeathieJ Yeah, I've thought that some way to tell the puzzle you're done other than have it all filled in would be nice. On the other hand, given the mess they've made of the forum, God knows what would happen if they tried to do that.
Francis, I had that very thought as I was writing it up. Why push our luck, right!?
@HeathieJ Two thoughts. You could use pencil mode in those boxes you're not sure of, and you could deliberately leave one box empty until you're happy with your puzzle, similar to what DC recommends when working a rebus puzzle.
Thanks, Vaer! Those are good thoughts that I need to remember to do while solving. So often, I fill in the last square without realizing it's the last square, so intentionally leaving something iffy blank would help. ☺️
@HeathieJ I use the iPad App, and when the puzzle is done, but incorrect I get a message to that effect. I can go back and fix and eventually get the gold star. Do other apps not do that? Today I was almost done, but no happy music. Kept looking and realized I wasn't sure about ALOHAOy. Sure enough -- fixed to ALOHAOE and got my music and gold star. So, that works like a SUBMIT button, I guess.
Desirable formation for ducks - ROW So sweet and silly. A second look at the theme answers revealed that more was going on than I first thought. Nice puzzle.
Vaer, When did you submit the OP? I don't see anything in it that would have been filter bait.
@Barry Round midnight. I was surprised when it didn't post. It had me wondering if I had hit cancel instead of submit by mistake.
@Vaer Apparently emus dislike ducks.
Ducks? What's wrong with ducks? (Will this appear immediately? It's 12:07 p.m. ET)
It wasn't the ducks. Was it "silly?"
I believe it was the word after this in the OP: So sweet and
...because a short post with that word did not post. Amazing!
@Barry Ancona @Vaer So now we know. In addition to disliking sock repair, the emus dislike unserious fun. Imagine grandma's expression as she sits in front of her TV watching the Three Stooges while mending socks, being notified she has been banned for unseemly behavior.
@Barry In my post to Lewis, I used funny instead of s---y, but only because I didn't remember exactly what I'd written. So now we know????
Yep. Pretty "funny," isn't it?
@Vaer This whole post is just silly (14:11).
I see they changed the algorithm.
And the human emu just released my test post with the naughty word that got caught in the filter...
@Vaer it's so OBVI that it was the ducks! Emus are jealous because ducks can fly.
31 across with no question mark is one of my favorite clues ever!
@Jim And here I thought Andrzej was getting an extra leg up....
@Jim Ooohhh! Thanks. I thought it was a Polish dialect and moved on. And I was keeping my eye out for a discussion from Andrzej. The way it's written is a great clue, funny!
I love the wit of this puzzle, the 'ah ha' when I figured out the scrambled words, and that the answers all seemed natural. I did not need any cheats, a treasured rarity on a Sunday. But, oh, did I ever have a typo. I couldn't find it, even though I combed the answer pdf along with the puzzle three times. Finally, the spouse had to sit at the computer chair and.... viola! I had 'play' for 'PLAN', somehow I didn't see the wrongness of 'bowiyg'! I hope to see many more such puzzles from Sam Brody!
@Joan I, too, was one letter off, and as always it drove me crazy: TWEeK vs. TWEAK, crossing MESe vs MESA, which I should have seen. For me, it's often the vowels. Although yesterday it was a Y.
Executive summary: Much NECTAR, constructor has nothing to RECANT. Et tu, emu.
Such delightful word play...excellent puzzling Sam! Look forward tor more from you.
Really enjoyed this one. Great anagrams. Reminded me of one of my all time favourite clues GEGS where the answer was SCRAMBLED EGGS.
I love anagrams, so this was a real treat. As soon as I finished, I started in on the puzzle's title, thinking there might be a bonus. So far, I've got ANAGRAM KING, which is fitting, but that leaves me with TREMENS, which is unfortunate. I'll let you know if I find a better solution. The Northwestern (University) DORM was my hidden gem of the day. I wondered about DOme, as my second cousin, a civil engineer, was a big fan of Buckminster Fuller.
@Grant loved Northwestern abode too-super clever and an all-time fave clue
I had to let Sam Brody know just how delightful I found his puzzle! Lots of tricky clues, but they all produced smiles and head nods - not a groaner or an eyeroll in the bunch. Great job and hope to see more from you soon!
Anagrams got me like: <a href="https://youtu.be/QhmtXpWsAdU" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/QhmtXpWsAdU</a> Anybody else feel like Lisa?
@M&M Yup. My brain doesn’t parse them all.
@M&M - But with that said, this is a very doable puzzle with great fill. It just left some folks in our solving group staring at the completed grid, saying, "I still don't get it"
My smooth ride was briefly interrupted today when the chain fell off my derailleur as I was confidently SHIFTING GEARS, but I was only TEMPORARILY OUT OF ORDER.
I haven’t done the puzzle yet but here are the banned words, if you scroll down this site, that a previous Sunday’s Doonesbury alluded to but then the QR code link had disappeared. I am shocked at some of these and some I don’t even know that well if I know them! <a href="https://pen.org/banned-words-list" target="_blank">https://pen.org/banned-words-list</a>/
@Convoid-04 That list is insane.
@Convoid-04, and @John and "mental health" is banned. The power of words.
@Convoid-04 Was this the "Sunday Comics" comment section, or merely the Outside Reality Uninvitedly Crashing Down on People Just Trying to Do and Read About the Sunday Crossword Puzzle? Not sure which
Wow, Sam. Tour de Force! Stellar Performance. Magnum Opus. Plus, thanks for recognizing the contribution of yet another unsung heroine of Science at 44A. (BTW did anyone ELSE see that MTG has said Federal employees weren't doing "real jobs." Uplifting. Insightful. So glad she's on the job, there.) I am not really "up on" the components of DNA--discoveries and subjects that didn't come up during my years of schooling, including college and graduate programs. You don't necessarily pick up that much even reading news magazines, Smithsonian, etc. So it was just lucky that I decided SWITCHES should be SWITCHED in order to get something that looked more "sciency" at 95 Down..... I do recall a group of students at our DR table, constructing a DNA molecule out of colored beads and wire...but they never mentioned what the different colors represented. I'd have to ask PhysDau if it was for chemistry, biology, or what... Enough rambling. I am needed at the SEWing machine; I've just UNstitched 13 blocked after putting them together wrong.....arrgh.
@Mean Old Lady ADENINE, Guanine, Cytosine, and Thymine. I have no idea why those have remained in my brain for so long after freshman Bio. (And also Uracil, if it's RNA.)
Loved today’s puzzle, especially the themed clues. I especially liked the clueing, no arcane words or proper nouns. I look forward to more such puzzles
Great debut Sam Brody! No bones about it. Guess who holds the Guinness World Record for the most broken bones? ☠️ Yep, an estimated 433 bone fractures. <a href="https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/most-broken-bones-in-a-lifetime" target="_blank">https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/most-broken-bones-in-a-lifetime</a> Evel Knievel Museum will re-open in downtown Las Vegas this year!
Very nice Sunday puzzle, solid theme and some fun misdirect clues
I really wanted GENETICALLY MODIFIED once I caught on, but one of the more enjoyable Sundays in a while
@Danny ENGINEERED was sufficiently obtuse for me to puzzle over that pun
I will take a break from my usual griping about overly-complex themes to praise this puzzle, despite its difficult (for me) theme. No, it did not help me solve the puzzle, but once I saw what it was doing I was actually somewhat delighted. Very enjoyable solve.