ATOB - that could be the title of my post today. It perfectly illustrates how confused I was by the bottom third of the puzzle. RIGA was a gimme but most of the other entries there I hopelessly struggled with, finally resorting to lookups of SST, ELO, WELTY, TED TALK, and TGEL. AD ASTRA and ADOLPH emerged from crosses. I know the latter is just a name, in a way, but in this part of the world it only ever comes up in one context, accompanied by a look of disgsut. I needed loads of crosses for THE FLOOR IS LAVA. I know the game from the internet only, where it came up in some memes. Of course we engaged in something similar as Polish kids in the 1980s, but the game never had a name. And finally, that ATOB... I really tried to parse it once it emerged from crosses. I looked and looked at it and its clue... Nope. I needed the column to understand what I was seeing. I don't really get the connection between the clue and answer. To me, A to B is a description of the simplicity of a solution to a problem, which may be something completely different than it being short. I don't get why CARD solves to WIT - could somebody please explain? Despite it being mentioned in the column, I still don't understand why 'Long way to go?' solves to HALL. I'd appreciate an explanation of that, too, please. Finally - not mowing one's lawn is one of the easiest ways to help the environment - especially insects - and water retention in the age of climate change. EYE SORE... That's 1950s thinking.
@Andrzej If you googled Eudora Welty, you know that she is a 20th century writer. I think she must translate well to other languages—she did to French. The owner of the hotel in Paris where I stayed most often loved her stories. Card is slang for somebody who makes a lot of jokes. The idiom is "in for the long haul" meaning committed to staying with a project to the end.
@Andrzej A witty person is sometimes called a "card". Generally, I think of card as a mostly delightful, though eccentric person. You got me on HALL??? I admittedly utterly hate yard work, and it's self-serving of me to agree with you about how much I wish our lawns weren't so important to us. But you're right--it's very dated.
@dutchiris It's HALL thought, not HAuL... I see in other comments people are generally confused by the entry, thinking it's just not very good, and simply about some halls being long 🤷 @Francis My father (who sits on the local council) stopped mowing his lawn last year. His garden is full of wild flowers now, a veritable meadow, a heaven and haven for insects and birds. It looks good, and thousands of creatures benefit from it. Also, the city of Warsaw is constantly replacing lawns with trees, shrubs, and meadows, and what lawns remain are only mowed three times a year, to reduce environmental impact. The city recommends housing estates refrain from mowing their lawns, and watering them, too.
@Francis The far right wreaks havoc here, too, emboldened by its rise in the US, and by blatant displays of autocracy and cruelty elsewhere. After a spell of optimism in late 2023, recently I've lost all hope, TBH.
@Francis It's been well researched - you can read up on it online in authoritative publications. The fact I understand their rise does not make it any easier to bear...
@Andrzej a HALL is long, and it’s a way to go from one room to another. This might be a case where the clue is not too clever, but the opposite.
@Andrzej Completely agree re mowing lawns!!!
@N.E. Body If it's just a HALL, why the question mark in the clue implying wordplay? @Steve L Sure, but it sounds the same, and in fact it *is* the same name, just spelled alternately.
@Andrzej totally agree on the lawn thing. Lawns are a waste of water and resources and bad for the environment. Outdated thinking to act like it's an eyesore to mow them
@Andrzej I read it as: Long way to go, as in having to go to the bathroom. A hall might be a long way to go (if you have to go really bad).
@Andrzej @Francis A neighbor has quit mowing a large swath of their lot and put up a "Pardon the weeds, we're feeding the bees" sign. I love it, but the husband is still a traditional lawn guy. 🙄
Said one volcano to another, "You magma my dreams come true!" (I'd post this one sooner or crater.)
@Mike Whoops, an extra word in that pun! I won't erupt about it, though. (It was my fault.)
@Mike You have been missed! Several people have ashed about you.
@Mike Coincidentally, "Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki erupted at 5:35pm local time today, unleashing a 6.8-mile (11-kilometer) hot ash column over the tourist island of Flores in south-central Indonesia." That blew me away.
I think this is a perfect example of Wednesday puzzle.
My cat plays "The Floor is Lava" (or, perhaps, The Floor Is Dog) by using my body as a bridge. Usually I see his jumps coming...
@Isabeau We had one like that. He left a lot of bruises. Fortunately, he was a foster and got adopted by someone who wanted a playmate for their similarly energetic cat.
Our game, circa 1965, was Blind Man’s Buff played in a dark interior long HALL of our house with all the doors closed. Usual rules about being “It”. If not “It”, a good hiding technique was to use both arms and legs to shinny up one of the door jambs, and cling there near the ceiling. Same hall made an excellent venue for vigorously slamming around the latest new thing, the Super Ball. We may or may not have broken a ceiling light fixture that way. WORTH IT! These memories brought to you indirectly thanks to the lava theme.
@Cat Lady Margaret In denying that the ceiling fixture was your doing, perhaps you were playing a variant of the game, called Blind Man's Bluff! Those super balls sure could bounce!
@Cat Lady Margaret I may or may not have broken a foot in elementary school that way.
@Cat Lady Margaret I may or may not have broken a front tooth that way.
@Cat Lady Margaret oh thanks for the memory, our hall was narrow enough (and we were young and wiry enough) to climb up the walls in the same manner so we "hid" at various heights above the person who was "it".
I remember playing this game in Pompeii, back in 79. (too soon?)
@ad absurdum To be fair, Pompeii was covered by volcanic ash, not lava. Yes, I'm fun at parties.
@Andrzej Ash, yes. But embedded in two or more 700 C pyroclastic flows that moved at hundreds of km/hr. I'm even more fun at parties.
@ad absurdum Are you sure you weren't paying Tabula or Ludus Duodecim Scriptorum (backgammon) for money? Betting your asses (copper), dupondii (bronze), sestertii (bronze), denarii (silver) and aurei (gold) away in the bar.
@Xword Junkie Well, yeah - pyroclastic flows of gas and *ash*. We're equally fun, I think!
@ad absurdum LOL LOVED IT But then, I am a Sicko....
@ad absurdum @Xword Junkie Not to mention the hot Toxic gas cloud of CO and CO2 and fine ash and volcanic glass that asphyxiated them which got shipborne Pliny the Elder, written about by Pliny the Younger, who famously said "Hic maneo, avuncule!", which translates to "I'm staying here Unc..."
At the risk of being that guy: TGEL crossing WELTY is a textbook example of a natick, right? With that said? A fun and breezy puzzle. I for one don’t mind the occasional proper noun collision.
@Stephen It is. No doubt we will soon be lectured on why we should know one, if not both of those clues, and how many times each of them have appeared in the NYTXW
@Stephen Yeah, sure, there's a really large potential for a natick there. Of course the question is, and always will be, will it be naticky to everyone? Some people? No one? @Steven M. I know from past postings that some of us sometimes annoy you with responses to comments like this. Believe me, we, too, are annoyed by a lot of posts. But the fact is I *like* hearing what the better solvers think. After all, they're better. Maybe I can get better.
@Stephen The Massachusetts town of Native is pretty obscure if you're not from around here, but the only Eudora I can think of is Welty, and I considered that one a gimme.
@Steven M. .and here I am to deliver the lecture, as follows: Eudora Welty is far from an obscure author. As noted in the clue, she won a Pulitzer Prize. At least five movie have been made from stories by her. She is an absolute giant in Southern literature, right up there with Faulkner, Harper Lee, and Flannery O'Connor.
@Stephen I looked up both. As a reasonably well-read Polish guy WELTY I've never seen before (of the authors mentioned in the lecture above I've heard of Harper Lee, and I tried reading Faulkner in high school, but was quickly and utterly defeated by the stream of consciousness style), and even though now I recall seeing TGEL here before, I don't even try to remember US brand and product names, because it's completely pointless for European me. A Natick if there ever was one, since at least WELbY is as viable as Welty, and an American product can be named anything.
Winning a Pulitzer doesn't make your name a gimme to most solvers. Signed, The "not literate enough" Dude
@Stephen Agree this is an example of a Natick, but it was one I happened to know fairly easily. The SW corner for me….that was another story. Two movie references crossed with a proper name - also a Natick.
A Natick, as per the revised definition by the coiner of the term, is the cross of two words "most solvers" would not be expected to know as clued. I think the editors were correct thinking "most solvers" would recognize either Eudora WELTY or TGEL shampoo from the clues. If someone wants to say it was a Natick for them, fine. I note that Rex Parker, who coined the term, didn't call it a Natick in his review of the puzzle.
@Stephen I'll just add that EUDORA is seen in puzzles every once in awhile (with the clue being something like "Author Welty"). It's a good name to learn. "The Optimist's Daughter", the book that won her the Pulitzer, really is a great book! I didn't know TGEL, but now I'm happy to know it for the future (my future entails being an ironically-named rap star (I'm bald)).
@Stephen Enjoying the lively discussion! If Natick specifically means “proper nouns that are obscure” then I totally withdraw my comment — and I truly am not mad at this one. I too was able to get it. But for anyone in a context who doesn’t know WELTY for any number of reasons, this felt even more Natick-y than usual because the crossing letter only functions as a letter in the brand name; it can’t even be narrowed down by phonetics.
Stephen, Right. WELTY/TGEL is akin to the *original* Natick Rex Parker encountered. If you don't know that Natick starts with an N, and you don't know that N.C. Wyeth's first initial is an N, you're stuck. But by his own revised definition, was the original Natick a Natick? I solved that puzzle. I knew both answers. Shouldn't Rex the super solver have known at least one of them? Wasn't it just his personal Natick?
Steven M., Whether or not NYT Crossword solvers read the paper, a crossword is a word puzzle, and people who know words should be better at solving them than people who don't.
Mr Dave, "Obviously" you don't understand what Rex Parker initially and subsequently called a Natick.
Steven M., Words, in the NYT Crossword, has always meant both what you call "vocab clues" and what you call "trivia." Being literate is important, and literacy means being well read; knowing how to read is often the second definition. Having some familiarity with a range of topics is usually more useful here than knowing the sixth or seventh definition of a "vocab clue." IMO, that's how it should be.
Umm . . . 9A could also be a squeak enhancer. (posting for a friend 🤭) TEAMO, emu TEAMO, emu TEAMO, emu
@Whoa Nellie 🤣 Wish I could double recommend!
Got there eventually but the cultural chasm today was deep Never heard of THE FLOOR IS LAVA, no idea what a TPED house has had done to it, and it’s a Pub Crawl not a BAR CRAWL. TGEL through the crosses but that’s par for the course. Crossing it with WELTY was not really a Wednesday thing 😀 The theme was nice. Thanks
@Ιασων I learned TP'ED here - it's when a house has been festooned with unfurled rolls of toilet paper.
@Andrzej In suburbs you typically see trees festooned with TP on Mischief Night, not the houses.
@Ιασων I have always heard "bar crawl" where I'm at since we don't call them "pubs" here
Random thoughts: • Seems like a tight theme. It’s one of those where commenters would be coming up with good answer alternatives, and it’s been crickets so far. I’ve certainly tried and failed. Props to Eli on this! • After a lifetime of saying, “The end is nigh,” with this puzzle I can finally say, “The beginning is nigh.” • Another example today of one of crosswords’ biggest no-no’s – you can never clue ADOLPH with you-know-who. • Speaking of [House with a long-unmowed lawn, e.g.], we have just such a house on our street. The new owner has lived there several months and the front yard is getting jungle-y. She's very nice, hasn’t mentioned it, and one has brought it up to her. The neighbors have begun commenting. Stay tuned. • I love GLUMMER, the way it looks, sounds, and how it rolls off the tongue. Eli, your puzzle thrust me right back to kid-mind – that excited feel in games like THE FLOOR IS LAVA. I also wowed at the theme’s originality, and as you can see, your puzzle got my brain going all over the place. Thank you so much for making it!
@Lewis the only alternatives I came up with are NSFW and not safe for children's play --- lap dancing and couch bonking. But then I'd never played the game, and only heard of it a few years ago. Sounds like living room parkour. My parents would not allow us to jump or stand on the furniture.
Lewis, Cabinet shuffle? (Or maybe that’s specific to Canadian politics…)
@Lewis Thank you. BTW, the other you-know-who spelled his name with an F instead of a PH, thankfully for this puzzle.
The first Eudora Welty story I read was like opening a door and entering a world I hadn't known existed. I wanted there to be more stories, and there were. Her writing illuminates the extraordinariness of everyday life and you recognize the complexity we all share as human beings. They are sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking, more often a tangle of both. Long before the civil rights movement, Welty saw the Depression era in the same way, and recorded it in the photographs she took for the WPA before devoting her talent exclusively to writing. Take a look at these: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/09/lens/eudora-welty-photos-mississippi.html" target="_blank">https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/09/lens/eudora-welty-photos-mississippi.html</a> If you don't know who she is, you've got a lot to look forward to.
@dutchiris I know nothing about Eudora Welty…well except that a coworker decades ago said she wrote a story about a post office. And that’s why our email client was called Eudora. I kept the Eudora incoming mail sound for a long long time after that client was retired. And then one day I realized the sound was “everyone knows it’s log”
Yikes. A lot of bad crossings here. No idea what the pun for Long HALL is supposed to be, nor what an ELO is. HAuL would have made sense for that clue, and EuO was just as plausible. I suppose I'm fortunate to not have to know what _GEL was, but would have needed 26 guesses to guess what it crossed with WEL_Y. I was only slightly more confident in OPART/APU than I was in potentially AbU/ObART.
@Steven M. ELO is short for Electric Light Orchestra, a massively successful British rock band that started waaaaay back in the 1970s or so.
...as recently as three weeks ago.
I don't think of unmown lawns as EYESOREs. Manicured lawns are hard for me to look at now that I've been educated on how landscaping, particularly growing and maintaining lawns, is such a detriment to our natural environment.
@Lorel Best comment of the bunch.
It’s so late that nobody’s going to see this comment, but… I really don’t get the string of objections to things that I got pretty easily. Long HALL made perfect sense to me, once I recalled from my distant youth that the Electric Light Orchestra had a hit record called “Mr. Blue Sky.” When I finally worked out the SW corner, I instantly realized that ATOB was to be parsed as “A to B,” because I’ve been doing NYT crosswords for many years and see that kind of thing all the time. BAR CRAWL seemed obvious to me once I got enough crosses. Etc., etc. Was it too easy for a Wednesday? Too hard? Who knows? Your mileage may vary. I thought it was a pretty solid puzzle.
@Dave S Brooks was here. And so was Red. I saw it.
@Dave S I saw it, too. And I liked it! (I'm also with you on HALL making perfect sense.)
@Dave S I read your comment and agree - surprised to see so many negative comments.
A quick solve, until I got bogged down in the long HAuL. Anyone else?
@dutchiris. Sorry to say, but that “clue” is just plain stupid.
@dutchiris Absolutely! And when I changed it to HALL, I really didn't expect to get the finished message.
@dutchiris Me too. I still don’t get it.
@dutchiris Just occurred to me: could it be that the constructor actually doesn't know the expression is "long HAuL"? And that the editors didn't catch it? I hate to suggest such a thing but I see a lot of this with homonyms, like people writing "here, here" to indicate agreement. Otherwise there's just no explanation for that clue leading to that answer.
@dutchiris Yes. Unless two rooms have a door between them, wouldn't a hall tend to be no longer than any other way to get from one to the other?
Just checking in now and I'm pretty surprised about the HALL kerfuffle. ELO has been an answer a whopping 256 times, mostly clued to the band, 6 times to Mr. Blue Sky. When faced with E_O, any medium to long time solver has an excellent chance of guessing that it's ELO. The clue for HALL is not wrong, it's pun. Yes, you're supposed to think about "the long haul" but the answer relates to another type of [long way to go?] as indicated by the question mark. Think of the long HALLways in a hotel. Every HALL does not have to be long for the clue to work.
@Nancy J. I think you're probably right, but even I, "soft on constructors" though I may be, draw a line there. I really don't don't homophones have a place in a crossword unless the pun is clearly signaled. But I just can't come up with anything better than what you have.
@Nancy J. Nice try but that emperor has no clothes. It is funny though, I've been laughing at the sheer stupidity of it all day long.
Huh. The correct idiom for a "long way to go" is "long haul," not "long hall." This was really a weird answer to the clue.
@Gail F Thanks! I was still wondering what the? about that one.
@Gail F I read it as a HALL might feel like a really "Long way to go" if you have to go to the bathroom really bad. Of course, I could be wrong but it made me chuckle.
@Gail F I guess this one didn't strike me as a problem. I've been some places lately that have reallly long HALLs. A hospital, a senior housing complex, a large church, etc. And I knew ELO as a band, so that helped a lot.
So, it's news to me that "The Floor is Lava" is a new game. I remember playing at a kid in the late 60s (possibly early 70s) but I'm pretty sure it was in the 60s. I played it at my godfather's house with his kids. He and his wife wondered what was happening to their doorknobs because we had used them to stand on to swing on a door from one place to another (bed to dresser for example).
@Norman The game isn't new. The meme based on the game is apparently new. I'd never heard of it.
@Norman The Wikipedia article about the game cites an article that suggests that it may date to the 1930s!
I am vastly amused by the possibility that a set of people considered the idiom "a long haul" to be "a long hall". It's like something saying something like "it was just a hare's breath away".
@Francis exactly I've tried googling "long hall" but it always gets corrected to "long haul". It does have a big uptick in google searches today. Many are trying to figure out what they've missed.
@Francis there’s a fun Reddit called bone apple tea that I think you would enjoy
Terrible puzzle. OPART? ATOB? LGBT? Cmon now.
@AcidBurn you think it’s terrible because you’ve never hear of “op art”? You’ve never heard of “A to B”? Of is it that in prod month you’ve never heard of LGBT?
@AcidBurn pride month…oops…not like we’re talking Folsom Street Fair where prod month might be a thing.
@AcidBurn Sorry @AcidBurn — you really should know the term OPART. It is a big part of modern art history. And many of us doing these crossword puzzles are in their early 60s all the way up to 90s — and we all know very famous artists and artworks that are a part of this genre because we lived during this time period. And one further note — we can’t all know everything! But by completing enough puzzles I’ve learned the names of different characters on Game of Thrones and The Simpsons, not to mention many sports figures that were never a part of my life. I learn something new everyday by completing The New York Times Crossword Puzzle!
@AcidBurn bold move there, openly admitting that you don’t know what LGBT(Q) is - and during pride month no less! Personally, I don’t think I’d be strong enough to handle that kind of humiliation, but more power to you.
Now that I think about it, I'm going to need someone to explain 47D [Long way to go?]. How is it HALL? Because it's a homophone of HAuL?
@Francis I think the clue writer is assuming all HALLs are long. The consensus so far among commenters seems to be that the clue is not a great fit for the word.
@Francis Mayhaps a long HALLway?
@rajeevfromca that might make the clue fit if all hallways were long... But, in fact, no hallways are long except in relation to other shorter hallways...
@Francis Maybe refers to the shape of a hall, long rather than square?
@Francis I would say the definition of a hall is that it is longer than it is wide, I think that’s the point. Not defending the clue, because I didn’t care for it much myself, just explaining it. I agree HAUL would have been better.
Manicured lawns, aka ecological deserts, are the true eyesores, not un-mowed lawns. Note to the editors. You insist we learn the terms and ways of seemingly every social issue under the sun. You might do the same with matters pertaining to the environment, ecology, and natural history. You know, help change the world for the better, maybe save a few species too.
I am glummer for having spent more than enuf time on this puzzle. It wasn't like going from atob. It was a long hall. Now I just wanna go to a bar and eat a tapa. Just one.
@Brad K Bet you can't eat just one
Loved the theme! My brother and I used to chant "HOT MAGMA DEATH!!!"
@Justin I scan through a lot of posts. The first time I read this my eyes widened because I missed the second M in MAGMA.
While others are enjoying pleasant childhood memories from THE FLOOR IS LAVA, I'm having unpleasant flashbacks induced by PREFAB. I grew up in a post-war Arcon Mk V prefab housing scheme. While they could be erected in eight hours by a sufficiently large team, they generally took longer. They were so poorly insulated that the toilet cistern (which was mounted against an external wall) used to freeze solid during winter nights, and when the house was quiet you could hear the larger birds walking along the roof ridge. <a href="https://tinyurl.com/4jsyumpe" target="_blank">https://tinyurl.com/4jsyumpe</a> The strange brick and corrugated-iron structure in the first image at the end of my link is an "Andershed". These were garden sheds built from some of the components of a wartime Anderson Shelter. The originals were cheap personal bomb shelters for people with gardens large enough to accommodate one. They required an excavation so that they were buried to roof level. When the war ended, the materials were repurposed to provide above-ground sheds---we had one behind our house, identical to the one in the picture.
@Oikofuge Ah, the old Anderson shelter. Fond memories of playing in my grandparent’s old shelter. They’d actually managed to bury into the hillside, so only the front was exposed. I have no idea how they managed it.
I'm late to the comments so likely it has been noted, but in my experience LUBE can also *cause* a lot of squeaks....
I haven't had time to read through all the comments but this sure was a toughie for me, especially the lower left. But I got there unaided in the end! Phew!! I left a few responses about this but I've noticed a lot of people thinking the HALL at 47D was incorrect and it should have been HAuL. Perhaps I'm wrong but I read it as a HALL might feel awfully long when you have to "go" (to the bathroom) really bad. 🤷♀️ I got a good chuckle out of it, so I hope that was the intention. Okay, back to work for a while! 😊
I suppose WOOSH is the British spelling of WHOOSH? The TGEL/WELTY crossing was a tough one. Especially so since WELBY is a surname and essentially any letter can precede GEL. Fortunately, I knew the writer. That said, for some reason I thought the product name was TGEN, which led me to wonder what a TED TANK might be. Seemed like a well-crafted puzzle, which took me a bit more time than usual for a Wednesday offering.
@Xword Junkie I've never seen WOOSH until today, although the OED allows it as an alternative. For those of us who pronounce "wh" differently from"w", it makes little sense, and I struggled to see it.
@Xword Junkie T-GEL and T-Sal have both been in the puzzle in the past few months. Useful letters for crossword construction. I remember a discussion of T-GEL because it's been discontinued by Neutrogena, but Walgreens still carries their store brand version. T-GEL has coal tar in it, which California decided required labeling as a possible carcinogen
@Xword Junkie Eudora WELTY's home and garden are a Point of Interest in Jackson. Someone lent me her book of Welty's short stories, which I ...can't recommend. I could never get very far with her most well-known novel, _Delta Wedding_. Perhaps she just belonged to an earlier time that I am unable to appreciate or relate to? Old TV shows would be just as hard for solvers...Mucous WELBY would be unworthy of exhumation, IMHO.
@MOL Not sure if you fell victim to auto-correct or just weren't fond of *Marcus* Welby, M.D. Don't think I've ever read anything by WELTY. Condolences on your lost streak. Squeaked by with a 5 today.
@MOL Well, there is the James Brolin factor to consider. :) (But it was not a show that was viewed by our family.)
@Xword Junkie Yeah, I stumbled on "WOOSH," too. I'm going to grumble a bit about that one. Hands up from anyone who remembers the classic Macintosh email program named after Eudora Welty, an homage to her short story, "Why I Live at the P.O." I hung onto Eudora for a long time until finally switching to Apple Mail. I sent myself one last message with some mildly "hot" language so it would trigger a "chili warning" from Eudora. :-)
ATOB and HALL were not my favourites.
Really disliked the cluing for 42D WANNAGO. "You in?" is a real stretch for that answer. Liked the theme but it was pretty easy for a Wednesday.
Overheard in a posh hotel. The PREFAB Four havin a chat after their Get Up and Go show: Stig fancies a dance with BACCHUS and JABS at Dirk. "ELO, ELO, ENUF of that GLUMMER. How's about a DRAM, or some mull of Kintyre?" Dirk is having none of it, "We USED to be mates. Now IDARENOT pluck a chord, as you're LIABLE to ride HERD over me like ADOLPH at a TEDTALK in Hamburg. Stig turns to Nasty. "WANNAGO?" "NOCANDO, muzak man, Nasty replies. He slips out WIT OSAKA for the opening of "WOOSH," their OPART EYESORE featuring SST brake ROTORS. Stig looks over at Barry, who has managed to COUNTERBALANCE a bottle of TGEL and a congealed TAPA on a puple drumstick. "It's not WORTHIT" he thinks, to even ask. No chance of a bird-filled TABLEHOP with Barry. Barry: "IGOTYOU! I'd love a kneesup BARCRAWL, Stig, but wait, me ATMCARD is lost and I'm proper skint" Stig sighs, and urges Barry out the door and down the HALL. "Not to worry, all you need is cash"
Can someone explain "Card" solving to WIT? I usually finish these on my own, but today I find myself here in the Comments hoping that someone brighter than me can explain what my Google searches failed to unearth. Happy Solving!
@James W I think it's card in the sense of a clever, funny (witty) person.
@Mel ah, I see! I had to go deep into the informal definitions to cross reference that one. Much obliged.
@James W I did not understand it, either. I also could not think of any etymology for card as wit, so I looked it up: <a href="https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/151915/etymology-of-card-referring-to-an-eccentric-person" target="_blank">https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/151915/etymology-of-card-referring-to-an-eccentric-person</a>
@James W This is one that I got but didn't like. It was unfilled until I had no choice.
@James W When I and my friends were teenagers (a million years ago) and someone would say something witty, one of us would reply, "You're such a card! You ought to be dealt with."
@James W I recommend reading the short story, "Haircut" by Ring Lardner, in which the barber repeatedly states, "He certainly was a card." A bit archaic, to be sure,
I'm guessing I spent over half my solve time trying to come up with answers in the SW, which put me way over average. The rest of the puzzle seemed pretty typical Wednesday difficulty.
@Jim Agreed. I eventually gave up on that corner. Two movie references crossed with a proper name - a bit much for a Wednesday.
This is the Wednesday-ist Wednesday to ever Wednesday - perfect midweek puzzle!
Wouldn't it be fun, maybe, to do some of the puzzles that the editors have rejected? Or—is that already happening?
@replay I always assume that the puzzles that get rejected here are submitted to other sites. (And I've assumed that it's viewed as bad manners to discuss that here.)
@The X-Phile Persistence pays in the long hall.
@replay conceptually I agree…it would be fun. BUT then I pause and realize…that many kf them were rejected for a reason. Like when you used to do the puzzle in the back of the airplane seat and realize that not all puzzles are good.
Has anyone said that HALL was simply a mistake that was missed by the editors? Words that sound alike are often confused, and sometimes meanings of idioms change, but I have never seen anything like "We were in it for the long hall" in writing.
@dutchiris I think it’s “hall” as in “hallway” or “down the hall”
@dutchiris I take it as "go" meaning have to go to the bathroom... and the hall may feel awfully long if you have to go really bad. :-)
@John Ezra — Your mention yesterday of Franz Hals in a comment yesterday reminded me of what must be the first record of a selfie in progress: <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436616" target="_blank">https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436616</a>
@dutchiris (Always reread before hitting the SUBMIT button. One yesterday too many.)
@dutchiris That's such a great painting. I love glimpses into the real world of the past. Posed formal portraits are interesting, sure, but they don't give you the same feel for the times as this. There is an element of human connection here, both between the subjects and between them and me. Fascianting. Thank you!
Editors took the day off on this one. ATOB WOOSH BARCRAWL and TGEL are all technically ok but should have ended up on the cutting floor.
@James H Genuinely curious: why do you think these should have been cut?
@James H Barcrawl was straight forward and fit in well with the theme. Woosh was very straight forward as well.
A moderate Wednesday, about 75% of my average time. Still, I enjoyed a lot about this grid “Went through channels” for SWAM; “Look bad” for OGLE. I also appreciated that ADOLPH Coors sat atop BAR CRAWL. Also, challenge accepted: I plan to say “One does not simply walk into Mordor” at least once a day as my part to bring it back…though, like “fetch,” it’s probably not going to happen.
@Joe Our family use it at all times and all occasions. One does not simply walk into Mordor on a whim. I get extra points for mimicking Sean Bean’s Yorkshire accent (tis mine own birthright too)
11 proper nouns in the bottom half of the puzzle... all of them crossing other proper nouns. i also don't understand HALL over HAUL. PREFAB doesn't really fit considering there's no slang or short-form in the clue. pretty easy to tell the constructor gave up exactly halfway through the puzzle - top half was solid. bottom half was bar trivia.
Charles, PREFAB has been a word of its own (by shortening) for quite some time; it doesn't need a signal. HALL/HAuL has been discussed several times today; sorry you didn't understand it. Crosswords often have proper nouns crossing each other. Did you fail to solve some of them, or were you just expressing an aesthetic complaint? (We shouldn't have bar trivia with a BAR CRAWL.)
I do believe these theme answers are the most clever set in recent memory. Slightly clunky fill, but well done Eli!
A number of people have mentioned having trouble in the SW with not knowing Eudora WELTY as one of their problems. I'm here to thank her for getting me to change Erie, PA, which I was sure was a gimme, to the correct answer, YORK. Otherwise, I'd have been stuck in that corner quite a while. As for the theme game, instead of THE FLOOR IS LAVA, my brother, sister and I played the floor is quicksand in the late 1960s. Sofa and chair cushions on the floor were the safe ways we traveled from furniture piece to furniture piece.
@Vaer I, too, remember playing "Quicksand" as a child, but I think we also played "Hot lava" (as we called it) as well. We also played it outdoors, on a swing set/jungle gym. Our homestead was a very dangerous place!
@Bill I bet you rode in the car without a car seat or seat belt, too.
@SamCorbin. Saw your book announcement yesterday. Congratulations!
It’s not a meme?? It’s a (I thought common) game that kids play. I was certainly playing it before the Internet
@deeb Apparently, it's an old children's game that (much later) became a meme. Both are news to me.
Loved it! I played many a game of THE FLOOR IS LAVA as a kid. My sister would be Sailor Mercury, and I would be Sailor Moon, and the floor, of course, would be Lava. There was some debate about whether throwing a cushion on the floor to use as a stepping stone was cheating. Other childhood favorites: --hide and seek --tag --throw horse chestnuts at each other
Those were puns? Cutesy phrases, rather....for a "game" I've never heard of and would have been very displeased had it been played in the house. There's a place for romps; it's called The Outdoors. We recently saw a reference to LAVA so I guess it was meant to soften us up for this puzzle. Bah. And I'm not saying that just because, after yesterday's Wordle score of 1, today I blew my 149-game streak. C'est la vie. PhysDau suffered the same fate--"first letter hell." Into my second set of clothes before 8 a.m. Humidity is about 250%. Honest!
Mean Old Lady, The air is water - never a fun time. My condolences.
@Mean Old Lady Oh, our mom wouldn't have loved it either. Fortunately, she never knew about it cuz we only played it when she was out and Dad was in charge. He thought it was funny.
@Mean Old Lady I agree with you wholeheartedly on the puzzle. However, if you ask PhysDau, your Relative Humidity Adviser, she would tell you that 250% is not possible. Honest! Don't make me get my sling psychrometer out !
Bar crawl; no. Pub crawl; yes.
@William Kash BARCRAWL; yes. Pub crawl; also yes. Both are real. 🥃🙂🍸
Man, that SW corner made me feel like today was a different day. 38A, 54A, 64A... never would have gotten those without "comment support." Thanks, all.
Can constructors stop crossing three names with each other? The SE corner killed me!