I got through this one, finally, and my last chore was to change from one pair of subbed letters to the other pair of subbed letters for each theme answer. Before taking out the UT of GUTTER and putting in the RA for GRATER, I was so sure that the theme answers worked that way that I actually checked my entire grid for unrelated typos. I didn't find anything, although those gobbledygook downs at the theme letters were making it hard to figure them out. Finally, I did substitute in the RA for the UT and the others, and got the little jingle. But to me, it didn't make sense. RAT OUT was, for example, the instruction to answer 22A. So the clue for 22A is [Proverbial bad thing to have your mind in], so the answer is GUTTER. To get it to GRATER, you go from UT to RA, not the other way around. But the "hint" in the previous answer said RA to UT. The others followed the same way. It seemed to me that it was all bass-ackwards. The clue should have been for GRATER, and the printed answer should have been GUTTER (with different down answers that made sense with the U and the T). And so forth for the others. Or the whole puzzle should have been constructed with the UT to RA order.
@Steve L I agree that changing OC to PI would have been more intuitive to me as well, and the puzzle could easily have been clued that way. Still, it was consistent and I could parse it to mean “OC goes TO where PI was”. It didn’t bother me too badly and I figured it out quickly when I realized that CLE had to be right.
@Steve L I completely agree.
@Steve L I agree. RATOUT says to me that you take the RA from what's already there and change it to UT. But there was no RA already there. I'd answered the clue and put GutTER. The clue should have been for GRATER instead of GutTER. And then the Downs would have had to be different. I realize I just repeated what you already said. Mostly just explaining it again to myself.
@Steve L The way it hit me when I was solving: 20A should have been clued as something like "Tattle on...or the correction needed to make 22A fit its clue". Clueing it as "an instruction for "answering"" 22A definitely sounds as though the constructor is telling you go from "UT to RA". That was my thought at the time, anyway.
@Steve L I thought the same as you at first, but then changed my mind after thinking about it. The wrong answer to the clue is in the grid, to get the right answer (GUTTER) you change the RA TO UT. I had to change my mindset to see it, kind of like those visual puzzles... do you see the vase or the two faces? 😄
Anyone else tired of nail polish clues?
@Steve Not when Opi and octopi share an I, that was fun.
@Steve OPI used to be obscure, but it was a welcome gimme today.
@Steve the reference to Barry Manilow gave me a big grin this morning! Clues like this bring tiny moments of joy IMO
@Steve omg yes. ETSY & OPI til the end of time lol
@Steve I get emu-tional about them. How about gnu?
I use kitchen utensils for the grater good. (I majored in whisk management.)
@Mike Don't beat yourself up. You don't have to scramble. Per Yogi: "When you come to a fork in the road, take it."
@Mike With credentials like yours, clearly you know your onions, but be careful not to muddle the cook. Be sure your ifs ands or butters are clarified. You don't want to mixer up.
Such stirring and appeeling puns today, with lots of zest. I batter fold.
Mike, I just want to say that juicer are a fine punster. You raise the wordplay level at dish rag. (No offence NYT ;)
I think the theme would have worked better if the directions weren’t ambiguous. Like instead of cluing to “gutter” when the answer is GRATER, it could have been clued to “grater” when the answer is GUTTER. When I see “__ to __” I’m expecting to end up with the second pair of letters, but here we ended up with the first. On the plus side, I’m sure I was in the very small minority of people who knew PARADEREST off the top of my head. High school marching band coming in handy out of nowhere!
All this puzzle needed was for one word to read differently in the theme clues. For example, for the ARTOIS/BARHOP pair, instead of [Part of a beer name ... or an instruction for answering 53-Across], if it had been [Part of a beer name ... or an instruction for *reading* 53-Across], lo and behold, we’d have a theme that makes sense. A difference of one word: One small step for the puzzle, one giant leap for logic.
@Sam Lyons Your suggestion would have made the theme/trick easier to understand, but I think even as it’s written, the theme does make sense. It just takes a little more work to understand it.
@Sam Lyons @Eric I agree that the clue was close enough for me to get the trick, but I would have felt much better afterwards if they had used Sam’s version. For me, the toughest bit was knowing neither PERETTI nor TAIO. At one point, I hade PARADER-iST, thinking, “hmm…I wonder if that’s a less common name for the drum major?” Once I got the “d’oh” for that one, a little trial error got me the Naticky cross. But, on reflection, I should have guessed the “t” in PERETTI first.
@Sam Lyons -- My two cents. Your terrific solution would have made the puzzle easier and more elegant. It would have made this an excellent Wednesday puzzle. Like you, I believe the way it was done today was understandable. But unlike you, I never got the feeling that the editors did not think it through -- I hardly ever get that feeling, one reason being that I know how they've gone through my puzzles with a fine tooth comb. My feeling is that the wording today was intentional, and the best reason I can think of for it is that they wanted to make the puzzle a layer more difficult, and Thursday-appropriate. I found it refreshingly unusual, actually. I liked it.
@Sam Lyons et al. Ditto, I buried/totally omitted the lede. I should have noted that I am always impressed when constructors can pull off a letter-switcheroo like that and still produce a word or phrase that makes sense. In this case, using answers with “TO” in them to signal the switch is next level impressive. Well done, Hannah!
Ooof. All the hate. Personally I liked it. Thursdays always throw curve balls and this wasn’t really that hard. For me it was ARTOIS/BISHOP and the inability to make crosses work. That’s why I come to the puzzle - to figure it out. To think a bit differently and try something new… that’s the whole point! And I’m glad they’re all different - keeps it interesting.
@Chris I think most of the complaints are not about the fact that there was a trick to figure out but that the trick wasn't implemented in a logical way that makes sense in English.
@Chris I think that any comment that starts off with the dismissive “Ooof. All the hate” shows that the commenter hasn’t noticed or understood the giant flaw that this puzzle seems to have, which wasn’t sent back for correction and perhaps a complete rework of the concept. The first “hint” answer (just like all the others) is backwards. It says, “RA to UT,” when what you actually have to do is change UT to RA. Three of us wrote basically the same complaint simultaneously last night, and they each appeared a minute apart.
@Steve L I understand the confusion and I agree that it might be better (or at least less controversial) the other way around, but I think it works just fine if you interpret the clue instructions in a different but (I feel) equally valid (if not equally obvious) way. RA to UT meaning you must change the RA in the filled answer to UT for it to match the clue. I feel like there have been similar conceits that worked this way in past puzzles.
Another puzzle comes down to trial and error, gaming the app by entering a series of letters because I don’t happen to know who Chelsea PERETTI or TAIO Cruz are — but the constructor decided their best option was to allow two proper nouns to intersect.
@Ken W.Yep, I ran the alphabet on that one because I was pretty confident about the rest of the grid. Pretty surprised when the music played. TAIO?
@Ken W. I’m going to answer the way I did someone else the other day—PERETTI and TAIO and PARADEREST were all Naticks to me. I got my happy music with some educated guesses and trial and error and yes if I were solving on paper I wouldn’t have been sure I was right unless I saw the answer key or looked them up. But for me that’s not a loss and it’s not “gaming the app”. I appreciate that the app lets me experiment a bit instead of giving in. I accept that fact that I don’t know everything and I’m glad to have learned about two new people and a new term. I don’t care about any streaks I’m just proud I got as far as I did and finished without a lookup. What’s the big deal!!!? PS clever fun theme and I don’t care whether OCTOPI is a variant or not I like it better than saying OCTOPUSES.
@Ken W. No biggy. The first letter I tried was “t” because it sounded perfectly Italian. Never heard of TAIO, learned something. The rest of the puzzle was nice and clean, good Thursday trick.
@Ken W. I think you're right that most of us solvers didn't know either TAIO or PERETTI, so it's fair to call this a Natick. But when I had PERET_I, T seemed the only reasonable solution, to me at least. (Although, just about any consonant could have fit with _AIO.) When I got the "something's amiss" message, I didn't even consider that this was where my error was. (There was a typo elsewhere.)
@replay That’s the answer to “how much did I enjoy this puzzle?”
@replay Which should be read "NO to NEBIT".
Hannah, I seem to be in the minority today but I had no issue with the theme clues/answers as written and overall found your puzzle enjoyable and an appropriate Thursday challenge.
I'm with you, Bill. Clue A1: In order to answer the A2 clue, change the WX you have entered to YZ. Seems clear. (My delays were non-thematic: getting the correct Chelsea and the correct Cavaliers.)
@Jamie Comments like this make me angry. If you read the constructor's notes, you can see how hard they worked to make this puzzle for you. And you come in here and drop three dismissive letters, without even expending the energy to punctuate it. Ugh.
The dirtiest trick this puzzle played was asking me to believe that Stella Artois counts as beer.
@Alan J. Pyle C’mon, can’t the Europeans have their Budweiser?
@Alan J. Pyle it's a crime that this isn't the top-rated comment today lol
Oh, sweet – a classic Thursday puzzle, with a riddle to be cracked, involving something not normally done in a crossword, and with Thursday resistance to make the hill harder to climb. By the time I saw the TO in RATOUT and the other first-halves of the riddle, I had filled in a good portion of the rest of the grid, but none of the second-halves in full. That is, the riddle remained unsolved through much of the outing, nagging and pestering, making my brain screw up its forehead deeper and deeper, so that when it finally cracked the mystery, the aha was sensational. Delaying that aha and making it all the sweeter were no-knows like TAIO, vague clues like [“You’re in on this?”], and misdirects like [Silent marching band position], a clue that had me cataloging every marching band member I could think of. Classic Thursday. Capital-P Puzzle. Mwah! Thank you for creating this, Hannah!
@Lewis I was in the marching band in HS, and I don't remember PARADE REST being a thing. In the Army, that position is with feet shoulder width apart, with both hands clasped behind your back, unless you're carrying a rifle. In marching band, your feet are always together. Oh well, maybe I'll watch the video in the column.
There’s always someone who fails to read the instructions in the clues: “I’m so eager to get home and make that triple cheese pizza” “Oh get your mind out of the GRATER” Our cat adoption agency uses a PETSIT as a precursor to a license to adopt; we want to make sure the human is good enough. That one stegosaurus is such a wuss about the cold - his tail is SOCKED. Well, some inventive clergy have used the BARHOP as a way of meeting potential new parishioners.
@Cat Lady Margaret NIIIICE! I actually know a clergyman who used that recruitment technique. And PETSIT suggested the same thing to me as to you, so unfortunately it made me try to make sense of the other theme entries instead of seeing the switcheroo trick. Will I remember to BOLO for TO in the middle of words in the future? No, probably not, though I think I'm good for ATOB and ATOZ.
For over three years, this crossword has gotten me through many dark Pacific Coast nights. I have even developed something of a streak and have enjoyed improving my solving skills and reading the witty column, as well as the lively and respectful commentary here. I almost exclusively lurk, since the internet has become a divisive place - although this little corner has remained a bastion of civility. Except for today. I’m compelled out of lurkery by the meanness, dismissiveness, and bullying in the comments. I enjoyed today’s puzzle and the “aha” moment when I got the trick, embarrassingly late. I hope the constructor does not let the bullies win. Come back soon.
@mlw "Lurkery" is a fantastic word. Ima steal it!
@mlw You are correct. The rhetoric has reached a new level with this one. It's one thing to not like a puzzle. It's another to hope that the constructor doesn't get another one published anytime soon, and is glad that it's been a long time since the last one. This is not liking the people behind the puzzle rather than just the puzzle itself.
Was anyone else surprised by MIKE for microphone instead of MIc? I looked it up after finishing the puzzle. Apparently, MIKE was the original abbreviation for microphone, and it's only been changed to MIc in the past 25 years. This article explains why MIKE is actually the better choice. <a href="https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/66196/microphone-mic-or-mike" target="_blank">https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/66196/microphone-mic-or-mike</a>
@Beth in Greenbelt I was. I remember hearing "mike" first in Dancing in the Rain decades ago. I liked the word, I thought it was funny. I was sure it was spelled "mike". Then time after time I encountered it in writing as "mic". I was confused, because how can mic sound the same as mike? But ok, mic is mic. And then today happened...
@Beth in Greenbelt Thanks for getting that. I was confused while I was solving, because I couldn't really rationalize MIKE in my head.
@Beth in Greenbelt I still cringe when I have to use "mic" instead of "mike". Sort of like "lede" for "lead," as in the opening sentences or hook of a newspaper story. Showing my age, I guess.
@Beth in Greenbelt "Mic" has always bothered me. I can't bring myself to use it.
I got the theme. It took some time. For a moment there I thought it might be phonetic, and I felt dejected - "Americans probably pronounce ARTOIS strangely and I will never be able to get it", I thought. So yeah, I was glad it was not phonetic after all. It sort of seemed like the revealers were the wrong way round? I was changing one set of letters to another, but not the way the revealers implied? Maybe I'm not getting something. It was an OK theme. It didn't wow me, but it did not annoy me, either, which is rare 🤣 I did not enjoy some of the fill though: I had to look up several things of the trivial variety. Not Chelsea PERETTI though - Gina Linetti of Brooklyn 99 is my spirit animal. I, too, am a loveable rascal. I was also proud about PTAS being a gimme. I must have learned it in these puzzles. It's not a thing in Poland btw. Schools invite parents to a meeting once per semester to discuss things with them, and Parents' Boards operate as advisory bodies to headteachers, but there is no association combining parents and teachers. Maybe I'll skip reading the comments today. 2/3 of them are bound to be about OCTOPI...
@Andrzej Most Americans just order a Stella, but the second word, if ever used, is pronounced ar-twa
I loved this puzzle. I thought the theme was fun, clever, and easy to understand. There was also a lot of fun fill, like PERETTI, OCTOPI, FINESSE, and the full ET TU BRUTE, rather than the more crossword-y ET TU. Hannah, please don't listen to the haters. There have been a lot of them lately, and they all seem to have a bug up their APSES.
Super cool puzzle. Loved the theme! As for [Comedian Chelsea], my first thought was definitely Handler, but it didn’t take long to get to Chelsea PERETTI, being a fan of her standout work on Brooklyn Nine-Nine, not to mention her famous husband, Jordan Peele. She’s also got a famous (in some circles) brother - Jonah PERETTI, cofounder of BuzzFeed and HuffPost.
@Striker She was *so* incredibly funny on Brooklyn Nine-Nine; I love her. (Like most everyone, my first guess was Handler, but when nothing was working out in that area, I happily realized that it was PERETTI.)
I’ve been too tired and busy to comment much this week because my 5 year old grandson has been visiting for the week without his parents. He keeps my wife and me on the go all day. So, I’ve been crashing as soon as I finish the puzzle. I had to pop in tonight to say how much I suffered by entering Handler instead of PERETTI, of whom I had never heard. Oh, and I liked the trick of the puzzle as well.
@Marshall Walthew Boy, do I get you about watching the grandchildren. They have so much energy and we have so little.
Trivial nitpick: I feel like the theme clues should have been clued the other way round, or else worded differently -- if the "instruction for answering" says XX to YY , I expect the clue to fit the XX one and the fill to be the YY one. "Instruction for parsing" would work as fill-to-clue. But I like the trick :) Also my brain wants to parse the last lines together: Mike Reese weds Ibex Popup. They arranged for a bishop but the instructions got confused so it was a bar hop instead, as the entire wedding played The Floor Is Lava (and 18A looks for his sewing case again)
@Isabeau I agree. The gimmick felt like it was done in the reverse way
@Isabeau I had to struggle all the way through to keep my mind focussed on the switch. As Ringo Starr said, "It don't come easy".
I’ll join in the choir and say that while I had no trouble with the puzzle’s theme, it did irk me a bit that the wording was “Instruction for answering ____” when in fact the direction only makes sense as an instruction for *interpreting* the answer of _____. Ex, we are not changing X to Y when we write the answer, we are changing X to Y when we parse the answer. Feels like a simple thing to fix with verbiage, with zero changes to the actual puzzle. With that said, it was very very early on that these were flipped, so the gameplay was largely unaffected. I found the puzzle a joy to solve. My hat off to the constructor! I just wish the editors had reworded the theme clues to better reflect the trick.
@Stephen Agree. It’s not worth was a weird way to phrase it.
@Stephen Map OC “to” PI. Makes perfect sense.
Don't know who this Mike is that needs to be on every podcast. Mic is the correct abbreviation of microphone.
@Joel "the troll" <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mike" target="_blank">https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mike</a>
@Joel "the troll" Growing up, I only ever saw "mike." When I began seeing "mic" and asked about it, someone told me that "mike" was for the analog microphone I was used to and "mic" was the new digital kind. Whether or not that was true at some fleeting point in history, "mic" seems to have completely subsumed "mike." I still occasionally hear "mic" as "Mick" in my mind, though.
What a slog from start to finish. I could not have enjoyed this puzzle less.
@Lake life For many of us, the slog is the point of the journey. Like life, perhaps the puzzle isn’t the problem, it’s one’s attitude about it.
@Lake life "Could not have enjoyed this puzzle less"? Don't sell yourself short; I bet you could have. I'm reminded of Groucho's response in A Day at the Races. Why, I've never been so insulted in my life. Groucho: Well, it's early yet.
Unlike many of the criticisms I've read in the comments, what I most appreciated about this puzzle was exactly the added layer of difficulty resultant from the actual answer to the themed clue happening only in the mind. Despite being led down the wrong path for quite a few entries ("goat" instead of "aone" and Chelsea Handler instead of PERETTI, for two) I immensely enjoyed the solve. Thank you, Hannah, for forcing my synapses into firing mode and delivering a mighty fine puzzle!
@sotto voce My thoughts exactly. Fun challenge. Although I also agree with Deb that ATOP was stray theme-adjacent (and was even on the left side of the grid), which was a flaw IMO.
This was a fun Thursday! I couldn't make sense of the theme until I finally solved around ARTOIS/BARHOP and sussed out that is "should" be BISHOP.
@Hunter Same. That's when I figured out out too.
I was trying to figure out how ARTOIS could change “parson” to BARHOP. Needless to say, I failed to do so.
I dunno, just kinda underwhelmed by this one. Agree with all the folks who reckon the TO is backwards — IMHO the easiest fix would have been for the clues to read “..instruction for _reading_ XX-across”. No grid rework required. Leaving that aside though I still just thought the theme was a bit meh, especially for a Thursday. I kept waiting for the rest, but no apparently that was it Agree also that having ATOP, in an across position, on the West side of the grid is not the best (yes even though the theme is xxTOyy and not xTOy). At least if it had been a down answer say it would have been less glaring
@Alexis I interpreted the to as “Map X to Y.”
@Roberta Except it's more like the "inverse" (i.e., map Y to X), since the letters before the TO come from the verticals, not the horizontals. So I can somewhat understand those who felt that the TO was "backwards".
I was really looking forward to attending a church that allowed me to BARHOP -- perhaps a different drink at each station of the Cross? -- and that had metaphorically personified that action into a clerical role! Imagine my disappointment when I worked out the theme.
Hmm. I felt it was a bit backwards as well. But I am content that I figured out the trick. I like tricky puzzles. However I predict there will be much grumbling about this one. I hope Hannah doesn't take it personally.
Ha ha - that marching band benefit finally kicks in after 60 years LOL.
I'll be in the minority and say that I really enjoyed this puzzle. Yes, I solved it without understanding the theme, but once I went to Wordplay, I thought the theme was actually rather clever. Just because my brain didn't work that way (and it wouldn't have worked in the reverse either), doesn't mean it's a bad theme. Actually, it often means it's a very good theme!
BRUTE PHONE HOME So far that's the only themer I can come up with for my puzzle in progress that has the revealer ET TO BRUTE. I thought this was so fun! And I thought the theme made sense, but I'm hardly an authority on that. I did get hung up where everybody else did, thinking, "Sure, Chelsea FC is a joke, but not really a comedian."
@ad absurdum As an Arsenal supporter, I fully endorse this. Sod off, Chelsea FC, you ain't got no history. (Emus are Tottenham supporters.)
And now, Hannah can take another seven years off.
The Chelsea Handler fake out really got me off on the wrong foot! 😵💫
Easier to get the puzzle than the trick. I'm a big no on this one.
I loved this puzzle. I don’t have anything clever to add, I just loved it. Happy to be here.
First puzzle in a long long time that left me flummoxed. I love it! Had a great time once I was able to figure it out and I got over my stubborness to leave HANDLER in there at all costs.
That was super tricky but somehow, with stubborn persistence and luck, I figured out the theme. Then I had to go back and adjust everything accordingly. Wow, kudos to the constructor, that must have been a beast to create!
Looks like I'm in the extreme minority today! I'm got Chelsea PERETTI easily once I had the I from ITTY because of being a huge Brooklyn 99 fan (Nine nine!!)-- a proper noun clue i knew for once! And i actually found the theme intuitive as clued... didn't feel backwards to me. I guess it was just a case of being on the same wavelength as the constructor!
Today’s comments are a highly entertaining study in contrasts, the gamut from the easiest/fastest ever (Do we really believe this?) to the most hated (hyperbole, no doubt) to advice for the constructor/NYT on how to improve a perfectly wonderful puzzle.
@Mark Today's comments are boring; worst ever. ;-)
Hated this puzzle and just left it alone after realizing it was going to be one of those full of misdirection and unsatisfying complication. It’s been a long time since this person had a puzzle used and I hope it’s at least that many years before another one is used.
@SB You don't have to like it, but do you have to be so mean about it?
@Beth in Greenbelt I enjoy the occasional mean post, as counterbalance to the usual sea of sickly sweet "I loved it", "cute theme", "wonderful construction" 🤷 Also, silencing dissent, or expecting it to silence itself, isn't really better than bearing it, is it?
@SB Well, that was quite the ugly tour down Constructor Hate Avenue.
@Andrzej Dissent is fine when there's some specific valid points made, but when it's just anger and frustration because the puzzle was beyond someone's ability it merits a rebuttal. It's not just a knee-jetk reaction to all criticism of puzzles.
People are sometimes angry. They vent. It's normal 🤷
When people make their puzzles publicly available on the internet, and proceed to read online comments on them, surely they must be prepared to get some flak? The internet is not the place to look for mollycoddling.
I’m confused? Do people in Hawaii have to prep for the wet test, or is that people from all the other states have to take it before visiting? I enjoyed this puzzle. It felt like a puzzle: made one think, but ok to do.
@JohnWM I, ludicrously, had WEsTEST in there for a while. Sometimes I'm prepared to believe anything about American English. And I forgot about the Aleutians. Apart from that it was a brilliant answer
@JohnWM I wanted WESTERNMOST, but settled for WESTERN until forced to revise.
A lot of people in the comments seem to have trouble with the concept of mapping one thing to another. Map OC to PI. To me it makes perfect sense.
@Roberta It's backwards. Go through the comments carefully and think about it. Our point is quite valid. We understand fine what we're supposed to do. The only problem is it's backwards.
@Roberta If we take "answer" to mean that which is entered into the grid, then the mapping is from PI to OC, which is backwards from how it is expressed in OCTOPI. That's the argument they're making. Personally I was happy to roll with it, but their point is well taken.
And if we take "answer" to mean that which satisfies the clue, it makes perfect sense as written.
@Roberta My solution to this directional issue was to enter *everything* correctly, using standard rebus notation. Of course, this was called wrong. ;-)
@Steve L It would be backwards if the hint was how to enter the clue, but as a hint to answering the clue it’s fine. You take what’s written, change the letters as instructed, and then you have the answer to the clue.
I didn't think it was possible -- I disliked this one more than a rebus.
Seeing a lot of frustration with this puzzle … I started off going “what the heck?”, spent a good few minutes in confusion as I worked on the crossings/etc., but once the theme clicked, it CLICKED. Super satisfying and fun by the end. Definitely can see why it might be a headache (that was me for the first half and change of the solve), but a really clever trick that Hannah pulled off here that made for an ultimately enjoyable solve, at least on my end.
Great puzzle with a clever theme! I’d agree with the nitpickers if the clue had said “instruction for entering,” but I think that “answering” I fine. Part of the answering process is figuring out how to interpret the clue.
Odes of Solomon? I always learn something new when I do these puzzles.
@Paula Armstrong I had never heard of them, probably because they are relegated to the Apochrypha (which is not included in the Christian Bible)...and further, they have nothing to do with the Solomon of the Old Testatment. Pretty obscure, in other words.
For me, the best puzzles, and especially the best Thursday ones, make me, as the solver, feel clever when I pick up on the theme. I loved this theme. The right amount of challenge, subtlety and obscurity.