It’s BOCCE, never BOCCI, right?
@Mike Bocce, surely. Is "bocci" some sort of dialect or something?
@Mike It's both, also boccie. Possibly regional.
@Mike Absolutely agree. Bocci is plain wrong and coupled with a bad clue for "no, sir" spoiled a very clever puzzle.
@Mike I can never remember, so I always leave that last square blank.
@Mike Thanks! I was stuck for 40 minutes at the end with everything triple checked and no gold star - have never heard it called anything but bocce (and there was a definition of noser that also seemed to possibly fit!)
@Mike Googled it and there are several variants, but bocce is all I've ever seen.
@Mike I grew up in an Italian-American neighborhood with a bocce court. My sister and I were the only females around. We were the unofficial scorekeepers, moving the pegs on a wooden board. The bocce court was in the back yard of a player who lived high on the hill, and he would ring a bell to get a game going. Almost every man kept a vegetable garden, so it was likely that most of them would be outside to hear the bell. I don’t know if they had planned game times, but I suppose they did. They spoke English, mostly, but used Italian for some elements of the game, particularly to swear at bad shots. At home, my parents didn’t speak a lot of Italian because they spoke different dialects and teased each other about their accent. (My grandparents grew up in northern Italy but my parents were born in the U.S.) At home, we used Italian words for a lot of foods. As a result, I could be fluent if served bad food. Regarding the spelling question, I only know bocce but, with almost all things Italian, I figure there is a lot of room for creativity. I worked there briefly and that was even true in banking and the postal service.
And the puzzle answer is in English, not Italian. <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bocci" target="_blank">https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bocci</a>
@Mike "Never"? Clearly not. "Never in my experience"? Perhaps. "Requiring a 'var.' at least"? Agreed.
@MikeI If "BOCCI" I would've expected the clue to have at least one word of Italian. It doesn't full-on violate the style guide, but it's a slant rhyme to a slant rhyme for sure!
@Tex the problem it that the answer NO SER is equally valid. Many sources equate sir and ser
Sweet how this theme weaves together: • The name of the song, “Break On Through To The Other Side” describes how to get through the wall. • “The Doors” are what the mystery squares literally are -- as the bonus clues open them -- as well as being the name of the group. Very crafty, Brandon.
@Lewis Totally agree! Having the "The Doors" act as doors to connect the two sides/theme answers was both clever and delightful. Can't imagine the effort that must have gone into accomplishing it so smoothly! An enjoyable puzzle!
Mennonites mentioned! Always a little bit exciting for us Mennonites
@Lara Evoking memories of the film 49th Parallel.
@Lara as a member of the Mennonite-adjacent Church of the Brethren, I was excited, too!
I strongly believe that “How was the solve?” is a far more important question than “How impressive was the construction?” (And the solve was grand for me!) But I don’t want to neglect that second question today, because Brandon’s crafting of this puzzle was superb: • The skillful use of the entire grid. The East and West, from top to bottom, house the song title, and theme answer HOLES IN THE WALL. The center, from top to bottom, is occupied by the phantom THE DOORS, and the words connected by the letters of THE DOORS. • The wordplay. Turning BEET and OVEN into BEETHOVEN, in effect, eight times. Plus the theme-related meanings in HOLES IN THE WALL, and BREAK ON THROUGH TO THE OTHER SIDE. • The symmetry. Making this all work in the confines of a symmetrical grid. Also, in the black wall, the letters of THE DOORS are symmetrically spaced! • The creativity. How did Brandon even come up with this multi-leveled theme? One involving melding pairs of words by adding a letter between them, not to mention a black wall, a band, and a song? Scintillating! • The grunt-work. Coming up with those pairs of words, which included having them fit symmetry, so that, say, GOB / TWEENS, a three and a six, worked with MENSCH / IRS, a six and a three. Impressive build? Very, and bravo Brandon!
BTW, Brandon must have thanked his lucky stars that HOLES IN / THE WALL and BEAK ON THROUGH / TO THE OTHER SIDE break evenly in half.
@Linda Jo @Xword Junkie Hah! Easily worth the typo -- bravissimo!
@Lewis Impressive build yes, but certainly fun to solve too!
I used to post quite a lot, but haven’t for quite some time now. Today something very interesting happened with my solve. I thought that I had a very early breakthrough - yet it turned out to be all for nothing. With only the T in square 18, I looked at the clue for 68D and said to myself “I know that”. It had to be “They’re Coming to Take me Away, Ha Ha!” I remembered this Number 1 song in Canada, and it fit perfectly into place, including the T at square 18. Furthermore it was by someone called Napoleon XIV. And Napoleon Bonaparte had played an important role in the music of Beethoven who also composed “Für Elise”. It all seemed to click and I really thought I was on to something here. I prided myself on guessing such an unlikely clue so early on. Well, I soon realized, when none of any crosses would work (except for ODE at 78A), that I would have to tear that idea up, and it was not until much later that I could fill in the Doors classic. To add insult to injury, I looked up “They’re Coming to Take me Away, Ha Ha!”, and it was actually from 1966, not 1967. Notwithstanding the above, this was a terrific puzzle and a very enjoyable Saturday night romp! Cheers to old Wordplay friends!
@Andrew Cheers back. Don't be a stranger.
@Andrew What @Bill said. Miss your sense of humor.
@Andrew I remember when that song came out. We could not for the life of us figure out what the heck it was all about. There were all sorts of theories, but with no Google machine it was very, very hard to get anything definitive about it. I haven't thought about it for years, but I'm sure there are hundreds of pages out there talking about the song, and maybe some of them are even true. P. S. Like the others, I hope you chime in often.
I wish the animation had not filled in the bridging letters automatically. I wish it had given me time to go back and look at the bonus clues again after I filled in the rest of the puzzle and figured it out on my own. Other than that, I enjoyed the puzzle.
@Liz B I appreciated the animation. Would I have been able to figure the extra clues out on my own, probably not? This was a fun puzzle. I only needed one cheat; I didn't know the "Lip Gloss" rapper. A wee Wiki search brought her name right up.
@Liz B I completely agree. How cool would it have been for the breakthrough squares to activate once the rest of the puzzle was correctly filled? Probably a coding nightmare though. Wishing your Durham group a pleasant lunch this week! What fun...
@Liz B I too would have enjoyed the opportunity to ponder the bonus clues and figure out how THE DOORS came into play. The animation really spoiled that aspect of the puzzle.
@Liz B @Eric Hougland I was surprised that the bonus clues filled in by themselves when everything else was correct, but I was kind of over trying to finish the puzzle by them, so probably wouldn't have bothered with the bonus clues. I do understand why people would not be happy when that happened though.
@Liz B If you turn off overlays (in settings) it won’t fill in the bridging letters. You can do that even now, after solving. I believe, though, that having the overlays turned off has made me miss out on delightful things sometimes, although I can’t remember an exact example. In today’s puzzle, I had an inkling this would happen, so I wished I had paused to turn the overlays off just before finishing.
@Liz B very much agree. I understood the trick with BEET(H)OVEN but didn't use it for any of the other solves. Was looking forward to going back and figuring out the other seven bonus clues, and disappointed the graphics did it for me
It was not my cuppa tea. Why the 8 were cute, without it lined in the actual grid, those eight felt like nothings to me. I know this took a lot of effort to construct. That’s laudable. That said, hidden “bonus” clues aren’t really bonuses if you have to SCOUR to find them. And if you’ve already completed those blocks, they become moot. Or in Joey speak: “moo”
@Red Carpet Exactly. Each half of the answers to the bonus clues was clued so simplistically, you didn't need them to assist your solve. When THE DOORS appeared, I was like, "Oh, those work as two halves of a longer legitimate answer. Huh." And then when I clicked through to the info screen, I was like, "Huh. They went to the trouble of writing clues for the long entries. Weird. You don't need them for the solve." If a crossword needs additional explanation, it's generally not a good puzzle.
@Red Carpet I don't want to agree with you, but I want to commend your Joey quote. Made me look it up!
Well constructed puzzle! Who spells Bocce as Bocci, though? Seriously.
@Isaac Unfortunately the Times does. It’s a common “alternative” in the puzzle. They also use panini as a singular. 🤦🏽♂️
@Isaac The Navaho do, and Slavs who spell their name Sacha, while doing ueys, uies, or whatever. Tsars maybe, as well, or was it czars? It's been (a)eons since anybody knew any of this, precisely.
The longer the notes or instructions, the more tedious the puzzle.
@Dave Worse: this one split the puzzle into two halves, completely separate puzzles.
@Dave It's like a joke that has to be explained. You understand the explanation, but by then it isn't funny. Puzzle was fine for me but I had 47D BOCCE for 134A.
So. Much. Fun. Very happy to be a stone tablet solver for this one. Living in the NY metro area, I get my Sunday supplements delivered with the Saturday paper, so the Sunday puzzle is my Saturday morning ritual. It was a treat to suss out the bonus entries after everything was filled in - no automatic fill-in like y’all are complaining about. I love the endless creativity of NYT constructors, and Brandon never disappoints. Bravo!
Mmm...this one seems to have divided the commentariat. Count me among the disappointed (and after such a stellar Saturday!). I think the Puzzle Notes clues should have been in the actual puzzle, clued for the left side entry, with the right side having only an em dash. To me, that would have integrated the theme into the puzzle and been much more challenging. As it was, this was a pretty simplistic solve and I only noticed the trick with the center column after I finished and the app revealed the missing letters. Frankly, if I were doing this on paper, I'd probably still be wondering where the theme was. Instead of working to puzzle out the theme, it felt like it was just handed to me after solving a too-easy Sunday.
Jim, Actually, doing it on paper, the theme was clear and finding the theme answers was a delightful experience.
@Jim I think that would have made for a better solving experience for me as well. Or even, clue the left side with the full word and clue the right side normally.
@Jim I like your idea. The extra clues should have played at least some part in solving the puzzle, some how, some way. They did not. ____________________ Jesse Goldberg 8/28/2024 for Puzzle of the Decade (emu filler)
@Jim My thoughts exactly. I did see the “bonus” clues — and in my mind that means extra — and ignored them. However, they were an integral part of the theme and should have been incorporated into the cluing. Yes, one can solve the puzzle without them but in my opinion it would have been better and more clever to include them.
NH, Yes, it was good for me, and, I assume it was good for the folks who recommended my comment. Or perhaps they were just happy that I enjoyed the puzzle. Sorry not sorry it bothered you.
@Jim I think that would have made it easier for us App solvers. I ignored the extra clues, because I couldn't see them w/o going back to the notes, and that's a pain. Especially when you don't really know what you are looking for, and the regular clues are all that's needed to finish the puzzle.
Just love these clues: Romanian city that becomes an Ethiopian entree if you swap the third and ninth letters while standing on your head and performing a Nicaraguan dance with your left hand.
@Dave Post of the day. ____________________ Jesse Goldberg 8/28/2024 for Puzzle of the Decade (emu filler)
Discoveries from the puzzle: MENS CHOIRS contain a mensch. True, in my experience. CHORE-O-GRAPH: I’m adopting this coinage to make to-do lists more fun. Maybe some dancing involved. RUNTS. Would I eat one? Research required. The theme, though complex, was fun to solve. I like how the break through answers are so different in meaning and pronunciation from their two parts.
@Cat Lady Margaret I totally agree! I’m seeing lots of comments that the theme didn’t add anything, but I tackled it first, solved the song title, and literally used the extra clues to solve 7 of the 8 answers on the right side. The extra clues were super helpful to me. It was super fun.
This was a great puzzle and now I will have The Doors hanging out in that space between consciousness and my subconscious for a few days. There seem to be a lot of solvers who have an idea of what they think a crossword puzzle should be, and if a puzzle doesn't fit that idea they consider it a bad puzzle. I continue to be impressed by the imagination of puzzle constructors. These folks keep me on my toes - I'm not sure what to expect. When I can complete the puzzle in a reasonable period of time (the time that it takes my morning coffee to cool off enough to become undrinkable, with maybe a warm up zap or second cup on a Sunday), learn a thing or two (IMGUR, RINSO), and maybe overcome an "I know it is right" moment when it can't be right (BOCCI) by checking my crosses, it was a good puzzle worth my time. Thanks!
Light My Fire! Thanks, Brandon.
@Barry Ancona You know that it would be untrue You know that I would be a liar If I was [sic] to say to you... My least favorite Doors' song is now my daily earworm. Thanks, Barry.
Clever and fun. My only suggestion would be if the new squares could have come in blank, giving us one last clue to solve.
Kudos to whoever chose "You’ll need all of your powers of perception to get through Brandon Koppy’s latest Sunday puzzle" as the column's subtitle. The Doors took their name from The Doors of Perception, an Aldous Huxley title itself taken from Blake's "If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is: infinite". Apparently, mescaline played a role in all of this.
Small world. This morning I saw octopi playing bocci.
@ad absurdum And they had paninis and tamales for lunch?????
Vaer, Tamales are fine; tamale, not so much. Be my gyro.
Not just "a cemetery in Paris," Caitlin, Père Lachaise Cemetery! Anyone who is--or was--anyone is buried in Père Lachaise! Even people who (probably) aren't buried in Père Lachaise are buried in Père Lachaise (Abelard and Heloïse). Mounds of flowers (and other things) on the gravestones of Jim Morrison; on Alice B. Toklas; on Maria Callas; on Frédéric Chopin: fewer, but some on Luigi Cheubini and Paul Dukas. (Vincenzo Bellini got into a snit and moved back to Italy.) Young men taking selfies with Oscar Wilde. Myself, there exists a photo of me in front of Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826)--French lawyer, politician, epicure, and gastronome. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_burials_at_P%C3%A8re_Lachaise_Cemetery" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_burials_at_P%C3%A8re_Lachaise_Cemetery</a> Wanna know who isn't buried at Père Lachaise? Bede! He's buried at Jarrow; also, he isn't a Saint, strictly speaking, rather a Venerable Doc. Still, better than you or I . . . (Not that I don't find our Wordplay columnists, and many of the constructors, worthy of veneration:-)
@Bill. From his death in 735 to 1899 Bede was indeed simply “venerable”. As a result, when he was canonised by Leo XIII in 1899, and so afforded the title “saint”, 1264 years of usage stayed with him.
@Bill. And P.S. Durham Cathedral claims to have his remains, which carry, in Latin, his identification as Bede the Venerable.
@Bill Speaking of the transference of relics, those of la Diva Maria are no longer actually at Pere Lachaise. They were stolen, recovered, then scattered over the Aegean. The urn, and the flowers, remain. Take her, earth, for cherishing.
@Bill In my memory he is always "the Venerable Bede". I didn't know he was a saint, but the process of becoming a saint has always struck me as more than a little peculiar.
@Bill You forget the Montparnasse Cemetery (which is but a few minutes' walk from my apartment). Buried there are a lot of luminaries: Simon Beckett (one of my most favorite writers) Charles Baudelaire Guy de Maupassant Jean-Paul Sartre Simone de Beauvoir Susan Sontag Marguerite Duras Serge Gainsbourg Jane Birkin Jean Seberg Eugene Ionesco Man Ray Agnes Varda ...and many other notable people.
Great puzzle! Tough, and worth the work. I don't know if it was just me, but I ran into some serious issues in the SW, with IMGUR, LIL MAMA, and REGIME. But I am grateful for this, because it gave me time to review all the bonus clues and discover THE DOORS, which was a delightful way to end the puzzle. I feel sorry for those who finished the puzzle and got this bonus given to them as an animation (of sorts). I think I would have felt cheated if I hadn't solved this on my own. A suggestion to the techies who transfer the puzzle to this digital format: After finishing the grid, it would have been great to have the black squares of "the doors" (or "tunnels") turn to white (or gray), and allow us solvers to put in the bonus solutions in order to finish up. [Although I know this possibility would be a source of dismay for a certain sub-set of solvers.]
@The X-Phile exact same experience for me! Though I guessed at LIL MAMA, couldn't get IMGUR or CALVES or OLIO (which I still don't really understand, but I digress). I decided to do the bonus clues while I pondered, and was glad I did that ahead of time, though it didn't help the corner. In the end I googled IMG__ and found my way from there. I think your techie suggestion is a great one!
119A is incorrect. Our state bird is the mosquito. Aside from that egregious error, this was a fantastic puzzle! The theme was excellent and the fill was fun. TUSHIE, BELLOW, SATIE, ESO BESO, HAD LUNCH crossing UDON, the witches of MACBETH crossing ELPHABA. Many thanks, Mr. Koppy!
@Katie You're not kidding! When I moved here from Florida a couple years ago, I did not expect there would be this many mosquitoes. 😯 Nobody there believes me, either! 😄
BOCCI should be BOCCE. Someone please find me the spelling anywhere with an I.
@Allen Funny you mention that. This was the reluctant letter switch that finally earned me the music and gold star today!
@Allen Google tells me it's an alternate spelling, but I 100% agree with you. I've never seen it spelled BOCCI in my life.
It's BOCCE. The game is BOCCE. This ruined the entire puzzle. Can the editors really be this clueless?
@Paul Z. It looks like "ruined the entire puzzle" is synonymous with "I made a mistake because I failed to check my crosses".
Paul, The answer is in English, not Italian. The answer is fine. See if you can unruin your puzzle. <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bocci" target="_blank">https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bocci</a>
@Paul Z. I wouldn’t say the spelling ruined the puzzle for me but I did cringe. Bocce is very popular in St Louis, where I live, especially on The Hill (originally an Italian neighborhood…where Yogi Berra and Joe Garagiola grew up), and I’ve never seen it spelled as BOCCI.
@Paul Z. I agree with your point. It seems to me that, at the very least, there should have been a "(var.)" appended. But if this is enough for it to "ruin" the puzzle for you, you may have bigger problems.
@Nancy J. And I don't know how to check Webster's in Google for variant spellings.
I must admit I found this a bit tedious to solve. And then I looked up the IMGUR article on Wikipedia and my eyes glazed over. Quick, Bonnie RAITT to the rescue. Here she is performing Thing Called Love. <a href="https://youtu.be/7vqrQ_47B4U?si=PlzXRm7jATBIKusg" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/7vqrQ_47B4U?si=PlzXRm7jATBIKusg</a> That's Melissa Etheridge along for the ride. PS Getting a little tired of those clues that want you to swap letters in names or ask you to figure out a name that sounds like two letters or anything thing else along those lines.
@Vaer I used to be addicted to imgur's daily meme page 10 years ago or so, when most of the memes were actually funny, and often works of creative genius. However, over the years the content changed, and I stopped browsing imgur completely in 2020 or so. Too bad, tbh, because it used to help me understand and communicate with my 18-21 year old students. Now I'm out of touch with them, again.
@Andrzej Hope you checked out the Bonnie Raitt video.
@Jerry I don't know, but several of the commenters think so. I also liked her little shout out to Stevie Wonder's Living for the City at the end. "New York. Just like I pictured it."
@Vaer Watched it now, at the end of a sad and stressful day. Great stuff, thanks 👍🏾. However, the bowtie guy with the accordion looked very out of place in this properly rock setting. Was he there for comic relief ? 🤪
@Andrzeg Sorry you had a rough day. No, Bruce Hornsby is a legitimate musician. I couldn’t say why he's playing accordion with Bonnie. To add a blue grassy element to the performance? They did record some stuff together around the time of that performance. Bruce also spent a lot of years playing piano with the Grateful Dead as per Wikipedia.
@Andrzej Don't want to tax you, but here's Bruce's best known song, I believe. The lyrics hold up, unfortunately. If you're already sad, maybe not for now. <a href="https://youtu.be/cOeKidp-iWo?si=RI7XY44fTjQOaz6" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/cOeKidp-iWo?si=RI7XY44fTjQOaz6</a>-
Well-constructed, a pleasure to solve. Always mystified by the level of complaint some of these grids inspire. If I can abide impact used as a verb out there in the wider world, folks can endure a grid quibble or two every now and again. Enjoy!
I spent a lot of time trying to figure out my mistake, could not, finally had to reveal the puzzle. Turns out the mistake was yours. The Italian word answer to 47-down is spelled B-O-C-C-E, NOT bocci.
@Mary Pontzer BOCCI is an accepted anglicised spelling. By the way, what does NOSeR mean?
This was an interesting concept for a Sunday puzzle, or should I say double puzzle. I figured there would be some trick to bridging the wall down the middle of the puzzle involving the eight bonus clues. I set about solving the twin puzzles, assuming the trick would become clear in time, without really looking at the extra clues. I got the revealers and finished the puzzles, and the answers to the bonus clues revealed themselves without letting me solve them. If I had tried to figure out the bonus before completing the puzzle it actually would have made the puzzle unnecessarily harder. I liked the concept, but think the execution was a little off. However, I did like THEDOORS mini theme. BREAKONTHROUGH and TOTHEOTHERSIDE gave me massive footholds on each side of the puzzle, which helped the solve immensely. Continuing the musical theme, I enjoyed seeing long time favorite, Bonnie RAITT crop up on the right hand side. I’ve seen her many times over a more than 50 year span beginning at the Philadelphia Folk Festival in the early 70s. It’s odd to think that Bonnie released her first album in 1971, the year Jim Morrison died, and she’s still going strong more than half a century later.
@Marshall Walthew Au contraire, looking at the bonus clues first did help me solve the puzzle. Finding the DECO for DECO(D)ER RING showed me how the trick worked. Yeah, I should've seen BEET(H)OVEN first, but was thinking Bach for Elise this sleepy Sunday morn. Doh.
Fun puzzle, though I was more willing to accept the archaic word “noser” as a winky gentleman’s disagreement (“I do believe you’re asking for a noser, old chap”) than I was to accept that the alternative (and gross) spelling “bocci” existed.
@Horatio Same conundrum. I was sure it was BOCCe, but also pretty sure that outside of Game of Thrones "SeR" wasn't really a thing. But I also wasn't familiar with AGNES Varda and started to doubt the "S". No amount of fiddling got me there until I found that, meanwhile, in a land far away, I had UVULAs instead of UVULAE..
Horatio, I will be challenging my brother to a noser in the near future - thank you for the laugh!
a long slog for sure. the bonus clues did not add anything to the solve. Perhaps if the salient clues had been starred, it would have made the puzzle clearer.
Hi Asher: I came here to say the same thing. The fact that I could solve the puzzle without engaging the theme at all made it less than satisfying for me. I admired the construction immensely but the directions could be greatly improved.
@Asher Well, from 68D I knew that there were eight hidden squares, and the “wall” running down the middle of the grid was divided into four sections, so I was able to figure out that two of the bonus clues probably went into each of those four sections. That did narrow things down a bit.
@Fred Agreed. I saw the reference to additional clues in 68Down, but didn't know where "the note" was. Since that's not how the column or constructor's notes are usually called. I guess it's a personal bocci.
Having to look at the extra clues in the notes made me ignore them completely 🤷 The fill was Monday/Tuesday level, except where it wasn't, for me, because of proper names, trivia and unknown terms. I had to look up what polliwog meant, and I asked google for ROKU (I checked what it was and if it's available in Poland - it's not), ELON (like dozens of schools, it's come up here before but I can't really remember where all those colleges are located), RUNTS (utterly arcane brand, for me), LIL MAMA and RAITT (never heard of them), UVULAE (I've seen it in previous NYT puzzles, but it's not a word I was likely to remember), CTA, and DELCO. It was not an annoying grid, which is rare, in my experience, for a Sunday. I know the championship ring as a concept well enough from movies and TV (I think I learned of them first from Pawn stars, of all places 🤣; yes, I used to watch "reality" TV 15 years ago), but it's a very American thing, isn't it? I've never heard of rings being awarded to champions of any sport popular this side of the pond.
@Andrzej That SW corner was where I ran into trouble too because of the IMGUR/ UVULAE/LILMAMA crosses. I had LIL, but LIL MAMA is not one of the many Lil-something rappers I've heard of. I'd also never heard or IMGUR, and since it looks like a nonsense word to me, I couldn't figure it out even with a few crosses. I thought the rest of the fill was pretty smooth.
I loved this puzzle. When first saw that black bar down the middle, I knew something interesting was about to happen, and I wasn’t wrong. I always forget to look at the Sunday puzzle theme before solving, so I didn’t see the bonus clues until I was done. But the song title gave it away, and HOLES IN THE WALL drove it home. BEET_OVEN was the easiest to crack, and it wasn’t hard to spot the rest of the letters after that. I had a lot of fun filling this in, and I appreciate the creativity behind it. That said, I have one request: Can we please agree on one accepted spelling for UEY / uie / uwie / uee / that thing where you turn around in the road??
@Heidi The correct spelling is u-turn.
@Heidi Agree on a correct spelling??? You are asking the impossible! Just this week we've had arguments over Octupi and Bocci. Part of the puzzle of this thing is figuring out how to spell things. :o) Don't we love the English language? [Spelling rules? What are they?] I lived in Russia for 2 years, and while my Russian speaking never got very good (learning a new language at 70 is about impossible) I can read it pretty well -- even if I have no idea what I'm saying. The letters look funny, but are always pronounced the same way. 10 vowels, 20 consenants. Oh that English were that way. I loved the puzzle a few months ago with many different words ending in OUGH that were all pronounced differently.
Haven't scanned all the comments, so perhaps this has been mentioned already. HONESTWOMAN seems a bit troubling given its apparent origin, which at least is politely hidden by the clue "New bride, quaintly".
@Xword Junkie "Archaic" might have been better than "quaintly"
Tremendous puzzle and easy solve for me. Born in the 50’s and still love The Doors. They sent Ed Sullivan into a tailspin in the 60’s with Light My Fire… girl we couldn’t get much higher!
Hi- Popping in to say I was disappointed that the center clues self populated when I finished the puzzle without giving me a chance to fill them in . Would have been fun if when the two sides were complete EMPTY squares appeared in the right spots so you could at least have the joy of answering those clues . Obviously on paper this puzzle would have been harder . Interesting solve.
Well I’m glad this was easier than yesterday’s but I wouldn’t have missed yesterday’s either. In the end, I thought BOCCI for “Italian lawn game” was spelled BOCCE. I must look that up. I loved getting BREAK ON THROUGH TO THE OTHER SIDE!
@Convoid-04 I thought the same, and it turns out both are valid spellings (as is BOCCIE, as it turns out).
@Convoid-04 I almost just gave in a did check puzzle, bc I could not find my mistake. Changing the E to I finally put me out of my misery, but not before doubling my average solve time. I still really enjoyed the puzzle.
@Convoid-04 you are absolutely correct...and I did look it up. BOCCI is barely mentioned even as a variant. Even worse, BOCCE would work fine with the NOSER cross since SER is actually a common variant for SIR.
My Diary of a Crossword Fiend review: <a href="https://crosswordfiend.com/2025/07/12/sunday-july-13-2025" target="_blank">https://crosswordfiend.com/2025/07/12/sunday-july-13-2025</a>/ TL;DR: A clever concept, admirably constructed, that was spoiled by the decision to have THE DOORS appear automatically on completion of the grid.
Eric, TL;DR: Fun solving on the stone tablet delivered to my cave. (Pretty in Print)
@Eric Hougland I did read it; it wasn't all that long. :) And I think your summary here is a bit kind, when the gist of your review seems somewhat more in line with mine: "impressive construction doesn’t equal a fun solving experience. I didn’t dislike the solving experience, but neither did I truly enjoy it." Although I actively disliked the whole experience, because it went nowhere. This is a puzzle where ALL the fun belonged to the constructor and none to the people solving.
B, I had to find THE DOORS on my own, and I had fun doing so. Sorry your online experience wasn't fun.
@Eric Hougland I agree completely with your analysis although I didn’t mind the pop up animation at the end; I could have figured it out on my own but I knew it would spell something out so it wasn’t going to be that difficult.
@Eric Hougland I left one square unfilled until I figured out the theme (did not look at the bonus clues).
@Ιασων Next step Kielbassi You already did it to pierogi!!! 🇵🇱 (I jest. Pierogi is the proper Polish plural of the singular pieróg. The singular kiełbasa becomes kiełbasy in plural nominative, so quite close to kielbassi 🤪)
Many of the regulars here may remember that I about to move soon to a new abode, in about about two months. So today, we had a garage sale and got rid of a lot of junk, and made a decent amount of dough for things we'll never miss. So although I commented a few times last night, I didn't have much of a chance all day to go back to see the Saturday comments. But very craftily, we ended the sale at precisely the time the puzzle came on, and although I was a few minutes late getting to it, I enjoyed a few minutes of mind-clearing relaxation. As Sunday puzzles go, this one wasn't it. I didn't notice the note with the eight bonus clues (I blame that on the fact that I was quite tired by then). But I did notice the huge wall of black running down the center, which is usually a no-no. That helped me with the two-part HOLES IN THE WALL, and put me on track. There were some very difficult spots for me, so I wondered whether it was my fatigue. Maybe a bit, but I found on xwstats.com that this was a Hard puzzle (though not Very Hard, like yesterday). And I solved it totally without the benefit of the eight bonus clues, and had no idea what was up until the solution flashed the extra letters. So I then went back to see what I missed. Sometimes, you just shouldn't attempt a crossword when you're tired.
@Steve L "Sometimes, you just shouldn't attempt a crossword when you're tired." I hope you learn that lesson quicker than I did. (I still make the mistake of trying to finish a puzzle when I'm barely awake.) Good luck with your move. We did it 11 months ago (and are glad we did), but I wouldn't want to do it again.
@Steve L I forget; where are you moving to?
This puzzle was a bad experience on mobile in the app. How would one know that there were 8 secret clues? They were hidden in the menu to open the blog article. I don't open the article about the crossword, which contains spoilers, until I am stuck or done. That was very frustrating to see when I completed the puzzle. On that note, the title of the crossword/blog article, which is occasionally a hint to the puzzle, should be visible in the mobile app without opening the blog article as well. Other than that, it was a decent puzzle.
@Phil On Sundays always open up the title page (the little i on the top, at least on my app) to read any additional notes. I still found it annoying to go back and forth but there it is.
@Phil In the web version using mobile browser, the only place those clues appeared is by trying the little "i" icon, which I did long after completing and complaining about the simple crossword puzzle. Overall a dismal experience all around.
@Phil I didn’t open up the clues, but I knew from the puzzle itself that there were 8 holes in the wall. Going from top to bottom, I broke on through to the other side by completing a longer word when filling the holes in the wall with T-H-E-D-O- . . . and the penny dropped. Very satisfying—but I did that after the puzzle was completed.
Oof. PAN before MAR. DUKE long, long before ELON. the western flank was super hard for me. I wondered if the missing letters from the wall had been put in some of the clues because how else could BEDE have six letters? Doh! TIL about whales and polliwogs. CTA and IMGUR. RADON is a noble gas and noble gases are not reactive because they have their electron shell filled. But radon is radioactive, which is different. The clue misdirected me for awhile. Ditto REGIME where I was hoping that ‘those in charge’ referred to ions (get it? 😊). The theme was cute. I particularly liked seeing BEETHOVEN.
@SusanEM ELON is "classic" crossword fill. Anytime there's mention of a "Carolina university", it's the first thing to come to mind for me, even before I check the number of letters.
@SusanEM I had to ask PhysicsDaughter about RADON. I felt sure it was correctly entered, but a Noble Gas?? She said, "Sorta." How lucky you are to live in Basel!! I loved my one visit. I was at the gate of the Kunstmuseum when it was opened and Wow!! I literally cried out, "The Burghers of Calais!" It took my breath away.
Solved it without help, but sadly found doing so quite the slog. To me, the fill really suffered in service to the theme. A very nifty exercise in puzzle construction, which for me wasn't enjoyable to solve. I wonder if Mr. Koppy is already hard at work on his Pink Floyd tribute puzzle---in which we add bricks to THEWALL. Hope not. By the way, there's no J in any of the answers---so don't bother looking for Mr. Mojo Risin' hiding anywhere in this grid.
@Xword Junkie We disagree? Say it ain't so. I found the puzzle tricky, but worth it in service to the theme/gimmick.
Multi-dimensional genius.
I solved the entire thing without ever looking at the theme, or caring about it. I found it to be, in essence, two separate puzzles, each of a Tuesday-level difficulty. I guessed most of the "bonus" clues just by looking at them. I knew, when I was about to fill in the last square, that the theme was going to have something with tunnels, holes in the wall, and The Doors song , but didn't need that information, and didn't care. I hit the last letter, got the completion fanfare, and saw it was doing, and still don't care.
@Bworks22 Agree, theme seemed superfluous. Didn’t even know where “bonus clues” were until pulling up the article after finishing.
Loved this puzzle, did not love that it revealed the bonus answers as soon as I entered the final letter in the grid. I was looking forward to working that out. Maybe a “reveal/keep working” button could be added to puzzles like this in the future?
@Rob Exactly the comment I came here to make. Thanks for succinctly expressing it and shout out to a fellow Cincinnatian!
shoutout to @SOTTOvoce, thanks for making 34A a freebie
I know I shouldn't brag, but I was the class valedictorian and I had a D- average. Suck on that, bonus clue 7! Home-schooled only child for the "W"!
An interesting Sunday. Pretty chewy in places, esp bottom left, but otherwise fairly straightforward. I worked out THE DOORS from the two related clues, then spent ages looking to see how to fit it in. I was surprised to get the happy music when I filled the last square as I expected it to need more work. The song is now my earworm of the day. Winced at IN PAWN. Never heard it called anything other than pawned before. The haybales are in. Manfully rose at 06:30 with only a mild hangover, to beat the heat. Still ridiculously hot out there.
@Helen Wright As mentioned elsewhere regarding "In pawn" check out Libba Cotten's Shake Sugaree. Here's a link: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1ViAIdO3i4" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1ViAIdO3i4</a>
Wow, I h_ted this. Ridiculously easy to complete, and the theme was utterly superfluous to the puzzle, more so than any theme I can remember. Totally irrelevant, playing no part in solving any of the easy, easy clues. Just h_ted it. Sorry. Felt like a short waste of time. (Now expurgated to please the emus)