My favorite little detail is that *only* the themed across answers contain Cs.
I propose a more specific clue for 69A: "Exclamation made by unobservant solvers who only realize after completing the puzzle that every clue has begun with the same letter." (This refers to a friend's experience, of course.)
@Paul Frommer or maybe "Cry made by unobservant solvers who only realize after completing the puzzle that every clue has begun with the same letter." Gotta start with a C! :)
Great Monday puzzle! Must admit I didn't notice every clue began with a c until I got to the theme... Like that experiment where you're so focused on counting basketball passes that you don't notice the gorilla walking by
@CB We who solve on the website never see the complete clue list -- each clue comes up one by one as you move from one answer to the next -- so we had no chance to see the array of Cs. Rats!
Charming crossword cluing compadre!
So there, I was, in my cabin cruiser, off of Cape Cod, snacking on Cap’n Crunch, candy corn, chocolate chips, cotton candy, and, of course, cold cuts and clam chowder (put together by my celebrity chef), when a California condor flew by, making catcalls. And I, a career criminal, living in a clown car for too long, I, a Capone career criminal, suddenly wished for a clear conscience. I wanted to join a chess club, stop making crank calls, get rid of my common cold, join a city council, sing Christmas carols, play clay court tennis without cheating, dance the can-can with a happy heart, watch the Calder Cup or hear the clip clop of horses without gambling, study famous people like Calvin Coolidge and Charlie Chaplin, maybe join a camera crew, use a non-fake credit card, enjoy legitimate chit chat, be caught on Candid Camera doing good things, run cross country, join a chess club, that is, be a force for good. And I did it! Vanished from the mob like a cancelled check. My calling card is now Ex-con Caped Crusader, Captain Contenment. Case closed.
@Lewis Captain Curmudgeon counters: Contrived clue concept curbs cruciverbalists' contentment. 🤪
Andrzej, We get it. You don't like surprises. Many of us like surprises (at least in puzzles).
Andrzej, Surely you jest. You had commented seriously today -- and on other days -- along the lines of the first paragraph of your reply just now.
@Lewis Worried for you, seeing that you've had a seizure....
@Lewis Alas, your nautical diet might induce a cardiac catastrophe.
Sailors seas the day. (It's a boat time I posted that.)
@Mike Deep thought. Very sailent. Your wisdom is surfacing—salty but not at all blue.
Mike, Shipshape post. (Stay on an even keel.)
I think these puns manifest an unmoored psyche, but then it’s knot for me to judge.
@Mike ... And if the pun is right you can sail away With fine agility ...
@Mike I bet yawl are gonna ketch some grief for that post. (Sorry to barge in here. Once again, I thought I'd trimarandom comment.)
The theme was bolstered by a sextet of fresh answers, appearing for the first time in the Times crossword – BOOK DEAL, CARD COUNTING, COCA COLA CLASSIC, LET IT REST, CAITLIN CLARK, and CHALUPAS (though this answer has been used in the singular before). Fresh answers aren’t automatically good, but these were. That brought spark. The all-clues-begin-with-C flew right over my head until I uncovered the reveal. That trick is hard to pull off, as usually, there are clues that feel off or contrived and give it away. Bravo, Brian! I love being gotten like that. I was on the wrong track trying to guess the revealer, thinking “seize” would be in it, but my brain relished the effort. And, it turned out to be a lovely revealer, punning on "C's" and alluding to how that letter opens each word of the theme answers. So, this was more than a Monday blip, it was a day-boost; its charm made my heart smile. Thank you, Brian!
@Lewis I literally gasped out loud just now. I didn't realize until reading your post that all the clues start with C. Amazing! I am going to finish my coffee now.
@Lewis what an absolutely delightful comment! thank you!
My five favorite original clues from last week (in order of appearance): 1. Head into? (3) 2. Noted doomsday prepper (4) 3. Flash point? (3)(6) 4. When squirrels may thermoregulate by splooting (4)(4) 5. Apt name for a narcissist? (4) RAM NOAH AHA MOMENT HEAT WAVE MIMI
My favorite used-before clues from last week: [Medium capacity?] [Pop flies?] ESP SWAT
@Lewis I’m glad to see Noah made the cut.
@Lewis I loved the clue for MIMI! So much in fact that I'm going to refer to my sister as Mimi from here on out. It makes me laugh!
@Lewis My new pastime- Googling ‘“images of squirrels splooting” (or raccoons, dogs…). It apparently is my happy place.
AORTA give you a STAR for this one. A CLASSIC Monday (no PEAKS necessary, so no rEGRETS). Thanks, Brian. I'm COUNTING on seeing you again. Now I'm hungry. ASAMIch should fix me right up.
Canny commenters commend Callahan’s clever crossword: “Cheers!”
Really enjoyed this one, and... Wow! The reveal was one of the last things I worked out and then I was just amazed to go back and look over the clues and realize they all started with C's. That's just amazing. And.. to be able to do that and also make this a Monday easy puzzle is just incredible. Oh, and as a side note, over time I've come to believe that constructing an early week (easier to solve) puzzle has to be more challenging than constructing the later week puzzles in some ways. There's quite a limitation there. I'm done.
@Rich in Atlanta Well put. It's quite nice to read an early-week post that comes to praise CSer, not to bury him! 😉
For those of you who are just starting out and are struggling, I'll just let you know that it used to take me forever to do the Monday puzzles and now they are a breeze. And super fun. Hang in there. Your brain will warm up.
Aww nice to see a couple of Peruvian entries on Independence Day! ¡Felices Fiestas Patrias! Only last week I was in Ayacucho in the Andes here in Peru, where you can visit the site of the final battle that concreted Peru's (and basically South America's) independence. There's a super monument, great cuisine and lots else to see around the area - very much recommended! Easy 45min flight from Lima. Very nice puzzle, loved noticing all the "C" clues! Wasn't it mentioned a couple of days ago that there was a puzzle once where all the clues began with "T"? - I think I read about it in the comments on the recent one with black squares shaped like T's, with "Teetotaler" as an answer somewhere. Nice work, thanks Brian!
Per the column...let's start with the obvious: I wasn't paying attention! LOL I had to be told that all the clues started with C. Nice Monday puzzle. Stay cool, fellow puzzlers.
@Amy I didn't realize it until I read your comment.
Champion crossword constructer! Calendar-commencing creativity!
Thought I'd seize the day and tell you that I feel very KEEN about being on the OPENSEAS--and this puzzle is no exception! Cute, classy crossword! I have no rEGRETS about it except that if I gave it the letter grade it deserves, it wouldn't match the theme and that would be unKIND. 🤷♀️ C y'all later!
@HeathieJ Oh, well done! I went to notepad to try to compose a clever comment (hey, look at that! Three C's, without trying, lol) Anyway, I decided it was too late, I'm too tired, and I would just enjoy everybody else's creativity. Have a good Monday!
Cute! And that's how Sue "C's" it.
Cousins Pyotr and Mikhail review "The Crullers Caramelzov" by Fryo Doughsky. An international tale of relationships within a rising family: • Croquembouche Caramelzov: The family patriarch, puffed up and keeping it together by the thinnest strands. • Dmitri Bear Claw Caramelzov: The impulsive nutty son, slashed by a fritter-ing rivalry with his father over dough, and a slick honey named Glazedenka. • Ivan Kanelbullar Caramelzov: The intellectual middle bun, knotted up with philosophical extracts about the great baker in the sky. • Alexei Fritelle Caramelzov (Zeppole): A devout small donut who tries to leaven troubles between his brothers. Spoiler/TLDR: Live with kindness! (ASAMI) Hooray for The Crullers Caramelzov!
I normally don't comment, but I was absolutely not on a wavelength with the constructor today. My tipping point for this puzzle was the cluing for 63A—how exactly does "Cellphone's weather app, e.g." equal WIDGET? A widget is not the same as an app. The app may *have* a widget that can be displayed on the home screen, but this is such a nonsensical clue to me. Seems like I'm the only one taking issue with it, though.
@E. Yes, I think you're right. I forgot to mention it, but widget has a specific technological definition (last I heard was for web portal tech), but I think the clue writer was unaware of that. I think the clue writer was thinking just the everyday use of "widget" as "that thing that does that thing". OTOH, I haven't really kept up since I left development. Still, it wasn't my favorite clue/answer combination.
@E. Right? It was a very weird clue - gettable but strange. I waited for the first cross to enter APP, reluctantly. What is the opposite of technically correct? Technically-incorrect-but-not-so-wrong-as-to-be-ungettable? Also, if "technically correct" is the best kind of correct, as some say, the other thing surely is the worst kind of correct :D
I'm definitely not up on apps, so I'm not sure what's at issue here. <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/widget" target="_blank">https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/widget</a>
It very well may be, and that is distracting you from the meaning of WIDGET that dates from 1924...
An app can be considered a gadget.
@E. This completely threw me, too. It was clearly not WIDGET for exactly the reason you say, so I kept trying to re-do the SW corner. It's unfortunate that a general lay usage of the term overlaps with something that will be defined more precisely in developer documentation, but it's not an unheard of thing to happen. Here's to better luck for us tomorrow!
@E. The thing I see on my cell phone that gets me to the weather app on my cell phone is a widget. It's a little larger than the usual app icon because it also shows me the current temperature and where I am. Most apps just have an icon. But some, with constantly changing info -- like clock and weather -- have a larger 'icon' called a widget. If you go into the screen-editing mode on your phone, you will have a choice to add Widgets. I could also have widgets for my calendar that would show upcoming appointments, or for my email that would show newest 3 email subjects. At least this is the way it works for Android. I think iOS is similar.
I had lAwn before YARD and stop before WAit before WALK 🤣 Finally got there 😅 Congrats, Callahan! Happy Monday Crosslandia
Love it when a Monday puzzle is so engaging. Thank you Mr. C.
My observational skills are clearly not particularly KEEN. I solve on paper, so I can't imagine why I needed the revealer to point out that every single clue begins with a C. Maybe it's just a testament to Brian's skill. Coming up with such natural sounding clues that didn't rouse suspicion is quite a feat. Okay, now, upon reading the comments just before posting this, I see that @Chris g picked up that the only C's in the across answers are in the themers. I missed that completely. Very impressive!
@Nancy J. How is it impressive that a feature of the puzzle was so immaterial to the solving experience almost nobody noticed it while filling the grid? I'm not being snarky - I just don't understand this position.
Every single sporting reference (and they usually defeat me) could be filled by crosses. 5 stars to the setter.
I C what you did here, Mr. Callahan. Very clever (and impressively clued!) puzzle. There weren’t any clues that felt heinously forced, which is a real accomplishment given what you were going for. Bravo!
"Free of the usual fill"??? Not with 9D in there. CrossWorld is *tired* of this....9D! OPEN SEAS is certainly a phrase I've never heard or read, despite a fondness for naval novels. I was thinking of something like SEASONAL for the reveal--sly, but more "in the languge." There's a wonderful Mexican place called Santo Coyote in Little Rock that we quilters used to visit after our gatherings. I never tried their CHALUPAS because the Pozole Verde was too delicious to miss. Hated moving away! Sigh. Off to quilt guild this morning..."Christmas in July"...predicted to be 96 degrees.
@Mean Old Lady re: your first observation—ASAMI!
@Mean Old Lady This is literally the third daily puzzle in a row with "ASAMI"!!
@Mean Old Lady Y'know, putting a crossword puzzle together ain't always a walk in the park. I know you're tired of crosswordese, asami, but constructors don't like using these fillers any more than we like seeing them, but once in a while its almost unavoidable without blowing up the whole puzzle.
@Mean Old Lady I could do without the "playground retorts" as well. But hey, I've never created a puzzle, so who am I to judge?
Funny story. I had Doh! Instead of Duh.
Nice one for a Monday!
To Andrzej: I so enjoy reading your comments, and knowing your mastery of English, thought you would be interested in the book, "Enough is Enuf. Our Failed Attempts to Make English Easier to Spell," by Gabe Henry. It is full of fascinating fun facts and hilarious. I guess only English- speaking countries have spelling bees for children. A bunch of you crossword solvers will love it, too.
@Marcia Fidler Thanks for the tip. That may be a bit niche for me though, and I also often balk at the sort of humor American authors seem to favor when writing facetiously about facts. I'll add the book to my Kindle wishlist and try a sample later to make up my mind. Polish doesn't have spelling bees. However, one of our linguistic staples is the dyktando - the word may look familiar, because it is related to your "dictating", as in reading out loud. During a dyktando, a person reads a text full of complex, unusual words and punctuation (where to put a comma is much more complicated in Polish than in English), and participants attempt to write it down. Dyktando is one of the basic components of Polish language classes in primary school, but there are also advanced dyktanda (that's the plural of dyktando) for adults, prepared by best Polish linguists, like Jerzy Bralczyk. They are so fiendishly difficult I would never be able to complete one without errors, even though my Polish is basically perfect. The thing is, an adult dyktando is a bit like a Saturday puzzle at the NYT: tricky on purpose, and dipping heavily into the repository of the language's most obscure words.
Probably a good clue to my mental condition. I had trouble with 58A, "City of Honolulu's island." After 43 years of living there and only eight years away, I could not think of any real city besides Honolulu on its island.
@kilaueabart It was a stumper, for sure!
@kilaueabart I understand your confusion. The clue should simply have been "Honolulu's island". The "City of" was forced by the feature of the puzzle most of us missed.
@kilaueabart That WAS a bit mind-bendy! There are little communities here and there, not to mention all the posts and bases, but cities?? (Things have really changed since we lived there--1958-60, when cane and pineapple fields cloaked the hills with gray-green and bright green...)
Huh, I have a Canon EOS, but it never occurred to me that it was named for the goddess, because it's capitalized. I figured it stood for Electronic Operating System or something like that, because it features a digital autofocus.
@Grant - Same, and I'm on my third Canon EOS. (Currently using the 6D Mark II)
Heh! I just completed today's crossword. Those who get upset when the same word appears in two puzzles on the same day are going to need some calming. Down, boy!
CaptainQ, Sorry. I misread your comment to refer to consecutive days. And we've had recent comments about words in the Crossword and the Mini on the same day. I don't do the Midi.
Surprisingly tricky for a Monday and the C opener for every clue is some mighty fine work
What Cleverness is this?! Color me impressed. Clearly a feat. C's the day!
The SW corner was inappropriately natick-y for a Monday. Otherwise, a fun puzzle!
@D Where is there a Natick? The only two names I see that intersect in the SW are INDRA and CAITLIN CLARK. You might not know INDRA, but the 1.2 billion Hindus probably do. And not knowing CAITLIN CLARK at this point is like not knowing Tiger Woods. I'd hardly call that a Natick.
@Katie I have zero interest in basketball of any kind, but CAITLIN CLARK got my attention when she was earning more as a college player than professionals in the WNBA, through Name/Image/Likeness.
I'll admit it. I had a scary number of unfilled squares in the SW, and I ran through the unresolved clues several times before I finally figured out COWER. EASYTIGER seems easy in retrospect, but I couldn't find it without a lot of crosses. I honestly don't recall every hearing of INDRA, so that was a challenge. And it wasn't until I got COWER that I got ROARS. (I mean honestly, crowds do a lot of things: Oles, Rahs, Gos, Boos, but none of them fit. In short, not a good solve time for a Monday for me.
Francis, What's the rush? Did you enjoy the open seas?
@Francis agreed, I had multiple naticks in that corner too and blew out to a Tuesday time as a result. Rest of the puzzle was a nice Monday though!
@Francis I had lawn before YARD, so that slowed me down a bit in that area too. By the way, according to X word stats, this was a hard Monday. I was 1.6% slower than my Monday average.
Fun puzzle, and congrats on the “C” theme! I was briefly thrown by the clue to 20 across, which doesn’t fit the answer… “Characteristic of a penetrating mind” calls for a noun as an answer, but “keen” is an adjective. “Keenness” would be the fitting noun. “Penetrating, as a mind” would have been the proper formulation of the clue. Thanks for a great puzzle!
@Chuck Berger ah but "characteristic" can be either a noun or an adjective! Here is is an adjective 🙂
My work weeks are always easier to start when I get a sub 9min ;-)
While a compadre is very very often an amigo, it doesn't mean that. Your compadre is the godfather of your child, comadre for women. It pretty much means your "co-parent"
Cite: <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/compadre" target="_blank">https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/compadre</a>
I am perplexed that a moderator removed from this thread the exchange of posts discussing that while the the clue and answer do not agree in Spanish they do agree in English. A classic tamale trap. I don't think the OP was offended by anything I wrote, and I certainly was not offended by anything the OP wrote. WHATEVS.
PHI Chi... Obviously I entered "tai" there without giving it any more thought. Thankfully CaALUPAS looked really weird and popped at me right away when I checked the grid upon not getting my gold star. In the end I remembered CHALUPAS from an older puzzle - the word is a bit funny for me, as in old Polish chałupa meant a village house, and it modern Polish it is one of the slang words for "home." Also, RAt may be many things, but certainly not Cardi B's genre 🤪. Anyway. PHI Chi seems obscure for Monday? It looks like gibberish to me (Greek letters are not commonly used over here, at all, except as symbols in math and physics) so once I got it from crosses upon correcting my error I looked it up. An international medical fraternity you say... So international it only has an entry in English on Wikipedia 🤣 The theme did nothing for me, but it didn't hinder my solve, which is good enough I suppose. Why is a MACE, specifically, ceremonial? I've seen many more ceremonial swords than maces. It seemed like an odd way to clue that weapon. In Poland for centuries a kind of mace (buława) was the insignia for military officers, pułkownik (colonel) and hetman (old Polish military rank, roughly equivalent to a top-tier general). However, its purpose wasn't only ceremonial - it was a functional, deadly thing, which happened to also serve as insignia.
@Andrzej Since all the clues begin with the letter “C”, “ceremonial” takes the nod over any clue that begins with a different letter. See? I enjoyed that every clue began with the same letter.
@Andrzej My experience was different, I thought the puzzle was delightful. I hadn't noticed all the Cs until I got to the revealer (like Francis, shoulda been a detective!), but when I did, it made the puzzle for me. I too often think "that's all?" when I finish a Monday, but not this one. A plus! Just like A comes before B, PHI comes before CHI. It's a Monday clue.
I appreciate that you could have clued SCAD as College in Savannah, but you chose not to do a college abbreviation, Those always irk me, because I’m not going to memorize hundreds of college abbreviations, as they have no other application in life. This puzzle was an incredible feat! Nicely done!
@Annie If that were the reference, “Savannah” couldn’t be in the clue. And that would turn an already tough clue for most into an impossibility.
College couldn't be in the clue either.
@Annie How about: [Carolina rival of RISD] (Well, maybe a good late week clue)
@Annie My bad, I’m across the border in SC, it’s in GA. Oops.
Cowabunga, that was cool!
Clever, clever, clever. Congrats!
So so clever. Not easy to fit that much clever in a normal puzzle size.
“As am I” is really having a moment lately.
Mondays continue to be not as easy as they used to be (for me anyway) but this was certainly a fun solve, must have been quite a challenge to have all the clues start with C.