Saturday, August 16, 2025

Now that was a Saturday puzzle. Thank you, Byron!

I can't make my own oleo. But I'll get butter at it. (If only margarinely so.)

Friends, I'm not sure I'm going to make it. After many recent puzzles where I have broken my own records by astonishing times, this one may be the end of me and all I hold dear. If you never hear from me again, please know I hold you in highest regard and that I've enjoyed our time together... Please don't forget me. And please tell my husband I love him. All right, cracking my knuckles, doing a couple back stretches, and I'm going back in!!

I failed the trivia contest.

I’m calling Natick. 24A and 26D are beyond the limits of reasonable knowledge for mere mortals. Throw in the unknown 37A and the highly suspicious 38D, and there you have it. It qualifies. There are those who will disagree with me. You’re entitled to your opinion, as am I.

What a great puzzle. If I recall correctly, one of Byron’s former college students once posted a very nice note about him on here. Every time I do one of his puzzles, I feel like I am learning something new while having a great, and often pleasurably vexing, time. I have no doubt that he is an excellent math professor, and luckily for us, an excellent crossword constructor to boot.

This one was definitely not for me

1. [Like a typical Byron Walden puzzle solve] 2. [Detective's overly excited words upon arriving at a crime scene] 3. [Pee?] 4. ["We never call it __________!", rebuke to a tourist by a person from Frisco] 5. [Plaintive appeal to Godzilla] 6. [Dangerous things to have on motorcycles] I had a blast with this peach of a puzzle! It was a real toughie, though! 1. SEVEN HOUR 2. "HEY! ANY BODY?" 3. PRESS START 4. "THE" BART, MAN 5. "LOWER HOUSE" 6. OPEN MOUTHS

Fun puzzle! But Ash Carter deserved more than to be called trivia. Please read his remarks on the decision to include transgender people in the military. A wisdom we are now lacking. <a href="https://www.defense.gov/News/Speeches/Speech/Article/821833/remarks-on-ending-the-ban-on-transgender-service-in-the-us-military" target="_blank">https://www.defense.gov/News/Speeches/Speech/Article/821833/remarks-on-ending-the-ban-on-transgender-service-in-the-us-military</a>/

I am going to stick my neck out for a moment. A student of Austen, an expert on Austen, an avid reader of Austen—may all be Austenites. But a true lover of Aunt Jane like myself is and always will be a Janeite. That’s my hill and I’m going to die on it.

I kept hoping for that golden moment of enlightenment, when I suddenly get rolling and everything becomes clear. Uh, not this time. A slog all the way. Not unpleasant (actually enjoyable) but I thought I'd never get it done. Thank you, Byron Walden. for a puzzle worthy of a Saturday. No kidding around, just got us thinking and learning things, like that smart boy's name, and who did the animation singing, and that the Rhodes Scholars won't be crowded. My admiration for your creativity is UNWAVERING.

Often get the feeling that many here assign a ceiling to the time spent on these puzzles, then just plain quit when they hit that limit. Too hard! Unfair! Bad clues! This one took 30min more than average, but it finally yielded after a healthy (unhealthy?) amount of hair pulling and foul language. Maybe that's the benefit of being retired -- or starting at 4 AM!

Not a fan. I enjoy a tough puzzle, but this was neither a fair test nor a fun challenge. Far too much obscure trivia. Ruined some of the otherwise clever clueing.

A Walden Saturday feels like a holiday to me – and it’s been more than a year since it’s come around. You don’t simply enter the box in a Walden puzzle. It’s more like going to another country. It has its own distinct feel. And I’m a fan of that feel. Byron takes no prisoners. He brings me to the edge of uncle, and man, it feels like a victory to enter practically every square. It’s a magnificent solve riddled with victories. Today: A 66-word, 21 block elegant grid (both these numbers ridiculously low), squeaky clean. Okay, there’s THOS, but it’s easily saved by a terrific factoid clue. Try filling a 66/21 grid, even ugly, and you will bow with respect at Byron’s talent. Two things you can count on in Waldenstan: • Fabulous original wordplay clues, like today’s [Smack in the middle of a crowd, in brief?] for PDA, and [Curve that’s high and outside?] for ARCH. Two bland answers given shimmer through wit. • Debut Times puzzle answers – 19! Nineteen! I did the math, and three-quarters of the squares with letters belong to debut answers (.738%)! Did your puzzle feel vibrant? Welcome to Waldenstan. My favorite debuts were TIGHT FIT, UNWAVERING, ROSE TO FAME, PRESS START, and the marvelous HEY ANYBODY. Byron, you are such a credit to Crosslandia. Your puzzles sizzle. What a beaut you brought today. Thank you sir!

Oof, GALOIS/OCELO/LEA is one hell of a Natick. I knew Lea, fortunately, but had it spelled Lia. Tried the other spelling for my Gold Star. Tough solve. 33 minutes even

This was a brutal puzzle. Ever since I neared a milestone I've been fearful that I will come across something like this that will end the run. Happy to say that I persisted, but Byron definitely made me earn that 1000 crossword streak!

I'm convinced (with little evidence) that the original clue for 8-Down was "___ digress", but was changed to "___ disagree" to make it more difficult. BUT I digress. Do you disagree?

One of the best Saturday puzzles in some time. It trusts its solvers to be well read and reasonably intelligent. Nice to see the sublime LEASALONGA in there. And a reference to differential GALOIS theory? Wonderful! More like this, please. Saturdays have been a bit too easy lately.

Byron Walden is a master. Really, what else is there to say? Thank you for the Saturday puzzle I’ve been waiting for, Byron.

I adore crosswords that keep me on the edge of my seat -- will I be able to solve it? or will my streak go up in flames? -- but end up being (just, barely) solvable. Then, I get to spend 30 minutes looking up facts, listening to music, etc., to get the 411 on what I didn't know. That combination of challenge and learning is just perfect, and never gets old. Thanks, Byron, for a perfect Saturday! [P.S. Our daily, ad-free, chuckle-rich podcast, Jean & Mike Do The New York Times Crossword, is still going strong, and we love new listeners!]

I have made one spin through this puzzle, both across and down, and have only a few tentative fills. Came here to see if people were calling this one easy, because that might be the sign to throw in the towel. Is it better that I’m not the only one having problems? I don’t know, but this may be the one that breaks me. Good luck, everyone else. Hope to see you on the other side. Don’t wait up.

Wow! What an amazing Saturday workout! I’m not ashamed to say the SW corner finally did me in, and I haven’t been done in by a NYT puzzle in a long time. I did get LEASALONGA although this bit of trivia was new to me. I made an educated guess on BOARDIES which panned out. I had ELSE (thinking of computer logic) before ERGO for a long time, and I couldn’t get my head around RESTON for the literal meaning of surmount for awhile, but got there too eventually. But I couldn’t get past ITS instead of TIS, and had CEELO in my head instead of OCELO, so I was left with ACAIBUTTER which I was skeptical of as a dairy product but couldn’t get around. And despite what I thought was a decent background in math and AP calculus, GALOIS was a total unknown to me. And only just this second did I figure out that ACTIONHERO meant James Bond and not some funky nickname for a well-performing investment. So I finally succumbed and looked up CEELO to find out while he did write a SpongeBob song he is not a brand of sponge. Well done! I am thrilled to have been pummeled into submission by a fiendish but ultimately fair challenge and look forward to many more.

More made-up entries than in any puzzle I've seen. Does anyone actually say HEYANYBODY? Is BESTADVICE even a thing? YOU'VE is not a particularly natural entry to "changed". BUTI is too lame even for fill. It's more like the answers were dreamed up to suit the clues than the other way around. And to surmount something doesn't mean to RESTON it. That's what you do after you have surmounted it. I avoided putting that in for the longest time because I knew it simply wasn't correct. Didnt finish and am not the least bit bothered by that.

Ok, here’s my last word on Naticks for today. If by Natick you mean crossing words that a certain high percentage of solvers don’t already know, then GALOIS and LEASALONGA and maybe BOARDIES and OCELO are Naticks. But the real question should be (at least if you are going to complain about them) is whether an intellectually curious person should or would want know them? With the exception of OCELO I think that’s the case. I’m happy to learn that surfers wear board shorts and they are called BOARDIES. If I didn’t know who LEA SALONGA was I would be excited to look her up and learn about her accomplishments, which certainly go far beyond Disney movies. And I’m tickled to learn that despite a decent math background and more than my share of math lectures on the Great Lectures series, there’s an important mathematician I haven’t heard of and I’m grateful for the constructor explaining his work to me. Folks, are we here just to prove how smart we already are or can we set a secondary goal for ourselves to grow and learn?

Mr. Walden, if you're reading this, I came here today to say, first and foremost, thank you for a really rich puzzle, with entrances into many a rabbit hole. My synapses were crazy firing and you've given me lots of homework. I'd also like to say that, despite having been an A+ algebra student in high-school, I understood nothing of your constructor notes until you got to "His so-called Galois theory laid the foundation for algebra as it is studied today." But I sure guffawed all the way through that first part, so thank you for that, too! Mr. Byron Walden, your puzzles never disappoint and always live up to your very inspired name.🙌🏻

Not looking at any hints, and I've come here mid-solve, which I never do... But this puzzle is KMA (abbr). Maybe it's fatigue from trying to outlast my five-year-old granddaughter's play instinct. Maybe I'm just too "old-man-away-from-home-out-of-sorts", but this is a throwback to the days when a Saturday was at best quarter filled, most of which is wrong. I very much doubt I'll ever come through with this one. So I won't read the comments on how easy it was.

If we knew nothing whatever about Jane Austen, the novels would be enough. They are love stories, love felt for family as much as unfolding love for a potential partner, told with clear insight into the difference between what people seem to be and what they are, the ridiculousness of snobbery, the precariousness of life without money, and always, the reliability of integrity. What has made the novels endure is that she tells these stories with a delicious kind of humor, a sure eye for the silliness of self-importance and the value of honesty, all revealed through the dilemmas she creates in the stories she tells. When we admire an artist there is an urge to have more, to pull aside the curtain and find out everything about the wizard. but it's the art that counts. We should accept that there isn't any more, and the books she has given us are enough.

Despite the touching (and true!) constructor note, the clue for GALOIS is not good. "Differential Galois Theory" is a real thing, but it's not the theory for which Galois is best-known by a long shot - "Galois theory" is a much more common term. "For whom an algebraic theory is named" would be much more appropriate. I'm always asking for more math in the crossword, but that won't stop me from posting things like this xP

This was a tough Saturday and, as others have said, it was a bit on the Jeopardy! side as opposed to the wordplay side. I came here to say that looking things up online (as facts, not as crossword clues) is not in my view cheating.

Really really didn't enjoy this one. The punny clues were particularly helpful and worse than that, weren't particularly funny. A lot of unrecognizable words that really had me second guessing my answers, but not in a fun or exciting way. What are boardies?? No one says that.

I think the complaints about the GALOIS LEA SALONGA crossing are partially valid, but to me, the L in GALOIS is guessable, and the most likely letter to form two sensible looking names. But maybe that's because my father, a proud Welshman, used to wear a T-shirt on holidays to France which read: "Suis pas Anglais, je suis Gallois." And on the same holidays, I used to sing along to "A Whole New World" with my sister, doing our best impressions of Brad Kane and LEA SALONGA.

Bartman is not a comics superhero

Oh. My. Lord. I see Mr Walden’s name, I know I’m in for a slog. How does one person put together such impossible clues, but have a whole that fits beautifully and makes complete sense?? If my head hadn’t exploded I would tip my hat to you sir. Let’s start with Mr Walden’s constructor notes; I’ve said before here that I am dyscalculic. Maths is the equivalent of the 7th circle of hell for me. I, literally, with no hyperbole, did not understand a single word other than it was a young Frenchman, his name and the fact he died aged 20 after a duel. Mon Dieu, tres Francais. So there’s that. Naturally I had no clue what 13D meant. Eventually got it with crosses but still needed to really look at it. The singer. Nope. Dance. Nope. Which MARIO? Nope. Scrubbers? Nope. Song. Nope. BUT; I knew BLOW DRY BAR which helped. Never been in one. That’s a thing for them big cities. Haven’t reached Somerset yet. I knew the French Assembly was LOWER HOUSE, ERGO the Mexican chamber must be the same. Figured out 17A. Am I the only one to find that cringingly icky? The rest was the proverbial slog of trying to fit letters in to make a sensible word. And yet, once finished, with a few exceptions (see above), it was all so obvious. Now THAT’s a Saturday puzzle. Bravo.

One of the best constructor notes ever!

It was a difficult puzzle for sure and may get some praise from the folks who think the puzzles have become too easy. I like a difficult puzzle, but I think this one was difficult for the wrong reasons. I love those clever and devious clues that when you figure out the answer you appreciate the guile and lateral thinking and how brilliantly it was clued. Another way to make a puzzle difficult is to fill it with obscure (to most) references, clues that don’t quite work, questionable fill. and green paint. To some, I guess this is what makes a fun puzzle, but not for me. chacun à son goût. Green paint (multi-word answers that aren’t common phrases) are my personal puzzle peeve, and there was no shortage of these today: (HEYANYBODY, SEVENHOUR, OPENMOUTHS, PRESSSTART, BESTADVICE, BUTI[disagree], and more). In the category of obscure fill, a certain amount in a late-week puzzle is fine, expected even, but too much is just a way to make a puzzle difficult without making it interesting, clever, or fun. In today’s puzzle I think the line may have been crossed. Some examples from today’s puzzle (some of which I knew) there were: GALOIS, MRLONELY, OCELO, THOS, THEBARTMAN, LEASALONGA. Some of these (like MRLONELY) were derivable after getting enough letters. I’d put HEXER into the bad fill category, but one or two in a puzzle is generally just an annoyance. This puzzle also had some lovely clues like “Bond Classification” , but not nearly enough for me 😢.

don't cross LEA SALONGA with OCELO

I had fun! Never heard of a BLOWDRYBAR, BOARDIES, and even GOATBUTTER came as a surprise, but the crosses were doable. Read the clue for 14D and immediately thought HEYANYBODY - and by gosh it was right! Love when that happens. Happy Saturday!

So much complaining in the comments. I enjoyed this puzzle thoroughly. Maybe I was just lucky? I look forward to more Saturday puzzles from this author.

The puzzle was fine and a fair level of difficulty. But I didn’t like the clue for “roan”. It was clued as a horse color, but it’s not a color, it’s a pattern and the pattern color varies from horse to horse. So it was sort of like having a clue for the National color of Scotland and having the answer be “plaid”.

This crossword got me angry and irritated. This activity is supposed to be fun and challenging, but not to the level that the challenge is too hard and then no fun is left. Real life provides enough quota of frustration and irritation. I do not need my recreation to evoke the same feelings. Really bad.

This was one of the most brutal puzzles I've seen in a while. I've been getting progressively better at not using Google for help, but today was extremely tricky.

I’m not going to look through all 200+ comments, but The Bartman (the song + dance) came from The Simpsons Sing the Blues album from 1990. Bartman the superhero did not appear in the TV show until the next year, and the Bartman comic books did not appear until 1993. So I rather think the dance inspired the superhero, not the other way around.

I don't normally comment on here, but man... its like this puzzle didn't want to be fun. I spent 6 hours trying to solve this without lookups, and I wish I could get that time back. I really liked the NE and SE sections, but NW and SW were chores to get through. I was stuck with DRYBAR, RHOUSE, MOUTHS and ADVICE for soooo long. I had "teen MOUTHS" for a long time (they french a lot?) and "case ADVICE" (counsel on getting "a lead"). The "by-the-wind sailor" was especially unfair, because you needed to a. know what that is b. know its another name for Velella and c. know that they're BLOB shaped. Also having LEA SALONGA crossing GALOIS, OCELO and THOS is just... cruelty. All four of those terms are so relatively niche, and having them all cross like that is heavily unfair. I don't mind the challenge, and it makes it more satisfying when I'm able to overcome it, but in the end I still wanna have fun. I don't want to have to do homework before hand.

In case the editors read these, I want to add my voice to the Yes column. I pay for nyt crosswords because they are the best and they (used to) challenge me regularly. (If you don't like that go play LA Times or WSJ.) This was an excellent challenge. Yes it took me longer than my average. That's great! I appreciate the level of difficulty. Disclosure: yes, I am also happier with broadway/movie trivia than, say, sports trivia which nobody ever seems to complain about. PS Lea Salonga is not that obscure. Google search lists her in the top 10 most well-known modern Broadway performers

All those 10, 9, and 8-letter entries made for a TIGHT FIT, very little glue required. Now that’s the sign of a master craftsman! Favorite entry….AUSTENITES. Proud to be one. Great clue "Bond classification" for ACTION HERO. Well done, Byron.

First heard of Galois theory while watching a documentary on the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. There was a point when it seemed this puzzle would take four hundred years to complete.

Just because you CAN use a word/term....doesn't mean you SHOULD. What a slog...and as such, not fun at all.

I haven’t read the comments in full yet, so I apologize if this is a repeat. For 1A, I wound up with ByObDaYspa for quite a while. Now I wonder if these exist. If there are any entrepreneurs out there looking for a new idea, feel free to snap this up. :D Also, thank you commenters, I appreciate the discussion here every single day. It’s one of the best parts of puzzling for me. I have so many favorites. I am working backwards through the archives and am currently in May 2020. I try to read the archive comments too. It’s very interesting to see the names come and go and to see the influence of the campaigns, the elections, COVID 19, etc. This community is the best! Thank you all!

Well that was like taking candy from a baby!! A baby hippo!! 🤕 🦛 😵‍💫 Yes, my good people, I am back from the battle... Beaten and bruised... limping, humbled. The many WHAPs still resounding in my ears. A mere shell of the woman I used to be. StilI, I survived. Nary a look-up, but it was getting close where the sponge, the Tony winning actress, and the French prodigy came together... But I put in what I thought was most likely logically, and I got my dunce's music. Only a blue star though because two-thirds of the way through, I decided to do a check puzzle. There were only four incorrect boxes, but they were definitely holding me up in my last area. Whew!

After thinking I was so smart all week… with this one I needed the clues.