Spoiler alert: This puzzle has a rebus. (C’mon, *somebody*had to say it!)
@NYC Traveler yes, two others before you did 😉
@NYC Traveler disregard my previous comment 🤣 I always sort by oldest comments first, but my phone updated today and it defaults to newest comment first 🤦🏼♀️
@NYC Traveler 😂 That was my very favorite clue! But also it made me wish that it was kind of meta and there would be a rebus in the puzzle.
I misread 16A as “Catcalls of the insurance industry.” “Hey baby, check out my copay!” “Let me help explain your benefits!” “We might have to deny a claim that cute!” I’ll stop now.
@Cat Lady Margaret I was led to believe, by Stephen King, that Mainers had absolutely no sense of humor. Are you a mutant native, or a transplant?
@Cat Lady Margaret It’s the wolf whistle of Wall Street
@Cat Lady Margaret Don't know if you'll be willing to check back on this, but I loved your post and thought I wrote something that might get a laugh, but also make the emus pp their shorts. (I'm obviously working to try to not rile the blue-haired emus.)
@Cat Lady Margaret, “I got ya deductible right heah!”
@Cat Lady Margaret HAHAHAHAHA 😍😍😍😍😍
"Whoa baby, if like to put a rider on THAT policy!!"
Oh hey, a Tuesday puzzle with a REBUS ;)
@Isabeau What will the REBUS haters say?
This is unacceptable. What is the editor thinking? After that tough Sunday and Saturday, now they put a REBUS in a Tuesday puzzle?!
When I didn't get my favorite toy as a baby, I got rattled. (But then I'd have a bawl.)
@Mike I used to have crib notes. Now I use a mobile app. It helps to have a pacifier. There's a prize for a good one.
@Mike This one should have had a spoiler alert.
@Mike Fanatic railingat the injustices of playthings could lead to reversal of formula . . . Welcometomybib 😉
@Mike This makes 2 days in a row I'm drawing a blanky.
Am I just really drunk or was this really hard for a Tuesday? 8:31, that's really slow for me on a Tuesday. Also, the clueing for 9A seems wrong to me. Isn't the vegetation that prey animals eat considered part of the food chain?
@Steven M. Around eight minutes is my usual Tuesday solve time. Tonight it was 10:39. Even though hard at first, it eventually softened.
@Steven M. Well I’m definitely not drunk and I thought it was one of the harder Tuesdays I can remember. A lot of tricky clueing. Some of it was this seemed like a “young” puzzle, not just that I didn’t know the revealer, but stuff like Play Store purchase and Insta post which were gettable but just not instantly accessible to my brain. But still this was crunchy all over— I never thought I’d see “Dance performed in Smetana’s ‘Battered Bride’” or “Residents of the Realm of Four Parts” on a Tuesday. Not that I am complaining, I loved this puzzle and appreciate a harder Tuesday. Maybe the editors took to heart everyone complaining how easy puzzles have been lately.
@Steven M. That was one answer I put in right away, even though I was dubious about it. If the predator is at the top, then its prey is just one step below. If that’s the bottom, it’s a pretty short chain!
@Steven M. Definitely harder than a typical Tuesday IMO. Part of what made it challenging, I think, is that some of the theme answers were more vaguely clued than a typical Tuesday, so things like RAILING AT and MONITOR LIZARD didn't jump out at the solver, as can often happen earlier in the week.
@Steven M. Not just you. I made my first pass through the across clues and was shocked by how little I had filled in. Took awhile before it finally broke open, and I ended up a good 20% over my normal Tuesday time.
@Steven M. This is what xwstats.com had to say about it: Global Stats Difficulty Very Hard Median Solve Time 8:19 Median Solver 18% slower ⚡26% of users solved faster than their Tuesday average. 9% solved much faster (>20%) than their Tuesday average. 🐢74% of users solved slower than their Tuesday average. 48% solved much slower (>20%) than their Tuesday average. I solved it in considerably less time than their median time, but still about 13% slower than my Tuesday average. I did notice, though, a bit of crunchiness as I was doing it.
@Steven M. I found it quite hard! The clues were just a little trickier/quirkier than a typical Tuesday. Loved it but solved well below my average time. Enjoyed EVE as a counterpart to ADAM from yesterday.
@Steven M. Hopefully an actual ecologist or zoologist will weigh in, but prey can be used for plants or fungus or other non-animal foods. Also (responding to the "very short chain" comment), predators can be prey for other species.
@Steven M. And I was rooting for SOIL, but nothing grew on it.
@Steven M. I came within 30 seconds of my average time, and had to hunt for one wrong letter before I got the happy music -- I had DIs -- but I knew sOALIE was wrong. I was thinking Internet, not sports....
Netminder? That had to refer to the internet, right? Ok, I do alright with technology, but stay away from social media. Hmm. I had DIS for 1A. That gave me...SOALIE? Umm, no. I'm open to learning something new...but, no, that can't be right! I puzzled over the NW corner, until I realized, DIS was not it. For gosh sakes, I see it now, dang it. Grrrr! Sports clues, got me again! Lol.
@Lily same same. Also, I don't know why, but I really struggled on this for a Tuesday.... Took me 50% longer than my average.
@Lily Same here and harder than a regular Tuesday. Below my average but five minutes slower than my best.
@Lily Also my last letter to fix. But even with that I was about 30 seconds under my average! YMMV....
Cluing seemed less straightforward than a typical Tuesday.
I like the cuttlefish clue!
Often on Tuesdays, my crossword-veteran brain goes into IDLE, settles into recall mode, takes a breather, knowing it will be barking out answers to very-little-effort-to-get direct clues. Swaths splat in, the puzzle finishes, and while my brain enjoyed keeping in practice, it never got excited. My brain likes to riddle-crack, to be thrust into a problems that force it to devise possibilities, to unearth connections, to gather different meanings for words, to suddenly see the blanks between crosses. This is what galvanizes my brain. And today, right from the start, my brain perked up, and before long, it was yessing. There were vague clues, no-knows, wordplay clues, a theme to crack, clues with humor. I left the revealer blank, didn't even look at its clue, and tried to guess it, knowing at that point that it would include CRIB. And even though I didn’t get it – I never heard of the show – the effort was more balm for my brain. Then there was the bonus of a rare-in-crosswords five-letter semordnilap (SNIPS). Thank you, Eric, for this, for taking my brain from lethargy to happy dance. More please!
I realize the crossword has a built-in difficulty sequence throughout the week, but after seeing NYT rank the difficulty on Connections I’d be curious to see something similar for crosswords. Maybe I was off today, but felt like a trickier Tuesday. A 4/5 difficulty, if you will!
@Steve Actually there is a project afoot to purposely "untune" the weekly difficulty scale to measure the effects of tinkering with a concept which translates to "the way the rat gets the treat". But that's not all, we are simply one in a cluster of clusters of clusters of clusters of such projects, all of which is an experiment to determine the best way to sell tooth paste in an intersecting universe. L'Chaim!
@Steve I’ve been saying this for a while. Just report average solve times, and maybe the distribution in some form.
Steve, You can always see how others fared... <a href="https://xwstats.com/puzzles/2025-08-19" target="_blank">https://xwstats.com/puzzles/2025-08-19</a>
Some cluing that was a little trickier than usual for a Tuesday, but crosses did a good job of filling in enough to figure out entries. Stymied myself for having DIs for 1A until the end, but I finally realized what type of net-minder (volleyball?, tennis?, AHA) was being wanted, and filled in the last two letters correctly for the solve. Also briefly had BLANKET cOverage, but none of the crosses worked, so it got fixed in a hurry. No other problems with the theme answers, though. A few answers were guesses, some 'educated', and they turned out to be correct. My parents made a mistake when I was very young. I was content to stay in my crib and play, but then they had guests over who had a slightly older child, who knew how to climb out of a crib. So, shortly, did I. Nice puzzle, Eric, hope you're on the way to a full cycle.
@JayTee for some reason, my brain wanted it to be a fishing net and at one point I was considering TOADIE as some sort of insult to the person who minds the net while the cool kids get to fish. 🐟
Is this where I come to register a complaint about the REBUS in today’s crossword?
I went 40% above my average but enjoyed every minute. I really like the “Book of legends” clue for ATLAS. Thanks, Mr. Rollfing.
MTV......I have heard of it. Never watched/listened/cared a fig, so the Reveal was no help and made no sense. I wanted ODD DUCKS for 37D, which complicated matters further. The Kinks? Myst? Play Store? Insta? World Cup? Babies. I know about babies. If they really need you, you won't require a MONITOR. They don't really need BLANKETs (safety tip) ...and a MOBILE is optional. Recently we saw an ad for some fancy brand of diapers that only need to be changed after 11 hours. (Plus the ad says, "Less changes" instead of "fewer.") Hoo boy. Can you spell "sore bottom"? Our children (now in their 40's) were born at the advent of the "artificial diapers" era. Instant rash! So we were in the Cloth Diapers Crowd. You can still get 'em--and I do. You can't beat 100% cotton for household tasks.
@Mean Old Lady I always enjoy your comments and in fact, search them out. We must be of similar age. Having been taught english grammar in grade school, the "less/fewer" errors rankle me also.
@Mean Old Lady guess what? Disposable diapers and cloth diapers have about the same incidence of diaper rashes. They are both fine. Signed, an old pediatrician who has seen it all! <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39667412" target="_blank">https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39667412</a>/
What would a jaNITORLIZARD even be?
Not another REBUS puzzle! ;)
@Dave Munger LOU I waiting until the last cross before I put the B to make REBUS because the clue did not fit the NY Times puzzle use of that word. Then I remembered that there was that other definition. LOL. I like rebuses in the puzzzles.
A little tough for a Tuesday! But a lot of good clues. 53D is a little meta. Well, but for this puzzle. But as a crossword clue in general. I liked 62A. Very clever bit of misdirection. But maybe a higher level of misdirection than you'd usually see on Tuesday!
Whew, harder than im used to for a Tuesday but fun!
. . Hooray! . . Hooray! . . Hooray! Thank you, NYT Games team, for another reason to put off doing the dishes . . .
Fun and fresh puzzle! Loved the ⚽️ fill, appropriate as the Premier League just kicked off. Go Arsenal!
I agree that this was relatively tricky, which is not a bad thing! I was amused to see REBUS show up, because for a while I was thinking this might actually be a rebus-filled Tuesday. I thought the fig leaf wearer would be David, or maybe Adam. I thought STAIR was “stairs”, SILICA was “desiccant”, ZAPS was “nukes”, and the crabbing spot was my neighbor’s house. Oh, well. Guess I got punk’d. (Shoutout MTV)
@Heidi I was thinking along those lines too!
MTV Cribs and Myst?! My elder millennial heart overflows with nostalgic joy! I thoroughly enjoyed this one, though for the longest time could not let go of a 1a DIs, and chose to accept that "seALIES" must be an esoteric nickname for seals, and they would indeed want to mind the nets. 😂 Also loved the rebus clue. Excellent Tuesday!
@Ash Yes, I also had DIs and was trying to figure out what a soALIE was, or was it soApIE? I was questioning every other word before I got back to DIs
Pretty tough for a Tuesday, but still enjoyable.
Quick but fun. It felt like it had a few good PECANS, though, to make it crunchy for a Tuesday. Thanks, Eric.
I really enjoyed this puzzle! Yes a little trickier for avl Tuesday, but it was lively and kept moving :) A perfect balance between difficulty and enjoyability. I did get tripped up by the American spelling for LIT(RE)!
A gray and rainy morning off here in Detroit, and the lead photo of Sam's column prompted me to pull down and re-read Jorge Luis Borges' short story "The Library of Babel." If you are unfamiliar, may I recommend it.
I was really committed to 1A biting comment being "sic" which slowed me down in the NW corner.
@MamaIshtari I had DIs at first
It's been a while since I've struggled like this on a Tuesday. Spent far too much time wondering what RAILINGwAT was because I had RAINwEAR. I also had googleAPP for ages even though I knew ODDoALLS was wrong. I blame the fact that I did it at 4am 😆
@Sebastian indeed 😀 it seemed to be more of a Tuesday mid morning puzzle. A little way away from Monday but still quite some distance from a Wednesday.
@Sebastian A surprising amount of redirection for a Tuesday! I had googleAPP too, at first, and thought, what else could it be? Oh, more general, not more specific!
Phew. A relief to know it’s not just myself who felt stumped by a Tuesday puzzle. That was a two coffee grid and no mistake. Like @Heidi I was beginning to suspect rebi were involved, not just the REBUS in the clues. Having finally solved it I can look back and admire the beauty of today’s offering. Being too aged to count myself an MTV watcher the theme revealer was a TIL. My main connection to the channel is Sting’s refrain in Dire Straits ‘Money For Nothing’. That will now be today’s ear worm and there’s nothing wrong with that.
My time was closer to my Tuesday average than any other day of the week but boy this puzzle did not feel like a Tuesday on first pass.
That took more thinking than usual for a Tuesday! Now I need a nap.
I was thinking the "netminder" could be a fisherman (or -woman), which biased how I dealt with the top left corner: when I saw the third word was A, the biting comment became a DIs, and the Spanish "that" became ESe (one of the other two Spanish endings for said demonstrative pronoun), ultimately leaving me with seALIE and making me believe "sealie" might be a slang term for someone who works on a boat. Luckily it was the only questionable word I had when the site told me I wasn't done yet, and once I thoroughly considered my other options on the Spanish word, DIG and GOALIE fell into place.
@Stefan Starting with DIS set me back for a while, too! Wound up a minute or so over my average.
@Stefan Hmm, "sealie" sounds like it could be some version of a mermaid, doesn't it? And then thusly related to a fisherperson, and their nets... That corner was the very last to fall for me, too! It took me a long time to see GOALIE. Good one!
@Stefan SEALIES are mythical creatures, though. Unless I am confusing them with SELKIES.
@Stefan. I thought Netminder was some digital app or antivirus software that I’m oblivious to! Fortunately the crosses came thru for me :)
What a perfect Tuesday puzzle. Beginner friendly due to the crosses, but not a filler-inner for the rest of us. A number of times, my first thought was not correct, and that doesn't often happen this early in the week.
Count me in the "this was tough for me" category. I rarely go above my average time in the early puzzles, but missed my average by a couple of minutes today. I wasn't really seeing the theme, as evidenced by some of my bigger misses: Komodo instead of MONITOR, umbrella instead of BLANKET. Everything made sense eventually, but it took time.
Today I realized that Jupiter and Neptune not only have the same number of letters, but also the same third letter.
@Lewis I initially put in Mercury because it was the right number of letters, and I used the U. Had nothing else in that corner for way too long because nothing seemed to work. And then I figured out it could be Neptune
@Lewis I too put Jupiter in and wasted a lot of time trying to fill around it.
@Lewis JUPITER is one of the easiest objects to see in the night sky, even in our light-polluted neighborhood. If you can see anything in the night sky, you can see JUPITER (on those nights when it's up there).
@Lewis This is not a DIG but I feel sorry that all of you either don’t have an opportunity to stargaze/planetgaze or haven’t taken the time stop and do it sometimes. It brings me great satisfaction and sense of serenity to look at the night sky and pick out some readily visible heavenly companions—Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. Admittedly Mercury is hard because it’s low in the night sky if ever and I didn’t know you could see Uranus. If you get anything out of these comments, maybe download an app (Sky Guide for example) and give it a go, it puts life in perspective sometimes.
Very much enjoyed the choice of cluing in this puzzle. So many of these entries could have been clued many, many ways. The ones that made the cut gave this Tuesday puzzle a fresh feeling. (Like the lovely breeze and cooler temps outside here on the SECT coast. I saw a tall ship coming in while I was out walking this morning.)
@Amy SECT coast? We have an East coast and a West Coast. Not much of a South coast and no North Coast. Did you mean SOUTHEAST CONNECTICUT ?
@Amy Don't you mean the Gulf of Connecticut? (Formally known as Long Island Sound.) And yes, tall ships are cool.
Tough and satisfying Tuesday solve.
Clever theme but a really tough Tuesday for me. Needed some crosses for all of the theme answers, and then... was completely unfamiliar with the reveal. That took a while to work out. No big deal - that's all on me. And of course my puzzle finds. Here's a really unusual one - a Thursday from September 24, 2015 by Peter A. Collins. A couple of theme clues and answers: "One volume in the Encyclopedia of Movie Pets and Sidekicks?" TONTOTOTOTOTOME "Statement from the proud snake as its eggs were hatching?" IAMAMAMAMAMBA And the other two theme answers: LENDADADADADA THISISISISISAID Here's that Xword Info link: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=9/24/2015&g=58&d=A" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=9/24/2015&g=58&d=A</a> Might put another one in a reply. ...
@Rich in Atlanta As threatened: A Sunday from June 26, 2022 by Matthew Stock and Finn Vigeland with the title: "Bonus features." I imagine that most of us probably did this one, but I of course had completely forgotten it. A quite unusual puzzle. Some theme clues and answers: "What you'll hear after-hours at a sports car sales lot?" THESILENCEOFTHELAMBOS "Rodeo Drive uprising?" BEVERLYHILLSCOUP "Twisted jeans legs?" PANTSLABYRINTH "Staunch dedication to one's upper leg exercise routine?" THIGHFIDELITY And a couple of other theme answers: JURASSICPARKA THISISSPINALTAPE THEBLAIRSWITCHPROJECT Here's that link: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=6/26/2022&g=102&d=A" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=6/26/2022&g=102&d=A</a> I'm done. ....
Today I learned that Uranus is visible to the naked eye under circumstances that I will never have (very dark sky plus very good eyesight). Googling, I find that a lot of people have asked about this, and a lot of those who answer, apparently, are 12 years old. Tough Tuesday!
lol, I got stuck for a few moments due to 48A, where I’d confidently filled in GOOGLEAPP, thinking that it fit the theme very cleverly because it started with something you might hear from a crib — “GOO”
I did not enjoy this puzzle. I was expecting the difficulty that came from a tuesday, not what felt like a thursday. I have struggled less on some saturday puzzles.
My trickiest spot was SEPIA crossing with ROI, primarily because I don't put in answers I'm not sure of on my first pass through the across clues. I tend to find the down clues easier than the across (is it just me, or is that a known thing? I don't know.) I found this a bit more challenging than a normal Tuesday puzzle. Part of my difficulty was that 58A only became clear once I got enough crosses, so I didn't get a boost to the theme entries. Now that the entertainment world is so vast, there are bound to be big gaps in pop culture knowledge and this was one of mine.
@Laura I did not know that SEPIA ink came from cuttlefish, but I did know those were a type of squid, because I've seen them on seafood menus. (No thanks, I'll have the chicken.) TIL you can still buy genuine sepia ink for calligraphy. Also, black ink is made with soot, not squid.
Took me a little bit to get the theme. I was trying to tie the words back to MTV!
Cool puzzle. Quirky enough to keep us on our toes, and with a little parental guidance, straightforward and fun. Thanks, Eric
My Diary of a Crossword Fiend review: <a href="https://crosswordfiend.com/2025/08/18/tuesday-august-19-2025/#ny" target="_blank">https://crosswordfiend.com/2025/08/18/tuesday-august-19-2025/#ny</a>
@Eric Hougland Why would you say this theme is infantile?
V nice Tuesday! Lost a few seconds wondering what a SEALIE might be, then it all clicked into place with GOALIE ha ha - I can never remember Latin or Spanish conjugations that crop up in the puzzles, also confidently thought it was DIS
@CLN I had DIS, also. However, the clue tells you it's Spanish for "that." It is NOT a conjugation, just a matter of whether 'that' refers to a feminine or a masculine place/thing/person. So you put in ES- and wait to see if it needs to be an O or an A. English is so much more convenient, not assigning gender to nouns and then requiring that modifiers agree....
I'm glad I'm not the only one who struggled with this--the whole NW corner was a mystery to me, given the various meanings the word "net" has taken on. A post-solve read of the wikipedia page on "Rebus" gave me a couple of smiles: it included the specific use of the word "rebus" in the context of crossword puzzles, footnoted with a link to Deb's column! Also I learned that the familial crest of (St.) Ignatius de Loyola--subsequently adopted by various Jesuit institutions--includes the image of two wolves ("lobos") rampant, flanking a cook pot (the crossword staple "OLLA"!)--perhaps a rebus for the name "Loy-Ola." Perhaps not.
Because I'm reading a great book, Spectacular Things, about a soccer GOALIE, net-minder was my first fill and the rest fortuitously fell into place. Thanks, Eric - looking forward to more puzzles across the cycle from you!