You have to walk into Thursday puzzles like you’re walking into a murder mystery dinner party. Suspect everyone. Trust no one. Keep your wits about you! It’s all in the details…
Ok. Seminary graduate here. Let's talk about 9D. The Hebrew name for God is not Yahweh. In fact, the Hebrew name for God is unpronounceable and, frankly, un-writeable. It's why many Jews write G-d instead of God; as a former teacher at a Jewish Day School, I encountered that pretty regularly. It is signified in Scripture as the tetragrammaton, YHWH, which is generally spoken as Adonai, which in English bible translations usually appears as "Lord." Yahweh is a Christian construction that forces vowel sounds into the tetragrammaton. The Latinized Jehovah does the same, importing the vowels of Adonai into the tetragrammaton. The Hebrew bible has many reasons for not rendering the name of God as utterable. So perhaps the NYT could respect that and simply clue YAHWEH as "Weird Christian effort to make the name of God pronounceable." And yes, Deb, I too needed a refresher on how spoonerisms work. Who do I blame? In honor of the NYT's YAHWEH screw-up, I'm going to say the Roman Catholic Church.
@Jim Observant Jews don’t write or pronounce the name of God out of respect and awe, not because it’s unpronounceable. Although the English transliteration may or may not be accurate to the Hebrew name, due to the lack of vowels in Hebrew, that is not why observant Jews substitute the word for “our Lord” when reading the Tetragrammaton. I am a Jew, but not devout, so I don’t necessarily have a personal issue with that particular answer in today’s puzzle, but there are many observant Jews who would be quite disturbed by today’s puzzle and would not be comfortable filling in those squares. I’m guessing there are similar clue/answer combos that would make devout Muslims equally uncomfortable.
@Jim T Thank you for flagging this! I love the crossword and I thought this was a good one, but as an observant Jew it was kind of jarring to see this clue and I did feel somewhat uncomfortable filling it out. More generally though, as a British Jew used to our culture being completely invisible in the public eye, it's really refreshing for basic concepts in Judaism to be assumed knowledge for the crossword! I also do our UK crosswords, and I have never seen for example SEDER or LATKE as clues there, both of which would be unremarkable in the NYT. It's nice to be seen!
@Jim Perhaps the answer would have been less inaccurate — sorry for my being a lawyer here — if the clue had read “name for Hebrew G-d”?
@Jim Agree with your assessment of the name. Still let my 500 day streak go rather than complete the puzzle. Maybe it's better to be off the streak anyway.
@Jim on spoonerism day, I cannot believe this is the pop toast
@Jim as a product of 11 years (started in 2nd) of Catholic education I agree with your blame assessment. We were taught the Y word without any explanation, but at least the answer was a gimme for me. Apologies to those who were offended by the clue
@Jim just to give a little due to the Roman Catholic Church, since 2008 they have removed the answer to 9D from liturgy and all forms of public worship. I was in choir, so I remember the changes to the hymns. <a href="https://www.usccb.org/prayer-and-worship/the-mass/frequently-asked-questions/the-name-of-god-in-the-liturgy" target="_blank">https://www.usccb.org/prayer-and-worship/the-mass/frequently-asked-questions/the-name-of-god-in-the-liturgy</a>
@Jim et al. The last time 9D appeared in an NYTXW grid, it was in my own debut, on 7/13/22, where it was a theme entry. With apology, I had been ignorant to the issue. It had previously appeared only five months before that (2/6/22), so the conversation had memory to it. In the comments to my own puzzle -- which I greedily devoured -- I theorized that I might have earned the dubious honor of the *final* use of a term in a grid, as opposed to the more customary pride of introducing one. Perhaps the honor will go to Joel. Nice debut! I enjoyed it. Keep 'em coming!
@Jim YIL to not utter the sacred name of the Divine. A priest we had at our church (Episcopal) suggested it was the sound of wind or breath, as when the Divine breathed creation into being.
@A.S. I actually posted in the comments at least one of the times this came up in 2022. And here we are again...
@BR I would feel as if I'd been tricked into spelling it out by such a clue. I wouldn't know the answer as clued and then there it would suddenly appear as I filled in the crossings. Ouch.
@Jim And to cross with 4A…disrespectful
I had no idea about the theme. Got the theme answers from the crosses and knew I was missing something. I blame me. I still enjoyed it very much. I am constantly amazed by the creativity of the folk who make these puzzles. And thankful for them. I love doing them everyday - even when I don’t “get” it. Thanks, Joel! And best of luck this year studying maths.
Nice debut. Although "cattle" barriers, in practice, would be barbed wire under any normal circumstance. Maybe "Bourbon orders" for CHAINLINKFENCES?
@CT The clue could be referring to feedlots, so it's fine the way it is. <a href="https://theecologist.org/2014/jul/22/true-cost-your-beefburger-much-worse-you-know" target="_blank">https://theecologist.org/2014/jul/22/true-cost-your-beefburger-much-worse-you-know</a>
From "Little Shop of Horrors": A matchbox of our own; A fence of real chain-link....
I need to buy new silverware as spoon as possible. (But it'll cause quite a stir.)
@Mike You gotta fork over some dough first.
@Mike You can put those nice cream peaks on top of your dessert, if you’re willing to attempt a high whisk challenge
@Mike If you'd polish what you already have, we'd all be better off. And "as soon as possible" is not a good modifier for "where."
@Mike Ladle did I know how often I would find this place setting me up for a giggle.
My recollection is that we see spoonerisms in the entries, so finding them in the clues was a nice twist. Loved the 4! clue, as factorials were one of my favorite math topics. A bit of pizzazz in every one!
@Mike R As a mathphobe, I didn’t understand the 4! And now that you mention “factorials” I’m having a bad flashback even though I have no idea what that is. I’m literally anxious about looking it up. That’s how much math scares me.
@Mike R factorials!!! Oh my goodness the word was escaping me so so badly, and what made it worse was that I knew it ended in "-al" so the answer being EQUAL and me having only the ---AL filled in for the longest time was also tripping me up 😅 Thank you for the brain blast lol
SPOONERISM is the religious belief in using a LADLE to eat ice cream or soup.
There's something amazing about a theme that fools... everyone!?! I'm sure I'm one of the vast majority of solvers who finished the puzzle and asked themselves, "Where are those darn SPOONERISMs???" And then.... "Ah, now I see them! If only I read my clues more carefully." (Hopefully, but not necessarily, this "a-ha moment" happens without Deb's assistance. [And does she sometimes call herself "Deb Envelope"?? Is there a hidden SPOONERISM there?]) But, for me at least, there's something (mildly) annoying about a theme that only reveals itself after your done. Sort of like Tuesday's Big A, but not as satisfying. My rating: a strange mixture of amazing and disappointing? Color me ambivalent.
First attempt, finally released by the emus. I apologize for the repetition.
@The X-Phile Funny you mention the Deb Envelope thing. Not a spoonerism, but Amlen is the translation of the Welsh word for envelope
@The X-Phile I did this puzz at Rosemont Station whilst drinking light beer!
Whoops. I had Beethoven before BACH. Understandable as they have the same number of letters. If, like me, you're really really mad at baths. What's amazing to me is how diabolically normal the spoonerized the clues look. A packed lunch is a thing! That's why I(and probably many of you) didn't have a clue(other than the actual clue) as to what was going on! Blind mown!
I too missed the word “clues” in the revealer, and did not understand the theme before reading Deb’s explanation. This does not make me feel intelligent. Oh, well, can’t get them all!
@Rachel R. You’re already intelligent. But now you know another theme possibility and will be ready for it next time. You’re even more intelligent than you were before!
Regarding 9D: I mention this every time this word is in the puzzle. I’ll let Reddit explain this iMessage <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/religion/comments/r7hc78/the_term_yahweh_is_offensive_to_many_jewish_people" target="_blank">https://www.reddit.com/r/religion/comments/r7hc78/the_term_yahweh_is_offensive_to_many_jewish_people</a>/
@Steve L Should be “this time.”
@Steve L Unless I misread, the reddit post indicates that it is offensive to pronounce the word, but not to write it.
@Steve L, I have to say I was surprised to see the answer here. When I filled it in, I thought, “Can that be?”. From what I remember from a college religion class many years ago, the name was not to be said, and only written without the vowels, as you said. Since I rarely see it written out, I was really taken aback to see it in the puzzle.
@Steve L, thank you. It's ignorant, and not worthy of inclusion in the Times. At the very least, they could clue it accurately. I imagine many feel this is an esoteric gripe, but so be it. Decent biblical scholarship abandoned Yahweh for YHWH quite a while ago, and to ascribe this form to the "Hebrews" is both inaccurate and offensive.
@Steve L And yet, you're often the first to gripe about "pearl clutchers" whenever there's a clue/answer that someone might take offense to.
@Steve L EEK all these years of hanging around with so many Jewish people and all I picked up was G-d and I never knew that the 9D word was offensive. Probably because I never happened to use it. This is good to know because if there's one thing I can't stand--one thing that embarrasses me to the point where I want to go through the floor--it's inadvertently offending someone. Thanks for the heads up!
@Steve L Perhaps a case can be made on paper that YAHWEH is “offensive”…but anyone who would actually take offense at seeing that string of characters in their crossword grid must find the world a very difficult place to be.
@Steve L I think part of the difficulty is that this name for God is in the Christian Bible and not considered offensive by Christians. There are many Jews in my life, and I knew that when writing in Hebrew the vowels were omitted, but had no idea it was considered offensive by Jews for non-Jews to write this, or any other, word in English. If so, this may be an instance where beliefs come into conflict. I have quite a few cousins who believe it is important to memorize Bible verses and read them aloud, at least in the privacy of their homes. I'm curious if their beliefs about how they read Genesis have changed.
@Bill in Yokohama Presumably the difference is that for Jews, it is not just uncomfortable or jarring to see the clue, it is not permissible for Jews to write it. Whereas in other religions, it is permissible to write any number of cusses or potentially racist words, despite them making people uncomfortable. Religious Jews would not (and did not) complete the puzzle, and it seems discriminatory, for lack of a better term, to include an answer that a group of people cannot type. And for the record, it's not merely offensive, it's deeply ingrained in religious Jewish culture that this word is not allowed. It is a significant sin, literally one of the 10 commandments. The discomfort presented isn't just 'write a word,' it's like asking someone to violate the Sabbath to solve a riddle. Sure no one is being forced to do this (although arguably if they only solve the across clues first...), but it's a slap in the face to be presented with it in so unexpected a place.
Nice theme, but 9D threw me off... please err on the side of caution and don't include this as an accepted word (c.f. Steve L's comment). I'm not even religious, but the inclusion made me uneasy.
@Lisa I preferred it to when the answer is GOD because I can't write G-D.
Having the monkey business with the clues rather than the answers is always a blind spot for me. I didn't get the theme until reading Deb's column. Even then it took me an embarrassingly long time to get the three she didn't explain. Obviously I blame everyone other than myself. That's what we do in the good old U S of A these days. Oops, is that political? I guess it is. *Everything* is political now. What I did like, though, was the feeling of superiority when I immediately recognized 4! as being mathematically 4x3x2x1 = 24.
@Francis Yoooo, samesies! I glanced upwards in the puzzle for a second but my brain was already doing the factorial. Happy smug feeling.
@Francis I had no idea what that 4! I kept going to the answers to try to connect them. No fair adding esoteric math in puzzles. I never saw that in my entire life--and yes I graduated from college.
@Francis Thank you for reminding me of what it means. I did have this, I think actually in elementary school, which is hard to believe because the school wasn't that progressive. But as a words person far more than a numbers person, I couldn't cope with a punctuation mark, especially that one indicating excitement, in a math setting! It still slightly bugs me ...
I, too, made the same mistake Deb did. I got it after I came to the column and understood why some fills were so off the wall. MAGE is a solid answer, sAGE was not, and I almost came to RUIN until I bought the FARM. Congratulations, Joel Woodford, you constructed a beautifully clued puzzle, but lets be honest here. What I really want is one of those giant ice cream cones.
In the opening moments, when I was having deep trouble cracking the NW corner, there was a fleeting moment when I wondered if this puzzle would deal me a blushing crow.
Had no trouble sussing out the theme, but since @DebAmlen is looking for scapegoats, I'll blame it on the bossa nova (with its magic spell).
@Pezhead That was the first thing that occurred to me! I correctly assumed someone would have beaten me to it by now.
I blame it on Uri Geller's spoon bending. Which was a waste of his gifts on "boon spending"
Oh, this is so good! The Spoonerisms are so smooth, so completely in the language, that they never caused me to question them. I didn't see the trick until I got to the revealer; I kept looking for some sort of letter change. But I did repeat my very own Mantra [TM] to myself: "When the answer doesn't agree with the clue, the trick is in the clue." But I was looking for letter changes, not sound changes. Oh how I struggled with trying to turn "Recently dated" into GOOD ENOUGH. Recently daRed? Recently daZed? Recently Mated? Nothing was working. It was delicious going back to see how good the Spoonerisms were -- once I had the revealer. This will go into my running list for Puzzle of the Year. Brilliantly done.
Once again, I'm reminded me of a spoonerism I blurted out in a seminar discussion about the author of The Great Gatscy, F. Skit Fotchgerald. Thought I'd never hear the end of it.
@dutchiris 😆 I'd love to know what goes wrong in the brain when something like that happens. I don't know if my birthday wishes ever got past the emus, so...I'll drop it in here. Hope you had a great one!
@dutchiris Please ignore that "me." I get lost editing and forget to reread reread reread.
Just to be clear, Yahweh is not a Hebrew name for God. At least not to Jews. From a religious standpoint, trying to pronounce the four-letter name is forbidden. So we say Adonai or Hashem, which allude to “The Name” but make no attempt to pronounce it. In an academic setting, Yahweh is used. But it feels tacky to me to have in a puzzle, which is not an academic forum.
Spoonerisms AND factorials in a single puzzle! Great day for us words/numbers lovers!
Very fine puzzle. I'm not sure I deserve the gold star, because I ran the alphabet on the first letter of 52A. It didn't help because I had sAGE for 68A instead of MAGE (??? never heard that one before). It was only when I finally re-evaluated 52D, from _ARS to FARM, that I got the music. Still, I needed the column to understand the four themes answers. (What's the over/under on how long until the first sincere post that says that one of them doesn't make any sense?) So, it was a wainted tin at best. Uh, make that a tainted win. I blame Barry, naturally.
@Francis Ooh, living on the edge by naming and blaming! Mind you don't trip over those stone tablets of his 😉 If you feel you've earned that ⭐️, you enjoy it!
@Francis I don't know about your rules, but my rules allow anything except looking up answers. Alphabet running is fine to me (although I know folks who use the app have advantage over paper and stone.) I was surprised there weren't already angry rants about things not making sense!
@Francis About MAGE, we're used to seeing three of them: MAGi.
@Francis Clearly you don’t play Dungeons and Dragons or any fantasy role playing games. But if it makes you feel better I still had SAGE first as well.
As the Cambridge professor said to the poor student: “You have tasted two worms and are leaving by the town drain.”
@Wes I hate to ask a joke to be explained, but what's a "down train"? Or did I get it wrong?
We’ve seen spoonerisms in puzzles before, but I don’t remember them ever showing up in the clues, and if this is a first, then it’s a debut theme device on top of a debut puzzle for this 20-year-old constructor – a fubble dirst, and props for that, Joel. It was a guy-one-bet-one-free puzzle for me – poo tuzzles in one. My first pass yielded swaths of white, many clues opaque. Then my eyes fell on the revealer’s “Feature of the clues….”, and when I looked at the theme clues laterally, the curtains opened wide, begetting splat upon splat to the end. What a sweet feeling, when criddles rack. So, as with a collerroaster ride, with that slow grind up then a “Whee!” downhill, both my brain’s workout ethic and love of play were fully satisfied. Boy, was I dismirected by [Shade in a picturesque island scene], where I stuck with “palm” instead of AQUA for way too long. I did like the neighboring palindromes PIP and TUT. Congratulations on your debut, Joel, and thank you for a most jended splourney!
Well, thursdays are for learning something new. Today I learned spoonerisms. As to who is to blame? I blame my English teachers. After that many English classes, someone should have taught me that.
@Red Carpet, my English teachers did teach me about spoonerisms, and I still forgot it! Don't blame the poor, underpaid English teachers. They have enough to deal with. (Former English teacher here!)
@Red Carpet It is a pity you weren't taught that. The term is named for Rev. William Archibald Spooner, who was prone to making such mistakes. I at first thought it came from a character named Mrs. Spooner, so I looked it up. Turns out I was thinking of Mrs. Malaprop, who gave her name to malapropisms. Just goes to show even if you know something, it doesn't prevent you from stumbling over your own half-remembered learning!
That was harder than a Sunday puzzle. I’m also suspicious of the shortening of words and calling them informal. Some of them, like Bach seem unlikely.
@Ian Hookham I also found the clue for 'Bach' quite odd. I know starting with Thursday puzzles, they try to obfuscate things. But really? Bachelor party??? Maybe 'Batch', but 'Bach'? Do people really talk that way? Other than than, I suppose this is quite average for Thursday hijinks. I managed the long words without deciphering the clues, only confused that there seemed to be no match. Ten cheats and I was done!
These Thursday puzzles just get better and better. This was one of my all-time favo(u)rites - fun, witty and very clever. Huge congratulations to the compiler on a memorable debut
The last thing I learned in 12th grade calculus was factorials. That's when I dropped the class, because I couldn't for the life of me figure out why I'd ever need to know what they are. Then, 56 years later, I found out why!
@Nadine I felt the same way about matrices and matrix mechanics in linear algebra class. Looked like the most abstract, make-work thing I'd ever seen. I distinctly remember saying that it was made up mathematician garbage. It turned out to be the basis of virtually all my research in quantum chemistry.
I didn’t see the SPOONERISMs in the theme clues until I got the revealer via crosses. Then I went back to appreciate them before finishing the puzzle, and still managed to finish in a reasonable time. I happen to enjoy spoonerisms and thus enjoyed the puzzle. I liked ICALLDIBS. Do kids today say that any more? Also, the clue for ASEA was one of the most unusual ones I’ve seen for that old crossword favorite. As a fan of LOTR it was catnip for me, but I could see that it might be annoying to the uninitiated. At least the crosses should make it easy enough to spot.
@Marshall Walthew As an amateur LOTR-ista, I was all over this one! And I particularly enjoyed that this time it was clued and meant literally, as opposed to the usual 'lost' or 'confused'.
@Marshall Walthew, yep. ASEA was quality clueing.
@Marshall Walthew I've lost track of how many times I've read The Lord of the Rings. When I saw the four squares available for the answer, I briefly considered whether someone considered Frodo to be dead at the end.
@Marshall Walthew my immediate response to the clue was a whispered "too soon", as my heart always breaks at that part of the story.
@Marshall Walthew I ponfidently clunked in AGED for Frodo at the end of LOTR, but soon realized it was Bilbo who was the old one at that point. It worked for two of the crosses, which really slowed me down.
Chain link fences seem more like city and suburbs than ranches to me.
@BJ I thought the same thing. In 50+ years of living in Texas, I'm not sure I've ever saw a cattle ranch enclosed by anything but barbed wire or bull wire. I'm trying to remember what surrounded the feed lots I saw outside Lubbock and El Paso. I suppose they could have had chain-link fences.
@BJ I grew up in a house with a chain link fence in the suburbs and we never had a cow ring our doorbell!
Even if you’ve filled in a Thursday puzzle, it isn’t complete till you’ve worked out the trick. Bravo, nicely done.
Congratulations on a terrific debut, Joel. I have a feeling you'll be back.
@Nancy J. I think you mean he'll be BACH.
I love SPOONERISMS!! We were introduced to them in the 9th grade lit book...but The Readers' Digest had beat them to it. And I "got" this puzzle..... but I didn't see any wordplay until I got here and read BR's Comment. The clues! My congratulations to anyone who picked up on that without any help. I was, like Frodo, ASEA.
OHHH. I didn't get the twist until I read the column. Because I guess reading fail. The *clues* are *********, not the entries.
I would like to echo Steve L's comment on the use of 9D. It's a holy word and shouldn't be used in such casual context It was a delightful puzzle otherwise though!
@Madison C But the word was distorted by the Catholic Church, so no G-d problem here.
Finished in 44% less time than average, but disappointed that I did not make sense of the theme until after the solve. Despite what the revealer said, I was trying to find the spoonerism in the theme answers rather than the clues. Doh!
@Jim I think many of us did that.
@Jim Same here but I didn't even know what spoonerism meant 🤷♀️ The puzzle itself was fun, the four special answers kind of just popped out. I was nervous to try CHAINLINKEDFENCE with only a couple of letters in place but it turned out to be correct. Only had to look up the tennis player and the House of Dragon actor
Woal Joodford is the game of the nent who is responsible.
@Ms. Billie M. Spaight 😂 I can tell I'm going to have to think really hard reading the comments for this one.
It turns out that elePhaNtS has the same number of letters as AIRPLANES. And TypEa has the same number of letters as TIGER.
@Joe P yeah I had type A for a while just because it’s popped up in quite a few puzzles lately
@Joe P And palm has the same number as AQUA. We were given many chances to go confidently wrong, which of course is what we crave.
@Joe P BENTOBOX for packed lunch. I blame a recent trip to Japan!
I finished this one without understanding it, but that still counts, right? I knew about spoonerisms in my childhood, but that was a long time ago. And somehow, my easy solve feels unearned. Anyway, congratulations to Zhou Zhang, who seems to have won the Battle of the Spouses. 606 to 429, at current count.
@Heidi Same here. And I still fail to see how any of these is a spoonerism.
@Heidi OK, I get them now. I didn't realize a spoonerism referred to a strict letter swap; I thought it was more of a general botch of a name or a phrase.
Nice puzzle. But I had to look up what a spoonerism is. By mad! 😜
No blame here because I finally figured it out on my own! I really had to because not all my down answers were correct, so my theme answers weren't even words. I finally understood what was going on after getting CHAIN LINK FENCE and then analyzing the clue to understand what was going on. After that, the fill went really fast, and I was able to correct my mistakes speedily. Who do I blame for this one and all the puzzles I've been able to complete without lookups since I started in December? I blame my parents for having me when they did. I sometimes get the feeling that GenX is the sweet spot between the oldsters who don't want to learn current pop culture and the youngsters who rail against the old stuff. Before you chastise me for making gross generalizations about age, I know there are exceptions! The fastest folks here were born well before me. And there are young people like Tyler Hinman who know more than I ever will.
@Beth in Greenbelt Yes!! I posted about this a few months back, trying to get a sense of the optimal age range for crossword puzzle solving. I am also Gen X and agree that this (as you say, in a general sense). ❤️
I solved it and stared at it for quite a while before getting it, and I blame my little brother! Growing up, my Dad coined the term "Pooner Schism" for my brother's habit of moving syllables to the center of words. "Pass Getty" was his favorite pasta dish. "Yay Crowns" we're for coloring his art projects. Is it any wonder I grew up fuconused and fuddlebeed?
Didn’t get the theme until coming to the article (I had a vague idea of what a SPOONERISM is but couldn’t put 2 and 2 together apparently). The cluing was easy enough that it was a pretty quick solve even though the theme answers were fairly nonsensical without getting the theme.
This was a lovely puzzle! I got several of the theme entries from crossings, so I was able to compare answer to clue, and I think "battle carriers" to "cattle barriers" was what pinged first. That let me do the remaining theme entry. As per usual I let the theme clues be until I knew the trick -- there were no asterisks but at least 66A highlighted the lines nicely . I didn't have many false starts this time, partly because for ones where I could think of several possible (e.g. LADS could have been pals or bros or macs) I just left them blank. I didn't briefly have PIGpen, but I knew 9D had to be YAHWEH so that didn't last long; I almost put TypEa instead of TIGER, because I think it's been clued as such before, but I already had ANEM_A for 14A and ANEMyA was improbable. Anyway. Pun fuzzle! I had a teat grime!
@Isabeau TypEa was one of many mistakes in the down answers that kept me from grokking the theme right away. I did get it eventually. Like you, I finally figured out the trick after filling in 41A, but that's just because all of my downs in that area happened to be correct.
Congratulations on a fun NYT debut, Mr. Woodford! I expect we'll see you back here many times.
Good fun. Dicely none. FREAKOUT was my first LP purchase. Parent reacted appropriately.
@John Carson Ha! Subsequent offerings would've scandalized the parent even more. Have you read Moon's memoir? She puts the "Dis" in "Dysfunctional Family."