There was a FUNFILLED puzzle, with lots to like. I, for one, liked the clue for BELLCURVE, and the use of AUTODIDACT, NOCAP. I also liked THECREATIONOFADAM. Though not a religious person I was very moved by the frescoes in the Sistine chapel. Seeing BBKING took me back to when I was 12 or 13. My best friend’s mom worked at the Lawrenceville School, and when BBKING performed a concert there, she insisted on taking us. Neither of us knew much about him, and were, of course, blown away. My somewhat unlikely intro to the blues.The funny thing was that my friend’s mom was a very refined lady whose musical interests lay in the classical sphere. Thinking back, I recall a couple of years earlier, she took us to see A Hard Day’s Night. So her outward appearance concealed hidden depths. Many years later I learned that she had driven an ambulance in France during WWII. She’s still going strong at 101 and still does the NYT crossword in ink every day.
@Marshall Walthew Amazing story about your friend's mom. She sounds like a real Renaissance woman. I really appreciate people who have a broad respect for competing art forms. That believe you don't have to hate the Beatles to love Beethoven.
@Marshall Walthew Thanks for sharing your memories. It goes to show the impact we can have on peoples lives by exposing beauty and genius.
Took a bit of time but I got it. Nice play on words in some of the clues. After about 5 years of solving, I can say it’s finally become rare that I need to look anything up to solve a puzzle, even on the tough days. I’ve come a long way since those first weeks of solving when I’d never get a Thursday-Sunday puzzle without look ups. So if you are new at this, just keep plugging away.
@Bill My experience as well. There was a time when on a Friday Saturday I'd get about ten fills in, seven of which would turn out to be wrong.
@Bill Thanks for the encouragement and congrats on your progress. I can finally handle Monday's and am inching further into the week with more stops than starts!
The gift-packaging competition was a wrap battle. (It got present-tense!)
@Mike Indeed, one guy took a bow but then immediately got his rib in a twist...
@Mike I tried to find a funny little cartoon in the Internet as a rejoinder to your excellent puns, but it got stuck among all the other funny little cartoons while downloading. Apparently it was GIF-trapped
@Mike Did you win a ribbon?
@Mike Oh, crepe! The other replies have me sort of boxed in.
Well, we know they don’t mean RFK Jr.
@Kevin That apple fell so far from the tree that it's in a different orchard, and it's rotting on the ground. And it's full of worms.
@The Poet McTeagle For anyone who comes across this post, please listen to The Tragically Hip, one of the greatest bands to come out of Canada. One of their albums was titled "Road Apples".
This was a perfect puzzle for me and my level of competence. After I'd made a pass (I don't go in linear fashion--I try to build off of a seed of a cross or two at some place in the puzzle) I was really unsure if I'd seen anything that I could make a decent guess at, looking at the sparsely filled in puzzle. Then I'd get another one, which would give me another letter or two to work with. Then it happened again. Then again. Find a mistake there (RANT, not veNT) and more came tumbling out. I just love solves like this. I almost feel like I used to feel when I was in great shape after a long run. The headache I had at the start of the run was gone, the fatigue was delicious, my breathing fast, not labored but deep and relaxing, and my frame of mind just couldn't have been better. I miss those days, and enjoy it when I get a whiff of it through a good crossword. This is all to demonstrate that the grump I was a couple of weekends ago when I face-planted on Saturday and Sunday was not my only facet, for what it's worth. I am sorry about that.
@Francis Keep at it! You'll have more frequent "solver's highs" the better you get at solving (and you will get better).
@Francis I had veNT before RANT too. Hey, if you were a grump, you were a very nice one and didn't even blame the puzzles for your verb tense debacles, no matter how tense you felt about them.
@Francis I completely relate to your experience solving the puzzle. This one was not an easy for me, possibly because I'd had a maddening, frustrating day and it was carrying over, fragmenting my concentration and making everything harder. I made the same mistakes everyone else did and the puzzle took longer than it should have, but then those heady moments when a section started to click and there's the moment when your brain can grasp what's happening, and the long fills start to reveal where the wrong fills are, and you get the help your need from that. Like the creation of Adam, but working a crossword puzzle instead.
@Francis This describes my experience too. It's a slow meander around different sections, mulling over possibilities. If I could ever do a crossword in 4 minutes, I don't think I would bother - I like taking 30-60 minutes!
Oh my. I had an error in mine that I finally got corrected. I had misspelled CLEO initially as CLiO. That left me with Di_ for [Start to do?] I thought to myself, the NYT can’t possibly have DIL as the answer here, right?!?! 😳 I finally got the answer to [Eclipse, for one]. Oh, DEE!! 🤣🤣🤣😅 Phew! I must have giggled at myself for 10 minutes. Thank you, Jesse, for a FUNFILLED experience on my end. Happy Friday. Enjoy the long weekend!!!
@Jacqui J That is hilarious!!!!!!! I would love to see that someday in a NYT puzzle.
@Jacqui J But why not? It has appeared in Spelling Bee.
At [Start of some temple names], who else confidently threw in BETH instead of BNAI?
@Lewis But of course. And then I almost followed that up with BNEI, even though my daughter's Bat Mitzvah reception was held at B'nai Tikvah. I think the absence of the apostrophe threw me for a hot minute.
@Lewis Not I. NEIN, the gimme at 6D, prevented that misdirection. Also, I was coming at it from below, as I like to start at the bottom.
@Lewis I thought of both, and, as often advised here, waited for the crosses. As MOL noted NEIN was a gimme (for me), and the issue was resolved.
@Lewis I did, until the cross made me change it.
Random thoughts: • The two stars, IMO, were the largest answers, CELESTIAL EVENT and CREATION OF ADAM. Both are gorgeous to look at in the grid as well as in real life. • Oh yes, Jesse has constructor mind, he who can look at MANDARIN and see four state abbreviations. • It takes guts for a constructor to put DUD smack in the middle of the puzzle. But, as of yet, no commenter has used that word to describe it. • About time you showed up in the Times puzzle, EVOO, after appearing in other venues more than 30 times over the past 20 years. • Lovely to see neighbors PIE / TIN. • I, who usually don’t enter answer until I’m quite sure of it, had a fair number of take-out-and-replaces today. That, to me, is a sign of a skillful cluer. • Personal PuzzPair© of MANDARIN (as in orange) and I’LL BITE. Enough rub to satisfy, enough fun to send me sprightly into the day. Thank you for this, Jesse!
@Lewis As a speaker of MANDARIN, I'm embarrassed to admit I thought of Pig Latin first.
Chart and graph are not synonymous in the sense of 21A. Graphs represent a function, whereas charts plot some data. There is no PIE graph.
@Thomas That's a good call, felt off to me as well. Googling it, it seems 'pie graph' is in fact sometimes used, but it is less certainly common, and I agree less accurate, than 'pie chart.' And perhaps most importantly, "Certain chart shape" would have been just as apt and pleasing a clue. ("Certain graph shape" would have been an excellent clue, however, for BELL CURVE!)
@Thomas Bar graphs don’t always depict a function. For instance, population by state.
@Thomas I can't believe people who do late week crosswords have a problem with this clue (21A). "There is no pie graph" you say, yet pie chart is considered to be a type of graph. If that ain't close enough for crosswords on a Friday puzzle, I don't know what is.
@JS no, they are 100% correct. Charts and graphs are different things and there's no such thing as pie "graphs". A polar graph is the closest you'll get. For such a rigorous discipline, it's quite funny you think mathematicians are loose with language.
Deb: Arkansas. Not Arizona.
@Steve L Yup. The As are among the hardest postal abbreviations to remember. Arizona isn't AR, Arkansas isn't AK and Alaska isn't AL.
@Steve L Yeah, I kept getting those two abbreviations mixed up during our road trip this summer, as we visited National Parks in both Arkansas and Arizona.
@Steve L and others OK, just so people don't now get them all mixed up: Arizona is AZ Arkansas is AR Alaska is AK Alabama is AL To me it seems logical, though I can't explain why.
Is this the SMURFaissance? Three times this week. Any puzzle referencing BB KING is okay by me. Fell down a rabbit hole with him after solving. Here he is live with Bobby Blue Bland. My dad had a CD of them performing together that we both loved. <a href="https://youtu.be/fUyKrNzW3Pc?si=Sbr27oZuI6F-Gc2n" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/fUyKrNzW3Pc?si=Sbr27oZuI6F-Gc2n</a>
@Vaer I think all the SMURFs are NYT's version of product placement, what with the movie... It just seems too frequent to be a coincidence
@Vaer @DW The company that runs the two movie theaters here periodically sends me a ballot that allows me to express my interest in movies they're thinking of running here. The Smurfs was probably on one of those, but until DW mentioned it, I'd forgotten it exists. I thought I had seen a lot of Smurf references in puzzles this week (not just NYT puzzles). I'm glad to know I'm not imagining it.
@Vaer Actually, if you count the Mini, four blue folks this week.
@JayTee xwordinfo.com doesn't count the mini, and that was my source.
@Vaer thank you for the clip of BBB and the King! Had not seen that before. Grew up playing in the band and idolizing Bobby Bland: always a great groove with stellar singing and a truthful message. Gonna have to find that recording you mention
The CONE. Starring our Claudius. “NO CAP, this thing is a DUD. NEIN, I will not tolerate it! I’m an unhappy CUSTOMER. FUN-FILLED, this ain’t. I LOVED IT - not!!! I am gonna RANT about this horrible DEED all night!” And in the morning: there he was, no cone. An AUTO-DIDACT and he’s not telling how he got it off.
@Cat Lady Margaret Our Cassius manages to get out of his in less than five minutes flat, and I never see him doing it. I was so grateful his most recent surgery did not require the dreaded CONE! But one quibble: I'm talking *feline* [post-op wear]! One does not need to be a canine to suffer this indignity. 😹
@Cat Lady Margaret I prefer AUTO-DI-CAT as the term to describe your Claudius.
@Cat Lady Margaret I once tried one of those "soft" cones on my cat. She removed it immediately, then hid it. I didn't find it for months.
LOL. 34A "Big bust." I had DDD. A big bust indeed. I was lucky to get the word going down to correct it.
@Cal Gal I'd love to know the percentage of males vs. females that immediately went to DDD. My favorite moment in one of those Leslie Nielsen movies is when the pole dancer (I think) leans toward him and says "Is this some kind of bust". My thirteen-year-old brain is waking up again as I go through my second childhood, and I find that *very* funny.
Why does Adam have a belly button in that painting? You had one job, Michelangelo...
I didn't get much on my first pass. In the beginning there was ADAM and EVES. I'm sure we can all agree that "Christine" was the greatest movie ever because that AUTO DID ACT so well! Yet somehow she was beaten by Shirley MacLaine for Best Actress?!?! Course I know what AUTODIDACT really means cause I meself am self-learnt.
This felt like a good mix of gimmes, tricky clues, and don't-knows: perfect for a Friday. One of my favorite things about crosswords is the brain's ability to be confidently wrong. For example, I misread "peel" as "peal", as in RINg, giving a Christmas villain named HEROg. "Yeah, that sounds right." 😂 My other favorite thing is the diversity we bring to solving. Different generations, regions (even countries), life experience, all brought together by our love of puzzles. One person's "gimme" is another's "don't know", and we all learn something new! (AUTODIDACT is new to me, but I knew EVOO thanks to Ms Ray!)
@Ash THANK you! Good grief, I could see her face, I could see her hugging the jug of oil to her plump little breast, I could hear her saying, "E,V, Oh, OH!" But I could NOT think of her name!
Shout out to all the TILers here. Cruciverbalism feeds AUTODIDACTicism. Do emus prefer EVOOs?
@Linda Jo Ask me how I know that AUTODIDACT has the same number of letters (and the same first letter) as AVID READER.
I guessed the wrong Kennedy, but I then immediately realized that a reference to the specific rap battle between two self-proclaimed Jewish-American princesses from the musical comedy TV show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend from eight years ago was an unlikely answer to the cross.
@Nick 😂 Yes, the jFK/RFK question. I started with JFK, but had an eye on it maybe needed to be R. And it would have been a hoot if your rap battle would have been right.
@Nick 😆 Thanks for reminding me of that scene. CExG is one of my all-time favorite shows!
@Nick I had forgotten about JAP Battle! thanks for that.
If your DEED DENTs my DISC and turns it into a DUD with a capital DEE, I might insist that you DUBAI me a new one.
What a fun puzzle this was! As ever, I fell into the clever traps and misdirections, but enjoyed saving graces as a result of watching all those cooking shows, not to mention taking Art History. I get entries like SMURF and MUNSTER only through the crosses... unable to regret not having been exposed to those. And what, pray tell, is wrong with LOVE stories that begin with a MEET CUTE? (DHubby and I have a story there....) Ahem. The Queen Bee is attended by a group of Worker bees (all female, of course) who groom, feed, and guide her as she does her duty: laying eggs. Workers (who perform many important functions) also guard the entire HIVE; they are not specifically guarding only the Queen, and none are specifically designated as KILLER BEES, for Pete's sake. Have some respect!
Great puzzle, just challenging enough. Thanks!
Sorry Deb. In MANDARIN, AR is the abbreviation for Arkansas, not Arizona. Arizona is AZ.
@Ms. Billie M. Spaight And, not particularly related, AK is Alaska, which is often confused for the postal code for Arkansas.
@Ms. Billie M. Spaight Actually, in English. Look at the first comment last night.
@Ms. Billie M. Spaight and @Mark Smith Yes!! We lived in ARkansas for 18 years, and no end of people (such as hotel check-in staff) would ask, "Long way from Arizona, aren't you?" And then there was the mail addressed to AK...(thank goodness for zip codes)...
Started this last night when I really should have been asleep and got the usual result: stuck, stuck!, stuck!! (H/T to another Christmas Story) For me the puzzle is about as good an indicator of how I'm doing taking care of the "little grey cells" as anything I've found. This was a fine workout once I invested the requisite zzzzz's. I'll leave with this: "A politician is an elected or appointed official focused on gaining and maintaining power, often through partisan strategies and self-interest. A statesman, in contrast, is a highly respected leader who prioritizes the long-term common good, acts with integrity and magnanimity, and serves the entire political community rather than a narrow faction. The term "statesman" implies a much higher level of moral character and public service than "politician". " <a href="https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/a-time-for-statesmanship" target="_blank">https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/a-time-for-statesmanship</a>
@John Carson Too bad the media environment has made it impossible for a statesman to be elected.
I was today years old when I discovered He-Man and She-Ra ave the same number of letters, and that neither was the foe of Gargamel.
@Bill At least you had the pleasure of mentally picturing He-Man. 🙂
The two-tailed figure I thought of first was the Starbucks mermaid, who is apparently actually a siren. But very similar to figures I saw painted on the wall of a very very old church in Greece. And then I misread the clue for MANDARIN and thought the answer had to be the four postal abbreviations in alphabetical order. That slowed me down in that corner! Other than that, it solved very smoothly.
@Liz B I misread that as well, which held me up for a considerable amount of time.
@Liz B Yikes. I thought sirens and mermaids were the same thing (except that sirens were more about luring sailors to their death) but a quick dive down the rabbit hole leads to conflicting information. One source says sirens are land-based and have wings; another says they traditionally have two tails and yes the Starbucks logo is a siren. I no longer know where to turn for reliable information.
Unlike Deb, I didn't pray that the middle letter of 34A wasn't another D. Nope, I confidently filled in DdD. I mean, if you believe God CREATed ADAM, then he must also have created DdD cups, right? What's the big deal? Does he also create DUDs? Loved CELESTIAL EVENT. I saw three shooting stars this summer at Dead Horse Point State Park in Southern Utah, which were three more than I'd ever seen before in my 60 years of life. I was always that person going, "Where? Where?" any time someone else noticed one. I'd forgotten that Herod shows up in the Christmas story. As I recall, he was also a singer and dancer. I'm sure I won't be the first commenter to link to these... <a href="https://youtu.be/KHHfeCgERnE?si=n_zOYqyQCtDbJ9Kw" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/KHHfeCgERnE?si=n_zOYqyQCtDbJ9Kw</a> Or <a href="https://youtu.be/9BnxwP8vLRg?si=nO0X7SKTueaW67sP" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/9BnxwP8vLRg?si=nO0X7SKTueaW67sP</a> Or... I was going to link to this year's Josh Gad version at the Hollywood Bowl, but apparently, it's been taken down.
@Beth in Greenbelt Great post and thanks for reminding me I need to get out to see a shooting star again. They are so beautiful but so transient, (I loved your "Where? Where"?) and it feels like a minor miracle to happen to be looking in the right place at the right time.
@Beth in Greenbelt G-d is nonbinary.
@Beth in Greenbelt Dead Horse Point would be a great place for a meteor shower. 10 or 20 years ago, we were out at Delicate Arch in Arches NP and stayed well after sunset. I don’t know if you know that hike, but a good part of it is across open slickrock that has a pretty good slope. Halfway down, there was a meteor shower and we just lay on the slickrock (which was still warm) and saw dozens of shooting stars. If you’ve never seen a meteor shower where they’re coming every few minutes, it’s worth the effort. We were in Creede, Colorado, when the Perseids peaked a few weeks ago, but it was too cloudy to see anything.
@Beth in Greenbelt Alice Cooper nailed it as King Herod!!
Oh, this was a good one. It started out slow and sporadic for me, and I had a flashback to my earliest crossword days when I'd have a little freakout - "ARGH! I'll NEVER solve this!" But I chipped away with some guesses, many of them wrong at first, until eventually the rubber hit the road. There were a lot of interesting words and clues today, a cut above what we usually see, I think. Thanks for the fun!
@Peter C. Me too, same sort of experience.
Today's brain fog: Why was Deb concerned that the middle letter of D_D might be a third D? So I googled DDD. Google was not much help. Degenerative Disc Disease? Domain-Driven Design? Defined Daily Dose? Diners, Drive-Ins and Dive? Strange things to concern Deb and "The Gray Lady"! It was only when I read some comments here that the "bust"-related meaning came to mind. And in retrospect, I'm glad that Google didn't understand my query. I really don't need to start my morning with a triple-D bust search. I guess I was the DUD (with a capital DEE) this morning.
My first rap battle, I was set to destroy my opponent, but (un?)fortunately it was love at first sight instead. So I sang: Pleased to meet cute Hope you like my spit But what's puzzling you Is wherefore I rap like-- Long story short, I lost the battle, but won the war of love.
@ad absurdum I so hope this is a true story but if it’s not, please do not tell me.
30A. Scut Farkus? ... Emu stuck to icy post.
@Whoa Nellie 😂😂😂 "He had yellow eyes! So help me God, YELLOW EYES!" What a movie!
@Whoa Nellie classic!! 😝🧊 🤣🤣🤣
@Whoa Nellie SCOTT Farkus, so help me, God! (If I recalling correctly, he also had a role--like an extra--as one of the classmates, but cleaned up and groomed.)
A fairly brisk Friday for me as I finished in around half of my average time. Fortunately, the long fills .. CREATION OF ADAM and CELESTIAL EVENT came to me immediately. I also loved their juxtaposition as they are similar in their grandeur. I had never heard of EVOO, though I managed to get it easily enough by the crossing fills. I did enjoy the clueing for CANON, “What fan fiction is not.” I thought it was quite sly. Though I actually look forward to tough end-of-the-week puzzles and I breezed through this, I did enjoy it. I don’t necessarily think it was easy, it was just that I was on the constructor’s wavelength. Because the XW gods may think I’m cocky now, tomorrow I’ll probably end up tearing my hair out over the grid.
SWINGSETS brought back memories of the old swing set we had in the back yard when I was a kid. It was basically 2 steel A-frames with a cross piece header where all the swings, etc were hung from. It wasn't actually attached to the ground so if you could swing high enough you could actually get the legs to come off the ground and make the swing set walk. Very dangerous in hind site, but it sure was fun!
@Ragland That sounds exactly like the SWINGSET I grew up with. By the time I was old enough to use it without supervision, it had spent several winters outside in upstate New York and was nice and rusty, too. And those swings they have now for infants, with the safety bars? Nowhere in sight.
@Ragland, I had the same. With the burning hot chains in the summer. And every time you managed to get the legs to come off the ground, you tried to swing higher and higher! Ahh, the good old days.
@Ragland And don’t forget the teeter-totter!
I was so stuck on "Vent" for blow off steam and irks/ires. It took deleting ''I'm sure I'm right" answers to see the possibilities and correct answers.
@Sarah Knowing when to delete ''I'm sure I'm right" answers is one of the most valuable crossword-solving skills to have.
FUNFILLED Friday. No RANT, not a DUD, but I'm not sure ILOVEDIT. (Where will solves fall on the BELLCURVE?) Thank you, Jesse. Signed, A CUSTOMER
@Barry Ancona A CUSTOMER! makes me think of "The Worst Pies In London". I enjoyed LEA SALONGA's recent performance of it on Broadway. ;)
Nice puzzle. Typical tough Friday for me and had to look up a couple of things but ended being an enjoyable workout. Kind of surprised to see five debut answers in this one and at least three of them quite familiar terms - e.g. SWINGSETS, FREEMEALS etc. No big deal. Answer history search today was inspired by BBKING. Dawned on me that THETHRILLISGONE is 15 letters. It's been an answer in 3 puzzles - one of them a Thursday from July 16, 2015 by the great Paula Gamache. Four grid-spanners in that one and two of those never appeared in another puzzle - and the other one was only once before in a pre-Shortz puzzle. Those were: LETDOWNYOURHAIR PSYCHOLOGYTODAY ILLDOITTOMORROW A bit surprised by that. I'm done. ...
@Rich in Atlanta I too found this a 'typical tough Friday'. I tried a new way of cheating. I brought up the easy version of this puzzle (link found in the email), and whenever a clue was too confusing, I checked to see how the clue was worded in the easy version. Sort of a 'light cheat', not just googling the answer. This enhanced the play.
Difficult but doable. Friday delivers again. Actually this week has been great for puzzles. Knock on wood.
Fun fact: It seems that Pinocchio (1940), the second animated Disney feature film, is the first to have a named “cute animal” character (not counting Mickey Mouse short subject personas.) Snow White (1937) had lots of animals, but only named the cute little men, of whom I was thinking when saw the 47A clue. As to the whole puzzle, who can’t stand back and admire Creation of Adam paired with Celestial event, and Bell curve with Pie (graph); Herod described as a “Christmas story villain”, to name a few of the delectable entries? Mr. Cohn hints at hackneyed hyperbolic descriptions, Fun filled; I loved it--!!! optional. And his telegraphic recipe for Hollywood success: Meet Cute. But he adds equally telegraphic diagnoses of old car problems and what I consider online-comment problems: RUST and RANT. Papa couldn't have put it better. Yep, I did love it.
Great cluing Jesse Cohn! The culmination of an excellent week of puzzling!
A thoroughly satisfying Friday crossword, one of the hardest Friday in memory.
Nice puzzle but I found it surprisingly easy for a Friday. 🤷♂️ Mandarin was a nice answer. I didn't love the clue for bell curve. Ah well.
I’m sorry but 44 across not clicking for a daily slack user. IMS is not a synonym for DMS and ALL slack messages are instant by design
EVOO just irritates me unreasonably. I can't explain it or justify it, but it does. My wife was the daughter of an angry, notoriously demanding German chef...imagining him using EVOO just warps my mind. "Chef" and "cute" don't coexist in my view of the universe. I suspect that whoever came up with it never set foot in a restaurant kitchen. I couldn't get BBKING. I was running the song through my head, and some portion of my brain was shouting the answer at me, but KILLERBEE as a guard to a queen bee is unknown to me, and since I had B__ING I wanted to see a vowel in there somewhere. It was the only thing I looked up. I always imagine B.B King lyrics in italics, and I was even imagining the italics, but the double consonant prevented me from making the final connection to that part of me that already knew. I once had a girlfriend who went, alone, to a B.B. King concert. She sat right at the edge of the stage. At one point, he walked over, squatted right in front of her, looked into her eyes, and said (and I have to paraphrase): "I thought I had her wrapped around my little finger. But, after a while,I knew that she had me wrapped around her little finger." Then he played a long lick on Lucille, and said: "And I liked it." One look, and he knew.
@Bruce The EVOO abbreviation doesn't irk me. What irks me (or did, I haven't watched her in some time) is when Rachael Ray would say it, then say the full term anyway, completely obviating the abbreviation. One or the other, Rachael.
@Bruce What a great BB King anecdote!!!
My Diary of a Crossword Fiend review: <a href="https://crosswordfiend.com/2025/08/28/friday-august-29-2025/#ny" target="_blank">https://crosswordfiend.com/2025/08/28/friday-august-29-2025/#ny</a>
@Eric Hougland Thanks for including a picture of the Michelangelo. Saved me from having to look it up. Deb said Ms Ray did not coin EVOO, though she certainly said it ad nauseum in the one episode of her ABC show that I watched for some reason.
@Eric Hougland Seeing the clue for 38A right after the rom-com clue on your list reminded me that there are lots of MEETCUTEs in fanfic, and they're usually not CANON.
I still have to use auto correct for Friday and Saturday, but that was a fun puzzle!
@Sam Try turning the autocheck off sometime. You might find that you know more than you think you do. Good luck, and keep having fun!
I enjoyed this, especially clues like 'Queen's guard' and the 'two tails'. There are nearly always clues I solve with crossers but am unfamiliar with: I know SWING but not SWING SET, I didn't know TEE OFF meant 'anger', can't work out how 'big bust' means DUD. ROBES hanging in a hotel room? Judges and mayors wear robes - but on looking that one up, I find it means 'dressing gowns' .... No connection to: "Give me my robe, put on my crown: I have immortal longings in me." from Cleopatra. The clue about a 'coaster' immediately reminded me of 'Cargoes' by John Masefield: Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack, Butting through the Channel in the mad March days. Can you tell I'm from the generation that learnt poetry off by heart for homework?
@Jane Wheelaghan Big bust = DUD = total failure.
@Jane Wheelaghan A swing set in the States usually has multiple swings and often includes a slide (or should I say chute?) connected to its posts.
@Jane Wheelaghan Ooh, that is a really good call. A British coaster being a species of ship never crossed the NYT puzzle, I’ll bet. Beautiful poem, thank you. I have longings to go find it in its entirety. But imagine you knowing NOCAP, and not the much more standard “robes”. Or did you not?
@Jane Wheelaghan Partly generational but I have plenty of age-mates who didn't catch the bug--my spouse and one of my sisters, for example. I had a grandfather who urged it on me, with the further advice that it was the ones you memorized in youth that you'd be sure to remember. Pretty much true. I've managed to acquire a few Frost poems since then but cannot memorize anything longer than maybe 8 lines. Wish I could get Larkin's "Church Going" or Frost's "Two Tramps in Mudtime" or Dylan's "Refusal to Mourn the Death of a Child" or even ALL of that Masefield poem.
17 Across: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APUWOoUqQho" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APUWOoUqQho</a>
@Barry Ancona Such innocent times when we had the brain space to be worried about the invasion of KILLER BEES. And then the courage to laugh about it.
@Barry Ancona Startling to remember we were talking about them that long ago. Had no idea until looking them up just now that they all came from a single set of hives.
@Barry Ancona A funny and creative sketch. At over nine minutes long -- I wonder what the average SNL sketch length is these days -- it was still entertaining from start to finish. Thanks for sharing.
This seemed like a tale of two puzzles to me. Half seemed very easy with early week level clues and half was extremely out of my element. RAPBATTLERS spit rhymes? I’m assuming that’s a slang term for what they do? AUTODIDACT and NOCAP was a true Natick to me—no complaint I learned a new word that actually describes me and it makes sense. On the flip side MUNSTERS was a gimme and sad to admit so was CLEO, what kind of a Disney nerd do you have to be to know that? Overall a satisfying solve.
@SP I knew both right away, and it was nice to see autodidact. The other one not so much. :)
@SP Disney fan, for sure, and I haven't watched Pinocchio in decades, but CLEO popped right up for me as well. And the MUNSTERS was likewise a gimme. The SE was tough for me as well, though I did vaguely recall seeing NO CAP in previous puzzles (it was used twice last July per xwordinfo). Liked KILLER BEE for Queen's guard, but I'm getting a little bored with seeing little blue creatures show up in the puzzles lately (fourth time this week!). This was quite a bit faster than my usual Friday solve, but still a fairly good workout. Thanks, Jesse!
@SP There's a "spit" lyric in Hamilton, "in Aaron Burr, Sir": [LAURENS] Well, if it ain’t the prodigy of Princeton college! [MULLIGAN] Aaron Burr! [LAURENS] Give us a verse, drop some knowledge! [BURR] Good luck with that: you’re takin’ a stand You spit. I’m ‘a sit. We’ll see where we land.