I beg your humble pardon, but one eats oyster crackers with chowder, not saltines. Because the word chowder refers, for ever and ever, to New England clam chowder and no other. Otherwise, it waa a lovely, quick puzzle.
Kathleen, You and I and many others eat oyster crackers with chowder. I'm sorry to report that I have, at times, observed the eating of saltines with chowder. The answer is sad but true.
@Kathleen I don't know, I just think adding crackers made of oyster is too much for a clam chowder. Maybe a corn chowder... I jest, I'm not an eater of clams or oysters, but I did try to put oyster in there first, before surprisingly having to change it to SALTINE. Even this lifelong Midwesterner knew the correct answer should be oyster. ☺️
@Kathleen Herman Melville refers also to cod chowder. When Ishmael enters the Spouter Inn on Nantucket the proprietor asks “Clam or Cod” being the only two items on the menu. There is also Bermuda Chowder, which is mixed seafood.
@Kathleen @Barry @HeathieJ I am sensing some real elitism here.
@Kathleen Oh, goody. Yesterday, it was BEEP vs MEEP. Today, it's the chowder wars. (Yawn)
@Kathleen Please explain the difference between the two crackers to us cretins.
@Kathleen DHubby totally agreed! (I often test-drive certain clues that raise outcries...) His "oyster crackers" was instantaneous. And no SALTINES have ever crossed our threshold.
I really love today’s crossword!! Even though I know nothing about sports, baseball and English is my second language ( im fluid in English) I finally got a crossword where I really could dive into it. Most of the answers I could figure out myself, EVEN THE BASEBALL ONES!! And I loved it!! Loved finally doing a crossword for real and not having to search for hints on 80% of it and stumble on things I have never heard of, even though I’m perfectly fluid in English. I think crosswords like this really help spreading the NYT games to a broader international audience.
@Emlyn Your enthusiasm made me smile. Thank you, and congrats! 😃
@Emlyn This was also the first crossword I've managed to do without having to google anything (yes, even the baseball ones!) So I totally get your excitement :) Tillykke!
@Emlyn Given that the best I can do abroad is a tiny bit of very basic Spanish, I feel like a fraud giving someone who is legitimately multilingual advise about the English language, but I figured this might be useful to you: The phrase you're looking for is "fluent in." "Fluid in" is commonly heard, even among native English speakers, but "fluent in" is better.
@Emlyn We might say you are FLUENT in english :))))
My five favorite original clues from last week (in order of appearance): 1. Crack expert? (5) 2. Rock, for one (5) 3. Deep study (10) 4. Check-in line? (3)(3)(4) 5. Part of Wayne's world? (7) COMIC COMIC OCEANOLOGY ARE YOU GOOD WESTERN
My favorite encore clues from last week: [Butter from a farm] (3) [Found darling] (6) RAM ADORED
A great day at the ballpark is pitcher-perfect. (But inning isn't everything.)
@Mike This jugged my memory of some of your past puns. They are all very “you” but some of them are getting ewer
@Mike No comment today. I didn't strike out, I just balked. (If I wanted to add one, it would have been a walk in the park.}
Matthew (32 NYT puzzles) and Michael (31) are top tier constructors, and their skill is evident in this theme. First, they had to find three team names that you can remove the letter “I” from, and have what’s left be part of both words of a two-word phrase. I believe the three they found are the only ones in MLB that work. Second, those two-word phrases had to fit symmetry in the grid – one had to be a spanner to match the revealer, and the other two had to have the same number of letters. Wow! Bravo! My brain got its workout at trying to guess the revealer, the highlight being trying to anagram the circled letters and wondering if STANG was a word. I also liked seeing TOTEM as a vertical answer, as well as the PuzzPair© of HEIST and a backward LOOT. Quality puzzle, quality solve. Even with those i’s in your full name, Michael, you and Matthew make an excellent team. Thank you both for a most lovely start to the week!
@Lewis Wait - there were teams in there? From a sport? I had no idea at all. And I was pleased that I did so well!
Mathematician here! I always love seeing math related clues, and loved the rest of the puzzle. I do have a small nitpick: mathematically, something can be [One dimensional] but not LINEAR! (and vice versa). As an example, almost all curves are one dimensional but not linear!
@Pedro aren't lines 2d? A point is 1d.
@Pedro Yep! I think people get confused between the dimensionality of the graphical representation of the curve and the dimensionality of the curve itself. e.g. y = sin(x). This is a 1-d curve, given that there is a single parameter. The y axis on the graph represents output, rather than input. As an aside to the devs, two nits discovered on Android (Pixel 9) today. 1) When in a comment thread, clicking the popup "pencil" icon on the lower right creates a brand new thread at the top level, rather than a comment within the currently viewed thread. 2) When writing a comment of any kind, the text view does not move when the text extends into the keyboard space. This means thatthe user constantly has to type blind, and minimize the keyboard to check correctness. There is no way to scroll down while typing.
@Pedro But anything LINEAR is one-dimensional, right? So the clue works. Clues are not all-inCLUEsive. If anything that is one-dimensional is LINEAR, then the clue is correct, I think.
Mondays are easy for us solvers, but hard for constructors. How to make it doable for beginners, but interesting for the experienced? Today's puzzle is about as good as it gets. Pretty easy (IMHO), but with a theme that slowly reveals itself, until you get that pleasant "A-ha" moment. And timely as the lo-o-ong baseball season moves into its final month. Nice job, Matthew Stock and Michael Lieberman! Go, Yanks!
@The X-Phile I was just remembering fondly how the World Series was early in the school year...a promise of turning on the radio to listen to the game IF class behavior and work ethic were satisfactory....heh heh, a guarantee of Peace in the Valley.... With the start of college football "warm-ups" there is just too much competition for attention IMHO. Not that I was going to watch any of it.
@Mean Old Lady I was thinking the same thing. We used to listen to the World Series on little portable radios during recess the first week of school. That was when school started on Monday 2 weeks after Labor Day. That's today!! But now I've been in school for a whole month, since Aug 14. And the World Series will be some time in November. But football season started 3 weeks ago!
Sam, hope you read about the Rosetta Stone because it’s a fascinating story; if you are in London go see it at the British Museum. I’m always fascinated at some of the things otherwise well educated and intelligent people (this includes myself) have gaps about in their knowledge.
@SP Well, I assume Sam read the nice article she linked to. My favorite part: In a legend recounted by Champollion’s nephew, upon recognizing the significance of this confirmation, Champollion burst into his brother’s office, shouted “I’ve got it!,” and fainted, remaining unconscious for nearly a week.
@SP I saw it at the British Museum in 1989-ish. I had heard about it before then and I think I remember it because it was described as a tax “document” (taxes is my chosen profession). Enjoyed the puzzle.
@SP I guess some of us, unlike Sam, are old enough that we learned about the Rosetta Stone long before there was an Internet to teach us languages, and auto-translate for us! I'm old!
Corollary to the revealer's [Coaching axiom]: ...but there is in WIN.
I filled in the first themer and waited. I filled in the second themer and guessed the revealer. My wife is a coach.
🤪🤣 I am rarely as confused by Thursday themes as I was by today's, on a Monday - at least before I got to the revealer, which made me understand both what was going on and why I was so clueless before. Thankfully the fill was truly Monday easy. Otherwise I would have struggled terribly with a puzzle such as this. It's a bit meh that the themed phrases have no deeper connection to the cities or teams (because they don't, right?) - it makes the theme feel a bit random. ARENA is a word in Polish, too, but we don't use it to describe any huge venue. It only appears in commercial names of a few venues (like the Atlas Arena in the city of Łódź - Atlas is a sponsor), I suppose under English influence. The Polish arena has a much narrower meaning than the English one: in its literal sense it only means the center stage of a circus, ancient amphitheater or corrida stadium. We would never call the center of a sport stadium or the whole stadium an arena. Neither would we use the word for a concert hall or some such. In a symbolic sense, as in English, it may mean an activity or place of competition or discussion, as in political arena (arena polityczna).
@Andrzej -- It's not exactly the connection you were hoping for, but here's a puzzle (pointed out by Jim Horne at XwordInfo) with the same theme, where it's presented with a deeper connection: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=6/3/2018" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=6/3/2018</a>
@Andrzej The word "arena" comes from the Latin "(H)arena" (with or without the "h"), which literally means "sand," and by extension, the sand on which sporting events (including gladiatorial games) were held. Hence the more limited usage in Polish, I'd guess. Latin probably borrowed "Harena" from Etruscan, a non-Indo-european language. (Old news to many.)
Very clever theme. Years ago in choir practice the director said I was being too loud and I jokingly said, there actually is an I in choir 🤣
@Vivien Miller 🤣 I must remember to tell that one to our choir director!!
That was cute and elegant. Great puzzle!
The "ayes" have it! Very cute puzzle. I loved it!
There is no u in chocolate. Good puzzle!
@Wes There is! It's Fox's U-Bet, a chocolate syrup beloved by my generation, who grew up drinking egg creams. Egg creams are remembered fondly by anyone who grew up in New York. A chocolate soda made with not just any chocolate syrup, but only Fox's, a little milk, and seltzer from the soda fountain or the seltzer bottles that we all got delivered. No egg, no cream. That syrup is still being made today, and is available in certain areas of the country that have a kosher section in the supermarket.
"Ingenious fix" was perfectly acceptable as a crossword clue for "elegant solution," but I'm going to nitpick it a little anyway. An "elegant" solution isn't just ingenious. It's also simple. I once, during my career as a baker, approached the head engineer at my facility with my solution for a problem with a piece of machinery. It involved the installation of a plexiglass (I.e "perflex") shield to prevent small pieces of dough from dropping into the machinery of a dough conveyor and slowing the belt, causing a feedback loop that eventually stopped the conveyor and shut the line down while it was dealt with. I am used to thinking in terms of stuff I can buy off the shelf at, say, Home Depot, so my idea involved a Rube Goldberg construction of threaded rods and multiple parts. But our head engineer was a machinist, among his many other talents. He came back with a device that accomplished the same thing, but it consisted of a single aluminum bar with a 45° twist, to which a very specifically shaped piece of 1/4" plexiglass was bolted. It accomplished the same thing that my gizmo was trying to do, but it was a far more elegant solution.
@Bruce I know what you mean. When the windshield gasket on the Subaru I had at the time started to become unglued years ago, I could have attempted the complex and expensive job of replacing it, but I just duct taped it back into place. Simple, elegant - perfection.
@Bruce I’d say usually the simplest solutions tend to be ingenious as well when they are unexpected. My best example is the mathematician Gauss whose teacher (the story goes) asked the kids in elementary school to add up the numbers 1-100 to keep them busy. Gauss realized you could solve this quickly by taking pairs from each end: 1+100=101, 2+99=101, etc. There are 50 such pairs so the answer is 50 x 101 =5,050. There’s a solution that’s elegant, ingenious and simple!
@Bruce If I recall correctly, the Apollo 13 crew were able to survive by building a makeshift air filter adapter, using duct tape and a few other things, when they were forced to move from the Command Module into the Lunar Module. I understand all NASA missions carry duct tape.
Thank you, Sam! Thank you, creators of this puzzle! “I” was blown away!😄
Good thing that Oyster didn't fit for type of cracker served with chowder. I enjoyed solving this bright and lively Monday puzzle. Thanks guys.
Whizzed through this without have a clue re theme. Needed a second look at the completed grid to finally understand, because football. The diagnosis is in; I have the ‘flu, which I’ve now passed on to DH. And he says I never share. The plague cross has been daubed on the front door, though as I’m 10 days in surely it can’t last much longer?😷
@Helen Wright -- May it end soon!
@Helen Wright First of all, I hope you feel better soon. As soon as you can, and if they offer it, get a flu shot! As for the puzzle, those are baseball teams, not football (of either kind). The Pittsburgh Pirates, the Baltimore Orioles and the San Francisco Giants, the last of which were originally the New York Giants.
First time commenter. This was a fun solve and I managed to complete it without the aid of the Wordplay Column. Thank you for an enjoyable Monday morning. Go Dodgers!
Possible POY for Monday, what an engaging puzzle! I'm afraid (and I think fellow Pittsburghers Josh, Sue, Al, et al. will agree) that there's not much of a team left to cheer on here, and no coaching bromide will help us through this: we have a skinflint owner, and there's only one way that ends -- at the bottom of the standings. SELL THE TEAM, BOB! Can never remember whether it's Eastern Daylight Time or Eastern Standard Time. Dang it!
@john ezra Baseball memory I cherished, seeing Clemente and Stargell walk onto the field. I was 12. It was magical. It’s stupid, but keep the faith. Someday
@john ezra Sorry about the down year, JE. Been there many times. But I'm grateful for your giving us back Isaiah Kiner-Falefa this summer. IKF is flourishing here and seems happy to be back. Plus we fans missed him when the owners let your team snatch him from under our noses last summer. There's been a lot of traffic between Pa./USA and TO. Maybe, next year's series will be Jays/Pirates. Meanwhile, let's go, Blue Jays! ⚾️ 🐦 🍁
@john ezra - I lived in Pittsburgh in the glory days of the ‘70s. Those were the days, my friend.
@john ezra 1960. Bill Mazeroski. 9th inning. Need I say more?
Played this while the MARNERS played another fantastic ball game. Go M’s!
@C. I didn’t know that Silas, or his family, played baseball. (More evidence of the game’s longer history than the official version)
@C That was quite the game. Now to polish off the Cheaters for the division win!
Fun fact: ETCH and ENGRAVE are two different intaglio processes in printing. Engravings are like portraits on US paper money, where lines are tooled or carved out of the metal plate. Etchings are made by painting corrosive chemicals on metal to wear away the design. Not synonymous, if you’re considering the last 500 of printing, but no biggie!
Loved the puzzle today! Cute theme. However: The Hebrew name ELI (אלי) means “my God.” No Israeli would think otherwise. It is spelled with an aleph (א). “High” as a clue perhaps confuses it with עלי/עליון Ali or Alyon (“to ascend,” “Most High”).
@FJC Eli with an aleph is usually short for אליהו or אליעזר (or sometimes אלימלך), there is an עלי too which does mean high (ספר שמואל א)
I love a good sports theme! I’m with Matthew Stock - Go Cubs! 🐻 ⚾️! Just got to see them last week at Truist Park in ATL, a great place to watch baseball, but it’s no Wrigley Field! And thank you, Sam, for the iconic scene from “A League of Their Own”! Just got a funny image in my head of emus playing baseball! When, oh when, will Apple give us an emu emoji?
Fun Monday puzzle and a pretty smooth solve. The reveal was almost the last thing I filled in and that just made for a nice 'aha' moment. And... THERESNOIINTEAM was the 'reveal' in a rather amazing Sunday puzzle from June 3, 2018 by David J. Kahn with the title "Proving them wrong." And the clue for that answer was: "Sports axiom refuted by this puzzle" And the theme answers in that one were all crossing answers - across and down. Some examples: detroIt crossing tIgers washIngton crossing natIonals mInnesota crossing twIns stlouIs crossing cardInals All of those pairs crossing each other at the "I" (which I capitalized) Here's that link: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=6/3/2018&g=63&d=A" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=6/3/2018&g=63&d=A</a> ....
Nice and easy puzzle for a Monday, very creative revealer. Thanks
I really liked the nice payoff when I finished this puzzle. Monday is my only ‘speed solve’ day and I frequently miss the point of these puzzles. Today, the revealer sucked me in and each find was a little present. Thanks!
I was afraid those were anagrams....'cause I couldn't make heads nor tails out of them! Given that these two Constructor names belong to Matthew Stock and Michael Lieberman (whom, if they were in my classroom, I would seat well apart) we are getting off lightly. Delightful puzzle. The only truly puzzling part was why someone felt it necessary to put the city names in the clues. We don't need no stinkin' hints. Or badges. Baseball Forever!
@Mean Old Lady - Cities needed since it's Monday. Made the theme easy once I got to the revealer.
Cute, fun puzzle! Made for a nice start to the week.
Nice Monday puzzle, with a solid and cute theme and some interesting fill: PEGASUS, SALTINE, ROSETTA, OILPASTELS, ONIONBAGEL. Took me about 7.5 minutes, which for me is faster than usual for a Monday.
@Xword Junkie How dare you say you enjoyed this puzzle? That's a slap in the face to all of us who disagree! Just kidding, X. I liked it, too. I see you've solved the busy morning problem by doing the puzzle the evening before. I'm not sure what I think about that! (But I do know how much you should care about what I think.)
Thank you, Matthew and Michael. Such fun!
This was great fun. And wow! I didn't need to look up anything and inserted American clues like IHOP and EMTS like a pro. I had thought ICEE was an ice cream, though. I thought ONION bahji not BAGEL, I can get bahjis everywhere, but never seen the BAGEL. Fortuitously I learnt the mnemonic for rainbow here last week. Nice one.
@Jane Wheelaghan I've never had an ICEE (and I'm not sure what fast-food emporium sells them, come to think of it) but it's sure to be a disappointment if you ever do get one.
@Jane Wheelaghan I'd not heard of a bhaji before, and you're not likely to find Indian food at a deli. I checked crosses to make sure it was not an onion bialy.
Nice work, lads. A theme that's so dopey you gotta love it.
Loved this one! As a born-and-raised Maryland girl, as soon as I saw OROLES in 49A, the theme fell together for me. One of my quickest solves yet, and a genuinely fun Monday puzzle - great job to the constructors!
I loved today's puzzle! I am always fond of an early week puzzle with a theme--I remember when I was a new solver and the Monday/Tuesdays were the only puzzles I could routinely solve without assistance, but I felt rather left out by never having a theme like the Thursday and onward puzzles, so it's always nice to see these. I've enjoyed reading others' comments on the impressive construction of the grid! I especially liked the cross of 25A and 28D, and also 64D. One thing--does anybody else solving on desktop have a banner at the top of the screen offering a family subscription? It makes it so I cannot see the last row of the grid, and the puzzle jumps when I get to the final clues so that I can't see the top where the clue is written solo, only the side lists. It's a little thing, but it's driving me absolutely bananas. I'd hoped it would go away after a week!
@G Download uBlock Origin browser extension, right click anywhere on a website, select element you want to hide on it. Voila. No more obnoxious banners etc.
A proper mechanic does not wear a TOOL belt, as doing so dramatically increases the odds of scratching the paint. The rolling TOOL chest is de rigueur. Fun Monday puzzle, although SILAS MARNER was disappointed not to be included in the theme.
Grant, I trust you mean a proper *auto* mechanic. Those rolling TOOL chests can't go everywhere.
Great way to start the week...a home run, guys!!
Great puzzle! It would be a great one to suggest to brand new solvers.
Great Monday puzzle! Elegant and fun, with a cozy theme reveal
There’s no I in Team, but there is in Win 😆 Catch ya later! ⚾️
What a great start to the week. Baseball fever is ramping up around here. Go Jays!
@Michael Bonnell I’m assuming you are not in the more famous London.
@Michael Bonnell - Baseball fever crazy here, as well! Our Brewers will beat the Blue Jays in the Series. Definitely no "i" in Brewers. (Michael - we will wave at you as we head to the Stratford ON Shakespeare Festival next week.)
Lots of fun! Great way to start the week. I even got the theme before I read the Wordplay!
While there is no I in team, with a slight movement of letters, there is a ME. Fun solve today for sure.
I thought this was very clever and well constructed for a Monday.
Didn’t figure out the theme until I got to cameo roles and then was trying to do cameorioles and realized what was going on. Enjoyed this very much. 3:44 under my Monday average