Loved this puzzle. Forgetting about the theme, it solved like a chewy themeless, with a lot of misdirects for me—ADAM before SELF, UCSD before SDSU, LINENS before DIAPER, I could go on—and good fill and clever clues. As for the theme, it’s getting scary—I saw the first one “meditation chant, in a sense” and I immediately knew this would be OM inside a sense word. But even understanding the theme, there were no gimmes with it, even with RAREEVENT because I thought it was Christopher REEVES. The theme helped but didn’t give anything away, the best of both worlds. Big thumbs up.
@SP If you liked this puzzle, consider poking a toe into the ocean of cryptic AKA British-style crosswords. The themers here are "container clues" in the UK parlance and one of many variety clues used in cryptics.
@SP Yeah, it's a perfectly decent "themeless",... But it's Thursday! I want a theme that makes me say, "Wow!"
@SP You probably know this, but just in case, you might have wanted REEVES because the early TV superman portrayer was George Reeves.
No rebuses. You can come out now.
@Barry Ancona I think they're already at the pub. And this puzzle's theme would bemuse them as much as a rebus anyway.
@Barry Ancona Except people usually come here *after* solving the puzzle.
I'm a British crossword doer usually, and the italicized clues reminded me of British cryptic clues - except they were missing the third part that these types of cryptic clues would have. So for fun I've had a go at adding it: Meditation chant, in a sense, is excessive. Tennis do-over, in a way takes inside and outside bets. Superman portrayer, in so many words, comes occasionally. Oopsie - it requires a passport or driver's licence, in a manner of speaking. Action star Jet, in a nutshell, is often found at the beach.
@eatnik I was just going to say this is about the closest we get to the British-style cryptic, which I never have been able to get my head around. This is the first I've learned that there are typically three elements to these types of clues. That might help me crack the code. In your examples, it is clear. Thanks!
I tried understanding cryptic crosswords a few times and I always failed. I wonder if it's just about intelligence (I'm certainly lacking in that department) or maybe also native and non-native language skills.
Fun solve. I picked up on the trick with TO(OM)UCH and was off to the races from there. But I didn’t fully appreciate the ingenuity of the theme until after I finished. First, the constructor came up with five different phrases that mean the same thing (“in a sense”, “in a way”, “in so many words”, “in a manner of speaking”, “n a nutshell”). Then, he came up with of one word to cleverly represent each phrase (touch, route, rant, accent, pecan). THEN, the pièce de résistance. Finding a word that can be embedded within each word that makes a completely new word. Amazing! PE(LI)CAN is my favorite. Congratulations, Adam. Excellent work!
@Anita Thank you for that detailed description, I missed how clever the construction actually is -- thank you to Adam for the fun puzzle, satisfying to solve!
Lovely moment: I was stuck on the corner of _inny and _ue, thinking of all the letters that could go in that square. I left it blank, went elsewhere. While I was elsewhere, my brain tapped me on the shoulder and excitedly whispered “HINNY!” Lovely moment: About halfway through, after having placed in three theme answers, seeing the trick. Oh, that was sweet! Other lovely moments as well. The numerous ahas at cracking oblique clues. The inner LOL at the PELICAN clue/answer. The déjà vu at 5D – [Gets away from] – the ELUDES or EVADES kealoa we saw less than a week ago. Not to mention the overall shine of sweet wordplay in theme and clues, and the rub my brain cherishes. Adam has shown once again that he has impressive grid-building chops. This 70-word, 26-black-square grid looks like a Friday or Saturday, and is so cleanly filled. The theme is tight, too. Bravo and thank you, Adam – what a splendid heap of lovely you brought today!
@Lewis I can't be the only person who looks forward to Lewis's comments each day. It's always a delightful palate cleanser amongst all the usual vitriol about the constructor, the editor, the constructor's parents, how easy and boring the puzzle was (Should have been run on a rainy Tuesday in April, not a Thursday, YAWN) and so on. Just sayin', you're appreciated and missed when you're not here, Lewis.
@Lewis Are you sure your brain didn't tap you on the shoulder and whinny in your ear? I like that the word HINNY is a portmanteau.
Thank you so much, kind people. I come into the NYT puzzle like a kid comes into a candy shop. Why? Because the constructors and editors are so good, with such a sweet combination of smart and art. These puzzles have so much to like. At least, that's how they hit me, and I calls 'em like I sees 'em.
@Ash Lewis is a constructor as well as a solver. He knows how much work goes into creating one of these, and by gracious example reminds us as well.
Had kiNG before HONG, though OPTICAL led me to delete; adam before SELF, which I held on to for way too long given IFNOT felt obvious; and zorse before HINNY, though I have heard of the latter. (I can never remember which way around the parenting goes though.) Fun fact: with both mules and hinnies, the front half looks like dad and the back half like mom. Also, obligatory PELICAN poem: A wondrous bird is the pelican: His beak can hold more than his belican. He holds in his beak Enough food for a week. But I'm darned if I know how the helican.
@Isabeau Tip of the hat to Ogden Nash. And as z lagniappe for us solvers, a link to another from Mr Nash - The Lama. <a href="https://epl.org/national-poetry-month-april-10th" target="_blank">https://epl.org/national-poetry-month-april-10th</a>/
@Isabeau Phnoo! You can still enjoy Nash's lama but I wrong to attribute The Pelican to him. Its origins seem to be a bit muddy, like its subject.
Just an interesting factoid about SHOFARS. In Hebrew the plural is shofarot (שופרות). Wishing all who celebrate a Happy New Year שנה טובה! Best, Julia
@FJC And to you, Julia. Do you think the editors held it back until it was seasonally appropriate? Best wishes for a happy, healthy, and peaceful year to all puzzlers and constructors, Judaeo- and other. 🍎🍯
Wow, that was hard for a Thursday, and I really enjoyed it! The theme itself was tough to get for a while, and it proved to be interesting and fun too. More crucially the theme actively helped me complete the puzzle. I just love when it's more than tangential windows dressing. If you catch this one it opens up a lot. This was mildly terrifying for me for a bit, much more so than the average Thursday. Well done! And it took me a while to change first person from "Adam", you sly dog you.
@B exactly how I felt. Took me well over my average, which I really appreciate. Just couldn’t get the handle on it until I did, thank you Jet li you beautiful king fu pelican.
@B [First person?] seems so much like a Thursday clue for ADAM that I did a little research. This clue has been used for ADAM all of twice, with [First of all] being the most common clue, used 12 times. [First mate?] and [Leading man?] have each been used 5 times. Some other, non-tricky clues, like [Eve's man] (6 times) have also been used multiple times. Today's clue seemed like a gimme to me, that eventually wasn't. But here's the twist: Look who the constructor is. SELF fits perfectly!
Regarding 28 down — HUE is not a synonym for color; it’s one of three properties of color, along with saturation (or chroma) and value (or lightness). Signed, a graphic designer
@Eric D This comes up every time color terms--hue, tint, tinge, etc.--are used in the puzzle. As a musician, I feel the same about tone, note, pitch. Just bite your lip till it's #660000, and move on:-)
@Eric D @BA's little hand slap aside, there seem to be several different coding systems for colors, and I don't quite understand which are used when. (I do understand the difference between RBG and CMYK., but not the rest.) In the HEX (or other) system, do two of the digits code hue, two chroma, and two value? Honest question, for you or any other graphic designers. @BA Actually, most musicians (including myself) use "note," "tone," and "pitch" pretty much interchangeably, unless they are composers or musicologists speaking formally about music theory.
@Eric D I tend to be pedantic when color terms are clued in a way I think is technically wrong, but I understand that when they are used colloquially the definitions are a little looser. However, in this instance, the clue is so technical that IMO the answer really should be technically accurate.
Cheeky Adam, to make us *think* he had inserted himself in the puzzle.
@Cat Lady Margaret I certainly thought that!
Well I, for one, instinctively entered HONG for 41A. Go figure!
@Mark Cousins That may have been my first entry.
@Mark Cousins Me too, and I'm not even in Hong Kong.
@Mark Cousins Mandarin speaker here; just curious as to residents of your city say Hong Kong, out of tradition, or Xiang Gang? We Americans made the editorial shift from Peking to Beijing a while ago, but HK persists.
Crossword superstar Paolo Pasco Jeopardy watch, day six ... Victory once again, and impressive, as Paolo didn't land on a single Daily Double. He won by betting big on the Final Jeopardy clue, which was "In April 2025 the Empire State Building was lit up green to celebrate the 100th anniversary of this novel’s publication" -- (answer in reply). His winnings now total $162,117.
FJ answer -- "What is The Great Gatsby?"
@Lewis I will have to tune in tonight. Thanks for the heads up!
@Lewis How does that show work? Will he be on it forever? It's been quite long already 🤣
@Lewis - Cheering him on every night! It’s been such a treat to watch him from the moment he ran that anagram category on the first night. I’ll never forget the way Ken anagram’ed his name the next night - “Papa So Cool” 😎
So a person who keeps winning keeps returning? I used to watch Jeopardy on satellite Tv in the 90s but I remember very little.
@Lewis Cruciverbalist Paolo cruising in Jeopardy. Crossword solvers of the World-UNITE!!
@Lewis, Not getting why they lit it up green.
As someone whose sentences have been accused of being overqualified, I greatly enjoyed the theme’s wordplay, literally. Thanks Adam!
I tried but I just couldn't deal with the fill without lookups - I googled SHOFARS (seen the word here before but it didn't stick), OTHELLO (never heard of it, I think, and I definitely never played it), GIDEON (a complete mystery to me), SDSU (well, duh), and LACERTA (apparently the Polish name is Jaszczurka, which means lizzard. All constellations have Polish names in Polish. I've never heard of it even though apparently it's visible from here and we learned about the night sky in school). Then I had to rely on crosses for other clues or entries I did not understand. For example, I know nothing about sport betting in Polish or English, as I abhor gambling, so I only got OVERUNDER with almaot all the letters already there. Ditto BERATED, as I didn't know what "Chewed out" might mean. As for the theme, I got it in the end. Unluckily, the first themed entry I got from crossew was the one in the SE (easiest corner for me, filled very quickly), PELICAN. Its clue looked like a word salad to me. It's not explained in the column, either (my stumpers rarely are...), and google is no help - it inanely insists on telling me about Jet Li when I try to find a connection between Jets (a sport team?) and Li (a player?) I finally understood the theme upon analyzing ACC-ID-ENT. After that Aha! moment I was able to complete the puzzle. That was quite a good theme. I sort of liked the puzzle I guess, but I wish the fill were less arcane.
Today I'm going to the funeral of my best childhood friend, Łukasz. For years he was like a brother to me. We haven't talked in ages though. I always thought we had time. Well, we don't. He died at 44. ***Please don't recommend this post*** - I'm not fishing for "likes" here. It's just that talking about grief helps me deal with it.
@Andrzej i thought san diego state had a sister school in krakow! no? guess not. youre a wildman for wrassling these cross-pond crosswords.
@Andrzej Oh, I just re-read the PELICAN clue. So it *was* about Jet Li. Doh! I'm so useless sometimes...
@Andrzej On another topic... my wife returned yesterday from a trip on which she picked up the two dogs I mentioned once. So we are now a two dog family. But because my son is staying with us temporarily, and because he has a dog, then we have a three dog household. And because my daughter often comes over with her dog, so we are sometimes a four-dog household (oh, and sometimes we babysit that dog for several nights). Finally, my daughter is in the process of getting another dog, so I'll soon be sharing my house with up to five dogs. I'm not really complaining....ah who am I kidding... I'm complaining at least a little bit.
@Andrzej You may know OTHELLO as Reversi. One player plays white, the other black. One has to flank opposing pieces to play, which flips the opposing pieces to your color. Repeat until grid is filled or no possible moves for one player. Person with most pieces of their color on the board at the end wins.
@Andrzej I’m so sorry to hear this. I’ve never posted here and never spoken to you but as a fellow European NYT crossworder I look out for your posts most days (especially when I think there’s too many “Americanisms” or sports references) and missed them during your recent holiday hiatus. I too lost my first childhood friend 5 years ago when she was 39. Perhaps like you we hadn’t talked in some time but had managed to stay in touch as much as possible. The pain was and still is immense, I’ve found talking and reminiscing with family and friends helps so much a few years when the pain isn’t so raw. Condolences to you and your friend’s family.
Thank you all for being here for me and sharing your stories. It helps.
@Andrzej Here in the comments some people do an OVER UNDER about how many complaints there will be about a rebus or similar trick; that's how I knew it.
I don't usually watch sports, but last weekend I was hanging out with two friends who were watching the Brewers game and switching over the the Lions/Bears game during commercials. I was APPALLED at the number of ads for sports betting. They even inserted them into the baseball game in little windows off to the side. Then on Sunday night I watched the Crawford/Canelo fight. Nothing but ads, ads, ads, all for sports betting. I would just as soon see ads for heroin, but I guess I'd better learn more about sports betting, judging from today.
@Jeff Z Yes—becoming a huge problem on one end, big money on the other. Lots of stories about this in the last year.
@Jeff Z If you want to learn more about sports betting, I recommend Michael Lewis’ excellent podcast “Against the Rules” Season 5, which explores the world of sports betting. If you know any young men, I suggest you point them there too. It will save them a lot of money (if they heed his warnings).
@Jeff Z What's worse is that with gambling front and center now for basically all sports, it's impossible for me to believe there is no interference with the purity of the competition. I long scoffed at the NFL being fixed. I now think it is entirely possible, at least to some extent.
(Haven't read comments yet; apologies for any duplicates.) [Boomers, in essence] [EGOT winner Moreno, in a play on words] COLD SORE PURITAN
@ad absurdum Hello, in ave. crosser [Emu'ed]
@aa It didn't help that my eyes--which watched the moon landing on TV--kept seeing "Bloomers."
@ad absurdum I was trying to solve in my head and thought "What's a PRITAUN?"
HINNY today I learned that a mule with a donkey mom is not a mule at all. It's a "hinny", which, despite being an animal person, is a term I've never heard until today. When you mix a lion and a tiger you get a liger or a tigon. But mix a horse and a donkey, you don't get a horkey or a donse. Nope, a mule or a hinny. I really wish there were horkeys.
@Dan I think Hinny is a mash-up of horse and jenny, a female donkey, although I don't know why that wouldn't be a henny.
@Dan Me too. And thanks for reminding I had never heard of HINNY, but now i know what it is.
I couldn’t make sense of the italicized clues, even though I knew (for example) that the “meditation chant” was OM. But when I got the SE corner filled in, the LI in PELICAN gave me the trick, and I was able to get the other theme answers pretty easily. Thanks for the fun, Mr. Wagner.
@Eric Hougland that was my experience as well with the light going on at PELICAN ☺️
When alternate words fit and create a seemingly logical cross, you can get in a jam. There are such things as "prizebots" and a "bar" is a reasonable goal to shoot for, whether it's high, or in the current moment, desperately low.
@Mortiser I was stuck with a seemingly correct completed puzzle, and thanks to your comment I was able to find my error! Very confusing indeed.
“Touch” is a sense. “Route” is a way. “Rant” is so many words. “Accent” is a manner of speaking. “Pecan” is a nutshell? Actually, I mostly wasted time with BAR instead of PAR, wondering if a PRIZEBOT was some kind of online gambling feature.
@Eric That was my only square I had to fix flyspecking. I also had PRIZEBOTS x BAR
@Eric Bar! Humbug!
@Eric Simple, the nut here is a shell around the contained word. I thought it was just perfect...
@Eric I had BAR and PRIZEBOTS too at first. Plus, I forgot how to spell the French city and had LeON instead of LYON, which took a bit to figure out because I've never heard of a HINNY so HINNe seemed possible.
@Eric Yeah, pecan was weak. The clue would have to be "Action star Jet, in a nut" to match the others. No bueno.
I love to be tickled. This was great.
Enjoyed reading the constructor notes. When I got to the word “chonkiness” I was reminded of my daughter’s dismay at the whole grape tomatoes in her salad: “C’mon Mom, I need forkiness!”
My favorite themes are the ones that can be sussed out mid-solve, and help me answer the remaining theme clues. This was a nice example of that. Just right for a Thursday.
And so here I am, trudging in with a weary heart, Late in the game with a star in the West. Impaled, squirming in shame Hoisted by that gnarled trumpet, That gleaming shofar. The Zen blindly cried out in protest. The neophyte mind searched - Mu! Mu! I must have MU What is MU? Blinded, unwilling to give up on, TOu MU CH Then calm, the wave breaks, the walls settle . . . OM
@Whoa Nellie Wow! I am speechless!
For some reason I didn't much enjoy the theme or the puzzle even though I got the theme early on. I guess I prefer long answers and stacks instead of a bunch of 5, 6 and 7 letter words. I never really thought about that before. It just feels choppy to me and not flowy. Just how my brain works I guess? Cheers all and go Paolo!
This should be in the thread started by Emlyn 6 hours ago, but two attempts have not shown up yet. Trying this way because sometimes it works: The answer is in the first paragraph of the column. Qualifiers are words or phrases like "in a way" or "in a sense" that limit meaning. It's not a crossword-specific term; you might say "In a way, you're right" when you mean that the other person isn't completely right, or is right somehow by accident. In this crossword, these qualifiers serve as wordplay rather than their normal meaning; "in a sense" means that the rest of the clue ("Meditation chant", or OM) is literally found wrapped within a sense (TOUCH). This is not something that happens with regularity in American-style crosswords, but is common in cryptic (British-style) ones. The NYT runs cryptic puzzles as the second Sunday puzzle every eight weeks, in rotation with several other types of puzzle. They're not available on the NYT Games site/app, but can be played (on non-mobile devices only) at xwordinfo.com (membership required). Hope this helps!
@Steve L And of course, all three of them appear at the same time!
great, really clever construction. I adore a puzzle that has a distinct epiphany.
Superb! I loved the theme, it must have taken some work to find enough words to work that way. The in a nutshell one was the first I got and it had me chuckling.
Full of fun moments, not the least of which was changing King Kong to Hong Kong.
Wow! Great puzzle. I’m in awe of you and a bit of me since I did finally solve it fair and square. What a workout! Thanks.
I’m an insomniac and I’m first!!!??? Om inside touch. Reeve inside rant. ID inside accent. Let inside route. Li inside a pecan. A Thursday rip snorter, by gum. Seriously…I just can’t sleep. Dang...I'm not first...
In German… Ein = a Eins = one While “ein bier, bitte” and “eins bier, bitte” are both correct and will get you a single beer, ein, zwei, drei, vier, funf is never correct (a, 2,3,4,5).
@Dan "Eins bier" is correct? My last German lesson was over 25 years ago but that looks very wrong. Also, "Ein bier butte" will get you one beer, "Zwei bier bitte" will get you two. The clue is soet of OK, if not perfect.
V surprised to get the gold star as my stuffed up head found it very tricky, in a good way. Got the theme with PE-LI-CAN then had fun working out the rest. The rest of the fill was chewier; no clue on betting, sports related or otherwise, ditto the bible ref. I could only think of David, which clearly didn’t fit. I had Adam at 52A for ages. Chuckled when I finally hit on SELF. A good Thursday overall.
We arrived back home just in time for this puzzle. We had spent a week in LYON, where any resident will tell you it’s the second largest city in France using some obscure metric. But, the big payoffs were two answers from previously unheard from housemates. Metal head son knew the drummer and #1 grandson chipped in with the chess answer. In our house, it takes a village.
Got the gold star and the music, and then went to work on "what the heck is the theme?". All I had figured out by the time I completed the puzzle was that the answer to the clue seemed to be embedded in some bigger word or phrase. Finally the light came on and I realized how the rest of the clue worked. An outstanding Thursday puzzle. I haven't read the comments yet, but if I hear someone suggest that the constructor got more pleasure constructing this puzzle than the solver did solving it, then I say to that person that is totally on you, and you need to solve a lot longer before you make such statements.
@Jim Even *I* appreciated the theme 😃
Great puzzle, but I kind of wish they had all been nut-themed. My personal nut hangups aside, I did really enjoy this puzzle. SHOFARS, CRANE GAME, and GIDEON are all great entries. I had trouble with OVER UNDER, since I don't gamble. I find it so much easier to just set piles of cash on fire.
Quite shocked by the positive reception to this one. A stockpile of poor cluing and google-able fill made the north half impenetrable, and while the south half felt more doable, still some nasty naticks poked their heads up, grinding progress to a halt. Disappointing when constructors and the editorial team feel such construction is publishable. The usual cheap Thursday tricks are present, unfortunately, and there was no clue or hint how to solve those. A reliance on the Wordplay column to explain your gimmick does not a strong crossword puzzle make, I fear. Once “revealed”, the puzzler is left with no discernible theme, direction, or connection upon which they can hope to figure out the rest of the puzzle. Again, how these get by editorial is beyond me, but my experience has shown many are asleep at the wheel with these things. Chose to reveal the puzzle rather than bumble through it. Critics will say it’s a me problem, and hey, maybe so. I don’t feel the best this morning and my brain hasn’t quite woken up for crosswords. But I couldn’t find it in me to try today when faced with such an uninspiring slog of a puzzle, all things considered.
@D Not sure what you mean when you say there was no clue or hint on how to solve the themers—the italics let you know there’s a trick there and the clues were pretty self explanatory. I, and I’m sure many others, were able to figure it out without reading the wordplay column.
@D I can't tell from your comment whether you actually understood the structure of the theme clues. Thursdays often borrow from all kinds of puzzle concepts; today the clues used a structure common in cryptic crosswords. Deb described the specifics. Forgive me if I'm about to explain something you already know or if the general structure has been discussed below. I have to work now. In cryptic crosswords, clues are typically in two parts, with a straightforward clue and then a trick. Those parts here were clearly denoted by the comma. The part before the comma was straightforward, the part after the comma, "in ______" was a clue that the word from the first half of the clue appeared inside the word referred to in the blank. I did not get the bit about modifiers until reading the Wordplay column, but I did not need that for the solve.
@D “The usual cheap Thursday tricks are present, unfortunately, and there was no clue or hint how to solve those. A reliance on the Wordplay column to explain your gimmick does not a strong crossword puzzle make, I fear.” The media solve time for users of xwstats is currently 16:30, which is about what I would have guessed based on my own experience — and assuredly, the great majority of those users did not need to consult the wordplay column to grok the theme. Personally, I enjoyed the theme very much, though I’d say it was a bit on the gentle/easy side for a Thursday gimmick. Sounds like this puzzle was simply beyond your current solving abilities. There’s no shame whatsoever in that. Why not just acknowledge it?
@D I understand that you didn’t like it and appreciate your taking time to explain the reasons why. I think the bridge too far is suggesting that the constructor shouldn’t have submitted it or the editors publish it. Whatever your subjective feeling personally, objectively it should be clear to you (if you read the other comments) that lots of people enjoyed it a lot, and thus it was a worthy puzzle to be published. Say your peace about your own opinions and then leave it at that.
@D - Yeah, it's a "you" problem. I never rely on or even read the Wordplay column prior to solving, this puzzle included (which I solved in well below my average Thursday time FWIW). Maybe refrain from commenting on days when you "don't feel the best", in the future?
I vote yes to this clever puzzle. I caught on with ACCIDENT which enabled me to polish off the REEVE clue. I like it when a theme, once understood, can help the solve. I was a bit stuck at the beginning as I’m not familiar with the OTHELLO game and though I’ve heard of RSS FEED I really don’t know what it is. (Well, I do now) Figuring out the OM “in a sense” answer really helped me solve that quadrant and confirm the EVADE/ELUDE conundrum. TIL HINNY. H my final entry.
I solved the puzzle without cheating, but had to come here to understand the theme. It's like doing Connections: 90% of the time when only 4 words are left, I have no idea how they're connected.
Very late to the party here but wanted to be sure to give a big IVOTEyes to the puzzle! It was a hard one for me, and very enjoyable. For a while, I wasn't sure if I could complete it without help—especially in the upper right but I kept puzzling away at it and huzzah!! First got the theme with ACCIDENT in the lower left area, which was the most accessible area to me. The theme actively helped me get the other four themers, which helped me get the other fill, which was awesome! I really like it when that happens! I had no crossings for ROULETTE and that area seemed impenetrable but when I figured out how the theme worked, I plopped it right in. That felt good!! This one made me proud of how far I've come as a puzzler! Not easy, not fast but I got there. Another huzzah!!
@HeathieJ It does feel good to realize that I'm now routinely putting in answers that a year or so ago would have been entirely, completely impossible.
I found this one notably hard due to those chonky corners and a few words I couldn't produce: HINNY, LACERTA, and SHOFARS. What was fun was that PELICAN did indeed reveal the trick, and then the theme answers served as anchors for the rest of the solve, presumably as intended. A drag for me was having HINNI for a while as I misspelled LYON and that equine hybrid wasn't providing any helpful advice. Also checked in with the KING [Kong] gang.
Really enjoyed this puzzle, especially for a Thursday. Got stuck on one letter. I had BAR as a 40A “goal to shoot for.” This gave me PRIZEBOTS as 21D “holdings of winnings.” I was fairly certain this was the letter tripping me up, but “I’ve never heard of a prize bot” isn’t really helpful when I’ve also never heard of a HINNY or a SHOFAR. And, in this day and age, a robot holding on to your money made sense, even if I’d never heard of it. Had to check puzzle, then just keep guessing letters until I landed on P. Alas.
@Sam In a sort of ChatGPT vs Claude in the ring punch fest. Makes total sense
Got the theme. Needed the theme! Middle of the puzzle was the toughest bit for me. TIL the difference between a HINNY and a mule!
This one started out slow for me, but then the PELICAN made it fly! So fun. Question: Why is a horse + a jenny not a henny? Or a jorse? (I wish it were a honkey.)
@Heidi I snorted. Neigh, I brayed!
TRANSAM made me smile. I remember some of the rich kids who drove Transams to high school. They were beautiful. 6.6L it said on the hood. Sitting next to CJ5’s with lift kits, giant mud tires, and KC lights. I drove a big mercury station wagon to school sometimes. Don’t laugh, it had a very beefy 390cu engine.
I loved this puzzle! You gave me that wonderful “aha” moment that is the best part of a Thursday!
I loved this puzzle. I had nothing in the top half and my first entry was king. Luckily the N and G were correct giving me two downs, which in turn opened up the SE corner and let me see that I need HONG instead. Once I got PELICAN I saw the trick with the themers and I was able to work my way around the puzzle in a clockwise spiral from the SE and ending in the middle. Clever and fresh, this puzzle got my day off to a good start.