The intersection of MENOMOSSO IGOTTAJET (which I had as IGOTToJET) HAJIS STAVE and TARO was a few too many Naticks for me.
@Bob somehow it never occurred to me that GOTTA could be GOT To, despite making *perfect* sense. Would have slowed me down even more than my existing trip ups!
@Bob MENOMOSSO and ECHOISM? This is too much. It's too difficult and it takes the fun out of it.
@Bob The SE was my last corner, and the last blank squares weren't giving an inch. I had to do a couple of look-ups, but they didn't entirely do the job, so I trusted a couple of guesses and it was done. Nearly fell off my chair. I thought it was worth all the work because as the fills emerged they were perfectly transparent and beautiful. I loved it.
@Bob SE corner was a streak-breaker for me. Too many lookups to consider it an official solve in my book. First one in nearly 1.5 yrs (April 6, 2024 NW corner was the last).
@Bob First off, those aren't Naticks. They're just words you don't know. Second, that corner, while it had some difficult entries, also had some easier ones: KING ME, MONSOON, STEM, and TKO were highly guessable. I didn't have the trouble you did with HAJIS, as I'm pretty familiar with Islam. (I made a point to educate myself about it after 9/11.) TARO made sense eventually, as I'm a fan of the TARO ice cream at the creamery down the road from me. SMOKE RING also came easy after I got a couple crosses. Puzzles like this will get much easier if you widen your horizons. I recommend reading more books and/or eating more ice cream.
@Bob I gotta jet, said no-one, ever.
Tough corner. I had to look up STAVE to get it to fall.
@Bob (I meant this comment to be a reply to yours, and hit a wrong button, which posted it separately. I'll try again.) Working tough puzzles is how you get better. No buzz of self-satisfaction when you can't finish one, but the way you continue to deserve the buzz is to face the toughest puzzles with imagination, tenacity, and patience. It's how you got to where you are, but you can't just coast on your laurels, and you should never blame a failure on the people who unveiled your nemesis.
Long, looong time since an NYT crossword put up a fight like that
What a workout. Fair, but tough. Just how I like my Saturday puzzles. "King me" was a particularly enjoyable aha moment. This puzzle pushed my current streak to 1400, and I had to fight for it.
@JBW Agree! Incredible to get the occasional Saturday that's still actually tough. Love the payoff of a hard solve.
This one was not for me. Not a fun solve.
NOMEGUSTA. Nice and challenging at first but six (6) random phrases (including one in Spanish)? One or two of them might be fixed expressions, like IMATALOSS, but the rest are just random things people might say. Why is that even puzzle-worthy? Add in a bunch of stuff I've never heard of, some truly weird cluing (chicken feed vis à vis breastfeed??), and two entries where the clue and the answer are in different registers ("commencement" is formal English, GETGO is the opposite), and it takes the fun out of it for me. And then there's the just plain incorrect: HOG isn't keeping to oneself, it's keeping *for* oneself. Before others can pounce, let me point out this is strictly my own opinion. There were some worthwhile words and a few gems, like TSELIOT, but the questionable entries brought me down. SPIDERMAN almost saved the day but even he couldn't quite spin it.
@Teresa This is a very good analysis. The puzzle defeated me on a much more basic level. Thank you for an in-depth, critical look at it.
@Teresa "The selfish child kept all the toys to himself." Is that not correct?
@Teresa I hope to reach your level some day. I felt like a pig looking at a watch.
@Teresa I thought chicken FEED and breast FEED was a brilliant combination. As soon as I thought of it (which took a few), I knew it was right.
@Teresa You've just described the essence of a Saturday puzzle.
Finished it but didn't feel any joy solving this puzzle, unfortunately. Well, there's always tomorrow.
@Hello World an exceedingly accurate description of my own experience. nothing bubbled up for me. had the feeling of completing an assignment.
E.T. wants an iced latte to foam home. (He needs a cup for his saucer.)
@Mike Guess he paid for it with star-bucks. Back in those days there would have been TONS of roaming charges and response would take AGES.
@Mike How long were you brewing up that one?
@Mike Some folks might like to whip more than just the cream....
@Mike T.'s Eliot needed to get home fast because there'd been a lien placed on it. Sorry, I spaced out.
At no moment was I even remotely close to solving this unaided. All I had after several across and down passes were nine entries, two or three of which turned out to be wrong later. I googled most of the proper names, trivia and the like: STLEO, ARI, ALEC, POLS, ABA, TED, OSMIC, NO ME GUSTA, TKO. This helped - I completed 3/4 of the puzzle then. Still, the SE corner was empty. In the end I needed reveals to deal with it. MENOMOSSO looks totally alien to me. I GOTTA... JET? After nearly 40 years of learning English I can't recall ever seeing or hearing that. I had "run" there. Components of sweet tea are... Tea and sugar. I know of TARO but I've never seen it as a tea ingredient. Unknown stuff I got from crosses was plentiful, too: MOTHERS (the clue is a mystery), ECHOISM, and the mysterious CSA - what is that? Of course it's not cheap Vered by the column. TRADE WAR I got instantly, and was annoyed by how it reminded me of the sorry state of the modern world, a playground CRIMP, to me, a climber, is only a small, usually sharp hold on a climbing wall. I was proud of remembering RECTO from a previous puzzle. I guess this was a proper Saturday grid. I don't enjoy being defeated though so personally I didn't like it, but that's probably a "me" problem.
Oops, what happened there. A playground of petty agents of chaos*
... "cheap Vered" is what google autocorrect must have twisted a typo'ed "covered" into.
@Andrzej - 39A Katie and Allie was the name of a TV show. I never saw it, but I knew the title. - 38D I never heard of ECHOISM and it wasn’t in my online Merriam-Webster dictionary, but apparently it is the opposite of narcissism. Think of the myth of Narcissus and Echo. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism</a> - 54D CSA is Community Supported Agriculture. Customers buy a share of a farm’s produce and periodically receive a delivery. It’s a great way to support small farms and to have a reason to explore a multitude of zucchini recipes in order to keep up with the onslaught.
@Andrzej CSA stands for “community supported agriculture” - this is a local farm where members pay for fresh vegetables before the growing season and then collect them for many weeks, generally from June through October.
@Andrzej I've been speaking English for 70 years and had never before heard "I gotta jet." I liked the rest of the puzzle though.
@Andrzej If it makes you feel better I’ve been speaking English for 63 years and never heard “I gotta jet”. I did watch Kate and Allie in the … early 80s? It had Jane Curtin after she left Saturday Night live. Forgot they were mothers though. And CSA was new to me. Also ECHOISM but I could guess that. (At least that’s what everyone else says…see what I did there?)
@Andrzej You're certainly not alone is finding this puzzle difficult and some of the clues rather obscure. I had never heard or seen MENOMOSSO before, nor had I heard or seen IGOTTAJET. I much prefer your choice of RUN rather than JET. "I gotta run" is definitely something people say. And I'm still mystified by CSA. I finally decided not to spend still more time on the puzzle. I just want to add that I'm amazed that you can do so well with NYT puzzles when English is not your native language.
@Andrzej. FWIW in printed classical music, many of the musical instructions to the performer are in Italian. So "meno mosso" means less motion, or go slower.
@Andrzej I had I gotta run, then I gotta get which I crossed with Magis as they were pilgrims. I am American and have never heard or used I gotta jet.
Now that was a Saturday puzzle requiring persistence and perseverance. WOW.
Holy moly. What a talent. Five puzzles into the Times, and Katie has shot into my top-tier group of constructors. When I saw her name atop the blank grid, I actually yessed with a fist pump. Her offering today once again, with its wit, play, and skill, once again brought me to the height of solving joy. Joy – this grid design, which calmed and relaxed me even before filling in my first square. Grid design is often a non-factor in a puzzle, but Katie has made it an asset in most of her puzzles. Today, the relaxed feeling it elicited made me feel like I was solving with Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale” in the background. Joy – Beautiful and interesting answers. LIVE LARGE, RECKON SO, LURK, MENO MOSSO, I’M AT A LOSS, NO ME GUSTA, RATS NEST, KING ME. Joy – OMG, the cluing. A riddle-fest. Misdirects, wordplays, “Hah!” producers all around the grid, such as [Free of typos, say] for EMEND, [Keep to oneself] for HOG, and [Rare showbiz collections] for EGOTS. Joy – The master-level skill behind this. Four gorgeous stacks in a low wordcount, low block grid, and no junky answers! More, more, more, I ask of you, Katie. You bring such pleasure into solving. Thank you!
@Lewis Double-ditto, esp. "no junky answers!"
Excellent throwback to the pre-Covid puzzle era (I still get stumped by older Fri and Sat puzzles from the Archives). The SE corner completely destroyed my self confidence and just that section took me 30min to crack. Time for a tub of chocolate ice cream to soothe my ego.
"How would you characterize our current relations with Middle Eastern nations?" "I GOTTA JET!"
@ad absurdum Thank you for reminding me that decent folk have a sense of humor. 🤓
@ad absurdum Oprah: And you GeTTA JET and you GeTTA JET. Me: And you win the internet today.
Trivia heaviness often spoils Saturday puzzles for me, and today was just one of those Saturdays. I much prefer word-play where answers can be sussed out. But if you don't know trivia answers, especially if they cross multiple other trivia answers or foreign language phrases, there's just no moving forward. And if I need to start looking up answers, then I've lost the fun of solving. At least I've been doing these puzzles long enough to know that some are just not for me. Looking forward to Sunday's puzzle!
@Gregg "there's just no moving forward" That's just not true. It's called a crossword for a reason. I didn't know a ton of what you call trivia in this puzzle, but I deduced my way to a solve using the crossings.
The theme for this puzzle should have been SCREWTHAT! What a heaping pile💩 I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many one or two word clues that led to answers that were sometimes made up by the constructor. This was not clever, wasn’t interesting, it was extremely challenging, but that doesn’t make it a good puzzle.
Which were the answers in this puzzle you thought were "made up by the constructor?"
Just keep puzzling! You'll eventually get better at it, and puzzles just like this will eventually become fun and rewarding for you!
Honestly felt like just a bunch of inside jokes and references between Ms Hoody and herself mixed with a bunch of the most obscure Google search results. Finished in decent time, but absolutely joyless.
Just stopping by to say I GOTTA JET! More details maybe to come, as I LIVE LARGE in London.
@Cat Lady Margaret Whoohoo! Enjoy Blighty, and have a Babycham, or three 😉
I loved, loved, loved this puzzle. Fantastic clueing. I had a I GOTTA GET/HAGIS at the end and was pulling my hear out.
Crossword superstar Paolo Pasco Jeopardy watch, day eight. All good things must come to an end, and Paolo lost to a strong opponent, but what a lovely run Paolo had, and he’ll be back for the Tournament of Champions, because any contestant who has won five games goes. He represented Crosslandia admirably. At one point I went to a Jeopardy fan site, and commenters overwhelmingly praised his smarts and demeanor. It was fun to have a crossworder on the show, and I look forward to seeing him again in the TOC. Go Paolo!
@Lewis I’m bummed to have missed watching it as I was still traveling for the day. I will definitely keep an eye out for the TOC. Thank you once again for the heads up!
@Lewis I didn’t see it but read an article people were shocked he lost a fair amount on a bad ruling. It was about the James Bond video game—he called it Goldeneye and then tried to clarify with James Bond: Goldeneye, but it was 007 Goldeneye. He lost money on that and an opponent used it to gain money. This seems overly nitpicky to me and a lot of viewers apparently.
@Lewis I was sad about the end of Pablo Pasco's ride, but it was clear he could not possibly beat the band-director, who reminded me of Ralphie in "A Christmas Story"--not in a bad way: just blond, blue-eyed, clean-cut, groomed, deferential. He was super-quick on the buzzer, and it made all the difference...(well, and of course he seldom missed an answer.) At least Pablo lost to a worthy opponent.
This was everything a Saturday puzzle should be: difficult, but not unfair. Several words I didn't know, but a bunch of ones I did, so it all worked out! Me gusta!
TRADE WARS? What TRADE WARS? HO HO. LIVE LARGE. FEARSOME? 1A! (emu avoidance). Nice one, Katie.
@Barry Ancona, yeah, it was just annoying.
This was impossible until it wasn't. Great Saturday puzzle!
A real challenge. One that I couldn't meet. Just too many uncertain entries to be able to really focus on one. In the end, I was done in by insisting on IGOTTAgET. I have never heard of "I gotta jet". That was my only mistake when I folded and checked the whole puzzle. I don't know if I fell short with a really tough puzzle, or a easy one, as my hard-o-meter is in the shop. Looking now in the comments to see which.
@Francis Right? This puzzle was harder than a billionaire hunting poor people for sport.
@Francis Me too. HAgIS seemed fine as did IGOTTAgET. IGOTTAJET is way less common to me, but I shoulda known HAJIS. Ah, crosswordland.
@Francis I was sure of HAJIS, and all its other crosses worked, so once I realized that the sheets for the OVENS were cookie sheets, and got GET GO, I bought JET as the ending of that valedictory statement. But I always have heard "I gotta bounce." But I would never say it, any more than I would put my bedsheets in the oven.
@Francis This makes two puzzles in a row that have bested me. Hoping for a less frustrating Sunday, or I may lose all confidence.
@Francis "I folded and checked the whole puzzle" Take heart. You simply verified your entries were filled differently than Katie and Will! There's a new one tomorrow . ...😉
55A and 46D just for starters. I really disliked this puzzle.
@R.J. Smith Also no fan of IGOTTAJET but what’s wrong with HAJIS?
Very bad puzzle. Just a slog. Bunch of obscure nonsense. Not well done. Do not do another.
@James Your yuck might be someone else's yum, of course. Sorry you didn't like it -- your "slog" was my "fun challenge". At least it wasn't filled with proper nouns that you either know or you don't (mostly the latter for me!)
Maybe its me, but I just gave up today, the puzzle brought me no joy as I could not get on the creator's cluing wavelength and did not know many specific answers (St. Leo? Actor Millen? MLB Third Baseman Bohm?Menomosso?)
Comet, You just cited four of the six answers in the puzzle I absolutely did not know from the clues (in addition to others that puzzled me). Glad it was a crossword!
Working tough puzzles is how you get better. No buzz of self-satisfaction when you can't finish one, but the way you continue to deserve the buzz is to face the toughest puzzles with imagination, tenacity, and patience. It's how you got to where you are, but you can't just coast on your laurels, and you should never blame a failure on the people who unveiled your nemesis.
@dutchiris Here! Here! Saturdays are my favorite BECAUSE they challenge me the most, and I can only get better by being challenged. Which this puzzle certainly did
I hadn't done puzzles for a while until about six weeks ago. This was my first Saturday puzzle. I'm glad to read through all the comments and find that almost all commenters found this one particularly challenging. I ventured this as a learning project. I looked up lots of things that I could Google. And also used the "check" and "reveal" options. It's sort of like playing Scrabble using the dictionary--still fun. I learned a lot of things. Kate and Allie was a show I had never seen--about two divorced mothers who moved in together to lighten the load. I also found out a lot about the Clay/Liston fight and its controversial aftermath. And I finally learned what a technical knockout is. And how it differs from a Technical Decision. Very interesting. Also, a little bit about how you make a bow--with a stave!
@lucky13 Treating a puzzle that is challenging as a learning experience is an excellent approach. Refreshingly adult, way less stress, sets you up to face the next tough one, and there are really rewarding moments when one look-up opened an entire section of the puzzle that previously appeared impenetrable.
@lucky13 I vaguely recalled Kate and Allie but conflated it with Cagney and Lacey until I had __THERS filled in. Whoops! And I agree with @PuzzleDog: great mindset! Crossword-related rabbit holes have become part of the experience for me, as well as the many facts and stories from commenters here. I hope you keep at it!
Later-week puzzles have been so good lately. Nice one!
As many of you know, I moved last Wednesday for the first time in 40 years, and the Mrs. and I have been unpacking and fixing things up for the past ten days, but today was an especially busy day, with a water heater issue, our handyman's last scheduled visit to take care of a few last minute issues, and some later-stage unpacking going on at the same time. By 6:30, everyone was done, and I settled in for a sandwich for dinner and then the Mets game. I was quite exhausted, but managed to wind down nicely by 10:00. Still, when I started doing this puzzle, I wasn't vibing with the clues, and the entire NW and SE looked like a big blank. 31 Down! I tell everyone that experienced puzzlers face each puzzle with a "when, not if" attitude (about reaching a clean solve), but five minutes into the puzzle, I started to wonder whether that clean solve might have to come after a full night's sleep! Well, 1 Across! Little by little, things came to me, and I meandered around the puzzle until everything fit in and made sense, more or less, without a single 27 Down, and then it was 55 Across! And a quick look at my stats showed that I actually finished about a minute and a quarter faster than my Saturday average.
@Steve L So, when did you head off to nod? Mine was a two-day tussle, and well worth that "when, not if" payoff.
Many look-ups for me on this one. Now I'm doing my post-crossword ritual of reading the Wikipedia articles for all the answers that stumped me. While a smooth solve is nice, I can also appreciate puzzles that force me to expand my trivia knowledge. Today I learned that ECHO was a mountain nymph who had an affair with Zeus, much to the dismay of his wife Hera. According to Wikipedia, when questioned by Hera, Echo "distracted her with lengthy conversations. Hera wasn't very amused by her garrulousness, so she cursed Echo to only be able to repeat the words of others.
Tons of unknowns made this one seem FEARSOME to me and TONS of the clues seemed to be stretches, so I was surprised to finish this one in a reasonable time. I was helped by the fact that one of the arcane clues (ALEC Bohm) was up my alley as a Phillies fan, and in fact I had the Phillies game on while solving. It was one of a very few toeholds I got on my pass through the acrosses. However, that’s a pretty obscure reference, and I’ll understand if people want to gripe about it.
@Marshall Walthew Did anyone steal a home run ball from a little kid in tonight's Phillies game?
I detested doing this puzzle. Not my day.
Wow that was the toughest Saturday in a long time. A bit of a slog, but there is real satisfaction in finishing such a tough puzzle. Spent a long time working out the northwest section, and finally finished the solve by changing a G to a J to reveal IGOTTAJET. Definitely not the most elegant puzzle, but phew, it’s done.
Difficult, yes. Expected for a Saturday. But for the wrong reasons imo. Too many "know it or you don't" references and trivia, mixed with clueing that has too many valid responses to choose from, and a lot of the good ole "who but the author would ever think that." Leaving on a positive: very well constructed and clearly intelligent.
@Jairus First off, thank you for ending your comment on a positive note! I am an inveterate critic of all things human myself, but I strongly believe in giving credit where it’s due. Also, you said: “Too many "know it or you don't" references and trivia, mixed with clueing that has too many valid responses to choose from” I agree with everything above except “too many”. In fact, I’d say the combination you pointed out was quite deliberate by the constructor, and IMO it’s a great formula, the combination of: 1) open-ended clues (e.g. “Hmm, no idea”, “Big mess”, “Commencement”, “Chilling”, “Prime”…and jeez, having just looked back at the puzzle, I could truly go on for a while in this category 🤣) 2) Trivia/vocab (e.g. ECHOISM, MENOMOSSO, STLEO, ARI, Gelassenheit) Put the two together intelligently, and it’s totally doable — I was 100% clueless on each of the trivia/vocab examples above.
I haven't had to cheat this much in a long time. Too many naticks for me.
It was brutal. I’m a bit vexed about “keep to oneself” solving as “hog.” Keep TO oneself suggests secrecy. To suggest selfishness, I think the preposition should be FOR, as in “keep for oneself.”
@DF Weird. That was one of the few clues I figured out on the first pass with no difficulty.
@DF If I hand you a box of cookies and you keep it to yourself, you are hogging it. The clue was fine. Some of the others not so much.
Was confused by 13D, “hair of the dog” wouldn’t fit and down this way there is no chance beer would ever get stale…
@beljason Bloody Mary didn't fit either
I tried hair f dog,which fir, but was so wrong! @beljason
@beljason And does it have to be stale beer? Or is that just another random noun paired with a random adjective?
Very hard to break into, but this didn’t feel unfair. I eventually managed to conquer the SE unaided without having the faintest clue on “meno mosso”, so I wouldn’t rush to cry natick. Glad I stuck it out. Great puzzle!
This brought back a memory from college. Someone in the lab was studying grunion and wanted eggs stained for electron microscopy. My professor stressed that the osmium tetroxide I would be using was highly toxic so I had to use the fume hood. By the time we got back from the beach, after the grunion run, it was after midnight. Everyone left and I preserved and stained the eggs, very carefully! After all that, I never got to see the results. I was just a lab technician. This experience didn’t help me solve the puzzle, though, as I never heard it called OSMIC acid.
@Ombeady - When you dissolve osmium tetroxide in water it forms OSMIC acid. But, yes we usually labeled our stains as OsO4, too. A hearty "BOO" to your lab supervisor/professor for not showing you the results of your work! I would have taken you into the EM room and showed you how the EM worked, and shown you the magnified specimen as I scanned it looking for interesting things, and then how the selected region of the specimen was photographed. One of the important things about having student workers is showing them how the science is done! I hope I don't know this person...
OK my streak is at 2166 and this one nearly broke it. Has anyone who doesn't live in Florida heard of St.LEO's college ? A total guess thanks to our current pope . Tons of misdirection . I was a chem major in college - albeit over 40 yrs age - but OSMIC acid - really ? I finished this one , and I'm a purist so I hang in and never look anything up till after the puzzle is done , but this was the hardest puzzle I've done in ages . Yikes.
@Cathy Parrish I am also a chemist who did not know "osmic acid". I was pretty sure it ended in "ic" as many acids do, but beyond that, I just didn't do enough biology to get into staining techniques. So I learned today that osmic acid is another name for osmium tetroxide, a terrifying compound for many reasons, not the least that heavy metal in a high oxidation state. Shiver.
I found the puzzle not only tough, but overly vague and completely uninteresting. Not only do I now not know many of the answers so far, I have no interest in figuring them out. And that's the worst thing I can say about a crossword puzzle.
@Xanadu the fault, dear Xanadu, lies not in the puzzle, but in ourselves
@Xanadu A less pleasant person than I might suggest that you're saying more about yourself than the puzzle, but thanks for playing. But, believe me, I get the frustration.
Well count me in with the 64% much slower than average crowd, but I did it without looking anything up, but I was mightily tempted. In the end it was the upper left corner that was still completely blank other than OPS. I really didn't think I was going to complete that section. I almost gave up, I came so close to giving up!! A Catholic University in Florida, how would I know!! I'm not Catholic nor am I a Floridian.... nor do I play either on TV!! Har! Connecting with a flame, I tried kiss, date, sext hahaha... Clean for the error free one, at all kinds of things for kink. Some more interesting than others... 😬 Seems so many expressions at 1a and 17A could have fit. For the longest time, only OPS remained. Then, TSELIOT popped out of my bingo ball spinner of a brain, but I still couldn't get anything else. Before giving up, and I was so close, I thought to myself, "Self, maybe you don't need to know the Catholic University. It's Catholic, it might start with a saint, there are a lot of cities that start with ST, including the very one you live in... Okay, okay, self, S T and it ends in O, by Jove, maybe it's STLEO." Huzzah!! And I was able to slowly piece it together from St Leo to TS Eliot. Phew! And also huzzah!!
@HeathieJ Nice going! Glad I came back to the comments--that was inspirational.
Slow going almost all the way. I GOTTA JET? Nope, never. I gotta run. HOLE CARDS? Never heard of it. STALE BEER? Had plenty of occasions to need the hair of the dog in my younger days, but I was never a beer drinker, so hard pass on that one. Yet another obscure basball player atop another sports clue? And an obscure musical term - MENOMOSSO? I only know STAVE from barrels, not bows, so even getting SMOKE RINGS didn't help. In the NE, even knowing AMISH, RECTO and IDEAL didn't help either. That side and SE were my undoing. I like a tough Saturday when I find that all the hard work results in success. This was not one of them. Just too much arcane trivia. My first answer, NO ME GUSTA, was a gimme, since I was a Spanish teacher. I had no clue it was going to be the opposite of Love, love, love for me and this puzzle.
@Times Rita NO ME GUSTA was the only answer I was confident in on my first pass as well! I was a long term sub for Spanish 1 & 2 when I lived in Wisconsin ☺️
Agree that it was challenging but disagree that the clues were trivia or obscure. They were just hard! Just because you don't know something doesn't make it obscure!
@Mary true, but conversely just because you do know something doesn’t make it not obscure. If a large majority (how large?) of people don’t know it, then by definition (M-W def. 3) it is obscure. Having said that, I’m not sure how to best determine the relative obscurity of a particular thing. Number of Google results can be a decent proxy most (but not all) of the time. I’d say that osmic, echoism and meno mosso would likely qualify.
@Mary that said, I think few obscure clues should be expected in a Saturday puzzle. 🤓
Gulp. Well being new to NYTimes crosswords over the past few weeks, this was... humbling. All of a sudden looking forward to Monday :)
@Todd this cracked me up so much! I'm not new and felt the same way!
@Ben Right? It was impossibly hard for me, too.
@Ben that one corner took over half my solve time, all because I couldn't get away from run on 55A. Once I took that out it became much clearer, thanks to HAJIS.
Oh thank God everyone found this one challenging. I was quite defeated by it, couldn't get a foothold at all. Like Caitlin said, it was a throwback to when I first started doing Saturday puzzles. Haven't struggled this much in a while. Finally folded and looked up the tough clues in the column. Then clicked on comments thinking that if everyone here was talking about how easy it was, I would just cry 😂😂
What about you? Even as I protest the mendacious propaganda purporting to a dilution of the Gray Lady's grid, it seems: The trend toward crosswords with legs has created more success using one's brain, not the dictionary. Mr Shortz & CO secure the future solver's ability to enjoy a day like today, any day. Esoterica and topicality are passe. We may not be around to wonder at the shaking heads bemused by our flexing - but no? If in doubt, try a crossword puzzle from the 70s - good gravy! Any keyboard character, animation and grid construct is open for exploration, exploitation and edification, A rebus is the final frontier separating the casual guest and determined enthusiast, And . . . Nothing beats that lightning-quick synaptic snap of delight when solving a head scratcher like today's crossword puzzle! Ya think? Thank you, Katie Hoody. Did I love it? RECKONSO