An absolute delight to solve. Adrianne, please come back again soon -- particularly if you're bringing chocolate.
Since the topic of the day is Kit Kats....if you havent had them frozen..you're missing out. Here's the recipe... Take 4 Kit Kats....put them in the freezer....wait.
@Paul I will die on the hill of frozen Snickers.
@Paul Frozen Charleston Chews in my childhood home.
Cute theme and fun to solve. Best themer was FOSTER KITTEN crossing SNEAK ATTACK! Because they do love a good sneak attack. My late lamented Buster Kitten earned his name by his hilarious pratfalls, including crashing into a mirror containing another kitten.
If you put Kit Kats in the vending machine, take out the old candy first to make wafer them. (I should take a break from these puns.)
@Mike I snickers at your jokes
@Mike By all means, get rid of those Milky Ways, Almond Joys, Fifth Avenues, Butterfingers, Reeses, Mounds, M&M's and Hershey bars. Carefully remove all of it, to avoid damaging the new, crisp KitKats. Then pack those Duds carefully in a box (or boxes) and send all of it to me.
@Mike Your puns make me ROLOn the floor laughing!
A fun backstory to the Kit Kat bar jingle that I learned post-solve. It seems that 40 years ago when an ad agency pitched a jingle to a client, it needed not only the one it put the big bucks into, but a throwaway jingle as well, giving the client the illusion of choice. The agency brought composer Michael Levine in, asked him to come up with the alternate jingle, and on the elevator trip down, he came up with the jingle we all know. The agency didn’t give him much of a budget, so during the recording session, instead of hiring singers, he had the band do the singing. The client picked the throwaway, and after the jingle came out, sales skyrocketed to where Hershey had to build a larger Kit Kat facility. I love underdog-wins stories like that. Another TIL I will remember is that “Dalai Lama” means “ocean of wisdom”. All this after a fun solve, including little extras, like GEL in the same column as PENS, and, something I alluded to in an earlier post, the lovely clue – [Small square] – for ONE, because a small square is exactly what a KIT KAT MINI is. Thus, Adrianne, your puzzle gave me a sweet during and after, for which I’m most grateful. Thank you!
@Lewis Thank you for this bonus column on a fun crossword!
@Lewis Thanks, Lewis. I love the KIT KAT story. And, while I was doing the puzzle, I thought to myself, "I should really know what "dalai lama" means, but I don't." But, sadly, I quickly forgot my puzzlement...until you reminded me.
Oh, for the days when Tik Tok was just a ROBOT in the Oz books...
@Steve L Delighted to learn where that name came from; part of the fun of a good crossword puzzle is the odd facts and trivia you learn doing them. And this was a good, fun puzzle.
@Steve L And when Donald was busy running casinos into the ground.
@Steve L Oh yes! And always good to find another knowledgeable Oz person in the comments.
I usually do the Sundays with the help of my boyfriend: he’s great at trivia and I can do the word play. But this week he is tackling Africa’s tallest mountain and so I went this one alone. Hopefully he will be just as proud of my first solo Sunday gold star, as I am of him taking on a very different kind of challenge. Anyway, I’m off to find some kitkats.
@Lucy You know, I think I know what you two need. You need a little more drama and adventure in your lives.
@Lucy If you abscond to the Scottish island with them, it will be- " Lucy on the Skye with chocolate."
@Lucy That's an incredible feat!! I still struggle with Sunday!
Fun fact: my parents met at the original Kit Kat factory in York (the original York, in fact)
@Jonathan Baldwin Is that York of Peppermint Patty fame?
An absolutely brilliant puzzle: fun solve, loved the double-rebuses! Not the most challenging of puzzles, but full of wonderful discoveries. Both a pleasure to solve and an extremely impressive construction! I'm in awe of the skill required to come up with recognizable words and phrases that have KIT and KAT in them -- and then to make them intersect in the appropriate squares! Genius! All of the themers are brilliant, but my personal favorite is the intersection of TON[KAT]SU and WREC[K IT] RALPH. Wonderful! And a clever revealer with the addition of MINI! More than a hat tip, I bow deeply before the skills of Adrianne Baik! I look forward to seeing more from you!
@The X-Phile I came here to say the same thing. You described my experience exactly. Well done Adrianne! Look at you now!
@The X-Phile loved the Tonkatsu / Wreckitralph cross. Great job Adrianne!!
@The X-Phile We are worlds apart regarding this one! Glad you enjoyed it so much.
Thanks for sharing your KITKATMINIS with us, Adrianne. (Waiting to hear that the constructor was lazy because they left out letters when constructing the puzzle. And no, this post will not prompt that post; those posters don't read the comments.)
@Barry Ancona There will also be complaints that the rebuses read differently across and down. There will also be complaints that there are rebuses. There will also be complaints of "product placement." Even though no OREOS were anywhere to be seen. I solved at 32.7% faster than my Sunday average. My complaint was that it was too easy.
This thread was fun Sunday reading! Had to make popcorn halfway through.
"I like Kit-Kat, unless I'm with four or more people." - Mitch Hedberg
Ms Baik, Take a bow! Great puzzle! You should feel extremely proud!! Perfect balance of fun and challenge. I look forward to your future endeavors!
I had to growl and tear at and shake this puzzle until it finally gave up. We were both exhausted by the end. I had a good time with it! Once I realized that it was a rebus, it took me a while to realize it was a rebus with the same entry (within an "a" and an "i") in all places, I had to scramble to get rid of my wrong rebuses. I guess you could say I went rebus wild. Definitely fun, and definitely one where there are going to be complaints about how the answers don't make sense with the clues. I think every time the answer has been Sotomayor's first name, I've started with SONyA. It would really be nice were she to change the spelling of her first name for me. I mean, it only seems polite. And it took me forever and a day to figure out B. S. was Bachelor of Science rather than, well, you know what rather than. Good puzzle! It would have been a worse puzzle had I not been able to pull it off, but I'm glad to have done the constructor the favor of rebounding from my failure yesterday, and thus bestowing my Seal of Approval on it.
@Francis I always fill in ELaNA Kagan when that justice is a clue. I don't know why it confuses me every time.
@Francis it's the Spanish spelling if that makes it easier to remember!
I suppose that there are those who think the clue "____ Homo" is a gimme, and those who think it is impossibly difficult. As a reader of Friedrich Nietzsche, I will never tire of ECCE. His last, semi-autobiographical work was entitled "ECCE Homo", "Behold the Man!" -- the words of Pontius Pilate when Jesus was brought before him. As someone who denied Jesus's divinity, Nietzsche gives the book a fascinating, thought-provoking title. Is Nietzsche so bold as to think that he is the "Man" who will replace Jesus in the development of civilization? Check out some of the chapter titles: "Why I am so wise", "Why I write such good books", and "Why I am a destiny". Nietzsche wrote this shortly before he was committed to a mental institution. Some argue he was already losing it when he wrote this book, but I am not one of them. Please excuse this PHILosophical interlude. You may now return to the regularly-scheduled complaining about rebuses.
@The X-Phile Love this. I was telling someone the other day about how i got picked for a jury because both sides liked that I studied philosophy in grad school. Little did they know I was reading Nietzsche!
@The X-Phile I know the phrase from the lead-in music to the Mr. Bean episodes. "Ecce homo qui est fava."
Let me be the (I hope) 400th person to say how much fun this puzzle was! It ticked off all the desirable qualities--the newer topical entries were gettable via the crossings, there were humorous clues, tricky clues, misleading clues, plus I was reminded of happy times in my life (living in the Territory of Hawaii) and learned (relearned?) a couple of things. The mongoose population was always eager to get into our treats at Girl Scout camp; who knew they were related to MEERKATS? (In fact, who knew there was such a thing as a MEERKAT?) Japanese culture was kept alive and thriving by citizens of Hawaii, and we attended KABUKI THEATER plays, where thoughtful explanations of the traditions were shared. And if anyone else had thought it was the STAMP ACT that precipitated the TEA Party, you have company. George III and his Parliament were so busy enacting taxes and laws --to show his love, of course--that it is hard to remember wth exactitude; high school Amer Hist was so long ago... thank you, Adrianne!
@Mean Old Lady I had TEA Tax before ACT. Here is the great Jonathan Groff to remind us of KG's love. <a href="https://youtu.be/ssapE97GOnM?si=lV1TlP21vARduvlx" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/ssapE97GOnM?si=lV1TlP21vARduvlx</a>
@Mean Old Lady Confusing the Stamp Act and Tea Act is not a mistake you would ever make if you grew up in Massachusetts!
@Mean Old Lady “In fact, who knew there was such a thing as a MEERKAT?” Anyone who read National Geographic in the 1990s would probably remember meerkats. And I think that around the same time, the PBS show Nature covered them. They are interesting creatures (and cute as well).
@Mean Old Lady - The Meerkat is also a character in Disney's "The Lion King" (not that I could easily remember the name...)
"No no no, it's Wreck IT Ralph. And TonKATsu. And meerK....oh. Aha!" Love a clever rebus and a good Aha moment! Beautiful puzzle!
The rebus almost had me beat Then it turned out to so sweet I did a double take After that lucky “break” And it was all easy street
Finished the puzzle right before having to run out to the Guthrie theater to see A Doll's House, which was fun and provocative... and mostly I am so grateful that we are still allowed to, you know, experience art. Whatever... Moving on... This puzzle was as much faster for me than my Saturday's puzzle was slower for me. Crazy! 'Twas a good one, not as fun and delightful as many are, but that's all right! I do always love ariba's! Areebas ariba Aruba.... a rebus Dang voice to text! 😂
@HeathieJ I should get to the Guthrie more. I used to see four or five shows a year, and I was never once disappointed in the slightest.
@HeathieJ I’m very jealous of all your cultural outings, I used to go to the theatre 2-3 times a month, either in Winchester or London, but since I moved to the very rural county of Somerset I hardly ever get to scratch my cultural itch. Last thing I saw was a production of Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake in Bristol last December. Mindblowingly beautiful dancing.
@HeathieJ I was a season ticket holder at the Guthrie when I lived in Minneapolis and was never disappointed. The Twin Cities is home to a remarkably vibrant, diverse theater and arts scene, but the Guthrie is truly a gem, with excellent stages, artistic direction, production, and acting talent. I still miss it and many other venues that I took for granted until I realized that these amazing resources do not exist everywhere.
anybody remember the kit kat commercial from the 70s with 2 fishermen and 2 lions? that was yours truly on the shore, a big cat *behind* each bun. loved those residuals, while they lasted.
@Laurence of Bessarabia Really? That's really cool, even if the residuals dried up.
@Laurence of Bessarabia This one? <a href="https://youtu.be/BRxwRp7Oi-A?si=uK4KqWc_J1T_J1e2" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/BRxwRp7Oi-A?si=uK4KqWc_J1T_J1e2</a>
@Laurence of Bessarabia How fun! And how brave! But what do you mean “behind each bun?”
@Laurence of Bessarabia Well done. That didn’t make it to the UK. The strap line here was always (and as far as I know still is, as I don’t watch tv) ‘have a break, have a KITKAT’.
@Laurence of Bessarabia Ah, critters in sweet adverts . . . <a href="https://youtu.be/Dd_GSSQQGNY?si=GvYfLjVmqr5Ez4mK" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/Dd_GSSQQGNY?si=GvYfLjVmqr5Ez4mK</a>
Nice! Gives folks a chance to shake off that Saturday stunner and settle back into the solving saddle! On a K-roll, amigos! This sweet Sunday treats begs a question or three: KITKATS: Izit a cookie or candy bar? Rebus: dreaded spawn of Satan or a savvy stuffing? Toebeans on kittens: adorable cushions or pearly peas?
Sometimes I just come here for the entitled complaints. "Too much trivia!" "Product placement!” "Rebuses are a tool of the devil!” "Why don't these puzzles only contain things I know about?!" Rebuses, Oreos, and movies made after 1974 are not going away. Learn to live with them, or find a more traditional puzzle supplier.
@Tony I enjoy that almost as much as the “Well actually” comments that Barry and others refute.
@Tony I understand figuring out the nature of the rebus is part of the dubious enjoyment people get from these things, but I guarantee there would be 50% less screaming from us entitled folk if there was a giant flashing "REBUS" sign above the puzzle. Maybe 55%.
Great puzzle, Adrianne! Figured out the rebus early on thanks to KABUKITHEATER and TONKATSU. A perfect day for my grandchildren when they were growing up would be eating tonkatsu while watching WRECKITRALPH. Thanks for a fun Sunday puzzle!
@Valerie I'm glad you liked those entries! I also grew up eating tonkatsu and watching Wreck It Ralph :) Your grandchildren and I are very lucky!
Highly recommend international or dark chocolate KitKats over the standard American (milk chocolate) ones. The process they use for American Hershey's milk chocolate gives it such a weird taste.
@OrangePeelsLemon ah, the wonderful puzz community! I like everything in the KitKat but the peculiar milk chocolate. So your post impelled me to order dark chocolate KitKat minis online! And in overly observant mode, the wrapper says KitKat but the Hershey’s website says KIT KAT. But that a popular US candy can share a name with a fictional nightclub from 1920s Berlin is delightful.
@OrangePeelsLemon My kids just came back from Japan and they brought strawberry cheesecake KitKats. Apparently they have all sorts of bizarre flavors there.
@OrangePeelsLemon. It may be a weird taste, but it’s OUR weird taste!
I like how the clue for ONE -- [Small square] -- echoes the Kit Kat mini theme. Et tu, emu.
The KIT/KAT rebus made this Sunday puzzle a little sweeter. Fist pump for the reference to ERROLL Garner the virtuoso jazz pianist from Pittsburgh. His Concert By The Sea album is pure pianistic pleasure which has endured the test of time and become a jazz classic. Garner was quite small and used to sit atop a perch of phone books (remember them?) when performing. The story goes that the city he was playing determined the number of phone books he would need. He was self taught and sui generis as a piano player, with a unique style that few have imitated. A true original
@Marshall Walthew What do short people sit on nowadays to reach the piano keys?
@Strudel Dad Adjustable piano benches have been around for a very long time, but their popularity in North America didn't start to pick up until the mid-twentieth century. (I only know about them because I play guitar, I've spoken to a few pros, and adjustable piano benches are favored by many of them because the heights of the chairs performers are provided with by venues tend to vary a lot.)
Having done a not particularly successful across pass of the trivia-heavy grid I reached the trivia-based revealer - I was *this* close to abandoning the solve. However, I decided to persevere: maybe the down pass would yield better results? *Of course* there was even more trivia, including Schrodinger's Stephen Rea/Fry... Still, I had enough crosses almost all over the place to try and complete the puzzle. At this stage I was still clueless about the theme. Strangely, what revealed the theme to me was the crossing of TONKATSU - a term I only learned from these puzzles very recently - and WRECK IT RALPH - a film I've never seen, but the title of which I remembered for the strangest reason: because I was never able to understand it. I saw it a few times in comments to memes on imgur, when I still browsed it regularly 5 or 10 years ago. I never could parse it. Is some guy Ralph's nickname "Wreck it"? Is somebody telling Ralph to wreck something: "Wreck it, Ralph!" Or is the title about something else? Once I got my first themed entry, I filled in the revealer - doing things backward. Now I finally felt hopefully about completing the puzzle. I looked up much of the ARCANA (ironic how that was an entry today, eh? A gimme, unlike ARCANA such as MSNBC or SEA Island) and proceeded to deal with the remaining four themed crossings and the rest of the grid. The theme was quite cool and well implemented into the grid. I did not enjoy the trivia-heavy fill though.
Ah, so one of my theories was spot on. Wreck-it Ralph was a guy. I suppose when I saw the title years ago, written down by some randoms on the internet, they skipped the hyphen, making things hard for me to understand.
@Andrzej I liked the theme but in my opinion themes should never include trivia as then it is impossible. Worse when they cross. WRECKITRALPH/ TONKATSU.
@Andrzej Regarding you "remembering for strange reasons"... Some people are saying that we tend to remember multiple choice questions we get wrong more than those we get right.
@Andrzej Oh, by the way, did you move from Warsaw, Poland to Warszawa, Poland? Is the culture similar? Are the accents very different? Is the money the same?
@Andrzej Wreck-it Ralph was a fictional video game character in that movie hence the colorful name.
Several commenters have expressed difficulty with which format of rebus the puzzle will accept. May I offer some advice, copied from @DC: once you start to notice the trick, erase one of the squares of which you're absolutely sure--1A/!D--is usually a good choice. The fill it in again at the very end of the puzzle. If you get the Happy Music, great; if not, re-erase it, change your formatting (or read Wordplay--no shame in that), and try again. I entered it as [KIT/KAT], which worked; but I still used the trick. *** "On top of Mt. Crossword, All bother and fuss, I broke my poor streak With a double-rebus." (pace @FinGM and @BA, who I hope have since quelled their hangries by sharing a Kit-kat bar, and made up.)
@Bill - Great idea, and another earworm to replace the KitKat jingle.
What a fun Sunday puzzle! I'm usually not (like, hardly ever) a fan of rebuses, but with my favorite candy bar as the theme, I was all in today.😂 Congratulations on an impressive construction, Adrianne -- no small feat for you, I'm sure, as a current chemistry/climate major. Hope you're enjoying your experience at Harvey Mudd -- best of luck to you and hope to see more puzzles from you!
As a Kit, I really enjoyed this one - rebuses and all! And as Housewives-head, love a Mr Cohen shoutout.
@Kit So you haven't yet married a Katherine and celebrated with a chocolate themed wedding? ;)
@Kit I’m a ‘Below Deck’ fan, a show which is often followed by Andy Cohen. Well, that usually triggers a quick channel change. With today’s further notoriety, A.C. is likely to get even more insufferable.
i had so much fun with this one! i never comment, in part because i’m still learning and struggle with a lot of the puzzles, but i was very proud to get this 12 minutes faster than my average sunday. i figured out there was a rebus because i knew WREC(KIT)RALPH right away for some reason. just had to get some crosses to figure out where it went. got hung up on SKATE RAT because i thought it had to be SKATER __. i had PREps instead of PREOP for a while. i did cheat a liiittle to get ROSIE but that cleared up everything for me. i only wish there was a way to make the rebus two lines!
@Sarah Glad you are joining the forum finally. Don’t be embarrassed to comment just because you are new I think it’s great to get fresh takes
@Sarah Yeah, what SP said. Don't be a stranger. We are (mostly) harmless here. As long as you are not unkind, you'll have no problems from any of us. However, we sometimes have spirited disagreements, which are (mostly) fun. Please feel free to jump in anytime.
My cat is purring like crazy now that he knows he is BOTH the revealer AND five rebuses. Purrfect Sunday. I love this, my time came in 5 minutes under average even though it was thrown off because I have to stop and hug kitty every time something even remotely feline-related appears. I’m years overdue for my next Kit Kat bar, hmm, Halloween is coming.
Another super puzzle, quite a run of goodies recently! I was hoping to find a mention of the Kit Kat Club from Cabaret. I looked that up and was quite surprised to find this In Wikipedia: “The name originated from the Kit-Cat Club, an 18th-century English liberal political society.”(it says citation needed - so take that as it comes!) On the 18-century political society, Wikipedia says: “The first meetings were held at a tavern in Shire Lane (parallel with Bell Yard and now covered by the Royal Courts of Justice) run by an innkeeper called Christopher Catt. He gave his name to the mutton pies known as "Kit Cats" from which the name of the club is derived.”
Yesterday’s time to solve: 61:52 Today’s time to solve: 27:28 The world is upside down lol (Almost lost our gold star streak yesterday) #1899 today
I haven’t commented on this puzzle overall yet—because my first instinct was that it was a little on the easy side and I’m getting a bit bored of repetitive rebuses on Sundays, I was wondering if maybe it could have been scaled down to a Thursday puzzle—but I didn’t want to be discouraging especially to a young constructor. But honestly I’ve taken a closer look and it really is a very clever theme and is extremely well constructed, and the theme answers are all varied and interesting. So maybe not a big wow factor for me but I think a worthy Sunday and one I would commend highly. So kudos for that and it is impressive how Harvey Mudd is churning out excellent crossword constructors! (Also I can’t think about Harvey Mudd college without chuckling over that original Star Trek nemesis Harcourt Fenton Mudd).
@SP I grew up a couple of towns over from the Claremont Colleges. It’s a very unique consortium of which one is Harvey Mudd. My physics teacher in high school was really pushing me to go to Harvey Mudd. I’m not at all surprised to see so many constructors coming from there!
An excellent rebus puzzle on a Sunday, many thanks, a great start to my day.
So happy to see Erroll Garner make an appearance - I named my son after him and you would think no one had ever seen the name Erroll before (granted, it's a bit more common with one L - he was excited to see his name in the crossword today!). If you have never heard Garner's Concert by the Sea, it is a delight. Or if modern music is more to your taste, Adele's All Night Parking has a great Garner feature.
Well, I solved it. I solved a Sunday puzzle, in less than an hour, without once cheating. So ... obviously this puzzle is too easy. There's no way I'd be able to solve a Sunday normally.
@Sam Hey, it's a Sunday. You did it cleanly and PDQ. End of story.
@Sam I felt it was a perfectly normal Sunday.
@Sam I needed loads of lookups today 🤷🏽
@Sam Look around at the comments. Nobody's complaining that it was too easy (at least from what I've seen so far), and it definitely took me more than an hour. You just aced this one. Congratulations.
Not a native speaker, so it may just be me, but did anyone else take issue with CLIP OUT as being pleonastic? You either cut out a coupon or you clip it?
@BigJ You introduce yourself as a non-native speaker, then you send me off to the dictionary. Nice...I'm humbled.
@BigJ I am a native speaker and never heard of CLIP OUT.
@BigJ Any anagram lovers out there?
BigJ, I wouldn't say it, but it didn't bother me.
@BigJ I’ve lived in the Midwest for 73 years and we have always “clipped out” coupons. Maybe a regionalism?
@BigJ - I used to clip out coupons from magazines back years ago when I read Good Housekeeping. "Clip out" is fine.
Actually surprised that almost everyone else found this one unusually easy. I was not able to complete it successfully - more than a few complete unknowns as clued and I guess I never quite completely tumbled to the trick. No complaints - that's just me. And this was a really amazing feat of construction. Puzzle find today - a Sunday from February 5, 2006 by Eric Berlin with the title "Central intelligence." There was a 5 x 5 central square with each square just numbered from 1 to 25. And as far as I can tell there was no clue for that section. And then all the other theme answers just referenced a sequence of squares in that section. One example: "17-20-24-12-8-9-13 " NOSYORINQUISITIVE Here's the Xword Info link: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=2/5/2006&g=23&d=A" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=2/5/2006&g=23&d=A</a> I remain completely baffled. See you tomorrow. ...
@Rich in Atlanta It looks like the across answers are meant to be formed entirely by answering the down clues. This yields another clue, in which each letter of the answer is assigned a number (eg. W is 1, A is 2, …) Each number is used exactly twice which is another aid. Then those letters go in the central square to get the hidden message. I only sussed this from the xwordinfo solved grid! Curiously the app archive version has all the centre letters blacked.
Had a good time with this one and enjoyed the rebuses. I had trouble with the northwest corner - couldn't get my head out of the word SKATER
Delicious puzzle! I always buy a big bag of Halloween candy every year, and eat it all myself. The chocolatey stuff, not the fruity stuff. Jolly Ranchers are gross, and anyone who disagrees with me is also gross, and I won't share my Snickers with them.
I'm normally not a fan of rebuses that have to be read differently for the down entries than for the across ones, but this has enough logic to it that I was able to figure it out, rather than just seeming random. Well done.
Congratulations on your first puzzle! While Hannibal LECTER is for sure the better-known character (and for sure a bad guy) isn’t the actual villain of Silence of the Lambs “Buffalo Bill?”
Was super fun and cute!!! I wish that most solvers that end up breaking streaks because of rebus formatting would come here first and not after they've broken their streaks. I always feel sad for them. My general rebus advice is to put it all the letters in a row when it makes a word or there's no obvious need for a divider; or to put a slash when there are two different words for across and down (as I did today and it worked), or in worst case, put the first letter only (which seems to work like 95%+ of the time.) ... but never put a space in the rebus square!!! I'd also note that I would bet the NYT will restore a streak that was lost due solely to uncertainty as to how to format the rebus entry. Now I want candy and donuts and pumpkin flavored everything. Welcome Fall!!!
@Niki B thank you! I was losing my mind trying to find a mistake
So I’m absolutely delighted to see some love for L Frank Baum’s Oz books other than the first, which were a staple of my childhood. But I have to say calling TikTok a robot is drastically anachronistic. Reading more, I do see that he is considered an early prototype for a robot, but the term was not invented yet and he was really more of a very complex windup mechanical man. It would have made me feel better to say “anachronistically”, “in a way” or or something to hedge just a bit. Yeah, I know it’s a crossword and things don’t need to be exact, it just feels like it doesn’t capture the flavor of the character or does him justice. But I hope at least this whets folk’s appetites and they buy these books (you can get them on Kindle) and read them to your kids, they will be delighted and they are much more interesting than the movie, classic though it was.
@SP “automaton” would have needed another rebus
@SP Another Oz book fan here, also read them all in childhood. As you might see from my name.
I’m no hater of rebuses, but with my eyesight, on a phone, trying to see if I have exactly five tiny chocolate treats in the right places . . .
@spurious I understand. It was hard for me on my tablet.
Congrats on a very fun Sunday puzzle, Adrianne. I enjoyed the rebus!
Loved this puzzle!! Very straightforward once you figure out the fun theme. Finished in 20:43 with no hints.