Today is Erev Rosh Hashanah (Rosh Hashanah Eve) when Orthodox Jews spend two days refraining from creative work which includes phone usage. While it is possible to maintain the crossword puzzle streak by doing tomorrow's puzzle on Wednesday night due to the one-day grace period, this is not possible for Wordle or Connections which offer no such allowance. And so, today I say goodbye to my Wordle and Connections streaks and prepare to begin anew on Wednesday. May this year be a happy and healthy one for everyone filled with good streaks (both trivial and important). כתיבה וחתימה טובה
@Mark I abandoned all streak ambitions before I got here. Frequent two-day gaps and occasionally three days (two days' holidays preceded or followed by sabbath) meant streaks could not last more than a few months. Thanks, Mark, for the good wishes. May we all be inscribed and sealed swiftly for a good year.
@Mark For future reference: You can solve Wordle or Connections or any game a day early by going to settings on your device and changing the time to a minute or so after midnight of the current day.
@Mark L'Shanah Tovah Mark and SBK. May you and your families be inscribed for a happy and healthy year.
@Mark Happy New Year! Many things are more important than a Wordle streak. Including, of course, your and your loved ones’ health and happiness.
@Mark L'Shanah Tovah! Health and Happiness!
When Homer gets annoyed, it's to the point of "D'oh!" return. (Making up puns is grunt work.)
My five favorite original clues from last week (in order of appearance): 1. Ordered clubs, for example (5)(5) 2. New customs might incite them (5)(4) 3. Connect with a flame (4) 4. Sheets might be placed in them (5) 5. Make a big step, perhaps (5) ROYAL FLUSH TRADE WARS WELD OVENS STOMP
@Tim thank you for noticing!!! ;)
ORLON? On a Monday? At this time of year? At this time of day? In this part of the country? Localized entirely within your kitchen? Wonder if SUPER NINTENDO Chalmers was an intentional hidden Simpsons reference.
MOST kids these days are Gen A. But I guess a few are still Gen Z. So it’s only a mild harrumph.
@abelsey my youngest barely makes the cut born in 2010. I also had GEN an initially.
@abelsey my youngest barely makes the cut born in 2010. I also had GEN a initially.
@abelsey Mom used to refer my sister and me as “the kids” when we were in our 40s with teenage kids of our own.
@abelsey that and YOLO are about a decade outdated. I should know because that’s when I graduated high school!
Phonetic themes are usually my bane, but not today - Homer's cry was a rare pop-culture gimme, and I actually understood how it helped solve the themed entries. I'm sort of proud 🤣 I wonder what it is about cookie - or cake - dough that makes us crave it perhaps more than the end product? My mom rarely baked cakes, but when she did, I always assisted her as a child, and having a taste of the raw dough was why I mainly did it. On related note, maybe: Lucyfer the puppy has loads of chew toys, yet he singled out a piece of furniture he seems to prefer to gnaw on, a cabinet styled to look as if it were made out of old-school suitcases. He knows he shouldn't, yet he nibbles on it when we're not looking 🤷🏽
@Andrzej Did your mom encourage it or was it a, you can't do that it's kill you with salmonella or whatever!? Sometimes I think it was a little bit the risk... A spatula full of batter, I must have it! Nah, it was just damn tasty in a different way than the big product was. These days, I do prefer that baked products but back in the day, give me the raw deal all the time! Your puppy is the cutest puppy!! By the way, I have the cutest grand puppy. My husband's daughter has the best little dog in the world!! Winnie is... Like seriously, I would burn everything to protect her!! ❤️😆❤️
@SBK I'm glad to have evoked a childhood memory of yours 🙂 Kogel mogel has been a thing in Eastern Europe for centuries: <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kogel_mogel" target="_blank">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kogel_mogel</a>
Poodle puppy time! Lucyfer in one of his favorite spots on the terrace: <a href="https://imgur.com/a/CBBkO8X" target="_blank">https://imgur.com/a/CBBkO8X</a>
@Andrzej Lucyfer is still adorbs, obvs! If you get him a striped shirt and suspenders, he can be a mime on Halloween. Spooky!
@Connie He has his own, huge, super comfortable dog beds he inherited from Jorge the Lab. We've always had a strict no-dogs-on-furniture rule. @ad absurdum That is indeed an absurd concept 🤣 (Seriously though, I won't submit my dog to the indignity of dressing him up. After all, he is a wolf, if a domesticated one)
I'm happy to play fast and loose with clues and answers, but a [Cigarette butt receptacle] is an ASHtray (or, casually, if "butt" is not in the clue, a buttCAN). An ASHCAN is a metal receptacle for refuse. Crossword editors and readers old enough to remember when NYC buildings had incinerators instead of compactors will remember the sound of the ASHCANs that held the ashes being emptied into Sanitation Department trucks.
@Barry Ancona And GENZ were last born in 2010 which is why I originally entered GENA.
@Barry Ancona ASHCAN, is also a slang term for a depth charge. Look out below!
@Barry Ancona Same. Saw 6 spaces and declined to enter the answer until my hand was forced.
What do you call a party animal? A FUNGI.
Oh, fun theme, bolstered by other pluses: • Every theme answer has pop … and is a NYT debut answer. • Rare-in-crosswords five-letter palindrome (SAGAS). • Echoing the theme, a plethora of O-ending answers (Hi, @UE!): BRO, INFO, NEO, ALOE, MARIO, YOLO, ONO. • Crossword staple PuzzPair© in ONO and a backward ENO-ENO. • Lovely answers CODDLE and NOGGIN. • Gridrhymes of EWES/FUSE and SHAQ/QUACK. My d’oh moment: For [Farm docs] I was thinking “documents”, and for a bit wondered what kind of documents farmers use that non-farmers don’t. Congratulations on your second collab, Dena and Andrea, and I’m happy to hear that there are more to come, as you two click. Thank you so much for this!
@Lewis Free range farmers have non-enclosure agreements.
@Lewis I believe we also have a panagram with this grid!! 😎
@ad absurdum -- Standing O! @Jaqui J -- You believe correctly.
Surely this puzzle could have been designed with DOE as 1A. Wonder how(why) this was overlooked(eschewed). Cute enough, and took me a bit longer than usual for a Monday. Perhaps because I solved this one right after consuming too many KIT/KATs.
A nit, but… tuning a piano really isn’t “fixing” it. Fixing implies that something is broken, and a string going slack under use isn’t broken.
Fun fact: The Simpsons scripts don't say "d'oh!"; they say "annoyed grunt". Congratulations on 90 puzzles, Andrea!
@Mr Dave So I'm guessing then it was Dan Castellaneta that turned it into a cultural landmark. Pretty impressive.
Good Monday puzzle. I realize now that D'OH (as Homer says it) is pronounced differently from DUH. But why is the NYT xword so resistant the accepted usage of INUIT? INUIT is plural, so the clue for 15A should be Alaskan natives. We've had this conversation before. Justin who?
@Esmerelda I just looked it up and learned that Inuk is the singular form of Inuit. Thanks you just expanded my knowledge!
Esmerelda, Surprising editing miss (or reversion). The last time INUIT was clued with a singular was October 24, 2023. Since then, INUK had been properly used. Tue Sep 17, 2024 48D Arctic native Howard Neuthaler Fagliano Mon Sep 2, 2024 50D Alaska native Sala Wanetick and Emily Biegas Fagliano Fri Dec 15, 2023 10D Arctic native Alex Tomlinson Shortz
Loved FUNGI next to CACTI. 🍄🍄🟫🌵 🌵 I had a true DOH moment when I entered JUSTIN ThorEAU initially 🤦🏼♀️ Quickly corrected that ZANY answer when it looked awfully strange and just didn’t sound quite right It QUACKED me up🤣 Happy Monday Crosslandia!
@Jacqui J I was confusing him with the actor Justin Theroux.
Are GENZ really considered ‘kids these days’? The youngest are now teenagers and the oldest are nearly in their 30s!
@Gavinthis was my thought exactly. I almost hit the rebus button to type in “alpha”
A fun and fast one! And a great palate cleanser from a difficult conversation I had right before doing it... Oof! But yay, crossword puzzles!! Enjoyed the theme a lot. I was once a big Simpsons fan but it's been ages since I've watched any. A lot of classic moments still live rent free in my brain though. Like this one anytime I can't fall asleep: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9TyqjcZosI" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9TyqjcZosI</a> Loved 6D One who is barely seen? for NUDIST! ASHCAN sure gave me pause, but no problem filling it out on the crosses. Thought briefly how fun the comments would be if it were a Monday rebus and the answer really was ASHtray, as I'd expected. Har! I'd have to go get my popcorn kettle out and settle in! 🍿😆🍿 Surprisingly, I did not get my dunce's music right away. Turns out, I'd put NOodle in instead of NOGGIN... I already had COOKIEDOUGH (another important part of my misspent youth that I survived despite all the warnings about raw eggs), so I should have noticed that I changed the G. The others filled themselves out and I was sloppy and didn't check them. Oh well, easily resolved. Fun, fun! Now I have to go eat some NOodles! I mean, the pasta variety, of course!
@HeathieJ We're of like minds on that 6D! 🤣🤣🤣 Hope those noodles were yummy! Seeing "sloppy" and "noodles" in close proximity in your post gave me a visual of long, slippery strands coated in red sauce. Be careful! Har! 🤣🤣🤣
Okay, that actually got an audible laugh out of me when I read through the themers!! Some nice fill, too – just a little spicy in places to warm us up for the first day of Fall. Loved the NUDIST clue! I see others have also commented that the current crop of kiddos are almost entirely Gen-Alpha... A small nit that caused an eyeroll when I filled it in, but worth it for the way the clue phrase is used in life. And I definitely still call my almost 30-yo niece a kid – usually in instances when I should just shrug and say "Kids these days!". Oh, and @Xword Junkie made a good point in an earlier that 1A could have been DOE and thus an extra bit of theme-! Thanks for a bit of good fun! Amidst Sunday chores...
my thanks to whatever agent or agency read my gripe yesterday and restored my streak today. i never did contact the emus. and if it got revived by the same avatar of AI or other-I chaos that shattered it...well...thank you, too.
It was the ideal set up. So smooth I paid scant attention to the themers, did not peek at the reveal until the last and, yes, head slap! And a pangram to boot. Perfecto!
I imagine that it is hard to make a Monday puzzle fun and fresh. This puzzle delivered. As for the “Gen z” answer, I have two children who are Gen zers. I don’t care what anyone says! They are kids, otherwise that makes me old!
Great puzzle but ORLON and INXS is tricky work
Two for Sam C: • Wow, Sam, how did you find that pefect photo for [The Lion's share}? Brava! • Speaking of Seth Rogen, since the Emmys, we decided to give “The Studio” a try. Four episodes in, we’re very glad we did.
@Lewis, let's just say it involved a lot of scrolling. When an idea for wordplay strikes me, I will stop at nothing to find the picture to match. And I loooved "The Studio"! It reminded me of a fun French show from the 2010s called "Call my Agent," which has similar actors-playing-themselves shtick.
NEW: Add three people to your subscription. Upgrade to Times Family. At the very least they could stop saying "NEW", right? In fact it shouldn't be long before they add an ESTD year.
One more puzzle find. A Thursday from June 9, 2005 by David J. Kahn. Answer across the middle was 15 rebus squares: (DO)(RE)(MI)(FA)(SOL)(LA)(TI)(DO)(TI)(LA)(SOL)(FA)(MI)(RE)(DO) And the other two 15 letter theme answers - each of them containing one rebus square: MUSICALSYL(LA)BLES SCALINGUPAND(DO)WN Thought it was fairly amazing to be able to come up with that. Here's the link: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=6/9/2005&g=38&d=A" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=6/9/2005&g=38&d=A</a> ....
@Rich in Atlanta Oh... and what the heck. One more puzzle. A Tuesday from May 22, 2007 by Roger Woolf. Three 15 letter grid-spanning theme answers. It's easy to guess the clues. Surprised that at 15 letters each of these was making their one and only appearance in any puzzle. Anyway - those answers: DEERAFEMALEDEER DROPOFGOLDENSUN NAMEICALLMYSELF Here's that link: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=5/22/2007&g=17&d=A" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=5/22/2007&g=17&d=A</a> ....
@Rich in Atlanta I’m going to try this one, then come back and read your take on it.
This is going to make you feel old — more than half of Gen Z is over the age of 18, and the oldest Zoomer turned 28 this year. Kids these days...
@Chess Noob Was just going to say. I'm a 27 year old gen Z "kid". I even had my own kid a few months ago. Side note: NYT puzzles are great to keep your brain sharp when you're glued to the couch nursing
@Chess Noob Old? I'm a boomer sooner. That's old. ....
Small point, but cacti have spines, not needles. Interestingly, fir trees do have needles.
@Ben Thanks for explaining that! I did hesitate over CACTI, feeling they wouldn't have needles per se, but not knowing what they might be called (and suspecting that was what the puzzle was looking for). I did know fir trees have needles. :)
Suddenly craving Ben & Jerry chunky monkey.
Sam - yes, ETAIL is a pretty common word "in the biz" - it even made it into Merriam-Webster: <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/e-tail" target="_blank">https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/e-tail</a>
@Allan I shouldn't be surprised, since I'm familiar with e-commerce, e-stores et al... ETAIL just looks to me like it's missing a letter!
Was gunning for a 5 minute solve, but got tangled up in ORLON! I agree with other commenters that Gen Z are mostly not really kids any more. Similar thinking has people going on about "entitled millennials" when many of us are in our 40s...
Oh what a good start to the week, many thanks Dena and Andrea.
A deer, a female deer. Where was I - oh yeah, nice Monday puzzle and an enjoyable workout. DOH was one of the last things I filled in and that just made for a nice 'aha' moment when I glanced back and caught on the theme. Always glad to see an ACME enterprise and looking forward to more from Ms. Verkuil as well. Puzzle find - a Sunday from July 30, 2000 by Randolph Ross with the title "Business cards." All the theme clues had the same format. Here's a couple of examples with the answers: "___, Insurance Salesman" JUSTINCASE "___, Travel Agent" WANDALUST "___, Funeral Director" PAULBEARER And some other theme answers: MARSHADIMES TERRYCLOTH BESSSELLER And there were more. Here's the Xword Info link: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=7/30/2000&g=23&d=A" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=7/30/2000&g=23&d=A</a> I'm done. ....
@Rich in Atlanta And... one more puzzle find. A Sunday from December 22, 1996 by the great Frances Hansen with the title: "Taking off for the holidays." Don't recall another one quite like this. Thought it was very clever. Anyway... four 21 letter grid-spanning theme answers: "Start of a verse" SOFARIHAVENTMADEITFIT And then... IMPOSITIVEITCANBEDONE AHNOWIVEGOTITTHISISIT MERRYCHRISTMASEVERYON (sic) Here's that link: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=12/22/1996&g=78&d=A" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=12/22/1996&g=78&d=A</a> ....
Good morning! I'm a late boomer. Those Orlon sweaters were so soft! Homer Simpson...he's a FUN GI. DOH!
This was one of the most fun puzzles ever. Keep them coming... I love your hints and your words. All the best, Paul
What a great way to start the solving week. This was fun and I loved the theme. Hope all y’all have a great Monday. Thanks, Dena and Andrea!
@Terry And a tip of the hat to the composers for spelling the D-oh differently in each question. Mighty slick!
Thank you for a super fun end to my weekend!
Loved this start to the week! I'm always so happy when I read the constructor notes and see a duo. It gives me so much encouragement that I will find a crossword puzzle mentor and get my own puzzle ideas published one day :-)
@Lizzie Boredom How exciting! I’m happy to mentor you! Just email at my full name at gmail and we’ll take it from there, as long as you’re no actual relation to Lizzie Boredom
I missed the theme. DOH! A little trickier than the average Monday, but then again, still carrying a thick head post flu. At least I’ve stopped coughing as much. More a social smokers cough than a full throated nicotine gargle. Hopefully my ribs and sternum will settle down soon. Flu. Wouldn’t recommend it. 🤧
Sub-five minute solve! My previous record was over 6 minutes, so I'm very excited to have beaten my goal of 6 minutes by a lot! Now on to four minutes?
Just about the perfect Monday NYT crossword - congratulations, Dena and Andrea!
Really loved this one! The themed clues were a lot of fun and the revealer made a lot of sense.
Puzzle was fine. Found my typo with 20 seconds to spare, thus meeting my only speed goal of the week. Really came to say that I loved Sam’s Wordplay column today. She did her research and reached a very satisfactory conclusion. Ears are tricky, sometimes you hear exactly what you expect to hear.
I took a screen shot of the mini with the clues on the side and pasted it into an LLM and asked it to solve it. It did. Even asked me if I wanted it typed into the grid, I said yes and it gave me a grid. It even gave me its reasoning 9A: Busy buzzers ... and letters found at the start of every clue in this puzzle Let’s analyze the clues: 1A: Barker 4A: **(B)**ase 6A: Bouncy 8A: Budget 9A: Busy 1D: Baked 2D: Big 3D: **"B"**eauty 5D: Balm 7D: Bourbon All clues start with B. Answer: (Busy buzzers) I thought of repeating this with the regular xword. Didn't have the heart to find out the answer. Some things are better left not known.
@VA I still think we are not at the point where an AI can construct an original crossword, themed or not, at the level of the NYT or anything close. At least I hope not and I too am afraid to find out
@SP As @Andrzej notes, construct it—probably not yet; it’s not intuitive enough quite yet as to what would capture people’s imagination (although if you give it six more months…) But I would definitely try giving ChatGPT the job of writing the clues for a puzzle. You might have to edit it for really out-there esoterica, but ChatGPT excels at punny humor. If you’re someone who interacts with it a lot, it’ll even imitate your particular brand of humor to the point of uncanny. Or, at least, Uncanny Valley.
Wouldn’t an Alaskan native (in the singular) be an Inuk?
@Antonia I came here to say this. Clue should have been "Alaskan nativeS" - if you want the answer to be plural, then the clue needs to be plural too, NYT. The fact that Inuit are native to more than just Alaska is a separate point, but also worth thinking about. "Nunavut natives" is so satisfyingly alliterative!
@Dan technically this should be Inupiat (or Inupiaq in the singular) rather than Inuit, if we're talking specifically about Inuit people in Alaska. Was really hoping this would be Yupik or Aleut instead when I saw the clue.