Much fun, loved the pair of Jack Lalanne and Frank Oz! Nunnery that doesn't allow male guests? BAN OF BROTHERS Underage drinker? RUMMER BOY Make use of some furniture to go down the river? RAFTING TABLE Nana comes into the room? GRAN ENTRANCE OK, I don't those those are all that funny. I didn't HA ENOUGH
@john ezra They were own right good.
@john ezra these are all goo!
@john ezra We're investing in a mutual fun!
One more that my wife just came up with: Amico? PAL IN ROME
"I know that baseball officiator is no good - I have umpirical evidence!" (He's on the diamond and it's rough.)
@Mike He's treading the (d)anger zone!
@Mike It's an interesting facet of his job, trying to convince the fans of the same old story (mittillogically speaking).
@Mike Baseball Punsters deserve the brush-off.
@Mike You hurt his feelings, now he's on strike.
@Mike In real life, that's actually umpirically true, and is a problem now that cameras are so accurate.
Long time listener; first time caller. This month was a doozy but it's the first that I've completed with all gold! Current and longest streak sitting at 45 after about 1.5 years of daily solving (and many more from the archive). I feel the difficulty ramping recently, especially after Larry Snyder's contribution on Friday the 26th (oeuvre, and the southeast) and Alex Jiang's Saturday 13th entry (Takis/Elgin). Here's to many months more!
@Steve Oh wow, congratulations! I just barely missed this month. I couldn't come up with IGOTTAJET, a couple of weeks ago. My only non-gold this month.
At the dinner table, if us kids ever said "I'M FULL," my mother would immediately jump in to correct our manners: "I'm satisfied." Under her breath she'd add: "You're not a balloon." ............................................... Nice puzzle, Mr. Werfel! The themers made me smile. Thank you!
@sotto voce If you had said "I'M done" she might have tried to stick a fork in you.
@sotto voce Hmm. If only there were another way you might have phrased "under her breath".... .:)
@sotto voce O MY! I've never heard "I'm full" as anything but a big compliment. It always meant that the person ate quite a lot of whatever was served. Not dainty enough for you? Excuuuuse me, but I'm full.
@sotto voce whereas my mother had an inflated opinion of her children
@sotto voce. A loud burp was indicative at ours. I later learnt to follow up with “Must be a barge coming through”, or “That tasted better going down then coming back up”. Thank you Mr. Watterson!
@sotto voce I remember from early foreign language instruction not to say "Je suis plein(e)" to mean "I'M FULL." We were taught that "Je suis plein(e)" meant "I'm pregnant. I don't think I ever asked a native speaker whether this was true, but I remember with DELIGHT learning the Latin phrase "Ave Maria, gratia plena..." and thinking, "Oh, she's "FULL" *that way*.
A hearing in which proposed charges are subject to the judgment of women who have dealt with two generations of toddlers: GRAN JURY
@Cat Lady Margaret BEAR THE LION - a hibernating beast with an identity crisis HOSPITAL WAR - doctors and nurses duke it out IMMINENT ANGER - reaching boiling point
"I'm thinking about visiting Canadian Territories." "Yukon if you want." ("Nunavut looks very interesting.") (Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.) (Mispronunciation is the sincerest form of punning.)
@Your Fired She's just too, too convenient! If she didn't exist, we'd have to invent her.
Where is the punster Mike?? I hope he’s just on holiday and hasn’t been scared away by that meanie who asked him why he bothers with his almost daily puns… Come back Mike!! I miss you!
@Petrol Vote this up - I saw Mike in a different thread (Mel Taub obituary) so he's around somewhere... Please get back to your duties here, @Mike in Munster. Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
@Petrol He posted yesterday. It wasn't a pun but I think there will be mre in the future.
@Petrol You beat him by 20 minutes
@Petrol NOTE TO SELF: ignore me - he’s back!
I remember Jack LaLanne from my earliest days. In summer, or on days I was sick I'd sometimes see him on morning TV. I only later realized what an amazing physique he had, I think because I was used to seeing cartoon muscles and his were pretty close. But then he'd do a few minutes of some simple calisthenics moves and the "workout" was done. Now I'm sure it did his fans a lot of good to get whatever exercise they could. His was a noble occupation in my book. But it was very clear that he didn't get that body by doing *that* workout regime. Strange to hear his name after all these years.
@Francis I remember my brother and I watching Jack LaLanne on Sataurday mornings when we were young. I don't know why we watched, as neither of us was even remotely interested in physical fitness. I think it must have been on at a time when there were no cartoons to watch. We ony had three TV statiions to choose from, and sometimes we had to settle for the least objectiional choice. Good memories.
@Francis Even stranger, about an hour before I did this puzzle, a post about Jack LaLanne appeared in my Facebook feed. As is common on that site that keeps me reading political posts for hours, it was posted by someone I never heard of. It's as if FB knew I was going to do today's puzzle. Creepy.
@Andrzej In Telluride Colorado, we had one, CBS, and it didn't come in to well.
@Francis I thought, "Wow, that's going WAY back!" We didn't have a TV until the late 50's, so I must have seen it on the neighbors' television. Pickings were slim in those days of three-channel programming.
@Francis I'm currently reading Alison Bechdel's _The Secret to Superhuman Strength_ and she mentions watching Jack LaLanne in the 60s, so it was a gimme for me as well! (I know I saw it a couple times on television, but it may have been reruns?)
@Francis I vaguely recall that he wore one-piece jumpsuits everywhere. Didn't he do stunts on "Wide World of Sports," like pulling trains? And he invented fitness bands and protein bars.
@Francis I also have fond memories. I remember occasionally going to a Jack Lalanne inspired fitness class with my mother in the sixties when my nana couldn't babysit. I think he did a lot of people a lot of good. My mom had never exercised in her life, and it was a springboard into sports for her. She's eighty now and still fit.
Delight indeed! This had so much fun built in. First, figuring out what the deal was with CROW CONTROL, not a common phrase. That woke my brain up and when I cracked that riddle, it had a glee-burst. Then, knowing a D would be missing, trying to guess the remaining theme answers with as few crosses as possible, fun in itself, and when they did fill in, not only getting a big aha, but wowing at the cleverness behind both clue and answer. Finally, trying to guess the revealer, getting nowhere. After finally uncle-ing, uncovering it, and my jaw actually dropped with happy wonder at how funny and perfect it was. What a theme! Standing O! Along the way, lovely answers – LATHE, OOZE, FLEABAG, HOW’D IT GO, NUNAVUT. A PuzzPair© of I’M FULL and a backward ATE. Not to mention the sweet wordplay clue [Left of a ship ... or what a ship may have left]. Justin, I came to the box feeling decent and left it feeling exuberant. That is a gift. Thank you!
I love ON KEY KONG so much. With a voice like that, maybe Mario should have been worried that Kong could steal the princess.
Mail order bries would have been DE-LIGHT-FUL.
@Ms. Billie M. Spaight Yes, if you don’t mind a very cheesy wedding photo!
It's a Strip-Dees. I'll show myself out.
@Ed Probably for the best - we’re a conservative bunch around here and don’t like people who are totally nue. After all, who wants to be confronted with a load of ick?
Well done, Mr Keller. Loved the puns, got some good smiles out of this puzzle. I sez, you come back now, y’hear?
I solved the Tuesday 9/30/2025 New York Times Daily Crossword in 12:24! I started doing the crossword about a year ago, and today's was one of the most fun, truly a D-lite! And, on the mini, I learned reune is a word. :)
@Peter it doesn’t play in Scrabble, though. :(
Thank you Mr. Werfel for a delightful Tuesday puzzle! Way more fun for me than most Tuesdays.
Fun puzzle until the SW corner had too many proper nouns that I didn’t know.
@Here’s Johnny agreed. It totally fell apart in that section. Never heard of either of the downs, and even ALF for me is a stretch (I’m 41 and i don’t think I’ve ever seen or heard of him outside of NYT crosswords).
"On key Kong" was quite clever... :)
The Mini made me laugh at myself. I just couldn't figure out what GREEN had to do with a handshake. Once again I'm a victim of all those speed reading courses I took
@K Barrett Me too! GREEt was a good answer, right? And tEST going down is a valid word -- but the egg would be in a testtube, and there was no tube in sight. I figured out NEST, and then went back to look at the Across clue again. Oh -- that's where the extra T went!
Hahaha ON KEY KONG? CROW CONTROL? GARBAGE UMP? This is hilarious. Absolutely loved this one. And the revealer is *chef's kiss*. I'm still giggling at the silliness of it all. What a fun theme. And I can definitely relate to garbage ump. We used to have hockey season tickets that were close enough to the ice that the players could hear me. And I definitely let the refs know what I thought of their calls.
I remember from early foreign language instruction not to say "Je suis plein(e)" to mean "I'M FULL." We were taught that "Je suis plein(e)" meant "I'm pregnant." I don't think I ever asked a native speaker whether this was true, but I remember with DELIGHT learning the Latin phrase "Ave Maria, gratia plena..." ["Hail Mary, full of grace"] and thinking, "Oh, she's FULL *that way*.
"It's a delight" perfectly describes my thoughts about today's puzzle! The fill was very pleasant and I adored the theme. ON KEY KONG in particular made me giggle 😁
I’M FULL o’ love for this DELIGHTful puzzle. Clever play on words for the theme. Looking forward to more from you, Justin.
While I will always take time to appreciate a good pun, I’ll also take time to bemoan a poor clue. I always hate to see “informally” at the end of a clue because it is NYT shorthand for ‘spelled any way the setter came up with to fit the grid’. But even with this in mind, “Declares, informally” still stands out as possibly my least favourite clue in all the time I’ve been doing crosswords.
@Phil "sez" is a very informal way of saying "says" but it's also quite possibly very American. Forgive us... :)
@Phil Then you probably don't like the variation of the Ali Baba line: 'Open! Sez me.'
@Phil "...it is NYT shorthand for ‘spelled any way the setter came up with to fit the grid'." SEZ who?
@Phil. I first encountered it in an Archie comic. Reggie (or possibly Archie): “who sez?”. Moose (possibly about Midge): “I sez!”
I kept trying to make Onkeykong a rebus and started with thinking that the rebus square was the KEY. Nice flip on the head for American solvers trying to figure out how to spell Nunavut, though the crosses helped. Until the end I thought it was Nunavuk and had to figure out what square I had wrong. Nice solve with a de-lightful fun crunch
Thank you, Mr. Werfel, for a DELIGHTful Tuesday romp.
Smooth sailing today. Nice puzzle with a cheeky pun. Nearly got tripped up by having Goop instead of GLUE and IMdone instead of IMFULL, but once those clicked, the rest fell into place. Pleased I got NUNAVUT on my first pass and lucky that LALANNE was handled by the crosses.
Wasn't ALF a guy in a suit rather than a puppet? Almost everybody over here watched that show in the early 90s - it was one of the first popular American series to air in Poland, and back then we were all hungry to get a taste of "the West". It wasn't as successful as "Dynasty" though, which aired a year earlier. Whole families gathered before their Polish, East German and Soviet TVs to watch the camp and drama of that show, the first American soap opera broadcast in this country. The contrast between it and the sad, gray reality of Poland in 1990 - ravaged by the collapse of the old regime, and not yet made prosperous by democracy and market economy - was shocking. Unrealistic as "Dynasty" was, it gave us a taste of American culture. How different to our own it seemed! My mother, a strong, independent woman who always gave men a run for their money in anything she did, was fascinated by the character of Alexis. I laughed at it a bit at the time but these days I can understand and respect why it was. Too bad I can't tell her that - she would appreciate it. As for the puzzle... Meh. Another somewhat groany theme 🤷🏽. It was quite well constructed though, which I can recognize even if I didn't particularly like it. The fill was hard for me in places, and I almost looked up that very weird name in the SW corner, but in the end I managed to fill the grid on my own in a time only slightly longer than on a typical Tuesday (and 15% faster than yesterday).
@Andrzej You are partially correct. When they needed a full body shot of ALF, an actor would put on a suit and perform the part. But most of the time, ALF was a puppet! The show was created by a puppeteer, and a raised set was constructed so that he could operate the puppet from underneath.
@Heidi Interesting! Thank you 🙂
@Andrzej You don't have to watch Dynasty To have an attitude.
@Andrzej Dynasty a taste of American culture? Even for the '80s, that was merely an escape for us mere mortals. It was a novel, and I seriously doubt even the Bush family lived that way.
Great puzzle! Smooth theme and some very nice cluing. On Key Kong! Nice
Very fun theme and I will accept a few of the questionable fills to reach the goal of an enjoyable Tuesday puzzle.
Somehow this puzzle felt harder than a Tuesday to me, but had just the right amount of aha moments. Loved it!
Enjoyed this one quite a bit. The theme was very clever, with a delight-ful revealer. Felt more challenging than usual for a Tuesday, yet I solved it about two minutes faster than my average. Wonder if the corner with ACACIAS, LALANNE and FRANKOZ caused a lot of trouble? I don't think I'm familiar with the last of these three. Very nice puzzle!
@Xword Junkie Besides being the voice behind Yoda, Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear (and many other Muppet characters), FRANK OZ also directed such hits as "Little Shop of Horrors" and "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels". He's had an impressive career.
@Xword Junkie FRANK OZ also had a cameo in "The Blues Brothers," as the desk sergeant at the prison. He had a memorable line, but it would not pass the breakfast test.
@Xword Junkie I had double Ls in LALANNE that slowed me down a tad.
@Xword Junkie Yes, all three of those gave me trouble. Tough corner for me! Especially since I had zipIT instead of CANIT and could not have guessed SEZ in a million years 😂 I do know of Frank Oz, but it took a minute to come together. I agree though. Nice puzzle and I loved the theme!
Perfect puzzle for a warm but rainy Monday.
Man, SEZ with 2/3 of its letters crossing with proper nouns really padded my time :( Had no idea what the names of 41 and 42 down were. I only remember Henson for Sesame Street. Though I figured the Z for Oz after looking up Lalanne. Originally had Say as my answer.
@JD same here, friend. The rest of the puzzle was wonderfully well-oiled, but those two proper (and, frankly, somewhat esoteric) names in parallel made the SW corner an overall disruption to the flow and overall quality of the crossword. Especially because “year” in Spain is *not* ANO; it’s “año.” We all know what ANO is, and it‘s definitely not a span of time.
Nice fun puzzle. Loved the theme entries. Happy Tuesday, y’all! Thanks, Justin!
Probably my favorite Tuesday I can remember. Great puzzle!
Be still my heart...maybe a PB in the offing??? Quoting here from Firesign Theatre's "The Further Adventures of Nick Danger, Third Eye," a spoof on Old Time Radio: "CATHERWOOD: Yes, and at the last possible moment, he stopped on a dime! LT BRADSHAW: I see… CATHERWOOD: Unfortunately, the dime was in Mr. Rococo's pocket." <a href="https://youtu.be/RwG5c9IsgbA?si=dOuqtZhqV2J9_A7x" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/RwG5c9IsgbA?si=dOuqtZhqV2J9_A7x</a> Lots of quotable stuff; a classic!! This puzzle was right up my alley. Thanks, it was a delight, for sure! Hey Catherwood, how 'bout rolling up a couple of bombers and leaving them on the side table...
@Call Me Al In the same vein: my grand-dad got a ticket after a fender-bender in which he rear-ended another vehicle. He protested the fine, telling the judge, "He stopped on a dime! And I stopped on eleven cents." (No dice; he had to pay up.)
@Call Me Al What a gift it is to start the day with a Firesign Theatre reference! "What's all this brouhaha? Brouhaha? Ha ha ha!"
@Call Me Al Nick Danger: "What kind of chump do you take me for?" Rocky Rococo: "First class."
This was a fun one. Thanks, Justin!
Never knew Nunavut. Crosswords almost always expand my knowledge. Grazie.
CORGI! TERI Garr! What's not to love in this nicely Toughened Up Tuesday? I'm also amused picturing Yoda next to Jack LALANNE.
I breezed happily through this - until I reached the fitness guru, the puppeteer, the alien, Kelley, the tree (even CAN IT only distantly familiar) all in one corner and completely unknown! I'm surprised that I've never heard of ALF, a great many US programmes percolate into the UK, even if I don't watch them. I got CATALOG from the crossers and slowly guessed my way to the rest and then looked up the answers. Very, very clever. I didn't get the idea until I read the wordplay, not catching on to the lack of Ds. It all fits together so well.
@Jane Wheelaghan The Kelley Blue Book (or its online equivalent, kbb.com) is an encyclopedic listing of what used cars are worth. If you're selling a car used, you check KBB to see what you should ask for it. Except for possible future crossword appearances, you haven't missed anything with ALF.
Late to the party. Solved early this morning but then had a water emergency but all is well now. :) Cole Porter said it best: "So please be sweet, my chickadee And when I kiss you, just say to me "It's delightful, it's delicious, it's delectable, it's delirious It's dilemma, it's de-limit, it's deluxe, it's de-lovely"
Wow what a DELIGHTful pitch perfect Tuesday. Loved the punny revealer, the themes and the fill. Loved the shout out to Frank Oz. Sorry we didn’t get a clue to the outstanding Phoebe Waller Bridge show for FLEABAG. Finally anyone else notice we had HIC two days in a row clued differently?
@SP Nope but I didn't read that clue, as I got it on the crosses. I often find myself saying, "That was in there?!?" when someone here mentions a solve that I missed in my trundle to the solution.