I have a pun about television, but it's not even remotely funny. (It would get a poor reception.)
@Mike Do you think it might push people's buttons?
@Mike if you want to set up a TV show, just assemble a lot of actors, and then you will have a broad cast! If you want to compete with the likes of Conan O’Brien I suggest you enlist a host who is a recently deceased star with a title, like Sir Roger Moore, so you have late knight TV! If you want to reach an even wider audience just let your TV catch fire, and then you will have set-alight TV!
@Mike Maybe channel good spirits using your powers of ESPN.
@Mike My television pun went flat. (They should screen these first.)
@Mike Maybe you could dial back your punny humor...
@Mike I can't picture you being not even remotely funny. You always break us up. It must be interference from your super high standards for what rates and what doesn't.
Seeing 58A (DIET) reminded me of that old quip: "I've been meaning to go on a diet, but I have too much on my plate right now."
@RichardZ My Doctor tried to put me on a diet. I scoffed at the suggestion
Congratulations on your New York Times puzzle debut, Mr. Hayden! Nicely done!
My hat is all the way off for this debut puzzle. Be proud of your achievement, Patrick.
@Francis P. S. Andrzej keeps us all in stitches with his hyperbolic posts. Don't take it personally. 😀
@Andrzej Golly! And yet you're here anyway!!
@Francis Just make sure you keep your KILT on!!
The color TV part of the theme brought up two memories. First: Long, long ago, in a planet far, far away, lived a family in Brooklyn with only one B & W television. We kids pined for a color TV, and I had to be content with going to Manhattan to watch it in the window of the RCA building. (Yes, I'm that old!). Dad worked near City Hall, and one night came home after shlepping a TV on the subway back to Brooklyn. He bought it off the back of a truck, cheap. We peeled off the plastic sticker that showed all the colors of the rainbow and plugged it in. Alas, dad was scammed. It was color in sticker only. Second memory: Fast forward several years. I was the last in my class to finally get a color TV. And I was the teacher. Bought it with my own hard-earned money. True story.
@Times Rita I for one am still waiting for the Lord to send me a Mercedes Benz.
@Times Rita I didn't have a color TV until the 1980 Winter Olympics. Television producers had just stopped worrying about bl/wh TV values. So the slalom ski runs were marked off with flags, red and blue I think, that were the same shade of gray on my black-and-white TV. Impossible to figure out if the skiers were missing the turns or not. I went out the next day and rented a color TV to watch the rest of the Olympics.
@Times Rita In the mid-60s, we still didn't have a color TV, although a lot of people I knew did. My father kept telling us that it was because the colors weren't true. I realized later that we just couldn't afford one. Now we have seven or eight TVs, depending upon whether the one I'm using right now as a desktop monitor counts. Of course, all are color, and the main one is 4K and very large. I marvel at the fact that the one I bought in the 80s that was 35" and weighed more than Wile E. Coyote's anvil was considered huge at the time.
The second half of the themed answers totally escaped me. Thanks for the explanation, Caitlin!
Saguaro National Park is truly a gem. Even if I am a little biased
@James Mt. Lemon is not too shabby, either.
@James There really is something stunning about the desert. I grew up in the plains, which are desert adjacent. I was once at a conference in Las Vegas with a couple of easterners who'd never seen a desert or anything like one. I really enjoyed seeing it vicariously through their eyes.
Loved seeing Kermit and Ernie both make an appearance :)
Congratulations on your NYT debut, Mr. Hayden and thank you so much for the clever puzzle! It was a joy to solve and made me feel very pop-culture knowledgeable, which came as a surprise. I still have no clue why I knew the things I knew and why it all cascaded out from me onto the grid so easily. A very NON REAL and fun experience!
Congrats on your debut! Here’s my thinking- as I understand it, the NYT relies on the revenue from game subscriptions more than ever. But many consider the puzzle too tough. Ergo, the puzzle has gotten noticeably easier, and subscriptions have gone up. There’s also about a two-year (or more) wait if you get a themeless puzzle accepted. They are getting zillions of submissions. Takes months for them to respond to *any* submission.. Sooo… What if…there were simply options for solvers who love the late-weeks, the rebus crunch, the brain twisters..? Like yesterday and today, if you could have opened a crunchy themeless, would you have jumped on that? With years of them waiting in the queue, why not just have…more? Just me? Can’t be just me…
@CCNY Good points! Why must every puzzle have a "theme"? Especially when it become more and more of a stretch to come up with an original one? At this point, 3/7 of the puzzles are "themed"--5/7 if you include Thursdays and most Sundays. Why not relatively easier, yet cleverly clued, puzzles--think Robyn Weintraub's Wednesday puzzles on the New Yorker website? Also, only some types of themes are considered "acceptable"--for instance, "quotation puzzles" are considered a no-no, even though I remember them fondly from my print-solving youth"-) A big frustration for me, personally, is that I tend to have more time earlier in the week, when the puzzles are over in a few minutes, whereas later in the week and on weekends, I feel I have to rush through the puzzles which truly challenge me, and would rather have time to savor. (Thank G.d for New Yorker Mondays!)
I love that they got all them colors in the tee-vee. Why, they even managed to get yeller in there!
Fantastic debut today. I actually agree with George after dissing him yesterday (hence why I thought his grades seem a little arbitrary—even a stopped clock is right twice a day). Patrick, hang your hat on that, some people wait decades to get a grade over 5 from him. Anyway this is exactly what a Tuesday should be, IMHO. Yeah some trivia and slightly stretchy clues, but nothing a newbie shouldn’t be able to get from guesses, a little extra thought, and crosses. Clever, extremely tight theme. Not hard (8:13) for me but fun, I jumped around a little bit, learned a few new things, and got several smiles (YELLERS and Kermit’s greeting). I’ll try to think of other possible theme clues tomorrow—but not tonight.
Excellent debut, Patrick. Even this non TV savvy solver enjoyed it. I liked the DUO of [Easy as ___] clues, with the answers sitting right on top of each other.
Clever theme, solid fill, good clueing. Could be more difficult, but very good Tuesday puzzle overall. 9/10
@George Ooooh! I'm surprised. I thought this was perfectly fine for a Tuesday and am surprised to see it so highly rated by George (who I tend to think of as the Soviet judge 😉 ). I did like the double themers but zoomed through under 15 mins (fast for me). I prefer a puzzle that puts up a tussle!
Patrick Hayden, if you’re seeing this (and I’m sure you are, since you’re going to be reading through the Comments all day long), you just got some high praise from a very discerning puzzle critic! I’m shouting CONGRATULATIONS on your debut! Well done!
A very nice, colorful puzzle, Patrick. Welcome to (above) the fold.
Colorful and fresh Tuesday puzzle that was not a CHORE to solve. I just popped in to say how nice it is to see the INDIGOGIRLS get a shout out. Their harmonies are “closer to fine”, which happens to be a favorite song of mine.
A fair bit of trivia I’d never heard of, so I found this one challenging (I'm sort of a beginner)! I stuck with it and to my surprise I only had to guess one letter and look up bocce. In a way, when you don’t know the trivia, parts of the puzzle become a bit non-deterministic — more about imagination than logic. Once I'd worked out a couple of the shaded answers I imagined that the INDIGO GIRLS and a TV show called Girls probably existed ... which also made the number i clue feel oddly appropriate. Maybe there's value in challenging (/stressing out?) the brain in this way too 🤷♀️
@Lavinia Nice attitude. I think some solvers just get annoyed when they see trivia they don't know and then just shut down instead of looking at it like another type of puzzle to be solved. Being open to whatever the day presents expands our skill set.
@Lavinia Yes! I'd say that that imagination you speak of is a different type of logic: letting go of trying to *know* the answer and looking instead at the pattern and logically trying what might fit. (This can be especially true of women's names. On Saturday, not knowing that day's tennis star, I had __IS_ for 2D and realized it could be Elisa, Alise, or the ultimately correct ELISE – which felt more apt for a Northern European-sounding last name.) And thanks: I didn't understand 1D until you made that musical connection! (Down answers can be difficult to parse, especially before I've had my morning coffee!)
I would have beaten my best time for a Tuesday, but cat happened.
I wasn't told there'd be no math, but it's ok--I love when there's math. 15A, regarding the number "i" being unreal. "imaginary" or "unreal" number have names that are lies. Just because when we take the square root of a negative number we get a number outside the set of numbers we had up to that point, doesn't mean that the answer is unreal or imaginary. Consider just the positive integers. If we add two positive integers, we get another positive integer. But sometimes when we subtract two position integer (2-8) we get a number outside the positive integers. That's not an unreal number--it just wasn't in what we initially considered a "number". And when we divide any two integers (positive or negative, excluding division by 0) into each other, we get a whole new set of numbers we didn't have before. Numbers like 1/4 = 0.25, and 4/7 = 0.571428571571428571571428571... with the "571428571" being repeated over and over, forever. So it's unsurprising that when we take the square root of some integers, we get answers outside even these groups. The square root of 2 can't be written exactly--it's a never ending or repeating series of digits. The "irrational" numbers, although there is nothing irrational about them. And when we take the square root of a negative number, we get the "imaginary" numbers, although they are just a new type of number, and there is nothing imaginary about it. Mansplaining over.
@Francis Just to be clear, the clue and answer are fine. The fault lies purely in using outdated naming systems.
@Franci Thanks for that! I always did think we were being a bit unfair to imaginary numbers. Kind of like teddy bears and plastic plants. They’re not real? I can hit you over the head with them.
@Francis No "man-" aspect here. Just 'splaining and, I suspect, mighty useful. (Sorry, Andrzej. I know you /were/ told there would be no math.)
@Francis and yet...examples of imaginary numbers cannot be pointed to in the 3-D world in order to explain them or, at least, suggest them in some way, like one can do with irrational numbers. i agree that calling them "unreal" is problematic, but insofar as they seem to exist outside the corporeal world, "imaginary" as in "mental construct" works for me. what would you call them?
@Francis This is my least favorite post on this board, ever. Just by glancing at it I risked a PTSD episode 🤣
@Francis calling puns and metaphors "lies" is an unexpected judgement to find on a forum dedicated to wordplay. Good luck getting mathematicians to stop punning. And besides, all numbers are unreal, even ℝ. "ℕ symbolizes things and ℝ quantity, but ℕ and ℝ are better than things and quantity. Otherwise they would degrade the things they symbolize."
@Francis 👏🙏 e^(iπ)+1=0 is as beautiful, or more so, as any words written. It’s just that some people don’t know this language. Raging against a language because you don’t speak it surely is antithetical to the spirit of a puzzling community 😀
@Francis Funny--I (non-mathemetician, but one who did quite well in HS and undergraduate) was just about to post a comment with the opposite (yet same) argument: That ALL numbers are imaginary. I mean, when was the last time you picked up a three? Three apples, perhaps, or a card in one of the black suits, but "a three"? Positive integers, fractions, negative numbers, irrational numbers, non-real numbers . . . it just depends on the depth of one's imagination.
@Francis Oh wait, your reply to @Matt, fifth down on the replies, pretty much states the same opinion, even using the "apple" illustration :-) Here's a serious question for a serious mathematician--can you imagine a class of numbers--points on the infinite number line--which are irrational, but cannot be described in terms of mathematical (square rt. of 2) or geometric (pi) processes? Could such number be said to "exist"? Is there a branch of number theory which handles them? A rather useless concept, in the real world, but then so was "i" until it wasn't.
@Francis Mathsplaining. Glad to see you back in the comments again.
Fun puzzle. I know of all the shows in the themers even though I've only seen bits of one. But should we really be squabbling about genre when THAT JIMMY GUY'S EATING THE WORLD?! Sorry to be an old yeller.
@adz absurdum Loved your post and your name change! 😝
Congratulations on a fine debut, Patrick! I enjoyed your clues, as well as your humble constructor notes. Your perseverance certainly paid off and I (not i), for one, find myself to be a grateful solving recipient. I hope to see more from you!
Another hit puzzle for my solving pleasure. INDIGO GIRLS gained a lot of new fans when their song Closer to Fine was featured in the movie Barbie. <a href="https://youtu.be/HUgwM1Ky228?si=bT6j93MuQa8E5o8e" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/HUgwM1Ky228?si=bT6j93MuQa8E5o8e</a> We didn’t have a COLOR TV until sometime in the mid 70’s. I still remember seeing The Wizard of Oz and the color in the second half in the movie had me in tears because I had only ever watched it in black and white. (It also only aired once a year back in my childhood). I was a huge fan of the tv shows HOUSE and SUITS. My brother-in-law worked on HOUSE for years in post production. My kids have become fans more recently. GIRLS was created by Lena Dunham who is frequently featured in crosswords here. And CASTLE has Nathan Fillion, and I’ve caught many episodes. Just haven’t watched it as religiously as HOUSE or SUITS ☺️ The stack of [As easy as__] was fun too. Thank you, Patrick, and congratulations on a fine debut.
@Jacqui J Here's a little snippet of Closer to Fine from the movie. I did not realize until today that the movie version was sung by Brandi Carlile and her wife, Catherine. <a href="https://youtu.be/DnDTcanV6rQ?si=YvUccHB1B2L6EWsU" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/DnDTcanV6rQ?si=YvUccHB1B2L6EWsU</a>
Fantastic puzzle, a big surprise to have such a fully loaded Tuesday. Congrats Patrick on the debut, looking forward to seeing your next puzzle!!!
Any puzzle with AL Green is okay by me. Here's a little Love and Happiness for you all. <a href="https://youtu.be/q8AMZmWqgRM?si=nwOGeDe8k93nfnhZ" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/q8AMZmWqgRM?si=nwOGeDe8k93nfnhZ</a>
Jimmy Eat World is not Emo by any stretch of the imagination. (3a)
@EC Maybe you should update their Wikipedia entry then…
@EC I certainly agree with you— I have never heard them described that way and would never describe them that way.
@EC My first thought was "no idea", then I remembered yesterday reading a comment where someone said that to the NYT puzzle editors, all music after 1980 is EMO, before 1980 ELO. So I tried EMO, and voilà.
@Marcus "Jimmy Eat World is an American ROCK band formed in Mesa, Arizona, in 1993." - Wikipedia No clue how someone could consider them emo.
@EC I agree, not emo, but surely by some stretch of the imagination, at least in the emo subreddit: <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Emo/comments/106ui9y/do_you_consider_jimmy_eat_world_emo" target="_blank">https://www.reddit.com/r/Emo/comments/106ui9y/do_you_consider_jimmy_eat_world_emo</a>/
@EC Agreed. They're simply not emo. Just because people have described them that way doesn't mean it's true. Calling Jimmy Eat World emo is like calling the Indigo Girls a girl group.
[Baked fruit dessert] BROWN BETTY
I always forget the Alamo company when it comes to renting cars. You know another thing that's NONREAL? A perfectly behaved child. Well, Tuesday is a big voting day out in the Real World. Please do your civic duty after you finish the puzzle! Or before. Or at the same time! Members of the aristocracy? BLUE BLOODS* *Bloods is a terrific English comedy series about paramedics. It's probably available somehow in the US.
@john ezra Now, just to be clear on something... Are we allowed to go out and vote several times? I could probably tilt a race if I did it forty or fifty thousand times.
Congratulations to our constructor on getting published! And with a fine Tuesday at that. I think it's a testament to the puzzle's success that even for a cord-cutter like myself, the double-headed theme shone through.
Fun puzzle. Easy Tuesday puzzle overall. There's one little part I got hung up on. For the 'Humor can be this' question I had DRY instead of WRY and for the football question I had TDS instead of ADS. Leaving me D_ITECTSTLE for the restaurant question but making every other crossing clue work. Still took me only just over 11 minutes, but I have to laugh at the fact that I made two one letter mistakes that were equally valid answers and happened to fall on the same line of an answer I had heard of but was not familiar with the clue.
@Chris Interesting, both reasonable alternate clue answers except TDS would probably need some hint of an abbreviation.
@Chris I had those same two incorrect answers as well and there aren’t any of those restaurants in my area so it took a while to figure out what it was supposed to be. Ended up the same as you, just over 11 min, by the time it clicked!
Medium-difficulty Tuesdays might be my sweet spot. Quick enough to chase a fast solve, tricky enough to make me think. No better way to pass the time while staring into the black mirror.
@Striker My mirror has been quite black for a while now.
Rather a lot of US specific clues made this one a bit of a slog for me, but still enjoyable. Like the theme, which did help with WHITECASTLE; I assume an eatery of some kind? I would never have got the double theme of tv shows without Caitlin as I don’t know any of them (was SUITS the one that had Harry’s wife in?) Still, love the clues for Kermit. 28A will always remind me of The Good Life episode with Margot explaining the meaning of NB to a bewildered work man; ‘didn’t you read my note?’ ‘ it wasn’t addressed to me, my initials are FC, you wrote it for someone called N B’ Cracks me up every time. I tried to find a YouTube link but failed, so you’ll have to take my word for it.
@Helen Wright Yes, Suits is the one with Mrs. Sussex in it. WHITE CASTLE is a fast food place that sells sliders (small, thin burgers) that they cook with lots of onions. Very unique taste. Something you could crave under the right conditions. There was a movie a while back called “Harold and Kumar Go to WHITE CASTLE.” But I doubt you were the target audience. (The titular duo were stoners.)
Perfect debut, and perfectly calibrated for a Tuesday puzzle!
A Francis on the shore of another Great Lake!
What an annoying trivia-fest this was! I can't remember when I last hated a Tuesday as much as this. Every other entry was a proper name or brand. Seriously? The bit directly North was impossible for me to solve without lookups even though I knew ARABICA, ROOMBA and BRITA. Some obscure mathematical trivia (Caitlin's words, not mine), stacked with three other trivial unknowns... How did the constructor think this was a good idea and why did the editors accept this? Bar trivia "puzzles" like this make me want to find another hobby. GRRRRRRR 🤬
@Andrzej How about Sudoku? Maybe we could find a version that uses imaginary numbers? This is what you get for fooling this old man with a photoshopped kangaroo sitting with Lucek.
@Andrzej Despite the glamour and high pay that undoubtedly comes with being a crossword constructor or editor, I think most of them care very much about providing an entertaining and enjoyable experience. I’ve never felt strongly enough about a puzzle to hate it but if I did, I can’t imagine going as far as belittling the people who worked on it. Your posts are usually among my favorites, btw. Just not this one.
@Andrzej Counterpoint: I found this puzzle fun, interesting, and delightfully challenging for a Tuesday. I encourage this constructor to carry on and bring us more like this 😀
Attaboy @Andrzej. I knew we could count on you to bring the overcast to this otherwise sunny day 😁
@Andrzej I only object to your calling ' i ' "obscure mathematical trivia." Imaginary numbers come up even in first-year Algebra.
@Andrzej - Yes, the editors put a US-centric puzzle in a US newspaper. The gall! Admittedly no solidarnosc with the rest of the world.
@Andrzej I thought it was fun. In a world where so many things are less than ideal, getting upset about the content of one’s crossword puzzle du jour seems, to me, out of proportion to the offense.
@Andrzej About 1/3 of the way through this one, I thought to myself, "Self, Andrzej is going to hate this one!" And I do so love being right, so I thank you, good sir! 😊
Lovely to see several Muppets in this puzzle... Feel like there was even a nod to the Count with all the number-ish clues? (Anyone else old enough to remember the Sesame Street sponsored numbers in the '60s -- "This episode is brought to you but the number EIGHT" -- always with the hapless chef dropping that many gooey desserts as he fell down stairs? I missed Sesame Street so much when we moved back to Britain in 1970. But I digress!) Thanks, Patrick - that was great fun!
@Sian And now you have given me today's ear worm: one two three four five six seven eight NINE TEN eleven twelve doo doo doodle doo ......
I thought of another one: "__________ Special" (13 letters.) ORANGE BLOSSOM
Grant, Too bad "blossom" isn't a color. (YELLOW ROSE OF TEXAS doesn't work either.)
@Grant Great find! But I think all the solves were 1-hour dramas, no? BLOSSOM was a half-hour sitcom.
I was utterly stumped by this mere Tuesday puzzle. No real hints in the Column about my problems so I had to take advantage of being a subscriber and peek at the answers for these: ARABIan to ARABICA (I don't remember encountering that word in the previous 90 years) and ALS (first names?). U_A over P_M to USA, POM, and KELSO; I recognize the first of those three. The rest of the puzzle was very easy. The only theme answer I guessed immediately from the clue was 24A but the rest filled in from crossings. But I couldn't figure out how to associate the second parts of them to the revealer until I read the column. In spite of having once been a fan of HOUSE it never occurred to me that there might have been TV programs called GIRLS, SUITS or CASTLE. Something new every day.
@kilaueabart AL is the first name of two singers. POM Wonderful is a juice drink made from Pomegranates. Not sure if there are other ingredients. Used to come in a cute bottle, not sure if it still does, or for that matter if they still sell it.
@kilaueabart, IMHO, none of these one-word TV shows are household names. In fact, I forgot about checking what the theme was while I was solving. After I finished, it still took me a minute to see that the second-half of the themers were titles of shows.
@Nancy J It's available to rent on Amazon Prime movies.
@kilaueabart I remember some coffee commercials (Folgers maybe?) bragging about using "100 percent Arabica beans." As though it's not the most common type.
A very nice puzzle! An amusing thing, both Monday's and Tuesday's puzzles have featured the names of Arizona cities in which I've lived. Nice debut! I hope to see more from Hayden.
I don’t recall ever seeing that many brand names in a puzzle before. Is the Times selling ad space in the crossword now?
Good job Patrick – I liked it a lot 👍
Jimmy Eat World has been described as a lot of things - rock, punk, alt rock. But EMO certainly is not one of them.
@Mike. I had the same reaction. And found this Reddit discussing this very question! <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Emo/s/bJLPEDCpdF" target="_blank">https://www.reddit.com/r/Emo/s/bJLPEDCpdF</a>
@Mike Jimmy Eat World was a pioneer of Emo. What are you talking about?
@Mike except that they have been described as exactly that. Certainly. You can disagree with the description, and I don't have a dog in this. But they have definitely been described as such. My favorite category name is Alt-Pop, with XTC as my exemplar. But Andy said they played citric acid rock.
It's been my experience that musical genre 'labels' are arbitrary. Most artists don't decide what genre their music is. The promoters and media clowns do that for them. Or, their label decides which audience would generate the most revenue, thusly 'assigning' their genre. It goes way beyond my brief summation, but suffice to say, J.E.W. is whatever you want them to be. Just don't ever use Rock 'n Roll to classify them.
Second attempt, not sure what I did, ‘cept abbreviate the band’s name 🤷♂️ It's been my experience that the assignment of music genres is arbitrary, at best. Not many present day artists decide to create music to fit a specific genre. The promoters and media clowns decide what produces the most revenue, which age group eats it up, and thusly, a genre. Curt Cobain didn't decide to create Grunge Rock, however Bob Marley knowingly authored Reggae Music. Pink Floyd did not knowingly create Psychadelic Rock, nor did Carl Perkins decide to develop a sound called Rockabilly. All we ask is not to mistake Jimmy music as Rock ‘n Roll. 🤘🤨
I figured Wordplay would have the "Oreo Girls." Colorful solve, Thank you Patrick
Well, a lot of working the crosses on this one, as there were several answers that I was never going to get just from the clues. And... will confess that I am evidently ignorant about some TV shows, as I wasn't familiar with the second half of some of the theme answers. No big deal - that's just me. Unusual puzzle find today - a Wednesday from January 27, 2016 by Adam G. Perl. The 'reveal' in that one was three answers connected to each other and referencing a Bob Dylan song. Those answers: THETIMES THEYARE ACHANGIN And then.. the theme answers: SMITE ITEMS MITES EMITS ITSME IMSET Thought that was pretty clever. Here's the link: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=1/27/2016&g=26&d=D" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=1/27/2016&g=26&d=D</a> ...
Enjoyed this puzzle. The theme was fun. Was able to get what I needed from crosses to fill out what I didn’t know. A great debut, Patrick! Thanks. Y’all have a terrific Tuesday!
Such an enjoyable puzzle! I liked the theme—just right for a Tuesday—and I even knew, or could guess most of the trivia. Thanks for the. Fun, Patrick!
Honestly such a lovely puzzle. felt refreshing and i cant explain why
Fantastic first puzzle, and I'm always a sucker for trivia-laden puzzles.
ANGEL was also a spin-off of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." Hmm, Blue Angel would have worked. And I have never, ever craved WHITE CASTLE burgers.
Congratulations Patrick. I am always a bit surprised to when I hear color TV was invented in the 1950s. In the UK it was a mid ‘70s thing. The first time I experienced color TV was watching Red Rum win the Grand National in either ‘73 or ‘74. A hotel in our village had one in the lounge. Red Rum is the only horse to win it three times. ‘73,’74 & ‘77. He came second in ‘75 & ‘76.
Terrific debut puzzle. Fun from start to finish, great theme. Never watched “That ‘70s Show” but got it from crosses. I hope to see many more of your puzzles, Patrick Hayden. 😊
Fun debut! I didn’t get the second part of the revealer until I read the column, but I still thoroughly enjoyed solving Patrick’s puzzle, and I’m looking forward to more!