For the people posting their times, I will say this: Seeing the times of fast solvers is disheartening to many developing solvers, and for that reason is considered gauche in many corners of the crossword world.
@Dan personally I would have found it inspiring. I consider myself smarter than the average bear, to be modest. If I saw solve times when I was a novice, it would have given me encouragement that it won't always take as long as it's taking to solve puzzles
@Dan Thanks for sharing this disheartening feeling. That's not fun at all and I wish this comments section could be fun for all of us at all times. My experience in seeing times shared is rather opposite yours. A handful of years ago, I was just starting to solve late week puzzles and those fast times were so far from my understanding that I skimmed over them. Now, I enjoy seeing someone post their time and getting a sense of the realm of solve times out there. I hesitated to write this comment because anything bringing negative feelings into crossword solving is worth attention. And yet, I wanted to provide a counterbalance too that it can help some people (me included) to feel joy in celebrating and learning from fast times here in the comments section. I wish you many happy solvings.
@Dan I disagree. I don’t post times because I get that not everyone can solve that quickly, and I don’t try to speed solve and like to take my time. But I think as a new solver I would be heartened that maybe I could get that good someday.
@Dan How to say this gently... As a beer league softball player, would you find it disheartening that Shohei Ohtani can hit a 100-mph fastball into the upper deck of Dodger Stadium? As a weekend duffer, would it bother you that Tiger Woods can shoot a 72 on any given day? (Or at least could at one time?) Why would you stomp on the joy of someone who just set a personal best and wants to tell the world? I know, they could say they got a personal best without giving the time, but why? Because you're not there yet? I personally don't post my exact times anymore, not that I'm obsessed with them anyway. I've gotten fast without necessarily aiming for it after more than 40 years of solving. Back then, there was newsprint and pen(cil), and no help column, and certainly no comment section. The learning curve was extremely slow. Now, you can get that help to improve your game and move up the ranks infinitely faster. The column and comments are resources that I think some newer solvers take for granted. But with these resources, come people who express their experiences in a multitude of ways. Why silence their form of expression because you think it's gauche? For every person who disapproves of time posting, there's probably another who's fine with it, and a third one who doesn't care one way or the other. Don't like time postings? Ignore them.
@Dan In spite of the fact you're getting an earful, I know exactly what you mean. Strange how people react differently to different pieces of information. Stranger still how so many don't fully appreciate that, or at least forget it from time to time. Super sonic times disheartened me, too, in the beginning. Then I accepted that there are freakishly good people for almost any task. I'll never compete on their field, but I suspect the same could be said for them in some of my fields. I like your honesty. Good points were made in response, but I still think you have a defensible position.
@Dan Your comment as of right now is the most highly recommended of all the comments, so a lot of people agree with you. It's striking that the replies are mostly of the "don't be so sensitive" vein, though. I personally don't feel that posting of times in the 5-minute range on a Friday is encouraging. I have been doing the puzzles for many years. I'm not a novice. But I will never do the puzzle in 5 minutes. Steve L's comment that everyone can solve a puzzle in 5-6 minutes if they try hard enough is not very helpful. I guess he thinks I am just stupid. Maybe my education is not enough, maybe my intelligence is not enough, maybe I'm just not enough. I will never be able to do that. I like to think we have a little community here. Surely, the people who are posting 5-minute times know that they are significantly better than most solvers. It's as if we were in the financial section and everyone started giving specific numbers about how much money they made in the stock market this year. Of course, we're allowed to do so, it's a free country. But I'm not sure that announcing that you made more money than most other people is helping to create a community.
@Dan I don’t find it disheartening. A little freakish, perhaps. Who can really type that fast?? But since the fleet-fingered solvers only seem to be competing with each other (and themselves) and not us slowpokes, it doesn’t bother me. I solve for pleasure, not speed, so I’ll never make the time trials. And that’s just fine by me.
@Dan It may be considered gauche by some, but I wonder about the "many corners." To provide an analogy, I've been playing video games for almost my entire life. You've probably heard of a dedicated community of gamers who spend a lot of time speed running games by any means necessary (whether by skill, manipulation of the game in ways the developers didn't intend, or some combination). The original Super Mario Brothers on NES can be completed in under five minutes, and there's not much time left to save (we're talking frames, or 1/60 of a second at this point). I doubt that stops people from playing it anyway, and I don't think anyone who's aware of the world record time holder is calling them gauche for demonstrating to the world of their ability. As others have said, you can always ignore it. I know there are people in the world who will always solve faster than I ever can; good for them, I say.
@Dan I just posted this elsewhere in this section, but it also seems relevant here: 1. "Your puzzle, your rules." You get to decide for yourself whether solve time is important to you, but you don't get to decide for others. 2. "Your mileage may vary." What's easy for you may be hard for someone else, and vice versa. And I'll also add this third adage which is valid for all Comments sections and social media in general: 3. "You can only control what you do, you can't control what others do. But you can control (to some extent) your reaction to what others do." If you don't like what someone else posts, don't fret; just keep scrolling.
@Dan back when I started doing the crossword there was one guy who posted solve times that were incredibly short. We stood in awe. Eventually he was called out for solving on paper then entering his solution online, thereby having those mind-boggling times. Now, whether that was *actually* what he was doing or not, I sorta keep that story in the back of my mind whenever people talk about their solve times.
@Dan This sounds like a personal insecurity on the part of the new solver, rather than any rudeness on the part of more experienced solvers. If you spend your whole life comparing yourself to others, you're just making yourself miserable. It's not the other guy's fault. I see people posting faster solve times than mine all the time. I see people doing speed runs of video games, reading three books a week, passing me as I walk down the street. There are always people who are going to be faster than me, better read than me, more talented than me. I refuse to live my life comparing myself to them. I'm just here to have fun.
@Dan but not all corners brother. And this is one where gauche is gold, so let’s see them numbies!
Loved the fill on this and found it to be a little more accessible for a Gen Z solver :) loved Dark Academia, Gossip Girl, and Minecraft. My 4th gold star on a Friday and 2nd ever 5-day streak. Fingers crossed to get a 6 day streak for the first time tomorrow! It has been fun to slowly feel like I’m getting better at these.
@Maggie It is fun. Enjoy your ride.
@Maggie Congrats on your stats! 🥳 Rooting for you tomorrow! 💛 I liked the fill on this one too. Bit of a fall fashion theme with DARK ACADEMIA, ELVIRA, and GOSSIP GIRL. CHAOS, GOAT, and the cluing for DNA were also favorites.
@Maggie this was also very enjoyable as a Millennial solver :) Rooting for you!
We haven’t had a nit about parasites lately (ever?) so I’m here to point out that the *cause* of sleeping sickness is Trypanosoma brucei, rather than the tsetse fly which is just the vector. Yeah, I know, the clue is still okay. Just need to nit a nit once or twice a year! Thank you for your attention to this matter.
@Cat Lady Margaret Next assignment: Lyme disease and deer ticks. Does vector calculus point to mice or deer? Or are ticks the vector and the mammals hosts? Extra credit:Those other unpronounceable tick-borne ills
@Cat Lady Margaret Technically correct: the best kind of correct!
SO many posts about how easy this was for a Friday (it was), but not enough posts about how satisfying it was to solve, for any day of the week. I think both had a lot to do with the relatively low number of black squares. There were so many crosses to every answer that there was always a way in, for even the more challenging clues. Thanks, Malaika, for showing me a good time while also making me feel Friday smart!
I’m surprised that some people have solve times of 5 to 6 minutes. Even when I instantly know every answer, my fingers can’t work fast enough to achieve such a fast solve.
@Thor Maybe it's the altitude.
@Thor same! It takes me longer just to tap it in on my phone. Some people may be using other devices or even pen and paper?
@Thor My Monday best is an even 6 minutes. All entries were gimmes and I typed as quickly as I could. I also don't understand how it's physically possible to do this faster. Maybe it really is about solving on the phone (me) and desktop.
Agreed. According to my stats, I once completed a Monday in 4:55 somehow. I think that’s probably the fastest I’ll ever go. Most of my Mondays take twice that, even if they seem easy.
@Thor my downfall is usually a typo that takes me a couple of minutes to find.
@Steve L - Thanks for explaining that the speed relates to the input device! Using a "typewriter" keyboard makes sense. I, on the other hand, only use one thumb on this phone. I can't figure out how people use two thumbs and still hold onto the phone. Perhaps because my hands are small. Still my knowledge of the querty keyboard (from my jr high summer school typing class) lets my thumb find the right key.
@Thor I usually solve on mobile but today I saw my progress after a couple minutes and switched to the PC to try to beat my ~15m Friday record. Unfortunately, I just barely missed out on that.
@Thor According to the Stats page my Sat best time is 5:21. Hah!! I think that's the day I accidentally hit the "Show Puzzle" button. My average on Sat is about 39 minutes -- much more realistic. I did find this easier than most Fridays and did it in about 1/2 usual Fri time. Some people said Wed was harder, but I did that in about 2/3 my usual Wed. And that's the one I accidentally did on Tues night. I am gradually getting faster with experience. I think I've been doing them regularly for 7 years or so. It keeps my old brain from getting not too old. Anyone want to test your brain? Try mindcrowd.org. Interesting exercises. Free.
Malaika produces some high quality puzzles, and always fair and interesting. As I just said to VF, I ran through this one fairly quickly, but might have shaved about five more seconds off my time if I hadn't hesitated a decent bit at the last thing I put in, double checking all the crosses to be sure it was right. That answer was 61A: IKEAS. The clue was [They're the subject of more than 200 million catalogs a year]. There are so many less clunky ways to clue a plural IKEAS. Maybe [Stores in Brooklyn, Paramus and 52 other US locations.] Or [Stores in New York and Oslo]. But all 200 million catalogs are the subject of just one IKEA, the overall business. The clue, despite its included meganumber, is not set for a plural answer. At the very least, it's unnecessarily clunky. Maybe it was changed by an editor.
@Steve L Agree with that. I never saw the answer because I got it on crosses, but the stores are not the subject of the catalogs, the products are.
@Steve L the original clue was probably “more than one ikea.” Give the editors some credit.
@Steve L I first had seEds, then, wistfully, IdEAS, before I was brought down to earth with IKEAS. I should have know "ideas" would never produce that number of catalogs.
@Steve L Oslo is in Norway; IKEA is Swedish. Why would it have been clued for Oslo?
@Steve L I also hesitated on IKEAS as the plural just didn't seem to jive, but the cross finally sealed it for me.
Have to add my congratulations to Deb on her pending retirement from the NYT. I'm an old guy (will be 67 in December) from the midwest and the NYT crossword has been a daily task since I retired at the beginning of 2023. Reading the wordplay is part of my quotidian routine following the solve. Im struck, not just by Deb's passion for all things crossword, but her consistently positive attitude, sense of humor, and empathetic mien. Wishes for a long and healthy retirement that allows you to do all those things that a full time job doesn't.
A lot of comments that this felt like a Tuesday. Not really. It was an easy Friday that I solved in Tuesday time but the grid, the average answer length, the themelessness, the fresh fill are all Friday hallmarks. I like the fact that the NYT does not treat the relatively difficulty level of the days of the week as a hard and fast rule, although I notice this is a favorite topic for kvetching on here. There are only two themeless puzzles a week. It’s nice that some are easy and some are hard. Part of the fun for me is not knowing the exact difficulty level and therefore having to consider a wider range of possible answers. Tomorrow may take me 20 minutes or an hour and a half. That’s POG. (?).
@A Pedant Given the number of puzzles that are submitted and rejected and the amount of revision that goes into each one that actually makes the cut, it seems ungrateful and unreasonable to expect each one to have the precise level of difficulty associated with that day. The money successful constructors are given, compared with the amount of time, effort, and skill required to produce them, is tiny. I generally just don't complain about them. They're gifts from a community I don't have the skill or intelligence to join.
@A Pedant That’s true. I think there’s a difference between complaining about something being too easy and commenting about it, and also considering the clues vs the fill. In my comments I specifically called out the first clue as being a total gimme which really does annoy me; and the cluing overall was not very inspired. But I also said the grid itself was well constructed and had a lot of interesting entries. So I don’t mind some Fridays being a little easier, but I think it’s OK to constructively suggest that the clues could have been more geared to that day; and I also put that more on the editors because they are more responsible for calibrating the clues.
@A Pedant This forum seems to have become mostly complaining about the puzzles, complaining about others’ comments, complaining about complaining … The top comment is someone complaining that others post their solving times and it makes them feel sad. Just …
@A Pedant “I like the fact that the NYT does not treat the relatively difficulty level of the days of the week as a hard and fast rule, although I notice this is a favorite topic for kvetching on here.” I made a comment about the Tuesday-ness of today’s puzzle myself — but it wasn’t a complaint, and I agree with your comment 100%. Actually, I’d like to see *more* variance in the distribution of difficulty (along with gimmickry, in fact) for any given day of the week, so as to keep us all on our toes.
Found this crossword enjoyable today and just discovered that there was a comment board for the crossword as well. Hello! As usual I found a couple clues tricky because I’m only 13 :) Happy fri-yay!
@Ethan Welcome! I hope you check in often. It would be great to get your perspective on the puzzles.
@Ethan Welcome! I second the encouragement to return. TIL, thanks to you, “Fri-yay”
@Ethan Welcome, Ethan. Great to have you hear. Hope you're enjoying the usual prairie winter. I miss 'em. We had a skiff of snow earlier this week but it's all gone now. ❄❄❄
@Ethan I started doing the crossword in the Los Angeles Times when I was about your age and it was on paper. Later when I had moved away from home and came back to visit my Mom we'd fight over who got to do the puzzle each day. But then she got a copier/printer so problem solved. Now she is passed and I'm 76, but still doing the puzzle. It's a good life-long hobby. Keep up the good work.
@Ethan Welcome aboard, Ethan! Your participation and perspective will be great additions to our forum that spans all ages and many countries!😊
Delighted to see DARKACADEMIA and GOSSIPGIRL in this one. Finally something for me! It can't always be golf and retirement accounts. More puzzles by women, please!
@Katie Agreed! Although I wish someone would tell these constructors that hardly anyone posts PICS on Instagram anymore, it's all videos now 😢
@Katie I’d also be happy to see more puzzles by women! Cheers!
Yes, it was very easy for Friday, but boy was it fun; a lovely array of long stacks that made me smile. Who doesn’t love having the divine Beyoncé as their ear worm of the day? It felt quite personal; I eat mainly 1A, avoiding 63A as much as possible, though I’m partial to a glass of 17A particularly when mixed with Edinburgh Ginger and Rhubarb gin. Delicious. After the great alpaca escape of Tuesday this was a lovely, relaxing end to the week. Thank you Malaika.
@Helen Wright agreed! (But now fruitlessly googling for alpaca escapades - are they all okay??)
@Helen Wright The Great Alpaca Escape of Tuesday. What a great title for a Sir Arthur Conan mystery 😄 Beyoncé is more eye candy than ear worm 😜 Rhubarb gin… what’ll they think of next… sloe?
Do you ever feel like a puzzle is made for you? New Friday record, and I had a wonderful time solving! Happy Friday everyone
I had a lot of help with this one. How To Be An ANTIRACIST was a question on Jeopardy earlier this week, and my grandson’s fascination with Minecraft has given me lots of knowledge about that game. DARKACADEMIA was new to me and the last fill to be completed. I thought it was cute to work in the dreaded Oreo via OREOCOOKIE. Liner notes for SEASHANTY was an A+. Way haul away, we’ll haul away Joe.
@Marshall Walthew Of the many strangenesses that arose during the pandemic, the popularity of sea shanties is near the top of my list. Why? How? So odd.
@SBK - We are blessed in so many ways to live near the Great Lakes. I live near one and have visited all of them several times.
Probably a PR for a Friday but boy was it fun! It seems like my age is showing as an elder Gen Z as there were zero lookups and several "oh, cool!" nods to answers I never expected to see in a puzzle whose audience skews older. Video games, pirate music, and Pinterest-core aesthetic terms? That's my domain.
"GO FETCH is the [Command that initiates a chase]. If you’re really lucky, your dog may bring it back." ... I'm sure going to miss you, Deb!
Sleepless in the English Midlands and delighted by the fresh, young fill in this puzzle.
Here's my SEASHANTY: Yo Ho, as Friday's go, The answers came like a Wednesday flow.
@Dave K. Hey, ho, the willy rums go, Back to the briny and back to the snow. Hey ho, the Wednesday flow, So earli in the morn.
@Dave K. I learned it as SEA CHANTY, but checked it out later and found that both are correct and pronounced the same.
I really enjoyed this one today!! usually I give up and skip fridays but filling this one out was a joy. thanks for brightening up a novice crossword puzzlers day!
For all I know, Lucek's style in the pic below may be Dark Academia 🤣 <a href="https://imgur.com/a/BypSDsj" target="_blank">https://imgur.com/a/BypSDsj</a> He's not allowed on the furniture but the genius beast and lawyer's dog seems to have found a loophole. His back paws remain on the floor, and the rest of him is in my lap rather than on the sofa itself 🤣
@Andrzej 😂😂😂 Dogs just naturally know how to push back the boundaries!
@Andrzej Oh... 'Content not available in your region', so I'll never know what he looks like. 😔 Just to give me an idea, what sort of dog is he?
@Andrzej Let that sweet creature up on the couch! He doesn’t even shed. It’s his couch. And is he watching TV?
@CCNY He's watching me play a game on my PlayStation. Or rather, he climbed onto me as I was playing. I couldn't continue because he was in the way of my controller 🤣 He has two huge premium beds of his own and I don't sleep in them 🤪.
@Andrzej We had a dog who knew she wasn't allowed into the carpeted part of the living room. She'd stand or sit right at the edge and watch us all. BUT, when we'd come home from all being gone, there would be a 'warm' spot on the couch. She naturally preferred naps on the couch to naps on the linoleum.
This grid was full of LIFE, bouncy and fresh. My favorite part was the SE because I’m a wordplay lover and it had a lovely HEAP: [Liner notes?] for SEA SHANTY [Cellular data plan?] for DNA [Material for a certain pocket] for PITA, and [It’s badly in need of a pick-me-up] for STY My second favorite part were the long downs, eight of them, with six being NYT answer debuts. No same-old, same-old there. My third favorite part was the abutting GOAT and GO FETCH, imagining what it would be like to play the latter with the former. I liked the dook SOD ONE, and seeing THAW there to balance off row ten (ICE DAMS and SLEETED), and pleased to encounter a worthy TIL – DARK ACADEMIA. Go my mojo going with this one, Malaika, a great springboard for the day. Thank you!
@Lewis Life in The Snow Belt of NE Ohio meant learning all about ICE DAMs and "Wintry Mix" (a little of everything--rain, snow, sleet, wind, temps plummeting) and watching out for Black ICE. After a THAW, take a novel and get in line at the car wash to get the chunks of ICE/slush and the salt cleaned off until the next blizzard. I've never owned that many clothes --before or since!
@Lewis Besides numerous OREs, there are also OCELOTS in MINECRAFT. Players can tame them by feeding them fish, but then they become ordinary black housecats.
@Lewis I'd also like to commend the inclusion of POD, POR, and POG. Charming triplets coming from widely spaced areas of knowledge.
28A - a memory gave me this clue. The smartest Golden Retriever I ever met in the wilds of Wisconsin. walked up to me with a stick in her mouth, laid the stick in front of me, so I naturally threw the stick, and she retrieved it. I took the stick, threw it again, and she just looked at me, like, "it's your turn to go fetch, eh?"
@minndependent No, it was: "This is an excellent stick. It's my gift to you. Stop throwing it away."
"Dark Academia" as a style, a pose, and a decor? I guess it's fun and harmless, but it gives me the creeps. I learned about Antoni Gaudi when I was still in my teens. I was reading William Gibson's book "Count Zero" and got to the scene that takes place on a bench in a computer simulation of Park Güell, was curious about the place, and since I was in a library at the time, found a book that included many illustrations of Gaudi's architecture and became a little obsessed. So, fifty years or so later, I finally made it to Barcelona, and was actually sitting on that very bench. And about ten feet away from me was a perfectly coiffed, perfectly dressed young woman. She set up her ring light, attached her phone to her selfie stick, got her shot, then left. She got her proof that she was there, although in a sense she never really was. I never thought I would live in a time when narcissism is seen as a virtue.
@Bruce ....but only by the narcissist. (I was married to one. Happily, escaped.)
@Bruce Did the girl have Zeiss Ikon eyes, like Tally Isham? And there you have it; William Gibson predicted internet influencers.
Come on. This would have been a nice Wednesday or a tough Tuesday.
I solved this in 15 minutes, which is 20% faster than my Wednesday average. I enjoyed the solve, but I would have preferred it earlier in the week. Many of the clues were simply way too obvious for Friday. That being said, I was unfamiliar with some of the fill, and thus had to make a few guesses: DARK ACADEMIA (I've never heard of it), FEEDER TEAM (ditto, but I guess I get the name), ICE DAMS (what are those? The clue and its answer don't match anything I know from our winters. I've seen dams, sort of, created by ice floe, but I wouldn't describe those as clued today). For once I knew much of the trivia and proper names. I saw my first DAVID Attenborough documentary as a kid in the 1980s and have loved the guy since then. He's like the Jesus and Captain Picard of naturalists 🤩. I think I owe my fascination with and respect for nature to him, to a large extent.
@Andrzej I've been warned about ice dams since moving to Minnesota. Say your roof is covered in snow, and that the insulation for your house is such that the higher points of the roof are warm enough to melt snow, but the eaves are not. The snow will melt, but be trapped by the eave snow. This traps liquid water against a roof with no where to go. Not a good situation. Some people rake their roofs in the winter here. I've done it, but only under extreme duress. Could not agree more about David Attenborough. The dulcet voice of Mother Nature.
@Francis Thank you! Climate change has changed our winters, but we still get heavy snow quite often, and my family home has a sloping, eaved roof, yet I've never heard of this. I can see how it would be a problem though. I wonder, maybe even more snow than we get in Mazovia is needed for this to materialize? Or have we just been inexplicably spared ice dams for 30 years of owning the house? Interesting. The only related issue we've had was when snow, ice melt and ice accumulated over the only non-sloping section of the roof, over the antechamber. My father and I had to climb up there and remove that mess several times, as the roof would start to leak.
@Francis In my area many have installed electric cables on the outside of their roofs to melt the ice to prevent the dams. They are most common in Cape cod styles houses because of they often lack insulation on the top floor.
I absolutely adored this one because there were no sports team references in it! 😅
@Vicky I watched the World Series for the first time this year and found that I knew half the stat abbreviations already - RBI, anyone? It's because of crosswords - I'd never seen a baseball game before in my life 😆
@Laura first time World Series watching for me too! ... Besides it being such a fabulous ride, I don't fear the baseball puzzle clues AS much now....
feel like this crossword was for young solvers (such as me). absolutely demolished my best time and had fun doing it. never have gotten so many long clues on a first pass. yay for puzzles for youth!
@Alex Good on you but this 80- year- old found it pretty easy too
One of the easier puzzles this week. My only hiccup was GOFETCH - I kept oscillating between GOGETIT and GOGETEM.
@Cameron I tried GO FOR IT....quite the set-back.
@Cameron I've never had to actually say, GO FETCH. Just picking up the tennis ball was sufficient. Go get 'em for me as well.
I continue to wonder when the SEA CHANTY became a SHANTY. I have yet to be introduced to MINECRAFT; RISK was bad enough--our son had the game and my one and only exposure was an Epic Fail. Love those "Toy Story" movies, but which villain? The dealer? The bear? Ooooh...SID! He was no mere antagonist. Teach long enough and you encounter a few children who are psychopaths; I count a total of five...and wonder where they are now...and those poor parents. DARK ACADEMIA? Oh, and congrats on sneaking in the OREO COOKIE. Aargh.
@Mean Old Lady Famous thing I've never heard of: DARK ACADEMIA Sometimes I just have to trust that a realish sounding thing is realish enough.
@Mean Old Lady "I continue to wonder when the SEA CHANTY became a SHANTY." 1869--two years after the coinage of "chanty." (per OED)
I’ll miss you, Deb. Thanks for all the fish.😉
I was too sure of GOgETem for too long.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised that everyone else found this one unusually easy. Not all that easy for me, with more than a couple of complete unknowns, and... others that I was never going to get just from the clues. No big deal - that's just me. Still found it to be an enjoyable workout. Puzzle find today - a Sunday from May 24, 1998 by Harvey Estes and Nancy Salomon with the title: "Labor Daze." This one was all in the clues. Some examples: "Fence builder's job?" RAISETHESTAKES "Architect's job?" MAKEAGRANDENTRANCE "Sculptor's job?" CHIPOFFTHEOLDBLOCK "Politician's job?" TAKETHEMONEYANDRUN And there were a couple of others. Here's that link: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=5/24/1998&g=92&d=A" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=5/24/1998&g=92&d=A</a> See you tomorrow. ...
@Rich in Atlanta So how's life in your new digs? Glad you were able to get back here easily. I like watching your mind work to see patterns in the puzzles.
Getting all of OREOCOOKIE in there, intead of just our old pal OREO, was an especially lovely flourish - go, Malaika!
@Sian I put in OREOCRUMBS at first and had to go back and change it
Wish came true, Malaika! A PB at 8:15. A fun jaunt! As a lover of DARKACADEMIA, I was excited to see it referenced (although my speed is more the literary version, rather than the clothing, etc.). Love it or hate it, The Secret History is my favorite book, and one of the most referenced examples of DARKACADEMIA.
@kit Exactly the same new PB time for me…8’15” !
@kit So, I googled The Secret History. Wow, that is dark. Shudder. Not for me. But then, I don't do horror movies either. Thanks for the reference.
Sad to say for all of you, CHAOS, 10A, opens up one of my favorite subjects. James Gleick is an amazing writer of science fact, and I've read his book "Chaos" at least twice. It is perfectly written and covers such an astonishing topic. A brand new branch of mathematics having surfaced and sprouting in our lifetimes. I can't do the subject justice here, but I can say you really don't need to understand classical mathematics to really get a gut-level feeling for Chaos and Complexity. And the colored versions of the Mandelbrot set are breathtaking. God's fingerprint. Reading Glieck's "Chaos" changed my life a little. I began seeing things I hadn't seen before. Shortly after I left academia I was writing monkey level computer code and the subject of the movie "American Beauty" came up, in our group, which drew a lot of derision. Particularly the scene in which the Wes Bentley character films a long sequence of a piece of paper caught in the swirl of winds, twisting in a corner of a building. They laughed and laughed at how "artsy" it was. All I could think was that I was seeing a Strange Attractor in real life, and I was mesmerized. I never told them about that.
@Francis I used two different spellings, but the correct spelling of the author's name is Gleick.
@Francis What you said. I have a coffee table book filled with Mandelbrot sets -- strangely calming. It is another example of the greatest natural puzzle -- why the physical world should be expressible in mathematics. Eugene Wigner's 1960 paper ''The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences" remains the best statement of this absurdity that enacts itself every day in front of us. Why should a coastline's bends and folds be reproducible with a piece of recursive mathematics? It's both magnificent and silly.
@SBK PS For those who don't know what these Mandelbrot thingies are, go here and be captivated. <a href="https://www.fractal.garden/l-system/crystal" target="_blank">https://www.fractal.garden/l-system/crystal</a>
@Francis Actually, it was a plastic bag blowing in the wind, which I've always assumed is where Katy Perry got the idea for the first line of her song, "Firework," but she and I aren't really on speaking terms, so she never told me. 😆
@Francis I loved American Beauty, and the scene with the plastic bag dancing in the wind was one of my favorites. The whole movie was filled with lush moments like that. Pretty cynical to deride that as artsy.
Well we got a friday on Wednesday and a Wednesday on Friday. Guess it balanced out. Beat my average friday time by half.
Super easy Friday for me - personal best by an absolute mile. I'm so sad it's over. I always want a puzzle to last but now I have to wait for tomorrow!
@Sam O - Try the archive puzzles, or they may be behind a paywall. I'm sure there are other crosswords online. Actually, reading these comments keeps the fun going.
This has got to be my fastest/best Friday ever, less than half my average time and without a single clue or lookup. (Usually I need help past Wednesday.) There will probably be a lot of complaints that this was too easy, but sometimes maybe that’s what we need.
@Jared Friday PB for me (and faster than my Thursday PB by a few seconds)
A Friday that was made for me. Just for me. I knew every single answer. Felt like a Monday! Played like a Monday!!! Yayyyyy! I know many will be disappointed, but let me have this.
@fiona And yet this GenX had no problem completing it in record time!
I'm one of the few - if not the only one - who found this crossword to be of average difficulty. I just counted and there were 10 clues I had no idea about! So I worked at it - revealing the 'o' of GOAT (c'mon, tell me that's not trivia) and the 'd' of SO DONE. I assumed that a bit on a bun would be a currant, raisin. cherry, bit of icing or sugar. In fact most of the long clues were a mystery, but I got them in the end. And, it was very enjoyable. For me, if you don't need to work at it, think about unusual synonyms, try out letters, why bother? I only have problems when there are too many names and brands and too much slang.
@Jane Wheelaghan Are you aware that in modern lingo, as they say, GOAT is an acronym for "greatest of all time"? If you do, then it's lateral thinking to figure out that Simone wears an image of a quadruped goat around her neck.
@Jane Wheelaghan Just so you know, I was a little mystified by GOAT too but it stands for Greatest Of All Time so there’s some rhyme or reason to it
@Jane Wheelaghan - G.O.A.T. is a common US sports term. Besides Simone Biles, there is Tom Brady, Michael Jordan, Shohei Ohtani, Lionel Messi, etc.
@Jane Wheelaghan Here's an article from the LA Times with a pic of Simone wearing her GOAT necklace. <a href="https://www.latimes.com/sports/olympics/story/2024-08-05/simone-biles-goat-necklace-jeweler-details-explained" target="_blank">https://www.latimes.com/sports/olympics/story/2024-08-05/simone-biles-goat-necklace-jeweler-details-explained</a>
It is 10:08pm and I am… done with the Friday puzzle? A personal best by a mile!
@VF Early results from xwstats.com call this puzzle Very Easy. Although I did 14% faster than my Friday average, it was nowhere near a record Friday for me at all.
@Steve L I always chuckle to myself when I visit XW Stats. It must be one of the most skewed data populations possible: the selection of people who sync to XW Stats vs all the solvers. I'm always waaaay slower than the average and don't know how other users can physically type so fast, never mind percolate their thoughts.
Interesting take on the HALO in the new Dan Brown / Robert Langdon book - the light not emanating outward but transmitting inward. Some interesting concepts in his latest but a far cry from some of the others, IMO. I know they’re all formulaic but Angels and Demons and Da Vinci Code were good fun. This Friday puzzle is similar to a Dan Brown book. Didn’t stretch the limits of the brain but an enjoyable way to pass the time.
Zeit, die Erbsen zu zählen. Die Initialen für das alte Ostdeutschland wären DDR. In English it's GDR 🙄
Not the constructor's fault this Tuesday puzzle masqueraded as a Friday. Editing team missed on this one.
A Friday PB for me! Though based on the thinly-veiled grumbling that this was too easy, perhaps I shouldn’t be too proud… But, I’m still rather green to the NYT puzzles compared to many, so I’ll take my victory with pride all the same. This one definitely played well for the thirty-somethings out there I’m sure. Only real stumbling blocks for me today were GOFETCH (my dedication to GOGETEM had me questioning DARKACADEMIA even though I knew it had to be correct) and SEASHANTY which I could see fitting but simply couldn’t work out why that would be the answer! Also had a little smile when answering 18A with TIERS on my first pass, before finding its real home in 44A a few passes later. If only Thursday’s 69A was here too! I’m still learning that I need to not be so grounded with my answers, many times the puns pass me by because I’m looking for something more “serious” - I’m SODONE with being too realistic!
@Nathan Nope, you absolutely *should* be proud. According to the Law of Conservation of Crossword Difficulty™️, if you or anyone reading this found this crossword too easy, fear not -- a *killer* crossword is lurking somewhere in the hopper, waiting to take the proud down a notch!
That was the easiest Friday I've ever done. Not a complaint. I have a lot to do today before I leave tomorrow for a week. I'm taking my cat with me and already dreading her meowing for the hour and a half drive. Poor thing.
@Cal Gal I solved that once by folding down the back seat and using blankets atop my luggage to create a cat bed from front to back high enough for the kitties to see out. Probably not very safe, but in my ignorance, they were happy. A mom and 6 kittens. At night fourteen glowing eyes followed my every move in the rear view mirror.
This might have been the easiest Friday puzzle. I solved it half my average time, and didn’t have to look up anything.
This was infinitely easier than that rabbit/duck monstrosity from Wednesday
What’s the protocol here? I read comments on people completing a puzzle in such and such a time ‘only having to look up’ this and that. For me if I’m so stuck that I have to resort to looking up an answer, which occasionally happens with a Saturday, I deem myself to have not completed it. I’d feel a fraud claiming success having resorted to what I think is cheating (well, what IS cheating), but maybe that’s just me…
@Gareth There is no protocol. Everybody has their own standard, as it should be. Your "cheating" is my dealing with unknown trivia that has zero value to me, especially when it crosses with yet more such trivia. You will probably look down upon me for it, but I look down upon elitists, so we'll be even.
@Gareth Sorry for overreacting. So many times we've had people post here about their disdain for those who look stuff up I automatically assumed this would be another such case. My rules are as follows: if I'm stumped by trivia completely irrelevant to my life experience, and especially when trivia entries cross, I will look it up. So, I look up musical actors, US sport teams, brands, and the like. I don't generally look up geographical names, as I've had a bit of education in geography. I also don't pretend I'm learning the trivia I look up, or that it's worth learning in the first place - sure, sometimes I'll remember some name, but what worth has knowing some brand that's not even in the shops over here? I also occasionally look up unknown words, especially American slang. I never seek aid with witty clues and misdirection. I generally don't look up spanners, either.
@Gareth I see the crossword as a test of lateral thinking rather than a trivia test. I try to avoid looking anything up but if I have to look up an old actor or a US-specific term I don't let that ruin the effort I put in to solving the other 99% of it. Looking stuff up is the only way to get better at the trivia anyway.
@Gareth I sympathize with Gareth's comments, and I try not to look things up. Sometimes I'll think I know the answer and will look up my answer, not the clue. A tiny balm for my conscience. But in any event, no one is judging me other than myself, and when I forget and go make toast in the middle of a solve, with the puzzle open on the screen, well, they're just times. No matter.
@Gareth I'm the same- any look ups is a fail for me
@Gareth I believe a lookup can be one of a few different actions. To some it means looking up the answer to “today’s NYTXW clue _____”. For others a lookup is going to a Wikipedia page and scrolling to see what the capital of Kazakhstan is. And for some, it’s double-checking the spelling of an answer when struggling with an area. For me, it has changed over time, so my lookups now are asking my husband if he knows. Like wine or coffee- the puzzle is to enjoy. Not a group sport, so the rules are as personal as the experience.
@Gareth Wednesday through Saturday I have to use autocorrect otherwise I'd never finishband never improve.
@Gareth I used to believe that looking things up was "cheating", but since becoming a regular visitor to this Comments page, I have learned these two things: 1. "Your puzzle, your rules." Everyone gets to decide for themself what the rules are. 2. "Your mileage may vary." What's a gimme for you is someone else's trivia, and vice versa. There are other things I have learned as well "-- such as "Read the column before commenting," and "Criticize the puzzle (if you must), but don't criticize the constructor." -- but these first two points seem relevant here.
@Gareth It's not a competition. There's no leadership board. People are just having fun. I feel guilty if I look things up, but I've been trying not to because I'm learning, improving, and not wasting time slamming my head against the wall when a single hint would help me fill in the rest.