Seemed hard, then easy, then I bogged down at ATTACKAD and ANKLETAT. As a former insurance lawyer, I thought minimal coverage provider should be GEICO or AETNA. Nevertheless a good clue for THONG.
@Marshall Walthew i refuse to believe you actually thought this and am certain youre just having us on. in which case, its pretty funny.
I have been a board-certified dermatologist for over 25 years. Perhaps "DERMA" is common in other countries, but I have never, ever seen or heard the dermis being called, "DERMA." The word, "DERMA," obviously exists but from poking around the internet, it looks like its heyday was back in the 1800s. I think the puzzle would have been better off cluing this answer differently (or scrapping it altogether).
@Derek I'm peds and I was trying to make it a rebus to get dermis in, but fortunately gave up
@Derek Yep, also MD, have never heard of derma as a standalone word. Did a lit search and only recent paper I could see using the term had exclusively Italian authors, and it appears to be the translation of dermis in Italian
@Derek So I’m a pediatrician and completely agree, it would have been much cleaner to clue it as a kishke holder. But here’s what happened, the constructor needed it to complete the puzzle, and then looked it up and the first thing that pops up is “another word for dermis”. Then they look up dermis and find out it’s the layer of skin that holds the hair follicles. He’s not a doctor, presumably, and neither are the editors, so how are they supposed to know it’s not in common use? So for educational purposes I certainly support pointing it out, but I’d be inclined to cut them some slack otherwise.
@Derek ENT here, same reaction as you. GENE SET was also a science swing-and-a-miss. Kludgy puzzle today!
@Derek To me, it’s a dish called stuffed derma, and let me tell you, that was really confusing
@Derek I'm a certified juris doctor and in don't care 🤷🏽
@Derek I'm not even a doctor and I knew something was off. High school anatomy was more than 20 years ago, but I still remember the dermis, epidermis, etc. I feel like they could have changed it to dorma, and clued it as "Nessun _____." But that would create a Natick-y situation with Ove as the cross.
@Derek That clue was so bad I almost convinced myself there had to be a rebus for the IS in DERMIS.
"I thought Winnie the Pooh needed a bath." "No. Don't soak the bear." ("But doesn't he need one a week? That's the bear minimum.")
@Mike If that's Eeyore story, I'd stick to it.
@Mike That’s nothing but a sham Pooh story.
@Mike To keep your bear strong, don't soak it for 7 days, because, as we all know, 7 days makes one weak.
Wow, the top half of the puzzle was incredibly difficult for me, yet I managed to fill it in without outside help - I'm proud of myself 😃 I found the bottom half much easier and was done with it fast. The top took twice as long, and I entered most answers in pen. Overall this was tough but enjoyable for me, pretty much the perfect Friday puzzle.
@Andrzej I’m on your wavelength, which is a little bit off Deb’s. Moderately challenging, and no pop culture. A-minus from me. YMMV.
@Andrzej. I used to do the puzzles with a sharpie, but then I got tired of cleaning my phone.
@Andrzej I think that it's an intentional constructor strategy to make the NW especially tricky on Friday and Saturday puzzles, since that's where most of us (naturally?) begin. I often think that I'd be wise to start from the bottom on those days (like today), and then I remind myself that I don't really care about time. Enjoy the ride!
Ugh, derma (not a word, it's dermis) and gene set (not a phrase ever used, it's genomes).
Mike, Here's your not a word: collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/derma
If you can stuff it, it's a word. (But that's another meaning.) Anyhow, I thought it's an 𝙚𝙥𝙞dermis.
@Mike @Dan So there’s your epidermis and your dermis, two different layers, and your hair follicles are in the latter. I’ll admit as a physician we generally say dermis, but a quick look up reveals that DERMA is also acceptable
@Mike Gee, I just googled "gene set" and found a whole bunch of links to scientific papers that use the term "gene set". You could do that, too!
@Mike As for GENESET it’s a little green painty but acceptable, and I’ll try to explain why (I’m not a geneticist so correct me if I’m wrong). Clones theoretically share a GENOTYPE, a complete set of genes that have exactly the same information. Humans share a GENOME, which is the set of all the genes you have (but maybe not the same exact ones). And strictly speaking, a GENESET would be a group of genes that all are used for the same purpose; so for example you might have a GENESET that are all used to repair your DNA. So any of the three could be considered a “set of genes” and loosely called a GENESET, even though only the last one has that official terminology. If that’s too confusing, think of it this way. If you and I collect baseball cards, and both have exactly the same cards, that’s our GENOTYPE. If you and I only collect American League teams, and someone else collects National League teams, then we have the same GENOME and they don’t—it’s like the set of cards you can pick from. And each team could be considered a group of similar cards—that’s our GENESET. So it would be like saying you and I both have the same CARDSET if our cards are the same—true enough, but a little imprecise and maybe not the terminology real card collectors would use. But good enough for everyone else, and I certainly wouldn’t break a great puzzle nitpicking over it. There’s my understanding and if someone has a better explanation, or I’m missing something, please correct me.
@Mike I had these two niggles too but otherwise I thought this a superlative puzzle. Not complaining if this is the standard.
ANKLE TAT and ATTACK AD clever, clever, very clever. Grateful to have a puzzle not asking me for celeb names.
Nominations now open for the Deb Amlen Tricky Clues comment of the year. My entry: 2D. OK, maybe I did at first think that “bra” would be a spiffy answer to [It might be on a rack], what of it? The rack in this puzzle, however, holds a HAT.
@Richard Yup. I chuckled out loud.
@Richard I'm waiting for you to come up with another example, so that I can comment, "What a nice pair!"
Looked to see if somehow I missed that this was a Robyn Weintraub puzzle. High, high praise in my book. DONTPOKETHEBEAR and HEREGOESNOTHING. TAKETHAT, James McCarron. Well done!
Who knew that Wyoming and Montana have the same number of letters as Alberta.
@Lars And Arizona (not that easy to mistake for Alberta, probably, unless of course you haven’t seen the movie).
And Atlanta, which has been making a big push for film companies lately, though I didn't think it went that far back. (I had the first and last A at that point.)
The Brokeback Mountain story as written was for a Wyoming location. Movie production frequently uses other locations due to concerns such as weather, amenities, politics, prejudices, cost, enticements, scenery, etc. Back in the day John Wayne showed up in my town for the filming of Hellfighters. The reason given was that the location was considered a look-alike for somewhere in Venezuela. I just missed bumping into John Wayne at our local Drug/Liquor/Gun Store. You know, the one with the drive-up window. He had been there to look at guns.
Well! That took a few minutes. A fair Friday, I'd say.
@Barry Ancona I agree. Quite a few false starts that took a while to fix. Many "Jeopardy-type" clues but I can usually handle them. Crosses helped with several. Glad that I follow the English Premier League. James may have failed to heed his caution at 14a.
Wonderful grid spanners today! I tried to fit Speedo before THONG, trIM before SKIM, STop before STEM, and scalp before DERMA 🤣 But I happened to make a PESTO pasta tonight for dinner! And today marks the day I became a mother 31 years ago. Happy birthday to my oldest son ☺️
@Jacqui J Happy birthday to your son.
This was just plain fun. Not hard—I hope I DONT POKE THE BEAR by saying so—but fun for sure. Great clues for SEASONTICKETS, ANKLETAT, THONG, RAINS, and ATTACKAD; and fresh long entries in HEREGOESNOTHING, TODAYYEARSOLD and DONTPOKETHEBEAR. And a really pretty grid, if anyone cares about that. If I had a wish it would have been to make the crossers a bit harder to extend the enjoyment—but they still weren’t gimmes or uninteresting. Well done.
@SP Had the crossers been harder, it would have resulted in Saturday difficulty, for me. This puzzle was challenging for me, pretty much at the high end of what I still consider a Friday rather than Saturday. I enjoyed, anyway.
In today's mini, the clue "Unit of distance originally equivalent to 1,000 paces" is answered with MILE. Actually, the mile is more like 2000 paces. The Latin passus (plural passus) is the ancestor of English "pace" but means something different. English "pace" means a stride; Latin "stride" is gradus, and it takes two gradi to make one passus. The pace at quick time is defined by U.S. Army Field Manual 22-5 as 120 30-inch steps (strides) per minute; the gradus was 2.5 Roman feet, roughly the same (30 inches). A thousand 30-inch paces would be 2500 feet or less than half a statute mile (5280 feet).
@Fact Boy That's a maxi answer for a mini puzzle :)
@Fact Boy Whoop, whoop--a math guy.
Fact Boy, And my journey of ten thousand paces always gets put off by great rabbit holes like this :)
Puzzle moments today: • Appreciating the elegant black square design, including the photo album corners. • Inner-fist-pumping at DON’T POKE THE BEAR and TODAY YEARS OLD, as well as [Spot likely to smear]. • Nodding at the cleverness of [Minimal coverage provider?] for THONG, a clue never used in the Times for *any* skimpy bit of wear. • Wanting REMOTES for [Show stoppers, sometimes]. • Admiring the junk-free answer set in such a low-word-count (68) grid – SO hard to do. • Noting TORE and TEARED, past tenses for two meanings of TEAR. • Smiling at seeing NOON, clued [High time], at the top of the grid. • Wondering “If iterate means repeat, then is ‘reiterate’ redundant?” James, you gave me far more than a mere fill-in today. Just a splendid outing. Thank you!
Adding to the chorus: Since this is an English-language puzzle, derma should have been clued as a prefix, suffix, foreign term, or archaic English term, one not used since the 19th c. This wasn’t tricky; it was just off. Having said that, it was a fine puzzle. For me, there were enough gimmes to make me wish the puzzle had taken longer, but I really, really liked the fill. James McCarron, come back anytime. Happy Friday, all.
@Sam Lyons Agree. The skin layer is called DERMIS, not DERMA.
@Sam Lyons My Webster's II has two definitions of DERMA: 1. the dermis, and 2. Beef casing stuffed with a seasoned mixture of matzo meal or flour, onion, and suet, prepared by boiling, then roasting. (The second definition would certainly qualify as a foreign term.)
@Sam Lyons English? I’m pretty sure it was just a really really really hard Dutch puzzle.
@Sam Lyons Being ignorant in such matters, once I got enough crosses, I filled in DERMA without a second thought. I have to imagine if a person who is an expert in every field attempted to do these crosswords, they would be one miserable soul. Luckily I am not that, so I can merrily fill in the answer the puzzle wants, get my gold star, and not find out until the comments that it is wrong.
Super fun puzzle. I loved the crossing of SOVIET with DON'T POKE THE BEAR.
I also thought 2D was ‘BRA’. In fact i was so confident it was ‘BRA’ I tried to force words to work around it until the very end.
@Elizabeth That’s hysterical and made me BUST out laughing, but the editors would never have let that through, unfortunately.
@Elizabeth It's such a pain when your bra doesn't fit.
That “Spot likely to smear” was a gem.
As a guy who knows a lot of season ticket holders, I can safely say that a fair few number can and do miss multiple football games, symphonies, lectures and readings, ballets, and operas, per season. It's irrational to think we'd be so rational, as a species. Hardly anyone is truly rational. We need only to look so far as Deb Fischer, who claims humans have nothing to do with climate change (and that's just the tip of her particular iceberg of irrationality). Other than that small difference, a fine puzzle. I only paused once, because I had RAIDS as the cause of shows being shut down. Guess I go to shows that might get raided, and proud of it! Is that called LACK of virtue signaling? Having just had a lovely bowl of pesto and glass of claret, I am in the mood to discourse on the difference between pestare -- to crush -- and schiacciare -- to crush ... Pestare is pounding, multiple, repeated applications of force, such as grinding, mashing, as with a mortar and pestle, to make paste, whereas schiacciare is to crush with continuous force, steady pressure. There is a slight crossover when it comes to mashing, one uses pestare for mashing up herbs, schiacciare for mashing potatoes. It depends what you're mashing, since potatoes can be smooshed, herbs cannot. Arrivederci!
@john ezra As someone who has sold many thousands of season tickets and who is a season ticket holder myself, I agree that there is tons of non-attendance among those who buy season tickets. That one made me pause for a second but then I figured you could interpret it differently—those who buy the season tickets are making sure they won’t (“can’t?”) miss anything because of individual events selling out. Kind of a loose link but good enough for the crossword, so I moved on and the crosses confirmed it was right. Thanks for the Italian lesson! 😊
@john ezra O no a foodie.
A bit easy for a Friday but I did love seeing TODAY YEARS OLD. I was not fond of GENE SET and I kept trying to force GENETIC and GENOMES to fit in there.
Very nice Friday morning puzzle Spent too long trying to trim rather than SKIM Thanks
@Ιασων Same! Those were my last squares.
@Ιασων I had trim on that starting spot in both directions -- for "curtail" as well. Knew one was wrong, but thought one would end up being right. Nope!
Had to laugh hard at @xworddeb 's comment re: 2D, as she thought of a bra being on a rack. At my daughter's wedding, the "best man" who was actually the groom's twin sister, read a magnificent toast that she penned on her way to the wedding. It had everyone rolling. It detailed their lives, how she would get them in trouble, but he always got the punishment. But the best line was undoubtedly: You grew a beard and I grew a rack. And this puzzle... I went through it once and thought I'd never finish it. Then, suddenly, words started filling in. Slowly, my brain remembered stuff. Important stuff. Banal stuff. Did pretty well for a Friday! So, keep at it! I was TODAY DAYS OLD when I realized Fridays are getting easier for me! I never thought it could happen!
@Marlene I was just at a wedding with a sister best [wo]man. I loved it!
I was today years old when I learned the name of the founder of McDonald's.
@HEK Sort of. He did put that on his business card, and he did make it into a national chain. But he didn't start the first one; the brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald were responsible for that. Ray Kroc, who at the time was a salesman for the milkshake machines they used, talked them into being their franchising agent, and eventually bought the whole company, except the original location, which by the terms of the contract continued to be owned and operated by the McDonald brothers...they had made a great deal of money from the deal, but they wished to continue running the place. It was their brainchild, after all Kroc regretted that; his ego could not accept that he had this one location that wasn't his. So he set up another McDonald's close by that took enough of their business away that they eventually folded.
There’s always someone who says the dictionary is wrong. DERMA as clued is in several dictionaries, defined as meaning the same as “dermis.” A Google Ngram search shows that it has trailed off considerably since 2000, but not that “it was last used in the 19th century.” <a href="https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=DERMA&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3" target="_blank">https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=DERMA&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3</a> It’s clearly not the up-to-date term for the layer of skin, but it exists. And if it exists, it’s fair game for a puzzle, especially a late-week one. Some have said, “Why didn’t the editors do their job?” I’d say they did, although a “dated” or “obsolete” marker might have helped. But on a Friday puzzle, the goal is not to make the puzzle super easy. And of course, dictionaries have editors. And lexographers. Which literally means “word studiers.” So I’ll take the DERMA, with a corned beef sandwich in the side.
@Steve L Yes, yes. We all know the constructors get to choose....but as a "frequent flier" at the dermatologist's mercy, I can attest to which is used by the professionals atop the ladder. I didn't even utter a MINI- whimper.
@Steve L Dig your feet in the ground all you want, the fact of the matter is it's not used in a way that's intuitive to solving the puzzle. I don't think if the editors put a note about the term being dated in the clue it would've made it that much easier. When professionals in the field are telling you that it's not correct, maybe it's time to put the dictionary and the "um, actually" responses away for a bit.
@Steve L I agree with you. If it’s in the dictionary, it’s fair game. Late week puzzles are supposed to be challenging and stretch your brain a little. I always expect answers to be “iffy” on Friday and Saturday 🤷🏼♀️ I plugged in DERMA without a thought
A great Friday puzzle! Thank you, James McCarron! Loved TODAY YEARS OLD. And [Image just over a foot]; ha! Good one. TIL where Kotoka International Airport is, and that Brokeback Mountain was not filmed mostly in MONTANA (though it fit so perfectly!). Had a few wrong things in there (TIE on a rack) but kept circling back around and eventually everything fell into place. Great clues and great puzzle.
@Heather K It took me forever to get that airport clue, and I've flown in and out of it! (It was a loooong time ago.)
That seemed awfully easy for a Friday puzzle, didn't it? I don't track times but I'd guess lot of personal bests were achieved on this one. The cluing seemed Tuesdayish level... I sympathize with the criticism of season tickets but I suppose it meant that one can't miss a game because the tickets are already in hand. I guess. (It's not great.) The other long answers were much better, though simple.
@B It didn't. The top half was a Saturday, for me.
@B Thanks for the plausible explanation of season tickets. I won't have to scratch my head so hard.
@B My Fri average is 35 min. Today after 55 min I gave up and went to the column and then the solution grid. We all have different wheelhouses.....
Contrary to other commenters, I had no objection to DERMA, as it seemed a natural alternative form of DERMIS to fit in 5 letters (perhaps it’s wrong, but I think of DERMA as a pluralisation referring to the various layers of DERMIS collectively). My bugbear (which I shouldn’t poke, I suppose) is GENE SET. My research intersects heavily with genetics and I have never heard that phrase, so was convinced it had to be GENOMES.
@Kate Dermises or dermides would be the plural
@Kate Really ought to be DNA.
@Kate. This is one of those too-rare times when not being a wordie nerdie puzzle-doer worked to my advantage :).
@Kate My objection to DERMA is that it is clued as a singular. I had a similar issue with GENE SET, so I left it as GEN.... until I had crossings. (btw "gene set" is the term used to refer to the annotated genes in the protein/amino acid alphabet.)
That was fun! It also made me feel old, because I actually know the slang and trivia. Presumably, someone my age is authoring puzzles now! (I tried to Google James but couldn’t find a bio to confirm). The iCarly reference earlier this week was in that camp too. It’s amazing how quickly pop culture changes. I’m 5 hours in to that 1940s puzzle they released, and my next plan is to seek help at a retirement home…. The slightly uncommon terms - Derma, gene set - didn’t bother me. Yes it’s atypical. But isn’t that true of much crosswordese? We’re all about the obscure and old fashioned :)
@Judy Go to xwordinfo.com and you'll see his picture, along with the photos of most of the constructors whose puzzles appear every day.
I didn't initially think I could do this one. Instead of getting some traction and starting to fill in crosses, I was all over the grid, filling in the few answers that I was relatively sure of. I reconciled myself to many lookups and a long solve time. Eventually I just put it aside for maybe 20 minutes and just went down some unrelated internet rabbit holes, which helped. I came back, made a few leaps of faith, and it started to fill in. One of the weirder moments towards the end was looking at what I was expecting to be the text from some industrial workplace placard and having some obscure part of my brain unexpectedly suggest to me that it was really a caution against bear-poking. Riiight... I thought sure, why not, I'll try it...I'll be removing it again in a few seconds, but I'll try it...and less than a minute later I got the music. One of my faster Friday solves, and I didn't look up a thing.
The criticism of DERMA seems justified, though IMO it wasn’t really a problem in light the crosses (MEER was certainly no gimme, but the M was easily inferable given DER_A). But GENE SET? Come in, folks. This is “computer storage” all over again. The complaints are focusing on the question: What would “gene set” be most likely to denote in an academic paper or textbook? When the right question is actually: How can “GENE SET” be interpreted to fit with its usage in today’s puzzle? And this isn’t even a tough one — the phrase “gene set”, in addition to any specific technical definitions it may carry, can be viewed as a synonymous formulation of the more generic phrase, “a set of genes”. And that’s certainly something that clones share.
@Anonymous I guess another acceptable answer would be “bone set”, as they share all the same bones?
Quickly wrote in fill after fill that, uh, was w r o n g. A light went on each time I figured out the right one, and everything started jumping. Great fun and a most enjoyable puzzle. Thank you James (and Rachel!). I'm looking forward to the one in the Times queue.
@dutchiris I don't know if there's a metric for this, but it sure seemed like there were a lot of short answers puzzle that had two or three possibilities, crosses not considered.
Had no idea that interate and reiterate mean the same thing.
@redweather I think you mean, "I was TODAY YEAR'S OLD when I learned that..."
@redweather regardless/irregardless flammable/inflammable Let's call the whole thing off! 💃🏻
@redweather Well, technically, “reiterate” should only refer to the third time forward…
Typical tough Friday for me. Just a bunch of working the crosses before answers finally dawned on me. Even on review I can see more than a couple of answers that were NEVER going to dawn on me just from the clues. No big deal. Unusual puzzle find today. A Sunday from April 29, 2007 by Henry Hook with the title: "Circle of Friends." Quite incredible piece of construction. Eight theme answers, all of them proper names, and each of them clued in connection with the following theme answer (and the last one clued in connection with the first). Those clues and answers: 23a: ... "and 25-Across have "canine" surnames :" MARKSPITZ 25a: "... and 41-Across sang with their siblings :" JUNEPOINTER 41a: "... and 52-Across are Mormons :" DONNYOSMOND 52a: "... and 69-Across have affiliations with "Jeopardy!" :" KENJENNINGS 69a: "... and 80-Across have mythological creatures as surnames :" MERVGRIFFIN 80a: "... and 99-Across starred in musicals and share their first names with a classic sitcom couple :" ETHELMERMAN 99a: "... and 101-Across are known for their fancy footwork:" FREDASTAIRE 101a: "... and 23-Across are Olympic gold medalists :" CARLLEWIS Wow. Here's that link: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=4/29/2007&g=99&d=A" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=4/29/2007&g=99&d=A</a> ...
@Rich in Atlanta I remember that one!!! And the dreaded name of Henry Hook!
On the one hand, we have the complaints about DERMA and GENE SET (and HOSTILE and SEASON TICKETS). (But no one seems to have an issue with Jan van der MEER. Is that intended to be an alternative name for the famous Delft painter [usually called "Vermeer"], or a reference to the [obscure] Haarlem landscape painters?) On the other hand, we have the excellent clueing of "Spot likely to smear", "Image that's just over a foot", and the lovely debut of TODAY YEARS' OLD. And, as a bonus, we get Deb's hilarious "Rack" comment. My verdict: Fine Friday puzzle. Thanks, James McCarron!
@The X-Phile I was very thrown off my that - there's van der Eyck, but had not heard of van der Meer? Apparently Vermeer is a contraction of van der Meer, but not much to be found on the internet.
Sometimes, when there's a newly coined phrase I've never heard, I'll guess, based on what I've already filled in. At 51A, I had TODAY YEARS ??? and I confidently wrote in TODAY YEARS AGO. But HOT straightened me out. And TODAY YEARS OLD is much better, don't you agree? The other long answers were much more familiar. I've often heard DON'T POKE THE BEAR and I've actually said once or twice HERE GOES NOTHING. I'm proud to say I got that answer just off the EREG. A nice clue for SEASON TICKETS and a world-class clue for ATTACK AD. Some questions: Are ERASERS purchased separately now? I thought they came with pencils. And if people don't bring pencils (or erasable pens) to school anymore, then what do you need ERASERS for? And is GENE SET a phrase? Don't you just share genes? Or all your genes? If you're sharing millions (or is it billions?) of genes as clones do, "SET" somehow sounds too limiting. A clean, enjoyable puzzle with no junk and lively fill. But I didn't find much resistance. YMMV.
@Nancy my resistance was breakfast based (the lack thereof) but I agree... very lively. TODAY YEARS OLD was the gimme for me today, but pre-breakfast I needed crosses for DON'T POKE THE BEAR and HERE GOES NOTHING lol. Also those types of clues can yield so many possibilities that I'm often scared to guess them and have an entire row of wrong. LOL! And I totally agree about ERASERS!
@Nancy @Joya I can't speak to today's school supplies, but the erasers on pencils in ancient times were often not very good (or big enough for big erasing jobs). So a gum eraser was one of my school supply purchases.
@Nancy after purchasing school supplies for the last 26 years straight, I can assure you that erasers are on every school supply list that I’ve seen and that includes California, Arizona, Texas and Wisconsin! The pencils long live out their attached erasers, ergo the supplemental eraser request. Whiteboard erasers are also sometimes requested.
@Nancy Wow, you've never owned a Pink Pearl? Drafting/drawing pencils don't come with an attached ERASER, so a separate one is essential. Mine is an art gum.
I loved TODAYYEARSOLD being in there—and knowing it was the seed. That was sweet and I love hearing what people learned so belatedly. I've had some good, embarrassing ones, myself! It was a first-round gimme... that and ASPEN were about the only two of those I didn't have to change. Had the hardest time figuring out ANKLET AT. Is this some sort of new social media thing I thought!? CANITBE!?😏 Happily, Deb set me straight! Big ole duh moment for me. In any case, nice puzzle! All of them have been over the last several days, but they've all felt pretty hard to me. I think my brain is in a slump, despite my recent MRI results being so beautiful and the most perfect results ever. I just feel sort of slow. Maybe it's the horrific (to me) early extreme darkness, along with the snow and cold. And, you know, combine all that with the, um, state of the world... Yeah, I guess feeling slumpy makes sense. Still, I have enjoyed all the puzzles and solved them unaided, even if I found them tougher for me. I only SKIMmed the comments because from my quick review, I realized I'm not in the mood for the "too easy" comments or a lot of nitpicking. That's been the case the last few days too. I truly say this not as a complaint or to be HOSTILE to anyone—people can say and rate as they wish—but it's good to know one's own limits and do a little self-care. Cheers, all! 😊
@HeathieJ When I was in a college fraternity, getting the Greek letters tattooed on your ankle was a thing, and that was 40 years ago, so not a new thing. A friend of mine has the Pearl Jam "stickman" logo on his. I remain ink-free.
this puzzle both thrilled and irritated me. im pretty new here and its unusual for me to feel so passionately ambivalent about elements of the same days fill. perhaps this is a subtle constructors weekend job? 36D. Get to. ATTEND? really? i know. weekend. flex. stretch. "ive got to get to the party" = ive got to attend the party. no. i can get to the party, decide at the door i dont want to attend, do an about face and go home. a bridge too far and too mushy a clue. even for a friday. 35D. on what planet does being argumentative imply hostility?? is it that hostile witnesses are argumentative? i thought the lawyers are being argumentative. most argumentative people i know evince this trait without a shred of hostility. just who they are and what they do. and theyre usually annoying. but hostile? i may well be argumentative at this very moment. but hostile? not a bit. again. friday. loosey goosey. got it. but no. just...no. now... 26A? wow. just wow. among the best clues of the year, by my reckoning. 5D? bravo. took me forever and made me grin when it fell. my objections are all primarily esthetic and not semantic. as are my huzzahs. and vis a vis dermis vs derma: im an emergency doc and i dont care. no skin in the game. just stuff to sew. exeunt.
@Matt 👏 The moment I finished reading this the first time, I went back and re-read it and found even more stuff there. I know you think I'm saying this is because of the whole thing about whether it's me or Andrzej that's being mean to you, but regardless of how insincere this sounds, it is sincere. Great point about argumentative vs. hostile. But you gotta admit, they often go together. And if you don't admit it, I'll make you sorry you didn't. ER doctor, huh? Color me impressed.
@Matt I, too, gave some major side eye to HOSTILE, but I thought ATTEND was reasonably clued. When you have a chore to do, you get to it. Or you ATTEND to it. After a whole lot of procrastination, if you’re my husband.
@Matt I also didn't like the clue for HOSTILE, but that's an end week puzzle for you - some clues will be questionable, and apologists will say it's fair because misdirection is the game 🤷🏽
@Matt Fair points all, especially about “argumentative”. We are certainly very argumentative on this forum but I hope most of us aren’t HOSTILE.
@Matt For [Get to], I originally had ATTAIN.
Four great long crossers and nice grid! Very enjoyable.
This puzzle sparkled, not a single clinker in the bin. Nice to see Mo SALAH make an appearance, a debut even? (Even though he does play for Liverpool.) More soccer clues please, fewer baseball players from the '50s. And the Hammers play in CLARET and blue kit.
@Grant loved the Mo clue! I felt like I had an edge for once instead of feeling lost by all the pop music references.
@Grant Oh! I HAVE heard of Mo SALAH. Had to look up the Egyptian star named Mohamed SALAH and still had no clue.
@Grant I was also pleasantly surprised to see an appearance by the Egyptian King. I've been less pleasantly surprised this season to see that he's forgotten how to kick a football. Still one of my all-time favorite players.
The five-lettered famous architect that isn't I M PEI and who has appeared 9 times (all Modern Era) in the NYT crossword, Frank Gehry, has died.
Again, not too bad. Thought I was on the same wavelength as the constructor for this one. A little lost at times, but fun to figure outf
Jimmy Mack, when are you coming back? Funky grid. Fun solve.
If you haven’t heard it, or even if you have, Mark Knopfler’s “Boom Like That” is worth a listen. Or five. Kroc style. Boom like that. <a href="https://youtu.be/0sYK2RwH5E8?si=LdGxZ3Y6mb-zFSG_" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/0sYK2RwH5E8?si=LdGxZ3Y6mb-zFSG_</a>
@CCNY that’s how I knew that answer! Such a great song.
@CCNY I was going to post that, too. Knopfler is such a great guitarist and songwriter. "Boom like that" is one his best. I don't know how many times I listened to it (while I was working) before I really heard the jist of the song.
Wishfully thinking this morning while viewing the puzzle solved at bedtime. You know what would be cool? Instant replay and see how one solved a puzzle in condensed time. Make it so! ;-)
@Geoff Offermann Ooh, that would be nice. The video game Civilization had that feature in the early 90s. It was awesome.
@Geoff Offermann That would be a blast. Occasionally Deb used to do this—show grids of how she got a foothold into the puzzle, and gradually added more fill, at least for the early parts. Haven’t seen any of the columnists do this lately. And yes Andrzej that was a fun feature of Civilization and I miss it. It would be nice to review how we conquered the crossword!
@Geoff Offermann Actually that is precisely how some versions of AI work: they track what you do. So an AI- enabled xword app could be coming soon. Beware what you wish for.
@Geoff Offermann There are of course various screen recorders that could do this... Snipping Tool is a mostly-built-in one on Win11. Android has Screen Record built in (swipe down to find it.)
Having GENESET (very awkward answer), ATTACKAD (clever clue) and ANKLETAT all intersect was really tough. I kept wondering how an "ankle top" was an image.
@Doug Schoemer I thought it was meant to be a single word and kept wondering how ATTACKED was likely to smear.
@Doug Schoemer ATTACKAD was my last fill, and I did literally execute a face-palm upon enlightenment. :)
I was thinking of Isabel Allende until Gay TALESE tapped me on the shoulder. That meant ALABAMA wasn't the filming site, but ARMENIA fit, as did ALGERIA and ...finally, lovely ALBERTA. There are quite a few "sticks" in an orchestra, if you care to be extremely imprecise. And why GENE SET rather than GENOME? DERMA, not DERMIS? I kept trying TRIM here, there, and everywhere, and it never fit.... The corner with 31/32/33D had me feeling like a PATSY--a SAILOR lost at sea--until ...At last! An ARK. Oh, and SCREAM--far too close to the box cutter clue--and the color CLARET.
@Mean Old Lady I got it after genome, but was also perplexed by gene set.
The hat trick of delightful puzzles this week. Wednesday, Thursday and today. Just enough of a challenge to keep you interested but easy enough to not get frustrated. Been doing crossword puzzles for some 50+ years and have never lost interest. Thanks NYT.
Think I'll go out to ALBERTA, weather's good there in the fall...
@Barry Ancona - You got some friends that you could go to working for?
@Barry Ancona 21°F at the moment - no thanks.
@Barry Ancona One of my favorite songs.
The two terms that threw me off somewhat were DERMA, a prefix, not a skin layer, and GENESET, an expression I have never heard in decades of teaching biology and genetics. Otherwise, these are minor nits. Overall the puzzle was challenging and enjoyable. I loved the clue for ANKLETAT.