At last! A puzzle in which *every single entry* is a Spoonerism!
So my gold star streak hit 2000 today. Not much by David Connell and Steve L standards, but a milestone for me. It would have been longer except for some heart surgery five and a half years ago, which means the operation must have been a success. A good cup of coffee, a cat in my lap and a fine Friday puzzle to solve, always my favorite. Who could ask for more?
@Vislander congratulations!
@Vislander Congrats to you anyway! And keep staying out of the hospital!
@Vislander Whoo-hoo! That is extraordinary. Over 5.5 yrs of flawless solving is worthy of note.
@Vislander congratulations! What a great puzzle to have for #2000. Enjoy your cat and coffee.
@Vislander Just a fellow "cat in lap" solver here checking in to say hello
@Vislander, Congratulations to you! That’s a might big milestone to reach. Well done!
What a work of balance. TIGHTROPEWALKER crossing EGGANDSPOONRACE.
Maybe it's the cookie coma, but I found this one Saturday-level challenging. Fair but very tough.
@Derek Jones I'd like to see COOKIECOMA in a puzzle! 😆
So as weird coincidences go this is one of the weirdest. My boss at Cincinnati Children’s hospital is Dr. Andy Spooner. (Not such a common name, right?) He loves crosswords, is very good at them, knows I’ve published (I’ve challenged him with all my rejects) and has mentioned to me that he’s toyed with writing them. So I see this byline and immediately text him —congratulations, that’s amazing, why didn’t you tell me? I finish the puzzle and read the constructor notes and who would believe it, it’s a DIFFERENT Andrew Spooner (my boss is definitely not Australian). How crazy is this!!! In any case as I’m doing the puzzle, I’m thinking, well I definitely won’t say anything bad about it—luckily, boss or not, I don’t have to. This is an exceptional puzzle and even more exceptional debut. Love the long crossers and the clues (SPOONRACE is certainly perfect for this constructor). Lots of clever clues, loved the STROLLER clue (and I had TEENS before NANAS for the other babysitting clue) and CELLMATE. I’m sure I won’t be the only one to have BRA for “Broad band” although I was a bit surprised the NYT would allow a somewhat pejorative term for women. Also loved the GEODE and “marked with an X” clues. Overall a nice difficulty level for me and appropriate for a Friday. So congrats Mr. Spooner, whoever you are, for an enchanting debut. I’m headed to bed as soon as I pick up my jaw off the floor.
@SP I report with some embarrassment that I had to use the CHECK to complete this puzzle. Mortification! X did not mark the spot for me. I in-speck-ted forever and I knew that the trouble was in that block. But I foolishly just read the answers to make sure they were English and missed my GET instead of GOT at 44D. What I thought PeRNO was, I have no idea. 😳
@SP Cincinnati Children's!! PhysDau was on One South back in...1980. One of the people we recall most fondly was Dr. Peter Dignan (a source of information and encouragement.) I hope you got to know him even slightly. (I think I recall he was an Aussie.)
So many riddle clues, where the answer couldn’t immediately be slapped down without crosses. But the clues were such that if there was one cross, or maybe two, the answer suddenly was clear. So, initial hesitation left swaths of white for me, but gimmes and good guesses begat Sudden Splats – bam bam bams – a royal “Whee!”. It's a lovely grid design, no? No scattershot black squares. It does create islands in the NW and SE, and that NW island provided another Crosslandia gift on top of the splats – the Triumphant Return. Where you are stuck in an area, just can’t penetrate it, so you au revoir it only to return later and whoosh it in. So, good feelings all around. Sparked by RAGNAROK, a word that looks great to me and is fun to say, as well as by excellent clues, including [Baby sitter?] for STROLLER, and [Life partner, perhaps?] for CELLMATE. Yours is a very promising new voice, Andrew, and I eagerly await more. Congratulations, and thank you for a scintillating outing!
One of those rare times a puzzle is both not difficult to finish and extremely interesting to work. I had only one ask-up (Hub knows myriad odd bits), and the rest of the fills seemed to be talking to each other and guided me through to the gold. Thank you for this holiday gift, Andrew, and congratulations on your debut. A VERY nice puzzle! (Have you ever participated in one of those races? Perhaps with one of the Eggers?)
@dutchiris Ah, yes, the best Hubs do know myriad odd bits.
That was a perfect Boxing Day puzzle; not too taxing, but full of interesting fill. Love the balance of TIGHTROPE WALKER crossing EGG AND SPOON RACE. Well done on your debut, you should be very proud. In the tradition of servants getting the day off on the 26th I refuse to cook on this day, having cooked up a storm to feed the 5000 leading up to Christmas. After mucking out the Alpacas I’ve had a lovely day lolling in front of the fire (it’s a bitter cold Easterly out there), stuffing my face with cold turkey and chocolate…occasionally in the same bite. The crossword done I’ll turn my attention to Wordle and the Bee, possibly with a nap in between. Heaven.
Nice! Had a few misfills -- GeTit before GOTME; teenS before NANAS; _MEND (could be a or e) before OPINE that I promptly deleted under the assumption that 25D was indeed CARLE; and (due to brain farts including mixing up Tuesday and Thursday) Maundy before SHROVE and Barley before BULGUR, but OWL fixed the last, and both STROLLER and RAGNAROK fixed the other -- but mostly I was on the same wavelength. Except for really wanting the outside song to be yodel... Also 39D is my RL name and 52 in a literal sense is what my body is good at doing (I have a condition, FOP, of which the second word is Ossificans), so I'm secretly considering this a me puzzle. Though I guess telling y'all makes that less secret. Also I'm not a KANGAROO, so, uh.
@Isabeau I’m so disappointed your real name isn’t Isabeau, I’ve told you before how much I love that name from the movie “LadyHawke”. Although Miriam is also a lovely name!
@Isabeau My cousin named her German Shepherd Navarre. Also, I see that Ladyhawke is free if you have Amazon Prime. Definitely a good time for a rewatch.
Lots to love about this evocative puzzle. POKE -- a word with a lot of meanings, one of which is a small leather bag or pouch as used by gold miners for gold dust & nuggets, I.e. a MONEY BAG. Another is the balancing acts of the tightrope walker crossing the egg and spoon race. I tried and failed to find footage of some daredevil on a tightrope doing the egg and spoon thing, surmising there would be hundreds of videos. Nada. Wouldn't you watch such a film? Especially if it was a P0RN0 starring a giantess named Miriam wearing only an obi? Will she lose it midway, or will there be a rift in the rope, and was it tied in properly? I promise you there will not be a dry eye in the house; they, and possibly other parts, will all be quite moist: you're gonna die! An EMT is waiting! And now the camera turns away from the giant stroller on the rope and focuses on the weedy pile far below her, now ablaze, like a funeral pyre for a Norse god at Ragnarok, adding an extra element of tension. But when a lone kangaroo in the crowd calls out "MOA, MOA!" (probably drunk on Mai-Tai's), you opine that this project has gone too far and should be put on hold. Whatever my ambition as an auteur, including such imagery in a serious film is simply low art. If you're going to have CGI creatures, make 'em more like that owl Albus Dumbledore's henchman Bulgur gave to Harry Potter, a kind of replacement for his mother, Lily. Back to the tabletop for some revisions...
@John ezra Excellent! And a 'poke' in Scots dialect is used for any sort of small bag - a poke of sweets, a poke of chips (fries). Also in the expression, to "buy a pig in a poke".
@john ezra Even the thought of the TIGHTROPE gives me the willies; even being near the edge of a drop-off makes me dizzy. I had to stop reading. I need to put a COLD cloth on my head now.
Having both a cold and a Christmas holiday threw me off, so I happily attacked this puzzle thinking today was a Monday. Partway through I thought, wow, this is a pretty tough Monday. There'll be a few comments on this one!!! Oops.
@Walj You are not alone. I got a bunch of Thursday-subscription emails yesterday and stared at them in puzzlement. "Why," I thought, "am I getting all these today?"
In a few days, I will be leaving for Africa. The trip will include South Africa and KENYA. Under the first draft of my itinerary for the trip, we had planned to visit a World Heritage Site near Johannesburg called "The Cradle of Humankind." Imagine my confusion to see that verbiage clued with a 5-letter answer. I'll have to research if there's a similarly named WHS in Kenya to visit. My plan as of now is to only visit Nairobi with day trips to Mount Kenya and Lake Nakuru before I heard to Kilimanjaro and the Serengeti...
It seems to be in reference to this site: <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/801" target="_blank">https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/801</a> Unfortunately too far, being in the far north of the country, near the border with Ethiopia
@Steven M. Hope you’re planning to visit Cape Town, one of my favorite places on the planet!
@Steven M. What a trip! The only way we can all come along is if you tell us about it in the comments, so be sure to squeeze in some puzzle time along the way.
@Steven M. We went to South Africa in 2006, and booked a private tour with a grad student at the WHS near Johannesburg. Fabulous.
So I guess the ROC can't be extinct if, according to Google, it's a "legendary" bird. Somehow I thought it was a real bird that went extinct and it was my go-to 3-letter puzzle bird. (Other than the EMU, of course, which isn't extinct.) ROC went perfectl;y with COINED for "Made up", but MIRIAM brought me crashing down from my two wrong answers. So it's the MOA. Have I ever heard of the MOA? Darned if I remember. I'll make a mental note to remember it -- though, of course, a mental note isn't worth the paper it's printed on. My only other real problem was RAGNAROK, which I don't remember ever seeing before. But it's correct, I'm pleased to say. EGG AND SPOON RACE? I suppose you have to run as fast as you can while carrying an egg in a spoon and not dropping it? I'll look it up. The bizarre tests of "athleticism" people invent. I'm sure that even fifty years ago I would have dropped that egg before going even three steps. A smooth Friday themeless with just the right amount of crunch. I didn't find it hard, but neither did I find it boring. And I applaud it for having almost no junk at all.
@Nancy When you're looking up EGG AND SPOON RACE, also check out sack race and three-legged race. They are more goofy than super-competitive.
Coincidence that Mr. SPOONer had eggandSPOONrace down the middle?
I was so, so sure 49D was “rod” for casting in fishing. That has been a lesson of the past few weeks for me. When a block of the puzzle just won’t fill in nicely, delete most of it and try again. Somehow opens the door in my mind to a new cross and “aha” moments.
@sonnel I was stuck on the same thing toward the end! That down entry was the last to fall for me. I also automatically entered “rib” for 51D because we had short ribs for dinner tonight. Quickly caught that error from the crossings.
@sonnel Same here. But PESETA put a quick end to that.
Loved this puzzle.
One of my more interesting jobs was casting director for "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman", but I was hugely embarrassed for all the 48- and 49-footers who showed up thinking no one would notice they were wearing lifts. Unfortunately I was then (ironically?)typecast as the go-to guy for certain sorts of films. I noped out big-time when they offered me "Godzilla vs. Mothra".
This took me twice my average. I have never had so many answers I knew that were right, be wrong. They were in so many corners. Soulmate was my starter for the NE. Instead of TRUELOVE. Mealtray (then GIANTbra) for GIANTESS. I knew emu was probably wrong for MOA. but I’d like Oreo clues. There are always new ones showing up. Plus others I can no longer remember. So much ‘erasing’. But proud of myself for golding it. At 1:01:19.
@Weak, a solve is a solve! You stuck it out; the time it took is irrelevant! Congrats!
Also still singular if you instead add an A at the beginning.
Beautiful job. Nice and clean, fun cluing, no junk. My only regret is that it was over too soon. Do come back and see us again!
RANGNAROK is surely spoonerism-adjacent for KANGARRO. and if I told you it was big white boomer in a snowstorm, would that make me a white trope talker?
I rarely try Friday puzzles but as I and my wife are on a bike tripe in Chile, with not much else to do at midnight — the country has chosen to set its time to be two hours ahead of ET, so as to co-ordinate with Brazilian time for commercial reasons — I gave this one a go and was happy to be able to get the gold star. Congrats to Andrew for his debut with this enjoyable puzzle. By the way, the view out of our hotel window is breathtaking, prominently featuring the Osorno volcano: <a href="https://surl.lu/rmqhav" target="_blank">https://surl.lu/rmqhav</a>
@Strudel Dad Judging by the time of sunrise and sunset in Santiago, I don't think their solstice sun times are much different from those in Toronto in June. So I think their chosen time zone seems quite normal, regardless of commercial reasons.
A fairly fluid Friday. At one point I did idly wonder if the constructor was Australian, and to my amusement it turned out he is. Good on you, Mr Spooner. Is this going to be Dumbledore week?
@Vaer The parliament of OWLs votes "Yes!" for Dumbledore Week. 🦉🦉🦉🦉
Congratulations on a fine and clever debut, Andrew -- I hope we see more from you! I loved every bit of it, especially EGGANDSPOONRACE for the win! 🥚🥄🏅
Cute. SW was last. Challenging solve. Satisfying.
Interestingly, Deb, I didn't even think of your interpretation of 49d. I was thinking that if I wanted to cast some metal pieces, I would need a die to pour the molten metal in. My grandfather was a tool-and-die man in Detroit back in the 1930s and 40s.
@Alita Shaver point: @Alita Shaver clearly your interpretation is the intended path from clue to fill. a die in debs view is a prop, not an actor. and is not cast but rather bought or found or otherwise procured as objects are.
@Alita Shaver I think both interpretations refer to the kind of die you're talking about. The die is cast = the thing is done, the matter is settled. Shakespeare scholars, feel free to correct me.
@Alita Shaver That was the first thing I thought of too.
What a great debut! Thanks, Andrew! Have a fantastic Friday, y’all. And a great weekend!
I started last night had to finish this morning. I had so many wrong answers initially and right ones that I took out and put back in several times. I knew the rhyming drink would be a MAI tAI tAI, so I left off the first letter. Then I thought the answer to 20A might be total, so I had tAI for the longest time. I also had teeNs before NANAS, but knowing MAItAI fixed that in my first pass of the downs. Rod before DIE, which led me to dry out before OSSIFY. GOT it before GOT ME. I put in ABORTS and took it out three times. I tried aloe before LILY. Needless to say, this was more like a Saturday time for me. My last correction was fixing what started as total that morphed to GeTUp and finally to GAMUT 😅 Thank you for the brain exercise after a nice relaxing holiday, Andrew. I think your next puzzle should include spoonerisms!
@Jacqui J The mistake I stuck with the longest was coiNED at 41-D for "Made up". The bird in question could certainly be a MOc, no? But I was pretty sure that the plural of PORNO wasn't PORNi.
(Ignore the following unless you’ve watched the streaming show “Pluribus”.) The things that stick with us … seeing CAROL in the grid immediately made me think of: "Hello Carol! This is a recording. At the tone, you can leave a message to request anything you might need. We'll do our best to provide it. Our feelings for you haven't changed, Carol, but after everything that's happened, we just need a little space."
@Lewis I am on the fence about that show. Amazing premise, tremendous acting—but the pacing! Waiting all season for something to actually happen!
@Lewis rewatch the episode (2?) and call the number they gave her
@Lewis - TIL that the actress who plays Carol, Rhea Seehorn, is also a crossword puzzle enthusiast: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/dec/26/rhea-seehorn-interview-making-pluribus" target="_blank">https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/dec/26/rhea-seehorn-interview-making-pluribus</a> In explaining what was wrong with the hivemind portrayed on the show, she said, "I’ll never get to do a crossword puzzle again, because I already know all the answers, because I made the crossword." Scary thought!!
39 across… New Zealand is not “down under”. That is what Australia is referred to as. So this clue was very confusing.
@Aimee Really? This is truly news to me. To us in the northern hemisphere, Australia and New Zealand are both down under.
@Aimee, I am now further weirded out to read the constructor is Australian. I automatically went with Emu because of the Downunder and there are some of them extinct.
@Aimee been to NZ twice, never Oz, but “Down Under” certainly means Australia. Might have been a better clue with a lowercase “u”. Nevertheless EMU aren’t extinct and MOA are, and “down under” is anyplace south of the equator strictly speaking.
@Aimee According to Merriam Webster “down under adverb or adjective variants often Down Under : to or in Australia or New Zealand” You know that dictionaries record usage…
I really enjoyed this crossword. What a great start to a crosswording career.
Whew. Typical tough Friday for me but ended up being an enjoyable workout. Most everything fell together with some crosses but then... there was 8 down. Never, ever heard of that and that had me doubting some of the crossing answers, so I would go back and re-examine those. Finally just gave in and managed to get it finished. Interesting puzzle find today. I'll put that in a reply. ...
@Rich in Atlanta As threatened: A Sunday from February 5, 2005 by Frank A. Longo with the title: "Peruse the clues." Don't recall another one quite like this - thought it was very clever. Some clue and answer examples: "CHALTUPID" STOPINTHENAMEOFLOVE "VISSADAGE" BLUEINTHEFACE "JASOWB" PIGINAPOKE "SNILTIR" MUCHADOABOUTNOTHING "BEDORISING" ADAYINTHELIFE "SPORETAFF" READBETWEENTHELINES Here's that link: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=2/5/1995&g=51&d=A" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=2/5/1995&g=51&d=A</a> ....
@Rich in Atlanta Goodness, did you never have a school picnic? I suppose that the three-legged race is dead and gone, but surely the sack race and the egg-and-spoon race survive!
I liked this one, and not just because I solved this with out look-ups in under two-thirds of my average Friday time having had a lot of blank space after my first pass. What was good was how there were relatively few proper names and how they do not cross. And the trivia could be worked out - just a few crossers for Kangaroo and I knew the cradle of humankind had to be in the Great Lakes region of Africa. Much easier than the nicknames of sports teams that have no obvious connection to their location.
Bravo, Andrew! The crosses were brilliant. More please!
The typing monkeys got a day off. I was able to puzzle out the few remaining squares in the brutal NE. That’s the sign of a very enjoyable crossword. Even though you don’t know it you can work it out. Happy New Year Y’all
Absolutely brutal that a PeRNO is a bolt that can be marked with an x, and “get me” just sounds better than GOT ME
I liked the intentional KEALOA at 21D. The ‘E’ in DIE/PESETA was the last square to fall. The euro has been around so long now, I thought Spain’s currency was the PESaTA; it took me a second to pick up on the “die is cast” misdirect. Fairly breezy but fun puzzle overall.
Great debut! As an Australian with family in the RAAF, I had trouble trying to figure out how to fit wedge-tail eagle in and definitely got tunnel vision on that before eventually realising it wanted Kangaroo from the Roundel on the planes
@Phoebe I thought of uniforms first, too. Dad's routine of shining his brass insignia was part of daily life when we were small. The scent of Brasso can take me back there in a twinkling. (His birthday was December 15th, so of course I thought of him...on what would have been his 113th!)
Congratulations, Andrew. Looking forward to next time.
Lovely one. Took me a bit longer than usual. Just the way I like it.
You know how sometimes you're just not on the same page as the puzzlemaker? Today I wasn't on the same planet.
What an incredible debut, Mr. Spooner! Congrats on a solid Friday puzzle. The smattering of personal don't -knows with difficult, but gettable, crosses was the perfect balance. Speaking of...the "balancing act" of the two crossing spanners? Well done! Also, I don't know if it was intentional, but I smiled at "short diner order" adjacent to a short "stack", which was my first thought before BLT.
I had so many wrong answers throwing sections off. The worst in the SE, where I can tell you my guess of GlAmazon starts with the “G” I knew was correct from the cross and uses the same number of letters as the answer, GIANTESS. Misspelling words like BULGaR and being unsure of spellings like ALBUS made it all feel tentative. Good puzzle, though. We don’t use words like OSSIFY often enough.
LOWART is high praise for kitsch. : /
@Molly in Wake Forest. Have you seen The Museum of Bad Art? <a href="https://museumofbadart.org/collections" target="_blank">https://museumofbadart.org/collections</a>/ It makes me laugh every time.
@Molly in Wake Forest If literature rather than visual art is your thing, may I recommend The Stuffed Owl: An Anthology of Bad Verse? <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/24517.The_Stuffed_Owl" target="_blank">https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/24517.The_Stuffed_Owl</a>
Weird how minds work. I like to pick a different random word for the Wordle and today TROPE popped in my head for no apparent reason. Only afterward did I realize its connection to this puzzle (TIGH)TROPE. Can’t be a coincidence, somewhere in my subconscious brain some neuron was turned on about that.
@SP I started reading your comment before I started Wordle today. I closed the app in a bit of a panic. Do I start with Trope? Will I get a 1? Will that be cheating? Tried to do the puzzle in my usual way bc I’m too much of a rule follower. To anyone who has read this far, SP’s post is not a spoiler
On the topic of "de-extinction," I recently read that bioscientists brought back the dire wolf. That's pretty cool, especially for Game of Thrones fans, but is it really a good idea? What's next, sabre-toothed tigers? At least a MOA won't rip your face off. Fine Friday puzzle, by the way, with a frisson of unknowns, like TACOS de canasta. And Moses had a sister? Also, KENYA's western border is the Great RIFT Valley. (Thank you Dr Leakey.)
@Grant That means we can all look forward to going to bed and in the morning singing: When I awoke, the dire wolf, Six hundred pounds of sin, Was grinning at my window, All I said was, "Come on in!"
@Grant I vaguely recall, but am not gonna look it up, that the dire wolves that they brought back are not the same as a GOT dire wolf.
@Grant I lied. Here's an unlocked link to the Times article. (Did these people learn nothing from the Jurassic Park/World movies?) <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/07/science/colossal-dire-wolf-deextinction.html?unlocked_article_code=1._k8.K6jb.d6HZdksAAmjL&smid=url-share" target="_blank">https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/07/science/colossal-dire-wolf-deextinction.html?unlocked_article_code=1._k8.K6jb.d6HZdksAAmjL&smid=url-share</a>
@Captain Q Glad to see you survived the feast of the seven fishes.
once again, i had that feeling of hopelessness when i first saw the layout of this puzzle but chipping away at it, i finished, with no lookups, and at a decent time 21:41 just enough crunch for a lazy morning happy friday, everyone!
I thoroughly enjoyed this puzzle. It was one of those where after I went through the acrosses with almost nothing. I thought the downs would be my saving grace. Alas, no. Not much there either. Picked it up an hour later, and it all came together. A reminder that I can do hard things.