I found all the medium long entries in this puzzle delightful: HERDINGCATS, FAKEPLANTS, GETSABADRAP, SINKORSWIM and any reference to ANIMALFARM (George Orwell’s farewell to communism) is welcome. I was helped by knowing about SEALS in Scottish lore, which I learned from the folk song The Silkie of Sule Skerry, and which reminded me of the lovely trip to Scotland my wife and stepdaughter took in September, in part to visit my daughter, son-in-law and grandson. My one disagreement with the puzzle is that it doesn’t seem to me that it takes a long time to get OLD. It seems to happen in the blink of an eye.
@Marshall Walthew Pretty sure we had a recent encounter with "The Secret of Roan Inish" in these parts. Great film and how I knew this answer!
@Marshall Walthew I know we recently ran into The Secret of Roan Inish here, which made this one a gimme for me.
@Marshall Walthew Here's a video with Joan Baez singing over watery images with the lyrics. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESA9dVB3fUQ" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESA9dVB3fUQ</a> If you don't know the song, be prepared for a hit at the end
@SBK On Saturday we had a Kelpie/WATERHORSE combo and I mentioned mixing up Kelpies and Selkies and then got into a back and forth with G (i think) about movies, including Roan Innish.
@Marshall Walthew >(George Orwell’s farewell to communism) Orwell was not a communist who stopped being a communist; he was, and remained to his death, a democratic socialist.
Did anyone else have "Faceplants" instead of "Fakeplants" for 5 minutes after solving before realizing your error? Just me??
@Eli Edwards Not just you. I should have left the last square of ERI_ blank, because that's one I never can remember, but I put in a c anyway on my first pass, which then led to "why are faceplants green? is that slang?" bemusement ...
@Eli Edwards Same here. After a day of skiing it seemed perfectly appropriate. Had to get corrected by our friends here.
@Eli Edwards For an embarrassing long time. And i love Satie.
@Eli Edwards METOO ASDIDI SAME etc
@Eli Edwards, yes count me In as part of the face plant club
@Eli Edwards Yup. Me too. And I was sure Satie's first name was ERIC! But I felt a bit better when I learned that his birth name actually was ERIC and he changed it to ERIK later: "In 1884 Satie wrote his first known composition . . . . He signed himself "Erik" on this and subsequent compositions, though he continued to use "Eric" on other documents until 1906." [Wikipedia]
@Eli Edwards yes and thank you!
Lots of white space, no glue, no green paint, only elegant, interesting fill. Now this is what I call a Friday. Nicely done, Kyle. The one unknown for me was YOKO Ogawa. Before I came here to post, I read up on her fiction a bit, then immediately JINKed over to my library app and put holds on three of her novels. I’ve had to bump two homegrown writers further down on my reading list for this year to make room for Ogawa (2026 is my Year of the American Novel), but her writing promises to be compelling. Finding a gem like this in a puzzle is such a breath of fresh air after the usual having to parse TV show titles or stage names of pop artists. (Yes, yes, I’ll tell y’all to get off my lawn before this post is over.) Other than that, quick but really, really enjoyable, and please don’t tell anyone I stared and stared at, uh, CART nAILER, having conjured up visions of dray horses and Conestoga wagons (see Year of the American Novel). GETS A BAD nAP is a perfectly valid entry, after all (see Year of the American Novel as it eats into my usually limited anyway sleep), if you fill it in without first reading the clue. On that note, it’s time to get up and grind some beans. Have a good day, everyone.
@Sam Lyons Agree with the nicely done Friday feelings, and I too moved Ogawa's Memory Police to the head of the priority queue. It was already in my NYPL list but I found it in Yokohama Library too, so I'll read it on paper instead of kindle.
"Is that your final offer for these plants?" "Yep. Rake it or leaf it!" (He got a root awakening.)
@Mike If there were a flower equivalent of dryads, you could say they're women in stem...
@Mike Always thinking about the lawn green. Pot- entialy, could soil your rep for generosity.
@Mike Are you trunk or something? (I hope you don't arbor any ill will against me.)
I certainly enjoyed the puzzle but I have some quibbles as a Scot! 21A the name for the creature is a selkie, and 55A the Scottish spelling is Iain!
@Lily, wasn’t this creature from Scottish lore in a puzzle recently? That’s why I thought of it first, but the crosses disagreed.
@Lily TIL “selkie”. And now I know why the seal in the children’s show Puffin Rock is named Silky!
Quibble and warning: NEVER put gas cans in your trunk. Very bad idea. I can't believe they clued it that way. You will be inhaling dangerous fumes when driving. And a lot of cars have a light in their trunk. Granted, modern LEDs are not as dangerous as old filament bulbs, but still a chance of a spark & a car-b-q.
@Phishfinder Right? I think it's actually illegal over here. Before 1989, when fuel shortages were the norm, everybody had a gas can in their trunk though (filled up along with your car after waiting for many hours in a kilometer-long queue, on the rare occasion that fuel had been delivered to the station).
@Phishfinder never put gas cans (with gasoline in them) in your trunk. A spare empty one can be a good thing to have.
@Phishfinder I brought gas home for my mower for 40 years in the back of my car. I opened the windows to let the fumes out. Where was I supposed to put til he gas can? On the roof of the car?
@Phishfinder And never put a filled gas can on your fire escape if the building you live in has one. There was a horrendous gas shortage in the the mid-'70s, and I had a long commute that required a lot of gas. I lived in a seven-story apartment house that abutted another one just like it. In those days I slept the sleep of the dead, and nothing would ever wake me. One Sunday I woke up at my usual late hour to a commotion in the street. Looked out the window to see the entire street filled with fire engines. Threw on some clothes and raced down to my lobby, to find it had been set up as a Red Cross disaster area. My apartment was on the 6th floor; one on the 6th floor in the other building caught fire, and the firefighters went through both buildings ringing bells and pounding on doors to evacuate the residents. I was the only one who never heard a thing. It was a sheer stroke of luck that the wind was blowing in the direction away from my building. I've always wondered what that might have been like, though I probably would not have lived through it.
@Phishfinder Yeah this was a don’t try this at home clue.
@Phishfinder I came to say the same thing. I would only put one in there for the trip home from the gas station. Does that make it a trunk item? (Yes, I realize a few out there who store one permanently) There's gotta be a better clue for this. The rest of the puzzle was fantastic.
Pleasingly challenging puzzle with some fun cluing! However I take issue with Sam's comment: "38A. I’d describe this entry as “stretchy” in puzzle parlance because it stretches the limits of a word’s standard definition to accommodate a looser meaning." Sam is wrong. And I know a thing or two about words as an esteemed Nobel Laureate in literature*. *I recently acquired the award at a garage sale. And I'm proud to accept this award that I deserve, maybe more than anyone ever. But being a magananimous person, I feel the writer who first owned the award deserves almost as much credit as I do. Although I've never heard of him or her.
@ad absurdum There are looser meanings, and then there are losεr meanings, as of the phrase "prize recipient".
@ad absurdum I just picked up a Nobel in medicine on ebay so if you have any health concerns, you know who to ask.
@ad absurdum I hear that there's a Peace Prize being swapped around. Might want to add it to your portfolio.
@ad absurdum Doesn't anyone else find this tragic, if true? I'm afraid to ask whose award you now own.
I found this a very challenging but enjoyable puzzle, largely because of Friday-worthy misdirection and opacity, as it should be. Idiomatic expressions and trivia almost stumped me but I persevered and filled the grid without lookups. Well, almost. When I typed in the final letter, I got the dreaded "So close" pop-up. FAcEPLANTS are a thing but they are definitely not green all year round 🤣. The composer was an ERIK, not an ERIc, as I had originally assumed, and resolved with Google on my first guess as to which square I needed to check. FAKE PLANTS became popular in Poland in the 1990s. Otyer than elememts of plastic funeral wreaths they were not available before 1989 and maybe that fact alone enticed Poles to buy them when they arrived - like much other stuff - with market economy. The first IKEA opened in Warsaw in 1991, iirc, and it stocked extremely realistic fake plants, among other things. My mom was fascinated by them and remained so until her death more than 30 years later. I never understood the appeal though. Fake plants, fake smiles, fake-whatever... The genuine article is usually so much better. PS The broken links really are tiresome, aren't they? How hard can it be to do this right...
@Andrzej I had a FACEPLANTS first too. But I also had POTSNAKES. That would be quite a terrarium that had both of them wouldn’t it?
@Andrzej As I understand it, fake plants that are obviously fake are OK. Fakers trying to be real are ick. I'm not sure how this approach works in practice. But I certainly like paper flowers much better than plastic ones.
@Andrzej Gosh, me too! I disappointed myself by doing a lookup before an hour of staring (my own personal rule), because I think I might have been able to figure it out!
Standouts for me: • A new clue for YOKO, as in all Crosslandia's major outlets, it has always referred to Ms. Ono. A crossworthy clue as well. After reading about Yoko Ogawa, I’ve placed her on my want-to-read list. • HERDING CATS! Hah! Incorrigibility, thy name is cat. It’s one of the reasons that every cat I’ve lived with has stolen my heart. • A sky-high 18 longs, bringing fun and interest to the box. • The NE corner, which stayed mostly white for me, even as I came back to it numerous times, and just before I uncle-d, an answer hit me. Then nada. Then again, just at breaking point, another answer. And again and again, a serious grind. How satisfying that was to fill in. • PuzzPair©️: DUST, clued [Do some cleaning], and FAKE PLANTS. Is this not true?! Is this not true?! Standout puzzle, Kyle, a splendid outing. Thank you!
This felt hard (in a good way!) but came out to just under my Friday average. I loved HERDINGCATS and thought PERMS was clued quite cleverly. 55A slowed me down a bit because I was certain it was EoiN, ruled it out with APOLLO_II, and then thought "EioN?" I also had perEnnialS for FAKEPLANTS for a second before remembering they very notably are *not* green all year round. Quite the opposite, in fact. Those of you who garden are free to laugh at this. Very random final note: my grandma and Arthur ASHE were friends :)
@Rory I was sure 55A was EwAN but then I had to deal with APOLLOwII which I was equally sure wasn't a thing. (Grapple, grapple.)
@Rory Very much the same solving experience for me, except I got caught up by the FAcEPLANTS / FAKE PLANTS mix-up others have noted. And my problem with 55A also was wanting a W: I briefly wondered if a live event could have happened in a Wii game-! I love your "very random final note". Very cool!
My biggest proof that everything is a simulation and I’m the main character is when a crossword puzzle clue/word aligns with niche elements of my life. As I travel around the UK right now (about to step off the train to Cambridge!), the wealth of Welsh, Scottish, and English clues today have me quite self-absorbed. But then if I was the main character, I’m not a very good one. This puzzle stumped me! And in the presence of Cambridge nonetheless. If only I’d spent a little more time in the British Museum memorizing short-lived monarchs! A big “thank you!” again for all the warm welcomes yesterday after my crossword comment christening!
@Walker When I got to the first letter of FIFA, I plopped it in, remembered I know *nothing* about the sport, but figured I'd leave it in, just in case. Made me think of you, learning the language, adding to your arsenal of both knowledge and fluency in this puzzle-ese we speak. We eventually "know" things that we don't know we know. Y' know? Enjoy the whimsy and freedom of travel!
Welcome to Fridays, Sam! I (for one) would be psyched if we got to see you *every* Friday to read your take on your favorite solving day. I'm a Friday fan meself. Thurtainly a thucker for themeleth!
@CCNY Aw, thank you! Excited to serve 🫡
@Sam Corbin Love your columns any day of the week! No bags of money needed...
Good one! I thought White House partner was SCOTUS at first.
Nice, difficult Friday puzzle. Could've been a Saturday (IMHO). Excellent mixture of tricky clues (I especially enjoyed "Coming-out party?" and "Invitations to come on board") and TIL-opportunities (JINK, YOKO Ogawa and FOREX) and extensions of knowledge (Lady JANE GREY and SEALS/selkies). If this is Friday, I'm a bit anxious about Saturday, but in a good way. Thanks for the challenge, Kyle Dolan!
The X-Phile, This was a NYT Friday the way it should be (and hasn't been for quite a while). Naturally, based on the stats of online solvers plugged into this site, it was deemed Very Hard for a Friday. <a href="https://xwstats.com/puzzles/2026-01-16" target="_blank">https://xwstats.com/puzzles/2026-01-16</a>
Reading up on the story of the life and death/execution of Lady JANE GREY, and with it the succession issues of Henry VIII (and various parliamentary acts of succession), I wonder how anyone could seriously believe in the "divine right of kings."
One of the hardest I've tried and I'm glad to see that there are not dozens of posts claiming it was too, too easy. Paradoxically, I didn't think of face plant, it's not an expression I'm very familiar with, so FAKE wasn't hard. I didn't know quite a few. FLOTUS sounds vaguely unsavoury, like flotsam and detritus. And I would never put a petrol container in the boot of the car. I wondered about the media star ATSY MBOLL. I discovered that the BABY SHOWER is a newish trend in the UK, but not widespread, usually linked to an afternoon tea. When I was young, it was considered bad luck to buy a pram or cot, or too many baby clothes, before the baby was born. A sad reminder of the not so distant past. Despite the nods to the homeland, I found it quite 'American', as it should be, of course.
@Jane Wheelaghan. Absolutely on FLOTUS. But SCOTUS is worse (Supreme Court Of The United States.. that r in Court thankfully omitted… but hard to overlook), and POTUS ain’t great. Perhaps all reminders of the US descendency in certain measure from the roundheads who could be disrespectful of authority, warts and all.
@Jane Wheelaghan Yes, I’ve been to a couple of BABY SHOWERS (friend’s daughters) and find it all a bit tacky tbh. Silly games involving chocolate covered nappies (diapers, American friends) and the like. Struck me as more a present grab than anything else. Glad my D-I-L isn’t having one.
@Jane Wheelaghan FLOTUS = First Lady of the United States 😉
The answer Apollo VII makes no sense. The Apollo (and Mercury) missions have always been referred to using Arabic numerals (i.e. Apollo 7), only the Gemini missions used Roman ones. I'm surprised the editors didn't catch this (a simple Google would have surfaced the issue) or, if they did, allowed this. Now I know the constructor would have had to totally redo the lower left quadrant without it, but standards are standards after all. The editors should have at least qualified the clue by stating the answer was a variant (or something similar to calling it a variant). As it is, the mismatch between the needed answer and the correct one was an unnecessary obstacle toward completing the puzzle.
@Colin Seftor Yeah, I see your point, but a crossword clue doesn't have to make complete sense. The crosses were easy enough for me, even though I didn't know which mission it was. It's not a dictionary or encyclopedia. I remind myself of this pretty often.
@Colin Seftor Interesting nit. I wouldn’t say it makes “no sense”, it’s easily gettable and I would let it slide because often times people use Arabic and Roman numerals interchangeably for these sort of things, even if NASA didn’t officially. I think we’ve seen this with movie sequels a lot in crossword puzzles. But it’s a good point.
@Colin Seftor Here’s some evidence that Roman numerals were also used: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_7#/media/File" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_7#/media/File</a>%3AApollo7.png Or <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/mission/apollo-7" target="_blank">https://www.nasa.gov/mission/apollo-7</a>/ (Zoom in on the patch.) Remember, the answer doesn’t have to be the most common thing, only that it is plausible.)
@Colin Seftor I basically agree with you that Apollo VII is a flawed answer, but Apollo Seven (or One, or Ten,or most tragically Two) would have been flawed also, since they’re words rather than the Arabic numerals.
In fairness, I think the puzzle should have been solvable both with the first letter or with a rebus.
@Laura Stratton Genius post following yesterday's puzzle. (Although it wasn't until I read Barry's reply that I caught on, so essentially you got both me and Andrzej. Bravo!
This puzzle is why some people think of us hard-core CW enthusiasts as masochists. It took me over 50 minutes with no assistance whatsoever. And I’m happy about it. One of those wonderful days where I begin to think I’m not going to get it. A little bit in the center S. A bunch in the SW. And then the entire NW. That’s what was left. And then an insight here and an insight there and I got it all done. Great puzzle.
@Jake G I'm not sure I'll ever understand what all the rush is about. the principal pleasures I derive from doing crosswords are the felicitous mental associations chance word minglings often produce. It's not poetry exactly, & that inexactness can be the treat.
zANE GREY was my Ride or Die. Just couldn’t let go.
@Mike R Was he York or Lancaster? 😂
@SBK Which house was the house of Purple Sage?
@Mike R, Zane Grey (the American author) is a distant cousin of mine, and why I immediately thought the same, but knew he was not the answer, though ZINK made as much sense as JINK!
I'm not up on how quickly Henry VIII slaughtered his wives. JANE GREY had a shorter reign than Anne Bolyn? Who knows/remembers? Or did she die of natural causes? Because of the heroism of a group of brave airline passengers, "here we go" will always be LET'S ROLL to me. But I didn't like the LHE combo with ASHE and AMUSES, and eventually had to change it to LET'S ROCK. Before I changed it, I was sort of screwed up in the NE. But basically a pretty whooshy Friday with some very nice cluing. I love "coming out party" for BABY SHOWER and "they're green year-round" for FAKE PLANTS. I cop to owning some FAKE PLANTS because I love the look of plants but have always had a black thumb. I'm proving it right now, as someone brought me the cutest, loveliest small plant with gorgeous, abundant deep green leaves and bright pink flowers with a long name I don't remember -- and I'm in the process of killing it, I'm pretty sure -- though I'm watering it religiously, but not, I hope, OVERwatering it, So hard to know. This plant is so, so lovely -- and, alas, so, so doomed. But I've had it since December 30, and it's not dead yet. Can I make it through a full month? We shall see. An enjoyable puzzle. Some will find it too easy, but I liked the whooshiness.
@Nancy Jane Grey was a monarch, Anne Boleyn was the wife of a monarch. (And lived far longer than nine days!)
@Nancy Jane Grey was not one of Henry’s eight wives.
@Nancy Your plant might be what we call a Christmas Cactus which, paradoxically, needs to be kept moist and only indirect sun. Good luck!
@Nancy At this time of year, most plants will need very little water, and many need to dry out completely before needing water. You can wait until the leaves start to droop, which means they need water, rather than keep them wet. Just a thought.
@Nancy Thank you for the reference to LET'S ROLL. It didn't occur to me with the puzzle, so perhaps it's fallen too far off my radar. I appreciate the reminder of those brave airline passengers and their heroism! Good luck with the plant!
@Nancy i also had LETSROLL. Visit the Flight 93 memorial in Pennsylvania if you can. I had the good fortune to know someone who knew Todd Beamer...via a gay rugby team. I worked in DC on 9/11 near enough to the Capitol that was presumably that flight's target. So you will understand why I screamed at the guy who parked near there for a few weeks after 9/11 with a "God hates f@gs" sign on his truck.
Spent a good five minutes wandering around trying to get a foothold on this puzzle...sticking a pluralizing S here and there. Then the clues slowly started to open up. Fun puzzle. Got interrupted by the cat, which didn't help my time, but still around 34 minutes.
For 35 Across, Ian is one spelling, in English. Iain is the Gaelic spelling.
This was a rather tough Friday puzzle for me. Initially the upper left and lower right got filled in pretty soon, but the two remaining quadrants resisted mightily. When only the lower left was left to fill, again it resisted mightily two or three more times, but when I finally saw the elusive J of JANE GREY, that catalyzed the fall of the remaining dominoes, allowing the solve to snowball and nail the last few clues like low-hanging fruit. Never heard of JINK. Not sure if I'd ever seen A.A.V.E. or FOREX before. A terrific crossword that afforded me a bunch more minutes of solving pleasure than usual.
@Dan, That mirrored my experience with this puzzle. NW and SE went fairly quickly. I sweated bullets for the rest of it. It’s always a nice feeling when you think something may work, which in turn leads you to something else that may work, and before you know it, a VIOLA!
"Secret offering?" = DEODORANT "Invitations to come on board" = JOBOFFERS fiendish clueing and proximate placement led to a devil of a left lower quadrant for me.
TIL about tai chi FANs and JANE GREY's short JINKy life. Good puzzle, fresh fill to the gills. Thanks, Kyle.
@Linda Jo I did Tai Chi and nary a FAN was to be seen. Poor Lady JANE GREY...a pawn in the struggle for power. Both she and Guilford Dudley, her husband, were beheaded, and England was treated to Bloody Mary Tudor's reign.
@Linda Jo I practice tai chi with a sword, but when I was in Shanghai, I saw about a hundred ladies doing their morning exercises with FANS. An impressive sight.
Link to wordplay breaks since URL uses 2025 instead of 2026 ;)
Nice puzzle, though easy for a Friday, IMHO. I actually started at the top because "Rita Moreno" caught my eye--and it was Off To The Races. Disappointed that LADY JANE GREY was not honored as nobility; she wasn't just Plain JANE. But I don't want to lose my head over this... (Was CHOPS right below her on purpose?) We had a TRAILER that we hitched up to our SUV during our move, but I would never refer to it as a CAR TRAILER. People don't even say TRACTOR-TRAILER anymore. Got my hopes up for another mention of Kelpie or Selkie or some such there at 21A, but No. Oh, well. SEALS are nice. Also got a little tickled at 56D's "Half-____" as I had several thoughts that were...nonstarters. I guess I'm easily AMUSEd. Have a good lead-in to the weekend, everyone. Be sure to read Dave Barry's Guide for folks headed to the Monday night game.
@Mean Old Lady I think that was meant to refer to the kind of trailer you might use to tow a car behind another vehicle.
@Mean Old Lady I had to stretch a bit to get from "hitch a ride" to CAR TRAILER, but I pictured one of those huge RVs towing a car behind, so the folks can drive to dinner once they've parked the behemoth.
At one point I had to reassure myself that the author Zane Gray was never the king of England. I mean, nine days is a brief reign, but you'll still expect someone to notice immediately that something was amiss.
@Sam, et al Fighter pilots JINK to avoid enemy fire. I guess we read different books, play different video games. FIVE clued as "Hand count?" was a hidden gem.
What a great puzzle! I started it during a sleepless hour at about 1 AM, fell back to sleep, finished this morning, so my time was quite long. Perfect Friday, I did not have one answer that irritated me or did not make perfect sense once I got it. I love puzzles like this one, seems hopeless at first but then slowly comes together. More like this please!
Very difficult for me. I simply was not on the constructor's wavelength. Felt like there wasn't enough intrinsic fill to get the gears going and I had to turn to Ms. Corbin much earlier than I like. Fair game, and I'm not complaining, but this was HARD.
I guessed LETS ROCK without any crossers. I love when that happens. Lots of fun cluing and fills. Thoroughly enjoyed this puzzle.
@MFSTEVE : Oops - sorry - wrong reply - meant this for " Asher B" above! ...lol...
@MFSTEVE Even more appropriate on the anniversary of David Lynch’s passing.
I really enjoyed this one; contrary to many, I beat my average, so I guess I was especially attuned to it. Though I didn’t know YOKO Ogawa (and, judging by the length of her English Wikipedia entry, not many of us did), it wasn’t hard to get once you got the across phrases (whose clues worked nicely). Ultimately, I appreciate Kyle’s going out of his way to leave Yoko Ono alone for a moment. (How nice would it be if we could also learn something about an AVA that’s not Duvernay, an ANI other than DiFranco, or an ENO not named Brian??)
@Han Wudi 'Gardner' has been in the clue for AVA 204 times. Most recently last year, though DuVernay has largely taken over the clues for that (45 times in recent years). ....
OTERI did not appear in the grid until Cheri appeared on SNL.
Hi NYT- please go back to showing average, best, and today right next to each other instead of on separate screens. Thank you!
Happy to see a puzzle with the appropriate difficulty for a Friday. Would be great if crosswords on Fridays or Saturdays had at least this difficulty going forward - this used to be the case and was much more enjoyable.
A typical long Friday workout for me, with a lot of things that were only going to come to me with some crosses. But... ended up being a nice challenge with a lot of 'aha' moments when something finally dawned on me. And of course my puzzle find today. A Thursday from August 29, 2019 by Jeff Chen. Really clever one, with a type of theme clues that I don't recall seeing before. Some examples: "Word that can complete CARE___R" GIVEORTAKE "Word that can complete SH___ED" INOROUT "Word that can complete DE_____" FRIENDORFOE "Word that can complete ____ER" BOOMORBUST Here's that link: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=8/29/2019&g=61&d=A" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=8/29/2019&g=61&d=A</a> ...
Took a whole lot of crosses and head scratching (and maybe just a smidge of Google's time) but finally got there. This is what I'd classify as a super duper Friday puzzle. Veeeery satisfying. Thanks Kyle!
I looked up Jane Grey (1536-1554) and learned that she was an exceptionally learned woman whose accession to the throne and beheading both resulted from her getting swept up in political events outside her control. Given our contemporary scene I wonder what truths about her situation were known by the general public and what plain folks' attitudes toward her were. As they had no elections to look forward to as a way to impact such high-level goings-on, I'm guessing malevolent players in the political power class saw no need to cultivate a disinformation industry. But maybe there wasn't much of an information industry either. Anyway, pardon that aside on 25 Across.
@Jonathan I think it is important to emphasize that Lady Jane Grey was a teenager. It was her power-hungry family who promoted and forced her into that position regardless of the danger. High-bred women, (with various genealogical claims to titles and land), of that era were pawns in the game of dynastic power politics.
Lady Jane Grey, a heartbreaking story. "At the time of her execution, Jane was either 16 or 17 years old." <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Jane_Grey" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Jane_Grey</a>
Yeah I don’t know. Last week took half an hour less, and what’s the difference? This puzzle roamed and ransacked across the grid with little to no assistance from an OREO or an ORO. Sure ASHE found a foothold on the Eastern edge but the rest was like getting directions from a dyslexic local who knows how to walk five miles directly through a city without knowing a single street name and arrive where they want to be, when they want to be there. “Take a left at, informally, the street formerly known as Latin 7 but now is called Avenue Faux Pas - go thirty meters and turn left at Katz’s but stop for the pastrami, then keep going until you hear a tympani drum, you’re almost there!” Anyway I got through without googling anything, at least. JINK seems excruciatingly geographic - someone in the Northwest might call it a DINK, someone in the Midwest might call it a Poorly Exercised Tactical Response to a Sudden Movement or a spasm, for short. Blah
@Michael "Excruciatingly geographic"? I am not sure what to make of that. In the same vein: "painstakingly gastronomic" "agonizingly symbiotic" "piercingly agoraphobic" Others?
@Michael I was able to learn “jape” from someone whose third fluent language is English, I guess I can learn JINK now, both seem foreign (and grating) to my ears.
I didn't really like this one. A lot of the fill felt like a bit of a stretch for me, didn't particularly like clue/answer combinations for JADING, OLD, LETS ROCK, ATSYMBOL (only ever heard it referred to as an at sign), OHSURE, PERM, among others (I assume it's a perm because it is a temprary hairstyle?). I did enjoy learning JINK, AAVE, the fact about SEALS (is that where the term "seely" is from?), CAW, and the twin "Do some cleaning" clues. Maybe I'm just bitter because I had to error check ERIK Satie and find out that it wasn't "FAcEPLANTS" stay green all winter. Another I wish I had marinated on a bit before resorting to lookups. Oh well! Have a good weekend everyone!
I had a few erasures today. mariA instead of ANITA, scOTUS for FLOTUS (sad but true), seAN for EVAN. The cluing was really nice. [Coming out party?] made me think it was going to be some word for the actual newborn, but the real answer was good as well. Loved SINK OR SWIM, BOOK FAIR, HERDING CATS, ANIMAL FARM and more. Nice clues, low on PPP, some sticky areas, all adding up to a nice Friday puzzle. Inspired by 39 D, Grace Jones with Warm Leatherette: <a href="https://youtu.be/Qn4ohXUdo_8?si=1FGk4u-PCQELtxNx" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/Qn4ohXUdo_8?si=1FGk4u-PCQELtxNx</a>
@Nancy J. Warm was my first thought for the fill, but alas, knew better.
Knew Satie's first name, just couldn't spell it :-s And i think FACEPLANTS are green (lively) all year round too! #CloseButNoCigar
Great cluing and novel entries made this a fun romp Friday. Thank you!
The easy mode of this Crosswords was a delight, although it hit a bit too close to home. As I came back from maternity leave this week, I have been told to 17 Across (and that I put my own interest before the company's because I took a maternity leave...), so I would love a 29 Down to get me out of this madness!
@Marie Sorry to hear that.. (I think) Out of interest, when people comment with just the clue numbers, do they expect people to go back and forth between the puzzle to get the references, or do they think people remember what clue led to what word?
@Sue As a phone app solver, I seldom bother. I just move on to the next pist
@Vaer That would be post. My allergies are killing me.
@Marie Reading the first sentence of your post, I thought maybe you'd make reference to 1A. I'm so sorry your reaction – and return to work – were for much less happy reasons! I've worked at some very toxic workplaces, but (maybe incredibly) they always treated people on maternity/paternity leave well. Not to mention, my assumption is better working conditions in Europe... I hope you get that 29D in the near future. Here's to 2026!
@Marie, I’m so sorry to hear that you’re going through this. I do hope that things get better for you soon. At the risk of sounding too Pollyanna-ish (is that a word?), I lost a longtime job with no notice, and I thought it was the worst thing that could possibly happen to me. Turned out to be the best thing. 🫂🙏🏻
Poem made from today’s puzzle: <br> <br> a/ summer <br> green wood <br> a great trunk <br> the flooring uncovered <br> this takes a long time <br> this takes time <br> you count out <br> d/ the bones of the family <br> another unwieldy secret <br> zigzagging away <br> memory <br> a/ all dust by now
@Peter Valentine Sure. Makes as much sense to me as most poetry does.