"I don't have any more decorative tissue for these presents!" "What a paper-thin excuse." (And that's a wrap!)
@Mike You're just ribbon us again, but you have a gift for that.
@Mike if this comments section had moving images we’d be able to see this giffed. (But I enjoy your puns anyway, you might even say I’m rapt!)
Adrian Johnson constructed one the least enjoyable Friday puzzles I have ever attempted to solve (it ran in June 2025). I remembered his name then, and remained prepared to be annoyed by his further creations. Can you imagine my surprise at how much I liked today's grid? I found it very challenging and full of unknowns, yet I managed to deal with it, and in a Friday time of 25 minutes, too (Saturdays usually take me over 30 minutes). My only gripe has to do with the naticky crossing of PUT_ and OC_S. It was my last empty square. I thought it had to be a vowel, but when none of those worked, I gave up and looked up PUTH. I could have done a full alphabet run, but really, looking it up had the same result. I found the misdirection of the clues very clever and yet very gettable, with effort - there is something very cool about feeling your mind open and figure out the riddles that good Saturday clues ultimately are. Much if the fill felt fresh, too. A great puzzle, thanks. Poodle pics time! Here is Lucek growling at some big cats on our smart tv screensaver and enjoying a wintry walk in Warsaw: <a href="https://imgur.com/a/2ETOlGi" target="_blank">https://imgur.com/a/2ETOlGi</a>
@Andrzej Great picture of Lucek! I am quite with you on this one. I almost gave up a couple of times, but then I'd have just the slightest inkling that this might be that, and finally I got enough in place. But that PUTH/OCHS cross was tough. I went with my gut, which turned out to be right, but I was all set to struggled with at least that area if I was only "close". I was delighted with a lot of the answers for their cleverness (and, I'll admit it, my cleverness because I got them).
@Andrzej Age-related, no doubt. Some of us who were of age to be drafted during the Vietnam conflict will probably always remember “Draft Dodger Rag” from Phil Ochs. I immediately filled in his name. Never heard of Puth before today.
@Andrzej Love these! Give him all the scratches and belly rubs. All of them.
Lovely Saturday puzzle. Good fun. But I do have one minor quibble: that pints are supposedly served in steins. I would never bring the two together! Perhaps I've lived with the metric system too long but a stein usually refers to the German "Bierkrug", or "Masskrug" - the ones you see at the Oktoberfest or in the beer garden. A "Mass" refers to a full liter, and a "Halbe" to 500 ml - close to a pint, but not quite. Plus culturally speaking, when I think of a pint (U.S. or imperial), I picture a nice conical glass, or one with a comfy bulge at the top. All are wonderful ways to experience a brewed beverage, but so very different. END RANT. And now I'm thirsty. Prost everybody!
@Bizza I, too, felt the clue was iffy. My first entry was "BIER." But thank you for info on Halben und Masse.:-)
@Bizza I see your point (and like @Bill I wanted to put in BIer at first), but I suspect there are several bars in the US that serves PINTs in steins. (Note that "stein" is not capitalized, as it would be in German.)
@Bizza - Same thoughts exactly! Was wondering why the BEER just didn't fit :-)
@Bizza I started with beer or bier for that one. Pints are usually in England and Ireland. Steins are usually in Germany, Austria, etc.
@Bizza I feel ya! Knowing I was dealing with an American puzzle I entered PINT right away but for a European it *felt* wrong.
@Bizza absolutely agree! A stein is much larger than a PINT, which is something expect to be served in a (preferably chilled) glass.
@Bizza i came here to rant about this but it’s much more fitting to come from Munich. Thank you.
@Bizza They do exist, though. <a href="https://a.co/d/64KZfRZ" target="_blank">https://a.co/d/64KZfRZ</a>
@Bizza I work at a bar and we serve Pilsners in a stein that holds the same volume as a pint. It happens!
This one brought me back to the olden days, when I got a corner where nothing was working. In this case, it was the SE corner. Like Caitlin, I had BANANA, but I didn't have BEANIE, because I already had THOR and NEE, and also because a BEANIE doesn't wind around the head. I couldn't come up with TURBAN because it wouldn't come to me that they're wrapped. Instead of MUNDANE, I had PROSAIC. I didn't know what property tungsten had, how to end AVENGERS..., HALLOWEEN..., KISS..., SHOW... and ONLINE... I also had NEAT for [Swell]. For [Roll over], I tried REACT. I had no idea what [Knocks the top off of] was, but once I took a chance on SHOWBOATS, MOWS became obvious. Off just the N in HALLOWEEN, I guessed DENSE for the tungsten property, and saw DEN for the winter home. With the M and the N in place, PROSAIC turned into MUNDANE. By then, I saw TURBAN, and after that, the two things I didn't actually know for sure came to light: KISS ARMY and AVENGERS ENDGAME. Now, HALLOWEEN PARTY and ONLINE CASINOS fell into place. By that point, TENPIN fell into place on its own. This was the rare corner where I really had to play around with the answers to finally arrive at the right ones. But I didn't panic. I have convinced myself that the NYT cannot throw anything at me that I can't eventually solve*, so I just kept plugging away. * I say this because I don't believe in Naticks. Put another way, I think the editors work hard to make every puzzle solvable.
@Steve L Interesting, I might've given up on this one were it not for the SE corner. I had a few guesses filled elsewhere but the SE was first to GEL. The top third gave me the most trouble.
@Steve L The crossing of PUT_ and OC_S would like a word with you! H was such a strange fit for the square. I was sure it had to be a vowel.
@Andrzej The only two things I was positive about after my first trip through were snoop dogg's Cousin ITT and Phil OCHS Phil is a gimme for people of a certain age. @Steve L That corner almost did me in. Nothing could convince me that it wasn't a FUR HAT atop that head. Thought i was a genius for getting that. Perhaps it's the forecast.
I may be in the minority but this puzzle fell into place beautifully for me, so I loved it! This, despite my betting everything on Quantum of Solace being the 23rd movie in the series (it is 22nd, if you discount Never Say Never Again) because it has the same number of letters as AVENGERSENDGAME. TIL that TARE is derived from the same root as “tarot” and that TURBAN is etymologically then fraternal twin of “tulip” - they both spring from Turkish tülbent "turban, gauze, muslin," and from the Persian dulband "turban" which got its name because the hat looked like the flower. Tulips were introduced to Europe from Central Asia and were the symbol of the later Ottomans. Who knew?
@Petrol Not I. Thanks! And it appears most solvers enjoyed the puzzle - I know I did 😃
@Petrol Thank you, that's really interesting. And the clue for TURBAN had me going. I was stuck on the dreaded MANBUN and couldn't get it to work!
@Petrol I would_so_like to believe you on the etymological connection between "tare" and "tarot," but I can't seem to find any sources. Can you verify? As a patissier who most often works in weights, "tare" is a word I use regularly.
Gender euphoria? Have I missed something? I've felt the euphoria, but it didn't have anything to do with gender, and it always depended on the outcome, especially of haircuts, which frequently made me semi-suicidal. (I started cutting it myself to avoid an early death.) I was so pleased with myself when I completed the bottom of the puzzle, but it all went away when the top was mostly blank and didn't budge. I got one from the column that I didn't already have, and it did loosen up some of it, but it didn't last and I was back to slogging. It's done now, but what I really could have done without was so many proper names. Glad I didn't just yeet it, but that might have been because I didn't know the word.
@dutchiris A new set of clothes or haircut are often ways for a trans person to bring their appearance more in line with their (perhaps newly-embraced) gender identity. The potential euphoria of self expression is certainly universal, but it’s a far more specific and potent feeling for some!
@dutchiris I took it to mean that the new haircut and wardrobe differed from the way the shopper previously presented and reflected a break from traditional expectations.
@dutchiris yes. like me, you have missed something.
@dutchiris Even though I has "gen" and "euphoria", it seemed too farfetched to me.
Love doing crosswords with my mom again, glad she’s doing better. No way I knew about Phil OCHS, but there’s no way she’s heard of YEETED either. We looked it up on UrbanDictionary, and I don’t think it helped.
@David Ramos That's wonderful news, that your mom is doing better and you can do crosswords with her once again. Sending best wishes!
@David Ramos That's really heart warming. I hope you two do thousands more together.
@David Ramos Love the Cross-Generational Clue Coordination. Long may you both enjoy it!
Yes, the Erie were known as the "Cat People." Why? Theories abound--perhaps the bobcat was a totemic animal, or their fierceness in warfare was like unto wildcats, or on account of the raccoon tails they sported on their chapeaux; or perhaps they liked David Bowie*; or . . . Unfortunately, we can't ask the Erie, who were extirpated in the mid17th c. in a genocidal war against the Iroquois. (We imagine the First Nation peoples as all living in harmony with the environment, and each other, when the truth was anything but; and first-contact Europeans were often embroiled into conflicts which had been simmering for centuries.) On old maps of Nouvelle France, Lake Erie is sometimes named Lac du Chat, and the archipelago at the western end--Kelleys and the Bass Islands in Ohio, and Pelee in Ontario--were known as the Îles aux Serpents, from the numerous watersnakes that lived there. Like the Erie, the watersnakes were almost extirpated, down to an estimated population of 1500 in 1999, but through protection, their numbers have increased to 12M+. Bobcats, like most apex predators, have never been numerous, but their population seems to be stable. *<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1O4iZOt23Q&list=RDi1O4iZOt23Q&start_radio=1" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1O4iZOt23Q&list=RDi1O4iZOt23Q&start_radio=1</a>
@Bill Thank you! Was wondering about that one. Fun & challenging puzzle and now I feel a little smarter.
After reading the explosion of comments about the euphoria of new clothes and haircut, I see that I did, indeed, miss something. I didn't see the clue as relating to anything about gender.I never think about gender differences when I put on a new outfit. I don't identify my friends by gender or think, He's gay and she's not when I see them in new clothes, but I see now what joy it must be to slide into the identity your were born with, instead of one that was "assigned" by the physical attributes of your body. The tension and hostility toward people of different sexual identities and self image are yet another artificial barrier meant to divide us into the deserving and the undeserving, meant to claim superiority and power. It would be pathetic if it weren't so brutal and damaging. I see now that my missing a gender connection completely when I saw the solve is both my lack and my blessing.
@dutchiris The identity you were born with is not the one "assigned?" Wow, good to see you fall in line with the ideology prevalent in this cesspool. Enjoy the Kool-Aid 👏
Oh, lots of digging and scraping, just what my brain hungers for on Saturday. Answers thrown in that have to be taken out. Opaque clues. Grinding hard, even with a grid of answers I’m mostly familiar with. And here it was today. Plenty of forehead wrinkling. Tough, tough, clues, like [Practice] for WONT. But also plenty of answers, such as PAPER THIN, ESCHEWED, MUNDANE, and SHOWBOATS, that made me smile and think, “Ain’t English grand?” Even an LOL moment, with [It’ll never fly!] for PIG. Plus, the sweet memory of my son’s SECURITY BLANKET, which eventually looked like a lion had used it to sharpen its nails. Also, respect. Sheesh – this is an uber-low 66-worder fully free of junk! This is an answer set freshened by 10 NYT debut answers, including the entire bottom three-stack. Adrian and Ryan, this, your first collab, has been a paradigm Saturday, IMO – what a day enhancer! More please. I. Loved. This. Thank you!
Administrative note. This evening, an ice storm lasting more than 20 hours straight will be rolling in, and it's quite possible communications will be disrupted. If I am away for a few days, that will be why. But, glass-half-full guy that I am, I greatly hope to return here tomorrow!
It’s my WONT to love a hard puzzle and, yikes, did I get my wish or what. There was much gnashing of teeth and regretting of having spent the end to a very long week having another beer at 4am when the puzzle dropped. There was a gluT, er, sorry, HOST of entries I had no idea about, like where I needed about 80 crosses to get AVENGERS ENDGAME (“Yes, yes, honey, I’m sure I’ve been in the room when you watched it, and yet I’ve managed to remain blissfully unaware”) or stubbornly tried to change gimme crosses like AORTA to get GENtle EUPHORIA and an ENtRANT you can plug a Yellowstone geyser vent with. Phil OCHS who? Charlie PUTH who? (Neither has a concert venue under my rock.) And so it went. I think I briefly related today to posters who do a drive-by here with a “This puzzle bites!” when what they mean to say is, “This puzzle worked me over.” This is a very roundabout way to say congratulations, Adrian and Ryan, on a fine construction with excellent Saturday-worthy clueing. And congratulations on your engagement, Adrian! This marriage thing, by the way, really rocks. Happy Saturday, Wordplayers big and small. I’m off to get some sleep.
@Al in Pittsburgh Reposting your Tuesday’s notes on The Magic Mountain below with some of my thoughts (after asterisks): 1. Mann uses the word “einfachen”. Dictionaries give simple, uncomplicated, and straight forward. Translators give “simple-minded” [L-P] and “perfectly ordinary” [Woods]. I will argue that his character in constrained by this place and time, but that he is in no way an ordinary man. *** I’ll leave my uniqueness counterargument until you’ve finished the book. (I don’t know how much you’ll be influenced by L-P’s ’s translation. It’s been written, perhaps unkindly, that she hadn’t read the entire novel before beginning to translate it. I know that her translation of Death in Venice mis-portrays a key character in a way that changes the psychological thrust of the book.) I’ll say this: Keep an eye out for narrative feints. 2. The Castorps are not aristocrats. They have been of the merchant class since 1650, the first date etched on the family Christening Basin. The six generations listed there have survived despite momentous changes in the outside world. (The end of the 30 years war, the rise of Prussia under Frederick the Great, and the unification of Germany under Bismark). Hamburg has remained a self-governing city-state. His grandfather was a Senator in the local council. Continued below.
… continued. *** Yes, they’re the perfect specimens of the German Bildungsbürgertum, the educated bourgeoisie. It’s important to keep in mind what history has laid at the Bildungsbürgertum’s door following the 18th c. and WWI (remember that Mann published the book after WWI), and later again in the wake of WWII. 3. I would describe Hans' character as constrained by middle-class morality and manners. 4-6 show . . . H's uniqueness. ***. 3. The morality of the Bildungsbürgertum was very aesthetically mediated. Manners were key. Hans is a decent man, but can his decency make him dangerous? It makes him maximally receptive, but does it make him decisive? 4. He is an orphan. He has lost mother, father, and guardian grandfather within the two and a half years before the age of eight. We are told little of his education other than eight semesters at technical colleges ending at age 22. He has “never met a literary man". (I will find more when I get to later chapters. Spoiler: I've heard that the first appearance of “the pencil” will occur while he is away at boarding school.) *** A lack of a humanistic education may make a young person morally bland, don’t you think? Still a blank slate, impressionable? As an orphan, by whom is his character being shaped? Mann doesn’t present Hans’s orphanhood as individuating, but functional. It frees him from binding obligations, removes inherited ideological commitments, makes him available for influence.
part 3: He’s not psychologically scarred; he’s unencumbered. He has money, a technical education, social legitimacy, no urgent attachments. He embodies the rootless, late-imperial bourgeois subject. 5. Some personal quirks: He is angered by the slamming of doors and scandalized by the “activities” of the couple in the next room. He says things like “I really like the sight of a coffin.” and “Funerals are more uplifting than church.” *** These might be quirks today, but were they in pre-WWI Germany? He has an aversion to orderliness disrupted by noise or, as we’d say, TMI. And death, like other experiences, is mediated aesthetically in a culture that has removed itself from its immediacy. Think of Hans’s first aestheticized encounter with death, his grandfather’s: He experiences it as beautiful form (ritual, objects, atmosphere), not rupture or grief; something he can contemplate without cost. He is not morbid; he’s a product of his time and place. 6. Whether the door slammed by Mme. Chauchat (hot cat) is a Freudian symbol of sexual rejection remains to be seen. *** What if Hans stands for the West in the 1910s and Chauchat for the East? Not the Far East but the one represented at the time by Russia. You could read the “hot cat” as the allure of the exotic, forbidden East for Mann’s and Castorp’s West, with the East slamming its doors (loudly) in the face of the curious (and culturally restrained) West, remaining opaque behind the veil of a language Hans doesn’t speak.
I found a lot of the clues incongruent with the answers. Not a fun solve.
After I changed OREO ARMY to KISS ARMY, I kept wondering if there were Oreo fanatics who are so intense they even paint their faces black and white to look like their favorite cookies. Looking online, I found on Facebook a havanese (dog) named Oreo with 146 followers. The Oreo Army on instagram has one post and 9 followers. This would be the time for a visionary Oreo lover to put out the call and begin recruiting troops. I'm too old to join and not a big fan of Oreos, but at times like these when our cities are being overrun by thuggish ICE agents, I will gladly join my brothers and sisters in this call to arms full of cookies. We will defeat the forces of fascism and greed, 53 calories and 4.7 grams of sugar at a time!
john ezra, First: I really enjoyed this post! Second: based on First, I expect it was having your erudite thoughts rolling around in my head that led to my Oreo-poisoning-based reply a while later which failed to acknowledge your inspiration. So, both thanks for this and sorry for that :)
@john ezra - That clue made me think of Frank Gorshin's appearance on the original Star Trek.
You know when you're wearing lots of layers *and* your big fluffy coat and you get an itch right between your shoulder blades? Solving this puzzle gave me the feeling I get when I can scratch that itch. Thank you, Adrian and Ryan, I needed that. Brilliant misdirection, vague cluing, fresh and fun. A perfect Saturday offering.
24D Fan group that often wears black and white face paint I was like “This can’t possibly be JUGGALOS and I don’t even know if that’s spelled right.” But I put it in any way, just to see it lying there. Of course, nothing crossed. The answer turned out to be KISSARMY. My answer was better.
@Johnny from SoCal Do you notice and recognize miracles?!
This was a thoroughly unenjoyable slog.
In my view, I deplore something that someone else did but I regret something that I did. Sort of analogous to envy/jealousy.
@Dave Yeah, that seemed a tad off to me, too. I'm sure if fits within the confines of a dictionary definition, but I've never used "regret" and "deplore" as synonyms.
Not to sound too much like a golden ager, but this harkens back to the days when a Saturday puzzle at the NYT was a Saturday puzzle at the NYT. For the past months i(years?) t's felt like too many puzzles have been trying to be too clever, or cutesy, or trying to fit square pegs into round holes, or be crazy hard on a Monday but easy as pie on a Friday... This was the most enjoyable puzzle my husband and I have done for a long time - not easy, and not perfect, but perfect for what it was supposed to be. I hope it signals an intentional shift on the part of the editors to get back to what established the NYT as the crossword gold standard. Thank you!
@Shauron For me, it harkened back to about a year ago to when I had just started solving and most Saturdays felt impossible. Maybe I should have put it down and come back later or maybe I was too distracted by the football, the news, and everything else. Glad the more experienced solvers enjoyed it.
Been feeling this for a while now, but today felt like a tipping point. I am not a huge fan of clues like "Again?!" with solutions like " UGH"'. These kinds of answers feel too arbitrary, like filler. Please, fewer clues like these.
@SJS while I fully enjoyed this crossword (more than any in the past week, tbh) and that particular clue didn’t slow me down much, I completely agree with you. A clue should have a special bond with the answer it points to, no matter how oblique. The relationship between “Again?” and UGH is no more special than the relationship between anything that may cause mild-to-moderate displeasure and any number of paralinguistic expressions denoting disgust.
I found this one tough, and was about to sleep on it, but SECURITYBLANKET and HALLOWEENPARTY suddenly occurred to me and I finished in a rush. Lots of good clues and non-MUNDANE entries made for a fun solve. I wanted split component to be banana. I’m not a member of the KISSARMY because I remember Phil OCHS’s exhortation and “I ain’t marching anymore.”
I can't be the only one who thought the movie was called "Avengers 22: Electric Boogaloo".
@ad absurdum I think that was Avengers 19. Avengers 22 was subtitled, "The Cash Grab Continues".
@ad absurdum There was a movie in the Breakdance series with that subtitle. Did you see it? I think there were only 3 and it was #2. Fond memories of aeeing them with then teenage daughter.
@RozzieG Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo. Never saw it. (JRRRR Tolkien refused to write the 3rd LOTR movie because they wouldn't let him use that as the subtitle. That's probably why it flopped.)
I was mildly disappointed that 24D was not Juggalos, who are fans of Insane Clown Posse, and also paint their faces. Of course, it was KISS ARMY, and a nice tribute to the late Ace Frehley. Also mildly disappointed that Jack McCullough beat me to this. Wow, that was indeed a doozy of a puzzle, but what a sense of accomplishment upon completion. And also that I got SIA and YEETED without much difficulty.
I absolutely loved this one. Gender euphoria? Security blanket? Avengers: Endgame? Yes, yes, and more yes. A lovely start to a wintry weekend across much of the US. And congratulations, Adrian and Annie, on your engagement!
Wow. One giant bucket of ...do-not-know-wait-could-it-be-I-think-it-is...yes! Exhilarating. *CC lights up a smoke*
My personal Natick was ENDRANT/ANA - I was thinking of the physical vent, and thought maybe it was a ring or something. I slept on it after finishing and not getting the happy music, and this morning finally realized the tennis player's name didn't have to be Ina. With the A in place and a bit of caffeine END RANT occurred to me. Until the comments I thought it was a dumb answer, something the constructor made up, but I guess it's a real thing. I've been trying to stay away from social media, especially the kind where people are venting. END RANT
I've been thinking about the disgruntled comments about GENDER EUPHORIA. And I realized that, perhaps, there is a parallel to feeling that joy about the right haircut and the right outfit to my own quibble with the PINT in stein entry: that clue-solve pairing caused an emotional response from me. Because in my mind, in my experience, those two things don't fit together. However, when beer and glass and meant for each other, that is a thing of joy. Listen, I'm a woman who got emotional when I was served a Bavarian Weissbier in the correct glass at the wonderful Novare Res in Portland, Maine. Really, I cried. Because, for me, it was a sign of respect, of understanding, and of knowing where the product came from, and celebrating it with the perfect exterior. Some people don't care what they drink their beer out of. For others, it's a celebration of who they really are. (yes, this comparison is flawed in so many ways)
@Bizza I don't always drink Stella Artois, but when I do, it has to be in the proper chalice. Fortunately, my local bar keeps them on hand for precisely that purpose. Dunno about EUPHORIA, but the presentation adds to the experience.
Adrian Johnson is one of my favourite themeless constructors, and while I’m not always on the same page as Ryan McCarty, I’ve learned to appreciate and respect his Saturday puzzles. This felt like a spiritually pure Saturday puzzle. Challenging, and very satisfying when I got it finished. Well done
Now THAT was a workout! My grid was distressingly blank for a long time. I kept chipping and chipping and it finally started to click. Thanks for the challenge, and congratulations to Adrian and Anne on your engagement!
A perfect Saturday knock-down-drag-out!
Crossing two obscure artists seems Naticky.
@Lou Scheffer It is the definition of a natick.
@Lou Scheffer maybe unknown to many, but that's not the same as obscure; eg, how many ppl know there are no penguins in Greenland?? sorry don't know why I had to go there tds I presume
I'm sure Rex Parker knows at least one of them...
@Lou Scheffer Ochs had enough of a profile to be puzzle worthy. The other guy, as far as I'm concerned, doesn't. But I don't think it's a natick.
Not being one good with entertainers’ names, Phil x Charlie was causing me some ender disphoria. But I guessed right, so: happy now. A party of bony clues that won me over, the more I chewed.
@JWMiNBC Well, limited number of letters possible, so not a true Natick, but yes, an odd crossing of proper names: Too bad Charlie and Phil never performed a duet:-(
Really an outstanding Saturday puzzle. So many interesting entries, including actual *words* like DISPEL, SECTIONAL, ESCHEWED and MUNDANE. Didn't know PUTH, but did know OCHS---though I'd have guessed H for that crossing in any case. Solved this one unassisted, but took more than thirty minutes. Did slow myself down a bit by reading "Chucked" as "Chuckled" in 50A. "Called on one's birthday?" for NEE was one of my favorites here. Simple and yet so clever.
@Xword Junkie When the answer is YEETED, the clue can be anything. I'm gonna need the crosses.
I should know better than to let myself think "wow, this is really easy for a Saturday" when I'm only halfway through. Sheesh! The bottom section had me completely stumped. Not really knowing the Avengers movies, AVENGERS ENDdays seemed perfectly logical 😂 that mistake tripped me up for a looong time, along with several others in that section. Persistence finally paid off. Thanks for the workout! Hope everyone is staying warm and safe!
hahaha you shoulda seen *how* confidently i put in "banana" for 37D
@josh - It was mentioned in the column but I still don't get it. How or why would a banana wind up on your head? (My first answer was beanie.)
It’s been a rough week, with Thursday, Friday, and Saturday all taking about an hour to complete. But music was heard, the streak continues, and the bruises will eventually heal.
@Jay I suggest next time not solving the puzzle while walking down stairs. Hope you heal quickly.
So stoked to see a Phil Ochs appearance, it's surprising to me that he isn't crossword royalty alongside ARLO.
Tristan, The CH doesn't cross was well as the RL.
@Tristan Ochs? royalty? Oh puh-leese! At least Arlo actually had a hit record that still lives on. Phil? Good Lord, man! He was a suicidal, delusional mental case. He should have listened to his friends and family and gotten help.
@Tristan Stoked about Ochs. Why? (That was rhetorical)
fine, i’ll be the annoying mcu fan. the endgame clue makes NO sense. in what way is endgame the penultimate movie of the mcu? they’ve made FIFTEEN movies since then. if it’s only referring to the avengers movies, than it makes no sense to call it a series of 23 movies when there are currently only four of those movies.
@Ben Barton agree. Only figured this one out after I got a bunch of crossing ones after having something else completely incorrect in there.
@Ben Barton Clueing makes complete sense. The Infinity Saga spans from Captain America: The First Avenger through Spider-Man: Far from Home (23 films). The second to last (penultimate) was Avengers: Endgame. Pretty straightforward.
@Ben Barton huge MCU fan and this was the first time I learned that the movies up until Far From Home are considered a separate saga from the rest. Seems arbitrary to me, but ok. I only ever knew them as phases. I'm sure I've heard the phrase Infinity Saga, but I just never would have considered it to be a like, separate enough thing for this answer to have ever occurred to me without crosses.
This one was a challenge for me, 6 mins slower than my Saturday average FWIW. You know how sometimes a difficult puzzle feels like a tedious slog and you feel irritated and grumpy even after successfully completing it? This was NOT one of those for me. I thoroughly enjoyed the cluing, the clever misdirects, and felt a lot of satisfaction when I got the happy music with no lookups. Getting gold today felt far from certain on the first pass but gradually it all fell into place. Thumbs up from me!
Killer is right. Couldn't get anything but the 60s folk singer and Reese Witherspoon. Had to look up at least 2/3 of the answers. And even then I didn't know what they were talking about. Oh well. On to Monday. Stay safe and warm, y'all.
Quite the close one for me tonight. I really didn't think I'd manage to break the log jam I had at two or three places in the puzzle. But, a guess here, a stab there, getting rid of a weak answer over there, and it unravelled (or raveled?) in the most beautiful way. I thought 34D [Pedestrian] was a great example of how my mind often sees only one meaning of the word. What's the deal with AVENGERS GAME and 23? Were there actually 23 movies in a series? I'm not much of an super hero guy.
@Francis i take no pride in informing you off the top of my head there are 23 films in the marvel cinematic universe infinity saga, a subset of the mcu more generally. spider man: far from home is the ultimate installment in the infinity saga.
@Francis "it unravelled (or raveled?) in the most beautiful way" perfectly describes my experience with the puzzle, too 😃 As for the movie title, I somehow knew it, even though I can't stand superhero movies with their paper-thin, silly plots, atrocious acting, infantile character development, overblown special effects and cartoon villains. Don't get me wrong - I love silly movies, generally, but this is just too much. I watched a few Marvel films, and fell asleep trying to watch more. I don't get what people see in them. I have a soft spot for X-men though. Go figure 🤷🏽♂️
@Francis “a guess here, a stab there, getting rid of a weak answer over there, and it unravelled (or raveled?) in the most beautiful way” - this is beautifully evocative of the mental sparring involved in crosswording! ❤️
@Francis I’m an over 50 woman who has never read a comic book, and Endgame is a theater experience I wish I could relive for the first time with my now adult daughters all over again. The collective joy and intense emotions it brought was a slight reprieve from what has been a really hard decade. It doesn’t fix anything, but it does inspire hope and action. There are more of the “occupied” than occupiers.
I thought crossing two obscure singers with odd names (OCHS and PUTH) was not very cool. Otherwise excellent puzzle, I love the full width answers.
@joel88s Phil Ochs isn't exactly obscure.
@joel88s And to me, Charlie Puth isn’t obscure either - he has almost 47 million monthly listeners on Spotify.
@joel88s I think the constructor and editors thought that OCHS would be well-known by the olds, and PUTH by the youngs. I knew both names, even though I'm not a listener of either. Again, to do well at crosswords, you must know a little about things you're not particularly interested in. Ironically, one way I know of Charlie PUTH is the line in Taylor Swift's song, "The Tortured Poet's Department": “Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist.”
@joel88s I'd add that in the string OC_S, it seems to me that only an H makes a recognizable last name, and the H plays well with the cross, too. The name OCHS is the family name of the man who bought the NYT 130 years ago, whose great-great-grandson is the current chairman of the NYT Company. Its a well-known name among longtime readers, and should at least jog the memory of some who are trying to complete the singer's name.
@joel88s channeling Barry … OCHS has been in the puzzle often enough to not count as a natick for the Saturday crowd.
@joel88s As a Gen Xer, I fall smack dab in the middle of the two generations and knew neither.
Simply put, some knowledge is not evenly distributed among the population of solvers. I knew OCHS having been exposed to a good bit of early folk music, but I had never heard of PUTH (a name if I had heard, I probably would have remembered).
Is there a mistake in the clue for 5D? Given the answer it should be “quatro minus uno” not “four minus one”
@Mgood --- [cuatro menos uno] would be "tres", but the answer is TREY, which I don't understand either. Can someone explain? Is trey synonymous with three? I thought it was just for playing cards and basketball slang.
@Mgood I know that a three playing card is called a "trey" but I thought this was a stretch.
@Mgood this was confusing for me, too. Trey is slang for a basketball 3 pointer, but not familiar to me otherwise. I think it’s from the Italian (trei?), but not the Spanish tres.
I found this puzzle quite difficult, and that is a compliment! Out well beyond an hour, but wonderfully satisfying as the many misdirections resolved. And at the end the reward of listening to Phil Ochs songs. Among many others, <a href="https://youtu.be/rwXO0sbN4pc?si=WvdhtJwpJuJDuFLw" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/rwXO0sbN4pc?si=WvdhtJwpJuJDuFLw</a>