With Deb's permission, I shake my fist at the sky over ESPIAL. I can't argue against it being valid, but I can certainly choose to give it an 🙄, some 😒, and a bit of 😠
@Grumpy All hail Deb Amlen, but it was the erudite Sam Corbin who gave us permission to shake out our fists at the sky over that ridiculous word!
@Grumpy this felt like a Friday to me because of that, NOISOME, [Pips], and quite some names
ESPIEL? Methinks on a Wednesday puzzle when thou useth archaic English, thou shalt indicate so in thy clue.
MC, I don't use ESPIAL in my everyday conversation either, but it is still on the active roster. <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/espial" target="_blank">https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/espial</a>
@MC Oops ESPIAL is correct. So... espy is not used in everyday conversation. Espial is not used in everycentury conversation.
@MC ESPIEL refers to sales pitches in the Internet...
@MC At the risk of being ridiculously picky, I can’t resist pointing out that correct usage would be “thou usest” (2nd person singular) rather than “thou useth” (3rd person singular). The word “espial” was entirely new to me as well, though!
I had the same reaction (but without the periods).
I wouldn't know that EHOW existed if it wasn't for its frequent appearance in the NYT crossword, so just how much of a "popular website" is it really?
@Carrie It's not. Just as no one interested in tech has visited crossword stalwart CNet since 2002 either. I have been online forever and not seen eHow mentioned anywhere but here. At least CNet was once a useful resource. Just an espial? Talk about things no one uses...
@Carrie It comes up in searches sometimes. But the methods it recommends are usually terrible, so if it’s really popular it shouldn’t be.
@Carrie I just visited it. It seemed heavy on recipes and kitchy homemade crafts. I tried asking it for repair instructions for old Hondas. They had a few, but all of them lacked illustrations of any kind and tended to be sparse on details, so they're close to worthless. I might end up there again if I encounter a link to that site that looks like it might actually be useful, but I doubt that will happen.
@Carrie - maybe ehow was set up by the NYT to help out constructors!!
The last time NOISOME and ESPIAL were seen this close together, they were hand-in-hand watching the ARK float away. The ark itself, incidentally, making for a pretty noisome espial if you espied from inside, I’d bet. This puzzle had a few signs of some earlier Times. Merely a symbolic gesture?
@ad absurdum Some clutter, for short? A MES (I did a bad one to make your great one stand out even more - love it)
@ad absurdum Okay, that's only 56 minutes old, but still, how is it even possible it only had 6 votes?
@ad absurdum I'm guessing that yours was a MESSY bun,
ad absurdum, Marvellous! If I may riff for a moment about a midriff: [Saggy tummy?] AB UNDANCE (What Andrzej said.)
The pictorial clues were cute, and not stress inducing. But what won me over were some of the fine entries, e.g. HUMDINGERS, ESPIAL, and NOISOME (one of my all time favorite words). A very pleasing Wednesday. I also got a kick out of the reference to COMMODORE computers. We had a Commodore 64 back in the day, although I mostly used it to play Radar Rat Race.
Marshall Walthew, I like ‘noisome’ too, the odd time I see it. I once made up the phrase “a noisome oyster annoys the adenoids” to help me remember it is about a smell and not a noise. I once used a Commodore PET (a precursor to the 64) to grab and analyse image data from a microspectrophotometer, as part of a summer-student job. It was kind of pushing things to the limit, and quite frustrating given the 5.25” floppies were the only storage we had. Fun times.
Harder than Friday or Saturday, methinks. Never heard of a pip outside of Gladys knight or dice. Noisome and espial are new to me. And my phone autocorrect, as well. But great puzzle. I enjoyed this Wednesday. Thank you
@Weak see PG Wodehouse novels where Bertie Wooster refers to attractive women as “pips”.
@Weak 'Pip' in this usage is kind of British-sounding to me, but it is not unknown. Between ESPIAL and NOISOME, I'd class 'espial' as extinct and 'noisome' as on its way but still clinging to life.
@Weak I think that's what Gladys Knight's use of the word was meant to convey. I believe that Archie Bunker occasionally said to his wife, "You're a PIP, Edith." I don't think it was meant to be as positive as Gladys's use of it.
I have a real pip of a cat, named Pip! She often sits with me while I do crosswords and I enjoy telling her “Pip! You’re adorable! You made the Times puzzle again!”
@Becky Who knew?! Our own Pip is enjoying his post-prandial cleanup before the morning nap!
💯⭐️🥇 PICTURE PERFECT Or, practicing up for my eye doctor appointment!
@Cat Lady Margaret Your posts are always so witty and fun! Just had to gas you up. 🩷
So, my brain loves hills to climb in puzzles, loves rub. Give me answers out of my wheelhouse, words that have never entered my ears, riddles to crack, and my brain says, “Let me at it!” So, there was that going on for me today, a brain-happifying puzzle. Also, happifying was this theme. Using strings of emojis for theme clues has been done before, but not often, and not like it was done today. Bravo! Smiles came as well from a couple of clue echoes. [Write “their” for “there"] for ERR echoes a clue from two weeks ago – [Mistake “air” for “Heir”, say], where rhymes to ERR are featured in the clues. Also, [Pips], the clue for HUMDINGERS, recalls Victor’s last NYT puzzle, where dice were depicted in the grid, and the letter O represented the pips. And I must say that HUMDINGERS after Sunday’s SMITHEREENS has once again smitten me over our quirky language. The box, therefore, was filled with mood-lifting pings for me, Victor, making for one splendid outing. Thank you!
what an unenjoyable waste of 20 minutes. noisome? espial? really? I get wordplay but this was a reach.
@em completely agree. I hated this one.
@em NOISOME is a pretty common word to encounter in literature. You know, that stuff you might have experienced before your days were consumed by scrolling? I’ll never understand people who complain that crosswords reward knowing *words*, of all things.
Ugh. I had no issue with the little picture clues. But espial and noisome were both well beyond my ken. Apparently they are real words though. Looking at NGram Viewer, noisome significantly outpaces "odiferous", whick makes no sense to me at all. The latter is a word that people use. I have to assume that a majority just thought noisome means noisy? At least it accurately reports the observation that no one has ever actually used espial. :) Anyway, while certainly solvable this did not seem like a Wednesday at all. Difficulty is really all over the map at the Times lately. :( And yep, XWStwats reports "Very Hard". There's a problem here, because several Friday/Saturday puzzles have been trivially easy. It's not fair to outline a weekly progression policy and then completely ignore it.
@B Agreed, and this puzzle itself was all over the map, from ridiculously easy to fairly obscure. The columnist made the same assumption about NOISOME. I learned that word as a youth by -- guess what -- reading! It was a novel set in the 16th century, when I imagine a lot of things were noisome. And while we're at it, "fulsome" doesn't mean thorough, no matter how many news anchors think it does.
@B When you chart two terms at the same time, if one considerably outpaces the other, it looks like the less common word isn't used at all. Chart ESPIAL by itself and you'll see it has been used. Chart both words and add "cat," and "noisome" looks like it's never been used. Add "the," and it looks like "cat" has never been used. <a href="https://tinyurl.com/46ebncmp" target="_blank">https://tinyurl.com/46ebncmp</a>
@B I thought it was hard, too, but mostly because of all the proper names -- KESHA, MOTHRA, SAMUS, etc. At least they are easy to look up.
Hoo boy, that was a doozy! Loved seeing the emojis and figuring out the answers. COMMODORES were a blast from the past. I loved the “Noted wildlife refuge”, too. But ESPIAL, srsly?
@NYC Traveler These are the Commodores that are a blast from my past: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qTPVS1uiQ0" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qTPVS1uiQ0</a>
Not the most enjoyable grid today. The fill was clearly stretched to the limits (I think I've seen ESPIAL once in my life outside classic literature or a crossword). The theme unfortunately didn't make up for it.
@Alex L Yep. There was a notably strong disconnection between the really easy true-rebus clues and the weird archaic fillers. Not a fan here either.
hmmm... A theorem: struggle X amount of struggle = level of nastiness? No matter how long I've been doing these puzzles, I STILL cannot understand how people get mad and nasty about PUZZLES. Besides, Wednesdays are those puzzle days when there is a range of difficulty. This one was near the top of the range for a Wednesday. And I like a challenge. There was no cheap fill (as people ALWAYS complain about) after the puzzle theme was sussed out. FUN and CHALLENGING!
@APNerd Consider the immense pleasure people derive from complaining and being reinforced in their gripes … the puzzle serves that purpose as much as any other for a fraction of the commentariat. Everyone’s having fun in their own way 😀
@Alex Barry GAH is a new one on me.
This is no "The woods are lovely, dark, and deep..." kind of snow we are having, glory be, in northern Minnesota this Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. A blizzard just like from Hollywood. The wind is rattling the windows, and the streetlight shows bands of snow mostly moving horizontally, except when there's a burst of wind and then they'll fly in too many directions to keep track of. I feel really lucky.
@Francis, OHOH 😱. I was triggered by your quote at the top and just had to comment. That line turns out to be a famous misuse of the Oxford comma, dating back to a collection of poetry by Robert Frost published in 1969 and edited by an overzealous Dartmouth professor, one Edward Lathem. <a href="https://firstknownwhenlost.blogspot.com/2010/12/woods-are-lovely-dark-and-deep.html" target="_blank">https://firstknownwhenlost.blogspot.com/2010/12/woods-are-lovely-dark-and-deep.html</a> You’ve opened a can of worms, my friend.
@NYC Traveler That was an interesting click, thanks for that!
@Francis Francis, talk about cold, we are at 40° (only 8° above freezing!) in our drafty little house in the Bay Area, bundled up in layers of clothes and wearing gloves and a scarf, grateful for our trusty heater that at least offers a bit more warmth downstairs, and trying hard to appreciate the rain that has finally arrived. I mean, this is what real cold is. We don't need no noisome blizzards!
Rebuses! Luckily, these are the harmless variety. They will not squish you.
@Barry Ancona Nah. Rebuses use the sound of the symbol's word to convey another word, e.g. 🐝+T=beet. That's not what's going on here. These symbols are visual clues, which is quite different.
How did I know somebody would suggest I was serious calling the pictures rebuses? How did I know who it would be? It was not Very Hard.
What a weird puzzle. In the end I completed it quite quickly, but I had to look up the crossing of F_CA and _R_NE. The second blank in the second entry came from _UM[D]I_G_RS - there the [D] was a guess. Once I looked up FICA, IRENE became the obvious solution, which in turn led to my recalling HUMDINGERS (I've seen it here once before), even though I couldn't remember what it meant and how "Pips" was a clue for it - I needed the column and an internet search to get that. Not knowing NOISOME for "offensively odorous" didn't help. The theme was OK even if it didn't particularly grab me. The misdirection in many of the clues was quite nice to see. It's just a (personal) pity my ultimate struggles were caused not by clever clueing but rather by my being unfamiliar with a few entries. It's on me, of course, but it still doesn't feel great.
Oh, and once I had ESP___ I began to suspect ESPIAL might be a word 🤣
@Andrzej Next time I'm in an auto race, I want to be next to you! :-)
@Bill That's a gracious comment about my being a quick finisher, thanks.
On a Sunday evening in the spring of 1966, Godzilla and Mothra set a side their differences for a while, and tune into American TV: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nl-i4Y8s0U8&list=RDnl-i4Y8s0U8&start_radio=1" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nl-i4Y8s0U8&list=RDnl-i4Y8s0U8&start_radio=1</a> ("Hey Moth, pass the mochi!") IYKYK *** Yesterday evening, I was delighted to find that my phone had two emojis for horses, four for fireworks, and one for a little red and gold money envelope: Health and Happiness, Peace and Prosperity to all my fellow Word-players in the Year of the Horse!
Bill, IYDKYMGLASTCITYTC* If you don’t know, you might get lucky and spot the connection in the YouTube comments. I didn’t know, but enjoyed the link.
Today we have people complaining that this puzzle was "too hard" for a Wednesday. One of them says they don't want to spend Wednesday morning that way. Which begs the question: Why are you spending your morning that way if you hate it? Stick to Monday where you'll be safe from the dreaded thesaurus.
I liked the symbol clues, those were very well done. A lot of the clues today felt more like obscure vocabulary quiz. HUMDINGERS, NOISOME, ESPIAL, DINS, MOCHI, and they all seemed to cross each other and cross other awkward or proper name trivia clues like GAH, IRENE, EHOW, BERNARDO, ASSES as an answer for "Nincompoops", somehow knowing the name of the city Iowa State is in. Other than the theme clues, I was not a fan of today's puzzle.
@Chris "It had words I wasn't personally familiar with and required me to know things" is one of the weirder criticisms of a crossword I've seen
I didn't know that a "pip" was anything but a seed. I never saw "Fame," "Hustle and Flow," or "High School Musical." I think I encountered "gas up" once in a previous NYT puzzle, but never in the wild. I didn't know the singer or the song. I had "noxious" initially instead of NOISOME. For "X" I initially had the Greek letter rather than the Roman numeral. I don't use emojis...I can see the point of them when they help make clear the intent of something that might be misinterpreted otherwise, but otherwise they seem like something a girl in middle school would fall back on, so I use words instead. I struggled, I backed off and redid answers quite a bit, I finished with one of my slowest times ever for a Wednesday, but I didn't look up a thing, so I'm not complaining.
@Bruce 😮 (Why a girl, specifically?)
@Bruce "(emojis) seem like something a girl in middle school would fall back on" Or a bunch of cabinet members/VP discussing a military attack in a group chat.
@Esmerelda I didn't know that, but it doesn't surprise me.
Who ever complained about last week definitely won't be complaining today lol. This was a doozy
Wow, that was a HUMDINGER!
Absolutely thrilled to see my queen Mothra show up this morning!
The sheer number of American proper nouns - sports, actors, govt, schools - meant I could never do this one enjoyably, unfortunately. Only 3 themed clues as well? The fill seemed very desperate, with obscure, archaic, abbreviated words that usually betray a loss of control due to crowbaring in a lot of themed entries... But not much theme to warrant it. Finished in under-average time thanks to Googling, but in future I should probably just leave ones like this and take the hit to my streak.
I’ve never commented on a puzzle before, but I had to share my daughter’s names intersected in this puzzle. I started doing the crossword every day while my oldest daughter was up all night with colic as an infant. I still do them to try to stay sharp for them. I’ll save the screenshot of this one forever.
@Dan What a nice coincidence.
Dan, Enjoy the screenshot! I'm guessing IRENE and IRIS? KESHA and CHASE seemed less likely; SAMUS and SASS were out of the question.
@Dan How amazing is that? I would do more than take a screenshot; I would print it and frame it! (And even SCREENSHOT shows up in the puzzle, so it's very meta, especially considering the chances are probably null that someone else will be taking a screenshot for the exact same reason as you.)
@Dan I love this story! I hope you return and share other stories here in the future. I was trying to surmise how long you have been doing the crossword daily, but your comment could span any range. So a mystery in a personal story: very nice.
My. My. My. Wasn’t that some tasty granola?
GAH! Seemed to be quite an ABUNDANCE of proper nouns today. Found this one quite challenging for a Wednesday, which is not a bad thing. Solved it unaided, but took 20 minutes. Ignorant of how "Pips" connect to HUMDINGERS, but that entry filled itself in. Also ignorant of ESPIAL. Time to learn some things.
@Xword Junkie re: pips and humdinger--see the vid on Youtube by the Glenn Miller Orchestra's hit "I got a gal in Kalamazoo" which describes the gal as both
GAH! So many don't-knows for me in this HUMDINGER. I had more empty squares throughout than on a typical Saturday! Luckily my millennialness gave me EFRON, TERRENCE, and KESHA as a foothold, and I encountered NOISOME the other day in the archives, but much of the top half eluded me. I thought the theme was cute and well-executed. I can't complain about a solid challenge in the middle of the week.
@Ash It's so nice to see a comment from someone who owns the fact that they don't know everything, and doesn't blame the constructor or the editiors. Thank you!
Bro you crossed NOISOME with HUMDINGERS and the latter with GAH. This one needed editing
Posted this once, never appeared, so I'll try again (after removing any possibly objectionable words). There are words like RAND B that you finally get and think, Oh no,, thank heaven no one knows about this (until now). There are words like DINS that you tend to associate with a meal until you look back at the clue and get the noise. There are words like NOISOME that you always associated with annoying and now know are a way of saying something smells bad. And then there are words like ESPIAL, which you have never seen before, can't even imagine how to pronounce, will never use, and cause you to put a little check mark beside the constructor's name to remind you that this might happen again the next time you see it. All that said, Victor Schmitt(✔️), I had a lovely time solving this puzzle and look forward to your next one.
@dutchiris (Groan) . . . now know IS a way of saying , , ,
If you're gonna use pictures, they should be large and clear enough that a person can see what they are.
@wendyfromboulder: AMEN!!! Although I guess that's something the NYT doesn't have complete control over on a computer screen. But I really hate these puzzles that contain emojis, because I usually can't figure out what half of them are supposed to be beyond a blob on the screen.
If anyone has a Mac and has a problem seeing small elements onscreen, a _light_ double-tap on the trackpad or on the Magic Mouse will zoom in, enlarging everything, and another light double-tap will return the view to normal.
I thought the theme was very witty. And I enjoyed the not-so-common vocabulary words. More please. "Yes, you're once, twice, three times a pc And I love you"
@ad absurdum The pc then went wandering around on its own, asking everywhere it went, "Hello, is it me you're looking for?"
@ad absurdum Or, as Buh-wheat sings... 🎵"Unce, tice, fee times a mady... I nub you..."🎶
Transported me back to the ASL picto-puzzle from when I first started solving. Very dense Wednesday and all the nicer for it.
@Matt Do you happen to know when this was from? I would love to give it a go.
That was an enjoyable Wednesday. Wasn't there an RANDB group called Gladys Knight and the Humdingers? They had a song about a train but exactly which train and where it was going I can't recall.
Roberto, Rich (in Atlanta) will be happy to remind you.
@Roberto It was called the Overnight Train to Azerbaijan.
Dear NYT Puzzle Dept: I know you don't personally print the puzzle in the physical paper or set the type or choose the font or do anything that affects how the puzzle will actually appear to someone who subscribes to the dead tree edition. But may I remind you that it is home subscribers who are keeping the NYT afloat and most likely paying your salaries. So that if you have a puzzle with visual clues that cannot be made out by people solving in the physical paper, it doesn't matter how clearly they may appear online. Please grab yourself a copy of today's Times. Go to the puzzle page and tell me if you have the slightest clue as to what clue 39A is depicting. You say that you already know? OK -- give the paper to your mother or your sister or your best friend and challenge them to tell you what on earth clue 39A is supposed to be. I rest my case. Except I don't -- not really. After all, it's not only on the puzzle page that the NYT's complete lack of concern for the subscriber to the physical paper is manifested. Blurry, fuzzy, very pale, and even completely missing print is everywhere these days. It would not have gone out that way perhaps as little as five years ago.
Nancy, The visual clues in the puzzle in my copy of paper are fine, and I haven't noticed a recent increase in print quality issues. And we get the same edition. And I just saw my ophthalmologist.
@Nancy I pay for my digital subscription, just like you. I'd thank you to not inject the comments section with some sort of misguided claptrap about the supremacy of the dead tree edition.
@Nancy What is this ‘paper’ thing of which you speak?
@Nancy Actually, it is all us digital puzzle subscribers who are keeping the NYT afloat. Most local newspapers are struggling, or have already folded. I just looked it up. NYT has 6.48 million digital subscribers! Without all of us who live far far away from New York, the Times would be struggling too. Look what happened to the Washington Post recently.
I appreciate the theme and some of the longer clues but this was a rough one. ESPIAL, NOISOME, EHOW (this is not a popular website, contrary to the clue), the awkward plural of PASTAS, SAMUS, ARAM. It was just unpleasant, sorry.
I thought this was a superior Wednesday puzzle, with interesting, offbeat words, clever clueing, and a cute theme. Not too easy, just the right amount of friction for the middle of the week. Thanks for the fun!
Two days in a row! Yesterday: "Jeez, this seemed hard for a Monday." Today: "Jeez, this seemed hard for a Tuesday." I've gotta stop taking these Monday holidays off.
@Jack McCullough Same here, and I didn’t even have Monday off!
Don’t hate the puzzle but I hate it on a Wednesday. The clueing and some of the obscure answers make this a Saturday puzzle.
After a run of easy Friday/Saturday puzzles, I'm delighted to have a slightly more challenging one on any day of the week.
@Darren As simple as the Saturdays have gotten lately, I don’t think they’re quite as easy as this one was (yet).
Early results at xwstats.com find this puzzle Very Hard: 🌎 Global Stats Difficulty Very Hard Median Solve Time 8:51 Median Solver 10% slower ⚡22% of users solved faster than their Wednesday average. 4% solved much faster (>20%) than their Wednesday average. 🐢78% of users solved slower than their Wednesday average. 33% solved much slower (>20%) than their Wednesday average. My experience was different. My solve was 16.8% faster than my Wed. average. My mileage, apparently, did vary.
@Steve L I was about 30 seconds faster than my average. And I was watching the Olympics while I was solving 🤷🏼♀️
Steve, I trust you noticed that "Very Hard" was called at just 10% slower for the median solve, while 16% faster the other day was called "Average." "Very Hard" was not really very hard, if it was really hard at all. Really.
@Steve L So apparently 137% of puzzle solvers responded to this survey???
@Steve L I continue to think that difficulty has relatively little correlation to total solving time, except perhaps for those who engage every puzzle as a personal no-holds-barred race to the death. This puzzle didn't take me very long at all, but some of it was hard! I don't know if XWStats difficulty is based entirely on timing.
Barry, '"Very Hard" was not really very hard, if it was really hard at all.' That speaks to me on a personal level, and not in a nice way 😢
@Steve L Yikes! So the Median Solve Time for a Very Hard Wednesday puzzle is 8:51? Humbling.
Definitely harder than last Saturday. This is the level of difficulty I want.
Hard, yes, but didn't enjoy the thesaurus clues.
Okay. Okay. Theme? Fun, silly, and tight. And I mean it like, "Toit!!" That's right. *Two*exclamation marks. Which I hate, but it had to be done. The clueing? [Meager amount of compassion]. [Pips]. [Plumb mad]. !! And the fill. MOCHI, SCREENSHOT, PETERED OUT, MOTHRA... HUMDINGERS!! I hate this comment and it's seventh-grade use of punctuation, but I ate this puzzle up like chocolate covered manna. POY Wednesday. Fo. Sho.
Ten Wednesdays in a row with no lookups! I was a few minutes over my average today, and I nearly gave up, but I finally removed the “n” I had at the end of ESPIAL (it was a guess!) and things started to click. NOISOME, HUMDINGERS, and MOTHRA about did me in, but I fought back! Great puzzle!