I was moderately annoyed that some of the HORSES only worked across or down, but not both. Upon reading the column, I realized that ORC(H)EST isn’t a word on it’s own, and that while PAS(S)ING is a type of hit, the full name is PAS(S)ING (S)HOT is even better. My annoyance is gone, and I’m in awe of the brilliance and complexity of this construction. It was an enjoyable solve too!
It’s interesting how differently solvers approach a puzzle. I couldn’t be more opposite from our guest columnist who writes “The first thing I do is scan the clues for the revealer.” I prefer to find the revealer close to the end, and hopefully have figured out the trick before getting there. Which was the case today As noted, we’ve had “dark” themes before, but I don’t tire of them. This one was very clever and I like how each separate part of the phrase is a stand alone word. Nicely done, Hanh.
@Anita Same. I do puzzles in chunks until I get stuck, then I start a new chunk. With Thursdays, especially, I try to figure out the theme before I get to the revealer. I don't even care if it's an inefficient way to do it. It's how like it. This one got me today. I didn't work it out until I saw ALIENATE. I'd probably completed about two-thirds of the grid.
More essays from Rian Johnson please! Great puzzle and fun to have his accompanying voice.
That was pretty cool. I enjoyed the trick - it took me a long time to get it, which is as it should be on Thursday. I found the fill challenging in places, too. More of such quality grids next week, please.
@Andrzej Curious, Andrzej, if you listened to the Ramones in cold war and eastern Europe?
I was born in 1980 so I was too young to know about music in the 80s. The radio and music stores were state-owned, so it's unlikely decadent, Western rock music was avaialble there (it wasn't in the 1960s, when my grandfather was the radio's main censor, which my mother told me about). People smuggled smuggled all sorts of stuff from the West though, including tapes, so I'm pretty sure some Poles listened to the Ramones. We had some good rock music of our own though, and especially in the 80s it was much more progressive than you'd think. Polish censors realized they had to let people vent to prevent unrest and rebellion, and thus they often allowed stuff critical of the system and the establishment.
If you neigh too loudly, your voice will get horse. (Sorry to saddle you with that one.)
@Mike Sorry to nag, but how do you keep trotting them out?
@Mike Easy boy... Let's reign it in a bit.
Good old Mike from Munster: whinnies right, he’s right.
@Mike Saddle to say, you seem to have galloping hay fever ....time to trot out the antihistamines!
@Mike Oh dear, I've never known you to be whinny before. Always so steedfast, but those were the days when you were always feeling your oats.
Mr Hyunh it was a fine puzzle. Thank you
Wow must've been quite a feat of construction making all the crossings work. Kudos!
Well. The “Shot in the dark” puzzle (5/16/21) was one of my favorites ever, and this “dark horses” is really great too! As ever, we like it when the not-clued partial entities in the grid form real words, like “overt” and “dish”. I’m now looking forward to these themes: DARK MATTER DARK CHOCOLATE DARK AGES DARK MAGIC ALONE IN THE DARK DARK HUMOR
When you need the column to understand the puzzle, it doesn’t make for the most satisfying solving experience. I finished it, I looked it over, but I still didn’t get it. And while I realize it’s probably just me and my own mental block, this one just didn’t add up for me. Sorry.
@Heidi You mean to say that you didn't feel a surge of dopamine, when the salient squares acquired their letters?
Since it seems our guest columnist doesn't realize this yet, his first name has appeared as an answer, clued as [Director Johnson] or similar, 13 times in NYT crosswords already. Another thing: black square insertions have appeared in 33 NYT crosswords.
@Steve L Thanks for picking up some of the Lewis-slack.
I needed a lot of help with this one and didn't hesitate to get some. My brain is numb enough without more blank spots. It all cleared up when I finally got the final picture, and I saw that it wasn't such a dark horse after all. Massive stress on the home front and now we are at war. I have to stop watching the news. Enough is already too much.
Hey ho, let’s go! I caught on to the black square trick at RAMONES, as I knew the answer and could see that no rebus would work with the various crosses. The puzzle solved pretty easily after that. Seeing HOMEEC brought my mother to mind as she was a long time home economics teacher. During her career, and in part due to her initiatives, the curriculum changed from principally sewing and cooking to include things like family planning, child care, nutrition, and money management. She really put the economics in home economics. Seeing the Deadwood clue reminded me of what a stunning performance IAN McShane gave as Al Swearengen, the show’s complex antivillain. I thought his performance was EMMYworthy, but perhaps it got lost a bit among the other fine performances in the ensemble. While I understand many were turned off by the show’s graphic violence and coarse language, it was a brilliant exploration of how civilization emerges out of chaos, and featured some of the most brilliantly baroque writing ever seen in television.
@Marshall Walthew The "Deadwood" writing was just phenomenal. Almost Shakespearean in its elegance. I thought it odd that so many found the language to be so "bad". I wonder if it just seemed out of place in a western, whereas it was fine for an context like "Pulp Fiction".
@Marshall Walthew another commentor here turned me on to Chaos by James Gleick, and now I would actually have an interest in watching a TV show depicting order (civilization) rising from chaos.
@Marshall Walthew Deadwood is, and always will be, an exceptional TV show. @Francis was not exaggerating when he called the writing Shakespearean. I think it was as good as anything that has been produced in the television era. The fact that its creator, David Milch, is unable to write anything else of this caliber because of his struggle with Alzheimer’s should be regarded as a national tragedy.
@Marshall Walthew One of the often used profanities in Deadwood is referenced to great effect in this SNL skit: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Deqx-Xb-yHY&list=PLkxSaApJPp72NXXzzKYELkKXAytEQuiBf" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Deqx-Xb-yHY&list=PLkxSaApJPp72NXXzzKYELkKXAytEQuiBf</a>
WOW WOW WOW!! Hats off to you, Hanh Huynh. This was so brilliant!
Anyone else see that a single horse in chess could jump around the black squares and land on each of the theme letter boxes? Coincidence?
@Robby Wow! You are right. That integrates the grid design with the theme in a whole 'nother way.
@Robby THIS guy crosswords
Of course Rian had to have JEDI in there! May the Crossword Force be with you.
Thursday tricks don't have to be terribly tricky, and they certainly don't have to be rebuses (although I love them), but this pleasant confection would be a fine Tuesday. It it clever, but it requires little thought to solve, much less offers a challenge. Nice work, Hanh Huynh. Wrong day, editors.
@Barry Ancona Well, I was coming here to say that it was a definite challenge for me. I was genuinely alarmed about how many entries I couldn't quite get to work, and even when I realized the dark squares had letters in them, it took me a while to quite fit things together. So, hat's off the you and all those for whom it required little thought, and was far from a challenge.
Francis, Pro tip. When you find entries that don't make sense from clues, skip them and fill in the ones that do make sense. Then try the crosses for the missing entries. Then look at what you've got. 38A by itself makes no sense, but 39A and 40A do. After a cross or two for 38A, the pattern should emerge. Rinse/repeat.
@Barry Ancona difficulty seemed fine to me, especially by recent standards
@Francis I'm with you on this. I found the grid a proper Thursday challenge. Tuesday? Pshaw! Let's hope Barry does not apply for the position of NYT Crossword puzzle editor 😆
@Barry Ancona My time was in Thursday range, though about 20% faster than average. It was over twice my Tuesday average time.
@Barry Ancona I agree with you but the hive at XWStats does not, deeming it Hard. Standards have rapidly lowered, I suppose based on the increase in our gruel. 🤷♂️
@Barry Ancona respectfully disagree. I thought this was a perfect Thursday, especially when I realized the dark horse squares worked for both the across and down answers.
@Barry Ancona Maybe you should think about it a bit before rushing to be the second post. The puzzle might grow on you.
@Barry Ancona Agree this is Wednesday worthy. It is challenging by recent standards, but I finished 30% faster than my usual Thursday time, and in average to hard Wednesday time. And that extra time was all used in tracking the location of the theme squares because there is no way to do that on my phone. With some way to track those squares, this would have been fast Wednesday
Great puzzle. Kicked my kiester. At one point, looking over a mostly filled-in grid, I thought that maybe Blitzkrieg Bop was a RAMMSTEIN tune and I noticed EINSTEIN over in the southwest quadrant. Maybe I needed to connect them somehow? At the bottom The CO in CONSTABLE could possibly be the beginning of COPPER, and OPER was an answer at the top of the puzzle. Could those connect? Luckily, before trying to defy the laws of quantum physics to make this puzzle work, I made out ORCHESTRATE across three down clues with two missing letters and it came together. For a while there I wondered what choreography had to do with Lord of the Rings.
HOME EC brought back a wonderful memory. Of course it was only for girls, as the boys had shop class. In the days when this subject was taught in JHS, my school, Cunningham JHS was, I believe, unique in NY. The first year was Sewing, which I didn't like. But the second year, the class was simply called Apartment. The school had a full one-bedroom apartment: kitchen, dining/living room, bedroom, bathroom. We were divided into six groups, and rotated rooms each week. Cleaning the toilet would have been awful, except using it was verboten, so it wasn't bad. Other groups cleaned the other rooms. One group would cook a meal. The best part was when it was your group's turn to do nothing that week except eat the meal! By the time we had graduated from college, one of my friends became a teacher at that school. Sadly, the apartment had been converted into classrooms. It would have been nice if they had kept it and taught the boys how to do all those things. Instead it was up to us girls to "train" our husbands.
@Times Rita OMG, small world! I went to Cunningham, too!
Steve, Was the Apartment still there when you showed up?
Took me 8 minutes to fill in 99% of the grid and another 8 minutes to figure out the the 26 Square. Usually any tennis clue is a gimme, but solving on mobile, the dark horse squares can be a little tricky to keep track of. I kept going back and forth between bAShINGSHOT and dAShINGSHOT as I checked the rest of the grid. Once I remember that the hidden squares was an S, not an H, I immediately saw PASSINGSHOT. In other news, Indian Wells started today. Won't see as many passing shots there as you'd see at Wimbledon, though. The desert doesn't particularly favor net play
As someone who has tried his hand a crossword construction (many submissions, no acceptances :-( alas) I am often awe-struck at the ability of successful constructions, especially on Thursdays. Today's is a perfect example. Not only working out the long answers (albeit broken by black squares) but to hide HORSES in them, and still maintain symmetry. Bravo!
@Paul Stoddard Keep at it. Took me about 30 tries. Someone published recently who had been submitting for 20 years!!!
@Paul Stoddard (Parenthetical remark) I had a classmate named Pal Stoddard in RRHS class of '74. Tall, slim guy, blonde hair, very focused.
@Paul Stoddard Nothing but respect for the fine people who create these puzzles for our amusement. Hats off to you, Hanh Huynh!
@Paul Stoddard check out what @Robby spotted about the grid - bbt only if you want your mind blown
I am usually not a fan of Thursday crosswords and actually have a better track record with Friday and Saturday puzzles. But today's was terrific!
Amazing puzzle! Loved the theme. Was expecting a rebus or some other shenanigans, but was blown away by the revealer. Thanks for the challenge!
The level of cleverness in this puzzle is stratospheric. Not only the hidden letters, but the fact that they combine to echo the theme. Well done Hanh Huynh!
Now that was a wonderful Thursday puzzle! Not much more I need to say. Puzzle of the Year contender for sure.
I guess I could feel smug about getting the gimmick off of the revealer DARK HORSES. But no. What I'm feeling really smug about is that I plopped in INSOLE the second I saw [Puma's pad?] I chose Adidas when I graduated from Keds. But my brothers wore Pumas. Ah, the joys of real-life experience for crossword solving! Also, having been there for constant phone operator help made it a gimme, and I really have to shout out the one and only Jim Croce: <a href="https://youtu.be/-qgnGH6Rg-E?si=UdAaNkw5QTYsaR5S" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/-qgnGH6Rg-E?si=UdAaNkw5QTYsaR5S</a> Thank you, Mr. Huynh for your beautiful creative mind and constructor chops!
@sotto voce, What a great, great song. Thanks for this link. I’ve listened to this a hundred times in the last few years. Do millennials and younger even know what it means? Hello, Operator, won’t you help me place this call, The number on the matchbook is old and faded … Thank you for your time, you can keep the dime … It must sound like a secret code to anyone who didn’t have pay phones in their lives.
Given how trickily clever his screenplays for the Knives Out movies have been, I'm not surprised that Rian Johnson is a puzzle fan and a Thursday-crossword kind of guy. I enjoyed today's column!
What a brilliant, thoughtful puzzle. This is the perfect type of Thursday. Where you pass over a few clues and immediately think “huh, there’s something going on here” but you aren’t quite sure what yet. Is it a rebus? Is it a wraparound? Huh. Nope. And then it slowly starts to piece together, the revealer starts to make sense and you just think “sheesh man, that was so damn clever”. Well done.
Why is this answer OVERT? Oh, I see. There's a ROW over there and a missing H would make this OVERTHROW. Got it! I'm about to get cross about ORC. More textspeak where people can't be bothered to blurt out a whole word like ORCHESTRATE? Oh, I see. There's that missing H again -- plus a missing R. My eye inadvertently catches the revealer clue way before I get there, "It's going to be DARK HORSE", I say. So there's an O, an S, and an E remaining. PASSING SHOT is the hardest one, beautifully hidden. As a tennis player, I'm not going to let this one get by me, but it almost does. I get a much-needed assist from EVERPRESENT. I had fun matching wits with this puzzle, though I wish the theme hadn't necessitated so much 3-letter crosswordese. It's not a smooth grid. But it's an interesting one. A word about 35A: To DISS someone doesn't "bring shame upon" them. It brings shame upon you.
@Nancy Re: 35-A Nor does DISH, but DISH[O]NOR does!
@Nancy That's why it's DISH, not DISS. Hint: There's a black square following that H.
@Nancy, This one got me too. I went back and forth for a long time between DISS and DISH, not knowing the one-named singer (if it ain’t Cher, I don’t know it). Then I found where the “O” goes in the black square, tying 35A and 37A together, then it all made sense. AHA!
I’m extremely tired tonight and struggled a bit with this, but once I caught onto the trick, it was much smoother. My last correction was ReM to RAM. No idea why I had an e in there because I knew it was the Ramones. Again, super tired. Dumb mistake. 🤷🏼♀️ Good theme that was well executed. Thanks, Hanh.
@Jacqui J. Same here. I just thought the band was REM, until I realized I had to include the dark letter in the vertical.
@Jacqui J I knew it was the RAMONES too, but in a moment of self doubt wondered ridiculously if REM might have covered the tune. One I got the gimmick, it was a relief to correct it.
@Jacqui J Funny, I had absolutely no clue what band that was (the Ramones were always nails on a chalkboard to my ears, and I was born just a couple years too late to pick up an awareness of anything but their 2 or 3 biggest singles through cultural osmosis), and like many others, thought REM seemed reasonable enough…and though “peeled” obviously wasn’t the right spelling, somehow the edit distance of 1 made me the tiniest bit open to it (always a mistake, that kinda mindset). Between that and having never heard of any artist called “Her”, along with the 65% plausible answer of “diss” for 35A, it took me a few extra minutes to sew up the loose ends on this one. Fun Thursday :)
That was a VERY fun "I was like whaaaat?" puzzle. I usually just glance at the the revealer, but in today's case I really had to go back and read it closely. ORC, OVERT, EVE, RAM, PAS, etc., made no sense as answers to their given clues in any way, shape or form, until the light bulb went off and 5D "Choreograph" ORC was simply the first three letters of ORCHESTRATE. Then, checking downwards, the rest of the word seemed to be there albeit in other entries, except... the DARK spaces! And sure enough, it was behind the black curtain that I found the HORSES of the revealer entries. Of course the macguffin was that it was only the first clue of these hidden key entries that yielded a misleading answer. Well played indeed, Hanh Huynh! And how delightful that the puzzle editors have brought in the master ORCHESTRAT(OR) of the Knives Out detective series with favorite-Bond-ever Daniel Craig as the molasses-mouthed, silver-tongue brilliant-detective Benoit Blanc. Today's puzzle & accompanying column left just the right amount of clues to make me feel like I should have been a private eye.
I don't often pop into Wordplay (usually just if I need one last hint, or if I want to read more about a theme), but what a delight to see the byline and do a double take! Huge fan of the Knives Out series, and also love a good Thursday!
@Sasha PNW Well... two out of three ain't bad. ;)
This is my 5th Thursday in a row. All of them could not have been fluke easy ones, I must be getting better. Friday and Saturday still mostly out of reach.
@MP You are getting better. And they are getting easier. Just do some Thursdays from 2021 to test the hypothesis that both things may be true.
@MP Yes and yes. This was one of the better Thursdays this year, but still on the easy side compared to the recent past. Congratulations and keep going.
I don’t like this. It feels sloppy, like the constructor couldn’t quite make the concept work. Yes, when you plug in the H O R S E S, all of the clues suddenly work. But to me it’s problematic and lame that some of the theme clues work without plugging in the H O R S E S while others don’t. Like, on its own, ORC doesn’t work. But EST and ATE do. When you add the H and R, of course all three now work. But they should either all work before and after adding the H and R or not work until the H and the R are added. There should be some continuity.
@Ti So it seems sloppy to you but it’s deliberate. The point is to hide the theme, the small bits in the later parts of the clue have to be real crossword entries and clued that way. Otherwise you’d have to put “-“ or something like that and figure out they were continuations of the word above which would be no fun at all. Or they could be gibberish but in a puzzle like this that’s part of the charm and brilliance that they are all legitimate clues on their own as well. So you may not like it but it’s very carefully thought out.
@Tim I don’t understand your complaint. The first clue given is for the entire trick answer. So ORC on its own doesn’t make sense. This helps us find where the trick is and figure it out. If ORC on its own made sense, there wouldn’t really be a trick at all.
Brilliant! and also quite Thursday worthy. I found it tough and was SO close to my gold star, when I ran into the reality that I had a mistake somewhere. I need to get out and finish my daily hill walk before going to handbell practice, so for the first time ever I used the Check puzzle option. It was painless and gives me time to get to other enjoyable tasks that will distract me from the world going up in smoke :-( Thanks, Hanh Huynh and also thanks to the amazing Rian Johnson, whom I was so surprised to see in this role. Off to finish my daily 5 miles in this perfect weather :-)
@Shari Coats Good for you for enjoying the puzzle without letting it stand in the way of a walk.
Can't say I Wanna Be Sedated after completing today's most excellent puzzle! If you need me I'll be Howling at the Moon in celebration!
Enjoyed the cluing. I did not enjoy having to keep track of the letters of horse in my head. Would have been nice to be able to fill them out somehow so I could keep track of them.
@Charlie - I used scratch paper once I caught on that there were missing letters.
@Charlie I never gave up paper-and-pen solving. They can't make me use my iPad or my PC (except I call up the puzzle on my PC and print--often on the back of used paper) and use my (erasable) FriXion pen to solve. Plenty of room for notes or guesses, a chance to doodle, ability to write in the gray squares (thanks to InkSaver) and the view of the entiire puzzle and full list of clues at my disposal. SO much more fun. (I don't mind missing the gimmicky animations or the music, and I recycle.) Best of both worlds.
This may be one of the rare times that solving on paper made this so much easier for me than for many online solvers. I simply had to write the missing letter in the black box, so it was easy to see the full theme words and keep track. And since I print in ink saver mode, those boxes were gray, even easier to see. That probably also helped me get the trick right out of the box. But while this was impressive feat of construction, there was nothing Thursday about the fill. Pretty dull, no wordplay, nothing exciting. I look forward to Thursday to Sunday puzzles for the challenge, but hey editors, where was the challenge in these clues???
@Times Rita I, too, am a paper-and-pen person (Ink-saver as well) ...and the "DARK" entries came as a fun surprise, especially as they were arranged in such a way as to spell out HORSES. The fill was pretty good given the constraints, IMHO. I am happier than you are, but sorry for your disappointment.
@Times Rita Agreed - the theme was good but the fill was lifeless and easy (possibly due to editorial interference?). I don't see how XWStats users call this Hard.
Pretty fun one. Got stuck on DISs, though. How is DISH… oh, right, the theme. It was surprisingly difficult to keep track of all those horses.
Took some horsing around to figure out this one. As for the Midi, beware the odes of March.
A very enjoyable Thursday. It helped that I got the theme at RAM NES, so could relax and have fun finding the others. Despite there being quite a few names/companies I wasn’t aware of, it all filled in smoothly. It’s not every Thursday I can say that. I chuckled at 27A. Husband and I were only chatting last night about Ben Gurion airport with No3 son, who’s learning to fly. DH, as a young apprentice aircraft engineer in the early 80’s, got to fly out to recover a plane that had gone u/s on the apron there. They were monitored very closely by a couple of heavily armed female soldiers. A daunting experience for a rural English lad.
@Helen Wright Can you enlighten me (us?) as to the meaning of "u/s"....I was thinking "up-side-down," but that doesn't really work.
@Helen Wright I insist you enlighten us landlubbers straightaway about the meaning of "u/s!" We're talking my backyard here and I will have satisfaction.
@Helen Wright Apologies MOL and Matt. Being surrounded by engineers and pilots I forget the lingo I take for granted isn’t everyday language. U/S stands for un-serviceable. That is, a plane away from home base that has a breakdown, requiring engineers from its airline to schlep across the globe to fix it. Sounds like a waste of money? Why can’t engineers at the base they’re on fix it? These are questions I have asked, which generally receive an eye roll and a pitying look in response. I think it goes something like; ‘what? Those louts from ABC touching the engines of DEF? The very idea’. Engineers are delicate creatures under all that grease.
Man… I think the theme was clever, but I found it so hard to keep in my black squares where the special ones. Maybe I'd have been able to do it easier on paper if I could mark the squares.
@Jase Haddleton I so wish the app interface had an overlay for solving this exact kind of puzzle!! Poor interface added a challenge that didn't need to be there
I loved this puzzle. My favorite so far this year. Maybe Thursdays aren't so bad after all. I also am continually amazed at how feeble my brain is. I got 10D entirely through crosses, and then stared at it for a long minute, wondering what kind of word BESILENT could be. Besilent? Is that some mineral on the periodic table? In its liquid form does it become besilyne? I'm no EINSTEIN.
Having missed yesterday's Cuttin' a Rug as a Lynyrd Skynyrd lyric, I feel I should try and get my Southern card reinstated. So here goes: To witness the heresy of confusing The Ramones with R.E.M. is deplorable. 😖 The early1980s alt rock scene in Athens, Ga (go Dawgs) headlined R.E.M., Widespread Panic and The B-52's. The Ramones, on the other hand, topped the mid '70s NYC punk scene. Personally, neither band appeals to me, but as an Athens-Clarke County resident, I must represent. Maybe "Losing my Religion" and "I Wanna be Sedated" contain the same message in two polar opposite genres? Y'all carry on, and never make this mistake again 😉
@Jerry My dad, WWII generation, was very proud that R.E.M., Widespread Panic, and The B-52's were all from his hometown. Those were the only band names he knew post-Beatles, and he told everyone we met in our travels. When friends came to town, he took them to The Grit. I doubt he would have recognized any of their music, but boy was he proud.
(For those of you unfamiliar with 1980s Athens GA, The Grit was in Michael Stipe's building.)
@Jerry They weren’t confused. Did you finish the puzzle?
@Artemis Not the puzzle constructor or editors. The solvers. With the new search feature, you can search these comments to find how many of us entered ReM before RAM.
The Ramones, right? Not REM. Am I crazy?
Thursday is always a great puzzle day but a guest column from Mr. Johnson and mention of Sondheim made it extra special.
Well this was surely a constructor’s puzzle, as they say—which isn’t a bad thing in my opinion but I imagine we’ll get some complaints about that as the day wears on. The point being that it’s an incredibly impressive feat of construction but more fun, possibly, for the constructor to create than the solver to solve. One could solve most of this without getting the theme, since only eight short entries didn’t make sense on their own and could be gotten on crosses. And most of the clues were pretty easy—in this case deliberately by the editors, even apart from recent trends, because they like to make sure clues are easier with very tricky themes like this one. Don’t get me wrong, I loved it and it’s an EXTREMELY impressive feat, taking into account the symmetry and the need for each piece of the theme entries to be words on their own and interlock, Bravo! I thoroughly enjoyed Rian’s commentary but gotta say as a constructor I’m miffed (and a bit surprised) that he jumps to the revealer. Rian, how would you like it if I fast forwarded your Knives Out movies to see the end, then watched the rest of the movie from the beginning? Takes all the fun out of it.
@SP I jump to the revealer. Makes the solve more intelligible from the beginning. Just smart strategy.
@SP Very easy clueing today, I thought. I had to use the theme to get the last two squares, but that was it. Disappointing Thursday.
@SP Yep, this would have been a LOT better if the overall fill weren't so "____ Ahoy cookies".
@SP It's a good idea to read the column *after* doing the puzzle, so in that case you've already seen the revealer. No big deal.
Connect the dots between the black horses squares and you’ll see the image of a galloping steed, constellation style. An unintentional bonus aspect of today’s grid.
@Becky Sure we will... Archimedes', _____, Becky, _____, Philip's head, Allen AFEWLOOSESCREWS A Jedi's memory, long it is.
@Becky All I see is a swastika. Sorry. Couldn’t help myself…
All I see is my father expecting more of me.
@Becky @Matt I'm a believer! The editors succumbed to your Jedi mind tricks, thusly today's 17A. How DO you do it? You both get a 10 from me.👏