I kept looking for a NENE. It was an opNENEded search.
@Linda Jo Ha! the way your mind works never ceases to amaze me. You've got a fan in me!
@Linda Jo Maybe I can partWRENith you to create the sequel to this crossword. A part II, if you will.
@Linda Jo Silly goose!
So they day after Sam pleads for civility the Times flips the bird :-) Seriously, I’ll take more civility any place I can get it. Thank you, Sam. My current streak is 2,657 puzzles, so I haven’t been around long enough to know how hard the puzzles were in the good old days, but as a subscriber I have access to puzzles back to 1993. I can go there if I need a harder puzzle. At some stage a lot of the puzzle comes down to my wheelhouse. If I there’s a natick for me I’ll run the alphabet. More than one natick and I may just look up the answer and move on, even if it’s a Tuesday. To each their own. Enjoy the puzzles however works for you. Will and team, thanks for your hard work on these puzzles. I enjoy them and look forward to a nightly challenge.
@Nate Beautifully said, Nate! Some days it clicks, other days it’s a struggle, but fun trying. If I have to look up an answer, I learn something new. I just enjoy solving and appreciate the efforts of Will and constructors to bring the joy.
@Nate You can go all the way back to 1942 on the XWordInfo site. I'm working on 1986.
"Not a single bird came to your birdhouse?" "Yeah, I have no egrets." (I'm just winging this one.)
@Mike Such a loon.
@Mike Yes but are you raven about this puzzle, or do you think it took a tern for the worst?
@Mike <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycbwSIJGZ4Q" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycbwSIJGZ4Q</a>
@Mike Your puns are for the birds.
@Mike you think it’s the first time I’m heron this pun? I think it’s time you and i had a serious stork
@Mike Ok, but don't crow about it.
@Mike I rooster like those kind of puns but now, not so much.
@Mike There's a book called "Wild New York," on where to see wildlife within the five boroughs. The chapter on water birds is called..."Egrets, We Have a Few." :)
@Mike “Owl do you do this every day?”
@Mike I thought I might be robbin' someone else's reply, but I just dove into it anyway. Don't have time to wait around; I'm no tanager any more.
@Mike Hey, have you seen the movie starring Wren-Tin-Tin?
@Mike Hey. I just did the puzzle from Thanksgiving week of 2020 where you published quite the loving grateful comment. Over five years later, it touched me, too. I just wanted to let you know.
@Mike Sorry Mike, that's a hard one to swallow.
43A: SPARTA did send troops to the Trojan War, but Odysseus, who led the force in the horse, was an Ithacan (and I don't recall that any Spartans were with him). I don't mean to 58A at the rest of the puzzle, which I enjoyed. Not the trickiest of Thursdays, but not for the birds. Thank you, Alex.
@Barry Ancona I feel like Sparta wasn’t really the “Sparta” we think of until much later. Fun puzzle!
I think Sparta was very much Sparta even then. Helen was kidnapped from Menelaus, king of Sparta. Odysseus was the king of Ithaca.
@Barry Ancona yes! studying classics at university finally paid off with the momentary satisfaction i felt knowing this clue was just a bit off 🏺
@Barry Ancona This article says Menalaus, a king of Sparta, was in the Trojan Horse. <a href="https://www.greekmythology.com/Myths/The_Myths/The_Trojan_Horse/the_trojan_horse.html" target="_blank">https://www.greekmythology.com/Myths/The_Myths/The_Trojan_Horse/the_trojan_horse.html</a>
@Barry Ancona Oops, make that Menelaus.
Right. And DJT was in the helicopter to capture Maduro.
@Barry Ancona You think that's bad? I once solved a puzzle where the clue was "Occupants of a wooden horse," and the answer was TROJANS. I've never been more mad at a crossword puzzle.
Katie, At least that wasn't a Times crossword. My favorite clue error here was having Mark Twain born, not buried, in ELMIRA.
Hmmm. Not sure where my reply to Katie is. I was noting that the clue error she cited was not in a NYT crossword, but that my favorite clue error here was 1A on 3/16/2016.
@Barry Ancona Do you mean to suggest that there were only Ithacans in the Horse with Odysseus? If so, you're probably mistaken, and Menelaus was probably there with Odysseus. When Odysseus's son, Telemachus, visits the Spartan court to learn more about the fate of his father (in Book IV of the Odyssey), Menelaus tells the story of how his beautiful and clever wife circled the horse, speaking in the voices of the wives of the warriors inside, trying to get them to betray their presence. Odysseus's leadership kept them from being discovered. The clear implication is that Menelaus, as well as many other Greek leaders, were there with Odysseus in the Horse. The story also implies that Menelaus and Helen are not living "happily ever after"...and never will. "Do you remember, darling, that time you tried to get us all killed?"
The X-Phile, See my earlier comment re DJT.
[Austere] would have been a much better clue, IMO.
@Barry Ancona Of course, it's possible that much of the Odyssey is just "propaganda", although Helen could have contradicted Menelaus since she would know if he were lying. Odysseus is the only Ithacan survivor when he tells the story to the Phaeacians of his heroic adventures after the War, from the Cyclops to Circe to Calypso. There's no one to verify the "truth" of these tales, and later Athena will compliment him on what a great liar he is...just like her!
The X-Phile, In your next post, I'm expecting you to credit the idea of the Trojan Horse to Menelaus...
@Barry Ancona Like Elbridge Gerry, I too found that there was but one Spartan in the Trojan Horse. I fear this was a hopelessly obscure clue; solved only with a deep dive into ancient Greek history (or a PhD in History). I would have had no shot at solving this puzzle without the greyed-in squares.
@Barry Ancona I found multiple sources saying Menelaus was in the Trojan horse. They also said he was part of a Spartan contingency in the Greek army. A better answer would be Greeks for sure, but the answer here is defensible. I don't suppose you will change your mind, but at least I learned a bit.
Easy for a Thursday but 10/10 for the theme. Loved the idea.
@Rahul great theme indeed. I do enjoy when the modified words still make real words but flip the bird is funny enough to offset that in my eyes
Loved the theme, but felt that E-CIG, E-BATES, E-INK and E-MAIL is a little too much electronicness for my analogue brain.
@Phil V And sloppy on the part of the editors.
@Phil V Yesterday the constructor used suffixes to help them out: -ER, -EN, -ISH. Today it's the E- prefix. It's hard to construct a decent puzzle, so I'm not gonna complain (much). But it is a bona fide NIT.
Loved this one. The link between The Real Slim Shady EMINEM and its cross referenced Lose Yourself? was clever. <a href="https://youtu.be/xFYQQPAOz7Y?si=MqKl7ujI-unmKR37" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/xFYQQPAOz7Y?si=MqKl7ujI-unmKR37</a> I originally had moi for Miss Piggy instead of OUI, but that was my only misstep. Thank you, Alex.
@Jacqui J 'moi' cost me a shockingly long time. But I knew oRGE made no sense. And if it was URGE, then the crosser was ?UI. Then I also saw that, although Miss Piggy loves her furs, OINK made more sense than mINK Finally, happiness!
@Jacqui J That k you for pointing out that Lose Yourself - Real Slim Shady connection! And I, too, had moi, but obviously orge didn't make sense because we're not talking about French barley.
That was SO MUCH FUN. A nice little brain tickle just as I thought I was going nuts.
I’m sitting on the fence with this one (pun intended). There are many who feel as a rule grid entries shouldn’t be gibberish. I’m not generally not that rigid. But in this case I do think the theme would have been better served by having backwards birds in normally entered phrases, like, say COI(N RET)URN. This would placate those folks and make more sense that you flip the bird (turn it backwards) to complete the phrase. That said this was still clever and enjoyable. As to the shaded squares, I’ll always vote for greater challenge but can’t fault the choice they made. I would much prefer they kept the shaded squares and instead upped the difficulty of the other clues. Last nit was a big one for me as a student of Ancient Greek history. I have to double down on what Barry said earlier about the clue for SPARTAN. This clue was quite awkward and misleading. Yes Menelaus was a Spartan and his contingent was part of the Trojan war and certainly were in the Trojan horse. But there were lots and lots of soldiers there from all over Greece. To say “one inside the Trojan horse” is SPARTAN is like saying “one inside Congress” is LIBERTARIAN. Not sure why they didn’t just say “like some inside the Trojan horse” or just clue it with something more iconically Spartan. Sorry I know I’m being pedantic but so many people have misunderstandings about the Trojan war I just wanted to set the record straight.
@SP I disliked SPARTANS, too.
@SP But if structured like COI(N RET)URN, we would have to flip *to* the bird, rather than flip *the* bird.
@SP Didn't the Greeks have misunderstandings about the Trojan War, seeing as it's all made up? Sorry, just being facetious :-)
@SP Okay...but to speak of the Trojan Horse as a historical fact is also a bit of a nit for me. It's like setting the record straight on how many different alien species were on the Death Star when it exploded.
@SP I see the problem, but isn’t your way just what the actual (flipped) answers are?
@SP Your way doesn't make sense. Yes the actual entries make sense, but there is no need to flip anything. You can say that there are backwards birds there, but so what? This puzzle is better because it IS nonsensical, so you literally need to FLIP THE BIRD to make sense of it all.
I'm torn about this. I was impressed by the theme - four long entries incorporating flipped birds? Nice! And one of them was a golden retriever, too - those dogs are so great being reminded of them always feels nice. Grasping the theme actually helped me solve, which has rarely been the case lately. Alas, the revealer (which I enjoyed, as a person who makes many rude gestures) was a bit too on the nose, no? Once I got it I filled in the shaded squares in less than a minute, having had some crosses there. The fill though... So much of it was trivia, and some of it felt questionable. EBATES may not have been as bad as yesterday's trank or sleeken but c'mon... I realize a theme often necessitates having strange fill to accommodate it but this felt like maybe things were taken too far. And yet... There was also decent misdirection in places, which is always welcome. Then there's my solve time - it was half way between Tuesday and Wednesday... Ah, sod it. I guess overall I liked this.
@Andrzej Writing that review hurt you toward the end, didn't it...
@Matt The recent trend of making these puzzles super easy on average means I never have a reason to rant any more - if anything, that's why I might feel hurt.
@Andrzej sorry, EBATES are a thing, not just crosswordese.
@Glenn Weinberg Not in my world they're not 🤣
I appreciated the shaded boxes; it helped me figure wehere the turn was.
The shaded squares for the flipped birds definitely made this easier for me.
Fun! This was one of those relatively rare ones where I kept thinking "I'm going to hate this, I'm going to hate this", mostly because of the nonsense scramble within the theme answers, but then I finally got to the revealer and all was, well, revealed. Neat trick! The shading even worked this time, rendering the boxes very easy to read and visually minimizing the effect of the nonsense scrambles. A good time in the end. Thanks.
@B I moved very rapidly from "I'm going to hate this," to "I really hate this!"
Fun Thursday, my fastest ever! In the iOS NYT Games app with the new in-app web for reading Wordplay, I can't easily switch between the puzzle and the article like I could when it opened in a standard web browser. Can I please request an open-in-browser button on the web view? Thanks!
@Jeremy - It's a pain now, but open up the Wordplay column in your regular NYT app or your browser app so you can keep the puzzle app open on the puzzle.
@Jeremy Yes! Clicking the link in the Games app used to take me to Wordplay in the NYT app - much more convenient and also respects my dark mode settings. Please can we have that behaviour back
Well, engage the bird button in my wake-up head, and you’ve turned neutral into favorable. Span a dog across the center, especially the make-the-heart-smile GOLDEN RETRIEVER, and you’ve turned favorable into auspicious. Then keep it there with the lovely RAGTAG and BOOP, not to mention that In the three two-word theme answers, the bird connects the two words, rather than residing in one and leaving the other uninvolved. And how can you not like a puzzle that includes both OINK and EINK, plus a rare-in-crosswords five-letter semordnilap (LEPER)? Things like this turn the box into a gift. I found coming up with additional theme answers tough, with the exception of one very theme-friendly bird that shows up in a large number of phrases in the REAL WORLD, from STEEL WOOL to IMMORTAL WORDS. This was fun to uncover, with enough stickiness to satisfy my brain’s workout ethic, and sent me into my day ready to conquer it. Thank you, Alex!
(Paragraph five may help answer Sam’s question about whether the circles in the grid were needed to identify the theme.)
Some days it feels like the universe is communicating with me through the puzzle. Today was one of those days. This Saturday there will be massive, organized expression of free speech across my home state. I and three of my friends will be participating, something none of us has done before. After registering, we received detailed information about what to expect. We can expect to be yelled at, cursed at, flipped the bird and even shoved or have our signs yanked from our hands. We are advised not to respond in kind. Thanks for reinforcing the message Alex. I promise to be on my best behavior! I needed the revealer to solve and thoroughly enjoyed it,
@Cyndie Those of us who were around in the 60's can certainly relate to large public demonstrations and the various reactions to them.* Just hope all goes well for you and your friends. *Oh, and will just note that I was in Chicago in 1968. ....
@Cyndie Thanks for getting out there. My experience has been positive and mellow, just a few people flipping the bird or giving the thumbs down as they drive by. I hope yours will be the same. I'll be in Canada for a funeral so will miss it this weekend. I was in Salt Lake City in the 60s so the protests I attended back in the day were equally polite.
@Cyndie: I hope you will enjoy the experience. At our local event, we have loads of supportive happy honks and waves, and, (my favorite) the people who think they are angry-honking and bird-flipping *can't really be distinguished from the happy ones*. Har har, angry honker, I lump you in with the happy honkers!
@Cyndie Around here they have coordinated the timing of events in different towns so that you can go to several, one after the other. Parking may be the biggest challenge. They are almost, but not quite, close enough to bike from one to the other.
To answer Sam's question about shading, why not have an "extra help" button for solvers who need it. They could get the shading, while experienced solvers would have a more challenging puzzle. It would be nice if the NYT could figure out some way to throw a bone to their more skilled solvers. They are completely abandoning us.
@Nancy J. That is a great idea! Also toggles to the “easy clues” for Fridays and Saturdays could keep everyone happy!
@Nancy J. Abandoning us a little more each day. I couldn't believe that I was doing a Thursday puzzle. Where's the charm? Where's the lack of crosswordese? And though not quite the same, we just had an anagram puzzle on Monday. I don't care that EINK has been used before. It's gross. And to have three more of them, EBATES, EMAIL AND ECIG, is simply horrendous. And Miss Piggy saying OUI. I think "non". Those who loved this puzzle are obviously not seasoned solvers, so I imagine they liked it because they could finish it without lookups.
Glad most of you enjoyed it; I thought it was for the birds
From the Audubon Expanded Field E-Guide: “In the early 20th century, birders worldwide were saddened to see the extinction of the graceful, white-plumaged Lesser Gret. Funded by an anonymous group of wealthy bird fanciers who wanted to preserve the beauty of the species for future generations, a team of ornithologists, early roboticists, and even military engineers developed a prototype, and within a year successfully launched thousands of the autonomous, solar-powered simulacra into the wild. Few people today, even among the birding community, recall the days of the natural Gret, and many are not aware what the ‘E’ in Egret stands for.” Except for those who solve crossword puzzles - we know.
@JohnWM It used to be that the United States Postal Service delivered all the gret, with hardworking gretpersons walking door to door, bags stuffed full with both personal and business gret. Alas, with the advent of the internet, the simply joy of opening a hand-written piece of gret is no longer experienced, supplanted by speed-of-light Egret. And now, we are told that soon we will be unable to vote via that handy gret-in ballot.
Apparently Spartans have been retrojected as a distinct group into the Trojan horse. Or perhaps this is according to some source other than Vergil … Quintus Smyrnaeus? Of all the clues leading to “Spartans,” this is the one NYT decided to go with?
@Jason Miller Right? Go Michigan State!!
[Austere] would have been a fine clue...
@Jason Miller glad I'm not the only one who spent too long mentally cycling through ACHAEANS?... MYCENAEANS?... before coming to terms with this actually somehow being SPARTANS.
Sam asks: I’m curious, for those who regularly solve Thursdays: Would you have been able to identify the gimmick without the shaded squares? Sam, Yes. It would have taken a bit longer to discover the first bird, but with that one in hand... Two or three years ago, this grid would not have had shaded boxes (and rebus squares would not have circles and fill clues would be harder). One newer solver yesterday mentioned persevering to solve, and the solver was not complaining. Crosswords should be puzzles.
@Barry Ancona To Sam: I agree with Barry. The shaded squares eliminated what little hope this puzzle had of being Thursday-worthy. To the Constructor: Not meant as a criticism of your skills; it’s a nicely crafted puzzle. It’s just that someone slotted it into the wrong day of the week.
Fleur Anne, Without shading, I think this is a fine Thursday. In any case, no shade on the constructor.
@Barry Ancona Back in the day when Charles M. Deber was crafting his amazing (tough!) puzzles, there would have been no shading... and we still managed to solve the puzzles, but not swiftly, not without tearing our hair, not without howls of agony. At least, that's how I remember them....
@Barry Ancona Interesting to hear your comment that two or three years ago, this wouldn't have had shaded boxes. Since I just made a comment that I am used to shaded squares and so that would have affected my solving experience if they weren't there, I had to look back to see how long I have been solving Thursday puzzles. My first Thursday puzzle was October of 2019, and I have been solving them regularly since January of 2020. So apparently I have solved quite a few of the un-shaded, un-circled varieties, and through it all, became a big fan of Thursdays. It's my favorite day! All that being said, I enjoyed today's puzzle exactly how it was, shaded squares and all. A perfectly enjoyable Thursday 👏🤓
Well I'd never heard of E INK but luckily for me, auf Deutsch, the word Nook does indeed have EIN K
@Will oh, that’s a good catch! A double.
Loved the puzzle! It was fast for me-- four seconds shy of my best-- and I got the trick with the first theme fill. (I knew it was POLtergeIST, but that would make 4D ONt, and I noticed that the shaded squares held EGRET backwards, Flipping birds immediately occurred to me... and I hadn't even hit the revealer!) I'm sure there will be complaints about the shading making it easier, but I feel that it makes the puzzle more accessible in general. I would have spent way longer staring at poltergeist and ont, otherwise. I might have eventually figured it out, but I prefer it this way. (I do not like the new in-app comment interface though! (iOS) Opening in app instead of in browser means I can't pull up the puzzle to reference clue numbers. Also it took way too long to figure out how to comment:)
@Isabeau - It's the same problem in android. Open the Wordplay in the regular NYT app or your browser, and keep the puzzle open in the puzzle app. Whoever changed this is not a Wordplay user.
I don’t recall Miss piggy ever saying oui, and certainly not oink. In my memory, the only French she ever used was moi.
@Rob yeah, this is a pretty good puzzle, but the constructor really did Miss Piggy dirty. Oink! As if she would ever stoop. Maybe sardonically. That clue might have worked if it were lower case.
@Rob Agreed! Were MOI not in another clue, I would have been stuck for a long time. Plus why would she have said MINK?
@Rob Though it is not necessarily a catchphrase, Miss Piggy does say "oui" and other French insertions. The other clue has a question mark, leading us to consider the other unmarried pig-women in the world That cross was my last sticking point as well but I have to admit it's fair.
@Rob et al You are correct! The Clue-Constructors have besmirched the Heroine of Muppetry by putting words in her mouth that she never uttered. Miss Piggy would deal with them harshly. Ayyy-YAH!
@Rob I thought she tried to Speak French, in general. The problem was she only knew very few words. An example: <a href="https://youtube.com/shorts/ikAGW5zIp20?feature=shared" target="_blank">https://youtube.com/shorts/ikAGW5zIp20?feature=shared</a>
Not to be that guy, but Sparta did not yet exist as a unified entity at the time of the trojan war. And almost none of the 30 soldiers in the horse were even from Lacedaemon. Most were Achaeans from the mainland or other greek islands. This answer doesnt really make sense.
@Greg Yep I had Achaeans (which fit) for the longest time; it was one of my confident first fills. There’s so many ways to clue Spartans but this isn’t one. Sigh.
(Wednesday is my favorite day of the week (because that’s when the Thursday puzzle comes out.)) I figured out that I had to reverse the shaded squares, without understanding that I was flipping birds. To answer Sam’s question: I would have had a VERY tough time with just the revealer and no shading — probably would have gotten stuck fairly early.
At the risk of attracting hate mail, I must confess that I found this puzzle AS EASY as pi.... I entered 2D, 1A, then 3, 4, 5D...and feeling sure of POLTERGEIST, caught onto the trick. The Mississippi Flyway is busy with passers-by (the cedar waxwings were flocking this week,) so BIRDs are on my mind. A little glitch when I saw the W and wanted a SWAN...but of course the crosses came to my rescue. Wonderful, Alex Murphy! Come back soon!
Horrible gimmick, miss piggy would exclaim MOI not OUI Just a lousy puzzle, latest in a long line.
As an avid birder, I loved the theme, and used it to my advantage. I had my doubts about SPARTAN, but went with it anyway. Got the dreaded “keep trying” message, and spent a lot of time trying to figure out what was wrong with EINK. Although I eventually spotted my real error, I’m still puzzled by EINK. Hopefully Wordplay will clue me in. Off topic, but for those lamenting the decline in difficulty of the crosswords, the NYT is still producing fun and challenging acrostics every other Sunday, although annoyingly not on line. When acrostic creators supreme, Cox and Rathvon stopped constructing acrostics for the Times, I was in despair. But a new husband and wife team, Balton and Stewart, have stepped admirably into the breach and are turning out quality puzzles with regularity. They also curate an excellent, although underused blog, at nytacrostics.com.
@Marshall Walthew I was in despair, too, when Cox and Rathvon stopped constructing acrostics for the Times. Pretty happy with the new team, although not so sure I love all the themed puzzles. For those who don't subscribe to the Sunday Times, the acrostics and other variety puzzles from the magazine are available on XWordInfo for a nominal yearly fee.
I didn't know what was happening, so I just went with it, using the crosses and trusting that it would all stand up and take a bow, which it did when I flipped the birds. I loved it, especially that the clues weren't just fillers to support the theme. I'm looking forward to seeing your third, Alex. This one was a winner. Thank you!
Last night I knew there was a weirdly configured POLTERGEIST in here and it was the key to an otherwise straightforward puzzle. But my tired brain was having none of it. This morning I looked again. All it took was "a rude gesture" and it was feathers all the way down. Flipping awesome, Alex Murphy!
I love that GOLDEN RETRIEVER is a gimme. Dogs are the best people.
@CCNY Your comment reminds me of an interview with Jane Goodall, the chimpanzee expert. She said that chimps were not her favorite animals. They were too much like humans, and some of them were real stinkers. Her favorite animal? Dogs, of course! <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xGvLApNrFQ" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xGvLApNrFQ</a>
@CCNY Our dog is a mixed breed rescue, and I have decided he is my guru. My life is better when I listen to him…for example, when we’re on a walk and he stops and stands still for a few minutes, I think, okay, he’s decided I need to be in the moment now. If I’m reading something political and only just begin to feel the stirrings of anger, but haven’t overtly expressed it, he comes up to me and paws my arm, and I know he’s saying, “Oh, come on, Joe! This isn’t worth it.” He is wise beyond even my years, though he’s six.
Not particularly difficult, but very clever.
@Craig I agree... it was disappointing to finish it so quickly, because I wanted more... but I did like seeing the BIRDs named in the grid.
Had an amusing moment when I looked at the clue for 54D and read it as an across: Cry from Miss Piggy: "Moi??" Made perfect sense! Could I have gotten the trick without the shaded squares? Yes, but it might have taken a bit longer. Knowing to be on the lookout for a Thursday trick would have been enough. I'm a top-to-bottom solver, so by the time I got to the revealer, I said "Ha!!", and filled it in without a second thought. Alex Murphy, good work fitting that together!
@Amy "Moi" too, and it haunted me until the very end, when I figured that one out! (It was moderately possible that Miss Piggy cries "Mink!" for the down as well)
@Amy I also filled in "Moi" there (quite confidently), giggling to myself about Miss Piggy! Actually, both the down and across clues at 54 say "Cry from Miss Piggy," albeit one is with a question mark. I figured out it wasn't "Moi" when [Desire] was not working out with an O in the beginning.
@Amy I confidently entered “moi” for the across and a little less confidently waffled with “mwah/muah” for kisses for the down. Both hung me up for a while.
What a lovely theme! And I managed to solve without lookups (for the first time on a Thursday!). Thank you for a great puzzle, Alex! I thoroughly enjoyed it from start to finish.
@Sonny,same! First Thursday without hints for me! 🥳
My first time ever completing a Thursday without using hints. Caught onto the theme, and away we went! Only took about 4 years of dedicated play haha
Love a birdy puzzle! Just got back from seeing the whooping cranes at the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge.
I don't know why someone in this day and age would write "untouchable" as a clue and have PARIAH as its answer. Untouchability is one of the worst crimes against humanity that has ever existed, and the p word is just as offensive to a large number of people as the n word is. Neither the p word nor the clue used belongs to a recreational crossword today.
@Prithwiraj The dictionary would be a much thinner beast with you at the helm, I'm guessing. So many words...
@Prithwiraj may I ask for cultural context to your statement? I was not aware of this and would appreciate the education! Thank you!
@Prithwiraj Thanks for your insight which I assume is accurately informed from an Indian perspective. In the US we tend to use PARIAH very informally and I never heard anyone consider it pejorative in and of itself. On the other hand, though, “untouchable” is very specific and I can certainly see how making that comparison could be considered offensive. I appreciate you bringing it to my attention and I will personally try to be careful how I use it in the future.
@Prithwiraj I'm Polish but I felt the clue and answer were insensitive. Thank you for posting about it.
A quick trip to M-W suggests at least one test solver should have flagged the clue and answer. <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pariah" target="_blank">https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pariah</a>
@Prithwiraj "Outcast" would have worked as the clue without causing consternation. I imagine many who read your comment will agree immediately.
@Prithwiraj In this day and age in North America those words don't carry the baggage they may elsewhere. Using them is not a case of tone deafness nor insensitivity. They are absolutely appropriate for a "recreational crossword today." Also, are there crosswords that aren't recreational?
Wowie zowie! My name in a Thursday! Can't beat those 3 E's! 😊
@Renee C First time my name's been in a crossword!
Been while since I been in the comments. Used to enjoy text searching them to see how others felt about a given clue that I either enjoyed or struggled with. Would like to see that feature added to the mobile app, or restore the ability to easily click out to the default browser.
Enjoyable Thursday puzzle. Not all that easy for me, of course, but finally working out the reveal and tumbling to the trick was a HUGE turning point and that's always a nice touch. And the reveal was a really cute touch. Thumbs up. A couple of puzzle finds today. First one a Sunday from August 9, 2015 by Melanie Miller with the title: "Help Wanted." This one was all in the clues. Some examples: "Need stunt pilot to..." FLIPTHEBIRD "Need bakery assistant to..." TAKETHECAKE "Need cocktail waitress to..." CALLTHESHOTS "Need cruise ship band to..." ROCKTHEBOAT And there were several others. Here's that link: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=8/9/2015&g=37&d=D" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=8/9/2015&g=37&d=D</a> I'll put the other puzzle in a reply. ...
@Rich in Atlanta As threatened - a Sunday from December 16, 1990 by Sandy Graf with the title: "50 K's". Actually kind of wonder if I might have linked this one before but I just don't recall. Anyway - some answers in that one: KIOSK KODIAK KNACK KIRK KARMA KAYAK KOOKABURRAS KINGOFKINGS KANKAKEE KAZANTZAKIS KINNIKINNICK KNICKERBOCKER And a lot more. Here's that link: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/PS?date=12/16/1990&g=93&d=D" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/PS?date=12/16/1990&g=93&d=D</a> ....
I may be old, but the only French word I remember Miss Piggy saying is MOI. I can't recall a single instance where she said anything else in French. And I agree, the SPARTAN clue was bogus.
Theme was clever enough but at least eight of the answers were entertainment trivia, mostly easy I'll admit, but it would be nice to not have so much focus on one area of interest.
Okay. Fun concept. BUT I thought the clueing made this too easy, specifically the bottom half of the puzzle. that said, I figured it out the trick immediately from the NW / N. but that’s not on the editors. I’m just that good. Didn’t even get to the revealer until the end of my solve. I’d rate this as a 4/10. If 5 was the average Thursday. But again, I’m a savant. These puzzles hold no challenge for a solver of my caliber… And again. Thursday solve time was quicker Tuesday or Wednesday.
@Weak Dear Mr. or Ms. Sauce. Your ironic little barbs are disrespectful to the cruciverbal community generally as their veiled criticisms of crossword quality are by now old hat and therefore unwelcome. We have heard it all before, and so we must stop hearing it. Please remember that in these roiled and touchy times the prose of protest does occasionally and randomly offend certain readers, regardless of how politely and cleverly constructed and whither targeted. Kindly desist. Sincerely, The Ministry of Truth
Got hung up with MOI and MINE as Miss Piggy quotes, which are better references to that porcine goddess than the ultimate answers. However that misdirection is hard to unsee, and unthink, once it is in the E-INK, which upset my solve time greatly.
Filled this puzzle in DRIBs and drabs. Then, I did flip the DRIBs, which meant spelling the across themers the right way (Poltergeist, etc.) and duly expected the gold star at the end. No. It was only when I flipped them back again that I got the music. My own sou's worth of commentary is that either way should be acceptable, since each way is going to create nonsense words in either the downs or acrosses. It's left me...puzzled. Like someone else said, there are more "E" entries than usual here, and not just the e-cigs, e-bates and e-ink, also Etta, Eminem, elm, emo, economy, east, enoki...EMAIL ME if I've missed any. Besides that, a good puzzle and excellent idea for a theme!
@john ezra glad to find you agreeing with me--I don't think anyone else did. As you said there will be nonsense words (I called it gibberish) in either the downs or the acrosses. And as I said elsewhere, It's a question of whether you physically flip the bird and enter POLEGRETIST, or you enter POLtergeIST and then "mentally" flip the bird to turn ONt to ONE.
After experiencing the IN(N)(E)(R) (W)ORKINGS of this constructor’s mind, I exclaimed “WIN(N)(E)(R) (W)INNER CHICKEN DINNER!”
I did the first half of the puzzle on my phone, in a coffee shop. Not my usual style. I was struggling, and thought I would not be getting a gold star. But being a dinosaur, I came home to my trusty desktop and suddenly saw the gray squares. They may have been there on the phone app, buy, you know, dinosaur eyes. The hodgepodge of POLTERGEIST showed me a backwards egret in gray, and having already solved the revealer I was on my way to enjoying the San Jose Strut. In a world where everyone is a phone addict, I jones for my desktop. Two screens, a mouse and a keyboard gives me my fix. Maybe I should have saved this thought for one of the (many) LSD-answer days.
@Don H 'Enjoyed the San Jose Strut' caused me to look up the reference. I hadn't idea that the crossword solved music has a name Another piece of trivia now filling my brain