Now that was a fine Friday. Thank you, Zachary.
@Barry Ancona I'll say, this one slowed me down, but I got out of it when I recognized that it was SAMMICH AND NOT "sammies" (didn't notice the lack of number agreement), and TOOT AT instead of "tootle." Those two caused all the long SE answers to be hard to figure out. I've learned that whenever I get to a corner where I am really stuck, I inevitably have to rip out some wrong answers. Now that we agree that it was a fine exercise for the end of the week, let's see what the other solvers think.
Much more like a Saturday than a Friday IMO. Too many proper nouns all bunched together at the bottom. DAN, ARTUR, CERES, and RUDI are 4 of 6 consecutive down answers in that area, and they are all essentially unguessable. I had no clue about the MANGA factlet, so 5 of the 6 consecutive answers were blanks for me, and the Across answers in that area could have been many things. (eg, "Kitchen gizmo"? Really? Something that vague is a Saturday clue, not a Friday one IMO.). I personally found the bottom part of the puzzle very frustrating.
@DJ yeah, same, I was struck down there for quite a while too. But it was fun reading about Artur Rubenstein and dwarf planets as I got myself unstuck!
@DJ I thought it was completely fair. There was a wide range of trivia represented: cartoons, sports, classical music, astronomy. The chances are good that someone would know at least one of these names. And they were all down answers, so no Naticks.
@DJ clearly we both need more kitchen gizmos. Let's see; 5 letters PARER CORER DICER FRYER DRYER 6: SLICER STONER MINCER BRINER
@DJ genuinely sorry you were frustrated. I liked it. I will say that there's a pretty thin line between Friday and Saturday when it comes to the crossword; they're both generally themeless and more difficult. As for the four names you mention, the only one I knew was ARTUR (and it took a while to get there as I thought it was spelled ARThur so I didn't immediately enter it). I got everything else from crosses. I had no idea MANGA is often in black and white, but I have heard of it so once I had a few crosses I plugged it in to see if it could help. It did. Hope tomorrow is more to your liking.
Please fix the link to Wordplay column so it opens in a browser like it used to. After the recent update, it opens inside the app so if you need a hint or want to read the column while solving, for any reason, you can't have the puzzle and the column open at the same time.
@MWC Yes please!!! I’m a solver with a long streak of “not giving up.” The ability to easily peek at Tricky Clues or see what clues other solvers are talking about is key. The new design does not make that easy. Let’s get lots of Recommends on this!!
So this evening I learned that the definition of "reduplicative" is more expansive than I thought. (JIBJAB) And it took me an ungodly amount of time before I realized I was working on a "Tahoe runner." (MAC) But please, dear puzzlers: DON'T RUB IT IN!
@NovelaMaven Same here. Once crosses revealed the first two letters for me - JI____ - I happily repeated them, to get JI_JI_. Changing that second I to an A was one of the last things I needed to do to complete the puzzle.
Awesome Friday puzzle, with all sorts of twists and misdirections. I particularly liked “direction in many a spaghetti western” for THATAWAY and “Totally missing the big picture” for NEARSIGHTED. As an ex lawyer, ARGUEDACASE was the one longer clue I was able to get right away, and without that substantial foothold I might still be floundering around.
@Marshall Walthew I had TrotAWAY before THATAWAY and cracked up after I made the correction!
You had me at Artur. Is there any finer interpreter of the late Mozart piano concerti, particularly 21 & 23? This was a right Friday of a puzzle. Much fun, loved the cluing. [Unlit?] SOBER ... and THATAWAY! Wow! I'd imagine some Italian-Americans might bristle, but it's all in good fun. I was convinced [Computer runs] was SPAM. I mean, if a computer had the runs, wouldn't the result be spam? I feel uneasy about SAMMICH, bit too close to baby talk (I have a friend who's currently not speaking to me because I yelled at him about calling something a "sammie."). Standards and decorum must be maintained. So, if cold neuralgia is Brain Freeze, would Brainstorm be wet neuralgia, Braindrain dry neuralgia, and Brainfart windy neuralgia? Asking for a friend.
@john ezra Interesting point about [Computer runs]. When I started with computers in the early 70s, the only thing you could do with a computer was to "do a run". You had you code, you had your data, you fed all of it into the computer (or rather the operators took your cards and ran it for you), and you got a printout of the job. It might diagonalize a matrix, it may do a numerical integration or numerically solve a differential equation, or whatever, but you told the computer what you wanted it to do, and then later got the output. Except in scientific circles, I don't think computer runs are "jobs" like that any more. Today we interact with the computer. We call up things to read and hear and see with the computer, but it isn't a "job" in the classical computer job sense. Kind of a throw back answer.
@john ezra Here you are: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxQxzW6CNXo&list=PL7Uq4AQDcpSkFRpLV_oly1_mvIIZNy9pI" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxQxzW6CNXo&list=PL7Uq4AQDcpSkFRpLV_oly1_mvIIZNy9pI</a>
@john ezra As for THAT-AWAY: nothing bothersome for Italians in that clue. The 'extra' A in the answer is just the Western/rural US habit of inserting an A before directional words: afore, arear, alee, away. It is a preserved remnant of even older forms of speech from Great Britain. It is entirely unconnected with the parodic Ital-ish in which all final plosives (and occasionally other final consonants or even vowels!) elicit an added schwa. Good-a, bad-a, stop-a, went-a, you-a, etc. This is not THAT-A WAY but THAT A-WAY.
john ezra, You really tickled my brainstem with your neuralgias-talk. And also, I LOLed at your take on SPAM.
@john ezra Neuralgia translated means "nerve pain". You can have occipital neuralgia (pain of the occipital nerve), trigeminal neuralgia (pain of the trigeminal nerve), glossopharyngeal neuralgia, etc
@john ezra The link I posted is for the Mozart concerti.
Just a brilliant puzzle. There is nothing better than giving a crossword a first pass, being able to fill only a handful of clues and then slowly bringing the full grid to completion. Thanks for such a Friday morning treat Zachary!
@Dave after all the discontent about easy puzzles over the last week or so, I have thoroughly enjoyed the fact that this one has taken me over an hour of solving time across 24 hours of real time in order to get there. Very effective time-killer on a school residential…
Ok, I hope you guys are happy. There's been so much about the archives, I decided I really needed to go WAY back and see what I could find. So I went to 2003. I done about ten puzzles, and I had absolutely no idea for 90% of the clues without a cross. None. Nothing at all comes to me for [Blouse with a sailor collar]--MIDDY??? A two part clue of [With 7-Across, something to start with] is BANANA DAIQUIRI??? Even for the easier ones like [Evict], BOUNCE took forever and a day. I know, I know, crosses, right? Sure, like the cross [What taxis do]? Which is HONK? I didn't find a lot of crosses to help me out. So now I'm in a frame of mind that I simply can't get anything, so when I tried today's puzzle I struggled because I was in a mindset of failure. Now I can't do the archives because I'm too dumb, and I can't do the current ones because I'm traumatized. I hope you're all happy. Verklempt I am. I bet I'm the verklemptest guy in Minnesota. And it's not a fun type of verklempt, I can assure you of that.
@Francis Maybe someone should retroactively develop an easy clue version for the archives. Actually that’s not a bad idea.
@Francis Put on a middy and have a banana daiquiri. That should cheer you up.
@Francis MINNESOTANICE SISYPHEANTASKS Promising start for a stack, no?
@Francis I looked at that BANANA DAIQUIRI puzzle. The clue/answer has to be taken in context. Note its location, and then look at 39A and its location, and 67/68A and its location. Then the clue and answer makes more sense.
@Francis But has the spring thaw gotten rid of some ICE?
@Francis I did this once and there were so many words and reference I’d never heard of lol. I bounced my way back to 2020s so fast lol! I found a lot of Fridays and Saturdays I hadn’t done, especially around big life change times. Saturdays were like today’s Fridays (and sometimes like clueless Wednesdays Thursdays) through and in months post Covid.
I don’t know how you all are making your s’mores but I’ve never know one to catch fire. The marshmallow yes but the entire s’more? Never.
@SC The answer was easy enough to guess? But to your point. I’ve never taped the graham cracker and chocolate to the skewer, while ‘roasting’ the marshmallow.
@SC I agree. The marshmallow may catch fire but if your completed s’more catches fire you’re doing something very wrong.
@SC There may be no greater skill known to man than getting your marshmallow toasty enough to have an outer crunch, while still keeping it from catching fire. I think there is 0.3 seconds of play from Maillard perfection to charcoal disaster.
@SC Out West, there are tales around the campfire of folks who'll swirl a speared marshmallow in booze before it meets the fire to scorch, and sizzle it, afore spackling said comet between them other fixins. I'd never do it, and if it were offered to me, I'd throw that away. . .😉
@SC If the marshmallow catches fire, the s'more is on fire. Case closed.
@SC Unless you're wearing fireproof gloves allowing you to pick apart the flaming glob, surely this is a distinction without a difference.
@SC I love this - just the kind of lexicological firecracker i want to find smoldering in the comment section. A seemingly innocuous view on smores that is guaranteed to catch fire!
@SC my s'more technique: 1) collect the ingredients (including the vital selection of the proper forest wand for my marshmallow skewer. Manufactured implements? Heresy.) 2) eat the chocolate while devoting intense concentration to the charring of my marshmallow. 3) ingest said morsel oyster-style 4) leave the disgusting graham cracker for whatever woodland creature could stomach it. 5) digest while stargazing
@SC if you toast your marshmallow, make your s'more, then wrap the whole mess in tinfoil to toast and melt some more, it can really char. But none of us would do THAT, right? Certainly not me. Nope, never.
@SC For me, the key to a really good Smore is for the chocolate to get all melty and swirl with the melty marshmallow. To accomplish this I wrap the whole in tin foil and put the whole thing into the campfire. It's wrapped, so it shouldn't catch on fire, but it can get burnt if you leave it for too long
This is on my list for Best Thread of the Year!
@SC Full disclosure time: I have never in my life eaten a s'more, or even seen one, in the forest or on the hoof.
@SC Agree that this can be Thread of the Year. My 2 cents as a former Girl Scout leader: we were supposed to take an official training class before we took them camping. Class was quite helpful but at one point the instructor suggested IXNAY on s'mores on the grounds that kids running around with flaming sticks was too dangerous. We students unanimously replied that it was not a camping trip without them. Fortunately we got our training certification without having to agree with that dictum. And I never had any problems with my scouts even though nearly all of them did catch at least one of their marshmallows on fire, accidentally or on purpose.
@SC One of my autistic things is that I prefer to eat the graham cracker, chocolate bar, and toasted marshmallow separately. I call it a "s'less"!
As a neurologist, "cold neuralgia" opened this wide open for me. However, no one calls it that. For anyone with any pain above the neck, please refer to the ichd3 (international classification of headache disorders, 3rd edition) which is available for free online. BRAIN FREEZE is actually cold stimulus headache, classified as 4.5. I am intimately familiar with this. About 20 years ago, for (I think) my wife's 25th birthday, my friend brought over his own home fashioned beer bong. He had professional levers installed to ensure that we could fully control the flow. However, being the snob that I am, I declined bonging any beers. Instead, I decided to bong a frozen Margarita. Yes I did it. WORST BRAIN FREEZE EVER. DO NOT RECOMMEND. Also, @Steve L, this should make me older than 20...
@DocP Didn't you say the other day you were celebrating 20 trips around the sun? Or were you in some kind of time-space anomaly? (Or was I?) (I did think that your handle belied a 20-year-old reality, but then again, there was Doc Gooden.)
One of my favorite things about Friday crosswords is the ability to open up the column for hints. Moving the column within the app rather than in the separate New York Times app makes it so much harder to get quick answers, since I have to toggle back-and-forth a bunch. It has made my crossword puzzle solving experience worse :/
This is Zachary’s first themeless puzzle out of ten in the Times, and I hope it’s not his last. It gave me the perfect mix of whoosh, slow motion, and in-between. I had fun, my brain got its workout, and there were sweet periods of even-ness to amplify the extemes. What a gorgeous black square grid design, looking like two hooks, or maybe two J’s. I’ll go with the latter, since the puzzle begins with the sing-song JIBJAB. A sweet moment: Being stumped by [Totally missing the big picture?], then after getting NEARSIGHTED through crosses, with a big “Hah!,” grokking that clue and bowing down to its cleverness. Lovely answers in DON’T RUB IT IN (a debut), THATAWAY, and SAMMICH. Lots of zing, with all six triple-stack answers in the SE and NW having appeared in the 80 years of Times puzzles but four times or less. Wow! The uber-low number of black squares (28, ten less than a typical Monday) allows for a sea of white, and Zachary filled it with interest and junk-be-gone. Man, Zachary, you hit my sweet spot with this. Thank you, and more please!
@Lewis I'm an old fart and still say sammich 😁
MAC x DAN x MANGA x ARTUR x CERES x RUDI is a truly insane section. pretty easy to find where the puzzler gave up and mailed it in. way too much trivie - this puzzle didn't want to be solved and was not enjoyable.
Charles, I just spoke to the puzzle. It did indeed want to be solved, and it is very sorry you didn't solve it.
@Charles As someone who refuses to use the Internet as an aid, that section killed me as well. I finally solved that part, but it was a very slow solve and felt way more like a Saturday than a Friday. Note: even after I got my gold star, I still had no idea whythe answer to "Tahoe runner" was "mac". It finally hit me that mac could be Mac short for Macintosh. I still don't like it, because the actual computers that run Tahoe would be an iMac or a MacBook.... I highly doubt that an actual Mac, which was released in 1984, would run the Tahoe OS. Am I wrong???
@Charles I do not understand how 'Tahoe runner' = MAC
@Charles and @Daily-Solver, I got almost all of those from the crosses. Except MAC. As a long time (OG!) Mac user, I refer to the fact that I work on Mac, all my computers are Mac, and my IT environment is a Mac shop. If I need to differentiate, I will specify the MacBook Air, or the Mac Studio, etc., but in general, they are all Macs. The alternative catch-all in all those sentences is PC.
A puzzle that truly made me say, "Girl, I don't KNOW." Not much fun for me and a lot more lookups than I've had to do, but in the discomfort is where skill improves. Glad to see many did enjoy this one. (And relieved that xwstats rates it as "very hard.") Still chasing that 7 day streak, but I'm taking my mom to a protest tomorrow and trying to get ahead of some school deadlines...so I don't think it's in my near future. Have a good weekend, y'all!
@Joanie When I looked back at my solves, I was amazed at how long it took me to get to a 7 day streak. Months and months. Stay safe!
@Joanie After 50+ years of crosswords I still look up stuff. Sometimes it’s a matter of understanding the way a constructor thinks and sometimes you have to look at a clue from several angles. The fun part is when the lightbulb goes off. I used to let streaks rule my puzzle life. (Lost a 270 day Wordle streak and was crushed) I’m a much happier person with a solve however I get there.
I'm sure somebody thought this was a Monday, but I found it a proper challenge, and for the right reasons, too, mostly - misdirection and indirect clueing. I needed Saturday time to solve the puzzle. I was tempted to look up a few things in the trivia-heavy NE corner - it was the only bit of the grid I did not enjoy, as being stumped by arcana never feels great. ATALANTA was my only gimme there. In the end I managed to deal with it on my own - I just checked Wikipedia for Morse code terminology: I'm familiar with dots and dashes (also in Polish: kropka/kreska), and even though DITs and dahs appeared in these puzzles before, I just can never remember them, as they seem non5en5ic@I to my Polish brain.
@Andrzej No Monday here. This puzzle resides well within the upper foothills of the Friday mountain range.
@Matt On Spring Hill maybe? Not too close to Armageddon though?
@Andrzej DITs and dahs seem non5en5ic@l to my English brain too. Just call them dots and dashes people! There's probably a really interesting explanation of why they're not... ...ok, I looked it up, it's because of the way operators used to vocalise the Morse Code. So they needed short and long syllables, "di dah di dit" (they used di and dit for the short tone, but we'll never see "di" in a crossword...). Hopefully writing this down will forever cement it in my mind.
@Andrzej the dits and dahs are for when you are actually speaking morse code as opposed to talking about it; dah is naturally longer than dit, so for SOS you'd say dit dit dit dah dah dah dit dit dit.
Bravo! Standing ovation! I've been defeated by a Friday NYT offering and I am absolutely delighted! This is how it should be if the famous gold standard is to be honored and maintained. I am 62 years old and had never touched crosswords until 5 years ago. Even Mondays felt like a foreign language, one I was really bad at trying to learn. While I struggled with feeling dumb and not cultured enough, my long-time solver friends called me brave and persistent and admirable. I have nice friends. Really, I was just stubborn. I read every article on how to solve NYT crosswords, lurked in the comments, studying and learning from the tireless veterans who teach and elucidate. I relied on auto-check and began understanding lateral thinking, figuring out misdirects, using logic and deduction, gaining experience with language patterns. I was finally learning this foreign language. And yet, I'm still not fluent in it. Hence, when last week I was finishing a Friday and Saturday puzzle in 16 minutes, with no lookups, no stepping away, no "check puzzle" halfway through, and none of Deb's recommended chocolate, I knew something was terribly wrong. (Continues in reply)
My learning trajectory continues. I am, as I've said, delighted that I've been defeated. And I'm deliriously happy for the veteran solvers getting the chewiness they so richly deserve. Thank you, Mr. Levy, Will Shortz, and editorial team for today's puzzle! With rare exceptions of being on the constructor's wavelength, this is the challenge that an end-of-the-week puzzle should present. I will survive the defeat and I will continue to labor at it, happily mingling alongside the veterans who I'm grateful for and no longer need to fear will abscond to greener pastures. Everyone gets to have their day in the sun. And this is how it should be.
@sotto voce - This is the attitude I so wish more people had. A loss is a learning opportunity! So is every clue/answer pair where you don't know what it could possibly be. Some people even get upset if the first entry they try that fits in the grid turn out to be wrong, as revealed by the crosses. I often find I have to change an answer -- I never get angry about it. The entire concept of being angry about such a thing is totally foreign to me.
This was a really tough one for me. First pass through the Acrosses: one answer filled. Next pass through the Downs: one more answer. Third pass and beyond: a very slow fill, requiring a few lookups and a whole lot of creative thinking. In other words, a stellar Friday puzzle. I hope everyone who has been asking for harder puzzles is happy, because this one tried to break my brain. (I’m not complaining.) Also: my husband has a very annoying habit of referring to a sandwich as a “sammich”. He’s an intelligent person; I don’t know how this seeped into his vocabulary. I am not going to tell him that his obnoxious quirk made the NYT crossword.
@Heidi Ouch. I'm sorry to hear that. Even seeing that travesty of a word in the puzzle irked me. Having to hear it, possibly daily, must be insufferable. Stay strong!
@Heidi I'm delighted to see I'm not the only one who gritted their teeth seeing this annoying baby-talk word make it to the crossword!
@Heidi, you do realize that we husbands are obligated to be annoying whenever possible, amping up when we sense our spouse is irritated. Start calling them sammiches yourself, and suddenly you'll hear it from him no more.
Perfect puzzle for a Friday. I didn't try to overthink it, just dropped guesses in, went back and took them out when the crosses said they were wrong, and there the right answers were; e.g, had "Fold" for Hit 22 and thought for one wild moment that maybe I'd misspelled Phooey all these years, then had the Doh! moment and realized it was BUST. Taking out the seat-holders wasn't always necessary—some of them were actually right. I had a wonderful time solving it. I suspect there will be the usual MOANers. but I thought it was ALLOK and then some. Thanks, Zachary David Levy, for a very cool puzzle.
Proper Friday, sir….not just for show.
Now *that* was a Friday puzzle. In the NE, BUnk before BULL and not knowing IGA as clued, DIT, ATALANTA or HUSTON forced me to do some deductive reasoning. GIRL BOSS gave me hives when I was forced to write it in, but at least it was clued as reductive. Then there was the SE. SAMMIes before SAMMICH (both awful), and suv before MAC, slowed things down for a while, making me work for it. Thanks for an excellent Friday puzzle, Zachary. Very much needed. To make my morning even better, the great Joe Strummer with RUDIe Can't Fail: <a href="https://youtu.be/dIVjSZKHKlE?si=ovjcmDdK3SOAbf-W" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/dIVjSZKHKlE?si=ovjcmDdK3SOAbf-W</a>
@Nancy J. Thanks kindly for that! Woke up this morning and I had myself a beer, been drinking brew for breakfast, in my chicken skin suit and pork pie hat. And Joe was a big Pigpen fan… if you make a mistake you gonna pay for it twice.
@Nancy J. Nothing like the Bo Diddley beat to get you moving in the morning. London Calling was/is such a great double album. Soundtrack to my undergrad graduation. Well, at least the parties…
I LOVED this puzzle! I went into it with dread because of its closed off corners, and I got nowhere pretty fast until STENO, ORZO and WEE lead me to BRAINFREEZE and JUSTFORSHOW which opened up things for me. Those got me to JIBJABs which are not your average ecard! They’re way more fun. NEARSIGHTED stumped me way longer than it should have considering how nearsighted I am, and have been since 3 years old. I couldn’t think of a word shorter than short that fit, until I got DAN by guessing which male name with an A in the middle fit there best lol. THATAWAY and Zsa Zsa’s MARRIAGEs gave me back to back chuckles. Loved the Rebel/OBEY opposites for the same reasons I loved its cross’s firs/beeches vs furs/beeches for TREES; the latter being my new favorite clue of all time lol. I could see George sitting in front of RUDI in my head but I needed the UDI to actually remember the name, but I loved the nostalgia. Just a really fun puzzle!
Finished an hour workout, came home, opened the crossword, gave myself another 25 minute workout. Oof! A solid Friday which followed my favorite pattern (I have nothing > this is basically nothing > I’ve gone as far as I can go > okay I know one more answer > oh my god I did it!) I may call foul on the JibJab reference though, there’s trivia and then there’s stuff that had a shelf life of two weeks in 2008!
Wordplay used to open in my NYT app, leaving my Games app separate so I could easily move back and forth to and from the puzzle. Developers, bring it back!
@JSR I thought it was a glitch on my end !
Hmm, I figured all the “old guard” would be pleased with this puzzle because it was difficult. I don’t get it though. Sure, it was more difficult than most Fridays of late. Any puzzle that includes a bunch of green paint (e.g. ham omelettes), bad or obscure fill (e.g. toot at, rudi) and poor cluing (e.g. direction in a spaghetti western - maybe a cartoon western) is gonna be more difficult. Personally I’d rather have a clever puzzle than one that is more difficult for the wrong reasons. To each their own I guess. I think praise of this puzzle just for being difficult sends the wrong message.
@Jeb Jones 100% -- I found it fun but not worthy of the praise it's getting. Sorry in advance for the comments you'll get by kicking said old guard's nest.
@Jeb Jones I prefer a puzzle to be tough due to wordplay and misdirection, but at this point, I'll settle for a challenge any way I can get it. I have to admit though, THATAWAY gave me a chuckle.
Oh my goodness...this is the Friday workout we've all been hoping for. I thoroughly enjoyed every second of this puzzle. I thought I'd need Google at a couple of junctures, but being patient was rewarded with AHA moments.
Yes, now that is a Friday! I loved "No no" for YES especially. The NW was the last to fall for me. I couldn't figure out what the heck "cold neuralgia" was--hypothermia? Nope. I also got thrown by Anjelica HUSTON, forgetting that her name is not spelled like the city. My single nit is PARER. I simply do not believe it is a thing, and I will die on this hill. It's my personal OREO: whenever I see it, I cringe slightly. There is no parer in my kitchen. A paring knife, yes. A peeler, yes. A parer? No! Thanks to Zachary David Levy for a fantastic puzzle!
@Katie Maybe you're the kitchen gizmo, Katie... Mwahahahaha!
@Katie I'm right with you on the PARER. I have a similar visceral response to APER, clued as a mimic. But fill is fill, after all.
Too hard, too easy, too many proper names, too obscure TOO BAD This is a crossword puzzle constructed by a person having a gift. Excessive criticism behind a screen name has unfortunately taken over this column. Some days I get it some I don’t. I just love crosswords. Most days I have one or two fat finger letters and check for mistakes resulting in a blue star. Oh well, there will be another tomorrow.
@Dan Collins I started doing crosswords not too long ago. In order for me to enjoy them and get better at them, I have opted to turn the timer off in settings and just enjoy the game. I am not chasing a streak or beat a time. Some days are easier than others. And that’s fine by me.
I don't remember the last time I disliked a puzzle so much. Just, yuck. I don't even know how to be constructive about it, but very little felt fresh. Not every puzzle is for everyone, so I'm hoping for a more enjoyable time tomorrow.
@Gregg do you mean by enjoyable one that is easier? I’m just seeking clarification. Many of us loved this today just because of its difficulty.
@Gregg sorry this wasn’t your cuppa. I don’t agree with you but I Recommended your post because I like how you expressed it. Have a good weekend!
Annoying puzzle in many ways. MAC I only associated with Tahoe from muscle memory. Had to look to the comments to see the connection. Don't understand how THATAWAY applies to a Spaghetti Western. Unless characters saying that is some kind of established trope, it's a pretty weak clue. The whole ATALANTA crossing was filled with potential Naticks. And don't even get me started on 12A. Ms. Swiatek has a mediocre 6 months and she loses crossword privileges? Not fair!
@Steven M. Not to mention Rita ORA? Actually I’m grateful those were clued differently for a change.
@Steven M. Posse rides up and asks "What way did they go? " "They went that away."
@Steven M. I'm with you on this.
@Steven M. As John Ezra pointed out in another thread, THATAWAY is a common dialectical form of "that way," but the connection to spaghetti Westerns is a sly dig to the way Italians are perceived to pronounce it. There's no evidence that THATAWAY is actually said more in spaghetti Westerns than in other Westerns.
For longer than I'd like to admit I was convinced it was a MOM doing school runs in a Chevrolet Tahoe
@krovadma In my case, I thought the Chevy Tahoe was running on gas, until I finally realized that gANGA and sERES couldn’t be right. To add insult to injury, I just updated my MAC at work to Tahoe last week. D’oh!
Love the column photo of the beautiful new ballroom!
Great puzzle! I love it when my first pass through all clues looks bleak, but slowly I crack each quadrant. Bring me just to the verge of googling something and then it breaks open.
@George Krompacky I agree. My first pass through left a mostly blank grid. I solve on an ipad and like to use the “pencil” feature to try out some guesses. The lighter shaded font reminds me not to hold too tightly to those entries and be ready to change them. Well…little by little some of those penciled in guesses led to more certainty and some aha moments and before long it all fell into place. Enjoyable Friday puzzle.
I thought this was a fine Friday with a lot of interesting entries, some of which were new to me, KDRAMA, JIBJAB, and ARMBAR. SAMMICH certainly made me smile. I liked the combo of THATAWAY and THISONE, and as much as GIRLBOSS is distasteful, it was at least next to a real BOSS woman from mythology, ATALANTA. I had forgotten that origin story but read about her if you want know the rest. I appreciated that even some of the gimmes were clever and funny—firs and beeches instead of furs and beaches. Finally, I think CORER and PARER are the latest KEALOA for me, I always seem to guess wrong.
@SP Well, these days, good luck trying to find a CORER!
AM I OK? Apparently not. An awful lot of phrases, as opposed to long words, which somehow feels like cheating. I accept that it's a legitimate strategy for construction, but it rubs me the wrong way. Well, that's my JAM. Oh, apparently it's not. I knew that the Jetsons had a robot maid named Rosie, but I didn't remember a "computer friend" of any kind. RUBY perhaps? Apparently not. Is JIBJAB still a thing? I haven't seen one of those silly animations in a long time, and certainly never received one as an e-card.
the SMORE does not catch fire, the marshmallow does. You don't put an entire s'more over the flame.
@Dc True, but if you transfer it to the cracker fast enough, you can spread the fire.
ARTUR vs Arthur Rubinstein led me down a rabbit hole to another 5-letter named Rubinstein pianist who happens to be from my home state - Beryl Rubinstein. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beryl_Rubinstein" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beryl_Rubinstein</a>
@Michelle Botwinick I put Anton in originally.
That was a better Friday (even if the TREES clue escaped from a Monday puzzle).
Trivia tidbit: The dwarf planet Ceres was discovered by Giuseppe Piazzi on 1 January 1801, the same day that the Act of Union 1800 was completed - which brought Britain and Ireland together as the United Kingdom, while abolishing the Parliament of Ireland. So Ceres is as old as the UK. But only one of them has a core of water and occasionally remodels its surface by shooting cryovolcanoes of muddy ice into its thin atmosphere.
Somehow, the column's Tricky Clues/Entries are never the things that stump me. I managed to get K DRAMA (which I just googled) thanks to the 22A crossing, but where I ran aground was over there in the NE corner. I had never heard the gossip about ATALANTA's upbringing, but I was stuck at 21A's Malarkey/21d's Hit 22.... and 28S's costar.... I ended up with PUTT for 21D (I don't golf or gamble), PULP for the 21A Malarkey (pulp fiction, eh?) which helped me get actress HUTTON (remember her? Lauren? Tall, space between her front teeth, way back when....?) Well, I tried. So, Zach Levy can hang a head on the trophy wall; go ahead, RUB IT IN. To the victor belong the spoils.
Just WOW -- thank you, Zachary, for this incredible Friday workout. It also happened to be my 300th streak and you sure made me earn it! Well done -- S'MORE of these, please!😊
@Kelly H - Congratulations!
Another upvote on how wonderfully challenging this puzzle was. And such clever clues. This is what I hope for in a Friday-Saturday. Kudos! Maybe I'm a masochist, but I love that sense of dread when I just can't figure a corner out (the southeast today), and then the elation when one good guess makes it all fall into place.
“Tahoe runner” is MAC? Sheesh.
@Joe P That one was a mystery to me, as 49D and also 47D were Unknowns. I only knew ARTUR. However, PhysicsDaughter has a big MAC (ha ha) that The Corps (of Engineers, not the Marines) got for her to use at work. I did think about phoning her to ask, but I don't call her at work (or, at least, not unless there is dire necessity) so I just guessed. I'm no wiser re MANGA (anime? Japanese comic?) but I do know CERES (who has made but brief visit here, as it is already in the 80's every day. CERES is a tease.)
This puzzle had more clunkers than usual.
I hope Sam's photo was not implying this puzzle was a PISA cake. It sure didn't lean my way. Going out for brunch soon, inlaws are in town. No sammiches or ham omelettes, more likely to be saugage and grits with my eggs.
I usually enjoy a challenge but for some reason this puzzle just made me angry. Can't explain it, and not blaming anyone but myself. That's just the feeling it invoked. Oh well. Time for a mimosa and eggs benedict. Cheers!
@Joe I really liked it but I hear what you're saying. Puzzles have a funny and inexplicable way of boring down deep sometimes and tapping pockets of flammable emotional material. I haven't the faintest clue how this works.
@Joe Yes! I can feel myself going grumpy when I cycle through the clues and don't have even a guess at any of them.
Notice that when a proper Friday challenge shows up, no one complains about it being too easy?
@Steve L Yes. The forum becomes much more "civil," too, don't it?
Steve L, But how much money do they lose, for each [Bit of bellyaching] saved? :)
@Steve L Oops. I complained. Sorry. ;-)
Xword Junkie, I noted your complaint!
Solvers who found this a very hard Friday (compared to Fridays over the past couple of years) are in good company. <a href="https://xwstats.com/puzzles/2026-03-27" target="_blank">https://xwstats.com/puzzles/2026-03-27</a>
@Barry Ancona, generally when I find a puzzle difficult, my time goes up by a much great factor than 19%. Took me 100% longer than it normally does today.
A proper Friday challenge! Thanks, editors! More please! Here’s hoping this is the start to a great puzzle weekend.