Liked the puzzle except “Go IPO” is not a thing. It’s either “go public” or IPO. “Go initial public offering” doesn’t make sense and isn’t used as a phrase. Tripped me up because it was so awkward.
@Erk Clue felt a bit awkward, but it’s not unheard of. It’s more commonly used when describing the strategic decision of a late-stage startup: “Will OpenAI stay private or go IPO?”
@Erk While I absolutely agree with you, it may change soon. A bit of searching tells me that "going IPO" is a phrase that's used, and I came across both a company called GOIPO and several of mentions of "Asian GOIPO" conferences for companies that want to learn about going public. But as of today, I can't find a single use of the slang term GOIPO, so I'd say it's not *yet* a thing.
This bespeaks seriously questionable editing. If GO IPO is not a phrase that people use, what is it doing as a NYT crossword answer?
@Erk I agree that it sounds awful.
@Erk I cannot say with certainty that GOIPO "is a thing", it certainly sounds like it could be a thing, plus I got the answer, so as far as I am concerned, it is close enough for crosswords. Move on.
@Erk I hear this phrasing alllll the time in my corporate job.
Note to editors, who do such remarkable work. I have a request, and I’m guessing I’m not alone in this request. For years and years, Thursdays were not only marked by trickiness, but were also tough to fill in, often as tough as Fridays and Saturdays. As one who became skilled at solving the more difficult puzzles through doing Monday through Wednesday grids, I loved the process of cracking a tough puzzle – thinking laterally, learning oft-repeated answers, seeing answers with fewer and fewer letters filled in. By being tricky, Thursdays were fun, and with the layer of difficulty added to it, they became riddle-fests supreme, requiring brain-loving effort, and bringing deep satisfaction. Recently, the difficulty has dropped, shifting Thursdays closer to the early week rather than the later week, and as one spoiled by how things were before, I have to register my discontent. You provide puzzles for newer solvers not only Monday through Wednesday, but also in the minis and midis now offered. Oh, I love puzzles such as today’s, with its wit, beauty and humor, but I would have loved it more had it included more rub. Please shift Thursdays back to where they used to be, and, IMO, where they belong. Thank you.
@Lewis Thanks Lewis this was eloquently written and spot on with my own thoughts. And perhaps you are a better man than me, always separating your bigger picture comment from your kind words about an individual puzzle that may have disappointed you with its difficulty level but otherwise had merit.
@Lewis And here I was thinking my NYT crossword puzzle skills were continuing to improve. Way to turn my day upside down. 😉 But you managed it all in such a civil and articulate style that I can't even hold it against you.
@Lewis and all others with the same feelings Please email the editors directly as well at: <a href="mailto:Crosswordeditors@nytimes.com">Crosswordeditors@nytimes.com</a> There's no guarantee they are reading our comments on a daily basis. Of course there's no guarantee they're reading our emails either.
@Lewis I agree in spirit, but then look at all the people who didn't even know the word WAN....
"What an unusual layered dessert!" "Nah, it's parfait the course." (But it was still berry good.)
Mike, Have you seen the really decadent one they call “parfait sεx”? Another name for it is apparently “sin on a mousse”.
@Mike You have been MiA! I thought you might have become discustard with puns and ceased to commint.
I wonder how frustrating it must be to move through life with a disposition that compels one to complain so vehemently about the difficulty of crossword puzzles. People are ruthless. My heuristic for a good Thursday puzzle is: "Did it make me smile when I figured it out". The answer today was yes, absolutely. Cool idea in this theme! There were a few answers I didn't love (GOIPO is meh, NETWT isn't fully an abbreviation...), but that's cool. Also, I wonder if the people complaining about difficulty have ever considered the fact that when you do something for years you... get better at it... which makes solving ... easier....
@Marshall - Well I guess I did these puzzle for 30 or 40 years without improving at all,, but in the last one year, BANG! Suddenly I've become a much more adept solver! Occam's razor disagrees with that assessment. So does a quick perusal of the archive.
@Marshall Those who have been solving for 50 years, 40 years, 20 years, 10 years, etc. all seems to agree on the time when the puzzles became easy. The puzzles are now significantly easier, no two ways to look at it. To argue differently is just ignoring the facts.
@Marshall Look, it is frustrating. Let me put it another way for you. Suppose you are a good skier and get a rush out of difficult runs. (I’m not). Your favorite resort used to have multiple runs, easy for the newcomers, medium and then difficult ones that you got the most enjoyment out of. Suddenly they decided to get rid of the harder slopes—maybe it was getting too busy with newer skiers and they needed to free up more runs for them (let’s assume they had a way to reshape those so they were not as steep). Or if that doesn’t register with you, what if you are a great golfer and they suddenly redid the holes at your favorite golf course to make it less challenging. Wouldn’t that be frustrating? Wouldn’t you complain? What’s the problem with that? Why do we have to be belittled because we want more of the vibe that we used to get from the NYT crossword?
@Marshall Translation: “The crossword puzzles continue to suit my own tastes and skill level just fine; and anyone who feels differently needs an attitude adjustment.” This, too, is a pretty common genre of comment around here.
@Marshall Perhaps people, of either opinion on the appropriate level of difficulty of the puzzles, are not intentionally insulting those who disagree. Maybe they simply saying, "Consider my opinion." Either of the two perspectives most frequently expressed regarding this issue could be the most important consideration to those who decide. IMHO, what matters to them is likely to include both and a number of other things that we may not have thought of. Maybe there is an answer between the two extremes. Maybe we are even seeing it? Just a thought from someone who feels strongly both ways.
I guess I’m going to be the first negative Nelly today. I have a lot of respect for Ms. Lin usually but what the heck has happened to Thursdays lately? They are rapidly turning from my favorite day to my least favorite. Early week puzzles seem to be getting more interesting (I enjoyed all of them this week more than today’s) and Friday and Saturday, while getting easier, are at least still engaging and have a share of fun clues. But Thursdays have lost all spark. This theme while cute doesn’t seem worthy of a Thursday. Two themers use the same trick and the other two were just ho-hum. (I admit I was looking for angel food initially for the “rings on top”.) Any enjoyment I might have had was squelched by the inordinate number of gimmes—again seemingly even more than the early week puzzles, are they trying to overcompensate for a trickier theme? Finally it’s a turn off when your first two clues are so clunky—agree that GOIPO just doesn’t sound like something anyone would say on Wall Street, and while BACH IT is a thing I can’t imagine anyone actually writing it that way. I know it’s officially a spelling—but it sounds more like playing Baroque music and I would desperately avoid writing the phrase down, or if I did would write it BATCHIT although it’s equally clunky. Also thought the ADORED and POSER clues were just off. Just to add a positive at least I did like the “oil bigwig” clue and the clues for WAN and FROST. But those were my only bright spots, to be brutally honest.
@SP I came to the comments to see if anyone else felt the same way about today’s puzzle as I did. You have the same complaints and bright spots as I did.
@SP Interesting that you say two of the themes use the same trick. When it is a rebus square puzzle, often the “same trick” is used 4 times in one grid. Eg writing RED in for direct l different cells. I actually was happy there were two different ‘concepts’ used in the grid. “Do you think this company will go IPO?” Doesn’t sound that off to me. Just like saying “that company went IPO, last year”. But I guess you always look for things, when you want to hate. It is what it is. If that term hasn’t made it in a grid, it needs to.
@SP Would it have helped if there were no circles?
@SP For me the puzzle was impossibly difficult, with few gimmes 🤷🏽♂️. I needed to check it and use reveals to finish. Of course, my being Polish was to blame - I don't know the names of many American desserts, and the two themed entries that looked like gibberish when read the standard way simply confused me too much. BANANA SPLIT was a gimme, and BLUEBERRY CRUMBLE was gettable, but of the other two I just got the fruit myself. (No, Jim, I'm not angry about any of it) Even though I used checks and reveals, the solve took Friday time, and I actually failed it, not being able to grasp the whole theme myself.
@SP It's a nice Wednesday puzzle. It's just that, once upon a time, Thursdays were special. I've got a book of Thursday puzzles somewhere. Maybe I'll see if I can find it.
@SP thank you for not being a Debbie Downer.
What a lovely touch to have every dessert be related by fruit. What a brilliant way to illustrate CRUMBLE. What fun wordplay, turning these desserts into letter manipulation riddles. For me, this was a playground of a puzzle, and enjoyment is what counts most, of course, in how good a puzzle is. This is also a quality build. What are the chances you can get four fruit-dessert answers to fit symmetry, as Barbara did? Also, when answers go diagonally as SPLIT does, it greatly constricts the surrounding answers, and look at how cleanly Barbara filled it in. Look at the lovely answers NOODLE BOWL, UMBRA, NANOBOTS, PEALS, TIFF. Look at the lovely [Damage caused by a mole, maybe] for LEAK, a new clue for an answer that has appeared almost 300 times in the major crossword outlets. So, I loved this never-done-before theme, I loved uncovering it, and I loved the art of the artist that made it. Thank you, Barbara, for this day brightener!
@Lewis Except I had to give up the silken fur of an industrious digger for the furtive turn-coat that is a spy....sigh.
@Lewis I think both kinds of moles cause LEAKs -- spies leak out info, garden critters eat into plastic sprinkler pipes. Clue works either way! Clever
Wow. Tough crowd commenting today. I found the puzzle delightful. And one to build confidence in those afraid of entering the Thursday- Friday-Saturday realm.
@Tracey Until I retired, I only did the Sunday through Wednesday puzzles because I didn’t have enough free time for the tougher Thursday-Friday-Saturday ones. When I retired 9 years ago, I for one wanted the challenge of the end of the week crosswords. I didn’t particularly want to have my confidence built; I wanted to conquer puzzles that I found daunting. Just my opinion, of course.
Barry Ancona: I heard that you mentioned in the comments for Wednesday’s puzzle that longtime commenter Robert Michael Panoff had died some months ago. I remember reading his comments and am sorry to hear that news. I also remember a photo of you and Mr. Panoff at an eatery when he visited NYC. My condolences for the loss of your friend.
Eric, He was an online friend to many here, and a regular at the North Carolina meet-ups. I met him in 2022 when he was in New York getting a second (medical) opinion. I'm relinking yesterday's post for those who knew him and missed it. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/shared/comment/4f8nf8?rsrc=cshare&smid=url-share" target="_blank">https://www.nytimes.com/shared/comment/4f8nf8?rsrc=cshare&smid=url-share</a>
Times Rita, You're thinking of Martin (whose last name I'm blanking on). He posts in the 2016 comments in my link yesterday. He was as you describe, and a test solver, and he guest-wrote a couple of Wordplay blogs (before Wordplay was a column).
@Eric Hougland @Barry Ancona I'm so sorry to hear this. I met Bob a couple of times at the NC lunches, but sadly had to miss last summer's gathering. He was lovely and very funny. He will be missed.
I enjoyed this one. The first penny to drop was the Pineapple dessert at which I laughed out loud and my partner wanted to know what had happened! Then it was smooth sailing after that...liked the circled answers too. Thanks Barbara, for an enjoyable puzzle,
A cinnamon babka, a crème brûlée, and an Oreo met at the Dessert Support Group. They were lamenting how they were unlikely to ever show up in a dessert-themed crossword puzzle. Babka: “What’s the use? Everyone knows I’m the lesser babka. I won’t get chosen.” Crème brûlée: “Yeah, I always get burnt in the end. No way will they use me.” Oreo: “You guys have it better than me. I’m just a crossword joke already before they even think of including me in a theme.”
Wouldn't two of the answers literally(or at least more literally(literallier?)) just be B A N A A N N A A and B LU EB ER RY ? Hmm. I'll leave it to others to decide which ones are litteralliest.
@ad absurdum I think that’s a good point.
@ad absurdum Change one R to a B and you’ve almost got what a lot of comments here are!
@ad absurdum I think you just put your finger on what bothered me about this puzzle. Two of the entries illustrated the theme, two almost did but slightly missed the mark. Your way is better. Even more so without the circles!
@ad absurdum Yeah this was my issue. Instead those answers read as redundant. BANANA SPLIT [split]. And BLUEBERRY CRUMBLE [crumble].
Well, I enjoyed it. Clever theme and it took me a while to tumble to it, and... that was the big turning point. I thought it was especially neat that each of the theme answers used a slightly different trick. S S B B M M U U H H T T And I'll put my puzzle find today in a reply. ...
@Rich in Atlanta As threatened: A Thursday from February 2( (!) 1995 by Bob and Sharon Klahn. Some answers: WOODCHUCK GROUNDHOG SIXWEEK And... one 16 letter answer down the middle of the puzzle with the first letter extending above the top: P U N X S U T A W N E Y P H I L Here's that link: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=2/2/1995&g=48&d=D" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=2/2/1995&g=48&d=D</a> ....
@Rich in Atlanta LOL VERY cute, dear Brother.
I just love a Thursday FunDay! I'm sitting here getting my tires changed giggling as I "got it" on the first big down clue. So much fun and pffflllfftt to the negative comments! Go pop a kid's balloon!
Amen, amen, amen to Lewis's post -- begging the NYTXW to bring back REAL Thursday puzzles!!! Listen to Lewis, for heaven's sake! While I complain about many things, Lewis never complains at all. But this deliberate dumbing down of the Times puzzle is a real slap in the face to the sophisticated solving community that the Times has created over many decades. I credit Will Shortz, btw, for his huge role in creating that community. To the best of my knowledge, there wasn't a Times "Puzzle Team" during most of his tenure -- and it seems to me that when the "Team" arrived, that's when the crunchiness of puzzles -- especially Thursday puzzles -- began to ebb. Please respect our puzzle-solving chops, NYT, and bring back Thursdays that are worthy of their name!!
Nancy, Will has had a "team" for years, if not for decades. The change came, IMO, when crossword puzzles became Games.
@Nancy Agree with you, for the most part, but the “team” includes Joel Fagliano, Ian Livengood, and Sam Ezersky who have written some of the most devious puzzles ever so I think there must be some larger directive. (I am not trying to slight the female editors, Wyna, Tracy and Christina—just the first three stick out in my mind as tending toward trickier puzzles). I can’t imagine them making the puzzles easier without some specific intent.
@Nancy You probably didn't notice, maybe you weren't posting here that often, but starting in the pandemic years when many, many more people signed up to do the puzzles, on Thursdays there were often hundreds and hundreds of comments complaining that the Thursday puzzles were too hard and too tricky. (Which is probably also there's an Easy Mode Friday now) Lord help us if there was also a rebus involved. Those people won.
@Nancy Huh! And I thought I was just getting better at Thursday puzzles! I agree that there should be no dumbing down of Thursday challenges despite this one being about my speed. After all, one needs more difficulty in order to improve, and I have improved mightily, imo, in my three years of CW solving. I was pretty bad, lol.
@Nancy I believe you are right about Robyn. When hers was the first Friday puzzle Easy-Moded, she expressed unhappiness with it, not sure if it was in her comment here or maybe xwordinfo.com.
@Nancy Robyn's comments are found on xwordinfo.com accompanying her July 21, 2023 puzzle.
Crossword puzzles are not designed for one of us. They are designed for all of us. Some of us love a particular style; some of us hate that particular style. Some of us are just happy to have puzzles to solve and games to play, and to wake up and play another day. Some people think "comments" means spew and whine. Some people think "comments" means complain online. But a lot of us like the comments to share and ask and create community. If you don't like the puzzle, oh well. Do a different one. As for me, I'm keeping my glass half full.
@Marlene I completely agree. Entertainment is quite subjective and crossword puzzles fall into that category. Unfortunately this forum like many allow contributors to hide behind a screen name. Today’s puzzle was clever and as some say, crunchy. It took me about 12 minutes less than my average because the lightbulb went off early. Yesterday I was still scratching my head 3/4 through. Like Clarice sung to Rudolph, there’s always tomorrow! Ear worm intended.
@Marlene Complaining about complainers who complain. Got it.
I got interested in writing about Jeopardy when Paolo Pascal was a contestant there. Paolo is one of our favorite crossword constructors. One or two commenters have thanked me for keeping them up on Jeopardy stuff. The current champion is Jamie. He is amazing. He won his 19th game and has over half a million in earnings. He almost always goes into Final Jeopardy with an enormous lead. But last night was a close call. He was in second place going into Final Jeopardy! But Jamie wagered well and all the contestants missed the answer. The "answer" was something like: [A name that was chosen to show size and strength and also Irish heritage]. And the "question" was "Who is Hulk Hogan?" I have to brag that I knew two answers on Jeopardy last night that none of the contestants rang in on. One was about the location of the oldest structure of a civilization in the Americas. The answer was The Andes. The other was about the (supposed) purpose of the Phen-Fen pharmaceutical: weight loss. (Look it up!) I hope this is not too off-topic. I've noticed that commenters in this forum discuss their pets, their health issues, their travels and everything else. Champ Jamie is so amazing. I don't know how anyone can know all that stuff. And always charming!
@lucky13 I too have enjoyed watching Jamie. He is so low key and unflappable, and yet I find him very entertaining.
@lucky13 Your posts about Jeopardy are always welcome! You're sharing with us one of your interests as many do here. Cheers!
@lucky13 With all due respect, off topic comments don't do anything to improve the forum. It's one of those "What if everybody did it?" things There's a Reddit group on Jeopardy that would be a much better place for this.
I delighted when I saw “ __ R I S” as “anatomical ring” and smiled in admiration as I pencilled in a “B”….
Lots of fun here, even if we're really not supposed to play with our food. Thanks, Barbara. Non-word complaints starting in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 ...
@Barry Ancona You mean people are going to go BACH IT?
@Barry Ancona not in the non word category but wouldn’t you agree that GOIPO is bad grammar? It’s not that I expect it in a puzzle but that one irks. 😀
@Barry Ancona no complaints here, my sweet thoot was all adrool. btw, thanks for those links in yesterday's comments; 10 years feels like 10 minutes. condolences.
I enjoyed this puzzle. I enjoyed the different tricks. I like fruity desserts. Thank you.
Oh, NYT Crossword, how far you have fallen. Thursday puźzles have become such a letdown. This was especially disappointing. If you're going to give us such a simple trick, at least make the fill less straightforward. Just give us *something* to work out. Thursday has become an extension of MondayTuesdayWednesday.
@Nancy J. They used to be by far my favorite. Now it’s so rare to get one that’s truly clever, or even tries to be. I think part of the issue is that they always highlight or circle the “interesting” parts now, which makes the trick too obvious.
ENO back in da houzzz. He’s so talented, I kinda like that his name is so convenient for the puzz. Today was fun. But I’m going to go full-on broken record by saying a secondary, tougher clue set for us old fogeys would only be a good thing. Zero downside. I’ll happily write them. No charge. Consider this a formal application, Deaf Ears.
@CCNY Before Brian came to prominence, the clue for ENO was [Wine, combining form].
Delightful theme today. Enjoyed this one a bit
Very enjoyable puzzle, Barbara….thank you. I thought many of the clues had a decent amount of ambiguity to make it challenging in spots, and the theme was a positive spot! Some don’t consider it a proper Thursday unless there is self-flagellation or an injury involved. Finished roughly 15 minutes ahead of my Thursday average BUT I think I got very lucky on many first guesses ( NANOBOTS, FROST, RHINO, etc) and therefore had a fairly accurate foundation for the rest of the full. Knock-on-wood I don’t regret that statement in the future!
@Dean I had PARKA for so long for 28D, but once I'd finally admitted to myself that it must be wrong the crosses fell into place and I cursed myself for having been so literal-minded. 🙄
A dessert made of what's missing from another dessert? DONUT H_L_S Dessert (?) that's a polite term for what I shouted when the president declared 70A COW PIE A dessert some people get in a twist about? OR EO RE EO RO OO A dessert that has all the right angles? LEMON FOUR NINE SIXTEEN (I.e. lemon squares)
@john ezra lemon squares is brilliant 🤣
The problem with this puzzle is the questionable editorial decision to run it on a day when I must fast;
@Leslie I’m in the same boat, currently awaiting shoulder surgery. If coffee or water had been clued, it would’ve been downright cruel:-).
@Leslie When I first started to fast, and had not yet adapted to it, I happened to rent a Korean movie that featured, for no reason connected to the plot as far as I could see, several scenes where groups of people were sitting down to large multicourse meals and enthusiastically wolfing down what looked like some really good food. By now, though, that kind of thing doesn't faze me much. I'm actually fasting now...not because I need to fast, but because I'm travelling today and need some extra time to prepare. I still did the puzzle, of course.
Sweet theme. There have been so many food related entries today, I’d swear the editors are testing my resolve to lose a few pounds by making me think about the desserts I’ve been missing. Once I saw BANANASPLIT, I figured out PINEAPPLEEKAC and APPLENRUT pretty easily. I needed some crosses to come up with the final theme answer though. I thought there were some clever clues, my favorite of which was Joey of kid lit for ROO. Mark this one down as another fun puzzle, that went down a little easy.
The constructor writes: "I limited myself to fruit desserts, even though my chosen desserts almost always include chocolate." Just to cheer her, I would like to point out that I never saw a banana split without hot fudge!! A perfect dessert--or lunch. Think of all that potassium!!
@lucky13 …and dark chocolate has magnesium!
This was an interesting puzzle. It provided less of an “aha” moment than a “oh, THAT was it?” realization. I figured out the SPLIT split pretty early on, and then guessed correctly on the jumbled CRUMBLE. But the EKAC and NRUT realizations only came after the crossings filled them in and the “congratulations” screen stopped my plans to fix what seemed to be gibberish. One the one hand, it’s my fault for relying on the circles to identify the tricky parts. But on the other hand, why circle only half the parts? Pick a tricky lane! Aside from all that… I can’t let a ROO reference go by without a shoutout to my beloved dachshund, Roo. But these references are starting to become bittersweet. Little guy has developed dementia and given his advanced age, I’m not sure how much time he has left on this planet. Today, ROO clues are still joyful. Soon, they may be painful. But I’ll enjoy each one as long as I can. Having gone through this many times before, the only thing I know is, it’s never long enough.
@Heidi Aww. My sister has had sweet dachsies for many years, and you're right - it's never long enough. Her last pair were sisters, Snickers and Sophie. And I agree with you on the circles - let's be consistent.
@Heidi I agree! It bothered me that only half the themed entries has circles too. Either circle them all or leave us to figure them all out sans circles.
Normally don't have cake for breakfast, but nothing wrong with a doJELLYnut is there? Nice slow reveal to this puzzle, like the 'proper' way to eat cake, one small bite at a time
I absolutely loved this one! So clever. Must have been a challenge to construct.
no one has ever said "bach it" ever.
I have. So have several other people who so posted earlier.
Had me fooled almost all the way to the end. An ideal Thursday puzzle!
Brian ENO! It’s been a minute, homie! Clean puzzle. Nice assortment of tricks. A nice dessert tray. A worthy Thursday methinks. My biggest nit is NOODLEBOWL. I’m not feeling that. Is this green paint? Or am I just not in the know. I feel like I’m pretty informed on Asian cuisine. Never heard the term BACHIT. I’ll have to do some research on that. It doesn’t sound good my ear, but I’m sure I’ll find a ton of memes on the term. Thank you constructor Lin.
@Weak I don't know the official-ness of noodlebowls, but it's something my spouse and I started making at home when we don't know what else to eat. The broth is always Asian inspired. Dashi, ginger, soy. But the accoutrements are whatever is in the fridge. So it is a very fusion dish.
@Weak I’d say NOODLEBOWL is an official menu item and not just a dish that happens to have noodles in it.
@john I guess I’m too trained to think specifics. pho or ramen or udon or beef noodle soup. Though the idea of a chipotle style noodle soup joint would probably do very well.
@Weak BACHING IT was a pretty common term years ago. Am I showing my age?
This was lots of fun, and perhaps more challenging for me than it seems to have been for some others. (Life is too short to read ALL the comments!) It took me some time to understand all the very clever misdirects, like “Oil bigwig?” I tried way too long to think of something to do with oil wells 🤔 Need to remember why constructors use question marks in clues. Thanks to the whole team. All my puzzles done for the day now except Connections. Gave up on it this morning but will try again later. Sometimes it goes so breezily and sometimes it has me scratching my head and running out of tries. 😳
@Shari Coats I didn’t get ART CURATOR either. And for me the beauty of Connections is it’s over fast and then can get to the crossword at some point but I know I need more patience.
@Shari Coats I don’t think I’d have gotten this without help from this page. It was definitely tricky for me, but lots of fun also!
Nice Wednesday puzzle. What? You say it's Thursday? Not according to the puzzle editors, apparently. [Get over it, X. This is the new normal.] And yet, s/he persisted.
This was so fun! I got tripped up on the Pacific Coast clue. Being from Northern California, I put Big Sur of course.
Two comments: First, I object to the “GO IPO” answer, but it seems for somewhat different reasons. I don’t know how Wall Street feels about the lingo, but it’s definitely a phrase I’ve heard in my Seattle / Silicon Valley cohort. But while companies may issue stock in an IPO, it’s the initial *public* offering, not when they’ve started issuing stock. By the time companies GO IPO, they’ve usually issued plenty of stock to founders, investors, and employees already. Second, I’ll join the kvetching about the declining difficulty of the puzzle. I’m content to breeze through easy Mondays and Tuesdays: they should be a toehold. But by the time we get to Thursday, I’m really eager for something to chew on. Instead here I am chewing the fat. If the editors are determined to simplify the puzzle, maybe they could continue the expansion trend and add a new “fiendish” puzzle with historical difficulties for curmudgeons like me.
Isaac, You're right, of course, on both counts. With respect to GO IPO, though, what clue would you have written (since it can't include "public").
@Isaac The argument against GO IPO should not be that it doesn’t exist, but rather that it’s too insider for the general solving public. Of course, we all have seen IPO, and the GO part shouldn’t be too hard to figure out.
Steve, Everything is "niche" to some people (as we know) and you just said it could be figured out. GO PRO is fine. Isaac is not objecting to the answer, he is objecting to the clue.
Loved this puzzle. Just what I needed today. Thank you.
This seemed more a Wednesday than a Thursday puzzle, thematically. The theme was clever, but I think our constructor missed on the presentation of "apple turnover". The TURN should simply have been shifted *over* one column without being inverted. EKAC was perfect for "upside-down cake". But doing it again with NRUT was (to me) a real design flaw. BACHIT also made me wince. Decent puzzle, but not what I'm hoping for on a Thursday.
@Xword Junkie I think the TURNOVER would have been more amusing with O-V-E-R presented as a right TURN. Or, even better, a left TURN, which would have allowed it to be backwards.
So disappointing for a Thursday. Weak theme, bad opening clues, as have been discussed. Nothing very clever or interesting. And most important, about as difficult as some recent Mondays (although this past week I think Monday was harder than Tuesday) I look forward to Thursday puzzles for the challenge, but there was none. I've liked Barbara Lin's puzzles in the past, but this one didn't pass muster. Sorry.
I myself have used the phrase BACH IT in conversation. But I've never seen it in writing before. What's funny [peculiar] is that, written, both BACH IT and BATCH IT look wrong. One looks like you're baking up a BATCH of cookies, while the other looks like you're going to listen to some of BACH's fugues. Weird.
@The X-Phile Exactly. I’m not against the phrase at all, but the only time I would put it in writing would be if I was transcribing a direct quote. If I were a novelist, for example, I would just find another way for the character to express it rather than write either down.
@The X-Phile - We generally say "baching it", but "bach it" is easier to fit into a puzzle.
Today's poem made from words found in today's puzzle<br><br> a/ you live in the sea <br> and wear the skin of a shark <br> you live in shadow <br> and wear the skin of a man <br> you live in a wall and wear stone skin <br> you live in fire and wear no skin <br> and d/ with your coat of laughter you change <br> the music you change the world <br> you change you <br> change <br> a/ as i crumble <br> <br>
Got a later than usual start on the puzzle last night because I kept getting messages that the NYT servers were problematic instead of seeing the puzzle. So my time was a little longer than usual due to the late start and the fact I took a short unintentional nap while on the puzzle page. Other than that, I like puzzles from Barbara Lin, as they always are interesting, and this was no exception. Thanks, Barbara.