The entire upper half was superbly done and CRASH BLOSSOMS was a nice TIL moment. BILL instead of SPAM was a fun misdirect too. But CRASH BLOSSOMS crossed with OLGA, PULIS and LILITH was way too Naticky for me and ended up being a super frustrating solving experience.
@Rahul Emus are preventing me from venting, but I could not agree more with your second paragraph. CRASH BLOSSOMS?? Did Adam divorce Lilith? Did he cheat with here on Eve? As far as I'm concerned, this is arcana to the highest degree.
@Francis We've rarely agreed on anything lately - it's nice to vibe once more, at least a bit 😃 I knew LILITH from the show "Lucifer" and the video games "Diablo IV", of all places, naturally OLGA was a gimme, and I recalled PULIS in the end, but I still needed checks and reveals to get CRASH BLOSSOMS 🤷🏽♂️
So glad to learn there’s an actual term CRASH BLOSSOMS! “Milk Drinkers Turn to Powder” “Drunk Gets Nine Months in Violin Case” “Dead Man Noted Among Realtors”
@Cat Lady Margaret CRASH BLOSSOM is a relatively new word, having been coined in 2009. In my world, we called it an "amphiboly".
TIL CRASH BLOSSOM, and the headline that led to that neologism. But as a teacher of informal logic, I have long known the informal fallacy known as "amphiboly", which amounts to much the same thing. And so I have a lot of amusing examples of this fallacy. Here are some of my favorites: PROSTITUTES APPEAL TO POPE COURT TO TRY SHOOTING DEFENDANT FARMER BILL DIES IN HOUSE IRAQI HEAD SEEKS ARMS PARAMEDICS HELP DOG BITE VICTIM Feel free to add your favorites.
@The X-Phile: After posting mine last night, I thought of the subset of these (allegedly) found in church bulletins: “Don't let worry kill you -- let the church help.”
@The X-Phile I'M HAVING MY WHOLE FAMILY FOR DINNER RED TAPE HOLDS UP NEW CONSTRUCTION FOR SALE: ANTIQUE DESK SUITABLE FOR LADY WITH THICK LEGS AND LARGE DRAWERS ....
@The X-Phile This may not quite be the same thing, but I’m reminded of the old New York Post headline: HEADLESS BODY FOUND IN TOPLESS BAR.
VOLUNTEERS NEEDED TO HELP TORTURE SURVIVORS You might think that some of these must be made up. They can't be real. Take a look: <a href="https://www.fallacyfiles.org/headline.html" target="_blank">https://www.fallacyfiles.org/headline.html</a>
BRITISH LEFT WAFFLES ON FALKLAND ISLANDS Just discovered this one.
McDONALDS FRIES THE HOLY GRAIL FOR POTATO FARMERS
I was proceeding briskly until I ground to a screeching halt in the bottom four rows. Spam instead of BILL, tax instead of TAB, fine instead of FAIR, not knowing OLGA Tokarczuk, and a couple of improvidently placed typos took some time to sort out. Also took me longer than it should have to figure out NESTSIN. Learning the term CRASHBLOSSOM alone made this puzzle SOFUN.
@Marshall Walthew I had pretty much the same problems, except that 47D, Olga Tokarczuk, was a gimme. If you need a very thick book for a long plane ride, I recommend her novels.
Oh, superb Saturday! Areas of whoosh, areas of fierce battle, upper-tier punny clues, and freshness … the kind of gotta-love-it freshness like the aroma of a bakery. I’m going to focus on that. Out of the 13 long answers, 10 are NYT debut answers. Gorgeous answers, such as AVOID AT ALL COSTS, CALL IT IN THE AIR, NO MEAN FEAT, THAT SAYS A LOT, and WHAT HAVE I DONE. Wow! A puzzle pulsing with gorgeous freshness has magic to it, like the inventive work of an artist that makes your jaw drop when you see it for the first time. Sealing the deal were the stellar parallel clues for two of those debut answers: [Rued remark?] for WHAT HAVE I DONE, and [Flip remark?] for CALL IT IN THE AIR. You dazzled me, Kareem, with your last puzzle (2/12/26), with its brilliant Valentine’s Day theme, and the dazzle continues today. You have the talent and you put in the work. Oh yes, more please – and thank you!
When I ask my chatty car salesman friend where he works, he says a lot. (He's always calling me on his sell phone.)
@Mike And here I thought you’d pick the low hanging fruit and take the forestry pun, but I guess tree jokes aren’t very poplar these days.
@Mike You've seen the shop and you're sure he's not a butcher? No offence, but he could be selling chops.
@Mike Some friendly advice: If a used car salesman calls you on a sell phone the *last* thing you should say is “buy”
The bottom section was unsolvable for me. You can probably guess my only gimme there. I tried to figure out the other clues for some 20 minutes but then I just gave up, resorting to checks and ultimately reveals. I'm only ashamed of not getting ACDC sooner. The crossing of NESTS(o/I)N and SAK_ was a natick, for me. Yes, I don't know all the names of all the people in the world. Some hold it against me but somehow I don't think that's fair.
@Andrzej I spent almost half my time at the bottom of the puzzle. Not being sure of AC/DC and for some reason thinking that OLGA was Onur didn’t help. Perseverance paid off in the end.
@Andrzej Nests in is totally unfamiliar to me, though gettable in context. No idea about Saki. That said, another easy Saturday for me, sadly.
@Andrzej I'm sure that if you were to provide the constructors with a list of all the name in the world that you *do* know, they will be happy to limit themselves to that elite group.
@The X-Phile I really don't understand the condescension. What is it motivated by other than malice? Do *you* know everything? What makes the things you know better than the ones I do? If I get stumped by factual knowledge clues should I just keep quiet? If your aim is to belittle me it's not working - I see posts as yours as testament to the author's character.
@Andrzej Agree! Was stuck on that section for ages and finally needed 4 or 5 look-ups to complete it.
For some reason DIGITALSHORTS made me think of Sponge Bob Square Pants.
AFTER DOING SATURDAY’S PUZZLE, NYT PUZZLER SAYS BOTTOM LEFT HARD
@JohnWM PROCTOLOGIST RECOMMENDS CHILDREN'S SOFT STOOL
Okay, who’s coming here to say it was too easy?! As Bart Simpson might say while making an online comment, you can eat my DIGITALSHORTS
Excellent puzzle! A good mix of fun and challenging. Thank goodness HEADS OR TAILS didn’t fit for [Flip remark?]. I had enough trouble with that section. I’ll add to the CRASH BLOSSOM fun …. Farmer Bill Dies in House Jerk Injures Neck, Wins Award Eye Drops Off Shelves
That bottom half was NO MEAN FEAT, but all worth it for the fun of learning about CRASH BLOSSOMS. How have I never heard that term before? A few more great examples: “Child’s Stool Great For Use in Garden” “Eighth Army Push Bottles Up Germans” “St John Ambulance to Teach Teens to Help Stab Victims” And then there’s the related, possibly apocryphal, story of Cary Grant receiving a telegram from a fact-checking editor: “HOW OLD CARY GRANT?” His reply: “OLD CARY GRANT FINE. HOW YOU?” Not a crash blossom, just another example of having fun with ambiguity.
@Heidi The "stool" example was new to me. As a lover of amphiboles, I'm happy to add a new one to my list!
👏👏👏👏 Oh yes! That was a Saturday! That feeling when you know for a fact that there are heaps of clues you’ll never get and your weekend is ruined, then you slowly chip away and… it ever so slowly comes together. The anticipation of entering the last letter and hoping you’ll hear the tune and not the withering ‘almost there..’ message… Now I’m in a good mood!
@Gareth The flip side is when that premonition sadly proves true, as was the case for me today. :-( But I've been on the winning side of that phenomenon often enough that I suppose I have no right to complain, lol.
Good one! Took a few passes of the grid, several clues needed lots of crossing letters, a few "never heard of that" moments, plenty of replacing wrong first ideas... Exactly how it should be! Some more fun crash blossoms (from Mental Floss): "Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant" "Milk Drinkers Turn to Powder" "Chester Morrill, 92, Was FED Secretary" (obituary) "Jacksonville Pornography Free, Officials Say"
Oh, and one for us: "Gator Attacks Puzzle Experts"
Alex, The "one for us" was in the column.
CRASH BLOSSOMS is now the name of my fantasy girl band. I eternally regret not having taken a photo of a sign at a motel in DeKalb Illinois many years ago, advertising FREE WOMEN IN BUSINESS SEMINAR
@Patricia Henry I regret not taking a picture of the Castro Theatre marquee when the director's cut of a 1971 film was released in the 80s: KEN RUSSELL'S UNCUT BOYFRIEND
I was feeling quite smug as I raced through the long spanners, then I hit the bottom set with a CRASH. INXS briefly before accepting no long span would begin with X. Settled on AC/DC then spent an inordinate amount of time staring at white space. Sheepdogs? No. Author? No. I don’t watch SNL so that was a blank. As for 55A, blimey. So TIL several things, which is good. I can get on with my day with a light heart.
@Helen Wright I originally went with INXS, too. I don’t think I knew AC/DC were from Australia.
@MOL At least you had the A, and hopefully you mow know that Abba is from Sweden.
Why does my reply to MOL, typo and all, appear before her comment???
@Helen Wright That was my experience, too. Bottom third was hard; the rest easy. I'm surprised xwstats says "hard."
I know the song "Strange Fruit" made famous by Billie Holiday, but didn't retain (if it ever registered) that the TREE was a poplar. What I do recall is that the lyrics were an original poem by a Bronx schoolteacher, Abel Meeropol, who at one time had James Baldwin as a student. Meeropol was an open leftist, and adopted the two sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg when they were executed for espionage early 1950s. All old history now.
@Leapfinger "Strange Fruit" came up on shuffle just yesterday. I don't know the lyrics cold, but I got it once I had the POP.
@Leapfinger Had to go through the lyrics in my head to get that one. Old history to us - unknown to most now.
Merriam-Webster has an interesting piece on crash blossoms: - <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/crash-blossom-words-were-watching" target="_blank">https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/crash-blossom-words-were-watching</a> A quote from the entry: A headline blares "Whale watching boat carrying 27 sinks," and you wonder: Why is the whale watching a boat, and how can you tell that it's watching the boat? And why was the boat carrying 27 sinks? A missing hyphen can give rise to a lot of questions!
@RichardZ And here I was thinking it was the whale that sank!
Fun top 2/3s. Absolutely brutal bottom third.
@Joe My experience exactly. Flew through the top ⅔ then came to a screeching halt especially in the SW. Fun puzzle all told.
Another hand raised for the “raced through 90% of the grid, then spent most of my total solve time staring at the last ~10 squares in the bottom-left corner” category. Btw that’s a pretty brilliant corner, considering that I was able to fill it in without knowing OLGA, PULIS, DIGITALSHORTS, CRASHBLOSSOM, or LILITH (though that last one did spark some familiarity once I got it from crosses). The combination of guessability and ambiguity for FAIR and AFOUL, along with the inferrability of ACDC (who I would have sworn was an English band until just a few minutes ago), provides a great foundation for the rest of the corner.
What an odd puzzle for me. The top half felt like a Monday. For each of the first three across entries, the phrases were the first things that popped into my head. A brief check with the downs confirmed them. Then came the bottom half. One unknown after another. Was Adam married to Lilian? No idea about the dogs, never heard of DIGITAL SHORTS (sounds like something you would put on a naked cartoon character), the wonderful but new to me CRASH BLOSSOMS. spam instead of BILL and fee for TAB further complicated things. The first 7 rows represented 13% of my solve time with the last 8 accounting for 87%. I would have preferred the top half to be more Saturday like, but the bottom more than made up for it. It was a LOPsided but ultimately enjoyable solve.
@Nancy J. My experience exactly almost down to the percentages. I was drafting my latest post complaining about Saturdays getting to easy and then had to refocus my attention on the puzzle! Even so, would have loved it if the top two-thirds had been half as challenging as the bottom. Always more fun to go way over my Saturday average time than sneak in just under it!
I’ve enjoyed the puzzles this week while away on our spring break. I liked seeing ATHOS, ETHOS and OATHS in the same grid. On our drive today, the Talking Heads song Once in a Lifetime popped up on our playlist twice which includes the line, “My God, WHAT HAVE I DONE?” <a href="https://youtu.be/5IsSpAOD6K8?si=8WdCn9TUj94iQDx1" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/5IsSpAOD6K8?si=8WdCn9TUj94iQDx1</a> This has been a challenging week personally as our daughter got her wisdom teeth removed a couple of days before our trip started and ended up at the ER on Monday night. Doing much better, but wow, I’m exhausted. I need a vacation after my vacation!!
@Jacqui J. Ooooh I hope she’s doing and feeling better. I hear you. Some years ago on a trip to Williamsburg, our younger child needed an emergency appendectomy. My wife and I rotated staying in the hospital and doing touristy stuff with our other children and grandparents. My wife and child ended up staying an extra five days after we left until kiddo was good to fly. Someday I’ll see Williamsburg. 😊
I am not sure I'll have any company when I describe my experience with this puzzle... I started right in the center and just whizzed through the entries, both long and short. Knew SHEPARD, knew SAKI, knew ACELA, knew COE College, knew PELE, knew LILITH....Pinged on all of the longer phrases down to a certain point...Filled in the SE (slowing down) and then... I ran AFOUL of the band, the writer, the dog, the 'term', the SNL feature, and ran out of gas. TEN letters I could not figure out, all clustered in the corner, sneering at me. Wow, Kareem. Ouch. Take no prisoners, eh? I hope my old white head looks good up on your trophy wall! I'm headed off to lick my wounds. Next week at this time DHubby and I will be packing for our flight to Seattle on Sunday. Here's hoping that on the following Sunday--the 26th of April--some Puzzlers will see fit to visit Cloud City Coffee in "Maple Leaf"--early afternoon--for a Meet-up. We can put some (actual) names and faces to our cruciverbal friends.
@Mean Old Lady Have a wonderful time MOL
@Mean Old Lady I can't wait to finally know you in real life, as well as all other Wordplay participants who choose to join us! I'll be the one wearing a badge that says "Hello. My name is... sotto voce" hahaha ;-)
Way cool, @MOL! Don't forget to take photos, and post links to the mugshots.
OLGA Tokarczuk is one of my very favourite writers, so I was delighted to see her featured here. Would recommend everything she’s written to those who haven’t heard of her, but ‘Flights’ (which won the 2018 Booker) and ‘Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead’ are particular favourites.
@NotMandatory Now imagine how great she must be in the original Polish. Refined simplicity is her style, and it's the most brilliant Polish prose ever.
@NotMandatory I too enjoyed Flights. Drive Your Plow and The Empusium are in my queue.
@NotMandatory I love her too! The only paper I've ever published is on Drive Your Plough and I'm 60 pages into The Empusium. Am really enjoying it, can't wait to get to the end of the day to keep reading :))) Would love to be able to read her in Polish.
As a relatively recent crossworder I'm not ashamed to say that I wasn't even close to completing that one. 6 correct answers out of a dozen guesses when I gave up (I would have got the playwright if I knew the correct spelling of his surname!). Kudos to those who managed it.
“You’re going to try to scale El Capitan *that* way? Why the *long* face? “ (“Because of all the spring flowers growing at the bottom. You know - the crash blossoms.”) This puzzle went up and down, in terms of difficulty.
@JohnWM You make some interesting mental connexions, JWM. Highly morbid, yet down-to-earth, as it were.
Really like this one even though it took me forever to get the bottom half. Great to learn about crash blossoms!
Update #2: Woohoo! The bottom half crumbled as well. Then I didn’t get the music. Then I went over the whole puzzle across and down and couldn’t find anything. Then I thought maybe NESTSIN and SAKI rather than NESTSoN and SAKo. BINGO! For those people who have not been doing this as long as some of us (and there are people who have been doing it a lot longer than I have), this is one of those puzzles that challenges veterans. The thing is, it didn’t get me angry. It was wonderful. Including breaks, it was 48 minutes. And, I used no help whatsoever. If you have to use help, I agree with those who say use it. It’s how you learn. It’s just never the way I learned. Maybe, for me, nothing beats the thrill of really, really thinking I’m stumped and never going to get it. Then, I solve it. It can actually carryover into life. That may sound weird and so be it. Thanks to the constructor and Will for their fine job. It was tough and fair. The way I know this is I eventually got it. That’s all that counts. This is one of those occasional puzzles where those of us who “complain“ about how the puzzles are easier get our wish granted of tougher puzzles.
Honest question: how do you solve puzzles like this if you don't know the trivia? I didn't know ACDC was Australian (I tried "inxs"). Never heard of OLGA Tokarczuk. Never heard of PULIS. Kept switching between "spam" and "junk" for BILL, and had "amnot" for CANSO. Never heard of CRASHBLOSSOM nor DIGITALSHORTS. Never heard of COE, and had no idea BAATH was Syrian. The only two fills I had in the lower left corner were LILITH and HERO. The whole thing really made me feel bad.
CNB, Honest answer: I use the crosses.
@CNB like Mr. Ancona, I use the crosses but I also use Google for what I don’t yet know…that way I add to what I do know in the long run…learning something new is never a fail. PULIS are the cutest dogs!!! I had not heard CRASH BLOSSOM before but now I know. Also: after my first few go through, if I don’t have much, I read the first part of the column. If it’s worse than that I read about the tricky clues. I edge my way in for solves in baby steps I guess. Hope that helps. I’m 62…I’ve learned there’s always going to be more that I don’t know…keeps living interesting…keeps solving interesting, too.
@CNB Absolutely *none* of the trivia in the bottom-left corner was in my wheelhouse. So how did I get it without cheating? Slowly! That corner alone took me as long as the rest of the puzzle combined. In a bit more detail…AFOUL and FAIR aren’t trivia, they’re just under-specified; and at least for me, CALLITINTHEAIR was pretty easy once the last couple words were in place. With that leading C, it didn’t take me long to guess ACDC (despite the fact that I would have bet decent money they were English), and from there it was only a matter of time for AFOUL and FAIR. That leaves out a few squares…but hopefully you get the idea.
@CNB don't feel bad. I use the crosses at least 95% of the time, but I've been solving for toooo many years! I'm not ashamed to look something up, though. As MaryEllen said, learning something new is never a fail. It just adds to your knowledge base. And, after all, we're only competing with ourselves.
@CNB I also tried INXS a number of times.
@CNB Take a break. That’s the only thing to do. Come back half an hour later and you’ll be amazed at how much more clicks into place. I haven’t been stuck on a full corner for years, but the SW was very challenging. (If you started with LILITH, then that’s a pretty good foothold to come back to.)
@CNB Hard to retrace steps exactly. I did know COE (a great crossword reference to have in your back pocket) so that got me CANSO and OATHS and ETHOS. That triggered BAATH which got me BILL. Had the L in LOP but couldn’t quite pull out LILITH yet, but knew it couldn’t be SSN so once I got PIN that triggered LILITH. By then I had enough to get CALLITINTHEAIR and that gave me AC/DC for the band, and could guess OLGA. Fell pretty quickly after that. But knowing COE at least was pretty important. Seems like there’s always an in somewhere.
@CNB I never comment on here but as an owner of a number of Pulik over the last 40 years I take issue with 40 Down. The plural for a Hungarian sheepdog is not Pulis, it is Pulik. The same goes for Hungarian livestock guardians, they are not Komondors, the plural is Komondorok.
@CNB So interesting! I got stuck on the upper right (NW?) part of the puzzle. Highly recommend this book by Olga T: "Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead"
@CNB The only things I knew for sure in the lower third were BAATH and ACDC (I was pretty sure though I did flirt periodically with ASIA as I tried to make something work). From there I figured BILL was likely, but not certain. Same for ETHOS. And I eventually plugged in HERO though I had not heard the quote. After some more mucking around, I got INTHEAIR, SHORTS and BLOSSOM and TAB in place. Then the real work began. I eventually plugged in AFOUL and FAIR seemed likely. I finally figured out PIN but even then I was stymied, trying desperately to come up with a woman’s name for 38 Down, and hoping a dog breed would occur to me. I densely did not recognize CALLITINTHEAIR or DIGITALSHORTS as correct even when I had them in. OLGA seemed likely based on the likely ethnicity of the last name, but that was a guess. Finally LILITH showed me the light. So, to answer your question, by spending far too long on a crossword puzzle, my brain somehow finds a way.
That bottom third made this the hardest puzzle--for me-- since I started solving around Xmas. Streak-breaker with three lookups AND an autocheck to correct 3 bad squares. Not complaining.
Could not let go of INXS in the SW corner even though it had to be wrong. They are still in my head as an earworm, despite now listening to Don Giovanni on the Met Opera broadcast. <a href="https://youtu.be/F93ywiGMDnQ?si=W3lIS_tAdnvCptOf" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/F93ywiGMDnQ?si=W3lIS_tAdnvCptOf</a> Finally I gave up and revealed the parts of the puzzle in the last three rows that I couldn't figure out. I don’t really like doing that, but sometimes I just have to put myself out of my misery.
Tough grid to build? Well, it certainly was a tough grid for me to solve. The southern third of the puzzle baffled me for quite some time. This was a very worthy Saturday challenge for me. Thanks for the fun!
Still irritated that the link to wordplay column doesn't open a browser window like it used to, but stays inside the app. Why?
OLGA Tokarczuk. I did this crossword this afternoon during the intervals in a brilliant stage adaptation of Drive Your Plow Over the Bone of Our Dead. (Belvoir St Theatre)
@Patrick J. Wow, talk about synchronicity! Could it be a I-should-play-the-lottery kind of day? :-D
Good to know that 'Tokarczuk' is the name of a minor planet, as well as a literary star. OLGA deserves a prize for the title alone of "Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead".
Update: took another look at the top part and it all came together in about four minutes. I’m trying the bottom some more. Still no helps.
A sunny little SO-FUN Saturday, hafta hand it freely that there's NO MEAN FEAT to WEEPOVER. Beautifully colloquial long ones that almost make it easy to remember the Comte de la Fere was one of Dumas' Mousquetaires who HELD EPEES, if not rapiers or sabers. Admitting problems with wanting two Ts in my MASERATIS, as well as a geographic marker along I-95, like the Macon-Dixon line... instead of ACELA Now comes the bottom & the WEEPOVER, despite a fair start with PULIS (Hungarian), LILITH (Cabala), BAATH (from somewhere that stores AA words) and BILL (don't we all?)... I *knew* ACDC was more likely than ABBA, but *really* wanted FEEL IT IN THE AIR and CAPITOL SHORTS, Also thought TRASH BLOSSOM more appropriate than CRASH BLOSSOM, having never heard of either. Didn't help that Tolstoy got in my head with his "All happy families" quote, which had me go with HOME where HERO should have rested. So it was a slow rassle with that miserable retort at 41D, and a look-up of the suspected COE University, sadly not on my radar till now. Finally realizing that 51A was a *coin* flip led the whole gallimaufrey "home" All in all, enjoyed the hand to hand combat with Kareem A, and will AIR my one working nit in a reply to self
@Leapfinger noticed: The right side of the grid seems FAIR awash in testosterONE and MANly symbols: Besides the free-standing MAN HEMEN HERO PELE RAM NARC MASERATIS TTOP ATTACKER TAB (Hunter) BILL (He's Just My MAN) On the Left: Only OLGA and LILITH, maybe supported by DRS (some have no Y-chromosome) and HATS And of course BILL (paying our share) Looking at only quality, THAT SAYS A LOT; but if you consider quality, it could be a draw. Now I need to know: do DIGITAL SHORTS come in Bermuda length? Have a happy summery weekend and SAKI Toomey.
I join the ranks of those who were introduced today to Crash Blossom. Tip of the hat!
That felt like a typical Saturday during the solve, but was over sooner than I expected. Hadn't thought of CRASH BLOSSOMS for a long while but was happy to be reminded. of it.
CRASHBLOSSOM made it a Saturday. No complaints on difficulty. A great puzzle.
Ιασων, A great puzzle indeed. CRASHBLOSSOM made it a Friday.
There was a lot to like about this puzzle, starting with that beautiful, impressive, unusual grid, that provided for a lot of longer answers. And the longer answers were all colloquial, none felt forced. (The only clunker, to my ear, was NESTS IN, but that's nothing to complain about.) Some beautiful clues, my favorites being "Flip remark?" and "Plug amount". And the amusing crossing of FAIR and [A]FOUL. A few too many gimmes for this solver, but I'm not going to complain about the inclusion of OLGA Tokarczuk and Sam SHEPARD. And the Fitzgerald quote was both amusing and insightful. So, a big Saturday thanks to Kareem Ayas!
@The X-Phile Wasn't sure weather anyone elae would notice crossing FAIR/AFOUL. OTOH, I liked seeing OLGA T, and also was OK with SHEPARD because of PULI, you know. Admitting my soft spot for all Hungarian dogs, but will remain cautious about imposing VIZSLA upon this room <a href="https://share.google/kRPkwyqJ9n0oM4htG" target="_blank">https://share.google/kRPkwyqJ9n0oM4htG</a>
@The X-Phile Maybe you should provide the editors and constructors with a list of your gimmes so they can avoid them in future. (I'm learning from the best)
Dear Kareem, Thank you for a really great Saturday puzzle. Just the right mix of word play, trivia, new and old references and a fresh fill to make it a slow burn and a fun fill. 👍 Jimbo
I thought the SW would crack me. It’s been awhile since I’ve had to take a break, walk the dog, and pour a second cup of coffee. Whew!
finished the top half in 5 minutes and the bottom half in 20
Raced through the top and west/middle muttering under my breath about pandering puzzle editors, etc. etc. and then almost committed seppuku (i.e. did a look up) after 30 minutes on the bottom stack. Man, that was close! TIL what a CRASHBLOSSOM is after just hail-Marying it and CALLITINTHEAIR bedeviled me until I realized it could not possibly end in HEADS. Overall serious slalom despite the top bunny-slope start. WHEW!
@Matt I had the same experience as you, up to the first “etc.”
I'd heard of SAKI as an author but wasn't familiar with either of the titles in the clue. "The Open Window" is listed as one of the most anthologized short stories in the English language. Short and worth a read! <a href="https://americanliterature.com/author/hh-munro-saki/short-story/the-open-window" target="_blank">https://americanliterature.com/author/hh-munro-saki/short-story/the-open-window</a>
I just wanted to leave a note that this puzzle totally got me. I’m actually weirdly happy about it. I didn’t stop in to get any clues. I will come back to it now and then and I really don’t see how I’m going to get it. I have very little for the long ones on the top and the long ones on the bottom. Kudos to the constructor.
@Jake G I see you finally got through it 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼🎉 I thought it was a great challenge as well
Flew through the top, then came to a screeching halt with two confident own-goals in the lowest tier: INXS (also from Down Under) and SSN (also memorized). Cost some time to unwind those, but enjoyed the solve.