@Chris Daylight come and we want go home.
Very convoluted for a Tuesday puzzle. When I read that the maker had done mostly Saturdays, it made more sense.
The last clue I couldn’t get, despite having a family member with this disorder, was OCD. Because it’s not a habit. It’s a compulsion. I feel like this clue perpetuates a common misunderstanding about a very serious disorder.
@Jill The word "force" in the clue gets at the idea that it is a habit you are forced to do, which describes a compulsion in a crossword clue sort of way. I have two siblings who have struggled with OCD for many decades. We've had discussions about how much more it's talked about now than it used to be. They both appreciate that, as long as it's normalized without being trivialized. I think the clue walks on the good side of that line, but I understand your discomfort with it.
@Jill That one bothered me too. As someone on the autism spectrum, I have often seen the attitude that we're choosing to be this way, as though we're indulging in bad behavior. So the notion that OCD is a "habit" like biting your nails rubbed me the wrong way, because it implies a level of control that isn't there. Like you could just stop if you put your mind to it, as you would a nail-biting habit. It's not a habit; it's wired into our brains.
@Jill I get a bit uneasy when people casually say, “It’s my OCD kicking in.” I had a sister who struggled with OCD, which became intense enough that she required several medications. It’s an extremely debilitating mental health disorder which led to her spending years in a care facility. I totally understand where you’re coming from. I’m not upset that it popped up in today’s puzzle, but it did bring back some not-so-happy memories for me. I remember, I move on. Thanks for bringing this to light.
@Jill agreed. Very poor clue that oversimplifies and misidentifies a disorder.
"I can't think of any more supervocalic words!" "I guess you'll have to throw in the vowel." ("O, sometimes I wonder Y I talk to U.")
@Mike MY hUmOr Isn't dEcAf (though I had to use US orthography!)
@Mike I shall cast a spell on thee, and tie thy tongue, varlet!
@Mike I'm glad we can count on your consonant presence here.
Spelling out “KAYO”? Please. Weak sauce.
@Jeff B Not really. It's been around forever.
Sports page usage. Maybe you read the obits instead.
This is a niche nit, but this comment crowd is full of niche nit nuts so i feel I’m in the right place to vent: ETON is *not* a prep school! It might be what the Americans call a prep school but it’s a British school, and in Britain a “prep school” is a private primary school, while Eton is a private secondary school. So if you went to Eton and asked the pupils how they liked their prep school, they would tell you about place they studied before Eton. Because Eton is not a prep school. (In fact, in Britain a private secondary school is known as a “public school”, but that’s another level of complication… let’s not get started!)
@Petrol I wouldn't call that a nit at all, it's an incorrect clue.
@Petrol If I reported that I was out with my British friend in London and he had escargots for his entree, my American friends would think he had snails for his main course. Sure, my British friend would call it an entree, but it still wouldn't make sense to an American audience. See what I'm getting at? In Britain, ETON is not a prep school. But that's what it's considered in the US. And this is a US paper and a US puzzle. The clue works for me.
@Petrol Thank you, I was heading here to highlight the same nit. ETON, as you explain so well, is most definitely NOT a prep school. It’s also not an attainable school for 99% of the UK population either, but that’s another story.
@Petrol adding another wrench is the fact that the name of the school is ETON College. Public, private, prep, college... face it, we're nations divided by a common language.
@Petrol “I think I prefer The Office second series.” “Oh, me too. I love Steve Carrell.” “Wait, what? No, the second series as opposed to the first.” “Right, the one in America!” Who’s on first? It is interesting how many words in Britain have entirely different meanings in America. Today, I learned about “prep school” and that I was picturing Eton all wrong. Thanks for the clarification.
A fun theme that had me thinking of examples from recent headlines. [Deep space travelers] ARTEMIS FOUR [Flag restored to Stonewall National Monument] WAVE IT PROUDLY Well done, Mark.
@Anita These are great! And *very* current news cycle — probably too much so for the Grey Lady's crossword schedule, lol. This from yesterday's news: <a href="https://gothamist.com/news/trump-administration-agrees-to-let-pride-flag-fly-at-nycs-stonewall-site" target="_blank">https://gothamist.com/news/trump-administration-agrees-to-let-pride-flag-fly-at-nycs-stonewall-site</a>
So, finding words and phrases that use all the vowels just once, is hard enough, but it can be done. I’m thinking of the GENIUS AT WORK in MOZAMBIQUE who AMBIDEXTROUSLY ate CAULIFLOWER, played the TAMBOURINE, and, while thinking of JULIA ROBERTS and the FOUNDING FATHERS, wrote with a FOUNTAIN PEN. But, getting the vowels in words and phrases just once *in order* MAKES IT TOUGH, and I believe it would make for an involving LATE-NIGHT HOUR activity … okay I’m only saying this HALF SERIOUSLY, please don’t TAKE IT OUT on me!
While I love that "supervocalic" is in fact supervocalic, it bugs me that it's not the vowels in order. Maybe we should rename it to sapervicoluc ... (I am even more bothered that "palindrome" isn't one, but palindromeemordnilap is too long and palinnilap hasn't caught on.)
@Isabeau Noun is a noun, but so are verb, pronoun, preposition, etc. (Adjective can also be an adjective, in an adjective clause or otherwise.)
@Isabeau, At least “supervocalic” is still autological, like “common”, but not “quotidian”.
@Isabeau But then what would we call a word that becomes another word when reversed? I love a semordnilap! Now I'm feeling stressed. Time for some desserts.
@Isabeau i keep misreading “supervocalic” - it looks to me like something that is about to experience an aeruption (of the vowels?)
@Isabeau But is "heterological" heterelogical?
@Isabeau I worry this anecdote will get lost/buried here, but it belongs. I was working with a new assistant, and within the first hour she warned me she had CDO. When I asked, she explained that it was like OCD but in alphabetical order, as it should be. We got along very well.
FWIW, I've never seen FWIW used in place of FYI... always interpret it as more "I'm not sure this adds anything" or something like that.
@Cory That IS what FWIW means. It doesn't mean, "Just so you know" unless a few qualifiers are attached.
I know it has shown itself before, but KAYO really IRES me.
@Joe I came to the comments specifically because that one irritated me so much and I wanted to make sure I wasn't alone.
KO would be fine but KAYO is not? Are you OK with OKAY?
@Joe For some reason I like KAYO. It reminds me of gritty boxing reporters from the '40s. "Sugar Ray KAYOed LaMotta in the 7th!"
Only gripe is kayo, its inclusion into any dictionary makes k.o. and ko feel crowded. Especially since TKO doesn’t have a teekayo sister word.
I have my reservations about 5A's (KAYO) clue, [Bout rout]. A knockout is certainly decisive, taking the bout out of the hands of the judges and their questionable scorecards, but knockouts don't have to be a rout. Sure, Ali's first-round KO of Liston counts as such, but his KO of Wepner in the 15th round, after having been to the mat himself, was no rout. I know, good enough for crosswords, and like the [Hot spot]/DESERT clue, there's some overlap, but a KO isn't necessarily a rout. But the editors sure like those singsong clues!
@Steve L For those who haven't been paying attention, the DESERT clue was a few days ago.
Raising my hand because of course I had IRkS before IRES. Who wouldn’t? BASE as “a safe place to stand on a diamond” confused me. A base IS a diamond. So how could it be ON the diamond? Which is why I didn’t fill this in until my last pass . APPLE ICLOUD is how nobody refers to it, ever. I don’t know. Overall, this was a fine Tuesday puzzle. Some of it just felt a bit forced. Props to Count CHOCULA, though. “I vant to eat your cereal!”
@Heidi Diamond in this case refers to the whole base paths (four lines) - that’s usually referred to as a diamond.
@Heidi 1. me! irk is annoyed/bothered, ire is anger/rage. 2. 'on' is correctly used here. if you where to stand on a diamond, the base would be the safest. the base isn't whats 'on' the diamond, the thing that's being 'safe' is. think of it like, high place to stand on a house: roof. 3. this isn't really true, before apple was the default assumption everyone i knew would specify apple icloud. it might differ depending on if someone was already very familiar with personal tech at the time or if apple was their first exposure? there's definitely a difference between admitting you didn't know something, asking if it's actually common, and claiming your idea must be the obvious one. but honestly, even if it wasn't, that's how these puzzles always are T_T finding out new phrases/terms that are totally normal for thousands of people... as an australian it can make even the mondays difficult ;;
@Heidi I've never heard of it called an "Apple iCloud" either. I got "base" because I'm a baseball fan. I mentioned in another comment that it felt more like a Saturday puzzle. This is just one person's opinion, but I thought it crossed the line from "figuring out the answers" to "figuring out how Mark is trying to show that he's clever."
Well, talk about range. Mark’s last puzzle, in February, was an uber-low 62-word Saturday, with eight answers of 11 letters or more – all of them NYT debuts! It was tough, too. Today’s puzzle hit the other end of the difficulty continuum, but I made it tough by trying to guess the revealer (Hi, @Barry!). I jumped through hoops – looking at the first letters of the theme-answer words, looking at first words, last words, looking for hidden words – until I finally uncle-ed. When I uncovered the revealer, I just shook my head in amazement over how something can be right in front of my eyes, and I just don’t see it. What I did see as I solved were colorful theme answers (well, maybe not APPLE ICLOUD, but look at the others!). APPLE crossing SEED made me think of Johnny, and FROZEN abutting WATER made me think of ice. Mark, word-nerd me loved this theme, and congratulations on your 79th Times puzzle. Please, keep the streak going, and thank you!
That felt quite chewy for a Tuesday over here. I started to panicked a tad when I had nothing on the top line, but MANX offered a starting point, phew. I needed the revealer to get the theme, obvious when it’s pointed out. I’ve muttered in a reply to @Petrol below. As they point out, ETON is in no way a Prep school. I understand @Steve L’s point that it would be considered a prep in American terms, but I would say that if a clue is based on something as specifically British as that school, then the British term of Public school is a more appropriate fit. But, tomayto/tomahto. We won’t fall out about it. Am I to understand that CHOCULA is a reference to a children’s breakfast cereal? Sounds tooth cloyingly sweet.
@Helen Wright I get the British take on that ETON clue, but an American would be lost with “public school” in the clue. In the US, public schools are the system of free education paid for by real estate taxes and attended by the vast majority of school children. Unless you pay to go to a parochial school or a private (i.e. privately-owned, independent) school, you’re kids will go to the public school in their public school district. This is about as far from what ETON is. American public schools also run from pre-K to twelfth grade, not just the upper ages of that group.
@Helen Wright You are correct regarding Chocula. It's a kid's cereal with a cartoon "vampire" on the box- a take off on Count Dracula, I assume. I've never had it, but I'm sure it's plenty sweet and chocolaty.
KAYO, OHDANG and ENS-enough said about this truly ugly puzzle. One of the worst we’ve seen in some time.
A fine Tuesday, more or less themeless to solve. As a Cincinnati transplant, the first job when you get here is to learn how to spell Cincinnati. The second is to eat the chili. (I know, Mean Old Lady, I know).
@SP Been to Cincinnati a couple times, enjoyed my stay each time. Especially the chili. If someone doesn't like it, that's okay. It's okay to be wrong. 😉
@SP My wife's family spent many years in Cincinnati, and that's where I learned about Cincinnati Chili. I really like it.
@SP I was thinking of you when people didn't know how to spell MADEIRA a couple of days ago. I had friends that lived in that lovely enclave of Cincinnati. I try the chili every couple of years, just to make sure that I still hate it. And the result every time is, "I do." Now, goetta, on the other hand,...
@SP LOL Thanks for saving me the trouble! Our last visit, seeing the old Ludlow/Clifton intersection and various closed-off streets (even in the park!) made us sad. I lived in The Brookline for a couple of years, walking to UC for graduate studies. Great neighborhood back in the day....
@SP Never heard of Cincinnati chili, so I looked it up. Oh man, I could eat a ton of that! Actually, we do sometimes. When Babe makes her (spectacular) midwest version of chili, we'll put the leftovers on spaghetti the next day. Hard to beat.
Fun wordplay and an enjoyable solve, though I thought some clues were odd (especially for a Tuesday). “KAYO” for example.
OHDANG, hang on there, compadre - Why's that mutt of yours grinning like he owns a butcher shop? Don't he know it's a fur piece for a fourlegged varmint to trot out WEST? Ain't nothing but RUTS and a sky that'll SCORCH YEW for miles between them RARE WATERINGTROUGHS! AWW, that fleabag ain't got a care in the world. He's ONTHEWAGON! Howdy, pardners!
@Whoa Nellie I tend to scroll past posters' handles very quickly and start reading and as soon as I started reading this, I knew it was you. Welcome back.
I imagine that there's a computer program you can set up that will furnish you with AEIOU-in-order theme answers. Otherwise, having to dream up these answers would be A tEdIOUs process, indeed. The theme was irrelevant to my solve, but might have been more helpful had it been a much harder puzzle. At any rate, any theme is fine with me if it leads the way to long colorful theme answers like these on a Tuesday. A clean junk-free grid and a nice puzzle.
Jim Horne notes: RegEx is great for finding answers that fit the AEIOU pattern. xwordinfo.com
Shouted AIH when I realized for the NTH time that there is no such thing as a MINX cat… Also, I’m happy to see SHIV crossing over from my other latest obsession (Slay The Spire 2)
Excuse me, Mr. Blair, aren't you being a bit ABSTEMIOUS in not meaning that hallowed word? A good enough Tuesday to keep me off the streets and the them GAVE IT FOCUS. I've never heard anyone call it Apple ICloud, but I'm not a computer guy, so maybe there's like, Verizon ICloud or AOL ICloud. Nice little corners, such as Unwed/Undead, the jailhouse trio of Do it! Shiv, Use On made me think I'd better watch my back around here; shot crossing On the Wagon was wicked. Not the biggest fan of ires, oh dang, kayo, but in the end I'm okay with kayo at least. NATO.
@john ezra Never in my wildest imagination would I ever have thought the US would even remotely conside unaligning with NATO and aligning with you-know-who.
DCON/CHOCULA was absolutely a natick for me. Too UScentric. I don’t think I have used the expression to HASH anything OUT but that seemed as a reasonably old Americanism. The rest of the puzzle was a reasonable Tuesday.
@Ιασων I feel like, even if you’ve never seen the cereal before, “Count _HOCULA” should probably be pretty easy to guess, knowing it’s a breakfast cereal. What other letters could fit there?
I was getting bogged down as I tried to speed solve. Slowed down, I took time to smell the flowers. What a delightful puzzle! Nice fill and great clues made for a perfect Tuesday.
OCD is not a force of habit for anyone. It’s an anxiety disorder that’s increasingly difficult to diagnose due in part to inaccurate portrayals in media. Sigh.
@Tommy G I assumed it meant force of habit in the sense that it forces you to do things repeatedly, though it did seem a stretch to me as well.
Although, in the puzzle, we've seen "ire" used a a verb, somehow my mind read it as that old stand-by of puzzle construction, the plural of a normally uncountable noun. Well, the OED cites only one instance of that, from the Wycliffte Bible of 1425 (where, coincidentally, it is spelled "iris"): "He that stirith iris [Latin iras], bringith forth discordis." Early morning--time to shower and shave, with that razor I borrowed from Occam.
@Bill When the puzzle features words like IRES, it bringith forth discordis, all right.
Today's New Yorker, by the NYT's own Wyna Liu, might be the chewiest puzzle I've done in a while: <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/puzzles-and-games-dept/crossword/2026/04/14" target="_blank">https://www.newyorker.com/puzzles-and-games-dept/crossword/2026/04/14</a>
I liked it, Steve. I found yesterday's, from Elizabeth Gorski, just a bit chewier.
@Steve L YMMV. It helped that 22A is an exclamation I use often; 55A was some dandy wordplay. You know I'm always good for a YouTube link--here's a piece by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, often played at weddings (even royal ones), but written for fundraiser cabaret evening called "the Yellowcake Review," to protest environmental degradation in Northern Scotland: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DW2PY9QncA&list=RD0DW2PY9QncA&start_radio=1" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DW2PY9QncA&list=RD0DW2PY9QncA&start_radio=1</a> Off to Gorski's!
@Steve L I"ll get to that tomorrow. I've been working on the puzzles from ACPT. But I did do Elizabeth's, which was more like the ones she's had in the Times when they allowed her to get published. Her more recent ones in the New Yorker seemed to have lost that old sparkle, but this latest one was good.
@Steve L 44A was my favorite.
@Steve L It's great that we can access these without a subscription. That's not true of New Yorker articles. (I just tried to read David Sedaris's latest.) I wonder how long this will last?
@Steve L 44-, 55-, and 58-Across were all fine answers, very well clued.
@Steve L I really enjoyed it, but I breezed through it pretty quickly. I think of chewy as meaning difficult. Now to the Gorski. Thx.
@Steve L That was good. Thanks for recommending, Steve!
@Steve L @Barry I liked Wyna's puzzle and solved without too much trouble, so not overly difficult IMO or is that FWIW? I'm afraid of Ms Gorski, so don't know if I'll attempt hers. Bill T I think you've posted videos with that pianist before? I recognize the space. Nice.
A fine Tuesday puzzle!
Maybe I should take the day off? I spent five minutes wondering what kind of benefits package a Hen gets at the local co-op before my brain recognized that it inserted a dash where it shouldnt be. My brain is officially out of office. (This was in the Midi) Haha!
I’m beginning to suspect that the NTT xword editors have been reading my calendar. On Saturday I reported that I had been doing the xword in the intervals of an adaptation of Olga T’s “Drive your Plows..” Tomorrow I am seeing an adaptation of CLUE, albeit known here as Cluedo. I’m beginning to think that I am going to have to check my theatre programmes every time I attempt one of these xwords.
@Patrick J. Make that NYT xword editors.
Today's poem made from words found in today's puzzle<br> <br> a/ stand <br> stand a while <br> through the angers <br> stand <br> for the defeats <br> stand still <br> stand still <br> d/ one <br> just one <br> the belief of one <br> the practice of one <br> the one in the crowd <br> <br> a/ you <br>
@Peter Valentine please stop with these poems. genuinely.
I loved this puzzle and the theme! FWIW, I didn't figure out the theme until I had everything filled in, and even then it took me a few more seconds. Very clever! I was not clever about Cincinnati, although the question mark should have clued me in. I spent way too much time looking for a more straightforward definition. Probably because I was born and bred in Cincinnati and wanted to prove something to myself.
@Mary I noticed that Cincinnati also had three "i"s and wondered how one would spell that.
@Mary I also (and also a Mary) was born and grew up in Cincinnati, and in my head I still always spell it out letter by letter; maybe in grade school our teachers wanted us to be able to write our own addresses?
Fine, fine job Mark. Ingenious, undoubtedly hard to construct, and fun to solve. Don't wait so long for the next one!
To bring those of you who weren't reared in the US up to speed... Count Chocula and Franken Berry cereals debuted in 1971, with Boo Berry joining them in 1973. here's a video of three commercials, one each from the 70s, 80s, and 90s. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wjgo0cT0x4" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wjgo0cT0x4</a>
Thanks for the reminder that I'm "still single" in one of the clues! (I'm joking. I have no desire to not be.) A more genuine thanks for the reminder of my favourite chocolate (i.e. sugary) childhood cereal. My mom always let me have it. I do miss her.
DRH, U B U. We should also note that many people with partners are UNWED, and until recently some could not be wed.
@DRH I loved Cocoa Krispies back in the 1960’s.
That column photo is worth the price of admission: too cute! (And yet mysterious at first, at least on my tiny phone screen...) Maybe the photo is an apt analogy for this puzzle, because I came away feeling like the theme was quite subtle. Of course it's spelled out right there in the revealer, but it's approximately the opposite of Sunday's theme, at least in my book! The resulting rereading of the grid let me see some wonderful connections (amidst the more banal crosswordese). My favorite is the bottom section: After touching upon the arid and often SCORCHing DOHA, we are treated to a flood of watery images, with the IONIAN Sea crossing FROZEN and WATERING TROUGHS, concluding with the NEAP tide to raise all boats. Very nice to see Mark Diehl's name on an early-week grid. Congratulations on hitting your Shortz cycle, and hopefully we won't have to wait another 41 years(!) for your next Tuesday NYT publication!
Congrats on the cycle, Mark! A smooth -- too smooth? -- Tuesday, with a revealer I did not guess before reading the clue.
Great puzzle today…love seeing puzzles from long time constructors…I’m sure I solved the one in 1985 bc I solved every weekday back then. To Steve L and Barry Ancona: thx for the puzzle recommendations…my husband and I solve Connections everyday so looking forward to the puzzle by Wyna Liu. For today, all NYT puzzles solved…wordle in five sadly, one mistake with connections, medium sudoku puzzle easy today so good for beginners…hoping for a more challenging crossword tomorrow. Happy Tuesday!
Again, I finished 33.7% faster than my average for Tuesdays. Half a minute faster than my Monday average. Yup, I suddenly must be getting much faster in my dotage. That must be it. That's the ticket...
@Steve L I found this one a little trickier than recent Tuesdays, so you really might be!
Playin’ my cwrth in the cwr, singin’ “and sometimes y and w. Don’t be sillY, she said. Well 366 in a row today. Surprised I didn’t give up during tax season, but, well, if they’ve been easier, kept me in the streak. And all the terrific comments here bryng me back. Cwl.
I got hung up on the middle right more than usual for a Tuesday. I think USE ON was hard to get, and then I had no idea what a boilermaker is so that didn’t help. Still fun tho, I liked the AEIOU reveal.
I’m old and could use a dictionary of texting shortcuts.
@Laura Maybe <a href="https://slangwise.com/social-media-slang-words-that-keep-showing-up-in-comments-and-dms" target="_blank">https://slangwise.com/social-media-slang-words-that-keep-showing-up-in-comments-and-dms</a>/
@Laura Don't. Chat-GPT/Al lies like a cheap rug. A recent tragic example can be found here: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/13/well/ai-chatbots-cancer.html" target="_blank">https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/13/well/ai-chatbots-cancer.html</a> Heartrending.
For me. it was a breath of fresh air to see a puzzle by a constructor whose been published here for more than 40 years, as contradictory as it must sound. I just wish the puzzle, while not bad, had been a little more interesting.
Here is a Thursday from the archive I ran across yesterday that owes something to today's puzzle (or vice versa). <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/crosswords/game/daily/2018/11/15" target="_blank">https://www.nytimes.com/crosswords/game/daily/2018/11/15</a>