All I can say is PHEW!!!! I predict this is going to be a controversial puzzle for a lot of reasons, but I absolutely loved it. It was like a puzzle within a puzzle within a puzzle. First I saw the title and said, ok, we are looking for the odd letters in the entry (that’s the cryptic crossword freak in me). Then I saw the circles and said, gee, why spoil it and give it away? But that was the least of my worries. Then I was afraid one clue would just be the odd letters from another which would be a giveaway. Then I thought, ok it’s a synonym of the odd letters, which is better. But then it’s a misdirecting crossword clue for the odd letters—WHAT THE FUDGE? That’s crazy! THEN to top it off, the rest of the fill and clues are no walk in the park for a Sunday either, and we have a real barn burner on our hands! I suspect this will be a bridge too far for many solvers, and that’s ok, I really do understand your issues. But for me, who doesn’t mind some stretchiness in the service of a mind blowing theme, crazy construction skills, and an overall fantastic challenge, this was heaven for me. Glad you’re back, Mark, and I can see why you are a dentist, you like to torture people and this puzzle definitely was like pulling teeth in the best possible way: <a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bOtMizMQ6oM&ra=m" target="_blank">https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bOtMizMQ6oM&ra=m</a>
@SP I don’t do cryptics often so I don’t know all of the common indicators, but I have done them and enjoy the format. I immediately thought those clues ending with “oddly?” seemed like a cryptic clue. But does “oddly” in a cryptic clue indicate looking at the odd letters? I would have thought it was an indicator of an anagram.
@SP I did not have time for the puzzle this morning but after pulling up the most recco'd comments, and here you are, I'm going to dive in. Thanks.
This one was more brutal than it’s been for a long time for me. KENKENSEY and ENTENTE crossing with RIESEN (not ReESEs!) and SENTA all looked so unfamiliarly familiar to me. That combined with SATATOP (not SeTATOP) crossing with AEC, TASS, and ACHT gave me an aching foreboding that I’d be spending hours tediously flyspecking the grid. Thankfully, I got it early on, but this seemed much gluier than usual!
WHAT ARE THE ODDS? that people will enjoy this puzzle? I have no idea, but I thought it was great! Mark Diehl likes to have fun with words, and this puzzle delivered fun words. Fine Sunday fare for me.
@Barry Ancona What are the odds‽ I couldn’t even with this puzzle
@Barry Ancona Odds are that the opposition will come out and they did. I want to see what their submission would look like. I for one thoroughly enjoyed it.
Woof. Not my favourite. Too much American university sport nonsense. (TCU, ACC). A lot of euro-languages which isn’t the worst, but felt like a crutch here. Some spelling variants I didn’t love like AMON-RA instead of AMUN-RE. AORTAL instead of ATRIAL. A lot of abbreviations like PHYS URBS CIRC EDS. OBTUSER is, fittingly, obtuse. The theme itself was equally weak. I think this didn’t meet my expectations of the standards of the NYT crossword.
@Selective Walrus I really didn’t enjoy it either.
@Selective Walrus - Amon-Ra is also another US football reference. Amon-Ra St. Brown is a wide receiver for the Detroit Lions.
@Selective Walrus AORTAL is not a spelling variant of atrial. It's referring to the aorta, not the atrium. (Amun vs Amon (vs Ammon vs Amen) is the unfortunate side effect of transliteration, and is one where, if it pops up in crosswords, I just put AM_N and let the crosses decide.)
Fine fine puzzle, a doozy! Good to see the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Sticky Pad here, the semordnilap-esque SATATOP (my Bostonian sister in law absolutely says POTATAS), the semi-homonymal connection between ALMOND MILK and AMON RA (hopefully there were other options to pour on his Wheaties in the Luxor of YORE), and the clever RIESEN / ENTENTE verbal hairball there in the west. Me, I'm a DERN tootin' man, and also a one-D "YADA YADA YADA" but no complaints. Different oarlocks for different orcs. And also good to see Ezra. My man, a hero of spiritual reform. In the Book of Ezra, exiled Jews in Babylon, part of Persia (Iran) are allowed by Cyrus to return back to Jerusalem, and it is chronicled how they rebuilt their main Temple and resumed their covenants, partly under the leadership of Ezra. Which is to say that the conflicts between Jews and Persians are ancient, and our feckless leader has stepped into a MUD HOLE he doesn't understand. Or does he? He might be getting his intel from TASS. He vaguely senses something is not quite right, but is constitutionally incapable of ENTENTE. Ah me. What I wouldn't give for No Drama.
@john ezra the conflict was with the Babylonians. The Persians were the good guys. All the way up to 1979.
@john ezra John, I know your last name is Ezra but let me set you straight on a few things. Babylonia was what is now Iraq and the Jews were initially conquered by the Babylonians and exiled. Cyrus was indeed Persian but he conquered Babylonia and very kindly allowed the Jews to return. Meanwhile some Jews stayed in what would become both Iraq and Iran and coexisted very comfortably there for two thousand years, thriving and respected even when the Muslims came to power—the Talmud was written there, and Jews flourished until the mid 20th century. I know, because my wife’s family were Jews from Baghdad before antisemitism grew after WWII. So, whatever you think of the Iran/Arab/Israeli conflict, it really is a fairly recent development as history goes, certainly quite less ancient and well rooted than the Christian/Muslim conflict which goes back to the Crusades. A recent documentary “The Long Journey Home” by David Kahtan documents this history very well and tells a largely untold story since most Jewish histories tend to focus on Ashkenazi Jews and the Holocaust, and this history is less well known.
I'm just so tired of excessive trivia and non-English word porridge that is served to us as adjacent and crossing entries with no resolve. One cannot simply guess a proper noun as any letter can follow any letter in a proper noun. And if enough crosses in every word are missing, then the whole section is unsolvable. I am just so so tired of all this. After doing the bottom right section and then revealing some of the answers I am just so done with this. AHME indeed! I don't even want to solve the top left. I know I can do it but I don't want to. I have no interest left in solving those two theme entries there. And I guess that is the biggest loss any puzzle can face, not when people are irritated or annoyed, but when they get so tired that they lose all interest in solving further.
@Apurv - You may want to relax your own rules and google answers when faced with almost impossible to know things like Reisen and Senta. This one had quite a bit of German influence. You will be an expert on a South Asian puzzle.
@Apurv Foreign Solver A: This puzzle is too American! Foreign Solver B: This puzzle is too foreign! How do we resolve this? Cage match?
Urbs? Urbs??? URBS???????? :-(
The informal word may not be used much in the Lexington (KY) Metropolitan Area, but it is in others. <a href="https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/urb" target="_blank">https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/urb</a>
@Ann But it made so much sense! I've never heard it either, but of course folks would say that. Somewhere, folks would say that.
@Ann Lexington may not have "urbs", but it has the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government, the wonderful LFUCG.
Cannot stop…but have added a few hyphens to try emu evasion. There’s something NOT QUITE RIGHT about that ACCOUNT REP. She’s really odd. Those BARBARIANS dared to publish a non-sensical THINK PIECE in the NYT. It was really odd. KEN KESEY may or may not have paid CHILD SUPPORT to Jerry Garcia. It was really odd. BRIDGET JONES offered a LOW DIGIT as the over/under on how many dates she’d get with Mr Darcy. Namely, three. It was really odd. It’s NO EASY TASK to write a symphony just using a bunch of STICKY PADS. It’s really odd. No one GIVES A D-A-R-N that you’ve built a gazebo out of PLASTIC SHEETS. It’s really odd.
CLM, Brava (and successful evasion).
@Cat Lady Margaret, you made this task look easy! You've been on a roll lately, CLM.
@Cat Lady Margaret. And even odd that KEN KESEY never paid that child support to Grace Slick. At least he took Jerry on his knee.
I liked the idea of this puzzle. I absolutely hated the execution. The theme was clever, and I would say well done. But the puzzle was ruined for me by all the short (3 and 4 letter) acronyms and obscurities. I can accept obscure answers/spellings and the occasional lousy short fill here and there, but it felt like this puzzle was absolutely littered with it. When it feels like the words are stuffed in there just “to make it work”, the puzzle loses its appeal - and that was what a lot of this one felt like.
I don't know if this will qualify as a "proper" Sunday, but I can tell you I spent almost as much time flyspecking than actually filling in. Like many, I got caught in the RIESEN/REESES trap. Took me forever to figure out what [A as in Austria], which I thought was a brilliant clue. I also loved that an "acute" angle is NOTQUITERIGHT. And STICKYPADS for "nests" was also quite the delight. Great puzzle!
Loved the theme of this one, and therefore I’m extra disappointed that it’s let down by some of the filler words and clues here: - don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone refer to a winning party as the INS. I understand the logic but it’s beyond clunky. - I’m struggling to think of an OBTUSER way to describe PSAs than “spot for charity, say, in brief”. That’s just inanely vague. - a HD TV SET is not a thing. It’s either a HD TV or a TV SET. - never heard of “snow jobs” in my life. Sounds horribly suggestive. - KEEN is not a word I would ever use to replace “Neato!”. Who even says “Neato!” anymore? - RIESEN and not REESES is just cruel at this point. I’m now expected to know niche German chocolate brands? - “u slay me” and ROFL are generationally disparate phrases. The only way someone could think these are synonymous is if they’ve never been online. - PARI-mutuel betting? What do you take me for? An encyclopaedia? - “so-called” and “Civilised” for CHOCTAW are just outdated colonial BS. - AH ME sounds biblically old. - URBS reads like an infant trying to spell herbs. Never heard of her either. I understand that it’s insanely difficult trying to construct a grid with a theme as complex as this but, imo, if the cost of said theme is losing the joy of the solve, it’s not worth it.
There clearly was no joy in Mudville ... or Sheffield. Some of us found this to be a field of dreams. Different strokes... <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUUhDoCx8zc" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUUhDoCx8zc</a>
@Billy Snow jobs are definitely a thing. I've heard that expression many times and *I think*it means something like bowling someone over with false promises. No, let's see what the internet says.... ["A "snow job" is a North American idiom for an intensive effort to deceive, persuade, or overwhelm someone with insincere talk, lies, or misrepresentation. Originating as US military slang during World War II, it refers to a "cover-up"...] I have to agree with you on URBS. I've never heard that.
@Billy I don't know what pari-mutuel betting is, but it involves horse racing, and the Kentucky Derby was on yesterday. I've only played the ponies once, at the Preakness Stakes, and there was alcohol involved.
@Billy The clue to CHOCTAW is different in the NY Times Magazine version: Native people of the southeast
@Billy We totally agreed with you about the anachronisms of HD TV SET and ROFL used in the same breath as "slay." AH ME only brought to mind the line in T.S. Eliot's Old Deuteronomy, later immortalized in Cats the musical: "Yes! No! Ho! Hi! Oh, my eye!" (which is to say, ancient and biblical indeed.) We shared your astonishment at the mention of snow jobs in the paper of record. Thanks to @Larry for the update from the magazine, that brought some peace of mind. I muddled through trying to explain my recollection of the "5 tribes" to my better half, but with my last US history class over a decade in the rearview mirror it only came across as the racist colonial BS that it is.
@Ethan S. And I for one thought “he who dealt it” and chuckled. But three letters was too short, alas.
@Ethan S. @Nora In this case, you might want to say "he who Diehl-t it."
Yay, today I reached a 365-day streak, with no hints or look-ups! Fun puzzle to celebrate with.
I knew we were in trouble with HDTVSET. Much of the rest of the puzzle consists of dated and really bad fill. The concept of the puzzle isn’t bad but the execution left a lot to be desired.
The only good thing I can say about this puzzle is that it didn’t have any clues related to golf (something I have not and will not ever care about). So many arcane and out of date phrases & slang here: AH ME, BRO CODE (ew), GAH, KEEN, ROFL (dates back to 1989 Usenet-speak). Then we have the clunky and flat-out incorrect CUT IN ON (correct phrase is CUT IN), MUD HOLE (the greenest paint you ever did see), HD TV SET (no one has used “set” after “TV” in decades), and the very apt NOT QUITE RIGHT (an acute angle could be 45° or lower). The fill here is made even uglier with the trivia-centric acronyms AEC & TASS appearing right next to each other, two three-letter German-language words being clued with “in Austria”, and the bizarre URBS which I have never encountered before in my life and truly hope to never see again. The theme, unlike the fill, was not abhorrently bad. It was merely so weak that I barely noticed it. 1/5 stars
@Alexandra There was a golf clue actually. Mark OMEARA.
@Alexandra I wasn’t a fan myself. I was thinking “oh my” instead of “ah me”. I never heard of ah me. Banh mi yes. Several other things I found to be stretch but I give some grace as putting these things together is an art form.
@Alexandra I felt very much the same, though golf is a lovely time
@Alexandra - Couldn't have said it better myself. Adding to the misery of the top right corner was PETTED. While, yes, technically the correct past tense of PET, it had me continuing to scratch my head, wondering if I'm solving in the current decade.
@Alexandra Thank you for compiling the list of oddballs, and love that you accepted the golf clue without noticing! :P AEC, TASS, GAH, cut in ON, and HDTVSET were the ones that knocked me off my game. Then I let myself down with CIRC throwing me so badly that I didn't get ORE which was great.
@Alexandra I’ll focus on one of your many nits, the one about CUT IN ON. The clue was [Rudely interrupt, as a dance partner]. That clue implies a direct object. When people are dancing, someone may cut in. Or that person may CUT IN ON **someone**. So only CUT IN ON works with that clue. Everything else you nitpick is a matter of opinion, of which you are certainly welcome.
@Alexandra Never realized thst TASS was an acronym although, looking at it, I should have realized that a double-S ending in Russian would be quite unusual. Thanks for pointing this out.
@Alexandra I concur! I also think that expecting readers of an American newspaper to know an obscure German chocolate brand that also happens to have spelling close to a well known American chocolate brand is absurd imho. I have lived and traveled extensively in Europe and have not ever seen or heard of this brand among many other more common German brands with wider distribution.
@Alexandra you do know they speak German in Austria, right?
Generally in the 'Tough but Fair' category of puzzles for me except for the Naticky crossings of KEN KESEY, RIESEN, SENTA and OSTER which did me in.
Today is a funny day. I solved the puzzle in a very average Sunday time but I wasn’t really there. As I write, both of my boys are in on planes. One is headed to Vietnam, the other to Crete. They’re great. Dandy. They’re with their lovely wife/girlfriend. But I woke up feeling off. They’re both still in their 20’s, and are adulting and traveling the world. I’m their mom but they no longer need or ask for any *parenting*. It makes me so happy and it makes me feel quite lost. Thrilled for their adventures. Silently praying we’ll get some pictures or a FaceTime call, or…something. I am not complaining. But my heart is on two airplanes… somewhere… loved but not needed, and that’s just a funny feeling.
@CCNY I feel for you. My baby boy (24) is currently with friends in Malta. At my request (PLEA) he sends one photo a day so I know he’s ok. When my eldest lived in Japan, a whole world away from me, I would lie in bed at night making contingency plans for how quickly I could get to him in an emergency. No, they don’t need us to parent them any longer, they’re productive members of society, just as we raised them to be. Doesn’t mean we’re no longer Parents, with all the joy, fear, love and heartbreak that entails.
"One is headed to Vietnam, the other to Crete." CCNY, Better now than 60 years ago.
@CCNY If you are loved, you are needed.
@CCNY Identifying with your words! It was an odd feeling to be "cared for"--picked up, driven places, tutored on local habits, shown a thing or two! And then to be the "sous-chef" (or even assigned more lowly tasks) as we made DHubby's birthday dinner to celebrate 85 trips around the sun! (The 3-layer Schwartzwalder Kirsch-Torte was a hit!)
@CCNY This is a very lovely and bittersweet poem to which I completely relate. Thank you.
@my lovely friends- Just now getting to read your kind words ( and @Barry- Amen! ) Thank you all for your notes and your kindness. It’s a bit tough to reinvent ourselves. First as a partner, then a mother, then a woman who has freedom but doesn’t quite recall where she wanted to go. I understand how blessed I am. Just looking for the balance between the old gray mare who feels put out to pasture, but seeing such beauty and calm right in that zen-like pasture where I’m finding myself. I love my word nerd friends.
@CCNY The day I noticed my son was fully adult and capable was when we were both flying out of Denver, but to different places. We were on a crowded airport bus going to the terminals. The crowd was crazy, and the drop off for his flight was before the one for mine. So I saw him get off the bus with his bags and head towards a long, long security line all by himself. Suddenly all the years telescoped into one short film.
I found this annoying and abandoned the solve. The fill was giving me trouble in many places, and the theme didn't grab me. I used to skip Sundays altogether. Maybe I should go back to that. The easy Sunday grids are just a boring exercise in typing skill, while dealing with the hard ones feels like a chore.
@Andrzej @Jane Wheelaghan So when you guys abandon the solve do you reveal the grid out of curiosity?
@Andrzej I dragged it out to the end with a good few check puzzles, but honestly don’t know why. I’ll probably start skipping them.
We had doner yesterday; shawarma today. I'm putting my money on gyro tomorrow.
I'm not going to say this was a bad crossword, but I had a dreadful time solving it
Clever and enjoyable, a puzzle in the best sense of the word. I enjoyed the theme and the clueing, entertaining and challenging without being too arcane. I also enjoyed the link to earlier puzzles, always fascinating seeing the preoccupations of earlier eras.
I don't know how long this took to complete, because I spotted a very unusual bird in the Japanese maple outside the window next to the computer printer, and early in the solve decided to check my Peterson Field Guide, where I did NOT find the mid-sized bird with black-hooded head (black not extending further), bright yellow body/breast, dark wings with yellow streak. It was rather puffed up as it was 51 degrees. Not an oriole, but similar; not a warbler, but similar. GAH! So, back to the puzzle. AORTAL???? Srsly? It's AORTIC. Aortic valve, aortic defect, aortic coarctation, aortic arch, aortic aneurism.... I mean, could you get any OBTUSER? One suspects that the two offending words were devised by the same BRAIN that added California universities to the ACC. Okay...I can check off "Have rant" on my To-Do List for the day. (Still trying to get back to normal. Our first day back it was 48 degrees and rained all day--a souvenir from Seattle?)
"...rained all day--a souvenir from Seattle?)" MOL, Skipping the jokes about Seattle's two seasons, I trust you are aware that that city has much less total annual precipitation than either Jackson MS or New York City?
@Mean Old Lady Re your comment about Reddit elsewhere. Maybe you were thinking of Redfin, which is a RE site.
@Mean Old Lady Sounds kind of like a Flicker, but the ones out here are orange, not yellow, so I'm not sure.
@Mean Old Lady Perhaps an Orchard Oriole?
Didn’t enjoy this puzzle. Odd theme was most unpleasant. I enjoy a challenging puzzle. However, this one had too many misdirected or vague clues.
Got it. You enjoy challenging, but not too challenging. Odd that you didn't like the theme; you prefer even?
Some very tough clues alongside some absolute gimmes. Also, it's still hard to believe that Stanford and Cal are in the ACC.
@Dave Good point. I'm so old that when I went to Michigan State and Michigan they knew how to count to ten.
Fun solve. I always prefer clever wordplay over pop culture trivia. Aortal is routine for those of us in the Bee Hive. Urbs is a city term. Ypres is a sad reminder of the futility and insanity of war.
@ABChurch Yes that clue/answer took me there too. Pile high the grass at Ypres and Verdun .... Cover it over and let me work... All l remember from a Carl Sandberg poem. But enough.
I call foul on 48A. "ERIN" may be a name, but it's not even remotely correct as a name for Ireland, or EIRE as it's usually rendered in the crossword. Make space for Éireann, or not at all!
@H.E. it seems strange to say only the genitive Éireann is acceptable as a name when the nominative Éire not only exists but is still used on postage stamps, passports, and coinage. erin is merely poetical and derived from the dative Éirinn.
I continue to be amazed by the verbal assaults on constructors. Yes there might be an occasional stretch to make the puzzle work. For me today it was OBTUSER. Not the way I might use it if ever, but it made the puzzle work. These people(constructors) have a gift. I am forever grateful to their craft. I would like to know how many of the complainers have had a puzzle published? Like mom used to say “if you can’t say something nice…………be quiet!
The editors seem to have heard those of us who wanted more traditionally difficult puzzles/clues. Now the question is whether they will go back to easier stuff given all the popular (based on recommends) whining that’s happened since. Gosh, people, if you don’t want a challenge that requires interpretation and a broad vocabulary, don’t do the Times crossword!
@Glenn Weinberg Thank you!!! Wish I could give this several recs.
AORTAL vs. AORTic: *The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary*--you know, that two-volume set that is ubiquitous in used book stores, with or without the accompanying magnifying glass (mine still had it)--lists both, with first citations in the 1830's, although it does describe "aortal" as rare. Ngram viewer shows "aortic" miles ahead, with a peak about 2013 (at .0006034808%!), whereas "aortal" hugs the x-axis, with the merest of bulges above in the 1830-40's (.0000044622%). This is, of course, relative, and if you compared "aortic" to "say," say, it would be the merest of bulges. Back to the OED--you noticed, I hope that I roused myself from my comfy chair, and went to the bookshelf. Why? Because my account with the Cleveland Public Library, which I've managed to maintain by hook and by crook, has finally expired, and neither of the two other public library systems with which I could easily register an account--Detroit and Windsor, ON--have on-line subscriptions to the OED. And forget the Montmorency County Public Library System (three branches, in Lewiston, Hillman, and Atlanta, MI) :-( And being that *rara avis*, the college-dropout, forget alumni access to a university library system. Now, Barry, I know that M-W online is free, and Merriam-Webster is the *definitive* dictionary for the English language as spoken in America, but the historical citations and etymologies are just not as comprehensive.
@Bill (cont.) I could of course, purchase an individual account to the OED, but that's very pricey, just to get one's Wordplay jollies. Any suggestions?
@Bill I have a one-volume compact-compact version (with magnifying glass) but no place to set it out. It will not fit on a bookshelf and lives in its box, and is only brought out for very special occasions. These days, it is easier for me to solve on crosses and find etymological information from the comments than it is to lug it out.
@Bill When my high school English teacher introduced me to the OED, it felt like a portal to infinite worlds had opened. I used to get a "Word of the Day" email from them.
@The Cool Bill Considering the plethora of knowledge you posses on a myriad of classical topics, you should author your own definitive dictionary. The only sticking point would be what to name this masterpiece.
For me, this was tough but generally doable. I thought it was mostly excellent. The theme was multifaceted and a lot of fun to figure out. I ended up running check puzzle to find a couple of mistakes that I couldn't suss out on my own, but I still had a lot of fun.
Pretty weak. I think this was the first time I completed a grid with figuring out the theme. The center left is a truly ridiculous section, with "belike," "entente," and "tyke." Why put "tyke" and "infant" right next to each other? Then to put two proper nouns, including a random German actress, next to each other is annoying. The puzzle was both too easy but then in one spot ridiculously obscure. Not good.
@Great Necker “Why put "tyke" and "infant" right next to each other?” Why not? (You do realize, also, that it’s BE LIKE?)
There are some Sunday puzzles which challenge mostly appropriately, occasionally cleverly, somewhat annoyingly in places and tolerably thematically...and are destined to be forgotten almost immediately. Such was the grid for me today.
@Matt forgetting most puzzles almost immediately ensures the enjoyment/disappointment is fresh … 😀 It helps having a leaky brain.
Spent at least a third of my time trying to identify the one letter I had wrong (I had ACCEDES rather than ACCEDED), but I would forgive this puzzle anything for that delightful "Blue blood vessels?" clue.
@Katie I’ve just spent about 15 minutes searching for an error. Finally spotted it in HAsHELP/EsT. Arrgh.
@Katie “Blue blood vessels” was my fave—took me a while but the “aha” was worth it.
Easy theme, tough fill. That NE section nearly did me in. With a couple of letters in place, I deduced that Reddit might be the alien logo site, so I took a peek to refresh my memory. Didn’t look like an alien to me. Looked like a baby bear with a ping pong ball on its head. So I asked Google: What is the Reddit logo? “It’s a snoo”, I was told. What’s a snoo? I asked. “A contraction of what’s new.” Apparently it’s also an alien. Whatever.
@Heidi I'm REALLY disappointed that Google didn't respond "Nothing, what's new with you?" 😁
@Heidi Learn more than you ever wanted to know here: <a href="https://mascots.fandom.com/wiki/Snoo" target="_blank">https://mascots.fandom.com/wiki/Snoo</a> This website makes me fear that our doom as a species draws nigh...
Never attempt a solve when you're falling asleep. This is especially true after you've fallen asleep three times with your phone in your hand. I got up this morning and waded into the mess of bad guesses and ridiculous misspellings that my exhausted brain had come up with. I took a break and watched a random YouTube video featuring an anonymous man breaking into an abandoned prison in the middle of the night, along with some snarky commentary and a lot of swearing. It seemed weirdly appropriate...both it and the puzzle involved wading through a lot of debris One hour and forty minutes to finish it.
"Aortal" is not a term that I ever heard in 40 years of nursing (more than half in the cardiac realm). Never having constructed a crossword, I can only imagine how difficult it is to make it all jibe. But this seems like a neologism to me. Dictionary.com wouldn't even cough it up. I suspect Barry A. could weigh in here 😉
momonjava, Oddly enough (as it were), others -- including one MD -- have been weighing in on "aortal" since yesterday.
momonjava, And again after your post but before your reply to me! No, I was not "scolding" you; I was acknowledging the mention and explaining why I would not weigh in.
@momonjava I agree with you and other commenters. As an MD for over 30 years I have never heard AORTAL used. While not horrible this puzzle was very clunky.
What’s a riesen? I eat Reese’s. Never had a reason to chew a Riesen. But having looked them up, they look tasty, albeit not so good for aortals.
It hasn't be called a TV set in 50 years
@Dc 50 years ago is 1976. I was there and it was still called a TV set.
@Dc Agreed. That one was awkward to say the least. An HD TV is a modern thing, but TV SET is an older term. Squishing the two together just felt off.
It probably has been, in a man cave.
@Dc there’s a lot in here that hasn’t been used in at least 50 years. AH ME sounds positively Victorian.
@Dc better than urbs... No one ever has used that phrase
@Dc If it’s not a set, why does the cable company give me a set-top box? And how do I get it to stay on the top of the set?
I think I would need a thesaurus to thoroughly describe how much I hated this puzzle. First of all, there are blatant errors (or intentional errors to make the fill). Seems like once a month we get a puzzle like this. Created by a constructor that just has to show the world how clever they are by creating a nearly impossible puzzle (without lookups). My only joy from today’s puzzle was looking up a few answers because the obscurity and random nature of this puzzle is astounding. And of course the theme is absolutely useless until you complete the puzzle. Rating: 0/10
@Darren Without trying to make a personal criticism of your puzzle solving ability, let me just say that your written assessment of this puzzle is a disappointment. This puzzle took patience but did eventually for me come to a successful close without lookups. Some clues were slightly odd but the challenge of finding a suitable answers to the odd circled letters made this a worthwhile puzzle with embedded puzzles. If rating this puzzle I would give it an 8/10. Thank you Mr Diehl.
@Darren I think we get puzzles like this once a month because they are not at all impossible without lookups for a sizable number of us. I am far from the most accomplished solver here, but I found the solve smooth, got the theme in my second pass through the clues, and found the second half of each theme pair impossible to get without the theme, but easy to get with it. There has to be room here for both people who hate puzzles like this and people who live for them. Each constitutes a sizable percentage of the solving public, although there appear today to be more likes than dislikes for this one.
@Darren Did you get the theme? Just wondering whether you thought it was silly or didn't understand how to apply the "oddly" part. Once I got the theme, about half way through, it helped me to solve the puzzle.
@Darren “Created by a constructor that just has to show the world how clever they are by creating a nearly impossible puzzle (without lookups).” Darren is one of a few commenters around here (D from Ohio being another) that leave me genuinely confused as to whether they are just trolling (essentially, playing a character that says things they expect to elicit reactions from commenters in the forum whose style they dislike), or earnestly expressing their own views. If you’re trolling: ok, keep at it. But if not: this puzzle wasn’t even challenging, let alone “nearly impossible”. (Sure, one might say “but xwstats says it’s Very Hard”…but with a median solve time of 32 minutes as of Monday morning, that is decidedly *not* what I would call a very hard Sunday, except in purely relative terms compared to very recent history, which is what that xwstats label reflects)
Bleah. Very hacky. Read through the answers and most are nonsensical. Theme was okay, but too much German, sports, turn of phrase. Needs work.
@Ken Burk You didn't like the answers or didn't get that the "oddly" trick? The circled letters are the odd numbered letters (if you count the letters to that answer) and they were the clue for the following answer (the answer that says "oddly" in it).
Great theme laid extremely low by gnarly crosswordese... Non-English language clues: ICH, ACHT, ILE, EIN, ENTENTE, TASS, PARI-mutuel, BANQUE Names that defied noodling out: KEN KESEY, ELIA, AMON RA, YPRES, SENTA, O'MEARA, OSTER Combinations of words I've never seen used that way before: CUT IN + ON, HD TV + SET, BEAN for head, Snow job for CONS (woah-- thought something had seriously slipped by the editors there) Silly shortenings: INS, OSE, ETTE, PHYS, CIRC, URBS, RET, HOR (slow down there, EDS!!) Throw in some I just didn't know (TCU, NEOBOP, AEC) and this is definitely the longest we've ever worked the crossword, only brought to an end with increasingly exasperated lookups. The theme was very cool and I really liked a few (BIG TOE / LOW DIGIT; ACUTE / NOT QUITE RIGHT) but we had fully filled in CHILD SUPPORT before we could come up with KNEE, such was the treachery of KEN KESEY. I don't think this puzzle really wanted to exist, given the incredible reach of the non-theme fills. I will push back on the "obscurity" of RIESEN chocolates I'm seeing people claim, though. I've always found them in an American grocery when I've looked for them, and my mom packed them in my lunch as a kid. They glue your teeth together, and they are excellent. A handful of them would have made this experience a lot more fun!
@Erin & Erin Thanks for this breakdown, makes me feel validated that this was my roughest puzzle in a while! I'm not one to be a RIOTER, I'll just smile and say better luck next time, me!
@Erin & Erin entente is an English word...
i dunno about that "Choctaw" clue. maybe i'm being too sensitive but it seems a little dicey
@sykofox - Good point. Perhaps it could have been clued as "One of the original (native american) tribes of the SE US". For space reasons only, leave out "native american".
Here we go again with changed clues between The Magazine and the online version. In The Magazine, the 93 Down clue is [Native people of the Southeast].
@sykofox yeah, you’re being too sensitive, IMO. They were called the Five Civilized Tribes, that’s why the clue started out “the so called”
@sykofox Thanks for pointing this out to me. Like Barry, I solved in the Magazine and hadn't even seen this clue. And, like Barry, I wonder why the editors saw fit to change the clue. But, as a result of your comment, I did a bit of internet research to learn that the "Five Civilized Tribes" was a term created by Anglo-American settlers (invaders?) to refer to those tribes that adopted Anglo-European customs after their nations were invaded. Those tribes that didn't were termed "wild" or "savage" by the settlers. Being "civilized" did not save these tribes from being dominated and manipulated and decimated by their white "neighbors". It's worth noting that the "so-called" in the clue seems to indicate that the puzzle editors do not (necessarily) approve of this terminology, And, its inclusion in the puzzle allowed me/us to learn something important, But, I agree with your assessment. "Dicey" is going easy on the editors.
@sykofox I definitely noted the "so-called" in the clue and thought it was a quite appropriate reminder of the inappropriateness of the label. It was an important reminder to me of how they adopted customs of the settlers and why, and how it didn't work--and why.
@sykofox To add to the confusion, I solve in the NY Times International Edition. In my printed newspaper, the clue for 93D is "Enemy of the Creek". Assuming the paper is set in advance, the clue was changed before The Magazine that Barry uses and then changed again for the online version. So 3 different clues for Choctaw. Very odd indeed!
@Lynn while it’s important to remind people of how the US gov’t (and whites in general) thought of and treated the native peoples, I still think using that phrase in the clue was not a good editorial choice. You don’t have to use the N-word to tell people why it’s bad to use the N-word.
A note to our columnist on a matter of importance (to me): Miles Davis was not a "pioneer" of (Be)Bop, although he did play Bop in the early part of his career. The true pioneers of Bop are figures like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk. Don't get me wrong. I absolutely love Miles. "Kind of Blue" may be the greatest album made, not only the greatest jazz album, the greatest album in any genre of music. And Miles was a pioneer of many genres: notably hard bop and jazz fusion. He was always trying something new. And on top of all that, he was one of the coolest cats whose feet ever touched this planet. But, credit where credit is due. He was not a Bop pioneer. So what? <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqNTltOGh5c" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqNTltOGh5c</a>
@The X-Phile I've long been a big fan of Miles Davis and still have a lot of his albums in storage. And... you led me to do a bit of counting and eventually an answer history search. In brief - SKETCHESOFSPAIN (one of my favorites) is 15 letters. And... was an answer in two puzzles. ...
@The X-Phile If I'm remembering it correctly, the claim was that he was a pioneer in "neo-bop," which seems to imply a later revival.
@The X-Phile If you get the chance, read Miles: The Autobiography. He struggled to create a sound of his own out of the school of Bird, Dizzy and gang. He grew tired of playing behind the jazz greats and needed to make his own name known. He finally found Cool jazz, thusly, Birth of a Cool. His hatred of Steve Miller was kind of comical, but mostly not funny at all.
The X-Phile, Caitlin's comment on the 104D clue could have used a bit of editing, since he was, as you and the article in the link note, a pioneer of earlier music -- hard bop -- but not of (Be)Bop. ALAS: The Times can't afford both copy editors and emus.
@Barry Are you sure it;s not Alt-Bop? I'm not saying it is, but we seem to be attaching "alt-" to everything these days.
@The X-Phile I'll disagree. Charlie Parker hired Miles in 1945. I can only think of a couple of bebop trumpet players before him (Dizzy, Howard McGee, maybe Fats Navarro). Comes down to how you define 'pioneer', but he qualifies in my book.
When I go back to “admire” my completed grid, the cheeky app displays: “What are the odds?” You finished this puzzle without hints! (A pretty impressive theme construction, I thought.)
Nice puzzle. It took me forever, but I was sleepy and hungry and spacing out quite a bit. One thing that bugged me about the theme was the three anatomical answers, all glommed in the middle. I had found KNEE, BRAIN, and BIG TOE, and thought the rest of the theme answers would be body parts as well. ALAS. Also a few more "is that really a word" answers than I usually like: OBTUSER, LEAPERS, and the infamous AORTAL. What the flip is an URB? I've heard of suburbs and exurbs, but never URBS.
@Katie URBS are the spicier parts of a metro area.
My May Day story. Once I was visiting a community of artists who were having a May Pole dance. Because they were artists, each one had designed their own ribbon, many of them tie dyed, many using vegetable dyes they had made. So we stood around the May Pole, most of us never having done the dance, and listened to the instructions for weaving the pole. The leader explained that some would dance clockwise and some counterclockwise and asked us to count off. “One.” “Two.” “One.” “Two.” “One.” “Two.” (Silence.) “Oh. She’s anarchist. OK, skip her and go on.” “One.” “Two.” “One.” (Silence.) “Him too. Continue?” We proceeded to dance, half of us going clockwise and half counterclockwise, and the two anarchists going anywhere they wanted. The end result was two knots of ribbons that looked like mottled clumps of mud at the top of an otherwise bare pole. There are a few limits to anarchy. YMMV
I'm always surprised when I come to scan these comments and discover that other people had a very different solving experience from my own. I read daily comments by people who complain that a puzzle is unfair if it includes foreign words or slang terms --[Snow jobs] -- that aren't in their own daily lexicon. Heavens! Part of the fun for me is in discovering things that I don't know much about or have forgotten over the years. I like puzzles that stretch my brain. Anything that can do that is fair game. By contrast, I was amazed by how many people commented that they solved yesterday's puzzle in record time. I worked up a good sweat and the better part of an hour on it. It was a lovely challenge and a reminder that some solvers are in a league well beyond mine. I guess that bottom line is that we each come with different expectations and different levels of tolerance for our own ignorance. Personally, I thought today's puzzle was clever and not terribly difficult. It won't be on my personal list of all-time favorites, but it was fun to solve. And a a mild brain stretcher.