Using too many capital letters while typing is shifty behavior. (I'm telling you just in case.)
@Mike Do you think you're getting type-cast, what with all the puns but no other sorts of comments?
@Mike Seems like you've got a lock on it today. As an alternative, try to control it.
@Mike - You're a true font of punnery, Mike.
Why is QUART is one of my favorite words? That’s a great question. I’d love to tell you. My dad was a quiet, stoic sort. And he travelled for work, so we didn’t much time with him. When I was eight, he took us all out for ice cream. Huge. Deal. Standing in line, my dad asked my older brothers ( I’m the youngest of four ) if they knew why a quart was called a quart. They shrugged, but I lit up like a Christmas tree and asked, “Is it because it’s a quarter of a gallon?” The look of surprise on his face, my brother’s and sister’s faces… Bliss. Better than ice cream. I floated home. And, yeah. I’m *totally* still talking about it 50 years later. Bliss!
@CCNY: Andy, smarty pants, did anyone ever ask you why they called a standard bottle of liquor a "fifth"?
@CCNY Before age 8 I had to recite: 4 gills one pint 2 pints one quart 4 quarts one gallon Much later I found out that whisky was measured in fractions of a gill, although now it's mls. I never found a use for QUART.
@CCNY I wish ice cream still came in 2-qt containers. Now they are only 1.5 quarts. And what used to be a pint is only 12 oz. It's the sneaky price inflation. Don't raise the price -- just make the amount smaller. Tuna used to be in 8 oz cans. Now the same cans hold 5.5 oz. But the worst is sweetend condensed milk. I have a wonderful lemon meringue pie recipe that calls for 16 oz. That's what used to be in a can. Now the cans are 14 oz, so I have to use a whole one and part of another, or it doesn't work with the amount of lemon juice and eggs. I can't do 7/8 of an egg!
@CCNY, I ❤️ this story.
My solve on Wednesdays is usually a waltzing around the puzzle, with downs and acrosses intermingled like steps as I go here and there around the grid's dance floor. For that reason, I had only halves of all the themers at first – PLUS, SYMBOL, OPEN, MARK, none of it making any sense. Then along comes the revealer and bingo! Now I could make my way back and complete all the themers. Ta-da! Because I solve on the phone, with the keyboard devoid of a shift key, I thought of how much more fun it would have been to solve this on a desktop. My loss. The puzzle was great nonetheless. Imaginative, breezy, a perfect waltz. Thank you, Mr. Keller. I look forward to more offerings from you! P.S. Congrats on the 95% cluing acceptance. That's quite a feat!
@sotto voce I usually start in the lower-right corner for just this reason. And I solve on a desktop. As a dyed-in-the-wool newsprint-and-pen guy for decades, I still feel old-school even online because I have a cord-attached QWERTY keyboard in front of me. It helped this time, for sure. Plus fewer typing errors in general. And I can see the puzzle.
@sotto voce I too solved on my phone, which is unusual. But I'll flip the script: I was *glad* that i didn't have the answers under my fingers! it was a nice added hurdle on a Wednesday.
8A should be included in the "Tricky Clues" section, since ER NURSES do triage, not the docs.
@Matt Docs do in cases of mass casualty and combat scenarios.
@Matt Yes, I had ERNURSES at first also.
@Matt I put “nurses” first as this is the correct answer. But changed it after seeing the cross clues. Totally agree.
@Matt I would suggest both are true. Yes nurses in the common every day usage in a typical ED in the US (and what I entered first). But Emergency medicine as a whole is a specialty of triage expertise.
I'm old, I drove a cab for a living while I was floundering around after grad school, I don't have a single ride-share app, and I still tried "Lyft" first.
@Bob How funny our wiring can be....I never thought of Lyft at all, just jotted TAXI in there in a twinkling.....
Fine fit for a Wednesday. Nice job, Brian. (Waiting to see if any ED staff will comment on the 8A answer.)
@Barry Ancona I had the same reaction to this clue. Nurses do triage first, especially in ERs. We all know this. But I entered the answer because my expectations are low sometimes.
@Barry Ancona not an ER staff, but nurses is the same number of letters and a better response
@Barry Ancona I’m not an ER doc but worked there during my residency, and did a double take at that as well. It’s fair to say most ER docs don’t routinely triage (unless you are watching “The Pitt”) but it’s fair to say that they could if need be, ultimately trained the nurses and designed the protocols, and can certainly be considered “specialists” in it.
@Barry Ancona son of an ER nurse and partner to one, and I was miffed by this clue, especially as Nurses Week just ended!
Adding to my earlier post... For those who don't know, Guns N' Roses lead guitarist, Saul Hudson, is known by his stage name Slash (= shift key + question mark). Here's my favorite song of theirs, "Patience" (yes, it's been confirmed, rock bands churn out some of the best and most iconic ballads!) <a href="https://youtu.be/ErvgV4P6Fzc?si=yfaKswMVFbFGFNpn" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/ErvgV4P6Fzc?si=yfaKswMVFbFGFNpn</a>
@sotto voce Are you supposed to be giving answers in these comments?
@sotto voce I think Slash doesn't need explaining.
@sotto voce Yes, I agree re rock ballads. It is quite stark contrast from the beauty of Patience to what comes next on the album.
@sotto voce Hmmm. I thought you were waltzing? <a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wKns-__3sfc" target="_blank">https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wKns-__3sfc</a>
Delightful puzzle, disappointing column. Better than the other way around, to be fair.
Isaac, good column but there are FOUR theme answers plus a revealer, not three. Great puzzle, workin' the keyboard there. The AXON clue was gorgeous, and the Pirate Parrot makes an appearance. Once when my wife and I were vacationing during spring training in Florida, we caught a Pirates game and a particularly hot day. We went to the back to get a beer and a hotdog and my wife also got a bottle of water, and we headed back to our seats, only to be greeted by the Pirate Parrot, who stood towering over us, blocking our way. He pointed one of his wings to my wife's bottle of water. "Hey Parrot," she said, sweetly. And gave him the bottle of water, which he twisted open with his claw and consumed in a single gulp. He bowed his great and noble head toward us in thanks, stepped around us, and was gone. I believe he was a replacement Parrot for the Parrot involved in the cocaine scandal that swept through the Buccos' dugout sometime around then, but I'm not sure. They may have kept him on despite the funny business.
@john ezra Also the theme clues do not all refer to a number, as the article claims. The first refers to the = sign.
Pronounced something like 'Pahrt pairt'.
I enjoyed the puzzle, and the theme gave me a good chuckle once I “clued” in. Thanks for the solve Brian! I was disappointed in the Wordplay column today though. As mentioned in an earlier comment, there were in fact four theme clues, not three. On top of that, two of the four were not numbers. I usually really enjoy reading the column, but this one felt rushed and sloppy, and did not do the puzzle justice (the constructors note seemed longer than the article itself).
@Kirsten I feel often the "difficult clues" are just chosen at random, because they're usually not the hardest ones.
Just as an interesting quirk, this only works if you have an English language keyboard. The dollar sign on my Danish keyboard is together with the § sign and no number.
@Robin Wildfang Almost the same here. My German keyboard actually has the dollar sign as shift-4. But shift-9 is the closing parenthesis (the opening one is on shift-8), and the question mark is found on shift-ß. For extra confusion, the equals sign and slash are actually shifted characters, while the plus sign is not. Definitely an extra challenge if you use (and grew up on) a different keyboard layout.
Indeed, NESTS belong in trees. Try telling that to the starlings, who insist on building theirs in my dryer vent.
@Grant….😂 that was funny but not the headache of removing that from the dryer vent…..
@Grant, How about the purple martins that built theirs in the access to fill valve on the propane tank we used for heating and hot water? We spent weeks waiting to see whether the babies would fledge before we ran out of propane.
@Grant Put a piece of chicken wire fencing in front of your vent.
@Adina Okay, now that's funny, because purple martins like to be pretty high off the ground. I helped my brother-in-law build a martin house, and the pole was 15 feet long. And no worries, I just turn on the dryer for a few minutes, and it blows all that mess out.
Big few hours here for me. Mets won 10-2. Solved my first Midi with only across answers (I know my Mario!) And in the morning, Pete Wells article about me will be printed in the Food section of the Wednesday paper
@Steven M. Congratulations on all fronts! Please be so kind as to post a gift link to the article here tomorrow so we may all enjoy your achievement. (I believe not all NYT subscriptions include the Food section. I know I've been shut out of certain sections before; maybe still am.)
@Steven M. That is quite the honor! Congratulations!
@Steven M. I'm taking the liberty of reposting here the link you gave me so it doesn't get buried in the thread and more people can enjoy reading it. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/shared/comment/4g2j87?rsrc=cshare&smid=url-share" target="_blank">https://www.nytimes.com/shared/comment/4g2j87?rsrc=cshare&smid=url-share</a>
@Steven M. Congratulations, Steve. Bravo. I am in awe of the diversity of your experiences and the motivation to follow through once a goal is set.
@Steven M. Interesting article, and interesting reader comments too. If I may pick one nit, I'd say it's a Pete Wells article featuring (not about) you.
@Steven M. Welp. Not in today's print edition. But the 100 Best wasn't either. Maybe they're saving it for the weekend?
@Steven M. Interesting article, and congratulations on all fronts! 😊
Steven M., Interesting that it's not in print today; NYT search says it's in the May 13 print edition.
@Steven M., et al I emailed Pete Wells (lah di dah) to ask what happened to the print version, and he replied that it is scheduled for June 3.
I felt like a jumping jack until I was stopped cold in the NW corner. Guessing here, knowing there, wrong downs, a real cha-cha-cha of a puzzle, and fun to clean up as soon as I saw what I needed to do. I still didn't see the true cleverness of it until it was done, which made it all the sweeter. Brian, I learned the qwerty in high school (flunked the class the first time and had to take it over, because there were disconnects in my brain and I kept doing things like typing an s instead of an l —something to do with the sneaky streak of left-handed-ness in our family. Never mind, in the end I was saved by the IBM Selectric, and typed my way to, well, not stardom, but to many a job. Your shifty puzzle was a joy to solve, Mr. Keller. Thank you!
Nice puzzle! I feel much more comfortable with a Shift to the left than with Alt-right-control where the outcome is unpredictable, frequently disastrous and cannot be undone
Already 150+ Comments.... so I read a few, and Nancy in NYC pretty much said it all. I'm hopeless when it comes to rock stars/bands, so .....Guns'n'Roses, bleah. I found the Reveal clue, with the hint about the SHIFT KEU...oops, I guess LUTE was wrong, so it's a LYRE. So, YEAH, I opened the iPad and looked at the Logitech KEYboard. FYI, we all call it a DOLLAR SIGN. I've never seen/read Game of Thrones, and you can't make me. What is "Broad City"? Movie? TV show? Tacky nickname for a metropolis? Maybe populated by people named SLASH and ANUBIS? And who own INU Shiba doggies? Just sign me "Proud to be WOKE."
@Mean Old Lady I do. Own a Shiba INU that is, though as INU is Dog in Japanese he’s just a Shiba dog. I adore him, but don’t recommend the breed for a first time owner; they are the cats of the dog world and as such treat their human serfs with the disdain they clearly deserve, that is when they’re not trying to maul the postman/delivery driver/visitor who looked at him funny.
Regarding 43A, I present to you Brooklyn 99's finest: Captain Holt: I must say, this is going considerably better than when I came out to my colleagues. They were not, as the kids say, awake. Jake: Do you mean woke? Captain Holt: I did mean woke. But it's grammatically incoherent.
@HeathieJ even in the crossword the Times has to show their liberal side
Very clever theme and puzzle. I won’t say that it was tricky at all—I pretty much blew straight through it and got the theme on the second themer—but I still really enjoyed it, and glad I solve on the phone and couldn’t cheat. Also appreciate that two of the answers weren’t numbers, those were very artfully done. I also appreciate that even though many of the answers were gimmes for a Wednesday, there were several clues that impressed me and that I thought were really clever—AXONS, ORALB, SPIELS. Even Bulls and bucks—but for the capital letter you’d look for NBA teams. Plus I started the puzzle late and am exhausted so happy for something quick and fun today. Great work, two excellent sophomore efforts in a row—no sophomore slumps here!
What a fun and clever theme! And any puzzle that has Slash as an answer is a Sweet Child of Mine!!!
I solve on my phone so I basically had to brute-force the themed entries, as the clues were no help - I may be a computer touch typer, but I don't remember the exact layout of the keyboard. Going for a theme that really only works on some of the devices the crossword is available on seems like a poor idea. I found the across fill very challenging, but the downs were Monday level. That being said, I'm still struggling with the NW corner - I haven't been able to fill it in yet. I'll give it a few more goes later. It's off to work for now.
@Andrzej The puzzle works fine on any device. You're not supposed to actually press the shift key, just to be delighted by this clever way of representing short answers as long ones. (I did it on my phone, too, and couldn't remember what the top bar of the keyboard I touch-type so happily on looks like, either. I didn't have to remember to solve the puzzle.)
@Andrzej You're an academic. You don't work.
I love when I figure out a theme and genuinely laugh and smile - today was that day. Especially since I knew the "real" answer to 47A, and was just not connecting how it could possibly fit, then finding the revealer, I laughed out loud. Great puzzle, one of my favorites in a long time.
This was such a satisfying solve because I had to work REALLY hard to get the upper left corner and it involved searching my keyboard. I had LYFT for 1A and YOKE for 2D and ROYAL for 6D which gave me *K**S*Y* for *PEERS, which I knew had to be one of the upper (shifted) symbols above a key. First step was to replace ROYAL with REGAL which gave me *K**S*G* and then to realize that S*G* had to be SIGN. So then I had *K**SIGN, and that meant the K was wrong. LYFT hadnt seemed to work from the start so I got rid of YOKE and LYFT. Then I stared at the keyboard to find something that could be PEERS, and oh the delightful aha when I realized it was the symbol you shift to get the PLUS SIGN: EQUALS. From there it was easy to fill in the rest of the top left section. Ive been solving the NYT crossword for years and somehow constructors never run out of ideas! This one was delightful.
@Alexandra Dixon Enjoyed the play-by-play commentary. Been there, done that!
I enjoyed this, even if I had to look up an image of a PC keyboard to refresh my memory of the keys. (No shift key on an IPad!) The only stumbling block for me was the NW corner, but once I sent the Lyft driver away I was fine. Still waiting for the WOKE firestorm. That was a bold entry. I approve!
Perfect Wednesday -- once you realized the theme, the clues allowed a quicker solve - which is the goal. Well done.
Thank you, Brian, for such a clever grid -- it SHIFTed my thinking in the very best way. I look forward to seeing more from you!😊
Clever without being annoying! Bravo!
If you knew Anubis, you’re not a Nooby, as I am.
I'm visiting Barcelona right now. This week I learned that if 28D had said Barcelona rather than Seville, the answer would be TAPES.
I was doing so well, really enjoying this crossword, when - the bottom right corner. I've never had to use the word QUART for anything, definitely not ice cream. When milk came in bottles it was pints, then 2-pint cartons, now litres. But ice cream is just big or small tubs. Then TSA BIN was unknown and TCBY. That sounds quite a mouthful for a brand name! I must be the only person here who doesn't know about the name Slash. However, still very enjoyable.
@Jane Wheelaghan I knew of Slash but not ABBI or ULTA. SO had difficulties in the same part of the grid as you. I eventually tried TSA BIN because I couldn't think of anything else and have done enough NYT xwords to know of TSA as common filer.
@Jane Wheelaghan In case you haven’t already looked it up for yourself, TCBY is a US nationwide chain of stores selling soft-serve frozen yogurt. It started in Little Rock, Arkansas, in the early 1980s and quickly expanded franchise operations across most of the country. (I was living in Little Rock at the time and had met the gentleman who started the company,) The abbreviation originally meant “This Can’t Be Yogurt,” but a competing chain named “I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt,” which had been in existence a few years, sued over copyright infringement. The abbreviation meaning was changed to “The Country’s Best Yogurt.”
@Jane Wheelaghan 2 pints = 1 quart. Do you really call it a "2-pint container" instead?
@Jane Wheelaghan I didn't know / either. Never heard of him. I've seen quarts of ice cream and definitely milk. Quart bottles and then containers.
A moment of silence for solvers with non-US keyboards. Luckily, I was solving on my work laptop, which I've specifically ordered with the US keyboard because it's just superior for programming. I still remember the nightmare of trying to type my automatically assigned password (which was basically half symbols) on a French keyboard during my exchange. How did they end up with that layout?? Such a fun puzzle today anyway!
@Sonja I find different keyboard layouts fascinating! How does the Finnish one differ from our English (US) one? I have three different ones loaded onto my laptop: 1) the standard English-US which came with set-up 2) English-US-International, which is what I have the PC set to at most times. It makes it easy to type things like "crème brûlée" with ease. It covers all of the Western European languages, including the Scandinavian ones, but falls short on (Roman-alphabet) Slavic ones, and Hungarian. Also, it is "a bit of a pain" to remember to his the space bar after hitting the quotes key, or else you'll get ä bit of a pain." 3) Something called Ält-Latin 2019 (whoops! I meant "Alt-Latin 2019"), which covers those. I don't use it often enough so when I do, I have to resort to a cheat-sheet. And it still doesn't cover that dot-less ï"--I mean "i"--one finds in Turkish. Ironic one can not type "Dvořák" on a standard English DVORAK keyboard.
@Sonja My father's old boss, who fled East Germany as the wall was going up, had a typewriter with umlaut vowels. I thought that was totally cool.
Caught on at $. Very clever theme and I also would have preferred Brian's original clues. Well done and thanks.
There are four theme answers (not three as the columnist writes) and a revealer. I thought it was super clever! Kudos to the constructor, and I think his original clues mentioned in the constructor notes were much better than the substitutes created by the editing committee. (We all know that a camel is a horse designed by a committee!)
Great puzzle, Mr. Keller! The trick, of course, once I caught on, was to fill in the theme answers without looking down at the QWERTY. There may be other ways of truing a bike wheel, but the method I learned was to pluck the spokes, not unlike Orpheus plucking his lyre, and adjust their tension, until the all sounded the same pitch. In other words, literally a "tune-up." It's a PITA, which is why I pay the technician at my LBS to do it for me. Here's various _characters_, all as portrayed by Elle Cordova, commenting on today's puzzle: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ky0YOo7_Y0o" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ky0YOo7_Y0o</a> This puzzle reminded me of one of my FOAT puzzles, which I believe was a Thurs. from 2020; I haven't figured out how to search for it on xwordinfo.com, or the like, but if I do, I will reply with a link to the archive.
@Bill Elle is cute as heck, isn't she? Cool nerd, for sure. I never knew she did those catchy little sketches until seeing it here a while back. Here's how I first knew about her (and Toni). <a href="https://youtu.be/YROojjsbIHs?t=27&si=FKrh9NW6h4eMGc57" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/YROojjsbIHs?t=27&si=FKrh9NW6h4eMGc57</a>
@Bill Found it! <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/crosswords/game/daily/2020/03/19" target="_blank">https://www.nytimes.com/crosswords/game/daily/2020/03/19</a> by Wayne Bergman and Gary Otting
@Bill I was first aware of Elle Cordova based on her duets with Toni: <a href="https://youtu.be/YROojjsbIHs?t=25&si=P0eNkiNYRFMHFv3U" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/YROojjsbIHs?t=25&si=P0eNkiNYRFMHFv3U</a> I only found out about her YT shorts from this column. She's the cutest nerd, Thanks for posting that.
Figured out the trick at the Guns n' Roses clue. (That tells you what generation I'm in.) Fun puzzle all around. Wednesday is my favorite. The Goldilocks of crosswords.
Oof I was going nuts in the top corner. TAXI was what I needed to get things going thanks to a comment. Entire puzzle was solved, I even had ____SIGN filled out. Awesome puzzle. I had a lot of fun with this one. I know people complain about the difficulty getting much easier, but really this was just at my skill level. After a year of this, the only puzzles I can’t solve without lookups are Fridays and Saturdays.
I enjoyed it! Never thought I would be the first to comment, though.
@DYT Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but… (As Maxwell Smart used to say, missed it by that much!)
DYT, You were nosed out by someone who had filled in the puzzle but had not yet solved it.
@Barry Ancona I prefer the Webster's definition of solve, but I get what you were trying to say.
Anyone else notice the 2D answer in a puzzle with a clue about Guns N' Roses? Different spelling, of course, but I wonder if it was intentional.
@NanuNanu, Good catch!
I enjoyed that theme. I solve on my phone so I had to Google a picture of a keyboard.
What a fun puzzle. Great theme. When I figured it out, I refused to look for clues which wasn't easy if you knew my wpm.
It's a good thing I don't keep track of streaks, because I really, really blew this one. First, I solve on paper, far from my PC keyboard. I had no idea what was under the PLUS SIGN, but managed to get that from the crosses. Likewise, also no clue about the Guns N' Roses guitarist's stage name, but getting QUESTION MARK from the crosses made it unnecessary. Where I totally screwed up was in the top middle. I'm usually quick to think of alternate meanings for clues, but couldn't get past the baseball thing to get SPIELS; I was trying to make a rebus out of Spitballs. Then I had no idea who the Game of Thrones character was. This could have all worked out, if only I'd thought of what I always did as a teenager, before my hippie phase kicked in, and that was TEASE my hair. And at some point I did know that it was back-combing. I am aghast at blowing a Wednesday puzzle, after congratulating myself just the other day on my lack of cognitive decline after breezing through the Friday and Saturday puzzles. Hope this isn't the beginning of a trend.
@Times Rita Not a trend. You're fine.
Delightful puzzle. Always great to get something new and creative. More of this please.
SPIELS got me. Excellent clueing.
I loved this fun puzzle with a clever theme! I was today’s years old when I learned: PARENTHESES is the plural form of Parenthesis! This caused me a problem in the eastern side as I was pretty sure NIKE was the personification of Victory but didn’t fit with PARENTHESES… I really appreciate themes that actually help you solve a puzzle. Too often themes have no bearing on the puzzle or only makes sense once you finish the puzzle and read the cross play article. Rating: 9/10
This had to be the sparsest Wordplay column I've ever seen....
I thought I'd probably have to run a lot of the alphabet when two unknowns crossing and leaving blank square challenged me at 39D and 44A, but it only took two key presses! "TCBY" is vaguely familiar; I'll look it up later. Oddly, it didn't take any kind of run to fill in the blanks of ANU__S at 57A though I didn't know the crosses until after I filled in the BI that suggested itself out of nowhere. My mind is starting to play that kind of trick on me.
@kilaueabart The Country's Best Yogurt, I believe.
@kilaueabart, Good to see you out here again. I was thinking of you when we had those monsters on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. They were pretty tough, IMNSHO.