I realize that the only qualification for the special entries is that they be stores that go into a (slightly) big(ger) box, but it would have been nice if all four were really BIG BOX STORES. LOWES and IKEA definitely qualify, but GAP is just a typical mall store, and ALDI is a moderately-sized limited-stock supermarket.
@Steve L I was about to comment the same thing. Aldi can be smaller than the average grocery store and I've never seen a big box gap.
@Steve L same. This construction error made me irrationally angry.
@Steve L They are not Big Box Stores, they are stores in big boxes in the grid. L
@Steve L Some Gap stores are big box-ish (think like Macy's and Nordstroms). There is one in UVillage here in Seattle that is huge, 2 floors with an escalator inside. (We don't have Aldi here, but I've heard of it as the parent store of Trader Joe's)
I know the term from American media, but what actually is a big box store anyway?
I had [guess]timates for 12D, but of course, a SguessT isn't a thing
@Steven M. I had the same thing at first!
@Steven M. Ah, but “guess” was used in the clue, so it couldn’t be in the answer, right?
@Steven M. This is what kept me from finishing quickly. I knew Guess wasn’t right but I couldn’t come up with Lowe’s for at least 3 minutes.
@Steven M. I got dooked at that crossing; I parsed 12D as LOWEST I_____ and had a heckuva time unseeing that.
Steven M. — yeah, that was definitely a tricky corner!
I was surprised by the nonstandard plural SERAPHS.
@Dan Same here. I gave myself a little pat on the back for knowing the answer was SERAPHIM, but then was confused when that clearly didn't fit.
Nonstandard? <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/seraph" target="_blank">https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/seraph</a>
@Dan I wouldn't call it nonstandard. When English imports a word from another language it's a crapshoot as to whether the plural follows the rules of the original, or of English. So we have concerto leading to both concerti and concertos. According to ngram SERAPHS was actually the more popular plural until the 1830s.
Super cute. I loved this puzzle. Fun and cheeky without being obstinate. I needed harmonious noncombative company tonight- thank you!
Vivaldi asked for an amaretto at the local dive. He was disappointed. Of all the yoga poses to try at the megaplex, downward dog really makes it hard to watch the movie. Speaking of that, the model who was told to strike a pose one too many times opted for downward dog. It worked like a charm - coffee break instantly declared. The contractor trying so hard to offer a low estimate for the project lost out because they were slowest to realize that there was no more American Flag Blue paint to be found anywhere.
I admire the vision of constructors who come up with these sorts of ideas. And I admire the word smithing that constructing such a beautiful thing. But let me tell you what kind of shopper I am. I want a long street, preferably like something out of Harry Potter, with teeny, tiny stores so picturesque you could just eat them up. Each one specializes to the point that one can either gather it all in with one glance, or pore over it for hours. In other words, I love the polar opposite of big box stores. Every single one of them gives me a headache to even drive by. And being in most of them makes my skin crawl. And that made the puzzle slightly less appealing to me that it might have been. I can't escape big box stores entirely--this is America, after all--but I avoid them to the best of my ability.
@Francis I hate big box stores and shopping malls. They are depressing, dehumanized temples to consumerism. I don't get how people spend time at malls for *fun*.
@Francis I totally agree with your comment. I used to live in the North End of Boston - the city's Italian district and loved to go shopping on Salem Street, defiantly a model for the Harry Potter design. There were little cheese stores, butcher shops, bakeries, even an herb shop where they would scoop tea leaves into little brown paper bags. I still remember the sound. But my favorite was a small fruit and vegetable shop around the corner where you couldn't touch any of the merchandise, but only point at what you wanted. The owner would then place them in a small brown paper bag with the price written in crayon on the bag. He also had a small coal burning stove in the middle of the shop where he would set vegetables atop where they would slowly simmer on a cold afternoon.
This comments section is hilarious today. Here is a disambiguator for everyone who finds themselves confused about the puzzle or about big box stores in general. Big Box stores are large, box-shaped stores, usually located in outlying suburban areas, often in close proximity to other similar stores (in aggregate, these are referred to as Big Box Developments, or something similar). This is in contrast to a shopping mall—where many stores are located in one building—or main-street style shops, which have individual access but are smaller scale. Walmart, Costco, Ikea, BestBuy, Target, HomeDepot, etc. are the prototypical Big Box stores. Big Box stores are not (necessarily) stores where you buy large things or large numbers of things. The term refers exclusively to the size and shape of the actual building. The stores listed in the rebus squares, are not all Big Box stores. The gimmick is that they are stores and they are placed in boxes that are slightly bigger than standard crossword boxes. This might have been more straightforward if they had been consistently either all big box stores or all not, but let's assume these were the ones that worked and leave it at that. The visual pun of the rebus being a store in a larger box would not have worked without the visual emphasis. While it is often nice to be surprised by a gimmick, this one had to be visual or it would not have made sense. This is probably more annoying than helpful but hey. Take care out there!
@Scott All true, yet Aldi’s footprint is more of a medium box and I haven’t seen a big box Gap in forever - the one near us became an AT&T store and is now a chase bank.
They really changed things. You can’t pop the puzzle back up while you’re in the comments section. It doesn’t open the NYT app anymore. Anyway, nice puzzle. The LOWES square had me for about eight minutes. Other than that, a nice bowl of popcorn.
@Jake G Yes, the NE corner was a low point for me too.
@Jake G - After the recent format change, go into the regular NYT app and search Wordplay. Open the column and comments there, and you can leave the puzzle open in the puzzle app.
@Jake G Yeah, that really annoys me, too! I used to love popping back and forth between the comments and the puzzle to see what clues people were referring to. Extra cumbersome to go find the article on the Times app to be able to do that.
Thursday lite. The revealer was obvious; having the revealer (and the big boxes) made the puzzle much too easy (in my opinion, of course). This worked L(ikea)CHARM if you like your Thursday tricks on the very easy side. Nice idea, Joe Deeney, but I would have preferred normal size boxes for the stores.
@Barry Ancona But then they wouldn’t be stores in BIG BOXES in the grid L
LarryF (and recco's), No kidding!
I got my brain-loving work-hard moment trying to figure out the LOWES square. Then came splendid moments of uncovering words and phrases that hit sweet spots – GRAVEN IMAGE, GRAPPA, LIKE A CHARM, ELICIT, TAG LINES, SERAPHS, CHASM, and SOIREE. That’s a load of lovely. I appreciated the tightness of the theme – and thus Joe’s skill in coming up with the theme answers he did – when I struggled to come up with other rebus possibilities. The only other store besides ULTA (which Joe mentioned in his notes) that hit me was UPS, which does have terrific answer possibilities, such as BACKUPSINGER and COUPSDETAT. And, you know, it’s pretty silly – and I love silly – having a grid with goofy-looking oversized squares that pun on BIG BOX STORE in the first place. So, your puzzle, Joe, put me in a great mood and sent me flying into my day. Thank you!
I know this puzzle can be considered easy, but despite the lack of a greater challenge, I'm completely charmed by it. It took some thinking and figuring out, but not the hair-pulling kind. A Thursday Lite, I'd call it. It brought me memories of my stint working for the GAP in Austin, TX. Remember GAP greeters at the door? They'd just stand there at the entrance, blurting out "Welcome to the GAP!" My boyfriend at the time walked in one day and was greeted with a "Hello, how are you?" by this innocent kid who was on his first day at work. Big mistake. Huge mistake. My boyfriend, an extroverted jokester, stopped in his tracks and lovingly answered, "I'm so glad you asked. You really want to know? Let me tell you how my day's been going—" at which point I ran over and pulled my boyfriend away, apologizing to the wide-eyed kid and letting him know all was well and he was doing great. I'm still friends with that ex-boyfriend and 'til this day I tease him that it was because of him that the kid never came back for a second shift. And with that, I leave you with the fabulous funky The Gap Band and the song "You Dropped a Bomb on Me" - <a href="https://youtu.be/17lkdqoLt44?si=uKq1eacDvnaPOwAk" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/17lkdqoLt44?si=uKq1eacDvnaPOwAk</a> Thank you, Mr. Deeney, for a very nice puzzle and the trip down memory lane!
@sotto voce I am certain it won't sound this way, but I mean this as a serious question: What is the appeal in doing what your boyfriend did? It reminds me of those people who post videos pranking their child by giving them a big present and saying "Remember how you wanted a bike?" and it turns out to be a rock and they post the video so everyone can laugh at their child's disappointment. (Of course, I'm also a bleeding heart who can picture that poor nervous kid on the other side of the fun you and your boyfriend had at his expense.)
As former (short-term) GAP employee ( I survived exactly the number of days to get the big pre-holiday employee discount day) the worst possible post was as a greeter. During the holidays. In a mall. The non-stop flow of people and your own voice, “Hi there!” “Hello” “Hi” “Hello” “Hellohitherehellohellohihihitherehello…” Hours. Almost felt like hazing newer employees. But *everyone* got Gap clothes for Christmas. So,there’s that.
I don't think of GAP as a BIG BOX STORE, but I found this puzzle delightful!
@Teresa Neither is ALDI, but I think that just meant store names in big boxes in the puzzle, not literally big box stores, commercially.
Good puzzle today. Clever theme and good rebus that wasn't sneaky about being a rebus. Fun solve. I had trouble in the northeast corner because first I had GUESSTIMATE but couldn't make GUESS work with the across clue. Then I had TEE SLOTS and didn't know enough about MENORAHs to realize easily I was wrong.
So easy. So sadly, disappointingly easy. Again. Thursdays at the Times have become the opposite of what they were until quite recently - unpredictable and challenging and innovative and creative and surprising and engaging and fun. This was... not that. /boo to the Great Easening(TM)
@B 54 minutes and 2-3 revealed squares for me. Just for a counterpoint.
@B Again we agree. Even though not knowing many of the multiple trivia entries slowed me down, I still completed this faster than my Thursday average, and the rebuses were pretty much given away by the huge, glowing boxes.
You all want to talk about BIGBOXSTORES? Well, i want to talk about Shamash. I’ve never heard of a shamash, which is apparently the candle used to light all the other ones on a MENORAH. This is probably why i thought it said “stramash”, which is a Scottish word that basically means a brawl. So there i was, trying to work out if the seven letter answer could be “Glasgow” or “Scot pub” or somesuch. And when i finally looked up Shamash, Wikipedia did not illuminate me with Jewish candles but took me straight to an article about the ancient Mesopotamian sun god of that name, who was also known as Utu (in another confusing near-miss with one of this puzzle’s answers.) Finally on the right track, i am fascinated to see that MENORA derives from the ancient Proto-Semitic root -n-w-r, meaning "to shine" or "to give light," which is shared by other light-related words like the Arabic nar (fire) and minaret. Who knew??
@Petrol Not you! (And neither did I)
@Petrol What an erudite little constitutional that was. Thanks.
@Petrol Shamash in Hebrew is a helper, someone or something used to enable. The shamash is used to light the other, more important candles of the menorah. A shamash in the synagogue is the custodian; he keeps the holy books tidy, etc.
I don't care what day it is as long as it's a fun puzzle, which this very much was, but a Thursday that's "approachable enough for solvers who are still getting their Thursday sea legs" - isn't that a Wednesday? I've got a soft spot for a rebus (any puzzle that plays around with the letter entry to be honest) - I enjoyed this one as just a straight-up classic example of the genre. Plus a cute little visual element as well. Good to see CORONA clued as a beer, too. Like "musk" should be clued as a scent... Great job, thanks Joe!
@Alex Wednesday with a gimmick.
For me the experience of doing the NYTCP is that of tiptoeing on a narrow edge, with self doubt on one side and the sheer joy of discovery on the other.
I like the theme of this puzzle but ... entering the names as rebuses makes me think these are little box stores. There's some symmetrical fun in the N and S: MAGMA spewing out of a CHASM and a short OBIT that reads NO ME.
Well, I finally found how to get to comments… Yay. Also yay, I figured out the big box stores theme early. I don’t agree with Gap or Aldi though. Yes to IKEA and Lowes. Made for a relatively easy but not fast Thursday puzzle
@Megan hello and welcome to the comments! I thought that about Gap too, until I noticed that they are just stores (any stores) that have been put into big boxes. It was confusing that IKEA and LOWES actually are big box stores.
I have been struggling with the rebus concept for awhile now. But something clicked when I read your take on it and the light bulb went off. This was a fun puzzle to solve, particularly if you struggle with Thursday puzzles like I do.
@Mikey That's great to hear! Congrats on the solve, I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Cute puzzle, but awfully easy for a Thursday. It would have been more of a challenge if the rebus squares had not been telegraphed.
@Marshall Walthew True. But then they'd just be box stores, not BIGBOXSTORES
@Marshall Walthew - a good example of why i have the overlays turned off by default. There are those occasional days where the overlays are key to understanding the theme. But more often, like today they just simplify the theme too much for my liking. And since Big box could arguably refer to the number of letters, the puzzle stands on its own without the overlay.
Late to the comments as the squirrels ate through our internet cable. The technician just finished reconnecting it and let me know that we should be good for at least another day. I liked this puzzle a lot -- a classic rebus. And after two days on the phone with SMARMy but not too helpful, customer service reps, I needed a not too difficult puzzle. Thanks Joe Deeney.
@Esmerelda I didn’t even know that was a thing that could happen !
@andrzej -- Congratulations on having a woman from Poland reach the finals of the French Open tennis tournament!
Well, it's nice to have an actual Thursday puzzle on a Thursday. Sadly, the cluing for this one was once again much too direct, especially since the theme was so obvious. Finished in about 13 minutes, and I'm not a speed solver. Is the GAP a BIGBOXSTORE? That one seemed very out of place to me. And I'm surprised YOGAPOSES and STRIKEAPOSE were allowed to appear in the same grid. No GEMS here, but GRAVENIMAGE, MENORAH, GRAPPA and SERAPHS were nice entries.
@Xword Junkie same thought about the Gap! Didn't realize the Gap even sold a single thing in a box
@Xword Junkie You might be looking at the theme a little too literally. I wouldn't call GAP or ALDI a BIG BOX STORE in real life, but in the puzzle they're a store inside of a big box. Ergo, a BIG BOX STORE. I do agree that the fill clues were far too direct. "Waikiki welcomes" belongs on a Monday, not a Thursday.
@Xword Junkie I had the same complaint about YOGAPOSES and STRIKEAPOSE. That should be a definite no-no.
@Xword Junkie seraphs pissed me off too. the plural of 'seraph' is 'seraphim', not 'seraphs'. Even in English.
Loved the puzzle, but gotta say, GAP and ALDI are not BIGBOXSTORES.
@Lisa Marshall As others have noted, they are stores and they are placed inside big boxes on the grid.
This was a terrible puzzle, full of nonsense words and misspellings. Rebuses are the worst thing NYT ever did to crosswords. What exactly is a 'licharm'? Who is "Viva"? Certainly not the composer of the Four Seasons. That's Antonio Vivaldi. And even the rebus clue is nonsense. Aldi isn't a big box store. It's a grocery store. Neither is GAP. Will Shortz really phoned this one in.
Adam, I really hope you get some puzzle help: from the column, the comments, or anywhere else.
@Adam I can't tell if I'm just too exhausted to understand your comment but you seem to both understand that there's a rebus element within it and yet not understand it at all. You might want to read or reread the article that you had to cross through to come here and leave this comment. It'll work LIKEACHARM.
@Adam Maybe the puzzle shouldn't accept just the first letter for a rebus. It would get rid of this "misspelling" nonsense. And the gratuitous hatred spewed toward Will Shortz? How in the world does that help anyone? Of course you have the right to your opinion about the puzzle. And I have a right to my opinion about your opinion. Feel free to have an opinion on my opinion about your opinion. That's how we push the software to the extreme right edge of the page, right Andrzej and Matt?
@Adam Please know, there will be no misspellings. There will be solver misunderstandings and refusal to sort it out, but there will be no misspellings, or at least vanishingly rarely. It's worth figuring it out! It's fun!
Please do not feed the trolls. It just encourages them.
Fun puzzle, although I still had to look several answers up due to them crossing. 21 across kept me combing through the puzzle for a while. At first I thought of a US citizen and put down ESP. Then after EAGLET I though, "OH! Of course, it's ASL! I don't think anyone learns ASL just to be bilingual but cool of the constructor to raise awareness" Had no idea ESL was a widely used acronym but here I am, someone with English as a second language 🙈
@Frankie B ESL is indeed widely used here. I've heard TEFL on BBC, which stands for Teaching English as a Foreign Language. There's a move towards EAL for English as an Additional Language, because many of the people in the classes already speak 2-3 languages.
Ugh! For me it was one of those puzzles where I stupidly spell something wrong and then spend 25 minutes trying to find the error. At least by checking my answers I learned that Tolkien’s Treebeard is not an ear, nose, and throat doctor.
I have never gone to a megaplex, not to say more than one, but if I did, I would call them "megapleges." *** One day, in EDEN: Adam's Task ***And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field ... GEN. 2:20*** Thou, paw-paw-paw; thou, glurd; thou, spotted Glurd; thou, whitestap, lurching through The high-grown brush; thou, pliant-footed, Implex; thou, awagabu. Every burrower, each flier Came for the name he had to give: Gay, first work, ever to be prior, Not yet sunk to primitive. Thou, verdle; thou, McFleery’s pomma; Thou; thou; thou—three types of grawl; Thou, flisket; thou, kabasch; thou, comma- Eared mashawk; thou, all; thou, all. Were, in a fire of becoming, Laboring to be burned away, Then work, half-measuring, half-humming, Would be as serious as play. Thou, pambler; thou, rivarn; thou, greater Wherret, and thou, lesser one; Thou, sproal; thou, zant; thou, lily-eater. Naming’s over. Day is done. -- John Hollander.
The big, glowing boxes could just as well have had an arrow pointing to them, captioned with "There is a rebus here!!!". Why even have a rebus when discovering it is no challenge at all? Over here, VIVALDI'S Four Seasons is probably one of the few pieces of classical music almost everybody is familiar with, so it basically gave the theme to me for free. Also, the themed squares were incorporated into words that had nothing to do with BIG BOX STORES - I always think there is something inelegant about a theme that does not meaningfully incorporate all the entries involved. The fill was not very interesting, either. Oh, and even though I am a huge beer snob, I've never seen a Belgian IPA. The concept seems very strange - Belgian beers are known for being malty rather than hoppy, and I've never had a bitter Belgian ale, so I don't really get how a Belgian style would show in an IPA.
@Andrzej Isn't Houblon Chouffe a Belgian IPA? A Tripel to start and then they hop the heck out of it, no?
@Andrzej that clue made me want to try both a black and a belgian. I'll have to wander up to the Amsterdam Ale House and see if they have any on tap.
I like how they’re always changing the prices at big box stores. It’s more my style to buy à la crate.
Overall this was a fine puzzle, but I don't think that The Gap qualifies as a big box store. Typically I think of Target, Walmart, etc.
Even with a year under the belt. Starting 1 across with a gimme. Either ACTI or ACTV basically made the puzzle fill itself. But I will say, for me, I spent maybe 30% of my solve trying to get my last cell. The NE themer. I just cold fry my brain to process it. Until I did. Interestingly. The note says don’t play in dark mode. Which I always do. Many times I can’t see circles when playing in dark mode. But these boxes were super clear. Interesting the editors put that note in there, which I saw after I was done. I liked the theme. But I didn’t. For me. And I think for a lot of folks, the harder, the more enjoyable. I’m not here to boost my ego. I’m here to get my backside whooped (@$$ kicked) in a fair but punishing way.
@Weak I solve in dark mode in the android games app. Boxes were impossible to miss if you had Show Overlays turned on. The note should have said make sure you have them turned on.
@Weak where does it say not to play in dark mode? I don't see that note.
I take issue with 12D, “Low Estimates” being clued as “Conservative Guesses”. There are plenty of situations where the conservative guess may in fact be intentionally on the high side, for example in budgeting for expenses.
@JD Gold I definitely see your point. And I guess technically, they could have clued “conservative guesses, usually” But aside from playing “fact boy”. Did it really mess up your ability to get the answer? As I said in my OP. that was my last and hardest cell. But it wasn’t because of definitional completeness.
Like Barry, I found it to be Thursday lite, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. Tiny bit of a religious theme going on, what with SERAPHS, MENORAH, EDEN and GRAVEN IMAGE in the grid. Thanks, Joe.
@Vaer I agree and you didn't mention Sons of Eli from the Old Testament book of Samuel.
I enjoyed the solve but I just have one qualm. I understand completely that the bigger boxes for the rebuses was literally part of the theme and revealer but I always prefer when rebuses or indeed any themed entry is not highlighted and requires a penny dropping moment instead where you realise that the letters you want to use just won’t fit into those boxes. I just find that a Thursday in particular should avoid the handholding. But thanks anyway for the fun puzzle!
@Dave For this puzzle I think 11A/12D would have been very difficult without it.
While I understand the theme, neither Aldi nor Gap are big box stores, at least in the US where big box stores are the IKEAs, Best Buys, and Home Depots of the world. Aldi is a regular supermarket (and in fact smaller than a traditional US supermarket) and Gap is a standard clothing store. Nothing big box about either of them. I also agree that this was more Tuesday or Wednesday material given that, due to the theme, the rebus boxes were highlighted making it a much easier solve. Enjoyable nonetheless.
@David --- While they may not all be big box stores, I think we can agree that they are all stores in a big box. which I believe was the conceit here.
@David I had the same objection at first, until I realized that all the names are in fact in big boxes - as @jas pointed out. What? Puns in a crossword puzzle? I never.
@David Also, definitely Costco and maybe Walmart.
A real Thursday puzzle! Hurray! Good gimmick. Good revealer. And great rebi! That’s my idea of a near perfect Thursday!!!
The X-Phile, New location! Summer? Sabbatical? Kidding?
Fun puzzle. I thought I was so smart by filling in GUESStimates in the upper right…that derailed me for a while.
Today's poem made from words found in today's puzzle<br> a/ o heart! in such a world as this where a brave of birds wild the sky in a tempest of joy you run in the orchards over d/ the rush of angels just a/ to see
Well I love rebuses, and especially when they work both ways. So I really enjoyed this in spite of all the things I didn’t know. Somehow I found them. And I thought maybe you really had to be in certain parts of the US to know all the stores. Fave fill was Vivaldi.
In all my ~1500 puzzles, I have never noticed a NYT crossword using the same word twice in the grid (POSE) - I had assumed this was some kind of rule? Can anyone illuminate for me?
@Rachel C While you're correct that STRIKEAPOSE and YOGAPOSES both contain POSE, I'm not sure the repetition breaks this softish rule, since the word in each case is but a component of different multi-word fills. More senior solvers might weigh in differently, of course. Your number of puzzles is pretty similar to mine, so I'm also newbish here. As for intentionaly repeated words in a puzzle, there are a few recent examples. The January 3d puzzle this year did it several times. But that was part of the gimmick that day. Ditto on April 19, 2025.
@Rachel C The May 7th, 2023 puzzle has an answer twice, and even with the same clue, but in that case it's quite intentional as it's the point of the theme.
Finally! A rebus! And then the NYT crossword editing team appeals to the lowest common denominator by highlighting exactly the squares in which to place them. This was a good puzzle that could have been made great by not highlighting the squares in which to place the rebi.
@DocP Another disappointing Thursday. PS Your pedantry for today: rebus is Latin, but it’s not in the nominative, so it forms a plural is the regular English way.
@DocP Finally? Doesn't your memory extend back as far as this past Sunday?
@DocP I think making the boxes big was important for the revealer answer.
@DocP I understand that you want to figure out the rebuses by yourself, but unless you have big boxes, how does the theme work?
As I solved this puzzle, I wondered how it would sit with our international solvers. Do they know these stores? Do they care to? Aside from the “big box store” pun, I found the whole thing pretty uninspired, and not really worthy of a Thursday. I’d have no complaints if this had appeared on a Tuesday or Wednesday, but I’m getting a little impatient waiting for a real Thursday entry to come along. And while I wait, does anyone know where I can go watch some corgi races? Now that looks like fun.
@Heidi IKEA has been present in Poland since 1991. In fact, the first Polish IKEA opened less than 1 km from where I lived at the time. Can you believe it was considered a luxury store then? We were in the middle of our great economic transformation, inflation was raging, and living standards were decreasing for many, before finally improving several years later, once market economy and democracy finally began to provide benefits for most people. These days I would never shop at IKEA - much better quality furniture is available elsewhere, especially as Poland is one of Europe's (the world's, maybe?) biggest furniture producers. We have ALDI stores, too, albeit of the German supermarkets, Lidl is by far the most ubiquitous, and my favorite (also because they stock a lot of Polish produce). I've never seen a GAP store in Poland, but I remember the name from my formative years - my mom managed to get her hands on a GAP sweatshirt in the late 1980s, when anything Western was rare and much desired. LOWES gave me most trouble today as I only vaguely recognize it, probably from 5 or 10 years ago, when I browsed imgur daily, and all sorts of American things came up in the memes there. We don't have that brand over here.
@Heidi I checked and there actually is an ALDI in the building that housed IKEA in 1991! Also, I remember that building from the 1980. There was some state-owned store there then. Shops were understocked under "communism", but occasionally new stock would be delivered, and huge lines formed then, with people queueing for hours upon hours. There was a whole queueing culture - people organized queueing committees (komitety kolejkowe) that made sure nobody would cut in line (Pan tu nie stał! - You were not standing here! was a signature catchphrase or pre-1989 Poland). My mom once took me to stand in such a queue - having a kid with you meant you could go and take care of some other stuff while the child kept your spot in the line. So there we were, my mom standing in line, and me playing around on the nearby underground (Metro) construction site. I was throwing stuff into a huge puddle when my foot slipped and I fell into the dirty water. It was winter, and close to freezing. I begged mom to take me home but she couldn't - she had spent hours in line already and she really needed whatever it was that was being sold. By the following day it would be gone. So I stood there, shivering. Fun times, eh?
@Heidi It’s very kind of you to think of us outsiders! I’ve been to IKEA but never known my been to a BIGBOXSTORE. But anyway, we cope. And love the crossword, as ever, for all its parochial challenges!
@Heidi I once saw a lecturer who demonstrated an animal's ability to find minimize (in a calcuslus sense) by bringing his corgi friend, Elvis, the calculus dog. At one point he mentioned as an aside that Elvis could run a mile in 4:20. I almost stood up to call shenanigans on the claim. I don't believe it to this day! Maybe I'm just too closed minded. If you see a corgi race where a corgi actually does this, please let me know.
@Heidi both Ikea and Aldi ARE international stores. Ikea is from Sweden and Aldi is German.
@Heidi As others have pointed out, two are European and everyone's heard of the GAP. I've heard of LOWES alright because they pop up on sports sponsorships. Couldn't tell you what they do. It was gettable anyway because SLOWEST had to be S___EST, not a huge jump.
@Heidi, IKEA and Aldi are both European stores, so those should be recognizable. And for the corgi races, check on YouTube. When you come out of that rabbit hole, the next Thursday crossword will be ready:)
I get it. You kind of need the boxes for the theme to work. They're not all big box stores, but they are all stores in big boxes. Very cute, but the boxes are a huge tell, and take this puzzle out of Thursday territory. As soon as I cued up the puzzle to print, I felt a little let down. I wonder if Joe was surprised that this ran on Thursday instead of Wednesday.
@Nancy J. That's of course, queued, not cued. All I want for Chrismas is an edit button.
9D was easy because Shadow and Jackie's chicks have been doing great.
@McT We have a cabin in Big Bear City. Cheers!
@McT <a href="https://www.bigbear.com/blog/big-bear-lake-bald-eagles" target="_blank">https://www.bigbear.com/blog/big-bear-lake-bald-eagles</a>/
@Warren, if you're reading this, thank you for that video you posted yesterday! I just saw your comment and the video now, and wish I had been at that concert. How great that your son was there! The song "What's Up" has become, of course, a timeless hymn/battle cry. I remember walking in Manhattan with my brother and a friend of his, talking about the emergence of these amazing female songwriters of the 1990s. We brought up and agreed on Alanis Morissette (specifically "You Oughta Know) but he sneered when I mentioned Linda Perry and 4 Non Blondes (specifically "What's Up".) I defended the song whole-heartedly. I hope he now knows that the first one has 93 million views on YT, having been posted 19 years ago, while the latter was posted 15 years ago and has 2.1 billion views! I feel avenged, lol.
@sotto voce Yeah, I got to comments late yesterday. I have to admit, I really only learned about Linda Perry’s vast influence because of Brandi Carlile. As you noted, a lot of it is behind the scenes or in collaborations. Here’s a good story about her new work and documentary in the Guardian. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2026/may/07/linda-perry-4-non-blondes-let-die-here-documentary" target="_blank">https://www.theguardian.com/music/2026/may/07/linda-perry-4-non-blondes-let-die-here-documentary</a>
@sotto voce, Take that, brother and friend! 😎