In the UK, mews (which can refer to a single building or multiple, attached buildings) is not a word for "row houses". Mews are former stable/carriage houses from Georgian and Victorian times, and they do not front onto streets. They are in alleyways or courtyards behind both commercial and residential buildings, or behind individual homes or businesses. They were the rear garages of their time many of them have been converted into really lovely residences which have retained their original stable doors. Row houses--which front onto streets---are called terraces or terraced houses. in the UK if a place is called a mews, it really was stables. In North America, 20th century property developers began naming roads of newly-built regular street-fronting rows of attached or semi-detached (and horse-free) houses "Mews" because it has a charming, olde-worlde sound to it.
@jbesen Thank you! I spent way too long looking at that (solving downs first) wondering how the heck terrace could fit in before finally settling on semi because at least that fits for 2 houses in the row
But virtually all of the mews in the U.K. have been turned into residences, so they are now row houses. Just as Washington Mews, the former stables/carriage houses behind the homes on Washington Square North in NYC, is now row houses.
@jbesen Yep. Also a little confusing on the association of red and blue to political parties. Never understood why it's the opposite way around in the US with red's association in many countries with the left.
@jbesen Maybe consider that as an American publication, the American definition may be meant. While a MEWS means the same thing in both countries, here in the US, row houses don't necessarily front a street (I live in one that doesn't), and MEWS fits the description of a row house just fine.
@jbesen Thanks. I know them as "terraces".
@jbesen This has been an issue in the comments before, which is exactly why I was certain it definitely couldn’t be MEWS haha!
Am I the only one who hates that the article now opens in the game app’s internal browser with no option to open in external browser?
@Kevin, Nope. It’s been that way for a few months now. After I solve the puzzle, I open the Wordplay column in a separate browser tab (I have it bookmarked) and go between the two on my phone. A hassle, but it works.
@Kevin lots of us hate it. When it first appeared there was much complaining. It seems they are just going to wait until we just ‘accept’ our fate. There is no indication that the puzzle technical team has user feedback in its workflow. Almost certainly by doing it this way the app becomes a self standing entity that can be tested and used without dependencies (eg which is the default browser of the user).
@Kevin It took me two times scrolling through the Wordplay column to figure out where the comments had gone. When I went back to the puzzle I finally saw the teeny-tiny comments box. I will say, though, that I like that I can now see the comments in dark mode, which I prefer.
@Kevin - You can open Wordplay in the main NYT app by searching Wordplay. Leave the puzzle open in the games app.
@Kevin Not only that. For months now, when I enter a word, it often disappears a few seconds later. That bug has cost me my streak several times. I have given up on ever beating my streak goal.
Early returns at xwstats call this puzzle Very Hard. That may change, but it tells me that my experience was not unusual. I thought maybe I was just tired.
@Steve L I've been slower than my average three times this week, including today. I don't know if it's been a tough week, or a low mental energy one. I fear the latter.
@Steve L 30% over average here.
Never heard of dealer's shoe, Elise Neal, or used the word "goose" to mean energizes. Sometimes the puzzle giveth and sometimes...
@Emma I was stymied by (l)OOSE and (l)IVETH, which made perfect sense to me.
Had I been solving in pen, this puzzle would have required a bottle of white-out.
@Mike R I just would scribble the right answer right over the wrong answer. White Out--that's clever. NOTE TO SAM--Is that puzzle scavenger hunt in Prospect Park another one of Zohran Mamdani's things? He does stuff like that a lot.
THEWAYILOOKATIT this was a nice sticky Friday. Although it had more general knowledge questions than I like, I was able to MAKEITMAKESENSE. I seldom quibble about the accuracy of clues, but as a lawyer who did a fair amount of bankruptcy work, I found REOPENED to be a little iffy. In the vast majority of Chapter 11 cases the business remains open throughout the bankruptcy, or if it does shut down, it either remains shut down or reopens before “emerging” from bankruptcy. I concede there may be cases that fit the clue, but the answer ran counter to my experience, and I’m feeling mildly churlish tonight
@Marshall Walthew I've never understood why a bankrupt place is still doing business. That's not what I was taught in Monopoly.
@Francis This is a simplistic answer. Going into bankruptcy can protect you from creditors and if you can reorganize while protected, perhaps you can reopen. Perhaps someone will come along and explain in more depth.
@Marshall Walthew @Vaer I think it's because I've been wired to equate "bankrupt" with "broke", and not see bankruptcy as a legal situation. Legal situations are my biggest area of ignorance, by light-years. I guess I just invited anyone to suggest I have even greater ignorance in other areas.
@Marshall Walthew I had trouble with this one because I was thinking about individuals, not businesses. I wanted it to be something like "recovered".
@Marshall Walthew you didn't need to feel any kind of churlish to chime in here. In fact you were being way too kind. I see bk deals all the time and have honestly never seen a company "close" while in Chapter 11. If they did, they'd be giving up any revenue thereby putting themselves in a much worse position. The whole point of filing for bk is to reorg while you're open.
The bank only gave me bills and no coins. Make it make cents! (I always mint to post that.)
@Mike Euroften upset and we hear accounts, dime after dime, of problems like this. Next time you should teller exactly what you want: laundry money.
I have fallen asleep weeping and praying for 14A for nearly 10 years now. I don't think I'm going to get an answer.
@Francis We have been wondering the same thing. It's like the world went mad. Hopefully things will get better there soon wirh new leadership! Wishing you good luck!
@Francis There is no answer in human experience. My family is on its /fourth generation/ of this problem and not uncommonly so, in most of the world. War is God's way of teaching USians not only geography but also philosophy and maybe even ethics. Good luck to you.
One of the signature Crosslandia moments is when you revisit an area numerous times and still can’t crack it; it still looks the same, you haven’t put in anything new in ages. But then, on the nth time a fissure opens somewhere inside you and out bubbles an answer you know is right, the tension dissolves, and you sit with gratitude and wonder at how that happens. Often that one word triggers a splat-fill that breaks open a huge area. Is there a term for that moment? I bring this all up because I was in true stuck-ness several times today, and these wondrous life rafts did come, just when I thought they never would. This was, for me, a tough puzzle punctuated by these feel-good moments, created by a constructor who is skilled at making grids that RUN INTERFERENCE. I love working hard through difficult grids like this, grids that enable these wondrous pops of pleasure. Thank you, and more like this please, Kelly!
@Steve L -- Yes, of course, that's it. Perfect!
@Lewis I swear...when we go away from a puzzle that is killing us for a while, there are background apps in our noggins that are running, solving, obsessing. What else could possibly explain these moments of enlightenment when a whole section or the whole puzzle suddenly opens up to us??
@Lewis Perfect description! Though I did still give 26D a stern look.
@Lewis For me it’s like painting. I’m a very detailed painter so when I’m working I am looking close up at minor details in color and shape. It’s only when I step back and take a break and take a look at the whole picture do I see, wow, that actually looks like what I was trying to create. So in the same way we can sometimes be overthinking crossword clues and trying to fit in stray letter patterns and guesses, but when we take a break and come back to it we get some big picture inspiration.
@Lewis I call that moment "The Click".
@Lewis Yes! I burned through this puzzle, delighted—and then got stuck in the east. I must have come back four times! It’s been years since I’ve been that stuck. And then—bam! In half a minute it fell. Fascinating!
I am so impressed!!! I mean I am really wowed!!! Yes, of course for this Friday-worthy puzzle, and the brilliant mazes of meanings that Kelly Morenus cooked up, but for me as well! I finished it with no look-ups, no hints, nothing but teeth grinding grit, with feints and jabs and dancing backward, pleading MAKE IT MAKE SENSE!! (If anyone thought this was easy, I DON'T WANT TO KNOW!)
@dutchiris 😂 Yes, the Thrill of Victory!
@dutchiris I see that no one has posted a link to Angela Lansbury's performance from Dear World, the musical based on The Madwomsn of Chaillot. Here you go: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKQMRhBNr2g" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKQMRhBNr2g</a> Enjoy.
I love the spanners! They nicely form opposing pairs: 14A and 17A reflect a desire to know and understand, while 49A and 52A reflect a desire to blind and occlude. Also, someone who FLIES SOLO ain't helping with the EMISSIONS problem. Just saying.
The cluster of GOOSES, DEVO and POTOROO - all total unknowns - defeated me, especially as I was unfamiliar with DEALER'S [SHOE], too, and the biblical verb and LITE didn't come to me as easily as they probably should have. I was only able to resolve that mess with lookups of the marsupial and the band, and ultimately with a puzzle check. That's too bad, because otherwise the puzzle was enjoyably challenging. My first across and down pass yielded very little, but then I managed to tune into the clues and the solve progressed nicely. Then I hit that wall... It always feels uncool to be bested not by clever clueing but rather by personal arcana. That one area of the grid had 0 fun factor for me.
@Andrzej POTOROO was new for me too, but you do know DEVO: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIEVqFB4WUo" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIEVqFB4WUo</a>
@Andrzej I agree that the many Os block was not fun. LITE was cleverly clued. The rest was just a slog.
@Andrzej you know DR NO and not the DEALERSSHOE 😀 Watch to the end <a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7nFgqmAMglk&ra=m" target="_blank">https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7nFgqmAMglk&ra=m</a>
@Andrzej I would have pegged you as a DEVO fan. Their first album was produced by ENO. They do a cover of The Rolling Stones "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" that always made me laugh. Apparently Jagger was amused as well.
Not a fan of how the link to the column now opens within the games app instead of opening the NYT App. Why the change and can we set it back to the “ol’ timey” way of opening the column?
@JoPa I only use the games app, but the link to the wordplay column would just open in its own browser window. Amazing. It's the worst now that it's all in the game app
That was hard! Way over my average.
We had a discussion here a while ago about MEWS. In the UK row houses are called a terrace, and definitely not a MEWS. This was hard. Even when I revealed or looked up some clues I wasn't enlightened. You snap on DIAPERS? My babies' nappies used sticky tape, and before that - a large safety pin. PEEN, RED APPLE, HOGANS, GOOSES, POTOROO, the SHOE .... But that's fine - I'm glad others had the challenging Friday they expect.
@Jane Wheelaghan modern cloth diapers often close with snaps.
@Jane Wheelaghan I bought a bag of Fuji apples yesterday, Hogans are Navajo Tribe homes -- learned that in 4th grade California history. PEEN is one end of a ball-peen hammer. I had to look at that one for a minute.... I had it on crosses, but definition didn't come right away. My Biblical verb was haVETH, so wanted the energizer to hoist - but that didn't fit, either. Finally had to look at answer key to get POTOROO and GOOSES.
I would agree with xwstats to put this in the Very Hard category. It was a bear for me, about 33% over my Friday average. The East area took the most time. It was fun figuring out the spanners. There’s often that gnawing thought early on that maybe I won’t be able to fill this one in. But I put that aside and tell myself that I have a lot of time, I can always lay it down and come back to it and maybe see things differently. It was a good workout and a formidable Friday. Thanks for the experience, Kelly.
That was beyond difficult, with clues that felt particularly US based, making it an almost impossible fill for this International solver: RUN INTERFERENCE, HOGANS, particularly unknowable. As for MEWS. Others have already explained how inaccurate this clue is so I won’t go on, but it’s not the first time this clue/answer combo has been used, so come on Ed, a little tighter on the checks please. I’m currently changing multiple nappies (DIAPERS) for my baby grandson. There are no snap on varieties available here, it’s sticky tapes around the waistband, just as it was 30+ years ago when mine were tinies. I’d love to know exactly what snaps onto what. So, that’s my whinge over with. I hate being so down on a puzzle just because I’ve struggled with it and am always in awe of the constructors skill, but sometimes a puzzle feels exclusionary (if that’s the right word) if you’re not a part of the culture, rather than being delightfully difficult and an opportunity to fill in gaps in your general knowledge. Like TIL POTOROO. Final nit; is it my iPad playing up or has the Wordplay format changed? The comments section has moved to a separate page, rather than integrated with Wordplay. Can’t say it’s an improvement.
@Helen Wright I’m with you, snap-on diapers? No clue. And this was a toughie—quite a few look-ups, which never makes me feel great.
@Helen Wright RUN INTERFERENCE derives from American football. When a player is trying to move the ball forward, other offensive players attempt to prevent defenders from tackling him by getting in the way of those defenders. Not understanding this is why many non-fans think that what is going on is just chaos, and not part of a strategy. The phrase is applied metaphorically to any situation where someone important has underlings whose job is to make it so that person can accomplish his or her goals more easily.
@Helen Wright Didn't we have the MEWS discussion a month ago? I think it was resolved that they are stables, but possibly houses where stables used to be.
@Helen Wright modern cloth diapers use snaps. That's what I had for my son.
Grant, It was more than a month ago. Time flies! MEWS Fri Jan 30, 2026 31D British rowhouses Robyn Weintraub
Some cloth diapers have snaps. However I don't think that's what most people picture when they hear the word diaper.
@Helen Wright When I saw the MEWS clue and didn’t immediately get the answer, I just thought “oh, they had this recently, and I remember grumbling at the answer then”. Still grumbled a bit. HOGANS/ANNA was my sticking point at the end, had ANNe first and HOGeNS seemed plausible enough.
Just the sort of challenge I love--when I'm not severely sleep-deprived. I did not think I would finish, or even get halfway. I may have cried a little. But I did it! Somehow. Thank you, Kelly Morenus, for a lovely puzzle, even though it almost killed me. Editors: MORE OF THIS PLEASE.
Nice Friday offering from Kelly. No rebuses to bother people. No theme for people to not like. Just plain old clues and answers. I hope this one doesn't cause a STIR. And I don't see NCWYETH anywhere in the grid.
Best clever clue and answer: 22 ACROSS.
@Ms. Billie M. Spaight I was coming to 22A to say the same thing.
@Ms. Billie M. Spaight I couldn't decide if it was stupid or if it was genius. Came down on the former, but I'll forgive you that flaw. 😀
Advice to constructors: Ignore the whiners. Congratulations, Kelly!
Heh- heh! heh-heh! The puzzle had PEEN in it, Beavis!
Top notch Friday puzzle. I needed loads of crossers to get almost every answer, but gradually with trial & error and educated guesswork, they came. Had to really massage the long spanners to get them to reveal themselves, but again it was satisfying as they slowly stepped out from the shadows. Avoiding frustration and despair as square after square goes unfilled takes a lot of patience, but it really is worth it in the end! Thanks Kelly!
Oof, I finally got the update where the comments open in the Games app and I can now understand all the complaints. Blinding white that doesn’t respect my Dark Mode setting. Inability to easily swap between the puzzle and comments to make sense of someone’s “25D” comment. Who thought this was a good idea?
@Joe Also, I’m on an iPhone 17 Pro and the scrolling both in Wordplay and the comments feels like a nauseating sub-10 fps. Just a terrible implementation all around. Why not add a toggle in the options to open in the NYT app? On the subject of the puzzle, I really appreciated the challenge today. Barely got it with no lookups, but almost 9 minutes over my average. Learned some new words, like MEWS and HOGANS.
Can anyone tell me why the world play column won’t open in a new tab anymore?
@Courtney Yes this is annoying. I've taken to having the last one I read forever in a separate tab and when I need to read the latest, I refresh that tab then scroll to the links.
Brutally tough. Took years off my life.
1. Took me about the normal time, but a bit longer 2. I really sweat out a couple of areas 3. GOOSES is hilarious, and it took me forever to see it 4. Never heard of MEWS, CAVA, ANNA Hedgeman, or ELISE Neal 5. 22A is HERE just like every other clue/answer 6. Not sure why those are IOTAS in 27D. For all these reasons, and some that I've forgotten already, I declare this puzzle to be Friday-worthy. If you wish to argue with me, I'd point you towards 31D.
@Francis "Cava" is on Spanish champagne labels but I thought it was an adjective, not the type of wine. TIL for me. The Iota clue refers literally to the three (Greek) I symbole.
@Francis You've heard of CAVA. It's appeared in these puzzles before. I also often believe I've never heard of stuff I have simply forgotten.
@Francis 27d: Think of the carving on fraternity house IOTA IOTA IOTA.
Has anyone here ever heard of a POTOROO before today? Thanks to Will Shortz for making the DEVO band cross gettable for me by providing an "only these letters" clue for POTOROO. Otherwise the band and the animal could have been just about anything. How do I know it's a Will Shortz clue? Because it has WS's fingerprints all over it. Y'all also see that, don't you? I love MAKE IT MAKE SENSE. I've never heard that phrase, but it's quite colorful. These days, though, it might be very frustrating. There are some things that just can't be made to make sense -- with a whole slew of them coming out of the Oval Office every single half hour. Cute, deceptive clue for HERE. Thought for the day -- and it's a thought I've often had as both a solver and a constructor. THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO CLUE FOR "EKE" THAT'S NOT A SLAM DUNK. I have never, ever seen one. Have you, Lewis? None of our most elite constructors and most devious clue-writers have ever been able to find one. So if EKE, EKES or EKED is in the puzzle, you're going to have a gimme. I found this an entertaining and not particularly hard Friday themeless.
@Nancy I haven’t heard of a POTOROO either and thought I was pretty well versed in rare animals. And yeah that clue had the NYT editors’ paw prints all over it
@Nancy I haven’t heard of a POTOROO either and thought I was pretty well versed in rare animals. And yeah that clue had the NYT editors’ paw prints all over it
@Nancy And yes, I’ve never seen a really original clue for EKE either and have given up trying to create one as a constructor as well.
@Nancy. Good question on EKE. I did a quick search and found a cool alternative. It seems Eke is the first of the four sacred market days in the traditional Igbo calendar. Not a bad clue for late in the week, imo.
@Nancy In pre-Shortz era puzzles EKE was sometimes clued as a monogram of Duke Ellington - whose name was actually Edward Kennedy Ellington. And... .... in the very early years, it was often clued as an archaic version of 'Also.' I wasn't familiar with that. ....
@Nancy I knew POTOROO. My excuse is the Zoology PhD.
@Nancy Re EKE: Dyslexic cry upon seeing a mouse?
@Nancy I recently learned from a Charles Finch novel, The Last Passenger, that EKE NAME used to be the term that became NICKNAME--Finch was riffing on the way words gained or lost an "n" (eg napron and nuncle). But that would really be obscure!
Not feeling particularly clever today. This took forrrrever. Gonna need to read what y’all have to say about shoes and peens and some other bits to make sense of the happy music. I got it, but I don’t feel like I deserved it. But I do hope and pray that Friday will give me trouble, and it did. Fo. Sho. Awesome.
@CCNY Casinos shuffle 6 decks of cards into a SHOE, and the DEALERs slide the cards out one at a time. (Remember "Rainman"?) And a ball-peen hammer should tip you off to the part of a hammer that is the PEEN. Children should all be exposed to tools, IMHO, and learn their varieties and when to use what. But it's never too late; I'm sure you know a phillipshead screwdriver from a flathead, right? Oh, and wrenches.....
@CCNY If you kept going and got it, you deserve it!
When I worked at the Atlanta Summer Games, female staff were issued khaki SKORTS. They referred to using the bathroom while wearing them as "The Olympic Challenge." So maybe not so much leisure? Asking for a friend.
Tough (for me at least) but fair. A satisfying solve. And I learned that the lucite thingy on a blackjack table has a name. A weird, nonsensical name.
As a 2yr puzzler, I've learned my place in the heirarchy and instead of yelling at my own lack of knowledge, I now start Thu/Fri/Sat sans-help in the AM and then let them stew, and enjoy the augmented finish in the PM. Rarely a goldstar but still fun to ponder clues during the day while working and finish with a tasty beverage. Cheers!
@Joe Stew is always, always best left to sit for awhile. The Monday puzzles are like stovetop Mac and cheese—eat it right away. Fridays and Saturdays? Those pearl onions are way better after setting.
PLANE figures are specifically shapes in two dimensions, or flat. ... But I never understood how they got snakes on a plane.
@Mark The scale of difficulty must have been high.
@Mark They snuck in through the asp hole?
@Mark, M. C. Escher was famous for tessellating the PLANE with birds, fish, lizards, horses, and whatnot; I'm sure he could have done the same with snakes. :-) (There actually is an Escher work titled "Snakes", but it is not a tessellation; the snake doesn't look particularly planar there, due to the shading and layering.)
A tough but rather enjoyable puzzle when all was filled and done.
OooooKayyyy. I started in the NW, which was deceptively gettable...and then... Oof. Good challenge!! I took PLANE Geometry in 9th grade; this clue does not plainly (ha ha) jibe with the usage I'm accustomed to, but I'm sure Barry A will defend it, so I'll move on. I know of the POTTO, but the name POTOROO is, I admit, higher on the Cute-meter. AUDI makes a Q3, I see. I don't go by "make and model." In my book it's red car, blue car, black car.... and Manual or Automatic. I loved my Volkswagen station wagon (manual) that DHubby cruelly dubbed "too old" and sold out from under me....35+ years ago, but still.... Anyone else wear a SKORT back in the day? As in, 1958? Ugh-ly style. That's about it.... Stay safe this weekend, Puzzlers!
@Mean Old Lady The car I miss is my son's '96 Thunderbird. God I loved driving that car. Blew a head gasket. RIP PS I wear skorts all the time in the summer. I love how they look!
@Mean Old Lady My parents sold my VW Karmann Ghia when I went into the Army. Well, technically not "mine" but I drove it, a lot. Did I mention that it was a convertible?
@Mean Old Lady When I turned 16 and got my driver's license, my mom bought herself a '65 Mustang. And that's the car I got to use on weekends. It wasn't until some years later that it finally dawned on me that she had almost certainly done that just for me. Oh, and I buried the needle on that car more than a few times out in the country. ...
@Mean Old Lady Skorts are back in now! But cuter haha. I didn't know of either the potto or the potoroo! Have you heard of the Quokka? That's a new cute one I discovered. Anyways, I had to check my answers on this one and also didn't know there was an easier version! I forgot to close tabs on my laptop and my time shows 4 hours for this! :)
One more puzzle find. A Sunday from December 25, 1994 by Randolph Ross with the title "Seasons Greetings." All of the clues for the theme answers started with "Seasons greetings from..." And here are some examples: "Athens" KALACHRISTOUGENNA "Seoul" CHOOKSUNGTAN "Rome" BUONNATALE "Oslo" GLEDELIGJUL "Paris" JOYEUXNOEL "Madrid" FELIZNAVIDAD "Oahu" MELEKALIKIMAKA "Dublin" NOLLAIGSHONADHUIT Whew. Here's that link: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=12/25/1994&h=100a" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=12/25/1994&h=100a</a> ....
Another excellent tough Friday. I love it when I’m 10 minutes over my average. Thank you.
How do I open the tips in a browser instead of in the app?
@Kay do you mean the whole comment section or just the tip? And is this the same Gary Larson as Far Side?
@Kay agreed, terrible update. Now i cant swipe between the article and the puzzle!
@Sean. While it might “seem obvious in retrospect” the [blue] signifies LEFT to you, for most of the world it is red that signifies left and blue right in politics. Fortunately,I’ve seen enough American political news to get the answer
@Patrick J. You know, that's very interesting, because I distinctly remember political maps used to use blue for GOP and red for the Democrats. I distinctly remember watching returns in the 1968 election, and I could swear that when Humphrey won New York, the state went bright red on their display. And when Nixon won nearly the entire West, I remember it being a solid blue. And I thought, at the time, that it was an insult to the Democrats. Because at that time "red" meant "communist". "Better dead than red" was the slogan. Does anyone else remember any of this?
@Patrick J. Also, labeling Democrats as the left seems funny to a European - at best they are centrist by our standards, and on some issues they sit firmly on the right.
What even is left and right anymore? The "right" seem to want the government to ban things and control people's lives all over the place, while the "left" becomes more of a cultural or social club without any political foundation at all. Time for an updated way of defining how everyone hates each other, I think!
@Patrick J. I lay the blame for this on a graphic designer at the NY Times. The eye-catching displays of election results, (perhaps 2000?), based on new computerized data quickly became the way news organizations addressed the maps and the politics. As you point out, the new usage overturned centuries of previous practice. Royal Blue for authoritarian conservatism and Red for peoples' revolution. (Consider the flags chosen for the USSR and Mao's China.)
From the Wordplay column: "26D. I needed to ask a puzzle editor to clarify the clue [Kind of figure], and she was kind enough to educate me about PLANE figures, a geometric term that essentially just refers to shapes. No matter what you encounter this Friday, rest easy knowing that you didn’t have to ask a puzzle editor at The New York Times to explain shapes to you." PLANE figures are two dimensional. You can draw them on a paper, like circles, rectangles and squares, triangles, etc. By contrast, solid figures are three dimensional: cubes, pyramids, cones, spheres, cylinders, etc. They are something you can hold in your hand. Voilà.
I trust our columnist just didn't think "geometry" for 26D's [figure], and that he does still remember PLANE and solid geometry from high school.
I found this one enjoyably tough today. Took far, far longer than my Friday average.
It's fair to say that I struck out on my own while solving this puzzle. Though I saw a few things that eventually would float up from the dregs of my memory, ISIS*, SETH*, CAVA, I didn't feel confident filling in anything on my first pass until I got to the DEVO/DRNO combo all the way in SE corner. It was a proper Friday struggle for me. *Noticed after the fact that these two are names of Egyptian gods, which per wiki were sister and brother.
Typical tough Friday workout for me. Had to look up a couple of things, but mostly just working the crosses until something finally dawned on me. And... three of the 15 letter grid-spanners were debuts, but none of them were terribly unusual phrases. A bit surprised by that. Puzzle finds today I'll put in a reply. ...
@Rich in Atlanta As threatened: Two puzzles that had similar but somewhat different tricks. First - a Thursday from September 6, 2012 by Ben Pall. In that one - four sections that had double-wide or double-long squares that had just one letter in them. And... the 'trick' was that in one direction those were just single letters, and in the other direction they were implied to be stacked and used separately by two different answers. One example: PIZZA ______JOINT ROTARY While the down crossings over JOINT were RA(J)A, EB(O)N, AB(I)T, MI(N)X and SET(A). And the other 3 double spaced trick answers were: UNION, BREAK and SPLIT. You need to look at it to really get it. Here's that link: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=9/6/2012" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=9/6/2012</a> I'll put the other puzzle in another reply. ...
Once again, I'm so grateful for the "Easy Mode" clues by Christina Iverson, they "make it make sense". (I needed twenty two of them.) Kudos to those of you who wrestled with this very hard puzzle on your own!
boom! the theme answers were great, and the crosses perfect. Friday level fun all the way! Thanks!
Bravo! This was a worthy Friday and such a fun ride. I thought I would need to resort to Google to crack this baby open, but perseverence paid.
Ok, this was it. I’ll sometimes get some help on a clue here or there—rarely. But I haven’t run into a puzzle I just couldn’t solve in probably five years. I had to turn on auto check to get through this one. And it’s only a Friday! Not sure why this was so impossible for me, but o guess it had to happen eventually.
Well, I started out thinking this would be a romp. The first two spanners went in with one cross each, so the top third basically filled itself in. The rest was nice and crunchy. Since I already had RED APPLE, I thought aPlomb fit in nicely at 36 D. That really messed me up for a while. If it wasn't such a nice word, I probably would have taken it out sooner, but it just looked so good there that it took a while before I gave it another look. The SE came together slowly but surely, DEVO being the key that opened it up. Very nice, Kelly. Thanks for a fun Friday.
Gotta work on my patience, I gave up on this one. Kudos to those who stayed the course. The Monty Python “argument” sketch where Michael Palin mistakenly enters the “getting hit in the head lessons” room comes to mind. Happy Friday!
@Renaldo Moon Giving up is fine! I did so a couple of times. It’s coming back that will amaze you.
KILLER puzzle...in the best way possible. Tough as the toughest Saturday. Who could not want that? Who Saturdays?? Yayyyy!