I like challenges, but without too many obstacles. The long word plays, the slang, double entendres, oddities, all add up. My least favorite NYT puzzle in the past 2-3 months.
@Curtis How can something be a challenge if it doesn't have obstacles? To each their own. I thought it was witty and fun, one of my favorites in a long time.
Kugelman. Ok, he's a big deal, so I'm not going to hold back as I would for a debut constructor. This is *exactly* the kind of puzzle that causes negatives posts in the comment section. Absurd amount of cuteness, lots of brutal crosses (I won't call them naticks because I no longer think I know what that means), plenty of foreign names and foreign languages, bygone rock bands, answers which are noted as misspellings... Nah, no fun for me.
@Francis Have you been possessed by Andrzej today? Anyway there’s always next week.
@Francis You didn’t ask, but you mentioned, and I’m grouchy today so I’m gonna chime in on the mighty natick. They appear much less frequently (in my opinion) than the comments would suggest. IMHO- two words crossing that the solver doesn’t know just…ain’t. Not a natick. (Today, I did not know ANNE or GENA, but the crosses got an me A__E then a GE_A, so how many names could they be?) But, the original was 1-Across: "Town at the eighth mile of the Boston Marathon" → NATICK 1-Down: "'Treasure Island' illustrator, 1911" → NC WYETH) The 'N' was the intersecting letter that tripped up solvers. If you didn't know the illustrator's initials or the obscure Boston suburb, the "N" was gettable *only* by running the alphabet. However- the one I bring up (way too often) was two clues, [Counterpart of 84 down] and [Counterpart of 76 Across]. The crossed, but their final letter was a corner square. Uncheckable. Both three-letters. Crosses got TI _ and TA _. TIC/TAC. TIT/TAT. And the final letter was uncheckable! It happened to be a Kugelman, Sunday July 30th, 2023, but I have to put some blame on the editors. CC rant, over.
@Francis I believe I've despised every one of his puzzles until now. This is his exception that proves the rule against him. For me anyway. (But I don't keep track of constructor names and your mileage will vary.)
@Francis A natick is any cross one can't solve given one's own unique limitations.
@Francis Rex Parker, who coined the term, provides a definition and discusses it here: <a href="https://rexwordpuzzle.blogspot.com/p/frequently-asked-questions-i-get-lots.html" target="_blank">https://rexwordpuzzle.blogspot.com/p/frequently-asked-questions-i-get-lots.html</a>
Fun puzzle that had me chuckling when I figured the theme clues. My contribution: Actress Annie notices the trendiest places POTTSSPOTSTOPSPOTS
@Tom But then realizes they also have a faddish old timey vessel when she visits the loo. OOPS POO POO POT
@Tom meanwhile the late Queen Elizabeth is no longer able to say nice things about honey-making insects, which means that BESS BLESSES BEES LESS …while her son is laughing about usurping the king of Iran’s treasure CHAS HAS SHAH’S CASH HAHAHA
@Tom Show-off dined at home. HOTSHOTGOTTOGO
An actress, a physicist, a tea, and a martial art all crossing each other is brutal.
@Joe Agreed. That spot unalived my solve time, too.
@Joe Actually the actress and the physicist alone were enough for me.
@Joe Aw, shucks. I was expecting something else entirely! An actress, a physicist, a tea, and a martial art walk into a bar... :-D
I'm not touching this.
@Andrzej I agree 100%. Unfortunately I’ve started so I’m carrying on. This is the most stupid quiz ever. Just trivia.
@Andrzej A very wise decision, one I was sure you'd make. I did touch it, much to my dismay. Will write my "dismay" after I finish reading all the comments.
@Andrzej We all have our preferences. Mine skew toward difficult but doable puzzles, regardless of trivia, Americanisms, arcane and niche knowledge etc. With all the above so common in the NYT puzzle lineup I'm surprised you bother with them at all.
@Andrzej but it’s hard for Sunday! Aren’t you looking for hard puzzles? I had to look up a ton of stuff on Wikipedia.
Well, the puzzle had me at LEHRER, wordplayer extraordinaire. Here. Here’s a snippet from “Vatican Rag”: Get in line in that processional Step into that small confessional There the guy who's got religion'll Tell you if your sin's original. And, BTW, he did something quite rare and wonderful. He released all of his songs to the public domain. That is, he relinquished all his rights and gave the public blanket permission to use his music.
@Lewis When I was a grad student, we used to gather and listen to his records. Amazing talent.
@Lewis Imagine if he had kept writing songs until his death instead of stopping when he was young? But, as he said, “Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace prize”.
My favourite kind of end of week puzzle where after an hour of struggle nothing seems to be working and I'm contemplating retiring from solving crosswords and questioning all my life choices and drafting a mini rant in my head to rail at the random trivia and seemingly unsolvable Naticks and suddenly everything falls into place and the gold star pops up. Loved it.
@Rahul I love this comment. Some people give up at the "mini rant" stage and never get to "falls into place". Perseverance is the key to becoming a better solver.
While I appreciate how much skill this must have taken to construct, solving it felt like pulling teeth for me and I couldn’t wait for it to be over.
"Modern Art" nearly killed me! What a gloriously fun Sunday.
I haven't posted to this board in quite some but that was my least favorite puzzle in quite some time. I confess to being a bit of a brat about Sunday puzzles; it's one of my favorite hours of any given week. So when the Sunday puzzle is full of trivia, poor cluing (just my opinion), and is generally a joyless slog it gets my goat, so to speak. I understand mileage varies. Just saying that for me, that was really not pleasant at all.
Loved, loved, loved this but too gobsmacked to even know what to say right now. DERRIÈRE RIDER DERIDED is going to keep me smiling for a week. I think it will be more fun just to wait and see what everyone says because this puzzle will be as polarizing as it gets, I can’t wait to watch the nuclear fallout. I do need to ask—were any AI’s harmed in the making of this puzzle?
@SP DERRIÈRE RIDER DERIDED has to be one of the weirdest answers I’ve seen recently.
@SP For sure, hit me right in the silly sweet spot. But aww, you had go and bring up the modern day scourge of thought. :(
@SP I, for one, am not a DERRIERE RIDER DERIDED DERIDER
@SP to each their own I guess. I generally liked the theme but thought that was the worst of the theme entries.
@SP Ditto your reaction — to the puzzle in general (I guess I’m a rare Kugelman fan 🤷♂️), and doubly so regarding the particular theme entry you highlighted. By the time I got to that one, I immediately knew it was going to end in “derided”, but it took me until the very end, while flyspecking, to fully parse and appreciate the answer. Absolutely golden.
How about “NBA champions delete music greats from pregame playlist”? KNICKS KICK NICKS, SINK KINKS
This puzzle may play in Peoria, but it will not play in Poland.
@Barry Ancona Be surprised if Andrzej even tries it. John Kugelman + Sunday + a punny theme? That’s gotta be a hard pass.
@Barry Ancona Kugelman can go ride his derriere with a 10 foot pole.
@Barry Ancona A little bit of synchronicity: TCM is showing My Dinner with Andre tonight (as I learned while practicing the step away approach to solving). I caught the part at the start of the dinner where Andre details his experience with a group in a Polish forest. I didn't stay long. Returned to finish the puzzle in twice my Sunday average time.
@Barry Ancona it’s shouldn’t have played in manhattan either
I've learned in my brief tenure here that there are two ways to deal with a Kugelman grid: 1. Skip it. I'm too OCD/unevolved for this. 2. Imagine an AI programmed to mimic a very clever spectrum-dwelling dad who lives to amuse only himself with puns and jokes. Next, take a deep breath and grab a cup of strong coffee or glass of peated whisky. (Coffee for me, usually, as I'm a morning solver and am frequently off to work soon after...) Finally, commence to solve in the knowledge you will derive little pleasure apart from completing it.
@Matt It's late night for me so I'll take the whiskey. Oh wait I'm working on martini already.... 🍸🍸 Actually, I don't mind him that much, but for some reason this time as soon as I clicked into the grid, I decided to come to the comments. Might just beat me in the crazy time life as been lately Will I do the puzzle, or not? Good question!
@Matt PS I'm sorry to report that there were no Freudian fodder dreams last night. Bummer! 😕
@Matt Nobody cleaned up after their dogs here as recently as 20 years ago. Then things started to change, but slowly at first. I was among the early adopters of this new standard. I often found myself faced with a dilemma: do I dare step onto a biological minefield, in an attempt to clean up after Jorge, risking ruining my shoes, or do I just move on. Some fecal matter is best ignored.
@Matt There’s also option 3, which is how I approach most crossword puzzles, but Sundays in particular: stay in constant motion, not pausing on any one spot for more than a few seconds, until the grid is 90% full. Following that approach, I’ve found that it’s exceedingly rare to encounter a Sunday puzzle that’s actually challenging enough to be frustrating (aside from getting bogged down in the occasional flyspecking morass). That said, I actually happen to *enjoy* Kugelman puzzles (absolutely loved today’s theme!)…so even on a Sunday morning, such as today’s, where my brain is absolute mush from the previous night’s chemical bath, this take requires no zen mastery on my part :)
Clever theme that was spoiled by too many obscure and random clues to make the whole experience enjoyable. Ultimately a slog and not fun 😢
Great idea ruined with a mountain of trivia and some very poor clues.
I opened the puzzle, looked at the constructor, and said "Oh, no, not again." I absolutely despise any puzzle by this constructor, and this puzzle didn't change my mind. I knew for sure that Andrjez was going to be in my corner. No surprise that my print copy had no italics, but they weren't necessary at all. I hated almost all the theme answers, with the exception of MAMA CASS SCAMS CMAS. I didn't appreciate a triple Natick with an actress, a Noble physicist, and a martial arts sport intersecting, though I got them through a couple of lucky guesses and the crosses. The rest of the fill was underwhelming. HA HA, YEAH? GEEK GIRL CON? MADE A TRY? Then there's the sad UNALIVED. But a kudo, just one, for LEHRER. It wasn't that the puzzle was all that difficult. I did manage to complete it, kicking and screaming all the way. It was just annoying and a total slog. I wish the NYT would bring back the real stars of crossword constructing who have defected to other outlets that appreciate them. I had a ray of hope when David J. Kahn made it into print this past week, but then Mr. Kugelman seems to have ousted all the rest of the brilliant Sunday constructors, and for the life of me, I don't know why.
@Times Rita Nothing like puzzle with Tom Lehrer in it.
@Times Rita MADE A TRY sounds like something you'd hear in an ESL classroom...or at a rugby match. HAHA YEAH and AH OK were less clunky, but only slightly so. At least the constructor fell on his sword for UNALIVED.
@Times Rita It's MADE A TRY (for). As when you jump for something and miss. As when doing a ropes or obstacle course. HA HA YEAH brought back some nervous situations for me when I've either said that or someone else did.
@Times Rita weird about the lack of italics. They're in the newspaper version, but not the others.
Last night at 7pm, I was sitting on my stoop enjoying the drop in humidity and struggling with this puzzle. A woman with her teenaged daughter and dog walked by. I must have been sighing, and as she glanced over at me, she stopped and said “oh, this one is tough! I nearly gave up, but I got there.” And I thought I need to know this person who finishes Sunday’s puzzle by 7pm on Saturday night!
Absolutely brutal puzzle. Way, way too cute. More trivia than solving. Naticks everywhere. This should’ve never been published.
(In a bit of housecleaning, The Almighty chooses between two species in the 1600s) GOD: DOG GOOD, DODO DOODOO, DODO GO
@Lewis Good god! You one-upped the constructor! (Or should that be one-downed?)
@Lewis I don't think my comment is clear. I meant to convey that I'm impressed you were able to create a good themer with only 3 letters
(Second try) Sometimes I like silly, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes its out-of-the-box-ness charms me. Other times, it simply makes me cringe. The goofiness in the box today fully charmed me. I like that the theme employed two types of wordplay. One was the silliness caused by manipulation – coming up with long complete sentences using only four letters. The other was the punning of “characters” in the revealer. The first type made me go “Hah!” The second made me go, “Good one!” So, I was entertained. But my brain was happy for another reason. It had hills – no-knows and tricky cluing – to conquer. A Kugelman Sunday often does this. Thus, you doubled my pleasure, John. And please, just keep on doing what you do, as I love your bonkers voice. Thank you!
Way too off the reservation for me today. Don’t mind a challenge but this was just ab awful slog by the end of the
I didn't enjoy this puzzle. Too many obscure words and trivia. This was the worst puzzle I've seen in a while.
TRUE FACT, this one gave me AGITA and I needed many DEEP BREATHS to complete. Being worn out I couldn't bear to flyspeck, so gave in and revealed all to put myself out of my misery. I was never gonna give up on SOPHOMORE. There was a lot of relying on Wheel of Fortune solving in this one. I did enjoy NESSIE in the SEINE, however, so all was not in vain.
@Vaer Maybe some vape juice next time?
@Vaer Trying to cram SOPHOMORE in there cost me at least a minute or two. I did the flyspecking on my phone and fortunately O, CeNADA leapt out quickly.
This was just a mess all around. Not enjoyable by any means.
Well, that's an hour and a half of my life that I'll never get back. So glad I do yoga and meditate or I might be frustrated.
When you have no clue about anything related to Steven Seagal or martial arts, deciding between NESSIE SEEN IN SEINE and NESSIE SEEN ON SEINE and XENO (a prefix meaning foreign) and XENU (an alien leader in Scientology) is pretty tough.
@Jim It couldn't have been "on" seine, since the themers only contain 4 distinct letters - I, N, S, E for this one. That was one nice way the theme helped out with the solve.
Jim, I haven't mastered too many martial arts either, but I was sure the cryptid would be IN the river, and XENOphobia is rampant.
@Jim but ON SEINE would break the theme, so there’s that.
I liked the long clues, very clever, but some of the other clues were questionable.
I'll be looking forward to the comments on this one. I'll even go out on a limb and say the sentiment will be quite negative. I will say one thing about the wordplay: UNALIVED is unacceptable. OK, two things: NUMETAL?!?
@Tim In LA Well, NUMETAL is a thing, and they did warn about the spelling. UNALIVED? Hmmm, just because a couple of people used it in social media once, doesn’t necessarily make it a word—but maybe it’s used more than that, I don’t know. But still, it is so funny (despite the sentiment behind it, I know) it made my day, so I’m all for it.
@Tim In LA As someone who frequently watches YouTube videos, UNALIVED is absolutely fair game. If you talk about people being "killed" in a video, the algorithm picks it up and demonetizes your video, and appeals never get looked at by a human being or overturned. Almost every small content creator using the word as a substitute. Likewise, suicide is referred to as "unaliving yourself. It's stupid, and it impacts people who are trying to make legitimate videos about everything from social analysis of the impact of crime to reviews of action movies to how to safely remove wasp nests. A few days ago I was watching a video of people playing miniature golf and one of them hit a ball that ran over a small lizard on the course, and they remarked, "Oh, I hope I didn't just unalive it." Such are the times we live in.
@Tim In LA I just noticed, the Constructor Notes make a snide pre-emptive attack on your position. It drips with bile. Sigh, and just when I finally enjoyed one of his puzzles too. :(
@Tim In LA There's something wrong with the comments app (Maybe I should say something *new* wrong?) for this thread. On my Android phone, I see a link tag that says "0 more replies", and a button to see all replies that just blinks and redisplays itself without showing any more replies. I presume/suspect that somebody posted a reply with the non-euphemistic word for UNALIVED, and the AI bots are suppressing it - which is another reason that "UNALIVED" exists. The online world is a fantastic, and sad, place. 😒
“TikTok euphemisms are a pox on the Queen’s English. Unalived. Pew, pew. Out of my sight! Thou dost infect my eyes.” “Let me put this in a crossword puzzle.”
@Richard You have the order reversed. And one is ironic.
This one took me way longer than usual and I enjoyed every single minute of it. This Kugelman fella has a true gift for constructing and I'm always happy to see his name in the lineup. Very very well done 👍
This small cast of characters brilliantly and oh so amusingly cozied up in the most enjoyable puzzle of the century. I needed a long time to finish it early this morning in my shady garden shared with numerous friendly birds. I enjoyed every minute.
@Boston I second this. Had so much fun with the theme. Very cool puzzle.
Sort of got the theme in that these were repeating letters. Interesting. But the rest of it - just no. Way too much archane trivia. Looked up about half of it. There needs to be a limit on trivia. Isn't this why we have editors?
The absolute bottom of the barrel in a line of horrible puzzles the last few years, I'm giving up on NYT
@Dc Happy trails to you, until we meet again Happy trails to you, keep smilin' until then Who cares about the clouds when we're together? Just sing a song and bring the sunny weather Happy trails to you, 'till we meet again Some trails are happy ones Others are blue It's the way you ride the trail that counts Here's a happy one for you Happy trails to you, until we meet again Happy trails to you, keep smilin' until then Who cares about the clouds when we're together? Just sing a song and bring the sunny weather Happy trails to you, 'till we meet again
@Dc Maybe this will help you feel better: <a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=X_-q9xeOgG4&pp=0gcJCUACo7VqN5tD&ra=m" target="_blank">https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=X_-q9xeOgG4&pp=0gcJCUACo7VqN5tD&ra=m</a>
This is exactly the type of puzzle I like to see for a Sunday. Loved it!
A hard puzzle can be a joy. It may make you think a different way or give you an AHA moment. This was just a difficult quiz. 🫤 I concurred with Andrzej twice and the emus ate those comments. The theme was inane and the fill a quiz of trivia. A very poor puzzle. Not hard. Just bad.
Caitlin notes that HAHAYEAH makes its first appearance as a puzzle entry. I kinda hope it's also the last appearance of that particular entry. Otherwise, I found this to be a perfect delight!
@Pezhead, One and done! HAHANEVERAGAIN
Whew! That was a good one! I had SOPH_O for the start of 22A and thought that SOPHOMORE had been misspelled. Took me nearly an hour, but some of that was failing to turn it off the app when I put down the phone. I liked it very much. Et tu, Andrzej?
@NYC Traveler haha yeah, I had a very similar thought about sophomore.
Genuinely surprised by the strong negative reactions. Seemed pretty typical for a Sunday puzzle.
Haven’t completed the Sunday puzzle yet but wanted to pop in and send a huge thank you to Vaer, Barry, Lynn, jas, Amy K, Bob T and Bruce. BLUE worked. I just went through and checked each rebus square and found I had not entered just BLUE in all of them. One still had BLUE/RED and another had B/R. I could not check earlier as I spent the day with my 91 yo mom with Alzheimer’s and her 95 yo boyfriend (is it permitted to say boyfriend at 95?) and I was so happy to check back and see responses that led me to the solution. Happy dance! And happy birthday to me and my mom who still somehow remembers to mention that I was the only birthday gift she got from my dad on June 14, 1959.
@Cyndie You're welcome and Happy Birthday. Glad I could help out, and I got to solve an interesting puzzle.
@Cyndie, And thank you for posting the problem. I didn’t comment yesterday, but i was another (probably amongst many others) who took it as a challenge to help with the solve. I’m only average at best, time-wise, and I allowed myself liberal usage of lookups, but I was amazed at how many follow ups showed up by the time I had completed the puzzle. So yesterday’s extra brain exercise is thanks to you!
@Cyndie It was a really fun puzzle to do. Thank you for letting us know how it came out! Happy birthday to you and your mom! This brings back memories of how my mother was able to express her love well into her dementia. Thank you again.
Well, that was fun! Parsing the themers was a treat. [Modern art?] for ARE. ❤️
My commitment to OSTEO nearly killed the patient but I ultimately prevailed and scored a W, which is always nice. I thought the puzzle was solid, if quaint, but all in all well within bounds.
@Robert C. Man, OSTEO held me up for a long time!
Nice, chewy Sunday, thanks! Took longer than my average, which kept the synapses firing longer. And the added effort to earn the jingle seemed to make it sound more triumphant 😀 To be honest, I also like light breezy Sundays, just enjoy them in a different way. I love rebuses too, and long quotes. Big credit to the editors for giving us such a wide assortment of flavors.
A puzzle marred by tedious contemporary pop culture drivel and bland, vague cluing (lunge at = made a try?) Derriere rider derided is an example of Mr. Kugelman entertaining himself at our expense.
After finishing this puzzle, I scheduled a root canal to cheer me up. Yowzas, that was difficult. But, with puzzles like these, I break a smile for the experts, many of whom likely enjoyed this one. Cheers yall.
@Joe To feel better I went outside and watered the patio plants in 92 degree/86% humidity weather (similar, I'm sure, to yours.) Yep, it did help. LOL
@Joe Having been the victim of both this puzzle and a root canal that hit home!
Mark the day, June 14, 2026 It's when the NY timew crossword officially jumped the shark A slog of a puzzle, and utter nonsense/arbitrarily made up themed answers.
@Rob Yes, a 100+ year old cultural institution jumped the shark today because you didn't like it.