TILSIT crossing with MITES is pretty cruel... MOTES seems like the more apt answer for a tiny piece of something.
@Richard My stubborn refusal to give up on motes added several minutes to my solve time.
@Richard Agreed. I came here to look for where I’d gone wrong, so thanks for the comment!
@Richard Same! I think of “mites” as little bugs. “Motes” is better for teensy amounts. Hadn’t heard of the cheese so I had to cheat to finish today :(
@Richard Exactly! I had actually filled in_OT_S on my first pass, assuming that it was either IOTAS or MOTES. Only time I ever heard "mite" this way is in Jesus' parable of the widow's mite.
@Richard Same. Plus the CARs crossing felt non-kosher for a NYT crossword, so I insisted on CAB SHARING for far too long.
KAMASUTRA twice in a row? I’m not sure of the correct position to take on today’s teaser. It got hard straightaway and was ticklish all the way to the bottom. There were a couple of bits where i needed a leg up and a helping hand to really get the thrust of it, but overall i embraced it and after some thrilling filling, I’m inclined to say I’m satisfied. Phew!
@Petrol this comment brought me great pleasure.
@Petrol I love this thread. Thank you, all.
@Petrol Hey! What page is that one on?
To the constructor: "Library of Congress?" as a clue for KAMA SUTRA is fantastic. I think the editors should have kept that one!
Not gonna lie. This was perhaps the roughest one in recent memory. There was way too much trivia for me. I haven't done any lookups so far this week and I needed to do half a dozen today. Never heard of "Under the Volcano", never watched "The Office", never heard of GORP, had no idea where the Daugava River was or where some LOTR character was buried, did not know the word MOIL and stuck with TOIL for too long, etc. But there were some really nice and amusingly clued entries, such as ADOUT, ASTRONOMY, and TRI. An hour and 10 minutes.
Not crazy about the cross of MITE with TILSIT
I did all I could, and I am quite proud of how far I got in the solve on my own. In the end though the multicrossing jumble of the author, some basketball abbreviation, a Prussian town/cheese, hwy. overseer, and bugling game defeated me. There was no way for me to resolve this personal mega-natick. I had to look up the author and the town to finish. TILSIT... OMG! I finally realized what was going on here. I mean, I had been very surprised that there seemed to be a European cheese I was not familiar with. But I *did* know it - sadly only under the Polish name of "ser tylżycki" - Tylża is the Polish name for Tilsit. Historically it was an important place for us Poles, as in 1807 a treaty was signed there that led to the creation of Księstwo Warszawskie, the Duchy of Warsaw. At the time Poland had been partitioned by Russia, Prussia and Austria for more than a decade - it had ceased to exist as an independent state in 1795. The Napoleon-aligned Duchy of Warsaw was perceived as a resurrected Poland, and allied with an unstoppable conqueror, too - people had high hopes for the future, dreaming of Poland becoming the successor to Russia as Eastern Europe's superpower. Soon though everything came crashing down with the disastrous Russian campaign of 1812... Who knew a quite unspectacular cheese could inspire a history lesson?
That period is immortalized in our national anthem, "Mazurek Dąbrowskiego" (The Dąbrowski Mazurka; Dąbrowski was the foremost Polish general of the era, commander of Legiony, The Legion - a Polish unit fighting at Napoleon's side against Poland's partitioners). It was composed and written at the time. It is all about hopes of Poland regaining independence.
@Andrzej: in 2011 I was on a private tour in Iran. Eating dinner in hotel in Tehran, eavesdropping on diners next to me, I was listening to a German corporate employee organizing lunch to go for next days’ outing with Iranian and German teams. “What kinds of cheese do you have,” she asked. “We have panir,” said the waiter. “Ok what else?” “We have panir.” “Only panir?” “We have panir.” Order concludes finally, waiter leaves, and she says to her companion, “what kind of country is this, only one kind of cheese!!?”
1 hour 10 minutes. But no lookups. Got the gold When I filled in the last cell, it was by the grace of god that I had no typos. I didn’t have the energy to find any error(s). I can barely remember when I started. It was a tough solve. Nothing came easy. Except ASTRONOMY and surprisingly, SUSANLUCCI! But I’m a better solver because of this effort. Thank you Zachary.
@moisture! Congratulations to you. Took the L after 3 rounds of alphabet bingo. Guess I don't know manuscripts fronm Shinola. It is cruel fate that I got SUSANLUCCI a heck of a lot faster than she picked up her trophy! And no gold star for moi!
I've been eating cheese for 60 years and, trending veganward as I am, I miss it. But I have never knowingly eaten tilsit. I was all ready to therefore declare it an obscure cheese and today's puzzle accordingly null and void -- but! I checked with The Source s to whether a cheese belongs in the popular conversation: The Monty Python "Cheese Shop" sketch. I was humbled to learn that among the 43 cheeses named, tilsit is second. Second! That makes it both real, and a silver medalist of sorts. What an ill morning for my pride. Cheez.
@Asher B. I haven't had tilsit in decades (I have also forsworn cheese) and suddenly miss it desperately
@Asher B. I would not have known TILSIT without Monty Python's help. Never had it, never seen it in the store. Venezuelan beaver cheese, on the other hand...
Not sure where to begin with this miserable puzzle. The proper nouns and trivia ruined it for me. And that’s without mentioning things like the terrible SE corner … COT, OBELI, and GABE… basically impossible for me. Most of the three letter answers were impossibly clued as well. Sad because there were a few brilliant spots, like ANTEDATED, but the few gems were ruined by the rest, for me. Ok… cue the people who say it was too easy…
@Brett I'm with you. This puzzle was anti-fun.
@Brett I’m not going to say it was too easy,* but it was clued as Saturdays are normally clued. Things you consider trivia, relatively obscure words, proper names (which appear every day and have since day one). Saturdays are intentionally hard and more obscure. This is by design. As I said just a while back to another commenter, you’re at a disadvantage being out of country, even if you’re an expat. If you’re a non-American, even more so. I will assume that when you say “miserable puzzle,” you mean your solving experience, and not the actual puzzle quality. * See my comment last night (it was the earliest one) where I discussed this puzzle’s difficulty for me.
@Brett I’m sorry you had such an unpleasant experience with this solve. I do find it interesting, though. Fascinating, even. We are a niche crowd, the lot of us who gather here to dissect a….puzzle. Every. Day. Most people I know find it odd that there are actually others like me who care so much about word puzzles, and that I would want to *chat* with said others who share my quirk! But then, a puzzle comes along that shows the chasms and distinct differences in this group. For me- the tougher, the better. I want to feel pain! I wanna moil! I wanna toil! I want to spend three hours, walk away and come back and finally crack the doggone thing open! Anyway, I love that we’re not carbon copies. We love the puzz, but we’re also a wildly eclectic mishmash of word nerds. Makes me happy.
It seems to me that those commenters who insist that TILSIT is obscure don't know Jack about cheese.
@Steve L And yet, they're still handling in much better than the people who went down the tubes when there was a puzzle about video games.
My last to fall was RAINY for [Precipitous?] My mind went to a precipice/cliff, and then went to something done suddenly and rashly. Finally precipitation came to me with a big head slap. GARGANTUA popped into my mind out of nowhere, with just the initial G and final A in place. The things we remember and don't realize we remember until given two letters... And I took a shot at DYSPhorIA knowing full well it was wrong before DYSPEPSIA came to me (because Pepcid AC...) The puzzle was a nice brain workout because of the cluing – one of those that I thought I'd be up a creek without a paddle trying to solve, but that surprised me with the simplicity of the entries once they were gotten. Very nicely done, Mr. Levy. Thank you! (And here now, my favorite song from Pearl Jam's TEN album: <a href="https://youtu.be/n3r9KWth84Y?is=v9b3W9DV_f2I600b" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/n3r9KWth84Y?is=v9b3W9DV_f2I600b</a>) It's worth saying that Eddie Vedder's diction is impenetrable, so if you'd like to know what on earth he's singing, watch this: <a href="https://youtu.be/oO6wPWFMrCA?is=VBw4HDUo2gWyTh9S" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/oO6wPWFMrCA?is=VBw4HDUo2gWyTh9S</a> 😜😂
@sotto voce You came closer that I did with GASTRITIS on my first pass!
@sotto voce Excellent links. Impenetrable indeed. That too is my favorite from Ten. I first heard it on, of all places, a United flight. In my 30s, I was working too hard and had fallen out of touch with pop culture. Pearl Jam and some other music of the time caught me back up. I'm still a big grunge fan.
I profoundly struggled with this puzzle. Very few answers came quickly. ASTRONOMY was easy for me, but the island temples and the Mexican getaways MOIL vs tOIL and the HRT treatment (still no idea, will have to look up)...all these were way out of reach. My worst outing in over a year. When I finally fell on my sword I had six(!) errors. COT was way too tricky for me and with OBELI a complete mystery yea unto this very moment and CORONATIONROsES, this was just utterly hopeless for me.
P. S. Standard terms apply: the was on me, the puzzle was fair, I'm not blaming anyone but myself, etc.
@Francis If you're going to struggle, it might as well be profound 😆 They'll put another one out tomorrow!
@Francis HRT--Hormone Replacement Therapy IMO, stay away from it and I believe there is a lot of controversy in the medical field about its value.
I complain to myself when a Saturday puzzle is too easy. Then I complain to myself when a Saturday puzzle is too hard.
@Fritz I appreciate your self-awareness! Many lack it, so it's always refreshing to see. ☺️
A tale of two puzzles for me. Top half, a beget-fest. Where you start with little islands in a sea of white, and suddenly from crosses, or maybe the brain taps your shoulder because it just cracked a clue, an answer that stumped you moments before, hits you. That answer trips off another, which begets another, and in what feels like a wham, an expanse is filled, and you are thrilled. Bottom half, a trek. Those islands remain stubborn. You return to them and they stay tight lipped. Where you really have to sweat, call in the reserves. Squares do eventually relinquish themselves, but begrudgingly. You end up feeling accomplished, but you don’t want to think – about anything – for a while. I love both scenarios -- work and play -- so got my money’s worth today. Along the way, I enjoyed the international feel, with BALI, DIA DE LOST MUERTOS, IRANIAN, REVERAS, CORONATION ROBES, RIGA, TILSIT, KAMA SUTRA, and CABOS. Thus, a splendid outing for me. Thank you, Zachary!
Curious to discover more about the Susan Lucci / Gargantua / Gabe from the Office venn diagram (which includes me, apparently, and I don't know how I feel about that). The clue with 'Under the Volcano' seems like you would know the answer if you're even vaguely aware of the premise but is otherwise mystifying and perhaps tough to get on crosses. Curious on this one because I don't think either the book or movie are widely known at this point. Mites / motes is pretty suspect. Elk was funny. Moil, though? The cross forced it but that doesn't mean I have to like it.
@Withnail I've seen perhaps 10 or 20 episodes and have never heard of either of those two Office characters. Lucci was a gimme and Gargantua was an easy guess. None of it amused me. 🤷♂️
@Withnail GARGANTUA was my only gimme among those. I've never heard of the book or author, and I haven't watched "The Office" 🤷🏽
@Withnail I'm going to have Robert L Service's "Cremation of Sam McGee" stuck in my head all day -- "There are strange things done in the midnight sun/by the men who MOIL for gold..."
@Withnail I didn't need to know 'Under The Volcano' - for some reason I had just enough down letters to see Dia de los Muertos almost right away. It might have come to me easily since I live in a fairly heavily Mexican-American area. Agreed (along with many other commenters) about 'mites', and yes, moil annoyed me given how appropriate 'toil' should have been there. What I had to cheat on though was 'obeli' as publisher's marks...
@Withnail The book was no help to me but after a few letters the holiday was. You don't see ...MUE... in too many places except MUERTOS, do you?
The puzzle was more or less kind of wonderfully thrilling. The crosses made the clues solvable in ways that made the difficult seem easy, and the head scratchers magically emerged. My favorite clue was "bugling game," and it was so nice to let SUSAN LUCCI know that we haven't forgotten her (although I never watched "All My Children." we all knew of her struggle. It's late and I have to go to bed (Yawn). Tomorrow IS another day and I'll be back.
Not knowing one of the best selling albums in the history of music (Ten) and being puzzled by women's biology (HRT) is a YOU problem, not a puzzle problem. Amazing how so many people who don't know how the female body works want to control what it does...
@APNerd Ma'am, this is a crossword comments section.
Steve, I thought it was clear APNerd was talking to recent posters calling a Natick on HRT/TEN.
@APNerd Men get HRT too. Just ask the Secretary of War.
@APNerd Nah. Not knowing an initialism for a medical treatment is not the same as not knowing how the female body works.
@APNerd Must...not...make a joke about the Hostage Rescue Team being called in. ...and I saw Pearl Jam open for the Chili Peppers, when they were touring to promote TEN, so a gimme.
Just a heads up for all of you who’ve never heard of Tilsit (or Tilsiter, as we say in Cherman), please know that it looks rather plain, maybe like a havarti, and yet will need to be double if not triple wrapped and kept in a container in your fridge, because it is AMAZEBALLS but also stinky as heck. I have a parent who was born in that place when it was still called that and so it is a cheese I have known my whole life. I loved this puzzle, because, while I needed some help, I feel smarter (having learned a few things) AND very entertained. And it rattled a few old pieces of knowledge loose (like GARGANTUA), inspired me to read “Under The Volcano,” and made me laugh. OH SNAP!
Awesome Saturday puzzle!
Did any other non-US solvers struggle with the midi?
@Mr T I practically gave up after I had no clue of any of the answers even looking at the top half (apart from Rome's main attraction) and just revealed almost everything.
Well, as expected, this killed my 5 gold star streak. After completing the last 30%ish with autocorrect, I thought this Saturday would have been very fair and solveable after a few more years under my belt. The cluing seemed very appropriate for the day. Nice puzzle, creator. Cheers folks!
@Joe Now that’s the attitude when you’ve failed to solve a puzzle that you realize you’re not ready for yet. May your increased ability come swiftly!
@Joe I used to work the Sunday NYT puzzle (in syndication) only, back when I had kids in the house, an orchard, a huge garden, and all that jazz. It usually took me all week. I grew into the rest as the kids were more independent and self-starting. (They liked helping with puns and trick clues.) All in good time.
I can't believe I winkled out those tricky bits! It almost makes me want to say AMAZE BALLS, but I really have enough weirdness in my life, so I'm pretending that doesn't exist. GARGANTUA led the way (why does Pantagruel never get any attention?) but I certainly ran into more than a few Unknowns. The TV shows, rock bands, LOTR, and the cheese are all on my list. TILSIT sounds more British...in fact I recall a novel (_The TILSIT Inheritance_ from back in the 60's...a porcelain factory as bone of contention --ha ha bone china...oh well. ) Extra points for Zachary David Levy for PATCHWORK (though scraps are not necessarily part of such a quilt.) Thanks, Zach. I had a good time saying, "Hah!" And "Aha!" And "Gotcha, you rascal!"
Clever comment I saw on another site and wish to share: "Haw's pronouns: HEE/Hem"
Not me confidently plopping down “gastritis” instead of DYSPEPSIA. It’s not my fault they’re the same length. Anyways, not a big fan of this one. A lot of trivia and odd crossings (MITES/TILSIT being the most commonly cited example.) This felt significantly harder and required some lookups (with apologies to SUSAN LUCCI.) These kinds of Saturdays are just never my favorite. There were some kind of fun wordplay clues (Precipitous for RAINY, par example) but overall this felt more like bar trivia drudgery than a crossword to me. It’s fine I guess, just not my slice of cheese.
I toiled until I MOILed Bites and Boria were are as likely as MITES and MORIA (I started LOTR when I was a teenager but decided to do anything else instead). At least Boria sounded like it would have come from the Greek for north 😀 Typical Saturday that is made hard by US specificities (yes I’m looking at you GORP crossed with TV characters) OBELI and a decent clue for TESLA were good to see.
Ιασων, GORP's origin may predate the U.S. being the U.S. <a href="https://www.rei.com/blog/hike/the-origins-of-gorp" target="_blank">https://www.rei.com/blog/hike/the-origins-of-gorp</a>
Poor construction. Mites instead of motes crossing a foreign term no one has ever heard of is just poor taste. Fancy schmancy names and science terms we could all do without. Coronation robes just seems completely a random and forced. Moil... Really???
@Nick I’m trying to say this without sounding condescending or smug, but it’s not the puzzle’s fault. This is a Saturday puzzle. They’re all like that, by design.
@Nick I don't get the complaint about MITES, A mote is not a quantity, as "mite" is; e.g., the "widow's mite" in the Bible. I do agree that the puzzle was somewhat "unfair" with too many trivia clues.
@Nick Yes, MOIL, really. And TILSIT is not a foreign term. It's also not a good idea to use the terminology "that no one has ever heard of," just because you don't know it. I knew both of them, although there were several other answers I got just from the crosses.
Nick, Have some TILSIT (from a store in Minnesota). <a href="https://eichtenscheese.com/collections/tilsit-cheese" target="_blank">https://eichtenscheese.com/collections/tilsit-cheese</a>
@Nick "a foreign term no one has ever heard of" You mean a foreign term YOU have never heard of. Please stop assuming your experience is universal.
MOIL instead of TOIL at 52D is devilish good work. 😈
@Angela that was brutal. I stared at “toil” for 5 minutes and just couldn’t figure out why people would say “atazeballs.” 🤦♂️
Here's a perfectly innocent inquiry of those who create crosswords. I hereby declare the "I'm just asking questions" invincibility cloak. We know you sometimes construct around a theme. So you have a set of answers that you must get into your grid. But for the rest, do you specifically look for words like "mites" and "motes" that can be clued indistinguishably? And for MOIL and TOIL? Also, from previous puzzles SAPOR and SAVOR. There are a lot of examples. Every bitter commenter (unlike my perfect self) has their pet example. It's perfectly fine if you do, but I'm curious if such sadism inflicted on the solver is intentional or not.
@Francis I don’t. I suspect most of the time it’s a coincidence, and sometimes we might not even notice it. Plus the editors might have altered the clue. So Zachary might have written a clue about MITE the bug and the editors changed it. In either case it’s possible the clue was written to be a bit ambiguous on a Saturday (I’d guess that’s the case with MOIL and TOIL, hard not to notice that one) but generally I think the grid comes first and a tricky clue later. As for well known ambiguous entries like SAVOR/SAPOR or SNARF/SCARF I would actively avoid them if I could because they are more tired than clever. If I’m going to misdirect the solver I’d want to do it with something original. I’m guessing MITE and MOTE was a coincidence today. I really think MOTE is not really a synonym for “amount”; and if the editors or the constructor believed it was I don’t think they would have deliberately put a Natick for an obviously obscure entry like TILSIT, even on a Saturday. I wouldn’t have.
Terrible puzzle, relied too much on trivia knowledge than actually constructing something clever. So many proper nouns- lazy, too specific, and quite unpleasant to chew through.
TIL MOIL, which I thought was an alternate spelling for moel/mohel, and TILSIT. This one was a struggle for me - definitely not on the constructor’s wavelength. Thought I was going to lose my streak, but, like others, made the switch from MoTE to MITE and got the happy music. (I’m working my way forward through the archives - I’m up to February 1999! - and this felt closer to those older Saturdays than many recent ones.)
We had zero familiarity with: The abbreviation RCCARS (we looked it up afterwards and much to our surprise, yes, it is a "thing") GARGANTUA AMAZEBALLS MORIA OBELI MOIL TILSIT Island of a Thousand Temples Under the Volcano Shirin Ebadi Rabelais Durin Daugava River Pearl Jam's debut album name Unit equal to one weber per square meter Sewerage (described that way) Yet we persisted and got the ⭐️ that we have come to so obsessively and unreasonably crave. And it was enormously satisfying regardless of the gold star. It took about an hour and twenty minutes, almost double our usual Saturday time. Yes, we live under a rock, don't get out much, etc. But now that's true just a touch less so. If we can do it you can too. P.S. That esoterica in the clues can help you, but if it's not helping you, you should just ignore it. Do not let it intimidate you.
@Peaty & Oaty Sewage is waste water. Sewerage is waste water removal.
I hope all the olds complaining about last week's "niche" video game theme appreciate this obvious sop of a puzzle. It has everything, tennis references, obscure art and literature, rarely used words and slang, and clues that are too clever by half.
TW, I wasn't complaining about it, but FWIW that was a Sunday (with a theme) and this is a (themeless) Saturday.
@TW, well, I could be considered old, and I liked both puzzles. My husband and son played Mario, and I dabbled in it with them from time to time. I was able to extract some theme answers from my decrepit brain, and the crosses supplied the rest. Great fun. I also enjoyed today's puzzle, and found very little, if anything, I'd consider obscure. Diego Rivera, obscure? No. Tennis references? Sports are a special case but even a rudimentary knowledge of tennis, especially this close on the heels of Wimbledon, isn't much of a stretch. And while the full title of the Rabelais work might be obscure, surely crossword nerds should be familiar with the adjective "gargantuan". What did you find obscure? Personally, when I struggle with a puzzle for whatever reason, I shrug and move on; not everything is in my wheelhouse, nor does every puzzle tickle my fancy, and that's ok with me.
@TW I'm a septuagenarian and I loved both puzzles. Though I've seldom played fast-twitch games (because I'm a slow-twitch kind of person), I love character-based puzzle games. At one point I bought a quarter-century old Mac for the purpose. Now that you don't need a special game box to play classic games, I'll probably try Mario Bros. if I ever retire.
Great workout!! More like this please. 52D recalled my father's annual recitation of "The Cremation of Sam Mcgee" round our family campfire. "There are strange things done in the midnight sun/by the men who MOILed for gold. . ." Miss you, Dad.
Great puzzle. I found it quite hard (it's Saturday after all) but clever and fair. Moil was new to me and I only let it stand because the crosses were rock solid.
I had about three squares I wasn't sure of, and had to keep trying different letters until I hit the music. Did not expect that CAR would cross CAR.
This was tough but so well Constructed, I enjoyed the solve.
Again! Stop clueing dice rolls of 2, 3 or 12 as losing rolls. Any roll can be a winner or loser. Only on a few rolls do they lose. Far more money goes out to casino dice players when 2, 3 or 12 are rolled than lost - especially on horn and field bets. Career boxman here.
@Zaphod It wasn't clued that way. It was clued as a [Losing roll]. The answer was the word the emus probably look for. Who mentioned 2, 3, and 12?
@Zaphod The issue for me was that I immediately thought of the term but have never heard it used in the singular. I mean, plural is the name of the game.
This guys is probably really fun at parties.
As others have mentioned, I was hung up on TILSIT crossing MITES. Apparently there are 1,800 to 2,000 distinct cheeses in the world. I don't know them all. At least not yet. In other news, Natick was in the NYT this week in the "Couple Stalked by eBay Settle for $56M" article on July 28.
@Kevin Yes, made me think of Python, cheese shops, and the hundreds of obscure cheeses I'm quite sure exist and taste vaguely like cheddar. Not particularly fair pool. The July 17 episode of On The Media (available as a podcast) goes into the eBay scandal. It's crazy and makes you surprised eBay is even allowed to exist now. As a company they authorized incredible obsce-e psychological warfare on on (essentially) small journalists.
@Kevin I was thrilled to read of that settlement. I was an eBay seller with a lucrative side business selling antiques and collectibles, all gleaned from having to clean out my parents' house. Long story. Think hoarder without the dead animals and dirt. But I had to give it up when the original creator of eBay sold it and it literally became a criminal enterprise, ripping off the small sellers like me. I still follow the blog written by Ina Steiner, who prevailed in this lawsuit along with her husband. It was a long time in coming and well-deserved.
I’m conflicted. I hated this puzzle while solving it and cursed this grid often. But it also felt like it was deserving of being a Saturday due to the difficulty. I regularly felt stupid and had to look up a lot of the trivia because I didn’t know it and couldn’t get the crosses. Now that I finished it I feel oddly proud despite needing more lookups than I’ve had to do in a long time and it still taking significantly longer than my average. I dunno, it is an impressive grid, but for me it was a slog. At least it motivated me to go back to working through the Saturday archive puzzles to get to a point where I can solve one like this without lookups someday.
@Brett This was a bit hard for a Saturday in 2026, but would have been very typical a few years ago. Xwstats.com says: 🌎 Global Stats Difficulty Hard Median Solve Time 18:50 Median Solver 5% slower ⚡42% of users solved faster than their Saturday average. 16% solved much faster (>20%) than their Saturday average. 🐢58% of users solved slower than their Saturday average. 35% solved much slower (>20%) than their Saturday average. Good attitude; may your improvement come swiftly!
I don't think I ever heard or had someone say to me, "AMAZEBALLS" but I have METPAYROLL (the original "half-staff" clue would probably have blown up my brain). MOIL, OBELI reminded me of the deficiency of my education. A proper challenge indeed.
@John Carson I’m must confess (not proudly, mind you) that I do, in fact say AMAZEBALLS. And many other such silly-rific words.
@John Carson Substitute "said" for "heard" above. Finishing up a few puzzles hanging out on the clipboard and just got stumped in the SW corner in Amy Lucido's 7/21 New Yorker entry. Like today answers that are "in the language" - just not my language.
@John Carson Add to your education bucket list “The Cremation of Sam McGee” by Robert Service, which begins: There are strange things done in the midnight sun By the men who moil for gold; The Arctic trails have their secret tales That would make your blood run cold; The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, But the queerest they ever did see Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge I cremated Sam McGee.
I find it EERIE that the two constructors who have used this word in the grid in The Times have the same first name. 2 results for AMAZEBALLS from Modern Era puzzles: Sat Aug 1, 2026 51A Incredible, in modern parlance Zachary David Levy Sat Jul 15, 2017 1A Incredible, in modern slang Zachary Spitz
@Barry Ancona what about KAMA SUTRA in back-to-back puzzles
Mike L, That's not EERIE, it's intentional.
At first this looked daunting, but it just flowed for me and my many VAGUEIDEAS of answers. There are a number of things I didn't exactly know, though some of them I knew were somewhere in my bingo ball cage of a brain, but I thought the crosses were fair and suddenly, BAM, I had finished up to happy music significantly faster than average. Huzzah! Hip hip harumba!! The upper right was my last area. I had PSAS in there at 10 across until every other section was finished, then I took it out and the rest came to me. Similar with MOIL and tOIL. With enough crosses, I could see that it couldn't be toil and then I remembered MOIL which also made sense. I think the best thing that I have learned in my couple years plus now of doing these puzzles is to not cling to what I absolutely am sure of... unless I truly am absolutely sure, like an actual fact question. A world capital or author, or some such. Many times after I take what I think it is out, it ends up still being what I think it is, but I needed to take it out in order to see it. Other times, like today, it was the only way I was going to finish that section, and soon realized APBS also works. Huzzah! Nice puzzle!! Lots of fun clues, I thought. I liked "Bugle game" a lot. And OVARY crossing the C-section section was nice. Plenty others. Haven't checked out the comments yet, but I hope that others enjoyed it as much as I did.
Streaks are the enemy of crosswords like this. I'm half way through. I'll finish it slowly during the week. What excellent cluing. I'm looking forward to answering some of the clues. Bravo.
The top half or so of this is ok, but the bottom section is just horrid. Way too much obscure trivia. Had to look up nearly everything. Thumbs down.
This was the rare puzzle that I solved 36% faster than my Saturday average, but I kept feeling I was going to get stuck on until the last letter was in.
@Steve L About 50% over average here. Too many false starts plus a bit of fly-specking. I've read Under the Volcano but tried to fit English into 17a far too long. Worked from the bottom up until el relámpago hit.
@Steve L Yes! My experience, as well. Got hung up by things I didn’t know, guessed incorrectly, mis-read clues [ Enthusiastic approval *board*] and hopped around the grid until BAM! Happy music! Learned a few (many) things and names, but shocked that it came together like it did. Really enjoyed the crunch.
I wasn’t completely thrilled with today’s puzzle but can’t quite put my finger on why. It certainly was a decent challenge for the most part and had some great entries, just seemed off a bit to me. I’m sure others will articulate better. Too bad KAMASUTRA was in two days in a row, and this one clued so blandly. I agree “Library of Congress” doesn’t quite work, but “Library of Congress feature”or something like that would have worked. Looks like we have a new KEALOA—MOIL/TOIL. I wasn’t initially fond of the plural “Attire for a ceremony…” but upon research it appears there are multiple robes worn at different times during the ceremony so good on them. I also wasn’t fond of ORS for C-sections but I guess they are specialized types of ORS, so good on them again. I found out today that Gargantua’s mother in Rabelais was Gargamelle after whom the Smurf villain was named. Lastly, any others out there put DYSENTERY before DYSPEPSIA? I was prepared to blast the editors for that one, but DYSPEPSIA is perfectly fine.
@SP Congressional Aid? /not a fair clue but good for a smile
@SP Also, I agree with your queasy feelings about the puzzle. For me it just comes down to too much obscutrivia that I didn't know, wasn't funny or interesting, and, most criticallly, didn't really seem presented fairly. Others have already mentioned the random cheese crossing mite/more and moil/toil, and for me the whole lower right was iffy. I figured obeli was correct but Gabe, cot, and Cabos were all more or less guesses. I had piecework before patchwork which was probably the only fun I had here. Nothing really wrong, just didn't love this one.
@SP Now, c'mon. You're a doc! DYSPEPSIA for stomach/tummy trouble (acidity, reflux, maybe nausea) is a far cry from DYSENTERY, where the lower GI goes crazy... Not to be confused, I'd say.
Ahhhh tough never heard of Susan tucci or Tilsit so had to cheat…. A fail for me 😞 But that’s how a Saturday should be 👏
More of these, please. Many, many more. 7 DOWN got a muttered curse. 3 DOWN got a rude suggestion for the constructor, spoken out loud to my dog. This puzzle was marvelous--tough, witty, obscure--a delight. Lots of people are going to hate it, but it is exactly what a Friday or Saturday should be, IMNSHO. YMMV.