My five favorite original clues from last week (in order of appearance): 1. Temple services? (4)(8) 2. They're taken off for boudoir photos (4)(4) 3. Honey boo-boo? (3)(5) 4. Number of letters? (8)(4) 5. It's not exactly fast food (8) HEAD MASSAGES LENS CAPS BEE STING ALPHABET SONG MOLASSES
My favorite encore clues from last week: [Make out, perhaps?] (3) [Name of "the other reindeer" in a common Christmas mondegreen] (5) TAG OLIVE
@Lewis I'm usually 100% with you in your choices of notable clues. Today, not so much. For me, HEAD MASSAGES was a weak answer to an excellent clue. As others mentioned at its first appearance, the answer seems lumpy and artificial. On the plus side, LENS CAP was delightfully wicked as clued, and MOLASSES was charming. Thanks as always for your stellar service to the list.
@Lewis Were all 5 from Sunday's puzzle?
Beaucoup style points for this one. 6 tight themers, the revealer fits the theme as well as being ia revealer, two crossers which UPS the constructing difficulty immensely (even though you do have a gimme Y/B at the cross), a fresh themer in BIRDBYBIRD and a great grid with not much glue—what’s not to like? Anyone would be proud to have their BYline on this one.
If you were going to make a “word hidden in a phrase” clue for Best-Picture-winner ARGO, could you come up with a more perfect phrase than “and the Oscar goes to…”? That’s a sweet blast of brilliance. And then having ARGO crossed with LARGO is the cherry on top. Nate has a way with finding words masked in phrases. It was the theme of his last Times puzzle, where names of singers were hidden, such as Elvis in TUNNEL VISION, and the reveal was INSIDE VOICES (as in, what children should use at the library). That ARGO clue was a highlight for me, bolstered by a supporting cast of lovely answers – PLUCKY, SASHAY, SUBTLY, PHOBIA, BLURTS, and BUOYED. Beauty and the beast of a clue elevated your puzzle, Nate, above a simple fill-in, and that, sir, elevated my day. Thank you!
"I'm not sure which rug to buy...hmmm...let's see..." "Come on, step on it!" ("Gee...ummm...how about this one?" "You made a decision?? I'm floored.")
@Mike Add that joke to the PILE. Can’t catch you NAPping.
@Mike That process is nothing to carp at. If you're thinking about doing the stairs too, swatch your step.
@Mike That’s not a fitted carpet, it’s FRITO-LAY anywhere
@Mike You have a very warped sense of humor.
@Mike Still the Rugged Individualist, I see.
@Mike Did you jute say you’ve decided? Good. Let’s sisal it up. 🌻☮️
Made me think of the old comedy routine “Slowly I turn, step by step, inch by inch”. Classic Stooges. A quintessential Monday theme. ENJOY!
@Anita Wasn't that on I Love Lucy? 🤔
@Anita Stooges jumped to my mind, too.
@Anita Abbott and Costello did it, too <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KpsUlvzbkk" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KpsUlvzbkk</a>
Oh boy, the PANINI is really going to hit the fan today!! It's been a while. As soon as I saw the clue, my head started not so SUBTLY twitching and a single tear ran down my cheek. Guess it's time for SOSAD walk. <a href="https://youtu.be/gHmQGR99XbA?si=ymeaOsg4piuFU7RE" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/gHmQGR99XbA?si=ymeaOsg4piuFU7RE</a>
@HeathieJ I realized that my reply never posted to your question last week. My daughter went to Camp Minikani in Wisconsin ☺️
@HeathieJ Same. Worse is that Spelling Bee will take the plural, but not the singular. It does that for many Italian food words (penne, ravioli).
@HeathieJ I’d love to join you, as soon as I finish my tamale.
As someone who, many years ago, took a writing course with Anne Lamott, I was delighted to see the title of one of her books in today's puzzle. I didn't become a fiction writer, but I did discover that a talented author can also be a truly wonderful and down-to-earth human being.
@Steve L I heard Anne Lamott interviewed recently on Fresh Air (I think), which helped
It’s cute how [People attracted to any gender, for short] is PAN, and the theme is centered around BY (“bi”). Dunno if it was on purpose but I like it.
Nice having 6 theme answers in my Monday puzzle, yknow.
Anyone try the Monday “Across clues only” challenge? I managed, somehow, in 23:11. It’s a really nice puzzle, and the theme was a big help — CASE BY CASE was extrapolatable and the SE corner crumbled without a fight Actually the first seven clues were a doozy, but i suddenly got bogged down: RICE CHEX was hard but eventually guessable because it sounds like the kind of thing Americans would eat for breakfast. I initially had “blow by blow” instead of PLAY BY PLAY, which threw me for a moment, “air” instead of UPS, and “blur” instead of HAZE. But i slowly untangled it, without ever looking at a Down clue. Yay! If you find Mondays easy and you want to spin out the fun, get horizontal! Try the “Across clues only” challenge!
@Petrol Inspired by your previous posts, I gave it a go. I chose the downs, for my first try, because I thought it would make it a little easier, and I think that was true today. Still, it took about 40% longer than a normal Monday solve. I thought it was a good challenge. Even in early week puzzles, I rarely write in anything without confirming it with a cross, so this really went against my cautious nature. I agree that the theme was a big help.
@Petrol Somebody here — perhaps it was you — got me doing the Monday (and sometimes Tuesday) puzzles with Across-only clues. Did it in 21:23 today. A bit easier than usual, once the theme became apparent (it also helped that I've seen 44A recommended several times recently, so was familiar with it). Quite a fun way to do the Mondays!
@Petrol I wasn't really trying, but got pretty far. I knew RICE CHEX and the book, but was defeated by Chappell Roan.
@Petrol @Nancy J @Michael G I always start Mondays as Downs-only. Defeated me today because I just couldn't see 48 D despite having PLU and the adjacent 49D (though that was a guess and I wasn't certain. So had to look at an Across. How could I have forgotten PL....Y little Poland? Though it turned out, thanks to DuckDuckGo, that the slogan was actually "PL....Y little Belgium" It was just the anti- war musical, "Oh what a lovely war" that had morphed things into "PL....Y little Poland and Brave little Belgium". BTW the British response to WW I Belgian refugees is an example for us all...something like 100,000 Brits offered their homes. (Yes not without some problems but still inspiring. Supposedly that's why Agatha Christie made Hercule Poirot a Belgian.) Not that present-day Minnesota isn't inspiring too. And elsewhere. Roslindale hosted a fundraiser (ice cream, face-painting, chalking, music & dancing) for Haitians in the park last night that raised over $24,000.
@Petrol I get that it's more challenging but is it fun that way? Much of the pleasure for me is reading and solving all the clues and seeing how they mesh. You're purposely reading only half of them... (I even stop to fully read and absorb clues that I've already inadvertently filled in during the course of answering all their crosses.)
@Petrol, Tried, and got close, but Lento insisted of LARGO got me (totally messed up the SW corner), and I also didn’t get UPS - somehow had rPS. Still, it’s a fun way to try the Monday
Random thoughts. I read BIRD BY BIRD ages ago, but still have trouble putting its advice into practice. Seems as if it's turned into the summer of the ANTS. Srsly, check the frequency of ANT/ANTS at xwordinfo.com since June. RICE CHEX, nice and crunchy. LASSO today instead of Riata. And even though I've never seen the show, it's hard not to see Ted in front of it. And as Faith of the Buffyverse might say, this puzzle was Five by Five.
@Vaer We stumbled on the first season and were blown away by the acting props of the TED LASSO character--and that was just the first episode.
poem made from words in today’s puzzle a/ i see the glow in the road bed slow, i go not in protest i go with a rock i found d/ to show the way lifted to the sky to the spirits a/ play
Good one Nate! So many themers, and all consistent. I did this puzzle LINEBYLINE and enjoyed every minute of it.
Is this the debut of BIRDBYBIRD in NYT? Exciting!
@Shelly Yes, this was the debut. ....
Today I took my sweet time solving, and also changed it up by going across, then down, then back to across and down, filling in what I didn't get on first pass. It was akin to taking a new path from point A to point B, as opposed to the usual one (wherein I do the puzzle in sections, criss-crossing as I go.) Zen masters recommend these tweaks to wake us up from auto-pilot and experience anew being present in the moment. It did make me more focused, brought my attention to the fill, not the end, and afforded me great enjoyment. And this was a perfect puzzle to do that, because the theme and the fill were so good! Thank you, Mr. Cardin! BIRD BY BIRD is new to me and an interesting TIL. And here's a FOUR BY FOUR that wasn't in the puzzle but that I really like (though without the religious connotation of the song) : Godspell's "Day by Day" - <a href="https://youtu.be/ekoHxB4idmg?is=PgY31_jY1kXHY8ff" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/ekoHxB4idmg?is=PgY31_jY1kXHY8ff</a>
@sotto voce I hate to be that guy, but "Day by Day" is only a three by three.
Erratum: "Day by Day" is *not* a FOUR BY FOUR, lol! (But it's still a good "by" song...🤷🏻♀️ )
@sotto voce I know you meant "Dayo by Dayo".
@sotto voce Anne Lamott's book is quite readable, even just for entertainment. It's not how I approach my writing, but she has good ideas, helpful advice, and encouragement to offer all who read her book...
Did anyone else find the solution to 63A--YKNOW--sketchy? I thought that expression should be spelled YAKNOW. I know the clue had two apostrophes indicating missng letters, but I never saw the expression YKNOW in anything I've read.
@Francis DeBernardo I've seen it hyphenated as y'know.
Francis DeBernardo, IYKYK, whereas if ya don’t, yno. :)
@Francis DeBernardo Yes, and it broke my streak. OK NOW/FLO just seems so much better than YKNOW/FLY, so that's what I went with. Was solving with only the horizontals ...
@Francis DeBernardo I on the other hand, type YKNOW frequently and have never seen YAKNOW!
@Francis DeBernardo Always y'know. Never ya know. Doesn't even look right.
@Francis DeBernardo Seems pretty common to me. Maybe it's a regional thing.
Was on track for a fastest time today until I got to the end and the dreaded “So Close!” message appeared. Being British and thoroughly uninterested in sport, I’ve never heard of RICE CHEX or David Ortiz, so I had RaCECHEX and PAPa, and it took me at least an extra minute to realise that a cereal brand probably wouldn’t focus on the ethnicity of their pretzels.
@Billy I'm a Yank but thought the Chappell Roan song was "GOT TO GO" (not HOT). Otherwise they all came easily. I'm pretty sure this was my fastest solve.
Is Anne Lamott an ornithologist? Even though she's been a far, far more successful writer than I've been, I sort of can't figure out how and why she came up with her rather odd BIRD BY BIRD writing tip. Maybe it's part of a longer paragraph that explains it? But that answer adds a lot of color to a theme that's already pretty nifty for a Monday. Very dense, with answers going both across and down. UnMondayish fill like GEODE and HAZARD and PLUCKY and PHOBIA. Best of all, a constructor willing and able to avoid pop culture trivia. I'm so happy that ERAS refers to the times of your life and my life and not Taylor's life. SIDE BY SIDE could have been clued via Sondheim, whom I love to death -- but I'm very glad it wasn't. CASE BY CASE could have been clued via, say, "L.A. Law" -- but, again, I'm glad it wasn't. Thanks, Nate, for a nice clean grid that I wish more constructors would emulate.
@Nancy In her book of the same name, she relates a childhood anecdote that explains it. I'm sure you can find it online.
@Nancy Early in the slim volume Anne explains where "Bird by Bird" came from and why. You might enjoy reading it; I did!
@Nancy - My memory is that she had an assignment when she was a kid in school that involved writing a report about a bunch of birds. It may have involved drawing them. I forget. She was complaining to her father and asked for advice how to approach the assignment. He just said "Bird by bird, Annie. Bird by bird." It's a metaphor for writers on how to overcome writer's block. Page by page, or sentence by sentence or... word by word.
@Nancy luckily Sam explains exactly this in her column accompanying the crossword. The answer has been just one click away from you this whole time!
@Nancy Sam's column describes the "bird by bird" reference.
FYI today's New Yorker puzzle by Elizabeth C. Gorski is pretty "challenging" (and so labeled) yet ultimately doable. By me. Barely. No theme, just a lot to chew on and a lot I didn't know. You might enjoy it.
B, Not sure if you missed this or added it for others, but all New Yorker Mondays are themeless and are called "challenging." I did enjoy dealing with Ms. Gorski's construction.
@B I started Gorski's entry earlier but then got tied up in other projects. Will find it and get back to y'all upon completion. (It's a good one).
A pressed sandwich is a panino. Sandwiches is panini (the clue is misleading).
@Francisco I wonder whether it's regional? M-W says, "The use of panino as a singular form in English has become relatively uncommon as panini has become established as the usual singular."
@Francisco “panini” is the loan word in English. We use the plural as a singular, and often as a plural too, but it is common to pluralize it as “paninis” as well.
@Francisco Welcome to the tamale trap, Italian sandwich division.
In France the same thing commonly happens to brownie, the dessert item. As in “Je vais prendre un brownies” (“I’ll have a brownies”). I wonder if it’s accepted in their crossword puzzles.
@Francisco I hope you enjoy your spaghetto and cheese. It's a little sparse but grammatically correct.
@Francisco Please! Not another 100 posts about the pressed sandwich/es.
For another project I've been working on I've subscribed to ChatGPT to learn what it is capable of. I asked it to search for other possible 4x4 phrases. Here is what was returned: Here are reasonably common phrases fitting the exact pattern four-letter word + “by” + the same four-letter word: • Case by case • Side by side • Step by step • Inch by inch • Mile by mile • Hour by hour • Week by week • Year by year • Line by line • Word by word • Page by page • Door by door • Room by room • Blow by blow • Play by play • Move by move • Turn by turn • Shot by shot • Vote by vote • Name by name • Item by item • File by file • Task by task • Test by test • Rule by rule • Town by town • City by city • Seat by seat • Game by game • Race by race • Song by song • Book by book • Cell by cell • Gene by gene • Byte by byte • Dose by dose • Drop by drop • Wave by wave The most familiar or idiomatic are probably case by case, side by side, step by step, inch by inch, blow by blow, play by play, line by line, word by word, and door by door. Also a TIL for me on BIRD ... Nice puzzle.
@John Carson For crossworders: clue-by-clue ?? I chat with "Chet" to smooth out short sippets of text for some teaser/intros I do for radio.
@John Carson "Door by door" seems like an outlier on your short list. I would say "door to door," if anything.
@John Carson Your list has drop by drop, but not drip by drip, which is more in the language to me, who has been haunted by leaks in the past.
@John Carson Nice to see a benign use of ChatGPT. But please don't do that again here. Part of the fun of the crossword comments is coming up with more themers and discussing them here.
Good Monday puzzle. Typical slow start for me, but tumbling to the trick was the big turning point and that's always a nice touch, though BIRDBYBIRD was unfamiliar to me, so had to work that out from the crosses. And... a somewhat appropriate puzzle find today. A Wednesday from August 27, 2008 by Donna Hoke Kahwaty. Theme answers in that one: PAWPAWPRINTS TOMTOMTURKEY BONBONVOYAGE Here's that link: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=8/27/2008" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=8/27/2008</a> See you tomorrow. ....
Ah, the *frisson* of pleasure I felt when I entered the final "I" of 25D! Raisins on your peanut butter may be all well and good, but wouldn't a smoked pork product be, um, sexier?: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th_g6FsbmqY" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th_g6FsbmqY</a> The perfect Monday puzzle--thank you, Mr. Cardin!
I thought there was something special in this Monday and liked the tribute to Anne Lamott’s writing.
So cute! I read Bird By Bird ages ago, it was the first themed answer I got in the puzzle.
Anyone else catch the glaring error in the 3D clue of today's Midi? I wonder how often this happens.
@Matt ? True, snow after a storm would be significantly higher than ankle deep.
@Matt I guess it depends on where you live? When we were in Wisconsin, definitely deeper, but in Flagstaff, seems about right 😉
@Matt Good catch. It went right by me. I believe that a common error in proofreading occurs when a word is repeated. We had a glaring one on the cover of a publication I worked on that had the same small word mistakenly at the end of one line and at the beginning of the next line. Another common error is when there is a wrong word but it is a real word: "bine" would be caught when it should be "line" but "fine" or "dine" or "mine" would breeze right through. Sadly, there was a big kerfuffle where I worked once when an ad for the National Dairy Association had the "National Diary Association" in two places.
@Matt Congratulations, you just made me do a MIDI puzzle.
I’d say that crossing a baseball player with a cereal is as close to a natick as you can get. I would agree with Ms. Corbin RICECHEX makes more sense but what would I know about cereals in the US. the BIRDBYBIRD essay was fun (if a bit skewed) to read.
Now that is a good puzzle. Even the unheard of trivia was deducible. Clues fun and solvable.
Had all the spaces filled, but, horsefeathers! Somewhere there was an error. LentO had been corrected to LARGO through the crosses. What devious trap had been laid for the innocent Monday crossword solver? Oh, nvm, I can’t spell BUOYED.
@Spelling Marauder One of my favorite seafood stores in Seaside, Oregon, the Bell Buoy, was featured on Oregon public broadcasting last night. I still misspelled it. I think it was because it was a down entry.
So… the bird is the word? <a href="https://youtu.be/6GizTr6QLfc?si=IKTYa_uDRC68696t" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/6GizTr6QLfc?si=IKTYa_uDRC68696t</a>
@JohnWM One of my all time favorites. 🤷
My first strict down only solve! Forgetting the full title, I was hoping STEP BY STEP was clued to the gorgeous Benny Rivers song: <a href="https://youtu.be/zSGhyrF7YVo?si=FZ5Gs0zBGQzFJzOH" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/zSGhyrF7YVo?si=FZ5Gs0zBGQzFJzOH</a> Post solve, I checked out the other song, but it was definitely not my jam!
As @Vaer notes, this is the Summer of the ANTS. As it happens, I contributed an article to our Village newsletter on the subject of RIFA...you can Google that to reveal what it stands for (or perhaps, unfortunately, you already know.) I used an encounter to illustrate...well, what *not* to do should RIFA cause an emergency. They still make CHEX? We are a Cheerios-Only household. Or...Oatmeal!... should it ever get cold again here; DHubby says we're being baked in the fiery furnace.
@Mean Old Lady Red something? Fire Ants? I like cold steel cut oats oatmeal. You make a batch very thick, put in a cake pan in the fridge, cut a square in the morning and put your nuts and berries, etc on it and eat like it's cake. Haven't eaten CHEX in years, but know they still make it.
@Mean Old Lady You mean that you're *not* going to tell us "well, what *not* to do should RIFA cause an emergency"? By the way, I saw the photo of your bird-in-a-tree quilt posted in these comments recently. It is fantastic!!
7 minute solve today. fun theme!
Pleasantly impressed by this Monday puzzle. Tight theme and TIL BIRD BY BIRD. Thank you, Nate, for starting off my week with this UBER fun puzzle.
54D [Title for Helen Mirren and Emma Thompson] Great movie starring DAME Emma Thompson: “The Children Act.” I’ve seen it twice. DAME Thompson plays a judge who must make a ruling in a medical case where the patient is refusing treatment. Also starring Stanley Tucci. The Children Act is the name of a British law. <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6040662" target="_blank">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6040662</a>/ Another interesting movie starring 42D [“Deadpool” actor RYAN Reynolds] and 54D DAME Helen Mirren is “Woman in Gold” about the complicated real life legal maneuverings necessary to recover a Klimt painting lost in WWII. Also seen twice. <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2404425" target="_blank">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2404425</a>/ (“Deadpool” is not my cup of tea.)
A typo on 65A stalled me for longer than I want to admit. Ironic, given the clue
PANINI is the plural form. Singular, it’s PANINO. While I see this mistake all-to-often at local sandwich shops, it’s surprising to see it making its way through the NYT editing process.
@Bob DiNardo I agree fully. And it’s not the first time for this mistake either.
@Bob DiNardo Non siamo in Italia.
@Bob DiNardo I'm not going into a sandwich shop and ordering a "panino", just to be met by a blank stare that requires me to launch into a little on-the-spot lecture to the teenager at the register, for the same reason I'm not going to provide a correction if someone uses "decimate" to mean anything other than doing away with exactly one tenth of something. My younger self absolutely would have done those things, but sometimes it helps when you make an effort not to put people off. They could care less...y'know what I mean?
@Bob DiNardo Thank you! Panino/i annoys me unreasonably. I need to find something more worthwhile to annoy me!
@Bob DiNardo You may be right for the language of origin, but in English I've only ever heard anyone call it a panini. It's common usage, so it's correct for a puzzle like this one. English does this to words from other languages all the time.
@Bob DiNardo I love using panino or cannolo or spaghetto with people to get their reactions.
@Bob DiNardo According to Merriam-Webster, the singular is PANINI, "or less commonly, PANINO"
I caught on to the word-BY-word format immediately, but no idea how the revealer would tie them all together. Ne'ertheless, the solve was smooth and easy, no need for a blow-by-blow account. Like Anita, I thought of the Stooges routine. Sam, that bigwig in the photo is downright freaky.
The perfect puzzle to breeze through beside a sunny little lake, where the BIRDs include a loon teaching her chicks to dive for fish. Thank you, Nate!
Those 15x15 grids always look like a piece of cake on our phone after the 21x21. By Friday that feeling always wears off. But, what with the GE, we have always been prevailing lately. Unremarkable as expected. Enjoyable while it lasted.
For 25 down “pressed sandwich.” This is singular. That would be panino, not panini. In Italian, panini is plural, panino is singular. The clue should be “pressed sandwiches.”
@Jane Gherardi Came here to say the same thing!
@Jane Gherardi The clue doesn’t say “in Italian.” In English, PANINI works for the singular, even if it’s wrong unilaterally Italian.
@Jane Gherardi agreed. And 60 across. Largo means “wide”. Not so much “big”.
@Jane Gherardi, it sets my teeth on edge as well, as does, “well, it’s English” as a defense. The purist in me feels that just because we use a borrowed word in English incorrectly to the native language doesn’t make it right. However, such is the nature of descriptive, adaptive grammar. We aren’t going to win this one, I fear, but we can continue to gently point it out. Don’t even get me started on “data” as a singular noun. ;-) Y’all have a lovely day and remember to be kind.
@Jane Gherardi Make me a panino on rye, hold the mayi.
@Steve L The other day, I was buying chili and saw that Hormel has tamales in a can. Did not buy, not even for science.
Not only was 2-Down also in today's LA Times crossword, it was clued in basically the exact same way
@Smirking Punk And it was on Jeopardy! recently, too...
Nice to learn bird-by-bird. One major reason why I do these puzzles is to learn stuff like that. In my life the same idea has been Q: “How do you eat an elephant?” A: “One bite at a time.” Of course we shouldn’t be thinking about eating the remarkable elephants of the world. They are amazing creatures. But maybe various species of huge mammals like mammoths and sloths were in North America eaten by our predecessors into extinction. That and the climate change of 15,000 years ago.
@sonnel Many of the behemoths were extinct before humans were around... or so I thought. Hard to believe human action could have been responsible for mass extinction way back then.... A gap in my knowledge base, I suppose...which will remain, in all likelihood.
Tried to solve using just the horizontals ... and failed on a single box. Had OK NOW rather than YKNOW. Clearly my horizontal entry is *better* than the horrid YKNOW. Just reclue 55D to yield FLO and ... there, I've fixed the puzzle for you. Ya' know is bad enough. Y'KNOW is awful. Yes, I'm bitter. ;-)
@Xword Junkie In my head I was pronouncing it ick now and actually took out fly for a moment until I got it :D
@Xword Junkie, I tried as well, but was not as successful as you. I had YKNOW, but also had Lento instead of LARGO, so that kind of messed up that corner. I also didn’t suss out UPS, so I was a ways off, but I’ve only tried this a few times (only on Mondays).
Late to the game today. Cute Monday theme! Rating: 10/10
I was trying to fit the two letter BI into A25 for an embarrassingly long time. Nice Monday puzzle, thank you.
Loved to see Lamott mentioned. Slightly taken aback by noting there were 5 "by" clues but the big theme answer was 4x4, not 5x5! I realized it made sense after half a second, but still . . .