This puzzle set a personal record for the most time spent after finishing the puzzle staring at it trying to figure out what the theme was.
@Billy That was the _real_ puzzle we were intended to solve?
@Billy I think that adds to the difficulty of constructing the puzzle. The altered letters in the themers spelled out real words. Bonus points for spanning sizes XS->XL
@Billy I’m right there with you Billy. From a construction perspective it’s brilliant in my book. I was only a few seconds slower than average and was clueless on the theme. I went with what made sense on the downs and surprise…..I got the music.
@Billy agree, cost me a gold star on exspouses!
This was the first Thursday I was able to completely solve on my own without searching anything or reading the Wordplay column!! Maybe this was just an easier Thursday than usual, but I’m choosing to believe that I’m finally tapping into my RAW crossword solving potential and celebrating with some PIE. :)
@Susanna: Not all that easy, but you SIZED UP the challenge and rose to the occasion. Nice work!
@Susanna Congrats! That's a great feeling. Here's to many more.
@Susanna Same accomplishment here!! Didn't even have to check QUORA :)
Good puzzle in which the theme doesn’t work at all for me. I am neither entertained or amazed by the wordplay.
@Selective Walrus this was no fun
@Selective Walrus you’re literally doing a word puzzle and commenting on a column titled Wordplay…
Ugh. I solved the puzzle but I HATE when I have to read the explanation to "get it." I think I'm fairly smart but if the theme needs a lot of unpacking and explaining, the puzzle is a dud in my book
@Robert The theme was pretty simple. But I understand the frustration when you don't get it. I've missed some easy ones as well.
@Robert It's not the puzzle's fault that you didn't understand it. Many of us did without any help.
@Katie You're being rude for the sake of being rude here. He didn't criticize the puzzle AT you.
Didn’t get the logic behind changing the letters until reading the column. Makes sense now.
Anybody else out there slap in BLT before PBJ?
@Lewis Yes and trying to figure out how PBJs are crunchy except sometimes you use crunchy peanut butter.
@Lewis yes, but I already had BRRS entered, so I was perplexed. Then I realized it could be crunchy peanut butter 🤦🏼♀️
I got the revealer before any of the themes, so when I saw Lobsters, and knew it should be Mobsters, I thought the revealer meant sizing up in the alphabet. So change the L to M since that's how they fall alphabetically. Imagine my absolute confusion for the rest of the puzzle when that did not work for a single other answer... I gave up on trying to figure out the theme and finished on crosses and sheer grit, then had to come to the column for the answer. SIZES, duh. Oh well!
@Mackenzie That first entry going from M to L definitely adds another touch of trickiness for top-down solvers. I also thought we might be shifting letters one notch back in the alphabet.
@Mackenzie Same here. After the initial M to L (which I thought was L to M) I saw that the unneeded X in AXLES and thought that perhaps we took the X from ExSPOUSES, but couldn’t make sense of that either. So I also pushed through to finish then read the article. No way on earth I would have figured that out.
Finished the puzzle without picking up on the theme, and then read the article and ohhhh that’s a good theme, sure wish I’d spotted it!
One of those puzzles where I think "there's a theme here, I'll continue solving and come back to crack it later", then next thing I know I've solved the puzzle, I hear the music and it's done....
Congrats, Killian. This takes me back to some classic Thursdays BE (before easening). I was completely flummoxed for the most part until I muddled through to the bottom. Ended up getting the revealer as the first themer but even that didn’t quite help, Then the penny dropped with AQUARIUS. The NW finally dropped last. I really really appreciated that the other clues, for the most part, weren’t entirely cαstrατεd to compensate for such a tricky theme. There were a lot of other fresh entries and tricky misdirects and I’m glad they kept a lot of your clues. Also appreciated the extra trickiness of some sizing changing from one letter to two or vice versa. This was a delightfully teeth-pulling Thursday for me. Newer solvers and Thursday haters please keep an open mind about this. Yes it doesn’t fit the standard crossword mold. Yes it doesn’t follow your usual crossword rules. Yes it may be opaque for some especially if you are not patient and flexible. But it’s internally consistent, clear in its revealer, and extremely well-crafted. If you still hate it, by all means say so—but don’t demean the constructor, editors, or those of us who appreciate it because it is a worthy addition to traditional Thursday untraditionalness.
@SP Nicely put. I'm not sure there are all that many Thursday haters so much as there are rebus haters. Although I suppose there is a small contingent who can't tolerate the slightest bit of creativity. :( Personally I didn't find this one too difficult even as I squinted a bit to fully see the theme; XS as a size was not obvious.
@SP I appreciate Thursdays and I tolerate rebuses but I'm not wild about people telling me what to say.
1000 puzzles in a row! And a Thursday is a nice way to get it, usually one of the tougher days for me. Dedicated to Grandma, who started the obsession when I was barely old enough to read ❤️
@Matthew congratulations to you and your grandmother too!
"Axles" makes this one completely incomprehensible. In "mobsters"/"zilch", "ex-spouses"/"useless", and "Aquarius"/"masks", the across clue is the smaller size and it's in a single square, and then for "axles", it's the *larger* size, and it spills to the left? Really frustrating, rather than fun. My partner and I filled in everything correctly except for trying to put in rebuses instead of single letters on the theme crosses (as it apparently wanted), but then when it didn't complete, we stared at "axles" for twenty minutes, sure that had to be where the problem was.
@Sam thank you my friend for this - this odd inconsistency spoiled the fun for me. I didn’t get happy music and I assumed this area contained my error as it didn’t make sense (only to find out I mistyped RONAN/MAXIMUN) despite knowing the show so well, as well as the word maximum….
@Sam it was definitely a brain teaser, but it is consistent: the answer you need to write in the crossword is always the larger one: L instead of M (m/lobsters) S instead of XS (exs/spouses), M instead of S (aquarius/m) and indeed XL instead of L (al/xles). It may be confusing because XS is smaller than S, but XL is larger than L
@Sam The theme is consistent, just really complex and convoluted. Didn't appreciate it.
@Sam I don’t think there was any inconsistency. Did you read the column?
It was interesting to fill in a puzzle tonight with so many tech and game references, especially after having spent the evening setting up a new Claude project for work. I kept thinking to myself that if my mom was doing today’s puzzle she would be lost on a bunch of the terms and would have to get them from the crosses. I liked the theme, though. I was convinced for a while that there was going to be a rebus but then got LOBSTER. Then I thought the sizing up was to simply move up one letter earlier in the alphabet (since the M moved up to an L) but that got me nowhere with the other entries. When I finally got it, I laughed out loud. My favorite entry to fill in was BANDWAGON. Not sure why—just gave me great joy. And after hearing some sad news tonight I needed that. Thanks for the diversion. Enjoyed this one a lot.
31A might be my contender for clue if the week. Very clever playing the two March "holidays" against each other that way
@Steven M. I still don’t understand the PIE reference. What does it mean?
I don’t understand the consternation here. The theme is insultingly simple. You take the maiden name of Louis Gossett Jr.’s great aunt Thelma and multiply the number of its letters by the number of letters in the italicized clue. You then divide by pi and apply the corresponding Sanskrit character for each of the digits in the result—BUT—you must remember to apply it from right to left, not left to right. Finally, you translate the Sanskrit into Aramaic, THEN back into English, but using the Middle English spellings for answers referencing a Gossett Jr. film title released in 1982. Hence 47A solving to ANOFFICERANDAGENTYLMAN.
@Ace I got stuck on being sure it was to be handled like a rebus. As in M/L in one square. So simple to you is not simple to everyone! Glad you tricked onto it so quickly...
@Ace Dang. Reading just the first two sentences of your comment, I wasn't sure whether to be in awe or set you straight. That was hilarious!
@Ace very funny and thanks for the compliment, because clearly you and others must think that I and the others who solved this and understood the theme must be frickin’ geniuses.
@Ace @Ace very funny and thanks for the compliment, because clearly you and others must think that I and the others who solved this and understood the theme must be’ geniuses.
@Ace Great comment! I hope my endorsement doesn't get the entire thread taken down.
Vinny was so upset, he was actually weeping. All his pals were swanning around town as LOBSTERS. But for some reason, the great puzzle master who rules us all had decided to down-size him. He was a SOBSTER.
@Cat Lady Margaret Take the cannoMi, Vinny. Meave the gun.
Just because you get it doesn’t mean you have to like it.
Well, the slippery cluing and slippery theme kept my brain involved and happy. Slippery clues such as [They might have deposits] – what kind of deposits? The kind in banks? Deltas? Large purchases? A slippery theme that kept me guessing as to what was going on until I filled in the revealer. Oh I tried getting it before that, but nada, ZILCH. That is what I hope for in a Thursday puzzle – a capital-R Riddle. In my post-solve musing, thinking about sizes, it hit me that “petite” is embedded in the word “appetite”, and then I learned that “petite” is a category of sizes rather than a size itself and that there is even a "petite large" size. Hah! That brought the phrase "jumbo shrimp" to mind, and well, I can’t tell you how much my brain savors little diversions like this... So, Killian, you gave me a Thursday-worthy outing, topped with some delightful digression, and I’m pleased as punch. Thank you for this!
@Lewis "petite" often means "short" more than "little", so I guess "petite large" would mean short but stocky. Probably a hard size to be. Might have to make one's own clothes.
Quite a fun, fast solve today. I rather liked the trick, especially since it sometime grew or shrank the answer. A satisfying puzzle with good fill!
Fun to solve a puzzle with clues that wouldn't have made sense a couple years ago. PROMPT as query for Claude, LLM, OPT out of cookies, AIRPODS...
@Rachel Yep, I always find the NYT crossword as a good barometer for where we are as a culture/society by way of the ubiquity of terms used. Seems like AI has now well and truly crossed that threshold and we are now living in a world where terms like this are just part of our day to day lives
@Rachel Guess we have different definitions of fun. I wish I could OPT out of references to Gen AI
For those confused by the theme or who think it is inconsistent, let me clarify: The theme is SIZE UP. Four words are changing by changing a size in the word one size up. EXSPOUSES—ESPOUSES (XS-S) AQUARIUS—AQUARIUM (S-M) MOBSTERS—LOBSTERS (M-L) ALES—AXLES (L-XL) Nobody said or implied that the resulting fill must have the same number of letters and it doesn’t in two answers, one smaller and one larger. Arguably you could have done a rebus for AXLES but that would have been inconsistent and unnecessary. Tricky? Yes? Unconventional? yes. Inconsistent? I don’t see how.
@SP thanks for the clarification. I failed trying to fit the trick into one square via rebuses. Too clever by half(size)
@SP thanks for posting such a simple, accurate, and concise explanation of how the theme works and IS CONSISTENT. Now I don’t have to 🤓. I’m sure I wouldn’t have done as good a job 😊
@SP Yeah, no. One square—>two squares. Oooh, tricky! Get it, don’t like it very much. Will keep it in mind for future reference when someone ill-advisedly uses it again.
Loved the gaming Puzz Pair of SOFA and FARM. When I saw FARM’s clue, I thought the answer might be “grind” (as in grinding out gaming achievements) which put me in a little rebus paranoia. As did the “fitting” revealer - I love when Sean mentions something in the column that also happened to me during the game. At the beginning of my crossword journey, Thursdays really SAPped me. I’ve only recently begun doing them again and, okay yes, they’re great. There’s an art to the wordplay, misdirection, and crazy themes. No longer does a rebus or a letter substitution make me say IMSAD!
@Elena Love to hear it! And those are great solving instincts, they'll serve you well in future Thursdays.
The theme eluded me completely until I came to Wordplay. Because the themed answers made recognizable words my ignorance was no impediment to completing the puzzle in good order.
I thought this was an elegant theme, very nicely executed. And I loved it that the revealer misdirected me into thinking it would be a rebus (that the themers would be "sized up" as in having more letters than would fit.) Lovely surprise when I came upon AQUARIUM, knowing it had to be AQUARIUs and having the M and S jump out at me as clothing sizes. The rest is history. Thank you, Mr. Olson, for a delicious romp with the theme, and for the clever fill to boot. The musical accompaniment is dedicated to all the lovely New Yawkers in this forum. "SOFA Away" 💕(a.k.a., "So Far Away") with Carole King - <a href="https://youtu.be/zBMGovfHccI?is=1WGv2-Zeg5DSBtEU" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/zBMGovfHccI?is=1WGv2-Zeg5DSBtEU</a>
P.S. Speaking of lovely New Yorkers, @Barry Ancona, you're being missed! I hope its only because youre on vacation and enjoying yourself.
@sotto voce I'll see your Carole King and raise you Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris. <a href="https://youtu.be/3PHaGgpFH4g?si=Ds00F3y_5Mm4RTpN" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/3PHaGgpFH4g?si=Ds00F3y_5Mm4RTpN</a>
@sotto voce The m/lobster answer reminded of the line in the Felice Brothers’ “Special Announcement”: “…all the mobsters eating lobsters in dim-lit rooms.” Always liked that line. <a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gxKbWEKefHI&list=RDgxKbWEKefHI&start_radio=1&pp=oAcB" target="_blank">https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gxKbWEKefHI&list=RDgxKbWEKefHI&start_radio=1&pp=oAcB</a>
It’s a little ironic that yesterday I made a comment about how the internet is full of misinformation and today the crossword has multiple references to AI. The universe laughs.
Not particularly difficult. But it was creative concept. LOBSTERS that was my first themer. I assumed the trick was going up one letter in the alphabet. So L->M. But the trick of course, was literally the opposite. I appreciate the creativity of XS->S and L->XL. I think that is what made the trick ‘thoughtful’. Anyway. Not too hard. But I give it prop’s for creativity and breadth of trick.
Guessed the theme but didn't know for sure as I'd never heard of size XS. PIE was delicious... ... ? ... Maybe that's why I was clueless about XS?
@Jamestown Ararat I have observed when looking for clothes for my nonbinary kiddo that men aren’t offered size XS. XL, yes, and any number of Xs before L. But I deduce from this that clothing companies have learned that no man wants to think of himself as EXTRA-small.
Solved the puzzle before understanding the theme!
Just flew through the puzzle and thought holy cow this is the easiest Thursday ever. Didn't realize till the end that I just did the Midi. Need. More. Coffee.
@Down_Home I feel like the Mini’s are getting better!
Fun Thursday today, maybe easier than average but within the expected range. Good simple theme that was fun to figure out. A lot of good clues and not too many proper nouns without good crossings. (Or at least the most obscure proper nouns I happened to know like ROMAN Roy). I liked the BANDWAGON answer. One of the ones that doesn't make sense until you think about it in a different way and then it's obvious. I got hung up a little thinking the sandwich was BLT, isn't that more crunchy than PBJ?
@Chris Not if you use crunchy peanut butter for your PBJ!
@Chris I thought it was BLT too, until I looked up the Olympian.
Two notes of note: • This puzzle is a pangram. • All sizes that can result from a “sizing up” are represented in the theme answers: S-M-L-XL.
@Lewis I know I'm being pedantic here, but there are several sizes above XL.
@Lewis I hadn't noticed the pangrammitude. Thanks for pointing that out.
@Lewis Given the locations of the Z and J I'm pretty sure the pangram was intentional. I am appreciative.
@Lewis I think there are also a range of sizes in the "Petite" category, such as petite extra small (PXS), petite medium (PM), etc., etc.
It never ceases to amaze me that people keep coming up with novel tricks for us. It's just so much fun solving a puzzle with a mini puzzle tucked into it. mOBSTERS/LOBSTERS - are we going back a letter? E(x)SPOUSES/ESPOUSES - is it a rebus? ALES/AXLES - what the actual..? Be patient, all will be revealed. And yes, it was. SIZING UP. It seems so obvious now.
@Nancy J. We are indeed living in the age of AQUARIUM.
I was able to solve it without understanding the theme, but I'm kinda sad about it because it would have been fun had I got it.
What a clever and original theme! Liked this one a lot. Mystifying until it wasn't: MOBSTERS --> LOBSTERS ( M --> L ) EXSPOUSES --> ESPOUSES ( XS --> S ) ALES --> AXLES ( L --> XL ) AQUARIUS --> AQUARIUM ( S --> M ) In each case, we're SIZINGUP---we're replacing the "correct" answer to the clue with a different word, by making one of the size-related enlargements listed above. Solved it without help, in about 25 minutes. This included fully understanding the theme ... I think. Thursday Puzzle of the Year candidate for me. Just great.
@Xword Junkie I also finished in about 25 minutes, but without actually understanding of the theme. I knew something was tricky about those squares, but I blithely kind of ignored it. Fun to see after the fact though.
Clever, I liked it. My mind took the clue, "like a bike without wheels", and kept flipping to the saying, "a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle". Funny how brains work.
I thought the theme was kind of fun actually, not sure why all the pooh-poohs from the peanut gallery. I got LOBSTERS pretty much right out the gate, had to consider when M would be L, then when I got SIZING UP I had my eureka moment. AXLES was a nice unexpected twist. Nice breezy Thursday for me with some fun wordplay sprinkled in. I liked it!
Why have crossword puzzles become less and less about words and more about ostensibly clever gimmicks? Decades of solvers were happily challenged by constructors who managed to find ways to create puzzles that were crossword puzzles. These days, puzzles are more often about gimmicks and less about the words, especially later in the week. Yes, there are still "old-fashioned" puzzles that are intrinsically challenging, but far more often constructors seem to rely on gimmicks that contribute little to the pleasure of solving the puzzle.
@David It's Thursday, and it's a New York Times Thursday puzzle. They're all about putting your assumptions aside and anticipating that a few rules are about to be broken. They require extra ingenuity to construct and extra ingenuity to solve. They are the favorites of many of us, and if you don't like them there's countless alternatives for you to pick from, whereas for those of us who love solving them there's only one source. I've posted several replies like this in the past, and I don't like being repetitive...but seriously, if you don't like this type of puzzle, why do you show up here?
@David This is a genre of comment that always cracks me up, and reminds me of a line from a 90s movie (that’s not worth naming), where an outraged customer at a diner exclaims “We’ve been coming here for 20 years!” and the server responds, “We’ve only been open for 8 years, sir.” Rebuses and other gimmickry such as today’s *have* been common features of NYT crossword puzzles for the last couple/few decades (especially on Thursdays).
@David Simply put, it is revisionist history to claim that crosswords with tricks are a new thing. Will Shortz has been around since 1993, and his first puzzle had a theme that put non-words into squares. <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=11/21/1993" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=11/21/1993</a> Eugene Maleska, the staid headmaster who preceded Shortz, already was allowing puzzles that played loose with the "rules," including this Schrödinger puzzle (one in which two different letters could work in certain squares) from 1988: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/PS?date=2/7/1988" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/PS?date=2/7/1988</a> And rebuses have been around since 1954: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/PS?date=9/6/1954" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/PS?date=9/6/1954</a> If you want ordinary crosswords, there are dozens of sites that provide them for free every day.
@David I remember being shown an NYT Sunday crossword puzzle in the late 1980s. The clue was RIROSIENG. The answer was Ring Around the Rosie. (Hopefully I spelled the flower correctly.)
As a mathematician I am appalled. Truly. Compactness and density are completely orthogonal. (Also, the nth is not the last. By definition, it is the nth).
@Remi Agree about NTH. "Arbitrary" or maybe "Typical" would have been better than "Last".
@Remi Justice for the (n + 1)th!
@Remi FWIW, from Merriam-Webster: "The phrase "to the nth degree" means to the utmost, maximum, or most extreme extent possible. When you do something to the nth degree, you take it as far, as deep, or as detailed as it can possibly go." And from Wikipedia: [As users on Quora agree, the expression comes from math. In algebra, the letter "n" stands for any unknown or infinitely large number. Raising a value to the "n-th power" or "n-th degree" means continuing the math process to an unspecified, ultimate limit.]
Back in the day the unofficial state motto for Rhode Island was "mobsters and lobsters" so at first I thought we were going in that direction Lol
Solved this in under 20 minutes, which might be a Thursday record for me (still working on my timing)! I feel like this theme might have worked better if it somehow incorporated rebuses (and this is coming from a tried and true rebus hater). It just wasn't satisfying for me how all but one of the theme answers affected only one square, and then you randomly have 41-across affect two squares. Luckily, I was able to reach "AXLES" through the crosses, but otherwise I know I would have been stuck for a while looking for something where only one square was affected. I know when I have submitted my own crosswords before, if the "rules" for one of the theme answers feels different than the rules for all the others, it has been rejected on the basis. Curious what the justification was for letting this one through as is. Ultimately, though, I can't say I didn't have fun! It was a really cool concept. And certainly can't say I wasn't happy with my solve time.
@Yael yup that 41 across thing is still bothering me an hour later! You summed it up nicely.
@Yael I found the two clues that didn't have a tidy 1:1 substitution rather tricky, in a good way. Otherwise the solve would have been duller. 26A also didn't fit, because we had to change XS to S. I spent a whole staring at ESPOUSES wondering how I was supposed to fit an X in there. And A_LES, surely that has something to do with ale? I was held up on MAXIMUM because I didn't know FARM or ROMAN, so also lacking the X made it tougher. So my experience was that I got the trick with LOBSTERS but still had challenges ahead. I thought it made the trick fresher.
They invented the word 'arcane' for this one.
Solved in 10 but didn’t understand the theme at all and had to come here to get it. I had enough crosses for AXLES to realise it was correct and got the revealer early but still no dice. So went ahead with populating the theme words based on the crosses and found myself completing it.
I say this as an IT guy of 40 years, and a computer nerd since 1980, but I found this one to be a little heavy on the tech jargon
I liked this puzzle. I was a little stumped up until the last letter, which was X in axles. Mostly I came here to say that last night I watched the solar eclipse in Zaragoza Spain. I returned to my hotel hot and sweaty, but happy. I thought “shower” but then thought about a beer… so I had a SHOWER BEER. AHhhh. Prudence dictated that it was not in the shower, but on the sink, because it was a glass bottle from the mini bar. Life is quite good.
@Nora I watched it too and it was awesome, but a big surprise came a little later: the setting of a crescent sun. I might add you may be the only person to ever watch a solar eclipse at night.
@Nora <a href="https://apod.nasa.gov/apod" target="_blank">https://apod.nasa.gov/apod</a>/ For anyone interested in seeing how the eclipse looked in Zaragoza.
Completed without ever understanding the theme. Not sure it's a great theme when the majority of people (it seems) can finish the puzzle without ever understanding it. Disheartened by all the tech industry clues, just personally. Sure, that's a terrible reality we live in now (technopoly), but the lack of balance with more cultural clues left me rather depressed. Maybe it's just me today.
@Endall I too felt disheartened that acronyms about AI have already invaded our solving milieu. It was the same feeling I had solving a quiz of the "20 best films of all time" on Redactle, where so far no movie "chosen" predates the 1970s, and most are late 20th and 21st century action-sci fi films as if the list had been curated by a 19-year-old living in his mom's basement who never read a book. One pleasure of solving crosswords is to gain a better lens on the world, albeit an ever changing one. But once the acquisition of said data seems really ephemeral, sigh... I have the same feeling working a book of NYT crosswords from the 1990s and early 2000s. So much pop culture/tech trivia has already gone into the compost bin that the solving experience is "period."
@Endall I don't think you can treat the comments section as a representative survey of everyone who has completed, or attempted, the puzzle.
As is usual for me, I worked around the revealer, leaving it blank and its clue un-read. Filled in all of the grid, with mostly correct entries (I had BRRd/dOFA--wha?). I realized that a letter substitution was involved, but without the revealer, I NEVER WOULD HAVE FIGURED OUT THE GIMMICK IN A MILLION YEARS! In other words, a truly stupendous puzzle! Thurs. POY material. Thank you, Mr. Olson!
Very easy without ever getting the theme, which was a little too cute.
I enjoyed this puzzle and kind of got the trick as I was completing it, but not totally. I was trying to do something with the S at the end of AXLES but couldn’t work out what AXLEM might mean and figured I hadn’t understood what was going on. In the end I just let the down clues guide me in all cases and let it work itself out. But there was some fun clueing in here, so it felt satisfying.