Now THAT'S a theme that's integral to the solving experience! It's also one of those themes that you can't believe someone was able to pull off for the whole puzzle! Also fun! I really enjoyed this one.
Puzzle fun makes trick nifty! 😃
When I watch my chiropractor speak into a mirror, everything's back words. (I'll have to reflect on that.)
@Mike What a wise crack! It takes some adjustment to get used to your humor.
@Mike Don't talk back to me! My chiropractor ran off to Tahiti with my podiatrist in toe.
@Mike True story: i went to an osteopath and i said you’re no doctor, you’re just pulling my leg!
@Mike I work with a hematological chiropractor. He's helping my blood relatives get back in shape.
@Mike My chiropractor put a new spin on treatment. He's now a gyropractor.
@Mike Nothing to do with this puzzle or your awesome punning, just hope your reappearance means the power’s back on in Munster?
Fun one! At first, I thought it was a Yoda theme.
“Weird are clues these” I thought as I looked over the first few acrosses. “Downs to switch better!” “Verbs as masquerading nouns!” “List Griddies to add!”
I was ready to reveal the whole thing after going through all the across clues and still having a blank grid. Glad I stuck with it.
Brilliant! Took my a while to figure out the trick. Loved it before and after figuring it out. Very fun solve.
Funny, I didn't see Yoda as one of the constructors.
What a fantastic puzzle! So clever and fun to solve. A welcome change from the mundane.
I quite liked this, for the peculiar reason that I did not catch onto the gimmick quickly. Not too clever of me, but it made the disentangling more fun.
At first, I thought I had a stroke, the words weren't making any sense. It was an excellent puzzle.
@Marilyn Yes! "I am so much worse at xwords than I thought" kept going through my head until I figured it out. :p
@Marilyn I laughed out loud. No, really! An actual 'hah!' emerged. Glad to see you were mistaken. Keep well and keep puzzling.
Puzzle this, ambitious most. It is very, very hard to come up with accurate backward clues that sound natural, that is, like real clues, and, if possible, that misdirect. Such as today’s: • [Free booze], that in a normal puzzle would make you try to think of other ways of saying “a complementary drink”. • [Set off] that, with an answer of six letters, makes IGNITE sound like a sure thing. Mwah! I, who inexplicably enjoy things like palindromes and semordnilaps, that is, backwards wordplay, got a big kick out of this puzzle. And its whole wacky vibe. I loved your chutzpah, Hoang-Kim. I loved the sterling moment when I figured out what was going on. More out-of-the-box please, up the road, and thank you for a delectable romp today!
P.S. -- What I’d like to see next is a grid whose across answers are all semordnilaps, such as today’s SNIP, but have the backward clue be the clue for the in-grid answer backwards, that is, SNIP with a backwards clue for PINS, say, [Partner needles]. There’s a theme that might take quite a while to crack!
@Lewis Bah! 'Complimentary' would be the freebie drink; a 'complementary drink' would be something like "What's the best cocktail to pair with braised possum?" It's not even SPLITting HAIRS.....and I suspect it's more like typo + not proofing....
Honestly. I’m afraid to read comments. For me. I really appreciate the creativity and effort it took to make this puzzle work. Very appropriate revealers. Got the truck fairly quickly. But not too quickly. So it was definitely puzzling the first couple minutes. My biggest hang up after a while. Was that I started reading the down clues in reverse order. And got stumped! Quick sober. But just engaging throughout. Inspired work Vu Kim-Hoang.
@Weak Sometimes auto correct is just as fun as a Thursday puzzle. Got the truck fairly quickly. Trick Quick sober. Solve.
I haven't commented here for years, and I have to say that this was the most enjoyable crossword I've completed in a long time. Thank you, Hoang-Kim Vu, for your brilliance. How refreshing! ✌️☮️
I guess folks who wanted to try the “downs only” challenge were in luck today (and anyone trying the “across only” challenge had a tough start). So, if there was a definition of a “constructor’s crossword”, this might be it. That is to say, once you get the trick it solves like a themeless, and then all you can do is sit back and admire the nerve and artistry. Which I did, and loved doing it. And even once you get the trick I don’t think it was so easy. For me the penny dropped at “Crows to relatives”—how about you? Most of these worked really well, and the ones that didn’t, quite—well, I won’t sweat the small stuff. My favorites were “Game of observation for travel”, “on-off signs”, and “Practice Japanese”. As for 58 across, I can only suggest: “Here critics most like acts” Speaking of which, there’s a word I’ve been trying to get into a crossword puzzle forever. Fellow constructors, it’s all yours. The clue is “Many a commentator on the crossword column” (8 letters). The answer is LOGOMACH. Look it up.
@SPI I got it very quickly in the upper left, not insignificantly aided by the revealer or two wedged right up there. It just took me a minute to get that it was a dead simple game of reverse rather than reordering anything. Maybe this is the optimal angelic form of constructor's crossword. The ones I've seen until now have been despicable in that they were tortuous to the customer while in search of meaningless inside baseball brownie points like pangrams ad lengthiness stunts.... This one was lighthearted and didn't strike me as exclusive at all. It was fun, if way too easy.
@SP I’m on season 6 now of A French Village. The series as a whole is just… haunting.
@SP You’re absolutely right! I always start with the Acrosses and see how far i can get… well, this time, i got through all the across votes and i was staring blankly at an almost blank grid (my first fills turned out to be errors!). Only when i got to ETSY did i start to craft an idea of how the wool had been pulled over my eyes!
Enjoyed it very much. Not too hard when you get the trick, but very fun.
Puzz this did done I
@Bill in Yokohama This is a really underrated comment.
@Bill in Yokohama Totally agree with B! Eddie, if you're reading this, you know you really made a splash when even after this length of time your posts are fodder for wits like Bill in Yokohama.
One of the most annoying puzzles I've ever done.
@Ed I had to come to the comments to figure out what I was doing wrong. Hated it.
@Ed Puzzled by the puzzle = annoyance. hmm
What a trip was this! I can myself hardly express now; all a jumbled mess it is, not backward even, just nouns and verbs way this and that. Loved it! And now I need an aspirin. It clicked pretty quickly thanks to the revealer being in the NW. But up until then, I'd been dwelling on HARP, TROU, and PLAID, trying to figure out the wording of the clues, despite knowing the answers. It was the strangest feeling – like my brain somehow understood even as I looked at these clues that logically made no sense. Then PUT IN REVERSE came along and cleared it up, and I filled in the rest of the puzzle in complete awe of the constructor. I also became aware of being so focused on the reverse reading that I realized no song at all was coming to me the way it usually does – it was like there was no space for anything else. Surreal. BRAVO for the execution, Mr. Vu, and thank you for the jolt to my brain!
@sotto voce One of the funniest puzzles I did in my past (not from this paper) had a lot of seemingly easy clues. However they didn't match when I was trying to make the crosses. I was doing this on paper. Had to wait for the next day's answers. When I saw them, I thought my brain took a hike. The answers in the crosses were all backward. Then I looked at the date: April 1st. And I laughed my head off! That was such a funny experience. I'll never forget that puzzle. This one was fascinating because the CLUES were reading backward for the across words. Gave me such a nice memory of that other puzzle.
@sotto voce No song? How 'bout 22A, the theme for the A-Team? <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAO2JBjRRBk" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAO2JBjRRBk</a> No, it's not particularly memorable or singable. Surely there's some "sound like heaven" song. Maybe Dylan Knockin' On Heaven's Door.
This puzzle pink me tickled. Great fun!
Many of the clues are still extremely awkward and clumsy even when reversed. Consider me unimpressed by the gimmick.
Basically, you figure out the gimmick, which wasn’t hard, and it becomes a Monday or Tuesday puzzle, slowed by having to read the clues backward. I’m sure constructing this was a feat, but I don’t think it was worth it,
These types of puzzles are always funner for constructors.
A fun puzzle correlates directly with much imitation in the comments which is the sincerest form of flattery. Ha! I don't even need to write backwards to be incomprehensible!
This puzzle was a blast, perhaps because, for once, I saw what the trick was very quickly. I started out thinking I was in for a rough go of it because the clues seemed very awkward. When I got halfway through the acrosses without a single obvious answer, I made myself slow down. Lo and behold, it hit me: read the clues backwards you nincompoop. Then after getting a couple of acrosses in the NW, another miracle, I actually saw the first revealer. After that, the puzzle was relatively easy, and I enjoyed the discipline of reading the clues backwards. This was a very nice change of pace.
Really? Come on. Seriously. Oh well. There’s always Friday and Saturday.
First of all, I really enjoyed this one!! It was fun when the nickel dropped and I figured out the aha of why the clues across did not quite make sense. I had lots of little chuckles all along the way. Had a little bit of a tough time in the southwest corner, but still filled it out more quickly than I would have liked. Would have enjoyed more!! Okay, now anyone who reads my post regularly knows I'm not much of a nit picker, but since Steve L declared it nitweek, I'm going to toss my nit into the fray, with the disclaimer that I've already looked up my nit and see that I'm not completely correct. Although if you would ask my pastor and all my Bible teachers growing up, they would agree with my original nnit. At 57A, growing up in all sorts of church sermons, bible camp, Sunday school, etc, I always heard that repentance is not *feeling* bad about something. It's the act of turning away from the thing you feel bad about and choosing a new way. Turning a new leaf. Conviction, confession, and repentance. That said, I see that the dictionary attributes it to the feeling, not necessarily the action. It also told me that the root words in Greek and Hebrew, do seem to agree with what I learned about turning away from the error of your ways. It's funny how deeply that teaching stuck with me... To the degree that I was kind of flummoxed by the clue. My apologies for looking up the word in the dictionary first and not ending with: do better NYT! 😏 Maybe next nitweek... Har!!
@HeathieJ But the clue didn't say repentance was a feeling. It said "feel some repentance for". Just as responsibility isn't a feeling but you can feel responsibility for something. I guess.
@HeathieJ Great timing, Heathie, with Rosh Ha-shanah/ Jewish New Year barrelling down at us Jews in a shockingly few weeks. Maimonides (1100s, Spain; big name in this field of thought) said that repentance /תשובה, /lit./ 'returning' requires: - remorse, i.e., the internal realisation of the pointlessness and waste involved in the sin and the resolution never to do it again; - confession, i.e., the verbal statement of remorse to the injured party or in public (as in prayers); - atonement, i.e., the act of making whole the injured party and making peace with them. For traditionally observant Jews, the month before R"H should be called "Awkward Conversations-ember." 🙄
@HeathieJ So… you wait until Nitweek to complain? That’s just lazy commenting. Do better, HeathieJ. PS- I’m cancelling my subscription.
I thought this was so fun! Thanks for this fresh take. Hooray for Thursday puzzles and constructor creativity!
Tried it last night and realized it was too tired. Looked at it this morning and thought god I’m an idiot. Then I pressed on and was pretty sure I had an aneurism. Then I finally made it to the down clues. Joy what oh. Then I started reading the down clues wrong. Constructor work good. Enjoyed I.
This is a puzzle where I liked the theme but didn't like the filler. I thought having to figure out the across clues had to be read backwards was a rewarding 'Aha', and PUT IN REVERSE and FORWARD THINKING were good revealers. Just finishing out the final clues had a lot of answers I thought were stretches. Especially SW corner. I finally broke into it when I realized the letter after Chi was PSI and not PHI which got me USENET which got me EATS UP. But I thought EATS UP and PIGGED were two of those weird grammatically awkward clues that technically make sense but don't feel right. And I thought SLEPT was a very bad clue for "Wasn't paying attention" and ISLET and CAP were equally awkward. ALT wasn't bad but there were too many other options to help with the crossings (Could have been DAD for example). Then stuff like RIPER when there was no reason in the clue to use a comparative. Just not good filler at all.
@Chris The RIPER clue also seemed off to me—although I suppose RIPE would be fully mature, and something approaching maturity would be RIPER than something not close to maturity. PIGGED had me going for a long time, too, until I parsed it as “Ate, ate, ate—with ‘out’”
Sean: “Every Across clue is meant to be read in reverse.” Me: oh thank gosh I’m not going crazy
Enough that’s sometimes and, fun was it. Cares who but hard too not. This liked I.
Super duper easy but still a lot of fun. A refreshing change of pace. Multiple revealers made it all the more charming. Many clues were essentially synonyms backwards and forwards and many read correctly in Yoda-speak but they didn't really detract from the gimmick. This seems like something I should have seen here before but I have not. A nicely crafted, different little puzzle.
There was a broadcaster, Grant Napear, for the Sacramento Kings who had a catch phrase: “If you don’t like that, you don’t like NBA basketball.’” Well, if you didn’t like today’s puzzle, you don’t like Thursdays.
@Steve I normally really like Thursdays. For some reason this one just didn't ring my bell. Reading the comments, I see I'm in the minority.
PUZZLE CLEVER A WAS THIS. Nope. You've gotta do more with it than that, Nancy! There's a lot of thinking needed to dream up clues that almost sound like they make sense, but don't. 1A had to be HARP. But why on earth express it so peculiarly? 5A has to be I SPY for that game you play traveling in a car. But it's not. At this point I have no idea what it is. Thank you, Huong, for putting the revealer so close to the beginning of the puzzle. Once I knew what the trick was, my feelings went from thinking that either I or the constructor had lost our mind to thinking: This is amusing -- and not very hard. I love the way some of the clues almost sound like they make sense just as they are. I'm thinking of DOG PARK for "Land of Spot"; SAVINGS for "Spending limits it"; and OPEN BAR for "Free booze". Because it was over on the side of the puzzle I filled in before getting to the revealer, PLAID was the answer that flummoxed me most. "What on earth is stylish about PLAID?" I wondered. "PLAID is not stylish! PLAID is sort of nerdy, if you want to know". Trickiest clue in the puzzle, I thought. And how about SPLITS HAIRS for "Details insignificant contests"! Great fun to straighten out. Great care was to how the Acrosses were clued. The result is a puzzle that is highly original and very entertaining. It's also extremely dense, theme-wise. Three long Downs, any one of which could serve as a revealer. Wow!
@Nancy some of the clues did seem like Yoda-speak!
This was a remarkable (and fun) experience. I always start with Across, and after awhile a couple of things emerged in my mind: one, something felt similarly odd about every clue, and two, not one of them immediately tipped me to an answer, which by the bottom third of the puzzle on a Thursday is quite unusual for me. It was a very weird feeling to know that I could of course read the words and understand their individual meanings but could not parse the clues in the way I can normally. If nothing else, it was an *outstanding* reminder that an enormous portion of crossword solving is down to practice, and that when you get in their rhythms and customs they shake open much more easily. (A milder version of this for those of us who habitually solve only the NYT puzzle is to try some other publication's crossword - different editing styles do change the experience!) Anyway, I eventually caught on to the idea that all the clues seemed odd in the same approximate way, went on to try the "normal" Downs, and got help pretty quickly! What a good puzzle, and a fun, "bendy" start to the morning!
The theme didn't really stump me, but the SW corner of the puzzle sure did!
@Todd Yes! I was stuck there for quite a while too, had to put the puzzle away and come back, several times. Finally got one answer and then the rest clicked into place. Funny how that happens!
I’ve been solving these puzzles for over 30 years. I enjoy a good challenging puzzle, but some puzzles seem to be created for the joy and satisfaction of the constructor rather than the solver. This one fits into that category. Hope we don’t see any more like this.
Amazing achievement. It really needed YODA to be one of the answers, though. :-)
I always admire a bold puzzle! This one succeeded in confusing my seasoned, seen-everything crossword brain for longer than I care to admit, and for that I say Thanks Hoang Kim Vu! Well Done!
So tempted to respond to people who didn't like this one with 'joy kill you' :D Folks different for strokes different!! I for one absolutely loved it. I always do all the across clues first so you can imagine how my heart sank at the start. Thankfully I gave up midway and tried the downs and found I had not lost the ability to do crosswords after all lol. It clicked into place with PUT IN REVERSE, and then I was smiling the rest of the way. So fun, so fresh!!
A perfect blend of the diabolical and the immensely satisfying. Fun Thursday!
After going through the across clues with no comprehension I was ready to quit right then and there. I was composing a tart complaint in my mind but grudgingly decided to give the down clues One and only One pass. And the clouds parted with a Heavenly Sound and I was off and running. Illustrates my number one axiom on life: You never know til you try.
@David Hancock - My experience too. The Downs helped me start filling in the puzzle.
Just a Thursday gem. An absolute pleasure. Hoang-Kim Vu---thanks.
And lo it came to pass in Crosslandia, in the epoch of the Great Easening, that a clever gimmick, quickly grokked and remedially clued, turned a Thursday into a Tuesday.
@Matt maybe you're just going through your epoch of improvening ;)
@Matt I got the impression this was intended as a sort of gateway Thursday for newer solvers. It’s a ridiculously easy puzzle as soon as you catch onto the gimmick — and for all but the most impatient of solvers, it should only be a matter of time before that happens. But the initial sense of confusion the gimmick is likely to elicit for most solvers (myself included), combined with the _slightly_ sloggy nature of filling in the across entries after you’ve gotten it (i.e. you still kinda feel like your doing a little something extra), seems perfectly tailored to make less advanced solvers feel clever, and therefore like the puzzle. If I put on my rose-colored glasses, I can imagine a version of this timeline in which Shortz and co. is sorta deliberately trying onboard a large new cohort of solvers, and _gradually_ get them hooked to the point where they become willing/able to solve challenging puzzles; but at some point, the difficulty dial gets turned back up (regardless of whether the pandemic-era masses actually stick around). But I’m not holding my breath, of course…
The clues initially seemed to be constructed by a certain diminutive, greenish, Jedi master, and reading them as that got me through until I'd gotten 4D. Nice twist for a Thursday and one we hadn't seen for a while. Thanks, Hoang-Kim.
unAble was I 'til I saw I had to back up. The fun was remembering to do it every time. What a delightful puzzle. No no-brainers because the trick made every clue quirky. I loved it Hoang-Kim Vu. I'm looking forward to what you'll give us next!