I actually loved the ZZ theme/clues, but loathed the upper left section, where I got stuck. SOUNDERS, NAZCA and PARDO crossing each other made it basically impossible without tedious flyspecking for me, since I've never heard of any of those, so that's what I did. Kind of a shame too, because I liked the puzzle a lot otherwise, and the rest of the proper names/trivia were manageable with the crosses.
@J.S. Upper left is where I got stuck too. It’s like the cluing was deliberately made more vague, just to give us a challenge. The clue for UNZIP should have been just “open one’s teeth” instead of “open with one’s teeth”. And the clue for I CAN TOO could have been more specific, such as “You’re not the only one able to”
Made it. Ninety-two today, and still here.
@dutchiris, Fantastic! Happy birthday! 🎉 🎂
To our beloved dutchiris, Happy Birthday and many more with much health and happiness! You more than just made it – you made it still sharp as a tack, still solving twisty crosswords, and being an inspiration to us all! Salud! 🥂🍾
@dutchiris Wishing you a very happy birthday! I know you've had a lot going on with various appointments you've mentioned here. I'm sure that's hard. It's also obvious that you're sharp as can be—and I'm so grateful about that for you!! Blessings!
@dutchiris Yowza. Wishing you many more mischievous rebuses!
@dutchiris Happy birthday. Glad you're still here. <a href="https://youtu.be/ebcUo0YhR90?si=_TvAF08vmsoZSOow" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/ebcUo0YhR90?si=_TvAF08vmsoZSOow</a>
@dutchiris Happy birthday Dutch, hope you go to Chez Panisse and live it up! Or maybe just Saul’s.
@dutchiris And hopefully will be around for a long, long time. You haven’t missed a step.
@dutchiris Happy Birthday 🥳🎉🎉
@dutchiris Many happy returns of the day!
@dutchiris Some great-grandmotherly advice from an antique person: Never stop doing things. Work puzzles, climb stairs (hold on to the banister), do for yourself whatever you can. Eat healthy food, of course, and exercise, but it's the little everyday things that are vital for staying alive. About puzzles: I work six puzzles every day,. Some easy, some hard. If I'm totally stuck on the Crossword, with a few squares left, I google or come to the column. (Except for news and PBS, we haven't watched much TV for years.) I never give up on the Spelling Bee until I get to Genius (1,119 out of 1,122) so far). I've missed a Wordle only a couple of times and even manage to best the Wordle bott. Strands got much easier after I read the instructions instead of just stumbling around in it. I always try to finish Letter Boxed in at least one fewer than the limit. I work the Mini, but not often anymore (too much else to do). The Connections puzzle is another matter—totally baffling. I manage to get it done about once or twice every three times I try it. Probably evidence that my old brain doesn't work so well anymore. Of course there are things I can no longer do, but I try never to give myself a break because I'm old. I know from watching others age what a terrible mistake that is and how much you will lose if you let things fall away. If something is across the room, don't ask someone to bring it to you, go and get it if you can. Never stop moving, thinking, living.
@dutchiris I really am glad you're still here. I hope you have 92 more.
@dutchiris Brava! What a marvelous achievement! Wishing you the best of days and on to the next year.
@dutchiris PS For anyone who asks, you can tell 'em you're 33 in Celsius. Make them do the math!
@dutchiris Happy Birthday!!
@dutchiris Happy 92! And still being witty with Mike on the puns 🥳
At the risk of reductive plagiarism, I done did this zzpule! With apologies...
@Salty Dogs Isn’t it “I done did this zzpu”?
@Salty Dogs I Z what you did there
@Salty Dogs - Well played, Sir!
@Andrew It's almost as though someone made up a normal puzzle and then played around with the sequence of letters just to confuse people!
Loved the theme! Once I got ZZ TOP it was so much fun figuring out the theme entries (I hadn't heard of FUZZY WUZZY so that stack of ZZZZs fried my brain lol). But i have to complain a little about that NW corner. Oof that was natick central for me!! A fairly obscure ancient civilisation crossed with an American soccer team crossed with a TV/ radio announcer's name? Needed a couple of look ups to get out of there! Which was annoying after being able to figure out the rest of the zzpule!
@Divs I found that corner difficult too. In addition to your list, I had trouble with 1D and 17A (I assume it's a legal phrase).
@Divs I think I only know of Don Pardo because he was the answer to a puzzle 20 or 25 years ago, on public radio’s “Weekend Edition.” ...Which, come to think of it, would’ve been written by Will Shortz. It’s Shortz all the way down!
My attention tonight was somewhat distracted by a fun DIY project going on yes at 10 p.m. (solar hot water tank pressure valve has died and must be replaced, oh shoot it’s got a long probe that makes it bump into the wall when trying to remove, oh shoot there’s a stud there, etc) So…it took me a long (fun) time to see exactly what to do with the Zs! FUZZY WUZZY was a bear, probably useless with a drill. BUZZ ALDRIN was an astronaut, so problem solving was his skill. PIZZA ROLLS oh yes please yum, except the local store is shut. JAZZ HANDS all round, the probe is out, the problem completely solved, all but.
@Cat Lady Margaret Our solar hot water heater died a couple of years ago when some connector rusted through, and we can't find the part anywhere! We've had to shut it off. Company is out of business since everyone just puts up solar electric panels now and gets electric water heaters.
Love, love, love this one. A combination of fun and artful, with extra points for level of difficulty. From a solving challenge this is tricky to rate. It’s pretty impenetrable until you get to the revealer, then (for me) became pretty easy. That’s the nature of the beast, once you know where to put the ZZs it gets pretty straightforward. I really appreciate that the editors didn’t water down the clues too much despite the tricky theme. I enjoyed it from start to finish. Thanks Sean for explaining ARK, I didn’t get either, although I figured a boat with every animal on it couldn’t be too sleek. NODOZ, that’s funny, since this puzzle helps you catch a lot of ZZs No connection, but we lost Tim Curry today, after Dolly yesterday. Rough week. A magnificent actor, “Rocky Horror” notwithstanding. Lastly, at the risk of offending the emus and the humus, I want to let you know— If anyone happens to be visiting the Crosshare website today; and happens to come across a recently posted crossword by a constructor with my initials; and happens (completely unsolicited, of course) to want to leave some feedback or comments; then would anyone have any issue with that? Asking for a friend.
@SP In the interest of accuracy, both Dolly and Tim died on Tuesday, August 25, but the news about Tim didn't come out until Wednesday, the 26th. Both were 80.
@SP It took a few clicks to find it… published 5 days ago? I have it bookmarked and look forward to solving it tomorrow! Tell your friend.
@SP I enjoyed it. I think I'd prefer it without the circles. Cruised thru it at a fair clip, but I've got a few squares I can't quite fill. I.e., it was pretty easy, until it wasn't.
@SP I replied when you first wrote about it, then discovered that my reply was missing, along with your post. I did visit the Crosshare website and have started the puzzle. But I must confess that I have been overwhelmed with "stuff," and usually work other puzzles in bits and pieces, because those are the ones I do online, as opposed to paper for the NYT. But I will persevere!
@SP just finished it. Thanks for the heads up!! Really enjoyed it 👍🏼 Perfect fit for a Thursday. Clever theme. Loved the movie.
@SP Apparently I need to add, the puzzle was just added today, but you need to click “more puzzles” to find it.
@SP I started your latest Crosshare puzzle last night, hoping to attempt to complete it today. It was stretching me early on. I added another one there yesterday also. They don't seem to have a search function for puzzles/constructors, that would certainly be helpful.
I'm usually very wary of being negative, but this just had too many crosses of proper nouns and/or non-english words to be enjoyable for me. One of the joys of crosswords for me is that, with patience, they can be figured out based on having an understanding of how the language works, having a good knowledge of synonyms etc, but none of that works with proper nouns or words in a different language where it's just about whether you know the trivia or not, and if the you don't know it, and there's a cross that's also not a word, then you're stuffed, with no way to move forward.
@Nina Totally agree. Unas/nazca; arepas/howru/ahisee/snes/sog. Great theme marred by clunky fill.
Regretful the grid didn't have a beard-n-shades design, given our boys' signature look. I imagine a lot of you faithfully put Buzz Aldrin in there and then had to leave it there with the rest unfilled in until you figured out the twist. As for admitting to that, I CAN, TOO. Are there an unusually high number of names ending in "o" as in Juno, Eno, J-Lo, Rao, Pardo, Zeno, or am I just getting the ZZZZs from staring at this puzzle in fascination? Anyway, this puzzle was a joy to work on, very zestful, had a lot of ZZZZRAMATA.
@Tony I'd never heard of that, either, and Don Who? Was no help....but sometimes we learn a bit of "inside lingo" that we can tuck away and save for future puZZles.
@Tony "Prisoner at the bar" was a commonplace term in English law. Project Gutenberg offers "The Prisoner at the Bar: Sidelights on the Administration of Criminal Justice" <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/58534" target="_blank">https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/58534</a> among many examples.
Things I struggle with as a non-American NYT enjoyer - American spelling American brand names American cultural references Any of the above coupled with playful changes to the traditional crossword format 🫠
@Gaeilige Gato I get that today. But I love that you’re taking it in good humor, and that you’re still an enjoyer, not a hater!
I like that they had WASPS for 52D. ZZBU ZZBU
I spell my name with 2 Zs, and I just felt so seen by this quick and fun puzzle today. What a lovely start to my day off!! xoxo ZZLI
Well, hello Thursday trick! And for me, hello Thursday difficulty. May this continue, please, editors! Before glomming onto the theme, my favorite Moment Of Confusion came when I had FUYWUY but nothing above it, and I was confident of those six letters. Just shaking my head, trying to recall children’s rhymes with bears, wondering how you even pronounce FUYWUY, certain the answer was going to be arcane. When that answer finally came after I understood the theme, oh yes, that was a take-a-bow-to-the-constructor moment. Making the transition from thinking about ZZ Top to “Hey, how about taking answers with double-Zs and floating those letters to the upper square?” That’s prime constructor thinking. And this was a prime Thursday, got my fix. Thank you for making this, Zachary, and zzhua!
Errata: "...upper square" should be "upper squares".
@Lewis I think the praise word you used is spelled "ZZHUAH"
@Lewis And I threw Buzz Aldrin in the northwest corner and just stared
I still say that these odd puzzles are fine for people who like them. But for people who like actual crosswords I wish there was an option. I stop working them as soon as I realize they’re gibberish and not true crosswords. Sometimes it’s more than once a week.
@Alan I respect that you feel that way. But there ARE other options. The WSJ and LA Times don’t do rebuses, and generally not as tricky themes. Certainly there are lots of other crossword sites and books that do standard puzzles. If you don’t like these kinds of puzzles, which have been staples of the NYT for decades, why not move on? I’d love to have you stay, don’t get me wrong, and I hope you might learn to enjoy puzzles like these, but if not, there’s nothing wrong with trying something else. And it’s hardly fair to expect them to change for those of us who like these puzzles, because we really don’t have a lot of good alternatives.
@Alan what is an “true” crossword anyway? Thursdays are fun to move your brain around and this was a good one.
@Alan no true Scotsman enjoys Thursdays.
@Alan I take exception to your use of the term “actual crosswords”, since this is *actually* a crossword. But if you want alternatives, there’s always the archive.
@Alan you’ve got all kinds of options, unless someone is forcing you to do this crossword?
@Roldick Agreed and you are right to say it. The tricks are a huge turn off, always and especially when they impede the solve.
In Alan's defense, I would have worded his comment differently, but I agree with him that wordplay should result in grids that still spell out words rather than contain entries like ZZPIAROLL. There are crossword editors who would have sent back this puzzle for that reason. He's not the only one who feels that way.
@Alan these puzzles are obviously not made for you then
Very 'USA' puzzle today. Not so fun as a foreign solver. I'd assume it was quite a simple solve for North Americans. I'm not a fan of puzzles made difficult by brand names and foreign languages. It feels lazy to me. Anyway, those are my two cents. I hope Friday redeems the last two days.
@Hitch You make a version of this comment several times a week. Not sure what you're expecting at this point.
@Hitch Bro, seriously, go do something else. You complain like this every day. Why do you continue to do something you don't like?
@Hitch Not at all simple for this NoAm-ian. Even after I ZZbued through the themers, there was plenty of strangeness for me. No laziness on the part of the constructor, though. It takes immense smarts to create a NYT-worthy grid. Hatz off to Zachary!
Is it pronounced "Zed Zed" Top in England?
A breeze! A doozy! A puzzle to guzzle over pizza and mezze on a mezzanine while nuzzling with a boozy mezzosoprano! More pleeze!
I do love that moment in which I go from “I think I’m losing my mind” to “ahh, it’s Thursday!”
The theme was fun, but I always dislike it a bit when the answers as-written are nonsense. I caught on quickly to what was happening, but ZZBUALDRIN just don’t have the same pleasing visual impact of a theme/rebus with answers that are actual words. That northwest corner was also a bit torturous with Don PARDO, the SOUNDERS, and NAZCA all collectively pushing the boundaries of my (admittedly ZZFUY) memory. Still, a fine Thursday, but perhaps not my favorite kind.
Very nice tribute puzzle. Got to see the group with Billy, Frank, and Elwood (their former guitar tech) playing Dusty's parts; Milwaukee Summerfest 2022. They did a nice tribute to Dusty during the show. Only tricky part for me was figuring out what happened to the letters left behind, and of course the answer was just leave them in the same order and move the Zs to the top. Now we need tributes for Dolly and Tim Curry. It's been a rough week or two for the 70-80 year olds.
@JayTee Dolly was also inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, so I though maybe she'd make this puzzle.
@JayTee And Shelley Fabares and Jaye P. Morgan, though the former was 82 and the latter 94.
Regarding the puzzle’s Scrabble score brought up by Sean McGowan… This puzzle has the 12th highest Scrabble score in the Times oeuvre. The highest was for a Wednesday, 8/10/16, puzzle by David C. Duncan Dekker that featured – get this – a quintuple pangram! That’s a feat never since equaled.
@Lewis Looks like my “higher than usual” guess was a lowball! For the uninitiated: in crosswords, a pangram is when the grid contains every letter of the alphabet. A quintuple pangram is a pangram, five times over. So, a puzzle with (at least) 5 A’s, 5 B’s and so on. Wild stuff.
hated today's puzzle. Or is it zzpule?
Sorry, but this one was not fun.
Some questionable wording today. I can't help but think there's a better way to clue ALI than to use someone assassinated a few months ago. And maybe a Simpsons clue about APU should be retired given that the show itself has mixed feelings about the stereotype and hasn't used him for almost 10 years. I wonder what type of stereotypes the author would accept...
@GN - Agree the ALI Khamenei clue was in very poor taste. And if the Iranian government sees this puzzle, it may instigate an attack on us or allies. Clue violates national security.
@GN Sorry to be intolerant but I’m amazed at these frequent calls for “sensitivity” and all the pearl clutching about “distasteful clues” in the comments section. I mean, do you all live your life shivering under a duvet? what actually happens over your breakfast table when you see a clue about a person who has died? Do you throw down the crossword in disgust and horror, and return to your chaise longue until the swoon has lifted? Can you not just accept it as a crossword? Do i dare point out that Frank Beard of ZZTop fame just died? Are you not outraged?
I was already finding the theme hard to follow but FUZZYWUZZY becoming ZZZZFUYWUY, for me, was completely confusing, since that's not really ZZTOP but ZZZZTOP. I was thinking it would be ZZFUY ZZWUY, since Fuzzy Wuzzy is two words. Like Sean McGowan, I found the connection between "clumsy vessel" and ARK to be completely opaque, and it's still kind of opaque even after reading Joel Fagliano's explanation. I wouldn't call a large riverboat "clumsy," even if it's rigged together (and there's nothing in the linked definition that implies that there is any rigging together going on).
@Bradley Yeah, I'm not buying the temporary riverboat thing. I guess that if one built Noah's vessel, though, that it would be poorly maneuverable. Too many cubits!
Awful puzzle. Only relieved it wasn't a tribute to the Flying Karamazov Brothers.
@jp inframan Now that would be a fun tribute. Especially if the puzzle creator added a visual of their tumbling juggling clubs I saw them once performing on a ferry in the Pacific northwest. Great group
The theme was very easy to get for me - not what I'm looking for on a Thursday. Also, personally I found the fill that resulted from the theme just awful in places, and I don't just mean the nonsensicaI look of the themed entries. Ultimately it defeated me - I needed to check the puzzle and do a reveal of one square. At least AREPAS were a gimme! I just couldn't remember the name, which appears in the crossword often, in my first two years of doing NYT puzzles. But then last year my wife and I visited Cambridge in the UK, and we spotted an AREPA food truck in one of the squares! "It's the thing from the crosswords, let's have some!" I cried out to my wife. The AREPAs were delicious. Experiencing stuff is how I remember things. Just seeing them in a puzzle is usually not enough, which is probably why I won't recall RAO or NODOZ (whatever that is) by tomorrow...
@Andrzej NoDoz is a caffeine pill sold over the counter in the U.S. IIRC, each pill has the caffeine of 2-3 cups of strong coffee.
@Andrzej I managed to dredge RAO up from the depths of my mind. But I agree about the lousy fill.
UNAS crossing with NAZCA was a mess.
@JK Agreed, that was awful. I got lucky and guessed that one right, even though I didn't know either answer. But I guessed AREPAS crossing AHISEE wrong (entering arepos and ohisee) and couldn't figure the correct cross out because I assumed ohisee must be right. I don't know from AREPAS. I liked the theme (and got it) but the downside of the theme was that some awkward fill was forced around it. I don't see better alternatives in those two areas.
Fuzzy Wuzzy made me laugh out loud, I loved this puzzle!
This puzzle was tops! The theme was fun and the clues were terrific, chock-full of misdirects and unknowns I had to work out with the crosses (hand up for falling into the trap of "pain" for French bread.) Seeing all the Z's and Buzz Aldrin made me think of bees buzzing about and Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebees." But *of course* that's not what I'm linking to today!! Here's ZZ TOP with "Gimme All Your Lovin'"– <a href="https://youtu.be/TG2JtdUEMJU?is=7ElH94HiJUy4FLPZ" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/TG2JtdUEMJU?is=7ElH94HiJUy4FLPZ</a> Finally, HOW R U always makes me laugh. Three 3-letter words. The first one doesn't wear anyone down to type but oh the next 3 letters are just too much and the final 3 letters are omg unthinkable! Thank you, Mr. Levy, for a wonderful puzzle, with great theme and fill, and thank you to the editors for, in the words of @SP, "not watering down the clues!"
@sotto voce HOW R U originates in the early age of texting, where people had a very low character limit per text, and you had to do multiple taps for most letters (10-key texting).
I had no idea about the Columbian offerings, and oHISEE made just as much sense as AHISEE. Had to resort to autocheck to find that error. I liked the Zs floated to the TOP. Once the lightbulb clicked on at jazzhands I was able to scramble buzz aldrin and fuzzywuzzy and finish the rest.
@Bruce Those "Columbian offerings" can be yummy. Available here in diverse Boston; hope others are as lucky. BTW not only Columbian; we first had then while visiting husband's relatives in Venezuela.
Bruce, Whether or not you've encountered them IRL, this is the fifth time in 2026 "the Columbian offerings" have appeared in the crossword. And they're not new: first appearance was in 1944. (They're our usual Friday dinner.)
@Bruce The only reason I ever set foot in Walmart is because they are the only place locally that regularly carries P.A.N., the go-to cornmeal for arepas. The ones I make don't taste as good as the ones I first tried, from a food truck in Atlanta. Staffed by a family who knew how to make them.
I’m going to go with ‘if you can’t say anything nice, then don’t say anything at all’.
Well, that was quite timely. I have to wonder whether this ZZPULE was constructed after the drummer's death ... or has it been in the queue for a long time, and only scheduled for publication recently? If the former, that's a remarkably short wait between submission and publication. In any case, I quite enjoyed the ZZZZRALEDALE of the theme. And now, if it's not too late, let's crank up the volume and enjoy a little "a-haw-haw-haw-haw": <a href="https://youtu.be/Vppbdf-qtGU" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/Vppbdf-qtGU</a>
A playful theme that resulted in a fun solve. Twelve ZZs, but WHO’S counting? I love the ZOE ZAG ZSA stack. And OOZIER is just fun to say. Too bad 66A (LEG) couldn’t have been plural. Thanks Zachary, I enjoyed that.
@Anita just scrolled down to see we had the same reaction and to 66A. 😀
Honestly hated this puzzle. Waaayyyy too hard and confusing. Not sure how anyone was supposed to figure out the z placements. You get it after you reveal the puzzle, but that was just too hard and no fun. Not a fan at all.
@Jemma zztop was the indicator. Expect to be zzpuled on Thursday
@Jemma - Perhaps have to be old enough to remember Buzz Aldrin. The theme revealed itself to me before I got to the revealer.
For me a perfect Thursday puzzle. I struggled, couldn’t get unstuck, finally saw the key, and -- then I struggled some more. Great fun!
Zzzachary, great puzzle. So impressive constructing something like this with so many Zs. Loved it!
Happy Birthday! My grandmother thought me how to do crosswords, I think of her every day now.
Unlike yesterday, I got the theme reasonably quickly, when I vgpt ZZTOP and it was integral to my solve. AHISEE said I, but it still took me a minute to figure out how to place the Zs. ZZZZFUYWUY was almost too much for me to master so near my bedtime. And now I’m off to catch some Zs.
I enjoyed this. Much less stressful ghatI got the misplaced ZZs relatively early on because of ZZJAHANDS and ZZBALDRIN but I was convinced I was wrong because ZZTOP was scrambled. It didn’t help that I’ve never heard of Pizzaroll or Fuzzywuzzy (the latter was the last to fall into place as I stared in horror at the four Zs at the start of the word. It looked like a nightmare Scrabble pick. I had to check the Constructor Notes after I finished for the explanation and I felt like a right ZZDIYCOW once I realised it was obviously the key to explaining the other clues. D’oh! 🤦🏾♂️ In my defence, I did the crossword at 4.30am when I should have been catching a different type of ZZs 😴💤
@Sebastian Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear. Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair. Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn’t very Fuzzy, was he?
Let me just say it: this puzzle was la-zee. Just kidding. I liked this zzpule. Zzhuah!
Saw IV didn't come out in 2007. It came out in 2008 which is when it won Best Picture.
@ad absurdum And it got a special endorsement from Norm Abram. Saw IV works better than any previous iteration on any old house, he said.
@ad absurdum Movies are released the year after they win Academy Awards. If It won Best picture in 2008, it would not be released until 2009.
Loved this sharp-dressed theme! Migrating the ZZs of the special entries to the TOP of the answer? Perfect.👌