Ugh. Awful! Too many made up and ridiculously obscure clues. Not fun. Required too many look ups. PS: I don't care if you finished this in six minutes and thought it was too easy. I'm speaking from a human perspective.
@Asher Agreed! this was a slog. Hated it.
@Asher Um, just so you know, I’m a human too. Lots of humans finished this. I think you are speaking from an Asher perspective, which is perfectly fine to do, but please don’t speak for all humans.
@Asher I did it on Friday's Easy Mode and enjoyed it. No shame in it.
I’ve gotta say, I’m really liking the comments on today’s puzzle so far — the puzzle is getting lots of love (much deserved IMO), and most of the negative comments I’ve seen are like this one, i.e. acknowledging that the puzzle was just too hard for them, rather than lashing out about how it was “bad”. May this trend continue!
@Asher You are a thousand percent correct… Horrible puzzle for most. But some folks only joy in life is to try to impress random strangers with their trivial knowledge…
@Asher Look ups do not ruin a puzzle for me. I learn from them. Sometimes leads me down an interesting rabbit hole.
THAT was a great puzzle. Saturday hardness but a fun puzzle anyway. I love when I can get nothing in a whole section on first pass (NW) and then come back after conquering the rest to watch it all fall in place. “Jazz aficionado” and “flame proof” my favorite clues ;)
@Jeff I guess you didn't try ARO for "flame proof"?
A fun, honest challenge with some really clever and satisfying wordplay. A fantastic Friday puzzle.
I struggled a lot more than I have in quite a while, but in a good way. More Fridays like this, please (heck, more *Saturdays* like this!).
Fixing an air conditioner is breezier said than done. ("I need you to repair this thermo, stat!")
@Mike AC-er said than done. That pun was FREON easy.
@Mike That must have been your cool aunt? Come press her for details first. /not a fan
@Mike Not a fan? Always the power louver. What a cold shot.
@Mike The capacitor and the contactor are the usual suspects.
Like most good Friday puzzles this seemed utterly impossible until it didn't. I struggled mightily for the first 15 minutes, despairing over the multitude of personal arcana in the lower half of the grid. But as I slowly and often reluctantly typed in entries, things became much clearer, and in the end I finished the puzzle in standard time. I enjoyed the misdirection of many of the clues, and I suppose my being able to complete the puzzle despite knowing almost none of the trivia is proof of good construction. HONSHU is spelled Honsiu in Polish, but I kinda remembered Americans did it differently so I left one square Emory there and let crosses take care of it. Why are there towels on golf bags? So the "athletes" can wipe the sweat generated when they amble around a lawn and occasionally swing a stick? Maybe next I'll learn golf gear includes SITARs, OLD SAWs and BOOSTER SEATS 🤣
@Andrzej very similar experience to start with. I was thinking I’d be an unhappy solver. I was about to 1A the whole thing. I ended up finishing in about half my normal time. Post facto one can never see why one was stuck.
@Andrzej I guess you don’t like golf much 😝 Anyway the towel on the bag is mainly used to clean golf balls and the working end of golf clubs. I suppose some may use it to dry hands, but it’s really there for equipment. Mark
Someone in here once said something along the lines of "don't think about IF you'll finish, think WHEN you'll finish". It's great advice, and it helped get me to the end of several puzzles. Today though, it made me want to strangle them. 😈 I hated every minute of this. After the first half hour I had 3 answers I was confident in. An hour plus later, I finally broke down and hit the auto check button. I didn't know who doctor faustus or the mythical figure that was "in" it/them was, and I don't know what the latin phrase sine qua non means, but the autocheck revealed the very top right square should not be an S. Hellas was in my head maybe? IDK Why I didn't try HELEN / NEED I have no idea. Probably focusing on Ronaldo and the SE corner. And lastly, to the "too easy" commenters...you must be absolutely insufferable in person with all that smugness.
@V Ha! So true about the smugness.
@V A big thumbs up to the quote in the first line
Oh, man, the spark in the box today! Not just in the fresh answers (10 NYT debuts), but in the profusion of riddles in the clues, riddles that make you think, laugh, and maybe even exult. Those riddles draw you in, get you involved, so much more than direct either-you-know-it-or-don’t clues. The debut answers included BOOSTER SEATS, NON-ANSWER, WE’RE SO BACK, and WELL WELL WELL, which I can’t believe has never been in a Times puzzles before. And those misdirecting wordplay riddles! They lit up the solve, bringing me brain-ercize and sweet surprise. Those that weren’t original were well chosen, and those that were, such as [Something read at a table] for TELL, [Screen capture?] for LINT, and [Organization that might do some spring cleaning?] for EPA – showed Jack’s clue-making prowess. Jack, you’ve got the knack; please fast-track your way back. Thank you for a stellar outing today!
I have only recently started taking the plunge into Friday and Saturday puzzles, and this might be the first I’ve gotten fully with no help! Agree with everyone that the misdirection led to sections going untouched on one pass, and then perfectly falling into place on the next. Nothing too obscure, just fun. Favorites were “step in the shower” and “they might raise your kids”
@Merrick Well in my humble opinion that means you're pretty great at these. I found this one of the toughest Fridays in memory. Congratulations. You can probably throw away your training wheels.
@Merrick I very much agree with B. You have forever escaped the dread "I finally got my first Friday, but everyone said it was easy" syndrome. Congratulations!
@Merrick I tried “goat herders” for the latter.
@Xword Junkie You inspired me to think maybe I could have done one like this without cheating or at least tried a little longer before doing so.
I hated this puzzle with all of my being… like so many others have commented, way too many obscure words, made up words, or just very rarely used versions. I was able to slide through it and complete the puzzle, but this is one of those puzzles that are made by a constructor that wants to show the world how smart they are… Rating: 2/10
@Darren WADR, I think of it as a constructor and editors who want to show solvers how smart THEY (the solvers) are. I am SO up for that.
@Darren Peaty and Oaty are right. From experience no constructor is trying to show how smart they are but want to show how smart they think YOU are, which I think is why most of us do crosswords. We are off the mark sometimes but it is never our intention. And of course, Jack did delight and appropriately challenge many of us today so you can’t tailor a puzzle to everyone.
What I don’t think many folks will say about the puzzle today: ITSABREEZE What I hope to be able to say about Fridays based on this puzzle: WEARESOBACK Actually I can’t say this puzzle took me very long at all—but it felt hard. I had to jump around all over the place, appreciated a lot of tricky clues, was misled several times, learned a lot, and just barely avoided a few Naticks. If this is the level of Fridays going forward I won’t complain. Let’s see…I knew PELE was a soccer god, but a real god too? (Great job avoiding two soccer clues). Nice call out to Harold Ramis—Caddyshack? Groundhog Day? Ghostbusters? Who can forget his acting and directing. Lot of great clues today and misdirects—my favorites were MEZCAL, HELEN (Satan? Devil?) THOR? LINT? LOWGEAR? EPA? I could keep going. Like Sean I had ESCAPEART before ACTS and had to flyspeck, and BOOSTERTEAMS before SEATS until I got RAMIS. TICHA was a total no-know to me so that was no help. Also had to scratch my head to make sure I had HONSHU right as INHO was also an unknown. Did newer solvers solvers give up on this and say SCREWIT? I HOPE NOT, it was worth it. Last: again at the risk of angering the emus a few folks could not find my latest puzzle from Wednesday night on Crosshare. Again, SCREWIT, here’s the link if you need it: <a href="https://crosshare.org/crosswords/FISpD5Olay0ot2no6aw0/fur-better-or-fur-worse" target="_blank">https://crosshare.org/crosswords/FISpD5Olay0ot2no6aw0/fur-better-or-fur-worse</a>
@SP Pele is a Hawaiian goddess, to be more precise.
@SP It's not INHO (if you're thinking it's his last name), but Ronaldinho Gaucho
@SP No way to turn off the timer at CrossHare? I find them repellent. :(
@SP Oh man, finally finished it. So well done, and so hard. I got online with the theme early on and seemed to make steady progress, but there was so much else to chew through! I kept flipping through things and finally realized that the rill wasn't currency and that Tom Lehrer was not the right composer! Sheesh, self. I really should have waited until the morning to try this. I still really missed the ability to turn off jumping over letters and the timer but of course that has nothing to do with you. Thanks for sharing a great puzzle.
@SP I'll try it, despite the title being a huge turn-off, already. I'm getting Kugelman vibes 🤣
@SP Your puzzle was great and a tougher Sunday than we usually get here. But of course I did succeed where a less fantastic man would fail. (I know you'll get the reference. I hope.)
@SP I agree. This puzzle didn't take me very long but it was a fragmented process. It helped that I knew RONALDINHO and HAROLDRAMIS and guessed HONSHU more quickly than I should have. All in all a very fun puzzle to complete.
@SP that was really fun! A good workout that I felt satisfied to finish. Well done.
So good! We've left fuzzy wuzzy in the past and gone into crunchy munchy territory. A proper Friday, with the twists and turns we adore. Thank you, Mr. Hatchett! Lots of misdirects and either-you-know-it-or-you-don't entries. And there, amid the unknowns, was my gimme – RONALDINHO, a.k.a. "little Ronaldo" (a very common Brazilian way to affectionatwly refer to someone), the joyous jersey #10, the one whose face often broke into a smile as he played. I really appreciate that he was allowed the soccer limelight though in the same grid as PELE, the original jersey #10 and the one who anointed the number for only star players. With due respect to Sean's link to the video of Ronaldinho's jaw-dropping moves, here's another one with more close-ups and some slow motion so the viewer can really take in his footwork and beautiful game. Some of his moves with the ball are unreal! <a href="https://youtu.be/ADi1A1dX9wA?si=fYhAXt9RKDWo_X_v" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/ADi1A1dX9wA?si=fYhAXt9RKDWo_X_v</a> He never cared to be the GOAT and always just played for the love and joy of it. Unfortunately, he also loved to party and often showed up late for training, lacking discipline, which is what cost him his career. If you've read this far, thank you for allowing me this mini gushing letter to one of the greatest soccer players ever. Cheers.
@sotto voce You're in the Mini! That was probably the high point of my puzzle-solving experience today.
@sotto voce I remember shelling out a tidy sum for a Robin van Persie Arsenal jersey, with his #11. The next season, he changed to #10, as that number became available when William Gallas was traded to Chelsea. So yes, RONALDINHO was a gimme for me.
What's not to love about this puzzle with its tongue in cheek wit and its shameless preponderance of proper names (that southeast corner's a doozy)? Barely gettable from the crosses, but yes, they can be gotten, a fair Friday workout. Ronaldinho and Harold Ramis, and Pele and Atari's Asteroids, Stevie Wonder's electric sitar -- I felt teleported back to another era in the ultimate escape act, watching Ghostbusters -- a movie I never liked much,but enjoyed Bill, Harold and the boys hamming it up, playing Asteroids...an era when the EPA actually cared about every well well well, and those who would later create Screamo, e-girls, miis and all the terrible sine qua nons of this e-world of ours were still in their booster seats, chewing on a lego... Is "Ignorance is bliss" really an old saw? Isn't that more Orwellian propaganda than an oft-repeated proverb? Haste makes waste. That's more like it. But hey, I'm just ignorantly following my bliss...
@john ezra I’m with you although “shameless preponderance of proper names” is getting to be a proper excoriation around here lately by a lot of folks. Personally I agree, I like to learn about things.
@john ezra If you think “ignorance is bliss” is more “Orwellian propaganda” than “eternal truth”, you have a lot to learn :)
@john ezra Ignorance is bliss is a sorry contraction of the original “Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise” (Thomas Gray, Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College, 1742). The bastardization of the original is sad—because the original was so clever.
Great puzzle. Many obfuscating and slippery clues. It did make me wonder where the word TELEPORT came from. It’s obviously a concocted hybrid of Greek “tele” (far) and Latin “port” (carry) but i wasn’t sure how far back it went, since obviously science fiction. A Google search pops up with an AI reading of Wikipedia, telling me that it was coined by American science fiction pioneer Charles Fort in 1931. Fort is a wonderful character whose occupation is given on Wikipedia as “Anomalistics researcher”. So, case closed. But hang on. Do we trust AI to give us the right answer? (Altogether now:) NO WE DON’T. So I delved into the Wikipedia page and its footnotes and — lo and behold — the term has been documented as far back as 1878. The wiki links to an issue of the Hawaiian gazette published on October 23, 1878. The Gazette has an article entitled “The Teleport.”, which in turn cites an unnamed Bombay paper that describes “an apparatus by which man can be reduced into infintisimal atoms, transmitted throngh a wire, and reproduced safe and sound at the other end.” It goes on to say how a dog was thus teleported, and a boy named Pedro, and then they were both teleported at the same time and their atoms got mixed up in an unfortunate accident. So a mysterious Bombay paper seems to have given us teleportation and the plot of “The Fly” all at once, almost 150 years ago! <a href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn83025121/1878-10-23/ed-1/?sp=4&st=text&r=0.588,0.773,0.125,0.175,0" target="_blank">https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn83025121/1878-10-23/ed-1/?sp=4&st=text&r=0.588,0.773,0.125,0.175,0</a>
@Petrol I love that. Thank you for sharing the fruit of your investigation.
It was a struggle but this was my 1000.
It may be a little late in the day but I’d like to address this notion that puzzles should have only a certain number of proper nouns, as if that is some untouchable well of information am knowledge that is inaccessible to the common man. There are lots of non proper nouns that all people may not know—colloquial phrases, terms from specific specialties, outdated terms, etc. It would be a very unfortunate puzzle world where only words that “most” people know are in a grid, and we would learn nothing and hardly expand our horizons. The trick is to spread them out and try to cross terms that people from different walks of life may know. TRICHA, a WNBA player, crosses SAMANTHA a TV character and common name, and MII, a gaming term that is guessable and has been used before. RONALDINHO a soccer player, crosses HONSHU, a heavily populated important Japanese island that if you don’t know, you should be happy to learn. HAROLDRAMIS, an important director, crosses HELEN, a common name and one of the most important mythological characters. PELE crosses nothing obscure. Is it hard? Sure, more to some than others. But it’s a PUZZLE. If, heaven forbid, there’s one or two letters you have to guess or leave ok up—or worse yet, you don’t get a gold star—why is that the end of the world? In every good puzzle there are words and names I don’t know, and can usually guess or figure out by crosses. That’s part of what makes it a good puzzle.
@SP I meant to finish, I love it when people share what made a puzzle easy, difficult, or impossible. That’s how we learn about each other, so please everyone keep doing it. But can we please stop excoriating the constructors, the editors, or the puzzle itself for doing what puzzles are supposed to do.
@SP Here. Who are you calling common?
@SP Sorry for the poor editing. “Leave ok up” should be “look up”
@SP TICHA ... so you spell correctly next time the name appears. ;-)
@SP I don’t agree. I get that there will be a lot of names I don’t know but I don’t think they should cross. It’s one thing to run the alphabet for one square but once you have 2, then it’s not doable and spoils the fun if you got the whole rest of the puzzle. I don’t know the names often and that’s ok but I really appreciate it when they can be found from the crosses, even though I know I work harder than many of you who are up on things.
WELL WELL WELL, it looks like Jack has TELEPORTED us back to a time when a Friday puzzle wasn't a filler inner. In part, this was due to names I didn't know (not my favorite way to toughen things up), but there were an equal number of great misdirects. Popping in belts (I really should actually read the clues) at 36 A led to to the obvious epeE at 37 D, so that added some confusion to the process. A fun Friday outing.
The 2nd puzzle in a row I dropped halfway through because I was finding it an exercise in pure masochism. But when I see that many of my most respected blog pals not only solved it but enjoyed it -- I have to think that I'm the outlier today. Once again, many too many names -- and making it worse, they were l-o-o-ng. I finished the bottom from HONSHU/MCING all the way down, with the exception of TICHA and WII, but the top was impossible. It looked for all the world like 22A would be WELL WELL WELL, but having MENU instead of TELL for "something read at a table" made it impossible to see. (TELL is a world-class clue, btw.) Having AMIGoS made WE ARE SO BACK impossible to see, and anyway, I've never heard anyone say that. NON-ANSWER is a wonderful clue/answer. But I had to look at the finished puzzle to see how good it was since it wasn't in my own grid -- nor would it have been had I spent two entire days on trying to solve it. I have to admit there was another loud SPLAT against my wall today. But for those of you who enjoyed it, I'm glad it was there for you.
I liked the cluing in this sticky Friday workout. Lightning conductor, They might raise your kids, and Setting for an uphill climb, were among my favorites. I was saved by remembering my Faust and Whitman, and by knowing RONALDINHO and HAROLDRAMIS. I’m not one who objects to trivia heavy puzzles, but I could see this one irking those whose minds are less cluttered with trivial pop culture knowledge than mine.
@Marshall Walthew. I thought it was WESANDERSON.
Quick comment on the Wordplay column's reference to the old Minneapolis Lakers (which has nothing directly to do with the puzzle). There are definitely still some who remember the Lakers as a local team. They were the first NBA dynasty, winning multiple titles in the 40's and 50's. When I moved to Minnesota in 1983, the team was of course long gone, but you would still occasionally see George Mikan, their greatest star, walking through the downtown skyways in Minneapolis. Nothing to do with today's Crossword (which I greatly enjoyed, by the way), but a good memory.
@DYT It's weird that the Lakers and Jazz didn't change their names when they moved. Contrast with the Seattle Pilots who became Milwaukee Brewers. I hope the Phillies never leave Philadelphia, but if they do they couldn't possible keep their name, could they?
@DYT The Skyway is fun. I once got stuck to the floor trying to get to the library in St. Paul. I thought I was gong to die there.
Not a fan of this puzzle maker tbh. The word play is not very clever
I am proud to say I actually knew SCREAMO, even at my advanced age, so thank you college radio. I've started revealing the final square of the Midi each time. Maybe it will silence the daily messages about the imporance of preserving "my streak." I know that the survival of the New York Times is to some extent linked to those of us who signed up for the crossword, but no thank you regarding streaks...I'm already compulsive and addiction-prone enough without them.
I haven’t had a Natick more Naticky than MII/TICHA in a while.
@Jon I got MII, and the first video game I played was Pong. In a pizza parlor. As a teenager. Haven't played many since then, either. In other words, I am completely and totally not a gamer. But when I discovered MII in an earlier puzzle, I thought, oooh I'm gonna try to remember that. Much like learning WII earlier. I didn't get MII right away, but I did eventually. Yay! Helps that it's sort of punny. Anyway, yeah, that was a tough cross, but doable for me, a non-gamer.
Wow, that was crazy hard. More Fridays like this please! There were so many personal don't-knows in this puzzle (almost all of the proper nouns), and yet, it was ESCAPEArTS that was my mistake 🤦🏼♀️ Jazz aficionados and MEZCAL were two of my favorites. Too many good clues to mention!
So, are we not having a Friday this week and just skipping right to Saturday?
That was an excellent tough Saturday puzzle for me. Nowhere near a Friday. I appreciate the difficulty, but I'm really tired of the editors' messing with us. Ultimately, the crossing of M _ I and T _ C H A was a natick for me, so running the alphabet was my only option (other than looking up the answer).
Note to Sean: AMALGAMATE is a verb. The noun is "amalgam".
@Dan Messing with us? Not sure what you mean. This is Friday difficulty, not Saturday, by traditional standards. If they’ve been messing with us, it’s by making Fridays much easier than this lately.
@Dan I thought the whole idea was to be messed with.
While Pele is the Hawaiian goddess of the volcano, she did not create the islands. In Hawaiian mythology, the islands were pulled up from the bottom of the sea by Maui, with his fish hook, Mānaiakalani. Certain myths recognize the reality of volcanic activity, crediting Pele with both destroying the land (through eruptions) and expanding it.
@NanuNanu I also had Maui for a long time.
@NanuNanu Yeah I went with Maui too thanks to “You’re Welcome” the Moana song: “For the islands I pulled from the sea”
And I thought yesterday was awful...
Once in a while you simply know you won’t enjoy brute forcing your way through it, click reveal and move on. Nowt wrong with, just a speed date gone wrong.
@spurious I revealed half way through. Too much fly specking took the fun out of it. One of the worst puzzles i’ve seen in a while. Not enjoyable in the least.
So many great clues and fresh answers. Thanks Jack, this was a really fun one.
I'm so grateful for the "Easy Mode" clues, I needed 20 of them today. I had not even a faint idea of how to make a dent in this monster! (Yes, I know many will love this one.) Meanwhile, I achieved Queenhood in the Spelling Bee with just the two letter grid, a feat which never happens. It balances out!
Goose eggs on the first pass. ATARI was my first fill that I had a high degree of confidence in. I knew I'd remember the Sex and the City character that was escaping my grasp if I got a couple of crosses, and I did, filled in the SE, then worked back upwards diagonally. NE remained elusive to the very end. Even as I keyed in the last letter, I remained skeptical that I'd get the music. Finished two minutes over my Saturday average. Stunningly satisfying puzzle, thank you.
@Steve Atari was my first as well, followed by Brer, and Samantha. By the time I got that third one I'd already spent 30 minutes on it!
Funny, but I never noticed that Wes Anderson and Harold Ramis share the same number of letters and have a d in the middle before.
@Peter G. I immediately went to Wes Anderson and think it's the better answer, except for one thing... it didn't work.
@Peter G. and @Jeff Z Well you guys at least had the count right, so you did better than I did. I knew Dan Aykroyd's last name was spelled a little unusually and kept trying to shoehorn one more letter in there to make it fit.
One of the first Fridays I needed help with in a long time. But fun and clever and (mostly) pretty fair! Loved all the misdirection. Wouldn't mind a few more chewy ones like this to stretch my brain.
No one else changed INSTEPS to INSoleS, then back to INSTEPS, then back to INSoleS...etc.? I guess not.
@SBK in TO i changed INSOLES to INSTEPS.
@SBK in TO Changing INsoleS to INSTEPS is what finally got my solve going. The grid began crystallizing around that word.
@SBK in TO @HeathieJ @Lynn Can we start a whole new thread/rant about buying shoes and the awful uncomfortableness of many women's shoes?I was pretty solid on the 'P' so never thought of INSOLES but INSTEPS isn't what I think of on the much-dreaded occasions where I need new shoes. What matters first is where the arch falls..is that INSTEP? After that width but also if the heel will be loose. My leading peeve is that companies don't stay consistent! Once I finally find a near-perfect one, they stop making it.
Just some idle thoughts on proper nouns: Do the creators actually expect solvers to know obscure names? Probably not. (Not to offend anyone, but professional women's basketballers aren't exactly household names in America, let alone Poland and Japan.) Half the fun of solving is the process of making known people and places you don't actually know. It's fun to amaze yourself.
@LBG Looks like SP and I had a Vulcan mind meld.
For a moment, it feels like WE ARE SO BACK.
@CCNY "For a moment" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there IMO. And FWIW I'll be fine with it either way.
I loved this one!! Didn't love DEEPS though, felt like DEEP would have been the right word. Overall fun, tricky, but not impossible. Kind of a perfect puzzle!
@BeeBee <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/the%20deeps" target="_blank">https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/the%20deeps</a>
Shock horror… no one complaining about 1A Where has the moral outrage gone? 🤣
@Ιασων Maybe it's because its late night in the U.S. and those who would complain start to type it and then go "aw, 5CR&W IT. I'm going to bed."
I love a puzzle that bumps up my average. A bunch of things that I know but just wasn’t on the right wavelength until I shook it out with a cup of coffee. Thanks for a fun Friday morning!
Liked this one, ESCAPEArT instead of ACT slowed me down at the end but the rest of the puzzle flowed well.
Excellent puzzle! An actual challenge. More like this, please please please. I confidently entered Maui for 21D, having seen Moana approximately 500 times. The Wikipedia article for PELE doesn't mention her creating the islands. Most of the legends I've found describe her coming to the Hawaiian islands from somewhere else, so she couldn't have created them.