Well, this is how I learn that Esau was not given a cottage for selling his birthright to Jacob. Would have been a nice trade, IMO
@Sam Corbin If he was Canadian, would it have been POuTAGE?
@Sam Corbin I tried “pot of ale” before realizing it wouldn’t fit.
@Sam Corbin Right? In biblical times most kids couldn't afford their own cottage and had to live with their parents until they were two or three hundred years old.
@Sam Corbin and I think it's illegal in at least 48 states to give a toddler anything with CUSH in it ⚠️
@Sam Corbin Now they'd call it an "ADU" or an "Accessory Dwelling Unit" which is either too few or too many letters.
Completely lost patience with this one and didn’t care to finish. Glad many seemed to enjoy more than I did.
@Robert I stuck it out, but with the aid of the "Easy Mode" clues (twenty two of them!) I thought I'd have to break out the "big cheats", as the Easy Mode clue for the German dude didn't help, but I got him from the crossers. They don't make the Friday puzzles for the likes of me, I know it. They make these for those who found the Thursday puzzle "too easy". (They're giving us a real work out today! Finding the Spelling Bee's 66 words was an effort, too.)
As the kids say, this puzzle slaps! Super challenging Friday with a dizzying array of source material, from the obscure (to me) Ludwig Erhard to the lovable Slinky Dog to the iconic RiRi. My head is still spinning...
Whew, that was a proper challenge! 😅
Yes. A weekend themeless with sufficient bite to give the brain the opportunity to whirr, to have moments where you’re working in one corner of the grid and suddenly an answer from another corner hits you because your deeper brain has been working on it. A riddle-fest with plenty of those sweet pings. A meager 66 words and scant 25 blocks means many letters have to interlock, and to do it with hardly a whiff of junk, as Julian did today, takes inordinate skill. On top of that, to spike the grid with loveliness -- SOJOURNER, PAN ROAST, POTTAGE, UNHINGES, JINGLES, ENAMORS, and WALLOP, is remarkable. I love the brain that saw the two “criticize” synonyms in PAN ROAST, that came up with a “protection of all speech” angle with which to clue SECURE LINE, and that clued VEG, which has appeared nearly 100 times in the major crossword outlets, with a word it has never been clued with – “hang”. I left the box satisfied and enriched, and that’s a sweet gift. Thank you for this, Julian!
@Lewis you should apply to write the Wordplay column as a guest columnist! Well said and I always look forward to your analysis.
Sorry, you're not even half as clever as you make yourself out to be. Talk about a grid insisting upon itself... Draggy? Slinky dog? Pottage? Geneses? Dative/Latin completely lack any actual cluing. Hecka should win an award for worst clue of the year - maybe even decade.
@Nick so grumpy! I like the answer hecka, but the clue was too vague. Seeing that the creator rides the BART helps explain it. Long ago I worked at an elementary school in Oakland. Adults said “hella” a lot. As in, “those Nikes are hella tight,” meaning “super cool.” Little kids, afraid of getting in trouble for saying hell, toned it down to “hecka.” The clue should have acknowledged the regional and age specificity of this adorable slang.
@Nick I agree this was more than a bit of a stretch. Not sure how this made it through the review process.
@Nick I disagree. This puzzle was a delight. No glue, great clueing. It’s not often that I’m scratching my head on these, and this was a treat.
@Nick Interesting review, especially considering that “insisting upon itself” was a cartoon-based phrase that was created specifically to mean nothing.
@Nick There is no need to personally insult the constructor. If you want to be rude, please go to X or some other cesspool.
@Nick Anytime someone uses the phrase “it insists upon itself”, I have to wonder if they actually got the joke, i.e. that Peter was just parroting a line that sounded like a plausible lead-in to a thoughtful criticism of The Godfather, and probably hadn’t even seen the movie…
@Nick Trying to see what your beef is except maybe HECKA (and I’m not up on modern slang so maybe that’s ok too). DRAGGY—perfectly good dictionary word SLINKYDOG—character in a multi movie hit franchise, and even if you haven’t seen it you might think Toy Story and remember a toy many played with as a kid POTTAGE— famous story right out of the King James Bible GENESES—plural of genesis which is a pretty common word for the start of something. I’d have no problem if you just said this was too hard for you, or that you thought these words were obscure. But when you take a POT(tage) shot at the constructor by saying that he’s not half as clever as he makes himself out to be, I feel justified in sending one back and saying at least he’s twice as clever as you seem to be.
@Nick I thought the puzzle was hard overall, but DATIVE/LATIN was one of the few bright spots for me. Once I had the D, I had everything.
@Nick the fault, dear Nick, lies not in the constructor, but in ourselves
I put a slinky in my shoes. I now have a spring in my step! (I was told to coil my heels.)
A Friday that actually felt like a Friday for the first time in ages. Great fill. Really missed these
@a for me it was in the top 10 toughest puzzles of the year on any day. Enjoyed the challenge on subjects I knew little about. It's always more of a rush if you're not even sure you're going to figure it all out.
I have no idea how I was able to complete this. I felt completely lost for most of my solve. On my first across and down pass I typed in just a few entries and thought I might have to resort to reveals to continue. But I decided to give it some more time, and I managed to fill in the NE corner l first. I was fascinated by the Pathfinder mission to Mars. I followed its progress on TV. However, I have forgotten the rover itself was called SOJOURNER, and I never knew it was named after a person. I read up on her once crosses and vague recollections gave me the entry. Who knows, maybe I'll remember something of what I've just learned. The SE was second to fall, then the SW, and finally the NW. Had I not known NATASHA Lyonne, and had I not learned GMAN from previous NYT puzzles, I would have needed lookups to finish the puzzle. HECKA... I took me quite some time to arrive at that. I started with HELLA, of course. Isn't EVILEST slightly questionable? I mean, I get that it's probably grammatically correct, but wouldn't you rather say of somebody that they were the most evil you have ever met? Overall I found this a very challenging and enjoyable puzzle, a good fit for the day it ran on. And now for something completely different. Here are some photos from my yesterday's walk with Lucek the poodle around the northern part of my Warsaw district of Ursynów: <a href="https://imgur.com/a/pNkuASz" target="_blank">https://imgur.com/a/pNkuASz</a>
@Andrzej Nice pix! Poland looks nice. Can we all come out to visit you until 2029? At least? The question of whether to use the suffix to indicate degree rather than an adjective has always bedeviled me. I suspect it bedevils all English speakers. I've probably used both "most evil" and "evilest" in the past. I doubt there is anything approaching universal agreement on many cases. You're a fan of Natasha Lyonne?
@Andrzej Lucek is has become as beautiful as those surroundings, a real showstopper!
@Andrzej Gorgeous poodle! The most enjoyable part of this puzzle.
@Andrzej Lucek is a beauty. A friend has a 2-year-old white standard poodle. She keeps sending me photos, but her dog isn't nice looking at all! I loved my time in Poland, (except for the robbery). Were it not for the language, I could live there - there was a TJMaxx right on the street where my purse was stolen! The name was slightly different, but the font was exactly the same, and I learned that they had to change the name due to some sort of trademark issue.
@Andrzej Not knowing the actress, I first tried NATAliA before NATASHA. Thank goodness for crosses! EVILEST as an adjective — more for a thing than a somebody, at least in my usage. "He looked at her with the evilest grin." ... Thank you for the poodle pics! Always a pleasure.
@Andrzej Thank you for the wonderful photos and commentary!
Not my cuppa. Glad younger solvers are joining the game, but between computer games, new to me artists and slang, this one yielded few of the delightful realizations that I normally experience when I adjust my focus and things “come together.” White space über Alles may be an organizing principle that ENAMORs the constructor and his computer more than the solver.
@Jennifer I was playing Space Invaders in Japan in 1979, so nearly half a century ago. I doubt youngsters today have even heard of it.
@Jennifer I agree. Somehow this puzzle lacked personality: does the constructor really have an interest in post WWII Germany? Does he PAN ROAST his Sunday dinner? Is he actually a fan of ETTA JAMES? Did he ever play ATARI GAMES that were popular before he was born? And so on. Just felt kind of disengaged, to me.
@Jennifer Space Invaders was released in 1978, which makes it 48 years old. Come on, dude. Video games have been around for half a freakin century. You have no excuse for not knowing about them.
That was a toughie, a good mix of esoteric general knowledge and clever word play. I came close to quitting, but stuck with and am inordinately proud of getting to the end. But, I’m not sure I have it all correct, because the app refuses to acknowledge, one way or the other, that I’ve completed the puzzle. Grr. I’m just declaring victory and calling it a night, even though, given my history, the odds of a typo are high.
@Marshall Walthew So I opened the puzzle this morning and about 20 letters had been randomly deleted overnight . I replaced them, and voila, the app acknowledged that I had completed the puzzle. Technical glitches aside, I enjoyed the EVILEST Friday in a long time.
Wow. Just wow. This was Saturday level hard...10+ years ago that is. Took almost twice my Friday average time with all the vague and very tangential clues. Great, very humbling puzzle 😊. Let's have more late-week puzzles like this, please.
I enjoyed this one! 1A was one of the last clues to fall for me and I always appreciate a puzzle that makes me work for the first clues. Tough but extremely fair. More tough Fridays, please and thank you.
@LaurenV I originally wrote in LACTICACID for 1A. Hey, it fits!
Typo in the 46A clue? “Saiys”?
My fav this week by a long shot. JENGATOWER and SECURELINE were clued so well I can forgive the clunky (sorry) HECKA. We had a heat wave here in Vancouver earlier in the summer, and my jar of VITAMIN gummies got all melty and then THICKENed and congealed, so now it's just one giant gummy. I've just been pulling chunks off it.
I have never played a video game. I never saw Toy Story. Needless to say, these O's in my development put me at a disadvantage; I don't know any of the jargon. Nor am I particularly SLAP at current slang (I thought it must be SLoP). Nevertheless, I finished the puzzle when I understood that most of the clues would be for real language and I stopped trying to make it harder than it was. I suspect that even the langbusters may have stumbled on this one a bit. (Yes, I made that word up to refer to SLAP word wizards.) Thanks for a puzzle workout like I haven't had for a long time, Julian. The clue clues were quite wonderful, and if the puzzle as a whole hadn't made me feel like a dolt, I would tag it as a favorite HECKA .
Very smooth solve. Reading the constructor notes, I now understand why. This was a very fair Friday, methinks. My only hiccup was the crossing of the two proper nouns in the NW. I had NATASiA, which created a German name that seemed off. But whatever. Of course. That one is on me. I would never call that a Natick. Though it did take me a long time to find my error. The constructor notes lately have been 🔥 Today’s was just great insight into the mind of a constructor. I’ll admit. I have really lost faith in this community. Everything good I see in a puzzle is bullied by top comments of dissatisfaction. “The bolded M’s are annoying” “I had to erase HOLE four times!” So today. When I saw VEG, I figured I would once again be rage baited by top comments. But thankfully, mercifully. I am spared. I have now become the complainer than complains about complaints. You all did this to me. I do not claim any responsibility. Haha
@Weak 😂 I definitely feel you concerning the community. I'm trying to adjust my thinking to the idea that there has to be a little strife in any community, just to keep things interesting. But it's a delicate balance, and not one that is easy to maintain.
Is anyone going to comment on the fact that two and a half years after being a derelict freshman, the constructor is now working on a master's degree? (Well, I guess I am.)
Sigh, this masters thing ain’t cutting it and I really am bored riding the BART. I know, I’ll whip up a Friday themeless crossword with a wide open grid. Let’s throw some Latin grammar in there just for funnzies. Hecka good times! Count me impressed.
That was a hard one! Each corner fell apart pretty quick once you got a foot in the door, but that was no trivial task.
This was an excellent way to start my four day weekend. Kudos to the constructor for a puzzle where almost every clue had me filling and refilling squares. Clever all the way through, tough but fair, satisfying to close out: in short, a vintage NYT cross.
A proper Friday challenge. Took me just over an hour with no lookups, this putting my no lookups streak at 20. I couldn't care less about how long it takes. Time Schmime! The real prize, and the mark of a great solver, is solving it with no lookups or help of any kind.
@Laura Stratton I think a 'great solver' is simply one who doesn't give up, no matter the count of needed 'easy mode' clues, wiki look ups, and out and out cheats! And, of course, time needed. Let the young, with their nimble, non-arthritic fingers boast of their scant times. Meanwhile, I persevere!
@Laura Stratton this is a surprisingly controversial opinion here. personally i think people can play however they like, and all of us who play online have a bit of help (it tells us whether we solved it and we can fix mistakes if not). but i wouldn't feel very good about myself if i claimed to "solve" something i had to look up.
Really fun and challenging but let down by HECKA and DRAGGY imo.
I'd like to put in a salute to Natasha Lyonne. What an interesting actress! I first saw her in "The Slums of Beverly Hills", which I consider a minor masterpiece. She and Marisa Tomei and Alan Arkin and David Krumholtz and Carl Reiner were just terrific in depicting an oddly dysfunctional, yet strangely lovable family. That mildly desperate but gutty attitude was also present in a lesser known movie "A Night at the Golden Eagle", maybe my favorite Lyonne movie yet. "Golden Eagle" was a skin-crawlingly gritty movie about a decrepit LA flop house hotel. Unsurprisingly, she played a prostitute in a relatively minor but unforgettable role. She was fabulous in "Orange is the New Black", another perfect movie for her. I haven't seen the entire "Russian Doll" series, nor much of "Poker Face". But she's honed that quintessential brassy female power to a fine art, and can deliver cutting, brassy humor with the best of them.
@Francis Love her! Amazing actress. "Russian Doll" was most excellent. I haven't yet gotten around to "Poker Face." You've made me curious about "The Slums of Beverly Hills." I'll have to look it up. Okay, I just did. It's on Prime. Cued it up! Thanks!
@Francis Loved her in Poker Face, sorry they cancelled it.
@Francis I have believed for a long time that casting people deserve more credit than actors. Most actors have the thing they always do - their acting is always the same. It only works if they've been cast correctly.
@Francis Russian Doll and Poker Face are both fantastic. I also personally feel that mentioning Natasha Lyonne without mentioning But I’m a Cheerleader is a cultural mortal sin.
@Francis AND Natasha Lyonne is a famous crossword enthusiast who even co-authored a published New York Times crossword puzzle in April 2019 alongside puzzle editor Deb Amlen! So she might be reading our comments 😄
You mean Esau (of twindom fame) didn't score free POsTAGE in his birthright deal? No postcards to the fam -- Greetings from EDOM, wish you were here? Perhaps I'm confusing my GENESES with my exoduses. My ignorance of POTTAGE was not the only obstacle to gold-stardom, and I nearly became UNHINGEd when I was not serenaded upon recording my final entry after some 40 minutes of rollicking with JENGA, SLINKY, PUSHTOY and the like. Problem was, i knew ERHARg couldn't be right, despite desperately clinging to gRoGGY as "sluggish." Or maybe, at 4:30 AM, i was just groggily desperate. Anyway, I got it sorted out. Marvelously satisfying, Julian, thank you.
@Peter Anyone else try PLUPERFECT for 1A. No? It has the same number of letters as JENGA TOWER. AMHIK.
Fun and challenging puzzle tonight! And Sean’s sense of humor cracked me up. Thanks! I enjoyed both.
I’ve wrestled with some terrible puzzles before but this one is off the charts. Almost every answer is a reach. What is the criteria for publishing a puzzle? Someone thought these were reasonable clues?
@FJ You’ve been doing puzzles that are easier than they had been only a few years ago, on average, and today you’ve encountered one more like those of longer ago.
@FJ BTW. Here are the xwstats.com rating for today: 🌎 Global Stats Difficulty Very Hard Median Solve Time 18:30 Median Solver 34% slower ⚡17% of users solved faster than their Friday average. 2% solved much faster (>20%) than their Friday average. 🐢83% of users solved slower than their Friday average. 64% solved much slower (>20%) than their Friday average.
@FJ I used to hate it when I'd get shut down by a terrible puzzle and everyone else commented, "Wow, this is great." But in time I moved closer to the latter category. Keep at it. You'll be able to get these someday. (But yes, I thought a few clues were subpar here.)
@FJ To echo a couple other responses: I can vividly remember feeling exactly the way you have described in my earlier crossword-solving days. But fast-forward a few years, and I really enjoyed today’s puzzle (and didn’t find it especially challenging). In other words, I promise — if you stick with it and continue to grow your solving skills, your perspective on puzzles like today’s will change dramatically. (That’s not to say that you’d necessarily *like* the clueing in today’s puzzle even if you found it accessible, as that’s ultimately a matter if taste…but solving a puzzle unaided, in a modest amount of time, will leave a very different taste in your mouth than struggling mightily before eventually cheating, only to find that the entries still feel unfair/nonsensical even when you’re looking at the answers.)
@FJ I agree with you on this one. Far too much slang in this puzzle for my tastes. Hecka? Slap? Swole? Don't think this was a good Friday puzzle at all.
@FJ Again, I never comment because someone says “this was too hard for me” or “I thought these clues were too obscure”. But I do get defensive when people use “this was a terrible puzzle” as a synonym for “I couldn’t solve it” or even “I really thought this was too hard”. Except for HECKA I didn’t think anything was a particular stretch today (and that still within bounds of reason), although there were plenty of misdirections and some less commonly used words and slang. But again this is a PUZZLE and a weekend themeless. For puzzles you have to KNOW stuff and not everyone knows the same thing. But even so there is plenty of opportunity to figure it out in crosses or common word and letter patterns. If you read the other comments lots of people thought these were reasonable clues and was a good puzzle to publish. You have to be pretty self-centered to assume that it’s a terrible puzzle and shouldn’t have been published based on your own knowledge base. Sorry, but I’m in that kind of mood.
MAS-TER-PIECE No, that's not an exaggeration IMO. Tremendously fun and satisfying solve. It lurched along and then gained momentum as it fell square by square, answer by answer, section by section. The way a good themeless should. Elegant grid. I'm guessing the editors are due a lot of credit for the way the clues created a "tense build-up" of a solve. Note: I'm up in years yet the answers that would tend to be in a younger solver's wheelhouse as opposed to mine didn't do me in. I was able to get them from the crosses; again, good cluing.
Had me going there! NE particularly until I dumped the MAGLEVS and PANFRIED I'd entered on the first go around. Thank you Julian for a good Friday-into-the-holiday challenge. Speaking of challenges, YES, NYT gatekeepers, I DO use multiple devices on my account, I am not sharing my login. Multiple, multiple. Desktop. Laptop. Work Desktop. iPad. iPhone. Get over it.
15 minutes over my average and I was just so happy to see that gold star pop up. A great brain buster!
Ahh, the beauty of a one word clue. Is it a verb? Is it a noun? It just sits there with nothing else to give it context. They always seem like a lesson about not making assumptions. Nice too see so many today. [Result of a tense build-up] for JENGA TOWER and [System by which all speech is protected] for SECURE LINE were at the other end of the spectrum. Good old tricky cluing. I felt appropriately puzzled today. The only area with an early foothold was the NE. The rest went in bit by bit over a couple of passes, just the way I like it.
@Nancy J. Those one word clues were very prominent in today's puzzle, weren't they? It's amazing how hard they make a grid. And it's a good kind of hard, too.
@Nancy J. “I felt appropriately puzzled today.” What a beautiful, kind response!
This puzzle was DRAGGY - did not SLAP, nor pack a WALLOP. EVILEST? HECKA? At least I'd heard of the childish nickname for Rihanna.
Fed. Wow. That was hard. Took me forever. Great puzzle.
@Kristopher A hard puzzle doesn’t make it great.
Man that was hard. Utterly hopeless until Sojourner showed me the way.
Now that was Friday tough. It’s the first time for a while that I had acres of white space after a couple of passes. Fair made my heart rate go up. The fill came eventually, slowly, tortuously, but bit by bit I got enough to make a good stab at the stuff I really didn’t know (looking at you POTTAGE, HECKA, DATIVE). I also stuck with eyes for IRIS for too long which messed up that corner. All in all an excellent end of the week offering. I’m a bit late to the comments today so haven’t read them all, but it seems a little calmer today after the spats of the last couple of days. Phew. In Alpaca news; the BlueTongue virus has arrived in the village, in a local flock of sheep. A nasty illness, I’m keeping a close eye on the girls and waiting for the vet to come and inoculate them. After our brush with TB I’m hoping we can keep this one at arms lengths too. Who’d own animals? Too much stress.
@Helen Wright I'm glad there's a vaccine and I hope you can get it in time! Wishing you and your herd the best.
@Helen Wright Blue Tongue Virus? Wow, what a scary name. Almost as bad as "lockjaw". So, it this sometimes fatal? Inevitably fatal? I could never again allow myself to be more of an animal owner than I am, with two dogs because my wife is a dog lover. It just rips me to pieces when they get sick and die.
Oh, and to our columnist who penned this gem: “I can never remember if the tuning fork goes to the left or the right of the pottage spoon.” Recommended 👍 Nice! and LOL
Some awfully difficult clues that made no sense until they did. Great job, Julian! Wouldn't it have been nice to have 3d clued as [Actress and x-word constructor Natasha]? I'm sure at least a few of you remember it. Quite an amusing puzzle that Andrzej wouldn't like. April 2, 2019. But wait, there's more. She co-constructed it with our very own Deb Amlen!
@ad absurdum You beat me to mentioning NATASHA's puzzle. Early SLINKY DOG catches the POTTAGE.
That was a close call! I wasn't sure whether the Puzzle would eat me up or if I could possibly prevail, given the hopeless-looking grid and list of Unknowns in the clues. To start with, the "mess of potage" that Esau craved was, we were told in Sunday school, probably LENTILS, which fit the space nicely. And that is how it was spelled. It certain was a MESS in my grid. I put in SLINKY DOG and took out the SLINKY because SRI LANKA (the new name) seemed to me to be later than 1960...not that I can remember much these days. I had to run the alphabet for 6D -UNE... it was my last entry, after I put AGO back in. HECKA....Hmm, maybe it's my new word. I need to go lie down with a cool cloth on my forehead now.
I am so glad to see this was hard for other people too! My longest Friday puzzle in months, if not years.
So sorry, but 'tis dreadful. Vague, very strained wordplay, over-reliance on cutesie modern slang, etc. etc. Have been doing these NYT gems for over 40 yrs and cannot say I've ever been as frustrated, mystified, and just plain idiot-feeling. Whoa!! Will, puh-LEEZE!!!!!!! (insert eyeroll and melting emojis here) (oh, the exploding-head one, too)
That was a workout! I polished off a 2012 Saturday puzzle waiting for this one to drop, and that wasn't half as tough as this. Can't say I enjoyed myself the whole time (loved the tricky clueing, didn't love all the fill), but I can say Xiao made me sweat.
Two things that portend for a great weekend themeless—a sterling opening clue that I don’t get until almost the end, and a grid that forces me to almost the bottom before I gradually make my way up. Bingo on both counts today. My first real inroad after some thought was SLINKYDOG. I think the first corner I finished though was the SE and gradually the others. Thanks for a proper challenge today. A few comments: In the “what is the sound of one hand clapping” category, I wonder whether one IRIS can have heterochromia. It means two IRISES (IRIDES) with different colors. I finally reconciled it to be one IRIS with a different color than the other but it was an interesting philosophical consideration. In the weird coincidence category, I was struggling to come up with POTTAGE. I have a pretty good knowledge of the Old Testament and knew it was some kind of food but maybe not the King James version. Anyways, I finished it with crosses, while watching the second season of The Gentlemen which just came out (great show by the way). Anyway, I swear a half hour later on the show the exact story was recited including the potage (they used the French spelling). Wow. Let’s see, great clue for SOJOURNER. I never heard HECKA but if it is used it’s a lot less “super” than HELLA which I do hear a lot. Lastly, I don’t do LATIN but I do do Greek and thankfully they also have DATIVES. Thanks for a great Friday solve!
@SP I first learned what a heterochrome when the eruditist of current baseball play-by-play men, Gary Cohen for the Mets, pointed out years ago that pitching great Max Scherzer is a heterochrome. He had to explain to his boothmates (and me) what he meant.
@SP I assumed heterochromia could be different colors in the same iris. Then you had me doubting that. But wikipedia reassured me! <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterochromia#/media/File:Segmental_heterochromia_in_left_eye.png" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterochromia#/media/File:Segmental_heterochromia_in_left_eye.png</a>
I didn't know JENGA TOWER when I read the clue, and having looked it up, I don't fully understand the clue now. Why "tense"? Does building one of those things make you tense? If you say so. If you say so, also. re SLAP. It's appeared so often in the NYTXW and I'll never remember it. I don't remember slang where the newly coined word seems to have absolutely no connection with its meaning. But mostly I really liked this tough themeless. Most of the difficulty came from actual words and not from names -- although there is almost never a puzzle without some names. I pat myself on the shoulder for guessing ATARI GAMES, based only on the G -- which I had from GRE and not GED, btw. I've learned that most games I've never heard of were made by ATARI. From the OY alone, I guessed at PUSH TOY. I closed my eyes, pictured a toddler pushing some toy or other, and figured, yes, it would help him walk. CORONAs kept me from seeing MAGNET for the longest time. I was going crazy trying to make a word out of MA?NSTS. I forget what POTTAGE is, but when it finally came in I thought: "Esau was an idiot." A nice challenge that kept me on my toes.
@Nancy The word SLAP meaning good comes originally from hip hop with baselines so heavy they almost literally "slap." So if a song with such base was "good," it "slaps"
@Nancy One wrong move in JENGA can bring the whole TOWER down, and it can get pretty tense as options for moves narrow.
This one felt like a Friday of old to me. Solved it unaided, but took about 40 minutes. Nice challenge, and much appreciated.
When I open the Friday Mini, it takes me to a February puzzle. Anyone else?
@Danielle Kuhl Yes, that's been happening to me for a couple of days. I have to use the NYT website (instead of the Games app) to access the Mini. But after I complete the puzzle, the Games app updates to show the current puzzle as completed. 🤷♀️
Really tough one. Some very nice clues and solves, but also some abominable ones! 'Hecka' sticks out for the wrong reasons. I always say, creators seem to have lost the ability to create a hard puzzle without reverting to arcane trivia and tenuously linked answers. I was really enjoying this one until I got stuck. Revealing those answers made me roll my eyes instead of having an 'aha' moment. I love a hard and clever solve. This puzzle was one of those...
Rude Boy had me trying dede for Desmond Dekker and trying to think how the Clash could fit in. So old I am, after the crosses revealed RIRI found and watched Rihanna, her Rude Boy has like 10,000X the views of Dekker’s Rude Boy Train. Watching it… like a mashup of an acid trip in Jamaica with Rocky Horror and Terry Gilliam. I’m so out of touch. Gonna need a brew for breakfast, and watch Oppenheimer, an early rudie. Classic try, forget for a few hours, pick up, try again, repeat puzzle. Always surprising how words suddenly appear out of nowhere when I plant the first idea in my brain. Like messages from another dimension or world line.
@sonnel First you must cure your temper Then find a job in a paper … like Wordplay column writer! Anyway, that’s how it looks from here in Shanty Town.
@sonnel You're looking pretty smart, in your chicken skin suit You think you're pretty hot, in your porkpie hat?
Good puzzle, with an appropriate difficulty.