Tough Monday, or maybe I’m tired.
@Selective Walrus I humbly submit that you are tired, oh blubbery whiskery one!
Did the creators think it was Wednesday? Way too hard for Monday, come on
@Jeff Really? Comfortably under my Monday average time (and definitely faster than my PR for Wednesday).
I listen to the radio with some frequency. (I'm pretty set in my waves.)
@Mike Are you sirius? Do you listen in the AM or just any old time?
@Mike Not sure i like the music they’re playing — I have tune doubt
@Mike Music on the radio can soothe listeners--keeping them out of treble and supporting the bass.
@Mike I imagine you'll hear from a broad cast of characters today.
I needed Tuesday time to fill the grid, mostly because of a distinctly un-Monday-ish NE corner. I ended up having to take a peek at the answer key, too. I don't know what a gofer is, and while I didn't understand what ERRAND BO[w]S might be, the entry didn't look like gibberish, so I accepted it. That [w] came from [w]OWZAH, which seemed perfectly fine! These slangy American expressions are among the most challenging puzzle content for me - there are just so many of them, they all seem quite strange, and they come in a zillion spelling variants on top of it. How common is elevator music in the US? I hear it very rarely in Poland.
@Andrzej very similar experience re the top right. Not sure whether elevator music is only used in very tall buildings in order to avoid conversation. Lifts do seem to talk a lot these days, mostly about where they are going)not many options) or where they have arrived.
@Andrzej Muzak was a company dating back to the 30s. In the early days it was common in elevators. The company is gone and music in elevators is rare, but the terms live on to describe a certain type of bland music.
@Andrzej Gofer is wordplay, "go for" riffing on the animal gopher.
@Andrzej I originally made the same mistake as you with wOWZAH and got upset that it had an H at the end because I'd never seen it with an H. It turns out it doesn't have an H. It's WOWZA. Only YOWZAH has an H. I get why you would get frustrated with these exclamations. Even I do!
@Andrzej A gofer is a bottom-of-the-ladder employee who is routinely told to "go for" anything the higher-ups want or need. Go for coffee, go get a file, etc.
My five favorite original clues from last week (in order of appearance): 1. Mild-mannered characteristic? (6) 2. Result of a tense build-up? (5)(5) 3. Change sounds (7) 4. System by which all speech is protected? (6)(4) 5. The sound that concludes "The Sound and the Fury" (4)(1) HYPHEN JENGA TOWER JINGLES SECURE LINE LONG E
My favorite encore clues from last week: [Character with a famous opening line?] (3)(4) [Quite the head turner?] (3) ALI BABA OWL
@Lewis. I pulled out my copy of the Faulkner novel snd turned to the last page - not remembering a final scream
@Lewis I was totally DOOKed by LONGE
Good puzzle. Tough by Monday standards, twice my Monday average. LOEWE and ERRAND BOY crossed with REPAST? What the heck is a REPAST? That corner felt more like a Wednesday or Thursday.
@Chris REPAST was easy for me because I know that "le repas" means "meal" in French!
@Chris I've seen "repast" in novels about past centuries.
"What the heck is a REPAST?" Chris, <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/repast" target="_blank">https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/repast</a>
@Chris.......REPAST---After a funeral, it is a meal shared by the family with the mourners.
Very hard for a Monday, so a bit disappointed. Monday’s are for cruising, not being flummoxed. Some of the clues like “some gofers”,really?
@David F I’m not sure what your objection is to that particular clue. Is it just that you didn’t get it?
@David F For at least 60 of my 79 years, I've heard "gofer"-- a general slang term for an ERRAND-runner--usually a low-paid, taken-for-granted, constantly busy LABORer who performs a variety of tasks for anyone who out-ranks him/her, (which is everybody.) And today would be an appropriate day for that entry. The level of difficulty seems approriate for a Monday, IMHO. I'm surprised 7 people agree with you...unless they thought it should be spelt "gopher."
Ya know? I don't remember the last time I took an elevator that had music or even muzak piped in. How about you all? Do the NYT elevators play music? How about those of you who work in office buildings or places where the ride up or down is long enough to warrant music? Last time I heard elevator music was in a big old downtown Pittsburgh department store, like Kaufmann's or Horne's, sometime in the 1980s. I remember cuz it was a muzak "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" but rather well done, and catchy. I wonder what it's like to be a muzak creator, what satisfactions there are, what sources of pride. And who goes to department stores anymore? I kind of miss it. I like the relative difficulty for a Monday, and the weird confluence of words that got me imagining a rather ghoulish, gruesome narrative, a story called "Unlawful Repast" involving cannibalism, thus the ice saw for those troublesome but tasty elbows, for ella esta morta as they say in Barcelona, but makes for a tasty stew, a recipe you used your Imac to find, it called on you to add IPAs (or a Sam Adams) and egg; in a while, you took a sample spoonful of this elixir and shouted "Yowzah! Let's eat!" Mmm, this is good, your guest said, after a very unlawful repast. Who's in there anyway, Kim? Sara? It's left me all atingle. You shrugged. "No clue," you said.
@john ezra I haven't heard elevator music in a while either, kind of forgot about it actually. The last I specifically remember was Bridge Over Troubled Water, years ago at a Hecht's near Washington DC.
@john ezra Well, THAT certainly took an interesting turn 🤔
"If I WERE a Carpenter," I'd be Karen Carpenter, with the most mellifluous female singing voice ever, and BOSS on the drums to boot. <a href="https://youtu.be/NpQRsXrduc8?is=Cv4PhR7OYNDcNNd4" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/NpQRsXrduc8?is=Cv4PhR7OYNDcNNd4</a> And if I were an ace in crosswords, I wouldn't have blue starred on a Monday, for heaven's sakes. I fat-fingered it and an S went in where an A should have been in the crossing of DATA and EAT. I guess I might have caught it if I'd flyspecked, but I don't worry about streaks so it doesn't matter. Obviously :-) I adored this musical puzzle! And I got a nice chuckle out of "uplifting tunes" for ELEVATOR MUSIC. Very well done, Jeff and Stephan. Thank you, gents!
@sotto voce If I Were a Carpenter is also the name of a wonderful tribute album released in the mid-1990s. Highlights include Shonen Knife taking "Top of the World" to pop-punk heaven, and Sonic Youth's abrasive but compassionate cover of "Superstar".
@sotto voce I love Karen Carpenter. Absolutely luxurious voice, that deep alto voice in which she sang "What I've got they used to call the blues...". Amazing talent, and so sad that she never seemed to be able to enjoy it. She just melted my heart.
Usually when the theme answers are downs, it’s for a reason, and often that theme will be about up-ness or down-ness. I don’t remember a down-theme-answer grid being about both, as today’s is. It made for a splendid moment, actually. I had filled in the two western theme answers, but not the revealer, and saw LATIN going down and ROCK going up. I stopped right there trying to figure out the connection between both words and why they were going in opposite directions. And getting nowhere. Eventually, I uncle-d, and solved on, and when I uncovered ELEVATOR MUSIC, man, that brought a huge “Hah!”, one of those you hope for in a crossword, but don’t often get. Props and high thanks for that, Jeff and Stephan! By the way, this ELEVATOR MUSIC theme is simple, yes, and you’d think it would have been done before, but I haven’t found it, and I’ve looked. So, high scores for originality. Bang up job, you two, and thank you for brightening my day!
@Lewis As the philosopher once said: <a href="https://youtu.be/SFEewD4EVwU?is=uYF30GCh6YBEb2i3" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/SFEewD4EVwU?is=uYF30GCh6YBEb2i3</a>
@Steve L -- OMG, you're right! That puzzle I made with Jeff Chen (Sunday, 5/31, 2020), titled "What Goes Up Must Come Down" -- a down-answer theme that involved both up-ness and down-ness! So much for my second sentence here. Thank you for the reminder!
I took the Across only challenge and i made it!! I completed the puzzle in 11:59 without ever looking at any of the Down clues. I got lucky because I spotted the theme early, which helped me to fill in some of the fill. I loved it, especially “Jabbers on a plane”! But in a crossword all about ambient music, where was Brian Eno, who is practically a human Oreo in crosswordland?
@Petrol I think Brian Eno would die if his ambient music were equated to ELEVATOR MUSIC /Musak because, let's face it, it's a term that's usually used in a very derogatory way. We cherish "our" Brian Eno and I, for one, am relieved he was honored by being left out of this specific puzzle. ;-)
@Petrol Wow. I tried it too, did get most of the theme answers, but was no where near finishing it with just acrosses.
@Petrol I did Across only and made it, too, but it was more of a struggle than usual! SW corner and middle East really bogged me down. Fortunately, I'm bull headed and refuse to give up. 33 minutes.
Not a very good Monday. Lots of obscure trivia and several of them form Naticks.
I had never heard of LOEWE bags but, apparently, it is a fine leather design company since 1846 and on their website you can buy a handbag for as low as $5000.00! I'll take two!
What's not to like? Tidy Monday with a clever twist in the theme.
Finally a puzzle dedicated to The Love Boat! The first hint was the circled answers that rose and dipped, evoking the motion of a ship asea. The definitive proof was the inclusion of "gofer", the valiant purser(Hi, Loewe) of the ship. And then we have all the allusions to The Odyssey which famously dictated the story arc(not ark) of the series: -The Sirens tried to lure the sailors to their demise on the ROCKs. -The Odyssey was written in LATIN or some other ancient gibberish. -Whenever a crew member asked how much longer the voyage would be, Odysseus answered either "NO CLUE" or "IN A WHILE"(but in Latin or whatever). -ODESSA!!!!! The central down answer reinforced the theme, because what song is more elevating than The Love Boat theme song? Set a course for adventure indeed. Did you know that The Love Boat cruised along for 10 seasons just as Odysseus's voyage took 10 years? (Because men and asking for directions.) But in the end Odysseus was reunited with his beloved Penelope on Fantasy Island.
@ad absurdum Have you been working for Christopher Nolan?
A little extra labor for this Labor Day. But I like a Monday challenge once in a while.
Not my favorite Monday starter. LOEWE? CHICKCOREA? REPAST? C'mon now.
@Todd.....REPAST---After a funeral, it is a meal shared by the family with the mourners.
@Todd And Chick Corea only won 29 Grammys. Maybe if he had won 30? <a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nD9SAKiKaNU&list=RDnD9SAKiKaNU&start_radio=1&pp=oAcB" target="_blank">https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nD9SAKiKaNU&list=RDnD9SAKiKaNU&start_radio=1&pp=oAcB</a>
@Todd....ChickCorea---Famous American jazz pianist (1941-2021).
@Todd - Two gimmes and one easily solved from the crosses.
@Todd not only was Chick an international superstar, he made his home in FLA not far from you. You not knowing of him is like me living in the jungle room in Graceland and not knowing of leading 20th century English astrophysicist Fred Hoyle.
@Todd Y'all don't need to pile on about Chick Corea. Well known by jazz fans, sure, but hardly a (Monday) household name. I only know of him because I dabbled in jazz in college.
So surprised at the many comments finding this difficult for Monday. Honestly this felt like a standard Monday offering, or perhaps I’m just on the constructors wavelength today. It happens but rarely. I’m going to assume you’re all suffering from Labor Day hangovers! Drink water, eat PIZZA. See you on Tuesday.
Handel's Hallelujah Chorus. Now that's elevator music. Always gives me a high. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weFJHtcxJt0" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weFJHtcxJt0</a>
@dutchiris This one is even more elevating <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxPZh4AnWyk" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxPZh4AnWyk</a>
Fun theme, seems comparatively chewy for a monday. But then I had to go back after solving to figure out what RAN DB was, so maybe it's just me. Thumbs up either way.
RANDB. RANDB? Ohhhhh, R AND B!!! Sometimes I amaze myself with how thick I can be 😬
@Down_Home For one second I thought RAND B might be Cardi B's brother...
Just looked up the William Blake poem, A Poison Tree, which I was not familiar with. wOWZAH!! It is quite a sobering tale, short and not so sweet, but very poignant. This is one of the best thing about these puzzles, not just reciting what you know, or being angry if you don't, but having the opportunity to learn and keep exploring. Enriching! I thought this was a really good puzzle. Often, Mondays are sort of fill in the blankish, which has its place of course. This one I actually had fewer than normal entries on my first pass, which was exciting, but everything seemed very fairly crossed and I still finished up faster than my average. I think it helps me that I never STEW over things I don't get quickly. I just move on and trust the puzzle and myself to figure it out. I'm not always as such in life, so I appreciate my ability to do so in puzzles. May it spill over into my life. For example, at 21A, I confidently started filling in auger, but being a letter short and double checking it wasn't a plural in the clue, I just moved on. I, the daughter and wife of fishermen, (plural, not the same guy - har!) thought, "Surely, there are other things that an ice fisher might use... " And voila! An ICESAW emerged. Extra fun Monday! ELBOWS for "Jabbers on a plane" was especially good. I'm not saying I was quite ALLATINGLE, but I really liked that entry as well. Nice one!
Would CHICK COREA be obscure even on a Saturday, or is the band just from berore our time? Nither of us were even a little familiar with the musical act though admittedly we're not tuned into jazz. I enjoyed a chewier Monday than usual but that and REPAST / LOEWE (also an unfamiliar proper noun) threw us for a loop.
@Erin & Erin - I don't know your ages, but if you're like 2 or 3 years old, maybe CHICK COREA was before your time. He released albums fairly continuously up until he died in 2021. And there was a posthumous one with Béla Fleck released in 2024.
@Erin & Erin I don't think he'd be obscure but if you just aren't into jazz, I could see how you might not be familiar. He was performing at least through 2016 and maybe afterwards because his band continued until his death in 2021. He had a retrospective at the Lincoln Center in 2011 and is considered one of the great jazz pianists, along with McCoy Tyner, Keith Jarrett, and Herbie Hancock. He got his start with Coltrane.
@Erin & Erin CHICK VOTEA was a person, not a band.
@Erin & Erin Please forgive the fat fingers.
@Erin & Erin Chick Corea is not that old, but it is obscure even though judging by the grammy's Chick is a big deal in that specific scene. NPR published that only 17% of those buying tickets for Jazz performances are under the age of 45. Contemporary jazz is definitely known way less in the overall culture than more classical periods.
Really bad puzzle for a Monday and just plain questionable to begin with. As a Minnesotan who DOES go ice fishing I wonder where (or if it is ever) ICESAW is said… LOEWE bag? I asked my wife about this who is obsessed with purses and she had never heard that name (granted they are $6k) but she still is pretty aware of handbags… CHICKCOREA? With crosses like MENSCH, KIM and ODESSA? Terrible puzzle and even worse by the editors 🤦🏻♂️ Rating: 0/10
@Darren I grant you that this had lot more difficult entries than usual for a Monday and that you are angry about that. But 0/10? This is the very worst puzzle you could possibly imagine? No puzzle could possibly be worse than this one?
@Darren - I live on a lake that is full of ice fishers and their shacks in the winter. Granted, augurs are far more common than saws for cutting hole through which one fishes, but saws are also used, especially for those larger fishing shacks in which you want a nice large hole inside for more than one person to use, to help keep lines separated. Saws make a larger hole with nice, clean edges. They do increase the likelihood of unfortunate accident, though. I've also never heard of LOEWE but it was easily solved from the crosses. The remaining four were simple gimmes.
@Darren Zero??? Very harsh. G**gle seems very familiar with ICE SAWs and many merchants seem eager to sell me one thereby. As for Chick Corea, he's far more notable than any of the many LIL rappers that are commonly mentioned. Far more. Your other examples are also eminently knowable. Your review is rejected.
@Darren Ice saw is for sturgeon fishing(spearing).
To add to the discussion, I would like to say that I'm a relative one-yearish newbie. (I have not yet completed a Thursday puzzle without lookups.) But I got the gold star on this one and completed it without any cheating or lookups or even google. I must admit that I didn't notice the clever music genre elevator bits in the circles until I read the Wordplay column. I should have remembered to look at those! I was happy to fill in CHICKCOREA as a friend of mine once made me trade him a CHICKCOREA album for a camera he swapped me. I have since looked the musician up and he does have a very wide swath of the jazz scene. I didn't even know that he was a pianist (like me--well, one year of piano lessons). I'm sorry to hear that the puzzle considers an ATLAS to be a 56D [Book made obsolescent by GPS]. I like to look at and study maps. And I don't even have a GPS. I looked up the 48D ["I was angry with my foe: / I told it not, my ___ did grow": William Blake] poem. Too sad. If I'm going to think about plants, I'd rather think about 2D [Plants with tendrils] VINES. I have grapeVINES, and pumpkin VINES growing in my garden now!
@lucky13 - Agree 1000% about ATLAS and GPS. I almost made a comment about this but refrained. No way does a GPS in any form replace a map. They are two distinct but related things, in that a GPS displays a map. Planning a long road trip on a GPS is essentially impossible. GPS does NOT render the ATLAS obsolete, or even obsolescent, as the clue says. Close enough for a crossword, but inaccurate in the real world.
@lucky13 FWIW, I used to use my street map along with my bus/commuter rail map to be able to pinpoint the exact bus route (along with transfer buses) in a neighboring county! Those were the days.
Nice ride, Jeff and Stephan. I was hoping to see Brian ENO...
No, I just wanted to see Brian ENO. <a href="https://elevate.at/en/arts/music-for-elevators-brian-eno" target="_blank">https://elevate.at/en/arts/music-for-elevators-brian-eno</a>/
CHICK COREA crossing KIM and ODESSA was just inexcusable for a Monday. A very disappointing puzzle whose theme and clues both caused me to frown into my Monday morning coffee. Very little wordplay, a lot of opaque answers (REPAST? YOWZAH? LOEWE?), and the theme was inscrutable even after solving. A good theme is like a good joke: if you have to explain it, it probably wasn’t all that great. Not a great start to the week.
@Edward I’ll give you that this had some difficult entries for a Monday, but this seemed like a pretty typical theme, if you didn’t recognize it then I’m guessing you are fairly new?
As an observation over the past little while, it seems like we are getting our wish for upping the difficulty. (Of course I could just be going downhill.)
Surprised how many people seem to have forgotten about Odesa/ODESSA. It is Ukraine's largest seaport and Putin really, really wants it. If he gets it, he will have total control of the Black Sea. Here's a front page article in this newspaper from several months ago. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/25/world/europe/ukraine-odesa.html?unlocked_article_code=1._VA.L6u6.tewJTmnFcheD&smid=url-share" target="_blank">https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/25/world/europe/ukraine-odesa.html?unlocked_article_code=1._VA.L6u6.tewJTmnFcheD&smid=url-share</a>
@Lynn.....Ukraine---"Bread basket of the world."
@Lynn I remembered it, but I confess to not knowing that the native spelling contained a single S. Glad to have learned something new!
@Dave Same here. I might have read that at some point but the spelling with two esses is what I remembered.
@Lynn I was similarly surprised that so many didn't know the Kipling novel, in which the young hero is trained to spy for the British. In one of the training exercises, the instructor reveals a tray of objects, and then covers it up again, and KIM has to write down as many as he can remember. We played "Kim's Game" in Boy Scouts.
Several minutes flyspecking for wOWZAH… wIKES!
Today’s poem made from today’s puzzle: a/ now let’s carry all robes all the robes of the wizards and princes of the young, the older the ordered and dependable let’s carry all the holy robes across d/ the passing night star light tendrils uplifting the holder offering up newborn kisses a/ yes! yes! we’re all yes!
I cannot tell you how disappointed I am after I excitedly filled in dANDB (before I had the rest of 7D filled in), only to realize one of my most listened to genres of late was not, in fact, getting some love in the NYT. I jest, this was a great puzzle! A little more difficult than a typical Monday for my particular sets of knowledge, but fun and rewarding nonetheless.
I managed to finish under my average despite hunting a typo for a while. I was convinced it had something to do with the randb?, ran db?, rand b?, genre that I was oblivious to. Finally found and fixed errandboyD, and still managed to finish under my average. :) Looked up randb afterwards, and boy did I feel dumb. :p
I do hope ELEVATOR MUSIC was not intended as the theme. Those genres would not seem to be likely choices. Further thoughts: That's not how *I* spell EENEY....actually, I never use that. I come from a "One potato, two potato" family. I thought CHICK COREA was a musician from an older era...not that I've ever heard of the "Elektric Band," but the name sounds more recent. I had gotten KIMONO and KIM, which gave me hope that there would be more words with K*I*M--such as aKIMbo. Oh, well. ODESSA is how I've always seen it spelt. Happy Monday and Happy Labor Day.
@Mean Old Lady Chick Corea died in 2021 and was playing, superbly, to the last. He led his Elektric and Akoustic bands alternately. He got his start with Stan Getz in the mid-60s, was in Miles Davis's 1969 'Lost Quintet' and hit the big time with his fusion band Return to Forever. The less said about his scientological side the better.
A lovely puzzle but deeply inconsistent in difficulty. Sections were spot on for Monday, others for Wednesday? Needed some editing on the fill IMO.
If I am allowed to be picky, based on the revealer clue, "Uplifting music," shouldn't have all the solutions have read from bottom UP to top? I get that an elevator goes up and down, but the clue alludes to only one direction. Still, a fun puzzle.
@Francis DeBernardo The word 'elevator' also alludes to only one direction. Just noticed that.
Loved it! Harder than the average Monday, but a fun and easy theme. Though, like many, I did get dooked by R AND B.
Not too bad, a bit harder than last Monday. The poems of William Blake are well worth a read.
Just a nod to my family in Barcelona, where they speak Catalan as their first language.
@Jillian I was hesitant to fill this in, because I didn’t know what “to be” (ephemeral kind of “to be”) is in Catalan. I guess it’s the same in both Spanish and Catalan in this case, according to Google Translate.
Northwest with ELBOWS / LOEWE / WISE / REPAST all in the same small section is 100% Friday or Saturday level. I feel like the Great Easening includes a little psyop they’re using to train newbs with early week puzzles. They seem to be adding sections that are tougher than early week puzzles from years past. Archive Mondays and Tuesdays feel easier to me. If it’s all about daily active users + average time per session, this would make sense. Longer sessions in the app, plus training newcomers to battle through the tough bits so they’ll be more likely to give late-week puzzles a try. I’m just along for the ride, man. Come what may.
@Striker I agree, way too hard for a Monday (except it was northeast, not northwest)
"If I were a carpenter and you were a lady, would you marry me anyway, would you have my baby?" Sounds like a lot of puzzlers are not familiar with this song. It's not The Carpenters. Tim Hardin wrote and recorded it in 1966, and Bobby Darin had a hit with his cover in 1967.
@jennie First of all, why didn’t you attach this comment to the thread you were addressing? Secondly, reading that other thread, I didn’t get the impression that those commenters thought the clue referred to the Carpenters.
Always a please to see a Jeff Chen et al construct
I got stuck in the upper right...and a few other places. Some good twists to the clueing. Best part of the morning: reading Sam's column!
After reading some of the comments, I'm surprised how many people struggled a bit with this one. I'm pretty sure it was my personal record for solving with zero lookups. I had no issues with a lot of the words and the ones that I did have issues with were easily solved once I solved the corresponding column or row. Like the writer of the article, I also did not look at the puzzles theme which is a flaw of mine, but maybe it ended up helping me in this instance.
Not in a boasting way, but I have to join the list of those who don't quite understand how people found this to be a particularly difficult puzzle (as noted both here and in XWSTATS.) In fact, I went back to look at the puzzle to see if maybe today's clues played to whatever my particular (minor) strengths are, but didn't see anything notable. Maybe people just enjoyed a bit too much Labor Day weekend celebrating yesterday?
@William My guess is that a lot of the difference in experiences comes down to the Chick Corea clue. A lot of people mentioned never having heard of him, and it's not the kind of name where you could take educated guesses about the missing letters if you also had any trouble with the crosses.