Oh what a lovely Thursday. Absolutely loved the theme. Nicely done, designer! Wonderful debut! Congrats!
To those who are getting acquainted with NYT puzzles. This is a fair Thursday. You have to figure out the blank word that is missing from the clue, but that word isn’t the answer - it’s merely the rest of the clue. This is a mental workout that takes time to spot and understand. A good tip is if you see something you don’t quite understand, keep solving until you can see one of the answers start to appear. Then from there you can reverse engineer the word play used for a particular puzzle. This is also key for solving rebus clues. Remember, crosswords are like life, and things aren’t always as they pleas.
@Red Carpet Nicely put. When I start solving a puzzle like this, where answers just don’t make sense given the clue, I take a deep breath and remind myself that eventually, I’ll understand what is going on. And 99.9% of the time, I do.
@Red Carpet Fair Thursday is overly generous. This was Tuesday - Wednesday level. The trick wasn't even that hard to suss out. And the revealer makes no sense at all. They could have clued FIRE BLANKS in so many better ways. It may be a very oblique way of indicating that at the start of a footrace, they fire a starter's pistol, but this is a very loose association. On the whole, Thursdays no longer hold the joy they once did. Twas my favorite dya of the week, but alas, twas not meant to be.
Well, I love riddles. One reason is that the good ones almost always stump me. My brain just seems to have a hard time doing that kind of thinking. Still, my persistent brain works and works at trying to solve good riddles, and when, finally, I uncle, and receive the answer, it brings a huge aha because I put so much effort into it – looked at it from so many angles. I feel I’ve been gotten good and fair, and it’s a sweet wow experience all around. And thus today, with the Big Riddle as to what went into the blanks. Oh, I worked hard. I refused to uncover the revealer, and tried every which way to crack the riddle. And then, when the grid was nearly filled in, the answer hit me. Well, even better than being gotten good is a successful riddle-crack. Yes, I will be walking a bit taller today. Thank you, McKay, for coming up with a simple and elegant concept that drove me mad for a bit, and brought a huge "Yes!!!" Congratulations on your debut, and more like this please!
Another sweet moment? Uncovering ECLAIIR. I haven’t had one in many a year, and remembered its flavor, as though I had just taken a bite into one.
“Mapleleafm” was my first email address and I still use it today. People always think I’m Canadian, but I’m not. My old school bar trick is MLR is a tune I can always sit down and play by heart. It was such a delight to solve that clue by thinking of the note on which I begin the piece. It’s my favorite song in the whole wide world and always will be. Thanks for making my day.
@Miranda My sister introduced me to Scott Joplin’s music in the early 1970s. I’ve been a fan of it ever since. “Maple Leaf Rag” is one of his best compositions.
@Miranda I enjoy hearing and playing MLR too but as far as I’m aware it doesn’t have words and as such isn’t a song. Scott Joplin did write one opera called Treemonisha but his famous ragtime piano compositions are not songs 🤪 Mark
@Miranda Joplin's rags are great stuff. Alas, I am of a generation for wgich they are indelibly associated with that cynical manipulative long-con of a filn, The Stink. Sorry, The Sting.
@Miranda Good for you, Miranda! That’s a great trick. I think mine is variations on Happy Birthday by Denes Agay.
Fine debut. Nice easy Thursday (or Wednesday?). Good news and bad news (IMO) is that people will be able fill in the puzzle (and get their gold stars) without understanding the theme. Fire blanks indeed.
@Barry Ancona Don’t worry so much. Many of us enjoyed, and needed, the hint in the revealer
@Barry Ancona I thought the difficulty level was perfect for Thursday - the theme was not a gimme, many of the clues stumped me, and my solve time was actually closer to my Friday average.
@Barry Ancona I’m surprised the you wouldn’t rank highly a puzzle with CANTANKEROUS in it 😀 the revealer came late for me so I found it appropriately tough. There were trivia re blue mana, order of the Old Testament, a newspaper, football, and the crossing of themed entries that created enough of a bulwark for a Thursday.
Krad, I wasn't worried, and if you've returned to the comments, you've seen people who filled in the puzzle without understanding the theme.
Really enjoyed this puzzle, made me smile! Thank you!
"Southern California city with a Spanish name"? Uh..... all of them?
Randi, Fair point playing pub trivia, but this is a crossword: the answer has to be four letters (no rebus today) and it has to cross with four other words. That leaves one of them.
@Randi This reminds me of all the people who want to see The La Brea Tar Pits in SoCal. Translation: The the tar tar pits.
@Randi Yes! It’s not like that narrowed much of anything down. I had BajA as a place filler for a little while thinking maybe they were being cutesy with “southern” California.
Congratulations on your debut! This was a well thought out theme and a nice grid. I will probably not be the only one to wish it had been clued at a bit of a higher level and wonder if this weren’t better as a Wednesday theme. I say that because once you get the theme (took me a little bit, but not too long) then it becomes a themeless, and not a hard one at that. But none of that is up to you. It was still a great idea and a cute revealer. My only nit is “fireball” for COMET. Comets are made of ice and aren’t on fire. METEOR is more accurate but of course that doesn’t fit there; but they aren’t symmetric revealers so it didn’t need to be 5 letters. I’m going to just assume this is the metaphoric meaning of COMET, like “the entertainer’s MEGAHIT streaked to the top of the charts like a COMET”. Or maybe the reindeer was a bit of a fireball. Still, Frances may have something to say about that. My latest Crosshare puzzle is in; it’s a bit of a loose theme and breaks an unwritten rule about revealer placement. But, I think it’s pretty fun, has my favorite title of any of my puzzles, and is a pangram. <a href="https://crosshare.org/crosswords/t0ZW6f6CbLMNHFp3taeM/put-up-your-dooks" target="_blank">https://crosshare.org/crosswords/t0ZW6f6CbLMNHFp3taeM/put-up-your-dooks</a>
@SP Interesting theme, but I needed checks and reveals to deal with the fill in places. I don't care about revealer placement so I don't even get what you meant above. And obviously I don't understand the title so I have no idea why it's your favorite ever.
@SP I too thought this puzzle would have been better placed on a Wednesday. As Steve L. suggested, once you understand that you need to replace each blank in a clue with “Fire,” it becomes easy to solve. I’m looking forward to your Crosshare puzzle.
@SP Can you all please state which puzzle you're discussing in which post? It's annoying to truck down through a post or a thread only to discover that it has nothing to do with the NYT. Today's example: the stuff about DOOKs.
@SP Fireballs can be meteoroids from various places, including the asteroid belt, the moon or comets. Look for "cometary meteoroids" to learn more.
@SP Nice Crosshare puzzle. It took me 2x longer than today's NYT and falls right into my sweetspot for a Thursday puzzle.
Was wondering what the trick was all the way to the end. Nicely done!
Nice puzzle but, to be fair, calling a COMET a fireball is a bit far since it’s actually an ice ball that releases gas as the sun heats it up. So it’s about as far from a fireball as you can get.
@Benjamin Smith Who was it that started calling them "dirty snowballs"?
@Benjamin Smith Looks like fire from down here. Took a buncha millennia to figure out what it actually is.
Another puzzle where I just circled the grid, guessing what might be right, skipping answers that seemed too iffy, but keeping them in mind (e.g., LOADSUP), and finally understanding what the blanks represented. Looking things up wasn't wasn't necessary because that seldom helps except with proper names I'm clueless about, and the puzzle was free of those. What it all added up to for me was a tightly constructed, cleverly clued debut, one to be proud of (a Thursday, no less!). Congratulations, McKay Fritz.
@dutchiris May I add some emphasis to something you mentioned en passant: a grid free of obscure proper names! This is such an irritant to so many and Ms/Mr Fritz avoided it. Bravo, McKay.
Rather a nice crossword. As a fantasist, I’m a sucker for anything with DRAGONS and OGRES. And as a glutton for cheese, BRIE is a gimme. Lovely debut. More please.
@Petrol the Brie surely falls apart unless it’s already in pie slices.
@Petrol You and me both. Have you read The Empyrean Series by Rebecca Yarros? DRAGONS galore, to be enjoyed with BRIE and a cheeky Port.
Very fun theme. A rare one where I got almost all the way through the puzzle without getting any themers (except "lambasted" through crosses), then got the revealer and everything clicked right in. TETRA instead of bETtA tied me in knots at the end.
Anyone else google “comet ball”? Haha, I was firing blanks on that one. (There apparently is a juggling doodad called a comet ball.)
Although *Joplin: Complete Rags* (Schirmer ed.) is sitting on the piano, a mere four feet away from where I solved this puzzle, I resisted the temptation to get up and check what key the "Maple Leaf Rag" was in. I knew it was *something*-flat; Joplin, like most romantic composers, favored the flat keys. Here's the 1970 recording of "Maple Leaf Rag" by American musicologist Joshua Rifkin, who was, perhaps, single-handedly responsible for the "Joplin revival." (Rifkin's other major area of study was the choral compositions of J.S. Bach; his Bach performances and recordings are still controversial.): <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e10k9QIjTU4&list=RDe10k9QIjTU4&start_radio=1" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e10k9QIjTU4&list=RDe10k9QIjTU4&start_radio=1</a> It's worth repeating Joplin's famous admonition to solvers: "Do not solve this puzzle fast. It is never right to solve crosswords fast."
@Bill Five letters in the answer means it has to be "something-FLAT." Six means "something-MAJOR or MINOR."
@Bill Rifkin’s recordings were given a significant boost when The Sting was released in 1973. Starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford, the movie featured Scott Joplin’s ragtime music adapted by Marvin Hamlisch. It was a huge hit, winning multiple Academy Awards (including one for Hamlisch).
@Bill I don’t know music theory, but is it correct to say a piece of music is in the “key of A-flat”? If correct, It seems like it would be ambiguous.
I look forward to thursdays! And if I get the trick, I bore my girlfriend with descriptions of them. Super fun!
Really enjoyed that one! Didn't take too long, but kept the 'little grey cells' working all the way to the end. Well done to the creator. Maybe not Thursday difficult, but excellently constructed nevertheless!
Had the puzzle well over half filled before catching on to the theme. Knowing the theme helped me fill in some blank patches in the puzzle that needed some extra help. Solved in 55% less time than average. Congratulations McKay on your debut puzzle.
This is in no way connected to today's puzzle, but The Guardian has a good piece on Poland: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/15/poland-economy-heights-transformed-regional-tech-hub?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other" target="_blank">https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/15/poland-economy-heights-transformed-regional-tech-hub?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other</a>
@Andrzej I read your linked article with only mild interest until the chart that showed shop-bought beer prices had increased 49%. I feel your pain.
@Andrzej....... great photos, wonderful to see.
Nice debut and theme, even if it was over too quickly.
I was fired up to do this puzzle, so I liked the theme which I found quite clever. I entered some of them without catching on to the trick, but once I had enough crosses to get the revealer I raced to fill in the rest. My favorite was LAMBASTED for put under ——.
Solved this low-key Thursday puzzle with a minimum of HOOPLA. Just one, in fact.
@Mike R 46A Hubbub? HOOhah? was one of many clues where I had plenty of choices. Among many others: 9A pOwEr(ball) 18A needS 20A (sure) asshooTing [By now I was getting suspicious!] 28A NEGATIve [These can't be all accidents] 32A Caesar [Come /on/!]... Well, enough. At some point mid-puzzle, I did grasp that the FDNY had come through and put out (heh!) all the fires. (BTW why no (Fire) ISLAND at 50D? A gimme!) But all those not-quite-right answers were just cruciverbal candy! I loved it*! * But with one nit. See next post.
Congratulations, McKay Fritz, on your crossword debut! Nicely done, even if it was not quite as tricky as I like to see on Thursday. (But that’s on the editors; to me, this would have been more appropriately placed on a Wednesday.) I was interested to read your shout-out to the people who publish the Ingrid puzzle construction site. I’ve not tried that one, but I have had some luck with Crosserville, another free web-based construction option. I’d urge anyone who is interested in construction to give it a try. There are lots of good resources, including the NYT series on “How to Make a Crossword Puzzle” and Patrick Berry’s comprehensive “Crossword Constructor’s Handbook.” <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/14/crosswords/how-to-make-a-crossword-puzzle-the-series.html" target="_blank">https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/14/crosswords/how-to-make-a-crossword-puzzle-the-series.html</a> <a href="https://aframegames.com/store/?download=21" target="_blank">https://aframegames.com/store/?download=21</a> Two great things about crossword construction as a hobby as compared to knitting, painting, pottery or whatever* are that the finished product takes up only disk space! And you might even get paid for it! *Let me be clear that I am not knocking any craft-making hobbies. I know lots of people who do that sort of thing and that’s great. It’s just not for me.
@Eric Hougland No offense taken...I'm just feeling sorry for you, since you are missing out!! You're bound to need a quilt up there in the mountainous territory!
Loved it! I kept getting the theme answers, especially with the crosses, but could not figure out why, until the end. (And, this sneaked up on me—today’s was my 2001st in a row! I said I’d stop worrying about my streak after 1000, but just kept going, wow)
Well, that was certainly fun to figure out and fill in! The DRAGONS helped me do it... Because I start at the bottom, I had FIRE BLANKS early on, but I was (and still am) a bit at sea with 50D ISLAND (Movie? Game?Cult?)... I had HEAPS UP for the buffet plate, MAXIMIZE for the 49A answer, and NEGATIVE for "!"--probably just what McKay Fritz planned up in his (her?) garret, cooking up this treat, cackling... No, seriously, great puzzle, fun trick, nice vocab...maybe a bit easy for a Thursday, but I am NOT complaining about that! More, please!
@Mean Old Lady Re ISLAND: Unfortinately,you have to know about the game referenced in the clue. Otherwise, the clue is just jabberwocky. I ignored it and solved using the crosses.
Don't go describing Ren as 'classic' (I say as I groan every time I rise from a chair).
Nice debut! It was very clever to use our familiarity with crossword clue formatting to trick us. I had to scratch my head over several confusing entries before finally figuring it out. A COMET isn't a fireball, of course, but looks like one. Clues are hints, not definitions; if a clue leads you to the correct answer, it's a good clue. Thanks for the fun!
@Peter C. "if a clue leads you to the correct answer," Well said!
A fine gimmick that at least didn't get in the way of a pleasant solve
Didn’t we just have a puzzle where the blanks were in the grid and not the clues? I don’t get flustered when doing a Thursday and I don’t immediately catch onto the trick. I just work around it until something fills itself in. Watching a playoff game (can you say “leadoff homer*”?) at the same time didn’t help. My time was slower than usual, but it was because of the conditions I was working under. Once I saw the trick, things moved quickly. * On the very first pitch of the game
@Steve L Wow! I remember when the Jays started one of the WS games with back-to-back jacks, as the announcers like to say. Tha-rilling!
Nice puzzle. Solved it without any insight into the twist.
Loved it! Elegant, uncomplicated, but yet kept me guessing until I was literally done with the fill. Then going back one by one was a blast: Aha! Aha! Aha! Congrats on the cool debut!
Thanks for the 'aha moment' when I figured out the theme. Things began to fall in place after that. Fun puzzle! (And the ! is not a negation.)
@Tom To a coder, the bang (!) is negation. Does anyone have another explanation? This does seem to be a bit specialized.
Our debut constructor came up with a dandy misdirection on having to construct the blue rather than fill in the blank. Very imaginative! Nice work, McKay Fritz!
This here was a terrific puzzle and a great debut. Thanks McKay!
Another week when I didn't clue into the theme until towards the end... and another fast solve for a Thursday! Great puzzle!
“Southern California city with a Spanish name” … 🤨
@Andre Oh c’mon! You knew it was only four letters! That narrows it down a lot. Still took me getting the B from the fairly predictable IBM to come up with the right city.
@Andre Isn't it "La Brea"? This and the "coding !" clue did me in. I knew VABS wasn't the answer to "bubbles" but wasn't worth it to try and figure out those last 4 or 5 squares.
I found this pleasantly and hopscotchily wrongfooting at every turn. Can't recall the last time I had to erase and re-enter so often. Not that it flummoxed my mind so much. The gimmick was fairly easy for me. More like a carnival amusement from my youth which required completing a maze of sorts with an ever-shifting floor. At this point in the easening I'm fairly grateful for any non-Kugelman anomaly.
@Matt You expressed exactly my experience with this one. I stumbled a whole lot before finally sorting it out.
@Matt Yes maxIMIZE instead of OPTIMIZE and NEGATive instead of NEGATION had me staring at the centre of the puzzle for a good while!
I've never seen 26D written with a "g" and not a "j" - maybe that's my parochial British English coming through. Only one clue I didn't understand elsewhere, 37D. Can anyone shed any light?
@Jonathon GIBE rather than jIBE uzzled me as well. GI_E crossing _AS was my final empty square, and as I entered B there I was honestly expecting to get the annoying "So close" pop-up. I was very surprised when it turned out to be right.
@Jonathon Here's an explanation! (Or not, lol.) From Merriam-Webster "Confused about jibe and gibe? The distinction actually isn't as clear-cut as some commentators would like it to be. Jibe is used both for the verb meaning "to be in accord" or "agree" (as in "the results do not jibe with those from other studies") and for the nautical verb and noun referring to the act of shifting a sail from one side to the other ("jibe the mainsail," "a risky jibe in heavy seas"). Gibe is used as a verb and noun for derisive teasing or taunting. But jibe is also a recognized variant of gibe, so it too has teasing or taunting uses. Gibe has been used occasionally as a variant of jibe, but the use is not common enough to warrant dictionary entry, and is widely considered an error." Plus of course the sailing term can also be spelled gybe, because.
@Jonathon Read lips for 37D. Read people's lips.
@Jonathon did you mean 37A? Rather an old-fashioned word, I think. To lambaste is to severely criticize, originally to assault physically. <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lambaste" target="_blank">https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lambaste</a>
Fun puzzle, congratulations! One of the things that had me looking for a rebus for quite some time is that I was looking for a way to contract 4A into something that ended with either major or minor, but I finally got off that sidetrack. I haven't read all the comments yet, so am I the first to point out the Scott Joplin said that ragtime music should never be played fast? I think Joshua Rifkin may be credited with the rediscovery of that principle. <a href="https://youtu.be/Rad6UvoGHV8?si=1QnJA_o30n-k34Ha" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/Rad6UvoGHV8?si=1QnJA_o30n-k34Ha</a> I was on the right track for 51A, but I went for pennibs before ERASERS. Nice misdirect there. Similarly, I thought that [Wheel that comes apart easily?] might be a novel cluing for Oreo before I saw that it had to be BRIE. Thanks for a fun Thursday!
@Jack McCullough I think we posting the exact same recording/information simultaneously!
Yes, it was easier than a typical Thursday, but the theme was clever and there were still some words that I had to get with the crosses, which is good. Nice debut!
Was working my way along ignoring the theme, until I came to 9A/11D - Hey! No fair! And then my brain caught ____. Had engorge before ENLARGE, NYE before DEC. Baja before BREA. But it all came together nicely. LOVE the picture with today's article. I think Barcelona was the best torch lighting ever!
Congratulations on a most excellent debut, McKay Fritz! The theme was a sureFIRE spark of creativity, and the fill was aFIRE with flair (LAMBASTED, ABACI, GENESIS, ECLAIR, GRECO, NEGATION, TRUCE and on and on.) Now, about ICE for bruises...yes, it is indeed a way of treating them. But I'll share with another way, taught to me by a French friend whose one-year-old daughter –learning to walk and falling all the time everywhere – had not even one bruise on her body. Boiron arnica gel! Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor. But I can give my first-hand account: that thing is amazing. When applied immediately after the injury, it stops the pain and prevents bruising! SRSLY. (End of PSA, onto music.) Tom Petty with "REFUGEE" - <a href="https://youtu.be/KDetoYBnxU4?is=y4qCARgD4mFeHSqB" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/KDetoYBnxU4?is=y4qCARgD4mFeHSqB</a>
Wonderful, wonderful puzzle. Way too easy for a Thursday, but that's not the composer's fault. Or maybe I just got lucky, noticing a gimmick early. Nice debut.
Clever puzzle. I did need the revealer, but then the theme offerings made sense. I had to fire up my brain.
poem made from words in today’s puzzle a/ for the majesty of the maple leaf d/ gathering the past in the circulation of a/ dragon’s fire
@Peter Valentine I just came in from a six-mile hike through one of our State Forests, in full fall-color splendor; this poem is particularly touching. Thank you!
Took me a while to figure out the trick but once I did it became a fun and fairly easy puzzle