Need I mention that class and genus are two completely different things in biology?
@Steve L Yes, I was very disappointed in this. Not a fair misdirect, just wrong. Could have been fixed by making the clue “Part of a biology class?”
@Steve L Am I missing something? Indeed, class and genus are different in the taxonomic sense, but the English meaning of "class" covers much more territory than taxonomy. See for example, dictionary.com : Class meaning genus meaning 3 is "kind, sort, class" but only in one sense of the
@Steve L Since I got GENUS almost immediately with the crosses, it seemed fair enough.
@Steve L PhD biologist here; while of course I noticed, it didn't bother me at all. Perfectly fair misdirection based on legitimate polysemy IMO.
@Steve L et al Looks like this is not a hill we want to die on, and the tide of Visigoths is beginning to overwhelm us. Our battle on behalf of scientific literacy will have to continue another day. I surrender, for today at least!
"Is this bird from the Tytonidae or Strigidae family?" "Owl be the judge of that." ("Oh, you're so talon-ted.")
@Mike You've reached the beak of kindness.
@Mike They have a competition for these kind of birds, i think it’s called the “superb owl”? Anyway, this year’s winner is quite a headturner.
@Mike Today's entry was a rare species -- or the order of genius. When you have good ones like this, I phylum away.
Got stuck at the crossing of ANKE with KOOKABURRAS. Having never heard of either, ANNE / NOOKABURRAS seemed plausible enough.
@Bob NOOKY BURROS are donkeys doing what comes naturally! I was going to use another word besides donkeys but didn’t think the emus would let it fly.
@Bob I responded that NOOκγ BURROS are donkeys that are doing what comes ηαturally. Not sure why the emus ate it, but maybe some Greek letters will get it through. I actually was going to use a three letter word for a type of donkey but I really didn’t think the emus would let that fly!
@Bob I had a response that had to do with N__KY BURROS that got emu’d twice even with Greek letters. Maybe this one will show up, and you can guess what it was about but worded quite mildly, I thought.
@Bob for me it was crossing KOOKAB[?]RRAS with Oliva M[?]NN ! pardon me that i don’t know the actor, that M[A]NN is a very normal-seeming last name, and heaven forbid i dont know all of this animal name’s vowels and put KOOKAB[A]RRAS!! kind of a lame way to have one letter off and not finish the puzzle
@Bob----Kookaburras---famous Australian birds that sound like they are laughing. See Wikipedia.
@Bob Not knowing the tennis player, I started Cookaburras with a C -- oops. After looking all over, and even making sure all the O's were not zeros [they look alike in my app's font] I went and read the column. Problem solved!
Today marks my 2,000 day streak!
@Coleman Maberry, Whoa! (Or WOAH!) Major milestone! That is hard to achieve. Congratulations!! 🎉🎈👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
@Coleman Maberry, absolutely amazing! 🎉🎉🎉
Thank you so much to those of you who responded to my post yesterday. It means so much to me. Not sure when I will be commenting again, because doing the puzzle remains so difficult. But hope to be back here soon.
@Times Rita I just saw this right now. Thankful for you sharing that with us and sending lots of healing wishes your way. Hope you can get back to puzzling soon and wishing you a very speedy recovery!
@Times Rita I'm sorry that your incident made puzzling so difficult. It's such a good diversion so often, so it really stinks that when you could use a diversion the most, it's so difficult. Wishing you all the very best and hoping you can be back here soon on the regular!
@Times Rita Till we meet again.
@Times Rita Even those of us who didn’t respond were moved. I wish you a very speedy recovery (with no pesky Naticks!)
@Times Rita, I was one of many here who was sorry to hear about your being laid up for a while. We appreciate hearing from you, knowing how difficult it must be for you to communicate now. I hope your pain is manageable, and that you can soon get to the point where solving crosswords isn’t such a physical challenge for you. Best wishes for your continuing recovery! 🙏🏻
Pleased to say that I have seen KOOKABURRAS in their natural habitat when I spent 5 months in Australia. Just recently got my pictures digitised. I have a friend who teaches stage or MOCK combat and have been on stage when there were mock combats happening. Final note: RIP Walter Koenig original Star Trek cast
@Megan Walter lived long and prospered.
Oh, I see. Not the COMBAT end, but the BAT end. Not the MAMMOTH end, but the MOTH end. Not the BOWL end but the OWL end. Not the SWITCH end, but the WITCH end. This is SO good! My appreciation for this idea knows no bounds since I've had the idea of FLY BY NIGHT as a theme for maybe as long as two years. It kept popping into my head at 3 a.m. when, unable to sleep, I would lie in bed trying to come up with puzzle themes. I loved the phrase, but couldn't come up with any interesting or clever way to use it. I would then drop it and go on to try and come up with something else. What a terrific way to use it! Kudos to Jeff and Bharati! The grid is smooth-as-silk too. No junk and very few names. A much better-than-average Tuesday, I'd say.
@Nancy I thought there were quite a few names! I noticed because I didn't know them. Still enjoyed it however.
I find that themes are a dime a dozen. And I love clue-writing. It's grid construction that is the real burden for me.
This biologist had no trouble with GENUS as clued. It's just some good misdirection. If I were writing the clue, though, I might have played with the major taxonomic group immediately above GENUS, which is "family." So, perhaps "Member of a Family" or, even better, with the veiled capital: "Family member". If "member" isn't copacetic with you, then how about "Family division" or even more fun for the pedants: "Family subclass".
"So, perhaps "Member of a Family" or, even better, with the veiled capital: "Family member"." I know that names of specific families are capitalized, like Asteriidae, and Asteraceae, and even Zoroasteridae--thus he spake!--but is the common noun "family" capitalized, when speaking of taxonomy?
@Captain Quahog That would be better. I would have even been more ok with “class member” because a genus is a member of a class if not immediately so.
This was an incredibly fun puzzle to do with just acrosses, proud of myself for that achievement. It was fun to suss out all those wonderful downs like KOOKABURRA and INKWELL and LIPRING and SAVETHEDATE. You do miss out on puzzling out misdirections in the down clues, but I think SAVETHEDATE was the only noteworthy one. Had to do a double take at the spelling of WOOLLYMAMMOTH (Lewis will probably comment on double letters). The SE nearly did me in with just acrosses, even though I pulled ARUBA out of my bottom I had to play around guessing INCA or INGA and GRU or GNU or some university because I was running through real biology classes in my brain (CETUS is one) and as Steve L mentioned I couldn’t see any way GENUS could be a fair answer until I tried it. Loved this theme; I was briefly disappointed that three of the theme endings were hidden inside the word and the last one ROGUE wasn’t (flying as in escaping). Until I realized that wasn’t a themer and OWL was (LOL)! Incidentally UFOS also fly by night. Lovely to see the legendary Jeff Chen in a byline, you can always count on a safe landing of a puzzle with him, as you say, Bharati. Congratulations on a fun puzzle and collaboration.
@SP Yay, well done! I managed the Across only challenge too, feeling quite smug and happy, and surprised because my grid was looking threadbare until something clicked. In fact, what clicked was OMA_A and then MER_I, because i already had EMO, DEM, LEIA and OHARA, so i knew the revealer ended in CH, which soon became TCH, and suddenly i was pulling at a thread that unraveled the whole thing. What a ride! (Full disclosure: it turns out i can’t spell WOOLLY, and my initial attempt to put WOOLYMAMMOTH flopped. But the MOTH got me back on track when i got the revealer. Yay!) Happy Tuesday!
@SP -- Yes, Lewis probably will (see above)...
Very cool! Really like the theme, and here's a quick tip of the hat for the moo / mew mashup!
Pretty good all around Tuesday. Felt myself getting lost a few times. Where there’s a Rhino though, a gnu may follow.
I was not a fan of today's puzzle. Most of it was easy, the southwest corner though. Proper nouns, vocabulary words and weak clues. Interesting that two times in a week we get a RAVI Shankar clue. I listen to him every now and again but he's not super well known outside India or very specific kinds of music fans.
@Chris Beatles fans should all know him too, as he taught George to play the sitar! Thank you Ravi!!
@Chris Ravi Shankar is also the father of world-famous singer-player-songwriter Norah Jones.
@Chris if it’s too easy, try the Across only challenge!
@Chris I thought he was quite famous. Basically the only name that I’ve ever heard associated with the sitar.
"Proper nouns, vocabulary words and weak clues." Chris, The first two describe most crossword answers, so I'm not sure what your issue was. Which were the weak clues?
My mood and this puzzle matched, perfectly, one might even say, tenderly, fondly. It was like dinner with someone you might not always get along with. Sometimes things can go astray. But on this one special, magical occasion the stars align and the banter is light but not silly, the conversation meaningful and maybe challenging, but not unfriendly. The disagreements are minor and easily worked out. And flirting, but not enough to involve HR. (Don't ask.) And, at the end, a special goodbye treat. Did anyone notice the buried gem tucked away at 64D [They wave their wands so you can fly, for short]?
@Francis Thanks for highlighting it, I did miss it! That’s what one gets for focusing on acrosses.
58D. I filled in Teri at first, but after I put...the candle...back stuff fell into place. That vas a fun puzzle! It vas a roll in zee hay!
@Call Me Al I did shed a baby tear for Teri Garr and Catherine O’Hara. What gifts they were.
Credit to the constructors for coming up with this theme answer set. There are not many common words that end in BAT (such as ACROBAT) or MOTH (such as BEHEMOTH), that also are the last words of common phrases. Jeff and Bharati not only had to find theme answers that did this, but that also met the requirements of symmetry. This on top of coming up with this terrific theme idea out of the phrase FLY BY NIGHT in the first place. So, lots of excellence baked into the box today. Bravo you two!
When the revealer said "the ends," it really meant it!
@Barry Ancona, that elevated the theme quite a bit, didn’t it!
I solved this in standard Tuesday time but it felt more difficult than average - partially because of misdirection, which is good, but also due to an abundance of proper names, which I never enjoy. I've never heard the phrase FLY BY NIGHT before. I also didn't realize MAMMOTHs could fly - their wings must have been enormous! STAGNANT the adjective made me realize Polish doesn't really feature its equivalent. Stagnacja is the Polish noun equivalent to "stagnation",.and it's used quite commonly. However, while the adjective "stagnacyjny" features in dictionaries, I've never heard or seen the word used in the real world in my 4+ decades. Google autocorrect doesn't recognize it, either - it desperately wants to change it to the noun "stagnacja". (Yes, I know it's moths that fly, but I'm wondering how many people will reply without reading the whole comment)
@Andrzej agree. I blame end of a long day of work brain. And riding a very bouncy bus home! 🥸
@Andrzej It's moths, not mammoths, that fly! Mammoth wings would have to be way too big.
@Andrzej Is there a different word for eg stagnant water? Water that has stopped moving and has become contaminated. Mosquitos love it.
@Andrzej I just stopped by to let you know that a new Bosch book just dropped. I seem to recall that you’re a Michael Connelly fan.
WOOLLY MAMMOTH, a two word-phrase with three double letters – how many of these can there be? I don’t know, but I wanted to send a musician and caffeine-loving friend a BASSOON REED and COFFEE SPOON, but alas, I lost the SHIPPING ADDRESS.
"Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree. Merry, merry king of the bushes he. Laugh, kookaburra, laugh. Kookaburra gay your life must be..." Ah childhood.
@Amy, But isn’t it (and I say this in all seriousness) “Merry, merry king of the bush is he”, … referencing the Australian Bush (not the bushes).
Easy one for me thanks to my kindergarten teacher, Miss Kaborski. 64 year ago she taught us the Kookaburra Song, recited here from memory: Kookaburra sits on the old gum tree, Merry, merry king of the bush is he. Laugh, Kookaburra Laugh, Kookaburra Gay your life must be. Funny how I can remember that, but my neighbor's first name still escapes me.
@Don H did y'all sing it as a round? That's how I learned it! Either in elementary school or the one year I was in Girl Scouts.
@Don H If you want to remember something forever, make up a rhyme about it. That's how it was done in many pre-literate societies.
I know that I've heard of a kookaburra, but I don't think I've ever gone any father than hearing the name. Till today. What a beautiful, fascinating little bird. Can endure the stickiness of a humid forest or the arid savannah. Is carnivorous, and so helping us with the insects. Has won 10 grammy awards. (Oh, wait, that last one I went to the wrong tab where I'd pulled up wiki for Norah Jones. What's worse is that I was writing something about Norah Jones in another place and I just saw that I described her as "...seeing her prey she dives down and grab them with her strong beaks".) But those little cutie-pie former terrifying dinosaurs do have a voice so evocative of the jungle that they get voice-over acting gigs all the time. I wish I were a kookaburra.
@Francis My wife and I encountered KOOKABURRAS on our Australian vacation in 2009. Back then I was still able to remember new things, so today it was an unusual, huge gimme. And you'll have to be satisfied with being a kook.
@Francis love our Kooks and their laughing calls. Happily be woken by a kooka rather a rooster any day.
@Francis His other daughter, Anoushka, isn't bad, either.
Loved the revealer. Excellent Tuesday puzzle :)
In the mini I thought "has texts and scrolls" was MOSES not PHONE.😅😅😅
Loved the 'fly by night' theme! So very clever! Tried to picture mammoths and bowls with wings flying at night. Gotta love the owl that likes to wake me at 4 in the morning! 🦉🦉🦉. MERCI for a fun Tuesday puzzle.
@Jeff B MD FYI: We are capable during daylight hours, but after that awful business in Salem, we felt obliged to curtail our activities...
We sang about kookaburras around the campfire, without any idea what they looked like: “Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree Eating all the gumdrops he can see Stop, Kookaburra, Stop, Kookaburra Leave some there for me.”
We were singing it here last night around the campfire...
@Marc A. Leaf Merry king of the bush is he.
Kookaburra crossing Munn and Anke?! On a Tuesday? For me, this is the worst kind of clue. Just random letters on a page.
@Stuart S. I can't remember the last time I needed a lookup on a Tuesday but I did here. Yuck!
@Stuart S. Totally agree. WAY too many names - especially for a Tuesday.
@Stuart S. I had NOOKABERRA and had to resort to running the alphabet on the first letter while trying all the vowels in M_NN. I had no confidence that would actually work - the piano trill gave me a heart attack when it finally hit!
Well, it obviously should have been "whup."
TIL to spell WOOLLY MAMMOTH. That wasn't my guess for woolly, but I like it! In my experience, if a word looks spelled correctly, it almost always is. Might take awhile for this one to feel right. Maybe write it on the blackboard 100 times and then head back to my desk with the built in INKWELL. That's a another challenge. Left-handed writing with ink pen can be quite smudgy!
@Jancy It will also come in handy for spelling woolly bear caterpillar!
It's been just over a week, but in my mind, I'm still in ARUBA! Mmmm! ⛱️👙🌞🍸🌊🛳️ Still haven't found the buffet in this darned place we had to live in after the cruise!! Or the soft serve ice cream!! I'm telling you, 0/5 stars! Fun puzzle though!!
@HeathieJ, And where are all the people that wait on you hand and foot, anyway? 😄
For those interested in seeing a beautiful kookaburra and hearing its famous call: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcJegUXNHYA" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcJegUXNHYA</a> . Regarding the woolly mammoth, I learned that their appearance is well-studied even though they are extinct, because frozen carcasses have been found in Siberia and North America. I thought they would be larger than today’s elephants because, well, “mammoth”, but no, they are about the size of today’s African elephants. Yes, they had fur, but their most memorable feature to me is their magnificent huge curved tusks. Look at the skeleton here: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woolly_mammoth" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woolly_mammoth</a> . So, Jeff and Bharati, in addition to giving me a fun solve, you elegantly enriched my wheelhouse. Thank you!
@Lewis Some were frozen so abruptly that, in the mouth of one such mammoth, the scientists studying it found buttercups...
Brainchildren. We need more brainchildren.
We could use some more wise guys too. ...
Needed more names, you know, because those are so much fun.
25 Down. Sing along! <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEsKV91yJiw" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEsKV91yJiw</a>
@Barry Ancona Sha'n't. I have to sleep at some point tonight…
@Barry Ancona Hah!! My daughter and I used to have such a good time singing this as a round, each of us trying to sing louder than the other while holding our hands over our ears. Great memories!
Enjoyed flying by night through this fun puzzle.
NOICE puzzle with fun theme. I am a tiny bit surprised that some don't know the KOOKABURRA. We learned to sing the song about them in music class in grade school. Maybe there aren't music classes any more? I've also been idly wondering if flying WOOLLY MAMMOTHS were the ancestors of Dumbo.
Today’s poem was a stubborn one and incidentally a herd of rhinos is a “stubbornness”… a/ cream trickled from a star down to the island d/ where laughing was born and low and high and gently go i with great delight before the milk birds their course they fly over under around and by and by to thank with all false words the a/ rhino
That was so much fun. Despite not knowing any of the ‘real’ names it all filled in very quickly. Unusually for me, as I’m not generally that quick on the uptake, I saw the fly by night creatures straight away. Yay me. The scary weather has finally abated, though they’re warning of more to come at the weekend. Hope it holds out as our local school is holding its Bonfire Night celebrations on Saturday. Would be a shame for their hard work to end up a damp squib. 🤞
Any time a movie sound editor needed a "jungle sound effect", they'd go to the archive and pull out the kookaburra call. Brazil, Africa...doesn't matter. Are there really 2 "L"s in Wooly? Woolly? I'm skeptical.
I've also seen it written as Woolie!
@Teresa I...I don't know.
@Teresa No, you're just exchanging raw intelligence for experience and wisdom, which are far more valuable. I lie to myself like that all the time.
Solutions to 23A, 51A, and 59A--ANKE, MUNN, and LORI, respectively--were such particular bits of knowledge that they made the even more particular bit of knowledge (and NYT debut) 25D--KOOKABURRAS--impossible for me to solve using crossings.
@Francis DeBernardo - same here... I even kind of had the bird in mind, however had no idea how to spell it properly without looking it up.
I looked at COMBAT, MAMMOTH, BOWL and SWITCH and thought the joke was over my head. It took a couple of beats. I felt a little TOO SLOW.
@Nancy J. LORI Grenier is well known as one of the original sharks on the TV show "Shark Tank." She's a prolific inventor and entrepreneur herself and also sponsors and supports gazillions of up-and-coming businesses. Some of us watch "Shark Tank" religiously for years, saying for a friend.
What a delightful puzzle! Best Tuesday I can remember in years.
Nice Tuesday puzzle. Needed to work the crosses in a number of places before an answer dawned on me, but that just makes for an enjoyable workout. And... had to pause and think for a bit when I was almost done to finally grasp the theme. That's always a nice touch. And, my puzzle find today: A Thursday from July 3, 1975 by Sidney L. Robbins. A couple of pairs of theme answers: 3-down: "School traffic violation" DOWNTHEUPSTAIRS 11-down: "Return route for 3 down." SRIATSNWODEHTPU And then... 36d - "Mis-headed flier of 1938" NAGGIROC 9d - "Epithet for 36-down, appropriately" YAWGNORW Here's that link: <a href="https://www.xwordinfo.com/PS?date=7/3/1975&h=3d" target="_blank">https://www.xwordinfo.com/PS?date=7/3/1975&h=3d</a> ....
One of my bedside tables is a repurposed school desk; the INKWELL is still in place. Perfect height and size. Ditto the piece on the other side of the bed, which once held a treadle sewing machine; (the gap is covered by a cut-to-order piece of plexiglass.) DHubby converted an oil lamp base and wired it for electricity. Waste not, want not. Just what an antique wife wanted! Jeff Chen, nice job of assisting! You are a very busy person! (I play WWF with another resident here, and there are some little puzzles on the site. Not my fave activity, but I hate to pull the rug out because my opponent is so sweet a person. She credits my tutelage, and recently crushed me in a game; methinks I went too far! LOL
Happy Bat Week, everyone! Thanks to today's puzzle creators for helping us celebrate those wonderful little flying mammals who reduce mosquito populations and pollinate plants. Here's a social media posting from the U.S. National Park Service about Bat Week: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/nationalparkservice/posts/pfbid02GtW2Jq6zi7SpiMpgWwHfb9nLapuDgQWn2fvfsZnJG5Uow4Zv7auj2sa1diS8FYikl" target="_blank">https://www.facebook.com/nationalparkservice/posts/pfbid02GtW2Jq6zi7SpiMpgWwHfb9nLapuDgQWn2fvfsZnJG5Uow4Zv7auj2sa1diS8FYikl</a>
Does anyone creating crosswords ever read contemporary poetry? Seriously. We don’t say yon, oer, ere, the list goes on.
@klh...... It's called "vocabulary enrichment."
@klh We say o’er before every major sporting event in this country. Even now.
@klh I guess I don't know the answer to that, but old poetry is pretty darn great!! There once was a man from Nantucket.... 😏
@klh I don't think that list does go on. I think that's the complete list. If you can't stand the glue, get out of the puzzle.