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18A isn’t ambiguous—it’s another reference to this puzzle’s theme. Odysseus famously defeated the cyclops by gouging (or “poking”) out its eye, and since the creature only had the one, it was blinded. It’s no coincidence that this answer begins with the one, circled “I” in this puzzle.
This was a really excellent theme. A shifting rebus with a clever reveal clue AND the grid itself is designed to look like the Greek letter Phi? Fantastic. Phi-nominal, even.
The arcane GELID crossed with a clue that doesn’t pair “wheels” with MEALS was too much for a Tuesday. When I came across 55A I naturally assumed, without any other context provided, the clue referenced the massive, international “Meals on Wheels” charity program, rather than a seemingly random other word that happens to rhyme with wheels. I’m sure “deals on wheels” has been used in many advertisements for car sales, and was apparently the title of a British television program that ran for a few years in the late 90s, but I had absolutely no way to figure out this was the “rhyming partner” in question. When there is another, much more famous “partner” around, more context ought to be given in the clue.
Most of this puzzle came together fairly quickly for me, and I thought a lot of the longer clues were nicely clever, but… OXES? Is there something I’m missing here? Normally the plural of ox is “oxen”.
@T. Truffin In general, I assume people don’t read these articles until they’re finished with the puzzle, as they are routinely filled with answers and discussions of answers. So, in that spirit… How is this answer incorrect? On the GPA scale F is zero, D is one, C is two, B is three, and A is four, with “plus” or “minus” adding or deducting 0.3 points respectively. Therefore a 1.3 GPA is a DPLUS, the answer to the clue.
@Grant I think that’s a stretch. The clue didn’t suggest it was a philosophy practiced BY Confucius; it used the adjective “Confucian”, implying a connection to Confucius—and the philosophy most associated with Confucius is Confucianism, not Taoism. To make use of your example, if the clue was, “Religion associated with Jesus” or “Christian religion” and the answer was Judaism instead of Christianity, on the logic that Jesus Christ practiced Judaism, people would be justifiably confused.
It’s disappointing and a little frustrating to see “shoed” for 40A. ‘Shod’ is basically crosswordese, and when I first saw the clue I thought, “Well it can’t be ‘shod’ since it’s a five-letter word…”
As a Canadian, that upper-left corner was BRUTAL. An obscure American politician, an abbreviated US federal government organization, a British brewing company, a Hawaiian word… The cross of 1D and 22A was also very difficult without knowing that obscure politician, since there are many countries with more than 50% desert and guessing without the first letter is pointless. When I had “CEI” in a row from FACTORIAL, ATEAM, and REIKI (all straightforward clues) I assumed the end of “Let’s be real…” involved DECEIT, not FACE IT. Not an easy solve for me at all.
@Susan E That’s fair, and I’m sure you’re correct, but even so it seems like a somewhat arbitrary choice of rhyme when there are multiple (common) answers that could work. And again, this was mostly a problem when in combination with GELID, which I had no hope of guessing correctly.
I got the theme here relatively early—I solved “fruitlessly” and figured the answers would include fruit words that would be removed from the entire clue—but still couldn’t get enough of the crossed words to make sense of what the longer, fruit-containing but otherwise non-clued answers should be. Some trivia-heavy answers sapped the fun out of this one for me—a baseball hall-of-famer I’ve never heard of, a cosmetics brand I’ve never heard of, a car company I’d never heard of that doesn’t operate in my area, and “dross” instead of the “dregs” I had initially guessed combined to make the bottom-center of the puzzle quite miserable, for instance.
@Elder Millennial The clue wasn’t “naturopathic medicine”, and there are several forms of “holistic” medicine.
A nice, breezy Monday puzzle. A small usage note, however: “FTW” isn’t used to proclaim one’s own victory—at least not usually. It’s normally used to suggest that a particular thing is very good at what it does, and that its use could hypothetically lead (or has led) to victory. “X FTW” means “X is very good”; “Michael Jordan FTW” might be written about an old Bulls game to acknowledge Jordan’s dominance of the court, regardless of which team you were rooting for (to offer an example the older, non-video-game-oriented crowd will likely understand). Sometimes this might be used to celebrate a personal victory, but it wouldn’t be used on its own—it would be preceded by whatever you thought contributed most to that victory, and could just as easily be used by the loser to insult reliance on what they consider an unfair strategy, e.g. “faking injuries FTW” in the context of undue soccer penalties. It’s also a term you’re more likely to hear from Millennials or nerdy Gen Xers than the teens of today, I would think!
5D: While a lot of people will get this clue without issue, it’s worth pointing out that it’s based on discredited science and was disavowed by the researcher who originally coined the term. Wolves aren’t led by an “alpha” male who out-competes their peers; they’re generally led by a mother/father pair, who are in charge by virtue of being the parents of (and thus older than) the rest of the pack.
This was very likely my fastest Wednesday finish. I thought the theme was cute, but I definitely didn’t need to make use of it to solve the puzzle; I just ignored the crossed-out clues until I finished it up and then went back to figure out the H-dropping theme.
@Michael This is a reference to this puzzle’s theme: the cyclops of the Odyssey. Odysseus blinded the cyclops by poking out its eye.
@B,J I’m not sure I understand. What does the anterior cruciate ligament have to do with genocide? I don’t think there was any pun intended here—there’s no “?” in the clue hinting at anything like that.
I thought 61A was cute, but DINOSAURS are neither a race nor a species.
SIVA?!? Seriously??? Can someone explain to me why the answer to 18A is “SIVA” without any indications of an alternate spelling from the utterly ubiquitous SHIVA?
@Jamey Adding to this, from a Canadian website on Inuktitut language usage: “It’s important to note that in Inuktitut, the noun ‘Inuit’ is plural in form and refers to several persons. Therefore, it remains invariable in English, and an ‘s’ should not be added to the end of the word to pluralize it.” Some people DO write “Inuits” and it appears in some dictionary entries, but using the language as the people themselves recommend is a matter of cultural awareness and respect.
I have to gripe a bit about 67A… This is the second time in a short span that I’ve seen the NYT crossword use “lase” as a verb in this way: for a clue that should solve to “tase” but with an L, implying that someone is being “zapped” by a laser. First off, “laser” is derived from an acronym—it’s not defined as “a thing that performs the verb ‘lase’.” After lasers became better-known, people DID construct a verb “lase” backwards from the noun laser, but it means to emit light, not to “zap” anything. These “lase” clues have been poorly constructed. Not a big problem in this easy Monday puzzle, but it’s still sloppy and inaccurate.
@Andrzej The quotes don’t need to be original or funny to help identify the movies; they are all well-known schmaltzy action films (with the exception of “North”), and knowing anything about Ebert’s taste helps narrow down the possibilities.
I greatly enjoyed seeing all the Xs pop up in my answers today. It felt like a fun, subtle theme.
@Desiree Byrd It’s not uncommon at all for puzzles to have some sort of theme or trick to them, and “rebus” crossword puzzles are relatively common. Furthermore, this puzzle provides a very direct hint in the form of the “stuffed crust” clue. If you’ve never seen one before a rebus might take you by surprise, but this one was comparatively straightforward to suss out—it didn’t hurt that 8A was very obvious and very early in the puzzle.
@Kate It’s the “Mandela” effect, named for Nelson Mandela, whom many erroneously believed to have died in prison in the 80s. A “mandala” is a circular geometric pattern.
@Andrzej Something can be dumb “blockbuster” fun, or it can be “brilliant”, but very few if any films are both. I daresay a Michael Bay film where Bruce Willis blows up a comet to save the planet is squarely in the former category—and a critic known for preferring artistry would be doing his audience a disservice if he were to hold back his negativity. You don’t need to agree with a movie critic for their critique to have value; you just need to understand their perspective and recognize where their review is coming from.
I see we have a new author for the article? I’m pretty confused at how common crosswordese like EPEE and EMCEE made it into the “tricky clues” section.
@David Mann You hit the “more” button at the lower-left of the keyboard, and then click “rebus”. It completes just fine, and rebus answers are far from a new thing for the app.
It wasn’t “Spidey Sense” that caught me up (though that IS what I initially entered), it was LASED instead of TASED for 38A.
With news of Oscar nominations still relatively fresh, I expected the signal to get off the stage in 7D to be a SONG, and WAGS escaped me as a term for jokesters. I relied on the article to finish this one off, but otherwise it was a very quick solve.
@heironymous “Ram” works significantly better than “bam”—think of the animal. In the case of this clue, “head” is meant to be taken literally, as in how a ram butting its head against something is the origin of the word as a verb.
@JayTee I don’t know where you’ve ever heard this, but in the many laproscopic surgeries I’ve had not once did anyone refer to using a surgical laser as “zapping” me.
@Barry Ancona It’s common for variant spellings to be marked “var.” or similar. “Shiva” is, by far, the more common spelling.
@Ed & Mabel “Dinosaurs” aren’t even a species—they are dozens of species (or two classes/one “superclass”).
I found 49D pretty frustrating. I’ve always interpreted “pulling up” to mean “moving slowly towards until you reach”, e.g. “Pull up to the curb” means “move toward the curb until you reach at.” It’s a form of movement that implies stopping, but isn’t itself the stopping. Grammatically it’s akin to “Walk to the curb,” “Run to the curb,” or “Speed to the curb” and doesn’t mean “halt” any more than “walk” or “speed” does; it’s just a different pace for getting there.
@Barry Ancona ‘Shoed’ is absolutely a word, but it’s not the word used when referring to horses.
@Darren Seeing the five giant Ts made out of black squares was a HUGE help once you understood the theme.
@Rachel I’m not suggesting back-constructs aren’t part of the language—I’m pointing out that THIS one doesn’t mean “to hit something with a laser”; it means “to emit light like a laser”.
@Jack McCullough I wasn’t suggesting that being an acronym makes the clue not work; I was pointing out that, in this case, the back-construction “lase” doesn’t mean “use a laser on,” but rather “emit light like a laser”.
@JayTee It’s quite ironic that you say you don’t know what else you’d call it… just before providing a second option for what you’d call it.
@Bill That’s not a mistake in the article. The passage in question is explaining how pizza was spreading through Canada, i.e. in areas north of the US-Canada border, so “north” is correct.
@SBK The structure of the clue demands an adjective, not a past-tense verb, and “shod” is the correct word in this case. “Shoed” is also a word, but when referring specifically to horse shoes, the word IS “shod”.
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