WhySoMad?
Chicago
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Chicago
Ummm… did you get the days mixed up? This was way harder than even a tricky Tuesday. The themed clues were clever and cute and fitting a Tuesday… but the rest of the fill was very tricky and frankly felt more like an easy Friday solve.
Late to finish today... I'm of two minds. First, I loved the theme and how the double clues worked. Cracked that early and had a fun time finding those answers. Filled the puzzle pretty quickly, but with low confidence. Then, my second impression is that there are WAY too many natick or natick-ish crosses in this puzzle. If I don't know the name of a particular kind of stool or the name of a particular artist, I have a square I need to run the alphabet for. One of those isn't really a problem... but if you add in the following proper name crosses you have a problem: Iraqi city / Jewelry brand name Curtain fabric / metrology tool name Gymnast surname / apple variety name Musical notation name / Obscure Japanese vegetable And those are just the ones that had me scratching my head. I'm sure things I took for granted were a challenge for others. When you have 3, 4 or 5 of these crosses, you end up needing to get lucky or run the alphabet for hundreds of combinations. Sure, you can infer that 33D is either ALI or ALY, but that multiplies the number of alphabet runs by 2. 18D is probably a consonant, so again, it isn't 26 letters to try, but we're already up to 40+ and we have 3 more trouble spots to include. If you don't know either of the words, just just have to run the letters.. there is no puzzling out the name of a city you don't know and a brand name you don't know... you need to just try all the vowels. Not impressed.
@Nick - I mean... no more than you using LGBTQ in your post, right? It's a word represented in an acronym. The crossword wasn't making any judgement or pushing some kind of narrative. It's the equivalent if the puzzled asked what the R in NRA standing for or the Y in BYOB.
@GW - agreed. I’m annoyed I spent over 15 mins trying to find my error before considering Rebuses or other trickery. Fun puzzle, but I was expecting a graphic at the end to add the dashes.
@Barry Ancona - I have a 975 day streak and didn't know TARDIS or ARARAT. I did know UHURA, but wasn't 100% on spelling. I'm sure in the past 3 years I have filled in ARARAT in a NYT crossword, but that doesn't mean it's on the tip of my fingers or that it feels reasonable for a Monday. I got the puzzle done in my usual time, so I think the crosses were enough for most solvers to get there, but I found those clues and answers to be pretty tricky for a Monday. Also, not for nothing, but UHURA and Dr. Who both debuted in the 60's... those are some very old references. I know they have been rebooted many times, but I think there are way more than a few solvers who wouldn't know those answers off the top of their head. Next stop: Googling TARDIS.
@SP - Nah... our dog definitely wants some "pets" and as good dog owners, we gives her some "pets."
@Bill in Yokohama - Not picking a side here or challenging your experience... just curious... could the challenge of 30 yr old puzzles be that the cultural and historical references are 30 years older? For my part, I was a teen in 1994 and I know I would struggle to recall historical, literature, sports, music or cultural trivia from the 60's, 70's and 80's vs. the last 30 years. For sure, the puzzles may have just been harder back then, but I think recency certainly plays a role in making things easier.
@Steve L - not OP, but their point was that the words straight down weren’t connected to the theme or clues in any way… like if they had to do with braids or boxes or Janet Jackson or the pair of words formed in the braids… I don’t share that concern, but that is their complaint.
Joining the early chorus questioning YABBER. I had YAMMER and briefly wondered if BOOTJ was a thing once the B's fell into place from the downs. Still an plenty easy for Monday, but esoteric, alt spellings are generally not found this early in the week.
@Bill in Yokohama - I mean, sure... you can come up with other examples of using bad english. I just don't think most people think "I been had!" or "I been stuck on this puzzle." I may not say "I've been stuck on this puzzle" but I might say "I'm stuck on this puzzle".. but unless I was trying to slangify my language for affect, I wouldn't say "I been..."
Found the SW corner very tricky. First off I had EAT out of house and home which threw me off on the downs and seemed 100% right. Of course 38A could be TUXES or LIMOS, so tried each of those for a while. Once I figured out ATE and remebered MARMITE, things came together, but this was a Wednesday with a Saturday SE corner for me. Spent more than half of my time down there.
Anyone else start with gREATwHITeSHARK on the 12th row? Fun puzzle, didn’t know or like SLOP/ARGOT… SLIP fit better in my mind.
This was a toughie on my birthday... hardest puzzle in a long time (Saturday or otherwise). Well over my average. I suppose I'm not too SALTY (which wasn't the answer for 33D) as I was able to get the gold star eventually, but I had a lot of false starts along the way and disgustedly said "KIVA?!?" at the end when that I typed in the K in KEG to finish it up. I especially liked FACETATS and DDS!
Happy Pride! Great puzzle. Loved it.
Like many others here, I found this to be an annoying slog to complete. Something about the double referential clues keep being annoying and really disrupted the flow of clicking through the clues. I think some of the answers and clues were quite clever, but the construction was more annoying than fun.
@Bort - Are you questioning what one iron means or are you a golfer who is thinking "Who the heck carries a one iron?!" If the former, golf clubs are made up of irons (metals clubs heads that are tilted at different angles to create different loft), woods (which are beefier club heads with longer shafts made for hitting longer shots off tees... and also haven't been made out of wood for decades), wedges (which are just irons with extreme loft made for special situations like sand traps), and putters for making shorter shots on and near the green. These have dead-flat faces and generally have the shortest shafts of all the clubs. The iron numbers go from one to nine with nine being the most lofted (e.g. shorted shafted and highest launch angle) and therefore will carry the ball the shortest distance. The reason I asked about the nature of your question is that almost no one actually owns, let alone carries a one iron in their golf bag. One irons have basically been replaced by specialty clubs that fall under the "woods" category which tend to be more forgiving and easier to hit well... so having a one iron in your bag would be very strange. Anyway, hope that helps... and/or... woosh... I really overanalyzed your joke.
@Jim Casey - Yup... same here. Spend 1/3rd of my final solve time noodling over 19D, 9D and 31A because I had TANKS instead of MASKS. Feel like an idiot for taking so long to figure it out considering it's a Monday. The range of emotions that happens when an early week puzzle starts off fast and you're thinking it could be a record... then you hit a few snags and think "Oh well, not a record, but should be pretty breezy" and then the dread of getting stuck and not even being able to fill in words that make sense... on a MONDAY!! The Horror. Then you finish it and know it will shift your average a little bit in the wrong direction, but really, who cares?! Fun puzzle with some strange clues and fills... but a nice little Monday challenge to get the week started.
Almost exactly what I am looking for from a Friday / Saturday puzzle. I thought I was in a lot of trouble my first time through most of the clues... then I tried a few things in the SE corner and things came together... then it was a real struggle to branch out, but eventually, slowly, things filled in in fits and starts. In the end, I had to fix WAITONIT as the 4D and 5D weren't making any sense, but just getting the grid filled felt like an accomplishment. Ultimately, I was in the middle of my usual time band for a Friday and it felt like a good challenge that I could chip away at without having Naticks or other unsolvable sections filled with proper nouns. 5 stars, would solve again
@Andrzej - I had a similar experience early with the puzzle. I stuck with it and managed to get there in the end. As with most of these puzzles, if the ball starts rolling even a little bit, you'll find that things start to clarify. There are certainly some answers most of us won't know and need crosses to solve, but I found it tough but fair and I'd encourage you to be stubborn and focus in on each area in turn to see if you can start to piece some things together.
Crunchy Tuesday for me. Was never in jeopardy, but much longer to solve than my usual Tuesday these days. NW corner gave a run.
@Kip - I'm not sure what the Monday puzzle has to do with your feeling toward the rest of the week. I wouldn't read anything into it... it's an April Fool's prank and a definitely hard Monday puzzle. If you got through it, count it as a win and carry on to Tuesday.
The early returns seem to imply that NW was the hardest to fill... I was stumped longest on NE... everything North of Broncos took me a while to figure. Didn't help that one of the only answers I entered on the first pass through the puzzle was WANE for 16A. The section I finished next to last was NW, but COHABIT unlocked that whole section for me. I'm also on team skeptical of COB as Turkey Day detritus and I started with PACKERS for the NFL team. With all the errors and the tricky top of the puzzle, this was a good crunchy Friday challenge.
Fun puzzle... just the right amount of tough, but solvable with some fun misdirects. I especially enjoyed the following: 1A - HAT vs. EGO 45A - PEN vs. OAK 54A - CANS vs. TINS Also, TIL that WOOKIEES has a second E at the end. Always just assumed it was Wookie. Never claimed to be a Star Wars nerd, but I felt a little embarrassed as I am certain I have read and written that word a thousands times and never noticed the extra E.
@Jamie - now imagine you filled the puzzle with dashes in under 13 mins and the puzzle wasn’t correct. You then spend another 13 mins trying to find your error before trying the word LINE instead of the dashes… and then you get the music and star. Frustrating, right? I recognize that the revealer is meant to indicate adding dashes, but I don’t think it’s a big stretch to assume the word LINE is representing dashes in this case and feel confident you have those 5 clues right. Often the puzzle accepts variants or similar answers that demonstrate that you solved the gimmick… if you didn’t understand the gimmick, you’d have 20 down words that made no sense… so it’s frustrating to figure out the trick and get every other clue solved correctly and not get the star. That is why haters are hating… it’s the 15 mins spent searching for errors that weren’t there.
@Grant - I think it is totally reasonable to use FRAT in this instance. It’s a common usage to refer to the building as a “frat” and leave off the “house”. It is also common to find current and former fraternity brothers complaining about the ubiquity of the term “frat” and how they might like the term to be used differently.
@D - it’s interesting to hear how differently we approach and enjoy Crosswords. What you describe as enjoyable (or at least what I can interpret from learning what you dislike) is what I find to be meh and apparently vice versa. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t think today’s puzzle was a triumph, but I do enjoy sticky clues that are hard to parse and require working through the crosses and maybe some starts and stops and restarts to decipher. I’m sure I’m simplifying, but it seems you like a puzzle where you can read a clue and just type in the answer. If you have to take extra steps (e.g. examine the crosses), that is less enjoyable. For me, that’s a Monday or Tuesday puzzle and those are fun only in that I try to go fast and break my record. With late week puzzles, the reward is often the eureka moment when you figure out that RAINCOAT and CROATIA share the same letters and the remaining themed clues are not much more accessible. In most cases, the answers are words you know and the clue is just trying to make it hard to recognize. The clues that give me heart burn or names of authors or languages other than Spanish (Thanks NY State academic requirements!) Anyway, happy to chat with my puzzle inverse and wish you nothing but puzzle satisfaction going forward.
@Dan - I certainly understand that Thursday gimmicks aren't for everyone, but I for one don't mind them as they play into the "puzzle" part of crossword puzzle which I enjoy. I'm not saying this is you, Dan, but it seems some are looking for a vocab / trivia quiz more than a puzzle to solve and I much prefer puzzling out thorny clues or long revealers to just relying on my recall of historical figures, authors, architects, musicals and the like.
@Andrew - Congrats! I just got 2 yrs myself this week. Not sure where to go from here. 1000 is obviously the next milestone, but at this stage, I think it's safe to say "I do the NYTs Crossword everyday" whether I keep the streak alive or not. Was that the goal? No idea... but it's my reality. I do feel pressure to keep it alive when we're on vacation or if I get stuck on a tricky Sunday or something. The last streak breaker was the Sunday puzzle with ZAZZIEBEATZ (about 2 yrs ago, lol).
@Steve L - I’m not sure who your lecture is for. I do the crossword. I like the crossword. I solve for clues I don’t know all the time. Took me 2 hrs to solve this Sunday’s puzzle (well over 2x my usual time), but I struggled through it. Implying that those who don’t have some thirst to understand the world around them can’t solve puzzles is elitist garbage. Yes, knowing esoteric facts may help solvers, but knowing a Bible verse or a middle eastern port or a rapper’s debut album doesn’t make you an enlightened person or deem you worthy of the NYT puzzle. It’s just facts you have encountered and stored away for recall. Some of the smartest and most well read people I know are terrible at puzzles and some dummies like me can pull off a long streak. The puzzle is a game that we play, so spare us the high-minded reflections on who can and can’t solve puzzles. Next stop: Googling ESOTERIC to see if I used it correctly.
@Sleepyinsummerland - Thursdays are always a gimmick of some kind and often it involves a rebii (is that a word? I think I'm in the right forum to learn the answer!) Don't be discouraged... you get better at sniffing the tricks out and over time, you'll feel great figuring out the tricks before they have a chance to trick you. I had dabbled in crosswords on airplanes or in the newspaper when traveling before getting a subscription a few years back and doing it daily. I recall being proud of completing my first Thursday without hints and then getting my first Friday and Saturday and my first 7+ day steak. Fast forward a few years and I just got my 1200th puzzle in a row on Tuesday. Aside from breathing and eating / drinking, I don't think there is anything else I have done for 1200 days in a row unbroken. Hang in there and enjoy the fun one without being discouraged by the tough ones.
@Marilyn - Welcome! Umm… yeah, this is an online forum, so not sure why you were expecting affirmations and wonder. People gonna gripe and then other people are gonna gripe about the griping.
I scrolled for a while and it seems I'm the only one who got stuck in the bottom middle section. The crossing religious clues with the math term gave me trouble. I had never heard of a Papal BULL, nor PURIM. I knew it was a Jewish holiday, but it wasn't any of the ones I knew. Not helping was my initial guess at 41D - PER (periodical), but as I played around, I eventually arrived at PUB and then TUPLES became clear... but I still ended up randomly guessing vowels to arrive at BULL/PURIM.
@Barry Ancona Take me out to the ballgame, Take me out with the crowd Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jacks I don't care if I never get back, Let me root, root, root for the CUBBIES, If they don't win it's a shame 'Cause it's one, two, three strikes your out At the old ball game. FTFY
@Ern - interesting... I found 20A one of the rare moments of "good clever". I lump 53A in there as well. A clever misdirect that makes sense when you figure it out and you kind of roll your eyes and smile. For me that poor clue was 47D. I can kind of see it, but it's just not a great clue in my mind. Also, I would spell 27D as WRASTLE vs. RASTLE, but the spell check on the page is tell me I'm wrong... so I guess I take it all back.
@Amy - I don’t think the majority of complaints were about the challenge of the clues and their answers. I think the issue was that the puzzle design erected barriers between the clever, challenging, solving bits that themselves weren’t clever or fun. It just added friction and while that friction did make the puzzle harder to solve in a technical sense, that extra “difficulty” didn’t enhance the experience in any way. The silver didn’t feel smarter or rewarded for going through the extra steps. It was akin to making solvers translate clues from a codex before they could read them. Making solves translate the meter S to the letter B is an extra step, but it doesn’t require any smarts to do and doesn’t add to the experience, it’s just an extra tedious step. This was the issue with the puzzle yesterday. Aside from that extra friction, I found the puzzle a very impressive construction and generally rewarding to solve.
Tricky Monday. Fun puzzle with some later in the week clues and answers imho.
@Ethan - Even better would be the Bugs Bunny inning where his single slow pitch strikes out 3 batters in a row.
Nice puzzle. Spent WAY too long trying to find me error. Somehow convinced myself that FIAT / BOOLIAN was right in both cases. Looked at those two 10 times and thought they looked right. Eventually talked myself into swapping in the E and was surprised it was right… then duh! FEAT was clearly correct and suddenly BOOLEAN looked right. The mind plays tricks on you sometimes.
I thought the theme was great and loved that FINALFOUR fit for 25A despite being all the way wrong. Nice misdirect for those who run the acrosses vs. filling areas to start. For some reason I really struggled with SW corner. TYPEA, TYCOON and OUST just eluded me despite having everything else right at various stages. It was one of those annoying moments when you finally get it and expect to be mad about some tricky or unfair or wonky cluing and then you just don't find it... I just couldn't crack the 2nd letter Y words for 43A and 43D until OUST finally occurred. I easily spent 20+ mins on that corner after blazing through the first 3/4ths of the puzzle in my usual time. Anyone else have those short circuits in an otherwise easy puzzle?
@Shannon - Yeah, I found yesterday much tougher than this... theme was fun, but if they had just swapped them, I think it would have been a pair of easy for their day puzzles, but well within the norm.
@Nancy J. - While I agree with the spirit of your analogy, I do understand why people get grouchy. Your analogy would advise that those who know they won't like the Thursday puzzle should just skip it instead of doing it and getting mad about it (e.g. why go to the restaurant on Thursday?!) But the true analogy is that you purchased a special meal plan with the restaurant to serve you dinner every night of the week and you are continually annoyed with the Thursday menu. If you buy the subscription for NYT Games, you expect to be able to play them every day... it's not like you get to choose 1 day each week to complete the puzzle and these poor souls keep trying the Thursday hoping it will be different. Should the same cast of characters complain and moan about Thursday knowing that Thursday is purpose-built to be different? Probably not, but "just skip it" isn't really a fair retort either... especially in a world where NYTs and literally everthing else in our lives is gamified and people like to maintain a streak.
@Steve - can as in fire from a job. “Got the axe”
@Juanita - do you not get it or do you just not like it?
@Xword Junkie - while I agree with your general sentiment that some Rebus puzzle are a bit finicky with what they will accept, this one seemed straightforward… if the downs were gonna work, you needed NO and nothing else.
First time in a good while where I filled a puzzle without understanding the gimmick. My issue is that I got LOBSTER which I interpreted as “ok, M is one letter higher in the alphabet than L, so it’s just a simple shift up on the first letter.” Of course that didn’t work for any of the other clues. ESPOUSES seemed to be adding an extra letter instead of substituting. So yeah, I was confused and had to read the column to understand it. Fortunately it was a pretty smooth and easy fill for Thursday even without getting the gimmick. Disappointed not to get it during the solve, but oh well.
@Renegator - yeah... right there with you... INEZ/ZTILE, ENSILE and LAC is a lot to ask... but the fact that you also have NIHILO and ELLER/GALOPS in the mix means you can be chasing the solve for a long time. Really hard... needed to phone a friend to get through it. More obscure words that I like in my puzzle. My only regret is not figuring out ZTILE on my own... there were some really clever clues, but lots of esoteric answers that weren't figurable unless you happened to know the trivia.
@Steven - while some may call it Alt, the keys are named "option" very clearly.