Desert Dweller

Lower left corner was unfair. Crossing a 26 year old random novel - Maeve Binchy is well-known, but not quite Dickens or even Connelly - with a wordplay trick that has two reasonable answers and with a Chicago theatre name that most people outside of the Midwest would never have heard of…well, that, my friend, is the very definition of unfair.

6-Down? Huh? I’ve been solving puzzles, usually fairly well, daily for over 50 years. Never saw that clue-answer relationship, and don’t understand it now. I’m sure Barry Ancona, or someone else, will just say I’ve missed it over the years, but I think I might not be alone in this gripe.

So much is wrong with this otherwise creative puzzle, that I don’t know where to start. Is it with the absurd crosses - Hair lightening brand crossing with Europe’s highest volcano? Or perhaps the first name of a onetime African head of state (hmm, couldn’t tell us the nation, could you?) crossing with a horned antelope from the same continent? Or perhaps playing fast and loose with commonly-known mob terms, as in the theme-forced answer to 53-Down? Or maybe it is combining many modern words with the last name of a Scottish crime novelist who died over 70 years ago, and whose best-known and lauded novel was named by a British crime writers organization as the best crime novel ever…even though your readers and solvers would be virtually incapable of finding it in print today. A fun theme that could have been done much, much better.

My favorite comment about this extremely difficult (not unfair, just unusually hard for the Saturday series) puzzle was Caitlin’s amusing reference to an emergency brake. “…E-Brake, of course…” To which group of conversant Americans is an emergency brake an E-Brake? Just as it took decades for the Britishism “veg” to appear in crosswords, shouldn’t E-Brake reach some level of use beyond the ability to figure it out, after getting the answer with crosswords? Just because you’ve heard it once, doesn’t make it common enough to appear in the puzzle. Adding “of course” in the comment is why some commenters can be inappropriately rude at times. I just think it was a bad entry, and that Caitlin’s comment was insulting. That’s all.

My wife asked me what the long Latin phrase in the middle of today’s puzzle meant. I told her that someone thought to ruin an otherwise decent puzzle, while the editor who approved it - like the constructor - thought far too much of himself and his audience. Do better.

Interesting and clever theme, now that it is explained. Since single letters aren’t words, the idea that A STAR IS BORN could be parsed into six words, as the so-called revealer clue tried to say, was mostly useless. The puzzle was, of course, solvable without this diversion, but themes that are so obscure as to be misunderstood or not understood are wastes of time. Certainly for this solver, and I will bet for most of those who - today, or in many weeks around the country, when folks without the benefit of the Wordplay column will find this help - will feel likewise. Do better.

I understand the currency idea, and that other terms were modified to display, instead, different words or phrases now including those currencies. What wasn’t explained was how the heck anyone at the Times expected people to solve the puzzle with only clues pointing to the original, and not the modified answer. Lazy Thursday garbage. Really, do better.

These are brilliant comments. Much as the constructors tried to create something that doubly doesn’t exist - homonyms for misspelled monster names - many commenters are applauding the constructors for their skill and brilliance. I feel as if I’m reading comments on a par with ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes”. I found the theme to be undermined by the misspellings, but I’m sure some clever person (who undoubtedly would see clothing on the Emperor where there was none) will rebuke me.

The clue about the Stanley Cup was, in a word, wrong. The Cup crosses the Canadian border every time a Canadian team is in the final, when someone has three wins and is en route to a title. For example, the Calgary Flames led the 2004 Cup Finals, 3 games to 2, with Game 6 set for Calgary - you know, in Canada. As is tradition when someone can win the Cup, it traveled to the site of the game. In Canada. It happened again the next year, 2005. And again in 2011. And again in 2021. And again last year, just a few months ago, when the Florida Panthers took a 3-0 lead in games against Edmonton before the fourth game, in Edmonton. Look it up.

Thanks to the Wordplay columnist for “explaining” that the themed clues “meant” that the first letter of the first word of the clue represented the NATO alphabet letter - to be used as the first letter of the answer - while the rest of the clue “meant” the actual clue to the answer itself. Oh, sure. We all “got” that. Absurd, and well below the normal Thursday quality. That other thing included about the constructor’s theme of using another piece of prose as the underpinning for his five previous puzzles? Yeah, I think I’ll skip those.

Amazement, indeed. The clue and answer for 8-across reminded me of a Will Shortz comment about the suitability of words me clues in the puzzle - that nothing unsettling or distasteful should be used. Apparently, whoever edited today’s puzzle was unfamiliar with that guidance.

CORN PIT - a barn play area made up for this puzzle, to help with that troubling lower left hand corner. The sign of a forced answer, for certain. Kind of upends an otherwise clever puzzle.

I’ve been using the Times Games app these last two days, and have had many, many retypes or miskeyed entries because of fat fingers and their crossword keyboard, which is different from the one used when solving the puzzle in the Times newspaper app. Easily 15-20 seconds lost there, but only due to that minor issue. Couldn’t the keyboards be consistent across the different solving platforms offered? Also, BLAMESTORM? LENAPE? UGLYCRYING? Three bad answers, two of them particularly long and not found in subsequent searching. Much crying, by the way, can be ugly if you don’t expect to see it. The high quality standard of the NYT puzzle was to use phrases found elsewhere in the paper, at some time. Emerging terms and phrases, as well as the endless linguistic and pop culture content that we all enjoy. I’m okay with being out of touch at times, and learning new things this way. UGLY CRYING? C’mon.

Rebuses on a Wednesday. Rita is not happy.

The Red Delicious apple industry would like a word. Are you guys kidding? Fine puzzle, but with an absolutely absurd clue and answer combination in the bottom section. Which means someone has some ‘splainin’ to do…

Fun puzzle, though I had to get over the answer for “___ of buffalo”. Those of us who lived in, um, Buffalo knew it as a HERD. But I guess I need to catch up on current “Queer initialism” usage. Can someone clue me in to a meaning?

Problems: 1. the theme is absurd 2. the instructions are wrong. They indicate that you should use the “Light (default) mode”. The menu of choices, however, include none of those words. I’m using an iPad app, but really - does it matter? Instructions are supposed to instruct. Do better. I don’t think I was really helped, in the end, by the display of the theme answers, which shows the squares in different ways to help with each answer. They didn’t help at all. 3. the theme is absurd. I know I said it once, but it bears repeating.

The answer used in the puzzle is not a form of Elizabeth. Someone at the Times puzzle section might think so - even perhaps from their own experience - but it simply isn’t so. It would be as if someone named John had the nickname of Sid. Inexplicable.

Some might suggest that having IMGUR and RINSO in the same puzzle is asking for solvers with savvy about cultural minutia from across three generations. A bit unfair, 115-Down, though, is ludicrous. “Hosting site with gallery of memes”. IMGUR looks like a five-letter set known by folks who pull in memes and otherwise gobbledygook to people who speak in words. Do better.

Last letter of 36-Across could have been one of two choices with both fairly defensible for a nebulous clue. Not too bad as a puzzle, save for that.

Inconsistent themes are, um, 8-down. Consider 7-down and 19-across to 21-across. So the missing letters are in the black square…wait, no, they’re in the last square of 7-down..wait, no… C’mon now. That is pathetic. The editor should know better. CONSISTENCY! Especially in these Thursday themes from Hades.

Clever, almost Thursday-worthy, but undone a bit by 53-down answer, which is in-theme, but really is a stretch when you figure things out. The answer itself, when one revises it to its full length and meaning, is not a thing in language, and certainly not another meaning for the clue. Since it is at the bottom, it seems like someone squeezed it there, like perhaps the editor?

The cross at 26-Down and 28-Across is bad. Two arcane references should not cross. Also, out here in the desert, a streambed, wet or dry, is a WASH.

Please NY puzzle editors, explain to me how the clue DENVER brings the answer to 77-Across all on its own. The other double clues and answers make sense - the two for 102-Down, for example - make perfect sense and hold up on their own. Really, I want to hear your explanation. Remember that other examples of this answer must, in the future, hold up equally…and it seems there are literally thousands of the 77-Across word in IMDB. Any could apply, right? Utterly horrible way to ruin an otherwise clever puzzle.

Wasted two minutes in lower right corner, mostly because the clue “Good golf score” for 55-Down was poorly phrased. Likewise, the clue and answer for 58-Across might be OK in the minds of the puzzle constructor or editor, but it is an LA Times-quality entry in the NYT puzzle - in other words, pretty crappy. Seeing that in the lower right corner means cramming it in to get the theme. The NYT used to be better than that.

Using NYT Games app as always today, but this time I saw some Game Center screen I couldn’t get to disappear. What gives? Is it iOS only? Why would anything interrupt a good and working app like this? I can contact NYT separately but I’m hoping I’m not the only one bothered this way today.