Steve L

TIR (Today I realized) that SAUTÉ PAN and "saucepan" share seven of eight letters. Ask me how I know.

I can relate, because the Mrs. and I have a son and a daughter, and have been part of that conversation twice. (Only with our daughter, it was "Mom, Dad, I'm bi.") Son went first, and was relieved that not only was it no problem for us, but that we kind of knew by that point anyway. Several years later, daughter's job was made easier because she knew she wouldn't have anything to worry about when she came out. You don't stop loving your kids. This particular piece of information doesn't change how you feel about them at all. All you care about is that they are happy. And as of Aug. 22, when said daughter gets married, we'll have both a son-in-law and a daughter-in-law. Just not with the partners we originally expected. And life goes on. Because life is made up of all kinds of people. And people should be happy if it is at all possible, and live their best lives.

No, no, no! A PIT STOP is a brief stop, not an overnight stay in a hotel. This PIT STOP is an actual PIT STOP, at an auto race, where the driver stops to re-tire his race car. Re-tire-ment, get it?

Take note, everyone, that in order to avoid the issue of "and sometimes Y," Marshall left Y out of the puzzle altogether.

Since yesterday's installment was so popular, here's a new list of the anticipated nits from today's puzzle: Theme: --How do I write the rebus? --It's not a rebus? --Circles are bad enough; triangles, too? --I'm supposed to go up and down and up and down? --The triangles spell what? --The circles spell what? --I don't get it. Clues and Answers: Foreign languages: EAU--I'm supposed to know French? ALEPH--I'm supposed to know other alphabets? MAIS OUI--More French? Computers and phones: MSN--What is this, 1990? AGE--Ugh, online dating. OTOH--Ugh, textspeak. TBH--Ugh, more textspeak. DMED--Ugh, social media. LCD--A kealoa. Could be LED. Or even CRT. WIFI--Nothing wrong with the clue. But how many tech words are there going to be? Abbreviations and initialisms: PLO, IED, LCD, TBH, OTOH, DMED, DJS, IPASGSU, STP, GSU, CSIS--How many flippin' letter salads are there going to be? APT--Wait...that's not an abbreviation?!?!?! Sportsball: GSU--I'm supposed to know random abbreviations about college sports teams? TIPINS--Come on, it's not even clear what sport that is. Basketball? Golf? Both of them? END--Football is too violent. I never watch it. Also: ATOMIC DOG--I'm supposed to know some song that barely made the charts over 40 years ago? UVEA--Too obscure. MEDEA--Wasn't she in those Tyler Perry movies? MEDIA--Wasn't she in those Tyler Perry movies? ESSIE--I'm supposed to know nail polish brands? OCCAM--I'm supposed to know a 14th century dude? Happy solving, folks!

Remember a few days ago, I said that if a puzzle had too much going on, the payoff had better be worth it? Here's that puzzle. I got some of the upper theme answers without knowing why. With trick puzzles like these, I just plunk in what's obviously the answer with a few letters remaining, and move on. I completed, for example, YOUTHFUL INDISCRETIONS with about half the letters, all the while not knowing why it matched [Wild cats]. When LATE NIGHT was the answer for [Arsenic's realm, in years past], I realized they really mean Arsenio, and I had to change all the C's in the theme clues to O's. But I still didn't know why. And then there was the matter of the three BLOCKs. Obviously, here we had something different: a two-part, slash-separated clue for each. The dark squares seemed to be BLOCKs, and as such, the answer pairs, such as ICE BLOCK and BLOCKers, solved the clues. But why? You had to look at the grid once all of that was filled in (or if solving electronically, wait for the animation). The big C in the middle becomes an O with the three BLOCK rebuses returning to actual BLOCKs, as they were in the clue. (The only thing I wonder is how many solvers know that black grid squares are called BLOCKs.) Or, of course, you can look at 113A. And for the cherry on top, there are no C's in any of the clues except those that have to change, and no O's except those in your head after you make the C-to-O changes. This puzzle might be a Puzzle of the Year contender, IMHO.

If you're going to go all foreign plural with THALAMI (unfortunately, Caitlin beat me to the joke I was going to make about it sounding like a deli meat), you might as well get "Fathers, in Hebrew" right. ABBA is father, but fathers is AVOT. ABBAS is a Palestinian politician. I'm aware that English regularizes plurals; in fact, I tell this to people all the time (i.e. paninis). But the clue was "Fathers, in Hebrew", not in English, and ABBA has not become a typical word in the English lexicon yet. Its only use is in religious contexts, as a title, most often for God. I held my nose when I entered it. Might as well been "Swedish quartet and namesakes".

This puzzle kinda needed to have a revealer (or was EDITORS supposed to be one?)...without one, it just seemed pointless. I got through the puzzle in a normal amount of time, and saw there had to be a rebus right from the start...it had to somehow be VIVIEN LEIGH, which didn't fit. Soon after, I discovered that the IE's and EI's were the rebus, but the across answers and the down answers each had the other digraph. But why? Just because they could? That didn't seem like a satisfying reason. I was waiting to see what clever gem tied all of this together. And there was none. Quite disappointed. (I bet Rex Parker tears this one apart tomorrow morning.)

I got through this one, finally, and my last chore was to change from one pair of subbed letters to the other pair of subbed letters for each theme answer. Before taking out the UT of GUTTER and putting in the RA for GRATER, I was so sure that the theme answers worked that way that I actually checked my entire grid for unrelated typos. I didn't find anything, although those gobbledygook downs at the theme letters were making it hard to figure them out. Finally, I did substitute in the RA for the UT and the others, and got the little jingle. But to me, it didn't make sense. RAT OUT was, for example, the instruction to answer 22A. So the clue for 22A is [Proverbial bad thing to have your mind in], so the answer is GUTTER. To get it to GRATER, you go from UT to RA, not the other way around. But the "hint" in the previous answer said RA to UT. The others followed the same way. It seemed to me that it was all bass-ackwards. The clue should have been for GRATER, and the printed answer should have been GUTTER (with different down answers that made sense with the U and the T). And so forth for the others. Or the whole puzzle should have been constructed with the UT to RA order.

Someone at the NYT Games Department was reviewing this puzzle and looked at a certain entry and decided: WORDLE! If you know, you know...

Possible nits to pick today: Celebrities: BEYONCE-I don't pay attention to music after 1980/1990/2000... MELANIE-I don't pay attention to music before 2000/1990/1980... SUSANNA-I'm supposed to know a song from the 40s? The 1840s? OHIO-I'm supposed to know where random people were born? MODEL-I'm supposed to pay attention to supermodels now? Literature: CHOLERA-Too foreign. Foreign words: PROST-Wasn't he that French writer? SALATA-Now I'm supposed to speak Italian? NOEL-Now I'm supposed to speak French? DER-Now I'm supposed to speak German? Miscellany: ITS A TIE--Ugh, sportsball. NBA JAM--Ugh, sportsball and video games. BBC-Random niche cable TV network. LA LAW-Some random TV show that was cancelled 30 years ago. APSE-How am I supposed to know about someone else's religion? ARTEMIS-Ugh, who cares about dead religions? ITALY-Who knows trivia like that? ELPHABA-Did you know CYNTHIA has the same number of letters? THREE-What's that, some kind of leftist agenda? Finally... SNARK-Is that even a real word? Have a good Wednesday, all.

First things first. Thanks to all on this board who served our country, Barry, Rich and many more I'm not aware of. Especially during unpopular and poorly thought-out wars that were unpopular.

The fact that this was a Monday puzzle, and a very straightforward one at that (which is to say a perfect one for a newcomer to try his or her luck on), it's a bit anticlimactic to announce the following, but here goes: This puzzle marks the 3000th consecutive solve in my NYT solving streak. Every solve has been a clean solve; in other words, there have been no lookups of any sort. The solve might have been even longer if I hadn't been doing my puzzles on other media when the NYT web interface came out (Puzzazz was an app that worked for the NYT puzzles way back then, and never was unable to handle an oddball theme; Across Lite was my go-to before that), but 3000 puzzles ago was when I started in the NYT interface, and so it's a 3000-day streak today. (What I'm saying is that I was already doing them without lookups before the streak started, but I don't have documentation for how long.) I have been solving for over 40 years. If you can't imagine doing 3000 puzzles in a row without help, keep in mind that these days, with all the resources that exist that didn't when I was starting out, you can become good much faster than when I was new to this. My solves are rather fast these days because that's my natural pace now. Solving fast allows me to fit them in every day without fail, even on busy days. I savor them afterward, among good company here at Wordplay. Happy puzzling to all!

I have perused the existing comments, but I might have missed someone already having said this. Anyway, in case no one has, let me say this: There’s an added layer of elegance in the puzzle. There are so many O’s in straight lines as the ball caroms around to get from tee to cup, but there isn’t a single other O anywhere but in that long path. Very cool!

Wow! A hundred comments by midnight! I wouldn’t be surprised if we break 1000 today! Most of them are from haters, and things like “this isn’t a crossword” that tell me there are a lot of newbies out there. Imagine stepping into, and then out of the batter’s box after three quick strikes, and complaining, “No fair, curve balls. I didn’t know that could happen.” Without curve balls, hitting would be too easy and the games would be five hours long and the final scores would be 48-27. Curve balls make baseball a better game. As a batter, you have to be able to figure out when to expect them, and how to hit them. Or give up and sell cars for a living. This puzzle was a masterpiece, and you do it a disservice by blaming the puzzle for the fact you weren’t ready for it. (Yeah, I know, you’re the exception: you’ve been solving for 15 years and you still hate it, blah blah, blah.) This one could be a contender for Puzzle of the Year. A perfect game is a work of art, but the opposing batters on the losing team still don’t like it.

Usually, it’s the quarterback who takes a KNEE, but today we found out that it was the tight end that did it, and Swiftly ushered in a new ERA. How prescient to have planned both words for tonight’s puzzle!

Anyone else, with JOSIE already in place at 13A, decide that "Item in a trunk" (13D) had to be JUNK? Everybody has some, or so they say. !!!! !!!!

A theme based entirely on Pig Latin is drudgery for me. By the time I got to the lower third, I was just plodding along just to get finished. I'm sure a lot of solvers loved it, but as they say in the decluttering business, it didn't spark joy for me.

I realize that the only qualification for the special entries is that they be stores that go into a (slightly) big(ger) box, but it would have been nice if all four were really BIG BOX STORES. LOWES and IKEA definitely qualify, but GAP is just a typical mall store, and ALDI is a moderately-sized limited-stock supermarket.

One might say there are two types of people out there trying to solve this puzzle: those who have played Mario Bros. games, and loved the puzzle and found it relatively easy, and those who have never had any interest in this or any video game, and thought the puzzle was niche, unfair, and not enjoyable for them. I'd say there's a third type of solver. Someone like me. I have had zero interest in video games since I last played Pong circa 1978. I have no interest in MARIO, WARIO, LUIGI and PRINCESS PEACH. I know nothing about FIREFLOWERs and these magic MUSHROOMs. I never heard of a WARP PIPE, and to me, MAMMA MIA is an ABBA musical. But I knew a few things. I knew the puzzle was about a video game. I recognized all the characters, including YOSHI, who I believe is a dinosaur. I knew that in order to make the puzzle fair, the crosses near all the theme entries had to be super gentle. I realized that the things many people wouldn't know had to be inferable. I knew that it would be to my advantage tonight that Ive taken just a minimal interest in a video game that I couldn't care less to play or learn about in depth. (This is how I approach any pop culture--or regular culture--things I'm not drawn to. Enough to know what someone is talking about in a casual conversation, and enough to be useful solving crosswords.) And so it went. Not the most interesting puzzle for me, but relatively fast, and not the disaster or object of hate that some people reported.

84A [Headwear that's stereotypically red]: Hands up if you thought MAGA HAT???

Everyone all set for the "This is not a crossword" crowd? For a touch of elegance, the only regular T in the puzzle is in the revealer. !!!!! !!!!!

The pièce de résistance actually is the fact that all the words minus their covered-up initial or final letter, are themselves the names of trees or plants: ASH, FIR, PEAR, APPLE, ELM and LOTUS. LOTUS flowers are a real thing; there is a mythical thing called the LOTUS tree mentioned in the Odyssey.

Tonight I reached a streak of 3653 gold stars. No arbitrary number at all, just an annual milestone...I'm sure by now, you've figured it out that Dec. 17, 2015--the Obama era--was the last time I had a blue star. And looking at my solve in the Archive, I don't even know why. I apparently "Revealed square" where ANDY, clued as the tennis player Roddick, and OYS, clued as exclamations of exasperation, crossed. I'm sure ANDY was a gimme, and OYS seems obvious...who knows what made me do that? All I know is that if I hadn't done that, I would have reached this milestone months earlier. But only months, not years, because sometime not long before that, I had just switched to solving in the NYT interface. I had previously been solving on a platform called Puzzazz, and on Across Lite before that. For a time, I switched from one platform to another often. So my streak couldn't have even been a year longer. But at the time, the idea of a streak was something new, and I guess it didn't matter that much to me back then. After all, why would I have revealed a square that was easily gettable? I hope that ten years hence, I'll still have a streak. Heck, I hope I'll still be doing crosswords...or anything! Who knows what can happen in ten years, but I hope to report on 12/17/35 that my streak is 7305!

This is basically a reply, but I don't want to attach it to any specific comment, because it could apply to any of several comments made so far (and quite a few more that will be made, I suspect). This was in my opinion a very solid Friday puzzle. It actually played more like a Saturday for me, as I had very little the first time through, and I figured I was in for a serious battle. Having found a few things near the bottom to get a foothold, I was able to make headway, and eventually completed the puzzle at the top, which was quite sparse halfway through my solve. Experienced solvers look forward to puzzles like this one because we can breeze through a lot of supposedly challenging late-week puzzles, even though these puzzles give trouble to less experienced solvers. I can appreciate that this one might have been a backbreaker for newer or less proficient solvers, but that doesn't make it a bad puzzle. Vague cluing? A feature, not a flaw. Obscure trivia? Ditto. Please don't denigrate the puzzle because you couldn't solve it. You don't come to the crossword fully formed as a solver. It takes years, decades even, to get to the point where you can always solve any puzzle. Be positive, and you may get there. (And I emphasize "may". I don't think everyone does.) But the fact that a puzzle is too hard for you doesn't make it a bad puzzle. It just means you weren't ready for it. Factually, it was a very good puzzle.

Just wanted to point out that TIP ROAST and "top round" share an insane number of letters. Ask me how I know.

Reposted: In which ICE disappears. If only...

I have to endure the complaints every time there's a rebus from people who have no idea that rebuses have been a thing since 1954. Themeless Sundays have only been a thing for a few years, and they only appear a couple of times in a year. Someone apparently though back then that they would be a good idea. But I'm quite disappointed when I realize that it is one. (And that's fairly early on, based on the grid shape--no obvious theme answers--and the title, which always conveys in apparently endless ways, that there's no "there" there.) I do them, because I do all of them, but I don't have to like them. Why don't I like them? Because at the size of a Sunday puzzle, the lack of a theme makes the puzzle boring, it drags on, and it lacks humor. This particular puzzle was no different. At least it'll be six months before the next one.

I would like to personally thank Will Shortz for giving us both a Friday and a Saturday puzzle this week that were worthy of their placement at the end of the week.

For the "Skewered meat dish" (9A), I wavered between possible spellings, and settled on entering only K-B-B, intending to wait on the crosses for the vowels required. It turned out to be SATAY. I guess I should B more #.

So yesterday, everyone was going on about REUNE, ETERNE and NEONATE...all good words, unknown to some, disliked by others, and claimed to not be a word by a few. (And yes, if it's in the dictionary, it's a word. And if it's a word, it's good to be in the puzzle. That's how it goes.) Anyway, today's obvious clunker to anyone who follows the sport is MINOR TEAM. Certainly, these two words together as a pairing exists, at least sporadically, since if you do a search, you'll find examples on the internet, although none of the ones I saw were by professionals. And this is because it's not what teams like the Syracuse Mets are called. They're called "minor-league teams." This distinction is important; one is the normal term, and one is the term a few people who don't know the normal terminology have occasionally used. (I base my opinion on the fact that I watch or listen to at least 150 games a year, and no one well-versed in the proper lingo says it...I've literally never heard it on a baseball broadcast.) Does it work in a crossword? Sure, most people (Americans, that is) will be able to figure it out. But it is still very clunky.

Sam, it's not just that AL are the first two letters of the theme answers. AL is the state postal code for ALABAMA. AL is the chemical symbol for ALUMINUM. AL is a common nickname for ALBERT. Which makes it one step more clever than before.

The [Soup or sandwich] clue (27A) reminded me of an old joke: An eighty-year-old wife says to her eighty-year-old husband, "Tonight, would you like to have super sex?" The husband replies, "I'll have the soup." Ba-da-bum!

Jus' sayin'...I don't pronounce LON and "lawn" alike. No "cot/caught merger" where I'm from.

For those of you who are unaware (and I am guessing that includes many of you), today's puzzle is by the editor of the LA Times crossword.