Rob
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Extremely Low Earth Orbit
@Jean French Really? I just entered Fs in all of the theme boxes and it was fine. It didn't even occur to me that this could be a rebus puzzle until I read wordplay, at which point I'd already figured out the theme and solved it successfully.
@Voicers When a word gets borrowed into a new language, the grammar rules of the old language don't always apply. Sometimes we keep them, but that generally leads to confusion. In this case we haven't, and trying to insist otherwize doesn't change the facts.
@Rebecca I don't think the theme was tricky enough for a Thursday. Without the revealer and the marked squares, you could have just solved it normally without noticing that there was a theme.
"It just means the puzzle’s wordplay is self-evident." I dunno about that. I fully solved the puzzle without noticing that there was a theme. It might be more accurate to say it means the theme is optional.
I dunno about 17A. Seems to me that, if it becomes a sting operation, that means the beekeeper has done an extremely poor job.
I'm normally not a fan of rebuses that have to be read differently for the down entries than for the across ones, but this has enough logic to it that I was able to figure it out, rather than just seeming random. Well done.
@LJADZ It wasn't obvious to me, either. That corner was the last part to be filled. But, that doesn't mean the constructor had to look it up. You don't know their life. This might be normal terminology for them.
"Get one's story straight" means "to communicate clearly and accurately"? I don't think I've ever seen it uzed in that sense. I generally see it in the sense of "to come up with a more convincing lie."
I'm kind of annoyed at myself. When I saw the clue for 1A, I thought, "haha, maybe it's a baby shower." And that seemed like such a silly pun that I didn't even check whether BABYSHOWER had the right number of letters and left this entry blank until I'd basically completed the puzzle and could tell that was the answer from the crossing letters. I must remember that just becauze a pun is silly doesn't mean they won't uze it in a crossword clue.
@Mr T I'd be OK with it if they marked it as an abbreviation. But, they didn't. I thought that was against the rules.
I'm normally a fan of themed puzzles, but this one seems kind of cheap becauze all but one of the theme entries work even if you don't understand the theme, which I didn't until I came and read this article. 'Cause of Irritated Eyes' = BAD BREAKUP? Sure, that makes sense, becauze you're likely to be crying. 'Many lovers' = CAT PEOPLE? OK, I guess it's a reference to cat hoarders, which is a bit off, but not beyond the pale for misleading clues. 'Mayim of entertainment' = THE SHOW MUST GO ON? I've never heard of Mayim; maybe they say that a lot. 'Way down in the nether regions' = BRAZILLIAN? It's a term related to the bikini area, so, again, not that off for a misleading puzzle clue. All of theze and Y=X I solved with only a few crossing entries to help, becauze they make sense with the clues as written. The only "theme entry" that makes more sense once you know the theme is DAS KAPITAL. What a useless theme.
@Alex Care is the ending of both AppleCare and ObamaCare. I don't see a problem with the wording. "Starts with" would have indicated CareApple in my mind.
Anyone else try to fit AS F in 33D, it was that just me?
@Chris Sad, considering that they've changed their business model from helping crafters get a leg up in business to cramming in as many unnecessary fees as they can while supporting grifters.
A DIE is also a type of mold used for casting metal. I think that makes more sense for 49D. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_casting" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_casting</a>
@Niall Inc and Fortune are both business-related periodicals.
Thoze long entries were difficult. I've never heard of the guitar technique being described simply as "slap bass" and I initially rejected it becauze it would make 14 down start with TS, which cannot possibly be a word. But, the TS was right, after all.
@Bill Totally missed that. I guess I have to look at spaces after blanks now, too.
@Matt H EPISTOLLARRY NOVEL was my first thought for that clue. But, as you can see, I spelled it wrong and convinced myself that it didn't fit in the space. It was only when I had filled in a lot of the crossings that I realized it works if you don't add two extra letters. EPICENE is completely new to me. But, when I looked it up and saw the that the dictionary definition was illustrated with a picture of a statue of Hermaphroditus, I knew immediately it was right.
I did not know that oar could be a verb. I initially entered ROWED, which messed up some of the crossings.
@Byron The Oxford English Dictionary recognizes ASYLA as a variant plural form of asylum.
@Deb Amlen When I finish a game of Minsweeper on my phone, the app I uze for that replays it, showing the order in which I opened it flagged each square, but at high speed and omitting any pauses or hesitations. It's kind of cool to see a birds-eye view of how the grid went from entirely unknown to entirely known in a few seconds. I can imagine how a similar feature in a crossword app could also be cool. But, as a programmer myself, I wouldn't envy whatever poor soul is tasked with making it happen.
@DF Weird. That was one of the few clues I figured out on the first pass with no difficulty.
I am normally very opposed to rebuses that are meant to be read differently across than they are down, as I think this violates the definition of a CROSSword puzzle. However, in this case, I think it actually works, since Φ does rather look like an I and an O in the same space and the puzzle was very consistent about doing that. It helped that I was able to paste in an actual Φ and that was accepted; if I'd got to the end of the puzzle with Φs in all of the squares and then had to go back and change them, I'm sure I'd have had a lower opinion of the puzzle. I've never heard of a crisscross puzzle before, and I was still able to figure it out once I saw the pattern with the rebusses. So, that's pretty cool.
@Cyndie Or both keys at once. But, yes, this seems like a weird interpretation.
@Michael D I hadn't heard of havoc as a verb before, either. But, the OED dates it to 1575.
@Bay Area Native "Awake" isn't a binary condition. I generally interpret this question to mean "Are you *fully* awake?" And, if you have to ask me that, the truthful answer is uzually no.
@Matt R. Really? Then who did the Australia lose a war to in 1932?
@Ben Dunkle All three of the listed holidays involve fables, so I'm not sure how that works.
@Lauren I have no idea what a quadruple double is (even after looking up the Wikipedia page on it), but I was still able to solve this. I don't love sport-intensive puzzles, but I've seen a lot worse than this one.
Generally the word "certain" in a crossword puzzle clue implies that the answer is a specific example of the given category. Today, however, we have [Certain Windows hard drive malfunction] solving to I/O ERROR, an extremely generic term for a wide variety of issues involving communication between the CPU and other computer components. When a computer displays this message, it's basically admitting that it has no idea what went wrong. So, yeah, it took me a while to figure that one out.
@Pilvion I assume it's to do with the Buddhist mantra, but I think it's a bit of a stretch to call that a "chant". I also finished the puzzle without understanding the theme. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Om" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Om</a>
@Dc True, but if you transfer it to the cracker fast enough, you can spread the fire.
"Vascular" means of or pertaining to blood vessels. A dress made out of blood vessels would be a really odd fashion choice.
Given that 90% of the world is literate theze days, is it still a sign of being learned?
@Steve L I never heard of Diane Sawyer before, either. But, I didn't get mad about it like Charles. It gave me an opportunity to learn something new.
@Doug Schoemer I thought it was meant to be a single word and kept wondering how ATTACKED was likely to smear.
@Dutch Gunderson To me, it looks like the clock stops immediately, but there is a definite delay before the puzzle is marked as solved. I'm also uzing Firefox.
@Anonymous "Terminally online" is an expression meaning out of touch with reality due to an overconsumption of social media.
@Bradley It's three words: IN A LIE, as in "caught in a lie". I don't know ADOUT either, though.
DROPSHIPping is when you add a (uzually unnecessary) middleman. What am I missing that allows it to also mean "cut out the middleman"?
@Edward I agree with you about car. Even after seeing the explanation for this one, I still don't think it makes sense. Gas tanks go from empty to full exactly as often as they go from full to empty. And they start off empty, becauze nobody wants a full tank of gas inside a car factory.
@Jenna I wrote in a word I figured they'd never allow in the New York Times as a joke. Turned out to be the right answer, though.
@JR For Georgia, it's in the title.
@The X-Phile I did the same thing and I'm still annoyed. It's an fun theme, but both ways ought to have been accepted. Not accepting both just ensures that half of solvers will have a bad time right at the end, even if they correctly figure out the trick first.
@Bill If they were real anagrams, I'd respect that. But, this is kind of weak.
I couldn't remember whether the Spanish for "other" was OTRA or OTRO and I didn't want to look it up, so I just guessed. Then, once I filled in the whole grid and it was saying I had an error, I had to go through every answer twice before I noticed I had accidentally written AIN'T GONNo HAPPEN in 39 across. So that was kind of annoying. Otherwize, a pretty eazy puzzle.
@Mads I occasionally get this in the Android app. Only solution I've found is to open the puzzle in a browser (signed in with the same account) and retype any single letter. Instantly marks it as complete, even in the app when I reopen it. Seems to be a weird intermittent bug, but, it's enough that I have to check that yesterday's puzzle is still marked as complete before starting today's.
@Hugh So much esoteric trivia! I was stuck on 2 down for a while becauze I've never heard of a mathematics prize being called a medal before.
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