Nick

@Lou Scheffer Eh, in principle, I suppose. But Michelle YEOH has been so well-known internationally for decades, acting in works of various genres in both film and TV, that her name should be a gimme for most solvers (except maybe those playing the archives decades from now), and even if you can’t remember how to spell her surname, I can’t think of any other plausible letter other than ‘H’ to complete C_AD for the first name of someone whose middle and surnames are “Michael” and “Murray,” respectively. In fact, I’ve never heard of the latter performer, but I happened to fill in the ‘H’ with the down clue using that exact reasoning, even though I would have known for certain from the across. I actually think this an example of good puzzle construction, precisely because you can rely on your general knowledge of phonology, spelling, and reasonably common names without having to know the trivia.

@Eric Hougland I do personally enjoy the acronym thing solely because it lets me refer to the six Justices who usually write awful opinions in an obliquely rude way by calling them the “Supreme Court Republicans of the United States.”

“Honey, would you please do daddy a favor and clean up those LEGO® brand toy building bricks (US patent no. 3005282A) on the floor?”

@Zachary [Kennedy and Obama] would have been a better clue in terms of misdirection (i.e., you think John and Barack, but it’s actually Jackie and Michelle).

@ol fishman Alternatively: Haymarket Riot/Massacre (1886) All of an Italian football club killed in plane crash (1949) Armed forces of Apartheid-era South Africa kill 600 people in Angola (1978) Margaret Thatcher becomes British PM (1979)—Twenty UK sailors killed on HMS Sheffield during Falklands War (1982) Over a hundred people killed in plane crash in Nigeria (2002) Massive tornado nearly completely razes town of Greensburg, Kansas (2007) Any day of the year is going to have numerous tragedies that occurred on it if you look into it.

@Andrzej So, you’re telling me that clue wouldn’t play in Dąbrowa Górnicza?

@Red Carpet The clue says “percentage,” not absolute amount. Alaska contains 225,848,164 acres of federally owned land, versus 56,961,778 acres of federal land in Nevada. However, the former is about 62% of the total land area of the state, while the latter is about 81%.

@Steve L You forgot: “How dare they include 19A with a neutral descriptor for the clue! I’m cancelling my subscription!” and “I have *absolutely* nothing against people who are 32A, but do they have to bring up that sort of pernicious ideology in a crossword? Why won’t somebody please think of the children!”

@Fact Boy A bit of a stretch, but the anti-Bolshevik “Whites” whose defeat marked the creation of the USSR included monarchist factions (among many other ideologies). Thus, if the Russian Civil War had ended differently, it’s *conceivable* that a monarch claiming relation to the House of Romanov with the title of “tsar” might have been reinstated in some form or another. Arguably, then, the establishment of the Soviet Union is what conclusively resolved the question of whether the February Revolution that deposed Nicholas II would simply have marked the start of a short interregnum, or if it meant the true end of tsarist rule in perpetuity, as it did in fact do.

@Petrol Yeah, the clue doesn’t strictly make sense. You can’t transliterate something that’s already a transliteration into the same target writing system. I guess the thinking was that something like “Alternative transliteration of the Chinese surname ‘Zuo’” isn’t Saturday-level, maybe? Obviously, they couldn’t actually go with “Chinese surname transliterating 左,” which would actually make sense. (I know we’ve had clues where ‘H’ is supposed to be interpreted as a Greek eta, as well as the aforementioned Cyrillic-as-Latin thingy, but a clue requiring hanzi knowledge would be fair only to a small subset of NYT crossword solvers.) But then it’s still fairly obvious what the clue is meaning to ask, so it’s not clever misdirection; rather it just gives slight pause at the awkward wording. Presenting Pinyin in a clue to solve to the Wade-Giles representation that’s more familiar to the average American takeout-orderer is already reasonably difficult unless you happened to have studied Sinology at university, so I don’t think they needed to reword the clue in the way I think they might have, if that was the case. Oh, well, I guess I can console myself by actually having some 左宗棠雞. Uh… it looks like four out the nine total Panda Express locations in this country are within a train ride away for me, so yay!

@Andrzej “Give it the old college try,” often shortened to GIVE IT THE OL’ COLLEGE TRY, is a reasonably common expression, though it might be slightly dated. (I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone my age or younger actually use it, though I did get my bachelor’s degree in Canada and my master’s degree in Japan.) The fact that people from the U.S. usually refer to post-secondary educational institutions generically as “colleges,” even if the actual names of those institutions usually include the word “University,” almost certainly makes it an Americanism, as per your second paragraph.

@PhilO Merriam-Webster and Oxford have the primary definition for VAPOR, respectively, as “diffused matter (such as smoke or fog) suspended floating in the air and impairing its transparency” and “a substance diffused or suspended in the air, especially one normally liquid or solid.” They provide “a substance in the gaseous state as distinguished from the liquid or solid state” and “a gaseous substance that is below its critical temperature, and can therefore be liquefied by pressure alone,” respectively, as secondary definitions. I don’t think that my blood plasma consists principally of unbound ions and electrons nor that it has near-infinite electrical conductivity, either.

@Steve L I’m not sure if I understand your complaint. That paragraph in the column seems to be doing a perfectly fine job of describing how the particular misdirection in the clue works (even if it should be obvious); the columnist simply didn’t happen to use the word “misdirection.”

@Fact Boy According to Wegner et al. (doi:10.1126/science.aaa8902), the opah differs from tunas and lamnid sharks in that it exhibits full-body endothermy, its heart pumping warm blood to all vascularized tissue, as opposed to being endothermic only in specific regions of the body (as is apparently the case with all other known fishes described as warm-blooded). I think the clue might still need to be reworded to be correct, though.

@SBK I didn’t interpret the clue as “Characters from [the names] Homer and Herodotus?” but rather as “Characters from [the works of] Homer and Herodotus?” I guess we can’t know for sure without mind-reading the constructor/editor, but I think it was just a coincidence that both names start with an ‘H’ in English and that the character/letter that turned out to be the answer is shaped like an ‘H’. Also, looking it up, the clue works either way, regardless; you seem to be wrong about there being no etas in either name (unless the editors of Greek Wikipedia are in on some big conspiracy): Όμηρος [Homeros] - The letter right between the mu and the rho is a lowercase eta Ἡρόδοτος [Herodotos] - The first letter after the apostrophe-like glyph is an uppercase eta

@sotto voce Going by the list of member states on the United Nations website (and using the forms of the names used there), I agree it’s *A*ntigua and Barbud*a* (not Aruba). Interestingly, Antigua and Barbuda would actually be the one and only country that would count going by their full official names in English: [Republic of] Albania [People’s Democratic Republic of] Algeria [Principality of] Andorra [Republic of] Angola Antigua and Barbuda Argentin[e Republic] [Republic of] Armenia [Commonwealth of] Australia [Republic of] Austria

@Fabiano To expand on what Simon said, the possibly more familiar word “unagi” in Japanese refers most often to eels belonging to the genus Anguilla, which do spawn in the sea but live mostly in freshwater, while “anago” refers specifically to eels of the genus Conger, which live exclusively in the ocean. (Outside of anything you’d find in Japanese cuisine, “unagi” is also used to refer to, or as part of the common names of, other eels and eel-like creatures generically. For example, electric eels and lampreys [neither of which are closely related to true eels] are “denki unagi” and “yatsume unagi,” respectively. “Anago” always refers to congers.)

@George Like Keith said, as in this classic Gary Larson Far Side panel: <a href="https://static1.cbrimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/far-side-parties-moray-eels-partying.jpg" target="_blank">https://static1.cbrimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/far-side-parties-moray-eels-partying.jpg</a>

@Aaron Teasdale Whenever “futon” appears in a crossword, I have to think about whether it’s asking about an actual futon that you’d find in Japan or if it’s instead asking about what is labeled a “futon” in English-speaking countries. A Japanese futon consists of cloth padding (not really a full mattress, as you only use them on tatami floors that are already comfortable to lie on) on the bottom and another cloth covering that’s like a duvet or blanket. Because a Japanese futon would be uncomfortable to use in the vast majority of homes in North America, I think what they sell usually does include a minimalist frame with slats of some sort, plus a mattress that is bulkier than the bottom part of a Japanese futon set but lighter than a traditional mattress.

@Tamal As a man who doesn’t typically wear pink, I think the clue the clue is caveated perfectly fine, in almost exactly the manner you are asking for, by the appositive phrase “in a breast cancer awareness campaign.” To me, that’s identical to “for some,” except that it provides additional information helpful to solving the clue.

@Steve L I shan’t be finding out in person, but I brushed off my Cyrillic skills and searched one of the major Russian e-commerce sites, and apparently the clue is indeed the best kind of correct.

@HeathieJ I thought at first you were making a bilingual pun: In Mandarin Chinese a “nǐ” problem IS a “you” problem.

@Ggb I think I mentioned this last time there was a similar clue, but 道 (“tao” in the now less commonly used Wade-Giles system) is just a fairly bog-standard word in Classical Chinese, about as common as the English word “way.” Taoism, as the name suggests, adopts it as a particular term of art, but you can find it used more generically as far back as the original Analects, with English translators rendering it based on context: (from James Legge's translation) 子曰、父在、觀其志、父沒、觀其行、三年無改於父之*道*、可謂孝矣。 The Master said, "While a man's father is alive, look at the bent of his will; when his father is dead, look at his conduct. If for three years he does not alter from the *way* of his father, he may be called filial." 有子曰、禮之用、和爲貴、先王之*道*、斯爲美、小大由之。 The philosopher Yu said, "In practising the rules of propriety, a natural ease is to be prized. In the *ways* prescribed by the ancient kings, this is the excellent quality, and in things small and great we follow them.” 子曰、君子食無求飽、居無求安、敏於事、而愼於言、就有*道*、而正焉、可謂好學也已。 The Master said, "He who aims to be a man of complete virtue in his food does not seek to gratify his appetite, nor in his dwelling place does he seek the appliances of ease; he is earnest in what he is doing, and careful in his speech; he frequents the company of men of *principle* that he may be rectified:—such a person may be said indeed to love to learn." Given that TAO has more specific connotations in English, a better clue would probably have just been [Chinese “way”].

@Rob Belcher That might be true of at least some arcade games, but a ONE UP is definitely an extra life in the Super Mario Bros. games and others.

@Lyla Regardless of who is in the right between Lively and Baldoni, the only way the latter could plausibly win a judgment against the paper would be if the Supreme Court overrules New York Times v. Sullivan. You may have read some court filings, but I humbly suggest that you study the legal concepts and precedents that (should) inform them a bit more. <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/celebrities/2025/03/05/justin-baldoni-new-york-times-lawsuit-pause/81672135007" target="_blank">https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/celebrities/2025/03/05/justin-baldoni-new-york-times-lawsuit-pause/81672135007</a>/

@Lpr Ever read/seen the exchange between Hamlet and Ophelia in act Act 3, scene 2, of that one? 👿

@Andrzej I find that comment insulting to pirates!

@David To be pedantic, dictionaries don’t typically have separate entries for each conjugation of a verb for tense, person, and number. However, the online edition of Merriam-Webster does actually have an entry for “sayest”: <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sayest" target="_blank">https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sayest</a> As for the issue of the variant lacking the ‘E’ that’s the answer here, Shakespeare’s First Folio shows usage of both variants: 35 uses of SAYST and eight uses of “sayest,” to be exact. <a href="https://firstfolio.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/search?q=sayst" target="_blank">https://firstfolio.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/search?q=sayst</a> <a href="https://firstfolio.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/search?q=sayest" target="_blank">https://firstfolio.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/search?q=sayest</a>

@Nick D. I’d say it brings to mind the “command” symbol on Apple keyboards more readily, myself.

@Chloe I highly doubt too many USonian solvers even knew what many of these state flags vaguely look like (unless they actually happen to live in that particular state), let alone how many stars are on them; that part is just to make you say, “Oh, that’s sort of clever” when you finish the puzzle and read the column. The actual meat of the clues that solve to the state names are all for features that are fairly well known, even for people who don’t live anywhere near the answers, so I don’t see how this should be particularly more challenging for an Anglophone living on the same continent. How about: “The forests are so pretty, but I keep getting a sense of déjà vu, as if the whole place were a movie set that’s been reused countless times. Still quite enjoyable.” “Yawn, another mountain. And why is everyone so obsessed with oil? Would not recommend.” “This place has everything, from vast lakes to a huge metropolis. Those interested in an educational trip to learn about government will need to prepare to head a bit out of the way, but at least the climate isn’t so muggy.” “I couldn’t understand a word anyone was saying. Some very nice architecture, though. Also be sure to give the bagels a try.”

@AK This comment will probably already be redundant by the time it goes through, but to spell out Steve’s explanation more explicitly, one undergoes ORALS to become a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) rather than a Doctor of Medicine (MD), so the clue is factually correct, just tricky.

@Grumpy I mean, you’re certainly correct that there are some dialects of English in which “sari” and “sorry” are homophones and some in which they are not. However, this accent feature (known as the “father-bother merger”) is, in fact, now more common than not among North American English speakers; you would notice it if you paid close attention to how most national news anchors (in the US) or characters in American movies and TV shows who aren’t intended to have any particular regional accent speak. A distinction between the vowel sounds is preserved mainly in accents from New England and the eastern half of anglophone Canada (obviously with exceptions going either way among individual speakers). Personally, as someone who grew up in the US Pacific Northwest, went to university in Vancouver, BC, and now lives in a non-English-speaking country: * sari/sorry: Homophones * canapé/canopy: Not homophones, but probably only because I happen to know the former is a loan-word from French and rarely use it in spontaneous speech to begin with * caster/castor: Probably homophones unless I was purposely trying to enunciate the latter extremely clearly * magnate/magnet: Not homophones, but I don’t tend to use the former much in spontaneous speech, and I’ve definitely heard them pronounced the same by plenty of speakers * heir/air/err (but not “are”): Homophones * ho/hoe (but not “whoa”): Homophones

@Andrzej In addition to the golf interpretation, I thought it was a reference to how a snapping mouse TRAP is typically depicted in cartoons: with a wedge of vaguely Emmentaler-like cheese placed as bait.

@Francis HER isn’t remotely superhero movie, and it was nominated for best picture—among many other awards—and was on numerous top-ten movie lists (including the one published in this paper) for the year it came out. I suppose they could have assuaged your nit by clueing it as something like [2013 movie in which the co-star is never seen], but it seems a strange one to pick simply because of other roles the actor has happened to have played.

@Steve L “We have always been at war with Eurasia.”

@Ms. Billie M. Spaight A “crack” can mean a joke. (Think “wisecrack.”) There’s a whole genre of “yo’ mama” jokes. Not the most sophisticated things, but they’re common in some circles. For example: “Yo’ mama’s so [corpulent], she has her own ZIP code.”