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Got it, but pretty rough for a Monday. Too many proper nouns. The intersection of B'nai B'rith and Jean Smart leaves you with a spot you know is either an A for jeAn or an N for jeNn, but if you don't know who Jean Smart is, B'n_i could be any letter. Also it's WEENIE and BEGAT, not WIENIE and BEGOT. Like, for real.
Hmmm... A camera 'Pan' movement isn't getting closer. It's a horizontal movement, specifically one where the camera rotates on a stand, instead of moving the camera on a dolly. It's definitely not 'getting a closer shot' in any definition. Also, these crossword authors really love EBB and SRO. I've lost count of how many times they've shown up lately (though I'm sure someone on the wide web is tracking such stats)
@Lady Morgan Kelly Diana a PDA was a Personal Digital Assistant, which were handheld computing devices that started to get popular and then pretty much immediately died when they added cellular phone capability to them and called them smartphones. PalmPilot was probably the most common/popular one
Is it not an Elks LODGE, not a club? Definitely got tripped up by IDEM instead of IBID, but didn't mind the gimmicky theme, that was fine Also becoming increasingly convinced that NYT crossword authors don't know of any other tree species. They seem very ELMist
Super clunky puzzle. It's more commonly 'bet the farm' not the ranch, and 'insulation' is almost never pluralized. I'll admit I was wrong on Aughts, though. I definitely thought it was Oughts
Have never heard anyone exclaim 'OH ME' either in real life or in media or literature. 'OH MY' is a common exclamation that fits the meaning of the clue, though.
But... Why? The 'theme' entries in 'fusing' the clues together weren't overly hard to solve (mere seconds off my p.b.), but without a revealer or a puzzle title or anything they just felt.... out of place? No mention of them elsewhere in the list of clues, the phrases had no real connection to the answers or clues they stuck between. Sure, we can stick a word between two other words and it makes a third phrase, but to what end?
After a week of puzzles I felt were too easy for their day, this one was a total slog. Not unenjoyable on the whole, but fairly exhausting.
SETI isn't a subject, and it isn't studied with telescopes..... It's the name of an organization or an initiative, and they *do* the studying. The subject of their study is Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, which they do use telescopes to Search for....
@Robin Indeed, they've EBBed on some of the faves, but the puzzle was so full it was SRO, so I guess they couldn't fit without others making their ESC
Who says PAREN??? Like is it a regional thing, or a specific job/field? Never, ever, have I heard that said or seen it written. Also, two days in a row for EBB and SRO, both! They reaaaaallly love those two
The uncommon spelling of lychees definitely threw me for a loop, but I got there. And my frequent gripe showed up again: OBIT is an abbreviation for obituary, no matter how commonly used, but no indication in the clue's text that it would be a shortened or abbreviated word All in all, a fun puzzle!
Again with the abbreviation answer (5d) that's not indicated in the clue. Even looked it up on Merriam Webster's website to be sure, and yep, the only entry there is "abbreviation for Reorganization" Fun puzzle, aside from that one picked nit
I thought a diaresis mark was only used with two adjacent vowels to ensure separate syllable pronunciation, like naïve or daïs. Did the Brontë family just use it incorrectly when they should have chosen an acute and spelled it Bronté?
New personal best for Fridays. 11:11! Less than half my average, with no lookups. Was today's puzzle just easier than most Fridays, or was it just a particularly good fit for my brain, or am I just on fire this morning? The world may never know
@mkemperbrown Not to quibble your quibble, but according to how the MCU fandom wiki slices it, the clue was correct. <a href="https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/The_Infinity_Saga" target="_blank">https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/The_Infinity_Saga</a>
@ad absurdum The Mini has gold stars? I just checked the archive, and it's blue all the way back as far as I've been doing them (nearly a year). I think gold stars are only for the main crossword (indicating it's part of a streak, yes?) and not for the mini, which doesn't track streaks?
I've heard of a Township, but never in this context, only in the context of surveying property, as in Township, Section, and Range, but even then, I haven't ever seen it abbreviated. That was new to me
Yeah, plenty about this puzzle was difficult, but PLUM is just plain wrong, erroneous, and incorrect. It is, as Caitlin pointed out, PLUMB as in slang for 'completely' and not PLUM, the fruit. Disappointing to say the least
@Grant What a fascinating nugget of history, encoded in some of the most mundane administrative data
I'm guessing this is a regional variation thing, but where do they call them 'MALTEDS'? Over here in Oregon that's just a 'malt' or a 'malted milkshake' Then again, I'd never heard of an egg cream either, which doesn't sound particularly appetizing now that I look it up Overall a fun Saturday solve though!
@Gustav Hellthaler JR Isn't the more commonly accepted term for lake/land interface "shoreline"?? I think "coastline" and "coast" at least in common parlance, only refer to sea/ocean
@Andrew It's creepier than that. It shows how well Google knows what you search for, and what time of day your searches are likely to be looking for NYT clues
@Vaer ah, is that it? I know approximately zero about tennis, so that explains my lack of getting that one. Thanks!
@Mark, from BART Interesting. Well, at least we can blame the incorrect diacritic choice on him, instead of the (presumably more qualified) author sisters, for whom such a gaffe would be a bit more embarrassing
@Grant Yeah, figured it must be some kind of regional thing. We don't really subdivide our counties out west here despite having some very large counties (mine is over twice as large as your whole state), at least not in any sort of administrative subgroups or governing boundaries. Just State -> County -> City
@Dana Not on the Merriam-Webster website for the definition of PLUMB they don't? At least not that I'm seeing? <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/plumb" target="_blank">https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/plumb</a> Also that page has a link to a Merriam-Webster article comparing PLUM and PLUMB and quite specifically imploring us all to not confuse the two <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/difference-between-plum-and-plumb-and-plump-usage" target="_blank">https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/difference-between-plum-and-plumb-and-plump-usage</a>
@Steve L I have no idea what rap song you're referencing, but GO HAM is a common enough slang term
@fernandan Only when using the NOAA method of calculating coastline, which unlike the CRS method (that they used for the number in the clue today), includes tidal inlets and apparently also the shoreline of the Great Lakes. Even when using that method, Florida is still 2nd place, with 8,436 miles
Got it in decent time and it was a fun puzzle, but my uncaffeinated brain is still confused by a couple of the smaller downs. LOB? If it was like an easy baseball pitch, then it would be a 'pre smash-hit' not a 'pre-smash hit' Or does it refer to something else entirely? And LAW? One law covers all estates? Maybe I'm overthinking it?
@Grant I did know TATUM, but I initially misspelled HAILEE. AMAL and AYO EDEBIRI I got pretty much entirely via crosses before I realized what the actual answers were
@Tony Or rather (as I had my order of operations flipflopped), stirred up with sweetened condensed milk, then iced, then topped with evaporated
@Frank They were? I can still buy them in every convenience store just about, here in Oregon
@Oikofuge Hmm... Seems like a dubiously phrased 'one' to me, still. But it makes more sense than it did a minute ago. Thanks
@Hardroch I see it there in the M-W entry, but every other result, including an article on M-W that describes the diaresis, as well as the entries and articles about it from OED, Grammarly, Cambridge Dictionary, Britannica, Oxford Reference, several articles from here in the NYT over the years, and many others, specify pretty clearly that it only applies to adjacent vowels. I can envision M-W including Brontë as an example due to the name's longstanding prominence, but the overwhelming weight of entries and writeups seem to be showing that it's an incorrect usage
Was there meant to be some connection or theme between the answers to the theme downs? I figured out the nested parentheses upon first reading the 5D clue, even if I didn't know the answer yet, and confirmed my assessment as soon as I saw 7D's nesting doll clue, but if there's meant to be some connection between the themed entries, I'm missing it
@Heg I thought the same thing when I had it filled as SKIS, but then when I realized it was SKID instead, the clue made for a better fit
@Loopy Not not so. Thai Iced Tea is customarily topped with a hefty pour of sweetened condensed milk. The americanized version is sometimes substituted for fresh half & half. <a href="https://hot-thai-kitchen.com/thai-iced-tea" target="_blank">https://hot-thai-kitchen.com/thai-iced-tea</a>/
@Loopy It is topped with evap, you're right, but it's usually stirred up with sweetened condensed milk (before adding ice) and finished by topping with evaporated
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