Tony

@M. Biggen I had an absurd Wordle streak until 2 years ago which was broken by a time zone glitch when I flew back to the UK from a visit to the US West Coast. It is liberating indeed. I’ve only played occasionally since when my daughter wants to have a go at the puzzle together. The whole solve time and streak thing is a bit silly when you think about it. I did crosswords the old fashioned way for years. I was just as satisfied when I finished them, in an unknown time, occasionally with errors I'm sure. All too often my satisfaction now depends on a desperate hunt for a keying error as the clock ticks up.

@Moira I think some of the clues are tricky for Tuesday, but I found once I got the revealer and cut 50% of the letters to a vowel it was quite easy to fill in. Being UK based I always struggle with a one or two clues that are especially American themed. Today’s was HiLiter. We don’t have them here, but the vowel trick let me see it. (If you are doing a UK crossword with the same clue the answer will be Stabilo!)

@HeathieJ I live right by Marlow… it’s a cozy little place for a cozy little mystery. I can forgive them the pain when I need to go into the town and the roads are blocked because they are filming by the church!

@John I got stuck on that as I originally entered HAVEABIT, which when I worked out my error made the naughty parsing inevitable!

@Ιασων On a Friday I think we have to expect a bit of wordplay, even on science clues. A system could be described as having a low chaotic state (low ENTROPY) or a high chaotic state (high ENTROPY). We are drawn to assume that the clue must mean a state that is actually chaotic, but that’s the misdirection intended. As a scientist by training I struggled to see through it, but I think it’s valid.

@Snarf disliker I too balked at this the first time it came up, but it is quite a frequent answer, much more so than scarf. You might need to snarf down a few more crosswords before you get used to it though.

A killer clue for those of us without a US cultural reference. The Moose/MEESE meme doesn't seem to have crossed the Atlantic, probably because MEESE are not found here. Further compounded by Moose not being the first of the deer family to spring to mind! Halloween seems to be getting bigger every year, even if it's got a long way to go to match my experience when living in the US. I picked up a bunch of flowers for my wife at the supermarket yesterday on a whim. When she went to put them in water she discovered a spooky spider on a stalk nestled in the blooms!

@Andrzej Agree I think I would have been lost without knocking half the letters down to a 1 in 5 choice. I have never heard of Hi-Liter markers… until now, but it was easy to guess with the vowel trick.

@SP Agreed. Great puzzle. Very solvable for us non US folk as well. I’ve never heard of COLORWARS, but using tugofWARS at first got me there in the end. I liked DOMED for ‘rounded up’. Slight concern I cheated a bit as OUTINLA is visible from my seat along with my other Chilli Pepper CDs, but I’m going to assume the crossword gods planned that serendipity.

@Matt I don’t think paragon of a heart attack makes sense, but if you look at legitimate uses of paragon e.g. ‘of virtue’ or ‘of simplicity’ then textbook example fits fine. I’m not a crossword expert by a long shot, but maybe clueing as ‘Paragon, say’ would be appropriate.

@Jack McCullough Funny that’s the first thing I thought when I got the revealer. No OREO or ETNA today. Was expecting an OPI though that didn’t materialise.

@Mike It would have been easy! Clothes horse Charlie horse Rocking horse Shaving horse (Neil Young and) Crazy Horse Erm… interc-horse?

@Dan Yes this answer was my last fill because PUREEVIL seemed frankly a bit over the top. Then again, maybe this partly reflects our shifting attitudes towards acts of turpitude. Fraud, bribery, even adultery would once have brought down public figures without fail. These days they seem less remarkable, accepted even.

@Lewis I’m instantly reminded of Lost in Translation which features said crossing in Tokyo, and wipes the floor with this year’s Oscar contenders.

@Mark P I struggled as well. In the UK streakers are normally tackled rugby style by security staff if lucky. Otherwise the competing sportspeople take them down!

@Veevee This makes the most sense. You would say ‘The past five AGs have been scratch golfers, not the past 5 AsG have been golf scratchers!

@Jane Wheelaghan I did miss a few as well. OCONNOR was gained entirely from crossings, as was ICE, but then I couldn’t name any Supreme Court justice man or woman, and my knowledge of rap, Grammy winning or otherwise is limited. Hermione Granger was of course created by JK Rowling, who is estimated to be the 7th best selling author ever on Wikipedia. In fact they have women as 7 of the top 10. Seemed like a good stat for today!

@Jane Wheelaghan My favourite car nomenclature is the ‘shooting brake’, used to describe an estate car with a more sloping trunk/boot profile and generally more sporty appearance. They still get released now and then, though I’ve seen them called things like sport back and fast back more recently. It originates from the days of horse drawn carriages when they were used to transport hunting parties.

@Grant This UK contingent member works in ‘The City’ and would only that term to describe that financial district itself. London overall (including The City), is London. Certainly this UK interloper is very happy for anyone to use The City as they please, or indeed London, of which I think there are over 10 in the US alone!

@jennie They do more hard science than you’d think, at least here in the UK. Enough for my son (13) to laugh at my lame cooking/chemistry joke when he burned some cookies… the Maillard reaction has gone to completion! There’s also a lot on safe cooking temperatures, including bacteria destruction rates at various heat levels and durations.

@Jack McCullough I’m not sure I follow. The start of each theme answer makes no sense in its own right, though they are cleverly all real words that could definitely be clued in a different way. In fact they have been in previous puzzles. The rest of the answers including one or more ‘dark horse’ squares complete the theme, and also match their individual clues.

@David Hartin It’s a UK thing as well, or was. The older players at my club used to say AD-IN or out, and sometimes van-in/van-out. Seems to have died out though. Now we have bagels instead!

@Wilk Also the triple jump is specifically hop, skip, jump, despite its name. The clue had me puzzled, and then slightly disappointed as the crossings showed the answer was in fact, JUMP

@dutchiris I’m trying to remember when all the ‘signs’ were replaced with ‘signage’.

@LStott I think everyone is missing that Brie, well ripe Brie, as it should be, is spreadable!

@Bill Great trivia! Or maybe it’s common knowledge in motor city… it probably used to be!

@Richard I solved faster than my average, but the median solve time of 8ish minutes makes my 20 feel very sluggish in general!

@Stephen It was a big clue, but didn’t stop me filling in ELPHABA across and down at first, making my solve tricker than it needed to be!

@emma I like to think it’s because you always regret giving up. They the link on purpose, giving you another chance to solve unaided before you look it up on xwords anyway.

@Alan That is the late great Dickie Bird, Patrick Meyer, who was a professional footballer (soccer to the home crowd), and later also a cricket umpire. In the middle is Patrick Eager, which is somewhat surprising since he was a professional sports photographer, so you might have expected him to be the other side of the camera. Lords is indeed a special place. I had the privilege of watching Dickie Bird officiate there on several occasions, including a couple of woeful displays by England against the baggy greens. I am pretty sure that Mr Gates is not a cricket fan. The most high profile US billionaire that was is Alan Stanford, and the less said about him the better!

@Tain Yes several US schools, which always trip me up. Even when the answer turns out to be one I do know I’m inclined to assume it’s going to be a different, more obscure one (at least to me). Fortunately the lovely Latin gave me enough crossings to finish under average, but it was close.

@Mo Doner is used in the UK as well but normally in the NYT crossword such things are kebab or kabob. I got LIED crossing with DONER pretty early, but I was suspicious of both because I hadn’t seen it before.

@Andrzej Agreed. I tend to try and puzzle every day because I like a gold star when I have done a puzzle without any help. If I use google I ‘spoil’ the puzzle with a lookup so I only get a blue one. And yes, if get bored the puzzle is left unfinished. So my streak is meaningless. I still can’t resist hunting down keying errors to mark it done in some way though.

Chase them away maybe?

@Jane Wheelaghan That section was a stinker even with the 2 letter head starts. I got Lienee as I’ve worked on US finance deals, but I didn’t recognise triple A even after filling it in, and I was convinced a pitcher was retired, not relieved. Was 2 mins ahead of my best heading into the last 5 clues, but ended up missing by miles!

@Aaron I also srirachad! Happily MIOSIS gave me the I that exposed my error.

@Dc I’m starting to wonder if the midi is entirely edited by AI. Today’s clanger was clueing TURBO as ‘supercharged engine’, when turbocharging and supercharging are two distinct engineering processes.

@Throckmorton I suppose strictly the Irish would include the northern Irish, a lot of whom would be unlikely to use EIRE. I’m inclined to avoid the political hornets’ nest though and accept the clue as meaning loosely ‘Gailic for Ireland’.

@Barry Ancona I lived in France for many years. Plenty of ripe Brie, and few pretensions about how it should be served or eaten!

@Barry Ancona Well quite, hence the complete lack of disputes!

I'll take Futurama any day over having to name the TV Network for a niche sitcom.

I think Phil's point is that you don't normally use the adjective of a noun for the noun itself, because it's redundant. A wax seal is self evidently waxy because it is pure wax. Waxy wax makes no sense, like buttery butter or bready bread. What else would it be?

@Petrol Reminds me of the old British joke. What does a policeman have in his sandwiches? Truncheon meat! I don’t think it crosses the pond very well.

@SP As a counter to that I’m a relatively new enthusiast of the NYT crossword. I have been trawling back through the archive, currently on late 2014 and my best times are all in puzzles between 2015 and 2016.

You never quite know, even when it seems obvious. Roe deer, Reindeer, and so it turns out Moose, are all deer. But a Musk deer? Well that's closer to a goat taxonomically. I don't know how common that contradiction is in other languages. I speak French, but not to the level I know the names of every variant of an animal family. English does try to correct these things sometimes. Children are now taught about sea-stars not starfish, because they are not fish.