WM
Minneapolis
I found this much easier and faster than Thurs or Fri. Dioramas, dings, new normal, and digital detox came right away and no real issues in any quadrants. Briefly had do the time for 10D and pans for 31D. TIL escalator clauses. Same wave length, thanks for a fun puzzle John Guzzetta! Agreed Caitlin on stripy looking wrong.
@Lewis extra crossword-y: BABY EEL BABY EMU
@Mass HOS yes that one hit close to home
@Dave K. I was picking up on the music theme: IDINA WAITRESS RAPDUO SINGIT GROUPIES MAJORTOM And several more that could count if MARIE is counted as a part of a science theme 😄
So many comments already! I enjoyed the puzzle and the fact that cluing seemed easier than a Thursday (I'd say Tuesday or Tuesday ) which is fair since the top half was an exercise in trying to figure out where the rebus or answers breaking across multiple lines should be. USURPED crossing CRUSH for example had me thinking complicated things. In the end it was more straightforward although apparently I thought it was spelled RaINDEER and that STIcKY was a plausible answer for 46D 🤷♀️ Thanks to the constructors for this feat and the fun photos and the Games team for the colors. Oddly I've had pizza two days in a row this week after not having it for months...
Because my first themer was 17A and I excitedly filled in LAosPDR for 37A (I've been! And it was very cool, partially because no one knows exactly what all the ancient jars were for) it took me a while to realize that the metal didn't have to be the end of the answer. I spent a few mins staring at LAos and trying to figure out a metal that would make sense. Overall enjoyed the puzzle and finished in a reasonable amount of time for a Thurs. And TIL about Lydia!
Had last wish for 16A (end of year wish) 😧 I'm not as dark as that makes me look! I was thinking of closing out the year with a wish like a it was a birthday 🤷♀️ it made sense for a few mins...
@Francis JAZZHANDS was a gimme for me and I was suspecting by then that this was a pangram and I was anticipating the Zs! I have heard donezo used although the spelling looked weird as I was filling it in from crosses. Enjoyed the puzzle and went faster for me than Monday (although tbf I was multitasking).
@Steve L I noticed too! Halfway through I started to suspect it and although JAZZHANDS was a gimme for me, it was made slightly easier because I was anticipating a Z (and got two!).
@Dave Rosenbaum same for me! Friday I got some of the spanners right away but struggled with many entries and had to sleep on it and come back a few times. Today pretty much all the long entries only came after several crosses but the overall puzzle was more my wave length. Both days were a good challenge!
@CCNY yes! I immediately thought of 1A but then started second guessing myself and didn't put it in till I worked the crosses.
Congrats on your debut Bob Benson. It was a great Tuesday for me and I thought the theme was clever. Like a few others, I did get stuck on the first letter of 11A/D but F was my second guess so not too painful. Re yesterday's puzzle, I didn't see anyone mention Corrections, any other jackals here? (For those not in the know, Seth Meyers started an online feature responding to comments after a correction about Legos/Lego bricks)
It felt like a lot of Vs! Not part of the theme I guess. I got the theme answers through the crosses and relied on the column to make sense of them. Stuck on stOP for 1A for a little bit, OYVEY!
@tautau same here! The top half was very intuitive for me, the bottom half less so. There was a mention of Adrian doing the top left, I wonder if he was responsible for the entire top half.
I posted this below in one of the Scrabble threads, just repeating my plug for the game Bananagrams! Sort of a faster version of Scrabble where everyone makes their own board and when someone has used all their tiles everyone takes one more from the pile and incorporates it into their board. I love the aspect of quickly trying to form new words. And not having to wait for everyone else to finish their turn and no need for strategizing to hit those triple letter etc tiles.
@dutchiris it was more about the SNOb SNOt confusion! I started with the Downs.
@Cat Lady Margaret thanks for that, I missed it 8 years ago!
@Andrew right, and Sam's tricky clues hint says she understood the answer to be the opposite of "quite some time".
Harkened back to a capella days and had pitch pipe for 32D! Alas crosses didn't work. Air guitar is funny too though!
Loved all the levels of music clues! Everything mentioned in word play plus the scale running down from do to do in the puzzle. So intricate. Thanks Mike Ellison!
Joyfully entered mononym for 62A (you can blame Spelling Bee!), alas it was soon replaced with ONE NAME.
@Sam Corbin, A HOT MINUTE can mean a long time in slang. So the more direct reading of 10D is exactly as written, meaning quite a long time but using words that normally mean quickly.
@Stevedson I definitely thought about it!
@Times Rita same on KOS except I first tried TKO. I think it's one of those crossword short entries that automatically come after doing the NYT crossword for a couple of years!
@CCNY same last letter due to the crossing of ROSTRA and the vague cluing for ESP! Very fun challenge overall. Definitely checked some answers after getting them through crosses. And confused EirE (for Ireland) and ERSE for the language.
@Nancy J. I'm a scuba diver and box fish are among my favorites! When you follow them to try to get a picture they look back at you in seeming dismay
@WM that should say Tuesday or Tuesday plus. The emus ate my plus sign!
@Cloudy Rockwell I recommend Bananagrams! Everyone makes their own Scrabble-like board and when someone has used all their tiles you call out Peel and everyone grabs one tile and tries to fit it in their board. For me, much more fun than Scrabble since play is simultaneous and you don't have to worry about those triple letter and word spots. Bananagrams is all about speed and how well you can incorporate new tiles to make new words.
@Grumpy they did leave it out of the clue! I had a harder time with rhino as I'm from Indonesia and we also have rhinos (not very many left sadly) so African didn't immediately evoke rhino.
@HeathieJ I also was on Rose Conlon's wavelength (faster than Thursday or Friday) and really enjoyed this puzzle! Once I got rid of the S I put at the end of 17A, HUMANCANNONBALL just came. And thanks for the Brooklyn 99 clips ❤️ as for love languages, sure, an at home LAPDANCE would count in several categories.
@Andrzej in my experience macaroons are coconut macaroons, a soft and chewy mounded cookie with no filling. Macarons are the French almond flour with a filling. The internet does say that some macaroons are also an almond flour mounded cookie, I wonder which versions Lewis and Times Rita ate.
@Remy Sundays, though larger and a test of my eyesight on my phone, are a nice break after the challenge of Fri and Sat as they are a Wed/Thurs level. That level of challenge is my sweet spot and the longer solve holds me over through the quick beginning of the week puzzles.
@Michael Weiland the crossword loads at the same time every day (it doesn't depend on time zones) so you'll still have the same amount of time to do them and as long as you do them in order (and close to the 26 hour window) you should be ok. I've definitely loaded a crossword and worked on it on a plane with no Wi-Fi before :-) sometimes it doesn't save or your time gets weird but a worthwhile sacrifice for amusement on a long flight. Have a great trip!
@dutchiris I had 49D as rhapsody in g lue which didn't seem right, but ALG was as plausible to me as the actually correct ALB. Good luck finding your typo!
@Mean Old Lady "we have running water etc" made me LOL!
@Alex I was solving mainly the acrosses and started to see a lot of doubled letters. By the time I got to the downs the theme was mostly revealed. Agreed though that the number of doubled letters also allowing a straightforward long to be entered would have been challenging if I'd started with the Ds.
@Patricia Henry close! Timor is actually the name of the island and timur is East. Timor timur was the name when it was part of Indonesia and the other half of the island still is Timor barat or west Timor. TIL (after googling to confirm) that Timor likely was derived from the Indonesian/Malaysian word for east, now spelled timur. I'm from Indonesia and I grew up thinking Timor was just the name of the island and sea. It would make sense as vowel sounds do change a bit in Indonesian depending on the region you're in and prior to a standardization of spelling that happened in the 1940s there was inconsistency. @MarkGawron as to where the other direction names come from and the many other sources of words in Indonesian it is a function of Indonesian deriving from the trading language /lingua franca of the region and absorbing words from Portuguese, Arabic, Sanskrit, etc etc. It also means that Indonesian is very stripped down with no cases and tenses!
@HeathieJ same on Connections! And thanks for the restaurant rec, I'll check it out!
Michael Lieberman your note made me lol! I enjoyed the puzzle and revealer helped my tired brain crack it open. The spelling of SHETHL and GEHRY were my biggest challenges but the crossings were gentle, thanks!
@Helen Wright don't give up! Galangal was added at some point, I remember when I half heartedly tried it yet again and it worked!!
@Jon Onstot yup, and POKY was not obvious enough to me to give me the Y in FLYNT!
@HeathieJ so good! I must never have seen that music video, it is definitely ripe for parody!
@Francis come to Indonesia. Plurals are made by repeating the noun. No need to add an s or account for different etymologies. One book: buku. Multiple books: buku buku. So simple! And in texting you can just write buku2.
@HeathieJ @Andrezj I'm late to the party so you may not see this, but do you watch Seth Meyers' Corrections videos? It all started with a commenter correcting Legos to Lego bricks... It's been doing a while now and honestly is funnier if you go back and watch from the beginning. I think you would both enjoy it if you're not already jackals!
@Phil and it doesn't help that ser is a variant of sir... I resorted to looking at the answer key.
@Mike beautifully put and I agree! Thank you @Deb!!
@SP my first guess was Teton which was wrong on multiple counts but I think was top of mind because I've been there 🤷♀️
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