Sal Z
NJ
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NJ
I had such fun working out the trick of the theme and solving this puzzle! Plus I'm still chuckling at [flat-headed crew driver]. Thank you Dylan Schiff for a great crossword! It was a nice ESCAPE-ARONI of an evening....
@Deb Amlen your "morose verse" of the triplet 54A, 30D, 31D is more heartening in the order 31D ILL ADVISED, 30D STILL I RISE, 54A PLEASANT SURPRISE
@Francis That phrase was written for Agnew by speechwriter and language pundit William Safire.
@SamCorbin, I loved your column, and like you, I inexplicably made a big chore out of the NW with false starts like "debit" and " go up NORTH" (duh!). I was finally able to find an arrangement allowing Diana RIGG , forever Emma Peel. I'd never heard of or been blessed with a Bottomless Brunch, but when I got it, I was delighted that all the "too long " answers included brunch food! Very cute ! Fun solve!
Ditto the many shout-outs to John McPhee-- his books are many times re-read in my house! I liked this puzzle and did not miss the asymmetry, though I can see that it might not seem harmonious to everyone. But I liked the visual of the tree. Lots of fun clues and answers plus the cute theme well done with tree names. Last thing for me was TUN /ACTIN pair which brought a fond memory that my mother-in-law taught me the word TUN many years ago during one of our many co-solves of crossword puzzles. That was the first and last time (until today) that I'd ever heard the word...
@Andrzej But I find your ability to do most of these puzzles so amazing! And thanks for the Polish trivia!
Fun puzzle . Tight , well made, and nothing FOUL about it-- Thanks to the constructors!
Fun solve! Great refresh after a tough day. Enjoyed the clever theme, the amusing clues,and OMNOMNOM (which my son said a lot as a teen ). Plus got a good laugh from Deb's "She overthought everything" comment...
@Mike Unless they're irrational. (Ok, I'll log out now)
Cute & funny punny theme! Sometimes I appreciate a quick Sunday, and even more so when it has something fun! Thanks, constructors!
Fun! I liked the clever punny theme idea-made me laugh. I got it by the 2nd theme answer -- I like this kind of pun/wordplay. Nice debut! More please!
@Andrzej "Mode" as in math terms, mean, mode, median which are statistics. Thus STAT
Loved this puzzle! I've been through several exhausting days so this was a sweet distraction (though my finish time suffered when I dozed off with my hand on the screen!) I name this as my favorite puzzle of the year, --- simple yet oh so ambiguous cluing, Caitlin's column and opening picture, and Katie Hoody's engaging memory of the childhood trek to Florida! Plus the related tales that generated in the comments!
Enjoyed this puzzle, although I got the key word without really understanding a couple of the pointer clues-- so I was glad for the explanation in the column. (End of the Road-- cute!) Also loved the Constructors' write-up; hope for more from any and all in their family!
Ms. Miller, I enjoyed your fun puzzle and it made me happy! Thank you!
@Ed I had " cajoling" until nearly the end!
Fun Sunday solve for me, Nice theme, good construction. Enjoyed it even though I spent 10 minutes on internet search of rEAVIES, before finally thinking of HEAVIES. I " knew" ArNOLD was right, but at least it got the thought train going.
Nice Debut, D.B.! Hope to see more from you!
Wow, great puzzle! Challenging - [eek! current pop trivia-- not my era] !! But I didn't have to look anything up. I got COO on the crosses then listened to the Sarah Vaughan song Sam referenced to understand. Some clever cluing added to fun. Eventually I realized that the entire After entries really were an alternating shuffle of Before, also explaining the double GOOFOFFS. Very satisfying to my lexical brain! Also lol @Sam Corbin column-- I'm sending vibes to the puzzle gods to cut you a break!
Nice debut! Fun puzzle with some thinky clues. Embarrassingly I didn't fully realize the theme until reading the column after solving. Very impressive.
Wow, a workout for me but engrossing. Loved finally getting OCARINAS . Some of the constructor's Gimmes were simply not available to my 1am brain. (Duh, 5-letter state ending in "ine"?). I couldn't let go of "hOrNY" for [Crushing] until I gave in and got the crossing ....TROOPA from the column. Oh well, I thought it was clever.
Great Weds puzzle and a nice debut! I appreciate that even with trivia I didn't know, the crosses eventually helped out so no temptation to look up. I liked the Tea break theme.
Sam's intro to the column made me laugh! Fun puzzle- thank you much, Mr. Bodily and Mr. Byrne. Also best wishes to Mr. Byrne's wife.
Easy peasy but fun . At first I didn't think much of the theme entry letter switches, (as in, "why are we doing this?") but when I saw the reveal I decided it was pretty cute. Loved the cluing for BLEEPS. Thanks and Good luck to the energetic constructor! And now, off to FINE MIST reading to pass on to some WEASELS I know...
@Mean Old Lady I too was surprised that the word "Lay" is so little known now. But that's what happens to words. Any fan of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings would recall the lays recited in that series, such as the Lay of Nimrodel and the Lay of Luthien. (I refer to Tolkien's work, not the very different LotR movies). I enjoy learning the old words and how people used to express things, as well as seeing how language changes over time. I think crosswords help provide a glimpse into that. Taken together, crosswords cover a broad range of cultural and linguistic references from decades or centuries ago, to very modern, even localized, culture and slang. So very energizing (and puzzling too!)
Nice puzzle; for me timewise was as long as the grid! Some good laughs on clues and answers: MANBAG, [spoke sheepishly]. Doh- "what can those circled letters spell" until the mystifying [connect from A to T etc]. Even though I couldn't connect the dots (tiny phone, bad spatial skills) I knew there was a giraffe in there somewhere. That left only no idea why TOWERS until reading the column. I enjoyed it and the constructor comments... not to mention @Whoa Nellie's hilarious poem! (And the graphics worked on my small unpopular phone, so thank you tech team. Though I am sorry it didn't work for others. For me, it's PIPS that is a headache).
Deb, my condolences upon your father's death. May his memory be a blessing. Thank you for telling a bit about him. My crosswording also started with my dad's habit of completing the newspaper puzzles every day.
@Whoa Nellie Whoa that's great! Loved it!
@Francis On the other hand, you knew Enthalpy!!!
I'm in my 70's but only today did I learn the phrase "term of art". Overall the puzzle seemed bright and contemporary (not to my advantage!), but pretty well constructed to help with the trivia. All the same I had two lookups.
Fun Monday; And great column, Sam!!
@CCed and @Andrew Thanks for the Hey Ya link! Never saw it before but got a real kick out of it. I was dimly aware of the retro-Polaroid fad in the early 2000's, but I really remember the late '60's in 8th grade when a dear friend saved up from his paper route to buy a Polaroid. I saw plenty of Polaroid pics taken and developed but I never saw or heard of anyone shaking them, so that theme entry today was a mystery-- explained by the video!
@Bobby I liked the theme too, although I can no longer take the sweetness of Cotton Candy, my favorite treat many decades ago. Those decades helped me get MAIN, probably an obsolescent use, but I have long heard the phrase "over the bounding main" and other references. On the other hand, I never heard of ON TILT, so thank heavens for the crosses!
@Beth But I bet a lot of us started out with rebusses to achieve the starred clues until we saw the pattern or got the reveal! (As in, that's what I did!)
@Ben Crossword popped back to the top for me when I updated the NYTGames app via the app store .
@Dave Munger I also didn't want to put SCONE since High Tea usually is not about sweets but more like the mini sandwiches, etc.
@Steve L That's also a perfect description of a BED dOG!
@Marshall Walthew and @Mason Oh! I hadn't thought of "buff" as fit or strong- good idea! "Buff" did seem a little strange when I read the clue; In fact I thought it was an adjective for Marsh that I wasn't familiar with, so I kinda ignored it which helped with the answer considerably! After reading your comments I looked up "buff marsh" , and it doesn't seem to be a thing, although there are a number of people named something like Marsh Buff! So I guess "buff" in the clue could mean the egret is attractive.
No problem with this one. Got the theme quickly with the first (and well chosen) theme answer. Shout out to @Deb for her great corporate buzzword double-speak dialog!
Enjoyed this during my car maintenance! A rarity for me on Friday: Good time without a single lookup! Things I didn't know yielded to the crosses and reasonable guesses. Lots of puzzling clues made me feel good when I finished. Nice column @Deb Amlen; I had a laugh with your comment about 3-1-4, the last clue to fall for me. I had crossed with AGAwP so "LOwS ??-very long pause-Oh". You have a lot more working brain cells than I do!
@Helen Wright Apple butter: No butter. Just refers to being reduced, concentrated and ultra thick compared to "sauce".
@SP Me too. Maybe actually even more often. Like Hazel F, I met LOTR when no longer a kid. I'd had some linguistics and some northern European history and literature studies, and Tolkien just captured my brain and stuck there. And I'll second @Sara W's suggestion-- Master and Commander Series as audio books kept me entertained and sane for several years of hour+ commutes to/from work.
Very nice puzzle; lots of fun. Loved the notes from constructor Zhou! GINZU and CONFABULATE were instant but embarrassing amount of time passed for OCCAMSRAZOR and IMEANCOMEON (latter not helped by CAius for Julius Caesar character)!
Mr. Lieberman, I saw your shout-out to your mom; I am old enough to be your mom (or grandmom) and not much of a Saturday solver either, but I stuck it for well over an hour and "finished" with 6 lookups! (Ouch!) (But I never even blinked at MYRNA Loy or NOEL Coward which were among the very tiny set of words I wrote down on my first run-through.) Thank you for a delightful time parsing your puns and misdirects.
@Jason Miller Thank you! Very interesting to find out about Paracelsus in Wikipedia, thanks to your comment. (Not Greek!) Enjoying my rabbit hole...
@Times Rita Blast from the past--Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land was also my early teen intro to Sci Fi. I kept up with Sci Fi until middle age, so managed this puzzle ok-- My dead spot is pop music/culture. And no, Times Rita, Neutron Stars are dense, but you are not!
@Andrzej And oh yes, good guess about NETIPOTS - exactly right. I could never bring myself to try it (so far)... Congrats on your solve-- I had to go to the column to get answers....
Fun ride! Theme clues and answers gave me a good chuckle. Nice debut!!