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I finally had to look up usage of “tec” because I have only ever seen it in crossword puzzles—and I have read a lot of detective novels! I guess we all have just blithely accepted this as a valid abbreviation and gone about our puzzles, but having never seen it outside the NYT, i had to find out. So, just to enlighten all of you, it was slang first published in 1879, with a usage of 0.1 words in a million. Then it dropped, made a comeback to that level in the late 1940s (who used it? No idea. Magazines maybe?) before dropping to its current level below 0.02 words in a million. Also used as a verb, to spy on.
Bravo. Really nice puzzle, long entries in a mirror pattern replete with bad puns. Very nice.
@JayTee This is exactly why I like to read the comments column here. Very cool.
@Dave K, well, knowing full well what was being referred to here, I had TATTOOS for a few minutes there before realizing that was never gonna fly. FACE TAT is so slangy for a description of Maori body art.
Oh, some awesome punning, love it. Especially with the dad joke response in there. (And yes, turtle's hell was the gem.) Skosh, the word, always bugs me, I guess knowing that it came to English from GIs in Japan (sukoshi = a bit) and somehow landed in the US without acknowledging that. At least "moose" (musume = daughter) didn't catch on for girl.
@Ace Yes. This is why I read these comments on crossword puzzles.
Just here to say that it's nice to see Jennifer Egan name-checked, I love her books. How cool that must be to have your name in the NYT crossword!
Oh, those repeats! I was second guessing myself all the way through. Nice one!
Just gonna say: nowadays, movie trailers do indeed often give you the whole picture! They basically play out a super edited overview of the entire plot. Mostly it makes me want to skip the thing, if it can be summed up like that.
I really wanted 28D to be pink dolphins, was happily filling it in till the last i. Oh well, I'll settle for tetras.
Since I boringly start NW and work across and down, I was getting grumbly about all the sports stuff (honestly the only reason I know anything about team names etc is due to NYT crossword puzzles!) But then we had La Tosca, and BMI followed by Half Step, so I calmed down. There you have it, how to please everybody.
Nice one! I have stopped racing the clock so i can really enjoy the puzzles, and I really liked the slow reveal on this one. Figured out it had to be a rebus by about a quarter way down, started filling them in in the circles.. And so forth. A couple name-crossings, but not undoable. Thanks!
@Bill in Yokohama I don't quite know why it bugs me, for some reason the usage seemed crass to me. My own problem, I know! Some Neurospiciness or other. I am mostly ok with loan words ( I loved the ones brought into Japanese when I studied that decades ago, like "remocon" for remote control, for example.) And often these are modern things stuffed into old languages that need to be reshaped to accommodate. Other prickly ones for me are the short-style of imported words into Swedish, where I live now after a lifetime of Californian English and Spanish: El for electricity, bil for automobile. I just can't hear or read "El bil" correctly. Or the megastore El Giganten, gets me every time.
@Michael yeah, too fast! I got it in under 10, hadn't even finished my coffee.
@JayTee back when I motorcycled, we always carried a tube of the ointment called Brave Soldier, just in case of road rash. Luckily I didn't need it... Until I was bicycling more often. But we always "dressed for the crash, not the ride" and would chide other motorcyclists for not doing so. Road rash can kill! Needless to say that was an easy answer for me.
@Sarah f I try not to as well, there were a few names in this one I was tempted to but held off and made it through on crosses. But yeah, personal fail if I absolutely have to. It gets harder as you go back through the archives, so many topical names from the past that simply aren't common knowledge in the present. They had one from 1942 on the archive and it was impossible!
Hey now, that was just a big Monday. 15 minutes. Also: donuts are not baked.
@Heidi That T was the last letter for me. I kept staring at it after changing from "In a bin".
Nice one. You know I'm going to be using some of these just to confuse my friends. Like others said, however, IM and DM in the same puzzle, hmmm. One of the funny things about current references is that you never know how long they'll last, they could age out by next year, could take a decade. I mean, if you too back through the archives (I started going backwards a few years ago, hit 20 years back this week) you'll come across so many things that don't exist anymore (Napster, ipods, etc.) And pop culture references that are best forgotten, perhaps. There's also a puzzle from 1942 on the website, that was really tough with the people, places and things that people were expected to know then. Autocheck on.
Often I don't like the tricks in Thursday puzzles, but I really enjoyed this one, especially once I figured out that the answers to the parentheses made actual phrases and not word salad! Not my fastest, but not the slowest either. Several wrong turns for me (as others have noted, tree for smog, sole for hake) and a few blocked pipes in the brain till the coffee started working, (seriously, couldn't remember Jamie's surname for awhile there.. Duh.) but I made it through! Oddly Moana was called Vaiana originally here in the EU, though that has now changed (no idea why it was too begin with), but as my kid was Vaiana age when we watched it, that's stuck in my head still.
Didn't get the trick, finished in 15 minutes. Not sure I really appreciated it.
While I appreciated the musical refs (arco, Strat, paradiddle), overall this was way too easy. Finished before finishing my coffee.
@Rob yeah I'm calling Natick on that one, that G was my last letter in the puzzle. 7734 40
@Steve L I've been doing the archives backwards, and it's really interesting when I come across idiosyncratic answers twice in a given week or month. I wonder if they do that on purpose, I suspect so, but who knows. (Also since I'm going backwards, I usually get the harder solve first.)
@Steve often for me the things I dislike in a puzzle are two-or-more word constructions, they always feel forced. There were several in this one that irked me.
@Cat Lady Margaret This would make an interesting cipher, especially if reach fruit had some specific extra meaning.
@Jon The very fact that the streak is noted by the electronic version of the puzzle section becomes a source of stress. If you are offline for a day due to, say, travel, it's over. Why was it there to begin with? And why, if they keep track of it, does it disappear? Shouldn't we have a list of all lengths of "streaks"? (e.g. one from July 6 2014-Sept 8 2018, next Sept 9 2018-Jan 4 2020 or whatever.) Then you could compare your own, oh I was longest from 2021-2023 or something. Personally, the fact that it only lists the current one is annoying to me so I tend to ignore it.
I know I'm exposing sensitive personal data but: Early 80s UCSC, at The End party we had a naked jello slip-n-slide.
Yeah, under ten minutes for me. I guess I’ve done too many puzzles.
@Francis it's pu-erh tea, a fermented leaf tea, brewed strong and then made very sweet using condensed milk! Yummy.
Super fast Saturday (8:46!) but providing us with gold in the comments section. Note, in my retrograde archive solving yesterday I got to Sunday March 3, 2002, where the clue for 106 across was "type of plane". Same answer as today's 1 down so I was in the mindset from the beginning.
Wow, good one. I had a lot filled wrong, changed, changed again. Good clues, good answers! Thanks!
Wow, tough one. I did not get the trick until I was done, got all the two/threes by crosses.
Good puzzle! However, a lot of guesswork from my end to complete it. Many things I didn't know and guessed as working around the answers (mostly names, though I did know the Shaw quote.)
@Greg Same. Took less than half a cup of coffee.
@Keep It Simple Please What platform are you working on? I always try to do them on an iPad (with coffee) and the rebuses worked here as well.
@Vaer same, was trying to remember Ventnor, is it Densmor...?
@Francis Well, i think pretty much most religions think that!
@Charles came to say: stu? In decades of studio work I have never heard anyone ever say that. Like the ever-present "TEC" for detective instead of dick. I've only ever seen it in crosswords.
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