Jon G.
Alameda CA
I couldn’t see the circles until I updated to v4.64.00 on iPhone. But here’s the thing: my phone (and I assume many/most others) are set to auto-update all apps. Whenever this crucial update came out, it was still in the auto-update queue on my phone along with many other apps. Life in our times. So this is a NYT tech fail. Don’t publish a puzzle that needs to run on the latest update until well after the latest update has been released and installed on your subscribers’ devices! 🤦
I enjoyed this solve and the thematic twist, but the resulting words (Cornier Stories -> Corner Stores) are a dead end. So what if without the I the phrase becomes a different more common phrase? What does Corner Stores have to do with the clue or the theme, other than it’s a phrase without Is in it?
Outstanding puzzle. Love the different layers of solving. Thursdays should always be the most esthetically pleasing of the week.
@Mark Agree. Seems to me that with the huge number of subscribers doing the puzzle on their phones, publishing a crossword that can’t be fully depicted in the app should be a nonstarter. And I thought it was a really easy Thursday with a simplistic Tuesday or Wednesday level theme.
Arte Johnson has been an NYT crossword answer for decades given the usefulness of his name as a filler, but I hadn’t seen it in years.
I mostly enjoyed this puzzle, until the end. Then I felt like a fool. Then after reading the comment I felt like I wasn’t the only fool. My biggest problem is the “puzzle note.” I solve on an iPhone, and I never read the article until the end of solving, to avoid getting help I don’t (yet) want. Was this note provided to print subscribers next to the empty grid? If so, why wasn’t it provided to online subscribers when we opened the empty grid? “We couldn’t do it due to technology limitations” isn’t the right answer. The right answer is “we aren’t publishing this puzzle until our technology catches up to our ambitions.”
Get me rewrite! Do you mean to tell me that no one who read this article caught the mistake that “ACA” is the AFFORDABLE Care Act, not the American Care Act?
@Jess thanks yes, I know about the blinking i and always open it to see what the *name* of the Sunday is, because I know it’s our first clue. I didn’t look down and see the Note because I wasn’t looking for it since it’s usually not there. So it wasn’t until this point in the solve that it all became clear. Now I know of course so I, for one, will keep an eye out.
@Dave Munger It wouldn’t have been hard. For instance, for the first one, the clue could have included (mom and pops) after the punny clue, signaling that there was more to this than simply filing in the apparent answer.
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