sonnel

Charming crossword cluing compadre!

Bill Clinton’s is displayed…. 43D… I got to S_X and was aghast, decided 52A could not be EXEC. Held me up until the end. Then I thought… was the cat SOX now stuffed and in the Smithsonian? Finally SAX emerged in my mind and I finished. Thanks Matz’s! Fun little loop there.

For the first 15 minutes it was impossible, the second 15 minutes it was difficult, the third 15 minutes doable, and when I was done, I decided it was easy. Consistency is the hobgoblin of my journey into crossword-tania. I’ve learned in the past year the pleasure of crosswording and acquired substantial respect for the talented constructors and solvers. I had losangeles before SANANTONIO and anarchy before ENTROPY. In another eon I drank Rhône overlooking the Rhône with my landlady whose tiny pet dog was named Mignon. I was so young it made me feel worldly, but now I cringe a bit at how callow I was. And remain. Crosswords can the chords of memory long forgotten.

I’m with Sam Corbin on “cheating”…. when I started regularly doing the NYT crossword a few years ago, it was me and Google. The main difference now that enables me to not Google anymore… I have learned a bunch of frequently used words like ERE, ERR, OGRE, EPEE, EMU, etc. So usually I can get enough of a start to reason out the rest. Very fun puzzle today! Ever since I tasted coffee ice cream at age 3 it has easily been my favorite… morphing now to mainly espresso shots. Thanks!

I was saved by RICEARONI. Being absolutely sure of that answer cracked open the wormhole detail for me.

Second TATI!

Only 13 minutes… only 13 minutes over one hour, that is. Just about zero crosswordese… maybe ENT and PDF. Got that good old feeling 30 minutes in of only having 5 words entered. Then somehow the southeast came together. Then slow difficult progress with… a surprising number of wild guesses being right, and weird memories like BWANA from some old movie that I can’t remember anything else about rising out of nowhere into my consciousness. Northwest was last, again, couldn’t believe my desperate guesses turned out to be correct sometimes. But as often wrong. One thing I’ve learned is to erase aggressively when no confirming cross comes pretty quickly. Well a terrific exemplar of the best in crosswording, for me, anyway. A repudiation of quick, obvious, impatient, flip, shallow. An antidote to contemporary instant gratification. But I love instant gratification too on Mondays. Breadth is worthy.

WiND and RiADE was my natick. Had gar (Grand Army of the Republic, 37d) for a while, then usa, then finally GOP. Don’t think GOP was much used when Lincoln lived, nor was gar. But close enough for a crossword. I saw the trick at SLR. Great fun, thanks!

ACk ! Superb puzzle, and caused me to recall Bill the Cat, who maybe should become my avatar these days.

ORCAS are the new oreos. Now I know how to spell SHEA since it has recurred! Most fill felt fresh though, and I love the long entries in this puzzle. AVAST is nice!

I was so, so sure 49D was “rod” for casting in fishing. That has been a lesson of the past few weeks for me. When a block of the puzzle just won’t fill in nicely, delete most of it and try again. Somehow opens the door in my mind to a new cross and “aha” moments.

And sometimes PMTRYSTS.

Liked the SKIP being related to BROKENRECORD… from the days of needles on grooves in 33s, 45s, and 78s. Except my daughter got a turntable a couple years ago too, and took all my Otis Redding albums off to college. Analog phonographs returned.

I’m too old, as are my kids, for Frozen. The SW stumped me for a long time… racked my brain trying to remember details from Darlene Love’s version of Winter Wonderland- was somehow it a Father Brun who asked something about building a snowman? NOPE of course… finally fell together, and then after finishing looked up the lyrics… very sweet, from the 1930s… “In the meadow we can build a snowman, Then pretend that he is Parson Brown He'll say: Are you married? We'll say: No man, But you can do the job When you're in town.” Happy holidays!

“Hopefully, that lightness of spirit has made it easier for new solvers to learn, and for everyone to see crosswords can be a lot of fun.” Deb you succeeded completely! Good luck in all your future interests!

Diana Ross and Bob Ross together in a clue made my morning!

A COSMO, pickles and MAPOTOFU, then some MINITWIX… makes a meal.

I gotta remember AREPA… got roti and naan in my memory, but AREPA still eludes me. Never eaten one! Maybe I’ll make them myself, then I won’t forget. They look tasty.

Somehow out of the deep recesses of my memory BACTRIAN appeared. Until then I was at an impasse on the west side. Then I loved EMERYBOARD. Kept racking my brain for computer terms until the crosses slammed my palm to my forehead. Very nice, thanks!

I enjoy these puzzles when they're on the easier side, and when they're on the harder side. When they're on the easier side, I'm obsessed for a shorter duration. Then they're on the harder side, the enjoyment of suddenly seeing a previously unimaginable answer is terrific. I'm up to a year of continuous solving, although I had to work backward from when I restarted, just after tax time last year, to Thu-Sun for blue stars. I feel like I'm somewhere between apprentice and journeyman. I admire all the terrific solvers who take the time to post and answer, and the constructors, and frankly, the NYT for having this whole endeavor. Seems to be a moneymaker, but, to me, amazing it has survived all the declines in readership and literacy. It doesn't seem to me at all to be purely about money, but more dominantly, about a love of words and silly, punny, and sometimes clever wordplay. Thanks to all.

Delightful puzzle! Thanks. Lots of total unknowns to me… 23A, 29A, 39A, 40A, 42A, 42D, 51D, 87D. I got really lucky on 63D, as I used to work with lignum vitae. But I’ve learned from a year of these comments and the wordplay column to just keep filling and the crosses and deducible answers eventually permit figuring the total unknowns.

Had I remembered AGORA more quickly, I’d have not taken nearly an hour to finish. But I stubbornly refused to look anything up today. AGORA is like EDAM and the more common EPEE, ORCA, EEL, X-based words etc… words that I’ve learned are frequent as fill. Agoura Hills, a city near me, got me to guess AGORA. That triggered completion; had to unwind tic and tsa (guesses for XIN and FBI). And of course the city has absolutely nothing to do with the Greek marketplace. But to learn that, I discovered the connection between Alice Coltrane and Doja Cat, the latter another crossword fill answer. Now that is the kind of useless trivia I live for.

I never noticed the variety and number of stars on state flags before, thanks! Alaska’s 8 are gold like the 5 on the flag of China, and most of Alaska’s stars have Arabic names… Alioth, Dubhe, Alkaid, Mizar, Merak, Phecda, and Megrez. Polaris is a kinda modern adaptation from navigation. Arkansas has 4 blue stars, one representing the Confederacy (!), as well as 25 white ones. California has one red star, originating in an 1836 attempt at independence from Mexico. Sheldon Cooper would be proud of me!

I’m most definitely on the “this was fun” side. Has both TAU particle, discovered wrong a few times by Martin Perl before the final time that won him a Nobel, and his boss, already a Nobel winner, refused to believe the final time, and took his name off the authorship list on the discovery paper. XENON too!

The mini was really my gateway… lots of minis enabled me to do the Monday… then lots of Mondays as Deb recommends, then many Tuesdays and Wednesdays… finally Thu-Sun got doable. But I’m still slow… I marvel at those who usually do Saturdays in 15 minutes or less without help. One helpful thing… if the constructors intentionally could seed less common regular usage words in the Mondays so novices like me learn them by easier crosses… maybe like ERSE and INRE today, or EPEE… would assist in producing the virtuous circle upward. Maybe constructors do that already. I do feel like doing the crossword helps my vocab and connection-type reasoning. Math has always been my strength, but words live in a distinct neural net.

7 Zs!

I support all the positive comments… fun, effervescent puzzle. I don’t speak much German, but friends told me the phrase JFK used meant he claimed to be a jelly donut, because of the “ein”, which should have been omitted.

Glad it was smooth for many… I wandered quite a while in Wrongovia, but I stuck with it, and mainly appropriate corrections eventually popped out. 70 minutes but all of you have helped me enjoy the empuzzlement, well, must be a word if ALOP was.

Loved the cross of ENDIVE and ENCORE. Decades ago when I worked in Geneva, I had to adapt to hearing the words ENCORE and voila so frequently. For an ignorant American like me, sounded too fancy. Seemed like the cafeteria served ENDIVE all winter… nearly the only green vegetable. Got the blank stare when I pronounced it the American way. But I hardly knew what it even was. It was the only green thing in a serving tray, ready to be dished out, at the cafeteria. Now it is the French pronunciation that is imprinted forever in my head, and I get the blank stare here.

I found this puzzle quite difficult, and that is a compliment! Out well beyond an hour, but wonderfully satisfying as the many misdirections resolved. And at the end the reward of listening to Phil Ochs songs. Among many others, <a href="https://youtu.be/rwXO0sbN4pc?si=WvdhtJwpJuJDuFLw" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/rwXO0sbN4pc?si=WvdhtJwpJuJDuFLw</a>

I had a lot of fun with this puzzle, thanks! One where my first pass only yielded 5 or so fills… put it down for an hour, and answers gushed out. Like I crossed into a different world sheet in a many-worlds quantum situation. Always feels weird when things I didn’t seem to know at all flow out of seemingly nowhere. I thought 2 Fs in STUFF. I’ve never had or bought these Oreos. So DOUBLE STUF looks like a sort of oxymoron to me… the double F has been changed to a single F!

I loved yesterday and today. Both were real hard and took me a long time. That’s why I do these puzzles… to be puzzled. What continues to astound me is how, given enough time, obscure info burbles up from the depths of my memory. Suddenly I remembered Sebastian, Pilsner (I don’t drink beer) etc. The less patient I am the longer it takes. Perfect cluing isn’t that important to me. Just gotta get close enough. I’ve never had a gimlet in my life. But somehow I knew lime was involved. A funny puzzle would be one where most of the non-fill had “slightly off” cluing. Like gimlet was… or clues depending on common knowledge that is technically incorrect. Probably has been done already! Or even a few clues that were a sort of double take… look just utterly wrong on the surface… not just seemingly unrelated cluing like New jersey for calf. Just wrong on the surface. But eventually an obscure interpretation that is close to right.

Caused a flashback (not at all drug related, just a normal memory)… “You dig? Cool, I dig. Far out.” Wearing bell bottoms and a head band. Like we all did.

Terrific puzzle… thanks Jo. The Thu through Sun puzzles sometimes take me forever too, or, well up to 2 hours. That moment when I see an answer after a long struggle with no ideas is addictive. Great This American Life on how Daniel Kish uses echolocation from clicking his tongue to navigate the world, and even ride a bike. He is blind! <a href="https://www.thisamericanlife.org/544/batman" target="_blank">https://www.thisamericanlife.org/544/batman</a>

Loved MANDELBROT but had SuperUSER for a long time until ABET jumped out… I just thought ASET was another peculiar crossword word. EDLAMODE made more sense to me than EDNAMODE since I have no idea what The Incredibles is. But NENE finally burbled up out of the depths. Loved all the broken bad words. Thanks!

I love Mondays! Thursday-Sunday are terrific but take me too long, unassisted. Now I pretty much do old Monday-Wednesdays on Thu-Sun. I just rue the time loss over obsessing on Thu-Sun… it does hurt real good but I’ve found those days just leave me on another world sheet. When and if I hit 10 minutes or less on a few Weds I’ll return to Thursdays.