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.

With both the TAU and its possible decay product the PION this puzzle was particle-ularly fun!

I have exactly zero Mario or Supermario or NES experience. Loved the puzzle! Drove me to focusing on the crosses and the possible completions. Great gray cell calisthenics! Thanks!

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.

“In the meadow we can build a snowman. And pretend that he is sparse and brown.” I had no clue about that line… and the next ones either until I listened to the first recording of Winter Wonderland, <a href="https://youtu.be/L2msLwz5V-U?is=RdHAhrrKUVGNHPy5" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/L2msLwz5V-U?is=RdHAhrrKUVGNHPy5</a>

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!

Irene Curie and her husband Frederic Joliot did a crucial experiment that James Chadwick reinterpreted and Chadwick discovered the neutron, which led Fermi to do Nobel prize winning work, Szilard to imagine nuclear amplification, and Hahn and Meitner to discover nuclear fission, leading to… Los Alamos, Trinity, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. Irene and Frederic reported the first artificial radioactivity made in their lab, related to the missed neutron discovery, and got a Nobel for that work. They also had evidence for positrons in their data but misinterpreted those data.

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

Love the theme… others… In 1896, Henri Becquerel found the film left in his drawer, when developed, had the image of a metal Maltese cross, just like the one he’d left between some uranium salts and the film. Radioactivity. In 1934, Enrico Fermi noticed his experiments on producing artificial radioactivity with neutrons were far more effective in the setup on a beaten up old wooden table than on a nice new marble table. Moderation. There is no serendipity in the discovery of nuclear fission though. Ida Noddack knew and published that Fermi had been incomplete. She was not heeded. Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn figured out fission with good old fashioned systematic science. Meitner, of course, refused to work on the Manhattan project. She’d seen enough gruesome death on the battlefront in WW1 as an early x-ray technician-nurse.

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.

I entered only the letter for the first meaning... like ISLANDOPPED... and I just left all of those with the second letter of rebus unfilled... I certainly wanted to enter DH (in that case) as a rebus, but I didn't figure out that DEAD had an adjacent HEAT of one entered both DH and DT. But I got the music... and learned how to work the rebus entries with parallel reads from the column. That first occurrence... DH and DT are also names of some fusion reactions... deuterium-hydrogen, and deuterium-tritium.

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!

Loved the lack of standard fill… only a few like TSO, SSNS, TSAR, TOTS. AVE was nicely not clued as crossing the streets. Silly me now I understand Ave Maria. And got some terrific stuff… LEHRER, MEGAOHM, PEKOE. Not to mention the hilarious themes. One of my favorites of 2026.

The guy in the TRENCHCOAT both kept people honest *and* bent the rules. Sam Spade, Lew Archer, Jake Giddes, Philip Marlowe, among many others. One reason I love them. My current favorite, VI Warshawski, well, not a trenchcoat type. Better in many ways. Hardly a very common xword word in this one… maybe only SSN. Terrific puzzle.

“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 enjoyed today’s puzzle, from BOGIE thru ATTN. A few groaners but hey that is part of the fun! And I learned the difference between apple pan Betty and apple pan DOWDY. That alone puts the puzzle up in the 95th percentile. And add the terrific photo Sam Corbin found, also Francis quip about the 10 types of people. The rest of the news in this world is a fresh he** daily, and our internet has become a predatory wasteland. But the NYT crossword remains a haven of jaunty goofy amusement. Thanks for that!

Rude Boy had me trying dede for Desmond Dekker and trying to think how the Clash could fit in. So old I am, after the crosses revealed RIRI found and watched Rihanna, her Rude Boy has like 10,000X the views of Dekker’s Rude Boy Train. Watching it… like a mashup of an acid trip in Jamaica with Rocky Horror and Terry Gilliam. I’m so out of touch. Gonna need a brew for breakfast, and watch Oppenheimer, an early rudie. Classic try, forget for a few hours, pick up, try again, repeat puzzle. Always surprising how words suddenly appear out of nowhere when I plant the first idea in my brain. Like messages from another dimension or world line.

A bit of a tussle With this crossword puzzle. An honest 80 minutes, but never annoying.

I loved this puzzle. Particularly when I imagine AITOOL pertaining to all those AI tech bros.

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.