Prydera

@KS Thursday puzzles always have tricks to the theme. Often it’s based on splitting the words in the clues up and/or how they sound when said aloud. If you don’t want to have to figure them out, skip Thursdays.

@Jane Wheelaghan In the US, COT usually means a moveable/temporary bed used for things like camping or as an extra bed in a hotel room. Most people use “crib” for a baby COT.

@Chris Ignore other people’s “rules” & do the crossword the way that works for you/you enjoy most. I’ve been doing the NYT crossword almost daily for around a decade. I still use Google or other reference works fairly regularly. I have a specific order in which I go to various reference works & techniques for searching, but I’d say most Saturdays I have to look up at least a couple things. I don’t look at search results from third-party crossword-answer websites. If I’m truly that stuck, I’ll bite the bullet & look at the answer key here. If it’s something that I really didn’t know, I’ll look up more information in hopes I’ll remember it next time. (I often do the same for answers I only got through the crosses) Sometimes I feel like the folks who refuse to look things up are actually missing out. I’ve fallen down some fascinating Wikipedia rabbit holes when trying to figure out answers.

@Nancy A portion of a tv schedule can be referred to as a “block”. It’s often used informally (ex. prime time block), but I’m pretty sure PBS KIDS is a name created by PBS to market a specific set of children’s shows always broadcast together.

@ad absurdum In April I went to “The Princess Bride: An Inconceivable Evening with Cary Elwes”. It’s a screening of the film followed by a live “conversation” with Elwes telling stories about filming prompted by a local media person (at the one I went to it was a local radio personality) with a few audience questions. I highly recommend it if he’s doing it in your area at all. Then I got the audiobook of As You Wish, his book about making the movie, which he narrates with quite a few of the other cast members. There’s definitely overlap between the book & what stories he told at the event I went to, but I don’t know if he tells the same stories at every stop.

@Darren AEONS (all one word) is an alternate spelling for eons. Merriam-Webster says it’s mostly used in British English.

@Mean Old Lady It was a segment of a series called Animaniacs, which may be more familiar to you than the segment name. (The same sort of segment as Peabody’s Improbable History or Dudley Do-Right in Rocky & Bullwinkle)

@MikeW I had that initially, too. How annoying of “yak” & YAP to have two thirds of their letters in common.

@Plastic Jones Having been to Connecticut probably wouldn’t have helped you. I live in New Haven & I’m not sure I’ve ever heard ELI used locally to refer to a Yale student. I only see it used in crosswords.

@Jon “Cue” is the letter “q”. (It took me moment to get that one, too.)

@Jack McCullough Accents are ignored in crossing words. To use a completely random example (not one I’ve seen in a puzzle), a puzzle could have “piñata” cross with “song”.

@Ron Bravenec I actually thought of the possibility & double checked that the clue only said “clock” not “clock radio”.

@Ken Once you open the puzzle in the iPhone app there’s an “i” in the upper right next to settings that flashes on Sundays for the title, and other days if there’s extra information that may be needed to solve, such as something that shows in the print version & the PDF that can’t be shown in the app (very rare, but has happened). I assume it’s in a similar location on Android. The hints to the extra clues were there. Usually if there are extra clues in that bit, they’ll be about looking at the puzzle answers differently rather than something where you actually input anything additional. Even on days where the “i” doesn’t flash, tapping it will give you the name of the constructor(s) & a direct link to that puzzle’s Wordplay column.

@Grant My friends in the UK use “punters” as a slang term to mean customers/clients in general. They wouldn’t use it to someone’s face, but I’ve definitely had friends talk about dealing with punters at work. (Mostly I’ve heard it from app developers who quite like & respect their clients so I hadn’t realized any negative connotations.)

@_chs_ I normally solve on my phone, but I currently have to use my iPad. I’m much slower on the iPad. I am still usually faster than my average time. (My average times include hundreds of archived puzzles from the 90s. I’m much slower at those.) I’m actually your opposite in that one of the reasons I prefer the phone is because you only see one clue at a time. On the iPad the screen is so busy that I struggle to remember where I should be looking.

@Michael Hendler As others have said, you can’t keep the gold star streak if you don’t do the puzzles fairly promptly. That said, you only need a small bit of internet access to download the puzzle to your phone & you don’t need internet access while you do the puzzle to continue the streak. So if you can even manage to get online for a couple minutes each day, you can potentially keep the streak going. Or you can opt to not worry about the streak & enjoy time away from internet. That’s what I did when I went to Yellowstone in 2019. (I think I did download the puzzle a couple times, but at that point the NYT was even stricter about how long you had to finish each day’s puzzle to keep the streak.)

@Eric Hougland There isn’t a limit on how many times a gift article link can be accessed. The only limit is the number of articles you can gift per month. As far as I know, the links don’t expire over time, either. I’ve certainly reused a gift link months after I first gifted the article.

@Nel The closest link I can think of for that clue is the phrase “takes an X-ray”. The problem is, of course, that even with that, it’s the radiologist/radiology tech who “takes” the X-ray of another person’s body. The patient doesn’t take the X-ray.

@Neill Double tap on a box to switch between across & down (in either direction).

@Retired, with cat As a kid, Reese’s Puffs were one of the cereals we very occasionally got as treats (sugary cereals were not generally allowed in the house). They’re a puffed cereal flavored with chocolate & peanut butter. You don’t actually have peanut butter in the cereal. Taste-wise peanut butter, chocolate, & milk are a pretty good combination. Natty Ice I got due to a recent Connections puzzle, but hadn’t heard of it before that. (Not today’s puzzle)

@Vaer I don’t think I’ve ever had to put in an email address to access the San Diego Zoo cams. (I certainly didn’t when I just tried now using the DuckDuckGo browser on my phone) My favorite of the San Diego Zoo cams is the Platypus Cam. I hope to eventually be able to go see them in person.

@MB They actually did get giant pandas back over the summer!

@BDJ I could deal with it as an occasional answer, but I definitely rolled my eyes when it showed up twice in four days. (The first usage feels more recent than Sunday, but I went back to find the exact day) I suppose I should be grateful that neither puzzle used it as a theme answer.

@Steve Almost all calicos are female. I’m pretty sure that genetically it’s a x-linked recessive trait that only expresses when there are two.

@MA Actually Griner was there as a player on a Russian professional team, not for international basketball. It used to be common for top WNBA players to play in Russia over the off season because it paid so much better than the WNBA. Plenty do still play in Europe during the off season, although there are finally professional offseason options in the US.

@Jerry When they were the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim there was a final Jeopardy clue about a MLB team with a redundant name when translated into English. I’m a huge baseball fan so got the answer, but none of the contestants did.

@Mean Old Lady The test taken early in 7th & 8th grade by some “gifted” kids is the SAT. In my town it was in relation to a John Hopkins program which then gets you access to a bunch of summer camps & various one or two day programs (and come-ons from colleges that had programs for kids who wanted to skip high school). I didn’t do the summer camps, but I went to a couple great one or two day programs. There was also the SSAT taken in 8th grade if you were applying to private high schools. It might have been required for private schools that start in 6th or 7th grade as well. (I did public school through 8th) Like the SAT it was a Saturday thing. The PSAT was generally taken mid-week actually through your school similar to how state standardized testing was done.

@Adam The other day you might consider the possibility of a rebus when solving is Sunday, although it feels to me like the frequency of Sunday rebus puzzles has gone down. Sometime in the past 5 years or so there was a Wednesday rebus, but I think it was only one square.

@Barry Ancona It’s also not posted on Saturday for people more than 6 hours ahead of the East Coast. I just spent a couple weeks in Spain & it took me the entire first week to stop checking for the new puzzle before I went to bed around 11PM each night.

@Bruce I’ve been doing the NYT crossword for over a decade & I struggled with parts of this one. It certainly isn’t the first time I’ve struggled with a Saturday that others found easy. There have been other Saturdays where I’ve breezed through & come here expecting to see complaints of how easy it was, just to see that most people struggled instead. Each person has a different experience of every crossword. Celebrate what you did, don’t worry about anyone else.

@Grant I think the roster every All Star Game incorporates fan votes in some way. The MLB All Star Game still has fans decide the starting position players. I think part of why it avoids being all Yankees & Dodgers is that enough people actually vote based on who they think is deserving, not just their favorite team or players. Also, the newest voting format involves two rounds with a limited number of players to choose from in the second round (three for infield & DH & I can’t remember how many outfield). I believe the first level of backups is decided by a player vote. The All Star managers then fill out the rosters with a few more position players & all the pitchers. (The rosters are larger than 26 players.) Other American sports have fan votes count as a percentage of the votes for starters or something like that. Players votes usually also contribute.

@Jane Wheelaghan It’s a brand name that’s become a generic term in the US. I can’t remember last time I bought plastic cups that were actually Solo brand.

@Vaer It’s interesting because it’s only the PANDA CAM for the giant pandas which requires an email address. My favorite of the San Diego Zoo cams is the Platypus Cam. I hope to eventually be able to go see them in person.

@Dave Munger I feel like “addy” was more common pre-smartphones when texts involved hitting the same number multiple times to get the letter you wanted. I suspect the strict character limit for texts was another factor.

@Claire The wording of “a dance” in the clue is a slight misdirection, but the CAN CAN is a performed dance the same way ballet is. Performed dance is not the first definition of dance that I think of when I see the wording of “a dance”, but it is a valid definition.

@Eric Hougland The NYT sold the Globe to Fenway Sports Group sometime around 2013. I still occasionally see NYT articles in the Globe, but I’m not sure if I’ve seen a Globe article in the NYT.

@kkseattle I stayed up to watch all of the game which then made all of my Saturday rough. I’m very glad the Brewers managed to beat the Cubs in nine innings. As soon as the Red Sox were eliminated, I started hoping for a Mariners/Brewers World Series.

@CCNY I’m the opposite. I’m much faster solving on my iPhone than on my iPad. It’s probably a combination of habit (I started on my phone) & the ability to see only one clue at a time. The screen feels very busy to me visually on the iPad & I struggle to focus on the correct clue (even with it highlighted). Interestingly, I don’t have the same issue doing crosswords in the paper.

@Sebastian I saw Jake Gyllenhall as George when he did Sunday in the Park with George on Broadway in 2017. Like you, I wasn’t sure what to expect with him singing, but he was good. It’s really too bad that you & the rest of London missed out.