Jon
Madison, WI
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Madison, WI
[Post flyspecking, rises out of his chair in indignation, cartoon vapors streaming from his head:] “‘JOGGLE??!’ Jiggle, juggle, toggle, even boggle, but ‘JOGGLE’?” [Storms around, pours coffee, returns, looks at OED online, expecting triumph upon seeing the word ‘archaic.’ But it is not there.] Except for my final minutes of drama, very enjoyable puzzle.
That was a terrible experience. I saw that they were state puns quickly, and I grew up trading puns with my dad in the yard while we dug and planted trees, so I was prepared to enjoy it. But these were the kinds of puns we’d at best try to get away with very late in the punning contest when everyone’s just tired of it. I hope not to see a puzzle like this any time again soon.
I’m in awe. Three bears dividing 3 of the 4 clues that all sound like phrases I know but spoken in the accent I hear from everyone around me right now…with a bad cold. Great puzzle, and right for a Wednesday!
Just a bit past 1,000 puzzles, it’s clear to me that Friday is generally my favorite day. Just enough challenge to wake me up, while Thursday trickery, Saturday obscurity, and Sunday volumes can sometimes make me want to go back to sleep. This was a great example as notches everywhere and the entire southeast quadrant took a while to gel for me, but it was well worth persisting.
I haven’t had a Natick more Naticky than MII/TICHA in a while.
Sometimes the crossword is more fun for the constructor than the solver. I appreciate the cleverness, but it’s the same way I do(n’t) appreciate magic acts, because it seems the point of the artist’s work is to make the audience suffer. Although many of the clues and answers weren’t on my wavelength, I’ll reserve my complaint to just one, ELHI. Here’s a recommendation: if you google a word and the entire first page is different online dictionary definitions of that word rather than a single citation of someone using the word, it’s not a good crossword answer.
Yes, there was math, but you also used (all the) letters. Loved this one. Fast for me.
I’m looking at my final puzzle with that occasional mix of frustration and admiration reserved for good NYT puzzles. The loops would have made this hard, especially RAMALAMADINGDONG, a song that at least I recall hearing, but barely. But being stubborn about “inland” rather than INAFIX (and I still feel that’s a cheat, because the fair clue is ‘up A creek’) and “settle” rather than METTLE (a fair misdirect), plus learning NEGAWATT and JAMON for the first time today. Bottom line, I am glad I took the ride.
I try to learn something from every day’s puzzle, so I’m sharing this very pleasant RABBITHOLE I was sent to today <a href="https://opensanctuary.org/glossary-of-horse-vocalizations-and-sounds" target="_blank">https://opensanctuary.org/glossary-of-horse-vocalizations-and-sounds</a>/
The first time in six years I seriously considered giving up. I can’t decide if that’s a compliment or a complaint. As usual, after the solve many answers seem fair, and even ‘obvious,’ but that’s not how it happened.
Though I agree with all the i-people complaining about how this puzzle was not formatted in a way that allowed us to enjoy the theme, I want to observe that having the underlined letters would have made a very easy Thursday puzzle even easier. So if you’re going to have a dumb technical error, doing it today is better than on a day with more fiendish clues. Also, I liked the puzzle, but without the modest trick, it would have felt much more like a Wednesday.
LUrID AIR and IrONIC looked fine for a long, long time. …. …. …. …. Until the emus and I finished flyspecking, painstakingly
That was awesome! Really fun to complete. Most of the clues were straightforward, but those that weren’t, like 19A and 27D, enhanced the puzzle.
@Ruth Beier I lived in NYS for 20 years. It’s a common abbreviation in use there, yes.
So I lost an hour on the clock from Saturday to Sunday but gained it back on the puzzle.
I liked it a lot. I can’t say I loved it, because the northeast corner was a bear. But I respected the theme, the fill, and the challenge. Overall great to require more thinking than usual on a Sunday. I usually fill in along on first passes, and today took several.
Five proper name musical references:I’m not complaining, but my apparent lack of musical education made this a really difficult puzzle!
Most of this is great! Since I spent half my total time in the NE, I’ll say that DECO is not a common usage for Art Deco, and I doubt I’ve ever heard anyone say they were about to SAW(S) UP something. So one questionable clue and one questionable entry that happen to be near each other and crossing with other challenging but fun clued entries can make a tough corner.
@Weak to stan, in the sense of obsess appreciatively over something, has been in widespread use for close to a decade, if not more.
Tough one! Having confidently put bestsellers instead of BANNEDBOOKS ruined the upper half of my grid for a lo-o-ong time.
Whoa, same wavelength. Personal best and 70% faster than my Saturday average. Faster than Tuesday.
I really enjoy the Fridays. Not many ‘gimmes’ on a first pass, some misdirects (tents, not tuxes; art lab, not studio), some amount of trivia to stretch your memory or realize where your education has been inadequate, and yet ultimately, a lot of satisfaction in getting through without lookups or moments of wanting to quit. Keep ‘em coming.
I was so confident that 8D was REEL that I tried to bend the entire NE corner around it. I have a lucky flush of mallards that lives just outside my front window (and sometimes on my roof), so I took the problem to them and they helped me figure it out.
Yeah! TIL TUCKET, lady MARMALADE, and APEROL. That’s three things for a Tuesday, which is a lot and unusual. I love it when a crossword challenges me to learn new things, and become aware of areas of human experience about which I know very little. Thanks!
I have to speak with admiration about the clue for 52 down. Chef’s kiss. Emu’s kiss too.
@Teddy I’ve seen and heard “who knew” used both ways, although I agree your interpretation has been more frequent. I picture the sarcastic version coming from someone seething during a meeting after someone louder than them has just repeated their idea without attribution.
How does “SLYBOOTS” not make the tricky clues list? I’ve heard and read—millions?—of words, and spent time in Britain, but never once encountered this word; I can’t find a literary citation for it.
Puzzle overall fine; too easy for a Thursday. “Droptop” is a weak answer as one of the four bases for the theme. It’s not common enough as a usage.
Bravo! Five plus years of solving, and I can’t recall a more flawless puzzle.
TIL mangosteen, but I couldn’t connect MIL to ‘cool quality’ and only reread my error after the puzzle was done. My eyes might still be asleep.
I love Friday puzzles because I have to tease them out from all over the grid. TIL the word COMTE in the context of cheese. It’s rare that I believe I’ve had no knowledge whatsoever of a word before. Wow, did that slow me down in the SW!
Great puzzle! No lookups, but the SW corner fell last and kept me on the STRUGGLEBUS for five minutes.
On 41D I tried sneered, scorned, and snorted before I found the right answer. I’m grateful 69A gave me some small compensation for those extra errant efforts.
I still love Friday puzzles, but this one was chewy! Fair at the end but rife with chances for confident errors, like KNOWS for 39D, DEN for 43A, and - - - - EVE for 17A. Those had to surrender slowly to realities on the crosses.
@Rich in Atlanta we got a 1/4 inch in Madison this morning. The South is stealing our snow.
@BigO surely that’s a word that applies to a behavior, and it’s pejorative because some people don’t like the behavior? Would “murderer” or “thief” also be unacceptable?
Wapini/ Noro? Wapimi/ Moro? Wapiki/ Koro? I was fine with everything in the puzzle, but isolating and then navigating that Natick was yucky. I like sushi and large ruminants but I don’t know all their names.
@Petrol in many Greek myths, whether guest, host, or stranger, all the problems started if you unalived them.
@cameron I’ve seen 10 at a time in Times Square.
@Times Rita with equal but misplaced confidence I wrote “this is FUN” picturing a chill cartoon dog in a burning house meme.
@Peter means the gold teeth are real, not removable veneers.
Like raising children, this puzzle gets more fun the more it recedes into the past.
@Nat K I’ll join you. I often like puns, but I recognize that the person coming up with them often has more fun than their receiving audience, and for me that was largely the case here. And I also didn’t find much of the fill around them much fun to figure out. To stay positive, though: two I did enjoy were RATFINK (because it has been a long time) and TYRE (because the clue and answer are both Britishisms).
@Andrzej thanks for my second LOL of the day. The first was the solve for 26A.
@DocP I think making the boxes big was important for the revealer answer.
@Kimberly on my iPad, the keyboard includes a Rebus key. When I press it, a kind of super square appears and I can type in any number of letters, press enter, and that run of letters appears in the square on the grid
@Steven M. Ha for me it was the lower left.
@Joshua Parker I would think that her professional responsibility here is to add value for the community of solvers, rather than critique. And most solvers come her for new insights and points of celebration in the experience, with occasionally some shared frustration. So maybe the best way you’re ever going to know she doesn’t like a puzzle is when she says less about it.
@Jane Wheelaghan I didn’t realize the term “backseat driver” was only American. I can report that I have experienced the phenomenon while driving English people in England. And if it occurred while I was approaching a back-to-back rotary (‘roundabout?’) driving on the ‘wrong’ side, their attempts to help were unwelcome!
I usually love Friday puzzles, but not this one. As feedback these are two things I prefer to see less of in puzzles: first, there are 17 capitalized nouns. I prefer fewer. Second, the two “artful” language clues, at 37A and 27D weren’t fun. Figuring them out added little to my overall solving experience.