Alexis
Perth, Australia
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Perth, Australia
How can GREEN GRASS be a colourful feature of a lawn? The grass _is_ the lawn, no??
Well, 1A was a gimme :D - Alexis in Perth
I didn’t find this one as easy as everyone else it seems! The SE was most of the problem. Didn’t like MOLARS or LAM (as Deb has noted, you don’t grab food with your back teeth and LAM isn’t really a verb..). Even as one whose knowledge TILTs STEMwise I didn’t know ASTATINE. Not sure what a LINEA (Line A?) is. Wanted UNTIDY to be UNrulY (UNTIDY to me is more passively messy, whereas “chaotic” feels more active). Not familiar with the GETTY. Found NERDALERT a bit insulting (see above about being STEMish 😂). Had to google catholic presidents — I would have got BIDEN eventually on crosses of course but just couldn’t get enough of a foothold to _have_ any crosses! After looking BIDEN and ASTATINE up the rest eventually fell into place but it was a bit of a slog
@Tom Yes, because it’s fun to figure it out. And isn’t that why we’re here, for fun? None of us is getting paid to do the crossword (except Deb and co., lucky sods 😉)
@MBM There are often “gimmicks” like this on Sundays (and especially Thursdays). Sometimes the trick is to enter more than one letter in a square (we call that a rebus, and instructions are here: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/08/crosswords/rebus-crossword-puzzle.html" target="_blank">https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/08/crosswords/rebus-crossword-puzzle.html</a> ), sometimes it’s something else. Stick around a while and you’ll get the hang of it, and hopefully begin to look forward to the extra little aha you get from figuring it out! Welcome!
Can someone explain [Real lulu] = ONER?
I dunno, just kinda underwhelmed by this one. Agree with all the folks who reckon the TO is backwards — IMHO the easiest fix would have been for the clues to read “..instruction for _reading_ XX-across”. No grid rework required. Leaving that aside though I still just thought the theme was a bit meh, especially for a Thursday. I kept waiting for the rest, but no apparently that was it Agree also that having ATOP, in an across position, on the West side of the grid is not the best (yes even though the theme is xxTOyy and not xTOy). At least if it had been a down answer say it would have been less glaring
Pleased to make an appearance in the clues today ;)
@Heidi All of the _OR_ entries’ clues included the words “and a clue to the circled square in this row”, which was a pretty big indicator to me that I needed to stop and think hard about what that meant. Just because you _can_ solve a puzzle without understanding the theme doesn’t mean you should! For those who solved without understanding: Did you ignore that part of the clues or did you give it a go and still not get it? (Genuinely curious; not trying to be inflammatory!!)
@marty Surely it being published on a Thursday _is_ a proviso for its weirdness?
Gosh, EBT crossing BARQS crossing QBERT was a complete Natick for me. Not familiar with BARQS. Now that I see QBERT it’s possibly a word I’ve heard but I couldn’t have told you what it is. I had EFT (electronic funds transfer) for 1D until I also had to enter it for the newt clue. Having googled EBT I suppose it’s electronic *benefits* transfer? Though that’s not even the first result that comes up (for me). Shame because I thought the theme for this puzzle was a great idea! Especially enjoyed finding MASH down the middle containing *three* of the theme boxes all in one entry.
Maybe I’m just the right generation for this, but my brain didn’t even attempt to parse the numbers as numbers, just immediately read them upside down. Meant that I had no aha moment and the whole thing solved as a (too) easy themeless Of to the archive to find another Sunday I guess! 😅
@Charles Why? They were all gimmes for me
Oof — I got the theme really early on but it didn’t do much to help my solve. I just wasn’t on the constructor’s wavelength I guess but this was a _slog_
If your grade has been inflated, you receive the higher grade. Not somehow two grades at once. Also, a rebus would have made the down answers gobbledegook. Thus, no rebus required
@DJ All the Latin phrases I feel are in common enough usage by English speakers to make them fair game on a Monday. YMMV of course..
@Phil I don’t speak Spanish but grew up on looney toons cartoons, including Speedy Gonzales and his catch phrase of “Andale, andale, arriba!” (And ILK is a good one to file away in the memory bank; it’s common crosswordese)
@Andrzej I’ve enjoyed reading your snippets of Poland. Maybe we’ll see you around again someday
Solved with one hand while eating my lunch and still got a Tuesday PB - but an enjoyable fair dinky, er, dinkum puzzle
ATWATER crossing WILLYLOMAN crossing LUSAKA? On a Tuesday? C’mon..
@Tony Sorry, but if you thought there needed to be any form of YES in the boxes then you _didn’t_ have the puzzle “completely worked”.
@Andrzej I’m not sure Ms. _is_ an abbreviation. If so, of what? It might be written with a full stop (er, period in US English) to match the abbreviation Mrs., as it is in the clue here, but I think I see it more often just as plain Ms (like how Miss doesn’t have a full stop as it’s not an abbreviation)
@Andrzej @HeathieJ How cool that something as seemingly superficial as a crossword comments forum can lead to something like that from across the globe
@Tzvee Just because you didn’t have fun, doesn’t mean the puzzle was inherently unfun. I had a lot of fun, and really enjoyed solving the extra clues for the key. You may find this comments section more fun if you frame your opinion as an opinion rather than as an absolute
In fact, INXS’ Never Tear Us Apart was just yesterday voted number one on Triple J’s Hottest 100 of Australian Songs Triple J is the national youth(ish) radio station run by the national broadcaster, the ABC (Here that stands for _Australian_ Broadcasting Corporation, of course 😁 They have various TV and radio stations, including for instance Double J, which is for people who used to listen to Triple J when they were younger - e.g. me 🤣) Every year in Jan they run a Hottest 100, as voted by listeners. (Any song released in the previous year is eligible, not just Aussie songs.) Periodically they do variations on the Hottest 100 like The Hottest 100 of All Time or this Aussie only version. If anyone’s interested, the full list is here <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/countdown/hottest100/1-100" target="_blank">https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/countdown/hottest100/1-100</a>
@James In the US they have one- and two- dollar notes. Hence TWOS are not the lowest denomination note, but are pretty low. As for RECALLS, it’s not necessarily a car-specific term, it’s just been clued that way. When some product is found to have a widespread and potentially dangerous fault, the manufacturer might recall it from sale (voluntarily or otherwise)
Really wanted 34A to be Bra :D
@Francis Absolutely!! She’s a CLASS ACT
Congrats on your debut Adrianne. Impressive puzzle, especially the spans And condolences on the loss of Arjun. He sounds like the kind of friend everyone should have. I’m sure he’d be so very pleased for you today
Hmm, so “oner” (pronounced “1-er”?) means unusual, like a one-off I guess? And “lulu” means crazy (unless there’s some other meaning I’m missing) which I guess could also mean unusual, but not really in the same sense Maybe I’m overthinking it. Clues aren’t definitions — that oft repeated refrain in these comments! Just crossing ONER with LENDL seemed a bit of a stretch
Not sure why “blade” is in quotes in 44A. That’s literally what rowers call the oars. (More technically, “blade” refers to just the end that goes in the water, rather than the whole thing including shaft and handle, but the terms are often used interchangeably) Yes I suppose it’s not truly a blade in the sense of being sharp (though I don’t think Olympic epees are actually that sharp either, are they?), but it’s a technical term, not slang
Had mAGS for RAGS which does fit the clue, and mFK Stadium seemed as plausible as anything else to this non USian.. (I mean, of course I’ve heard of RFK, but who knows what y’all name your stadiums after.)
@Andy G Just because it’s easy doesn’t mean you _have_ to solve it quickly. You can linger, if you choose
@Ernest That exact pair of clue and answer have been seen 17 times in the “Modern” era. Another few for the reverse (ie [Elate]=SEND) and another few for Elates=Sends and vice versa. Not to be too Ancona-y about it 😅 Stick around and you’ll eventually build up a bank of this kind of crosswordese — they’ll become gimmes
Clever theme and nice having a gentle bit of trickery on a Tuesday. Doesn’t really work in my accent though (I don’t know enough phonetics or IPA to really explain what I mean but “pair” has sort of a longer version of the vowel in “pet” whereas “para-” is shorter and more like “pat”. Assuming you pronounce “pat” and “pet” like I do I guess 😂)
@Greg Anderson But a rebus would have made the down entries gobbledegook. You weren’t finagling the app, you were searching for the right answer, and just like in every other square, you don’t get the happy music until you enter the right letter..
@DW Have you considered that you might just be becoming a better solver?
And nor have I heard of a soft drink called Mug, for that matter!
@Cat Lady Margaret “OOPSIE, just gonna do a little UTURNITO here”
@Andrzej Came to the comments just to see what you had to say about this one 😂 FWIW my experience was much the same
Was just doing a puzzle from the archives that had TANK UP as an answer (26 Mar 2017 for those playing along at home, clue [Get ready for a long drive]), and now GAS UP. Do people really say that? (Here we would say “I need to fill up” or simply “I need to get petrol/fuel” but not to my knowledge “I need to petrol up”. If someone said to me they needed to “fuel up”, I’d assume they meant they themselves needed to eat something before some exertion, not that their car had an empty tank)
@Francis Like the theme of the puzzle, pretty sure he means it went from “ILLEGIBLE” to “GIGGLES” :)
@Dave S “This puzzle could have been fun, but I specifically opted out of having fun. Now I’m annoyed that it wasn’t fun.” SMH indeed
@Zézito Wasn’t it? I came in under my average Thursday time
@Vincent and Janet Welcome!
Very breezy for a Friday! I finished faster than my time for this week’s Tuesday (and Wednesday and Thursday) and only a minute or so outside my Friday PB Surprised that OPI has only appeared 34 times — it feels like every other week..
Is anyone else bothered that three of the four themers are in fact parties/gatherings of some description, while the fourth is just a play on words? Would have liked them all to be one or the other..
@Cat Lady Margaret Yes exactly, any old loop has no end - as you say the twist (ha!) with a möbius strip is that has only one side (or edge)
@Tom S. I think there’s a part-of-speech problem there. You can’t say something “is rotted” like you would say it “is rancid” (in my idiolect anyway). So for the answer to be ROTTED the clue would need to be [_Went_ rancid].
@Avi OMG they are too. I started trying to read the extra letters before I’d got all the way through or figured out the theme properly. At that point my understanding was “rebuses with a U for some reason”, and I was trying to figure out why MAYTHEFOrceBEWITHYOU wouldn’t fit in the reveal (and with too _few_ letters of all things, so a problem unlikely to be resolved by a rebus in that entry at least). I hadn’t thought about today’s date yet either, obviously 😅 Thought they might spell out a physical force or something (strong, weak, electromagnetic??), but didn’t have enough solved to make head nor tail of it Once I figured the theme out and finished the puzzle I didn’t think to go back and try to read them again!