Judith nelson

So, I guess if you put “abyss” and “chasm” in a blender? First time in my seventy relatively erudite years that I’ve run into this word….

I wouldn’t mind being a little more GELID right now!

I love this! Did the whole darned puzzle without figuring out the trick and then howled with laughter. I especially liked “stone tool”.

Love this trick—when I got “para” and looked back at the double clues, I cracked up. Good job! I also learned something today. I recently ended a 50 some year career in music, and I always thought of “Assai” as “enough”. Just like French “assez “, right? “Molto ” was the fastest possible, “assai” a little slower. I never bothered to look it up. It took retirement and this puzzle to put things straight—maybe I’ll go back and look at all those Mozart and Beethoven finales! (Of course for a violist, it’s kind of a moot point—we’re always playing as fast as we can!)

This is really frustrating. I do the xword on my iPad mini. NYT app won’t let me get to the keyboard with the = sign or rather, weirdly, it gives me a completely different symbols keyboard without =. I tried typing in “equal” or “equals”. No dice. I’m bummed. Goodbye streak! Please fix these glitches that are irritating app players! Aye, axe those flaws!

I got 21A from the crosses, but was irritated at HAL-FASS. Then the penny dropped. It’s fascinating how difficult it can be to decipher undivided consecutive words. Many early Latin manuscripts were written in this fashion. Sheesh, on top of learning Latin you have to figure out the darned words! EPL-URIB-USUN-UM. Um…indeed.

I just followed a Reddit thread for the mysterious (at least to me) phrase “go ham”. Apparently the source is the always sagacious and sensitive Ye, but the range of interpretations, ie guesses, across the thread makes it clear that I (old, white female devoid of hipness, ignorant of rap culture) am not the only one who is confused.

On second thought and after examining a map, I reluctantly conclude that these countries fit into “Asian” better than any other designation. Istanbul is famously the city where you can walk across a bridge from Europe to Asia and scarcely break a sweat. HOWEVER, thats where clarity ends. If we agree to fold in “the Middle East” to Asia, we have a unit that stretches from the Bosphorus Bridge across the Himalayas from Pakistan to India, and onward to Ho Chi Minh City? Singapore? Jakarta? Manila? And north through China, Japan, Korea and only ending at the Bering Strait? Do Russians agree that they are Asian? If you go East from Europe, are you of necessity in Asia? Or is there a carve out for Russia? Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltics are European and Russia is Asian? It’s all very confusing to one whose geographic knowledge mostly comes from concert tours, and reading about wars and famines, but it made for a fun hour with my maps this morning! And, I’d rather hear answers from other puzzlers than Wiki or Google!

Poor Hydra! Hope Hercules’s batting average is low this season! (And I can’t believe that it’s a John Singer Sargent painting—never seen him venture this far into Jungendstil (sp?) territory.)

Wonderful puzzle, but I especially love Sclossberg’s riff/rant on OLIO. OREO mansplaining was foreshadowed by the two million times that my parents told me about OLIO and food restrictions during WW II. The message was that we had butter and thus, I had nothing—ever—-to complain about. Dadsplaining, I guess, though they both said it.

The Krebs cycle still haunts me after I nearly failed a physiology class my freshman year. (Naive violinist, only non pre-med student in the class.) Full of admiration for all those folks who aced the exam and probably have spent the intervening 50 years healing humanity!

I read this poem many times, mostly in the distant, and appear to forgotten it almost completely. On rereading now, I got goosebumps in the last stanza. Maybe I’m just old enough now to appreciate the weight of past decisions. And I have one quibble: “Culture setters” is a pretty dubious clue for “labs”. Maybe “culture settings?” But I enjoyed the impatient tone of the last line.

I spent a lot of time trying to reconcile “imbue” with “ninja”. It was only the happy music that convinced me that “endue” was a word. Usually I like what the vocabulary-challenged call a “ crossword puzzle word”, but I’ll stick with imbue, thank you. And, to pick a nit, you don’t “rat on”, you “rat out”. I don’t, personally, but I’ve heard about it. Gosh, why do I sound so cross? I should be happy to learn a new word!

Hilarious! I gather they had been working on this for awhile—I’m glad, because I had visions of them slaving FEVERISHLY to get it ready before we get back to reasonable weather. As for the weirdest clue, no Monty Python fan can forget John Cleese hawking “Albatross! Albatross!” as a snack during a movie. (Guess going to a movie in GB is like heading to Yankee Stadium.).

@Andrzej Your facts are correct, but your tone is not what I usually encounter in these forums; most interactions here are enjoyable/humorous and leave both parties laughing. Yours, sadly, projects a condescension that casts a pall over the happy interest either which I posed this question. This also goes for other responses of yours which I see in this column. I’m certainly not the comment police, but belittling your fellow puzzlers see seems to run counter to the basic aim of games: to have fun.

Harder than the usual Tuesday, but I really like the trick!

I spent a good five minutes trying to figure out what an Alister was. Scottish? A fungal disease? MacGyver adjacent?

I must confess, I’m frustrated. I’ve filled in the puzzle correctly, left the T squares as is—figured out the trick pretty fast, for once—and still can’t get approval. I’m playing on my iPad with everything updated. Grrr. I love the tricks, but not when they don’t work! Otherwise an amusing puzzle.

Oh man, this was brutal. Got everything on crosses, knew the trick clues but couldn’t make the rebus work. Re-entered rebuses and still wrong. Cheated with the answer key and turned out I had the Hebrew letters wrong. Time to learn yet another alphabet. Plural of REBUS should be REBI?

Love this puzzle! Trick is relatively self-evident—nice for those of us who are slow to catch on—and the caddies tees/teas clue is delightful.

I don’t get it! Managed to slog through this puzzle but am mystified at MSTEAMS. M Steams? Ms teams? Help!

Gosh, I’m really puzzled, so to speak. I had totally forgotten about those vert/horiz numbers, though I regularly see them at crosswalks. Slogged through the whole thing on crosses, have checked it twice, like Santa, don’t see any mistakes, but still no happy music. Is there a trick to writing the clues? Doing it on the app. Suggestions welcome! (Yes, I checked it a third time, and fourth—maybe I have confirmation bias syndrome.).

Charlotte, Agreed, absolutely. I just came back from two weeks in France, and though I speak fairly good French, I found myself puzzling over unfamiliar uses or combinations of familiar words. I believe French has a smaller lexicon overall, which means they wring even more meanings out of each word. Are you a biologist? French?

Iraq and Iran are in Asia? Huh?