Josh
New York
Today I learned that a nice 7-letter gift for a newborn is a “Layette”, and apparently not “Tequila”, “Airhorn” or “Spiders”.
@Cassandra The clues are instructions, not descriptions. So add (give) an ‘o’ or remove (steal) an ‘x’. If the clues were “stolen kisses” and “hugs given”, that would indeed be backwards.
Ouch. I like a challenge but this felt way too hard for a Tuesday. I did like the theme, and I got a kick out of seeing “fjord” because…well, I love a nice fjord.
Fun puzzle. It made me do a double-take! Deb: That imperial chart is hilarious. I just wish we could fully commit to metric by including times and dates. Like this: Hey, just 135 kiloseconds till the weekend!
Loved it. My favorite kind of Thursday, just hard enough to make me feel smart! For the “west” rebus, I think “tsew” should have also been allowed - I get to the bottom and turn west, so shouldn’t those letters be backwards? Otherwise, I feel like I’m spelling “SO WHERE DO TSEWAND”. I see the logic either way. It comes down to whether the rebus letters themselves are part of the new direction. With the other three, they’re not - you change direction AFTER the rebus square. But with this one, that means doubling back and skipping over the square you just filled, which seemed weird to me.
Wow! Solved without the theme and couldn’t see it for the life of me. After Deb explained it and I looked again, it felt like watching the end of The Usual Suspects. Eg, it was in plain sight.
@grif I agree with you completely subjective opinion. But… do you think “gaslight” just means “disagree with”?
I thought today was Tuesday, and spent the whole puzzle wondering why it felt like a Thursday. I was so confused! It was surely a moral outrage! No, I just hadn’t taken my Ritalin. The weird thing is, I still finished under my Tuesday time limit. So…I had the power all along?
Congrats on your NYT crossword debut! Maybe I’m missing something but I don’t quite get the theme. If we’re saying “hi” to playing cards, they need a suit. “Five” isn’t a playing card. Maybe adding a suit in italics to the clue might have helped. Or maybe that makes it too easy. And if they’re not playing cards I have no idea what those four words have in common.
Wait, “Bangles” is a real word?!? I thought the band made it up, like “Beatles”.
@Old Dad Agreed it should have been there. But then I assume, if it had been, the rank thresholds would have increased by that value. So it’d be a wash as far as my ego is concerned.
For “pointy-eared being”, anyone else guess “Alf” first?
@Clutch Cargo Yeah, I see your point. It’s a little funky is all.
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