NYC Traveler

I honestly do not understand the hate heaped on this puzzle from a few hours ago. It was different, original, novel, a new experience - pick your descriptor - and fun to solve! I can not imagine the effort that goes in to making something like this work. Please, Mr. Sclossberg, do not be discouraged by some of the comments that you read here. A lot of us LOVED this puzzle and welcomed a new twist on the usual Sunday fare.

Spoiler alert: This puzzle has a rebus. (C’mon, *somebody*had to say it!)

I’m calling Natick. 24A and 26D are beyond the limits of reasonable knowledge for mere mortals. Throw in the unknown 37A and the highly suspicious 38D, and there you have it. It qualifies. There are those who will disagree with me. You’re entitled to your opinion, as am I.

Didn’t get the logic behind changing the letters until reading the column. Makes sense now.

Arrghh! Thought I had a shot to be the first commenter of the new year (sorta), but couldn’t get past the broken link. Oh, well. Loved the puzzle, great to start the new year with. Happy New Year, everyone! 🎉🥳🍾🥂🎈

TIL about OBELI. I always just called them “.daggers”.

This was a great theme for a crossword puzzle. As others have mentioned, I’m sure there is a lot of overlap in the Venn diagram of NYTXW solvers and Jeopardy! fans. While my enjoyment of the theme does not reach the heights attained by HeathieJ with the Star Trek puzzle of a few days ago, it was still a lot of fun, especially for a Thursday. I thought I should give an update to my recent experience that I’ve mentioned here. My lovely sister-in-law unfortunately passed away during the night yesterday while in hospice care at home. Even though we knew it was coming, we were still surprised by how markedly her condition changed and that she was gone so quickly. I know that she was well cared for every step of the way, most especially by her husband, my awesome brother Joe. Please remember to show love to the people in your life that you love. It’s easy to take for granted how important they are to us. 🙏🏻

I liked this puzzle. Mostly because it was my 2000th solve in a row! That number has seemed so far away for a long time. But doing the crosswords every day has been a great source of entertainment, accomplishment, satisfaction, education, challenge, … I could go on. One of the best things has been getting to the point where my mindset is that I can always finish the puzzle. It might take me a while, and the hard ones won’t be done in one sitting, but I’ll figure it out. I think that carries over subconsciously to other areas of life, and that ain’t bad.

I have never used or heard of ALOP. Sounded kind of EELY to me.

I’m a little embarrassed to admit that after having __TS for 37D, my first thought was that there were 2.3 million RATS. 😖

Wow!!! What a puzzle!! I cottoned (or flaxed?) to the theme when I got the revealer, but still took me a while to see how the wormholes worked. They were rebuses? That were different types of worms? And they worked both across AND down??!? Unbelievable. Well done, Mr. Schiff. Took me nearly an hour, but how satisfying was that to complete? It also happened to be the five-year anniversary of the start of my streak. Quite a suitably challenging puzzle to finish a five-year run with. Thank you again, Dylan.

“Desirable formation for ducks” I confidently entered VEE. 😀 And it stayed there for a long time.

Liked the puzzle today, a good Wednesday, just the right amount of challenge. Well done, Aidan and Oren. I’ve been traveling lately and am still catching up on reading the comments from the last few days. What an amazing set of puzzles from last weekend! I seriously thought that my streak would end on Friday, then again on Saturday. The NW on both of those really kicked my onager (hah, emus!). And Sunday was a ton of fun! I felt like a real yegg by the end. (Flashback to the 70’s) A few months ago I bemoaned the fact that I wouldn’t be able to attend the ACPT event this year and meet some of the people that I have gotten to know through this forum. After I finally got up the nerve to actually go, I had to change my plans. But for a good reason. My first granddaughter Maya was born to my daughter on March 9! First girl in the family after four grandsons, much like my daughter was the first girl of her generation. I had a wonderful time being there with them all and glad that I could be there at her birth. Just wanted to share my good news with everyone, and maybe I can bore you all with pictures in Stamford next year!

Well done, Mr. Motz! Congratulations on your NYT crossword puzzle debut! I enjoyed this puzzle a lot. I was unsure if I was seeing some bolded fonts or not, then realized that the clues up and down all used pairs of M’s, as revealed in 1A. Very cool how you worked Eminem into the puzzle. And I loved seeing MADMEN at the end, one of my favorite shows of all time. My favorite themer was MICKEY MANTLE, my childhood baseball idol growing up just a few miles from Commerce, Oklahoma where he grew up. One of my uncles would go to see him play semi-pro ball in Baxter Springs, KS, then again in the low minors in Joplin. He was very well known locally before hitting the big time in New York City. Don’t recall seeing his name in a puzzle before. Is this a first? Wanted to give a quick shoutout to @AudraLM, too. Loved seeing your town in the puzzle today! 😄

Excellent puzzle! Loved the trick. Thank you, Ella.

Thank you, Garrett Chalfin, not just for the fun of solving your puzzle today, but for sharing your story with us. I got goosebumps reading about the joy you felt when your first NYT puzzle was accepted. Well done, sir.

Bold prediction: People are going to hate this one. It is a real challenge. Nice to finish.

I’m really not saying this just to contribute to the Great New York Times Crossword Comments Competition, but doing these puzzles from the last two days and reading their Constructor Notes and learning the background and reading everyone’s comments here, including those from the constructor herself, … I’m just so impressed and thankful to be a part of this community. May we never, ever take for granted the special space that we have here.

@Whoa Nellie, You’re in the Crossword today!!!

Liked the revealer. It wasn’t immediately obvious how the highlighted answers could be tied together. Well done!

I started reading the comments from newest to oldest today, not what I normally do. I wanted to get a sense of what people who solve later in the day thought about this one. For me, this was a return to the days of yore. After my first pass I had maybe three answers filled in. Finally, a real Saturday puzzle that’s not going to feel like a walk in the park! Mr. Judge is going to make me work for it. Great! Even the second and third passes did not yield a great deal. The answers came one by one, very slowly. I really liked all of them, even the shorter “fill”. Not answers that I see in a puzzle very often. But what really made the difference for me here were the clues. Many were very short and ambiguous. Is that a verb or a noun? And which meaning of the word? That’s what made it a Saturday puzzle for me. A real challenge to get to the end, and enough for me to have a little bit of doubt whether I could. I hope a lot of you got the same sense of accomplishment that I did from this one. Thank you, Ryan Judge.

TIL that PRINCEVALIANT and THEWIZARDOFID have the same number of letters. Ask me how I know.

This is not a comment on the puzzle, which I greatly enjoyed, although I didn’t get the PERCENT/NOQUARTER link until I read @Steve L’s excellent “to a five-year-old” explanation. I’m writing to say that I was all set to reward myself with attending the ACP Tournament this year for the first time, after years of solving the NYT crossword and reading the Comments from all of you. I’ll admit to feeling nervous about the opportunity to meet so many people who I’ve only known through this column, but my curiosity and interest finally overcame my fear of possible rejection and I made plans to finally go. Alas, life got in the way, as it often does, this time in a good way. I’ll be occupied with caring for my grandson after my daughter has her second child (my first granddaughter) in late March. While I’m obviously looking forward to that, I’m going to miss the opportunity to meet many of you there. Usually I tell myself that there’s always next year, but at 72 I know how things can change from one year to the next. I’ll have to settle for just being there in SPIRIT instead. 🙂

Just had a thought. If some brilliant constructor could come up with a puzzle with rebuses and also used Pig Latin, maybe with a few sports and math references thrown in, that would have to set the record for number of comments and maybe even break the internet.

My son graduated from Tufts in 2008, so I sent him a screenshot of today’s puzzle with that answer filled in, along with PROUDPAPA(S) above it. Very nice.

Liked the answer for 32A, but thought it would be FINGER PAINTING. (Hello, emus)

I would agree with xwstats to put this in the Very Hard category. It was a bear for me, about 33% over my Friday average. The East area took the most time. It was fun figuring out the spanners. There’s often that gnawing thought early on that maybe I won’t be able to fill this one in. But I put that aside and tell myself that I have a lot of time, I can always lay it down and come back to it and maybe see things differently. It was a good workout and a formidable Friday. Thanks for the experience, Kelly.

David, That would be Tin PAN Alley, mon ami. Tin Can Alley is much less desirable. (Do emus nibble on tin cans?)

Boy, did that one kick my onager. Started with a lot of wrong answers. Sort of remembered Segovia associated with guitar, but not with Spain. So I came up with aruSSIansGUITAR for 3D. (Doh!) Had MeetS before MIXES, puLLUP before ROLLUP, erte before IVES. I was a hot mess. Took me just under an hour, but I finished. Truly a worthy adversary. Thank you, Mr. Slonecker!

Thought I might be the first to comment tonight, but no. I liked it. Went fairly fast. Always fun for me no matter how easy it might be.

To the constructor: So, if you had NOT gotten into college and you had NOT gone to law school and had NOT gotten in to your SAFETY SCHOOL … Would we be calling you Zero Degrees Kelvin? (Have pity on me. I had to go a long ways for that joke)

Hoo boy, that was a doozy! Loved seeing the emojis and figuring out the answers. COMMODORES were a blast from the past. I loved the “Noted wildlife refuge”, too. But ESPIAL, srsly?

@HeathieJ, Let me be the first to wish you a very Happy Birthday!!!🎉🎂🎈🎁🥳 (I know it’s not technically for a couple of hours yet, but the Wednesday puzzle is here, so I think that counts) Will you be having that swim in the sea? 🤗 Have a great time today!

Welcome back, Sam! Good to see you here again! Just wanted to say that my streak started on this day in 2020, six years ago. It’s been quite an enjoyable ride, despite being seriously threatened by that KAC puzzle last Saturday. The best part, of course, is getting to know all of you out here, and being part of the conversation. I’ve never been part of a virtual community, and I appreciate what I receive from this one. Happy Memorial Day, everyone! 🇺🇸

Not as hard as most Fridays, but an enjoyable romp nevertheless.

Nice puzzle, Ginny! I liked the bird theme. Very cleverly done. Thank you!

I came here to say that 22A is just flat out wrong. When a ballgame goes into extra innings, a runner is automatically placed on second base in order to — What’s that? Oh! I thought we were still NATTERING on about yesterday’s puzzle. My bad. 😆

Is this the David Steinberg that draws the Far Side cartoons? (Asking for a friend. I forget his name right now.)

Whew! That was a good one! I had SOPH_O for the start of 22A and thought that SOPHOMORE had been misspelled. Took me nearly an hour, but some of that was failing to turn it off the app when I put down the phone. I liked it very much. Et tu, Andrzej?