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@Cathy, if your 3-year-old did the Sunday NYT crossword, I think he can handle a scientific explanation.
@M, I agree with you on the theme. For once, it helped me to fill in the rest of the answers once I got it on the first, but I didn’t have much satisfaction from a fun cohesion or aha moments. Re: the architect: I only had the first I and instantly entered IMPEI. Although I didn’t know he was the architect for that specific building, he was so famous, and so frequently featured in the crosswords, that it was a gimme for me. Five-letter architect (no matter how it’s clued)? I.M. Pei. Three-letter singer? Ora or Ono. Four-letter place in India? Agra. Four-letter Native American tribe? Otoe or Cree. A lot of the skill in doing these puzzles (and the part that becomes easier the more you do them) comes from remembering these frequent flyers.
Well, it appears that I am a MINORITYOFONE today, because I loved this puzzle! Sure, it was more challenging than the typical Tuesday, but even on a few of the unknowns (or partially deduceables), I was able to get them from the crosses. I thought the theme was clever, once I got it. I had already gotten the lengthy theme answers, so it didn’t help me fill those, but I enjoyed spotting it. My favorite days are the late-week puzzles, and for me, Mondays and Tuesdays have gotten a little too easy (after lots of practice). So I enjoyed the challenge! I look forward to more from Paul Coulter.
@D, I think you would be very lonely on that hill! For many of us, Thursdays are our favorites!
@Dakota, I assume you are younger, because those of us who are a bit older are very familiar with her. Hopefully, by now you have Googled and learned about the seminal case of Anita Hill v Clarence Thomas—a travesty of justice with consequences that have endured for decades.
Yes it was only the easy side, but when I read the story behind the constructors, it warmed my heart. I love that this was a collab with a center for the aging. I lost my parents back-to-back two years ago, and they were both avid, daily NYT puzzlers. They would so have loved to take part in this project! 🥰 A fun theme, a nice break from the earlier puzzles in the week, and now I am ready for the challenges in the next two days’ worth.
@Momerlyn, soon-to-be grandma here (in May). When my children were toddlers, I limited their sweets and junk food. Inevitably, they would come back from their paternal grandmother‘s house having loaded up on those things. I was so dismayed because I thought it was sending mixed messages. I’ll never forget our pediatrician telling me that children know the difference between Mom‘s house and Grandma‘s house, and it’s perfectly OK to be spoiled by Grandma. Now I can’t wait to do the same!
@Jeff, sotto voce’s comment was not meant to be an insult to the “hoi polloi” but to the NYT. The lowest common denominator meaning the easiest puzzles of the week. Those less experienced have five days of less difficult puzzles. All we ask for is two challenging days a week: Friday and Saturday. Even the usual Thursday trickery—not too difficult but requiring lateral thinking—has been absent lately.
@LW, these are extremely well-known and accomplished women. Chalk it up to a great learning experience!
Loved this fun theme! I got the trick at 35A when I had a partial fill from the crosses and thought, wow, this must be Tarantino but… TARNAT…?? I already had DOUBLE at 62A, and RE… at 63A, and suddenly everything made sense and the rest fell into place. Knowing that even with a theme like this, the entered words have to be a real word, the theme answers filled in quickly and helped with a few of the downs. I used to find Thursdays extremely difficult, but I have been working through the archived Thursdays, so far back to 2020, and I now find them much easier and love them! I highly recommend the archives for people who find Thursdays too challenging or frustrating. I believe you will come to look forward to them!
@Byron a bialy is similar to a bagel but softer and with no hole, just a divot. Typically filled with onions. They’re delicious! For bear meaning gnarly problem, think of “wow, that was a real bear of a puzzle.” That’s the way I read it, unless I missed something more directly correlated.
@Tony, it asked for the time that marks the beginning of Taurus season (which spans more than one month). That time is late April.
Sam, thank you for your column intro. I hope it will remind all of us to be kinder to each other. Along with others, I will assume you are referring to some of the more direct criticism of fellow commenters, which I have seen often, and not the recurring theme of the late-week puzzles getting easier. Those of us who look forward to a challenging puzzle only have two days out of seven: Friday and Saturday (plus the typically twisty, but not necessarily difficult, Thursday). Isn’t there enough with the easier early-week puzzles (plus the Friday “easy mode” clues in the newsletter and the recent addition of the Midi) to attract and retain the newcomers? That is all we are asking for, is for the editing team to give us those two days that we all look forward to. There are five remaining days for people who are newer in their solving journey (as we all once were). I agree with several other comments I have seen today, that almost all of the complaints have been careful to applaud the work the constructors while pleading with the editors to give us back our two days of challenging puzzles.
I enjoyed today’s puzzle. I look forward all week to the increased difficulty of Friday and Saturday, and often, Sunday is a bit of a letdown. Longer, but usually relatively easy. Which is unfortunate, because that’s the day I have the leisurely morning to take my time completing it. The extra challenge with the rebuses today gave me a good, fun workout. I welcome a long and challenging Sunday. Monday and Tuesday are easy enough that we can whip them out before work. Great job, Amie Walker. Keep ‘em coming!
Not sure if anyone has mentioned it yet, but can we get a hats (caps?) off to the developers for today’s Strands grid? Bravo! 👏👏👏
I loved everything about this puzzle! I caught on at 30A [3,065, in ancient Rome]. Favorite clues: 1D [Red rover home], which I puzzled over till halfway through and then laughed out loud; 70A [Your business start-up?]; and 126A [Happy companion]. Very clever! Never noticed the whole alphabet in the rebuses till l read the column at completion—what an amazing feat! 👏👏👏
I loved this!! Took me right back to the hundreds of thousands of miles spent on airplanes, American specifically, and that feeling of disappointment when you open to the puzzles and someone already wrote in them. (I always wrote on a separate piece of paper as a courtesy.) Great misdirections at first, and an awesome April Fools’ Day puzzle. Bravo! 👏👏👏
This was fun! Yes, it seemed obvious to me that we needed to enter the missing letters in the pictorial squares, because the cursor landed there (making each a non-blank square). I did that on each pass, but I can imagine it was frustrating if you got to the end without having filled them in and thought you had an error somewhere. It seemed intuitive to me. I think it was an excellent feat that Brad Lively found all these answers that fit the theme in three ways: With a dancing “letter” in the middle, plus a dance name in the answer, plus a satisfying length. Bravo, Brad! I look forward to more of your puzzles.
I love how difficult this was! Thank you, Byron, for a refreshing Saturday challenge. I had so little on the first pass, and suddenly realized I was already 18 minutes in and still had most of the puzzle blank, with a word here and there and a few spots partially filled in with word patterns (EDs and S’s, etc.) Ultimately, often letter-by-letter, the grid began to fill. So much misdirection, so many puns, some arcane trivia that I needed to be self-filled by the crossers (ZARFS…), and a few nice TIL facts (ok, and a few nits to pick, like EPT!). I ended up nearly 50% longer than my Saturday average. My idea of a perfect Saturday morning.
@Sandip please don’t add spoilers for the other NYT games! I look forward all day to doing them after work, but I do the Crossword first thing in the morning.
Loved this crunchy challenge! Almost twice my Saturday average. Bravo, Katie! Scanning the grid, re-scanning, and scanning again repeatedly, filling in a letter here, a letter there, and finally gaining a toehold with a few words and phrases (with glorious aha moments) made for a super satisfying solve. The NW corner hung me up the longest: I had “I HAD A BLAST” for far too long at 1A, combined with “MOFU BREWER” at 15A, and therefore, obviously, the youth baseball supporters were “DUES,” leaving 1D a mystery. What a lulu! I mean a doozy!
@LJADZ, hmm. I loved it! One man’s obscure nonsense is another [wo]man’s pleasurable challenge. I look forward all week to this Saturday morning mental workout, and today’s fit the bill perfectly.
Cute Wednesday-level puzzle. This took me 1/3 of my average Friday time and earned me a Friday personal best. I enjoyed the clueing, but not the fact that it took me about as long to do the puzzle as to read the article afterwards. XW Stats called this “Very Easy,” with 95% of solvers playing faster than their average Friday time, and almost 80% solving it in over 20% less than their Friday average. Stats don’t lie. I used to look forward to the challenging Friday and Saturday puzzles, but lately I feel annoyed more often than delighted. The other NYT games (esp Connections) have gotten way too easy lately also.
Fun puzzle. I wish the rebus puzzles would *only* accept the rebus, not the first letter in one direction. I got the completion and the music having only filled in the Fs in the acrosses. Was a let down to get the completion without discovering the trick. It should have forced me to rethink it and enter the PH/F and enjoy that aha moment. There should only be one single convention for double rebuses: “across/down”, and no other accepted variant. (And for single rebuses, only the full spelling, not the first letter.)
Wow, fantastic! Bravo to Dylan Schiff! I was completely 92D for quite a while, totally 2D. “36A!!” Figured out the trick at 97A (speaking of ear worms!), and then little by little, I got it all 42D. Fresh fill in the rest, absolutely no 42D. Several misdirects that felt like gimmies at first (e.g., RAPPER at 13A) made this even more challenging. Perfect puzzle for a lazy Sunday, basking in the glory that we still have one more day of R&R tomorrow. Happy Memorial Day, everyone. Thank you to all who have served, and bless those who lost their lives defending our freedom.
Having never heard of UNDIE RUNS, I assumed that must be a gaming term for streaks of successful wins without dying. Ha!
@MmmmHmm, I felt that way about Friday and Saturday puzzles in the beginning, often taking we’ll over an hour to complete them (and often with a few lookups). But fast forward a couple of years, and I am usually getting them pretty well between 20 to 30 minutes. Keep at it! Half the secret is remembering the usual suspects (not too many today!) Another is deducing word patterns (based on tense, plurals, etc.) And finally, you sort of catch on to the puns just from experience. I didn’t know several of the answers today, but they eventually filled themselves in from their crosses and that deductive reasoning.
This was a delight! Thank you, Katie. Seemingly impenetrable at first, but little by little, it all came together. A perfect Saturday morning. I thought I started off with a bang with SALON at 1D. But the later correction to SCALP (thanks to LORETTA) was even better. I loved the crossing of TOYPOODLES with POOLNOODLES. Amazed that I pulled SNORLAX out of the deep recesses of my memory. (His buddy LORAX has appeared in other puzzles twice this past week!) I loved the whole (text?) conversation in AREWECOOL? TOOFARGONE? ITLLBEFINE. SWEARONIT? YETTOCOME. All debut entries! Yesterday, I was happy to be among XW Stats’ 50% who solved much slower (>20%) than their [recent] Friday average (glad to have the challenge). Today, it says 14% solved much faster (>20%) than their Saturday average. I was 31% faster, but I didn’t consider it much easier, it just happened to be right up my alley in several subjects. Loved every minute of it!
@Lauren, hmm. I loved that there was almost no pop trivia, and the few such entries that were unknown to me (I haven’t yet seen Anora, didn’t know the Beatles song, forgot Jewell’s last name, and love Edward NORTON but didn’t know the movie), I got from the crosses and simple deduction. For example, no clue who he is (though TIL!), but Anora’s husband IVA_ had to be IVAN, which helped lead to NORTON, and I guessed Jewell LOY_ was LOYD. I was also unfamiliar with the Chinese game FANTAN but ultimately got it from FISH (out). While my knowledge of Bad Bunny’s repertoire was only recently expanded, I got a couple of letters of OTRO from the crosses and deduced the rest. That’s how these puzzles sometimes work for me—a few squares at a time until before you know it, whole sections get filled in where before there was a lot of emptiness. I love it that way!
Cute theme, enjoyed it. Kept getting the oops message and spent way too long looking for my typo and finding nothing amiss. Turns out I had an error at 86A/71D that seemed perfectly reasonable: SOMETHINGGOLD for the sequin jacket, and therefore, DRAG for lackluster (as in a party). Anyone else?
@Ms. Billie M. Spaight, your NIECE is your mother’s [other] daughter’s [i.e., your sister’s] daughter.
I was so stuck on DRACULA being correct. Vampires are ‘out” (as in, like a light; asleep) for breakfast, right? Worked for me. The children’s cereal never entered my mind. That kind of stuff was verboten in my childhood home, and in that of my children. Thus, my NE corner was a hot mess for far too long. Being confident that the mysterious wax collectible was some kind of …CARD further added to the muck. (I knew the physics measurement had to be PHI or CHI, but what is a LCRECARD?? Ha!) Still eked it out slightly under my Saturday average, but not by much thanks to that stubborn mental block. Loved this puzzle with all its fresh fill! Makes me sad that we’ll be back to the easy ones for a few days.
The reason why many tried to enter rebuses (aside from it being a Thursday) is that not only did it make the answers work (across and down), but also, it showed a progressive series (top to bottom) of “grade inflations”: F/D, D/C, C/B, B/A. Had they not been in order that way, the rebuses wouldn’t have seemed so correct. Easy enough to fix, after fly-specking to find my error, but it did add to my pleasantly fast solve time.
I loved this puzzle! A proper Saturday workout. Thank you, Fritz Juhnke (and thank you, editors)! I had never heard the term “grid flow” before Fritz’s narrative here. Fascinating. That is exactly what helped me work through this puzzle, meandering through sections and slowly filling in the grid—often one letter at a time. That made for a very rewarding solve. The punny and misleading clues gave me so many 31D (FACEPALMS) when I finally got those eureka moments. Too many favorites to list here, but I loved them all. Fritz, happy birthday to your wife Katie, and we are grateful for her contributions.
@Chris, I have never heard of the Sprint Cup, but I knew that anything related to racing with three letters is almost always STP!
Deb, I am so sorry for your loss of your father. Your column was a beautiful tribute to him. It sounds like he was a wonderful man and father. I lost my dad two years ago this Saturday (and my mom right after), and the slightest thing still makes me cry, including your column today. I take solace in the good memories, and it sounds like you’re doing the same. Take care of yourself. Bravo to the constructor(s) and editors today. Great puzzle, very clever!
@Mike S waving hello from Fort Lauderdale – even though I completely disagree with you! I loved this one and got it right away with Long John Silver.
@Tex same. I can usually tell where suffixes are going to go, like S, ED, ING, IC, ESE, ISH, EST, IEST, ER, IER…, and then I play the “what if” game on the corresponding crosses to see if they work. Little by little, I can usually get things filled in that were previously roadblocks.
@Elizabeth, what goes on means clothing, which goes in the closet.
@Laura Stratton, as soon as I saw Maryland crab, I knew it had to do with Old Bay but didn’t figure it out till I got the X from 46D. It’s not that obscure – try it sometime, it’s a very versatile seasoning blend.
I loved this crunchy Saturday puzzle! I had almost nothing on my first pass. And my second revealed only an entry or two. On my third pass, a few squares filled in by deductive reasoning on the word patterns. Then, very slowly but surely, it all came together. Just perfect! Funny, my first thought on 1A was indeed the answer, but I thought, [no way in hell] could that be it. A few downs proved me wrong (or right, as it turned out!)
Did anyone else confidently fill in EMILY at 35A on the first pass? (Since we still can’t search the comments, this may have been mentioned.) Got a laugh from the clue wording when I realized it was HELEN. Great puzzle, and a fantastic debut from Joyce Keller! Like many, my favorites were C[A]ESAREAN and MANSPREADING. As a mom and a new grandmother, I am thankful to not have experienced the former, and as a frequent flyer, I am all too familiar with the latter.
@The X-Phile, exactly how I solved today’s puzzle!
What a fabulous and fun Sunday morning puzzle! Thank you, Alex Eaton-Salners. Plentiful puns that made me laugh and clever wordplay with satisfying AHA! moments. So much more enjoyable to deduce than hunting and pecking to fill in trivia with crosses. My favorites were 25A: [How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying] and 91A: [Into the Woods]. Terrific! Alex, my condolences on your loss of your mother. It does get easier with time, but for me, it has been three years and I am still on that journey. This puzzle was a great dedication to your mom.
@Lewis Hear, hear! I understand NYT’s objective of attracting more players, especially with the expanded family memberships they are hawking. But please don’t cater exclusively to newcomers at the expense of your loyal, paying regulars!
I flew through this puzzle, at about 12 minutes, getting a bit irritated at how easy it was for the Thursday challenge I had been looking forward to. Until I came to a screeching halt where those six/twelve answers became inscrutable. Suddenly, the eureka moment hit with the DARK HORSES, and it all made sense. Loved it! Thank you for this very clever and fun Thursday technique, Hahn Huynh!👏 👏 👏
@JD Gold, I agree with you, for the most part. But I just did a couple Saturdays from 1995 in the last two nights, courtesy of a suggestion here, and I would say at least a third of those puzzles were then-contemporary trivia. One was Elizabeth Taylor, which was easily gettable (from the crosses, not the 1960s movie clue), but several others were about flash-in-the-pan 1970s TV shows and lesser politicians. Like you, I do very much prefer the general knowledge wordplay clues. But I don’t mind learning something new.
WHEW, what a ride! This is one of my favorite themed puzzles ever. I first knew something was up (literally) with MARTINIGLASS, but didn’t have enough surrounding fill to completely figure it out just yet. The Aha! moment came at MICHELLE/MICHELINMAN, and then I was navigating the other roundabouts like a pro. Still a lot of crunchy clues in the non-themed answers. I was way over my Sunday average, and enjoyed every minute of it! I am in awe of 15-year-old Oliver’s skill. A banner day in the Schossbergs’ home. Bravo!
@B, as an American, I did not know anything about the state quarter, but there are only a few four-letter common birds, and I took a stab with WREN first thinking I could change it to LARK if the crosses didn’t fit. I had no idea about the politician or the singer, but with the former being Korean, I filled in Kim at the end and let the crosses do the heavy lifting. Soon enough, the only first name that seemed to fit was Andy. I was mystified by the clue at 1D (I was thinking of Washington as a name rather than a school, and I even entertained BIFF for a second), but when I got the C in the second slot, I realized it was very likely the old crossword standby UCLA. That got me 1A and started to open up the NW corner. A lot of this game is about word patterns and educated guesses (and erases/rewrites). We don’t all know all of the facts! Trust me, it was difficult, even for us!
@Hank, agreed, but anyone who grew up listening to Maria sing it would recognize it right away. She defined “so” (its homophone anyway) as a needle pulling thread, which “sol” would not be. Then again, one needs the British English pronunciation to equate “fa” with a long, long way to run!