Mtmetz
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Pacific NW
Haven’t done today’s puzzle yet, in fact just did Monday’s masterpiece and left a late comment. As I went through all 278 comments (which as others have noted was a joy in itself) I realized that, unless I missed it, I don’t think anyone mentioned another feat of Mr. Newton’s construction (and perhaps the editors judgment): All those O’s and not a single OREO to be seen, and on a Monday!
I loved this puzzle, and Caitlyn's comments about the constructor, not least because I got a rare PB on a Saturday. The puzzle just flowed for me and there it was. Was it easy? Probably for many. Am I getting better? Also likely. But I looked back at my solve for Mr. Logan's last puzzle where my time was 3X today. I don't think I'm getting *that* better in that short period of time!
Sincere condolences, Deb. It's clear his memory is a blessing, which is how it should be. As others have said, we are all the better for his influence on you. Thanks for that.
Ella Mai...sorry, I don't think so. Not my son's father's R+B. So much auto-tune! DEEP SIGH... Better Friday clue: Middle month en printemps
Under my average Tuesday by 2 minutes. Liked it, knew most of the trivia, respect the complex theme. Thanks Paul! Just putting that in as a small counter to the nattering nabobs of negativism!
Had fun with this until I didn't. I got that the theme had something to do with a lot of Ks, but the song title just killed me. Spent many, many minutes trying various combination of rebuses (rebi?) TWO, FOUR, ONE (a short tennis match could be one set if the players agreed to it, right?), along with the plausible MANIC and MATIC. Can someone explain why rebuses shouldn't work in the crossword? I understand that the song title uses numbers, but this is a cross WORD, so I didn't think of the possibility of using actual numbers initially. And then, even after I put in the actual numbers, still didn't get the happy music until I changed EDGE to EDGY. Dispiriting. Looking forward to tomorrow...
Great puzzle, perfect for a Friday with sparkling wit and crunchy but gettable clues if one follows Deb's sage advice (we'll miss it when she's gone!). And could two constructors be any nicer? Collaborative, elementary educators, Minnesota...I'm guessing the ice cream affinity is the "lie." Maybe lactose intolerance or vegan? Thanks Jess and Adrian!
Nice Friday. I was DEKEd by JINK for a while...
Very late to this party, but I just have to post for the record (NYT, after all) that Monday was my birthday (a big one) and this puzzle was a wonderful gift. More layers to the story: Sunday I played 9 holes with the mother of my child, and 3-putted 5 greens (Sotto and others not in the know, that’s a bad thing). Monday, after climbing a local butte for a spectacular view of 9 snow-covered Cascade peaks, we retreated to the golf course for an hour of putting practice. Later, when I filled out this delightful grid, I was filled with wonder at the gifts these puzzles give us, often so unexpectedly. Finished off the day with a wonderful performance of Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody On A Theme Of Paganini” by the Oregon Symphony featuring Macedonian soloist Simon Trpceski (now that’s a name for a Saturday crossword). Thanks, Mr. Newton, for a wonderful puzzle on a birthday I won't soon forget!
Late to the commentariat after taking advantage of a sunny day to put up the outdoor decorations. I missed a personal best by 18 seconds, but don’t even care because this puzzle was so delightful, as expected. I want my own personal Robyn Weintraub to make a puzzle like this for me every day for the next four years. I might make it through the ordeal.
Nice puzzle with some clever cluing, but perhaps somewhat easy for a Saturday especially for one educated in the sciences. I may have had no idea (until yesterday) about the etymology and all the variations of ISIS (thanks, Sam Lyons!), but today ISOMERS, BORON, (transfer)RNA and PULSAR (not QUASAR) were gimmes for me so maybe that helped. I thought there were a few inelegant/not so much in-the-language clue/answers: BATH SET, MADE A STOP, DETECTIVE BUREAU. And JORTS? Jumper shorts? Jodhpur shorts? Jym shorts? Please enlighten me. Still, I enjoyed the puzzle and still time for protest. Thanks, Alex!
Bonus themer to CATCH: Steelhead TROUT, my favorite gamefish and near obsession. While steelhead are derived from rainbow trout and share the same biologic name (Oncorynchus mykiss), they have adapted to the same life cycle as salmon, spawning in fresh water rivers of the Pacific and spending a year or two there before migrating as 6" smolts to the ocean. Most spend two or three years feeding and growing to 6-8 pounds and then return to their natal river to repeat the cycle. Unlike Pacific salmon which die after spawning, around 15% can survive the spawn and then go back to the ocean for another cycle. Some even spawn 3-4 times, coming back progressively larger, which make them an attractive gamefish. Most anglers realize that these fish are "too valuable to catch only once" and so practice catch-and-release. Although hatchery steelhead are delicious, you should never buy wild steelhead as they are increasingly endangered. The four H's (lost Habitat, over-Harvest, Hydropower dams and Hatchery fish which compete with wild fish) have lead to declines in numbers. Farmed steelhead and salmon are also not as sustainable as some would lead you to believe, because of the immense damage the fish farms do to the estuaries and their inhabitants where the net pen farms are anchored. Obviously I liked the puzzle! I would have had a PB Monday but I had NSA and SAABS which took me 4 minutes to sort out. My son was a big fan of Pokemon so the themer was a gimme.
Great puzzle and great constructor notes. (The picture also caught my eye; thanks Sam!) As the husband of a middle school librarian, I loved seeing the YA books. Mr. Cappel's last puzzle, a debut on 3/11/25, was a Tuesday and was also great. This one felt more like a Tuesday to me, but he's on his way to the cycle. Good luck and keep them coming!
@Amy K this is the reason why, when scrolling the comments, I always change the default to "oldest first"
@Hardroch Nice! I bow to your impressive analysis. It holds if, as Steve L noted, there are no other O's found elsewhere in the grid, which presumably Mr. Newton used as a constraint. These constructors are good!
@Mike Your puns give me such Joy!
It seems that for me that the Friday and Saturday puzzles were switched again, no doubt to the dismay of those who like "a proper Saturday challenge." Which I understand and mostly agree with. My Friday was fine until I could not sort out, ironically, the NW with LIEU, SIAM and OMBRE. Today, it was a smooth solve from beginning to end with pleasant surprises all along the way. Sometimes it's OK to have it a little easier, especially after a struggle the previous day. Thanks, Mr. Musa!
Another 5 minutes of flyspecking on a relatively easy (for me) puzzle that was not really a good Thursday placement. As usual, that's on the editors, not on the constructor. I loved the theme and learned that the common CROW is AMERICAN, and the SNIPE is, well, COMMON. My error also taught me something. After thinking a minute, I put in ALS for "Bad ending?" and immediately thought, "That's incredibly insensitive! How could they?!" Of course, they wouldn't and I should have realized that and thought some more. TALK seemed to work for "Do it!" so there was that. Still well under my average. The mavens must be pretty frustrated this week.
I haven't been through the entire comments section, but I haven't seen a clarification to Deb's contention that in epee "any contact a competitor makes with an opponent's suit...results in a point." The contact must be with the blunted tip of the weapon. The epee suite has the largest contact area for scoring but contact with any part of the blade which is not the tip will not score. Small but significant nit. In saber, the side of the blade can score (and hurt like heck!).
@Mike He must have ironed out the problems he had with his swing.
@Steve L Thanks for this. My father enlisted and was in basic at Great Lakes when the war ended, but two uncles fought in Europe and survived. Their sister, my mother, was a teenage Rosie-the-riveter, working in a tractor factory converted to making tanks in Racine, WI. She also served in her way, as did many other women in or out of the military, who don't get enough recognition on Veterans Day. Here's to them as well. I know you thanked all, but the women deserve a call-out.
As usual on Monday, I tried to do this puzzle using only the Downs. I was quickly thwarted, and I wonder if the constructor deliberately made the down clues hard. Generally, a great Monday puzzle with a nice theme and a broad spectrum of clues to please all solvers.
@CaptainQuahog 36D, for those like me who were confused at first The clue seems OK to me. At any given time, an owl is hunting for a mouse. For their prey, owls hunt mice. Attorneys general?
@HeathieJ Just a quick note to thank you for the kind words on my post associated with the Friday crossword. I'm a morning/afternoon solver so my rare comments usually end up where few would see them, and I wasn't sure you would. I'm beyond glad that you found my advice useful and reassuring. It seems one of my side gigs in retirement is helping family and friends, who like me are experiencing the perils of older age, navigate the opaque and sometimes very unhelpful health care system. I have a lot of time for it recently as I am recovering from an unexpected total hip replacement, after a fall while skiing at Whistler last month resulted in a fracture. I followed my own advice, with the help of knowledgeable colleagues, and found an excellent surgeon at the "other UW" in Seattle. (I'm a Badger). I'm coming along well and I hope you have a successful and stress-free ablation--it sounds as if you are in great hands. One of the things I constantly marveled at and never took for granted when I was working was the way total strangers trusted me and the team with their lives, often with very little time for consultation. It was an amazing connection. I miss that and hope you find practitioners with a similar approach. Best wishes!
Loved the puzzle and it completes a100-day streak since my hip replacement after a fracture (minus the first couple narcotic-infused post-op days). Quite a BASH after I was run into while skiing at Whistler in March. Surgery left my bone-SPURred, cartilage-free femoral head in the *bucket*, which has the same number of letters as BREAST. Fortunately it wasn't a SPIRALled fracture. I usually haven't bothered with streaks, but the forced inactivity started this one and then I decided to continue. This past weekend, I was late getting to the Friday puzzle and did it in order on Saturday, before starting the Saturday one, and was rewarded with a blue star, which I think breaks the streak. In the past, I have sometimes waited two days before completing puzzles and always got the gold star as long as the puzzles were done in order. This was my understanding after reading many discussions about this in the commentariat in the past. I inquired of the NYT Games staff, and a nice woman wrote me "... for a puzzle to count toward your streak, it must have been solved on the day of its publication before midnight without having used in-app help...It doesn't count if it 's within 24 hours unfortunately." I followed up with her but haven't heard back. I didn't know about the constraint of not seeking help from "in-app" resources, which I never look at until after completing the puzzle. Others might be interested or have some insight. FWIW I'm doing very well thanks to modern surgery!
@HeathieJ Thanks! Had a great visit to MN a couple of weeks ago despite the fire smoke. Sis has a cabin on a lake near Brainerd. Hope your issues are resolving as well. It's no fun when you visit your primary care and one of their first questions is "How many times have you fallen in the past year?" and you have to admit to some incidents...
Of course, to “scroll sites” is to SURF. Everyone knows that. And a flying fox is actually a type of SQUIRREL! Snd there are many crosses that work with those clever answers! Boy did those slow me down in the center/NE…oh well, TIL. Nice puzzle, Mr. Adams—thanks!
Great Friday puzzle. Loved the long answers and the diabolical clues, but I agree with the constructor: MAA? SIG? BOO! I kept trying to make RISES into RILES and SEMITE into LEVITE, but I couldn't think of a barnyard animal that says VAA. Maybe a sheep with a speech impediment? And who knew that the Ivies were so prejudiced against the Akkadians and Phoenicians? TIL!
Sam: One of the world's great fishing writers, John Gierach, published a collection of essays titled "Standing In A River Waving A Stick." Clearly, he was making a little joke about how others might perceive the fly fisher, but his advice in the book was spot on: "The solution to any problem-- work, love, money, whatever -- is to go fishing, and the worse the problem, the longer the trip should be." I'll be chasing steelhead in Oregon and B.C. this fall. The trips will be long ones...
Loved every one of the 57 minutes it took me to solve, mostly because of the diabolical SW. Great one Kelvin, looking forward to many more!
@Mike Back in the 70's we didn't need no stinking blenders; with a little ingested enhancement we easily imagined whirled peas
I agree with all the commenters who noted and enjoyed the increased difficulty of the week's puzzles, especially the themeless. I found today's puzzle much easier than yesterday's which surprised me given the constructor. But, he is an editor also and so maybe was playing make-up after yesterday to keep the new paradigm on track. And for the experts, maybe absence makes the heart grow fonder, and maybe the occasional hard-week bone thrown to the puzzledogs will be the way they keep both old and new solvers engaged, with a kind of sinewave of comments switching from "too easy" to "too hard" depending on the week
@HeathieJ Interesting take. The three kinds of fish are all in the family Salmonidaeand so have some similarities, but to avid anglers, salmon, trout and char are three very different categories with different life cycles, preferred habitats, methods of angling,and other characteristics. All are delicious, and some say char species are the best. They prefer the coldest cleanest water which probably contributes to their excellent texture and flavor. Unfortunately, I can’t fish for any of those where I am currently, but I know you, as a lover of tropical locales, would appreciate that I did my puzzle this morning sitting on my crossword – friendly LANAI overlooking the OCEAN on KAUAI!
Great puzzle. Tricky clues, superb wordplay. And the constructor notes are HAI-cute! Thanks ladies!
@Barry Ancona For those who don't know, the "student" in the video is Charlie Berens, University of Wisconsin J-school graduate who morphed into a comedian, poking gentle, but spot-on, fun at midwestern language and behaviors. His short YouTube videos could be an enjoyable diversion in these dark times. Not to be missed is "Midwest Siri." <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_8n2q5iI4E" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_8n2q5iI4E</a> First time in my life I'm embarrassed to be from the Badger state, although Milwaukee, the UW and Dane County did all they could.
@Lewis Thought of it, but seemed too straightforward for a Saturday. This morning I had my first hot tub since hip replacement surgery five weeks ago, and later doing the puzzle while watching the Masters the answer came readily to mind!
@JT I wouldn't presume to speak for Barry, but since he hasn't responded I will suggest that perhaps he's referring to a story in the NYT yesterday about a leaked draft executive order proposing a radical restructuring of theUS State Department in which almost all Africa operations will be eliminated. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/20/us/politics/trump-state-department-overhaul.html" target="_blank">https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/20/us/politics/trump-state-department-overhaul.html</a> In that context, perhaps his mention of 59A is a reminder of what can occur in countries outside of US influence. I would add, perhaps we should look inward as well.
@max When I moved from the west to upstate NY for a couple of years back in the 20-teens I was delighted by all the popular brands that I had never heard of: in the food aisles Utz and Herrs potato chips (each with an Old Bay seasoning variety, another uniquely east coast product), Edy's ice cream; store chains Wegman's (groceries), Wawa (convenience and gas), and Hess (gas station, now rebranded as Speedway, although they still sell their annual Hess Toy Trucks each Christmas, a 60-year tradition). Although I'm back in the Pacific NW exposure to these names and others have served me well since I began doing the NYT XW during the trump flu pandemic. My wife and I really enjoyed our stay in the Finger Lakes district for this and many other reasons. The diversity of the US is to be celebrated and enjoyed.
@R.J. Smith I tried as hard as I could to figure out how to use the "I can relate" expression without success. Then it occurred to me: I think it's sort of related to the expression "word" which (I think I've learned...) is a four letter response to convey understanding of or agreement with a statement. "That was a fantastic show" "Word" "Mood" seems to be a kind of brief statement of relating to a feeling or situation "This chaos in Washington has me unbelievably depressed" "Mood" Did I get it right?
@Mike Thanks for that. I too loved Chuck Mangione. Back in the day I played the flugelhorn in the Wisconsin Marching Band as I didn't want to carry a French horn which was my serious instrument at the time. For the many who asked me "what's a flugelhorn?" my go-to reply was "the horn that Chuck Mangione plays," which brought instant recognition as he was big in popular music at the time. The flugelhorn plays the same range and fingerings as the B flat trumpet, but its notably mellower tone comes from the fact that the bore of the instrument increases steadily from the valves to the bell, whereas the trumpet has a bore which remains more or less the same diameter from the mouthpiece to the point at which the bell's flare begins.
@ad absurdum And Tris was undoubtedly a better ball player than Bobby Orr
Thursdays aren't what they used to be--two weeks in a row with a personal best. This was a fine puzzle but too easy for a Thursday, more like a Tuesday. As usual, not the fault of the constructor. The "trick" was really not a factor: the theme phrases were so straightforward that it was unnecessary to appreciate the theme to fill in the blanks. Those of us who enjoy a tricky puzzle on Thursday will have to wait patiently for another week *heavy sigh*
@HeathieJ Wonderful link and picture. Growing up in Wisconsin, I always felt the occasional snowy owl sighting to be a special privilege. Seeing one on a telephone pole as I drove back to the hotel after my mother's funeral, I took it as a good omen. Let's hope that applies in the current horrific situation. The resistance of the wonderful people of Minnesota is inspiring.
ERA, RAE, EAR in the same puzzle Cool Next time go for ARE and REA too!
Are all sins necessarily evil? I'm kind of fond of lust myself. If it's not too late, discuss among yourselves...
Ept, or "in-ept" reminded me of a song/video I play every year on the first of this month, my Birthday Month. Vanessa does it so much better than Julie: <a href="https://youtu.be/cg4YrOlAkds?si=AWvaelJs1iJkIfI0" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/cg4YrOlAkds?si=AWvaelJs1iJkIfI0</a>
@Henry Su Not to be too alarmist, but keep in mind that you might seek attention if things deteriorate down the road. Subdural hematomas can develop slowly after the initial trauma, sometimes weeks or months later, and can cause weird symptoms depending on where they press on the brain. The ED docs probably told you that, so this is for everyone else
@Della Patteson Loved the National Western when we lived in Denver. Always got my Stetson steamed and re-blocked there for 5 dollars. Locals leave their holiday lights up until it’s over as a sign of welcome to visitors. We’ve carried on the tradition as we’ve moved around the country.
@sotto voce Music in all its wonderful exuberance has always been a huge part of my life; and I pulled AHA out of the depths of memory having not thought of that band for nearly 50 years. When I clicked on the link you so thoughtfully provided I was washed away by a wave of nostalgia. In the middle of my residency training back then, I had no time for MTV. But work hard/play hard: when that song came on in a club or party, my beautiful young wife and I would find the dance floor. And until today, I had never seen that amazing video. Aha, indeed. Thanks, Ms. Sotto.
@Mike OH-OH, another one of your caustic puns...