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I'm wondering if anyone else made the mistake that cost me 20 minutes: I figured out the braiding theme fairly quickly, but I entered the answers so that they would be correct in the *down* direction, while containing flipped letters on every other line in the *across* direction (e.g., "OEDS"). The way I explained the trick to myself was "The grid is 'braided,' but if you 'unbraid' these strands, flipping the letters in each of these pairs every time the gray square is on the right, all the acrosses become correct." I thought it was just a cool "extra" that (when you fill it that way) the shaded zig-zags also formed legit English words, albeit kind of random ones. Eventually I realized it must be the opposite way (all the acrosses correct, all the downs confusing), did the unbraiding on the screen rather than in my brain, and got the happy music....but not before spending 20 minutes trying to figure out if I had made a mistake somewhere else. For sure, the way the constructor intended it is better than the way I filled it, because his way contained a visually correct grid (all the words shown were real, they just didn't match the clues) and mine contained ugliness like "OEDS." Still, Thursdays DO sometimes contain weird things that look at first glance like mistakes, so it didn't seem obvious at first that my way wasn't the intended way. Was it just me??
I love Wordplay, and I appreciate its genuine enthusiasm and positivity, but sometimes I wish the columnists would include more constructive criticism of weaker clues, etc. So I would like to say that I appreciate that Deb included not one but two quibbles here!
A nitpick: I don’t think, per Mary Poppins, that “supercalifragilisticexpialadocious” means A-One. It doesn’t mean anything—it’s just a word so long that saying it (especially loudly, so as to sound precocious) impresses and distracts the listener to somewhat magical effect. Hence, saying it to his abusive dad saves Bert’s aching nose, and another man uttering it to his girl led to his girl becoming his wife. “A-One,” despite its value as crossword fill, seems decidedly lacking by comparison.
@Steven M. Aristide was President of Haiti four separate times in the 1990s and 2000s and was repeatedly overthrown in coups that were major news in the U.S., especially because of the refugee waves that followed. He was the dominant figure in Haitian politics for fifteen years. Everything's a Natick for someone I guess but this really seems like fair game (plus "Aristida" and "Aristidd" seem like rather unlikely French last names, right?).
TIL that a "hexagon" need not be the shape I thought of as a hexagon my entire life to date (that would be a "regular hexagon"). Surprised this wasn't in the tricky-clues list--is it just me? Anyway, while absent the crosses I would never have thought to describe Utah as hexagonal, researching it led me to this post, which uses the term "a utah" to describe a hexagon with two sets of three parallel lines! Crosswords, always a source of unexpected knowledge.... <a href="https://christopherdanielson.wordpress.com/2014/03/15/the-hierarchy-of-hexagons-continued" target="_blank">https://christopherdanielson.wordpress.com/2014/03/15/the-hierarchy-of-hexagons-continued</a>/
At 5:55, five seconds off my PB about a year into solving, I was feeling pretty good until I saw some of the bonkers times being posted here. Sheesh, guys!
Oh, Deb. My dad died just a few days before yours, and I feel every bit of what you said, so much. He too wanted so much to have more time to be with my Mom, us kids, and the grandkids. He wasn't a crossword guy, but he and my Mom would print out two copies of an "evil"-level Sudoku each night and race each other to solve it. I have done quite a few crosswords (and read quite a few Wordplay columns) since he passed, and indeed while spending his last night in the hospital watching over him as he slept. Distraction and ritual help at least a little, so your words and the work of the Games team have helped me. My best to you and your family.
Among other things, I want to give a little love to the double stack of two spanning phrases often said back to back: "MORE TO COME LATER" and "ON A SEPARATE NOTE"
This time it probably shouldn’t accept just the H, because if you put in just the H, there are no minute letters….
@Kyle The tattoo is not an arm though, it’s a tattoo
@john ezra musk was not a technocrat; many of the people he fired were. The job he was doing at DOGE didn’t involve any expert analysis of the needs of each agency, it involved blindly firing people with no idea of what they even did. And he was not hired for his technical expertise, but for his money and role getting Trump elected. (Thiel is similar but luckily has not been given as powerful a role yet.)
"Quite some time, antonymously" is a solid clue--and it's not asking for the opposite of "quite some time," which would make it just a weird clue. It's asking for an expression that means idiomatically more or less the opposite of what it would seem to mean literally. "A hot minute," usually used in the expression "it's been a hot minute since ___," "means "quite some time."
@K. H. Yes that’s the point of the clue—reread it
@Linda Jo I have medicine cabinets in several bathrooms, all installed in the 2020s!
Just wanted to note that the Mini is quite elegant today, with no black squares!
@Cheryl If anything the Internet makes sharing interesting headlines easier. It's not like most Americans subscribed to the Chicago Daily Tribune, Variety, or the New York Post when those famous headlines ran....they had to be shared by other sources....
The constructor notes make very clear that the theme was not inspired by some random 2017 meme, but rather by the decades-old childhood game that meme was based on, so the first few paragraphs of the column don’t make sense…having never heard of the meme but having played the game countless times in the 80s, I was confused! (FWIW, we then just called it Hot Lava. But I am familiar with the more recent popular kids song The Floor Is Lava.)
@J-J Cote ha, your comment appeared while mine was pending. I guess it was not just me!
@Joe i think the reference is to a Supreme pizza, with all the toppings!
@Dave S a bad beat isn’t really just losing with a good hand. It’s losing when you outplayed your opponent in the sense made decisions that were in expectation right, while your opponent made decisions that were in expectation wrong, yet got lucky in the end, often by getting the only card that could help them on the river (the last card dealt). The beat is rendered “bad” by a sense of injustice.
I love the wordplay, but I don't get why the constructor decided it worked better with plurals as the individual units. A pair of dice should be "die die", a pair of frays should be "fray fray," and so forth, right? FRAYS FRAYS seems like a pair of "FRAYS"es (which I suppose could have been clued as PARAPHRASES, but wasn't).
@Helen Wright. Similarly, in the U.S., we would not use "cloakroom" for a place that one doesn't actually store, like, cloaks. (Or coats, more often.) I appreciate the nice euphemism, though! In any case, though, I understand the clue to be written from a US perspective, as in, "what we call a bathroom, Brits call a ___," which seems accurate.
hmm...fun puzzle and I was excited about my time, but I have to admit i think this maybe should have run on a Tuesday. (I beat my average Tuesday time and my best-ever Wednesday.)
@Marshall Walthew Google suggests that "buff egret" or "buff-backed heron" are alternative names for the cattle egret (even though it too is partly white), so I guess that's in bounds. I also guessed Shrek first!
@Joe P I thought this too, but apparently XWStats only reports the median for its own user base, which tends toward highly experienced/competitive solvers.
@Steve L Possibly nobody has ever asked "Is Coke OK" because (unless Pepsi is specifically listed on the menu) nobody ever specifically orders a Pepsi!
@Andrzej FWIW I am a lifelong American who has never heard AMSCRAY! Frau was well clued though…the equivalent of Fraulein that you are thinking of is Miss, not Ms.
@APNerd if they didn't, the theme would be even more pointless because it would be completely impossible to figure out how the dots are supposed to be connected
@abelsey Hmm...a triple repeat. Might that be an alternate meaning of...THREEPEAT? (Or should we be on the alert for those words in tomorrow's puzzle, too?)
@Zézito this is exactly how I understood it in high school (although spitting the liquid out your mouth might also qualify)...and I went to high school in Alexandria, VA. a localism?
@SP Snausages made me think of my beloved childhood dog, who would go nuts for them. It made me happy. I haven't actually seen them for decades, despite having had subsequent dogs.
@Andrzej ha, fair about kotb! French spelling is much more predictable though....
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