Lorenzo

@David Connell There is challenge, and there is ridiculous cluing and random trivia in an effort to appeal to 'everyone'. If we wrote puzzles in a similar spirit, I imagine the resultts would be just as tortured and offputting. But we don't have editors or experience, at least I don't. That's why, in my view, this is a fail and I expect more from the NY Times. Every year there are a few clunkers and I guess that is to be expected. But when I think about it, I never felt that way before, only in the last few years. Though I love steak, I have never heard of an 'ambassador cut' or knew or even care that Beale Street has a music festival. I was able to guess Beale, but I derive no satisfaction or interest from doing so. I got lira—Turkey bacon? how lame— and damask ('I have seen roses damasked, red and white, / but no such roses do i see in her cheeks'). Doesn't mean I think the latter should show up in a puzzle. I always remember the scene from the Will Shortz movie about crosswords in which one of the constructors looks up a word in the dictionary to make sure it is legit. If he doesn't know the word, why should anyone else? That is just a bad puzzle. Today's seems like a perfect example of such construction.

@Sonja One could make that argument—octopodes is the more learned form. which most English-speakers do not know. However, English speakers are unaware of the stem change in the root and thus use octopuses, employing a garden variety plural suffix. Octopi, as you have doubtless already deduced, is based on the erroneous assumption that the word is Latin and second declension. Even so, a lot of people think that that is correct, because even fewer of them have any experience with Greek.