Erik
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I don't get the complaints for this one, it felt super Monday to me. Finished under 4 minutes, below Mon average for me, maybe it just happened to hit specialty knowledge I'm lucky to have? I did find it weird to include Ask Me Another, a mid-tier radio show/podcast that's been off the air for four years, but I listened to the whole run of it so it wasn't a problem for me in this puzzle.
@Rex Freedom from trying to maintain a streak is a gift in itself!
Relatively tough for a Tuesday but satisfying and fun puzzle!
Let me add that this is in no way a bad puzzle, not trying to shame the creator, it's just not the right difficulty for the day. This would be a great Tuesday puzzle.
@MDB Recently invented? Yoink has been common among my tail-end Gen X crowd since the 90s.
@Ms. Billie M. Spaight Dictionaries allow both, with "mice" being much more common in actual usage. It's a matter of preference, and not an error just because your preference is different. See also the "gif" pronunciation debate.
@Deadline I've learned tons of stuff from looking up things in crosswords, it's good for you!
A twisty mind-bending puzzle is the joy of my Thursdays. Today there is no joy in puzzleville
@Nancy It's a direct reference to a scene in the movie and an Easter egg for solvers in the know. It's not about being able to solve, it's about triggering those three extra neurons of recognition. Lighten up!
GOHAM crossing not one but two out of date tween pop culture names was a bridge too far for me, that corner should have been reworked before publication.
That was a scary grid to look at at first but it all came together smoothly, very nice construction and impressive stacking of those long answers. I initially had "EFS" for Standoff's conclusion, though I guess "EFFS" would be proper spelling to make that answer work. I'd also started with PTS for the Carton amts, and had to scour the finished puzzle for my error to discover that of course IPTESTS aren't a thing, at least not as a measure of brightness. Mind your Ps and Qs!
@Rosalind Mitchell I prefer my puzzles to have a single rebu
I know echidnas from a trip to Tasmania 20 years ago. Crossword solving is helped by all the little things you learn along the way. I'll never get the sports answers without easy crosses, though! Pretty straightforward rebus and not too difficult puzzle overall, though I wish the final revealer answer used the same conceit to keep the theme.
Wow, the effort of just creating a list of so many theme words must have been intense, let alone actually piecing them together into a grid. Hats off to Mr. Hermann!
@Jim I was glad they rendered it for us so I didn't have to run a sharpie over my computer monitor!
@Paul Z. Hard to take a comment like this seriously when you don't point out a single reason why you didn't like it
@Grant PSST is obvious now that I see it, but a series of guesses led me down the wrong path. I've never heard of a THAI iced tea so CHAI seemed a good guess. SEE didn't occur to me right away and I stuck in EEE for filler, thinking perhaps it was some chess notation I wasn't aware of to denote the location of a bishop on the board. That left me with PESC across, which seemed perfectly cromulent as a fish word that would go with a poke bowl.
@LJADZ I think you mean a pretty Mehta puzzle
Tied my Friday best at 9:20. Not a tough one, but enjoyable wordplay. Hat tip to the Friendly Atheist for a fun one today!
I didn't get the ### clue, and unfortunately had MOTOR instead of ROTOR at the cross. I kept looking at it wonder what SHAMPS had to do with octothorpes, or parsing it weirdly. S-HAMPS? SHAM P's? Forehead slapper in the end.
Fun enough puzzle, but this really belongs on a Tuesday level difficulty. I always look forward to the Thursday head-scratchers and "aha!" moments so it's rather a letdown to breeze through one like this.
@Mean Old Lady I can't believe you'd STOOP to such a new low with this criticism
Surprised to see so much confusion about this one. I guess my mind just works on the same wavelength as this constructor. Most of the wordplay came right to me. The theme became obvious once I hit that revealer at the bottom and it was smooth sailing from there. Not trying to brag, there are plenty of puzzles I don't sync with so well! I'll have to check out past puzzles from Seigel. Finished 4.5 mins faster than my Thurs average, came in under 10 mins.
@Chet How about we change the cluing from plural: The Cajun chef yelled "The OKRA'S done frying!"
I enjoyed the breezy fill and like Hemant's puzzles in general, but c'mon this was a Wednesday at best. Some of us have Friday work we're trying to avoid and need the challenge of a Friday puzzle to use up time!
I agree that this felt like a Wednesday puzzle but I generally prefer a more challenging puzzle so I don't mind. Only downside is that it took 2:13 longer than my Tuesday average so will slightly shift my stats, but who cares?
@Xword Junkie I don't recommend grating your OKRA(s), the slime will go everywhere
@jmooser A "mare" is a darker-appearing portion of the moon, but doesn't comprise a full side and isn't dark in the sense that no light is hitting it. "Dark side of the moon" is a common phrase that doesn't actually refer to a mare, so therefore MARE would not be a literally correct answer. FWIW, there's also no actual dark side of the moon, the pedantically correct phrase would be "far side of the moon." The far side of the moon from Earth's perspective is always dark to us, but because of lunar rotation no portion of the moon is always in darkness (except for lunar eclipses, mostly!). And of course sometimes the near side of the moon is also dark thanks to moon phases.
Mild spoiler alert for today's Atlantic crossword, NYT includes BADKITTY for a cat, Atlantic features BADGIRL for a dog. Crossword constructors are having naughty pets lately
@JGinDC Typically replaced by Phillipa Soo these days, mostly known from her role in Hamilton
@Emerald This seems needlessly pedantic. Crosswordese does not follow strict rules of language. If you want the character to be an ñ in both directions, though would generally require two foreign language words to cross each other, which is a no-no in crossword construction (a word or name requiring specialized knowledge should be crossed with more general word or else the puzzle easily becomes unsolvable). If this has happened to you "every time it's here", you should be able to figure out what they're looking for. Otherwise you come across as purposefully not getting it just to complain.
@M I never fill in the vowels of that word on my first go-round because there are so many variations of it in crosswordese. Just K_B_B and move on!
@Ann "Alias" was a TV show from the early '00s starring Jennifer Garner as a CIA agent
@CB Not just in the US, as evidenced by the old BBC "spaghetti tree" broadcast from decades ago
@Pat It's been common slang for several years now, and commonly featured in crosswords from many publishers for it's vowel contributions.
The puzzle itself was fine, but prefilling all the "T"s really took all the fun away from this one. It's a Thursday, make us work for it!
@Andy K Well I finished it, longer than my average time, and liked the concept of the theme if not the total execution. The NW corner fill was especially tortured. I wish the editors had provided a bit more guidance and suggestion on fill and cluing on this one, and it could have been a lot more fun and elegant. Instead it was a bit of a slog, though I didn't hate it.
@Jane Wheelaghan ETAL, if written normally would be "et al.", short for "et alia" which is Latin for "and others". Often used when citing published papers with many authors, you might cite the lead author then note "et al." Common space filler for crosswords so good to keep note of.
@The X-Phile Wasabi peas might be a nice complement to a poke bowl but not much of a condiment
@Laura Xuereb I know Won from Korean movies and learned about both Rands and apartheid from Lethal Weapon II as a kid. Maybe you just need more screentime!
@dk Everything I know about the Foreign Service exam I learned from watching Spies Like Us as a kid
@Cherry You just have to remember that a burrito is a small donkey!
@john ezra I get what you mean re: 1999, too bad Prince wasn't there too. Though FWIW Ru Paul seems to be at peak cultural influence right now, Tori Amos has a new album coming out in the Spring, and yet another unnecessary Matrix movie will be out sometime in 2026. Maybe our puzzle creator knows something we don't... could the "Tupac is alive" conspiracy theorists be on to something?
@Vaer Wikipedia describes Elmo as "[a] furry red monster who speaks in a high-pitched falsetto voice" and notes his first appearance in the Sesame Street song "We Are All Monsters"
@Adam Moe and Lon should start a groundskeeping company together
I don't love rebuses, but I don't hate them the way some others seem to. Mostly they just slow down my solving groove in a kinda annoying way. But this one was fairly obvious at least. The upper right corner of this puzzle really messed me up today. Don't know spanish, never heard of rose milk, and for some reason I'm picturing blue cotton candy.
@NYC Traveler I miss the days of Rae Dawn Chong
@Kyle Uncle Ben said it, but Spidey popularized it by putting it into action and making it his guiding ethos.