Tuesday
Boston
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Boston
Hardest Monday I’ve encountered and I’m on a 140 Monday streak! Not a fun puzzle for me. Several areas left me stumped like a late week puzzle, but without the satisfaction of being one. There were so many crossings that were lookups. Too many obscure words/names and subpar clues. For me, this puzzle really missed the mark. I guess they can’t all be winners though. On the bright side, I think the creator might be great at making late week puzzles, I’m going to keep an eye out for that.
What a delightful puzzle! Whimsical and amusing fill plus a theme that perfectly fits Monday and was seamlessly woven into the puzzle.
The crossing of 51D (a person’s name) with two other names (53A & 62A) was brutal. Submission guidelines say to avoid having even two names cross, so I’m surprised that three made it through. Honestly, that area and the adjacent SW corner were a little questionable. Other than that, this puzzle was fantastic, easily one of my favorites among recent puzzles. Top tier creative theme, fun and interesting fill, and just the right difficulty to make me really think without feeling completely stuck. My favorite moment was getting my gold star after filling in several complete guesses for letters in the SW corner.
Not my favorite. Might just be me, but there were too many crossings of what I’d consider to be obscure terms and names and clues with overly ambiguous answers, including many theme entries. This was especially frustrating for theme entries because I actually loved the theme and figured it out on my own (after a lot of head scratching), but even with some crossings already filled in, many of my initial answers ended up being wrong (mad hatter, no vacancy) and I lacked adequate crossings to easily determine that, to the point where I thought there might be a X/X style rebus (to make all or part of the answer fit the literal meaning of each clue) until I came to to column for help. Please don’t misunderstand this as a complaint over difficulty. I love difficult puzzles, often even those that really stump me early on (I’m looking at you, open grid Fridays). Today for me just wasn’t a fun challenge, and the things I was stuck on felt arbitrary rather than cleverly misdirecting.
@Lin it’s like if “rainy weeks” was used to clue SUMMER. It’s not technically wrong because there are rainy weeks in summer, but it’s both a really bad example of summer weather and an accurate description of other times of year. Mods as a category don’t always include cosmetics and many cosmetics are acquired in the course of normal gameplay. The issue isn’t that the clue is overly specific, but that it uses such bad examples that the answer no longer fits.
I really liked the punny clues on this one! Usually I’m groaning or rolling my eyes at many of the answers, but most of these were really clever and made me smile. I especially loved the NW corner (which was the hardest part of the puzzle for me) with PUSHOVERS, HOTWIRES, STARWARS, and ENAMEL.
Absolutely delightful puzzle! Tricky enough to really tickle my brain with a theme that was joyful to discover and really pulled the whole thing together. My only gripe is 65A, where the clue should note a variant spelling (Loofahs or Luffas is correct, Loofas doesn’t even appear in most dictionaries). Editors, please fix the clue!
Good puzzle overall, but the revealer made zero sense to me until I read the column. Even now that I understand it, I still find it to be terrible and too weird for a Monday puzzle. The only thing it added to my solve was confusion. In my opinion, it’s the worst part of the puzzle and would be better off replaced by a non-revealer clue. Other than the revealer though, I did quite like this. I didn’t get everything right away, but the answers kept coming as I made passes through the puzzle. It’s rare for me to find one where I can maintain momentum like that.
Great puzzle, but the column was unusually short. It only had six answers (2 theme, 4 others) instead of ~10 like I’d expect any day of the week, especially Sunday. This was frustrating for me as someone who likes to use the column for extra help when I’m stuck.
@abelsey that and YOLO are about a decade outdated. I should know because that’s when I graduated high school!
@Andy G agreed! My friends and I are pretty big gamers. Mods are a significantly broader category than merely cosmetics (as specified in the clue) to the point that for some games, cosmetics are even considered to be their own thing, not mods at all (eg. “custom content” in Sims 4). I penciled in the right answer, but thought it was probably wrong until I literally finished the whole puzzle because of how poorly it fit the clue. I’m guessing the puzzle maker and editor aren’t gamers, which is how they ended up on this clue. Speaking as someone who is though, I’d suggest MODifying it. Perhaps “new move or accessory…” or “new map…” to stick with the video game theme.
@Joe “backed” in this context means funded, so “backed a work” means funding a show
Particularly difficult Friday for me. I’ll take it up with the editors if tomorrow’s is easier.
@Margot I found it a little difficult for a Monday too. For me, the level of difficulty would have been a better Tuesday fit. Sometimes the editors evaluate a puzzle as harder or easier than most solvers find it to be. Other times, a puzzle ends up being harder or easier for me than for most people. No harm done either way, it seems to happen in both directions (hard puzzles too early and easy puzzles too late in the week), neither very frequently. Difficulty is hard to evaluate because one person’s gimmes are another person’s stumpers. Unless this becomes a pattern of misplaced puzzles, I don’t think the editors are doing something wrong. Definitely a frustrating solve for both me and you today though!
Great puzzle overall! Took me a good while to finish and a lot of head scratching without ever leaving me feeling completely stumped. So many answers I struggled to find seemed so obvious once I got them, a wonderful feeling!
@Cat Lady Margaret I don’t believe I’ve ever done so, but as a kid, my dad once humored my request to go around the rotary multiple times for fun. RAMA LAMA DING DONG had me completely stumped. Usually I can figure out unfamiliar song names by guessing words once I have enough crossings, but this one was, as my husband put it, intentionally unguessable nonsense. It was a big frustration for me in an otherwise enjoyable puzzle, especially as one of the theme clues (I loved the loop de loops once I got my app updated).
@Keith A that’s my experience more often than you’d expect and I too found today’s puzzle easier than yesterday’s! I think once it gets to the end of the week, difficulty is a bit more individually determined. Much of it seems to comes down to what I know and don’t know, plus how well my thought process aligns with the clue writer’s. Very open grids are especially tricky for me, and I’ve notice them more often on Fridays. It really is so individual, so I think a Saturday for me could be someone else’s Friday and vice versa.
@APNerd same! I got the rest of the puzzle on my own, but ended up needing the column and the comments to figure out that NW corner.
@Elie Levine thanks for putting the notice in the info section of the puzzle and making the i blink! The circles only showed for me after updating, so that notice was the difference between me solving the puzzle and being utterly baffled by it.
Thought I was so clever putting JULIENNES for 57A because it’s like dicing, but you only cut along the long side. Alas, I rolled SNAKEEYES on that one.
@cal 65A really bothered me too! Why did the clue have an abbreviation, but not the answer??? I got “one” on my first pass, but discarded it immediately for that reason and only hesitantly wrote it in after a corroborating cross.
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