Morgan Wick
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Who else expected 59/60A to be COUNTS headS? The first two letters of each of 22D/23D completely stumped me and led me to turn on autocheck even after the rest of the puzzle was finished, not helped by me still expecting 26/28A to be religious-themed even with the question mark.
In the iOS app, I've just discovered that when I have Auto-Candidate Mode on in Sudoku, any candidates that I've removed come back whenever I fully fill in or remove a number. This isn't how it's behaved before. Is this intentional or a bug? I know any sudoku players who happen to be in these comments aren't likely to be sympathetic to someone who's not a "real" sudoku solver who does it exactly the same way someone with a pencil and eraser working on a paper puzzle would, but this still frustrates the way I play the game without feeling like a natural challenge, and might chase me away from playing the Times' Sudoku.
Surprised there aren't more/any comments remarking on the difficulty of the POMELO/LASE cross.
@CG This makes me wonder if this puzzle is in part a way to stick it to the "across-only" solvers :p
@Francis Larry Bird only won three MVPs.
I used to be into college football (boo realignment), yet when msst proved to be a bust for 42A I needed to get every last cross to figure out what was meant. Also had loot for 52A and take for 15A. What does it say about me that my thought when reading the clue for 41A wasn't "tic-TAC-toe" or "out of office", but "castle queenside"?
@Mia This is a regular frustration with the midi, they have themes but they don't have revealers and don't have a column explaining them. A lot of times when I see clues like these I expect there to be some sort of twist that makes the answers unintuitive, but these answers were what I'd expect based on the clues alone, so I was just left wondering what the brackets meant and how they related to the puzzle title. (Then again, I also needed this column to explain the theme of the main crossword, so...)
@Elena This is probably a sign of the irrelevance of the Grammys, considering their "Record of the Year" usually goes to a single song.
So based on 17A and its clue, does that make this the "maxi"-crossword?
Who else thought of the Simpsons after figuring out 18A? My first instinct for 78D was "eula" as an example of something that could be considered "terms and conditions". Doesn't quite fit the terminology of the clue, but whatever. And I figured 82A was asking me to emphasize the "draw" but thought it was something you do at the end of a *draw*ing. Also took me way too long to figure out 17D even with _E_S filled out.
Got to the end, got told I had at least one square wrong, wondered if it was the 11D/28A cross that was the last square I filled since I didn't recognize TABOR, but couldn't figure out what else could fill MADE _ACK. Confirmed TABOR fit the 28A clue, couldn't figure out where else my error could be, thought it might be EApE in 56D but thought the error was in the first square even though I didn't know what else could complete GAUCH_. Ran the autocheck for the first time ever on a Tuesday puzzle... and it was the 58D/67A cross I got wrong, even though 67A was covered in the column. I think I got misled by the column saying the two words were similar, so even though I'd just read it, after filling APIAN on 14A I naturally drifted to ApIARY on 67A and didn't bother to wonder if it was right until the end because "it was in the column, therefore I already know it's right!" 🤦♂️
Alternate clue for 65A that would have further obscured the "animal" theme, but which might have been easier for some solvers: "Twitter alternative" (or, fine, "X alternative").
@Morgan Wick Got the whole puzzle filled and needed to fix square 53; I wasn't familiar with SUN TEA and aHS was what I initially filled in for 53A after figuring out 54D (and that "umS" wouldn't work for 53A).
My initial interpretation of the theme, before reading the explainer in the column, was that the LIEs were hidden in the black squares for the Across clues, but only the IEs were hidden in the black squares for the Down clues. Which didn't make sense but that was the only way I knew to make sense of the Down clues I knew vis-a-vis what 26A seemed to be pointing towards (and would have been marked correct in the app based on how it interprets rebuses), and coupled with how I was interpreting the 41A clue made me think the answer there was peLL once the column gave away the 25D answer.
If you're like me, 47A was another tricky clue - not because the state Hochul's the Governor of is obscure or hard to look up, but because my first instinct was to write in New york. When the crosses started to look nonsensical I started wondering if I was misremembering her state, and only after figuring out one of the crossing Downs in full (and I'm not sure I'd have figured it out if it weren't 34D specifically) did I get NY STATE.
@KB Funny how the Midi had essentially the same thing at a different spot on the grid.
@Jim Of course, that just means that using a portmanteau of "estimate" is kind of stretching the "no using a word in the answer in the clue" rule.
@Philly Carey DEM makes sense (to an American) once it's explained, but it probably should have gotten a shout-out in the column.
@Brian That's the one that seemed like it would be trickiest, since CRESCENT on its own is a plausible answer to 22A and would be marked correct on the app, and I could imagine thinking tEY is just a Britishism that I've never heard of.
I actually got the revealer first. I wondered how we might get a more Halloween-y puzzle than Wednesday's and was surprised to find only one obviously themed clue, relating to individual squares. Then I realized MONSTER MASH was a plausible answer to that clue and thought "Oh God, is this a rebus puzzle?" I figured out DESDEMONA and PROGRESS BAR with minimal lookups but didn't get any of the crosses until after looking at the column, though since I try to read the "Tricky clues" before the "Today's theme" section I was able to pick up MANGO LEMONADE on my own once I had the MONGOL EMPIRE cross.
@Fidelio Unfortunately, the Futurama gag I wanted to post here doesn't seem to be online...
Incidentally, Saturday's mini was surprisingly tough. Needed a couple of look-ups (including figuring out 1D if not Mai taiS - hey, I don't drink) and even using the autocheck multiple times.
@Cmj I found the SW surprisingly tough. I'd never heard of 13D, didn't recognize 14D, 16D didn't seem to make sense without the letters from 13A and 18A, and without the letters from those I had no idea what to fill in for the longs. Resorted to turning on autocheck.
@retired, with cat "Google tells me the NYT people are wrong." "I suggest doing a Google before claiming the NYT people are wrong." Can you see the problem with this sequence?
@Andrzej For this English speaker, "orangeade" didn't seem like a real word and it took crosses for me to consider that that's what it was.
@Confused Kiwi I waited until I had enough crosses to establish what spelling was intended.
@Chris What tripped me up with TRIVET and TEASE was thinking 55A should be spelled HEINey.
I got the dreaded "one square's amiss" error, and NIP for 60D didn't seem right to me, but I tried every plausible letter for the last letter until I read the column and saw that I had EnCLAVE wrong and didn't recognize the [Palindromic kitchen brand] in 48A (though I probably should have because I did recognize it once I corrected it).
@Vaer The clue always starts with the vowel corresponding with the sector it starts in.
I don't get 28A at all. "Nick, e.g." = MAR? Midi spoilers ahead: I'm here to file a complaint about the Midi using ERIK as both the clue to 11A and the answer to 12A. I get you wanted to maintain the consistency of having the theme answers start with [blank] [surname or epithet], but you couldn't have clued 11A as "son of 12 Across", "surnamed [12 Across]son", or even "____ [12 Across]son"?
@Xword Junkie I was today years old when I learned that "op-ed" wasn't short for "opinion editorial", as in a mix of an opinion (which I think I thought would have referred to a letter to the editor without the "editorial" part) and an editorial (that is, it's not coming from the editors themselves).
@SP I'm an American and I have never heard of MAA as the sound a goat makes. And I had "clog" for 23A for the longest time, so that didn't help with finding the error and locked out most of the entire NW.
@Julia Perhaps 38D could have been clued in a way to relate to the theme?
Regarding the mini, imagine me wracking my brain staring at o_ENT in 5D as the last square needing to be filled (not being terribly familiar with Chappell Roan's oeuvre). Now I may not be part of the hoity-toity martini crowd that makes up the NYT's typical readership, but the idea that BRAVo is specifically for male (or mixed-gender?) performances seems not merely obscure but outdated, in terms of larger cultural norms if not necessarily actual practice.
@Gregory M. If it were meant to be specific to Italian the clue would be in Italian. "Diva" is technically an Italian word but I don't know if it has the meaning there the puzzle intends. I didn't mean to come off as a brusquely ignorant American (note how I hedge my complaint), only noting the difficulty involved.
@SuzyQ A part of me wishes there was a middle ground, where you fill in the candidates manually but they auto-update as you fill in the board, like other sudoku apps I've used (my self-consciousness is because I've seen reviews of those other apps complaining about the auto-updating); instead you either turn auto-candidate mode off and have to add AND remove candidates manually, or you turn it on and they're pre-filled in. But NYT sudokus are challenging enough that they take me as long or longer than those other apps even with Auto-Candidate Mode on, so I'm not complaining.
@Frankie B There seems to be a bug in the app. I put MNMS and RNB and it didn't mark the puzzle as completed. I used Check Puzzle and it marked the N as correct but still didn't mark the puzzle as completed, but since the N was marked correct I can't change it to something else so I can't complete the puzzle without just using Reveal Square/Word/Puzzle.
@Charles Peterson ONE or TWO would both be valid answers, with the correct one only deducible through crosses.
@McX BASSISTS was the first theme answer I got, and it tripped me up in trying to figure out the theme because BASS can be lured by BAIT so I figured there was some sort of pun involved. Learning the theme from the column did *sort of* help with 60A - I knew the "Beach" in question had to be five letters, and from the crosses I could guess that PISMO was a plausible answer to the clue, and from that could fill in SAMOA for the last five letters, but APIA was too obscure for me.
@SP Perhaps there's been such a glut of early-mid-week clues that they've pushed some puzzles forward a day to get them all in?
My streak ended only because I misremembered the [Orange-colored liqueur served in a namesake spritz] as being spelled APERiL, which made 24A "IN iN" look weird but not enough so to tip me off that I was wrong.
@Rebecca Seeing someone who'd never heard of TNN makes me feel very old and I'm only in my late 30s.
@Will Johnston There was a puzzle a while back where all the Across clues formed a letter when combined.
@Pat-a-pon Not being familiar with Moby Dick, but recognizing Starbuck as the name of a character on Battlestar Galactica, I expected 43/46A to make a comparison between two different works of fiction.
Who else had GOOGLEcloud at 17A and doubted the whole answer when it became untenable and had only one cross? Or had tEAr at 24D for way too long? Or expected one of the [Farm female]s to be cOW?
@Kristopher "Huddling" is a gerund/present participle, so any verb answer would have to be that as well, disqualifying ENCLOSE. Therefore you look for an answer that agrees with it as an adjective, hence IN CLOSE.
Only a couple of comments on the midi, one of which calls it a rebus? You do realize the puzzle/app accepts numerals too? Well, I found it an interesting twist but one that was kinda easy once it became clear that, yes, that is what they're looking for.
@MC I got a gold star just now (on the iOS app), which makes me think there might be something wrong with your app or browser or something. There was a period when I wasn't getting gold stars even though I was pretty sure I'd finished without help, and maybe I was working on them too late, but it made me wonder if the app was getting stricter about what "without help" meant.
@Francis What about "what a tsunami used to be called"?
I'd never heard of 42A, and 29D wasn't coming to me with GAR_ showing, so I ended up going through the whole alphabet (in keyboard order) to get the gold star.