Byron
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Pretty easy for a Thursday but I didn’t catch on to the puzzle til the clue-answer that spelled it out for me. ON ANOTHER NOTE, PLEASE HIT “RECOMMEND” IF YOU RESPECT THE WISHES OF CANADIANS TO REMAIN INDEPENDENT.
Fun Tuesday though on the easy side. Not on the easy side is what’s going on between our two countries today. I just want to let my American crossword community friends know that we are unwilling participants in Trump’s trade war. It’s unfortunate how divisive this is but we have no choice but to fight back. All the best…
@Jennifer I suspect it helps people who are different from the mainstream feel like they’re not alone and that there’s nothing wrong with them. I suspect all these different shades of identity have always been around but cultural homogeneity ruled the day.
@Malcolm Seems a little fussy if you demand that crossword puzzles only include things that happened in your lifetime.
I misunderstood the trick and entered all the downs as coherent words which merely flipped two letters in every other across going down the braids. Didn’t get the happy music so took another look. Realized both downs were braiding with each other. Should have realized sooner. Oh well. Got there. If the goal of the shading was to help us see the pattern, perhaps two shades should have been used. With only one shaded it appears only one word is braiding. Really appreciated the cleverness of the constructor though. Not complaining.
@JPT What controversy? It’s the Gulf of Mexico! His Malignancy Lord Orange can Sharpie up as many maps as he likes, it doesn’t change the course of hurricanes or names on the globe.
@Andrzej Seeing the impacts of climate change within the span of just our lifetimes is enough to drag anybody down. Same with just about everything else in the world. I find the Russian barbarity in Ukraine to be horrifying from my distant vantage point, I can’t imagine what it’s like having it happen on your doorstep. For what it’s worth, I find the crossword to be a very pleasant diversion from the troubles of the world. Sometimes my dark mood bleeds into my crossword world but for the most part it’s a looked-forward-to respite and brief bit of asylum. Your recollection of blooming “kashtan” (Ukrainian for chestnut, not sure what it is in Polish) brought me back to my year in Ukraine in ‘89. It was pretty dreary and grey back then but spring was beautiful. I remember walking with friends around the Podil with its art shops down cobblestone streets and the Pechersk Lavra at the top of the hill. A breath of fresh air after a bleak Soviet winter! Which is to say that hope springs eternal.
@Byron What the heck, while I’m at it I might as well point out some other problems with the clueing. CELEB — I thought convention was that if the answer is an abbreviation there should be an abbreviation in the clue: CELEB is short for celebrity. COVE — Should we not at least have “sometimes” appended to the clue? AVID — hard-core is a terrible clue for AVID. IHOPESO — “From your lips to God’s ears” means to utter a prayer, no? That’s not really the same as saying “I hope so”. ERG — Would anyone really relate watt-hours to ergs? There’s a million ergs in a joule. Let’s keep it metric! PLASM — I would strongly argue that “proto” is the prefix here and PLASM is the root. HET — No way HET is being used to mean straight. I refuse to believe our language has been so debased. VET — SRSLY? “Vet” is now short for “veteran” and “rookie” is short for “rookie”? I don’t believe it! LESAGE — Doesn’t mean “wise man”, it means “the wise”. Okay, that’s a quibble. ORR —Weirdly long and specific clue. Why not just “Famed defender”?
Happy Independence Day my American friends! May you (may we all) emerge intact at the other end of the next four years. As for the puzzle, it was an enjoyable if slightly easy solve.
Awesome puzzle! Tons of fun, or should I say nuff o’ snot. By the way, speaking in palindromes… did you guys know Mozart wrote a palindromic song? Yeah, a page long melody that plays the same forward and back!
What a treat! I did not see that coming! It wasn't until I dumbfoundedly entered MANE as the answer to *"Jaws" menace* and got the happy music with reveal that I discovered why some of the answers seemed off. Hats off. That was fun!
Let’s see if this comment A) gets posted, and B) stays posted. I’ve either been getting blocked or removed recently despite having done nothing offensive. I liked the puzzle. Got a little hung up in the NE. Is “sider” truly a suffix? Is it not just one half of a compound noun?
This may be about as close to the ideal Sunday crossword as one can get. Chunky, clever, clean, decent level of challenge (finished in 26:06). All in all a very pleasant puzzle. Thank you Kareem for sticking with it (two and a half years!)
@Andrzej Sort of on the flip side of your point but related, I find it fascinating all the entirely fictitious things or things we don’t know about personally that are completely familiar to a huge chunk of the world’s population. Like, we all know what elves and orcs are, or how a superhero’s powers work — “he’s got Spidey sense!” — or, in the case of many gamers, what the capabilities of various weapons of war are — “it’s a flash bang!”. We share an imagined world that is at least as large (or perhaps even larger) as the real one.
Awesome! What a fun challenge! Loved it! Took me half an hour to finish!
Either I’m losing my wits or this week has been unusually challenging. Not complaining, enjoying it very much, but today took me 12m29s which is a little long for a Wednesday I think.
@D You didn’t appreciate the Roman numerals forming a word and also solving each clue? I thought it was clever and enjoyable.
I think people are being too hard on XDIN. What else would fit to make the NE work at all? I think the occasional stretchy fill is okay.
@Phil The puzzle has a puzzle within it which is hinted at in 40A — FOLLOWDIRECTIONS. In this case, the directions are NORTH, SOUTH, EAST and WEST. At each box containing a circle we are supposed to enter one of the cardinal directions and literally turn that direction to complete the puzzle. So the answer to “Musical interval like C to E flat” is MINOR THIRD. In the puzzle it appears as MI NORTH IRD with NORTH occupying the entire box with a circle in it and IRD taking a turn to the north and running upwards. Super clever and fun isn’t it?
@Byron Doh! Had NSA instead of NSC.
@Robert Schwartz I’ve never heard the word “anti-pattern”, but if I intuit the meaning correctly, then the clue is actually just a definition of the word. No?
Really?!?! NYT crossword is going to clue BOERS as “Descendants of Dutch settlers of Southern Africa”?!?! Way to “white” wash it. You could easily have clued it as “Dutch farmers” since “Boer” means farmer in Dutch or go further by being honest with something like “The Dutch colonists whose presence led eventually to the Apartheid state of South Africa”.
Deb, for what it’s worth, I think the first O is a rear wheel, the h is the area where the driver sits, the I is the exhaust and the lower case o is a front tire. Ohio. I mean, you really have to want to see a tractor there.
Nice puzzle. A little easy for a Saturday but still enjoyable. I was going to complain that a portobello is a mature cremini not a mature button but then I looked it up. Indeed, white buttons are the juvenile form of what later become creminis and portobellos! Always like to learn new stuff. FWIW, cremini are my go-to: work well diced or sliced and offer a little deeper flavour than white.
@Nancy Sculerati MD On the contrary, crossword constructors and aficionados tend to be polymaths with a broad base of knowledge about a diverse and eclectic range of topics. History, literature, science, politics, current events, music, art, popular culture and on and on all feature in both the construction and solving of crossword puzzles. I’m not really even sure what your comment means to be honest. Were you looking for a crossword featuring only parts of human anatomy? Friendly advice: you may want to consult with a practitioner of a certain sub-specialty of your profession to help you unpack what motivated you to post your insulting comment.
@Angela Probably not an unapt Freudian Slip in America today! :)
@H.T.S. As used as a hint in this answer, “confirmation” refers to the fact that all the circled letters spell out various words that denote confirmation — YES, AYE, AMEN. It plays off the widely-used phrase “confirmation bias” but it is not meant that way. It’s a play on words. As Barry said, they are confirmations (yeses) that are written on the bias (diagonally).
@Tim D Annoying? That’s the fun part!
What kind of mad genius can conceive of even one two-word phrase that loop back on itself by switching two letters never mind a half dozen of them? I’m agog!
@Byron Oops. Should have refreshed my memory *before* posting. I flubbed the distinction between “psychoanalysis” (Freud) and “analytical psychology” (Jung). In my defence I haven’t studied anything about them in 30 years at least.
@Kaed Taylor But by all means, waste more time posting your displeasure!
I had a hard time with this one. A fair bit of youthful clue/answer pairs and the opacity of the gimmick. I eventually deduced that it had something to do with a garbled message but thought the answer was the garble not the clue. Could not see how Eiffel Tower could be misconstrued as some kind of parasite. I mean, technically, EIFFEL TOWER isn’t a mistranscription of “parasite” — if anything it would be a misdirected Google search result if someone queried something like, “Siri, tell me the name of a parasite”. So, a bit of a flawed puzzle in my opinion.
@Park. If Einstein's famous facial feature isn't exactly right under your nose, it's certainly under his. :)
@Eric Hougland How about, “Knight’s aide who worked for a song?” SQUIREDFORSOUND! and I’m trying to make SQUEEGEE for “Ouija” work but failing…
Nice puzzle! I found it had a little more challenge than many Mondays, which is nice.
@Eric By some estimates there are one million words in the English language. A native English speaker has 20,000 to 35,000 words in their vocabulary. Someone who knows 40,000 to 80,000 words is considered to have a large vocabulary. It’s not surprising you will run into words you didn’t know yet now and then. Take it as an opportunity to learn something and expand your vocabulary!
That has to be the first time I’ve learned a new word from a Monday. Who knew SMEW!?!? Not likely to ever use it unless I one day actually try to construct a crossword or write a tongue twister… hmmm… Too few smews skew zoos to boos, but too much duck mucks up such luck? No? Hm. Needs work. Anyway, SMEWS et Alia in that quadrant did slow me down but not appreciably. Finished in 5m20s. Not best but not slowest.
That was fun! Whoda thunk there were so many pro/con sets of roots that could make cogent phrases? Hmmm… any others? I can think of four. Here’s how I’d clue them. See if you can guess what they are (answers below): Teacher with a guilty conscience Get Quebeckers to agree to secede Electrify an assembly line Politician willing to to sell out his country PROFESSORCONFESSOR CONVINCEPROVINCE PRODUCTIONCONDUCTION CONSTITUTIONPROSTITUTION
Fun challenge that took me almost 23 minutes. So good value for money. Not happy with “Watch this space!” solving to WRIST.
@Jerry Well, by all means waste a little more time to let everyone know that you, personally, were offended by the puzzle. Because we all care. We really do.
@D You’d best avoid Thursdays then.
Either there’s something wrong with my brain today or that was a tough puzzle! Took me 31 minutes and I had to Google the ‘63 AL MVP. Whew! What a workout!
@Bruce The clues were plural so I think it works. I.e. “wells” and “mouths” are both examples of “holes”.
I haven’t been able to get Wordplay to load without freezing in over a week so it’s nice to be able to rejoin the conversation. Hm, not much to add. Thought it was a little obliquely clued which is fine. Ended up taking me a relatively long time to solve (19 mins). Didn’t like ARSONS. I’ve been working my way through the archives doing the saturdays. Almost done 1993. If you want a challenge, try the oldies. Much harder.
@cipherdom One you've solved it you should get the reveal. Several of the black squares are actually SECRET PASSAGES which contain letters which make sense of the few answers that don't add up. So MANE is revealed as part of MANEATINGSHARK, and PRIMER is part of PRIMEREALESTATE. I thought it was super-clever and even more fun because I didn't get it til it was revealed..
Wow! What a pleasantly surprising fun and challenging puzzle for a Tuesday! I mean, not difficult. Just a little higher bar than a typical Tuesday. Nice!
@KK I’ve never heard the term “SNELL” but TERI Garr and LON Chaney are doughty crossword standbys.
Don’t know if I’m just slow today but that one presented a little more challenge than a typical Monday. Over 7 minutes to solve! Usually under 5.
@HeathieJ Hope you’re feeling better.