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A fun, clever, hard puzzle. I have to SMH about either my age or how out of touch I am with current popular culture. Things I don't think I have ever seen or heard: POKEBALL, TSWIZZLE, DONEZO. Names I didn't know: OLAV, DIAZ. The crosses provided enough glue for me to finish, though. Nice job, Spencer Leach and Jem Burch.
@Nitpicker -- that corner was tough for me as well. Partly because I had "BeNe" in place for so long, and while a cREPe doesn't immediately sound like street food filled with queso, I've come across worse clueing. :-)
I was defeated by just not knowing enough. I've never heard of NAZCA LINES or Seiji OZAWA, and so I couldn't easily see that ZEst was wrong. This was a solid, challenging puzzle, and I liked it for teaching me new worthwhile phrases.
I used to write computer programs in a language called Lisp, originally an abbreviation for "list processing," in which the most common characters (other than letters, numerals, and spaces) are parentheses. It looks like this, where I'm using dots instead of spaces to create indentation: (defun factorial (x) ..(if (> x 1) ......(* x (factorial (- x 1))) ......1)) In a conversation between programmers, "paren" was very common to hear. Mostly "You're missing a paren there." :-)
Whew! Tough one for me, but I did finish. A few thoughts: "On-line" was a giveaway (as David suggests) that we're not talking about modern computing, where "online" is not hyphenated. I was held up by sPoONS instead of APRONS in the SW. It fit so well I didn't even bother to think of alternatives for quite a while. The clue and the entry for 22D are opposites in a sense: "Still working on that?" Yes. "Done yet?" No. The questions take opposite answers to give the same meaning.
That was fun, Damon Gulczynski. Thanks for a fun, engaging puzzle. Boo to the NY Times IT staff, however. Because there's no = sign on the keyboard for the iPhone app, one must enter EQUALS as a rebus. But the standard capability of entering the first letter of a rebus to represent the entire entry has been disabled. Why on God's green Earth? This is a single rebus, as described in the NY Times instructions on how to enter rebuses: Single Rebuses A single rebus entry reads the same for both the intersecting Across and Down entries, like in this puzzle by Elizabeth Long from Dec. 1, 2011, where the word JACK was the rebus element. In this case, the word JACK works for both the Across and Down entries, and the following rebus answers would be accepted: * JACK * J (The first letter) <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/08/crosswords/rebus-crossword-puzzle.html" target="_blank">https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/08/crosswords/rebus-crossword-puzzle.html</a> I'm shaking my head...
Nice job on the theme entries, Daniel Grinberg! Some even made me laugh. "Apart from its theme, Daniel tried to include new vocabulary in the grid. 1A, 116A, 10D, 15D, 36D and 74D are all appearing in a Times crossword for the first time.” There were a few clunkers, for me: In 116A, the clue doesn't quite match the entry, grammatically; STUNK AT and ALLEGORIC might be new, but I could easily do without them; I too easily forget the characters in children's movies (26A) and pop singers (2D); ... But on the other hand, there's freshness! Jill Biden, the feminine plural for emeritus, the Subway quote, the gay-themed NW corner, Dame Edna... Overall, fun.
Wow, that was the hardest Wednesday I can remember. DNF. No complaints, just surprise. Some entry names were completely new to me (40d and 41d) and some clues had the same flavor (22a, 3d, 62a). Live and learn.
Also, I was looking askance at "AS IS" up to the very end. Could someone give a sentence in which the phrase means "currently"?
Nice puzzle with clever themers. I am angry with the technical execution, however. You know the rebus shortcut where the puzzle will accept the first letter if it's correct? Today it doesn't. Thanks for wasting my time at the end of an enjoyable puzzle, NYT.
I usually solve Mondays looking at down clues only, and I've *just* gotten to the point of being able to do it with some consistency, though not perfectly. The joke was on me with today's puzzle. I didn't even think of Wednesday- or Thursday-style trickery, so all of the odd partial letter sequences seemed like my own mistakes. Once I gave up and looked at the across clues, it was an easy fix-up. Good puzzle (maybe for a different day, though).
@Mr Dave -- It was unfamiliar to me, too. Checking Google Scholar, cache eviction apparently came into more common use in the past couple of decades; there are only a few dozen hits before 2000. Technical language changes, I guess.
@CaptainQuahog To test my own biases, I searched online for the best poems of the 20th century. Literary Hub's list of 32 iconic poems in English was prompted by discussion of “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” on the anniversary of its publication. Clicking further, I found that the poem is even more famous than I'd realized. No one likes to be told of a gap in their education or cultural knowledge (I'll raise my hand here), but we all can learn new things. Every adult English speaker ought to be familiar with a sampling of English poetry, and a couple of Frost poems ought to be in there.
@Nobis Miserere I tend to think of it as a slangy non-upper-class way to describe an upper class thing. Like “tux” or “limo”.
Is there marketing of flu vaccines? I had no idea. Not watching commercial TV and having Web ad blockers, I just get whatever's available. So much for being a good capitalist. That said, I filled in FLUSTRAIN back to front, and it took me forever to figure it out. A kind of RAIN? A kind of TRAIN? A kind of STRAIN? And even when I filled it in (as others have remarked) it wasn't obvious! I thought this was an okay puzzle. There was a hint of deviousness in"Election night news", for which I wrote "REturnS", but the correct entry, "RESULTS", is kind of boring. There wasn't much spark otherwise. Mostly a lot of PPP.
Impressive grid, Marshal Herrmann! Thanks for the puzzle. I had just a few overwrites, beginning with 1A oped, which went away quickly with 1D being pbjS--no, wait, BLTS. Another, 41A, came before I got to the revealer: BOOkinGS. "The 'book' part makes a clever connection with 'records," I thought. But I was wrong. The one-L rule for grid entries reminds me of a classic problem in chess: the eight queens puzzle, in which you have to place eight queens on a chessboard (8x8) such that none threatens any other. It's different on a standard crossword grid because diagonal "movement" isn't allowed, but the similarity is that no letter L can "see" another L going across or up/down.
@Caitlin: "A “Personal theory that isn’t in the source material” is HEAD CANON, or widely accepted information, from one’s own cranium." I was happy to see headcanon. I'll quibble with this description, though. What is headcanon isn't necessarily widely accepted information. If as a Harry Potter fan you believe that [per an example in Merriam Webster]... "Given the amount of history between James, Lily, and Snape ... James is not Harry's father, but Snape is due to an affair Lily and Snape had." ...and you're the first person to come up with this idea, and no one else believes it, it's still headcanon.
Fun. Thanks, Grace and Greg Warrington. I think your 23A clue would have been epic. This has been a super-easy week for me, with the weekdays taking about 70% of my average time and today about 50%. I hope things go back to normal soon.
Whew! That was a tough one for me, but I finished. One overwrite held me up for a significant amount of time: If I may for IS IT OK It's a perfectly good answer! ...aside from being wrong. :-)
Huh. That was an easy solve, though a bit sad to see all of the ENDANGERED SPECIES going down both in the real world and literally in the puzzle. I thought a secondary theme might have had something to do with repetition, what with the non-circled letters repeating "after". Also the cluster of GET IN GEAR, EATS IN, and IN OT, with IN OR not far away. USA and US MARINE also stood out.
Fast, straightforward puzzle, but a DNF for me. In my branch of the Department of Defense, projects often have a specific person responsible for handling questions that come in, arranging external discussions, and so forth: a point of contact, or POC. I was surprised, but fine! GAMEcAN didn’t raise a flag for me either. Oh, well!
@Lars I agree that this was an anachronism. I don't think anyone used the term "gate" in the context of logic before the invention of electronics in the 20th century.
That was fun and interesting, and I learned a few things. New to me (given the clues): AME, VIV, IVAN, and ESSO; NADU and SANAA were a Natick as well. I DNF--this had the feel of a Thursday in years past, when they were more difficult? That would be fine, actually, if it continues.
@Sherman -- With only the X to go on, I tried tampax and maalOX before eventually hitting CLOROX. I would not have been surprised about either of those.
@BC — I had even more trouble, with LeAd for “Advance” and BaP right below. Fortunately CReaNER is obviously not a word.
160 comments and no one has mentioned the connection between 43A (Usual heir in patrilineal systems) and 10D (Biblical twin of Jacob)? Michèle Govier deserves credit for making ESAU actually relevant, instead of being a dismissable bit of crosswordese: Jacob and Esau The sons of Isaac, who was the son of Abraham. As the eldest son of Isaac, Esau should have inherited the covenant with God that Abraham had passed on to Isaac. But Esau traded his birthright (inheritance) to his younger brother, Jacob, for a “mess of pottage” (a meal of stew) when he was too hungry to consider what he was throwing away. Jacob also cheated Esau out of their blind father's deathbed blessing by impersonating him, a deceit prompted by their mother, Rebecca. The feud between the brothers ended many years later in a joyful reconciliation. <a href="https://www.dictionary.com/browse/jacob-and-esau" target="_blank">https://www.dictionary.com/browse/jacob-and-esau</a>
@BW :-) I was reminded of a rule for building sports cars attributed to Colin Chapman, founder of Lotus Cars. "Simplify, then add lightness." We can imagine a conversation: "Okay, so how about a moonroof to let in more light?" "Not that kind of lightness!"
@Lars Consistent with what I know, as a computer science person. Mention of Shannon caused me to search around a bit, and I came across this, which made me laugh a little: "[Shannon] explored his ideas in his master’s thesis, entitled A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits. A version of the thesis appeared in 1938 in Transactions of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. Two years later the groundbreaking work, often described as one of the most significant theses of the 20th century, garnered Shannon the prestigious Alfred Noble Prize." Sigh. There is no "Noble" prize, and Shannon never won a Nobel prize; he worked in (and created!) fields that aren't covered by the prize categories.
... and by "Thursday" I mean "Friday." Emu fodder added.
@Bob T. -- How cool to hear someone say that the entries I missed were exactly in their wheelhouse! Thanks for that. It makes me appreciate the different perspectives people bring to the table.
@LBG -- My first try at the shoe clue was Brooks. We have choices when it comes to six-letter athletic wear companies! My own shoes are Mizuno, but I don't think they'll ever appear in a crossword.
Clever! Cleverer than me, that is; though I finished, I didn't understand all the clues until reading the explanation. The only one I still don't get is "It might be pressed for cash" for ATM. The implication seems to be that one can press an ATM, but I've never heard that expression.
... and by "Thursday" I mean "Friday."
@Liz B -- I also tried litTLE REMINDERS before finally getting it right. botTLE REMINDERS just didn't seem like a thing.
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