Katie
Minnesota
HELLYEAH, MINNESOTA NICE! We've LIVED through some tough times recently, and have felt less SECURE by the day. To say we are MIFFED is an understatement. Thankfully, we didn't have to go it SOLO, as we are always here for each other. Minnesota will be an ICE ARENA no longer. We won.
Well, that's the most sexist thing I've ever seen in a crossword. Can we please do away with the idea that women are more "emotional" than men? This stereotype has been used to keep women down for centuries. The idea being that since we are so "emotional," we can't be rational, like men. Who apparently do not have emotions. Showing emotion isn't getting in touch with your FEMININE SIDE. It's just called being human.
"What are we going to do tomorrow night, Brain?" "The same thing we do every night, Pinky. TRY TO SOLVE THE NEW YORK TIMES CROSSWORD."
@GM As a nonbinary person, let me say: This is a crossword puzzle, not a treatise on gender theory. Please calm down. This type of pontificating only alienates people from our cause.
@Barry Ancona I've read it multiple times. The implication is that: 1. Being feminine is about expressing emotion. 2. Being masculine is about NOT expressing emotion. Both these ideas are outdated and harmful to both men and women. It plays into the idea that women are too emotional to be rational, and that for a man to express emotion is feminine, and therefore bad.
Today I learned the International Monetary Fund cannot help you get pregnant.
I like my GRAY hairs, and refuse to cover them up. Except with a hat. Wind chill is currently -40, and I'm trying to work up the courage to get to the rally in Minneapolis later. Plan is to wear three pairs of pants.
This one nearly destroyed me. First off, asking me to spell ONOMATOPOEIA is just mean. The constructor should have known that I can't spell it, and taken steps to preserve my ego. Second, I could have sworn that is was cocoa nibs, not CACAO NIBS. A quick Google search for cocoa nibs gives me a snarky reply: Including results for *cacao nibs*. I do not appreciate the tone, Google. Third, I had misspelled PORTOBELLO as portoNello, and took forever to realize my mistake. This led to me having "ALT ten" at 27A, it seemingly never occurring to me that there is no ten key on my keyboard. In spite of my ineptitude, I enjoyed it! Great job, Alina!
I didn't realize until I came here that the shapes spelled chips and salsa. I'm so grateful to have this column! Thanks, Deb!
@Marty There is no excuse for this sort of rudeness.
I thought IPAS were hop-ular brews. ... I'll see myself out.
Is it me, or has there been a huge amount of negative comments in here lately? I can't believe so many people disliked this puzzle. I thought it was amazing. I think most of the puzzles are amazing. I think Will Shortz is amazing, and Daniel Grinberg is amazing, and anyone who's ever actually constructed a crossword puzzle is amazing. Have a nice day.
I just can't. This would have been fun on any other day, but I'm just miserable right now.
This was a thoroughly enjoyable puzzle! I loved seeing RIBALD, and 56A made me laugh out loud. Congrats on a fantastic debut. It should be noted that the CONE OF SHAME only applies to dogs. When cats wear the cone, they feel no shame, only thirst for revenge.
@riskstrategies It's the New York Times. Last time I checked, New York was in America. Really, it's too much to ask for the puzzle to be accessible to every person from every country. Something a person from Britain would know is something a person from Poland might not. Even though I live in the US, there are often New York-specific clues I don't get. And I don't complain, because this is the New York Times, not the St. Paul Pioneer Press.
Wow, I'm seriously surprised at all the complaints. I thought this was a fantastic, fun puzzle. I wish more people would abide by the adage "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all." Far too may of these negative posts don't have any legitimate criticisms, they just say "yuck." At least show a modicum of respect and say WHY you disliked the puzzle. There is no excuse for rudeness. There's enough of that in the world right now.
That was insanely difficult for a Tuesday. I got most of the proper names right away (UHURA, LEVAR, ROMO, IMAN) and still struggled mightily. I ended up having to look up a couple entries to make sure they were a thing (GESSO, ADOLFO). The longer phrases were the hardest part, and it didn't help that two of them were part of the theme. A MINORITY OF ONE? SET IN OPPOSITION? AT A LOW EBB????? I'm not sure any of these are "in the language," and if they are, they're very rare. I don't mean to PAN this puzzle, but I just didn't enjoy it. I could've used an Oreo or two.
I loved this puzzle. I thought the theme was fun, clever, and easy to understand. There was also a lot of fun fill, like PERETTI, OCTOPI, FINESSE, and the full ET TU BRUTE, rather than the more crossword-y ET TU. Hannah, please don't listen to the haters. There have been a lot of them lately, and they all seem to have a bug up their APSES.
@Alan You, personally, CAN make the rebus go away: just don't do the rebus puzzles. Go do something else. The rest of us will be having fun with the rebus.
Why would middle schoolers laugh at URANUS? URANUS is majestic. URANUS is giant and gaseous. Granted, URANUS has a weird ring around it. But URANUS deserves respect! --Katie, age 37
Word pairs that have the same amount of letters, thus tripping me up when I try to enter them in a crossword: --Pistil and STAMEN --Mauna Loa and Mauna KEA --Sasha and Malia Obama --Jerry's friends Elaine, George, and Kramer --Sierra Madre and Sierra Leone --Mattress makers Serta and Sealy Can anyone think of more examples?
Oof. I confidently filled in RAMADAN at 1A, but things went very quickly downhill. My first pass left me with about three answers filled in. Things got a bit DICEY in the center-west, but I'm one of those DAMES who never gives up. In the end I RASSLED the puzzle into submission. FYI, I've had BETTER THAN SEX cake, and it's not.
Full disclosure: any time I get my hands on a calculator, I type 80085 into it. My name is Katie, and I am 37 years old.
I scrubbed the kitchen floor yesterday, and my arms didn't TREMBLE so much as explode into aches as I lay in bed last night. As I get older, I've added Advil to my list of cleaning supplies. Anyway, this was a lovely puzzle. I wish everyone had the same tolerance as the constructors. I'm praying for my immigrant neighbors every night. I love you all.
Anyone with a cat knows the OWNER in the relationship is not the human. (Can emus be cat ladies?)
It was lovely to see ROSA Parks crossing MALALA YOUSAFZAI. Two exceptional women, together at last!
So many people not getting the theme... It seemed pretty obvious to me, and super cute. They're false sightings, that's why they're spelled wrong. The idea of a hairy monster with cigarette lighters for feet cracked me up. "No no, that's BICFOOT. He's not mysterious at all."
I just didn't like it. For one, there was a lot of glue, especially abbreviations. SOC, ETAS, STA, REL, etc. Second, some of the theme fell flat. The METRODOME has been gone for more than a decade, so the clue felt oddly outdated. Unforgivable for me, though, was 48A. Holland and DUTCH are not interchangeable, and DITCH does not mean tunnel.
@Michael I didn't realize OLAF the Stout was so popular. Is he Taylor Swift's ex or something?
This was an excellent debut! ELMO was the one who clued me in to the theme. Many thanks to the little red dude, and to the constructors. I wanted [Plot problems] to be moles so very, very badly. I tried googling "toe smoe" in the hopes that this was a ballet thing I was unaware of. Google instead showed me results for "toe smoke," which was mostly pictures of people holding cigarettes with their feet.
Misspelled OLAJUWON badly and thought, "My God, what have I done?!"
A lovely almost-themeless puzzle. Favorite entry: COLUMBO, who I am slightly in love with. As a TEETOTALer (fifteen months!) I do allow myself the occasional ginger ALE. I wonder if there's a theme to be had in nonalcoholic liquids that sound like alcoholic ones? Root beer, oyster liquor, and...?
This was everything a Saturday puzzle should be: difficult, but not unfair. Several words I didn't know, but a bunch of ones I did, so it all worked out! Me gusta!
@Atavistic Cringeworder Yeah, shouldn't it be "binary pronounS"? The construction HE/SHE isn't meant to be a pronoun in and of itself, but rather a choice of two pronouns. It's either/or, not both. Honestly, I just wish people would use the singular "they." HE/SHE is so ugly and awkward. If the singular "they" is good enough for Jane Austen, it's good enough for the rest of us!
This was just too easy. I've put off commenting on this for a while, but I've definitely noticed a trend of decreasing difficulty, especially on Saturdays. This is supposed to be the hardest day of the week, and this puzzle was not difficult at all. I used to look forward to the challenge, but now Saturday is like any other day of the week. The problem seems to lie in the cluing. Most of the clues were completely straightforward. Example: [Requirement of some dress codes] for SLEEVES. Not only is this easy, it's boring. This is Monday-level cluing on a Saturday puzzle. Please, please, PLEASE bring back the difficult Saturday puzzles.
@Michael There is absolutely no reason to accuse the constructor of using AI to create this puzzle. It's silly to accuse any puzzle you don't like of being AI-generated, though I've been seeing that insult pop up more and more frequently. There is simply no evidence to this accusation. I'm not sure what would make trivia "forced," though I suspect "forced trivia" just means "trivia I don't personally know." I didn't find the famous names difficult at all, and thought there was a good balance: three literary giants, three inescapable figures from pop culture, a renowned poet and singer/songwriter, a Tejano singer known to most English speakers through a movie starring J-Lo. Unless you've been living under a rock, you probably know several of these names.
I got BARBIE DREAMHOUSE immediately, though I never had one as a kid. My Barbies lived on the couch and drove a dump truck.
@Steven M. "No one is complaining that proper nouns, trivia and cultural references exist." I have seen people do just this. "How am I supposed to know about X?" is a common complaint in this comments section. These people aren't complaining about Naticks, they're just mad that there is a word they don't know in a crossword puzzle. Now, I have an unusual talent for trivia (being autistic is fun). But if there's a word or name I don't know, such as SMEW, I don't get upset about it, I just look it up. I'm not entitled to a puzzle where I know every answer. It would be impossible for the constructors to cater to my knowledge base, and the knowledge bases of all the other thousands of people who solve this puzzle every day. I've said it before, and I'll probably have to keep saying it, seeing how many people get annoyed by Steve L's posts: The best way to get better at crosswords is to widen your horizons. Read more books, watch more movies and tv, play more video games, listen to more music. You'll notice the trivia gets a lot less "obscure."
@Julia She's the Oreo of pop singers.
Friendly reminder about the best headline of all time: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/22/science/moray-eels-eat-land.html?searchResultPosition=5" target="_blank">https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/22/science/moray-eels-eat-land.html?searchResultPosition=5</a>
@MrB This is why I love the comments section. I always learn something!
Are Katie Hoody and EARL Sweatshirt related?
What a lovely theme! No book has affected me like THE BLUEST EYE did. It utterly destroyed me. I was not okay for weeks afterward. And yet I remember the novel fondly. It's mysterious how art that makes us miserable can also make us happy.
I went to a Latin mass, but I couldn't make CENSE of it. (Sorry.)
@Skeptical1 I had fun once and it was awful.
Apt puzzle, as when I got up early to move my car this morning, it was only 8 degrees out. It was so cold my peach emoji almost froze off.
Loved seeing Peter Falk mentioned in the puzzle. I have an unhealthy obsession with Columbo. My brother is also obsessed, which I find amazing. My mother had given him up for adoption when she was younger, so we didn't meet him until a few years ago. He and I developed parallel Columbo obsessions all on our own. It must be genetic.
@Shelby Drink Your Juice Remember: The one-L lama, he's a priest. The two-L llama, he's a beast. And I will bet a silk pajama there isn't any three-L lllama.
@Ant I have no problem getting entries via the crosses, mostly because this is a crossword puzzle.