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Wonderful theme execution! All crossword construction is impressive to me, but something like this is especially impressive, extra especially since there was very little filler, mostly strong clues.
Feels a bit rough to lose my streak due to so many crossing proper nouns. Oh well I guess.
@Richard Irell I thought it was hard but mostly fair (only bothered by ABBAS as a Hebrew speaker). At the first pass I had almost nothing, but it did all come together in the end. It's definitely on the harder end but no matter what, some puzzle will be on the harder end and that's what keeps it fun.
People who hate rebuses, sure, they won't like it, but let's not judge it by the standards of people who were never going to like it. I thought it was very generous for a rebus. I bet it was someone's first time figuring out a themed rebus without looking up the trick. DOUBLE HEADER is a straightforwarf fill for its clue, and that plus enough crosses is plenty for the themed entries. For anyone who was stumped, my number one tip is just don't let yourself be bogged down, skip confusing or italicized clues and simply don't worry about them until you have more fill and can start guessing at the tricks.
Nice puzzle! Pretty simple theme and for me it was a quicker solve than usual. More of us need to be ok with "this puzzle didn't match my knowledge" and remember that this doesn't mean it was too hard or unfair. It happens! The stars do or don't align.
I thought the theme was very well done. Did I understand it immediately? No, of course not. But with enough crosses it came together no problem. It helped that the actual rebuses were super simple, there was no real guessing of what the images meant because they were straightforward.
A hard one today! Took me well above average. But it's Saturday so if not now, when? Can't be mad about it :)
Felt very fresh. I did think it was funny that it "balanced" interesting new answers and clues with, of course, baseball. Great puzzle, hope to see more from this constructor.
Great puzzle! A nice Saturday that looks intimidating at first but comes together bit by bit.
Hard but fair! Really took a long time to make inroads, and areas were very disconnected so there was no one "aha" moment to bring it all together, but rather lots of small ones. But hey it's Saturday, it's perfect for a hard puzzle. The difficulty was good difficulty imo, less of hyper specific trivia and more just thinking in crossword-ese.
This was a treat, the kind of grid that doesn't have many grips at first but each fill helps find another. It wasn't the hardest ever as others are saying, but beautifully constructed - I made much more use of crosses than I do on an actual easy puzzle.
@Sean yes! Every time I open any puzzle it gives me that intro message. Hope it's fixed soon. Great for welcoming newcomers, not needed 10 times in a row for anyone.
This was a great puzzle. I had almost nothing on my first pass but it all slotted together as I went. Getting one thing here, one thing there, opening up the grid more and more. Ultimately I spent a pretty average Saturday time on it, even after having so little at first. Very satisfying.
@Jane Wheelaghan fyi it's E*Trade - all the down entries use it as the symbol, and all the across entries use it as the letters STAR.
Much easier than Friday, that's for sure! I went over my Sunday average but I wasn't stuck on any one part for too long. The theme was pretty easy to figure out with crosses and the revealer.
The northeast corner nearly defeated my 150-something streak, but I made it through! And for the most part everything felt like "good" difficulty, the kind where you look back on clues and say "oh of course" or "TIL" rather than "ugh" or "I guess". Great a Saturday puzzle!
@Jim Murray these are all incredibly famous paintings. If you asked 100 NYT subscribers "list 10 paintings", probably many would include all of these in their answer. If you don't know them that's fine but there are zero deep cuts here.
@HeathieJ I would guess both are "male honorifics". So signor (italian) and monsieur or mister.
The theme answers were very puzzling, but with the revealer and enough crosses I got one and then it became quite obvious and made solving all the other theme answers pretty easy. Clever!
@Bob it'll get you every time - I usually leave the first two letters of that word blanl until there's cross since I've seen 3 out of the 4 ways they could go...
@Jim in Forest Hills There's not really much to "get" with the clue for ad-hoc, that's just what ad-hoc means. No wordplay.
@Michael Hendler setting as in location. Streams (little rivers) are found in dales.
I don't mind a rebus, but I wish it had accepted all the letters with the extra Ts, well, with the extra Ts. Knowing what I do about rebus puzzles my last resort is always "only one letter per square" and that did work, but it's extra tedious work and it's weird it wouldn't be accepted in the full version. The rebus themeitself was cute though. I like when it makes no sense to start with but comes together, like this one did.
@CA Metadata for instagram includes things like "how many people viewed this photo" and "when was each comment or like recieved", for example. Anything except for the content itself (literal pixels, caption, tags) is metadata. I don't know if this fits the mathematical definition of statistics but I think it's fine as an everyday or crossword-ese usage. (With the question marking the pun about being owned by Meta.)
@Man and 2 dogs I didn't understand LAC, can you explain please?
@Jerry yeah "stan" predates gen z, and "shipping" predates millennials. Slang is hard to track down... But these ones can easily be found as older than their listed gens so it was a little iffy.
I didn't exactly get the theme until reading the column, but the repetition was clear so it didn't really hinder solving. And I do think it's clever having read it, even though I'm not sure about how it was clued.
@Eric Hougland I find older puzzles more difficult too but for me at least a lot of it seems to be an age thing. A puzzle from 15 years ago will have lots of people and media I'm simply not familiar with because they haven't withstood the test of time enough. Eg I got AKON very easily today, but I'd never know the Akons of decades past. So it would be quite difficult to compare apples to apples here imo.
@Rob it's the crossword, it's extremely common for the clue and answer not to be perfect synonyms. They just need to be close enough to be reasonable.
@dvdmgsr can also try FIVE - just in case it's different on different platforms. I'm on Android and got it with FIVE but didn't try anything else either.
@Byron agreed. No, it wasn't Thursday difficulty at all, I'm also around 8m which is only slightly over an average Wednesday. I get that people who are not good with hidden tricks and/or don't expect them on Wednesdays would have a harder time than usual, that's fair. But it was an incredibly generous hidden trick. Just need to not get bogged down and wait for crosses to do their jobs.
Lost my connections streak because at least one guess that should have said I was one off didn't say anything, which meant I abandoned good paths. Disappointing:(
@Darren a dash often means that it's a continuation of something, yes.
@Torey Adler you should use the feedback form to send them info about what device you are using and what browser or app version. This is not a universal problem, but one specific to your combo.
Did "ARO" recently get added to the Official NYT Crossword List Of Allowable 3 Letter Words, or has it been there all along and it's just that one puzzle clued all the other creators in? Not a complaint at all, it's crossword tradition for useful words to show up multiple times a week. Just funny and I'm curious. It's been so common in the past little bit.
@Don H your suggestion is easier and more accessible, but the goal isn't to be as easy and accessible as possible every day. It's to offer an increasing challenge.
@DIVAS IVLIVS I think it's fine when it's a totally optional theme like this one. I didn't really get it while solving but you don't actually need to.
@Zack I agree. Often, multi-letter squares also accept just the first letter. I had to check the column to see if my format was wrong or if I needed to keep looking for errors and glad I did because I default to one letter only in error-hunting mode.
@Michael G yup this bothered me too.
@Tony I do on slack at work, but then software engineers use a lot of parens. I don't think I've used it much on my personal life.
@runner girl you don't need a slash - I just did TW, HD, etc. You probably don't even need to enter both letters if it's like most other puzzles. If you're ever stuck on formatting, try just one initial letter per square, so T instead of TW or T/W. Even in situations where down and across don't have the same letters at all, just choosing the first letter from some direction tends to work.
@CrosswordSolver both "kit" and "kit/kat" work for me on Android. I put in just "kit" after I got the idea. When in doubt, always go shorter. I bet just "K" has a good chance of working too. Def took a while to pick up how they generally accept these kind of clues where across and down meed a different fill, but "across/down" or just across or just one letter usually works.
@Dan when in doubt, try the first letter of one of the directions. So in this case, P would be safest. And keep in mind that your problem could be something else and not the rebuses.
@Irarelycomment it's not "the letters making up PIE plus S", it's just the sound of S with the sound of "pie", giving "espy", which means more or less the same as its twin clue HAVE EYES ON.
@Oikofuge sure but it's 2025 and most swords are used for sport fencing. NYT crosswords use "foil" and "epee" quite often so it's worth filing them both away as the default "4 letter crossword swords".
@George var. often means spelling variant. In fact I can't recall a time it meant something else. But these "variants" are rarely satisfying and generally just questionable.
@z-man plenty of people intentionally pierce it! It's just covered by most clothing, so maybe you don't notice it.
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