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@ksp210 If I remember right, IPOs are sometimes discussed in The Economist, but only insofar as they are newsworthy. I agree that it's an odd clue, although maybe technically correct if "announce" is defined very broadly. I would not associate the magazine with "announcing IPOs."

@Jonathan Without rebuses, everything is a valid entry. With rebuses, there are entries like UPABLMO. I believe that is why it is correct without rebuses.

@Max Nicks "Soak" with the liquid as a subject can also mean to permeate (e.g. My spilled milk soaked into the floorboards). A "seeping" liquid can be penetrating as well as leaking out of the object, so in the penetrating sense it can legitimately fit "soak slowly." I'll defer to you on "ute," but I think in some places it might simply be a shortening of "sport utility vehicle."

@Francis I've read many of your comments, and usually agree, but today my love of wordplay makes our opinions diverge! About FARADAYS specifically: I don't think it's too bad, since Faraday's singular role in the history of electromagnetism (I think most people have heard of a Faraday cage) makes it a reasonable educated guess once the crosses rule out COULOMBS, even if you don't know the (admittedly obscure) unit. I already had the F when I got there, though, so maybe my perspective is skewed.

@Cat Lady Margaret Completely agree. Even a whole time series can usually be described by many kinds of growth. I wish it were used only to make a suggestion of an underlying process that behaves exponentially, such as bacterial reproduction. And don't get me started on the use and abuse of poor "parabolic" in the world of finance...

@Tom Historically, I believe exponents were first used with positive integer powers, and negative and zero powers came along in a way that made the laws of exponents consistent in exactly the way the other commenters explain. Alternatively, I think the way I was taught in university was by first defining the exponential function (which has base e) as the unique function that is everywhere equal to its own derivative, and letting exponentiation generally follow from that. We are first taught with good reason that x^y means "y repeated multiplications of x" because it is well-motivated, intuitive, and applicable to basic concepts in geometry, etc. But strictly speaking this is not a proper definition of exponentiation at all, since it only works for positive integers. x^0 is usually the first example we learn where it is not directly useful, so it sticks out. But it's equally insufficient, for example, for fractional exponents, like we encounter with compounding interest, etc.. In short, there's no point in trying to wrap your head around "zero repeated multiplications of nine", which doesn't necessarily make sense. Instead, understand the rules of exponents, how they make exponentiation a useful tool, and how x^0=1 is consistent with those rules.

@Elbridge Gerry I am pretty sure that ALL refers to the DRINKS. FLIPOFASWITCH : FLIP :: DRINKSALLAROUND : AROUND, not ALLAROUND.

@Tim Hm, well it seems like neither "their" nor "cruciverbalists'" are unambiguously adjectives, because they swallow the article. I might say, "I have his book" or "I have Joyce's book" but not "I have incomprehensible book," since the latter construction misses an article. In spite of this, you could reasonably decide to call the pronominal determiners "possessive adjectives" (and many do). But similarly, in spite of the fact that they do not stand alone, you could also decide to call them "dependent possessive pronouns" (and many do). If I wanted to be very careful, I might not use either term. As is so often the case, it is a question of terminology, albeit an interesting one. But since there are certainly many credible people who do classify "their" as a pronoun, I think it is a fair clue. After all, when a word can be spelled in multiple ways, the variants are acceptable in a crossword (cf. SHEIKS), so why not extend the same principle to grammar?

@SP It is not always considered a pronoun. Sometimes "possessive pronoun" is limited to theirs, hers, mine, ours, etc. and not their, her, my, our, etc. To me, an interesting way to understand the motivation for having such a distinction is historical: in Old English, words like "my" were inflected like adjectives, instead of being treated like a noun in the genitive case. This is true e.g. in modern German as well. However, relevant to the case at hand, third person possessives actually were the genitive case of the pronoun in Old English, just like in Latin (i.e., they were indisputably pronouns). So if anything, this strengthens the case for "their" being called a pronoun (although "their" actually comes from Norse, not Old English, it followed the same principle as far as I can tell). I don't mean to imply that history need actually determine how we classify words, I just find it helps me to understand the potential difference between "possessive pronouns" and "determiners." I'm not an expert so I welcome any corrections.

@Tom I think the beta puzzles are available from the menu in the top-left of the Games website. For Zorse it seems the address is www.nytimes.com/games/zorse