TMD
Sonoma Somewhere
@JJ You're missing a period
Sam notes: "I think there might be a bit too much phrase weirdness, with cobbled-together bits". I have to agree. Cobbled together bits that aren't common phrases really shouldn't make it past the editor.
Hmm...my half-edited comment self-deleted itself. Put my down as not a fan. Maybe one day I will appreciate Sam's clueing but I'm certainly not there yet. I'm glad others enjoyed it, and happy that we'll not see another for some time. 🙂
I'm really missing rebus puzzles, answers that are out side the grid, or inside the black squares, or some kind of twist that the last few Thursday puzzles have been lacking. No dis to the constructor, it was a nice puzzle, some fun clues, but it's time for a real Thursday. Pretty please?
Who knew that tubas "BOOM"ed ? Timpani and other drums boom, perhaps an electric bass guitar can boom, but a tuba? Maybe an OOMPA, or OOMPAHPAH, or a BLAT, or maybe even a SPLAT, but not a BOOM! Not buying it.
Whew! That was difficult. Took a nap after I stalled out in the upper middle. Rhine before Rhone. Theif before heist. GMs before VPs. Something octane? No idea about the Greek? Or the trees. Or the mart. Erased all the guess work and it finally came together on crosses. This was my 2000th solve and I'm intentionally ending the steak at 1000. It's been a mostly fun ride and this puzzle was a fun exclamation point for the streak.
Fun but quick! I'm too lazy to read all the comments to see if someone has already mentioned that 60A should have been clued to Fleming.
@john ezra It is a very unique light. One tip: look at the shadows made by leafy trees during an eclipse. You'll often seen hundreds of little crescent 🌙 and it's easy on the eyes also.
Enjoyed the cluing and answers, and the rubber ducky. Fun, fast, and easy. Thanks! Anybody remember the old "CM ducks? MR not ducks!" story? For some reason it tickled my 94 year old mom and she knew it annoyed me, so I heard it out of the blue at the weirdest times. Her version of "rickrolling'. She'd be 100 this year. May she rest in peace.
TAKEONE or TAKETWO before ONEEACH anyone? Does anyone know if you go into the archive, pick a puzzle in the middle of your streak, and reset that puzzle, if that will break your streak? I was looking at my stats and saw my Friday best has an improbably low time. If I wanted to reset and re-do that puzzle is my streak affected?
The cluing was mostly very straightforward and I figured this out "top to bottom" refusing to look ahead for a revealer. When the answers with gray boxes made no immediate sense I pressed on putting my trust in the constructor and knowing that during the solve I'd either figure out the twist or complete the puzzle and then get the twist afterwards. One question: is there a name for this subset of anagramming where groups of letters are reversed instead of the more usual total scrambling? If not, how about Guzmangram? 😀
I'd like to say I enjoyed this.
It's not you, it's me. Wrong wavelength, I guess. A total slog. There's always tomorrow.
@Steve L It's just a puzzle. Enjoy it for what it is.
@Tom Is it the clue or answer that is worser here?
Confidently entering CARELESSEDITING on the first pass was just my first mistake.
This one was a work out for me! I realize this is 'end of week' clueing but shouldn't 29A "society" be capitalized?
Even as I type this on an android the correct answer is obviously OLDFORDS. <a href="https://news.classicindustries.com/inspired-by-the-space-race-the-ford-galaxie-1959-1974" target="_blank">https://news.classicindustries.com/inspired-by-the-space-race-the-ford-galaxie-1959-1974</a> SMH.
31A and 34A and 32A, oh my! Where are my pearls. Fun puzzle. At first I thought I was headed for a record time and then ended up over my average.
@Gregory M. One issue is they're often engineered to be tolerant of pesticides and herbicides which can have many negative side effects. Another is they can lock farmers into patented seed stock reducing competition and biodiversity.
@Dan Seems unlikely doesn't it? By the end of November I doubt you'll be finding any fresh sweet corn in the market. For a Friday it could have been a male swan type clue.
In honor of the echidna, the Zappa classic composition from 1973, Echidna's Arf set to some ancient Disney cartoon footage: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOC_LO8UMlw" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOC_LO8UMlw</a> Probably not most people's taste, but an amazing composition and performance by an incredible group of virtuosos. If anybody makes it to the end I'll listen to the Swift link elsewhere in the comments. :-) P.S. "Screen Shares" are of typically monitors or laptop screens, probably very few if any are TVs. Other than that nit a fun xword.
@Al in Pittsburgh REED is fairly well known in the context of hospitals: Walter Reed near Washington D.C. is often in the news when denizens of DC need medical attention. This a-ha moment didn't dawn on me until about the 5th or 6th time I read the clue and had a few crosses.
@Brent It's a superfluous bit of text added at the end of short posts by a very few not infrequent posters who believe that too many short posts, made too quickly, are withheld for human review by an Electronic Moderation Unit (EMU), and that by making their posts longer they will avoid such moderation. In effect it is forum pollution fueled by impatience, and the need to see their important comments appear immediately.
@Andrzej The comic strip Peanuts may be part of the Zamboni popularity. Charles Schulz was an avid hockey player and built an ice arena where he coukd play and for Sonoma County residents to enjoy. The Peanuts comic had Snoopy or Woodstock driving a Zamboni many times. <a href="https://www.snoopyshomeice.com/zamboni" target="_blank">https://www.snoopyshomeice.com/zamboni</a> Somehow I missed the local news that their propane powered Zamboni is now an EV.
@Jim On a Thursday where you've checked and rechecked everything multiple times and you're confident it's a rebus entry problem perhaps consider looking at either the column or the solution before using the check or reveal option instead of breaking a streak. I had BANG everywhere, which didn't work, changed it to ! which also didn't work, put in !/BANG everywhere, no bueno. Then found and fixed a typo, still no happy music, changed everything back to BANG and finally credit. Very annoying that the rebus slash notation was not accepted.
After a long and physically tiring day, with little sleep the night before, I do not recommend starting the puzzle on a tablet, snuggled under a blanket on a couch. I woke up to find I'd entered a half dozen or so answers before conking out for 39 minutes. I guess it is the puzzle time clock running that keeps the app alive and defeats the Android inactivity timer? Is this also an IOS issue? Whatever it is, it would be nicer for your average if the app respected the inactivity setting. I think I may have once had a 13 hour solve time due to this. Fun puzzle!
@Andrzej LOL @ your mom! A water faucet is commonly called a tap in the US.
Just noticed I'm at 731. Didn't even notice it was two years until I saw these comments.
Fun puzzle that turned out to be a bottom up solve and only took one third my usual Friday time. I see many 'on the same wavelength' comments which certainly applies, as well as 'not much on the first pass'.
@Andrzej In American football when a team gets possession of the ball they get four attempts to advance the ball at minimum TEN yards. If they succeed they are awarded four more attempts. Each attempt is called a 'down', and are referred to as FIRST down, second down, etc. So, on the first attempt it is FIRST AND TEN yards to go.
Thought there was some playfulness in the clue and really wanted the Modest home in Modest-o to be a Ranch-o...
Nice debut and fun Thursday puzzle. Took a number of passes but got there fairly quickly for me. (I gave up the daily grind and only solve Thursdays now.)
@Julia In the Android app I used the rebus option (key that has ... on it) to enter 'EQUALS', but could have just have easily while in rebus entry mode used the '!#1' shift key to get to the non-alphabetic keys and enter an equal sign. I could presume the IOS app behaves the same, but don't know.
I wish the app had an inactivity time out. Now that I think about it, does the (Android) app disable a smart phone from turning off? Solving after a long day I sometimes nod off while contemplating a clue with my eyes closed, only to wake up some time later to find an hour has gone by. Finished in 1:23. Oh well I'm not a rapid solver, and don't really care but that's well over my Friday average.
@MmmmHmm You might not know, but there is a separate forum for the Spelling Bee and that opinion was voiced ad nauseum today. I enjoyed the "J" filled SB today. Gotta find a little sunshine wherever you can.
@Fred What protects the globe? Remember when refrigerants were destroying the ozone layer? Leading to global bans?
Didn't know the poem and on first pass thought STD could be reasonably clued as a [Going concern]. No?
@Heg I'm guessing not on end of week puzzles. I'm sure a certain frequent and oft pedantic poster here will confirm. I momentarily had HAS before MCS, because I played HEAD before MIND games.
@Steve L. One year back in the 1980s too many celebrants climbed the street poles in Madison WI. So the poles got greased in advance of the next. What was unforseen was that empty party cups and beer cans would stick to overly greased poles. It didn't take the crowds too long to figure this out. Looked pretty funny the next day.
@Nom De Plume The app accepts just the first letter of the [REBUS]. The full answer is : TEA[TROLL]EY
@drsophila "Yeah, I was at that concert! Couldn't see a thing. Was sitting up in the nosebleeds."
@Jamie Sounds like you don't have "overlays" turned on in the app. Check your settings.
I blinked and it was done. :-) Welcome back Will!
@dutchiris My last fix was to change 'ICYRAIN'. I'd accept that as a reasonable xword answer, but ICE RAIN is nonsense.
I had my fears halfway through the across clues and not much entered but then things started to click. Sometimes I doubt that an 'obvious' answer could be correct and hesitate to enter. Fun puzzle, thanks!
@K Barrett I presume a 'strait' as in Bering Strait.
@Georgie Boy What a coincidence, my 1000th also. I commented elsewhere already. Congrats!
@Tom On first pass after figuring out the rebus before getting the crosses I assumed it had to be GIANT even though I couldn't make it fit.
I figured out the rebus theme fairly early but kept trying to somehow find a way to make "adolESCence" work in an empty NW before getting some of the crosses. The only other hangup was the last Y. I didn't know the god and reading CRxPTS vertically just couldn't see a word that worked.