jas
Barcelona
161
Comments
0.206
Avg Sentiment
51
Positive
90
Neutral
20
Negative
Barcelona
@Dc 8 minutes in I was happy to have entered two words with some probability of being correct.
@CC -- I like an attorney general who fights pornography with a 1,960-page report as much as the next guy, but puzzles would be pretty dry without a smattering of fun clues like this one!
The way I read it, similar to what others have commented, is that the LIEs hidden in the black squares are exposed (pushed upwards) by "SPIKEs" in the (signal emittted by) the POLYGRAPH. And I think that's brilliant. Many thanks to the constructor, her dad, the NYTDCC Fellowship and all of the mentors collectivelyy responsible for bringing us yet another enjoyable crossword challenge.
@Peter Don't forget to calibrate. "Easy for a Saturday" in no way means easy. First gold-star Saturday is huge!
@Peter Vocal runs, in this context ala Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Christina Aguilera, etc. The fancy word for it is melisma (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melisma" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melisma</a>)
Having anchored my center with hAm instead of MAC [and cheese] and the ever-popular SNOb instead of SNOT, I had quite the mess to clean up before putting this definitely-challenging-for-a-Monday puzzle in the books!
With respect to complaints --- and not just about this particular puzzle --- that suggest we're being made to suffer for a constructor's vanity, that they are being too clever by half, or somehow lazy for not making more of a concerted effort to be conventional, complain away, you've every right to. But I take such puzzles in a different spirit. I see constructors who have a crazy idea that sounds like fun to them and are inviting us to the party. And doing all the work! And it's a lot of work for a pittance per hour and a few of their allotted fifteen minutes of fame. An M&Ms puzzle where every clue has exactly two words starting with M? Heck yeah, I'm in, sign me up, let's go. Fun idea, thanks for making it happen and letting us get in on it. I'm down for that and ready to be delighted by the next cukoo idea and the nutty one after that. And sure, a straight forward themeless or well worn comfortable theme, if that's what's on the menu, also great. Variety is the spice of life, which is like a box of chocolates ... and all that. Not saying at all that everyone should feel like this but if you do you're not alone and to all the constructors who might want to paint outside the lines now and then, we're out here.
Started strong by quickly filling in THANKSGIVINGDAY, worked my way through what was for me an enjoyable but challenging puzzle, ready for glory and ... nothing. No happy music. Took me forever to find my error at the intersection of HOSTaL and PESCaTARIAN. My Barcelona eyes have gone native, and they refused to see the Spanish word HOSTaL for HOSTEL as anything but correct, especially crossed with what I thought was not only the preferred but only way to spell PESCaTARIAN. So double the time and triple the relief to finally get this one in the books!
@Alex M NW corner for me too, took some time to wrangle that one into submission. What was interesting is that I was missing the top parts off the downs --- something-BOARD, something-OWNER, something-ENCOUNTER, and those upper crosses were not falling!
@Petrol --- I think you're referring to the conjunction fallacy (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjunction_fallacy" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjunction_fallacy</a>), and I bet a lot of people here would enjoy (or have enjoyed!) "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman, where that and other such things are entertainingly explained. That said, I think the clue is fine. It only asks for "one" kind of person that should avoid thin ice --- but I do get your point that, logically speaking, SKATERs are not special in that regard!
Glad I read the column otherwise next time I went to Vegas and rolled an eleven I would have yelled "RAIDERS baby!" Who knows, maybe it would have caught on. That SE corner was like a quintiple natick for me, okay, slight exaggeration, but only slight. Finally TIE and LSAT allowed for a somewhat finite number of plausible guesses as I returned a few times throughout the day before lucking into keeping the streak alive.
@Once a Marine I recommend the opposite! Go to the archives and go on a Thursday binge. For a while you'll be questioning your life choices but they'll get easier (though not to say "easy") I promise and, much more importantly, more and more fun.
@Petrol That's a great list. I would only add "acai", which we probably eat after all those reps and sets. Less common and not as tasty: roe, ghee, oleo
@Kevin D --- Or know which Super Bowl it is!
@Emilie Confidently filling in NERDCRED gives you NERDCRED in my book. I had (unconfidently filled in) woRDCRED and hung on to it for the longest time, doing me no favors trying to get a toe hold in what was for me an extremely difficult middle section!
No. They wouldn't. They did! Touché. What a fun start to the week!
Nice to have this puzzle honoring truckers. It isn't an easy time for them, and the work they do deserves recognition. And here's yet another tribute via song. Linda Ronstadt's cover of 'Willin'' by Little Feat.
@Eric Hougland it took me forever to give up on a very lonely "tollS" in that spot
@kkseattle Well that's embarrassing. I literally missed the trees for the forest
@Prithwiraj --- okay, but "read the room" implies someone might be put off or offended in some way. In any case, that taqueria could be anywhere, in Mexico e.g., especially on Saturday.
@Mgood --- [cuatro menos uno] would be "tres", but the answer is TREY, which I don't understand either. Can someone explain? Is trey synonymous with three? I thought it was just for playing cards and basketball slang.
@Barb Prillaman --- I'm amazed that anyone can fill in a grid with clueable strings of letters at all, let alone this delightful offering. Seriously, every puzzle seems like a minor miracle to me.
@David --- While they may not all be big box stores, I think we can agree that they are all stores in a big box. which I believe was the conceit here.
@Caitríona Shanahan another definition of TREED: "force (a hunted animal) to take refuge in a tree. 'their dogs crossed over on to private property and treed a raccoon'"
@Lewis Thank you for your service. I love stuff like this.
@Rees --- You are not wrong! But like a bunch of us you didn't see that the clue is asking "Who's asked ...".
@PoloniusMonk --- I hear you, but what I've learned is that you only get the message again if you delete (blank out) a square and type a new letter. If you type a new letter over an existing letter, and the puzzle is still not fully correct, you won't get the message again. You just know there's still work to do because you don't get the "Congratulations" happy music. Believe me this theory is well tested as I've typed over existing letters a zillion or so times over the years without getting the message again for still incorrect puzzles. Works for me in the browser, the Times app and the Games app (Android in my case). Hopefully it will work for you too!
@Anthony I also stared at TNII for aeons sure that something (or many things) had to be wrong in there somehwere. Even when I had the notion to change the I to an E, I was thinking it wouldn't make it much better without also addressing that "TN..." situation. Was very suprised and relieved to hear the music! (I also love that ENNEAD for a group of nine Bradys is not considered a tricky clue. Y'all are beyond literate.)
@Evan --- right or wrong, the setters are following the New York Times style guide: As noted at <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/afterdeadline.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/faqs-on-style" target="_blank">https://archive.nytimes.com/afterdeadline.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/faqs-on-style</a>/ : Here’s the relevant portion of The Times’s stylebook entry: Use apostrophes for plurals of abbreviations that have capital letters and periods: M.D.’s, C.P.A.’s. Also use apostrophes for plurals formed from single letters: He received A’s and B’s on his report card. Mind your p’s and q’s.
@Matt --- I hereby nominate "tisderpio" as the general term for an answer that tells you something somewhere has gone horribly wrong. Eg, "I had a real tisderpio there in the upper-right but, dang, all the crossed seemed correct!"
@Darren --- I took it as in the context of I accede to your demand I submit to your demand
My first thought looking at that grid was that is was a QR code for "www.streak-breaker.com".
@Alex M --- me too, but only after I thought I had learned a new word for "SkA BAnd"
It's an admittedly small amount of data, but my theory is that words that sound like sneezing are, on average, harder to spell!
@Jay Right or wrong, coming up with a10-letter word from nothing that perfectly matches the clue is clever indeed. I was the opposite --- with eight of the ten letters I was still scratching my head.
@Andrzej Yes! I've learned to be on the look out for that one. According to m-w.com SNARF dates from the sixties and is "perhaps blend of snack and scarf", which I love.
@Mary For me it was GREat ANACONDA I had to let go of to get the ⭐
I guessed HOBO, which was good, but was more confident about silENT for [Skipping music] (like a silent move maybe? It somehow made sense at the moment), so that was a wash. I finally gave up on silENT and chipped away until I opened things up with iHAdABLAST (insert record scratch sound effect here). I really struggled to justify friend-of-the-crossword iHOP for [Smack] before another round of scratch and patch put paid to that corner. Similar stories across the other 80% of the puzzle. Tough one!
@Lisa I don't know, but I'm pretty sure I eat more Oreos than I would if the puzzle didn't insist on tempting me so often. This is a fun deep dive into the topic: <a href="https://pudding.cool/2021/01/oreo" target="_blank">https://pudding.cool/2021/01/oreo</a>/ Fun facts like "In the iconic New York Times puzzle, OREO wasn’t used to reference the cookie until 1993, despite its invention in 1912. Its first appearance coincided with the start of the Shortz era. Until then, it was exclusively clued as the Greek prefix for mountain."
WAFFLEcAKEs did me no favors. Also had ELdoradO for way too long, tExT instead of FEAT, LyrE instead of LUTE. I got GRIT right off the bat, but it didn't help me at all, so I removed it. Finally got it from the crosses and saw that the answer was ... GRIT. All signs of a great puzzle 🙂
@Wayno --- I agree, although commenters below are quiblling with the same quibble. I think the issue comes from seeing dictionary definitions that say that vamp can mean to improvise, or extemporize. But the examples that of I've seen for that sense of vamp are not musical, they're like when a speaker suddenly has to fill time waiting for a technical issue, they may have to wing it or "vamp". As far as I know, vamp in the musical context is the other thing and not improvising (maybe some experienced musicians can enlighten us more).
@Steve --- Same, though given the <a href="https://xwstats.com/puzzles" target="_blank">https://xwstats.com/puzzles</a> ratings of "very hard", "hard", and "very hard", respectively for the last three days, I'd say we're in good company.
Clearly I've been watching too much soccer as I spent the first minutes delighted by the grid clearly representing a soccer field, which made the initial looks at the revealers confusing to say the least. So not another celeberation of the World Cup, but was more than happy to finish being delighted instead by a puzzle about giraffes.
My entry in the anyone-but-HAROLDRAMIS sweepstakes was "Carol D. Ramis", feeling very good about cErEs for a mythical figure. Nevery heard of her but figured, sure, another family of geniuses where some work more behind the scenes, producer probably, deep cut, hey it's Friday. So big mess in the northeast. Finally getting LINT felt almost as good as the soft sweep of fingers across a lint trap itself. From there the rest of the stubborn dominos fell, but few without a fight.
@Aaron --- a lot of us fell into that trap. Somehow minuscule is spelled with two u's, (although apparently some rebellious types do spell it with two i's). <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/minuscule" target="_blank">https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/minuscule</a>
@Doug it may be a stretch but my best attempt at understanding the clue in a way that fits the answer is that it's asking "what are two things of/from a clock", thus HANDS. Curious what others think!
@OldNewbie ABES is the plural of ABE, as in Abraham Lincoln, whose portrait graces the five dollar bill. So not exactly nonsense, but "crossword-ese" perhaps. 52A, [So, is that ___?] ANO is two words, as in "a no".
@Gerry Wachovsky I think it's a soccer penalty we're talking about here. It's a big disappointment when they miss one of those.
@Andrzej during the draft days, the military used the designation "1-A" to mean "Available for military service." See here for other codes (the most common that we might see in another puzzle would be "4-F") <a href="https://www.sss.gov/about/return-to-draft/#s2" target="_blank">https://www.sss.gov/about/return-to-draft/#s2</a>