Rosemary McNaughton
Western Mass
Going to be a bit of a grump here and say that while I’m a math teacher and astrophysicist by training I fell out of love with the puzzle once MAHER was mentioned, due to his smug misogyny, and then it felt pretty glaring how many men were referenced versus the one actress, including STEPHENHAWKING who had some fraught issues with women too (I did get to meet him once in grad school and got a hit of that seeing his aide). And I’ll defend the one thing everyone else seems not to like: OHO. I thought it was cute that after putting in aha the answer to gotcha turned out to be OHO. He got me!
Loved it! 🧩💖 Somewhat slow for me for a Friday but it had a perfect amount of friction for me. Slow but never felt helpless, and when I figured things out I was always pleased at the right answer rather than disappointed. Some interesting echoes throughout, too. I wanted the chemistry term to be ISO-something and then that popped up in ISOPOD. SELFDRIVINGCARS crossing ROAD and GTOS. ARISE on the top and -END and IMTHERE on the bottom. And as a high school teacher and current parent of teens I especially applaud you for your dedication and drive to put this puzzle together and get it to the attention of the New York Times! Well done!
I solved as THENORTHEAST of course, being from Massachusetts. I wonder how strong that tendency was among solvers. My only whiff of tricky business was that “word before fly” felt oddly unspecific. If it had been clued as “_______ fly” I don’t think I would have noticed.
@RHL I was confused for a while and had LONGA in there because I say it more like AHmericUH and of course if you’re singing “America the Beautiful” it will have beautiful long As, but I had to concede to SCHWA eventually.
@KandB that’s not the tune, though a fun memory. I tried figuring out the dog name from what notes might make a good melody there, but no dice. I hummed the notes clockwise from 1A and didn’t recognize the tune. I wonder if it was meant to be anything-it’s not a gripping tune. Maybe the constraints made it too hard to construct something known or at least catchy.
All 5 comments loaded