Completing this puzzle on my android phone. Probably a glitch in the app but the puzzle won't let me enter raINbowtrOUT, so I'm left with raINbowtrO (across) and Ore (down), registered as correct. Just FYI. Thanks for a fun one.
So excited. This is the first time in doing a rebus puzzle, I figured out the theme and completed the puzzle without looking at the completed grid!!!
4
@Barbara Metzinger
Congratulations!
Wow. A rebus that gave me NO trouble! That's a first for me. I usually struggle.
4
I know I’ve said it before, but I love rebus puzzles! This one was great!
3 Barleycorns equals ONE INCH?! That’s tremendous. Such a great piece of trivial information!
THINning OUT IN BOXes and OUT BOXes made for a nice last corner.
Especially enjoyed the rebus answers STOUTISH, RAINBOW TROUT, CARPING ABOUT, and FROTHING AT THE MOUTH. I did like the cross of CUBSCOUT and URSI.
Remembered DEKED from a recent puzzle. Only hockey term I know other than puck.
:-D
3
If there were a theme title, I couldn't resist saying it should be "Burgers", but there isn't a theme on Thursdays.
@David Malik
Don't understand "Burgers."
@Ron
I think he’s referring to “in and out” burger franchises. We have none in Arkansas, and I’ve never seen one in Texas either.
I’m relatively new to tackling the NYT XW every day (used to just do the Sunday now and then) so I can still get tripped up by a Thursday. For this one, no rebus issue, but I was nearly decked by “deked” having NO knowledge of hockey. I foolishly put “IRE” for 3D’s “IRK” and got a mess that added a few minutes to my time. But otherwise a very fun theme that took little time to suss out.
1
Repeating what I said Sunday, "LOVEd it!" Of course, I'm a sucker for rebuses. Like some others, caught on with CUBSC(OUT), although I wasn't sure of their uniform colors. Couldn't get THEFOUNTAINOFY(OUT)H to fit, though, so searched the clues for the revealer(s). (OUT)BOX came quickly and after getting the down entries in that corner, so did (IN)BOX. (Loved that stack, btw!) Now aware of the two rebuses, quickly filled in the top part of the grid.
With SN(OUT)S at 42D, knew 47A was ...ATTHEM(OUT)H, but wanted FoaminG to begin. Knew 48D probably started with RE, so finally came up with FROTH(IN)G. The rest of the puzzle proceeded apace, and for the first time in ages, got the happy music immediately after my last entry!
Very few unknowns (ERIN, CHARLY, ISLE, SUNS) and a few "sorta' knowns" (SHIV, FEY, ARGOTS, OST, OUTRE). Not my fastest Thursday, but much better than average.
Great puzzle, Alex!
1
Just checking in with readers in the path of Hurricane Florence. If you are in an area where the storm is landing, please be sure to obey first responders and keep yourselves safe.
We're thinking about you.
12
If you hear repeatedly from solvers 'one letter, one box', perhaps you should pay attention.
Rebus puzzles give the author a chance to show off, get cute and mislead.
They give the solver the chance to throw their paper/tablet/whatever across the room.
Maybe your authors could be "challenging" by using more sophisticated vocabulary instead of being "open-minded" about the rules by which crosswords are designed.
Or maybe the Times could just refund the percentage of the subscription price that corresponds with the occurrence of rebus puzzles.
5
@Shar
If you examine the comments, solvers who say "one letter, one box" are decidedly in the minority.
15
@Shar That's an interesting proposition, getting a refund for each rebus puzzle. Let's break that down:
Each month, the New York Times publishes on average 6,400 articles and blog posts*, all available on nyt.com for a price of $15 a month. That comes out to less than a quarter of a penny per item.
Let's say for the sake of argument that the puzzles are among those 6,400 items. If there are 8 rebus puzzles a month, you are due a refund of 2 cents.
To me, it makes more sense to skip the Thursday and Sunday puzzles, engross yourself with one of the other 6,398 offerings, and go your merry way.
And that's my 2 cents.
*https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/05/how-many-stories-...
5
@Shar
If I hear what you are saying, I think that you are accusing the NYT of publishing fake crosswords.
Hmm.
For us less than capable solvers it would be nice if autocheck didn't give false positives on rebus squares. So in today's puzzles all the 'I's and 'O's were marked as correct which isn't true.
1
@Checco, you have a point, although in a sense scoring that way is a bow to solvers who loath putting more than one letter in a box.
To my mind, it;s worse t have false negatives, as there seemed to be recently so many types in the puzzle where LOVE and HATE had to be boxed up just so in order to pass mustard.
An interesting issue, comparing the effects of false positives vs false negatives, but I appreciate your purist's perspective.
1
Mind-blowing fact: shoes are sized in barleycorns!
A mens' 12 was 12 inches overall (11 1/4" nominal), but increments either way are in barleycorns. A size 9 is 11 inches; a 10 is 11 1/3", etc. So a half-size is 1/6" larger than its base size. Yes, a pica is half a barleycorn. Those French took the Age of Reason too far with their new-fangled metric system. Size 44 is 44 cm. Where's the romance?
9
@Martin
This is great, thank you!!! I now have something else to impress people with. (And to blame the French for....)
And trust you to come up with a food-related fact! :-)
Now I have a question: in the US women's shoe sizes numbers are different than men's. Would you know the basis for that? (I don't)
1
@Dr W
Sure. Both men's and women's sizes come in barleycorn increments, but the "standard largest" size was chosen as 12 (12" overall/ 11 1/4" nominal) for men and 8 (9 1/2" nominal) for women. (A women's 5 is 8 1/2" nominal, showing the same barleycorn increments as men's.) It was just an attempt to emphasize the daintiness of women's feet. Marketing from the days of barleycorns.
1
@Martin
Thanks! OTOH I hope this has nothing to do with the malaise we call "corns" on toe knuckles ...
1
I thought for sure actor mark was HAMILL based on the adjacent clue being about Tatooine. Had to have been intentional!
1
@Colin Me too!
The ol' red herring!
Thanks for the fun Thursday puzzle, Alex! Great SE corner. Favourite clue: beach house? and who knew that three barleycorns measured ONEINCH, which made me change yellow trout to RAINBOWTROUT.
Once I get IN to a puzzle I find it hard to get OUT short of completion. I feel down if I have to give up. (I am human after all: if you kick me in the shIN do I not shOUT?) Love the Thursday puzzles.
5
That was a log of fun....favourite word: outré.
3
Very nice Thursday! I'm always AMAZEd at the constructing prowess that goes into rebus puzzles; the revealer in the SE corner is very impressive!
It could just be because I'm getting more accustomed to them, but I found this to be a very easy rebus...might be a good puzzle for people who are on the fence about rebus elements, to demonstrate how smooth and logical such puzzles can be.
The real difficulty for me was on the north side of the puzzle, esp. in the middle where KEFIR and CARP as a verb were both new to me.
NW corner was my favorite; very challenging, but I was able to crack it eventually...at first I had ESS for "end of mathematics" thinking it was one of those letter clues, but then ZEES clicked, which gave me QUIZ for 1a, which gave me UTE, IRK, QED and voila! I had totally forgotten about DEKE from the last time I saw it a couple weeks ago and looked it up once I got the crossing. Won't make the same mistake a third time! DEKE me once, shame on you, etc.
I loved this puzzle. I can’t believe I am saying that about a Thursday puzzle. The inbox/outbox combination was what helped me realize the rebus angle. The last thing I got was deked because I know nothing about hockey except that fights break out frequently.
The video of Marcel the Shell with shoes was hilarious, thanks Deb.
4
Clever theme, clever clueing, fun, satisfying solve, many “ahas,” no rapper references, no millenial slang, no rubbish fill. Please, more puzzles like this one. Thank you!
2
@PWS
No disrespect intended, but I've seen a pattern of comments to the effect of "don't put rappers in Xword puzzles" and I'm curious if there's something I'm missing: solvers are expected to know, or be able to guess or deduce, all sorts of proper nouns--Broadway stars, sports casters, directors, authors, athletes, weathermen, obscure singer songwriters--so why draw the line at rappers?
19
@Nick
I think there are two factors at play:
1. Primarily rappers often have odd made up names, name spelling or random letter combos. If you're not familiar with them, you are simply out of luck. Not so much with artists/bands in other genres.
2. Very controversially, I'd say there is an implicit bias against rap/hip hop. I remember growing up, the two genres of music I avoided (but wasn't unique to me, I swear) were rap and country. I don't even know why and wondered if it was learned from mass media and peers. Whether you agree or disagree, I know that I recall hearing and saying "I like most music, except rap and country."
1
@Wen
Rap is fabulous, although sometimes you need to ignore the lyrics. As is true of much of life.
Granted that this one was a tad on the easy side, but the elegance of the placement of the rebuses more than made up for it. In all the themers the INs peceded the OUTs. The revealer was in exactly the right place, and the INBOX was atop the OUTBOX just like in real life. Bravo.
Didn't fall into the THE trap at 30A because I already had the O from DOJO and the U from the YOU in my otherwise incorrect 21D. CHARLY and ISH located the Y[OUT]H, and then I saw that my FOUNTAIN was still spilling over. But if there's an OUT, why not an IN? And thus did I see the theme.
I actually got DEKED (albeit with some trepidation). It was the only thing that fit with the downs, and it tickled a (doubtless XWD-inspired) memory somewhere that it had to do with a sport, probably basketball. Whatever, it worked.
Didn't know ERIN Andrews or Dick ENBERG, but I quite like Mark HARMON. TIL the CUB SCOUT colors. And Tatooine.
My problem with physical INBOXES was that the latest thing to arrive got put on top, and the older stuff got buried, leading to sometimes less-than-timely response.
Election day today, so finally an end (for now anyway) to the robocalls -- especially annoying since I voted absentee a couple of weeks ago.
Here's hopes for the safety of all in the hurricane area.
Also, Deb, I know how stressed you must be with the upcoming move. This is me, sending you virtual chocolate.
4
@Deadline
"Didn't know ERIN Andrews or Dick ENBERG..."
Because sports...
1
@Steve L
I guess that's true for ENBERG, since the clue says he's a sportscaster, but her clue says ERIN Andrews is a host of "Dancing with the Stars." I've never seen it, but I'm pretty sure it has to do with dancing, not sports.
Erin was a sport reporter before she hosted the dancing show I think.
I believe we have a genuine pangram here.
Haven't checked if anyone else caught that.
@Dr W
I wrote the above before reading the constructor's comments.
I am often torn between commenting before or after I read the blog column. If I read the column first I sometimes find my comment anticipated and so superfluous. Life can be full of hard decisions. :-)
5
Whenever I see Q, J, Z, X in the puzzle, I start looking for K and V to see if it's a pangram. On the other hand, I sometimes get really lazy and go to xwordinfo.com. https://www.xwordinfo.com/Crossword?date=9/13/2018
For this puzzle, on the right hand side, where it says "missing: none". That indicates its a pangram. it's a whole lot easier than checking. :)
@Dr W
Today’s puzzle was the first I ever checked for all the letters. I think the tingly feeling I got when QUIZ went in straight off the bat means I may have unlocked a new level of puzzling!
1
SPELLING BEE
32 words, 133 points
I-3, L-2, N-1, P-19, T-7
First time I've tried the Spelling Bee. Boy, it's addictive and frustrating. Thought for sure I had a couple of good words in LIPLINE and TIPLINE, but neither was in the list. At least I found one pangram.
3
@Bill Shunn
Wait until you get hooked enough to try to find ALL the words, which will get you a little message that you are Queen Bee. I am not trying for QB today, stopping at 36/167. I'm just too tired from staying up so late after I got revved up over the fabulous Thursday puzzle.
@Bill Shunn
Glad you like it, and you’re right, addictive. Even when I say I’m going to stop because I might have something more important to do...a go back and stare at it some more, find a few more words, vow again to stop....
4
all right, all right! I'm at 41/183 and I've sneaked back to the computer to bang my head against the Wee Bee. Not making much progress!
Tomorrow I can compare my list with Frank Longo's in the Big Bee (slightly different--requires minimum 5 letters, and you have all week!).... I think the intent (or expectation) was that those who like the Big Bee would not bother with the daily Wee Bee. Hah. As if we could resist a word puzzle!!
No 18A about this one!!
Very well done. Without committing a spoiler (I hope!!) I would also like to say I admired the pairings.
68A and 62D are an interesting pair: the last two letters can actually be switched in this grid without changing fill meanings.
1
PS Yes I know about messing up 44D. Please ignore such.
Dr W,
I'm quite sure that *Spoiler Alerts* are required only when discussing an active Spelling Bee, not for discussing the current Crossword.
Also, for the sake of the online solvers, we have been asked to spell out entries (i.e., LITER) not refer to them by clue number (i.e., 68A), since they would have to toggle between comments and puzzle to follow.
2
Once I read the Tatooine clue I decided that for sure actor Mark was HAMILL. That hung me up for a while.
6
My solve was like many others -- faster than average, saw the rebus (1) because it was Thursday and (2) because ErIN Andrews was a dead giveaway. Didn't have "THE" on FountainOfYouth and so messed the middle up for a while. But then got really stuck because I had "SHACK" for "SHELL" in the far SE corner. Woke up at 2a this morning, it hit me like a bolt, so I tapped it into the app and went back to bed.
Favorite chuckle clues:
AKC
DEKED
DOJO
KEMO/MIME (last one to fall)
RAINBOWTROUT (as an avid fly fisherman, this one took WAY too long)
SHELL
ZEES
1
The habit of starting at the bottom of the puzzle once again serves me well. As it turned out, the 59D entry was the only vertical rebus, but this puzzle still turned out to be a fast, fun solve.
STOUTISH seems like a stretch, but for the sake of a fifth rebus, I'm willing to be forgiving. We've seen worse!
Late to the party, but oh well. It's in the Sixties here, clear and lovely! Hope that the decaying Storm Florence is less dreadful than we have feared! I have one sib in ATL and one in NoVA....hope all goes well in coming days.
4
@Mean Old Lady
Apologies of raining on your parade, but all the rebi are vertical as well.
@Mean Old Lady
"the 59D entry was the only vertical rebus"
Actually, all of the downs that crossed the relevant across squares were rebuses. But 59D was the only down that had both rebus elements in the same entry.
I'm quite sure MOL meant only vertical entry with a rebus pair.
Thursday's my favorite day, I think. Really liked this puzzle. Caught the OUT rebus fairly early on, but the IN rebus took me by surprise. I had the puzzle more than 3/4 done last night but had hit a wall, so this morning when I returned to it, I didn't expect it to progress speedily. But it did! And that lower right hand corner which had stymied me fell into place.
Huzzahs for Alex!
2
SPELLING BEE:
45 Words, 206 Points and super annoying.
E-1, I-4, L-2, N-2, P-26, T-10
Got down to a missing 5 letter word and went randomly through word roots and plain guesses. Then went back to list for "alternate spellings". Yep. Alternate spellings occur 3 times in this puzzle.
FURTHER HINT:
Try lots of random suffix-izing: men, it, et, ette, Go bowling at least twice.
Overall, too long for a Thursday! It also feels like too much guesswork of late. Meanwhile, no pelmeni. I love pelmeni in a nice chicken soup! I should have stopped at Genius like I promised myself. I want that half hour back.
7
@Liane
LEPTIN will reduce the amount of soup you consume.
1
Neither can one go pellmell thorugh this Bee.
3
@Liane Thank you Liane, I'd only gone bowling once so that was very helpful :)
Why even have a grid? Why not just, “Here’s a bunch of clues. Some of the answers may share letters. Have at it”
1
@pmb
Why have curveballs? Just blindfold every batter and tell them to swing.
2
@Steve L Is this in reply to my comment? It doesn’t seem related
@pmb
Check out the Sunday edition puzzle offerings. Sometimes gridless crossword is included in addition to the standard presentations.
I 'm not aware the gridless could include rebus fills. (Deb?)
Nice little Thursday puzzle.
1
I thoroughly enjoyed this puzzle! Early on, I thought of RAINBOWTROUT -- but it didn't fit, so I moved on. Work piles up on a desk, so I tried that for 69A, but when I got to 72A, I realized that something tricky must be going on. 65D and 66D gave me the OXs that I needed to get the theme, and I was IN great fun from there on OUT.
1
@dlr Oh -- and no lookups for me today!! (Unless you count looking up the correct spelling of Mark Hamill's name -- which turned out to be the wrong answer, anyway. The two SUNS of Tatooine must have blinded me.)
3
This one went pretty quickly. Figured out the rebus in 9D ERIN then saw the OUT in the end of 18A CARPING ABOUT. I liked the arrangement of the IN followed in the same line by the OUT. Actually didn't see the theme clues in the SE corner until I was abOUT 2/3 done.
1
So enjoyable. Over much too soon. I tried to make this last longer, like a too-tiny scoop of ice cream, but it didn't really work. I just love these kinds of puzzles and this one was especially well done.
Pretty easy as rebuses go, and I raced through the rebus-less NW in a heartbeat. But crunchy enough in the NE that, when I was having some trouble, I skipped immediately to the revealer. That's not something I always do.
What I especially love is that all the Across theme answers have both IN and OUT embedded within. I also love THIN OUT (59D) and the fact that the IN BOX is directly above the OUT BOX.
My only write over? I had M--E for "Give the silent treatment" and confidently wrote in MutE. (And, actually, I like my answer better.) Wonderful job, Alex!
6
@Nancy I agree. Probably my fastest ever rebus and half my usual Thursday time. Cute, but not filling.
Made up for irritatingly long Spelling Bee, at least!
2
Hand up for MUTE....but I had to give it the SHIV.
1
@Mean Old Lady
Saved by the Lone Ranger here....
Deb writes:
45A: I had _U_S for “Tatooine has two of them” and immediately thought “PUBS!”, but that could just be because I’m moving in the next few weeks and am stressed out. The answer, of course, is SUNS.
If you were looking to Wordplay because you didn't know the word Tatooine, I will assist our stressed out columnist by advising you that it is a planet in Star Wars.
1
@Barry Ancona
Thanks Barry. Now I don't have to look that up.
@suejean - rather an iconic image/musical cue from the first movie in the series:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gpXMGit4P8
@suejean
Ditto.
Wow, I thought this one was a ton of fun. I got it at Y(OUT)H and proceeded to solve from top to bottom ending with the cleverly stacked (IN)BOX/(OUT)BOX. That was the icing on the cake!
@Steve L, this puzzle made me totally homesick for an IN-N-OUT burger. I wish they'd expand to OH!
Thank you, Alex Eaton-Salners, this one is a gem! QED
5
I’ve gotten used to these rebus puzzles so managed to suss out the main trick early. Very nice. However I’ve never in my life heard of DEKED so was stumped there.
1
Thank goodness this was a Thursday and I was looking for the theme or I may never have solved this! Great puzzle.
Like others, I entered FOUNTAINOFYOUTH sans article initially. Also thought of RAINBOWTROUT when I read that clue. Then the LXX pretty much gave away the trick. Took a lot more thought to work out the other two, but eventually got there through crosses. Had a couple of isolated areas (notably the NW) that I had left largely blank on first pass, but as usual thinking of one key answer was enough to work it out.
Agree that FROTHING in that phrase was a bit of a stretch (have never heard that), but still a clever and well-executed theme.
OT: I live a couple of blocks off of East Ponce de Leon Avenue, which is both a significant thoroughfare from the east side to downtown (even though it's only 2 lanes out here) and also a common reference point for locating things on this side of town. But if you ever happen to be down here and pronounce that street name correctly, you just announced that you're from out of town.
Around here it's "ponts duh leon" (with the non-hispanic pronunciation of "leon"). Even more than that, it's fairly rare to ever hear the entire name. It's mostly just "ponts" or sometimes "east ponts."
1
@Rich in Atlanta, I could have written your first paragraph. I was exactly in the same boat.
1
@RiA
I sympathize with your having to endure weird pronunciations of street names.
Where I grew up in Detroit, nearby streets included Cheyenne (Shane) and Faust (Fawst).
When I lived in Mississippi, I worked in Bolivar (BOLLiver) and Lafayette (LaFAYette) Counties.
Hope your back is feeling better.
Thanks, CHARLY. The placement of your final letter clued me in very early that there must be a rebus at work. I enjoyed tracking down the INs and OUTs of this very clever puzzle.
If the other rebus puzzles in Will's backlog are half as good as this one, bring it on!
4
IN/OUT? Please stopping playing with the boxes. I doubted my very reality when FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH did not seem to fit.
Everyone hates playful games.
2
@David Connell
I gotta ask: are there any other kind?
@Dr W - I guess I forgot to put my "sarcasm" emoji on that one.
A lovely puzzle with enough resistance to make it interesting. And Deb, I am staring hatefully at my physical inbox as I type. :-)
1
It took me a little while to get the - pardon me for saying this - “in”s and “out”s of this puzzle but according to the stats I finished 7 minutes faster than my average for Thursdays. When it doesn’t fit, chances are it’s a rebus.
6
*stand*g!!
Loved every m*ute and *did myself solv*g this one.
21
OUTstandINgly clever puzzle that was a pleasure to solve. Both long themers were immediately identified, but locating the rebus squares in them took time. Alex need have no qualms about the revealer. It is fine as it it.
LTD before LLC (Wrong side of the pond). A brief Natick at the cross between 28D and 23A, for which the first guess sufficed.
TIL DEKED
6
@Amitai Halevi
Correction
... the cross between 28D and 43A ...
Xteresting Ycome
held my Xterest throughY
Am I more Xclined to enjoy rebuses? "Yes yes!" IshY.
7
The fun week continues with this great rebus puzzle. Luckily I had enough in THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH entry to not make the mistake of leaving out THE, so got the ins and outs quite quickly. I especially like a rebus with no more that 3 letters as that is all that shows up on my iPad in across lite.
I'm glad some people are beginning to like rebus puzzles.
I hope all those in the path of Florence will let us know if they are okay .
3
Suejean,
Before discovering the Fountain, I realized CARPING AT wasn't going to work with the crosses...
(Here's to a lower category for Florence)
1
@Barry Ancona
A lower category and an end to the stall that threatens to exacerbate the flooding.
I’m beginning to like rebuses and this one really helped. Clever, clear and fun.
Great work on this one, Alex Eaton-Salners!
11
First time in ages I didn’t need Debs clues to help me. And a rebus as well! Got stuck for awhile with HEMS not HEES had to look up CHARLY but generally in my wheelhouse. Also equalled my fastest time. I expect to return to reality tomorrow.
5
@Bml yay, you! Keep up the great solving!
One Bee grumble and I will buzz away. I’ve had suspicions before that SB words appearing on the “yesterday’s game” list were words I’d entered and the Bee spat out. But I wasn’t sure. Now I am certain, because I took a screen shot of my game. I entered baba, got the rejection shake, and now I see it on the list. So glitching annoying.
3
@Passion for Peaches
Thank you for the confirmation ... at times I thought I was losing my mind!
1
I noticed this too.... I also entered Baba and was rejected, along with a couple of other words on the final list.
I entered BABA and had it rejected that night (just after midnight my time). I knew it was acceptable from earlier SB's. I tried it again the next morning and it took it. It sounds like there was a problem with the word list that got corrected.
This was the most fun puzzle ever, I think so! I knew something was up because (a) it was Thursday and (b) there was just no way that "the fountain of youth" was incorrect. At first, I thought maybe it was a joke, and would be "the fountain of you" and then I thought maybe the TH would be outside the line. But catch on, I did. And laughed and laughed. Thank you so much!
But I should have waited until morning, since now I'm tempted to stay up until after SB is available @ 3 A!
4
@Mary SB?
@Laurence of Bessarabia
SB is the Spelling Bee game at https://www.nytimes.com/puzzles/spelling-bee
@mikeq
TY for the URL!!
My first Thursday rebus with no help, google or peeking. Small sense of smug satisfaction that I can't share with anyone I know... except you guys. Suitably caught the RAINBOWTROUT last, but that was probably because I never knew that skirts features FLARES...
8
@Dan Share away, Dan! We’re proud of you!
"...I never knew that skirts features FLARES..."
They don't, Dan; that was wordplay. A pleated skirt would have pleats (plural), but flare is a style but not also thing, so an individual skirt either does or does not have flare (singular).
Don’t you mean “flair”?
In re Constructor's note:
And I noted a more amusing symmetry between 30 A and 47 A.
One of the first Thursdays I found the theme and rebuses quickly but that NE corner gave me such trouble!
Rebus awareness came early with ER(IN) Andrews, but the OUT rebuses took a little longer, until THE FOUNTA(IN) OF Y(OUT)H appeared.
Fun puzzle, and a fairly quick solve - just a tad under half my Thursday average.
Liked the stacked IN/OUT BOXes.
6
This was a fun little puzzle. I like doing a rebus. I use Across Lite on an iPad and it has a rebus entry key
Solving the instructions for multiple letters and rebus squares or whatever—- is very difficult for an old man —- it’s enough that do can text on this iPhone without goofing up wrong letters with elderly forefinger— I spent hours at the Cerizon store after
2
Deb- rest assured, some of us still have wire inboxes, along with the virtual ones. I actually faxed something the other day. I think it may have gone into another dimension and come out in 1991.
10
23A "Bears: Lat."
What does the "Lat." stand for?
@Job Latin.
1
@Job - Latin. Ursus / Ursa is a bear in Latin - though I wonder if others thought "fert" belonged there? That's the verb "bears" in Lat.
Latin.
A great, fast puzzle. Is there a short cut to turn on the rebus function? I lost time scrolling up, clicking, going down....
@Adrienne The "Insert" key on my laptop keyboard works for that.
@Adrienne
You might want to check out the link Deb put in the first paragraph of today's Wordplay column. It explains all about rebuses and down toward the bottom are instructions for entering rebuses for computers or mobile devices.
1
@Adrienne
You must be a real speed demon if "scrolling up, clicking, going down" slows you up significantly!
Like one of my venerable ancestors, this was great, great, great! Yes, count me as one who loves rebuses, especially when a) I can spot them, and b) they only become evident at the very end of the crossword, so after an intense struggle everything magically falls into place.
The only problem with doing crosswords right when they are published is that I am now so amped I'll probably be up for 4 hours ... a small price to pay for such a rich solving experience. Thank you, Alex!
5
mprogers,
I like your openin line, but assuming we share a species (I mean, Tatooine was in the puzzle), you have considerably more than one "great, great, great" ancestor (although more people than some think have fewer than 32).
N.B. "Openin" was a typo, not dialect.
@Barry Ancona
Nothin wrong with showing off your origins.
:-)
In your description of 49D you begin with TIL. What does that stand for?
Fountain of youth was easy fill, except none of the downs fit. It threw me off for a while. I knew it meant there was a rebus but I didn't see the revealers. When I saw the XX in the lower right, everything became clear.
@Ted B
It's short for Today I Learned
You can think of it as Wordplay-ese. I’ve never seen TIL anywhere else. OTOH, AFAIK it’s common text-speak.
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@David Meyers
OK, I know OTOH, but AFAIK?
As rebi go, this one was pretty tame, but a lot of fun. Thanks, Deb, for explaining the QED clue, so I didn't have to look it up.
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With so many black squares in the grid and the NW and SE corners mostly isolated, I immediately suspected a rebus. INBOX on top of OUTBOX was pretty cool. But LXX was pretty weak. Did the author at least try to use Foxx (as in Jamie Foxx) for the XX? His notes don’t say.
Although QUIZ is a nice entry, QED and ZEES are not. Author seems to have gone completely out of his way to include the Q.
@Julian
Re QUIZ set al., the constructor’s notes express regret over that corner which was in pursuit of a pangram puzzle.
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@Julian
You might want to check the Constructor Notes in the Wordplay column, where he explains that the puzzle was accepted 17 months ago and what he would do differently if he were constructing it today.
@Julian
Agree with Alex and y'all about the Q/Z thing not being worth it. I've never understood the pursuit of the pangram, never notice when the puzzle is one, and don't see that it adds anything.
But the sheer elegance of the INBOX on top of the OUTBOX, and that right down at the bottom and the right-hand side of our desk, excuses LXX. I'd know Redd Foxx before Jamie (neither of which fits without grid redesign), but LXX is a gimme with even the most rudimentary knowledge of Roman numerals.
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QED demands a bit of Bernstein:
https://youtu.be/Vmc72fCJivA?t=1m53s
My mathie colleagues below the age of 40 eschew QED at the end of proofs. They use a little square box in the modern world, and argue about whether it is solid or outline or has a check mark in it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tombstone_(typography)
-30-
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@David Connell - for the religious studies crowd, by the way, LXX doesn't only mean "seventy" but is the standard shorthand for the Septuagint, an ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible that is extremely important in interpretation of the scriptures. LXX because there was by tradition a group of 72 scholars who did the translation (they rounded down).
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@David Connell
I guess cluing it as "the standard shorthand for the Septuagint" would have been too much of a gimme. :-)
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@ad absurdum
vot did you zay?
Revised will have some solvers FROTHINGATTHEMOUTH.
I thought this was nicely done, cute, but not overly so.
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Enjoyed this puzzle. Caught on with CUB SCOUT, although the IN rebus came to me a little later. Much faster than average Thursday, but still not close to a record. Nice to have it out of the way on Wednesday night though - won't have to sneak it in at work on Thursday.
@Andrew
Where do you work? I want to tell your boss you do xwords at work. ;-)
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@Andrew
Likewise caught on with CUBSCOUT and discovered the IN rebus later.
Had a flashback to last night when the fourth clue was for a French word. I loved this puzzle, lots of fun and it's always exciting to discover a Rebus.
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@Tyler
Had a flashback to last night when the fourth clue was for a French word.
C'est la vie!
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@Tyler
And you “seated” a maitre d’. :-)
Day before yesterday, it was cheeses. Yesterday, it was French food.
This puzzle has got me wanting to fly out to the West Coast just to get a burger.
http://www.in-n-out.com/
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@Steve L Yeah, we're supposed to be boycotting them for some reason about something, sometime, someplace. Doesn't seem to have affected the line at the one in my neighborhood one iota. If y'all don't know about Karl from San Francisco, do you know about animal? (Or did we all have that conversation when SECRET MENU was an answer?)
@K Barrett
Their website has Animal listed on their "not-so-secret menu".
Having only been out west once in my lifetime, I've missed out on the experience. However, here in the east, we have Five Guys and Shake Shack, which are not as big a deal as all the hype they get would indicate.
But I see the West Coast now has those two as well.
THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH gave away the rebus pretty early. I had DOJO and CHARLY and the ISH of STOUTISH already, so I knew it wasn't FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH, which would have fit the squares.
I liked the design aspect of the INs running NE to SW in a sort of diagonal or arc, and the OUTS running along another (rougher) arc farther away from the NW corner. I kind of wanted them to light up when I was done to make it more visible.
The EBB/LOO/LXX corner was a little weird, but it was worth it for the stacked IN and OUT boxes.
@Liz
Not for me. While Acrossing I’d put in FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH - no rebuses and it fits!? So I didn’t discover the rebuses for awhile after that.
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I did the same with FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH.
And it was STOUTISH that clued me into the rebus. And then the revealer clinched it.
The theme reminds me of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49H0IfoILwQ
VERY cute! started with IN BOX and OUT BOX and thus the theme was revealed! Like RAINBOW TROUT and YOU AGAIN the best!
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Missed opportunity for belly button clues
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I had OUTIE for a few brief seconds at 62D.