Argh. I figured out the "trick" easily enough, but couldn't come up with the right answer to 5A. I was stuck with I__RAM, didn't know the mob boss name, and went back and forth with ICHAT or ECHAT.
Once I finally read INGRAM in one of the comments here, it all came together.
Frustrating to solve the hard part of the puzzle but get beaten by two random squares.
2
What a lousy puzzle. Lots of obscure clues with little connection to the answers. Just garbage, all around. I hate it when puzzles are this annoying.
5
Mr. Haight owns to difficulty cluing "inner beauty." If it shows up again, it's a wonderful name for a Jamaican hot sauce.
1
This puzzle was difficult but fun. But that's not my subject.
Weekend special puzzles are available on a very erratic basis. For a while they were functional after 6PM ET on Thursdays. Then they didn't appear till later ... at various times. Today the showed up on Thursday but had bad links.
I don't really care when you release these puzzles, but bad links and unpredictable schedules are signs of amateur management. Can someone please get the puzzle department under control?
1
Hi Jess,
Thanks for the bug report. I'll pass this on to the tech team (the publication of the puzzles is automated).
39a, HERE GOES NOTHING. But I came down to earth after taht. Generally my first instincts (aside from 39a) turned out to be correct. Fun puzzle.
1
Arlington Puzzle Festival championship puzzle. For the first time in six appearances, I was not at the final board (getting old and slow!), my spot going to Young Matt. They still haven't posted the standings online that I can tell. Pretty sure Matt and Rob were faster, but Mike and I seem to think we were tied in rounded-to-the-minute finishes, so they must have gone to seconds to break the tie. I finished puzzle #4 in 5:51, significantly faster than the three finalists, but I attribute that to (1) lack of pressure, and (2) pencil-and-paper solve, which is mechanically easier than going back and forth between the clue sheet and the whiteboard.
I had my schadenfreude moment when I silently pointed out to Rob his one incorrect square, which was one of my erasures, filling in IPODS and then correcting (or not, in Rob's case!) to IPADS. The error dropped him to second, giving the title to Mike. Matt, relatively inexperienced, resigned just before the ten-minute mark, with a few blank squares in the vicinity of EGGO and NISEI, which is ironically where I got my toehold. I can never keep NISEI and ISSEI straight, but I filled in the SEI part, and STOLI and PRIMAL URGES helped me quickly spread to the second theme entry. I wrote in THAT'S A LIE backward, but once I figure out only the last word was backward, the theme fell quickly (and for once was a theme that helped fill in the other entries).
Great job by all the competitors! There's always next year....
3
So sorry, PJ, that you slipped down a peg, but congratulations anyway on how well you did.
We'll be looking for you next year.
1
This was a tough one. I knew something punny was going on with the theme clues, but darned if I could figure out what. Stumbled into INGRAM and had no idea about SYRAH, but many of the nontheme clues yielded to the fourth or fifth hard stare.
A;ways glad to survive another Thursday puzzle!
4
Aside from the entertaining puzzle, I would like to commend Dr. Haight on having the grace to hang his head about YARNED. (I don't care how many dictionaries it's in, or if it's printed in gold in the OED, it's awful.)
Suspected the back part right away, at 17A, but wasn't sure exactly how the gimmick was going to be executed. But with that in mind, it was easy to figure out when I got to 26A.
Didn't know INGRAM, UBS, NIA (sort of), SYRAH, BUGLE. Some stuff took some thinking: EGGO, MVP, SOLAR CAR.
Loved the nontheme longies, especially SOLAR CAR, PRIMAL URGES, INNER BEAUTY.
Thanks a lot for a satisfying Thursday. And yrrruh.
5
This is what I think of when I see YARNED:
https://www.google.com/search?q=yarn+bomb&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&...
1
Attention emus!
Hmm. Interesting. My comment from before, which I did see here an hour ago, seems to have disappeared. I see it in the "Readers' Picks", but not here. Poof!
Just letting you emus know...
1
I see that the immortal words of The Terminator came up in the comments, but none of you have done this one, so I feel I have to:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QOkSvLqkafU
1
Actually got some of the last theme words (the ones spelled backward) but kept finding other possible beginnings to the phrases. Several other answers I simply didn't know. Result: the puzzle took me just over an hour - in several sessions.
Nonetheless I really like these Thursday constructions.
1
Since Deb mentioned the KenKen tournament, I'm going to mention my excitement that they noe have a Seniors division!
1
Go git 'em, Gene!
I'm having a block of some kind...can someone explain how "More than 1% or 2%" is WHOLE?
Got milk? ;^)
Whole, 1%, 2%, skim....
It refers to milk, 1% or 2% fat.
Ah of course. Thank you!
There was a similar puzzle in July 2014, except that the implied BACk came in the middle of the answer - YGGIPRIDE clued as "Little kid's lift, literally".
2
Super intro today, Deb!
Ah, the JOYS of XW solving! Got INGRAM, RYE, KENNYG, and a few other gimmes to start, but what was going on with those theme answers? Eventually guessed that there was some reverse element, and then worked out 17A—the trick involved just the last word, not the whole phrase. This revelation helped a whole lot going forward. The triple SSS in 49A did throw me off a tad, but not for long. Must remember SYRAH for next time. Well done, Bruce Haight.
“Up the Hill SDRAW” (OK, “Backwards”) was the 3rd single released from David Bowie’s 1980 album “Scary Monsters.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFUY_mnKHvg
2
Jimbo, just wanted to mention that I'm surprised at how often I read your introduction to your musical link, tell myself "oh, I've never heard that," and then discover that I recognize it when I play the link.
I guess there's a whole lot of music that I've heard but never really registered what the name of it was.
1
That's good to hear, Rich. Just be grateful you don't have to hear try to sing them, or you'd never be able to tell what I'm getting at. :^D
1
I have an acquaintance who claims to have befriended Don Mclean in the 1980s, and to have had numerous discussions with him about the American Pie lyrics. According to him:
Upon learning of the plane crash, Mr. Mclean, who at the time was performing in various venues along the Hudson, sought the companionship of his drinking pals to reflect upon the tragedy. He drove to New Rochelle to their usual watering hole, a bar called The Levee and found it closed. He then proceeded to another bar in Rye where he found his friends drinking whiskey.
Despite the fact Mr. Mclean has relatively recently revealed the meaning of the lyrics which do not include my friend's theory, he stands by his story.
2
Bobby, Mclean was 14 years old when that plane crash occurred.
..
1
Actually he was 13, but when he wrote the song he was 25, and the lyrics are obviously from that perspective. How many 13 year-olds drive Chevys?
2
The Levee *was* a bar in New Rochelle, but when (if ever) Don McLean frequented it, when "the music died" and when he wrote the song are at least two if not three different years.
http://www.newrochelletalk.com/node/93
1
I got the trick right away, and after toying with LOOKING BACK and ANIMAL URGES, there was no turning back. Since we're promoting products like EGGO and BUGLE, let me give a shout-out to Eagle Rare rye, the go-to for a perfect sazerac.
1
Who was that movie character who closed the movie with the line "I'LL EB" ?
4
Sorry Dr W, but I made that reference earlier. Arnold made it as the Terminator. LOL.
1
First used in "The Terminator," but Ah-nold has recited the line in many of his movies since.
1
Your comment has helped me see an error of commission on my part. The Beatle song, for conformity's sake, should read: "teG." All apologies.
1
I must commit SYRAH to memory. The oenophilic term might get me out of a jam in a Scrabble contest...My solve stalled woefully until I determined the 'back at you' trick. Things would GO WELL after that aha moment. 49a relieved me on the worrisome anguish that accompanies a crash and burn feeling...It was an educated GUESS in the NE, as the 12 square was the last letter entered. The fill would have it no other way. My pass-fail angst all hinged on the slow stab I took at the purply grape..."Get kcaB" saw Billy Preston sitting in with the Beatles on their 4/69 release of the #1 single. Has it been 48 and a half years already?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mXzIftmpDY
After all, "It was 20 years ago today, Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play." Jimi Hendrix completes a Beatles twofer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMmhHBr7WDA
AND SO It Goes,
Bru
2
Shiraz could be useful as well, Bru, same grape in fact. But I think grape varieties are proper nouns, at least in the U.K.
1
The NYT doesn’’t capitalize grape varieties. And syrah is a valid Scrabble word.
1
I sort of realized that, Peaches. It still looks strange to me with a small "S".
Consider me Ecclesiasted! Crash. Burn. Flames.
1
Don’t OBSESS on it. Concentrate instead on your INNERBEAUTY.
3
Extended version of what Johan said below - I woke up at 3 a.m. (fighting yet another cold), decided to take a shot at the puzzle and was getting nowhere. I think I had the NW corner and just a few other guesses filled in. Told myself I was never going to get it, closed AL and went back to bed, feeling like a total DUMAS.
When I got back up I decided to take one more shot at it. My first time through I had looked at 10d (MORDECAI) and thought "I'll never remember that." This time I filled it in immediately. Same thing with 21a. Then I figured out the first two themers more or less simultaneously and the whole thing filled in smoothly. Oh, I am not good at writing backwards and had to go from back to front one square at a time. EMOC was the only one I managed.
Question for subscribers of Xword Info - something that's bothered me before. The answer for the themers in today's puzzle are listed as interpreted. e.g. 26a is listed as ITAKETHATBACK. That's fine for a rebus, but with tricks like this, I'm always thinking - "that's not what was in the puzzle." It was ITAKETAHT. Just seems misleading and inaccurate to me. Wonder what others think about that.
1
Rich, I hadn't looked at Xwordinfo yet--I agree with you that it's strange. I would have expected the answers to be given as they appeared in the puzzle.
2
I've posted on the point before, RiA. Xwordinfo has to make decisions all the time about rebus puzzles, trick puzzles, etc. - when entering information into the database. It's kind of a sub-division of library science (woo hoo for library science, archivists and allies!). How to record "what was" at the same time as recording "what it meant" or "what it was meant to represent"? Quite a conundrum.
Over the years, quite an accumulation. It would be worth a page on xwordinfo from the folks who've actually had to make the choices over the years about what to record, and how.
When I did my "Star Wars" research over the past weekend, I was thinking that way, too. There are plenty of "Star Wars" clues/fills that won't come up with a "Star Wars" search - and a good number of non-"Star Wars" items that will. [Side note: JavatheHutt came up; it's a coffee-related pun on a name from "Star Wars".]
This is why researchers - people who pay attention to details - will never be out of date. The murderer last Sunday happens to have had the same first/last name as an actress. Her life - and her google results - are changed forever, by that simple fact. As the great orange ball would say, Sad! But this is where scholarship is born, and why researchers will always have work to do.
1
I usually don't look at the list part of xwordinfo, just Jeff's (and anyone else's) comments, so I hadn't noticed it until you called it to my attention.
1
As another commentator remarked, this one looked impossible to start with but then the words and crosses started to connect and I actually did no lookups. That's a wow. Backwards and forwards. Sort of like spreading a napkin on a wine spill and watching the red fluid ooze outward.
For all and Bruce H, APATONEHT.
2
Took a little while to catch on, but once I got it my INNER CHILD overcame my PRIMAL URGE to give up. Enjoy this, which was my introduction to the wonderful Lake Street Dive. A fun version of I Want Uoy
https://youtu.be/6EPwRdVg5Ug
1
Splendid puzzle.
1
It took me seemingly forever to figure out the trick. Once I did it was like “doh”, which made this a very enjoyable and entertaining puzzle. Thanks to the creator.
2
The strange combo of HT at the end of 26A gave me the 'in' and the rest of the puzzle fell pretty easily despite some thorny Unknowns (the R&B pair, the bank, the battle) and I give Bruce Haight a high five for this puzzle. Bruce, why not change your name to Luv?
1
Sam unknowns for me, MOL. Plus Esther's adoptive parent and the grape.
After solving the puzzle, I was certain I knew what image Deb would select as the lead photo for the column. I was not disappointed. It would GO WELL with my morning coffee (if not with the RYE from American Pie, or the STOLI).
OLE!
2
An ideal puzzle is one where your first pass makes you think it's impossible, followed by solving it unaided. This one qualified.
24
What a succinct way of summarizing what makes a tough crossword great! agree 100%
4
I guess the comments will be thgir. Gimmicky yet doable. Not my favorite kind of puzzle.
1
Noel, did you see we wave when we drove through ABQ? Once on a Sunday, once on a Friday!
I wondered who the lady was with the quilted hairdo.
comments reply button not working. This is in reply to the comment on the three successive 's'es on 49A. With the theme, GUESS WHO'S BACK, makes sense.
Rodzu. See my reply to Viv below.
This lived up to expectations for my favorite day of the week. The NE corner was a snap for me, so I had enough letters in 26A to get the theme quite quickly, so could go back to the first one and make some sense of it. What a fun idea and great AHA moment.
There were some quite tough fills, but managed most of them without help, although I had sport instead of SHIRT for Polo clue, which did fit 3 of the letters, and Seneca briefly for the orator, ( not sure he was one, but all I could think of at first). I did have to look up Ari.
The great week continues. Feel free to do a Thursday any time, Bruce.
8
Hand P
U for SpoRT before SHIRT, but I quickly erased the P and O realizing it could go another way.
I saw Dr. Haight's byline, remembered it is Thursday, and smiled. In that order. No disappointment here, although it was probably my fastest Thursday. Somehow I just knew it was WE'LL BE (right back) and then saw the reversal of the 'HG'. I did have to wait for I TAKE TAHT before I could be sure each themer ended with 'back', and then it was clear sailing. I had to sing the chorus from American Pie, but thankfully no one but my avatar was traumatized by TAHT.
We have a few rhyming answers -- PSY/RYE/SPY/SPRY/CRY. In all, a puzzle full of JOYS.
As Arnold might say, I'LL EB!
1
My love of Tricksday Rebus puzzles is well known. I, in point of fact, may have a "No Rebus Allowed" sign on my lawn. My rants aside this one was very good.
The rebus idea was a solid and the surrounding fill was not the usual dreck required to support the puzzle type that shall not be named.
First fill for 17A: And now a word.
Nice one Bruce
Very similar: Now for a word (from our sponsor)
That might work for a Sunday xwp.
Lovely Thursday puzzle, which I managed to solve despite initial misgivings. I made a few confirmatory Google checks and one a priori look-up: KENNY G. the G might as well have been D, as dO WELL is as good as GO WELL.
My Aha! moment came early. The NE corner was satisfactorily filled, so TAHT at the end of 26A stood out like a sore thumb and clearly had to be reversed. The other themers followed easily.
My last obstacle was INNER BEAUTY. I had SpoRT before SHIRT, elf before TOT and was not familiar with “Pros and Minis”. GISTS, then STU and
GUESS ___ cleaned up the corner and got me the gold star.
A minor nit: IMO, the answer to 49A, as clued, is GUESSOHW (only two consecutive S’es). To better accommodate the third S, I would have preferred a clue like “____ ___ here again.”
1
No, Amitai, the answer as read "in full" is GUESS WHO'S BACK. Like all the other themers, the word BACK is implied by the reversal.
1
Sorry Viv and Rodzu, my bad.
I was trying to make a grammatical point and flubbed it. My "emendation" lost the BACK.
The moral: think before you post.
Amitai,
מודה ועוזב ירוחם
Or, there's a special place in Heaven for those who admit a mistake.
4
Toughness, satisfying aha, and big smile on the clue for BOTH (which had me thinking "olio"). This puzzle gave me a fair fight all the way to victory, and that is a recipe for a terrific experience -- a delicious solve.
Or, put another way,
The puzzle didn't quite BREAK YM,
But it did make me feel like I've been TO HECK DNA,
And at some point perhaps even KNOCKING ENO,
But in the end I happily CLAWED MY YAW.
Such a good time!
Once you do a Bruce Haight puzzle, you'll NEVER OG!
14
Oh, and Deb, your opening section was marvelous, with spark, humor and wisdom. Brava!
4
Nice aha moment when I figured out the backwards theme. That enabled me to correctly guess at things I didn’t know like DUMAS and MORDACHAI. Wanted ICHAT and could shake that off so DNF because of the G. Still fun and satisfying.
3
Solver's demise? : stabbedehtni!
Pure evil...!
10
and Elke
Floundering (no 'sand dabs') around in the NW , because I wanted Gotti for NITTI, TIL were ICER with a new clue, and GCHAT etc. Headed south and finally the GROSZ dropped that I needed to add 'back' to make the whole phrase make sense. Ah so ! Very revelc.
Maybe one needs a shot of RYE or STOLI or sip a fine SYRAH....
Noticed that the SPY in the SW was balanced in the SE by SPRY.
Anyway, the THERE'S NO GNINRUT made me think of Judy Collins and Pete Seeger and their OLDIE which I think is BLISS :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA9e-vWjWpw
Re puzzle- B.H. -please ,this was fun AND DO EMOC soon.
10
Oh, Elle, I had the same thought and listened to a version with just Pete Seeger a while back, and was going to try to find this one, so you have saved me the trouble. Judy Collins is my second favorite singer (Joan Baez just beats her) and Pete Seeger is just simply my first favorite person. I'm still full of tears.
6
That pie is calling to me.
At first I thought this must be a rebus, but of course I couldn't make any “squished-box” variations fit. Finally, ITAKETAHT(back) emerged, and the rest of the themers followed. That didn’t make the rest of the fill easy, though. This was slow gniog for me. One step forward, two steps kcab.
I like very much, so cheers and thanks a lot. Now I’ll go get my STOLI and Bolly and tottle along, Dahlings.
(In honor of LSD and STOLI I’d intended to link a Pats and Eddie clip, from Absolutely Fabulous, but now that I’ve watched it I’m not sure the highlights clip of the dynamic duo is suitable for the NYT. It’s funny, though.)
3
All you solvers who got through this one without getting flustered, give yourselves a pat on eht. YARNED it!
14
Well into this one I thought Will had mistakenly put a Saturday puzzle on Thursday, Then, after I got it,I couldn't help thinking "why didn't I get it sooner?" Tired, I guess. Good one, Bruce.
4
It wasn't as effortless for me as for other commenters. I was able to get a lot of cross clues, and eventually it clicked that something was strange about several long across answers. (I was forewarned, of course, because it's a Thursday puzzle.)
It was a challenge, but a very rewarding one.
9
also got it right way with And don't EMOC! Also we'll be THGIR! Very clever. Another oldie but goodie today with American Pie -- "took my Chevy to the levee ... drinking whisky and RYE. that'll be the day that I die!
1
@David Connell—I posted this earlier this evening on the previous puzzle’s page, but it ended up in the wrong place (i.e. as a new thread rather than as a reply to your comment.). SPOILER ALERT: Skip if you haven’t done the Wednesday puzzle yet.
David, regarding your plaint about the lack of duality between hetero and gay, I indeed concur with you that our society often separates humanity into "straight" or "gay," which is incorrect; of course, there are many other categories.
However, from a strictly crossword clue/answer point of view, there's no nit to pick. That's due to the word "say," which means, roughly, "as an example." Thus, "hetero" is an example of NONGAY. So is asexual. Just like "Oak, say" can clue TREE.
3
Still quirks in the comment system - more than a few people wrote that their replies appeared in the wrong places, both as new threads and in unrelated ones!
I understand your point, but it does remind me of a bit from Umberto Eco, where there is a couple who hear noises from the yard in the night. The wife wakes up her husband, "There's a man in the yard!" The husband looks out the window and says, "There isn't a man in the yard." Had he said, "There is..." then certain information would have been given. But when he says "There isn't..." the wife doesn't know whether there may be an extra-terrestrial, a tiger, a boy, a troop of ponies, or two men in the yard - or nothing at all.
5
A reco for the Eco.
2
A great idea for a new product - the Amazon Eco.
"Umberto, is our universe real?"
5
At least you know what we hate, ha.
3
I think we need a song playing in the background for the comments for this puzzle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnfSoaJxe3Y
6
Or perhaps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6gKe9Fr2ok
5
What you say? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8Tiz6INF7I
3
It took me a little extra time to correct ANIMAL URGES.
3
and I started with NORMAL URGES.
4
Weighed PRIMAL vs ANIMAL.
Which (as Viv points out) are both NORMAL.
1
I always expect something interesting from Mr Haight, and he didn't disappoint today. It took me a while to figure out what was going on, but when I did it was a nice Aha! moment. AND DON'T EMOC was the one that solidified for me what was going on. I never heard of the battle of RIVOLI, but I guess that's where the street name in Paris came from?
I enjoyed Mr Haight's comment about the improved clue for INNER CHILD. I'm currently at the beach (Hilton Head) and on this morning's long walk on the beach we saw that there was a group of dolphins close offshore, swimming along at just about our walking pace. We followed them down the beach for a mile or so. And we realized that almost no one walking in the other direction had seen them--most people were looking at the sand, or for shells, or engrossed in their earbuds. So we started pointing out the dolphins to everyone. And the looks of happiness and joy on people's faces were just delightful. One woman literally jumped up and down and said, "I feel 12 again! They're wonderful!" So that was our contribution to warmth, nostalgia, and happiness today.
19
Loved the trick and how, even after getting it (right away on the first themer), it was still hard to discover the exact wording of the affected entries. A good solid challenge tonight.
1.38
8
1.33. Bogeyed every day this week so far after being below par every day last week.
1
On the first themer? Way to go! Eventually figuring out the themers was the only thing that saved me. 1.45.
Thanks for more data! Love it. Bottom line, I'm glad to have a little challenge, above average solve times are not a bad thing! In the end, that's what keeps me (us?) hooked.
3