Great theme expertly crafted. Well done!!
I'm a little bummed as I lost my streak of 276 consecutive solves with no help on Thursday's puzzle. Got stuck and forgot to go back before the deadline to try again. :( New streak begins today! ;-)
Question: is there any way to clear your times? I've never played for time, and often have left the puzzle "on" for hours, so I'd like to clear them start over.
2
Hi Dan,
Hit the Feedback button on your device and send an email requesting a clear. Going through Feedback gives the team the information to help you.
1
Thanks, Deb, will do!
1
I thoroughly enjoyed this puzzle. I am a regular at solving the NY Times crossword, daily and Sunday. I found this puzzle to be particularly creative and intelligent. Thank you.
3
Impressive piece of work. SOTOMAYOR seemed the most impressive fit for some reason, but it's all great. At first sight I agreed with Andrew, that bow speed isn't strictly related to tempo, but then it's hard to come up with an example of slow bowing and up tempo. Maybe bowing a long, not too loud pedal tone while someone else is playing fast? No matter: besides the impressive theme, there is a marked lack of entries to cavil at. And I learned that Lao is a tonal language. Bravo, Mr. Fagliano!
1
It takes supreme intelligence to create a puzzle of this caliber, and Joel nailed it. Superb!
1
Still don't understand 107D, tho I got the whole puzzle done without a lot of angst. But I never saw the Justices names! Guess my brain just doesn't work that way.
IMDB is the Internet Movie Database, which has information on 'thousands' of movies, including the 'casts' [of thousands].
1
The usual long Sunday slog but came under 4 hours. I got OBSTRUCTIONOFJUSTICE About an hour into the fray. The upper half showed the Supreme Court Justices appeared early. The lower half weren’t apparent .
Mr Fagliano is an acutely !gifted constructor. Yes, he works hard, yet there is an uncommon grace and sparkle to his puzzles. A master at his craft. Thank you
7
A very amusing result, at the end of the puzzle. But once again, us diagramless solvers have to figure out for ourselves that the grid is 20x21 instead of the usual 21x21. Someday the Times will give us a heads up on irregular grids.
I ran into problems with:
OTRANTO/ANSONIA (could eventually get from crossings and the theme)
NSA/LAO (had to think about slant cluing for NSA)
ORIENTE/ROC (for me, this R crossing had to be done by trial and error)
I would have clued ROC differently, so two obscure answers didn't cross like that.
Ingenious theme.
4
Whew! What a great one. I think this is a personal best weekender for me — 3:26:15 and I only looked up two letters at the very end: OTRANTO/ANSONIA and ORIENTE/LENTO, where I was just guessing for a letter.
A really satisfying puzzle. I can’t imagine the difficulty in working the justices in. Kudos!
3
Eminently satisfactory.
4
excellent puzzle! did it all and then tried to figure out the theme. got it at STEPHEN BREYER! and then went back and saw all the rest. A SUPREME accomplishment!
4
For purposes of this puzzle, BREYERs is really JUST ICE cream. But Blue Bell still reigns SUPREME!
6
Great Puzzle!
2
Diabolically clever theme. Spotted the clue for 67A and figured it would be beneficial to number the designated rows (solving in print still has some advantages). KAGAN and SOTOMAYOR were the first two to emerge, so for a short while I assumed all the themers would be present justices, but ABEFORTAS disabused me of that notion. IDBM is one of my bookmarked favorites, so I avoided the CAPUCHIN rigmarole.
Given today's theme, it seems only natural to post "THE BOSS" by ex-Supreme Diana Ross. The song made the Pop Top 20 in 1979:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NO0bwjkPdBk
3
This puzzle reminded me of a law school near me, briefly named the Antonin Scalia School of Law before someone noticed .... The Antonin Scalia Law School it is.
3
Ah, good old George Mason
4
Getting the justices' names in there was amazing! Nicely done!
2
Thanks to Joel Fagliano for a challenging (for me) yet solvable Sunday puzzle. I have long admired Mr Fagliano's facility with the daily minis. Keep up the great work!
3
Wow. Talk about doing justice to a theme! Perhaps we should just call Mr. Fagliano the Supreme Constructor.
Bravo!
19
Great puzzle which I think must have been constructed well before the current foofaraw.
I appreciate Deb's inclusivity, but I have to say this puzzle made me ineluctably sad, especially when I recall Beyonce's beautiful version of "At Last" from 2009:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/GZ-q0BajNFQ
How fast and far we have fallen....
3
Having read Horace Walpole’s “The Castle of Otranto,” or at least part of it, made the castle town a relative gimme for me. IMO one of the worst novels ever published in English, reputed to be the first gothic novel, it was hilarious for all the wrong reasons. I’ve often thought that English courses should include a bad classic novel to show aspiring writers how not to do it. Try it - you're not required to finish. Page after page of eerie episodes without a point in sight.
3
Wonderful feat of construction! Got 67A quickly, then put dots next to the rows indicated (I'm a Magazine solver) which helped me first see ANTONINSC (also a top-to-bottom solver) and the rest unfolded as I went. Within the same vertical alignment as DANTONI and HOPSTEP, I noticed THE PEARL, which might have been clued using NBA legend Earl "The Pearl" Monroe.
3
This was a BUTTE, and very close to being THE PEARL beyond PRICE.
Great enjoyment in finding GANYMEDE (the CAPUCHIN SABOTEUR COCOONed in the TAJMAHAL), STUPIDS' STUPOR and SO TO TOTO SOT . Rarely does a RIPPLE of REGICIDE PEEL through a HEAD SHOP over a DEWAR WAR. Filled in 67A off the O and S, but it wasn't till the MAYORAL race that I saw just how the JUSTICEs were OBSTRUCTed. Without a shadow of a doubt, I will henceforth think of ELENA as SOOTY MAYOR.
Had NO_DOGS before NO_FOOD and TRIENNE for the Castro birthplace. Odd that, since ORIENTE is probably the only Cuban province I could name. I blame looking for a musical conductor in that sector for putting me off my feed. Revision at 101D: I still can't quantify the marginal difference between A_HINT and A_HAIR.
Clearly, it heightened interest in the theme to find members of different enneads in time. Given tomorrow's remembrance, it's too bad the grid couldn't support one other row:
a. Dudley Moore star turn (1981) [6]
b. More than Fair, less than Excellent [4]
c. Post-WWII plan [8]
Nicely Nicely done, Joel; I'm happy to toast this effort with some DEWAR's and JUST ICE.
Happy Erev MLKDay
8
[groan] Sorry, ELENA and SONIA! Only one SOOTY MAYOR at a time...
Love your additional theme entry - he was my favorite SCJ before RBG hit the scene.
Well-played!
1
Good one, Leapy!
1
Bravo, Joel!!
2
Or Obama or LGBTQRSTUV....
1
A grand slam home run: no references to Harry Potter or the Simpsons!
2
Or Star Wars, or hip-h...well, perfection is hard to achieve. :-) I thought this was a wonderful effort.
2
In their place we get defunct Cuban provinces, obscure clothing, and the usual dash New York City regionalism (Ansonia, pop. 18,732). I'm sure some were distressed at the lack of any opera-related clues. The Simpsons and hip-hop may not be in a particular solver's wheelhouse, but the former is the longest running scripted TV show ever, and the latter has been a major cultural influence for 40 years. If these two topics we're off the table, then wouldn't that also exclude everything else from the last half century? Can't we all agree that the audience for the NYT crossword is diverse and its topics should be too?
10
Different strokes for different folks, everyone. The Crossword is increasingly diverse for increasingly diverse populations of solvers. For every Simpsons clue there will be an opera clue, and long may it be so.
13
Really smart theme. I'm impressed. For me it made for a lopsided solve. I had 80% of the puzzle done in under fifteen minutes, but it took me 30-40 to do the rest, and I had to look up that town in Connecticut (I didn't grasp the theme until the very end; that would have helped).
Also, LENTO meaning to bow (your violin) slowly was a bit of a stretch for me, I think because players don't "bow".
1
In fact one does bow a violin (or VIOLA). However the bow speed does not directly impact the tempo (LENTO), so in fact the clue was somewhat suspect.
2
I spotted SCALIA early on and got some inkling of the theme. Was surprised and impressed later to see first names as well! That made OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE a fairly easy fill with a few cross letters. I was held up for the longest time having entered CAPUCHoN (the French influence I suppose) and oMDB. Though IMDB was much more familiar to me, CAPUCHIN was a complete unknown. Did anyone else get taken in by entering HENRY IV before HENRY VI?
I found the East to be the most fun with its musical clues and musical misdirects. VIOLA was a very musical entry with a non-musical clue. While the "conductor" clues had me thinking bEAT instead of HEAT! I smiled at LENTO whose clue had me thinking of the bow one takes after one finishes one's bowing! And GANYMEDE reminded me of this wonderful Schubert song. Enjoy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkwIe3mT5uk
3
Great fun puzzle. More like this please!
3
A wonderful theme very well executed. Like others, I had to stare hard and long at the filled grid before the dismembered jurists materialized one by one.
Before that, I spent a long time checking the fill for errors because my solution was not accepted. I had CAPUCHON and refused to change it to CAPUCHIN, which AFAIAC – Martin's explanation notwithstanding – is either a monk or a monkey. Incidentally OMDB (Open Movie Data Base) is fine for 107D.
.
My favorite clue/entry: UMPED. Entries that I could have done without: STUPIDS, especially with STUPOR already present, and EVILEST.
1
It's in the MW abridged dictionary. (Capuchon is not, btw.)
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/capuchin
This was a delightfully quick Sunday for me, though I didn't know many of the proper names.
I didn't see the theme until the puzzle was solved - and I don't think it would have helped my solve anyway.
Thanks for a fun puzzle, Mr. Fagliano! :)
3
As one of the bloggers who nearly always misses the deeper level of the theme, I burst out with a laugh and a "Wow!" when I saw ANTONIN SCALIA.
Seemed like a lot of tricky clues. Loved the one for LENTO and "run off" for PRINT -- I originally had ELOPE. These little twisters send me off in a good mood for the day even though it looks as if I won't ever figure out what I've got wrong in my completed puzzle.
3
Well done! JUst got stuck on a regional ice cream. We have Dreyers not Breyers out west. Fun puzzle.
1
I had Dreyers first, but I always struggle with brand names.
Hi Edith!
Appreciate the assist from SONIA SOTOMAYOR....because I was looking for various crimes/cover-ups. And after the first couple (working from the bottom up) I wanted them all to be from the same era, so to speak.
I had been stuck in the NE until, working backwards, I put in SCALIA's first name.
So, now the question is, was Joel Fagliano engaged in jiggery-pokery?
8
Or argle-bargle?
5
Like Viv, I was blown away by Joel's achievement today. As soon as I had the central reveal I went back to study the appropriate rows, and managed to recognize SCALIA and FORTAS. I could hardly wait to get to the rest, although I was a little worried that being here for so long I might not recognize all the names, but luckily only STEPHEN BREYER was new to me, and his first name sort of leaped out, and also made me go back and see all the first names. Wow!
I had quite a few unknowns, so did need some look ups; I've already forgotten which. Even though I've been to Apulia, I didn't recognize the castle town.
I was glad to read Martin's explanation of CAPUCHIN. I looked it up and did find that meaning as a fourth option, but without any background.
One of the most impressive puzzles I've done for a while. Thanks, Joel.
5
Suejean, Wikipedia says:
The Castle of Otranto is a 1764 novel by Horace Walpole. It is generally regarded as the first gothic novel. In the second edition, Walpole applied the word 'Gothic' to the novel in the subtitle – "A Gothic Story".[1] The novel merged medievalism and terror in a style that has endured ever since. The aesthetics of the book shaped modern-day gothic books, films, art, music and the goth subculture.[1]
. . . I think that's mostly where I knew it from, although I've never read the novel.
2
Enjoyed this puzzle much. Took me a fair bit of time because I’m not up with all the Americana, living as I do halfway around the world, but loved getting TOHELEN, DANTONI, BIEL, BLIN and PIBB from the crossings. And when OBSTRUCTIONOFJUSTICE magically appeared in the grid, then that helped with BREYERS and MAYORAL.
Thank you Mr Fagliano, for that, it’s great when constructors give you a chance to suss these out. (And I must add that it was your minis that encouraged me to try out the full size ones). Looks like this can be fun!
9
Terrible puzzle. Finished the entire grid very quickly and still had absolutely zero idea how OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE or Supreme Intelligence related to any of the mentioned rows. Had to come here to find out. No fun when it's that convoluted.
2
Well, it's like spiders--they are all venomous, but only some are dangerous.
Some puzzles are more fun than others.
6
Surprised (and impressed) that so many finished this without getting the theme. I absolutely needed it. It took me a while, but once I had enough down crosses to suggest the reveal, the only 'theme line' I had filled in completely was at 42a. I saw what was happening and managed to fill in DANTONI and WANNABE only by connecting them to the surnames already in place. Similarly later on with the three theme answers in the bottom.
Even with the theme, I'm surprised I managed to finish this. Two squares were an absolute guess (though reasonably likely) - the OTRANTO/ANSONIA cross and ORIENTE/ROC. Actually that whole little mid-east section was a bear for me with HEAT / THERM / LENTO tossed in. I'm certain that if VIOLA hadn't finally emerged from somewhere in my memory with the VI in place that I would have been doomed in that area. Oh yeah - BUTTE / BOT / CAPUCHIN was another alphabet run until the likely dawned on me.
Very impressive puzzle. Took me a long time, but well worth it. Oh - did anyone else try THEDAVID before TAJMAHAL?
4
I had never heard CAPUCHIN except in relation to a monastic order or the monkeys (who look slightly like they are wearing hoods, I suppose.) To call a cloak itself a CAPUCHIN sort of makes sense, but it's pretty obscure. I got it off the -PUCH- though, so it's not an impossible leap.
I had the L at the end, so only the TAJ MAHAL occurred to me....and there are too many famous marble statues (THE PIETA, for instance) for that to be a fair clue for just one....and please stop putting notions into Will's head!
1
I didn't actually try The David, Rich, but I thought it, hesitated, and then got more letters for the TAJ MAHAL.
1
I love it when I come here and find someone had the exact difficulties I had.
6
Terrific idea for a puzzle! Also, lotsa' theme yet kept it clean. And with the lovely SOTO over TOTO. I like that the top three are former justices, and the bottom three current.
By the way, regarding the clue "Hooded cloak", Bill Murray debuted as Steve Bannon last night on SNL wearing same.
8
Like others, I had a slow awakening. The puzzle's title plus the revealer's guiding me to line 1 and 3 showed me SCALIA and FORTAS right away. I got the idea, filled in the rest while barely looking at the other themers - and only when I saw STEPHEN at the bottom - and I didn't happen to know that particular Justice, so I thought, hey, that sounds like a first name - did it dawn on me to look at the others again, and I was blown away by the achievement of the constructor. Kudos, Joel!
6
Joel Fagliano starts every day for me with his perfect quick puzzles. I’ve still not managed to complete one in less than 25 seconds, but I keep trying. This big Sunday one was a joy, even though I didn’t recognise a single justice’s name! (Not something we Brits are as familiar with)
4
There are a few Justices that are best forgotten....
Going against the grain of most other comments, but I feel this would have been more suited for a Wednesday puzzle. I felt disappointed this was a Sunday offering and didn't offer a surprise finish.
As always, though, kudos to Mr. Fagliano (et al) who have the creativity to construct these challenges!
1
Another one of those themed puzzles which I solved without "getting".
I feel we would've had a better chance of using the theme to fill the grid, rather than the other way around, simply by going for "obstruction of justices" as a title.
I still had the "ah-ha!" moment, but it was after the fact and so, not as enjoyable...
Great puzzle of Supremes. After parsing the top ones, figuring out the bottom three helped get the related clues. Quite a feat! A rare Sunday for me when I don't have a letter wrong to finish. However, I think the hooded garment is a capuchon, not capuchin.
2
A great puzzle to be sure. However, I had "capuchon" instead of "capuchin". The O in capuchon (a hood which can be permanently attached to a cape) is Open Media Database (OMDB). One of the few times I've seen where there is as much ambiguity about clues and answers. But the rest of the puzzle made up for it.
1
I was also puzzled by capuchin instead of capuchon, AJ. When I was studying costuming, we learned about the capuchon, a hood in medieval dress. I thought capuchin was a kind of monkey.
1
It all starts with the Capuchin monk. They wear a brown hooded cowl. The hood was called a cappuccio in Italian or capuche in French. That became capuchon, which was absorbed into English.
A capuchin is a hooded cloak, a woman's fashion, modeled after the cloak worn by a Capuchin.
Both cappuccino and capuchin monkey are named for the monk's cloak. The brown cloak, the coffee and steamed milk blend, and the monkey's upper-body fur were seen as sharing a color.
8
I, too, thought capuchon. Probably because I am rereading some of the Brother Cadfael series. Ellis Peters uses the word frequently.
2
Very fun. We didn't see the theme until we were done.
4
Great construction! I got the central theme (obstruction of justice) pretty early, but it wasn't until I finished the whole puzzle that I saw the various Supreme Court justices. Should have gotten it sooner. DUH
Thanks Joel
3
It’s taken a year, but I’ve finally finished my first Sunday puzzle without any of my usual “harmless” cheats (google, IMDB, asking my boyfriend about an old hockey player). The satisfaction of this moment is both sweet and ephemeral. Thank you Joel for a lovely puzzle and a new sense of accomplishment and commitment to crosswords. No dum-dums or stupids here for now!
24
Blue Ribbon for you! Congrats!
4
Silly me - I noticed 'Scalia' and 'Kagan.' Kept charging forward and wondered if Joel had thought about trying to get first names in, too. Then I happened to notice 'ABEFORTAS.'
Goodness.
2
Not much to say except that it was indeed a fun puzzle. (And I am not sure whether to be proud of or sheepish about the number of Durhamites who have spent their/our Saturday night doing the NYT crossword...)
2
Have you been to our brunches? :)
Didn't know about them.
I started doing the crossword a few months ago and keep stumbling on members of the secret society of NYT crossword fanatics. I had no idea.
and Elke
What a judicious use of my time to do this lovely puzzle.
Caught on with ELENA KAGAN. But then spent an injudicious amount of time searching for my IDOL : Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Especially since there exists a picture of her and ANTONIN SCALIA riding on an ASIATIC elephant (don't know whether it was near the TAJ MAHAL). A wonderful interview with Gwen Ifill :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSEWCA2Hhmo
at the end there is the tidbit about her gold and silver bibs.
My DIET TIP today: don't eat a TUB of BREYER'S icecream, especially not the RIPPLE varieties. Just have one thin BLIN(tz).
TIL : 'stewbum' , will file it with 'skibum'.
This was fun.
7
I never noticed that the first names were there, too. Doh.
2
Very enjoyable puzzle, whose ease of solving didn't diminish the pleasure at discovering the intricately crafted theme. Hats off!
5
Capuchin and Ganymede...Fantastic clues. Well done puzzle although i did not get the theme until i finished and came to the blog. I blame obtuseness on watching Pats game while I solved.
7
I read the clue and thought “Largest moon? I have no earthly idea”. Then crossed in the G and from my small constellation of satellites (Europa, Sirens of Titan) up popped GANYMEDE, and the N confirmed it. I love when that happens.
1
Likely rationale this Sunday will be 'speechless'!
When I first read the clue for 86D, "Italian castle town," my reaction was "well that certainly narrows it down a lot." Bilingual trivia: OTRANTO is the O in the Italian phonetic alphabet.
8
Between Napoli and Pisa, Orvieto always worked for me.
3
Lucky for me that Volterra didn't fit.
I still dream of winning the lottery and then permanently moving to that place (and of course re-reading Cold Tuscan Stone when I do).
4
Nearly random thoughts:
HEAT and COLD in same puzzle, AKA and ALIASES in same puzzle. What else are they hiding? NSA *and* NSC in same puzzle, along with SABOTEUR, WAR, and DEWAR.
NANNY state is one our friends across the pond might know; I had to get it from crosses.
Santa covered in 110D, would get 99D.
If you used 108D, you'd have nary 101D.
I'm glad someone here looked up new names for Mr PIBB recently.
And,,,we've had a lot of support lately (A BRA, VICTORIAS SECRET, BRAS).
9
Robert, Re 110D, I has ashen there at first; it fit with Afro.
1
Got the theme immediately; enjoyed the puzzle for its creativity more than its challenge.
6
This was really cool. It was cool enough when I saw the justices' surnames (which was not very early at all), but it became really super cool when I realized their first names were there too. Lovely!
11
I completely missed the first names until I read this comment. Wow!
As usual, I forgot to LOCATE the theme until coming to the blog, where Deb reminded me. Wow, I say. And yes to thinking DJT, which would have put me over the moon (does ours have a name, or is it just "moon"?). Anyhow I'm stuck on the ground in Connecticut, which is lucky because it helped me get 110A.
3
Very enjoyable puzzle today, but I didn’t catch the hidden names until well along. But 67A came early. Once Sonia Sotomayor was staring at me I was able to get past the blocking to finish. And this puzzle was well clued as well.
3
Excellent puzzle. It must have been a bear to construct. Well worth the trouble.
I wondered if the puzzle could have been turned on its side, and the justices in question been arranged left-to-right based on their liberal-to-conservative leanings. But that would have invited political commentary, which we need not broach here.
Today we add the GOD ARK to the pantheon, joining yesterday's GOD EEP.
I liked the reverse-disguised-capital in "Raiders' org." Not a proper name, but capitalized merely because it starts the clue.
Of course, musician me, I fell for "What a conductor might conduct." Having _EAT, I duly completed BEAT. But TBERM isn't a thing as far as I know. Had to change to HEAT and THERM.
Like POOH, I accomplish the impossible (in just the same way) every day.
Here's hoping everyone has an enjoyably impossible Sunday afternoon.
4
Hands up for GOD ARK after GOD EEP! Even without "ba dum dum".
2
Hate the clue for HEAT. Are there any coal fired trains in operation left anywhere in the world? Really enjoyed the theme though. Very ambitious.
Just to be clear, metal conducts heat and is itself called a conductor. If you heat one end of a metal bar, the heat will be conducted throughout the metal. One way to measure that conduction is in thermal units, or therms (1 therm is about 100,000 BTU). No trains or THAT kind of conductor at all.
5
Did anyone think that maybe the answer to 98 Across, "Frequent Twitter poster," in three letters, was going to be DJT?
27
Yes!
7
Yes, especially with the main revealer entry at 57A to go with it.
Not to mention WANNABE, SABOTEUR, HEEL and...STUPIDS. Some might throw in EVILEST. Hoping some of those cheeseburgers might put him into a temporary STUPOR so he can GO DARK on twitter a little while. We've been AWASH with that stuff I've become NUMB to it.
5
Forgot to add, "Supreme intelligence" with OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE reminded me of "stable genius"
4
I'll admit, I didn't have the slightest idea what the theme was until I was finished. (Paying attention to the title would have helped.)
When that happens, there has to be an amazing "Aha!" moment in order for me not to pan the puzzle as being too cryptic. After all, I've been doing puzzles for a long time, and if I can't figure out the theme, how many newbies could?
But this time, the "Aha!" moment was tremendous. And then to admire the execution, getting some of those names in three consecutive entries, which was amazing.
Only issue is that my wife's favorite, RUTH BADER GINSBURG, didn't get in. That would have been mind-blowing.
8
I had no idea either. Solved quickly, took more time to decide the theme. That said, masterful construction.
3
For your wife and other fans for whom RBG is an IDOL:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xz-9W909cKI
2
I needed the blog.
1