I was out of the country last Sunday. I get the TimesDigest on line but it doesn’t give the Puns and Anagrams puzzles, only the main puzzle. If someone can send me a copy of that puzzle I would be so happy. It’s my favorite and I just saw that it was in last Sunday’s paper. I count the weeks until that kind of puzzle is included. Thanks anyone if you can help me.
Can't wait for this Sunday's Puns & Anagrams - hope it's Mel Taub
Bring back Mel Taub
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I've been addicted to Puns & Anagrams over the years but am having a very difficult time with Sam Ezersky.
I love puns and anagrams. Wish there were more frequent submissions.
liked DOUBLE DIP best. clever! I miss the regular Mel Taub puns and anagrams.
I believe that 3D ("dog wagger") is FURTAIL rather than CURTAIL. Why would curtail make sense besides having tail at the end?
I also believe that 1A ("past relative of 10 across") is ANFESTORS rather than ANCESTORS. I believe anfestors is a punny take off on ancestors which incorporates the 10A clue using. Otherwise, what does ANCESTORS have to do with 10A?
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A cur is a dog. CUR TAIL = a dog's "wagger".
I never would have gotten that intentional-misdirection answer myself in a million years, but yesterday somebody here explained it.
It did NOT have anything to do with Answer 10A in this puzzle.
Ancestors are our past relatives.
The phrase TEN ACROSS anagrams to ANCESTORS.
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thanks!
This was so much fun. I still don’t understand why 19A is INT everything else was a treat. Thanks!!
@Nonamamo The real clue is "act preceder." INT can precede ACT, as in the word INTACT. The phrasing "one-act" can be read as a hint that the answer begins with I (Roman numeral for "one").
I don't understand 19A. I have INT but that makes no sense with the clue.
I had trouble with that one too. Finally assumed it was INT plus (preceding) act for intact which means one ( not broken, whole). But that seems too forced, even for a P and A.
Maybe someone sees it more clearly
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I think you might be right. But it's lame!
SPOILER ALERT: I believe the STUN/NUTS answer was realized by that puzzle solver to be incorrect once 23D was discovered. BATS/STAB.
If "beady" is the answer for 23 down , then how is "turned insane" ( 22 across) NUTS or STUN ?
Pandas are new to me , but am I doing this all wrong ?
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shouldn't it be BATS ?
It's not STUN, it's STAB (BATS). The A in that comes from #3D, Dog Wagger, which is CURTAIL. They do take some getting used to. You were on the right track!
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shouldn't that be BATS ?
I enjoyed this one even if I was not sure why some of the answers were correct before coming here.
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A good, quite difficult P&A, with very clever clues. One that held me up for a long time was 1A. OTOH, 23D was a stretch, I did not get it until Caitlin explained it.
One question and two nits:
1. Would someone explain 4D. Electronic BB pellets?
2. 40D is inappropriate. Pop-cultural names ordinarily do not – and IMO should not – appear in P&A puzzles.
3. 62A is wrong. In a cellphoneand elsewhere, ONE AM is a minute after 00:59.
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4D. E BB's are like E MAIL, E COMMERCE etc.
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But in the United States, digital displays DO have times after midnight as
12:__ rather than 00:__ .
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Jerrold.
The European cellphones apparently are more consistent. If you use the 24 hour notation 12:00 is noon and 00:00 is midnight, Otherwise, you wouldn't know what time it is.was.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZyauyRm_DM
The finest P&A I've seen in a very long time. No disrespect to Mel Taub, who has given me hours of fun, but familiarity creates its own challenges. Today Sam Ezersky was both fresh and fiendishly clever. It took me over a day to get the last clue --the answer was clear, but it took me that long to figure out why it the answer.
Will, keep fresh challenges coming! Even the inestimable C&R might be appreciated more if you offered occasional contrast.
Just a note of one of the key differences between English style / Cryptic puzzles and these P & A / Puns and Anagrams:
The P&A puzzle grid conforms to American rules for grid construction: symmetry, no fill shorter than 3 letters, and every letter must be included in both an across and a down clue (every letter is doubly checked).
The Cryptic puzzle grid may be symmetrical (most often nowadays it is), but only every other letter is doubly checked. This means you can't fill in the grid correctly unless you really "get" the cryptic clues.
In the Snake Charmer puzzle, I did not enjoy the sudden downtown when Patrick included overlapping sets of clues for proper nouns that require googling. A big chunk of that puzzle was a very unsatisfying Natick situation for me.
On another topic related to Caitlin's post, it shows us how times have changed. In the pre-Internet days, when the Times was only in print, I don't think they would have mentioned anything about a program called "Schitt's Creek", even if it was spelled thusly.
Coming to think of it, a program with that title never would have been allowed on the air.
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Stephen Colbert interviewed Eugene Levy about his Canadian show "Schitt's Creek" and he was allowed to say the name of the program aloud, provided that every single time he did so, the logo for the show, with the full name spelled out, was displayed on screen. It was a very funny interview.
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When the actress who played Pu__y Galore in that James Bond movie was interviewed on American TV, she was not permitted to say the name of her character.
On British TV, she was permitted.
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Yes, when the NYT was on paper only, their motto was "All the news that's fit to print." That motto has long since disappeared.
During a prolonged stay in Seattle, I am discovering just how much the world has changed. While looking through a rack of greeting cards, I saw at least half a dozen with various salutations that included the f-word spelled out. Then in a store called "Sock Monster" I saw a rack of socks for girls with the same kind of explicit remarks emblazoned on them.
The NYT Crossword crew is to be commended for their valiant efforts to catch up.
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I was able to get 60D (ELI) from the crosses, but I don't see how it fits the clue ("Kind of citation") even by the twisted logic of P&A puzzles. If someone can shed light on that, please do!
Hi Richard, I didn’t solve the puzzle, but it sounds to me like it’s an ELI citation, or “elicitation.”
Steve L will correct me if I’m wrong.
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Ah - I missed that completely, but it makes perfect sense. Thanks!
Deb, you’re not wrong!
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1A was a diabolical clue that threw me off the trail for some time. 22A was STUN for NUTS backwards (turned) which made 23D unintelligible until 3D was solved. Much fun!
I think that was BATS for 22 A.
Snake Charmer was new and very different, like a Spiral but going twice in one direction instead of up and back.
And as I do with a Spiral, I decided to make up my own diagram on a large piece of paper after realizing that the S shape was not necessary. It just had to be a continuous sequence of 38 squares.
[MAJOR SPOILER ALERT]
My only real gimmes were STAR and GRAMPA.
I had to search for CEDAR and ANDREA.
I got NASTYGRAM only from the overlapping words.
And at the end, being not any kind of a cook, I had to search to verify that there was indeed such a thing as PASTA RONI.
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are these the right answers for this week ? I guess I really am not doing this (new to me) puzzle correctly, then . :(
Nancy these words are all correct. Answers for clues 1-11 form a continuous circle or S-shape. Answers are only as long as space between the numbers. E.g. answer to number 9 must stop before space numbered 10.
After “revealing” some of the words in the impossible-for-me PandA out of curiosity, I still can’t make sense out of 64D.
The clue looked to me like it had something to do with a transgendered person. (Maybe I was reading too deep.)
Anyway, BAE is an anagram for both of those names, but is it actually a word?
Definition of bae - a person's boyfriend or girlfriend (often as a form of address)
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Is that an acronym for some phrase?
Just a guess that it's a "contraction", of sorts, of "babe."
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