What a Straight-A Student Passes With

What’s with “alii”?

Turned out to be a fun solve, despite starting out with one of my least favourite entries. I mean to say --- GUAC? The sound alone is almost enough to keep you from eating it. Not quite, but almost. Cool connection of HIM and HERS, esp 'organ'ized as they are near UTERO, right? A shame there wasn't an equivalent MEN'S part around, like maybe, um, STONES or JEWELS. COMMANDO doesn't exactly cover it... And the theme -- good for a number of smiles. While admiring SuzyM's GOLDEN SNATCH, I only replicated Deb's GOLDEN SNEETCH. Seuss instead of Suzy,.. Also filled in a quick GREEN HORNETdrat, and I'll withhold my A-plus for the puzzle till I find that elusive flying LANTERN. Mild regret not enough boxes for the BROWN BOMBER, eh? Nice flight, Amanda-Karl! Looking forward to your next.

I liked the FLYING COLORS theme. Particularly the theme fills: RED BARON, BLUEBIRD, and GREEN LANTERN. I only got GOLDEN SNITCH through the down fill. Not a Harry Potter reader. The word, ENNOBLE, was appealing. Never heard of the WEBBY award or AERIE as a brand. I thought the solve was nice—not overly time consuming or difficult, but enough to entertain. Thanks guys. :)

Regarding misplaced posts and replies. Some recent comments have led me to a possible theory. Whenever I post a comment (CiC or reply), I always refresh the page and check to see that that comment has actually appeared before I attempt to write another one. I've been doing that for a long time and I've never had the misplaced comment/reply issue. My guess is that each person has exactly one available 'slot' or 'box' for posting on the blog. And there is clearly some amount of delay between the time that you submit the comment and the time it is actually added to the comment list . So I'm guessing that if you type in another comment before your previous one is approved, then you are essentially just refilling that box. But it also appears that the destination for that comment remains as wherever you attempted to post or reply in the first place. That seems to match what several have reported. To be overly clear: Say you replied to someone's comment and after submitting proceeded to type out your CiC. You've replaced the reply in the box, but the placement of that comment was already marked as being a reply to someone else's comment. And so that's where it shows up. I would just suggest that everyone start refreshing and waiting until each comment actually appears before attempting to enter another one.

As others have opined, an easy Tuesday puzzle. For me, a new record, almost as good as my best Monday. Loved the theme and managed to guess the revealer with no crosses! Only unknowns were ENID, _______SNITCH and AERIE but got them from the crosses. Briefly delayed having entered Lee instead of LIN (of course!). Loved the cross of HIM and HERS. Agree with Steve L. -- "Diamond judge" was NOT a misdirection for me. Have done enough puzzles to know better. :) Great "debut," Chung and Ni! Looking forward to more.

Althea Gibson and Rosa Parks. Both possessed such courage and dignity. My heroes for life.

I've been reading this blog for months now, but haven't posted previously. I just wanted to say that as much as I've learned over time by doing the NYT crossword, I think I've learned just as much by reading the great posts and commentary on this blog. Also, I wanted to share my accomplishment with those who would appreciate it - I somehow, someway, increased my completed puzzle streak to 100 days with this last puzzle, fully tripling my previous streak. Onward and upward!

Speaking of bluebirds, Bru, the song has been covered a bit, but I don't think I've heard the original for about 60 years. How about you? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akXU5n6AR1I

Ever the uber Dad, I'm posting late as I just got in from a jaunt to the airport with daughter #2...I have heard of the Potter game but I am lost, in A FOG, about the game's particulars. I'm getting a buzzer beater vibe from [email protected] is today's twofer with provided lyric for the SAKE of the song. Feel free to kick the tires on The Dead's "ALTHEA" with Jerry handling the lead vocals; still miss HIM. ALSO, Sara Barellis has a ballad that is, to be certain, all HERS: "BLUEBIRD." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7lMxNfb7rw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCekAiKcqqQ With A Respectful Doff Of The LID, Bru

Posted a couple of replies today without the intrusion of anything I'd posted earlier, so I have my fingers crossed that everything will be where it belongs. Not very many comments today (or maybe a whole lot of them got disappeared), so not much in the way of long threads. The only one long enough really to check is still not in chronological order, but still, there's progress. I think. I hope. Terrific start to your XWP career, Amanda and Karl. I don't know why it's being called "solo" when there are two of you. No no-knows today, although I did have to pause while putting together GOLDEN SNITCH. I haven't read the books and saw one of the flicks a few years ago, so I knew the reference but couldn't recall the name. What I learned today is that there's an American Eagle clothing line named AERIE. I like that. Thanks to all concerned.

When I first heard Vera Lynn sing "There'll be BLUEBIRDs over the white cliffs of Dover, tomorrow just you wait and see..." I assumed this was a propaganda song encouraging the U.S. to join Britain in the second world war [when Britain stood alone against Germany, and the Battle of Britain was fought in the skies over Dover]; and that BLUEBIRDs were synonymous with American fighter aircraft (real BLUEBIRDs are not indigenous to Britain). Perhaps I was not far off the mark. In the end, they did come, Britain became the largest aircraft carrier in the Eastern Atlantic, and peace was eventually restored. AUNT is one of those words where the vowel sound seems to have a spectrum of pronunciations, starting with ANT, as in the insect, ranging through ONT to ARNT. In the U.K., the vowel is close to the letter R, so ARE-NT. It is one of those words that epitomizes differences in contra-pondal pronunciation, WATER being another. Finally, I had to cheat on the BEE today, and resort to the MERRIAM-WEBSTER Scrabble server for the last word, which after several tries, churned out a second 9-letter word that was no CLOTBUR, but has only 4 different letters. So a very tricky one to construct.

This puzzle has many beautifully calibrated clues for Tuesday that managed to be tricky without exceeding usual Tuesday limits. A pleasure to solve!

Deb, thank you for posting that beautiful-beyond-words ballet image. Yes it captures "with flying colors", but it captured me as well.

Really enjoyed this one - I love clever themes. Well done. Passed this first test with ______ _______.

Nicely done theme and fill. Encore!

Glad to see you use spank today, Deb. It was a really fun puzzle.

Paused for a short while on the 45A/35D cross. The only parasite harborer that came to mind was a garden HOSE, making our house sitters responsible for . . . PEE? I went ahead and gingerly typed it in, even as I knew it had to be (surely!) wrong. I finally had to resort to the alphabet dash to get my happy music. Ah, a PET. OK SURE. I like a nice clean theme well executed like this. Well done!

This theme is so perfect in its simplicity and yet still has that unexpected aha moment when you get the connection that all the themers fly. Beautifully done! Thank you Amanda and Karl, I hope you two are flying high today!

Today I did the down clues first and filled in many of them. SNITCH and WEBBYS were unknown to me. Like others I started the first Harry Potter book because so many had recommended it. I thought it was delightful and was really enjoying it until, about a third of the way through, I totally lost interest. And that was that.

Congratulations to our constructors on their duo debut. Fairly smooth solve for me. GOLDENSNITCH was unknown but came easily from the down crosses. I got hung up a bit in the SW. WEBBYS was a complete unknown and I did a couple of dumb things on some down crosses (SKIF, e.g.) but managed to work it out. I did have a mildly furrowed brow trying to see precisely how the theme worked, mostly because of the inclusion of BLUEBIRD, but I think I get it now. Looking forward to more from this pair.

Very nice Monday puzzle, he echoed. Fine demi semi debut (well, they've been here before, but not alone, but they're not alone here either; what does one say?). You didn't get to do the first introduction, Deb, but "first meeting?" You don't do Saturday or Sunday puzzles any more? I wondered about the "almost two separate puzzles" nature of the grid; did our co-constructors each take the lead for half? And I thought perhaps the editors should have saved this one for winter, with the halves joined with a CUE for another LOG. Editing nit: It was over 100 years ago; I would have preferred 17A clued as "German" rather than "enemy." Peace.

Regarding Spelling Bee (SPOILERS AHEAD)-- Yesterday's Bee took up too much of my time. I reached Genius ok (a few hours of intermittent play) but was still far from Queen Bee status when I decided enough time wasting. A look at the answers today tells me that I should've gotten some of the words that I missed, but some of them would've probably never come to me. And although I'm pretty adept with words, I don't think I've ever seen MANCALA, CAMARILLA or MALIC. Anyway, I've decided to try for Genius every day and only if I'm really close and it's moving really fast will I go for Queen Bee legitimately. Today was one of those days when I just decided I'm not going to sweat it. There are some word finder sites, like the Merriam-Webster Scrabble word finder site, that take groups of letters and look for words with certain letters. To account for doubles, you can enter the letters as CAILMNRCAILMNRCAILMNR (to use yesterday's letters). (You must sift through the results to find only the words with C in them.) With that help (needed two separate sites to do it completely), I got to QB. I'm not saying it's legitimate; I'm just saying I'm done. For those who are still reading at this point, there are 35 words and 114 points in the word list. Crossword favorite OBOL isn't accepted, but another crossword favorite is. A Russian word and its plural are both accepted. A very big number is also there; if you got that, you'd best consider whether it's a really big one.

This was a fun fast Tuesday. Haven't read Harry Potter either, but GOLDENSNITCH was easily gettable from the crosses. Not my fastest Tuesday, but almost.

Nice. Congratulations to Amanda, Karl and unnamed pup!

My favorite real estate in the puzzle was the eighth column with my two favorite words of the bunch: MINARET and ENNOBLE. I know it is too long, but it would have been sweet to see PURPLE PEOPLE EATER stretching across the grid!

The GREEN character emerged slowly--not familiar. Superman comics and Donald Duck & Co. were our speed back in the day. Then books superceded the allure of comics..... Nice workmanlike puzzle and welcome new constructors--a win-win....

Fun puzzle, congratulations on your first nyt published one! Loved seeing the GOLDENSNITCH make its way into the grid.

That was a delightful puzzle and would have been perfect for Monday. I wonder why Tuesday was chosen. I'm seriously interested in what goes into making that decision. I loved seeing ALTHEA Gibson, a heroine of mine. It is inspiring to read about her accomplishments as the first African American to win Wimbledon and one of America's greatest athletes. I look forward to many more puzzles from this couple.

Nice to see references to children’s authors from across the pond ... Blyton and Rowling both captured kids imaginations, decades apart!

I was stuck for awhile on the snitch or snatch or whatever. it turns out it's related to a so called book series that I haven't even picked up in eight decades and I'm not going to start now. Things have been going too well for me to start with something as suspiciously commercial as that seems. Fun puzzle except for that one whatever.

Wasn’t sure how Green Lantern met both aspects of the theme until I read his power ring allows him to fly 1440 mph. Very nice.

I thought this was a really clever puzzle, even if it was my new record for a Tuesday. Congratulations! Hope to see more from the two of you!

Straightforward and easy, but I really liked the theme. I wish the theme entries had turned color online when the puzzle was completed! I hope Ms Chung & Mr Ni make many more puzzles!

Easy, sure, but let’s give the new constructors a generous NOTBAD for a fun first puzzle. Congratulations and we can’t wait to see more of your collaborations.

Love the use of spang, Deb! I’ve got to integrate it into my vocabulary!

One of the easiest Tuesdays ever. I came close to my record for Tuesdays, and there was one big interruption SPANG in the middle of my solve. (I hate that word but I wanted to prove I could use it too.) But I have to disagree with Deb about "diamond judge." Something having to do with jewelry would be misdirection for me (and probably most longtime solvers). It's going to be baseball. It's going to be UMPIRE.

Easier than Monday puzzle.