I hit a dash clue and knew something was up. Then I was certain KUNG FU PANDA was correct, so how to fit it? A rebus, or one of those centipede themes that squirm across the board? I followed my usual Thursday strategy - just ignore the weirdness and solve as much of the normal fills as possible, trusting the gimmick would show itself eventually, and it did. Clever, but not very hard, really. A fun solve.
By the way, I love the fact that people complain when there's a rebus, but also complain when there isn't one. The old joke, "The food is terrible - and such small portions!" comes to mind.
1
So then why does the clue to 45D say, "a hint to connecting four pairs of answers," when there are only two pairs of answers being connected? Also, why doesn't the clue to 14D say, (abbr.)?
IFYO[UP]LEASE and DANJO[UP]EARS are also theme answers.
I’m not the greatest puzzle solver but I always give it a fighting chance. This puzzle had me so confused with the dashes for clues and I even thought of Machu Picchu but it didn’t fit into four squares. I was relieved to read the solving tips and realize that the Thursday puzzles are a different beast!
Dang, one of those puzzles I actually solve (except for two letters not tied to the theme), but still not getting the theme. A bit too clever for me!
I actually had an easier time with this theme and overall puzzle than I tend to on Thursdays. The one that got me for a while was big SKY conference - I had big TEN in there for most of the solve until I decided it wasn’t going to fit. Then things came together.
Sadists.
3
This drove me around 6 different bends till I could "see" it to my satisfaction. Just a *little* differently than the format Deb used:
__________(P)ANDA
------------//
KUNGF(U)
such that the missing U and P are in the black squares, and the U//P is the 'UP ramp'. If all that has been perfectly obvious to everyone without my umptieth repetition, I apologize for my obvious obliviousness.
I just thought it was super-nice of the PTB to acknowledge DavidC's Spring passion just so few days after he let leek how RAMPED UP he gets this time of year. Don't we all love seeing DC fire UP a RAMPage? (Moi-meme, I don't get that way till the chanterelles start singing.) As always, the gander gets to pick his poison.
Frankly, I can't quite see straight ever since PaulaF let loose that rising ORGASM. Looked to see if it might have escaped from Woody Allen's Sleeper, but came no closer than a suggestive ORGASMADON. Oh well
Had to switch from RATS to NUTS, but otherwise Jeffy was kind, if abstruse. He also let me see that the EX HUME Kant put a Locke on the John Stuart Mill.
All prepped for a great Friday.
1
I don't usually comment but just to say that I really disliked this theme. personally I want a square to be a letter and vice versa. count me in the No Rebus type puzzles camp.
2
Very clever and enjoyable to solve. Good to be reminded that Thursdays aren’t ALWAYS rebus puzzles. Machu Picchu was where it clicked for me.
1
This drove me around 6 different bends till I could "see" it to my satisfaction. Just a *little* differently than the format Deb used:
__________(P)ANDA
------------//
KUNGF(U)
such that the missing U and P are in the black squares, and the U//P is the 'UP ramp'. If all that has been perfectly obvious to everyone without my umptieth repetition, I apologize for my obvious obliviousness.
I just thought it was super-nice of the PTB to acknowledge DavidC's Spring passion in just so few days after he let leek how RAMPED UP he gets this time of year. (Moi-meme, I don't get that way till the chanterelles start singing.)
Have to say I've been some rattled ever since PaulaF sprang that rising ORGASM on an unsuspecting readership. Did look to see if it were kin to Woody Allen's Sleeper, and it came kind of close with ORGASMADON. Not quite a cigar...
Only write-overs that I recall was RATS at 5D, LAP for LEG and Big TEN for Big SKY, so Jeffy was fairly gentle while being tricky and abstruse. He did let me see that the EX HUME Kant put a Locke on the John Stuart Mill. Sadly, no Big O's involved.
All set for a great Friday.
3
I was worried that my 300+ day streak would end today, but I finally managed to finish. A very clever theme, and a tough solve.
2
A fun puzzle—the theme was trickier than most but worth it in the end. But overall it seemed really hard for a Thursday. With such a tricky theme couldn’t we get a break on the fill?
4
Excellent puzzle. Took me twice as long as usual but worth it ... always fun to discover the Thursday theme.
2
Tough, but the moment you realize the theme and it’s not a rebus!!
Fun. Tough. Amusing. Thank you!
2
I was blown away by the cleverness and creativity of the theme - once I had it explained by Deb. Very well done, Jeff Chen.
4
SUPER S(H)LOMO - King Solomon?
4
Puzzle of the week, humble Jeff!
4
Two of crossworld's most beloved architects have been in the news today.
EERO Saarinen's TWA Terminal at JFK Airport has reopened today as an airport hotel. The bar is in a prop jet and each room has soundproof glass for windows. EERO has been a puzzle entry 267 times.
And sadly, I. M. PEI, who designed the pyramid addition to the Louvre and the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame, has just died at the age of 102. The NYT story says, "Full obituary to follow." They had 102 years to get it ready, and it's not ready??
8
A . Classic Thursday.
3
I don’t have all day to solve a ridiculous puzzle like this. Can I get a refund on my annual app fee?
3
@Jay Wells
Sorry you found nothing to enjoy in today's puzzle. Maybe try something from the archives? With over 25 years' worth of puzzles available, surely you could find something there more to your taste. No snark intended.
6
Maybe I'm a traditionalist but I hated this puzzle. The fill was very poor and the puzzle had a very large word count all for the purpose of stretching to a gimmicky theme. I'd much rather have interesting clues than made-up words in a contrived grid.
10
What words were made up?
1
@Michael Rogers
...GOOBER, SWAG (as clued here), SHAZAM, OOLALA, EMO....?
Just tried to think what might be considered 'made-up words', though all of these have been around for some time (EMO being the noobie, heh heh), though some have geographic or age-related aspics.
3
@Eli all words were made up by someone somewhere sometime; unless yiu mean made for this puzzle only?
1
Jewish words are my ultimate undoing, and this puzzle is no exception. How about a L'Chaim to that.
4
@Watson Tungjunyatham
Let me help you remember for next time ;D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgZ4ZTTfKO8
2
@Leapfinger I'm in tears
1
@Peter, I know what you're talking!
In what world is Weezer an emo band??????
23
@Alex
If you asked me what Weezer is I would’ve said someone with lung congestion.
The clue is “Genre for Weezer.”
Apparently Weezer played EMO music in the past and their Pinkerton album from 1996 is a highly regarded EMO album, even though they don't currently produce albums in that style:
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/40-greatest-emo-albums-of-all-time-23526/weezer-pinkerton-1996-3-163405/
To answer your question, “In the world of 1996.”
So the clue fits. The clue does not necessarily imply “only genre” or “current genre.”
It's a clue, not a definition. It's a Thursday puzzle, requiring broad rather than narrow thinking.
4
@Alex
When presented with a 3-letter answer to a musical genre, always guess EMO.
3
This is one place where I would dare to consider myself the expert and, yes, Weezer is emphatically not emo.
1
I am asking for your help in having a "DOH" moment, but what does the picture and its caption have to do with this puzzle? This is happening more often. . . is there something I keep missing?
4
@Robert Michael Panoff
1. That's Usain BOLT in the middle: SHAZAM
2. It appears to be a SUPER SLO MO still
3. Usain Bolt increased his speed more rapidly -- he RAMPed UP faster -- than any other human
*But alas since there are no batons, this was not a relay and thus not a LEG
Credits: Henry Su, ColoradoZ, Paul from Alexandria
6
@Puzzlemucker
Thanks. All make sense. None occurred to me! I think the super slo mo is the most appealing to now provoke my late afternoon "DOH!"
1
Whoot!
I started on this very late last night, only making enough progress to realize a puzzle lay within the puzzle.
By mid-morning today I had parsed out the theme, and narrowed down a certain breed of pear to one of three types.
LAZES before LOLLS, and the SouthWest corner was definitely the most tedious of the grid ... language count was above the average, as well as the cleverness of the clues. KEYSTROKES held me up until mid-day, and STRATI was the final NIT.
Kudos!
2
@Michael I also had LAZES then LOAFS before finally getting LOLLS
1
@Bob @Michael
I actually had SLUMS before any of the "L" guesses!
As one of Deb's "kids" (about to turn 40, but whatever!) I've never understood why short records were called Extended Play.
Anyway, I really liked today's trick and thought it was a lot of fun. I was stuck at the crossing of TATAMIS and TREF, as I knew neither word, but that counts as a win in my book!
4
@Amrie Plus Tref has several correct spellings and is totally foreign to gentile solvers, still it was an intriguing solve, which brought me to the blog to see how others reacted to it. Agree with Deb, I thought I was totally at sea until the puzzle mysteriously started solving itself before my eyes.
5
@mike
Plus Tref ....... is totally foreign to gentile solvers.
Not so and not just from solving puzzles.
9
@mike I knew TREF from the restaurant, but with the alternate spelling of TRAIF.
@Amrie I think because they are Extended compared to Singles! LPs came way later.
2
A very satisfying and mind-stretching piece of work. Nice geometry, too. I'd never seen one like this before, and it was fun to work on.
7
another thursday contrived waste of talent.
4
I came here to make the same observation. Some fans and critics contend Pinkerton has emo elements, I don't think that is really their genre. I only reluctantly put that answer in there when it became clear ALT was not going to work.
I couldn't stop seeing ORGASM over the final Ramp Up.
23
@Paula Freedman
Oh my gosh, Paula, that's hilarious. Thanks for sharing!
@Paula Freedman
I'd say it was a happy accident, but TO immediately precedes it . . . and (sorry) that TO intersects with STROKES.
5
@Paula Freedman I've alerted Jeff Chen to this, and his somewhat dubious answer is that perhaps his subconscious was at work. Personally, I think he hid it in there as an Easter egg.
12
Just when I thought I was getting to the level of the Thursday puzzle! I never got the trick even after solving it with many many look ups. NUTS. A new skill to learn. It was still fun.
5
5/6 of a thumbs up on this one! (And since it's spring the ramps are up too....) Not a full thumb up because I had to do 5 entertainer lookups. :-(
So, I'm looking at where 26A and 19D cross, and I'm thinking this has gotta be a rebus because HU fits neatly into that square ... noooope. Wow!!!!
Not sure I understand 17A. Actors on stage are seen when curtain is up .....
13A is the reason fir 9A, right?
I always have a problem with the spelling of 15D. Is it I before A or after A? Because the way it is pronounced I would think it would be I before A, like "hiyyam."
BTW, it's been taking me longer lately to read the comments as compared to solving the puzzle . Is this the new paradigm? (No, not a complaint.)
Kudos!!!!
@Dr W
Re: l'chaim, a clearer transliteration from the Hebrew would probably have a "y" because it's really more like cha-yim, if that makes it easier for you to remember the order of the A and the I.
1
@Jewish person
All I know is that in the dozens of practices and performances of Fiddler on the Roof I was in, it was always L'chaim. To Life!
Well I solved it. But I had to come here to understand what I had solved.
The key may have been visible/grasp-able for those working the puzzle pencil-on-paper, but for those like me working the puzzle one small section at a time on our phones, No, we're not going to see that kind of geometric possibility. It wasn't fun.
And now I have to finish your article to understand those other non-clued bits. How was that supposed to have been something other than just randomness in the universe?
7
vebiltdervan,
My telephone is audio-only, so forgive my ignorance: I gather you can't solve in such a mode, but is there no option for you to even *view* the full grid?
1
@Barry Ancona, I solve on my smart phone and love doing it that way because it’s so easy to erase my (many) mistakes. Yes, you can see the entire puzzle at once but not the clues. Even the Sunday fits my iPhone screen. It took a tiny bit of getting used to, but then so did bifocals and stick shifts.
2
@vebiltdervan I very rarely use the computer to solve, maybe because I don't feel right unless I put pen to paper to solve. Also because my fingers and the online grids don't get along.
1
I stuck with the top half until I had it pretty much filled in and had a close look at the answers that didn't make much sense. It didn't take long to realize that in each case the letters U P were missing and from there it was a couple of steps UP to a great AHA moment. That definitely helped me to get IF YOU PLEASE and D'ANJOU PEARS.
No problem with TATAMIS, I lived in a house in Japan with tatami mats which I cleaned by scattering torn up wet newspaper and then sweeping. Amazingly effective.
Great tricky Thursday.
3
@suejean
Where is the accented syllable in 'tatamis'?
@Robert Michael Panoff
ta-TAM-mis, not unlike tamales.
Beautiful, tricky, such fun to solve. Thanks Chen!
4
Not a fan. This trick is just a silly stretch. Pet peeve is made-up words and non-sense syllables that can be spelled multiple ways to bridge a gap = lazy construction. Glad others had fun.
8
So many bad clues to get to the result here. I'm glad there were people who enjoyed this.
10
This is indeed a clever (and really cool) concept, though it’s unfortunately marred IMO by some seriously questionable clues:
• Weezer hasn’t been an EMO band for 20 years. I would have accepted the clue with “, formerly” appended to it, but the real answer to that one is POP.
• Adding “, say” still doesn’t make LOLLS an appropriate fit for its clue. If you accused someone of lolling around the house all day, I would think you meant they had partially lost control of their muscles.
• I’ve literally *never* seen it spelled out “OOLALA”, without the H after the OO. Ewww la la.
• UGLI is a brand name, not the real name of the fruit. I admit it’s a weak gripe, but I think that should have been indicated in the clue, especially considering how UGLI I find the idea of “proprietary fruit”.
If you’d like to hear more about the things of which I disapprove, stand within 50 feet of my house while the news is on. :)
18
@John Kreese
As soon as I saw that the Weezer genre had three spaces, I filled in EMO, just because EMO seems to be in every puzzle. However, you are right. Weezer is not an EMO band. They are best described as a power Pop band.
7
@David Ewing
Apparently. Entering POP didn't work..... :-(
@David Ewing My initial thought was that there are probably better ways to clue the ubiquitous EMO than with [Music genre for Weezer]. However, upon reflection, the clue doesn't necessarily imply that EMO is always Weezer's only genre. Many bands branch out and explore other genres, which often makes then more interesting and certainly more creative.
I delved into the issue further, and found that Rolling Stone listed Weezer's "Pinkerton" album from 1996 on their "40 Greatest Emo Albums of All Time." https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/40-greatest-emo-albums-of-all-time-23526/weezer-pinkerton-1996-3-163405/
3
i have been doing NYT Crosswords for close to 40 years, and this was one of the most frustrating and least pleasurable puzzles I have ever tried to do. The clues were very misleading, the Thursday trick was stupid, and I hate Jeff Chen.
There.
7
@C p Saul,
I opened up the Comments section to see yours alongside one from Nadine M. It perfectly illustrates the range of opinion and feelings that people have about the NYT Crossword (I'm with Nadine). :)
5
C p Saul,
Dislike the puzzle, fine, but you hate Jeff Chen?
What happened to Iowa Nice?
5
@Barry Ancona
I think it's actually Minnesota Nice. Nothing against Iowa, also very nice population.
1
I just started really getting into the NYT Crosswords, and this article opened up a whole new world for me - I never knew the puzzles had a theme. Do they all have a theme? What fun this little world is!
14
@Nadine M.
Fridays sometimes have a theme and Saturdays rarely have a theme. All other days usually have a theme- some obvious, others not so much
2
@ColoradoZ
Also note that sometimes there are days the puzzle has a Rebus where more than one letter is entered in squares, usually more than one square. Friday is the most common day for a rebus with Sunday occasionally having one
@ColoradoZ
Thursday is the most common day for a rebus
3
Catholics also have HOLY DAYS. Much anticipated in grade school, not because of the religious aspect but because they were school HOL(I) DAYS
2
Ok, I got it, and thankfully before Deb’s helping illustration.
To me, this falls into the category of the joke that needs a detailed explanation.
To boot, using non-words in the puzzle (whether clued by obscure proper names or hyphens,) irks me as well.
Glad to get past it.
6
Man, just when you think you've seen it all, Jeff comes UP with this beauty of a puzzle which sparkles with originality. It took me *FOR- EV-ER* to figure it out. Especially because I didn't see the reveal until the very end. I knew I had to get from KUNGF to UPANDA. When I finally saw I could use the UP RAMP that Jeff conveniently incorporated into the grid, my AHA could be heard in the next state.
Jeff Chen, you've done it again ... thank you!
10
I'm in the "I liked it a lot" camp.
Figured out what was going on when SHAZAM gave me MACH and SAC fly resolved itself. I then could see the other three ramps, and picked UP those answers.
KEYSTROKES was the last word to fall for me, as it was for some others.
Great puzzle, IMNSHO.
6
I'm definitely in the PRO (or should I say, after much delay, FOR) camp on this one. I thought the cluing was tricky in general, and that might have been enough, but the twist kept escaping me. The two pieces of the dashed answers seemed just too far away in the grid - and I was too focused on solving the "trick" just working through the top half, that I convinced myself that the the MACH had to be finished with the "U" in KUNGF below it, and somehow that "U" would finish the FU as well... I was all over the place.
But the revealer was key and was glad to finally get there. Really enjoyed this - and feel like my brain was forced out of its comfort zone in the best way. Thank you Mr. Chen!
9
@Aaron Heartily agree. I knew I had to get from MACH to ICCHU. The only way was UP. What fun!
4
Hmm, I seem to have devised a different solution grid compared to Jeff's intended pattern....but I like mine better.
I created an UP RAMP via my entries.... In squares 22, 27, 28, 31, 43, 48, 49, and 53, I simply divided the area diagonally SW to NE, and entered a letter for Across and a letter for the Down. (All Across entries were either U or P, of course.)
Using the black squares, to me, would be overthinking. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
4
I am so grateful for Deb’s column! “Keystrokes” was beyond me, and I needed to see “Manchu Picchu” to catch on to the theme.
4
Not a fan of this one. Got it in well under average, but got frustrated with a lot of the dreck that went to glue it together. Plus high word count and what felt like a lot of corners. Nice to see Sydney Pollack in the puzzle.
Thursday isn’t the day I enjoy though and lots of other people love it so hey.
3
This puzzle cheered me UP. What fun!
8
I really love the wordplay in WordPlay! You all are so clever!
for instance:
Just Carol: "It’s too early for lunch. That’s a good thing because this puzzle ate mine."
Nancy: "The good news is that there was a lot of crunchiness. The bad news is that I think I broke all my teeth."
Puzzlemucker referencing Leapfinger: "out of gruntle"
Barry Ancona: "You did not solve the puzzle; you entered correct letters in every square."
Fred C: "I have to add my own 'small carp' to the pool."
Makes it fun to come here every day. Sometimes more than once.
30
I probably deserve a Fail because I Googled the TEN YEAR OLD MOVIE (and I hate animated films made after 1949) and the actor Jeong....but fair is fair. I knew I had the gimmick with MACH UP ICCHU....but I had not entirely cottoned onto the slasher aspect of the UPward bound squares. Once I realized I could have two letters --one for each direction--I was happy to complete the puzzle. I don't want to say that Jeff Chen has certain tendencies, but honestly--could he get EVILER?
LAMAZE....oh, yeah, we wasted money (twice) on those breathing techniques. Frank breach presentation with Baby #1 and 10 lbs+ with Baby #2 equals 2 Caesarian sections. Oh well. I'm almost over it. (They are in their mid-30's...)
10
Do swimmers get a lot of earaches? Never came across that before.
2
@retired, with cat In addition to the pain you can get if you go underwater without properly clearing your ears, there is this:
https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/ear-infection/understanding-swimmer-ear-basics#1
3
@retired, with cat Yes. There's an entity commonly called swimmer's ear - technically otitis externa. It's usually caused by bacteria invading the skin in the ear canal. It can start with itching, but if ignored and not treated can progress to painand occasionally serious complications.
2
@retired, with cat
As a competitive swimmer from the age of six to the age of nineteen, the answer is yes.
Not just swimmer's ear either--I had a lot of middle ear infections....
3
Started with SOU (a different kind of "bread") at 1A. Fortunately, it was all uphill from there. Congratulations, Mr. Chen, on a terrific Thursday puzzle.
4
Deb you know one of the things I love in your intros is how they make us “not quite there yet” feel normal! Jinxs for slow motion, wizard of OZ and pro, con, for.
So this was a difficult one for me. But I learned to live with my limitations, and not to feel bad when I have to google clues after trying very very hard. And when you loose all shame, even a Thursday puzzle like this can be sooo enjoyable. And what great clueing!
I so loved the trick! ( after Debbie told me). So...
I have an idea. I think it’s brill. And I know how IT artists love a creative challenge. Can you please, please, make the black squares (where we imagine letters) look normal black squares until we try to enter letters. Then, when we try to enter letters, they turn into normal squares and accept the letters? Maybe keeping the sides bold to indicate they do not function as rebus, ie, they play no role except what is intended? Pretty please?
Or did they do that already for those not solving in an IPad?
Good puzzle!
3
@Laura Rodrigues In London
I’ve pondered puzzle themes—and seen some—where there were indeed black squares hiding actual letters. Indeed, the example puzzle posted on the Times’s crossword submission page is a good example: it contains CIA, NSA, and FBI hidden under black squares, all “redacted”. (I wonder how devices handled that puzzle.)
But I don’t think today’s puzzle really is such. The “ramp” of three black squares IS the “UP” in each entry; you don’t have to write it in any particular square. I do my puzzles on paper, and today’s felt very satisfying even without me finishing the “UP” in the four themes.
:-c)€
3
Interesting! nothing new under the sun! Thank you
It’s too early for lunch. That’s a good thing because this puzzle ate mine.
Thank goodness for downs and Deb’s column. Whew! Jeff Chen is a Master of Wordplay!
:-0
11
@Just Carol
You are so funny!!!
Glad we can still visit via WordPlay. (It is crazy here--packers are packing...)
4
@mean old lady
I’m going to be watching for your comments even when you’re far, far away. Moving is the worst. Take care!
:-)
3
Using the UP in 13A makes more sense to me.
1
Figured out the whole puzzle and didn’t get the theme. Annoying
2
@Steve LaKind
See 5 down.
I finally caught on with Machu Picchu, but couldn't make it work because I forgot there were two c's in Picchu. Keystrokes was the last clue I figured out. I kept thinking buttoned down could mean a dress shirt. So much about solving the latter-week puzzles is about letting go of your first impression. I find that taking a break from the puzzle sends me back with a fresh view and then those tough ones seem obvious to me. Good Thursday puzzle, with an original twist. Enjoyed it!
11
Physics and Acrobatics, at neither of which I am skilled.
2
Really, really weird. The good news is that there was a lot of crunchiness. The bad news is that I think I broke all my teeth. The two-letters-to-be-entered-in-three-spaces thing just Doesn't Work. It's Unfair. It Makes No Sense At All.
And then you embed all that weirdness in a plethora of pop culture. Making the solving experience even more frustrating. I'm extremely proud of myself for finishing, but I certainly didn't enjoy it. I think this puzzle really went off the rails. Or maybe off the RAMP.
12
@Nancy - Hear, hear! My wife solved the (admittedly clever) trick to today’s puzzle. She’s excellent at figuring-out Thursday tricks. But we then entered into a lively debate concerning that two-letters-in-three-spaces matter! The ramp leads over the solution, not TO it! Arghh!
Well, still another cool puzzle by Mr. Chen. Thank you!
@Nancy
Think of the three black squares as the ramp. They imply "up." You don't enter UP anywhere because the ramp up is the stand-in.
You can think of the three black squares as a "virtual rebus," possibly with a label "UP" drawn across them. But the easiest way to make it work is to just visualize the squares being the ramp up. It's length in squares is irrelevant; it's just a ramp up.
Deb got it right: Thursday as rebus day is damned if you do, damned if you don't.
2
@Martin
It ramps up because we write from left to right. Now if the grid had been flipped L-R you'd have ramp down ... right? :-)
Good stuff overall. I'm a little gripey that he used 3 squares for a two letter word but it was consistently applied with a space between U and P. I won't abide Weezer being called "emo" certainly not without some qualification.
1
@Oswald
I think 3 squares makes sense. The first square is the trailing U of the first part of the answer, the second square is the space between the two words, and the third square is the initial P of the last part of the answer. At least that's how I made sense of it!
5
Bob,
If one thinks of them as "up ramps" (rather than as black squares containing letters), they really could be any length, but if it's going to be three black squares, I really like your rationale. But if that was Jeff's reasoning, he missed the opportunity to show it on the xword.info answer key (which, strangely, shows the "ups" differently on its website and in Deb's partial image in the column. Maybe Jeff had a change of heart that posted before being completed?).
2
@Barry Ancona I came to the same conclusion as Bob and I too noticed that xword.info graphic had a different form from what I pictured in my head. Overall I don't mean to be too persnickety, I thin it's a great solve and the tie breaker for me is that I solved it way ahead of my average so it didn't cause any undue stress.
1
Clever, I suppose, but so opaque that it wasn't much fun.
9
Thumbs UP, for sure. Somehow, I can't keep from hearing James (North by Northwest) Mason snarling, "Games? Must we?" Well, yes of course, since it's Thursday.
6
Somehow I managed to complete this without catching on to theme. True to Deb's words, some chocolate was required....two brownies in fact with my morning coffee. [groan]
4
Shazam was one of Gomer Pyle's famous catchwords, and Goober (Pyle) was his cousin on The Andy Griffith Show.
12
These days Thursdays are not my days -- which has nothing to do with the crossword but everything to do with my personal schedule.
The puzzle? [Am trying to work in a thumbs UP here, but don't have time.]
Look forward to reading comments tonight.
Grateful for opportunity to eavesdrop on my version of the Algonquin Table.
4
Though it didn't take as long as some other Thursdays, it certainly produced head scratching moments!
Wha? Huh? Hmm. But ... AHA!
5
When one adores a puzzle (UGHs, EMOs, CPLS and all) and reads oodles of disgruntled comments that get oodles of recommendations, one becomes like Leapfinger’s feather-ruffled EMU, out of gruntle, and one might even SAYST to oneself, “What do they know?!?”
One must remind oneself of the great AudreyLM Xword koan: “One person’s Natick is another person’s Monday”. One must then apply this koan (which one might have misremembered but hopefully did not butcher) to one’s present circumstance:
“One person’s Jeff Chen is another person’s chance to be Rex Parker.”
Just kidding: All feelings, viewpoints, and whims about a particular puzzle are absolutely valid, no matter how utterly wrong and misguided they might be.
33
@Puzzlemucker
I was just examining the puzzle again and leaving aside the theme answers, there are a lot of great clues/answers. Like MOBILES and HULA for skirt instead of mini, midi or maxi.
12
@Puzzlemucker
Chen and Parker in the same sentence? :-(
2
Whew! That was great fun!
Did anyone else notice that yesterday was Trini Lopez's birthday?
2
Ann,
You did, yesterday.
5
I got the reveal in 45D and kept looking for the connections. What tipped me off was ICCHU filled in from crosses and seeing MACH in 26A. The rest fell out from there.
I was not aware of the translation or I might have figured it out sooner. Fortunately the reveal was straightforward even though it's application was a bit tricky.
1
Ooh, I do enjoy a puzzle that puzzles! My first inkling of the theme came when I read the clue for 29A and knew it had to be KUNG FU PANDA… but some of it apparently had to go elsewhere. But where? And why?
The revealer helped me a lot in this puzzle. (Maybe too much? Sometimes I wish the mystery could have lasted a little longer.) As soon as I saw RAMP UP, I went back and tried to figure out how to place KUNG FU PANDA. That’s when it finally hit me that “UP” would appear in the theme entries, but they would appear as little escalators. How delightful!
My smiley clues: 9A “One to whom you might say Boo!” REF, and 58A “Button-downs?” KEYSTROKES. Ha!!!
Thanks for a puzzling puzzle, Mr Chen! Happy Thor’s Day, Everyone!
:-c)€
4
@Floyd
I was slowed down by thinking the movie was MULAN at first. 5 letters--animated--China--what else could it be??
3
@Liz
I know! Except for that pesky K from POLLACK, which I absolutely 100% certain knew was true. So goodbye Mulan.
@Liz B
Oddly—because I’ve seen Mulan, but not KUNG FU PANDA—the former didn’t cross my mind. I think I was maybe unconsciously aware that it came out before 2008, even if I couldn’t name the year.
:-c)€
1
I will never understand people criticizing a puzzle for being too puzzling. I would think that anyone interested in puzzles would enjoy looking for a logical and clever solution to a seemingly perplexing situation. Otherwise I don't see much reason to be doing one. For me the more convoluted and original the better, and if I am unsuccessful, it is usually because the puzzle has been cleverer (more clever?) than I.
At first I thought the theme would have something to do with EAR crossing EARACHE and LEA crossing LEASE, but my aha moment came with MACH UP ICCHU, at which point I saw the UP RAMPS in the grid.
I always considered a POIRE D'ANJOU to be an ANJOU PEAR but I still got it immediately once the theme was apparent.
Great puzzle!
32
@Andrew I appreciate your comment very much. I think you put your finger on it when you say that people enjoy a logical and clever solution. Most of the time, people are unhappy when a solution seems illogical, isn’t clever, or violates some assumed rules.
For example, I’m usually unsatisfied with a rebus that seems completely arbitrary, or a clue that is so general, there could be a slew of correct answers. Another pet peeve is the use of product names, especially car models. The numbers and letters for car models are arbitrary, and it feels “wrong” to require a knowledge of car models to succeed at a wider d puzzle.
Lastly, I’m put off by the amount of cultural factuals in many xwords. For me, the more proper nouns a xword has, the less enticing it is.
3
@Andrew
I was also thrown by DANJOU PEAR. I think that "D" is rarely seen in US supermarkets.
4
It made me think of the POIRE D'ANGOISSE, a rather nasty little instrument described in relatively recent annals of torture. Not sure why i've crossed paths with them, but I'm sure I prefer Poire Guillaume.
Because it is a Thursday puzzle you expect it to be wonky. I solved it without ever getting the theme, meaning that the effort to construct is was meaningless. It's like telling a joke where you have to explain the punchline.
8
MI351,
You did not solve the puzzle; you entered correct letters in every square.
16
@Barry Ancona
Astute observation. Today I also only entered correct letters in every square. Having ICCHU and ANDA is not solving if you don't realize they are missing a P
2
@Barry Ancona Brr! That's cold!
3
Well, there’s 18’41” that I won’t get back.
If the halves of the clues has been linked by just one step UP, I wouldn’t feel so cheated. However, the extra two black squares in the link remind me of loosening one’s belt in order to get it to buckle.
3
@Barb, in real life highway construction, ramps have to be at least a certain length, reaching as they do between two roads at different levels, else they'd be too steep.
In this puzzle construction, it was just a case of Art imitating Life.
2
@Barb, in real life highway construction, ramps have to be at least a certain length, reaching as they do between two roads at different levels, else they'd be too steep.
In this puzzle construction, it was just a case of Art imitating Life.
PS: No regrets, OK? All of Life is just an ongoing series of minutes that nobody gets back.
3
@Leapfinger, you are very wise. Let’s chalk up my irritation to first-week-of-grad-school jitters.
2
Clever puzzle and I was thoroughly demolished by it. Let me think of some excuses. Okay, first - I'm not a very visual person and I tend to be overly-focused; I never noticed the pattern of the squares. Second - I'm kind of in a hurry today. This is one time when a long break at some point would have helped.
My biggest problem, though, was that I had almost nothing on the left side of the puzzle. As an example, the NW: GALAXY, AZALEAS and SHAZAM all unknown as clued, and I couldn't remember who directed that film. Just not enough to get started. In the SW, MAYI worked just fine with HOLYDAYS, but there wasn't much else I was seeing down there.
I actually thought of MACHU PICCHU when I had ICCHU in place, but not in a way that I connected to the puzzle. After some cheating I had both KUNGF and ANDA and was thoroughly baffled, but it never occurred to me to connect them.
Just one of those days.
8
I always do my commenting before reading Deb or Caitlin's commentary on the day's puzzle, because I don't want to be influenced by what I read (don't ask - I'm semi-psychotic it seems), but I had to come back to say that I loved Deb's intro today! So funny and spot on with the polarizing Rebus issues and the need for Chocolate and tears. LOL Deb!
6
Not a puzzle for a buttoned down WASP, buzzed TOM beleagueredly
Anyway got this one done. Knowing KUNG FU PANDA helped RAMPUP my solve time.
Interesting feat of puzzle construction is, per Flower's mother (see Bambi for this reference), the nice thing I will say.
On to the weekend.
Ahem, Deb, another gold star and still no cake.
1
🍰 there you go 🎖
2
Thank you, @Laura Rodrigues In London. :)
1
@Laura Rodrigues In London - "there you go" will always bring me back to this guy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VL9whwwTK6I
1
Great puzzle built on a simple concept. I got the idea right away. I always spend a moment just looking at the empty grid before beginning the solve, and I will again recommend it. I look at it in the middle distance, meaning: I'm not inspecting it but simply letting it into my eyes.
Early in the posts there is a brouhaha over the clue for azaleas: "Relatives of rhododendrons." Eventually, the commenters seemed to work things out, but the whole capitalization thing was overlooked. The genus is Rhododendron, with the capital R required for generic epithets. The common names azalea, rhodora, pinkshell-azalea, rhododendron do not have initial capitals. They are all Rhododendron (+ species epithet, lower case), and they are all relatives of each other. The clue (with its lower-case r) is perfectly fine. And, as Wen stated, when in doubt, count the stamens.
12
@David Connell
"I always spend a moment just looking at the empty grid before beginning the solve, and I will again recommend it."
I've trained myself to think about potential rebusses, but I almost always forget to do this. Will never know if it would have helped. What a GOOBER.
1
@vaer - for some reason this connection popped into mind...
When you go to a wikipedia article about a place, there's usually a map showing the location of the place in a country, on an island, or whatever. But when I click on that map to inspect it more closely, the little blip showing the location of the thing I'm interested in disappears from the bigger map, rendering it useless for the purpose.
When the puzzle solve begins with squares to fill in, one at a time, I think your focus must remain at the local level - no map.
2
Finally, this bris and all those Bar Mitzvah lessons are coming in handy. To all the gentiles unfamiliar with the concept of TREF, don’t worry, most of us Jews spell it as either TREIF or TREYF.
Evidently, few scruples stood in Will Shortz’ way when it came to green-lighting that fakakta entry.
3
@Jon & Arielle Take it up with Merriam-Webster.
3
@Lorne
The Wikipedia entry is under TREIF, but it does list TREF as an alternate spelling.
Although TREF is sometimes found in the wild, it does not accurately reflect the normal pronunciation of the word, which rhymes with SAFE and not with JEFF. Why Merriam-Webster chose to use the TREF spelling is a mystery.
1
@Jon & Arielle - (ignoring all my personal rulebook) - look up how many variant spellings there are for what you wrote as "fakakta" (which would be below the bottom of my list of variants, and nowhere near an actual spelling; in the Aleph-beth it has r for the second letter) - and get back to us about "correct" spelling of Yiddish words.
Oy.
4
The key for me in solving this puzzle today was to ignore the theme... LOL
Obviously, there was a trick, as indicated by the "-" clues as well as the revealer/hint, so for the "-" clues I relied on crosses and ignored letter combos or words that didn't make sense. The grid was solvable this way, and the post-solve look for the theme was rewarded with a great A-HA! Love how the diagonal ascending black squares tied the two words together, and the extra added "kick" of needing to insert "up" as you rose to the next word.
Great theme Jeff!! I loved this one!
5
LETTER BOXED THREAD
Another quick one today, mercifully, so maybe I can go back to sleep.
I have
M-D(9), D-M(7).
Thought I had a 13-letter solution but haven’t nailed it. Maybe later...
Yesterday I had the NYT’s (SE’s) answer.
1
Addendum
Just noticed a shorter mod:
D-M(7),M-Y(7).
I’m done. Really.
3
@Kevin Sparks
R-S(7),S-D(7)
Oddly enough I had the same second word in a very recent Letter Boxed as well.
1
@Kevin Sparks
Today I had two solutions where the same word can be used first or second. S-D (7) D-Y (9) or M-S (9) S-D (7).
Thanks to you, I see the shorter solution now, all building off the same core (M-Y).
1
Clever and fun. Kiddos!!
It took 19 minutes. Last Thursday was 15.
If you have to read a long explanation in order to solve it, in my opinion it’s not a fun puzzle.
4
@Kevin Davis
I'm curious.. did you try to get the theme on your own and then come here for the explanation? YMMV, but I was able to get the theme from the revealer and noticing the "-" clues were not actual words (in two cases anyway). For me that was a lot of fun, but again, YMMV. :)
@Kevin Davis
I think Deb's explanation is intended mainly for puzzle-solving newbies (tyros?). More experienced solvers--especially those familiar with Thursday trickery--could figure it out from the revealer at 45D. For those who did, it was a delightful aha moment, seeing the little "ramps" made out of black squares, each representing "UP," while also carrying the entry up--very clever!
:-c)€
2
@Steve Faiella (BTW I'm a Norwalk native) I solve what I can, then look up obscure clues (names, etc.), then come here.
Only with the help of this column do I solve Thursday through Sunday puzzles. I guess I'm not clever enough.
As for experience, I've been doing these NY Times puzzles for a year after a 35 year hiatus. I used to solve them in the 1970s and 80s when I was a teen. They seemed easier then, or maybe I was smarter.
SPELLING BEE
Thlmnoy
22 words, 71 points, 1 perfect pangram
H x 3, L x 2, M x 9, N x 0, O x 1, T x 7, Y x 0
4L x 13, 5L x 6, 6L x 1, 7L x 1, 8L x 1
4 5 6 7 8 Tot
H 2 1 - - - 3
L 1 1 - - - 2
M 4 3 - 1 1 9
N - - - - - 0
O 1 - - - - 1
T 5 1 1 - - 7
Y - - - - - 0
Tot 13 6 1 1 1 22
42
@Ron O.
Thanks for the grid. Almost made QB on my own today but your grid pointed me towards the last couple of words I needed.
4
@Ron O. For the grid but I made it to QB without consulting it. Only the second time I’ve ever done that.
3
@Gretchen - in the end I doubt I would have reached QB without the grid, because my last was a 5-letter M that I entered as a joke.
3
I saw all of those dashes and thought WTH? I went to read the explanation...good lord, I can't even be bothered with this puzzle. I have better things to do with my time than to decode this nonsense.
7
@Rebecca B
Are you relatively new to the crossword? I only ask because the "-" conceit is used fairly often in puzzles with a "twist", and like solving crosswords in general, the more you do them the less it might be frustrating... I will say that when I first started solving the NYT grids, I usually got agitated and/or frustrated on Thursdays most of all... :)
11
It’s like so many things in life- first, strange taste -UGH- then you start discovering the pleasantness and then you can’t wait for next Thursday
2
@Rebecca B
Don't sell yourself short. It's a puzzle. You can solve it.
1
As much as I dislike rebus puzzles, that would have been preferable to this. And I HATE rebus puzzles.
16
@BW
Take a deep breath before each Thursday Solve, BW!
:-c)€
6
I think I’ve been shook. I had a good run there of beating my average times and then last week hit with a couple of DNF’s. Now relatively gettable answers feel very hard. Finished this one though. Hope the confidence comes back.
2
@Doug
It will, Doug! As we always say on this blog - practice, practice, practice! :) For the longest time, I always gave myself a "pass" if I had a DNF on a Thursday... they can arguably be the toughest day of the week due to the tricks they sometimes contain!
2
I know I’m getting too old for this sort of Thursday puzzle when my brain says "Drano" is the parent company of Koolaid. Won't listen to reason; simply offers up Drano every time I look at the clue.
27
@Joan In California
That's funny. I had Say so before SAYST, so I had _RA_O and thought about Drano also
@ColoradoZ/Joan
Very funny indeed. I had the downs BJORK and TREF so KRAFT was pretty apparent. Not to worry, I had plenty of other fails.
1
@Joan In California Hee hee! (or, I guess, TEHEE) I’ve been laughing about this all morning.
1
I did my KEYSTROKES in SLOW MOTION rather than
SUPER SLO MO ,so that took a long time to clean up. I ended up solving even though I had no idea of the theme. I lucked into knowing the downs and therefore was amazed to get the happy music, not having any idea of what ICCHU, ANDA or DANJO meant. I had to read Deb's column to get it. L'CHAIM
3
Deb Amlen wrote something somewhere about taking the time to really look at a puzzle and its little black squares and see what they are doing-and there were, four little ramps of squares just like 45D teased. Thought it was hard and fun.
7
Up ramps! How cool is that?
I caught on after I had MACH at 26A and noticed _ _CHU at 20A. What word ends in CHU anyway? A quick scan located MACH below connected to _ _CHU via three UP steps. Aha!
D'Anjou or Anjou? In my mind the D' is not inherent to the name of the pear itself, it merely means pears *from* Anjou. Anjou probably outranks D'Anjou in common usage by at least 100 to 1. But what do I care? I prefer Bosc.
Very clever puzzle Jeff, thank you.
Inspired by the 3-step features in the grid and the clueless entry at 23A, here is movement 3 of Bartók's Piano Concerto No. 3 played by Géza ANDA:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1gCSQzCJMs
Good night.
5
If you like films featuring New York's urban grit of the 70's, Three Days of the Condor is one of the best. Here's a short list of some others:
Dog Day Afternoon
French Connection
Taxi Driver
Midnight Cowboy
Serpico
Taking of Pelham One Two Three
Klute
The Seven-Ups
Mean Streets
Shaft
Network
14
@Deacon Poisson
The classic scene from DDA.
https://youtu.be/kYt24hq5nbM
Speak, as thou might(e)st
2
An ok puzzle and certainly not difficult. Weezer is definitely NOT Emo though. They predate the genre. How hard would it have been to choose a band that legitimately IS Emo to clue with? (A: Not very). Also, we Jews celebrate the High Holidays, not the High Holy Days. I guess this one is legit, but it is a non-standard variation. Kind of cheesy.
10
I believe both High Holidays and High Holy Days are in common usage.
4
@LJADZ
Imagine not being Jewish and having no clue about that or TREF (although I did remember the latter eventually since it appeared a while back and there was a lively blog discussion about it). My two hardest types of clues to solve are religious references and French words, but I'm getting better at both thanks to familiarity with past usages (sometimes) LOL.
2
@LJADZ
As I mentioned on another thread, both High Holidays and High HOLY DAYS are in common usage. Just Google it. Maybe your rabbi prefers the former, but there is plenty of attestation for the latter.
Of course, it's really silliness, since the word HOLIDAY derives from the words HOLY DAY.
1
Jeff Chen is a master of warped themes, and today's is no exception.
So I'm trudging along and come across a dash clue. Okay, it's Thursday, so game on. Then a couple more. But they don't seem to relate to the previous across entry as they often do. Then the revealer RAMP UP. But what does it mean?
Very late I get it with IFYO… …LEASE, with the "ramp" connecting the two themer segments and also representing the unseen U and P. This theme was very helpful in completing the construction of MACH(UP)ICCHU.
This type of has Jeff's fingerprints all over it. "Step it UP" would have been a more accurate revealer. I think he would have said so himself if this was someone else's puzzle. But but that's a nit I won't pick.
All in all, great job from Jeff, as usual.
10
Hi Deb!
I'm trying to figure out how the photo you've chosen for today's column ties in with the puzzle. I suppose the sprinters pictured here are increasing (their speed) rapidly?
Or maybe the competitor in the middle happens to be the reigning world record holder in the 100- and 200-metre sprints, a lightning-quick superhero from Jamaica with a BOLT on his chest?
https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/08/14/sports/olympics/15TRACK-3184/15TRACK-3184-jumbo-v3.jpg?quality=90&auto=webp
1
@Henry Su
I was thinking 36D, but this is not a relay race--no baton.
1
@Henry Su
Maybe a frame taken out of a SUPER SLO MO video? The photo gives the impression of being slow rather than the fastest (most fast?, David Connell) ) man ever.
3
Yes, this photo could’ve been a “fourfer” had he been carrying a baton: SHAZAM, SUPER SLO MO, RAMP UP (which he did effortlessly), and LEG. Perhaps it was a “fourfer” when you consider that he made his competitors appear to be STATIONARY.
1
I got L'CHAIM and HOLY DAYS but misremembered TREF as kREF. Not my wheelhouse.
2
This one took a tiny bit longer than a usual Thursday puzzle to solve for me, mostly because I was sitting trying to figure out the theme for a while! When I did figure it out however, it was delightful to see it fall into place and understand how clever the puzzle construction was. Thank you Jeff for a fun Thursday that I (mostly) solved without any help! I did google “Japanese floor coverings” because I didn’t know the words TREF or TATAMIS but I’m hoping one day I’ll be able to solve a Thursday puzzle without using google at all! Only been doing the crossword for about 2 months now :)
10
You were not alone, Lauryn, in not knowing TREF and TATAMIS. That was a natick for me.
1
@Lauryn
You will, Lauryn! TATAMIS (or the singular) is found fairly frequently in XWPs, because constructors love words that alternate consonants and vowels (they "mesh" better with crosses and have other advantages). It usually takes me two or three occurrences in a grid to learn a new word, but there is a satisfaction in recognizing and confidently keying it in later on!
2
@Steve Faiella
I vaguely recall someone a while back objecting to just throwing an S onto the end of a Japanese word and calling it the plural (and explaining why) and was wondering if the case is the same for TATAMIS.
3
Without the revealer at 45D this puzzle would be unsolvable (by me, at least). Interestingly, the common usage of "ramp up", meaning increase rapidly, is just the opposite of the meaning years ago in engineering. "Ramp up" then meant to increase gradually rather than abruptly or quickly.
Here are two current definitions:
"Gradually increase energy supplied, manpower deployed, or quantities produced. This term is applied generally to low rate initial production runs where output rate is gradually increased as the production process is proven, or required approvals or funds are obtained." BusinessDictionary.com
"It helps with performance engineering. We recommend to not begin a large test at the maximum number of virtual users. Rather than run a test for 10 minutes beginning with 5,000 and ending with 5,000, we suggest to start smaller, for example, with 500 users and increase to 5,000 over an hour. This approach has the advantage of allowing your system to get all the parts working properly at smaller load (e.g. caches, threads, database connections) before the heavier volume starts exposing potential bottlenecks in your application. Also if the target server begins to fail during the test this provides more granularity into the number of concurrent users where failure begins. If the test starts at 5,000 and fails all that can be learned from the results is that it fails somewhere between 1 and 5,000 which isn’t very useful." Loadstorm.com
6
@Backup
Coming from the I.T. world, I concur, although having the "rapidly" in there didn't bother me too much... :)
1
@Backup & Steve
I first thought of SPIKE rather than RAMP, but soon recognized what was going on in the grid.
1
I’m glad I wasn’t the only one with visions of the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain. Finally saw the UP ramps with the help of RAMPS UP. Diabolically different.
5
@Beejay yes, I was definitely thinking about the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain! Seems like wizardry could have explained this puzzle.
@Stephanie/Beejay
I confidently entered Slowmotion and Wizardofoz right off the bat and then took them out about five minutes later, because they seemed too obvious for a Jeff Chen puzzle. Then it took forever to get the correct answers.
1
@Beejay
Ditto on Wizard of Oz. In fact, I had AZALEAS and DOZE pretty early, and I thought LOLLS was going to be LAZES. Then I almost convinced myself that the theme would have something to do with all the Z's.
:-c)€
2
Thursdays are my favorite puzzle days, and loved this one. Had PUMPUP for awhile, but DANJOU PEAPS cleared that up.
9
@MJM,
Correct. And if the clue had been "Your friends from the Loire Valley," then it would have been D'ANJOU PEEPS.
3
Jeff Chen, you are truly diabolical! What a clever, fun, tricky, frustrating puzzle. I am going to need some serious chocolate after trudging through that one.
On my first pass through this puzzle, when I saw those [-], I was thinking UGH, what is his ANGLE?
I first noticed the gimmick at 29A, which I knew would be KUNG FU PANDA. I saw the ANDA at 23A, which I got from the crossings of course, since the [ -] was no help. I was perplexed as to where the UP had gone, and I had an AHA moment when I saw the letters UP went UP the little stair steps, as they did in the other three theme answers. Now it makes sense.
Clever idea, really made me think, and frustrated me a bit as well. A very Thursday puzzle indeed, Mr. Chen.
11
Dumbledore himself would have had fits with this "ramp up" stuff. 'Nuff Said.
2
Just as CC's Wednesday puzzle seemed more like a Monday or Tuesday puzzle in terms of difficulty, Jeff's Thursday puzzle was sufficiently tricky to be more like a Friday puzzle. At least that's how it was for me.
I spotted the themers fairly early in the solve -- MACH, KUNG F, IF Y, D'ANJO -- but I didn't recognize the black squares as UP ramps connecting their second halves. The revealer did not immediately reveal this to me either. Color me grid blind. As a result, I continued to labor away on other parts of the puzzle until I spotted ANDA and finally made the connection. Count me as someone who initially thought we were headed for rebus land.
Beyond the tricky visual themers, I thought some of the fill was quite tough. POLLACK was an educated guess. L'CHAIM I had to defragment from bits stored on my hard drive. For REF I had to clear my RAM of Halloween and sibling fun. The cluing for KEYSTROKES was a stroke of genuis.
But I remembered TREF from Andrew Ries' puzzle two months ago. My wheelhouse is growing! Finally, despite being measly three-letter words, GPA and NIT were devilishly clued. Bravo, Jeff.
20
@Henry Su I enjoyed the cluing for KEYSTROKES and GPA as well.
I agree that some of the fill was tough, but it was fair and clean.
Horray for your wheelhouse growing! I am always hoping some of the new things I learn will stick in my brain.
5
I agree with you that many of the non-theme answers seemed closer to a Friday than a Thursday puzzle. Part of that was my confusion over what were theme answers and what were not. I suspected a rebus for a long time, until I realized that KUNG FU PANDA was the animated movie. Then the rest of it fell in gradually. Wonderfully done!
4
It was MACH in the vicinity of ICCHU that did it for me. It came late in the solve, and I already knew something had to RAMP UP. Until then I was totally at sea. Ah, Thursday.
3
Yes, ICCHU was my first aha moment too, but definitely needed RAMPUP to get UP to speed. A terrific Thursday workout.
1
Sloppy puzzle. Sollved it and hated it. The whole rampup thing was a kludge. Not to mention the apostrophe words. Sayst. Lchaim (even the NYT spell checker hates those two). How about we do one trick at a time?
15
@John Ranta I wouldn't consider words with missing apostrophes to be a trick. Apostrophes are always omitted in the puzzle, even in simple words (like didn't or don't) on more straightforward early week puzzles.
13
I solved most of it then I thought “when is a puzzle trying too hard to try too hard”. And so I stopped. :)
5
@John Ranta
Time to ditch your spellchecker. It thinks “solved” has two “l’s”.
7
I was tired and therefore a bit grumpy when things weren't working out. Figured out that it had to be MACHU PICCHU, but there were some extra letters missing a place to put them. I thought they must be around the corner or something, similar to some past gimmicks. But I couldn't locate the P or U. Took a long time to see the little diagonals.
I could've sworn it was MULAN, until the DEFACER, wait, DEFILER came along.
The visualization that Deb provided is not how I pictured it. I have the U at the bottom left black square in the diagonal, P at the top right black square, and the middle black sqiare is just along for the ride. Once I figured that out, KUNG FU PANDA is obvious.
The final problem I had was with D'ANJOU PEARS. I always knew them as ANJOU PEARS because grocers and supermarkets labeled them as such. Lazy grocers! Why don't you get it right?! Because Americans can't figure out how to pronounce D'ANJOU?! Yes, you'd be right. Someone make up their minds on how everyone should call them fruits, please.
I had A LA instead of AKA, KRONER instead of KRONER. Took a while to doubt those assumptions and get to KEYSTROKES. The most misdirecting clue for me was small carp. KOI? Are they really that small? They look pretty big to me, though not as big as the ones in the Mekong or the Mississippi. Until I willed myself to think of the other meaning for carp.
I wish I enjoyed it more. Looking back it's really a fine tricky Thursday puzzle.
7
@Wen wrote: "The visualization that Deb provided is not how I pictured it. I have the U at the bottom left black square in the diagonal, P at the top right black square, and the middle black sqiare is just along for the ride. "
Wen, don't think about this in terms of inserting the letters U and P in the black squares. Rather, the three diagonally arranged black squares represent an "UP ramp" that connects the two halves of the themers. Think escalator.
7
Wen, I pictured it the same way you did. At first I was confused why there were three ramp squares instead of two, but it must surely have been necessary for construction. And it does make sense with your (and my) visualization because each of the answers has a word ending in U and another starting with P. In other words, a space in the middle fits the answers perfectly.
I can also understand why Deb (and apparently Jeff) represent it the way Henry describes, though, since we don't like to think of crossword answers as having spaces in them. Instead the whole thing is just an UP ramp.
5
@Bess,
Yes, my view is that the whole thing is just an UP ramp -- it's a visual connector. But your explanation works well too -- U-square (space = empty black square) P-square.
Cleverly constructed Thursday puzzle where the revealer helped me to make sense of the broken answers. Biggest difficulties though were figuring out how to spell LCHAIM and, like Deb, cycling through PRO and CON on the way to FOR.
7
very clever! finished the puzzle and then connected the dots for ANJOU PEARS, IF YOU PLEASE, KUNG FU PANDA and MACHU PICCHU. It all seemed to wash over me and I then intuited what was going on!
1
I completed the puzzle in exactly my average for a Thursday. And I tried to figure out the theme....really I did. But I had to come here to have Deb explain it. I'm beginning to think that the skills for solving puzzles ((which I am getting better at ) don't translate over to theme sussing. I've lived with my abysmal spatial aptitude all my life and fear I'll just have to resign myself to failure in guessing these clever constructions.
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@Reedie1965 Don't feel bad. I had to stare at this for a long time before I got it. It was a tough one.
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@Deb Amlen
Thank you for the encouragement, Deb. As I’ve progressed with my solving I’ve resisted lookups longer and longer until I mostly do them without any no matter how long it takes. Perhaps I now need to add “staring for a long time” and not being so impatient with finding themes.
4
@Reedie1965
I'm better (i.e., more practiced) than I used to be, and these days I can usually complete a puzzle in one sitting. But I learned a while ago that if I got stuck, the best thing for me wasn’t to stare at the puzzle, but to do the opposite: put it away, forget about it, and come back later. I’d find that my neurons were firing in new patterns, having been jostled by whatever I was thinking about for the last few hours. Then something in the puzzle that eluded me completely before would now jump out at me unexpectedly.
:-c)€
4
I have to add my own 'small carp' to the pool.
I'm pretty sure that Billy Batson says 'SHAZAM'in order to to turn into Captain Marvel, which is the actual name of the superhero with the lightning bolt symbol. Aside from this small NIT, it was an excellent puzzle.
@Fred C
There was apparently a Captain Marvel revolution that you missed:
https://www.newsarama.com/43256-captain-marvel-shazam-name-history.html
Steve L,
I was just about to post the same link!
Also, SHAZAM is an acronym for the "Immortal Elders" from whom Billy's alter ego derives his superpowers:
Solomon - wisdom
Hercules - strength
Atlas - stamina
Zeus - power
Achilles - courage, invulnerability
Mercury - speed, flight
9
@Fred C
"I have to add my own 'small carp' too the pool."
My first 'small carp' was KOI so I would have added it to the pond.
4
Theme doesn't work with the mobile app.
1
Worked for me.
4
This is one of those puzzles where I played until the little jingle went off. I had no idea what I was doing, what the theme was, until I read the notes and saw the schematic. Good grief! I hate Thursdays!
7
I viewed each ramp as being U-P, I guess, and it kind of bothered me, since the answers shouldn’t have dashes in them. I’m not sure Deb’s visualization is any better. Other than that, I thought it was a neat gimmick. Now that I think of it I guess the middle black square could represent a space. That works better.
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@David Meyers
I also figured that the U was the lowest square on the RAMP, with a space in the middle and the P in the highest square. It makes more sense that way since it attaches the U and the P to the actual words in their phrases.
1
Okay, I solved the puzzle, but I didn't figure out what was going on until I went over my answers to try to find my error. In the process of doing that, I saw KUNGF and realized it had to be KUNG FU PANDA. . . and there was the ANDA, up three black squares. And MACH and ICCHU suddenly made sense. Etc etc.
My error was HOLIDAYS for HOLYDAYS. There was so much that made no sense while I was working on it, but I realized it was important to trust my instincts and go with what I knew (like the Downs that created some of those strange almost-words) and hope that it would all come together. Which--yay!--it did.
9
@Liz B
Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are alternately called the High Holidays and the High HOLY DAYS, so I was going back and forth between the two trying to make some sense of the, ahem, crosses.
9
I’m giving Jeff 100% on Theme Helped Solve (THS) scale and 100% on AHA! Entirely subjective rating system tonight as I realize that I am not very good at predicting how others will experience a puzzle.
I finally got the theme toward the end and needed it to finish. Yet, even after finishing, I had to study the themers to really get it. Quite a feat and made me feel sheepish for thinking that Jeff would stoop to using a partial word as part of an entry (IF YO). Hope U will forgive me for doubting, Jeff. Thanks for a great Thursday that didn’t bust my streak.
17
@Puzzlemucker
Well, the theme certainly was a necessary factor, but it wasn't much help for me while trying to ramp 'UP' into the grid itself. (It seemed to work at first but left impossible crosses.) Marks off for leading astray.
My ratings: DHS=7, AHA=10, Time=1.50Avg
Btw, thinking about using golf handicap approach for computing individual par time. If I remember, the average of the best 10 of your last 20 scores is used so that your handicap reflects current form. Of course, here it would be necessary to compute a different par time for each day of the week.
1
@Al in Pittsburgh
That’s a good idea. For long-time solvers, current average is likely to be lower, sometimes significantly lower, than their average.
Lots of nits (some of which seem wrong) and sloppy dings in comments tonight thus far. Depresses me. Bed beckons.
1
Regarding 18A--Although I got the answer immediately, the clue is a little off. AZALEAS are not relatives of rhododendrons; they ARE rhododendrons.
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@Steve L
Azaleas are in genus Rhododendron. But they're distinct horticulturally.
Interestingly, we have lots of rhodies but can't grow any azaleas because deer eat them. They won't touch any rhododendron but see any azalea as salad. They clearly are not taxonomists.
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@Steve L - Martin already pointed out they are different. A while back, I found out that they look very similar but were clearly distinct, and one of the easiest ways is to count the number of stamens. Heck if I could remember which has how many though. I call them all rhododendrons, personally. When I was growing up we had them in our yard and I was always very partial to them.
https://www.gardenia.net/guide/Azaleas-and-Rhododendrons-What-Difference
2
Yes, azaleas are rhododendrons like lions are cats. Lions are cats, and, well, cats are cats, and lions aren't cats the way cats are cats, but they're still cats.
When I go and buy an azalea, the tag says "Rhododendron" on it.
9
EPs generally contain four to six tracks; certainly not one or two. They have been available in different formats at different times, including vinyl, CDs and digital downloads.
4
@Steve L
I have EPS that have one track on each side: an extended version of a single, and then on the other side some other version--like instrumental, or disco.
3