A small note makes huge racket when dropped, proceeds to make automotive history.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lt4euqZLsY
(Video dedicated to Deadline, with a spoonful of sugar)
I have friends who are 'Juniors' and have called their sons TREYs, so I thought it TREY nice to THINK TWICE and fill once. Won't mind seeing double from this constructioneer, and happy to play it again Same.
Chin chin
CONDI BIONDI, hah!
1
I do feel that a wild pitch can elicit a boo.
1
I enjoyed much of this, until the dismal Northeast quadrant. TREY isn't much of a word, moving pictures was a poor clue for OP ART, gondaliers aren't actually polers. I got the rest quickly, including the theme answers and description without understanding the theme, though WILDPITCH didn't make much sense, and the theme description didn't obviously relate to the theme clues for me. It was only after reading Deb's commentary that I understood what the constructor was *trying* to do, and even then WILDPITCH still didn't make any more sense than it did previously. Boo boo, WTF? Hmm, in retrospect maybe I didn't actually enjoy the puzzle that much.
5
I'm on the west coast and started late. What with company coming for dinner, I was resigned to kissing my streak goodbye. Suddenly it just filled itself from bottom to top, saving the trey for last. Phew! Or more elegantly, psi.
2
@DebAmlen,
@David Podeschi's question below reminded me of a request I have long wanted to make: would you consider writing, and linking permanently to the Wordplay home page, a glossary of conventions and slang (?) used in NYT crosswords and comments? Crossword conventions would include n/, “quote marks”, abbrs., langues étrangère, and so on. Commenter slang might include Natick, chewy, crunchy, DOOK, etc. Your “How to solve a crossword“ column covers a few of these but there are a lot more. It would be nice to have them all in one place for beginners and for reference.
4
Twice within less than a week, we have the same clue for the same contrived answer. On Saturday, August 3, 29A, Member of Dubya's cabinet, answer "Condi". And again today, 66A, Member of Dubya's cabinet. Could it be Condi again? Yup. Please tell Will to show some creativity or at least variety. If you can't find an alternative meaning for those five letters or an alternative five letter answer that fits, you could try "Ms. Rice's nickname" or "former Secretary of State to friends".
13D started a mindworm that brought up the memory of a poem (A Runnable Stag - by John Davidson) I had read a long long time ago. It's in the middle of the next-to-last line in the following fragment:
A stag of warrant, a stag, a stag,
A runnable stag, a kingly crop,
Brow, bay and tray and three on top,
A stag, a runnable stag.
1
Congratulations, Timony Polin, on your 50th NYTimes Crossword Puzzle! It was jolly jolly, good good, fun, fun.
4
This was the first time I’ve seen something like “2/“ looking for a month. Wordplay mentions this is a convention. Is there a list of conventions used by the New York Times crosswords?
@David Podeschi
ARS president David Podeschi?
The grid was looking pretty blank for me for a while there, but I just kept chipping away slowly, and little by little, I got it. Challenging and enjoyable puzzle. Good aha moment when I finally figured out the theme.
4
I found this puzzle to be quite a bit more difficult than last Friday's.
3
For “I’d like another” (which was ONEMORE), I was really hoping the answer was going to be BEERME.
16
@Mr. Mark I was, too!
1
Very first boxes I filled in were the revealer, but still made for a rather tricky puzzle. NE corner in particular was elusive.
3
I don’t want to be technical. I just want to put in an answer that fits.
1
A relatively quick solve today (relative to me, probably not you) in spite of the formidable presence of MATTBIONDI, a complete stranger discoverable only by 10(!) crosses. The clever theme revealed itself early, and a quick encore by CONDI put a nice dent in the SW. I’m beginning to think Thursdays are my favorite puzzle days.
2
@Grandpa Brian
I had the MA but Mark Spitz didn't fit. I needed the crosses to get the full name.
2
now that was really clever. and fun.
3
Regarding the Mini, 5D (Westernmost territory of the United States--GUAM): If you want to be technical, Midway Island at 177 degrees 21 minutes W., is the westernmost territory of the United States. You can reach Guam from there by traveling in a generally westerly direction, but at 145 degrees E., it's technically to the east of every US possession except Wake Island and the Northern Mariana Islands.
In Guam, it is already Friday, as befits a more easterly land (think Japan). (Actually, Guam is an hour behind Japan, despite its being east of most of Japan.)
A slow start. Had Paco before PEPE and again before TWICE, but Stan GETZ led me toward LOGIC PUZZLE which gave me the big AHA! Answers to the other theme clues then came quickly. Lots of humor there and some challenging but fun clues. And I love Hawaiian pizza, eh.
3
@Beejay - to store away for the future reference - Paco is the nickname for Francisco...hee hee.
2
@David Connell
Yes, thanks, I remember. Big fan of the late Paco de Lucia.
1
I found the cluing today to be incredibly annoying. Didn't enjoy this puzzle and gave up very easily :(
3
Liked this one --- I caught onto the theme before I solved THINK TWICE; I originally thought THINK again but I thought again because 9d could not end in an "a." The NE corner, in fact, was the last to fall -- it was like a mini cryptic with OPART, ALIBI, and TREYS all coming from twisted clues, the best kind. Hear, hear --- I had had a good, good time with this crossword.
3
oh.....clue clue not answer answer!
6
Moderately OT, re the photo with today's column:
I was delighted to see Mr. Bolton walking Hector in Central Park, and not just because my many walks with my many dogs in my favorite park are happy memories.
My maternal grandparents had serial dogs named Hector. All of their dogs were named Hector. In conversation, they were differentiated as "the old Hector," "the new Hector," "the first Hector," "this Hector," etc. I don't really know why. I've always suspected that the name was a reference to the phrase "when Hector was a pup," which is the kind of thing that would have appealed to my grandfather, but as a kid i never asked.
All of the Hectors were delightful mutts.
5
Wow, so hard! I did not get the theme until after every clue was solved.
How I did it, I don't know, because every second was a pleasant torture, and my brain now has puzzle freeze.
9
Not sure whether to put this one in the “Solved” column or the “Completed” column.
I managed to figure out the theme - including revealer and answers - but bumbled over a silly mistake or two and could NOT figure out OP ART or TATS (the latter because I had an ‘N’ left over from a bad guess at square 49). Some additional patience would likely have gotten me through to a clear “solve”.
One thing is certain. Deb is right when she says anyone can learn to solve these things.
I thoroughly enjoyed the puzzle and though the theme to be exceedingly clever.
Didn’t we see CONDI - clued almost exactly the same way - within the last week??? Funny how that happens..
We are in Stratford, ON enjoying a week of excellent (mostly) theater. “Merry Wives of Windsor” was a thoroughly enjoyable Shakespeare Comedy - - with a capital ‘C’. “Little Shop of Horrors” was pure Schtick - - - with a capital ‘Scht’!! Well-executed - - but WHY?? It’s hard to believe that ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and ‘The Little Mermaid’ came from the same mind(s) that created ‘Little Shop’.
5
@Guess Who!
Little Shop of Horrors was actually a (non musical) movie at first by Roger Corman in 1960. It was part of the whole 60s drive in theater "lite"/campy horror movies like The Blob, The Tingler, etc. In 1982 it premiered Off-Broadway, and finally made it to Broadway in 2003. It was also made as a movie (with Menken/Ashman's music and lyrics. Although the story isn't typical Broadway musical fare, the songs are amazing as you may imagine. The '86 movie with Ellen Greene and Rick Moranis in the lead roles is incredible! Story aside ( which I love, but my sense of humor runs in that vein) the songs are some of Menken/Ashman's best. :)
4
@Steve Faiella
Steve Martin as the dentist....
4
@vaer
Yes! In the original Corman movie, the dentist was a young Jack Nicholson!
1
I’m just curious as to why the other NYT word puzzles (acrostic, other specialty puzzles) are not available through the puzzle app?
3
Hi @Lynne Apostle, Right now the team is expanding on other games like Spelling Bee and Letter Boxed.
You can still do most of the variety puzzles through the web view, though (with the exception of those puzzles that need to be printed out). Head over to the main puzzle page on your phone or tablet:
https://www.nytimes.com/crosswords
psi, what a great puzzle! thanks!
3
I liked the composition of this puzzle. It wasn’t until I had “KIN” and “OCHOA” that I gronked onto the theme.
The “Ken, for one” clue was a definite reassurance that the thematic solution resided within the clues themselves, but that did not make “AVON” and “EVIDENCE” any easier to suss out. I needed to set the puzzle down a number of times before I could get the first three down and across clues solved.
OARERS before POLERS, PRUDENCE before EVIDENCE, PIG before PAW, JEFE before PEPE, SAW IN before HAD IN, GOOD PITCH before WILD PITCH ... anyway lots of uncertainty before it all fell into place.
The “O” in MATT BIONDI should stand for “wOW that’s a lot of gold medals!”
Cheers.
3
OT (but important): Today is International (and National) Cat Day. So, if your family doesn't include a kitty -- or even if it does -- it's a good day to visit your local shelter and adopt a little needy one. (And/or a dog.)
My solve mirrored RiA's, as I said in a reply to him. I was quite delighted by the doublings, especially CAN CAN/HIGH KICKS.
Also delighted by the clever cluing for so many entries -- PACE, EBAY, PSI, OIL PRICES, others. I confess, though, that I was so much on Timothy's wavelength that I got most of these instantly. That made me feel really clever.
Before starting to duplicate RiA's journey, I got off to a slow start, with nothing in the far NW, and getting started only with ACT in Minnesota. Continued in a sort of zig-zaggy clockwise direction until I figured out the gimmick and thus was able to fill in a whole lot.
Did have a problem going back up the west coast though. I needed all the crosses (which I didn't immediately have) to get MATT BIONDI and OCHOA. I don't know what POLE BEANS are, STL could have been ATL, I had ANY before ONE MORE, and NCAA was a guess (caps=sports).
The real hangup was that I entered WIDE instead of WILD PITCH. I wanted ENDS and PEPE, although I didn't know the Jose connection. Finally gave up and entered ENDS. Still wasn't sure about L or N in that last empty square -- WIND PITCH and PONE BEANS made a sort of sense to me.
Great puzzle, relaxing yet satisfying. Thanks.
7
@Deadline
We have an old cat we rescued from a bad situation. Took her in what was to be a temporary home. Well, you know the rest. She gets me through some dark days.
6
@Ann
So glad to hear that you and your senior kitty have been so good for each other.
5
Deadline,
I walked past this place about 30 minutes ago (as I do every four weeks). Dogs were out being walked; cats, not so much.
https://www.aspca.org/adopt-pet
4
Absolutely loved the clueing on this. I didn’t get the THINK TWICE clue till I was 3/4 done with the puzzle for purely mechanical reasons: I was lying on my side, typing with the thumb of the same hand that held the phone, so when I got to TWICE, it was easier to get it from the cross clues than to shift my entire grip so that my thumb could reach 60A for the reference. One gets lazy at 2am.
What I’m trying to say is that I filled in DENTAL HYGIENIST as someone that removes tar without a second thought. “OK,” I said to myself. “Tar must be another word for tobacco or chew. I have yet much to learn as a relatively new Texan.”
4
TIL that I strongly associate "notable breakups" and "storm casualties" with human beings. My bad. Gotta work on that personal issue in order to improve my PACE. Crunching through today's moguls and misdirects felt like the xword equivalent of "surviving" a steep double blue or single black diamond ski run. I don't know much about Mr. Polin's BIO, but I THINK his nickname should be Captain Crunch. Congrats on your 50th ACT!
3
I had THINK TWICE. I mean, THINK at 19A and again at 60A. I thought that was pretty clever! Slowed things down in the NE. I thought gondoliers used POLEs, so that helped. Very clever theme.
2
113 comments by 9:30 Eastern? this is going to be interesting.
5
Today’s “tricky clues” made no sense all. No way is op art a moving picture or a trey a heart. Weak.
4
@Ben Barton
TREY of hearts = Three of hearts
OP ART = Art that uses optical illusions which give the impression of movement
Tricky but fair, IMO.
16
I thought the TREYS clue was very clever.
9
@Martin - Oui, c'était très adroite, bien sûr.
3
After gritting my teeth and doing google lookups on the four personalities that I had absolutely no Idea of, the puzzle solved nicely -- and with a great deal of chewing. Which is ironic because (spoiler alert!) the theme recalled a long-since forgotten musical radio ad for a very popular brand of chewing gum using the words "pleasure" and "fun".
Interesting week so far -- almost a full day's shift methinks: Monday felt like Tuesday, Tuesday was a hard Wednesday, Wednesday was like a Thursday, and today's felt like Friday. Tomorrow promises to be "interesting."
And -- wonder of wonders .. the NYT weather predictions were more or less correct yesterday. Quien sabe?
3
Easy for some, tough for me. Some of the clues were devilish.
Two names in the SW and a couple sports references slowed me down more than the past few puzzles did.
Is kenken really a word? Tintin is more my thing.
1
Renegator,
Go to the NYT Crossword home page and look under Logic Puzzles...
3
@Barry Ancona
Will do. Thanks
my experience always seems to be counter to the general consensus on this blog. it’s kinda fascinating. i was really tickled by yesterday’s despite some sketchy fill, and finished it well under time.
but hough i enjoyed the theme today, i found large swathes of it — much of the N — harder than usual and with annoying cluing, so it ended up taking me longer than my average (and as i’ve continued to do the crossword my timings are generally lower and lower than my average so it was noticeably longer).
- i had THINK AGAIN instead of THINK TWICE at first like someone else. but also, given their equal lengths, it wasn’t clear which went where, which was annoying and so i kept flip-flopping them.
- found much of the S way more easy than i would expect for thursday, which was surprising after finding the N so challenging.
- having POLER and POLEBEAN in the same puzzle seems... meh.
- the PSI clue should have had some indication it was for a greek letter. i remained stumped by that one but for no good/ satisfying reason.
- also disliked cluing and answer for 14D. on a saturday i’d be fine with it, but not a thursday. hearts is already kind of a lesser-played game and TREY is a pretty obscure word. the combo with the cluing is... yeah. anyway.
and lastly, UGH SPORTS!!! no, that’s not an answer (but maybe if i ever make a crossword it will be :-P), i’m just not a sports person (ESP. baseball) at all and puzzles with lots of sports clues irk me.
5
@a.
Interesting how we react to these puzzles. I didnt mind poler and polebean, but the sports references were tough for me. I try to accept there are a lot of sports fans and I'm just not one of them.
I also struggled with the revealer, having again instead of twice for a while. And I've never heard of kenken.
1
@a. - We are birds of a feather on sports. I offer one hint for future solving:
When the clue says "with [number] across/down", the "with" element will always be the second element. Though "think again" and "think twice" was a confusion - and, arguably, intentionally so - there shouldn't be confusion about "think" coming first according to the clue.
I'm saying this as someone who is more than 50% annoyed by cross-referenced clues. At least Will Shortz goes for consistency in this regard!
3
@a. Hand up for THINK AGAIN before THINK TWICE.
9
Clever, crunchy, witty, delightful. Absolutely loved this puzzle.
Two wrong answers, confidently written in, may have made this harder for me than it was for you. Stan mETZ at 39D kept me from seeing DENTAL HYGIENIST. And TOP Seed at 49A kept me from seeing OIL PRICES, SLOVAKIA or TATS (42D). I had T-dS and was looking for some lovely "parlor" furniture.
I needed the wonderful revealer, which I stumbled across late, to understand the clues. I then re-read them all and had a huge "Aha Moment". My favorite was "tar[tar] remover".
Making this puzzle even more wonderful was the fact that there are almost no proper names at all. Fabulous job, Timothy. Thanks.
6
@Nancy
Funny how a wrong word that fits can throw everything off in its vicinity. I had to tear out a few words before i was done.
But the few names were near each other. And that slowed me down, especially with one being long.
1
I loved this puzzle. Loved the theme, and loved the tricky clues (even though some were so tricky that I made a mess of the top corners.) I was also thrown when BEERME didn't fit in 29A.
5
@FrankieHeck
BEER ME would have been a WINK WINK NUDGE NUDGE to the Wordplay group :).
1
When I got to the SW, I mistakenly wrote OCHOA in the wrong place, at 53D instead of 52D. Suddenly everything in that corner came to a GRINDing halt.
4
@archaeoprof
Ahhh ...thank you. I do that also. Now I don't feel so weird.
4
@archaeoprof I sometimes do that when solving on paper; solving on my phone protects me from myself.
I recently successfully encouraged my son to subscribe to the NYT puzzles. I hope he is still speaking to me after today’s. So many synapses fired this morning my head aches.
3
"It's min. score is 120" -- I wanted GOLF, but maybe there are better golfers than myself.
Fun puzzle, nice cluing.
23
It never occurred to me that one would skip the "P" in PSI. But if I hadn't stupidly decided "Be dramatic" pointing at A_T must be ART as in "Where art thou?" I probably would have got the P and S without finally giving up and googling "improvisational style." Not that I have any idea what SCAT means.
2
@kilaueabart
Watch "Ella Fitzgerald, Oscar Peterson.. Air Mail" on YouTube
https://youtu.be/hoT4CC0O-Xk
4
@Ann
Noice.
1
@Ann
Noice.
LETTER BOXED Aug 8th 2019
My first 2-word solution attempt:
C-----N (7), N------S (8)
Re: "Gondolier, maybe" as POLER
Alan J and Wags (and Martin),
I have no first or second hand experience with gondolas (as watercraft), but I do with canoes. At times, I would use the paddle as a pole, to push off on the bottom, or to fend off another craft, a snag, or a dock. While I was always using a a paddle, was I, at those times, "maybe," a POLER? It is, after all, getting late in the week.
6
@Barry Ancona
If you did that in Alaska would you be a polar poler?
3
@Barry Ancona
It sounds like you're trying to sell a shaky clue. But to characterize either a canoer or a gondolier as a POLER is like trying to categorize a wrench as a hammer, maybe. It doesn't matter if you might sometimes pound a nail with a wrench. It's far enough off-base from primary usage as to be misinformational.
A wrench is not a hammer, not even maybe.
A gondolier is not a POLER, not even maybe.
A hard drive is not a BRAIN, certainly not essentially.
2
@ Dr. W
Yes, I believe he would be. Canoeing gets dangerous if you get any further north, though. Spring a leak and surrounded by all that ice the best you can hope for is becoming a floeter...
2
Clever puzzle and quite a challenge for me. I had a good chunk of it filled in in reasonable time and then had to work hard in some other areas. My biggest problem was that I read the clue for the reveal too quickly and was thinking that the 'think twice' applied to the answers, not the clues, and that even though I already had LOGICPUZZLE filled in. Think? Logic? What?
It was only after I had COMICSTRIPS filled in that I went back and re-read the clue more carefully and finally got it. Still tough in a couple of areas after that but managed to work it out.
Pleased to see pretty much all positive comments so far. I half-expected to come here and find somebody quoting the last two lines of Dylan's "Don't Think Twice."
7
@Rich in Atlanta
Same mis-think here, RiA, trying to double the first part of the entries instead of the beginning of the clues. Also, same stall at the same place -- LOGIC-LOGIC???? -- leading to a rereading of the revealer and the big Aha! moment. This also triggered a somewhat smaller lightbulb at TIN TIN.
GMTA.
1
After a Thursday on Wednesday, we have a Wednesday on Thursday. Keep us guessing, Will.
P.S. I enjoyed both puzzles.
5
I thought Wednesday was a Tuesday and Tuesday was a Thursday. Today’s Thursday was a Thursday.
5
My metric is firstly based on whether I fell asleep midsolve. Ignoring those nights...
The day's placement is correct for me when it falls between my average time for "yesterday" and my average time for "today." Ignoring the "I fell asleeps" - it's been months since that metric wasn't accurate.
I continue to be amazed by Will's ability to "pitch" the puzzles correctly.
3
LETTER BOXED
Today I had C-N (7), N-S (8).
Yesterday I had the NYT solution.
HINT: Old boys’ club?
5
Had that first and for the first time ever I found an alternate:
O-S (9), S-T (9)
What an emoting priest does?
@Andrew
Thanks for the hint! I was clubbed down by this one.
Clever theme with reconsider/think twice clues. My favorite clues were for AVON, CACTI, OIL PRICES. TIL PEPE is a nickname for Jose - interesting internet explanation on the religious aspect of the origin. TIAL, Tintin was a comic strip long, long before it was a movie. Do New Yorkers/East Coast people eat Hawaiian pizza? I would guess not much.
@Chatte Cannelle
If a comic strip is the four-panel job that you find (or perhaps, used to find) in your daily paper, TINTIN never was one. It was a series of comic albums, or books, similar to what we now call graphic novels. That seems to be the major complaint voiced here by others.
As to the pizza, it's not unheard of, but I don't know of anyone who would order one. The idea of ham and pineapple on a pizza seems rather revolting to me, and it seems, to most New Yorkers.
2
@Chatte Cannelle - I had a student one summer, he looked exactly like Tintin, in every way up to and including the iconic haircut.
He had never heard of Tintin.
I supplied him with copies of some of the images of the character, and he agreed that he was a clone.
The film came out a few weeks after that. I was vindicated!
@Steve L
I've also seen Hawaiian pizza on menus -- I'd even read the description, so did know what the toppings were. But I have never actually seen one, or heard anyone order one. And I can't imagine anyone actually eating one.
(Actually, I've never understood why some people -- apparently quite a few people -- seem to think that pineapple goes with ham. Those people also seem to think that pineapples grow, pre-sliced, in cans. I think the combo is a perfectly horrid idea, right up there with lamb and mint jelly.)
3
I was doing HIGHKICKS when I saw the clue for 7D given that my husband had just immigrated to the US from Slovakia about the time of the Velvet Divorce. I knew that would help a bit. Alas, it helped about as much as a pair of TREYS. That clue (13D) I never would have gotten without taking a peek at Deb’s column.
Still, it was good to see SLOVAKIA listed instead of the Czech Republic (Czechia), the Eagleton on the former Czechoslovakia (Parks and Rec reference).
4
TIL that what I had long believed to be true is indeed true. I have a busy schedule today so I wanted to solve first thing, just in case I couldn't get around to it during the day. I began solving with NO COFFEE. In retrospect, it was quite amusing. Hardly anything filled in, and having misread/skipped the revealer clue, I was trying to figure out how THINK HIGH KICKS would be reconsidering something (more often than not, two part clues are close to one another and often on the same line). I was reading clues that would normally be gimmes and having no idea what the answer could be. After about 15 minutes of this, I closed the puzzle and had my usual 30 ozs of strong black coffee. An hour later I opened the puzzle, read the revealer correctly, and solved in about 10 minutes. Not sure how I feel about needing a chemical to get my brain working...
I liked the puzzle a lot! As Jeff mentioned over at Xwordinfo, it was a puzzle that could ease people into Thursday solving without being *too* easy for the vets. Fill was really clean (except maybe POLER and POLE BEANS, but maybe that's a personal thing.. I had ROWER for the longest time for 16A since I didn't think POLE would be duplicated). Overall a great Thursday and an (unfortunate?) confirmation of my addiction... :)
3
@Steve Faiella
I totally share your addition to coffee BEANS. Quite FOND of them. Perhaps too FOND of them, but the EVIDENCE of their positive impact on my morning mood and clarity is quite clear. Just have to do a better job of saying no to ONE MORE cup!
3
@Steve Faiella
Needing coffee to get the brain working in the morning should engender no shame. I'd liken it to oxygen.
3
@Deadline et al
I usually measure the degree of difficulty of a puzzle by how many breakfast cups of joe I need before I finish it. (That's why I often solve at a certain diner nearby -- all the java I can drink.)
PS I did the current one in an insomniac fit at 2 AM -- no coffee.
1
A lovely original theme, spot-on Thursday difficulty, four world-class clues (for OIL PRICES, TREYS, PACE, and AVON), and a palindrome (TOP SPOT) all in one grid -- a wow for me.
The theme is tight as can be, IMO, with each doubled element consisting of three letters. I tried coming up with an answer/clue for WOO, but nothing of Timothy's quality emerged. And the concept is so clever that I didn't care that TAR is an outlier (TARTAR is a single word, while KEN KEN, CAN CAN, BOO BOO, and TIN TIN are not).
Bonuses are having a backward PACER to go along with PACE, and ELLA / ANA / ASIA / AREA / LEIA / OCHOA / and SLOVAKIA.
A true Thursday treat. Thumbs up all around. Thank you for this, Timothy!
11
@Lewis
If WOO doesn't work for you, how about BAM? Or MUU?
1
@Lewis
Having been a parent, BOOBOO is one word.
@Lewis
Kenken is a single word, and Can-Can and Boo-boo are usually hyphenated, so I guess TARTAR is OK by those standards.
Did somebody go to law school, pleaded Tom parenthetically?
Scored some original Tom Swift books so my “Swifties” will surely improve. How could they not, tweeted Tom twice.
Got the reveal early on and the rest fell like dominoes.
Thanks Tim
5
I've been doing the crossword almost every day for the year since my retirement. At first it was
difficult and frustrating to encounter tricky clues and obscure (to me) themes. I could almost always "get" Monday and Tuesday puzzles, but the rest were tough. Suddenly, I'm on an 11-day streak and enjoying the sneaky playful bits. I've learned a lot from Deb and this community and am having lots of fun. Thanks!
58
@Expat Keep up the great solving, and lucky you to be in Rome. What a beautiful city.
3
@Expat
Now that Mondays are getting easy for you, try the next stage, which I learned about from another Comments section regular: try to just use the Across clues to solve the Monday puzzle. So far I've had to look at least a couple of the Down clues to solve the puzzle, but it does make Mondays much more challenging!
3
@Expat Good job on the streak!! I can't even get my day started till i finish the puzzle. it's clearly an addiction.
I still struggle some days especially Fridays and Saturdays but we endeavor to persevere!
Good luck on #12!
2
SPELLING BEE 8/8/2017
Aghntuy
36 words, 138 points, 1 perfect pangram, bingo
A x 3, G x 4, H x 5, N x 8, T x 9, U x 5, Y x 2
4L x 15, 5L x 14, 6L x 4, 7L x 2, 8L x 1
4 5 6 7 8 Tot
A 1 2 - - - 3
G 3 1 - - - 4
H 2 2 - 1 - 5
N 2 3 2 1 - 8
T 5 3 1 - - 9
U - 3 1 - 1 5
Y 2 - - - - 2
Tot 15 14 4 2 1 36
49
@Ron O.
I decide to add the date and I get it wrong! August 8, 2019.
3
@Ron O., thanks! Three words were eluding us. They have now all been wrestled into submission.
@Ron O. Thank you for grid!
first two letter hints (not much variety today)
3-AU (3)
3-GA, 1-GN (4)
5-HA (5)
8-NA (8)
6-TA, 2-TH, 1-TU (9)
5-UN (5)
1-YA, 1-YU (2)
16
I love it when I catch on to the theme quickly, but there is still plenty of work to do. My solve wasn't helped by the fact that I not only had again instead of TWICE, but also had it in the wrong place, 16A, instead of 19A.
Other than that a really fun solve with all the double words and tricky cluing, most of which I got fairly quickly with the exception of TREY, which took me a while to make sense of.
Faster for me that either Tuesday or Wednesday.
7
Thoroughly enjoyed this one. Got the THINK TWICE then still had to think a few more times to double the clue, but Can Can and Boo Boo lit the bulb. Very nice AHA moment. Always like a baseball clue. Other favorites were OPART and CACTI. Didn’t know the swimmer and the golfer, but now I do. And for Out, of sorts, I thought not of someone being away as an ALIBI, but the alibi being your “out”, meaning your way out of a difficult situation. Know what I mean? Maybe that’s the same thing. Thanks to the constructor. I won’t dread Thursdays now.
13
@Rosalita
I agree with you that “Out” for ALIBI was being used as a noun, not an adjective. Deb might have been joking, of sorts. It was one of three great clues in the NE, along with the clues for OP ART and TREYS.
2
@Puzzlemucker
Me too re "out."
Also re not knowing the swimmer and the golfer (or, for that matter, the newscaster).
It's tough not to judge Tintin for his WWII Nazi collaborationist period. Like this panel from 1941:
https://tinyurl.com/tintinantisemite
The complete, complex story is at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideology_of_Tintin
Rin Tin Tin I'm 100% fine with.
18
@Martin
Both links take to the same page on the Tintin Wiki site. To see the antisemitic panel, you have to scroll down a bit to the section entitled “Tintin and the Jews”.
@Martin Wow, TIL.
5
@Martin
"Complex" story indeed! I had absolutely no idea. I didn't even know that TIN TIN was not a modern (e.g., late 20th Century) COMIC STRIP.
Very very nice.
Mr Polin seems to have snuck in some "Hitchcock" cameos
with POLER and POLEBEANS.
3
In honor of the theme, I will use DuckDuckGo as my search engine today
6
Good puzzle, nice theme, on the difficult side for a Thursday in my opinion. Got majorly stuck in the NE corner, had THINK AGAIN for a while. TIL about SCAT singing.
4
@Rajeev, I didn't doubt again for ages.
@Rajeev Same - start with AGAIN as well up there, and between OPART, the completely random (as clued) TREYS, and 9D having ACT work better (in my mind) than OPT, just couldn't get seem to find the way.
Before I got the reveal, on the first pass through, I entered Bronze for the tin clue, figuring I would get the rest of the answer on the Downs. Bronze instead of COMICS couldn't be wronger
2
Shouldn't the title have been "Timothy Polin is trying to (re-)use his words"?
Today (Wednesday) would have been my father's birthday. He spent decades estimating future OIL PRICES (and reserves) for Amoco. [using spreadsheets he filled in by hand, by the way, with totals in the billions of dollars. Try that, you data scientist. ;) ]
6
@PaulSFO
August 7th was my dad's birthday, too. Missing him.
4
Being of an intellectual bent, I THINK that probably only TWICE in my life have the COMIC STRIPS not been the TOP SPOT in my daily newspaper reading routine. Therefore, I am surprised I have never heard of TinTin. (With its inclusion in the paper a few years ago, Ken Ken has replaced local news for the second spot)
2
@ColoradoZ
This being Xworld, you probably won't be surprised to know some liberties were taken with this clue. Tintin was created by a Belgian and was primarily, if not solely, featured in Europe. I don't know what his US exposure was. I expect someone will jump in with more elaboration. Meanwhile, there's wikipedia.
1
@vaer
I guess you are not me, because you must not have spent a lot of time from the mid-90's to the early 2000's with a little boy in comic book shops, which always featured a circular rack of TinTin books. He could even borrow them from the library.
1
@Ann
So Tintin was primarily in comic books, not comic strips here? That's sort of my point, which I was not clear about at all.
1
Fun puzzle. I didn't quite grasp the double think part of the clues, but I finished despite that. Though I do keep looking at 9 across and thinking, What the heck is an O PART? And TIL that PEPE is a nickname for Jose.
6
@vaer
I stared at it long enough to see the OP ART move after getting the happy music.
I believe O PART is what you see when you stare at an OP ART piece shortly after spending hundreds of dollars for a 10-minute visit from your plumber.
4
@vaer
O PART was what Moses said when standing at the shore of the Red Sea.
5
I was chuckling about PEE as the "letter that sounds like an expression of relief" for 5D. Sadly, it was not to be. Would that have required a clue ending with a question mark, I wonder?
22
@Eph
That reminds me of this from The Royal Canadian Air Farce:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1lIhymngpI
3
I enjoyed this one. Tough enough. TREYS really stalled me, as did Lorena OCHOA. Vaguely aware of golfers.
And I do love a little baseball clue in season. My team continues to make a lot of boo boos, but how about the Mets!!!
(I am still stinging from 1969, but even I have to be impressed with them since the All Star break!)
1
@Ann Those two slowed me down also. As for the rest, very enjoyable and easier than Tuesday (which I've previously said never times).
4
Very quick completion for a Thursday puzzle... But it didn't seem easy. The clues were humorous or straightforward. The theme became apparent fairly quickly too. I think there was a mini law theme as well with EVIDENCE, ETHICS, LSAT, plus LOGIC PUZZLE and CONDI Rice.
I enjoyed this puzzle a lot!
:-)
6
Decorum prevents me giving my opinion of this theme and puzzle.
8
Fun puzzle!
On my first pass through I instantly recognized the clue for 9D as ACT. That slowed me down in the Northeast. Occupational hazard, I guess. 😁
8
Alan,
You were simultaneously appearing in 6D? Busy, busy!
2
Easy for a Thursday, but I enjoyed discovering the theme and smiling at some fun cluing
Thank you!
1
A satisfying solve. The clues for PSI, TREYS, OILPRICES, and CACTI made me smile once I got them. The trivia ran the gamut from in my wheelhouse (LEIA, SLOVAKIA, ZAIRE, LSAT) to "I think I can get this from half of the crosses" (GETZ, PEPE, OCHOA, MATTBIONDI) to "I don't know this but I got all the crosses" (KYL, ANA, SAUL).
Standardized testing alert: We have LSAT crossing SAT, and we have ACT at 6-down (also next door within CACTI). There is a test for middle school students applying to private high schools called the ISEE, which has appeared in the puzzle 626 times (including twice in the past 11 days) but not today, unfortunately. 22-down, PSA can make PSAT if you go Boggle-style. (We also have Boggle-style GRE, GED, and SSAT.) And we have our GPA at 47-down.
(Every once in a while, I go wild looking for patterns in the grid. This is one of those days.)
3
clever puzzle. finished without too much trouble and then had to THINK what the revealer actually meant. KEN-KEN and BOO BOO gave it away!
1
Great puzzle. Some of the cleverest cluing in a while.
But a gondolier doesn't propel his craft with a pole, he uses a long paddle that pushes the water and doesn't touch the floor of the canal. (I think this came up a few years ago.)
12
@Wags, and again an hour ago.
2
Loved the cluing, with my TOP SPOT going to “Hearts that don’t beat very much?” (TREYS). Rare Thursday where I got the theme before the revealer. Themers still crunchy for me because of clever clues. Very FOND of this one.
(Alas, LEIA’s still waiting for a better clue).
13
@Puzzlemucker
Erik Agard was getting close in his puzzle on June 2.
And you know mine.
Meanwhile as I was looking at Leia on xwordinfo.com, I noticed a typo in the clue when Mr. Tobin included her in a puzzle on August 23, 2014.
"Sci-fi character remembered for her large bus."
4
@vaer
Well, Leia did think the Millennium Falcon was a heap, yet she got ferried around in it quite a bit so I can totally see her calling it a large bus just to annoy Han.
2
@vaer
I wonder if it was supposed to be BUST or BUNS? The latter would be hilarious given Leia's Cinnabon hairstyle...
2
Yesterday's error: hard drive as brain. (Sufficiently discussed yesterday, though I remain in the dissenting camp.)
Today's error: gondolier as POLER.
See for yourself. This gondolier uses a long-handled oar, not a pole. The reason is simple: the canals are too deep for any pole of practical length to reach bottom.
https://youtu.be/rN97DFiq2xc
Time to retire this clue, constructors and editors. Make a sticky note. Nix the gondolier's pole. It ain't right. Next time you need a POLER, why not [Cambridge punter]?
That said, I generally enjoyed the puzzle, though my solve was clouded just slightly by the reappearance of this recurring bit of misinformation.
25
@Alan J
We had dinner in a neighborhood pub tonight; the TVs had the Pan Am games on. We watched the decathlon and saw some good POLErs vaulting. Maybe that was in my head when I did the puzzle.
@Alan J, that is why I resisted Poler for a long time.
1
@Alan J
Thanks for the information, Alan. I didn't know that and now I do. Bonus for today.
2
Slower for me, thanks in part to tricky clues and baseball. A nice AHA moment when the theme came; I was expecting the first word of the answers could come in between two "thinks," I don't know. But every theme answer was exciting and original! At least ONE MORE puzzle please, or maybe TWICE that.
Mr. Polin had a standardized test mini theme: GPA, ACT, SAT, LSAT...
I thought I was set with crossword beans: MUNG, LIMA, FAVA. Apparently not.
5
@John S. Don't forget soya (or "soys.")
TREY was the last to fall and I didn’t like the clueing very much until I did. ;)
12
@Doug
I was confused enough by Deb's comment that TREY referred specifically to the hearts suit that I Googled. After checking out several (but not all) references, I found no verification of that. I've always heard the term with reference to any old three, nothing suit-specific.
2
@Deadline
I think it was just because "hearts" was in the clue, and hearts "beat" in more than one way. The pun wouldn't have happened with any other suit.
YMMV.
1
@Deadline
Doesn't mean a TREY can't be a heart.
A cute little concept. Being a huge Kenken fan, 51A was the tipoff for me.
I was intrigued by the inclusion of Matt Biondi. I assume that Timothy Polin just ended up with so many letters that led him to a long down entry for Matt Biondi - or, to put it another way, I don't imagine Matt Biondi was on the young constructor's horizon enough to serve as a leading entry for that sector of the grid. For many of us who cheered for him in '88, he was memorable. I didn't have any trouble coming up with his name.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R03pMGBZe08
P.S. the pole beans could hardly be later to come in this year...flowers only last week, and the beans won't be ready before next week...a very late year for everything in the garden.
5
@David Connell
Mark Spitz was the first Olympian that popped into my head - wouldn't fit the spaces or the decade. Matt Biondi was wonderful to watch in 1988! And Michael Phelps is our hometown phenom of the 2000's. 3 M's of swimming. Bean poles are well-suited for pool events.
Our pole beans are at the stage yours are. Everything that the groundhog didn't get is so late for us, too.
1
@David Connell
Go Cal Bears! MATT swam for Cal and his son, Nate, currently attends Cal and is on the swim team. Thanks for the link.
1
@Puzzlemucker & Ann - for what it's worth, my original version of my post included the word
"dzaddy"
nuff said
2
For some time, I've been writing screenplays designed to attract moviegoers by merging two popular titles together, e.g. Gandhi with the windy, The iceman always cometh twice, Breaking badlands, and a fusion of J.R.R. Tolkien and Rowan and Martin's Laugh-in, with the lead role written for Lily Tomlin: One ringy-dingy to rule them all. The clue at 25-Across has inspired me to add to my list the story of s boy and his two dogs, working title: RinTin Tin Tin Tin.
27
@Fact Boy -- And don't forget that Wizard of Oz sequel where Bert Lahr's character has been over-bestowed with courage, The Lion King Kong.
6
@Fact Boy
I am very appreciative of your not proposing Breaking with the Wind.
7
@Fact Boy
How about the Khmer Rouge come to Iowa in "The Killing Field of Dreams."
1
not sure why AVON was considered well-known enough of a makeup brand to be clued in such a roundabout way; as someone with a decent collection, I don't think I'd be able to name the brand if you gave me an hour... a little worried about how out-of-touch the notion of "modernity" is within this crossword
Avon is pretty big, fifth world-wide per Wikipedia. Since Avon is a direct sales company, perhaps your experience lies in urbanity rather than modernity?
4
I’ve never seen an AVON product up close, but that’s because my parents fended off the friendly neighborhood AVON ladies at the door. They were definitely part of a suburban childhood.
1
@concernedJT
There was always an AVON catalogue strategically placed in the teachers lounge by some enterprising side hustler. Seems ubiquitous to me, although I never knew anyone who ordered anything but SkinSoSoft, for mosquito management.
2
Got it with COMIC STRIPS and DENTAL HYGIENIST, but had to think about WILD PITCH for a moment to get the "boo boo"="error". RAFT before TUBE. We just saw CONDI clued this way last Saturday--the only two times it's ever appeared. I really wish it had been clued differently, or there had been more time between the two puzzles.
8
@Liz B
I was thinking of "boo boo" referring to a batter being hit by the wild pitch. :)
5
@Nathan
A wild pitch and a hit by pitch are two separate statistics. If a batter is hit by a pitch, it is considered a ball in the pitcher's statistics, but not a wild pitch.
1
I’ve noticed from time to time that a word appears in two puzzles rather close together, as CONDI did today and a few days ago. I think it’s deliberate, a little shout out to those who will be rewarded with a quick fill the second time. It always brings a smile to my face!
I love Thursdays, and this one did not disappoint.
17