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Totally destroyed, in gamer-speak / THU 10-29-26 / Chat follower / Um, two bases for paint / "In summary ...," in internet shorthand / Drunk, in modern slang / Crocodile in a classic children's book / Fried bites for the Festival of Lights / Modern-day aid for a data job, maybe / Ape-man's introduction
Thursday, October 29, 2026
Constructor: Sam Ezersky
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
Theme answers:
I'd file this under "Conceptually Interesting" as well as "Formally Innovative" (for once, I actually like the addition of extra crap—here, the commas—to the grid), but only one of these themers really landed for me: the last one ("YOU KNOW, THE DRILL"). It's the only one that made me laugh, and the only one where the clue was really able to create a plausible context where I could hear someone saying it, as punctuated. "LIKE, OIL AND WATER" gets close, but "I MEAN, BUSINESS" and "WELL, CONNECTED" don't really pass the ear test. Beyond that, I don't have much to say about the theme—bold idea, but only semi-successful execution. One other thing: it's a very minor stylistic issue, but I don't understand why the theme clues aren't offered in quotation marks, since the answers—the whole concept—is based on a phenomenon of speech. Like, you're representing how people might say these words. They're imagined quotations. Somehow feels like the clues should be quotes. But now I'm noticing that the clues aren't exactly equivalents of the answer phrases, but regular clues with an added filler word (or phrase). Without the filler words, the clues are just ... clues, e.g. [Another way to say "online"] is CONNECTED. But another way to say "er, online" is "WELL, CONNECTED." The filler word is also aptly placed in the first theme clue: 17A: Um, two bases for paint—the answer is just an equivalent of "um" and then literally two bases for paint. I don't know why the "Uh" in 24A: An, uh, expensive air passenger class isn't at the front of the clue, since "I MEAN" is at the front of the answer, but I guess they just wanted to vary the filler placement in the clues. I'm realizing now that the reason the last themer felt like the best themer is because the clue felt most like a human being talking, particularly because of the first-person pronouns (55A: It's ... (what am I trying to say?) ... it's what my dentist uses). The others are just dryish clues with filler thrown in—human voice, not achieved. Annnnyway, this almost half-worked for me. E for effort, at any rate.
- LIKE, OIL AND WATER (17A: Um, two bases for paint)
- I MEAN, BUSINESS (24A: An, uh, expensive air passenger class)
- WELL, CONNECTED (43A: Another way to say, er, "online")
- YOU KNOW, THE DRILL (55A: It's ... (what am I trying to say?) ... it's what my dentist uses)
In linguistics, a filler, filled pause, hesitation marker or planner is a sound or word that participants in a conversation use to signal that they are pausing to think but are not finished speaking. These are not to be confused with placeholder names, such as thingamajig. Fillers fall into the category of formulaic language, and different languages have different characteristic filler sounds. [...] Every conversation involves turn-taking, and speakers need to signal whether they are yielding the turn or want to keep going. Pauses are common in both cases, but to avoid confusion, speakers wanting to continue commonly use fillers, such as um, er, or uh. // Beyond conveying "I still want to talk", fillers can also convey more: whether the speaker is just trying to find the right word or is struggling to formulate his/her thought at a deeper level. "Uh" is more common in the former, and "um" in the latter. However fillers are often more complex, conveying many nuances of meaning and doing so through subtle variation, both prosodic and phonetic, such that many fillers are sound combinations, rather than words. [...] In American English, the most common filler sounds are uh /ʌ/, ah /ɑː/, and um /ʌm/. In British English, the equivalents are er /ɜː/ and erm /ɜːm/. Among younger speakers, the fillers "like", "you know", "I mean", "okay", "so", "actually", "basically", and "right?" are among the more prevalent. (wikipedia)
• • •
F, though, I'm afraid, for the desperate attempt to sound like one of the cool kids. Which is to say, the puzzle is trying way too hard with the slang (some of which already feels dated to me). REKT and TURNT??? I'll give you TL;DR (53D: "In summary ...," in internet shorthand); it's got legs and has currency beyond any one particular niche group or generation, but REKT (3D: Totally destroyed, in gamer-speak) and TURNT felt cringe. Even cringer, but for a different reason, was EX-DA, oof and ugh, what crossword graveyard did you exhume that from? Hmm, looks like a crossword graveyard from 2017 (the only other appearance of this "word"). That time, it appeared on a Saturday, where I'd be much more likely to give it leeway. Did I give it leeway? Hang on. . . wow, I didn't comment on it at all, perhaps because there was so much else to be mad about (OSTERIA, ON THE UP, a 2005 film called BEE SEASON that no one saw, etc.). So this is EXDA II, the Re-EXDA-fication! It's bad, please stop. Also bad (as in GAH, ick, no, stop): not one but two A.I. answers: A.I. TOOL (which is acceptable only if you're using it as a term for enthusiastic A.I. boosters) (39A: Modern-day aid for a data job, maybe) and GPT, which is the word debut of the year, and which looks silly without the Chat in front of it (32D: Chat follower). The Chat is in fact welded to the GPT in the name of the product. GPTs are standalone entities (I just unwillingly learned) ("Generative pre-trained transformers"), but as clued, GPT is ridiculous (if easy). If you wanted to kill GPT and A.I. TOOL and bury them both in the same hole with EXDA, that would be fine with me. Hide the bodies, go ahead, I won't tell.
The one other fill annoyance was the onslaught of ONs. Four of them, three in quick succession (all at the fronts of answers), three of them crossing, two of those crossing at the ON itself (ONTO crossing ON THE SCENE crossing ON IT ... plus USE ON = four). No real trouble with the puzzle overall today, outside of trying to parse the themers. I think the far SW was maybe the hardest for me. If I knew about LYLE the Crocodile, I totally forgot, so I was like "uh ... LYNN? Is LYNN the crocodile? LYRA?" I also didn't know the C.F.L. team in Edmonton—luckily that "E" cross at LYLE/ELKS was eventually totally inferable. Beyond that ... well, I wrote in OREO for ORCA, but that was an extremely delightful mistake, and a completely unexpected kealoa* (18D: It's all black and white).
Bullets:
- 26D: Classic card game with a geographical name (BOSTON) — no idea. Zero. Probably should've been my Word of the Day:
Bostogné, Boston or Boston Whist is an 18th-century trick-taking card game played throughout the Western world apart from Britain, forming an evolutionary link between Hombre and Solo Whist. Apparently named after a key location in the American War of Independence, it is probably a French game which was devised in France in the 1770s, combining the 52-card pack and logical ranking system of partnership Whist with a range of solo and alliance bids borrowed from Quadrille. Other lines of descent and hybridization produced the games of Twenty-five, Préférence and Skat. Its most common form is known as Boston de Fontainebleau or French Boston. (wikipedia)
- 21A: Number that Jerry Rice wore for his entire N.F.L. career (EIGHTY) — hey you know what other number starts with "E" and is six letters long? Because that's what I wrote in.
 |
| [wrong guy] |
- 25D: She has a lot of young followers (MOTHER DUCK) — lovely answer, much better than whatever social media-related crap the clue leads you to expect
- 30A: "Wow, that can't be right!" ("GOSH, NO!") — absolutely nothing about this clue suggests "GOSH!" Nothing prepares you for "GOSH!" I was unprepared for "GOSH." "Wow" doesn't really cut it, and the clue phrase and answer phrase really don't match. The first sounds like you're looking at suspect data, and the latter sounds like you are denying you ate the cookies in a 1960s TV show.
 |
| [48D: Crocodile in a classic children's book] |
That's all for today. See you next time.
*kealoa = a pair of words (normally short, common answers) that can be clued identically and that share at least one letter in common (in the same position). These are answers you can't just fill in quickly because two or more answers are viable, Even With One or More Letters In Place. From the classic [Mauna ___] KEA/LOA conundrum. See also, e.g. [Heaps] => ATON or ALOT, ["Git!"] => "SHOO" or "SCAT," etc.
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