THEME: one letter off ... — six Across answers must be read twice, i.e. they are actually two-part answers, with the second part being just one letter off from the first part in each case; where the letter changes, you must put both letters in the square they share in order to make sense of the Down answer, so, for instance, BREAK / BREAD goes in the grid as BREA(KD) so that SOC(KD)RAWER can work in the Down:
Theme answers:
BREAK BREAD (20A: Eat, quaintly)
FACE FACTS (28A: Confronts reality)
"DON'T DO IT" (32A: "That's a bad idea!")
TALL TALE (46A: Wildly outlandish story)
POWER MOWER (53A: Lawn equipment with an engine)
GO TOE-TO-TOE (58A: Be in direct competition)
Word of the Day: Cynthia ERIVO (37A: Cynthia who played Harriet Tubman in 2019's "Harriet") —
But then I figured it out it must be "It's a DEAL" at 4D: "It's a ___!" and so changed SUCK to VOID ... and *then* (eventually) changed DEAL to DATE. Sigh. Stumble stumble. Once I got back on my feet after tripping over my laces there at the starting line, I got up a pretty good head of steam and then ran right into the wall that I was supposed to run into, i.e. the theme. Wanted BREAK BREAD but couldn't figure out where the BREAD part had gone or was supposed to go. Off at a diagonal? Into a black square? Shrug. Worse, DON'T looked Perfectly Good as the answer to 32A: "That's a bad idea!" and since *my* theme clues were not (helpfully!) italicized, but instead appeared (unhelpfully, confusingly) inside quotation marks, I had nothing (except *double* quotation marks, which I didn't notice) to indicate I was dealing with theme material. Finally, SOCK DRAWER came to the rescue. "Well, this has to be SOCK DRAWER ... but ... wait, why does "KD" go in one square here, but with INORGANIC there's just that weird missing letter ... what do I do with INORGANC ... I don't g- ... oh":
"DON'T DO IT!" Not "DON'T!" That changed everything. After that, the predictably hard part (grokking the theme) was over. There were some regular, less predictably hard parts to come (trying to work out every single letter in ERIVO from crosses, trying to learn the term CAT CONDO mid-solve, etc.), but overall it played just a shade tougher than your usual Thursday.
The theme is very clever and interestingly executed, and I thought GO TOE-TO-TOE was an incredibly inventive example of the theme concept. The grid's got a decent amount of non-thematic spice, and the Down answers running through the themers were kinda fun to work out (struggled most with LOSING TIME (largely because it ran through that ERIVO section)). The very end of my solve was a brutal dead stop in the SE corner, where I wanted only CAT COUCH at 40D: Item of feline furniture, and I couldn't figure out what the [Tiny pedestals] were (that should've been easy) and I couldn't get [D.C. address?] to save my life (S.O.T.U. = State of the Union). Great, but brutal clue. A "?" clue sitting *directly underneath* another "?" clue (68A: Make amends?), in a very small section. Seems kinda cruel. I wanted split / loose ENDS, but CAT COUCH was making it impossible. Finally I got EDIT and then TEES and was finally forced to confront the fact that something called a CAT CONDO apparently exists. Is that what you call the multi-tiered climbing posts? Wow. This is the second time this month that some piece of pet furniture has been an absolute wrench in the gears. Not a fun way to end. Overall ... well, "I LOVED IT" is probably too strong, but I definitely liked it a whole lot.
Fun Rebi. I had a similar experience in the SE, thought that was rough. I enjoyed the “aha” at sock drawer/break bread and then rolled. Not sure It would have been so doable without the italic clues indicating all the themers though. My iPhone showed the italics luckily. Thanks for your daily blog!
Started with the @Rex overwrite of suck at 1A, then went on to considerable confusion with the themers. Even after I thought I understood the theme I had the rebodes in the wrong places for INORGAN[ic] and CLOSE[ts]. I find Thursdays challenging to begin with, so I'll agree with OFL's "just a shade tougher than your usual Thursday."
I loved that about 80% of the theme concept soon became apparent, but the the last 20% - OK, I know it's "don't do it", but how the #&@* do i get "don't do it" into the grid? - was a real fun challenge ending with a genuine "aha!"
Agree with all. SE was tough, especially for non-cat people. Had the TOE but I was locked in on NOTINTIME. Good, enjoyable. Light came on with BREAKBREAD. Thanks, Rex.
Today for no particular reason I decided to print the puzzle and solve on paper, and in the printed version the clues for the themers are NOT italicized or distinguished in any other way. Wasn't able to solve it that way.
It took me forever to get the theme, partly for the same reason Rex mentions, ie I knew it was INORGANIC but I thought DON’T was fine, so I didn’t want to put in an NI rebus. I just left those squares blank until I finally got it at POWER MOWER crossing AP MUSIC. (I didn’t know there was such a thing - that is one class my talentless self would never have been allowed near.) Then I went north and filled in the rebus spaces and finished in the much tougher SE. There I filled in the GT rebus without any clue what the across answer would be, and I agree GO TOE TO TOE was the best themer.
ORATE next to SOTU is nice, as were the clues for OIL BARON and LYE.
Snowbirds heading SOUTH - this is the opposite of me. I hate the heat and actually like cold, snowy weather. In my dotage, I may become a sunbird, going north every summer to escape the swelter. And with climate change making places like Arizona uninhabitable, I do wonder when the trend of people moving to the Sun Belt will start reversing, and Minnesota and Maine start to see huge growth.
Best rebus I've seen, though not a fan generally. Really liked that the rebus squares worked in 2 different ways. Someone has to nit so......G/T OTOE is very clever but doesn't fit the theme of 2 words with 1 letter difference. GOTOE is not a word. Nor is TOTOE. Doesn't really diminish the puzzle, which is excellent.
D.C. Address is an address (I.e., a speech) made in Washington D.C. … and D.C. being an abbreviation hints that it is an abbreviation. So … State Of The Union … or SOTU.
It actually seemed like 75% of this puppy was M-T easy, which is a good thing as the gimmick part really sucked up some time and energy. Add in a few WoE’s for me like ADIPOSE, ERIVO, ROCOCO and even SOTU and you pretty much end up with an appropriate Thursday-level gimmick puzzle. So job well done from that perspective.
I saw it at POWER MOWER combined with AP MUSIC. But to get there I filled in two-thirds of the puzzle while bewildered over what was going on with the italicized clues and their answers. While I was in that addled state, of course, my brain was working on it. One of life’s mysteries and gifts: It’s like someone who is not you is inside you and surreptitiously doing work for you, as a favor, for no pay whatsoever! Ain’t life grand?
I love little language quirks like today’s horizontal theme answers, phrases whose components are one letter apart. Such quirks give me great pleasure. I really don’t know why. I’m sure there are many who look at such quirks and go, “Yeah? So what?” and move on. And I say: “Vive la différence!”
But I also say “Vive Barbara Lin!” because her puzzles often center on just such little language oddities. I’m still wowing at today’s theme answers – all of them. So, Barbara, please keep quirking along, finding and showcasing such tiny-yet-glorious treasures. And thank you for today’s gem!
Aargh. Solving on paper, knew we had a two-letter thing going on, caught on to the BREAK/BREAD rebus, and wanted to put the two letters in the wrong square everywhere. Had the puzzle entirely filled with reasonable stuff and still missed the trick in several places.
Not my finest hour.
Really good Thursday, BL. I'd Better Look more closely the next time. Thanks for the workout.
I’m in total agreement with Rex et al about how neat this is. And I’m glad there was no note or reveal or anything; I was absolutely stumped for a while. I mean, I was almost there, but the Schrödingerness of it didn’t hit me until I *finally* saw that BREAK is only one letter different from BREAD. I’m embarrassed at how long it took me to see that. Sheesh.
The two non-theme clues that also had the quotation marks interfered mightily with my battle. I wonder why they didn’t go with asterisks instead. So there’s your unUNASKED question.
My favorites were FACES FACTS and GO TOE TO TOE(Hi, Rex, Wanderlust). The one-letter difference is so subtle. And I liked that the down crosses utilized both letters.
There’s another place besides a SOCK DRAWER where everything should have a mate, where mates mysteriously vanish over the course of a couple of weeks: some day when I’m long gone and my kids are dealing with my effects, they’ll find a little lair full of odd socks and tupperware* lids. Yucking it up and still laughing at me.
Liked ASS crossing BRAYS. And MANIC crossing LOSING TIME. That’s me about 5 minutes before search starts, at which point my day becomes a blur, and I better the heck be ready.
@Wanderlust – I’m with you on the SOUTH snow birds dealie. Hot weather makes me sad. If I could, I’d move to Fairbanks and never look back.
*For me, tupperware (like band-aid, Q-tip, and kleenex) is a full-on generic terms. Not so for Mom. How many times has she heard me, waist deep in a cabinet, rummaging around and said, What are you looking for?. When I tell her tupperware, she always says she doesn’t have any. We’ve lived together a year and a half now, and neither of us can get this straight. Honestly, what Do you call it if you can’t call that Rubbermaid storage thingy Tupperware?
Thanks to all ... Knew it should be a REBUS but didn't know how to get there (Doing puzzle on my phone.) So now I know. Surprise! It accepted puzzle with only 1st letter of REBUS.
Finished it without knowing that SOTU is short for "State of the Union" (address). I've had cats all my life without knowing what a cat condo is, but it fit. Typical far-out Thursday puzzle.
This went down really well, and I LOVED IT. Feeling last night that my time was limited (it was, and I couldn't afford to be LOSING any TIME), I wanted to move through the puzzle quickly, but told myself to watch out! And so it went. The theme was firm and al dente, offering a satisfying level of resistance to figuring it out, and wow, the concept is great. This is what good puzzle construction looks like. Barbara Lin, color me impressed.
I love BREAK BREAD. It feels very homey, friends or family gathered around a table, sharing food and making conversation. (I hope everyone here still enjoys the company of others while eating together, without any of this cell phone business.)
The words today are cool, among them ROCOCO [I love saying it, and even love typing it] and ADIPOSE and BRAYS and CAT CONDO.
My daughter took AP MUSIC in her senior year. It seems a lot of kids sign up for it not realizing what it's going to be like; they may be thinking, "hey, I like music!" I wouldn't advise any kid to take it who isn't already serious about music, because it's rigorous, and at an intellectual depth equal to or greater than any AP Math you care to name. The failure rate is pretty high; that's what Lydia was saying.
I am sad to say I did not know (the centrally placed) ERIVO, because she sounds very accomplished. Luckily, the crosses were quite fair. Just below is CIS. I have to say, I do find surprising the number of people who are trans nowadays; as a university instructor I meet them all the time. If there are people here who don't know CIS, I'd say now is as good a time to learn it as any, because these designations are here to stay.
Love the positivity of YES I CAN. Let that be the watchword of solvers of this puzzle. It also reminds me of Obama.
During Trump's tenure, whenever he gave the SOTU address, all I wanted was for him to STFU.
During the past few years my family has been getting into Formula One (we root for Lewis Hamilton). Too bad for Mercedes this year; they'd been so dominant before the recent engine makeovers. Needless to say, we are not Verstappen fans.
Okay, that's all from me for now. Have a good one.
Like @Lewis, didn't grok the theme until about 2/3 through ("G/T OTOE" was the "aha" moment for me).
I cracked up over "tiny pedestals"; TEES (when it finally occurred to me) was so "out of the box" relative to all the possibilities that were revolving through my mind ;)
We’ve had some great Thursdays this month, and this was another winner. I love rebus puzzles, and I think this is the best kind: wherever a rebus is required, the principle for determining what goes in the rebus square stays the same but the specific letters change. More fun than simply repeating a letter string over and over again (although, depending on the particular puzzle, I can get a kick out of that, too).
I wanted VOID right off at 1A but, because of my dismal record at 1A at the beginning of solves, I didn’t write it in. A check of the relevant downs was inconclusive: no idea about [Air Force Two riders] or [Crude industrialist?] – didn’t think of the possibility of OIL-something – wanted INORGANIC but it didn’t fit, and decided that [“It’s a____!”] was a birth announcement (i.e., “girl”). So moved south in the NW, got PINA and SLOT, then went east and filled in enough to suggest SOCK DRAWER as a likely answer to 5D, but it was too long. Hmm, what to do? I got enough acrosses in the latter half of that answer to realize that if there was a rebus, it had to be at K/D but eek, how to make sense of the across answer at 20A [Eat, quaintly]? I left that area unresolved and moved around the grid, finally becoming certain about what was going on at 53A, P/MOWER. Yay! I thought that DON/IT was the hardest answer to parse because of the rebus being in the middle, but that it was also one of the cleverest, along with its counterpart, FACE/TS. Oh, and agree with Rex and others about the sparkly G/TOTOE.
At some point I must have heard the term CATCONDO. It didn’t occur to me right away but with only a cross or two, I was able to fill it in. (I hope @Gary Jugert does something with ROCOCO CATCONDO, if only to celebrate all those Os). I’ve also seen Cynthia ERIVO in something and taken partial note of her name (it must have been Bad Times at the El Royale), because I was sure of ERIV, but unsure of the last letter, and LOSING/TIME remained hard to see for a while.
Silly mistake: I never watch Shark Tank, but decided the airer must be CBS (probably because I’d seen CBS in the clue for 39A, and unconsciously absorbed it). That left the Champs-Élysées lined by “sAFES,” a concept which gave me pause. There *are* many high-end shops on the C-É and probably a number of them have sAFES, but is that what is meant?? Putting “cBs” there also messed up BREAK/D and delayed my grasping the theme, so I was very glad to get that sorted out.
I had the bad luck of getting FAC(ET)S first, which had the two-word phrase across crossing the standard rebus down AND the across with the rebus made a word too. When the others didn’t do that, I first thought I was getting them wrong, then had the opposite of the “aha” moment as I realized they weren’t all going to be that clever.
Lots of fun working the trick and well filled. The BREAK BREAD x SOCK DRAWER was the TOE hold. Like the lack of a revealer - but the themers were italicized on the app.
YES I CAN, I LOVED IT, OIL BARON etc are all solid - not much glue anywhere. I guess ADIPOSE is unfortunate and didn’t like the double down on frozen treats.
We call it "plasticware", like glassware or silverware. Kind of generic. A bunch of it comes from takeout, so not all Rubbermaid, and a couple I bought in Berlin last spring (makes me think my Oma would call it "good German plasticware"). Note spellcheck does not like plasticware, keeps changing it to plastic warehouse
There are themes and there are gimmicks. This puzzle definitely fell into the latter category. Absolutely not a fun puzzle. Just throw random rebus squares in that only make sense for the down answers. Cheap chicanery. Friday, please.
Most of the theme clues didn’t have any indication, italics or quotation marks, on my iPad. I was going through the puzzle at the end, tidying up the theme answers, and it told me my puzzle was complete but 32- and 58-across didn’t actually have the rebus answers in them
Hey All ! West half of puz was quite easy. East side put up a little resistance, but still a quick puz. Timer tells me just over 13 minutes, which is super fast for me on a ThursPuz.
Figured Rebus out at the DONT DOIT spot. Knew 3D was INORGANIC, but wouldn't fit, so stopped at INORG___, knowing a Rebus was brewing, but not exactly where. Thankfully, my Themer clues were italicized, remember, I'm a "look here!" neon light to point out the theme spots type of guy. So got the AHA at the NI. Let out a "Neat!", and went searching for more. Keep hearing Monty Python's "Knights of NI!" when I see that
Tried to form a meta by putting the Rebi together to form a word/phrase, but got KDETNIPMGT. Looks like a government initialism for something.
Why did TENNESSEE add so many double letters? TENESE. Simple. 😁
I never fully figured out the theme, but once I saw what it was at the end, I thought it was really cool! Very clever. Would have been fun to have figured it out while solving, but oh well.
A very proper Thursday workout, with the best part of my 33 minutes figuring out how the theme worked. Knew that INORGANIC and SOCKDRAWER were answers, but how are we dealing with that extra letter? Agree wit @Rex on the cleverness of G/TOTOE.
SLEWS of fun for the old NOODLE (a Wednesday puzzle leftover).
Wow this was a brilliant Thursday but one I found to be quite a challenge. Not the puzzle overall but the theme was a real slog, even though I saw the trick pretty quickly. I checked the app version after the FACT and see that the theme entries were italicized, so I’m cutting myself a good bit of slack as that was not the case in the printed form. Since the theme clues were not uniquely designated and the answers were not obvious theme entries, which is to say not long crosses or downs as we’d normally see, that made it considerably more difficult to determine where the themers lurked. Also the variations in the placement of the rebus - the first letter, the last letter, and the next to the last - added another level of trickiness. I felt downright MANIC at times trying to figure out where they went. All I could do was leave a VOID where the down answers made no sense. Anyway that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
ORATE in front of SOTU was a nice touch. Talk about your TALL TALES. I had DEAL before DATE, NIXON before ERIVO, MAC before STU because when I make my INORGANIC goulash I add elbow macaroni. When I make stew I DONT DO IT.
I should probably get my CATs a new CONDO but they’d probably just ignore it and play in the box it came in.
Easy, fun theme, enjoyable all around. Unsure at the outset of how to make BREAK BREAD work, I got my answer a moment later when I saw how to make INORGANIC fit. LOVED ferreting out the rest of the rebus crosses, the flourish of their symmetrical placement, and the pleasures of SOCK DRAWER and the idea of a ROCOCO CAT CONDO. Mostly a breeze, but like others, I found that the SE offered an almost-done-but wait challenge; so, an extra reward for figuring that section out. @Barbara Lin, thank you for this treat.
It was difficult to grok the gimmick on this one. Some of the themers work without the double-letter rebus — MOWER works all by itself, and so does DONT.
And then some of the rebi create two words of equal length, one for each letter (FACES/FACTS, BREAK/BREAD) and others you need to read two or three times over to create the full answer (GO/TOE/TO/TOE, DONT/DO/IT). I thought for sure that Rex would hate the inconsistency of that. I sure did.
"While I was in that addled state, of course, my brain was working on it. One of life’s mysteries and gifts: It’s like someone who is not you is inside you and surreptitiously doing work for you, as a favor, for no pay whatsoever!"
--Lewis
May I borrow that "inside" someone who was working for you, Lewis, now that you no longer need him? Alas, there was no such person working inside of me -- and I had absolutely no idea what the bleep was going on. Where was the BREAD of BREAK BREAD??? Where was the missing IC in INORGANIC??? It was all too much for my little gray cells. I filled in what I could, and came here as quickly as I could. Congrats to all who solved it and who were able to parse all the themers.
Figured out BREAK BREAD early on and also had no problem with DON’T DO IT. But I put the other rebuses (rebi?) in the wrong places, so I ended up with a grid that didn’t make sense until I came here. I guess this was above my pay grade, but I enjoyed tackling it and think it’s a great puzzle in spite of my DNF.
Now I can finally stop thinking about how to FROST FROTT and wondering what an AMANA PANAMA is.
A rewarding puzzle to solve! Yay! I filled everything but the SE, with obvious omissions, and finally settled in to decode the trick. I started with CLOSES/ FACES and voilá! So then to BREAKBREAD. I also thought DONT was enough for 32A at first.
We don’t have any Tupperware - I call them “plastic containers,” because I'm like that. My husband will call them “drawer,” “spoon” or “ipod,” because he's not so concerned with accuracy. Or he's trying to help me become psychic.
Medium. Yes, ERIVO was a stand out WOE. I slowly caught on to this and then I needed to make sure the letters in the rebus squares were in the right order. All of that required nanoseconds. Most of the actual puzzle was pretty easy.
A fine set of word pairs, liked it a bunch! Congrats on POW.
I’m not a fan of the rebus genre, but I really enjoyed this one! Overall the theme answers and fill played fresh—and quite amusing at times. I wanted “icing” or “ice it” for the cake, but LOVED the frost instead. Happy to see Erivo center stage, she’s one of the great British actors, among a boatload of them.
Every time Ms. ERIVO is in MONACO, she hears the ECHO of a ROCOCO CATCONDO.
Nit alert! CONE is not a frozen treat. It is a holder thereof.
And speaking of nits, how about CIS right below NCIS?
I think that the people who threw tomato soup on Van Gogh’s Sunflowers want to put an OILBARON the world. Alternatively, they may have been doing a cool sampling of a mix featuring Van Gogh and Warhol. Hard to say.
Like most of you, I loved this. Took me for.ev.er to get how the rebii worked, but it was an aha moment that I’m sure compares to the one experienced by Archimedes. Thanks, Barbara Lin.
P.S. No ASS today other than in TDPASS. We’ll have to make do with ENDS.
Good start in the top sector, but downhill thereafter; at least until the happy music at the end! :)
Knew there were going to be rebuses at INORGA_C / BREA_, but took forever to fully grok, wrt how to enter them correctly.
Toughest cross was ERIVO / VINO.
I've watched Cynthia ERIVO in 'Roar', 'Genius', 'The Outsider', and 'Mr. Selfridge'. I loved her performances, yet didn't remember her name; got to do better! 😔
Coincidently, I'm currently listening to Stephen King's audiobook, 'If it Bleeds', featuring Holly Gibney (which ERIVO played in 'The Outsider').
The other major head-scratcher was SOTU, which took some faith to leave in. Post-solve, it finally clicked.
This has to be one of my fave Thursdays ever, even tho it took 2 x my avg to solve.
Fun & very rewarding exercise! :) ___ Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🙏
Left the rebus squares until the end. Didn't know SOTU, as I don't follow politics.
HOLE IN ONE seems like a homophonic revealer, no? I'll go read comments. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
It's raining here so I'm giving up on the day.
Uniclues:
1 Every headline in RWNJ newspaper. 2 Haul malfunctioning refrigerator to the dump. 3 The sound one hears when the dryer finally takes the last one. 4 All of them individually. 5 This gargantuan highly over designed tower sitting in my living room ordered from some posh online retailer which our favorite feline has never used. 6 Prospective home buyer offered a succinct appraisal.
1 "FACE FACTS!" BRAYS RAG (~) 2 TOW MANIC AMANA (~) 3 SOCK DRAWER ECHO 4 IFFY CEO 5 ROCOCO CAT CONDO 6 "I LOVED IT! CLOSETS!"
Yeah, um, no, I didn't get the theme until reading Rex's explanation. It's very clever, I'll give you that, but because I put the "extra" letters in all the wrong places (and really thought the quaint 20A would be BREAK fast), I was never going to figure this out.
I did have an error at 52A where I had TOe because 42D was SLE[WS] rather than S[LE]WS and I just scratched my head at TOe being an alternative to a boot. I wrote the word TALE outside the grid and wondered how leaving out FAST and TALE and then some random letters could possible constitute a theme. Okay, got it now.
Barbara Lin, this is such a nice puzzle, I can only wish I had gotten the theme while solving, thanks!
I didn't remember, or maybe never knew, that the ham-sandwich-cause-of-death story was reported by a Hollywood Reporter columnist at the time, apparently at the behest of Cass's manager in an attempt to "save her reputation", since he assumed drugs had been the cause (which they weren't).
So I agree it doesn't qualify as an urban legend, since there really was a concerted attempt to make it the official story for public consumption.
Thursday. Time to switch gears. The nuts and bolts really need oiling. Rust everywhere. Where is my fairy dust when I need it? I will unabashedly use @ROO's "What in tarhooties."... although I actually said something else. I won't sleep until this nut is cracked and I'm able to eat the fruit inside. Talk about a rude stare. I looked at INORG[NI}C crossing BREAK[D} for so long, my fake eyelashes fell off. I think ding dong went off at [GT)OTOE. Why in that particular spot, I don't know. It just popped. A delight to finally eat the fruit and enjoy its juiciness. Then came the WOWS, the OHOS and the final AHHH. Did anyone else solve this a a themeless? Of course not...but I started that way and was terribly mad that nothing was oiling my nuts and bolts. When I finally got out of PARK, picked the CACTI from my nethers, I was able to let out a whoosh of satisfaction. Very clever...Can you t me know when you'll be back, Barbara? I'll need to gear up.
Technically DNF -- I got all the rebus and other hard answers OK, but left 4D as It's a D_ _ _ until the crosses showed me DEAL or DATE, and never came back to put in the obvious T. But I noticed it when I came here, and quickly filled it in before I saw the answer, so I'll take that as success.
ZI got the trick with TALL TALE, which made sense of CLOSETS, and gradually figured out the rest. I solve in the actual paper, which did have italic clues for the Across rebus answers-- but the print is so small and my vision so poor (after cataract surgery and wearing prescription reading glasses!) that I didn't notice them until I had most of the themers already. When I did notice it, I wished I hadn't, but it did help with GO TOE TO TOE, which for some reason I was trying to parse as an ordinary rebus. Knowing it really was a themer kept me at it just long enough.
@Loren, those socks, or at least some of them, really are eaten by your washing machine. Our washer needed service once and the repair person nonchalantly ripped the cover off the machine and showed me the offending sock gumming up the works. He also showed how a sock could climb over the edge of the tub to make its escape -- especially if one fills the tub too high because one is three days late in doing one's laundry.
I can't explain the lids, though. We finally gave up on making do with old yogurt and chip dip tubs and bought a set of identical leftover dishes (that I call them) with red covers. There are only two sizes, so the lids are interchangeable. I've never looked back.
@Rex CAT COuch? That's any couch in the same house as a cat. You can spot it by the shredded upholstery on the arms.
Two of the multiple letters in one square themers seemed to work just fine with just a single letter, 32A DON'T for "That's a bad idea" and 53A MOWER for "Lawn equipment with an engine". (And there is such a thing as 47D AP MUSIC? Really?) That made the solution to this very clever puzzle even more difficult to tease out. Almost like a misdirect away from the true misdirection.
Do yous know who has never defined REBUS as a crossword puzzle with multiple letters in a single grid square? The New York Times Crossword Puzzle, that's who. REBUS has appeared, per xwordinfo.com, 94 times in NYTXW puzzles over the years, the first in 1942 with "Picture puzzle" as the clue and more recently in 2022 with "Puzzle type with pictures" as the clue. Not once has it been clued in reference to multiple letters. Every time it has been a "word puzzle with pictures" type clue. More on how linguist, philologists, historians, Egyptologists and related scholars use REBUS at Rebusgate.
Your comment reminded me of one of my favorite books, String Too Short To Be Saved, by the late poet Donald Hall. He writes of his summers as a kid at his grandparents' farm in NH. Later, going through their effects, he finds a box with a label written in his grandmother's hand: String too short to be saved.
This puz was a real THIN(K/G)Y, at first. Part of the problem early on was at INORGANC/DONT. With DONT seemin like a perfectly reasonable answer. Also, BREA? didn't make no sense, even after doin M&A's usual nanosecond-eatin run thru the alphabet. And my printed version of the puz had them italics, so I knew somethin was up, in both them mysterious trouble spots.
I think I figured out the theme mcguffin almost simultaneously, at both places, as the M&A frownin eyeballs kept shiftin madly back'n'forth between INORGANC & BREA?. Sooo … sorta a Big Bang ahar moment. Luv the theme idea … one U wish you'da thought of … even tho it regretfully didn't feature the Halloween holidays. Too soon, @Shortzmeister?
staff weeject pick: STU. Mostly cuz it made the puz end on a U. A rare corner f(U/I)nale. Plus as collateral damage, it also gave us the Ow de Sperational SOTU. They coulda gone with STS/SOTS -- but, NO! They went with U. M&A's heart sings.
So weird. I stupidly thought the idea was just that things were mispelled because my rebus tries made no sense starting with K/D. Finally at the end I kind of figured it out and went back and changed 4 rebuses?! DONT looked fine to me for example. The phone app announced I had solved the puzzle. Came here only to discover that wasn't true.
Same here! I just solved accepting a missing letter and waited to reach the clue that explains all, but it never showed! So I had a completed grid with no idea what was going on 🤔 I always read the Rex 👑 blog after I finish (or DNF!) the puzzle so now I get the full picture! To be honest, I'm not sure that I would have gotten it even with the italics or "s 😉
My solve started out fine with VPS, OIL BARON, DATE, but whoa, INORGA...??? And so ran right into the trick. Rebus squares, a favorite. I wandered around filling in bits as I circled the grid.
Returned north and I see 5D must be SOCK DRAWER (great clue), so that rebus is KD. Then 20A, if you read it twice alternating the rebus letters, is BREAK BREAD! Awesome socks, right?
Returned to the five remaining blank squares and smiled as they appeared: FACES FACTS, DON’T DO IT!, TALL TALE, POWER MOWER, and the hardest for me, GO TOE-TO-TOE, that latter just lovely. Like @Rex and others, I’d first thought DON’T, MOWER, and FACES worked by themselves.
Now everything is in but the first letter of 71A. Finally saw tiny little golf-tee pedestals and stared at SOTU. SOTU?? Is that something like a POTUS address? Can’t think of anything shorter; try again. Maybe like a Gettysburg? Stared and stared and stared and finally: State Of The Union address! Big aha moments like that are so electrifyingly gratifying.
Liked the puzzle a lot, even though, being accustomed to revealers, I did spend a further bit of time looking for one. Do the rebus letters spell something? N-o-o-o, doesn’t seem so. Am reminded you can’t have everything. And, per comedian Steven Wright, Where would you put it?
@Wanderlust 7:24 – Exactly right! Am living in Arizona where snowbirds migrate and wonder the same thing so am considering moving back to the Northeast. I do miss it, and every October I long for real autumn color, and, oh yes, there is water. Love your idea of a sunbird escaping the heat.
@jberg 1:03 pm – Laughed at the image of a sock climbing over the tub edge to make its escape and hope none of mine get any ideas!
That theme! I found this to be a toughie. Since some of the themer answers could be solved without a rebus, it made it super challenging for me.
I don't recall a lot of cafes on the Champs-Elysees. I do recall a lot of high end (tres cher!) boutiques. And a fabulous store selling eyeglass frames. But cafes? Not so much.
This was brutal until I saw the light. Not sure why it took me so long; I knew something was up with INORGANIC, and it is Thursday, so I shoulda known...
One problem was not recognizing certain down themers. For 35 down I had NOT IN TIME, so I figured it was Bill NYE solving chemistry problems at 35 across.
[Spelling Bee: yd 0, the pangram was a long one! QB "streak" at 2 days.]
You've said it all, Lewis, and beautifully as always! You are a breath of Fresh Air, especially on days when the comments are particularly grumpy (and that's putting it a la Lewis 💚)
I came a cropper on the TALLE/SLEWS cross, because TALE worked more or less as well as TALL TALE, and SEAS as well as SLEWS, but what's a TOA. You have to be pretty hip to modern law enforcement to equate BOOT and TOW, also. Anyway, that little area was my Waterloo.
@Joe D. (12:59 PM) – I’ve heard two versions of the ham sandwich story: the one you mentioned (a deliberate misdirection) and another that’s really more in the category of speculation/honest mistake – that there was half a sandwich on a plate in the room with Cass and one of the medical types who had seen it threw a crumb (as it were) to the ravening reporters who were desperate to find out what had happened. He suggested that aspirating food may have been the cause of death and many media outlets printed it as fact. And then there’s my husband who says he swears he heard that Cass had died in a restaurant after choking on a fishbone! That’s got to be a fabrication based on misremembered erroneous reporting, so possibly some sort of mutant Mandela Effect.
[SB: After my mini-streak of 3, had 2 days of heartbreaking -1s. Haven’t yet tackled today’s.]
Instead of towing cars for over parking or having too many unpaid parking tickets some cities use a “Denver Boot”(large clamp) to keep car from moving. Still have to tow but first pay your fines. Cat Condo is a tall carpeted scratching post with several levels for hiding, jumping etc.
Hi @Wanderlust! I’ll see you in the north. The heat in Oklahoma has been my nemesis since 1976, and I am delighted to be heading to northern California before summer hits again.
Well, another feat of construction. I got that we were “missing” letters immediately, but like so many if you, had no clue exactly what to do with it. I really wanted a rebus, but wasn’t convinced until I decided to BREAK BREAD, have some lunch and think about it. Thereafter, it was time to FACE FACTS, reorganize my SOCK DRAWER and move on to my CLOSETS.
I was moving on through the puzzle with alacrity until I hit the LOSING TIME/TOE TO TOE cross. For some reason, my brain just had a ridiculous amount of time to get the rebus in the right square.
Overall, once I got the gimmick, my troubles were over for the most part. I am impressed with OUR constructor, but do wish we had some sort if consistent indication (warning?) to identify the themers. Editorial staff? Hello? Anybody there?
What a Thursday treasure! I loved every bit of it and solved it in good time, probably because I popped VOID in right away and was off to the races. A rebus always makes me smile and this didn’t disappoint.
I thought somehow “Break Bread” could not be “eat quaintily” since one only breaks bread while sharing a meal with others. And more often than not, we eat alone. Maybe “Dinner with Friends, quaintily”, would be more on target?
This was very clever. Would have enjoyed it more if I had figured out what rebi/rebuses were up to BEFORE finishing puzz. Have to give it many props 👏🏼 Either way. ☺️🦖🦖🦖🦖🦖😉
@Anoa Bob I think your railing against these type puzs being referred to as Rebus is fruitless. It seems to be too far ingrained in the lexicon. Unless you come up with an nteresting name to identify this type puz and have Rex use it every time we get one. Maybe ""Multiple letters in a square "? Too long. "Letteropodes"? @Z influenced. "Smusher"? "Jammer"? "ShrinkWord". Ooh, I like that one.
@Anoa Bob asked: "And there is such a thing as 47D AP MUSIC? Really?"
Why, yes there is, and it ain't no joke. Actually, it's AP MUSIC Theory. My daughter took it as a high school senior (as I mentioned at 8:09AM). I'd guess it's one of the tougher AP courses out there. Music as a subject to major in in college is also super-demanding; I don't have statistics to hand, but most students I've known who took it up had to drop out and do something else. I'm sure the musicians in the commentariat could say much more.
Rex complains about the themers being indicated with quotation marks instead of italics where he solved them. Well, the syndie version now up on the Seattle Times site had neither! No indication at all of the themers. Especially tough with something like MOWER which made sense as it was (although I wasn't so sure about AMUSIC).
Still, even with that it was a fun solve. I usually don't love rebus puzzles but this was one of the better examples.
Did everyone miss the dupe: ONEPARENT/INONE? Oh well, as I recently discovered, this is no longer taboo.
I guess that actress in the middle is obscure only to me. Filled in the downs and...shrugged. "Hope that's right." Ditto with SOTU until it was explained as an acronym here. I simply never in my life heard or saw this abbr.
Other than those WOEs, this was not too hard. Stuck in the NE because I needed another space for CLOSETS, I finally saw that FACES by itself or FACTS by itself don't fit the clue--but FACES FACTS does. After that the rest was easy. Birdie.
A long time ago, I was solving this puzzle and got stuck at an unguessable (to me) crossing: N. C. WYETH crossing NATICK at the "N"—I knew WYETH but forgot his initials, and NATICK ... is a suburb of Boston that I had no hope of knowing. It was clued as someplace the Boston Marathon runs through (???). Anyway, NATICK— the more obscure name in that crossing—became shorthand for an unguessable cross, esp. where the cross involves two proper nouns, neither of which is exceedingly well known. NATICK took hold as crossword slang, and the term can now be both noun ("I had a NATICK in the SW corner...") or verb ("I got NATICKED by 50A / 34D!")
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112 comments:
Fun Rebi. I had a similar experience in the SE, thought that was rough. I enjoyed the “aha” at sock drawer/break bread and then rolled. Not sure It would have been so doable without the italic clues indicating all the themers though. My iPhone showed the italics luckily. Thanks for your daily blog!
Started with the @Rex overwrite of suck at 1A, then went on to considerable confusion with the themers. Even after I thought I understood the theme I had the rebodes in the wrong places for INORGAN[ic] and CLOSE[ts]. I find Thursdays challenging to begin with, so I'll agree with OFL's "just a shade tougher than your usual Thursday."
Interesting, clever, and fun. And a bit devious. Just what a Thursday should be!
I loved that about 80% of the theme concept soon became apparent, but the the last 20% - OK, I know it's "don't do it", but how the #&@* do i get "don't do it" into the grid? - was a real fun challenge ending with a genuine "aha!"
Is there a way to put two letters in a square when solving puzzles on Iphone????
Yes, tap the “More” button on the keyboard, then the “Rebus” button, and you’ll be allowed to put multiple letters in one square.
Hit the “More” button lower left of keyboard, then “Rebus” and you can enter as many as you like.
Agree with all. SE was tough, especially for non-cat people. Had the TOE but I was locked in on NOTINTIME. Good, enjoyable. Light came on with BREAKBREAD. Thanks, Rex.
Am I not awake or is 12 down a mistake? Closes closets for places for hangers. Clothes not closes.
Ignore closets comments . Now I see! Definitely not awake.
Today for no particular reason I decided to print the puzzle and solve on paper, and in the printed version the clues for the themers are NOT italicized or distinguished in any other way. Wasn't able to solve it that way.
Please explain “DC address.” Jim
Use the rebus option and it will allow the input of two letters in a cell
I just had TALE for 46A and the SEAS for 42D… I just figured TOA was some sort of “boot” for 52A.
Good rebus, fair play
It took me forever to get the theme, partly for the same reason Rex mentions, ie I knew it was INORGANIC but I thought DON’T was fine, so I didn’t want to put in an NI rebus. I just left those squares blank until I finally got it at POWER MOWER crossing AP MUSIC. (I didn’t know there was such a thing - that is one class my talentless self would never have been allowed near.) Then I went north and filled in the rebus spaces and finished in the much tougher SE. There I filled in the GT rebus without any clue what the across answer would be, and I agree GO TOE TO TOE was the best themer.
ORATE next to SOTU is nice, as were the clues for OIL BARON and LYE.
Snowbirds heading SOUTH - this is the opposite of me. I hate the heat and actually like cold, snowy weather. In my dotage, I may become a sunbird, going north every summer to escape the swelter. And with climate change making places like Arizona uninhabitable, I do wonder when the trend of people moving to the Sun Belt will start reversing, and Minnesota and Maine start to see huge growth.
Anyhoo, great Thursday puzzle.
How are tiny pedestals “tees”? I don’t get it.
State of the Union address, or SOTU.
Best rebus I've seen, though not a fan generally. Really liked that the rebus squares worked in 2 different ways. Someone has to nit so......G/T OTOE is very clever but doesn't fit the theme of 2 words with 1 letter difference. GOTOE is not a word. Nor is TOTOE. Doesn't really diminish the puzzle, which is excellent.
SOTU = State of the Union, an address (speech) delivered in DC.
Golf tees are pedestals for the golf balls.
For golfers put your ball on a tee I guess
D.C. Address is an address (I.e., a speech) made in Washington D.C. … and D.C. being an abbreviation hints that it is an abbreviation. So … State Of The Union … or SOTU.
It actually seemed like 75% of this puppy was M-T easy, which is a good thing as the gimmick part really sucked up some time and energy. Add in a few WoE’s for me like ADIPOSE, ERIVO, ROCOCO and even SOTU and you pretty much end up with an appropriate Thursday-level gimmick puzzle. So job well done from that perspective.
Golf tees, not tee shirts. This has me scratching my head for a while too!
I saw it at POWER MOWER combined with AP MUSIC. But to get there I filled in two-thirds of the puzzle while bewildered over what was going on with the italicized clues and their answers. While I was in that addled state, of course, my brain was working on it. One of life’s mysteries and gifts: It’s like someone who is not you is inside you and surreptitiously doing work for you, as a favor, for no pay whatsoever! Ain’t life grand?
I love little language quirks like today’s horizontal theme answers, phrases whose components are one letter apart. Such quirks give me great pleasure. I really don’t know why. I’m sure there are many who look at such quirks and go, “Yeah? So what?” and move on. And I say: “Vive la différence!”
But I also say “Vive Barbara Lin!” because her puzzles often center on just such little language oddities. I’m still wowing at today’s theme answers – all of them. So, Barbara, please keep quirking along, finding and showcasing such tiny-yet-glorious treasures. And thank you for today’s gem!
Aargh. Solving on paper, knew we had a two-letter thing going on, caught on to the BREAK/BREAD rebus, and wanted to put the two letters in the wrong square everywhere. Had the puzzle entirely filled with reasonable stuff and still missed the trick in several places.
Not my finest hour.
Really good Thursday, BL. I'd Better Look more closely the next time. Thanks for the workout.
I’m in total agreement with Rex et al about how neat this is. And I’m glad there was no note or reveal or anything; I was absolutely stumped for a while. I mean, I was almost there, but the Schrödingerness of it didn’t hit me until I *finally* saw that BREAK is only one letter different from BREAD. I’m embarrassed at how long it took me to see that. Sheesh.
The two non-theme clues that also had the quotation marks interfered mightily with my battle. I wonder why they didn’t go with asterisks instead. So there’s your unUNASKED question.
My favorites were FACES FACTS and GO TOE TO TOE(Hi, Rex, Wanderlust). The one-letter difference is so subtle. And I liked that the down crosses utilized both letters.
There’s another place besides a SOCK DRAWER where everything should have a mate, where mates mysteriously vanish over the course of a couple of weeks: some day when I’m long gone and my kids are dealing with my effects, they’ll find a little lair full of odd socks and tupperware* lids. Yucking it up and still laughing at me.
Liked ASS crossing BRAYS. And MANIC crossing LOSING TIME. That’s me about 5 minutes before search starts, at which point my day becomes a blur, and I better the heck be ready.
@Wanderlust – I’m with you on the SOUTH snow birds dealie. Hot weather makes me sad. If I could, I’d move to Fairbanks and never look back.
*For me, tupperware (like band-aid, Q-tip, and kleenex) is a full-on generic terms. Not so for Mom. How many times has she heard me, waist deep in a cabinet, rummaging around and said, What are you looking for?. When I tell her tupperware, she always says she doesn’t have any. We’ve lived together a year and a half now, and neither of us can get this straight. Honestly, what Do you call it if you can’t call that Rubbermaid storage thingy Tupperware?
I noticed ORATE and then got to STOU so it was sort of a clue in an answer! Made me think of a speech address rather than a mail address.
@lms. “Storage thingy” probably will work well.
Thanks to all ... Knew it should be a REBUS but didn't know how to get there (Doing puzzle on my phone.) So now I know. Surprise! It accepted puzzle with only 1st letter of REBUS.
Finished it without knowing that SOTU is short for "State of the Union" (address). I've had cats all my life without knowing what a cat condo is, but it fit. Typical far-out Thursday puzzle.
My solve went almost exactly like OFL's, except I thought of void, not suck. All that space SF I read, I guess.
Great puzzle. Not only a great puzzle, but nice words and amusing clues along the way. Only one PPP, so it didn't matter that I never heard of her.
I really loved it... setting a high bar for more great Thursdays. I hope we see more that are nearly this good.
This went down really well, and I LOVED IT. Feeling last night that my time was limited (it was, and I couldn't afford to be LOSING any TIME), I wanted to move through the puzzle quickly, but told myself to watch out! And so it went. The theme was firm and al dente, offering a satisfying level of resistance to figuring it out, and wow, the concept is great. This is what good puzzle construction looks like. Barbara Lin, color me impressed.
I love BREAK BREAD. It feels very homey, friends or family gathered around a table, sharing food and making conversation. (I hope everyone here still enjoys the company of others while eating together, without any of this cell phone business.)
The words today are cool, among them ROCOCO [I love saying it, and even love typing it] and ADIPOSE and BRAYS and CAT CONDO.
My daughter took AP MUSIC in her senior year. It seems a lot of kids sign up for it not realizing what it's going to be like; they may be thinking, "hey, I like music!" I wouldn't advise any kid to take it who isn't already serious about music, because it's rigorous, and at an intellectual depth equal to or greater than any AP Math you care to name. The failure rate is pretty high; that's what Lydia was saying.
I am sad to say I did not know (the centrally placed) ERIVO, because she sounds very accomplished. Luckily, the crosses were quite fair. Just below is CIS. I have to say, I do find surprising the number of people who are trans nowadays; as a university instructor I meet them all the time. If there are people here who don't know CIS, I'd say now is as good a time to learn it as any, because these designations are here to stay.
Love the positivity of YES I CAN. Let that be the watchword of solvers of this puzzle. It also reminds me of Obama.
During Trump's tenure, whenever he gave the SOTU address, all I wanted was for him to STFU.
During the past few years my family has been getting into Formula One (we root for Lewis Hamilton). Too bad for Mercedes this year; they'd been so dominant before the recent engine makeovers. Needless to say, we are not Verstappen fans.
Okay, that's all from me for now. Have a good one.
Like @Lewis, didn't grok the theme until about 2/3 through ("G/T OTOE" was the "aha" moment for me).
I cracked up over "tiny pedestals"; TEES (when it finally occurred to me) was so "out of the box" relative to all the possibilities that were revolving through my mind ;)
A very fine Thursday contribution :)
We’ve had some great Thursdays this month, and this was another winner. I love rebus puzzles, and I think this is the best kind: wherever a rebus is required, the principle for determining what goes in the rebus square stays the same but the specific letters change. More fun than simply repeating a letter string over and over again (although, depending on the particular puzzle, I can get a kick out of that, too).
I wanted VOID right off at 1A but, because of my dismal record at 1A at the beginning of solves, I didn’t write it in. A check of the relevant downs was inconclusive: no idea about [Air Force Two riders] or [Crude industrialist?] – didn’t think of the possibility of OIL-something – wanted INORGANIC but it didn’t fit, and decided that [“It’s a____!”] was a birth announcement (i.e., “girl”). So moved south in the NW, got PINA and SLOT, then went east and filled in enough to suggest SOCK DRAWER as a likely answer to 5D, but it was too long. Hmm, what to do? I got enough acrosses in the latter half of that answer to realize that if there was a rebus, it had to be at K/D but eek, how to make sense of the across answer at 20A [Eat, quaintly]? I left that area unresolved and moved around the grid, finally becoming certain about what was going on at 53A, P/MOWER. Yay! I thought that DON/IT was the hardest answer to parse because of the rebus being in the middle, but that it was also one of the cleverest, along with its counterpart, FACE/TS. Oh, and agree with Rex and others about the sparkly G/TOTOE.
At some point I must have heard the term CATCONDO. It didn’t occur to me right away but with only a cross or two, I was able to fill it in. (I hope @Gary Jugert does something with ROCOCO CATCONDO, if only to celebrate all those Os). I’ve also seen Cynthia ERIVO in something and taken partial note of her name (it must have been Bad Times at the El Royale), because I was sure of ERIV, but unsure of the last letter, and LOSING/TIME remained hard to see for a while.
Silly mistake: I never watch Shark Tank, but decided the airer must be CBS (probably because I’d seen CBS in the clue for 39A, and unconsciously absorbed it). That left the Champs-Élysées lined by “sAFES,” a concept which gave me pause. There *are* many high-end shops on the C-É and probably a number of them have sAFES, but is that what is meant?? Putting “cBs” there also messed up BREAK/D and delayed my grasping the theme, so I was very glad to get that sorted out.
Very enjoyable puzzle. Thanks, fellow-Barbara.
Golf tees are little pedestals holding up the ball.
I had the bad luck of getting FAC(ET)S first, which had the two-word phrase across crossing the standard rebus down AND the across with the rebus made a word too. When the others didn’t do that, I first thought I was getting them wrong, then had the opposite of the “aha” moment as I realized they weren’t all going to be that clever.
Lots of fun working the trick and well filled. The BREAK BREAD x SOCK DRAWER was the TOE hold. Like the lack of a revealer - but the themers were italicized on the app.
YES I CAN, I LOVED IT, OIL BARON etc are all solid - not much glue anywhere. I guess ADIPOSE is unfortunate and didn’t like the double down on frozen treats.
Mr. Carl Perkins came from TENNESSEE
Highly enjoyable Thursday solve.
@ LMS 7:54
We call it "plasticware", like glassware or silverware. Kind of generic. A bunch of it comes from takeout, so not all Rubbermaid, and a couple I bought in Berlin last spring (makes me think my Oma would call it "good German plasticware"). Note spellcheck does not like plasticware, keeps changing it to plastic warehouse
I solved the puzzle, but the iPhone app accepted CLOSES instead of the intended rebus… just saying… mighty confusing. Watch it, Will.
Wordle 495 4/6*
🟨🟩⬜⬜⬜
⬜🟩⬜⬜🟨
⬜🟩🟩⬜🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
The downs provide the extra letter for the across to be a theme phrase. The ET rebus in "closets" gave the across "face facts."
There are themes and there are gimmicks. This puzzle definitely fell into the latter category. Absolutely not a fun puzzle. Just throw random rebus squares in that only make sense for the down answers. Cheap chicanery. Friday, please.
Most of the theme clues didn’t have any indication, italics or quotation marks, on my iPad. I was going through the puzzle at the end, tidying up the theme answers, and it told me my puzzle was complete but 32- and 58-across didn’t actually have the rebus answers in them
Hey All !
West half of puz was quite easy. East side put up a little resistance, but still a quick puz. Timer tells me just over 13 minutes, which is super fast for me on a ThursPuz.
Figured Rebus out at the DONT DOIT spot. Knew 3D was INORGANIC, but wouldn't fit, so stopped at INORG___, knowing a Rebus was brewing, but not exactly where. Thankfully, my Themer clues were italicized, remember, I'm a "look here!" neon light to point out the theme spots type of guy. So got the AHA at the NI. Let out a "Neat!", and went searching for more. Keep hearing Monty Python's "Knights of NI!" when I see that
Tried to form a meta by putting the Rebi together to form a word/phrase, but got KDETNIPMGT. Looks like a government initialism for something.
Why did TENNESSEE add so many double letters? TENESE. Simple. 😁
Favorite was GO TOE TO TOE.
HI MOM!
Three F'S
RooMonster
DarrinV
Ever since I was 5 I wanted to be BARON, or a magnate, or a Titan(of industry). Alas, my career was in the state civil service. Worked out OK though.
I never fully figured out the theme, but once I saw what it was at the end, I thought it was really cool! Very clever. Would have been fun to have figured it out while solving, but oh well.
So happy to see Cynthia ERIVO in here. Her performance in The Color Purple on Broadway was life-changing.
A very proper Thursday workout, with the best part of my 33 minutes figuring out how the theme worked. Knew that INORGANIC and SOCKDRAWER were answers, but how are we dealing with that extra letter? Agree wit @Rex on the cleverness of G/TOTOE.
SLEWS of fun for the old NOODLE (a Wednesday puzzle leftover).
Wow this was a brilliant Thursday but one I found to be quite a challenge. Not the puzzle overall but the theme was a real slog, even though I saw the trick pretty quickly. I checked the app version after the FACT and see that the theme entries were italicized, so I’m cutting myself a good bit of slack as that was not the case in the printed form. Since the theme clues were not uniquely designated and the answers were not obvious theme entries, which is to say not long crosses or downs as we’d normally see, that made it considerably more difficult to determine where the themers lurked. Also the variations in the placement of the rebus - the first letter, the last letter, and the next to the last - added another level of trickiness. I felt downright MANIC at times trying to figure out where they went. All I could do was leave a VOID where the down answers made no sense. Anyway that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
ORATE in front of SOTU was a nice touch. Talk about your TALL TALES. I had DEAL before DATE, NIXON before ERIVO, MAC before STU because when I make my INORGANIC goulash I add elbow macaroni. When I make stew I DONT DO IT.
I should probably get my CATs a new CONDO but they’d probably just ignore it and play in the box it came in.
@TTrimble: Your SOTU/STFU comment made my day. 🤣
Easy, fun theme, enjoyable all around. Unsure at the outset of how to make BREAK BREAD work, I got my answer a moment later when I saw how to make INORGANIC fit. LOVED ferreting out the rest of the rebus crosses, the flourish of their symmetrical placement, and the pleasures of SOCK DRAWER and the idea of a ROCOCO CAT CONDO. Mostly a breeze, but like others, I found that the SE offered an almost-done-but wait challenge; so, an extra reward for figuring that section out. @Barbara Lin, thank you for this treat.
35A I had Nye as in Bill the science guy, 35D not in time
It was difficult to grok the gimmick on this one. Some of the themers work without the double-letter rebus — MOWER works all by itself, and so does DONT.
And then some of the rebi create two words of equal length, one for each letter (FACES/FACTS, BREAK/BREAD) and others you need to read two or three times over to create the full answer (GO/TOE/TO/TOE, DONT/DO/IT). I thought for sure that Rex would hate the inconsistency of that. I sure did.
Don’t wait five years!
“Go toe to toe” into the Xword Hall of Fame NOW!!!
"While I was in that addled state, of course, my brain was working on it. One of life’s mysteries and gifts: It’s like someone who is not you is inside you and surreptitiously doing work for you, as a favor, for no pay whatsoever!"
--Lewis
May I borrow that "inside" someone who was working for you, Lewis, now that you no longer need him? Alas, there was no such person working inside of me -- and I had absolutely no idea what the bleep was going on. Where was the BREAD of BREAK BREAD??? Where was the missing IC in INORGANIC??? It was all too much for my little gray cells. I filled in what I could, and came here as quickly as I could. Congrats to all who solved it and who were able to parse all the themers.
Adipose and Cat Condo gave me the 'ol DNF
Figured out BREAK BREAD early on and also had no problem with DON’T DO IT. But I put the other rebuses (rebi?) in the wrong places, so I ended up with a grid that didn’t make sense until I came here. I guess this was above my pay grade, but I enjoyed tackling it and think it’s a great puzzle in spite of my DNF.
Now I can finally stop thinking about how to FROST FROTT and wondering what an AMANA PANAMA is.
A rewarding puzzle to solve! Yay! I filled everything but the SE, with obvious omissions, and finally settled in to decode the trick. I started with CLOSES/ FACES and voilá! So then to BREAKBREAD. I also thought DONT was enough for 32A at first.
We don’t have any Tupperware - I call them “plastic containers,” because I'm like that. My husband will call them “drawer,” “spoon” or “ipod,” because he's not so concerned with accuracy. Or he's trying to help me become psychic.
Can someone explain TOW / boot - I don’t get it. And WTF is a CATCONDO? Furniture? Did t like this puzzle. Good idea but it failed to execute.
The answer for 1 across yesterday was Roomba, which is of course a Vacuum, the 1 across clue today.
Medium. Yes, ERIVO was a stand out WOE. I slowly caught on to this and then I needed to make sure the letters in the rebus squares were in the right order. All of that required nanoseconds. Most of the actual puzzle was pretty easy.
A fine set of word pairs, liked it a bunch! Congrats on POW.
I’m not a fan of the rebus genre, but I really enjoyed this one!
Overall the theme answers and fill played fresh—and quite amusing at times.
I wanted “icing” or “ice it” for the cake, but LOVED the frost instead.
Happy to see Erivo center stage, she’s one of the great British actors, among a boatload of them.
Every time Ms. ERIVO is in MONACO, she hears the ECHO of a ROCOCO CATCONDO.
Nit alert! CONE is not a frozen treat. It is a holder thereof.
And speaking of nits, how about CIS right below NCIS?
I think that the people who threw tomato soup on Van Gogh’s Sunflowers want to put an OILBARON the world. Alternatively, they may have been doing a cool sampling of a mix featuring Van Gogh and Warhol. Hard to say.
Like most of you, I loved this. Took me for.ev.er to get how the rebii worked, but it was an aha moment that I’m sure compares to the one experienced by Archimedes. Thanks, Barbara Lin.
P.S. No ASS today other than in TDPASS. We’ll have to make do with ENDS.
I swear every time I looked at the clue for 33d it said something different: "Home of Bollywood"; "Dome of Hollywood"; "Bowl of Jolly Good Soup"...
I figured out the gimmick pretty quickly when I hit what had to be SOCK DRAWER but was one letter shy. So overall I thought this was easy.
Our constructor's alter ego— a lefty guitarist! I remember my AP MUSIC teacher showed us this clip back in high school! (Not really.)
Thx, Barbara; loved the Thurs. challenge! :)
Very hard.
Good start in the top sector, but downhill thereafter; at least until the happy music at the end! :)
Knew there were going to be rebuses at INORGA_C / BREA_, but took forever to fully grok, wrt how to enter them correctly.
Toughest cross was ERIVO / VINO.
I've watched Cynthia ERIVO in 'Roar', 'Genius', 'The Outsider', and 'Mr. Selfridge'. I loved her performances, yet didn't remember her name; got to do better! 😔
Coincidently, I'm currently listening to Stephen King's audiobook, 'If it Bleeds', featuring Holly Gibney (which ERIVO played in 'The Outsider').
The other major head-scratcher was SOTU, which took some faith to leave in. Post-solve, it finally clicked.
This has to be one of my fave Thursdays ever, even tho it took 2 x my avg to solve.
Fun & very rewarding exercise! :)
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness to all 🙏
Left the rebus squares until the end. Didn't know SOTU, as I don't follow politics.
HOLE IN ONE seems like a homophonic revealer, no? I'll go read comments. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
It's raining here so I'm giving up on the day.
Uniclues:
1 Every headline in RWNJ newspaper.
2 Haul malfunctioning refrigerator to the dump.
3 The sound one hears when the dryer finally takes the last one.
4 All of them individually.
5 This gargantuan highly over designed tower sitting in my living room ordered from some posh online retailer which our favorite feline has never used.
6 Prospective home buyer offered a succinct appraisal.
1 "FACE FACTS!" BRAYS RAG (~)
2 TOW MANIC AMANA (~)
3 SOCK DRAWER ECHO
4 IFFY CEO
5 ROCOCO CAT CONDO
6 "I LOVED IT! CLOSETS!"
Yeah, um, no, I didn't get the theme until reading Rex's explanation. It's very clever, I'll give you that, but because I put the "extra" letters in all the wrong places (and really thought the quaint 20A would be BREAK fast), I was never going to figure this out.
I did have an error at 52A where I had TOe because 42D was SLE[WS] rather than S[LE]WS and I just scratched my head at TOe being an alternative to a boot. I wrote the word TALE outside the grid and wondered how leaving out FAST and TALE and then some random letters could possible constitute a theme. Okay, got it now.
Barbara Lin, this is such a nice puzzle, I can only wish I had gotten the theme while solving, thanks!
Btw – @Barbara S., re Mama Cass two days ago:
I didn't remember, or maybe never knew, that the ham-sandwich-cause-of-death story was reported by a Hollywood Reporter columnist at the time, apparently at the behest of Cass's manager in an attempt to "save her reputation", since he assumed drugs had been the cause (which they weren't).
So I agree it doesn't qualify as an urban legend, since there really was a concerted attempt to make it the official story for public consumption.
Thursday. Time to switch gears. The nuts and bolts really need oiling. Rust everywhere. Where is my fairy dust when I need it?
I will unabashedly use @ROO's "What in tarhooties."... although I actually said something else.
I won't sleep until this nut is cracked and I'm able to eat the fruit inside. Talk about a rude stare.
I looked at INORG[NI}C crossing BREAK[D} for so long, my fake eyelashes fell off.
I think ding dong went off at [GT)OTOE. Why in that particular spot, I don't know. It just popped.
A delight to finally eat the fruit and enjoy its juiciness. Then came the WOWS, the OHOS and the final AHHH.
Did anyone else solve this a a themeless? Of course not...but I started that way and was terribly mad that nothing was oiling my nuts and bolts. When I finally got out of PARK, picked the CACTI from my nethers, I was able to let out a whoosh of satisfaction.
Very clever...Can you t me know when you'll be back, Barbara? I'll need to gear up.
Technically DNF -- I got all the rebus and other hard answers OK, but left 4D as It's a D_ _ _ until the crosses showed me DEAL or DATE, and never came back to put in the obvious T. But I noticed it when I came here, and quickly filled it in before I saw the answer, so I'll take that as success.
ZI got the trick with TALL TALE, which made sense of CLOSETS, and gradually figured out the rest. I solve in the actual paper, which did have italic clues for the Across rebus answers-- but the print is so small and my vision so poor (after cataract surgery and wearing prescription reading glasses!) that I didn't notice them until I had most of the themers already. When I did notice it, I wished I hadn't, but it did help with GO TOE TO TOE, which for some reason I was trying to parse as an ordinary rebus. Knowing it really was a themer kept me at it just long enough.
@Loren, those socks, or at least some of them, really are eaten by your washing machine. Our washer needed service once and the repair person nonchalantly ripped the cover off the machine and showed me the offending sock gumming up the works. He also showed how a sock could climb over the edge of the tub to make its escape -- especially if one fills the tub too high because one is three days late in doing one's laundry.
I can't explain the lids, though. We finally gave up on making do with old yogurt and chip dip tubs and bought a set of identical leftover dishes (that I call them) with red covers. There are only two sizes, so the lids are interchangeable. I've never looked back.
@Rex CAT COuch? That's any couch in the same house as a cat. You can spot it by the shredded upholstery on the arms.
Two of the multiple letters in one square themers seemed to work just fine with just a single letter, 32A DON'T for "That's a bad idea" and 53A MOWER for "Lawn equipment with an engine". (And there is such a thing as 47D AP MUSIC? Really?) That made the solution to this very clever puzzle even more difficult to tease out. Almost like a misdirect away from the true misdirection.
Do yous know who has never defined REBUS as a crossword puzzle with multiple letters in a single grid square? The New York Times Crossword Puzzle, that's who. REBUS has appeared, per xwordinfo.com, 94 times in NYTXW puzzles over the years, the first in 1942 with "Picture puzzle" as the clue and more recently in 2022 with "Puzzle type with pictures" as the clue. Not once has it been clued in reference to multiple letters. Every time it has been a "word puzzle with pictures" type clue. More on how linguist, philologists, historians, Egyptologists and related scholars use REBUS at Rebusgate.
@lms 7:54
Your comment reminded me of one of my favorite books, String Too Short To Be Saved, by the late poet Donald Hall. He writes of his summers as a kid at his grandparents'
farm in NH. Later, going through their effects, he finds a box with a label written in his grandmother's hand: String too short to be saved.
This puz was a real THIN(K/G)Y, at first. Part of the problem early on was at INORGANC/DONT. With DONT seemin like a perfectly reasonable answer. Also, BREA? didn't make no sense, even after doin M&A's usual nanosecond-eatin run thru the alphabet. And my printed version of the puz had them italics, so I knew somethin was up, in both them mysterious trouble spots.
I think I figured out the theme mcguffin almost simultaneously, at both places, as the M&A frownin eyeballs kept shiftin madly back'n'forth between INORGANC & BREA?. Sooo … sorta a Big Bang ahar moment. Luv the theme idea … one U wish you'da thought of … even tho it regretfully didn't feature the Halloween holidays. Too soon, @Shortzmeister?
staff weeject pick: STU. Mostly cuz it made the puz end on a U. A rare corner f(U/I)nale. Plus as collateral damage, it also gave us the Ow de Sperational SOTU. They coulda gone with STS/SOTS -- but, NO! They went with U. M&A's heart sings.
no-knows: ERIVO. CATCONDO. APMUSIC. [All debuts, unastonishinly.]
fave stuff: ADIPOSE. YESICAN. ILOVEDIT. CACTI. MONACO & ROCOCO. TDPASS.
Thanx from a true F(U/A)N, Ms. Lin darlin. Superb job. I now officially end my remarks with a U.
Masked & Anonymo4Us
(boo!) …
**gruntz**
So weird. I stupidly thought the idea was just that things were mispelled because my rebus tries made no sense starting with K/D. Finally at the end I kind of figured it out and went back and changed 4 rebuses?! DONT looked fine to me for example. The phone app announced I had solved the puzzle. Came here only to discover that wasn't true.
I still don’t like rebus and other gimmicks that replace good wordsmithing
Same here! I just solved accepting a missing letter and waited to reach the clue that explains all, but it never showed! So I had a completed grid with no idea what was going on 🤔 I always read the Rex 👑 blog after I finish (or DNF!) the puzzle so now I get the full picture! To be honest, I'm not sure that I would have gotten it even with the italics or "s 😉
My solve started out fine with VPS, OIL BARON, DATE, but whoa, INORGA...??? And so ran right into the trick. Rebus squares, a favorite. I wandered around filling in bits as I circled the grid.
Returned north and I see 5D must be SOCK DRAWER (great clue), so that rebus is KD. Then 20A, if you read it twice alternating the rebus letters, is BREAK BREAD! Awesome socks, right?
Returned to the five remaining blank squares and smiled as they appeared: FACES FACTS, DON’T DO IT!, TALL TALE, POWER MOWER, and the hardest for me, GO TOE-TO-TOE, that latter just lovely. Like @Rex and others, I’d first thought DON’T, MOWER, and FACES worked by themselves.
Now everything is in but the first letter of 71A. Finally saw tiny little golf-tee pedestals and stared at SOTU. SOTU?? Is that something like a POTUS address? Can’t think of anything shorter; try again. Maybe like a Gettysburg? Stared and stared and stared and finally: State Of The Union address! Big aha moments like that are so electrifyingly gratifying.
Liked the puzzle a lot, even though, being accustomed to revealers, I did spend a further bit of time looking for one. Do the rebus letters spell something? N-o-o-o, doesn’t seem so. Am reminded you can’t have everything. And, per comedian Steven Wright, Where would you put it?
@Wanderlust 7:24 – Exactly right! Am living in Arizona where snowbirds migrate and wonder the same thing so am considering moving back to the Northeast. I do miss it, and every October I long for real autumn color, and, oh yes, there is water. Love your idea of a sunbird escaping the heat.
@jberg 1:03 pm – Laughed at the image of a sock climbing over the tub edge to make its escape and hope none of mine get any ideas!
That theme!
I found this to be a toughie. Since some of the themer answers could be solved without a rebus, it made it super challenging for me.
I don't recall a lot of cafes on the Champs-Elysees. I do recall a lot of high end (tres cher!) boutiques. And a fabulous store selling eyeglass frames. But cafes? Not so much.
This was brutal until I saw the light. Not sure why it took me so long; I knew something was up with INORGANIC, and it is Thursday, so I shoulda known...
One problem was not recognizing certain down themers. For 35 down I had NOT IN TIME, so I figured it was Bill NYE solving chemistry problems at 35 across.
[Spelling Bee: yd 0, the pangram was a long one! QB "streak" at 2 days.]
You've said it all, Lewis, and beautifully as always! You are a breath of Fresh Air, especially on days when the comments are particularly grumpy (and that's putting it a la Lewis 💚)
I came a cropper on the TALLE/SLEWS cross, because TALE worked more or less as well as TALL TALE, and SEAS as well as SLEWS, but what's a TOA. You have to be pretty hip to modern law enforcement to equate BOOT and TOW, also. Anyway, that little area was my Waterloo.
My phone app only had quotes around one of the rebus across answers which made it a bit weird.
@Joe D. (12:59 PM) – I’ve heard two versions of the ham sandwich story: the one you mentioned (a deliberate misdirection) and another that’s really more in the category of speculation/honest mistake – that there was half a sandwich on a plate in the room with Cass and one of the medical types who had seen it threw a crumb (as it were) to the ravening reporters who were desperate to find out what had happened. He suggested that aspirating food may have been the cause of death and many media outlets printed it as fact. And then there’s my husband who says he swears he heard that Cass had died in a restaurant after choking on a fishbone! That’s got to be a fabrication based on misremembered erroneous reporting, so possibly some sort of mutant Mandela Effect.
[SB: After my mini-streak of 3, had 2 days of heartbreaking -1s. Haven’t yet tackled today’s.]
Instead of towing cars for over parking or having too many unpaid parking tickets some cities use a “Denver Boot”(large clamp) to keep car from moving. Still have to tow but first pay your fines. Cat Condo is a tall carpeted scratching post with several levels for hiding, jumping etc.
Hi @Wanderlust! I’ll see you in the north. The heat in Oklahoma has been my nemesis since 1976, and I am delighted to be heading to northern California before summer hits again.
Well, another feat of construction. I got that we were “missing” letters immediately, but like so many if you, had no clue exactly what to do with it. I really wanted a rebus, but wasn’t convinced until I decided to BREAK BREAD, have some lunch and think about it. Thereafter, it was time to FACE FACTS, reorganize my SOCK DRAWER and move on to my CLOSETS.
I was moving on through the puzzle with
alacrity until I hit the LOSING TIME/TOE TO TOE cross. For some reason, my brain just had a ridiculous amount of time to get the rebus in the right square.
Overall, once I got the gimmick, my troubles were over for the most part. I am impressed with OUR constructor, but do wish we had some sort if consistent indication (warning?) to identify the themers. Editorial staff? Hello? Anybody there?
What a Thursday treasure! I loved every bit of it and solved it in good time, probably because I popped VOID in right away and was off to the races. A rebus always makes me smile and this didn’t disappoint.
I wanted LIPS for split/loose, but that definitely wasn't helping me in that corner...
WOW. One more time for sure!!
Another great puzzle. This week is a bounty of interesting, inventive and challenging puzzles. I love them all and it just keeps getting better.
I thought somehow “Break Bread” could not be “eat quaintily” since one only breaks bread while sharing a meal with others. And more often than not, we eat alone. Maybe “Dinner with Friends, quaintily”, would be more on target?
This was very clever.
Would have enjoyed it more if I had figured out what rebi/rebuses were up to BEFORE finishing puzz.
Have to give it many props 👏🏼 Either way.
☺️🦖🦖🦖🦖🦖😉
[SB: td 0! My last word was a 5er. QB streak 3 days; @Barabara S, when you're hot I'm not, & vice versa.]
M
A
YESTERDAY, OCT. 26, 2022
Wordle 494 3/6*
⬜R⬜A⬜I ⬜S⬜E
🟩F🟨O🟨U⬜N⬜D
🟩F🟩L🟩O🟩U🟩T
The Band Don’t do it
I loved this puzzle! Cat Condo…hahaha!
@Anoa Bob
I think your railing against these type puzs being referred to as Rebus is fruitless. It seems to be too far ingrained in the lexicon. Unless you come up with an nteresting name to identify this type puz and have Rex use it every time we get one.
Maybe ""Multiple letters in a square "? Too long. "Letteropodes"? @Z influenced. "Smusher"? "Jammer"? "ShrinkWord". Ooh, I like that one.
Everyone, feel free to suggest your own.
RooMonster Naming Guy
Loved it. (Just posting to get the comments to 100)
Really clever puzzle, thanks.
Hey @Roo
How about Ginsberg (my mother's maiden name)?
This was brutal. It took me, literally, twice as long as ususl to solve.
I got it eventually.
(And now we will see if my first comment gets recorded under something recognizable.)
@Anoa Bob asked: "And there is such a thing as 47D AP MUSIC? Really?"
Why, yes there is, and it ain't no joke. Actually, it's AP MUSIC Theory. My daughter took it as a high school senior (as I mentioned at 8:09AM). I'd guess it's one of the tougher AP courses out there. Music as a subject to major in in college is also super-demanding; I don't have statistics to hand, but most students I've known who took it up had to drop out and do something else. I'm sure the musicians in the commentariat could say much more.
@Roo 7:41 pm. Crammer? Packer? Jammer?
Fun and tough. Never heard of a CAT CONDO, nor ERIVO(??).
Same here. Wanted some hint to the gimmick/trick. Finished but only barely
Rex complains about the themers being indicated with quotation marks instead of italics where he solved them. Well, the syndie version now up on the Seattle Times site had neither! No indication at all of the themers. Especially tough with something like MOWER which made sense as it was (although I wasn't so sure about AMUSIC).
Still, even with that it was a fun solve. I usually don't love rebus puzzles but this was one of the better examples.
TALE ENDS
Act as IF this DATE WAS your last,
then ONCE you FACE the FACTS,
when LOSINGTIME to make a PASS,
DON’T DOIT IF UNASKED.
--- NOLA ERIVO
Did everyone miss the dupe: ONEPARENT/INONE? Oh well, as I recently discovered, this is no longer taboo.
I guess that actress in the middle is obscure only to me. Filled in the downs and...shrugged. "Hope that's right." Ditto with SOTU until it was explained as an acronym here. I simply never in my life heard or saw this abbr.
Other than those WOEs, this was not too hard. Stuck in the NE because I needed another space for CLOSETS, I finally saw that FACES by itself or FACTS by itself don't fit the clue--but FACES FACTS does. After that the rest was easy. Birdie.
Wordle 6 (phew!)
I really hate this kind of stuff.
D, LIW
Not a big fan either, but filled it in anyway.
Took too long to figure out the gimmick. In the end it was too convoluted and not much fun.
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