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1970 hit for Neil Diamond / SUN 6-25-23 / Considerably large, in Appalachian dialect / Still shot of a moving image, in tech-speak / Tactical reductions in lighting as during WWII / Sommelier's superlative / How Cassius looks to Caesar in Shakespeare / Repeated small role for Paul Rudd / Like much prized blue-and-white porcelain / Relationship conditions so to speak
Sunday, June 25, 2023
Constructor: John Westwig
Relative difficulty: Challenging
Theme answers:
- IN OUTING (22A: Event at a hot new club?)
- SHORT LONGING (24A: "I wish I were under four feet tall," e.g.?)
- PRO CONNING (38A: Career for a scammer?)
- SPRING FALLING (67A: Slinky?)
- ODD EVENING (91A: Dinner date that makes a good story?)
- WHOLE PARTING (109A: A kiss, a hug, a wave, the works?)
- ON OFFING (112A: Title of an essay by a hit man?)
- EASY HARDING (37D: "Whoa there, Warren G.!"?)
- NICE MEANING (41D: Compliment for a lexicographer?)
Sir Brian Harold May CBE (born 19 July 1947) is an English musician, singer, songwriter and astrophysicist. He achieved worldwide fame as the lead guitarist of the rock band Queen, which he co-founded with singer Freddie Mercury and drummer Roger Taylor. His guitar work and songwriting contributions helped Queen become one of the most successful acts in music history. [...] May was appointed a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2005 for services to the music industry and for charity work. May earned a PhD degree in astrophysics from Imperial College London in 2007, and was Chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University from 2008 to 2013. He was a "science team collaborator" with NASA's New Horizons Pluto mission. He is also a co-founder of the awareness campaign Asteroid Day. Asteroid 52665 Brianmay was named after him. May is also an animal rights activist, campaigning against fox hunting and the culling of badgers in the UK. May was knighted by King Charles III in the 2023 New Year Honours for services to music and charity. (wikipedia)
• • •
Maybe the idea was that the theme is obviously subpar and so the giant middle, with its hoard of long answers, was supposed to be some kind of value-added feature. Like "ok, sorry about the theme, but here's a fun feature!" And it's true that some of the best things about the grid are in there. SCREEN GRAB, very nice (32D: Still shot of a moving image, in tech-speak). NO MAN'S LAND, same (52D: Unclaimed area). SIREN SONG, sure, I'll take it (72A: Famous drawing of a ship?).
Not sure why seemingly every other clue needed a "?" on it. In addition to all the themers. I count ten (10) "?" clues, some of which are harmless (4D: End of a college search? (EDU)), some of which are kind of clever (81D: Stop hiding behind? (MOON)), and some of which are awful (98D: Good name for a political pundit? (ILENE)). The net effect was to make a hard puzzle harder, and an unpleasant experience ... longer. More drawn out. I just wanted it to end but the "?" clues were ganging up on me. MINGERA! LOL. I think my reading that as one word is actually the highlight of my solving experience today. When the puzzle doesn't give you pleasure, you can always rely on your own mistakes for a good laugh. Oh, my other favorite moment was when I assumed that Warren G. was the rapper. I mean, that's the rapper's name: Warren G. "On a mission trying to find Mr. Warren G." From the song "Regulate"? No? Not a '90s rap crowd? Sigh, OK. Anyway, I had EASY HARD- and was like "Uh ... EASY HARD RAP? EASY HARD RAP!? Wow, I know they can be tin-eared about hip-hop over there but that is Particularly bad." Again, the LOL is on me. It's not the rapper, it's everybody's favorite boring corrupt 1920s president, Warren G. HARDING! Someone should write a rap song about Teapot Dome. If They Might Be Giants can write a song about James K. Polk, surely someone can oblige me here re: Warren G.
SLOP ON ... I just keep staring at that truly horrid and impossible-to-imagine phrase? I had SLOP UP there at first, which was bad enough, but at least I could kind of understand the phrasing: you serve something up, and if what you serve up is slop ... SLOP UP? But SLOP ON, as clued, makes no sense. On what? The clue doesn't say. Your plate, I guess, but the clue and answer do not substitute neatly for one another in any context that I can imagine. Nevermind that, as I say, this is the first of four (!?) "ON"s in this grid (along with PUNTS ON, ON OFFING, and ON TOP). I gotta quit. I said I'd keep it short and that has not happened. I apologize. Talk amongst yourselves. I'll see you next time.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. I'd like to thank The New Yorker for this amazing non-mention of me earlier this week, truly an honor to have my name omitted from your publication!
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202 comments:
I didn’t get the meaning of Ming Era until reading this. I figured Mingera was just something I didn’t know, like Cremona.
Bravo, Rex. While doing the puzzle, I muttered to myself many of the comments you make here. It's not that it was hard, it was that it was stupid. Disappointing all around.
I totally thought it was Warren G. (RIP) the singer
Could not agree more, this was thoroughly unenjoyable. Too many terrible ? clues. So few good ones. Is Atlanta THE A or THEA? Neither seems correct from a very quick Google search. And if it is two words, yuck for that and the THE CAPE.
SANDGLASS? SAND GLASS? Wtf as clued? Again, Google seems to disagree.
LEAN clued as some obscure Shakespeare reference crossing the horrid OF A LIFETIME.
So much more, so much felt incredibly forced and so little enjoyment from aha moments. All sighs.
Lol, on the non-shout-out shout-out.
Agree completely about the generally disapppointing theme, fill, and clues. Otherwise it was great😒
I think if the themers are clued with “?”, there shouldn’t be any other ? clues.
Otoh I appreciate your including Clifford in your write-up. There aren’t that many of us!
That article is quite disrespectful to you — I expect better from The New Yorker. Thanks, Guy Who Posts The Answers !
Pretty much agree with Rex. I got tripped up in the NE with I said so instead of I said no. The down clue was too cute by half. Another bad clue was the a for Atlanta. I’ve never heard that. ATL or hotlanta, sure. The A? What?
The theme was also not great. Odd evening was the only one I liked. The rest were meh (on offing) to outright bad (whole parting).
Unfortunately, this is pretty standard for Sunday puzzles. In my opinion, they range from okay to atrocious. This one was in the middle. I wish Sundays would be better.
100% also thought at first that it was referring to Warren G. the rapper. Wish it had-- it would've livened up today's labor, for sure.
Everything that Rex said plus this: a truly terrible, insanely difficult, and wholly unpleasant puzzle.
Am looking at the Wordplay comments and the NYT toadies are sucking up to it (humble-bragging of a high order).
I stopped doing Sunday puzzles a few years ago, though I am absolutely dedicated to the weekday ones; Sundays were just too boring, too soggy. How I wish I hadn't reneged on that idea today.
Just insanely idiotic at every level.
Usually I can blow through the Sunday puzzle in 30-40 minutes. But this one was gummed up with so many bad clues and answers that it took me two hours. ... Two hours I'll never get back.
Is no one going to mention Adolph? Adolph??? Barf.
OFALIFETIME? and did not parse MINGERA . finished no errors, but there were some head scratchers. Enjoyed it
HOW DE DODOO? RIGHT SMART? Ay Dios mío....Is there a skunk in the room?
My SHORT LONGINGS and my PRO CONNING refuse to dance. Where do I begin, THALIA...? You are, after all, the Muse of comedy. Did your poetry inspire your funny bone to spit out phrases that only make sense to the untutored? Did I miss your comedy somehow? I think I stopped even trying to laugh at OAKIEST. Oh, wait!...I take that back! I'll toss in EASY HARDING. What a hoot.
It's late and I shall go to bed and perhaps wake up in the morning and wonder why....
PS...I don't understand NAH as the answer for What's said in passing? at 60A. It isn't the only thing I don't understand....
I thought this was a real slog; just not getting the clues and not liking the answers. Surprised that Rex felt the same! Pretty much everything he said; the weak theme and the extra ? clues. Particularly SIREN SONG, which looked like a themer so I tried to keep the --ING ending. I even tried to fit the pattern --DRAWING with no luck.
Never heard of DIMOUTS. OAKIEST sounds absurd. Know lots of Neil Diamond but not SHILO. And the only name I actually knew right off was good old astrophysicist/rocker Dr. BRIAN MAY!
for "What's said in passing" all I could think was: RIP. And for "Crab or lobster" had SEAFOOD, then OCTOPOD, then HEXAPOD before DECAPOD. Whew!
[Spelling Bee: Sat 0, hooray no goofy words!]
When you pass on something you say, "no thanks" or "nah".
Miserable puzzle. I'm glad it's over.
Easy-medium. No real problems with this one, although MINGERA took some staring (hi @Rex) to make sense of. I thought this was a mostly OK Sunday so I liked it a tad more than @Rex did. He does, however, make some valid points...LAB x 2, ON x 4, some awkward theme answers...
@GILL I - Would you like to do this puzzle one more time? NAH, I’ll pass.
No. Very unpleasant. Sandglass was the worst. Who says that? It’s an hourglass.
Might be my least favorite Sunday ever
What @Rex and everybody else said. Lots of unknown PPP, but nice to learn about Brian May.
@Gill I: I was also confused by NAH at 69A. I think it means that you might say "Nah" when you pass on something.
"Anybody want another drink?"
"Nah."
"I'll pass."
Nah, as in no thanks, I pass. Ugh!
I spent oh-so-much time trying to find a way REGULATORS would fit
I’ve been solving this puzzle every day for the last ten years and this may be the worst executed Sunday theme I’ve seen so far. Not one good answer, and the rest of the fill… yikes!
No fun. Here’s another: old coin at hand; ~ -near farthing
A skill I’ve been working on is spotting a boring, unfun puzzle and stopping before I invest too much time with it. Worked perfectly today!
Well, I’m closer in age to 60 than 50, I grew up in western North Carolina with elder relatives who used all sorts of old-timey speech, and I never ever heard RIGHTSMART in the sense of considerably large. To have that crossing HOTPACK, a bit of a HOTMESS in itself, was kinda brutal.
Had more fun than the big guy. Thought “Old timer” a fantastic clue for SAND GLASS. Got a chuckle from ON OFFING and ODD EVENING. The main sticking point for me was the the longer non-themers - especially SIREN SONG clued with a ?
Took some time to work - but pleasant enough.
July - she will fly
100% agree. NYT puzzles used to be so reliably tight and clean, but this is just one (particularly bad) example in a recent trend towards anything-goes, which I suspect is part of a misguided attempt at "inclusivity". I've solved every day for probably 15 years and at this point, not only do I enjoy them less but I also don't think they're making me smarter like they used to. Boo.
I agree with those who were not amused by this outing. But unlike Rex—who wrote “Gonna have to make this relatively brief … and I really don't want to dwell on it”—I *really* am gonna make this brief. It’s history. Get over it. Bye!
Thank you, I felt EXACTLY the same.
Hmmm, I did not hate it as it seems every single other solver did. (As I write this, @Lewis hasn’t posted yet.) I love clever cluing and this puzzle had tons. “Stop hiding behind” for MOON (as lauded by Rex) was the best one, but I also liked “cutting class in med school” for ANATOMY LAB, “famous drawing of a ship” for SIREN SONG, “that’s in Seine” for EAU, and “old timer” for hourGLASS. (Yes, I know the answer was SAND GLASS, which no one has ever heard of but I’m pretending it was a good answer because I liked the clue so much.) I’ll add “comment made in passing” for NAH. I said AYE and resisted giving it up for a long time. Up top, I saw through the misdirection for SHIN and OSHA right away but got a nice aha finally getting ANNE for “one of two of six for VIII.”
As for the theme, it was fine. Not great, not bad. ODD EVENING was the best, while ON OFFING and EASY HARDING did feel like they went big on the wackiness. I do agree there was a lot of weird stuff in the fill like SLOP ON and OAKIEST. Rex’s rant on FBI SPY was hilarious.
Re the New Yorker dis - I hear you, Rex, but the “joke” wouldn’t have worked if it used your name. “The guy” makes it a little funnier - though it wasn’t all that funny anyway.
Shortlonging? Inouting? Proconning? Tedious, stupid, nonsensical…agree with Rex 100%. Worst Sunday puzzle ever.
Here’s a suggestion to the NYT for the next time a constructor submits a puzzle like this one, in the form of a theme answer: suppress publishing.
I didn’t read the title until about 75% of the way through, which was way too late. At least the theme entries sort of made some sense at that point (like SPRING FALLING for example, which definitely sounded like incoherent nonsense before that).
The colloquialism (RIGHT SMART) , trivia (SAMANAS, TERRAN, TIKI, THALIA, etc.) and “too cute” stuff like SAND GLASS made the rest of it unusually difficult (and boring) as well. In fact, the solving experience was similar to sitting through a poor movie just hoping for a decent ending.
Unfortunately for me that ending never materialized , as I had to guess at EWOK or EWOR and went with the Blueshirts (NYR) so I actually had a DNF on a sports trivia cross.
I worked in law enforcement for almost twenty years, the last eight in national security. I never heard anyone use the phrase "FBI SPY". Not even once.
Maybe Jeff Chen publishes at 7.
He does not
Oh yeah, this was hard, and man, was it fun!
That feeling when you’re wrenching your brain to crack a clue, then it finally comes, and the wordplay elicits a huge joyburst. Today, that feeling came again and again, a staccato of joie.
Astonishing freshness in answer and clue today. Where’s the stodge? Nowhere.
There were 21 NYT answer debuts, for one thing. But it was the cluing that, for me, especially shined. John had to write 132 clues for this puzzle. Hey, it takes a while, sometimes a long while, to come up with just one good one. Try it sometime. And this puzzle is packed with good ones. Usually, if we’re lucky, a puzzle might have two or three, but today I counted a solid dozen. And no staleness in the others.
Thank you, John, for the effort you put into pleasing the solver. This was a feast for my brain which adores riddle cracking and wordplay. The freshness was as sublime as a perfectly-timed fresh-picked peach.
You are most talented, and your puzzles, to me, are can’t-miss in two ways. They always hit the bullseye, and I get psyched when I see your name affixed atop one. Thank you for a superlative Sunday!
This whole thing was just ghastly.
Maybe we could have a separate contest for WORST clue in this awful puzzle. If we did, my vote would go to "APING" as the answer to the clue "Making an impression?" (48D). UGH!
"His" (7D) is not an adjective. It's a possessive pronoun. Such sloppy clue-editing!
Well, it's 11am here in England...maybe Ginny and Daniel live in Nova Scotia? ;)
Warren G is still alive. Are you thinking of Nate Dogg?
Yeah, it’s not often that the puzzle elicits an audible groan from me, but unfortunately, today I ended with ILENE. Made the dog look over in concern. Yet not even as bad as some of the other answers already pointed out by Rex. Ugh.
This Sunday morning, as usual, I'm wallowing in nostalgia for the good old pre-1993 days when doing the Sunday puzzle was something I looked forward to all week and thoroughly enjoyed.
Gee, I came here to write how much I liked this puzzle. I've found recent Sunday puzzles to be way too easy; this was a challenging, long solve that I had to nibble at to finish. And I didn't "get" many of the clues until the answers were in via crosses - like "Course number" for PAR. The clue and answer for 67 across - "Slinky?" is one of my favorite combos ever. And I thought the theme was just fine. My only complaint was the amount of question mark clues was confusing - I didn't know if I was looking for a themer or not. And I still don't exactly understand 72 across - SIREN SONG for "Famous drawing of a ship?" But other than those few nits to pick I had fun with this one. Thank you Mr. Westwig!
Random Jibber JABBERs (a tip of the hat to the senile judge played but Shelley Berman on the great Boston Legal, who allowed no Poopycock in his courtroom and repeatedly stated “I am the Decider!”):
— Rex was especially ornery today, likely because of a perceived slight in The New Yorker.
— This puzzle took me longer than usual and I was only saved by adding in the pattern of INGs. Not my all time favorite but not bad either. The hardest for me to get was Slinky the toy, literally being a SPRINGFALLING (which was my appreciative D’OH! moment du jour).
— ADOLPH is the first name of Coach Rupp, Brewer Coors and a certain Meat Tenderizer. Hitler’s name was ADOLf, but even if spelled the same, so what? A historic name, just like Warren G. Well, I guess a bit more major a player than EASYHARDING, all things considered.
— Kinda disappointed that Rex didn’t have an incensed RANT about the clue “poof” and how that can be used as a gay slur in this holy month of PRIDE. Or that GOOF rhymes with the vile term that I will no longer write but can be found in the previous sentence. Must have been too triggered by The New Yorker omission to include (plus had vowed to keep the write up short - his personal SHORTLONGING)…
JABBER on, my in Blue friends! (A far greater - and cheaper - honor than a Blue check on the social medium that Musk not be named!)
Ugly, clumsy, stupid, and ungrammatical.
Unlike most of you, I liked this puzzle. I think that many of Rex's complaints, echoed by most of you, were strained. I agree that SAND GLASS was stupid. But all of the themers were right on. The constructor should be getting kudos for his efforts.
Better than anything in the actual puzzle.
I agree with these comments--lots of head scratchers. I grew up in western VA and I have never heard "right smart" used to mean "large."
Unlike most of you I liked this puzzle. And I think that many of Rex's complaints, echoed by most of you, were strained. I agree that SAND GLASS was stupid. But all the themers were right on. The constructor should be getting kudos for his efforts.
I just gave up. Truly horrid
Most of my complaints have been covered already so I'll just add that Seine is not pronounced "sane" so the clue for EAU, which would otherwise be kind of cute, is all wet.
I didn’t know the Queen guitarist’s name and had “GO ON” for 81D (Quit Hiding Behind). Took an age to figure out that’s what I had wrong. 1/10 would not do again.
Thx, John, 'that's' was 'insane' 😉; what a great workout! 😊
Very hard (toughest Sun. I can recall, 2 1/2 x avg).
Dnfed at AA MILNE. Had Ac, and ECU looked as good as anything for 'that's'. Couldn't locate the gaff; had to hit reveal for the first TIME in ages.
What a clever clue for EAU: 'That's in Seine!'
Just felt like I was in another universe for this one; totally off J.W.'s wavelength.
Unknowns, hazies, learnings: HOWDEDO; DIMOUTS; THALIA; SERAPH; SIREN SONG; BRIAN MAY; PUNTS ON; DECAPOD; SHILO; LEONA; SEMANAS; BPS; ADOLPH; SAND GLASS; ANIL; HIS; SLOP ON; TERRAN; ANCHO; RIGHT SMART; AA MILNE (2nd initial).
Nevertheless, a very worthwhile adventure. Always enjoy a challenge! Hopefully, some things learned today. 🤞
___
Mossberg's Sat. Stumper was 8x tougher (time-wise) than yd's NYT' Sat.; was shocked to get the thumbs-up upon filling in the final cell at the 'Confederation' / 'cactus garden' cross.
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness, Freudenfreude, Serendipity & a DAP to all 👊 🙏
@anon 8:14a - so how to explain the two phrases “HIS life is full of drama” and “HIS is a life full of drama”? Whether it’s syntax or not the Bible is loaded with the possessive adjective HIS word, power, glory…
I liked the theme quite a bit more than Rex, but completely endorse his other critiques. So many of the answers were just odd. FBI SPY, OF A LIFETIME, SLOP ON, PUNTS ON, etc.
My difficulty with parsing MING ERA was my vague recollection that there was a brand of china named MI-something-A and trying to remember what that was (it’s Mikasa, for future reference).
1..Where the dough sits?
2. Sound of cows on grass?
3. Stretch out the Crisco?
4. Business goal of the American Psychiatric Association?
5. How to lose five pounds in five years?
(Answers below)
Welp, I’ll admit that this was a hard one,but the theme was a lot better than Rex gives it credit for. His write up at times makes it seem like he didn’t really understand the theme. ODDEVENING and ONOFFING were especially well clued, I thought. Outside of the themers, MOON as the answer to “Stop hiding behind?” definitely should make the @Lewis list for the week.
Thanks for a fun, hard and interesting Sunday, John Westwig.
Answers:
1. RISESETTING
2. HIGHLOWING
3. LENGTHENSHORTENING
4. GROWSHRINKING
5. SLOWFASTING
Agree with Rex and the majority of commenters who found this as much of a slog and downright incomprehensible in parts as I did.
To that end, while OFALIFETIME has already come in for criticism, I’d like to underline that neither the clue nor the answer make any sense. “That one will never have again”? I still can’t figure out that construction. Did they leave a word out? “Something that one will never have again” would make more sense as a clue. And I guess “a lifetime” would kind of sort of be an answer to that, though not one I would have guessed in this lifetime. But what is OF doing in the answer? And this is me trying to alter it in in my head to make it make sense. The actual clue and answer, just … what?!?
Lori -- the Siren's song "draws" the ship towards her.
But what I wanna know is, at 62D, if you hold on to Kapoor, are you ANIL retentive?
Why is there a Brian with a three-letter last name that isn't ENO? I don't need that in my life. With him beyond me, and not knowing Ming Era, -- for Old timer the best I could come up with was SANDAL ASS. I can see that as a nickname for a 70-year old man, no?
I was happy to see OFL rate it challenging, because I struggled with it and crashed at various points.
Stop hiding behind? for MOON, was worth the whole effort for me. Individual others were very good too.
When you have to do a lot of thinking at every juncture, a Sunday puzzle never feels long. I was consistently engaged and entertained throughout.
And in a way, the "made up" quality of so many theme answers were what made the puzzle so crunchy and interesting. Nothing was obvious. The first themer I wrote in was IN OUTING and I questioned it -- as in "What the hell is that?" But as I went on, I realized that all the theme answers were made up and that I'd have to be inventive myself to figure it out. Nothing was too on the nose. In fact everything was more near the tail.
One of my favorites was the vaguer-than-vague "Dinner date that makes a good story" = ODD EVENING. I had a wonderful time trying to imagine just what happened during that dinner date? I couldn't even begin to guess -- which makes the clue/answer such fun.
And let's not leave out some extraordinarily good non-themer cluing -- some of the best I've ever seen in a Sunday puzzle. The clues for SIREN SONG, SAND GLASS, and especially MOON (!) which fooled me completely were really brilliant.
One of the really good Sundays -- with lots of wordplay and minimal trivia. I found it a lot of fun to solve.
This puzzle sucked.
I'm gonna be 90 soon. Found it pretty hard. Took a long time and I had to cheat cause I did not complete the damn thing.RGW
Rex, I think that the New Yorker bit not only doesn't mention you but also doesn't have the facts right is hilarious! The blurb seems to be from the point of view of someone who doesn't have their act together, so describing you as "the guy" sounds just right. I doubt the timing mistake is intentional, but it fits right in!
I see the constructor's family weighed in here, praising the puzzle. For the rest of us, those of us not related to the constructor by blood or marriage, we can speak the truth: this puzzle was a fiasco. The NW corner alone, with HOWDEDO, should've let me know this puzzle was constructed by someone who's never traveled, never read a book, never had a conversation. You could get a couple 26-sided dice, with all the letters of the alphabet represented, and crapshoot your way to a better puzzle. Monkeys on typewriters, after finishing Shakespeare, could come up with a better puzzle. Just wow, truly outstanding in its wretchedness.
At least it was well covered last time it appeared that HOW-DE-DO is a legit spelling, with multiple Gilbert and Sullivan links.
I don't usually read the oomments first but I got up @ 4am & looked at the puzzle. Fortunately, I went back to sleep. After reading the comments, I don't even think I'll bother with the puzzle.
Good for you, Rex!
My chance for a big chuckle at my own chuckle-headedness was my dnf (after all that slogging) with ERaTIC (sic)/LEaNA! Wowser.
Hey All !
I can see the idea for the theme, a nice idea. But shouldn't you end up with actual phrases? And they all have the -ING ending, along with a bunch more -INGs around the grid.
Lots of open space, which is nice to see. Had a two-letter DNF today, at the crazy answer of OF A LIFETIME. Had ONE LIFETIME there, getting me DORn and LEeN for the crossers. Ah, MIN GETA (said like an expletive.)
Told to sit alone and fix your mistake? LEFT RIGHTING
Praise insults? UP DOWNING
"Keep at it!" "Don't look behind!" "Strive!" FORWARD BACKING
Able to tolerate the couch? STAND SITTING
Country insult? SHIT EATING
😜🤣
I'm sure some of y'all will come up with a bunch. I posted before reading the comments, so apologies if repeats.
Anyway, I'll stop the JABBERS. TTYL.
Six F's (One smack dab in the center!)
RooMonster
DarrinV
@Rex Parker: I don’t do Sunday puzzles but occasionally do check in to remind myself why (too big, takes too long, often on the corny side). So I did skim your writeup this morning and I just wanted to give you the credit you’re due. Yes indeed, thank God for the guy who publishes all the answers on his blog at 7 a.m. every day! And even when I don’t need the help, it’s always worth the time to read your perspective. Wishing you a pleasant Sunday.
Have we already started seeing AI produced crosswords
"in the style of...?"
Another horrible clue to add to the list- AAMILNE most certainly did not write a saccharine line about “weeds are flowers once you get to know them.” That line comes from one of the many extensions of the Pooh brand created by the Disney Corporation. You can tell it’s not A. A. Milne because it makes you want to throw up.
I’m usually much more forgiving of puzzles than Rex because I’m just not very good at them. Today I came to see if a) Rex liked it and it was just a case of me being a moron and then b) to see how @Lewis would find a way to compliment it lol. It’s not that today’s was hard. It was just singularly unenjoyable. After immediately getting INOUTING from the downs, the theme was patently obvious and I could stick ING everywhere, get a few letters and guess the antonyms without really knowing what I was answering. That’s no fun! But like the New Yorker columnist, I have my streak to maintain, so I persevered. As for the number of clues the creator came up with: did he though? Because what on earth is HOWDEDO?
Well, I wanted HOTrocks for my muscle relaxing massages. And I leaned towards Shakespeare for softHARDING. In Beverly-land, HOWDE is spelled HOWDY and One LIFETIME is all you get.
I enjoyed SHORTLONGING and NICEMEANING, but I tried to work in closePARTING for a long time. This puzzle is an example of what gives folks the idea the Sunday is the hardest NYTXW of the week. I would have thought it was just me being sleep deprived but for all the question mark clues that weren’t themers, and the comments here. There were lots of great twisty clues - the one for MOON I didn’t figure out til after completion. Ditto for SIRENSONG. ELOPER.
I did look up Brian May, since he crossed MOON, BPS (drew a blank there), and SANDGLASS - which I did Not want to put in, though technically it is accurate. That type of timer is made in a variety of time durations. I bought a cute little gadget with four sandglasses, each timed for brewing a different type of tea - black, green, white, herbal. Unfortunately, it turned out not to be very accurate, but also you have to watch it like a hawk. I'm too much of a space cadet. I need a ding - or three. And often someone to say, “Did you hear that? Your tea is ready.”
A bit shocked to learn about DECAPODs. Not much of a shellfish eater. Six ought to be plenty of legs… Eight if you’re an octopus.
Shortz deserves 20 lashes for inflicting this dog on the public. WTeffetyF?!?
I knew Warren G. had to be Harding because of John Oliver's wax president biopic. https://slate.com/culture/2017/07/it-is-on-john-oliver-puts-warren-g-harding-on-blast.html
A lot of the time, I think that Rex is just too harsh, but this was truly one of the most horrid nyt puzzles that I can ever remember. Will S., what were you thinking?
LMTR, but not much more. Agree with his rating of "challenging" but mostly because, as @Conrad has already pointed out, there were oodles of unknown PPP that provided obstacles at every turn. I found the themer acceptable, and occasionally downright amusing (ONOFFING). Though I had to struggle intensely to getvpast the PPP chunk on the eastern side of the puzzle, I ended up with all the correct answers, so cannot complain too much...
Agree with you. I enjoyed the challenge of this. Had to come at it from all directions. Feel like the complainers can't take anything that's not in their "wheelhouse." Is there a rule that theme answers have to be humorous?
Same complaints as everyone else. Slow and painful. OF A LIFETIME? SANDGLASS? FBI SPY? And many, many more.
The puzzle is what it is but we appreciate you @theguy. Same goes for Malaika and Claire.
There are ING endings on the non-themers DETAILING, FOAMING, APING. But that hardly seems to matter considering everything else.
I can sort of appreciate the constructor's impetus here. Take two words that are opposites, and put them together in a phrase where their meanings are different from their "opposite" senses. But most of the resulting phrases are awkward, or awkwardly clued. The one I think works the best is ODD EVENING. ON OFFING, as an essay title, is clever too.
But also, there were too many other weird things: OF ALL TIME, LAB ANIMAL, MING ERA (I also read this as one word), FBI SPY, SAND GLASS...it wasn't fun.
Turn up the old victrola
While not as bad as this one, the constructors’ other puzzle earlier this month (6/3), also was “…ing” focused. Why 2 times in a month? by the same constructor? No offense to Mr Westwig (other than a very bloated wordlist with made-up nonsense - HOWDEDO, good lord), but man, coupled with the Opposites Attract propensity noted by Chen, it’s easy to pile-on the NYTXW poor puzzle selection and editorial direction.
@Liveprof (9:29 AM)
Thx for the SIREN SONG explanation. It had clearly sailed over my head. ⛵️
___
SEINE pronunciation:
According to ChatGPT:
"The word "Seine," referring to the river, is pronounced as "sɛn" in International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) notation. In English, it is typically pronounced as "sane" or "sayn.""
howjsay, and Cambridge Dictionary concur wrt to the English pronunciation. YouTube varies between the French and English pronunciations, either 'sen' or 'sane'.
Some recordings seem to reduce the vowel sound; somewhere between 'sen' and 'sane'.
Wikipedia has this to say re: 'vowel reduction':
"In phonetics, vowel reduction is any of various changes in the acoustic quality of vowels as a result of changes in stress, sonority, duration, loudness, articulation, or position in the word (e.g. for the Creek language[1]), and which are perceived as "weakening". It most often makes the vowels shorter as well.
Vowels which have undergone vowel reduction may be called reduced or weak. In contrast, an unreduced vowel may be described as full or strong."
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness, Freudenfreude, Serendipity, & a DAP to all 👊 🙏
Quick thoughts on some clues:
16D - tortured to the max (though I had AN__ and got it instantly
48D - more of a "so to speak" clue than "?"-worthy, I think
57A - aren't a ton of clues for ELOPE and the like all about how the "service" part is skipped?
72A - the misdirection is fine, but "famous" is not how I would describe the answer, even in a "?" sense... it's just there to misdirect even more towards the art kind of "drawing"
75D - totally got me (but like others, I'm not a big fan of the answer)
81D - clever and unexpected, for a NYT clue
82A - great! (though I saw through it pretty quick)
Wrong answer highlight: I had RIGHTSM- and went with RIGHT SMALL, which would've been kind of funny if it was right (RIGHT SMALL = pretty big?) - but nope.
@Andrew (8:56) Re jibber jabber, I loved that guy on Boston Legal and loved that show. I mean, William Shatner, Candice Bergen, James Spader, guest stars like Betty White and Henry Gibson - just a brilliant lineup every week. My favorite part was always the very end when Shatner and Spader sat with their cigars and philosophized. Those two played off each other so beautifully.
I struggled with this one. My biggest objection to a puzzle like this is the preponderance of question marks for theme as well as non-theme clues. I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to fit some of those non-thematic clues to the theme. Maybe use a different font to distinguish them? When I didn’t get the happy music I just decided to use the Autocheck and am glad I did.
+1
Agreed with Rex on a lot, but I thought there was some real cleverness, and a theme which aided solving which was ruined by some awkwardness, even in cluing, which seems easy to fix: Yeah, the two LABs, bothered me, and SANDGLASS/LEONA?? HOWDEDO, HOTPACKS, SLOPON, and even the cluing on SWEETIE, GOOF, and RIGHTSMART. Having RIGHTSMART, ANATOMYLAB and the other "?" clues not be part of the theme was distractingly rather than charmingly confusing. It was hard, sometimes for good/clever reasons, and sometimes for not-so-good and not-so-clever reasons. Too bad.
Congrats to John Westwig…this was tough and tough is good on a Sunday. Loved it
Actually Jeff Chen publishes the night before. But I don't think XWord Info is considered a blog.
Anyway, the New Yorker writer may only know that the answers here are published by7:00, if that's the time he usually reads it.
wow... I am officially 'afraid' to put my soul through a sunday ny times puzzles anymore this one sealed the deal!! just let A.I. do the puzzles at this point they've got to be wittier and more language savvy than this garbage.. css't la vie!
I don’t think OAKIEST is actually something a wine aspires to, so not sure if that’s a “superlative” unless it’s defined simply as something that will end in -EST whether it’s good or bad. Even so, this is about the 700th worst thing about this puzzle.
Thank you, kind folks, for clearing up my NAH. Just to prove I'm not living under an applet tree, I will say that there were two clues/answers that I liked: I'm picking you, SPEEDO, and your partner shall be MOON.
The rest of this ODD EVENING remains looking like SERAPH with his six wings flapping in some HOT air.
I'm sensing these JABBERS: SLOP ON, SPLATS, BILE, RANTS and ANTI. I will dance with them all.
RIP/NAH.
A thought on all of the question mark clues. I thought it was great that the themers weren’t highlighted or asterisked. You just had to discover them as you went. If they were the only ones with question marks, then they may as well have been asterisked. Ergo, I conclude that this was a conscious and applaudable approach. Keep living RIGHTSMART!
@egsforbreakfast 9:27 AM
#4!
I agreed with "Challenging" and then I was astounded at Re's next comment. Couldn't have disagreed more.
I found the puzzle difficult, but the theme was clever and fun. And getting the first word of a theme answer helped get the second. Knowing ing went on every end helped just a bit with other pars o the puzzle.
Some of the clues were amusing. I put a big smiley face by 75D Old timer. This I had trouble accepting sand glass when I've always heard hourglass - this despite sand beigtae first thought I had re the answer.
I put a grimace/smile by 81D Stop hiding behind, but a happy smile by 72A Famous drawing of a ship
Very good puzzle.
@egs Your clues are far better than the ones in this puzzle!
Hated it - no fun whatsoever.
Have lived in Atlanta for 40 years and have never heard it called "The A" - WTF?
I worked at an Asian art museum for many years. I have never heard "Ming era." It's always "Ming dynasty."
Whilst I don't like to have to agree with all the negative comments today, this was pretty bad wasn't it...
Rex is being a DECPOD i.e. crab because he just doesn’t like wordpay gimmicks. I thought this one was quite clever and fun to solve. My only nit is the plethora of three-letter flotsam, especially the non-words ike WSJ, AMC, BPS, GOP GPA etc. But overall I woud give it a B. If it wasn’t for the junk fill it would be an A. Keep ‘em coming John Westwig!
Pure misery. So many bad clues. “ PG” does not mean “family friendly.” I wouldn’t let my kids watch PG movies when they were very young.
Yikes! First, I was SO glad that @Rex rated this challenging after I “finished” (with cheating). Let’s just say I fall midway between @Rex and @Lewis. Thank God I actually KNEW BRIANMAY and Warren G. HARDING and Kate MARA! In the end, knowing that, and filling in the INGs did NOT help me enough. I was just not on the constructor’s wavelength. Plus:
I’ve always wondered about WHY dupes were “bad form.” Welp, after filling in LABANIMALS, I thought, surely it won’t be ANATOMYLAB? So I had IOI (101) in lieu of LAB for ages.
I found the “rural” and “Appalachian dialect” clues a little offensive…they might well have said “How did Jed Clampett say X?” for both of them.
As @Christopher Smith said…Superlative = OAKIEST!? Maybe I’m just a rube (well, yes, I am) but I strive to get the LEAST oaky Chardonnay. This only stopped me for a hot second because I luckily knew Chardonnays can take on the oak taste. I would note that these days they often ferment them in metal vats/barrels or whatnot.
And yes, the MOON clue was the best thing in this puzzle!
Clinging desperately to my disintegrating story, I will continue to insist that the "sane" contains water while the "senn" contains EAU.
I thought PROCONNING was an outlier or a mistake because the word CON doesn’t have a double N and all of the other opposites that were the second word in the gimmick did not have an extra double letter before the ING ending. Turns out that CONN is in fact variable spelling for the word CON so it’s all good.
Spring falling was my first. On offing was the cutest.
I just wanted to be done so I didn't have to think about it anymore. This was irredeemably awful.
I liked it okay but it took me about twice as long as my usual Sunday solve time - I was relieved to come here and see it rated "challenging" because it sure was for me!
I'm with Lewis. This was great! I guess I just do the crossword for different reasons than Rex does, I think. I pay no attention to the clock; I'm going step by step through the Acrosses, and then the Downs, filling in only what I can, sometimes only "s"es and "-est"s and "-er"s, and things I really know (Spanish; here, NYK and APRIL; AAMILNE...), and then go around again and see what they suggest. And again. It's like a Zen process with my coffee. And today, when the first themer declared itself, I got a kick out of it. EASYHARDING, I think it was (I didn't know there was a rapper). The rest of them didn't disappoint. A couple made me laugh out loud. SPRINGFALLING! And the last one to fall in place: ODDEVENING—brilliant with the clue. The understated "essay," "On Offing," too.
Thank you, Mr. Westwig, for a lovely Sunday morning.
THANK YOU. This puzzle was a mess. DNF.
One criticism that has not been mentioned (I think) is that every themer ends in "ing" and yet we have an additional entry of FOAMING. Boo.
And, as a native Texan I can assure you that there is nothing legitimate about HOWDEDO. It's howdy-do or just howdy. How do you do --- how d'you do --- howdy-do --- howdy. No one ever ever ever has said howde. Even my stupid computer doesn't want me to spell howde.
Yes, Rex nailed it. As usual for a Sunday too much PPP.
har. This SunPuz evidently had lotsa stuff to please and displease everyone.
It sure had a lotta cool, extra sneaky clues in it. The puztheme woulda called this HAPPYSADISM.
Never heard of SANDGLASS, but it is legit -- found it right there in the Official M&A Helpdesk Dictionary:
"sandglass |ˈsan(d)ˌglas|
noun
an hourglass measuring a fixed amount of time (not necessarily one hour)."
Always cool to learn some new words, as long as it ain't PEWIT.
staff weeject pick: NYK. A debut runt word. [One of 21 debut entries in this puz, btw. Several of them were themers, of course.]
Thanx for a feisty inouting, Mr. Westwig dude.
Masked & Anonymo5Us
**gruntz**
@Anon 9:29 -- While I, too, was less than thrilled with the OF A LIFETIME clue/answer and while I agree that it's awkward phrasing, I can still make it work grammatically...and rather easily, in fact:
"That one will never have again" = OF A LIFETIME:
"Opportunity that one will never have again" =
"Opportunity OF A LIFETIME"
I scribbled three things in the margin while I did this puzzle on paper, because I knew you'd cite all three as awful answers, and I was right: SANDGLASS, HOWDEDO and FBISPY. All of them simply dreadful.
BTW, you don't have to stick with the "ING" ending to come up with themers. Though of course you can. Here are some theme answers I came up with:
1) Sad princess
2) Ruin a decades-long science experiment
3) Agree with Frost's thesis that "good fences make good neighbors"
4) Choose a designer
5) Xenophobic
1) LOW HIGHNESS
2) LOSE FINDINGS
3) BACK FRONTIERS
4) TAKE GIVENCHY
5) AGAINST FOREIGNERS
One of the worst ever. Jonathan Yardley
Ditto @Anon 12:07AM!! And reading OFL, I STILL had to stare at it to figure out where the two words split. HooBOY!
@Andrew (late yesterday)…hahaha! I will provide a handy reference guide for the Weezie v Beezer:
Similarities:
- We both like hardware stores
- We often agree on POV
- We both TRY our damndest to be tactful or “gracious” (as you said) in responding to comments by others
Differences:
- Pretty sure I’m at least 30 years older than Weezie
- Weezie is about 20 times more eloquent than I am. And I’m pretty sure generally “smarter.”
I hope this helps!
@Casarussell…I get your point, but I generally think of “howdy” as “Western” (or cowboy country in old West) and (lol) I just realized Howdy Doody was dressed like a cowboy. So. I DID Google “how de do” and it has a definition. Both short for “how do you do” AND idiomatically as “That’s a fine how de do”! My point earlier is that it isn’t a “rural” greeting in most of the U.S. THESE days. Maybe it should have been labeled “old-style” or antiquated. There is a huge expanse of areas in the Great Plains that would be labeled as rural and I’m thinking not many people these days say as a matter of course, “how de do” OR “howdy do.” As an oldster who watched a lot of tube as a kid I only hear, “How de do Miss Drysdale” and “Jethro is right smart good at cipherin’!
Wow Nancy, those are great!!
Absolutely loved this puzzle. Even though it took me much longer than usual to solve, it was fun and satisfying. So many double meanings and clues I’ve not seen before. Plus I’m always happy to see my name appear in a puzzle!
@whatsername (11:38)
Glad to find another Boston Legal aficionado here. Agreed, the repartee of liberal Alan Shore and conservative Denny Crane was so much fun! Great cast, timely topics, and the writing! Consistently excellent!
David E. Kelley has created so much - from LA Law to Ally McBeal to Goliath - but think this is his finest.
Watched it again last year - the best part about my memory starting to fade (MAD COW!) is knowing I’ll be able to binge it again in again in a couple years with fresh eyes (post-cataract surgery, so I guess I see EVERYTHING with fresh eyes)…
The one high point for me was finding out that Warren G. was the president, rather than some rapper. So much junk that I could have looked up except I did not care about it. Well, I liked Thalia. I gave a good clavichord concert a while back of music from the J. C. F. Fischer Musikalischer Parnassus, a set of 9 keyboard suites each named for a muse, and I had done a bunch of research for it, which was fairly irrelevant to the music, which is good.
There is a whole musical about Warren Harding, PRESIDENT HARDING WAS A ROCKSTAR, by the same guys who later did BLOODY, BLOODY ANDREW JACKSON.
PK, so, a couple weeks ago (or at least recently), I defended a Sunday puzzle because it was a tried and true NYT Sunday theme type and it fit the bill to a T, had humor and some real cleverness.
Then today arrived on the scene and pretty much except for the clue doe ELOPER (Secret service member? 57A), it was a long and arduous slog. The theme entries were so strained it hurts, literally. I had to stop twice for coffee and finally for ibuprofen for my headache. OK I forgive the headache, I had some more outpatient surgery Friday and am tired, sore and cranky. However, the puzzle disappointed me to an extreme I haven’t experienced for longer than I can remember. Parts were easy and I had hope of having the momentum continue, but too much PPP, poorly constructed clues, way too many ?s which created cn fusion rather than lessening it and the whoosh would come to a sudden stop.
And the MINGERA china? When Delft wouldn’t fit, I guess my brain just didn’t go back far enough in history. It was late in my slog-solve when the MINGERA china appeared so I was already tired, confused and exhausted with the made-up “opposites” that made no sense or were forced and just “not.” I simply moved on. I still saw MINGERA when reading OFL’s analysis and stared long enough k owing that we had two words and finally saw it. Yikes.
I finished. That’s all I have to say.
The common phrase inferred is "once in a lifetime", so the clue and answer (of rather than in) are in fact a bit off, but just a bit. Not enough to spoil what I found a challenging and enjoyable Sunday opus, despite all of the not incorrect objections by Rex and others.
Okay. So after saying that "I wasn't going to bother" & solving Wordle on my 3rd guess, I figured "Okay, let's give this guy a shot."
Now I can say after reading the blurb by WS where the constructor writes "Lots of friends do the Times puzzle but complain that mine are too hard" I have to say that this "outing" of his was for his gratification, not for our enjoyment.
I regret that I came back to tackle it & that I allowed my enjoyment of puzzle-solving to waste my time today.
Sorry. Guess I'm pissed at myself (& him!).
Bravo, Rex. Thank you for making me feel better and like I wasn’t losing my mind. I’ve been doing the NYT puzzles daily for 50+ years. This is the worst experience ever. And to add to the insolence, the puzzle master actually said “most complain that mine are too hard.” No. Not too hard. Just really bad.
Maybe I should calm down before I write this, but right now this appears to me to be the *worst* *ever* puzzle I recall over 70 years of doing the NYTXW. One clue-answer pair epitomizes the whole business. "...blue and white porcelain." I had the initial "M," and what fit right in there, since I had absolutely nothing near by, was MEISSEN. Oh no. A vanishingly obscure hyphenation, MING-ERA, instead. This one should have been taken from WS's inbox straight to the trashcan.
I believe he did. Look it up.
Amen! Just one of my complaints about this one!
Naticked. ExOTIC crossing MINGExA. Figured it was some kind of Pyrex-y thing, and EXOTIC seemed good enough for me.
As a resident of North Carolina, I can assure you that no one has ever said 'HOW-DE-DO' to anyone, ever.
And the cluing on 'RIGHT SMART' is DUMB WRONG.
The discrepancy of quality in Sunday puzzles points to everything that needs to be fixed with the NYT Crossword. This was both impossible AND a miserable experience, with shoddy cluing and laughable fill. Are there not better puzzles being submitted?
Terrible.
I kept on wanting to quit but then thought that it would get better. My mistake.
p.s.
@RP: Hey, many congratz on yer bein anonymously referred to in a New Yorker article as "the guy"!
Better than when I actually got anonymously referred to in a Wall Street Journal article, many years back, as "some wag".
That anonymous referral musta nagged at m&e all the way here to eventually decidin to pick "Masked & Anonymous", as my blog commenter alias. [That and I was kinda always a Bob Dylan fan.]
M&Also
Gawdawful. Never seen such unanimous hatred (ODIUM) in the comments before either.
Agree with Lewis completely. My wife and I struggled (separately) with this puzzle but very much enjoyed the challenge. What a whine-fest this blog is starting with The Professor. To summarize most Sunday comments in the last few years: oh this puzzle is too simple; not challenging; not clever. So a difficult puzzle arrives and most in this community feel that you’ve wasted your time. I say let’s praise the constructor for a great work out. I’m happy to give some leeway on the theme. As Lewis wrote, constructing a challenging puzzle requires great effort. Bravo to this constructor.
I'm suprised Rex didn't object to EDU being clued as "End of a college search?" -- you'd type the ".edu" if you're going to the website of a college, but if you're googling it, you'd simply type the college's name sans EDU
My 2 cents on a very minor topic:
I have never in my entire life heard the river running through Paris pronounced as "sane."
Though I did just hear someone refer to the chain Pret a Manger as if all three words were English words.
My wife had to explain to me what Mingera china was. I started with Meissen, which Google now tells me can be blue and white, along with many other colors.
Villager
Thank you. Feeling relieved and vindicated, I thought it was just me . . .
What a simply awful puzzle. I was looking forward to some late Sunday entertainment. It was a brief overlonging, a hot cooling, an up downing… blech!
I thought the theme answers were kind of clever. Agreed about His not being an adjective, though.
I got a good laugh- from all the things Rex pointed out! Glad I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t figure out what a MINGERA was 😂
@Nancy 1:39
Thanks for the explanation on OFALIFETIME, but I’m still just as perplexed. I was trying to solve a clue when apparently I should have been trying guess what word the constructor left out of BOTH the clue and the answer? I did not know that was part of the proposition: I always thought that constructing a crossword puzzle would be hard. But if all I have to do to get in the NYT is write clues like, “Here are some words that don’t really make sense or even relate to the words I’m asking you to fill in as the ‘answer’”then it should be a breeze.
I'm at the beach--it's 78 degrees, breezy, low humidity, sunny. No screaming children, country music or smokers anywhere around me.
I take out the puzzle and my #2 pencils. Wow, heaven.
You know it's an awful puzzle when a day like this is ruined.
Rex liked this more than I did.
Challenging, which is one of the reasons I liked it (could I finish?) I also admired the theme answers that involved a change in the part of speech and MEANING, e.g. (FALL, noun: the season, to FALLING, a verb) or OFF (adjective) to OFFING (noun). So HARDING didn't quite work for me, in that sense, but points for creativity. I found the cluing tough throughout. A nice workout.
A lot of extra non-theme ? clues and -ing endings, plus some inelegant cluing and scary bad fill, deeply undermined what was otherwise a very cute duo of ODDEVENING and ONOFFING.
Still finished in decent time but it took all day - just couldn’t stick with it, kept leaving after one clue and then coming back to continue the fight.
@beverly c
So we're @RooMonsters!
LAB ANIMAL- nooooooooooo! I always read your blog with the fear of living a puzzle that you hated, but we usually agree. I truly cringed when I got Ming-era which I only filled in after putting down the puzzle stumped at —-glass, and picking up my book, “The Wager” by David Grann- a spectacular tale about a shipwreck- only to read the word SANDGLASS in reference to a discussion on Longitude! Dead reckoning, indeed.
My initial entry was MEISSEN.
I agree that a lot of this puzzle was a stretch.
However, Julius Caesar is after all one the most well known Shakespeare plays with the famous crosswordese et tu appearing so frequently. I have heard that Shakespeare is taught much less now than when I went to high school a long time ago so that might have something to do with your reaction that the line “lean and hungry look” is obscure. I have not read the play since then but the line came quickly to me. It is still a fairly iconic line veven for those who never read it.
Also “the Cape” is most definitely in the language in New England. Cape Cod is so well known nationally that crosswords frequently use Cape Ann as a trickier answer for a cape in Mass.
Not obscure at all, I would think.
When a puzzle is this crappy I enjoy looking to see how Lewis will manage to sing its praises, and once again he did not disappoint. I contend that this puzzle is subpar and unpleasant to solve due to the following: it includes far too many proper names (MARA, EDIE, ANIL, LEONA, SHILO, DEANNA, BRIAN MAY, A A MILNE); it uses a foreign word that has not gained common usage in English (SEMANAS); it repeats the word-answer LABs, which seems a disqualifying error (LAB ANIMAL, ANATOMY LAB); it includes -ING answers (DETAILING, APING) which conflict with the theme of adding -ING to the ends of answers (that is, if your theme is about adding -ING to the end of words, other answers in the puzzle should not end with -ING); and it includes painfully contorted answers (OAKIEST, IN IT, SLOP ON, PUNTS ON). NYK and DORF are also crappy. And worse than the answer OF ALL TIME is the tortured clue: "That one will never have again."
A siren drawing a ship to the rocks.
Ditto. I’ve lived in mostly rural parts of the country all my life and never have I heard anyone actually say “how de do” or “right smart”.
What a horrible slog of a puzzle.
@Nancy 2:09 PM
These are wonderful.
@Anne Lindley 10:13
From Dorothy Parker in The New Yorker October 20, 1928 Issue:
“ ‘Well, you’ll see, Piglet, when you listen. Because this is how it begins. The more it snows, tiddely-pom—’
“ ‘Tiddely what?’ said Piglet.” (He took, as you might say, the very words out of your correspondent’s mouth.)
“ ‘Pom,’ said Pooh. ‘I put that in to make it more hummy.’ ”
And it is that word “hummy,” my darlings, that marks the first place in “The House at Pooh Corner” at which Tonstant Weader Fwowed up.
@Nancy 2:09. Well, damn, Chiquita. You pulled from this puzzle a rare filet mignon. And here I was eating pizza (which I hate).....
Buen hecho!...
@Anony 6:14
Hey, thanks! I liked both @Nancys and @Gary Jugerts, too!
RooMonster Talented Bunch Guy
Lewis's unrelenting positive attitude strains credulity. (Also, it seems he doesn't know what "staccato" means.)
(Hey,
@Lewis. Get a grip, man!)
I am not surprised, for once, to be on exactly the page, as well as chapter and verse, as Rex, and as I see most commenters are. I can't remember a worse Sunday puzzle.
@sandy McCroskey 7:46
Bravo!!!
Rex - Thank you for your brutal honesty on this puzzle - and for ranting a bit longer than you intended. This puzzle was so crappy, I'd have loved a rant three times its length. The same goes for the honesty on another puzzle I worked on today from 6/2/2022. When I read your write ups compared to, say, Deb Amlen's or Caitlin Lovinger's, I always feel like I have a kindred spirit. Deb and Caitlin are like camp counselors handing out participation trophies. They're enablers who encourage crappy XWP drafters to put out more drivel. They'll find ANY reason to praise even the crappiest puzzle. They'll also make you feel like an idiot because you didn't grasp the point of said crappy puzzle. I'm repeating crappy because I rarely swear on social media, but this puzzle made me throw up more than just a little in my mouth.
You are a hero. The kind who wears a cape, not who is slathered in mayo (but you may well be both and it's nobody's damn business). You are a bare-knuckle fighter in a knock (down) dragout world. I live on the West Coast, but would gladly stretch my hand (across) America to shake yours.
I’ve been doing the NYT crossword for more than 35 years. The NW corner is the single most unpleasant experience I can recall.
I agree with the some of the negative comments about this puzzle, but I enjoyed the challenge. I struggled through it with looking anything up except for Brian May.
Al Stewart has a song about Warren Harding on either Past Present Future or Modern Times, can't remember at the moment
"RIGHT SMART" is definitely a colloquialism in the American South (as well as the Appalachian region) -- it's used as a superlative and can have various meanings depending on the context in which it's used (e.g., "many," "much," "a good deal [of]"), but to the best of my knowledge it does *NOT* have anything to do with physical size.
I’m quite tolerant of even weak puzzles, and am usually just in it for the exercise. But this was a total cringe/wtf slog from beginning to end. And the Warren G. misdirect was unforgivable (should’ve been Tonya-related or nothing). Wish I had just given up and cheated.
5 hours for me. I kept saying, I should give up but just couldn't. After I finally figured out what the theme meant and filled in all the ing endings I thought it would be smooth sailing. But no, it was still crazy hard. I kept thinking that all those people who complained that the Sundays were too easy should be delighted.
Very late to the party today because I took several breaks with the puzzle and also took a delicious and surprisingly long snooze with the pup this afternoon. I didn’t hate the theme across the board though I agree some answers were better than others. The grammar/cluing of OFALIFETIME was such a clunky stinker.
I think @egs made a good point about the heavy use of question marks, though I found it annoying during the solve. But I also thought there were some solid clues and misdirects, so I didn’t dislike it nearly as much as most of you.
And, in defense of Rex and my fellow commenters who disliked this offering, all the regulars who panned it are folks I’ve seen absolutely relish a devilishly difficult puzzle (ie, McCarty a couple weeks back). To assume that the “real” reason folks don’t like something is because they aren’t up for the challenge, rather than the many other rationales they’ve listed, is a little uncharitable.
Finally @Beezer, aw, thanks for kind words and back at you. (I’m 39, for the record.)
Sometimes I’ve got a sunnier take on a puzzle than Rex—and my instinct is to feel bad for constructors who get negative reviews; it’s not easy to put together an excellent puzzle of any size, and especially a Sunday 21x21–but I have no interest in defending anything he criticized here.
In fact I’d say he left a fair number of problems and unpleasantnesses still on the table.
This. Was. Wretched. Full stop.
Worst Sunday NYT I can remember since I started doing the puzzle faithfully again in 2016.
@Weezie - your point is well taken about regulars who panned it being those who relish in a devilishly difficult puzzle (DDP). I love a DDP, but don't love poorly constructed messes that think they're clever. They remind me of adults who think they're clever because their mother told them repeatedly that they were clever. I also love a DDW (devilishly difficult Wordle), especially if there's a way to use logic or skill for the solve rather than having to chase the first letter in a word ending in EAST. At that point, it's luck, not skill.
Many thanks for the nice words from @beverly c, @Gary J, @GILL and @Roo. Very much appreciated!
I enjoyed it too, Lewis. Gave me couple laughs , was definitely harder than usual Sundays , which is a good thing.
Don't get the complaints about OAKIEST. It's the superlative form of oaky – "most oaky". Whether or not one likes oakiness in a wine is irrelevant.
Agreed!
DavidinDC and Lewis. Amen. Yeah, it was hard and there were alot of DNFs out there. But I’ve heard so many posts whining about how easy Sundays have been yada yada yada. Now comes a high heater fastball up and in and folks are complaining. Give me a break. Took me an hour. No errors and no cheats. I finished with a sense of accomplishment. Kudos to John Westwig. Really enjoyed the struggle.
Way late to the game today.
I got the theme and even appreciated it, but was thrown by all the other "?" clues that were NOT related to the theme. Please don't do this, NYT. For once, I agreed with Rex about how much of a slog this was. Rare for me to complain, but: No, no, no.
This puzzle should not have been accepted/published. Simply awful.
Asked ChatGPT: "Are you familiar with the phrase, 'right smart' for 'considerably large', in Appalachian dialect?
"Yes, I am familiar with the phrase "right smart" used in the Appalachian dialect to mean "considerably large" or "quite a lot." It is a regional expression commonly used in the Appalachian region of the United States, particularly in the southern and central parts of the Appalachian Mountains.
In this context, "right" is an intensifier that emphasizes the degree or extent of something, while "smart" means "a lot" or "considerable." So, when someone says something like "It's a right smart distance to the nearest town," they are emphasizing that the distance is quite significant or considerable.
The phrase "right smart" is an example of the unique linguistic characteristics found in regional dialects, reflecting the rich diversity of language usage across different areas."
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Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness, Freudenfreude, Serendipity & a DAP to all 👊 🙏
You have to look at this as a substitute. So if one has an opportunity “that one will never have again” it is an opportunity “of a lifetime”. Not saying I love it, but I believe the clue and answer are meant in this context.
Train wreck. Worst puzzle in years. Congrats, Will.
Yes, a masterpiece of badness. But "Eries"? Never heard anyone say that instead of "Erie" (native Pennsylvanian here). And then of course Adolph is a trigger for PTSD.
Just say no to this puzzle. It was not fun. It was not challenging. It was not well-crafted. It was not relaxing. It was not witty. It was not creative. It WAS a painful slog through everything that makes a crossword a mess. Someone once told me that you should never try too hard to be smarter than those you are writing for. This puzzle definitely tries too hard. He shoots, he misses. I am especially saddened for all of us who look forward to our Sunday morning date with the puzzle. This Sunday I felt alone. So very alone.
This was awful … I wondered if it was just me, but looks like others felt the same. I usually enjoy themers, but instead of “aha,” this one left me thinking “are we almost there yet?”
Hard for me, but not in a good way. Irritating clues and irritating fill, mixed around a clever theme.
I lived in New England for 20+ years, five of them in Boston and going to “the cape” or spending the weekend on “the cape” is a very common phrase. Regional perhaps, but as understood as Fenway Park.
I also lived in Atlanta. Never heard it called The A. The ATL, yes. The A, never.
This puzzle stunk for so many reasons.
Just to this today. Agree this was an unpleasant time wsster
FWIW "The A" does seem to be a thing, at least according to the Wiki article.
Maybe I'm underwater on this, but did the Sirens lure the SHIP or the SAILORS with their songs? I always thought the sailors were lured, not the ship. A fine distinction, but yet another confusing clue.
Today is Tuesday. This puzzle was made available on Sunday. Let me apologize in advance for just now completing the puzzle. I can explain. I started it on Sunday (as I should) and I had the best of intentions of completing it on Sunday (as I should). However it was just SO PAINFUL that I had to quit working on it on Sunday, then start afresh on Monday with high hopes, quit once again, then finally finished it today. I know there's no good excuse for tardiness, I am only human, and this puzzle was inhumane. Opposites attract?
Difficult for sure, but I liked it!
Very important to clarify for the sake of the constructor and some of the commentators - this puzzle was difficult to finish, NOT because of the difficulty of the clues; clever misdirection, obscure PPP, complicated rebus or any other valid reason for a puzzle to be difficult to finish. This puzzle did not have any of those enjoyable elements. This puzzle was difficult to finish because the ANSWERS made no sense. Shortlonging? Inouting? These things do not exist in nature.
@dgd: Yeah, agreed my Shakespeare knowledge is lacking and I should shore up on that. Born 1984, elder millennial. :) Also, no worries on THE CAPE. Was just annoyed that they went with both THE CAPE and THE A felt weirdly redundant to me in a way I think Rex usually dislikes more than me usually, but I somehow I was really put off by this one.
@Andy & Anon: Repeat of THE A stuff above. I found it right after I posted and wished I could edit. Sorry, I feel I was vague about my upsetness, both answers totally fine in and of themselves. Just felt a little redundant to have them both in a single puzzle.
Alas, looking up quotes online generally leads to 99.99% inaccuracy, esp on the most well-known sites. Identifying inaccurately-cited quotations is one of my weird passions. I’d agree with Anne that he probably didn’t write that, but can’t say 100%. I can say that none of the first slew of google-found sites that attribute it to him were reliable or accurate. The best one I found was this, although one comment would be worth looking into IF one were getting paid to fact check.
http://poohmisquoted.weebly.com/home/rubber-stamp-your-pooh-misquote
No, sorry, that dog won't hunt. It's HOWDYDO, no E involved. Ridiculous. It created an impasse in the NW, and when I started uncovering themers elsewhere, the whole effort soon became Not Worth It. So I just quit. By DNF rule, I can't grade this thing, but if I could it would surely be *other.* Meaning "worse than triple-bogey."
Wordle par.
When HOWDEDO showed it's ugly and wrong face ISAIDNO, but did finish.
I'll just mention DEANNA Troi for @spacey's benefit.
Wordle par.
I so agree with @Spacey and @Rondo - no DE involved in "howdy!"
And quite a slog going thru the rest, tho I did persevere and finish. When I read in the blurb that the constructor's friends think his puzzles are too hard, I was warned!!!
Diana, Lady-in-waiting who managed not to quit...but considered it
The correct parsing of 18A is: how-de-do. It really exists. Ask Gilbert or Sullivan.
An hourglass is a specific type of sandglass. Sandglasses with other time intervals exist, mostly in the past of course. And if you happen to own an hourglass, it is probably used for decorative purposes only.
Posting from Syndication Land July 29 (I just pulled this one off of the pile and completed). This puzzle ran locally on July 9. On July 5th the news was this:
Journey rhythm guitarist and co-founder Dr. George Tickner has died at age 76. Neal Schon shared the news of his former bandmates' death on Facebook saying:
"Dear George
'OF A LIFETIME' is still one of my favorite songs ever. RIP brother God Speed."
And there it is: the first song on the first Journey LP, co-authored by Tickner, STRAIGNT DOWN THE CENTER OF THE GRID on the first Sunday after Tickner's passing. But in reality published two weeks prior. Talk about your lattice of coincidence...
I'm surprised that nobody caught the error in the second themer. All the others are two opposites followed by "ing" but the opposite of PRO is not CONN.
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