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Heavy cart pulled by a carriage / SUN 6-4-23 / Glam rock band with six #1 hits in England in the 1970s / Bygone medical device used in electrotherapy / French pet name that means cabbage / Ornamental tree with fan-shaped leaves / ___'s number cognitive limit to how many relationships a person can maintain / Implement used with a Venetian fórcola / Tarot card figure classically depicted in ragged clothing / Title TV character whose name is an acronym / Irish Rose lover
Sunday, June 4, 2023
Constructor: Rafael Musa
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
Theme answers:
- ON AND OFF (colored red) (17A: Intermittently) are RED STATES (18A: They're right on an election map ... or a description of 17-Across?)
- STEROIDS (colored orange) (37A: Olympics no-nos) are ORANGE JUICE ("juice" is slang for STEROIDS) (33A: Screwdriver component ... or a description of 37-Across)
- DARK ROOM (colored yellow) (48A: Negative space?) is a YELLOW LAB (51A: Marley in "Marley & Me," e.g. ... or a description of 48-Across?)
- CASSETTE (colored green) (76A: Device with a pair of spools) is a GREEN TAPE (73A: Bureaucracy surrounding environmental legislation ... or a description of 76-Across)
- PEACOATS (colored blue) (allegedly) (Double-breasted outerwear) are BLUEJACKETS (Columbus's NHL team) (95A: N.H.L. team from Ohio ... or a description of 93-Across)
- BRADBURY (colored violet) (111A: "The Martian Chronicles" author) is a VIOLET RAY (108A: Bygone medical device used in electrotherapy ... or a description of 111-Across?)
Thaddeus Michael Bullard Sr. (born April 29, 1977) is an American professional wrestler and former arena football player. He is the Global Ambassador of WWE and also performs for the promotion as a wrestler under the ring name Titus O'Neil. Described by the company as "one of the most philanthropic Superstars in WWE history," Bullard is the recipient of the WWE Hall of Fame 2020 Warrior Award.Bullard played college football for the University of Florida, and thereafter played in the Arena Football League (AFL). His career as a professional wrestler began in WWE's developmental territory Florida Championship Wrestling (FCW), before being moved to NXT where he was part of the second season and fifth season, NXT Redemption. In WWE, he is a former one-time WWE Tag Team Champion as part of The Prime Time Players with Darren Young and a one-time WWE 24/7 Champion, being the inaugural holder of the latter title. In 2021, Bullard was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame as a recipient of the Warrior Award, honoring his charitable work – especially in his hometown of Tampa, Florida. In the summer of 2021 a public school in Tampa was also named after Bullard honoring his charitable work and contributions to and for the Hillsborough County public school system. (wikipedia)
• • •
I realized today, just now, why I never, ever solve the puzzle on the website or in the app unless (like today) I absolutely have to—it's because I print out the puzzle when I'm done (I need to mark up the finished puzzle with my notes, and I need it sitting here on the desk beside me as I type), and you absolutely cannot print out a finished, solved puzzle from that stupid site. You can print out a blank puzzle, of course. You can also (for some completely incomprehensible reason) print out The Solution Only (seriously, no clues, just ... the finished grid, which, today, was offered to me in glorious ... black & white) (Who Is Printing Out Just The Solution???). But you cannot print out the puzzle as a whole, clues and answers, completed, inside the dumb dumb applet. Why is everything so badly built over there, they're swimming in puzzle subscription money ffs. None of this is the puzzle's fault, I know, but I have a very specific job that I do, and while the NYTXW website has zero obligation to accommodate my admittedly niche needs, maybe now you will understand why solving inside their proprietary, data-mining environments is of no real interest to me on a daily basis. I download the puzzle. Then the puzzle is mine. And I use Black Ink software to solve. And that software is easy to use and it prints my puzzle, solved, complete, bam. But that software cannot handle technical gimmicks, which the NYTXW seems to be resorting to more and more. I have learned to check "Puzzle Notes" to make sure there's not some element I'm going to be missing by solving in Black Ink, but 9 times out of 10, when there *is* such a gimmick, hauling my ass over to the actual website to do the puzzle ends up Not being worth it. Today, though ... well, the color thing was cute, I'll admit, though either my eyes are bad or the color on my screen is bad because that ... that is not blue (see PEACOATS, in the posted grid, above). That's ... kind of purplish. You see DEPART over in the SE (where the cursor is in the posted grid, above)? Those squares are blue. That is blue. Compared to that, those PEACOATS squares—Not Blue. Also mysterious: VIOLET. I kept trying to make something PURPLE happen in that answer. VIOLET RAY is a real reach (what the hell is it? a bygone what now?) and easily the worst thing about this themer set. Other than that, though, I thought the theme was kinda fun, if terribly, terribly easy to solve once you suss out the gimmick (well, those last two themers excluded ... but I wrote all but one of the color answers in immediately):
I got the revealer (the oddly offset PRIDE / FLAG) very late in the game, and literally said, out loud, "Really!?" Like, yes it's Pride Month, but nothing about the content of the grid suggested Pride *at all* until that moment, so it really came as a surprise. I mean, obviously the PRIDE / FLAG is a rainbow, so it was in front of me all along, but none of the answers were PRIDE-related, so ... yeah, a late surprise for me there. Cool.
I kept forgetting that the colors in the various theme answers referred only to the *literal* color of the cross-referenced answers in the grid, so I kept having moments like "Wait, are PEACOATS blue?" and "How the hell is a CASSETTE green??" But no, with BLUEJACKETS, the word meaning "Jackets" (PEACOATS) appears in "blue" squares; with GREEN TAPE, the word meaning "tape" (CASSETTE) appears in "green" squares, etc. I'm impressed by the construction here, not so much architecturally (the colors unfortunately don't really end up evoking the flag that well, given their positions) but conceptually. You're not just dealing with your typical wacky clue / theme answer pair. You've got to get two-part answers that begin with each of the colors, and then get the second part of those answers to clue a second, adjacent answer, and get alllll of them to line up symmetrically. For instance, I might like GREEN CARD better than GREEN TAPE, but then I'd need an eight-letter word meaning "card" to go where CASSETTE is now. Perhaps doable, perhaps not. So if you're the constructor, you're juggling several considerations with every themer pair. The colors themselves are merely decorative, but the way the answers are laid out and the way the cluing actually works, that's quite complex. This is definitely an above-average Sunday puzzle. Plus it's pretty. And it's proud. Win win win.
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Never heard of DUNBAR's number (1A: ___'s number, cognitive limit to how many relationships a person can maintain), but shocked myself by filling all in from crosses immediately, bam bam bam bam bam bam! Love when the initial guesses all break my way! The SW corner is the only part of the puzzle that really made me make faces. First, there's VIOLET RAY, which as I say, wtf. But then there's also a bunch of ragged fill (DESEXED LTE EPS LEDTV ATTN). Getting through there did not feel so great. But most of the rest of it seemed smooth and bright and pleasingly varied. Never can and never will spell GINKGO right on the first try (35D: Ornamental tree with fan-shaped leaves). Never gonna love the double-S spelling of YESSES (117A: R.S.V.P. tally). I kept wanting 30A: Reference for exploring America to be U.S.A.-something, but U.S.A. what? Needed almost every cross to see that the answer started not U.S.A. but U.S. ... U.S. ATLAS (the "America" in the clue should've tipped me off that "A" wouldn't be part of the answer, but it didn't). Haven't seen AJA in a while (used to see it all the time), and I've been on a big Steely Dan kick lately, so I was happy to welcome AJA back to the grid (hopefully it won't wear out its welcome, again). Speaking of musical acts, I was also happy to see glam rock legends SLADE and T REX.
"WHO? YOU?" was very inventive, if initially very confusing (20A: Taunting response to a challenger). I had the "YOU" part but couldn't work out the "taunting" part. "Uh ... 'BOO, YOU!'? 'POO, YOU!'?" But no, it's two one-word standalone questions. Creative. Hope you found things to like about this one. See you next week (or Monday, or however your schedule works).
My experience is that these are very tasty snacks. More meaty than a mini, but small enough and doable enough to knock off during a spare 5, 10, 15 minutes or so (depending on your skill level). The pangramitude means that the fill gets pretty lively in places, and you also always know, if you’re struggling, that until you’ve ticked off all 26 letters, well, those remaining letters are definitely out there ... somewhere. Knowing you gotta touch all 26 actually helps with the solving at times. These puzzles are unusual and fun and snackable. Worth it, for sure.Would make a nice little addition to your solving routine. Might be great for someone who’s just getting into crosswords (or someone you want to encourage to get into crosswords).
It's a 13-week subscription, with new puzzles every day of the week (including weekends). That's 91 puzzles! For just $14!? Come on. Go get them.
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86 comments:
Easy. The theme was pretty obvious and I didn’t have any WOEs (except VIOLET RAY) or erasures...so easy. Great way to kick off Pride Month, liked it a bunch and Jeff gave it POW.
Easy-ish; I'm mostly in agreement with @Rex's assessment.
Overwrites:
SEAL up before IN at 16D
nAIL before MAIL at 62A (thinking of "dead as a doornail")
liCense before I.D. CARDS at 97A
WOEs included DUNBAR at 1A, Sharon OLDS at 9D, SLADE at 19D and CHOU at 76D
I don’t solve using the app, and the colors printed out just fine for me, so I don’t understand Rex’s complaints. And since I’ve been at the corner of Castro and Market many times, I got the theme immediately. Easy, but fun.
The *Unsolved* puzzle would’ve printed with the colors just fine, sure. But you cannot print a *solved* (finished) puzzle, you can only print a solution (i e just the finished grid, No clues), and *that* (the solution-only option) prints only in B&W. I realize this matters only to me and apologize for any confusion. ~RP
Dear Rex/Michael, can you just do a screen shot when necessary and print that? Then the color will be a part. Sundays are my least favorite puzzles,
Tying REDSTATES to one of the pride related answers was… a choice
These tribute themes just never tribute. TV Guide level fill - so many 3s and 4s for a Sunday sized grid.
GO SOUTH is apt.
I wore out SLADE Alive in the mid 70s
Argh. Too many people whining about tech. You can take a screen grab on your phone and print it straight to lots of printers. In color.
Not sure this is worth the trouble, Rex, and it’s certainly absurd that you might have to, but could you screenshot the solved puzzle and then print it that way? Maybe there’s something I’m misunderstanding about why that isn’t possible though.
Anyway on to the puzzle, given how absolutely terrifying things are out there for me and my fellow LGBTQIA+ folks, I immediately appreciated the Pride nod. I would have loved if it had actually felt queerer, like I kept waiting for more than TAKEI, but I’ll take it. In general this was a really breezy puzzle for me, similar takeaway as Rex’s. There were a few quibbles but with a theme with this many constraints, I can give those a pass.
Oh, also, my comments yesterday published under my actual name; hopefully folks were able to tell.
An amazing feat of construction and fun to solve. Loved it. Like Rex, I was able to put in all the color words except the last one, where I thought, “Hmm, not sure if this will be purple or VIOLET.” But that was the only one where I got the corresponding answer, BRADBURY, off the clue only.
I love how pretty the puzzle looks and it evoked a pride flag very well for me. Pride flags now have a triangular section with sky blue, pink and white to represent trans/non-binary people plus black and brown to show racial diversity. But representing all that in a puzzle would have been impossible. The black and brown parts of the flag always strike me as insufficient because they don’t represent all people of color. But trying to represent AAPI and Indigenous people with colors would be insulting (assuming you would use colors once incorrectly associated with their skin colors).
The BLUE JACKETS / PEA COATS pair is a little inconsistent with the others because jackets and coats have the same meaning. In all other cases, the meaning of the word that follows the color (states, juice, lab, tape and ray) changes. My favorite was ORANGE JUICE and STEROIDS.
I didn’t know the BLUE JACKETS were an NHL team now, but I love Yellowjackets, the series about a girls’ high school soccer team whose plane crashes in the Canadian wilderness on their way to Nationals. They spend more than a year stranded there, and strange and mystical things ensue. Lord of the Flies meets Alive meets Mean Girls.
Nice to see George TAKEI in the mix for a pride-themed puzzle.
I don’t remember if I once knew that ALF stood for something and forgot, or if I just learned it for the first time today (yes, the passage of time does that to one’s memory, lol). It means Alien Life Form, btw.
I fell into a similar trap as Rex (I.e. how is a CASSETTE green ?) and struggled with VIOLET RAY (like many I suspect). DUNBAR was a bit of a downer as well (It’s always a buzzkill when the NYT parks trivia in 1A). It’s actually a pleasant surprise that with such a complicated theme that the constructor didn’t have to load up the grid a bunch of junk. Good effort by Mr. Musa.
I was charmed by this, from the photo album photo corners, to the colors popping out, to the wordplay connecting the theme answer pairs, and to the sweet-and-simple undaunting feel of the grid.
Much of the latter, I think, comes because this puzzle has 133 words instead of the usual 140, partly because it has 20 instead of the usual 21 columns, and partly because of those photo album corners. Usually, for instance, the top and bottom rows have three or four answers; today two. Usually the side columns have four answers; today three.
My solving journey was unusual for me. Generally, I follow where the crosses lead me, and usually that’s a rambling path. Today, though, I started in the NW, and they led me south through the whole grid, until the western half was filled in, while the eastern half was practically blank. When I got to the bottom, I moved east, then headed north, back up to the top. So, this outing had such a round feel – adding to the charm.
I loved the PuzzPair© of GO SOUTH and the nearby down ARROW.
Rafael, your creativity is marvelous. Here you had the difficult task of coming up with theme answer pairs that had to be a certain number of letters, plus they had to involve a pun. And, IMO, you nailed it. You’ve charmed and you’ve wowed me, and what a great feeling that is – thank you!
I didn't remember Dunbar, but I knew the number is 150. Gore-Tex factories were built in modules sized according to this theory.
I read Rex to learn about obscure, to me, answers. Often, he assumes we know them. What is “eps?” What is “lte?” Thank you.
Jim
EPS are extended play records. and LTE is the 4G version of cell phone service. On my phone you see those letters next to the number of bars of service you have.
Yay PRIDE !!
The fill suffered from the theme constraints but I’d say it’s worth it. And it still offered DUNBAR ATHEIST PALEO CESSNA TREX SLADE CLERIC ATHEIST, not much but a few pleasant moments in the trudge.
Struggled with the colors. Worked with the Pantone color guide for years and my childhood was strongly invested in the the Crayola 64- and 120-sets, so I see things like marigold and peach. Sometimes you can know too much. But the theme is clever and when it eventually made sense I had fun.
My puzzle printed out nicely on paper, thank you, and the colors were all there and recognizable, except for the top one, which I assumed for far too long was pink Even after I wrote in REDSTATES, I wondered, what do the REDSTATES have to do with pink? I caught on eventually. A little slow this morning.
No real snags until I finished up in the SW, where LICENSES and the capital of Samoa and some kind of TV crossing the hard-to-parse ITSATIE , took a while to sort out, but gave me my internal happy music when I finished successfully.
Today's coup was remembering Catherine OHARA from Schitt's Creek, which I still have never seen. Crossword experience to the rescue.
Interesting and timely Sunday, and different, which is always good. Nice work, RM. A Real Masterpiece of colored square usage, and thanks for all the fun.
I’m guessing the blue color wasn’t a true blue to differentiate it from the normal blue highlighting on the squares you’re filling in.
Half my family is LGBTQ+ and so perhaps I’m more attuned to the dog whistles. George TAKEI is a gay right activist, and gender neutral pronouns (ONES) are a hot-button social topic but those are in here with no context. If this is actually about Pride Month, then where is the positive messaging? Or this puzzle just a rainbow flag because that’s the icon we associate it to? This is a huge grid so there is a ton of lost opportunity. Also, including words like “DESEXED” is tone deaf.
One of my biggest peeves about NYTXW style is how they use ‘cry’ in clues so often. Today it’s “Cry before overtime”. Nobody 'cries' “IT’S A TIE!”.
Thank god they spelled GINKGO right this time.
Nice to have PRIDE FLAG symmetrical with ONES OCALA.
Very easy overall, though the WSW was hard for me.
Figured out the theme fairly early. I'm color-blind ("color challenged," actually... I do see colors, just not as vibrantly as most), but luckily the colors were in the logical order of ROY G. BIV! (Speaking of which, my former high school physics teacher is being honored today by my alma mater - he was the first to teach me ROY G. BIV.)
I solved this online but had the print version in front of me as well. Have to agree with Rex that the NYT IT department is not seemingly very competent - lots of glitches and goofiness with a lot of their games.
Kudos to Rafael! I enjoyed this puzzle and was also glad to hear about how much this meant to him.
Rex could take a screen shot of the finished puzzle, paste it into a word doc (or save it as a jpeg), and then print that.
A big difference for me between the slam-dunk easy top of the puzzle and the highly perplexing bottom. I mean, of course, the VIOLET RAY section. Let's have a show of hands for anyone who knew that that used to be a method of electrotherapy.
As a clue for BRADBURY, VIOLET RAY is the funniest and most inventive themer in the puzzle. But if no one knows what a VIOLET RAY is...
I had trouble here because I thought it might be some kind of TRAY. And I wasn't helped by having -----TRAY begin with an "O" from either VIDEO or AUDIO instead of the "V" from LED TV.
I also resisted SET PIECE for a film battle scene. I can't imagine any kind of scene that would be less of a SET PIECE. So many extras! So much mayhem! So hard to film!
What's LTE for "letters by some bars"??
This was easy until it wasn't. But as it got harder, it also became more involving and interesting. I ended up liking it.
Speaking of the downsides of the app, I'm on Android, where things like that simply don't show at all on the app, so the colors were never visible which made the whole thing even odder.
Happy to see Pride but definitely would have been happier to see the actual colors.
Thx, Rafael; very colorful production! 😊
Easy-med.
Pretty smooth (with a few rough spots) top to bottom solve. Only thing close to being an issue was the LTE / SET PIECE cross.
Chucklehead moments: I agree before IT IS SO; Ent before ELF; Uh NO before UM NO; sEe ya before PEACE; nAIL before MAIL (saw Marley in the LAB clue, so "dead as a nAIL' went right in, D'OH).
Loved the theme and execution thereof.
Hadn't realized that ROY G BIV no longer exists (gone the way of Pluto, I guess).
"Modern physics generally accepts a six-color spectrum. Indigo is omitted because few people can differentiate the wavelengths well enough to see it as a separate color. The six-color spectrum also fits the model of the color wheel, with red, yellow, and blue being primary colors. Orange, green, and violet are secondary colors and are spaced between the primary colors. Indigo would be considered a tertiary color." (Scientific Minds)
Liked this one very much! :)
@Rex; thx for the Peter Gordon A-Z xwords info. Subscribed! :)
___
Ben Zimmer's Sat. Stumper was easy-med (2x NYT Sat); top 1/3 was the toughest.
On to Jim Horne's NYT acrostic on xwordinfo.com. 🤞
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness & Freudenfreude to all 🙏
PEA COAT is blue because they are generally Navy. From Wikipedia “ A pea coat (or peacoat, pea jacket, pilot jacket, reefer jacket) is an outer coat, generally of a navy-coloured heavy wool”
Brutal. Worst puzzle of the year.
Isn’t PRIDE one of those seven deadly things ? What’s next, an homage to GLUTTONY ?
Screenshot wouldn't work because RP wants all the clues printed also. App doesn't show them all on one screen. At least I now understand his resistance to the NYT app, which does what it is supposed to do for my purposes.
I got almost no acrosses in the top 4th of the puzzle, then went back to the downs and had Rex's experience (other than DRAY, which was a WOE for me).
I hadn't heard of Dunbar's number so I thought it might be some crackpot theory thought up by the character Dunbar in Catch-22.
I have a friend whose entire life is refracted through episodes of The Honeymooners. That may be happening to me with Catch-22.
Fine and fun enough but once again will shortz’s bio blurb unnecessarily gives away / points to revealer - let us have a little fun will! Have some faith.
Hey All !
First thought was "What a neat looking grid!" All colorful and whatnot. Got @M&A's "jaws" in all 4 corners, amping up the interesting factor. The colors kinda through me off a tad, with the clue/answer you are on gets highlighted by blue with that yellow letter where you are at. Trippy.
Pretty cool how the corresponding Acrosses describe what the colored answer is, with the color added. Hadn't heard of GREEN TAPE (Red Tape, yes, Green Paint, yes (😁)) and also hadn't heard of a VIOLET RAY, but got a chuckle out of that one. The rest were regular things. Sidenote: Had the RAY in, and then got the t to make it TRAY, trying to think of some sort of colored TRAY. Good times
I'm sure this was a bear to fill, as the "colors" have to be in order from top down, ala Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Violet. You can't just willy-nilly throw them in wherever you want. Which means the corresponding parts are also locked in. Which means lots of hair-tearing to get any semblance of clean fill. Bravo on that Rafael.
Figured it'd be Rainbow for the Revealer. Nope. PRIDE FLAG.
Two - letter/four word FWE. DUmBAR/mODULE and OJe/eCTO. MODULE - NODULE, let's call the whole thing off.
Was thinking last nights hockey game was gonna have me say ITS A TIE, but those Knights kicked butt and won! Go Knights Go!
Six F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
I don’t get either the REDSTATES or the BRADBURY link to the color clue (ONANDOFF and VIOLETRAY) …
Very much enjoyed this puzzle. But minor quibble with some entries that I think are "wrong" vis-a-vis the clue-entry relationship. "Twist and Shout" and "Yesterday" were 7-inch 45 RPM singles, not EPS. EPs became a thing in the 1970s, with the rise of the DJ and the phenomenon of "spinning disks" at discos and other kinds of clubs. Part of this was the rise of the 12" single. From that flowed the EP, which was a 12-inch disk that typically had two or even three cuts (songs) on each side–a sort of mini LP. Similar quibble with "ATTN" (101A) being clued as "Subject-line abbr." The appropriate 4-letter entry for that clue would be "INRE"; the appropriate clue for the entry "ATTN" would be "Address-line abbr." But as I said, very much enjoyed this puzzle.
No one knows this. I do brain stimulation for a living. It’s not a thing
@Trina:
ON AND OFF are 2 STATES of operation (for a tool or device) and are shown in red-colored boxes...= REDSTATES
“ A violet ray is an antique medical appliance used during the early 20th century to discharge in electrotherapy. Their construction usually featured a disruptive discharge coil with an interrupter to apply a high voltage, high frequency, low current to the human body for therapeutic purposes...introduced by Tesla in 1893...” -Wikipedia Bradbury’s first name is RAY, as shown in violet-colored boxes= VIOLETRAY
@Mike in Bed-Stuy – I was mystified by that Beatles clue as well, but it turns out the Beatles' label Parlophone did release a number of 4-song Eps in the UK during the 60's, including two with those titles – more from Wikipedia.
This was news to me, and it's a pretty obscure reference to use as the clue given that everyone knows those songs as hit singles.
@Trina 10:15 AM - ON AND OFF are states. RAY is Bradbury's first name.
First thing I got was pride flag.
A slog from start to finish.... yecchhh
A puzzle to be proud of and a fun solve that proves that Sundays don’t have to be a slog.
Loved VIOLET RAY. Also loved learning that the Statue of Liberty’s TOE is four feet long.
@Weezie 7:02. I was pretty sure that might be you. Your style is unmistakably wow.
The puzzle today. I don't normally do the Sundays because they have bored me. I woke up really early today so I thought I'd give it a try:
My printer doesn't do colors. My ink cartridge is black. When I opened the app, I saw the rainbow of colors. Que pretty....My HP spits out the puzzle and I just got shades. No problem...I just wrote in each color. I kinda felt as though that might be a cheat. I really didn't need them.
So I read Rafael's notes and I figured we were probable dealing with something PRIDE. I was looking for "month." No...just the flag. I was hoping for a lot more. TAKEI? Are you the only one?
Did my first at ON AND OFF/RED STATES. Let out a little boo. I can't think of one RED STATE that embraces or cares to understand the LGBTQ community. Maybe Arizona? They voted for Biden...Is there any damn hope for aliens living on this planet? Maybe?
The puzzle was interesting, if not easy. I wasn't too thrilled with what seemed like a
plethora of names. My bad. Should I do a fandango tango with CLERIC? I'd look like a FOOL.
Yesterday I posted another little goodie and it was gobbled up. I couldn't cut and paste because it disappeared. Should I save my tomes? Another problem to figure out.
Buen hecho, Rafael.....
Hi Rex,
Printing out things when there is no print button advice: Use a screen shot.
Love, Tim
Maybe I'm making things too complicated, but is there something I'm missing with the YELLOWLAB DARKROOM pair? Yes, DARKROOM is colored yellow, but is a dark lab a thing? Or lab room? Is it just the dog?
I wanted sequence instead of SETPIECE so I struggled in the SW too. The EP thing - no idea they existed in the 60’s. I bought 45s after raiding my piggy bank.
When I opened this puzzle, I saw the colors and immediately thought "cool, a pride puzzle!" and by the time I finished I felt that this was one of the worst puzzles I'd done lately, if only because of how not pride themed it was. The flag gimmick felt shoehorned as a pride thing, and the themed answer REDSTATES drove me up the wall -- when scores of those red states are passing anti trans legislature, why would you associate them with the rainbow flag? Additionally frustrating was DESEXED, which, while more of a reach, left me with a bad taste in my mouth thinking about the forced sterilization of queer people at the hands of our own governments. Finally, there just wasn't any real queerness to the whole thing. No cultural references, no important figures, nothing. Maybe the empty message of the flag with no substance is a kind of jab at the nature of "rainbow capitalism" itself.
Great concept but some of the themers do not work as others. The placement of PRIDE and FLAG was a touch inelegant but with so much theme there wasn’t too many options. Also, there was nothing in common tying the themes together other than their wacky connections to the colours they were located on or next to. Then there was the prining issue. My “red” shaded area over top of ONANDOFF was actually an orange colour due to the poor prining of the NYT magazine. The orange on top of STEROIDS was a really pale yellowish orange that was only orange in comparison to the yellow shade on top of DARKROOM. Great effort, but with a bit more polish it could have been better.
Easy to solve, but I liked the brain-twist challenge of the theme pairs. That is, it was easy for me to grasp that ON AND OFF were STATES (shown in a RED stripe) and that a LAB was a (YELLOW-shaded) DARKROOM. But then, like @Rex, I wondered, "Is CASSETTE TAPE really GREEN?" (UM, NO) I got that straightened around, but then came the BLUE JACKETS, which seems to be name of the team, not just the JACKETS. So that PEA COAT pairing seems to work differently...? Anyway, fun! In a fun-house mirror sort of way. In other news, it took me a dismaying long time to get the PRIDE FLAG reveal.
Help from previous puzzles: APIA, SET PIECE. No idea: DUNBAR.
Still have no idea what either T.S.A. or PRE means; no idea what an "LTE" is, or why it might be seen "by some bars" (Is it the brand name of some trendy overpriced hipster beer?) -- Never heard of GNC, utterly clueless about the names OLDS, NIA, ALF, and ENSOR; I've seen "WOOT" but never knew what it meant (and I guess I wasn't missing anything); total blank on LEDTV.
I get the paper delivered so it was easy to see on paper. I had snails for sloths for way too long & didn't know EPS for the Beatles - otherwise an okay Sunday.
Good point
Pretty easy, just 30 seconds over my all time best Sunday time. I was initially nonplussed by the acrosses, but downs were a very easy fill (if a bit choppy) and the theme answers were very quick, once I figured out the gimmick, which I did with the first orange juice one.
The technical difficulties here go beyond mere software; the only way they could have used true colors is change the text to white when needed. (Or make the text have the color, but also change the background to white or black to suit. Just look at Rex's list of Theme Answers: ON AND OFF is quite legible, DARK ROOM is completely illegible cuz it's yellow on a pale yellow background, and the others are so-so.)
Typeovers: GREEN LAWS before GREEN TAPE, AT REST before AT EASE, and WHO DAT before WHO YOU. And for the 2014 boxing documentary I had I-MALI and thought: ISMALI?
[Spelling Bee: Sat -2, missed these. Quite a slog!]
Am I the only solver who doesn’t have a color printer? Classic B&W Laser Jet. This was a hassle for me, had to make note of the colors I saw on my screen and put them in the margins of the paper. Too much trouble for a pretty blah puzzle. Not my thing..
I subscribe to the actual paper, delivered right to my Sonoma County home here in California. And the colors are way off. My ON and OFF is not RED, but ORANGE. My STEROIDS ARE YELLOW. My CASSETTE is, properly, a shade of GREEN. My PEACOATS are bluish but nowhere near the actual Navy BLUE they should be. However, dear old RAY BRADBURY is indeed pretty close to VIOLET.
I really did not like DESEXED, because of course a SPAYED dog remains very male in appearance, as are SPAYED toms, and a SPAYED female cat is, in my personal experience, very much SEXED -- ours, indeed, provided a fine lesson in sex education for my innocent daughters, though it was certain there would be no kittens as a result.
It was nice to see the Portuguese ANO, which has no tilde, rather than the Spanish one, which tends to raise the IRE of many Spanish speakers, because the puzzle printers can't do an enye.
Why in the world did they put the colors on the wrong answers? They should've run it all the way across, right? And why is the revealer in such a weird spot? Awkward.
This feels like Corporate Pride-Lite. We'll put a rainbow in our otherwise queer-free puzzle in the belief more people will subscribe than quit while successfully avoiding any substantive and nuanced examination of what the Pride flag represents. Maybe I have too many friends on posting meaningless socially aware drivel and I've become jaded.
So many nits to pick, but in the end it was a fun puzzle and looking back through the construction is lovely in light of so much real estate dedicated to the theme. Struggled in the southwest (needed to look up APIA) and northeast (looked up NEO), but once those were in place, everything came together.
Oh yeah, DUNBAR/DRAY. Thanks for nothing FUNBAR/FRAY. I can successfully manage one social relationship. After that, I might be able to remember a few people's names. Dunbar would be disappointed in me.
I AM A LI: Chromatic introduction of one being a half-step above La.
Uniclues:
1 "You can have 150 friends!" and others.
2 Dust bunnies.
3 Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
4 How to turn your trip to McDonald's into a workout.
5 What I will be tripping over.
6 Science fiction author at a rave.
7 Scarlet binge watching.
1 DUNBAR SLOGANS
2 ARMOIRE COLONIES
3 ON AND OFF RED STATES
4 ORANGE JUICE STEROIDS
5 DARK ROOM YELLOW LAB
6 VIOLET RAY BRADBURY
7 O'HARA DOING LED TV
They started making EPS in the fifties.
The rainbow stripes look like Necco wafer flavors: wintergreen, orange, lemon, lime, licorice (sort of), and clove (sort of).
This theme doesn't really land for me. PEA COATS are, in fact, jackets that are traditionally blue, so that duo has a more substantial connection than the others. The rest are random associations made from the "colorized" phrases. ON AND OFF as "states" feels pretty tentative.
I liked the acrostic today. I found it hard to get a toehold – almost nothing seemed obvious at first – but eventually it started falling into place pretty smoothly. I wonder if there will be a regular constructor taking over soon.
Just googled GREENTAPE - no such thing as clued. But now know options for buying tape rolls that are colored green.
PEACOAT! BLUEJACKET! (Hockey fan here, but how would ordinary folk know that?) VIOLETRAY!
And every fan’s excitement, ITSATIE! Nothing more exciting, especially when it’s a 0-0 soccer game, going to OT.
This was a weak puzzle. Had more fun reading about people’s printers than the actual solving.
But POW! says Chen. Tis the month to celebrate! WOOT WOOT!
I am one of those dinosaurs that solves the Sunday puzzle in the print copy of the Magazine. Seems like they may have had some ink supply problems in the NYT press department, because the color that was supposed to be red was a perfect orange, the color intended to be orange was tan, the yellow was so pale that I wondered whether it was supposed to be something else, and the violet was trending toward pink. Nonetheless, my first thought was that the theme was Pride Flag related (it being Pride Month and all) even without WS's "I know something you haven't figured out yet and it's at 57- & 58-Across and here's a few more hints you didn't ask for" spoiler.
TSA is Transportation Security Administration, which at airports has a program called Pre ✓, complete with the annoying checkmark, which speeds the security process for "trusted travelers."
The LTE refers to letters that sometimes appear next to cellphone bars that has something to do with download speeds, I think.
The clue for "dray" is nonsensical. A team of horses pull a dray, which is a simple horse drawn cart. You would not use a carriage to pull a cart anymore than you would use a truck to pull a another truck.
For those of you who subscribe to the NYT, today's Metropolitan Diary piece about a kid looking for Jean Shephard was written by none other than my Good Old Best Friend Jerry. Nice break from lots of awful news.
@MetroGnome 12:18
You really need to get out more. GNC as a Vitamin Store has been around so long, they're now going out of business.
Loved it! Fun, pretty solve. But VIOLETRAY was my nemesis, too. It was not entirely a pushover.
I started with INDIGO RAY
Well, I have to agree with @Rex on the color things: 1. PRIDE FLAG was a real stretch and 2. The colors were wrong. Also, for you science wizards out there, should the VIOLET have been ultraVIOLET? Whatever, the point is that the colors that came through on the app were not true. But, if you think thise were a little weak, the ones in the print version were worse-at least in the print version I went and purchased out of curiosity. OK, I also love, love, love reading the Sunday NYT in print. It’s my adult version of an all day sucker. I start with books and arts and get around to the depressing world news about time for the late night tv news.
I found this easy until the SE corner, and I enjoyed the cleverness of most of the theme answers. For whatever reason, I blew through the top tier with acrosses. As I whooshed though, I did glance at the downs to mKe sure I was on the right track. I have no idea why, after slamming on ON AND OFF, I put RED STATES in the next one so much without thinking that my subconscious said “whoa there! Wanna check that?” So I did and bam! Got the theme. Or at least the “wordy” part.
The PRIDE FLAG kinda sat there in the back of my mind, but since the placement of the color strips was decidedly not flaglike, I didn’t commit, even knowing that this is PRIDE month.
Then came PRIDE, which (again because I was hoping for something more complex) I filled in as PRIsm. That was my first and worst slowdown. PRI being correct didn’t help. My being entirely devoid of any information about Marley and Me kept the YELLOW DOG from instantly solving the problem and this is where I started needing the downs. SCALD and LEGOS sashed my science-related theme hopes and on I went.
Whooshing merrily along, I looked forward to the theme entries - for me the most interesting part of the puzzle. I limed them all, with YELLOW LAB and PEA COATS my favorites. I am of the OEA COATS and 13 button US Navy surplus bell bottoms generation. I had both and wore them until even the Salvation Army didn’t have a use for them.
I had most trouble on the SE where I was unsure if APIA was correct (after 60 years with this puzzle, you’d think I could remember all the capitals), and very unsure about ALF (thinking eLF?)
The puzzle is absolutely Sunday worthy. Fun, clever, and enough crinch to make me work a bit. ID CARDS was slow to get, but I sussed it out. ATTEN though nearly stumped me. I interpreted “subject like” to be the subject content of the actual memo (because after 40 years writing legal memos what else could subject be but in re? Took ne forever. Realky, the whole puzzle was done except that little bit with in re not helping at all! Then I realLy didn’t grt the VIOLET RAY, never heard SET PIECE other than in footie (my time in London Made me a Premier League fanatic), and simply did not want the front of the obvious SEXED to be DE - just sounds wrong. The downs ultimately got me there when I put in eLF and somehow that made me recall that when she was very young, my daughter liked to watch ALF. He and the PEA COATS gave me APIA and that’s all I needed. When I CANOED down to the end I realized I had no other choice to make the poor animals DESEXED.
Overall, this one had everything that gives me enjoyment on Sunday. And it’s PRIDE month- so let’s raise the flag for inclusivity of all people everywhere. Every PRIDE celebration I spend some time missing my LGBTQ+ brother who took his life having never felt truly accepted by anyone but me (or so he told me in his suicidal goodbye).
Everyone has issues and nobody is perfect. Please practice kindness and tolerance. Peace out.
Bradbury’s (in the violet box) first name is Ray, ergo, Violet Ray
@Jean Luc (2:31) -- I'm a fellow in-the-magazine-solving dinosaur and I'm sure the colors in our respective copies were identical. But here's the thing: We saw them a bit differently -- which fascinates me. Could it possibly be true that no two people see color the exact same way?
Here's what I see:
*The "RED" is a salmon (or coral) pink.
*The ORANGE is a real orange, but very washed out.
*The YELLOW is so pale that it's almost invisible. But it IS yellow.
*The GREEN is green.
*The BLUE is a [cold] blueish PURPLE. But much more purple than blue.
*The VIOLET is rose-colored more than violet.
I was gobsmacked that you saw the orange STEROIDS as "tan". I don't see how that's even possible:)
A dark room is a lab. In this case the lab (dark room) is yellow.
When a group has been repressed maybe since the beginnings of civilization, if an opportunity arises to express pride in themselves and their accomplishments, their rights and in their humanity, they are entirely justified. I notice you did not criticize patriotism which is essentially about pride.
Hate can be a sin and before people criticize others for “sinning” they should check their own motivations.
I agree about the colors in the print edition. That was no red! Maybe peach? Confused me a bit.
But I think there is only so much you can do to tie the theme entries together. As Roo said above as it was a real feat to fit these themes in as is.
You don’t get it
Joe Dipinto 10:45 AM - Huh! Thanks for that info.
Could you perhaps, in using the NYT app, take a screenshot of the finished puzzle and then print that out?
@James
As someone already pointed out, you still wouldn't have the clues.
Late to comment here, but loved this puzzle. As a bisexual, so great to see the Pride Flag theme in NYTXW - kudos!
I haven't read all the comments, but someone should tell the junior setters that the term EP had a different meaning in the 1960s. At that time the single Beatles releases were either 7 inch "singles" or "45s" due to them playing at 45RPM. EP meant a 12" 33RPM record - the "extended" was compared to 78RPM records. Technology packed the grooves closer together, so 12" 33PRM could pack more music, and so became Long Playing LPs. The vinyl re-birth co-opted the EP name for 7" one song discs. But for the Beates it would have meant about 12 songs. Bad editiing.
Am i the only one who noticed the difference between a tyrannosaurus rex and a triceratops in kindergarten?
Because they are vastly different creatures.
Thanks. I needed that too.
Me either ?
T Rex lived at the same time as the triceratops, therefore is it's contemporary
Oh, hell. My local newspaper, Raleigh News and Observer, didn't publish this one today. Because Pride is now too controversial to mention,I guess. In its place was a crap old Sunday one from 2020 called Number Theory featuring Dobby the House Elf as a featured answer (along with ELF as its paired answer because ELF is 11 in German, didn't you know?)
The Seattle Times site has a DIFFERENT one from 2020 than the one BlatantOctopusHouse mentions above, called "Letter Dictation".
I'd like to think that the problem was technical--that they couldn't reproduce the colors--rather than aversion to the Pride theme. But the Seattle Times site runs other puzzles which are broken due to elements they can't reproduce....
Why is everything so badly built over there, they're swimming in puzzle subscription money ffs.
What does ffs mean?
What does ffs mean?
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