THEME: "Get Over It" — a [BRIDGE] rebus where you have [BRIDGE] in a single square in one direction, which represents the absence of a letter in the other direction. Then you've got shaded squares that go "under" the [BRIDGE]—those squares spell out bodies of water, with the [BRIDGE] "covering" one of the letters in each case ... take all *those* letters together, top to bottom, and you get BYGONES (122A: Apt word spelled from this puzzle's "covered" letters, top to bottom), which is apt because the phrase WATER UNDER THE [BRIDGE] (114A: Past disagreements that are no longer of concern ... or each block of shaded squares in this puzzle?) is reminiscent of the phrase "let BYGONES be BYGONES":
Theme answers:
CAM[BRIDGE] UNIVERSITY / SN [B] OG ("bridge" covers "B" from BOG)
URBA [Y] N ART / BURNED [BRIDGE]S ("bridge" covers "Y" from BAY)
SO [G] ULFULLY / A[BRIDGE]D TEXT ("bridge" covers "G" from GULF)
"OF MI [O] CE AND MEN" / BUILDS [BRIDGE]S ("bridge" covers "O" from OCEAN)
"HELLA GOO [N] D" / LLOYD [BRIDGE]S ("bridge" covers "N" from LAGOON)
"ALAK [E] AZAM!" / A [BRIDGE] TOO FAR ("bridge" covers "E" from LAKE)
WATER UNDER THE [BRIDGE] / ID [S] EA ("bridge" covers the "S" from SEA)
Word of the Day: DEL TACO (94A: Fast-food chain with a sunrise in its logo) —
Del Taco Restaurants, Inc. is an American fast-food restaurant chain that specializes in American-style Mexican cuisine, as well as American foods such as burgers, fries and shakes. Del Taco is led by Brand President Tom Rose, and is headquartered in Lake Forest, California. On December 6, 2021, Jack in the Box announced it was acquiring Del Taco for $12.51 per share. The acquisition was finalized in March 2022. Del Taco has approximately 600 locations in 16 US states. // The chain operates in 15 US states, 1 US Territory (Guam), and had 594 locations as of May 1, 2023.The majority of their restaurants are in California. Del Taco also operates in several other states, including Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Utah and Washington. The company has a handful of locations east ofthe Mississippi. // Las Vegas, Nevada, has the most Del Tacos of any single city, and California has the most Del Tacos of any state. (wikipedia)
• • •
Wow. I can't tell if I'd've liked this more or less if I'd actually had the shaded squares and little "bridge" icons in my puzzle. My software did not alert me to any issues, and when I discovered (early) that there were [BRIDGE] squares that played as blanks in the other direction, well, I had no reason to expect that I was missing anything. I figured all would become clear with the revealer. Only the revealer made nothing clear (I was looking for names of rivers literally "under" the [BRIDGE] squares, to no avail), and then the BYGONES answer came along and things were even less clear. So after I finished the puzzle, I headed over to the NYT site to see what I was missing and ... again, wow. This is some elaborate nonsense. So the "bridges" go over nothing, from a regular solving standpoint ... but that nothing is also a something, if you imagine bodies of water literally running under the [BRIDGES] ... and those "somethings," taken all together, give you ... the standalone word BYGONES? Which is "apt" by inference? Am I getting this right? Also, please direct me to the [BRIDGE] that goes over a damn OCEAN!? Also also, when's the last time you took a bridge over a ... bog!? A bog? LOL "bog" beat out "stream," "creek," "canal," and god knows how many other plausible water features. Bog? So, enormous sea- and ocean-crossing bridges, and also a bog bridge. From a purely infrastructural standpoint, his theme is ludicrous. And yet it's so elaborate. So much effort and complication to arrive at ... Where? BYGONES? Truly, a bridge to nowhere.
LOL, still not over "bog." Sigh, OK, what else? I don't know. Once you pick up the [BRIDGE] bit (which I imagine was *pretty easy* when you've got literal bridges printed on your grid), there's not much trickiness left. You gotta navigate (!) your way through some awkward semi-bygone (!!) slang like DOT BOMB and DUDEBRO and "HEY, BUD" ... and some absolutely painful non-terms like DETAG (101D: Unlink from a social media post, say). WHAT!? (100D: "Are you serious?!"). What the hell!?!?! Come on, that has got to be UNTAG, right? Yes, it Definitely Is UNTAG. Who authorized DETAG!? YEESH x 1000. And then IN CREOLE!?!?! Are we just doing "IN [any language]" now? That seems ... well, bad. And then, holy moly, ASAGUIDE!?! LOL, it's a debut! Welcome to the wordlists of the world, ASAGUIDE! I hope you enjoy tempting future constructors with your absolute terribleness. "Hey, try me, I was in the Times puzzle once!" Ugh and oof and why would you debut this manifestly awful prepositional phrase. AS A WHOLE, AS A RULE, those are AS A phrases that I can accept. But AS A GUIDE? Especially as clued (119A: How ancient mariners relied on the stars), just clunky garbage. And *long* garbage as well. Eight letters' worth. AS A GUIDE sits directly atop BYGONES and ... let's hope so. Remember the "Dora the Explorer" episode where Dora met Isaac ASAGUIDE? Me either!
["... and the Sultans play Creole ... Creole"]
What needs explaining? Well, first of all, I needed to explain to myself how in the hell SIXTY worked as the answer for 71A: Count on one hand? I am assuming that SIXTY is the "count" (i.e. number) of minutes (or seconds) as measured by the “hand” on a watch or clock. Do not correct me if I am wrong—I like my interpretation, and I fear your interpretation, however correct, will only be disappointing and possibly stupid(er). Did you do UEY before UIE? T-BILLS before T-BONDS? Was that fun? Was it? (whether you flubbed those are not, neither is in any way "fun"). I had the "Arabian Nights" prince as AMAHL (because of "AMAHL and the Night Visitors," I think) (80D: "Arabian Nights" prince => AHMED), and I had Donald Duck working for the O.S.S. (43A: Org. that employed W.W. II-era Donald Duck as a spokesperson => IRS). Hey, how come the puzzle routinely calls the AFLAC duck a "spokesduck" but not Donald Duck here. Why is Donald a "spokesperson?" Is it 'cause he talks? The AFLAC duck talks. Sure, all he can say is "AFLAC!" but talking is talking and he talks. It's canon. Anyway, I demand duck equality. If it speaks like a duck ... "Spokesduck." No, I will not, as the puzzle title suggests I should, "Get Over It."
You know what was good? The BRAS clue (12A: They may be wireless). True, no one calls non-underwire BRAS that, but it's accurate enough, and a very nice misdirection. I wonder if anyone got that answer and thought "Wait ... they have SmartBRAS now?" (I mean, they probably do, but again, as with so many things, I don't really want to know). I think it's time to move on now to the much more delightful portion of this Holiday Season blog post ... that's right, it's More Holiday Pet Pics (submitted by you, the readers). Here's Thunder puppy trying to figure how to dreidel without opposable thumbs. Keep at it, Thunder!
[Thanks, Jennie]
And two more festive pooches, Lady Bird and Rory (unrelated ... though their owners' names sure sound alike: Moira and Moya, respectively!)
[Thanks, Moira]
[Thanks, Moya]
Here's another child / animal / tree trifecta featuring Mae (human!) and Connie (canine!) and ... well, unnamed, probably (tree!)
[Thank you, Laurie :)]
And two more Christmas kitties, both belonging to Kathy (thanks, Kathy):
[Coco! Another Ornament Kitty]
[Buttercup! Another Christmas Present Kitty!]
And finally, there's Oliver, to whom this entire Holiday Pet Pics segment is dedicated. On the first day I asked for pet pics, I got ... this:
That's Oliver, dressed as God Knows What. A llama? A sheep? Something like that. Anyway, two days later, I got this:
Hi, Mr. Parker!
My wife, Courtney [W.], submitted a photo of our cat Oliver in the last day or two. Oliver died yesterday, and part of her cat grief has been to regularly check your blog to see if her photo was posted. Sometimes its the little things? 🙂
This would be moving under any circumstance, but the fact that I lost my own cat just last year around this time, and the fact that that cat's name was Olive (!), made this loss especially poignant to me. So I just wanted to say how sorry I am, Courtney. Here's a special little slide show of your sweet baby. RIP Oliver:
["WHAT!?"]
[Crosspaws! Very serious! His decision is final! Court adjourned!]
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. my wife just walked in with her finished puzzle and said "I don't know where to start... 'BOG'!? [mutual sincere laughter] ... And MASH IN? [long explanation of why that clue is wrong] You're gonna get mail about that one" (25A: Add, as cilantro to guacamole). Me: "I know, I know, I've got 'NO' written next to that one, but I just didn't have the energy to write about it. I only have time for so much nonsense, and dealing with ASAGUIDE took half of it ..."
P.P.S. Today is the last day of Peter Gordon’s2024 Fireball Newsflash Crosswords Kickstarter—20 timely puzzles, released roughly once every two weeks, with loads of answers ripped straight from today’s headlines. Tuesday/Wednesday difficulty. Your proper noun skills will improve! Here’s what I have said about the puzzle in the past:
All for a measly $17. Give it a try. Or give it as a gift. It is the season, after all.
The theme with all those graphics was so silly that I ended up expecting silly answers which I guess made me more forgiving of them. EXCEPT DETAG! That was totally unforgivable.
Oh and I bras with no underwire are indeed wireless to me!
I thought I knew what I wanted to say but... jeez Oliver, you look too young to die.
Puzzle wise, Rex said everything I would have said. I got all the BRIDGEs but couldn't grok the revealer, just a bit too clever. And agree about AS A GUIDE: I had ASA----- and I thought: please let it not be AS A GUIDE! Yuch.
And surprised to see DEL TACO as word of the day because... living in Canada I am leery of "..chain.." clues in case they are a chain we don't have up here and that I also never happened to notice when I was down "in the States". And in fact I have never heard of it, and after I got the answer from crosses I read it as DELTA CO which sounds quite military special forces ish. What, do they sell MREs? ("Meals Ready to Eat", which US soldiers can take out of their backpacks, peel off the foil and eat as is, hence the name.)
Also we have the answer ALE up top and then IPA (India Pale Ale) at the bottom; seems a bit dodgy, no?
Well, there was certainly a lot going on here, and I don’t want to repeat anything that’s already been said. But I will do a little defense for BOG. On hiking trails, where there are areas prone to puddles/mud, trail crews will build small bridges using a couple beams or logs. You’ll see these a lot in New England especially. The technical term for these in trail maintenance is “BOG bridges.” Seeing the reference here put a smile on my face as a hiker. OCEAN, on the other hand…
What are you supposed to do to get this to register as finished when solving online? Tried using the letters that complete the bodies of water, tried typing in "BRIDGE" under each bridge, no good
Easy. I solved this without reading the instructions so I had no idea what was going on (except for the BRIDGE part) or why the happy music didn’t play. So I tapped the i at the top of the app, figured out what I needed to do, and lo and behold “happy music.”
A very impressive feat of construction that was fun to solve, liked it.
…let BYGONES be BYGONES, it’s all WATER UNDER THE BRIDGE…
Plenty of structures that carry roads over BOGS in SE Mass and Cape Cod but agreed that it’s a little off. I don’t have the words for the rest of this thing. Inserted BRIDGE blindly in each box and BYGONES came with crosses. A useless theme.
I read the instructions – "...if you're still stuck, further explanation of today's theme..." and I thought, "Great! I'm gonna challenge myself! No explanation, no nothing! Just me and a Sunday, mano-a-mano!"
And then I get to the first bridge and type, "BRIDGE." And then the second one: "BRIDGE." And then BRIDGE and BRIDGE and...are you kidding me?! What fun is THAT?!
Add in all the crappy fill and by the time I got to the end I wished I had one more bridge to throw the puzzle off of. YEESH.
Well, first of all, since I always solve offline, I had no issues with missing visuals, since the magazine showed the bridges, and the water, complete with ripples. Second, since I enjoy solving the puzzle rather than having a hair-on-fire reaction to things like a bridge over the ocean, or random prepositional phraseology, I liked the the whole experience, visually ASAGUIDE and thinkfully offroad. And third, Rex's take on it was just hilarious and that just added to the enjoyment. It "got me feelin' HELLA GOOD."
May Oliver’s memory be for a blessing. What a lovely cat!
You could, on a broad but not wild construal of “ocean,” say the East River is the ocean. Then there are some bridges crossing the ocean!
Extremely minor quibble: in iOS, the app’s blue and yellow rendering of water and bridge were the same blue and yellow that are used to indicate the current clue/answer. Checking back and forth between clue and grid was discombobulating, especially when doing a Sunday on a phone.
First, it would have worked with simply having the bridges going over the various waters, with the revealer WATER UNDER THE BRIDGE, a sweet punny rebus theme. But no, Jeremy took it one step farther by having the letters under the bridges spell a word – BYGONES – related to the metaphorical meaning of that revealer. A brilliant leap, IMO, adding a lovely layer of complexity, not to mention a layer of difficulty to the solve.
Second, the puzzle’s title – GET OVER IT – relates to using a bridge to cross over water, as well as meaning “put it behind you”, perfectly relating to BYGONES. This title is the sweet bow tying everything together. Perfect!
Adding the layer of difficulty to the solve certainly added a huge layer of difficulty to the construction, but that’s what good constructors do in service to the solver. Jeremy is a Sunday pro, with two-thirds of his 27 puzzles over 17 years falling on this day, and his skill shined in this grid
Thank you, sir, for a masterful theme and for a splendid outing!
I can say without fear of hyperbole that Rex talking about spokesducks was a billion times better than anything in this puzzle. NYT online took away our .puz files and acrostics and variety puzzles to give us this?
Rather than drone on about how truly awful DETAG and ASAGUIDE are, can we appreciate the levels of complexity in this OPUS?
All the BRIDGEs were valid terms, as were all the highlighted terms the BRIDGEs crossed, and they formed WATERUNDERTHEBRIDGE - BYGONES!
That’s a trifecta of cleverness! Seriously. To nitpick that there are no BRIDGEs over a bog or an ocean inlet is being persnickety to the NTH degree!
(Methinks many are frustrated by not getting the happy music on apparent completion. I too was confused at first, thinking that each illustrated BRIDGE was a free square. But Jeremy literally spelled it out, as did the information tab telling us to use the single letters from 122 Across. For those who need further help, go to Wordplay. For those who are still annoyed, GET OVER IT!j
This was a brilliant, BRILLIANT structure that doesn’t deserve the flood of complaints…
Good morning all, Colin here.... My Firefox keeps yelling "GAH!" at me whenever I try to open this page (and certain others), and so I cannot log in as usual, and will show up as Anonymous today using Chrome.
("GAH!" reminds me of Mr. Theophilus Goon, the incompetent policeman in Enid Blyton's books featuring the Five Find-Outers and Dog...)
Like others, I was flummoxed by "BYGONES" - initially, I wrote BRIDGES into the circles (before really reading the clue in detail) but no-o-o-o, that wouldn't work. The bridges were cute, as was the whole visual effect. It just seemed too much of a square-peg-in-a-round-hole kind of concept. So, mixed feelings.
Test part of this puzzle was needing to go to this blog post to wrap my head around BYGONES which led me to pix of adorable cats. I never really got BOGged down anywhere but all and all it was an OCEAN of disappointment. Loved the LLoyd Bridges reference which could only make me think if his line in Airplance, “ Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue” when the revealer finally clicked in.
I’m so sorry Courtney about your loss of Oliver, a beautiful cat. And thanks to @Rex for being a kind person who would post that memorial. Also thanks to @Rex for tearing this idiotic puzzle to shreds. I cringed the second I saw those cutesy little bridges. I did however start writing down the”Missing letters” to see if they made a word and sure enough, Bygones. FWIW. SMH. I love these alternate puzzle recs also, I’ve been doing the AVCX puzzles since you recommended it and I love it. Also did that tournament just for fun. I’ll get this one for my mom who stays up on the news!
My print out had yellow bridges crossing blue bodies of water, which was OK. Took a while to see the "biridges" rebus but that made everything pretty easy.
The bridge over the OCEAN made me think of an old Bob and Ray bit where one is interviewing the other, who is building a bridge over the Atlantic Ocean, which has just been started, and in the background you hear the sound of many cars driving off the end and into the water because of course they do. Nobody beat those guys for absurd.
My Mom always said "water over the bridge" or "water under the dam", and that always made me smile.
Today's word from the crossword vault has to be ATTA, which used to be in every other puzzle. Welcome back.
Nothing like a Sunday Stunt Puzzle JB. The gimmick was worth the sometimes strained answers, but Just Barely. Thanks for a lot of fun.
I rarely feel like I’m “in control” of a Sunday grid, but I handled this one about as well as I’ve ever done before - so definitely on the easy side. Had trouble with the usual suspects - mostly the nonsense like DUDE BRO, HELLA GOOD, YEESH, HEY BUD, and of corse that atrocious SIXTY.
Fat-fingered my way out of a six-months long streak when I inadvertently turned on auto-correct for a nanosecond - alas, technology gives, and technology takes away.
Disagree with OFL on the big BOG controversy (close enough for CrossWorld in my opinion), but agree with and enjoyed the rest of his observations today.
This was an impressive puzzle. Never heard of Dude Bro , Del Taco, or the No Doubt song so that area took forever. Prefer not to see terrorist groups in the puzzle, whether they’re left wing or right wing.
The bad news is I missed the whole second level of the puzzle -- i.e. the bodies of water under the BRIDGES. The worse news is that the puzzle let me.
Once again I ask: What's the use of doing something clever/tricky/intricate/difficult in your puzzle if the solver doesn't need to figure it out in order to solve and may not even notice it at all?
The BRIDGES were too easy to figure out by themselves to make for an interesting puzzle. The BYGONES clue floated right past me: I understood its relationship to WATER UNDER THE BRIDGE but didn't know what was meant by "covered letters."
For those who did notice the WATER UNDER THE BRIDGE, I'm guessing you had more fun than I did. But I still say to all constructors -- and especially the cleverest ones among you: Always keep the solvers in mind. What is THEIR experience going to be like? Not yours. Theirs.
The best part of this was listening to Aretha. Second best: her backup singers. Third best: her band. Everyone singing and playing so SOULFULLY. That gave me the spiritual fortitude to hold it together while looking at those lovely pictures of sweet Oliver.
Amazing puzzle, I thought. Kudos to the constructor. This was a theme puzzle whereby getting the theme aided in the solve. That's the way it should be. Fitting BRIDGE into CAM___UNIVERSITY was very clever.
I had "inFrench" instead of INCREOLE for the longest time (the 4th and 5th letters matched). That was my last stumbling block.
In the NYT app, all you have to do for any rebus is put in the first letter of the rebus. Today, I just went around and put B in all the bridge squares, and carried on. Review and commentariat seem a little grinchy today.
The extra help with clues and visuals made the theme elements too easy. I liked the Water under the B leading to BYGONES. Of all the puzzles, it was odd to think this would be the one that would be sending me for extra help after the app basically rolled out the red carpet.
One of those days when I enjoyed both the @Rex critique and the puzzle itself. Took the references to BOG, OCEAN, etc to mean a body of water and did not take them literally. The complexities of the construction and theme seem to me ingenious and as someone has indicated close enough for handgrenades and crosswords. A relatively easy Sunday fairly easy on crosswordese, if a little off in the direction of DETAG…
Luckily my sweet husband prints the puzzle for me every day! I prefer pencil on paper - so I saw the bridges - this was much too easy for a Sunday.... I doth protest.
I just typed B in each bridge rebus square and it worked in the app. Would have been better (because it would have required understanding the blue shaded squares) if the app only accepted the missing letter for each body of water to spell out BYGONES before getting the happy music.
HEY BUD! Holy moly. So many things happening in this here puz. Amazingly, I was actually able to figure it all out. Signs the ole brain is still working. Plus, got the Happy Music at the end!
The NYT site, which went up to $50/yr, always has the grid as it should be. Ergo, today's had the BRIDGEs covering the squares in the direction of which way to go. Figured that part out at LLOYD BRIDGES. Took me a bit to figure why there were shaded squares in the crossers. But then got the circled BYGONES, reread the note (did y'all see a note?) and started putting in the letters in order (albeit starting at the end of the world/puz, and moving backward/upward), finally seeing the BRIDGEs were "crossing" bodies of water.
Very interesting. Took a while to say OH I SEE. Had let out a WHAT? before, then a "DUDE,BRO!" once sussed. A little strange how the extra letter is plunked into an answer, but the BRIDGE covers it, so I guess it's UP TO YOU to decide if a feature or a bug. You can say "ALAKAZAM! Letter gone!" or somesuch if you HAVE TO.
It's hard enough to find someone to house sit, but good luck if you also have a horse and they've got to HOOFSIT. YEESH!
Why did the music teacher tell the students that the Solfège scale goes do, re, mi, sol, la, ti, do? He was ANTIFA. I would love to correct him, but I can't right now ASHES busy.
Fantasy of a LADIESMAN/SEDUCER: BRAS, ASS, MOUSSE and ARIDE, followed by GOO.
I've heard somewhere that there is a marina ONRYE's waterfront. Can anyone verify?
I thought this was a HELLAGOOD puzzle, although it was pretty easy after figuring out the bridge trick. The WATERUNDERTHEBRIDGE part took slightly longer to see, but once seen it was an aid in solving (though not in Solvège). The weird thing for me was that I initially didn't put any letter in the bridge squares, but then, when I didn't get either happy music or an error message, I started to fill them in. When I got to the 4th of 7, I got the happy music. I'm beginning to suspect that the Gray Lady has turned the crossword over to ChatGPT and the real rules are unknown to human beings. Anyhoo, I enjoyed the puzzle, Jeremy Newton.
This was a lovely puzzle. I admired the construction and the WATERUNDERTHEBRIDGE/BYGONES bonus. Just a brilliant puzzle. I did the hard copy, so I imagine the online app giving filks problems. Lewis, you succinctly posted my exact thoughts. you are always on the money.
So sorry for your loss, Courtney. Oliver was a cutie.I lost my Cinnamon when we were hit by an SUV in January 2022. We were the first post in Rex's Pet Parade (of course!).
It seemed pretty easy for me for a Sunday, though it was annoying the yellow "bridges" completely obscured what was written in the cell. But I really liked the clue on OILBASED
Neither worked for me, and then I began to erase all the under the bridge squares to make sure I had read the hint correctly, and it triggered complete with 3 erased and the rest filled. Quality workmanship!
RE: 82 across, Salami. What is an Italian "club" (sandwich). There are Hoagies and Subs and Grinders(if you wrongfully desire your Hoagie to be warm). But there is no iteration of a club sandwich---Italian style----you know with una,due,tre slices of plain white bread. You may order a club sandwich in your local Italian Club (restaurant) if they have one on the menu. But it ain't gonna have salami on it.
I know there’s at least one commercial calling bras WIRELESS, because the first time I saw it, I wondered why you would need your bra to connect to the internet.
The CAPTCHA I just solved to post this asked me to identify bridges….
Stayed with my original answer for “Obnoxiously fratty sort” - DUmbBRO - far too long.
Still like it better than DUDEBRO - where do I go to coin a portmanteau? - this play off of Dumbo and the dumb ubiquitous use of BRO these days should be added to the crossword database that apparently exists.
I thought that this puzzle was very impressive, although it flew by quickly for a Sunday
I’m not sure why the notion of a bridge over a bog is controversial. I have a nice hiking trail near me in a peat bog conservation area and I think that everyone who visits agrees that it’s more pleasant to walk on the bridge than trudge through the water.
I also don’t understand the complaint about T-BILLS vs. T-BONDS. So there was a clue with multiple possible answers and you had to check the cross to narrow it down. Isn’t that how crossword puzzles are supposed to work?
Cajuns speak Cajun French not creole I know I was married to a Cajun for 26 years creole is more associated with New Orleans it is a different mix of people
I know it’s a minor point, but for people who hike, “bog bridges “ are definitely a thing. They’re wooden constructions that are placed in wet parts of trails (like bogs) allowing hikers to traverse these environments without turning it into a wide muddy mess. So yeah, bog bridges, definitely a thing.
I am so sorry, Courtney, about the loss of your sweet Oliver. I hope seeing your photos posted here brings you some small comfort.
As for the puzzle I completely missed the boat on the underlying theme. I slapped “BRIDGE” in the rebus squares and had no clue as to the words specific to the water beneath. Thanks Rex for the enlightenment.
I think bridges over bays might count as over the ocean. What “boggles” my mind though are the various forms of the shaded squares that appear in different places. I just happened to have a print copy of the paper because Puzzle Mania was published today. In the magazine and The NY Times digital app there were colored squares indicating the bridge square and water underneath. But The NY Times games app only had grey squares in those spots. The rebus was easy enough to discern from the clues but nonetheless there are times it would be super helpful to place a rebus with more specific indicators.
The minute and second hands of a clock can count to sixty, and so can a human hand. This has been done since ancient times, and is the origin for the Base-60 system (that and 60 is divisible by more whole numbers than 100). This is why there are 60 minutes/seconds, 12 hours, 360 degrees, etc etc.
And celestial navigation is indeed used by ancient mariners but also by all sorts of modern stuff like missiles, satellites, and reconnaissance aircraft. After launch from a submarine, a Trident missile takes a star fix to calibrate its onboard INS navigation system. Apollo moon missions used celestial navigation to align their navigation platform. GPS satellites do the same thing.
Count me in as someone who had a lot of fun with this puzzle in spite of some of the weaker fill noted by @Rex, then post-solve discovered the secondary themers of BOG, etc. and my feeling turned to admiration and amazement.
I have ZERO problems with BOG and OCEAN. For whatever reason I think of cranberry bogs…my guess is there are quite a few bridges around to access these properly as well as just get past them. Also, while it doesn’t span the entire Atlantic, I’d say the bridge from Miami to San Clemente goes over the OCEAN.
MY downfall, DNF, and personal nit was DUDEBRO. Yep. I had rUDEBRO…UM,UM…seems like a RUDEBRO would be more obnoxious than a DUDEBRO. I dunno…I guess the term DUDE has always seemed to indication affection more than scorn, but I guess it’s all in how you say it. This did NOT ruin the puzzle for me Jeremy Newton!
Filling the puzzle correctly was easy. When I tried to deal with the theme, first by putting the word bridge as a rebus into the bridge squares, my phone went haywire. Any square I tapped on would cause the entire puzzle to shrink to half size then immediately spring back to full size and I couldn't change anything. Not wanting to waste any more time with the theme I went to xwordinfo and saw that all my solving was correct. Their explanation of the theme and how you type in the "missing" letters was still confusing. I understood what the point of it was I just fail to see why anyone would bother with drivel like this. One of those cartoon puzzles where you find the slight differences between two seemingly identical images would be more interesting than this. What you've got here is an oversized early week puzzle to produce a visual gag. Gagging was all I got.
agree that little wooden bridges often go over bogs, and piers are sort of bridges that go out over oceans, though they don't lead to another landmass, only to the end of the pier. i thought it got a little more interesting as you figured out that the letters in the water actually signified something, overall very easy. another win for ... print!
Somehow you just know it's going to be an interesting -- and somewhat easy -- Sunday puzzle when the first clue you read and fill in is the name of your own University.
Thanks for explaining the SIXTY answer, Rex. I was hoping that the answer to that clue, “Count on one hand,” would be the Sesame Street character, whose name escapes me.
I thoroughly enjoyed it as well. I believe Rex over-thought it. I just started filling it in and let the puzzle unfold. I got bras immediately, but detag and dudebro were ugly.
I had the same problem with the puzzle not yielding the happy music when I finished, so I finally hit Reveal-All. Of course that meant that my efforts wouldn't be part of a string. The directions for solving this problem were highly ambiguous. By no means the stupidest thing about this sorry effort, but it's Sunday; what can I tell ya.
Rex, so sorry for your loss of Olive around a year ago. Was she the white rescue cat with the facial injuries? It’s so sweet and kind that you memorialized Oliver today and comforted his family. Thoughtful touch in a cruel world.
Lucky for me my neighbor gives me the magazine section on Sundays. So I got BRIDGE. But I don't know how I feel about this puzzle. Was the constructor trying too hard? Was I trying too little? 71A "Count on one hand" = sixty?
Courtney, I'm so sorry for your loss of darling Oliver. He was a very handsome fellow and obviously well-loved. Thanks to Rex for posting all the lovely pictures of him, and all the adorable holiday pets!
Two things to love today - the puzzle and the pet photos. This is the kind of Sunday puzzle I find so much fun to solve, with its charming grid art and the multiple layers of the theme - from the partly obscured WATERs, to the ways the BRIDGES were sometimes more hidden (ABRIDGED) or appeared in lively phases, whether being BURNED or BUILT, to the BYGONES under the last of them. A small touch, but I was glad I solved in the magazine to get the ripples flowing under the BRIDGES.
I was mid-grid before I asked myself why there was an unequal number of blue squares. Only when CEAN was in place did I think, "Wait a minute" and cast my eye back to ULF. Aha. But what about OG? Fortunately, I've been on nature trails that did indeed have a BRIDGE over a BOG. Understanding that aspect was a big help in my getting the unknown HEL[LAGOON]N and A[LAKE]AZAM and in resetting my mind from "street" to URBAN ART. And what a dynamite reveal!
@Trigger and all -- US 1 from Key Largo to Key West, comprised of numerous bridges, is known as the Overseas Highway. I can be a nitpicker at times, but today that's close enough for me. Gotta say I loved this puzzle! More like this on Sundays, please!
I've walked on abridge over a bog, but agree there was never a bridge over an ocean. My brain had trouble with the bridge not actually covering a meter inthe answer. Evenafte I realized the word in but could be bo and gulf. Wan't til I finished tht Fully too in that all the water word were in blue. hen I liked it better. And of course it mad e the realer perfect.
First of all, my sincere condolences to Oliver’s family. He was obviously well loved and no doubt, in his own special feline way, returned the love.
As for the puzzle, the graphics didn’t appear, nor did different shades of blue squares. This was the first time I recall having to go to the title page hoping for a clue. And I resent having to do that! I picked up the BRIDGE rebus without any instructions at CAMBRIDGE university. But when the rebus made zero sense going down, I erased it. Sheesh!
Had the graphics been better I would have enjoyed this much much more. I will say that the constructor had an interesting idea and if its translation to print and the various apps had been more successful, I would have enjoyed the solve.
I had to come here to get the BYGONES. Now understanding that the bridges (allegedly) cross bodies of water, all I can say is any actual BRIDGE crossing a BOG is very likely a criminal waste of government resources!
I dunno, didn't much care for the puzzle but it was okay.
Thanks for the explanation of the sixty count.
Yes, there are sea bridges and ocean bridges; google is your friend. Sometimes.
Yes, for centuries sailors used stars as navigational guides, both before and after the sextant was invented. Some still do. And, not for nothing, the Mercator projection was created as a navigational guide as well, not as an expression of US hegemony over the world.
And no, there is no organized group called "antifa." I suppose if there are a group of people rioting during an otherwise peaceful BLM march each person in that group may refer to themselves and/or their friends as being "antifa," but that's about it. Water under the bridge these days, as our next President will be our last, and he'll send everyone he thinks is "antifa" to re-education camps anyway.
Picked up on the theme pretty quickly at CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY, which helped later with WATER UNDER THE BRIDGE, and BYGONES.
Same thot as @Rex re: SIXTY.
Had DUDE BRO originally, but changed it to rUDE BRO for the loss. (hi @Beezer (11:21 AM)). Thot rETAG might work just as well as DE TAG. :(
A wonderful 2 1/2 hr. workout.
Loved those BRIDGE crossings!
An excellent adventure! :)
🙏 for Oscar, Courtney & fam. 😿 ___ Lester Ruffs' Sat. Stumper was easy-med (2 1/2 NYT Sat.). On to Balton & Stewart's NYT acrostic on xwordinfo.com ___ Found td's 'Connections' puz very tough. Did manage it, but with one misfire. ___ Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness ~ Freudenfreude & a DAP to all 👊 🙏
As a newbie Sunday “hard copy” solver who doesn’t always get the themes without Rex’s help, I liked this foolish puzzle. It would be very confusing without the visual clues, but I’m quite pleased that I figured it out all by myself!!!! Were there some weird clues/answers (e.g.,“dudebro”? “sixty”?)? Yes, but I still liked the feeling of accomplishment.
Cute SunPuz, despite the lack of theme humor. thUmbsUp.
I used the printed, with colorful bridges and water pictures, puzversion. Really helped , becuz splatzin in the "BRIDGE" words got to be almost gimmes. The omitted water letters was slightly trickier to get, but got em. BYGONES was kinda weird, until I thought it over for many precious nanoseconds.
Fillins got a bit weird at times [UMUM, DUDEBRO, INCREOLE, DETAG], but, hey -- 17 U's! Totally UIE! [staff weeject pick, btw]. And 40 weejects! soooo … M&A is willin to let BYGONES be bygones.
fave thing by far: clue for SIXTY = {Count on one hand!}. Kinda enjoyed DUDEBRO, too boot, I gotta admit.
Thanx for bridgin the crossword ocean to get to us, Mr. Newton dude. Excellent job.
Masked & Anonymo17Us
p.s. rest in peace, Oliver. And Olive. And OYL, if applicable. Cute kitty bygones.
Rex is in fine form today. I laughed a bunch of times reading his critique. I had a very similar reaction to the cluing anf answers throughout. Although I thiought the puzzle was flat out easy, Very disappointing.
Got the bridge business right away, but at first the letters in blue seemed pretty odd. OG? BA? But at ULF it came clear, although no idea why only part of the word. So 122A, coming at the end, was a pretty neat summation. Sundays I do in the magazine so the graphics were all there. Amazing construction feat and enjoyable enough solve, if brief.
Don’t know why all th3 naysaying here bothers me but it does.
This was the best puzzle in a month of Sundays (as BEETAYLOR might say).
So well-constructed! And yet people are focused on whether a BRIDGE covers the ocean!!
In Minneapolis, I often cross the Mississippi River. Does that cover the entirety of the Minnesota-Louisiana route? No! What’s wrong with Will Shortz, allowing this obvious error? Does he no longer CARE?
To get BRIDGE and “things that are spanned” and BYGONES in a highly creative puzzle is worth praising! Love Connections (as in “I love Connections”, not thw cheesy dating game show) as well.
Jeremy, Will, Wyna - FTW! (Hope I’m using that right - all the initialisms throw me)…
I thought the theme went a “bridge “ too far with the BYGONES part. But I didn’t dislike the puzzle even though I gave up trying to figure out where the word came from. I vaguely noticed the water related words but I lost interest. Also I dnf’d at DETAG/DUDEBRO. Had an r. Made sense to me at the time. Normally I get upset, but the cross was a bit off as Rex said. My guess is the BYGONES theme was added because the bridges theme was ridiculously easy. As often happens with me, the theme was (mostly) easy but other parts made it average with the dnf
I print and solve on a hard copy. So this all worked for me.
At first, I didn’t like the grid but then I saw that my complaint was a property of the theme conceit. I solved this as if it were a collection of small puzzles, each with BRIDGE in the center. Oh, well..
Thanks Nancy. You described my experience with the theme exactly. The bridge theme was ridiculously easy, with a tacked on additional gimmick which I like you didn’t get. But I had problems with other parts of the puzzle so it kept my interest.
@egsforbreakfast The pentatonic scale is anti-fa (as well as anti-ti). That makes the majority of blues and rock guitarists anti-fa, (including Ted Nugent).
I find I much close-up magic over the showy, ALAKAZAM folks. This is the David Copperfield of puzzles. Too much going on for my taste, and it draws too much attention to its ingenuity, but it sure is a feat of engineering.
This is a PUZZLE. That means it might involve having to figure something out, perhaps even something novel that we haven't seen in a puzzle before. There was an amazing amount of intricacy in the layers, but not if the only goal is to quickly slap in letters to achieve a personal best time; then those layers become pointless, confusing or even irritating. I thought the theme was brilliant, and worth taking the time to enjoy the ride.
Silly time to popst, but this is when I get to puzzles on Sundays in December, as a working musician. ANTIGFA does not exist, it's a creation of the fevered imaginations of crazy right winger. I almost stopped solving when I got to that answer and threw the thing in the compost. I've been a left-winger for decades and I have never met a single person who was a member of ANTIFA. Sheesh.
Oddly, I put nothing whatsoever in the under-the-bridges squares and the app was fine with it. I didn't understand the BYGONES thing so 🦖 to the rescue.
One nit: The see-saw doesn't power the HAND CAR, it is the mechanism through which human-power is delivered.
Tee-Hee: BRAS. ASS.
Uniclues:
1 Religious fervor surrounding new iPhone releases. 2 Where wealthy Brits play with others' balls. 3 Pretty pre-pig-murder palace surprises. 4 Gourmet assassination on a dinner party cutting board (with cheese on the side).
1 PALO ALTO FUELED AMENS (~) 2 CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY ARCADE 3 STY DOMES ASTOUND (~) 4 HELLA GOOD SALAMI (~)
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Puts on sandals with socks, cargo shorts with way too many pockets, tucks in his tee shirt, cinches down his belt, and prepares to hit the grocery store where he's certain the cashier thinks he's funny. KEYS UP DAD BOD.
Speaking of floods, the Tulpehocken creek by my home has flooded the "bog bridges" I've built on the path when it's in it's banks, will be days til we see if they were staked down well enough or if they "be gone"???
Yep. Still better than the endless set of second rate actor named from long forgotten series or non-funny trivia about streaming records (but Pascal's triangle is an unknown). Well, de gustibus non est disputandum.
Best Sunday in memory, because of the theme’s cleverness. It just kept on giving. On paper the visual was lovely, the bridge fun, the body of water a perfect bonus, then the bottom reveals a treat.
When Wizards cast a magic spell, they frequently declare 'ALAKAZAM!'
I also fondly remember a 60's children's series called 'The Magic Land of Alakazam', that featured Mark Wilson, a noted stage magician. The series is credited with establishing the art of Magic as a viable television subject.
As for a BRIDGE across an OCEAN, at the League of Conservation Voters Annual Capital Dinner in June 2023, according to the official White House transcript, President “Gaffe” Biden remarked, "We have plans to build a railroad from the Pacific all the way across the Indian Ocean.” LOL!
Real guacamole is not mashed...you need some chunks of avocado for texture, and it's not guacamole without diced jalapenos, tomatoes...and of course, cilantro...if you don't make it right, it's NOT guacamole
All this talk of "Easy-medium," Easy (!), and zipping through it...While I had another DNF. First time ever back to back, I think. I just never got off the ground with this one. Kept trying to make SHAZAM work; ALAKAZAM was among a host of WHA???
Wordle par. On to a better (we all hope) New Year. Have a happy!
Again no write-overs. Again rather easy, IMO. Again not that much fun. The Chipotle ad just now on TV said they were MASHIN' guac. According to the Google, the nearest DELTACO is 701 miles away from here. Good thing I paid attention in CA and NV and elsewhere when touring on vacay. Wordle par. Tried a tasty answer but turned out it was just salty.
I had this big speech planned but Mike E said everything I was going to say. And it went like this:
Mike E 7:07 AM Well, first of all, since I always solve offline, I had no issues with missing visuals, since the magazine showed the bridges, and the water, complete with ripples. Second, since I enjoy solving the puzzle rather than having a hair-on-fire reaction to things like a bridge over the ocean, or random prepositional phraseology, I liked the the whole experience, visually ASAGUIDE and thinkfully offroad. And third, Rex's take on it was just hilarious and that just added to the enjoyment. It "got me feelin' HELLA GOOD."
I suppose I could add that the DIRE [bridge]TRAITS tune was a nice touch.
The bodies of water under the bridges confused me because the first 2 I looked at… BOG and GULF were from letters in BRIDGE so I assumed that would be consistent (tho kind of arbitrary). Then came BAB? BAR? BAI BAD BAG BAE? As coach said “When you assume…..”
Latecomer syndicate club checking in. My satisfaction at solving puzzles and admiration for the intricate construction work is tempered by curiosity over whether today Rex and his commentariat will deride it as infantile, or declare the fill too obscure to belong in the grid.
My syndicate's website software has no bells and whistles, neither literal to congratulate me on solving, nor figurative to enter anything other than one letter per square. Once I have realized why the obvious answers don't fit, and identified the rebus squares, I have to highlight them and click the "show me the answer for this square" cheat button to fill them in.
Nevertheless I figured it all out and just in case Jeremy Newton ever comes by to read what people thought of the crossword, I raise my little voice to say that it was tricky, but not too hard, and very clever.
Count me as another one who fell into the Rudebro/Dudebro trap. Dudebro is probably a term (that I've never heard of), but I like Rudebro as an answer better.
Rex, may I refer you a little North East of your location for a bridge over an ocean. Confederation Bridge from New Brunswick to Prince Edward Island definitely bridges a good stretch of the Atlantic Ocean. :-)
I'll join Aviatrix as a syndicated solver who didn't have bells and whistles. I had grey squares but no bridge cues, etc. But I figured the rebus out pretty quickly. Yes, DETAG seemed forced but I liked the rest. Fun enough to give a challenge but not beat your head against the wall challenging. I liked it; thank you Jeremy Newton.
A long time ago, I was solving this puzzle and got stuck at an unguessable (to me) crossing: N. C. WYETH crossing NATICK at the "N"—I knew WYETH but forgot his initials, and NATICK ... is a suburb of Boston that I had no hope of knowing. It was clued as someplace the Boston Marathon runs through (???). Anyway, NATICK— the more obscure name in that crossing—became shorthand for an unguessable cross, esp. where the cross involves two proper nouns, neither of which is exceedingly well known. NATICK took hold as crossword slang, and the term can now be both noun ("I had a NATICK in the SW corner...") or verb ("I got NATICKED by 50A / 34D!")
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Wow. I can't tell if I'd've liked this more or less if I'd actually had the shaded squares and little "bridge" icons in my puzzle. My software did not alert me to any issues, and when I discovered (early) that there were [BRIDGE] squares that played as blanks in the other direction, well, I had no reason to expect that I was missing anything. I figured all would become clear with the revealer. Only the revealer made nothing clear (I was looking for names of rivers literally "under" the [BRIDGE] squares, to no avail), and then the BYGONES answer came along and things were even less clear. So after I finished the puzzle, I headed over to the NYT site to see what I was missing and ... again, wow. This is some elaborate nonsense. So the "bridges" go over nothing, from a regular solving standpoint ... but that nothing is also a something, if you imagine bodies of water literally running under the [BRIDGES] ... and those "somethings," taken all together, give you ... the standalone word BYGONES? Which is "apt" by inference? Am I getting this right? Also, please direct me to the [BRIDGE] that goes over a damn OCEAN!? Also also, when's the last time you took a bridge over a ... bog!? A bog? LOL "bog" beat out "stream," "creek," "canal," and god knows how many other plausible water features. Bog? So, enormous sea- and ocean-crossing bridges, and also a bog bridge. From a purely infrastructural standpoint, his theme is ludicrous. And yet it's so elaborate. So much effort and complication to arrive at ... Where? BYGONES? Truly, a bridge to nowhere. 
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155 comments:
The theme with all those graphics was so silly that I ended up expecting silly answers which I guess made me more forgiving of them. EXCEPT DETAG! That was totally unforgivable.
Oh and I bras with no underwire are indeed wireless to me!
I thought I knew what I wanted to say but... jeez Oliver, you look too young to die.
Puzzle wise, Rex said everything I would have said. I got all the BRIDGEs but couldn't grok the revealer, just a bit too clever. And agree about AS A GUIDE: I had ASA----- and I thought: please let it not be AS A GUIDE! Yuch.
And surprised to see DEL TACO as word of the day because... living in Canada I am leery of "..chain.." clues in case they are a chain we don't have up here and that I also never happened to notice when I was down "in the States". And in fact I have never heard of it, and after I got the answer from crosses I read it as DELTA CO which sounds quite military special forces ish. What, do they sell MREs? ("Meals Ready to Eat", which US soldiers can take out of their backpacks, peel off the foil and eat as is, hence the name.)
Also we have the answer ALE up top and then IPA (India Pale Ale) at the bottom; seems a bit dodgy, no?
[Spelling Bee: Sat 0; streak 14 days!]
Well, there was certainly a lot going on here, and I don’t want to repeat anything that’s already been said. But I will do a little defense for BOG. On hiking trails, where there are areas prone to puddles/mud, trail crews will build small bridges using a couple beams or logs. You’ll see these a lot in New England especially. The technical term for these in trail maintenance is “BOG bridges.” Seeing the reference here put a smile on my face as a hiker. OCEAN, on the other hand…
Fun divided by zero
What are you supposed to do to get this to register as finished when solving online? Tried using the letters that complete the bodies of water, tried typing in "BRIDGE" under each bridge, no good
Easy. I solved this without reading the instructions so I had no idea what was going on (except for the BRIDGE part) or why the happy music didn’t play. So I tapped the i at the top of the app, figured out what I needed to do, and lo and behold “happy music.”
A very impressive feat of construction that was fun to solve, liked it.
…let BYGONES be BYGONES, it’s all WATER UNDER THE BRIDGE…
Not good
cAleB before JACOB at 1D
micS before BRAS at 12A
HEY you before HEY BUD at 26D
I am hEre before I MADE IT at 52A
fIfTY before SIXTY at 71A (I didn't get how either fit the clue; thanks @Rex for the explanation)
TnoteS before TBillS before TBONDS at 95D
Wanted Lothario instead of LADIES' MAN at 49D but it didn’t fit
Overall Easy-Medium, but I didn't understand BYGONES until I got here.
Ha!
Tried to put in RUIN for the adding cilantro in to the guacamole but of course it was too short. Cilantro, yuck!
Plenty of structures that carry roads over BOGS in SE Mass and Cape Cod but agreed that it’s a little off. I don’t have the words for the rest of this thing. Inserted BRIDGE blindly in each box and BYGONES came with crosses. A useless theme.
LLOYD COLE has some words of warning for you prior to solving this one
I read the instructions – "...if you're still stuck, further explanation of today's theme..." and I thought, "Great! I'm gonna challenge myself! No explanation, no nothing! Just me and a Sunday, mano-a-mano!"
And then I get to the first bridge and type, "BRIDGE." And then the second one: "BRIDGE." And then BRIDGE and BRIDGE and...are you kidding me?! What fun is THAT?!
Add in all the crappy fill and by the time I got to the end I wished I had one more bridge to throw the puzzle off of. YEESH.
Well, first of all, since I always solve offline, I had no issues with missing visuals, since the magazine showed the bridges, and the water, complete with ripples. Second, since I enjoy solving the puzzle rather than having a hair-on-fire reaction to things like a bridge over the ocean, or random prepositional phraseology, I liked the the whole experience, visually ASAGUIDE and thinkfully offroad. And third, Rex's take on it was just hilarious and that just added to the enjoyment. It "got me feelin' HELLA GOOD."
39 Down: Not sure if I “got” the answer, even though I filled it in correctly. Was that because a 1pm bell tolls just once?
BOG bridge I’m ok with — it’s something you see regularly on hiking trails in wet areas. OCEAN bridges? Nope!
Type the revealer letters under each bridge
May Oliver’s memory be for a blessing. What a lovely cat!
You could, on a broad but not wild construal of “ocean,” say the East River is the ocean. Then there are some bridges crossing the ocean!
Extremely minor quibble: in iOS, the app’s blue and yellow rendering of water and bridge were the same blue and yellow that are used to indicate the current clue/answer. Checking back and forth between clue and grid was discombobulating, especially when doing a Sunday on a phone.
I put the letters that complete the bodies of water and it worked. Maybe there’s a typo elsewhere?
Using the NYT app it was entirely unclear you had to type in the letters of BYGONES over the bridge icons, letters you then couldn’t see. Terrible.
By the time I got to bygones, I had completely forgotten about the shaded letters and then I saw them with an underwhelming 'oh'
Two things I especially love about this puzzle.
First, it would have worked with simply having the bridges going over the various waters, with the revealer WATER UNDER THE BRIDGE, a sweet punny rebus theme. But no, Jeremy took it one step farther by having the letters under the bridges spell a word – BYGONES – related to the metaphorical meaning of that revealer. A brilliant leap, IMO, adding a lovely layer of complexity, not to mention a layer of difficulty to the solve.
Second, the puzzle’s title – GET OVER IT – relates to using a bridge to cross over water, as well as meaning “put it behind you”, perfectly relating to BYGONES. This title is the sweet bow tying everything together. Perfect!
Adding the layer of difficulty to the solve certainly added a huge layer of difficulty to the construction, but that’s what good constructors do in service to the solver. Jeremy is a Sunday pro, with two-thirds of his 27 puzzles over 17 years falling on this day, and his skill shined in this grid
Thank you, sir, for a masterful theme and for a splendid outing!
I typed in BRIDGE as a rebus for each one, and that worked just fine on the ipad app.
Same here. I’m not sure if the clue was stupidly dull or subtly brilliant.
LOL at 112A. Absurd deranged right-wing fantasy that this is one organized "protest group."
Bridge Over Troubled Water is all I got to say about this one.
I can say without fear of hyperbole that Rex talking about spokesducks was a billion times better than anything in this puzzle. NYT online took away our .puz files and acrostics and variety puzzles to give us this?
Rather than drone on about how truly awful DETAG and ASAGUIDE are, can we appreciate the levels of complexity in this OPUS?
All the BRIDGEs were valid terms, as were all the highlighted terms the BRIDGEs crossed, and they formed WATERUNDERTHEBRIDGE - BYGONES!
That’s a trifecta of cleverness! Seriously. To nitpick that there are no BRIDGEs over a bog or an ocean inlet is being persnickety to the NTH degree!
(Methinks many are frustrated by not getting the happy music on apparent completion. I too was confused at first, thinking that each illustrated BRIDGE was a free square. But Jeremy literally spelled it out, as did the information tab telling us to use the single letters from 122 Across. For those who need further help, go to Wordplay. For those who are still annoyed, GET OVER IT!j
This was a brilliant, BRILLIANT structure that doesn’t deserve the flood of complaints…
Good morning all, Colin here.... My Firefox keeps yelling "GAH!" at me whenever I try to open this page (and certain others), and so I cannot log in as usual, and will show up as Anonymous today using Chrome.
("GAH!" reminds me of Mr. Theophilus Goon, the incompetent policeman in Enid Blyton's books featuring the Five Find-Outers and Dog...)
Like others, I was flummoxed by "BYGONES" - initially, I wrote BRIDGES into the circles (before really reading the clue in detail) but no-o-o-o, that wouldn't work. The bridges were cute, as was the whole visual effect. It just seemed too much of a square-peg-in-a-round-hole kind of concept. So, mixed feelings.
My NYT app gave my the Congrats screen with nothing typed under the bridges.
Test part of this puzzle was needing to go to this blog post to wrap my head around BYGONES which led me to pix of adorable cats. I never really got BOGged down anywhere but all and all it was an OCEAN of disappointment. Loved the LLoyd Bridges reference which could only make me think if his line in Airplance, “ Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue” when the revealer finally clicked in.
I’m so sorry Courtney about your loss of Oliver, a beautiful cat. And thanks to @Rex for being a kind person who would post that memorial.
Also thanks to @Rex for tearing this idiotic puzzle to shreds. I cringed the second I saw those cutesy little bridges. I did however start writing down the”Missing letters” to see if they made a word and sure enough, Bygones. FWIW. SMH.
I love these alternate puzzle recs also, I’ve been doing the AVCX puzzles since you recommended it and I love it. Also did that tournament just for fun. I’ll get this one for my mom who stays up on the news!
My print out had yellow bridges crossing blue bodies of water, which was OK. Took a while to see the "biridges" rebus but that made everything pretty easy.
The bridge over the OCEAN made me think of an old Bob and Ray bit where one is interviewing the other, who is building a bridge over the Atlantic Ocean, which has just been started, and in the background you hear the sound of many cars driving off the end and into the water because of course they do. Nobody beat those guys for absurd.
My Mom always said "water over the bridge" or "water under the dam", and that always made me smile.
Today's word from the crossword vault has to be ATTA, which used to be in every other puzzle. Welcome back.
Nothing like a Sunday Stunt Puzzle JB. The gimmick was worth the sometimes strained answers, but Just Barely. Thanks for a lot of fun.
I rarely feel like I’m “in control” of a Sunday grid, but I handled this one about as well as I’ve ever done before - so definitely on the easy side. Had trouble with the usual suspects - mostly the nonsense like DUDE BRO, HELLA GOOD, YEESH, HEY BUD, and of corse that atrocious SIXTY.
Fat-fingered my way out of a six-months long streak when I inadvertently turned on auto-correct for a nanosecond - alas, technology gives, and technology takes away.
Disagree with OFL on the big BOG controversy (close enough for CrossWorld in my opinion), but agree with and enjoyed the rest of his observations today.
This was an impressive puzzle. Never heard of Dude Bro , Del Taco, or the No Doubt song so that area took forever. Prefer not to see terrorist groups in the puzzle, whether they’re left wing or right wing.
The bad news is I missed the whole second level of the puzzle -- i.e. the bodies of water under the BRIDGES. The worse news is that the puzzle let me.
Once again I ask: What's the use of doing something clever/tricky/intricate/difficult in your puzzle if the solver doesn't need to figure it out in order to solve and may not even notice it at all?
The BRIDGES were too easy to figure out by themselves to make for an interesting puzzle. The BYGONES clue floated right past me: I understood its relationship to WATER UNDER THE BRIDGE but didn't know what was meant by "covered letters."
For those who did notice the WATER UNDER THE BRIDGE, I'm guessing you had more fun than I did. But I still say to all constructors -- and especially the cleverest ones among you: Always keep the solvers in mind. What is THEIR experience going to be like? Not yours. Theirs.
Waste of space. Dumb trick.
The best part of this was listening to Aretha. Second best: her backup singers. Third best: her band. Everyone singing and playing so SOULFULLY. That gave me the spiritual fortitude to hold it together while looking at those lovely pictures of sweet Oliver.
Amazing puzzle, I thought. Kudos to the constructor. This was a theme puzzle whereby getting the theme aided in the solve. That's the way it should be. Fitting BRIDGE into CAM___UNIVERSITY was very clever.
I had "inFrench" instead of INCREOLE for the longest time (the 4th and 5th letters matched). That was my last stumbling block.
In the NYT app, all you have to do for any rebus is put in the first letter of the rebus. Today, I just went around and put B in all the bridge squares, and carried on. Review and commentariat seem a little grinchy today.
The extra help with clues and visuals made the theme elements too easy. I liked the Water under the B leading to BYGONES. Of all the puzzles, it was odd to think this would be the one that would be sending me for extra help after the app basically rolled out the red carpet.
Agree!
One of those days when I enjoyed both the @Rex critique and the puzzle itself. Took the references to BOG, OCEAN, etc to mean a body of water and did not take them literally. The complexities of the construction and theme seem to me ingenious and as someone has indicated close enough for handgrenades and crosswords. A relatively easy Sunday fairly easy on crosswordese, if a little off in the direction of DETAG…
Luckily my sweet husband prints the puzzle for me every day! I prefer pencil on paper - so I saw the bridges - this was much too easy for a Sunday....
I doth protest.
I just typed B in each bridge rebus square and it worked in the app. Would have been better (because it would have required understanding the blue shaded squares) if the app only accepted the missing letter for each body of water to spell out BYGONES before getting the happy music.
HEY BUD!
Holy moly. So many things happening in this here puz. Amazingly, I was actually able to figure it all out. Signs the ole brain is still working. Plus, got the Happy Music at the end!
The NYT site, which went up to $50/yr, always has the grid as it should be. Ergo, today's had the BRIDGEs covering the squares in the direction of which way to go. Figured that part out at LLOYD BRIDGES. Took me a bit to figure why there were shaded squares in the crossers. But then got the circled BYGONES, reread the note (did y'all see a note?) and started putting in the letters in order (albeit starting at the end of the world/puz, and moving backward/upward), finally seeing the BRIDGEs were "crossing" bodies of water.
Very interesting. Took a while to say OH I SEE. Had let out a WHAT? before, then a "DUDE,BRO!" once sussed. A little strange how the extra letter is plunked into an answer, but the BRIDGE covers it, so I guess it's UP TO YOU to decide if a feature or a bug. You can say "ALAKAZAM! Letter gone!" or somesuch if you HAVE TO.
Got our required ASS. ASS PULP, UMUM. 😁
Pretty radical puz there, Jeremy.
Happy Sunday.
SIXTY, er SIX F's
RooMonster
DarrinV
It's hard enough to find someone to house sit, but good luck if you also have a horse and they've got to HOOFSIT. YEESH!
Why did the music teacher tell the students that the Solfège scale goes do, re, mi, sol, la, ti, do? He was ANTIFA. I would love to correct him, but I can't right now ASHES busy.
Fantasy of a LADIESMAN/SEDUCER: BRAS, ASS, MOUSSE and ARIDE, followed by GOO.
I've heard somewhere that there is a marina ONRYE's waterfront. Can anyone verify?
I thought this was a HELLAGOOD puzzle, although it was pretty easy after figuring out the bridge trick. The WATERUNDERTHEBRIDGE part took slightly longer to see, but once seen it was an aid in solving (though not in Solvège). The weird thing for me was that I initially didn't put any letter in the bridge squares, but then, when I didn't get either happy music or an error message, I started to fill them in. When I got to the 4th of 7, I got the happy music. I'm beginning to suspect that the Gray Lady has turned the crossword over to ChatGPT and the real rules are unknown to human beings. Anyhoo, I enjoyed the puzzle, Jeremy Newton.
This was a lovely puzzle. I admired the construction and the WATERUNDERTHEBRIDGE/BYGONES bonus. Just a brilliant puzzle. I did the hard copy, so I imagine the online app giving filks problems. Lewis, you succinctly posted my exact thoughts. you are always on the money.
So sorry for your loss, Courtney. Oliver was a cutie.I lost my Cinnamon when we were hit by an SUV in January 2022. We were the first post in Rex's Pet Parade (of course!).
It seemed pretty easy for me for a Sunday, though it was annoying the yellow "bridges" completely obscured what was written in the cell. But I really liked the clue on OILBASED
Neither worked for me, and then I began to erase all the under the bridge squares to make sure I had read the hint correctly, and it triggered complete with 3 erased and the rest filled. Quality workmanship!
The stretch of I-95 through Secaucus, NJ can be fairly described as a bridge over a bog. I did wince at the bridge over an ocean, though.
Me, too!
RE: 82 across, Salami. What is an Italian "club" (sandwich). There are Hoagies and Subs and Grinders(if you wrongfully desire your Hoagie to be warm). But there is no iteration of a club sandwich---Italian style----you know with una,due,tre slices of plain white bread. You may order a club sandwich in your local Italian Club (restaurant) if they have one on the menu. But it ain't gonna have salami on it.
I know there’s at least one commercial calling bras WIRELESS, because the first time I saw it, I wondered why you would need your bra to connect to the internet.
The CAPTCHA I just solved to post this asked me to identify bridges….
Stayed with my original answer for “Obnoxiously fratty sort” - DUmbBRO - far too long.
Still like it better than DUDEBRO - where do I go to coin a portmanteau? - this play off of Dumbo and the dumb ubiquitous use of BRO these days should be added to the crossword database that apparently exists.
Also, shout-out to today’s most EXCELLENT puzzle!
I left all the bridge squares blank and got the happy music when finished.
So it turns out that DONT SPEAK and ITS MY LIFE have the same number of letters as HELLA GOOD.
I thought that this puzzle was very impressive, although it flew by quickly for a Sunday
I’m not sure why the notion of a bridge over a bog is controversial. I have a nice hiking trail near me in a peat bog conservation area and I think that everyone who visits agrees that it’s more pleasant to walk on the bridge than trudge through the water.
I also don’t understand the complaint about T-BILLS vs. T-BONDS. So there was a clue with multiple possible answers and you had to check the cross to narrow it down. Isn’t that how crossword puzzles are supposed to work?
Cajuns speak Cajun French not creole I know I was married to a Cajun for 26 years creole is more associated with New Orleans it is a different mix of people
I know it’s a minor point, but for people who hike, “bog bridges “ are definitely a thing. They’re wooden constructions that are placed in wet parts of trails (like bogs) allowing hikers to traverse these environments without turning it into a wide muddy mess. So yeah, bog bridges, definitely a thing.
I am so sorry, Courtney, about the loss of your sweet Oliver. I hope seeing your photos posted here brings you some small comfort.
As for the puzzle I completely missed the boat on the underlying theme. I slapped “BRIDGE” in the rebus squares and had no clue as to the words specific to the water beneath. Thanks Rex for the enlightenment.
I think bridges over bays might count as over the ocean. What “boggles” my mind though are the various forms of the shaded squares that appear in different places. I just happened to have a print copy of the paper because Puzzle Mania was published today. In the magazine and The NY Times digital app there were colored squares indicating the bridge square and water underneath. But The NY Times games app only had grey squares in those spots. The rebus was easy enough to discern from the clues but nonetheless there are times it would be super helpful to place a rebus with more specific indicators.
Yeah, but the puzzle has "The Dude's" dad. How can you speak ill of a puzzle that has that?
And come to think of it, maybe THAT was the real revealer: "SEA HUNT?"
The minute and second hands of a clock can count to sixty, and so can a human hand. This has been done since ancient times, and is the origin for the Base-60 system (that and 60 is divisible by more whole numbers than 100). This is why there are 60 minutes/seconds, 12 hours, 360 degrees, etc etc.
And celestial navigation is indeed used by ancient mariners but also by all sorts of modern stuff like missiles, satellites, and reconnaissance aircraft. After launch from a submarine, a Trident missile takes a star fix to calibrate its onboard INS navigation system. Apollo moon missions used celestial navigation to align their navigation platform. GPS satellites do the same thing.
Count me in as someone who had a lot of fun with this puzzle in spite of some of the weaker fill noted by @Rex, then post-solve discovered the secondary themers of BOG, etc. and my feeling turned to admiration and amazement.
I have ZERO problems with BOG and OCEAN. For whatever reason I think of cranberry bogs…my guess is there are quite a few bridges around to access these properly as well as just get past them. Also, while it doesn’t span the entire Atlantic, I’d say the bridge from Miami to San Clemente goes over the OCEAN.
MY downfall, DNF, and personal nit was DUDEBRO. Yep. I had rUDEBRO…UM,UM…seems like a RUDEBRO would be more obnoxious than a DUDEBRO. I dunno…I guess the term DUDE has always seemed to indication affection more than scorn, but I guess it’s all in how you say it. This did NOT ruin the puzzle for me Jeremy Newton!
Filling the puzzle correctly was easy. When I tried to deal with the theme, first by putting the word bridge as a rebus into the bridge squares, my phone went haywire. Any square I tapped on would cause the entire puzzle to shrink to half size then immediately spring back to full size and I couldn't change anything. Not wanting to waste any more time with the theme I went to xwordinfo and saw that all my solving was correct. Their explanation of the theme and how you type in the "missing" letters was still confusing. I understood what the point of it was I just fail to see why anyone would bother with drivel like this. One of those cartoon puzzles where you find the slight differences between two seemingly identical images would be more interesting than this. What you've got here is an oversized early week puzzle to produce a visual gag. Gagging was all I got.
yd -0
agree that little wooden bridges often go over bogs, and piers are sort of bridges that go out over oceans, though they don't lead to another landmass, only to the end of the pier.
i thought it got a little more interesting as you figured out that the letters in the water actually signified something, overall very easy. another win for ... print!
I laughed reading your post (bog and asaguide). Then, of course tears when I got to Oliver and Olive. Thank you for the holiday pet photos.
Somehow you just know it's going to be an interesting -- and somewhat easy -- Sunday puzzle when the first clue you read and fill in is the name of your own University.
One of the best Sundays in a long time. I had to come here to understand the meaning of 71A. Pretty darn clever.
If you go on most sites selling bras there will be a whole “wireless” section
I think bridges to barrier islands or to Key West would qualify as ocean bridges.
Thanks for explaining the SIXTY answer, Rex. I was hoping that the answer to that clue, “Count on one hand,” would be the Sesame Street character, whose name escapes me.
I note that @John X is in the house (11:20 am). Welcome back DUDEBRO.
I thoroughly enjoyed it as well. I believe Rex over-thought it. I just started filling it in and let the puzzle unfold. I got bras immediately, but detag and dudebro were ugly.
I had the same problem with the puzzle not yielding the happy music when I finished, so I finally hit Reveal-All. Of course that meant that my efforts wouldn't be part of a string. The directions for solving this problem were highly ambiguous. By no means the stupidest thing about this sorry effort, but it's Sunday; what can I tell ya.
Rex, so sorry for your loss of Olive around a year ago. Was she the white rescue cat with the facial injuries? It’s so sweet and kind that you memorialized Oliver today and comforted his family. Thoughtful touch in a cruel world.
Lucky for me my neighbor gives me the magazine section on Sundays. So I got BRIDGE. But I don't know how I feel about this puzzle. Was the constructor trying too hard? Was I trying too little? 71A "Count on one hand" = sixty?
Otherwise, it was okay.
Courtney, I'm so sorry for your loss of darling Oliver. He was a very handsome fellow and obviously well-loved. Thanks to Rex for posting all the lovely pictures of him, and all the adorable holiday pets!
👍🏻👍🏻
Am I the only one who doesn’t understand ALAKAZAM?
Also, ANTIFA is not an organization or “left wing protest group.” Please stop spreading GOP propaganda, NYTIMES.
Two things to love today - the puzzle and the pet photos. This is the kind of Sunday puzzle I find so much fun to solve, with its charming grid art and the multiple layers of the theme - from the partly obscured WATERs, to the ways the BRIDGES were sometimes more hidden (ABRIDGED) or appeared in lively phases, whether being BURNED or BUILT, to the BYGONES under the last of them. A small touch, but I was glad I solved in the magazine to get the ripples flowing under the BRIDGES.
I was mid-grid before I asked myself why there was an unequal number of blue squares. Only when CEAN was in place did I think, "Wait a minute" and cast my eye back to ULF. Aha. But what about OG? Fortunately, I've been on nature trails that did indeed have a BRIDGE over a BOG. Understanding that aspect was a big help in my getting the unknown HEL[LAGOON]N and A[LAKE]AZAM and in resetting my mind from "street" to URBAN ART. And what a dynamite reveal!
@Jeremy Newton, this was a treasure. Thank you!
Impressive puzzle, too much work for my brain on a Sunday
@Trigger and all -- US 1 from Key Largo to Key West, comprised of numerous bridges, is known as the Overseas Highway. I can be a nitpicker at times, but today that's close enough for me. Gotta say I loved this puzzle! More like this on Sundays, please!
I can see how you got your name!
I've walked on abridge over a bog, but agree there was never a bridge over an ocean.
My brain had trouble with the bridge not actually covering a meter inthe answer. Evenafte I realized the word in but could be bo and gulf. Wan't til I finished tht Fully too in that all the water word were in blue. hen I liked it better. And of course it mad e the realer perfect.
First of all, my sincere condolences to Oliver’s family. He was obviously well loved and no doubt, in his own special feline way, returned the love.
As for the puzzle, the graphics didn’t appear, nor did different shades of blue squares. This was the first time I recall having to go to the title page hoping for a clue. And I resent having to do that! I picked up the BRIDGE rebus without any instructions at CAMBRIDGE university. But when the rebus made zero sense going down, I erased it. Sheesh!
Had the graphics been better I would have enjoyed this much much more. I will say that the constructor had an interesting idea and if its translation to print and the various apps had been more successful, I would have enjoyed the solve.
I had to come here to get the BYGONES. Now understanding that the bridges (allegedly) cross bodies of water, all I can say is any actual BRIDGE crossing a BOG is very likely a criminal waste of government resources!
Okay, now I've read through the comment and\d have to agree there are bridges over ocean.
Didn't anyone else ting dumdum was an inapt clue for ass?
I beg to differ. Cilantro in Guacamole takes it to the next level!
Rex Parker, you're our hero. Thanks for the tribute to my sweet Oliver today. It was so sweet to read the comments too. XOXO!
P.S. As usual, what bugged you bugged us too... ASAGUIDE? Come on!
I dunno, didn't much care for the puzzle but it was okay.
Thanks for the explanation of the sixty count.
Yes, there are sea bridges and ocean bridges; google is your friend. Sometimes.
Yes, for centuries sailors used stars as navigational guides, both before and after the sextant was invented. Some still do. And, not for nothing, the Mercator projection was created as a navigational guide as well, not as an expression of US hegemony over the world.
And no, there is no organized group called "antifa." I suppose if there are a group of people rioting during an otherwise peaceful BLM march each person in that group may refer to themselves and/or their friends as being "antifa," but that's about it. Water under the bridge these days, as our next President will be our last, and he'll send everyone he thinks is "antifa" to re-education camps anyway.
Sorry if my musings are a bridge too far.
Good old fashioned paper is how I solve Sundays, which makes life both easier and more enjoyable for me.
Welcome back! We missed you.
Thx Jeremy; a fine piece of work! 😊
Med (I suspect); went downs-only.
Was thrilled to (almost) get this one.
Picked up on the theme pretty quickly at CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY, which helped later with WATER UNDER THE BRIDGE, and BYGONES.
Same thot as @Rex re: SIXTY.
Had DUDE BRO originally, but changed it to rUDE BRO for the loss. (hi @Beezer (11:21 AM)). Thot rETAG might work just as well as DE TAG. :(
A wonderful 2 1/2 hr. workout.
Loved those BRIDGE crossings!
An excellent adventure! :)
🙏 for Oscar, Courtney & fam. 😿
___
Lester Ruffs' Sat. Stumper was easy-med (2 1/2 NYT Sat.). On to Balton & Stewart's NYT acrostic on xwordinfo.com
___
Found td's 'Connections' puz very tough. Did manage it, but with one misfire.
___
Peace 🕊 🇺🇦 ~ Compassion ~ Tolerance ~ Kindness ~ Freudenfreude & a DAP to all 👊 🙏
As a newbie Sunday “hard copy” solver who doesn’t always get the themes without Rex’s help, I liked this foolish puzzle. It would be very confusing without the visual clues, but I’m quite pleased that I figured it out all by myself!!!! Were there some weird clues/answers (e.g.,“dudebro”? “sixty”?)? Yes, but I still liked the feeling of accomplishment.
Thanks for explaining SIXTY. I was hoping someone would also explain how "Air ... or chair" is RUN.
Thanks for explaining SIXTY. I was hoping someone would also explain how "Air ... or chair" is RUN.
Cute SunPuz, despite the lack of theme humor. thUmbsUp.
I used the printed, with colorful bridges and water pictures, puzversion. Really helped , becuz splatzin in the "BRIDGE" words got to be almost gimmes.
The omitted water letters was slightly trickier to get, but got em.
BYGONES was kinda weird, until I thought it over for many precious nanoseconds.
Fillins got a bit weird at times [UMUM, DUDEBRO, INCREOLE, DETAG], but, hey --
17 U's! Totally UIE! [staff weeject pick, btw]. And 40 weejects! soooo … M&A is willin to let BYGONES be bygones.
fave thing by far: clue for SIXTY = {Count on one hand!}. Kinda enjoyed DUDEBRO, too boot, I gotta admit.
Thanx for bridgin the crossword ocean to get to us, Mr. Newton dude. Excellent job.
Masked & Anonymo17Us
p.s. rest in peace, Oliver. And Olive. And OYL, if applicable. Cute kitty bygones.
happy holidaze:
**gruntz**
Very nice Sunday puzzle.
Just completed Saturday’s offering . Isn’t it quite rare? A Farrell puzzle what with 9across?
Head over to the Chenango Valley State Park to see many bridges on the “Bog Trail”. They keep your feet dry while you peruse the ferns.
Doesn't the seven mile bridge from the Florida mainland to the Florida Keys travel over the ocean?
I kept staring at UMUM, convinced that I was missing something, but that was the answer. Surely the most ludicrous garbage fill ever.
Great puzzle
I like
I live in Hilo, Hawaii. There is a footbridge over ocean to Coconut Island, a popular park.
Rex is in fine form today. I laughed a bunch of times reading his critique. I had a very similar reaction to the cluing anf answers throughout. Although I thiought the puzzle was flat out easy, Very disappointing.
I mean, there’s plenty of bridges that are built over ocean water.
The San-Mateo Hayward Bridge crosses San Francisco Bay. It's scary.
@Okanaganer early this am
'Murcan here and only know DEL TACO from watching Grace & Frankie!
@Anon 3 ish
You can RUN a show on TV (air) or RUN a meeting (+/- chair)
Got the bridge business right away, but at first the letters in blue seemed pretty odd. OG? BA? But at ULF it came clear, although no idea why only part of the word. So 122A, coming at the end, was a pretty neat summation. Sundays I do in the magazine so the graphics were all there.
Amazing construction feat and enjoyable enough solve, if brief.
Don’t know why all th3 naysaying here bothers me but it does.
This was the best puzzle in a month of Sundays (as BEETAYLOR might say).
So well-constructed! And yet people are focused on whether a BRIDGE covers the ocean!!
In Minneapolis, I often cross the Mississippi River. Does that cover the entirety of the Minnesota-Louisiana route? No! What’s wrong with Will Shortz, allowing this obvious error? Does he no longer CARE?
To get BRIDGE and “things that are spanned” and BYGONES in a highly creative puzzle is worth praising!
Love Connections (as in “I love Connections”, not thw cheesy dating game show) as well.
Jeremy, Will, Wyna - FTW! (Hope I’m using that right - all the initialisms throw me)…
Air a show, chair a meeting. Run could be used in both of these senses
I thought the theme went a “bridge “ too far with the BYGONES part. But I didn’t dislike the puzzle even though I gave up trying to figure out where the word came from. I vaguely noticed the water related words but I lost interest. Also I dnf’d at DETAG/DUDEBRO. Had an r. Made sense to me at the time. Normally I get upset, but the cross was a bit off as Rex said.
My guess is the BYGONES theme was added because the bridges theme was ridiculously easy.
As often happens with me, the theme was (mostly) easy but other parts made it average with the dnf
An, Easterner here. I only kno DELTACO from a previous Times puzzle.
I have seen them too. Still thought the last part of the theme was too convoluted.
I hate doing the puzzle on line.
So I agree with you both (Jack Zamboni & Mike E
I print and solve on a hard copy. So this all worked for me.
At first, I didn’t like the grid but then I saw that my complaint was a property of the theme conceit. I solved this as if it were a collection of small puzzles, each with BRIDGE in the center. Oh, well..
The closest I could think of an ocean bridge is the one that connects Denmark and Sweden. Still not an ocean, but a straight between 2 seas.
About ATTA being back after an absence, it was also a kealoa with It’s a. I thought you would notice the old friend
Thanks Nancy. You described my experience with the theme exactly.
The bridge theme was ridiculously easy, with a tacked on additional gimmick which I like you didn’t get. But I had problems with other parts of the puzzle so it kept my interest.
Thanks for bringing up the Italian “club” issue. I still don’t get it!
I made the rUDEBRO/rETAG error.
Glad I am not the only one!
@egsforbreakfast The pentatonic scale is anti-fa (as well as anti-ti). That makes the majority of blues and rock guitarists anti-fa, (including Ted Nugent).
I find I much close-up magic over the showy, ALAKAZAM folks. This is the David Copperfield of puzzles. Too much going on for my taste, and it draws too much attention to its ingenuity, but it sure is a feat of engineering.
This is a PUZZLE. That means it might involve having to figure something out, perhaps even something novel that we haven't seen in a puzzle before. There was an amazing amount of intricacy in the layers, but not if the only goal is to quickly slap in letters to achieve a personal best time; then those layers become pointless, confusing or even irritating. I thought the theme was brilliant, and worth taking the time to enjoy the ride.
Silly time to popst, but this is when I get to puzzles on Sundays in December, as a working musician. ANTIGFA does not exist, it's a creation of the fevered imaginations of crazy right winger. I almost stopped solving when I got to that answer and threw the thing in the compost. I've been a left-winger for decades and I have never met a single person who was a member of ANTIFA. Sheesh.
Which three erased? I’m having the same issue.
yep. that was weird. and when any attempt to put in the letter to complete the body of water was hidden under the bridge ...
Rex should have played this one in the print edition. It was a lot of fun. Very clever.
Oddly, I put nothing whatsoever in the under-the-bridges squares and the app was fine with it. I didn't understand the BYGONES thing so 🦖 to the rescue.
One nit: The see-saw doesn't power the HAND CAR, it is the mechanism through which human-power is delivered.
Tee-Hee: BRAS. ASS.
Uniclues:
1 Religious fervor surrounding new iPhone releases.
2 Where wealthy Brits play with others' balls.
3 Pretty pre-pig-murder palace surprises.
4 Gourmet assassination on a dinner party cutting board (with cheese on the side).
1 PALO ALTO FUELED AMENS (~)
2 CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY ARCADE
3 STY DOMES ASTOUND (~)
4 HELLA GOOD SALAMI (~)
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Puts on sandals with socks, cargo shorts with way too many pockets, tucks in his tee shirt, cinches down his belt, and prepares to hit the grocery store where he's certain the cashier thinks he's funny. KEYS UP DAD BOD.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Speaking of floods, the Tulpehocken creek by my home has flooded the "bog bridges" I've built on the path when it's in it's banks, will be days til we see if they were staked down well enough or if they "be gone"???
I realize I’m missing something obvious here, but how is due /due = uno?
Realize I’m missing something obvious here, but how does due/due = uno?
Yep. Still better than the endless set of second rate actor named from long forgotten series or non-funny trivia about streaming records (but Pascal's triangle is an unknown). Well, de gustibus non est disputandum.
Am I the only one following who actually does that crossword physically in the paper?
Two (in Italian) divided by Two is One (in Italian).
Best Sunday in memory, because of the theme’s cleverness. It just kept on giving. On paper the visual was lovely, the bridge fun, the body of water a perfect bonus, then the bottom reveals a treat.
Agree! Cilantro in guacamole takes it to guacamole. Without cilantro, it’s just avocado with lime juice and onion mashed in (!!!!)
When Wizards cast a magic spell, they frequently declare 'ALAKAZAM!'
I also fondly remember a 60's children's series called 'The Magic Land of Alakazam', that featured Mark Wilson, a noted stage magician.
The series is credited with establishing the art of Magic as a viable television subject.
I believe you are referring to 'Count Count'.
As for a BRIDGE across an OCEAN, at the League of Conservation Voters Annual Capital Dinner in June 2023, according to the official White House transcript, President “Gaffe” Biden remarked, "We have plans to build a railroad from the Pacific all the way across the Indian Ocean.” LOL!
Can anyone explain the answer for 116 down? I just am not seeing a connection!
Real guacamole is not mashed...you need some chunks of avocado for texture, and it's not guacamole without diced jalapenos, tomatoes...and of course, cilantro...if you don't make it right, it's NOT guacamole
All this talk of "Easy-medium," Easy (!), and zipping through it...While I had another DNF. First time ever back to back, I think. I just never got off the ground with this one. Kept trying to make SHAZAM work; ALAKAZAM was among a host of WHA???
Wordle par. On to a better (we all hope) New Year. Have a happy!
GOOD IDEA TO SEDUCER
For ONEONONE, AS OFT AS I can,
I MAY USE IRENE ASAGUIDE,
BUT IMADEIT ASA LADIES'MAN
with AMPLE SALAMI TO HYDE.
--- REP. LLOYD COLE
Again no write-overs. Again rather easy, IMO. Again not that much fun.
The Chipotle ad just now on TV said they were MASHIN' guac.
According to the Google, the nearest DELTACO is 701 miles away from here. Good thing I paid attention in CA and NV and elsewhere when touring on vacay.
Wordle par. Tried a tasty answer but turned out it was just salty.
YEESH, DUDE
AT CAMBRIDGEUNIVERSITY
I BURNED my BRAS AND BRIDGES TOO,
THE ASHES are BYGONES, YOU SEE,
HEYBUD, I WEAR out DUDEs LIKE YOU.
--- JOY DEL LAZULI
Am I the only boob who didn't understand "DUE + DUE = UNO"?Please help me!
Sorry, I just realized that there was a division sign b/w the "DUE"s. Duh!
Florida keys
I had this big speech planned but Mike E said everything I was going to say. And it went like this:
Mike E 7:07 AM
Well, first of all, since I always solve offline, I had no issues with missing visuals, since the magazine showed the bridges, and the water, complete with ripples. Second, since I enjoy solving the puzzle rather than having a hair-on-fire reaction to things like a bridge over the ocean, or random prepositional phraseology, I liked the the whole experience, visually ASAGUIDE and thinkfully offroad. And third, Rex's take on it was just hilarious and that just added to the enjoyment. It "got me feelin' HELLA GOOD."
I suppose I could add that the DIRE [bridge]TRAITS tune was a nice touch.
Always been somewhat amazed and frightened by the idea of the Florida Keys highway. Aren’t those bridges over the hurricane-prone Atlantic Ocean?
The bodies of water under the bridges confused me because the first 2 I looked at… BOG and GULF were from letters in BRIDGE so I assumed that would be consistent (tho kind of arbitrary).
Then came
BAB?
BAR?
BAI
BAD
BAG
BAE?
As coach said “When you assume…..”
Latecomer syndicate club checking in. My satisfaction at solving puzzles and admiration for the intricate construction work is tempered by curiosity over whether today Rex and his commentariat will deride it as infantile, or declare the fill too obscure to belong in the grid.
My syndicate's website software has no bells and whistles, neither literal to congratulate me on solving, nor figurative to enter anything other than one letter per square. Once I have realized why the obvious answers don't fit, and identified the rebus squares, I have to highlight them and click the "show me the answer for this square" cheat button to fill them in.
Nevertheless I figured it all out and just in case Jeremy Newton ever comes by to read what people thought of the crossword, I raise my little voice to say that it was tricky, but not too hard, and very clever.
Count me as another one who fell into the Rudebro/Dudebro trap. Dudebro is probably a term (that I've never heard of), but I like Rudebro as an answer better.
Rex, may I refer you a little North East of your location for a bridge over an ocean. Confederation Bridge from New Brunswick to Prince Edward Island definitely bridges a good stretch of the Atlantic Ocean. :-)
I'll join Aviatrix as a syndicated solver who didn't have bells and whistles. I had grey squares but no bridge cues, etc. But I figured the rebus out pretty quickly. Yes, DETAG seemed forced but I liked the rest. Fun enough to give a challenge but not beat your head against the wall challenging. I liked it; thank you Jeremy Newton.
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